Jock Spirituality: Part 1
Jock Spirituality: Part 1
It always amazes me how many Catholic teams make it to the NCAA championship brackets. This year in the men’s division, the Augustinians (Villanova) outlasted the Jesuits (Loyola Chicago), despite the latter having a 98 year old nun as a mascot; and the Congregation of the Holy Cross (Notre Dame) walked away with the women’s championship. What is it about Catholics and Basketball? Actually, what is it about Catholics and sports in general?
I first learned about the spiritual importance of sports in grammar school. Marin never had the heavy CYO imprint that San Francisco did, and St. Anselm’s was never considered a basketball powerhouse, but going out for the team in fourth grade seemed almost as holy an endeavor as becoming an altar boy. Both implied some sort of heroic loyalty to Team Catholic. Our basketball coach was Father Ed Dullea, who taught us how to pass the ball and warned us about “hacking.” (I never did learn how to shoot.) We knew St. Raphael’s would always beat us, because they had twice as many students, an indoor gym, and a real coach; but if we were lucky, we might be able to beat St. Patrick’s or St. Vincent’s School for Boys. We would always put our hands together on the ball before the game and say a prayer; and we’d always make the sign of the cross before a free throw. (Many years later Dennis Lucey told me that the sign of the cross was originally a yogic centering exercise - which might explain its efficacy for foul shots.)
In the seminary, of course, sports were elevated to a near sacred status. The first seminary document any of us read was Lyman Fenn’s “The Little City of God,” where he went into great detail about how the sports system was carefully designed to play a pivotal role in the formation of young men for the priesthood. One line summed it up: “The competition at St. Joseph’s is very keen.” Arriving as a non-orig in third high, I had never gotten to know my classmates in their native state - before they had been branded by a team – so the seminary draft became a huge deal for me. I’ve always considered my selection as an Indian my first call to orders.
At our yearly retreats, we inevitably heard dramatic Mission Band homilies about how our spiritual life was like a baseball game: We had to widen our stance, choke up on the bat, and keep our eye on the ball, lest we go down swinging and end up in Hell. God was our long-suffering coach, and Satan always threw spitballs.
Later, in the wake of Vatican II, new franchise teams started popping up in the Church League. Instead of all the teams consisting of clergy, the laity started creating their own squads. First came the Cursillo movement where regular people started organizing weekend retreats, sharing their feelings and experiences without benefit of clergy. It started to impact St. Pat’s shortly after I got there. Older classmen would disappear for a weekend and then come back all giggly, singing “De Colores,” and trying to hug all their classmates. It seemed pretty weird to the rest of us, who had spent years trying to keep our emotions under control, and Lyman Fenn, our self-appointed sports commissioner, wanted to throw them out of the league entirely, but eventually we accepted the fact that the rules of the game were changing.
Then the women got involved. They got tired of listening to priests telling them about marriage and family, so they grabbed their husbands, adapted some of the Cursillo techniques and started holding couples’ retreats under the banner of the old Christian Family Movement. The Vatican Council even started enlisting their advice on issues like birth control. (Well, sort of).
Soon the Cursillo concept spread to teen agers in the Bay Area. Organized through the CYO, it was called the Search for Christian Maturity and featured teens teaching and inspiring other teens. This was an exciting new ball game, and I was curious to experience it, so I asked my classmate Ed Nevin if he could get me into a Search over our Christmas break. (His folks were active in CFM and his brother, Mike, was one of the leaders of the Search.)
I was told that this holiday Search was reserved specifically for football players who hadn’t been able to attend any previous Searches during the regular football season. About 70 of them showed up at the CYO camp in Occidental. A lot of them already knew each other, but still, “the competition was very keen” and there was enough testosterone in the air to start a forest fire. However, the leaders seemed up to the challenge, all of them Search veterans who had been hand-picked to deal with this gaggle of beefy jocks. Pete Armstrong started things off, telling them that this was THEIR event, to be led by THEIR peers, who could relate to THEIR problems. (Very collegial, a la Vatican II). Mike Nevin led off, talking about sports, teamwork, dedication, excellence, and how all these things can be applied to your spiritual life. Other teen leaders followed, each giving their own personal accounts of how they had evolved from clueless high school jocks into spiritual athletes. The crescendo built and built until finally the last speaker was announced: “Now we’re going to hear from a guy you all know - at least by reputation (Snicker, snicker). A great football player, a great leader, a great all-around guy – Ace O’Conner!”
The name was vaguely familiar to me, and I suddenly flashed back to my first year at St. Joe’s, to one morning at breakfast, when a sixth latiner – I think his first name was Kevin in those days – held the entire refectory in thrall as he proceeded to set a new record by eating 108 stewed prunes. It had started as a dare, but soon the whole refectory was sending their left-over bowls of prunes to his table, watching him wolf them down, one after another. Only Cat Canfield’s bell stopped him at 108.
I hadn’t seen him since then, but now he rose, a strapping six footer, and grinned out at the burly crowd. He started out slow: “Guys, a lot of people think Jesus was a wimp. They think all he did was turn the other cheek.” He paused and looked slowly around the room. “But I’m here to tell you, they’re wrong! Jesus was no wimp! He was a winner! If he played football, he’d be Y. A. Tittle! If he played basketball, he’d be Bill Russell! If he played baseball, he’d be Babe Ruth! He was the kind of competitor who never gave up. He gave his all for the team. And now He wants you to do the same. You need to step up to the plate. You need to pick yourself up after the tackle. You need to man up.” He paused again, slowly nodding his head and sweeping the crowd with his eyes.
“No shit, guys. You gotta crack your balls for Christ!”
It was the most powerful jock sermon I’d ever heard.