A Credible “Proposition”

In October 1984, I was accepted into a program to study for the priesthood by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. As a recent college graduate, who hadn’t majored in philosophy, I would be required to complete a year-long program of philosophy, prior to entering the theological seminary. I was 24 years old at the time.

I thought I was to begin in January, but the Diocese wanted me to take the full year in residence with other students (probably simply to keep me on a September-May schedule), which would have begun in September 1985. So, since I had nearly a year to wait (and think), I went back to Memphis to spend yet another year “on the road” with my good friend, Jeff Steinberg.

While I was in Memphis, I became a (loose) part of the Roman Catholic community there. When I was not traveling with Jeff’s ministry, I attended Mass daily at the small local Catholic Church near where I lived. As well, I befriended a priest at one of the larger churches, and in fact, I took a missionary trip (as a “seminarista”) to spend some time with a missionary church in Zacatecas, Mexico.

But at the small local church I attended daily, there was another, older Roman Catholic seminarian (perhaps in his 30’s). in fact, I think he had been ordained a Deacon, and was in preparation for ordination to the Priesthood. I’ll call him “Fr. Bernie”. He had in fact graduated from St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. I didn’t know it at the time, but St. Mary’s had a reputation, being known as “the Pink Palace”.

In 2002, a genuinely devout Roman Catholic writer, Michael Rose, wrote a work entitled “Goodbye, Good Men”. The book discussed a broad range of “liberal” issues within the network of Roman Catholic seminaries, including a “gay subculture”.

The book was trashed by conservative Roman Catholic writers. But one paragraph rings true to me:

“a large number of students had been convinced by some liberal teacher that sexual promiscuity with the same sex was not a violation of celibacy”(pg. 59)

This is precisely the appeal with which “Fr Bernie” approached me. I was too unsophisticated to know what this was about at the time, but in retrospect, this did seem to me as if he had been trying to proposition me. I tended to avoid him after this.

Interestingly, “Fr Bernie” is still a priest in Memphis. I recently saw videos of several of his recorded Masses on YouTube.