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It never struck me as odd then - and, momentarily I’ll explain why - but subsequently, I have puzzled over the insensitivity of church administrators to the ethnic make-up of the parish. With a near-majority of Italian-American parishioners, they apparently felt no need whatever to provide them with clergy of their own extraction. Nor could the reason have been a shortage of Italian clergy. In conversation, relatives and friends seemed to be always commenting on how “cousin Luigi” or “nephew Rocco” had become a priest. At the time, I merely dismissed the situation as one of the peculiar prerogatives of the Church hierarchy to appoint clergy to whatever parish they wished, and we peons had no right to question their staffing policies.
As the years wore on and eighth grade graduation inexorably approached, one strong awareness, from the welter of pre-adolescent confusion, began to crystallize - John Gillin and I were a terrific team. The best Mass-serving team since the two fellows flanking Christ at the Last Supper. I began to notice that we were serving together much more often than random assigning would produce; we were serving more and more of the special High Masses. I can’t say that John and I ever spoke about it, or made a conscious decision to be excellent little altar boys. It was just that we were both very serious and rather bright (John, the brightest, as I have explained), and took our acolytic routines very seriously.
When we hit that altar together, we were ready to do a job that would have made a Marine Drill Sergeant proud. Our responses had a snap and eloquence to them; we tossed off Latin as though it were our mother tongue - as though we understood what we were saying. As we floated about the altar, our movements’ precision must have been a joy to behold, a thing of beauty, a marvel of synchronization. Then, whenever we approached mid-altar and our eyes met for a fraction of a second, that glance conveyed a silent, mutual understanding, a determination that we were going to swivel, genuflect, rise and turn as one. Generally, we did. And we got better and better until - I’m certain that neither of us had any doubts, nor did the priests we served - we were unquestionably the number-one acolytic team in the parish. We were a miniaturized edition of the Pope’s own Swiss Guard.
Yes, serving with John Gillin was a special pleasure, that unique satisfaction that comes from working with an ideal partner on a job well-done. The fact that I deferred to him in all the important status decisions we had to make mattered not at all. I never resented John’s having the plum assignments; indeed I let him have them uncontested. It seemed to me perfectly logical, proper and fitting that his classroom status should carry over to acolytic ranking. He was first in brains, smarter and more handsome than I. He was... well, he was better than I. It was only just that he have the glamour roles. He deserved them, especially considering what I deemed the relative poverty of his family. So, when it came to agreeing about who would be “Bell” - ring the bell for the Sanctus, and who “Book” - shift the missal from side to side as necessary, I knew I’d be lugging that unwieldy volume all over the altar. “Bell” was the preferred role.
The same was true for the “Wine vs. Water” decision; I’d be “Water.” And, again, when there was a special Mass or Funeral Service requiring sacred fumigation, I was “Boat,” holding the tiny vessel containing incense and spoon. John would be “Censer” and proudly get to swing and operate the impressive gold container, a great big affair with three-foot chains, and more chains to operate the lid removal. As the celebrant spooned incense from my boat over the charcoal in the censer, I would only keep reminding myself how saintly it was to be humble.
John was smarter and a better person. John Gillin was Irish and holier. All of our parish priests, solid: every single one was Irish. (Since they were known only by an adopted first name, there was no way of ascertaining the nuns’ home planets.) Gradually a great truth dawned upon me. I was, naturally, reluctant to admit it; embarrassed to acknowledge the insight forced upon me by the facts. But I had to face it. The Irish were holier than Poles or Slovaks, holier than (gulp!) - Italians; holier than everybody. My God, they were holier - than - Thou!
Despite Italy’s being virtually identical to the Vatican, despite our unbroken lock on the papacy for over 1900 years, the Irish had somehow managed to surpass us in sanctity.
St. Patrick was the clincher. What a saint! Famous above all others with a celebrational day and parade surpassing all the rest put together. And unarguably, 100% Irish. What nationalities were the other saints anyway? Who knew? They, too, were known only by first names, so you hadn’t a clue there. What were Saints Anthony, Michael, Francis, Thomas, Bartholomew? Could they have all been Italian?
