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Chapter SEVEN Holy Days
By G. Wayne Miller
1. Not long after his visit to a Carmelite monastery, Bishop Tobin drove himself to Our Lady of Providence Seminary in Providence, where two dozen high school boys who had expressed interest in becoming priests were gathered for a day of reflection. It was Saturday, March 24, 2007. The morning began with Mass in the seminary chapel. In his homily, the bishop urged the boys to “pour out your hearts and your souls” in daily prayer as their lives unfolded and as they sought direction. Most, the bishop said, would ultimately marry and raise children, which he commended. A few, perhaps, would become priests. “That would be a wonderful gift, a wonderful grace,” the bishop said. After Mass, the bishop related a bit of his own journey to the priesthood — of how his calling was no tsunami, but more like a dry sponge slowly absorbing water. “It seeped into my soul until finally it became a reality,” he said. As for being bishop, he said he still did not entirely understand why he’d been anointed one, but he trusted the Lord that it was the right thing. “I’ve always found comfort in the words of Christ at the Last Supper when he said to the Apostles: ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you.’ ” The bishop took questions from the boys, who came from throughout Rhode Island — from public and Catholic schools, and from families who taught their children at home. “We all sin because we’re all human, and we all give in to temptation sometimes,” one boy said. “On our road, if we’re just starting a vocation to the priesthood, can any sin tear us away from that? I don’t want to put it this way — but maybe change God’s mind?” “That’s a good question,” the bishop said. “Like when God really gets to know you, he changes his mind? Like, ‘I don’t want him to be a priest, I’ve found out too much about him!’ ” The boys laughed. The bishop struck a favorite theme: priests as “earthen vessels,” humans called to the Lord’s work, as St. Paul wrote in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. “We all have sins and weaknesses and imperfections and bad habits, even priests and bishops,” Bishop Tobin said. “Trust me: you don’t stop sinning when you become a bishop — or when you become a pope, for that matter. It’s all part of human nature. So the key is that we recognize our sinfulness, we recognize our weaknesses, and we do our best to grow.” In short, Bishop Tobin said, “There’s no one sin that can keep you apart from God. There’s no one sin that can prevent you from being a priest if God is calling you and if you’re willing to respond and to do your best.” The gathering broke into small groups for lunch. The bishop sat with three boys and the Rev. Marcel L. Taillon, diocesan vocations director and chaplain at Bishop Hendricken High School. Bishop Tobin, who had played guitar in a folk group when he was in the seminary, said he was attending a Peter, Paul and Mary concert that evening. Had they heard of them? The boys had not. Father Taillon said he was familiar with one of their songs, “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” — which, he’d always assumed was about smoking marijuana. The bishop insisted that was not the proper interpretation. Lunch ended, the bishop left, and after a game of touch football, the boys assembled in the seminary lounge to watch a short motivational movie. Father Taillon and the Rev. Michael J. Najim, diocesan vocation recruiter, asked the boys to write questions on slips of paper, which the priests would pull from a box and answer. The first question was about celibacy, the renunciation of marriage. A centuries-old tradition for Catholic priests, celibacy is not unshakable dogma; theoretically, the Church could eliminate it, though no pope in modern times has shown any such inclination. “It’s the thing people give you a run on,” said Father Taillon. “I think the sex-abuse scandal in the church has made the reputation of priests and celibacy kind of tainted in some people’s minds — particularly if they don’t know priests, or they’re not active in the church, or they don’t know happy priests.” The practical advantages to celibacy, Father Taillon said, include the freedom it gives a bishop to reassign a priest without the additional concerns of relocating a family. The spiritual benefits, he said, included a greater “intimacy” a priest could have with Christ, and also with people. 
