Our suburban Rochester parish lost a great man last week, so ‘Puter thought he’d say a few words in this space about the loss of a man whose impact on our world will never be fully measured or understood.

If you’d like to see the details of Father Hogan’s life, you can see them here, in his official obituary. There, you’ll see the nuts and bolts of a life, the minutiae and details that some believe are the measure of a man. For some, the fact that Father Hogan was personal secretary to Abp. Fulton J. Sheen alone would signify a great man. But it’s not that simple. It never is.

‘Puter’d like to dwell for a moment on the man that print cannot capture, the man who ‘Puter knew as a passing acquaintance, and occasional confessor. Mrs. ‘Puter knew him much better, and wept openly at the news of Father’s death. Father Hogan died, appropriately, on the Catholic feast day of the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Father Hogan was in all senses the stereotype of an Irish priest of late 1940s vintage. Heck, if Hollywood needed a priest for a role, they could not have done better than Father Hogan. He was tall, handsome and spry, with a fantastic sense of humor, always needling but never, ever cruel. He lived my faith as few I have ever known have. Father Hogan is a priest’s priest. He was the sort of man who made you consider encouraging your sons to consider the priesthood. His good nature, his unfailing kindness, his patience and his steadfast faith gave witness to Christ in manner akin to the saints. Father Hogan was a man who walked the walk, and in so doing, encouraged those of us to be truer to our faith. That, my friends, is in ‘Puter’s humble opinion, the best a priest can do: through acts and words encourage others to live our faith more fully.

As ‘Puter said earlier, words fail to convey this man’s quiet dignity, immense faith and inner strength. ‘Puter hopes his meager effort herein has given you a sense of the loss we have all suffered, whether or not we knew Father Hogan personally.

Requiescat in pace, Father Hogan.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.