Is It Naughty When It's Just Insane?

Let's skip Halloween and go directly to Christmas. From way back in December of 2004, comes this gem from Barbara Nicolosi which cracked me up then and alas, so fits me today.

I forwarded it on to a friend in a similar situation with this note:

In the 15 minute window of leisure allotted me between hand-signing 300 Christmas cards, discussing foundation funding options with our business manager, and packing for that 6:30 am flight to San Antonio tomorrow morning, I had to send you this true spirit-of-Christmas item from the great Barb Nicolosi's blog.

I don't know why it tickles me so much but it is *SO* my life - just change the names and details to protect the guilty.

Except for one thing: Barb's past life as a sister has obviously left her with excessive scruples. She's worried about being a mere 5 *weeks* late on a major writing project. Good grief, I've got a half dozen projects that I'm at least a year behind on. Once you're past the year mark, you pass beyond mere guilt into an alternate time-and-space universe where guilt becomes transcendent: a kind of all encompassing faith that gives meaning to your life.

My favorite line: Is it naughty when its just insane?


BARB'S BRAIN MAKIN' A LIST, CHECKIN' IT TWICE...

1. Am now officially eight days past my deadline to submit my National Catholic Register column. No hope of getting it done until Saturday. - NAUGHTY

...Am ducking their request for a special article about the Pope on Cinema because I really want to do it, but can't see how or when - NAUGHTY

2. Was supposed to turn in the first draft of the screenplay Nov. 25. Am now shooting for Christmas....We'll see how much I get done on Saturday. - NAUGHTY

3. Am five weeks late submitting my chapter for the Act One book. They would certainly cut me out of the project if it wasn't for the fact that the book editor works for me. Saturday looks good to wrap that up. -- DEFINITELY NAUGHTY

4. Have written but not typed up a preface to a new book on the theology of The Passion of the Christ. They made the mistake of saying, "Whenever you can get to it." I think I can get it done Saturday before I really start writing. - NAUGHTY

5. Managed to do all the final negotiations for the new Act One offices. We sign the lease Friday. - NICE

6. Am ducking a new friend who runs a cool ministry that I really love. She asked me two months ago to give notes on the marketing plan they will be rolling out this year. - SLIMEY NAUGHTY

7. Am spending the next two dfays participating in a consortium on theology and cinema. I actually read the four books they sent in advance of our discussions - NICE!

...But, then, they sent me a pile of papers to read based on the books, and I only managed to print those out. Sigh. - NAUGHTY

8. In anticipation of the Act One Board of Directors meeting tonight, we managed to get out an agenda and all the budget stuff and other info to the members three whole days ago. - NICE

...Me taking credit for the fact that my staff did the lion share of work getting all the Board meeting stuff together - PROBABLY NAUGHTY

9. Managed to coordinate several meetings this week between our Hollywood Christians, and a delegation of Christians from Capital Hill. The meetings have been very well-attended and interesting. - NICE

...Thinking of the follow-up blog or messages I should write about our discussions. Maybe can squeeze it in on Saturday... - NAUGHTY

10. Still have to find that 12" GI Joe tank for nephew John Thomas somewhere out there in Internet shopping land. Have been spending too much time surfing around looking for it. - MORALLY UNCLEAR. CONSULT FAGOTHEY.

11. Have so many cool things to blog. Been saving thoughts since the film festival back in October. What if I die suddenly without getting to post my ideas of how The Wizard of Oz fails thematically by having subverted itself as a musical in terms of its methodology? Thinking I can get up early on Saturday. - IS IT NAUGHTY WHEN IT'S JUST INSANE?

12. Everyone is asking me to comment on movies. Haven't seen anything for months. Need to see everything. - NAUGHTY

13. Missing the office Christmas party tomorrow to be at the theology thing. - NAUGHTY

...Saving money by not getting presents for anyone at the office and thinking no one will notice because I am missing the party - DEEP IN THE NAUGHTINESS ENDZONE* (*credit to Karen Hall for coining the usage)

14. While running between events yesterday, I turned on the radio and heard a song about Christmas. It made me think of Jesus and my heart swelled with love. Still got it, even now. - VERY VERY NICE

And now - must run to a staff meeting . ..

Catholic Fortunes in Japan

Sandro Magister has a moving article this morning about the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 and its impact on the Catholic community of Japan. I had not realized that
"among the victims of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, two thirds of the small but vibrant Japanese Catholic community disappeared in a single day. It was a community that was nearly wiped out twice in three centuries."

In 1945, this was done through an act of war that was mysteriously focused on this city. Three centuries before, it was by a terrible persecution very similar to that of the Roman empire against the first Christians, with Nagasaki and its "hill of martyrs" again the epicenter.

And yet, the Japanese Catholic community was able to recover from both of these tragedies. After the persecution in the seventeenth century, Christians kept their faith alive by passing it on from parents to children for two centuries, in the absence of bishops, priests, and sacraments. It is recounted that on Good Friday of 1865, ten thousand of these "kakure kirisitan," hidden Christians, streamed from the villages and presented themselves in Nagasaki to the stunned missionaries who had just recently regained access to Japan.

And again after the second slaughter in Nagasaki, in 1945, the Catholic Church was reborn in Japan. The most recent official data, from 2004, estimate that there are a little more than half a million Japanese Catholics. They are few in relation to a population of 126 million. But they are respected and influential, thanks in part to their solid network of schools and universities.

Moreover, if to the native Japanese are added the immigrants from other Asian countries, the number of Catholics doubles. A 2005 report from the commission for migrants of the bishops' conference calculates that the total number of Catholics recently passed one million, for the first time in the history of Japan.

Astronomical Terrorism

A reader of ID writes about the current beliefs of a grieving widower with whom he has been sharing his faith: "the cosmos is soooo enormous that he can't believe we humans have any significance."

To which I can not do better in a hurry than to quote from the "funniest, wisest, and most unorthodox cookbook ever written" (or so thought Craig Clairborne of the New York Times in the late 60's)

"Unfortunately, we live in an age which is too little impressed by the small and too easily intimidated by the great. It is the stock in trade of atheists and other knockers of the wonder of being to insist that the magnitude of the universe makes all men's musings insignificant. How, they ask, can we seriously think we are of much account in a universe where light travels at 185,000 miles per second, and it takes a hundred light years to go from one galaxy to the next?

Looking into my saucepan as the stock thickens, I find a counterfoil to such astronomical terrorism. Creation is vast in every direction. It is as hugely small as it is large. The number of water-filled insterstices in my three tablespoons of flour runs the interstellar distances a fair second, the appeal to size is a self-canceling argument. Plying my whisk, I know that what goes on here is neither less mysterious nor less marvelous than what happen there. We may not have settled the question of whether i am mad to think that I matter, but we have definitely eliminated the numbers game as a method of proof. I will listen to any man who wants to argue me down, but saucepan in hand, I refused to be snowed."

The Supper of the Lamb, Robert Farrar Capon

Random Delights

Oh frabjous day!

