Summery and excerpt of When Latin Lost its Relevance

When Latin Lost its Relevance is a fictional memoir about 99,000 words long and deals with young boys growing up at the Josephinum, a Catholic seminary in central Ohio that I attended in the late 50s. The story is completely fictional, but it does reflect the kinds of relationships and foibles many of the students dealt with.

Below is a synopsis, followed by two excerpts from of the novel itself.

Synopsis of When Latin Lost its Relevance

 Fourteen year-old Paul Riddle arrives at the Josephinum in August, 1958 and sees immediately that he will have a hard time adjusting to the rigors of the pre-Vatican II Catholic seminary. All he wants is to fit in and win his classmates' respect, but being a new arrival, he finds acceptance illusive. Impossible schedules and curricula, draconian rules, absolute silence at night and during meals, kneeling for long stretches of time on concrete floors as punishment for minor infractions, class preference, cliques, and rivalries add to his misery, but worst of all is the unspoken and un-addressed, but ever-present specter of his evolving sexuality. The seminary has no systematic way to address the taboo subject, so Paul is left to deal in fear and ignorance with the strange developments his body undergoes. He believes that erections, nocturnal emissions, and uncontrollable sexual urges and desires of all kinds are mortal sins, and this belief drives him to near despair.

For the first several weeks he flunks all his Latin assignments but manages to pass the first quarter exams because a brainy classmate, Chuck Means, forms a small study group that meets in secret, at night, against the rules, to study. Chuck's motive is not to help Paul, but to increase his control over the members of the group. He is already the most influential student in high school because he always seems to have cigarettes to sell to anyone who wants them. Of course smoking is strictly forbidden. No one knows that Chuck's secret source for cigarettes is a gay classmate named Johnny Bronson, who buys them by the carton from the son of the engineer who is in charge of the school's power plant and lives in a house located on school property.

Paul grows to resent Chuck Means, and when tension develops between Chuck Means and Johnny Bronson, Paul, on a lark, decides to exploit the rift. He gets more deeply caught up in the quarrel than he intended. His attempts to cope with the consequences of his involvement and at the same time deal with his uncertain sexuality in an atmosphere of all but total ignorance on the subject has a destabilizing effect on his already unstable personality. His insecurity increases dramatically when a professor makes a homosexual pass at him.

The quarrel between Chuck Means and Johnny Bronson finally results in Chuck shoving Johnny into the rain-swollen river bordering the property. Johnny is never again seen alive. Everyone believes it was an accident, but Paul, who secretly observed the incident, believes he has witnessed murder. He can't report the crime for fear he is himself too deeply involved, so he concocts a plan to punish Chuck himself. By this time Paul is consumed with guilt and self-loathing. When it turns out Johnny Bronson in fact has not drowned but made his way out of the river and into Columbus only to be beaten to death by a mugger, Paul remains convinced that the act of pushing Johnny into the river was the act that caused Johnny's death.

When the time comes to execute the plan, Paul realizes he is nowhere near capable of the murder he had planned, but that doesn't prevent him inflicting a severe beating on Chuck. Bruised and bloodied, Chuck reveals for the first time that Johnny Bronson was an excellent swimmer and there never was a danger of his drowning; that the primary cause of the quarrel was Chuck's belief that Johnny's negligence as a life guard at the swimming pool back home had caused the drowning death of Chuck's little brother; that Johnny believed he was being blackmailed by his classmates regarding his smuggling cigarettes, and that because of his homosexuality everyone, even his family, rejected him. These were the reasons that he returned neither to his home nor the campus after escaping from the river.

What Paul learns from his violent confrontation with Chuck constitutes an epiphany. He has misjudged the drama he had seen on the bank of the river during the flood, he has misjudged Johnny and Chuck, and most of all, he has misjudged himself. He comes to realize that the mere belief that someone is guilty of crime, or sin, even if that someone is himself, does not translate into truth, and that judging the heart is an enterprise fraught with peril, sometimes even when the heart being judged is one's own.

