An inside look at the wave of polio that swept the NJ cities. ( )

It was the familiarity with streets and locations of St. Paul that first suggested that I might find some enjoyment in reading ‘Vestments’ by John Reimringer. Father James, on a forced ‘break’ from his pastoral duties will begin teaching in the fall. During the summer, while staying at his mom’ s home, family dynamics of past and present collide. Occasionally, as adults, we gain insight and experience that helps put our parents and our families into perspective. We find we can simply accept things they way they are and let go of the conflicts we’ve carried; or we are fortunate to find a truth within ourselves that sheds understanding and even tempers a difficult relationship. check all of the above for James’ difficult re-immersion into his family.
Through James’ revelations to the reader, we learn the steps that led him to the priesthood and the passion he felt for his calling.:

“But even then it would be hard to say aloud that my love was deep and
physical, that woven into my mind since my earliest memories was the
unexpectedly sensual fabric of Catholicism, made up of rosary beads
and silver crucifixes, the weight of altar robes on my shoulders, incense
and candlelight, the red and blue cloth markers in my grandparents’ black
leather missals and the old-paper smell of the gilt-edged pages, the
ritual rhythms of the Mass, the hymns of the Christmas season that
promised more reason to the world than we could see.”
(page 157-158)

Some sons inherit land or money; some inherit sweet personality quirks that relatives lovingly joke about at family gatherings. Sons in the Dressler line were constantly being scrutinized and measured in terms of success and failure by fathers and grandfathers who, themselves, had failed - or at least, saw themselves as such, unable to see or accept successes. Anger, frustration, and even self-loathing circles back to the bearer and then spews out anew, with more strength, at its target. I think James learned this about his lineage and consciously determined to change the Dressler lineage.

Lord God, forgive me for what I’m about to do. Forgive me for wanting
communion with one woman over that with the people you called me to
serve. And forgive me most of all for wanting a son of my own, for not
finding your Son to be enough.
(page 404-405)

Located within a novel, arguments for not requiring priests to indulge or not in very human relationships; enjoy relationships and experiences that enrich lives; and a perspective on how we often socially isolate priests and others called to church leadership. James muses how priests are asked to be an active part of the most life changing events - death, Christening of babies, weddings, yet are often seen as too distant or ‘not of this world’ to take part in an informal family gathering. I’m reminded of a female Lutheran minister who, when I learned was ill and in the hospital, I called and before hanging up, asked if she would like me to pray. She eagerly said yes. She revealed, that because she was the ‘church/religious leader, others seemed not reconciled that sometimes she needed to be on the receiving end of prayers and helpfulness in personal areas.

Though my mother was raised Catholic, her five children didn’t grow up in a church-centered family life. We didn’t even grow up on the periphery of church. Taught to pray to St. Anthony, to say our Hail Mary under dire circumstances, that’s where our Catholic teaching began and ended. My brother and I accidentally enrolled our younger sister into a Catholic school - kindergarten. When we returned home, our mother was furious. Mary told Mom that all her teachers wore long black skirts. It wasn’t until many, many years later that I was given just a bare hint of the anger my mother held toward the Catholic church. Yet she held to the idea that we children would find some kind Passive-aggressive and often simply aggression in dealing with conflicts and self guilt; of safety in praying and pleading to its saints. and holy mother. Joe Dressler was so much like my dad, just a different job. My dad was a musician and bartender in the Chicago area. At various times, he would take one or several of us to whichever bar he was working at the time. Some of my first memories are of playing slot machines; replenishing beer bottles behind the bar; with my younger sisters and a friend, making costumes from crepe paper and staging plays on the VFW hall stage during the quiet of the day when the bar was closed. The rancidness and stickiness of the bar and floor were more unpleasant. It was the fifties and because of my dad’s connections, with the mob and so many other questionable characters. It seemed my dad could do anything...not necessarily legal. Because of ‘helping someone out’ he would come home with a side of the most tender beef, nicely aged. I don’t know how we never got sick, but the side would take up space on the stove top, and for a week, whenever we were hungry, we would simply slice into the slab and slice red meat for frying. With five kids and two adults, this was welcomed change from sometimes a much meager supper of rice or crackers.