More random quote generators than you can shake a stick at:

The wonderful Gerard Manley Hopkins poem generator:

Summa

THE best ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascribèd to
The holy Three in One.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins. Poems (1918).

The glorious G. K. Chesterton day by day quotes

JUNE 22nd

THOSE thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

G.K. Chesterton, 'Tremendous Trifles.'

The profound Desert Fathers quote generator:

Of the infirmity of forgetfulness, and how we ought not to despond because of it.

A certain brother said to one of the elders, "Lo, my father, I frequently consult the elders, and they give me advice for the salvation of my soul, yet of all that they say to me I can remember nothing." Now it happened that there were two vessels standing empty beside the old man to whom he spoke. He therefore said to the brother, "Go, take one of the vessels. Put water in it. Wash it, and pour the water out of it again. Then put it back, clean, into its place." The brother did so. Then said the old man, "Bring both vessels here. Look at them carefully, and tell me which is the cleaner." "Surely," said the brother, "that is the cleaner which I washed with the water." Then said the old man to him again, "Even so it is, my son, with the soul which frequently hears the words of God. Even although the memory retain none of them, yet is that soul purer than his who never seeks for spiritual counsel."

Random Music - quotes from Jacques Maritain

Paradise consists, as St. Augustine says, in the joy of the Truth. Contemplation is paradise on earth, a crucified paradise.

-- Jacques Maritain, in Scholasticism and Politics, 1940.

All via the generosity of the Jacques Maritain center of Notre Dame.

Add that to the P. G. Wodehouse random quote generator and what more could you ask for?

If I had had to choose between him and a cockroach as a companion for a walking-tour, the cockroach would have had it by a short head.

Very Good, Jeeves (1930) ``The Spot of Art'

Any other great quote generators that you recommend?

The Social Agenda

A very useful tool:

The Social Agenda - an online summary in six languages of Catholic social teaching put together by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace which was then headed by late, lamented François-Xavier Nguyên Cardinal Van Thuân.

The Social Agenda is made up of passages from Church teaching assembled by topic. A good place to begin your survey of Catholic Social Teaching - although I would never stop at a survey.

I find that those cd collections of Church teaching up to and including Vatican II are a fabulous way to gather a comprehensive collection of statements on a particular subject. It only takes 60 seconds to find the quotes and a week to read em all!

If God is With Us . . .

Both Fr. Mike and I are still swamped. I will try to get back to blogging later today. In the meantime, enjoy this two wonderful videos of Michael Card (and friends like Steve Green and Phil Keaggy) jamming on

The Poem of Your Life



and singing the exquisite Immanuel



A sign shall be given
A virgin will conceive
A human baby bearing
Undiminished deity
The glory of the nations
A light for all to see
Hope for all who will embrace
His warm reality

Immanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Immanuel

For all those who live in the shadow of death
A glorious light has dawned
For all those who stumble in the darkness
Behold your light has come

Immanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Immanuel

So what will be your answer?
Will you hear the call?
Of Him who did not spare His son
But gave him for us all
On earth there is no power
There is no depth or height
That could ever separate us
From the love of God in Christ

Immanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Immanuel

Immanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Immanuel

Music that nourishes hope!

This Week

We're still blogging but things have gotten busy.

A number of remarkable opportunities have come the Institute's way in the past week. Several large dioceses have approached us about wide-scale implementation of the Called & Gifted discernment process, I've been approached to speak at a important national gathering, I have also been asked to consider teaching (part-part-part-part time - I'm not leaving the Institute!)at a seminary, and we have received another international invitation and there are other possibilities that I can't even talk about in vague terms.

And then I'm gone for 8 days. We leave CS Saturday for Maryland and Making Disciples (with Fr. Mike, Keith Strohm and Barbara Elliott.) And then I am doing a Day of Discernment in Washington, DC. And hope to get to meet and spend a little time with Gashwin Gomes of Maior autem his est caritas while I'm there.

So we are scrambling a bit to pray, prioritize, and respond. We could use your prayers as we try to discern where God is calling us.

But I will also be blogging as I can this week (and have some good stuff to blog!) so stay tuned.

"Wholehearted" Discipleship

At the end of the Cursillo weekend I attended a couple of weeks ago, there was a prayer service in which the candidates are invited to commit themselves to apostolic works. It ends with a simple question each individual asks of God,

"Lord, what do you want from me?"

As we came to that question, I was prepared to examine the activities I'm involved in, and reflect on how I might be more Christlike in them, or how I might be more open about my Christian faith. I was hoping I might have some direction as to what new project I might be involved in, or what to do next in the Institute.

Instead, no sooner had the question been posed, when I had a response,

"Give me your heart."

It was one of those moments that I've had once in a while, in which the words that come to mind seem to come from deep within me yet somehow not from me. It's hard to explain. In these cases, the words have always been something of a surprise, like these words. Yet, of course, they made all the sense in the world.

And at the same time, they cut like a two-edged sword, because, of course, they imply that I have not given my heart completely to my Lord - and thus he's not entirely "Lord."

In fact my heart - my loves and desires - are very divided. I get wrapped up in the passing things of this world (like Duck football, for example!) and my heart rises and sinks with each win and loss. The same rising and sinking of emotions happens in relationships that we cling to because the other has become a means to our own happiness, rather than someone for whom we're laying down our life, or when we're trying to manipulate the emotions of another through pleasing, for example. The same churning of emotions happens when we've given our heart to work; each success merely momentarily staves off the ever-present fear of failure.

So why is it so hard to give my heart to one who loves me enough to suffer and die for me? Why am I so convinced that living my life my way will be better than Jesus' way? I will have to think and pray about these questions.

But in the meanwhile, it seems I have some ideas of where my heart is divided, and where there is need of true mortification - a "dying" to passing things. I am in need of detachment, not so that I can be free, but so that I can be attached to him "who loved me, and gave his life for me." (Gal 2:20)

Christian life in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank

Consider visiting Tabula Gaza, an English language blog from a resident of the Gaza Strip. This morning they carry this report from French 24 about the death of Rami Ayyad, manager of the Gaza Strip's only Christian bookstore.

Rami was a man of great courage and faith.

"Palestinian Christians number around 75,000 but there are only 2,500 -- most of them Greek Orthodox -- living in the Gaza Strip among nearly 1.5 million Muslims, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics." (Note: there are only about 200 Catholics in the Gaza Strip)

"Gaza has no history of tensions between the two communities and Christians say they are bound to their Muslim neighbours by shared suffering.

But fears peaked on October 6 when Ayyad was kidnapped, tortured and shot dead, his body dumped in a field outside Gaza City. No one has claimed responsibility for the murder.

Ayyad ran a bookshop affiliated with the United Bible Societies, a worldwide organisation that tries to help people "receive the Word of God and see the true light in Jesus Christ", according to its website.

The shop -- the only Christian bookstore in Gaza -- was firebombed in April, and Ayyad's family members said he was threatened several times.

"Three months before Rami was killed a man came into the office," Ayyad's mother told AFP. "He said to Rami, 'What do think about converting to Islam?'"

