Comments

1. Bernard Dauenhauer 01/18/2011 - 8:07 pm

   Yes, Shriver was an exemplary man.

2. JC 01/18/2011 - 8:28 pm  subscriber

   I learned a lot in that review. Eunice and Sarge were really in Opus Dei? That is a surprise. Opus Dei can’t be so bad, can it?

   I wonder why Sarge opposed an amendment banning abortion.

   O’Brien makes good points about the bishop/catholic politician problems we have today. On the other hand, where are the Sarge/Califano politicians today? There is Bob Casey, but there are just so many disappointing Catholic politicians that it is hard to blame the bishops for being pissed. Does the church have the culture to produce a Sarge anymore?

3. David Gibson 01/18/2011 - 8:49 pm  subscriber  contributor

   Hard to beat this picture as a tribute — his granddaughter Carolina Shriver stroking his face at the wake for Eunice:

   http://content.usatoday.com/_common/_scripts/big_picture.aspx?width=490&height=336&storyURL=&imageURL=/news/_photos/2009/08/13/shriverx-large.jpg

4. David Gibson 01/18/2011 - 8:57 pm  subscriber  contributor

   Scott Stossel, his biographer, has a lovely reminiscence over at The Atlantic where he is an editor:

   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/the-good-works-of-sargent-shriver/69677/

   It concludes:

   I tend to think of myself as a pretty cynical guy. I am not easy to inspire. But Shriver awakened in me–just as he did in thousands of others–the notion that it is always worthwhile to work harder, to do more, and to dream bigger about achieving peace and social justice.

   A final note about his faith. The root of Shriver’s self-conception was as a lay Catholic who always tried to model his life after the ethics of Jesus as expressed in the Gospels. This has not been a passive pursuit. Always he was asking himself, Am I living my life as Christ would want me to?

   What he derived from his faith was less the solace of Lord’s presence, or the promise of transcendence in the hereafter (though he did derive both of those qualities from his faith) than a kind of mobilizing vision for action here on earth. It is telling that in the 1930s Shriver invited Dorothy Day to speak at his undergraduate institution, Yale. Shriver’s Catholicism was in some ways analogous to Day’s: rooted in the ethics of the Christian Gospels; dedicated to working toward peace, social justice, and redemption of suffering here on earth; and concerned especially with the easing the plight of the poor and the disabled.

   In some ways, Shriver and I were as different as can be: him an optimist about human nature, me a pessimist; him devoutly faithful, me a struggling agnostic. But I am nonetheless unequivocally sure of two things. First, if there is a heaven, Sargent Shriver is on his way there now–or no one is. Second, even if there is no heaven, his legacy of good works here on earth is an inspiration and a goad for all of us to do more and better.

5. Jean Raber 01/18/2011 - 9:20 pm  subscriber

   David, thank you for the link to the Stossel piece. Inspiring the faithful is a wonderful thing. How much more wonderful to be able to inspire the cynical, doubting curmudgeons.

6. william collier 01/18/2011 - 10:07 pm  subscriber

   Though Sargent Shriver was Peace Corps director before my time, he has legendary status within the agency, and as one of the more than 200,000 current and returned Peace Corps volunteers, I honor his efforts to transform what was initially mocked by some as a wasted effort into what IMO has been the best dollar-for-dollar foreign assistance expenditure the U.S. has ever made. The Peace Corps celebrates its 50th anniversary later this year. I’m sure there will be many tributes to Shriver as part of the festivities.

   Shriver, along with his wife, Eunice, will also hopefully be remembered for their pro-life efforts, from their work on behalf of the mentally and physically disabled to their advocacy on behalf of the unborn. In 1992 they were signatories to a full-page ad in the NYT titled “A New American Compact: Caring about Women, Caring for the Unborn.” The document is one of the most powerful statements I’ve seen about what is perhaps the most divisive issue in America.

   http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/xx40/mmatters/NYT07141992ProlifeLetter.jpg

7. David Gibson 01/18/2011 - 10:34 pm  subscriber  contributor

   From Colman McCarthy’s column in the WaP, about Shriver hiring him in the 1960s:

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/18/AR2011011804789.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

   I thought my chances were nil. Months before, I had emerged from a Trappist monastery in Georgia where strictly cloistered priests and brothers were God’s inmates. Five years with no newspapers, magazines, television or other damnable frivolities, I’d been bricked out of secular society. Why would Shriver hire me?

