A Real Community of Faith

The one thing people usually say about St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly is how beautiful the church is.  There's no denying that.  It really is a magnificent house of worship to behold but one of the biggest complaints I had about the place was how impersonal it felt to me.  “Mass is like a roomful of strangers,” I jotted down in my journal back when I was in my mid-twenties.

This wasn't to say the church lacked a faith community.  Rather, the faith community that existed at St. Mary's seemed very cliquey.  For a time, the parish published a newsletter with a section that profiled certain parishioners but my takeaway was only people who were part of the pastor's circle of friends would ever be featured.
 
I now attend a smaller church with my mother that's mostly made up of elderly parishioners.  Each week we see “the regulars” meaning certain people who almost always go to the same Mass and sit in the same pews.  At first, these worshipers were just faces in a crowd, but after a while, my mother and I would wave hello, smile or nod.  Eventually, we'd actually start talking to them.  Sometimes we'd even exchange personal details about our lives including our hardships and struggles to the point where they were no longer strangers.  For one group of regulars, getting to know them was as simple as me asking, “I see you here at Mass all the time.  What are your names?”     

A few of these regulars learned about my struggles as a single and vowed to keep me in their prayers.  When I started dating a woman from Catholic Match this year, she insisted our third date include a visit to my parish for Mass.  I cautioned her that the sight of me with a female who isn't my mother might actually give some parishioners heart attacks...or at the very least, they'd faint.  Indeed, our third date did raise a few eyebrows among the regulars.  Even my priests wanted to know who this woman was and they hoped to see her again at many more Masses.

Everyone in my life was extremely happy for me and they noticed a certain spring in my step.  Gone was the hopelessness that had plagued my life for such a long time.  Even though she wasn't my girlfriend yet, I could actually start to see myself build a future with her.

For our fourth date, I traveled over a hundred miles to visit her church and the same thing happened with her parish's regulars.  Almost immediately, we got singled out to bring the gifts up to the altar and that made this already shy woman a bit flustered.  Others wanted to know who I was and if I'd be coming back to Mass in the upcoming weeks.

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be and after our fifth date, she no longer wanted to see me.  When the regulars at my church asked for their weekly update about my relationship, I had to break the bad news to them.  Two regulars who my mother and I knew for a long while now handed me a card after the following week's Mass.  Per their wishes, I opened it later on.  The card featured a cartoon lion holding an umbrella that had rain pouring out of it.  The caption read, “When life just doesn't seem to make sense...”  Inside the card the caption continued, “...trust God to carry you through the storm.”  At the bottom was a passage from Hebrews 11:1.  They signed the card with their names and added, “Your church buddies.”
 
I was greatly moved by this thoughtful gesture because it showed me that someone out there cared.  This is what a real community of faith looks like.  Simple acts like that don't contain a solution to a problem but they don't have to.  The fact that someone went out of their way to acknowledge my troubles gave me a sense of comfort.  In that moment, I definitely felt less alone and more connected to the parish.

Let this be a lesson to us all.  A church shouldn't be so big that some parishioners get lost in the crowd.  Perhaps there are people at Mass that you see all the time but you don't even know their names.  Make 2023 the year you say hi and introduce yourself...even if it's just to finally find out what their names are.  Such gestures could sow the seeds of a real community of faith.

No Followers No Problem

After reading the last blog entry, I think it's safe to say I have a tendency to not get along with other Catholics.  When I started this blog back in February of 2016, I really didn't know what to expect.  Before this journey into the blogosphere began, I had spent quite a lot of time reading articles and blogs about Catholic singles and the one thing that made a huge impression on me was the comments section.  A heck of a lot of people were hurting, lonely and miserable.  They were not only questioning their faith but how the Church treated singles.  I thought starting a blog would add useful perspectives to the conversation and the closet optimist in me hoped other like-minded singles would become fans of this site.  Perhaps a future spouse would identify with what I had to say and reach out too.

The eternal pessimist in me thought otherwise and even after all these years this blog still doesn't have a single follower...but that's okay.  I write to get things off my chest and while trying to jot down my thoughts into something mildly coherent is incredibly challenging, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders once a blog entry is posted.

Some of the Catholic blogs I routinely check out enjoy a good number of followers but they usually tow the party line when it comes to the Church.  That's not this blog and as the title states, I am quite the black sheep.  I don't put on airs and tend to see right through people who do.  It's no coincidence that I've glimpsed the not-so-nice side of individuals who seem to be universally respected.  It could be a popular politician who campaigns on a platform of transparency and inclusion but holds secret meetings to quash different perspectives.  It could be a beloved pastor who says he looks after his congregation but then coldly ignores the singles in his midst.  And as we saw in early 2020, it could even be Cardinal Sean O'Malley who was clueless about the struggles many Catholic singles face on a daily basis.

Some people equate negativity with always being wrong and positivity with always being right so when an inconvenient  truth emerges, they run and hide...and remain silent.  These are the same people who never question the Church or their faith.  Instead, they find comfort in the logic, “If the Church says so, it must be true.”  That's not this blog and perhaps this is one of the reasons why Long Lost Black Sheep doesn't have any followers.

Going along with crowd is much easier than listening to the little voice inside your head that wants to speak out against an injustice or call out what you know to be a lie.  When someone tries to sell me a line, my mind is always testing...always challenging...always looking for consistency or inconsistency.  Sad to say, I've seen a whole lot of inconsistency from my fellow Catholics and it's just not in my nature to look the other way.

