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Beyond the Vows

by Ed Griffin

296 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0274; ISBN 1-55212-874-1; US$20.69, C$23.79, EUR16.99, £11.90

A young Catholic priest finds conflict and romance on his journey toward the light.

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About the book      About the author      Sample excerpt      Catalogue info

About the Book How is it possible for an idealistic young priest to keep the spirit alive when he finds money changers in the temple? Father JP Lacey throws himself into the priesthood after twelve years in the seminary. The year is 1964. He's going to free the captives and give sight to the blind as the prophet Isaiah has directed. He hears confessions, chaplains parish groups and struggles to bring God into the lives of the people. But nothing works as he anticipated. The world is in tumult with the death of JFK, civil rights demonstrations, the war in Vietnam and the sexual revolution. Even the rock-strong Catholic Church has been shaken by the second Vatican Council. JP searches for answers. The fierce God of his childhood gives way to a God of love. Helping others replaces a life of rules. But a deep void eats at his heart. He is alone. When a young woman in the parish, Caitlin O'Neil, contacts him for help, JP must decide what kind of priest he will be. Caitlin has been ordered to fire the only black man in the company she works for. Will JP offer pious advice or will he stand with her, even when he discovers that the owner of the company is a good friend of the bishop's? The Catholic Church, which has filled the two of them with a desire to make the world better, now stands in their way. JP finds himself falling in love with Caitlin despite his vows. Caitlin struggles with her feelings. She's been raised Catholic and falling in love with a priest is taboo. In addition, a dynamic union organizer has proposed to her. A wild ex-nun shows JP one way to leave the priesthood, while a self-educated church janitor counsels a different way. What is love? Where is God? Why celibacy? When do you follow your conscience and not the church? JP and Caitlin search for answers as they stride toward the light. Review from The Surrey Now, Saturday September 22, 2001 Fictional account tells Christian truths     "Spirituality is found beyond the church, not in the church," claims former Catholic priest and Surrey writer Ed Griffin.     "The church is a school. You learn your lessons and then you graduate and become an adult Christian."     In Beyond the Vows, Griffin fictionalizes the story of his own five years as a Catholic priest.     "The young priest sets out to save the world, but soon discovers that he's the one who needs saving. He tries to have his church confront modern problems, but he finds that money rules. On his journey to the light he meets a greedy bishop, a philosopher-theologian janitor, a courageous young woman and a wild ex-nun. He tries to replace the fierce God of his childhood with a God of love. Even though he pours himself into parish work, a deep void still heats at his heart. He is alone."     What is love? Where is God? Why celibacy? When do you follow your conscience and not the church? These are the questions of Beyond the Vows.     Griffin was a Roman Catholic priest in Cleaveland, Ohio between 1962 and 1967. He became active in the civil rights movement and marched in Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King. Removed from a surburban parish for his activities, he served for three years in Cleaveland's central city.     After leaving the priesthood Griffin earned a master's degre at the University of Wisconsin and was elected to Milwaukee's city council in 1972. He met his wife, Kathy, in Milwaukee. Raised an Irish Catholic, she was active in the civil rights and peace movements.     Griffin and his family moved to British Columbia in 1988, where Griffin helped establish a dynamic writing community in Surrey.     He is the founder of Western canada's largest writers' conference, the Surrey Writers' Conference. Griffin teaches creative writing at Matsqui Prison. He taught the same subject at Waupun prison, a maximum security prison in Wisconsin.

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About the Author Ed Griffin began his professional life in 1962 as a Roman Catholic priest in Cleveland, Ohio. There he became active in the civil rights movement and marched in Selma with Doctor Martin Luther King. Removed from a suburban parish for his activities, he served for three years in Cleveland's central city. His years in the Roman Catholic Priesthood are the subject of Beyond the Vows. After leaving the priesthood in 1968 he earned a masters degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was elected to Milwaukee's city council in 1972. He met his wife, Kathy, in Milwaukee. Raised an Irish Catholic, she was active in the civil rights and peace movements. Griffin and his wife opened a commercial greenhouse in suburban Milwaukee in 1976. They lived where they worked and shared the joys of raising children and growing flowers. In 1988 the family, Ed and Kathy, Kevin and Kerry, moved to British Columbia, Canada, where Griffin helped establish a dynamic writing community in the city of Surrey. He is the founder of Western Canada's largest writer's conference, the Surrey Writers' Conference. Ed teaches creative writing at Matsqui Prison, a medium security prison in Western Canada. He taught the same subject at Waupun prison, a maximum security prison in Wisconsin. His first novel, Prisoners of the Williwaw, has been optioned by HBO for a movie. The book is available through Trafford Publishing. Click here to read about Ed's first book, Prisoners of the Williwaw He has published poetry, plays, short stories and a newspaper column. His writing has won several awards and the American Humanist Society has honored him as the teacher of a prize-winning inmate writer. Griffin believes that all the arts, including writing, should be encouraged in prison. "As Aristotle said, 'art releases unconscious tensions and purges the soul.'" Click here to visit the author's web site, Ed Griffin

