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Advance Praise for Celibate
Maria Giura’s Celibate is an impassioned portrait of a self in utter struggle over, and ambivalence about God, family, sex, and love. Giura exquisitely draws the reader into the turbulence that was her life but also compels the reader to believe that now, finally, she is on the right path, that now she has reached her truth and peace. An exhilarating page turner.
— Kathleen McCormick, author of Dodging Satan
Deeply human and finely wrought, Celibate is Giura’s strikingly honest examination of her battle to hang onto her faith in the midst of trying to understand—and free herself from—her complex relationship with a Catholic priest.
— Michael Steinberg, author of Still Pitching:
A Memoir
A beautifully rendered and heartfelt look at the place that contemporary women have in the Roman Catholic Church
and one brave woman’s struggle to reconcile her faith in this context.
— Leslie Heywood, author of Pretty Good for a Girl
Celibate tells a different kind of vocation story. Vivid and passionate, it speaks to both the afflictions and the victory that can come from discerning and following God’s voice. A gripping memoir from first to last page.
— Jana M. Bennett, author of Singleness and the Church: A New Theology of the Single Life
In Celibate, priest, woman, and Church are tangled together in a romantic, forbidden web, and the boundaries between Church and society-at-large blur to the point of clear transparency. A poignant must read.
— Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
celibate
a memoir
celibate
a memoir
Maria Giura
Copyright © 2019 by Maria Giura
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).
First Edition
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62720-214-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62720-215.2
Printed in the United States of America
Designed and edited by Christina Damon
Promotion by Meghan DeGeorge
Author photo by Danny Sanchez
Published by Apprentice House Press
Apprentice House Press
Loyola University Maryland
4501 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21210
410.617.5265 • 410.617.2198 (fax)
www.ApprenticeHouse.com
Also by the Author
What My Father Taught Me
For JC
and for JM
My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I’m naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield…
—Theodore Roethke
Contents
Note to the Reader xv
Chapter One: The Long Loneliness 1
Chapter Two: After Mass 29
Chapter Three: Telling Father 51
Chapter Four: Courting 71
Chapter Five: Confessions 95
Chapter Six: Mystic 115
Chapter Seven: Nellie 137
Chapter Eight: Candidacy 151
Chapter Nine: Novitiate 181
Chapter Ten: Exit Interviews 215
Chapter Eleven: Dream 257
Epilogue 273
Acknowledgments 285
About the Author 291
Note to the Reader
No one in this memoir asked to be in it. Yet here they are.
I’ve written only those parts of their lives that directly intersect with my story. I’ve prayed for the wisdom to write them as real as I can and have done my best to acknowledge when I’ve done them wrong. I’ve changed nearly all their names and, where possible, without compromising the emotional truth of the story, some details. I thank each of them in advance, especially my family, for understanding that I had to write this story.
Vivian Gornick says about memoir that, “It’s not what happened; it’s what you made of what happened.” I think it’s both, but I understand what she means. Perhaps if I had chosen a different life—or it had chosen me—my interpretation of the past, especially my childhood, would be different. Since that’s something I can’t know for sure, I present to you this account, the only one I can.
Chapter One
The Long Loneliness
I first noticed Father Infanzi in the way that matters during his second year at Saint Stephen’s. It’s not that I hadn’t noticed him before. It was impossible not to. He was thirty—four years older than me— tall and lean with black hair parted to the side, and he said beautiful things like God loved us into existence. But it wasn’t until my sister Janine introduced him to my family after Easter Sunday Mass that he really got my attention. It was a cool, sunny day with the fragrance of daffodils in the air as we waited on a long line to greet Father outside the front doors. When it was our turn, we all smiled and said hello, and my step-dad Tom complimented his homily. Father said, “Thank you,” and then, shaking our hands and blushing, said to my sisters and me, “Wow, four girls. You all have the same blue eyes,” but when he got to me he held my eyes a beat longer than he did theirs, and I felt a sharp pulse of attraction. After we walked away, my sister Julie said, without a hint of irony, “He’d be perfect for Maria.” Nellie, the youngest, rolled her eyes, and my mother shot back, “Julie!” but with a smirk. I nearly gasped. He was perfect—smart and handsome and personable but also a touch shy to make him sweet. He made me feel more special in that moment than the men I dated, sometimes slept with, so I wouldn’t have to be alone. After that, whenever he said Mass I thought good but walked out the side door and didn’t greet him. He was a priest. Besides, the last thing I wanted to be reminded of was celibacy. I’d been running from it ever since I was eight and, sitting in St. Bernadette’s one night, I felt God calling me to become a nun.
It was after five o’clock Mass on a Saturday, and I was headed out the door when something made me pick up The Tablet’s Special Vocations Issue and stay a while. Nestled into hewn rock high above the altar was the Blessed Mother in a beautiful white dress and powder blue sash with fourteen-year-old Bernadette kneeling beside her and gazing into her face. It looked like a giant circle of love surrounded them, but not one that made me feel left out like I had ever since Nellie was born. I walked a few feet down the long aisle, sat down in a pew, and opened The Tablet. There in the centerfold in big bold letters was GIVE YOUR LIFE TO GOD. I stared at it for a while unsure why God would want jealous eight year old me to give my life to Him or what that even meant until I turned the page and saw picture after picture of smiling nuns and priests.