Looking Back: A Grateful Penitent

By Dr. D.

This is a cautionary tale of the life of a devout young man who became religious and priest and then regretfully left both with dispensations and became a university professor and father of nine. He wants his kids and grandkids to know his history, good and regretful. But he also wants seminarians and young priests to know the mistakes he made and how to avoid them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664182776

Dr. D.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Dr. D. tells stories in a university town.. He learned from his brother, Dr. Tom, inventing kid stories. Dr. D. practiced on his own 9 kids. He tries to match Tom’s inventiveness by having school children choose story characters. He told stories to college kids for 40 years.

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Copyright © 2021 by Dr. D.. 549526

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Rev. date: 07/08/2021

LOOKING BACK

A Grateful Penitent

foreword.psd

Stanislaus Dundon

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Contents

Chapter 1 A Good Start

Chapter 2 Minor Interruption Then Graduate School

Chapter 3 Accumulating Colleges And Priest-Work

Chapter 4 What Happened? The Phone Call!

Chapter 5 My First Regular Job

Chapter 6 Break In The Story And Move To Davis

Chapter 7 Meeting Christine And Back To Life

Chapter 8 Wedding And Teaching At Uc Davis

Chapter 9 Our Work

Chapter 10 Sac State And Disaster

Chapter 11 What Was I Teaching And Why Was It Not Popular?

Chapter 12 Gene Splicing And Back To Human Bioethics

Chapter 13 In Sickness And In Health

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CHAPTER ONE

A GOOD START

A s I stated in my forward, I intend this writing to be a cautionary tale to benefit young priests and seminarians who do not wish to be unfaithful to the precious gift of their vocation. Throughout this account I will frequently reflect on things which I did to preserve my priestly vocation and things I did and failed to do which led to my abandoning that vocation. Somehow seven of my nine children point out that they would not exist had I remained a priest. I think all nine believe I would have been a passably good one.

This writing will not be a tale of woe. I have led a joyous and fruitful life, although I did little enough to deserve it and not a few things to risk losing my way. As I once said to Father Joseph Mary, O.C.D., a much loved colleague in the Order: I left Him, He did not leave me. Nonsense, he replied, but I know he knew it was true. I will try to be as open and honest as possible in this account because I believe its value will be based largely on the ring of truth it will have.

Also it’s you, my much loved children, who are the nine gifts of God to an undeserving man, to whom I also direct this writing. If this is how God rewards penitent sinners, imagine how He treats the saints.

As the title suggests, I will be looking back, principally to a time and place of which there is a photograph. In the foreground is Father Christopher, a former WW II counter-intelligence officer, now (1962) a Carmelite Priest and Provincial of the Washington D.C. province of the Discalced Carmelites. He is on one knee and is crossing himself in response to a blessing being given by young, newly ordained priest in the background. Standing bolt-erect, dark hair cut short, looking out over the congregation, he is intense and serious. This is the day he had been training for since he was 14, thirteen years before. The Provincial is Father Christopher, the new priest is Father Stanislaus, the place is Saint Florian’s Parish in South Milwaukee, under the care of the Carmelites. He had just been ordained by the Carmelite Bishop Patrick Shanley, retired from his prelature in the Philippines. It was August 15, 1962, almost 60 years ago at this writing.

But I thought I should relate to you some wonderful things about my upbringing which in some way increases my guilt about how poorly I rewarded my parents for what they gave me. Born July 18, 1935, the fifth in a family of nine kids each separated by two years except after me there were four years until Frannie was born. My father was a physician and surgeon, my mother a nurse. My father was a devout Catholic, daily communicant. Our large house had a children’s bedroom at the back over the two-car garage one half of which was usually occupied by a chicken coop. My father would noisily back his car out and wait in the alley for any kid who wanted to accompany him to mass. I did this frequently. My dad would pray the morning offering prayer on the way. On the way home we would stop at the bakery for a hot loaf of whole wheat bread. Dad would slice the bread, turn on WGN for news, while any of us who were up would slather butter on the delicious bread.

I was cross eyed when born and had to attend the Milwaukee Eye Institute once a week. We had only one car at the time so my mom trained me to use the streetcar to get there and back. Each eye has to be trained to focus independently so they would place opaque tape over the right or left eye lens alternately each week. The kids in my first grade used to call me the pirate’s son. Eventually an operation corrected the crossed eye.

You might reasonably ask: What kind of a mother would have her five-year-old son ride a streetcar all the way to downtown, Eastside Milwaukee? Let me tell you! She was a wonderful woman and I loved her a lot. At that point the streetcar, #15 line, ran through an open field to end in Whitefish Bay where I lived. Things were different in those days.

One of the things I remember about her impact on me was an awareness I had that if I became financially successful in some career or other and came home to visit driving a huge Cadillac and walked in the house and told mom What do you think of my car? she would say: Nice, so what else is new? You cannot imagine how liberating that was for me! I could pursue any career as long as it did something good. She was so indifferent to the idea of being rich that she never pressed my dad to buy her a car and rode her bicycle to the grocery store, only a few blocks away, every day and always to shop behind the counter for bargains on food that was out of date. We often ate exotic stuff by Milwaukee standards like artichokes, puffballs and kidney. But also some awful stuff like rutabagas.

Mom has a fascinating pedigree. She is Jewish on her father’s side, Jacob Sherman. He was Catholic but from Alsace Lorraine where the Shermans were all Jewish as were all the Shermans in Milwaukee. I have a picture of mom that shows her as believably Jewish and stylishly beautiful, On her mother’s side, Elizabeth Von Nagel, she is related to the famous Nazi opponent and aristocrat, Clement August Cardinal Graf Von Galen. His mother was of the Von Spee family, famous for its leadership in German naval history. A fact which may have led Hitler to tread lightly with Von Galen. He was Archbishop of Muenster. He has been recently declared a saint. A funny story about