I also can't deny the things I've seen with my own eyes.  While some Catholics minimize the struggles of singles, I keep going back to those heartbreaking reader comments from other blogs.  Each remark represents a real person who is enduring real pain.  Shouldn't we be doing more as a faith community to help?  No doubt some think I should just shut up but that's not this blog.

Chatting with other singles on one particular online forum has only reinforced the misgivings I had about my fellow Catholics.  When discussing loneliness, one user accused me of “making the vagina into an idol.”  (His words.)  Other users hold very outdated views on masculinity, femininity, chivalry, and who should and should not be the provider for a family.  One online forum member cautioned everyone against bringing a date into your bedroom because the temptation to have sex would be too strong.  Others spoke out against pre-martial kissing and they considered all forms of attraction that led to arousal to be sinful...including those puppy love crushes most of us had as teenagers.  Needless to say, I've gotten into my fair share of online flame wars with these people.

As someone with a creative side, I find a lot of Catholics to be boring and unimaginative.  While trying my hand at online dating, it became clear that I couldn't share certain music, TV shows or movies with my fellow Catholics because they seemed too close-minded.  No wonder why I tend to get along better with my secular friends and acquaintances.  Unfortunately, they don't share many of the Catholic values I hold so dear and that leaves this black sheep straddling both worlds without ever finding a place to call my own.  But that's okay too.

The Cure for Starvation is Food

It amazes me how little support Catholic singles get from not only the Church but from other Catholic singles.  Loneliness is not a good thing.  In fact, it can be quite hazardous to your health and study after study shows when people lack meaningful connections with others, they tend not to live as long.  It's even been said that loneliness is worse for your long-term health than smoking or obesity.  Then there's the oft quoted factoid that on average married people live longer than their unattached counterparts.  So why do a lot of my fellow singles think being alone is no big deal?

On one particular Catholic dating chat room, I earned a “Gloomy Gus” reputation because I dared to say that being single was miserable.  Despite all the talk of brotherhood and fraternity, there wasn't much sympathy to be found from the Catholic men on the site.  Instead I was told to suck it up.  One chat room member even went so far as to question my mental health because he did things by himself all the time and it didn't bother him.  He said he could travel, take in a concert, go to a restaurant and do many other activities without having to dwell on being alone.  Well, I've done many of those things to death by myself and I just get tired of never having anyone to share those experiences with.

I guess a lot of Catholic men (and many women) think the only emotions the male gender of the species are entitled to fall somewhere between stoic and angry.  In their eyes, to complain about loneliness is to show weakness and that isn't tolerated.  Sometimes I'm reminded of a public service announcement on the radio that starts with someone saying, “It's only cancer.  Get over it.”  Then the point is raised, “If we wouldn't say that to someone with cancer then why do we say that to someone with depression?”  Then it's explained how serious a mental health problem depression is with thousands of people taking their lives each year.  I guess for many Catholics, there's no legitimate reason to be sad about being single.  These folks often quip, “Others have it worse than you.” or “God loves us and that's all we should need.”  Maybe they'll say we should be patient because God has a plan for us.  Despite their good intentions this advice isn't very helpful and sometimes, it's actually hurtful because it trivializes those deep feelings of isolation that can't be shaken off so easily.

Some Catholics in this chat room have said we need to view being single as an opportunity to better ourselves.  A few of my fellow brothers in Christ suggested taking up weightlifting and eating healthier so that when a woman does enter our lives, we'll be on our A-game.  Well, this assumes we'll actually meet an eligible member of the opposite sex at some point.  Then there's the Law of Diminishing Returns.  Self-improvement only goes so far and it's a pretty useless thing if you never actually find anyone to date.  Besides, I know plenty of people in successful marriages who tied the knot when they weren't in the best of shape or when they didn't have ideal jobs.

Then there are the numerous articles put out by Catholic dating websites and bloggers alike that seek to put a Band-aid on a gaping wound with titles similar to: “Being Single Doesn't Mean You Have To Feel Alone” or “A Survival Guide For Catholic Singles During The Holidays” or “How To Be A Happy Single.”  I think articles like these can be helpful in the short-term but they are ultimately useless to chronic singles who have seen decades slip by without a significant other.
 
When someone is starving we don't send them articles like: “Ten Things To Take Your Mind Off Eating” or “You Can Be Happy and Hungry.”  We give them food.  Sure, we want to comfort singles when they feel despair but anything short of helping them find a spouse fails to address the root cause of their problem.

After so many years of being alone, I finally met someone through a dating website this year.  She found my profile photo to be attractive and decided to reach out to me.  We chatted for a few weeks via the online messenger and then met in real life at a restaurant of my choosing.  The date went very well so we continued to see each other.  In that time, it felt so good to be with someone.  All my years of loneliness and isolation (and the anxiety that came with it) just melted away.  I was no longer that strange loner sitting by himself.  I was part of an “us” whether we were going for a walk on a rail trail or just innocently cuddling on the couch.  Unfortunately, she didn't think we were compatible enough and decided to dump me after our fifth date but for one brief shining moment, I got a taste of what had been missing in my life for so long.  It turned out, I didn't need psychotherapy.  I didn't need to lift weights, to eat healthier, to take up wood carving or to read more.  No, I needed a girlfriend.  It's time my fellow Catholic singles and the websites that cater to them realized this!

