By David Himmel

“THIS IS NO WAY TO PRAY. This is no way to send our loved one off to the Great Beyond. To Heaven? I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore. I’m not even sure I was ever so sure at all.”

Typical Fr. Harrington. Always starting his sermons with a sense of existential dread and confusion. Topped off with a sprinkle of self-doubt. He’s the Woody Allen of Catholicism. He even had a questionable relationship with an ingénue at his old parish in Portland, Maine. That’s how he ended up here. In my church. The only reason he wasn’t defrocked was because his sordid relationship was with a young woman, not a young man. The Church loved saying, “See, they’re not all homos!”

It was December 18th and the electoral jury was still out on who would be the country’s next president. Fr. Harrington was speaking to me and I don’t know how many others via Microsoft Teams. That, right there, was a big point of contention among the congregants. I’d seen the church’s Facebook page—stuffed with complaints. “Why can’t we use Zoom, like at work?” “Teams is awful.” “Bill Gates should have died. LONG LIVE STEVE JOBS!”

This was the eighth funeral I had attended since March when the coronavirus really took off. But it was the first that had nothing to do with COVID-19. This death was something else. A young man, age 36. Wife, two young kids. One of his great grandparents was even—somehow—still alive. Cancer. It came and made itself known fast then devoured his insides and his life and the hope and comfort of his friends and family in a month’s time.

It was fast, ugly, painful. And then, just like that, painless. 

“It’s been a long year of pain, uncertainty, and frustration,” Fr. Harrington said through stupid Microsoft Teams. “As if enough of 2020 wasn’t enough, God saw fit to take our beloved Michael with some random, unexpected, totally normal illness. Why? Oh, why, indeed…”

I thought for a second that Fr. Harrington’s computer had frozen. He just sat there, with the rhetorical question dangling. His face posed in painful contemplation. Like he was putting all his concentration to farting without shitting his pants. And then…

“I see little value in any of this. You come here for hope, for guidance. The truth is, there is none of that. Not here. Not anywhere. Because what you’re really looking for is control. And most things are out of our hands. Most things that happen to us belong to the whims of the universe. And the universe doesn’t give one goddamn whim or shit about us. Any of us.” 

Mariel Copnick chimed in: “Father, you can’t possibly—”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Mariel,” the priest said. “You’re muted. This is my time. I’ve placed so many rules on you—on all the Catholics I’ve preached to and worked with over the years. Rules bestowed by the higher ups in the Church. Rules commanded by God. But faith doesn’t need rules. Faith, by definition, is operating without facts. Putting rules around faith is just an effort to control others. Well… the cancer controlled young Michael laying before us. Despite the prayers and the hope and the lighting of the candles and all the silly parade of rule-following and traditional, dogmatic handwringing… Enough. Michael deserves better.

And with that, Fr. Harrington stepped back from the altar. He dramatically ripped off his collar and threw it to the ground. “Michael deserved a better funeral than this. His kids deserve to grow up with their dad. But that’s not God’s plan because God has no plan because God isn’t real. God is false hope. And hope, as Nietzsche said, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”

I saw Mariel Copnick mouth something that I’m sure was chastising Fr. Harrington for not adapting Nietzsche’s words to be gender neutral. But she was still on mute, so thankfully, no one heard her idiocy.

And then Fr. Harrington did something even more surprising than everything 2020 had thrown at us. He yanked his pants down and took a shit right there under the giant crucifix at Michael Metcalf’s funeral.

The following week, I was sitting through a Shabbat Service at Temple Am Shalom. Clearly Catholicism wasn’t for me. And despite what Fr. Harrington said, I still believed in an involved God. I had to. My faith was the only thing that was keeping me from taking my own massive dump in a public place that would cost me all future employment opportunities. Forget Nietzsche. I needed hope.

And apparently, so did Mariel Copnick, because I saw her a few rows ahead of me at temple wearing a yarmulke. She was fully into it already. When I saw her after the service, I didn’t have the heart to tell her women don’t wear yarmulkes. And that she should tuck her crucifix necklace back into her cleavage before she blows our cover.