SACRILEGIOUS: Confessions of a Roman Catholic Seminarian

Chapter I: Crossing the Threshold of Hope

It was an odd way to start a conversation. I almost couldn't tell if he was threatening me or telling one extra dry joke. Jokes that are always so characteristic of him. 

​We're sitting in the coach section of the airplane and Gregory Anderson says. "I read your letter."

​"Excuse me?" I stop chewing my gum.

​"This morning. In the refectory. It wasn't intentional."

​"My letter?"

​"Well, I had kitchen duties every day this week," he says "and when you got up from eating at your table you left a mess. Wrinkled napkins, plates, coffee mug, the newspaper."
​I stare at the seat's headrest inches from my face in front of me. He drums his fingers on his knee.

​"Why the fake name on the letter?" he asks.

"It's still your handwriting anyone who knows you would have been able to figure that out."

​Well obviously, so that people like Gregory Anderson would not be able to identify me. Clearly, I had not made my handwriting ugly enough. Why a letter? Well because I thought that would be a safe way to communicate something without it being screenshotted or forwarded by accident. And I was a dumbass for believing that would be safe enough.

​He smiles at me. "Anyways, I thought you might feel safer if I told you my sister is a lesbian."

​I don't answer him. He shrugs his shoulder and looks at me.

​"What are you saying Greg?" I ask.

​"Nothing, it's just I pray for her conversion every day. I have nothing against my sister or those people. I don't agree with her sins, but I love her. I will also pray for you. This changes nothing between us."

​Her conversion. Her sins. He prays for her every day. It almost made me laugh.

It didn't change anything? I cringe at just the idea, even I knew that was a lie. This changed everything, I could already see myself sitting in front of my bishop explaining this letter. Of course, all of that depended whether Gregory Anderson could keep his mouth shut. Maybe he should go on a lifelong silent retreat then I would be safe.

​"It was not my intention to make this uncomfortable, we are on the same peer support group. You can always talk to me."

I didn't even know how to reply to that.

​"Well I think its rather obvious you don't wish people to find out, least of all your vocation director or bishop," he continues.

​It's obvious isn't it? Of course, I do not want people to find out. Except I do want people to know, people I choose to come out to Greg that's why I wrote that letter. People with whom I am comfortable with explain that, yes, I am a closeted, terrified 24-year-old gay man who is studying to become a priest, and that since high school I've done nothing else with life other than be a seminarian and thus have no marketable skills to place on a resume other than typing sixty words per minute, running on coffee to write papers through the night, and not fall asleep during morning prayer. So why should I be sacred right? ​

​I mean I probably would end up getting kicked out from seminary, have my reputation tarnished, and disappoint the hundreds of people I have met who know I'm studying to become a priest. Not to mentioned I would have to pay back my diocese all the money they have invested in me over the past six years. It would be the end of the world. This world at least.

​The only problem would be that before all of that happened the diocese and the seminary would investigate, and they would most likely find the letters. The letters I got from Zephyrinus, then they would investigate him and try to connect the dots, until they discovered who he was and what seminary he studied at. I don't know what it would mean for him or his future. I don't know what it would mean for Zephyrinus and me.