P. David Finks collection

P. David Finks (1930-2009) was a pastor, teacher, scholar, social activist, and social critic.

Born in Rochester on February 28, 1930 to parents Perry D. and Frances Gillard Finks, David decided at an early age, along with three of his seven siblings, to enter service to the Catholic Church. In 1944 he entered St. Andrew's Preparatory Seminary in Rochester, New York. After the requisite six years there, he enrolled in St. Bernard's, one of Rochester's major seminaries. He received his B.A. in 1952 and in 1956 was ordained to the priesthood. From 1956 to 1960, Finks was assistant pastor at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Greece, NY. There he organized a large youth organization and a catechetical school for over a thousand children and young adults.

In 1960, he was appointed chaplain of the Motherhouse of the Rochester Sisters of Mercy and of Our Lady of Mercy High School, where he was also a religious instructor. In 1963 he began teaching introductory courses in scripture and theology to sister postulants and novices at McAuley Junior College. In 1964 he began his studies for a Master's Degree in Religious Education at Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. Finks worked hard to stay abreast of contemporary issues and to keep current in his studies of scripture, theology, and the liturgy.

In 1965, Finks was moved from his post at Mercy and sent to Rochester's Immaculate Conception Parish in the inner city by Bishop Lawrence Casey after complaints from several sisters about Finks' liberal theology. The incident dealt a severe blow to Finks' image of the church and had a profound effect on him and his future. Also in 1965, Finks met Saul Alinsky, a Chicago-based civil rights activist who had been recruited to help the civil rights movement in Rochester following the 1964 Race Riots. Finks became one of the few white members of FIGHT, a post-'64 Rochester Race Riots civil rights organization supported by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. In an update letter to the Ford Foundation, (which awarded Finks a Ford Foundation grant to write Saul Alinsky's biography), Finks wrote of Alinsky, "I admit that he had a crucial effect on my life and way of doing things." At Immaculate Conception Church, Finks began working with Father Robert Kreckel to open up the parish facilities and school to the community at large, to involve black parishioners in the FIGHT civil rights activist organization, to use the parish as a forum for public issues, and to create an environment for Catholics from other parishes to engage in active community efforts.

In December 1966, Rochester Bishop Fulton J. Sheen appointed Finks the Episcopal Vicar of Urban Ministry, a post which he kept until June 1969. As Vicar of Urban Ministry, Finks worked closely with Alinsky and the Reverend Herbert D. White, director of the Board of Urban Ministry for the eight Protestant denominations represented in the area's Council of Churches. Finks and White established the Joint Office of Urban Ministry which was designed to "help urban and suburban communities organize around economic and political issues which affected them." Through this office, Finks, in ecumenical cooperation with others, labored to ameliorate economic disparities and to help address political issues through parish support and resources. Throughout this period, Finks also taught theology and social ethics at Mercy High School and McAuley College, the Sisters of Mercy convent school where he encouraged students to perform community service.

In June 1969, Finks was appointed to be Associate Director of the Division for Urban Affairs of the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) and moved to Washington, D.C. There he worked as a consultant to a variety of dioceses and religious organizations interested in new forms of urban ministry. During his three years on the staff of the USCC, Finks helped create the Campaign for Human Development (CHD), the national church's primary funding source for social justice work. Although he had no formal pastoral duties, Finks did conduct occasional liturgies for a group of adults at Georgetown University. He stayed at this post until October 1972.

For Finks, the priesthood entailed certain strictures which he questioned and with which he struggled. He privately acknowledged that he struggled with the decision to resign from the priesthood altogether, especially as he had no interest in parish ministry or pastoral leadership. In addition, Finks was frustrated with the Catholic Church's responses to "human needs in actual situations." In 1974 he formally petitioned the Rochester Diocese for dispensation from his priestly obligations. He summarized his efforts as a priest and as a reformer in the last sentence of a paper he authored on the Inner City, "I'm an evangelist in reverse: instead of getting people to join the Church, I try to get the Church to join the people."

After resigning from the priesthood, Finks taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Notre Dame University while earning a PhD in urban sociology at Union for Experimental Colleges and Universities, a consortium of ten liberal arts colleges with headquarters on the campus of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. His dissertation was entitled Crisis in Smugtown: A Study of Conflict, Churches, and Citizen Organizations in Rochester New York, 1964-1969 (PhD, 1975) – a study in the causes of the 1964 Rochester Race Riots, and the recovery efforts following.

On September 6, 1975, Finks married Christy C. Bulkeley, executive publisher of the local newspaper in Saratoga Springs, NY. With its artistic community, libraries, and civic opportunities, Saratoga was a period of great happiness and fruitfulness for the newlyweds. The couple moved to Danville, Illinois in 1976 when Christy was promoted to executive publisher for Gannett Newspapers' much larger Commercial-News, and she soon afterward won the Headliner Award for Women in Communications. However, Finks found his role as the husband of a successful career woman jarred with their conservative Illinois community, and despite his serving on the local symphony board and creating and managing a system of legal guardians for children who were wards of the district court, Danville was not a happy time for Finks. In 1984, with financial assistance from a Ford Foundation Grant, Finks published The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky, the first biography written about his mentor, Saul Alinsky. In 1985, Finks returned to Rochester and created and managed the Downtown Community Forum for St. Mary's Church. He also served on the diocesan social justice board and the board of St. Bernard's Institute, successor to his seminary.

In 1994, Finks and his wife retired to Sanford, North Carolina, where he served on the boards of Heart of Carolina Jazz Society and the Lee County Community Orchestra; led Bible study groups at St. Stephen church; continued Christmas Eve and Easter Sunrise services after the death of the founder, Chaplain Carl McNally; wrote program notes for the Temple Theatre playbill; was a guardian ad litem for the Juvenile Court; and participated in the Men's Prayer Breakfast at St. Luke Church.

P. David Finks died on June 10, 2009 at the E. Carlton Powell Hospice Center in Lillington after a long period of declining health. The memorial mass was held on June 20, 2009, St. Mary's Church, Rochester, New York.