Ralph Pfau (Father John Doe) & the Golden Books
Born Nov. 10, 1904; joined A.A. Nov. 10, 1943; died Feb. 19, 1967
Short Outline of Life & Work
Introduction
The three most-published A.A. authors during the course of A.A.'s first sixty years have been Bill W., Richmond Walker (who wrote the Twenty-Four Hours a Day book), and Ralph Pfau, author of the fourteen Golden Books.
Father Ralph Pfau (November 10, 1904-February 19, 1967), who was a Roman Catholic priest, is our local hero in this part of the country: He spent years serving parishes in Indianapolis and southern Indiana, some of them quite near where we are having this workshop (like Jeffersonville, which is literally right next door, from 1935-1937). He gave the keynote address at the first Kentucky A.A. Conference in Louisville, Kentucky right across the river, almost exactly fifty years ago--that in particular adds a nice anniversary touch to this particular workshop session.
In my part of the country, the spirituality of everyone in the early A.A. groups was shaped at a deep level by Richmond Walker's Twenty-Four Hour book, which was read from during the formal meetings themselves. But many of the most dedicated also held meetings after the meetings, in people's homes, to study Father Ralph's latest Golden Book. One old-timer from my area says that when he first came in, he soon began to notice that all the old-timers who had really quality sobriety and serenity were fans of Father Ralph. They read his books over and over, and traveled hundreds of miles to hear him speak or just to talk with him privately. Something special about him and his message was communicated to them in this fashion, which inspired them in turn to become more and more deeply spiritual in their own everyday lives.
Ralph and Richmond Walker played a complementary role in early A.A. Rich wrote about the inner life of the spirit, and taught recovering people how to make genuine contact with a higher power, down in the depths of their hearts and souls. Ralph wrote about the active life in the world, and taught recovering people how to rise up from their meditations and begin taking concrete action, so that they could serve as channels of God's grace to this outside world. Rich taught us how to be silent and listen, while Ralph taught us how to make authentic decisions and then make a real commitment. Between the two of them, early A.A.'s had a marvelous pair of teachers, who taught them how to deal with the two halves of their lives, the inner and the outer.
Ralph was the first Roman Catholic priest to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous (he came in on November 10, 1943), and under the pen name which he chose to use, Father John Doe, he wrote his fourteen Golden Books back in the 1940's and 50's and early 60's. They are still being read and used by A.A.'s today:
1947 Spiritual Side
1948 Tolerance
1949 Attitudes
1950 Action
1951 Happiness
1952 Excuses
1953 Sponsorship
1954 Principles
1955 Resentments
1957 Decisions
1960 Passion
1963 Sanity
1964 Sanctity
1964 Living
They were coming out once a year at the beginning, but then he was slowed down as he also published three much longer books: Sobriety and Beyond (1955), Sobriety Without End (1957), and an autobiography, which he entitled Prodigal Shepherd, in 1958 (a shorter version of this ran as a three-part series in Look magazine).
He also issued a set of thirty recordings in which he spoke on various issues, including No. 11 "Father John Doe--Alcoholic," No. 22 "The Lord's Prayer," No. 2 "Alcoholism--Sin or Disease," and Nos. 23-26 "The Twelve Steps." He spoke on these recordings with a flamboyant old time preacher's style: his high voice, with its sharp- toned southern Indiana accent, could belt through to the back of a church without benefit of microphone, and knock any drowsy parishioners on the back pews out of their slow drift into sleep! His four-recording series on the Twelve Steps, in particular, is still as useful today for groups doing step studies as when he first gave them.
He invented the A.A. weekend spiritual retreat, and held the first one ever given at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana in June 1946. It was repeated the next year at the same location on the weekend of June 6-8, 1947, and a small booklet was printed to give the participants as a souvenir of their time together. He wanted a fancy cover for it, so his printer came up with some card stock covered with gold foil. This was why they came to be called the Golden Books. This first one was the Spiritual Side, which was so successful that people began asking for additional copies in large numbers. From then until 1955, in each subsequent year, he produced another booklet on that year's retreat theme, and so the Golden Book series came into being.
