Review: A Gay Catholic Memoir by Scott Pomfret

Since My Last Confession (a gay catholic memoir) by Scott Pomfret
Arcade Publishing, New York $26.00 288 pages


Vatican II brought radical changes to the (western rite) Catholic Church. Not only was the Latin mass changed to the vernacular but the nuances of the liturgy were streamlined or in some cases, “protestantized.” One of the intentions of Vatican II was to make the Catholic Mass “accessible” to mainstream Protestant religious bodies like the Lutherans and Methodists. The idea was to set the groundwork for Christian unity, to make Catholicism “ecumenically friendly.”
To the chagrin of Catholic traditionalists, the design of the “new” Mass was orchestrated by six Protestant clergymen. At the end of Vatican II, change for the sake of change in the Church became the order of the day. The concept of the Mass as a “meal’ rather than a “sacrifice” heralded the new position of the priest facing the people rather than east (or the altar). After that came the removal or deconstruction of the high altar itself. In Catholic churches around the world plastic or wooden tables replaced centuries-old altars. (Traditionalists derogatorily refer to these plastic tables as “Julia Child’s table—without the Cornish Hen”).
Other changes in the Church continued with the fever pitch of a Donna Summer song.
The tabernacle, once the immovable focal point of the high altar, was removed to a side table. Sacred iconography went the way of all flesh: statues and icons in some cases were removed and replaced with burlap banners decorated with Biblical quotations. Highly stylized Church crucifixes were replaced by a tacky looking resurrected Christ (arms outstretched) or in some cases bare plus signs. Altar rails, some of them hundreds of years old, were demolished and turned into parking lot slabs. The overall architectural design of Catholic churches changed as well. New churches came to resemble secular meeting halls or interdemonitional spaces.
“Is this a Catholic church or a Protestant church?” became the common refrain of the day.
In many ways the Catholic Church of the post-Vatican II era was a different Catholic Church than its predecessor. The 1970s saw folk masses, jazz masses, basketball masses, Halloween masses, hand clapping and other Protestant evangelical trappings. Gregorian chant flew out the window; in its place pedestrian “hymns” like “On Eagles Wings” became signature liturgical music.
Change even affected the religious habits of some orders of Catholic nuns. The “modern” nun, fashionably coiffed in short hair and long earrings, came to resemble the nice lesbian feminist next door. Sadly, the Audrey Hepburn nun of The Nun’s Story became a fossilized antique.
But if proponents of Catholic theological change thought that Vatican II would alter or modify Catholic doctrine, they were mistaken. The truth is, Vatican II was more style then substance. The Council took much of the fun out of Catholic worship (the smells and bells) but left more important areas like birth control or human sexuality, untouched.
Scott Pomfret’s memoir deals mostly with the “new” church (called the Novus Ordo by traditionalists), the church of “On Eagles Wings” and “cool” masses that get down (or up) like bad Broadway shows.
Mr. Pomfret, a Boston trial attorney and a lay minister, is a committed gay Catholic. He writes of his experiences as an involved parishioner with the satirical sagacity of a latter-day Art Buchwald. This highly enjoyable memoir touches on every aspect of parish life, from eccentric fellow parishioners to the anti-gay edicts of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, whom Mr. Pomfret refers to as “Sean.”
Jonathan Swift once wrote, “Nothing is above satire.” Mr. Pomfret would seem to agree. Here, for instance, is his take on a local Boston Dignity service:
“Dignity’s liturgical procedures mandated such strict gender equality. They hailed the Holy Spirit with all three pronouns, alternating among he, she, and it. Wherever possible, the liturgy used the word God instead of masculine pronouns and nouns, but the gender-neutral construction often caused blips in the rhythm of the prayers: ‘Our Father and Our Mother, who art in Heaven….’”
“Dignitarians’ capacity for egalitarianism,” Mr. Pomfret continues, “had outstripped my imagination. [During Mass] the entire assembly participated fully in Prayers of the Faithful. They appealed to the predilections and causes of so many splinter groups that it completely undermined the communal nature of the experience.”
Writing about the Dignity-style Kiss of Peace, or the greeting that Mass goers are supposed to extend to their neighbor, Mr. Pomfret reports that “the dyke sitting next to me gave me a kiss on the mouth,” as “everyone in the room had to be hugged—some of them twice.” In conclusion, he says that the average friar at his Boston parish church, the Shrine of Saint Anthony, “could have crammed two Masses into the span of time it took the Dignitarians to exchange peace.”
The author goes to great lengths to understand Cardinal Sean, whom he describes as “personally broken,” after the Massachusetts Catholic Church failed to stop the legalization of same sex marriage there. So devastated was the Cardinal, Mr. Pomfret writes, that he wouldn’t even look the opposition in the eye when it came time to shake hands at conferences or religious roundtable discussions.
“People who encountered [the Cardinal] reported a stunned, deer-in-the-headlights look,” he writes. The marriage victory in Massachusetts, Mr. Pomfret adds, was embarrassing for the Archdiocese of Boston where the state legislature is 70 percent Catholic.

