Speaker 1: Evolution and war have both been described the exact same way,
Speaker 1: endless periods of supreme boredom punctuated by brief periods of
Speaker 1: abject terror. Change when it comes, comes in loud, sudden bursts.
Speaker 1: One such burst, the subject of our show, happened between
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five and nineteen seventy three to a country,
Speaker 1: to a church, and to a bunch of young Catholics.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to change, there always lurks the
Speaker 1: revolutionary's dilemma. Do you change things incrementally from the inside
Speaker 1: or do you agitate from outside and smash institutions? Do
Speaker 1: you be the change, as Gandhi said, or if this
Speaker 1: were pro wrestling, do you pull a reverse Gandhi and
Speaker 1: force the change? This show will explore both sides of
Speaker 1: this dilemma, two sides which faithfully came together in a
Speaker 1: rare dis unified strength to protect Paul Kome So dig
Speaker 1: if you will the picture. We last left Paul standing
Speaker 1: agog in the Brigham's Diner, next to Marianne and Sarah
Speaker 1: helplessly looking on as Anne, Walsh and Tobin led the
Speaker 1: marchers down Tremont Street toward the waiting Feds in front
Speaker 1: of the Paulist Center. They were on the verge of
Speaker 1: the first political sanctuary in a Catholic church in four
Speaker 1: hundred years. To do this, to find a Catholic church
Speaker 1: that would be willing to thrust itself between the anti
Speaker 1: war resistance and the federal government, they would need a
Speaker 1: man on the inside. These outside agitators needed to find
Speaker 1: a Roman Catholic priest, an inside incrementalist, crazy enough to
Speaker 1: take on the Archdiocese of Boston, the federal government, and
Speaker 1: his own Holy Order. No priest in his right mind
Speaker 1: would do this, except that is for Patrick, their man
Speaker 1: on the inside, on that morning of the sanctuary, as
Speaker 1: he stood behind the red double doors of the Polist
Speaker 1: Center waiting for Paul and the others, Patrick was a
Speaker 1: wild haired Gonzo priest who had decided to stake his
Speaker 1: church on a crazy bet to sabotage a war. However,
Speaker 1: only two years prior to him standing there in that foyer,
Speaker 1: the Polis Center in downtown Boston had been just another musty,
Speaker 1: old smells and bells echo chamber of a stolid Catholic past,
Speaker 1: the kind where you'd go to church on Sunday, here,
Speaker 1: quiet organ music as you shuffled in and a single
Speaker 1: cough would reverberate for days. You remember what Jim Carroll,
Speaker 1: the author from the last episode said about the place.
Speaker 2: And it was also a famously establishment, and it was
Speaker 2: full of old guys.
Speaker 1: But Patrick, in the two years since his ordination and
Speaker 1: subsequent assignment to the Paula Center, had somehow transformed it
Speaker 1: into a vibrating beehive of subversive madness and progressive ideas.
Speaker 2: The Catholic Church was going through a revolution and the
Speaker 2: paul Center was a main place of revolutionary firment.
Speaker 1: So who the hell was Patrick and how the hell
Speaker 1: did he get this way? This divine intervention Chapter two,
Speaker 1: The drunken banjo player. This cat scandalized his entire order
Speaker 1: on a national scale and basically detonated what it means
Speaker 1: to be a priest. But he began like they all did,
Speaker 1: a conformist, apple cheeked nineteen fifties kid with cuffs in
Speaker 1: his jeans and an all shocks attitude.
Speaker 3: Patrick was, of course an altiboy.
Speaker 1: Patrick's sister Joanne, he.
Speaker 3: Was a prized Alta boy. Everyone wanted Patrick to be
Speaker 3: the altiboy at their weddings because he was so cute.
Speaker 1: Joanne is a painter and retired therapist. Soft spoken yet
Speaker 1: ferociously passionate, she has spent many years trying to reclaim
Speaker 1: the term hag as a thing of power, even printing
Speaker 1: t shirts and toad bags.
Speaker 3: And he had this toussled, blonde, curly hair because he
Speaker 3: was just so there, and so he would be the
Speaker 3: altiboy at weddings and he'd get tipps and he thought
Speaker 3: that was fantastic.
Speaker 1: Patrick was the second youngest of seven children.
Speaker 3: Some people call us Irish trains.
Speaker 1: Joanne was the youngest. Patrick grew up in Quincy, which
Speaker 1: locals pronounced with a z quinn. It's next to Dorchester
Speaker 1: on the water, which makes it sound a little fancier
Speaker 1: than its. Patrick's father was an Irish immigrant who worked
Speaker 1: as a machinist at the local navy yard.
Speaker 3: My father and Patrick built a boat in our basement.
Speaker 3: They worked on it night after night after night, and
Speaker 3: it turned into the most beautiful sailboat you could just imagine.
Speaker 3: And then Patrick set it out in the water and
Speaker 3: he just sailed all over the place with that boat.
Speaker 1: Eventually the neighborhood kids got jealous, so Patrick and his
Speaker 1: father built nine more boats and then they began having
Speaker 1: races on Boston Harbor. This kid had a unique trust
Speaker 1: in himself, a love of charting his own course into
Speaker 1: the unknown, and yet somehow he ended up going into
Speaker 1: the priesthood, entering a global religious hierarchy that demanded submission
Speaker 1: to authority. I did Patrick choose the priesthood. Maybe like
Speaker 1: a lot of other parochial school kids, it was the
Speaker 1: nuns took a shine to him, and they pulled him
Speaker 1: aside and told him he had that priestly X factor.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it was his parents.
Speaker 3: I think that it was sort of an inevitable path
Speaker 3: given the context of our family, the Irish Catholic, the
Speaker 3: reverence for priests. It was the highest calling that you
Speaker 3: could ever respond to as far as my parents were concerned.
Speaker 1: Okay, so maybe his parents had their thumb on the scale.
Speaker 1: But the question I'm still left with is what in
Speaker 1: the crap would make someone want to become a priest
Speaker 1: in the first place. I mean, I grew up, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of Catholic. I was Catholic when I visited my
Speaker 1: elderly aunt Mimian Scranton for the summer, Catholic enough to
Speaker 1: know it was a really big deal. When the parish
Speaker 1: priest was in your house, it felt like a celebrity
Speaker 1: was in your dining room. Of all the houses, of
Speaker 1: all the people, all the pews. On Sunday, here was
Speaker 1: Father McGillicutty eating corn on the cob in hours. Of course,
Speaker 1: now looking back, it's like you let a priest into
Speaker 1: your house Jesus. But this was before all the scandals,
Speaker 1: so you just felt anointed. But even with that rock
Speaker 1: star status at awkward family dinners, there are still the
Speaker 1: endless wakes and funerals and multiple masses a week. What
Speaker 1: is the draw? This is Floyd McManus. He just sighed
Speaker 1: because I asked him why he became a priest. He
Speaker 1: and Jim Carroll were seminarians.
