What a rollicking band of Billboard charting bluegrass-loving friars taught me about a life of faith
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Anytime I hear the hauntingly beautiful song,”Mr. Tanner,” by Harry Chapin, I struggle to keep a dry eye. In it, Martin Tanner is a launderer and baritone with an otherworldly voice. His passion for singing dies when critics cruelly pan his professional debut, crushing his spirit.
In August, my eyes welled with tears of another kind – joyful ones – as I heard The Hillbilly Thomists perform live in concert for the first time. This sensational bluegrass band, which took its name from Southern Gothic fiction writer Flannery O’Connor’s delightful description of her own creative worldview, is comprised entirely of friars from the Order of Preachers.
For 50 weeks of the year, the clerics humbly live out their priestly vocations as, for instance, university chaplains, a parochial vicar and a bestselling author on
