Authors: Michael Seed
Today, the Friars of the Atonement serve as ecumenical officers in dioceses in the United Sates, Canada, England and Japan, furthering the founders’ belief in Jesus’ prayer: ‘That all may be one so that the world might believe.’
The friars at Graymoor seemed to seek and bring out the best in one another and I was immediately adopted by the community. Even more than my experience with the Crowhurst family, I had finally found a place where I was in harmony with the people around me and my surroundings, and I knew that I had reached my spiritual home at last.
But there was still much work to be done.
Within days, I was introduced to Dan Callahan from Buffalo, New York, and we spoke together on the telephone with Jim Lindsay in Philadelphia. We had been told that the three of us were to enter the order’s friary, or House of Studies, at the Catholic University in Washington DC, as postulants. That is, as candidates for admission into the order who were not yet novices.
But that was still a whole year away. First I must return to England and complete my degree
course. Those final months seemed to fly past and suddenly it was September, and my finals were over The Franciscans may have accepted me as a candidate, but I would not begin my studies in America until the following May. And until then I needed to find a job.
Luckily, Gregory Crowhurst’s father came to the rescue again and found me a job in a children’s home in Bexhill-on-Sea in East Sussex. I worked there until Christmas. I was bored but happy enough and the tedium was reduced by visits from Father Peter and my occasional weekend trips to see him in the Westminster friary.
In January, the Crowhursts invited me to move in with them and become part of the family. By then, Gregory had also left the SMA and was studying to become a social worker like his father.
He had a brother Michael, a great guy who was wild and a hippy, and a smashing sister called Hilary. I became like a brother to the three of them and suddenly found the secure happy family I had always longed for.
During the day, I had the unlikely job of making pallets in a factory at Erith in Kent, and by the start of April I had saved enough to be able to take a short holiday before leaving for America. Once again, Gregory and I dug out our rucksacks and camping gear and headed for Holland, where we stayed in a campsite just outside Amsterdam.
It was a holiday of sharp contrasts. We walked around the red-light district and saw the ladies sitting
in their windows advertising their services and offering their wares, and Gregory took me to a couple of very risqué movies. But we also went to the house of Anne Frank, which was a very moving experience, and visited The Hague.
In April I was again on my way to America, and in May Dan Callahan, Jim Lidsay and I gathered at Graymoor and drove down to the New Jersey turnpike all the way from New York to Washington.
The Washington Friary consisted of we three postulants, no novices, five students in simple vows and eight friars who were in life vows, some ordained priests and some brothers who were not ordained.
There was also a Guardian, as in guardian angel, in overall charge of the Friary, who in other orders would normally have the title ‘Superior’, a Novice Master and a Postulant Master, Father Adrian, plus an administrator and several friar priests doing advanced studies at the Catholic University of America (CUA).
The Friary, which was to be my home for the next four and a half years, was on the University’s campus, where, dotted around, were various houses of religious orders – Jesuits, Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans, Marists and others. The University was famous not only for its Department of Religious Studies but also for medicine, drama and law.
We spent our first six months in prayer and meditation and studying theology and were declared ready for the clothing ceremony. For this, we were
returned to Graymoor, where the order’s Superior General helped us, for the first time, into our friar’s brown habits, which symbolised the beginning of our year as novices. These habits were tied around the waist with the traditional white cords of the Franciscans.
It was to be a year spent in the Washington Friary, an oasis year during which we partly withdrew from the world and devoted our time to prayer and spiritual study. This led, in January 1982, to our making our first vows.
As newly professed friars, the three of us, Dan, Jim and myself, began a six-month pre-theology course at the Washington Theological Union at Silver Spring in Maryland, across the state line but just a mile and a half from the Friary.
We studied Canon, or Church, law, spirituality, theology and liturgy: the rituals of the Church.
During this period, I made contact with the Dean of Theology at the University, Father John Ford, and gave him all my certificates and results which I had received from the Missionary Institute at Mill Hill, which was, like CUA, a Pontifical University. He checked with the Institute and eventually told me that he could accept my Bachelor of Philosophy degree study in England as being on a level with its American equivalent, and that it was therefore sufficient to gain me entry to the Master of Divinity course, starting in September 1982, for which the Franciscans had enrolled me.
Had they not recognised my English degree, it would
have meant starting all over again from scratch. I am not absolutely certain I could have coped with such a mammoth setback. Thank goodness I was never put to the test.
But, before coming to grips with my Master’s Degree I had the summer to get through and a more practical assignment thrown at me. I was sent back to England for three months to gain practical experience in a really needy parish in Thornton Heath in south London. St Andrew’s Church tragically achieved some notoriety a few years later when a man with a sabre ran amok, hacking at members of the congregation. It was my first taste of working in a real parish and I became very involved in the lives of its parishioners.
Father Jim Hurley was an example of the priesthood at its very best, compassionate, helpful and caring, but strong and commanding when needed. The ideal combination to cope with such a tough parish.
There were many lovely people there, but they had many problems to cope with: domestic, financial, criminal and racial issues, against a background of friction between the black, Asian and white communities. I loved it, and a few years later after I was ordained a priest, I went back there to celebrate one of my first masses with the great Father Hurley.
This was also the year of the first-ever papal visit to Britain, and the Franciscan magazine
Ecumenical Trends
asked me to cover the Pope’s visit and write an article on its ecumenical aspects. For this task, I was given a
press pass and was one of a small media group who were privileged to shake the Pope’s hand when he visited Westminster Cathedral, little dreaming that I would be working in that same Cathedral just two and a half years hence.
Another highlight was being invited to have lunch with Cardinal Hume, who still remembered me and wanted to know all about my adventures in America.
