REVEREND MAHONEY'S CHALLENGE(Charles E.J. Moulton) Reverend Mahoney’s eyes gazed across the crowd, his heart really deep into this matter. It was obvious that even the crowd loved this. Well, the congregation. Mahoney had to smile at himself. Basically, he had grown up with rock ‘n roll. He even called the congregation: his crowd.
Who was out there? Everyone. Everyone, except the senator. Even the Archbishop Reynolds, who had come all the way from Cincinatti overhere. The question was why? Because of the event. This was a seven faith event. the leader of the Japanese Buddhist Movement of the Shinnyo-En, a Jewish Rabbi, an Islamic Imam, a Hindu Guru, a Russian Orthodox priest, a protestant minister and himself representing Catholicism.
He knew that the mass was followed in the media. He also knew that the Archbishop closest friends were not here. They had officially declined. Officially.
Yes, the Reverend had hoped that the meeting with their son would prompt them to arrive at the mass. Obviously not. The Ohio Senator and his archconservative wife were in Washington holding a press conference about Kenneth Brewster’s new book: Globalizing the Family Arena. He had bought the book, inspired by the meeting with Patrick. The first hundred pages were basically about the history of American Family Values. It uttered how this American Idea, with a capital A and a capital I, could be moved to change the world in a republican way.
Anyway, the Senator wasn’t there. The Archbishop was. Mahoney knew that he was at least as much against the church moving with the times as Mahoney was for this cause.
Reverend Mahoney had always chosen the difficult road. Difficult, because most people were reluctant to believe in the kind of the openness he preached. He was a true believer in God. Still, the God that Reverend Mahoney talked about was more than just the God of the bible. This was the God that lived inside everyone. The God that was there when a married couple had sex or the God that was there when a little boy found a flower in the forest. This was Allah, Brahma, Jehova, Shiva and Jesus Christ. He was a beloved preacher and a popular priest. Popular among the people. Unpopular among the individuals making the decisions. Mahoney was fearless. At least, to a certain degree.
Mahoney believe in preaching the open spirit of divine grace. Even during his time at the priest seminar, Neil Mahoney tried to exceed the limit and range of his understanding of God. God, to him, was two things: the concious, everlasting being that had created everything and, secondly, the being that had planted a part of itself inside everyone. Accordingly, God was not only in heaven. God was in everyone. God could work best among his flock, through the creative work of his creations. His sheep working through him, who in turn became creators of their own cosmos. Furthermore, God was a part of everything that he had created in heaven and on Earth. This priest was an advocate of really enjoying marital sex and often walked straight into the ghettos and spoke with the hooligans.
This was the situation the priest was facing as he was about to enter his cathedral. The other six religious leaders were him. The original idea had been for the Reverend himself to come riding in a donkey, just as he had three weeks ago. Now, a small child was walking before the seven religious leaders up the aisle. The cogregation had listened to a piece written by the cathedral organist Jeremy Hendricks. It was a preludium encompassing Chanting, Yo Taiba, Sephardic Songs, Bhajan music and traditional Christian hymns.
When the music ended, Reverend Mahoney and his six colleagues had arrived at the altar. While speaking, Mahoney searched the cathedral. Regrettably, he didn’t recognize anyone from the school that he had spoken in last week. His thoughts wandered toward this young man, Patrick Brewster, and what he was doing at the moment. Had he actually broken away from his gang or was he trying to influence them to become more Christian?


The Catholic Church of St. Andrew lay in the middle of a mid-size American town in the mid-west of the United States of America. It regularly arranged oratories with local singers and tried to hire the finest musicians for the Christmas concerts. The elderly knew him as a friendly, young, dynamic man with a beaming smile and the young people called him the “action priest”. The young people who knew him, that is.
Neil Mahoney was a good man with a ten year long professional experience. This experience was, at least professionally, limited. But Reverend Mahoney had brought with him a deep understanding of life from his upbringing and from his earlier lives. He was a very deep Catholic, but he had also very much enjoyed the writings of Neale Donald Walsch just as much as he understood that he had been here before.