Another Dead End

We left off with one of my parish priests deciding to play match maker when a woman around my age approached him after a prayer group meeting and complained about being single.  My similar gripes popped into his mind and he thought it might be a good idea if we met.  When he discussed this with me after Mass, I wound up giving him my contact information so he could pass it along to this mystery woman.

I tired to be hopeful but any feelings of excitement were tempered by my dismal track record with the opposite sex.  Sure enough, the week passed by and I didn't receive a single phone call from any desperate Catholic females in their early 40s.  I wanted to follow up with my priest about this but as (bad) luck would have it, he didn't say Mass that week.

As (worse) luck would have it, I soon found out he wasn't even in the country since he was on a month-long mission to Europe.  This was frustrating to say the least because even though he had gone out of his way to keep my interests in mind, he failed to follow through by passing along my contact information.  Now a whole month that could have been spent going out on dates was lost.  When my priest finally returned to the parish, I wanted to see if he would say something to me about this woman without me having to remind him about it.  After Mass, he talked to my mother about her many aches and pains but he didn't say one word to me about this potential girlfriend.  So the struggles that were foremost on my mind for such a long time didn't seem to be that memorable to him.

At the end of another Mass, I decided to suck up my pride and just ask him about this woman.  He looked surprised and said, “She was here at this Mass.”  I thought to myself, “Gee, that's great.  And you said nothing to her about me?”  As a long-suffering single, I usually scan the pews just to see if (by some small miracle) an attractive woman decides to visit our church.  Perhaps my view of her had been blocked by other people or maybe she sat next to a support column?  Either way, I didn't notice any woman in her 40s among the sea of elderly parishioners.  My priest took out his phone and started texting her to let her know that the single Catholic guy he told her about (me!) was here.  She texted back within a few seconds but said she had already left.  My priest expressed his regrets and hoped we would meet up sometime in the near future.
 
I started to have doubts about this woman right then and there.  How serious could she be about finding a date if she wasn't willing to stop dead in her tracks and walk right back into the church to meet me?  Mass only ended a few minutes ago and I certainly would have done as much if the situation had been reversed.

A few more weeks passed by without hearing a thing from this woman despite that fact that I was pretty easy to find.  She knew which parish I belonged to and what Mass I usually attended.  She knew that I always sat with my mother.  She knew my first and last name which meant she could easily track me down on the internet.  When I followed up with my priest about this for a second time, he said he would reach out to her again.   More time passed and still there was no word.
 
I wound up having to approach my priest for a third time.  With regret in his voice, he said that he did talk to her about me but unfortunately, she was having second thoughts about the vocation of marriage and family life so she really didn't want to see anyone right now.  All that time wasted!

My mind sought to make sense of the utter stupidity of the situation.  This woman was so frustrated with being single that she was willing to complain about it to her priest but she was unwilling to do anything to change her situation.  It also surprised me that a Catholic single was willing to write off the one and only vocation that would lead to sacramental love and a family.  Maybe she was fine being a dateless wonder or maybe she was already playing the field like so many of my secular friends had done.

Of course, there was another possibility.  Maybe she did look into who I was but didn't find me to be a great catch.  Her first name was the same as a reasonably attractive 40 something woman I had once chatted with on a Catholic dating website.  After sending her only a few innocuous messages, she flaked out and disappeared.  Perhaps this woman and my priest's mystery date were one and the same.  Who knows? 
 
One thing is for sure, it strikes me as odd that so many Catholic women think they have all the time in the world to find the perfect prince charming while they let “Mr. Goodenough” slip right through their hands.

An Unexpected Invitation

I think it's safe to say that over the years, I've tried to make my plight as a Catholic single known to many of my parish priests.  Most of them have stood there like a deer caught in the headlights because they probably couldn't identify with my struggles.  I'm sure a few of them wondered why I was pestering them because they probably felt there really wasn't anything they could do to help.  This blog has tried to make the case that it's very important for the Church and our parish clergy in particular to actively assist their hapless singles.

Related to this is one piece of advice that I've regularly seen on Catholic dating chat rooms:  Singles should make their situation known because you never know what could happen when you make meaningful connections with others.  They often use the following as an example.  “If your Church is filled with elderly parishioners, talk to them anyway because one of these old people might have a grandchild who is single, lonely and looking for a spouse too.”  If you can land a great job through networking, it might also work when it comes to finding a mate.  Of course, the odds of this happening are probably quite low.  For many years now, a few old folks at Mass have prayed for me to find a spouse to no avail.  I can tell you that none of them have introduced me to their granddaughters either.  

I suppose the success rate of this strategy is slightly below the dismal world of internet dating.  It's been said that only a small percentage of people who date online will meet their future spouse.  Some people even refer to it as “hitting the lottery.”  None of this gives me much confidence as a single and for a long while, I thought I'd never meet anyone.
 
Then after one particular Mass, one of my priests pulled me aside to talk.  He had remembered my complaints about being single and said a woman in his bible study group recently came up to him and started talking about how difficult it was to find a good Catholic man.  He added that this woman was in her early 40s and was very attractive.  Then he wanted to know if I would be interested in meeting her.  With no other prospects on the horizon I said yes.  He entered my name and number into his smart phone and said he would talk to her later on and see if she wanted to go out with me.
 
