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 BEYOND
THE VOWS
Chapter 1
All You Need Is Love
The Beatles
JP, John Patrick, Lacey squeezed the rosary
wrapped tightly around his right hand. No.
He would not let his mind wander to the woman who came to him in sleep.
It could lead to
mortal sin.
He lay on his back in his steel institutional bed on
the first floor of St. Francis Seminary
and prayed for help. Last night she wore a skimpy top and a plaid skirt
- Oh God, it was
short. Despite her dress he knelt with her in front of the tabernacle
and then suddenly she
threw her arms around him and kissed him, pressing her smooth, moist
lips tightly against
his. Her tongue teased his mouth and found its way in and.
Rosary or no rosary, his hand moved toward sin. He
jumped out of bed, got a drink of
water at his sink and went over to the window. He cranked it open wide,
allowing cool
October air and the light of a full moon to flood the room.
He looked at his hands in the moonlight, the hands
that had almost sinned. In a few short
months the bishop would consecrate his hands because a priest touched
the sacred host. But
JP already liked his hands because they worked so well. Every other part
of him seemed a
little defective - thinning hair, a bridge in his mouth already, the
beginnings of a double chin
and a right foot that never walked straight. But his hands - they were
electrician's hands,
hands that knew how to use tools, hands like his father's and his
grandfather's.
He heard voices coming down Foster Avenue. When the
seminary was built, immigrant
Catholics lived around it. But during the forties and fifties Southern
blacks moved to
Newburg as they did to other big cities in the Mid-West. Now the
neighborhood was inner-
city, poor and black.
"Hey, man, gimme a light," the first voice
said.
"This here's the priest factory. Ain't got no
women."
"Straight up?"
"I ain't shittin ya."
"Ain't no good times in there, brother."
JP turned away from the window. No, the good times
didn't matter. Soon he would be
ordained and he would find great love in serving the people. He glanced
at the booklet, open
on his desk, a scriptural analysis of the prophet, Isaiah. He knew the
section by heart:
I
have appointed you ..
to
open the eyes of the blind,
to
free captives from prison
and
those who live in darkness from the dungeon. (Chapter 42, verse 6)
He framed the text with his electrician hands. A
great life lay ahead for him. Like the
messiah, he was being ordained to free the captives and give sight to
the blind.
Someone knocked quietly on his door. The luminous
hands on his clock said 11:15. He
opened the door a little, careful to hang on to it, because the heated
air from the darkened
corridor might suddenly stream in and slam open the door, bringing the
Prefect of Discipline
down on him.
"Let's go for a smoke," Terry McGonagle,
his classmate, whispered. Terry was an
ordained sub-deacon as of a month ago, just like JP. In May of the next
year, 1964, the two
would lie on the floor of St. Edward's Cathedral in Newburg and be
ordained as Catholic
priests.
"I gotta talk," Terry said, his voice
barely audible.
"Now? It's the Grand Silence."
JP held to the Grand Silence strictly. It was a
period of absolute silence between lights
out and breakfast in the morning. "During this time," the rule
book said, "the seminarian will
be in touch with God."
"I gotta talk. Come on."
JP took a small, fearful step backward into his room.
He was in a quandary. He had never
broken any major seminary rule, much less one as sacred as the Grand
Silence. But Terry
needed to talk, probably about celibacy. He sounded as if he was in
crisis.
JP looked down the hall. "Where's
Reynolds?" Monsignor Reynolds was the Prefect of
Discipline.
"He's in his room." Terry nodded down the
hall. "He's got a woman in there."
JP caught the twinkle in Terry's eyes. If Reynolds
had a woman in there, she was
probably scared to death. Reynolds' nickname was `Jowls', because of his
fleshy cheeks.
`Jowls' could be an affectionate name, but Reynolds was anything but
likable. "The man is
always scowling," Terry said on more than one occasion.
"Reverend Repressed Anger."
If Reynolds were to suddenly open his door and see
them talking, he would lecture them
with his cold anger and take away their next free day. JP couldn't
imagine what he would do
if he found them sneaking out for a smoke.
"Get your cassock. Let's go."
"Tomorrow," JP whispered.
"Now."