Come to think of it, what were the Apostles and Disciples, Peter, James, John, Matthew, and all the rest? What were Mary and Joseph? What the hell was Christ? They couldn’t have been Jews, because Jews hated Catholics, while those persons, on the contrary, founded our Holy Roman Catholic religion. And they were saints! One of them was the Second Person!
The nationality of most of the later saints was likewise unknown. But, it didn’t really matter, for they hadn’t done much either, except die - be martyred, that is. And that seemed to earn them canonization. The only one with anything substantial in his dossier was Saint George, who battled and killed a ferocious dragon. Apparently, the females had done even less, or perhaps it was more, to become saints. The majority had also been martyred but, in addition, their bios discreetly suggested that the girls had been “attacked.” How could we children suspect that meant they had been raped? We had no idea of such things.
Saint Patrick - now that was one macho, swaggering guy. And he had a string of real accomplishments that put the other saints to shame; genuine achievements of real merit. First off, I suppose he must have been the discoverer of Ireland. Then, he converts every damned heathen on the island - there were two tribes of them, the Celtics and the Gaelics, I think: they were called. Finally, to ensure the well-being of all those new converts, he gets rid of every snake on the whole damned island. We’d seen enough pictures to know this was true. Snakes were always curled all over his staff, while he appeared to be commanding them with miraculous power, to leave him and go slither off a cliff. Which they did. Either that or he just bashed them with his Bishop’s crook until the last one was squashed. Now, that’s a saint!
My admiration for Saint Patrick went far deeper, however, then just standing in awe of his heroic feats. For, I saw in him, that rare combination of superhero and theoretician, the latter title stemming from his devastatingly brilliant explanation of the Trinity. The Triune God; Three Persons in One God; Three Persons with One Nature. That mystical enigma which drives theologians to drink. The mystery declared insoluble, nay - incomprehensible - by no less an authority than Aquinas, the official Thinker of the Church. He said it had to be taken on “faith.” And we did. As good Catholic boys, we believed it, without knowing what the “it” was that we were believing. Until, that is, I heard Saint Patrick’s lucid, compelling analogy, and the cobwebs left my brain. A shamrock was the secret. The Saint couldn’t have done the demonstration in South Philly since there aren’t any green things growing there, let alone shamrocks. But I guess they’re all over the place in Ireland. So, he held one up and said, “So, what’s the big problem with the Trinity? See; three leaves, one stem; three-in one.” And that was it. So clear, so decisive. God is sort of, like, similar to, resembling, in a way, analogous to, in certain respects, comparable to a shamrock. How odd that Aquinas - also a saint - was unaware that Saint Patrick had solved the problem of the Trinity 800 years earlier.
There was one other spectacular accomplishment, but we were never taught about it. I just picked it up from observation - inferred it from hearsay, and from thinking about the fairly obvious connection between Irish people and drinking. Since they all imbibed so frequently, and, on the Saints’ day, so excessively, it followed that Saint Patrick must be the patron saint of drinkers. Thereafter, my logic led me to reason that, in order to have earned that distinction, he must have invented whiskey or gin; beer, at a minimum.
In those days of benign ignorance, I had no comprehension of the magnitude of that invention, a feat dwarfing the other, not inconsiderable achievements. But now, in my dotage, when I have become intimately familiar with the pleasures and comforts of alcohol, I, an Italian-American, bend my knee and raise my glass to Patrick, saint of saints.
On to High School
The change to high school was traumatic; I suppose it often is. Theoretically, it should not have been. I still lived at home; I was still getting a good Catholic education. My Epiphany school buddies were there too. I was still surrounded by nothing but males. I was still an altar boy. I was still dumb.
I suppose the differences outweighed those similarities. For one thing, I lost track of Charles Dumont and John Gillin. Oh, I knew they were there, and they certainly were. In the yearbook photos, there they are in the freshman group photos, the St. Norbert Society (altar boys) photo, the honor roll. On the latter, I wasn’t. Perhaps it was the other way around; maybe they lost track of me. I’m not making excuses - BUT - that freshman year was when I hit the zenith in my pianistic prowess, with a number of recitals and performances at the high school and music school. Then, that watershed concert at the Settlement School when I performed the entire Mendelssohn G-minor Concerto, memorized. That took some work. So did the Rachmaninoff First, which I subsequently plunged right into. And the Mozart A major.
