The Holy Cross priest, an early leader in DignityUSA, was the charismatic, 45-year-old president of the University of Portland when he tragically died in 1989. From the start of the tale, we marvel at the brilliance of Oddo’s short life and wonder what he could have accomplished had he grown old.
But there’s another note in the afterward that better resonated with my reading. There, the author cites Ray Struble, a former seminarian for the Congregation of Holy Cross (CSC) and Oddo’s housemate in the summer of 1972, who said: “In knowing Tom all those years I’d have to say I never knew him. He kept everything very close to the vest.” (263)
Indeed, while Bieber’s biography does an excellent job narrating the details of Oddo’s life, the CSC priest comes across as a polished figure fit for public consumption. The P.R. department at the University of Notre Dame couldn’t have written a better script for a post-Vatican II priest who was handsome, athletic, progressive and seemed to say all the right things at all the right times.
But who was the real Tom? What were his struggles and failings?
These questions don’t negate the importance and depth of Bieber’s research, which includes interviews, media and archives. Bieber does excellent work contextualizing Oddo’s life in light of the shifting church, secular and academic cultures of the 1970s and 1980s, though at times copious background notes and historical conjecture divert from the story. The second half of Against the Odds traces Oddo’s tenure in Portland, but it could just easily serve as an institutional narrative for the university.
One of the book’s greatest contributions is its history of the early gay and lesbian Catholic movement. Today Oddo’s name is mostly forgotten by queer Catholics, perhaps because he died at the height of the AIDS crisis, a time when gays and lesbians already had enough suffering to process, or perhaps because his advocacy on their behalf ended in the early 1980s, long before John Paul II made legends out of Rev. John McNeill and Sister Jeannine Gramick.
Bieber masterfully pieces together the relationships, networks, theologies and actions that laid the foundation for today’s LGBTQ ministries. Oddo, who was a chaplain for Dignity/Boston and served as national secretary for DignityUSA, spoke at milestone gatherings such as the 1974 Bergamo Conference. In the 1970s and early 80s Oddo courageously intervened on behalf of the then-deeply unpopular gay and lesbian civil rights movement by appearing in media such as the Boston Globe and New York Times.
Oddo also campaigned for his friend Elaine Noble, a Massachusetts activist who was the first openly gay person elected to statewide office in the United States. Oddo’s gay-affirming theology, ministry and activism were as prophetic and timely in the 1970s as they are today. We need more priests who can speak with his fearless moral clarity.
Against the Current reveals that Oddo was gay, although the priest never publicly identified as such. In this way he is like Father Mychal Judge, the first casualty of 9/11 recently profiled by Francis DeBernardo. I wonder about the ethics of “outing” a priest after they’ve died and what Oddo’s Holy Cross brothers make of this new biography. For queer believers Oddo is a tricky role model, especially considering his hidden sexual relationship with another DignityUSA leader.
Their secrecy certainly reflects a time when it was dangerous for gay men to come out of the closet, and Bieber acknowledges that Oddo may have never risen to the heights of Holy Cross leadership if he had been more transparent. But Oddo’s lack of openness about his sexuality and relationship also reflects the harsh realities of the clerical closet, which simultaneously elevates the status of vowed celibate, ordained gay men while shielding them from the responsibilities of relationships and the consequences of their actions.
Oddo’s secret life contributed to the Catholic Church’s systemic erasure of gay and lesbian people. How did this affect his lover, who was a publicly gay man? What did it mean for them and what did it mean for the church when their relationship ended? Against the Current left me longing for an honest assessment of the damage that the clerical closet inflicts on queer Catholics, ordained and lay, celibate and not. Oddo was certainly messier than his public persona and archives reflect.
Clericalism was glossed over by Tom’s reputation as a likeable “Hot Priest” (107). His career skyrocketed in post-Vatican II progressive circles that often maintained the patriarchal systems and attitudes they claimed to critique. Oddo was venerated as a priest though he had little experience in higher ed administration when he was chosen to be President of the University of Portland at the age of 38. Bound by church teaching, he thought women’s ordination went too far and stopped openly advocating for gays and lesbians in the 1980s when, under the censorious regime of John Paul II, it could cost the advancement of his ecclesiastical career.
It is refreshing to see Bieber’s openness about Tom’s collegial friendship with Paul Shanley, the Boston priest who was also a minister to gay and lesbian Catholics. Today Shanley is infamous for sexually abusing minors, a story made public by the Boston Globe 2002. This is a challenging part of LGBTQ Catholic history because Shanley worked alongside many of our community’s early heroes.
What does it say that Tom’s meteoric career was propelled by the same social and ecclesial forces that enabled the sex abuse crisis? Tom did not commit harm like Shanley, but both were members of a supposedly progressive generation of priests who used their privilege to erase healthy boundaries and benefitted from the presumption of clerical superiority.
Who was Tom Oddo? A Holy Cross priest. A minister to LGBTQ people. A president of the University of Portland. But he was also complicated and deeply flawed. Against the Current is an excellent starting point for much needed conversations on the role of clerics, clericalism and the clerical closet in LGBTQ Catholic ministry. There are lessons to be learned and countless ways that our community still needs to grow. The challenging questions raised by Bieber’s study of Tom Oddo points us beyond hagiography to an honest reckoning with our past, present and future.