Faith of My Father (and Mother)

I am sure that my adoptive parents meant to be obedient Catholics. However, I realize that they likely inherited their faith from their parents, and so on and so forth.

My adoptive father's Irish roots were strong influences. His father and brother, both NYC police officers both had large families and his Aunt whose care required investments of time, effort, and money from all sides of the family also kept the faith as expected. My Austrian maternal grandmother, whose German husband was a boxing champion and fled to America ahead of Hitler's rise to power, showed no particular commitment to religion, other than occasional weekly service. Her husband had passed five years before I came to be, so I have no memory of him.

As a result, it's not surprising that I learned absolutely nothing about the Roman Church from my youth at home. In fact, I cannot even remember EVER opening the single copy of the dusty Holy Bible that I remember sitting on the bookshelf by the front door.

I distinctly recall going to weekly Mass at St. Pius X Church and even recall fondly the few years I served as an altar boy. This was the early 1970s and the fallout of Vatican II had not yet settled into all places. I do not recall Latin Mass and as altar servers and we never dressed in anything but "Sunday best" dress clothes. The priests were a hotheaded Irishman (Fr. D) and a free-spirited Italian (Fr. B) who led to weekly "folk mass" - full of hippie felt banners, live guitar music, and more Kumbayas than you could shake a stick at. The part I remember most of all were the baskets of sliced up powdered sugar donuts that were available after the end of the folk mass. I have sinced looked up Fr. B and find that his is still the beloved pastor of a large metropolitan area Church. I am happy to have learned this. The Pastor (Fr. S) ruled with a bit of an iron hand, but in retrospect, he was probably an old-line conservative who felt a bit out of touch and more than a bit out of place as the pendulum of Vatican II reforms swung past reasonable and all the way to the extreme of liturgical abuses.

I remember well my first confession and first communion (actually, I recall the confession with more clarity than the communion). Like I said, I really wasn't sure what it was all about because my parents never spoke about the meaning of church, the basis for their faith, the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

The memories of joking and kidding around with the other altar servers in the sacristy before and after mass - those were some fun days. Occasionally, the fun spilled over INTO Mass, which was not ideal. There were several times that we were "shushed" by the Celebrant because we were giggling during the service. We have since been forgiven for those sins of our youth.

We used to flip for the right to carry the cross in the processional. We used to flip for everything. Loser usually ended up on the short end of the schedule - daily mass. During the summer, this meant getting to church at 7AM for 7:30 mass.

Such was the stuff of my youth.