Month: October 2021

During one of those nights when Denny and I use to pray Evening Prayer during Lent, he once asked me, “Bob, what if all the church ministry we are devoting our lives to is based on nothing?” I replied, “Well, if what we are doing is based on just myth, then what we are doing still has a lot of worth, for we are helping people in their troubles.” I think all of us in Church ministry, wonder if the life to which we have devoted our whole being is based on nothingness. For all in Church ministry, like the combat soldier in a fox hole under enemy fire, we all wonder whether there is a God. All of us have to confront that question, and in the end, make a choice as to whether it is worth all the trouble, the hell, and the sleepless nights we endure in ministry, sometimes to a congregation that is difficult and, at times, do not like us. Denny, as exhibited by a life of simplicity and self-giving to others, obviously came to terms with the question he posed that night. Fr Kevin Clinton, whom I believe was Denny’s BFF, at his funeral today, revealed the degree to which Denny fully lived out Jesus’ commandment to love God and neighbor. Fr Kevin has given me permission to share his homily with you this evening.

Here is Fr Kevin’s homily.

Homily for the Funeral of Fr. Dennis Dempsey

October 30, 2021

Family and dear friends of Fr. Denny Dempsey, beloved parishioners of this parish

and many other communities, brother priests and bishops,

just this week I found out that Fr. Dennis asked me to take on the task of addressing you on the occasion of his funeral.  Dennis and I have known each other since 1966—

but there are thousands who have been touched by this man during his 73 years. 

I cannot appropriately summarize what the Dennis and the hand of God did among us

in those remarkable years.  Fr. Dennis impacted others.  He was a skilled speaker,

but most of his preaching came to others from their observing him live. 

He understood the words of St. Francis:  Preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words.  So, I ask you in this homily to recall what you know about Fr. Dennis Dempsey

as we walk thru the beatitudes that have just been proclaimed.

Oh, to be free!  For us to live liberated from conventional constraints

to see as clearly as possible who we are, what we can do, and what we need to let go of

and then let God and others take on the rest. 

Oh, what a joyous freedom is the result. 

Oh, how the quality of one’s life improves!  Oh, to be “spiritually” free!

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down,

his disciples came to him. He began to teach them:

[“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.]

How blest, how happy are those who know they belong to the human race

with all its vulnerability—its hypocrisy, its idealism, its grief, its joys,

its losses, its successes, its dying, its rising again.  

How free and happy are those who live with both feet on the ground

and know that the kingdom of heaven is coming!

[Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.]

Oh, how blest are those who accompany others at funeral after funeral. 

Who are present to those who experience loss, the harsh shock of death

and carry the burden of deep grief.  How wonderful are those who know

and can announce to others that all will be comforted.

[Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.]

Oh, how blest are those who know that the love the divine mystery has for us,

became human in our incarnate brother—Jesus Christ.  Oh, how freeing it is

to know that each of us are human beings first and all other things we are,

sit on that foundation.  Yes, you and I may work at being Christians and from there we can be other things—some of us even ordained priests.  But oh, how freeing it is

to be approachable by anyone who sees us as an equal

and that land and all other resources will be brought to the service of all!

[Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.]

Oh, how hard it is to witness and live within the ways things are set up

when a few control wealth, resources and power

while the human family’s vast majority live in desperation.  Oh, how hard it is

to witness political power guarding an unjust status quo.  How blest are we

when we do our part to courageously speak and act

while being at peace knowing that God will ultimately bring things to be set right.

[Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.]

Oh, how wonderful it is to know you yourself are not perfect

and know you need to be shown mercy

for you are now free to show mercy to everyone around you.

[Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.]

Oh, the freedom that goes with living simply.  To not have a TV,

yet be very aware of the important issues of the day.  How free it is to be “OK”

with the passenger-side car-door being able to open only from the inside

and of course never turn on air-conditioning—if it indeed works. 

To drive a car until it must be towed away for recycling. 

Oh, the freedom to use a flip-phone instead of the latest technology. 

How free it is to live simply so that possessions don’t start possessing you. 

Oh, the freedom that comes to see God guiding and bringing all things to completion and just doing your part as best you can.    

[Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.]

Oh, how blest we are when we are free to engage with one situation after another,

with one person after another and even accompany many people

when animosity and alienation abound. 

We will be seen as one of the “children of God”.

[Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.]

Oh, how freeing it is to regularly make plans to protect yourself

and live in the middle of where dangers abound.  Lies, robbery, oppressive use of power, extreme violence and poverty, even murder and yet be accompanying people

living in their culture and using their language—different from your native home. 

Oh, how “universal” or “catholic” it is!  We are free to do things like this,

when we know what needs to be done and it is the right thing to do. 

Ultimately, we will arrive at the kingdom of heaven. 

[Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you

and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.]

How blest we are when we to can let go of reacting to people

who are given to magnify our own faults and judge us as “troublemaker” or “odd”

or “overly concerned with problemed people” or even “crazy”. 

You can be at peace knowing that the will of God is your strength. 

[Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.]

Oh, how happy and reassured you can be to know that after all the chaos,

close calls, successes and failures, threats and incomplete tasks to be done,

that now your reward will be great in heaven. 

Fr. Denny would not want me to say that he lived the beatitudes perfectly,

but I can say that he lived them in a way that challenged me as a human being,

a Christian and an ordained priest. 

I suspect all of you who knew him were like wise challenged. 

I am aware that many Fr. Dennis Dempsey stories have been circulating this past week. 

I conclude with two. 

A few years ago, Dennis said to me: “Let’s go kayaking on Minnehaha Creek for a day.” 

I was to prepare our lunch.  Dennis would provide the kayaks. 

I came up with one of my genius ideas of buying Super America sandwiches for the trip—

you know, those sealed in plastic.  They would stay dry in the kayaks. 

Lunch came and I presented my brilliant idea.  Dennis’s face flashed with anger

that I would do such a thing as serve Super America sandwiches.  I was shocked. 

I had been on many camping and canoeing trips where we roughed it and simply adjusted.  And now, Dennis Dempsey was complaining about the food!  I thought to myself:

 “I finally found something where Dennis was being “fussy”

and set an expectation higher than I would. 

In my wonderment I asked him, what this was about.  He was living in a Rectory

where a friend regularly brought Super America sandwiches for lunch

and everyone enjoyed eating them.  He found out, however,

that his friend got them out of the Super America dumpster. 

Dempsey had been eating dumpster food all along. 

I said: “Dennis, these are perfectly good sandwiches.  They are not expired.” 

He ate all my granola bars instead. 

Second story.  The last time Denny and I were together was one month ago

when he came over to my home.   We deep-fried the sunfish filets from my freezer. 

We made enough fish to serve 15 people and the two of us ate half of it. 

He stayed overnight and the next day we walked the prairie and woods that I take care of and that take care of me.  It was a wonderful connection of two friends. 

During the fish fry we had extra fish batter and in the still hot deep frier

we made fish batter doughnuts—

knowing that we would put them out for the animals that come to my patio. 

Dennis of course, insisted on eating one of them to see if it was OK. 

Two days later I texted Dennis: “The opossum is now eating our doughnuts.” 

He texted back: “I am concerned about the opossum’s cardiovascular system.”

When I see Denny in heaven, I will ask him why he would eat the opossum’s food,

 and why he wouldn’t eat my Super America sandwiches.

The news of Denny Dempsey’s sudden death, hit by a car as he was bicycling along County Road 42 in Rosemount, has hit all the people he served as a priest very hard. Whether it be in New Prague, Northfield, at Jesu Cristo Resucitado in Venezuela, St Anne and St James, Risen Savior, we are all grieving the death of this great man. I am not the only one in this Archdiocese that regards his death as a great loss of one of the few remaining good priests in this Archdiocese.

Was Denny perfect? Of course not. Just like you and me, he is flawed, but dang, only his closest confidants would know those flaws. To the rest of us, he was the epitome of the priest as the Servant Christ, ready to wash the feet of those he served. As a priest, he was the antithesis of many who have been ordained the past 20/30 years, who, by their actions see ministerial priesthood not that of Christ as Servant, but as cultic, demi-god priests.

Denny Dempsey, a priest modeled after that of Christ as Servant.

When Denny was the associate pastor of St Wenceslas in New Prague, I think the only time he actually spent in the rectory was to sleep. Otherwise, he was out with the people in the town. You could find Denny bailing hay with the farmers in the area, carving a wooden sculpture out of the trunk of a dead tree at Bruzek’s Funeral Home, leading teens on bike trips to Pike’s Peak, down Highway 1 from Seattle to San Francisco, working with young adults, and often times, over at my house watching movies on the VCR Ruthie and I owned. You could find him in the backyard of the rectory in the Spring, tuning up and fixing the bicycles of the kids in the parish. Or, as happened one Easter Sunday afternoon, in my basement, fixing my broken washing machine.

Stories of Denny.

We all have our stories of Denny. I remember one Saturday afternoon when my four kids were raising all sorts of hell at home, when Denny showed up at the door. He lasted all about 15 minutes at my house at which he said, “There is a blessing to celibacy. You see, I can leave, but you have got to stay and deal with this.” Then he left the chaos of my home.

Ruthie worked most of our married life as an RN, working nights at a nursing home. Denny, usually dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, would often show up at my house around 9 pm, around the time Ruth was getting ready to go to work, dressed in her nursing scrubs. The one night a week Ruth was home at night, she would often be dressed in her nightgown and bathrobe. Because I often had to work in the morning, on those nights Ruth was home, she and Denny would watch movies into the late of night, me usually sleeping in my chair, or in bed. At a St Wenceslaus Christmas Staff party, when Ruthie and I got to the party, Denny was already there, dressed in his clerics. Ruthie was dressed to the nines. Denny greeted her, “Hi Ruth!” She greeted him back, “Hi Denny!” He responded, “I didn’t recognize you in your clothes.” She responded back, “I didn’t recognize you in your clothes.” The room turned silent. Shaking my head, I said to both of them, you had better explain to all these people what you mean about not recognizing each other in your clothes.

