Seton School -
- Dr. Carroll’s Eulogy from Mr. Westhoff’s Blog
- Dr. Carroll’s Homily from Funeral Mass as All Saints Church
- Dr. Carroll’s Eulogy from Timothy T. O’Donnell
A Eulogy for Warren: A Carroll’s Christendom
We might expect a eulogy for Dr. Carroll to emphasize our sense of gratitude especially for the College he started, the books he wrote and the vision of life that he taught.
However, I propose that in the place of gratitude, the life of Dr. Carroll should first impart to each of us a sense of fear – the reason for this will be seen in a minute, but before we look at the fear factor, let’s consider three different things that are perhaps more important to remember about Warren than his College, his histories and his teaching. Here they are.
#1 We should remember Dr. Carroll’s singing voice. Warren could not sing – not a lick. He was totally tone deaf – ask anyone who was ever near him at Mass – Immaculate Mary; Holy God We Praise Thy Name it didn’t matter. He was not just in a different key, he sang in no key at all. Still, there was something so endearing about his rendition of “O’Donnell Aboo” every St. Patrick’s Day.
#2 We should remember Dr. Carroll’s car of choice at Christendom’s beginning. Our President drove a Gremlin. Not just any Gremlin, but a green Gremlin. And it backfired repeatedly. Yet he drove this presidential vehicle faithfully from his home in Haymarket to Christendom’s first home in Triangle every day. He was never bothered that there were flames under the hood all the way along Rt. 234. The good news is that when the College moved to Front Royal, Warren upgraded all the way to a Ford Pinto. Nonetheless, I think we can regard Dr. Carroll’s firey Green Gremlin as Christendom College’s equivalent of John Paul the II’s Popemobile.
#3 We should remember Dr. Carroll’s farming. Warren raised bees, chickens and
rabbits and a garden on Bull Run Mountain going organic before it was a fad. He
even had all the extra-
I think these three things are worth remembering because they don’t seem fitted to the 20th Century’s greatest historian and founder of one of our nation’s top colleges, but each of these things tell us something important about Dr. Carroll that is worth remembering.
Warren’s singing when he couldn’t sing represents the social graces that he lacked
but overcame. He stuttered; he often wouldn’t make eye contact when talking to someone;
he was unrefined in other ways. Yet somehow he was able to bring people on board
with him in his pursuit of his dream of establishing a college. People like Mr. Foeckler
who, while the College was still only an idea, brought his sons Dan and Chris to
the Carroll’s living room in Haymarket – a living room with maybe the ugliest bright
green carpeting ever laid. There in the astro-
Dr. Carroll’s Gremlin represents his unconcern for externals. In an age of materialism,
Warren didn’t worry about aesthetics. The first dorms were efficiency apartments
in Q-
Dr. Carroll’s farming ventures represent his lack of business acumen that kept him from being overly worried about money. This intellectual shouldn’t have tried to build a chicken coop; he was foolish to try to make that rocky red Virginia clay produce crops; he should have seen certain failure in the future and left his backyard well enough alone. And he shouldn’t have thought he could get faculty to leave secure positions from Niagara University and Pembroke State University as he did Kris Popik Burns and Jeff Mirus, especially when there was no guarantee that payroll would ever be met.
With any business sense at all, Warren should have closed doors when the original 26 students dwindled to even fewer by the time second semester of that first year rolled around. I remember so well Ohioan Loretta Davison Williams’ observation when all the students were together in a room during second semester. She looked around and then said, “There aren’t very many of us.” There weren’t. But apparently there were just enough.
It seems Warren didn’t have the tools to succeed where he tried to succeed. He seemed to be rocky soil where his ventures would have little root. However, Our Lord has said that it is only fertile soil that can produce 100, 60 or 30 fold. I’d put Dr. Carroll’s yield at the high end of that list. And that is why I say his life should evoke fear in us whose harvest yields are much lower. Sure he could type about a million words per minute, had an exceptional mind for history and a gift for writing, but his bushels per acre go way beyond what these qualities should have produced. So how did he do it? The answer can only be found in his response to the grace of God throughout his life. Here are some highlights.
