Amen's Boy. William Maltese
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He’s not bothering you.” These words of my father ignited a furnace. My brother leapt across the room, squatting down on the floor. He put his eyes directly into my eyes and called me a “Faggot!” Then from his frog-like squatting position he rose rapidly, swirling his entire body weight upward, landing a mighty uppercut to my father’s face, knocking his glasses off, breaking them. Daddy’s nose began to bleed profusely. My daddy let out a whimpering cry, and then he fell to the floor moaning, “Oh Bubba! You broke my nose!”
My brother jumped into his blue jeans and black high-top tennis shoes, pulled a black tee shirt over his muscular shoulders and chest, and took off in his Simca.
The days of life at home were often occasions for my victimization. This contrasted with Father Terry’s interest in me. How I became a counselee of his was an odd turn of events. His music and hospitality surprised even me. What was supposed to be discipline and correction of my behavior by him, turned into a boon.
Sister Ida had it in for me. She set me up to be seen for counseling by one of the parish priests at Assisi. She taught Bubba years before and expected the same trouble out of me she’d had from him. She referred me to Father Damian, a strict and harsh man, a Jesuit away from his own kind, doing parish work. But Father Damian was sick with the flu and I was referred to Father Terry instead. I was very afraid. I had a secret I was ashamed of.
Sister Ida reported me for sexual misconduct during her religion class. It was not true. I had a problem at home, no doubt, addicted as I was to masturbation in the bathroom. I never did anything sexual in class; only my penis would stiffen suddenly without provocation, and would be stuck in some cramped bent angle in my jeans. It hurt like hell, so I would wait for her to face the black board, then tugged my crotch and zipper enough to make room for myself, to straighten it out, and stop the pain. She thought I was getting aroused on purpose and playing with it. I was new at this spontaneous erection business, and I thought it very cruel of her to report me to the priest. I didn’t know this was the charge she put against me, not at first, but in sessions with Father I soon learned Ida’s wrathful lies about me.
CHAPTER FOUR
PERSONAL SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
My grooming as a special “priest boy” began about three years before I left for Mettray from Assisi. I was picked by Father Terry from out of the ranks of the seventh grade. Angry Sister Ida, who disliked me very much, remembering my unmanageable older brother, expected trouble from me. Suddenly one day without provocation she slapped me across my face as I stood in line silently. I was so humiliated and shocked that I just walked straight out of the classroom and out of the school’s front door. Sister Ida yelled my name, “Thaddeus, you come back here right now!” I walked directly home, ignoring her.
As a result of this, she was admonished by the Right Reverend Monsignor Pastor Morreau, who happened to be a classmate friend of my dad’s. However, Sister Ida didn’t let go of the grudge she formed against me and soon she lied to the priest about me. She told him I was playing with myself inappropriately.
I was called to Father Terry’s office. I’ll never forget the day, at 2:30 p.m. on a Thursday, October 2nd, while the other students had final period religion class, I was to speak to the priest about “self-abuse.”
I confessed, and Father Terry was kind to me, forgiving me in the name of Jesus, and telling me that we’d be meeting every Thursday from then on at 2:15 p.m. This seemed good to me. What had been dreaded turned out to be pleasurable.
His office was like a den, and it was air-conditioned in the sweltering summer heat, and he played music, and we drank cold milk or Cokes.
I have to mitigate the desire to fill in all the details about this time in my life. Everything seems important and meaningful. I wasn’t only running from a torturous home life, but I was enthusiastically moving forward to Mettray and to the priesthood. It is difficult to say anything bad about my father, especially since he is gone, and I miss him. He was a critical and angry force in my life. I didn’t know he was in pain; perhaps when I recognized that, I viewed him more compassionately and changed my expectations, how I dealt with him, but that didn’t happen until years after I left home for Mettray and got professional help relating to him.
He had to deal with my older brother. Bubba defeated him often in their war of wills. It was a psychologically unsophisticated time in the United States, and Bubba’s behavior was not, in that time in the 1950s, seen or heard as a plea or cry for help with his inner demons.
The positive acceptance and comfortable and safe atmosphere of the rectory appealed to me instantly. I had no adjustment problems in becoming a regular visitor to Father Terry. I cannot say I had a hard choice to make to lean in the direction of my priest; I treasured his affectionate hugs and frequent intimate sessions counseling me. There was no comparison to what I endured daily as a child in my family home. I beg God to forgive me telling these true stories of my life, putting my own family in such a sorry light, but there is a greater reason than my reputation or my family’s reputation. This story must be told truthfully. The truth must out! The truth must be and will be told in detail, if reluctantly.
Before I set this story down on paper, for moral reasons, I wrote letters to many of the people in this story, forgiving them any wrong they might have done to me. I wish to tell this story with a clear conscience; it is not told in a spirit of retaliation, revenge, or hatred. No, it is told because the meaning of my search for a true vocation, and my search for physical and emotional safety are themes much larger than me as an individual. My story, unfolding before you, has in it a meaning and substance that could ease some human suffering. If I had lived a life free of pain, and had I lived a life free of isolation and solitude, illness and despair, I would have no motivation to write this. I suffered because of ignorance. A book such as this could have forestalled my incapacity. Ignorance was my middle name, however.
The ignorance was not only my own, but also my parents’ ignorance, the church’s ignorance, the ignorance of my peers. The Dark Ages existed around me and surrounded the themes of my life in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
I was being groomed for the seminary, and for other things. It is the “other things” which I believe might surprise you. A boy can have secret experiences with an adult in a position of high trust.
There are many persons who have walked along the sidewalk, smelling the odor of red bricks on the rectory front porch in the summer heat, and then into the buzzing cool atmosphere of the cold refreshing priest’s office. However, at the time of my first beginning this process I didn’t know any other boy in the world who had a similar problem or a life like my own. Walking up to the rectory was like approaching a King’s castle, a foreign fortress.
To me at eleven, it was fun getting to hang out with Father Terry, sometimes twice a week in his office; the invitation was not for once but as many times as I needed to discuss my sexual urges and report to him when they were at their peak so I could receive support from him to abstain from “self-abuse.”
I told him every time I had “irregular emotions” or practiced sinful “self-abuse.” Immediately I felt relief. Many years later, my best friend shocked me one day in the last year of the twentieth century when he said, “You were sexually and physically and emotionally abused!” It can take a lifetime to recall traumatic injuries.
The dimension of all this was greater than one boy’s ego or needs. I had a role model now, Father Terry, and this gave my world a feeling of solidity that no fists or spitting could take away. I studied the Church’s teachings, my religion, liturgy, Latin, and totally identified with the Holy Roman Catholic Church in my love for Jesus Christ, my compassion for the poor, and my desire to grow up to be a priest to help the unfortunate, and those who suffered. I thought mostly in terms of the poor, but poverty was recognizable to me as a boy in things like loss of hope, or feelings of entrapment. I had both a concrete image of how I wanted to live my life, as a priest at the altar, but also as an activist, helping the poor. I went with the Sisters of Charity to the hill people around Assisi, and I went with Father Terry to many shanty-style shacks to visit the sick and bring them communion. I assisted in his administering of the last sacraments.
I believed