Edward Dowling

We're all so eager.

And he got up and he started talking about Sister Ignatian, Father Dowling, and Henrietta Cyberling.

I'm thinking, who the heck are all these people? You know, and I had prided myself on knowing everybody in AA at that point.

Just a little ego problem.

So I was, like, trying to tie the history of Narcotics Anonymous into the show me.

And I found some stuff about this guy named Father Ed Dowling, who was Bill Wilson's sponsor.

You know, like, we had this fuzzy area in, like... like people were experimenting with the 12 Steps with addicts.

Not only did Father Dowling help start Alcoholics Anonymous in Missouri, but he had started an early version of Narcotics Anonymous in St. Louis.

But Bill says no, we can't use those half-baked, he doesn't say that, but he says it somehow, that we don't stop there.

And I think that's what Father Ed taught him, is no, no, keep shooting for it.

You're never going to get to perfection, but keep going.

I'm a seeker.

So that's something I try to convey in My Piece I Give You and in other writings of mine about saints.

Now, you've written a book about a Father Ed Dowling, SJ-

Yes

... who I'm not sure if many people have actually heard of him.

So I learned about Father Edward Dowling, Father Ed, uh, from, uh, a friend of mine, uh, who's a member of AA who wrote a blog entry about Father Ed back in 2008.

And as a lover of all things Jesuit, or we'll say lover of almost all things [chuckles] Jesuit, the Jesuits contain multitudes, shall we say.

I looked up what I could find about Father Ed Dowling, and I found a, a book called The Soul of Sponsorship that was an edited collection of Father Ed Dowling's correspondence with Bill W., the co-founder-- one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I'm not an alcoholic myself, but neither was Father Ed Dowling, and yet he was drawn to this new, then new fellowship of AA back in 1940 when he encountered it.