That’s a wonderful story, thanks.
And very true that God comes to us in the oddest ways to answer our questions & doubts.

I overuse the word “awesome” in your comments’ section, but it’s so true:  There you are, rolling around on a small mound of nickels, blowing kisses to the statue of Mary in the corner and saying, “I owe it all to you, cherie!”

Great story! Thank you for the great post, as usual.

I know two ex-Episcopalian priests who converted to Catholicism- one waited until he could get “the best pension of any denomination” and lives in a beautiful house and also has a beach house…the other one left the Episcopalian priesthood right when the Spirit led him…and he and his family aren’t doing that great financially (luckily, his wife can work because all of his education and experience is in a denomination that he disagrees with)

Ha! I am definitely a “professional Catholic” I work for a diocese and write for Catholic publications…people often attribute characteristics to me that I do not have (like working for the man in a central diocesan office). Less dramatically, I’m just a Catholic person who is happy to be able to work for the Church in a variety of ways as my job!

That is a great story.  Welcome home, Billy Kangas!

Oh how true. I know an artist who did a lot of restoration work for a parish and the pastor was shocked that he wanted payment!!!!

If you think writing for the Church is a money maker, trying being a musician.  My family regularly drives around in our gas guzzling van towing a trailer filled with 20k worth of instruments and audio gear, and just last week we made $70!

You are my favorite professional Catholic, Simcha. God bless you for it.

“support his Catholic habit” That one really got me! Well done!

The more the Church asks of the laity (teachers in schools, musicians, etc) the more they are going to have to come to terms with their own teachings on offering a living wage.

Adolfo,
Maybe part of the trouble ,too, is that the laity are filling in where the religious orders used to serve.We each have special vocations & need to pray for discernment.

Love it!  I told my mother-in-law that I want to go back to school for a masters in Theology and a masters in social work to eventually work in a crisis pregnancy center.  She was like, ’ you won’t make any money doing that!’  Haha….I didn’t even get to the fact to tell her I really want to OPEN a crisis center for parents, not just moms to offer spiritual and material support.  Yep…no money to be made here!  Not sure if that would make me a professional Catholic, probably not…but I love your post!

So true, so true! I’ve teetered so much I now have permanent vertigo, but encounters-with-angels do occur as I can testify and have pulled me back from the edge of potential soul-killing mistakes countless times. How I love this faith that is open to every possibility of God in our lives!

Arg.  Now I’m grumpy!  As a convert to the Faith, I cling to the writings of “professional Catholics” to keep me from discouragement (as I keep running into heretical cradle Catholics or orthodox Catholics who are suspicious and smug and semi-schismatic):  Please continue to ignore them!  There are those of us who REALLY appreciate your efforts. 

Adolfo,
You are never going to get rich off the Catholic Church.  Give it up buddy.  What’s got to happen is that Catholic people need to wake up and learn something other religious groups have known for years:
***Whatever you are in your normal work life you can do for free for the Church on the side—and you should.  Accounting, teaching, nursing, plumbing, ditch-digging, sales, you name it.  We need those services and people should be able to volunteer them as tithe.
***Real talent can be found all over, but Catholics lambaste other Catholics who offer talent to the Church.  They need to learn to value talent.  There are Catholics who can actually sing who aren’t in choirs because of this; there are Catholics who are geniuses at art who do no art for the Church even though their homes are magnificent; there are Catholic teachers who teach Nobel prize winners who don’t teach for us because we’d rather pay an ignorant non-Catholic because it fits our old fashioned paradigms.  :/
And on and on and on. 

Little bitty non-denominational outfits with 200 members (not families, MEMBERS) support new church buildings, missionary efforts, you name it.  Using what they have to preach the Gospel is how they do it.  It’s a new idea for Catholics.  Catholics have to learn it.  We’re going to get the stuffing pounded out of us until we do learn it.  God gives talent and experience for a reason.

PS.  I love the story about the hit-and-run reality check.  God uses what’s at hand constantly.  It’s about time we paid more attention to that as Catholics.

I think it is interesting to note that one of the most famous converts of all didn’t actually get knocked off his horse, bounce up and become a faithful Catholic.  It was a process.  It involved some strange things like blindness, scales on the eyes, instruction, time in the desert…
.
What worries me about new Catholics or reverts is when they become teachers before they have been tested by life. They can make some pretty wild gyrations.  I’d be willing to bet $5 that the characters that write you letters telling you are an awful heathen fall into one of these two categories.  Trying to make you wear a veil at church etc. would appeal to their need for control and sense of moral superiority—and we all know where that comes from. 
.
The Catholic world loves a great Hollywood story too.  Playboy to priest!  Prostitute! Atheist! Catholic-hating televangelist!  In my book this is a beautiful new wine that needs to age for a while before it looks for a microphone.

Trying to make you wear a veil at church etc.

I’ve never heard of anyone forcing someone to wear a veil or even saying that one must wear a veil. What I have seen is people defending and encouraging wearing the veil only to be met with sneering condescension.

as a Protestant minister who feels called to become Catholic (but whose Protestant minister husband does not!), I am so grateful for this

Even Peter and the other apostles carried a coin purse during the years of Jesus’ ministry. Even the clergy and members of religious orders have to provide for themselves. So, the focus is on ministry.

Oh SImcha, I adore you!

Re Because if there’s anyone who has bleaker prospects than a Catholic who wants to try to bend his time and talents in service of the Church, it’s someone who already works for another church, and wants to become a Catholic.

My husband was an Episcopal priest when we saw the light and had to be “closet Catholics” while we figured out where we would live and get groceries without his priest salary. It went on for 2-3 months, sneaking off to Mass, wearing dark shrouds to peruse the Catholic bookstore. For the people who may think having an affair would be exciting, if this was anything like it - it was EXHAUSTING! But, now we are broke, Catholic and SO much happier. Professional Catholics like you have strenghthened and encouraged me so much; if I had a roll of nickels, I’d throw ‘em your way.

Scott, I have only been reading Catholic com boxes for a couple of years now, but reading them has made the kind of bullying I had experienced at the hands of a few “traditional” Catholics look MILD in comparison.  It still shocks me how people want to add layers to the deposit of the faith.  They defend their moral high ground in a way that would make the old tassle- wearers cheer.

What a good read. 

I’m so thankful for our “professional catholics.” We should be thankful for people who are passionate and good at what they do no matter secular or religious.  We chose our children’s catholic school based on the enthusiasm of the principal; we continue with our extra-curricular music classes because of the passion of the teacher; I am bound closer to my faith because of the dedication and talent of “professional catholics.”

