Kathleen M. MacPherson 

My family is half-Irish, half-Italian/ Mexican, and almost all nominal Catholic. A formidable Jesuit educational background helped me to come to grips with a chromosomal birth defect. Therapy and counseling brought me to a point in my early life when I was able to accept myself as the Creator had composed me from all eternity. Jesuit education helped me to overcome diversity and perceived handicaps, and focus on a life filled with service with and through the Church. These confusing early years created in me a tremendous empathy for the less fortunate and marginalized members of society. I left Spokane in 1968 to teach Spanish at Loyola High School in Los Angeles. It was similar to going to high school all over again. The only difference, this time, was that I had the grade book in my hand. In the summer of 1969, I went to Mexico City to study at the University of the Americas for an intensive summer of Spanish language, culture, and history. I associated with a group of Jesuits in Mexico who were deeply concerned with the plight of the marginalized in society, and to prove their point, they closed the most affluent and prestigious college preparatory school in all of Mexico and probably in all of Latin America, Instituto Patria. In 1971, I transferred to the Jesuit Instituto Carlos Pereyra in Torreon, Coahuila, to teach ESL (English as a Second Language). I learned far more than what I taught. The people, parents, and students showed me a different reflection of myself. To the present day, I have never enjoyed anything as much as teaching there, although there were some missteps. The following year, I went to Mexico City to study theology at the Instituto Libre de Filosofia, the Jesuit theologate in Mexico City. I studied at the Jesuit School of Theology in Mexico City from 1971 to 1973 with an excellent faculty. I met my future spouse in México, and life became focused: teaching, family, and two pregnancies. We stayed in Mexico until 1978 when the Golden Gate lured us back to the United States. Work with the San Francisco Police Department led me to pursue a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree with a Master’s in Public Administration, specializing in the Administration of Justice.

Life on the streets of San Francisco brought me cheek to cheek with the harsh reality of excruciating pain and suffering in the everyday life of human beings brought on by sin and hatred and loss of true volition due to drug and alcohol addiction. During many a midnight session in smelly alleyways and overcrowded emergency rooms, I never realized that I would become a priest-chaplain in a county hospital, in Texas working almost daily in Intensive Care into the twenty-first century. In law school, I studied under Bernard Segal, Robert Calhoun, and a host of other legal scholars who were both legal academicians and everyday practitioners. I discovered that the everyday living out of the gospels and theology had to reach the most despised and forgotten of society, those accused of crimes punishable by imprisonment. I left Texas in 2002 for Virginia because the Lone Star state had become claustrophobic. It turned out that I wanted to leave more than just San Antonio. My spouse died after a twenty-year bout with manic depression that devastated mind and body. I then discovered another spiritual practice, which does a whole lot to shape perception, emotions, and identity: the practice of total service to the community. In Virginia Beach, Virginia, I had some lengthy conversations with two priests who came down from Richmond in 2005. Both were civil lawyers and canon lawyers of the Church. After some very engaging discussions with them, I felt a tremendous calling and took all my theology, Spanish, and lawyering to Washington, DC, to become a canon lawyer at the faculty of the Catholic University of America, the only canon law faculty in the United States. In Washington, DC, I found myself counseling drug addicts and alcoholics at DuPont Circle in downtown Washington, preparing witnesses in the witness protection program for in-court testimony through the Department of Justice, and authoring the best half of my life story. 

After ordination to the priesthood in the Independent Catholic tradition, I now work with so many immigrants, convicts, drug addicts, politicians, and people whom I have counseled as a teacher and a lawyer who are waiting for me not just to speak to them about theology and law, but are looking at me to find the sacramental Jesus Christ and the triune God in the Eucharist and the sacraments. Being a priest to me means bringing the incarnate and sacramental Christ into the lives of those who do not even realize that God is speaking to them through me.

Companeros Inc., West Coast (2014-08-05). Transitions in the Lives of Jesuits and Former Jesuits (Kindle Locations 1968-1987). West Coast Compañeros, Inc.. Kindle Edition.