Remembering George Parnassus One Year After His Death: Pray for Him Always

I would like to have written, "one year after his entrance into heaven", but that would annoy him ; he would have chastised me verbally, because he was most painfully aware of his recurring sins. He said he most definitely wasn't going directly to heaven. He believed that he would have to spend time in purgatory to be made pristine for his vision of God in heaven. In one homily he called it "Gym for the soul."  I, and others, have always felt that the suffering of his last two years, maybe more than that, was sufficient to purge him, on earth, such that he bypassed purgatory and is experiencing the fullness of God's endless, timeless love.

Sunday, August 17 there was a memorial Mass for our former pastor, my former mentor, friend and something of a father substitute after my own died in 2008. I know I was not alone in this experience of him.  The Mass was well attended enough, I suppose, although I did note absences of many old friends of his life, with a certain amount of sadness. Perhaps they did not know, and it was not, a matter of, as one friend of mine said, "out of sight, out of mind."  Enough friends were there, one next to me in tears said, "I miss him so much." It was, whatever the numbers, a reverent, beautiful Mass with hymns, several of which were his favorites during his life, that engaged the spiritual senses and emotional heart. The Ubi Caritas, Bread of Life, to the music of the adapted spiritual from Dvorak, known as "Coming Home."

Monsignor Murphy, in his homily, a blend of religious instruction and memories of Monsignor's contributions to the beauty of the parish edifice and appeal to our spiritual senses in order to create the context of prayer, struck just the right tone. You can hear the homily if you go onto the Saint Victor Catholic Church (official) web site for the 17th.

It was a concelebrated Mass, somewhat by accident, although again, Monsignor would have said, "There are no accidents with God" and I have come to see that certainly in the last many years. The concelebrant, Fr. Rudolf Lowenstein, OP (a Dominican)  was the son of an old friend of Monsignor Parnassus, the father having been a famous business manager for the Rolling Stones, a character who in business suit and dislike for rock music, presented something of cognitive dissonance in the rock world. With his serenity and English accent the son (a second son is also a priest) he added particular poignancy to this one year remembrance.

The lady with the dog was there. This, I can tell you, Monsignor Parnassus would never have permitted; unless the dog was a service animal, he would have received an unceremonious, "heave ho"but as usual, the dog behaved with great dignity, sitting on her lap. I still love seeing that dog, despite myself, and I think I would have told Monsignor that, as we the servers spoke before Mass in the sacristy.  He would have dismissed my feminine tolerance. We would laugh over our disputation.

There will be a rosary said next week after the 8 a.m. Mass at St. Victor on Saturday, August 23.  A caravan of as yet undetermined size will go to his grave at Holy Cross Cemetery, off Slauson in Culver City, this ceremony, this prayer, which he so desired, to occur one year precisely after his burial at the site in front of the statue of the Good Shepherd with whom he now communes.  

            
All I can end with at this moment is an "Amen"; so be it.

Paul McCartney: The Long and Winding Road during which Life does Indeed Go On in a Wonderful Concert at Dodger Stadium

A lot has happened to Paul McCartney since his first appearance at Dodger Stadium in 1966. The Beatles broke up in 1970.  Two of their foursome died, one shot by a madman. Paul lost his beloved Linda.  A lot has happened to all of us who revealed in his three hour performance on his return to Chávez Ravine on Sunday August 11.  And the merging of our respective winding roads on a temperate bright full moon night was a nostalgic revelation. 

I didn't expect it.  I was going because he was part of a legendary group whose songs had been the soundtrack of any of our lives. And had another group Wings whose songs were the soundtrack of my college life.  And Sir Paul is getting up there, 72 years up there (isn't it interesting how the age gap between some of us fans who were kids when they first burst on the scene has narrowed so. The difference between my age 9 and their age 20 something was enormous. Now it is as if we are contemporaries), and it is possible we won't see public performances much longer.

I don't think I've been in that large a crowd since a Queen concert in Madison Square Garden back in the late seventies when a friend and colleague at 99X FM radio in New York (long since renamed something else) took me along. This was during the time I thought I wanted to go into radio professionally (as opposed to my college on air training) and realized that I'd probably never make it to an on air job without a lot more connections than none. 

But I love Dodgers Stadium almost as much as I love the Hollywood Bowl. It is a plain pleasing venue. And that crowd, it was orderly and truly wonderfully mixed, every age up and down. Although I loved some of the music from my dad's generation, there wasn't even a slight chance or moment in which he would have loved the music from mine. But here a 60 something could sit next to a 20 something and be singing the same words while wildly tapping their feet on the ground and gyrating joyously. 

The staging was terrific. The history of Paul and the Beatles and Wings and the solo career all playing on these side screens book shelf.  I was primed admittedly by the breeze and my first margarita of the night (I had only two).

