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
