Guest AuthorIt didn’t take long after I arrived in Lakeland in 1997 to begin my duties covering the religion beat at The Ledger before I began hearing the name of Father John Caulfield.
“Oh, you need to meet Father Caulfield.”
“Father Caulfield? Great guy.”
For 27 years, the Rev. John Caulfield was the pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in downtown Lakeland, the oldest Catholic church in the city. He was a big, handsome, charming Irish priest, something right out of central casting. Yet John never would have fit on a movie set, not because he didn’t have the natural Irish gift of spellbinding gab. That he had. No, John simply never would have allowed himself to receive that much attention.
John Caulfield died on Nov. 2 at the age of 78 from lung cancer. He was Monsignor Caulfield at the end, bearing the honorary title granted to a select few priests who have served faithfully and with distinction.
On one of my early assignments having to do with some Catholic matter, my executive editor, Skip Perez, insisted that I use John as a source. It was the first of many times I would call him up for a comment. He was far too devoted to the Church to ever say anything publicly critical of its practices and sometimes if the topic was controversial he would dodge me. Still, if I ever needed an explanation of Catholic practices and beliefs, John would oblige happily.
The first time I met him, he made it clear I was to call him John, not “Father.” There was an immediate connection between us because of my name. He had known some McMullens in County Galway, where he was from. I asked him once in an interview why he had left Ireland, and he talked about how small the island is and how the Irish had always been seized by wanderlust. For priests, this meant that they became missionaries and pastors in many foreign lands.
He was part of a wave of Irish priests to land here, recruited by an Irish bishop presiding over Florida in the days before Disney and before immigration, when the state was more Southern and Baptist than cosmopolitan and multi-religious as it is today. John had various posts before he came to Lakeland, including teaching at a Catholic high school, but he seemed to have found in Lakeland a resting place for his wandering spirit. He embraced the community and its people, its problems and its strengths.
Theologically, he was neither reactionary nor liberal. Rather he lived out his beliefs in generous, uncomplicated ways. He ministered to the homeless and to prisoners. He was a founding member of an interdenominational organization that used grassroots organizing to address community problems. He moved easily among the powerful and the powerless and treated both alike.
He seemed to assume, in the confident fashion of some Catholics, that if I wasn’t Catholic, I would eventually become one. I am from a long line of Scots-Irish Protestants. I learned on a recent trip to Belfast that nearly 100 McMullens had signed the Ulster Covenant of 1912 that essentially declared they would rather die than be ruled by Irish Catholics, and I’m pretty sure some of them were distant cousins. But when I mentioned my religious heritage to John, he impatiently retorted, “You’re a Celt, Cary.” As if that covered all my sins.
Like anyone who knew John, I will miss him. The City of Lakeland is a better place because of his tireless devotion to living out his faith.
Tu es sacerdos in aeternam. Thou art a priest forever, John. Requiem. Rest in well-deserved peace.
