The Good Sheep

By Jack Bray

While the title of my book refers to the main character, a seminarian who, despite enormous temptation, becomes a priest, it could also refer to the laity who still believe firmly that not all priests are pedophiles and, more than that, most if not all, are faithful to their promise of celibacy.

This is a fictional story of an Irish Catholic kid from the Bronx who becomes a priest at a time when sex scandals are erupting in the priesthood. He is plagued with just the memory of a beautiful girl's hand placed innocently in his as they walked from the beach giving rise to thoughts of sex with her. Can he handle celibacy? Will he become another story for the media?

This is also the story of that girl hopelessly in love with that seminarian. She visits him often in his last year in the seminary and begs him to leave. He meets with her a few months before ordination to insist that she accept his refusal. Before saying goodbye, she disappears.
After his ordination she reappears and escalates her behavior by crashing his party and announces he is the father of their unborn child. She later makes that accusation on TV and claims she had an abortion that he demanded.

When she realizes she can never have him, she descends into pschotic depression and, dressed as a nun, she jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge. It is a scene that captivates New York and the world.

Her body is quickly recovered and the autopsy reveals a major surprise. And, that's not the end. There is another surprise that is totally unexpected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack Bray
• Release date: Dec 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465832948

Jack Bray

After college, Jack had a successful thirty year career in broadcast television sales in New York City where he was born and raised, retiring as President of Blairsat, a satellite company he founded. His retirement years were spent as stock broker, teacher, publisher, lay minister and for the last 20 years, freelance writer.While living in Florida, feeling the need to respond to criticism of Catholicism, he began writing letters to the editor that led to column writing and web postings. After moving to Cullman, Alabama, his current home, he published his first book, a collection of those writings, "When My Catholic Buttons Were Pushed". That was followed by his debut novel, "The Good Sheep", a story of temptation suffered by a young man seeking the priesthood. The sequel, "Immortal Enemy", is a tale of the devil following that young man in his first year as a priest.His first novel of commercial fiction, "Grove House", is the story of a man who experiences the onset of dementia complicating his dealing with multiple suicides while living in a retirement home. His estranged daughter reunites and uncovers the mystery behind the suicides.He has just published “The Dreamers”, a short story sequel to “Grove House”.

Book preview

THE GOOD SHEEP

A NOVEL

By Jack Bray

Smashwords Edition

Copyright @ 2011 Jack Bray.

All rights reserved

Any reproduction of the content that appears in this book without written permission from the author is a violation of copyright law.

dedicated to the thousands of Catholic priests

who resist temptations every day

and remain faithful to their vow of celibacy

Chapter 1

in the beginning…

It was supper time. The family always ate around 6 o’clock in our small kitchen. Mom waited for dad to come home from work by hanging out the 2nd floor front window of our tenement and watching for his identifiable walk. He kicked his right foot out in front of his left foot. I never found out why. She could only see his legs beneath the fire escape that blocked some view of the street he came along from the subway. "Here comes ‘kick the leg’ she would always say. That always told me how much she really loved him if the sight of just his leg made her happy. Just the partial sight of him must have made her feel safe. Anyway, I waited until my dad came upstairs, kissed mom, took off his coat, tie and shoes, put on his slippers, and we all sat down. Almost immediately, I sprang the news.

I think I’d like to be a priest.

Saying that to my Irish Catholic parents was like lottery officials saying Mr.and Mrs. Brennan, you have just won a million dollars! It was spring, my senior year, and I had just finished vocation week at my high school. A missionary priest had visited and told us about his work among the poor of Africa. He was a big, burly Hungarian guy with dark, close cropped hair. Muscular, as I recall. Very impressive speaker. Looked right at you. He had hoped to light a spark for a religious vocation among all of us, young, eager kids sitting in front of him and hanging on every word. He lit my fire.

It’s known as the call to holiness. It’s a mysterious, hard to define feeling that comes over you that somehow makes you say, this is what I wanna do. It’s like someone whispered in your ear. Man, it’s magical.

You can only imagine how that supper went. My two brothers and one sister just looked at me as if to say, you want to do what? In fact, as I recall, one of them said just that. I think it was my oldest brother who said, Yeah, right. I told them I was serious and how I got the feeling during one of the sessions at Holy Family, the Cardinal Hayes High School annex I was attending. Cardinal Hayes, the new Catholic High School on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, was so crowded they placed some boys in annex high schools.

My brothers were 15 and 19 and my sister was 11. They were shushed by my mother. My father said nothing but beamed. I mean he actually beamed if humans can do that. I think he had had a few ‘cold ones’, as the Irish always described being drunk.

