A Genre Unto Itself
If there’s one thing many of us could use, it’s a better sense of humor about our faith. I suppose when you feel embattled, as do quite a few faithful Catholics in this country, it’s understandable when you take things about the Church a little too seriously.
To these people Nick Alexander’s music goes off like a string of Black Cats during a prayer service. His album, A Time to Laugh (a title taken from Ecclesiastes 3:4), comprises ten rock and roll songs from the 1960s through the ’90s, reworked with religious themes. (On his web site, www.nickalexander.com, the artist describes himself as a “a worship leader, a speaker, an apologist, a songwriter, and a church musician.”) If you’re in your thirties or forties, most of the music will be familiar to you.
At first blush, the juxtaposition of serious theological thoughts against familiar rock songs is funny. I played the CD for my friend Bill, a fine liturgical musician and composer in his own right. He guffawed when he heard “Should I Stand or Should I Kneel,” (a whack at the Clash’s 1982 hit “Should I Stay or Should I Go”). “This is genius!” he chortled. “I gotta send my sister a copy.”
He borrowed the CD for a few days, and the novelty wore off pretty quickly for him. But his ten-year-old daughter, too young to know the original songs, wouldn’t stop playing it. Same with another friend: His ten-year-old son is nuts for this CD.
It’s difficult to know how to critique an album of Catholic rock parodies, since as far as I know this album is a genre unto itself. But there are certain ground rules a parody must follow to be effective. The closer the lyrics are to the original, the funnier, especially when similar words take the meaning in a whole new direction, as in Alexander’s reworking of the 1993 hit by Madness, “Our House.” (Original refrain: “Our house, in the middle of the street,” The parody: “Our Mass, in the middle of the week.”)
Too often, though, Alexander parodies the title or “hook” of a song well but the rest of the lyrics are nowhere near the original (as in “Transubstantiation,” based on the Beatles’ 1968 anthem “Revolution” and “Tithe after Tithe,” based on Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time” [1984]). The most successful songs are “Should I Stand or Should I Kneel,” “Our Mass,” and “R.C.I.A.,” a send-up of the Village People’s 1979 disco hit, “Y.M.C.A.”
The arrangements are faithful, Band-in-a-Box renditions of the originals, and the uncredited guitar work is solid. But the production leaves something to be desired and the sound is generally too thin. (For instance, the staccato horns on “Our Mass,” punchy in the original song, sound as if they’re in the next room.) Alexander’s pleasant voice doesn’t have quite enough oomph to carry some of the harder-edged songs like “Old Time Gregorian Chant” and “Confession” (parodies of Bob Seeger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” [1978] and Billy Joel’s “Pressure” [1982], respectively). But the nasal Sonny Bono and man-deep Cher vocals on “I Got You Saved,” both credited to Barry Feterman, are hilarious.
An eleventh track-a non-parody song titled “Father”-hangs off the end of the album like a vestigial tail. Alexander included it, one supposes, to show he can do serious worship music. But it’s a weak, 4/4-time reworking of the Our Father over an unexceptional D-C-G chord structure, and it doesn’t belong here.
The deeper question concerning A Time to Laugh is whether or not it’s appropriate to use parodies of rock and roll songs to communicate truths about the Catholic faith, as Alexander attempts to do. “I find humor to be a refreshing and effective way to bring out certain truths,” he explains on his web site. “Some of my favorite preachers, like Scott Hahn or Fr. Benedict Groeschel, use humor to their advantage. It peaks [sic] our interest, gives us an ability to laugh at ourselves, and preaches to us in ways which humorless preaching doesn’t. . . .
“Tell me, is there anything so wrong with taking what is so precious and trying to convey it in such a way that others can understand it? We have many wondrous treasures that are locked within cathedral walls. Are we truly making the effort to share our treasures outside of designated culture-zones?
“Further, one thing I enjoy about today’s popular music is that it’s infectious. You can’t get it out of your head. Now, if you combine the repetitiveness of a strong melody with a strong message, you will create a powerful force.”
The counter-argument is that rock music’s very infectiousness is part of its problem. Much has been written about the nature of the rock and roll backbeat and how it appeals to our prurient nature. While I tend not to subscribe to this theory, I have to recognize that as a creature created by a perfect God in order to love him, I am badly tainted by the profane culture in which I live. If I had grown up unexposed to rock music and had experienced it only as a faith-filled adult, how would it impress me? Probably like Van Halen impressed my parents, which is not much at all.
And while I laughed at “R.C.I.A.,” should we ignore the fact that the original song and the group that performed it not only glorified the campy homosexual culture of 1970s San Francisco but helped make it mainstream? Is it wrong to take what is precious and try to convey it in a way that non-Catholics can understand it? Sometimes, at least, I think the answer may be yes.
