Nobody's Child

by Father Michael Seed

  In Oxford, I met Father Timothy Radcliffe, then in his early thirties, who went on to be world leader of the Dominicans. He was even then a dynamic, charismatic figure and seemed to carry his destiny for greatness like an aura around him.

  I made tentative suggestions about my becoming a Dominican friar and the Novice Master told me in a kindly but firm response that I didn’t have enough studies behind me. The Dominicans are very big on studies and are all deeply intellectual.

  But I enjoyed my week there and my contact with some of the young novices and it prompted me to dabble further into other orders.

  Within the month, I had arranged to spend a weekend at the Birmingham Oratory, a Catholic community founded by Cardinal John Henry Newman in homage to St Philip Neri, whose first Oratory community was established in Italy in the 16th century.

  I was desperate to find something I felt really called to. Although I was being sponsored by the Society of African Missions, I was still very uncertain if missionary work was the right vocation.

  After Father Flanagan discovered about my dabbling and reported me to the SMA, I once more feared the worst. But again they decided to keep me.

  Another student at Aberystwyth with whom I formed a lasting friendship was John Griffiths, who invited me to spend holidays with his family in South Wales and would remain my friend for 31 years. He is now a canon in the diocese of Cardiff.

  Surprisingly, at the end of my first term, the SMA declared they were so pleased with my results and progress that they had decided to accelerate my entry into the novitiate. I would start as a novice in Ireland in September.

  To our mutual delight, I was able to spend the summer with my grandmother, who had, by this time, moved to a controlled bungalow for the elderly in the middle of Bolton. She had become reconciled to my switch to Catholicism and was even beginning to show an interest in the religion. But, meanwhile, she continued to attend services with the Strict and Particular Baptists and, at the age of 82, was still turning out to protest against Sunday football matches and other such sins against the Sabbath.

  I spent my last night in the UK with John Griffiths and his family in Aberdare and he drove me to Swansea docks the next morning to catch my boat to Cork.

  The novitiate house was about a mile and a half from the centre of Cork. It looked very intimidating and austere – and very formal. Even the nuns who looked after us were strict. The place scared me at first.

  We were put in large double bedrooms, each containing two single beds, two small wardrobes and a small bedside table and chair. The walls were painted white and the floors were scrubbed wooden boards with a few little mats scattered about on them. Everywhere was scrupulously clean.

  To begin with, I walked about as though on eggshells, frightened of doing or saying the wrong thing. But, after a few days, I began to relax, and within a week I was beginning to enjoy myself.

  The novitiate is the period, usually a year, during which a novice or prospective member of a religious order, who has not yet been admitted to vows, has to undergo training in order to be found eligible or qualified for admission. It is a very ancient tradition dating back to at least the 5th century.

  One requirement of the students was that we had to work with local needy people. I was assigned to the psychiatric hospital and went there every Sunday to help out. I found I related to the inmates very well, because after my job in the nursing home in Bolton I was used to dealing with crazy people.

  We were also obliged to join a society, and I was assigned to the Legion of Mary, with which I was very familiar. This one was based in the University of Cork, which allowed me, once again, to integrate with undergraduates. I was 19 and the students were mostly about the same age. One night a week, I was allowed to go to the Legion meeting and afterwards we would go out to the pub, and I usually managed to miss the last bus back to the novitiate.

  My drink of choice had become Guinness, but one night I accompanied a group of students to a Republican get-together where a small barrel of poteen, illegally distilled Irish whiskey, was produced. It is like drinking liquid fire and rapidly affects your ability to do the simplest things. I drank it only the once and swore I would never touch it again. It took me days to recover.

  Cork was a lot of fun and it wasn’t uncommon, before we made our promises or vows, for students to form attachments with the young women of the town. I think it was even considered a challenge among some of the Cork lasses to steal a novice student. And several of them were stolen successfully.

  We did all sorts of silly things then and I was no exception. There was one young woman who seemed very keen on me. So keen, in fact, that she would walk me back to the novitiate after the pub closed, knowing that she would have to walk back alone into the centre of Cork afterwards.

  Sweet kisses and loving endearments were exchanged but I think we both realised that the relationship could never lead to anything other than friendship.

  Climbing in through the windows late at night had again become a way of life. But I have no regrets. It was a time of innocent adventure, with fun-filled days and nights providing many sweet and lasting memories, and I was extremely sad when the time came to leave.

  I finished my novitiate and made my vows, or missionary promise, on my twentieth birthday, 16 June 1977. That afternoon, I returned to England for a brief visit to my grandmother before seeking work for the summer. I needed to earn money before starting my university studies for the priesthood.

  One of my fellow students in Cork had been Gregory Crowhurst, who had become my closest friend and was someone in whom I could confide anything. His father was a social worker, who was able to arrange jobs for myself and another student, Len de Sousa, with a children’s home attached to the Archdiocese of Southwark.

  The home, run by mainly Irish nuns, the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, was in Hove, on the coast next to Brighton in East Sussex. We were paid £25 a week plus our room and board.

