Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Attend, my people, to my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in story,
drawing lessons from of old.
We have heard them, we know them;
our ancestors have recited them to us.
We do not keep them from our children;
we recite them to the next generation.
The praiseworthy and mighty deeds of the Lord,
the wonders that he performed.
God set up a decree in Jacob,
established a law in Israel:
What He commanded our ancestors,
they were to teach their children.
That the next generation might come to know,
children yet to be born.
In turn they were to recite them to their children,
that they too might put their trust in God. . .

—Psalm 78 NAB

Following the psalmist above, Bill McNamer, erstwhile Billings lawyer, legislator and fellow choir baritone at St Patrick’s Co-Cathedral has published a little book for his children and for the rest of us too, Keep The Faith Letters From a Catholic Father.
In addition to a defense of his life, there is a touch of Baltimore Catechism Lite, and an invitation to his children to re-invigorate their childhood faith—”The Catholic faith is a thinking person’s faith”—and have another look at the Roman Catholic Church, in which they and their ancestors were conceived, born, baptized, educated and from which as young adults they cannot simply shake off like a dog coming out of the water. Purpose and Meaning and Truth-Seeking are all part of the Catholic deal; McNamer calls on James Joyce to reluctantly say about the Church: “Here comes everybody.” [& every thing too I would add].

There are defenses of this and explanations of that as a lawyerly way of laying the groundwork for his final summation which is the Great Commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Maturity has not blunted his ironic wit: “The sacrament of Reconciliation was formerly known as Confession to you regular sinners. But we don’t hear much about sin and Confession anymore. Somehow, sin has [had] done a [total] makeover so it’s hard to recognize. Or else we’re all getting holier as we grow older.”

In addition to the Scriptures and Blake and Belloc, he has read a lot of the dissenting 20th century scribes of the Church, though he mercifully puts those references into some compact endnotes. This slim book is worth more than a quick read as I found on my second reading. Recommended.

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