Tag: Catholic church

Catholic Born, Part Deux

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

When I posted a recent article called “Catholic Born,” I got a few responses from readers. Some indicated they felt much the same way as I did, and I suspect those who remained silent disagreed either a little or maybe a lot with what I wrote, but that’s OK.   It was one comment made by my daughter Julie that kind of hit home. She told me “Thanks for not being a priest, dad. Even with all its flaws, and there are many, I find comfort in the rituals.”

While there was little danger of me ever becoming a priest, it made me realize that as I laid out my thoughts on the many teachings of the Catholic Church that I have discarded, as well as the dissatisfaction I feel over current church rules, I missed something important. Being raised Catholic is as much the culture you live in as it is any set of personal beliefs. Leaving that culture behind you is as rare and as difficult as a lifelong White Sox fan waking up one morning and buying season’s tickets for Wrigley Field.

A bit about that culture……………….

The stories:

I was twelve years old and standing in line in front of my dad at the door to the confessional in Resurrection Church on the west side. It was Holy Saturday and all four confessionals were doing a land office business, confession back then being a weekly requirement before taking communion the next day. Lines were long to the left and right of each set of boxes and the little lights above the doorways to forgiveness flashed from red to green as sinners concluded their litany, got their penance, and rose from the kneelers inside their compartments. It reminded me of old war movies where the paratroopers had their eyes glued on the light near the door of the C-47, waiting to jump into combat when the light turned green.

Each confessional consisted of three doors, the center door being reserved for the priest, and the two outboard doors for the sinners. The name of the priest inside was on a nameplate over his door, and people had their favorites, much like shopping for a more lenient judge in court. You wanted absolution, but you wanted it with the least amount of guilt and pain.

The priest sat in a chair and pulled open a screen on his side which allowed you, the sinner, to hear his voice and sort of see his shadow. Before he opened your screen, he could be heard mumbling back and forth with the sinner on the other side of the box. You always tried to listen in and catch the other guy’s treacherous failings, or maybe pick up a new, harmless sin you could use next week, but you could never quite make it out. Once your screen opened, it was Showtime and you went into your lines: “Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been (your answer here) since my last confession.”

I was next up in that line and my father, not the most patient of men, began to fidget; whoever the person was in that box ahead of me was in there for a long time. Each time another light flashed and a door opened in one of the other confessionals, he sighed, looked at his watch, shook his head, looked around. I could sense it building. It was clear that the priest and the sinner were having a long talk, because the poor guy in the box on the opposite side was stuck in there, awaiting his turn. The sinners behind us, eager to get forgiveness and then hit the grocery store, began deserting for shorter lines or faster moving lines. But we were next and so we were stuck.

Finally, his fuse finished burning and he blew. In a voice everyone in the church could hear, he said “Well I guess they got the guy who shot Lincoln!” Those working off their penances, kneeling in the pews, were startled. Some of the older ladies threw him looks of disapproval. Some of the men could be seen shaking with laughter but trying not to show it. Kids had their mouths open in surprise. And me? I wanted to die, but that’s because I was twelve. And the endless conference inside that confessional ended a few seconds later, so perhaps the priest or the sinner took the loud hint from outside.

——————-

Mass always began with the priest standing between two kneeling altar boys, all with our backs to the faithful. The priest spoke first: “Introibo ad altare Dei” (I will go up onto the altar of my God).

We as the altar boys responded in unison: “Ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam” (The God who gives joy to my youth).

It was Latin, but it might as well have been Swahili or Kurdish. We didn’t understand a single word of it. To become an altar boy, you had to memorize all of the Latin words of the mass on a small four page card and know when to say the words. No English translation was supplied and none was considered necessary.

I’m not sure how much joy to my youth was brought about by serving 6 a.m. mass on a February morning, but I had more than my share of those mornings. Mass came in several flavors for altar boys: early weekday masses (attended by about the same fifteen people every day), Sunday mass, both high mass (longer and with more singing) and low mass (mercifully shorter), funerals (four altar boys required) and weddings (only two required).