I was excited but also leery.  He didn't have a photo of this woman to show me so I'd be trusting the judgment of a priest that she was attractive.  Also, any optimism I had was tempered by the reality of the situation.  Sure, I was Catholic but I did question my faith at times and some of my hobbies could be off-putting to someone who was incredibly devout.  What where the odds that we would hit it off sight unseen?  Still, I was willing to try just about anything short of a mail order bride from the Philippines.  Having a date who lived within driving distance was a plus too given my responsibilities as a caregiver for my mother.  To his credit, my priest did say that he wasn't sure how our religious beliefs would line up but he thought a first date would be a step in the right direction.
 
So with that, he said he would get back to me about this.  I was happy someone had finally taken my complaints about being single to heart and kept my interests in mind when an opportunity presented itself.  Now I had to wait and see what would become of all this.  So many thoughts swirled around in my mind as I left the church.  Could this be how I find my future wife?  Time would tell.

Almost Thirty Years Later...Part 2

“We'll have to go there someday” is such a dangerous statement.  On the surface, it implies a serious commitment but far too often it's a shallow promise made in passing.  During my travels with friends, there have been many interesting places that we've wanted to check out but despite saying those famous last words, we never managed to get there.

For a time in the 1990s, one of my best friends lived in the city of Salem with his wife on a side street that was just a few blocks away from the iconic Salem Diner.  The building's futuristic design had always caught my attention so I suggested we all go there for dinner one day.  They were receptive to the idea but married life kept them busy.  When I asked again a few months later, they said the diner had strange hours because whenever they drove by the place, it was closed.  We never did wind up going because my friend and his wife decided to beat the high cost of living in Massachusetts by moving to Arizona.  Salem State University eventually bought the Salem Diner and ran it for a little while before it closed for good in 2019.  The school plans to develop the entire block and they want the historic eatery to be removed from the property.  One proposal had the Salem Diner being hoisted to the top of an apartment building for a rooftop restaurant but as of this writing, it remains in the same spot vacant and forlorn.

Another “well have to go there someday” place that comes to mind was the Warwick Cinemas in the town of Marblehead.  The old movie house was built in 1919 and I must have driven by it with two different sets of friends back in the 1990s.  The theater closed in 1999 and was eventually demolished by a developer in 2011 with a replica of the facade and marquee gracing the front of the new complex.

It's no coincidence that most of these “someday” places have been restaurants because the industry's turnover rate is so high.  Thankfully, one friend who shares my love of foreign foods and adventurous dining experiences helped me cross a few of these now defunct restaurants off my bucket list but for every Elephant Walk, Addis Red Sea, Sabur, and Russian Village there were places that escaped me like Cafe Budapest, West Street Grille, Lala Rokh, and that little Somali restaurant on Green St. with a name I can't recall.  (Some of these establishments have also made it onto my lengthier “great places I would have taken a date” list.)

During my college years, I spotted a cute Middle Eastern restaurant in my travels that looked interesting.  Unfortunately, the stars never aligned with any of my friends and since I didn't want to eat alone, the place remained out of reach for almost 30 years.  In early 2022, a project for work would take me very close to this restaurant so I thought about going there after all this time.  A quick internet search revealed the place was still in business but when I reached out to a few friends to see if they wanted to tag along, everyone had prior commitments.  So I'd be going by myself after all.

As a chronic single, most trips to someplace new have me wondering if I'll meet the woman of my dreams there and this restaurant was no exception.  Due to some delays at work, I entered the establishment around 2 PM.  The young waitress at the door was just okay-looking and a bit dismissive since she was very involved in a conversation with her coworker.  The place wasn't busy but there were a few other customers finishing their meals.  Since I promised my mother we'd go out to dinner later that evening, I didn't want to fill up too much.  Instead of trying one of the restaurant's signature entrees, I opted for an appetizer which was pretty big anyway.

Eventually, all but one group of remaining customers left so I found myself eating in a near-empty dinning room which only made my feelings of isolation worse.  To top it all off, the waitress's attentive service got lax and at one point I had to get up from my table and call her over for the bill.  So after almost 30 years, I finally crossed this place off my bucket list but my time here could have been so much more memorable had I only come here with friends a few decades earlier.

While sitting in the plexiglass-lined booth, I thought about how certain experiences seem to have a “freshness date” because if you wait too long to try something, it won't have as much meaning.  My thoughts then turned to dating and marriage.  Since I've been lonely for so long, would I even know how to have a long-term relationship?  Would love and romance now have the same significance as it might have had in my 20s or 30s?  Have all those years of bitter isolation left me too jaded?  Does sex lose its meaning as we get older?  Would the act itself bring a touch of resentment if the woman always longed for kids but was now infertile?

Then of course, as people get older, they tend to let themselves go.  To be frank, the dating scene at my age isn't a pretty sight.  That married friend from Salem tells me when you're with someone for many years, you tend to overlook those changes.  Some people call this having wife goggles.  This friend also admits that if he met his wife for the first time as she looked today, he wouldn't find her to be attractive but because of the shared history between them, he loves her regardless of those extra pounds.

I think my dining experience underscores the need for an increased sense of urgency from the Church when it comes to helping singles who want to get married.  Contrary to what some of my priests have said, young people don't have all the time in the world.  Before you know it, thirty years have slipped by and “someday” is looking more and more like an impossibility.