He was friendly and polite. What, however, always posed a problem for many of the traditionalist bishops was his unorthodox methods. He would arrange youth disco parties in the community centre. In his sermons, he spoke about the meeting God in the marital bed and realizing Christian faith when looking at a naked sculpture.
The community seemed to have no problem with his approach, when he one day came riding into the church on a donkey. The younger ones even found it “super-cool”, when he managed to invite members of seven diffent faiths into St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Georgestown, Ohio: St. Andrew’s Cathedral was full that day. 400 people were crammed into the benches, listening to Chanting, Yo Taiba, Sephardic Songs, Bhajan music and traditional Christian hymns. A young local girl sang Michael Jackson’s Heal the World and a music academy baritone sang “The Trumpet Shall Sound” from Handel’s Messiah.
The day was concluded with an international buffet, accompanied by a band that played international music from seven areas of the world. Seven different stands sold a plethora of merchandize and the money was used going to be used to build a homeless centre in the centre of town.
The Archbishop was there, he had held a speech and he had smiled. Realizing the full gamut of the success had been hard for him. This was a conservative, Republican man and Reverend Mahoney’s absolute opposite pole. Archbishop Laurence Reynolds believed the absolute truth of the bible in every word and the absolute deathly sin of sex. He believed in hell and eternal damnation and that God had chosen the Catholic Church as his only representative on Earth. But he also knew that Father Neil Mahoney did St. Andrew’s a world of good. So, accordingly, his eminence the Archbishop had held his speech with gritted, cringing teeth.
But as Archbishop Reynolds drove home in his four by four station wagon that night, he knew that he needed only one mishap from the young priest and it would force him to take action. There was grave danger that it would bring them both down.
It was week later and the successful multi-cultural event in the church was still echoing in people’s memory. Neil Mahoney was still getting thank-you-e-mails from people way outside his community. The warm summer evening had the breezes caressing the trees and the youngsters kissing in the park.
That long day’s work of confessions, masses, bureaucracy, chorus rehearsals, phone calls, trips, handshaking and eternal googling had left the man, in the words of the teenagers, “totally wasted, man”.
He locked the door of the office in his red brick building next to the cathedral and had one thing on his mind only that night: going home, making himself some tea, eating a pizza and inserting “Jesus of Nazareth” into his DVD-player.
He only barely noticed the gang of three macho teenagers sitting on the stone walls drinking beer. He would’ve stopped to chat, trying to convert them into becoming believers, if, in the immortal words of his mother, his feet hadn’t felt like “chicken sandwiches”.
In the back of his head, he felt the stinging eyes of the three guys. From his peripheral vision, he assumed to see three young boys that he had never seen before. That did not matter to him. He was bracing himself for a five minute walk to his residence and an immediate recuperation upon his private couch.
If those words from the gang-leader hadn’t come and hit his neck and made him stop in his tracks:
“Hey, look at that pedophile overgrown chorus-boy!”
There was another voice close by that seemed to contradict this comment and that seemed strangely familiar to the priest. “Theo, what are you saying, man? I took you here to visit the guy, not to insult him.”
Mahoney stopped in his tracks. He recognized those voices. Was that Patrick?
The wheels turned in his head. He knew that moving now was out of the question. At least, if he wanted to keep his pride. First of all, coming face to face with evil was a daily occurrence to him. But was this evil? Not really. This was just a silly kid. Still, a kid with a vengance. He had spoken to so many bad-ass teenagers by now that he almost missed them when they were not there. This one, however, was different.
His tone of voice was more challenging.
Should he answer this challenge?
He sighed, fighting with that inner judge that kept bothering him, whenever trouble arose. Should he stay and argue or should he just walk away? He was tired. On the other hand, tomorrow was a morning with a late breakfast. His earliest appearance here would have to be noon. He could afford a quarrel. A small one, at least.
