“Yes?”
“It felt…” I took a deep breath. “It feltperfect. I mean that literally. I have never before felt so close to another person in those moments. And I started to understand how messed up and twisted my view before was, how I’ve internalized a million negative messages about sex, about—aboutenjoyingsex, but now I’m afraid I—I’m think I—”
Father Mike leaned forward in his chair with an encouraging smile. “What are you so scared of, Aidan?”
I couldn’t keep the words in; they tumbled out of me. “I think I’m in love. But Ican’tbe in love.” I put my face in my hands, afraid to see his reaction.
“‘Love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and—’”
“‘Knows God.’ Yes.” I looked up again, desperate. “But Ican’tlove him. I’m about to become a priest! Even if I were in love, I could never give him the kind of relationship he deserves, and he—his job—” I shook my head helplessly. “And on top of all that, there’s a part of me that I can’t block out, that tells me last nightwassinful and wrong and against God’s law—”
Father Mike snorted derisively, and I stopped mid-flow. “The part of you saying that is one that you’ve cultivated carefully over the years, and it’s been watered with care by your superiors. But that doesn’t make it right.” He paused, thinking, then said, “Consider a garden, Aidan. Many things grow in a garden. But weeds and thorns and choking vines will grow just as strong as flowers and vegetables and trees if we let them. Some ideas take root, like weeds, and take over our minds. Sometimes we don’t even know theyareweeds until the whole garden is full of them.”
“Are you saying…thattwo millenniaof Catholic theology is a bunch of weeds?”
“I’m saying we live in the twenty-first century, not the first. And that you should be very careful which thoughts and beliefs you let take over your mind. That isallI am saying.”
I hung my head, still unconvinced.
“Let me ask you this,” Father Mike said at last. “Why do you want to become a priest?”
“Because God called me.”
“And what is it that God has called you to do?” I shrugged. We’d been through that conversation before. “You could have chosen to enter an order,” he continued. “Lived in a community of your brothers rather than serve as a diocesan priest, or thrown yourself into contemplation. Why didn’t you do that?”
“Because God called me to serve the community,” I said. “You know that. I’ve told you that before.”
“Yes, you have. You also told me you believed he had called you, specifically, to serveourcommunity. All those people who don’t feel like they fit under that neat little cis-hetero label. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Then perhaps it’s time to think about how you can best serve that communityas they are. Not as the Church would prefer them to be. And how you can serve them asyouare, not as you would prefer to be. Let me remind you, Aidan, of what Saint Augustine said: that we are neither body nor soul, but both. The flesh and the spirit cannot be parted, and not all of us are called to celibacy.”
He stood up, and I did too, though I was still confused and still angry—at him, at myself, at the Church. “I don’t understand.”
“Then look to God and ask him to show you your heart, Aidan. I don’t have the answers for you. I’ve told you what I believe, and what we believe here at Catholic Pride. It’s time now for you to discover whatyoubelieve. And remember—discover, uncover, notdecide. You cannotthinkyourself to God.”
I hadn’t understood that either, at the time, and went blankly out into the hallway once I had shaken hands. How could my faithnotbe born out of my thoughts?
I looked at Róisín now, and remembered some of Finch’s many disparaging comments about her. He thought that her shutting herself away in a religious order was a weakness, that she had more to contribute to the world and that her contemplative order was merely a way to hide from the sins of her family.
But who were we to judge her? She’d put her sister Tara before her own desires, left her order and come to help even though it would endanger her place with the Poor Clares. She had never said a word against the Morelli men, or myself, although my conduct wasclearlyunbecoming for a priest.
“How did you know?” I blurted out, and when she looked up, I added, “I mean, that God was calling you to—to the Poor Clares?”
She thought about it. “I just knew,” she said in the end. “I knew in my heart what God wanted me to do. It wasn’t easy,” she continued slowly, looking past me. “Tara and Finch, I know they think I’m running away from the world.” I bit my lips together, but Róisín was still staring at the door, as though she could see through it. “But it wasn’t that at all. If that was all I wanted, I could have gone back to South America, where I was working in a Catholic community. But I heard it, clear as day.” She looked at me then, her beautiful eyes slightly unfocused, ethereal. “God, speaking to me.Callingme, by name. Telling me to give up the world and pray for my family, pray for their souls without ceasing.” She smiled. “But I don’t need to tell you what it’s like, do I? When God speaks, it’s unmissable.”
It took me a moment before I replied. “Yes,” I said at last. “Yes, it’s quite clear.”
“I lied again,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“About the door. I do know the code.”
Hope leaped in me. Perhaps I could get out, see what was going on. Apologize to Conor for some of the things I’d said to him when he’d first proposed locking me in here. They hadn’t been verypriestly. “What is it?”
“Oh, I’m not going to tell you,” she said, surprised. “I just thought you should know that I lied. Sorry.”
