Prayers, please!

"Leavin' on a jet plane; don't know when I will blog again.

I'm countin' on your praaaaaaaaaayers."

To the extent possible, I will try to post intermittent updates on this extreme Catholic adventure!

Katrina update

Well, before I head off to the airport (Sr. Susan is taking me, so I don't have to trundle down Lake Street to the CTA with my awkward luggage), I thought it would be good to bring you up to speed on my family in New Orleans.

Mom and Dad now have a kitchen and a den (but Dad doesn't yet have an easy chair), plus a small room attached to the garage, where my godmother will hopefully stay so she doesn't remain alone in her house, which is still being worked on.

My sister is still living in her driveway (in a trailer). The providence of this mess is really rather humorous: she thought it was one misfortune on another when FEMA wouldn't let her have a trailer until January (and she needed to go back to work in October), so (with Dad's help) she bought a trailer to live in, and then it turned out to have all kinds of problems, so she was constantly calling the trailer repairman...with whom she is now going out...and talking marriage.

I also found a blog by a Chicago music critic who did a stint in St. Bernard Parish with Habitat for Humanity. It's an interesting blog (he also briefly covers the Jazz Fest), with a few interesting takes on spelling, too. An inside look at the heavy, hands-on work being done by volunteers, because the government still can't really be bothered. Please note: this is a blog by a regular guy who sometimes uses regular guy language.

Notes

Big thanks and lots of prayers for the amazing surprise package, Karen!

Happy Feast Day to Sr. Mary Bernardine and to all advertising professionals!

Congratulations and a huge promise of prayers for Chicago's dozen ordinandi! Ad moltos annos! In laetitia! Ad maiorem Dei gloriam et pacem in terris!

Ordination Day

Among the many young men being ordained to the priesthood here in Chicago tomorrow is our dear friend Pawell Komperda. The Catholic paper remarked that Pawell (we just call him Paul) is the only one of the ordinands who went through (get this) twelve years of seminary training. That's right, he started in the high school seminary and went straight through. The Archdiocese still has an preparatory program: Archbishop Quigley.

So pray for our new priests-to-be here in Chicago and wherever else. It would be a nice day to pray the Litany of Saints, in union with all those assemblies of bishops and faithful gathered around men who are ready to say their "Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will."

duh-vinci code?

Sorry for a bad pun; I was trying to mimic the Tribune's headline about the movie, which was shown at Cannes: "Da Vinci Dud." One and a half stars.

Is it okay to do a little happy dance?

Da Vinci Code Miracle

As I mentioned, Sr. Helena has been reading the novel in order to assist naive people who have been misled by its "FACTS." Well, she was talking yesterday about the various clues and anagrams. For instance, in the story, da Vinci's painting entitled, "Our Lady of the Rocks" is an anagram for... And I interrupted, "in English?"

Yes, folks: it's not just a "FACT": it's a "MIRACLE" that an Italian Renaissance painting would feature clues in modern English.

Perhaps there are other miracles as well...

Thanks, Karen

I was a little hesitant to proclaim it from the housetops, but since Karen outed me in her blog, let me just confirm it here: You may not be finding too frequent posts from May 22-June 6, because I will be out of the country, particularly in the footsteps of St. Ignatius. (My fellow sisters who have at times sniffingly called me "the lady Jesuit," take note!) 

I will be toting a video camera everywhere (Karen will soon tire of this), recording as much Catholic heritage, culture and saintliness as I can: all raw material for a future evangelization project I have been entrusted with.

Please pray for our safety, sanity and inspiration!

While I am away, Sr. Lorraine will monitor the blog comments, especially to remove any that are untoward or that contain links to unwholesome locations. Thanks, Sr. Lorraine!

More about Da Vinci and Evangelization

Today's first reading about the "many sufferings we must undergo" to enter the Kingdom of Heaven reminded me of what I read in the Jesuit history book I've been reading at night. One of the early Jesuits remarked that the more evident the difficulties, challenges and poverty of their life, the more people of that time wanted to participate in it. They were drawn to something that was bigger than themselves. Today's homily at St. Peter's Church was roughly on the same lines: the more we accommodate ourselves, doing the minimum in our religious practice, the less meaningful it all is. We become less and less motivated.

