The Catholic Standard & Times - Feature: Local Catholic Authors

Feature: Local Catholic Authors

By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent

Riveting fiction based on a local writer’s conversion story

“Effigies in Ashes”
by Robert Joseph Dagney;
Xulon Press, 416 pages;
$14.95.

It was a long way back to the Church for East Falls native, Robert Dagney. But his is no common conversion story. Told under the cover of fiction, “Effigies in Ashes” reads like a high-stakes adventure but is actually Dagney’s own life story told through a character named Bill Casey.

Casey’s search for his own soul takes him through some of the most turbulent years in U.S. history, from the battlefields of Vietnam to cutting coffee with the Sandinistas on a state farm in Nicaragua. Dagney spares none of the dangerous details.

“Our first stop was in Guatemala City,” Dagney writes about Casey’s first trip to Central America. “The bus they took us around in was followed by an darkened SUV, the vehicle of choice for the death squads, we were told.”

In 1973, he ventures into Ireland during the era of the Irish Republican Army and has a strange experience with a woman who, he begins to believe, may have been the Blessed Mother. He writes a novel based on the experience, then a second one about experiences of inexplicable healings that take place at a facility called Seaside House, where he serves as a pediatric nurse.

But even after putting it all on paper, Casey’s life still doesn’t make sense. What does it all mean?

“He had devoted his life to writing about his experiences in Ireland and Seaside House, trying to see them as episodes in something larger than themselves: a metadrama,” Dagney writes. “But they remained pieces of a puzzle that would not fit together.”

Casey returns home to Philadelphia and decides to meet with a priest at the Miraculous Medal Shrine in Germantown. He gives his books to a priest named Father Michael McDonald, with the hopes the priest will read them and tell him where he went wrong in life. While Father McDonald is reading the books, Casey decides to return to the church in his home parish, St. Bridget, for the first time in many years

“He went in and sat in one of the back pews, near the door, figuring that if he had to flee for some reason, he could just slip away without being noticed. He was surprised to see that the church was crowded. He had expected it to be half-empty. He had heard that attendance was down; that people were leaving the Church in droves but that didn’t look like the case, at least not today.”

Casey had already decided that even though he had not been to confession in 18 years, he was going to Communion. But then the priest began to give the homily.

“I am afraid that there are many of you out there who have not been properly educated in the teachings of the Church, especially those of you who grew up since the 1970s. … And there may be others of you who have been away from the Church and have forgotten what you were taught or no longer take it seriously.”

The priest went on to list a host of sins, from adulterous relationships and premarital sex to doing violence to people: “If you are doing any of these things,” the priest said, “it would behoove you to go to sacramental Confession before you come to holy Communion.”

The priest went on to explain what happens in the consecration — in a way that Casey had never heard it explained before. By the time the priest was done speaking, just the thought of someone as sinful as himself receiving the Body of Christ made him feel sick.

As soon as he could get there, Casey went to confession at St. John the Evangelist Church on 13th Street in Philadelphia. The experience was surprising. Instead of chastising him for being away from the sacraments for 18 years, the priest welcomed him back with open arms. When the priest asked why he decided to come back, Casey told him the truth.

“It was my mother praying for me every day.” The same mother who had once tucked a miraculous medal into his bags just before he left for Fort Bragg.

Casey’s story — and Dagney’s — are almost identical, including the writing of two novels that somehow didn't fit together.

“All the fundamental facts in the book are true," Dagney said, including the two novels “Casey” wrote but that would eventually become “Effigies in Ashes.”

Dagney’s first novel, “The Circle of Stones,” about his experiences in Ireland, was actually his master’s thesis in creative writing at Temple. His second book,’ ”The Story of a Swallow,” details his experiences as a pediatric nurse at Seaside House. Both were unpublished.

The idea that the books might somehow merge into one didn’t occur to Dagney until after his conversion. That’s when it became clear that all of the difficulties he had experienced in his life were not caused by the traumas of being knifed during a street fight or being involved in Vietnam. It was because of his sinfulness and loss of faith. When he realized this, the stories melded together into a compelling drama of faith.

“My conversion is what brought it all together,” Dagney said. The 60-year-old native Philadelphian who attended St. Bridget’s grade school and Roman Catholic High School, hopes his story will help people realize that no matter how far they’ve wandered, there’s always a way back to the Church.

“I like to think that in fiction a character becomes a representative figure. It’s more than just a person, it’s a representative of the modern age, of a person coming back to the Church.”