On April 15, Bishop Tobin, right, talks with Father Marcel Taillon, left, former director of vocations for the diocese, and seminarian Jan Zielinski, before the Holy Thursday dinner and Mass at Our Lady of Providence Seminary on Mount Pleasant Avenue. Journal photo / Mary Murphy “It’s very, very powerful,” Father Taillon said. “It’s almost like a secret love life between God and his priests. It’s very, very personal — very, very intimate.” He noted his Roman collar and black suit. “If you’re dressed like this and you walk down the street, people will tell you anything and everything — and that is every day.” Said Father Najim: “There’s no other life where someone who doesn’t know you — never has met you — will come up to you and tell you things they have never told another human being ever, and maybe never will tell another human being. It’s really amazing.” Nonetheless, said Father Taillon, it was normal to sometimes wonder what life would have been like if he’d married and had children. Father Taillon dated girls while growing up in Woonsocket — and came to the priesthood comparatively late, after leaving his job as an executive with pharmacy chain CVS. Father Taillon, who is balding, poked fun at himself. He said he sometimes wondered: “How many kids would I have had? Would they be bald?” The boys laughed. “God spared your kids,” Father Najim joked. More laughter. “Do you really believe anyone would have married you?” Father Najim said. Said Father Taillon: “There was this blind girl …” ONE AFTERNOON a while later, Bishop Tobin sat in his living room and reflected on his own celibacy. He recalled his young teenage years, in the early 1960s, when parochial school boys such as he did not have girlfriends. He was 14 when he entered minor seminary, a cloistered world without girls. Home for the summers, he did not date: the seminary discouraged contact with girls, even forbidding their young seminarians to be lifeguards, a job where temptation lurked. The conservative Baltimore Catechism still prevailed. Woodstock was years away. But women, of course, were more than half of all people, and as he completed his education in Rome, returned to Pittsburgh to be ordained, and began his parish ministry, Father Thomas Tobin lived among them. He maintained his commitment to celibacy with frequent reflection, and reading what prominent celibates wrote. One of the books in the study of his East Providence home is the classic Catholic text An Experience of Celibacy, by the Rev. Keith Clark, a Capuchin friar who devoted 176 pages to the subject. In the book, Father Clark casts the metaphor of a bridge over a stream dividing two beautiful fields. One field is marriage and family; the other, celibate priesthood. At some point, the friar wrote, a man must decide which field he will enter. Ideally, a priest walks deeper and deeper into the celibate one — but, perhaps inevitably, given human nature, some are tempted to return to the bridge, to gaze down into the other field. Has Bishop Tobin ever been tempted? Yes. “I’ve met all sorts of women that I think would have been terrific partners, who I would have been very happy with,” the bishop said. “Absolutely, you think about it: ‘I could have been happy with that one, or I really like her, or we just get along really well.’ ” Celibacy, he said, requires discipline, but it is not punitive. “It’s not a choice between a bad thing and a good thing. It’s a choice between good things. And you choose one good over the other for very specific reasons. It’s like choosing between, you know, pasta and steak. Both are great! And if you choose one, it doesn’t mean you don’t like the other. It just means you chose one good and you can’t have the other good.” But the bishop is not averse to female attention. He likes telling the story of dining out with a seminarian in Pittsburgh when he was a younger priest. “A very young, cute, attractive waitress came to the table,” he’ll say. “Just as cute as a button! Blond hair, blue eyes, mid-20s probably. And she really liked me. The seminarian was much closer to her age than I was — but she really liked me! Now, I was entering my mid-life crisis, so this was really good for me. “She came over and she was teasing a little bit and flirting, and I was teasing and flirting — and I said to this guy who was with me, ‘Mike, she’s really cute and she likes me. I don’t know what’s wrong with you — maybe you’re chopped liver or you have a disease or something.’ This went on all night. Every time she came back to the table to get something or whatever, she really paid attention to me.” When the waitress brought the check, she said to Father Tobin: “I want you to know I really enjoyed taking care of you tonight.” Telling the story, the bishop will pause for effect. “Because,” the waitress said, “you remind me so much of my dad.” 2. Rhode Island was in the national news on March 24, the day Bishop Tobin talked to boys who were considering the priesthood. The schools superintendent in Tiverton had banned the use of the word “Easter” during a Parent-Teacher Council fundraiser at the public middle school. Instead of the Easter Bunny, children could pose for photographs with Peter Rabbit. Supt. William Rearick said that striking “Easter” from the event was in accordance with the same policy that banned the word “Christmas” from school activities and publications. “I don’t like the term ‘politically correct,’ ” Rearick told a reporter. But, he said, he had become “more aware of folks who don’t have a Christian background.” 