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Sample Excerpt

Chapter 1

All You Need Is Love
     The Beatles

     JP, John Patrick, Lacey squeezed the rosary wrapped tightly around his right hand. No. He would not let his mind wander to the woman who came to him in sleep. It could lead to mortal sin.
     He lay on his back in his steel institutional bed on the first floor of St. Francis Seminary and prayed for help. Last night she wore a skimpy top and a plaid skirt Ð Oh God, it was short. Despite her dress he knelt with her in front of the tabernacle and then suddenly she threw her arms around him and kissed him, pressing her smooth, moist lips tightly against his. Her tongue teased his mouth and found its way in and ...
     Rosary or no rosary, his hand moved toward sin. He jumped out of bed, got a drink of water at his sink and went over to the window. He cranked it open wide, allowing cool October air and the light of a full moon to flood the room.
     He looked at his hands in the moonlight, the hands that had almost sinned. In a few short months the bishop would consecrate his hands because a priest touched the sacred host. But JP already liked his hands because they worked so well. Every other part of him seemed a little defective - thinning hair, a bridge in his mouth already, the beginnings of a double chin and a right foot that never walked straight. But his hands - they were electrician's hands, hands that knew how to use tools, hands like his father's and his grandfather's.
     He heard voices coming down Foster Avenue. When the seminary was built, immigrant Catholics lived around it. But during the forties and fifties Southern blacks moved to Newburg as they did to other big cities in the Mid-West. Now the neighborhood was inner-city, poor and black.
     "Hey, man, gimme a light," the first voice said.
     "This here's the priest factory. Ain't got no women."
     "Straight up?"
     "I ain't shittin ya."
     "Ain't no good times in there, brother."
     JP turned away from the window. No, the good times didn't matter. Soon he would be ordained and he would find great love in serving the people. He glanced at the booklet, open on his desk, a scriptural analysis of the prophet, Isaiah. He knew the section by heart:
     I have appointed you ..
     to open the eyes of the blind,
     to free captives from prison
     and those who live in darkness from the dungeon.
      (Chapter 42, verse 6)
     He framed the text with his electrician hands. A great life lay ahead for him. Like the messiah, he was being ordained to free the captives and give sight to the blind.
     Someone knocked quietly on his door. The luminous hands on his clock said 11:15. He opened the door a little, careful to hang on to it, because the heated air from the darkened corridor might suddenly stream in and slam open the door, bringing the Prefect of Discipline down on him.
     "Let's go for a smoke," Terry McGonagle, his classmate, whispered. Terry was an ordained sub-deacon as of a month ago, just like JP. In May of the next year, 1964, the two would lie on the floor of St. Edward's Cathedral in Newburg and be ordained as Catholic priests.
     "I gotta talk," Terry said, his voice barely audible.
     "Now? It's the Grand Silence."
     JP held to the Grand Silence strictly. It was a period of absolute silence between lights out and breakfast in the morning. "During this time," the rule book said, "the seminarian will be in touch with God."
     "I gotta talk. Come on."
     JP took a small, fearful step backward into his room. He was in a quandary. He had never broken any major seminary rule, much less one as sacred as the Grand Silence. But Terry needed to talk, probably about celibacy. He sounded as if he was in crisis.
     JP looked down the hall. "Where's Reynolds?" Monsignor Reynolds was the Prefect of Discipline.
     "He's in his room." Terry nodded down the hall. "He's got a woman in there."
     JP caught the twinkle in Terry's eyes. If Reynolds had a woman in there, she was probably scared to death. Reynolds' nickname was 'Jowls', because of his fleshy cheeks. 'Jowls' could be an affectionate name, but Reynolds was anything but likable. "The man is always scowling," Terry said on more than one occasion. "Reverend Repressed Anger."
     If Reynolds were to suddenly open his door and see them talking, he would lecture them with his cold anger and take away their next free day. JP couldn't imagine what he would do if he found them sneaking out for a smoke.
     "Get your cassock. Let's go."
     "Tomorrow," JP whispered.
     "Now."
     The woman in front of the tabernacle floated by in his mind. She had shiny brown hair that flowed over her exposed shoulders and long, smooth legs leading up to... Oh God.
