The Good Soldier

I was nine years old, in the spring of fourth grade, when World War II ended. My St. James Grade School sold so many war bonds that we got to fly the Minute Man flag at City Hall—we outsold the rest of the schools in the city, including public schools four times larger than ours.

I watched the progress of our forces through Europe and the Pacific, and played with miniature planes. I can still describe the P-51 Mustang which I thought looked really neat, the P-38 with its dual fuselage, the B-17 with its gun turrets on all sides, and the B-29, which carried the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I imagined being in the war and sacrificing  my life for the country. There was a book, They Were Expendable, which summarized my ideal: when the nation requires it, you are expendable. 

That set me up for later things in my life. The Franciscan Province sent me to Harvard—I would obey, even though prospects of success didn’t seem bright—who knows, I could even lose my faith.

In 1978 I was living with the community at Our Lady of Angels Seminary a mile north of Quincy College. The Province asked me to become “guardian” (superior) of the Franciscan community at Quincy College. There were thirty-two friars in the community, and they were split sixteen to sixteen on their choice of guardian. I was the dark horse brought in to break the tie.

I accepted the position. I was the Good Soldier, ready to do anything they asked of me. As I look back on the six years I was in that role, I almost shudder.

Example. The Province was dealing with the problem of alcoholism among the friars. The experts said that sometimes a friar has to be forced to go into treatment. Two friars during my tenure seemed to require treatment—I railroaded them into treatment—no thought of how they felt about it—there was a way to deal with it, I followed the plan.

Twenty years later  I was preparing to give a talk at Christian Family Camp to a group of adults, most of whom were parents. I had accepted Father John Joe Lakers’s definition of intimacy—intimacy is passionate, respectful, vulnerable, faithful involvement. From sociology I had developed a definition of power: power is the ability to punish, and punishment requires threatening or inflicting pain.

How do you reconcile intimacy with the reality that sometimes a parent has to use power to get a child to do something? A revelation came to me in the form of a sentence: “The rose bush of intimacy gives rise to the thorn of power in order to protect the rose.” Translated: you shouldn’t use power until you can relate lovingly with a person. When you use power prematurely, it is oppressive.

As guardian, I was acting as an administrator, carrying out the duties of making sure the friars got fed. Sure, I knew I was supposed to love them, just as I was supposed to love my students and all the other people I met. But the love was abstract, theoretical, so it got pushed to the background. 

The Good Soldier did not have to worry about intimacy. The focus was on your own willingness to sacrifice yourself—there was no reflection about the people you met.

The Lone Ranger (radio version) was another hero of my youth. The Lone Ranger rode into town, got rid of the Bad Guys—not killing them—the Lone Ranger always shot the guns out of the hands of the Bad Guys—and then the Lone Ranger rode out of town. “Heigh-O Silver, away!” No involvement.

I would be the lone ranger priest.

Those old childhood scripts stay with us. They’re not always as admirable as we thought they were.