Ray Donovan Pops A Child Abusing Priest - Episode 11 – Thunderous Applause in the Audience!

There is something quite primal in the new Showtime Series Ray Donovan, it attracts as with a moth to a flame.

Ray Donovan, without any job description in the beginning of the series, seems by acts and deeds to be some sort of Private Detective working for a high powered law firm in Los Angeles.  

As time progresses, Ray is a fixer of all the things that the rich and famous break and might go to jail for. But he has his bag of tricks and network of paid muscle, contacts and brains to hold together the power behind the throne of the rich and fabulously rich law firm protecting the fabulously rich and fabulously ugly and stupid Hollywood icons that pay huge retainers to be protected from the press, the public, truth, justice and even reality.

Behind the bone crunching, PR pizaazz fixing, bribing and body burying is the background story of Ray’s extended blood family, transports from the poverty, crime and grit of Irish South Boston in their origins twenty years previously.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2249007/

Ray Donovan is played by actor, writer, director and probably Emmy Award winner Liev Schreiber for his performance in this drama vehicle.

There, in the background story of his scumbag gangster dad (played by Jon Voight) recently released from prison by the FBI to spy on his son and bring down the powerful men of the powerful L.A. Law Firm headed by veteran actor Elliot Gould - is also the story of Ray's younger brother, emotionally lost in adulthood and scarred forever by being abused by a priest in Boston some twenty years back.

Ray’s younger brother “Bunchy” gets a $1,400,000 dollar settlement check from the Roman Catholic church for services and abuse rendered in the name of holy mudder church.  Bunchy, a clearly disturbed and drug and alcohol dependent individual paces back and forth in an eternal daydream filled with fears, anxiety and doubts about himself as the result of the institutionally sanctioned abuse and cannot sleep.

Without giving too much away about perhaps cliché settings and characters of this brilliantly conceived, written and performed TV Drama, Bunchy finds and begins to stalk his priest abuser from the past, now transferred to a parish in Los Angeles.

Bunchy shoots the priest, has regrets and brings the wounded cleric to his other brother Terry’s (played by Eddie Marsan) boxing and training Gym in gritty downtown L.A..

The brothers circle the wagons and try to decide what to do with a wounded and probably dying priest.

Ray, with his seething undercurrent of personal and controlled rage begins to interrogate the priest who denies being Bunchy’s abuser. As time and script allow, the priest admits his crime but in a state of holy RC denial will not apologize to Bunchy, perhaps because his sins have been forgiven in the confessional and he basically does not give a shit about his victims through the years.

Finally, it comes to light that Bunchy was not the only brother molested by the priest.

Ray pops the bastard with a clean gunshot right in the forehead, blood splattering onto the background side of the boxing ring.

The crowd went wild, the audience in my mind that is, to do what the courts in Rome or America have not done to these predator priest bastards protected by the bishops like Bishop Robert Finn in Kansas City Mo. here in America. Whatever.

All in all a great episode.  In an even greater series.

Final episode of the season next week.  The FBI is closing in…

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The Symbolism of the Bas-Relief Sculptures of a Pelican and a Phoenix Over the Entrance Doorways to the Saint Joan of Arc Church Harrowgate Philadelphia

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From childhood I always wondered why there were sculptures of birds and not saints over the doorways of my church in Philly. Nobody seemed to know. Nobody wanted to ask.

Just two doorways as an entrance. One left and one right. The two door configuration seemed to work alright but I always thought not very symmetrical when a bishop came for Confirmation or the May Procession proceeded through one door or the other and not a central third door.

The Priest who founded Saint Joan of Arc seemed to be of very moderate Protestant tastes in that he was born in Wales, educated in London, Canada and Wisconsin before becoming an Episcopalian priest at the turn of the last century.

The Church is a very simple early Romanesque with little adornment or fancy stained glass.  The one rather chic addition to the interior was a dozen mosaics about four foot in circular medallions in between round Roman arches. These Icon style mosaics of the twelve Apostles have backgrounds of gold backed glass mosaic tiles. Impressive if you focus on them but rarely notice them as they are so high up. 

At this point in time I am speculating and going on some historic research and oral tradition that these twelve Apostles Mosaics are recycled from an historic lineage downtown church of St. James once located at 22^nd and Walnut Streets and by the Philadelphia artist Nicola D’Ascencio more famous for this stained glass than his mosaics.

The altar area of Saint Joan’s is also a rather plain sparse area. Even the unmarried Jesus is clean shaven on the Cross there. 