     Again the turn-on. He inched his body behind the door, so Terry wouldn't notice. He had to get this woman off his mind. Maybe he should go out for a smoke.
     But the Grand Silence...
     "Come on," Terry said.
     No, the rule was clear. No talking until breakfast. But here was a man in the darkness of a dungeon. Wasn't he supposed to free him? Didn't Jesus say to love your neighbor?
     "Hang on, let me get my smokes."
     Terry looked surprised, puzzled. "You'll go?"
     "Yeah. What's the matter?"
     "Nothing. You always say 'no.' Come on."
     JP grabbed his red robe in the darkened room and put it on over his pajamas.
     "Not that," Terry whispered. "Jowls can see that thing a mile away. It's black you want. Do I have to teach you everything?"
     JP smiled, took his robe off and put his cassock on. He crept out into the warm corridor, noiselessly shutting his door. Only the exit light illuminated the corridor as he followed Terry to the steps that led down to the courtyard. They slipped through the door into the darkness outside and lit up, staying under the covered Spanish-style walkway and out of the bright moonlight.
     "What's with you, JP? For two years I've been asking you to sneak out for a smoke and you always give me this pious, 'It's against the rules.' Now all of a sudden, you join me."
     "It's the Vatican Council. The pope's going to throw open the windows in the church."
     "So you can smoke?"
     "Yeah, sure."
     JP breathed deeply of the October air and smelled a hint of Lake Erie, not more than a mile to the north. He loved the lake, the sail boats, the romance of knowing the water would reach Niagara. When he was a boy he put a message in a bottle and it reached Toronto. Even though Newburg was a hundred miles from Cleveland, the ore carriers and the cargo ships ran just a mile or two offshore and JP loved to watch them.
     He glanced up at the full moon, framed by the lines of the Spanish arch. His heart filled with the beauty of the evening. God was not far away. But he kept these thoughts to himself. Terry would accuse him of getting pious again.
     It was strange that they were friends. Terry at thirty-one was five years older than JP, more worldly, more cynical. Terry had gone to Newburg State University before entering the seminary. All his life he had struggled with a weight problem, but to JP it seemed right that Terry was chubby, for the older man was a generous person who took everyone - and everything - in.
     JP had entered the seminary in his first year of high school, eleven years previous. His appearance fitted his history, an innocent face, a sincere look about him. When JP's sister told their mother that women in the parish would love JP, his mother became upset. She didn't want other women loving her son. She wanted her son to remain a priest.
     JP liked Terry because Terry made him think. Terry was out on the fringes of orthodoxy, challenging what they were taught in class. "So, tell me, just why did God stop talking to his people when the last book of the Bible was written?" and "Celibacy was a way to make sure that the priest in the middle ages didn't pass on the church property to his sons. What's the purpose of it today?"
     Terry was a bulldog when it came to truth. He wouldn't let go of a truth and JP liked this, even though he seldom agreed with him. Terry often brought in principles of psychology and sociology he had learned at university.
     There was something more to their relationship that JP couldn't define. Was it that JP's father had died at forty-seven and Terry's mother at thirty-six, giving birth to Terry's younger brother? Was it that they were both on the fringes, Terry on the left and JP on the right? Was it that Terry, alone among his classmates, listened to his talk about ideals and Isaiah and the priesthood?
     JP didn't know the reason, but he knew this man was his friend.
     A light came on in one of the faculty rooms facing onto the courtyard. JP and Terry slunk back into the shadows and palmed their cigarettes so no one could see the glowing embers.
     A siren wailed down the street outside the seminary. Terry flicked his butt down and stepped on it. "I got a letter today."
     "From?"
     "A woman I used to know."
     "And?"
     "She wants to meet with me."
     "Why? Come on, Terry, tell me the story. What's going on?"
     "I knew her back in college. We lived together for a year."
     "So, why did she write you?"
     Terry took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose with force.
     "Damn. What am I going to do?"
     "Why did she write you?" JP repeated.
