Dear Diary: Going to Eucharistic charm school

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. 9, 2002

Dear Diary,


A massive sex scandal (again) is upon the Church -- priests diddling CHILDREN, diddling TEENS, and bishops covering up the whole mess. It is too much to bear. For me, this may well end up being the final straw. I cannot bear this; I cannot bear AmChurch vapidity; I cannot bear "traditionalist" obsession with protocol above all.

If many are to persevere as Catholics, we are going to have to find a way to reconcile doctrine with the fact that many of those whom we are supposed to obey in matters of morals and faith possess neither. And these are the corrupt shepherds God supposedly has given us.

How, exactly, is a body supposed to get his mind around that? And the reality that the faction of the Church so concerned about the Church's eroding moral authority is the most prone to whistle in the graveyard when presented with the gravest erosion of that moral authority. How am I supposed to get my mind around that?

There were two great schisms over less serious stuff than this. I know there is precedent for similar kinds of corruption in the Church. But would there have BEEN a Church anymore had these previous fits of corruption taken place in the age of mass media and a disarmed Vatican?

God help me, I think the only way some superpious types retain their faith with such (apparent) serenity is that they are, on some level, deeply warped.

We had a staff meeting at Pope FM yesterday about the dedication of our Chapel of the Eternal Word this coming Monday. It was like being hurled back to Jansenism 1955.

Listen, I get upset about liturgical abuses. I cringe when I see women going up for communion with their cleavage falling out of their tops. I was apoplectic when I saw a college kid in the communion line on Good Friday with a "Coed Naked Volleyball" T-shirt on. And I came close to doing physical violence to kids at a "youth Mass" who couldn't stop acting up even during the consecration.

But it damned near enraged me to hear our station manager and volunteer "spiritual activities director" imply strongly that while genuflection on one knee is the Vatican requirement, it really doesn't go far enough. Thus, we should feel free to genuflect on both knees or prostrate ourselves when entering the chapel.

And I was sooooooooo encouraged to hear that I would be allowed to enter into the presence of my Lord and Savior only when properly attired. My usual blue jeans, I understand, are OK so long as they are "in good repair." But staff members are not to wear shorts in the chapel, even walking shorts, as we are to set an example for proper reverence.

Walking shorts are OK for visitors.

Our spiritual activities director then said how it dismays her to see kids in shorts at Mass at the boarding-school chapel near her house. Egad!!! I'm sorry, but when it's 95 or 100 degrees here, I wear nice shorts to Mass.

You know, I know people who work at that school, and I know the reputation of Father, and I know that any inappropriately dressed kid would be out of that church in a heartbeat.

But for me, the coup de grace, was when the powers that be decided that on Monday night, the kids in for Keys to the Kingdom will not be allowed into the chapel without adult supervision because they had not been instructed yet in proper chapel decorum. I objected in the strongest terms about denying them the opportunity to be in the Eucharistic presence, saying that if a kid went in there and -- out of ignorance -- wasn't sufficiently reverent, it couldn't be held against him. And if a kid were in there unsupervised and were willfully irreverent, that was a matter between him and God.

Furthermore, I said, suppose someone called into the show and had real problems. Should the kids not on the air be prevented from taking their prayers to the Real Presence?

"Jesus hears our prayers just as well wherever we are," said the spiritual activities maven. "They don't necessarily have to be in the chapel to pray."

I love it when people slow-pitch to Barry Bonds.

"Well," I said, "that would seem to beg the question of why exactly we have a chapel."

At that point, the boss decided that we needed to move on to other topics.

Of course.

Dear Diary: Why I almost quit Pope FM yesterday

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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WEDNESDAY, OCT. 31, 2001

Dear Diary,


I didn't mention one thing that hap-pened earlier in the day yesterday. Probably because I was still too all-out furious about it.

