Autohagiography

  I was born at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, which was at that time (the 50s) a Catholic Hospital. Founded in 1928 by the Sisters of St. Augustine, it was presumably named after St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher-theologian and author of the Summa Theologica, which fact I consider significant because it augurs my future interest in the “Angelic Doctor”. Despite the fact that I returned to the Catholic faith in the 1980s I did not learn to appreciate his wisdom until I was 50 years old.

  There is something about this I find rather portentous. I was born in a place associated with St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. And now, only after 50 years of life and 30 years of religious studies, have I finally come back to them, embracing the study of the writings of Thomas and Augustine. Formerly my interest was more Patristic than Scholastic, a product of my time in the Russian Orthodox Church. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

  Besides being notable as the place of my birth, St. Thomas Hospital is also known as one of the first hospitals to admit patients suffering from alcoholism. Dr. Bob (Robert Holbrook Smith), co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had been trying for years to gain admission for his patients to Akron hospitals, but at this time alcoholism was considered a moral failing rather than a disease. Sr. Ignatia Gavin of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine was the Admissions Officer of St. Thomas at the time and through a saintly subterfuge admitted Dr. Bob’s patients as sufferers of “acute gastritis”. Eventually Sr. Ignatia and Dr. Bob convinced the powers that be to open the first ever hospital ward for alcoholics, she attending to their patients’ spiritual ills while Dr. Bob attended to their physical ones.

  Sadly, in the 1980s, St. Thomas hospital gave in to secularizing pressures and began performing procedures considered gravely immoral by the Catholic Church. Apparently St. Thomas’ board of directors considered these procedures more important than their Catholic identity and, amidst much acrimony, the Church took away from them the title of “Catholic hospital”. When my mother ended up ill there in the 80s, before her passing, I recall that the beautiful, old Catholic chapel was periodically closed, punishing the patients and their families for the intransigence of the Catholic Church. At any rate, St. Thomas Hospital, like the city of San Francisco, is no longer Catholic, and I presume both saints are quite unhappy to see their names so disgraced.