“The Church, limping, haggard, once a moral contender, had weakened to a shadow of its former strength. A different Church, one that retained a speck of moral authority, might still have articulated Gospel imperatives that really did bear repeating: poverty, capital punishment, war, goldfish murder, the ubiquitous frat boy uniform of khaki pants and braided belts, and other objective evils,” Mr. Pomfret writes.
There’s hardly a niche or crevice in American Catholicism that Mr. Pomfret doesn’t cover.
When he visits a Courage meeting (a gay Catholic group committed to celibacy), he observes: “Their alienation from their sexual identity was compelling—but also obscene, like watching a little girl with a box knife cut herself.”
Surprisingly tolerant when he writes about Courage, Mr. Pomfret does manage to include a few Courage quotes.
“People who have successfully integrated homosexual desires with their personalities…are rare indeed.”
“It is therefore easy to see how the homosexual relation fails as a totally human relationship.”
The Boston Courage chaplain is described as a “hunk.” “…Father John was a man’s man—forty years old, movie star handsome, a strong handshake, and a tough South Boston accent. A lot of the celibate boys surely developed serious crushes on him,” Mr. Pomfret writes. Although Courage’s celibate boys are only about ten in number, the author wonders, “The Church really is determined to torture these guys. They couldn’t have chosen a little ninety-year-old eunuch as chaplain? Instead they assign this virile stud?”
As to why he remains a Catholic in the impossibly rigid doctrinaire atmosphere of Pope Benedict XVI (or B16), Mr. Pomfret says, “I can no more shed my Catholicism than my gayness.”

Thom Nickels is the author of eight published books, including Philadelphia Architecture and Out in History. He is also the architecture critic at The Philadelphia Bulletin. He can be reached at ThomNickels1@aol.com.

SORE, metaphysical science fiction

The cover of my new book, due out in early 2010. I wasn't sure about this cover at first. I used to write erotic fiction in the 1990s. I no longer do that. My friends generally approve of this cover, although a few said it smacks of
tacky eroticism. SPORE is hardly a pornographic novel, however. Once again, I will have to take my chances. When 'The Boy on the Bicycle' was published in 1992-93,
The Philadelphia Inquirer refused to review it because of the cover.

