One of my favorite opening lines of literature is from Dante’s Divine Comedy – “Midway along the journey of our life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood for I had wandered off from the straight path. … But if I would show the good that came of it, I must talk about things other than the good.” Seven hundred years before the term “midlife crisis” was coined to give credibility to the struggles many go through between 35 and 40, Dante already spoke of the despair and sense of inner confusion that defines this period of our lives. We come face to face, perhaps for the first time, with our limitations, restricted possibilities, and mortality.
Twenty-five years ago, I remember writing a church newsletter article, called “Twenty-five years on the bench,” at that midlife crisis time in my life. I had left my first church position in Marin County, California, and was working full time as Director of Music at a San Francisco parish that once was considered a “cardinal parish” in the Diocese of California. In order to be a “cardinal parish,” a church has to be large, influential, and rich. When I arrived in the mid-90s, the “cardinal rector” that created that image had long-since moved on to one of the major “pulpits” of Boston, and with him, his legacy of sleeping with women in the parish (often at a hotel two blocks away) and giving weekly report cards to the organist. These report cards were evaluations of hymns and anthems, including commentary on the tempi of the hymns, choice of anthems, how well they were executed, volume of the organ playing, etc. (That takes gall!)
This rector was succeeded by another rector who was equally problematic. Eventually suspended by the bishop after being caught embezzling $150,000 in donations, having a sexual relationship with a former seminarian he was counseling, his coup de grâce was to threaten someone in his office with a gun. You can’t make this stuff up!
Anyway, the rector that succeeded these two was the one who hired me, and for whom I was working. I definitely worked “for” him and not “with” him, as he consistently referred to me as “his” organist. He was not the first clergy person that I heard refer to the parish musician with a possessive pronoun. For a class of people that pride themselves on their ability to spin words (clergy), it’s hard not to acknowledge that they don’t know that a possessive pronoun assumes a lack of autonomy by the person being “possessed.” Sadly, this was a very frustrated man, unhappily married to a woman, emotionally crushed that he had never been elected bishop as his father had, and possessing an astringent personality that successfully pushed nearly everyone away.
I stepped into that church building which seemed to hold a plethora of secrets, power grabs, and vibes of lives abused, with an equal sense of excitement and dread. It was a full time job for me, my first within the City of San Francisco, and one of only two in the entire Diocese outside of Grace Cathedral. There would be many aspects of that position which allowed me to flower. I developed a fantastic choir, an active chorister program, a well-recognized concert series, a Choral Society (which included performing Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion), and rebuilt the organ. I was also afforded the time to continue embracing my concert career, most especially in Europe, made two more solo organ CDs in Europe, and about six CDs with American Bach Soloists. I also co-chaired the national convention of the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM), so I had plenty to do! In many respects, life was good!
I was, by no means, miserable; but I did need to walk a tightrope around a rector who quickly discovered that I did not like to be controlled. Within two years, he put me on probation for insubordination, and kept me in that precarious position for the two subsequent years that I served that church. Every day in the office became a dance of trying to avoid running into him. In retrospect, I developed an outer armor to protect me from a constant barrage of complaints and snide comments.
Working in a church is similar to living in a family: There are always secrets told behind doors, but on the outside, one is supposed to pretend that everything is normal. In church settings, these secrets are often about the behavior of particular parishioners. This rector, in particular, didn’t seem to like very many people, so staff meetings were filled with denigrating comments about parishioners. (Word to the wise: People of integrity talk to people, not about people.) The rest of the staff and I would leave these meetings feeling dirty. Yet it was our job to be friendly and civil to all the people that would be horrified if they had known what the rector was saying about them.
This system of talking badly about people behind their backs is not limited to the Church. It’s endemic in our society’s workplaces. But at some point, someone has to say that this demonstrates a level of insecurity, immaturity, and absence of kindness and compassion, that has no place in institutions whose sole purpose is to foster spiritual growth. It is of no small wonder that of the infamous Seven Deadly Sins, the one God reputedly hates the most is gossip and the stirring up of dissension among God’s people.
In spite of the successes that I experienced at this church, I pretty much hated working there, largely because the rector was so problematic and clearly disliked me so profoundly. Our personalities were like oil and water. So when the opportunity came to move away, far away, actually (Minneapolis) and become the Director of Music at a cathedral, I jumped at the chance to leave San Francisco.
