Thursday, February 14, 2013

Brother Donald

With the news today that the Los Angeles Archdiocese has released MORE names of molesting priests, I decided to check around and soon discovered that TWO of my high school teachers were reported by multiple witnesses. One of them was a really arrogant dick who tried to keep me off the school paper; the other was just mildly arrogant, and difficult to picture as a molester.

If you include the fact that Father Falvey at Blessed Sacrament, once having been called "the most evil priest who ever lived" (are they counting the Inquisition?) was still at school when John and I attended, that's quite a few molesting priests to have been surrounded by.

However - and of course - there were good, kind, and supportive priests and brothers.  I was emailing with my sister Louisa and I told her about Brother Donald, who came into Daniel Murphy High School in my sophomore year.  He was outspoken, flamboyant, and a very free thinker and speaker.  He caused a minor scandal when he started teaching us about philosophers like Hegel and Nietzsche and Existentialism in Religion class.  He was short, with red hair that he grew into a frizzy red-fro, and came off like a toned-down Elton John in robes.

I formed a connection with Brother Don (maybe because I actually read books?), and he once took me on a "field trip" to see his old seminary (St. John's in Camarillo, where I'd been before) and to have dinner with his family. More importantly, when I got caught up in my first girlfriend's horrible druggy lifestyle, Donald immediately noticed the change and hauled me into his office for a much-needed wake-up call.

Louisa suggested I look him up online, and I found him very quickly.  He'd long since become Father Donald: he's 65, and still attending to priestly duties. However, he's beginning to suffer from Parkinson's, a challenge he's facing with the same good cheer I remember from almost 40 years ago.

When I sent him a link to my ELMWOOD page with the picture of myself at 14, he wrote back and said: "That's how I remember you - a little shit!"


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