Copyright ©2016 Harry G. Schlitt
Published by Sand Hill Review Press
www.sandhillreviewpress.com,
P.O. Box 1275, San Mateo, CA 94401
(415) 297-3571
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940036
Memoir
Christian
ISBN: 978-1-937818-41-8 Perfect Bound
ISBN: 978-1-937818-46-3 e-book
ISBN: 978-1-937818-45-6 Case laminate
Graphics by Backspace Ink
Photos from the private collection of Msgr. Harry G. Schlitt except “Clyde and Harry setting out for St. Louis” used with permission from the Southeast Missourian, photo credit G.D. Fronabarger; and “Father Harry teaching at the minor seminary” used with permission from the The Mirror/Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
for Jan
who saved my life more than once
Father Harry, like Odysseus,
traveled on epic journeys,
faced many temptations, obstacles and tests.
He was between a rock and a hard
place far too often, failed,
displayed weakness, but always
returned to his Church.
Foreword
Prologue
Part I
Formation
1. Life on the Mississippi
2. Baby Priest
3. Coming of Age
4. Omega and Alpha
5. Ciao Roma!
6. People of God
7. Priest Forever
Part II
Evolution
8. Blackrobe
9. Rock & Roll Priest
10. Man of God
11. Minister to the Masses
Part III
Maturation
12. Golden State
13. Hot Fudge Sunday
14. No Matter Where You Go
15. Ebb Tide
16. Big Apple
17. Gemini Rising
18. Vicar Schlitt
19. On the Bench
20. Silver Penny Farm
21. Lost Generation
22. Men in Red
23. Two Islands
24. Shrine of Saint Francis
25. Circle of Life
26. Thanks, Cornelius
27. Martyrs Jubilee
28. In Sync
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Foreword
Monsignor Harry Schlitt is a survivor from that tsunami of more than 40,000 priests who left the ministry in the aftermath of Vatican II. In this vividly expressive memoir, Monsignor Schlitt relates the stories of priest friends who made this painful decision. He does so in a spirit of understanding and fraternity and with a kind of wide-eyed wonderment that—thanks to the grace of God, he believes—he himself was not swept up in this exodus. Innumerable lay people who have benefited from Monsignor Schlitt’s priestly ministries are likewise grateful that he remained active in the vocation that has defined his life.
I’ll Never Tell is written with panache, unpretentiousness, and love of the people by a Missouri lad from a hardscrabble background who barely into his teenage years knew that he wanted to be a Catholic, and even more, a Catholic priest, although at the time he had little idea of what exactly that meant. It took decades for him to find out and to adjust to the fact that priesthood—however diversified in expression, however successful in outcome—involved a high level of sacrifice that would never come easily.
Only a diocesan or secular priest could write I’ll Never Tell; for these are the priests whom the Church requires to throw themselves headlong into the service of the people, to read the signs of the time, to be in the world but not of it, to animate themselves with a non-self-conscious piety emphasizing priestly service to others along with the acceptance of people’s faults as well as their own faults.
The diocesan or secular priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church represents the cutting edge of the Church’s pastoral ministry as far as preaching, counseling, and the administration of the sacraments are concerned. In apostolic times, the apostles created bishops to guide and govern the church and deacons to serve its administrative and practical needs. Towards the conclusion of the apostolic era or somewhat later, bishops shared a significant portion of their priestly identity with presbyters (priests) representing the bishop in rural areas. As Christianity further urbanized, so too did the presbyterate, and the priesthood emerged as a fully established tier of Holy Orders whose primary responsibility was the spiritual care of the people in all their complexity and challenges as they journeyed through life. Diocesan priests were until recently called secular priests— from the Latin saeculum, meaning in time, in the world— because they were of the world, not leaving it but serving its spiritual needs. Over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church developed an array of religious orders that since the Counter Reformation became increasingly clericalized. But the freestanding diocesan or secular priest, loyal to his bishop, taking no vows but promising celibacy, became the norm for parish life.
A graduate of the North American College in Rome (the West Point of American priestly training), Father Harry, as he was then known, created a unique ministry as a rock & roll priest, the continuing star of the television and/or radio format the God Squad. Two contending forces converged in Father Harry: his Roman education, preparing him for an elite career in the Church, and his rock & roll self, keeping him in environments that were decidedly non-ecclesiastical. Ordained in the early 1960s during the Second Vatican Council, Father Harry assumed priests would have permission to marry within five years. He turned out to be wrong. In this candid memoir, Monsignor Schlitt deals with the friendships and associations he formed over the years with female colleagues. In his younger days, he looked like a rock star and, it can be surmised, faced a rock star’s temptations. Yet he prevailed in his calling. In his later years, moreover, he experienced great success and satisfaction as a pastor of an established parish. Appointed the chief operating officer of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, he was named a domestic prelate (with the title monsignor) by Pope Benedict XVI.