Speaker 4: With Patrick, I guess the notion of service.
Speaker 1: Not many priests nor former priests have a really solid
Speaker 1: answer to that question, And as you've gathered by now,
Speaker 1: Patrick's not around anymore. So unfortunately, we can only guess
Speaker 1: at Patrick's true motivation to become a priest beyond pleasing
Speaker 1: his parents. What we do know is the succession of
Speaker 1: world events that surrounded his decision making. We know Patrick
Speaker 1: came of age on the cusp of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: We also know this was the era of the two Johns,
Speaker 1: and not John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President not
Speaker 1: to mention Irish Catholic was sitting in the Oval Office
Speaker 1: after being a shot upon immigrant group for over a century.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to overstate the significance of one of us
Speaker 1: in the White House. And it's equally impossible to overstate
Speaker 1: the significance of that one sentence on an entire generation
Speaker 1: of young people like Patrick. But John F. Kennedy was
Speaker 1: only one John, and maybe not even the most important
Speaker 1: John to Patrick at the time. There was also the
Speaker 1: other John, the newly appointed John, the twenty third, raising
Speaker 1: hell in the Vatican, and that John may have had
Speaker 1: something to do with how Patrick turned out to be
Speaker 1: a gonzo, wild haired priest. Okay, and since this is
Speaker 1: a show about Catholics, before we go on, here's one
Speaker 1: of the weirder things you need to know about them
Speaker 1: as you listen to this. Over a billion of these
Speaker 1: specimens are groping around the crust of this planet, participating
Speaker 1: in a global religious hierarchy that answers ultimately to one
Speaker 1: guy wearing a dress who lives in his own miniature
Speaker 1: country in the middle of downtown Rome, and this man,
Speaker 1: known as the Pope, is the ultimate intermediary between a
Speaker 1: billion people, the world they live in, and their godhead.
Speaker 1: Popes have a metric crap ton of executive power, so
Speaker 1: naming a new one is really a gamble because you
Speaker 1: really never know who you're going to get until a
Speaker 1: funny hat goes on. When Patrick was nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: Pope Pius the Twelfth, who'd been pope since the week
Speaker 1: Patrick was born, died and the cardinals of the world
Speaker 1: dashed to Rome to choose the successor. A large crowd
Speaker 1: of Catholics gathered in Saint Peter's Square and Vatican City
Speaker 1: to wait for news of a new pope, And after
Speaker 1: eleven days of waiting, white smoke puffed from the chimney
Speaker 1: over the Sistine Chapel. How about us, pop, 'm we
Speaker 1: had a new Pope. I was there.
Speaker 3: I was there.
Speaker 5: It's very funny.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Knnane. He was a young priest in
Speaker 1: Rome back in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 5: We ran out of it to Saint Peter's Square when
Speaker 5: we found out the pope. You know, the white smoke
Speaker 5: and all that kind of stuff. Was very exciting. We
Speaker 5: all got in the square and they said the new
Speaker 5: Pope is John the twenty three, and everybody looked at
Speaker 5: one another saying what.
Speaker 1: He was a total surprise. It turns out the pope
Speaker 1: they chose, John the twenty third was a surprise even
Speaker 1: to himself. In fact, he had bought a round trip
Speaker 1: train ticket to Rome, fully expecting to return to his
Speaker 1: duties as the Patriarch of Venice.
Speaker 5: Nobody expected anything from him, and of course totally he
Speaker 5: changed the whole atmosphere.
Speaker 1: There were early signs for anyone paying attention that this
Speaker 1: pope was going to be trouble. Jim Carroll describes John
Speaker 1: as a big eared bear, hug of a man, and
Speaker 1: a roly poly peasant pope. In one story, John the
Speaker 1: twenty third was once asked by a child how do
Speaker 1: people work at the Vatican and his answer was eh,
Speaker 1: about half. He also said it often happens I wake
Speaker 1: up at night and begin to think about the serious
Speaker 1: problems afflicting the world, and I tell myself I must
Speaker 1: talk to the Pope about this. Then the next day,
Speaker 1: when I wake up, I remember that I'm the Pope.
Speaker 1: This guy was a strange bird compared to every other pope,
Speaker 1: Patrick and his generation had ever beheld as their leader,
Speaker 1: and it was becoming clear that he had big plans.
Speaker 1: One of his first acts as pope was to deliver
Speaker 1: an appeal for world peace.
Speaker 5: I mean, we were used to popes going watch yourself now,
Speaker 5: you know you sort of like that head the recruiters. Instead,
Speaker 5: he opened the windows and he said, do you know
Speaker 5: he kind of he changed things.
Speaker 1: Suddenly, this pope, the Italian son of an impoverished peasant farmer,
Speaker 1: had entered the world stage, and his appeal for world
Speaker 1: peace began to ring like a clarion bell for a
Speaker 1: generation of young people like Patrick.
Speaker 6: He was an you might say, an oddity. He was different.
Speaker 6: He was not like the other popes.
Speaker 1: This is noted American historian Howard Zinn, whom I interviewed
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, a few months before he
Speaker 1: passed away.
Speaker 6: He was a rebel in many ways, and I think
Speaker 6: he became a hero to many of the people on
Speaker 6: the Catholic left. I know Jim carl my friend Jim Carroll,
Speaker 6: who has written so much about the Catholic Church, looks
Speaker 6: to John twenty third as a very special historic period
Speaker 6: in the history of the paper sit.
Speaker 2: The Catholic Church was going through a revolutionary and this
Speaker 2: whole revolutionary process was just beginning in the mid to
Speaker 2: late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Young Catholics everywhere, Young Catholics like Patrick, were enthralled by
Speaker 1: this new pope and his peculiar radical style.
Speaker 7: He opened the doors. He was a modern contemporary theologian
Speaker 7: and thinker, and he knew the church needed to get
Speaker 7: into the modern age.
Speaker 1: This is Mary Anne who he last left standing next
Speaker 1: to Paul at the Brighams.
Speaker 7: And he changed it dramatically. And it was at the
Speaker 7: same time that John Kennedy became President of the United States.
Speaker 7: Those two hugely symbolic transformational figures came on to the
Speaker 7: world stage.
Speaker 8: And it's as if they just.
Speaker 7: Try these incredible doors open, and a whole generation just.
Speaker 8: Poured through like crazy torrents of water poured through.
Speaker 1: What we know is that Patrick saw a fellow Irish
Speaker 1: Catholic Bostonian in the Oval office and a mischievous change
Speaker 1: maker in Saint Peter's Basilica. Maybe it was his natural leadership,
Speaker 1: or the nuns at school, or his parents, or the
Speaker 1: two Johns, or simply a sense of adventure, but whatever
Speaker 1: it was, it propelled Patrick into a life of the cloth.
