Perspective
Buts infused every moment with meaning
by TOM
ROBERTS
A memorial card hangs on a bulletin
board in my study at home. Its got a picture of James M. Butler, a
wonderful Irish mug with a nose that appeared to have been in some past battle,
outsized black-rim glasses and a thin line of a smile.
He was a monsignor, but the honorific more embarrassed than
honored him, and he made it clear he preferred Father.
Butler died last December, and for the past year I have looked at
that photo. Ive scrambled through boxes trying to find the scraps of
thoughts that I had written about him, an old interview I had done for another
publication.
I wanted to write something about Butler (actually everyone, when
talking about him, called him Buts, including his best friend, Fr.
John McNamara, who did so throughout the funeral homily) because he was one of
those remarkable people who, in even the simplest of circumstances, the most
ordinary of encounters, elevate life to a new level.
With no apparent special effort, but with an accent and a shrug
that more than hinted at his Brooklyn roots, he infused every moment with rich
meaning and remarkable understanding.
Some of the vitals: Msgr. James Butler was a priest of the diocese
of Allentown, Pa. For the last 28 years of his life, he was pastor of one of
the poorest parishes in the diocese -- Holy Infancy on the South Side of
Bethlehem, once the most Irish of places and now largely Hispanic. He was light
years ahead of the institutional side of church in so many ways and yet
absolutely loyal to it; he saw immediately through pretense and bluster and yet
never took advantage of ample opportunities to embarrass anyone.
He undoubtedly gave the chancery-types fits and nightsweats at
times (he knew how to exploit the rules with the best of them). The worst
punishment would have been to send him to one of the parishes seen as more
desirable, but those in charge would never waste one of the good places on
Buts. He seemed pretty well protected because he was thoroughly dispossessed --
he lived simply and drove ratty old cars.
If he allowed himself a luxury it was books, and they were stacked
high and wide on a long, thick wooden table in his second floor living room.
And there he would sit, chain-smoking unfiltered Pall Malls -- until his last
five years -- and making notes in the margin and jotting down thoughts on legal
pads. Later, the big thinkers would make it into his homilies, his
conversations with friends, in the most concrete and accessible way. He had an
amazing gift.
His friends have taken charge of his personal library -- G.K.
Chesterton, Yves Congar, Charles Curran, Dorothy Day, Avery Dulles, Hans
Küng, John L. McKenzie, Eugene Kennedy, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx,
Henri Nouwen, Bernard Häring and so on. They give a phone number in case
anyone wants to borrow some books. Buts would love it.
I never found the notes I was looking for. But his friends in
Bethlehem put together a booklet, and someone sent me a copy. A local newspaper
column included in the booklet recounts a story that helps explain what Buts
was like.
During an early Sunday Mass, a local homeless character came
stumbling into the church, apparently drunk and causing a bit of a disturbance.
Buts stopped what he was doing at the altar, walked down and quietly talked to
the man, escorted him through the sanctuary and sacristy, back through a
passageway to the rectory, where he made sure the guy got some breakfast. And
then Buts returned to the church and finished Mass.
The parish school, always operating on a frayed shoestring, was a
center of parish life. It was there, he said, that kids would be Christianized
-- and he would do anything to keep it open. Yet he once refused a generous
amount of state money, part of a special government program, because, he
explained, he never wanted to be in the position where some state agency might
come in and tell him he had to take the crucifixes off the walls. He was
assured that wouldnt happen, but he said no thanks
anyway.
Buts loved elaborately, and his people knew it. He didnt
give sermons, he told his people why this faith, this Jesus, made sense to him.
He could say more in seven minutes than most managed in a half hour.
And he was always exploring his faith. Reading and forever
conducting small study groups. I had the privilege to get in on one of those
for a few years in the early 80s. If you sat in on some of those sessions, you
began to pick up the Butlerisms, like, As Christians, weve just
begun to climb down from the trees. His friends who put together the
booklet combed his books and papers, notes in the margins, notes on those
yellow sheets, their own memories and came up with a wonderful list of
Butlerisms, some spoken, others written. For example:
God isnt just or fair. Thats how we try to be.
God is total giving, total generosity, total forgiveness.
And I remember him saying, when someone he knew died: Now
theyve got all the answers. And so do you, now, Buts.
But Id lay serious money that even with all the answers,
hes got a mug of black coffee in hand and one heck of a discussion going
wherever heaven is.
Tom Roberts is NCR managing editor. His E-mail address
is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 20,
1998
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