James Carroll: biography and literary contributions

James Carroll

An American Requiem by James Carroll

The subtitle of James Carroll's text is "God, my father, and the war that came between us." This is an eloquent summary of the conflicts that gripped Carroll over the course of his adolescent and young adult development. The juxtaposition of fatherhood, war, and one's relationship with the divine is startling in the title. Yet it is an eloquent summary of how patriotism, militarism, parental loyalty, and his relationship with the Catholic Church all became conjoined in the young Carroll's mind as he grew into manhood.

The specific nature of Carroll's "religious education" affected him permanently. But it is not enough to simply say that Carroll's education as a Catholic affected him. He was also permanently impacted as an American Catholic male, specifically located in a kind of political, conservative Catholicism typical of the Cold War era. His father, Joe Carroll originally wanted to be a priest. Carroll senior attended seminary school. But just before he committed himself to a life of celibacy, God, and the Church, Joe Carroll's resolution buckled. In his last year of schooling, he went away -- to law school.

Joe Carroll turned to another kind of calling, after realizing that the strictures of the life of a man of the cloth were not for him. He turned, still a committed Catholic, to the ideals of the American nation and served as a federal agent and in the armed forces. However, he hoped his son would feel the calling for the priesthood he could not. Originally, Joe Carroll expected his first son to follow in his footsteps. But when Joe, Jr. contracted polio as a child, James, the younger son was 'chosen' instead.

James did join the priesthood -- but not in the way his father wanted him to. James became a committed Catholic leftist and war protestor while a priest. James saw his actions as imitating the life of Jesus in the truest fashion, and becoming a committed pacifist as emblematic of Jesus' commitment to 'turning the other cheek' in the face of oppression. However, his earthly father only saw this as a betrayal of his family ideals, his national ideals, and his religious ideals. Because James did not become the sort of priest Joe Carroll aspired to be, James was judged a failure. By not living out his earthly father's personal ideals and political preoccupations, James was seen as betraying his heavenly father as well, despite James' own, personal take on his Catholic spirituality.

James Carroll states that he was forced to resist the Vietnam War. This was despite the consternation this caused to his family, and also to members of his own priestly brotherhood within the Church, because of the horrific, violent means used to oppress the people of Vietnam, in the name of saving the people of Vietnam. The war, ostensibly a fight against communism (and a view devoutly, no pun intended, espoused by James' militaristic father) was only destroying the nation of America from within and the South Asian nation itself from without.

Carroll's schism with his father was later to be paralleled in a schism he experienced with the Catholic Church itself. Unlike the pacifism reflected in the life of Jesus, modern Catholic leaders like Cardinal Spellman validated America's military involvement in Vietnam. Carroll's vision of Catholicism told his conscience that this kind of militarism was a betrayal of Jesus' religious ideals and the historical Church's true ideals. Yet these ideals caused him to enter into political and familial conflict -- and caused him inner turmoil as well. How could James honor his mother and father when his mother was a personal friend of Cardinal Spellman, even though she was somewhat sympathetic to her younger son's views? Carroll's own father was not just theologically disappointed in his priest-son, but also was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during this time period. Carroll, essentially, was forced into a no-win situation, a system of perpetually divided loyalties.

In the conclusion to his book, Carroll states that these conflicted loyalties were never fully resolved. In fact, they only became more complicated. However, with this intensification of complications, Carroll paradoxically found a greater spiritual peace. After he left the priesthood and became a husband and a father, he says, he better came to understand some of the conflicts his father faced between God, his family, and the demands of his different occupations. However, this caused yet another crisis for Carroll as a Catholic. Only by leaving the vaunted lifestyle of the cloth did he truly understand his own parents. Only by leaving supposedly the highest commitment a man and a Catholic can give to God, did he began to understand his own relationship to faith and family.