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    A Priest in the Castle: My Two Lives
    A Priest in the Castle: My Two Lives
    A Priest in the Castle: My Two Lives
    Ebook193 pages2 hours

    A Priest in the Castle: My Two Lives

    By Bill Mena

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    About this ebook


    In this his first book, Bill Mena takes us on the personal journey of his life, or, as he says, of his two lives. Experience his transition from a semi-monastic life to coping with the pressures and pleasures of secular life. His early youth in the Americas; his schooling and ordination to the priesthood in Europe; his ministry in England and his return to America.



    Bill lets us into his personal struggle to resolve the conflict in which he found himself, a conflict between his loyalty and wish to serve in the Catholic Church, and his wish to find personal fulfillment. In his own words The story that follows, then, is the story of my personal journey and rebellion...........my personal rebellion from a good student to a dedicated priest, to a frustrated cleric and eventually to a contented husband.



    The reader will get a glimpse into the life of one who has experienced equally the rewards of a compelling religious experience and the richness of secular life.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateDec 20, 2006
    ISBN9781467815253
    A Priest in the Castle: My Two Lives
    Author

    Bill Mena

    Bill Mena lives with his wife Sara in picturesque Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area. After his marriage to Sara, the author participated in the raising of her three children.   Bill and Sara now enjoy traveling and the frequent visits of their seven grandchildren. 

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      Book preview

      A Priest in the Castle - Bill Mena

      Contents

      Acknowledgements:

      I

      THE CASTLE

      II

      DISCOVERING AMERICA

      III

      SPAIN

      IV

      THE QUEEN

      V

      A SUMMIT

      VI

      THE TOWER

      VII

      SAN FRANCISCO

      VIII

      THE BANK

      IX

      ALTER CHRISTUS

      X

      THE CASTLE REVISITED

      XI

      APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA

      XII

      INKLINGS OR INSIGHTS?

      SOURCES:

      About the Author

      A Priest in the Castle

      Castle%20Portico.jpg

      My Two Lives

      By

      Bill Mena

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

      In this my first venture in the art of writing I wish to acknowledge and thank first of all my wife Sara for her prudent advice and many corrections.

      Caryl Hughan for giving so generously her time for reading the manuscript and making many helpful suggestions.

      Ms. Catherine Watson, senior travel editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who, without realizing it, gave me the last nudge to go ahead with this project.

      I

      THE CASTLE

      Between Bournemouth and Southampton near the city of Christchurch on the coast of Southern England, a small town perched on the bluffs facing the English Channel and appropriately called Highcliffe, nestles an old estate with a Castle as its hub.

      Peaceful Victorian gardens lay to the south and gorgeous woods planted with all kinds of common and rare trees surround it. A long avenue in front led to the main entrance, a seventy-five foot high portico, the avenue was lined with the typical tall and mature trees seen in that part of Hampshire. Come autumn and the place was an explosion of color and subtle beauty.

      Past the handsome gardens and a small grassy meadow, one could stand on the edge of the cliffs and from there take a long series of wooden steps that led to a beach of fine sand with course patches of gravelly pebbles. The Isle of Wight could be seen in the misty distance. It was a pleasant spot, a favorite of urban tourists who flocked to these beaches on the proverbial British Bank Holidays.

      I strolled along this beach one quiet weekday summer afternoon. Only here and there a couple or a small family shared the afternoon’s filtered sun with me. It must have been late July 1954. The crunching of the pebbles under my feet and the lapping of the gentle waves echoed in my mind the emotions and expectations that surged in me as I pondered the events that had brought me to this spot at this stage of my life.

      I was in my mid twenties, a young priest barely ordained three years before and then with a special dispensation, for I was then not quite 24, the minimum age for ordination. I belonged to a religious order* of priests and brothers in the Catholic Church.

      *Note: The word Order is used in this book in a general sense. Members of a religious order live in monasteries, take solemn vows, and follow a given rule. We refer to them as monks. Missionary priests, on the other hand, of which I was one, belong to religious congregations, they take simple vows, and move about as their duties dictate. However, since in English religious congregation has various meanings, I will refer to my congregation as an order.

      I had been in England only two years. I should not have been there, had the normal run of events taken its course. My origins were in the Americas. Sent to Europe for studies, I should normally have returned to America after my studies, specifically to Mexico. Nevertheless, I was still in Europe, in England, in Highcliffe.

