15 Minutes with Marty: Remembering M.E.M.
I remember the first time I met Martin Marty early in the third quarter of my first year as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. I was studying for an M.A. in Literature and Music. At that point, I was working in the Divinity School library, so I came to have a good sense of who was who in the Divinity School. I knew Professor Marty had a sign-up sheet on his office door for 15-minute blocks. I signed up for 15 minutes. Professor Marty was the first faculty person I spent time with as a graduate student; and that first 15 minutes was the first of many years of conversations about our work together: my academic progress, my impressions, and Professor Marty’s oversight of my two degrees.
When I met with Professor Marty for that first time, I was looking for his opinion about my plans for my M.A. thesis. I explained that in my last two years of Seminary College (1967-68), I was called upon to compose an enormous amount of music for the new English liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church. This new music had to be written for choirs, scholas, cantors and congregations. In my case, I composed for the College schola (SATB) of twelve male voices. I further explained that my goal for the thesis was to study and analyze the relationship between the liturgical texts—mostly for the Sundays of the Church year and major feasts—and my musical settings of them. I was amazed by Marty’s genuine interest in my project—his questions were intuitive—and especially his offer to read drafts of the thesis–all this from a 15-minute conversation with a person Marty had met for the first time.
From the very start, it was apparent to me, slightly intimidated as I was, that Marty was unusually generous of spirit, heart, and mind, grounded in humility and joy, and fully present with a palpable interest in what I had proposed. He also had a “big picture” attitude; Marty was an Ecumenist and exactly the kind of person I had hoped to find and study with. In that first visit he encouraged me to use everything I brought with me as a student, musician, composer, Roman Catholic, someone confused about how much he knew but curious and eager to learn. And Marty was clear: “let’s start with where you are and move forward. There is no reason to start over. You have a good beginning.” And so, that’s what I did. I began feeling that studying with Martin Marty was both a calling and a privilege.
Marty read the final draft of that M.A. thesis that I submitted to the program chair. When it was accepted and I received the degree at the June 1969 Convocation Marty asked, “Now what?” I told him of my aspirations, i.e., seeking a Ph.D. in American Studies or Religious Studies. I spoke about the programs I was considering. I also told him that at the same time I was thinking of stepping away from seeking another degree and, instead, teaching at an independent school. We talked about all this for a little while without reaching any conclusions, and then Marty wanted to know: “If you could study and write about anyone or any subject, who/what would that be? Without hesitation I said, Thomas Merton. We talked at some length about Merton (more than 15 minutes!) and ended up shaping a study of Merton as writer and monk and what I thought I would want to do with that duality. The outcome was that I would apply to the Committee on the History of Culture at Chicago, and were I to be accepted, Marty, a member of the Committee, would be my principal advisor. This is really how it happened. Could anything be more promising? Perhaps this was all part of the calling.
The Committee on the History of Culture required an application proposal that also was to serve as a dissertation proposal. The applicant would identify the topic, outline the study, create a curriculum (with suggested courses), and offer some kind of explanatory narrative on the project. It was this proposal out of which the student would plan, shape, and execute the whole doctoral program. Marty reviewed my final draft and agreed that I should send it to the Committee Chair. And I think it was Marty who suggested that the required three-person project advisors could be Chaiman of the Committee, Historian of Culture, Karl Weintraub, Divinity School Theologian David Tracy, and himself. Marty surely had a hand in the creation of this group, a perfect trio for my project; this also had the effect of bringing me closer to Karl Weintraub and David Tracy. Again, Marty seemed intuitive about how he shaped all this and, time after time, he arranged things to suit my way of learning. Marty knew what would favor my learning arc. It was remarkable. Another one of those Marty gifts.
During the time I was studying for my Ph.D., I was teaching part-time at two schools, something I did with permission from Karl Weintraub. Marty trusted me in this. I argued that I would be a better teacher because of my studies and a better student because of the teaching. In time, I finished all my course work and had begun to draft the dissertation, knowing that the final product had to be book-length (c. 240 pages), and publishable, and that Marty had to see every draft.