First, Warren, while not yet in the Church, married Anne Westhoff, a faithful Catholic and a faithful wife to Warren for their 44 years of marriage. It was a year into their marriage that Warren converted, and it was eight years into their marriage that they began to form their alliterative education empire of Seton School and Christendom College. But their marriage had a rocky start: On their car tour honeymoon from Wiggins, Colorado to Santa Ana, California, Warren ran out of money, and Anne had to foot the bill toward the end. After this Warren did remain the CEO of their sacramental partnership, but from that day forward Anne was their finance chairperson. But maybe the most remarkable thing about their marriage is that they celebrated their anniversary at a different ethnic restaurant each year – 44 years and they never had to repeat a country’s food. Anne can probably name all 44 of them if you’d like to hear them. The 44th was pure American cuisine served up in Café Prince William Hospital eleven days before Warren died.
Second, Dr. Carroll took inspiration from characters of history such as Philip the Second whose basilica/monastery in El Escorial, Spain, symbolizes this king’s heroic work for the larger Christendom. What Felipe Segundo did on the world stage, Warren did in the Virginia Piedmont beneath the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains and above the meandering Shenandoah River. Even so, his work extended to the Aid to the Church in Need behind the Iron Curtain and to the Freedom Fighters across the globe, and nationally when he appeared on the television show Unsolved Mysteries in a segment on the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima.
Third, Warren never tired of proclaiming things in their simplicity: Truth exists and the Incarnation happened. What more is there to know? As long as we can give the Christian significance of any event, we will form part of Dr. Carroll’s legacy.
Dr. Carroll has given us a reason to be fearful, but he also has given us a greater reason to hope. In an age adrift in relativism, he and his College have given us an anchor to drop into the firm security of absolute truth. Dr. Carroll’s life teaches us to put first things first without fanfare but with total commitment, and then to leave all things in the loving hands of Our Lord.
So Warren, now in hope and with tremendous gratitude I say to you in chorus with every other student you ever taught, “Viva Cristo Rey!” Long live Christ the King, and may you soon dwell secure in the heavenly Christendom where Our Lord reigns triumphant forever and ever.
Dr. Carroll’s Funeral Mass Homily -
We are the Church of the Resurrection. We are proud to proclaim the Good News that Jesus Christ who suffered and died on the cross has risen and lives forever. His death and Resurrection have brought new life and victory over sin and death. His death and Resurrection remind us that in the end GOD WINS! We are an Easter People – but our symbol is the Cross. It’s a crucified joy and today at Dr. Warren Carroll’s funeral, a joy in the midst of grief. We are united today in sorrow at the death of Warren and we are united by the joy of our faith.
On behalf of all of us, I express our sincere sympathy to Mrs. Anne Carroll, Warren’s beloved wife of 44 years, and to the Carroll and Westhoff families. We say to you two things: We’re sorry and we love you. We’re sorry for the sense of loss that confronts us at this moment and we express our love and deep affection for you and our gratitude. Know of our prayers today and support in the days and months to come.
It is said that the Italians know how to celebrate life and the Irish know how to celebrate death. An Irish wake is a celebration of new life coming after death. Irish wit and laughter is contagious. There is a famous story of a conversation between the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Irish Prime Minister during World War II. The Irish Prime Minister asked Churchill, “How are things?” Churchill replied “It’s serious, but not yet hopeless. How about you?” The Irish Prime Minster said “It’s hopeless…but not yet serious!” Irish wit at its best! God is always in charge and brings us victory.
I am thinking today of the need of transportation and how vehicles of transport are important. Anne Carroll shared in a handout answers to the most asked questions, of which one was “How did we meet?” Anne said, “A friend of mine at college called desperately needing someone to double date with because her boyfriend’s car was out of commission and persuaded me to go out with Gerry so they could have transportation.” Anne dated Gerry briefly and one date was to a movie and then to Gaylords Café in Boulder CO. where Warren was having a hamburger. Gerry introduced Anne to Warren. Anne would soon be dating Warren! They met because of a need of transportation resulting in a double date.
Important people have specially designed vehicles. The Pope has his Popemobile and the President of the United States has his bullet proof, bomb proof, armored clad limo. Movie stars have their expensive import cars. Dr. Carroll, when President of Christendom College, drove a green Gremlin, which backfired, with flames shooting out from under the hood – Dr. Carroll later upgraded to a Ford Pinto, which I think they stopped making and took out of circulation because of their tendency to catch on fire!