In those days, the Settlement School was a wondrous, incredible institution, subsidized by the Curtis-Bok fortune. For two bucks a week, optional, I got an hour private piano lesson from a superb teacher who came down from New York, an hour harmony-composition class with a composer who came down from New York, chamber music sessions, and an endless series of recitals and concerts. Often, there were free tickets to the Philadelphia Orchestra concerts - seating in the first three rows.
I thought I was pretty good at that time, but, truthfully, “pretty good” was about it. Such a conservatory environment has a way of dispelling any illusions about one’s abilities - what with eight and nine-year old Wunderkinder coming out of the woodwork. At times, you’d swear the Steinway grands were actually player pianos for, from certain perspectives, you couldn’t even see the tiny tots hammering out those torrents of notes.
And, if anything, the violinists were even better than the pianists. That year or the next, Gottfried and Irving, two super-fiddlers, slightly older than I (I loved to accompany them but wasn’t really good enough to be their regular pianist) came in One-Two in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Young Artist Competition. Which is to say, they beat out every damned violinist from the Curtis, Eastman, and Juilliard schools.
Oh, yes, soon after the freshman year had begun, I became the regular accompanist for two exceptional vocalists, a basso and a tenor, in my same class. One, the tenor Enrico di Giuseppe, was an enormous raw talent in the Mario Lanza mold; he would belt out a high C at parties or at the swimming pool, just to show off and impress girls. He went on to Curtis, then to the Met, and television, and, I presume, a wonderfully satisfying career. With a name like “Enrico,” he had to be good.
So, most of the time I could be found at the Settlement School, or playing the piano somewhere or other. But, no excuses. My grades should have been better. I should have spent more time on textbooks instead of nude photography magazines.
The high school was so far away, deep, deep into Italian territory, way up Passyunk Avenue. Actually quite near the humble Passyunk Avenue home in which my father was born. The school was at least a mile from our home. Thank goodness Passyunk Ave. was one of the few diagonal streets in Philadelphia and cut a straight hypotenuse almost directly from our Thirteenth and Snyder house to the Seventh-Eighth-Ninth Streets school buildings. Actually, Ninth Street was famous even then for its many blocks of open-air stalls, redolent with the lingering aromas of every fruit, vegetable, fish, fowl, meat, cheese and Italian delicacy conceivable. Ninth Street was later to be even more famous as the “Italian Market” - and it ran right through Southeast Catholic High School country. All the school buildings were on - no kidding - Christian Street. Upperclassmen were taught in the largest and most modern on Seventh Street. A small chapel and converted grammar school at Eighth Street served the needs of freshmen and sophomores, while the faculty lived closer to Tenth Street in an abandoned nunnery.
Unfortunately, even though we were in the midst of a gastronomic paradise, and, as upperclassmen, were even set free to do as we wished for lunch, our parents had warned us never to buy or eat any of the local food. They thought it was somehow “dirty” or “unclean.” But, I tell you, those Italian roast pork sandwiches, heady with powerful garlic overtones, fragrant and wet, certainly looked and smelled good.
And this school, encircled by little Italy, was itself an anomaly indeed, a monument to the ethnic blindness of the Bishops. For, who operated our school? Where did the faculty come from?
They came from Deutschland, that’s where. The Luftwaffe pilots, the sneering S.S. officers, the Gestapo interrogators - they didn’t escape to Argentina and Brazil; they came to Philadelphia and seized control of a Catholic Boys High School. Actually, they came via Wisconsin, the location of their mother house, but that made no difference to us - since Wisconsin, aside from some obscure connection to cheese, was just as foreign as Germany. Only Germans lived there, and I had never heard of a single Italian who hailed from Wisconsin.
Nevertheless, Wisconsin was the U.S. point of origin of the monastic order of our priests, the Order of Premonstratensians, a name so preposterously complex that everyone had trouble correctly spelling the abbreviation - 0. Praem. The name is certainly appropriate if it meant that they had antedated the age of monsters, for we believed that our faculty could have taught monsters a thing or two.
