Brother Sixtus as altar server, 1968

As the Portsmouth monks were marking the memoria on November 21 of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Mass and the Divine Office, our friends across the Mt. Hope Bridge at the Columban Fathers House were celebrating the feast day of their Irish-born founder, St. Columban. Although the actual date is November 23 in the Church’s calendar, it was transferred from Thanksgiving Day this year. I attended the 11:30 a.m. Mass in their house chapel and was happy to join the community and other guests for a festive luncheon following. Seated at a table near windows opening onto a great view of Bristol Harbor, I joined their superior, Fr. John Brannigan (born in County Down, Ireland); Fr. Charles Lintz who was the principal celebrant at the Mass; Fr. Henry P. Zinno, Jr., pastor of St. Mary’s and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel churches in Bristol; and Fr. Vander S. Martins (born in Brazil), pastor at St. Elizabeth’s Church in Bristol. After a heartfelt prayer of gratitude by Fr. John and grace over the meal, he paid special tribute to the kitchen staff who take such good care of the men, many of whom are retired. The table conversation naturally turned to the Rule of St. Benedict and The Life of St. Benedict written by the 6th pope, St. Gregory the Great, and about just how much of the latter might be legend and how much could be fact. Similarly, what we know of St. Columban derives from his own works, augmented by Jonas of Susa’s Vita Columbanus (The Life of Columban) written in 639-641. It wasn’t exactly a battle of the saintly biographers, but the comparisons drawn were interesting.

The topic then suddenly jumped from the 6th century to the 20th and 21st, with a discussion of the Catholic actor Martin Sheen and his son, Emilio Estevez. One of my lunch partners spoke of meeting one or both. Another reminisced about meeting the actor John Wayne’s grandson, a Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Matthew Munoz, known as “The Surfing Priest.” Distinctive with his long flowing hair, he uses his upturned surfboard to celebrate Mass on the beaches in California. The name of Mel Gibson as a Catholic actor/director also came up in the conversation, known for many projects but perhaps especially for his direction of the hyper-realistic film, The Passion of the Christ, shot in Italy in 2004. Bob and Dolores Hope were remembered fondly by the priests for the fact that they adopted and raised four children out of the same Illinois orphanage. In fact, the Hopes are buried side-by-side in the San Fernando Mission Catholic Cemetery in Los Angeles. Maybe it was the mere mention of the cemetery that signaled an end to this very fascinating conversation about the paths of priests being crossed with the paths of Catholic actors and directors and other glitterati over the decades.

On the short drive home back over the Mt. Hope Bridge, and still delighting in this unexpected monastic yet show-biz luncheon honoring a 6th century Irish saint, I thought back to 1968 and the very first time I ever set foot on the set of a major motion picture, the first of many, as it turned out, throughout my work career. I was 15 years old and it was actually a filming location eight miles from my hometown in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Paramount Pictures had taken over the entire coal-mining patch-town of Eckley, named after a 19th-century coal baron, an authentic company town still owned by one man – which made financial negotiations easier than dealing with dozens of renters of original 1870-era houses, mostly retired miners or miners’ widows. The film was The Molly Maguires and 2023 marked the 55th anniversary of its Pennsylvania filming. It is based on the true story of a Pinkerton Agency detective who in 1876 inveigles his way into the tight-knit brotherhood of the mostly Catholic immigrant miners who were fighting for better wages and safer working conditions underground.

Malachy McCourt’s A Monk Swimming

The film was directed by the four-time Oscar nominee, the blacklisted Martin Ritt, and starred the Irish-born Richard Harris, the Scottish-born Sean Connery, and the English-born Samantha Eggar. This was Mr. Connery’s first film role after retiring as the first James Bond. Maybe it was Harris as the Pinkerton spy who came to my mind back at the luncheon, or it could have been his New York drinking pal and fellow actor who was cast to portray the shebeen’s (or the saloon’s) bartender, played by Malachy McCourt. McCourt was born in Brooklyn but raised in Limerick, Ireland. And if the McCourt name rings a bell, it might be that you’ve heard of his older brother, Frank, author of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize winner, Angela’s Ashes. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting any of the above-the-line cast or crew that summer (remember, I was only 15 and those folks usually congregated after a long day of filming at the hotel bars), I did have a good chat with Malachy thirty years later at a book-signing at my favorite locally-owned shop called Left Bank Books, two blocks from my condo in St. Louis. The title of his book was A Monk Swimming, published in 1998, which, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is his memory of praying the Hail Mary: “Blessed art thou, a monk swimming.” Two years later he came out with Singing Him My Song.