My best day as an altar boy was a big Italian wedding, where the best man handed each of us an envelope with $15 inside. The priest asked if we had been paid anything so that it could go to the “Altar Boy Fund” and I and my partner Bill lied through our teeth. Fifteen dollars in 1962 felt like winning the lotto. No one could have more money than that all at one time, and I was, at least for a time, quite wealthy. Anyway, I’d cover the lie vaguely at confession the following week and certainly not to the same priest.

Second best were all of those days when you were called upon for funeral duty. Catholic funerals were always on weekdays, so you got out of class for the hour of the service, and another 45 minutes of goof-off time, which you could easily alibi to the nuns as a service that ran long.

—————-

The Gospels

You remember Martha and Mary, those two sisters of Lazarus who entertained Jesus during a stopover in Bethany? Martha was all about working the event, but Mary just sat at His feet listening to him. When Martha went to file a beef with Jesus about her lazy sister, she got a rebuke from the Man himself. She was too concerned with earthly things, He said. I wonder if He might have been a bit less critical after not getting fed and watered, had Martha not been running the show and looking after her guests.

Every woman in every family knows who the Marthas are and who the Marys are. Marthas plan the parties, clean the house, shop for the goodies, get the meal out, look after their guests and clean up after. Marys sit, drink wine, and chat. Every family is a mix of the two and each side knows it, seems to accept that you’re one or the other by nature and not likely to change. Marthas at a party bond together in their righteousness and volunteer to help each other out. They can be found in the kitchen. Marys won’t leave their chairs unless the wine runs out. They can be found on the patio or in the living room.

You know which one you are, ladies.

————-

You know the story of the prodigal son. Kid asks for an early inheritance, leaves town, blows it all on hookers and booze, then comes home broke and penitent. Good old dad rejoices in his return. Older brother, Steady Eddie, is a bit pissed.

For years, I identified with the older brother, thought that dad telling him “but you are with me always” sounded a lot like “and you’re chopped liver.” Your brother is a jerk, but gets forgiven by dad and even celebrated like he did something right for once in his life. Which he didn’t. Meanwhile, you toed the line, worked the farm, and did everything you were supposed to and nobody is putting fine robes on your back or slaughtering any fatted calves in your honor. Raw deal all around.

This was my take on this gospel story for years, until someone shared their interpretation with me. This person, an experienced dad like myself, said he shared my take for years. But looking back on it all, he now concludes that the true meaning of the story was that raising kids was a pain in the butt. Who am I to argue?

———–

The Homilies

I don’t know how many homilies I’ve heard, but just doing the math it has to be more than three thousand. And only three still stay with me.

The two frogs….

The first was given by Father Flannery, a priest at Resurrection who was also a decorated Marine Corp chaplain and who was wounded at Iwo Jima. I was in first grade and I remember his homily about the two frogs who jumped into a pail full of milk. Both were struggling to keep from drowning. One gave up and did indeed drown, but the other frog had some sort of amphibious faith and kept swimming and kicking and, lo and behold, churned the milk into butter. The butter gave him a solid surface from which to jump free of the pail. Keep kicking was the message I guess.

My brother and the apostles…

Father Joe Mulcrone, a Resurrection guy, said the funeral homily when my brother Bill was killed in a car accident in 1979. We were shattered at the time, numb from disbelief, and in need of some comforting words. Fr. Joe’s homily compared Bill with the apostles. He pointed out that the apostles, like Bill, were no saints when Jesus found them. He concluded that Bill would have been comfortable in their company. His words began the long healing process for all of us and I am grateful to him to this day.

The guys travelling to the next town….

Father Bill Gubbins was a gifted homilist in Queen of Martyrs parish. He told the tale of the traveler who upon arriving at a town gate, asked an old man sitting nearby about the people in the town. “What kind of people live here?” he asked. The old man replied, “How were the people in the last town you were in?” replied the old man. “Awful, terrible people,” the traveler answered. “Well,” said the old man, “I’m afraid you’ll find these people much the same.”

Later on, another traveler came to the same town, and again asked the same old man near the gate the same question. “What kind of people live here?” he asked. The old man again replied, “How were the people in the last town you were in?”  “Kind, wonderful people,” the traveler answered. “Well,” said the old man, “I think you’ll find these people much the same.”

