Unhappy Warrior
Even More Okay is back. And we are not happy.
I am a practicing Catholic. What that really means is that I walk into the Catholic Cafeteria of teachings and pick and choose what I like.
I love Jesus. He is my homeboy. I detest lying. I love mass, and throughout my life, including well into adulthood, I have served as a volunteer at any parish I was a member of.
But I support the idea that divorced people, members of the LBGQTIA+ community, and those who cheer for the No-Good, Cheating New York Yankees should have a place in the Church. I happily reside in the Church that embraces Dorothy Day, Cesar Chevez, Saint Oscar Ramero, and others who choose to live their faith on the Beatitudes rather than Leviticus. I stay away from Tyler Marshall, Bishop Robert Barron, and Cardinal Raymond Burke. If you don’t know these three guys, keep it that way.
For over half my career, I have either worked directly for the Catholic Church or advised them as clients. My experience has been mixed, at best. While I’m in awe of the unselfish work I have witnessed of members and clergy of the Church, I can say without hesitation that the people who have treated me the worst in the workplace are supposed leaders in the only church I have been a part of. Boy, do I have stories.
A few months ago, I began working for a Catholic parish and school in Washington, DC. It is probably the most progressive Catholic Church in the country. In this Catholic Cafeteria, the parishioners bring their own food. It’s a great place—right up my alley with its views and actions on social justice and welcomingness for all.
There were many times when I thought I wouldn’t have taken this position and proclaimed I wouldn’t work for the Church again. God, as always, has other plans. So when this opportunity came up, I didn’t spend much time praying about it; I just knew I was the best fit. In fact, I told the hiring committee that I was the only person in DC, who could do this job the best.
I love being Catholic. My parents gave me the gift of faith, which I have treasured for years. My faith formation is mainly based on the Jesuit tradition, but I don’t limit myself to one particular view of the faith. Case in point: Anonymous and I were married by a Dominican. There’s a variety in the Church that I appreciate, love, and embrace, especially when the place I work welcomes variety.
So nothing pisses me off more than when leaders of the Church continue to do some really stupid stuff.
Back in the day, I worked for Catholic Charities in DC. I mostly raised money but also directed a food distribution program for about four years. The latter was a great learning experience, and I learned that I never want to direct a food distribution program again. However, working in the social justice area of the Church helped me grow by allowing me to experience what it means to help people.
I have found that raising money for the Catholic Church isn’t especially difficult. Being charitable is a part of our culture, as are the calories we burn during mass by standing, sitting, and kneeling. It’s great to connect with people about their philanthropy when it comes to helping others. It’s tremendously fulfilling. Boy, do I have stories.
However, Catholic Charities in DC doesn’t embrace the wildly inappropriate fundraiser its sister organization in New York City does—the Al Smith Dinner.
The Al Smith Dinner is a glitzy annual gala that every four years looks more like a bad Saturday Night Live skit than anything resembling a sincere expression of Catholic values. Don’t get me wrong, the cause is noble. But that’s where the nobility ends, especially at this year’s dinner which took place last week.
For the uninitiated, the Al Smith Dinner is named after Al Smith, the first Catholic to run for president in 1928. If you remember, I wrote about my one-man show about Al Smith, which put numerous college classmates to sleep.
As someone who raises money for a living, I can think of better ways to solicit gifts to help those in need than this event, which has become less of a feel-good charity night and more of a playground for politicians, billionaires, and celebrities to exchange forced jokes and awkward chuckles over rubber chicken and watered-down drinks.
My biggest gripe is for the guy who has the power to ensure this type of nonsense stops. But Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, emcees the dinner like he's auditioning for a late-night talk show but with a more dangerous mix of politics and theology.
But that was just the night itself. Leading up to it, Dolan continued to show his aloofness of being a part of the problem. I’ll get into that a little later.
Since 1960, it’s been a tradition for the two major party candidates to share the stage and tell jokes about themselves and their opponents. This is meant to bring civility to campaigning and the power you claim when you win. The goal is to show people that we can dress up, not take ourselves seriously, and raise money to help kids to cover up the fact that the idea is entirely dumb.