That summer flew past and after a brief visit to my grandmother, and an even briefer visit to my Aunt Sheila in Halewood, who was now alone after the death of her mother, I returned to America.
I had long before decided to make peace with Aunt Sheila and she seemed immensely happy that I had taken the trouble to visit her. I came away pleased to have faced and dismissed one of the horrors of my childhood, my time in Grandma Seed’s house, and inordinately happy that Aunt Sheila should have reacted so warmly. To my great delight, she had even asked me to call her Sheila.
That September, I was introduced to two of the world’s greatest theologians.
My professor of theology was Father, in 2001 to become Cardinal, Avery Dulles, the Jesuit son of former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. His uncles were head of the FBI and the Attorney General. A powerful political clan similar in many ways to the Kennedys.
Father Avery could not have been kinder to me. He
was a very practical as well as a very holy man and became a kind of academic tutor to me in my years at the Catholic University.
For moral theology, I had Father Charles Curran, who since the 1960s had been under investigation by the Holy See, the Vatican, for excessive liberalism. Towards the end of the decade, when the Vatican first tried to remove him, the whole of the University had gone on strike until the threat was withdrawn. He was immensely popular with his students and deeply respected by them all as a remarkable human being and an outstanding Christian.
He was still being investigated during my time there and I must say it was very interesting to have him as my teacher of moral theology.
There was one other professor there, a nun called Sister Elizabeth Johnson, who was also a famous American theologian. But we had a difference of opinion when she decided she wanted me to drop my degree course. It all came about because of the old problem from my childhood: my inability to cope with written exams under pressure.
My first exams at the Catholic University were a rerun of my 11-plus. I left all my exam papers blank.
Fathers Dulles and Curran were curious and called me in to discuss it. After hearing my story, they said that, if the problem was a genuine one, they would be happy to test me orally.
They agreed it was best if they sent me to the School
for Educational Learning, there at CUA, and see if there was evidence to back up my story.
‘We have no problem giving you oral exams, none at all, and we will. But, for your sake and ours, let’s find out exactly what the problem is. So would you mind being analysed and assessed by top educationalists at the school? You will probably be helping their research studies at the same time.’
The outcome was that the experts concluded I was seriously dyslexic and, though I had somehow learned to read well, after all their tests agreed I was incapable of producing the written word under pressure.
In reflective mood I could write. But under stress, no.
They believed that, because of a childhood devoid of education and never being called on to do traditional exams, the written test was not a good format for me. In speech, on the other hand, I was excellent and had an exceptional memory. It was a fantastic report and Fathers Dulles and Curran accepted its recommendations without hesitation.
From then on, my exam results were superb. They would ask questions and it was difficult to stop me talking. I was like a computer. Until the end of my course, my results were very good.
But it was a very different story with Sister Elizabeth. The blank sheet had been of concern to her. Her reaction was rigidly traditional.
‘If you can’t express yourself on paper, I don’t think you’ll be able to fulfil this course,’ she told me. ‘Perhaps
you should consider not becoming a priest but remaining a friar brother.’
What she meant was that I should not become an ordained friar. I pointed that out to her and told her that Religious brothers were the intellectual equal of Religious priests. St Francis himself was not a priest.
‘Just because I can’t pass written exams doesn’t mean I can’t pass exams at all,’ I told her.
But she refused to change her mind, even after being told that Fathers Dulles and Curran, the two greats, had agreed to examine me orally. She failed me. So I left her class and found another lecturer to cover the same ground who would give me oral tests. I passed everything with top marks.
Sister Elizabeth was what priests in America describe as a ‘free-range nun’. They have a quaint way of differentiating between modern and traditionally dressed nuns. Those who still wear the full veils and headgear and robes are referred to as ‘battery nuns’. ‘Free-range nuns’ wear modern clothes and look like executives. It is not meant in a hurtful way but as a light-hearted way of describing the marked differences between different orders of nuns in today’s world.
That summer, for my practical experience I was sent to Los Angeles and made a chaplain attached to the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. It was in a really violent area full of shootings, stabbings, rape and violence – and I loved every moment of it. This was real
life and real emotion and like being a character in a
Kojak
movie.
I lived in a small friary not far from the hospital and was given a huge old car to drive back and forth. I visited all the patients of any and every creed. Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims all got a visit from Brother Michael. There seemed to be every type there, from Hollywood producers and actors to gangsters and policemen with gunshot wounds.
It was there that I conducted my first funeral, a tragic event involving a young actor. On a happier note, I also managed a day trip to Las Vegas and won a few dollars on the slot machines in Caesar’s Palace, and drove up the coast to San Francisco, one of the nicest cities I have ever visited. I travelled with Father Art Johnson, who was to become our Superior General.
It was a fabulous two months, a mixture of glamour and despair, and I learned a great deal about ministering to the needy and the sick and about the tarnished side of Tinseltown and its amazingly varied inhabitants. It was a rich and rewarding learning experience.
The following summer, after another year’s study in Washington, I was sent, in contrast, to our own St Christopher’s Inn at Graymoor. There were several hundred homeless and needy people staying there at the time, mainly from New York. Some were itinerant down-and-outs, others newly homeless and many were either drug addicts or alcoholics.
I helped in the clothing centre, the kitchens and in the
detox centre, talking with them, encouraging them to stick to their programmes of recovery and trying to instil hope in them. It was often harrowing work, but great experience for the future. Eighteen months later, I celebrated my first mass in the Inn chapel.
Three different summers and three vastly different experiences: the tough London parish, the bustling hospital set in an area of desperate poverty and violence, and our own centre for the homeless with its heartbreaking quota of broken and hopeless cases. Each experience had helped to develop within me the compassion and the instinct and the intuition I would need to be truly helpful to others and make a genuine difference in people’s lives – God willing.