Introduction to Father John Doe’s book ‘Sobriety and Beyond’ written by another John Doe.

No matter how degraded an alcoholic may be; no matter how confused his or her thinking might be; no matter how burden may his soul and body be; somewhere deep within his heart and soul there is that deathless urge found in all such people to reach out beyond the sordidness, the deceit, the folly, the ignorance, the immorality, the sham, the materialism and the hypocrisy of this world to grasp that elusive something which spells kinship with the lovely, and the beautiful and the divine in life. His perfectionist nature–so sensitive and so attuned to the eternal cravings–has always…reached for the pinnacle in every endeavor. Nothing in life was ever less than perfection, albeit ever blocked by some strange unseen force. In his work, his play, his love–he ever strove with might and main for the best. But, again and again he ended in defeat– which wrenched from the death of his agonized soul the cry:

“How can my dream break through the darkness,
When always this ‘thing,’ this Vile ‘thing’
Hangs at the satanic chalice above the threshold of night,…
So that none may Pass?”

And like The “Hound of Heaven,”

“He fled Him down the nights,
And down the days–
Down the labyrinthine ways of his own mind
He sped…”

Feb 19, 2002.  Today is the anniversary of Fr. Ralph Pfau’s death, also known as Father John Doe. He is believed to have been the first Roman Catholic priest to enter Alcoholics Anonymous. Fr. Pfau was born on November 10, 1904, and died on February 19, 1967.  He was a priest in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, ordained at St. Meinrad Seminary, and received an MA in Education at Fordham University.  In the opening paragraph of his autobiography, “Prodigal Shepherd,” Father Pfau wrote: “All my life, I will carry three indelible marks. I am a Roman Catholic priest. I am an alcoholic. And I am a neurotic.”