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                                    %u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 115from South Pacific with new lyrics: %u201cThere is nothing like a steak.%u201d Such a twist, of course, only added mystique to the subtracted original lyric. %u201cWhat next?%u201d Lock said. %u201cWhat next?%u201dThat precisely, I guessed, was what the whole faculty was asking about the dashing advent of Christopher Dryden. Something inside Misericordia was shifting on its axis. Years before, the seminarians had been docile, obedient, reading only the literature and philosophers required for class, and mostly outwitting the priests by drinking altar wine in the attic while sitting on the boxes of silks used for the Virgin%u2019s May altar. I saw color-slide pictures of one of those parties with seminarians, all fresh young veterans from World War II, later ordained priests, slugging smuggled bourbon right out of the bottle.Gunn, I think, really preferred that kind of rebellion. It was easy to deal with. He caught them, if he could, and shipped one or two of the leaders. Then he had discipline. For awhile. Drinking didn%u2019t scare him, because he knew the thought behind a drink or two.But with Dryden%u2019s coming, the old shenanigans had mutated and Gunn, consulting with Rector Karg, could not understand the refined edge of the new expressiveness. Change was blowing through the Church. On the sly, we read about the worker-priests in France who supported themselves at jobs and did not live in a rich rectory supported by their flock. Dryden had returned from two years at the Biblical Institute in Rome with a third glamorous year with the Vatican diplomatic corps, changed, despite all the formation of his years at Misery.He had come back from the world to Misery. He had lunched with Sophia Loren, and he had met Fellini during the filming of La Dolce Vita, which was condemned by the Legion of Decency, and he had worked with Roman charities for destitute boys. He had sped through Rome in his own red Frogeye 1959 Austin-Healey. He was shocking. He spent time talking with the seminarians outside of class. Mike, who began seeing him for counseling, reported he gave a glimpse of priestly professionalism: what it was for a man to be a good priest on the human level.Perhaps this priest was the priest I had hoped would initiate me fully into the inner secrets of the priesthood. He had introduced a new intellectual honesty. Our Misery education in humanities and theology had always been excellent even though rigid. Scholastically, Misery was the Oxford of Catholic seminaries, and Dryden was the new champion, at least, for those ambitious boys who planned to get ahead in the priesthood.A few moral theology books written by the new breed of theologians approved by the Pope circulated more openly despite cautions by Misery%u2019s 
                                
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