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Today, the old priest that has been leading our small parish told us he was going to be leaving by the end of the school year. And I did not take it well.
I didn’t understand the feeling at first. I’m not the kind of person who misses people. I like having fiends, but being the introvert I am, I sometimes think I could almost do as well without them. The pandemic hit me nowhere near as hard as it did other members of our community. Solitude has always been a welcome companion of mine.
But after he was done speaking (our old priest, that is) and especially after I hugged him after Mass, I held back tears telling him how grateful I was for his ministry. And on the way home, I felt a pit in my stomach.
I walked upstairs and started talking to my wife, and as I did, I cried harder than I have in a long time… a long, long time.
Six years ago, our parish was going through turmoil. Women (or a woman, we didn’t know at the time) were leveling criticism at our charismatic, young, and well-liked priest, saying he had emotionally manipulated them and crossed lines a priest shouldn’t cross with women. Our bishop, taking action, pulled the young priest out of his leadership position, telling him not to celebrate Mass in public until things could be sorted out.
Years went by, however, and nothing seemed to be happening. Many of the most well-established and staunches members of our community, members I respect greatly, stood by the priest and started accusing the bishop of being corrupt and, out of spite, trying to stifle a young, conservative priest in his prime.
Meanwhile, to more permanently replace the young priest, an old one was tapped. Let’s call him Fr. Mike, the man who stepped down today. Fr. Mike, at the time, was on the cusp of retiring after a long and fruitful life of ministry, but our bishop had this one last request – a request, as I remember it, Fr. Mike was free to turn down. But Fr. Mike decided that if his bishop was asking him to do something, then he should do it.
Fr. Mike was portly, white-haired, and soft-spoken. And he was a near terrible preacher compared to our previous priest. Charismatic he was not. He read from his paper like a tired grandpa reading aloud the advertisements in a Costco Connection magazine for his blind wife. You could tell he tried, but after personable style of the previous guy, the difference was stark.
But, like a tired grandpa patiently reading aloud the advertisements for his blind wife, he was dedicated. Rumors swirled around the bishop. People were still angry in our congregation. But the new old priest was so patiently quiet about it all, so steadfastly determined to do the basic work of the ministry – confession, celebrating the Eucharist, making sure the school was financially solvent, baptizing babies – without gossip or comment, that little by little, people seemed to calm down.
A couple years went by and, to our great sadness, we found out that, indeed, the bishop was right after all. The allegations leveled against our young priest before were credible. And he actually went off the deep end in other ways after he was let go from parish work.
So that’s what happened out there, but today, what I am realizing, is what was going on inside of me these last few years.
My father died two weeks before I was married. This was back in 2008. And I’m sure, if I were telling you that face to face, you would say something like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” But I would then tell you I’m fine. It honestly didn’t matter too much to me that he wasn’t there at the wedding because I wasn’t that close to him. He was someone who could be there in my life or could not. He had this thick, Eastern European accent – Ukrainian – that he never shook in all his decades in the US, and I remember him singing old Gospel songs in the kitchen in a vaunted, operatic voice. But again, I didn’t feel close to him.
This was partly because I’m an introvert. It is also partly because… I don’t know. Maybe because he wasn’t really there for my mom. Maybe because of everything that happened during their divorce. Maybe because I default to the assumption that I am alone in life, even when there are people around me who claim to care. “Only I can take care of myself. You’re on your own kid.” Whatever the reason, I had never emotionally felt close to him, even when he tried to reach out to me in his own way.
But years after his death, this old priest came along with that Eastern European accent. He loves to sing as well, so much so that he has to be turned down in the sound system during Mass, otherwise he overpowers the congregation. And I saw in him my father resurrected.
You have to understand how lonely married men can get. I don’t mean in the sexual sense. I mean in the sense that a father and/or husband always feels the weight of their family on their shoulders. Maybe this is why so many of them cut and run or check out. They are the ones that have to provide. They are the ones that have to make sure their wives are ok and the kids are taken care of.
But who takes care of the man? Who makes sure the husband isn’t working himself to death? On whose shoulder can the 30-something-year-old cry on when, statistically speaking, he has a terribly hard time making friends?
For me, I am realizing, the shoulder I cried on was the shoulder of this old priest. In confession, I told him about how I got distracted at work, how I sometimes harbored resentment towards my wife, my kids, my life, my God. I confessed my doubts. And he always brought me back to my primary calling in life. He prayed for me. He told me that no matter how many times I sinned the same sin, I should keep coming back.
I know, when he leaves, God will provide another priest – the kind of priest our parish needs. But will he? Really? Didn’t Fr. Mike step in when we were in disarray because of a rogue priest?
Yesterday, as though to top this cake off with a cherry, I found out that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had died. It is probably safe to say that he will be most remembered as the pope who decided to retire – the first one in 600 years to do so.
