Chapter Three: 'Patrick Duffy Junior's Vocation to the Priesthood'
Patrick and Bridie were devout Catholics, who since their marriage had religiously adhered to the letter of their faith. And yet, despite being good people, each felt the need to atone for any past wrongs and moments of weaknesses of the flesh they’d had. The couple felt that were they to have their oldest child join the Catholic priesthood then, any past wrongs either of them had committed during their courtship days would be truly expunged in the eyes of God and the slate would be wiped clean on the day of judgement.
Naturally, the parish priest knew about the sin of the couple having conceived their first child outside the Sacrament of Marriage as he had been the appointed one to ‘forgive’ them in the Confessional Box. And yet, to ensure such ‘forgiveness,’ Patrick and Bridie believed that God would only grant his seal of approval the very day their firstborn joined the priesthood. Thus, Patrick and Bridie believed that only by Patrick Junior becoming a priest of the Catholic Church, would a child conceived in sin effectively expunge the original sin of the parents and, until that happened, they would both live their spiritual lives and carry their cross.
Patrick Duffy Senior and Bridie initially imagined that their large Catholic family would be a good mixture of both boys and girls, but after their son Patrick was born, every other child to come along thereafter was a girl! Often, they wondered if this had been a punishment from God. Before Patrick Duffy Junior had become a teenager, he had twelve sisters and was still the only boy in the family. He could never walk the streets or go errands for his mother without the girls of Portlaw following him everywhere and refusing to let him pass until he granted them a kiss.
As he grew up into a young man in his late teens, the young Patrick Duffy found himself the oldest in a family of eighteen, and the only boy born to his parents. He had proved himself to have been the most obedient of children and there had never been a time in his life that he had ever thought other than one day he would be ordained a Catholic priest. Indeed, this idea had grown into such a ‘natural expectation’ by all the Duffy family that when Patrick announced at the age of seventeen years that he was leaving home forthwith to join the priesthood, while all of his family were sad at the thought of him leaving them, not one wasn’t pleased for him.
Indeed, his parents puffed up in pride each time they told someone in town that their son had been left a ‘calling card’ by God to enter His holy house as a Catholic priest. As a parting gift, his father thought it to be most appropriate to give his son the Duffy family prayer book; an old heirloom in a vintage red-leather binding with a metal plate inscription of the Duffy family name at its centre.This prayer book had been passed down since 1849, during the middle of the Potato Famine and had held the pride of family place ever since. It was usually handed on to the eldest son after the death of the head of the household and had never been previously passed on by the keeper of it during their lifetime.
Indeed, his parents puffed up in pride each time they told someone in town that their son had been left a ‘calling card’ by God to enter His holy house as a Catholic priest. As a parting gift, his father thought it to be most appropriate to give his son the Duffy family prayer book; an old heirloom in a vintage red-leather binding with a metal plate inscription of the Duffy family name at its centre.This prayer book had been passed down since 1849, during the middle of the Potato Famine and had held the pride of family place ever since. It was usually handed on to the eldest son after the death of the head of the household and had never been previously passed on by the keeper of it during their lifetime.
Indeed, the only people to envisage having lost Patrick to the ‘marriage stakes’ was every girl and single woman in Portlaw between the ages of 13 and 30 years; along with a number of married women for whom Patrick had represented their ‘guilty pleasure’ in their most secret and never-spoken of thoughts.
You see, like his father before him, Patrick had been handsome since the day he’d been born and every day that had since past, had merely added to his Adonis looks and sex appeal. He was in short, the most handsome man ever to have come out of Ireland; even better looking than his father had been in his youth. It mattered not how he had his haircut as styling wasn't necessary. Whether he had it cut short or allowed it to grow long and straight; either way, he remained the same picture of female desire and male envy as he had always done!
