The volume of my Journal that spans March 1968 to November 1969 is the record of two transitions in my life. The first was from Good Counsel parish in Brooklyn to Sacred Heart in Bayside, Queens. The second, much more significant, was from priesthood to lay life. The first entry in that journal contains the ominous words, “I don’t want to be lonely.”

The Parakeet Who Flew Away

I can picture myself seated at the heavy wood desk in my room on the third floor of the Good Counsel rectory. It is March 18, early spring. Perhaps the windows of my sitting room are open. One window looks out on Putnam Avenue. In a day before omnipresent Japanese-made cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks, the street is lined with bulky Ford, Chevy, and Plymouth sedans. There are no garages anywhere in the neighborhood, except for those of the priests. Our vehicles are snug and secure behind a high chain link fence. “Bill, please remember to lock the gate when you come in at night.”

The other window – I have to swivel around in my chair to look out – faces the church. From that window my pet parakeet had escaped several years earlier. The little green bird might have felt the fresh air on his wings and seen the beckoning branches of the tree on the lawn outside. Maybe he heard the chirping of sparrows and was responding to some innate need to be with his own kind, perhaps to find a mate. At the time, I was upset that the bird had flown away. Now, I understood. Soon I myself would fly away, not out the window, of course, but with the same finality.

Using ink -- ballpoint pens had not yet became the standard writing instruments -- I write:
I have been a priest in this increasingly depressed parish for almost nine years. These have been the years which saw the rapid, almost overnight revolution in Catholicism.

During these years I have grown along lines that were never foreseen by my seminary vision. The whole intellectual atmosphere has been transformed. The entire world looks different. Priesthood is different. Life is different.

Most of all, I have learned to love – to love as a man, capable of and wishing to love a woman. I don’t want to be lonely. All these pieces must fit together, must be integrated in the Bill Powers of the future.

I am happy. In many respects I am successful.

I have studied sociology, should have my MA this spring. It has taught me a great deal about our life on this planet. I have studied psychology and learned much about the world within a human person.

I am teaching, counseling, preaching, advising.

My Mass is ever more meaningful. My prayer life is “a new creation.” I am aware of being alive, of being loved, of being filled with hope

Unable to See What Was Coming

I wrote this two months before I requested a transfer and three months before that transfer took effect. It is clear that I am happy, yet restless, strong yet vulnerable, secure, yet uncertain. What makes me happy is my love for Marion. What makes me restless is my love for Marion -- an incomplete love.

Although I equated loneliness with the celibate priesthood, there was no suggestion on that spring day that I was thinking about resigning from the priesthood. However, a step in that direction was taken four months later. On July 18, my 34th birthday, I told Marion that if the law of celibacy were repealed, I would not exclude the possibility of marriage. Although hedged in with “ifs,” I had begun to picture myself as married. With the inevitability of dominos falling one against the next, the seemingly indestructible framework of my life had begun to collapse.

World and national events didn’t make things any easier. This was 1968, and we were pummeled time and time again by blows that left us staggering.