Wonder Media Network - an award winning female-founded, audio-first creative podcast studio - and iHeartPodcasts, the No.1 podcast publisher globally according to Podtrac, have launched "Divine Intervention," a 10-episode narrative podcast, fifteen years in the making. Host Brendan Patrick Hughes delves into one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the Catholic Church, the United States and the personal lives of ten revolutionaries. Fifty years ago, a ragtag band of radical nuns in combat boots, wild-haired priests and their madcap friends swiftly became accomplished cat burglars in a hellbent effort to sabotage a war. They did everything they could to destroy the war machine - they scaled walls, picked locks, hid in broom closets and broke into federal draft boards, stealing the files of the young men about to be sent into combat. They napalmed these files in city squares. They shredded them at press conferences, harbored draft fugitives in church sanctuaries, and traded blows with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Many went to jail, others betrayed their friends, and some fell in love. "Working on this project for so many years meant that I was able to capture a lot of important voices that have since left us, like Howard Zinn," said Hughes. "This has been a decades-long labor of love about the people I grew up with - outlandish and fiercely political Boston Irish Catholics out to save the world." Episodes available here: Https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-divine-intervention-98132542/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brendan, what an amazing story here, And first of all,
thank you for your dedication in loyalty fifteen years in
the making. That is a lot of soul, sir.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Row.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
It was a lot of time, a lot of a
lot of tribulations along landscape to cross on foot or
maybe on hands and knees.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
How did you find the focus to be able to
do this? I mean it was just a side hustle.
I mean, is that how it started out?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yes, yeah, it absolutely was.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
So my mother had started telling me these stories many
years ago and one let's see, it's actually it might
be more than like twenty years. In two thousand and five,
she and I went on a road trip and I
brought a little mini disc recorder and a lab mic
and I pinned it to her and we're driving from
New York to Boston, and she told me these insane
(00:48):
stories about these priests and nuns who became cat burglars
and started trading blows with j Edgar Hoover. And some
of the tape from that two thousand and five interview
is in the final podcast, as well as these interviews
I started doing with all these other people from the
movement in two thousand and nine, and then I did
a bunch more in twenty twenty, and all the while
(01:12):
I was you know, I was getting me, getting married,
having a starting a family, and working as a director.
But this was always in my on the back burner
as something I needed to get back.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
To a lot of people don't understand that the requirements
of a great podcast requires that one thing, and that
is it's like a book. You've got to be able
to put it together, and you've got to have forward
motion in the way of storytelling. How did you get
the continuity together on that?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh? Thank you? It was really tough. I will say this.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Actually, I was doing it on my own for a
long time, and I was focusing on a bunch of
different characters. So I should say for context that this
was a movement of let's say, two hundred three hundred
people Catholics, mostly priests, nuns, their friends that were breaking
into draft boards and things like that. And I chose
six of them because I knew them personally, and I
(02:04):
decided to sort of tell their stories, and I cut
a pilot and then started.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Cutting other episodes.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
But I was gathering information based on the people so
each episode was based on one character.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And I ran aground.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And it wasn't until I teamed up with a production
company called Wonder Media Network that we worked for fourteen
months starting last January, breaking down the story, finding all
of the cliffhangers, and making it so that over a
ten episode sweep, it would feel like it had that
motion you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Did you do, like what most rock stars do once
you record it, you go out there in the car
and you go for a ride so you can listen
to it.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, the terrible speaker test.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, let's talk about some of those people. Cookie, who
is she and what's going on here?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Oh? Yeah, it's Cookie Ridolfi. She's an amazing character.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
She So she was like a ne'er do well, Phill
Street tough and she was walking out of school one day.
He was going to cut school, you know, And I
think she went to a parochial school in South Philly.
And as she was walking out of the school, she
ran into this nun who was maybe a substitute teacher
at the school or something. This nun had just recently
(03:19):
become a criminal because she had broken into a draft
board in New York City, and stolen a bunch of
files so that the people around that draft board wouldn't
be arrested, I mean, wouldn't be drafted into the war.