And while young Patrick didn’t give his ‘good looks’ a second thought and had always lived a good Catholic life in every respect, he was somewhat relieved to have been called into the vocation of priesthood. During the past year, young Patrick had, on a number of times, found his mind straying and his hands wandering when he had awoken from his sleep, feeling damp and pleasantly uncomfortable. It had first started after he had called up to the church one day to tell his father that tea was on the table. Patrick saw his dad in the garden talking to the nun Sister Marie. Then as he approached, Sister Marie screamed as a bumblebee stung her on her lower throat. The pain was so sudden that the nun, without second thought, ripped open the top of her habit to rub the spot. Both Patrick Duffy Senior and Junior’s eyes almost popped out when they saw the ample bosom that Sister Marie was hiding beneath her habit.
Patrick’s father advised his son not to recount the happening to his mother as there was no point by unduly worrying her. Instead, Patrick Junior was simply advised by his father to mention the fact that ‘he’d looked’ at his next confession only if his eyes had stayed fixed on the nun’s ample bosom any longer than had been 'absolutely necessary'. However, Patrick felt obliged to add the extended 'look' to his list of sins when he next confessed them, along with a manufactured image he had constructed about what the nun got up to on her own at night-time, in her convent bed.
For many nights before going to sleep, Patrick Junior found his mind straying back to Sister Marie’s bee sting in the church gardens and her imagined nocturnal activities. He was eventually able to get off to sleep on a night without conjuring up the image of Sister Marie; but not because of any prayer. It had more to do with the fact that he now had a newer and much naughtier image to replace the unholy thoughts he had occasionally harboured of Sister Marie. Three weeks after the Sister Marie incident, he had decided to read ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover.’ To minimise the chance of not being seen carrying a book in his hand that all the parish priests from Portlaw to Galway had banned, Patrick arrived at the Portlaw Library a mere five minutes before closing time, and on a Wednesday evening; the quietest night of the week.
The librarian didn’t require too much persuasion by the handsome customer to allow him late entry. All Patrick needed to do was to look at the 20-year-old woman and ask. Patrick hurriedly got the book he wanted from the far end of the library room and on the way back, he caught a glimpse of a courting couple who weren’t there to study literature and whose feelings for each other had obviously got the better of them. The couple were completely oblivious to the fact that they were being observed by young Patrick Duffy. Patrick Duffy ran home and started reading Lady Chatterley instantly and didn't fall asleep that night until the gamekeeper had discovered the delights of woodland bliss.
The more female attention the handsome Patrick received, the more often his thoughts were distracted from his vocation. He was finding it harder not to momentarily consider some of the female offers that frequently came in his direction when he least expected them. On a few occasions, while looking at a smashing pair of female legs that were attached to the swinging and nubile hips of a 16-year-old girl, he found his eyes remaining on the vision longer than was wise or tasteful to do. And try as he may, he would never forget the ‘eyeful’ he got just before his 17th birthday when, during the wedding function buffet of his 22-year-old cousin, Sheila, she bent down, her dress blew up and revealed the full glory of the bride. This led to the return of those pleasantly uncomfortable feelings every time he recalled this event in his mind’s eye.
Patrick Duffy Junior therefore viewed his joining of the priesthood as soon as possible as been most opportune. There was no longer any point in denying it; he had arrived at a vulnerable stage in his life when both God and the Devil were each battling for his thoughts, mind and behaviour. He saw this contest as being no less than a battle between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’; the ‘flesh’ and the ‘spirit’. There could only be two possible outcomes; his salvation or eternal damnation, and those were each dependent upon which way he decided to jump. The only difficulty was however, his guardian angel of seduction always seemed to win out!
To tell the truth, Patrick Duffy Junior was coming to the realisation that Satan was presently winning the battle over his thoughts. Whenever Patrick found himself in the presence of a good looking woman, he couldn’t control the direction that his mind would travel, and it wasn’t towards the vocation of priesthood! He didn’t seem to mind if the beauty was a dark woman, a downright sexy type or merely provocative; so long as she was beautiful of face and body!
Facing such mounting temptation, the virile and sensuous young man who was filled with enough testosterone to burst through the walls of Sodom and Gomorrah, needed to repress such non-Catholic urges in order to preserve his sanity. He consequently viewed leaving Portlaw to join the priesthood ‘now’ as being the very best resistance to all of the temptations that the Devil threw in his direction. If he was ever to see the plains of heaven, he would not have to look back at Sodom and Gomorrah or he’d be eternally damned!
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