“The chances are good you won’t last here your entire life.” These words were the first ones spoken to us eight novices by the archabbot on our first day inside the cloister. “And even if you do make it through your novitiate year, your junior monk years, your solemn vows, and up to your death in the abbey before you leave,” he continued, “among the monks accompanying your body down to the cemetery will be at least one who is relieved.”

I’m not sure what I expected to hear from the archabbot at that first lesson (“Welcome?” “Thank you for joining us?”), but this was only the first of many memorable moments designed to instill monastic humility in us. I obviously did not make it all the way to the cemetery (nor to monastic humility, for that matter), but I can guarantee that my physical departure provided some pre-mortem relief to at least a couple of the monks still at the abbey.

I was reminded of the archabbot’s lesson while reading the Daily Camera’s coverage of former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney the past couple of weeks. I was not living in Colorado in his heyday, I never interacted with him, nor was I much of a Buff fan (“Go Irish!”). But as a gay man actively involved in LGBTQ+ equality and AIDS care efforts in Washington D.C., in the early 1990s, I was certainly aware of who he was and at least some of what he believed about me and my “abominable” friends, particularly in his vocal support of Amendment 2.

But based on the multiple recent Daily Camera articles, I questioned whether my memories of Coach McCartney’s non-football actions were mistaken: There was no mention at all of any anti-LGBTQ sentiment. However, just a quick Google News search and his Wikipedia entry confirmed my recall of his extra-football activities (and told me other stuff I would prefer not to have known).

This digging around also made me even more bewildered by the Camera’s hagiographical bent in their coverage (or more accurately, incomplete coverage). Especially given that just a few page turns from the first McCartney story was the obituary of Anita Bryant, which didn’t ignore but actually featured her famous anti-LGBTQ+ activism in the headline!

To be clear, I am not attacking the former coach here: I believe most of the people who say he was a decent person. And to be fair, he was a man of his time and upbringing. I like to think he was able to abandon his earlier bigotry (including his non-apology apology, i.e., expressing sorrow for the venue in which he made his disgusting anti-gay remarks and for how those words were received, but not for the content of remarks themselves). But no matter how much we try to canonize a person post-mortem (or even pre-mortem, as demonstrated in some news coverage of football coaches at CU and elsewhere), there are always going to be at least a few people who feel something like relief at that person’s demise.

This fact is true for each of us. As hard as it can be to admit, we are simply not everyone’s cup’o’tea.

And we have undoubtedly done or said things that they will correctly be glad to see buried (or cremated or composted) with us. I joke about having a “short” list of favorite people and — more to the point here — a “s**t” list of people I intensely dislike for my own reasons. Well, my name is on the same list that others keep in their heads, waiting for the day they relievedly cross it off.

Thinking back to the intent of the abbot on my first day in the cloister, I am struck with how much better I understand and believe his words today than I did when I first heard them. It doesn’t mean I am going to let hurtful, ugly beliefs and behaviors go unchallenged, no matter who they come from, dead or alive. But I should try to be better about cutting their owner a bit of slack in my response in order to have a real chance at changing them.

And if that doesn’t work, then I claim the right to have my inevitable feelings of relief.

Fintan Steele is an ex-Benedictine monk and priest with a Ph.D. in biology/genetics. He spent most of his life in science communications, including scientific publishing and, most recently, for biopharma and academic centers. He and his husband live in Hygiene. Email: fsteele1@me.com.