Ralph crisscrossed the United States and Canada from one side to the other, leading similar weekend spiritual retreats, and giving talks as an A.A. conference speaker. His cross-country journeys began as what was intended to be a simple, relaxing vacation in the Spring of 1948, driving from Indianapolis to southern California by the Texas route, but mushroomed from there, as A.A. groups, desperate for good, solid spiritual teaching, began asking him to speak, and then come back the next year and speak again. In his autobiography he talks about his extensive journeys from 1948 to 1958:
"I have traveled nearly 750,000 miles in ten years of working with alcoholics. I have spoken before nearly two hundred thousand members of A.A. at retreats, meetings and conventions, and personally discussed problems with more than ten thousand alcoholics."
At the point when he was beginning these travels (in 1948-49) he also founded the Catholic Clergy Conference on Alcoholism, which served a variety of useful purposes. It brought the message to priests and nuns who were themselves suffering from alcoholism, it helped to draw the benefits of the program to the attention of parish priests who could recommend it to parishioners who were alcoholics, and most important of all, it helped to keep the Roman Catholic bishops all over the United States favorably disposed towards A.A.
His Life
November 10, 1904: Ralph Pfau born in Indianapolis, youngest of five brothers.
His father died when he was four. His Uncle George was a priest and his Uncle Al was the bishop of Nashville, Tennessee. His older brother Jerry became a priest, earned a doctorate from Rome, and then taught at St. Mary-of-the-Woods college near Terre Haute, a medium-sized city over in extreme western Indiana, along the Wabash river. From a very early age, Ralph's mother referred to him as her other son who was going to become a priest, which created enormous pressures on him growing up.
1922: Graduated from Cathedral High School in Indianapolis, and in September began studying for the priesthood at St. Meinrad Seminary down in Spencer county, Indiana, about twelve miles north of the great Ohio river.
1928-29: First total breakdown. In the fifth year at seminary, the students who remained had to make an irrevocable decision. They were ordained as sub deacons and then as deacons on successive days. If you left seminary after that point, the normal rules were that you could never marry, and there was a deep cloud over you as far as good lay Catholics were concerned. Then one year later, they were ordained as priests.
Ralph began moving towards his first total psychological breakdown at that point. He could not eat, he could not sleep, he could not think straight, and torrents of thoughts circled around and around in his mind as he grew ever more frantic. His obsessive perfectionism was so great that he did not feel morally worthy to be a priest. The summer after the first two ordinations was a nightmare. He spent most of it with his older brother Jerry, who was now teaching at St. Mary-of-the- Woods, a Catholic women's college near Terre Haute, Indiana. The inability to eat or sleep continued, and the constantly churning thoughts continued to drive him frantic. Ralph got permission to see a doctor in Indianapolis, who prescribed Nembutal (a barbiturate) and then later doubled the dose. That was to prove the other half of his downfall. Ralph was to have as much trouble with drugs as he did with alcohol--all legal script of course, prescribed by licensed physicians--and he actually got started on his drug habit well before he had ever touched alcohol at all. At the end of summer he returned to Indianapolis, where a different doctor took him off the barbiturates and put him on bromides instead, which were also strong sedatives, and could sometimes produce hallucinogenic reactions.
May 20, 1929: The night before his ordination to the priesthood, he came down with a 104 temperature and had a complete nervous and physical breakdown, but was ordained priest anyway the next morning, sitting on a chair instead of standing and kneeling like the rest.
1929-33: Assistant pastor at the Old Cathedral in Vincennes IN, also taught Latin at Gibault High School which was connected with the cathedral. Vincennes is a very old town with a history, located along the Wabash river on the southwestern border of Indiana. The oldest building is a French log home from 1790, and there is also a Territorial Capital building which was used for territorial assemblies from 1800 to 1813.
Summer 1930: Went to Fordham University, run by the Jesuits, in New York city, to begin working on his masters degree.
While there he met David B____ , a New Yorker now, but originally from Indianapolis. They lived in a large apartment on Riverside Drive. David invited young Ralph to a party at their apartment. Although Prohibition was still in effect (1920-33), David offered the young priest a drink and he took it--his first taste of alcohol. Ralph liked it, and kept coming back all summer long for a drink or two. In Summer 1932, he got to come back to New York, continued to visit David for drinks in the evenings, and brought a whole case of illegal bourbon back home with him to Indiana.