Several owned stout wooden paddles about a yard long and a good inch thick. I think they were smuggled out of Belsen, or perhaps there had been a clearance sale at the Third Reich War Surplus Store. Whatever their origins, they were liberally applied to our rear ends at the slightest transgression. The good fathers would order us to the front of the room, and then, to bend over the desk. Thank God we didn’t have to lower our trousers. But then, that would have been wholly unnecessary since those smarting, stinging wallops would have penetrated any substance known to man. Head bent over in fear and anticipation, out of the corner of your eye, you could glimpse a windup that would have turned the Babe green with envy. Then, you heard the crash. And that was all you could remember because wave after wave of pain blotted out all cognitive processes, and it was quite a while before the senses of time, place, and personal identity returned.
Others were more subtle, yet more fiendish. Disdainful of instruments or implements, they used only their hams...er, hands, that is. I recall wide, long, swinging backhands that came from nowhere to land aside our faces with incredible accuracy. One of the Nazi Norbertines, a shockingly powerful blue-eyed blonde, with rugged physique and Aryan good looks, turned into a Beast of Buchenwald if he caught one of us talking in class. Or, the worst, cheating. He would suddenly stop speaking and stare off into space. We could see his eyes glaze over like a shark’s, and his face, suffused with blood, turn an atrocious scarlet. Slowly, almost diffidently, he would stroll down one of the rows, not looking at anyone in particular, outwardly (except for the face) calm, a shepherd amongst his flock. Deceptively, his ploy always involved walking past the culprit, without turning. How often the violator must have thought he had escaped; the sin had gone unnoticed; the cheating hadn’t really been spotted, had it? When suddenly, that vicious backhand would come whistling from somewhere behind the culprit and knock him into insensibility. I don’t know if I had heard the phrase “Heads will roll” at the time, but I often wondered why they didn’t. What kept our heads attached? Those blows should have snapped our cervical vertebrae like so many match sticks, and our heads, gone bouncing about the classroom floor like bocce balls.
Odd, isn’t it, that the slap, the punch, cannot be delivered directly and overtly, as a straightforward punishment. There’s no way that a sinner could be summoned to the front of the room, (“Come On Down, Anthony Pasquarello”), positioned properly, then slapped silly or pummeled with blows to the midsection. The vulnerability of the area being smashed doesn’t seem to be the key factor; a beating about the shoulders would still be unthinkable if administered openly and with forewarning. Yet, the rump is fair game for unabashed exhibitions of pain application. And so are the hands, a bit earlier, when rulers teach the same hard lessons. But it just isn’t fair to slap in cold blood; slaps had to be sneaky, unexpected, surreptitious.
The crudest of the Nazis had perfected these methods; to think that we were their prisoners for up to eight hours daily, for four years! Now, it is clear to me why Enrico - Rick, to everyone - and I were always asked to perform for the meetings of some obscure club in a distant section of Philadelphia. I well recall the name - the Volksverein. Rick would do some Wagner, then I would follow with Brahms. The Volk were in ecstasy; two small representatives of their former Italian allies, keeping alive the glorious dreams of Deutschland über Alles.
None of this is fabrication. The 1947 yearbook contains photos of 43 contemptuous faculty faces; unbelievably, not one name ends in a vowel. Not one. A smattering of Irish, French, Slavic surnames only served to heighten the contrast with the overwhelming Teutonic forces. Resch, the principal; Salutz, Schinkten, Hinkes, Koob, Geimer, Fender, Dorff, Boelhower... on and on. The names marched on with the goose-stepping, guttural sounds of roll call at Hitler’s staff meetings.
