Father Mascari

Fr. Mascari, O.P.
Theology Teacher at Fenwick High School

It took a long time but by my senior year I began to feel like I belonged at Fenwick.

Mascari's Theology 4 class was as engaging as Peddicord's class but he was a bit more apt to joke with us. Still, the course material was no joking matter. We pored over details the Council of Trent and Vatican One and Two and were obliged to learn all the names and stories of the major players from the last five hundred or so years of Catholic church history. From the first day of class onward Mascari called out details we would need to know for our final exam. He made explicit on a daily basis that if we were unable to pass that test we would not pass his class.

Somewhere along the way Wojtowicz and I compiled our extensive class notes into a thick study guide. The whispered anxieties of fellow Theology 4 students led us to discover that many would be willing to buy copies from us. We settled on a sale price of $10 per guide. We alphabetized the notes by subject and typed them on a typewriter at the Oak Park library. I drew up a cover with a haloed Mascari giving our study guide his stamp of approval and we invested in making the copies. We sold around thirty guides first semester.

Mascari found out about our guide but didn't know who had made it. He warned the class that it did not cover all the topics we'd find on the exam but I still think it helped a lot of us to study. We both aced that test.

Second semester we caught Sepe selling copies of our guide for $7. We called him out for leeching off us but he wouldn't stop. I was annoyed with him back then but at this point I prefer to remember him sitting through Spitznagel's class with his sock in his mouth.

With twenty years to reflect on it I'm pretty sure our time at Fenwick made us all better men.