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So, both Father and Son were unarguably in Heaven. And, whatever or wherever that was, it certainly wasn’t the Fifth Grade Boys Classroom of the Epiphany Parochial School. If they wished to know what mischief was taking place at the latter site, they either had to be able to see that far - and that seemed dubious - or maintain vicarious surveillance, using their lowest third. That would be the mysterious, somewhat ignored, rather pathetic Holy Spirit. God and Christ each had oodles of special prayers directed specifically to them: about ten times more than those addressed to the Holy Spirit. The poor fellow hardly got any worship at all! But, I never forgot him. I’d bet he knew little Anthony from Philly quite well. I had the distinct impression that my prayers to him went through directly, air express. No waiting period; no busy signals. So few others ever attempted to make that long-distance connection. Like Paradise’s Maytag Repairman, he was delighted to get my calls.
What made the fellow so much more accessible a person was his penchant for disguises and funny
get-ups. He could be everywhere at the same time because he had mastered the trick of splitting himself into an infinite number of different wacky appearances. Of the three primary ones about which we had been taught, none was particularly dreadful or genuinely frightening.
He could be, he was, a ghost. The Holy Ghost. And what was so bad about ghosts, the most familiar of all familiars we encountered in books and films? Of all the fantastic phantasms of the nether world, all the shadowy personages of the paranormal, ghosts have to rank on the mild side. They weren’t vicious, brutal, or menacing; just “spooky.” And that was O.K., even a bit endearing. They merely haunted some spots here and there, but, like the man without a country, didn’t really belong anywhere. Poor Holy Ghost. Sent on interminable spy missions and assigned menial tasks by his formidable duo of Divine superiors. In fact, although we naturally thought of the Eucharistic presence as the presence of Jesus, the Second Person, because he had invented the whole ritual at the Last Supper, it seemed unlikely that both the First and Second persons (with all the latter’s body and blood) would squeeze their Supreme Selves into that tiny host at each and every consecration. No, this was clearly another job for - Ghost God! Ectoplasm probably didn’t take up nearly as much room as real plasma, guts, bones, etc. And since all three Persons were equivalent to any one of them, God could be truly and substantially in the host. Well, if he were in our classroom, that was just fine with me. I welcomed his presence; I knew I’d be a good boy.
Then, it seems, when in his more pacific moods, he could turn himself into a dove. Doves were, for all practical purposes, precisely the same as pigeons to me, and we’d experienced plenty of those. And their residues. That was why it was semicomical to see depictions of the Third Person in his bird disguise, apparently always coming in for a landing on somebody’s head, hovering just a few inches above an unsuspecting victim. But then, there may have been nothing to fear; possibly, divine doves don’t do doo-doo. While there weren’t actually any doves in class, there were assorted creatures flying past our lofty third-floor windows.
However, there was no question that his funniest, yet most confusing disguise, was as the spectacular “Tongues of Fire.” Unfortunately, no one had ever bothered to explain the metaphorical intent of the phrase - a reference only to the flames’ shapes. Literal-minded me. I thought they meant tongues; thick, distended, slippery, pink tongues. Tongues on fire, was my understanding. Why he had picked that appearance, I never could fathom. Weren’t tongues hard to light? Weren’t they impossible to keep lit? One would imagine that they were always sputtering from the saliva. Surely, it made more sense to appear as “Noses of Fire,” or even “Feet of Fire.” But then, who can outguess the whimsy of a third-rate deity?
Only the kooky charismatics, those redoubtable fundamentalists, would have the disarming simple- mindedness to repeat the naïveté of my stupid mistake, and take “tongues” in yet another literal sense. With the same child-like mentality responsible for their “Barbie Doll” conception of the human embryo, hence, their anti-abortion stance - (“Mommy, Mommy, I’m a little person in here, so please don’t kill me”) - and, as always, undaunted by complexities and unhindered by logic, thus do they similarly image the phenomenon of religious fervor. They must have in mind the same pictures I saw, and using fifth-grade picture-thinking, interpret them as Gospel truth. Why, there are the actual photographs of Pentecost; one can easily discern the flames floating above each Apostle’s head. Apparently, the tongues hovered in the same zeppelin fashion as the doves. Then, it is written, the Holy Spirit descended on them, and sat upon each of them, (without singeing any hairs). After a pause, the flaming tongues started down, settled momentarily atop each head, then continued right through the cranium, the gray matter, and the hard palate, to come to a final landing, neatly slipping into place over the ordinary, non-flammable tongue. Lo and behold, the chosen ones now possess the Gift of Tongues.