Marty accepted the full draft of the dissertation and sent it to Professors Tracy and Weintraub for their review. With his watchful eye and guidance as I moved through the final steps (including a scorching dissertation defense when one of the committee members asked me, “who are you and what’s this dissertation all about?” (Marty bailed me out on that one), everything was in order and by the end of the fall quarter, 1976, my Ph.D. was in hand. In this final phase of the “process,” Marty fulfilled his role as primary advisor and troubleshooter. The small missteps along the way were all mine –including an incomplete I had to make up and because I followed Marty’s “guidance”—not his “rules”—everything always fell into place. More and more, Marty emerged as a “model” who was always present as I moved forward into the new reality of life after graduate school. Scholar or not, to Marty’s credit, I finished my graduate study at Chicago with two degrees, a book—thanks to Marty– and several published articles, review essays, book reviews and liturgical music.
I returned to the University in early 1978 to serve as Assistant Director of the Center for Policy Study, which I came to realize was structured much like the Committee on the History of Culture. Our projects were created from the ground up and most often were realized by the Center’s appointed faculty, one of whom was Marty. Suddenly I was a colleague, and the remarkable thing is that I was treated like a colleague by the Center faculty. What an amazing portal to “life after graduate school.”
After 1982, the year I left the University of Chicago, there were several stops that followed: University life as faculty member and administrator; K-12 school life as Head of School; and 9-12 school life as head of an inner-city high school for economically and academically impoverished students who wanted to study architecture and design in college. And at the end of this period of 32 years, I was ordained an Episcopal priest at which Marty was preacher and concelebrant at the Ordination ceremony in the Episcopal Cathedral in Philadelphia. I was 70 years of age when I was ordained, and Marty was 87 when he preached and helped ordain me. In all of these “stops” and many other important “life events,” there was somehow always a vocational path back to Marty and in some cases, at the end of his path, his actual presence.
Martin Marty was one of the greatest gifts of my life. I came to Chicago not knowing much of what I needed to know to do serious graduate work. And I was not at all certain I wanted to be a scholar. Marty figured this out very quickly. He knew I was not cut out for a life of scholarship. Fortunately, he took me much more seriously than I took myself. At the same time, he saw something in me that I had not yet seen in myself, and he was willing to let me become a person who would not be a scholar vocationally. As I look back at my time with him as a student, I see that I did not realize that he had already become a model for me; I was leading my life in a way that mirrored his, in miniature of course. Marty was all kinds of things—scholar, teacher, theologian, pastor, administrator, public figure, husband, friend, father—and all the elements associated with each of these categories. In my experience, he was often very wise about who might do what and why because he lived in these multiple roles, each with its own categories. And I often relied on that wisdom. We could cover a great deal of ground in just a few minutes of conversation, and I would be wiser.
So, yes, in these last many years, Marty was always present as a model, as he most likely was for many of his other students. But he had made clear from the early years of our connection that he was not at all interested in my becoming him, or even trying to be like him—I couldn’t do this anyway. He was most committed to me becoming me. He never said this, of course, but this is what I experienced in our work together. He was as much a mentor/model as he was a guide and advisor. He was someone who never told me what to do or even how to think. He let me shape my own model. And this is why Marty has been such a presence in my life, 42 years after I began as his student.
Even now, I often recognize that I remain a student of Marty as I continue my life as an Episcopal priest, a calling I owe more to Marty than to anyone else. In my school and my university work, I refined and practiced my version of Marty’s integrative model. In my version of that model, I am pastor, preacher, prophet, teacher, and abbot. Each element has its origin in what I learned as Marty’s student and, not surprisingly, what I continue to learn now as each of the five elements has its own path back to Marty.
This integration of ideas and shapes was a unique part of Marty’s gift. It was apparent at our first 15-minute conversation and never diminished.
Peter Kountz
Philadelphia
2-3 April 2025