Country Boy and City Bumpkin
Although
I emigrated from Chicago to St. Louis, Missouri, a long time ago, I
have never been anywhere near the small town of Ellsinore, Missouri, the
birthplace of the late Albert Ray Morlen, barber extraordinaire. Al cut
my hair in his St. Louis shop for at least 30 of the 47 years he did
business there. He may not have been Andy Griffith but he was close to a
clone and no one marketed the glory of his small hometown better than
Al. And he did very well promoting belief in Jesus Christ as well.
His
family had owned the only grocery store in Ellsinore back in the
Forties and Fifties. He came to St. Louis looking for work. Finding
none, he went to barber school and never looked back. He was a tonsorial
artist unrecognized as such by most of his customers who were
blue-collar men wanting little more than a trim or a crewcut plus an
update on neighborhood news. Al not only gave them what they wanted but
often a more liberal education as well. His specialty was theology.
Al
was a country boy and a Baptist and I was a city bumpkin and a Roman
Catholic but we got along famously over all those years. If no one else
were in the shop, we would discuss the differences in our two faith
traditions. Al never flirted with Catholicism or I with his Baptist
faith but when I first went to him he was convinced Mormons and
Catholics were nothing more than cults and he didn’t hesitate to say
that. After all, souls were at stake. Mine in particular unless I saw
the light that he turned on every time I got a haircut.
But
after many years cutting my hair, and many long discussions, he one day
told me he had changed his mind. Only the Mormons qualified as a cult.
He had been wrong about the Catholics but he was still not too fond of
all those statues. And since most of his customers were Catholic, he
often had to attend funerals and still could not understand what was up
with all that standing and kneeling. He never knew what was coming
next.
I
could understand his problem since I had a attended a Baptist wedding
once and we sat for the entire service. Big difference in the mechanics
as well as the substance of the two faiths and not easy to explain, one
to another.
It
may have been on the same day that Al told me Catholics were not a cult
that he also told me I was “saved,” whether I knew that or not. I knew
this was no small thing coming from a Baptist, never mind one as solid
as Al in his faith.
I
had spent 19 consecutive years in Roman Catholic schools in Chicago
without ever being told I was “saved,” a concept not accepted in
Catholicism in the Protestant sense. But then I had never been tempted
to be a priest, either. So when Al told me I was “saved” and just too
dumb to know it, I took that announcement as a Medal of Honor whether I
could wear it or not.
I
demurred vociferously, of course, and said I was always in the process
of being “saved” and hoped I would never fall off that path. I had a
history of many tumbles in my time.
I
tried to explain the Sacrament of Penance to him and its biblical roots
but that did not go over well. Nor did Purgatory and Martin Luther’s
throwing the Book of Maccabees out of the Bible in the 16th century
because of its allusion to Purgatory. But it was the doctrine of
the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist as discussed in John 6: 41-59
that may have made some impression on him. Nevertheless, he remained
steadfast in his appreciation of the grape juice and crackers used at
his monthly Baptist communion service.
I
told Al, however, that despite canards to the contrary, Catholics
believe that the grace of God alone can save someone and that “works”
are not the deciding factor in salvation as some non-Catholics might
have you believe.
I
added, of course, a reference to 2 James: 14-18 as the proof text which
says “faith without works is dead” and told him Catholics believe that
as well. Without works, faith is moribund, for all intents and purposes,
but Catholics in no way believe works will get you to heaven. Works of
mercy are what you do if you do believe, and you believe as a result of
the gift of faith that comes freely from God. You can’t earn faith or
heaven from the Catholic perspective but dying in serious or mortal sin
can help you go to hell. Al didn’t agree with that.
Al regularly
invoked his belief that faith alone guarantees salvation, that when one
accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior he or she went to heaven at
death. No pit stop in the car wash of Purgatory. He did not buy into the idea of dying with mortal sin on one’s soul as a means of finding hell as one’s eternal destination.
As a result, I used to remind him on occasion of
a notorious adulterer in his home town shot to death by an angry
husband. Al would always tell me that if the dead man had accepted
Christ, he went to heaven and he thought legendary Cozy must have done
that somewhere along the line. Maybe so, I said, but if he were a Catholic he’d have a lot of explaining to do, and we would leave it at that.
I
never accepted Al’s offer to visit Ellsinore simply because I don’t
like to “travel.” He told me I’d be welcome down there as a visitor and
would love the catfish and barbecue but as a Catholic I might want to
get out of town before dark.
In
a sense he was joking, of course, but in another sense maybe not so
much. Solid fundamentalists, whether in southern Missouri or elsewhere
in the United States, often have a deep-seated suspicion of papists whom
they view as souls needing to be saved. In contrast, Catholics I know
harbor no great animus toward Fundamentalists with whom we share similar
positions on abortion, euthanasia and other issues in our society
today. We disagree on many things but on core issues there is great
similarity whether either group admits that or not.
I
used to read Al's hometown paper in his shop while waiting for a
haircut and I had come to love from afar the people in that area. I
would rejoice when I saw the rare obit in which the deceased “was of the
Catholic faith.” I would circle that fact and give it to Al as part of
my gratuity on the way out if only to prove we papists had infiltrated
his part of the woods.
I
also admired a senior columnist in the paper who at times not only
voiced suspicions of cults (her readers knew who the cults were even if
Al had pardoned one of them) but she also had serious questions about
other Protestant denominations. She was a member of the Church of
Christ.
I
told Al that as a good Baptist he might not pass muster with the
columnist or perhaps the Church of Christ. I later learned
this denomination had split in two and neither of the two, as I
understand it, accepts the theology of the other. Martin Luther’s 16th
century earthquake still has tremors today with reputedly more than
23,000 sects or ecclesial communities already established and more being
born as disagreements in doctrine occur.
I
was often tempted to send the columnist a letter indicating that as a
traditional Catholic who reads her column every week, I felt obliged to
tell her we papists are Christian and believe that Christ is our Lord
and Savior and anything she may have heard to the contrary is buncombe
and balderdash. I never sent that letter. I didn’t think that kind of
thing would be helpful in bridging the gap.
Al Morlen was truly one of a kind. Every time I go elsewhere for a haircut now I think of him. I
have met a lot of people cut from rare cloth in Chicago and St. Louis
but no one like Al Morlen, a Christian first and a barber second.
The
man had to emigrate from his beloved Ellsinore, Missouri, to earn a
living and he did that successfully. He reminded me of my parents who
had emigrated from Ireland, circa 1920, to earn a living as well. They
too succeeded, making it possible for the likes of me to pick up a
couple of degrees coming out of a neighborhood where few went on to
college. And like Al making the long hike from Ellsinore, my parents
brought their faith with them.
———————————————————
Donal
Mahoney has worked as an editor for U.S. Catholic Magazine, Loyola
University Press, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Retired now, he keeps busy
writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Some of his work can be found
at http://eyeonlifemag.com/
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