But that cathedral position, too, was short-lived (as already chronicled), and I returned to San Francisco to build a new life, this time not focused in church music. After Minneapolis, I vowed I would never again work full time for the Church as I considered her a horrible and ruthless employer.
But I had one more lesson to learn…
Jesuits
Two years after returning to San Francisco, out of the blue I was offered a full time position as Director of Music at the largest Jesuit church in the United States. The church building is huge and glorious, on the campus of a Jesuit University, and with lots of opportunity to do choral music from the rich Catholic tradition. The organ was terrible, but there was a strong possibility of a spectacular new instrument. Two organ campaigns, by my predecessors, had tried to get off the ground but failed; but with my history of successful organ campaigns for new or rebuilt instruments, I figured I was ripe for the challenge. And with a budget for ten section leaders in the choir, I decided to focus on my great love of the Catholic choral tradition, most especially music from the Renaissance.
I should have guessed that something was “up” when my interview was only with the business manager. The pastor hadn’t even planned to meet me before I was hired – and was frankly surprised that I had asked to meet him before accepting the job offer. I had done my homework and knew that several of my predecessors had taken a strong disliking to this pastor; but I figured that one man’s meat is another man’s poison. He seemed friendly enough, at first.
But over the course of his entire career at this parish, he would fire twenty-eight music directors! (Perhaps that sentence should be read a second time so that it sinks in.) Surely this is a record in the Western Church. Somehow, the perceived problems in the church were always the fault of the musician, and never the priest. Musicians are lightning rods in parishes.
I was fated to be firing number 19.
Shortly after I arrived at this church, I formed a Worship and Music Committee, partly to explore the possibility of a new organ. The pastor would show up at these meetings and publicly berate me, raising his voice in anger and expressing doubts about my competence. Like many Catholic parishes, this particular one was split in half between the contemporary liturgy (the earlier Mass on Sunday, with its separate music director) and the traditional liturgy which I oversaw. The pastor thought that the best way out of that problem was to have me fire the contemporary music director, and then I could oversee all the liturgies each weekend. The result backfired. The contemporary Mass parishioners targeted me as their enemy even though I was merely doing the pastor’s bidding. Somewhere in the middle of all of that mess (something akin to a revolt, actually, as it resulted in very abusive shouting matches in public forums), the pastor decided he didn’t like me and would definitely not go out on a limb to cover my back. So, when my contract was due to be renewed, he took that opportunity to tell me to clear out of my office.
Oh, and the organ project, which was well under way at that point, went by the wayside in spite of some stunning proposals from several of the world’s most significant organ builders, and hundreds of hours by myself and at least a dozen parishioners to make this happen.
But that Jesuit Church knew that the City of San Francisco does not hold a lot of organists, most especially in comparison to any of the major cities on the East coast. (California in general, and San Francisco in particular, is a dead end for the field of church music. Church musicians do not come to San Francisco as a stepping stone to positions elsewhere in the country. San Francisco is unique in that respect.) I was needed to play the approximately 150 weddings that take place there each year, and I frankly needed the income. I stayed on in a tangential capacity, one in which I worked with wedding coordinators and bridal couples, never with clergy.
I did that for another ten years. Occasionally, then regularly, I played the Saturday evening Mass. In time I was asked to serve as a Music Coordinator to oversee the revolving door of musicians coming and going through that church. Eventually, I was asked to take the role of directing (part time) the music at the traditional liturgy on Sunday, once again. By this time, the pastor that had fired 28 musicians, was, himself, forced into retirement, and I figured it was a safe bet. They had asked me to serve as a consultant to a major remodel of the sanctuary, and had once again (for the fourth time), realized that they needed a new organ. I was just the person to see this through.
Gay
There’s a big secret that the Catholic Church holds, and the Jesuits in particular: The vast majority of priests are gay. It’s pretty easy to figure out why this would be. If you’re a Catholic kid, and you realize that you’re not attracted to girls, the easiest way to get all your relatives off your back (“When are you going to get married?”) is to say that you’re going into the priesthood. It’s a win-win! Your relatives are proud that you’re wanting to be a priest, and you get to hang out exclusively with men.
