From Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968:

I have digressed.  Back in theology, student life continued.  I was among the fourth-year fathers who one spring day challenged the rest of the theologate in softball.  This was 12-inch with gloves, fast-pitch.  In the course of the game, I speared a liner at third, reaching it at the absolute top of my leap.  I can still feel it.  Those sweet memories remain of what one did on the playing field, as I have said.  Nobody else remembers it.  I gain neither fame nor fortune from it.  But I remember it with pleasure.  There’s something special about it.  Keep that in mind next time you hear someone downgrade athletics.

The year ground to a halt.  The “ad gradum” exam, or just “ad grad,” came and went, the last of nine such oral exams with which we closed out a school year.  They were in Latin, as I mentioned earlier—a half hour each for first and second years of juniorate and philosophy, an hour for third-year philosophy, the “de universa [philosophia],” or “day you,” covering the previous three years.

Theology years one through three ended with hour-long exams.  The ad grad (say “odd grahd”) was two hours.  It covered all of theology.  The “gradum,” in question was the “step” or grade to be achieved so that one might be solemnly professed, that is, could take “solemn,” vs. simple, final vows.  These were the usual vows of poverty, chastity (celibacy, not getting married), and obedience—each for the second time—and a special fourth vow of obedience to the pope.

I put “solemn” in quotes because I never could figure it out: either I was committed to poverty (living modestly and getting permissions), continent bachelorhood, and following orders, or I wasn’t.

Why solemn?  Why final, for that matter, since we never took temporary vows?  The answer is, they were the final seal of approval by the Society.  You were still on probation, even after ordination.  You could still be held up, you could still be expelled if you acted up.

The course was 15 years—the 15th I will get to.  The solemn vow-taker took his vows not before 17 years.  If you failed the ad grad or any end-of-year final before that, you qualified only for “simple” final vows, which by rights meant you were less committed to obeying the pope, though no one said that.  More to the point, it meant you could never be provincial superior or rector of a major seminary.

Neither of those possibilities were in my playbook, but I was still pleasantly surprised, I should say astonished, to be told early in my 15th year of training, “tertianship,” that I had passed my ad grad.  My friend Pete Fox had been giving long odds for several years on my passing my orals.  It was pleasant to think I had somehow, against all odds, beaten them.  I was misinformed, however.

I PASSED?  NOT QUITE The tertian instructor, a tall, gaunt New Englander of kindly manner and measured demeanor, gave me the word in his office early in the coming ten months of tertianship.  However, it was a “clerical error,” I learned 20 months or so later from John Connery, the provincial.  I had completed a year of teaching as a priest at St. Ignatius and was running a summer enrichment program for neighborhood kids.  In the mail had come word that I was scheduled for final vows in a few weeks—a year early if I had passed my ad grad as Father Instructor had said.  I called Connery, who is better known in church circles as a major-league moral theologian (morality umpire) of the second half of the century.  He said he’d get back.  He did, with the clerical-error explanation.  (Yes, Virginia, even Jesuits make mistakes.)

There I was busy with a summer program for which I had with federal anti-poverty money set up my own office with telephone in a corner of the school building.  It was 1966, we were “fighting poverty” the LBJ way.  As someone who looked as if he knew what he was doing, I had looked very good to the folks downtown, who were deluged by highly questionable seekers after federal money for their various schemes and programs.

But poverty money or not, I had a decision on my hands.  I had to make the final plunge.  The contented, wholly dedicated soul, full of the Ignatian “more” and dying to serve, would have rejoiced.  I didn’t.   Faced with a decision I hadn’t seen coming, I blinked and called off the final vows.  It was a signal to a number of people, including my mother, she told me later.  All I knew was, it was time to put on the brakes.

As for the ad grad, I had done well enough to earn the degree, if not solemn vows.  This may have been standard. If you made it down to the wire, you got the consolation prize.  I hadn’t collapsed while questioned or denied the Trinity.  “Bene sedebat” was the wry expression — the mother tongue (Latin) for he sat well, that is, showed up for classes. I passed to that extent, and had my S.T.L. — licentiate in sacred theology —among my academic accomplishments.

But I have diverged from straight and narrow telling of my story, for which I make apologies.  In any case, theology drew to a close.  It was on to tertianship.

Tertianship? What the heck is that? Stay tuned. . . .