Try rebuilding a 150 year old pipe organ!

 “We will be saved by Beauty.” --Blessed Dorothy Day

Since about October 18th, I have been getting up at 4 AM in Bangkok to watch a few folks dismantle a small pipe organ in the huge Norwich Roman Catholic Cathedral, pack it into what seemed to me to be just an ordinary van, drive through the night, and unload it into an abandoned convent chapel in Ernee France. For about 25 TV hours, I’ve watched them reassemble thousands of pieces, a giant Lego puzzle with an extremely complicated inner mechanism, and all they used were a few sharpies and tape to label the pieces, plus their iPhones to shoot lots of pics of things as they found them. Often I was left wanting to see more. I am amazed.

Not one of them is an organ builder. Only one can really carry a tune and knows middle C on the keyboard, but there are at least 10 ranks of pipes and two keyboards, and they’re all hooked up to the bellows. They dusted off more than a hundred years of dust, wear and tear, and rescued an instrument that had been used to play our imitations of the angelic choirs since about 1850. They call her “Old Girl.” They handle this project with curiosity, love and respect, and seem to be having a great time. They are conscious of their task, the instrument itself, the people who had built and played it as well as the nuns who used to pray in their ornate abandoned chapel in a small city in Northwestern France. At the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, a young bearded priest in jeans and a hoodie whom they call Father Paul was in the thick of it getting his hands dirty and bemoaning the150 years of dust and grime. A young Frenchman called Yannis gives me hope that Gen X still has the stuff to take care of our world. Billy and Michael’s father is completely part of their lives. Their list of friends with benefits is long, perhaps with its own waiting list, and Nick Moon showed what Billy calls the fabulous skill set of nudging pieces together.

I tried to watch “The Crown” and failed. I’ll take the Pethericks over the Windsors any day of the week. They are truly kind to one another. They are real. They are willing to take risks. They share themselves and what they are doing, not some fabricated image of what they should be. They are so respectful of the past, the real past, the country they live in and its religion, as well as each other. I always feel better about my world after 25 minutes of watching ordinary people taking extraordinary care of an ancient pipe organ or a 17th century French convert. It’s certainly an oddball formula but it works. My only criticism is that after years in France, Billy ought to  have more than “Merci” in his French vocabulary but he certainly makes up for it with creative ideas about engaging his wide audience. He got me. I’m a total fanboy.

https://www.instagram.com/thepethericks

https://www.youtube.com/@ThePethericks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4y6m7Pu3gM

Father God, S.J.

Postquam recens nuncium meum Latine salutatus est clamoribus haeresis, illud iterare decrevi. In nostra disceptatione de Iesuitis laudabilibus dignis, notare volumus aliquot saltem misanthropes, qui per eandem sacram institutionem accesserunt. In Nova Anglia multis modis distinctos esse videtur. De caeco sanctitatis parte nonnulla scribam prolixa.*

In a recent discussion of Jesuit teachers who had an "edifying" effect in our lives, I wanted to share about some Jesuits who had a lasting effect though as they say “the jury is still out,” and although it might better that they have not been called back, I am going to violate the keep-your-mouth-shut rule.

John McLaughlin hosted the syndicated television program, The McLaughlin Group, from 1982 until he died in 2016. It was usually a wild affair, pretending to have all the subtle nuance and intellectual rigor of a Paris salon, overseen by the sagesse of a Diderot. I would side with Ronald Reagan who said that McLaughlin took the TV political commentary and turned it into Animal House. (In my second year at Dartmouth I was “rushed” by the real Animal House, Alpha Delta Phi, so I could put on my resume that I actually attended a weekend party that made it to the Big Screen, but in reality it made it to the drunkalogue part of my 12 Step work).

