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.

* * *

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!"

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.

* * *

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: This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy.

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.

* * *

TUESDAY, JAN. 22, 2002

Dear Diary,


Well, Doug liked the Pope FM promo I E-mailed him. Says it's further proof still that I've found my calling in radio.

Is it?

Frankly, I wonder how long I'll be able to do it . . . radio, I mean. Been seriously worn down and frustrated by the lack of resources at Pope FM and the extreme reluctance of my boss to spend money even on absolute essentials.

Mary, my boss, also has this highly annoying habit of blaming EVERYTHING that goes wrong on Satan, even when it's pretty obvious that there are many other possible explanations. Great way to avoid responsibility for one's own decisions, eh?

When you work with crappy old equipment, s*** tends to happen.

Sad to say, though, that I used to buy into that kind of thing. But to be fair, it's the peculiar culture at the heart of Pope FM that's the problem, not just Mary.

OK, Diary, here's the deal: EVERYONE constantly refers to everything that screws up as being a case of Satan being after us.

I was starting to fall into that a year or so ago until, oddly enough, a visiting priest on Total Catholic Radio Network's daily Mass provided me with a real sanity check on that score. He said, basically, not everything that goes wrong is the work of the Devil, and even if it is: a) You can't live life looking over your shoulder for Beelzebub, and b) don't give Satan the satisfaction of acknowledging his evil work.

Made eminent sense to me. Now I save the blame-Satan talk only for the most blatant cases for which any other explanation is difficult to concoct. Not so everyone else at the station. It drives me nuts.

I've already mentioned the story about a technical screw-up during our Pledge-a-Thon last month. Mary was having major trouble getting the phone patched through to the on-air feed. I asked her whether she'd done A, B and C. Yes, yes, she said.

I walked into the production room to find her saying, "Be gone, Satan!" I then looked at the control board for two seconds, punched a button, and the phone line was patched through. She hadn't done what she said she'd done.

And I've also told you about how Mary constantly is saying she can't wait to have Jesus on the premises (our forthcoming Eucharistic chapel) so Satan will leave us alone. (Did Satan leave Jesus Himself alone when He actually walked the earth? Not according to my Bible. As the Lord may have said at some point, "Oy veh!")

Also, there seems to me to be constant talk about the Holy Spirit -- as in, the Holy Spirit revealed this to me at adoration . . . the Holy Spirit will do this, and the Holy Spirit is up to that . . . if the Spirit moves you to etc., etc. That strikes me as leaning waaaaaaay toward the charismatic . . . not that we ought to discount the Spirit at all as Catholics, it just seems to me to be a disproportionate focus on the Holy Spirit.

Finally, we seem to have a big emphasis on "spiritual works of mercy" but every time I've proposed doing some corporal works of mercy -- most recently, contributing to 9/11 relief -- I have been dismissed out of hand. That would be a departure from our mission, I've been told.

Funny, I didn't know there was some sort of huge dichotomy when it comes to works of mercy.

Oh . . . about Father Jonathan Flava. He and J.T. Good were the speakers at last weekend's "Holy Glow" conference. Father Flava, a Benedictan evangelist, expounded on how we ought not think, that our thinking gets in the way of the Holy Spirit acting. (Our conference was a combined thing with the local charismatic Catholics . . . Flava was "their" guy.)

Folks went gaga over him. I was going "Huh?"

He also was fairly apocalyptic (real Catho-tabloid stuff), and boasted that he hadn't read more than five books in however many years -- the Spirit reveals to him everything he needs to know. It sounded to me too damn much like Magisterial snake-handling.

Really, Diary, I'm at a bit of a loss trying to make sense of all this and where I fit into "orthodox" Catholicism if this is the direction it's headed.

AND NOW, the archbishop (citing the new media guidelines passed by the USCCB) is demanding effective power of prior restraint on our program content. He wants to have approval on EVERYONE on Pope FM who "teaches the faith," whatever that stunningly ambiguous phrase might mean.

My objections to my boss about prior restraint was met by utter platitudes about "we must be obedient." And my concerns about the possibility for arbitrary dictates and gross abuse by a bishop were met by "that would help in our sanctification."

When my idea of evangelization and good radio is spots like the one I sent Doug, assuredly it's only a matter of time before I get a shiv in the back and my cold, lifeless body is sacrificed upon the altar of the chancery gods.

I swear to God, Diary, I've become Dr. Tom More and my life a Walker Percy novel.

Pass the lapsometer.

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.

* * *

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: Dear Rage Against the Machine . . .

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

* * *

TUESDAY, OCT. 30, 2001

Dear Diary,


I decided it would be unconscionable for me to bitch about the Keys to the Kingdom kids and not respond myself to the guy who E-mailed the show. So I did.

Here's the letter. I'm going to bed. It's late.

-- Me

* * *

Dear Rage Against the Machine,


Thanks for your question to Keys to the Kingdom last evening. I thought it was a valid one, and it cuts to the very heart of Christianity. As a Pope FM staffer, I was in the control room for the show, and I thought that maybe the panelists gave answers that were a little more complicated, peripheral and long-winded than they needed to be.

Then again, I've got a few years on the kids, have been through the School of
Hard Knocks and used to be in the newspaper business. I have a lot of years of experience at chiseling away bulls*** and cutting to the chase.