Fall 1932: The head pastor at the Old Cathedral decided to use brothers instead of priests to do all the teaching at Gibault High School; Ralph was now out of his teaching job, which he loved. He developed a massive resentment, and began drinking every evening.
He developed a source of illegal alcohol in Jasper IN, the bootleg headquarters of southern Indiana. Jasper is an old German town, with an interesting old church and a very good German restaurant which serves huge helpings of sauerbraten and wiener schnitzel and other traditional dishes, sixty-five miles due west of where we are meeting here in Clarksville, through some beautiful southern Indiana hill country. But in those days, there was little law and order among the hill people south of town. Ralph figured later that he was putting down at least a quart of this local moonshine a day, which came out of the still at 190 proof, close to absolute alcohol.
Summer 1933: The second total breakdown. Sent first to St. Vincent's, the big hospital in Indianapolis, and then to a sanitarium in St. Louis.
1933-34: Finally sent to New York for a full year, as a kind of rest cure, to finish his masters degree.
He stayed off alcohol, but only because he was afraid someone would see him drinking and turn him in to the church authorities. He could not sleep at night. Within a week of arriving there, he went to a drugstore and started taking bromides again, and quickly started increasing the dosage of these powerful downers to massive proportions. He stayed off the booze until he received his M.A. from Fordham on Wednesday, June 13, 1934. The very next day, he was back at David B____ 's apartment, and started drinking again.
1934-35: Assistant pastor at St. Anthony's in Indianapolis.
1935-37: Assistant pastor at St. Augustine's in Jeffersonville IN, the river town immediately to the east of Clarksville, where we are holding our workshop. He often crossed the river to visit the big city of Louisville, where he had strong connections from this point to the end of his life.
The Great 1937 Flood: Submerged much of downtown Louisville, and also the towns on the Indiana side.
A boat came and got Ralph out of the second floor of the parish house, and he eventually made it back to Indianapolis. The bishop immediately sent him back south, to New Albany IN (the river city immediately to the west of Clarksville, where we are holding our workshop). He was to say masses for the refugees, and help in the clean-up work. Ralph kept going by drinking through large parts of every day. He kept a bottle in the car, and whenever he felt like it, would down a slug straight from the bottle as he drove along, and chase it with a Coke.
1937-39: St. Bernard's in Snake Run, in Gibson County, over in the extreme southwestern corner of Indiana. A country church, with a house for the priest next door, with peeling paint, no electricity, and no running water.
Ralph spent a lot of his time in Evansville IN down on the river, twenty-three miles southwest, or driving east to Louisville and spending two or three days there. Now he was taking his bourbon straight with a beer for a chaser. Blackouts, morning shakes, and finally bleeding gums from trench mouth.
1939: The third total breakdown. Some of his parishioners complained to the bishop about his drinking, and he was removed from his pastorate.
He went first to St. Vincent's, the big hospital in Indianapolis, and then to a sanitarium in Milwaukee. Again he lied about his drinking, the doctor there misdiagnosed him as manic depressive, and they started giving him the cold water treatment.
1939-42: Assistant pastor at Holy Rosary in Indianapolis. In late 1940 he started drinking again.
December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor, many priests began being shifted to different posts.
1942-3: Appointed pastor of St. Anne's in Indianapolis, but self-destructed within a year.
1943: The fourth total breakdown. In May, the bishop removed him from this parish and sent him to a sanitarium in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
He drove there in a blackout, and then tried to smuggle twelve bottles of liquor into the sanitarium. But he lied about why it was in his suitcase, again lied about his drinking, and was misdiagnosed this time as schizophrenic. Shock treatments with 110-volt AC current, enough to light up a 100-watt light bulb.
1943-5: Asst. pastor at St. Joan of Arc's in Indianapolis.
Began drinking again a week after he arrived, then began having frightening experiences with drugs (Benzedrine and barbital), including LSD-like hallucinations at one point.
Fall 1943: Became the first Roman Catholic priest to get sober in A.A. Discovered a copy of the Big Book, began reading and re-reading it, and for some reason he could not understand, was able to stop drinking.
