By Thea Jarvis

In 1968, a quiet young man from Malone, N.Y., appeared at the door of the Trinitarian seminary in Washington, D.C. He was shy, nervous and spoke with difficulty, as if his words weren’t quite sure they wanted to be born.

The young man was deaf.

“When I arrived there they didn’t know what to do with me,” Father Tom Coughlin recalled recently at Corpus Christi Church in Stone Mountain. “They took me to the foyer and I just stood there, feeling as if I weren’t really human.”

Father Coughlin, who now holds the distinction of being the first deaf priest ordained in the United States, credits his Trinitarian tenure to the subsequent appearance of a seminarian who was able to “sign”--the hand-wrought language of the deaf--and interpret his words and the words of those around him.

“I knew then that God wanted me to stay,” he said, accepting the goodwill and talent of the seminarian as a “sign of God” for him.

The sign pointed down a road that was not all milk and honey, however. On that memorable Washington day, Father Coughlin advanced from a narrow, darkened foyer to the openness and officialdom of the order’s vocation director. The man was quick to size up his new recruit.

“How tall are you?” the man asked Tom Coughlin. Wondering to himself why the learned priest couldn’t see for himself how tall he was and what that had to do with his possible vocation, Father Coughlin answered, “Five-10.”

The senior Trinitarian seemed disconcerted but pressed on. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” was the quick reply.

This was too much for the vocation director. “You are deaf. How can you understand me?” he finally exploded.

“I read lips,” the young man before him explained simply, understanding at last the motive behind the convoluted questioning.

“After that, the door was open for me,” Father Coughlin now asserts. “That priest was my staunch supporter.”

From that tenuous beginning, Father Tom Coughlin, at the age of 34, has become one of the Trinitarian order’s most formidable assets, traveling 11 months of the year throughout the United States and abroad, ministering to the deaf and allowing them to more fully experience their Catholic faith.

“Every time I talk (sign) in retreats, deaf people always say ‘I understand.’ That’s what matters the most,” claims the itinerant missioner, who counsels, celebrates Mass and the sacraments and brings the presence of Christ’s community to those who might be experiencing it for the very first time.

“Deaf people love to see a priest who is one of their own,” he said with a smile.

Last weekend, Father Coughlin brought a pre-holiday renewal to the halls of Corpus Christi, where deaf persons of all ages and their friends and family gathered from around the archdiocese.

It is from meetings such as these that the enthusiastic priest derives his deepest inspiration.

“God reveals himself through the deaf ministry,” Father Coughlin explained. “Jesus becomes more alive and real to me through the people I meet.”

One of Father Coughlin’s current goals is to expand the ministry to the deaf within the Catholic Church and to focus particularly on deaf vocations. He is presently involved in readying a youth camp, formerly a resort hotel, near Lake Placid, N.Y., and hopes to have it open by summer of 1982.

“It breaks my heart to see a lot of Catholic deaf leaving the Church to go to other churches,” he said sadly, citing the case of a young deaf friend who had considered the priesthood and later joined a fundamentalist Protestant community, claiming that “the Catholic Church cannot save my soul.”

In the face of increasing influence by other churches on Catholic deaf youth, a fact the priest finds “very disturbing,” Father Coughlin made his way to the Vatican for a private audience with Pope John Paul II in 1979.

The pope urged him to “present the Word of God in sign language,” according to the dynamic priest, who said he was “flabbergasted” by the Holy Father’s enthusiasm and encouragement. Pope John Paul also personally endorsed the youth camp, an approval that has been a help in raising funds and support for the endeavor.

Father Coughlin’s trip to Rome was one of many stops he has made around the world.

Perhaps one of his most memorable was the recent re-tracing of a spiritual journey begun at the age of 15. As an impressionable teenager, Father Coughlin read a book entitled “Burnt Out Incense,” the simple story of the life of a Trappist monk written by Father Raymond, OCSO of Gesthemane Abbey in Kentucky.

At the time, “I was a young boy looking for a role model,” claimed Father Coughlin. “That book just hit me--I wanted to be like him.”

Though the deaf priest’s journey did not include a permanent association with the Trappists, the book exerted a profound influence on Father Coughlin’s life. In 1980 he decided to visit Gesthemane to experience first-hand the setting of the monk’s life.

“I got special permission to go all around the monastery,” he remembered. “But just before I left, the guest-master came over and asked me why I was here. I told him and the next moment Father Raymond was there.”

The Trappist author, now an aging monk, told Father Coughlin that “he never dreamed his book would reach anyone outside the ‘wall’ or encourage a handicapped person to serve God,” the deaf priest related.

Such youthful encouragement was evidently needed, for Father Coughlin now indicates that because he was schooled in boarding institutions for the deaf since the age of three, he “had a very low level of self-esteem.”

Although attitudes toward the hearing-handicapped are improving, Father Coughlin maintains that in institutions, deaf people learn to be passive. “They are not encouraged to be creators, but to conform to society and be producers,” he said.

Father Tom Coughlin has evidently beaten the odds.

The transformation from the shy and withdrawn young man on the steps of the Trinitarian seminary to the warm and outgoing missionary sure of his calling seems complete.

As an aggressive champion of the deaf, Father Coughlin listens with his heart and speaks in faith, communicating a very unique way his commitment to those he so faithfully serves.