Father Havel Quotes in Keeping the Faith (2000)

Father Brian Kilkenney Finn: I keep thinking about what you said in seminary, that the life of a priest is hard and if you can see yourself being happy doing anything else you should do that.

Father Havel: That was my recruitment pitch, which is not bad when you're starting out because it makes you feel like a marine. The truth is you can never tell yourself there is only one thing you could be. If you are a priest or if you marry a woman it's the same challenge. You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept that it's a choice that you keep making again and again and again.

Father Havel: I have been a priest over 40 years, and I fell in love at least once every decade.

Father Havel: Who is calling at this hour? It's barbaric. I was dreaming about my mother's sausages.

Father Havel: I remember I fell in love with this girl in Prague. She was beautiful. She looked like Carol Lombard. She grabbed me in the alley behind my church, she pressed me up against the wall, she kissed me. I was so happy I thought I would die, I felt like Richard Chamberlain in "The Thorn Birds", you know with Meggie in the attic.

Father Brian Kilkenney Finn: You never told me this. Did anything happen between you?

Father Havel: Not really. Flirtations, little moments, but soon after the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia and I moved to the United States.