When I worked in the shipping industry in Philadelphia I became acquainted with the Catholic Port Chaplain Fr. Tom Wassel. He came out of the Pennsylvania coal region but adapted easily to the South Philadelphia waterfront. He maintained a small chapel on Pier 98 to minister to seamen in port as well as the longshoremen working the docks. One Sunday I visited the pier to touch and feel the cargo - on the job training. Fr. Tom collared me and said he needed me to do the readings at mass. It happened to be the first Sunday of Advent and the reading was one of St. Paul's letters to the Romans where he admonished his listeners to abstain from drunkeness and fornication and the lot. So here was this young "acolyte" at the lectern reading Paul's words to a couple dozen rugged dockworkers, some of whom might have been out the night before doing some of the things that Paul was railing about.
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