Deacon Joe Forgue Knows God's Loving Grace Lights The Path Even From Prison

By Deacon Joe Forgue

July 1, 1974 was the beginning of my ministry in Oklahoma. Under the leadership of the late Father James Kastner, I joined (as DRE) a dynamic St. Charles Borromeo pastoral team. For the next five years, a vibrant parish community, aglow with zeal grounded in the vision of the Second Vatican Council, nurtured my family and me as I ministered to and with. There was an unprecedented spirit of collaboration among the clergy, religious and laity that identified St. Charles as a community “called by the Word to serve the world.” Diverse and lively liturgies, comprehensive and challenging religious education, along with caring and committed social action, were signs that the Spirit was fashioning a people of faith.

About a dozen years later, after serving on a number of Archdiocesan committees, teaching for various Archdiocesan departments, and working for Catholic Charities in the new Parish Social Ministry Development Team, I was ordained a deacon. I can still feel Archbishop Salatka’s hands on my head. This profound sacramental gesture signaled both a culmination and a commencement. As is the case for all of us, our sacramental encounters with Christ involve both a bringing to fruition and the sowing of new seed. For me, that November night in 1986 involved a mostly seamless transition. Or, so I thought. Little did I suspect that ordination would be a major step in getting me to prison.

How did this Chicago boy, born prematurely in 1941, end up in an Oklahoma prison? Only by the grace of God! The Catholicism of my immediate family had a Bavarian flavor on my mother’s side and French Canadian roots on my father’s. Neither was very pious, though both had legendary members who had, over the years, been either priests or nuns. In my formative years, my maternal grandmother’s devotion to the Sacred Heart and my paternal grandmother’s shrine to the Infant of Prague were touchstones of popular piety. More influential that anything, I served as an altar boy in settings that fostered a deep Eucharistic awareness.

I had excellent Catholic schooling. Be it by the Scalabrini fathers, Mother Cabrini’s sisters, the Sisters of Mercy, or dedicated Chicago archdiocesan priests, I was nurtured in a Catholic culture that placed responding to Jesus at the heart of the matter. The highlight for me, however, was contact with the Brothers of the Christian Schools. St. John Baptist de la Salle’s “Christian Brothers” fostered in me twin realizations: the practice of remembering the presence of God, and discerning God’s will in my regard in all things. I entered the brothers’ community at age 15. Within this spiritual “band of brothers” for the next decade, I learned: how to pray, how to teach, and how to enter the world of theologically grounded social action.

But, as Anton Pegis put it so well, God writes straight with crooked lines.  Discerning the will of God became quite a struggle. Four years of prayer, consultation with trusted men of deep faith, and, I almost hesitate to say, a mystical vision, brought me to seek dispensation from my religious vows. Then, in 1971, Joanne and I were joined through Matrimony. We have two married sons and a granddaughter.

In 1994, I got a call from Fr. Ed Weisenburger. He was asking me, on behalf of the Archbishop, if I was interested in prison ministry. As the story goes, they had been looking for a priest to no avail, so they were willing to settle for a deacon. I responded that I’d pray about it. I did begin the paperwork, since part of my discernment process is, if the call comes to you, it may be from God. However, the paperwork was being submitted to the government, so part of my decision rested on bureaucratic response. Then came the unfair part. I began reading the gospels, particularly the readings for Advent. So, altogether, the message got clearer. And so, for the past nine years, I’ve been in prison. As a federal prison chaplain, my main job is to facilitate the inmate’s Constitutionally guaranteed rights to religious practice. As a deacon, I have a special function with respect to the Catholic inmates in assisting their faith development and observance. The image I use is that I walk a tightrope between being naive and being cynical.

Another image comes to mind. The threefold crossings at the proclamation of the gospel, when we sign forehead, lips and heart, has been important to me since grade school. Now, as an adult and a deacon, they are even more significant, and challenging. What is the connection among the three? Is it my knowledge that informs my proclamation that directs my actions in faith? Or, does the presence of the Word in my heart give fervor to my proclamation and add profundity to my understanding?  The men I work with could pretty much care less about my two graduate degrees in theological disciplines; but the congruence of my life with my words and knowledge seem to be what counts. Their hunger, as is true for all of us, is for a religious spirituality that heals broken hearts, that strengthens our human connectedness, and challenges us to life-giving conversion. Ministry for me is to bring the gentleness of Jesus to the “smoldering wick and the bruised reed.”  It involves, as well, paying attention to, and eliminating, whatever it is that is blowing out the flame and trampling through the marshes.  

The biggest obstacle in my ministry is my failure to put on the mind of Christ. I fail everyday to be fully open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Yet, the Lord Jesus uses me, just as he uses each one of us, in mysterious and sacramentally hidden ways. Grace is, indeed, everywhere.