Speaker 1: Patrick's next move after deciding to become a priest was
Speaker 1: to choose the right order. If Patrick chose the wrong order,
Speaker 1: while the only risk winding up permanently unfulfilled and misspending
Speaker 1: his eternity. As for the priest orders, the Dominicans are
Speaker 1: the accountant types. The Franciscans are the tree hugging hippies.
Speaker 1: The Jesuits are the cool professors doing bong rips at
Speaker 1: frat parties. The Benedictines are the nerd bomb librarians. The
Speaker 1: Carmelites are the mystics. The Vincentians worked with the poor,
Speaker 1: and the Poulis are kind of the ones who end
Speaker 1: up in the av club, you know, pouches of dice,
Speaker 1: model rockets, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 7: And so he joined the Paul's Fathers and then spent
Speaker 7: it's eight years in the seminary.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's the huge commitment.
Speaker 4: Different orders have different missions, and for the Paulus, their
Speaker 4: mission was North America, and the Pause were.
Speaker 7: Really known for communication, and you know they had TV
Speaker 7: and radio.
Speaker 3: And then he went into the Paulis and vishit.
Speaker 1: So Patrick told his family, I'm off to the seminar.
Speaker 3: I'm going to set out on this path. I don't
Speaker 3: know how far I can go, but this is what
Speaker 3: I'm aiming toward. And everyone was so happy and supportive
Speaker 3: and just thought, oh, this is right, this seems so right.
Speaker 1: Patrick's choice to join the Paulists, obsessed as they were
Speaker 1: with communication, suggested that at this point he felt, I
Speaker 1: have something I want to say to this world, and
Speaker 1: I want to say it loud and clear. Now I
Speaker 1: have to figure out what the hell it is. In
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen sixty two, Patrick, Floyd, and Jim
Speaker 1: turned up at a place called Mount Paul Novitiate in
Speaker 1: Jefferson Township, New Jersey to begin their journey towards ordination.
Speaker 1: They arrived on a crisp September morning, driving down the
Speaker 1: tree lined mile long driveway off Ridge Road to reach
Speaker 1: a former hunting lodge with a little pond in several outbuildings. There,
Speaker 1: they were each given a black cassock as a uniform
Speaker 1: for their stay. As young men who'd grown accustomed to
Speaker 1: wearing pants in public their entire lives, this would have
Speaker 1: felt very unsettling for them. The boys were then told
Speaker 1: they would live here for one year and one day
Speaker 1: as novices to decide if they wanted to spend the
Speaker 1: following seven years in seminary. They were told the rules
Speaker 1: were strict and they'd have to learn the stern and
Speaker 1: disciplined life of a would be priest. Television and phone
Speaker 1: calls were things of the past. They were told they
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to leave campus on their own for the
Speaker 1: entire time they were there, And finally, they were left
Speaker 1: to ponder the question that would haunt the rest of
Speaker 1: their time as priests. Are you in this world to
Speaker 1: participate in this vocation or are you in this vocation
Speaker 1: to participate in the world. Boys, struck dumb by this decision,
Speaker 1: which would determine who they would be as priests, would
Speaker 1: then stroll around the grounds until they felt at home
Speaker 1: and not like they'd made a terrible mistake. But Patrick
Speaker 1: was not so easily daunted. By all accounts, he was
Speaker 1: an irrepressible, a brilliant character from the moment he arrived.
Speaker 1: He was roughly five to eight, stocky, warm, friendly and confident,
Speaker 1: with a bit of a trickster's gleam in his eye,
Speaker 1: and you.
Speaker 7: Know they tell the story about Patrick, of course, who
Speaker 7: could not sit spiled for five minutes.
Speaker 8: I mean he got to the seminary and said.
Speaker 7: Oh, my wife to do something about this.
Speaker 8: So I think the first thing he did was literally
Speaker 8: build a boat.
Speaker 4: He wants to build a boat.
Speaker 1: Floyd had grown up a Canadian farm boy and was
Speaker 1: assigned to run the wood shop.
Speaker 4: And he needs some way by my equipment. I was
Speaker 4: not very happy. But before long, not all only is
Speaker 4: he using my but he's using me too to help him. See,
Speaker 4: we weren't allowed out of that place. But by getting
Speaker 4: involved in building this boat, he would have to go
Speaker 4: out to get materials and that kind of things, which
Speaker 4: took him out. Really, it seemed to be somewhat of
Speaker 4: a consistent pattern. He would somehow be able to expand
Speaker 4: the box that he would find himself in.
Speaker 1: Of Patrick, Jim Harrell would later write in his books,
Speaker 1: this is a man I want to be with. Patrick
Speaker 1: had a particularly hard time saying goodbye to civilian life.
Speaker 1: In the summers prior, he had been a cape caught
Speaker 1: milkman by day, even delivering to the Kennedy compound and
Speaker 1: getting pinches on the cheek from Rose by night. He
Speaker 1: played banjo at a high Enda's honky tonk and caroused
Speaker 1: to his heart's content. The night before he left a seminary,
Speaker 1: he was dumped on the lawn by his friends, where
Speaker 1: his parents found him. The following morning, he was shall
Speaker 1: we say a party in.
Speaker 3: This is another paragraph? Thank god, the summer is almost over.
Speaker 1: A letter from Patrick to the Quincy Heights.
Speaker 3: It's been quite hairy at times. On our Thursday hikes,
Speaker 3: I sometimes see a group of guys drive by, drinking beer,
Speaker 3: singing and raising hell. In general, you can imagine where
Speaker 3: my mind wanders.
Speaker 1: He sent several sprightly letters to his sister Joanne, with
Speaker 1: graffiti all over the envelopes, vandalizing the return address to
Speaker 1: read call Mount Paul Novigiat for the latest in seminary.
Speaker 3: Ins received your letter. Very good letter. Please mail about
Speaker 3: five a day, just kidding, four will do. I'm beginning
Speaker 3: to get accustomed to this crazy life again. Pray, pray,
Speaker 3: pray if some of those people at Charlie's could see
Speaker 3: the banjo player now.
Speaker 1: In her reading, Joanne left out the word drunken. He
Speaker 1: had written drunken bancho player.
Speaker 3: This one he signs mister O'Toole.
Speaker 1: He signed early letters to Joanne things like Friar Tuck,
Speaker 1: Uncle Charlie, Billy the Kid, Lord Chesterfield, Charlie Brown and
Speaker 1: Lee Bear Archie love, prayers, trees, houses, cows and all that.
Speaker 3: Pat I'm gradually becoming an introvert, and that scares the
Speaker 3: hell out of me.
Speaker 1: It seems like one challenge of the seminary is to
Speaker 1: keep the old you alive as long as possible, but
Speaker 1: it's a losing battle. In the margins of one letter,
Speaker 1: he added editor's note on first writing this letter, the
Speaker 1: author was obviously disturbed, but he feels better now, so
Speaker 1: he shall make corrections. And then he proceeded to pick
Speaker 1: apart his own letter with little jokes, doing things like
Speaker 1: circling all the eye pronouns and remarking too many eyes.