As usual in my case, food was the lure that got me to continue on as an altar boy. After doing our morning stuff, often serving two or three masses, we went to this large, bare room just off the first-floor hall. There, someone - not one of the priests - would throw huge pans of breakfast goodies onto a great, barren table. We would grovel and scurry to get our fair share. There was no coffee, you understand; that was for adults. But there were eggs, glorious eggs, often sunny side up and hard, the way I liked them, and frequently, scrambled the way I liked them. Then, every so often, there was bacon or sausage. Sometimes pancakes; sometimes scrapple. In retrospective judgment, I’m certain it must have been swill; the remains from feeding the faculty. Leftovers. The cook’s afterthoughts (or afterbirths), when somebody happened to remind him that there were famished altar boys in that room across the hall. Nevertheless, coming from a breakfast-challenged, Italian-American home, I delighted in the new tastes and textures to be found in the troughs they set before us.
The other lure was more subtle, but essentially similar to the “status” reward at the Epiphany school. You see, they couldn’t any longer refer to us as “altar boys.” Oh, we were still altar boys, to be sure. And we were obviously still boys. But the term just reeked of elementary school and kids and immaturity. And we were now young Catholic men, (interested in naked girls). Our priests still needed altar boys, lots of them; so, they had to invent a new gimmick for enlisting slaves.
The deal was simple: if we agreed to serve Mass, we would be knighted. Well... not exactly. But we would be inducted into the Third Order of Saint Norbert. At first, the term had an undeniable ring to it, something like the Knights of Columbus, the Order of the Garter, or the Knights of the Round Table. Definitely, an Arthurian catchiness. Although I would have preferred a decoder ring and goofy secret messages in the packet of special membership materials we were given. The packet did include privileged prayers and incantations, with huge indulgences and purgatory time off - for members only. There may have been Third Order pins and holy pictures in the package of religious bric-a-brac, but the only item I definitely recall was a scapular to be worn around the neck, under the shirt. No one was supposed to see it; considering its shabbiness and stupid design, who would want to? Just two small rectangles of cloth, connected by shoelaces. I’m certain the poverty of its style and materials was a deliberate reminder of the vows of poverty the upper orders took, and the junior version of poverty we were supposed to practice.
Personally, I never found poverty very appealing. It’s about as exciting as its scapular symbol - and you just know that dumb thing was supposed to be made of horsehair, sackcloth, and woven thorns. Inevitably, either the back part would creep up and stick out your collar, making you look like a fool, or the front piece would work its way up around your neck and eventually strangle you. Or, more likely the whole damned thing would get tangled and twisted somewhere among layers of skin, undershirt, shirt, and sweater. It certainly was a sign of poverty - the poverty of one’s intelligence in wearing one.
Oh yes, I dimly recall a candlelight initiation ceremony held in the dingy chapel. Candles added the right touch of secret society mystery, the esoteric appeal to fantasy-minded 14-year-old boys. We took mini-vows, comparable to those of our First Order mentors. I’m certain that poverty, and that old standby, purity, were among them, though I think I still believed that the latter had something to do with bathing with Ivory Soap. (I did.) Having been inducted, we were given our obligatory daily office, a fraternal prayer which had to be recited each day on pain of - what? Surely not being drummed out of the order. Would they have held another, darker candlelight ceremony at which all the elders intoned solemn Gregorian chants, while the abbot ripped the scapular from your neck, and sent you out, alone, to wander the fish markets of Ninth Street?
That holy night, I’d bet that every inductee felt certain that his spiritual destiny lay clear and shining just ahead of him. I surely did. Just a few brief years, and a lot more studying and praying, and I’d be Father Anthony, myself a Great White Canon, First Order priest. Then I could write 0. Praem after my name, in addition to the letters indicating the utmost in academic achievement, B.A.
Initially, I had supposed that we were to work our way up through the ranks, from Third to Second to First Order. However, I soon realized that my assumption was grossly mistaken; no one wanted to be a member of the Second Order. They were the scum of the ranks and performed all the menial tasks - cooking, cleaning, laundry - for the First Order. They were only “Brothers,” which is nowhere near as prestigious as “Fathers.” My grasp of the situation was that they were too dumb to earn college degrees and become teachers, so they had opted for this terminal, spiritual siding. As befitted their stupidity, they assumed all the onerous Norbertine vows, but were denied the privilege of celebrating Mass, since they had not been ordained. That is to say, they did all the dirty work, but couldn’t get to perform the one really neat trick of religious life - turning bread into God. Or - I guess it amounted to the same thing - getting God (the Second Person) to descend from Heaven and disguise himself as a wafer.
