A man of many talents — photographer, painter, author and preacher — Carmelite Fr. Tom Butler from the PCM Province found himself involved in founding St. Bernadette's parish in Houston, Texas. He would live there from 1977 until 1996, as pastor for the last 12 years.
"An awful lot of the parishioners worked for NASA," he says. "They are a pretty brainy group of people." Those parishioners who did not work for NASA often were employed in companies related to the space industry.
So it seemed natural that a creative priest like Butler would get involved in NASA and "going into space" without ever leaving Earth. Sometimes it was pastoral involvement. Sometimes it was more of a hobby.
In 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after takeoff and all aboard were killed, the Carmelite parish responded. "We had to do some something because our whole town is involved in the space program. I called all the ministers in town and invited them to have a joint service. The radio station spread the word and we had a packed to overflowing church. Twelve television stations showed up. Several astronauts and their families came."
But most of Fr. Tom's association with the space program has been far more leisure oriented and has resulted in some res carmelitana going into space. Much of it now lines the walls of Fr. Tom's well organized, spotless room in the Carmelite monastery in Tucson, Arizona.
Appropriately, a brown scapular was the first Carmelite object to go into space. Mission Specialist G. David Low carried it aboard STS 32, the Columbia, in January 1990. That scapular made 172 orbits of the earth, traveling a distance of 4,509,972 miles.
Astronaut Bob Cabana, a parishioner at St. Bernadette's, was made a Eucharistic minister before his flight. "He thought that was great and so every time after that, if a parishioner was going up, I would make them a Eucharistic minister," Butler said. If you ask, he will proudly show you the pyx and the black case adorned with a patch from one of the space missions that always went with the astronaut-Eucharistic ministers. "It is the pyx that I received on my ordination day."
Other items Butler has sent up into space are a small America flag, a medallion made especially for St. Bernadette's parish, and the driver's license of deceased Carmelite Fr. Marius Zadenski. A Carmelite driver's license into space? "Oh, he was well loved in the parish, so after he died, the astronauts wanted to take something of his up with them."
Tom's space hobby and enthusiastic support got him invited to the annual Space Agency dinner. One year he was invited to give the opening prayer. During the prayer he mentioned "the first man on the moon." After the dinner, a man approached the Carmelite to thank him for his prayer. "I am that first man on the moon," he said. Tom was shaking hands with Neil Armstrong.
It was reported that on Apollo 8 in 1968, the first craft to orbit moon, that astronaut Frank Borman carried a medallion with the image of Pope John XXIII and a piece of the pope's cassock. If NASA ever returns to the moon, you can bet there will be something Carmelite with them if Fr. Tom Butler has anything to say about it.
Originally published in Internation Carmelite Newsmagazine CITOC www.Carmelites.info/CITOC. Carmelite vocation site Carmelites.net.
