Who was Father Ed Dowling, and why is he in A.A.'s story?

In the Big Book (1955 appendix)

Appendix V opens: "Clergymen of practically every denomination have given A.A. their blessing." (p. 572). The first one quoted is "Edward Dowling, S.J., of the Queen's Work staff" (p. 572). He says that A.A. "is natural; it is natural at the point where nature comes closest to the supernatural, namely in humiliations and in consequent humility." (p. 572). He compares it to an art museum or a symphony, things with "something spiritual" about them that the Catholic Church approves, and ends that "Catholic participation in it almost invariably results in poor Catholics becoming better Catholics." (p. 572). The same page quotes the Episcopal magazine The Living Church and Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick (p. 572).

The appendices came into the book with the second edition (p. xi); the footnote on his death in 1960 was added later still. The 1939 text doesn't mention him. See: What does Appendix V, "The Religious View on A.A.," say? · Is A.A. a religious organization?

How he came into A.A. (Bill's account, 1955–57)

Bill tells it in A.A. Comes of Age (1957). One wintry night in 1940 he had gone to bed early at A.A.'s first clubhouse on West 24th Street in New York, "with a severe dose of self-pity and my imaginary ulcer" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Sleet was beating on the roof. Old Tom, the caretaker, came up to say "some bum" from St. Louis wanted to see him (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The visitor came up the stairs on a cane, and when he opened his overcoat Bill saw the clerical collar (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

"We talked about a lot of things, and my spirits kept on rising" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill says the man "radiated a grace that filled the room with a sense of presence" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and that in the years after, whether in joy or pain, Father Ed always brought him "the same sense of grace and the presence of God" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

What he did for A.A.

Bill sets these down as "facts that new generations of A.A.'s ought to hear, read, and know" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957):

• The first Catholic recommendation. He was "the first clergyman of his faith to note the surprising resemblance between the spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (founder of the Jesuit order) and the Twelve Steps" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and so wrote, in 1940, "the first Catholic recommendation of A.A. of which we have any knowledge" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). That first piece was in The Queen's Work, the sodality's magazine (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill sums up its message as "Folks, A.A. is good. Come and get it." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and says "in effect": it is his paraphrase, not a quotation.
• St. Louis A.A. He "helped to start the first A.A. group in this town" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill notes that it turned out to be largely Protestant, and this "fazed him not a bit" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
• Years of work. "Travels, A.A. meetings, wise and tender counsel" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and many in the 1955 audience remembered his ministry to their spiritual needs (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The book's 1940 landmark reads "Religious leaders approve A.A. Father Dowling, Dr. Fosdick" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

The advice about money (after March 1941)

This is the place where he shaped how A.A. works, and Bill tells it in full. Bill doesn't give a date: he tells it after the Saturday Evening Post article of March 1, 1941, and just before events of "early 1942" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). After the Saturday Evening Post article, rumors in one city said the book and the New York office were a racket; an audit showed that Bill was living on $55 a week and Dr. Bob had never drawn his royalty (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill still couldn't decide whether he should take anything at all. "Shortly after the financial investigation episode, Father Ed Dowling, our Jesuit friend from St. Louis," came to New York, and Bill put the case to him (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

Father Ed asked whether A.A. needed Bill full time (yes), and whether Bill could take money for Twelfth Step work. Bill said that was settled long ago: he could not, "nor could any other A.A. member" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Then: if Bill were the only one concerned he could take nothing, "But what about Lois?" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill had a marriage contract to support her, and Father Ed thought the royalties would be "the best bet" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

Bill's conclusion: "Dr. Bob and I must certainly never accept money for Twelfth Step work but that we could be recompensed for special services." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). "We both accepted Father Ed's down-the-middle advice and have stuck by it ever since" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and Bill says the whole fellowship later accepted it as correct in principle. He places the episode among the test cases out of which the Tradition on professionalism grew (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See: Tradition Eight: can anyone be paid for Twelfth Step work?

