My mother pulled me out of public schools not because of any real principle along religious or moral lines. I could read at third grade level entering kindergarten due to a bout of polio and the public school wanted to place in that grade. Mom said no and called her childhood pal Father Kazmareck and asked to enroll me at St. Teresa’s which across the street from our house. So my life was set for several years, During the school week I did everything my classmates did catechism, mass daily stations of the cross during lent and all the prayers including a daily rosary after lunch. Saturdays I attended the religious instruction at our Lutheran church.

Most of my tenure at ST. T’s was highlighted by Father Kaz. He laughed, giggled and slapped my mother’s butt to get her attention when she was pulling weeds. Why did he do it? To make sure she and only she would pack his lunch for the school picnic. He was a Hawaiian shirted. Khaki pants priest who made life and religion joyful if not very serious. However, all that was to change when his assistant pastor arrived in my sixth grade year.

Father Ritz was an escapee from behind the curtain where practicing your faith could mean death. Perhaps that though we students did not think of it at the time explained the man who was a polar opposite to Kaz. Father Ritz to this day I cannot shorten his title wore cassocks so starched the edges looked like knives, only during mass was the berretta gone from his head. He walked so quietly he was behind you before you knew it. If you were “sinning “ his hand would go to your shoulder and he would march you to the chapel where you and he would sit in silent contemplation of your error. Not one word of displeasure or reprimand just silence until the words “forgive me” issued forth and several Hail Mary’s were assigned. That silence was more forceful than all the laughing, “do not do agains” from Kaz.

Friday confessions were fraught with wonderment. Who was the priest in the booth? As a protestant I sat in the Mary row (yes we had ten Mary’s in my class and we had our own pew) closest to the booth. The Marys expected me to check out the shoes beneath the curtain. Loafers or sandals and they breathed a sigh of relief. If the shoes shone like patent leather and were laced oxfords, they began to reduce the things they would confess.

Ritz was not feared but he was not attainable. Silence surrounded him. Idle conversation was not his style. When he spoke, it mattered. They only time I feared him was the day I asked if Mary had had other children after Jesus. His hand slowly rose with a finger pointing to the door as he quietly said out protestant. Yet to give him his due, he was also the one who hand on my shoulder brought me back into class with a quiet forgive me. An adult who could admit his error, I was stunned.

But the image that still moves me is one again of near silence. Having forgotten my school bag in the chapel I ran across the street after supper to retrieve it. Going down to the chapel, I stopped when I noticed someone praying. Father Ritz knelt in a pew, sunlight streaming on him from the stained glass window. His hands so long lean and strong were moving his wooden rosary beads as tears flowed down his cheeks. I stood for a moment in a silence broken only by the clacking beads and then tiptoed up the stairs. My schoolbag could wait: I was sure I had seen a saint.