In my senior year at Fairfield Prep, JJ was my Latin, English, and Religion teacher. We called him Father God. Looking back he ran our home room just like his TV show. He would proffer some dry dogmatic summary of a position and then we were called upon to opine. Then he would set us straight. He was a bully. When one of us broke one of his rules, the offending student would kneel in the front of the room with arms outstretched, an old noviceship mortification. Once when the guffaws spread and Father God ordered another kid up front to kneel with outstretched arms on the other side of the raised platform, my friend Jack Madigan yelled out, “You can be The Good Thief.” McLaughlin started to laugh but said, “Pretty good Madigan but not that good. Get up here and assume the position.” Of course he provoked fury. Once he was attacked by a knife wielding student who hid himself behind one of the huge ornamental bushes that lined the path between Bellarmine Hall where he had his rooms and Xavier where most of the classrooms were located. He claimed that a thick flowing cape-like affair over his cassock providentially prevented his certain death. God had been watching out for him. He was definitely cut out for TV.

He was probably the most Latin literate of any Jesuit that I ever studied with. My memory tells me, perhaps with some faulty mechanism, that we did Cicero in our last year, though I think that most of the orations were tediously translated in third year. However I remember him being almost theatrical as he took us through the Philippics, but it might have been Contra Catalinam. Now I see that classical fluency was his entrance ticket into the political class; Cicero was almost a god. His classicism also affected his Christian doctrine. I remember his talk contra masturbation. He talked at length about the Latin derivation of the word, manus plus turbo, with particular emphasis on the strong circular motion. It was about the only instance I can remember of getting an erection studying Latin until he linked the arguments contra with some high sounding, but specious meandering into the classical virtues of virility and restraint. In retrospect it was a nearly perfect jesuitical circumlocution--he never used the English word “sex.” Not once. He said, “manus turbo, that about describes it. Let’s leave it at that.”

In 1970 he became the first Jesuit priest (and perhaps the only priest ever) to run for the US Senate. At about the same time that Bob Drinan won a seat in the US House of Representatives, McLaughlin asked for permission from his superiors to run for political office. He was denied, but went ahead regardless. He was recruited (or forced his own way in) by the Rhode Island Republican Party to put up a token fight against the Democratic stalwart, Senator John Pastore. Of course he lost, but his bombastic style gave him enough notoriety to catch Richard Nixon’s attention and he became one of Nixon's speech writers although he’d really been angling to become the Chair of the FCC. He was one of the last men standing in Nixon’s White House. When Nixon was being rushed across the White House lawn to the waiting helicopter and exile in San Clemente, McLaughlin said, "History will judge him the most moral of presidents." That's close enough though probably not something that you'll find in the official Congressional record. He’d become just an asskissing Republican whore.

McLaughlin remained a priest through a brief stint in the Ford’s White House, but, this is really just my best guess, living the freewheeling lifestyle in the notorious Watergate Apartments, “The Republican Bastille,” including his well known womanizing, eventually forced his laicization in 1975.

“Predictions!” signaled the closing moments of his TV show. Mclaughlin saw the future of TV when there were just three major networks dominating Americans’ viewing habits. I was his hand picked editor of “The Bellarmine Letters,” The Prep’s quarterly literary magazine. In reality the position was nothing more than being his gopher, doing research and requesting submissions that he would completely rewrite. In 1961 I have a very clear memory of extensive research on what he called “subscription TV.” He really did see that consumers would willingly pay for receiving a transmission signal. This was almost a decade before the advent of PBS and Turner Broadcasting.

In 1990 I wrote to McLaughlin congratulating him, not for The McLaughlin Group, but for his hosting the 200th episode of “Cheers.” I liked the show and I actually thought that I might get a response even though it was almost 30 years since Fairfield Prep. I searched the archives of my emails to see if I could find what I said, but alas it has disappeared. I can only find this brief clip of the event on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBQqWVkzACo.

