Donahue's priestly oils still sizzle - John Donahue, ex-priest and director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 19, 1997 by Tim Unsworth

Not long ago, my friend John and I were punishing a glass of That Which Conveys Infallibility when he pronounced, "Tim, do you wanna know who the best priest in Chicago is? I'll tell you. It's Jack Donahue, that's who."

Jack Donahue would get a kick out of that de fide byte. But John Ring could be right. Donahue's ordination oils still sizzle.

We drove down to Donahue's modest office where he has been the executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless since 1990. He works with a staff of 15, including a creative fundraiser and a staff lawyer who tries to keep him out of jail.

It isn't easy. Donahue, like an earlier creative activist, Saul Alinsky, likes "to rub raw the sores of discontent." But Donahue prefers to use humor. He once tried to apply for foreign aid for the CCH. During the Democratic National Convention that renominated Bill Clinton, he had an associate dress as a tree and magically appear in photo ops. Mayor Richard M. Daley had planted over 7,500 trees to dress up the city for the convention. Donahue's tree proclaimed that the city could plant trees but not house the homeless. He and the tree-bearer were arrested while Daley fumed.

"Juancho," as his associates call him, has just been arrested for the fifth time. It had to do with his protests at a City Council meeting over the issue of a living wage ordinance that would require those with contracts with the city to pay at least $7.60 per hour, considered by the federal government to be the poverty line for a family of four. In fact, Chicago generally pays contractors enough to meet the $7.60 norm, but contractors routinely pay their unskilled workers only the minimum wage -- $5.15 -- and pocket the $2.45 difference or share it with the politicians.

In recent years, most authority figures have learned how to handle protesters in a peaceful manner. This time it got a bit rough. Donahue was slammed to the floor, shackled and hauled away not far from the mayor's red face.

Donahue is saddened by what he perceives as a falling off of interest, especially among Catholics, in social issues. "My ministry, my mission is to get people involved," he said. "But now there are so few signs of hope. My job is to organize that hope -- especially in public housing -- so that people can organize their own future."

Sadly, the jeans-clad priest had a point. There was a time when such protests were littered with priests, standing collar to collar in support of a social cause. There were no other priests at this City Council protest. (A few weeks later, only one priest appeared at a labor rally in support of the recent United Parcel Service strike. It was 80-year-old Msgr. John J. Egan.) Now, the evening news generally shows only black and Latino ministers of Christian and Muslim faiths at such events.

"The church has given up on moral leadership in favor of the bottom line," Donahue said with sadness in his voice. "It has given up its prophetic presence. It just has to get beyond self-interest."'

In fairness, just six months before his death, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin did write an appeal to Mayor Daley asking him to bring families of four up to the federal poverty line by passing the ordinance. There is not a parish in Chicago that isn't involved in some effort on behalf of the poor, and Catholic Charities remains the second biggest provider of assistance to the poor in Illinois. Further, there are some activist pastors who still know how to shake temple columns.

Despite all that, Donahue's observation rings true. The vast majority of priests, especially the sort being ordained these days, are administrators rather than agitators.

Fr. John Donahue was ordained in 1965 after 12 years in what was then the country's most elite seminary system. He was one of eight children who first learned something about social needs by standing near bus stops with his mother, soliciting donations for an outfit called "Operation Snowball," raising money for kids such as Peggy, Jack's sister, who has Down's syndrome.

His father was a Chicago firefighter who moonlighted as a deliveryman for a TV store. Jack helped out, together with his father's partner, an African-American named Elmer. Once while they were delivering a television set, the homeowner ordered Elmer to remove his shoes before entering her house. "Put the TV back on the truck," the senior Donahue ordered. Jack got his first lesson on the nature of prejudice -- and how to respond.

Now, 32 years after his ordination, Jack Donahue's best-priest-in-town status would leave most careerist clergy dyspeptic. He is an outcast. Even the kindly Bernardin repeatedly refused to grant him an audience.

Although he has never been laicized, he has been married for nearly 20 years and is the father of six, one of whom is already in heaven. His family lives just a paycheck from poverty, but their needs are modest. Chelin and John can turn a bucket of chicken wings into a picnic in the park. After three children, he applied for laicization in 1983, reasoning that the marriage to Chelin, a Panamanian, and the three kids would be proof enough. But after over four years of waiting, his petition was denied. The ruling came just a week after he picketed the Chicago chancery, which was hosting the visit of a Latino bishop with links to one of the corrupt Central American regimes. He hasn't bothered to ask since.