Yes, quite a culture.

 

Catholic Born

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

You know that part of the scripture they read at Christmas where they recite the lineage from Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob, and then about thirty five others who were all “begot’ until they finally get down to Joseph, the father of Jesus? I once asked a priest that if Jesus was really the result of the ”Virgin Birth,” as I was taught, then aren’t all of those guys on that lengthy list just his step-father’s dead relatives? For some reason, he seemed annoyed with me.

Either through fate, family history, or some combination of parental decisions, personal calls, happenstance, or whatever other forces out there control one’s destiny, I am and always have been pretty Catholic.

Consider the facts. I was baptized Catholic, owe every academic credential I have to Catholics schools, once thought I would be a priest, have worked for priests, brothers and nuns for a collective total of about eleven years (and counting) of my varied career, was active in parish leadership, raised my kids Catholic and, as far as I know, am in good standing with the church. And I married a Catholic girl even more Catholic than me. Who else do you know can recite from memory the list of priestly vestments (chasuble, alb, cincture, and some other stuff), the seven deadly sins (gluttony, sloth, and more bad things you shouldn’t do) and the Memorare? I won’t even go into her devotion to Mary, which is some sort of happy feminist spiritual preference, as if Mary is the only saint who can be really trusted, most of the rest being men.

That old Catholic church that defined much of my youth seems like a distant memory now. I remember it as a Church of ironclad and seemingly timeless rules, the endless list of things we did and said that seem so silly now. Taking communion on your tongue without biting into the host, never touching a chalice (some boy did, we were told, and he died), fasting, wearing scapulars like G.I. dogtags, writing AMDG or JMJ on top of each page of schoolwork, rosaries, novenas, masses with school attendance taken, mortal and venial sins, purgatory, hell, telling your oft-repeated three or four pre-adolescent sins to some guy in a box each week.

Today, I’m not an angry Catholic, just a mystified and somewhat dissatisfied one. Along the way I jettisoned most of the doctrinal baggage so carefully installed by a host of nuns and priests in my formative years. It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, and it’s not a loss of faith. It’s just that over time I grew to consider it just so much extra unimportant detail to the core of the message.

The list of lost luggage is lengthy and includes the aforementioned virgin birth, the immaculate conception, transubstantiation, the need for male celibate priests, the assumption of anyone’s actual body into heaven, Jesus as something other than an extraordinary man, little cherub angels, purgatory, plenary indulgences that mirrored our federal prison parole guidelines, demons, wood from the True Cross, and the many heads of John the Baptist scattered throughout Europe. And I might do a run-on sentence like this last one, but I don’t do confession.

Some things have added to my cynicism. On my first visit to Rome, I visited the Vatican Museum, a garish monument to the Catholic Church’s rich history of basically ripping off anything of value from Europe or Africa and the Middle East that wasn’t nailed down. After about 200 statues, I had seen enough. I have visited the Knock shrine in Ireland, held so dear by its locals, but which, like Fatima and Lourdes, has evolved into a bit of a religious side show. I have seen the 35 foot-tall silver aluminum statue of Mary as it made its rounds to churches in Chicago, rising like a sort of devotional ICBM from a flatbed truck, the personal penance of some poor guy who once owned liquor stores, or so I heard. It hasn’t exactly deepened my faith.

I have tried to center my faith on the essential meaning of Jesus, a man who came along at a moment in history and told us to love each other, forgive each other, to stop stealing from each other, conquering each other, and butchering each other. Simple enough instructions that we still haven’t mastered, but I can admire and try to follow the playbook well enough.

He came at a time when the world was maybe for the first time ready to start listening, and his message grew from that point onward as a force for good, through apostles, martyrs, and simple people in search of answers. He didn’t need to be anything other than an exceptionally good man of God to start the world in a new direction, and, as so often happens, they killed him for it. His story and his meaning doesn’t require that he be born without human intercourse, that he be some sort of “man-god” or even that he rise from the dead.  I realize that the Church, if they really thought me important enough (they don’t) to single me out for these beliefs, could deny me last rites and burial in a Catholic cemetery, but I have my cremation “get out of jail free” card, so I’ll take my chances. Just scatter my ashes on the 6th hole at Ridge Country Club.