For a period of about a month, once a week, a Hostess Cupcake truck would stop at our home and drop off five or six flats of cupcakes, Twinkies, and SnoBalls...and then there was Duke - Great Duke of Wildwood. One night Dad came home, fairly sober, with a full grown boxer on a leash and let him go. We four girls, ages from about 5-13, all jumped onto the top bunk in our bedroom. We had never been around such a big dog. His jowls and wrinkles, teamed with his muscular body, scared us to death as he kept jumping toward us.

Duke ranked higher on the social ladder than we did, certainly. He came with an American Kennel Club pedigree of four pages. How Duke came into my dad’s possession was one of the mysteries of life. It was probably the first time I began to question what my dad did for a living, beyond tending bar and lining up gigs for Bill Sage’s Dixieland Band. Joe Dressler’s fist pounding, drunken rages and anger that seemed to have no grounding in what was really going on was too familiar to me. (ref page 98)

I moved to Minnesota almost 13 years ago. I fell in love with the city, its various neighborhoods and its quirks immediately. Though once or twice I questioned whether Reimringer was merely trying to demonstrate how well he can read a map and name business establishments, I was along for the ride and enjoyed it. I really liked being able to picture where we were driving, and made promises to drive past those with which I wasn’t familiar.

sh 11/26/2011 ( )

A young priest is troubled by temptations of the flesh. Interesting characters in his family.

John Reimringer has written a stunning debut novel set in the twin cities of Minneapolis/St Paul.  Fr. James Dressler is 30 years old, a catholic priest who has come home to live with his mother for a summer while he decides what to do with his life.  He is struggling with the idea of celibacy, both in the abstract and the physical, and has been banished to the boonies by his bishop because of a momentary lapse with a young woman in the parish.  His only alternative seems to be a job teaching history at a local Benedictine college. In the meantime, he is earning money fixing up old houses with his father, while he watches his grand-father slowly die, and prepares to officiate at his younger brother's wedding.  Meeting his old girlfriend, who is separated from her husband, he once again wrestles with desire and the need for human contact.

There are wonderful backfills of how and why he decided to become a priest, of the lusty, bar-sprawling, blue collar, dysfunctional family he grew up with, of young first love and lover's regrets.  The characters are lushly drawn as are the stories of his childhood and his relationships with various members of his family.  The descriptions of the cities become almost a character of their own.  The influence of the landscape, the factories, the rivers, the entire immigrant culture are woven into a tightly knit fabric of reminiscence.  Multi-layered and multi-faceted, Reimringer's novel gives us a young man struggling to grow up and away from his father, struggling with young love and the decisions required when things don't go well, struggling to get away from the ugliness of a family who only communicate with their fists. The young Jim Dressler is attracted to the calm, quiet and ordered way of life the priesthood seems to offer.

Best of all, Reimringer gives us a portrait of priesthood and the Catholic Church of his childhood (both Dressler's and Reimringer's). It is a church balanced on the tipping point of the post-Vatican II era, where priests are trying to come to grips with change vs. tradition, with a more educated laity, and the reality of life as they grow older and lonelier. In an interview with Eric Forbes of the Good Books Guide blog, Reimringer says

"... I grew up devoutly Catholic, but as I got older I drifted to the left and the Church drifted to the right, and so I was writing in exile from the Catholic Church, which I deeply loved as a child, and whose rituals and people I still deeply love.  The Catholic Mass is one of the most beautiful rituals on the planet, and the average Catholic, parishioner or priest, is ill-served by the Church's leadership these days.  The novel is an elegy for what the Church could be and still occasionally is."

He gives us real people who are priests.   Real men who struggle with all the weaknesses, flaws and failings of themselves and their parishioners.  Real men who play poker, drink scotch, kiss babies, endure soggy sodden food prepared by sullen, disgruntled housekeepers, who go out in all kinds of weather at all hours of the night to offer solace to dying people, and work for hours to deliver decent homilies on Sundays.  He gives us a gut-wrenching picture of the loneliness of life in a rectory and the soaring joy of service to others.  Each priest in the book is an eloquent example of the diversity of the men who have answered the call to this way of life, and the sentiments, motivations, failures and victories of each.

Dressler's struggles and the anguish he faces as he decides where his loyalties lie will not be welcomed by very conservative Catholics, but readers will find a powerful portrait of love, repentence, redemption, and difficult choices made.  It is a book that can be appreciated by readers of all religions. ( )