Television Vatican II in living color, filled with
promises
By ARTHUR JONES
Catholic parents! Come Sept. 18, switch the telly on and order the
pizza in: Pope John XXIII is back -- thanks to Barney.
Thirty-five years ago -- when Barneys creator was a tot --
John XXIII was a television star. And the workings of 2,400 Catholic bishops
was a saga that warranted daily headlines and nightly reports.
Filled with today-and-tomorrow promises, all this history comes to
public television Sept. 18 at 9 p.m. EST (check your local listings, as they
say) as Reflections on Vatican II.
So pastors and directors of religious education, push the word.
Catholic teachers, assign television-watching as homework this night -- and
insist on a written report. Vatican II, the sequel, is going to remind America,
especially its Catholics, what a beautiful church it intended to build. And
what a fine universal church is a-borning.
Glimpses of that church are everywhere in this two-hour
special.
And if the on-screen celebration of Catholic
captivates, encourages, reassures, catechizes, evangelizes and explodes at
times with sheer joy -- wait till you see the Masses in Africa -- the story
behind the documentary is a tale unto itself.
In one sense, its also a story of a personal mini-conversion
-- about a guy who started out to make the documentary because he didnt
want conservative Catholics to steal Vatican II. And then found they
hadnt.
The tale starts in a small print shop on Ashland Street in
Chicago, next door to Loyola University Press. It was 1962, the year the Second
Vatican Council (1962-65) began.
Richard C. Leach, of Loyola Academy and Loyola University, one day
to be a father of nine, was running the Argus Press his dad founded in
1922.
That summer the Leaches took their five children on a trip west.
From San Francisco to Chicago is a very long drive with five children in
the car, said Leach, and my mind went to audio recordings. I became
obsessed with the idea of audio recordings playing in automobiles.
He discussed it at his next weekly lunch with Jesuit Fr. John
Amberg, Loyola Press publisher, and went to Illinois Tech where audio
tape was developed and learned about the mechanics of it.
Amberg had another idea. In those days religious, especially nuns,
had table readings at one or two meals a day. Why not, he asked Leach, offer
them tapes on topics theyd enjoy?
Leach wrote off to 3,500 convents and received an 80 percent
response. The respondents said, in huge numbers, that they were deeply
interested in Vatican II, then underway in Rome, and wanted to be kept current.
Those tapes theyd buy.
Leach wrote to the U.S. Vatican experts, periti, asking if
he could put a microphone in front of them when they came back to America to
give talks.
No response. Nothing.
Leach recalls that early in October 1963, Amberg called and told
him about a nun in our basement with a whole group of audio tape
recorders copying tapes like crazy.
It was Sr. Frances Borgia, religious education director for the
Chicago archdiocese, copying tapes from liturgical conferences because, said
Leach, on the first Sunday of Advent 1963, the altar was going to be
turned around, the Mass was going to be in English and none of the hierarchy
had bothered to explain the changes.
A School Sister of St. Francis, Borgia had liturgists like
Benedictine Fr. Godfrey Diekmann -- six talks on three tapes -- to distribute
to the 400-some parishes in the Catholic diocese of Chicago.
He and Borgia struck a deal and soon he was marketing Study
the Liturgy, $5.95 a package through a new little company, Argus
Communications. When he wrote back to the periti with copies of his
brochure, his mail was answered.
Soon there were Vatican II tapes. Then came biblical studies and
psychological studies tapes.
The tapes led to books by priests such as Barnabas Ahern and
Bernard Cook, Bernard Häring and Gregory Baum. He even persuaded his
Loyola Academy classmate, Jesuit Fr. John Powell, to write a book called Why
Am I Afraid to Love?
It was the Vietnam era and the peace movement. Those were
carefree days with regard to graphics. We decorated our books, broke all the
rules, Leach said. They started a poster company that in the decades
since has sold more than 1 billion posters.
One Leach child had a slight dyslexia problem. Leach investigated,
discovered the Association for the Other Child, and started taping their
material because no educational publisher would handle it. Hed started
another company, Developmental Learning Materials. When the Great Society
directed millions of dollars into special education, Developmental Learning
Materials grew exponentially, said Leach, and outgrew the premises in
Leachs four scattered Chicago locations.
Leach consolidated the growing firm in its present Allen, Texas,
location.
