BROTHER PETER W. DRAKE, FSC (1940-2005)

Brother Peter William Drake, FSC, was one of the principal founders of our Holocaust Resource Center; his signature appears on our letter of May 1996 to Brother Thomas Scanlan, FSC, petitioning the president of the college to establish a Holocaust Center, and much of the thought and expression in that letter was Peter’s. Brother Thomas approved, for, as he affirmed recently, "Manhattan College identifies itself with the post-Vatican II ecumenical Catholic Church." For us of the Center that has meant implementing Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate as our charter document. October 28, 2005 was the fortieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, an event to which Peter and I looked forward, but which his death earlier that year prevented. He said that not all those forty years had been spent in the wilderness; the fact that, as he complained, he had never heard a sermon inspired by Nostra Aetate made its commemoration all the more necessary. Nostra Aetate is the first document in the history of the Church that is doctrinally binding on the faithful that speaks affirmatively of the Jews and Judaism. The Council Fathers had no authoritative precedents to invoke, since there are no papal edicts, encyclicals, conciliar decrees or canons to cite, and so they had to go back to the foundational documents of the Church – the letters of St. Paul. Thus Nostra Aetate constitutes a great historical breakthrough; it goes against Catholic tradition theologically, biblically and exegetically, liturgically, homiletically, and educationally. Nostra Aetate was weakened as it went through several drafts over the years 1962-1965: It contains no expression of repentance or contrition for Jewish suffering at Christian hands; it does not condemn but merely reproves antisemitism; it does not value contemporary Jews for their own sake but for the sake of their ancient forebears. And so, as Peter observed, it affords a basis merely for tolerance, not for acceptance and esteem. But as Peter was also quick to note, these shortcomings have been made good in considerable measure by subsequent Vatican documents, such as the 1985 Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechis and the 1998 We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, and events such as Pope John-Paul II’s unprecedented visit to the Roman synagogue, his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Western Wall, his visit to Auschwitz death camp, and the Vatican’s diplomatic recognition of Israel.

Peter was a keen student of Catholic-Jewish relations past and present. He was profoundly aware that the Holocaust occurred in Christian civilization, and that without nearly two millennia of Christian anti-Judaism and antisemitism, the Holocaust would not have happened, at least not in the way it did. He was deeply chagrined by the fact that the professions – academics and teachers at all levels, clergy, judges and lawyers, civil servants, physicians, business and industrial leaders, scientists and engineers, the officer corps, and so on – all, with precious few exceptions – supported and served a totalitarian, genocidal regime from start to finish. They "bottomed up," as Peter argued. It was such lessons that Peter directed the Center to address and teach. He strongly objected to evasions, assertions such as we not infrequently heard from colleagues in the first years, that the Holocaust is an issue for Jews and of no real significance for us as a Catholic college. Peter insisted eloquently and sometimes vehemently that it is a human matter, of universal concern, a great watershed in the history of Christianity and the Church, that its lessons – if learned by the young, by our students – would enable them to oppose bigotry and prejudice directed at anyone. "The Holocaust," he wrote, "is an essential part of education for future generations to fight prejudice, genocidal ideologies, apathy, and Holocaust denial." A bitter experience for Peter, but one that ultimately fortified his commitment to our educational mission, occurred when, as director of Campus Ministry, he organized an informal group for Jewish students on campus to socialize in the welcoming environment of Campus Ministry, only to find that this caused them to be singled out for hateful remarks and even physical threats.

Peter was a 1962 graduate of the college in electrical engineering and taught in that department. I knew him casually from the time he was acting dean of the School of Engineering and when he led Campus Ministry. He brought with him a lively suspicion of authority figures and a crusading zeal for the rights of the poor and deprived that endured all his life. Our really intimate acquaintance, when I, an only child, felt Brother Peter to be my brother, was the ten years we spent together running the Center. He designed our icon and its motto "Remembering Together" as well as our beautiful posters and brochures. The two of us went about the Riverdale area to meet with various groups and organizations to inform them of the Center’s activities and enlist their support. We jawboned over drafts of our letters of invitation and the announcements to be placed in newspapers and magazines. I treasure our "power lunches" and the memory of Peter’s wit and humor, our "political dialogues" and "pithy Socratic endeavors." He was extraordinarily learned and well read, and deeply interested and knowledgeable of a broad range of subjects in science and technology, religion, the humanities, and much else. I felt that his work for the Center and his belief in its supreme importance helped give meaning and purpose to his life, particularly in the last years as illness slowed him down. Peter owed us another ten or twenty years of his insights and energetic engagement, but that was not to be. As the Center embarks on its second decade, our memory of Peter will inspire its leadership and remind all of his commitment to its mission and purpose.

Frederick M. Schweitzer
Director Emeritus