Jim Lovejoy

MANY CALL ME FATHER BUT MY KIDS CALL ME DAD

James E. Lovejoy

This was the title of a book that my daughter insisted I write several years ago. It was a simple autobiography of my life prior to, during and following my fifteen years as a celibate Catholic priest.

I never seriously thought about becoming a priest during my early years. In fact, I was seventeen years old and preparing to graduate from public high school when things changed all of a sudden.

I suspected that my father was having an affair with a much younger woman when I was about twelve years old. I knew that my parents were having marital difficulties but I couldn’t believe that they would separate until my father asked my older brother and me to meet with him and a different woman at a nearby restaurant late in December 1941. He intended to marry her when he divorced our mother. I was devastated. I loved my mother but I worshipped my father.

My father was an officer in the Army and left with his unit for the South Pacific the following month. I saw him only once during the following four years while he was on leave. My mother, who was a devout Catholic, refused to give him a divorce. I somehow believed that my mother and Dad would get back together so a few months before my high school graduation, I went alone to see a priest in my parish church. (My brother had already joined the Navy and was serving on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Guam.) My purpose in seeing the priest was a desperate appeal to help me bring my parents together.

I don’t remember much about our conversation but he did explain to me that this was something my folks needed to work out. It was not my fault, and I should do all I could to stay close to my mother who needed me during this trying time for all of us. At some point in our conversation father asked me if I had ever thought of becoming a Catholic priest. I do remember telling him that I hadn’t. I intended to join the military along with most of my class even though W.W.II had ended. The priest then gave me a book to read. It was entitled: ‘WHEN THE SORGHAM WAS HIGH,” the biography of a Maryknoll Missionary who was murdered by Chinese bandits in the early part of the 20^th century.(Maryknoll is a Catholic missionary society). I was deeply impressed by the story and when I went back to return the book I told father that I wanted to serve in the missions…as a priest.

Conflicted in mind about my new decision to study for the priesthood and knowing that I must terminate a close female relationship, as well as change my plans about enlisting in the military, I somewhat tentatively left for summer school at Maryknoll’s Minor Seminary in Boston, Massachusetts.

I spent the next ten years preparing for ordination. I had my doubts about continuing, especially when a “conflict” broke out in 1950 with North Korea. I was visiting my father the day the war started. He was living in Virginia and assigned to Ft. Belvior. I confided in him that perhaps I should take a leave of absence from the seminary and join the military. He persuaded me not to.

In 1953 I was told by my superiors that they decided I should not continue studying for the missions. They felt that I was too introspective and unsuitable for what may be long years in a foreign land and possibly miles away from any colleagues. I was devastated by this turn of events and returned home totally depressed and without hope of ever being a priest. Then the priest who had helped me apply to Marynoll heard of my situation, came to our home and spent hours talking to me. He finally said, “Do you sincerely want to be a priest or not? If you do, I can help you but you must decide.” I thought about it for awhile and finally said, “Yes, I do.” He made arrangements for me to meet with a bishop who was currently in Boston looking for vocations to come to his diocese in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. I interviewed with him and he accepted me. I would continue my studies at the major seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was now evident to me that God had other plans for my future.

I was ordained to the priesthood at the cathedral in LaCrosse on May 19, 1956. Both my mother and father, my brother and his wife and a few close friends were present. It was one of the happiest days of my life. I returned home to Lynn, Massachusetts for my first solemn Mass, but stopped on the way to offer Mass for my Maryknoll class preparing for their own ordination.

After ordination, I left the “unreal world” of the seminary where I learned how to become a priest, and began to realize the potential for good in the world around me. The first time I heard confessions was when the pastor in my mother’s parish asked me to “take his confessional” on the Saturday night before I left for my first parish assignment. I was very nervous .Those were the days in the 1950’s when the confessional time lasted several hours. This was part of my real education. I learned how good lay people were, and not how badly they sinned. I will never forget that “revelation.”

For a year I served as an assistant pastor at a wonderful new parish. I will forever cherish that time and my growth as a person. Then, circumstances changed and I was asked by the bishop to provide spiritual help to young adults at the nearby university. I remained in that capacity for the next 14 years with a two year break while doing graduate studies in Ecumenism at St. Rose Dominican Priory in Dubuque, Iowa. We were part of a consortium which included not only Catholic professors but also faculties from a Lutheran college and the University of Iowa.

I learned a great deal from the students and faculty, made some bad mistakes, but also some good decisions during my life as a cleric and began to form a real conscience of my own and see Catholicism not only as a divine creation but as a very human institution with fallible men at the helm.