And she started talking to this woman and got completely
fascinated because she hated the war in Vietnam. And Cookie then,
at eighteen years old, signed up with this underground and
(03:43):
they were planning a new action in Philadelphia, which became
known as the East Coast Conspiracy to save lives. And
she very quickly, at a very young age, became kind
of a lieutenant of the one of the ring leaders
of this whole movement. And she she broke into a
draft board herself. She got arrested. She was part of
(04:04):
a trial where she and twenty seven other people represented themselves.
She was eventually after the war, she wrote the State
of New Jersey and asked for a scholarship. For some reason,
the State of New Jersey gave her one. And then
she became a lawyer, and then she taught law for
(04:24):
her life. She was a law professor. And so she
went from this. She had this incredible trajectory of like
Nardwell Street, tough to someone who shaped justice at having
been on the wrong side of so to speak of
the law for much of her youth.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Oh my god, just to hear you share that story.
What you're doing is so important to American history because
we've entered in age right now where they're erasing the
great ones that took chances to help save other people's
lives and people like yourself. There's got to be more
because I did not know this story about Cookie.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh thank you, Ero. Yes, it's true.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
It feels like this was a time in history when people,
young people decided to put take it upon themselves to
correct their government when they felt their government was being immoral,
and they did things like voluntarily went to jail and
uh uh and and trade blows with j Edgar Hoover
(05:23):
to to uh to get in the way of FBI
agents when they were trying to tail other people. I mean,
it was really a crazy, crazy time. And at the
end of the day, everyone involves was there because of
how fervently they felt their patriotism for the country.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
You know, I do kind of chuckle on the inside
of my soul. And when when I read that that
the church was involved, because you know, the disciples they
were they were perfect people. I mean, you know, they
were they were doing some bad things too, and it's
you know, it's hey, it's just part of that biblical journey.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yes, yes, it's so. It's so true.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
At the end of the day, there's there's humanness for
everybody involved.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
I talk in episode nine about the story of Judas
because there was a lot of betrayal in the involved
in this story. And I myself, actually I am I
guess you could say an agnostic. I've never had a
full blown religion, but I am fascinated by Catholicism in particular. Yeah,
And there was there was one character who started working
(06:22):
with the FBI and betrayed all of his friends, and
I thought, oh my god, there's a lot of resonance
here with oh my good right, And he was even
paid thirty pieces of silver by Jack or Hoover, you
know what I mean. And so it was a wild
thing to be able to sort of reach back into
history and way back into history and find all these resonances.
(06:44):
And in thinking about that, I mean just thinking, like,
to me, the story of Jesus as somebody who put
himself out in the world and fought for justice and
was duly punished for it. You know, and it's sort
of a similar thing that happens in this story.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Another real person that is basically a forgotten superhero, Anna Walsh.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
She was the mastermind behind the plan.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yes, yes, she was another so Anne Walsh.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Walsh was a nun and she entered the US the
Sisters of Saint Joseph in Boston, and she really wanted
to make change. She was a really passionate young person.
She loved the church, she loved a justice. She wanted
to bring them together, and she found in her role
as a nun in particular, and in the trajectory that
(07:32):
a nun follows, to be a little bit too servile
for her taste. And she wanted to be at the
lunch counters in Montgomery, Alabama. She wanted to be out
there doing things and her the church. Her superiors wouldn't
let her. And after Martin Luther King was assassinated and
one of her sisters was kicked out of the order
(07:54):
for walking one of their students home, she and a
bunch of her other sisters walked down their order and
started their own.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Renegade order of nuts.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
They called the Bread Community, and they worked with Caesar
Chavez and the Deelano Great Boycott. They did everything they
could to find justice in the world. And then she too,
just like Cookie, became central to the movement, and she
was breaking in. She was arrested a couple of times.
One time actually in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That went all wrong. A guard found them.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
They Anne was filling in on that action wasn't supposed
to be there, and when the guard came, everyone scattered
and ran down these stairs in this building that went
straight to a subway station. But she didn't know that
that plan, and so she hid under a typewriter table.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And then the dogs came. She got arrested.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
One of her compatriots, Paul Cooming, came and got himself
arrested with her so that she wouldn't be alone. And
the judge when she got to the arraignment was a
daily community who went to church every single day, and
he let them go scott free. He was looking at it,
and she said she was she was found. Oh, she
(09:09):
left the tip right a table and went to this
men's room mutility closet.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
That's right, and he's looking at it, he says, h.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
So she was just found in the men's room mutility
closet in a public building.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
What's wrong with that is the two in the morning.
