{"id":384,"date":"2009-07-23T23:15:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/the-faith-of-frank-mccourt.html"},"modified":"2009-07-23T23:15:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-23T23:15:00","slug":"the-faith-of-frank-mccourt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/the-faith-of-frank-mccourt.html","title":{"rendered":"The faith of Frank McCourt"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the passing of celebrated storyteller Frank McCourt<\/a> this week, the world lost more than just a gifted writer. It also lost someone with a deep and complicated connection to the Catholic faith. <\/p>\n

Peter Duffy notes in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>: <\/p>\n

<\/a>Peter Quinn, the novelist and a practicing Catholic, wrote in an email that his friend was neither \u201ccontemptuous of believers in general nor Catholics in particular. On a trip we took together in 1998, he went to Mass with me on the Sunday morning that we landed. He respected the fact that I had reached my own peace with the Catholic Church. \u2018It\u2019s a good thing,\u2019 he once told me, \u2018that you\u2019re raising your kids in the Catholic faith. At least they\u2019ll have a map to follow or throw away. In either case, they\u2019ll know where they are.\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Mr. McCourt had. Even as he described suffering under its thumb, he developed an unbreakable affinity with the church\u2019s history, traditions and literature. He writes in \u201cAngela\u2019s Ashes\u201d about discovering Butler\u2019s \u201cLives of the Saints\u201d in the library on a rainy afternoon\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t want to spend my life reading about saints but when I start I wish the rain would last forever.\u201d He told an Irish television host in 1999: \u201cI read the \u2018Lives of the Saints\u2019 all the time. If you poke me in the middle of the night and say what are you reading, I\u2019ll say, the \u2018Lives of the Saints.\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

Readers will long benefit from his ability to evoke a Catholic milieu that will never exist again. To someone like me who grew up in the post-Vatican II church, it\u2019s a fascinating glimpse of a lost world. \u201cThe rain dampened the city from the Feast of the Circumcision to New York\u2019s Eve,\u201d he wrote of his childhood home of Limerick, Ireland. In just a few words, we are transported to a time when every schoolchild knew that said feast was celebrated on Jan. 1. The only picture that hung in the McCourt household, he writes, was of Pope Leo XIII in \u201ca yellow skullcap and a black robe with cross on his chest.\u201d How many families have framed portraits of Pope Benedict on the wall?<\/p>\n

Mr. McCourt felt it was impossible to fully divorce himself from the church. So when he stood before Pope John Paul II in 2002, accompanying a delegation of 40 mayors from around the world, the little Irish-Catholic boy in him took over. He knelt, took the pontiff\u2019s hand and kissed his ring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got up and he\u2019s looking at me with his dazzling blue Polish eyes and extraordinary complexion,\u201d Mr. McCourt told the Commonwealth Club of California. \u201cI had a feeling he knew. He knew what a fraud and a phony I was. Then I walked away. And I have to admit, as turbulent as my relationship with the church has been (although they don\u2019t know it and they don\u2019t care), I was walking on water practically. I was walking on air.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can check out more at the WSJ link.<\/p>\n

I once had a close encounter with McCourt myself. I was departing an awards dinner held at the Windows on the World and found myself, improbably, sharing an elevator with producer David Brown (“Jaws,” “The Sting”), his wife (the legendary publisher Helen Gurley Brown) and Frank McCourt. The only other people on the elevator were McCourt’s date, my wife, and me. We all smiled politely at each other as the elevator slid down to the lobby. <\/p>\n

All I could think was: “I hope this thing doesn’t get stuck. I have no idea what I’d talk about with these people.” <\/p>\n

Less than 30 quiet seconds later, the doors opened and we went our separate ways in the soaring marble and glass lobby of the World Trade Center. <\/p>\n

It was one of the more unusual elevator rides of my life. And not just for the company I kept. <\/p>\n

It was also the last time I set foot in the Twin Towers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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