John Moynihan Tettemer (1876–1949) was the author of I Was a Monk: The Autobiography of John Tettemer, a 1951 account of his life as a Passionist monk and member of the Roman Catholic priesthood.Tettemer, John Moynihan. I Was a Monk: The Autobiography of John Tettemer. [1st ed.] New York: Knopf, 1951."Bookman's Notebook: 25 Years a Monk." Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1951.

Formative years

Born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 16, 1876, John M. Tettemer was a son of Hanora Moynihan, a native of County Kerry, Ireland who had emigrated to America with her parents as a child, and Harvey J. Tettemer, a New Jersey native and manufacturer who became "the first man to bring shoe machinery west of the Mississippi river," according to historian Walter Barlow Stevens.John M. Tettemer (John Moynihan Tettemer), in U.S. Passport Applications. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 1921.Stevens, Walter Barlow. Centennial History of Missouri (the center state), one hundred years in the Union (1820-1921), Vol. 5. St. Louis, Missouri and Chicago, Illinois: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1921. Per Tettemer:Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, pp. 4-6.

My parents made a fine combination. My father, Harvey Tettemer, was Pennsylvania Dutch and Presbyterian. My mother, Nora Moynihan, was County Kerry Irish Catholic, from Cloughnareeny, a place not important or even large enough for sophisticated maps of the world to show....

Mother had come to America with her father and many brothers when she was fourteen years old.... She was a born story-teller. Her mother was a Connor of County Cork; telling us tales of Roderick, last high King of Ireland, she made us feel that it was exciting, but no cause for thinking ourselves better than anyone else....

The atmosphere of our home was strongly religious.... My first record of a game is playing priest and hearing my playmates' confessions through the cane bottom of an overturned chair. The oldest brother, Harvey, would play at saying Mass and rigged up an altar in the back parlor, with candles and flowers and such linens as he could beg or remove surreptitiously from Mother's linen cupboard.... I was his altar boy. My duty was to swing the censer, made of a tin can containing hot water, which I replenished whenever the steam ("smoke") died down.

His family experienced a brief period of financial difficulty when competitors to his father's business began operating in St. Louis. As a result, his mother took a job "as forewoman of the sewing girls" in a factory nearby. In addition, his father was able to obtain an unsecured loan from Morris Levi, a Jewish businessman in St. Louis. Tettemer would later recall that "Father used the incident to instill in us some understanding of a people that had experienced harsh tribulations throughout its history, and to lay on us the precept of judging men as individuals and children of God, not accepting ready-made, often prejudiced estimates."Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, pp. 9-10.

During his early childhood years, John Tettemer's older sister, Mary, died. Sometime around this time, he also developed a speech defect which made it challenging for him "to pronounce certain combination of consonants." He later observed that this caused him to be "shy and silent," becoming even more so when teased by his siblings and other children. "I would listen like a small ghost to a story being told, or would lose myself in some book." His discomforts made him "sensitive to emotional appeals, in music, in tales of heroism and pathos, and to beauty in color," and "equipped [him] with a spontaneous sympathy for the feelings of others, whether human beings or animals, and with a sense of the utter wrongness of doing anything that may hurt." Although the defect lessened as he entered school, the condition had left its mark. The "fear of it ran deep and I became adept at substituting easier words for those which were difficult for me."Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, pp. 10-11, 34.

Educated in the parochial schools of St. Louis (St. Bridget's), John Tettemer excelled at grammar and mathematics,Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, p. 11. and was deemed ready for his First Communion by 1885.Los Angeles Times. During summer breaks, he resided on the Montgomery County, Missouri farm of an aunt and uncle "about ninety miles from St. Louis," where he "rode horseback full-tilt over the countryside," and helped with grain threshing. After completing his schooling at St. Bridget's at the age of 14, he engaged in "a supplementary year of English, Latin, algebra, and geometry." His father then helped him obtain a job with the John L. Boland Book & Stationery Company, "the largest wholesale bookstore west of Chicago," for which he was paid $15 per month to assist with office work and run errands. After several years in that role, he "was promoted to wholesale billing," where he assisted with the company's nationwide invoicing, a job he later noted had honed his powers of concentration. Ultimately, he left that job due to burdensome overtime hours. He then found similar work with the William A. Orr Shoe Company, a firm managed and partly owned by his father.Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, pp. 16-23.

While recuperating at home from a cold at the age of 16, his mother gave him several religious books to read, including Alban Butler's The Lives of Saints which, he later said, "aroused in [him] a burning desire to do something with [his] own life that would have worth." At this juncture, he began reading only books which were religious in nature, "especially longer biographies of the saints," and became increasingly enthralled by the life stories of monks, whom he had come to believe were "the only ones who comprehended the true meaning of existence." This, in turn, inspired him to increase his attendance at church services. Sometime around this time, his 19-year-old sister, Nora, with whom he had shared an interest in entering the religious life, fell ill with a severe cold; she died from pneumonia just a few weeks later.Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, pp. 25-26, 34.