"Rami said, 'If you convert to Christianity, I'll become a Muslim.' Then the man said, 'I know how to make you a Muslim'. It was a threat."

The Hamas-run government has vowed to find and punish Ayyad's killers, and senior Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar and former prime minister Ismail Haniya attended his wake, along with several of the family's Muslim neighbours.

But many Christians, frightened of the new extremist groups and desperate to escape the worsening economic situation in the Gaza Strip, are seeking to emigrate, sparking fears for the future of the community."


Tabula Gaza also has a link to this amazing interactive map of the West Bank. Here you can see the extremely complicated reality: the many barriers, restricted roads, Israeli settlements, areas controlled by Palestinians and by Israelis. Imagine trying to live life there.

Even when I was there 20 years ago, the landscape was beginning to change in a way that was unrecognizable to those who had lived there for decades. I learned quickly within my first 24 hours on the West Bank.

I was being driven by a Anglican sister from Ramallah to an Arab village a few miles away that she had know well for many years. But as she neared where the road to the village should have been, she couldn't find it. A road constructed for an Isreali settlement blotted out the familiar landmarks. Somehow we ended up on the Isreali road heading to the Jewish settlement and I begin to hear her say strange things under her breath as she tried to turn around within sight of the settlement. It went like this:

"Don't shoot. We are just turning around. Don't shoot. We are just turning around."

It took a few moments for the reality of our situation to dawn upon my pampered American brain. What on earth was she talking about? Who gets shot at for making a simple three point turn about on a road with no traffic on it?

Unless, of course, you are in a car with a tell-tell Palestinian license plate 400 yards from the entrance to the Jewish settlement. It was, shall we say, a wake-up call.

Ramallah was a 20 minute drive, via a jammed Arab taxi complete with beaded hangings and Arabic music, from the old city of Jerusalem. That drive is not possible today.

Caroline Chisholm - Australian Saint?

Clara, co-Director of our Australian office, sent me this article from the Sydney Morning Herald about Catholic lay woman and heroine, Caroline Chisholm. Caroline's cause is being opened on this bi-centennial of her birth.

We tell Caroline's story at every Called & Gifted workshop since she is such a brilliant example of the charism of wisdom. Caroline basically invented the employment agency. She found jobs and set wages and working conditions for 11,000 single emigrant women whose passage to Australia was paid by the British government which failed to make provision for them when they arrived on the dock in Sydney.



Clara is an authority on Caroline Chisholm and has been championing her cause for years. For more information, check out this BBC report on Caroline's remarkable life.

The Fingerpuppet Guide to Life on the Road and Graduate Theological Education

It was a wonderfully rich and blessed trip to Detroit although fraught with all sorts of unexpected snafus and roadblocks.

Things started out with a bang when I turned on my laptop in the CS airport at 5:45 am and all I got was the blue screen of death. My presentation at Sacred Heart was on Powerpoint slides which I had put some real work into and I had no other notes or hand-outs with me. Eeecckk!

But it was too late to leave the airport or even have another laptop delivered to me. My plane was about to board. Fortunately, I had a copy of my presentation on a memory stick so all I had to do was find another laptop with Powerpoint in Detroit and I would be ready to roll.

My host, Renewal Ministries, hunted for another laptop but no one on staff used Powerpoint. So I nabbed a yellow legal pad in case I needed to rough out some notes by which to do my presentation on Wednesday. But miraculously that afternoon at the hotel, my computer seemed to work fine!

I had dinner with Ralph Martin and Peter Herbeck in Ann Arbor and it was fascinating to see how our work had been parallel to each other although we had never met. There were lots of connections made and it was a lot of fun. It as especially fun to talk about the global missionary scene since I so seldom know Catholics who are knowledgable about missions. Renewal Ministries currently works in 27 countries.

Wednesday morning, I was off to be filmed for a TV show for the first time. Ralph has been doing these shows for 35 years so he is very relaxed and it was completely painless. I understand that this show will broadcast on EWTN next summer on "The Choices We Face".

Then we left immediately for Detroit and Sacred Heart seminary seminary where Ralph Martin heads up the STL/MA program in the New Evangelization. I got to have lunch with old friend from St. Dominic's in San Francisco (and fellow denizen of St. Blog's) Tim Ferguson who is both a canon lawyer and judge (his classmates would tease him "here come de judge" as they walked by) and a student in the STL program in the New Evangelization. Tim introduced me to Ed Peters, yet another blogger, who teaches canon law at Sacred Heart (Ed and Tim were talking shop)

Ralph sent out an all points bulletin to the students and faculty to come hear my talk so we had a number of visitors in the class (Evangelization Methodologies) including Janet Smith who also teaches at Sacred Heart, whom I was delighted to meet and Matthew Hill, who had attended Making Disciples in Colorado last August. (Scroll down and take a look at this fun interview that Ralph did with Janet Smith last year)

All seemed to be ready to go - computer was working and all was right with the world when . . .the power went out 10 minutes before class began! So I got to teach in the darkened classroom using my computer for prompts until the batteries died and then I just ad libbed. (In a jam, I recommend finger puppets and a bit of drama to help substitute for those cool Powerpoint slides I had prepared) But I had really worked on preparing so the words came and, despite everything, the students seemed most appreciative.

Which was great because I had to quit 45 min early, pack up and Tim drove me to the airport in a hurry where I caught my plane and made it home by 11:18pm.

Ralph and Renewal Ministries are really interested in doing further collaboration with the Institute in a variety of interesting areas which should be both fun and fruitful. So all in all, it was blessed trip.

In my small way, I try to emulate the practice of St. Frances Cabrini when in a jam.

St. Frances, who worked one of her canonization miracles on a hill just above my old apartment in Seattle, was a world class traveling missionary and had developed a wonderful perspective on the inevitable snafus involved. She always said that when things got really difficult, God was about to do something especially wonderful.

There is one hair-raising story about her that I have little hope of emulating. She was riding on a train in the wild west when her train was held up by robbers. One robber fired a pistol at her pointblank through the window but the bullet dropped harmlessly to the floor beside her. Frances was unfazed and unsurprised.

After all, she noted calmly, hadn't she commended herself to the protection of the Sacred Heart?

An Interview with Cardinal Arinze

Our local diocesan paper interviewed the Cardinal while he was in town last month and Catholic is running the whole interview here. Cardinal Arinze, is currently serving as Prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

Be sure and read the whole thing but are a few excerpts:

CCH: What should be the primary focus for Catholics: evangelization, the culture of life vs. the culture of death, the sanctity of marriage?

CARDINAL ARINZE: All of these you have mentioned are serious concerns for the church worldwide. If you would allow me to put it in one word, it is evangelization; to carry out the mission Christ gave the church through his apostles. He said to them, "As my father sent me, I also send you." He also said to them, "All power is given to me on heaven and earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them. Teach them to observe whatever I have said to you." So, that's the mission of the church. It is always urgent.