This, as we all know, is the miraculous ability to babble incoherently for extended periods of time, a power possessed by only a very few others, such as politicians, and some philosophers. Ah, that far-out Third Person; those wild and crazy Pentecostals. Unfortunately, the Holy Spirit never performed his “Tongues of Fire” routine in our class; the only fiery tongue there belonged to the Enforcer, and it was anything but incoherent.
You’ve just become accustomed to the deathly quiet and discipline of our class when you think you notice something else, something so mind-boggling to the modern educator that it just couldn’t be, could it? Surely not. Yet, you detect...something. You note the faces of the first row, nearest you, nearest the door. They seem to exhibit an indefinable attitude, an attentiveness and alertness; cheeks are ruddy; penetrating eyes appear sensitive to the environment, to your presence; eyebrows are high; faces glow with health, with inquisitiveness.
But, as you go to the second row, something is different. Your gaze proceeds fairly rapidly from front to back of each of the five or six rows. No doubt about it. You repeat the experiment several times to be certain. Yes, the deterioration is marked, the gradual declination almost tangible. In the last rows, how could you but help notice the slack jaws, the vacant stares of those dead, uncomprehending eyes. The dullness is oppressive, a kind of DUMBTH RADIATION oozing from each blank visage; waves of such low intensity that they barely contain sufficient energy to tumble over one another towards the front of the room. Picture a molasses waterfall and you will have some idea of the vapid vibes filling that remote wasteland. One can only guess at what sort of piteous, primitive, quasi-humanoid creatures lurked in the dim recesses of that farthest row. Last Desk, Last Row. Who... What could have been sitting there?
One can see today’s educational theorists shrieking and rending their garments over that unbelievably demeaning seating arrangement. But, yes, we were seated by intellectual rank. Believe it or not.
There...There I am. First row, third desk. No, I wasn’t first and I wasn’t even second. But, by about the fourth or fifth grades I had begun to secure my lock on third place - the perennial show horse. Oh, occasionally during those last four years of grammar school, I drifted back to four or five, and there may have been a couple of times when I displaced Charles Dumont, Mister Two, for brief periods. But usually, like my favorite god, I could be found occupying the number-three position.
I guess our intelligence was measured by a combination of I.Q. tests, administered during those middle grammar grades, and achievement in class. As for I.Q., the nun just told us the raw score without interpreting or explaining it in any way. I swear she said mine was in the mid-130s, but I’m quite ready to admit I’m wrong and that 50 years of wishful thinking may have bloated the correct score by a few increments.
Nevertheless, I discount entirely the I.Q. aspect of our seating arrangement because I feel that I earned that third chair. I earned it by reading those mountains of books; by winning interminable spelling bees; by writing an infinity of clever, carefully crafted “compositions.” I have a jumbled memory of poster boards hanging in those rooms, and various devices for keeping a tally of who had read the most books. Some boards had pockets with our names, and space for 3x5 cards containing title, author, and a brief description of the book. My pockets were always full. Others just used gold or silver stars, or small cutout pictures of Jesus and Mary. My spaces had their fill of Jesus and Mary and other stars. Of course, there were no cut-outs for my special cut-up, that daffy deity, the Third Person.
At the school’s graduation ceremonies, my consistent literary pre-eminence garnered me the prestigious English Award; (actually, just one among a number of secondary “subject” awards). I’m certain the award consisted of either a framed 9x12 picture of the Sacred Heart, thorn-wrapped and bloody - (the heart, not the picture) - or a foot-long plaster statuette of the Blessed Virgin. One was the prize, and the other perhaps a graduation gift. Both still exist. The Virgin even now graces the Philadelphia home as a centerpiece decoration for my mom’s dining room buffet. I believe the two top awards were scholarships to one of the better and more academically oriented “status” Catholic high schools - staffed, if I remember correctly, by the Jesuit order. John Gillin, always top dog of our class, and Charles Dumont were awarded these really meaningful prizes. But, strangely enough, neither took advantage of the educational opportunity. As did I, both attended and graduated from Southeast Catholic High School for Boys.
