Fall 1998: Not A Household

After various private adventures, the three of us made it back safely for the fall semester, eager to begin being a “real” household in every way. The Troubador announced us as a “newer” household aiming to be “men of virtue, prayer, service, and action”, so apparently we really were a household and we had to start acting like one. Tomas was still Paladin, and probably would be until we decided how long his term ought to be.

We were all in Marian—Jeff and I decided to eliminate the negligible amount of exercise which constantly walking to each other’s rooms entailed and just be real roommates. We lived (rather strategically) on the first floor “Not a Household” (NAH) wing, hoping to take it over for our own nefarious Very-Household purposes when half the wing graduated that spring. This situation worked to our advantage both ways, because we had the total freedom to use the common room for all our functions while incurring no responsibility to keep it clean or remotely livable.

We began having Lord’s Days and inventing commitments. Probably our most challenging commitment was the 6:45 AM hour of adoration in the Port on Wednesdays. Future semesters would witness a wise shift of this hour to a more reasonable hour, but at the time we enthusiastically welcomed it as a voluntary penance. Also, due to our procrastination, I think it was the only hour left on Wednesday that worked for all of us. (But I could be wrong there.) Generally, Jeff would wake up on time and I somehow convince me to get out of bed. Later I would wake up, too. Then we’d check on Tomas…well, anyway, eventually, we would all be there in the chapel, trying desperately not to fall asleep and scandalize the more devout people present. I personally am positive that St. Therese of Lisieux says somewhere in her writings that she had the same problem during her nocturnal adorations, but I am not sure that it is therefore a universal sign of holiness.

Lord’s Days were another challenge, mainly because it was “just us”. People entering a well-established household generally have a much greater sense of the importance of this abstract institution they are joining. “Greetings, peon, your life finally has meaning, you are now a BROTHER!” or “You are now a KNIGHT!” or “You are now a LAMB!”, etc., etc. By the time you are ritually initiated, you have already allowed this particular group to force you to do various humiliating things in the name of this abstract institution. (The more well-known examples of this include carrying around a stuffed animal for no apparent reason or dressing in weird clothes and an annoyingly cryptic sign.)

So when this emotional roller coaster culminates in Initiation and the authority figure informs you that you now have the responsibility to attend certain functions and perform certain actions, you are much more likely to assume that any failure on your part will result in permanent ostracism or instant death (or both). Whereas when my buddy Jeff reminded me that my nap had to be prematurely terminated because Lord’s Day was in ten minutes, I was somehow much less likely to be moved by awe or fear of recrimination. It was much harder to get me to move.

We learned the hard way that the household was not going to discipline us, we had to discipline ourselves. We were not resting on any kind of tradition whatsoever - the Apprentices of St. Joseph were only as timely and organized as Tomas Fuerte, Jeff Ghering, and Bill Powell decided to be. This realization was somewhat slower in coming than it had to be, but after enough Lord’s Days had begun a half hour late, we began to dimly understand.

One of the biggest impetuses to get serious was the fact that we soon began to have prospective lackeys attend our functions. (”Lackey” was, and is, our term for “formal intent”. A lackey is even lower than an apprentice is. It can be a very humbling term if people know what it means. Fortunately, they don’t.) I’m not sure we had ever seriously considered the possibility of other people joining our household, so it was a big surprise, at least for me.

We had established from the start that we were never going to “recruit” members the way we had seen other households try to pressure innocent students, usually freshmen, into their ranks. If all three of us graduated and the household disappeared, then that was better than having a motley crew of unwilling Apprentices. Later we found out we had slightly different definitions of “recruit”. Where I saw even an innocent invitation to our Lord’s Day as suspiciously forward, others maintained that pretty much anything short of physical violence was only “being friendly”.

At any rate, several guys were genuinely interested, and four of them were intrigued enough to come with us on our first household retreat. Actually, it was the retreat for Conquer Through Love (CTL), a household upstairs, but they invited us along and we were happy to accept. It was a peaceful weekend at some old retreat center which shall remain nameless, and all of us came to the conclusion that the “household retreat” was one long-standing institution which we would be delighted to continue. I’m not sure how CTL felt about all these random guys invading their bonding space, but they were quite gracious and seemed to enjoy themselves despite our presence.