By the time we had finished eating, it had sunk in with everyone that I wasn’t kidding. I was dead serious and feeling all warm and fuzzy. Still can feel that when I think about that moment.

The following week I stayed home from school and my mother took me to the seminary prep to register for the fall semester. Why I didn’t go alone, I’ll never know. After all, I was 17. So, I tell people that my mother wanted to make sure I didn’t change my mind on the way. Usually gets a good laugh. Especially in Irish crowds.

Our parish priest, God bless him, advised that I would be better off studying in a local seminary and ultimately living and working in a neighborhood parish instead of living in a foreign land, trying to preach the gospel in sweltering heat to people who didn’t speak English. Oh, and that’s what would come after years of college and seminary training away from the comforts of a tidy home with loving parents in the Bronx, thank you very much. A very wise man.

It never hit me at the time that my life had just taken a dramatic turn. My journey to the priesthood had begun. And I had no doubts. None at all.

The fact that I was on my way to a lifetime commitment of celibacy never really entered my mind. My thinking was about the endgame: becoming a priest. It was about then that the adulation and admiration for me was told to me by my aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends. There is no doubt that their rooting for you strengthen your resolve and shore up your fortitude for the long journey. But, you do not-at least I did not-think about what you might be giving up. Sex. Legitimate sexual pleasure within a sanctified marriage with the woman of your dreams. I had no idea because I had never had sexual pleasure. I was 17 for God’s sake.

But, the hormones were raging when I overheard my dad tell a friend, Wait till the butterflies start. He meant my hormones, but, little did he know they were already fluttering, or should I say ‘percolating’? But, like I said, everyone was rooting for me. I had entered that special holy place of seminarian. My sister and brothers were happy and envious at the same time. I had become little saintly Seamus. That’s right. Seamus.Originally Iacobus which became James and then Seamus. Very Irish.

There was a guy in my class who was dating. Ridiculous. How can you prepare for a life of celibacy and date at the same time? That’s like playing with matches while training to be a fireman. Geez. My first exposure to the frauds in religious life. What a shock. He eventually left, married and had ten kids. Talk about raging hormones. But, I behaved. I was never really strongly tempted until one summer. The feelings stirred that summer were very strong. Disturbingly so.

It was the summer before entering the residential seminary after graduating from the prep.She was a friend, Dorothy O’Reilly, one of the girls in our crowd on the beach.I had known her casually all the summers I spent in Rockaway with my parents, brothers and sister. Anyway, she was very pretty. Leaving the beach together one hot day, she quietly slipped her hand in with mine. Release the butterflies, let loose the hormones! That was the first time she had ever done that. Apparently, looking back now, I suppose she had had a crush on me. And, I must confess, I was attracted to her. No doubt about that.

Nothing ever came of it that day, but I experienced, for the first time, my sexual urge-manifested in a pronounced erection-that was to plague, tempt, and almost conquer me as I moved along the path to the priesthood.

The years that followed in the seminary were good but, it seemed I was always struggling to overcome temptation. The attraction to women was my weakness. I had never had sex with a woman. God, I had never even dated. It was just that I really liked women. When the devil finds your weakness, he camps there. Even worse, as I would someday find out.

For the most part, seminary training was great. My grades were good and my dream was even better. Every guy in the place, I’m sure, had THE dream. Ordination day. Placing the host on the tongues of your mother and father. I also remember the wet dreams or, as my confessor called them, nocturnal emissions. I had never had sex, so the dreams were about what it might be like. All joy, relief and no guilt, no sin. How sweet was that.

There was never a class or a lecture on homosexuality or pedophilia. Why would there be? That would imply we had to guard against those urges. Those urges? Those guys with those urges shouldn’t have been there in the first place. So, no classes on those subjects. The assumption, I guess, was that all of us were naïve virgins and all we had to worry about were women. We were told to pray to resist impure thoughts of sex with women. Was I committing sin by simply enjoying the memory of her hand in mine? Well, it wasn’t reliving sex, but, I had no business enjoying even a memory.

We were taught that when you give up the normal, the natural sex urge, you must replace it with the supernatural, the strong spiritual life. That was more easily said than done. But, hey, we were trying to become priests, living saints for God’s sake.Literally.We knew that if the denial were easy, it would no longer be a sacrifice and the reward would be less satisfying. No pain, no gain. That kind of thing. It was tough. Maybe I hadn’t built a strong enough spiritual armor, I don’t know. But, if just the memory of a woman’s soft hand in mine plagued me, I knew it was gonna be a long, hard road.