Here is a memoir about Catholicism, the priesthood, and a search for New Age ministries, such as hitting the bars on search for New Age ministries, such as hitting the bars on Chestnut Street in San Francisco, where Father Harry ministered to a ragtag congregation of high-born and low, respectable and not so respectable, believers and those wishing they could believe, whom he befriended and counseled. All this outreach occurred within the matrix of a lifelong commitment to continue in the priesthood as the best way of making sense of his own life and being of service to others.
This is an engaging, sometimes a slyly humorous book, sometimes a book illumined by lightning bolts of religious insight. It is the real McCoy, expressive of the contradictions and confluences of our era, and it possesses a particularly American point of view: not only in its depictions of a boyhood enlivened by conversion and vocation almost simultaneously, followed by a journey from simple beginnings to the splendors of Rome, followed by a half-century of priestly ministry orthodox in content but frequently unorthodox in style: all this told matter-of-factly and frequently with a playful irony downplaying self-absorption.
What turbulent times we Catholics, lay and clerical alike, have lived in this past half century! How remote seems the triumphalism of an earlier era. And yet, how enduring seems the Church that carries through time Christ’s promise that He would be with us for all days. That He knew each of us. That even the hairs of our head are numbered. In the complexities and contradictions of who we are—who we really are, what we dream of, what we hope and fear, what delusions motivate us—we struggle towards a better self while remaining grateful for our individuality. Like Father Harry, we struggle to live out our lives in a spirit of self-acceptance, faith, hope, and charity.
Kevin Starr
California State Librarian Emeritus
Prologue
I have been one of those fortunate people who has really never had any insurmountable crisis and, therefore, have managed to remain happy most of my life.
It was 1968 when I wrote those words. I was a new young priest, fresh from Rome, teaching Preparation for Marriage to teenage Catholic girls in the Ozarks and working as a disc jockey for a rock & roll radio station on Route 66. Filled with the Holy Spirit and great love of the Vatican, the pope and the Church, I was eager to change the world.
I was a pioneer in the media ministry frontier opened by the Second Vatican Council. I’ll Never Tell was my weekly call-in show for teens. It was a first of its kind and a big sensation. I mixed clips from Billboard hits with upbeat non-denominational messages centering on the inevitable problems of youth. The phone would light up with calls from kids drawn by the music as well as the desire to be heard. It was a public yet anonymous confessional of the airwaves with a Top Ten soundtrack. They knew their parents weren’t listening and I was.
I was influenced by teenagers who trusted me and taught me how important it was to talk about it. Communication and relating in person were big then, unlike today where we all have private devices with pictures to share our thoughts and plans. I was impressed with how much I could do using the tools of mass media. I lived and loved rock & roll music and found a way to use it on the radio and television. I’ll Never Tell launched a career that I’m grateful to say has lasted to this day.
In fifty years as a priest and a broadcaster, I’ve had the remarkable good fortune to walk among the likes of Saint Pope John XXIII, James Brown and Joan Crawford. I’ve shared the stage with Bob Hope, the screen with Michael Douglas, shared the bill with the James Gang, the pulpit with the cast of Godspell and the altar with Fulton Sheen. I’ve lived in world capitals—Rome, New York, San Francisco—but I came from a small town in Missouri (never really grew up there) on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was a town made up of dirt and animal farmers trying to adjust to sidewalks, pavement and quasi-city politics.
At age fourteen I left home for seminary training. My Catholic family was very supportive except for my sister who read the daily schedule and decided I wouldn’t last a week. Of course, I didn’t know all that it would entail. I thought I would be married within five years of my ordination in 1964. The Second Vatican Council was that breath of fresh air that we all needed for the Church.
It’s important you know that I saw the change and am looking forward to going back to where we were going fifty years ago. Pope Francis has renewed my hope and trust in the Vatican and is beginning to open the treasure chest of the Church, not filled with gold, frankincense and myrrh but rather with a rich tradition of helping those who cannot help themselves, of reaching out to those who might have made bad choices along the way and given them a new lease on life in their present relationships.
After fifty years, not a lot has changed. We now have married priests but they are all from other Christian denominations. For us Romans, celibacy rules! I’m sure it will change the minute I begin to croak. Someone will rattle on about how the first pope, Peter, was such a good man and how much he loved his mother-in-law. I’ll die with a smile on my face.
Part I
Formation
O Lord, you have probed me and you know me: you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
Psalms 139:1-2
If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.
Francis of Assisi
1. Life on the Mississippi
IT WAS THE THIRD OF JUNE, 1939, and the heat and humidity both were in the 80s. Our little red brick house was stifling when I took my first breath. As I emerged from the womb onto the kitchen table, the air became even more liquid. My pee-pee exploded all over the birth attendant, my cousin Marvine, who delighted in telling that story until the day she died. Missouri people, at least the ones in my family, were like that. Years later when I was ordained as a Catholic priest, Marvine laid claim to being my first baptism. Oblivious to the embarrassment it would cause me, she related the story during the banquet at the Holiday Inn that followed my first solemn Mass in my hometown. All hope for a dignified celebration hee-hawed right out the window.