     "She broke up with the guy she's been going with for the last couple years. She says I'm like Catholicism. I'm in her blood and she can't get me out. But she said something else that's even more disturbing."
     "What?"
     "Here. Read it."
     Terry pulled a multi-page letter from his pocket. JP saw that it had been read many times. Terry handed him one page and pointed to a section of the neat handwriting near the bottom of the page.
     JP stepped out into the bright moonlight.
     "... and that's why I can't understand what you're doing. You know what we said. AND YOU AGREED WITH IT. You can't live without love, Terry."
     JP handed the letter back to Terry, carefully, as if it were a bomb. He looked up at the moon. Deep down he knew the letter writer was correct about Terry, that he needed love to live, but how did that square with Catholic doctrine? What about his calling to the priesthood?
     "What's her name?"
     "Nancy."
     JP took a drag on his cigarette. "I don't know, man. If you want to be a priest, I think you should avoid this Nancy person."
     "Put-ty." That was Terry's response to seminary directives. He always split the two syllables and emphasized them. Like seminarians were to be put-ty in the hands of the faculty. "Nancy's a human being. She's not to be avoided. The thing is, I want to be a priest. When I was growing up, Father Joe, my parish priest, raised money for the local hospital and said the prayer at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast and..."
     "You told me about him."
     "The point is, he was a respected member of the community."
     "So?"
     "That's what I want - to be a priest like him."
     The tough answer was right on JP's tongue. Give her up. But he didn't say it. The moon illuminated the statue in the center of the courtyard. St. Francis stood with his arms out and his palms up, receiving God's creatures and God's message. If Terry put his hands out and received the calling from God, he would have to live without love and his soul would shrivel and die.
     JP scratched his regulation short haircut. What was wrong? How could there be such a contradiction in the faith his mother and his father had given him? For a second he felt dizzy, as if the courtyard were a slanted floor in a fun house. Was it the smoking late at night or was it that, for a second, he doubted his faith?
     This was disturbing. This was not some theoretical argument about an ancient heresy. This was Terry's life - and his. Maybe if he repeated Pops Gibson's sermon on celibacy. "The thing is, Terry, the word full. You know how Pops said we're gonna be full of love, like Mary was full of grace? We're gonna reach the fullness of love by giving ourselves to celibacy. Love - that's the thing."
     "Pious dribble," Terry said.
     JP shook his head and gazed into the courtyard. The trouble with Terry was he always talked about empty. Something was being taken away from him, like the right to marry. You had to think full. And you had to give full in order to get full.
     But he had never received a letter like that. What if a woman wrote to him? Who was there for him? Nobody but the woman in his dreams. Last night she reached down inside his pants and ... was there no end to these sexual thoughts? He dropped his cigarette and exclaimed, "Jesus. Mary and Joseph."
     "What's the matter?"
     He stepped on the glowing ember. "Burned myself."
     Again the silence of the night came over them. JP felt the pain in Terry's heart, but the answer to celibacy was to commit your whole heart to God. That's where love lay. It was simple.
     Terry broke the silence. "My dad called me about the Olds he ordered for me. Delivery May 1. Automatic, air conditioned, the whole bit."
     "Great."
     "You still getting a Chevy?"
     "Yeah."
     "Stick shift?"
     "Yes."
     "Ah, yes, the proletariat image. I keep telling you, man, you're going to be a parish priest. A parish priest shouldn't be chugging along in a Chevy like an encyclopedia salesman who flunked out of college."
     JP said nothing. His mother had said something similar. He let his eyes wander over the courtyard, focusing on a dwarf tree at the other end. The moon painted a shadow of the tree on the arches behind it. The shadow danced as the breeze stirred the few remaining leaves on the tree. The magnificence of the scene brought the beginning of tears to his eyes. "Terry, Terry," he said, pointing out to the courtyard "Yes, we're doing the right thing. Look at the beauty of the world."
     "Yeah, sure. I can't figure you, Lacey. You get a Chevy. That I understand. Blessed are the poor. You get good grades, the faculty trusts you, you're probably gonna be a monsignor, maybe even a bishop. What I can't figure is how you put love into all this."
     "You give love and you'll get love. You love the people, you love the church, you'll get love."
