Black Hawk College - Sauk Yearbook (Moline, IL)

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SAUK INTERVIEW: FATHER JAMES GR BB a candid comfemalion with the controverfial clergyman and peace advocate Condemned by many of his fellow clergyman but followed by a lost generation of young people and adults, Father James Grubb has emerged as one of the Quad-Cities' truly controversial figures. He has successfully combined the ancient precepts of Christianity with modern music in a 12:00 Folk Mass each Sunday noon which may well have the largest attendance of any area church service. In a commu- nity where apathy is the norm, Father Grubb has become controversial by exercising his basic right to speak out against the hypocrisy of Christian society. In an effort to learn more about this man, SAUK sent a group to talk with Father Grubb away from the pulpit and in the privacy of his home in St. Anthony's rectory in Davenport. SAUK: Father, could you give us a brief autobiog- raphy? GRUBB: I was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa and lived there 'till I was four. And then moved to Des Moines and lived there all my life-uneventful type of life. I ioined the Church when I was about seventeen and then I went into the Army. And it was while I was in the Army that I thought I would study for the priesthood and, as a matter of fact, did. And, let's say, I was never too certain I was going to stay. I would say the first four years I was never completely unpacked. If I felt like leaving, then I would take off. I went to school at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri for the most part. I took part of my Philosophy at Notre Dame and I was ordained in 1955. I was sent to Washington, Iowa and I was the assistant there for eleven years-small town of about 5,000 or 6,000 people. We were the only Catholic congregation in the whole area but I liked it pretty well-in tact I liked it very well. I came here in July, 1966. That's a brief history. SAUK: I-low did the idea for the 12:00 Mass origi- nate? GRUBB: Well, it seems to me a number of people find going to church extremely dull and many of them, if they would admit it, would say that they would rather not go at all. And the only reason a lot of people go to Mass is because it is the Church's law that you have to. And if the Church decreed a moratorium on sin, for example, for a year I think they would find out that the church is not exactly packed to overflow. So the idea was to somehow make it meaningful and to in- volve people. And so the first thing we did was quite simple. We simply changed the type of hymn we had. We used folk hymns and we had three nuns who played the guitar. They did this and I think gradually things began to change. I thinkthat really did it. I decided one day, a year ago last summer, that I needed new vestments for the twelve o'clock Mass, that everything at the twelve o'clock Mass should be directed to the idea of ioy. And I was discussing with different guys what the vestments would be and I decided on burlap with peace symbol and the flowers and finally I had them made. The kid who made them was down today and we were talking about it because after I wore the vestments people began to talk more about the Mass and began coming down to see the freak . So the newspaper did a story on it. People for the most part are really so un- interested in other people and it seems to me we have placed the emphasis of religion on My God and Me -this type of thing, you know-and this won't work. That God is both up with this act of creation and that we find God, generally speaking, in and through each other or we don't find Him at all. You can read Scriptures till you're ready to drop but, unless you find the teaching of Christ living in someone, it is com- pletely meaningless. They have no use for me, absolutely none, and the strange thing is that most of them have never heard me talk. I don't work well when l'm hassled. Almost always when an article in the paper comes out about me, every nut in the country gets on the telephone to call me up and give me hell.