That guy’s St. Augustine-like story is unbelievable enough that it is believable.

I wonder how many ‘Professional’ Catholics the Church lost over the years while Pope Benedict XVI was in office both as Pope and as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith?  There is no question that some if not all of his following actions were responsible for a deep chasm within the institution.  Whether or not anyone agrees with this partial list is not as important as how the hearts of the faithful became so rigid during his reign.
 
• Kept silent about pedophile priests
• Silenced more than 100 theologians
• Denounced Liberation Theology
• Refused any discussions about women and their role in the Church
• Dismissed Collegiality
• Labeled homosexual actions/relationships as intrinsically evil
• Politicized American bishops by instructing them how to encourage laity to vote
• Prohibited the use of available birth control methods
• Put into doubt the operation of Women Religious in USA
• Maintained that all other religions are inferior to Roman Catholicism
• Called for obedience to the Church teachings at the cost of the individual conscience
• Reinterpreted Vatican II
   
The true role of all religious institutions is to lead people to find the God within and allow them, once again, to become the unique and Holy creations that they already are – despite their failings. 

Posted by Scott W. on Friday, Mar 1, 2013 12:56 PM (EST):

Trying to make you wear a veil at church etc.

I’ve never heard of anyone forcing someone to wear a veil or even saying that one must wear a veil. What I have seen is people defending and encouraging wearing the veil only to be met with sneering condescension.”
*********************************************
First of all a disclaimer: I am under the effects of cold medication today.
Earlier, I posted about the happy times my sons spent at the Legionaries of Christ weekend camps- in the comment boxes for a blog where that was probably not welcome information.Now I’m talking about veils in church.That never leads to a good place either.
But….I’m with anna lisa here. The creepiest & strongest kind of reactions come whenever women’s modesty is in discussion.I dislike pop psychology, but you have to wonder when men protest too much.There’s got to be something else going on.
By the way, I always wear a mantilla for Mass.My choice.I also prefer the Tridentine Mass. My choice,too.
Prayers for my cold gladly accepted. Thank you.

Trebert,

I have been hearing about this “silence on pedophile priests” accusation for weeks.  In spite of the fact that I work full time in researching and writing, I have not been able to find one shred of evidence.  Considering the nature of the rest of your list, I am beginning to understand why.

On another note, if you are involved with the ‘Ordain a Lady” video, I want to thank you for your hard work.  I have never seen anything else that so supports my position on why women shouldn’t be priests, other than the Bible, of course.

“horribilis est.”
Nahhhhhh.  Just one big family :)!
@Kathleen, ((hug))
Welcome to Billy Kangas!  I love his passion and enthusiasm.
@Trebert, I think you might be lost, this is the Register not the Reporter. The new generation of Catholics know how well all that liberation theology, Che, love-bead-Catholicism went—you’re showing your expiration date, bro.
p.s. and it was a *homosexual predator* problem.  Pedophilia denotes abuse of boys and *girls*.  The vast majority of the abuse was on teen aged *boys*.  Thank God B16 called for a housecleaning of all the *filth*.

Trebert the Troll.  Sounds like a bad childrens book.

Trebert, Where have you been? Pope Benedict has openly fought against the “filth” within the church (as he referred to the molestation problem), has exuded love and ecumenism resulting in millions of young around the world flocking to his audiences, has sought the true reform i.e., correct teaching as opposed to false reform (cf. George Weigel), has proffered orthodox understanding of sin, and yes, has demanded that the modern conscience-challenged defer to the 2,000 year old wisdom of the church regarding sexual morality.

great read for my friday!  thanks for starting the weekend with a positive.

The true role of all religious institutions is to lead people to find the God within

It would be better for a man to sacrifice chickens to the moon god than worship the God within—which is just a code for moral relativism.

so

• Kept silent about pedophile priests
See susan’s comment
• Silenced more than 100 theologians
Since they were wolves trying to destroy sheep with false teachings, good.
• Denounced Liberation Theology
They denounced Marxist twaddle running around in Catholic drag
• Refused any discussions about women and their role in the Church
No, they would allow any discussion as long as it was understood that the Church has no authority to ordain women, a teaching part of the Deposit of Faith
• Dismissed Collegiality
You would have to be more specific
• Labeled homosexual actions/relationships as intrinsically evil
Actually Scripture, Tradition, History, Natural Law and simple apprehension are what make homosexual acts intrinsicly evil.
• Politicized American bishops by instructing them how to encourage laity to vote
Why do I get the feeling that if it was a bishop urging people to vote for liberal immigration laws, you would be ok with this?
• Prohibited the use of available birth control methods
Artificial contraceptives are evil. They desecrate the marital bond, offend against chastity, and are a menace to public morals.
• Put into doubt the operation of Women Religious in USA
No, only the orders that had veered off into Leftist Looneyland.
• Maintained that all other religions are inferior to Roman Catholicism
Only the Catholic Church possesses the full truth of faith and morals.
• Called for obedience to the Church teachings at the cost of the individual conscience
The conscience is not a moral law unto itself. Progressives again here have turned conscience into self-refuting and incoherent moral relativism.
• Reinterpreted Vatican II
Most progressives have not even read the documents of V2.

(sigh) Simcha, perhaps if many more of us could write with your deftness of succinct wit, we’d be making further in-roads into, I’m A Catholic, Inc. (I kid…)

I must say I read many of the Catholic writers/bloggers out there, but when the day is done, I just loves me my Simcha!

Pax ~^~

  The problem though endemic to earning a living at Catholicism is that the professional Catholic will back and/ or flatter anything Rome says even if it is a regression ( e.g. in my opinion, the death penalty change which will get many inmates murdered by lifers who can’t be executed…happened to both Dahmer and Fr. Keoghan).  The first millenium had our present refusal to burn heretics.  St. John Chrysostom said: Homily 46 on Matthew, no. 1): “To consign a heretic to death is to commit an offence beyond atonement.”.  St. Cyprian of Carthage: “ If you attempt to defend religion with bloodshed and torture, what you do is not defense, but desecration and insult. For nothing is so intrinsically a matter of free will as religion.” (Divine Institutes V:20)
  Along comes Pope Innocent IV in 1253 and he binds princes to burn heretics under pain of excommunication…a regression vis a vis the first millenium overall…that continued for centuries with several thousand killed.  In cases where heretics were also criminals, that’s another story but St. Joan of Arc was ultimately burned for wearing men’s clothing with many clergy affirming it.  But if you were a Catholic teacher in the university, you had to support Innocent IV’s heretic burning even though John Paul II’s condemnation of “coercion of spirit” is now called an intrinsic evil in section 80 of Veritatis Splendor.
    When your next meal comes from Rome directly or indirectly or circuitously, you are vulnerable to flattering any position they take even though 300 years into the future, it may be reversed.  Pope Nicholas I was against torture in the 9th century….Pope Innocent IV was for it in 1253… John Paul II condemned it in the 1990’s.  Those teaching under those regimes and earning their next meal…were inclined to not think but obey with opposite results for 6 centuries following Innocent IV.