I have also further speculated at this point in time that the altar and altar screen of that defunct Episcopal Church of St. James may have also been on a wish list of Monsignor Edwards Hawks as he built his dream church to cap a career of writing, lecturing and converting to the RC church from the Episcopal early in his career. 

The altar and altar screen of St. James remained in storage until after Msgr. Hawks’s death and was sold to another Episcopal church in the suburbs. Have to wonder if it is one thing to sell iconic mosaics to a Catholic church but maybe the idea of an altar and altar screen was a bit too ecumenical for the times in the middle 1950s.

Back to the doorways. And the decorative bas-reliefs of a Pelican in a nest feeding its young over the left front door and a Phoenix rising from ashes above the right side door.

Having done some cursory research, I see no major issues in dogma regarding RC church design and the use of left and right. There is a distinction in that the left hand side of the church is called the pulpit and or gospel side in terms of the reading of sacred text. The right hand side is referred to the as the lectern and or epistle side of the church and of course refers to the reading of lesser sacred text from that side. 

Also of note, the left side is the pulpit side where the priest reads the gospel aloud and the right hand side is considered more the lay side in that the laity many times read the epistles rather than a priest.

Also from tradition, the bride and groom side of the church is left to right with any reason lost in history. And as a child the children’s mass at 9:00 AM on Sunday morning had the girls side on the left and the boys on the right. 

Secular and or pagan traditions put the left side as the female side and the right side as the masculine side. So too with ancient non-Christian or pre-Christian tradition has the female side associated with the moon and the male side associated with the symbol of the sun.

With all this minor background, I found that the Pelican is a basic Christian symbol of Charity and loosely based on the sacrifice of a parent to feed its young.

Better than that:

Elizabeth I of England adopted the symbol, portraying herself as the "mother of the Church of England". Nicholas Hilliard painted the Pelican Portrait in around 1573, now owned by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. A pelican feeding her young is depicted in an oval panel at the bottom of the title page of the first (1611) edition of the King James Bible. ~~~ - “Pelican” – Wikipedia

Pelican Detail of Above Portrait

The Phoenix has a long cultural basis going back to ancient times and even before the Greek and Romans to the Egyptians to the Bennu bird as part of Egyptian god mythology and a creature representing rebirth for the dead, a creature that came into its own being at or as part of the first creation scenario and as a symbol of the sun.

In a way the Egyptians worshiped or honored the Bennu bird as a symbol of the everyday sun dying at night and being reborn each morning.

Other cultures have the whys and wherefores of the Phoenix bird in slightly different capacities and in lengths of time in terms of the cycles of a Phoenix’s never ending life. 

The Romans used the Phoenix on their coins to symbolize the supposed indestructibility of their empire.

The Pelican and Phoenix above Saint Joan's doorways are of course framed within a triangle, symbolic of the Christian Trinity and the three fold purpose of one God.

So, in short I believe that Msgr. Hawks put a piece of his life history into the stone of Saint Joan of Arc Church in Harrowgate. 

First with the Pelican as his beginning in the Episcopal church, American offshoot of the Church of England after the American Revolution with England, and second with a Phoenix rising out the ashes of his old life as an Episcopalian priest and his rebirth as a RC priest. 

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Sabbath Tales

I have met and know of some remarkable men in my life. Since it is Friday and tonight at sundown marks the start of the traditional Jewish Sabbath, let me tell a few tales.

The man who baptized me or more accurately the man who was founder and pastor of my parish in Philly was a fanatic of sorts. He started out life as an Episcopalian, changed Christian registration to R.C. when in the seminary and went on to start a new R.C. parish. The parish was sort of in between a lot of other established parishes and the land in between those other churches began to be developed, houses built, and there was a need for a new church, school etc. in the first decades of the twentieth century in that part of Philly.

Let me call this man Father Ed. He was of the old “God is to be feared” school of beliefs. He was an Old Testament kind of guy.

He was dead by the time I reached first grade. I have heard stories about him. One from a home inspector who related the story about being an altar boy in my parish and being five minutes late for mass. Father Ed ranted into him at the end of service about how you can’t be late for God. The priest also made the boy serve everyday for a year at 6:00 a.m. mass as punishment. That priest made an impression on that guy but I don’t think that Father Ed made a friend.

Then, as it happens sometimes in life, a lady knocked on the door and said that she had been raised in our house and asked if she might get a quick nostalgic view inside. She then got into some stories about the neighborhood. The one story I remember most was about Father Ed.

