Before slipping off, he resolved that things would be better tomorrow. Things always looked more hopeful in the light of day.
9
Christmastime traditionally brings a bumper crop of suicides. People plagued by depression find that depression intensified when they are isolated amid the surroundings of the joyful majority who give and receive gifts, wax sentimental over the seasonal music, party and make merry with relatives and friends.
Fred Stapleton was not one of the depressed minority. Now in his early sixties, he was satisfied with his work as a psychologist in private practice. He was happily married to a former nun. Irma, their only child, a gifted pianist, who was a high school junior at the internationally famed Interlochen Music Academy, was home for the holidays. Fred enjoyed adequate to good health.
Yet Christmas was a difficult time for him. Fred Stapleton had been a Catholic priest, and as much as he missed his prime calling, he missed it most in this season. And this even though he’d been an inactive priest now for almost as long-seventeen years-as he had been a functioning priest-twenty years.
Tonight, his wife, Pam, an excellent cook, had served roast beef, one of his favorite dishes. He had only picked at it. She knew why. But there was nothing she could do about it.
Now, seemingly satisfied, he sat in his favorite rocker, puffing on his pipe. Pam was chatting with Irma about the future and her plans for after graduation next year. They were aware that Fred had long since been lost in his own thoughts.
Irma broke off her conversation with her mother and turned to her father. “Daddy …
“Uh … yeah … what is it, honey?”
“You’re on your own private planet again.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Won’t you join Mother and me in the land of the living?”
“Sorry again. Are you going to play for us? Play for your supper?”
“Later, Daddy.”
Fred shook his head. “Can’t be later, sweets; I’ve got a meeting to go to.”
“Tonight? A patient?”
Pam answered. “No, CORPUS.”
“Dad! You don’t have to go tonight. They have so many meetings. What’s the harm in missing one?”
CORPUS was an acronym for Corps of Reserve Priests United for Service, an international organization of former priests who, though married, want a return to their ministry.
“These meetings are important, Irma. And they’re getting to be more important by the year. By the month. By the day!”
“Dear,” Pam said, “this group is very, very important to your father. You’ve got to understand that.”
“Daddy, it’s been … what?… seventeen years since you were a priest. You’re a successful doctor. I know you’re good at what you do. You help people. Isn’t that enough? You don’t need to be a priest anymore.”
“You don’t know. You weren’t a priest for twenty years. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“You make me think you regret leaving. That you regret marrying Mother. That you’re sorry I came along.”
“Don’t be silly, honey. You know that’s not true.”
“If you hadn’t left you wouldn’t have had me. I wouldn’t have happened.”
Fred smiled briefly. “You’d be in pure potency.”
“Well,” Irma said, “once and for all: Are you sorry you stopped being a priest?”
“No, I’m not sorry, honey. But you’re not getting the point. Just about every priest who leaves really wants to stay. Most of us left to get married. As if the two were incompatible … as if marriage and priesthood were mutually exclusive.”
“You sent me to a Catholic grade school,” Irma interjected, “and I didn’t see any married priests.”
“Ah,” Fred responded, “but that’s because you happen to live in this country and because you’re a Latin Rite Catholic. If you’d been living anywhere that the ancient Oriental Rite has been functioning you’d have found married Catholic priests. You can even find Catholic priests with wives and families here in this country.”
“Where?”
“In parishes where married Protestant ministers have converted to Catholicism and have been ordained to the Catholic priesthood.
“The point I’m trying to make, honey, is that in the first place there’s no reason-Biblically, historically, or just about any other adverb-for us not to be married and still function as priests. And on top of that, they need us. They need us desperately.”
“If they need you so much, how come they don’t know it?”
“Irma,” her mother admonished, “don’t be flip. Your father is very serious about this!”
“Just playing devil’s advocate,” Irma said. “Daddy always says I’m good at that.”
“You are good at it,” Fred said. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t quite so good. ‘How come they don’t know about it?’ They know about it all right; they just won’t admit it.”
“But, Daddy, if they won’t admit it, they won’t admit it. What’s the use of your struggling, going to meetings, trying to convince them, if they’re just so stubborn they won’t admit they need you?”
Fred Stapleton hesitated, lips compressed in a thin line of anger and resolve. “There are times,” he said, finally, “when you have to do something you would have sworn you’d never do-if only to get their attention.” As he spoke, there was an aura of foreboding about him that was completely out of character for this ordinarily gentle and compassionate man. Neither Pam nor Irma could bring herself to break the spell.
Finally, Fred tapped out his pipe in an ashtray, rose, and announced, “It’s time. I’m going to the meeting.” He softened as he studied his daughter. “You will give us a concert before you go back to school, won’t you?”
“Sure, Daddy.”
In a few minutes mother and daughter were alone, gazing at each other wordlessly.
“I’m worried about him, Mother,” Irma said finally.
“So am I. He just hasn’t been himself lately.”
Irma hesitated. Then, “I’ve never asked you, even though I’ve wondered from time to time. But I have wondered.…”
“What? You know we can talk about anything you want to. What is it?”
“Well … what was it like when you got married? I mean … did you feel guilty about marrying a priest? Did Daddy?”
Pam smiled warmly. “I certainly didn’t. I don’t think your father did either. I’m sure he didn’t. I’d left the convent long before we married. We fell in love slowly … oh, so very slowly.” She obviously cherished the memory of their earliest days of a growing love.
“Our greatest hurdle,” Pam explained, “was his priesthood, of course. He’d been a priest twenty years. It was all he’d ever wanted to be from the time he was a small child. He loved his work. And he loved what his vocation had become just a little less-as it turned out-than he loved me. It wasn’t a matter of feeling guilty. It was a matter of feeling loss.”
“Seems like a case of seasickness and lockjaw simultaneously, to use the metaphor Daddy uses so often.”
Pam winced. “I guess so.” True enough, Fred did use the phrase with some frequency. But she’d always found it in poor taste.
“So,” Irma persisted, “how did he settle the dilemma? Or did you do it for him?”
“Oh, no. My only contribution was to urge him to stay functioning as a priest.”
“You did?” This came as a genuine surprise to Irma.
“Oh, absolutely. I could see down the line in the years ahead where that could be an insurmountable problem. I never wanted him to feel that I had put any pressure on him to leave the priesthood. I knew the way he