Religious life John Moynihan Tettemer subsequently "entered the Passionist Order of Monks in 1894," according to the Sydney Morning Herald, "and made his theological studies in Rome, where he was ordained by Cardinal Respighi in 1901."The Rev. John Tettemer, in "Liberal Catholic Church." Sydney: The Sydney Morning Herald, May 24, 1926.Rev. John Tettemer, in "News of City Churches." St. Louis, Missouri: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 9, 1903. Given the religious name of "Father Ildefonso, C.P.," (also reported in newspapers as "Father Alphonso"), he was assigned to the Passionist Monastery in Normandy, Missouri (known officially as "Our Lady of Good Counsel," but sometimes also referred to as "the Little Rome of the West"). The first Passionist monastery to be established west of the Mississippi River, it had been dedicated on June 7, 1891.Carbonneau, C.P., Father Robert. "NY Times Passionist History Pt. 1 (1886-1923)", in The Passionist Heritage Newsletter, Vol. 18, Issue 2.Historical Commission of the Province of St. Paul of the Cross (Eastern U.S.A): Fall 2001. John Tettemer later explained his decision:Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, p. 28.

I chose [the Passionist Order] for two particular reasons. I learned that it was the strictest and most contemplative of any of the modern orders which sprang up so numerously in the Church after the Counter-Reformation, and that it retained to a remarkable degree the monastic spirit and customs of the more ancient orders. Moreover, it maintained the original fervor of spirit of its founding, and strict observance of the rule.

In 1907, he was appointed as director of the International College in RomeRev. John Tettemer, in "Honored." St. Louis, Missouri: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 23, 1907.DeMarco, Frank. "John Tettemer's experience." I of my own knowledge: retrieved online April 2, 2018. and, in 1914, was appointed Consulator General of the Passionist Order."John Moynihan Tettemer." C. W. Leadbeater: retrieved online April 2, 2018. Per Tettemer:Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk, p. 11, pp. 213-215.

In the spring of 1914, while still rector of the monastery in Kansas, I received a cablegram from Rome announcing my election, at the General Chapter then in session, to the office of Consulator General of the Order. This is the second highest office in the order, the general being the head.

I was only thirty-eight years of age, and this was big and unexpected news. The consulator, or assistant general, is usually chosen among the older, more experienced members of the order, after long years of service in successive offices.... My duties [in Rome] would be more of an advisory nature, as the general and his four consultors ... formed the executive body that ruled the order. I would be consulted and would render my vote in all important matters pertaining to governing the order, but would have none of that detail work involving harassing decisions and the giving of orders, which I never found easy....

I stayed a day or two with my mother [in St. Louis], and then said a last good-by to her. My term of office was to be six years; she was already in her seventies and she really knew this time that she could hardly expect to see me again....

My father had died a year or two before, at the age of about seventy-six. He had been knocked down by an automobile as he was crossing the street, and his hip-bone fractured. The bone would not knit at his age, and he was an invalid in a wheelchair for six months.... I was permitted once or twice in that time to visit him, but when pneumonia supervened as a delayed result of the shock of the accident, I was not present.

....As my father had been a leading Catholic layman of St. Louis, a great concourse of priests and laymen attended the funeral in the parish church. My brother and I said our Masses for Father at the two side-altars while the solemn requiem was being celebrated at the high altar, with the sanctuary crowded with priests.

After decades of religious training and service in one of the most austere branches of his church, he began to suffer health problems, and was ordered by his physician to take time away from his job to rest. During his recuperation, as he reflected on his life's direction, he developed an appreciation for contemplative practice, and when writing his autobiography later in life, described what had happened to him during this time:

My own native mind had had little opportunity to assert itself in the preceding years, as it had been too occupied with studying and teaching the ideas of others.... During my 'quiet time,' realizing this, I allowed my mind total freedom to open to the riddle of the mystery of existence, which had marked the birth of my philosophic mind at the age of twenty or thereabouts and always had held a fascination for me in the years between.... A new faculty of knowing seemed to be born in me, in the quiet stillness yet intense activity of consciousness within me. I seemed to touch the heart of reality, the very essence of existence, with a directness, an immediacy, rendering all my former knowledge false and illusory.Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk.

As a result, he requested release from his church obligations in 1916, a release which was subsequently granted by Rome. After leaving the priesthood, he then embarked on a more traditional journey.Tettemer, John. I Was a Monk.

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