Sinner (eBook)

The Catholic Guy's Funny, Feeble Attempts to Be a Faithful Catholic

Lino Rulli (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
192 Seiten
Servant (Verlag)
978-1-63582-330-1 (ISBN)

What Catholic guy made money as an organ-grinder's assistant, spent one-on-one time with John Paul II, met a very nice Thai prostitute, and confessed his sins on a beanbag chair? Lino Rulli, of course! Lino Rulli has a style and personality not typically found in the world of religious media. In this fast and funny collection of stories from his own life, The Catholic Guy speaks honestly about his failures, successes, and embarrassing moments. His 'regular guy' approach to Catholicism is both humble and hilarious.

What Catholic guy made money as an organ-grinder's assistant, spent one-on-one time with John Paul II, met a very nice Thai prostitute, and confessed his sins on a beanbag chair? Lino Rulli, of course! Lino Rulli has a style and personality not typically found in the world of religious media. In this fast and funny collection of stories from his own life, The Catholic Guy speaks honestly about his failures, successes, and embarrassing moments. His "e;regular guy"e; approach to Catholicism is both humble and hilarious.

Monkey Boy

“Lino, your mother and I have been talking,” my dad said.

This raised red flags immediately. My parents never talked. Were they getting divorced? Was there an illness in the family? Would I finally find out I’m adopted?

“I’ve decided to leave my job as a parole officer to become an organ-grinder.”

I stood there silent. Stunned. Primarily because I didn’t know what an organ-grinder was. I didn’t know what was happening to my dad. It sounded painful to have your organ ground. And to do the grinding yourself seemed stupid and foolhardy.

Al Gore had yet to invent the Internet, so I couldn’t just Google the words organ-grinder and find out the real story: My dad was becoming the hurdy-gurdy man. Someone who cranks an organ, playing music, while a monkey dances around asking strangers for money.

Pops didn’t make his announcement at the dinner table. In fact, we didn’t own a dining room table. We ate at TV tables in front of, not surprisingly, the TV.

Neither did he make it at the weekly family meeting. Thankfully, we didn’t have those. It was a small family—just me, my mom, and my dad—so it was pretty easy to get everyone together when necessary.

He made the announcement while leaving church. And not just the church which my dad attended only on Christmas and Easter. This announcement came in the summertime; Pops wouldn’t normally be in church this time of year.

We were in Rome, Italy, on vacation, at St. Peter’s Basilica, the greatest church ever built.

August, 1983. I was eleven years old and this, apparently, was the place where God told my dad to become an organ-grinder.

It’s possible God really did speak to my dad, but I doubt it. God seems to speak in a crystal-clear way only to people He really likes. To the best of my knowledge, no one with the last name of Rulli has ever been in that group.

Nonetheless, God had a plan for my dad.

* * *

Some kids’ dads have respectable jobs like lawyer or cop or proctologist. Some dads are admired for being IRS workers or hit men. I wouldn’t be that lucky.

When asked in polite conversation what your father does for a living, few people in the past fifty years have answered with: “My dad? He’s an organ-grinder.” Try using that with your classmates. Or colleagues at work. Now you’ve entered my world.

It wasn’t always this way, however. In fact, the first eleven years of my existence gave every impression that I would have a normal life. Mom was a high-school teacher. Pops was a corrections officer.

We were the only Catholic family on our block. There were the Lutherans and their Lutheran God. The Baptists and their Baptist God. The Seventh-Day Adventists and their…well, I was never sure what they believed. They were a very nice family, but they didn’t give gifts for Christmas. That’s a big no-no in a kid’s eyes. You can believe whatever you want, but even my Jewish friends give gifts on Christmas.

My seemingly normal childhood was now changing. I was entering junior high, leaving my grade school classmates behind and preparing to meet a new group of people to reject me. I would soon be going through puberty, complete with faint mustache and bad mullet. It’s possible I could survive those, but a father who was an organ-grinder? That put me in a whole other bracket.

My father’s decision to change careers and forever alter his son’s adolescence did not come overnight. It took my dad several nights to discern how best to interrupt my impending teenage years.