Speaker 1: I simply adore myself. Patrick was chipper, boisterous, self effacing,
Speaker 1: and had not an ounce of what the Germans called
Speaker 1: Veltschmertz or world pain.
Speaker 3: Right at this moment, I'm a bit lonely, melancholy, nostalgic,
Speaker 3: but still a very content and happy guy. On the back.
Speaker 3: He wants me to send him newspaper reports of Boston
Speaker 3: college's hockey team.
Speaker 1: Try as he might to keep up with the old
Speaker 1: world he left behind. The seminary walls were closing in,
Speaker 1: and the untroubled world he left behind in Quinsy seemed
Speaker 1: farther away. With each new letter.
Speaker 3: As part of preparing to be a celibate priest, he
Speaker 3: was always trying to get rid of those feelings that
Speaker 3: he had.
Speaker 1: In one letter, he described the torment he felt about
Speaker 1: one of his ex girlfriends who moved west. Of course,
Speaker 1: I realized, he wrote, that if things were different and
Speaker 1: we were both around Boston, we probably would have broken
Speaker 1: up anyway, seeing as I hate to be tied down.
Speaker 1: Then he continued, aware of the irony of his chosen profession.
Speaker 1: This I think will be a problem that the Paulists
Speaker 1: are going to have with Father Pat if he makes it.
Speaker 1: Even Patrick knew the self described drunken banjo player had
Speaker 1: a certain amount of growing up to do. Tradition is
Speaker 1: meant to tame the heart from its desires. But the
Speaker 1: heart is always a threat to tradition. But Catholic tradition
Speaker 1: was about to be absolutely detonated in Rome by one
Speaker 1: Pope John the twenty.
Speaker 9: Third, Well Pope John undoubtedly this is the greatest day
Speaker 9: of his pumpaving hid the convening of this General Assembly
Speaker 9: of the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: On October eleventh, nineteen sixty two, only a month after
Speaker 1: Patrick's arrival at Mount Pin, Pope John the twenty third
Speaker 1: upended centuries of church dogma by convocating the Second Vatican Council.
Speaker 10: This is the first ecumenical council in ninety two years,
Speaker 10: and only the second in four hundred years. It as
Speaker 10: solemnly opened this Pope John twenty third is carried into
Speaker 10: Saint Peter's on his portable throne.
Speaker 1: All the Church's bishops from all over the world headed
Speaker 1: for Rome in a once in a century convening to
Speaker 1: decide on major church business. This was a huge ecumenical council.
Speaker 1: There have been about twenty in all of history, and
Speaker 1: from your tenth grade World history class you might vaguely
Speaker 1: recall the Council of Nicea, or maybe the Council of
Speaker 1: Trent if you were in ap history. This one was
Speaker 1: called the Second Vatican Council because there had been a
Speaker 1: first Vatican Council in eighteen seventy and at that one
Speaker 1: you may remember if you took religious studies. They defined
Speaker 1: papal infallibility. Anything in everything the Pope decreed was automatically
Speaker 1: perfect by virtue of the Hope having decreed it. After
Speaker 1: the First Vatican Council, popes now had supreme executive power,
Speaker 1: and no pope in their right mind would possibly give
Speaker 1: that up Until John the twenty third took office. He
Speaker 1: declared it was time for the Church to enter the
Speaker 1: modern age, so he announced a second Vatican Council. Less
Speaker 1: than a month after Patrick, Floyd and Jim arrived at
Speaker 1: their seminary to become priests. They were herded into the
Speaker 1: common room and an old Filko television was rolled in
Speaker 1: for them to watch the momentous opening ceremony for Vatican Two.
Speaker 1: They sat on couches and the ends of couches as
Speaker 1: the very church they had decided to devote their lives
Speaker 1: to began to molt right in front of their eyes.
Speaker 11: Pope John enters the Pasilica as the bells toll for
Speaker 11: the largest assembly in the.
Speaker 1: History of the Roman Church in the halls of the Vatican.
Speaker 1: All the old brass thought the Pope was crazy for
Speaker 1: convening this council, which would undoubtedly force him to relinquish
Speaker 1: some of that absolute executive power the papacy had been
Speaker 1: granted one hundred years earlier, but to John the twenty third,
Speaker 1: yielding some papal power was precisely why Vatican Two had
Speaker 1: to happen well.
Speaker 2: Vatican Two was the Catholic Church's response to the Church's
Speaker 2: failure to oppose the murder of six million Jews.
Speaker 1: This is Jim Carroll, who watched these proceedings along with
Speaker 1: Patrick and Floyd in.
Speaker 2: The Catholic Church in particular, had failed miserably in its
Speaker 2: obligation moral obligation to stand up forthrightly in opposition to
Speaker 2: the genocide of the Jewish people.
Speaker 1: Jim argues that in the years following World War Two,
Speaker 1: Christians and Catholics began to recognize that Hitler's actions had
Speaker 1: depended on thousands of years of anti Semitism perpetrated by
Speaker 1: Christian ideas.
Speaker 2: Like the Jews murdered Jesus, the Jews were replaced in
Speaker 2: God's favor as the chosen people by the Church. The
Speaker 2: Jews had no theological reason to continue existing after they
Speaker 2: rejected Jesus. It was a small step from that to
Speaker 2: saying they had no reason for physical existence either. So
Speaker 2: confronting the sources of the Holocaust was the hidden engine
Speaker 2: of what Pope John the twenty third saw when he
Speaker 2: became pope in the late nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: See when John the twenty third was still Archbishop Angelo Roncali.
Speaker 1: He watched in horror when in nineteen forty three Nazis
Speaker 1: rounded up the Jews in Rome and Pope Pious the
Speaker 1: twelfth said nothing. Roncoli meanwhile, actively resisted the Holocaust by
Speaker 1: falsifying thousands of baptismal records for Jews making their escape.
Speaker 1: Then after the war, in nineteen forty nine, Roncali watched
Speaker 1: as Pious the twelfth Samaria excommunicated all Communists, demonstrating a
Speaker 1: capacity for strong stances that had been absent during the war.
Speaker 1: So when Roncali became John the twenty third, he was
Speaker 1: crystal clear that it was time for a change, and
Speaker 1: his first target was the very language of the faith itself.
Speaker 1: The word Catholic with a lower case C means universal.
Speaker 1: The box office draw for the Catholic Church in the
Speaker 1: eyes of the Vatican has always been that it's one
Speaker 1: gigantic organization. So starting around the fourth or fifth century AD,
Speaker 1: the Church decided that all masses should be set in
Speaker 1: Latin because it was a universal language and basically everyone
Speaker 1: had to take it in school. In fact, the ATMs
Speaker 1: in Vatican City still have a Latin option in their
Speaker 1: language preferences. When Vatican two began, Latin had been the
Speaker 1: official church language for roughly fifteen hundred years. Patrick dreaded
Speaker 1: the Latin part of the job. You went to Mass
Speaker 1: on Sunday and the priests droned on in a dead language,
Speaker 1: like he was literally casting spells, and the priest faced
Speaker 1: away from you. So you just sat there witnessing this ceremony,
Speaker 1: having no idea what was going on. They kept a
Speaker 1: very mysterious paul cooming.
