On Monday I lost a good friend, and the earth lost a great and gentle soul. Tom McGovern, former Roman Catholic priest turned counselor, teacher, ethicist, and champion for all human grace and dignity, died. He was 85.
Tom grew up in County Cork, Ireland. He came to West Texas as part of a wave of Irish priests sent as missionaries to Texas; and he soon made his mark as a representative of a new, ecumenically-open, and social-engaged Vatican II church spirit. Each week, Tom could be seen going in and out of my home church, Second Baptist, as well as St. John’s Methodist and other liberal Protestant churches in Lubbock; Protestant and Catholic clergy in the community had found common cause to work together on issues of civil and humanitarian rights.
Legend has it that in 1967, in fact, that when the pastor of Second Baptist resigned, Tom was so often seen at Second B that rumor spread it was going to be calling a Catholic priest as its next minister. That would have been interesting!
I came to know Tom much later, after I was called to pastor Second B in 2010. Halfway through my seven years there, mutual friends introduced us and soon six or seven of us began a weekly meeting of what came to be called the “Safe and Serious Group.”
If we were indeed at times serious, it wasn’t Tom’s fault. He never failed to bring smiles to our hearts with his wonderful stories told in Irish lilt and with light in his eyes.
And his eyes were everything.
In our time together, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Tom’s sobriety date. He was 80 at the time, and he talked about having been given a whole second life to live in sobriety. He was especially poignant when he told the story of the first time his mother in Ireland saw him after he had given up drinking. “Tom,” she told him, “you have the light in your eyes again.”
The light took him down a whole new path. He left the priesthood,married his beloved and spirited wife, Toni, became a parent to his brilliant daughter, Lexi, and began a career as counselor and clinician, before ultimately becoming Professor Emeritus in Psychiatry at Texas Tech University School of Medicine. It was in this capacity that Tom literally helped tens of thousands find their way to hope.
One of these he helped was my dad, whose sobriety is in part attributed to Tom, his tenderness, and his connections.
And it was Tom’s ability to connect that made him so special. It is often said alcoholism is a “terminally unique” disease. In other words, it is a disease of loneliness and isolation. Part of the path towards sobriety is the recovery of relationship and connection.
Tom was always connecting. He was always embracing. Witty, yet tender, he invited everyone into himself. Every encounter with Tom was a kind of confessional moment, an opportunity to come near to the holy, and share with another your secret. And the secret was always that we are human.
Tom accepted that. He accepted it about himself and about us; and he always embraced it. He embraced the fullness of humanity in himself and in others.
That meant that while he wasn’t always serious, he was always safe. And we trusted him so much with lives.
Tom always reminded me of an older version of Claude Laydu, who gave one of the greatest performances in film history playing the title role in the film based on Georges Bernanos’s novel “Diary of a Country Priest.” Though Tom refused to let us call him Father — “I’m Tom. Thank you. Please. Tom.” — he was a priest and confessor to us all, Protestant and Catholic alike. And the Gospel he imparted to us can be summarized near the end of Bernanos’s book when, struggling with the trials and griefs of life and the admission of his own faults and failures, the priest says, “Faced with the ordeals which await me, my first task is surely to become reconciled to myself.”
That is what Tom helped us to do. He helped us to find reconciliation within ourselves.
When it became time for me to leave Lubbock, Tom was the confessor I reached out to. Aside from my wife, Irie, he was the very first person I told that I was considering coming to Fort Worth. Immediately he blessed the call, recognizing perhaps out of his own experience the largeness of the world and the importance of leaving home.
“It is good,” he told me. “It is time. Give yourself permission to go. Home will always be with you in the heart.”
The last time I was with Tom was on a Sunday when I was back in Lubbock not too long before COVID. Though he had left the priesthood, Tom never left the church. He was faithful and obedient, hopeful in those days when the church moved in the open and ecumenical winds of Vatican II, and long-suffering when it did not. In any case, Tom saw the wideness in God’s mercy, always.
That last Sunday we went to mass and sat together. Being the respectful Baptist visitor, I remained seated while the faithful went forward to receive the elements of grace. Tom left. But when he returned, he took his seat, turned to me, then opened his hand which revealed the hidden host. “This bread is for you, too,” he whispered in his joyous and mischievous lilt. Then he broke it, and we shared it together. I will never forget that moment.
Not too long before I left Lubbock, Tom took over a local NPR radio program called “Faith Matters” which Monsignor David Cruz, Methodist minister Ted Dotts, and I formerly hosted. It was an honor to be associated with so great a group of gracious, kind, and open-minded clergy.
Often I would listen to the program from Fort Worth, taking comfort from afar in Tom’s familiar voice, warm wisdom, and good humor. It was safe; and just serious enough. I especially enjoyed it when Tom would conclude the program with these wonderful words of Irish blessing:
“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”
You blessed us so much, Tom McGovern. Thank you for sharing with the us your bread, and the light in your eyes.
Now, may God hold you also, until we meet again . . .
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
