What They Did to the Kid: Confessions of an Altar Boy

The author is a schoolmate of Bernard Cardinal Law, and so am I. Consequently, I found Jack Fritscher's novel to be as much memoir as fiction, as I was also a student at the Pontifical College Josephinum with both Law and Fritscher, and found the fictive parallels to my memories to be evocative of how we as young seminarians were taught and trained "to be pure and avoid scandal at all costs." That, I suggest, is the innocent essence of the secrecy the media now calls "cover-up." Don't all groups--from firemen and cops to Marines--close ranks around their own? If one is at all analytical, one thinks that this "scandal of priest sexual abuse and priest molestation"--driven by media terribly hungry to fill 24/7 programming--is just another part of the fundamentalist religious war to destroy Western Civilization: i.e. Christianity, and Christianity's oldest bastion, Roman Catholicism. At any rate, Fritscher's novel, despite its media-juicy title, is a gentle, yet eye-popping read about the rigors of seminary life as lived by the thousands of young men recruited by the Catholic Church in the 1950's. His insight lights up the seminary culture that produced the priests of a certain age who now stand--rightly and wrongly--accused. The story is human, engaging, and quite literary, and never exploitative or graphically embarrassing even when confronting a variety of behavior including a Jesuit spiritual director distributing prescription drugs--without a prescription--to depressed seminarians at the fictive "Misericordia Seminary." Actually, the novel is a credit to both the PCJ and to Monsignor Leonard J. Fick who was, apparently, so much a mentor to Fritscher that he dedicates the book to Msgr. Fick. (Anyone conjecturing about the seminary culture of Bernard Law's life might well enjoy this parallax story.) What a good writer! What an entertaining book! One suspects Fritscher kept notes hidden under his bed, because he remembers minutiae I had long ago forgotten, but--reminded by this wonderful book--remember, with nostalgia, as true. I think a "novel" like this--better than can nonfiction--brings out a truth of how we young seminarians were trained, particularly by priests who, as returning veterans of World War II, set very high standards for priestly masculinity in the adolescent world of young seminarians. Those standards' inherent flaw froze many an adolescent emotional life at 14-years-of-age, perhaps later causing some of them to seek others also at 14-years-old. Author Fritscher even writes, "What happens to a boy when he is 14, marks him for life." If this novel, which is never about the obvious, is at all autobiographical in its experiences, what a wonderful life for an author to have led!

Amazing. I thought I was reading a youthful journal written by my husband who has told me nearly everything about his seminary experience. In the light of the on-going church scandal regarding problems of sexuality, I found this novel to be really rather gentle and respectful--as well as insightful--of the human experience of boys' being locked away in a seminary.Author Fritscher who obviously knows the territory about which he writes could have exploited the media controversy, but he seems to be a humane artist who chose not to do so. I appreciated being able to read about the secrecy of seminaries without being offended by overt sex or by the anti-Catholicism that fuels much of the media.My husband seconded my opinion, and we both genuinely enjoyed the book just as a story. I learned things. My husband remembered things long forgotten. The book gave us some lively discussions.

I am a former seminarian, not an ex-seminarian. Former seminarians got over the 1950's seminary experience. Ex-sems didn't. So as a former seminarian, I am eternally grateful for the seminary education I received. Even if I did not become a priest, the seminary experience put a permanent mark on my soul. So I truly enjoyed this well-tuned novel that brought back the emotions of my adolescence. The book made me cry a bit and laugh more identifying with its crises of spiritual life mixed with boarding school strife. Despite the rather provocative title, the book is not at all about what you'd think it's about. So anyone with an intellectual curiosity regarding what were the thought processes of boys who really believed they heard the voice of God calling them to a priestly vocation, this book is, frankly, a gem. Perhaps, finally, our generation, touched by angels, is beginning to express itself about our youth and how we got the way we were, and are, and forever will be. Amen.

