For Sunday baptisms, Jim Gorman had his four standard, well-tested gospel-homily combinations at the ready. One: Jesus’ own baptism. “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” Two: “Let the little children come to me.” Three: Jesus sends the apostles to preach the gospel and baptize. And four: the meeting with Nicodemus.
He typically started with a brief lesson. “A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace….Baptism is your child’s birthday inside the Church.” Especially since some of these couples only showed up for baptisms and weddings, Jim felt the need to do some basic, remedial catechism. If he happened to gather some details from mingling with the families beforehand, he sprinkled them in throughout the homily. He would end with his standard charge to be faithful Christians in the world. In his fifth year as a deacon, he had a comfort and rhythm with this sacrament. Sometimes, he reminded the couples, in closing, “You’re allowed to come back once in a while, you know.” Depending on the mental space he was in on a particular Sunday, he delivered that last line with good self-Church-deprecating humor or in real, barely masked frustration—frustration with trends of young people “falling away from the Church.”
Jim spent the second half of the week in Sea Isle. He and Maria had their own place down the shore. They bought it about the same time he completed his permanent diaconate studies and about the same time he retired. Family time together in the summer was special of course, but Jim also relished spending off-season weeks down the shore, alone. Maria, a third-grade teacher in Council Rock, was in her last year before retirement. After 20 years at MetLife and, before that, about 20 years at Prudential, Jim was already retired. Almost every morning, when down there by himself, Jim went to daily mass at Saint Joe’s. He prayed n the pews, with the people—he hadn’t yet volunteered his diaconate services to the shore. After mass, he would go to the promenade police station for the eight-am flag-raising, Pledge of Allegiance, and recorded “God Bless America.” (The promenade was what they called Sea Isle’s smaller sort-of boardwalk.). Off-season, with fewer people around, both mass and the flag-raising felt more intimate, Jim felt. Sometimes, Vin--Vincenzo D’Orazio, his buddy from Villanova--joined him for the morning ritual. A couple other long-time friends from Prudential, Villanova, and even from Saint Joe’s Prep had places down the shore too--in Sea Isle, Ocean City, Stone Harbor. Like Jim, they all were retired or nearing retirement. They had done their time.
That particular week, he met up with Tom O’Donnell for a morning run on the Ocean City boardwalk, and on Saturday, he and Vin reconnected to fish on Vin’s boat, bayside. They never really caught much—they didn’t fish to subsist—but it was the camaraderie, the conversation, and just being outside that made it worth it. Jim pined for his own—the Gormans’ own—boat, too. He imagined camaraderie with his sons and even his daughter out on their own boat one day. Maria had thus far delayed and obstructed any boat purchase.
Vin agreed with Maria. “Get your license and honestly you can use ours whenever you want. Also, wait to see whether Christie lowers the sales tax on these things.”
When Jim retired about the same time they bought the house in Sea Isle, the kids speculated—worried—that mom and dad might move down there full time. But when Jim committed as a deacon to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia at the same time, he signaled to the kids and to the wider society that the Gormans, like many good Philadelphia suburbanites, would be a two-house family: one in PA and one down the shore. The kids certainly would have survived with their parents having one house down the shore--all of them had already moved out—but they appreciated the Jersey-PA straddling of the Delaware. They would have a place at the shore almost any time, rent-free, with friends and future families, and they still had the home base they grew up in, in Doylestown.
Patrick, the oldest, worked in finance and lived in up-and-coming Northern Liberties with his wife Megan. Megan was from Connecticut. They met at Villanova and were married —by Jim—shortly after graduating. Northern Liberties, like many other neighborhoods in Philly, was always “up-and-coming,” when Jim and Maria updated their friends on the kids. “Oh that is a nice part of town now,” the family friend would dutifully reply, with mutual unsaid understandings of other parts of town and other times than “now.” Kimberly was back at NYU for her senior year, after studying in Greece for a semester. “Or ‘NY Jew,’” as Jim would joke in safe Gentile company, “studying God knows what this week!” James, Jim’s namesake but adamantly not “Jim,” was a sophomore business major and a faithful fraternity brother at Penn State. All three schools’ flags hung over the Sea Isle house balcony, like the other house balconies, in the proper mixture of school and social class pride.
