Today's Concord Monitor publishes, "Ex-police officer Breckinridge: I choose life – for myself and Michael Addison," by John Breckinridge with Gary Bouchard. It originally appeared in Parable, the magazine of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester. Here's the beginning:
I’m a Catholic. Like most Catholics these three words have meant very different things on a journey that has taken me to places I never could have imagined and never would have desired to go.
I was born in Andover, Mass., at a time when Sunday best still meant something. Many women still wore dresses and veils to church. Men wore suits, and people still carried Sunday missals. By high school in the late 1970s the world and everything in it was more casual. I involved myself in youth group and T.E.C. (Teens Encounter Christ). I made memorable trips to Camp Fatima in New Hampshire and formed good relationships with local priests whom I remain in touch with today. My faith was active, if unchallenged.
Then, like many young people, when I moved away to college I left religious practice at home. This is ironic since the place I came to school was Saint Anselm College in Manchester, and the opportunity to deepen my faith had never been greater. I didn’t wage a protest against my religion or even actively retreat from it. Like many people at that age I just let it fade away without much of a struggle.
Meanwhile, the road before me unfolded in the usual ways it does for a young man doing the things he is supposed to do. I majored in psychology and began a career as a social worker to help people. I fell in love, got married and had kids. Then I became a Manchester police officer. Being a cop challenged me and offered me a shared sense of purpose that most people never experience on the job. It also showed me every day for 22 years the very worst in human beings.
I had already fallen away from the Church and now, one incident report at a time, I was steadily losing faith in humanity.
Earlier coverage from New Hampshire begins with the preceding post. Related posts are in the religion and victims' issues category indexes.
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