Up until 2016, the jokes revolved around what people wore and policy positions they were known for.
Then Donald Trump showed up and proved how ridiculous the whole charade is.
Dolan is pretty ridiculous himself. In 2020, Trump held a call with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCB), the governing body of the Catholic Church in America, to tell them that he was the best president in the history of the Church. Once he finished babbling on, he praised Cardinal Dolan, and Dolan, who was probably blushing, responded that he was flattered to be batting lead-off (acting as he played for the No-God, Cheating Yankees) to say how much he respected Trump and that his mother was jealous because her son called Trump more than her.
It was a gross Bromance like any other.
I guess during their many calls, Cardinal Dolan, who has publicly supported universal health care, forgot that Trump wanted to dismantle it. I wonder if his Eminence knows about Trump paying off a porn star for his adultery on his pro-abortion wife. I admit to walking into the Catholic Cafeteria, but guys like Dolan sneak in after hours and hog down on a pile of baked hypocrisy.
But back to the dinner.
Here are three jokes from recent election year Al Smith dinners:
George W. Bush (2000):
"This is an impressive crowd—the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base."Barack Obama (2008):
"Contrary to the rumors you may have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-El, to save the planet Earth."Mitt Romney (2012):
"It’s nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house."
(Referring to the formal white-tie attire.)
These are all silly jokes. Granted, I’m not a fan overall in the evening, but if you want to take a shot at yourself, go for it. But I find it sophomoric to make fun of your opponent only because someone could go over the line and say stuff like this:
Donald Trump (2016):
"Hillary is so corrupt, she got kicked off the Watergate Commission. How corrupt do you have to be to get kicked off the Watergate Commission?"Donald Trump (2016):
“Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.”
Dolan has known Trump since being appointed the second-largest American archdiocese in 2009. He received this high-profile post due to his conservative public avoidance of the Catholic Cafeteria and his embrace of conservative politics. While Catholic politicians get publicly admonished by overweight white guys about their political position on abortion, Dolan and the entire USCB always seem to skip the Eighth Commandment, which forbids lying.
So it wasn’t shocking to read that Dolan was “doubly disappointed” that Vice President Kamala Harris decided to skip this year’s dinner.
What upsets me is Dolan’s arrogance that he thought Harris was getting “poor advice.” Never mind that Trump is a lunatic who, at best, displays boorish behavior publicly, let alone the fact that he promotes policies that are oppositional to Catholic teaching when it comes to immigrants, promoting violence to overturn a legitimate election, and humping someone who isn’t your wife.
Dolan seems to think Trump’s overall conduct is acceptable. I can’t find anything from Dolan where he takes Trump to task on anything. But Kamala Harris gets his wangling finger for not sitting beside him for a few hours.
I guess it would have been funny if Harris showed up and joked about how Trump wanted to shoot protestors, cage children at the border, and prevent Muslims from entering the country.
I mean, we are doing it for the kids, right?
It’s bonkers that anyone thinks this type of philanthropy is acceptable. And it’s not like we can’t have the dinner. In 1984, Democratic nominee Walter Mondale skipped the event. In 1996 and 2004, the Archbishop of New York revoked invitations to Democrats Bill Clinton and John Kerry because of their positions on abortion, which has steadily become the only sin traditional Catholics recognize.
Before the dinner, Raymond Arroyo interviewed Trump. Arroyo, who looks like Pee Wee Herman, hosts a nightly show on the conservative Catholic Eternal World Television Network—or Fox News of the Catholic Faith. He was excited to be engaged with the best Catholic president ever, who also failed to know anything about Catholicism beyond abortion.
In the interview, Trump claimed to like Catholics a lot. He also said he thought Pope Francis told all Catholics to vote for him after the pontiff embarrassingly punted the topic and told Americans to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Trump pulled out his usual attacks of calling Harris a Marxist, and by not attending, the vice president was offending all Catholics who seem to be against abortion but are perfectly fine having them live in poverty so they can enjoy an evening watching rich people tell jokes about each other to raise money to help them. It’s truly a bizarre Alice in Wonderland trip.
