Author’s Note
It was a challenge to try to produce a portrait in prose about Fr. Kurt Pritzl, O.P. (1952–2011), a priest and educator who is loved by so many. What follows would have been impossible without the assistance of those who gave of their time and from the treasury of their memories.
I am thankful for the help of my Dominican brethren: Frs. Brian Shanley, O.P., Ken Sicard, O.P., Ed Gorman, O.P., Giles Dimock, O.P., John Vidmar, O.P., Brian Chrzastek, O.P., Stephen Ryan, O.P., John Langlois, O.P., and Br. Reginald Hoefer, O.P. A special note of thanks as well to Mr. Pat Nolan, whose friendship with Fr. Kurt has diffused into a friendship with the entire community.
I am also grateful for contributions from those to whom Fr. Kurt was a teacher, mentor, or colleague at The Catholic University of America: Sr. Anna Wray, O.P., Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Drs. John McCarthy, Angela Knobel, Greg Doolan, Therese Cory, Gloria Frost, Tim Noone, and Kevin White.
I am likewise pleased to acknowledge the assistance of those who knew Fr. Kurt during his studies at the University of Toronto: Sr. Joan Franks, O.P., Fr. Martin Chase, S.J., Dr. William Stoneman, and Dr. Jane Smith.
Lastly, I offer a word of thanks to Fr. Kurt’s sister, Ms. Cathy Pritzl. I hope this article is a testament to how much Fr. Kurt spread the love of Christ to all he encountered.
Introduction
Each year, the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas gathers two communities from opposite sides of the same street together for Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.: the religious community of friars from the Dominican House of Studies and the academic community from The Catholic University of America. In the early afternoon on January 28, 2010, Fr. Kurt Pritzl, a Friar Preacher and Dean of CUA’s School of Philosophy, walked measured steps to the ambo to deliver the homily for the annual liturgy.
Moments before, those assembled had heard proclaimed a portion of St. Matthew’s Gospel: “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (5:16). For nearly three decades, Fr. Kurt’s goodness had shone out, to the glory of God, on either side of Michigan Avenue. On that day, it shone out once more. Though the ravages of terminal cancer had taken his hair and thinned his face, it had not dulled the brilliance of his smile or the sharpness of his intellect.
As a Dominican, he had often heard the motto, derived from Aquinas’s own reflection on the nature of our active and contemplative life: contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere. Roughly translated, the friar is obliged to contemplate and deliver to others the fruit of his contemplation. We cannot be certain of all the things that Fr. Kurt contemplated in the days and weeks prior to taking the pulpit, but his preaching affords us a glimpse that is profound, even if it is only partial. For at the climatic moment of the homily, this spirited, dying priest keenly observed:
We give our undergraduate students here a taste of Aquinas, hoping the flavor of it suggests to them why those who have devoted their lives to studying his thought fear for lack of time. These observations, however, only approach what we as a university acknowledge and celebrate today as we keep the feast of Thomas Aquinas at this Mass. Yes—Thomas Aquinas is one of the few thinkers whose intellectual genius is of perennial importance—we can hold a symposium for that. He is something more . . .
I promise to give Fr. Kurt’s decisive point at the conclusion. Our patience will be rewarded, for in first considering the life from which it ripened, we will be better prepared to savor the richness of this fruit. Let us begin our journey.
In Milwaukee
All men by nature desire to know. (Aristotle, Metaphysics, I.1)
After what we have said, a discussion of friendship would naturally follow, since it is a virtue or implies virtue, and is besides most necessary with a view to living. For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. . . . But it is not only necessary but also noble; for we praise those who love their friends; and again we think it is the same people that are good men and are friends. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII.1)
Fr. Kurt grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as the second of six children in a Catholic, working class family. He liked to recount that when his father would go out, Mr. Pritzl would strike up a conversation with anyone who would listen. As a child, Fr. Kurt inherited his dad’s gregariousness, which made him well-liked by nearly all, peers and adults alike. In high school, he became president of his class and a talented member of the football and debate teams. In the neighborhood, he and his sister both babysat for a nearby family, though the mother always made a special request—much to the sister’s chagrin—for Fr. Kurt to come if he were available. Even at this early age, his confidence and down-to-earth manner of speaking attracted people to become his friends. What’s more, he possessed a humility and considerateness that spoke to the genuineness of his character.