  Len, who was a good-looking Portuguese Indian from Mozambique, turned out to be a great charmer with women and within a week had several different girls in tow. He was incredibly naughty and destined not to last long in a seminary. Years later, he invited me to assist at his wedding.

  Several young social workers were attached to the home and with them I enjoyed another happy and pleasurable summer. Alone I used to take out about 20 children at a time, into the town or down to the beach – something I don’t think would be allowed today. But the children were by and large well behaved and there was only one occasion when I lost any of them.

  They were twins who had wandered off while we were all paddling in the sea and I didn’t realise they were missing until I returned to the home. I raced back to the beach in a blind panic, fearing the worst – that they had drowned or been snatched by foreign slave traders. But fortunately I found them straight away, still splashing happily in the shallows and unaware that the rest of us had gone.

  On another occasion, I was asked to join two of the nuns, who were taking a party of children to Westminster Cathedral for the annual children’s service.

  It was there, quite by accident, that I first met the man who was to have a profound influence on my future vocation almost a decade later – Cardinal Basil Hume.

  A year earlier, with remarkable boldness, Basil Hume, a Benedictine monk, had been plucked from relative obscurity as Abbot of Ampleforth in Yorkshire, by Pope Paul VI, and made Archbishop of Westminster. A few weeks later, the Pope raised him to Cardinal.

  This incredibly simple and holy man, who was to transform my own life, was to transform the image of Catholicism in Britain, making it more attractive and credible than it had been for decades, even centuries. Before his death in 1999, he would become more deeply loved, by people of all denominations and none, than any other churchman in this or virtually any other country. He was the spiritual leader of the nation.

  He found our little group hovering in the main aisle as he returned from saying goodbye to pe
ople in the piazza outside the Cathedral. He was alone and on his way to get out of his formal robes.

  He stopped and asked where the children were from and then, squatting down to their height, introduced himself to each of them in turn and asked their names.

  Then he asked about me and seemed genuinely interested when I told him I had completed my novitiate and was about to start my university course.

  ‘It’s been very nice to meet you all,’ he said, ‘and it would be nice to see you again, and hear how you get on.’

  I was to learn that he was always this chatty and didn’t use what I call ‘holy language’. That wasn’t his style.

  Later that year, I often used the Cathedral for confession and would sometimes run into him. He had a tremendous memory for people and always remembered who I was and had a few kind words to offer.

  Despite my serious misgivings that I was on the wrong vocational track, but not having found an order which better suited my needs, I eventually took my place in the SMA’s House of Studies in Barnet, in north London, which was my intended home for the next two years.

  I would study for my degree course in philosophy at the Missionary Institute at Mill Hill, which is associated with the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. We commuted to the college each day by minibus. There were religious orders there from all over Europe and a dozen nationalities.

  My course of study at the college was a serious matter, putting me under pressure to pass important exams for the first time. Fortunately for me, the continental system in use there relied on oral examinations and so I was able to cope with most of my subjects. Greek was the exception in requiring a written test, and here I was out of my league, but, thanks to the Herculean efforts of a private tutor, I managed to scrape through. I briefly touched on Hebrew and Latin and somehow scrambled through those exams as well, successfully emerging from my first year’s finals with a pass.

  Then it was back to the children’s home in Hove to start a summer of work.

  By this time, I had become religious-order promiscuous, looking round for new ones the way most young men of my age were looking round for new partners. I stayed at Worth Abbey, near Gatwick, and visited several other religious orders in the south-east during my month in Hove, but found nothing which stimulated a real interest.

  Then came a significant breakthrough: a meeting with the Franciscans of the Atonement. Their mission to help the poor and the needy and spread the belief of spiritual unity among the world’s religions instantly struck a vibrant chord deep inside me.

  The way it came about was as though divine providence was at work again, this time in the shape of a little old lady who lived in Hove.

  My duty on that particular Sunday was to take a group of children to Mass, and instead of taking them as usual to the church of St Mary Magdalene, where the sermons were long and boring, I thought, I took them to the Sacred Heart, where the kids could enjoy a lighter service.

  After Mass, I was pulled into conversation by Mrs Wynne Monen, who invited me to join her later at her home in Hove for coffee. It transpired that this elderly lady’s daughter, Loretta, had worked as a receptionist for a group of Franciscan friars in America, one of whom now lived in London, and came to see her each month. She told me they appeared to be a very nice order and gave me some of their literature.

  When I read of their ecumenism and interfaith dialogue and their devotion to the poor and needy, I told her that I would love to meet them. So she wrote to her friend and before long it was arranged that I should go to London and visit their friary in Westminster – the place I now call home.

  I had dinner there with the Father Superior in London, Father Alban Carroll. He was the first American I had ever encountered and I found him surprisingly easygoing. He made me feel very welcome. But he also cautioned me, ‘Michael, you are the property of the SMA. You belong to them and can’t just walk out on them for another order without thinking about it very carefully.’

  Which I did, over the next six weeks.

  The previous year in Hove I had met an Italian priest who was the head of a school in Spain. He had kept in touch and this year had invited me and a friend to teach English in his school for six weeks. He would pay our costs and for our work with him. And as a bonus I would learn Spanish.