An Argument over spilled beer leads to Murder

The Three [Philadelphia] Stooges—Charles Bowers, James Groves and Francis Kirchner-- who (allegedly) beat to death 22 year-old Lansdale-native, David Sale, over spilled beer, now face the possibility of life in prison.
They’d gone to McFadden’s bar in the Phillies ballpark on a beer road trip with other patrons from one of the sleazier bars in Fishtown. Their intention, I would assume, was to have a good time but that’s not what happened.
Whatever problems these men had before this incident are nothing when compared to what lies ahead for them. Ten years from now, perhaps, (if they are convicted of killing David Sale) they may wake up in a cell in Graterford Prison to participate in a Mural Arts prison Project. At that point they may think back to the stupidest night of their life, when they choose to let lose the ‘dragon within’ rather than talk things out, or walk away.
Walking away from impossible, alcohol-fuelled situations takes strength of character; there’s nothing cowardly about it.
If there ever was a lesson in controlling one’s temper before over reacting, this is it. Imagine having to spend a lifetime in jail because, under the influence of alcohol, you allowed violent, drunken impulses to possess you for the better part of 30 minutes?
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, when commenting on the Sale killing, said, “There’s a lot of violence out there.”
Psychologists, of course, have a lot of theories about why some men are violent. Violence can stem from a dysfunctional, abuse-filled childhood. It can stem from anger from unfulfilled personal desires (that which we seek to repress builds up stem, eventually producing a “volcano”). Violence can occur when lives are perceived as meaningless, when life itself is thought to be worth little. Nihilism may have its place in existentialist philosophy, but it rarely translates well to troubled individuals for whom life then becomes just as meaningless for everyone.
Sometime ago I wrote about vigilant violence, but ‘dog pack’ violence, when large groups that hang out, drink and do stupid things together, is a close cousin to roaming the streets and taking justice into your own hands.
Group dynamics, when mixed with alcohol, can have different effects. It’s unlikely that ten women having Martinis at a Union League luncheon will get into a barroom brawl, though their breeding might instigate conversational warfare should there be a breakdown in communications. Ditto for Knights of Columbus members who decide to share a brew at a local pub, say, and then get into an argument. Chances are the end result of that ‘fight’ would be a slammed drink on the bar, and a quick “disciplined” exit.
In movies there are lots of examples of barroom scenes in which a drink is thrown in someone’s face, and then a handkerchief offered to clean it up. Woman in those old films might even blow smoke in a man’s face and even get away with a slap or two before they walk out the door. Only in gangster films and western melodrama do we have examples of what happened in McFadden’s sports bar.
The testosterone-filled, crowded sports bar must be the direct descendent of the rowdy, western bar where cowboys used to shoot one another. Sports bars are “ripe” for public brawls because you can’t even maneuver the simple act of sipping (a drink) in such places without your elbow hitting your neighbor.
Sports bars are like little Roman coliseums: the wild laughter and good times always seem to threaten to turn into violence. Sports bars are places where just one drunk in the group may attempt to influence the pack, whether out of a sense of bravado or showing off in games of one-upmanship. Group drunks can turn into sloppy, dangerous affairs at the flip of a coin because the individual antics of just one member can cajole, encourage and otherwise instigate collective stupidities. This is what happened at McFadden’s bar, where police reported large numbers of people from “both sides” rumbling outside in small groups.
We may never know for sure how the fight at McFadden’s began in the first place. One thing is certain: alcohol almost certainly distorted the perceptions of what was only, on the surface, a simple beer spill. “Something” was read into the spill, and for that somebody had to die.
It’s one thing to die for one’s country, for someone or something that one loves, for work, family, religion, friends, etc., but “trading” a life for spilled beer just doesn’t make the grade.
Thom Nickels

