What Would Father Scully Do?
“From one bell all the bells toll.” - Dejan Stojanović [the contemporary Serbian poet, not the soccer player]
[The following is an adaptation of a homily for a collection of new clergy.]
Father Scully was hungry.
All of us knew this as he would begin to prowl the neighborhood like some kind of feral fauna.
Father Scully did not cook. As far as anyone knew, he could not make a sandwich. On the rectory housekeeper’s day off, Scully would walk about the streets surrounding his Roman Catholic parish in a widening gyre until, finally, someone would invite him in for dinner.
During the early dark of Midwestern winters, I recall he was a looming figure in the windswept snow, as if from a Dostoevsky novel, especially since his winter dress was a cappa nigra instead of a topcoat.
It was a tried and true practice, no doubt originally observed in his youth in Ireland. Roman clergy in Ireland are natural moochers in everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s cigarettes, pints of stout, an evening meal, or even as a guest on a family’s vacation, they have turned mooching into an ecclesial art form. Father Scully would always find a meal.
Sometimes, depending into which home he had been invited, he would leave before dessert, citing his expanding waistline and two heart attacks. Of course, he would then wander about in front of Mrs. Scorese's house, as she was a professional pastry cook, until she finally invited him in for some homemade cannoli.
In that old school practice, his parish was the entire neighborhood, Protestants and Jews included. Thus, he was never ignored, as he was a respected figure and certainly of devoted service to his parish and its people.
They formed that ideal, mutualized matrix for which all parish clergy work.
In regards to his devotion, I remember a particular example. One of my childhood friends, who was an altar boy at Father Scully’s church, who would one day himself become an ordained priest in the Byzantine tradition, would tell of Father Scully’s heart attack. I’m not sure which number it was, but he suffered it during Mass.
While distributing the sacrament he pulled my school friend close, informed him quietly that he was having a heart attack, and leaned on him for the next several minutes while Scully made sure the he had communicated everyone present and the benediction was complete.
He then walked out the sacristy door, fully vested, and into an ambulance that a sharp-eyed chorister had called.
Six weeks later, he was back.
Father Scully retired a few years later. As the practice in those days was for priests to choose their place of retirement, he chose what had been his parish for thirty years and remained an occasional dinner-time fixture in the neighborhood.
[I am sure his successor was thrilled by his decision to stay.]
But, because he was regarded as physically limited and was, after all, retired, Father Scully found himself with some unaccustomed time on his hands. So, while he may have prayed more often, tended to his small rose garden behind the church with greater care, told a few more stories than usual at Carney’s Corner Bar, he also began a singular project.
Scully convinced a mason in his parish to lay a small concrete and brick foundation in the yard behind the parish property, that which stretched to a promontory looking over Lake Erie. Then, with the appropriate lumber neatly stacked in the church yard, and using only nails, a hammer, a saw, and some other assorted tools, with his own hands Scully built a bell tower.
Once the roofing was complete, he had some of the stout fellows in the parish haul from its basement an unused church bell which was subsequently mounted to the tower. The structure was appropriately blessed and the parish children invited to be the first to ring the bell. For such a small casting, it had considerable tintinnabulation and could be heard throughout the neighborhood, carried by the constant wind from the lake.
So, every morning before he began his day of prayer, gardening, mooching meals, and story time at Carney’s, Father Scully would offer a simple toll of the bell. At Vespers, regardless of the weather, he would ring The Angelus.
For those unfamiliar, the Angelus consists of three sets of the bell struck three times, with a pause in between, and then followed by nine strikes. In Ireland, it was common for people to cease their labor at 5pm or so and pray according to this formula1:
Verse: The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
Response: And she conceived of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace, etc.
V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word. Hail Mary. . .
V. And the Word was made flesh.
R. And dwelt among us. Hail Mary. . .
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray:
Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Such became his service to the community. If they didn’t actually recite the prayer, many would at least pause for a moment.
Again, like his dinner-time peregrinations, it was a familiar part of neighborhood life.
One autumn Monday I was home from college and was in the small neighborhood market across the street from the Roman Catholic parish.
The market’s owner and I were talking about the Cleveland Browns miserable start to the season, a frequent topic of conversation even to this day, when we heard The Angelus rung from Scully’s tower. As it was late morning, we looked at one another quizzically. The clerk expressed concern that maybe Father Scully was “losing it a bit”.
Then a remarkable thing occurred.
At the conclusion of the Angelus, the bell tolled once. After about a minute’s pause, it tolled again, followed again by a minute’s silence. And, again a toll. And, again silence.
The clerk crossed herself and said, “Oh, something bad has happened.” She shook her head, I paid for whatever it was I was buying, and we parted. The bell would toll in this manner for the next half hour, its tones accompanying my walk home.
As I would learn later that day, a freighter had sunk the night before in Lake Superior, and with her the 29 crew members. With one toll for each crew-member, Father Scully’s bell-ringing witness had found yet another auditory ministry.2
I hadn’t recalled Scully’s ministry for several years until the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Although the true death count that first day was as yet unknown, it was estimated at around 3000 people.
Thus was created “The Scully Scale” for equating human tragedy.
If it took half an hour to toll the bell for those lost in the November shipwreck, it would have taken about 50 hours to do the same for the September 11 victims. One would begin his or her day hearing the toll each minute, work through the day, attend to children’s school events perhaps, have dinner with one’s family, and go to bed with the bell still tolling every minute through the night. One would do so through the next entire day and night, as well.
Realized in that manner, the magnitude of death is all the more staggering.3
As the years progressed, and as I claimed many roles in the greater church, but always at heart a parish priest, I would find myself asking from time to time, “What would Father Scully do?”
This is why I my church stayed open during COVID, even if I had to preach swathed in mask and nitrile gloves. It is why I once preached in a wheelchair from the chancel pavement, or celebrated on those days when I was verging on clinical exhaustion.
It is why I once drove three and one-half hours through a Sunday blizzard just to get to church to celebrate the Eucharist and communicate, as it turned out, the ONE PERSON who showed up for the liturgy.
(He lived next door to the church.)
We do such things because that is our job; that is our service. We know it as a great responsibility, and one that we should be proud to bear.
In each case, tempted as we may be to surrender our charge of care, we should ask WWFSD? There has only ever been one answer. His was a fine, if sometimes eccentric, ordained witness and a great encouragement for those in service, regardless of church or denomination or even ordination status.4
This is what we have learned from all of the Scully’s who have graced the altars and pulpits of Christendom. It is not an easy thing, but in its fulfilling we know that our Lord’s call is ratified.
May we exalt you, O Lord, in the midst of your people; offer
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to you; boldly proclaim the
gospel of salvation; and rightly administer the sacraments of
the New Covenant. Make us faithful pastors, patient
teachers, and wise councilors. Grant that in all things we may
serve without reproach, so that your people may be
strengthened and your Name glorified in all the world. All
this we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and
the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Now, if you will all excuse me, I have a sudden urge to gather some lumber and power tools and start building a bell tower. After all, that’s what Father Scully did.
I don’t know if it is still a practice, but television stations in Ireland would, at least in the early ‘70’s, interrupt their usual broadcasting day and play The Angelus with suitable video accompaniment at 5pm each day.
For those at least my age, it was the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975; an event made memorable through Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, first performed in 1976.
Had he still been alive, I have no doubt that Father Scully would have spent those hours, I hope with help, making sure that each soul received its toll.
Given that a curate of mine once “called in sick” on Palm Sunday, it may be a standard that is fading from our contemporary times.
Oh what a character! I do wonder, what is your bell tower? Perhaps this blog?