Priesthood many years in the making

loading...

ELLSWORTH – According to Tom Farley, the way in which the Roman Catholic Church has changed since he was a boy in Massachusetts helped him decide three years ago to become a priest.

Farley, 68, of Gouldsboro said Wednesday that the church has changed for the better in the 40 years since he first decided against the priesthood and instead became a teacher.

“The 1960s changed this world completely,” Farley said while sitting on a blue couch in the parish office of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. “It was a real [uptight] place.”

The Catholic Church has become more open to societal changes since his youth, Farley said. The church, for example, now allows the liturgy to be performed in vernacular languages instead of Latin, he said.

“We weren’t supposed to go inside a Protestant church,” Farley recalled. “We even say the word ‘sex’ now.”

Farley, who first attended a seminary in Massachusetts in the 1950s, will officially become a priest Saturday when Bishop Joseph Gerry, the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, ordains him at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.

He will be the first priest ever ordained in the city and the first person from the parish to become a priest, Farley said.

Farley acknowledged that church officials have talked about sex a great deal lately because of the national scandal involving Catholic priests who have been accused of sexual misconduct with minors. He was reluctant, however, to comment about the decisions made by the church hierarchy.

Allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior have reached even the Ellsworth parish, where Farley, who also is a church deacon, worked for three years in the 1990s as business manager under the Rev. Leo James Michaud.

Last month, Michaud was removed as pastor of St. Joseph’s after diocesan officials received what they called “a credible report of sexual misconduct with a minor” about Michaud. The Rev. James Gower, 79, of Bar Harbor, is serving as the interim pastor of the Ellsworth church.

Farley said the removal of Michaud “devastated” him, but his renewed desire to become a priest nonetheless has remained strong.

“It certainly has affected me, but not to the extent that I’m sick over it,” Farley said about Michaud’s removal. “It is important that there be priests.”

The future priest did not downplay the significance of the allegations that have enveloped the Catholic Church, but he stressed that the scandal and how it has affected St. Joseph Parish should be viewed separately from his ordination.

His calling to the priesthood has been reinforced by the faith of parishioners at St. Joseph Parish, Farley said.

“I really got a great deal of strength from seeing people come back Sunday after Sunday to worship,” he said. “That showed me that there’s a greater power than the notoriety out there.”

He said he did not know how long it will take parishioners at the Ellsworth church to recover from the shock and their anger over Michaud’s removal.

“They’re very sad about it,” he said. “If they had any involvement with Father Michaud, it will take some time.”

Farley said he has decided to answer his calling to the priesthood in his “eleventh hour.” He grew up in Haverhill, Mass., and first became a seminarian after graduating from high school.

Some of the 600 other aspiring priests with whom he attended St. John Seminary in Boston in the 1950s have since been accused of sexual misconduct, Farley said. Besides Michaud, he has never known anyone personally, either in or outside the church, who has been accused of improper sexual behavior.

After a few years, Farley decided to become a teacher instead of a priest and left the seminary. He moved to Maine in 1959 and taught Latin, English and French in schools in Ashland and Yarmouth before moving to New Jersey for about 10 years.

In 1974, he moved to Woodland and continued teaching until he moved to Sullivan and worked a couple of years for the Hancock County Planning Commission. He also worked in Ellsworth as a paralegal for 18 years before becoming the business manager at St. Joseph Parish in 1996. He never married, despite his decision not to become a priest, he said.

It was three years ago when he traveled to Boston to do some research on the historic Catholic priest, John Bapst, that the calling toward priesthood again stirred him.

Farley sought out the diaries of the bishop who had been Bapst’s superior in 1854 at the time when Bapst was tarred and feathered in Ellsworth by an anti-Catholic mob. John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor is named after the well-known priest.

Farley said he went to the archives of the Boston archdiocese, which is adjacent to the first seminary he attended a youth, and was troubled to find that the pages in the bishop’s diary corresponding to the time when Bapst was attacked were blank.

It bothered him that the bishop had failed to note anything about that important incident.

“There wasn’t anything in there,” Farley said. “I was really disturbed by it.”

When he left the archive building, he felt an overwhelming sensation that he was being called to the priesthood.

“I guess the call was there for a long time but I didn’t pay any attention to it,” he said. “I said, ‘I’ve got to do something to settle this once and for all.'”

In August 1999, he enrolled at a seminary for older men in Westin, Mass., and, returning to the school he left as a young man, eventually got his master’s degree in divinity at St. John Seminary in Boston.

Farley said he is “excited and nervous” about his pending ordination, as are his brother and two sisters who will be present for the ceremony. In all, he expects 45 relatives, mostly from Massachusetts, to witness the spiritual event Saturday.

As a priest, Farley sees himself as filling the role of the servant toward his parishioners and accommodating them in their quest for spirituality.

“The model of the Church that I like is the Church as a servant,” he said, adding, “We are here for people from the moment of birth until death. It’s a spiritual journey.”

Commenting that “it’s the sense of community that I like” about the church, he said he hopes to be given a parish ministry when the Portland diocese makes its yearly assignments July 1. He declined, though, to specify where in Maine he would like to serve.

On May 5, one week after Michaud was removed, parish council member Bill Sargent cautioned parishioners against voicing their displeasure with Bishop Gerry during Farley’s ordination.

The deacon acknowledged Wednesday that there are some parishioners at St. Joseph’s who are unhappy with Gerry. Farley said, however, he is not worried that their dissatisfaction will be apparent during the ceremony.

“They want it to be a joyous occasion,” Farley said.