So I still go to Mass most Sundays, perhaps missing during a week when we attend a funeral or if the weekend is too crowded. I go there usually pleasantly, grateful for the quiet comfort of being part of a large group of people whom I assume are of similar thought and belief as me. I go hoping to hear a good homily, but those are as rare these days as political elections that I feel good about. I go to enjoy the music, especially a good choir. I go to spend an hour with my wife at my side where we just “are”.  Sometimes I just go out of a sense of obligation. Sometimes I go when I really do feel the need to pray for something.

But lately I feel like I am a tenant in a building where many people are moving out and no one is moving in. The Catholic Church is in a downward spiral, or maybe a downward spiral with a turn to the right. Fewer churches, fewer active members, some moving to evangelical churches that mange to better answer their needs. As I write this, some 26 Chicago parishes need pastors and only 19 are available.

And of those 19, how many would you feel good about? I lost count of the number of stories I have heard about some Catholic priest denying marriage, requiem mass, or baptism in their church based on attendance at mass or donation records. I recently sat through an embarrassing 30-minute harang by a pastor to an absolutely packed church regarding his personal expectations of the churchgoers in terms of promptness, singing, and leaving early. Bite me, father. An archbishop who I actually went to school with will not bury gay Catholics in his diocese, even though death kind of settles your sexuality issues.  It’s not just quantity, but quality.

Orders of nuns, priests, and brothers are in their sunset years now, with pathetically few younger members. The model that once attracted so many young new leaders, myself included, is broken. And the endless file of the sexually abused and the indefensible cover-ups by the hierarchy have all but snuffed out the flames of devotion in even the most Catholic of Catholics. But the voice of “super Catholics” seems to be on the rise, those homophobic, pro-life, pro-death penalty (I’ll never get that) adherents to Doctrine as defined in Rome. A bleak future, if we change nothing.

Much of this downward spiral, and this is most mystifying of all, is driven by the insistence of a male celibate priest model. We are watching parishes around the country being rolled into other parishes, and not really for lack of enough faithful, as for lack of leadership. The hierarchy tries to fill in the holes with young priests from the third world or Eastern Europe. They might as well try extra-terrestrials, as I have witnessed homilies so out of touch with our reality as to generate good stories at parties. Some zealous kid from Manilla or Krakow, however well meaning, is not the answer. Nor are lay deacons, who do a good job, but who are too few in number.

The solutions are obvious and, I think, probably acceptable to most Catholics not on the extreme right: drop the requirement for celibacy for men and allow women to be ordained. Do those two things, or even one or the other, and your shortage of ministers problem goes away in a few years. Fact is, being a priest is not a bad job and people who are sensitive and compassionate and who want to make a difference will find it a natural calling. I happen to work in a place with some amazing nuns who would be terrific pastors, and a damned sight better at preaching than the last five guys I endured. When it comes to ministry, it’s like we have one hand tied behind our collective backs and our “top down” authority structure shows no sign of movement. Therein lies the dissatisfaction.

I remarked to one of the sisters recently that I often wondered “Why am I still Catholic?”

She shrugged, smiled, and said, “Where else would we go?”

Where, indeed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner with a Holy Man.

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

I don’t recall ever giving much thought to the existence of Holy Men. At age sixty five, this world, which can be so very beautiful in so many ways, can wear on you, turning you cynical. Perhaps living that life in Chicago, where wise guys abound and where the greatest crime is being a chump, has made me more so. I did know a lot about the big hitters in the Holy Man game: Jesus, John the Baptist, Gandhi, et al. Twelve years of Catholic schooling, four of those in a minor seminary, will give you almost lethal exposure to the lives of the saints, the sacraments of the church, and the rules of the road as set forth in the Baltimore Catechism.  But Holy Men? Didn’t think much about them.

