JOHN CATOIR
Being Jewish, I had never even met a Catholic priest until I won a Christopher Award for my very first TV movie script, “Aunt Mary.” Over the next few years, I won twice more in the same category for “Homeward Bound” and “A Winner Never Quits.”
Each time I collected my award, bearing the Christopher’s credo, “Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness,” I grew increasingly impressed with the man who presented it to me – Father John Catoir. The majority of us, after all, have jobs, careers and professions. Precious few have callings.
When us working stiffs refer to our boss as the guy upstairs, we only mean that he has an office on the floor above us. When my friend John Catoir says it, he really means The Guy Upstairs.
Q. Did you always want to be a priest? Did some influence in your past that made you gravitate towards the priesthood?
A. When I was growing up in Queens, New York, during World War II, I wanted to be a pilot. We were young kids in grammar school, admiring at a distance the soldiers who returned with their medals and fancy uniforms. None of us had a clue about the horrible reality of war. In those days, the idea of becoming a priest was the furthest thing from my mind.
My parents supplied me with an abundance of love which has served me well throughout my life. Their love enabled me to grow in self-respect, which of course is the foundation of my own capacity to love.
My dad was a good man and a colorful extrovert who somehow ended up as an accountant with Metropolitan Life. He never complained, though. My mother was a beautiful, graceful woman who loved her family very much. She stayed out of the work force to raise her two children. I was nine years older than my sister Cathy. Both my parents were average church-goers, but not especially religious. There was never any pressure put on me to become a priest. Quite the contrary. I think there was a good bit of unspoken hope that I would do well one day and provide for them in their old age.
Q. At what point did you hear the call?
A. It wasn’t until I had finished college and was drafted into the Army that I began to feel a strong desire to become a priest. This feeling came and went during high school, but I was too interested in the young ladies to take it seriously. As far as I was concerned, people like me got married.
In college, the possibility of a career in television began to fascinate me. While attending Fordham University School of Business, I became an announcer on the college radio station. Then I got a job as a page at NBC with the hope of launching my show business career. I worked there for three years. It was the golden age of live TV and I was in charge of pages on the eighth floor where all the major shows originated. We took care of all the dressing room keys. Needless to say, we met the top stars of the era, and I felt as important as any pimply-faced kid could feel in those days.
However, it was the time of the Korean War and, after graduation, I was drafted. The Army shaved off my hair, and put me through basic training. I emerged a Military Policeman at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, doing guard duty in the hot sun, wondering every day what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I had become disenchanted with show business for a variety of reasons. I had seen enough to know that the almighty dollar was God for too many in that industry. I really wasn’t happy with the idea of giving my life over to superiors who said: If it makes a profit, do it!
And so, what was I to do with the rest of my life? I was praying for an answer, going to mass every day, and through a series of events too complicated to explain here, I ended up as a chaplain’s assistant.
I loved every minute of my work with Chaplain George Phillips. He was a quiet gentlemanly priest who taught me a lot. Slowly it began to dawn on me that since I was actually living the life of a celibate in the Army, maybe it was possible to live it as a priest. Gradually the life of being a priest overwhelmed me, and I made my decision. But I didn’t announce it to anyone, though, until after I was discharged. My parents were shocked, but there was no opposition. They simply wanted what was best for me.
Q. Any regrets?
A. I have never regretted my decision to be a priest. Not once.