One particular aspect may need more attention at a particular time. For if you ask me what would be most urgent, I would say the prayer life in the Church is very important. That has no substitute, so that remains a priority. But also, of course, the areas you mentioned remain very important.

Snip.

Our faith is not based on theories or opinions. Our faith is based on a solid rock of God’s revelation: the holy Scripture, the tradition of the church, the teaching of the church which is alive in every age.

The church does not live in the museum. The church is alive today. Be with that church.<

Feast of the Forty English Martyrs

October 25 is the Feast of the 40 English Martyrs who died for the faith between 1535 and 1679.

This group does not include St. Thomas More (go here for the first post in our Thomas More and his family extravaganza. And then here )here, here, here, here, here, here,here, and here.

and does includes relatively well-known martyrs like Edmund Campion and Margaret Clitheroe whose story is here.

but also lesser known but remarkable people like Nicholas Owen, the ingenious designer/builder of priest hiding places in the great houses of England.


Here is a link to a long but fascinating article on the priest holes of England with many illustrations.

Owen gave himself up to distract attention from priests hiding nearby and although he was exempt from torture under English law because he was maimed, was, in fact, tortured to death. Father Gerard wrote of him: "I verily think no man can be said to have done more good of all those who laboured in the English vineyard. . . . He was the immediate occasion of saving the lives of many hundreds of persons, both ecclesiastical and secular."

Someday I would love to leave a pilgrimage to Britain, focusing entirely upon the remarkable lay contribution to the Catholic underground of the 16th and 17th centuries when English prisons became amazing houses of formation for many lay people suffering for their faith. Margaret Clitheroe was taught to read by a priest in prison and given one of her greatest treasures: a copy of the newly minted English language Douai Bible there. Her Bible still survives and can be seen at the Bar Convent museum in York.

Muslim Conversions to Christianity

An interesting article appeared in Christianity Today online yesterday on the conversion of Muslims to Christianity. J. Dudley Woodberry is professor of Islamic studies at the School of Intercultural Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, and served in the Muslim world for many years.

Since a reader had posted a query as to why Roman Catholics were not participating in a meeting on evangelization of Muslims, I thought it would be good to print the bulk of this article. It demonstrates the variety of ways in which Muslims are being drawn to Christ. The same means are also true for other non-Christians who seek baptism. The most important reason is the one that most Catholics are comfortable with – the witness of a truly Christian life (now how many Catholics are living exemplary Christian lives that are powerful witness to the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit is another topic altogether…). But the other ways in which God has been at work in the lives of Muslim converts to Christianity are startling: answered prayers, miraculous cures, dreams and visions, exorcism, and the power of the Gospel message of God's faithful love. Dissatisfaction with the way they experienced Islam, especially when it was enforced by the state, was another significant reason that Muslims turned away from their faith and embraced Christianity.

"So what attracts Muslims to follow Jesus? Between 1991 and 2007, about 750 Muslims who have decided to follow Christ filled out an extensive questionnaire on that basic question. The respondents—from 30 countries and 50 ethnic groups—represent every major region of the Muslim world. (Copies of the questionnaire are available from dudley@fuller.edu.) The participants ranked the relative importance of different influences and whether they occurred before, at the time of, or after their decision to follow Christ. While the survey, prepared at Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies, does not claim scientific precision, it provides a glimpse into some of the key means the Spirit of God is using to open Muslim hearts to the gospel.

Seeing a lived faith
First, we can look at the experiences that most influenced Muslims. For example, respondents ranked the lifestyle of Christians as the most important influence in their decision to follow Christ. A North African former Sufi mystic noted with approval that there was no gap between the moral profession and the practice of Christians he saw. An Egyptian contrasted the love of a Christian group at an American university with the unloving treatment of Muslim students and faculty he encountered at a university in Medina. An Omani woman explained that Christians treat women as equals. Others noted loving Christian marriages. Some poor people said the expatriate Christian workers they knew had adopted, contrary to their expectations, a simple lifestyle, wearing local clothes and observing local customs of not eating pork, drinking alcohol, or touching those of the opposite sex. A Moroccan was even welcomed by his former Christian in-laws after he underwent a difficult divorce.

Many Muslims who faced violence at the hands of other Muslims did not see it in the Christians they knew (regrettably, of course, Christians have been guilty of interethnic strife elsewhere). Muslim-on-Muslim violence has led to considerable disillusionment for many Muslims, from those who survived the 1971 war between the Bengalis of East Pakistan and the Pathans, Sindis, and Punjabis of West Pakistan, to Arab and Berber tensions in North Africa, and to Arab herdsmen fighting black African farmers in Darfur.

The next most important influence was the power of God in answered prayers and healing. Like most of the factors that former Muslims list, experiences of God's supernatural intervention often increase after Muslims decide to follow Christ.
In North Africa, Muslim neighbors asked Christians to pray for a very sick daughter who then was healed. In Senegal, a Muslim marabout (spiritual leader) referred a patient to Christians when he was not able to bring healing. In Pakistan, after a pilgrimage to Mecca did not cure a disabled Shiite girl, she was healed following Christian prayer.

Closely related was the finding that some noted deliverance from demonic power as another reason they were attracted to Jesus. After all, he is the healing prophet in the Qur'an and has power over demons in the Gospels. In northern Nigeria, a malam (what some might call a witchdoctor) used sorcery against a man who was considering following Jesus. The seeker became insane, and his extended family left him. But then he prayed that Christ would free him, and he was healed.

It helps to note that a third of the 750-person sample were folk Muslims, with a characteristic concern for power and blessings. It is also worth noting that the Jesus portrayed in the Qur'an is a prophet who heals lepers and the blind and raises the dead. Not surprisingly, many Muslims find him attractive. Of course, power and blessings do not constitute the final word for Muslims. The Bible also offers a theology of suffering, and many Muslims who follow Christ find that their faith is strengthened through trials.

The third biggest influence listed by respondents was dissatisfaction with the type of Islam they had experienced. They expressed unhappiness with the Qur'an, which they perceive as emphasizing God's punishment more than his love (although the Qur'an says he loves those who love him [3:31]). As for Islam's requirement that liturgical prayer should be in Arabic, a Javanese man asked, "Doesn't an all-knowing God know Indonesian?" Others criticized folk Islam's use of amulets and praying at the graves of dead saints.

Some respondents decried Islamic militancy and the imposition of Islamic law, which they said is not able to transform hearts and society. This disillusionment is broad in the Muslim world. Many Iranians became interested in the gospel after the Khomeini revolution of 1979 brought in rule by clergy. Pakistanis became more receptive after President Zia ul-Haq (1977-1988) tried to implement Islamic law. And Afghans became more open after Islamist Taliban conquest and rule (1994-2001).

