Dear Diary: More Catholic than the Pope FM

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

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SATURDAY, FEB. 18, 2002

Dear Diary,

I am spitting mad.

The other week, as I told you, I somewhat got into it with a couple of the Pope FM powers that be over their planning to bar the Keys to the Kingdom teen-agers (the ones not on the air) from our chapel during the show. I was told it was just for one week, until the little darlings could be "instructed" in proper decorum before the Blessed Sacrament.

Well, tonight, the kids were supposed to be instructed. But still, before I left the station tonight, our "spiritual activities director" denied one teen-ager permission to go into the chapel when he asked, and then told several of the kids that they were requested to (again) stay out of the chapel during the show.

I find this outrageous and incredibly self-righteous. Absolutely outrageous, this telling ANYONE, without demonstrated cause, that they cannot enter into the presence of the living God. That IS what we Catholics believe about the Eucharist, right? That it is the living God? Christ incarnate?

TRUTH BE TOLD, most of these kids are a lot more pious than I am. Though the young volunteer producer of Keys to the Kingdom told me last week that she had to "yell" at one kid for going in the Pope FM chapel barefoot.

I barely restrained myself from telling her "So what? The best Jesus ever did in the footwear department during His earthly life were first-century flip-flops."

Dunno, maybe my revulsion and puzzlement at this rigidity and hyperdevotionalism has turned me into a squishy AmChurch goofus, but I figure Jesus cares more about what's in the kids' hearts than what's on their feet.

This is deeply weird.

And Lord forgive the plank in my own eye, but I told the missus this morning that if Flannery O'Connor were still alive, she'd be writing about our "spiritual activities director."

Furthermore, I offer the following prayer with total sincerity and considerable pain:

"Saints Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor, O precious barefoot Son of Man who had no home to lay Your sacred head . . . HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPP!!! Amen."

And "Oy veh!"