As I said in my original posting: “Whether or not anyone agrees with this partial list is not as important as how the hearts of the faithful became so rigid during his reign”.

Would you not agree that these matters have split the Roman Catholic Church apart?  What has happened to dialogue?  What has happened to compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, freedom, kindness, acceptance, and loving your neighbor and enemy?  These are the qualities Jesus offered regardless of their race, color or belief system?  IF we cannot resolve these issues amongst ourselves how can we expect to become One with those of a different faith? We cannot call ourselves ‘followers of CHrist’ until we accept others where they are - not where we would have them be!

Trebert,
You may see “rigid” where others see “faithful.”

Would you not agree that these matters have split the Roman Catholic Church apart?

Only in the sense like when Our Lord told his followers that they must eat his flesh and drink His blood. Many left Him because they were hard teachings and guess what? He didn’t chase after them going, “Wait! Don’t go! We can have a dialog about this!” Some people can’t accept the Truth and we can’t deny Truth just to get along.

What has happened to dialogue? Too often dialog really means, “I’m going to keep talking and filibuster until you knuckle-dragging traditionists cave to my ludicrous demands.”

What has happened to compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, freedom, kindness, acceptance, and loving your neighbor and enemy? All of them have been distorted by false compassion, false tolerance, etc. The distortion comes from self-refuting and incoherent moral relativism.

These are the qualities Jesus offered regardless of their race, color or belief system?  IF we cannot resolve these issues amongst ourselves how can we expect to become One with those of a different faith? We cannot call ourselves ‘followers of CHrist’ until we accept others where they are - not where we would have them be!

Our Lord, and Our Lord alone are the only Way, Truth and Life. As He tells us, “Enter by the narrow gate.”

yea, why are people picking on Mark Shea, he’s always so friendly and charitable..

www.IlostanargumentwithMarkShea.com

Kathleen,

Religion and faith are not the same, especially in this case. 
Faith (Hebrew,aman, be firm, true; Latin fides, trust confidence)  In the Hebrew scriptures, God was always true to his people and was called the Faithful One.  In the Christian writings, faith was the way people let go of self-interest and believed in Jesus and his teachings, and then remained faithful to them.  Faith is a gift from God that allows people to believe and trust in his love and protection.

Religion (Latin religio)  1. An organization of people who follow a special set of rules, beliefs and practices in their effort to carry out their duties to their god and other people, e.g. the Christian religion. 2. The combination of attitudes, emotion, rituals, beliefs and organizations by which humans try to express their relationship with God and the world around the. 

Love your articles Simcha. Keep ‘em flying. Point of note. Interesting how Billy Kangas says that “the EO is not a stepping stone, but a church that [he] deeply admire[s]. [He is] still [...] very eastern in [his] thinking and see[s] them as [his] theological foundation”. I had this wonderful discussion with St. Silouan the Athonite the other day, which left me in no doubt that the Eastern Church has perfectly preserved the tradition (“fullness in communion”) taught by the Apostles (who, with the except St. John) ended up sawn in half, beheaded, crucified upside down, etc., etc., for the sake of Truth. The phrase to turn East therefore, is to turn one’s face toward the “sun of righteousness” (Malachi 4:2), which is the banishing of all shadow.

I always thought “professional Catholic” was used in a derogatory way for someone who used the Catholic label to sell their wares, even when they otherwise weren’t up to professional standards.
.
We’ve all been urged to buy a book or watch a movie that really didn’t make the grade on the grounds that it was “Catholic.” Not that the person was trying to make it rich or something, just that the thing was lame but somehow deserved support because it would (supposedly) promote Catholicism.

Scott,
If you or Susan do not wish to believe that Benedict was personally responsible for keeping silent about pedophile priests, at least until the media pressure the Vatican to release the real facts, then you cannot have been reading the newspapers lately about a certain Cardinal in California and Scotland.
But there is no doubt that the scale of the sex abuse scandal came about because of directives from the Vatican — specifically from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) — which required all sex abuse complaints to be processed in utter secrecy and withheld from local police and courts, under a Canon Law that was obsolete and ineffective and non-punitive. The Holy See claims the right to operate the system as one of its ‘statehood’ privileges, along with the exclusive right to speak and lobby at the UN to promote its theo¬logical agenda: homosexuality is ‘evil’, and so is divorce; women have no right to choose, even to avoid pregnancies that result from rape or incest; IVF is wrong because it begins with masturbation; condom use, even to avoid AIDS within marriage, must never be counten¬anced.
I’m not posting here to shame anyone I merely think it is time to tackle these issues for the good of the Church.  And with a new pope on the horizon – now is the time.

As a musician, this resonates. ;)
-
Trebert: what on earth possessed you to make this about the faults of Benedict, real or perceived?  Do you not have your own blog where you can expound instead of commandeering this little boat and trying to steer it in a completely different direction?

Simcha:

I was lolling about in my Scrooge McDuck swimming pool full of gold dubloons when Jeeves came in with news that you had written a beguiling piece about we Profe$$ional Catholic$.  “Oooh!” said I, “it sounds too tre tre!  I simply *must* have look!”  So donning my silk afterbath robes, I climbed out of the pool, took a mimosa from Jeeves and asked him to put your article on the large screen TV (I so enjoy watching films from the comfort of the pool normally, but I wanted to give you my full attention, dahlink.)

I must say, you really nailed it.  I do hope you can join the League of Profe$$ional Catholic$ on our Lenten Trip to Rio. Ta!

(Note to humor-impaired.  There is no League of Professional Catholics.  There is no Lenten trip to Rio.  There is no Scrooge McDuck pool or large screen TV at Chez Shea.  There’s just a lower middle class group of Catholics, warning you that if you want to serve the church with writing and yakking about the faith, get ready for long hours and low pay, but satisfaction in the form or, well, serving God.  The delusion that anybody does this work for money or power is, well, delusional.)

Best wishes to Billy!  May God guide you on your journey and bless your work in the Vineyard, young man!