      My previous destination had been Spain, where I was ordained a priest after four grueling years of semi-monastic seminary life and study. Spain was then an austere society under Franco’s dictatorship. Appropriately we had been cloistered in an old medieval Franciscan monastery in the small town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada in old Castile.

      Medieval best describes the town, the building, some customs, and certainly some disciplinary and religious attitudes. Then for one year, as a sort of internship, I had been sent to a small town near Barcelona in the capacity of teacher although I had no credentials or training for it. Now I was here, living in an English Castle.

      The story that follows, then, is the story of my religious pilgrimage and of my personal journey and rebellion. My religious pilgrimage from a conservative, middle-class family, to a junior seminary in Mexico, to a Novitiate and College in California, to a major seminary in Spain, to years of ministry in England and eventually back to California; my personal rebellion from a good student, to a dedicated priest, to a frustrated cleric, and eventually to a contented husband.

      As the sun set in the horizon that summer afternoon, I began the steep ascent to the Castle where it was nearly time for supper. The last step up the long series of wooden stairs always brought a silent gasp at the magnificent sight of the building. It was so well designed, so pleasing to the eye with its artful proportions, so steeped in history. The Castle itself dated back to a relatively recent construction in the 1830’s, but the beautiful stone work incorporated in the building, mainly around the windows, dated back as far as the 12th century and had been brought stone by stone from France, from the ruins of Jumiages Abbey and the grand manor of Grand Andelys, both in Normandy. It was stunning

      I had little knowledge of English History except for the broad, general strokes common to an average education. However, I was sufficiently fascinated by the building I now lived in to find out more about the Victorians who designed it and lived in it. Its elegance and style reflected its long history.

      According to the local history, the Third Earl of Bute, after resigning from his post as Prime Minister in 1762, fell from favor among his friends at Court, including the king himself George III. Away from the political scene, he devoted himself to his interest in natural science. (He had been a founder of the famous Kew Gardens near London.) It was in this pursuit that he came to the cliffs of Highcliffe. He was so impressed with the site that he decided to build a house for his retirement there. A house that was really a Georgian mansion with over thirty bedrooms, two libraries and various reception rooms.

      In 1790, while reaching for a rare plant growing on the cliff-side, Lord Bute slipped, fell and suffered fatal injuries. There is nothing to mark the spot where this tragic event took place, but looking down the cliffs it is easy to imagine how the elderly gentleman lost his balance and tumbled down the long precipitous bluff.

      Note: His favorite son Colonel Charles Stuart who had neither the income nor the inclination to maintain his inheritance inherited the old castle. His heart was in the Army and at about this time he had been promoted to Major General for his spectacular capture of Corsica. Therefore, the greatest part of the estate went up for sale and the new owners decided, for whatever reason, to demolish the original building.

      In the meantime, Charles Jr., the son of the Major General, had resolved that some day he would recover the property of his grandfather and build his family a country home in Highcliffe. With his retirement in 1830, after a distinguished and lucrative career as a diplomat and with the new title of Lord Stuart of Rothesay, Charles was able to repurchase the property and spared no expense in the construction of the new Castle.

      In 1841 Lord Stuart emerged from his retirement to be appointed British Ambassador to the Court of Czar Nicholas I, but had to resign soon thereafter for reasons of ill health. In 1875, Lord Stuart died and the Castle passed to Lady Stuart who did not survive him long and passed away in 1877. Both are buried in the local Anglican Church in the village of Highcliffe.

      Lady Stuart apparently left the Castle to her daughter Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, who lived quietly at the Castle for several years. After her death in 1891 a distant relative, in fact her cousin’s nephew Major Edward Stuart-Wortley and his wife Violet inherited the property. They were a more glamorous couple in British society than their predecessors and the Castle became well known for its elegant parties and distinguished visitors both from England and abroad.

      Royalty from France, Sweden, and Spain graced the rooms and grounds with their visits and Kaiser Wilhelm II stayed at the castle for a few weeks in the autumn of 1907. Local lore has it that, during World War II, the German command gave orders not to damage the Castle in the air attacks of the battle of Britain because of its associations with the late Kaiser, but that may be a mere colorful enhancement of the local history. An Italian aircraft, though, managed to spray it with machine gun fire shattering some valuable stained glass windows. Although the title to the property changed names among the various relatives of the Stuarts, it was Violet who continued to live in the Castle and became the locally well-loved mistress of the Castle until its sale in 1950.

