A Banner Year For The Bishop

Hey, when it comes to kids, I’ve always had a lot to say. Maybe because I’ve never forgotten what it’s like to be one. This story has been bugging me for a long time. Let me set it up for ya. I was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic schools. Sure, I got thrown out of most of them for being the class clown, and I was put in the corner with a dunce cap a coupla times too many, but today I’m on the board at Blessed Sacrament, my old grammar school in Holyoke. Hard to believe, huh?

But whoa Jimmy Jack. the priests and nuns back then put the fear of god in ya. Like we thought we’d be struck dead if we ate meat on Fridays. One summer Friday morning, about 5 a.m., I was fishing with my cousin and our sidekicks at Ashley Reservoir. I’d brought along an old army style mess kit and we cooked up some bacon and eggs. After my cousin ate the bacon, he remembered it was Friday and started hootin’ and hollerin’. “I’m gonna die! I ate meat on a Friday!” He really thought a lightning bolt was gonna come down. He was so scared he jumped into the reservoir and tried to stay underwater. What the Christ?

We didn’t know back then that what we really needed to be afraid of was the parish priests.

This story resurfaced on the front page of the Globe last Sunday. The Worcester Bishop Robert McManus is at it again. He’s still going after the Nativity School of Worcester, founded by the Order of Jesuits and Holy Cross College. McManus gave the order that Nativity can no longer be a Catholic School. Nativity is a middle school of mostly black and brown kids coming from real disadvantaged backgrounds. Here’s McManus’s gripe. Last spring, these kids wanted to hang Black Lives Matter and pride banners. The bishop demanded that they be taken down immediately. When the kids said no way, the tough guy bishop stripped them of their Catholic school status. But as school starts this week the banners are still flying.

The bishop feels the banners represent everything the church is against. Christ, when you think about it, for years all bishops we’re doing was covering up priests abusing kids. They would move these creeps from one parish to another, never holding them accountable. Some bishops were involved in abusing kids themselves. And this dud is worried about banners? Holy Cross College told the bishop not to show up at their graduation last May. And they still hang the banners in support of the kids. Worcester City Hall hangs the banners in support of the kids and faiths all over the city. 

The Nativity kids excel in school, pitch in for community causes, and go on to good high schools and colleges. At a time when Catholic schools are closing all over the country and countless fed-up parishioners have called it quits after the abuse scandal, Nativity could be a role model on how a Catholic school can thrive and survive in the modern world. Donors all over the country have jumped in to support the school. These young kids are just expressing an opinion and ya gotta give ‘em credit for that. 

Christ, even the Pope said he is welcoming anybody and everybody into the church. My message to McManus is to stop abusing kids.

Keep your dukes up.

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