I saw this novel in the National Catholic Reporter and was skeptical that it might be tasteless. Actually, this memoir, thinly disguised as a novel, is in fact an exellent novel treating coming-of-age inside Catholicism of the 1950's and 1960's. Well done! Well written, at times funny and touching, this book gives insight into the boys and men who subjected themselves to the intensity of seminary life in the last years before Vatican II. The author knows whereof he speaks, and he writes exceedingly well--actually far better than one might expect in this coming-of-age genre. The book is entertaining on many levels. In short, as a seminarian who became a priest, and who remains a priest, I am glad to experience the (to me, pastoral)light this book throws onto a class of men (former seminarians and former priests)who to this day sit in our parishes, carrying still the echo of the vocations they once thought they had. This novel--memoir or not--sheds light on the SPEICAL NEEDS of men who for whatever reason did not follow (in some cases, their very real) vocations to the priesthood. What do we say about and to men like that? What can be said about their spiritual and psychological condition as they themselves age and leave their 50's for their 60's and 70's? What are these SENIOR Men supposed to think about their youth spent in rigorous seminary training? This book has as a MAIN THEME the recurring question of "what is a vocation supposed to be" as the hero of the book looks at his fellow-seminarians and wonders how so many boys could have so many kinds of motivations for vocations, including social mobility. This book can give an insight into why so many priests ordained before Vatican II burned out, left the priesthood, and married. In this theme, the book should also be of interest to any woman married to a former priest, or to relatives of former priests. In addition to these men who sit oftentimes unidentified in our pews, the book raises the spectre about the former priests and seminarians who actually fear going back into a Church. Whoever taught the author taught him well about psychology, spirituality, and written expression. I could see and feel the time, the place, the characters and their conversations. Well done, indeed!

One of the first copies of this memoir-novel passed through my hands. As a former ordained Catholic priest, I remember author Jack Fritscher when he was a seminarian when we both were students at the Pontifical College Josephinum. This book and this remembrance give me particular insight. Presented as fiction, this book will seem real to any man who was a seminarian in the 1950's, particularly if he studied at the Josephinum outside my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. My review is particularly for those PCJ seminarians (and for their families). All of the "arme Studenten" who moved, on the banks of the Olentangy River, through some or all of the PCJ ranks from Sexta (high-school freshmen) through Diaconate (12th-year theology students) during the 1950's and 1960's have memories of what was surely a unique experience. For some, those days were sweet; for others, bitter; for most, bittersweet. Jack Fritscher's latest novel, "What They Did to the Kid," dares to capture the pschological, military, and theological ethos of that time and place like nothing else yet published. His novel is a miracle. Monsignor Kleinz and Father Fick, the English professor, would have loved its literary style. Father Schmenk, the treasurer, would not have understood its frankness. Rector Gieringer would have listened to Schmenk and banned it. The reverends Klausing, Durst, DeRuntz, Kleinschmidt, and Thielen would all have pontificated about its horrors without ever bothering to read it. The priests who would most understand it would have been Kuehner and Vanyo. Of all the students Leonard Fick encouraged to write, none has proved more prolific and successful than Jack Fritscher ('65). In turning his literary talents to capture the spirit of seminary days prior to Vatican II, he has illuminated a niche that many of us figured would always be kept in the filmy shadows of repressed consciousness. I'm happy his esthetic courage won out over pious censorship. He tells a story that needs to be told of the 1000's of boys who entered seminaries and then had to face the dysfunctional faculty, rector, and rules. Happily, this book is not about the cliche of sexual abuse. What happens in this novel is a far more important revelation you'll just have to read to see. Enjoy this book. Even if you weren't in the seminary, or if you had a brother, son, or husband who was in the seminary, you may find "Kid" covers an incredible period in American Catholicism's recruitment of boys in the 1950's. As Father Fick, editor of "The Josephinum Review," would have written about this novel, "Why the local color alone..."