Commemorating a Patriot and Father

Left - Funeral Mass brochure - Dad remained a Catholic to the end.

This is the one-year anniversary of my Dad's death, from pneumonia. My one regret, as I attended his funeral, was that we didn't have more time to get to know each other. This sounds odd, but the fact is - we always tend to believe there's "one more day" - one more day to talk over the phone to a loved one, or one more day to make amends, or one more day just to find out a bit more on the family history-genealogy. Alas, we keep looking or making excuses for that "one more day" - but too often we're caught short.

What I do know is this, though Dad and I disagreed over religious belief issues, he eventually came to terms with my atheism in a kind of peaceful co-existence. Indeed, in the months before his April 25, 2009 collapse (which initially saw him taken to the ER in Port Charlotte, Florida), an ongoing email topic of conversation between us was my youngest brother's fundamentalist Christianity. Dad was becoming ever more distressed, based on what he saw from copies of web pages sent to him, that his Catholicism was being disrespected and trashed. He'd never seen his beliefs "dragged through the mud" like they were on certain 'False Doctrines' pages of an I-Net church site.

Dad converted to Catholicsm after arriving in Milwaukee, in May of 1945, following his processing out of the Army. He originally was Southern Baptist, which meant taking every word of the bible literally. When he became a Catholic, however, he became - like my mom- one of the billion people who followed the Magisterium of the Church, and the Pope.

This was reflected in the upbringing of my brothers, sister and myself - all raised according to Catholic traditions- which meant all the sacraments, as well as rituals. No surprise then that my brothers and I all served Mass (in the 60s).

One thing about Dad that I noticed, is despite his 1945 conversion he never ever bashed or put down other religions or belief systems. He didn't diss his former Southern Baptists, any more than Jews, or even Muslims, or Mormons. He believed, or came to, that ultimately no man can know the afterlife fate of another.

Even after I left the Catholic Church fully, probably around 1979, I never disrespected its core principles based on what John XXIII re-introduced from Vatican II: that it was one family predicated upon respect and love for one another (one reason that part of the Mass - the "friendship" hand shake always resonated so much). Indeed, more than once in the past two years I've vigorously defended the Church against outsider attacks and attempts to reduce it to a "cult". (Dad, btw, was especially incensed that HIS religion was reduced to a "cult" by the same fundamentalist.)

It is also well to note here, that - contrary to recent blogging mystagoguery and rewriting family history, Dad never "de-converted" from his Catholicism to become an evangelical, nor did he cop to any "belief in the Lord JC as personal Savior" on his deathbed. This may play well to certain "peanut galleries" but it's totally fictional. He remained a steadfast Catholic, and he specifically requested a CATHOLIC burial and funeral mass. (See the attached sheet from the Funeral Mass handout at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Port Charlotte).

All this is noted because it would be dishonest to portray Dad's final days or hours as anything but what they were. Or to portray Dad as anything other than what HE was: a Catholic to the end!

I don't know where Dad is now, if anywhere, in terms of my atheism. I don't discount, as I noted in an earlier blog, that at some quantum level (de Broglie waves) his consciousness could still be around - but that is an independent aspect from whether a deity exists. (As Sir. A.J. Ayer once pointed out, "Just as there can be a godless life, there can be a godless afterlife" - in other words energy and consciousness in some residual form can perhaps survive death).

Wherever you are, or in whatever form, rest easily, Dad!