My beautiful mother doted on me. At the urging of my aunt Armella, she even entered me in a contest when I was two. Few in the family were surprised and none expressed it when I was proclaimed “Prettiest Baby in Cape Girardeau.” After all, I had inherited my mother’s looks.
I was my parents’ last child. My brothers and sister were already in school by the time I was born, so I was the baby to all of them. During the war years I remember quite well my family giving up their sugar on breakfast cereal, to give to me, because I had such a sweet tooth at that age. I was the first in our family to attend a kindergarten and there I distinguished myself for being a bit of an extrovert. I had the main part in a play put on for the parents. I got a lot of attention from my family, although sometimes the boys treated me more like a puppy. They taught me to swim by standing on opposite sides of the river and coaxing me across. As soon as I would reach one bank, I was tossed back in toward the other brother. It was an exhausting process and my little legs finally gave out. Charlie was talking to a buddy and didn’t notice me going under. Johnny dove in and pulled me up sputtering and gasping. They never talked about what happened, but both were proud that I’d learned to swim.
Hot summer days in southern Missouri often went right on into the night. There was very little shade for shelter in the daytime and at night it seemed even hotter because what might have been a breeze disappeared. Shortly after supper Dad would inform the family that he was going for beers. Mom would decline the generous offer as she rarely had a beer, wine or any spirits. The older kids preferred their own friends, so Dad would take me. We’d walk the six blocks to Broadway to settle on a stool where the floor was covered with peanut shells, stale beer and popcorn that you dipped out of the machine with a coffee can from Folgers.
You couldn’t beat Jones’ Walk-In for down home atmosphere. There was no music, no entertainment, no particular draw except the idea of a beer oasis in the sweltering Midwestern Sahara. Of course, I got the four-ounce root beer that was served in a frosty mug just like the big beers guys like my dad had. I can still recall going back to the popcorn machine with my Folgers coffee can for a refill. It was free and salty so you could drink that much more. What a treat for a kid who was five or six or seven. No one asked me to leave the room or give up my stool for someone who was going to purchase a beer for a quarter knowing my root beer cost a nickel. If I had been older, I’m sure I would have developed calluses on my elbows those hot summer nights.
“Let’s have another, Jonesy!” was the refrain up and down the bar. Dad would never have more than three beers but by then my little tummy was stretched like a camel tent in the desert wind. Two root beers and multiple coffee cans of popcorn made for lots of activity on those hot summer nights.
On other nights he would say after dinner, “Son, get in the truck. I’m going to buy you some candy.” We would stop at a drive-in liquor store whose approach was in an alley with the window on the passenger side. So I would hand the money to the man for a pint of peppermint Schnapps and a package of Sen-Sen, a black licorice kind of hard seed that was supposed to hide the smell of alcohol. After the purchase we would drive a bit by the Mississippi River with the windows rolled down. My dad would have a swig now and again and I would suck on the little black “candies.” What a guy, my dad!
Today, we have all kinds of descriptions of people who are in various states of intoxication from alcohol. There are stories about people and from people who are working hard to overcome the disease. When I was a kid, I never knew if my dad was an alcoholic or not. I would say not, but he did enjoy his drink. I remember a few times when Mother suffered because of his staying too long at the saloon after work. He never drank that much at home. It was only after Dad died that my cousin Theon, just back from the Korean War and living in our basement, was the first to make a public case of it. He discovered an empty bottle here and an empty bottle there stuck in the rafters. He was searching for a place to hide his own empties and the rafters were full. Mom pretended she didn’t know. For a guy who worked as hard as Bill Schlitt, this was little recompense.
My dad owned a garage. He was a mechanic all his life and a good one. His shop was filled with old farm vehicles that every stubborn German in southern Missouri refused to take to a professional because they were holding on to the first dollar they ever made and also because, as fixer-uppers, they knew that a piece of baling wire and an old rag could hold anything together. (Duct tape wasn’t around yet.)
My dad used to say, “Man doesn’t bring anything, can’t expect anything.” Years later studying in Rome, I was surprised to come across a Latin proverb, “Ex nihilo nihil fit,” that echoed my dad’s wisdom. “Out of nothing comes nothing.”
Dad had some really great expressions. Not sure I should relate them, but I know he’s in heaven and wouldn’t want me to hold back. One was a simple description I always looked forward to because it made me laugh. It had to do with someone who might have been hit by the ugly stick during life.
“My butt would make that guy a good Sunday face,” Dad would say.
Sunday was an important day in our family and we always put on our best when it came time to go to church. It only seemed natural for Dad to know how important a Sunday face was to a person.
Then there was a guy who used to walk by the garage who was short in stature. That is, vertically challenged. He was a pal of my dad’s. After he had passed by and only his rear was showing, Dad would remark, “Oughtta sue the city.”
“What for?” I would say.
“For building the sidewalk so close to his butt.”
Then he would light up another Lucky Strike, cough a few times, and return to that dirty, greasy, smelly, unhealthy work that was his livelihood.
