The young atheist student

Another interesting person on this cruise in 1962 was a recent graduate of Yale, who was going to be an architect. This cruise was like a graduate course for him. He was going to Europe to study the various types of architecture in Europe. I asked him if he was going to study the various medieval churches. He then told me that he was more interested in the classical Roman and Greek architectural monuments. Then he made a strange admission, that I had never heard before or after. He said that he was an atheist. I had known people who were not religious. However, they always had an excuse. They were too busy or not interested in religion. This guy was one of the few people that I ever met who was a pure intellectual atheist. He said that there was no need or purpose for a god or gods. He was quite willing to accept that the Greeks and Romans had their own mythical idol gods. He felt the same way about Christians and Jews. We never mentioned Muslims. He had nothing against people who believed in God. He, however, had come to a calculated decision that there really was no God, no higher power than himself. I tried to use one of the five proofs of God’s existence from St. Thomas Aquinas, but he just smiled and disagreed. There are a lot of people who are practical atheists or agnostics. They live as if there is no God, but they leave room for that possibility. This guy had no room for God. God was nothing, a non-being. It really struck me that this guy had spent so much time and energy to come up with this decision. He was not like “I am not sure if there is a God or not.” He was definitive, “There is no God.” I met up with him a couple of times, but we always came back to the question of God. He was very friendly talking about Roman and Greek ruins that he hoped to see, but beyond that we had nothing to say to each other. Have you ever met a real atheist?

My visit to New Jersey

After our vacation in Waupaca, it was time to head for Rome in 1962. Our ship was leaving on September 4, so that we only had a few weeks to get ready to go. Before we left, Bob Vogel invited Dave and myself to his family apartment in Chicago. They were going to have a party for him there. He lived on the west side of Chicago in a two flat apartment. I believe his mom lived alone, but he had a lot of relatives. Dave and I got to meet them. They were very nice. I then invited Dave and Bob to come to Carteret, before we left on our trip. That way we could visit New York City. I knew that my father would like to show them around New York. Then I took the train home to the Newark train station. I met my brother Jerry, so that he drove me home to Carteret. He was going to be a senior in college and was planning on getting a Master’s Degree in Special Education. Meanwhile, he had his own apartment in Carteret and worked at the grocery store where he was becoming a certified butcher. He seemed busy. Mom and Pop were fine. My mother was a little upset that I would be away for four years. This was not like Ireland. They were not planning to visit me in Rome. I stopped in to see the Servite priests in Carteret. I hardly knew them. I also went to see one of the priests from St. Mary’s High School, Father Ed Morris. He was now a pastor at some church in western New Jersey. He told me that I should have joined the Jesuits so that I would get a good education. He thought that it was nice that I was going to Rome. I stopped in at St. Mary’s HS to see Sister Joachim to tell her I was going to Rome to study. Everyone was really impressed that I was going to Rome. Maybe this was a great idea after all. I went out to supper with Paul Sweda and we went to a golf range. He played a lot of golf and softball. However, he was married with a baby, living in a small apartment in the second floor of a two flat in Carteret. He had graduated with a degree in Sociology from St. Frances in Loretto, PA. He was now a parole officer in Manhattan, NY. He took the bus in everyday to downtown New York just like we had done as teenagers to go to baseball games. He told me about the wonderful musical that he had seen on Broadway, “The Sound of Music”. I said that I did not have much time. We had a nice chat. It was first time in nearly ten years that we reconnected since we had gone to two different high schools and colleges. He seemed successful enough. I was happy that things were working out for him. I was happy that I was where I was. He looked like he might be stuck in Carteret for the rest of his life. I was on the move, to see the world. Does your home town look smaller when you are away for a while?