   For the make-or-break interview, we went to dinner. For four hours, the talk was not about pending legislation, Lyndon Johnson’s White House or Republican attacks on the Peace Corps. Instead, it was theology and spirituality, the turf on which I been trodding, however unsteadily.

   Shriver, amazingly, wanted to discuss Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, Hans Kung, Tertullian, Leon Bloy, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and others. He told of inviting Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker to speak at Yale during his student days. A couple of times I couldn’t keep up, as when he riffed on the differences between the early, middle and late writings of Saint Teresa of Avila.

   At dinner’s end, Sarge hired me – a flashpoint moment in my life. A spirited public orator, he needed a speechwriter like Stradivarius needed help stringing violins. Once at work, I learned that I wasn’t the only one with a background in religion. He was hiring so many former nuns and priests that OEO could have stood for Office of Ecclesiastical Outcasts. Sarge’s Catholicism ranged from ordinary pieties – a rosary was always in his pocket – to mindfulness of the church’s teachings on social justice and nonviolence.

8. Nancy Danielson 01/19/2011 - 11:34 am

   “…and their personal pain comes through when they realize there was never enough money.”

   We now have an important moral challenge in Haiti where the money is available, yet the situation has remained the same. In honor of Sargent and Eunice Shriver, I would love to see a joint effort between The Peace Corp and Catholic Relief Services, reflective of respect for the Dignity of the human person grounded in an authentic Love that when giving fish, teaches one how to fish, simultaneously. This would include a physical presence in Haiti with protection from some members of our Armed forces.

   May Sargent and Eunice Shriver rest in The Peace of Christ.

9. Jim Pauwels 01/19/2011 - 11:52 am  subscriber

   I look forward to reading all the links here.

   Just a quick comment: Sargent Shriver’s public life was pretty much before my time: I was a young child when he was a VP candidate, and I don’t recall him being much in the public eye afterward, except very occasionally as a member of the Kennedy clan. My comment is that his Catholicism, to which he seems to be an outstanding witness, was not, I think, well-known to the general public – I didn’t know about it until seeing this post. For those who were more mature than I was during his presidential campaign: was his Catholicism well-known, and was it an issue or topic of conversation back then? I was living in a thick Catholic family/parish network in those days, and attending a Catholic school, but I just don’t remember anyone talking about it or mentioning it. In that milieu in those days, ‘vote for the Catholic candidate’ would not have been far-fetched :-). Was it something that he wouldn’t have wanted to capitalize on, politically?

10. Bob Nunz 01/19/2011 - 1:47 pm

    Thanks to Bill C. for his personal tribute.
    If someone wonders about the decline in Catholic politicians today, the tangle of Church politics into the areana has made a difference.
    The Catholicism of Sargent Shriver’s was different and, from my perspective, much more inspirational and communiatarian than the one we often hear today.

11. Irene Baldwin 01/19/2011 - 1:52 pm

    “Though Sargent Shriver was Peace Corps director before my time, he has legendary status within the agency..”

    Yes! Before me, too, but definitely one of my heroes.

12. Michael Cassidy 01/19/2011 - 2:24 pm

    Dear JC and all,
    RE: Catholic politicians & bishops. Bart Stupak — a true hero — was hung out to dry by the bishops. That, plus a potentially bruising campaign for re-election made him decide to retire. Thankfully, Sarge didn’t face that sort of nonsense. He could have had a life of ease, but turned instead to true public service. Thank the Lord. And may the bishops reconsider their current stance on such things.

    mjc

13. william collier 01/19/2011 - 4:07 pm  subscriber

    NPR had a piece this morning about Shriver. I didn’t catch the name of the Shriver friend being interviewed, but he spoke in part about Shriver’s Catholicism, including how Shriver tried to attend Mass every day. The interviewee said that he once asked Shriver why he went to Mass so frequently, and Shriver replied that he needed Christ daily.