Very gradually, I came to see that it was not just the Brothers who lacked prestige. The entire Norbertine family suffered from a lack of genuine status, and a good part of the blame had to be laid squarely upon the shoulders of that ultimate square, its founder. Saint Norbert. Even the name was square. My God, it must have been a hybrid of the two paradigm male monikers for NERDS, “Norman” and “Herbert.” The saint himself was truly a paragon of non-entities: he had never done one blessed thing. He hadn’t slain dragons or rescued fair maidens; he hadn’t learned how to talk to birds and squirrels; he hadn’t converted entire heathen populations. He hadn’t even had the good sense to get himself martyred! As best I could make out, he had won a couple of debates, but I felt confident that Bishop Sheen could have decked him with ease. And, he founded the Order of Premonstratensians. Big deal! How our chests would have swelled with pride, what an honor it would have been to be a member of “The Seventh League of Saint George,” or “Saint Patrick’s Snake-Killers.” Even “The Eighth Army of Saint Anthony” didn’t sound too bad. But Noooo. We were “The Third Order of Saint Norbert,” not much better than “Mary’s Sweet Sewing Sodality.”
Those First Order Fathers needed us because they had to say Mass daily. Only now do I think I’ve finally figured out why. Mass cards. That was it - Mass cards. Every saintly little Catholic woman in Philadelphia buys them like lottery tickets. Someone dies, they buy a Mass card. Someone’s death is to be commemorated, they buy a Mass card. Originally, this meant that a priest would say a special Mass just for that person; one Mass - one person. When the crush became impossible, they probably started saying more Masses, or doubling-up by memorializing two or more souls at each Mass. I do believe, though, that they were scrupulously conscientious in reading the specific names of those for whom that Mass had been purchased.
The idea behind the whole business was this: most Catholics believe that most Catholics, at death, go to that big barbecue in the sky, Purgatory. There just aren’t that many saints, or the fortunate few who keel over just after receiving a Plenary Blessing. Those are the only ones who get direct, non-stop passage to Paradise. All the rest, the vast majority, have to change souls in Purgatory, where a few negligible impurities are “burned off.”
On the other hand, few Catholics feel that any Catholic could be so monstrous as to deserve that desperately final, absolute sentence to an eternity in Hell. Judas and Hitler, certainly. Mussolini, maybe. But, surely, nobody in Philly. Consequently, the Purgatorial lake of fire must be, by far, the most densely populated region of the nether world, with billions of souls simmering therein at different depths. All of our imagery had been formed by simplistic pictures of Purgatory we’d seen, just as mine derived from my attraction to a certain church window depicting some female Purgatorians. Prayers and sacrifices directed specifically to their plight either shortened the time they had to do, or raised them, by infinitesimal fractions, up out of the flames until they were completely clear. Then, Jesus would escort them to Heaven, which apparently, was quite nearby.
What the hell did it take to get someone out of Purgatory? Even the smallest of ejaculations, a one-second prayer, carried with it huge reprieves in weeks and months of time off. And, if you repeated those prayers rapid-fire, for minutes on end - as I often did - you had to be having a very significant impact on a Purgatorian’s well-being. And, if that was true of the most minuscule prayers, what would a whole rosary do? A novena? A Mass? Since we had been drilled in the concept of purgatorial time as horrid, but finite, and since “finite” connoted for us, about a million years, but not much more (could there be a longer duration?), the redemptive power of one whole Mass should be, theoretically, a case of massive overkill. Something like hiring both Melvin Belli and F. Lee Bailey to get you out of a parking ticket. All the blessings, graces, and energies of a transubstantiation on behalf of just one soul. Why, the levitational boost should be more than enough to lift the fortunate recipient clear out, high above the flames.
