A Catholic Memory

I think I was nine or ten the first time the new priest came to our house. He was tall and gangly and wore Barry Goldwater glasses with thick black frames. Freshly ordained and just assigned to his first parish – our parish – he seemed a little hesitant and unsure of himself as he stood in our doorway.

My mother invited him in immediately. Our family was devoutly Catholic. Priests were very welcome in our house.

On his first visit, we probably received the new priest in our living room. It must have seemed a rather stiff and formal setting, with the hardwood floors and Victorian furniture. By the second visit, however, I’m sure he was accorded the honor of being invited to have his coffee more comfortably in the family’s inner sanctum -- our kitchen table.

And that is how I remember him best – sitting at our kitchen table, where my parents entertained favored friends. He would sit with his long legs stretched out before him, sipping coffee and chain-smoking unfiltered Pall Malls, conscientiously rimming the burning end of each cigarette in the ash tray my non-smoking mother happily provided.

Informality only went so far, however. I can recall very clearly that, whenever the new priest came, my mother always poured his coffee in a porcelain cup and saucer, never a ceramic mug. He was, after all, a priest.

He was a “new” priest only a short time and became a close family friend very quickly. His initial visit was made in pursuit of his first assignment – the crusty Monsignor who ruled the parish as pastor had given him the task of conducting a parish census. Subsequent visits, however, were purely social. He was still a young man. His family did not live close by. My parents were warm and hospitable people. We children were charmed and flattered that a priest would choose our family to befriend, and I’m sure we showed it. We liked him, despite the slight awkwardness and shyness.

He became a frequent Saturday morning visitor, and always a welcome one.

My brother and I were altar boys and found ourselves serving his Masses quite often. At first, the slight awkwardness that was his way showed up in his sermons. They were carefully wrought – sometimes a little too carefully. Always earnest, he was sometimes stiff and halting. But each time there was a core of warmth in what he said. As time went on, he found his rhythm and learned to relax. Before he left the parish, only a few years after he first arrived, he had become a compelling homilist.

He also had something altar boys are prone to notice, close as they are to the priest as he celebrates Mass. It is something I recall sensing in almost every priest I served, and that is a palpable sense of sincerity during the Consecration, the point in the Mass at which the priest utters the words that, in the Catholic faith, transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

Mass is an essentially repetitive ritual. When someone says the same words over and over, certain inflections are often heard – inflections that may carry a hint of tedium. But something seemed to come over nearly all the priests I saw performing the Consecration. Tone of voice and body language would change in a way that suggested both awe and an element of passion. This priest certainly had both.

It was through his visits to our home and our service as altar boys that this young priest got to know my brother and me. He seemed to take a special interest in us. We were both stalwarts in the altar boy corps and, at that point in our lives, religiously inclined. Perhaps he saw in each of us the potential for a priestly vocation.

One day, he asked my mother if he could take me with him as he made his rounds visiting the sick. Her permission was granted readily. I was flattered to be asked and happy to go.

We drove in his big tan Chrysler to a retirement home on the Westside. Up to that time, I had had little exposure to the very elderly and what I encountered inside was disconcerting. It’s not that good care was lacking there – far from it. The place was comfortable and spotlessly clean, the patients had been dressed with care and the sisters and nurses on staff were clearly warm and attentive.

But I was still very young and rather sheltered and the vacant stares and despondent air of some of the residents got to me a little.

The priest, however, had become a different person. His usual awkwardness and shyness had left him. He gave everyone he encountered in the home a warm and confident greeting and as much individual attention as time permitted. Nearly everyone responded, even those who had been staring into space moments before. Many asked for a blessing, which he dispensed with fluid gestures and a smile.

Our final visit that afternoon I shall never forget. A nun came up to the priest and whispered something in his ear. He beckoned to me and we followed the nun down a corridor into what appeared to be the hospital section. We slipped behind her into a darkened room.

The drapes had been closed against the harsh afternoon sun. A very old woman was curled up under sheets and blankets on a bed. Her breathing was labored and there was a frightened look in her eyes.

The priest sat in a chair next to the bed and took the woman’s hand. He hunched forward and they spoke a little, but so softly that I could not hear their words. After a few minutes, the priest motioned to the nun and to me to wait outside. As I moved out to the hallway, it dawned on me that he was going to hear the woman’s confession.

Out in the corridor, I must have had quite a look on my face. I can remember the nun patting me gently on the arm and saying something consoling in a soft brogue. Shortly thereafter, we were summoned back into the room and to the bedside of the dying woman.

The priest had put his stole – a long rectangle of purple fabric – around his neck and had broken out sacramental oil and holy water. The nun assisted him as he administered the last rites. When he finished, he took the woman’s hand and smiled at her. She returned the smile warmly. I saw the tears in both their eyes before I felt the sting in my own.

On the way home, we were both quiet. When we arrived at our house, he and my father had a drink together at the kitchen table. I can still picture him in my mind’s eye, carefully rimming the lit end of his cigarette in the ashtray, just as he always did.

And that, pretty much, is the end of my story. I went on several other visits with him to the ill and infirm, as did my brother. He continued to visit on Saturdays. We had him over for dinner frequently. My Dad took him to Dodger games. He once took my brother and me to his parents’ home in Lake Arrowhead in the middle of winter. Their home was a modest cabin deep in the woods. His father helped us build a snowman. His parents reminded me of my parents. That did not surprise me.

After just a couple of years he was transferred to a new assignment – promoted, in fact, to assistant pastor in a new parish. As the years went by, we saw him only infrequently. He came to my high school graduation. I’m pretty sure he came to my father’s funeral, but there were so many people there that night and things were in such a whirl, that I don’t specifically recall talking to him.

At last report, he had become a Monsignor himself, the longtime pastor of a parish somewhere in the southern part of the Archdiocese. I expect that he must be close to retirement age by now.

I think of him from time to time, as I think of many good people I have known in my life. It is unfortunate – and terribly unfair – that I find myself thinking of him whenever the still-unfolding story of children abused by priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles erupts in new headlines, as it did last week ("Abuse Victims Still Suffer Decades Later," by Nita Lelyveld and Jean Guccione, Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2005).

My point in writing about a good priest who treated me well is not to deny or disparage stories of abuse, neither the most recent nor earlier ones. I believe most of these stories and they horrify me. In writing this account, in fact, it dawned on me that my parents and I placed our trust in the priest we befriended for the same reasons abuse victims and their parents did. If the priest we befriended had been a different man, my story could have turned out very differently. This alone helps me grasp some of the agony and outrage abuse victims must feel.

Nor do I mean to defend those members of the Catholic hierarchy who failed to protect the children of their schools and parishes. Their failures appall me.

It is also not a question of wishing to defend the Catholic Church as an institution. Though I retain many family ties to the Church, my life’s journey has taken me to a place very distant from my childhood faith. But this journey was propelled by considerations derived from history, science and philosophy -- not by some personal grievance.

I have no cause for any such grievance, fortunately. I grew up in the parishes and schools of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The priests I knew were good men. They did not abuse me or anyone I knew. I believe that they, too, are victims of a grave injustice perpetrated by the abusers, who have left the reputation of the Catholic priesthood terribly bruised and battered.

I simply want to bear witness to the truth of my life and to the good character of the priests I knew in childhood -- including the shy and awkward young priest who, one afternoon on the west side of Los Angeles, provided a young boy with an unforgettable glimpse of the power of compassion.