As with Paul and Cornelius in Acts, visions and dreams played a role in the conversion of many. More than one in four respondents, 27 percent, noted dreams and visions before their decision for Christ, 40 percent at the time of conversion, and 45 percent afterward. Many Muslims view dreams as links between the seen and unseen worlds, and pre-conversion visions and dreams often lead Muslims to consult a Christian or the Bible. Frequently a person in the vision, understood to be Jesus, radiates light or wears white (one respondent, though, said Jesus appeared in green, a color sometimes associated with Islamic holy persons). An Algerian woman had a vision that her Muslim grandmother came into her room and said, "Jesus is not dead; he is here." In Israel, an Arab dreamed that his deceased father said, "Follow the pastor. He will show you the right way." Other dreams and visions occurred later and provided encouragement during persecution. A Turkish woman in jail because of her conversion had a vision that she would be released, and she was. A vision of thousands of believers in the streets proclaiming their faith encouraged a young man in North Africa to persevere.

The message is the medium
Next in attraction for Muslims is the spiritual truth in the Bible. The Qur'an attests that the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel (commonly understood as the New Testament) are from God. Even though Muslims are generally taught that these writings became corrupted, they often find them compelling reading and discover truth that they conclude must be from God. The Bible helped one Egyptian understand "the true character of God." The Sermon on the Mount helped convince a Lebanese Muslim that he should follow the one who taught and exemplified these values.

Respondents were also attracted by the Bible's teaching about the love of God. In the Qur'an, although God loves those who love him, his love is conditional. He does not love those who reject faith (3:31-32). There is nothing in the Qur'an like, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10), or, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).

A West African was surprised by God's love for all people, even enemies. Likewise, although the Qur'an denies that God is a father (37:152), many Muslims find this a comforting concept. Particularly attractive to Muslims is the love expressed through the life and teachings of Jesus. The Qur'an already calls him faultless (19:19). Many Muslims are attracted to him by his depiction in the Qur'an and then go to the Gospels to find out more. A Saudi was first drawn to him at a Christmas Eve service in Germany—even before he knew German. Like many, an Iranian Shiite was attracted to Christ before he was attracted to Christianity. A North African Sufi found Jesus' portrayal as the Good Shepherd particularly meaningful. When Christ's love transforms committed Christians into a loving community, many Muslims listed a desire to join such a fellowship as next in importance.

Subconscious influences
For the most part, respondents did not say that political or economic circumstances influenced their decisions. But it's hard not to notice that Iranians, Pakistanis, Afghans, Bangladeshis, and Algerians became more responsive after enduring Muslim political turmoil or attempts to impose Islamic law. Christian relief and development agencies try hard to guard against spiritually misusing their position as providers of desperately needed goods and services. But natural disasters in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Sahel region inevitably put Muslims in contact with Christians trying to follow Jesus. It is no surprise that some of these Muslims also choose to follow Christ.

In many places, apostasy [from Islam] is tantamount to rejecting family, religion, culture, ethnicity, and nationality. Thus, many Muslim converts face persecution from family, police, or militants. Two friends were unable to fill out the questionnaire—one because he was apparently poisoned by his own family, the other because the government imprisoned him and later his tongue was cut out by a warlord so that he could no longer say the name of Jesus.

But Muslim converts to Christ know that such persecution can, in a mysterious way, be part of the best of times. Jesus, in fact, said it was a blessing. That's because with or without persecution, Muslims are discovering an experiential truth unknown to them before. As a Zambian Muslim exclaimed, 'God loves me just as I am.'"

Six Degrees of Separation

It's great to see the power of the charisms, technology and personal relationships converge and form a new apostolate. Friend of the Siena Institute, Joanne Wakim, has launched a new nonprofit, Catholic Global Impact (CGI). CGI makes the six degrees of separation between the world's 1 billion Catholics an asset in being agents of God's transforming love. Check them out!

Mother Teresa's Dark Night

Michael Gerson, a journalist writing for the Washington Post, wrote a short piece on Mother Teresa's letters published last September. I remember there was consternation on the part of some folks who believed that Mother Teresa would not have wanted her private pain to be so public. And yet, they may be exactly what we in the developed world need to hear. Christians in the US and other affluent nations are used to comfort and physical blessings, and it's natural to presume that these are signs of God's favor. Many are the times I've had pastoral counseling sessions with people who told me they were losing their faith because they or loved ones had encountered misfortune, because God didn't seem to be answering their prayers, or because some aspect of the Gospel or the Church's teaching based on the Scriptures seemed difficult or "out of touch with reality."

Perhaps we Western Christians need to hear of Mother Teresa's personal sorrow and sense of abandonment. It makes her decision to follow Christ's call to her all the more poignant. Gerson seems to cut to the heart of the matter as he describes how Mother Teresa came to understand her own suffering in a profoundly Christian way. A selection of his article follows. The entire article can be linked in the title of this post....



Eventually, on the evidence of the letters, Mother Teresa made peace with her darkness, identifying her own anguish with the suffering of her Savior and the suffering of the poor. "Now it does not really seem so hard," she eventually concluded. But she never regained the subjective religious experiences of her youth. "If ever I become a saint," she said, "I will surely be one of 'darkness.' "

There are lessons in this complicated spiritual life -- that holiness has more to do with obedience than spiritual feelings; that faith can coexist with suffering and doubt; that sainthood can be harsher and more difficult than we imagine.

But Mother Teresa's sense of abandonment raises a deeper issue. Assuming, for a moment, that she was not self-deluded in her calling, what kind of God would set such a difficult path -- ministering to lepers and outcasts for a lifetime -- and then withdraw his presence? Mother Teresa herself seemed to struggle with this unfairness: "What are you doing My God to one so small?"

There is no easy answer here, but the question is central to the Christian faith. Other noble religious traditions promise serenity, detachment from striving and release from the suffering of the world. Christianity, in contrast, teaches that grace is found in the worst of that suffering, and through a figure who despairs of God's presence in his parting words. This anguish is not convenient -- "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" is hardly the best religious marketing slogan. But for millennia this abandonment has offered hope that God might somehow be present even in shame, loneliness and betrayal, even on the descending path of depression, even in the soul's hardness and doubt, even in the silence of God himself -- and that all these things may be the preface to glory.

Through her pain-filled letters, Mother Teresa offers this assurance: Even when all we have to offer is ashes, and all we feel is emptiness, something beautiful may come of it in the end. But her decades of lonely sorrow are not an easy source of comfort. And Graham Greene might have been speaking of this abandoned mystic when he wrote: "You can't conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the . . . appalling . . . strangeness of the mercy of God."

Oh, Blessed Bloomington, Indiana

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, will be visiting the Tibetan Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana, this week. Details of the visit are linked in the title of this post. He will be giving a series of teachings, as well as visiting his elder brother, who founded the TCC in 1979, and has been incapacitated by a series of strokes.

In addition to his talks, other Buddhist scholars will be giving presentations, including my dear friend, Fr. Scott Steinkerchner, OP, a member of the Central Dominican Province who teaches interreligious dialogue at the Aquinas Institute in St. Louis. Fr. Scott got his Ph.D. in Interreligious Dialogue a couple of years ago and received a Fulbright Scholarship to continue his studies of Buddhism in Kathmandu, Nepal. Lets just say our discussions while hiking have a different character now.