I often say that I “straddled” Vatican II. Like most priests of that day The Council was a “breath of fresh air.” We had great hopes as Pope John XXIII opened the first session in 1962. Some 2000 bishops and their periti (theological experts) arrived for the world-wide meeting of Church leaders. The anticipation grew when the bishops collectively rejected the agenda offered by the Vatican Curia, and insisted on drawing up their own, which the pope enthusiastically endorsed. It was a few years after the Council closed that I began to seriously question my life as a canonical priest. I loved the priesthood and the work I was doing, but as I matured, I was somewhat more skeptical of church authority.

It may seem naive on my part but I was totally ignorant of the horrible incidents going on around me. I had never met or heard about a pedophile priest yet it was happening unbeknown to me. Years later when the Boston Globe made public the instances of clerical sexual abuse of children, I was shocked as were millions of others and I learned that the most notorious abuser in the Boston area had been found guilty of serial cases in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s while I was in the seminary and later as a young cleric. In fact he was at one time in my home parish and had been transferred, without parishioners’ knowledge, to the parish where I had my first solemn Mass.

What I did know a great deal about were the instances of alcoholic priests, womanizers and priests gambling when they should have been serving their people. Most of the priests I knew well were outstanding men who were a credit to the Church, but due to the exceptions I began to wonder about what I was doing and began to long for companionship. I thought more about marriage and a family but never believed I would realize such a life until I met my future wife, Jackie. We met at a Cursillo Retreat that I was conducting in Wisconsin. She was a nun teaching in the next town to where I had been Newman Chaplain at the University. Actually, our first meeting was quite negative. I resented some of her views on theology (which differed from mine) and I just passed her off as an “uppity nun”. Was I ever wrong!!

Coincidentally, we met again a year later at another Cursillo. I had a better impression of her this time and then she surprised me by asking if she could talk to me after the last session. She told me that she had decided to leave the Order for personal reasons which we discussed. I said nothing of my own deliberations at that time but told her to do what she felt was best for her.

I thought about her often after that and finally decided to ask her to dinner. She accepted and that was really the beginning of my serious consideration to leave the canonical state. We found that we had more in common than we had thought about at our first encounter. I visited her family, told my parents about our feelings for each other and our eventual plans to marry. I left the clerical state but not the priesthood, and we married in the dead of winter late in January, 1971 at Jackie’s home in Mountain, Wisconsin. A few family members and friends were our congregation and two of my colleagues from the university, one a priest and the other a Lutheran minister, were the officiants.. We had a simple honeymoon in northern Wisconsin amidst a raging snowstorm and then left for Washington, D.C. to search for work.

Four months later, after 90 interviews with various government agencies, little money left, and Jackie’s revealing that she was pregnant with our first child, I was hired by the Dept. of Defense for a job with a newly funded program to train members of the military services in preventing racial and sexual discrimination in their ranks.

For the next 30 years I did not serve in a priestly capacity. Like most priests who leave for reasons of conscience and disagreement with some hierarchical positions, especially the insistence on mandatory life-long celibacy as a condition of ordination, I devoted my time and efforts to my growing family (a girl and two boys who are now married with children of their own and seven grandchildren), my work, and community responsibilities.

Ten years ago, with our children out of college and on their own, I confided in an elderly priest acquaintance that I felt the need to re-associate myself with the priesthood. He did not question my motives but referred me to a group of married priests who met occasionally together with their wives in Portland, Maine. It was through one of those priests that I learned about CITI Ministries, an organization of married priests. The founder of the organization was a lay woman who realized some 20 years ago that the shortage of Catholic priests called for immediate action to provide service to thousands of Catholics who no longer felt comfortable with the institutional church but longed for a spirituality they could relate to. I talked to Louise Haggett, founder of CITI Ministries/Rentapriest, and after qualifying for membership in 2001, I had the privilege of resuming ministry. It has been wonderful to once again work with couples who wish to be married but either cannot or wish not to be married in the parish church. Jackie works with me in providing instructions and developing ceremonies for those who seek our help. Strange as it may seem I feel more qualified now than when I was in the canonical priesthood to meet their needs. As a married priest, my wife and I can better relate to them providing a woman’s view as well as my own and I can make use of my years as a priest as well as my added experience as a husband, father and even grandfather. I am no longer relying on books about marriage but my own 4i years of experience as a married man.