Chubby and red-cheeked, Charles Dumont’s appearance belied his quiet, withdrawn nature. A mystery boy, I never knew much about him, nor had the faintest idea of where he lived. Then too, he was something of an anomaly, with the unquestionably French surname branding him as a non-member of the three major ethnic groups represented in our class - Italian, Irish, and Mongrel. That last was a grab bag full of primarily Polacks and assorted central and southeastern Europeans. In those days, the Dumont name signified a superior brand of radios and phonographs. I always wondered if Charles were related to the electronics magnates. There’s no denying that he exuded an aura of confidence and breeding, as would a person with secret sources of wealth.
John Gillin was much closer and friendlier. Try as I might through all those latter grammar-school years, I could never displace him from his premier position - First Row, First Desk. Like most truly bright persons, his superiority extended to all subjects. I, on the other hand, came to a screeching stop after the first two “R’s”; my talents would not extend to “Rithmatic” or the natural or social sciences. Besides being master of all he surveyed, John was a good-looking boy with pleasant, regular features, an impish grin, sparkling eyes, and elfin charm. Of course, one never knows whether those attributes are actually there, or just “perceived” as a consequence of the knowledge that a person is Irish. Whichever it was, John was, intellectually, my closest companion in The Epiphany School.
I did know where he lived - near the corner of Eleventh and Jackson, directly across the street, and about fifty feet from the front of our church. Perhaps his brains could be traced to the benign spiritual influence of such a location, in such proximity to God’s house. He would be constantly bathed in rays of grace and the abundance of blessings pouring from the Holy Cathedral. (And that fortunate location must have had the desired effect; I learned, much later at a reunion, that John Gillin had indeed become a priest, and was permanently stationed in Rome! How brilliant of him to combine Irish charm and Italian living!)
However, I was a bit taken aback when he first invited me to his home. The family lived on the first floor and seemed to be occupying one dimly lit, bare room behind a Jackson St. storefront. I immediately got the impression of poverty - not “abject,” but “moderate” - a standard of living well below my family’s two-story, four-bedroom “mansion” on Thirteenth St. A little hasty generalization mashed together with vague historical scraps of potatoes and famines, and it was easy to arrive at the conclusion: All Irish are Poor. Indeed, I didn’t know any whose homes remotely approached ours in splendor and ostentation. (Of that third ethnic group, the less said, the better. They seemed to have settled in the farthest reaches of the parish down by the riverside, and all their family members worked on the docks. The mind could hardly begin to envisage images of the squalid shacks and hovels they must have called “home.”)
In retrospect, I realize that mine was the duty of upholding the honor of all Italians; I was the only one in the first row. Behind me stretched a string of Irish monickers - Paul Crossin, Robert Foy, Joseph Lawler. (In those days, I made no distinction between Irish, Scottish, and British; they were all “sort of” Irish to me.) Ralph Capozzoli may have made the first row on occasion, and he certainly came into his own in high school, as did Vince Marino. But my memory classifies them as second-row elementary people. No, I had to perform; I had to prove that Italians could be smart; that we were not just wine-guzzling, pizza-tossing, empty-headed tenors, belting out endless renditions of O Sole Mio in lieu of any intellectual activity. I, Number Three, was Italy’s hope. I, Antonio Serioso. So burdened, so dedicated, so serious. I began to see an important distinction between those boys like myself and John Gillin who were serious, and took all the theology literally, and the other guys, the majority, who seemed oblivious to any inconsistency in being Catholic, while still cussing a lot, and talking about sports, girls, and “bad” things.
Logic dictated my actions. God was in the tabernacle, a few yards from school. Why not visit him frequently, even daily? He loves me more than anyone else, more than everyone else - including the three Aunts - put together. And he wants me to visit and worship, and beg forgiveness for my sins. So, should I be spending any time at all on baseball, or stamps? Even piano practice? Especially when you consider that even the simplest prayers earned you huge blocks of release time from the purgatorial fires. Why think about girls when you could do a few, quickie, “Hail-Marys,” or rap a rapid-fire sequence of “J-M-J’s,” (Jesus-Mary-Joseph) and get credited with eons of relief?
When in the upper grades, there even were a few times when I forgot to pick up my brother, Phil, the first or second-grader, after school. The poor, little tyke. I was busy, working on really important things: I was praying in church. Gosh, I guess I was really close to cracking up in those days; on the road to bedlam. Or the priesthood.