Tom:

As near as I can see, nobody is picking on me.  Next time, instead of offering a non sequitur as your segue into your remarks, try just working without a clutch.  Just say, “You mentioned Mark Shea.  You know, as a devout Catholic full of the love of God, I would just like to say I really hate that guy.  Nothing to do with what you were saying, but I just wanted to get that off my chest.”

You’re welcome.

Trebert:

You do realize, don’t you, that your pre-recorded remarks have absolutely nothing to do with Simcha’s piece and you come off like a self-absorbed narcissist who demands everything be about you?

Matt 10:8. You recived free, give free.
Paul was a tent maker Acts 18:3

Thank you Linda, Anne, and Mark for your kind words. I have been inspired by all the prayers and encouragment people have offered.

I also work for the Church and struggle financially because of it.  I get blue and wish all the parishioners would give at least a little!  But, as Mark Shea says we receive “satisfaction in the form or, well, serving God.”
As for what I have learned in the process, I feel I am in the Church’s debt!  (Even in the thick of the blues!) 

Hart:

I, for one, don’t know how to make tents.  I do know how to write and speak, and I know a goodly bit about the Catholic faith and try to use the ability to communicate in order to teach people about it.  It would be nice if my job—the modestly paying one with no benefits, no retirement, and absolutely no unemployment cushion—could allow me to just drop my current mode of income and go to tentmaking school.  But since it doesn’t and I still need to feed my family every day as sole breadwinner, I find it difficult to obey your command from on high.  Since you are so certain about what God wills me to do, can I count on you to bear the burden of supporting my family while I suddenly abandon doing what I’m reasonably good at doing and am trained to do and instead go get the training necessary to do what you command me to do by your authority as Some Guy With a Keyboard?  Or is this one of those “tying up heavy burdens and not lifting a finger to help” things that Jesus remarked on in Matthew 23:4?  If so, then I am afraid I must decline to obey your command on the grounds that it is impossible.

I LOVE Billy Kangas’ story! So beautiful! Thanks for another great article, Simcha, keep ‘em coming. I’m not sure which posts I like better—your hilarious descriptions of parenting nine children, or your lovely reflections on various Catholic issues. Well, maybe the former, but I have an overdeveloped sense of humor.

Mark Shea, Master of Understatement.  Or is it hyperbole?

Re: Alphonsus et alia who are pointing out/grousing about how the Catholic Church does not value talent and pay enough to the laity….I have just one question for y’all… WHERE DO YOU THINK THE CHURCH GETS ITS MONEY???  FROM THE PARSIMONIOUS CHEAPSKATES WHO SIT IN THE PEWS!!! (Sorry for the shouting, but seriously) Simcha is right, it’s lovely and it’s horrible, and I think we all need to turn the pointing finger back on ourselves. The problem starts and ends with us.  It is we, the Catholic people who do not think a worker deserves his wage, (And, let us take warning, last time I checked, denying the worker his just wage is one of the four sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance, it’s right there next to murder. Yes. It is THAT BAD.) It is not so much the Church being stingy with the laity as it is the laity being stingy with the Church. (And, by association, with ‘Professional Catholics’) Follow the money trail in your own life. Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.

Sorry, I meant, Re: Adolpho
And PS to anna lisa,  You are so right on. (Embarrassingly, I have already for gotten which thing exactly I thought you were so right on about, hee hee, but Right on!)

Re: Hart Ponder. St. Paul was not a tent-maker.  The convert formerly known as Saul made tents, but you have a heavy burden of proof to say he continued this trade Post-blinding-and-converting and being named Paul. It is this same Paul who also chastened the Corinthians to provide for the material needs of himself and other Gospel-preachers, for “a worker deserves his wage” Guess tent makers did not get a pension.

In my experience, what the Church needs (almost as much as holy priests) is competent acccountants.  That is, until the hierarchy stops caring about brick and mortar so much, and starts having eyes for the spiritual life of the faithful. 

Maybe the reason why reason why Fisher and Shea are so enormously adroit is because they don’t owe anybody more than a “round mound of nickels.”  If it was more than subsistence pay, their brutal intellectual and spiritual honesty would be hopelessly suborned. 

Not just Catholic artists, but all artists suffer from this blight.  “Artists” who are well paid are little more than apologists.  Jesus died with just 5 pieces of clothing to his name.

fiat - there is ample evidence in the epistles that Paul continued to work, even as as an apostle.  His boast, which he refused to renounce, was that he had not placed a financial burden on any of the Churches he evangelized, even though this was his prerogative as an apostle.

Where he found time to work in between the stonings, being jailed and beheaded, I have no idea.

The “church” locally is the parish - the funds with which it supports various employees are typically those given by the people in the pews on Sunday.  If the people in the pews are chintzy in their donations, the employees will be underpaid.  The sisters who taught in Catholic schools for decades - until about 1970 - were paid too little money to save for a retirement, no pensions and only the earnings of younger members of their orders to provide for them when they became too infirm to work, often at or beyond age 80.
Better off Catholics should make an effort to support aged religious on a regular basis.
TeaPot562

By “fullness of communion” I wish to say actual “Catholicity”.

We often hear about the evils of the internet and the media age in which we live. I am a media junkie, and find the internet,FB and Twitter are great sources of spiritual inspiration from so many talented “Professional Catholics”. I love the dialog on the blogs and the rich articles I’m exposed to through Twitter. For Mark Shea, if he is still visiting this thread - I take your Tweeted prayer requests seriously and always offer up a prayer the moment I read them.

Were not the Levitical priests of ancient Israel dependent on the offerings of the people?

Midwestlady, getting paid a living wage = “getting rich”?

Sandy:  Thanks so much for praying for all those different folks.  I put the prayers on my blog because I am inept at prayer and hope that somebody out there with a charism will help out and get it right.  Your prayers are doing extraordinary things, by the grace of God.  Well done!

Small mound of nickels… Lol. You’re awesome.

Anna Lisa,

Dissing Protestants isn’t going to solve the Catholic Church’s problems.  Dissing converts isn’t going to solve your problems either.  It’s just a way to change the subject and try to shift the blame.

Adolfo,
If you don’t like the renumeration involved in your job, get a different one and stop whining.

“What worries me about new Catholics or reverts is when they become teachers before they have been tested by life. They can make some pretty wild gyrations.”

I’ve found this to be true.  In fact, out of the bezillion or so people teaching, preaching, or just sounding off on internetalia, there are only a scant handful worth paying any attention to at all.  And all of these follow or front this blog.  “The intersection of style and substance.” 