So maybe we need to advertise the cross?

Da Vinci Code and Evangelization

Sr. Helena has been reading the Dan Brown novel, so as to be equipped to respond to issues people may raise about it. She summed it up as "an agenda with a little bit of story wrapped around it," and tells me that it is largely an apologia for goddess worship and every other form of paganism. What Brown does, she says, is gently, but persistently, portray the Church as the ultimate oppressor of human freedom and happiness, so that the restoration of paganism (which, after all, is millennia older than any revealed religion) is seen as a return to our "lawful" and right inheritance.

In other words, Christianity is depicted as an intolerable burden that so many poor souls are dragging around. "Let me liberate you," Brown is saying.

And it wouldn't work unless a lot of people really did experience Christian faith (and Catholic faith in particular) as a burden, and not as "the freedom of the children of God," as St. Paul seemed to have experienced and preached it.

So what can we do about that?

First of all, we can ask if we ourselves experience that spiritual freedom, or if there is something obstructing that. (News: the "obstruction" would be sin, not Christianity!)

Then we can ask the Lord to grant us an "infectious" freedom, to make us witnesses to the freedom of the Spirit. This is what made the Apostles so effective in "proclaiming Jesus Christ and him crucified"; this is what made the saints of all ages so appealing, so magnetic.

And we can ask the Lord to show us the path of evangelization marked out for us: how to proclaim Jesus in a pro-active way, not only responding to things--because Dan Brown already had a finger on the pulse of the world when he wrote his novel. That is why it caught on so well. (It's certainly, if you believe Sr. Helena, not because he's an especially good writer!) So how can we have our finger on the pulse of humanity to such an extent that we can already present Jesus as the answer to their unnamed needs and desires, rather than wait until someone else proposes a false answer?

Any ideas?

Tagged Again!

It was MM at "Theology of the Body" who tagged me way back in April (St. Catherine's Day), but I didn't catch it until now! I in turn tag Karen, Sr. Lorraine, Sr. Bernadette, Lauren and Lisa!

 

Accent: Sort of generic, except (I am told) for a few expressions and when I am home in New Orleans.

Chore I Hate: Ironing.
Dog or Cat: Cat, cat cat.
Essential Electronics: Laptop

Favorite Cologne(s): ___

Gold or Silver: Silver.
Hometown: The City Katrina Remembered
Insomnia: Yep.
Job Title: Sister

Kids: All the people who read "My Friend Magazine" while I was editor (1987-1997).

Living arrangements: Former tailor factory on Michigan Ave.
Most admirable trait: Forthrightness.
Overnight hospital stays: Not for a long time (or a long time to come, I hope!).
Phobias: A few.
Quote: "Guide me in the Truth and teach me."
Religion: RC

Siblings: There are seven of us, and I am really proud of the other six.

Time I wake up: 4, 5, 6....
Unusual talent or skill: When I sing, people have said that they can pray with me.
Vegetable I refuse to eat: I exclude nothing on principle, as long as we stay in the plant kingdom.
Worst habit: Ask members of my community.
X-rays: Oh, yes.

Yummy stuff I cook: Seafood gumbo, peanut-butter cheesecake.

Heart-warming, and a little disturbing

First: Happy Mother's Day, MOM and all you other mothers out there, starting with my own sisters and sisters-in-law, and my dear Godmother Toodie and my other aunts.

 

Now for a look at today's news.

The Chicago Tribune's Mother's Day front page story was one of those human interest tales about a mother who was so full of love that she gave her twin daughters to her best friend. Seems the two women (not partners in life, just really good friends) had been life-long friends. One had two children, and the other godmothered those children marvelously, but would probably not have biological children of her own, given her medical history (which included a miscarriage). So when the first found herself pregnant with twins (and divorced, but not from the babies' father, who wasn't really involved in her life), with her true-blue friend at her side, helping her and always available, she just knew she was going to let her have her babies.

