Father Ralph Pfau and the Golden Books
The Path to Recovery from Alcoholism and Drug Addiction
by
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The Myth of Perfection Ralph first gave a long discussion of his new understanding of the issue in The Golden Book of Resentments, which he published in 1955, twelve years after joining Alcoholics Anonymous. He gave that section of the booklet the provocative title “The Myth of Perfection,” and began it with a quote from St. Augustine: “Let us admit our imperfections so we can then begin to work toward perfection.” Then he explained what that statement meant in the simple Hoosier language of the small towns and countryside of Indiana: “There ain’t nobody perfect in this world.” “There ain’t nobody perfect in this world” . . . . All of our lives we expected perfection, and when we again and again found instead imperfection, faults, failings, even serious ones, we became “disillusioned” — which in reality was only a vicarious form of self-pity . . . . We first thought our parents were perfect. Then we found out they weren’t! Frustration number one. Then we met the gal (or guy) of our dreams. And think we to us: here is perfection. And then we married her (or him)! Frustration number two . . . . Then along came our children. And without doubt they were perfect. “Isn’t he the most perfect thing that ever lived?” And then the policeman brought T. Jonathan home one day . . . . Our child? Never! But it was our child. More frustration . . . . But we held on to the mirage to the very last: We were perfect, and if you didn’t believe it, all you had to do was to ask us! . . . The truth? No one is perfect . . . . Like a little Scriptural proof? “If anyone among you says he is without sin, he is a liar and the truth is not in him.” Just a longer way of saying: There ain’t nobody perfect. Perfection is a myth based on spiritual pride. But in fact we will never have a perfect family, perfect friends, perfect business associates, or a perfect body. Sometimes we will get sick, or have aches and pains. We will also never have perfect emotional lives. Fr. Ralph comments: How many come to us and complain: “I have been trying so long — for years — to control myself and I still get upset, I still get jittery, I still get angry, and I still get nervous.” Well, what did they expect? Perfect control? Perfection? This is the alcoholic mind at work, Fr. Ralph says, the “persistent struggle to reach that smooth feeling.” When alcohol stops doing it, some people then turn to drugs. Ralph tried to use combinations of alcohol, barbiturates, and bromide compounds to help him get through each day — never too keyed up, never too depressed, never upset or disappointed by anything that happened — but just sailing along, as it were, on a waveless sea under a cloudless sky. But that was not the way the real world ever worked, no matter how hard we tried to make continual microadjustments in our mood with alcohol and other chemicals: There will be days when we will be feeling wonderful and there will be days when we will be feeling lousy; and there will be days when one is quick to anger and days when nothing upsets; and there will be days when we feel mean as all get out and days when we feel like doing a good turn even for our worst enemy. But then, life and emotions are like that, very uneven and imperfect, even in the best of men. We also need to remember that perfection is a myth when we get too worried about the wandering thoughts running through our heads. We may even be kneeling in church and trying our best to maintain a worshipful and prayerful state of mind, when a wildly inappropriate train of thought suddenly pops into our heads and threatens to lead us into total distraction. Angry thoughts, envious thoughts, sexual thoughts, the yearnings of worldly ambition, and temptations of every other sort may erupt without warning in the minds of even the holiest of us, and throw us into at least a brief spiritual struggle before we can lay them once more to rest. Even Jesus himself was not exempt: the story of his active ministry began with the story of the temptation in the wilderness and ended with the story of his temptation in the garden of Gethsemane. And as for the rest of us, as Fr. Ralph pointed out, “We may live to be a hundred, but we shall still have distractions, and ‘bad’ thoughts, and ‘screwy’ thoughts, until we’re dead.” Ralph was speaking partly to his own spiritual problems of course: his tendency to scrupulosity, the sense of personal failure which he had when he first entered A.A., and so on. But he found that this message also spoke to a central spiritual problem found among large numbers of Catholic alcoholics. It is amazing how many newcomers to A.A. who are of Catholic background are initially terrified by the spiritual dimension of the program because of their belief that they have sinned so wickedly against God — not just by their out of control drinking but in many other ways — that God would never hear their prayers for help. Most of them need, not being scolded and berated for their wickedness and supposed lack of will power and ordinary responsibility, but constant reassurance that God loves them and is going to keep on helping them recover, even if it takes months and years to begin getting their lives back in order again. And then Ralph discovered to his amazement, that up to sixty per cent of the people attending his weekend spiritual retreats were Protestants. They were just as terrified of God (and of the demands of real holiness) as the Catholics were!
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About the Book
Father Ralph Pfau was one of AA’s four most-published and most-formative authors (along with Bill Wilson, Richmond Walker, and Ed Webster) during the new movement’s earliest thirty years, during which it grew from only 100 members to almost 300,000. In the first ten years Pfau spent working to spread AA, he said “I have traveled nearly 750,000 miles .... I have spoken before nearly two hundred thousand members of AA at retreats, meetings and conventions, and personally discussed problems with more than ten thousand alcoholics.” He produced fourteen extremely popular books, called the Golden Books, under the pen name “Father John Doe,” along with other books and recordings. When he joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1943, he became the first Roman Catholic priest to get sober in the newly formed movement. An alcoholic and drug addict, he had spent the previous ten years being removed from parish after parish, as his drinking and addiction to “downers” got out of control over and over again. He taught the spirituality of imperfection, drawing from St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Little Way and St. Augustine’s teaching of God as Truth Itself — the forgiving God who touches us in our fallenness, in acts of sudden psychological insight in which our whole perspective on life undergoes sweeping positive quantum changes. Over and over he calmed people’s fear of God by reminding them that perfection was a myth, and that no human being could do it all. He was one of the most creative and interesting American Catholic theologians of his era.
About the Author
Glenn F. Chesnut, who earned his doctorate in theology from Oxford University, spent thirty-five years teaching theology and history at the University of Virginia, Boston University, and Indiana University, where he retired as Professor of History and Religious Studies in 2003. He has written important books on early Christian thought, the understanding of God and Christ in the modern world, and more recently, about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous and the spirituality of the twelve step movement. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area, continuing his research into the history of the twelve-step program and the wider foundations of spirituality, metaphysics, and the meditative awareness of the divine.