Warning: This column contains asterisks, exclamation points, pound signs and other symbols denoting a few fairly impressive curse words. If you’re easily shocked by phrases like “@#$!!” and “son of a $#%&!!,” you should probably skip ahead now to the sports section or comics page.
Also, it may seem to some that I’m poking fun at priests here. I’m not. I was raised in a home that boasted framed portraits of the Pope, John Kennedy and Jesus (in that order); priest-bashing is not in my repertoire. But if you’re the sort appalled by the mere notion that priests may occasionally fall short of perfection, please oh please, just give my column a pass this week; I’m far too delicate to field a lot of hate mail.
That said, I know the church has changed a lot in recent years and is no longer the stodgy, monolithic dinosaur it was (or seemed to be) when I was a kid attending St. Isidore Elementary School. Back then, our parish priests — one old (Father Czechowski or something equally Polish), one young (Father Pat or something equally Irish) — seemed nothing less than divine.
The nuns, who in those dark ages still served as teachers, encouraged this delusion and did everything in their power to indoctrinate us into the dogma that was old school Catholicism. So it was tough when, in fourth grade, I learned the truth about priests.
As a reward for having not driven any nuns crazy for an entire week (this was, for me, a major accomplishment) I was chosen — nun-speak for “drafted” — to help out in the rectory for an entire month. (For the unwashed heathens among you, a rectory is the home in which priests live.)
Serving there was a distinction usually reserved for goody-goody alter boys, so I felt appropriately honored. My duties consisted of arriving at the rectory before sunup and lugging in enough firewood that Father Czechowski could raise the sitting room’s temperatures to tolerable levels.
On some days, though by no means all, the Father treated me to a cup of hot cocoa once he had the fireplace blazing cheerily along. So it was that on one late December morning, just a few days before Christmas, I found myself perched on a footstool near the rectory’s fireplace, snow melting from my hair and eyelids as Father Czechowski prodded the embers with an ancient, iron poker.
Now, let me just reiterate, in those days we Catholic schoolboys held priests in the highest regard. The Bing Crosby movies alone had elevated the Fathers to near-mythical status in our eyes.
So I was more than a little surprised when Father Czechowski leapt back from the fire cradling his burned hand and exclaimed (get ready for the stylized profanity), “#$%!!! That @#$%!&!! fire is hotter than #@$!” followed closely by “Son of a @#$%!!.”
The Father had taken the Lord’s name in vain!!
He could not have shocked me more had he suddenly sprouted wings and flown off to Heaven. In fact, of the two scenarios, I would have considered the latter more likely.
Father Czechowski peered at me from beneath formidable, white eyebrows. “Forget you heard that,” he said.
For nearly 50 years, I did; until just now, I kept secret my knowledge that priests are people.
Coming up next week: you won’t believe what Soylent Green is made from.
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