The following account is from Glenn C.'s talk on Fr. Ralph P., for other related
information please, see the link to his web
site:http://www.hindsfoot.com/nIndy1.html

One of the people whom Doherty S. brought into the program was the first Roman
Catholic priest in the United States to join A.A. This was Father Ralph P. He
was
brought up in Indianapolis and went to seminary at St. Meinrad's in southern
Indiana.
The bishop of Indianapolis sent him to pastor congregations all the way from
Snake
Run, Indiana (six miles off the paved highway down in Gibson County) to the nice
Indianapolis suburbs. He was a good pastor, he did a very good job every time,
and
unlike many Roman Catholic priests before Vatican II he could preach a rousing
good
sermon -- but every time his drinking would eventually create such a public
scandal that
the bishop would have to pull him out, send him off to a sanitarium to dry him
out,
then give him a stern lecture and send him to serve as priest of some other
parish. He
had gone through enough churches that way, that his bishop and the whole
diocesan
administration were in total despair.

Father Ralph was back in Indianapolis, shaky and about ready to fall to pieces
again,
when he saw some A.A. literature and telephoned Doherty S. Doherty came over,
and
Father Ralph said "I'm not an alcoholic, of course, but I'd like to know a
little more
about this program," and Doherty, a very wise man, just smiled gently and
promptly
dragged Father Ralph off to his first A.A. meeting.

Dohr continued to be Ralph's sponsor until the end of Dohr's life. Afterwards
Ralph --
who was a Roman Catholic priest and understood the standards, and would not have
made such a statement lightly -- said simply that in knowing Dohr he had had the
privilege of knowing one of the real saints. J. D. H. said something very
similar: that
Dohr was the only man he had ever known whom he would put on the same level as
Dr. Bob. He must have been a truly extraordinary man.

Ralph later organized the Catholic Clergy Conference on Alcoholism, and played a
major
role in getting the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to appreciate and
support the new A.A. movement.

In June 1946 he ran a weekend spiritual retreat for members of A.A. at St.
Joseph's
College in Rensselaer, Indiana, the first of its kind. It was the first major
function where
A.A.'s from all over Indiana, from the far north to the deep south, were able to
get
together in one place and get to know one another. It was run in some ways like
a
Roman Catholic retreat, but without the lectures and references to Roman
Catholic
dogma and practice. Of the ninety A.A.'s who showed up for this first retreat,
eighty per
cent were non-Roman Catholics. It worked so well that the retreats continued
every
year, and Ralph discovered that he could, in effect, take off his clerical
collar and speak
about the spiritual life in ways that could be understood by anyone who had come
to
know a higher power through the A.A. program. Each of the fourteen little
booklets that
made up his Golden Book series was based on Ralph's remarks at one year's St.
Joseph's retreat.

They are called the Golden Books because, when they did the first one, they were
looking around for a fancy cover to put on it: they found some cardboard covered
with
gold foil, made the covers out of that, and liked the result so much that each
subsequent booklet was published with a shiny, gold-foil cover. In respect for
the
principle of anonymity, he published them under the pen name Father John Doe,
which
is the name under which most people know him. He also wrote an autobiography,
Prodigal Shepherd, telling about his own battle with alcoholism, which so
fascinating
that Look magazine published long excerpts from the book in a three-part series.

In terms of people who were themselves members of A.A. and who wrote about A.A.
and alcoholism, the four most published authors during the early days were Bill
W., of
course, with Richmond W. in the number two place.

Rich, who lived in Daytona Beach, Florida, wrote the meditational book
called
Twenty-Four Hours a Day in 1948. He printed and distributed it himself for many
years,
until the job became too much for him and Hazelden volunteered to take over the
task.

The other two most published A.A. authors were Father Ralph and Ed W.

Ed W., who lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, wrote The Little Red Book
(1946),
Stools and Bottles (1955), Barroom Reveries (1958, a book of humor which was a
flop
and never reprinted), and Our Devilish Alcoholic Personalities (in 1970, just a
year
before his death). He and Barry C. called themselves the "Coll-Webb Co.,
Publishers"
and printed The Little Red Book themselves at the beginning.

Father Ralph also printed his own books and distributed them himself in
Indianapolis for
years, calling his little publishing operation the SMT Guild. Hazelden has now
taken over
printing and distributing them as a service to the A.A. program, so they're
still in print
nowadays, and all his writings are still available. They're good stuff.

Father Ralph was the only one of these four who was a professionally trained
theologian. His writings were vitally important in keeping A.A. on track during
the early
period. We sometimes like to think of early A.A. as a time when people were
doing
everything exactly right, and then we get nostalgic about the good old days, and
start
talking about how bad things are now. But I had an interesting conversation at
the
national A.A. archives conference in Chicago last year, with a Chicagoan named
Tex who
has been in the program fifty-three years, and he started telling stories about
some of
the A.A. groups that were operating in the Chicago area back in the late 1940's
and
50's. There were some absolutely crazy people who were trying to jump on board
this
movement. There were self-styled gurus who were setting up their own weird
interpretations of the program, and Bill W. was driving himself almost crazy at
times
trying to keep A.A. from self-destructing from their influence.

Tex told about one of these gurus who came to give a speech in which he started
proclaiming that Moses had been sent by God to set up the first covenant, Jesus
Christ
had been sent by God to set up the second covenant and found a new and better
religion, and Bill W. and Dr. Bob had been sent by God to set up the new world
religion
which would replace Christianity and Judaism as the true revelation of God. Tex
said
that Father Ralph was sitting in the back of the room and started shouting at
the man
that this was total nonsense and the worst rubbish he had ever heard in his
life, and by
the time it was all over, the man had to go home without giving the rest of his
speech.
Father Ralph never let him get another word in uninterrupted!

Father Ralph was one of the people who fought and worked to keep the program
stable. He was a trained theologian himself, and in those fourteen Golden Books
(and
the recordings and other publications he distributed) he laid out the basic
principles of
the spiritual side of the program with good, solid common sense, based on a lot
of
practical experience as a pastor -- what really works, how do we keep it simple,
how do
we actually go about this -- and I think that he deserves a lot of credit as one
of the
people who helped keep A.A. together during that crucial period before we got
the
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book out, and that sort of thing.

And he's one of our own Indiana folk here, someone we can be really proud of.

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