I shall gently and mysteriously chuckle for a week every time my change includes a nickel….

And so shall I.

Midwestlady, I KNEW you were going to say that.  Thank you for confirming what I suspected about you!

@Midwest Lady, My husband is a convert who spent some time as a Baptist.  I used to go with him at times.  Wonderful protestant missionaries converted him from what would have been a dreary life of near atheism.  You are jumping to conclusions.  Some of the most amazing love, faith and desire to serve God that I’ve encountered is in protestants….so….ehhhh. No.

@Matt, who taught you how to write so well, and why aren’t you an author with a silk smoking jacket and a pipe?

or a slightly eccentric professor at Oxford?

If I was indeed so high falutin, how would our paths cross, what common air would we breathe, and what would be the occasion for the (jammin) music of our laughter?

Oxford affords so little of real life.  Oxsnard, on the other hand…

Mark Shea,

Is the Pope not a ‘professional Catholic’.  Just because you don’t agree with my comments (and I don’t insist that anyone else does) is no reason to get nasty - especially on a person’s character you don’t even know. That I find is extremely unproffesional especially as you are a writer for a Christian magazine.
 
As a victim of sexual abuse I am extremely dissapointed in Benedict’s treatment on this and other matters.  May I suggest you read the following:  http://whenreligionfails.blogspot.ca/2013/03/vatican-secrecy-behind-sexual-abuse.html

Lol!  Oxnard is a bit of a dump. Oxford would be so Downton Abbey. Oxnard has rival gangs that stab each other on the weekends…But I see a novel taking shape! and we’re most definitely off topic.

Aren’t you thinking of Westside Story?  I’m afraid it’s been done.  If I were a snobbish penman of the sort you describe I’d write a story about an ill-fated affair of the heart, like a combination of Prometheus Bound and one of those old Barbara Stanwyk/Jimmy Stuart movies.  It would run 1500 pages.  But to make it edgy, I would print it on fortune cookie-size slips of paper and distribute it by mail to unsuspecting random people, in a legal size manilla envelope.  Each slip would be numerically coded.  Then I would advertize a big reward for the person who could assemble enough of the pieces to come up with a coherent theme.  The trick?  If I was a slightly eccentric Oxford-type writer, there would be no coherent theme!  The whole thing, even at 1500 pages would be competely meaningless.

Trebert, I checked out you link. As a Catholic, I was dismayed on multiple levels. I’m left wondering, and I ask sincerely and with no malice; why do you want to be Catholic at all? It seems you’d really prefer for all Catholics to become Trebertians.

Sandy,

Sandy,
The question you pose was asked by many Catholics who called for a radical reform of the Church not the least of which were St. Francis of Assisi, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, etc..
 
It may surprise some to learn that as ‘professional’ Roman Catholics, subject to Canon Law, we not only have the right to express our dissent publicly in regard to decisions made by church authorities but also the right to follow our own informed consciences. For more on these rights and duties kindly refer to my blog posted in February of 2012 at   http://whenreligionfails.blogspot.ca/search/label/canon law

  Faith for me is a gift from God which as a mystery demands more questions rather than a series of prepared answers. 

anna lisa- I wish we could afford a house (minimum $350,000! for a fixer) in the ‘sort of dump Oxnard’- as it is we have a town house in Ventura- those rival gangs are called ‘the knife and gun club’ at the hospital where my husband works

Priest’s Wife, there’s dramatic potential in your Oxnard scenario.  How about “Flip this bird house,” or “Trading turfs.”  I can even see an not-for-profit opportunity called “Nuns trade guns.”

priest’s wife & anna lisa,
I know one has to live where there’s employment, but the housing costs in CA are so much higher than other areas of the country.Have you considered checking out other states?
Some parts of the South-like where I live-have very low unemployment, low taxes, & low living costs.Real estate is much, much more affordable.No smog, either…

Priest’s wife!  We are practically neighbors!  Perhaps we have a couple of mutual friends at St. Augustine’s Academy?  I laughed out loud when I read the thread and my three year old demanded sternly to know why.  Goodness, goodness gracious, I feel your pain.  There is something terribly wrong with CA real estate prices.  It is just so disheartening.  I was just reading Simcha’s piece, “You Belong in a Museum”, which I thought for sure would be a piece on the decline and fall of the SAHM.

Exactly, TeaPot562!

@Kathleen, I have so much curiosity about this great big country.  For the first time in my life, I have told my husband I would move practically anywhere, but now we are simply trying to bloom, where we are somewhat reluctantly planted.  He is working very hard in a fairly new job.  He is relieved to no longer work in an industry that he felt was unscrupulous—but it has meant a significant cut in pay.
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I’m thankful we have a big family network here (a mixed bag as well!) We also have some really. great. priests.  They are holy men, who are very serious about their priestly vocations.  They aren’t stuffy either and we enjoy going out with them too.
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@Priest’s wife, weren’t you positively high on the weather on Friday?  It was in the 80s here as it must have been in Ventura.  I packed a picnic, picked up my Kindergartner from school around noon and we went to the beach. It was simply breathtaking.

@priest’s wife, we don’t own our own home either.  It worries me, but we have already been victims of the volatile market, and don’t want to feel that pain, any time in the near future.  It seems to me there is another bubble forming…@Matt, yes, they are already “flipping” again.

anna, I can appreciate what you’re living through with your family.  We have just 2, and I’m like in an underwater suit.  Since Sandy ripped through, everything is shades of gray. 

There’s one existential solution: regard everything as temporary.  “Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about.” 

On occasion though one do stumble onto an exceptionally round and sweet strawberry, which throws the whole equation into disarray.

anna lisa- we homeschool, but about half of our world would be St Augustine Academy people

We own our townhouse (bought it 8 years ago for 225,000…no stove, dog vom** on the walls…we had to re-do everything…now, it is okay.

For those shocked that Californians discuss housing prices (talking about $ is so uncouth)...it is the second topic of conversation after traffic (that SNL sketch ‘The Californians’ on Hulu is pretty accurate)

Hahaha.  This is true.  But after a decade in The SF Bay area, I know those in Nor Cal would be horribly offended to be compared to the clearly SoCal cast of The Califonians.  We pride ourselves in being ugly and sporty.  We drive Audis and Prius’.  Designer handbags, Gucci glasses, and McMansions are considered uncouth.  We brag via our 5000 dollar bicycles, where we stayed at Tahoe during ski week and how wholesome our diet is.  If we really want to up the ante, we adopt an exotic child, or we let the invitro twin live, so we can stroll with a double Peg Perego stroller on the days we don’t go to pilates or Bikram Yoga.