"Wow, the blisters on my feet really hurt"

"Your aversion to pain is a manifestation of the illusion of a real self."

"Come closer, Scott, so my illusory fist can be introduced to your face."

"Ah, you have not subdued your passions and cultivated an attitude of caring and self-forgetfulness through meditation."

Seriously, please say a prayer for Scott. Tonight he presents a lecture on Tsongkhapa, a fifteenth century Buddhist scholar who founded the Gelukpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama will be present, and my ever-confident friend is just a bit on edge. I imagine it must be like lecturing on dogmatics before Pope Benedict XVI.

But Bloomington is thrice blessed: not only the Dalai Lama will be visiting, along with Fr. Scott, but SHERRY WEDDELL will be in town February 11-13 to give a mission at the St. Paul Catholic Center at the University of Indiana. I'll be there, too, as a tag-along.

Cardinal Arinze: Potential Called & GIfted Teacher

On September 23, Francis Cardinal Arinze spoke at Holy Apostles Church in Colorado Springs on "The Apostolate Specific to the Lay Faithful." Unfortunately, I was out of town and unable to attend. However, I was able to get a copy of his lecture, and I have summarized it below, with many quotations and a few observations of my own. The content of his lecture is remarkably similar to the Friday evening portion of the Called & GIfted workshop designed by Sherry Weddell and Fr. Michael Sweeney.

His talk was divided into seven brief sections:
1. what is the Church's mission?
2. who are the lay faithful
3. the foundation of the apostolate specific to the lay faithful
4. areas in which the lay faithful will need to be particularly engaged
5. involvement of the laity within Church communities
6. collaboration between clergy and laity
7. lay spirituality necessary to reap the fruits hoped-for in the apostolate


Mission
"For this the Church was founded; that by spreading the kingdom of Christ everywhere for the glory of God the Father, … the whole world might in actual fact be brought into relationship with him." (Apostolicam Actuositatem [AA], 2) Everything the Church does in pursuit of this goal is called the apostolate, or the mission of the Church.

Every member of the Church has a share in this apostolate. There are no spectator Christians. 'By its very nature the Christian vocation is also a vocation to the apostolate'" AA,2

Who are the laity?
"The lay faithful, clerics and the religious or people in the consecrated state all have a share in the apostolate of the Church. Negatively, the laity are those not ordained and not in a religious community. "Positively, and more importantly, the lay faithful are those Christians who by Baptism are made one body with Christ, are given a share in the priestly, prophetic and kingly functions of Christ, and are sent to carry out their own part in the mission of the whole Christian people with respect to the Church and the world."

"A secular quality is proper and special to the laity, and this distinguishes them from clerics and religious. The laity, by their very vocation, seek the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God…The laity…are called to live and work in the midst of the secular professions and occupations, to offer them to God, and to give witness to Christ in these arenas as insiders, acting from within."

Foundation of the Lay Apostolate
The foundation is the sacraments of initiation which incorporate the individual into the body of Christ and through which Christ commissions the individual to the apostolate.
"Each layperson can therefore say: 'I am commissioned and sent to carry out the lay apostolate by Baptism, strengthened in Confirmation and nourished by the Holy Eucharist. The other Sacraments received by the laity also empower me. Matrimony gives spouses the graces they need to witness to Christ in that state of life.'

He specifically singled out Baptism as the beginning and foundation of new life in Christ. As priests, lay people offer spiritual worship for the glory of God and the sanctification of people, and their lives are offered at Mass with Christ through the ordained priest. In their prophetic ministry, he said, the laity "evangelize the world from within, beginning in the family (cf Lumen Gentium [LG], 35). In their kingly role, they "seek to permeate the world by the spirit of Christ so that it more effectively achieves its purpose in justice, charity and peace. To discharge this role, the lay faithful will need to acquire competence in the secular fields, to know how to promote greater justice in society and a better distribution of earthly goods, and how to change social structures that promote evil or sin."

To call the lay apostolate "secular" is not to say that somehow it is less holy than the priesthood. It means first of all that sociologically the laity live in the secular sphere. But theologically, "secular" means that that is the part of life "where God has called them to live and work from the inside, to give witness to Christ there, and to sanctify it" in the manner of salt, leaven and light.

The Specific Nature of the Lay Apostolate
"The apostolate specific to the lay faithful is the evangelization, or Christianization, or animation of the temporal or secular order." Quoting Christifideles Laici [CL], 15, he said, "The 'world' thus becomes the place and the means for the lay faithful to fulfill their Christian vocation, because the world itself is destined to glorify God the Father in Christ."

Cardinal Arinze rightly points out that we are not attempting to establish a theocracy, because the things of this world "not only can help towards the attainment of our final end, but also possess their own intrinsic value. They take on special dignity because they are related to the human person."

The lay person at work, at leisure, in the family, and in the culture lives out his or her faith only insofar as they "organize these affairs in such a way that they may always start out, develop, and persist according to Christ's mind, to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer" (LG, 31)

Some Areas calling for lay Apostolate
The Cardinal mentioned marriage and family – but emphasized that this apostolate extends beyond the home into the political realm and in the mass media so that family life and marriage are protected and good schools provided for all.

In the area of work, the apostolate is normally of "like to like. The apostles of doctors are to be doctors. Teachers are to be evangelized by their colleagues. Dock-workers are to be brought to Christ by dock-workers."

Mass media are other areas ripe for the lay apostolate: the press, radio, television, the internet, the entertainment industry, advertising and communications in general are the challenging fields 'ripe for the harvest.' The same is true for the world of politics and science, particularly biotechnology.

Different Roles of the Laity within Church Communities
Within the Church community, the laity are indispensable in the celebration of the liturgy, working as catechists, serving on parish and diocesan councils and participating in various lay movements. When ordained ministers are not available, a liturgical role can be entrusted to a lay person, but "the Church gains nothing from efforts to clericalize the laity or to laicize the clergy."

He pointed out that at times the laity don't feel sufficiently integrated into Church structures, and where that is true "the situation should be studied and remedied, with all due respect for the nature of the Church as willed by our Lord, her Founder." But at other times, the perception may come from a situation in which the vital apostolate to the world has been ignored and/or forgotten.

Collaboration between Laity and Clergy
The effectiveness of the lay faithful in carrying out their apostolate both in the temporal order and in the Church, requires collaboration between clergy and laity.
"The lay faithful have the right to receive from the clerics the Word of God and the Sacraments. They should reveal to their pastors their needs and desires. They are free to express their opinion in matters touching the Church. Sometimes, by reason of their special competence, they are bound to do so through the proper channels and always with respect…
The pastors, on their part, are to recognize and promote the dignity and responsibility of the laity, to welcome their advice and collaboration, to assign them duties in Church communities, to encourage them to take initiatives on their own especially in society, and to 'respectfully acknowledge that just freedom which belongs to everyone in this earthly city.' While everyone in the Church is to strive to work with the gifts or charisms that the Holy Spirit has bestowed for the good of the whole Church, the pastors 'must make a judgment about the true nature and proper use of these gifts, not in order to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good." (AA, 3)

(my comment) This paragraph makes a potent argument for the nature of the charisms to be taught in seminary, and for clerical candidates and those preparing for pastoral ministry to know their own charisms. How can I as a priest 'make a true judgment about the true nature and proper use' of the charisms if I don't know what the signs of a charism are, how they are manifested, and what their effects are?