Well, that was the theory. That was what I believed. That was why
those reams of Mass cards were purchased, and why every priest had to celebrate Mass once or more each day. To grasp the magnitude of the entire operation, just consider the population of Philadelphia, the death rate, the number of Catholics, and an average of five Mass cards for each deceased. On any reasonably modest computation, thousands of Masses must be celebrated each week by - how many priests in the Philly diocese? But we had to get those relatives, friends, and neighbors out of Purgatory and Mass cards were, indisputably, the most effective way to do it. One small indication of just what a boon the Mass card business is for the clergy, (the reader, depending upon religious predilection, may append “doggle” after “boon”) is the presence, in recent years, of a large, unimaginably high-rent office right on Broad Street in south Philly, just for handling the Norbertine’s Mass card transactions.
Whatever the reason, all those Masses were being said, which meant that the altar boy profession was labor-intensive. Look at the numbers: thirty or forty priests, each saying one or two Masses per day, each one calling for two servers. At an absolute minimum, there would have to be some sixty boys, rising and dressing at 6 o’clock, then rushing over to the faculty house to start serving at about seven. Then sixty more, the next day. And so on.
Even though the St. Norbert Society was the biggest of all the clubs for extra-curricular activities - with six or seven percent of the student body, about 80 members - there was no way that each one could be shanghaied into service every day, 365 days a year. The two-altar-boy scenario quickly became a dispensable luxury: one priest - one server was the new mode of operation. No longer were there any complex acolytic negotiations over who would do what, nor any concerns over teamwork, two cherubs skillfully executing their “pas de Dieu.” One boy was now Bell and Book and Wine and Water and everything else. Never again would I experience the subtle joys of drill-team precision in a perfect duet with John Gillin.
However, since only five or six servers showed up on even the best days, most Masses were said unserved. One priest-no altar boys was actually the normal rule.
Most assuredly, the thrill was gone. Not just that rather rarefied pleasure of cooperating so smashingly with John. So much was changed. Gone was the church, and with it, the splendor, the aura of wealth, the glamour and glitter. Replaced by the “Faculty House,” (“Faculty Home for Deviant Nazis” would have been a better name), a fairly large, but godawfully depressing, dirty, and dingy structure, a few blocks west of the school building. It had either been a nunnery or a home for wayward boys but was subsequently abandoned because condemned as unfit for human habitation. As such, it was an ideal abode for the poverty-conscious Norbertines. Dining room, kitchen, visitors room, altar boy trough-room, and other common-rooms were on the first floor. Their sleeping quarters - God knows what they were like - were on the upper floor, along with the surrealistic chamber where we performed our duties. Not a chapel; perhaps it could be called the “Mass Room,” or better, the “mass Mass room.” For, in truth, the one room housed some 12 to 15 altars, each about six feet square, on a six-inch platform.
Secret passages? Forgotten nooks? I’m certain there were plenty. In a building that dilapidated, of such vintage, they had to abound. But what if there were? With the glamour gone, the romance nonexistent, what could one hope to find in, or at the end of a secret passage? A dead rat? The subtle psychological connection between covert wealth (buried treasure) and the lure of secret passages gradually became more evident. Without much chance of the former, the latter lose much of their intrigue.
There were twisting, dull corridors leading to unexpected sights - one section of the building housed an entire basketball court. Another room housed a seedy billiards table. In another passageway stood an ancient, upright piano, so abused and in such disrepair that when one of the priests, having heard of my talents, asked me to play something, I literally could not tell what I was attempting to perform. An octave was as likely to be somewhere in the vicinity of a ninth or seventh, and a smattering of keys did not work at all.
Somehow, the presence of these diversionary toys for adults only heightened my sense of sadness and compassion. Stripped from the image of the priesthood was the last glittering aura of a magic halo. They were all too human, after all. I knew their superhuman side as performers in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist. And as our torturing teachers, their subhuman aspects were quite familiar. But to see them as the dedicated, tragic, lonely men they were, perhaps disillusioned, disenchanted with their assignment to a south Philly ghetto - to see their frailties, their humanity at close range was something else entirely.
