What we think is the right road
I am Catholic about an hour every week. The other 167 hours, I raise a family, have a job, and try to squeeze in a little relaxation. I admit I am not a saint. But I’m a decent husband, father, employee and golfer. Isn’t that enough?
But it’s the wrong road
In a word: no. It’s not enough. Here’s why: everything we do is, or should be, formed and informed by Christ and His Church. If we are Catholic only at the circumference but not at the core, we aren’t practicing the faith. In all we think, say and do, we ought to be quintessentially Catholic.
The very word Catholic means not only universal, but also in the respect to the whole. We can’t compartmentalize our faith and correctly say that we are observant Catholics. We should practice our faith even – maybe especially – when driving. The Catechism, for example, teaches us that we incur grave guilt when we speed (2290). We should thus be Catholic drivers!
Really? We should be Catholic all the time? Was that ever true of a certain time, place and people? Without getting into questions about medieval practices, permit a reminiscence about the 1950s. Space does not permit defense of, or necessary concessions about, some of these pieties and practices, and I understand (and freely grant) that there will be remarkably different reflections about them. My point is simply this:
As Catholic kids growing up in the public schools of small-town Massachusetts, pretty much everyone I knew
- Wore blessed medals
- Said the “Our Father” before classes (Catholics stopped before “Thine is the Kingdom,” and Protestants continued)
- Said the Pledge of Allegiance with mention of God (after 1954)
- Refused to eat meat on Fridays (and the public school cafeterias served fish that day)
- Made the sign of the cross when a hearse or ambulance went by
- Made the sign of the cross before basketball free throws and before going swimming
- Made the sign of the cross in the dirt with baseball bats before every at-bat
- Went to catechism classes every week
- Obtained parents’ signatures stating that he or she had learned the catechism lesson for that week
- Observed Ember and Rogation days
- Got splashed with holy water by our mothers at the start of thunderstorms
- Memorized the Latin before becoming altar boys (the Confiteor and Suscipiat were tough), and learned the proper movements during Mass
- Noticed that about 85-90 percent of the parish attended every Sunday Mass
- Referred to the priest as, say, “Father O’Connor,” not “Father Tom.”
- Always said, “Yes, Father,” or “No, Father” when responding to a priest – and never “yeah” or “nah.”
- Dangled a rosary from the rearview mirror (absolutely a wrong practice, by the way)
- Had a plastic statue of Jesus on the dashboard
- Bowed our heads when passing Catholic churches (adoring Jesus in the tabernacle)
- Fasted after midnight until receiving Holy Communion at Mass. (The fast was reduced to three hours in 1957, and then to one hour in 1964.)
- Were urged by the Legion of Decency not to watch certain movies, and the parish as a whole pledged themselves to obey that request.
Some of these pieties were commendable, some perhaps less so. There can be honest differences of opinion about them. My point, though, is that the Catholic faith permeated our lives, and we knew we were Catholic.
The movies portrayed wholesome, courageous priests, and secular television carried Bishop Fulton Sheen, whom millions watched every week. Many entertainers and athletes were Catholic, and they were not shy about proclaiming their faith. There are stories (which I can’t verify) that singer Perry Como always held a small crucifix in his hand when he sang. And everybody knew who “Father Chuck O’Malley” was. Boston Red Sox centerfielder Jimmy Piersall made the sign of the cross in the dirt with his bat before stepping up to the plate, and so did most Catholic Little Leaguers. Every Catholic rooted for Notre Dame, directly or indirectly.
My mother was the proud daughter of an Irish Catholic millworker who had emigrated from Ireland, and she was almost in tears of joy in 1956, when the Democrats nearly nominated John F. Kennedy as their vice presidential nominee with Adlai Stevenson again at the top of the ticket. Kennedy – an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts! Imagine! (Estes Kefauver of Tennessee finally got the VP nomination. Stevenson and Kefauver lost that year to Eisenhower and Nixon.)
There is, let me say it again, much that was troubling about the 1950s, even in the relatively halcyon Catholic world. It is easy to catalogue the sins and sorrows of the 1950s, but what awaited us 1950s kids were the 1960s and the 1970s, and many of us were carried away by the winds and ways of those immensely troubled days. Many of us, though, even in the darkest days, were still able to call to mind the words we had memorized from the Baltimore Catechism. In answer to the question about why God made us, we recalled: “to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.”
Those 22 words, engraved in our minds and on our hearts during the 1950s, helped to provide us with light, reason and ultimate destiny. The common practices and pieties of the faith in the 1950s reminded us that we were and are Catholic – and that we should try, by the grace of God, to act that way in all we do, even when going up to bat or driving on I-85.
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.