Journal News
A news bulletin for E-mail subscribers from Christians Evangelizing Catholics
E-mail: cecmotc@juno.com Website: www.dodone.org
December 17, 2001
Rapping priest changes young hearts, from The Record, 12/13/01
By JENNIFER DEL VECHIO Catholic News Service
A rap-singing, gray-habit wearing Franciscan priest with a funky gray beret is changing hearts with his songs about chastity, abortion and suicide.
Or as the teenagers attending Father Stan Fortuna's concert at the Dec. 6-9 National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis put it: "The Spirit is moving."
In his songs, an eclectic blend of rap, hip-hop, traditional and jazz melodies, Father Fortuna gets to the heart of the matter.
All that sin, all that junk, throw it out, he said. Got a problem with looking at pornography on the Internet? Father Fortuna has the solution. Bring the computer into the living room where Mom, Dad or Aunt Lucy passes through, he said.
Have a problem saying no to sex? Then say yes to sex, he said.
But not so fast. You can only say yes to sex once you say yes to Christ and God's plan for sex to happen in the sacrament of matrimony, he said.
The priest's songs had teenagers bopping in their seats and soon taking to the aisles to dance. Some said the songs' messages have pierced through the half-truths and mixed messages from popular culture.
Amanda Bevis, 17, from Littleton, Colo., knows Father Fortuna's music has helped her life.
She never thought too much about abortion or why it was wrong until hearing Father Fortuna's song about it. "The song touched my heart," she said, and led her to pray outside an abortion clinic.
Father Fortuna told the teenagers he knows they have problems and that many of those problems stem from family breakdowns, such as divorce. But he told them, not to let that "get them down," and to look to the one who can always lift them up: Christ.
Father Fortuna has released nearly a dozen CDs and has a new book, U Got 2 Believe. He joined the Capuchin Franciscan order when he was 23, later joining the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Originally from Yonkers, N.Y., Father Fortuna, 43, would sneak into nightclubs to play bass guitar when he was a teen-ager.,.'
He called himself a "pagan Catholic" when he was growing up, defining it as someone who would go to church on Sunday but wasn't living the faith.
"I drew a line and made the rules," he said. "When I broke the rules, I rewrote the rules."
It was a book on St. Francis that got him interested in his faith and soon he began attending a Bible study and found that the life he was living wasn't that appealing anymore.
"There is a plan," he said. 'The Holy Father said holiness is the divine plan for every baptized person.. . . Confession is the bounce-back sacrament and combined with the Eucharist that makes us a bounce-back people."