Local Catholics recall impact of Servant of God Fr. John Hardon

Metro Detroit — Around Thanksgiving, Fr. John Hardon, SJ, would hold a retreat for the Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Cresson, Pa.

One year, however, the sisters all came down with pneumonia, and Fr. Hardon suddenly had no commitments on Thanksgiving day. So his secretary at the time, Susan Schoenstein, invited him to dinner.

But when she went home to tell her family, her young son, Ron, had replied, “I’ll be polite, I’ll pass the butter … but I won’t talk to him.”

“I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Don’t you know he reads souls?’” recalled Schoenstein, who lives in Rochester Hills. So she went back to the Jesuit priest and told him what her son had said.

“He gets this smirk and says, ‘Well, only a little,’” Schoenstein remembered.

Fr. Hardon, who died Dec. 30, 2000, and whose cause for canonization has since been opened, would have celebrated his 100th birthday this month. A memorial Mass in his honor was celebrated June 18 at Colombiere Center in Clarkston, where the Jesuit priest had lived until his death.

“Fr. Hardon said only heroic Catholics will be saved,” said Schoenstein. “I’m hard pressed to find somebody better than Fr. Hardon on this earth right now.”

Fr. Hardon, who entered the Society of Jesus in 1936 and was ordained in 1947, taught theology at numerous colleges and universities across the United States. He offered spiritual direction throughout his assignments, including Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. He founded several apostolates including the Marian Catechists Apostolate, based in Wisconsin; the Institute for Religious Life, based in Illinois; and Eternal Life, a catechetical materials company based in Kentucky.

Fr. Hardon wrote prolifically, including “The Catholic Catechism,” the “Modern Catholic Dictionary” and served as a consultant in drafting the Catechism of the Catholic Church. His name also spread through his many recorded talks.

He moved to Michigan in the late 1980s to 1990s, and taught classes in Ann Arbor at Domino’s Farms, at University of Detroit Mercy and to the local Missionaries of Charity sisters.

Fr. Robert Slaton, associate pastor of Our Lady on the River Parish in Marine City who celebrated the June 18 memorial Mass, said while he never met Fr. Hardon, he had spent “hours of my free time listening to his lectures in front of a computer.”

Fr. Slaton was an audio recording engineer before becoming a priest, and had been recruited to transfer many of Fr. Hardon’s recordings onto CD.

“I did listen to a considerable amount of his teaching, and it got me to start reading his books,” said Fr. Slaton. “I always found he was incredibly clear and had a perfect understanding of what the Church taught.”

John Best, who helped plan the Mass, knew Fr. Hardon from listening to his lectures “on a weekly basis for about 10 years.”

“He spoke with a certitude and authority that I was hungering for,” said Best, who spoke with Fr. Hardon many times, including in the confessional, where the Jesuit “was able to be very compassionate and understanding.”

Best added that Fr. Hardon frequently taught the need for joy amid suffering: “A lot of times I recall his lessons when I’m going through a difficult time.”

“He definitely practiced what he preached, too,” said Best. “He held himself to a very stringent standard of the Catholic faith.”