A Good Jesuit in a Hard Time to Be One: Fr. Joseph Koterski in Memoriam

Fr. Joseph Koterski was a good Jesuit in a hard time to be one, but he made it look so easy. The reason was no doubt his great love, which bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things.

“An old friend and a very good man. A good Jesuit when it was hard to be done.” This was the response of a colleague when I passed on the news of Fr. Joseph Koterski’s death on August 9, 2021, at 67. Simple and true. While there are still some gems, the Jesuit order has specialized more in doozies over the last six decades. Given the top-down structure of the order begun by a Basque ex-soldier, it is difficult to imagine there will be change anytime soon. And yet, even amid the chaos of the last half-century, men of faith, proven character, and solid learning have passed through this life in service of Jesus and the Society of Jesus. Such was the man many of us thought of as “Father K.”

Born in Ohio and raised in Pittsburgh, Joseph Koterski had what used to be considered the sine qua non of education for a priest—a degree in classics. After achieving this at Xavier University, he went to Saint Louis University for a master’s and then doctoral degree in philosophy, where he wrote under the legendary James Collins. After teaching at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, for two years he discerned a call to the priesthood in the Jesuit order at age thirty. In 1992, he began his work as a professor of philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I met him six years later when I began graduate work in theology there.

In his mid-forties at the time, he was an incredible bundle of energy. Not only had he been editing International Philosophical Quarterly and the annual proceedings of the University Faculty for Life for several years at that point, but he was also running the program for philosophical training for aspiring Jesuits and serving as chaplain and tutor at the Queen’s Court residence at Fordham. It was always stunning to ask him what he was up to over the weekend, since it would usually involve some sort of pastoral activity—hearing confessions and saying Mass for a convent or a parish—and then include some unexpected academic plans. He once told me he was brushing up on calculus. Why? Well, there were some students in the residence having trouble and he was going to help them. He later became “Master” of Queen’s Court, but there was no doubt the residents encountered a man much like Christ, whose lordship was embodied in service that went far beyond tutoring in asymptotes and derivatives.

I never had him in a course, but got to know him in large part because he, along with fellow Jesuits philosopher Christopher Cullen and briefly the late legal scholar Robert Araujo, organized a Sunday evening hour of adoration followed by the service known as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. An old analogy has it that one can be “as useless as a Jesuit in Holy Week,” but Fr. K’s reverence and liturgical sensibilities were matched by a competence in liturgical form and procedure. He had a beautiful singing voice as well. Some of my favorite memories of my time at Fordham were those times of prayer. When looking up from my own meditation, I would often see my teacher, the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, in the back of the chapel with Fathers Koterski and Cullen, along with members of the new order called the Sisters of Life (who all knew Fr. Koterski from retreats and the confessional) spread throughout, all on their knees.

There were spiritual giants in the land in those days.

Fr. Koterski’s delights, however, encompassed anything good in culture and life. He would help organize and teach dance lessons for the graduate students. As the “ski” name might have tipped one off, polka was a specialty of his. He would also go to movies with groups of students. I recall sitting uncomfortably next to him through some rather explicit scenes when a group of us went to see Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. I was too afraid to even glance in his direction, but I think I know what I would have seen, for he told me later that one of the things he admired most in his own father was his habit of shutting his eyes when anything on the television screen was inappropriate.

The fact is, while many Jesuits and employees of universities “in the Jesuit tradition” like to talk about being “men for others,” Fr. K. was the real deal. He never really achieved the kind of academic renown of which he was capable. He was only an associate professor and not a full professor at Fordham, and though he wrote over a hundred articles for various journals and over two hundred book reviews, he only completed one monograph, a very good introduction to medieval philosophy. His academic life was not about his own glory but about service to anybody who was a potential student. He might have worked more on grants and award applications, but he chose to spend his time elsewhere: serving on university and scholarly organizations’ boards; editing journals, books, and encyclopedias; reviewing new volumes that would be helpful to others; writing articles that were helpful to scholars and to ordinary people; and giving lectures introducing the most important things. Concerning those guilds, he chose to put his time into organizations that did good, whether they were politically advantageous or not. He was the guiding spirit for many years for University Faculty for Life and a tireless worker for the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, two groups that did not mark out their members as one of the cool kids in academic circles. As for teaching and speaking, I am told his courses on natural law, Aristotle’s ethics, and Biblical wisdom literature, available from The Great Courses, are excellent. If they made him any money, I’m sure he gave it away. His ever-present black clerical clothes, though clean, always struck me as just a bit worn.

So too in non-academic life. Fr. Raymond de Souza’s tribute to him in the National Catholic Register included some of the aforementioned Sisters of Life recounting how he did the dishes when preaching at their retreats. There was nothing showy about any of this. He did it for anybody. What’s more he always did everything with a smile. When my wife’s parents came for the bestowal of her doctoral degree, he greeted them on graduation day with a big umbrella. Chatting once after one of those Sunday night adoration and benediction services, I said I was flying home for the holidays the next day. He immediately offered to take me to the airport. When I declined, noting that I had a 6 AM flight and he would have to pick me up at 4:30 in the morning, he brushed off the refusal, saying that he had to be up to say Mass for a group at 5:30 anyway. He would be by at 4:30 sharp. He was, smiling as usual. That’s just how he was.

I don’t recall ever going to confession with him and I did not receive spiritual direction from him, but I recall many conversations in which we spoke about the deepest things. At one point while in graduate school, I decided that I needed a spiritual director. It didn’t work out that well, and the director and I mutually ended the relationship. A fairly new Catholic, I wondered if I needed to get a new one. Fr. K. asked why I needed one. When I told him that I thought to be a serious Catholic it seemed like the thing to do, he laughed and assured me that, unless one needed to discern something important, a director was not necessarily needed. He suggested that I simply be more regular about prayer, examining my conscience, and going to confession. It was a relief to me but also good advice. Problems in life will come up, but a life of consistent prayer and accountability does wonders.

I can imagine that those who depended on him for spiritual guidance feel a greater loss than I do. When he died, we were serving together on the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars’ board of directors, and I was always glad to hear what he had to say in meetings. He will be hard to replace. But for those who saw him more often, I can imagine feeling bereft. One mutual friend and New Yorker who has worked with him for many years on various projects wrote to me with her thoughts.  “I will begin with a confession,” she wrote. “I am selfish. I wish Father Koterski were still here and walking among us. But he is not. He is at the place he always wanted to be with the God he loved so much, and spent his entire life teaching about.”

Our loss is Fr. K’s gain, it is true. It is also the case that his gain is ours, for as Fr. K. would no doubt have said, people whose lives have changed, as the funeral Mass has it, but not ended do not change in their love for us. They are closer to the one who hears and answers all prayers. Fr. K. will no doubt be offering his prayers for all of us whom he taught in so many ways, as well as the Jesuit order he loved so much despite its flaws. If he is in Purgatory being fully sanctified now, I have no doubt it will be a short and cheerful stay because he was always so ready to do all things for the greater glory of God, as the Jesuit motto has it, and stay in the company (as well as the Society) of Jesus. He was a good Jesuit in a hard time to be one, but he made it look so easy. The reason was no doubt his great love, which bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things.

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