Tag: priests

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.

 

Rags and Old Iron: A Story of Attitude Adjustment

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

Author’s note: You may not have read or even heard of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, but if you want a quick look at the plot go to http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/play-summary/merchant-venice/.

I was a freshman at Quigley South in 1963, sitting in my English class, where Fr. Cahill presided. Fr. Cahill was a very tall forties-something priest with crew-cut snow white hair, and huge hands, either one of which seemed to cover both the front and back covers of whatever book he was holding. Over his white collar and black shirt and trousers, he always wore the priest’s cassock, sort of a black full length covering that all ordained faculty wore back then.

The grapevine said that he had been a star high school basketball player before finding his vocation, and he looked every inch the part; those oversized hands must have been useful on the ball court. He was a good teacher, too. His method was largely lecturing, but peppered with lots of questions to keep you in the game. In this class, we were knee deep in our first Shakespearean play, The Merchant of Venice. We’d been at it for weeks and I was way past the point of caring what Portia, Bassanio’s new bride disguised as a male lawyer, had up her sleeve. I thought Shylock was a creepy old guy, and Bassanio and Antonio seemed especially dense. Antonio who made the “pound of flesh” deal with Shylock, and Bassanio who couldn’t recognize his new wife dressed as a man? C’mon.

As a student, I got pretty good at reading the different ways that teachers would unconsciously telegraph their decisions as to who to call on next. Fr. McLaughlin, who taught Latin, would look for someone who hadn’t made eye contact yet, and call on him. My counter-strategy when unprepared to answer, which was almost always, was to look directly at him, as if eager to translate. Worked every time. Mr. Lang, who taught math, worked a list of students in alpha order, so you only had to be prepared when he got in the general neighborhood of your name. Fr. Henckle, who taught history, called on the first eager beavers to shoot up their hands, and it was always the same four or five guys. Free ride.

Fr. Cahill was a lot trickier, because he had memorized our names and could call yours without warning from anywhere in the room. Caught unprepared, caught with your mind wandering, or just plain lost, you bought yourself an extra writing assignment that night, due the next day. And it was the same punishment time after time: write out all seven stanzas of Sir Walter Scott’s “Young Lochinvar.”

God, how I hated that knight. Here’s the first stanza of this seven stanza nightmare:

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

If you ask me, Sir Walter was having an off day when he wrote this one.

We had reached the point in the Merchant of Venice where Shylock’s gig was up. He can have his pound of flesh as part of his evil bargain, but not one drop of blood. Shylock is outraged that he has been outfoxed. At this point, Fr. Cahill asked the class, “How does Shylock react to this news?” Then, “Mr. Wogan?”

Now on the west side of my youth, every week an old man in a horse drawn wagon would come down our alley singing his mantra, “rags and old iron”. Even though we were long past the era of horse-drawn transportation, this old tradition somehow stayed alive. He was the junk man, and because he was Jewish, he was referred to as the “Rag Sheenie”. I had heard my father use the term a hundred times, and never in anger or in derision. He just used the expression “screaming like a rag sheenie” as one his stock phrases. Even my grandmother, as simple and unprejudiced a person as you could hope to meet, would use the term. I even heard a nun say it once. I never gave it any thought; the old guy with the horse was a part of my neighborhood scene and he was stuck with this sad title.

Years later I would find out that yes, indeed, these guys were almost always Jewish, and that they rented their horses from a nearby barn on a daily basis. Most of them were very poor and whatever they could scrape from selling scrap metal was how they lived.

So I gave him my answer, confident that Young Lochinvar would stay the hell in the West and would still be riding alone tonight. What I said was, “He’s screaming like a Rag Sheenie, Father.”

From out of the corner of my eye I saw it, but it was too late. One of those huge hands caught the side of my face, not like a slap, but more like a sweep. It picked me up out of my seat and deposited me, with a thud, on the floor. My classmates instantly showed a renewed interest in what they were reading, as if not wishing to be caught up somehow in my crime. I looked up with confused wide eyes at Fr. Cahill, now taller than ever from my new seat on the floor. “That’s an ethnic slur, young man,” he said evenly. “I never want to hear that from you again.”

I didn’t know what slur meant. I didn’t even know what ethnic meant. I just knew I wasn’t going to say Rag Sheenie anymore. Oh, and I had to write out Lochinvar again.

——————

Looking back on it, it strikes me that I might have accidently demonstrated the main point of Shakespeare’s play. Merchant of Venice has been interpreted by many, but at its heart it’s about prejudice and in particular prejudice against Jews. Some of those interpreters claim that this was Shakespeare’s way or illustrating the evils of racial and ethnic bias. Others claim that it was his way of pandering to the anti Semite tendencies of his audience. It’s not hard to imagine some of those sitting in those seats at Stratford-on-Avon smiling with satisfaction as Shylock’s fortune is confiscated and he is forced to convert to Christianity at the plays ending.

My ethnic slur was a result of my youth and ignorance of the world around me, and that’s a pretty good definition of a fourteen year old boy. Today, as I watch the current embarrassing national political circuses, I wonder what excuse they can use for some of the fear and prejudice being sold on a daily basis to the angry and the scared. And I wish we had a Fr. Cahill’s hand big enough to administer a correction.