Conversations

We had a lovely community Mass for our feast of Mary, Queen of Apostles, and right now Sr. Therese is in the kitchen preparing a first class Vietnamese supper. We also have our brand new provincial superior here this weekend, since tomorrow St. Joseph's Seminary here in Chicago will give us their "Mater Dei Award," the seminary's way of recognizing the role of women in the Church. It coincides with our year-long commemoration of our 25th anniversary in Chicago. Only about 20 people will be there. so it will be more of an intimate, friendly gathering than an "event." Fine by me!
Conversation at breakfast with our Paulist chaplain and a guest, an older gentleman who has just been accepted as a seminarian for one of the midwestern dioceses, touched on the "America" situation. I recalled that a few years ago, there was a similar proceeding (involving another publisher in another country), which had been instigated not by bishops or by the faithful or even by a group agitating for reform, but by someone "in house" who had a grudge. This person involved others in monitoring the publication for anything that could be interpreted negatively, and then sent reports, resulting in action that was really a bit heavy-handed. The way the Church makes use of media is a very delicate matter, and I think we are all still learning--400 years after Gutenberg!
And that brings me to our Pauline mission. I was reflecting yesterday that years ago when presenting ourselves, we would typically point to the communications media and technologies as our special identifying mark. But now that communications has become, as JP2 said, a culture--in fact, the modern areopagus, well, everyone uses these technologies, and for the most part they use them more promptly than we do, who are hampered by institutional poverty that is very, very real, and a concern for religious poverty which sometimes shortcircuits our appropriation of the technologies we need--I mean, we are hesitant to acquire "unnecessary" gadgets, but then end up in the wake of all those others who immediately get the gadgets and figure out ways to use them. Anyway, that is just an aside. My real point is that now that communications technologies are in everyone's hands, our only distinguishing mark must be that we are entirely focused on proclaiming the Gospel. It is the Gospel, not technology, which must distinguish our mission.