Bishop Tobin stops to talk with his secretary, Terry Mulvey, as he takes a cofee break from his office at the Chancery at One Cathedral Square. Journal photo / Mary Murphy Some applauded his stance as a courageous affirmation of the principle of church-state separation. Others saw Rearick as a laughingstock. New York-based Catholic League president Bill Donohue, who brings an irreverent wit to his frequent TV and radio appearances, was one who had fun at the superintendent’s expense. “It is unconscionable that in this day and age Superintendent Rearick would choose to honor a thief,” Donohue said in a media release. “As every schoolchild knows, Peter Rabbit stole from Mr. McGregor’s garden. To now hold him up as a role model to impressionable youngsters sends the wrong signal. At the very least, grief counselors should be dispatched to tomorrow’s event. “There is also a more serious matter going on. The event smacks of sexism: Peter Rabbit had three sisters — Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail — and there is no historical record of them ever having committed a crime. So why were they passed over? Looks like the glass ceiling is still in place.” Bishop Tobin was privately amused by the Tiverton story. But it was a more substantial issue that moved him to speak publicly. Capitalizing on the heightened attention to religion during the Lent and Passover seasons, the Discovery Channel had recently aired a documentary suggesting that remains found in a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb were those of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and their son. Speculation that Jesus had married and fathered a child was not new: some biblical scholars and novelists, including Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, had long conjectured that Jesus was mortal, and his descendants still walked the earth. Nor was the tomb new: it had been discovered in 1980. But new DNA analysis of the remains, the filmmakers said, lent credibility to the old speculation. The documentary, produced by James Cameron, director of the blockbuster movie Titanic, drew 4.1 million viewers — the Discovery Channel’s largest audience in nearly 18 months. Some scholars maintained that its findings were worthy of serious consideration; the evidence did not constitute proof, they said, but it did support a plausible case that Jesus was not resurrected and ascended into heaven, but died and was buried, the end. But many scientists and historians were dismissive. Prime among them was Amos Kloner, the Israeli archaeologist who had unearthed the tomb in 1980. Kloner, a professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel’s second-largest, told the Jerusalem Post that “it makes a great story for TV.” But scientifically, he said, “It’s impossible. It’s nonsense.” Bishop Tobin, in a “Without a Doubt” column, approached the issue more from the perspective of belief than science. “If it’s true that the body of Jesus was found in a Jerusalem suburb, then the Christian Faith is over,” he wrote. “If Jesus was not raised from the dead, then all of our Christian and Catholic beliefs and practices are suspect. If Jesus was not raised from the dead, the Church is not the Body of Christ, enlivened and guided by the Holy Spirit. It’s simply another social club and its work is built on a fraudulent foundation. “If Jesus was not raised from the dead, all of our loved ones who have passed away are simply gone and buried, with no hope of resurrection; we’ll never see them again. And we have no hope of eternal life, either. “And in very personal terms, if Jesus was not raised from the dead, my years of study and work are in vain. My sacrifices, promises and commitments are for naught. I might as well pack it up, move on, get married, raise a family, and try to live a good, quiet and productive life. “But in fact, I’ve bet my whole life on the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead and that He is the Lord and Savior of the world.” BISHOP TOBIN turned 59 on April 1, 2007. It was Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week. Given the demands of this busiest of Christian seasons, he would not celebrate his birthday until after Easter, when he and his administrative secretary, the Rev. Michael A. Colello, who turned 32 on April 7, would have dinner with a few priest friends at the bishop’s house. In his Palm Sunday sermon at the Cathedral of SS. Peter & Paul, the bishop reminded the congregation of the Christian belief that Jesus was crucified so that mankind would be saved. “Why did God do all of this for us?” the bishop said. “The answer is as simple as it is profound: God the father sent his son Jesus to suffer and die simply because of his pervasive, unconditional, eternal, personal and saving love for us, His children.” About 400 people listened, which meant the cathedral, which seats some 1,350 people, was about two-thirds empty. It was full the next evening for the annual high Catholic ritual whose name derived from Christ: the Chrism Mass. That day was also the second anniversary of the death of John Paul II, for whom Bishop Tobin had great affection. The bishop put a photograph of the late pope on the back cover of the Chrism Mass program. A memorial to John Paul stood near the altar. Almost half of the diocese’s nearly 300 priests attended the Mass, which was concelebrated by Bishop Tobin, three retired bishops and several ranking diocesan priests. The Gregorian Concert