A (Humble) Giant Among Men

One bright spot during my years at St. John the Evangelist in Beverly was Deacon Tomas Sanchez.  This mild-mannered but commanding gentleman started to appear at Mass with our priests in 1986 and quickly became part of our spiritual community.  I was almost a teenager at the time and had no idea what a deacon was because our parish never had one before.  He performed some but not all of the duties of a priest and was married.  I thought this was fascinating.

It was explained to me that deacons were lay people with special training who could distribute communion, preach homilies, administer baptisms, and officiate Catholic marriage ceremonies.  They could not however hear confessions, anoint the sick, say Mass or consecrate the bread and wine. 

I didn't remember seeing Mr. Sanchez in the pews prior to 1986 but I was glad he became a deacon.  His voice was calm but deep, making him sound a bit like James Earl Jones.  The sermons he gave were usually interesting and very relatable because he tended to talk about family life.  After suffering though many boring sermons in my childhood, he was a much-needed breath of fresh air for St. John's and when you saw Deacon Sanchez up on the altar, you knew it was going to be a good Sunday morning.
 
During one CCD class, Deacon Sanchez dropped by to give each student their own religious booklet on topics he thought they'd find interesting.  Mine was entitled “The Good Earth”  which was a Biblical overview on the environment that encouraged stewardship, not exploitation of the world God created for us.  At the time I didn't think much of it but over the years it did  help me to have a greater respect for the environment and be wary of adopting certain political views based solely on party lines.  This was a point made abundantly clear when some of the dirtiest cities suddenly had clean air during the Covid-19 lock-down of 2020.  I still have the booklet to this day and will always think about Deacon Sanchez when I read it.      

When our family decided to leave St. John's for good and start attending St. Mary's, not having Deacon Sanchez at Mass was one of our only regrets...but it wasn't the last I would see of him.  During my college years, I was very passionate about the pro-life movement but grew increasingly frustrated by the ignorant tactics of some anti-abortion activists.  Under the leadership of St. Mary's pastor Fr. Richard Johnson, a parish pro-life group was formed so I decided to attend their first meeting hoping to steer the group away from being too fanatical.  To my surprise, Deacon Sanchez was there because he had been asked to offer advice to this fledgling ministry.  One of the first things he said was for us to not stoop to the level of those pro-file activists who yelled at women entering abortion clinics because condemnation and angry fists didn't do much to change people's hearts and minds.  Satisfied that he said what had been on my mind, I decided to keep quiet.

Sadly, I didn't see much of Deacon Sanchez after that except for a couple of chance encounters at my local bank branch.  Then after many years, I ran into him and his wife at a local supermarket.  He looked about the same except for a few wrinkles but his voice was slower and weaker.  I asked him, “Do you know who I am?”  He smiled and said my name but his wife looked at me and shook her head as if to indicate something was wrong.  I had forgotten I was still wearing my I.D. badge from work and he had just read my name without remembering me.  Apparently, he was struggling with memory loss.  I never did see him again after that and in April of 2022, I opened the newspaper to see his obituary.  I was surprised to read he was 92 because he certainly didn't look that old.  I decided to attend his wake a few days later.
 

At the funeral home, there were the usual photo collages of different moments in his life.  He had proudly served with the navy and a younger version of Mr. Sanchez looked very dapper in uniform.  There were also a few framed newspaper articles from the long-defunct Beverly Times that discussed his reasons for becoming a deacon.  He said he wasn't called to it right away but became more attracted to the vocation a little bit at a time.  Then I read a quote from him that shook me to the core.  When talking about his goals for St. John's, he said “You can't call yourself a Christian community if you leave even one person behind.” In that moment, I thought about how lauded a few of my former pastors at St. Mary's were for building up such wonderful communities of faith while at the same time, they turned their backs on me.

The Deacon Sanchez interview continued by saying while he might not be able to find an answer for everyone's problems, he would steer people in the right direction to give them the help they needed.  When my family had left St. John's, I was still filled with the hope that my life would get better so I never brought my struggles to Deacon Sanchez.  I wondered what help he could have given me had I stayed.

I arrived at the wake a few hours after it began so attendance was light but visitors continued to trickle in here and there.  His wife told me the problem with living so long was that almost all his contemporaries had already passed away.  We talked about the Church and many other things.  When she mentioned growing up in Lynn, I told her that's where my dad was from.  I wondered if she had ever met him and just didn't know it.  Like my dad, she knew local sports legend Harry Agganis and even had to sit on his lap when they all piled into a car on a trip from the beach.  I also met Deacon Sanchez's four adult children and their extended family.  Everyone was glad to see me and I made sure they knew how much I appreciated their dad's time at St. John's.  While on my way out, I saw a couple approach the family and upon introducing themselves they said, “Deacon Sanchez had married us 15 years ago.”  His legacy lives on.

While this blog features a lot of complaints about the Church and many of my priests, I have nothing but kind words for Deacon Tomas Sanchez.  I'm glad to have known him...if only for a little while.  

Almost Thirty Years Later...Part 1

I'm convinced the universe plays tricks on people because the first few months of the new year brought into my life a few things from almost thirty years ago.

A blizzard was predicted for January 29th and that meant the Saturday Mass my mother and I usually attended was canceled.  It turned out to be a pretty big storm with heavy snowfall that continued into the evening.  The manager at my night shift job asked me to come into work a few hours early so that left no time to get out the snow blower.  This turned out to be a good thing because when I attempted to start the snow blower later that morning, the motor wouldn't crank over and it took some doing to get it running again.  By the time I cleared out the sidewalks and driveways of our house and an invalid neighbor's house, the only nearby option for Mass was to  visit a church I swore I'd never set foot in again...my childhood parish of St. John the Evangelist in Beverly.

