I am the author of some 200 books and pamphlets on sex-positive and friendship theology.For the last ten years I have led a weekly Gay Men’s Support Group.
I am known throughout the Philippines as the priest who brought gay and lesbian love out of the closet by officiating at hundreds of same-sex weddings.
I am a war veteran of the Korean War.
I am an experienced restaurateur, having taken short courses at Cornel University.
As a psychologist I got my doctorate in clinical psychology after mid-life, following a master’s in counseling psychology.
I am a priest and bishop now in the Catholic Diocese of One Spirit with Bishop James Burch and a whole diocese of accomplished and exemplary priests, men and women.
I am the founder and abbot of the Order of St. Aelred, whose women and men priests minister to the LGBT people of the Philippines.
Because of my age, my faithful partner thinks I should introduce myself as Father Richard.
Introduction
I’m not quite 80, and there has been a lot of water coming and going under the bridge for all these years, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes and committed a lot of sins in these seven decades. There is a lot to talk about. In the past I have covered a lot in various essays I have written. Often I will just make reference to them instead of repeating everything here.
At this point in my journey, I am where God put me going on 17 years ago, and now I am a “live, die, and be buried” Filipino. More about that later.
Danville, Ohio
I was born in the hills and farms of Ohio. Green, green, rolling hills everywhere. That’s the way I remember my childhood in Danville, Knox county, Ohio. And that was Mickley territory.
One time I met a man in a parking lot in Los Angeles who had a Knox County, Ohio license plate. I said, “Hi, I’m from Danville.” He said, “Oh, then, you must be a Mickley.” I know that all 1000 Danvillians are not Mickley’s. But one uncle had 13 kids and they had kids and grandkids. Another had seven and they had kids and grandkids, and I guess that’s where the idea of “so many Mickleys” came from.
My Uncle, the Fire Chief
Some of my uncles were farmers, and my dad was a farmer-grocer. Later another uncle, Uncle Dale, became known far and wide as the grocer who was the town fire chief for years.
Butter and apples
My dad used to leave the grocery twice a week and drive out to the dairy farms in the country and collect (buy) the sour cream which he in turn then would sell to the butter-makers. (That actually was before margarine became known and widespread, so people used a lot of butter in those days.) On one of those trips into the country, my dad picked a whole farm trailer full of apples and brought them to our school on Main Street and gave then out, one by one, to all the kids in the playground at lunch time. My dad was like that.
Milking the family milk cow
At home, my duty everyday for eight years twice a day – before school in the morning and after school in the evening – was to milk the family milk cow. From pasture and barn, to kitchen, to breakfast, lunch, and dinner (actually, it was breakfast dinner and supper in those days; they only had “lunch” in the cities), it was milk by the gallon, direct from the family cow. How did we keep it cold? There was no electrical refrigerator in our house in those days. We had an “icebox,” yes, it was like a box you put ice in. It was constructed something like the design of a modern refrigerator, with a compartment at the top where we kept putting in the ice from the town ice factory. (There was electric refrigeration; my dad even had a walk-in electric refrigerator for the meat he butchered and cut and sold.)
I got the duty of milking the family milk cow because I was the oldest – eventually of the ten of us.
Well, of course I can’t tell it all here. I wish I could. That was life in the hills of Ohio – in Danville, 16 miles northeast of Mt. Vernon, 60 miles northeast of Columbus.
Our dog, Trixie
We had a dog named Trixie for years and years (or so it seemed when my years were so few). He loved to run along side the car. (Cars didn’t speed along all that fast in those days.) Back in the 30’s most cars had “running boards,” a step along the side of the car. Sometimes Trixie would hop on the “running board” and rest. One time we found that Trixie had ridden on the “running board” all the way to Columbus. But he got lost in the city, and we had to come home without him. (Dogs didn’t have GPS collars in those days.) But what a dog! Three days later Trixie showed up. He had found his way home, the whole 60 miles. We never knew if he rode any running boards, or just ran the whole way home.
Riding the “running boards” of life
Like Trixie, I have been riding the “running boards” of life around the world, continent to continent, country to country, city to city, learning to call “home” wherever I am supposed to be in the divine plan.
Awakening of spirituality
In a way, life was “uneventful” back in Danville. I was not allowed to go to Sunday Mass until I started school, and that disappointed me. I remember the thrill of my First Communion in second grade. I also remembered old Father Teipe’s sermons, repeated every year, like clock work. In those days the readings for Sunday Mass were the same each year, and in that pulpit, so were the sermons. Year after year, when he told the story of how a priest passed by the wounded man that the Good Samaritan helped, I was confused. Father Teipe was a priest, and he always helps people, and why did a “priest” pass by the wounded man? I had a lot of questions – and a lot to learn.
Sticking up for the faith
In fourth grade, dad bought a store in a town 40 miles away and we moved there – with the cow, and my duty continued. But it was a mostly Non-Catholic town, and I only had one Catholic classmate (in Danville there were four of us Catholic Mickley first cousins who started first grade together and were classmates all the way through), and an anti-Catholic teacher. I argued with him. I stood up for my religion. I didn’t know much history or religion, but I was not going to him tell me that Spain was backward because it was Catholic! No way. I survived, and so did the church.