But Nick Alexander is a clever guy, and the Catholicism he preaches is orthodox. If you are unconcerned by the larger questions, or can answer the objections to your own satisfaction, A Time to Laugh will be just that.
— Tim Ryland
A Time To Laugh
By Nick Alexander
Self-produced music CD (2000)
Eleven Tracks (36:12)
$15 (CD) or
$10 (cassette tape)
Available from
www.nickalexander.com
or www.amazon.com
For info: Nick Alexander,
937 Post Road, Box 201
Fairfield, CT 06430
Spiritual Pep Talk
Sometimes the troops need to be rallied. If you’re a Catholic whose faith is flagging, you could do worse than to fire up your VCR and pop in the video Led by the Light of Truth-Inspiring Testimonies about Coming Home to the Catholic Church. It’s the equivalent of a good spiritual pep talk.
The slickly produced, seventy-minute video intertwines three well-known Catholic speakers-Stephen Ray and Tim Staples, both converts, and Johnnette Benkovic, a “revert”-talking about their faith journeys. Ray and Staples are popular lecturers and apologists for St. Joseph’s Communications in Orange County, California, and Benkovic is the executive producer and host of The Abundant Life on the Eternal Word Television Network and the Moments of Truth radio program out of Clearwater, Florida.
The video is divided into four parts. In the first, “Predawn-Beginnings and Background,” the three recall their childhoods. Steve Ray’s father was a Protestant youth pastor who switched churches ten times while Ray was growing up. “I was a generic Christian,” Ray says. “I believed in sola scriptura and sola fide.” In high school he was inspired by a friend to study Scripture but, as a rebellious teen, he hid the Bible deep under his mattress so his parents wouldn’t know of his deepening faith.
Johnnette Benkovic was raised Catholic. “As a child I had deep devotion,” she remembers. “I wrote poems to Jesus.” Her faith, she says, was alive throughout her parochial high school years, but she attended Penn State University in the midst of the turbulent ’60s, and there she lost her faith. “I fashioned my own morality, my own universe,” she says, “and I was the center of it.”
Tim Staples recalls of his days growing up, “I was not a Catholic-basher. I simply thought the Catholic Church taught false doctrines that led people astray.” When he was eighteen his mother took him to a Christ Church of God Pentecostal church where he answered an “altar call” and accepted Jesus. But he was “extremely undisciplined” as a young man, living with his brother and “getting in trouble.” Recognizing the need for discipline in his life, as well as the need for money to attend college, Staples joined the U.S. Marines Corps, where he was an inveterate evangelizer. “I thought God had called me to get as many Catholics out of the Church as I could. Unfortunately, I was all too successful.”
In the second segment, “Search for Fulfillment,” Ray recounts how Protestant theologian Francis Schaefer shaped his belief. After Ray married his high school sweetheart in 1976, they moved to Switzerland to study under Schaefer. As they traveled Europe for the next six months studying theology and visiting the great sites of the Reformation, Ray says they “began to sense cracks” in Protestant theology. Protestant worship also became problematic. They knew there “was some element missing in worship. We knew it had to be more than listening to a sermon.”
“When we abandon our faith,” says Benkovic, “darkness comes in.” She says she would try to avoid the darkness by going to another party or another sit-in. “But as I drifted away from the light of truth, I was deeply depressed.” Benkovic recalls sitting in a dark bar alone one day: “I cried out to God, ‘I don’t even know if you exist, but if you’re there, please help me.’ I wanted to be saved from the lifestyle I had created.” When she walked out of the dark bar into what was a “glorious spring day,” the warmth of the sun “felt like a kiss” on her tear-stained cheeks. And there, in the middle of a cloudless sky, Benkovic witnessed a “tremendous rainbow.” “In that moment I knew Jesus existed and that he loved me.” But it was not until the 1980s that the witness of a friend brought her back the faith of her childhood.
Staples says that in the last year of his stint in the Marines he finally met a Catholic who knew his faith inside and out. They had many a heated discussion over their faith, and Staples found he didn’t have rejoinders to many of his friend’s arguments. “I thought, ‘This guy’s making sense, and it’s ticking me off,” he says. “When I left the Marines, I was happy to get away from him.” But now Staples was studying Scripture and reading the Church Fathers-and “discovering Catholicism everywhere.” Staples turned out his dream job-youth pastor at a Protestant church-because of his growing doubts about the mistakenness of the Catholic Church. Instead he went to Jimmy Swaggart Bible College, a fiercely anti-Catholic school. But when “my professors were saying things about Catholicism that simply weren’t true,” Staples felt compelled to point it out. “When you defend Catholics at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College,” he says, “people start looking at you awry.”