Denny was a good friend, and my spiritual mentor. When I was working on my graduate project in graduate school, I chose Denny as my graduate project advisor. I would go to him for spiritual direction. He admitted that the most difficult hour of the Liturgy of the Hours (a series of prayers deacons, priests, and religious pray every day) was Evening Prayer. So to keep from skipping that prayer, he would come over to my house and pray Evening Prayer with me during Lent. Facing a moral conundrum in my life, Denny taught me the importance of the Church teaching of the Primacy of Conscience, ending the lesson with the words, “Remember, the Church teaches to the general, but not to the particular.”

One last story about Denny … My sister, Mary Ruth, was chronically ill most of her life with Crohn’s Disease. She was suffering from Crohn’s long before they had a name for her disease. Every year, we could count on Mary having intestinal surgery to her alleviate the horrible pain that Crohn’s caused her. As she got older and the disease progressed, her surgeries became more intense, many of them 6 to 7 hours long, with a great uncertainty as to whether she would survive the surgery. One cold winter day, she had another very long, intense surgery, and the outcome was extremely uncertain. I think Ruthie and I arrived at St Joseph’s Hospital around 8 am, and Mary was in surgery from 9 am to 4 pm. She spent a considerable amount of time in post-op, before finally being brought up to her room. Upon reaching her room, we said goodbye to her and walked to the cold parking ramp where our Aerostar was parked. We began the long drive home, emotionally and physically exhausted by the day. Two thirds of the way home, the power steering went out on the Aerostar. I remarked to Ruthie that the power steering belt must have broken. When we pulled up in front of our house, I told Ruth to go in while I pulled the broken power steering belt out from the motor of the Aerostar. When I opened the hood of the vehicle and reached him to pull out the belt, I pulled out instead the tail of a cat. The cat must have crawled inside the motor to escape the cold when we had been parked on the ramp. I heard this pathetic, weak “meow.”

I was horribly distraught. It was not enough that my sister had barely made it through her surgery alive, but now I had a poor cat pulled apart in the engine of my Aerostar. I rushed into the house. My oldest son, Andy, asked, “How’s Aunt Mary?” I shouted back, “I don’t give a sh!t about Aunt Mary, I have a damn cat pulled apart in my engine!” I called the local cops for help. And, received back from them, “Do you have a bat? Do you have a garbage bag? Pull the cat out of the engine, and hit it on the head with the baseball bat, and throw the body in the garbage bag.” I told them to go to hell!

Not knowing who to turn to, I called my friend, Denny Dempsey. Denny told he that he would be right over. He added that he was bored working on some report for the Archbishop. He ended the conversation by asking, “Do you have a baseball bat?” I replied, “Yes.” He then asked, “Do you have a garbage bag.” Again, I said, “Yes.” He ended our conversation saying, “I will be right over.”

Denny pulled up so that his headlight shown in the front of my car. He got out and said, “I hear your engine has lost its purr. I understand you no longer have a tiger in your tank.” I just said, “Shut up, Denny.” We didn’t need the bat. Denny reached in and pulled out the dead cat, put the body in the garbage bag. Then he came and sat with me in the house as I poured out my soul to him, comforting me from the emotional stress of the day.

Closing Remarks and a Song.

Denny lived a life of Gospel poverty. In many ways, he would have made a great Franciscan. As an associate at St Wenceslaus, he drove a used mini-Toyota pickup truck with a little camper on the back. He chose to live simply. When he was assigned to St Michael’s in St Michael, MN, he took only that which he could pack in the back of that pickup truck. He had been gifted with a canoe from the parish, which was secured to the top of the truck. He had his bicycle, a few books, a few clothes and that was pretty much it. He didn’t need much to find happiness. He loved to ride his bike, run, and canoe. He loved to be with the people he was sent to serve. He often chewed the same piece of chewing gum for days, parking the gum on a gum caddy in his room … though, that is taking Gospel Poverty to the extreme, in my opinion. He loved to play his guitar, and when not presiding at Mass, would sometimes join the Guitar Group I had formed at St Wenceslaus when I first worked in the parish as director of liturgical music.

In talking with Fr Kevin Clinton, yesterday, he told me that Denny had spoke to him these words, “When I was ordained a priest, I found myself walking in the middle of the road in the Church. Now, I find myself walking in the ditch on the left side of that road.” Denny, like many of us formed by the teaching and wisdom of Vatican II, now find ourselves on the margins and fringes of the Church, placed there by the present crop of priests who want to return the Catholic Church to that miserable time in the life of the Church in the 1600s. The priests of our present time, could learn a lot from Denny Dempsey.

In 2016, I composed a song for him and sent it to him. I often compose music, and dedicate the song to people as a gift. I will let this song express my great love, appreciation, and respect for this great man of God.