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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK126 Jack FritscherDryden circled through his crowded smoky room, taking random ecstatic kicks at furniture and pillows and doctrine and dogma. %u201cI am,%u201d he said, %u201ca follower of T. S. Eliot. I subscribe to his theorem that the greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason. I also very much think that all institutions would be better organized along the lines of the religious communities of the Middle Ages. A modernized reorganization, of course. Perhaps into communes of peace and justice and love.%u201dI stepped back to the shadow of the corner. %u201cMike,%u201d I said, %u201csomething%u2019s got to happen to me this winter or I%u2019ll die.%u201d%u201cCool it,%u201d he whispered.%u201cYou each do what you must for yourself,%u201d Dryden said. %u201cPeople always do. Priests are people. As persons, you must withstand the impersonal institution for the right reason, the reason proper to your own existential soul. The impersonal must be resisted. Resist it for whatever reason is right for you, not solely for the fashionable sake of rebelling. This suite I have changed into a personal statement that nevertheless remains true to the worker-artists who built Misery with their own hands.%u201d%u201cHmmph,%u201d I said.Dryden stopped beneath a large black-and white photograph of himself sailing with Senator Jack Kennedy on vacation at Martha%u2019s Vineyard three months before in June. %u201cPriests, you say, need safe harbor. So true. Priests ought to be more than prayer machines, vending masses to distract their libidos.%u201d%u201cTwo-four-six-eight,%u201d a boy chanted. %u201cHow we gonna sublimate?%u201d He was hissed quiet.Dryden laughed and picked up the word. %u201cSome physical sublimation must occur, but such purity must find intellectual or esthetic expression, or the person the priest is will crack up, go crazy, turn to the bottle. Christianity is, after all, the ultimate achievement of Greek culture. But always there has been, and is now, even in this sweeping time of change in the Church, too much sterility, loss, and defeat in the priesthood. There need be no sterility in intellectual life, or in spiritual life.%u201d He turned, sweeping in the whole room, %u201cWe are surrounded by beauty. We are ourselves beautiful creatures of God%u2019s grace.%u201dI thought to myself, this guy has escaped from a cuckoo clock. %u201cThis year,%u201d I whispered to Mike, %u201csomething%u2019s got to happen to me.%u201d%u201cYou won%u2019t be a seminarian all your life,%u201d he said under his breath.%u201cThank God! In four years, I%u2019ll be a priest!%u201d%u201cYou%u2019ve got two hands.%u201d Christopher Dryden stared straight at me. %u201cStart wringing them.%u201d