Religion: The Forgotten Husband

Roman Catholics venerate the Virgin Mary as the mother of Christ and the Queen of Heaven, second only to the Trinity. But her husband, Joseph, who apparently died before Christ began his ministry, is a forgotten man, fleetingly celebrated as a good carpenter and notably understanding husband. Though the Gospel of Matthew accords Joseph rather than Mary the honor of hearing the Annunciation from the angel of the Lord, St. Joseph is not even named in the liturgy of the Mass, which so honors 27 other saints. Last week a widespread campaign was under way to remedy this omission; sent to every Catholic prelate in the world was a pamphlet marshaling the arguments for St. Joseph’s inclusion.

The Family Man. Sparkplug of this international campaign is a Jesuit theologian, Francis Lad Filas, 46, chairman of the theology department at Chicago’s Loyola University. One day in 1937, Filas stumbled on an ancient German treatise on St. Joseph, and was attracted to the Virgin’s husband as “an obscure underdog who didn’t deserve the treatment he had received in history.” In 1944 he published his first book on Joseph, The Man Nearest to Christ, and books, pamphlets, lectures and magazine articles on the saint have been pouring out of his typewriter ever since. Jesuit Filas feels that Joseph should be honored as “Jesus’ father in every way except physical generation.”

Putting St. Joseph’s name next to Mary’s in the prayers of the Mass was only a “remote hope,” says Father Filas, until Pope John XXIII called an Ecumenical Council, which will probably take place in 1962. Father Filas urged the documentary and research center at St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal to organize a campaign to put St. Joseph’s cause on the council’s agenda; other centers of “Josephology” in Italy and Spain were enlisted, and the pamphlet to prelates was the first result. The ecclesiastical reaction so far, says Father Filas, has been “very encouraging.” Of the church’s 420 cardinals and archbishops with dioceses, more than 200 have already let it be known that they favor St. Joseph’s inclusion in the Mass.