Jeremy told a bit of his story about his first seminary experiences. That has inspired me to reflect on my own, especially as those experiences led, ultimately, to my own estrangement from my Catholic Heritage. In some ways, however, this won’t be as detailed as Jer’s.
I grew up in a strongly Catholic home. My dad converted to Catholicism after he married my mother. I attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools, living at a boarding school for the first 3 years of my high school experience.
Throughout all those years, I considered the priesthood. Indeed, when I left the Catholic high school I was attending to finish my senior year at a public school, it was precisely because of that consideration. I’d spent so much time enfolded in the stifling arms of my church that I’d not experienced the world. Perhaps a year with “normal” kids would help me to decide.
After high school, I started to college, not yet sure what I wanted to do. At the end of my first full year of college, I was finally faced with making a decision. Priesthood or… or what? Something else. How I came, finally, to decide upon the something else is a long story, and to be honest no longer really all that important today.
I remained, however, fervently devout to my Catholic heritage. I prayed the rosary daily. I found ways to make it to mass nearly every day. I went on to marry, and entered the US Army.
But a voice that I could only define as God’s voice was always whispering… always drawing me back to a vocation. My military career was, well, not stellar. I never failed. It just didn’t show much promise. On top of that, our marriage collapsed, and in the end we divorced. I had the marriage annulled.
And, in 1987, when I wrapped up my 4 year commitment to the US Army, I set out to answer that calling. It was a hard row to hoe. Many things got in the way. I first looked into the Franciscan order. That I was newly out of the closet coupled with the fact I’d worked professionally with the Boy Scouts after the army put the kabosh on that. It raised “red flags”. Gay. Works with boys… you know. Then, I applied to the Dominicans. I was too old (I was 30.)
My sights turned to diocesan ministry. I was accepted by the Archdiocese of my birth, Omaha. But instead of immediately entering the seminary, they wanted to get to know me better, after all, I’d been married. And, while my marriage was annulled (hence, theoretically in the eyes of God and the Church it had never happened) that was a concern to them.
Finally, in 1991, after returning from a stint in Desert Storm (I was still in the Reserves) I entered a Benedictine run seminary to do “Pre-theology”, namely all the philosophy requirements. The fog of time has, happily, blanketed much of my memories from that year, but one thing stands out… the reason I left.
I befriended a younger seminarian (keep in mind, I was 32… an old man in the seminary!) who was experiencing confusion about his sexuality, and was pretty well spurned by his classmates. I told him I was gay. That’s it. Nothing else. I told him I was gay, because he was telling me that he was gay. He, however, assumed that my self-confession was really a ploy to bed him down, so he told the authorities. I was asked to leave.
It took 2 more years before my Archdiocese would permit me to try again. Two years of EXCEEDING their expectations. They asked I see a counselor to determine if I was a “risk”. I chose to, in addition to that, see the therapist not for the 4 meetings they required, but every 2 weeks for 2 years… I also chose a Spiritual Director from among a list of approved priests of the diocese, and immediately signed a request that the SD report, in writing (my idea, not the diocese’s) monthly to the Vocation Director. We did THAT for 2 years, meeting monthly, sometimes more. I opened my soul to them. When the Vocation Director scheduled a get together for all potential and current seminarians and invited me… I called up and volunteered to help out in any way I could. I tried to exceed expectations. I succeeded.
In 1994, my efforts paid off, and I was given a scholarship to St. Meinrad School of Theology in Indiana… I would be the first from my diocese to attend that school.
I settled in to my room easily, a few days before I was supposed to arrive. Immediately I began making friends. I was determined to honor my sexuality but to not make an issue of it. I would not deny who I was, but it needn’t, I felt, be broadcast, either.
But it didn’t take long before it became clear that a number of the folks in our class WERE gay. One was a very much out, gay ex-lawyer, who’s partner of numerous years had died from AIDS related illnesses. And then, my staying quiet came to haunt me.
The first person I became friends with came to me one night. Several others and he had spent several hours contriving a list of “all the queers” in the class. He was asking me for my opinion on the list. Oddly enough, MY name wasn’t there! My silence had a price.
The next year became an ugly year… the class was split in two with a great deal of anger, yes even hate between the two groups… the gays and their allies on one side and the ‘phobes and their allies on the other. Their side, the phobes’, was much, much smaller… but as is so often the case, much louder.
Our split was so extreme that the good monks who ran the seminary brought in outside mediators to attempt to help us. It didn’t work. But it did quiet down the fight… to a low seething mass.
Into this mix, in the spring of 1995, came an Archbishop and 2 bishops sent on the behest of the US bishops conference to determine if there was a problem at St. Meinrad. There were two concerns. First that the place was rife with homosexuality, and second that heresy had found a home within the walls. The heresy of… FEMINISM!
To my horror, the archbishop was none other than MY archbishop, the Archbishop of Omaha, E…. F…… C…… I was dispatched to collect him and his cohorts from the airport, an hour or so away.
The Archbishop immediately took to me, taking me, as the older man I was, into his confidence. The investigation lasted the better part of the week. At the end of the time, I took him and his fellow bishop back to the airport, and along the way, the Archbishop confided to me their findings. The other bishop was strangely silent. That night, upon my return to the seminary, there would be a gathering of all seminarians, and the Rector would inform us of the findings and recommendations.
