Going off to the seminary when I had just turned thirteen might have seemed stupid. But the decision felt like a response to a calling. I didn’t think God was stupid and my mother was all for it. At that point in my life I’d never call Him anything but Lord, as in “Lord, please help me pass this geometry test.”

So there I was, in the freshman class, living in a big dormitory room with about fifteen other boys, donning a cassock every morning and heading off to Mass and prayers and breakfast. This was followed by a rigorous day of rigidly structured high-level classes. Including geometry.

Theorems are a big part of that subject – propositions that are not self-evident but proved by logic – and it took me three years to decide, despite the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and his band of logicians, that it was mighty hard to logically prove God existed.

I did okay in that very tough school. Friends were made, and enemies. The teachers were all priests. I never witnessed any of the incidents that later gave rise to accusations and criminal charges. There were, however, rumors. 

My biggest problem was doubt. And finally doubt won. Quitting St. Andrew’s wasn’t easy. Jesus, I had to face my mother and my pastor back home. My mom cried a little every day for a week or so. But old Father Jake shrugged and asked if I wanted to go fishing, said that I should drive because he’d had too much brandy. So we went down to Long Pond and caught some perch. I didn’t have a license to fish or drive yet. It was a small town. Nobody cared much.

That fall, my senior year, now in public school, Father Jake asked me to teach CCD classes, ninth and tenth grade kids. He said I could bring them the news about the Commandments, with emphasis on number IX. Catholics embellish that one with all those rules about fornication and masturbation. As kids we coveted everything, and that commandment was very important.

“I’m not even sure I believe in God anymore,” I said to Jake, “and you want to put me in that classroom?”

“You know the material,” he said. “You can try to protect those girls from getting pregnant and show the boys how to be less obnoxious.”

In my classroom a few girls, the empty-faced seeking ones, were enthralled with Jesus and Mary and God and being holy virgins. But I managed to find one who wasn’t.

I left home in June, the day after graduation. My Magdalene and I were practically engaged. But she didn’t wait long to find a new guy. In September, she wrote me a good-riddance letter full of sexy details. I didn’t even pray, Please Lord, make her come back to me.

Instead, my teenage sadness was replaced by cheap beer shared with the college girls who lived just behind the cathedral in Orlando. I went there sometimes to find a little peace and quiet.