But he sort of overlooked.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
That and he let her go and she was free
to raid another day.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
You being a filmmaker and you hear a story like this,
you have to be going You got to be kidding me.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Man.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
People write these stories, they don't really actually you know,
experience them.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yes, right, it's so true. It doesn't feel like it
doesn't feel like real life. Every single story that I
discovered blew my mind. I mean, these people were also
was a hilarious b is filled with coincidences or divine
intervention if you will. And see it's so cinematic from
beginning to end. It is an amazing it's an amazing
(10:01):
tale going all the way down to the Pope John
the twenty third being instrumental in ending the Cuban missile crisis,
which is not something I knew until I started researching
this story.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
See, and it's things like that. See, they always say
the Korean War is the forgotten war. I'm beginning to
think that the Vietnam War was also the forgotten war.
And everything that took place with the Cuban missile crisis,
it's not being talked about or even learned from.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Right right, and there's so much to learn. I mean,
it's sort of the sunk cost fallacy. It feels like
with the Vietnam War in particular, it became an unwinnable
quagmier so quickly, and we were there for all the
wrong reasons, starting with Cardinal Spellman in the nineteen fifties,
(10:45):
hand selecting No din Zim who became the President of
South Vietnam. And he was basically an American puppet who
was a friend of Cardinal Spellman. And so Cardinal Spellman
came to be known in Washington d c. Circles as
the owner of the Vietnam War. And they used to
call it Spelly's War. And so all these young Catholics
(11:09):
that took it upon themselves to get arrested and sabotage
the draft, basically we're doing so because they thought to themselves,
this is a Catholic war, and it's my job to
stop it.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Please don't move. There's more with Brendan Patrick Hughes coming
up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
with Brendan Patrick Hughes.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
I've got to make a confession here.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I mean, since we're going to talk about Catholics, I
got to make a confession that is is that throughout
this podcast I kept going on, You've got to get
the confidence to ask these nuns that come into your
grocery store, ask them.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Who are you?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Really, get to know who they are as people and
not what they're wearing.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yes, yes, it's so true.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Nuns especially are fascinating, fantastic, unbelievably heroic people. They get
a bad rap because of the ones that hit kids
in the knuckles of rulers fifty years ago. But nuns
are magical beings and if you every time I see one,
I feel starstruck and I say, you know, morning sister, Yeah, yeah,
(12:08):
And sometimes if she says morning back, I feel great
all day.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
To learn that father Patrick was a party animal, My god,
this is the kind of guy I want to sit
down and just have coffee with.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
He was something else.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And I have a bit of a spoiler for you.
Oh father Patrick was my dad? Oh really, yes, there is.
There's a little twist at the end of the story.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Is that how you got it so deeply involved with this?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Then? Yep, okay, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I so he was he died in nineteen eighty I
was only six years old, and this story has been
a way to get to know him. He was a
very interesting guy, and he was a party animal who
brought that party animal nature to his priesthood. He reinvented
the liturgy, and he was doing these crazy things in
(13:02):
the basement of the Paula Center in downtown Boston, where
you know, there would be modern music, interpretive dance, crazy things,
and the young people flocked to the place to be
a part of these celebrations that he built. And then
he started a tablecloth restaurant for the poor in the
basement as well. He was going to They put him
(13:23):
down to the basement when he first arrived because he
was the new guy, you know. And he decided, well,
there's a working kitchen, there's a little there's a spread.
I'm going to reinvent the liturgy. I'm going to start
a soup kitchen. But it's not going to be a
souper kitchen. It's a fancy restaurant with waiters, and I
gotta pay.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
For it all. I don't know how.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
And he thought for a while, and then he invented
the pledge walk. So you see pledge walks all over
the country. He started the first one in the United States,
which is called the Walk for Hunger, which is still
being walked. It's having its fifty fifth in a month.