There was another man who walked by the garage every day on his way to the saloon. Dad called him Horse Piss Hank. Hank was quite proud of his identity. When questioned why the strange handle, he would launch into a ten-minute tirade about how his father could make real beer, beer that you could taste, beer that would lighten your spirits, beer that was filling and fulfilling. “All of this stuff they sell at the saloon is only horse piss.” Most people in town knew his name and that his father went out of business shortly before prohibition ended.
Nicknames were not uncommon in those days in Missouri. They were usually descriptive but not always kind. In grade school it was “Peach” for the girls and “Fuzz” for the boys. Today fuzz is a moniker for law enforcement. Some people have fuzz busters in their cars to alert them when the Highway Patrol might be in the neighborhood. I present this as a sidebar just to show how names, even nicks, can be taken way out of context and leave us searching for a deeper meaning to life and who we are. Here’s how I got my nickname.
So I’m in the General Garage. That was the name of the shop my father owned and operated and where my brothers worked. A big truck rolled in with carburetor problems. It was loaded with freshly picked peaches from the nearby orchards on their way to market. Barefoot, no shirt and in my little short pants, I climbed up the back of the truck and launched myself into this pile of ripe fruit. I don’t know how much I ate or how long I ate but sleep came over me. I awoke suddenly on the highway headed across the Mississippi River for Illinois.
Immediately, I began crying and screaming for help. The driver of the truck was so pleased that his engine was running again and he wouldn’t be late for his cargo to be unloaded. It was a steamy summer day and fortunately his windows were down and he heard my screams. As the truck rumbled off the asphalt to a dusty stop, I could see a pickup truck in the distance roaring toward us with the bright sign on the top, “General Garage.” The screaming subsided, the tears dried up and little Harry, aka Peach Fuzz, climbed out of the truck and jumped into the pickup eager to return to the safety of his family.
All the way back, I scratched and scratched and drove my nails into every piece of exposed flesh. The itching was fierce and prolonged. There was no spray or comforting aloe to remove the ever-present fuzz from the peaches that had invaded every part of the skinny skin that I had at that time. I could get no relief except from my two older brothers scolding me for getting into some strange man’s truck.
Fortunately I was safe, and more importantly, they actually missed me and instinctively knew I must be among the fuzzy confines of the peaches. Back in the garage they hosed me off and then soaped me and hosed me off again.
To my brothers, I was lost. For me, it was a frightening ride for a little kid in a truck headed for who knows where. We all feel lost at one time or another. We need to find a place, our place, a place in life. When we find it, we can rejoice with the widow who swept her floor until she found the coin, or the Alzheimer’s patient who discovered his glasses in the fridge, or when you finally got to the bottom of your purse and, yes, there were your keys.
Peach Fuzz discovered at the age of five that his big brothers Charlie and Johnny really did love him, missed him and no matter how much they laughed about calling him Peach Fuzz they knew he was worth the rescue.
Some Sundays in the summertime, Dad would drive with Mother and me to visit the country relatives a few miles away in New Hamburg.
“Keep the noise outside,” my dad would say.
It was my own high-pitched teeny voice annoying my father. It was coming from the backseat of that old Dodge we had and so, with the windows wide open, I would oblige Dad and stick out my head. I took to the air chattering on like a talk show host describing the barns, the fields, the other cars whizzing by—makes, models, colors and, more than once, the year they were made. After all, I was the son of an auto mechanic and it was impressive to know these things. I never thought it would come in handy on a radio show decades later when the tape failed or the record didn’t start at the right time and you had to vamp. Interesting word for maintaining sound or noise when the prospect of dead air was just unacceptable. Dad would simply want my noise outside.
“And lock the door so you don’t fall out,” he’d add. “We don’t want to lose you.”
A lifelong Gemini, my inner broadcaster had signed on and “Father Harry” was hot on his heels.
I was in the second grade when I took my first holy communion. I still have a picture of our group on the steps of St. Mary’s Cathedral after the ceremony. We boys were all dolled up in our white suits and white shoes. The girls had little veils and cute little white dresses. These could be handed down from child to child in large families. We were given a prayer book for children and a rosary, black for the boys, white for the girls. I honestly believe that this was the first serious recognition that I had of my faith and especially my belief that Jesus was present in the bread that I took on my tongue and swallowed.
Sister Mary Christy taught me about Jesus in the Eucharist. She did a good job because even today when I take communion I remind myself that it is, “My Lord and my God,” the words she taught me to say when I was seven. God would be part of me and I would be carrying the Savior who carried the world. It was that deep and real for me. Sister Christy made it last.
I think my habit of going to Mass in the morning throughout grade school was motivated by the sacrament every bit as much as it was by the doughnuts and milk that we got for a dime after it was over. There are five-dollar definitions but simply put a sacrament is a sign, instituted by Jesus Christ, to make us holy. The matter for the sacrament was bread and wine. The form was the same words I’ve said over and over for the past fifty years as a priest, “This is my body. This is my blood. Do this in memory of me.”
