As I prepare things for an imminent move to Texas (occasional priestly rotations have always been a healthy pastoral praxis in the Church) I can’t help regretting some of the things I missed in my current home base, Pittsburgh. One of those missed opportunities was to get inside the former locally famous Decade Music Club. Although the Decade closed in 1995 and is currently closed, the number of impressive musicians that played there in its 23 year history (two decades) always called to me to get inside and vicariously be a part of that cultural history. Strange desire, I know, but we all have our weird habits (one of mine is to let my imagination go slightly wild inside abandoned buildings). By the way, among the artists who played the Decade were the Pretenders, the Romantics, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Ramones, the Police, U2, Bruce Springsteen, and Wooden Nickel (friends of mine). Rumor has it that at some point, the sound man died, and his ashes were spread under the stage. Creepy for sure, and some bands refused to play there after that.
What does all this have to do with St. Irenaeus, today’s saint? Well, he’s the martyr-bishop who’s famous for Christian unity (declared doctor of unity in the Church in 2022) and for the first Catholic catechism: Against Heresies. He died in about the year 200, so one might say there couldn’t have been many heresies yet, but guess what? There were plenty. Most of them had to do with a denial of the everlasting truth of the Gospel and the permanence of Church teaching, given to us by Jesus himself. In our age of rampant neo-gnosticism and indifference about the permanence of the Faith and the Church teaching, we are well advised to look to St. Irenaeus for inspiration. Great music venues, like the Decade in Pittsburgh, alas, come and go, but Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and His Church is designed to proclaim just that fact, and no other fad, no matter how many decades it might last.
Let's Repent! 