In the third segment, “Daybreak,” Steve Ray recalls that when Al Kresta, a good friend and knowledgeable Protestant, converted to Catholicism, “I thought he was crazy.” As for the Rays, “We were terrified. The last thing we wanted to do was become Catholic.” But he came to realize “I had intellectually become a Catholic.” When the Rays agreed to attend Mass with the Krestas, “We were terrified. We’d never been to a Catholic Church. . . . We were overwhelmed. We were both weeping through the whole Mass.” The Rays converted in 1994 and have wept at every Mass since. “Enjoy it,” Ray tells himself. “It’s a gift of the Holy Spirit.”
When Benkovic finally hied herself to the confessional, “I told Father I had been away for a number of years and I had committed many, many sins.” The priest led her through the various commandments in an examination of conscience and she made a full confession. Afterward, she felt “tremendous joy; I felt a new life springing forth within me.” Once she was back in the arms of the Church, an opportunity arose to leave her successful insurance practice and get into media ministry. “Had I not returned to the Church,” she says, “I would have lost my soul, but so would my family.”
While still a Protestant, Staples got a rosary and began praying to Mary for her intercession. Then, once when he was reading Philippians 4:6, he had an epiphany of the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He looked in the phone book and called the nearest Catholic church. “Father, I need to come in and talk to you,” he told the pastor when he got him on the phone. “Fine,” said the priest, “but I’m very busy. You can make an appointment for sometime next week.” Staples said he tried several times to impress the urgency of the situation on the priest, who kept telling him to make an appointment. “Father,” Staples said finally, “I’m going back to Jimmy Swaggart Bible College in a few days and I need to talk to someone about the Catholic Church.” To which the priest replied, “Come on over right now.” Staples became a Catholic in 1988. “I think converts are called to give cradle Catholics a swift kick,” he says. “To make you realize what you’ve got.”
In the last segment, “Lightstreams-Fulfulling God’s Mission,” the speakers talk about Pope John Paul’s “new springtime” and the potential for a true renewal. As Tim Staples says at the end, “In the Catholic Church, it’s all or nothing.”
— Brian Kelleher
Led By the Light of Truth
Testimonies by
Johnnette Benkovic, Stephen Ray,
and Tim Staples
Ignatius Press/Life Works Press (2000)
70 minutes
$19.95
Available from Ignatius Press
(www.Ignatius.com
or call 1-800-651-1531)
Much Here to Recommend
As the ubiquitous Fr. Benedict Groeschel points out in the back-cover blurb to Tales of God: A Treasury of Great Short Stories for the Catholic Family, “Catholic prose and poetry were an important part of the lives of all educated members of the Church only a few decades ago.” But, as any parent knows, it’s difficult to find good Catholic literature (as opposed to well-intentioned but dumbed-down “faith-based” stories) that is appropriate for children.
Tales of God, edited by Br. Michel Bertigole, O.S.F., is an admirable attempt to bridge this literature gap. The first part of the book, “Tales for the Entire Family” comprises stories such as “What Men Live By” by Leo Tolstoy, “The Bell That Sang Again” by Fray Angelico Chavez, “The Teacher of Wisdom” by Oscar Wilde, “The Oracle of the Dog” by G. K. Chesterton, and “The Day Boy and the Night Girl” By George MacDonald. While all the selections are admirable, be forewarned: Children under seven or eight years of age will find their attention wandering. Many of the stories take half an hour or longer to read aloud, especially if the parent is stopping to answer questions.
But there is much here to recommend. Henry Van Dyke’s moving “The Story of the Other Wise Man” tells of a fourth magus who was waylaid by an act of charity and missed meeting up with his three friends in search of the King foretold by the star. The delight of MacDonald’s fairytale will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Princess and Curdie stories. And Chesterton never fails to delight. In “The Oracle of the Dog,” a Fr. Brown mystery, he writes of an enthusiastic young man named Fiennes “with eager blue eyes and blond hair that seemed to be rushed back, not merely with a hairbrush but with the wind of the world as he rushed through it.” Children soak in such writing by osmosis and are the far better for it.
The last part of the book, “Tales for Adults,” serves as an introduction to the writing of such Catholic literary figures as Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor, J. F. Powers, and Robert Hugh Benson. Br. Bettigole’s book is thoughtfully assembled, and families, especially with preteens and young teen-agers, will benefit from the time together exploring these stories.
— Dan Trimly
Tales of God
Edited by Michael Bettigole, O.S.F.
Alba House (2001)
237 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 0-8189-0847-5