The Whistling Priest

The following excerpt was taken from the novel, The Edge of Sadness, by Edwin O’Connor (1961). This exchange is from a scene in the novel involving the main character, Father Hugh Kennedy (first person), and his young curate, Father Danowski. In the scene, Father Danowski is describing one of his fellow classmates from his days in the seminary.

“But then I am almost forgetting to mention the classmate of mine who has become the most illustrious of us all. By reason of his innumerable television appearances. He is of course the celebrated Father Clement Cassidy.”

Of whom of course I had not heard. My face must have showed this, for the Father Danowski said quickly, “He is better known to some, perhaps, as the Whistling Priest.”

The Whistling Priest. Really? A fact? A fact. I heard about him now. He was a young priest who appeared each Sunday night on a popular television program; he was sponsored by a bath mat. On this program he had one function: he whistled songs. In his selection of these songs he offered a shrewd change of pace: he “mixed them up”; there was something for everybody. Father Danowski explained to me.

“He will whistle first, let us say, a grand old favorite song such as ‘There is a Long Long Trail A-Winding.’ Then there will come a popular song of the moment such as ‘How much Is That Doggie in the Window?’ And lastly,” he said, “he will whistle, let us say, ‘Ave Maria.’”

“I see. He always concludes on the spiritual note?”
“Oh yes. That is the whole idea.”
“Does he do anything else? Such as say Mass, for example? Or hear a confession now and then? Of course I don’t suppose his whistling really leaves him much spare time.”

He stared at me. “Oh no, Father,” he said reprovingly. “You have quite misunderstood. No priest is more scrupulous about his duties than is Father Clement Cassidy. The whistling is all in addition. It is what we might term a supplement. It is a way of reaching those who might not otherwise be reached.”

Another bridge to the unregenerate. This time the Bridge of Whistles. “And these people your friend is whistling at: you feel they’re being reached?”

“One can judge,” he said, “only by the response. And the fan mail is positively overwhelming.” His voice as he said this was awed and slow, but then after a moment he said, a trifle more sensibly, “Of course I realize that that does not prove everything. One perhaps cannot hope for a profound or permanent spiritual effect from merely a whistled hymn, but it is a beginning. Possibly it will prove to be nothing more than that, but even if it does, a road has at least been opened. And after all, Father, that is just what we are enjoined to do!” he said enthusiastically. “It is our task to open up the roads!”

All roads lead to Rome. So they do, or so I hope, but I have my doubts about the highway of the Whistling Priest: that is, I wouldn’t think it led much of anywhere. I’ve always disliked and mistrusted this carnival shill approach to the church—and yet heaven knows we see it often enough. Does it really work? I don’t think so, but more than that I think it’s all wrong. Because for one thing it’s so unworthy. I don’t mean by this that it’s too informal, too much in the marketplace, too “popular”; I do mean quite simply, that it’s cheap. Obviously, when you talk about such things as God, religion, the church, man’s soul, to a great different people, you must necessarily do so in a great many different ways and on a great many different levels. But none of these levels can be—or at least none of them should be—in any sense flashy or false or vulgar, because if they are—no matter what the apparent justification—you run the very serious risk of making God, religion, the church, and man’s soul seem just a little bit of the same. It’s all very well to suggest that this really doesn’t matter so much, that what does matter is that, as a result, the people come in, but I think that’s a great mistake. I know they come in—and often in considerable numbers—in response to such techniques. That’s not surprising. The gaudy, the meretricious, frequently have a powerful and immediate seductiveness: at a fair or a circus, the children invariably make a beeline for those horrible puffs of pink candy. Bit what is surprising is that we sometimes take comfort from this: I know priests, for example, who will point with great pride to statistics proving the value of such appeals. So many appeals, so many souls for God: quod erat demonstrandum. Of course what the statistics don’t do so well is to measure the depth, the strength, and the duration of the faith of those who do so come in—or in other words, they tell you absolutely nothing about the only thing that counts. And—still more—while there are all sorts of statistics to tell you how many souls these tactics have brought in, there are no statistics at all to tell you how many they may have kept out. Who knows, for instance, who can even guess the number of those who, with every sympathy, with every goodwill, have tentatively approached the church only to be repelled by vaudeville antics at their first point of contact? As I say, we have no statistics for that at all; if we had, they might not be so comforting …

So then, these are my misgivings, not about Father Clement Cassidy himself—who most probably is a very decent young man, and whom in any case I suspect of being something less than this magically compelling Pied Piper of my curate’s story—but about the kind of apostolic work he represents.