And it's this crazy story of his where throughout his
trajectory as a priest he was really trying to save
(14:02):
the world and then my mother walked through the doors
and people of the first Sight, and he was zoomed.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
But you know, deep down inside though, what inspires me
about about what's happening here inside your podcast is that
they took the time to truly activate what they felt
in their hearts, and in their hearts lived God.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yes, yes, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
They read Tehar Deschardan quite a bit and and all
these other sort of the ways of living the social Gospel.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
That's how they talked about it.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
They talked about how what they were trying to do
was answer the call that they heard from the gospels
to lift up the poor and you know, feed the hungry,
and and it was an incredible thing. And the crazy
thing is they would often get in trouble for it
(14:58):
by from the hierarchy, you know, would feel uncomfortable with
this level of kind of radical do gooding, you know,
which the hierarchy at the time saw as a certain
amount of ironically hell raising, you know. Yeah, But they
were answering something that was deep in their hearts. And
they remain beams of light every time I talked to
any of them. They are They're just wonderful human beings
(15:21):
that see seeking justice as the same as breathing, you know,
And it's a beautiful thing to be able to spend
time with them.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Speaking of seeking, did they go out onto the streets
like missionaries and pull people into the movement.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
That's the fascinating thing. They sort of didn't have to
because what they were doing. I think it was a time.
So this is coming out of like Vatican two and
John the twenty third, and there was an entire generation
of young people who had grown up Catholic and felt
that it was time to bring the Church into the
modern era. And as John the twenty third said, open
(15:59):
the windows, let some fresh air, and he said when
he started Vatican Two, we aren't meant to be museum.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Keepers as priests.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
We are meant to live in the modern age. And
so this was there was already such a groundswell of
young people that wanted to channel the good they knew
they could manifest in the world based on the teachings
that had come to the church to receive that they
(16:27):
just found each other like magnets and started committing crimes.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Wow, well we can't leave out mister Paul, because I mean,
I mean, once again, this is another one of these
people that you that you are featured inside this podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yes, yes, Paul Cooming was he so was.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I'm a Celtics fan and in the oughts there was
a Celtics player named rad John Rondo who always played
with a complete disregard for his own well being, you know,
and so he he's always played like you put himself
in a hospital. And that's how Paul Cooming sought justice
in the sixties. He was a part of every action.
He got arrested over and over again. He just wanted
(17:07):
to end the war that he felt so so much
disease with, and he even went so far as to
take his draft card, rip it up, send it back
to the government with a letter saying.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
He wasn't going to take part in it.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And then the long arm in the law, of course,
caught up to him, and instead of just going to
his court date. He and his friend set up this
elaborate plan where they went to went to the courthouse,
and he hid in the Paula Center in downtown Boston,
and they had this standoff with the FBI and the police,
(17:43):
who were all Irish Catholics just like them, and they
knew that if they hid Paul in a church, the
police and the FBI were going to have a really
hard time just bursting into the church to arrest him.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And it turned into this.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Wild three day arts festival thing that It was just
a crazy, crazy thing that they did. They were with
Paul taking the lead as one of the bravest souls
I've ever encountered.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
They were unstoppable and just whacky.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Did the Catholic Church ever have to rein them in
because this just seems like the greatest group of people
who really wanted change, peaceful change.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yes, right, the Catholic Church tried several times to rein
them in, and actually I will say this they over
time the Catholic Church after John the twenty third died
in nineteen sixty three and Paul the sixth took over.
Paul the sixth was not as much of a fan
of Vatican two, and he started to claw back a
(18:43):
lot of the reforms, you know, changing from Latin to
the vernacular. That stayed, but there were many things that
they were thinking, you know, female priests, priests had married,
birth control, all sorts of things that my father and
many of his cohort as priests thought the church was
headed towards. And it's sort of modernization folded back in
(19:04):
on itself, so that by the early seventies the church
had reverted, except for the Latin, basically back to its
sort of previous self. And this was disappointing for this
class of priests and nuns, and many of them left
the clergy and wound up getting married to each other.