But this one wouldn’t be small.
The young priest sighed, laughing to himself. Never had he dreamed that the Lord would test his strength so efficiently.
“Well, Lord,” he chuckled to himself. “If you want me to argue with this boy, let me do it well. Let me accept him and let him accept me. Let me solve this task.”
The Reverend turned around and smiled at the five teenagers. Dressed in ripped heavy-metal T-shirts, they sat there, tattooed, pierced and full of light beer. The stone wall by the lilac bushes seemed drenched with giggles.
For the first time in a long while, Mahoney really had to utter a cynical laugh.
“What your name, kid?”
“What’s it to you, Buster?”
Father Neil smiled. “If you already know that I am an overgrown child-molester, then I wanna know who you are. Who’s the better man?”
The four other guys in the gang were obviously impressed with Father Neil’s spitfire. The young boy, who had been cocky up until now, was shrinking.
“Patrick.”
“Well, Patrick,” Father Neil continued, “do you really believe what you read in the papers? Or is the news about the hidden life of clerics not worth the paper it’s printed on?”
Patrick took a slurp of his Bud, belched and spat: “What do you mean, man?”
“That we priests are all pedophiles and gays and assholes collecting money and sex?”
Two of the other guys started laughing. “Whoa-ah!”
It all signalled that the now were realizing that this was no normal priest.
This guy was one of them.
Patrick blushed. “I never implied that you were ...”
Patrick stopped.
“You called me a pedophile. You said I was overgrown chorus-boy. Do I look like a child-molester?”
“I’m sorry I called you a ... It ... uh ... was a joke, man. Uhmm. Forget it.”
Neil nodded. “Okay.” He gave Patrick a pat on the shoulder. “That’s cool, man. That’s really cool.” Neil tried to figure this guy out. Was he worth a discussion? “I’m really tired, Patrick.” Neil narrowed his eyes, trying to decide if this boy could be saved. “I’m really tired, but if you want I could do what I do with most guys your age.”
The five boys took a step back. In their eyes, fear arose. Maybe this was creep, after all.
“What’s that?”
“I could tell you that God is much more than just that bearded guy from the bible, that sits on his throne in heaven. You wanna know who God is? Really?”
Patrick was the smaller guy of the five, and yet he was an obvious gang-leader: cocky, brash, arrogant and snotty. The tallest guy of the five began speaking. He was a nerdy dude with lots of zits and a big nose. He moved with clumsy lankiness and his obvious tries to be cool really fell flat. But the question was honest.
“Okay, so who is he? God, I mean?”
“What’s your name, man?”
“Freddie.”
Father Neil pouted with his lips and shook his head. “Well, Freddie. What is your deepest emotion? What signifies you? At what point does your life matter to you most?”
The tall, clumsy guy looked to his own left for a second and then smiled.
“I am in love with this girl, Josie MacAllister.” He laughed. “When she says she wants to marry me, that’s my deepest emotion. That’s when I am happiest.”
Neil turned to Patrick. “What about you, man?”
Patrick shook his head. “Me?”
Neil’s voice sprung up an octave. “Yeah, you. Who do you think? The janitor across the road? When in your life are you the happiest?”
“I wanna be a rock-star. That would make me happy.”
There was a guy with a frizzy hairdo. He looked at Father Mahoney with the gaze of someone, that more or less would want to crush him with his foot.
“And you, what is your name?”
“Theo, my name is Theo.”
The priest smiled. “When are you the happiest?”
By the look of his Blind Guardian T-Shirt and his Skull Tattoo, Father Mahoney would’ve thought that this boy would’ve answered that he loved watching the Saw movies. But this boy said something completely different.
“Baking Pizza with my daddy.”
Father Mahoney smiled a tender smile. Such tenderness from such a hard kid.
“And you are?”
“Kevin,” the redhead with the thousand freckles spat. “I like baseball.”