The Servites arrive at Benburb

In 1947, the Chicago American Servite Father James Keane, OSM, travelled to Ireland intent on establishing a Servite foundation there. He was the same priest who started the Novena to our Sorrowful Mother in 1937 and the later Servite Australian foundation in 1953. He purchased a huge property encompassing the ancient historical Benburb Castle and an old manor house built by the Bruce family in the late 19th century. This became Benburb Priory in Tyrone, Ireland, that opened in 1949. From Tyrone, the Servites were to go south to Dublin where other communities were established. Soon the priories in Ireland were formed into a Vicariate of the Eastern Province of the USA. In 1983 the General Chapter of the Servite Order invited the entire Order to engage in a process of renewal and re-structuring. This was a gallant attempt to re-organize and re-structure jurisdictions to ensure a deeper sense of community, prayer, and service in their local communities. In response to this grand invitation moves were set in motion to unite the Servite Priories in Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Germany and Austria, into one single Province of Northern Europe. Meetings happened and united ventures in formation and pastoral congresses were established. However, in 1997, it became obvious, mainly for linguistic and cultural reasons that this new European Province would not materialize. But the Servite friars in England, Scotland and Ireland remained undaunted and resolved to pursue the ideal of a new life-giving structure for the Servite Order in these Islands. Joint council meetings were established and committees formed to prepare the ground for the formation of a single province. The Servite friars of Ireland, England and Scotland voted overwhelmingly for amalgamation and the new province came into being by a decree of the General Council in June 2000, having earlier obtained the approval of the USA chapter. The Servite friars chose the poetic and romantic title “The Province of the Isles” for the new entity, and adopted “St Columba” as Patron Saint. St Columba had travelled from Donegal to Iona and his monks went on to Lindisfarne to establish a second Iona among the English. Who better to inspire travel to these Isles for the sake of the Gospel and the forming of Servite religious communities? A beautiful bronze statue of St Columba was commissioned by the province to mark the occasion and is now housed in the Chapel of the Priory at Benburb. That is the story of the American founding of Benburb and its amalgamation into the Province of the Isles. I was there in 1959-1961, about ten years after the original Servite foundation. Did you realize that England, Scotland, and Ireland are all islands?

Famous Servite High School alumni

I found out that there were a lot of famous athletes who have come from Servite HS in California. The following professional football players were graduates of Servite HS: 1) Steve Beuerlein (1983), Notre Dame and NFL quarterback: 2) Derek Brown (1989), NFL running back; 3) Steve Buechele (1979), University of Pennsylvania and San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman; 4) Cody Fajardo (2010), quarterback for University of Nevada and CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders; 5) Ben Francisco (1999), middle linebacker at USC and US Army Bowl MVP; 6) Ryan Garko (1999), former CFL football player; 7) Frank Kalil (1977), NFL and USFL center; 8) Ryan Kalil (2003), offensive lineman at USC, starting center for Carolina Panthers; 9) Matt Kalil (2008), offensive tackle for USC and Carolina Panthers; 10) Matt Moran (1980), NFL offensive tackle and high school football coach; 11) Troy Niklas (2011), tight end for Notre Dame and NFL’s Arizona Cardinals; 12) Blaine Nye (1964), former NFL offensive lineman; 13) Turk Schonert (1975), Stanford and NFL quarterback, Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator; 14) Matt Slater (2003), Captain and wide receiver for New England Patriots; 15) Kurt Vollers (1997), former NFL tackle; 16) Matt Willis (2002), wide receiver for UCLA and Denver Broncos. The following MLB baseball player were graduates of Servite HS: 1) Dennis Sean Houlton (1997), MLB third baseman; 2) Patrick Cantlay (2010), MLB outfielder for Philadelphia Phillies and Cleveland Indians; 3) Sean Estrada (2003), MLB first baseman for Seattle Mariners, college baseball coach; 4) A. J. Gass (1993), MLB pitcher; 5) Mike Witt (1978), MLB pitcher, pitched perfect game September 30, 1984 for California Angels. Chris Galippo (2007), was a professional golfer, and Chris Pontius, (2005) was a soccer player, D.C. United midfielder. Here are some other distinguished alumni: 1) Dale A. Drozd (1973), United States District Judge; 2) Craig A. Kelly (1972), Ambassador of the United States to Chile; 3) Brian Lee (1989), entrepreneur, founder LegalZoom.com, Shoedazzle.com and The Honest Company; 4) James D. McCaffrey (1970), software research and author; 5) Richard McWilliam (1971), founder of Upper Deck Company; 6) Michael A. Rice (1973), university professor and Rhode Island state representative; 7) Vincent Bevins (2002), journalist for Washington Post, LA Times, and Financial Times; 8) Joseph Sanberg (1997), Founder CalEITC4Me and Co-Founder, Aspiration.com, and 9) Mike McDonald (1983), comedian, actor. They had an interesting group of alumni. Does your high school have famous alumni?