And I actually ended up growing up on a commune
(19:28):
that was all ex priest monks.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And really, oh, man, man, did you've got to come
back to this show anytime in the future. I love
how you were taking history and you are turning it
into stories. And I've always believed share your story or
someone will write it for you.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
That's such a great way to put it. It's so true,
it's really true.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
And this one I had a huge sort of I
was in my head about telling the story for a
long time because it is also secretly my origin story,
but it is one that I, for lack of a
better phrase, have been I'm pregnant with for a long time,
you know, and so finally having issued it into the
world is an incredible feeling. So I really appreciate you
(20:10):
saying that, Arrow, and it's a wonderful time to spend
time with you.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Ex will you be brilliant today? Okay, sir, thank
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You very much for you as well.
Brendan, what an amazing story here, And first of all,
thank you for your dedication in loyalty fifteen years in
the making. That is a lot of soul, sir.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Row.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
It was a lot of time, a lot of a
lot of tribulations along landscape to cross on foot or
maybe on hands and knees.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
How did you find the focus to be able to
do this? I mean it was just a side hustle.
I mean, is that how it started out?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yes, yeah, it absolutely was.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
So my mother had started telling me these stories many
years ago and one let's see, it's actually it might
be more than like twenty years. In two thousand and five,
she and I went on a road trip and I
brought a little mini disc recorder and a lab mic
and I pinned it to her and we're driving from
New York to Boston, and she told me these insane
(00:48):
stories about these priests and nuns who became cat burglars
and started trading blows with j Edgar Hoover. And some
of the tape from that two thousand and five interview
is in the final podcast, as well as these interviews
I started doing with all these other people from the
movement in two thousand and nine, and then I did
a bunch more in twenty twenty, and all the while
(01:12):
I was you know, I was getting me, getting married,
having a starting a family, and working as a director.
But this was always in my on the back burner
as something I needed to get back.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
To a lot of people don't understand that the requirements
of a great podcast requires that one thing, and that
is it's like a book. You've got to be able
to put it together, and you've got to have forward
motion in the way of storytelling. How did you get
the continuity together on that?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh? Thank you? It was really tough. I will say this.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Actually, I was doing it on my own for a
long time, and I was focusing on a bunch of
different characters. So I should say for context that this
was a movement of let's say, two hundred three hundred
people Catholics, mostly priests, nuns, their friends that were breaking
into draft boards and things like that. And I chose
six of them because I knew them personally, and I
(02:04):
decided to sort of tell their stories, and I cut
a pilot and then started.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Cutting other episodes.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
But I was gathering information based on the people so
each episode was based on one character.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And I ran aground.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And it wasn't until I teamed up with a production
company called Wonder Media Network that we worked for fourteen
months starting last January, breaking down the story, finding all
of the cliffhangers, and making it so that over a
ten episode sweep, it would feel like it had that
motion you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Did you do, like what most rock stars do once
you record it, you go out there in the car
and you go for a ride so you can listen
to it.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, the terrible speaker test.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, let's talk about some of those people. Cookie, who
is she and what's going on here?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Oh? Yeah, it's Cookie Ridolfi. She's an amazing character.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
She So she was like a ne'er do well, Phill
Street tough and she was walking out of school one day.
He was going to cut school, you know, And I
think she went to a parochial school in South Philly.
And as she was walking out of the school, she
ran into this nun who was maybe a substitute teacher
at the school or something. This nun had just recently
(03:19):
become a criminal because she had broken into a draft
board in New York City, and stolen a bunch of
files so that the people around that draft board wouldn't
be arrested, I mean, wouldn't be drafted into the war.
And she started talking to this woman and got completely
fascinated because she hated the war in Vietnam. And Cookie then,
at eighteen years old, signed up with this underground and
(03:43):
they were planning a new action in Philadelphia, which became
known as the East Coast Conspiracy to save lives. And
she very quickly, at a very young age, became kind
of a lieutenant of the one of the ring leaders
of this whole movement. And she she broke into a
draft board herself. She got arrested. She was part of
(04:04):
a trial where she and twenty seven other people represented themselves.
She was eventually after the war, she wrote the State
of New Jersey and asked for a scholarship. For some reason,
the State of New Jersey gave her one. And then
she became a lawyer, and then she taught law for
(04:24):
her life. She was a law professor. And so she
went from this. She had this incredible trajectory of like
Nardwell Street, tough to someone who shaped justice at having
been on the wrong side of so to speak of
the law for much of her youth.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Oh my god, just to hear you share that story.