Samples from the novel

 The young Narrator arrives at his destination after a long trip from home. He’s tired, lonely, and afraid:

 Doomsday dawned August 4^th, 1958. That was the day I got off the bus in Columbus, Ohio to attend the Pontifical College Josephinum, a Catholic seminary where boys went to study for the priesthood. I had been on the bus for forty hours straight. With no chance to bathe or change clothes during the whole trip, no room to stretch or move more than a couple steps at a time except for a few minutes at bus stops, sleeping only in snatches in a seat that didn't adjust nearly enough to get comfortable in, eating nothing but fried pies and potato chips for nearly two days – I was not in peak condition when the bus finally pulled into its slot at the Columbus station. Yet in spite of it all I would have gladly gone another forty hours if only I could have ended up back where I started. I was thirteen years old, had never been away from home, and now Far Corners, Texas, was fifteen hundred miles away. It might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

I don't know what made Mom and Dad so sure I wanted to be a priest that they'd send me across the country to a place I'd never been before, by myself, at such a young age. I might have said something on the subject once or twice, due to the fact that in those days I was living in terror of going to hell for all the mortal sins I was committing. At least two or three every day. It seemed like every time I looked at a girl, and sometimes even when I just thought of one, I couldn't help imagining her standing in front of me naked as a new-hatched sparrow. The third or fourth time I went to confession for thinking about naked girls and getting a hard on, my pastor chewed me out good – said if I couldn't get myself under control I would end up burning in hellfire for all eternity. That really scared the crap out of me, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t keep my imagination turned off. I finally figured the only way to stop sinning was to be a priest. Priests were super-human beings who couldn’t sin if they wanted to, so maybe if I was one I wouldn't either, and that's why I might have mentioned wanting to be a priest. It was a huge mistake made by a stupid kid. Whoever thought anybody would take me serious?

…

I found a space on the curb between two other piles of luggage, just big enough to fit my own. A fat, chocolate-colored man in a black leather golf cap appeared at the back of the cab nearest me. He opened the trunk lid and turned to me. An unlit cigar stump stuck from the corner of his mouth. He had an open-faced grin that somehow made me feel a better.
           “Headed for the Joss?” he asked.
           “Uh, well, yeah, I’m going to the Josephinum.”
           He had already started loading my trunk. “Anybody riding with you?”
           “No, I don’t know anybody.”
           “You will soon enough, I reckon.”
           The owner of another pile of luggage was standing by, a young guy with smooth skin and dark hair and his hands in his pockets. He was watching the comings and goings like he did it every day of his life. When he saw me watching he took a pack of Lucky Strikes from his shirt pocket and tapped out a cigarette. He placed it between his lips, struck a match on the sole of his shoe, touched the flair to the tip of the cigarette and sucked. He flicked the match toward the center of the tarmac, removed the cigarette and inhaled.
          He tried not to cough, but it didn’t work. His body scrunched up like a calf cornered in a cow lot, and a cloud of white smoke exploded from his mouth and nose. When he finally caught his breath, he picked a grain of tobacco from the tip of his tongue with his fingernail like nothing had happened.
         “Sextaner?” he asked me, examining his fingernail.
          The word startled me, having as it did the word “sex” in it. The shock must have registered on my face.
          “Yeah, you’re a sextaner all right. That’s what we call you freshmen at the Joss.”
          He offered me a cigarette. I took it. He lit another match, but this time the wind blew it out before he could get it to the cigarette.
          “Let me.” I turned my back to the wind, cupped my hands around another match and puffed quickly.
          “Looks like you’ve been doing that a while,” he said.
          To prove he was right, I drew in a mouthful of smoke, held it, and with puckered lips blew it toward the overhanging roof. Piece a cake. I took another, and this time, carefully, I sucked it back.
          “Chuck Means is my name,” he said. He stuck his hand at me across the last suitcase to be loaded. “I’m a sophomore, what we call a quintaner.”
          A cough was building up in my own lungs. Desperately I tried to head it off.
          “Paul Rid – ”
           The eruption forced smoke to squirt out my mouth and nose, and, so help me, it felt like it was coming out of my eyes and ears too. But I hung on to his hand.
           “Riddle. Paul Riddle.” My eyes were tearing something terrible, but if he could act like nothing had happened, so could I.
            “Don’t know why I smoke those things,” he said, grinning, “They’re nasty as cat piss. I must look pretty dumb, sucking on this thing….”