My wife and I moved to Maine with our family in 1984 after I retired early from government service and launched a new venture. We owned and operated a Bed and Breakfast business on the mid-coast. From that time to the present, 28 years later, we have worked together : 13 years serving guests from all over the world at our Inn. Jackie served as an educational technician in the local schools. I was the Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce. When we sold the Inn in 1996, I continued to work with a Travel Agency promoting our area for tourism. Then we moved inland and Jackie accompanied me when I worked as a traveling (“mobile”) notary delivering bank documents from banks for prospective home buyers to complete. In 2006 we moved south to be closer to two of our married children and escape the Maine winters.

I turned 86 in June, 2014 and Jackie will turn 77 in August. Until May, 2014, we lived close to our daughter and her family and having had the best job in the world—caring for her children while Jennifer teaches school and her husband works out of the home. Isabella was four years old in May, 2014 and the new baby boy, Garrett, is now two. I helped as much as we can, but Jackie did most of the caring (diapers and feeding). One son, Jon lived about 35 miles away with his wife and two children. Now we’ve moved back to Maine where our youngest son and his family live. We hope to visit the kids in Georgia in coming years. We consider ourselves very fortunate and try to appreciate every day that God sees fit to keep us in relative good health.

For as long as I can I will continue to serve those Catholics and others who feel estranged for whatever reason from their religious roots. While the Church, as institution, struggles with the issues of our time and seeks to regain the respect and trust of its members due in great part to the failure of its leaders to ferret out and correct the abusive sexual treatment of children in their care, my wife and I will work with many other married priests and their wives to provide the sacraments, counseling, and whatever spiritual needs the laity ask from us. .

Fr. James E. Lovejoy, married priest

Thomaston, Maine

sauguslovejoy@gmail.com)

ABOUT MY MINISTRY

As a married Catholic priest, I belong to a national organization of married Catholic priests (CITI Ministries.com). We provide service throughout the United States. Our mission is to be available to current and former Catholics as well as those of other faiths who wish to be married with some element of spirituality, but cannot or choose not to be married in the Institutional Church.

While a member of the Catholic clergy, I spent 15 years as a canonical priest in the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, 14 of which were as a university chaplain for students and faculty of the Catholic faith.

I left the clerical state (but not the priesthood) in the early 1970’s’primarily over the issue of mandatory lifelong celibacy demanded of candidates for the priest-hood. My wife and I have three grown children who have given us seven grandchildren.

In 2002, I learned of the married priests’ organization and have officiated at over 100 marriages in Maine, North Carolina and where we have now retired in Georgia. Although, I am now up in years I enjoy very much working with young couples to experience the kind of marriage they desire. I am not interested in the number of weddings I officiate but in serving those who are genuinely interested in a life-long commitment and in experiencing the greatest day in their lives.

I am grateful that I have been blessed with two special vocations, one to the priesthood and the other to marriage..

James Lovejoy ~ obituary

https://www.penbaypilot.com/article/james-lovejoy/47163

Fri, 01/23/2015 - 1:15pm

BELFAST — James Edward Lovejoy, 86, passed away Jan. 21, 2015, at The Sussman House in Rockport. He was born June 26, 1928, in Lynn Mass., and attended Saugus High School.

He entered MaryKnoll Seminary in 1946. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1956. He received two master’s degrees and later a doctorate in ecumenical studies and religious freedom. The majority of his time as an active priest was spent as a chaplain at two universities in Wisconsin.

James left the active ministry in 1971 and married Jacquelyn Kresse. He worked for the Department of Defense and the Department of The Navy for 13 years in race relations and equal employment opportunities. In 1984 Jim and his family moved to Belfast and operated a bed and breakfast for the next 12 years. While living in Belfast he served on the Belfast City Council, the Chamber of Commerce and State Development, tourism and local committees. He also organized the Waldo County Chamber of Commerce.

In 2002 he returned to ministry and assisted in more than 100 marriages, baptisms and religious counseling until retiring in 2014.

Jim will be remembered as a gentle man who was passionate in his involvement in causes and his care for people. He had a strong impact on many people throughout his life.

He was preceded in death by his parents, George Fred Lovejoy and Marie Donahoe Lovejoy; and his two brothers, George and Richard. He is survived by his wife, Jacquelyn; his children, Jennifer, Jon and Jeff and their spouses, Vince, Meg and Johanna; and seven grandchildren, Olivia, Jonah, Jack, Pete, Kate, Isabella and Garrett.

A viewing and visitation will be held Sunday Jan. 25 from 3 to 5 p.m. at Riposta Funeral Home in Belfast, Maine. A short prayer service will be held at 4:30 p.m.