This month it’s been 14 years since I left the Roman commune known as seminary. You could say I lost my faith in Rome during my final semester, the spring of 2011, having been in Roman1 communes for a total of four years. Those final two years were in Rome itself.
I returned stateside and attempted to continue as a layman faithful to Rome. I carried that facade for so long, but eventually my ambivalence towards that body rose to the surface. I couldn’t maintain appearances anymore.
I don’t doubt St. Peter’s will be in ruins in a millennium or two as is, say, the Eternal City’s Palatine Hill where so-called divine emperors, such as Augustus, once lived. You don’t find a lot of pagan pilgrims flocking to Palatine Hill with their priests.
Rome was the disappointing Oz of my life. I came to perceive the pope as an analogy to the wizard in that story. He was paraded around as something special. My comrades in the commune superficially spoke of him as a caring father, acting as if they knew him as seminarians in Rome even though they didn’t. (A brief encounter doesn’t count.) The pope is merely another man holding an office that for more than a millennium with its outlandishly false claims to power.
My impression of BXVI
Benedict XVI, I believed, was a decent man who sincerely wanted to eradicate the disgusting perverts and their enablers from power. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that as prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) for 24 years during the pontificate of “Saint” John Paul II. Nor could he do so as pope.
Ultimately, combating the sexual abuse of clergymen was a lost cause. I don’t doubt BXVI knew that as he had earlier spoken of the “filth” in the church with its “wolves”.
Eventually, the wolves won.
On January 9, 2010, my commune was invited to the Apostolic Palace, the pope’s official residence, for an audience with BXVI in celebration of our 150th anniversary. He greeted each of us as he made his way to his chair. He was frail and exhausted, even then, four years before his resignation. I would have been fine letting him walk by. Meeting each one of us must be exhausting for an old man who must meet so many on a daily basis.
With Pope Benedict in the Apostolic Palace (1/9/2010)
To my amazement, he gave me a nod of recognition as I stood behind two others and put out his hand. As another comrade in the commune later said to me, I was the Zacchaeus whom Jesus sought in the sycamore tree.
Time stood still at that moment. Never would I deny its significance in my earthly experience. To do so would be denial itself.
Roman disillusionment
But I discovered that this Roman institution, said to have been founded by the second person of the Trinity, also purportedly the bride of the incarnated God, was one institution among many throughout human history.
Like any other institution, the Roman Church, along with its papal and episcopal offices, has been merely another idea in our collective consciousness, especially for more than a millennium in western society.
That idea has survived for so long (and not exactly 2,000 years by the way) because another institution, the state, supported it with brutal force.
Without that level of support currently from the state, as has been the case since the birth of religious toleration across Europe in the 17th century, its prominence in our collective consciousness will drastically wane.
I don’t doubt St. Peter’s will be in ruins in a millennium or two as is, say, the Eternal City’s Palatine Hill where so-called divine emperors, such as Augustus, once lived. You don’t find a lot of pagan pilgrims flocking to Palatine Hill with their priests these days.
The same will be said one day of the future rubble west of the Tiber where history buffs will learn of those gawking at an encased “incorruptible” dead body in papal attire.
Return to the U.S.
I started losing my faith during my second year at that Roman commune known as the Pontifical North American College. That was my fourth year in seminary altogether. By the final semester, the spring of 2011, I had no desire to practice Catholicism.
I began skipping liturgies at the commune as long as any formator (in other words, a priest on faculty whose duty it was to configure us into an alter Christus for their paying customers, the bishops) couldn’t notice my absence. This was especially true during Lent.
At 7 a.m. daily within those 40 days, we had the option to attend Mass at a station church in Rome, as has been a longtime tradition, or in our chapel at the commune. I attended neither since it would have been unlikely that two formators in either place would have asked each other whether they had seen me.
The funny thing is, however, in my deceit, I acted as if I were a faithful Catholic for a few years after seminary. But my deceit soon revealed itself. One priest noticed I wasn’t attending Mass regularly. In another instance, a good Catholic mother was taking one of her small children to the bathroom during Mass. She saw me hanging out in the parish hall waiting for Mass to end. After a while, I began walking out several times. I loathed anything Roman whether it be liturgy, art, or literature.
As was the case toward the end of my time in the commune, I couldn’t stomach Catholicism at home.
I would preserve communion with Rome no matter what at all costs.
I would adhere to canon law.
I would adhere to the “deposit of faith” as handed down by Christ, the apostles, and their alleged successors, the ones referred to as bishops.
I would go along with the bishops because, after all, they’re the successors to the apostles.
Don’t ask questions. Yes, all this successor stuff is far-fetched, but just believe what they tell you.
I would have signed that some time during my academic year of 2011-2012, but I can’t remember exactly when. It would have been prior to my diaconal ordination in St. Peter’s during the fall of 2012. (Canonically, priests are to be transitional deacons for at least six months prior to priestly ordination.)
Many Catholics don’t realize this, but ordinands for the transitional diaconate make their lifelong promises to Rome. They are the following:
Celibacy
Prayer (more specifically praying the Liturgy of the Hours, or the Breviary, five times daily, a discipline practiced from day one in seminary)
Obedience to the bishop and his successors
A priest once told me that the most difficult of these three promises is obedience. Yes, not celibacy, but obedience. It’s one thing to promise obedience to a bishop a seminarian knew throughout his priestly formation in the seminary. It’s another thing to promise obedience to whomever those successors may be.
But hey, don’t worry about it. God’s got this, right?
‘Vere, mortuus est?’ ‘Sic vero!’
Not every priest loves his bishop despite the “he was a priest’s priest” praise, or the santo subito sentiment typical to most funerals.
Another priest recalled to me the funeral of a former bishop. During the viewing, some of the priests shook his casket to make sure he truly was dead. Needless to say, they were very much relieved and grateful.
Perhaps they would have been happy to chant an extra Te Deum on a weekday.
I refuse to the use the oxymoron “Roman Catholic”. The word “catholic” comes from the Greek, meaning “on the whole” or “in general.” Second, I refuse to call catholic the Church of Rome since there never was a catholic body in the history of Christianity. This is evident from its earliest days as reportedly Jesus’ concern in John 17:21. ↩︎