Much later in the story: After witnessing what he believed to be the murder of his classmate and believing he was partly responsible, the protagonist attempts, for the first time in his life, to seriously seek God’s help in prayer:

The air was cool and muggy when I walked into the empty chapel. Only the dimmest light filtered through the stained glass windows. The sanctuary lamp was flickering like a ruby way up at the front next to the main altar, and the familiar heavy perfume of candles and incense floated in the air. I had always liked the smell because I associated it with peace and quiet.
           I genuflected and made my way to my assigned pew. There I knelt down, as forlorn and pathetic as it’s possible for a human being to get. I was determined to pray like I never prayed before. I made the sign of the cross and started off saying a couple Hail Mary’s and an Our Father or two. Then I stopped, tried to clear my mind, and waited for the peace and quiet to settle over me. One minute, two, three. I said a couple more Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s and waited some more.
          Something was wrong. There was plenty of quiet, but where was the peace? I didn’t expect to be floating in ecstasy right off the bat, but I did expect to feel something, some loosening of the hellish grip of self-loathing maybe, but it didn’t happen. Always before, when I didn’t need it, peace seemed to hang in the chapel air like incense. Now when my tortured conscience needed soothing, where was it? If there was any peace lurking around, it was sure taking its sweet time homing in on me.
          Maybe I had to do something besides just repeating prayers and waiting, but what?
          I tried to reason it through. Compassion, redemption, forgiveness, all the things I had heard preached all my life was supposed to be there for the asking. So maybe I should ask. I knew as many prayers as the next guy – not just Hail Mary’s, Our Father’s, and Glory Be’s, but a whole host of others memorized over the years; but I didn’t know any designed to do what I wanted done at that particular time. There probably wasn’t any. In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted done; I only knew what I wanted undone, and I’d never heard of a prayer to undo anything.
         I had to plow new ground.
         “Dear God,” I said under my breath, head bowed, hands clasped in front of me so hard my knuckles were white, “hear your, uh, your servant, who beseeches you to, uh, help him – me, out of this mess, so that he – I – may go forth to further do your – thy will –  without the distraction of…of this distraction…”
        I admit I wasn’t very good at it, but I kept plugging away for twenty minutes and still nothing happened. I tried again.
        “O Almighty God, I know I haven’t been the, uh, the best, or even a very good example of…of what a seminarian should be, or, or ought to be, but…if somehow I…you could get me out of this, I promise I will, I will be the best seminarian ever – no more talking at meals or after lights out, no more farting during rosary, fighting, cheating – nothing but the best, dear God, if only you get me out of this…I will go to Africa or South America…I’ll give the rest of my life to bringing Your Word to the godless savages…”
        I must’ve still been doing something wrong. Maybe I didn’t have the right attitude. Or, maybe I ought to be praying to somebody other than God.
        Let’s see – St. Francis was a pretty good saint, but I could never really feel a connection to a guy who let birds sit on his shoulder. I liked to shoot birds, ducks in particular, in season or out, and if a squirrel or dove ever got close enough to sit on my shoulder it’d end up cleaned and gutted in no time. No, I didn’t think St. Francis would be willing to go out of his way for a guy like me.
        Saints Peter and Paul were way too important to bother about rescuing a miserable wretch from the consequences of his own cowardice. The martyrs would probably laugh at my problem, picayune as it was next to burning in a pit or being shot full of arrows. The Fathers of the Church were philosophers and theologians and would probably rather deal with serious moral issues facing the entire Church than the problem of one little bitty guy in one corner of the world at a single moment in time. The virgins – well, anything I had in common with virgins was beyond my contemplation and I didn’t have the inclination to meditate on that prospect now.
       I needed a saint I could identify with, one who wasn’t all so heroic and important that he didn’t have better things to do than hear my case and carry it right up to the throne of God himself in my behalf. But who?