Father Mahoned turned to the fifth boy. He seemed lost, somehow. As if he didn’t belong in this gang. His gaze flickered away from the group and across the river.
“My name is Joe. I like boats.”
“You see, Joe, Kevin, Theo, Freddie, Patrick, your hearts are all filled with some form of love. You love something, even if it is just expressing your freedom by telling your folks that you can’t be used. You love being you. Love is God. Yes, God is a concious being that lives and breathes somewhere in time. But God is also in every one of us. He lives in you. God is love. God is love. God is love. You don’t need a church to pray to God, but that is all the more reason to go there. To any church. Because there are other people to love there. There are other people to pray with and sing with. We have lots of fun in that place behind you. The best laughs in my life have been inside that cathedral. Hey, man. Jesus said it. Go out and love one another. He did say: hey, man. Hate the jews or kill the muslims or hindus suck. He said: go out and love one another. Everyone. Regardless of what stamp or sign is glued in their passport. Regardless of what skin color they have. Love one another. Like one another. Every one is different. Constellations appear. Music appears. Rock ‘n roll, baby. Rock ‘n roll is a divine expression. It ain’t the devil, man. Rock ‘n roll is God. God gave rock ‘n roll to you. Isn’t that what the group Kiss sang?”
The five guys started criss-cross chatting back and forth.
“Hey, that’s the coolest tune.”
“Or that song by that chick Joan Osborne? What if God was one of us? That song is so chillin’, man!”
Patrick got really excited now.
He jumped off the wall and started waving his hands about.
“I know this heavy metal band called Stryper. They play really cool loud hard rock about God. Man, that guitarist Oz Fox is wicked. They praise God in their songs, man. They make music that sound like Ratt or Poison and they sing about Jesus.”
The kids all started to mention rock songs that were about God. There were more songs in rock about Jesus and God and spirituality than Father Mahoney ever had heard.
“I gotta write that one down, man!”
Father Mahoney looked at these guys. He really had a gift. He had taken this arrogant, snotty band of misfits and turned them into Jesus lovers and they were cooler for it.
Father Neil pointed to the church behind the five guys. They looked and nodded.
“What do you do there?”
Father Neil turned to the guy with the frizzy hairdo and stretched out his arms and took the boy’s hands.
“We sing, we dance, we eat, we drink, we pray, we talk, we laugh, we think, we feel, we love, we embrace, we marry, we are born, we die and we go to heaven.”
This thirty-four word phrase had its desired effect. Father Neil had memorized it and recited the sentence every time an arrogant teenager asked him what was happening in the church. The four half-drunk hooligans started laughing.
“Man,” the guy with the frizzy hair chuckled, albeit in a sort of surprised way. “That is a completely different picture of the church that I know.”
Father Neil Mahoney shrugged, closing his eyes. He letgo of the kid’s hands.
“The mistake that many people make, nowadays, is that they think that the mass on Sunday is all there is to the church. We are a group of people who have one thing in common: we all believe in God. Certainly, the mass is important, but there is much more: Sunday School, confirmation, weddings, funerals, baptism, chorus rehearsals, concerts, picnics, parties, all in the name of God. We love God, and you know what? God is in us, in you, in us all. We choose to be together, because we know that God binds us. We need him and he needs us. We are God, God is us. God is the master creator and we recreate ourselves in him.”
The freckled guy mixed in. “We juvenile delinquints have this thing about rules.”
Joe chuckled. “Kevin? Where did that word come from?”
Kevin ignored that. “This society is so set on rules. Rules this. Rules that.”
Father Mahoney gave the boys a tongue-in-cheek kind of look.
“Boys, never forget that rules are there just to protect you and a lot of people just set up the rules, so that you won’t get hurt.”
Theo, the frizzy boy, spat: “But our folks start abusing us if we don’t follow the rules. If they want us to follow their rules, they gotta treat us with respect. They don’t.”
