The Last Catholic
in America
By John R. Powers

312 Pages • $12.95

The Last Catholic in America
By John R. Powers

About the Author  •  Links about the Author

John R. Powers’s novel The Last Catholic in America reveals how the distinct culture of 1950s American Catholicism left an indelible mark on the millions of children who passed through the Catholic schools of the time. The culture’s unique customs, odd characters, and vivid sights, sounds, and smells vanished with surprising speed in the 1960s and early ’70s. But many of those uniformed schoolchildren were taking notes, and they turned out to be talented writers. In fact, so many of them wrote colorful coming-of-age books and plays that the “growing up Catholic” memoir has become a recognized literary genre.

The Last Catholic in America, published in 1973, was the first of these books. It is also one of the funniest, and certainly the sweetest. It is the first of three coming-of-age novels that Powers wrote in the 1970s, drawing on his childhood in the intensely Catholic subculture of South Side Chicago. (The other two novels, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? and The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God, are also published in the Loyola Classics series.)

The Last Catholic in America records the elementary school experiences of Eddie Ryan, the author’s alter ego. Powers’s mood darkened as the series went on. Eddie becomes rather sly and cynical in high school (Black Patent Leather Shoes), and the hero of Unoriginal Sinner is afflicted by sarcasm and angst. But the Eddie Ryan of Last Catholic is warm and funny. Aspects of growing up Catholic that angered and scandalized others just make Eddie laugh. Consider, for example, his reflections on his first confession:

I had performed admirably. I had committed a proper variety of sins, just about the same kind that our nun had used in the dry runs. About the right number, too. Not so few that it would have seemed I had added wrong nor so many that I couldn’t keep track of them with my fingers. I had handled myself well as a sinner.

Eddie is a sharp observer, and his perception seems to grow acuter as he proceeds through grade school. In eighth grade, officially a teenager at age thirteen, he notices how ill at ease the priest in charge of the Teen Club seems to be:

Father Vendel sneaked into the classroom, coughed apologetically for being alive, and placed some loose-leaf papers neatly on the lectern that he had brought along with him. . . .
           
Ever since Father Myers had made Father Vendel the moderator of the newly formed Teen Club, Father Vendel had felt obligated to keep his gray hair in a crew cut and wear white socks and penny loafers that stuck out obtrusively from beneath his cassock.
           
Everyone liked Father Vendel because he was a pretty nice guy. I liked him because he was a very sincere guy. I can like anyone who’s sincere. He always believed in whatever he was doing even though, most of the time, he didn’t know what he was doing, which was another reason why I liked him. I could identify with him.

Throughout The Last Catholic in America, Powers has great fun with the excesses and absurdities of the Catholic system of the 1950s, but he doesn’t mock it. The system had mostly disappeared by the time Powers wrote in 1973, and he seems to recognize that something important was fading away. The urban Catholic subculture was an immensely effective way to transmit a system of values and a way of life—and it taught about serious matters, such as how to save your soul.

Eddie Ryan sees that too. One evening, he and his buddies are discussing their tyrannical old pastor’s terrifying sermon on hell.

“You know,” said Depki as he popped the Pepsi bottle from his mouth, “what if Father O’Reilly’s wrong?”
           
“What do you mean?” I asked.
           
“What if he’s wrong about the whole thing?”
           
“I don’t follow you,” I said. Depki shrugged and took another bite of his Twinkie.
           
“Yeah,” said Johnny Hellger, “but what if he’s right.”

Back to top

About the Author (click here to learn more about this author)

John R. Powers was born in 1945 on the South Side of Chicago. He earned a BA in sociology from Loyola University Chicago and an MA and a PhD in communications from Northwestern University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Studs Terkel, a Chicago radio personality and writer known for his oral histories (Hard Times, The Good War). Powers was a professor of speech and performing arts at Northeastern Illinois University for six years. He also created and hosted a number of specials for Chicago public television during this time.

Powers’s writing career began at the age of sixteen, when the Chicago Tribune published a column he penned. Years later, he started writing about growing up Catholic during the 1950s and 1960s, because, he says, no one else had.

“You write what you know about,” he says. “No one had ever written a book about the culture of growing up Catholic. I wanted to write a humorous social portrait of Catholicism in the mid-twentieth century.”

Powers’s stories first appeared in the form of articles written for Chicago magazine. The novels followed in quick succession: The Last Catholic in America (1973), Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? (1975), and The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God (1977). He has written one other novel, The Junk-Drawer Corner-Store Front-Porch Blues (1992), as well as Odditude: Finding the Passion for Who You Are and What You Do (2007).

Powers’s “fictionalized memoirs” of growing up Catholic have found life beyond the printed page. In 1979, a musical production of Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? opened in Chicago and ran there for three years. Powers produced the Chicago show full-time, as well as other productions of the play in other major cities. Powers has also produced and starred in a one-man show called Life’s Not Fair . . . So What?

John Powers and his wife, JaNelle, have two daughters, Jacey and Joy. He lives in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and is a motivational speaker. He speaks to about ninety companies, professional organizations, and community groups a year.

Back to top

Links for John R. Powers

John Powers’s Web site

Back to top