In 1966 and at the tender age of 12 years I left my home in Clogheen, a small village in Co. Tipperary, armed with a small brown suitcase, the blessings of family and friends and a solid conviction that I had a vocation to serve God as a teacher in the De La Salle Order of Christian Brothers. 5 years later I returned home with the same suitcase and the societal stigma of having lost a vocation.
35 years later I had returned and settled in Galway after a stay of 23 years in England, developing a career working in human services mainly with people with an intellectual disability and or a mental health problem. I am married and have three children. My time in boarding school is a distant and unexplored memory until one fateful day in April 2006.
I was guest speaker at a conference in Portlaoise, trying to persuade staff of a number of care organisations that people with intellectual disabilities currently living in congregated settings could, with proper support, live ordinary lives in ordinary settings among the rest of us so called normal people. On my journey home I found myself less than 2 miles away from my first dip into religious life in the Juniorate college in Castletown Co.Laois. I decided to divert. As I stood outside the gate dealing with the tide of memories washing over me I was taken in hand by a lady called Rose who now ran the college as a retirement home for the ever decreasing numbers of the Order. We were of similar age and she was brought up in the small houses at the other side of the wide village street.
My visit that day and a meeting with the Brother who recruited me all those years before allowed me, almost demanded of me, to revisit this important part of my formative years. The book Escaping God is the result. I present those years as a series of flashbacks and associated reflections triggered by that revisit. It is also one person’s personal exploration of the power of religion in sixties Ireland and the depersonalisation process visited on those of us who signed up for the higher calling.
The liberating aspect of all this was that it allowed me to place those years as a contributor to the person I was to become and still am. You can’t eliminate a chunk of your life and can’t deny its influence on you. Family and friends felt sorry for the young Billy. I did not as those years were part of a normality I learned to manage.
Enough said for now, I will leave you with my answer to my wife on my return from that visit. She apprehensively asked me what it was like.
I answered that it was like putting on a familiar overcoat.
That strange overcoat is yours to explore in Escaping God.
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