Maria appreciated the straddle, too. Most of her own friends lived in Bucks or Montgomery counties, and so did her doctors. She had beaten breast cancer eleven years earlier and felt she needed to stay nearby, just in case, although, she admitted, they could make the regular two-hour drive if needed. Also, there were tax benefits to remaining full-time PA residents as opposed to New Jersey, Jim would not shy away from adding.
They had moved to Doylestown from Ardmore, in the early ‘90s, around the same time Jim moved from MetLife’s office in Philly to Prudential in Blue Bell. This was after Patrick but before Kimberly and James were born. The tiny Ardmore house—with the higher Delco and Montco property taxes, Jim would add—would not fit all of them. Well, it would have fit them, but the Doylestown house had much more space: five bedrooms, three full baths on a half-acre-plus in Doylestown township—not Doylestown Borough—in a subdivision off Swamp Road. The lawns and homes were bigger—and the taxes lower—than those in the Borough.
Even though Maria was a public school teacher and even though the Central Bucks School District, in which Doylestown lay, was very well resourced, the Gorman kids did their schooling at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic school up through eighth grade. Then the boys went to LaSalle and Kimberly to Gwynedd, both single-sex Catholic prep schools in Montgomery County. For years, Jim ushered and lectored at Mount Carmel. With his accounting and finance background, he served multiple terms on the parish council. Maria served as a eucharistic minister. The kids were all altar servers in their days. “Servers, not altar boys, sorry,” Jim would fake correct himself and fake apologize after his fake controversy joke. (Kimberly and Maria quickly found the joke tired.) In high school, Patrick earned small yet easy cash as a sacristan and rectory attendant throughout high school. Jim actively participated in Mount Carmel’s Knights of Columbus chapter, helping to plan the annual Poker-Smoker and Beef-and-Beer. He never imagined becoming a deacon, but when Monsignor Fagan asked him one Sunday to consider it, the suggestion flattered him, and he found it difficult to resist flattery. Mid-mass, mid-homily, he sometimes imagined how he could deliver a good homily--better than Fagan likely, certainly better than wishy-washy Nguyen, the Vietnamese-American assistant pastor—but he never gave the idea serious thought.
Most Catholic priests spend about a year as ordained deacons before they’re ordained (celibate) priests. For a semester at Villanova, Jim flirted with the idea of joining the Augustinians, becoming a priest. But then he met Maria. In the 1960s though, with the Second Vatican Council, the Church re-established the permanent diaconate. There were long theological and historical reasons for why it was resurrected, but when asked by outsiders confused about married deacons in the Church, Jim just explained how the Church needed more dedicated (male) servants and that he felt called (and flattered) to do his part. After part-time studies at Saint Charles Seminary, he underwent his ontological change in the sacrament of holy orders. Cardinal Rigali “conferred [on Jim] an indelible spiritual character” that could not be “repeated or conferred temporarily” but that “marked him permanently.” In other words, like marriage or baptism in the one true Church, deaconhood wasn’t something he could casually walk away from.
When Jim quipped about waning church attendance in his homilies, he often was thinking of his own kids. Patrick and Megan went to mass. Yes, it was a Jesuit church—Old Saint Joe’s in Center City—which Jim wasn’t thrilled about, but at least it was church. If Jim were to have his own grandkids one day--to play with, to fish with, on his own boat or Vin’s, to baptize--Patrick’s line was the surest bet. Kimberly and James, less so. Jim felt embarrassed that, even though he was an ordained deacon—even though he ontologically changed—only one of his kids still went to mass.