The background (as if I didn't know, but humor me, Me):

We've been having trouble with the reliability of our teen-age hosts of Holy Spirit Rock, a music show that follows the Saturday rerun of Keys to the Kingdom. When they don't show, I've been substituting the computer-generated voices of John (an American PC) and his "lawfully-wedded co-processor" the British Marsha. I use a couple of text-to-speech demos on the Web to generate the voices.

Actually, I think John and Marsha are better than the "organics." I have a great deal of fun putting the show together -- actually, I put together the human-hosted show, too, by voice tracking the kids and then assembling the show with the music, bumper music, "shotgun" show IDs and sound effects. And it's commercial-radio slick, too.

But something happened that really, really pissed me off and damn near caused me to quit on the spot:

Yesterday, in a production meeting with the general manager, Mary said she was about to cancel the show if the kids didn't take it more seriously. I told her I thought the show was an important outreach to youth and to cancel the present hosts, not the show, if they didn't clean up their act.

I added that I thought the show had great potential and eventually could be syndicated nationwide.

She said youth programming wasn't "a priority" at this time, and that she didn't want me spending so much time putting Holy Spirit Rock together. She's starting a daily series of five-minute reflections by local priests, and wants me to concentrate on stuff like that.

I responded that I was seriously worn out and burned out by the long hours and constant technical crises, and that doing Holy Spirit Rock was the only thing keeping me engaged right now. She repeated that HSR wasn't a priority, and that people wanted to hear their priests on the air.

Besides, she added, "youth don't contribute to the station" monetarily.

Well, Me, I've always heard the expression "seeing red," but I thought it was just that . . . an expression (but, once again, ah reckon you knew that). But I think I really did "see red" yesterday when Mary said what she said.

It took every bit of my strength to control myself. I almost bit a hole in my tongue to keep from calling her a g**damn Pharisee and quitting.

Instead, I repeated that youth programming was important and that all the production work was getting done, despite the time I spent on Holy Spirit Rock. The rest of the day I alternated between intense anger and being near tears. I could not believe what I had just heard.

Then again, maybe I'm just naive.

Today, the development guy and I were talking about youth programming, and how many experienced media professionals had been offering to help out with things like Keys to the Kingdom. He agreed with me totally about last night's KTK blunder, and then I told him what Mary told me about kids "not contributing" to Pope FM.

This guy is the best money hustler I've ever seen, and his jaw literally dropped. His expression was one of total shock. He said "If youth programming isn't a priority, what is? That's the future." He couldn't believe she really meant what she said. Then he urged me to stick to my guns and keep hammering away on the subject.

But you know, it's not just Pope FM. There's a pattern of the Church as a whole not committing the attention and resources to its youth. And if you look at every other Catholic radio station in the country, I'll bet that what little Pope FM does in that area (generally badly) is pretty close to average nationwide (as far as radio goes . . . on the Web, there's AlphaMegaRock.com -- full time, yes, but it's just a jukebox and has low-budget written all over it).

The Church bitches and bitches about the Culture of Death, but I contend we're a part of it so long as we ignore our children.

I am just soooooooo tired. And I'm soooooo tired of how frigging Pharisaical and evangelism-incompetent "orthodox" Catholicism is.

Nighty-night.


-- Me

Dear Diary: The post 'Pledge-a-Thon' post

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.

SATURDAY, OCT. 26, 2002

Dear Diary,

The "Pledge-a-Thon" ended last night, raising roughly half of our stated goal of $250,000. Still, it was more money than we raised during the on-air portions of any previous Pledge-a-Thon.

I don't know what this means for the future at Pope FM, because God seems to be driving this situation like a Noo Yawk cabbie drives from La Guardia to midtown Manhattan when he's got a fare from Peoria in the car . . . by absolutely the most "direct" (heh) route possible.

All I do know is that I am absolutely, positively wiped. On top of everything, we spent today moving furniture out of my mother-in-law's apartment and into the assisted-living place.

NEVERTHELESS, it's a strange thing what happens when you just do your damn job the best you can when you would rather not do it at all.

