Chris Gaffney, a contemporary of mine, and of blessed memory, came up with a theory of Redemptorist life, which I feel sure, is true of all life. In this world, he said, there are barons, intellectuals and boneheads. People fall into, or are divided into one of these three categories. The barons rule the roost as administrators of society and enjoy the power and privilege that such positions bring. The intellectuals constitute a counter-point and balance to such power by the fact of their intelligence and their ability to voice and influence proceedings. The boneheads, like Ronnie Corbett, in that famous sketch, know their place!
In the world, barons and intellectuals reign. Boneheads just slog away. Perhaps Passchendaele has reminded me of this. Barons and intellectuals hold the power. They have control of things and can organise life to suit their tastes and inclinations. Boneheads, by contrast, feel powerless and spend a lot of time complaining about their situation. It is easy to despise them.
I can think of many good men who were boneheads in my time. They spent their lives going from house to house visiting people, and then preaching the gospel to them in mission sermons as best they could. Some of them were not great preachers, at least not according to the style and standard of Lacordaire: More John Vianney, they.
But what they lacked in style they more than made up for in sympathetic closeness to people. And people recognised that. People always suss out a genuine article. In my own thirty-five years in the Redemptorists, I remember many good men who spent their lives in humble corridors, away from the glare and the spotlight, walking the roads of this world and offering a listening ear to those who had no one to hear them. This was true power.
I will name one for you, though I know many. Jimmy Corrigan. They said about him that when he preached he was a like a plane that did not know how to land! He would come close to the ground and then take off again! I witnessed it a few times.
In my time as a Redemptorist I belonged to all three corridors of power. I was by nature an intellectual. I was bright and clever. In later days I was given access to baronial power, becoming a rector, a director of students and a parish priest. The hardest job I ever did was that of bonehead, the slogging work of visiting people: be it in their homes or in prison where I was for a time a chaplain.
But that work was the most rewarding, for it brought me into direct contact with ordinary people, whose reaction and response to me was so rewarding and life giving.
‘Bonehead’ was the cruel name that my friend Chris gave to the disempowered people, not because they were thick or ignorant, but because they were not rated or held in high regard, except for the rare high-flyer. Many of these people also did not rate themselves because nobody else did either.
In these words I wish to acknowledge the work they did and the lives they lived in the recent history of the Church. Secular priests and religious priests, as well as the unsung sisters and brothers, whose generous lives are in danger of being swallowed up in the wholesale rejection of Church that present times are witnessing.
Chris, my friend, saw life clearly and analysed it well and with good humour. Every person has power. Some powers are obviously seen and celebrated. Others mistakenly think they have no power at all. Think again.
God bless all boneheads.
Brian Fahy
31 July 2017
Erris Poetry 