Arthur Dunne

In the summer of 1958, I was introduced to Arthur Dunne. He was a few years older than me and maybe had done some college work or even graduated from college. My father knew his father, since they may have worked together. Art Dunne was going to be a Servite novice without being a postulant. I am not sure how that happened. Now there would be three of us from Carteret at the Servite Granville novitiate the coming fall. In the meantime, he was working with Julius Lelesi and me doing janitor work at St. Joseph’s school and the church. I got to know him a little bit. Art had worked with Dorothy Day in New York City, as he told me something about the Catholic worker movement there. He tried to explain the kind of work he and Dorothy Day were doing, since he had worked in a soup kitchen at the Catholic Worker place in New York. I asked him a little about it. However, he never went into much detail. Thus, I did not fully understand what it was all about. Have you ever heard about the Catholic Worker movement?

I am Irish

My ancestry is Irish, since both my parents were born in Ireland. Both sets of my grandparents were also born and died in Ireland. Thus, I have an Irish ancestry. As far as I know, my four grandparents never left Ireland. Thus, I am automatically an Irish citizen by Irish law, because my mother or father was born in Ireland. I am also an American citizen, because I was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. My father was an Irish man named Eugene Finnegan, with the same name as myself, but I was not a junior, since I had a middle name. My father was born in Corduff, Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Ireland in 1898. My mother was an Irish woman, whose maiden name was Rose Finnegan. She was born in Killarue, Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Ireland in 1906. That’s right, both my parents were named Finnegan and both were born and raised in the same town in Ireland, just in different sections of Carrickmacross, a town in southern County Monaghan, Ireland. My father was the youngest of nine children, while my mother, although eight years younger than my father, was also the youngest of eight children. Yes, they were both the babies in their large Irish families. The houses that they grew up in are still standing today, although my mother’s house has been abandoned for more than thirty years. Where were your parents born?

Racial discrimination

Basically, racism is the belief that your group or self-defined race is better than all others. Racism can be either overt, open, or covert, hidden. There are various levels of racism. An individual with a dominant racist attitude breeds open hatred. On the other hand, there are racists who just simply ignore or avoid people who are not like them. Others ignore this hatred, but tolerate those who practice racism. Superiority of my own ethnic or racial group leads to an attitude that others who do not belong to my group are naturally inferior. Racism can be institutionalized with various laws, customs, and practices so that it can be built into a culture. At a particular time, it can mean hatred or just not wanting to associate with a particular race. Traditionally, northern Europeans or Caucasians have considered themselves as superior to all other people. Slavery is as old as mankind itself. Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews made slaves from any conquest that they had achieved. The sub-Saharan Africa slave trade brought black dark-skinned Africans to North Africa via the overland Saharan desert to the North African Mediterranean area. The Spanish and Portuguese sailors developed slave ships that brought Africans to South and Central America, because they found the Native Americans were not good workers. American slavery came via the British slave trade. The southern North American colonies flourished under the slave system. The American Civil War (1861-1865) was fought over the issue of state’s rights and slavery. Officially, slavery was outlawed with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. However racial discrimination of all kinds has continued in American society right up to the present day. The “Brown versus the Board of Education” Supreme Court decision in 1954 caused the first stirrings of civil rights when it was declared that “separate but equal” was not constitutional and the schools would have to integrate. It was and is a difficult struggle. America was established as a racist society, so that racism is the original sin of America. Each African slave in America was considered 3/5 of a person for voting rights of the slave owner. We are all recovering racists. Thus, we must be cognizant of the ever-lurking sin of racism. Do you know anyone who is a racist? Have you ever been discriminated against or discriminated against someone else? Why does the color of your skin matter?