Latin Liturgy: A Natural and Beautiful Thing

There’s something “new” and exciting on the (Roman Rite) Catholic Philadelphia landscape. What is it? It’s the permanent return of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).
After 40 years of buried obscurity, the traditional rite or the so called Mass of the Ages (Pope Urban VII in 1634 said that the Roman Mass was the envy of souls in Heaven) is being made more available in parishes throughout the Archdiocese. Although there have been random TLM’s at various parishes in and outside the City for years, momentum kicked in after Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio in July of 2007. At that time the Pontiff urged easy accessibility to the ancient rite. For the first time since the close of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Catholics in parishes throughout the world were told that if they wanted a TLM in their parish, all they had to do was form a small group and request it from their church pastor..
In the Philadelphia-Lancaster-New Jersey area, the number of parishes hosting TLM’s are growing. Every month seems to bring in a new parish, a new inquiry. The traditional Masses are attracting people of all ages, from the middle aged to the very young. Traditional Catholic seminaries like the Fraternity of Saint Peter, as well as traditional convents and monasteries are also reporting a boom in religious vocations.
Beginning on October, 25, 2009, there will be a weekly TLM at St. Paul’s church in South Philadelphia. This is good news to St. Paul’s pastor, Father Gerald Carey, who calls the October change, “A very natural and beautiful thing.” Fr. Carey, who was ordained in 1998, says he first offered the TLM last year during the Year of Saint Paul. “Out of it came requests from the faithful. That’s what Motu Proprio is all about. I did get requests from parishioners and outside parishioners, so I asked the Archdiocese how I might accommodate them,” Fr. Carey said.
Over 400 people attended the Year of Saint Paul TLM at Fr. Carey’s church. The event was so successful a woman came up to Fr. Carey after the Mass and said that after years of being away from the Church, she was coming back.
Years ago, Center City’s St. John Evangelist church held regular TLM’s but those Masses were eventually moved to Holy Saviour Parish in Norristown. St. Patrick’s church on Rittenhouse Square once held twice monthly Latin Novus Ordo Masses (or the Mass of Pope Paul VI) until the death of its pastor, Father Fitzpatrick.
TLM’s have also been a regular staple of the Carmelite Monastery at 66th Avenue and Old York Road. On Thursday, July 16th, on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a Traditional Latin Solemn High Mass will be held at 7:30 p.m., complete with monastery choir and guest soprano, Dolores Ferrico. The nuns will sing the traditional Carmelite chant, the Flos Carmeli.
Fr. Carey says that shortly after the Motu Proprio was issued, he availed himself of an official TLM training session the Archdiocese was offering to priests.
He explains that the process of instituting a TLM is more than just a language thing. Planning a TLM means that the church in question must have altar rails (for traditional kneeling at communion), and altar boys trained in the Latin responses. (If an altar rail has been removed from a church, it’s possible to improvise a “substitute”) In a TLM, the priest as well as the congregation will face east, and the tabernacle must be on the main altar.
Facing East is considered a symbol of the rising Son of God.
“The Motu Proprio is a major step, but to approbate it takes time,” Fr. Carey said. “You have to make sure if priests want to do this, are you going to ensure that they’re going to do it well? And thank God the Cardinal was on our side and really worked hard and provided these workshops. Priests need to know the rubrics. Years ago people grew up with this Mass, they saw it all the time so when you became a priest you sequayed into it. But now you have to study it.”
Since the early 1970s The Latin Liturgy Association, Inc. has worked hard to keep the old rite alive.
“When Motu Proprio was first issued,” says Philadelphia Latin Liturgy Association Chairman Dr. Rudolph Masciantonio, “the Association sent the Cardinal a proposal asking that the TLM initially be made available in each of the vicariates of the Archdiocese—North and South Philadelphia, and each of the suburban counties. We thought this would be start to have a TLM in each of the vicariates. We also pitched for a traditional parish in Center City, much like Ess Cee in Berlin, New Jersey, where all the Masses and rites are traditional.”
Dr. Masciantonio says that while the Association didn’t receive a written response from the Cardinal, it got something better.
“The Cardinal acted on it. He appointed a priest to be the facilitator of the TLM in the Archdiocese, Msgr. Charles L. Sangermano in Norristown, and he made it a rule that all seminarians train in the traditional rite, as well as the new rite. And he specifically authorized a weekly TLM at St. Paul’s beginning October 25th.”
“We’re very grateful for that,” Dr. Masciantonio says, “and the future looks good.”
While there are still no traditional Catholic parishes in Center City, Dr. Masciantonio believes that this will change. “More and more people are interested in the traditional Latin Mass. The TLM is one of the best things that the Church has going for it,” he said.
The Latin Liturgy Association advocates the preservation of Latin in the Church, even in the “new” Mass of Pope Paul VI. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy at Vatican II decreed that, “The use of Latin is to be preserved in the Latin rite.” As to the question, “Why Latin?”, the Association’s website answers that question by reminding readers that “Latin helps us overcome limitations of time and place, and helps us participate in the universal reality of the Catholic Church, linking us with the generations who have worshipped before us.”
“Once people get used to these Masses again, and understand how valuable they are spiritually and aesthetically there will be a real reluctance to give them up,” Dr. Masciantonio says.
Father Adrian Fortescue, an English liturgical historian and author of the book, “The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy,” believed that “the Mass of the Roman Rite is the most venerable in Christendom.”
Like historic architecture, how can this venerable rite not be preserved?
“I can assure you that all the priests I know, even if they don’t have a familiarity with the Latin language, are very supportive of the TLM,” Fr. Carey says. “Most of them say the Mass as the Church directs them, and if they make a mistake it is unintentional. These younger guys really aren’t about innovation; they just want to say the Mass.”

