The Catholic Contribution to the 12-Step

Movement by W. Robert Aufill

DESCRIPTION
Robert Aufill explains how Catholicism influenced the 12-Step Program of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Wilson, the founder of AA, had a deep attraction to the Catholic faith, and
even corresponded with Bishop Fulton Sheen. In the early days of AA, a Jesuit priest
named Fr. Edward Dowling befriended Wilson after reading AA's publication (the Big
Book). He saw a similarity between the 12 steps of AA and Ignatian spirituality; in fact,
at AA's twentieth anniversary celebration, Fr. Dowling spoke about the parallels between
the steps of recovery and Jesus Christ's redemption of mankind. Through his friendship
with Fr. Dowling, Wilson came to love the Catholic Church, but he never converted
because some of the doctrines, especially infallibility and the sacraments, did not seem
to correspond with his experience of God working in his life. Aufill says that Catholic
apologists must learn to appeal not only to intellectual arguments for the Faith, but also
to man's personal experience.
At first, there were no Catholic members in AA, but their participation was made
possible by the final separation of AA from the Oxford Group.
In New York, the first Catholic member was Morgan R., who acted as AA's first unofficial
liaison with the Catholic Church. Morgan submitted the manuscript of the
book Alcoholics Anonymous ("the Big Book") to the New York Archdiocesan Committee
on Publications and received a favorable response. The Committee, Morgan reported,
"had nothing but the best to say of our efforts. From their point of view the book was
perfectly all right as far as it went." A few editorial suggestions were readily and
gratefully incorporated, especially in the section treating of prayer and meditation.
Only one change was requested. In Wilson's story, he had "made a rhetorical flourish to
the effect that 'we have found Heaven right here on this good old earth.' " It was
suggested he change "Heaven" to "Utopia." "After all, we Catholics are promising folks
something much better later on!"
A Catholic non-alcoholic who profoundly influenced AA in its early days was Fr. Edward
Dowling of the Society of Jesus. Although his involvement with AA was only one of
many apostolic and charitable works, his influence on AA was considerable. His work is
valuable as a pattern for Catholics who wish to relate constructively to AA and other
recovery groups. Dowling was a Jesuit from St. Louis and was the editor of a Catholic
publication called The Queen's Work. Upon reading the Big Book, he was favorably
impressed and saw parallels between the 12 steps and aspects of Ignatian spirituality

perhaps especially the Ignatian admonition to pray as if everything depends on God and
to work as if everything depends on oneself.
Dowling made Wilson's acquaintance on a cold, rainy night in 1940. Wilson grudgingly
admitted the visitor, thinking his unexpected guest was yet another drunk demanding
help and attention. Soon, as they talked, the Jesuit began to share an understanding of
the spiritual life which was to influence Wilson from that day forward.
This is all the more remarkable because Wilson had never known any Catholics
intimately and felt a lingering prejudice against members of the clergy, of whatever
denomination.
Wilson viewed his meeting with Dowling as "a second conversion experience." The
crippled Jesuit, he said, "radiated a grace that filled the room with a sense of Presence"
(interestingly enough, Wilson used the same expression, "sense of Presence," to
describe his impression of Winchester Cathedral in England, which had obvious
Catholic associations and where he had first experienced a desire for God many years
before). Wilson was feeling depressed and angry at God because, at the moment, he
seemed to be a failure:
As Wilson's biographer tells it, "When Bill asked if there was never to be any
satisfaction, the old man snapped back, 'Never. Never any.' There was only a kind of
divine dissatisfaction that would keep him going, reaching out always."
The priest went on: Having surrendered to God and received back his sobriety, Wilson
could not retract his surrender by demanding an accounting from God when life did not
unfold according to preconceived expectations. Even the sense of dissatisfaction could
be an occasion of spiritual growth.
Dowling then hobbled to the door and declared, as a parting shot, "that if ever Bill grew
impatient, or angry at God's way of doing things, if ever he forgot to be grateful for being
alive right here and now, he, Father Ed Dowling, would make the trip all the way from
St. Louis to wallop him over the head with his good Irish stick." And so began a twentyyear friendship between Wilson and Dowling, who remained Wilson's spiritual advisor.
Wilson was deeply attracted to the Catholic Church and even received instruction from
Fulton Sheen in 1947. Wilson's wife Lois, looking back on it all, was sure that he was
never really close to conversion; but a close friend thought otherwise: "I had the
impression that at the last minute, he didn't go through with his conversion because he
felt it would not be right for AA."
The simplest explanation is that Wilson remained profoundly ambivalent about
organized religion and its doctrines. Just as he had shied away from the "Absolutes" of