My early childhood in elementary school was filled with, “Oh, isn’t he cute! He’s the little brother of John and Charlie Schlitt.” They were star pupils and athletes in high school by then, but many of my teachers had also taught them. My only crisis in grade school was to discover that someone did not like me. I think one of the few times I have ever cried in my life was to find out that I was not the most popular boy on the playground. I used to spend hours worrying about this and trying to remedy situations where I was ill at ease with someone.
Back to that little red brick house where I was born. It’s now an accountant’s office owned by Charlie Joe Herbst. He and I became friends in the first grade at St. Mary’s and went to school together for eight years until I left for the seminary. As a boy he raised rabbits in his backyard and when the great tornado of 1949 hit Cape Girardeau, it wiped out his entire rabbitry. I recall going around the neighborhood the next morning with buddies from school picking up dead rabbits. We built a huge fire in Charlie Joe’s yard and burned their furry little corpses. It was one of the saddest experiences I had up to that point in my life. Since all the guys were Catholic, we offered a prayer. I led. Charlie Joe was devastated, but his family was safe with only minor damage to their home.
That tornado was one of the most brutal storms Southeast Missouri ever endured. It killed twenty-three people and over 100 more were injured. There was no warning. It struck just before seven o’clock on a Saturday evening in late May. We were lucky my dad was home from work. He didn’t like the way the sky looked and the stillness was unsettling. Dad ushered us into the basement, all except my brother Charlie. He was home on leave from the Army and out in his little green Ford looking for his buddy Jake. As the twister approached, the storm intensified. The gullywash of rain and the roar of the wind and the hail beating against the glass were truly frightening. The whole family was concerned about my brother but no one said anything. Suddenly the basement door flew open and there was Charlie. He never found his pal.
After three days, everyone except my brother had given up. “Old Jake is too mean to die from a little wind,” he persisted.
Workers dug into Jake’s basement, piled high with bricks and covered with boards, dirt and debris. Much to the surprise of the whole community—and to the pride of my brother—they found the young man alive. Jake became a legend in that little town.
Cape Girardeau was defined by the legendary Mississippi flowing at its side. A rock promontory at a bend in the river sixty miles below St. Louis enticed an explorer named Jean Baptiste de Girardot to establish a trading post there in 1733. Meriwether Lewis explored the area seventy years later and wrote about “temperate, laborious and honest” Germans. That would describe my ancestors, who arrived via steamboat from New Orleans in the mid-1800s. The weather, the people and the economy all flowed from that river.
I had a lot of freedom as a boy in Cape, except when it came to Donny Werner. He was the Lutheran neighbor kid my mom didn’t want me playing with because of his religion. My religion was that strict. On Saturdays I used to ride my bike out Perry Road to see my friend John Pickens. He was tall and skinny and predictably nicknamed Slim. I didn’t realize how poor his family was at the time. All I knew was that they had goats and goats were kind of cute if they didn’t attack you, nor if you had to smell them. They were all over the yard and into almost everything. The yard had all kinds of trash available and we would tinker with old throw-away stuff. You couldn’t really break anything, it had been broken before and had time to rust, rot and become even more of an eyesore. I was a kid. I didn’t notice.
John and I joined the Boy Scouts together. We got merit badges together and camped together. The first time I ever went away from home by myself was to Camp Don Bosco. Of course, it was a Catholic camp somewhere near St. Louis and John Pickens was with me (thanks to Dad and Mother). There were tents and sleeping bags and crafts, horseback riding and swimming. They had a pool. After I said good-by to my parents and the beginning jitters left me, John and I shlepped off to make ourselves known, popular, cool (not a word that was used by me or any of my peers in the day). Being away from home for the first time is supposed to be frightening. I took to it like a fish to water. After a couple of days there, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
My parents came from a long line of Catholics. They fostered my faith with daily devotions, nightly prayers and Sunday Mass. They introduced me to the concept of heaven and hell at a tender age. I had no doubt about my desired destination, but was not as clear about the route. All that changed when I was ten. A Maryknoll priest came to our fifth-grade classroom one day and showed us a filmstrip about missionaries helping people in Africa. Afterward he challenged us to do something for others. I’ll never forget his opening statement:
“If you want to help someone, be a priest. You don’t have to go out looking to do good, it comes to you.”
I wanted to be able to help people when I grew up. I was told that if I helped other people I would go to heaven. Serving people would give me the pass I needed for eternal life.
I nurtured this idea in the back of my mind for the remaining years in grammar school. I never told my teachers for fear of getting that extra pat on the head, which would make me unpopular with my fellow schoolmates.
I followed the advice of Father John Martin, Maryknoll Missionary. In my fifty years of priesthood, I have always found it to be true.
I suppose it works for many vocations but in the priesthood, it’s a done deal. I’m not talking about confessions or counseling. I’m talking about all kinds of questions that come to a priest on an everyday basis, like:
“Father, is there a hell?”
“Where will I go when I die?”
“Will I make her pregnant by being naked?”
“If God loves us, how could He send us to hell?”