Then in the 1980s, things turned around. Vatican II fervor
kind of died off, Catholic publishers and Catholic book stores virtually
vanished. And I was trying anything I could to pump life into it. He sold
Developmental Learning Materials, grouped his Catholic publishing into a new
firm, Tabor, and by now had a nice printing operation in Dallas
going.
He also had a small TV studio for what Leach calls
industrial videos, talking heads of the Catholic talent whose books
and audio tapes Leach had produced.
About 1988, Leachs daughter-in-law, Sheryl Stamps Leach, had
the idea for a character named Barney. Leach had to be careful because money
was tight -- Texas was in a disastrous oil slump and his bankers canceled all
loans west of the Mississippi.
Barneys firm, the Lyons Group, named for
Leachs mother, was started out of Leachs back pocket. The videos
were marketed through kiddie stores.
In Connecticut, a 3-year-old kept pestering her parents for a
Barney tape. When they yielded, the girl kept playing it and playing until one
evening her father watched it.
The dad, Larry Rifkin, was program director at the Connecticut PBS
station, CP-TV. He began airing Barney and Friends. Because of
Barney -- and Rifkin -- PBS is now airing Reflections on Vatican
II.
By the early 1990s, said Leach, he was financially liquid for the
first time in his life. At home in video, he felt confident attempting on film
what hed tried to do three decades earlier on audio: capture the spirit
and meaning of Vatican II.
The company was now RCL Enterprises. The printing business alone
grossed $50 million annually, and Leach began the Vatican II project like
a crusade -- to defend Vatican II against conservative movements that seemed to
be more interested in reversing the work of Vatican II. I felt that my crusade
was to stop that reversal and renew interest in Vatican II. He wanted
the good guys to stop the bad guys. He brought in Sherri Revor, a
Chicagoan, a Catholic and an experienced MTV producer in Chicago and Hollywood.
But something happened to Leach early on.
Listening to the hours and hours of interviews of the
important participants and reflecting on them, I found I didnt sense any
feeling of anger or abandonment -- even from those sources where you know you
would get it, said Leach. The sources where I expected to find
hostility did not have that hostility.
I listened for hour after hour for invective and betrayal
and when I didnt find it, I had to reorient myself and say, Forget
the good guys-bad guys. Go to the work and focus on the work, he
said. And thats what we did. Those tapes did give me a turn -- not
to look for bad guys -- and I was very happy about it.
As the project neared completion, Leach hoped he might sell 2,000
sets of the five-video package, which retails at $100, a small return on
the $2.5 million investment that in three years had sent camera teams to eight
countries to conduct 168 interviews. To date only 1,000 sets have been sold.
Leachs summary of the project?
What struck me was two huge factors. No. 1, how unlikely a
person John XXIII was. In every way. He got something from the Holy Spirit, but
he hadnt had a clue where it was going. No. 2 -- I hate this saying --
you know, if its not broken, dont fix it. We had anything but a
broken church. Our church was invincible in the early 60s. So why on
earth mess it up? Again, those two things told me that this definitely was the
intervention, I would say, of the Holy Spirit.
Leach, through Resources for Christian Living, is now into Vatican
II books, with authors such as theologian Bill Huebschs Vatican II in
Plain English. Theres an encyclopedic CD-Rom; symposiums (100 nationwide
already); talks with clips from the videos; Vatican II study guides, 22,000
packets mailed free to parishes; and a Vatican II Web page.
Leach has other Catholic interests, other directions, too. He is
helping to revamp religious education programs for children who attend public
schools (They have a 50 percent annual teacher turnover). And a
musical, Poverello, about Francis and Clare, opens in Assisi in
December 1999.
Poverello is likely to head to Broadway or become a
traveling U.S. show. We travel a Barney show, so we have two years of
experience, Leach said.
Same Barney -- whatever ones views of the purple creature --
who is bringing John XXIII back to millions of Americans.
The presentation is well-balanced. The Tridentine Rite lovers get
their turn along with Frs. Richard McBrien and Andrew Greeley and Sr. Mary Luke
Tobin and Patty Crowley.
Tape it. This is the best Catholic educational tool to come along
since Vatican II itself.
Arthur Jones is NCR editor at large.
National Catholic Reporter, September 11,
1998
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