The Minor seminaries in 1960’s Chicago, high schools really, were two schools, both gone now. Quigley North was the overcrowded original, back in the days when every mother prayed for at least one of her sons to take up the cloth. In my case, my grandmother was putting money away for my chalice when I was fourteen. The money later served as a down payment for a 1965 Plymouth, my first car, but that’s another story.

The Diocese, happily seeing no end of future priests, and not foreseeing the seismic changes to religious life which would be brought on by Vatican II, decided to build a second, larger seminary/high school on the South side. That was, aptly, Quigley South, and that was my school, even though I lived on the west side. Both schools were designed to capture religious vocations early, and the attrition rates were high, as each class was evaluated yearly by the faculty for priestly worthiness. I never got caught, somehow.

Over time, as the alumni aged into old men, the Quigley you attended and exactly when you attended seemed to matter less and less to those who carried the torch of reunions for all of us. There was something about having gone to Quigley, to have once aspired to the priesthood, which drew you into a common bond with your fellow once-seminarians, and you were invited.

And so it was that on a December night in 2014, I accepted the invitation from this loose confederation of alumni, whose criteria were that you once attended one of the Quigleys and that you were still alive. I met the group in the bar of The Greek Islands on south Halsted. It was warm, welcoming, with men who might have been strangers a moment before shaking your hand and asking which school, what year, did you know this person or that, whatever became of so-and-so. After cocktails, it was family style dinner, and seating was random.

There was a big man on my right, friendly face, but a little reserved. He was dressed in jeans, work shirt, and a sort of hunter’s vest. He had a bushy head of brownish grey hair and bushier moustache. While the others and I talked about our careers, retirements, grandchildren and told stories we had told a dozen times to a group that still wanted to hear them again, this fellow smiled, asked questions, asked others to expand on their stories.

Later, he spoke briefly of a few places he had been in his travels, and they weren’t places I had been. Cuba, Guatemala, North Africa. I wondered what business he had been in, to take him to such exotic locations. He mentioned that he now lived in Cicero, a suburb once known as the center of mob rule in Chicago, but these days just a down on its luck blue collar suburb. Curious, considering the Quigley crowd tended to be pretty affluent and lived at much tonier addresses. When he got up to use the facilities, my friend John across the table mentioned that the big fellow, also named John, had always been admired by his classmates. Several readily agreed. One pointed out that he had been the president of his class.

After he took his seat again, it seemed to me that, in a quiet way, he seemed to be almost presiding over the get together. Not in any overt way, but by his manner, which was sort of “favorite uncle by way of the favorite teacher you remembered”. He exuded a sort of care for all of us and in no way did he try to dominate the talk. His did not talk with his hands, nor use any body language that said “OK, now it’s my turn.” I noticed that others at the table would occasionally look his way and give a sort of unofficial salute, a nod of approval, a small sign of being glad to be in his company. They were proud of him, somehow.

It became nine o’clock and old men don’t party till dawn. As we began to break up, I said to my friend John, “Funny, you don’t see lot of ordained priests at these things, just lay people like us.”

“Just two tonight.” The guy down on the end, who I don’t really know, and of course, the bishop, sitting next to you.”

I was speechless for a moment. “That guy was a bishop?” Suddenly it all made sense. The travels to different mission lands, the Cicero rectory, the pastoral manner, the esteem in which the group seemed to hold him.

I caught up with the Bishop outside as we awaited our cars from the valet. “Nice party”, he said. “And it was nice to meet you, also.”

I replied in similar fashion and we made small talk about the weather, Greek Town in the old days, the White Sox. His car arrived first and he shook my hand and wished me a Merry Christmas.

“And you too, Eminence,” I said.

He turned as he got in his car, a small smile. Was he pleased I had recognized his Office, or irritated that I wouldn’t let him take the night off from his job? Did I even get the title right for a bishop with “Eminence”? (I got it wrong, it was Excellency, but I wouldn’t have gotten that out with a straight face.)

Driving home, it occurred to me that you simply don’t meet all that many people in life who seem to project that kind of pastoral good will, that priestly concern, and that warmth without a hint of judgment. Was I in the presence of a Holy Man? I think maybe I was. Maybe that’s why they made him a bishop….even the Catholic Church gets it right, now and again.