Catholicism; a small appreciation

We all know the story of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine who prayed for him, for years, to finally be turned to Christ.

Last weekend I picked this CD up from church – Fr. Isaac Mary Relyea talking about how the prayers of his own mother led him out of a terrible life (he was a streetfighter and a union thug) and into the priesthood.

I have to admit, I was a little put-off at first by his accent. Fr. John Corapi, the charismatic “hard-ass” of a priest is a tremendous-but-gruff speaker, but this Fr. Relyea is a pure-D New Yawk boy, wit’ de dese, dems an’ dozes. I expected him, any minute, to start with the baddabings and the baddabooms.

(Okay, so I am an accent-snob. One of my nieces, for a while, had a tendency to talk like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky – every “hello” was a clipped “yo” – and I nagged her mercilessly until she grew out of it. Some New Yorkers never do and da tawkin’ like dis gets my dainty little nose out of joint. But I digress…)

Fr. Relyea does not baddaboom. He does say “fuggedaboudit” a few times, but by then you’re an idiot if you notice it (as I am an idiot for noticing) because his story is so stirring, and his own humility so moving that it will get you bawling as you drive through town. Got me going, anyway.

By the end of the CD, aside from marveling at the way God works in our lives and through all of us – using his creation to reach his creatures – I found myself thinking once again about what James Joyce said about the Catholic Church: “here comes everybody!” It pleases me to no end that counted among our priests are not only the elegant Joseph Ratzingers and the gregarious Timothy Dolans, but the tough-talking John Corapis and streetfighters like Isaac Relyea, too.

Rumer Godden once wrote that the lovely thing about the Catholic church is that you could “find anyone in it, ‘from a tramp to a king;’ the cliche happens to be correct.”

Then again, why shouldn’t that be true? We’re all tramps and kings, aren’t we, depending on where we are in any given hour?