Ray Cannata, pastor of Redeemer Church in the Uptown section of New Orleans, once got to know his city by dining at each of its 729 non-chain restaurants. Cannata’s feat was highlighted in a 2012 documentary film, “The Man Who Ate New Orleans.”
As a transplant from New Jersey, Cannata fell in love with his city and its food. He simultaneously fell in love with its people: the pillars, problems, and everyone in between. At the same time, Cannata became convinced more than ever that 1 Peter 2:17 is one of the church’s strongest evangelistic tools: “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”
“Everyone!” Cannata emphasizes.
A Funeral for Frenchy
This conviction led him to accept an unusual invitation: to perform the funeral for Kent “Frenchy” Brouillette, New Orleans’ most famous mobster, who had been stabbed to death by his roommate.
“Saying ‘yes’ seemed like a problem,” Cannata admits, who was friends with Brouillette’s biographers. “Saying ‘no’ seemed like a bigger problem.”
“What if we became wildly famous for honoring everyone? A denomination that is famous for honoring. Pastors and Christians that are famous for honoring everyone — rich and raw, red and blue, cool or creepy — just everyone.“
So he agreed, with serious trepidation.
“When the ceremony began, I said something like this: ‘Friends, you all knew Frenchy. You knew him in all his contradictions, and his beauty and his brokenness. Some of you knew Frenchy as generous. Some of you knew Frenchy with a bottle or a nail gun. The only One who knew the real Frenchy perfectly was God. We know this because God made Frenchy, and God watched over and sustained Frenchy. That’s the only way we can explain how he survived this long. God created everyone with value and dignity, in His image. Frenchy hurt people. He also blessed people, or you wouldn’t be here. And in that way, he’s like all of us. I’m in no position to finally judge anyone else. But I know that wherever we go, God is always eager to welcome us home when we trust in Him.’”
Afterward, Cannata prayed what he feared would be his last prayer and benediction, and then jumped in line at the front of the parade to head down Bourbon Street, “with the media there, with thugs and hookers and musicians and mobsters.” After arriving at a bar at the end of the parade, Cannata says he got to know some of Frenchy’s friends personally.
“It might sound strange, but as the party went on, this misfit crowd became more and more beautiful to me. ‘Honor everyone,’ the Apostle Peter tells us. We’re all needy before God, and the more respectable you are, the harder it is to see it. But only when we embrace this can we honor everyone.”
A Private Parade
A few years earlier, Cannata had found someone to honor on the other end of the social misfit spectrum: a young woman who had been publicly dishonored.
Emily was 11 and loved Mardi Gras, Cannata explains. Emily also suffered from a mental disability, something that was picked up on by a group of drunk college students “who said vicious things to her” while Emily was watching her favorite parade. Emily’s family quickly left the scene, humiliated, vowing never to return to Mardi Gras.
Word traveled quickly to the members of the parade, who decided to host a separate private parade just for Emily in a nearby warehouse.
“Hundreds of members of other krewes poured in [to the warehouse],” says Cannata. “When Emily and her family walked in, we all cheered. [She was] seated on a throne, and we all lined up to honor her. … At the end, someone declared her queen of ‘Emily Gras,’ [and] we all wept. I looked around and saw this group of freaks in every kind of costume in this ugly warehouse in the most blighted neighborhood in the city. Something important and lovely was happening. Silly, ordinary people had answered the call to honor,” Cannata explains.
Adapted from Cannata’s talk at the 2018 Beautiful Orthodoxy conference.
Photo courtesy of wfu.edu.