Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [65]
Three days before the semester ended, I made an appointment with my class dean, Father Duewicke, so I could go in and tell him of my decision to not pursue the priesthood.
I walked in and sat down in a chair in front of his desk.
“Soooo,” Father Duewicke said in a strange, sarcastic tone. “Michael Moore. I have some unpleasant news for you. We have decided to ask you not to return for your sophomore year.”
Excuse me? Did he just say what I thought he said? Did he just say they were… kicking me out?!
“Wait a minute,” I said, agitated and upset. “I came in here to tell you that I was quitting!”
“Well, good,” he said with a smarmy tone. “Then we’re in agreement.”
“You can’t kick me out of here! I quit! That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Well, either way, you won’t be gracing us with your presence in the fall.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, still hurting from the rug being pulled out from under me. “Why would you ask me not to come back? I’ve gotten straight A’s, I do all my work, I haven’t been in any serious trouble, and I’ve been forced to endure living in the juvie room with those two delinquents for most of this year. What grounds do you have to expel me?”
“Oh, that’s simple,” Father Duewicke said. “We don’t want you here because you upset the other boys by asking too many questions.”
“Too many questions about what? What does that mean? How can you say such a thing?”
“That’s three questions right there in less than five seconds, thus proving my point,” he said, while giving a mock look at his nonexistent watch. “You do not accept the rules or the teachings of our institution on the basis of faith. You always have a question. Why’s that? What’s that for? Who said? After a while, Mr. Moore, it gets tiring. You either have to accept things, or not. There’s no in-between.”
“So, you’re saying—and, sorry, I’m asking another question, but I don’t know any other way to phrase this—that I’m somehow a nuisance just because I want to know something?”
“Michael, listen—this is never going to work for you, being a priest…”
“I don’t want to be a priest.”
“Well, if you did want to be a priest, you would cause a lot of trouble for both yourself and for whatever church you’d be assigned to. We have ways of doing things that go back two thousand years. And we don’t have to answer to anybody about anything, certainly not to you.”
I sat and glared at him. I felt indignant and deeply hurt. This must be what it feels like to be excommunicated, I thought. Abandoned by the very people who are here on earth representing Jesus Christ and telling me that Jesus would want nothing to do with me. Because I asked some stupid questions? Like the one that was passing through my head, supplanting the fleeting thought of choking the smug out of Father Duewicke.
“You mean like why does this institution hate women and not let them be priests?”
“Yeeeesss!” Father Duewicke said with a knife of a smile. “Like that one! Good day, Mr. Moore. I wish you well with whatever you do with your life, and I pray for those who have to endure you.”
He got up, and I got up, and I turned around and walked the long walk back to my room. I shut the door, lay down, and thought about my life—and when that became pointless I reached under the bed and consoled myself for the next hour with the latest issue of Paris Match.
Boys State
I HAD NO IDEA why the principal was sending me to Boys State. I had broken no rules and was not a disciplinary problem of any sort. Although I was a high school junior, it was only my second year in a public high school after nine years of Catholic education, and not having nuns or priests to direct me still took some getting used to. But I thought I had adjusted quite well to Davison High School. On the very first day of my sophomore year, Russell Boone, a big, good ol’ boy who would