When I was in seminary, Father John Basso would regale us with his stories of youth. He was a gentle old dago, who could really pour on the coals when he was pissed- most of the time, though, he’d tell these parables. Most of them were pretty damned good.

Anyway, he talked about screwdrivers once. He was using a rusty old pocketknife from his desk drawer to remove a screw from the temple of his eyeglasses, while we read quietly in Latin. He talked about a man in the town where he grew up, a man most thought of as a drunk and a fool. At one point or another, everyone in town had given him money for booze, or picked him out of the gutter, or bailed him out of jail. Everyone in town would say to themselves- or each other- Don’t drink too much, or get in too much trouble, you’ll end up like Louis.

All the preaching the Priest in town did from the pulpit could never have had the effect of guiding the townspeople towards temperance than old Louis. And so, Fr John said, in the hands of the Creator, even a poor, bad tool can be used. With that he put his newly tightened glasses back on his head, and made us conjugate latin verbs till we all hated breathing.