I told him that he had uncovered the true hidden character of the “Mclaughlin Group '' -- the Irish barroom brawl. His buddy Pat Buchanan was a carbon copy of one of my drunk, racist Irish uncles holding forth; poor Eleanor Cliff trying to get a word in edgewise over the yelling was a misogynist’s perfect setup; I probably left out that I felt he treated Clarence Page in such a condescending way he might as well have been Uncle Tom. I was trying to be honest and yet setting a tone that might be an opening to say what I really thought. Of course he never responded. Why would he? I was just a kid who’d been his gopher way back when he was a Jesuit priest looking for true vocation as a member of the political elite, and I was being passive aggressive anyway.

All that Jesuit training, years, the best education that money can buy, and not one ounce of humility in his bones. Although as they say “we lost touch,” I could see no observable signs of any self-awareness either. I can still hear his weirdly pitched voice yelling “Wrong.” When we meet in heaven I will yell it in his ear.


*After my recent post in Latin was greeted with screams of heresy, I’ve decided to repeat it. In our discussion of praise-worthy Jesuits, I would like to point out that there were at least a few misanthropes who came through the same sacred formation. In New England it seems that we were worlds apart in many ways. I will write some long pieces about the dark side of sainthood.

You're Under Arrest by the Fashion Police

If you're trying to dress to get some of that long overdue respect, here are some pointers for a Roman prelate under the gun.

Oh Dear Cardinal Burke, Down in the dumps are you? I know you’re about to lose your papal stipend and get kicked out of your groovy Roman digs, but this looks like you decamped to Motel 6. Going on social media to create some sympathy as the beleaguered ecclesiastic sad face of the ancient Knights of Malta and whip up your equally dubious supporters? This will never do. Here are some tips from the Vatican’s fashion police.

Try to look the part. 

Gather around you bright young people who seem enthusiastic about the message of the Lord. 

Make sure your acolytes have had proper sleep and can pay attention to what they’re doing instead of making sure that all their pleats line up correctly. 

Let them look you in the face instead trying to avoid eye contact as if they spent all night playing with themselves, alone or with others.

You’ve included hats for any eventuality. I count three. They’re all terrible.

Be color coordinated, but that green has got to go. And what’s with mother’s mittens?

If you were a posing for Gary Larson’s Farside instead of filing dubia in favor of the deposit of faith this might pass, but let’s face it honey, go back to 1869 and play kissy face with Pius 9. You need cheering up.

Respectfully submitted, your faithful Fashion Police

Let's go back to calling it heresy

This is going to get me into trouble. Reflections on a certain kind of theological reflection that inevitably leads to trouble.

My friend the Zen teacher John Tarrant once had dinner with renowned poet Czeslaw Milosz at his house on Grizzly Peak in Berkeley. Among the tales of a fine dinner conversation was this tidbit--Milosz was very interested in studying the various heresies and heretics that have run afoul of the institutional church over the years, even back in the days when the cost of thinking outside the norm could cost your life. Or perhaps the connection between controversy and rigid thinking might be part of his Polish dissident psyche.

But there is another side to heresy that interests me. What happens when your own personal belief system just drives your mind into a wall and there is no escape? We’ve set the fires aside, thankfully, though we still have religious wars that seem as senseless as ever to the unbeliever, but heresy still reeks havoc.

Last night my newsfeed pictured Mgr Jean-Louis Balsa who was just appointed to the post of archeveque of Albi in southern France. Balsa seems to be very likable fellow, with a jolly smile, but I have really no idea why Google choose this clip other than I follow the comings and goings of Pope Francis and his response to the dubia that several recalcitrant cardinals throw out as taunts, trying to alter the direction of (in their view) an errant magisterium. I remembered that Albi had been the hotbed of a very bloody heresy a millennium ago, but it seemed implausible that Google’s algorithm reached back to 1163. The Albigensian heresy held a rather gnostic view of man’s fate, caught in a fierce battle between the forces of pitch black darkness and glorious light of an afterlife. 