Speaker 12: It gave more power to the church, and it gave
Speaker 12: more power to the priests up front. You wouldn't challenge
Speaker 12: their words because you didn't understand their words. It was
Speaker 12: a sacred, veiled service that went on.
Speaker 1: In other words, celebrating Mass in Latin was the Church's
Speaker 1: mechanism to cling to priestly power. So the first proposal
Speaker 1: on the Vatican two docket was to put mandatory Latin
Speaker 1: on the chopping block and allow priests to give masses
Speaker 1: in the local language of a given church. This was
Speaker 1: a massively volatile decision with extremely passionate opposed camps. Jim
Speaker 1: Carroll would later note in his books the significance of
Speaker 1: this debate. The conservatives in the Vatican knew. This vote
Speaker 1: terrified most of the cardinals because it symbolized ceding power
Speaker 1: to the people and away from the clergy. And as
Speaker 1: this first dramatic ballot of this once in a century
Speaker 1: council was about to take place, the progressives John the
Speaker 1: twenty third among them, did not have the votes.
Speaker 11: There are twenty six hundred attending bishops, twenty two hundred
Speaker 11: of them have taken their places, and two grand fans
Speaker 11: on either side of the nave.
Speaker 1: And for the boys at Mount Paul, watching on the
Speaker 1: philco and their common room, the fate of their church
Speaker 1: hinged on one vote they were about to witness on
Speaker 1: live TV. But then the fate of Latin Mass was
Speaker 1: put on hold by major world events. Because less we
Speaker 1: forget this was October of nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 10: Sixty two, world peace was threatened by the most critical
Speaker 10: period in history since the end of the war.
Speaker 1: While the bishops were having their stare down over Latin
Speaker 1: and Rome, President Kennedy was being presented pictures of missile
Speaker 1: installations on the island of Cuba, installations first noticed by
Speaker 1: Jim Carroll's father, who was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Speaker 1: Kennedy immediately established a naval embargo surrounding Cuba, as Russian
Speaker 1: tankers loaded with more missiles steamed across the Atlantic, setting
Speaker 1: up a showdown that could very likely have meant the
Speaker 1: end of the world.
Speaker 13: Arms blockade of Cuba, and later.
Speaker 1: On October twenty second, JFK addressed a stunned nation, including Patrick,
Speaker 1: Floyd and Jim crowded once again around the film coat.
Speaker 13: This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of
Speaker 13: the Soviet military build up on the island of Cuba.
Speaker 13: The purpose of these bases can be none other than
Speaker 13: to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 1: Kennedy and Khrushcheff were locked in a deadly game of chicken.
Speaker 1: The citizens of Earth held their collective breath and prayed
Speaker 1: for a dais ex Machina at Mount paul I pictured
Speaker 1: the autumn mornings getting crisper as the boys stood in
Speaker 1: their cassocks at Pond's edge. Watching the leaves fall, the
Speaker 1: odd quiet in the woods as they stared at the
Speaker 1: windows of distant living rooms, illuminated with the glow of
Speaker 1: this unfolding horror. On the nightly news, there were B
Speaker 1: fifty two's in the air carrying nuclear weapons, one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand troops stationed in Florida ready to invade Cuba. For
Speaker 1: thirteen days, life on Earth hung by its fingernails. But
Speaker 1: then incredible thing happened. Pope John the twenty third had
Speaker 1: secret contact with both Washington and Moscow. On October twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: Pope John, following a plan he had hatched with Kennedy
Speaker 1: and Khruschef, made an appeal for peace on Vatican radio.
Speaker 1: Nusuprian TuS le gouverna girl. We beg all rulers not
Speaker 1: to be deaf to the cry of.
Speaker 5: Humanity zecut lucri a guassi bey bee.
Speaker 1: Kruzchef made sure that the Pope's appeal ran in the
Speaker 1: state newspaper above the fold in Moscow. Three days later,
Speaker 1: he issued a public statement that the Soviet missiles would
Speaker 1: be dismantled and removed from Cuba. Kennedy, the first Catholic
Speaker 1: president who was already sensitive about looking like he was
Speaker 1: taking orders from the Pope, got to look tough. Khrushcheff
Speaker 1: got to look human, and a priest had saved the world.
Speaker 1: Emboldened by John the twenty Third's courage, the progressive cardinals
Speaker 1: back of the Vatican rallied a coalition and voted to
Speaker 1: remove Latin masses in a landslide decision. Vatican two would
Speaker 1: now proceed with its promise of monumental church reforms. The
Speaker 1: traditions of the Catholic Church had always been its strength,
Speaker 1: but suddenly sweeping changes had begun to take hold. The
Speaker 1: next Easter, John the twenty third issued a papal encyclical,
Speaker 1: which is an open letter to the bishops of the world,
Speaker 1: called patchem in Terras or Peace on Earth. In it,
Speaker 1: he indicated that the burgeoning women's movement was a positive
Speaker 1: sign of the times, and he said, most preciently, at
Speaker 1: the dawn of the Vietnam conflict, it's hardly possible to
Speaker 1: imagine in the atomic era that war could be used
Speaker 1: for justice. And for Patrick, Floyd and Jim, seeing what
Speaker 1: Pope John did, how he was in his vocation to
Speaker 1: participate in the world. Let the boys know that the
Speaker 1: demands of this job were enormous, Far beyond learning Latin
Speaker 1: and being an impressive dinner guest. Suddenly being Catholic felt very,
Speaker 1: very significant, and the promise of their priesthoods, the very
Speaker 1: scope of their vocations, felt infinite. But these events also
Speaker 1: set a conflict in motion for them that would come
Speaker 1: to define their priesthoods. There is what tradition wants, and
Speaker 1: there is what the times demand. For the next year,
Speaker 1: as a novice, Patrick roamed the campus of Mount Paul
Speaker 1: Novitiate in his black cassock with a white linen collar
Speaker 1: that went all the way around his neck. In a breeze,
Speaker 1: a group of his fellow novitiates looked like a murder
Speaker 1: of crows or a chorus of black swinging handbells. It
Speaker 1: was now clear that he had entered the Seminary in
Speaker 1: no ordinary times. The walls of the seminary had, for
Speaker 1: centuries shut the world out so young men could attune
Speaker 1: themselves to the faint frequency that contained the presence of
Speaker 1: God and with time make it louder. But as the
Speaker 1: boys made their move to the Seminary proper in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. And began their lives of relative monotony and
Speaker 1: rigorous study. It became clear that the world outside those
Speaker 1: walls was starting to change and unless they watched it carefully,
Speaker 1: would leave them behind. So Patrick got an.