I got nothing but compliments the whole Pledge-a-Thon . . . from the engineering of the show to the music I was playing (which would have -- and, in the past, had -- given my old boss, Mary, the next best thing to angina). You would have thought I was the Lou Gehrig of Catholic radio.

God, I'm old. Make that the Cal Ripken, Jr., of Catholic radio.

Thursday morning, our secretary, Penny, came into the control room bearing a large bottle of Rolaids and a kiss on the cheek. I wish she had come with a bottle of limoncello, too.

And all through the week, people would call in to ask the name and artist of songs I was playing. One was Ken the GM's 13-year-old son when I was playing some Christian techno music by Ultrabeat. Another was Ken's wife, who dropped into the control room to say she loved one song I played and thought the voice was familiar.

It was "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen.

AND FRIDAY NIGHT, after the Pledge-a-Thon ended, Ken came into the control room to shake my hand. Manic Don gave me a high five.

Kind of surreal, being that minutes before (the end of the Pledge-a-Thon bearing down on them) Manic Don and Fred the Development Guy -- you know, the one who believes in God expanding time -- sounded much like Catholic used-car salesmen in a desperate bid to get the phones to ring.

That always happens when fund drives are falling woefully short. I always find it dismissive of the providence of God and beneath Christian dignity. Therefore, I always go into my Zen-master mode, becoming more and more calm as the pitch-people become more and more frantic.

And I always try to send not-so-subtle messages to knock it off through forcing them to go to break, and through the music I play when they do.

This time, when the frenzy just was getting to be too much, I got them to go to break -- which Manic Don told me had to be a SHORT song. So I played all 5:35 of Aaron Thompson's "No More Fear." Thompson is a gifted Catholic singer-songwriter from Phoenix.

And at the end of the show, I played a chant version of the Kyrie, followed by Nicole C. Mullen's "Redeemer":

Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning?
Who told the ocean you can only come this far?
Who showed the moon where to hide 'til evening?
Whose words alone can catch a falling star?

Well I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
All of creation testify
This life within me cries
I know my Redeemer lives

The very same God that spins things in orbit
He runs to the weary, the worn and the weak
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I'm broken
They conquered death to bring me victory

Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer, He lives

To take away my shame
And He lives forever, I'll proclaim
That the payment for my sin
Was the precious life He gave
But now He's alive and
There's a new day

Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer, He lives

©2000 Wordspring Music/Lil 'JAS' Music/SESAC

MAYBE the wind has shifted at Pope FM. Then again . . . aw, who the hell knows.


Wearily yours,

Me

Dear Diary: Shakespeare comes to 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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FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2002

Dear Diary,

Father Bob is a sick man, obviously is in deep denial, and his priesthood in all likelihood is shot to s***. But, hey, so are we at Pope FM . . . at least the deep in denial part: Our official response to this present darkness is "Time to circle the wagons."

We're probably pretty damn sick (in our own peculiar, clericalist way), too.

Not that Father Bob's priesthood shouldn't be toast. The saving grace of all this is the Madis County prosecutor stepped in and shined light on this (I hope) before Bob had the chance to slide from kiddie-porn addiction to something worse.

I've heard some things over the transom that cause me to have more sympathy for the man.

What the story is here is how just about EVERYONE is victimized by chanceries' ineptitude (to put it charitably) in dealing with this issue. In this, Father Bob has been victimized by the chancery's refusal to act more decisively just as much as anyone.

The archbishop basically destroyed the man's priesthood by putting him back into parishes right away with only the "stay away from kids" caveat -- one on which the archdiocese obviously did not follow up. If he had been reassigned to a desk job, been monitored and mentored closely and required to get serious mental-health counseling, perhaps one day -- one day -- he could have safely resumed parish work.

Here is what I think is going on. The arch has a bee up his butt about the media, and he has an ego the size of North Dakota. I mean, this is a SERIOUS blind spot the man has, with serious arrogance about it.

And he spreads this us-against-them mentality to everyone around him, and in the case of my boss, eggs on her native "evil secular media" mindset. It's all very Nixonian and, indeed, paranoia will destroy 'ya.