He was late taking the stage, no doubt to allow folks to buy plenty of souvenirs and drinks and food.at large lines  And when he came out, he made me forget that I'd seen him on television recently not looking too spry and sounding pretty hoarse.  It almost felt like he'd been in a time machine. He looked a lot like the "cute one" of days gone by; jacket and what at first I thought was a slim tie, but was a tie like stripe down the front of the shirt, revealed when the jacket came off after a couple of songs.

If I wasn't smiling I was crying tears of recognition. Oh, yeah, I remember singing that song in my bedroom in the Bronx ("Yesterday" when Yesterday wasn't really yesterday for me; I was far too young). Len Speaks reminded me of Roger Moore (on whom I had a major crush during his time as James Bond; Oh, Wait, I had a major crush on Pierce Bosnian too!), during the Firework laced Live and Let Die segment.

I felt like the late high school and college kid I used to be, but finally without all the angst!

I even liked the few tunes he did that were from the "new" album. 

Whether rehearsed or not, it all felt fresh and only for me, next to all those people who felt it was only for them. 

Where has the time gone?  And yet it all stood still. I couldn't be happier that I went with Leo, Connie, and Len to this historical fest. 

I have heard people say, and maybe I even believe it myself intellectually, that civilization in America began to decline once the Beatles came over the pond.  But you know what?  I admit it, den if that's true, I didn't care on Sunday. It was a bona fide blast!

Thank you, Sir Paul as we go back on our winding roads separately.

Robin Williams: One More Psychic Post Mortem

Along with virtually anybody else out there who has shared the planet with Robin Williams, I can't help but think about his last few days and the moment he decided to extinguish his own flame.

From the way we hear he died, a belt attached to a closet from which he hanged himself, it sounds as if the final decision was an impulsive one.  They said that he had cuts on one of his wrists, rather superficial, but several. I admit to being a bit of an armchair forensic psychologist in saying this, but I suspect he originally thought to slit his wrists and then couldn't do that. 

I feel so sad for what seems to have been a frenzied patch that he could not escape from this time. Something, maybe something even small from the objective observer's point of view, sent him over the edge from the gift of life to a madness from which one cannot recover.

Come on, haven't you ever felt like that?  I don't know if it was as extreme as the moment which faced Robin Williams, but I have had more times than I'd like to admit where logic failed me and restraint nearly did. These are hard to describe events. They come out of nowhere. Nothing in the external world or circumstance has changed from one day to the next, but on this day, old demons, and I think truly think they exist, attack. The brightest day of God's creation simply sinks into a kind of tunnel and all that you can think about is to escape this feeling, this I can't escape feeling.  I have to escape feeling. Remind yourself. Maybe Robin tried, "You have a great life. The best possible. Look at the horror in the rest of the world. Who are you to feel so lost?". Some people might say that if God was not in his life (from a religious perspective and I have no idea whether He was or not), then that explains it.  I disagree. I try to be a faithful Catholic, and I know, k-n-o-w, that in the throes of the "whatever it is", described by so many over the years, that it is almost as if, no matter the strength of belief, that one's body and mind seem almost to feel like they are being dragged from the light. It's like one of those horror movies where the victim is ripped from under her bed, where she is trying to hide.

With me, it is when certain responsibilities that I fear the most begin to press too much and I cannot be seen being weak. Williams was doing four movies, had been a great success in comedy and in drama, had three kids and a couple of wives, three, I think. Something always pressed on him and he usually kept it at bay, by performing, by using alcohol and drugs, by as many mechanisms as he could possibly manage until he could no longer manage them.

In those moments, while the world would say, "You should be thinking of others," everything is like a pinhole of intense cosmic pain.  There is a kind of raging blindness of soul.

Maybe in the next days we will hear what it was for Robin.  Maybe he left a note and tried to explain. Maybe there will never be nothing but whatever was in his head which we can never know. 

Don't assume anybody has it made. Frankly we are all broken people. But some breaks can be hidden better than others until the crack in the façade explodes the body and soul. 

Eternal Rest Grant Unto him O Lord and may perpetual light shine upon him.  May he rest in the peace he could never find on this earth.

Newman and Knox Pray For Us

On and off, for years, I have been fascinated by John Henry Newman, who in the middle of the 19th Century, after much complex thought and intense prayer, converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. I have read his sermons. I have been to the pulpit in Oxford, at St. Mary's, where he preached before his conversion. I have been at Little more where Newman was received into the Catholic Church.  I have read several biographies of him trying to get into his mind, the mind of a man who can articulate, with relative certainty, the decision to become and remain Catholic, the essence of that Faith and its ultimate Truth.  And the teaching of that Faith without compromise. 

After Monsignor Parnassus of my parish died last August, I discovered a number of books in his library by another Anglican convert, who was born two years before Newman's death, Ronald Knox.  They were sold as part of Monsignor's estate and I did not have a chance to read but a few pages of one, a retreat for lay people. Those few pages were enough for me to make a note. I need to know more about another Englishman who made a conscious change to the faith which has been mine from birth.

