The Really Nice Guy with glasses and acne scars. The Earnest Thinker with shock of graying hair and a mustache. The Brilliant Theologian with bald head and whiskey nose. The Progressive Cleric, he of the graying pony tail and lively expression. And where did Matt fit in? Young Father Who-Would-Have-Thought-It? More than one parishioner brave enough to watch a rerun of The Thorn Birds had looked at him with an edgy speculation.
"You must be Matt."
Progressive Cleric came over to shake his hand. Naturally, he clapped Matt's upper arm with the other hand. Progressive Cleric had been a charismatic athletic coach too. Young people had adored him. He was so cool for a priest!
"Welcome," the man went on. "I'm Nick Benedict."
They all gathered around then--Really Nice Guy, whose name was Jerry. Earnest Thinker, aka Paul, squinting through his trifocals, pumping Matt's hand. Brilliant Theologian, saddled with the overtly Catholic name of Damien, abstracted and just cool enough to make the sheen on his bald head look like glare ice from a Chicago winter. The man closest to Matt's age, around forty, was tall, slightly overstuffed and had a mustache. Norbert.
Matt let some coffee drip into a Styrofoam cup while he gathered his wits. Except for Norbert, these guys were all at least twenty years older than Matt was. He didn't belong here.
This was a mistake, but he was stuck with it.
Folding chairs shrilled protest as they were dragged into a circle on the empty floor.
"We start with a group therapy go-round," Nick said, grinning.
"No props but java and honesty. We're used to it, but it might be off-putting for a newbie."
"I'm not a 'newbie.' I'm . . . an ex-oldie."
"Ohol Matt's seen the therapy square dance." Paul expertly balanced the flimsy coffee container on his knee. "A veteran."
"I hadn't expected to be the youngest," Matt said.
"We hadn't expected it either," Jerry put in gently. Jerry would always be the peacemaker.
"Yeah," Nick said, laughing. "You must have just been coming in when we were going out.
Kinda like me and smoking; l started just when the Surgeon General's report saying we shouldn't smoke came out in the sixties. Are you as contrary a jackass as l am, Matt?"
"Swimming against the tide. The best always do," Damien put in. With authority.
Matt dragged his own tortured chair into the circle, wishing he dared leave.
But it was his turn to talk. "Yeah. There were almost more women in seminary than men when I went in. Just . . . getting the theological education, of course. Not expecting to be priests."
"Women priests!" Brilliant Theologian Damien looked pained. "God help us; that may he all we have left."
"I suppose gays are still one step below women in the church hierarchy," Norbert noted.
Matt knew that many gay men had entered the priesthood after the first wave of priests had left in the sixties, but the unspoken policy had always been "don't ask, don't tell," long before the military thought of it. He supposed one way of coming "out" was leaving the priesthood.
Nick shook his trendy head. "Don't scare Matt. We're really a pushover group. Being an ex-priest makes it hard to look down on anybody for any position--political, personal, or sexual.
For a start, why don't you tell us why you left."
"I can't."
They gazed at him, unconvinced and waiting.
"Not without saying why I entered. It's not a concrete process, like going in a door and out a door, is it?"
Paul nodded. "We talk about it in terms of either in or out, but it's never that simple."
"It's a revolving door, Matt." Nick grinned. "Not a door that just opens and shuts, but one in eternal motion. Believe it or not, sometimes you can feel more a part of the church after you've left."
"Politics," Damien grumbled.
"Lots of politics," Nick agreed. "Everywhere."
Matt was shocked to find himself in the company of men who enjoyed discussing theories and verities again. Why had they all made the wrong life choice, then, if they were so smart?
"How did you leave?" Norbert asked, nursing his coffee cup.
"The hard way." Matt laughed softly. "I was laicized."
"Good for you!" Nick looked ready to clap his arm again. Luckily, he was three chairs away.
What a relief to talk to people who know what that word means, or even how to spell it.
Being laicized was an achievement. Most priests just left, but Matt had gone through the official process of asking to leave, and had been granted permission. The difference was like getting certified as a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War, rather than just fleeing to Canada to escape the draft.
"I don't know how 'good' it was," Matt added. "That was just how it worked out. I came to see that my vocation, sincere enough when I was young, was really an escape from an abusive family situation. I was looking for a heavenly father. I was afraid of being a father. I was hiding in the Lord."
"Isn't that what He's there for?" asked Brilliant Theologian.
Matt felt momentarily trapped into giving the catechism answer, but didn't. "Then why wasn't that enough?" he said instead.
"For any of us?"
Silence. He was the raw recruit, freshly AWOL. They were veterans of leaving without leave.
Father figures, except none of them appealed to him in that way anymore. Maybe he didn't need the roles of Father, or even Son, in his life anymore, in himself.
"I'm . . . embarrassed." Matt admitted. "I came to the priesthood after everybody else was losing faith. I feel like a throwback. Like a fool."
"There's no fool like a holy fool," Brilliant Theologian joked.
Matt shrugged. "If only I could be that blessedly idiotic."
They sat silent in their circle, on metal chairs, cosseting ersatz coffee cups.
"Maybe I shouldn't have come," Matt said.
"Look," Nick said, "there aren't that many of us in this area.
Las Vegas is one of those oasis cities: one bright dot in the middle of nothing. Literally nothing. Norbert drove in from Arizona. Jerry's from Booma, California. I'm from Tonopah and Damien's from way up by Reno. We may seem a rather paltry group, but We're all we have.
Everybody's case is individual. Like, you're the only one among us from an abusive family."
"Thanks. And it wasn't that abusive a situation. it was one guy. My stepfather. And he was a piker. I'm talking yelling, a little hitting, nothing demonically sadistic, just--"
"Just enough to make every living thing around him cringe constantly," Damien said, nodding. "I had an uncle like that. It's not good, Matt, even if it doesn't set a record."
Matt nodded. "I've been working on that. That's why I'm here in Nevada, actually. He, my stepfather, just loved Las Vegas. I . . . found him. And that's when I found out that he wasn't the main problem, not really."
"You're not blaming yourself?" Nick's wrinkled brow showed concern made incarnate.
"God, no!" Here, such expletives didn't sound like swearing, just emphasis. "And it wasn't my mother's fault or mine. It was the times, or, rather, the behind-the-times. A man was head of the family, right or wrong. A woman had to have a man in her life, right or wrong. A kid had to feel responsible, rightly or wrongly. I understand that I fled to the vocation. I accept that maybe that's why that option was there, that maybe it was always a temporary sanctuary instead of the lifelong commitment I thought I was capable of making. I thank God for giving me an out when I so desperately needed one, but . . . I grew enough to know that I was hiding, not committing. So I made my case and left, with the blessings of the church, who could ask for anything more?"
"An ex-priest could," Nick said, laughing again. "Why are you here?"
"My spiritual director from seminary--my ex-priest spiritual director--told me about this group. And, I'm at loose ends now that I've left the priesthood. There's so much I don't know how to do."
"Like?"
"Earn a living. Set up a place to live."