the Oxford Group, so he could not see his way to accepting Catholicism's own
absolutismin particular, papal infallibility and the efficacy of sacraments: "Though no
disbeliever in all miracles, I still can't picture God working like that."
Concerning infallibility, Wilson wrote to Dowling: "It is ever so hard to believe that any
human beings, no matter who, are able to be infallible about anything." In a 1947 letter
to Dowling he said, "I'm more affected than ever by that sweet and powerful aura of the
Church; that marvelous spiritual essence flowing down by the centuries touches me as
no other emanation does, but when I look at the authoritative layout, despite all the
arguments in its favor, I still can't warm up. No affirmative conviction comes . . . P. S.
Oh, if only the Church had a fellow-traveler department, a cozy spot where one could
warm his hands at the fire and bite off only as much as he could swallow. Maybe I'm just
one more shopper looking for a bargain on that virtue obedience!"
To Sheen Wilson wrote: "Your sense of humor will, I know, rise to the occasion when I
tell you that, with each passing day, I feel more like a Catholic and reason more like a
Protestant!"
This is precisely the challenge faced by Catholic apologists in witnessing to those in
recovery groups: bringing the head and the heart together.
Wilson's difficulties with Catholic faith tell us thatwithout dilutionwe must make our
faith and its graces more accessible by connecting faith with experience. This does not
mean we can neglect reasoned apologeticsfar from it. We must respect people's
intelligence. But, as Sheen noted, in some cases, our reasoning "leaves the modern
soul cold, not because its arguments are unconvincing, but because the modern soul is
too confused to grasp them."
If we offer a plausible account of the religious implications of 12-step recovery, we can
perhaps get a receptive hearing for a fuller evangelization and catechesis.
At the convention marking AA's twentieth anniversary (the society's "coming of age"),
Dowling said, "We know AA's 12 steps of man toward God. May I suggest God's 12
steps toward man as Christianity has taught them to me." He then went on to draw out
the parallels between AA's steps of recovery and God's redemption of the human race
in Christ, who is both the Incarnate God and the New Adam of redeemed humanity.
Dowling concluded with Francis Thompson's poem The Hound of Heaven, suggesting
that the poem was "[t]he perfect picture of the AA's quest for God, but especially God's
loving chase for the AA."
Another important, though somewhat later, Catholic influence on AA was Fr. John C.
Ford, S.J., one of Catholicism's most eminent moral theologians. In the early forties,

Ford himself recovered from alcoholism with AA's help. He became one of the earliest
Catholic proponents of addressing alcoholism as a problem having spiritual,
physiological, and psychological, dimensions.
Ford said that alcohol addiction is a pathology which is not consciously chosen, but he
rejected the deterministic idea that alcoholism is solely a disease without any moral
component: "[I]t obviously has moral dimensions, and that is one reason why the
clergyman is thought to have a special role to play.
"To answer the question: Is alcoholism a moral problem or is it a sickness, I think the
answer is that it is both. I don't think it is true to say that alcoholism is just a sickness, in
the sense that cancer or tuberculosis are sicknesses. I think there are too many rather
obvious differences between the two to classify alcoholism as a sickness in that sense.
On the other hand, I don't think it is true either to say that alcoholism is just a moral
problem. There are still a good many people who look at an alcoholic as a good-fornothing with a weak will or one who doesn't use his willpower . . .
"They keep saying, 'Don't do it again,' over and over. I don't believe he does it just
because he wants to do it or because he is willful. When you look at the agony that the
alcoholic inflicts upon himself over the course of the years, it seems to me to be very
difficult to say he wants to be that way or he does it on purpose. . . . I think it is fair to
speak of alcoholism as a triple sicknessa sickness of the body, a sickness of the
mind, and also a sickness of the soul."
Wilson, impressed by Ford's insight, asked him to edit Twelve Steps and Twelve
Traditions (with the Big Book, this is the basic text of 12-step recovery) and Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes of Age. In part, Wilson's concern in these books was to present the
AA program in a way acceptable to Catholic sensibilities.
Ford's contribution to AA was therefore twofold: He drew on both religion and
psychology to show alcoholism as a synthetic problem requiring a synthetic remedy,
and he took seriously the quasicompulsive nature of addiction while rejecting both
absolute determinism and the attendant pitfalls of a purely therapeutic approach. He
drew on psychological insights, but ultimately shared the sentiments of Dr. Bob, who
used to say, "Don't louse it up with psychiatry."
In so many ways, Ford's approach to addiction and recovery remains a model of
spiritual discernment for our own time.
This Rock, Catholic Answers, P.O. Box 17490, San Diego, CA 92177, (619) 541-1131.