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Los Angeles - When teenagers pick up one or two of the many fan magazines on the newsstands, they expect such headlines as: "Mark Lester Whispers in Your Ear," "Bobby Sherman Gives Awa Kisses - How to get Yours" and "David Cassidy's Special Secret."
Until The Cowsills come along.
"Cowsills and God" is the headline on a recent cover of Tiger Beat, standing out among such other come-ons.
In another teen magazine called Fave ("The Newest and the Truest"), right underneath a headline that says, "Why Jack Wild Turns You On," there's: "Barry Cowsill Talks about God."
The Cowsill family - Barbara Cowsill and her five children, ranging from 11 to 20 - has become one of the leading pop singing groups since they got their start singing at charity benefits for Catholic parishes in Canton Ohio, and Newport, R.I.
In "Fave," 15-year-old Barry told teen readers - through as "as told to" writer - how he grew up in a family where "Mom took us all to Mass every Sunday and most mornings too," and how, as the group got famous, "I saw less and less of the inside of a church and soon I could county on one hand the number of times I went to Mass."
Then, in prose style typical of fan-magazine writing, Barry told his readers:
"But though I worked constantly and began to feel very confident in my musical ability, there was something missing. I became aware of a restlessness inside of me as if I was searching for something more! . . . I couldn't understand it at first and then one day it came to me!
"I was all alone in the house that night and the wind outside was blowing frantically! Mom and Dad had gone to a business meeting to discuss our contract with the recording company, Bob and Paul were out to dinner with their dates and Susan and John decided to take in a movie.
"The huge house echoed my footsteps as I paced from room to room. I could feel the restlessness awakening in me so I put on my jacket and stood alone outside in the howling wind studying the few stars that brightened the night. Suddenly I had the strangest feeling - an overwhelming urge to pray!"
But "no matter how I tried, I couldn't find the words," and then Barry Cowsill said he realized "what that emptiness was inside of me."
"Somehow, I had been accepting what I had received in life without giving thanks. I had begun to take God for granted! I had forgotten who had given me these beautiful things."
In Tiger Beat, Mrs. Cowsill authored a piece titles, "How We Keep Faith in the Family," in which she too confessed that although the family had attended Mass regularly - even daily years ago." Now with all the traveling we do we only get to Mass maybe twice a year and I wondered if perhaps the family had gotten God just a little bit or if they were missing out on something."
But in her article, as in her son Barry's, the "solution" is to realize that playing music and singing - entertaining people - add to traditional worship.
"God gave my family a great gift," Barbara Cowsill told Tiger Beat readers, "that of song and the chance to make people happy through our music. 'You know, Mom,' Barry once told me 'when I play my guitar it's just like as if I were praying.' "
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