This “backstory” is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2025.
For Seven Days’ 30th Birthday Issue, which featured the paper’s own history, deputy news editor Sasha Goldstein asked me to write about the distinctive office bathroom. That’s because the room, painted Pepto-Bismol pink, is brimming with religious art and objects primarily from my personal collection. Over the years, new staffers and visitors alike have marveled at the room, finding it both tongue in cheek and cheeky — though not purposely offensive.
Three readers, however, were appalled and didn’t hold back in letters to the editor. “A community that likes to see itself as inclusive and progressive does itself no honor when it gleefully mocks something that is sacred to so many, including Christianity,” wrote one. Another suggested that “sometimes the room you have to read is bigger than your own.” A third summed up his distaste succinctly: “Mockery is mean.”
As a writer and editor at newspapers for more than 30 years, I learned to take negative feedback in stride. People are entitled to their opinions, and we will not always agree. But this brief article elicited an unusual, personal letter to me from on high, as it were: the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.
The Most Rev. John J. McDermott takes his faith seriously, as one would expect. On the whole, he found our display of Catholic imagery inappropriate and disappointing. While acknowledging that I wrote “in a spirit of jest” and that the bathroom’s essential quality is kitsch, he proposed that I study the lives of the saints in order to understand their enduring influence on the planet’s billion-plus believers.
Bishop McDermott was especially disturbed that I was in possession of a last rites box. In the past, when dying at home was more common, I surmised, Catholic households likely had one of these at the ready; it contains items essential to a priest’s sacrament for a sick or dying person. To the bishop, these cabinets represent a “belief in the mercy of God and eternal life,” he wrote. To display such a box in a pink bathroom did not exactly meet this standard.
For several weeks I mulled over how — or whether — to respond to the bishop. Finally, I decided to gift him with the last rites box as a gesture of goodwill.
I carefully removed the fragile antique from the bathroom wall, dusted it, drove to the diocese in South Burlington and rang the bell outside the locked door. I told a female voice on the intercom that I had a present for the bishop. A nice woman named Susan came to let me in, saying he was in a meeting. I began to explain. “Perhaps you heard about this?” I asked. “Oh, yes, I did,” she said sweetly. I told her I was not a Catholic but appreciated the artwork. Murmuring agreement, Susan said she’d just returned from Rome. We both gushed over the stunning visuals of the Vatican.
The following day I received a short thank-you email from the bishop. He said he would make sure the box found a home — he refrained from writing appropriate home. He wished me God’s peace. I wrote back and expressed my hope that whoever inherits it could shore up the sagging wooden structure and replace its outdated components. I refrained from asking what happens to holy water gone bad.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Most Divine Intervention”
This article appears in Dec 24 2025 – Jan 6 2026.
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