       St. Jude! That’s the one – the patron saint of lost causes. I hoped my cause wasn’t lost, but I sure felt like it was. St. Jude was perfect. I didn’t know much about him, certainly nothing particularly heroic. In my muddled state of mind I didn’t realize he wouldn’t’ve been a saint if he hadn’t’ve done something pretty darn heroic.
       Again I squeezed my eyes closed. “Dear St. Jude…” What could I say next? I started again. “Dear St. Jude, uh, I just remembered you were the saint – the patron saint of lost causes. I don’t think – that is, I hope my cause isn’t lost, but…but – it nearly is, and I need – what I need is for God – for you to ask God for me, or yourself if…if you have the power…”
       This was going nowhere. Not only did I not know how to pray, but when I finally did manage to squeeze out a few words I ended up insulting the saint I was trying to pray to by hinting I didn’t think he was powerful enough to help me. How could anybody know about a thing like how much power a saint had anyway? I never realized you had to know so much to do a good job of praying.
        I was getting desperate. I tried the unfocused approach.
        “Dear St. Jude, anybody, I need help. I’m so miserable I can’t hardly stand it. If anybody is listening, please help me. I don’t know how to pray. I’m sorry I never learned, sorry I never paid any attention to Fr. Huelsman when he tried to teach us. It’s my fault and I’m sorry. I didn’t know I’d need help like this. I didn’t know I could get in so much trouble. I should have listened to Father Huelsman, and to Jape – uh, Father Marzen. I should have been more careful about all the rules, and I’m sorry I wasn’t. I’m sorry too about being so all-fired bent on being popular and a leader when I knew all along I wasn’t one. I’m sorry for all the stuff I did, ‘specially hitting Bronson…”
         I was on a role, but no point in trying to pull one over on whoever might be listening.
         “No, Bronson deserved the lickin’ I gave him, but still…”
         I was getting pretty cranked up, and had the feeling I might be getting somewhere. Something should start to happen pretty soon now.
         I was still kneeling when the lights clicked on and people started coming in for rosary. I had been there the whole hour! I got more than one peculiar look from people passing by to their pews. I wasn’t known for piety and was generally in chapel only when I had to be. I definitely didn’t have to be there during the after-supper free time, yet there I was.
        The chapel filled quickly. When everyone was in place and the muffled sound of the tower bell sounded through the stone and timber of the ceiling at seven o’clock, the major seminarians began the ritual. “Hail Mary, full of grace…” The minor seminarians answered, “Holy Mary, Mother of God…”
        They’d repeat, we’d repeat, everybody mumbling, over and over, at least fifty times before it was all over, like two flocks of chickens taking turns pecking grain from opposite sides of a trough, with an Our Father and Glory Be stuck in every now and then to break the monotony.
         I never did like to pray the rosary because it’s impossible to keep your mind on the words of the prayers for more than ten seconds at a time, tops. And what’s the point of all the repetition? Pestering the Virgin Mary so much she’ll agree to listen just to shut you up? It’s an impossible job. Father Huelsman once told us the words weren’t all that important – the idea was to raise our minds and hearts to God. But if the words weren’t important, why say them? And then repeat them over and over? That’s the kind of problem that kept me from taking Father Huelsman too seriously when it came to learning how to pray.
         I couldn’t concentrate on my own prayers while everybody else was saying the rosary, so I tried to fit my prayers into what everybody else was saying, to hitch my prayers to theirs, so to speak. Of all the saints, the Virgin Mary was closest to God, and it occurred to me that if anybody could do me any good it would be her, if I could get her attention.
        “…Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death…”
        With each repetition I rephrased the words, saying something like “…pray for me now, right now, forget the hour of my death…” and I concentrated till I nearly ruptured my brain.
         How was it supposed to work, really? Surely I didn’t have to go on and on, like a kid picking at a scab. I admit I was a novice at it, but in my misery I wondered – why couldn’t I just lay it out there man to man, once, with feeling, and rely on God to get it right the first time? If He’s so all-knowing and all-powerful, why would there be any need for a go-between? To be sure He got the message? Surely not. Surely He wouldn’t need for me to keep grinding away at the same old point, on and on and on till we were both sick of it.

…