So now the babies are born. God bless both women: when they learned that one of the children had a serious heart defect and probably Down Syndrome as well, they refused to hear anything about "selective termination." They knew those lives didn't come from anyone but God.

Still, there is something unsettling in what this story indicates about society.

 

These are two women with good jobs, settled lives, living as singles (and now as single mothers). (One woman has two almost-grown children.) There are no husbands involved. And the father of the twins is really not around, either. It is simply a matriarchal situation. The lifestyle calls out to be addressed.

Then you have an adoption that was predetermined spontaneously by the birth mother in favor of her childless friend. She has great confidence that their relationship will continue to be strong, but the first night the adoptive mother took the healthy twin home, the birth mother seemed to be stricken. "I thought I'd have more time." So there are all those unstated, unexpressed, unconscious expectations that enter in--and this is no longer just about a mother and her closest friend: this involves two tiny babies and their relationship with their birth mother, whom they will know as an "auntie."

It is almost presumed, not only by the women, but by the Tribune article, that children "belong" to their mothers like possessions that can be signed over to another party. (Clearly, this is not a case of necessity, where adoption is chosen as the best way to provide for the needs of child and birth parent.)

Did anyone else read the story?

 

Sr. Helena Comes Clean

Ah, yes, nothing like the warm light of truth to bring a soul to confession....

Last night, Sr. Helena, still denying that she was on her way to becoming a foodie, acknowledged that--were it not for her pursuing religious life and having more than enough to occupy her mind and interests--she may very well have become a pastry chef or baker or some other kind of...professional foodie. Anything that didn't involve cutting up chicken livers or dealing with raw fish. You get the picture.

(I told you so, Sr. Helena.)

 

By the way, Sr. Helena asked me to include a link to her web site with her funny essays. It will end up in my sidebar next time I go into the template.

Foodie, Oh yes you are!

I am beginning to realize that I have some sort of, oh, I don't know, connection into aspects of culture that I'm not even conscious of until they become, well, conscious. For example, years ago I got into birding. That was when I still called it "bird-watching," even though you can barely see them most of the time. (I have tapes of bird calls, and do most identifications by sound.) Lo and behold, some time into that, I read that birding was the fastest-growing leisure activity in America. I was "in" with the culture, and didn't even know it! Same thing with cooking. I didn't know I was inside a trend until it got, well, obvious.

Why am I going into this? Because my fellow-sister here in Chicago, Sr. Helena, is also in sync with this same cultural trend, but she is in deep denial about it. Yes, my friends, Sr. Helena is becoming a foodie.

I'm not saying that she can cook. (Far from it.) But she has begun to do little things, like notice that what I did with the carrots today was to "puree" them. And a while back, she dressed up a commercial pasta sauce with a handful of dried mushrooms and some other pantry item. She was proclaiming her ignorance about preparing apples for pie and then said, "For all I know, you have to soak them in something." And, of course, soaking the apple slices does keep them from turning a distasteful brown. I told her it was subliminal knowledge, but she denied, denied, denied. She glories in her affected disinterest in food.

But I'm beginning to know better.

Sr. Helena, you're on the slippery slope to foodie-ness!

Way and Will

Today's Gospel was Bl. Alberione's favorite: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." I was thinking about this in the light of the example of the saints, especially St. Ignatius (who, you may know, is up there with St. Paul in my regard). Ignatius is famous for his "indifference," which sounds really terrible--like a shrugging "whatever" before good, bad, etc. Of course, that's not what it means at all. But I still find the whole attitude a bit threatening: to be equally disposed toward sickness or health, success or failure, and so on, as long as God's greater glory is achieved.

But if Jesus really is "Way, Truth and Life," if he really does have a place prepared for us and will come to take us to himself--well, you see, the ultimate good is all sewn up. So sickness or health, success or failure or whatever could go "right" or "wrong" in our life--none of these can threaten the ultimate good.