Oh course, there is the slight problem, a disconnect, that these priests find themselves in: When they are ordained, they swear that they will “uphold the teachings of the Catholic Church,” including denouncing homosexuality; but, hey!, everyone does it. Right? And therein lies the seeds of the psychological split which I witnessed in so many Catholic priests. They know that they’re hypocrites, yet they are powerless to do anything about it. If they exercise enough power and control over others, most especially their staff, perhaps no one will notice?
At the start of this century, the Catholic Church was forced into a moral reckoning, following horrific abuse, by priests, of young laity. What the Boston Globe began to reveal was just the lid of the Pandora’s box of egregious behavior. What has NOT been tackled, however, is the blatant disrespect, disregard, and discourteous behavior of the clergy toward the musicians working within the Catholic Church. Catholic priests have often treated me like I’m an annoying fly. Perhaps they are insecure because their training in church music is so paltry when compared to that of the musicians in their employ. That’s only speculation, of course. But the emotional scarring that I, and so many of my colleagues have experienced, is real.
Jesus had a great deal to say about clergy, and none of it good! “They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. They love their seats of honor and the head table at banquets.” “Hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence.”
These warnings have fallen on deaf ears when it comes to modern day priests in the Catholic Church. The system is founded on power, control, and patriarchal hierarchy. It is destined to crumble. As more and more musicians speak up, and more loyal parishioners wake up, the reality of the sham will be revealed. Change will only happen from the ground up. Clergy will never willingly give up any of their power and control. The only question remaining is whether the church will act in time (repent and change) before it’s too late. (It’s the same story as our climate crisis.)
The priest that followed the infamous one (of 28 firings fame), Pastor #2, was reputedly the boyfriend of the Provincial. (Each Jesuit province has a superior, called a Provincial, who reports directly to the curia in Rome.) I didn’t have any issue with that, personally, until he started bringing in his friends to oversee me. The worst of those, someone he had met in a reform program, was a very unhappy alcoholic with a Napoleon complex. This person told me that, from then on, I needed to submit all of my music choices for him to approve at least a month in advance. When I suggested that perhaps he would prefer to choose hymns, he replied that it would be better for me to learn what hymns are and are not appropriate. He told me that he would choose the key I was to play each hymn in, the tempo, the harmonization, and even the book I was to read the hymn from! Such condescension and insult were new to me. I was seriously taken aback.
Pastor #2 was not one to spend a lot of time in the office. Eager to show the Provincial that he was doing a good job to build the parish, he hired a (very expensive) consultant whose job was to spread the work load more between the staff and lay parishioners. This consultant had a thing against traditional music in general, and organs in particular. He talked Pastor #2 into dropping all capital campaigns, including the organ campaign which had already raised $100,000. Upon learning this, I immediately resigned, twelve years after stepping through that door the first time, and having served in various capacities. I finally understood that the blatant disregard for the role of the musician is endemic within the entire system of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church’s hypocrisy about sexuality is completely repugnant to me. (As Shakespeare said – “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”) Several of my Catholic colleagues have even had to sign statements affirming that, not only will they not get married to a same sex partner, they will not even take part in a marriage ceremony between two people of the same sex. These forced signatures required for maintaining a job are allowed in America because of the separation of Church and State.
The problems that I’ve outlined I completely internalized. I conjectured that perhaps my whole professional life was one long midlife crisis. Getting lost in a “dark wood” with no clear path ahead of me seemed to be par for the course for my life in church music. If I didn’t have the outlet of a concert career, a professional choral ensemble (which I started during this time at the Jesuit church), and plenty of opportunities to make chamber music with musical friends, I probably would have gone crazy.
Herein lies the secret to being happy as a musician while working in The Church, find an identity outside of the Church context that is stable and life-giving. For me that has been 45 years of meditation, discussions of philosophy with friends, countless hikes in the natural splendor of California, therapy, 12-step groups, cooking and gardening. My organ professor at Oberlin, Haskell Thomson, gave me that advice when I was 20 years old. “Be sure to find a life outside of organ music and the Church.” It’s almost a Zen koan: Only by giving up a death-grip hold on the organ and church music can one find the resilience and joy that’s implicit in it.
The pain has been real. But the lives changed because of the music that has flowed through me is also very real. There were three more firings ahead of this midlife episode. Somehow, and for some reason, God granted me the strength to press on.
To be continued.