It’s always a mistake to see the magician in the morning, when he can’t even make a cough disappear. Shuffling in sandals, at times unshaven and unkempt, hacking and sniffling, they piled out of their rooms, picked up an altar boy, if available, and staggered into the altar room, each to perform his own pathetic version of the divine drama. As we served, we observed. They weren’t magicians. They couldn’t pull a habit out of a hat. Their garb wasn’t white, but yellowed, soiled, and worn. They grunted and complained and sighed. Like most morning males, they were a bit sad to see. This was another side of the priesthood; one which, in my naïveté, I had not considered. I had been blinded by a vision of all-powerful super-beings, supported for life, with all the free food you could eat.
The fact that there were never enough servers actually afforded me the opportunity for a display of technical skill so stunning that, long ago, my story must have become a part of altar boy lore. You see, if I were serving one priest, and another, without server, were to come in shortly after we had begun, then, if he were next to us, and if the synchronization were just right, and one knew the ritual inside out, as I did, then, on a few rare occasions, one could - and I did - serve two Masses simultaneously. I don’t mean just throwing one or two responses over to the next altar; I mean most of the responses and most of the switching and pouring.
Well, even though readers can guess what I’m about to relate, that in no way minimizes the extraordinary character of the feat. Yes, one cold morning - it was always chilly there - I was serving two concurrent Masses and doing a pretty good job of it, when an unaccompanied celebrant came in and set up shop at the vacant altar behind me, just opposite the two at which I was so busily ministering. I had noted his arrival but thought nothing of it until I heard his first plaintive, sotto voce prayer. Suddenly, I was overcome with an overwhelming feeling of pity for the poor, unserved priest, as well as a sense of divinely-mandated duty. God enlightened me, gave me confidence, and showed me what I must do. While remaining partly kneeling at one of my primary altars, I turned as much as I could, or dare, and directed the proper response to that forlorn Father behind me. I could see his wonder and delight at hearing that welcome, unexpected voice. He was no longer alone; he too had an altar boy. At least, one-third of an altar boy. And I continued, as long and as best I could, trying not to appear brazen or outlandish; without flaunting the technical wonder I was working. Soon thereafter, all was ended. I had accomplished the impossible; I had served three Masses at once!
During that day, I thought I detected a gleam of acknowledgment and appreciation in our teacher’s eyes, particularly those three who had been the witnesses to, and beneficiaries of the miracle. The entire school must have been abuzz with questions of “Who was that altar boy who...?” Surely, the story of the little altar boy who could, must have spread like wildfire. Perhaps a communique was dispatched to the Wisconsin headquarters. Or some notification of the fantastic feat sent to the Vatican itself. I felt certain that my performance would undoubtedly earn me advanced credit toward my 0. Praem. It was possible that, at my ordination, the Pope himself would do the honors, lovingly proclaiming “This was our beloved altar boy, in whom we are well pleased.”
Even today, I would suppose that the timeless legend of Anthony, the Acolyte is retold from Father to novitiate, from senior to freshman. It must have been incorporated into the Third Order initiation ceremonies. Young lads, wide-eyed and innocent in the glow of candles, must be whispering in hushed, reverential tones of the impossible deed. And wondering if that altar boy, so near, yet so far from their own time, had yet attained sainthood.
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Tony Pasquarello is an emeritus professor of philosophy at The Ohio State University, Mansfield, a professional musician, and philatelist. Major articles by him on the philosophy of religion have appeared in Free Inquiry, The Skeptical Inquirer, and American Atheist. “Irish, Nazis, Threes, and Me” is excerpted from his quasi-autobiographical book The Altar Boy Chronicles.
The Altar Boy Chronicles is available from
American Atheists Secure Online Store (click here).
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t some point in this altar boy’s story, readers probably expect that I will begin to reveal the scandalous details of all the altar-boy pranks we pulled. I’ve heard tales of adulterating the sacramental wine, or drinking it; wetting the charcoal so that it wouldn’t light; playing games with the Sanctus bell-ringing - like ringing too loud, too long, or out of sync with elevation of the Host - or adding a gratuitous fourth peal. I’m sorry to say I have absolutely, positively nothing of that sort to report. No mischief, no pranks, no practical jokes, and - God forbid - no vandalism or sacrilegious behavior. And I speak, not just for my ramrod straight, Jack Armstrong self; I can’t recall any of the other boys doing anything in the least bit irregular.