“Is it wrong to put my mother in an old folks’ home?”
“Why would God allow a tsunami if He is all merciful?”
I could fill a couple more pages with examples of questions that come to me from friends, family, strangers, people who see you in a black suit and a Roman collar and remark how comfortable they feel sitting next to you on an airplane. Or how uneasy. The opposite is also true. There are people who get nervous when a guy is in a black suit with a collar.
I’ve often told the story of how the plane would begin to wiggle and then go up and down and it was obvious that we were in some strong winds. The captain would say buckle up and we’ll try another altitude. A really frightened flight attendant would notice my Roman collar and ask if I were a priest.
“Yes,” said I, “but a nervous one at this time.”
“Could you do something religious?” she pleaded.
So I told her to empty the peanut basket and have a seat and I would take up a collection. The story still works for me and most people who hear it.
I have a small plaque on my wall awarded to me by one of my nephews, which reads “Champion Fronabarger Award for Successful Crappie Fishing in Texas.” Fronabarger was a professional photographer who worked for the Cape Girardeau newspaper. Mr. Fron’s claim to fame was to fish close to anyone who was catching fish. As soon as the person would bring in the fish, Fronabarger would be ready with his pole and bait and drop in on the exact spot where the person just brought in a fish. My dad made him famous among fishermen by yelling at anyone practicing this greedy form of fishing, “Hey, you’re doing a fronabarger on me.”
There are lots of fishermen around who pull the old fronabarger routine. I guess that’s why I have an award on my wall.
There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to be successful. All of us are eager to follow in the footsteps of someone who has found the right spot, or as they say in some fishing families the honey hole, where you are not only expected to get a bite but to catch fish. To remove ourselves from fishing, there are other kinds of sure things, honey holes if you will, that come to us in life. We only have to watch TV or listen to the radio and the answer is there for everyone. We should all be perfect if only we would follow this advice. We’d manage to have everything we’ve ever wanted (but didn’t need) and everything we needed (but didn’t know could be had).
I didn’t fronabarger anyone in my choice to become a priest. But along the way, I’ve seen a number of people waiting in the wings hoping for the success of the person on stage so that they too could follow in their footsteps. Even though I felt that calling after watching the film in the fifth grade, it took lots of people along the way to show good examples for me to know that success breeds success.
Come follow me.
Jesus’ disciple Matthew didn’t have anyone showing him the way but he heard a call and responded accordingly.
2. Baby Priest
I HAD NEVER HEARD of anything like it. Music Appreciation class. For a fourteen-year-old boy wanting to be a priest, thinking that he’ll be practicing the sacraments, saying Mass, forgiving sins and marrying people, this was way out of line. It was not at all what I expected from the seminary.
The class was taught by Father Mike McHugh who was young, enthusiastic about his musical knowledge and ability, and looked at the likes of me as a real challenge. To think that he could take a boy from the sticks whose Hit Parade consisted of Little Jimmy Dickens warbling “Taters never did taste good with chicken on the plate” and teach him to appreciate all kinds of movements in classical strings—without lyrics! Impossible, but worth the challenge.
It could not have been more than the second or third class when, after concluding his remarks about Rachmaninoff and before placing the needle on a 331/3 rpm disc, Father Mike startled us.
“Boys, you may smoke in this class.”
It was in the auditorium and there were ashtrays about, but freshmen in high school being invited to smoke? Today we would have used the expression, “I wonder what Father Mike is smoking!”
We were 114 strong, divided into three groups. There were day-hops and boarders. Our Group C was about fifty-fifty, guys who went home every night to their families and those of us who lived there. Johnny Grimes was sitting next to me. He was a very smart kid who was also a good athlete and a fun guy to be around.
Father Mike: “Those of you who have never smoked might want to give it a try.”
Man, if my mother knew this was being encouraged in the seminary I would have been yanked even though my dad was a chain-smoker all his life.
Father Mike: “If you need a cigarette, borrow one from a buddy.”
Johnny Grimes was the man. He had a pack of Viceroys. We all lit up. I didn’t see anyone in the class without a fag. That’s what cigarettes were called back then. Once the auditorium was flooded with smoke and several of us were coughing and spewing saliva that we didn’t know we had, we heard the scratch of the needle as it was removed from the LP.
Father Mike: “OK boys, take note. Some of you are coughing and trying hard to breathe normally. Others are not sure what to do. Still others are embarrassed or thinking that your parents would never allow you to do this at home.”
“Have you guys noticed me? I cough a lot and never seem to have a clear throat, even though I teach music and so like to sing. Look at my fingers. They’re almost yellow. Note my teeth and how they are stained with nicotine. My breath is always smoker’s breath. I urge you boys, before you become men, to give up the smokes before they become habitual. You could become like me. I’m not proud that I smoke. I’m not even happy about it. But I have to do it. It’s a bad habit.”
Slowly I watched the smoke spiraling from my Viceroy with the filtered tip and the long stately white stem. I put it out. Johnny Grimes is laughing at me.