At St. Louis, 1955

The twentieth-anniversary convention was held in his city. At the Sunday-morning meeting "God as We Understand Him," "A great cheer of welcome greeted Father Ed Dowling as, indifferent to his grievous lameness, he made his way to the lectern." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill introduced him: "Father Ed is made of the stuff of the saints." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and said he was the only person he knew from whom he had never heard a resentful word (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

His talk, printed in full (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), takes the meeting's three words, "God," "we," and "understand." Some of it, in his words:

• On the alcoholic: "We have the tremendous drive of shame, which is the nearest thing to innocence." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
• On how members come: "I doubt if there is anybody in this hall who really ever sought sobriety. I think we were trying to get away from drunkenness." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
• On understanding God: "our idea of God will always be lacking" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), but our understanding will grow.
• He quotes a letter of Bill's he kept, saying how far an alcoholic works out his dependence on God, in church or out, "is none of A.A.'s business" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
• He then gives, as a Christian, "God's Twelve Steps toward man as Christianity has taught them to me" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and closes with Francis Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

His talk is a friend's address, not A.A. literature's teaching: he speaks openly as a Catholic priest. Dr. Sam Shoemaker, who followed him, said the talk left "the theory and the theology" to the churches people belong to (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill's composite convention-goer, "Mr. Grassroots," says that hearing Father Ed and Dr. Sam made him see that most of A.A.'s spiritual principles had come through clergymen (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957); Bill introduces Mr. Grassroots as "a sort of composite character" speaking for the whole convention, not a real person (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See: What happened at the St. Louis convention in 1955?

Later accounts, used with care (1984)

Pass It On (1984), the biography of Bill, adds more, from letters and later memories:

• It dates the first visit to "a cold and rainy night late in 1940" and quotes Bill's memory of the priest's first words: "I'm Father Dowling from St. Louis." (Pass It On, 1984). The Jesuits there, he said, had been looking at the book Alcoholics Anonymous (Pass It On, 1984).
• It says Bill later called that evening the night he took his Fifth Step, and "a second conversion experience" (Pass It On, 1984), and it calls their friendship a 20-year "spiritual sponsorship" carried on in letters (Pass It On, 1984). It tells of Father Ed describing Bill's restlessness as a "divine dissatisfaction" (Pass It On, 1984). Bill's own 1957 account doesn't use these words. See: Who do I tell my Fifth Step to?
• It says that for Bill personally, St. Louis as the 1955 convention city had the added advantage of being "the hometown of Father Dowling, his spiritual sponsor" (Pass It On, 1984).
• It quotes Bill's letters to him about the Catholic Church (Bill took Catholic instruction and did not join the Church) (Pass It On, 1984), and says Bill consulted him before giving the Oxford Group credit in A.A. Comes of Age (Pass It On, 1984).

These are a later book's readings of letters our sources don't hold; they are dated and not part of Bill's own account.

What our sources do not settle

• The year of the first recommendation and the first visit. Bill (1957) says both were in 1940 ; the Big Book appendix doesn't date its quotation, and our sources have no copy of the Queen's Work article.
• The cause of his lameness. Bill calls it "grievous lameness" and Pass It On calls him "crippled" ; neither says why.
• His dates. Our sources give his death (spring 1960, p. 572; A.A. Comes of Age, 1957, a later footnote) but not his birth.

Read it yourself

• Appendix V, "The Religious View on A.A." (p. 572), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_appendicev.pdf
• A.A. Comes of Age (his 1955 talk, and Bill's account) and Pass It On are sold by A.A. World Services: https://onlineliterature.aa.org
• Related: Who was Bill W.? · What did early A.A. take from the Oxford Group, and why did it separate? · Who was Lois W., and what did she do in A.A.'s beginning?

Sources

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). A.A. Comes of Age and Pass It On are cited by the file-page markers in our copies (f.), not printed pages.

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, A.A. Comes of Age and Pass It On are © A.A. World Services, Inc.

These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.