Furthermore, his chancellor's playing poor scared and eager-to-please souls like Mary, my boss, like a Stradivarius, feeding them full of crap about the latest "assaults" and recon missions against Mother Church by the evil and stupid press corps.

A pretty good trick if you can pull it off -- which, quite frankly, isn't tough to do when dealing with pious Catholics -- getting the people whom you have victimized to help cover your ass when the press tries to hold you accountable for your (to put the most charitable interpretation on it) bumbling.

This evening I told Mary in no uncertain words that the only way to "handle" the press is to tell reporters the truth, and if there's something you just can't comment on, to say "no comment." I told her reporters aren't stupid and they know when people are bull****ing them.

I also told her that I had read the newspaper story and asked her whether she really had said Father Bob was on Keys to the Kingdom two or three times, because that struck me as being way low -- that it was more like seven or eight times. She told me that she just wanted to get the reporter off the phone and pulled a number out of her hat.

Later, I told Mary that I thought the archdiocese had victimized everybody involved, most notably Pope FM and "Spirit Fire" by not keeping adequate tabs on Bob and by keeping the station and the youth group in the dark. (And the jerks did keep EVERYONE utterly in the dark.) I said that the chancery had risked unspeakable tragedy if anything had happened with a kid, and now was trying to hide from the press to escape accountability.

Basically, I said, the archbishop's job is to take responsibility for what goes on during his watch -- that was why the pope made him a bishop, to be a man and take the heat when the rubber meets the road.

I closed by saying I have been nearly physically ill over this since the news broke this weekend, and that I was totally disillusioned with the archdiocese. I added that I had expected better than the way Cardinal Law handled things in Boston. (Yes, in talking to True Believers like Mary, the chancellor is using the "shrinks gave him a clean bill of health" line. But they're not even saying that much publicly.)

Everyone keeps writing about this like it's an ecclesiastical Watergate. It's not. What it is, is a Shakespearean tragedy. And when you start stringing this s*** together from around the country, it's a Shakespearean tragedy of earth-shattering proportions.

THAT is the story. And the question at hand is this: How do we free faithful Catholics and scared-s***less Catholic media managers like Mary to do what needs to be done to save our Church, instead of them just being rank enablers for the walking pathologies in our chanceries?

A big question, that. And the stakes couldn't be higher.

Dear Diary: Of Irishmen and their car bombs

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

This look back at my dysfunctional life at Pope FM requires a little stage setting.

In other words, it's all Josefina Loza's fault, what with her mentioning in the Omaha World-Herald that, indeed, there is such a drink as an "Irish Car Bomb," and that people, you know . . . drink them.

This caused howls of protest from some members of the local Irish-American community, and a persistent mau-mauing campaign on the part of some local outfit, the Irish American Cultural Institute.

HERE'S PART of the story in today's World-Herald:

Today, when you're wearing your green, crawling through pubs and downing an Irish Car Bomb cocktail or two, here's something to keep in mind:

That drink will make some heads explode. And probably not yours.

The 31-year-old concoction made up of Guinness stout, Bailey's Irish Cream and Irish whiskey makes many traditional Irish-Americans crazy. They hate all it stands for: The name makes light of serious historical and current events, and the potent cocktail glorifies drinking on a holiday they say has somber significance.

St. Patrick's Day drinks described as Irish Car Bombs are “tasteless” and “culturally insensitive,” said Chuck Real of the Irish American Cultural Institute in Omaha. He was shocked that such a cocktail existed in Irish-American pubs. He also isn't happy that people make Irish Car Bomb cupcakes and cakes such as those featured on today's Living cover.

To Real, the name conjures up memories of unrest in Northern Ireland. Car bombs sometimes were the weapon of choice, and many believe that the Provisional Irish Republican Army was responsible. Bombings still occasionally happen Real cited three bomb threats in the past five years. They aren't funny, he said. They're lethal.

