Free Boy Crucified by Jerome Wilde Page B

problems with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which was also proclaimed at about that time. So they broke away. We call them Old Catholics now. Of course, you have the whole Protestant thing, the Anglicans, all the rest of it. Vatican II produced its own unhappy people, and they were just the latest in a long line of what we used to call hell-bound heretics. Now we just call them our ‘separated brethren’.”
    He fell silent and seemed to be trying to remember something.
    “We had a group come by here, maybe five years ago,” he said, frowning. “Can’t remember who they were. But they were traditionalists. They wanted to buy St. Joseph’s from us. Offered us a ridiculously low purchase price. We sat around the table and laughed about it. They wanted to set up some traditionalist nuns here, or something. Of course we said no. But we were impressed by them. Two of their priests came, wearing cassocks, like the old days, with Roman collars. Knew their theology, weren’t shy about sharing it. Knew Latin. All their seminarians are taught Latin. They were respectful, but you could see they were looking down their noses at us.”
    “You don’t remember who they were?”
    “Can’t remember now, but they bought a property about three blocks down the street from here. Got a sign out front. You could go talk to them.”
    Seeing Fr. Cyrus always brought back many memories. After being taken away from my mother, I was sent to a boy’s home, where Fr. Cyrus was the chaplain. Because I was Catholic, he had taken a special interest in me. On my part, I had fallen in love with him—a true-blue crush—despite the fact that he was in his midfifties and not at all interested in me in a sexual way.
    I chuckled.
    “What?” he asked.
    “I was thinking about that time, after Mass, when I took all my clothes off.”
    He chuckled along with me.
    After serving one of his Sunday Masses, we both went back to the sacristy to get changed. I went a bit too far and took off all my clothes, my horrible erection impossible to miss. I told him I loved him and wanted him to “make love” to me. I all but begged him to molest me. What I needed, and didn’t know at the time, was for someone to touch me, to hold me, to reassure me. I went at it in the only way I knew, a crude, stupid, bumbling way.
    “I had such a crush on you,” I said.
    “I knew that.”
    “And you were very nice.”
    He had merely told me to put my clothes back on. Afterward, he had hugged me for a long time, rubbing at my hair, telling me that he loved me like a father, and that I didn’t need to do anything silly to get his attention. I cried. He knew what I needed, even though I didn’t. Despite what I had just done, he told me I was a good kid, and that God loved me very much and always would. He even signed me out of the home that day and took me to lunch at McDonald’s. Then we went to St. Joseph’s and I sat in his office and told him everything about my life, everything my mother had done, some of which he already knew, most of which he did not. I had gotten myself so worked up that he made me lie down on the couch in the brothers’ living room, and he sat with me, holding my hand, until I fell asleep.
    “How are you doing?” he asked very quietly.
    I could never lie to him, so I didn’t answer.
    “You heard from your mother lately?”
    “She stabbed me yesterday with a syringe.”
    “What on earth for?”
    “She just got out of prison. She wanted money. I said no.”
    “And that’s the one thing you never get to say to your mother, isn’t it?”
    It was indeed.
    I looked at him, not taking my eyes away. I didn’t want to be sitting here talking about my problems. “What can I do to help you?” I asked.
    “Nothing,” he said. “Just be happy, Thomas. That’s all. Just find some way to be happy, and to love God again.”
    “I’m trying,” I said.
    “The last time we talked, you were going on about the Hare Krishnas.”
    “Yes. I