In the past few years Dr. Carroll’s vehicle of transport was a four pronged walking cane and his faithful wife Anne at his side. He might have resisted the idea of needing help to get around, but in the end it became his freedom. It got him where he wanted to go: outside on a clear day, navigating the halls of Seton School to the classrooms, chapel and gym, to All Saints church for daily Mass and confession to pray with the community, to doctor appointments and even to his beloved Christendom College for special occasions, some of which honored him. And somehow like the big people, his Gremlin, walking cane and Anne supporting him suited him, and there was a beauty in the freedom it offered him. His determined spirit was inspiring as we watched him – keeping the faith, fighting the good fight and running the race. Important people have their ways of getting around, ways which respect their dignity or perhaps their fun spirit, ways that respect their need of safety and protection.
The most important person to ever enter the world was Jesus, the Son of the Living God, and the vehicle he chose was young humble maiden. In the fullness of time, an angel would come to a little town, and the virgin’s name was Mary. She was told that He would save the people from their sins. That ‘yes’ Mary said changed the history of the world and the entire universe, and her Son won for us eternal life. What was Jesus up to? He is being conveyed from one place and situation to another in human flesh and blood. He is being born to another in the sharing of the Good News. And let’s face it: His ride is a pregnant, sinless virgin. How worthy a conveyance.
When Mary received Christ, that Good News could not be contained. She goes in haste to another equally miraculously pregnant Elizabeth and the good news is shared with John the Baptist in her womb longing to be born, who leaps for joy. When Dr. Carroll met Christ through his wife Anne and one year into their marriage had his conversion, he could not contain this good news. He was a man on a mission with a message of hope. As Pope John Paul II said, “Those of us who know Christ can’t keep Him for ourselves. We must proclaim Him”. And proclaim Him he did! Dr. Carroll became a vehicle for Christ, and Christ was born to others in the sharing of the Good news through Christendom College, Seton School, volumes of books and articles written and published. Anne was the vehicle for Warren and Warren and Anne the vehicle for others. Anne and Warren are a team. I spoke of double dates. There are also triple dates. Warren was born on March 24th the eve of the Annunciation. He was baptized on December 7th the eve of the Immaculate Conception and today his funeral Mass is celebrated on the Feast of Joachim and Ann – the parents of Mary. There is a Marian theme running through his life! Anne and Warren are parents under God and can claim thousands of children, teens and young adults. Dr. Carroll and Anne’s zeal for Catholic identity, morality, church history, treasures of liturgy wasn’t only so young people would get the Church right – but more importantly that they would get Life right. They were convinced that our Catholic faith in the Incarnation and Resurrection and our friendship with Christ is the best way to live a life that is full of meaning and one that brings us to the goal of Heaven.
Friends in Christ, we shouldn’t be mistaken; the transport of Christ doesn’t require outrageous nobility. No, Christ is happily carried in the hands and minds and lips and lives of every human being. Mary is the first nurturing home of the Christ Child, the first ‘Christbearer’ but she is not the only or the last. Jesus must delight in His being carried within our bodies again and again, not the same as he was in Mary’s body (she was immaculate) but nonetheless carried as good news to a waiting world. Jesus allows Himself to be carried in our bodies giving us the freedom to travel, even as sinners, forgiven. I am sure Dr. Carroll must have prayed fervently and frequently to the Mother of God and there encountered the eternal Savior in his prayer and his teaching ministry to those who sought Christ through him.
Dr. Carroll’s example is that the option of receiving but politely not conveying the Word of God does not exist for us. He was a man on a mission with a message of hope. Reception in prayer and liturgical gatherings must result in action for the sake of the world. God still has a need of transportation and vehicles of transport are important. So when we grow cold to the amazing warmth of God’s Word, let us ask His Blessed Mother for renewed zeal. When our lives are marked more by apathy than excitement, we must be reminded “there is Good News to proclaim”.
Today, we entrust Warren back to God, the God who made him. We thank God for this vehicle, this precious earthen vessel who allowed Christ to be carried and proclaimed in his body, hands, mind, and lips. On the day of his baptism, the life of the Risen Christ was poured in his soul. At baptism God rescued Warren from the power of death and on that day God said “You do not belong to death, you belong to me”. Let’s pray for Warren today that he may complete the journey to heaven. Warren knew as we all do that only Mary was immaculate, so pray for him everyday – and for yourselves. Today we say with faith – “Warren, a man on a mission with a message of Hope, you do not belong to death you belong to Christ . . . . . . and so do we”.