Memorizing Latin
Across the street from the school was our little Catholic church. The pastor was young, had a big car, and gave interesting sermons. Henry Sidall, the son of a prominent businessman, was a senior in high school and he was the head of the “Altar boys.” It was his job to teach me how to be an “Altar Boy,” to serve Mass. In those days, and until Vatican II, that meant a lot more than learning what to “do,” to be in the right place at the right time, and “do” the right things. It also meant memorizing a lot of Latin. I was never good at memorizing anything. Now I had to memorize paragraph after paragraph of LATIN, a language, of course, which I did not know, but I had to know how to pronounce it and memorize it. “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” It was many years later that I found out that we opened the Mass by going to, praying “to God who gives joy to my youth.” But I said it, and a lot of other memorized Latin, for years and years. Henry Sidall did a good job of teaching me how to serve mass, and he went on to become a medical doctor, but he had, along with Father Fate, the pastor, motivated me to love the Mass and to be want to become a priest.
Catholic school and a vocation
In seventh grade we moved from non-Catholic New London to Catholic Louisville where we were all enrolled in St. Louis Catholic School. I continued to serve Mass and became a daily communicant and admired the goodness and holiness of our parish priest, and my desire to become a priest stayed alive in spite of my nun-teacher who did everything she could to discourage me. “You’ll never make it. You won’t last a month in seminary.” And it was my fate that she also became my eighth grade teacher and still hounded me with her negative message.
I continued to milk the family milk cow every morning before school and every evening after school. My father had a nervous breakdown and landed in hospital and the nun-teacher ridiculed me and set it up for the other kids in the class to laugh at me because my dear father, the father of ten, was in a mental hospital. When he was released he continued to work as a policeman to support his large family.
With encouragement from Dad and my pastor
Then, after grade school, with the encouragement of the pastor, Father Buckholtz, I decided to enter a full time live-in monastery-seminary. I can remember that September day well. As we approached the seminary gate, some 25 miles from the family home, my father drove over to the side of the rode, stopped, and turned to me in the back seat (mother was with him in the front seat). “Son,” he said, “Your mother and I are happy with your decision and we support you in your desire to enter the seminary. But now is your chance to decide. You are 13 years old. You are the one to decide. Do you really want to continue through that gate? If you want to go back home, we will still support you in whatever you choose to do with your life. What do you choose? To go into the seminary through that gate, or go back home with us?”
“Dad,” I said, “This is my vocation. God has called me to be a priest. I choose to enter the seminary.” Before he started the car again, with mom nodding in agreement, he said, “We will support you in every way we can. But when you enter that gate, go into that seminary with the decision to be a good student, to study hard, and to become a good priest.” With that, he started the car and we went into Brunnerdale Seminary. All through the years, even with their responsibilities to the other nine children, they never missed a monthly visiting Sunday as long as I was in that seminary in Ohio.
Learning Latin for real; on the way to the priesthood
Then began my “religious life.” It was high point of my dreams. I loved the prayers so many times a day (far more than the two times a day milking the family milk cow); I loved learning Latin and the other studies; I loved the sports and recreation, and even the chores and daily work periods. The whole wonderful life of being in a seminary of several hundred young men called by God to the holy priesthood.
I never lost my focus. It was a long long road from age thirteen to the priesthood at least 12 years away. This was what I was called to. I would follow my dad’s advice to do the best I can do, and it was a joy because that was what I wanted to do. That was my calling. That was my destiny. That was my life.
Until the bubble burst
I will now do what I said I would do at the beginning of this “autobiography.” Since I have told the story elsewhere, I will just give the outline or summary of the next half century or more.
Before I was 30, after all those years, my superiors decided that I was gay and told me I should leave the religious life and “Find a nice wife and settle down.” Now I regret that I was an obedient Catholic and did so. I regret that I did not seek acceptance in another religious community, but in my obedience, I did not think of it. I did what a good Catholic was taught to do. Obey.
Wonderful mother, wonderful children, failed father
The good thing is that God gave me one of the most wonderful women in the world who gave me eight of the most wonderful children in the world. Eventually I went on to lead a gay life, which, of course, demands a long explanation which is given elsewhere. I do not deserve even to be called their father. When they have remained loving to me, it is not because I deserve it, for in struggling to learn, over many years, to cope with being a gay man in a gay world, I was not longer the father they deserve.
Putting it all together: spirituality and sexuality
Gradually I became immersed in the gay world, the second thing that seemed to emanate from very nature, along with my calling to serve God in the priesthood. I learned, perhaps all too late, that I could integrate these two parts of my very nature, my spirituality and my sexuality, and then, as much as I love my children, my life again began to take on a meaning and purpose. And since at least 1971, I have been trying to do that for myself and others. I began to learn and live a sex-positive spirituality that made God’s creation become sensible and understandable to me.
In 1995 it culminated in the call and inspiration to found the Order of St. Aelred which would be dedicated to bringing a life of spiritual fulfillment to its members and to all those whom God would lead to us, many of whom had struggles similar to mine.