“You were taking it too seriously.”
There’s the same, old, excuse whenever religious “fanaticism” leads to tragedy. But, it seems to me, that’s the same as saying it wasn’t intended seriously; in other words, it was false. (You mean all the stuff about God, sin, and salvation wasn’t meant to be taken seriously?)
They must have recruited us at about the fourth or fifth grades, when we were still as sweet and innocent as - my god we could have passed for - the cherubs liberally depicted in the church. Strange as it now seems, I may still have been the lovable, slender, blond-haired angel appearing in some of Mom’s ancient photos. It’s also quite likely that they only recruited from among the first two rows, since only students of a certain intellectual attainment would be capable of acquiring and memorizing Latin responses and mastering all the complexities of acolytic procedure. Seven or eight altar boys from each of the last four grades would provide a corps of about thirty, enough to handle the myriad duties for a huge, thriving parish like the Epiphany, possibly a hundred or more square blocks of South Philly.
I can’t recall any training in the details of serving Mass, though there must surely have been some. Nor do I remember any lessons in Latin. I must have picked it up with the relative ease with which I have always absorbed the flow and feel of a new language, though certainly not the meanings. Of course, one could be a perfect altar boy without knowing the significance of a single Latin term. Besides, the language seemed to be closely related to and pronounced just like the Italian I had occasionally heard from my grandparents or - still more rarely - my parents. I’m sure I believed that Latin was derived from Italian.
With no recollection of toil and trouble, of ever “becoming” an altar boy, it now seems to me that I was always one. Always in church; always holy. At first, of course, the youngest boys were assigned to the “chorus” - flower strewers on the few really pleasant holy days and holidays; contributing our innocence and boy sopranos to winding processions; adding the cherubic touch to major ceremonies; positioned about the sanctuary like so much living altar decor.
Later, as we got older and wiser, rose in the ranks and ourselves became acolytic upperclassmen, we naturally got to serve Mass routinely. Then the High Masses, the funerals and christenings, the cinemascope productions on Christmas, Easter, Palm Sunday, New Year’s - oops, the Circumcision - the special visiting missionary events, retreats and novenas, and finally, the zenith of that hallowed vocation, weddings. For working weddings (holy matrimony), we might get - it happened only about half the time - a one-dollar tip. Nevertheless, even disregarding the tip, weddings were probably the “happiest” of all the sacred functions at which we served, and infinitely preferable to the excruciating boredom and eternal duration of regular Masses.
There were myriad excellent reasons for being an altar boy, almost none of them religious. Of course, I welcomed the spiritual benefits, the additional blessings and indulgences pertaining to assisting at Mass, which helped compensate us for the sacrifices in time and sleep necessary to the performance of our duties. More significant was the sense of constantly being so close to the Lord of Hosts, Almighty Creator and Ruler of the Universe, piled, in multiple enwaferments, in a golden chalice, in a golden tabernacle, just a few feet from my worshipful gaze.
Nevertheless, as important as these were, they could not compare to the sheer, snobbish satisfaction of walking into class at 10 in the morning, having just served a 9-o’clock Mass. Boring though it could be, church time was still better than doing class time; I savored the elitist joys of knowing I had missed, legitimately, hours of classroom drill. With supernatural sanction; something like having an excuse signed by God.
What? Schoolday, weekday masses? But of course. At any given time, we had five or six resident clergy and who knows what other peripatetic priests, visiting missionaries and papal emissaries? Each one had to say Mass each day - one of the earliest of the inviolate rules of the priesthood we had been taught. No matter what, in battle, sick in bed, in outer space, he must celebrate the sacrament at least once a day. I really can’t say whether they were permitted to do two or more. Six Masses every weekday, more on Saturdays and Sundays meant a minimum of twelve altar boys was needed each and every day.
Then too, the spiritually busy times of which I write were the war years. Those middle-elementary grades, the frightening period when our forces were being pushed all over the Pacific. A gargantuan parish, hordes of parishioners anxious over their loved one’s safety demanded more church time, more prayers, more ceremonies. Heaven had to be hounded, battered with an onslaught of worship, entreating the powers that be to grant America a speedy, glorious victory. Not that any additional prayers should, theoretically, have been necessary, for we all knew that God was on our side. He was certainly not a Jap! Hence, genetically speaking, his son could not possibly be one either. But the thousands of pictures of Christ that we’d seen afforded conclusive confirmation of our belief that Jesus was no slant-eye. Neither was the Holy Spirit, though I suppose that would depend on his disguise for the day. So, even though all the additional wartime supplications were actually superfluous, like chicken soup, they couldn’t hurt.
