Children of Priests Blog

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

My mother’s story is on Oprah’s site.

My sister and I are the children of a a Catholic priest and Broadway actress.  Because of the church we were separated from our parents and placed into foster care and state run facilities, some times we were together in the same home and other times we were separated.

When our mother finally regained custody of us we were bounced back and forth from New York to California faster than a handball in a championship match.

I remember when my sister and I were playing on the streets of New York City.  I was eight, she was nine.  As people would flick their cigarettes onto the concrete sidewalk prior to climbing aboard a Manhattan bus, we would scurry and pick them up, sucking the smoke into our young mouths and then puffing out the hot smoke into the evening air.  It wasn’t until the ripe old age of  ten and eleven that we actually acquired a smoking habit. At that time we were living in Inglewood California.  500 East Arbor Vitae, I still remember the address.  We would sneak cigarettes out of our step father’s stash and seated on the wood railing outside of our somewhat rundown second story apartment, actually smoke them, inhale, puff out smoke rings and feel very grownup.

At the Ansonia apartment building in Los Angeles, when I was twelve and Roxane was thirteen we became more aggressive with our smoking.   We had the habit.  By the time we lived in Hollywood, I was fourteen, she was fifteen, we were each smoking a pack a day.  My sister, Roxane became pregnant and had her first child at that time.

She was a great mom even though she was still a child herself.   She had her second child when I was about seventeen.   When I was nineteen I went to live with her and Jeff, the father of her second child, in Cucamonga California.  I was going to Chaffy College to study music, she lived a few miles from campus.   After school I would take care of my nephews and clean up the house in exchange for free room and board.  We smoked like there was no tomorrow.   After about three weeks of this arrangement she got into a fight with Jeff and she took the kids and moved out.  This left me in an awkward situation.  Jeff gave me a week to find other living arrangements.  It didn’t take a week.  That evening I moved into my car.  For the next few years of my life, my car was my home address.

One day while hiking in the foothills above Pasadena with some friends I had trouble breathing, I felt like I was suffocating.  I had to lie down on the dirt path until I was able to breath again.  I was twenty-one at the time and had been smoking for eleven and a half years.  It was then that I realized that perhaps smoking was not such a good idea, so I quit.

Generally around the holidays  would be the time that I would visit with Roxane and her now five children.  Although we had radically different views on life there was an undeniable strong bond that we felt for each other.  A few weeks ago Flip, the oldest of my nephews, called me to tell me that he had moved his mother into his home so he could care for her.  Roxane didn’t believe in doctors but somehow Flip got her to go see a doctor.  She was diagnosed with lung cancer and she was told that the cancer had also spread to her brain.  That evening my family drove out and visited with her.  She would not talk about her disease or any treatment plans.  Flip had already warned us not to speak of her cancer as doing so would just upset her.  She was in total denial that there was even anything wrong.  All of her children and her grandchildren were there. We all pretended that nothing was wrong.  We reminisced about our childhood together and we told jokes and laughed and drank wine.  Roxane had a kind heart and great sense of humor.

Upon leaving we hugged and said our goodbyes.  I had successfully concealed my sorrow for the entire visit but by the time I was out the front door rivers of tears were streaming down my face.   Three out of five of my nieces and nephews smoke, I worry for them.  My sister died yesterday…

I’m starting to get into this whole social media thing.  So in case any of you are in need of wasting some time,  I, Dr. Hope, can help you waste it.  Please hold down your applause until I’m done typing.  Thank you.  So anyway I’m on twitter:  TWEET!

Hmmm… I just thought that perhaps starting a scuba diving business would work well in this economy, what with everyone under water…

Wow, it’s about time I updated this blog! My apologies, to busy for words.  (Actually it was words that kept me 2 busy.) “What have you been doing,” you ask.  Well, thanks for asking,  I just wrote an essay to help people who are having trouble with this ‘Recession.’  It’s  called How to Recession Proof Your Life. I thought that I would charge 1 million dollars a copy, that way I could recession proof my own life with only selling a few copies.  Well they are flying off the eBook cybershelves by the dozens,  wow, I’m a multi-millionare! Ah, er, opps,  I forgot as a special limited time offer this million dollar book is FREE!   Get your copy quick before the price goes back to 1 million dollars!   Here’s a link: A LINK

I’ve been so busy working on www.DrHopePoker.com that I have been neglecting this blog. My apologies.  In order for me to get a quick substantive post that I thought would be of interest I took this from an email I sent a new friend:

A quick personal rant:   It upsets me how the Catholic church demeans woman, like they are a second class human.  A woman is not good enough to be a priest and a nun can never advance into the hierarchy of the church.  How they blackmailed my mother was atrocious. Why shouldn’t priests be allowed to marry and have kids?  The first pope, St. Peter, had a wife, why not all priests?  I’ll tell you why: money, greed, the church doesn’t want to pay for those families.  I’m hopeful that this book will start a dialogue that will effectuate a change in how they conduct themselves.  Okay, my rant is over.    Now go check out my mother’s true love story at: www.EverybodyCallsMyFatherFather.com

I thought I’d re-post a comment and some links that I thought would be of  particular interest to this group since they now have their English pages up and working:

“I don’t know if you read this yourself, Dear Mr. Anders, but in case you do I wanted to forward you these links to our website, http://www.humanrightsforchildrenofpriests.com and http://www.menschenrechtefuerpriesterkinder.de . It is run by one other son of a catholic priest and myself from Germany and France, and intends to fight against the discrimination of children of priests, and raise awareness of this discrimination.Our english pages haven’ t been updated for a while, but soon will be.
We would be gratefull for any feedback from you.

Best regards
David Weber”

Hello everyone,

This year my publisher has re-released The Strength of a Sparrow under a new name.  That name is: Everybody Calls My Father, Father. Well I guess that title says it all.  For those of you interested there is also a new website, www.EverybodyCallsMyFatherFather.com where you see pictures of my parents and my godfather, Vincent Rao, who was the consigliere for the Lucchese crime family… I guess another good title would have been: Everybody Calls my Godfather, Godfather.

I apologize for not being more attentive in this, my own blog, but my time has been spent putting together a website, www.DrHopePoker.com, where poker players can play for free and rent private poker rooms to play with their friends.  Cool, two plugs in the same post.

I was recently asked what my religious views were: This was my response:

Why is it that all religions tend to make woman subservient to one degree or another, to their male counterparts? Why are women not good enough to become priests? Are woman really second class? Is this right? And why has so much blood been spilt in the name of ‘god’ claiming that ‘their’ religion is the only right one? Why do religions fight against one another? Well they do have to keep their followers in line, so step right up, keep those coffers full, and go beat up the other guy fore his religion must be wrong, after all his ‘god’ is really weird next to ours and we must be right because we were told so by our religious leaders and they must be right because look at all the money and power and expensive buildings they have. And so it is that Muslims fought the Hindus in India and that the Christians fought the Muslims during the Crusades. Oddly enough even in the same religion there is violence. Why do Shiites kill Sunnis, do they not both worship Allah and the prophet Mohammad? Why did the Protestants and the Catholics blow each other up in Ireland? I could go on and on (Hmmm, I think I just did.) Back to the question:

My religious views: No thanks, I prefer the peace and love that the Universe intended without the hate, mistrust, and inequality that is the benchmark of religion. Damn, looks like I’m going to hell now.