Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [59]
But first I had to convince my parents to let me leave home. They did not like this idea. These were the people who wouldn’t let me skip first grade, and they were definitely less inclined to let me skip town. But I told them I had “a calling,” and if you were a devout Catholic in those days and your kid told you he had “a calling,” you had better not risk getting in between the Holy Spirit and your only begotten son. They consented, reluctantly.
The seminary training would take twelve years before I could be ordained a priest. Four years of high school, four years of college, and four years of theological training. The high school part was optional, but for those who had the calling, there were two seminaries in Michigan for high school students: Sacred Heart in Detroit and St. Paul’s in Saginaw. It was less than a year after the Detroit riots, so Sacred Heart was out of the question for my parents. St. Paul’s it was.
On the first night after my mother and father dropped me off at the seminary in September 1968, I instantly began to question the wisdom of my decision. My doubts were not driven by the strict rules I had to follow: Up at 5:00 a.m. for prayers, long periods of enforced silence, barred from your room from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., difficult studies (nine weeks spent dissecting just one Shakespeare play), hard labor and chores, and severe punishment for violating any of the rules. Freshmen were prohibited from watching any television or listening to the radio for an entire year. You were strictly confined to the campus—with the exception of 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays, during which time you could walk two miles to the strip mall, grab a Whopper, and rush back.
But I was OK with all of that. My trouble was not with the system (at least not at first). It was with the two roommates I had been assigned to share a room with. Mickey Bader and Dickie O’Malley. Mickey and Dickie. “The Ickies,” as I called them (but only to myself). The problem with them being there at the seminary was that neither of them wanted to be a priest. No way. They were into girls, and partying, and smoking and sneaking off campus whenever they could. And pushing me around. They were what the adults referred to as “juvenile delinquents.” They were rich kids, the sons of important men in their communities, and it seemed as if at least Dickie already had a number of run-ins with the law. Their parents decided that perhaps the seminary could straighten them out, and how they got through the intense interview process I had to go through to get into this place was beyond me. I came to the realization that their fathers had probably bought their way in, and the priests were obviously in need of any “charity,” wherever they could find it.
Discovering that this was both a seminary and a reform school did not sit well with me, and it was clear to me that I was going to have to endure the constant harassment of Mickey and Dickie if I wanted to be a priest. When they found out I really believed in all this “religion crap,” they were relentless in mocking me as I said my prayers, did my chores, practiced my Latin.