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During Bellairs' final year in Minnesota, something was brewing in back Chicago: those stories of his from the year before about St. Fidgeta had never really left the mind of Marilyn Fitschen, who began doodling a few drawings of a pudgy little girl. Who the caricature resembled was up for debate: Bellairs said Fidgeta looked like a baby Winston Churchill, others thought it resembled John himself. Regardless, the drawings spurred Bellairs to begin typing out a story, eventually giving a copy to Dale Fitschen to edit and Marilyn to finish her drawings.
| St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies was written mainly for Catholics with material drawn from my Irish-Catholic childhood. The pieces are satiric and meant to attack abuses within the church. They are also supposed to be funny. |
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John Bellairs |
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When Fitschens thought everything was complete, they sent the manuscript to the Thomas More Association in Chicago, in the hopes that they would consider it for publication in their Catholic literary journal, The Critic.
Dan Herr, the publisher, responded that 'against his better judgment' they would print St. Fidgeta.
Like all aspects of American culture during the 1960s, religion, particularly the Catholic Church, was undergoing changes. In 1962, Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, thereby ushering a sense of reform throughout the church: prayers in church were no longer said in Latin, the priest no longer faced away from the congregation when performing communion, and an extra effort was made to get closer to Protestant denominations. However by the time Bellairs began writing early draft of the Fidgeta article, Pope John XXIII was gone and his replacement, Pope Paul VI, was more conservative about making changes. As a result St. Fidgeta reflected a feeling of disillusionment that many Catholics had, hinting even that Bellairs had become a bit less devout than he had been growing up. Patricia Thomas suspects Bellairs tried to keep his true perceptions to himself as much as possible but that on occasion they bubbled up and escaped.
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One of Bellairs' students recalls such an outburst. Sonia Gernes, now a member of the English faculty at Notre Dame, vividly recalls being read preliminary sections of St. Fidgeta in class: "I had the sense that this was a rather bold move, since it satirizes both Catholic traditions and persons at St. Teresa's, namely Sister Camille Bowe, who was the president at the time, but that he didn't have anything to lose. I thought the sections were hilarious, and hearing them was a rather deliciously guilty pleasure for a young nun at the time."
When "St. Fidgeta: Her Life and Amazing Times" made it's appearance in the June-July 1965 edition of The Critic, it was printed just as it was submitted with one exception.
Days before the issue was to be published, Marilyn Fitschen received a call from editor, Joel Wells, concerned that a little slip of her pen produced what may have been taken as representing a female genital organ ("we didn't use the word 'clitoris' in those days," notes Fitschen) and the little angel pushing Fidgeta's swing was deemed unsuitable for the cover of the journal. Fitschen offered to edit the drawing but Wells instead asked if the art department had permission to alter the drawing. Thinking they would simply whiteout the offending line, Fitschen, Bellairs, and others were surprised to find the cherub wearing ink-black shorts.
On the first page of The Critic was is a section called "With Humble Pride," a kind of preview of what's inside, with a paragraph on Bellairs, complete with the familiar photo as seen on the dust jacket and the illustration of St. Fidgeta as seen on page 9 of the book:
"The young lady whose likeness appears at right is Saint Fidgeta. She is the highly fictional saint whose 'Life and Amazing Times' are documented this month by writer John Bellairs and Chicago artist Marilyn Fitschen. Mr. Bellairs is a product of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago's graduate school. For the past two years he has been teaching English at the College of St. Teresa, Winona, Minnesota. He admits that the supplications in the 'Litany of St. Fidgeta' represent his own actual childhood fears generated by overexposure to the grislier aspects of the lives of the saints. What inspired Mrs. Fitschen's drawings is more difficult to say - we were afraid to ask."
Marilyn says that The Critic was a bit conservative at that time but not as conservative as the national Catholic weekly, America. The editor, Father Thurston N. Davis, SJ said the article was, "...a sick, six-page illustrated piece...waste(d) space on triviality, irreverence, or a combination of both." Other reviews followed:
I would like to compliment Mr. John Bellairs on his humorous story "Saint Fidgeta" which was printed in your June/July issue. It was an excellent satire. I thoroughly believe it should be required reading for all teaching orders of nuns.
Louis J. Iasillo
Cliffside Park, New Jersey
Being a junior in a Catholic women's college and having received all of my education from the parochial school system, I was highly amused by the rich satire and wit contained in Mr. Bellair's [their punctuation, not mine] "Saint Fidgeta."
Geraldine O'Brien
West Orange, New Jersey
Father Thurston N. Davis S.J., has labeled your "Saint Fidgeta" article correctly (America 6/19): "sick." The ridiculing prayer formulas come close to blasphemy. I am sorry you or the author felt you had to give that kind of a jolt to confidence in the intercession of the saints, or even confidence in prayer. If, as indicated, it was supposed to be a jibe at hagiographers, it misses the point completely. And seriously, what writer of saints' lives today uses this kind of material?
Mark Hegener, O.F.M.
Chicago, Illinois
Then there was Fortunata Caliri who Marilyn says some thought was actually John writing a letter to protest - "that's the kind of name John made up all the time."
You do your readers a disservice and an insult when you publish this thing called "Saint Fidgeta" in the June/July Critic. It is vulgar, in bad taste, and extremely unfunny. I would call it "sick" except for the fact that to do so would relieve you and the author of responsibility.
Fortunata Caliri
Lowell, Massachusetts
While reviews in the press were one thing, Bellairs' popularity with his former employers back in Winona may have hit a snag. Still, John Murphy does not think St. Fidgeta was a big factor in John's leaving. He says the nuns were mostly liberal and that while St. Fidgeta probably did upset somebody, this sort of thing happens in every crowd - someone doesn't like something.
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