An Elegy for Mychal
Mychal Judge was a complicated individual in every sense of the word, but he was an uncomplicated priest, for he lived the Great Commandment more than any other priest I have known: love one another. It is, after all, that simple. Love one another. Mychal Judge embodied this approach to life in the gay men he mentored, in the last rites he gave to those who were about to die from AIDS at the height of the crisis, in the communion he gave in private to divorced Catholics. He was in death what he was in life: an example for us all to follow. An example of unyielding service to all people, people of faith, and people of no faith.
Twenty years after Mychal was welcomed home, his legacy remains controversial among some. It was no secret, and it is no secret now, that Mychal had “disordered inclinations,” the outdated terminology of the Roman Catholic Church for those of homosexual orientation. Yet those who came up with that phrase could not shine Mychal’s shoes, or, in Catholic terms, fasten the strap on his sandals. As everyone ran from danger that day, including priests stationed at churches in Lower Manhattan, Mychal ran toward danger, knowing death was certain, to ensure others had the comfort of a Catholic farewell in every sense of the term.
When Ted McCarrick raped me, he was sure to tell me the Church “owned” me on a cold winter day in Hackensack those years ago. But Ted McCarrick, and the many men of his ilk who are still in power in the Roman Catholic Church never truly understood the infusion of Christ a man like Mychal could provide, because their souls were ultimately hollow while his was filled with saintly light and joy.
Blessed be the peacemakers. Blessed be the poor. Blessed be those who don’t know Christ. Blessed be the sick and the weak: Mychal understood what those phrases meant physically and spiritually, and Christ lived happily in Mychal, and thus, in those he met in life along the way.
The fact that twenty years later the men “of the Church” in North Jersey are still whispering about his sexuality is farcical to those of us who knew Mychal and even more farcical to those of us who know what those old grey men truly are inside. I am a victim of the Catholic Church’s greatest evil, marked by a sadistic “Prince of the Church” for all eternity. This tragedy must end, for all of us know that Mychal was both a Saint and a Martyr who gave his life for the sake of the sacraments twenty years ago while the Princes took to their stained glass, gilt Cathedrals to pray for the dead. Long live Saint Mychal Judge. Long live his legacy. Long live his example. And to hell with those who preach false morals. The Church outside the great Cathedrals can see through the fading stained glass, and we welcome Saint Mychal. The road has risen to meet him, and we know the wind is at his back. Where is the Irish Eminence, Joe Tobin, to join in the call to the bar of Sainthood for Mychal Judge, his geopolitical Irish wisdom compromised perhaps by his loyalty to Rome and his brother Princes of the Church.
God’s will be done: Saint Mychal Judge, Pray for Us.
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