Thom Nickels

Haunted House on Beacon Hill. What I saw and heard when I lived in Sumner's room

4. Charles Sumner On Hancock Street was the home of Charles Sumner (1811 - 1874), abolitionist, lawyer, and for many years, senator from Massachusetts. Sumner's statue stands on the Boylston Street side of the Public Garden, and a portrait of him hangs in the State House library. Look for this story at a later date. When I lived here in 1970 as a very young Vietnam War era conscientious objector, I saw and heard things in this house I have never seen elsewhere.

Removing Urban Graffitti

Recently, a friend of mine asked for help in calling the city and getting some graffiti removed from his Fishtown property. The property in question is on Girard
Avenue. Graffiti vandals spray painted a billboard-sized tag on the side of his house. My friend, who has spent months, not to mention a lot of money renovating the house, said he called the city’s anti-graffiti hotline and reported the tags but he hoped that another report might speed things along.
“Every man knows better than he hopes,” as E. W. Howe once said.
I called the hotline for my friend and heard the recorded message promising that
graffiti is generally removed 3 to 5 days after it is reported. After the initial 5 days were up, and the graffiti was still not removed, I called the hotline again only this time I placed a call to the city’s new 311 system, which also processes graffiti removal requests. At this stage of the game intuition and common sense told me that something else, like Mayor Nutter’s city budget cuts, might be contributing to the delay.
I decided to do some detective work and placed a call to Deputy Managing Director Tom Conway, who oversees the city’s graffiti removal programs.
I asked Mr. Conway why the billboard-sized graffiti was still on the Girard Street property.
Mr. Conway told me the rise of graffiti during the warmer weather, when graffiti tagging vandals, like seasonal insects, come out in force. “The vandals are out more at this time of year,” Mr. Conway said, “but the city still has a very aggressive removal program. During the winter months we can’t power wash unless it is above 40 or 45 degrees, so sometimes graffiti will sit there for a while.”
I imagined thousands of tagged houses like the Girard Avenue house waiting to be power washed. An inner voice urged me to “be patient.”
During my affable chat with Mr. Conway, I repeated the vandalized Girard Avenue address several times, hoping that Mr. Conway would see to it that there’d be no further delays in getting the graffiti removed.
Two more weeks came and went, but the graffiti still hadn’t been removed. I telephoned 311 again and asked an operator why the tags were still there after four reports, the passage of 30 days, and a twenty minute conversation with the Deputy Managing Director.
The operator told me that the tags should have been removed several weeks ago but for some reason the request had been dropped or fallen through the cracks.
“Fallen through the cracks” in my mind translated into fallen victim to the city’s budget cuts. Mr. Conway, in fact, had told me that the budget for the city’s graffiti removal program, like every other city department, had been cut, forcing the city’s anti-graffiti unit to “look for different alternatives,” such as asking the School District to help with graffiti [school] removal. To adhere to the new city budget, Mr. Conway also said that the anti graffiti unit has had to change its hours of operation so that it won’t “have to pay overtime.”
In the good ole days when Mayor John F. Street was in office, graffiti was almost always removed within the 3 to 5 daytime limit. Minor exceptions to this rule happened but I can honestly say that whenever I reported graffiti then I was always amazed at how quickly the tags were removed.
“A quick removal is our biggest deterrent. The quicker graffiti gets reported, the quicker we clean it up and this deters the vandals,” Mr. Conway told me.
But there’s been nothing quick about the removal of the billboard sized graffiti tags on this East Girard property. Even after five different reports over a 30 day period, the graffiti is still there.
During the public uproar about Mayor Nutter’s city budget cuts, there was little or no publicity about cuts to the city’s anti-graffiti programs. Unfortunately, the “building up” nature of graffiti is such that as it mounts on city buildings, walls and houses rather than being power washed, the damage will begin to be noticed.
Hopefully, by the time the city’s new budget permits a “quick deterrent” removal, we won’t be living in a jungle of spray painted tags.