But the demand for more liturgy did create an unusual burden, heavier pressures on our clergy and the church facilities. Occasionally a priest would try holding Mass at one of the side altars, either the male altar featuring Saints Anthony and Francis, or the female one, to the left, highlighting Saints Teresa and Margaret. Devotees of those particular luminaries could then occupy the appropriate side pews for those ceremonies. Of course, that did nothing whatever to alleviate the crush, and create the additional space needed to accommodate the overflow throngs. Not to mention the confusion: even though following a side Mass, one could hardly ignore the fact that ringing bells at the primary altar were signaling that God had just arrived at center stage. And, obviously it wouldn’t do to have two simultaneous sermons going.
What we had there was an enormous logistic problem; before going off to the chemical plants, refineries, factories, Jersey farms and the Philadelphia Naval Yard, our parishioners wanted to sanctify their day and have their war efforts blessed by attending Mass. But when? Assuming that they rose around 6 and had to be on the job around 9, and noting that the standard Mass, depending on sermon, can get fairly close to an hour, there was only one Mass, the 7 o’clock, which they could possibly attend. We had to have more space, more services, and shorter Masses.
The solution incorporated two brilliant strokes of ecclesiastical innovation. One involved pressing into service our ample church basement, which had formerly been used only for meetings, and the ubiquitous Bingo. The other entailed a great deal of liturgical pruning: it was possible to clip the Kyrie, off the Offertory, and eviscle the Epistle. Even that untouchable, the Sermon, could be trimmed a bit, excising some of the homilies, but leaving the appeals for funds intact, since they constituted the very essence of the ritual. The end result is a streamlined service coming in at well under 30 minutes. Thus, can it truly be claimed that, born of the exigencies of war and the piety of the laity, came the invention of LITE MASS. Haste’s great. Less fulfilling. But precisely the same amazing grace. Now the lower church could hold Mass on the half-hour, the upper every hour, and there would be enough supplication to go round.
So, more altar boys. More church time for me. I welcomed it, not because I was that sanctimonious (I was!), but because the church building was so dramatically, wondrously different from our ordinary experience of block after block of row after row of row house. Its massive scale, dimensions and decor, its architectural splendor, regalia and trappings all combined to convey the distinct impression that this was not like home. This was something decidedly different, of another time and place; it must have been constructed in the Middle Ages. This resembled the enchanted castles, royal palaces and impregnable fortresses of our beloved comics, novels, adventures and fairy tales. Damn, our church was an exact replica of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Or was it one of the palaces in which Shirley Temple, as dewy-eyed urchin, frequently found herself?
Our church had its dungeons - the unrenovated areas of the lower church, its spires and turrets and towers, its Gothic arches and unexpected twists and turns, its forbidden zones, its remote, unreachable heights - the choir-organ loft. Just inside the church entrance, at either side, were small staircases leading to that elevated music level, but we were not permitted to use them; one side, in fact, was never used. Who knew why? Satisfyingly enough, just a few years later, my wonderful cousin, Marie, had become the church organist and secured for me permission to practice the organ and roam the loft at will.
There were... secret passages. How strange that those, more than most other aspects of my reading, film viewing and radio listening, should have impressed themselves upon my mind in so powerful a fashion. Secret passages. And the entire family of such: tunnels, camouflaged cave openings, mazes, trapdoors, movable panels. Yes, tilt just the right volume from the third bookshelf and a concealed system of gears and pulleys swings away one of the library walls. Touch a certain spot on that small, irregular stone below the mantel - lo, the back of the fireplace slides up to reveal secret steps descending to... what unspeakable horror? And the bed-chamber of course always contained its obligatory false panels. How else were assorted fiends to gain access to the heroine, when she had naïvely barred the stout oaken door from the inside? That secret passage often opened just behind an elaborate Victorian headboard. In other cases, the false wall was the one at the rear of the closet; upon opening, one can see a staircase, usually an ascending one leading to ... what unspeakable horrors in the attic?