Sometimes the lives of the saints overwhelm me, not just because I know I am not capable of the kinds of self-gift they made to God and neighbor, but because in my own limited vision, I somehow feel that some pitiful little "good" that I cherish might be threatened by a greater good that they saw, but that I don't. And that's the whole point. They knew that the greater good could not be threatened, lost, compromised. It was that "unshakable" kingdom that the letter to the Hebrews talks about. And Ignatius' famous indifference is not apathy at all: it is a whole-hearted grasp of the kingdom.

just a thought

Jesus "came into this world as a light."

Our Founder used to quote the Gospels in a kind of conjunction: Jesus said "I am the light of the world; you are the light of the world."

funereal tones

I forgot to mention one little thing that happened shortly before yesterday's Mass... I had gotten distracted out of my usual routine by the sight of the hearse in front of Church, so instead of going to the usual door, pulling the cell phone out of my pocket and silencing it, and going to my place to review the readings, I went to a different door and joined the line to pay my respects to Fr. Tom. That's when the little gizmo in my pocket started chiming the polyphony "Regina Coeli" I devised as a ring tone. I fumbled in my pocket, hastily trying to quiet the thing down. To no avail. I had to open and shut it to refuse the call, and then open it again to silence it. All with the mourning assembly looking on.

Well, today I went to the funeral Mass, and made sure--well before approaching the Church doors--that the phone was on silent. Good thing, too, because later I saw that my Dad had tried to call!

5 p.m.

There were quite a few more people than usual at the 5 pm Mass at St. Peter's today. It may have been the sight of the open hearse parked in front of the Church: a reminder that today was the vigil service for Fr. Tom Fratus, OFM, who served at St. Peter's on the order of 33 years. He was a terrific confessor. May he rest in peace, and may his community be blessed.

Congrad-ulations

Our Sister Rosalie (from Malaysia) is here for her MA graduation from Graduate Theological Foundation in Indiana. Actually, the ceremony was yesterday, but here in community we are celebrating with her and her sister (who lives in Mexico) and her sister's family. I designed a little "logo" for the event, and thought it might be useful to others who are likewise honoring graduates, so click here for an 8.5 X 11 pdf with three copies of the design.

worth your time

The Archdiocese of Chicago will be holding its annual summer Scripture program at Mundelein on the theme of the Bible and Evangelization. It's a great program, and with this year's speakers including Fr. Robert Barron, sure to be inspiring. And the setting at USML is so lovely. Highly recommended!

great stuff!

Oh, we got beat to the punch in this project, but here is a fabulous series of short videos responding to a number of issues raised by the Da Vinci Code, hosted by the rector of the "Temple Church" in London.

TOB dismissed

I was really disappointed with the article in America about the "V-monologues" (you know what I mean, but this is a generally family-friendly blog). The author, professor of law and of theology at Notre Dame, wanted to make a case for accepting the play as an opportunity for women's voices to be heard, for women's issues to be brought to the fore, and for a dialogue between the play's admittedly unbalanced presentation and the perspectives Christian faith brings to the same issues.

There is nothing wrong with that.

What I take issue with, and wish most ardently to protest, is the way the author repeatedly mischaracterized the Theology of the Body and those who have found it intensely life-giving and woman-affirming. I seriously wonder if the author has ever spent any time with the actual texts of John Paul II. She was so condescending of the naive souls who accept its "rosy" view, and who conform to "Humane Vitae." Evidently, the author seems to think that TOB is nothing but a justification of the 1968 encyclical, and not a complete and hearty presentation of the human person in relationship. To identify TOB as a mere confirmation of Humanae Vitae is like mistaking a book-length study of human health with a prescription! Frankly, it seems to me that Catholic scholars of a certain generation have never gotten over Humanae Vitae. Anything that touches on sexuality seems to push their Humanae Vitae buttons and raise the alarm so loud that nothing new can get in.

That's not all.

The author assumed that parties who are in line with the thought of the Theology of the Body also make a strict identification of "culture of death" with "secular society" and "culture of life" with the Church itself! I have never heard anyone at all operate from this assumption (I may just be living in a bubble). Is the author creating a Catholic straw man so that her argument in favor of a V-Monologue Dialogue is highlighted as the only reasonable position for a Catholic with a brain? Sadly, I suspect so.