“St. Patrick's Day to the older generations and to those in Ireland has always been a day of obligation,” Real said.

(snip)

After last week's reference to the drink, Real received a handful of calls and e-mails from members of his group. Kathleen McEvoy became so upset and short of breath that she had to use her oxygen tank to finish her conversation, he said.

“Don't you know that this could hurt people's feelings,” McEvoy, 80, later told The World-Herald. “It makes it seem that all Irish people were terrorists.”

What if cocktails were called “The 9-11” or “Afghan bomber,” she asked. “How would people feel then?”

I'LL TELL YOU how I feel now. I feel like I've just waded through one of the biggest piles of bulls*** I've ever encountered, what with all these Irish eyes a-cryin'.

No, a comparable argument here would be that al-Qaida or the Taliban would be upset if we named a drink for their proudest accomplishment. So long as the drink were a Shirley Temple, they'd probably be elated.

Basically, here, local Irishmen are playing the victim card because their long-lost cousins back in Ulster became so notorious for being al-Qaida before al-Qaida was al-Qaida that some enterprising Connecticut barkeep, back in 1979, named a concoction of Guinness, Irish cream and Irish whiskey after the Irish Republican Army's marquee weapon.

Remind me to shed a tear as I play the world's smallest violin in honor of bruised Irish sensibilities.

ANYWAY, that's the inspiration for this latest installment from my, er . . . interesting radio past at Pope FM, a time and place that seems like an alternate universe far, far away.

You won't believe it, but I swear to God it's true. The names, etc., have been changed . . . to protect the guilty.



MONDAY, FEB. 24, 2003


Dear Diary,

About a month or so ago, our program director, "Manic" Don Lawlor (note the last name), cold-cocked me by dumping a phone call on me to schedule an interview taping. The call was from Mike O'Malley, local contact for the Irish Northern Aid Committee, which was sponsoring a fund-raiser for the Sacred Heart Girls Primary School in North Belfast.

"What is it about that group?" I recall thinking at the time, "It rings a bell." Anyway, Father Seamus Boyle, Passionist pastor of the parish, was going to be in Kansas City to receive an award from the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and "the Irish Northern Aid Committee" was bringing him up here to raise money for his school, which you may remember was the focus of violent protests by Protestants, who were trying to keep the children from accessing the school through a Protestant neighborhood.

I smelled a rat somewhere, so I told the guy I'd tentatively pencil them in for today at 1 and refer the matter back to the program director.

So after I got off the phone, I did a Google search for the "Irish Northern Aid Committee" and came up with its more well-known moniker, Noraid. And various news items, etc., indicating that Noraid had been forced in the mid-'80s by the U.S. government to register as an American agent for the . . . IRA.

And that Noraid has been accused widely of funneling money and weapons directly to IRA terrorists. Etcetera, etcetera and so on and so on.

So, I dutifully printed all this stuff out, plus some background articles about the protests and told the program director, Manic Don, that Noraid stank to high heaven, was an IRA front, and that while Father Boyle and his school certainly were of interest, under no circumstances should there be an uncritical, PR puff-piece interview. I said that it might even be useful to include a Protestant churchman knowledgeable about Northern Ireland in the interview and turn it into a challenging dialog.

But under no circumstances, I said, should we be turned into an uncritical PR conduit for terrorist sympathizers and the ethnic and spiritual poison that breeds them.

Predictably, my idiot program director shoved all the cautionary material into a drawer and blew me off.

Fast forward to Friday. The Noraid flack shows up at the station unannounced and asks Manic Don whether the interview is still on. He says yes, and O'Malley, the Noraid flack, gives him a Noraid flier for the fundraising event, which Manic throws on my desk.

I come in to work a few minutes later, find this on my desk and very nearly blow a gasket. I write IRA on it in black magic marker and give it back to him, once again advising that we not allow IRA sympathizers uncritical PR on Pope FM, even though they've found a useful idiot to legitimize them in this beleaguered priest.

