I was battling for my academic life when Benedictine Father Paul Marx first contacted me, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have taken his call. After all, I had been trained at Stanford University to keep my distance from pro-lifers — and the caller informed me that he not only headed a pro-life organization, but was a Catholic priest to boot.
But the year was 1984 and the powers-that-be at Stanford were in the process of purging me from their ranks. Following a year-long research stint in China, I had become a critic of China’s brutal one-child policy, which was leaving millions of babies dead and women wounded in its wake. The Beijing regime was incensed, and angry academics had voted to deny me the Ph.D. And so I took Father Marx’s call.
“I’m holding a conference,” Father Marx said in his soft, quick way. “I’d like you to speak. Of course I can’t afford to pay you, but you can bring and sell your books.”
It wasn’t the best offer I have ever received, but I went anyway. In the years that followed, I went to virtually every world conference Father held. And I’m glad I did.
An Education Second-to-None
Father’s conferences were an education second-to-none. Each was a graduate seminar taught by not just one, but dozens of leading pro-life, pro-family thinkers and doers. By going year after year, I learned what I had not been taught at Stanford — the sanctity of life, the importance of the family as the fundamental unit of society, and the dangers of the secular humanist mentality that dominates our universities, our legislatures, and our courts.
Going to his conferences also gave me an opportunity to get to know Father Marx. The Apostle of Life — as the Holy Father called him — possesses a rare combination of gifts, Not only does he have a brilliant mind, he is an indefatigable worker and at the same time a wonderfully warm human being.
Father and I, it turned out, had a lot in common. We both loved children. We are both frugal to a fault, although Father, being a child of the Depression, is probably even more of a penny pincher. And over time, with Father’s encouragement and direction, we came to share a common faith.
Can You Work for Free?
In the fall of 1995 Father called again. “I would like you to head the Population Research Institute,” he told me. I was enthusiastic about working with Father. We talked about how to defeat the myth of overpopulation and promote the Culture of Life worldwide. Then we came to the question of a salary. “Can you work for free?” he asked hopefully.
“With six children and one on the way,” I replied, suddenly sober. “I don’t think I can.” But we quickly came to an agreement. Father and I began working together on a daily basis.
In the years that followed, I helped Father organize conferences in Cincinnati (1996), in Minneapolis (1997), in Houston (1998), and in Toronto (1999). Each was a brilliant success, thanks to his knowledge of the pro-life movement, his dynamism, and his guidance. Each attracted thousands of participants, from the United States as well as abroad, who went home better-equipped to tight on behalf of life and the family in their own communities. “The best pro-life conference I have ever attended,” people wrote year after year on their evaluation forms.
Father also continued to maintain a grueling travel schedule. Parish visits took him away to the four corners of the United States and Canada nearly every weekend, while every few months he would visit other countries and continents to encourage the pro-life movement there. These foreign trips, especially, could be exhausting. I recall one 1998 trip which took Father to the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, France, and California. Still, when a re-quest came in for him to speak at home or abroad, he would invariably say yes.
But Father was no longer a young man. As he approached his 80th birthday, he began to talk about the day that he would return to his abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. “I have been away from St. John’s Abbey for nearly two decades,” he told me once. “What I’d like to do is hold one final conference in my home state of Minnesota in the year 2001, then retire to the abbey.”
That was not to be, in March 1999. Father Marx was suddenly recalled to the abbey by his superior, and has remained there since.
Join Us to Give Tribute
But we at Population Research Institute have decided to hold a world conference in Minneapolis this year. We want to honor, as it were, Father’s original plans. We want to give closure to this holy priest, and to honor his life’s work and, with his encouragement, to continue his legacy.
So we have joined forces with the American Life League to hold a conference on June 20–24 in Minneapolis-St. Paul. (See pages 15–16 of this newsletter for details)
Father Marx will be joining us for the conference, traveling down from his abbey in St. Cloud, Minnesota. And I would like to invite all of you whose lives were in some way touched by the work of this holy priest — as mine was — to join us as well.
Father Marx will be pleased to see you again.
