This paper examines James Carroll's memoir An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us, tracing how Carroll's identity was shaped by Cold War Catholic conservatism, his father's frustrated priestly ambitions, and the Vietnam War. The paper explores the competing loyalties Carroll navigated as a Catholic priest turned antiwar activist — loyalties to his militaristic father, to the institutional Church, and to his own conscience — and considers how Carroll ultimately found a measure of peace by leaving the priesthood, becoming a father himself, and giving narrative form to his contradictions.
The subtitle of James Carroll's memoir is "God, my father, and the war that came between us." This phrase 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, yet it accurately captures 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. It is not enough, however, to say simply that his upbringing as a Catholic shaped him. He was also permanently shaped as an American Catholic male, specifically situated within the kind of political, conservative Catholicism typical of the Cold War era. His father, Joe Carroll, originally wanted to be a priest and attended seminary school. But just before he committed himself to a life of celibacy, God, and the Church, his resolution buckled. In his final year of schooling, he left — for law school.
Joe Carroll turned to another kind of calling after realizing that the strictures of a clergyman's life were not for him. Still a committed Catholic, he embraced the ideals of the American nation, serving as a federal agent and in the armed forces. Nevertheless, he hoped his son would feel the priestly calling he himself could not sustain. Originally, Joe Carroll expected his first son to follow that path, but when Joe Jr. contracted polio as a child, James — the younger son — was chosen in his place.
James did join the priesthood — but not in the way his father intended. James became a committed Catholic leftist and antiwar protester while serving as a priest. He saw his actions as the truest imitation of Jesus' life, and embraced pacifism as emblematic of Jesus' commitment to turning the other cheek in the face of oppression. His earthly father, however, saw only betrayal: a betrayal of family ideals, national ideals, and religious ideals. Because James did not become the kind of priest Joe Carroll had aspired to be himself, James was judged a failure. By refusing to live out his father's personal ideals and political convictions, James was seen as betraying his heavenly Father as well — despite James' own deeply held understanding of his Catholic spirituality.
James Carroll states that he felt compelled to resist the Vietnam War. He did so despite the consternation it caused within his family and among members of his own priestly brotherhood in the Church, because of the horrific, violent means used to oppress the people of Vietnam in the name of saving them. The war — ostensibly a fight against communism, a cause devoutly espoused by his militaristic father — was, in Carroll's view, destroying America from within and the South Asian nation itself from without.
"Antiwar activism ruptures family and Church ties"
"Departure from priesthood brings unexpected clarity"
The only solace, James Carroll says, is the act of telling his story, with all of its many faults and contradictions. Significantly, Carroll begins his book with a Mass and ends it with a Mass. He was an altar boy and an Elvis fan — a member of the Church and of the counterculture. His memoir opens with his ordination Mass and closes with his father's requiem and passing from this life into the next.
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