Eric #11107 - part 3

Dear Eric #11107 - part 3

I have this exercise derived from an RCIA class I taught.  I think it might make a good basis for discussion.

I am posting each question as a sub thread to avoid having nine threads.

1.     We have all heard the term “my people.” We may have even used it. Consider using this term personally. When you do consider it personally, who is included in your personal “my people?” There may be more than one group this applies to. They may be groups within groups. Name all the groups you can!

2.     It is said that the Church is "one." What does this mean to you? Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is "one?"

3.     Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is not “one?”

The church does not consist of people of only one color, of only one race, of only one culture.

It does not use just one liturgy -- each of the "Rites" of the Catholic Church has its own ancient form of liturgy.

4.     It is said that the Church is “holy.” What does this mean to you? Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is “holy?”

5.     Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is not “holy?”

6.     It is said that the Church is “catholic” with a small “c.” That means universal. What does this mean to you? Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is “catholic?”

7.     Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is not “catholic?”

8.     It is said that the Church is “apostolic.” What does this mean to you? Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is “apostolic?”

9.     Can you name one or more specific ways in which the Church is not “apostolic?”

Eric #11107 - part 2

Dear Eric #11107 - part 2

The second issue that arises from your post is the tendency of some people to seek darkness.

Just about everyone understands the light/darkness dichotomy -- it is found in pop culture such as Star Wars.  It was recently the basis of the Gospel reading of the wise and foolish virgins -- a story rooted in real life even to the 20^th century (see Barclay's Commentary on Matthew).

But a recent event in my life showed me a new insight into this image.  I was on a 2.5 day retreat at a Jesuit retreat House (Ignatius House in Atlanta).  There was light everywhere:  in the Word, in the retreat master, in the glow in the sky from a major city, in the halls 24x7 for security.  Then on Saturday, while it was still light out, a storm went through, knocking out the power.  Dinner and the last conference were done with no electric lights, just as night was falling.  There was a scramble to find candles to allow us to navigate the dark halls, the emergency power system having been exhausted.

Just as we were retiring, the power came back.  But the next morning, just as the morning bell sounded, out again went the power.  Breakfast with no power was more limited than would otherwise be the case.  This time the power returned in time for the final Eucharist.  At that time we shared our experiences of the retreat.

It seems that when the storm came through on Saturday, a number of people were in the nearby woods.  Those woods have a number of old large tall trees, not the place to be in the storm.  Several stories included the sound of limbs crashing to the ground as the winds blew through.  All escaped unharmed but not untouched.  Prayer on the occasion of danger burns deeper into our heart.

I am presently in the Washington DC area.  The residents are still recovering and remembering the events here associated with the snipers.  Last light, at dinner, it was pointed our that, on the way to the restaurant, we passed the site of one of the shootings.

Where I am staying is close to the Pentagon.  When I passed through last August, it was pointed out the side that is renewed and rebuilt after the events of September 11, 2001.

Two cases of darkness visiting and passing away, but the memories and therefore emotions, linger.

I have seen on StR's since I have been a member a tendency of some to focus on the dark side of things, specifically the church.  In view of the ongoing scandals and their painful resolutions, it is somewhat understandable.

But on that retreat I came to a new appreciation of light and darkness.

We are so bathed in light that we have lost our appreciation of light and darkness.  We use light to drive away fear, loneliness, and boredom.  The shiny is now mundane.

But when electricity is shut off, we are left with not just darkness but quiet.  Then it is when we can disconnect from the world, and connect with God.  For as the prophet said, the Lord comes not in the wind and thunder, but in the gentle breeze.  We find it difficult to experience it without being still.

Christ is indeed the light of the world.  But for his light to be seen, we must remove the glitter that blinds us.  For us to sense the Spirit of God, the breathe of God, the gentle breeze that blows through our souls if we let it, we must build a windbreak against the hurricane of Hollywood.

And so we frame a new paradox.  We shut off the light of the world that we may be warmed by the Light of the world.  We accept the absence of electric light so we may open the window of our hearts to the quiet Presence.

So Eric if you must be a crusader, be a Knight who accepts the responsibility to lift up the light of Christ in the world.  You might start where you are going to school.  Your bishop, Donald Wuerl, is one of the most influential and respected bishops in the US and in the world (he used to work in the Vatican and is respected there).  He is a great communicator.  He is also a soft spoken gentleman.  Get to know him.

