A Picture is Worth 1049 Words
A Picture’s Worth 1049 Words
As crazy as the culture wars have gotten in this country, I keep reminding myself that they were foreshadowed 50 years ago at St. Pat’s, when our entire seminary community was locked in a civil war over Vatican II. One side was lined up behind Frank Norris and Bob Giguere, sporting round-necked surplices and attempting to understand Kung, Schillebeeckx, and Rahner. The other side was aligned with Lyman Fenn who had declared war on the “joy-boys of the Resurrection” and regularly led his troops into liturgical battle wearing the stiff fiddleback chasubles that looked and felt like Crusader armor.
But as pervasive and engrossing as this liturgical battle was, there was another battle going on simultaneously that held even deeper implications for the future of the Church. It was the battle over white socks.
All through St. Joe’s, we seminarians had used two nylon-mesh laundry bags for our socks, one for the whites, one for the blacks. Each week we would carefully separate our socks and secure the bags with enormous diaper pins engraved with our laundry numbers. This was a deeply satisfying ritual, which gently fed our inner child. Many of us preferred white socks, both as an antidote to athlete’s foot and because white socks had a certain Archie-and-Veronica cachet. Others, who seemed to be cultivating a prematurely dour and staid clericalism, preferred black socks. In either case, it was a free choice and represented a rare personal fashion statement in the vast wasteland of drab seminary couture.
When Paul Purta first arrived at St. Pat’s, he was greeted as the great liberal savior, a forward-looking rector who would lead us through the Tridentine carcass-fields into a verdant savannah of change. It was a time of collegiality, so he invited the class presidents to sit down with him and discuss increased autonomy, expanded cultural opportunities, and an end to arbitrary rules. We naively thought we were home free.
Then, out of the blue, Rector Purta announced that the nuns would no longer be washing our white socks. “Too much work,” he said, “to separate white and black socks. From now on, only black socks.”
I was outraged. Talk about arbitrary rules! I caucused with Mike Sullivan, whose white socks were widely admired as the quintessential symbol of jock prowess. He and I cornered Purta and explained that there was an easy nylon-mesh-bag solution to the laundry problem. Purta hemmed and hawed a bit and then reluctantly admitted that, actually, the nuns weren’t really the issue. The issue was that priests needed to start looking and acting more professional, and white socks made you look hunky!
Mike and I had hurled a lot of epithets at each other, but we’d never heard of hunky. We didn’t even know what the word meant.
We said, “Okay we’ll wash our own socks,” and walked off.
The impasse only grew worse through the next year. At one point, Fr. Purta came up with another solution. He said he’d just read an article about West Point cadets who wore special socks that were black on the top and white on the bottom. That should solve the problem, he said.
“West Point!” I yelled. “That’s a military academy! They’re into discipline for discipline’s sake!”
He poked me in the chest. “Don’t forget, buddy, once you’re a priest you’re going to have to follow whatever orders the bishop gives you.”
“Not if they don’t make sense,” I said. “I’ll argue with the bishop just like I’m arguing with you.”
Thus did white socks become an explosive symbol of seminary rebellion in the mid-‘60s, representing perhaps a deeper, more immediate challenge to the status quo than either the counterpoints of Theology or the cosmetics of Liturgy. Long before the Yellow Vest Protest rocked the streets of France, the White Sock Rebellion rumbled through the halls of St. Patrick’s, threatening to derail Paul Purta’s otherwise promising career as a charismatic and visionary leader and reduce him to a reactionary abolitionist.
You have to realize, of course, that all this was happening in the spring of 1966, right when our 3d Theology class was already quite neurotic, staring as we were into the muzzle of mandatory celibacy, with only a month left to decide whether to pull the trigger.
And then Time Magazine asked, “Is God Dead?”
We all had the same thought. Here we are, about to swear an oath of celibacy before God, and the world’s most popular magazine is suggesting that such a vow would be totally stupid, because God’s no longer around to witness it.
It was too much. We had to do something silly. So we posed for a picture:
The picture was taken in the Theology reading room. On the right, Time magazine is being read by Len Duggan (RIP), a protégé of Lyman Fenn and the self-proclaimed arch-reactionary of our class.
Next to him is Jim Pulskamp, a shy comedian who was always up for a lark as long as he wouldn’t have to take the blame for it.
Paul Feyen is in the middle, dressed in the Batman costume that the nuns generously created for our shenanigans. Paul was the non-ideologue of the class, a witty practical joker who always looked and acted like Jack Nicholson.
Sitting on the window frame is John Castro (RIP) who was only a second philosopher at the time. John was a friendly, curious kid with a Paul Anka hairdo. I’m not sure how he ended up in the picture, other than he was always open to new things. His classmate Dennis Lucey says John was the one who first introduced their class to the Beatles.
Next to him is Jim McDonald whose middle-of-the-road equanimity, good humor, and rosy cheeks earned him the nickname “ The Mayor.” He’s reading New Republic, the moderates’ magazine of choice.
I’m on the far left reading National Review, obnoxiously flashing my white socks in hunky disregard for everything professional.
The fact that we could all sit down together and do something silly was a glowing testimonial to the tenuous sanity we had somehow managed to salvage during those stressful days of internecine strife.
Hopefully those of us still alive today can still muster that level of silliness in another era of conflict.