“Then you gotta tell your folks, Theo, that they have to do that. Respect is a very important mutual understanding that works both ways. Your folks have to know that.”
“Okay,” Patrick said. “Another question, man. What about this sex thing? Why does the church say that sex is such a damn sin? I mean, sex is what recreates our species, right? We need sex to survive. So, why is sex such a sin? It doesn’t make sense, man.”
“You are absolutely right, Patrick,” Neil said. “Don’t forget that the bible never ever anywhere says that you can’t enjoy sex. It only speaks of adultery. Thou shalt not commit adultery. But the bible never speaks of not being able to enjoy marital sex. In fact, why would God create a means for procreation and then make it boring for us to perform and tell us not to do it. We have to want it, it recreates our race. Wanting it is a part of who we are. The devil didn’t create sex. God did. He knows we need it to survive. So, it is not a sin. Marital sex is a must. If you betray your wife, okay, I’ll give you that. That’s wrong. But making love to your wife or girlfriend. That is normal. That is great. Do it. God is in you, you mingle with your girl. Do it as often as you wish. There is no harm in having sex with your wife. You should.”
The guy with the many zits started talking.
This time, he made perfect sense.
“What is this things with Adam & Eve? I mean, were they expelled for having sex?”
Father Neil smiled. “What do you think?”
“I’m asking you.”
“Man and wife are one flesh, they were naked and felt no shame. So far, so good?”
All the hooligans nodded.
“Which means what?” Father Neil asked.
“That sex is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Father Neil pointed at Patrick. “Bingo.”
The frizzy guy asked: “That’s in the bible?”
“Genesis 2:25, my man. Look it up,” Father Neil sing-songed.
“So shame is the forbidden fruit?”
“Now, my colleagues will probably kill me for this, but, yeah.”
“Excuse me, Father,” the nerdy guy with the zits said, again, “but the entire Catholic church is built upon this shame thing. You are saying they are wrong?”
“I am saying: there are two basic emotions. Love and fear. Anyone acting out of love will always do the right thing. He will be faithful, collagial, friendly, obedient and polite. Fear breeds serial killers, rapists and murderers. Rapists are not horny. They want power. Sex never drives anybody to kill anyone. If you love someone and have sex with them, all the more power to you, buddy boy. Sex is never the problem. Being ashamed about having sex is.”
Patrick chimed in. “We are still curious about Adam and Eve. Tell us what it says in the bible.”
“Okay,” Father Neil said. “The whole thing is a true misunderstanding of the holy scriptures and again, never ever tell any bishop this. He will behead me.”
The guys laughed.
“In Genesis, Chapter 3, verses 7 to 22, it clearly says that the problem was that Adam and Eve created a problem out of being naked. That was the downfall. Shame and lies. Whispers in dark corner. Hiding from the light. Having faithful sex, honest sex with your chosen spouse without alterior motives was never the problem. That came naturally. Are the animals ashamed of having sex? No. They know it is in their DNA to have sex. Why question it? But man started to think it was a problem. Man was born naked and God would not create a thing that we had to be ashamed of. If it were a problem, then God would have had us coming out with Boss Jeans and a Calvin Klein T-shirt. Don’t commit adultery. The word is mentioned 40 times in the bible and it is always called a sin. The bible is clear about that. Wars start only when you lie about sex or if you are ashamed of it. Don’t whisper about it in dark corners. Shout it out: I am not ashamed of my body. Don’t be ashamed. It is a box that your soul lives in. I repeat that. Your soul lives in a box called the body. Your soul has chosen this box to live in. The cheese in the supermarket is not ashamed of the box it came in. The soul enjoys itself here in life in this box called the body and then eventually leaves it to go back to heaven. Sex is just a way for the soul to enjoy itself. Don’t commit adultery, that’s all.”
The five guys were pretty quiet after that. They said their solemn good byes to the priest, who laughed with them and asked them to come to church once in a while to sing and praise God.

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