Richard (formerly of Northside Pgh)

Eric #11107 - part 1

Dear Eric #11107 - part 1

I am sorry I did not get to post in your thread now placed in the forbidden zone under pain of excommunication.  I am on vacation and a bit out of touch.  But it seems to me that the topic you were wishing to address is mission and evangelization.  You gave us your take on your personal mission and suggested evangelization approach -- you wish to preach a crusade, this time against other Catholics.  Would that this were a novel approach.

It is good that you are thinking about mission, about the journey and meaning of your personal life in God.  One of my passions is the communion of the saints, what Pius XII called the Body of Christ.  JPII shares this passion.  He has held up many models for us to ponder, who invite us into relationship with them.

At the moment I would like to consider one of my favorites, St Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  First you may wish to object that I call her a saint.  While her name is not yet in the canon (Latin for list), I have never met a Catholic who did not consider her a saint in their heart of hearts.  Her cultus is approved.  So calling her a saint is to recognize her heroic virtues -- as did the Hindus of her adopted country India, who gave her a state funeral.

Many saints experience a conversion experience -- not a flash of light or a vision, but a turning in one's life to a new mission.  SMToC's was different in that she was already a vowed religious when her conversion experience occurred.

The nature of her conversion experience was also special with respect to its goal -- its sense of mission.  Here in the United States most Catholics have experienced the mission of vowed women religious.  For persons of my certain age, it was typically as an educator or healer or contemplative intercessor.  They taught in schools, worked in hospitals, nursing homes, retirement homes, they prayed and worked in enclosure.

SMToC chose to be in the world.  She chose to minister in the streets.  She was called to minister to those rejected by the world.  And she chose not to teach them or heal them -- merely to be present to them as an alter Christus -- to wipe their brow as they died, to share a meager meal as they struggled for life.  As she herself said, she was not called to be effective but to be faithful -- faithful to the call of Christ.  To paraphrase Francis of Assisi, she preached always, but seldom used words.

Which, Eric, gets us back to your post.  You appear to be concerned with a lack of faithfulness in the Church.  You call us to orthodoxy and orthopraxy (as Casey Stengel said, you could look it up).

What I think you are doing is rejecting the call of the Spirit to be in, not to be of, but to minister to the world today.  You present to us the paradigm of crusade as the way of lifting up Christ.  I would submit that the witness (Greek martyrion) of the saints of the twentieth century shows us the two paths indicated by the comments on vow religious women above -- ministry of service and ministry of presence.

Service was modeled to us by Jesus when he washed the feet of the Apostles, when he listened to all, when he preached conversion by love -- of God and of our neighbors all, when he healed the sick.

Presence he modeled to us when he hung on the cross, dying, for us, yet be present to those who shared his fate.  He was present to them as brother irrespective of who they were and what they had done.

The opportunities are many;  many are called;  less than many heed the call;  fewer still answer the call.

But if you feel you are called to preach a crusade, then you must be trained and formed.  You have many choices -- diaconate, priesthood, vowed religious.  Gird your loins and prepare to do battle.  Seek the Lord where he may be found.

Eric #11107 - part 0

Eric #11107 was on an old dating site called I think St Raphael's.  I found an old stick and there is a file on it from 2002Dec2.  I am posting in in three parts.

Jerome

Jerome and me

the touchy feely parts of the ordinary form [of the Mass]

I’m a recent convert with Asperger’s. I have a REAL problem with the touchy feely parts of the “ordinary” form [of the Mass]...

Before addressing the question in the original post, I want to say I also have been diagnosed by my own daughter w/Asperger's syndrome.  I grew up in a relatively non-touchy non-feely environment.  And I have been thinking about my posture @ Mass for some time.

My first awakening experience was being an EM in a hospital in Pgh and then in a nursing home in MN.  You can't directly touch some patients in the hospital because of infection control.  You must wear rubber gloves, and sometimes face masks, and for a few patients, head coverings and gowns.

But the patients wanted us to come.  They were joyful that we came.  I shook their hands to let them express their gratitude, to let their joy run loose.

I had been a member of a parish in Oak Ridge TN for three years.  There was a couple with many children.  It was a running joke that they held hands during Mass.

So let's look at the sign of peace systematically.  We can start with married couples.  They have shared more than spit in their lifetime together.  It is totally appropriate for them to have a public display of affection on the occasion of joining with other part of the body of Christ to celebrate their "bodyness" and the one who makes them one.  They can touch in public in recognition and remembrance.  A kiss is totally appropriate.

Then there are their children, the fruit of their joining in love.  They honor their source by honoring their source, by touching the ones responsible for their being alive.

It can be hard to be a sibling.  Grievances and grudges happen.  What better time and place to put that aside than in a celebration of unity with their parents.  Touching and even a kiss is appropriate.