Lay Apostolate Spirituality
The lay apostolate begins with union with Christ, apart from whom we can do nothing (Jn 15:5). This life is nourished by the sacraments, the study of Scripture, deliberately following Christ and "concretized and manifested in love of neighbor and solidarity with the needy." Yet it is a spirituality distinct from the spirituality of the monk or nun. It is shaped by the encounter with secular society and directs the lay person back into that milieu. The temptation for any person in the apostolate, cleric or lay, is pride. "The gifts that God has lavished upon us – talents, health, learning, high position, achievement – are for God's work, not for our self enjoyment."

Furthermore, if we are to have an impact in this world of ours, "The lay apostle has to learn to work with others. There are many complicated and difficult apostolates which cannot be carried out by individuals alone, but only by organized groups marked by discipline, self-forgetfulness and readiness to sacrifice one's opinion for the sake of a greater good.

(my comment) This seems to me to be a real challenge for us as Catholics. We seem to lack the imagination to work together towards a goal, unless it is within an already established apostolate like the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Even within lay groups like the Knights of Columbus, lay affiliates of religious orders (like the Dominican laity), or Opus Dei, our tendency seems to be to work primarily as individuals. When these groups do work on a common project, so often it is directed within the Church community – as catechists, or providers of pancake breakfasts, or liturgical ministers. Those are fine, but perhaps we priests need to challenge the laity to work together to change secular society – and provide the spiritual and emotional support that truly secular apostles will undoubtedly need.

I was delighted to read Cardinal Arinze's lecture and to be reassured that the Institute's understanding of the VCII documents regarding the nature of the laity and their apostolate is "spot on." I'm glad the tune is being sung by more and more Catholic clergy and laity these days!

A Matter of Perspective

I called my friend, Anna Elias-Cesnik, one of the faithful editors of the CSI e-Scribe, last night. Anna and her husband, Mark, teach the Called & Gifted workshop for the Institute, and live a few blocks from me in Tucson, AZ. During the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I had had to drive through a hard snowfall Sunday morning to a couple of small towns outside Colorado Springs, and that snow still blanketed much of the area.

Her gasp of horror was not too surprising. "Oh," I said, "no snow yet in Tucson?"

"Not at all," she said. "We're having a beautiful October. Not like normal when it's so terribly hot, and you're sick of the heat after the long, long summer. It's even chilly this evening. I had to put a sweater on."

"Really," I said, "How cold has it been?"

Pause.

"Upper 80's, low 90's."

Reminder to self: take sunscreen home for Thanksgiving.

The Rockies: Altitude with Character

Fascinating New York Times piece this am on the highly religious esprit de coeur of our Rockies baseball team:

The role of religion within the Rockies’ organization first entered the public sphere in May 2006, when an article published in USA Today described the organization as adhering to a “Christian-based code of conduct” and the clubhouse as a place where Bibles were read and men’s magazines, like Maxim or Playboy, were banned.

The article included interviews with several players and front office members, but team players and officials interviewed this week said it unfairly implied that the Rockies were intent on constructing a roster consisting in large part of players with a strong Christian faith. Asked how his own Christian faith affected his decision-making, General Manager Dan O’Dowd acknowledged it came into play, but not in a religious way. He said it guided him to find players with integrity and strong moral values, regardless of their religious preference.

“Do we like players with character? There is absolutely no doubt about that,” O’Dowd said during a recent interview in his Coors Field office. “If people want to interpret character as a religious-based issue because it appears many times in the Bible, that’s their decision. I believe that character is an innate part of developing an organization, and to me, it is nothing more than doing the right thing at the right time when nobody’s looking. Nothing more complicated than that.

“You don’t have to be a Christian to make that decision.”

Even if the Rockies are not consciously doing it, reliever Matt Herges, playing for his seventh organization, said the team had the highest concentration of devout Christians he had seen during his nine major league seasons.

Every Sunday, about 10 people gather for chapel, according to reliever Jeremy Affeldt, and Tuesday afternoon Bible study sessions usually attract seven or eight players. Affeldt said players discussed life and their families as well as scripture.

“Certain guys attend chapel, certain guys don’t,” outfielder Cory Sullivan said. “I don’t think that’s any different from how it is in any other major league clubhouse. Nothing’s shoved down your throats.”

On the whole, players were relaxed in speaking about their religious convictions but said that faith was not a requirement for peer approval. The Rockies, who will face the Red Sox in the World Series beginning Wednesday, care more about whether a teammate plays hard, is unselfish and treats everyone with respect.

Maybe we really are closer to God here ????? :-}

Is There A Thomist in the House?

Oh great, high, and worthy Thursday Night Gumbo, master of metaphysics and the mysteries of the universe. One can only meditate in silence upon your question:

I think it's time to discuss a really important question: Why, when the Colorado Rockies have already proven that they can take two out of three from the Red Sox and beat Josh Beckett, are they still underdogs in the World Series?

Is there a Thomist position on that one???

Fr Mike?

P. G. Wodehouse to the Rescue!

I had planned a little Wodehouse fest yesterday but alas our webserver was down all day.

It made me feel a bit like Percy, my twin brother, who died tragically years ago. I thought of the words inscribed on Percy's tombstone: Percy continued to stare before him like a man who has drained the wine cup of life to its lees, only to discover a dead mouse at the bottom.

I had dreamed of a entire day dedicated to the art of the master and my frustration grew until I couldn't stand to keep working away on my Detroit presentation. I started pacing as I often do when distressed. Unexpectedly, Fr. Mike dropped by to pick up some notes from our last meeting. As he told a friend later I could see that she was looking for something to break as a relief to her surging emotions ... and courteously drew her attention to a terra-cotta figure of the Infant Samuel at Prayer. She thanked me briefly and hurled it against the opposite wall.

Then Fr. Mike encouraged me in his usual compassionate way:Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.

As we talked, I was startled by a loud, sudden noise.The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to my strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.

Fr. Mike, who used to work out religiously but was forced to give it up under the pressure of constant travel for the Institute, turned suddenly to see what caused the noise. I noticed that the lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip down to the mezzanine floor.

We ran out of the house to find a large woman had been hit glancingly by a passing car and was sitting on the curb, gasping and furious, her face red and distraught. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.

All in all, it was a trying afternoon. When it was all over and Fr. Mike was just about to leave, he turned and said thoughtfully: "I know that you wonder why you have so little name recognition. Have you ever considered changing your name to something more marketable like "She On Whom It Is Unsafe To Try Any Oompus-Boompus?"

Can no one rid me of this Dominican? I retreated back into the house and settled down with a badly needed gin and tonic. If only I had a lorgnette handy at moments like that! I knew that England was littered with the shrivelled remains of curates at whom a lady bishopess had looked through her lorgnette. I had seen them wilt like salted snails at the episcopal breakfast table.

