Dateline Dayton — The Catholic church and its religious have been under fire for some time.

I’m not about to defend either the church or its religious. I realize the church has made some bad decisions in handling situations over the years. There were, and are, some bad priests and religious.

What I do want to share with you is my experiences with a priest in the small town of Piqua.

Since I lived only a short distance from our church and school, the parking lot and school grounds were a regular hangout. Many hours were spent there playing basketball, in particular h-o-r-s-e and handball.

Both the basketball and handball courts were outside, in the fresh air, where we spent most of our time back in the “good old days” before we had television and computers.

Once my buddies and I reached the age that we were able to become servers for Mass, we were around the church even more. We were a group that could always be counted on to be there for our scheduled week to serve. In addition, we would check to make sure there were servers for the Tuesday evening special devotion, even if it wasn’t our week to serve.

I must interject here that Pauline and I used the Tuesday evening service as our meeting place during the week once we began dating. And yes, we did attend the service.

It was customary at that time for the priest to take Holy Communion to the sick and elderly who couldn’t make it to church. Many times on Saturday, when it was my week to serve, the other server and I would go with Father Lizza to make his visits. We weren’t allowed to speak to him until after he had completed his rounds — out of respect for the Blessed Sacrament. While he was visiting the shut-ins, we waited in the car. On the way back to church, we would enjoy some lively conversation.

It wasn’t unusual for us to end up at the rectory (the priest’s home) after playing basketball or handball, for water served by the housekeeper and possibly some television. None of us, at that time, had a television in our home. So this was a real treat.

Never, never even once, were we every confronted with anything inappropriate during our visits. We were very fortunate to have dedicated, caring priests serving the parishes in Piqua. While in junior high, Father Lizza was transferred to Cincinnati and we were devastated. Three of my best friends and I made a bus trip to Cincinnati to visit him. I remember we stayed in a motel close to his parish, and he took us to a Cincinnati Reds ball game.

Not once did he come into our motel room when dropping us off, picking us up, either for the game, a visit his parish or when he took us back to the bus station. He told us, he didn’t want anyone seeing him coming out our room, as they might construe something inappropriate was taking place. In all honesty, I doubt if any of us knew back then what he was really talking about.

Now I must admit I am going back almost 60 years, but what I can tell you, is, today you can still find riest’s like Father Lizza and the other Piqua Priests The problem is, in today’s society you only hear about the bad ones even though that percentage is very small. The really sad thing is, probably none of them can accomplish what Father Lizza was able to do back in the 1950s, provide four young boys with a great memory.

Some things were just better in the good old days.

Mr. Hennessey may be contacted at pmhenn@sbcglobal.net