What you're doing is so important to American history because
we've entered in age right now where they're erasing the
great ones that took chances to help save other people's
lives and people like yourself. There's got to be more
because I did not know this story about Cookie.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh thank you, Ero. Yes, it's true.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
It feels like this was a time in history when people,
young people decided to put take it upon themselves to
correct their government when they felt their government was being immoral,
and they did things like voluntarily went to jail and
uh uh and and trade blows with j Edgar Hoover
(05:23):
to to uh to get in the way of FBI
agents when they were trying to tail other people. I mean,
it was really a crazy, crazy time. And at the
end of the day, everyone involves was there because of
how fervently they felt their patriotism for the country.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
You know, I do kind of chuckle on the inside
of my soul. And when when I read that that
the church was involved, because you know, the disciples they
were they were perfect people. I mean, you know, they
were they were doing some bad things too, and it's
you know, it's hey, it's just part of that biblical journey.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yes, yes, it's so. It's so true.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
At the end of the day, there's there's humanness for
everybody involved.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
I talk in episode nine about the story of Judas
because there was a lot of betrayal in the involved
in this story. And I myself, actually I am I
guess you could say an agnostic. I've never had a
full blown religion, but I am fascinated by Catholicism in particular. Yeah,
And there was there was one character who started working
(06:22):
with the FBI and betrayed all of his friends, and
I thought, oh my god, there's a lot of resonance
here with oh my good right, And he was even
paid thirty pieces of silver by Jack or Hoover, you
know what I mean. And so it was a wild
thing to be able to sort of reach back into
history and way back into history and find all these resonances.
(06:44):
And in thinking about that, I mean just thinking, like,
to me, the story of Jesus as somebody who put
himself out in the world and fought for justice and
was duly punished for it. You know, and it's sort
of a similar thing that happens in this story.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Another real person that is basically a forgotten superhero, Anna Walsh.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
She was the mastermind behind the plan.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yes, yes, she was another so Anne Walsh.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Walsh was a nun and she entered the US the
Sisters of Saint Joseph in Boston, and she really wanted
to make change. She was a really passionate young person.
She loved the church, she loved a justice. She wanted
to bring them together, and she found in her role
as a nun in particular, and in the trajectory that
(07:32):
a nun follows, to be a little bit too servile
for her taste. And she wanted to be at the
lunch counters in Montgomery, Alabama. She wanted to be out
there doing things and her the church. Her superiors wouldn't
let her. And after Martin Luther King was assassinated and
one of her sisters was kicked out of the order
(07:54):
for walking one of their students home, she and a
bunch of her other sisters walked down their order and
started their own.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Renegade order of nuts.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
They called the Bread Community, and they worked with Caesar
Chavez and the Deelano Great Boycott. They did everything they
could to find justice in the world. And then she too,
just like Cookie, became central to the movement, and she
was breaking in. She was arrested a couple of times.
One time actually in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That went all wrong. A guard found them.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
They Anne was filling in on that action wasn't supposed
to be there, and when the guard came, everyone scattered
and ran down these stairs in this building that went
straight to a subway station. But she didn't know that
that plan, and so she hid under a typewriter table.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And then the dogs came. She got arrested.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
One of her compatriots, Paul Cooming, came and got himself
arrested with her so that she wouldn't be alone. And
the judge when she got to the arraignment was a
daily community who went to church every single day, and
he let them go scott free. He was looking at it,
and she said she was she was found. Oh, she
(09:09):
left the tip right a table and went to this
men's room mutility closet.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
That's right, and he's looking at it, he says, h.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
So she was just found in the men's room mutility
closet in a public building.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
What's wrong with that is the two in the morning.
