I See Father Jim and He See Me Too

So I’m at the joint, and I’m walking out of the place minding my own business when who do I see? The ol’ black and white himself! Father Jim. And this is the part that really got me going nuts inside, cause I see him smoking a Tom and Jerry. The priest! I know, right! Anyhows, this gets me thinking that I just can’t pass up an opportunity like this. When do guys like us get to see stuff like this, right? So, I gotta say something, I gotta move my lips somehow. But I ain’t got no sunny idea what I should do at a time like this. So, I think to myself, I think, “Yo Joe, ask him something that he’d answer differently if he was wearing his priest gear like normal times.” This don’t help much, but it’s the only thing I got, so I walk up to him and I says, “Yo Father, I gotta question you: why you a Catholic?” He drops his Tom and Jerry, all suave like, you see, and then he answers. He says something like this, he says:

I’m Italian. My grandparents grew up in Bologna. That’s in Italy. They ate pasta, drank wine, and confessed all their sins to their Father. They did that because their fathers did that. And the fathers of their fathers did that too. It’s always been like this. And before we called ourselves Italian, we were Roman. God knows everything, right? (I say to this, I say, “Yessir!”) He knows your story, he knows my story. He knows everybody’s story. But that’s not all he knows. He knows all the stories that could have been. He also knows what could have never been. When he sent Jesus down into our streets, into our stories, he could have put Jesus with the yellows, the blacks, the reds, whomever. And whenever. But he chose to put himself in the middle of the Roman Empire, at the height of the Caesars.  All this he planned. He chose. He picked my people, my Fathers, to nail him to that dead tree. You ask me why I’m a Catholic. I don’t believe I have a choice in the matter.

Next day, I was walking out the joint, same as always, chomping down on some fries I was taking with me to Wilma, and I see a bum half lying there, half sitting. He asked me for some change. I gave him a ten and the rest of my fries. His feet looked real bad like, so I took off my shoes and gave ‘em up to him too. That’s when they started calling me Shoeless Joe. I figure I don’t have a choice in the matter.