Mikey’s Quest for Father God

I was sitting in front of my locker today with my head in my hands. My gym teacher, Mr. Phillips, came over and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Mikey, you look distraught. What’s wrong? I have never seen you like this.”

I showed him my cell phone and the Facebook post I was looking at.

“Billy O’Rourke is my uncle,” I said. “I can’t believe he posted this.”

Mr. Phillips read the post. “Talk to your Dad about this tonight, Mikey.”

My name is Michael O’Rourke. My friends and family call me “Mikey.” My teachers and other adults in positions of authority call me “Michael.” I like both variations. My mother does call me “Michael” when she’s angry with me; that variation I do not like. That does not happen often, however, since I try to stay on her good side. I am thirteen, almost fourteen, and am in eighth grade in St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (SEAS) Roman Catholic Grammar School in Palm Coast, Florida. Palm Coast is a growing community on the Atlantic Ocean side of Florida between St. Augustine to the north and Daytona Beach to the south. I am an excellent student (“A+” average), an altar boy, and a better than competitive athlete. I play two sports, baseball and basketball. I was captain of the basketball team this year. We finished second in the ten-team diocesan league. Not bad! I was the leading scorer and rebounder for SEAS. I live with my parents, Jim and Veronica (not “Ronnie”) O’Rourke, and my sister, Susan, who is eight and in third grade at SEAS. Susan and I get along fine. I think the five-year spread in our ages is the primary reason why we have no problems. She looks up to me as a protector. I love her because she is so cute and, because of the age difference, no competition for me around the house. And I am, in fact, her protector. The other students at school and kids in the neighborhood know that if they mess with Susan, they have to fight me. They would prefer not to do that.

Like most kids today, I use Facebook daily, to stay current with the goings-on of friends and family. I rarely post anything, but I do check the site daily. I did post a great picture of me and Susan last week. My dad took the picture. Susan is sitting on my lap with her arm around my shoulder. I have my arm around her waist. We’re wearing light-up-the-room smiles. I received thirty-seven likes and seven comments, none of the comments negative.

Today someone I don’t know posted a picture of a megachurch somewhere in the Southwest. It was one of those churches with jumbo, on-the-wall video screens encircling the congregation, with every pew filled to capacity, and with a thousand-member male and female choir (Well, that was a little exaggeration!) wearing bright red robes. The comment with the picture was: “Shouldn’t these pseudo-religious megachurches pay taxes?”

I have no opinion, pro or con, on the tax issue, but I did notice that one of my uncles, my father’s baby brother, Billy, had commented on the post. That’s why the original post ended up on my page; I am one of Uncle Billy’s Facebook friends. He had shared the original post with all his friends.

Uncle Billy’s comment shocked me. I actually felt a pang, an uneasiness in my stomach. He posted: “When are these dupes and imbeciles going to wake up? Let me say again, and for the last time – there is no god, you fools.”

Is Uncle Billy an atheist? How could he be? Aren’t we Roman Catholics? My first inclination was to type in a quotation from Psalm 14:1 – “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ ” But I didn’t want to call Uncle Billy a fool, even if he were one. I decided to offer a weaker condemnation, one that would register my personal upset without directly attacking his position. I typed in: “Shouldn’t the g in god be capitalized? Even the name of a fictional character is capitalized.” I reviewed my entry for thirty seconds. Yes, that would not offend. I hit the send button.

During dinner that evening, I asked my dad if we could have a little talk after we ate.

“Sure,” he said. “Help me with the dishes, and then we can go into my study.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll dry.”

Our house has five bedrooms. My parents, Susan, and I each have our own room. My mom has taken over the fourth bedroom as her personal work room. My dad has set up the fifth as his home office and study. He has a desk, a computer table on which he keeps his Samsung computer and a small HP printer, a couch, two easy chairs, and two bookcases. The couch opens up into a sleeper to accommodate any overnight guests. I love to touch and smell the books on his two bookcases, leather bound copies of Moby Dick, Ulysses, The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe, and many more. He also has Father Frederick Copleston’s nine-volume History of Philosophy. He told me that I will treasure that set some day as much as he does. I believe I will.

After I finished drying the dishes, Dad and I retreated into his study. He probably thought I wanted to talk about sex, the big father-son conversation. We have beaten around the bush on that subject a few times, but never tackled it directly. But I surprised him. I wanted to talk about the existence or non-existence of God, not the dreaded, by parents, birds and bees conversation.

I consider Dad a very religious person. He goes to Mass with us every Sunday and dons a red and yellow Knights of Columbus vest one Saturday morning each month to collect donations for the poor at the entrance of the local Publix Market. He completed sixteen years of Catholic Education in New York City where he grew up: eight years of Catholic grade school, four years at St. Francis Prep in Brooklyn, and four years at Fordham University in the Bronx. Fordham is a Jesuit school, and, as a result of those four years in the Bronx, Dad has always revered the Jesuits. We are the only family I know that subscribes to America, the Jesuit weekly magazine. When Dad took the two-semester History of Philosophy course at Fordham, using Father Copleston’s nine-volume text, Father Copleston, who is a Jesuit, guest lectured the two sessions on Socrates. Dad said it was like having Socrates himself in the lecture hall.

“What’s up, Mikey?” he asked after we sat down in the easy chairs.

I handed him a piece of paper. I had printed out his baby brother’s comment from Facebook.

He read it. “Did this bother you?” he asked.

“Yes. It gave me a very queasy feeling, a hollowness deep in the pit of my stomach. I felt bad for Uncle Billy. How can he not believe in God?” I asked. “How can anyone not believe in God?”