There was a Russian tailor in our neighborhood. He also did dry cleaning and his store was a block away from our house. We did business with the man. In the story of the visiting lady we finally understood why some of our neighbors took their dry cleaning three blocks away and not use the local guy. The Russian was also a Jew and a good tailor I might add. My parents, for working class, were flaming liberals. Being Jewish did not matter to them. That and my father liked to haggle.

The lady went on to say that as a child, she and her friends used to taunt the man. Let me say anti-Semitism was rampant in America back then in the 1930's, at least in this neighborhood. Well Father Ed got wind of the fact that some of his parishioners and children were harassing the man and boycotting his business. Father Ed made it a point to visit the tailor and bring his dry cleaning four blocks from the rectory. In good weather, Father Ed sat on the store stoop and smoked a cigar together with the tailor as a means to make a statement of sorts to the neighborhood. Apparently Father Ed and the tailor became good friends as the result of this local anti-Semitism.

Which leads me to the story of my next door neighbor in Arizona. Perry had a remarkable life. Left home and dairy farm in Minnesota when he was fifteen in the middle of the depression and headed west. He wanted to be a cowboy and that he became for some years. Then when World War II broke out he went up to Canada and joined the fight. He hit Juno beach on D-Day as a lieutenant in the Canadian army. He married a Brit, brought his war bride home and settled into life in Arizona B.A.C. (before air conditioning).

Perry joined the post office and then worked his way up to postmaster before retirement. I got to talk to him over the fence as a neighbor. Good stories. Went into his house a few times and vice versa. All in all, he was a great neighbor.

Then one day his wife came to us to tell us that Perry had skin cancer, that they did some necessary surgery but that the disease may have spread. I am not sure how all this got started. Perhaps my neighbor’s wife was talking to my wife and then the topic came up about me being an elder in a local church. Apparently Perry had no religious ties. I would have assumed that he might have attended church in his youth in Minnesota. His wife asked if I would talk to him.

I went over to the man in his house and tried to give comfort. I don’t think he wanted me there. Perhaps he was in denial of his own mortality. No doubt he sensed how green I was in giving comfort. I admit it. I couldn’t do him any good. Between his resistance and my inexperience, I did not serve his needs very well sad to say. Perry died suddenly about two weeks later while working in the garden. We went to give comfort to the wife next door that night and then we attended a graveside service a few days later.

This is where I get some reality checks put into my little bubble world of beliefs. I met Episcopal nuns at the graveside. I never knew such an animal existed. They had educated Perry’s children. There were lots of neighbors, relatives and co-workers from the post office. The most interesting person I met was a female Rabbi. Perry was Jewish?

I was a bit taken aback. I had heard the story about how Perry and his war bride had built the second house in this desert housing community in 1948. When I closed on the house next door, I got my deed of title or whatever and included in the paperwork was a covenant of restrictions set on the property when it was built.

That covenant was of course stamped with a label “Null and Void under Federal Civil Rights Act of...” The nasty thing about that covenant was the few pages that made it quite clear in a long range of specifics that no ...”Jews, negroes or dogs...” were allowed in this housing development etc.

As it turned out, Perry had no religious affiliation. His wife was Jewish. I chuckled about how a man like Perry, this cowboy, this war hero, this postmaster must have laughed at the WASP covenant of restrictions. Here was a real individual. Here was an old fashioned American. Here was a man.

Perry had made arrangements with the rabbi to be buried in solidarity with his wife’s belief system. Was Perry a believer, an atheist, an agnostic? I don’t know. In retrospect I don’t care. I knew the man. He was good ethical man. I prayed for him.

Part of being a cultural Christian is that you can embrace people of other beliefs, respect them and still retain you basic feel for yourself and not compromise your basic faith.

America’s greatest strength is and has always been its diversity.

Amidst this eclectic graveside audience, I had an epiphany. I also think that that paradigm shift thing happened.

It was fascinating to hear the twenty third psalm read in Hebrew. I am not certain that the Kaddish was said there but I realized something about my own belief systems. Christianity is wrapped up in a lot of layers of traditions, sacred tradition, faith, grace, propaganda, love, hate and on an on.

There under a blistering Arizona sun, prayers for a Jew were said in the desert. Were these the similar prayers that Joseph of Aramathea read over Jesus’ broken and lifeless body on Good Friday at twilight, eve of Sabbath?

You could be surrounded with stone cathedrals, and stained glass and the gospels could be read from a Gutenberg bible and the minister could be wrapped in gold cloth. But could you get any more from prayers at the end of your life than my neighbor got that day or when Jesus was interred and they rolled the stone in front of the tomb?

It makes you think. It made me think.

Good Sabbath.