In 1970, Fr. Kurt began his undergraduate studies in his hometown at Marquette University. Majoring in both mathematics and philosophy, it was during these years that the latter seized his interest, particularly the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. Pursuing knowledge of the truth attracted him in much the same way that pursuing knowledge of others attracted him to friendship. He fell in love with the university, the context and locale in which he could search after the answers he desired with other seekers—both those learned professors and colleagues of his own day, as well as the great thinkers whose works he diligently studied. By the time he completed his undergraduate degree, he knew he wanted to pursue and teach philosophical truth. This desire would take him next to Toronto, to begin his masters and doctoral studies.
In Toronto
Holding as we do that, while knowledge of any kind is a thing to be honored and prized, one kind of it may, either by reason of its greater exactness or of a higher dignity and greater wonderfulness in its objects, be more honorable and precious than another, on both accounts we should naturally be led to place in the front rank the study of the soul. (Aristotle, De Anima, I.1)
Drawn to the University of Toronto in order to pursue further studies in philosophy under the direction of Fr. Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., a noted scholar of both Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Kurt found in Aristotle’s De Anima a key that threw open a certain portal, through which he could glimpse a deeper vision of the truth he had begun to pursue as an undergraduate. The De Anima considers the soul, and Fr. Kurt was particularly interested in what Aristotle had to say concerning the manner in which the human soul, as it comes to know some object, can be said to rest in its union with that object. This critical moment of knowing can all too easily be ignored as we quickly move to apply knowledge acquired toward some practical end.
In this ancient Greek man—twenty-five hundred years his senior—Fr. Kurt had discovered a kindred spirit: a friend whose words resonated as true and worthy of contemplation. For Aristotle’s words unlocked a crucial insight: above and beyond any practical application, knowing is worthwhile in this life for its own sake. As Fr. Kurt would tell his students years later, “The delight we take in seeing something or hearing something beautiful, apart from aiming to do anything at all, is an image and foretaste of heaven.” One gets a sense that Fr. Kurt saw his contemplative study of the union of the knower with the known as a sort of spiritual exercise. In carrying it out—letting its reality sink into his being and register in his innermost depths—it was his very soul that was drawing closer to a union with him who is Truth.
It was also during those Toronto years that Fr. Kurt forged lifelong friendships with a number of people who lived within the same residence at Massey College. In addition to the warm affability that allowed him to transcend various social circles at the school, they remember him as being extraordinarily generous with his time. Fr. Kurt encouraged others to seek after the truth with the same fervor with which he sought it. When one of his friends in the doctoral program asked for help preparing for her dissertation defense, he took it upon himself to read her entire thesis in a matter of days and become familiar with the topic’s recent literature. So well prepared was she by his questions that, at the end of her actual defense, the head of the panel remarked that he had never had a candidate handle herself so exquisitely.
Throughout his time in Toronto, Fr. Kurt remained a devoted Catholic. In talking with those who knew him then, it is striking that many did not have any indication he was considering the priesthood. It seems as though Fr. Kurt only talked about his discernment with a small group of close friends—much of the wrestling remained within the realm of his interior life. Though he had come to know the Jesuits at Marquette, he did not feel called to their life. During those years, he wondered exactly how the calling he felt to study philosophy might fit into ordained ministry as a diocesan priest back home in Milwaukee. Uncertain that it would, he opted not to enter the seminary at that time. Instead, he joined the faculty at The Catholic University of America (CUA) in 1980. The decision would prove providential, for it would be in Washington that Fr. Kurt found a home: not only in the CUA School of Philosophy, but also in a religious order whose very motto is Veritas—Truth. It would be as a Dominican that Fr. Kurt was to continue his devoted study of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.
In Washington
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20)
And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col 3:14–16)
In 1986, after spending six years at CUA and having already served as the school’s Assistant Dean for two years, Fr. Kurt was given his tenure as an assistant professor of philosophy. He had earned the esteem and friendship of colleagues and students alike, among whom there were great expectations that he would be a leader at the school for decades to come. Yet it was that same year that he was granted a leave of absence from the university in order to enter the Order of Preachers. When he returned to Washington after a year of novitiate formation in Cincinnati, he carried with him new responsibilities. In the several years that followed, the man with a doctorate would take master’s-level theology courses with much younger friars who had come to the Order right out of undergraduate studies. During this period of his life, commitments to his Dominican formation and preparing for priestly ordination, which occurred in 1991, restricted both his teaching and his scholarship.
