Bishop Floyd L. Begin’s Bold and Steady Service in the Development of the Graduate Theological Union: A Personal Reflection

Abstract

Bishop Floyd L. Begin’s Bold and Steady Service in the Development of the Graduate Theological Union: A Personal Reflection Bishop John S. Cummins [Editor’s Note: Bishop Cummins was the second Bishop of the Diocese of Oakland serving from 1977–2003. Cummins worked closely with Oakland’s first Bishop, Floyd Begin, serving as his Chancellor from 1962–1971. Cummins was Bishop Begin’s point man on the controversial issue of Catholic involvement in the newly created ecumenical experiment, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Ordained in 1953, Cummins was named auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento in 1974. He also served as Executive Director of the California Conference of Catholic Bishops from 1971 to 1977, when he returned home to Oakland. What follows is Bishop Cummins memoir of this crucial episode. All quotes come from his papers, which will be placed in the Diocese of Oakland Archives.] I. The Beginning Spirit The story begins on St. Patrick’s Day, 1963, at the chancery office of the Diocese of Oakland in California, situated at the time at 534 West Grand Avenue just below Telegraph. Bishop Begin, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon was wandering through the offices hands in his pockets, not in a hurry to end the day, unlike the rest of us who were not so well disposed to working on St. Patrick’s Day. French Canadian by way of Cleveland, he had been with us as our first bishop in Oakland for less than a year. He roamed into my windowless office and sat down. That evening I was scheduled to be at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley for a dialogue with Dr. Keith Bridston, a cordial professor at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. The Berkeley Gazette had an announcement of the evening with Keith Bridston on the left of the four-column piece and John Cummins facing in from the right. I opened the paper for the bishop. He gave little reaction, but I knew he would be encouraging. He was not familiar with Bridston’s name. I, therefore, read [End Page 39] from the Gazette that the professor’s undergraduate degree was from Yale, his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, and he had served in Thailand with the Lutheran World Federation. Then I continued on, “John Cummins, St. Augustine’s Grammar School. . . .” The bishop was hardly amused by the comparison, reacting with an admonition on the confidence I should have as a Catholic priest. For some reason, I thought it was a good moment to bring up what had been on my mind for two months. I started rather gingerly by telling the bishop that I had heard that the Bay Area had theology students in numbers equal to or surpassing the figures for Boston or New York. Without discussing that point, I went on to explain that the seminaries in Berkeley were organizing a graduate center for theology and were desirous of Catholic participation. Truthfully, I was not sure what his reaction might be, but his response was immediate, “That is the work of the Holy Spirit. Dialogue at that high level could not be put together merely by human ingenuity.” That remark established the basic position that the bishop would hold for the years ahead. That March 17, 1963 was the follow-up of a weekend in California’s Lake County in January. I was there representing Bishop Begin, who had received an invitation from a segment of the Carnegie Foundation dealing with international affairs. On the last evening, one of the attendees, Philip Adams, a San Francisco attorney, invited me to meet with him over a drink. His inquiry to me was whether we in the Diocese of Oakland would be interested in graduate theological education in Berkeley. Adams identified himself as the chairman of the board of the corporation newly established in 1962 as the Graduate Theological Union (GTU). I am sure he explained both structure and goal better than I understood him. I identified the effort with some 1961 conversations about establishing a department of religious studies at the University of California. I had known rather well two participants in those discussions, Larry Beyersdorf, the...