And what one commentator said was that, perhaps, that single act was the most instructive of anything he said or did, because it emphasized to a fractured Catholic world – especially here in the US where liberals and conservatives are at each other’s throats – that the Holy Spirit can be trusted. The Catholic Church will go on with or without the leaders we put so much – maybe too much – of our hope in.
Because with God, we are not alone. We never have been, and we never will be.
“America is a Christian nation.”
What do people mean by that?
Are they saying that the country was built on Christian principles, like the idea of human rights and the equality of mankind? I can get behind that. It’s sheer blindness to think the founders were not influenced by Christian values.
But I don’t get the sense that that is what those on the Religious Right mean when they say America is a Christian nation or that we need to “take back America.” It sounds more like “Manifest Destiny,” – the idea that God somehow made the U.S. a chosen people, like the Jews. As though we were destined to drive Natives off their land and bring the light of democracy to the world. And those pesky secular humanists are trying to derail our God-given political mandate.
When people say “America is a Christian nation,” it sounds like what they mean to do is force a religion on everyone else without getting the necessary buy-in first. They recognize that Christianity is on the wane in the States and admit we are in a “culture war,” but they don’t realize that if, indeed, we are in a culture war, that must mean Christianity does not represent a vast swath of the American public. It would, therefore, be undemocratic to insist the American public adopt their view of the world.
Believe me, I wish America was a Christian nation, but I accept that it isn’t. And until most Americans want the kind of moral life I want for myself, I don’t want to force it on them just as I would not want them to force their morality on me. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” said a Wise Teacher.
So, no, America is not a Christian nation. I don’t want to force her to be one at the point of a revolutionary gun or through gerrymandering, any more than I want to force a beautiful woman to marry me. I can long for it. I can even pray for it. I can try to woo her. But it has to be her choice.
Can we vote in our moral view of the world? Can we enshrine Christian values like the protection of life at all stages and the protection of the poor into law? Certainly. But only if we do the hard work of actually convincing our fellow citizens to become Christians and/or adopt our values. Not by shouting empty slogans about what we wish our country would look like.
Image made with the Midjourney platform.
My parents were staunch fundamentalists. Well, my mom is. My dad was. He’s dead now, but that’s another post.
Staunch fundamentalists… though that term, “fundamentalist”, was not in my vocabulary at a younger age. Identities are forged in relationship, and I didn’t have any meaningful relationships with people who were not fundamentalist for the larger part of my formative years. Strict Christianity was the air I breathed.
I took it as a given for awhile that, as Proverbs says, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” (Pro. 22:6, NIV*) Even some atheists will dismiss the Christianity I hold to because I grew up in a Christian household. But, as Proverbs is with most of its maxims, it’s largely true without being totally true. Little Timmy, for example, can’t shake the alcoholism he inherited from his dad, but he does shake his fist at him.
All to say, three out of four of us children did not remain fundamentalist. My older brother went off in the direction of maybe a vague liberal Christian spirituality, if that – certainly nothing resembling what we grew up with. My sister just older than me and I became Catholic, which to our parents might as well have been a complete repudiation of Jesus himself. My other sister is the only one who kept the faith, but her own children are not all walking in “the way they should go” either, from her perspective.
Knowing this history, when I look at my own children, I grow a little unsteady. I want to give them as winsome a vision of my Catholic faith as I can. I want to make it clear to them that the abuses of the Catholic Church do not represent her spirit. Heck, that my abuses do not represent her spirit. I want them to feel the joy I felt at having found a home in her bosom. I want them to be enraptured by her ritual and beauty, all emanating from the presence of Christ at the center of every Mass.
But I fear that the faith I am showing them looks about as boring and mundane as growing grass. The grass is vibrantly alive, but still, it is in the end “just grass.”
The tempting remedy in this scenario is to make Catholicism look “cool,” but I sense this to be a losing battle. Stryper, God bless them, were really cool in the 80’s, but I don’t know how you build a long-lasting faith on hairspray and spandex. Hippie music was really groovy when it got introduced into the liturgy after Vatican II, but the luster has dimmed quite a lot. Setting that aside, honestly, however good my intentions are in passing on the faith, I can’t imagine that I am as good or better a parent as my mom or sister.
So what is the answer? I don’t know. Does anybody? Is that what this post is supposed to be? “3 Knock-Out Tools to Make Sure Your Children Burn Bright for Jesus!” I could write that, but I wouldn’t be telling the truth.
What I’m trying to do, and that really badly, is build in my children a growth mentality: God loves you. God is not waiting to punish you. When you fail, you can always find forgiveness. Don’t forget that your faith matters. We love you. God loves you. God loves you. Please ignore us when we give you the impression he doesn’t.
I don’t know what they will decide in the end. If they match the trajectory of religious statistics in the United States today, they will hold on to this faith only with a good amount of sweat, blood, and tears.