Well, with youthful enthusiasm, a runaway fancy could easily transform all the slightly recondite areas of the church building into “secret passages.” A staircase from sanctuary to rectory; the two prohibited sets of loft steps; the devious route connecting upper and lower churches; a space behind the organ pipes that was an awfully tight squeeze - all were slightly illicit, all had a touch of the arcane about them. Then, it seemed that the lower church was in a perpetual state of construction and renovation, which obviously created more dangerous nooks and crannies and obstacle courses, more “no-trespassing” zones, more secret passages. Best and scariest of all was the long dark tunnel behind the main altar connecting the priest’s ready room with the altar boy prep room. That was the storage area for the dozens of generic surplices and cassocks; we donned them and primped there before making our grand entrance. The collars were ours. Each boy had to purchase his own. It was with respect to the collars that there seemed to be an ongoing, friendly competition among the mothers as to which could get her little angel’s the whitest and stiffest. My mom always did a great job; I always felt that my collar was vastly superior to the smudgy and sometimes downright dirty ones the other boys wore. Of course, I had three back-up laundresses - the three Aunts - who would not have permitted one mote of dust to escape their sterilizing, x-ray scrutiny.
Put on the sacred robes, back to the sacristy, assist at Mass, then back through the tunnel. There was no way to gauge its heights; these were lost in the blackness of the upper vaults of the church. One side of the tunnel was just the reverse side of the altarpiece: high, way up in the celestial strata, there were faint beams of light coming through the altar fretwork, either the dim church illumination or the candlelight from the very highest, huge altar candles - those lit only for the very highest and most elaborate productions. In fact, if I remember correctly, there were ladders in the tunnel, their upper ends also lost in the blackness, and it was necessary to climb them to light and extinguish those super-candles.
When traversing the tunnel, you had to make your best guess as to when you were directly behind the tabernacle, just two or three feet the other side of the altar. At that point, we were, presumably, breaking the path of the Divine Rays and must genuflect. The primary rays from all those sanctified hosts piled in the golden containers locked in the tabernacle must have been strongest at zero degrees, shooting straight down the center aisle, through the vestibule, down the front steps, and right across Eleventh Street. There was no doubt the rays went that far, for we - all Catholics - had been trained to at least bow one’s head, or cross oneself when crossing the center front of a church. Even when walking along the street. Even when in an automobile, where genuflecting would have been somewhat impractical. The rays must have weakened a bit at that distance, since they were entitled to only a nodding bow, not a genuflection. But they were still present. However, those coming from the back, at 180 degrees, must have been considerably more feeble. While we had to genuflect in the tunnel, nobody strolling on Twelfth Street had to bow, nod, or even wave.
That always struck me as a bit peculiar. One would have supposed that an omnipotent being, giving off beams of mega-zap force, would have radiated from a point-source, omni-directionally. Like those faceted, mirrored ballroom globes. Or radiated in several planes. At the very least, in one plane, at the four compass points. But Nooo; there was just the one super-beam about a hundred yards long coming out the front, and that other mini-ray at the back which forced our tunnel gyrations. Airplanes didn’t have to dip when passing directly over. Nor did the worshippers in the lower church have to make guesses about the upper; they had their own rays to contend with.
All in all, I suppose it was lucky that the Eucharistic rays weren’t more potent and omnidirectional. For, considering the location of John Gillin’s home, he and his family would have been perpetually genuflecting, bouncing up and down in a kind of spastic, demented Irish jig.
Secret passages. Yes, they transformed the consecrated building into a secular wonderland of such fascination and mystery. And one other thing, obviously related both psychologically and in fantasy. Buried treasure. Well, not really “buried” treasure; “misplaced” or “forgotten” treasure. You see, if there was one aspect of the Church which had been impressed upon us and really made an impact on the psyche of adventure-minded, comic-book-reared little boys, it was that the Holy Roman Catholic Church was an institution of enormous wealth. Incalculable, groaning wealth.