But he sort of overlooked.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
That and he let her go and she was free
to raid another day.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
You being a filmmaker and you hear a story like this,
you have to be going You got to be kidding me.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Man.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
People write these stories, they don't really actually you know,
experience them.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yes, right, it's so true. It doesn't feel like it
doesn't feel like real life. Every single story that I
discovered blew my mind. I mean, these people were also
was a hilarious b is filled with coincidences or divine
intervention if you will. And see it's so cinematic from
beginning to end. It is an amazing it's an amazing
(10:01):
tale going all the way down to the Pope John
the twenty third being instrumental in ending the Cuban missile crisis,
which is not something I knew until I started researching
this story.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
See, and it's things like that. See, they always say
the Korean War is the forgotten war. I'm beginning to
think that the Vietnam War was also the forgotten war.
And everything that took place with the Cuban missile crisis,
it's not being talked about or even learned from.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Right right, and there's so much to learn. I mean,
it's sort of the sunk cost fallacy. It feels like
with the Vietnam War in particular, it became an unwinnable
quagmier so quickly, and we were there for all the
wrong reasons, starting with Cardinal Spellman in the nineteen fifties,
(10:45):
hand selecting No din Zim who became the President of
South Vietnam. And he was basically an American puppet who
was a friend of Cardinal Spellman. And so Cardinal Spellman
came to be known in Washington d c. Circles as
the owner of the Vietnam War. And they used to
call it Spelly's War. And so all these young Catholics
(11:09):
that took it upon themselves to get arrested and sabotage
the draft, basically we're doing so because they thought to themselves,
this is a Catholic war, and it's my job to
stop it.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Please don't move. There's more with Brendan Patrick Hughes coming
up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
with Brendan Patrick Hughes.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
I've got to make a confession here.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I mean, since we're going to talk about Catholics, I
got to make a confession that is is that throughout
this podcast I kept going on, You've got to get
the confidence to ask these nuns that come into your
grocery store, ask them.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Who are you?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Really, get to know who they are as people and
not what they're wearing.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yes, yes, it's so true.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Nuns especially are fascinating, fantastic, unbelievably heroic people. They get
a bad rap because of the ones that hit kids
in the knuckles of rulers fifty years ago. But nuns
are magical beings and if you every time I see one,
I feel starstruck and I say, you know, morning sister, Yeah, yeah,
(12:08):
And sometimes if she says morning back, I feel great
all day.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
To learn that father Patrick was a party animal, My god,
this is the kind of guy I want to sit
down and just have coffee with.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
He was something else.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And I have a bit of a spoiler for you.
Oh father Patrick was my dad? Oh really, yes, there is.
There's a little twist at the end of the story.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Is that how you got it so deeply involved with this?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Then? Yep, okay, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I so he was he died in nineteen eighty I
was only six years old, and this story has been
a way to get to know him. He was a
very interesting guy, and he was a party animal who
brought that party animal nature to his priesthood. He reinvented
the liturgy, and he was doing these crazy things in
(13:02):
the basement of the Paula Center in downtown Boston, where
you know, there would be modern music, interpretive dance, crazy things,
and the young people flocked to the place to be
a part of these celebrations that he built. And then
he started a tablecloth restaurant for the poor in the
basement as well. He was going to They put him
(13:23):
down to the basement when he first arrived because he
was the new guy, you know. And he decided, well,
there's a working kitchen, there's a little there's a spread.
I'm going to reinvent the liturgy. I'm going to start
a soup kitchen. But it's not going to be a
souper kitchen. It's a fancy restaurant with waiters, and I
gotta pay.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
For it all. I don't know how.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
And he thought for a while, and then he invented
the pledge walk. So you see pledge walks all over
the country. He started the first one in the United States,
which is called the Walk for Hunger, which is still
being walked. It's having its fifty fifth in a month.