A small A.A. group had been started in Indianapolis only three years earlier by a retired manufacturer named Doherty Sheerin, a good Irish Catholic; he became Ralph's sponsor.
November 10, 1943 (thirty-ninth birthday):
He phoned Doherty Sheerin, who came to the rectory and arranged for Ralph to go to an A.A. meeting at the Rauh Library on Thursday night. There were only seven people there, but Ralph kept coming back, and never drank again.
The four major A.A. groups in Indiana at that time:
April or May 1940: Evansville (southwest)
October 28, 1940: Indianapolis (central)
December, 1941: Fort Wayne (northeast)
February 22, 1943: South Bend (north central)
1945-7: Assistant pastor at Holy Cross in Indianapolis.
June 1946: The first weekend A.A. spiritual retreat, at St. Joseph's College at Rensselaer IN, up in the northwestern corner of Indiana, a rousing success.
His theme was "The Spiritual Side of Alcoholics Anonymous," which went over so well that he gave the same talk at all the retreats he conducted over the next year, and finally put it out on a recording. This was the first of what was eventually a set of thirty phonograph records which took his voice to A.A. people all over the United States.
June 6-8, 1947: The second weekend A.A. spiritual retreat at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer. The first of Ralph's fourteen Golden Books was printed as a memento for those who attended that retreat.
It was a 56-page saddle-stitched booklet, six by nine inches, with a cover of shiny gold-foil card stock: the Golden Book of the Spiritual Side. Requests came in for more and more extra copies to pass around, and it was necessary to do a second printing almost immediately. Within ten years, 200,000 copies of the Golden Books had been sent out to A.A. people all over the country.
October 1947: The bishop of Indianapolis offered Ralph the opportunity to make A.A. his full-time work, if he could figure out how to support himself.
One of Doherty Sheerin's closest friends was A. Kiefer Mayer, who was at that time the vice-president of the Kiefer-Steward wholesale drug supply house in Indianapolis. Mayer called Ralph in and wrote him a check for $600 on the spot--Ralph's annual salary as a priest.
Christmas Day, 1947: Ralph moved to St. Bridget's rectory in Indianapolis, where he paid room and board.
Spring 1948: Dohr persuaded Ralph to take a vacation before trying anything major, and Ralph decided to drive out to Los Angeles on the west coast and back.
The dust storm that put him off his route, in Wichita Falls, Texas. Speaking to the A.A. meeting there, and the thunder of warm, appreciative applause afterwards. The same thing several days later, when he finally arrived in California, at an A.A. meeting in North Hollywood. The Texas A.A. Convention in Austin in June 1948, and the Southeastern A.A. Convention in Jacksonville, Florida in September.
Nov. 1948-April 1949: Five months traveling constantly.
Spoke to A.A. conferences and groups in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. An audience of six hundred in Rome, Georgia. The A.A. anniversary dinner on St. Patrick's day in Miami, Florida.
Then summer 1949: Montreal, Canada, and the Southeastern A.A. convention in Richmond VA.
1950-his death in 1967: Chaplain of the Good Shepherd Convent in Indianapolis (where he was the "prodigal shepherd" in the title to his autobiography). A three-room suite for offices and printing equipment, and three nuns to serve as full- time secretaries, clerks, and printers.
1958: Wrote his autobiography, Ralph Pfau and Al Hirshberg, Prodigal Shepherd.
Dohr had died in 1953, and his older brother Jerry in June 1957, which left him in a deeply retrospective mood.
1964: The last two Golden Books, Sanctity and Living.
Feb. 19, 1967: On the road again, died on a Sunday in Our Lady of Mercy hospital in Owensboro, Kentucky, over on the south bank of the Ohio river, separated by just the river's width from his own beloved Indiana.
Ralph's closest friends and supporters in Indianapolis reprinted his autobiography shortly after his death. They put a brief note at the beginning which said simply that they were fulfilling his wish for a new edition "in the hope that those who read it will receive the courage to live and die as he did. A sober alcoholic." Father John C. Ford, S.J., who taught at Weston College in Massachusetts, wrote the equally simple epitaph at the end:
May his courageous soul rest in peace.
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