Page 192 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK180 Jack FritscherHe reached for another sheet of paper.%u201cI don%u2019t like you,%u201d he repeated.%u201cI love you,%u201d I said. %u201cIn Christ%u2019s name.%u201d%u201cI also hold you...in charity.%u201d%u201cThank you, Rector.%u201d%u201cYou%u2019ve been taking Librium.%u201d%u201cNo more than I was given by my spiritual director, Rector. It%u2019s like an aspirin for nerves.%u201d%u201cYou have a nervous condition?%u201dNot till now, I thought. I was still my own best observer. %u201cI was working very hard. Studying. Writing. I had begun translating a German moral theology book, but stopped already early in the spring. My studies come first.%u201d%u201cYes. That book by that heretic H%u00e4ring.%u201d%u201cI was told, Rector, that he is one of the new theologians.%u201dHe glared at me. %u201cH%u00e4ring is a radical rogue priest.%u201d He pulled a sheaf of loose pages from his desk drawer. %u201cThese pages came from your room. There%u2019s words in here. Words that...one word...mentioned twice. You have dared to write it.%u201d%u201cI only translated it, Rector.%u201d%u201cNo seminarian should even know that word exists.%u201d%u201cI looked in the dictionary, Rector.%u201d%u201cThat word does not exist.%u201d%u201cWhen I become a priest, hearing Confessions, that word...%u201d%u201cDo not listen to everything you hear in the Confessional. Do you understand me?%u201d%u201cYes, Rector.%u201d %u201cI shall take these pages and burn them myself.%u201d%u201cYes, Rector.%u201dHe was an assassin. I sat across from him, intent on playing his game, intent on outmaneuvering him. This was about survival. I was certain I had a vocation, and if God were trying to tell me I didn%u2019t have a vocation, God would certainly find a better messenger than the pietistic Rector Karg.If I was not to be a priest, which negation I sincerely doubted, then I would leave Misery by my own will. I would not let this assassin twist ten years of my pure motives of study, prayer, work, and virtue into some weird pattern that would justify his shipping me.If I were to be removed, I would remove myself. All my life I lived to protect my vocation. Could I be faulted for grooming my specific vocation