    Another legacy that Eunice and Sargent left behind is that they were able to keep their children, for the most part, out of the media glare that was a negative for so many of the Kennedy cousins. True, Maria Shriver married an Austrian bodybuilder who became a movie star and the governor of California (one can’t make this stuff up ;)), but she has also been a strong advocate for Alzheimer’s victims. I heard her on TV a couple of years ago talking about how her father no longer recognized her. She would have to re-introduce herself as his daughter each time she met him. Heartbreaking. And the Shriver sons also absorbed their parents’ example for getting involved in causes focused on helping others. One now runs Special Olympics, another is an executive with Save the Children, a third started his own charity, and yet another is an activist lawyer. The Shriver parents must have something right with their kids.

14. Mollie Wilson O'Reilly 01/19/2011 - 4:22 pm  contributor

    As I noted at the time, Tim Shriver spoke very movingly at our anniversary gala in 2009 about the strong faith that his parents shared, and how it remained meaningful to his father even as he lost most of his connections to the outside world. I thought of that when I heard the news this morning.

15. Irene Baldwin 01/19/2011 - 5:29 pm

    The Peace Corps sent this out over Facebook, a promotional video from the 60s with Sargent Shriver. (The first couple of minutes is with Shriver, the last half shows Peace Corps training at the time, which is a hoot for anyone that ever served. ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t_V1C3fkoI

16. Jean Raber 01/19/2011 - 6:33 pm  subscriber

    “I didn’t know about it until seeing this post. For those who were more mature than I was during his presidential campaign: was his Catholicism well-known, and was it an issue or topic of conversation back then? ”

    The first election I voted in was the Nixon/Agnew-McGovern/Shriver election in 1972.

    Vietnam obliterated most other discussion, as I recall. Shriver’s religion was never an issue among young Democrats, anyway. As a Kennedy in-law, I think it was generally expected that he would take JFK’s position on religion–it’s a private matter–and that’s pretty much how he campaigned.

    Interestingly, both McGovern, son of a Methodist minister, and Shriver were pro-life. McGovern wrote in “The Nation”:

    “Liberals such as I are accused not only of being weak on defense but also weak on marriage and the family, the work ethic and reverence for religious faith. I have never known a political leader in either party who was disloyal to America, or who scoffed at marriage and the family, or who disrespected God and religious faith. Republicans and Democrats alike are pro-American, pro-freedom, pro-life, pro-family and pro-God Almighty.”

17. gene palumbo 01/20/2011 - 1:07 am  subscriber

    Here are two excepts from Bono’s N.Y. Times op ed piece about Shriver:

    Robert Sargent Shriver changed the world more than a few times and, I am happy to say, changed my world forever. In the late ’90s, when the Jubilee 2000 campaign — which aimed to cancel the debts that the poorest nations owed to the richest — asked me to help in the United States, I called on the Shriver clan for help and advice. What I got were those things in spades, and a call to arms like a thump in the back.

    . . .

    Toward the end, when I visited Sarge as a frailer man, I was astonished by his good spirits and good humor. He had the room around him laughing out loud. I thought it a fitting final victory in a life that embodied service and transcended, so often, grave duty, that he had a certain weightlessness about him. Even then, his job nearly done, his light shone undiminished, and brightened us all.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/opinion/20bono.html?_r=1&hp

18. william collier 01/20/2011 - 4:18 pm  subscriber

    Probably a prejudice on my part, but who knew Bono could write so well?

    Mysterious Ways.

    A nice op ed.

19. Ann Olivier 01/21/2011 - 2:17 pm  subscriber

    Given the unanimity of the praise for “Sarge”, it seems that he must have been something of a saint.

20. gene palumbo 01/22/2011 - 12:17 am  subscriber

    From a Garry Wills piece on Shriver, on the blog of the New York Review of Books:

    I said I would write it and send it to him. He said, “Oh no, I’ll come get it in Baltimore.” He drove over and we went through the speech, sentence by sentence, on the couch in my living room. He was radiantly friendly with my children, and I saw why no one I ever talked to about him had anything bad to say about him.

    http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/19/sarge-shriver/

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