Speaker 7: Idea seminary said, this is not going to work out.
Speaker 3: To just stay here, that's not going to work.
Speaker 4: He started up a singing group called the Roman Callers
Speaker 4: or something. I was never involved in that because I
Speaker 4: couldn't carry a note on a will. Barily, you know, we.
Speaker 14: Can take time, I think to introduce fifth member of
Speaker 14: our group. Pat is from Quincy, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: He's a deacon.
Speaker 14: Maybe you don't know what a deacon is. He's almost
Speaker 14: a priest. I'd like to do a Simon and Garfunkle
Speaker 14: special fil called Missus Robinson.
Speaker 7: Because Pauls were all about communication and evangelism and all
Speaker 7: of that, he convinced them that he should start a
Speaker 7: singing group and that they could go to college campuses
Speaker 7: across the country and recruit basically or evangelize or spread
Speaker 7: the gospel.
Speaker 1: They called themselves the Roman callersa m I n apostrophe.
Speaker 4: They went all over hec's have agar with that, various
Speaker 4: campuses and so forth, singing away. Whereas the rest of
Speaker 4: us were droning away in the seminary.
Speaker 7: You know, he was a tenor and Patrick had a
Speaker 7: beautiful voice, a very really clear voice, and they traveled
Speaker 7: all over the country and they did it for years.
Speaker 3: They did it for years.
Speaker 15: This really Roman Folars and that hasn't been our name
Speaker 15: all the time. And we had a contest in the
Speaker 15: seminary where we come up with some names that we
Speaker 15: thought were kind of meaningful, that it kind of said
Speaker 15: what we were all about. But second prize was the
Speaker 15: Groove in Gurus, and the name that I really wanted
Speaker 15: was called the Expectant Fathers.
Speaker 16: That's the wop their singing group and this group of
Speaker 16: nuns who had a singing group sang at Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 16: and Patrick had a solo where he sings, I.
Speaker 7: Believe in One God or something like that, and you
Speaker 7: can hear him and it was his proudest moment that
Speaker 7: he's sang at Carnegie Hall.
Speaker 12: I believe in One God.
Speaker 4: You know, he wouldn't have been viewed as, oh, there's
Speaker 4: somebody who is a rebel or wants to get away
Speaker 4: or anything like that, but he would position himself to
Speaker 4: be able to do that in a way that I
Speaker 4: don't think was very common.
Speaker 1: Patrick had found a furtive way to keep his thumb
Speaker 1: on the pulse while his seminary superiors contended with keeping
Speaker 1: the tumult of the nineteen sixties away from the door.
Speaker 1: But they would, of course fail That Philco Television in
Speaker 1: the common room quickly became a portal for the boys,
Speaker 1: through which they watched in awe as a relentless decade
Speaker 1: of incredible world events transpired outside their seminary walls to
Speaker 1: starting on June third, nineteen sixty three, when Pope John
Speaker 1: the twenty third, the peasant Pope who had dared to
Speaker 1: reboot a musty hierarchy, died of a cancer he'd kept secret. Then,
Speaker 1: the following Tuesday in Sagone, as the Vatican deliberated a
Speaker 1: successor to Pope John, a Buddhist monk named Tik Kwang
Speaker 1: Douk sat down in the middle of an intersection. Two
Speaker 1: young fellow monks poured gasoline and jet fuel over the
Speaker 1: elderly man, and then he dropped a match into his lap.
Speaker 1: Vietnamese President No Dindem, a Catholic mystic installed by the CIA,
Speaker 1: had been mercilessly cracking down on the Buddhists. Tik Kwangduk
Speaker 1: had immolated himself in protest of this violent oppression. A
Speaker 1: photograph of the immolation ran on the front page of
Speaker 1: newspapers around the world. When President Kennedy saw the picture
Speaker 1: in the Oval Office, he yelled Jesus Christ and immediately
Speaker 1: ordered a review of his Vietnam policy. For Patrick, seeing
Speaker 1: that photo, as a young seminarian, I can only imagine
Speaker 1: his first thought might have been, this man was a
Speaker 1: member of the clergy just like me, and in this job,
Speaker 1: the world may drive me to lengths I'm not yet
Speaker 1: prepared for. Ten days after that, on June twenty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, the boys were once again herded into
Speaker 1: the common room because Paul the sixth would now be
Speaker 1: their pope. From the scuttle butt on the seminary faculty,
Speaker 1: the boys gathered this new pope was a conservative and
Speaker 1: would immediately begin rolling back all the exciting progress the
Speaker 1: institution had taken.
Speaker 6: One they did until they every heel and mounting should.
Speaker 1: Be made a lot of the reply. Two months later,
Speaker 1: on August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three, the young Seminarians
Speaker 1: gathered once again to watch the Reverend doctor Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King give his eye have a dream speech. It was
Speaker 1: there Jim would later write that he learned there were
Speaker 1: two types of preachers, those who tell you what you
Speaker 1: already know, and those who tell you things you'd never
Speaker 1: heard before. Just three months after that, on November twenty second,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, President John F. Kennan was assassinated in Dallas.
Speaker 13: Kennedy died at one pm Central Standard time.
Speaker 1: Patrick rode to his sister Joanne, he sure represented a
Speaker 1: real guy in my mind, kind of like a symbol
Speaker 1: of American youth. His death simply gagged me, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to miss him in a personal sort of way.
Speaker 1: I can't figure it out. Three question marks. With both
Speaker 1: John's gone. Whatever birth of inspiration that led the boys
Speaker 1: into the seminary was now harder to find. Life was
Speaker 1: getting very serious and feeling very grown up. Summer nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast
Speaker 1: of Vietnam, some North Vietnamese patrol boats played basically what
Speaker 1: amounts it to a game of chicken with a US destroyer,
Speaker 1: and this was all the Hawks in the Johnson administration
Speaker 1: needed to pounce on the opportunity for a winnable symbolic
Speaker 1: fight against communism.
Speaker 9: Viewed hostile actions have today required me to order the
Speaker 9: military forces of the United States to take action and.
Speaker 1: Reply, leading to the official opening of the Vietnam conflict, at.
Speaker 2: Which point Patrick and I are still in the seminary,
Speaker 2: wet behind the ears. Jim naive about many things, including
Speaker 2: the war in Vietnam not resisting at all.
Speaker 1: Yet Throughout the fall of nineteen sixty four, tensions grew
Speaker 1: in Indo China. People who voted for Johnson thought he
Speaker 1: could get the Vietnam situation under control.
Speaker 2: The election in nineteen sixty four, Lyndon Johnson, the peace candidate,
Speaker 2: had just been elected. We thought that the resolution had
Speaker 2: just taken place. But in February of nineteen sixty five, Johnson,
Speaker 2: newly inaugurated for his own term as president, launched the
Speaker 2: war in Vietnam effect with a campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder.