Choir performed, and the cathedral filled with music from the 6,700-pipe French-built Casavant organ, the largest in Rhode Island. Incense swirled to the vaulted ceiling, some 80 feet above. The Gospel was read, the homily delivered and the bishop led his men through their yearly Renewal of Commitment to Priestly Service, including devotion to celibacy. “Are you resolved to unite yourselves more closely to Christ and to try to become more like him by joyfully sacrificing your own pleasure and ambition to bring his peace and love to his brothers and sisters?” the bishop said. “I am,” the priests said together. Deacons carried two large silver urns of first-press, or extra-virgin, olive oil to the altar, where Bishop Tobin blessed them; one would be distributed throughout the diocese for use in anointing the sick over the next year, and the other would be used for baptisms, of infants and adult converts. A deacon brought forward a third vessel of olive oil. The bishop stirred balsam fragrance into it, then bent to breathe over the scented mix; with a long prayer, he consecrated it as Holy Chrism, used for anointing the faithful at confirmation, ordination and other ceremonies, and for consecrating chalices, altars and churches. The roots of chrism were in ancient Greece, and its use in Roman Catholicism dated to the second century or earlier, with some theologians contending that Jesus himself established it. The Vatican allowed only bishops to consecrate Holy Chrism. “Above all, Father,” the bishop concluded, “we pray that through this sign of your anointing you will grant increase to your Church until it reaches the eternal glory where you, Father, will be the all in all, together with Christ your Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.” 3. TWO MORNINGS after the Chrism Mass, Father Colello and Bishop Tobin drove out of the underground garage at One Cathedral Square. They were bound for Saint Clare Home in Newport, one of five nursing homes and assisted-living centers run by the diocese. It was Wednesday, April 4, a cold and drizzly day. The conversation on the nearly hour-long trip turned to politics when they reached Portsmouth, where taxpayers remained bitterly divided over spending on their public schools. The outcome would not affect his diocese, but the bishop was following the story nonetheless. Administrator Mary Beth Daigneault met the bishop and his secretary when they arrived at the home, on Spring Street in the heart of downtown Newport. Daigneault escorted the bishop and his priest to the 90-year-old chapel, with its stained glass windows and granite walls. The congregation was aged, and the women greatly outnumbered the men. Many got around only with the assistance of canes, walkers and wheelchairs. Steam pipes clanged against cold walls as the bishop delivered his homily, a reflection on the themes of Holy Week, which these patients perhaps understood better than others. “In our lives, as we go from day to day and from year to year,” the bishop said, “no doubt there are moments that are sorrowful, when we’re not happy, things do not go well, we have to suffer some kind of pain — a lack of health, or family problems, whatever it might be. We share, in that way, the suffering and the cross of Christ. There are also moments in our lives that are very joyful and glorious and filled with life and hope and peace. And in those moments, we recognize the resurrection of Christ from the dead.” During Communion, a nun who had taught music to Catholic students, sang “Lift High the Cross.” Eighty-six years old and blind since childhood, Sister Rose Roffelson kept to the lyrics by running her fingers across a Braille music sheet. The bishop and Father Colello joined Sister Rose and Daigneault for lunch. The chef had prepared baked jumbo shrimp, sirloin steak and pasta primavera with shaved asparagus. Father Colello, an accomplished cook, was intrigued by pasta served that way. He said he would have to try it some time, perhaps when cooking for the boss. A pianist played during the meal, and the bishop and Father Colello each had a glass of zinfandel. “Soft piano music and wine — there are worse ways to pass your life,” the bishop said. He joked about his homily. “I’m glad we didn’t talk about the sacrifices we make during Holy Week — how we don’t eat too much!” Hearing someone cough, the bishop noted a story in the news about a dog that had saved its choking master by performing a sort of canine Heimlich maneuver. “I wonder if Molly would do that for me,” he said. The bishop turned his attention to Sister Rose. “You’re doing all right over there, Sister.” “I’ve found my mouth so far!” “You have a beautiful clear voice.” “It’s God’s gift.” “I am always amazed when I see someone read Braille.” The sister said that while a blind person could read, with Braille, she relied on others for many things. That was fine with her. Sister Rose’s only complaint was that her hearing wasn’t what it used to be. “I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore. Although my dad would say, ‘You’re still a spring chicken — we’re just not sure which spring!’ ” The next day was Holy Thursday. Unknown to the bishop, a group supporting gay rights was planning a State House demonstration. The issue would make for leading news again, and the bishop, offended by timing again, would respond.
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On Monday, Oct. 29, Journal staff writer G. Wayne Miller hosted 