Naturally both households experienced a slight culture shock. Try as we might, we Apprentices could not seem to appreciate the full aesthetic value of the traditional CTL “dogpile”. Another of their excessively intellectual pastimes included a game where you would lay down and roll as hard as you could into your household brothers in the futile attempt to roll over them. At the same time, they did the exact same thing to you. Theoretically, one of you eventually won, either because you rolled over your opponent or because he died. Tomas possessed such a distinct advantage here due to his imposing physique that I can’t imagine that that particular session lasted very long.

For their part, CTL was not expecting us to offer to do the dishes after one of the meals, and they were even more surprised that we considered it quite natural to sing as we worked. After the last abused bars of our improvised lyrics and harmonies had mercifully faded, we found out that we had apparently impressed them, not by the actual music as much as by the fact that we were so capable of enjoying spontaneous sing-a-longs together.

Unfortunately, if being able to sing well was a crucial element of being a Catholic man, then several of us were in serious trouble. What did it take, precisely, to be a real Catholic man? In all seriousness, this was just what our household was trying to find out. We had long cherished the idea of hosting talks on the topic, requesting some local role model to share his thoughts on the matter with whoever was interested. Now, it was time to make it happen.

On November 5th, 1998, a Wednesday, (Wednesday is traditionally dedicated to St. Joseph) Dr. Lee gave the first of the “Catholic Manhood” talks to a very full Program Area in the J. C. Williams Center. As far as we could tell, it was a huge success. We had not realized until then just how universal a concern Catholic manhood really is, (at least on this campus) and we were delighted that so many guys responded so positively to the idea of hearing what an experienced man had to say.

In this respect, our original vision of being the “household’s household” is still intact. Despite the blessing of our very particular devotion to that most individual of saints, St. Joseph, we still feel that our mission is one for the whole campus, for every man’s household, indeed, for every man. The quest for Catholic manhood is really the quest to be another Christ, (ordained or not) and this is so elemental that, as far as we are concerned, every man ought to consider himself an Apprentice of St. Joseph.

This is why we have always claimed that we are not particular about you joining our household rather than another. You could (and should) pursue our central ideas in any household, regardless of its mission. Part of our “lackey journey” even includes visiting the Lord’s Days of at least two other households to make sure God is really calling you to join us, not some other group.

But these good resolutions to impartiality were sorely tried when three of our four lackeys decided that, in fact, they weren’t called to be Apprentices after all. Somehow it made it worse that we hadn’t even initiated ourselves yet, but we had to admit that God was running the household, not us. Besides, one lackey remained—Rolando Moreno, a Michigan man who had known Jeff before college because they went to the same youth group. (To avoid confusion, I should clarify that Jeff lives in Michigan, but our high school is in my home state, Virginia. Why Jeff went all the way to Virginia for high school is another story entirely.)

The one problem with Rolando was that he wasn’t in Marian Hall. He wasn’t even on-campus at all, but in some hospital room in Trinity East. The negative impact that this had on his ability to attend our gatherings, scheduled and spontaneous, (as well as the percentage of our friends who had never met him because he lived off-campus) ultimately earned him the coveted title of, “The Mystery Brother”.

Still, he was a dedicated lackey, and on November 28, 1998, the four of us ritually initiated ourselves in the Marian Hall Chapel. As it was our first initiation and there were no senior Apprentices to welcome us, beaming with pride, several Knights of the Holy Queen graciously accepted the role and beamed magnificently. Naturally I am going to have to subtly skip all the details of the initiation, because if households made their rituals public a large majority of people would probably lose interest in households altogether.

Though the official photograph probably doesn’t capture it, all of us were, in one way or another, deeply thrilled at being Apprentices at last. I realize now that I never really considered myself a lackey anyway, but it was still neat to be officially initiated, and perhaps our lackey journeys as founders were the longest of all.

Now there were four of us. If all went well, we would get those household tee-shirts designed, make a banner, get the household wing and common room, keep growing - the future looked bright. There was just one little hitch.

Jeff, Tomas and I were going to Austria.