More On Cardinal Law's Family And Early Life

My informant has located a number of additional sources on Law's parents and his childhood, including accounts by Law himself in later interviews. Law's versions, as well as the version in the official biography, are often in conflict and also at variance with the known public record.

My informant did, thanks to his very good Spanish, locate a version in a Torreón newspaper that was published at the time the film Spotlight was released. My own Spanish is at best halting LA Spanglish, so I am going to rely on Google Translate without emendation for the quote below. Those more adept can follow the link for the original.

The birth of Law in Torreón was circumstantial and is linked to the extinct Transport Aeronautics Corporation (CAT) SA that since the late 20s offered the service of passenger transport and mail between several cities in the United States and Mexico, including Torreón. It was a novel service for a young city that was recovering from the ravages of the Revolution and began, not without difficulties, to regain its economic vigor. Bernard Francis' father was Bernard A. Law, an officer of the United States Air Force who was assigned as CAT Transit superintendent in Torreón in those years.

According to the registry of Genealogies of Mexico (www.genealogia.org.mx) the greater Law was born in Kingston, Penssylvania, in 1891, approximately. In the Hemerographic archive of El Siglo de Torreón (h.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx) there are several references to the life of the father of the cardinal and archbishop. One of them indicates that he participated in the Great War, known today as the First World War. Upon his return to the United States, in 1918, he joined the Air Club of America. By 1929 he was already in Torreón working for the CAT.

Bernard Francis's mother was Helen Stubblefield, originally from Walla Walla, Washington State and born in 1912. Social reviews published by this newspaper in the early 1930s mention her as an excellent piano performer. Helen and Bernard met during a trip that she made at the end of the 20s to Torreón to visit the family of her uncle who lived here. The American colony in La Laguna was one of the most important at that time.

Despite the religious and age differences, the couple formalized their relationship. According to the biographical book "Boston's Cardinal: Bernard Law, the Man and His Witness," Helen came from a Presbyterian family and Bernard from one of Catholics. She was 20 years old and he was 40 when they got married on June 3, 1931 in El Paso, Texas. Only five months later, Bernard Francis would be born in Torreón, who in the end would end up professing his father's religion. According to the referred text, the couple was united by the "love of music and literature".

Although not professionally, now Mrs. Law continued playing the piano. Account of it gives a review of the 5 of November of 1932 published by the Century of Torreón in which it is related that, in spite of being "a little indisposed", the Mrs. of Law could show "the irreproachable technique, the purity and precision of his execution and his great artistic temperament ". The recital was held on the night of 4 in the late Teatro Princesa with the aim of raising funds to help children with limited resources in the city. That day Bernard Francis was one year old. From his mother he inherited a taste for the piano that he learned to play alone.

The Law family had an active social life in the first half of the decade of the 30s. In the newspaper library they are mentioned in personalities receptions, pleasure trips, altruistic activities and participation and organization of sports jousts, such as the meeting of polo that was carried out in 1933. According to a mention in a social column that refers to the convalescence of Mrs. Law in November 1934, the family lived in the house marked with the number 5 on the Avenida Hidalgo west, where there is now a self-service store.

The reference to polo is tantalizing and would fit a version of Law's early life that included eating from Wedgewood china, as well as Adams House at Harvard, but beyond that, we know nothing. In a 1984 Boston Globe interview, Law himself in part gave this version:

During most of Bishop Law's childhood, his father was in and out of the Air Force, barnstorming in airplanes and running small airlines or airports, he recalled yesterday in a telephone interview. There was so much travel during those days that "it is really too hard to recall," he said. "There was a lot of moving, but they were very happy years. My mother and father and I were a very close-knit family."

His father was Catholic and his mother Presbyterian, but she converted to Catholicism while her son was at Harvard. "It was not a particularly church-going family," he noted.

My informant, in fact, says that Law would mention that he was "raised Methodist". This may have been a minor fault of memory on my informant's part, or it may have been just a different story from Law himself. One would guess, on one hand, that his mother would have had more influence on his early religious formation, such as it may have been.

But the reference to travel suggests the family was never tied to any parish of any denomination, and i would suggest that, whether Law was baptized Catholic, he at least makes no mention of first communion or confirmation in the Church. My informant's suspicion that Law was not a cradle Catholic seems well-founded.

Farther down in the 1984 interview, we see:

In his freshman year in Cambridge, Law roomed with Robert Wayne Oliver, a Southern Baptist, and two Jewish students.

Now an attorney who works as an adviser to Oregon's Gov. Victor Atiyeh, Oliver said that although he and Law became close friends and roomed together [which must have been in Adams House] for four years, "He did not try to proselytize me. . . At the same time, he gave me a very good understanding and appreciation of the nature of his church and manner in which he practiced his faith.

"He had a great sense of humor. He was firm in his faith, but in no way was he a zealot. He respected other people's divergent views. He was not provocative. Nor did he make anyone feel he was a lost sinner."

But this still raises the question of where Law received any real faith formation, even if, by the time he got to Adams House, he was representing himself as Catholic, if not a very fervent one.

Tomorrow I'll take a closer look at Harvard and Law's vocation to the priesthood. Nevertheless, I'd be interested to hear from anyone familiar with how Catholic vocation directors work what the reaction of a real vocation director would be to this background.