But the saddest thing is finding the mischaracterizing of TOB in America. Oddly, I think this is a result of changing the editorial practice in which two sides of an issue faced off. We would have been better served if someone well versed in the Theology of the Body had written a partner article. Because, unbeknownst to the author of the article, she was making a very good case for the core message of the Theology of the Body. According to JP2, the problem with, for example, pornography is not that it depicts the naked body as a whole, but that it depicts only body parts, separating them from the person who inhabits the whole body. And what does the V-Monologues do? Puts the entire focus on one body part. The original concern may well have been to highlight women's experiences and needs and sufferings, but by reducing women to one body part, it lost the person herself. So on the university campus, instead of reproducing the original work, why couldn't student groups be challenged with a full and honest presentation of the Theology of the Body (which, contrary to the America article's author, is not focused only on motherhood--if it was, why am I so intensely interested in it?). Then the groups could come together to create and original--and Christian--work of theater art.

Help the Women's Center

Here is the link to generate coupons that will turn your grocery purchase into support for the Women's Center and their services to women and children. Rebate coupons can be used at Jewel or at Dominick's in the Chicago area. What I did was use their fill-in-the-blank form to get the coupons in the mail, because the offer seems to have black-out days. (I couldn't print the coupons for today or tomorrow.) Anyway, it is worth the effort to try to contribute!

 

Pro-life

When I was a brand-new junior sister in my first "real" assignment (St. Louis), I found myself at a certain point unable to escape a certain series of rosary reflections that kept coming to me. Every time we said the rosary--in the car, in chapel, etc.--I found myself connecting the mysteries of the rosary to pro-life issues. Finally, one day in the car (I can still visualize where I was sitting and what the view was), it dawned on me: Maybe I'm supposed to write this! There was an almost forcible "confirmation" that came from both without and within, and I was, no kidding, seized with dread at this unexpectedly clear encounter with God's plan. Out of that came a little booklet called "Praying the Rosary Pro-Life." Eventually we printed and distributed over 200,000 copies. About six years ago, I asked that it go out of print, because the issues have grown so hugely a new version needs to be done. A sister was assigned to that, someone who specialized in moral theology and who is much more "up" on the issues than I have managed to be. But... she, like all of us, has too many other jobs, so the work is on hold, perhaps until I get inspired again.

This all came out of seeing the "Women's Center" at the Theology of the Body conference. I learned that (those of you in Chicago, take note!) we can get coupons from them to use at two of the major grocery chains here, and they will get a donation for  7% of the total sale. I will be following up on that, and will post the information about how to get those coupons. I also want to assert, contrary to the big lie promoted by so many in the abortion-rights camp, that these centers do not abandon women once they have given birth. They are always in need of baby care items, and they offer continuing support to women, constantly affirming them as mothers. It is so unfair for these centers to be written off as only "anti-abortion" efforts.

Another thing that strikes me, though, is the power of Planned Parenthood to set the agenda for women's "reproductive health." Part of that is their being a 900-pound gorilla with a uniform, centralized, national approach. I think somehow we would do much more good in impacting the culture if our many disparate women's care centers were to unite and form large multi-purpose centers like Planned Parenthood. They could offer the same services they do now, plus serve as centers for life-affirming training sessions, NFP training, things in general that serve women's needs. Granted, they wouldn't have the same financial resources as the allegedly non-profit PP, but perhaps the resources being used in so many small, scattered efforts would be better utilized if things were brought together.

But that is no easy matter! We are only now centralizing our bookstores, and it is quite a piece of work. How much more challenging to bring together services begun by so many different groups, with varying visions! But it may be something to pray about.