Speaker 1: A bombing campaign of North Vietnam that was intended to
Speaker 1: last eight weeks, but that went on for three years.
Speaker 1: Many many people would later describe Rolling Thunder as the
Speaker 1: germ of their personal radicalization. Then one week into the
Speaker 1: bombing campaign, on March ninth, nineteen sixty five, Johnson authorized napalm,
Speaker 1: a combination of gasoline and melted styrofoam, which created a sticky,
Speaker 1: flammable jelly that burst from the bombs and tortured anyone
Speaker 1: it landed on. Napalm burns hotter and longer than gasoline alone,
Speaker 1: and is particularly effective as what the military calls an
Speaker 1: anti personnel weapon. In their common room, watching the first
Speaker 1: televised war, napalm was probably a big problem for Patrick,
Speaker 1: Floyd and Jim. The American bishops, led by card Spellman
Speaker 1: of New York, the de facto most powerful Catholic authority
Speaker 1: in the United States, had already come out in favor
Speaker 1: of the war, but with napalm, it quickly became clear
Speaker 1: that over in Vietnam, because of Rolling Thunder, this shit
Speaker 1: was sticking to children and burning them alive. And for
Speaker 1: the boys, it was probably really hard not to think
Speaker 1: maybe perhaps the Church was wrong on this one, and
Speaker 1: in Patrick's brain, the first molecule of descent beat to life.
Speaker 1: In November of nineteen sixty five, Americans began setting themselves
Speaker 1: on fire.
Speaker 2: Roger Lapourte Jim, who was a young Catholic worker in
Speaker 2: New York. He set himself aflame and he said to
Speaker 2: a bystander, as he was about to be immolated, Catholic worker,
Speaker 2: I did this as a religious act, and then he died.
Speaker 1: Roger Laporte was twenty two years old when he brought
Speaker 1: a can of gasoline to the United Nations Building, sat
Speaker 1: in the lotus position just like Tik Kwong Duk, and
Speaker 1: set himself on fire. The uproar was immediate.
Speaker 6: Now those of us who were involved in the anti
Speaker 6: Wah movement, Howard Zinn became conscious of these Americans who
Speaker 6: immolated themselves. They would sacrished their lives in order to
Speaker 6: bring to the attention of the American people that we
Speaker 6: were burning people in Vietnam. You know, while some people
Speaker 6: might have said, oh, well, this was a feutile gesture,
Speaker 6: or this was silly or wrong, or criticism made of
Speaker 6: people who did this, and yet they had a profound
Speaker 6: effect on many people. They had a profound effect well
Speaker 6: on Daniel Berrigan.
Speaker 1: Dan Berrigan was a forty four year old Jesuit priest
Speaker 1: in New York known at a time for his poetry.
Speaker 1: Berregan was invited to officiate Roger Laport's memorial service, and
Speaker 1: doing so caused an uproar. Here he is speaking about
Speaker 1: it on democracy now.
Speaker 15: And in the course of it, I cast doubt upon
Speaker 15: the judgment of the cardinal that there had been suicide.
Speaker 1: Roger Laporte's self immolation would thrust Dan Berigan into the
Speaker 1: center of the anti war movement. Patrick was in the
Speaker 1: seminary starting to hear about this rebel priest thumbing his
Speaker 1: nose at the most powerful cardinal in the United States.
Speaker 15: And there was panic in the authorities of the Archdiocese
Speaker 15: of New York.
Speaker 1: And in my order, it must have been like watching
Speaker 1: a fearless classmate talk back to a terrifying Vice Principal.
Speaker 2: Daniel Bergan refused to condemn it, and he prayed at
Speaker 2: Roger Laporte's funeral service, which was enough to get Cardinal
Speaker 2: Spelman enraged at him, and Cardinal Spelman pressured the Jesuits
Speaker 2: to send Berggin into exile. That made Berrigan famous.
Speaker 1: With Berrigan and other young priests on one side and
Speaker 1: Cardinal Spelman and the rest of the pro war American
Speaker 1: bishops on the other, Patrick saw the church splitting in
Speaker 1: half over this war.
Speaker 6: Their actions influenced people to think about the war and
Speaker 6: then to join the anti war movement.
Speaker 1: One thing was clear. All over the world people were burning.
Speaker 2: By November of that year, an anti war movement is beginning,
Speaker 2: just in its first phase.
Speaker 1: With their ordination around the corner, the boys felt themselves
Speaker 1: on a collision course with the world they no longer understood.
Speaker 1: By October of nineteen sixty seven, as the Church was
Speaker 1: tearing itself in half over the war, Patrick, Floyd and
Speaker 1: Jim had begun to radicalize and land decisively on the
Speaker 1: Daniel Berrigan side of the argument that lone beeping molecule
Speaker 1: of descent had started to flourish.
Speaker 8: They were of the time. They happened to be in seminary,
Speaker 8: but they were deeply.
Speaker 7: Of the time, and they had this extraordinary vehicle of
Speaker 7: the church to actually manifest what they were wanting.
Speaker 3: To do in the world.
Speaker 8: It was pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Paul the sixth would eventually encapsulate perfectly this feeling the
Speaker 1: boys were having with his famous exhortation, if you want peace,
Speaker 1: work for justice.
Speaker 7: I guess they really did think of themselves as real
Speaker 7: change agents. And I think even before they got ordained,
Speaker 7: they were already starting to understand the role that they
Speaker 7: could play, and they were starting to chomp at the bit.
Speaker 8: And they knew that they were.
Speaker 7: Coming into their own and coming into being priests at
Speaker 7: a time, a time like no other time, certainly like
Speaker 7: no other time in the church. They could step in
Speaker 7: in terms of their own leadership and have a phenomenal impact.
Speaker 8: And I think they knew that.
Speaker 1: On October third of sixty seven, Sergeant Shrever, the brother
Speaker 1: in law of JFK and Bobby, went to see Patrick
Speaker 1: perform with the Roman Callers on the Berkeley campus. On stage,
Speaker 1: Patrick gave a speech about the word love, and the
Speaker 1: next day Shriver quoted Patrick directly.
Speaker 17: Of course, the trouble with the word love is that
Speaker 17: people use it for all the wrong things.
Speaker 1: What you're hearing is archival footage from the Sergeant Shriver
Speaker 1: Peace Institute. This is Sergeant Shriver's voice speaking at Berkeley
Speaker 1: after the Roman Caller's concert, quoting Patrick.
Speaker 17: Pat said, the people over thirty years of age took
Speaker 17: a great word love and turned it ugly. They used
Speaker 17: it for dogs and toothpaste, and cigarettes and coffee and
Speaker 17: tennis and cars and lipstick.
Speaker 1: Kill. Love lost its meaning for Patrick, hearing his words
Speaker 1: come out of the mouth of a Kennedy in law
Speaker 1: and watching their effect on the audience must have been
Speaker 1: absolutely transformational.
Speaker 17: Buddy went on to say, they have yet to contaminate service.
