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                                    %u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK176 Jack Fritschersupposed to destabilize into damaged goods; that was why the priests kept the contents under pressure for twelve years.But how, I wondered, can even the Pope expect seminarians, who come to the seminary at fourteen, not to suffer not only the normal crises of adolescence, but also the additional ones caused by struggles in the religious life? Realism says seminarians have to develop as much as anyone else. Karg can%u2019t expect us to have any interpersonal relationship with Jesus if we can%u2019t have one with our friends. Would Jesus want an interpersonal relationship with some boy who had only a stunted, inhibited persona to bring to the relation?I wrote journal notes to myself on stationery I stuck into my translation papers for the book on moral theology whose German author, that renegade priest, H%u00e4ring, speculated a forward thrust to the evolution of Christianity. Maybe the electricity of the wild May storm shocked me up like Frankenstein%u2019s monster. Maybe Gunn had gone too far. I felt wonderful. Screw them all! I tore open Hemingway%u2019s novel, The Old Man and the Sea. Someday I%u2019ll remember all this and it won%u2019t be any of that Mr. Chips crap.May 14, 1963Two weeks into May I told my Jesuit, my Jesuit, that I felt restored enough to begin a gentle preparation for final exams. All-important grades I couldn%u2019t fake. The clock was ticking. The calendar was turning. My third-to-last year, drawing to a close, promised a summer dedicated to apostolic work, maybe in some Negro parish on the South Side of Chicago. Ordinations to the priesthood for the twelfth-year deacons approached, propitiously, I announced to everyone, on President John Kennedy%u2019s birthday. That was a good omen.They stared.My Jesuit gave me copies of two recent Broadway plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and Suddenly Last Summer. He said that the author understood human nature, Christianity, and God. %u201cLiterature,%u201d he said, %u201cprecedes psychology and theology. Freud turned to Greek drama to find names for his conditions. In these plays you may rather quickly find the face of God.%u201dActually, rather quickly I felt bound to study for finals, so I skipped the plays, but after four days of deep study, I fell suddenly depressed. The Fathers of the Church in the %u201cPatrology of Ancient Christian Literature%u201d were dry texts we studied in Latin and were tested on in Latin. The Fathers 
                                
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