“After all that Catholic schooling too! All that tuition.” Jim worried out loud, “What will people think?”
“They don’t think. Because they don’t care,” Maria reminded him. “Except for Virginia Witowsksi.” Virginia had good information and bad judgment on everyone. “And she’s kind of a bitch. I mean, witch. So, who cares what she thinks?”
Young James reportedly had gone to mass his first year, at the Penn State Newman Center. But, now in his second year and living the frat life, he considered himself “spiritual but not religious,” as he told Jim and Maria, not very confidently, when they came up for a football game and he didn’t have the mass times readily handy.
“Like everyone his age these days.” Jim said with frustration on the drive home from State College. “Of course, he’s ‘spiritual but not religious.’ The Paulists at the Newman Center water that shit down because they don’t want to offend anyone. They end up convincing kids that they don’t need to go to church. Then the kids don’t go to church. What do you expect? I’d almost rather him come out with it already, like his secular theater major sister. Instead of this ‘spiritual but not religious’ fence-sitting.”
Maria, no fence-sitter or slouch herself, told him to take it easy. She defended James, her youngest. “Also, she’s an anthropology major, which you know very well.”
“Might as well be theater.”
It was partly James and Kimberly he had in mind when, on the drive back from Sea Isle, he mentally composed a new homily for the next day’s baptisms—a different one from his four go-to’s. New material. While he was at shore, Kimberly sent an email to Maria and him recommending they see Spotlight, “the movie with Michael Keaton about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in Boston.” The email was short. It was only about the movie. Why does she do this? She wrote an email just to say that? Couldn’t have even included in part of a larger life update email? “They say it might win Best Picture. It’s really well done.” Of course, it will win Best Picture. Hollywood, the media hate the church. They actually love when these scandals break. They make a ton of money stirring up these controversies. Sickos.
Another reason he liked going to the shore alone was, without Maria there, he watched much more TV. In particular, he watched more Fox News. He flipped through ESPN, History channel, and HGTV, but Fox was the main attraction. Friday night’s O’Reilly Factor featured some updates on this year’s the war on Christmas. Jim both loved and hated the war on Christmas battles—hated the groups who created such trouble but loved the spiritual and emotional fervor it gave him. Maria was no secularist and liked a good public nativity scene, but she disliked the fervor and the unhealthy communion between her husband and O’Reilly. Without her at the shore then, he got to indulge. As in previous years’ battles in the war on Christmas—a long war of attrition—people were creating unnecessary stinks over nativity scenes outside town halls. Cranbury, New Jersey and Middletown, Ohio were two such places this year. Always the very vocal minorities. Does it really bother them? Do those people even have any business at the town hall? Do they ever walk by it and are actually offended? Do they even live there? Jim thought in unison with O’Reilly’s asking.
While fishing, he lamented the war with Vincenzo, who agreed. Vincenzo hadn’t seen Friday’s Factor, but he was a loyal soldier—and Knight of Columbus at St. Rose’s in North Wales—and thus could be counted on to defend Christmas. “It’s like this country hates Christians again, like it did when we were growing up.”
They let that statement’s profundity hang in the air with the smoke from Vin’s cigar.
The waning winter sun caught the diamonds in Vin’s Villanova class ring, as he turned the engine back on. They had to head back, respectively, to Pennsylvania that afternoon. “It’s some bullshit. Scary too, what this country is coming to.”
On the way home, he didn’t remember who the couples and the babies were for tomorrow, but they undoubtedly needed to hear the message. They needed to hear the Gospel, the good news.
“What name do you give your child?
“What do you ask of God's Church?
“You have asked to have your child baptized. In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training him in the practice of the faith. It will be your duty to bring him up to keep God's commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and our neighbor. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?
“The Christian community welcomes you with great joy. In its name I claim you for Christ our Savior by the sign of his cross. I now trace the cross on your forehead and invite your parents and godparents to do the same.”