Effigies in Ashes can be ordered from www.catholicmom.com/book_club.htm All proceeds benefit the Miraculous Medal Shrine.

St. Denis parishioner and author answers challenges to her faith in a book

“Catholicism: Now I get it!”
by Claire Furia Smith:
Our Sunday Visitor, 252 pages.

The Catholic Church may be universal, but there are certain things about growing up Catholic in Philadelphia that only a Philadelphian can appreciate. There’s Pope John Paul II’s famous ride down City Avenue and the “miracle girl” from Bucks County, Amy Wall, who was healed by St. Katharine Drexel.

“Catholicism: Now I Get It!” by Havertown native Claire Furia Smith, captures it all. From the maroon jumpers and knee socks of St. Louis school in Yeadon to religion class at Archbishop Carroll High School, this is the story of a girl’s journey from mythical Catholicism to the real thing.

“Everyone hears the same old myths,” Smith said. “That the Church is anti-science, and all these other simplistic mottos about our beliefs.”

A graduate of Yale with a master’s in journalism from Columbia, the 37-year-old Smith was raised Catholic but admits her practice of the faith was lacking.
“Even though I always went to church on Sundays, the rest of what I did was the bare minimum,” she said. “Prayer was something I did when someone got sick. I wasn’t fasting except what was required in Lent. It was the bare minimum. It was exactly what people make fun of Catholics for.”

It wasn’t until she reached young adulthood and was questioned about her beliefs by agnostic and non-denominational friends that she realized how little she understood Catholicism.

“These were nice people with faith and strong moral character, but they were convinced that Church teachings are not in the Bible and are man-made. They would say things like ‘Confessing sins to a man? Where is that in the Bible?'”

The questions prompted her to go home and look for answers in the Catechism and the Bible.

“I’d be all ready to respond to these friends, but they’d disappear,” she said, “and the next person would say something completely different. It seemed like I would never get to respond.”

Over time, as Smith developed her answers — and an ever growing need to respond — she decided to build a Web site that contained all the answers to the questions being posed to her. Not long after the site was built, she received an e-mail from the acquisitions editor at Our Sunday Visitor, asking her to consider making the Web site into a book.

“Catholicism: Now I get it!” was born.

With Cardinal Justin Rigali’s imprimatur, the book handles serious matters of faith but intersperses them with Smith’s hilarious “Catholic moments.”

One such is the day of her First Confession, when she snuck a flashlight and a “cheat sheet” of sins into the confessional.

“I showed up at the church with a crumpled piece of paper, folded ten times lest an all-too curious classmate try to catch a peek at my oh-so-private sins. And a flashlight. . . .,” Smith said. “The priest must have wondered what in the world was going on with the blinding flashes of light emanating from my side of the booth, not to mention the loud crumpling paper commotion. I was delighted the priest did not admit to noticing any of this.”

She tells the story of her own confirmation by Cardinal Krol, admitting that she chose her confirmation name from among the “prettiest and coolest” of the eighth-grade girls. From there, she explains the facts about this powerful Sacrament. Like she does throughout the book, she includes interesting tidbits, such as how the Sacrament of Confirmation leaves “an indelible mark on our souls, which we will continue to sport even in the afterlife, whether that be in Heaven or Hell.”

She also lends her own thought-provoking angles to the teachings of the Church. For instance, she explains that because the bishop who confirms us was ordained by another bishop in a long chain of bishops going back to an Apostle 20 centuries ago, “[I]n a real way, this bishop received the gifts of the Holy Spirit from an Apostle filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost . . .”

In the same thorough and creative way, Smith handles 15 different areas of the faith from the Real Presence to the reasons behind the Protestant Reformation, and shares with us the truths she discovered during her own journey back to the sacraments.

“I found that early Christians were Catholics from the very beginning,” Smith said. "They went to Mass, they had priests, the Church was hierarchical, they believed mortal sin would cause a person to lose grace and therefore salvation; they did penance, they prayed for the dead. They believed receiving Communion was receiving the body and blood of Jesus. The list goes on and on and it’s very impressive.”

Married for nine years to husband, Bill, and a parishioner at St. Denis in Havertown, Smith thanks all the people who challenged her about her faith. “If it hadn’t been for all the questions and challenges about the Church that I received from these friends, maybe I would never have looked into this.”

Her book can be obtained through her website at www.stillcatholic.com/book.htm or by calling Our Sunday Visitor at 1-800-348-2440.

Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615