The woman in front of the tabernacle floated by in
his mind. She had shiny brown hair
that flowed over her exposed shoulders and long, smooth legs leading up
to. Oh God.
Again the turn-on. He inched his body behind the
door, so Terry wouldn't notice. He had
to get this woman off his mind. Maybe he should go out for a smoke.
But the Grand Silence.
"Come on," Terry said.
No, the rule was clear. No talking until breakfast.
But here was a man in the darkness of a
dungeon. Wasn't he supposed to free him? Didn't Jesus say to love your
neighbor?
"Hang on, let me get my smokes."
Terry looked surprised, puzzled. "You'll
go?"
"Yeah. What's the matter?"
"Nothing. You always say `no.' Come on."
JP grabbed his red robe in the darkened room and put
it on over his pajamas.
"Not that," Terry whispered. "Jowls
can see that thing a mile away. It's black you want.
Do I have to teach you everything?"
JP smiled, took his robe off and put his cassock on.
He crept out into the warm corridor,
noiselessly shutting his door. Only the exit light illuminated the
corridor as he followed Terry
to the steps that led down to the courtyard. They slipped through the
door into the darkness
outside and lit up, staying under the covered Spanish-style walkway and
out of the bright
moonlight.
"What's with you, JP? For two years I've been
asking you to sneak out for a smoke and
you always give me this pious, `It's against the rules.' Now all of a
sudden, you join me."
"It's the Vatican Council. The pope's going to
throw open the windows in the church."
"So you can smoke?"
"Yeah, sure."
JP breathed deeply of the October air and smelled a
hint of Lake Erie, not more than a
mile to the north. He loved the lake, the sail boats, the romance of
knowing the water would
reach Niagara. When he was a boy he put a message in a bottle and it
reached Toronto. Even
though Newburg was a hundred miles from Cleveland, the ore carriers and
the cargo ships
ran just a mile or two offshore and JP loved to watch them.
He glanced up at the full moon, framed by the lines
of the Spanish arch. His heart filled
with the beauty of the evening. God was not far away. But he kept these
thoughts to himself.
Terry would accuse him of getting pious again.
It was strange that they were friends. Terry at
thirty-one was five years older than JP,
more worldly, more cynical. Terry had gone to Newburg State University
before entering the
seminary. All his life he had struggled with a weight problem, but to JP
it seemed right that
Terry was chubby, for the older man was a generous person who took
everyone - and
everything - in.
JP had entered the seminary in his first year of high
school, eleven years previous. His
appearance fitted his history, an innocent face, a sincere look about
him. When JP's sister
told their mother that women in the parish would love JP, his mother
became upset. She
didn't want other women loving her son. She wanted her son to remain a
priest.
JP liked Terry because Terry made him think. Terry
was out on the fringes of orthodoxy,
challenging what they were taught in class. "So, tell me, just why
did God stop talking to his
people when the last book of the Bible was written?" and
"Celibacy was a way to make sure
that the priest in the middle ages didn't pass on the church property to
his sons. What's the
purpose of it today?"
Terry was a bulldog when it came to truth. He
wouldn't let go of a truth and JP liked this,
even though he seldom agreed with him. Terry often brought in principles
of psychology and
sociology he had learned at university.
There was something more to their relationship that
JP couldn't define. Was it that JP's
father had died at forty-seven and Terry's mother at thirty-six, giving
birth to Terry's
younger brother? Was it that they were both on the fringes, Terry on the
left and JP on the
right? Was it that Terry, alone among his classmates, listened to his
talk about ideals and
Isaiah and the priesthood?
JP didn't know the reason, but he knew this man was
his friend.
A light came on in one of the faculty rooms facing
onto the courtyard. JP and Terry slunk
back into the shadows and palmed their cigarettes so no one could see
the glowing embers.
A siren wailed down the street outside the seminary.
Terry flicked his butt down and
stepped on it. "I got a letter today."
"From?"
"A woman I used to know."
"And?"
"She wants to meet with me."
"Why? Come on, Terry, tell me the story. What's
going on?"
"I knew her back in college. We lived together
for a year."
"So, why did she write you?"
Terry took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of
his nose with force. "Damn. What
am I going to do?"
"Why did she write you?" JP repeated.