It was then that I turned again to the one source of comfort that has never failed me in times of distress: The random Wodehouse quote generator.

Let me recommend it to you. When reading a P. G. Wodehouse quote, the slug is on the bloom and all is right with the world.

I'm Off to Detroit

I'm off on a little two day trip to Detroit. I'll be filmed for Ralph Martin's TV show "The Choices We Make" and then will have the fun of teaching an afternoon class for 27 grad students in the STL/MA program in the New Evangelization at Sacred Heart Seminary.

I'll also get to reconnect with fellow blogger Tim Ferguson whom I knew at St. Dominic's in San Francisco and who is now a canon lawyer and STL student at Sacred Heart. And spend some time with Ralph Martin who I have wanted to talk to for years because his knowledge of the breadth and depth of the Church is pretty nearly unsurpassed - especially for a layman.

Back Thursday. I leave you in Fr. Mike's and Br. Matthew and Keith's ever competent hands till then.

Do Something about Breast Cancer!

My friend, Patricia Armstrong, is, so far, a breast cancer survivor. Each year in October, she's asked by her local paper, the Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, to write an opinion piece on cancer awareness month. Below is this year's offering from her enormous heart and talented pen. Because I know she's a faithful reader of this blog, I want to add a few preliminary words of my own.

Pat and Rich, her husband, are wonderful people! Married over fifty years (she's counting more carefully than I am), they are inspiring models of mutual, self-giving love, and by their example have taught this celibate a thing or two about the kind of love that enables one to "lays down his/her life for a friend." Pat's battle with cancer has been epic. Guerilla warfare, all-out nuclear strikes, terrorist attacks - all the metaphors apply in one way or another. In the middle of the turmoil, Pat has also acted as journalist; chronicling the attacks and counter-attacks in poetry and prose that has expressed the thoughts, desires, hopes, and despair of many, many women and men who have experienced the same battles. One of my favorites is a collection of poetry titled, "Daring to Dance, Refusing to Die," which sums up Pat's attitude wonderfully! From her public readings of her widely published poetry, short fiction and essays, Pat has raised thousands of dollars for breast cancer research. If you have a spare prayer, you might ask the Lord to give some publisher enough guts to publish her wonderful novel, "The Fattest Woman in Ireland." Every publisher who reads it loves it, but she's not a well-known novelist - at least not yet. I'd prefer that the literary awards she'd receive for it not be given posthumously.

She has served as the confidante of priests and lay ministers, as muse to a gifted local writer (who I'll call, "what's-his-name," since that's how he has referred to me). With her husband, Rich, she has helped pastors at St. Thomas More Newman Center in Eugene prepare couples for the sacrament of marriage - and has continued to support and encourage them after their marriage. Three young women who serve meals at the Eugene Hotel where she and Rich live have been talked into going to college by Pat. Her powers of persuasion are prodigious. (How's that for alliteration??) She has consented to be an editor of the bi-monthly e-Scribe I try to cobble together, and has shown the utmost patience with my prediliction to constantly use split infinitives.*

But enough from me - now you can read for yourself. But don't just read this note about breast cancer; DO SOMETHING about breast cancer! I know Pat and Rich would encourage you to pray for those who have the disease, their loved ones, cancer caregivers, and researchers seeking a cure. She just couldn't ask for that in a secular newspaper.


OCTOBER: BREAST CANCER "BEWARENESS"

Your attention, please! We're back in the PINK again. It's October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a calendar commemoration, as with so many other worthy reminders, that must not be minimized, yet I muse continuously: where does the AWARENESS go for the other eleven months?

Q. Do we engage in some form of denial or benevolent amnesia?

A. No way! Not those of us with this damnable disease or our caregivers and loved ones.
Not we chickens (and some roosters, too) who follow our physicians' game plans with hopeful, if enervating endurance.

I've written in this same autumnal space before and, despite all predictions since my first dire diagnosis in 1992, I am still attached to the operative word "survival." I still dance the figurative hesitation waltz of treatments and some times horrific side effects, and I often feel almost apologetic for surviving this long. More than once in the past four years my local columnist friend has described me in print as "dying." Humor as my ultimate refuge, I chide him "Oh, isn't everyone?" True, there is a small inoperable alp on my already heavily radiated spine. (If one's cancer originates in a breast, the subsequent malignancies remain breast cancer in origin even if they travel to skeletal and/or visceral sites.)

And so this October I think the reminder should have an added focus, namely: Breast Cancer BEWARENESS Month! Consider the more than 40,000 women in this country we will lose again this year. Factor in the millions more who are in treatment now and perhaps a million who have not yet been diagnosed. Globally, the statistics haven't budged in the past two years. Someone, male or female, succumbs to breast cancer every 90 seconds.

This past year there were days when I almost felt part of something quite acceptably fashionable and grateful for the openness of women such as Elizabeth Edwards, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge and TV's Robin Roberts, following the revelations of previous headliners like Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford. Because of their various open testimonies, cancer organizations and treatment centers reported an upswing in requests for mammograms and other information. A salvo of PINK for such honest witnessing!

Sure, early detection is the ideal with frequent self-exams and mammograms, perhaps the latter scans from an earlier age than many doctors suggest. But later detection is NOT an automatic death sentence. New clinical trials are ongoing and there are continuous reviews and modifications of dosages. There is medical progress, AWARENESS. For example, an emphasis of the exacerbating role of alcohol consumption on already difficult side effects. And there is new, less uncomfortable mammography machinery (we gals have long thought this would have been invented decades earlier had men been in the majority for breast cancer!)

Websites are now a patient's adjunct tools of treatment. Without playing doctor, patients and those who care for and about them should check online information for all medicines prescribed, all protocols, preferably before doctors begin regimens; so intelligent questions can be asked and answered. We should be informed advocates, partners with our medical team. Physicians, no matter how specialized and board-certified, are not gods. More and more, I've learned that modern medicine is more art than science.

There is a plethora of websites. Every day I click on www.thebreastcancer.com/ (the PINK window in the middle). Corporate sponsors underwrite free mammograms using the number of visits to the site. Visit www.cancer.org/ and www.cancer.gov/ and cis.nci.nig.gov/. Patronize local merchants who give percentages of sales to Komen For the Cure or the American Cancer Society. Enhance AWARENESS by walking or running in the PINK periodic relays and races, including such local events as the Soroptimists' Walk for Life with pledges to help local women needing assistance with living expenses while they endure the effects of treatment. Wear the pink pins, buy the breast cancer stamps, volunteer for fund-raising. Reach out to diagnosed friends actively, offering rides to appointments, shoulders of compassion, humorous banter to distract from their onslaught.

I am in countdown, I know. But as a lifelong writer and fan of inspirational words, I offer this passage from Edith Wharton's "A Backward Glance:" "In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways..." Amen.



*THAT one was intentional, Pat!
However, I await the other corrections you'll have for me.