Ha!  The spam filter thought it unfit for me to critique the profound differences in SoCal vs NorCal. (it wasn’t long winded!) But you are perfectly correct about housing prices and traffic!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are no exotic children - just children.

An exotic child is one who invents a spaceship that will fly to planet zoron (in time for lunch).  Or mine a mineral that cures moronic disease - rampant in 20 galaxies.  Or sit patiently with imbeciles for 20 generations while tracking down a character trait indicative of incipient genius.

Exotic children do in fact exist, but we’re plumb out of them.  All that remain are kids who are capable of moving their thumbs in smasmodic and repetitive twitches.

@Matt, I felt a little bad using the term “exotic child”.  I used “we” tongue in cheek, as I’m sure you could tell.  One of the little black spots on my soul is a slight terror/aversion of children that have been treated like exotic pets by their parents.  I should remember to pray for a few of them more.  One of my stranger experiences up North was being at a fifth grade history expo.  One of my son’s little friends was the child of a first marriage.  The second wife, a lawyer, came up to me when she saw that I was visibly pregnant.  She was a little embarrassed but got over her embarrassment well enough to ask me if she could buy the baby I was pregnant with (and as I clearly had plenty to spare)  When I looked at *her* like she was an alien, she wondered if I might have any friends who would consider such an arrangement.  I suppose I shouldn’t be so shocked, especially since one of the mothers in the Kindergarten class had been hired to carry twins for two gay men.
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Yes, “trigger thumb” alarms me too.
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Oh and I forgot one more thing that NorCal residents brag about, it goes kind of like this: “Dude, I’m kicking myself.  I had the opportunity to invest in Facebook when it was a start up.”

When I went the first time to meet my son in Africa, I had to travel by myself.  The trip was out of the question for our first son, and my wife needed to remain with him.

Moving about in this big African city was already a mind-blower, but the day came for me to meet my son.  He was staying in an orphanage in a back-street of the city.  Everywhere there were 15-foot walls, and people lived in gated compounds.

I got there first among my party, and was waiting at the gate.  I could see the chilren inside, in the yard.  There was about 30 of them, aged 3 - 7.  They looked well taken care of, but obviously in poverty.

When I walked through the gate, they surrounded me.  They all wanted to be picked up, held, loved.  They were genuinely smiling at me, kissing me, hugging me.  I was devastated.  I needed an additional 100 arms.

My own son took to me almost immediately, and we talked like father/son despite the language barrier.  But easily 10 other children were clinging to me, and loving me as well.  Needing attention, needing love.

I learned that there are 5 million orphans in this particular country.  Is that exotic enough for your earthquake-headed friends?

??? anna lisa, I put a comment up into the NRS cloud, which I hope will emerge, some day.  But I couldn’t help being curious about your “baby buying” story.

How much was the prospective mother offering?

PS, anna lisa: was there a stipulation in the surrogate mother contract for your Kindergarten teacher that the offspring needed to by a male?  Just wondering.

Was that California you were living in or Transylvania?

@MattB, The whole world is turning into Transylvania I’m afraid. I didn’t have to grow up with the likes of Dawkings, Hitchins or The Onion, but my kids do…These threads keep me on my toes so I can play intellectual ball with some tough customers who mentally wrangle with me all the time.
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Hey, you live in the land of Snooki…I’ve never seen more than a few minutes of Jersey shore, but I’m sure my expression was close to the one I gave the lawyer who asked to buy my baby.  Freaks live everywhere.—and “no”, she didn’t get past my “I smell dog doo doo” expression to present a hard number.  When the surrogate “shared” with me at the park what she had already done, all I remember is that she told me she had delivered the twins “naturally”.

I did in fact meet a (different)male gay couple on the beach once with twin girls.  We were hospitable with them—the little girls wanted to roast marshmellos with our kids.  It was awk at first, but I think it was the correct response in the WWJD handbook.
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What does one do?  One of the Moms I was becoming friends with told me a tearful story about how her son’s IVF twin died at childbirth.  She teared up—I felt her pain.  I didn’t know her well enough to speak candidly with her about what I believe.  She certainly wasn’t a strange vampire like that lawyer…

Oh Matt,—I just read what you wrote about finding your son (s?) in Africa.  That is the saddest and most beautiful thing I can think of.  God bless you for rescuing your sons.  I’m so sorry that what I first wrote could have been interpreted wrongly.  You have my highest respect for what you have done.

and Matt,—those weren’t my friends.  It could get lonely there,but there are *good* people everywhere too!  I do however understand why they say Mother Teresa was reluctant to let her orphans be adopted by these types.  There is a very high suicide rate for Marin county.  They abuse a lot of drugs and alcohol too.  What devastated me was to watch some of the even nicer kids from what seemed like decent families, with parents that clearly loved them, start going down the tubes.  Promiscuity becomes the norm…
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If someone finds the “promised land” down here, I hope they will be kind enough to send me a brochure.  God knows I’d take up Kathleen’s offer in a heartbeat if my husband had a good job there.

anna lisa, you have my highest respect for what you do every day.  You are the real thing.

And you have it backward, I didn’t rescue anybody.  I was a shipwrecked man in my middle age.  Through the grace of God, my wife’s belief in me, and the forebearance of two angelic, though strangely impertinent dark-eyed boys, I have become what I suspect God always had in store for me to be.

I also suspect that God created eternity for us to rectify all the vain indiscretions of our wayward youth.  And if I judge him aright, it’s going to be excessive.  (My big boy is from Central America.)

anna lisa,
I really enjoy where I live, but I guess there’s no real promised land in this life.Our non-qualifying features are mosquitoes & humidity.

I too have been saved by lovely, impertinent, dark eyed children :D!
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I’m not afraid of the wrath of God. Not his wrath specifically anyhow—Every time I have experienced what some would interpret as His wrath, it made me love Him even more—and a little more resigned to what He ordains.  I am impertinent too.  When they do the reading on James and John’s mother asking for a place at the right and left hand of Jesus,—with audacity (like my children), I always ask Him to squeeze me a spot near one of His feet with the ones who earned it.  He can hammer and chisel all that He wants if this is what is needed.
@Kathleen, I’m not afraid of mosquitoes either :)

O anna lisa, you’ve misunderstood me completely, if you’re talking about “the wrath of God.”  I’m afraid your theological slip is showing.  I meant that our heavenly Father is going to reward us in a way that confounds our ability to understand or really believe.  I have a screensaver of NASA Hubble shots, and it’s truly astounding.  It’s hard to believe that there’s so much up there (that we didn’t even expect until 20 years ago.)  God said to Abraham, I give you all of this as your possession.  Your children will be as numerous as the sand of the sea, and they will go forth to take possession of this land (heaven) - if you only believe.  I think your sculpting is up to the point where the true you is starting to shine through!

