Dave Newhouser was tormented by his baptism. You wouldn’t think he’d care since he was a lapsed Catholic, a very lapsed Catholic. He’d spent his whole adult life drifting from one denomination to another. He didn’t go much for organized religion but his wife, Juney, did. He went to church to please her. He figured he could daydream during the sermon in any denomination. It wasn’t as if he intended to pay any attention to some dreamy, goody two-shoed, ranting, raving sermon.. At some point, Dave would bring up his baptism. He couldn’t help himself. He was like a neurotic shoplifter or an acidhead. The predictable response was:

“That’s not funny!”

“That’s sacrilegious!”

“That’s blasphemy!”

“That’s not funny!”

After that, people tended get a bit cool towards Dave and Juney, and they’d leave and move to another church. The same thing would happen time and again. It upset Juney but it was better than Dave going to Hell. One church, the First United Baptist Church, gave him an answer but it didn’t comfort Dave.

“Of course it’s not valid. Baptism of babies is never valid. That’s just Popery!”, Preacher Smith told him.

"That's not very comforting, Pastor Smith", Dave told him.

"I'm not here to comfort sinners. I'm here to preach fire and brimstone! Fire and brimstone. I say! For-", the Pastor started to reply before Dave took off.

Dave escaped from there right then and there. He didn’t want to be told his baptism wasn’t valid just because he was eight days old at the time. He wanted to be told whether or not his baptism was bona fide, if it took, if it was authentic, if it was genuine because he was baptized with beer instead of water.

Dave’s godfather, his Uncle Bill, was pretty much of a practicing Catholic. He went to mass every week. He went to communion every week. He sang in the church choir too. He always put a dollar in the collection plate. That was fine right after WWII, when a dollar meant something. He still did, as all Catholics do, until his death in 1998. He gave up something he loved for Lent. Bill gave up beer. Due to an idiosyncrasy in Church Law, Sundays didn’t count for Lent fasting. Probably had something to do with the priests pigging out and getting drunk. Go figure. Bill wouldn’t drink beer all week, until Sunday. Then he’d drink a week’s worth in one day. The whole Newhouser family was like that. None of them drank the hard stuff but they all drank beer. Some of them only drank beer on Sundays during Lent. They were a contrary crowd. Their mother never drank and neither did their old man so no one knew why they all did. Being a rebellious child, and there 18 of them, was one thing. Being a rebellious adult was another. Point was, Bill was a beer lover. He knew when he’d had enough when his urine smelled the same as his glass of beer. When he was drunk enough, he'd piss in a glass and reprocess his piss.

When his brother, Bud, asked him to stand for Dave at his baptism, Bill agreed as long as the priest used beer instead of water. The only time Bill used water was for his monthly bath.

“You know, Bud, beer is dear to my heart”, he told his brother.

“Bill, umm, who the hell is going to baptize the kid with beer? I like the Baptist way of immersing the kid. Maybe for ten minutes or so. But, who the hell is going to baptize this brat with beer?”, Bud asked.

“Are you kidding? Monsignor Muluer’d baptize him with cat piss for a five-dollar donation. Hell, he’d piss on the kid himself for two.”

Monsignor Mueller was a phlegm-hacking, snot-blowing, rheumy-eyed evil tyrant who ran SS. Simon and Jude as his own little fiefdom. He’d pause his sermon if someone coughed and then belittle them just short of sending them to Hell.

"Well, if you're through making all that racket in the House of the Lord, I'll continue with my homily."

Then he’d hack up some phlegm, blow some snot, examine it for a while, and go on. He was personally as honest as the day was long but thought nothing of redirecting church funds to his pet proposals. He was the monsignor. Who were the parish members to make decisions? When the congregation raised money for new books, he bought an organ instead.

When the parents complained, he listened to them and then he told them to go to the Bishop. He thought of telling them to go to hell but only a Bishop could do that. The Bishop couldn’t do anything about him since he was a Monsignor and couldn’t be moved from his parish unless he assented to it. Another peculiar Church law. Monsignor Mueller was never going to do that so that was the last he heard from the parents about textbooks.

After the parents left, the Bishop turned to his assistant and said, "That phlegm-hacking, snot-blowing, rheumy-eyed evil tyrant. I'm stuck with him until our Father calls me to Heaven. At least, I hope it's Heaven. I wouldn't want to spend eternity in Hell with that phlegm-hacking, snot-blowing, rheumy-eyed evil tyrant bastard".

There was a drop in attendance at the parochial school, as if Mueller gave a rat’s ass. He’d still have enough of the little bastards to torment. He’d go into a classroom, coughing, wheezing, blowing snot, and ask questions about things they hadn’t gotten too yet. Few of the kids even tried to answer him, terrified as they were of him. Mueller loved it, the black-dressed phony bastard. He’d wink at the nun and leave. The kids, when they grew up, would wonder about that wink. Then they’d remember Sister Ferdinand the Bull and wonder about Mueller. No one would get that hard up.

He did the baptism with beer for $7.50. Bud had to supply the beer though.

This was the story Dave got from his mom when he turned 15 and he’d been anxiety-ridden ever since about whether or not his Uncle Bill had gotten him sent straight to Hell, no matter what Dave did. The Newhousers all thought their kids were crosses to bear and believed they should be sent to Hell, even Carl, who became a priest. Dave was a good kid usually. Sure, a few fires got away from him and he couldn’t resist making some of his spending money rifling glove boxes but that was about it. Maybe a little time in Purgatory, but not Hell. He might, though, for Dave being baptized with beer. He might have been offended by that. Baptism was something important.

Dave decided he just had to know and wanted to go right to the top. The Pope.

He wrote a truly heartbreaking letter to the Pope. It was enough to make a grown man cry. It was filled with sorrow and fear, sadness and despair. Dave probably should have quit when he wrote, “How can I be blamed for what my old man and my uncle did?”. He shouldn’t have added, “Of course, why should I be blamed for what Adam and Eve did, when you come right down to it?” He signed it, sealed it and sent it off.

A few weeks later, he got a letter from the Vatican!!!. He was so happy it was all he could do not to piss himself. He was also deathly afraid. What if the Pope said he was going to Hell for an invalid baptism? He stared at the letter until Juney took it off him and ripped it open.

“Well, this is a bunch of shit”, she commented as she handed the letter to Dave.

“Dear Son In Christ, Are you just plain stupid! Pope John Paul is dead. D-E-A-D dead! It was all over the news, dimwit! I opened this and read it since Pope John Paul wouldn’t mind, being D-E-A-D. Well, I can tell you myself that you’re hell-bound on the express train. No passing GO and no collecting $200.

Yours In the Lord

Sergi Laguini

Vatican Secretariat”

Dave almost broke down when he read that. How did he miss John Paul’s passing? What was the new Pope like? He found out the new top dog was a German. Oh, man! Germans are fine all alone, but pit two of them together and you have a Nazi. Can’t be helped. Dave sent a copy of his letter to the new Pope.

He eventually got a response.

“Dear child of the Lord May the blessing of our Lord be with you.

What kind of beer? If it was German beer, okay. If not, go to Hell.

In the Love of the Lord,

Clem "