EPISODE 51: A SURPRISE VISIT FROM A DEAD PRIEST AND A SMALL LOOK AT TIME

Welcome to my blog which begins with a story about itself.

A few months ago I wrote a little piece about my schooldays and the recent death of one of the Catholic priests I had known forty-five years ago. I headed it, An Unsatisfactory Dance on the Grave of Father Peter Orr SJ.

On Tuesday I received an email from a man in New York. He told me he had been trying to track down a priest who had abused him in Philadelphia in the early 1980s. He’d thought the man’s name was Peter Ore but now he suspected it was actually Orr and that he was the same priest I was writing about. I then wrote back, explaining that I was talking about the mid-60s in London and there was nothing in the obit I’d seen mentioning time in America.

The following day he sent me an obituary that he had seen. There was Fr Orr’s picture. The man described his experiences, how Fr Orr had groomed him through his mother and then started coming around when his mum was out. Looking at the picture, I remembered the man’s diffidence but also his lips and expressions on his face which I now recognize as hurt sexuality.

I was amazed. The experiences of this man confirmed that I was right in my estimation and condemnation of the priest. I think that when I wrote my piece, I wasn’t entirely sure in myself that I was being fair. I can remember shouting at Orr in the classroom – and then being expelled for the outburst – but I can’t recall what had actually happened. My American correspondent, not surprisingly, thought I may be in denial about something, that perhaps events had gone further than I can consciously tap into. I’m pretty sure, however, that he is wrong about this, particularly as I was ‘assaulted’ or ‘interfered with’ by my sister’s boyfriend during the same period and I have had no trouble in acknowledging that episode. Probably I was just a bit sickened by realizing that there were predators out there that I was doing secret deals with in the sense that their predilection produced benefits for me, eg a trip to Russia from the priest, sexual experience from the boyfriend, and also made me realize that I had a certain amount of power over these men.

And not only these men: I’ve  written before that I used to be followed by gays from a Public Toilet somewhere in Leatherhead. I never interacted with any of them but again I was aware of some sort of sick latent power I had over these people. They wanted me but I wanted nothing from them, except some weird feeling of superiority.

I didn’t tell the American guy this stuff because it wasn’t relevant. I did say that although I take a personal delight every time I hear of a catholic priest being caught, I also know a) that inappropriate desire and succumbtion to temptation are human traits that I share and b) this scapegoating of individuals is a cover-up performed by us all: soldiers that torture, care workers who don’t care, priests that abuse, these people are us and, like us, are the product of our systems and beliefs. In this case, as I have written ad infinitum, the Catholic church itself is an instrument of abuse and the priests that play with your cock aren’t half as fucked up as those who tell you that you were born in sin and obedience to divine fascism will save you.

I suppose at the back of my mind when I wrote about this disturbed Jesuit was a thought that someone else may read it and respond. Now it has happened, I’m stunned. Maybe it shows that a story is never over.

What would we do if Peter Orr were still alive? I guess my answer is probably ‘nothing’ because I never thought to track down any of the priests. (I kind of assumed they were mostly dead long ago because to me they were always old.) Also the abuse I received was not sexual, just a continued brutal assault on my mind, body and spirit. Orr went further with the American boys than he did with me, so maybe if I’d known that when he was alive I just might have been tempted to write him a really nasty letter but, as I’ve said, it is the Pope and his ilk that I detest, not some minor pervert who had had his life ruined by the stupidity of the catholic priesthood.

Mind you, I did go on the Irish Times website where you can leave a message of condolence. Which I did. ‘Hooray, another perverted Jesuit bites the dust!’

 

Sometimes I decide to throw away things I don’t use. A book, ‘Shaiva Devotional Songs of Kashmir: Utpaladeva’s Shivastotravali’, was about to be one of those things until I decided to look at it. Opening the pages at random, I came across the thirteenth verse of the fourteenth song, as translated above. An asterisk by Great Death takes us to the footnote: The Great Death represents time (kaala), that is, mortality. 

Time, in both eastern and Kantian thought, is prior to the mind. The notion that time necessarily goes forward, and never backwards, is a hard one to undo. Kaala, time, is defined as the ‘cloak’ over eternality that produces the limiting perception of time. (Niyati is the limitation on all-pervasiveness, kalaa the limit on omnipotence, vidya on knowledge, raga is limited sense of plenitude).

Consider, if you want, these statements from the esteemed Peter Wilburg. 

Space is essentially co-presence with a field of awareness.

Time is the emergence or presencing within a field of awareness.

Space-time is linear or sequential presencing within a field of awareness.

Time-Space on the other hand, is the simultaneous co-presencing of all phenomena – whether past, present or future in terms of linear ‘space-time’.

Enjoy.