What a beautiful thought to meditate on.  And yes, God is that extravagant in His love and generosity. I think I need that screensaver.  I often get a little mired with the gritty details here—but even the grit can be beautiful. The fish tacos and bell pepper salsa my husband and I collaborated on last night were sublime, but we had an itty bitty argument when he broke out a good bottle of wine to celebrate the death of Hugo Chavez. But it really just boiled down to semantics.

Spamster dragged my comment into it’s lair for the night.  To make matters worse I realized when I was picking up my husband from work that I mistakenly dragged Ceasar Chavez into matters instead of *Hugo* Chavez.  Lol.
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My six year old and nine year old just happened to have a conversation with me about how big the universe is, and I told them how I was hoping to change my screensaver to one that I just heard about that has Hubble shots :)

I guess my tone is a little casual, je ne sais quoi.  But I feel like I just gave birth out of my chest.  For days I’ve been on a trajectory, like an eagle diving.  Now, literally everything hurts.  Things you say cost real money.  Things you mean cost flesh and blood.

anna lisa,
I never used to pay much mind to mosquitoes, but after a tropical storm blew in a year or two ago we’ve had much more trouble with them & experienced severe reactions to their bites.It may be a new species that blew in,more standing water,or…? Possibly, too, our local govt.‘s cut back on spraying them.
At least it’s a seasonal thing.Right now the azaleas are blooming,the sun’s shining, & the skeeters are inactive.It’s a beautiful day.
Hope your’s is, too!

Okay Kathleen, that struck a chord of fear.  When my children were babies the first mosquito bites would swell up like golf balls.  They would look deformed if it happened on the face, then it would seem like their bodies adjusted.  I think I’m even more afraid of aerial spraying.  When I was expecting my sixth baby they sent us a letter that they would be spraying for a spotted moth that was killing the oak trees.  We were told to stay indoors and bring our animals in.  They came in white suits and sprayed a white mist on everything.  When my baby girl died at 22 weeks the autopsy said she was perfect, she just stopped living, but I distinctly remembered a burning in my digestive tract that I had never experienced before.  When I called them to let them know what happened they laughed at me and told me I had a greater chance of dying had I tried to flee by car.
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We have returned to jacket weather here and are having some much needed rain.  It is postcard beautiful here but I’m afraid I take it for granted, and am ruined for being able to live somewhere ugly.  What gave me a boost to my day was when our kind hearted pastor came down off of the altar at the sign of peace, shook our hands and said “God Bless your beautiful family.”

The spam filter is relentless.  Maybe because at the NCR it is a venial sin to hijack the thread. :)

I’ll go in and see what I can find.

anna lisa,
We’ve had the opposite happen where folks who never reacted to mosquito bites, now have the severe reactions.I googled it inline & found info on “skeeter syndrome.” I know sensitivities can work both ways.
I’m very wary of aerial spraying, too but spraying & other chemical methods have kept yellow fever away.It used to take many lives & was a terrible way to die.Ditto for encephalitis & malaria.One of the most prominent realtors I know recently was in a coma from West Nile.She barely survived.
I used to be in a Bible study with the head of Mosquito Control.He explained that they try to time sprayings with the development of the larvae & use the least amount of spray possible.They used more of a growth retardent agent than old school pesticide.
I avoid chemical pesticides & even try to ignore the fire ants in my yard.If only they would do the same…
I’m so very sorry for your loss. I know that must give you a keener insight into how precious life is.And a special heart for the pre-born.
God bless!

Thank you Kathleen, yes indeed it did.  It also marked the end of ever thinking that I did God a favor by bringing children into this world.
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I have been taken over by ants too.  I have been pregnant so many times in the past two years, they think they own the joint.
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My half-French grandmother (her mother from New Orleans) would have said: “You’re between the devil and the deep blue sea.” :)

@Simcha, no worries, everything bubbled up to the surface!:)You’re a hospitable blogger for letting us hang out on the porch and chat after hours.

I’m starting to get the willies with all this talk about pathogenic mosquitos.  Kathleen, for all the bucolic bliss, your crib seems to be infested with malevolent critters: prehistoric chickens, alligator gars, priggish pigs, and now insidious insects.  Is there some kind of vaccine you need to live there?

anna lisa, I waited all morning for your buried comment.  I just don’t know what to say to you.  You completely fluster me.  In fact, after our exchange last night, I was overcome by some kind of spritual affliction.  I’m chalking it up to Jersey disease.  Sartre wrote about it in “Nausea.”  (Although he didn’t call it Jersey disease.)  It’s the sudden insurmountable realization that you’re living in purgatory, and that the last train to heaven is pulling out 15 minutes ago.  I wish I had more time (indefinitely more) to keep up with your discussion.  I fear I would need a $5,000 bike.

Matt,
There’s actually more mosquito-spread encephalitis Up North.More Lyme Disease, too.
West Nile’s been more of a Southern-thing but I believe it’s spreading out.We have a very tiny population of leprosy cases which are somehow ssociated with the huge armadillo population.
I guess there’s risk everywhere.
Gators keep us from swimming in some places.Even without the gators, though, I don’t think I’d want to swim in those murky waters.Too many cottonmouths & snapping cooters.
But death-by-gator is rare.Death by drunk driving’s endemic.

Sounds like a case of “Venite intus; horribilis est!”  Are you sure you’re not selling insurance, Kathleen?  Your knowledge of risk is pretty comprehensive.

Matt, what can I say?  I’m really sorry if my words brought you an affliction.  I’m a work in progress.  I sometimes laugh to try to bring up the mood, but it can have the effect of laughing at a funeral, which I hope I would never do.  BTW, I really appreciated what you said about all of the unfathomable cosmos being a foretaste of what God has in store for those who love—it was really moving.  I always appreciate it when someone can help me to peel back my myopic view.  Life can slap us with blinders eh?  My husband was diagnosed with adult onset Rosacea yesterday, and I had to defend my third grader’s use of the word “frickin” on the handball court to his teacher.
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My description of fish tacos and Hugo Chavez wine must have landed like bad heartburn.

