A good priest

June 16

There was mention of Joe H. at mass on Sunday. Father Joe. A good man and a good priest, of compassion and courage. He ran afoul of diocesan authorities for his attempts to minister to homosexuals.

What actually happened was he caught the attention of a handful of truly rabid homophobes, who then, as guardians of orthodoxy, took as their blood mission to run him out of the priesthood. The bishop was not strong enough to stand up to them, was in fact enraged at having been put in the position of having to do so. Joe was to him a problem priest, and was soon disappeared. He has now surfaced in New Jersey, where one presumes that there are other voices in addition to the homophobic. He is still, thank God for the rest of us, a priest.

I wish I had been close enough with him that we could’ve remained friends. That would’ve been some kind of break for me, a break from reticence. Those are my second and third responses to hearing his name; pangs of regret. (My first response was to remember him fondly.)

I tend to blame myself, but in truth, I tried to start a relationship with Joe. Invited him over for dinner, more than once. Engaged him in email correspondence. Approached him on the running trail. We became friendly, but not friends. He had too many sheep to tend, and was in some ways more guarded than I was.

During those dinners here, he opened up. Literally took off his collar and lounged on the sofa, his thick gray hunting socks and huge pale calves protruding from his too-short black pant legs: the image of a New Jersey farm boy. Plied with a bit of Scotch, he dished the dirt, compared being called before the bishop to “getting into a pissing match with a skunk,” and also spoke sanely and sensitively and with conviction about important things. He especially liked Lola, in part, I think, because she is not Catholic. She liked him too, always favored him with a warm hug after mass. But when those dinners were over, the veil went back up.

We knew nothing, really, of his troubles—except what appeared in the newspaper: scathing letters to the editor written by his enemies and the tepid responses from the chancery. Knew that he was unhappy as a diocesan priest, heard that he had tried to join the Maryknolls and was rejected. In preparation for that application, he had gone to South America to study Spanish, and picked up an intestinal bug, and lost a lot of weight. (He was pleased afterward, said he’d been trying to lose.)

And then he disappeared. Eventually I discovered by googling him a couple of snippets indicating that he had gone back to New Jersey, but there was nothing definitive until this past Sunday, when our deacon mentioned that he had come for a visit. I was sorry that I had missed him.