Michael Matthew Casey

Black is White: My Experiences As a Jesuit Priest Michael Matthew Casey

This is a memoir of my experiences as a Jesuit, from 1952 to 1969. I am broadcasting live from Mount Golgotha. I experienced the entire Jesuit formation from age 18 to age 34. But four years after ordination to the priesthood I realized that I can?t live the Jesuit life, and I left in the middle of the night. But I carried my memories and experiences with me. There is flagellation of the flesh and wearing of penitential chains in imitation of Christ?s crown of thorns; there is drunkenness, priestly pederasty, bullying by reactionary Jesuit superiors. A sadistic moral theology teacher (Father Coitus Interruptus, S. J.) pushed me to near breakdown and much sobbing of the guts. My mother?s unexpected death from cancer a few months before my ordination to the priesthood is the turning point. When she dies, the Oedipal Temple Veil is rent in two, and there will be no going back to the Old Church and the Old God. Nor do the new gods of Vatican II take heed of my striving for peace of mind. With the Jesuits, always it is shame, unnatural shame from the unnatural vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, until all belief leaves me. I walk out the door, angry, disgusted, and resentful. But at last I am human, and have a life of my own, and no longer think that black is white.