AMEN
Given at All Saints Catholic Church
Fr. Bob Cilinski, Pastor
Eulogy for Dr. Warren Hasty Carroll, RIP
Delivered by Timothy T. O’Donnell, STD, KGCHS
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Hearken, my people, to my teachings;
Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will reveal the secrets of past ages.
What we have heard and known,
And what our fathers have told us,
We will not hide from their children,
To the coming generation we will declare
The praises of the Lord and His might
And the wonders He has wrought.
For He has set up a precept in Jacob
And established a law in Israel,
Which He commanded our fathers
To make known to their children.
That to the coming generation,
Children yet unborn,
Should know that they should rise
And tell their children
To put their hope in God, and
not forget the works of God,
but to keep his commandments.
Psalm 77
The words of the Psalmist certainly may be applied to our beloved Warren Carroll. All of us here have precious memories of Warren. He was a husband, a friend, a warrior, a founder, a historian, a teacher, and an author. As a founder, a teacher, and an author, he was also, in the full sense of the word, a father to the thousands of graduates, students and those who read his books.
His love for our Lord, His Blessed Mother and the Church affected everything he did after his conversion. The Faith – our Catholic Faith – was the deepest thing in him. God, in His Providence, chose him to found Christendom College, and he responded to that call, just like Ransom in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, which he loved so dearly. Despite the difficulties, the challenges, the woundings, he continued to move forward, one step after another, with a dogged determination which comes with the charism of being a Founder.
Warren had the gift of always seeing things in a radiant light, extolling and embracing the heroic in history and in ordinary life, in the struggle of good against evil, light against darkness, truth against falsehood, the knight battling the dragon.
Some thought this rather naïve – antiquated – rejecting such categories, preferring the shadowlands of uncertainty and the false comfort of a timid agnosticism so characteristic of our modern era.
But Warren was a true visionary, and he would have none of this. This vision he passed on to his students in his courses on Western Christian Civilization, History of Ireland, the French Revolution, Commie Rev, Hispanic Peoples, and others.
His five-
“TRUTH EXISTS…THE INCARNATION HAPPENED!”
His was a Catholic vision of history. It was not just a viewpoint – Catholicism is the prism of truth, revealing God’s providential action in time.
Through his work at Triumph Magazine, the Christian Commonwealth Institute, and Christendom, he manifested his deep love for the res catholica – the Catholic thing. Alumni still speak of and recall his lectures, such as Pelayo at Covadonga crying out against all odds, “Our hope is in Christ. This little mountain will be the salvation of Spain!” And other heros of Christendom – Constantine, Athanasius, Leo the Great, Godfrey of Bouillon, Isabella, the Catholic Queen, Don Juan of Austria, Philip II, Red Hugh, Jean Valette – always in his classes revealing how one man can make a difference. It doesn’t matter how little you have, even if all you have is just five loaves and two fishes – give it to Him and let the miracle happen. That’s what Warren did. His teaching will live on in the minds and hearts of his students and those he reached by his books, which are solid, scholarly, orthodox and balanced.
It is hard to exaggerate the affection of his students in the early years of the College. Cathy and I will always treasure his visits to our home, when he would spend the night – and the morning. You see, Warren was not like other men – he seemed to wake up and become fully alive at 2:00 in the morning! After a dinner, wine, and a good conversation, around 2:00 a.m. he would say things like, “Did I ever tell you the story of Bonnie Charlie and the Catholic Island of Barra?” – and he would go on straight till 4:00 a.m.
We were also blessed to have traveled with him several times to Rome, to Ireland (which he loved), and to the Holy Land. I share with you one memory of a night in Assisi – when Warren smoked his first cigarette sitting on the hill overlooking the Basilica of St. Francis, bathed in the light of a full moon. He spoke quietly that night with a still purpose about the work God had given him to do in establishing Christendom College. Throughout my time at Christendom he was always so supportive. He was always there with a word of encouragement as a father, a mentor and a very dear friend.
