Almost a decade after first meeting Father John A. Hardon, S.J. in 1980 at Christendom College, I had the fruitful occasion of introducing him to then-Archbishop Jan Schotte, C.I.C.M.—the Secretary of the Synod of Bishops—and to Father Christoph von Schönborn, O.P., the latter being the Executive Secretary and Editor of the still-then-developing new Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Both of them—one a Belgian and the other an Austrian—had belatedly invited Father Hardon to participate in a meeting about the New Catechism, and thus to fly at once to Washington D.C. from Detroit where he was then living in the Jesuit Community at the University of Detroit.
Although he was himself a Dogmatic Theologian and a major Catechist in the English-speaking world, Father Hardon had not been originally invited to this preparatory meeting in the United States. Father thus told me that he would not dare to be present at that meeting unless he were explicitly invited, which he was.
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