Trump even bragged that he was the father of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and would provide government funding. He claimed that “lots of Catholics liked IVF,” and he would have to think about a government exemption for those Catholics in the minority, like the USCB and the Vatican, who oppose it.
Of course, there hasn’t been a peep about Trump’s declaration on IVF, which involves the destruction of embryos. Maybe after Trump is dead, they can hold a dinner that raises money to protect embryos; who knows where the Idiocracy is going to lead us.
When you strip away the “humor,” the glitz, and the self-congratulatory toasts, what exactly is being celebrated at the Al Smith Dinner? If it’s charity, we should ask ourselves: is this the best way to showcase it? Are we really doing justice to the legacy of Al Smith, a man who fought for the underprivileged and advocated for the voiceless, by turning this event into a sanitized, feel-good evening for the elite? You have to think the proclaimed Happy Warrior wouldn’t be too happy about the direction of the foundation and the dinner it runs that bears his name.
The gospel call to charity is about more than writing checks—it’s about advocating for systemic change, justice, and the inherent dignity of every human person. Yet the Al Smith Dinner has drifted so far from these principles that it feels more like a pageant of power than a reflection of Catholic social teaching.
A week before the dinner, Dolan spoke at my high school alma mater, St. Charles Preparatory School in Columbus, Ohio. It was part of an annual fundraiser where prominent Catholics, all men (it’s an all-boys school), speak about Catholic values like integrity, civility, service, and ethics.
Dolan’s topic for the evening was the value of Catholic education. He spoke proudly of Catholic-educated people's role in American society, where they have happier marriages, commit to volunteering, and are more thoughtful citizens. Dolan proclaimed that a Catholic education imparts knowledge and wisdom.
He answered students' questions about priesthood and discernment, to which the Cardinal referred to St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, who is known for his insight on the subject.
I couldn’t help but think that not many people knew what Dolan was doing when he publicly rebuked Harris while exulting to a group of young boys at an expensive private school about the greatness of being an educated Catholic.
There have been plenty of times I have wondered about the greatness of that education. In 2016, I was working with a Jesuit all-boys high school client, and driving to work, I noticed my fair share of Trump/Pence stickers, much to my disbelief. Recently, I have heard a few school leaders express worry that the upcoming election is causing much stress among parents, which is seeping into the kids.
And you know that is true. Who can forget in 2019, during the March for Life here in Washington, DC, 11th grader Nick Sandmann of an all-boys Catholic school in Covington, Kentucky, who wore a Make America Great Again hat and had a confrontation with an Ohama elder who was caught on video and went viral? It turned into a media event, where the young man had the help of a public relations firm and appeared on the Today Show to announce that he wasn’t a racist.
You have to wonder what knowledge and wisdom young boys receive when they are allowed to wear such propaganda from a man who lacks both.
There’s nothing I can do about the stupid Al Smith Dinner. I’ll never be invited; even if I were, I wouldn’t go. I can’t ignore that I wouldn’t be able to stay awake, but mostly, I just don’t fit the vibe. But this year, with Dolan’s lecture to Harris just a week after visiting my high school and not at least challenging students to be happy warriors for others, put me in a place that I don’t like.
Harris was wise to skip the dinner this year. I pray that clergy like Dolan become wise to their influence and responsibility to their Church and its people and that it's okay to tell leaders that lying isn’t an item in the Cafeteria you can continue to eat from with no end.
Okay, that was long. If you read the entire thing, thank you. Please let me know where to send my money for the counseling fee I owe you.
I’ll see you on Friday.
Okay,
Chris
I think Dolan needs a "come to Jesus" moment. Do you know anyone who could sneak a copy of your essay into his inbox?
Dear Chris: I love the Unhappy Warrior, I could not have written it better myself. To make your life better do like me: go to the Cafeteria and eat what the Jesuits do. Whatever is OK for them is OK with me. Read America