When I was young man (or an old boy) at the age of 13, I was attending a Catholic parochial school. Even at that tender age many complex thoughts ran through my head.
Most of those thoughts centered around the conflict between what was taught about God and God’s attributes – all loving, all just, all knowing, etc., and the rules of the religion. The most troublesome was the repeated, invalidating theme of, “outside the church there is no salvation.”
These theological teachings were delivered by a priest who was fresh out of seminary. He was the catechism instructor who would come once a week, and teach us about God and what and how we should believe. He was militant, forceful, and powerful in his messages about how wrong and sinful we are, and how the church is our pathway to forgiveness and salvation.
One day, as a 13 year-old in front of the entire eighth grade class, I stood up and challenged the salvation doctrine of the church. I argued that God cannot be all about goodness and love, when good people who were not Catholic could not go to heaven.
The response from him was the usual: the church is the authority. What I heard was, “I’m right and you have no right to question me or the church.” Today as a “mature” person, I know that is probably not the message he wanted me to get.
He is also the priest who a week later backhanded Eddie Hastings across the face when Eddie wrote a report that called the sacred cloth that rests over the communion chalice a “snot rag.” Father Jerome came into class, and in front of the shocked nun and the rest of us, just about took poor Eddie Hastings’s head off.
These events forged a fear within my young heart that has taken decades to remove.
For decades, the energy I’ve had around Father Jerome is that he taught me to fear God and religion. The two events, my arguing about the salvation “rules’ and his backhanding Eddie Hastings, were galvanizing forces that fueled my quest for a deeper understanding of my relation to Spirit that is loved-based.
So now to get to the heart of my healing story. Last year I thought about looking up Father Jerome, to go and have a talk with him.
The reason I wanted to talk to him was complex, but mostly I wanted him to know that his actions set me up for a lifetime of questioning things religious in nature and, while I definitely did not like what he did to Eddie and the impact it had on us, I now appreciate the lessons and quests that his actions set up for me.
The quests in my life that were set in motion because of his actions, became powerful tools for me to reach a point where I could honor him for what he did, and to honor myself more and more for what I am learning.
Eventually, I got the bright idea to actually search for him. I wanted to tell him that it was all okay, that without his polarization my quests (if any) would probably have been aimless and unfocused. I wanted to tell him, not that I forgive him for what he did, but that I honor him for what he gave me.
Upon searching for him through the Vincentian order, I found his obituary indicating that he had died just a few weeks after my strong urge to contact him.
What an amazing thing this life is, and what great things we do for each other while not even knowing that we do them.
Peace,
Tony