But if their memories of their upbringing are of parents who loved them, a faith that spoke of a benevolent God in a benevolent universe, and the importance of choosing what is right even when it is difficult, then perhaps I will be able to say I was not a failure as a father. Maybe the inheritance they receive will be squandered, but at least I will be able to say I handed it down.
(Pic generated by AI at Midjourney)
*Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
My fourth-grade daughter, this afternoon at the lunch table, told me she wants to make money running a coffee stand.
Most of the time my children’s vocation ideas are garbage. This is not to say they are garbage or that I am not proud of their creative minds, but they’re kids. Ice cream and Coke for dinner every night sounds like a perfectly legitimate practice to them. My son wants to be a YouTube star, for example. I keep trying to encourage him to prioritize his studies over mastering the art of getting subs.
But my daughter… I have hope for that one. At first, she got the paternal nod from me and metaphorical pat on the head. “That’s great, honey. Now run along and play with the dogs.” But the more I thought about it, the more excited I got. And I began spit-balling ideas with her.
It’s not that I think she’s going to become a millionaire selling baked goods on the street. And you can reasonably criticize me for getting way too excited about starting my child’s career this early. But the older I get and the more I listen to the news, the more depressed I get about my kids’ futures. As Bernie Sanders has been railing about for a generation, wages have not kept up with corporate profits. Inflation is making that exponentially worse right now. College is overpriced and is increasingly becoming not worth the investment. So the more I can encourage a “you go girl/girl-boss/be-independent” mentality in my daughter, the better. No one else is going to help her in the work world. It’s an ocean full of sharks out there.
I know if she really tried to do this, she would probably barely make anything. But I think of what she would learn: hard work, how to appeal to customers, how to interact with people of different ages. The reality of a job where people depend on you. Not full-time, but, you know, a morning here or there.
More than that, when I first started my own self-employed music teaching business, I didn’t have enough students to cover the cost of living. I slowly grew it while living at home with my mom. If she started now – or a few years from now – she could have her own side-hustle to pay for college or more.
Is all this going too far? Does plotting out my elementary school-aged child’s career seem a little extreme? Forgive me for getting too excited. When I see such initiative, it makes me proud of them and a little less depressed about sending them into this world.
Because, when the time comes, watching them leave our house will be like sending soldiers into a war I know is going to rip them up and knock them down, however meaningful it is to fight in it.
Frankly, the more weapons they have, the better.
(Pic generated by AI at Midjourney)
Why do you write?
I mean, obviously you write. You certainly didn’t find this blog with the google search words, “Curmudgeon Catholic father from California.” You’re probably another blogger, looking to connect, maybe, with other bloggers like you. You typed in the right words that got you here, and here you are. Am I close in that assessment?
Certainly nothing wrong with that, just saying. I’m jumping out on a limb here and assuming you are a writer. I am, too, despite the title of this post. So I suppose the title requires some explaining.
There was a time when I thought that maybe I could blog my way into a living – that I could do creative work and turn a dollar with it. My passions, for a time, were (maybe still are) to write stories, opinion pieces, songs, and music, to name a few. There is a secret satisfaction I get in crafting something creative. Maybe this is why you do what you do, as well.
But at some point, I had to accept that that will simply not be my life. In both a positive and negative way, my world is about my day job, my wife, my three children, my church, and the assortment of other responsibilities that press me for time. I cannot lock myself in a studio apartment, reading everything from Shakespeare to David Brookes looking for inspiration to publish a best-selling book or launch a wild and interesting YouTube channel. I have too many hustles already to do another side-hustle.
Not to mention the lines you have to stay within to succeed at such a vocation. I’ve probably already lost you by now in my introspective ramblings to the universal void of the internet. If so, I don’t blame you. “Is this a Catholic blog? You said you were Catholic. A cooking blog? How to be a dad? What’s the deal?”
Therein is the problem. This is the worst of all possible blogs: the personal blog. Me typing my “disparate thoughts,” meaning that you’ll probably read on one post about how I’m totally stoked that my 9 year old daughter wants to run a coffee kiosk at her school to my thoughts on the homeless problem in California. What will the next topic be? God only knows. Though I have a few ideas.
Here’s my answer to why I write: I write because I love to write. I write because writing makes me feel at peace. I can take the tight knot that is my heart and somehow untie it, free it up a little bit, by laying it out on a virtual piece of paper. Don’t ask me why imagining someone is reading this makes that process easier. It just does.
I create content because I want to create something beautiful, like a wildflower on the side of a mountain. It doesn’t really matter if anyone sees it in the end, so long as it exists in the world. And the process is as important as the product.
Maybe I write because I really am a writer, just not a successful one, which, I suppose, puts me in good company.
Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thank you. Good luck and God bless you in whatever you happen to be doing on this platform.
(Pic generated by AI at Midjourney)
Disparate Thoughts 