I was to call the Archbishop back after this gathering, and, after identifying myself with a catch phrase reminiscent of some WWII spy thriller, report on what the Rector said.
Upon my return to the seminary, I marched myself into the Rector’s office and told him about my assignment. He was shocked. (I later learned that the next day the silent bishop called the rector and reported the Archbishop’s conversation with me, expressing shock and horror.)
That night, the Rector reported to us the findings, almost word for word, of the gestapo’s report. I dutifully called the Archbishop with my report. The Archbishop’s response to me is as sharp in my brain today as it was then. “I’ll bet I’ve got the faggots running scared there tonight!”
And that’s when it happened. My heart broke, and and a light went out. My love affair with the church of my heritage was irreparably torn asunder that night. It just took me another year to realize it.
In the weeks that came after that fateful night, I learned the Rector had put me on “suicide watch”. Every night, several times during the night, a monk from the abbey would come to my room, let himself in, and make sure I was alive. I didn’t know this until later. Also, several of my best friends were given keys to my room, and they, too, checked on me when I was sleeping. I didn’t realize, of course, how depressed I was, but everyone else knew.
Well, the summer came, I met the man who I’d eventually join in committed love. That summer, too, I attended a gathering of seminarians from my diocese at which the Archbishop mentioned above spoke. He addressed us with an explanation of what had transpired at St. Meinrad from his perspective, regaling the little fascists amongst us with horror stories of the rampant heresy and homosexuality of the place. And he ended with the phrase. “Gays have rights, women have rights, hell, even dogs have rights. The only ones who DON’T have rights around here are bishops.” I nearly puked.
Maybe he didn’t say hell. Maybe he just said heck.
I returned to St. Meinrad the following fall. Much to my chagrin, folks that were supposed to have not come back did indeed return. Our old tensions were there, and to some degree intensified. On top of the anger and hate, now rested a layer of bitterness and resentment.
I was now open in my sexuality, though living up to the expectations of chastity.
Finally, in February of that second year in seminary a great confluence of events occurred that brought me to the precipice, brought me to that place of life-altering decision.
The first was entering into a program that required me to travel into a major town an hour away, once a week, to “do ministry” in the hospital. This ministry was a mini-introduction to a program called “Clinical Pastoral Education”. While everyone else made their way through several different wards, ministering to numbers of people, I was asked to take on one individual, a young, very handsome man, who had AIDS. He’d been diagnosed HIV+ as early as 1983, and was then living with AIDS for 6 years. For 1995, that was extremely remarkable. He touched me in numerous ways.
The second event was an assignment from a professor. He was a Methodist minister working in a catholic seminary. We each drew a card from a pile, then had to write a very long paper about how we’d handle that circumstance. My card read “After Sunday mass, as you are closing up the church a young 15 year old boy comes to you and confesses that he is struggling with homosexual thoughts. How do you respond.” Wow. What an assignment. I had the entire semester to research this issue. In the end, my response was totally contrary to Catholic teaching. I got an A+. I realized, however, that I would NOT be able remain faithful to the magisterium, that I would, in all circumstances address the issue by telling the truth I understood. That there need be no struggle with homosexuality, that it was entirely acceptable, indeed pleasing in God’s eyes to embrace one’s sexuality, not to struggle with it.
And finally, the third event. Our class was attending a mandatory seminar on human sexuality when the class feud broke out from it’s hiding place. Epithets were hurled, anger ruled. When it was over, we had mass.
I attended and sat enthralled as the priest, visiting from Washington DC, prayed the Eucharistic Prayer. The long version. From memory, with the Sacramentary closed. With deep passion, a passion that moved me to tears. I wept, uncontrollably, as, at the moment the priest elevated the bread I knew. I KNEW that God spoke to me. God’s words were “You will never do that.”
And the world as I knew it crashed about me, the walls came tumbling down, and my soul lay in ruins.
A therapist who was in the mass saw, comprehended my experience and immediately came and sat with me until the church was empty, even my friends leaving. I wiped away my tears, thanked the therapist, and left that hallowed place. I wandered listlessly down to the Rector’s office. He was at his desk. He ushered me to some easy chairs and we sat down.
I told him that I was leaving, that I’d go to my room and pack that very night. I told him I knew I’d not be able to go on to ordination. His words helped, indeed they initiated immediate healing.
“Eric, I’ve known hundreds of men who have walked these halls. Almost from the first moment they enter the door, I have a sense as to their calling and their future. When I first saw you, I knew you weren’t called to the priesthood. Not everyone who enters this building are. But all are called by God to come here. All who walk here are brought by God to fulfill some purpose, to follow a call to serve God, either in active ministry, or in personal growth. The latter is no less significant that the former.
“I knew you weren’t called to the priesthood, but I knew you were being called to bring blessing to yourself and to us. Your spirituality has grown here, and been a source of humility to many of us, seminarian, faculty and monk alike.”
He convinced me to finish out the term, as I’d receive a MA at the end.
I never regretted those two years. And I love St. Meinrad with the love and fervor with which I once loved the entire Catholic church.
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