Page 77

By Jack Joseph Smith

from the mill towns are good football players. They are also tough, which puts the spirit of Saint Bernards on a level Papa Joe feels good about. The following is attempted a quote form the newspaper article my friends mom read us one day when she was telling us about good men and bad men. She read a short part smiling. Father Lawnegan Tells Bishop To Go To Hell Father Lawnegan, parish pastor of Saint Bernards Church in the wealthy section of Mount Lebanon during last Sundays sermon suggested that the Bishop mind his own business; and became more demonstrative later in his sermon by telling the most reverend bishop to go to hell. Father Lawnegan said to those attending twelve o'clock Mass, look around all of you. Do you see the chairs your sitting on. I'll bet some of you wonder why they arn't fastened to the floor. Well I'll tell you why. Because we take them all out of here every Sunday after you leave and set up partitions for classroom on Monday. Kids from all over the place come, here for school; and its going to stay that way. Father Lawnegan is also known for his passing out holy cards at Mass, which on the back read, if your ever in trouble, you didn't see anything, you didn't hear anything, and you know nothing. Notify Father Lawnegan immediately. Testifying to the type of communication he has with his children is also the statement printed in his own newspaper, The Boy Scouts are twenty percent boy and eighty percent girl, which made him somewhat a controversy from Pittsburgh to Miami. I can see him now dark and dismal in his walking in the early morning. His hat was frayed and old like his vestments that he had been wearing sence he was ordained. He lived alone in an attic above the tattered wooden rectory. The rectory was the only building on the grounds, that wasn't made of stone. But his face was stone, and the Mount Lebanon people were afraid of him. He was a tall man who moved as if he was

Original Scan

Page 77

AI Interpretation

GPT

Papa Joe Lawnegan enters as a scandalous parish force through newspaper legend, football pride, holy cards, and a school that he insists will stay open to children from everywhere, not just wealthy Mount Lebanon families.

The newspaper voice and neighborhood retelling make him feel larger than a priest almost immediately, half outlaw and half protector. School, church, class, and toughness are fused together so completely that his defiance of bishop and police reads like the moral style of Saint Bernard's itself.

Claude

Papa Joe's legend is documented through a reproduced newspaper headline - 'Father Lawnegan Tells Bishop To Go To Hell' - and the sermon where he reveals the unbolted chairs are removed each week so the church becomes 'classroom on Monday' for 'Kids from all over the place'. His outlaw pastoral style is caught in the holy cards ('if your ever in trouble, you didn't see anything ... Notify Father Lawnegan immediately') and the scandalous line that 'The Boy Scouts are twenty percent boy and eighty percent girl'. The mill-town toughness feeds the unbeaten football team and the parish spirit, and the closing portrait turns physical - 'his face was stone, and the Mount Lebanon people were afraid of him'.