     "Pie in the sky."
     "Come on, Terry."
     "No, I mean it, JP. You've got it all romanticized. The church isn't perfect, the life of a priest isn't perfect, but it's a damn site better than anything else out there. You live the life - you take what comes. You put up with some bullshit, but you get the respect of the people - and a decent income to boot. Oh, and of course, when you die you walk right into the pearly gates."
     Terry pulled out another smoke, but then returned it to the pack. "Come on, JP, I'm hungry. Let's go for a snack."
     "Snack? This isn't a drive-in."
     "I know where the faculty cookie jar is."
     "You're kidding me," JP said. "The faculty has a cookie jar?"
     "Yeah. There's a cupboard just inside the faculty dining room. They don't lock the door at night. The nuns keep the jar filled."
     "How do you know all this?"
     He rubbed his plump stomach. "Experience, my boy, experience."
     "How dangerous is it?"
     "Jowls almost caught me once. He was on his way there. Bastard preaches to us about the Grand Silence and then he raids the cookie jar." JP smiled. "You go ahead. I'd better get back to my room."
     "I want to talk more."
     "About?"
     "Nancy."
     "I don't think you should. I think you should trash that letter. At least get your mind off it."
     "Nothing will get my mind off it like high adventure to the cookie jar."
     "Not for me."
     "Then stay for one more smoke."
     They lit up and talked - about everything but Nancy. JP told of his mother's plan for a big ordination reception. "She's getting the house painted, buying new furniture, hiring a hall. It's big."
     "For an Irish Catholic, it is big," Terry said. "The mother of a priest."
     "Too bad my dad isn't alive," JP said
     "How close did he get to ordination?".
     "He left after first year of theology," JP answered. "Then he married my mother."
     "History repeating itself. Him in the seminary and now you. I can see why your ordination is so important to your mom."
     "What do you mean?"
     Terry glanced at him. "You know how people talked in the old days. Come on, let's raid the cookie jar."
      What a strange night. For the past eleven years he had kept the Grand Silence. Tonight the only thing that mattered was his friend, Terry. And now a little more rule-breaking.
     "Lead on, Falstaff." Falstaff was Terry's favorite Shakespearean character, rotund as he was, full of life and hell-raising.
     The two padded down the corridors, staying close to the walls, going right past Jowls' door. In the faculty dining room Terry opened a cupboard and pulled down a large ceramic jar shaped like Santa Claus.
     Only a night-light lit the room but JP saw homemade cookies in the jar with big chocolate bits in them. Fresh cookie smell filled the space. "Oh, man, Terry, this is great."
     JP took two cookies and started to eat them. Terry selected a cookie, but didn't eat it. He tapped the cookie on the edge of the jar and looked at JP. "I wish you hadn't come with me tonight."
     "What? I thought you wanted to talk."
     "You don't get it, do you, JP? I wanted you to say no."
     "No?"
     "See, it's a ritual I have. I ask you to break the rules with me and you say no and then I know this training works. Maybe it doesn't work for me, but it works for you. When we get out and we're priests, we'll be able to resist the temptations of the world because we've had seminary training. But, see, you've had eleven years of it and... it doesn't work."
     JP stopped eating cookies.
     Terry dropped his cookie back into the jar and held up his hands. Tears came into his eyes. "What's gonna keep these hands out of the cookie jar when we get ordained?"
     A door banged shut nearby. The two froze. "Let's get out of here," Terry whispered.
     They crept past Jowls' door and came to JP's room. JP patted Terry on the back. "Hang in there, man," he whispered.
     Terry nodded. JP watched him sneak down the hall and turn the corner, his shoulders slumped, his head down.
     JP slinked into his room. Isaiah still sat on the desk, calling him to free captives and give sight to the blind. JP hung up his cassock and lay on the bed. Outside his window the ice-blue moonlight shone on the maple tree near the entrance. Half the leaves were gone; the other half fluttered in the breeze.
     The world was wonderful. He closed his eyes. She was beside him again, the ghost woman. She lay beside him quietly in her skimpy top and her short, short skirt. She held his electrician's hand and gazed at the tree with him.

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Catalogue Information

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