On 3/1, I gave a "Theology on Tap" presentation at the Scholars’ Lounge, near the Gesu, in Rome. This past Thursday night, Dr. Scott Hahn gave a presentation, and some of you may have read the Whispers report of what happened – that Dr. Hahn was run off the stage by unruly Irish wanting to watch football.

Well, according to my operative, who was there, this is not quite what happened:

We were there – it was NOT the Irish, it was the British football (soccer for us Yankees) fans. There had already been disturbances earlier in the week down at Campo di Fiori by drunken & "celebrating" Brits, riots so bad that the carabineri had been called in (and were whacking indiscriminately any English-speaking people in the crowds – two of our students were whacked as they were trying to get away from the crowds!) It was so bad that the city basically CLOSED Campo di Fiori, meaning, no pubs were allowed to be opened (which is basically the entire night business down there). Thus the Brits spread out across the rest of the city. Which brings me to Thursday night and TOT, and our friend Dr. Scott Hahn.

Before the evening began, we got there early to stake out a few tables and could tell immediately that there might be problems – there were many Brits around, already with a few beers in them (but at that happy go lucky, "let’s hit on any females we can", stage) and they were talking soccer. We could foresee that any announcement that the bar was going to shut down the soccer screens so that a "Bible guy" could talk was going to be, shall we say, a bit irritating. That’s precisely what happened – About a third of the crowd was Brits, the rest were TOT attendees, and at the beginning of that talk it seemed that there might be a brawl. The Brits were being as loud and obnoxious as possible, screaming obscenities at Dr. Hahn and the rest of us (the mildest being "don’t you *** shove your *** religion on us!"). Very quickly though, they realized they were outnumbered. They didn’t shut up though until an Irishman (the only Irish disturbance I might add) did something really quite foolish (and which could have worked out very badly indeed), and grabbed the mike from Dr. Hahn, whirled around and basically told the Brits to shove off or there would be a fight… well, bad move as that might have been, that actually seemed to work, as the worst of the malcontents left soon after and Dr. Hahn was basically uninterupted for the rest of his talk.

I must add that by no means were all the Brits in the pub this kooky – there were many decent ones there. There was one fellow in particular who certainly didn’t agree with Dr. Hahn (or us) but who asked a question during the Q&A about how there can be a good God with all the bad natural disasters in the world. There was also a lot of evangelization going on in the corners of the bar, with a lot of TOT attendees talking one-on-one with a bunch of the Brits who had honest questions that they probably had never been faced with before. There was also a British priest present (I didn’t ask if he was Anglican or Catholic – at this stage, I don’t think it mattered) who was very good at helping to smooth things over during and after. Lovely chap – God bless him.

So – yes, there was a "situation" at TOT on Thursday, but it all worked out well, thanks be to God. Dr. Hahn even wrote in all the books he signed, Romans 8:28. 🙂

Well, God bless him. And better him than me, if I may dare to say!