Bottom line: What has God done for me lately? The same thing He's done for you. Jesus Christ -- God come to earth, the second person of the Trinity -- has allowed himself to be insulted, tortured, beaten and hanged on a cross until He was dead. All this in order to be a perfect sacrifice to atone for all our sins, yours and mine (and I've committed some doozies in my life), so that we don't have to get what perfect
justice requires we have coming.

God, the Creator of the universe in the person of Jesus Christ, allowed Himself to be killed by His own creation because He was the only sacrifice good enough to make up for every s***, crappy, unspeakably awful thing that humanity had done, is doing or ever will do. And, as Catholics, we believe that one-time, perfect act of perfect love is brought into our presence, through time and space, at every Mass during the consecration. In that way, yes, giving His very life at Calvary is something Jesus has done for you lately.

Even now, it's hard for me to fathom that. My old man never cut me a bit of slack -- and nothing I ever did was good enough for him -- so I still have a hard time understanding that the Creator of the universe loved me so much he died so I might have everlasting life. He died for me. He rose again on the third day in a final conquest of death. And He waits for all the prodigal sons and daughters to come home, when He will wipe the slate clean.

Even so, we still suffer on this earth. The world still suffers from the effects of sin, and we suffer also. We have free will -- God loves us too much to make us mindless robots -- and that means we have the freedom to do what is wrong as well as what is right.

But that is here. Now. Because Christ died to atone for our sins, if we accept that great gift, the suffering one day will end for us and we will have eternal joy in the presence of our Savior.

And in that here-and-now suffering, God will grant us comfort and peace. He's the Father, brother and friend who doesn't care what you are but instead loves you BECAUSE you are. He's the one person who knows the most awful thing you've ever done and loves you despite it all.

So you're pissed off at God. Well, I've been pissed at God, too. So, tell God EXACTLY how pissed off you are. Tell Him you don't think he's done jack s*** for you. Ask Him what He has to say about that.

He's God. I think He can take it.

Then, listen to see exactly what He has to say about it.

You hate God. God loves you. I think you're getting the better end of the deal, frankly.

Listen, I don't know what parish you live in or even whether you're Catholic. But you're certainly welcome to come to our youth group at St. Matthew's most Sunday nights at 6:30. Our youth minister is a great guy.

And there's more than a few of us (alleged) adult volunteers who've been there, done that, got the T-shirt and by the grace of God lived to tell about it.

Just don't end up like my old man. He died of brain cancer in May at age 80, and he died a bitter and scared man. I still hear him on his death bed crying out -- just out of the blue -- "Lord have mercy." But I don't know that he really believed the Lord would have mercy. In other words, I fear he died without hope.

I'm not sure you fully understand what an awful thing that is. It haunts me.

In your heart of hearts, is that how you want to end up? You don't have to, you know.


God bless,

Me

Dear Diary: Life at Pope FM

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today, Revolution 21's Blog for the People starts 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.

Here, then, is the first snapshot from Pope FM.

* * *

TUESDAY, OCT. 30, 2001

Dear Diary,

I was training some student "engineers" during tonight's Keys to the Kingdom, our teen call-in show at Pope FM.

The topic was vocations, and the archdiocesan vocations director was the guest. We received the following E-mail, which was not on topic, but was utterly foundational to the faith and to why Pope FM is supposed to exist (reprinted verbatim, typos and all):

Ok, number one, paschal access code? WTF? I just thought I'd 'shoot you an email'. Just heard about your program and thought Id give it a listen. I am looking for something more in my life, its either god or jack daniels and figured you could help. Before you tell me to accept god into my heart tell me, whats he done for you lately? He aint done jack s*** for me.

Oh the stories I could tell. So in short...here is a motto I love and believe in: If God hates you then just hate him back more . . . it works for me.

Rage Against the Machine

P.S. WHeres the cool music? No Butthole Surfers or Jesus Lizard? Break out the classics baby!

OUT OF THREE TEEN-AGERS and the vocations director, not one gave him a clear, simple answer. Indeed, no one answered his question at all.

I nearly was jumping up and down in the control room, holding a dry-erase board with "Jesus -- God -- willingly got on a cross and died for your sins, so that you might have everlasting life."

Then, I was holding up a sign with "John 3:16" on it. Still, no clear, simple answer.

The father of one of the student engineers was in the office, and I walked out to the lobby, despondent. Mr. Klause, a Lutheran, met me before I could say a word, saying "They didn't answer his question!"

I told him what my answer would have been, and he agreed wholeheartedly. And I told the kids they absolutely had to have a short, clear answer to that sort of E-mail, because it was utterly foundational. E-mails like that are why we exist as a Catholic radio station, and if we have no answers, we might as well unplug the transmitter.

I don't think Mona, the 20-something producer, appreciated that. I'll probably hear about my "attitude" from the boss.

Tonight, I am deeply ashamed to be Catholic. No, ashamed isn't the right word. Just heartbroken.

I told the wife that probably eight out of 10 evangelical youth-group kids could have witnessed cogently to this guy.

I JUST WANT TO CRY AND NEVER STOP. In 65 years, this guy will be my old man on his deathbed. Virtually the last thing my father ever said to me was to ask me how much money I made.

I refused to tell him.


-- Me