What is true of children can be extended to all of one's family, both by blood and by marriage.  Touching and even a kiss is appropriate.

Some are on the journey to being united in matrimony.  Public recognition of desires can be a chance to tell the world of where the relationship might head, could head, is wanted to head.

Then their are our neighbors in faith.  The ones we know are our friends.  Can we deny in public before God and our companions in faith, what we show in  public and private outside the gathering in faith?  Is that not hypocrisy?

As for our neighbors in faith, who are not our friends.  Does not Paul say, following Jesus, that we are one Body with them?  If our faith has meaning to us, can we deny to them what we give to others?

And then there are those who are not one in faith with us.  We are called to give witness to them.  By treating them as if we are already one with them in Christ, we show them who we want to be and who we want them to be.

<<>>

One of the questions that has occupied people for years is "How far should we go?"  For the Sign of Peace, Ok for the people in the pew in front; and behind; and on either side.  But whose responsibility are those standing in the aisles, in the back of the church?  If they are part of the gathered People of God, they are the responsibility of the gathered People of God.

There is a limit, though.  Which is why the narthex is important - a place to sign peace as preparation.

We like to think Mass has boundaries.  Decades ago (and in a few nostalgic places today) there was a bell to announce the beginning of Mass..  But is that when it begins?  Is not the act and process of gathering part of the gathering?  Is the celebration of the feast of Thanksgiving just a banquet, or is the preparation included?  The cleaning, preparing the table, the greeting at the door.  And also the purchase of the food, the choosing of the recipes, ....

So celebrations begin when the thought of the celebration enters the mind.  So let it be with the gsthering of the People of God to celebrate the Eucharistic Feast.

At the other end, there has always been controversy.  Some say Mass ends as soon as they receive Communion.  Others hold the moment is when the last hymn begins.  A few even wait until that song is fully sung.

But the words "Ite missa est" - Therefore you are sent - means the celebration and its fruits do not end at the walls of the gathering place.  The final charge is to continue outside what was begun inside.  The walls keep out the weather;  they should not be a barrier.

<<>>

original link: “Is it a rule that you have to give the sign of peace…?”

Francis and Gene

Try this in the pulpit. Let me know what happens.

The closest I ever saw of this was Fr Eugene Barrette MS at St Thomas the Apostle Church, Smyrna GA.  He would sing, do song reviews, movie reviews, TV reviews, a bit of a dance.  He would take as long for a homily as he thought necessary.  He was inspiring.  He was wonderful.  He was mostly gentle and kind.  Like us all he could be cranky at times.

He was/is my hero - a wounded healer.

He had been the head of the laSalette order in Rome and had some sort of exhaustion issue.  Some call it a mental breakdown.  He stepped down but continued to be a priest - a parish priest.

Wherever you are Gene, pax Christi tecum.

Physics joke

ajc2013Jul7comics Crackshaft

man: You look pretty pleased

woman: Yeah

m: Now what?

w: Oh, I was just wondering if Max is going to find someone ... or if Mindy is going to graduate from college ... or if Dad's okay in New York.  My happy times have a half-life shorter than a Higgs boson

COMMITTED FOR THE LONG RUN

Unable to attend the funeral after his Uncle Charlie died, a man who lived far away called his brother and told him, "Do something nice for Uncle Charlie and send me the bill."

Later, he got a bill for $200.00, which he paid. The next month, he got another bill for $200.00, which he also paid, figuring it was some incidental expense.

But, when the bills for $200.00 kept arriving every month, he finally called his brother again to find out what was going on.

"Well," said the other brother, "You said to do something nice for Uncle Charlie. So I rented him a tuxedo."

That's not exactly the most appropriate gift for someone who has died! But the story made me think about how we are often willing to give, even to sacrifice great amounts, and we are happy to do so once or twice. But we don't want it to become something we have to do for the rest of our lives.

For example, we're happy to have friends or family stay in our homes for a short while, but we don't want it to go on for years and years. We'll agree to teach a Bible class at church for a quarter or two, but we don't want to be stuck in the class for the rest of our life. We'll take a mission trip and live in squalid conditions for a week or two, but would never dream of moving there permanently.

And our hesitancy in situations like those is perhaps understandable. Unfortunately, we sometimes are tempted to have the same attitude when it comes to serving Christ. We're willing to give up everything for Christ -- at least, for a while. But for our whole lives? Always seeking to put others first? Always willing to forgive? Always willing to suffer and sacrifice for the cause of Christ?

