Truth is the test

She was incredibly attractive. He was incredibly drunk. The hour was late. Who would ever know? What would it ever matter? Everyone else does it, don’t they? Why not he? Everyone is human. You get that feeling and then what can you do? Oh, stop wasting time, and give in!

His wife would understand. Surely. And it would only be the once. And marriage only meant something in Australia. This was overseas.
And she is just so gorgeous . . . and so warm . . . and so willing.

And so, Sgt Williams (fictitious name) gave in to the Jupiterian gravity of his nether regions and fell into an affair while on R and R in Malaysia. No, he didn’t quite see it as an affair. He saw it just as a physical thing. He decided he would never ever tell his wife about it.
Only, he found he couldn’t do that.

On his return to Australia, the glowing affection on her face, the bright smiles of his two little girls, struck him more sharply and more deeply than he ever could have imagined.

It cut into him badly, because Sgt Williams was fundamentally a very decent bloke, who had done something very wrong. It took him some days to work out why it now seemed so wrong, but he got there.

He found that whether he liked it or not, he was now presenting a mask to his wife. He found he was pretending to be the good, faithful husband when the reality was quite different.

And so, late one evening, he quietly told his wife what had happened.

Something deep inside just broke, and he wept.

She packed the children up that night, and left him.

Sgt Williams sat in my office, forlorn and bereft.

“Maybe, Padre,” he said, “I should have kept my mouth shut. Then she would not have left.”

“No,” I offered, “Maybe you really should have kept your fly shut. Your mouth is perfectly fine.”

Williams smiled at this, and nodded. But then he remembered why he did tell her – he could no longer be a make-believe person. If he could disguise this one affair, then why not disguise two? Or three? Or 20?

“What about you, Padre?” he suddenly looked at me, “Haven’t you ever slipped up? You can’t tell me you Catholic priests are all pure! And you can’t all be trying to chase those little altar boys…”

One thing I love about the Army is how up-front soldiers are with you. Soldiers put statements to you that little old ladies of both sexes in the parish would absolutely die from.

It was my turn to smile.

“Being a priest does not mean you are never tempted,” I said, “but you and I have to make a decision about the way that we live out our lives, whether we are priests, husbands, soldiers, or whatever. Fellow, a wise old theologian called Irenaeus once wrote that the best way to overcome temptation was not to fight it but to avoid it. Don’t put yourself in places or positions where you know you will be vulnerable.”

Williams thought about this, “So, Padre, if we put you in a brothel . . .”

“I would be extremely vulnerable. Don’t even think about it.”

Through DCO, marriage counselling was arranged and agreed to by Williams and his wife. It took several months, but they were reconciled, and the marriage appeared to become stronger because of the whole ordeal. Most times, however, I find there is no happy ending. This one prevailed because the couple were each prepared to face and deal with truth, which so often is the hardest challenge of all.

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