  So, after my time in Hove, I set off for Spain with Gregory Crowhurst. We took rucksacks and a tent and sleeping bags and made our way down to Aranjuez – of guitar-concerto fame – south of Madrid.

  At the end of six idyllic weeks, I had made up my mind. I would tell the Franciscan friars that I wanted to join them.

  This time I was greeted at the London friary by Father Peter Taran, who had just arrived from America. He was an Italian-American in his early forties, streetwise, full of enthusiasm and spontaneity and big in the renewal of charismatic Catholic-Pentecostal-style worship.

  ‘If God is calling you to us,’ he told me, ‘then we will take you. The Holy Spirit has led you to us here and that’s good enough for us.’

  It’s a fact that, ever since then, I have loved boring sermons. For, had I not taken the children to the Sacred Heart because of the boring sermons at the Church of Mary Magdalene, I would never have met Mrs Monen and the Franciscans.

  At last, I felt I was on the right track and when I returned to Mill Hill that September I immediately sought out my Superior at the SMA and told him my decision.

  I gathered it was as much of a relief for him as it was for me. He had known for some time that I wasn’t happy with them and he had heard from other students of my visits to different religious orders over the preceding 12 months.

  In making the break, I felt that a great burden had been lifted off my shoulders, but I suddenly realised, on a practical level, that I was now in a no man’s land of my own making. I didn’t belong to anyone. At that stage, I was an aspirant for the Franciscans but not even an official candidate. I had nowhere to live and how could I stay in college if I was no longer a student for the priesthood?

  The SMA were marvellous. At no cost, they allowed me to continue my degree course as a lay student, the first ever in the college’s history, and a monk. Dom Edmund Jones OSB, who had been my sometime confessor, arranged a room at his monastery in Cockfosters, not far from the college, in exchange for cleaning and household duties.

  I was even invited to drop in for breakfast with my old room-mates in Barnet and travel to college in their minibus. They proved to be true friends and I am still in touch with some of them today, including the present head of the SMA, who had been a classmate of mine in Cork.

  The next significant occurence came in April 1979, when I found myself on a Freddie Laker flight to New York and my beckoning new life as a Franciscan friar.

  I was met at the airport by two friars, who drove me for two hours along the Hudson River to Garrison, where the highest mountain in the valley reared up before us. At its peak loomed a truly enormous monastery, a vast eight-storey structure of concrete and glass, almost a quarter of a mile in length.

  It looked cold and uninviting like something out of Russia during the Cold War, a veritable Titanic of a building stranded on top of the mountain. This was Graymoor, home of the Franciscans of the Atonement.

  Surrounding it was a brilliant area of breathtaking natural beauty, like the best of Scotland and Wales combined – a definite candidate for the eighth wonder of the world.

  Beyond the monastic monstrosity was the original friary and church, with an Italianate tower, built around 1910 and simply and beautifully crafted in wood and stone.

  The gardens at Graymoor covered hundreds of acres and were laid out like a religious Disneyland. There you could do the Stations of the Cross and visit the site of Calvary and the grotto at Lourdes, among many other devotional shrines.

  At that time, up to 20,000 pilgrims a day visited the monastery and its gardens at peak times of the year. There was even a huge children’s fairground where the kids could play while adults toured the grou
nds.

  Halfway down the mountain was St Christopher’s Inn, named after the patron saint of travellers and dedicated to the homeless and needy, which it served. The Inn had been started soon after the founder, Father Paul Wattson, arrived at Graymoor in 1898, and originally had one homeless man living in a chicken coop. It grew to become the biggest centre for the homeless and needy in the United States.

  Father Wattson chose the name ‘Franciscan Friars of the Atonement’ because atonement in the Bible means the unity of men and women with God and one another. Their mission was to serve the poor, the needy and the homeless, those in hospitals and prisons and people recovering from alcoholism and chemical dependency, and, through their ecumenical ministries, to bring people of the various Christian churches and other world religions closer together.

  The small group of Atonement Friars and Atonement Sisters under Father Paul and his co-founder, Mother Lurana White, were received into the Catholic Church in 1909, under Pope Pius X, and encouraged to continue their work for Christian unity.

  Today, the Friars of the Atonement serve as ecumenical officers in dioceses in the United Sates, Canada, England and Japan, furthering the founders’ belief in Jesus’ prayer: ‘That all may be one so that the world might believe.’

  The friars at Graymoor seemed to seek and bring out the best in one another and I was immediately adopted by the community. Even more than my experience with the Crowhurst family, I had finally found a place where I was in harmony with the people around me and my surroundings, and I knew that I had reached my spiritual home at last.

  But there was still much work to be done.

  Within days, I was introduced to Dan Callahan from Buffalo, New York, and we spoke together on the telephone with Jim Lindsay in Philadelphia. We had been told that the three of us were to enter the order’s friary, or House of Studies, at the Catholic University in Washington DC, as postulants. That is, as candidates for admission into the order who were not yet novices.