I had grown to dislike St. John's during my high school years for various reasons.  The dynamic priests who had once run the church had all been replaced by boring old priests who gave terrible sermons.  After the passing of the much-loved Fr. Everard, the parish saw two pastors who kept asking for more money but didn't do nearly as much to make the church a welcoming community. Those increased donations were used to renovate the church's interior but the end result was incredibly ugly and later covered over with another renovation.

During my awkward high school years, I really could have used ministries and mentors geared toward teens but the parish was on spiritual cruise control.  They did absolutely nothing for young people which is too bad because I was passionate about my faith but was starting to question it.  I also noticed that there were very few females my own age who went to Mass.
       
What this parish did have was plenty of old people...and a good number of them were hypocritical because they liked to get dressed up for Mass but they really didn't do much to increase the faith once they stepped outside the church.  When I was an altar boy, one of my priests told me there were a group of old ladies sitting up front who always came to him after Mass to complain if we made mistakes.  Trying to do your best when you're young is tough enough but now I had to impress the “Russian judges” in the first row.
 
As I entered college, my family decided to switch to St. Mary Star of the Sea in downtown Beverly but every once in a great while I'd hear stories about my former parish that made me glad we left.  One St. John's priest named Fr. Mullen put his foot in his mouth when he gave a Memorial Day sermon that criticized the glorification of war with such things as parades.  A World War II veteran sitting in the front row was so angry, he yelled out something along the lines of: “If it wasn't for us veterans, you wouldn't be free!”

St, John's was also the parish of Mayor Bill Scanlon who I felt was an arrogant bully.  During one election in which he was expected to win by an overwhelming majority, his campaign decided to sling the mud anyway by leaking to the local newspaper his opponent's sealed juvenile record from high school.  His supporters justified these underhanded tactics and since the mayor had once played hockey in his youth, they would quip, “He's not trying to win the Lady Byng Trophy.”  Yet Mr. Scanlon's campaign often touted the fact that he was a long time parishioner of St. John's.  Years later, the mayor was seen helping to cut the ribbon of a new abortion clinic shortly after being named Catholic of the Year by St. Mary's School.  Hypocritical indeed!

For one particular lent, my mother decided to attend Mass everyday and sometimes that meant she had to visit St. John's.  I would drop her off and then pick her up later but I refused to enter the church.  Unfortunately, the Beverly Catholic Collaborative Plan made it more difficult to avoid this place and one of our pastors got the bright idea to discontinue the 5 PM Mass at St. Mary's during the summer months and shift it over to St. John's because that building had air conditioning.  My mother and I decided to go to Mass elsewhere for the season.

Now almost thirty years later, I pulled into the plowed parking lot of St. John's to attend noon Mass with my mother.  The new front doors of the church were more ornate than the ones from my childhood.  Only three or four old people were inside at first.  With surgical mask and sunglasses still on, I looked around at all the changes to the interior.  Almost everything was a little fancier even if it didn't need to be.  For some reason, a purple accent stripe was painted two thirds of the way up the right wall.  The pews were now angled instead of straight.

My eyes may have been looking at St. John's as it was now, but my mind kept switching back to how the place looked before and just after that disastrous renovation.  I could see an usher in a red blazer walking up the aisle with a special crank handle in his hand that was used to open the long side windows.  Today these windows are sealed because of the air conditioning and they have added gothic details too.  I could see the awful gold crosshatching and burning bush flames that had once adorned the sanctuary and wondered of the old paint was still under there.  I saw the church's original altar rails and purple curtains.  Off to the left were the father and daughter singing team and to the right was Fr. Kiley playing the organ.  One of the only things that remained untouched were the church's hanging lights.

More people trickled into church including an portly gentleman I had sometimes seen at the Carmelite Chapel, two girls in their 20s, an older woman and her daughter, and a family of high schoolers but the vast majority of parishioners were elderly and that made me wonder about this place's future.  At one time, the bulletin for the Beverly Catholic Collaborative published each church's weekly need vs. what they received in donations and all three parishes regularly fell short.  I glanced at the latest bulletin and noticed they stopped publishing the weekly need but collections at St. John's were still fairly skimpy.

 

I didn't recognize the priest celebrating Mass because we had been away for so long.  His sermon on the lives of the saints was okay and at one point he said, “What we want might not be what God wants.”  As a single Catholic, it was a line I heard often and it really bothered me because I just didn't know what God wanted anymore.  At first, I wasn't going to put any money in the collection basket but then at the last minute, I changed my mind.

After Mass, we returned to the parking lot and one by one the handful of cars started to pull away.  I could still see the throngs of well-dressed parishioners from long ago.  During my childhood, the noon Mass was usually followed by a trip to Dunkin' Donuts for some Munchkins and perhaps The Three Stooges on TV.  For this trip, my mother and I decided to get something to eat at a restaurant and when we got home, I cleared some more snow with the snow blower.  I had been up for 24 hours by the time I got to bed.  Another shift at work awaited and busy days like this left little time to have a life.