We need to be reminded that Christianity is not a sprint, it's a long-distance marathon, and we must be willing to commit ourselves to run the race to the very end. Be forewarned -- it can be tiring. But "let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." (Gal 6:9)

How old are you?

Usually one measures age by the number of birthdays you have had.  Special notice is given for birthdays ending in zero in the decimal system.  But these can be denied.

Then there are the telltale signs on the body, especially the hands and neck.  Loose skin.  Liver spots.  Things that are stiff and should be supple, and vice versa.  But plastic surgery and modern medicine can change or mask some of these.

Then there is the attitude people have to you and you to them.  Do people ignore you?  Not hear you?  Do you want to tell the truth to everyone, despite the cost?  Do you do it?  Do you have the urge to post on Facebook every hour?  Do you follow that urge?

But the true sign is "What's in your mailbox?"

• Do you have incessant solicitations for Medicare plans?
  
• Do you get questionnaires from "Cremation and funeral societies?"
  
• Do people want to sell you "Final expense insurance?"

zimmerman trial

Is there a chance for blind justice when the trial is being used as a political kick ball on all sides?

In Sanford, Fla., Zimmerman trial keeps a shaken community on edge

The real problem in the USA is that there appears to be no way depoliticize race.  The media are heavily invested in using controversy as the basis for making money.

On code-switching:

Was Zimmerman trial witness Rachel Jeantel tripped up by her inability to code switch?

For me, it is still true that the medium is the message.  One must take responsibility for the message one delivers.  Wherever one is, one must speak the language of the place to the people of the place.

teaching today

For years I’ve been introducing students in my college-level fine- arts courses to the photographs of Diane Arbus (1923–71)....  Together they form a communion of beings as ethereal as saints, whose lovely, silver-tone relics seem at home under glass.

Projected onto a lecture-room wall, their dearness vanishes. No longer objects to be held and studied like jewelry, the photos assume the scale of billboard graphics, which one might think would heighten their power. Lately, however, my students seem less responsive to Arbus’s pictures than they once were, even if I try nudging them in the direction of honest emotion with a few lines from Grace Bauer’s tribute poem The Eye of the Beholder. Bauer dares my classes in her evocation of Arbus,

Run your hands
across your average face,
your normal body,”And tell me
how you differ from these
miracles that always make you
want to look away.
And see.

More and more, however, my students don’t turn reflexively from Arbus’s anomalies of nature and culture, or show much interest in “seeing” in a way that doesn’t entail keeping at least one eye on the screens of their iPhones. Instead, an icy stupor possesses them, something partly induced by the bullet-point approach to learning they’ve endured since grade school—all prepackaged “data” with little affective content. Sitting beside classmates with Popsicle-colored hair and more angles on filigreeing one’s body parts than even Arbus’s subjects knew of, they balk at the chance to examine art that asks, Who among you is without blemish? and only half buy my claim we’re not doing religion....

I regard the classroom as a hallowed place and require male students to remove their baseball caps upon entering....  Experience tells me that five or ten years down the road they’ll write to say they’d stumbled on the [a certain graphic image] in the pages of some magazine, no older or less terrifying than they remembered him. They’ll recall the hours we shared letting great images and ideas wash over us like baptismal water, a trick to keep our hearts and minds supple against life’s hard edges, our eyes fine-tuned to behold the world as it points beyond itself. - Experience tells me that five or ten years down the road they’ll write to say they’d stumbled on the boy with the grenade in the pages of some magazine, no older or less terrifying than they remembered him. They’ll recall the hours we shared letting great images and ideas wash over us like baptismal water, a trick to keep our hearts and minds supple against life’s hard edges, our eyes fine-tuned to behold the world as it points beyond itself. - Michael E. DeSanctis cw2013Jun1p31

peace / good will

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. - Lk 2:14

Today the NAB has:

Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.

I have been meditating on the relationship between peace and good will. One can have good will without being in peace. Certainly one can have good will without being in a time or place of peace.

For good will to be effective, it must be reciprocated. That, in and of itself, is peace; the sharing of good will.

I find that, as I age, peace becomes more important; and more elusive.

I find it unhealthy not to be always seeking peace.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is sadness, joy.

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved, as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

- Although the authorship of this prayer, first printed in the early 20th century, remains unclear, it has traditionally been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.

Patty and Pat Crowley

from Jim McCrea in post of Margaret O'Brien Steinfels @ commonweal.com

During the 1966 Papal Birth Control Commission, at which Chicago Catholics and co-directors of the Christian Family Movement Patty Crowley & her husband Pat were members, a heated discussion about how the church could save face if it were to allow couples to decide how to limit offspring, Marcelino Zalba, a Spanish Jesuit member of the commission, asked, “What then with the millions we have sent to hell” if the rules are relaxed?