The summer before my last year at the seminary, the year of my ordination to the priesthood, Dorothy begged me to quit. I was shocked that she sprung that on me after all those years. I told her I couldn’t. Yeah, she had always sent birthday and Christmas cards over the years and even came to the seminary a few times. But, so did some male friends and relatives. Not often. But, I was popular, I guess. Guys had talked after Dorothy visited. It just never occurred to me how serious she was. It wasn’t easy turning down this terrific looking woman who was throwing herself at me. Telling me she loved me was really too much. I must admit my feelings for her were awakened -or were they just the butterflies that my father warned about? Her parting words after that last visit in early September when I rejected her were scary and should have been a clue, you’ll regret this. She had a far away look in her eyes. Strange. Never forget it. What the hell did she mean? Bothered me.

Then she called a few weeks later and told me she wanted me to meet me in the city. She said it would be for old time’s sake, but I was suspicious, felt uneasy about it. I should have said no. I really didn’t trust her. But, telling her that on the phone was something I couldn’t do. So, I felt meeting her one last time was probably a decent way to get her to stop what she was doing.

Or did I really want to see her again? Temptation. A plague.

For me, anyway.

Chapter 2

OCTOBER

The New York subway is a moving menagerie. It’s air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the fall and always pretty clean, but, it still houses quite a collection of humans. As a native, I knew not to stare at anyone for fear I would offend them. Can’t explain that.

Late morning wasn’t rush hour, so trains would be empty. Even though the platform was chilly because it is not heated and rather uncomfortable, it can be a concert stage. There is never a dull moment in good old New York. Usually, somebody is singing or dancing or even performing close-up magic. The audience is small but very appreciative, no matter what time of day. When I got there about noon, there was a guy playing a violin quite beautifully. I dropped all my spare change into his little cup. Wouldn’t you know it, a train came before he had finished. The noise unfortunately drowned him out. You must be a dedicated performer to put up with that kind of noise competing with you.

Since it was the last stop, Van Cortland Park, when the doors opened, everyone got out. That meant there were plenty of seats for the return trip. I headed straight for the window seat—not that you can see anything while you’re riding beneath ground – I just like a cozy corner. I wanted to read, sat down quickly and opened my book.

Only a few people were getting on, so the train left quickly and was moving rapidly. Before I knew it, we were pulling into 125th Street. Just as we were leaving the station, I looked up from my book and saw this nice looking young girl get on. She walked quickly toward me and grabbed the empty seat next to me.

Excuse me, Father. May I talk to you for a second? So much for that reading break.

Of course. I’m not a priest yet, just a seminarian. We have to wear the collar when we travel. (That wasn’t true. I was wearing it to intimidate Dorothy when I met her later) What can I do for you?

I put the book in my jacket pocket and strained to hear her over the noise of the train as it lurched to a start.

I’m Anna. This is embarrassing. Forget it, Father. She started to get up and walk away.

Whoa. Wait. Please. Don’t leave. Talk to me. What’s on your mind, as I reached out to gently pull her back down.

Well, I’ve been thinking about seeing my parish priest, but, I chickened out. I saw you and got a rush of courage…almost, as she slowly returned to her seat.

Don’t chicken out now. Come on. What is it?

Well, I did a terrible thing and now I want to, well….. I’m thinking about having an abortion.

Boom. Oh, boy. I hadn’t bargained for preaching or teaching in a noisy subway car.

How old are you?

18. Why? Is that important?

Well, Just wanted to make sure you weren’t underage.

Why, so you could arrest the father for rape? Now she sounded angry. I apologized. Bad start, Seamus. My lack of experience was beginning to show.

Are you married?

No.

OK. Do you know the father?

Yes, of course. He doesn’t want the baby. She was getting testy at this point. And I was getting tested for my counseling skills!

Well, since you’re asking, it seems to me you really don’t want an abortion, right?

I’m not sure. That’s why I asked you for your help. So much for when in doubt, don’t. She obviously missed that. I felt I was losing her, so I gathered up my spirits and pressed on.

As the train rattled on at what seemed like break-neck speed, the noise was getting to be a problem for me-and her. About this point, a blind man came along with his cane and rattled his cup in front of us. I pulled out some coins and dropped them in his cup. I had to save the few bucks I had for this trip today. He thanked me and moved on just as we screeched into the next stop.

Well, since you’re hesitating doing it, I think you must feel it’s terrible. True?

Well, yeah, but, I thought it was only terrible if you did it after the first 3 months, right?

"No. That’s not right. The baby doesn’t suddenly begin to grow in the third