The National Tragedy...That's Largely Forgotten

It was supposed to be just another ordinary Wednesday in 1995.  At the time, I was attending Emerson College and don't remember much about the first half of my day.  I probably took an early-morning commuter rail train into Boston because a look at my photography log book reveals that I went to Reservoir Station on the MBTA's Green Line to photograph two of the transit authority's old snow plow trolleys.  Then I helped a cute French girl at Copley Station find her way to the Museum of Fine Arts.  After class, I took an afternoon commuter rail train back home but since there were no smart phones in 1995, riders were blissfully unaware of the national tragedy that had occurred several hours earlier.  My dad, who was waiting to pick me up at the train station said, “They blew up a building.”
 
I found his statement puzzling.  They?  Who were they?  And what building?  In that moment, I couldn't fathom the level of destruction that would soon flash before my eyes during the television news coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing.  In those days, the term BREAKING NEWS was not used so lightly.

Few people outside of Oklahoma City had ever heard of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building but now the ruins of this 9-story structure was burned into our minds.  At least 168 people were dead including three pregnant women and 19 children.  15 of those young victims had died in the building's day care center.  Almost 700 others were injured.  The April 19th tragedy would shake this nation to its core.

Many suspected Muslim terrorists were behind such a despicable act.  Just 12 years before, suicide bombers had killed 305 people at two military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York occurred only 2 year ago.  A voice for calm in the Boston area was Canadian talk show host Charles Adler who had a local television program called Adler On Line.  He urged people to wait for the facts and not jump to any conclusions.  On April 21st, we were shocked to see composite sketches of two white men labeled John Doe #1 and #2 on the front page of the newspaper.  As it turned out, the attack's mastermind wasn't some religious fanatic but an anti-government army veteran seeking revenge for the sieges at Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

People today often lament how divided society has become in recent years but I can tell you the 1990s had its fair share of divisiveness.  An infamous and poorly-timed fundraising letter from the National Rife Association sent out just days before the bombing referred to federal agents as “jack-booted thugs” prompting George H. W. Bush to resign his lifetime membership in May of 1995.  Some blamed talk radio for inspiring the attack and in a speech a week after the bombing, President Bill Clinton stated, “We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate; they leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”  One editorial cartoon at the time featured a take on the iconic photo of an Oklahoma firefighter carrying a dead infant...only a thought bubble was added that read, “Damn right-wing radio...”  The firefighter in question later said that was not what was going through his mind in that moment adding they regularly listened to Rush Limbaugh in the firehouse.  Even a tragedy of this magnitude could not stop elements of the left and the right from taking swipes at each other.

Like Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination, the Oklahoma City Bombing was another “loss of innocence” moment for the United States.  I watched one television network's special on the terrorist attack and toward the end they paid tribute to the victims by flashing each one of their names on the screen with an accompanying photo.  The segment seemed to go on forever and it really underscored the true toll of the tragedy.  The website for the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum has all of the victims listed here: https://memorialmuseum.com/experience/their-stories/those-who-were-killed/
 
In the years after the attack, there was talk of putting taggants in the type of fertilizer used to make the bomb but the idea was dismissed as being too costly and ineffective.  1998 saw the debut of The X-Files Movie: Fight The Future and a scene featuring the destruction of a federal building looked very similar to what we saw in Oklahoma City.  At the time, I thought it was tasteless and exploitative and I still do.  However, I wonder if younger audiences would even get the reference.  Last year, I posted a tribute to the bombing on a Catholic prayer website and one forum user who was in his 20s said he had never heard of it before.  How sad.  What are they teaching kids these days?

Unfortunately, the enormity of the 9-11 terrorist attacks just 6 years later overshadowed the Oklahoma City Bombing but I find many similarities in both tragedies:

* On April 19th, almost all of the victims were just going about their normal routines before their lives were cut short.

* Stories of heartbreak and near misses emerged: One man who was supposed to be at the Murrah Building that morning overslept and was running late which saved his life.  A woman who was in a meeting with her fellow co-workers survived the blast while everyone else was killed.  A man lost his life because he decided to drop by the Federal Building at the last minute to have some paperwork processed.  Three people died in other buildings, one was killed in a parking lot across the street and a rescue worker lost her life in the aftermath of the attack from injuries sustained by falling debris.

* A city's skyline changed forever and for a time the site of the Murrah Building was referred to as ground zero.  A fitting memorial preserving the lost structure's footprint took years to complete and features thoughtful symbolism as well as a survivor tree.

* Tighter security measures were instituted and in Boston I saw jersey barriers go up at various government buildings.

* There were calls for prayer.  One Boston Herald editorial written by Joe Fitzgerald urged us to hold onto our religious convictions and not call on God only when we needed something from Him in a time of crisis.  The uncredited AP photo of two Oklahoma teens at a prayer service appeared in his poignant article and is the first image in this blog entry.

I tend to remember the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing only because April 19th coincides with a personal anniversary of mine but this year, it almost slipped by me.  There wasn't any coverage in the news and no one in my life could tell me what had taken place on that day 27 years ago.  9-11 is certainly much easier to remember because the date of the attack is actually in its name.  What happened at New York's World Trade Center also unfolded on live television and was captured from many different angles making those memories all the more gut wrenching. 

In some respects, the world is a much different place than it was in 1995.  Just when you think we're starting to learn from the past, humanity keeps raising the bar when it comes to violence and gore.  School shootings...mass shootings...and now the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Ukraine.  Perhaps we've become a little numb to other people's misery or maybe we feel helpless to change things for the better.