That was my first, last and final attempt at smoking. I never learned to smoke cigarettes (nor appreciate classical music).
Now and again, people will ask who the most influential person in my life was. For me, that would depend on the time I was influenced. As a student in secondary school, it had to be DJ Ryan.
Father Don Ryan was a young Vincentian priest from Chicago who had sparse red hair, mostly freckles and a dome. He was a wonderful basketball player and came to the gym at odd times to shoot around with me. Sports were and always will be an integral part of my life. Basketball was king. I had been voted most valuable player in Cape in the eighth grade. Thanks to a good coach and my older brothers who both played very well, I was inspired to overshadow them with my roundball skills. Actually, I was pretty good as a freshman but went downhill after that as I never grew to be any taller than five feet eleven inches. I could dunk a softball and a volleyball but never could get the orange ball over the rim. Father DJ, as we called him, admired my athletic ability and my country boy honesty. He was a special friend of mine, and also my superior and model. I was flattered that he felt he could share his time with me and enjoy the competition of shooting a roundball at a hoop above us both.
Most of my classmates were from St. Louis and I was teased at great lengths because of my accent. I was unaccustomed to the styles in clothing and the latest fads in music and thus began my new life as a zero personality. I compensated rapidly by becoming the best athlete in the class. I made the varsity teams as a freshman both in baseball and track. In basketball I played as a regular. I soon became a hero and my classmates overlooked my country ways.
Father DJ introduced me to my first fancy restaurant with tablecloths and mystifying pieces of cutlery and taught me how to be nice to those who waited on us. Menus were a new addition to my way of life. What I had learned as a busboy at the Sunny Hill Dairy did not apply to an eating establishment with starters, soups or salads, entrees and dessert. I can still see the place with all the dark wood, with pewter plates and cups, and the never completed question, “What would you like?”
I had no idea as the names were not fried chicken, fried this and fried that, followed by something else fried. From an early age until I entered the seminary, I was hardly aware of any other form of food. Now to be fair to my mother and family, there were other foods but not that I liked or wanted. I wander!
Father DJ ushered me into manhood by removing as many of the rough edges from a country boy as he could and replacing them with simple courtesy and manners that I had not fully grasped at home.
I had only been at St. Louis Preparatory Seminary for two months when my dad, at the age of fifty, was diagnosed with lung cancer. He’d long been a true believer in L.S.M.F.T. (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco). And his years working as a mechanic without ventilation, especially in the winter months when it was cold and the garage door could not be opened, were an oncologist’s nightmare. There was no opportunity to filter out the carbon monoxide from all the other fumes permeating the cold winter air. There was little choice. You either kept the heat from the coal-burning stove and the hot engines in, or opened the doors so your fingers would freeze and you couldn’t handle the tools you needed to repair cars. It was a brutal occupation.
As a mechanic, he cured me of any desire to follow in his footsteps. Night after night, I had watched him scrubbing his hands with gasoline to remove the grease and grime, only to smell like gasoline as he sat down at the table to spread the jam Mom had made and eat the fried pork skins or the grease off the cooked pork loin that had been in the pot most of the afternoon.
I played dumb in that garage for so many years. Believe me, it wasn’t that difficult. I searched for hours for left-handed wrenches and kinds of hammers that never existed. I broke off so many spark plug heads that it cost my dad for me to work in his garage. When the idea and the call of priesthood came along, I didn’t have to think long or hard about what I would do in life or how I would spend it. I knew it would not be in the car repair business.
Bill had exploratory surgery in November of 1953 at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, not far from the seminary. Father DJ took me there to see him. The surgeons opened him up, saw the disease and said he might live six weeks to six months. It was unknown to me at the time that a person could die that way. I thought they could always cut something out or replace something, just like this man did in his garage work for so many years. A freshman in high school with a small-town knowledge of medicine could not be expected to fully grasp such dire consequences.
Seminarians were not allowed to leave during the school year (except for the day-hops who lived at home). Father DJ had obtained special permission for me to see my dad at Barnes and twice more in Cape on weekends that spring, but those were extraordinary occasions. I went home in February for my uncle Leo’s funeral. He was my dad’s last brother. As a seminarian, the family considered me almost a priest and I was asked to lead the prayers. I was so nervous I skipped part of the Hail Mary. It happened not once or twice but over a couple of decades of the beads. Some of my relatives remarked that it was the fastest rosary they had ever recited at a wake. I was already a hero for my brevity in prayer.
In March, I went home when my dad’s last sister, Coletta, died. It seemed like every time I went home there was a funeral. I remember my dad sitting silently in a chair, waiting. There was nothing more to do.
Father DJ was close to Sister Bertha who was the Daughter of Charity in charge of the nursing school at nearby DePaul Hospital. My sister, Della, was in training there. Because my dad was suffering from cancer of the lung and was given only a short time to live, Sister Bertha made sure that the little boy from the country would have some perks that he might not expect. In June when I turned fifteen, a large birthday cake with my name on it appeared at the table in the seminary.
