Vows

Finally.

I read this book about a month ago, and have been meaning to blog on it since - but doing so would require the kind of thought that is hard for me to come by these days. However - here we are, chapter 3 of the novel wrapped up for the day, baby a-napping on the couch next to me (he was asleep when I put him down, then immediately woke up. I ordered him, "Go night-night!" and after a few minutes, without a cry, he did...), birds going crazy at the feeder outside the window - the last time they did this was Saturday, and we know what happened Saturday night - and leaves pouring down from the trees in the wind.  So, let's give it a shot.

Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun and Their Son by Peter Manseau (linked on the right sidebar) is a fascinating book on a lot of levels, is evocative and thought-provoking. Short synopsis: Manseau's father was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston in 1961. His mother took vows, as Sister Thomas Patrick of the Sisters of St. Joseph, in 1958. The met working among the poor in Roxbury, and ended up marrying in 1969.

Here is what I liked about this book: it is, in essence, about what motivates our decisions and our life choices. That's the bigger tale here. Why did Bill Manseau want to be a priest? What external factors moved him in that direction? And Mary? Why did she become a religious sister? And Peter? What in the world led him to the point where he is at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, contemplating embracing a life of celibacy decades after his own father had left it?

On another level, it is, in a humorous and bittersweet way, about the struggles all of us who are deeply involved in religion, especially professionally, face, in terms of family life, and our fears in that regard. The PK is notorious, and even those in Roman Catholicism who can't be P's, therefore can't have PK's, worry - When I was in parish ministry as a DRE, I was so wary that my children would come to associate Church which something that absorbed their mother's time, and nothing else - since most of a DRE's work is on weekends, and in the evenings, it was a legitimate concern. Which is why I got out of it, and why I watch couples who can do this successfully - I've known two couples who were DRE/Youth Minister teams, and they were all just incredibly healthy and balanced, and as far as I know, their children are all still practicing, happy Catholics. Something to admire.

But back to the book - Bill Manseau was a part of a community of, for lack of a better term, ex-priests (one I am loathe to use because, you know, tu es sacredos in aeternam) in Boston in the 70's and beyond, and Peter is sharp in his narrative of the gatherings at the home in which one of them would say Mass, what that was like for the children, and so on. What is amusing in the book is that Mary Manseau put up with her husband's activism, but was not, to say the least, enthusiastic about it. There were even times when she would pack up the children after one of the ex-priests' gatherings, and take them to the parish down the street for Mass.

Into all of this, three children are born, and Peter picks up the thread of his own relationship to the Church - initially enthusiastic and devout, then rebellious and finally, via Buddhism, once again open - open to the point that he seriously considered religious life. The trajectory is fascinating - the parents, "liberal Catholics," had communicated their faith the best they could, and eventually, the son puts the pieces back together for himself.

There's more, though, and this is difficult to talk about without ruining some of the inherent drama of the book. Let us just say that the factors that move people to enter religious life, and the particular religious life they do, are odd and can even be evil. Facing those factors honestly can take almost a lifetime, and are a caution to any of us to both more acute self-awareness, and against the abrupt judgment of others. So for that reason, any discussion of this book on this thread isn't going to entertain comments about the Manseau's decisions to leave active ministry except from those who have read the book - for those are crucial points.

One final point - in a way, this book began the process of clearing up a little mystery for me. Long time readers know that one of the great mysteries for me, intellectually, is how things, to put it bluntly, went to hell so fast for the American Catholic Church. Really, from 1965-1968 was the sea change. I have never understood this - how people who were trained in the pre-Vatican II Church, renowned for strictness and obedience, could, in a matter of three years, be presiding at Clown Masses, to use the overused metaphor.

Reading the accounts of the formation that both the Manseaus received...I began to get it. What they experienced was, in essence, vocation factories. Hundreds of years of seminary and religious life formation and training distilled into manuals and schedules. Bill Manseau started to think a little differently about things when, working in the seminary library, he began to read theological journals, works which seminarians were at the very least, not encouraged to read, if not outright forbidden. Congar, von Balthasar, etc...It makes sense to me now that when you combine a rapidly changing culture that emphasized freedom, a Church tentatively opening itself to that, and then a batch of religious who had been discouraged from thinking for themselves and who had lived under obedience in decidedly unhealthy ways - read the note Bill Manseau preserved, from a fellow seminarian, explaining why he could not accept Bill's invitation to walk with him on the weekly walk for which they could choose one friend (never the same friend, of course) - it reads as if my 14 year old daughter had written it, albeit in more elevated language.

Some of us yearn for the good old days, and see them come back to life in some more "orthodox" seminaries. I think that it's safe to say that much of the life and topics of study and reading in today's orthodox seminaries would been forbidden and off limits in most of your regular diocesan seminaries in the good old days.

In the end, I appreciated this book for a lot of reasons - I was moved and sometimes entertained by the portrait of his parents' marriage, as two very different people struggle to grow together despite their rather different expectations of their relationship to the Church and their faith. However, what gave me the most to contemplate was the question I raised at the beginning - why do we do what we do? How do parents impact their children's life of faith? What ironies abound in all of our lives...truly.