Remembering a legend.

“So, do you know Fr. Sheehan?” I once asked of my students from South Boston when I was a teacher at Boston College High School. “Yes,” he replied, “whenever my mom makes me go to confession I hope that I always get him.” Living in Boston for the three years before I moved to Rome, I was blessed to live close to my cousin, Fr. Dan Sheehan. The man was something of a legend in Southie, everyone seemed to know him and love him. If, however, I ever mentioned that to him he would almost always use some colorful language to tell me to shut up.

Fr. Dan, Ready for St. Patrick's day.
Picture taken by my brother, Fran
Rogers. 

 Meanwhile, among a good number of the priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, I would mention that he and I were cousins and I would almost invariably get a somewhat different reaction. “Really, you’re related to HIM??” they would ask. The exception to this rule was usually the men that he lived with at St. Brigid’s rectory and among his friends. When his name came up, particularly among those who were, or at least thought they were, important in the Archdiocese there would be a slight roll of the eyes, or maybe a little bit of a sigh. They would never say a bad word about him, mind you, but it was always a the same reaction.

            The truth is that this all made sense. Fr. Dan was more at home with a Hot Dog at Sully’s Restaurant on Castle Island than at an important dinner table in the Chancery. He would have much rather preferred a walk down the Sugar Bowl causeway at Castle Island to a walk down the aisle at the cathedral. He much preferred a good joke to some lofty theological discourse. The truth is that I always had the sense that to him that the other stuff didn’t matter much. The high and lofty could be cast down from their thrones, for all he cared, he was just there with the people. There wasn’t ideology or some sort of statement behind it, it was just who he was. This way of being had become so fully a part of him that when he preached it often seemed that it could have just as easily been anyone else from South Boston preaching. He knew and loved the people and became, even in his retirement, one of them.

            One of the things that made him most beloved was the sense that he didn’t care much about judging people, and he loved people where they were and for who they were.  He knew enough about those people who surrounded him, first in the missions of Peru, and then among his working class parish in Peabody and eventually in retirement in Southie, that he knew not to judge them for the things that they had done or situations that they found themselves in. You knew that he had listened to them well when he could preach and mirror back to them the Gospel in their own context, and show them a God who was full of love, mercy, and compassion who often times in Fr Dan’s preaching seemed to have their face and walk with them on  East Broadway or Day Boulevard. He knew enough not to demand that anyone change as a precondition of his caring for you, and he was wise enough to know when certain individuals were incorrigible. He just loved them anyway, and as best he could he rejoiced in their joys and shared in their sorrows. He didn’t have time to judge, he was too busy loving people in the genuine and deep way that made him one of them.

            I can think of only one group of people that he didn’t have much time for, those who loved all but themselves too little. He didn’t have time for those who would put themselves in a place of superiority, and he didn’t have much time for you if that was who you were. It was the place where the genuine nature of his love was actually most manifest. When the abuse crisis broke in the US he was one of the ones brave enough in his own Archdiocese to say publicly that there was a crisis of leadership and that those responsible needed to hold themselves accountable. When he knew people who seemed to be campaigning for positions of authority in the Church rather than being pastors to the people of God, he wasn’t afraid to call them on it. When he felt that the institutional Church wasn’t meeting some need of the people of God, he wasn’t afraid to write what I have heard both from him and others were numerous letters. He didn’t care that it made him unpopular sometimes, or that it could have led to some sort of sanction, he just followed his conscience and didn’t let pride get in the way of doing what was right.

            When I was young, I remember calling Fr. Dan “Fr. Clown,” because he was always making us laugh, even as kids. He lived with a joy that was contagious, and he didn’t care if it was at times even bordering on the mildly goofy. On St. Patrick’s Day in South Boston, he would wear a green clerical shirt, green pants, and a green fleece. Where he got that color of a green clerical shirt, I will never know. There he would be though, outside the parish with the rest of the city watching the parade pass by. He was the first priest I knew and and I never knew him to be somber, downcast, or overly serious. We never felt distant from him and we never felt like he was set apart from us, even as kids. I suppose now, looking back that that image of priesthood helped me to begin to form my own attitudes towards it, and made me think first and foremost about the possibility that this could be a life filled with joy.

            Fr. Dan passed away this past Saturday, and I was awoken to a call via skype at 5:00 in the morning here in Ireland with the news. Of all the places I could be to get this news its seems somehow strangely right to be here in Ireland. His last words addressed to me were to go to find the places where our family came from. So I will go to Abbeyfeale this weekend, and I will pray for him and for all of the Sheehans, and Rynns, and O’Connors. More than anything else, I will remember that far more than the great and grand holy sites of Rome, or even Knock here in Ireland, this place where we came from would be a pilgrimage for him. To him it would be ground holier than St. Peter’s because it is the ground where we came from, because it is the ground of the real world, and that is after all where he found life, joy, and God.