The twelve guys I had to share it with were in awe as I knew no one in St. Louis except, of course, Sister Bertha who made sure that Father DJ would get the cake to me and allow me to celebrate with my freshmen classmates.
I completed my first year at the seminary and returned home to Cape for the last months of my dad’s life. I always felt good about him in those dying days of summer. We used to pray the rosary and the prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus every day. He still referred to me as ach du kleine engel (oh you little angel).
His parents had been first-generation Americans and he was the youngest of their seven children. All of them were musically inclined. They sang and played tunes late into the night. Dad played the fiddle and the harmonica and whistled quite well, especially when the fish were sleeping and I was complaining about flies and mosquitoes, itchy weeds and one soda for the entire day. I don’t remember him singing very much, but then his life was so short.
I only had my dad for fifteen years, but he made a wonderful impression on me. He probably drank too much but I never noticed. He was hard working with no formal schooling beyond the eighth grade, but he was bright and could figure things out on his own.
My most horrifying experience was waking up to him screaming, “Hit me! Hit me, I can’t breathe! Knock me out!”
I was skinny and weak and not able to make a fist big enough to do the trick. My mother said to run down the block and get my older brother. He was big and strong and could knock Dad senseless. My father was choking on the liquid wrath that his lungs were producing and it would stick in his throat so that he could not get his breath. After watching him beat his head to no avail against the headboard, my brother reared back and punched him in the face. He fell from the wood to the mattress and there he lie. It only took a few seconds and he spit up the blockage and once again could breathe. His eyes were watering and tearful and he rubbed his jaw and thanked my brother for a successful blow.
Bill drew his last labored breath at six o’clock on a Sunday evening at St. Francis Hospital. It was August 22, 1954, and the Catholic feast day of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. His parents and all of his brothers and sisters were already dead. My mother and two of his sisters-in-law were present when he passed.
I had been at the hospital most of that day but I was fifteen and feeling restless. That afternoon I talked my mother out of twenty-five cents to go see Francis Joins the WACS. It starred Donald O’Connor and a talking mule. The price at that time was ten cents for admission and some kind of strange tax was added to make it fourteen cents. After viewing this very funny but pointless movie, I returned to the hospital to find my father’s bed empty and my mother in the hall weeping. I was much too young to comprehend what had just happened. No more difficulty in breathing. No more pain. No more wondering when and where and what will be after I’m gone. His death was an answer to our prayers but as his little angel, it hit me hard.
Father DJ was present at my dad’s funeral and was always there for me when I had no clue of what might be happening. I respected him more than I knew how to love him or even appreciate all that he was able to do for me as a young kid.
Having to decide whether I should then remain home with mother or go back to school was not a tough decision as one of my father’s dying wishes was for me to become a priest. Noble though I was in making the offer to remain with my mother, neither she nor the others in the family would hear of it. It was at this point that I decided to make the best of my life.
Two weeks later, I returned to the seminary and began my sophomore year. It was a relief to be back among my classmates and teachers but I was sad to leave my mother alone. She was fifty years old and for the first time Theckla Schlitt was living by herself. Both my brothers were married and my sister was in her last year of nursing school. Not one to give way to her emotions, my mother kept busy volunteering at St. Mary’s, babysitting for the grandchildren and keeping the books for the General Garage, which my brother John had taken over that summer. I didn’t see Mother again until Christmas.
The prevailing wisdom at the seminary was that separation from the outside world minimized temptations and kept teenage boys focused on their vocation. Reading material was restricted, visitors were not permitted, not even family, and seminarians were not allowed to talk to “externs” meaning people from the outside. The emphasis was on the internal community where we had the priesthood in common. The model was drawn from Jesus and his apostles and, like the Twelve, we recognized our privilege and the corresponding responsibilities. It was our duty to prayerfully and honestly discern whether our calling was true. Illusions or false hopes didn’t do anybody any favors and could be harmful to ourselves, our classmates and the Church. The priests who were our teachers and advisors became like family.
During this time, I became very friendly with the dean of students. I recall lying to him once then the next day apologizing. This sign of genuine country honesty was something he hadn’t witnessed very often. It hurt me, but it did so much to affect me that I will never forget it. I started to excel, except academically where I was a solid B-, and was elected president of the student body.
Father John Martin, M.M., who first opened my eyes to becoming a Catholic priest when I was ten, came to the seminary on a regular basis. For a while before he was assigned to Rome, he was my confessor. Confession, or the Sacrament of Reconciliation, was a weekly activity for me all through my seminary training. It was a means of grace and a reliable measure as to how you were progressing in your spiritual life. It was also a relief of conscience from the terrible temptations of the flesh.
I didn’t have a driver’s license, I had never been on a date and I had never been kissed, but I was becoming a young man. In many ways, I was still a baby when I left home. By going directly from elementary school to living full-time in the seminary, I never had the chance to experience girls.
There was a little pink pamphlet that had all the answers about sex. The guys and I referred to it as Modern Youth and Plumbing but the real title was Modern Youth and Chastity