I'll Never Know

With 80 fading fast in the rearview mirror and handball, health and other lifelong joys littering the roadside, retired San Francisco Monsignor Harry George Schlitt relates the realities, indignities and sometimes hilarity of recognizing he's not the man he once was.

Like many his age, FATHER HARRY of the GOD SQUAD, as he's best known, has embraced what environmentalist Bill McKibben dubbed "codger power." Prayerfully accepting the fogey truism that if you can no longer join them, you can still beat them, Father Harry draws from a lifetime of media ministry to a global congregation ranging from the ragtag to political leaders, the military to peaceniks, from teens to the incarcerated and dying.

Always the loyal priest bound by promises and duty to his episcopal elders, Father Harry is finally freed to speak his mind by his de facto irrelevance at age 82 and his proximity to the pearly gates. Covering a five-year period spanning grim historic societal events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the orchestration by the religious right of a serious threat to undo both Vatican II and the papacy of Francis, I'll Never Know: The Rock & Roll Priest Looks at 80 is a soulful tonic, two parts grin and one part wry.

Since 1968, Father Harry worked as a rock & roll deejay, TV host and now podcaster and cyber celebrant for the Sunday Mass. His first book, I'll Never Tell: Odyssey of a Rock & Roll Priest, won awards and international acclaim.