Life of Sept. 11 hero was driven by love: whether serving AIDS patients or firefighters, Franciscan brought God's compassion in the shape of his own unique, flawed humanity. - Father Mychal Judge: an Authentic American Hero by Michael Ford - book review

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 4, 2002 by Jack Wintz

FATHER MYCHAL JUDGE: AN AUTHENTIC AMERICAN HERO By Michael Ford Paulist Press, 224 pages, $19.95

Biographer Michael Ford's impressionistic portrait of Franciscan Fr. Mychal Judge, the firefighter chaplain who perished at New York's World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, is drawn from many interviews with Judge's friends. "It is offered as a tribute," writes Ford, a BBC journalist, "to a one-time alcoholic who could never shake off his strongest addiction: a love for other people."

The book is, indeed, a portrait of a man whose compassion and love for people seemed as unconditional as that of the loving God he sought to serve. And yet, Judge's affectionate search was not pain-free. It was burdened by his straggles with alcohol, Irish guilt and by his troubled search for his own spiritual path and identity.

The author's primary gift in this biography is not that of dramatically making this intriguing friar jump off the pages as a living hero. Rather, Ford's strength is that of the reporter and insightful interviewer who talks to the right people--confreres and priests, firefighters and friends--who are able to recall and describe Judge at all the crucial junctures and turning points of his life. Though the book at times seems uneven and perhaps hastily put together, by the story's end a very informative and moving portrait has emerged.

Judge's tragic encounter with death below the north tower is described early ill the book. That morning a confrere informed Judge at his Franciscan residence about the tragedy unfolding downtown. Judge rushed to the fire station across the street, then sped off with the fire captain to the very center of the disaster area. Witnesses saw him running with fire fighters into the lobby of the north tower, where he would meet his death. Though accounts differ as to the exact details, one thing was certain: "The fire chaplain had laid down his life for his friends, the ultimate mark of Christian discipleship."

Judge's home for the last 15 years of his life was the large friary attached to St. Francis of Assisi Church in midtown Manhattan. One of the friars described Judge as never speaking "an unkind word" against another friar. "I think one of his strengths," the friar added, "was that he bore no judgment or condemnation toward anyone. He accepted people for what they were."

And yet, according to Fr. Anthony McNeill, a Franciscan confrere and friend in Britain, "Mychal was a free spirit. You could not tie him down." McNeill believed that his American friend saw God as an unconditional lover, not as a judge: "It was something he felt deep in the pit of his stomach. He was keenly aware of that presence of God's love in the midst of every minute of his life. It was from there that he got his energy, his drive and motivation."

Mychal Judge was born in Brooklyn, May 11, 1933. Both parents were Irish immigrants. The death of his father when Mychal was 6 left the young lad devastated. "I never called anyone `Dad,' "he lamented later and spoke about this loss most of his life. Among the odd jobs Judge performed as a youth was shining shoes in Manhattan's Penn Station. During one of his shoe-shining stints there, he discovered St. Francis Church nearby, which put him in touch with the Franciscan friars serving there. "He found himself drawn to their lifestyle," writes Ford, and he later entered their seminary system, eventually being ordained a Franciscan priest in 1961. During the 1960s and '70s, Judge served in three different Franciscan parishes in New Jersey.

A real "people person," he typically labored long hours meeting the spiritual and human needs of parishioners. While serving at one of these parishes, St. Joseph's in East Rutherford, the local paper did a feature article on him. "I love being a priest," he told The Sunday Record, "My sin is not having enough hours in the day to follow through with people."

In these years, too, Judge's heavy drinking was becoming a problem. "Matters were to come to a head," writes Ford, "when he was appointed assistant to the president of Siena College, run by the Franciscans in Loudonville, N.Y., in the fall of 1976." During his time at Siena, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the program, attending as many as five meetings a week and often speaking at them. Writes Ford, "AA nurtured him in a way neither Catholicism nor Franciscanism did."

One of judge's Irish friends in New York, Brendan Fay, said of the priest: "Within the recovery movement, he found there a community of people, a safe place where he could be himself for the first time in his life. Slowly and surely, all the things he had hidden or denied about himself were in the open, and the real Mychal Judge could find a home for himself." At this time, Judge was beginning to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous comprised mainly of gay people. The meetings helped Judge come into greater touch with his sexual identity. According to Fay, a gay activist, the spiritual dimension of Alcoholics Anonymous helped the friar "to own his homosexuality."