How can we forget his love of festivity? On St. Patrick’s Day, his impassioned reading of the Easter Proclamation. I will never forget returning home with him after a Catholic Rendezvous, hearing him belt out to an amazed seminarian John Heisler in the back seat of our car all four verses of O’Donnell Abu. Cam we forget him singing Roddy McCorley with his fist clenched in the air – “True to the last – True to the Last!” For Warren, “truth is a fixed star….”
Warren was a man who loved greatly. He loved the good and the true. It is not an accident that he converted to the Catholic Faith in 1968 – the year of revolution, chaos, disorder, betrayal. He came in and stood in the breach during those difficult days. Many at that time were leaving the Church. It was the year of Humanae Vitae. Many were saying, “This saying is hard. Who can bear it!” And so they walked with Him no more. Our Blessed Lord, with a broken heart, turned to His own and said, “Do you wish to leave also?” Warren Carroll responded to the grace given him and made a conscious decision to stand with and for Peter, and to cry out with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of everlasting life and we have come to believe and to know that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Like other converts, he brought a freshness, a zeal, and an enthusiasm for the Faith. He understood loyalty. He understood fidelity. I will never forget June 1, 1992, introducing him in a private audience to Blessed John Paul the Great as the founder of Christendom College. Warren fell to his knees, kissed the ring of the fisherman, and heard the Vicar of Christ say, “I thank you! Christendom is doing a great work for the Church.” We all could have died right then and there for joy.
That love for the Pope, not just his teaching office, but a special love for the person of the Holy Father, is something that he bequeathed to the College community and that continues to this day as a type of charism. Like Blessed John Paul, he loved young people, and they knew it. He knew that their youth was given to them, not for self indulgence, but for heroism.
Answering the question, “Why did God want Christendom College to grow and flourish?” Dr. Carroll responded, “Because Christendom College is educating and preparing young men and women who will bring what our great and holy Pope John Paul II calls ‘the new springtime of the church’.” He continued, “In the face of scandals and despair, believe in that springtime! It’s coming, and nothing can stop it! For proof, look at our history. Our graduates will be leading the new springtime.” And in 34 years, we have seen 64 priests, 43 religious brothers and sisters, and countless beautiful marriages raising families.
I have said Warren was a man who loved greatly. But if ever the saying was true
that “behind every great man there is a great woman,” that saying is true of Anne
Carroll! I know, Anne, you like to defer on this, but St. Paul tells us very clearly
in his letter to the Corinthians, “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing
wife,” and it didn’t take long, if you were married in July of 1967 and he came in
on December 7, 1968, that’s very impressive! Forty-
I remember you sharing how on your anniversary you would go and try a different restaurant
each year – some of them sounded rather strange and exotic to me, and your ever-
I am not here today to say Warren had no faults. He would be the first one to say, please, please pray for me! And so we do, and so we will, and so we will continue to do. But how beautiful it was that Warren died on a Sunday – the Lord’s Day, the day of resurrection and the day of the Church – and that the date was July 17, the feast of the Blessed Martyrs of Compiegne, of whom Warren wrote so beautifully in his work The Guillotine and the Cross. I somehow would have to believe that when this pilgrim warrior entered eternity, that the eighteen women of that heavenly Carmel took a special interest in him.
Although Warren died peacefully in his sleep that day, there is no doubt that he had his suffering and his calvary. For a man who loved conversation to have that heavenly gift taken from him at the end was truly a cross indeed. The last time I heard Warren lecture at Christendom, he spoke of Whittaker Chambers’ book Witness. At that time, I was deeply moved and sensed at the end that through Chambers, he was speaking to me and in a very real sense to us all. He ended his lecture with this quote:
My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods. In the open fields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses…. I will have brought you to Golgotha – the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wise.
Thank you – thank you, Warren, for your friendship, for your witness to the faith, your tender love for Anne. Thank you for your vision, your tenacity of purpose, your love of the good, and for all those whose lives you have touched and inspired through your teaching, your works, the founding of Christendom College, and your staunch, unwavering loyalty to the Apostolic See and the Person of the Holy Father. We make Blessed John Henry Newman’s prayer our own:
May He support us all the day long, till the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in His mercy, may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at least.
Dearest Warren! Requiescat in Pace!
P.B.J.C.