To an observer, this stage of Fr. Kurt’s life could appear like a squandering of his skills as a teacher and scholar. It might seem too like an unnecessary humiliation: the dignified professor being made to take choir practice and bus dinner tables. In truth, however, this period was perhaps Fr. Kurt’s most joyful, for in responding to God’s prompting, he found a deepening of his already-present virtues and a summons to share in Christ’s pastoral activity as a priest. In coming to know friars, both from teaching them in the classroom and attending daily Mass at their chapel across the street, he had witnessed a group of intellectual men who centered their lives of apostolic ministry around the contemplation of Divine Truth—a more perfect practice of that restful union by which we savor here and now a foretaste of heaven. In becoming a friar, he entered into that life himself, a life that was wonderfully suited to his gifts. Several of his friends as well as his sister recall being initially surprised by Fr. Kurt’s decision, but then quickly realized how much sense it made. There was no better way of life for him than the one into which he had entered.
After ordination, both the Order and CUA continually called upon Fr. Kurt to sacrifice the time he would have gladly spent in teaching and scholarship in order to step into administrative roles. Within the Province of St. Joseph, he served as Regent of Studies (1993–1997), as a member of the Provincial Council (1993–2002), the Intellectual Life Commission (1993–2002, 2004–2006), and its Vocation Council (2002–2006). In addition, from 1994 to 2002, and again from 2005 until his death in 2011, he was a member of the Board of Trustees of Providence College. Within the CUA School of Philosophy, he again served as Assistant Dean from 1992 until 1997, when he agreed to become Interim and then Acting Dean. In 2000, the University removed the provisional label and made him Dean, a position he would only step down from in the last months of his life.
With virtual unanimity, those with whom I spoke attested that they have never witnessed anyone bear such responsibilities so well or with such energy or friendliness. He never retreated behind the veil of administration, never ceased being present to his faculty, his students, or his Dominican brothers. He was famous for his correspondence—people came to expect a handwritten message from Fr. Kurt on their birthdays or anniversaries each year. He continued to see students for spiritual direction, directed numerous theses and dissertations, and never failed to teach at least one course each semester. In the classroom, his enthusiasm for whatever subject he taught and self-deprecating sense of humor would inspire a whole new crop of students to pursue the truth. Several of those former students are now professors themselves or have entered religious life.
Though the demands of his schedule as Dean often took him away from home, all knew his devotion to the fraternal life. When he would return to the priory late in the evening from his office on campus, he would often stop off in the common room to socialize with other friars gathered together. He made a faithful practice of attending the community Mass on Saturday mornings, even if he was so fatigued from a long week that it meant he would have to return to bed after the liturgy to steal a few more hours of sleep. And when it would have been understandable for him to take Sundays to relax or catch up on things before another workweek began, each week he could be found in some area parish saying Mass. He loved being in the midst of the people of God, handing over the fruits of his contemplation by his preaching.
A reservoir of contemplation of the sheer goodness of God and his works: herein lies the secret to Fr. Kurt’s stamina and apostolic zeal. Supporting the feverish activity of his nearly twenty-five years as a Dominican and twenty years as a priest was a solid foundation built in silent prayer and the unceasing, loving study of Scripture, St. Thomas, and human nature. Had it not been so, he would never have been as prepared as he was when the winds of illness and loss came to buffet him at the end of his life. For the witness of his last years was to be the ultimate lecture that Fr. Kurt—the consummate teacher—would offer.
In Valle Mortis
Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (Jn 13:1)
In 2008, at age fifty-six, Fr. Kurt was diagnosed with cancer. Though the initial round of chemotherapy proved to be effective in curtailing the spread of the disease, it would return soon after, causing his body to slowly waste away. For three years, Fr. Kurt would suffer, until his death on February 21, 2011. Beyond the physical pain, there must certainly have been the natural pain of knowing that so many plans, so much potential, would go unrealized in his life. There was also the grief of burying his only brother, who died unexpectedly around the same time that it became clear that Fr. Kurt’s illness was terminal.