So, when I came into work today, I pretty much knew what I would have to do.

So, about 1:30, in comes the Noraid guy with Father Boyle in tow. I recognized him from TV and the Internet stories. Manic Don Lawlor and our development and public-relations director give them the nickel tour and go in to talk about the interview.

I hear Manic Don telling them that we "don't want to ruffle any feathers" and "don't want to get into politics."

So, after a while, Lawlor comes into my production room and starts setting up for the interview, trying to smooth things over with me by saying that they weren't going to get into politics but wanted to do the interview so as not to "insult the priest." He also said we might interview the Noraid guy to be polite, but that it "won't see the light of day." (Like I was about to believe this guy???)

I said the fact that Noraid was sponsoring the priest's visit couldn't be ignored, and asked what kind of "peace prize" was going to go to a priest who'd associated himself with reputed IRA gunrunners. I asked him whether the Hibernians would give Father a "peace prize" if he'd been protecting little Protestant girls from a Catholic mob, of which there were just as many in Ulster.

Finally, I told him that, in conscience, I could not and would not engineer for the interview, and that I already had enough to answer for before the Judgment Seat and didn't want to add that to the list. I also told him that, as a convert with Scots-Irish ancestors on my father's side by the name of McShane, IRA thugs probably had killed at least a few of my distant kin.

I then walked off, leaving Manic to engineer the interview (which would be conducted by our development guy) himself. So, I spent 30 or 45 minutes in the lobby talking to our contractor's foreman and our secretary, who seemed genuinely troubled when I told her the score. I added that if I were in Northern Ireland, I'd likely be dead meat if I crossed the Tiber (converted) in one direction or the other.

Later, Manic Don and our development guy complained to the GM about my refusal to engineer the interview. So the GM, Ken, tried to smooth things over and said the station might use the interview on our soon-to-be-resurrected talk show Living in Grace, but that they'd have one of our Irish diocesan priests on to talk about the situation in Northern Ireland.

I told him the same thing I'd told the program director, adding that as a convert, I thought I had a different and valuable take on the subject and that, in the wake of 9/11, we should keep 10,000 miles away from any group that had any ties to terrorists past or present.

He then moved on to trying to allay some other concerns I'd had about our underwriting practices.

But then -- damn! -- he just had to go. So I caught him before he walked out the door and told him that by wanting to run that interview, we were in the political and moral quicksand now, and that any airing of that had to be as part of an honest, critical, hard-news look at the situation or I wasn't going to be having anything to do with that particular Living in Grace, either.

He said he had to run, but that he'd "have a talk" with me about it.

I'll just bet.

Dear Diary: The blowup. No, really. . . .

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

THURSDAY, OCT. 24, 2002

Just a quick note before I collapse from exhaustion. But if the anthrax comes again, I'm covered . . . I'm on two weeks' worth of Levaquin, of the Cipro family.

Meanwhile, the "Pledge-a-Thon" proceeds apace. And my general manager seems to have had an epiphany after the new control room damn near self-destructed because of a defective wiring punch block. Our contract engineer went to punch in one set of wires for the air monitor, and . . . kerflooey. We were putting out nothing but the sounds of silence.

It was the first time I ever saw true panic in his eyes.

After he got the room back on line (precariously, warning us not to bump into the wall), I took the hour's break I got when we went to "Catholic Queries Live" (which originated the past two days from our unfinished new studios) to wire up the men's room . . . uh, old control room . . . the way I originally had it. I told the GM that was the only "Plan B" we had, and that no one had better touch it.

Today, he complimented me on the wisdom of my approach, said that Manic Don hadn't had a clue how much was involved in putting on the Pledge-a-Thon, that he was impressed with how I put all the pieces of the operation together and that he'd gotten several compliments on the music we were playing.

And some other board members complimented the show -- one saying his 13-year-old daughter told him Pope FM was sounding "like a real radio station."

Sometimes, the Lord sends His small consolations and vindications. He's a good guy.