The Vatican was, to our imagination, some far-off legendary city of gold, far more fabulous than El Dorado or Shangri-La, and more awesome than the Bat-Cave or Superman’s shining, crystalline hideaway. And the riches contained therein were still more mind-boggling. They owned, for example, just about every famous painting in the world, since they were all done by Italians, and Vatican City was the capital of Italy. Everything that Michelangelo, DaVinci, Titian, Rafael had ever done was there. All the sculpture too. In fact, the value of all those art objects was so enormous that if they had just sold a couple of paintings, and perhaps one statue, they could have fed and clothed all the poor people in the whole damned world for about ten years. I often wondered why they didn’t do exactly that, instead of always asking our parish to send them money.
Then, the stamps. I had just begun to collect those pretty, weird, and colorful pieces of paper, those exotic ones that bore little resemblance to the boring, pedestrian stamps issued by the United States. This fledgling collector would save his precious allowance and purchase those great big, penny stamps, beckoning from the approval selections I received; crazy, triangular or diamond-shaped issues from the Mozambique Company, Tannu Tuva, and other bizarre lands, of whose locations I hadn’t the faintest idea. However, I gathered from snippets of information in our school magazine that the Vatican, as usual, owned the world’s biggest and best stamp collection, and my fevered imagination could only gasp as I speculated about its contents. Why, there must have been rarity after rarity, cartons of stamps and envelopes from the medieval period, from the Crusades, from King Arthur’s days. Maybe even... of course, they must have some of the letters sent by the Apostles; certainly some of St. Paul’s stuff; all he ever did was write letters. And, I’d have bet that locked in the most secure fortifications, inside ten-foot steel vaults, they actually had preserved some envelopes with stamps licked by Jesus!
The Vatican was wealthy beyond the dreams of a thousand emperors, and our church, the old Epiphany parish, was a part of the same organization, wasn’t it? So, it too must be rich. Certainly, there was sufficient additional evidence for that conclusion to indicate that my reasoning was logically impeccable. (It wasn’t). Just the contrast between the church and our homes confirmed the vast difference in wealth. The genuine marble everywhere - not marbled formica; the rich woods; the paintings, statues, and stained glass. Priestly raiment was all linen, silk and satin, interwoven and decorated with threads of silver and gold. Gold, gold encrusted with precious jewels, was the most conspicuous sign of wealth. All the sacred vessels were gold; the chalices, the monstrances, the tabernacle itself, even the paten - the little plate we held under the communicant’s chin in case a fleck of God should flake off, or the priest should miss the tongue altogether.
Finally, not only were we surrounded by priceless treasures, but we came into direct contact with the concrete, tangible value of money itself. Money, in jingling piles and loose stacks, in the wicker baskets on the ends of long poles we shoved down each pew so the devout could pay their dues. I think those were ancient times, long before the invention of “deacons.” What happened to all that cold, hard cash? Just one Sunday’s receipts?
Couldn’t there be a pile of it lying around somewhere? Forgotten? Misplaced? Couldn’t some priest, long ago, have hidden away a priceless relic, or perhaps an emerald chalice, then died before revealing its location to anyone? Why not the Holy Grail itself? Or, maybe some dusty storage bin containing a few masterpieces was plastered over in all the lower church construction.
These were, essentially, what I meant by “buried” treasure, as we silly boys whispered our tall tales and exciting rumors of the wonders concealed in the vastness of that church building. Most of the stories centered about the lower church, the basement, which our psyches had transformed into a dungeon; there was more mystery over its secret places. Secret passages and buried treasure kept us going back, serving again and again, so that afterwards, we could pursue our primary mission - exploration.
To be continued, explaining who the “Nazis” were.
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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ooming large - it seemed that
most of them loomed rather large - over a small desk at the front of the room, the ENFORCER. That would be a specimen of the good Sisters of Saint Joseph, arrayed in her (its?) pitch black, head-to-toe, Darth Vader uniform, broken only by two starched, stiff areas of white. One is the oversize clown bib, so inelegant, so disproportionate, that you instantly grasp that this is not designer nunnery finery. What on earth could have been its purpose? Surely, the nuns weren’t dining frequently on Italian cuisine and spraying sauce in all directions? Nor could they have been often found chomping on barbecued ribs, lobster, or crab legs. Not with those infamous vows of poverty. The bib must have been there to conceal any suggestion of curvilinear swellings - a bosom, to be specific. All the swaths of penitential black habits underneath would have been camouflage enough. But, best to be safe than sorry. Bibs afforded an extra measure of assurance that no one would ever suspect they were females - itself, a debatable hypothesis.