Last week, as one of the final acts of my tenure hosting the podcast Unorthodox, I took a road trip with producer Robert Scaramuccia, who was producing some sort of farewell piece about me (as I type this, I still don’t know what that piece will be). Because I talk so much about my childhood (some would say too much), Robert thought it would be fun to visit the homeland, Springfield, Mass., and meet some of the people who made me what I am, people I talk about on the podcast. So we drove north on I-91, stopped in to see my parents, drove by the house I grew up in (two miles from where my parents live now), swung by Bob’s Hobbies and Collectibles, the store on Dickinson Street where I used to get my baseball cards (Bob sold it, it’s under new ownership; hi, Carl!), right next to the late, great B-Kool soft serve window (which has vanished without a trace—I dare you to find it anywhere on the web), then doubled back down I-91 to pull off and drive around the grounds of my high school.
And as we were driving southbound, just north of Hartford, I saw the most amazing sight. In the lane next to us was an old Saturn Ion—had to be old, because they stopped making the Ion in 2007—but not just any Saturn Ion. It was painted all over, as if it were a delivery car for a drugstore or a Domino’s Pizza. But instead of delivering Viagra or a pepperoni pie, this sedan was delivering salvation.
As you can see in the photo above, a screen grab from a video Robert shot as I screamed in delight (“Take a picture! That’s Father Ed!”), this Ion was the professional warrior-for-Christ mobile of Father Ed Nadolny. The Father Ed Nadolny.
Now, Fr. Ed is not famous. But if you drive the I-91 corridor through Connecticut much, you know his billboards:
As you can see, Fr. Ed doesn’t just tell you that Jesus loves you—he gives you his private phone number, so you can call and talk about it. These billboards have been up for a good decade or so, and I have been meaning to call Fr. Ed for years. I never got around to it. And now here he was, driving next to me on I-91.
Robert called the number on the side of the car, and we saw through Fr. Ed’s window as he answered the call, on what appeared to be a flip phone. I spoke to him briefly, said I was driving next to him (I think he took it in the metaphorical, God-is-my-copilot sense, because he didn’t look to see us driving right next to him), then asked if his billboards ever brought people to Jesus. “Oh, yes!” he said. But before he could explain, he pulled off an exit, we lost visual contact, and he said he had to go. Not wanting to cause the crash that killed Fr. Ed, I let him go.
Since seeing his car in action, I have wanted to learn more about Fr. Ed. Turns out he was profiled in The New York Times back in 1982. From “Portrait of an Activist Priest”:
The Rotary Club of Springfield, Mass., convened for its weekly luncheon a week ago. The members dined, sang several songs and then quieted for the special presentation, entitled “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About a Priest but Were Afraid to Ask.'”
The priest was the Rev. Edmund S. Nadolny, the controversial director of the Office of Radio and Television of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford.
Father Nadolny read the first of several questions submitted by the audience. “Why don't priests get married?” he intoned. “Because they know better.”
The hall howled, and when the din died, Father Nadolny gave a serious explanation about duty to the Lord. “Next question,” he said, unfolding the piece of paper, which read, “What ideas do you have to break the poverty cycle?” He paused, leaned into the microphone and declared, “As the Pope has said, the arms race is a direct attack on the poor.”
He then said that nations spend $50 billion more on arms than on human needs and accused the United States of complicity in the loss of lives in Lebanon for arming Israeli and Arab forces. He also defended himself for vowing not to bless a Navy warship in the July 4 parade in East Hartford, and then asked, “Why can't America be No. 2? We've got enough arms. We are part of God's global family and we don’t have to be No. 1 in anything but love.”
[H]e ended his comments with an admonition for the committee of bishops that is considering a policy on the proposed bilateral nuclear arms freeze.
“I hope what they do say,” he said, “and I pray what they do say, is that the arms race is immoral. That arms are immoral. Immoral to make, immoral to use, immoral to intend to use.”
The Rotarians rose in a standing ovation. Several came forward to shake Father Nadolny's hand. But others muttered, “I didn't like it” and “What was that for?” And four had walked out during the presentation.
“Only four?” Father Nadolny said, apprised of the tally. “That's not too bad for me.”
Father Nadolny quite likely is, other than Archbishop John H. Whealon of Hartford, the most public Roman Catholic in Connecticut. As the director of the archdiocesan Office of Radio and Television, he prepares 10,000 radio programs and 3,000 television programs annually, ranging from masses to audience participation to spiritual and secular music, and he appears on many of them. The broadcasts are on four television stations and more than a dozen radio stations.
What’s interesting to me here is that it’s not what I was expecting. Fr. Ed seems to be a lefty (or lefty-ish), anti-war priest, interested in talking about poverty, unafraid to alienate the Rotarians. We tend to associate the kind of Christianity that involves billboard evangelism with a politically right-ward Catholicism, that’s less interested in social justice. This is unfair: all kinds of Catholics, not just “liberal” ones, take poverty and arms seriously. But there is a rough correlation, and it is a surprise that the billboard guy is also the anti-war guy.
But hey, good on him. Fr. Ed sounds like an interesting cat, not least because he comes to the billboards through TV and radio, so he is obviously a bit of a promoter, a Catholic carnie of the first order. Probably a very fun guy to have a beer with.
Do you have a Fr. Ed, billboard evangelist, on your highway? What does this make you think of? Write to me at markoppenheimer@substack.com — many thanks.