ANN OF GREEN PASTURES
The inner world of Ann Sultana
by
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Ann told me twice that she was not afraid to die as she became fully aware that the joy of living was slipping toward the inevitable. She never expressed the reason for these courageous statements. They caught me off guard. It never dawned on me to ask her, “Why are you not afraid?” I am glad I didn’t ask Ann, because it would have shown my own shallowness in relation to her faith. Only now, after her death, do I realize her secret reason. Ann knew she was not going to God empty handed.
Ann’s first eighteen years were full of fun in the sun and fog in
Ann knew where her strength came from. I witnessed her tears, reflecting her regret in leaving her family and friends, as she singled out her memories of her very rich Maltese family. Rich, that is, in love! Ann was leaving her secret source that nourished her whole being. “Letting go” of this rich treasure that funded her smile and gracious existence was a torment to her soul. This ordeal was recorded in Ann’s little book, “Mom’s Childhood And Teen Years.” It was her final memoir of happy trails. Every line in this book underscores the value of being blessed with a loving family. Ann wanted to demonstrate in words and pictures how important Ma and Pa and her siblings were in molding her as a work of their art. Even as death was approaching, her hurried volume illustrates her desire to give; to reveal her secret source of her goodness. Her secret heritage was to be passed on! That was her message loud and clear.
Ann finished her little book four weeks before she died. She had sent the hand-written copy to her niece Norine, and husband George, who typed and organized it into book form. Ann never saw it in final binding. Ann never gave up her giving. She pushed aside her dying process to leave this?her final living gift.
This suffering wife, mother, sister, aunt, and friend made it obvious to us all that she emerged from a deficient world like a colorful butterfly of enchantment. Her books, her diaries, her twenty photo albums of 31 years of memories and her Franciscan spirituality proved “she got it right.” She left a part of her world a better place. Her legacy was as a teacher of wisdom!
Proverb 31: 10-31
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About the Book
The front and back covers of this book are intentionally designed, and synchronized. Open the book in the center, and spread it out face down and look at both covers simultaneously. What do you see? What do you feel? Both covers are about a new beginning for us and the priesthood. What discovery stirred this storyteller to write Ann’s story? One day, after Ann died from ovarian cancer, our daughter Georgann found behind some blankets in a shoe box, Ann’s and my courtship love letters incorporated in this book. I never knew of their continued existence. The result of this finding is what you are holding in your hand. This book is a kaleidoscopic adventure shown in these covers. Each turn of the scope, page after page, will carry you into our reimagined 31 years of fusing a new faith, a new hope and a new love.
About the Author
GEORGE has a worthy mission. It is a correction-and-fulfillment of biblical tradition optional celibacy. Since 1963, George has advocated with academic tools of reason, in the forum of debate, the return of the married priesthood to the Roman Catholic people. For example, Jesus accepted married Apostles and disciples as an unquestionable, normal human right, and Paul continues Jesus’ attitude. Paul, a celibate by choice, testifies that "all" celibates have a “right” to change their mind and marry to love in a different, but equal way: “Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other Apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Peter?” (1 COR 9:5). Again Paul testifies to married priest, in his first letter to Timothy, and letter to Titus that priests be “a man with one woman.” This tradition from Jesus continued for 1,139 years?popes, bishops and priests married. The Roman Catholic leadership in 1139 legislated mandatory celibacy that castoff marriage as an indignity for its priests. However, exceptions (legal dispensations) to the law began to creep into this negative thought of a married priest. Pope Pius XII initiated exceptions and it was expanded by Pope John Paul II. They permitted converted Protestant ministers into the Roman Catholic priesthood with their wife and family. Some estimate that over three thousand “married” Protestant ministers worldwide have been ordained Catholic priests.
The Vatican Council II exhumed this authentic, valued tradition of the married priesthood but only in academic terms. With the aid of history and Vatican II, George began to question mandatory celibacy and his “intrinsic right” to marry. George was not alone; over 150 thousand celibate Catholic priests worldwide, in recent years, left the priesthood, and like George, the overwhelming majority of that number married.
After the death of his wife, Ann, George had an inquisitive thought. Academic, intellectual advocacy for a married priesthood, presented to the Catholic people, was ineffectual as a standalone form?facts are mind-numbing. Something was missing. He realized the academic approach needed a complementary imagery for the heart. His advocacy needed a married love story between a Priest and wife. To his astonishment, he recognized that he and Ann had that living, harmonizing story to attach to the lifeless, academic approach. His story inserted a soul into the rational argumentation. His love story with Ann added human, marital feelings in matters such as faith, hope and love, and framed marital moods of humor, joy, doubt, and anxiety as well as courage, resolve, and resiliency.
But there is more. George’s hero in his story is Ann. She “uncentered” his “seminary training,” an exclusive biased, masculine priestly worldview. Her love created a new, human priest-husband, a real breakthrough, a real “defining” moment for George and you the people.
Therefore, George’s book is not about a standalone intellectual argument for returning to the biblical tradition of a married priesthood. His book “uncenters” the debate from an exclusive approach of “human logic” to his complementary position on the “right to love” that no law can cast away. Love is the biblical tipping point, for wellbeing, for every member within the Christian community. George spent 5 years writing his and Ann’s beautiful, positive tipping point a historical love story in order to build a bridge back to the lost tradition of the biblical married priesthood in Roman Catholicism and in your parish.
I believe this is the first book of its kind that a priest welcomes you, to “come inside” and make yourself “feel at home” with his and Ann’s 31 year love affair.