Father downimg5/1/2023 ![]() group who guaranteed to pay the hospital bill of a new drunk who was sent into the hospital to be detoxed and given his initial introduction to the A.A. history, the word “sponsor” referred to the member of the A.A. program, a relationship which bound the newcomer to a more experienced member of the fellowship in unbroken fashion over the many years that followed.Īt the beginning of A.A. But once converted, there was no real equivalent in the Oxford Group to the continuing extremely close relationship which developed in the A.A. concept of a sponsor began to be influenced by the Catholic idea of the spiritual director: In the original Oxford Group program (which was based on the idea of the 5 C’s), an extremely close and personal one-on-one contact was necessary between the missionary and the person that missionary was trying to convert to a life-changing version of Christianity. In the long recording that Bill did to help Robert Thomsen in his research, Bill mentions after his long conversation with Dowling, he “felt for the first time completely cleansed and freed.” At the time of my research, I discussed this with several of the then-surviving old-timers, and they agreed that given the time and circumstances - remember, the 12 Steps had not yet been formulated and all they had to go on was Oxford Group practice - this “must have been Bill’s first ‘Fifth Step.’” “That is one of the things you should get from a real Fifth Step.” Over time and listening to more of Bill and reading more of his correspondence about the Steps and Father Dowling, I came to agree with the historical certainty of that understanding.īill Wilson was 45 years old when he made this detailed Fifth Step confession, and Father Dowling was only 42 - but wise far beyond his years. ![]() Kurtz talked more about what he had come up with in his research, in a note to the A.A. Robert Thomsen made the same statement, that this was when Bill Wilson made his full Fifth Step confession to another human being, and Nell Wing likewise affirmed that Bill “took his Fifth Step with his spiritual sponsor, Father Ed He told of his high hopes and plans, and spoke also about his anger, despair, and mounting But it was only now, as this evening with Father Dowling wore on, that the man who had written A.A.’s Fifth Step came to feel that he himself was finally “taking his Fifth.” He told Dowling not only what he had done and had left undone - he went on to share with his new sponsor the thoughts and feelings behind those actions and omissions. ![]() Then, Bill had unburdened himself especially to Ebby. Not since his earliest days in the Oxford Group had Wilson felt himself in the loving presence of such a receptive listener. Does His Fifth Step with Father Dowling: 1940Įrnest Kurtz reports how Bill Wilson did his first real Fifth Step with Father Dowling on that cold winter night in December 1940 when the priest came to visit him at the 24th St.
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