Thom Nickels can be reached at ThomNickels1@aol.com.

The Philadelphia Accent

What does it mean to talk like a Philadelphian?
Unfortunately, having a Philadelphia accent doesn’t carry the same cache as having a Boston, English or southern accent. A Philadelphia accent is regarded as something to get rid of, like crossed eyes or long nasal hair. The reasons for this are self evident: a Philadelphia accent just doesn’t sound as nice as all those other accents. It lacks the charm of a Georgia draw, and it’s not sophisticated sounding like the English accent, where the “unlearned” sound learned, and where even criminals can sound like they are members of Parliament.
The Philly accent is hardcore, like the sound of breaking glass under the Frankford El. “Where youz going, to get some wooder?” sounds more like a line out of a Pinocchio cartoon than something “real” people would say, and yet it is unadulterated Philadelphese.
“Hey dude, I’m toad-a-lee broke of corders though I need to go to the lie-berry to get a book on IT-lee,” a Philadelphian might say. “Gee, then I gotta go to the Ack A Me cause my Mom’s got Arthur-it is and can’t go downashore.”
Okay, so maybe they don’t speak mouthfuls like this on the Main Line or in Chestnut Hill. While a Main Line clip might not be as “ritzy” sounding as the upper class Boston Brahmin accent with its pretentious British overtones, it has a stuffy quality nevertheless. Come to think of it, Philadelphese only affects folks in the inner city and seems to stop mysteriously at City Line Avenue as if the preponderance of single dwelling homes there, rather than city row houses, acts as a kind of linguistic transformer. Go to any school on the Main Line (Haverford College?) and you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone there who pronounces beautiful, ‘beauty-full,” not to mention replacing the very ordinary sounding “mine and yours,” with the Philadelphese version: “Mayan and Urine.”
The question is: Why do so many of us talk like this? Is it something in the wooder? Our great but ailing city is already too much maligned. Is it our fault that the Philadelphia accent is the only accent in the world (wrongly) associated with stupidity?
It’s interesting to note that Philadelphians who become famous nationally go to great lengths to tone down their Philadelphese. Chris Matthews of MSNBC has small traces of Philadelphese, but I’ve never been able to detect the accent in Philadelphia born Jim Cramer of CNBC’s “Mad Money.”
The big stereotype, of course, is (bubble gum mouth) Rocky Balboa, but Zack Smith, author of (the online) ‘Philadelphia Accent, says that Rocky is representative of the New York working class dialect, not Philadelphia. For the most accurate Philadelphia accent in any movie, Smith says, go to Toni Collette’s performance in The Sixth Sense.
One can try to rid oneself of a Philadelphese but it is not easy. I have educated friends who say “youz” despite the fact that there’s no such word in the dictionary. It’s a fact that most people who have accents don’t even know they have accents. We are “infected” in ways we cannot imagine. All it takes is for one word to slip out, a stray “Yud’ or even mention of a “pros tee tute,” and the dye is cast. At that point you’re likely to hear, “You’re from Philadelphia!”
There are courses devoted to curing Philadelphians of Philadelphese, where teachers recommend that students learn not to distort vowels, and to “move” all L sounds from the back of the throat to the tip of their tongues. This takes some work and effort.
But is this really necessary? What’s wrong with confronting somebody for their “add-e-tude?” Shouldn’t we, as Philadelphians, be proud of who we are and what we sound like?
Perhaps the proof of how proud we are comes with how you’d answer the following question: If you could have one accent in the world, what would that accent be?
Would you opt for French, British, Scottish, ‘Georgia Peach’, an Irish brogue, or how about an exotic Jamaican or Indian accent? Or would you stick with ‘ACK A ME’-laden Philadelphese?

Thom Nickels can be reached at ThomNickels1@aol.com