Patty immediately responded in what became perhaps her most memorable quote. “Fr. Zalba,” she said, “do you really believe God has carried out all your orders?”

www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005d/120905/120905o.php

Andrew Greeley requiescat in pacem

his website

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels @ commonweal.com

2013 Baccalaureate Mass @ Thomas More College

On behalf of the 1963 class of Villa Madonna College, an apology to Sr. Margaret Stallmeyer SND, outgoing President for the way the 2013 Baccalaureate Mass was handled. The two master of ceremonies failed to be tasked with making sure the graduates and faculty had enough seating. Their job should extend beyond just the flow of the Mass. The pontifical servers managed the crosier and miter. No one managed the seating arrangements. Could no one count how many graduates there were? how many faculty there were? Did anyone do due diligence?

The point of a Mass is gathering of the people of God to worship. Anything that impedes that gathering needs addressing before the service proceeds. The ultimate responsibility for the gathering resides the presider and the community itself. Sr Margaret and some of the faculty are to be congratulated for their makeshift adaptation.

It is symptomatic of the problem that the homily used politics in the USA in the 1960s as a point of departure and not the renewal of the whole church in the twentieth century, which peaked in the 1960s. The election of a Catholic and his assassination three years later are not seminal moments in the life of the country nor of the church. The renewal of the church is good news of greater importance.

But it is symbolic that this happened while a woman was president of the college but the person effectively in charge of the ceremony was a bishop. Besides showing a lack of respect, it showed a shallow appreciation of the state of the world today, and the state of the church in the world.

Attention to cultic ceremonial details should not supersede the need to attend to fundamental symbolic actions which should mirror the basis for and composition of the community.

bucket list

I have resisted even thinking about a bucket list before this, but is now on my mind,  So I am making two lists: one of things done and one of not done,

done	2 do	books
go 2 Ireland go 2 Germany	make new will	Small Mercies (loyalapress.com $13) Still Point Loss, longing and our search 4 God (avemariapress.com $12) Rooted in Love Our calling as CAtholic women (avemariapress.com $15)

Morning has broken, like a new morning

I slept in this morning.  My brain needed time to work through whatever is bothering it.

It is spring, but the rain outside indicates it is not wise to do yard work.  I will water the new flower in the shade under the mailbox, and perhaps shop for more later.

We view sun as a blessing almost unreservedly.  Rain less so.  Yet God sends both to nourish the earth.

I have serious things to do in this last week of March, but I thought I needed to wake up my mind.  I turned to a stack of unread magazines and books.

As Catholics, we name the Hebrew and Christian scriptures gathered in the Bible the word of God.  Sometimes we hear him elsewhere.  Both are blessings.

This morning it was "Regime Change" Cw2013Mar22 - a quintet.  Some lancing the boils of the past and present (the confused media reaction to the resignation of the cat loving Rottweiler), others praying hope for the future.

I look forward to the next concert featuring the recently revised "How do you solve a problem like Francis?"

In the meantime I will settle for:

I saw raindrops on my window.
Joy is like the rain.
Laughter runs across my pain.
Slips away and comes again.
Joy is like the rain.

I saw clouds upon a mountain.
Joy is like a cloud;
sometimes silver, sometimes gray,
Always sun not far away.
Joy is like a cloud.

I saw Christ in wind and thunder,
Joy is tried by storm.
Christ asleep within my boat,
whipped by wind, yet still afloat.
Joy is tried by storm.

I saw raindrops on the river
Joy is like the rain.
Bit by bit the river grows,
Till at once it overflows.
Joy is like the rain.

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCIXVPYJuSg

tool time

My current project @ work needed another update that was not in the specs. To do the update I had to get the element from another person. I noticed she had two kinds of changes - adds and deletes. When I talked to her she stated that the element had "run out of space." The deletes were of obsolete code. It was then I realized we as a company had no strategy for this situation. I had a personal one. I had written tools to aid in this kind of work. The company had no tools, no policy.

serial madness

cross posted from fb

I need a new serial. Charles Dickens wrote his novels as serials - was paid by the word. Around WWII, movie theaters showed serials w/"main feature"s. Now I need a weekly serial to explain WTF fb has done to change the interface. what if M$ had written Vista or Office2007 so each week a new patch was applied that made a small change in the interface. we would all be crazy now. -- bad example. I am saying this on fb.