And it's this crazy story of his where throughout his
trajectory as a priest he was really trying to save
(14:02):
the world and then my mother walked through the doors
and people of the first Sight, and he was zoomed.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
But you know, deep down inside though, what inspires me
about about what's happening here inside your podcast is that
they took the time to truly activate what they felt
in their hearts, and in their hearts lived God.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yes, yes, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
They read Tehar Deschardan quite a bit and and all
these other sort of the ways of living the social Gospel.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
That's how they talked about it.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
They talked about how what they were trying to do
was answer the call that they heard from the gospels
to lift up the poor and you know, feed the hungry,
and and it was an incredible thing. And the crazy
thing is they would often get in trouble for it
(14:58):
by from the hierarchy, you know, would feel uncomfortable with
this level of kind of radical do gooding, you know,
which the hierarchy at the time saw as a certain
amount of ironically hell raising, you know. Yeah, But they
were answering something that was deep in their hearts. And
they remain beams of light every time I talked to
any of them. They are They're just wonderful human beings
(15:21):
that see seeking justice as the same as breathing, you know,
And it's a beautiful thing to be able to spend
time with them.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Speaking of seeking, did they go out onto the streets
like missionaries and pull people into the movement.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
That's the fascinating thing. They sort of didn't have to
because what they were doing. I think it was a time.
So this is coming out of like Vatican two and
John the twenty third, and there was an entire generation
of young people who had grown up Catholic and felt
that it was time to bring the Church into the
modern era. And as John the twenty third said, open
(15:59):
the windows, let some fresh air, and he said when
he started Vatican Two, we aren't meant to be museum.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Keepers as priests.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
We are meant to live in the modern age. And
so this was there was already such a groundswell of
young people that wanted to channel the good they knew
they could manifest in the world based on the teachings
that had come to the church to receive that they
(16:27):
just found each other like magnets and started committing crimes.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Wow, well we can't leave out mister Paul, because I mean,
I mean, once again, this is another one of these
people that you that you are featured inside this podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yes, yes, Paul Cooming was he so was.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I'm a Celtics fan and in the oughts there was
a Celtics player named rad John Rondo who always played
with a complete disregard for his own well being, you know,
and so he he's always played like you put himself
in a hospital. And that's how Paul Cooming sought justice
in the sixties. He was a part of every action.
He got arrested over and over again. He just wanted
(17:07):
to end the war that he felt so so much
disease with, and he even went so far as to
take his draft card, rip it up, send it back
to the government with a letter saying.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
He wasn't going to take part in it.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And then the long arm in the law, of course,
caught up to him, and instead of just going to
his court date. He and his friend set up this
elaborate plan where they went to went to the courthouse,
and he hid in the Paula Center in downtown Boston,
and they had this standoff with the FBI and the police,
(17:43):
who were all Irish Catholics just like them, and they
knew that if they hid Paul in a church, the
police and the FBI were going to have a really
hard time just bursting into the church to arrest him.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And it turned into this.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Wild three day arts festival thing that It was just
a crazy, crazy thing that they did. They were with
Paul taking the lead as one of the bravest souls
I've ever encountered.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
They were unstoppable and just whacky.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Did the Catholic Church ever have to rein them in
because this just seems like the greatest group of people
who really wanted change, peaceful change.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yes, right, the Catholic Church tried several times to rein
them in, and actually I will say this they over
time the Catholic Church after John the twenty third died
in nineteen sixty three and Paul the sixth took over.
Paul the sixth was not as much of a fan
of Vatican two, and he started to claw back a
(18:43):
lot of the reforms, you know, changing from Latin to
the vernacular. That stayed, but there were many things that
they were thinking, you know, female priests, priests had married,
birth control, all sorts of things that my father and
many of his cohort as priests thought the church was
headed towards. And it's sort of modernization folded back in
(19:04):
on itself, so that by the early seventies the church
had reverted, except for the Latin, basically back to its
sort of previous self. And this was disappointing for this
class of priests and nuns, and many of them left
the clergy and wound up getting married to each other.
And I actually ended up growing up on a commune
(19:28):
that was all ex priest monks.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And really, oh, man, man, did you've got to come
back to this show anytime in the future. I love
how you were taking history and you are turning it
into stories. And I've always believed share your story or
someone will write it for you.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
That's such a great way to put it. It's so true,
it's really true.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
And this one I had a huge sort of I
was in my head about telling the story for a
long time because it is also secretly my origin story,
but it is one that I, for lack of a
better phrase, have been I'm pregnant with for a long time,
you know, and so finally having issued it into the
world is an incredible feeling. So I really appreciate you
(20:10):
saying that, Arrow, and it's a wonderful time to spend
time with you.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Ex will you be brilliant today? Okay, sir, thank
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You very much for you as well.
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