The Co-founders
of Madonna House:
Eddie Doherty
A Priest All of His Life
The following is adapted from Archbishop Raya's preface to Fr. Eddie's book Desert Windows:
In the Desert
It was mid-July, 1969. We were sitting side by side on the top of the Mountain of Beatitudes, in the very heart of Galilee, land of the Lord. The “Lake of the Singing Harp,” Lake of Genesareth, stretched to the far horizon. A lazy air descending from the Golan Heights tickled its surface. The ebb and flow at the shores were drunk with the hazy atmosphere.
We were silent. Heavy with the rising heat of the desert, we could but listen. One does not need words to feel alive, to feel a presence, and especially his presence. The presence of the Lord was as velvety as a prayer. Only a breeze was stirring and we listened to his voice: “Blessed are the humble... Blessed are the kind and merciful... Blessed are the pure of heart...” The tall palm trees swayed like the murmur of lovers. Birds fluttered around. Not singing! They were learning a new melody. And the lake? The lake was humming the ever new story that happened two thousand years ago. Nothing could stop the murmur of his voice to fill our hearts: “Happy and blessed are those who strive for peace... How wonderful it is when you are lied about because you belong to me. Be happy about it! Be very glad! Dance for joy because the Kingdom is all yours!”
Edward Joseph Doherty, my newly ordained deacon, was listening too. He was watching the desert creatures coming to life. The desert was warm. It was bright. It created visions. It was a window to heaven. And everything was full of angels. The Irish Doherty was caught up into their dance. His blue eyes, his face of milk and honey, his deep, penetrating look of the lover, his tall-strong stature, every vital breath in him was aglow with an inner flame that made him look taller, purer, strong as a diamond, tender as a mother.
Yearly Visits
I first met Eddie Doherty in 1958 in Madonna House. It was at “tea time,” as the four o'clock family gathering is called here. I had just received my associate priest's cross inscribed with the words pax and caritas, which means “peace” and “love.” I became that day a receiver of these riches. Eddie kissed me. He hugged me and smiled at me. He said some kind words of joy. My eyes and ears carried him to the depth of my being. I had found a man, strong, open, simple in his greatness, humble in his fame. In my effusive and spontaneous Lebanese way, I invited him to come to Alabama. I was a pastor in Birmingham. I had a large, airy rectory. The invitation was repeated. It was insistent. One year later, Eddie Doherty came and spent a month in my parish of St. George. Until my ordination as Archbishop of Galilee in 1968, he faithfully kept that yearly visit.
What a blessing it was for me and my parishioners. Year after year, young and old waited for that visit. I shared with him my priestly life. My joys and sorrows, my triumphs and failures were his own. He came to know my parishioners by name. My rule of life in that parish was that four families should be visited every day. He shared the rule and was more joy and more consolation to everyone. The rich and the poor and the sick and the energetic children received both of us with the same hug, with the same smile, with the same expression of love. My parishioners loved to hear him talk about God and especially about the life of his Madonna House “boys and girls,” as he called them.
A Priest All of His Life
A real priest knows that he cannot teach God. All a priest can do is to help others to have an experience from which springs admiration and awe of God, of life and of creation. Eddie was such a man. He was a priest all of his life, even as a newspaper man, running the streets for news, roaming the highways for a piece of life. In his books, he always was an announcer of God's news, of good news, a carrier of the Gospel of Christ, helping others to have a religious experience and sprinkling their way with light and life and courage. He was a priest before ordination. I can say for myself, as a priest and as an archbishop, that Eddie Doherty was the one to bring me into the realization of so many experiences that put me into an orbit of awe and admiration of God, of life, of love, of my brother, of this world, and of whatever is in this world. To me, Eddie was always a priest of God, which made it an awesome privilege to place my hands on his head and consecrate him, at 79 years of age, a priest forever. So it is a great and awesome privilege to praise and bless Father Eddie Doherty, the first priest I ordained, the first fruit of my fatherhood as a bishop.
When the infant Doherty became a boy, he took off the infant wrappings and donned the trousers of a youth. It was a new life, a new discovery, a new celebration that followed him everywhere. When he became a man, he donned the strength and the pride of a man. A great enthusiasm drew his Irish generosity for God to the monastery. Eddie thought to become a priest. When he discovered the face of womanhood, that same enthusiasm plunged him into another river of life. He put on the garment of marriage and donned the vestment of fatherhood.
When he lost Marie, his wife, rebellion took over his soul. Man always seeks the Infinite, and Eddie rebelled because for him, Marie represented the Infinite.
But Eddie Doherty was a giant. With a newly discovered courage and enthusiasm, he spread his wings again: the wings of the eagle that never give up. He donned a second wedding garment. Mildred was a delight, a heaven and a security of life and love. An accident took her away. And the wings of the giant broke again and raised for him new challenges.
Paradise Regained
A Russian woman, a refugee of the first World War, a stranger in a strange land, gave Eddie a new vision of life by giving him the fullness of her love. Eddie married for the third time. Baroness Catherine de Hueck, mother of the poor, the destitute and the down-trodden in Harlem, New York, and in the Chicago Friendship Houses, became Mrs. Doherty. Paradise was regained. Paradise sang and danced in every word Eddie Doherty wrote until the day of his death.
Eddie Doherty was born to be a lover and his love had no limits. Blessed are those who live and who love. He drank of love with joy. He ate of love with pleasure. As he worked with boundless enthusiasm, he loved with boundless enthusiasm. And as he gambled with life, he gambled with love. He loved. And he lost. He loved again, and he lost again. He loved a third time, risking everything that he was, everything that he possessed, all of himself, past and future, and he became poor for the sake of the poor, landless for the sake of the destitute, and childless for the sake of the Kingdom.
He gambled his life and emerged a glorious victor. His poverty clothed crowds of naked and fed untold numbers of hungry. His vow of chastity that made his bed cold and lonely gave birth to countless spiritual children warmed in the rays of his love. Totally powerful in utter obedience, he acquired the richest of all riches in total self-giving in the Madonna House Apostolate.
Blessed is the man, blessed is the priest who abandons his own life to multiply it in others. Eddie was that priest and that man. He honoured his commitment to Madonna House Apostolate to multiply life and joy.
Madonna House was for him a new vision and a challenge. The adventure took his fancy, and he hung his personal garments on the clothesline of eternity, to give it life. Eddie Doherty loved life passionately. He enjoyed life fully. He suffered from life intensely. Love, joy, and suffering were always with him as an everlasting celebration of freedom.
— Archbishop Joseph M. Raya
Feast of All Saints, 1976
Related publications
Gall and Honey: The Story of a Newspaperman
by Eddie Doherty
A Cricket in My Heart: An Autobiography
by Eddie Doherty
The Life of Eddie Doherty
by Mary Bazzett
