Catholic Howl

(with Apologies to Allen Ginsberg
and Lisa Simpson)

I.

I saw the best Catholics of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving
hysterical naked
dragging themselves through the streets at dawn looking
for beautiful Liturgy

Coolheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the
Trinity,
Who passed through universities without ever learning
Aquinas, among the scholars of Küng,
who were expelled from the seminary for questioning
heterodoxy,
who cowered in rooms with no crucifixes, burning their
Missals in
wastebaskets and listening to the Feminist Theology
through the wall,
who got busted in their dorms reading Wojtyla,
who purgatoried their torsos night after night
with endless tales of bitter old nuns,
who chained themselves to altar rails for the timeless
reception of the Eucharist,

who sank all night in submarine light of renovated
Churches, listening to the
crack of doom from the folk group,
a lost battalion of Thomistic conversationalists,
screaming whispering facts and memories and
anecdotes of lecher priests, pedophiles, perverts
whole intellects who vanished into nowhere leaving a trail
of missed vocations,
who wandered around and around at midnight wondering
where to go for Adoration, and went, leaving no broken
hearts,
who studied Newman, Stein, St. John of the Cross
because the teachers would forbid it,
who loned it through the streets of Georgetown seeking
visionary angels like Fessio
who lounged hungry and lonesome through USF seeking
Chesterton or Augustine or
Waugh, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse
about Opus Dei
who disappeared into the Traditionalist groups,
who reappeared on the Florida Coast building Ave Maria
with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out
Catholics United for the Faith leaflets,
who kneeled for communion and shrieked with delight
for committing no crime but their own desire for orthodoxy

who journeyed to Denver, who prayed With Chaput,
& waited in vain, for the New Evangelization

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for
each other's salvation

who threw potato salad at Jesuit lecturers on Dogma and subsequently
presented themselves on the granite steps of Groeschel’s
Friary with
shaven heads demanding true religious life.



II.

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their
skulls and ate up
their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Heterodoxy! Filth! Ugliness! Bare Churches and
stupid theology! Boys sobbing childhood molestation
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of orthodox seminarians!
Moloch the incomprehensible dissidents! Moloch the
soulless Liturgies! Moloch whose church buildings are
empty!
Moloch whose love is endless questioning and changing!
Moloch whose soul is America and National Catholic
Reporter!

Tuesday, February 04, 2003
A Catholic Long Islander
(Gen X Revert)