Last year, I found more than a few articles on the internet discussing how the Oklahoma City Bombing has faded into the distant background of our collective consciousness.  I hope what's written here helps us all remember a little more easily.  We owe it to the victims and to ourselves.

The Wheat From The Chaff

In these times of increased isolation, having strong connections with the people in my life has become very important. Unfortunately, the pandemic has separated the wheat from the chaff as far as my friends and acquaintances are concerned.

During the Covid-19 lock downs of 2020, having in-person get-togethers became difficult to impossible but this was completely understandable given some of the situations people faced. One friend couldn't leave his mother's apartment at all because it was located in an old age complex and he was living with her illegally. Another friend cut back on all social interactions because her long-time boyfriend had immunity issues.

You'd think with the prevalence of social media and smart phones, maintaining friendships would be fairly easy but some of the people in my life have simply disappeared without a trace. Others chime in only sporadically and it has me questioning how strong our bonds were in the first place.

The Wheat: often use social media to keep in touch with others which keeps those strong connections intact.

The Chaff: often use social media to post trivial or inflammatory content but they can't be bothered sending the simplest of personal messages.

One of my friends is an extremely busy freelancer but she still finds time to send the occasional e-mail or Facebook post every now and then and she always responds to any message I send even if it takes her several days to get back to me.

Unfortunately, far too many of my other friends think sending no response to the messages they receive is perfectly acceptable. Before the pandemic, one particular acquaintance would sometimes invite me to hang out with him at a few of the bars in his neighborhood. During these cordial visits we talked about our hopes, fears and defeats without judgment and we both enjoyed each other's company. A few months into the Covid lock downs, I decided to send him a quick message on Facebook just to let him know he was in my thoughts and that I hoped he was okay. There was nothing but silence. This really bothered me so after a while I sent along a few cricket emojis. Still no response even though the small chat icon indicated that he read my messages. It makes me wonder how hard sending a thumbs up emoji, a “Thanks”, or a “Too busy to talk now” response really is? Two years later, he randomly sent me a video on old trains in Europe. Sad to say, I've had better conversations with internet trolls than I've had with some of my friends.

The Wheat: also pick up the phone and call every now and then. One good friend who lives on the other side of the country talks to me almost every week during his ride home from work.  Our conversations can be very deep at times but they're usually filled with a lot of humor.

The Chaff: are difficult to get a hold of. I'll usually get their voice mail and after I leave a message, they never seem to get back to me. There's also a good chance that automated female voice will say, “The mailbox is full...goodbye.”

The Wheat: make what you have to say a priority.  Our conversations are warm and friendly and I often feel energized when we get off the phone.

The Chaff: are always distracted. Sometimes they're watching a movie or TV show and won't pause it. Worse still is when another person is in the background and they're trying to have two conversions at the same time. If I'm lucky enough to call them when they aren't busy, their smart phone's connection might be terrible or the signal drops...several times. I usually get a busy signal when I call them back because they haven't realized we've been disconnected. Or, the phone they are using has a low battery and they have to cut the conversation short.

As we entered 2021 and some restrictions were loosened, getting together with people no longer seemed like an impossibility and I was hoping to meet up with some of my friends and acquaintances in the real word.

The Wheat: make every effort to plan in-person get-togethers even if it takes a while to pin down a date. My freelancer friend was so busy with projects and deadlines, she just couldn't find the time to hang out with me one-on-one. However, she kept me apprised of some of the interesting art exhibits in her neighborhood and we agreed to see each other there even if it was only for a quick visit.

The Chaff: ignore invitations to hang out even if I add an extra incentive like offering to treat them to dinner. They seldom initiate meet ups and after a while, the one-sided nature of the relationship is revealed because I seem to be doing all the work to maintain the friendship.

Interestingly enough, very few of my friends have access to an automobile so when we try to get together, transportation becomes an issue.

The Wheat: appreciate the fact that I've driven many miles just to see them. When my freelancer friend finally suggested getting together one-on-one for the first time in two years, she told me that some of her friends had asked if they could tag along to the art gallery we planned to visit.  She shot that idea down because she didn't want me to feel like the odd man out. I thought it was very considerate of her and we went on to have a wonderful time just catching up without any interruptions or the need to explain our personal jokes to people I didn't know.

The Chaff: use me for my transportation. After planning to go out to breakfast with one friend, he conveniently asked if I could also drive him to work so he wouldn't have to take the bus. In December of 2021, he insisted we meet up a few towns over so he could give me a Christmas present. I was so tired from work I asked if we could postpone it. He wouldn't take no for an answer so I gave in, drove out to see him and then wound up taking him back to his house despite my lack of sleep. Turns out, he had been delivering presents to his friends that day and simply wanted to get it over with.  In the past, this same friend has also invited his friends to hang out with us even though he knows I don't get along with them.

The Wheat: respect your boundaries.

The Chaff: cross them.

People often complain that the pandemic has significantly increased their feelings of loneliness and anxiety. It's gotten so bad, some moms have organized group screaming sessions to alleviate their tensions. These uncertain times have certainly made me reevaluate my relationships with others and right now I'd say there are only two people in my life who are really good friends. While others drag me down and drain me of my energy, they make me feel free in a climate of mutual respect. If all we have in this world is each other then I wonder why so many friends and acquaintances just aren't there anymore.