      After the long succession of owners described in the note, the Castle was finally sold in 1950 after it was stripped of all removable and valuable artwork. It was refitted to serve as a children’s home of some kind, but it soon failed. About the same time, the priests of the Order to which I belonged, followers of Bishop Claret in England were looking for an appropriate place to establish a seminary. After a long search, they came across the Castle, recently vacated and now for sale. It seemed like a godsend and it was promptly purchased, anticipating the influx of boys and young men interested in becoming priests.

      BirdsEye%20View.jpg

      From a postcard by Aerobliques Ltd. London.

      **********************

      The sun had finally set that summer afternoon and I walked back past the meadow and the old gardens to the dining room where supper was about to be served. Supper was of the institutional, monastic kind, simple and austere: boiled potatoes and vegetables with a little meat. Gone were the fine furnishings and antiques that once decorated the many rooms in the Castle, although the ornate walls and carved oak doors and ceilings remained. Some of these ornate doors hid Victorian humor, like two doors that led to a corner toilet. They had what looked like elegant bookshelves, but in fact were nothing but false book backs glued on to plywood. The book titles, however, if one looked closely, read something likeThe road to rest or Final Relief and similar subtle bathroom references.

      The Castle was now a shell and only a ghost of its former splendor. The stupendous entrance hall with its double stone staircase lay empty and its bare walls echoed our voices when we happened to pass through it. Famous wood panels from the Abbey of Jumiages depicting incidents in the life of Christ had once lined its walls, but they had been sold to the Metropolitan Museum of New York when the castle closed down. The library with its long sets of shelves lining the walls didn’t look so empty, for many book backs were there giving the appearance of a well stocked library; they were, however, just that, false backs of books closely arranged and glued to plywood. The drawing room was being used, but certainly not as the builders of the Castle intended or as Lady Violet did when she lived there. It had become a chapel.

      Supper had been prepared by Brother Abundio, a kindly Spaniard whose duty it was to prepare the meals in the dark, large kitchen located in the lower floor, equivalent of a basement in a modern house, but with a very high ceiling. What secret stories of butlers and maids might be hidden in those walls! It was the classical downstairs in an Upstairs Downstairs play. No fine cuisine or delicate tea trays now, just simple, austere, wholesome food shared equally by the small teaching staff and the few boys who now constituted the incipient training school and novitiate for future missionaries.

      It was a very small school in a very large castle. The teachers, including me, had no teaching credentials. The boys were few and not necessarily chosen for their ability or grades or anything resembling what one would associate with an institutional teaching establishment, but for their wishes or their parents’ wishes for them to become missionaries. They were too young, in my opinion. The curriculum was not necessarily based on the national standard of education, but designed by the staff to prepare the boys for future studies. Latin was of course de rigeur.

      This arrangement was not necessarily typical of the Church’s organization. There are well known, prestigious religious orders such as the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Benedictines to mention just a prominent few, who have centuries of tradition and well established goals and proven organization. The new owners of the castle were a small, originally Spanish Order begun in the 19th century by an energetic and deeply spiritual man who had become a bishop, was later appointed confessor to the Queen of Spain and then Archbishop of Cuba, when the island was still part of the Spanish Empire. His name was Anthony Claret, a surname associated with Catalonia in the northeast part of Spain. As a church leader he saw the need to have dedicated spiritual men ready to consecrate their lives to the religious ministry with missionary zeal, men without attachments, of total dedication and free to take off at a moment’s notice. One day he gathered some like-minded fellow priests in the small village of Vic, not far from Barcelona and in solemn tone announced, Today we begin a great enterprise and thus he laid the groundwork of a new religious order.

      In time, many men, young and not so young, rallied to the call for spiritual dedication and the Order spread throughout Spain. From there it spread to parts of Europe then to South America and the United States. Though not in the fashion of the great religious orders, it found its niche in the large organization we call the Catholic Church.

      It had also come to England, not a Catholic country, but a country with a growing immigrant population, and most importantly, at that time, the gateway to many other countries ripe for missionary work within the large British Empire.

      A few Spanish priests were ministering to the needs of some immigrants in London.

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