He ended up choosing the baptism of Jesus, one of his go-to’s. He began the homily with a little summary, highlighting the key parts he had just read. “With him, I am well pleased.” He referred back to the blessing he had just done in the rite. “Today, I made the sign of the cross on Sebastian’s head, on Patrick’s head, on Harper’s head, and on Michael’s head,” he looked at each of the couples. “It symbolizes their new birth in Christ, that they—and you parents and godparents leading them—will carry on the faith.” The couples and the grandparents and extended families all nodded. “And you—they—cannot be afraid. It is a difficult world out there.” Here at this juncture, it could have gone any way. “Difficult world” left open several different paths and conclusions. They didn’t know Jim and that there was only one path he would take from this point.
“Some years ago, in the Mojave Desert …” He felt he could not talk about the war on Christmas explicitly. That would have sounded too obviously straight out of Fox, and people persecuted not just Christmas but Fox too, even some churchgoers. Instead, he went for a deeper cut. He remembered a story—a homily even—he had heard ten years earlier. It was the one that convinced him to join the Knights, to be like their founder Father McGivney in the 1800s and their namesake in 1400s, to not shy away from the cross. So, Jim told about how, back in the 1930s, a small group of Christians had built a five-foot white cross on a hill in the Mojave Desert to honor the war dead from World War I. “‘Erected in the memory of the dead in all wars,’ it read. A simple white cross, for all the dead. Veterans and supporters had been gathering there for years under God’s sky—and it was God’s sky well before it was federal land. (Pregnant pause) But that was too much for the ACLU, for the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and for the other usual suspects. So, they fought through the courts to have it taken down.... They could not stand this cross (he motioned the cross blessing in the air) and what it stood for. What will you stand for?” He couldn’t tell and he couldn’t care how the people in the pews were taking this turn in the homily. A preacher’s job was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable after all.
“The cross had been there for seventy years and now these groups”—he was disciplined enough to not say “ACLJew” as he might joke with Vincenzo—“are offended by the cross? Well, parents, godparents, children, my friends, you must not be afraid to offend. That’s why we are here today. To say yes to the cross. To say yes to the Church, for your sons and daughters. To come back to us regularly, if you have strayed. The world might hate you, but remember, ‘with you, God is well pleased.’”
Jim sat down. He closed his eyes contemplatively for close to a minute, to let the words sink in with the couples and to fall over the babies. But he did not feel contemplative. He was wound up. One of the mothers and two of the godfathers, he felt, were not paying attention. In them, he saw James. Less so Kimberly. She was probably long gone, maybe even there with the ACLU in spirit. James, though, was in that liminal space: not one to carry the mantle of secular humanism himself but distracted and indifferent enough to be led to the slaughter and not even know it.
Jim did the water. He led the profession of faith and the rejection of Satan. He made the sign of the cross with the holy chrism on the babies. He lit the candles. He said the prayer over their mouths and ears. He gave the final blessing. He said goodbye to the families. He cleaned up, locked up the church, and drove home. But, he did not complete these rites mindfully. He was still caught up in the homily. He was still in the Mojave Desert. He was still at the Cranbury, New Jersey and Middleton, Ohio town hall nativity scenes, fighting the good fight. He always wondered whether he was doing enough, in the struggle, for the kingdom. He wondered when his time would come, when he would be tested. He thought maybe this was his time. Was God well pleased with him?
The Eagles played at four. They beat the Cowboys soundly to secure a spot in the playoffs. Patrick and Kelly came over to watch the game. Jim drank several Yuenglings, Patrick a couple IPA’s. Maria made a lasagna, which they ate during the fourth quarter. The battle, the persecutions would continue, and exile might come for him, and them and his to-be-born grandchildren. But the Eagles win, the beer, and the lasagna on a cold night all assured him. He had run the race that day. He fought well. He fell asleep by ten. On Wednesday, he headed back down the shore to fish. Like the disciples did.