Keeping Busy

I have been helping run an exhibit for my community--we have two spaces at a national level catechetical conference. The two "best sellers" for us at this conference have been "Imagining Faith with Children" (a really nice guide for pulling Catholic values and virtues from the hints you can find in best-loved kiddie lit) and Sr. Rose's latest in the "Movie Lover's Guide to Scripture" series, "Lights, Camera, Faith: The Ten Commandments." The exhibit lasts only through tomorrow afternoon, but it is quite a bit of work for us, because we used one of those fancy display units that requires unusual coordination of anyone brave enough to attempt setting it up. We succeeded in assembling it; will we manage to get it back into its boxes?

I took the CTA home so Sr. Susan could come home in the car in the evening. There was a pitifully thin homeless man sleeping in the subway car. He was bent completely over, and under his dirty coat there seemed to be nothing but bones. At a certain point, his head turned a bit, and I could see that his cheek had a huge purple-red area. He must have been beaten up. All I had with me was a travel-worn granola bar, but I left it on the seat near him. I hope other people saw it there and added a little something that they had extra. Pray for him.

Workers' Day

Today we have an example of one of those secular observances (and you don't get much more secular than a Marxist-inspired observance) that the Church very deliberately co-opted and "baptized." That means that the Church recognized a genuine human value that needed to be rescued from the harm that would be done to it if it remained solely under the influence of the ideology that first brought it to the public forum. Hence, today's feast of "St. Joseph the Worker," opening the beautiful month of May, dedicated to Joseph's wife, Mary. What is especially helpful in this is the way the month of Mary opens with a feast of her husband, an ordinary workman: it points to the family as central in the "workers' question" (as the matter used to be phrased in the late 19th century). The family still is central, of course. And today Chicago will be the setting for one of the marches seeking the legal rights of immigrant workers whose primary concern has been, precisely, to provide for their families.

 

The odd thing is that this is controversial, even among Catholics. Many people seem to think that it is a "crime" to be in this country without proper credentials, and that the "illegal immigrants" are "criminals." That is a serious misunderstanding, at least from what I have been reading in the news. They are guilty, at most, of a misdemeanor--so those who have never run a red light or (accidentally on purpose) surpassed the speed limit can cast the first stone. The law is that it is a felony to "harbor or exploit foreign nationals" who don't have the proper papers, so any "crimes" are on the side of employers.  But I really want to look into the attitude, more than the "facts," because the attitude of many Catholics in this regard is simply not Catholic. It is Puritan! Our ancestors (anxious to prove themselves worthy of respect) breathed in the Puritan atmosphere of respectability that is guaranteed to the law-abiding. They conformed to the surrounding culture to such a degree that American Catholics are more American than Catholic in many of their attitudes. In traditionally Catholic countries (unless their identity was in some way overwhelmed and driven underground by powerful and threateningly violent cultural forces) you don't find this Puritan attitude that makes law-abiding a supreme value and emphasizes punitive action so much, targeting the "sinner" and ignoring the circumstances that may have made the "sin" unavoidable. You sure don't find that in Italy! But even in Poland: if being an upstanding citizen meant faithful, docile submission to all the laws of the land, then Archbishop Wojtyla was certainly guilty of criminal incitement when he celebrated Masses (illegally) on the site of the communist "model city" of Nowa Huta, which was designed specifically without a place of worship. Wojtyla led public worship and illegally began to build a Church without the proper papers.

Our "new" immigrants today are largely from Catholic countries in Latin America and they have a genuinely Catholic recognition that the concrete needs of their families constitute a right that trumps the abstract values represented by the US' unjust immigration restrictions, specifically crafted to limit arrivals who do not meet the Puritan standards that are our national heritage.

Today Cardinal George (no radical, he) will be among those who are standing up for the immigrants who form almost half of our Church. Here's the official statement:

"

Cardinal George and the diocesan bishops of the other five Catholic Dioceses of Illinois have called for comprehensive immigration reform legislation that secures our borders, establishes realistic enforcement strategies that will restore the rule of law, but that also allows for non-documented men and women to move towards a fully documented, legally recognized status and provides a safe, orderly, and fair system for those who wish to come to work in the United States.  A full copy of the Illinois Bishops statement on immigration reform can be accessed through the Archdiocese of Chicago web site at www.archchicago.org."