Despite this tremendous suffering, Fr. Kurt stood firm in the face of difficulty and constant in his pursuit of all that is good and true. That is to say, Fr. Kurt showed possession of the moral virtue of fortitude. For what was remarkable to those around him was that he changed so little in those last years. He had spent his life cultivating virtue and being of service to others. When the Lord called him to this final stage of his life, he did not cease to act in a manner true to who he had become. He did not cease being the Dean of the School of Philosophy. He did not cease to preach the mystery of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. He did not cease to be a friend, whether that meant travelling across the country for a colleague’s wedding, or mailing out a congratulatory card to a couple who had just given birth to their daughter, a card that would arrive only after the sender’s death.
Remaining tranquil and self-forgetful in the midst of his suffering, Fr. Kurt made a return donation of love to God and to those whom God had given him to befriend in the world. Truly, he loved to the end. His was not the death of a martyr in the sense of shedding blood for the faith. And yet in another sense, he was a μάρτυς: a witness. In death as in life, Fr. Kurt witnessed in words and deeds to the truth of the Gospel. We are in via: pilgrims on a homeward journey toward him who is Truth. Truth is our end or τέλος, to use a favored term of Aristotle. And Truth has a name: God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fr. Kurt was blessed to learn this on his own journey, and his life was a blessing because through it he shared with others the Triune God’s invitation to respond to grace and divine friendship.
Inclusio
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. (Jn 16:13)
Since, then, the Holy Spirit constitutes us God’s friends, and makes Him dwell in us, and us dwell in Him (as was shown), it follows that through the Holy Spirit we have joy in God and security against all the world’s adversities and assaults. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, IV.22.3)
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (Jn 15:5)
Fr. Kurt Pritzl was a bright intellectual light who shone for a time. But ultimately, Fr. Kurt the academic was an unhistoric figure. His scholarly work will not enjoy the perennial importance of St. Thomas Aquinas. But this is a relatively small matter: for it is helpful to remember that the great Aquinas remains an ignored or even unknown figure to the vast majority of human beings living over seven centuries after his death.
Worldly honor and esteem did not matter to Fr. Kurt as he preached on that brisk January afternoon in 2010. For many friends whose lives he touched, what Fr. Kurt preached on St. Thomas could be applied to himself:
He is something more, something more profound, more worthy, more essential to all that matters. He is a saint. Thomas Aquinas, in all gentleness and humility, responded fully to the grace of God. He knew and lived what the Book of Wisdom says: “For [God] is the guide of Wisdom and the director of the wise. For both we and our words are in his hand, as well as all prudence and knowledge of crafts.” And whatever Thomas learned was gained as a gift by the prayer and pleading for “prudence” and “the spirit of wisdom” that is preferable to scepter and throne, riches, health and good looks.
In a lovely little book, The Silence of St. Thomas, fellow philosopher Josef Pieper asserts, “nothing characterized Thomas the teacher so strongly as his prayer and hope that his life would not outlast his teaching.” Fr. Kurt taught others to seek after the truth—natural and supernatural—that he had sought his entire life. He taught others to foster friendship—natural and supernatural—just as he had. The teaching of Fr. Kurt has indeed outlasted his life, because it can still be found in the hearts of those with whom he taught, worked, and lived.
I have little doubt that Fr. Kurt must have contemplated the last lines of his favorite novel, Middlemarch by George Eliot, countless times throughout his life. They speak of the story’s protagonist, Dorothea Brooke, a woman with talent and goodness, but who nevertheless fails to reach the pinnacle of societal fame. The narrative ends in this way:
Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Like Eliot’s Dorothea, Fr. Kurt lived a life that never rose to worldly fame and yet was saturated with goodness. He actualized who he always was in potency, which is a philosophical way of saying that he became what he was made to be—a friend of God. It is no wonder then that all those I interviewed about Fr. Kurt attest to the “incalculably diffusive” goodness which they received from him and which continues to steadily weave its way through this world by channels known only to God.
Perhaps you, like I, feel a bit unlucky. We would like to question him ourselves today, to have the chance to pick his brain, to glean from his wisdom. But I imagine such a request would be met with a characteristic smile and a hearty laugh. Like a good scholar, he would refer us to his source, a first-century Galilean man who went about doing good that has not ceased to diffuse in incalculable ways. Follow Him.
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