Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian.
Background
Henri Nouwen was born in Nijkerk, the Netherlands on January 24, 1932. He was the oldest of four children born to Laurent J.M. Nouwen and Maria Nouwen. Nouwen's father was a tax lawyer and his mother worked as a bookkeeper for her family's business in Amersfoort. His younger brother Paul Nouwen was a prominent Dutch businessman and his uncle Toon Ramselaar was a Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Utrecht and a co-founder of the Service International de Documentation Judéo-Chrétienne.
Education
Nouwen studied at the Jesuit Aloysius College in The Hague before spending a year at the minor seminary in Apeldoorn. His year at the school was spent preparing for six years of study for the priesthood, consisting of training in philosophy and theology, at the major seminary in Rijsenburg. From 1957 to 1964 he studied at the Catholic University of Nijmegen.
Career
Nouwen was a Dutch priest, ordained in 1957, who served at Roman Catholic churches in the Netherlands and the United States. In 1966 he turned his attention to education at the University of Notre Dame as a visiting professor of psychology. Posts at the University of Utrecht and Catholic Theological Institute followed. He joined Yale in 1971 as an associate professor, becoming professor of pastoral theology from 1977 until 1981. In 1983 he worked with the Harvard Divinity School as Lenz lecturer, and until 1985 he also served as professor of theology. In 1986, he began to serve as priest-in-residence for the L’ Arche Daybreak Community, a residence for the mentally impaired in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Nouwen was ordained a Catholic priest for the Archdiocese of Utrecht on July 21, 1957, by Bernardus Alfrink at St. Catherine's Cathedral in Utrecht.
Views
Nouwen struggled with his sexuality, which may have contributed to his feelings of self-doubt. Although this struggle was known by those close to him, Nouwen never publicly identified as homosexual despite acknowledging the matter in discussions with friends and alluding to a personal struggle in his private journals. Nouwen only became fully comfortable with his sexual orientation in the last few years of his life, and his depression was caused, in part, by the conflict between his priestly vows of celibacy and the sense of loneliness and longing for intimacy that he experienced.
Personality
Nouwen was known to suffer from loneliness and a need for interpersonal connection, which he wrote about openly.
Quotes from others about the person
Henri's squeezing, tugging gestures made it look like he was striving to milk meaning directly out of the air. He would point his fingers down and rotate his wrists as through trying to stir a separate little pot with each digit.
Interests
Artists
Rembrandt
Connections
There is no evidence that Nouwen ever broke his vow of celibacy.