So much passes as religion in this day of political and spiritual correctness. The same news feed informs me that Mormonism is the 9th richest religion in the world, just ahead of Scientology. Then they proceed to describe the LDS as a Christian sect. Not since 1896 when Mormons renounced polygamy as the price for admission of Utah to the Union has anyone dared call Joseph Smith a heretic, but I will, at least from any accepted understanding of Christianity. At least L Ron Hubbard was honest enough not to label his sect a Hollywood version of Dale Carnegie’s self-improvement courses or tell us that Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem told his followers to sell everything they owned so that he could buy a private jet or pay an astronomical price for “going clear.” But my reading of the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844 was precisely because of objections to his 40 wives, some as young as 14. This was not a practice that led the early martyrs to death in the Coliseum. (I am not saying that there are many upright god-fearing Mormons who love their children and pay their taxes, but Mormonism is a cult with very strange connections to the life and teaching of Jesus).

Returning to 10th century Albi, the Cathars held certain beliefs about Jesus and the doctrine of the Incarnation that were outside long held institutional beliefs, but there were also beliefs about human nature that the established Roman church found threatening. They held that humans were spirits trapped in fleshly bodies engaged in a conflict between the forces of Light and Darkness. The consequences of that battle were all that mattered. The institutional church of Pope Innocent III aligned with the French House of Caput found this belief so threatening that they redirected the armies of the Crusades from retaking Jerusalem from the Muslims to southern France where they slaughtered thousands of people and destroyed the remnants of these Manichean believers. Religious wars were bloody in olden times though humans still engage in this kind of doctrinal war gauging from the reported number of casualties in Gaza since October 7th. 

In New Age California, among the Light and Love crowd, there is a lot of uncritical talk about the body being some kind of learning vehicle for the soul. We are spirits having a learning experience by being incarnated in bodies, or some such bullshit. Bob Hoffman even goes so far as to try to give trapped souls an emotional component which he called the Quadrinity--the body, spirit, intellect and emotional self, each separate and distinct and operating at less than optimal capacity. I am not out to ignite a religious war to engulf Berkeley and other hotspots around the world, but this is complete nonsense springing from the supernatural understandings of the Spiritualist Church movement. 

I am going to try to resurrect “heresy” and simply define it as adherence to a particular school of thought and separate it from bloody crusades or burning at the stake. What are other heresies floating around today that pretend to be Christian?

Heresy: The Prosperity Gospel from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” to the predatory Rev. Ike and Rev. Creflo Dollar. (That can’t be his real name, but I admit that it has a kind of ring to it). Motivational speaking has been developed and honed, particularly in the United States, but it is not Christianity. 

Heresy: I have to include dear well intentioned Mary Baker Eddy and her Christian Science. Bows to Mind over Matter, elevating this prattle to a higher level, but it is not Christianity even though my Irish mother thought that Mind over Matter was the underlying rationale of the Sermon on the Mount. 

Heresy: The Westboro Baptist “Kill the Fags” cult is high on my list of perverted religious ideologies. Another cult. The leaders rely on a very selective reading of selected passages from the corpus of Christian texts. The problematic texts do exist, however the condemnation is a bit extreme and the reading very literal. God apparently abhors metaphor or analogy.

Anathema: Franklin Graham et al. Liberty University and the Empire of the Self Righteous. They just seem to be self-serving greedy pricks. I know it is the same kind of language that they hurl against the libtards, but what the hell, if we are throwing all the use of language and critical thinking to the dogs, I have chosen not to waste words. Go take care of your pool boy toy Franklin and try to keep his mouth shut. And just shut up.

The Narcissistic Heresy: There may be something about the positive psychology of Norman Vincent Peal other than to have trained Donald Trump in doublespeak, but looking at what was preached from the Marble Collegiate Church, it is nothing more than a sanctification of American greed. That he was honored by Ronald Reagan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom speaks volumes. It may be hard to really trace the lineage of Trump’s assault on the rule of law, but there is nothing positive in this line of  thinking. It is narcissism. God did not create other people for our individual abuse and exploitation. 

Enough. You get my point.