"She broke up with the guy she's been going with
for the last couple years. She says I'm
like Catholicism. I'm in her blood and she can't get me out. But she
said something else
that's even more disturbing."
"What?"
"Here. Read it."
Terry pulled a multi-page letter from his pocket. JP
saw that it had been read many times.
Terry handed him one page and pointed to a section of the neat
handwriting near the bottom
of the page.
JP stepped out into the bright moonlight.
". and that's why I can't understand what you're
doing. You know what we said. AND
YOU AGREED WITH IT. You can't live without love, Terry."
JP handed the letter back to Terry, carefully, as if
it were a bomb. He looked up at the
moon. Deep down he knew the letter writer was correct about Terry, that
he needed love to
live, but how did that square with Catholic doctrine? What about his
calling to the
priesthood?
"What's her name?"
"Nancy."
JP took a drag on his cigarette. "I don't know,
man. If you want to be a priest, I think you
should avoid this Nancy person."
"Put-ty." That was Terry's response to
seminary directives. He always split the two
syllables and emphasized them. Like seminarians were to be put-ty in the
hands of the
faculty. "Nancy's a human being. She's not to be avoided. The thing
is, I want to be a priest.
When I was growing up, Father Joe, my parish priest, raised money for
the local hospital and
said the prayer at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast and."
"You told me about him."
"The point is, he was a respected member of the
community."
"So?"
"That's what I want - to be a priest like
him."
The tough answer was right on JP's tongue. Give her
up. But he didn't say it.
The moon illuminated the statue in the center of the
courtyard. St. Francis stood with his
arms out and his palms up, receiving God's creatures and God's message.
If Terry put his
hands out and received the calling from God, he would have to live
without love and his soul
would shrivel and die.
JP scratched his regulation short haircut. What was
wrong? How could there be such a
contradiction in the faith his mother and his father had given him? For
a second he felt dizzy,
as if the courtyard were a slanted floor in a fun house. Was it the
smoking late at night or was
it that, for a second, he doubted his faith?
This was disturbing. This was not some theoretical
argument about an ancient heresy. This was Terry's life - and his. Maybe
if he repeated Pops Gibson's sermon on celibacy.
"The thing is, Terry, the word full. You know
how Pops said we're gonna be full of love, like
Mary was full of grace? We're gonna reach the fullness of love by giving
ourselves to
celibacy. Love - that's the thing."
"Pious dribble," Terry said.
JP shook his head and gazed into the courtyard. The
trouble with Terry was he always
talked about empty. Something was being taken away from him, like the
right to marry. You
had to think full. And you had to give full in order to get full.
But he had never received a letter like that. What if
a woman wrote to him? Who was
there for him? Nobody but the woman in his dreams. Last night she
reached down inside his
pants and . was there no end to these sexual thoughts? He dropped his
cigarette and
exclaimed, "Jesus. Mary and Joseph."
"What's the matter?"
He stepped on the glowing ember. "Burned
myself."
Again the silence of the night came over them. JP
felt the pain in Terry's heart, but the
answer to celibacy was to commit your whole heart to God. That's where
love lay. It was
simple.
Terry broke the silence. "My dad called me about
the Olds he ordered for me. Delivery
May 1. Automatic, air conditioned, the whole bit."
"Great."
"You still getting a Chevy?"
"Yeah."
"Stick shift?"
"Yes."
"Ah, yes, the proletariat image. I keep telling
you, man, you're going to be a parish priest.
A parish priest shouldn't be chugging along in a Chevy like an
encyclopedia salesman who
flunked out of college."
JP said nothing. His mother had said something
similar. He let his eyes wander over the
courtyard, focusing on a dwarf tree at the other end. The moon painted a
shadow of the tree
on the arches behind it. The shadow danced as the breeze stirred the few
remaining leaves on
the tree. The magnificence of the scene brought the beginning of tears
to his eyes. "Terry,
Terry," he said, pointing out to the courtyard "Yes, we're
doing the right thing. Look at the
beauty of the world."
"Yeah, sure. I can't figure you, Lacey. You get
a Chevy. That I understand. Blessed are
the poor. You get good grades, the faculty trusts you, you're probably
gonna be a monsignor,
maybe even a bishop. What I can't figure is how you put love into all
this."