. Fr. Newman



It is nearly a year after that mental note.  Something brought me back to Knox. I think it was a sense that my commitment to my faith was in danger. The world is falling apart. Christians are, literally, being crucified in the Middle East.  And here we Americans are living our lives as if we have all the time in the world and we cannot be touched by persecution. We have forgotten about 9/11 and are blissfully passive about the liberties being taken away from us in small bits. I am put in mind of the frog placed in a pot in cold water, heated gently, until finally, the frog realizes the danger too late.  And Catholics, in my parish, and elsewhere, seem outright apathetic during services. They come late and leave early. They wander around, often at the moment of the Consecration.  And there seems to be little more than a passing nod to theological principles. Ecumenism has somehow become a kind of "whatever" to any form of belief.  I have wondered why I should even remain a Catholic if what is taught is merely some kind of proscenium for an absence of first principles. There is a bit of the brother of the prodigal son in my attitude.  I see my own fellow Catholics saying, "Oh, that really isn't something you have to believe!", often things which are as the apostles said, "hard sayings" that it would be rather nice to be able to dismiss. 

 Fr. Knox

So I needed another level head, like Newman's. I turned to Ronald Knox. I decided to see if there was a biography. There was an autobiography, A Spiritual Aeneid, and a biography by the author of Bridgehead Revisited.  I read both. My first reaction was to note how similar were the experiences of the two men who existed together on the earth for only two years, Newman and Knox.  They shared a depth of intellectual dis-ease with what they tried and tried to reconcile--the confusions of the Anglican faith which incorporated low and high forms that were greater or lesser a reflection of the Catholic Faith from which they had split from after Luther nailed his theses and Henry the VIII had an itch in his groin that he confused with divine inspiration.  And each, ever so slowly (less slow for Knox than for Newman) read and prayed and read again and concluded that the Faith of the Church fathers was the faith manifested in Roman Catholicism.  It saddens me that Knox is not as well known in convert and Catholic circles as is Newman, but that is a potential subject for another entry.

What reading about Knox (and pieces of his writing) has done, as it did for Newman before him, was make me long for thinkers like him, for models like them, who can keep me from a tendency toward despair for the manifestations of Catholicism that are unclear, or contradictory.

They knew the faith they adopted.  It was not a matter merely of "feeling good" on earth to which I think Catholicism has devolved, in complete misunderstanding of the nature of life and the sacrifice of Christ.  It was an assent (Newman wrote a book called the Grammar of Assent) to a nuanced whole of which Christ is the Center and the Catholic Church's Magisterium is the admittedly imperfect repository, but one that has the fullness of the truth.  If you pick and choose what you will accept you have two choices (and I am talking to myself here as well as to this blog), then you are in the wrong religion. The New Evangelization seems to be missing the point of our faith.  I heard a priest say that it wasn't necessary to be theological. I think the opposite. I think it is first necessary to understand what our faith says, determine to embrace it even when it is hard and it is ALWAYS hard, and then invite those who would join what Robert Barron calls "The Strangest Way". 

The Catholic Church has survived far worse than the misunderstandings and meanderings of today. Blessed John Henry Newman and Ronald Knox, pray for us. 

Saint Dog

This is a sample dog. 

I should have liked to have taken a picture of the actual dog, but I would have thus brought myself to the attention of the owner in the front pew of my church. 

Since I am an altar server and wear the outfit denominating myself in that role, folks have come up to me and complained.  I went so far as to create a sign that said  "We love your pets, but only service dogs are allowed in the Church."  I properly interposed the reality of the problem. Since my sign never saw the light of day, I am making no further efforts. 

In truth, and in fact being a pet lover of enormous energy, I have a hard time objecting to what I know, intellectually, is a breach of reverence. It is probably more of one when my fellow parishioner brings the dog, I think it's a bulldog, like the one above, to the Communion rail. At least she has never presented him as an actual communicant, for then I would object, and heartily. 

Here's the amazing thing, though. The dog is always good. I mean, he is held in her arms all throughout the service and the dog doesn't bark, grunt or squirm. That's better than the children in our pre-school who visit the children's room because they tend to a wee bit of noise.  Not the dog. He lays there in peaceful un-moving.

In fact, he seems almost prayerful in his near snooze, meditative, let's call it. Saintly, even.  Saint Dog.

I recently re-read something about animals and heaven-- the authority (not dogma, so as a Catholic I MAY freely disagree and so I do) is that animals, though they have souls, do not have the knowledge of the Divine such that they are infused with the Holy Spirit and would be with us in heaven. I cannot accept that idea as I plan on greeting my cats Lucretia, Bruno (the sole dog in my life), Rameses, Hollywood, Trouble, Bud, Bert, Diablo, Oz. and Elwood, in heaven assuming I get there myself. 

And now, having seen Saint Dog, on more than one occasion acting in many ways perhaps more reverently than some of his human fellows in attending the service, I am certain that Thomas Aquinas, though otherwise an excellent theologian and all around fellow was wrong about animals. Animals must go to heaven. They make us whole and sometimes even holy.