Speaker 17: It's so contradictory to what they hold to be important.
Speaker 17: Service has no money in it. Service is so slavey,
Speaker 17: Service is so degrading. Service will never get you anywhere.
Speaker 17: Can service support a family? Can it buy a car?
Speaker 17: But service is the most noble of words, he said,
Speaker 17: because its meaning has not been destroyed.
Speaker 1: After hearing Sergeant Schreiber recite his words to a crowd
Speaker 1: at Berkeley, the fuse that had been lit inside of
Speaker 1: Patrick now detonated something inside of him, turning him into
Speaker 1: a wild haired priest ready to take on the world.
Speaker 17: It is.
Speaker 9: I shall not see and I will not accept denomination
Speaker 9: of my party.
Speaker 1: For March thirty first, nineteen sixty eight, Johnson announced he
Speaker 1: would not seek re election. Four days later, the Reverend
Speaker 1: doctor Martin Luther King, Junior was assassinated in Memphis Good Evening.
Speaker 9: The Reverend doctor Martin.
Speaker 15: Luther King, twenty minutes ago died.
Speaker 17: Martin Luther King was shot in and was killed tonight
Speaker 17: and remembered.
Speaker 1: Two months after that, on June fifth, nineteen sixty eight, Patrick,
Speaker 1: Floyd and Jim were made deacons, the last step before
Speaker 1: becoming priests. Soon they would be seen as authority figures
Speaker 1: in a world that was coming up heart at the seams,
Speaker 1: where once again a clergyman had died for his beliefs.
Speaker 1: That night, Bobby Kennedy was shot dead in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: His last words were, it is everybody all right? Is
Speaker 1: everybody all right?
Speaker 17: You know?
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty eight happened to death of doctor.
Speaker 7: King and the assassination of doctor King was assassinated, He
Speaker 7: was assassinated.
Speaker 8: It was it was just yellmen. He just couldn't take
Speaker 8: it all in heartbreaking and dark and scary, and that
Speaker 8: year was one thing after another.
Speaker 3: Of horrifying event.
Speaker 1: One night, Patrick found himself alone in the seminary garden
Speaker 1: and decided to allow doubt with a capital D to
Speaker 1: flood his system.
Speaker 8: He didn't know if he should really make the commitment.
Speaker 3: He didn't know if he could do it.
Speaker 8: I mean, just was so huge.
Speaker 7: He couldn't believe he could really make this kind of
Speaker 7: commitment to celibacy, to the life, to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: His ordination was coming up in February, and it suddenly
Speaker 1: started to feel like the edge of a terrifying cliff.
Speaker 7: He was sitting in the garden there and like really
Speaker 7: sort of pleading with God that he needed a sign
Speaker 7: or something because he couldn't make the decision. And he said,
Speaker 7: honest to God, as soon as he sort of said
Speaker 7: that pleading prayer, every light in the place goes on on.
Speaker 1: With such an unmistakable sign from the man upstairs. Patrick
Speaker 1: could plunge headlong into a life.
Speaker 8: Of the cloth and come to find out somebody had
Speaker 8: leaned against a switch that flipped on the lights that
Speaker 8: lit the hole outside.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it wasn't a sign, but he took the
Speaker 1: plunge anyway.
Speaker 7: He decided to make the commitment and to do it.
Speaker 1: And finally, on February twenty third, nineteen sixty nine, Patrick, Floyd,
Speaker 1: and Jim were ordained into the Congregation of Saint Paul.
Speaker 4: So off to New York.
Speaker 1: We went to Floyd.
Speaker 4: You know, you signed a certain seat and you're called up.
Speaker 1: All the soon to be priests lay on their stomachs
Speaker 1: with their arms outstretched.
Speaker 3: I remember being there.
Speaker 1: Patrick's sister Joanne, and.
Speaker 3: I remember the solemnity of it. It seemed so huge,
Speaker 3: that something so big was happening.
Speaker 4: And we're called one by one, and the Bishop puts
Speaker 4: his hands on our heads.
Speaker 3: Like the sense of the ancient Church's history, all the
Speaker 3: blessings that could ever come to a person get ministered
Speaker 3: to the one to be receiving the ordination.
Speaker 4: And says certain prescribed prayers which ordains this.
Speaker 1: It was snowing outside Saint Paul the Apostles Church, two
Speaker 1: blocks from Columbus Circle in New York City. Inside, laying
Speaker 1: face down on the floor, Patrick had no way of
Speaker 1: knowing what the future held. He had no idea he
Speaker 1: would be sent to the Polist Center in downtown Boston
Speaker 1: with a mandate from the Order to make change, only
Speaker 1: to find a building full of old priests who in
Speaker 1: fact hated change. All he knew was that the bishop
Speaker 1: was about to place his hands on Patrick's head and
Speaker 1: turn him into a Roman Catholic priest.
Speaker 3: When the hands of the Bishop are laid on Patrick,
Speaker 3: it was just as if all of the history of
Speaker 3: the Church and everything descends, and there is this palpable
Speaker 3: feeling of presence that this is what is coming to bear,
Speaker 3: that this is the line that he has entered into
Speaker 3: this line that went all the way back to well,
Speaker 3: I suppose Jesus Christ. It's very powerful and it was
Speaker 3: so very serious, and he took it, absorbed it. He
Speaker 3: just had that feeling like he became that witch, he
Speaker 3: that which he worked for, you know, aimed for.
Speaker 18: And really thought he was unworthy. And then it was
Speaker 18: so empowering because then he absorbed it and became that,
Speaker 18: you know, and I think it just accentuated the power
Speaker 18: of who he was already, So it made him stronger
Speaker 18: and deepened his courage. I was thinking of his courage
Speaker 18: this week because he seemed to have so much courage,
Speaker 18: just the sailing alone, just going out, depending on your
Speaker 18: ability to capture the wind.
Speaker 1: Divine Intervention is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Wonder Media Network. It was created and written by me,
Speaker 1: your host, Brendan Patrick Hughes. Our Unwavering producers Our Carmen
Speaker 1: Borca Korea, Abby Delk Palomo Moreno, Jimenez, Grace Lynch, and myself.
Speaker 1: Our editor is the Unstoppable Grace Lynch for Wonder Media Network.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Emily Rudder and Jenny Kaplan for
Speaker 1: iHeart podcasts. Our executive producer is Christina Everett for Dwight
Speaker 1: Street Book Club. Our executive producer is Rolin Jones. Vocal
Speaker 1: arrangements and special performance of Silent Night by the brilliant
Speaker 1: Morris Miley, Kai Fukuda and friends. Thanks to the Sergeant
Speaker 1: Schrever Peace Institute for their collaboration. Our theme and end
Speaker 1: credit music was composed and performed by the glorious Tanya Donnelly.
Speaker 1: It was mastered by Ben Errens. This is Brendan Patrick Hughes.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Divine Intervention.