"You give love and you'll get love. You love the
people, you love the church, you'll get
love."
"Pie in the sky."
"Come on, Terry."
"No, I mean it, JP. You've got it all
romanticized. The church isn't perfect, the life of a
priest isn't perfect, but it's a damn site better than anything else out
there. You live the life -
you take what comes. You put up with some bullshit, but you get the
respect of the people -
and a decent income to boot. Oh, and of course, when you die you walk
right into the pearly
gates."
Terry pulled out another smoke, but then returned it
to the pack. "Come on, JP, I'm
hungry. Let's go for a snack."
"Snack? This isn't a drive-in."
"I know where the faculty cookie jar is."
"You're kidding me," JP said. "The
faculty has a cookie jar?"
"Yeah. There's a cupboard just inside the
faculty dining room. They don't lock the door
at night. The nuns keep the jar filled."
"How do you know all this?"
He rubbed his plump stomach. "Experience, my
boy, experience."
"How dangerous is it?"
"Jowls almost caught me once. He was on his way
there. Bastard preaches to us about the
Grand Silence and then he raids the cookie jar."
JP smiled. "You go ahead. I'd better get back to
my room."
"I want to talk more."
"About?"
"Nancy."
"I don't think you should. I think you should
trash that letter. At least get your mind off
it."
"Nothing will get my mind off it like high
adventure to the cookie jar."
"Not for me."
"Then stay for one more smoke."
They lit up and talked - about everything but Nancy.
JP told of his mother's plan for a
big ordination reception. "She's getting the house painted, buying
new furniture, hiring a
hall. It's big."
"For an Irish Catholic, it is big," Terry
said. "The mother of a priest."
"Too bad my dad isn't alive," JP said
"How close did he get to ordination?".
"He left after first year of theology," JP
answered. "Then he married my mother."
"History repeating itself. Him in the seminary
and now you. I can see why your
ordination is so important to your mom."
"What do you mean?"
Terry glanced at him. "You know how people
talked in the old days. Come on, let's raid
the cookie jar."
What a strange night. For the past eleven years he
had kept the Grand Silence. Tonight
the only thing that mattered was his friend, Terry. And now a little
more rule-breaking.
"Lead on, Falstaff." Falstaff was Terry's
favorite Shakespearean character, rotund as he
was, full of life and hell-raising.
The two padded down the corridors, staying close to
the walls, going right past Jowls'
door. In the faculty dining room Terry opened a cupboard and pulled down
a large ceramic
jar shaped like Santa Claus.
Only a night-light lit the room but JP saw homemade
cookies in the jar with big chocolate
bits in them. Fresh cookie smell filled the space. "Oh, man, Terry,
this is great."
JP took two cookies and started to eat them. Terry
selected a cookie, but didn't eat it. He
tapped the cookie on the edge of the jar and looked at JP. "I wish
you hadn't come with me
tonight."
"What? I thought you wanted to talk."
"You don't get it, do you, JP? I wanted you to
say no."
"No?"
"See, it's a ritual I have. I ask you to break
the rules with me and you say no and then I
know this training works. Maybe it doesn't work for me, but it works for
you. When we get
out and we're priests, we'll be able to resist the temptations of the
world because we've had
seminary training. But, see, you've had eleven years of it and. it
doesn't work."
JP stopped eating cookies.
Terry dropped his cookie back into the jar and held
up his hands. Tears came into his
eyes. "What's gonna keep these hands out of the cookie jar when we
get ordained?"
A door banged shut nearby. The two froze. "Let's
get out of here," Terry whispered.
They crept past Jowls' door and came to JP's room. JP patted Terry on
the back. "Hang
in there, man," he whispered.
Terry nodded. JP watched him sneak down the hall and
turn the corner, his shoulders
slumped, his head down.
JP slinked into his room. Isaiah still sat on the
desk, calling him to free captives and give
sight to the blind. JP hung up his cassock and lay on the bed. Outside
his window the ice-blue
moonlight shone on the maple tree near the entrance. Half the leaves
were gone; the other
half fluttered in the breeze.
The world was wonderful. He closed his eyes. She was
beside him again, the ghost
woman. She lay beside him quietly in her skimpy top and her short, short
skirt. She held his
electrician's hand and gazed at the tree with him.
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