Perhaps he was looking out for his son’s spiritual well-being. Certainly, chastity would not be a problem. Had my father chosen a respectable career—as a burglar or a con man, the type of family stock every girl dreams of—I could have forged ahead. As the son of the hurdy-gurdy man, however, I would spend a lot of time alone, chastely. As an added bonus, the family of an organ-grinder is traditionally not wealthy. I would embrace poverty at an early age. If I had learned to be obedient, I would have been on my way to a religious vocation.

* * *

If you ask my dad, becoming an organ-grinder was divinely mandated. Thus, I learned at a very early age that a person should discern God’s will carefully.

If a saint has a private revelation, the Church investigates for years to determine the validity of this revelation. When your dad has a private revelation to become an organ-grinder, the Church is mysteriously silent.

According to Pops, he was in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at St. Peter’s, praying about it, and he felt at peace with the decision. And here’s the thing I’ve found that sucks about other people’s prayers: You can’t really disagree with them. Well, you can, but the point is that the prayers are theirs, not yours, and as Christians, we do believe God speaks to us. So any time I question another person’s prayer, I feel like the sinful, cynical person I’m afraid I am.

That’s one of the truly weird things about Christianity: We believe God wants a relationship with us. That we talk and He listens and even answers.

Not in a big booming voice, though. Sometimes God speaks to us through others. Sometimes we feel an inner peace and know that He’s answered. Sometimes we only think He’s answered, like some moron televangelist who says, “God told me this or that,” setting Christianity back hundreds of years.

Yet the scary thing is, God really does talk to us.

The lesson I learned is that if God calls my dad to be an organ-grinder, I have to accept it.

* * *

When my dad was a corrections officer in the early ’80s, a friend of his decided to leave corrections to pursue his real dream of being a stand-up comedian.

This guy and my dad weren’t best friends, just work buddies. My dad wished him well, and presumed this guy would be doing Chuckles in Fargo or The Laugh Hut in Tulsa for years to come.

It wasn’t long after, however, that Pops and I were watching Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and a comedian came out: Louie Anderson.

“That’s my friend, Louie,” Pops said. “Wow. He fulfilled is dream and made it as a comedian.”

“Wait, Pops,” I said, “you’re friends with Louie Anderson?”

“Yeah, of course!” He paused and realized I’d soon be asking for celebrity swag.

“Well, not friends. But he interned for me in corrections.”

The cat was out of the bag, though. I wanted to see if he really knew Louie.

For my birthday that year, Pops got me an autographed 8 x 10 photo of Louie Anderson. He wrote: “To Lino, I hope you have a wonderful life. Love, Louie.”

I was happy to see my dad hadn’t made the story up. At the same time, I was kinda hurt that Louie wanted to play no part in my life. He “hoped I had a wonderful life,” but wasn’t planning on finding out whether or not I did. Which made his claim of “love” at the end seem hollow.

Nonetheless, I think Louie’s success helped inspire my dad to chase after his own dreams. Not a dream that would involve making millions, hosting Family Feud, and being a beloved figure. Nope, Pops just wanted to be the hurdy-gurdy man.

* * *

The majority of his weekends were spent at street fairs, grinding his organ for all to see. He’d play music, pose for pictures, and entertain the folks. Inevitably, however, a question would come from the crowd: “Hey, where’s your monkey?!” An organ-grinder is nothing without a monkey. So Pops made a plan.

My dad sat me down to explain. “Lino, we can’t get a monkey. First off, we can barely take care of the two cats in the house. Second, there’s no room for a monkey around here. And third, we can’t afford it. The insurance is too expensive. He could bite someone, they’d sue us, and we’d be stuck.”

This all sounded like common sense. And I couldn’t help but wonder if there were any other father–son conversations taking place on the planet at that moment about why the family couldn’t get a monkey.

“OK, Pops,” I said, thinking he just needed to get this information off his chest. As I got up to go, he stopped me.

“Since we can’t get a real monkey…” There was a pause. Maybe he wanted me to figure it out on my own. Maybe his conscience was getting the better of him.

“I need you to dress up like a monkey and ask for...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	19.1.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-330-7 / 1635823307
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-330-1 / 9781635823301

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