@Matt, again my comment just got pulled under, but I wanted to say that I’m sorry you experience such episodes of pain.  Sometimes when I feel a dark mood coming on I warn my husband and apologize that I feel like a stinker. I almost always identify it for what it is in the midst of it.  This helps me to offer it up for someone who is really in an awful situation—This never fails to take most of the sting out of it, and I feel that it isn’t fruitless suffering.

Kathleen, your pragmatism is priceless.

After reading the comments from Anna Lisa, Kathleen and Matt B, I’m glad I live in flyover country where all I have to worry about are tornadoes and blizzards :-) Seriously, though, I am really awed at the faith and example you guys and gals are showing and I almost hate to get back to our original topic… but here goes.

I once worked for a Catholic diocesan newspaper full time, for 14 years. I enjoyed the work and actually it paid reasonably well though I could have made considerably more money working for the local secular newspaper. In some ways it was good for my faith—I got to meet lots of wonderful people and visit many different parishes, and I got to hear speakers and attend conferences I would not have otherwise.

In other ways, however, it was NOT good for my faith because spending 40+ hours a week immersed in “Church stuff” meant that I was burnt out on it in my off hours, and less inclined to do prayer or Bible study or other religious activities on my own. Attending Masses or retreats that were not part of my job was like going on the proverbial “busman’s holiday”. Now that I work in an entirely secular state government job, I cherish whatever time I can spare for prayer and study of the Faith, and don’t take them for granted. A few drops of water in the middle of a desert mean a lot more to you than a few drops of water in the middle of an ocean…. 

Elaine S.,
One of my children has worked for 2 different dioceses fulltime & has shared similar insights.
Thank you for redirecting the conversation.It had taken off in a different path completely.
:)

Elaine, my wife and I both left secular careers to work in diocesan organizations.  Before we did, a very holy Monsignor friend of us warned us: “Work for the Church… Lose your faith.”  I’ve seen this happen a number of times.

We both “quit it” to raise our two boys, and I find this experience to be far more conducive to lay holiness (such as I have any right to claim). I don’t think the “Church” was really meant for a career, but is rather an arcane medieval torture device for extracting holiness like bodily fluid.

anna lisa, I’m sorry for my bleat of pain.  There’s something going on over here that overwhelmed me for moment.  I discharge you from your obligation to be my mother.  However, I’m hoping we can still be friends.

Matt, I think it burdens you and blesses you to see the truth so vividly at times.  More than anything, it is a blessing.  Your comments are always food for thought, and I appreciate them.  I think Simcha suffers from this same affliction at times too.  Kathleen gives me hope that one can continue to make these connections, and stand calmly in the eye of the storm.
@Eileen, thank you for making us pay attention in class!

and apropos to the original post, I’m finally beginning to understand what a burden it is for a priest to have to “run the family, spiritual household”  One of my dear priest friends had Mahoney as a boss.  He is an amazing priest with two feet planted firmly on the ground, but his holiness has come from suffering from his job I think.

Back at ya,

anna, Priests suffer from an organizational phenomenon which is commonly known in the business community.  The organizational goals of the Church do not align with their incentive plan.  If the idea of the Church is to produce holy pastors and saved souls, you would never know if from their organizational incentives.  They really don’t reward, or even promote holiness, or even knowledge of holiness.  The Church is more like the Army or GM: incentivizing complacency and inaction.  You know that expression “the cream rises to the top.”  That’s because we’re talking about dairy product.  What happens when you’re talking about complacency, spiritual laziness and organizational sloth?  What rises then?

Mtt,
I hear you, but if the foundation of holiness is humility, then many opportunities are built into the system.

It’s a good thing, Kathleen, that nobody expects any profit from the Church, because the dividends are all accruing in the next world.

Matt: Your last comment makes sense only when “Church” is substituted with “family”. Indeed, only a family that imitates the Holy Family can produce everlasting fruit in the kingdom. Conversely, if on applying the wholesome logic of St. Irenaeus, we are visited not with the image of a Great King but with the image of a usurper in the image of Herod, slaughterer of innocents and serial begetter of the unholy miscarriage of justice, then you have an answer. Christian charity brings with it a responsibility to speak the truth in love.

“serial begetter of the unholy miscarriage of justice” - wow, that’s a mouthful.  I’m afraid I don’t follow.

The scriptures and sacred tradition are clear that Christ will return as a victorious king, not as a sacrificial victim.  This is a curious anomaly, since so much of our understanding of Jesus is imbued with “suffering servant.”  However, since Christ is the same, yesterday today and tomorrow, maybe there was some regality in this Jesus whom we all know was crucified and died?  Where would you look to find out?

Matt B ,
I have a Benedictan Crucifix-I think- that portrays Christ as victim,priest, & king.Maybe I should google to be sure, but I think that’s correct.

Kathleen, I find that many agnostics and atheists completely reject our Lord because they find him milqutoast.  My wife had an episode with a overstated skinhead who said, “I don’t believe in *Your* God.”  And it’s true.  If I were a martian stepping off a spaceship, and somebody told me that *this* Jesus was in charge, I’d have to chuckle and move on to Venus.  What last mysticism we had that preserved the awesomeness of Christ’s true self was totally fopped away P-VII.  I don’t think there are three clerics who would know their boss if he showed up and knocked at the door.  All his prophecies are coming true.  Every single one.

Matt,
You have a good weekend.
Sorry for my poor spelling of Benedictine.I’m already on weekend mode…

Glad you brought that up Matt. Without putting too fine a point on it, you’d look East, where the living Tradition is preserved. As you say, it all it’s glory.

Irenic, I’d have to say you’re indulging in “golden age” thinking.  I sincerely doubt there’s an Avalon or Shangri-la anywhere on earth where a pristine practice of religion prevails.

I often pine for Tibet, in fact.  I would love to go there and stay.  However, my body doesn’t digest yogurt well, and since my heart operation I probably couldn’t tolerate the altitude.

I would recommend to you some kind of public television program on the people of the high Andes of Peru.  They say that extraterrestrials visited our planet and built some of the ancient inexplicable monoments.  Well, Peru is where they still live.

Matt: Seriously.
TBN has nothing to do with it. I simply thank God for Orthodoxy. (Aside - just got a lick from Fido. Behind the ears too).

I love a mountain.

May the Lord bless and protect you Matt.

Very kind of you, Irenic.  Please accept the mutual nod.

We

Could lay Catholic missionaries be considered “professional Catholics?” Missionary Susanna De. A grapples with this topic on The Mission Blog and comes to some interesting conclusions: http://www.fmcmissions.com/2013/05/07/are-lay-missionaries-professional-catholics/

Thanks for the post!  I wasn’t planning on taking up my blog full-time anyway :)