Furthermore…

Little boys fighting outside church:

“He’s MY personal savior!” OUCH! “No, he’s MY personal savior!” THUMP!

St. Thomas wrote something about almost any subject you can name. He spoke of beauty as “id quod visum placet” in Latin, meaning in English “that which being seen, pleases (the observer).” Beauty, of course, is one of the Trancendentals, and is one of the attributes of God. The saints and angels are priviledged to “see” God. They do not see as we see, however. God is Pure Spirit, so the seeing is a spiritual or intuitive experience, the Beatific Vision. All things were created by God, and the beauty we perceive in creatures derives from God, the source of all beauty. The inspirations which allow artists and musicians to create things of beauty come from God, Who is entitled to glorified by human creations, the products of His children, and by the beauty of humanity itself, and of all nature.

Publisher rejecting teenager’s manuscript:

“Your idea is original, but we don’t see much demand for the Bible written in text messaging!”

Is there no answer, no one who cares?
Replace our souls with the things you want
We are only what you say. Say what you want.
Why have we lost what was simple
why have we turned our backs on the truth
to follow that which made us lose ourselves?
Talking is not unlike touching, yet speech is not physical.
My eyes gaze intently, into my desires
yet still, I am distracted by stars.
Autumnal felty hues
the billowed blues of Aegean sea and sky
Tiny white-laced patterns float above terrain of cold.
The clouds loom low to form a shelf for the sun.

Terrorist to victims:

“Yes, we all worship the same God – the one who tells us to kill you!”

There is a notion that is getting to be pretty common, repeated as an excuse by people who are abandoning their Catholic faith, that attending the Mass is boring. It might be expressed as “I don’t get fed there.” They get more ’stimulation’ at some non-Catholic church where they get stimulated with big TV screens, lively shouting music, fellowship, worldly preaching. coffee and donuts.

Serious Catholics need to get into action. figuring out ways that to make local churches more friendly and warm. Sitting in the pew staring straight ahead, as at a movie, doesn’t get it. One could look around and get a feeling for the congregation, the people of God joined together in unity. One could step up the efforts to have people greeted with a friendly smile as they enter. Or perhaps stopping and chatting with little groups of folks after Mass, helping to make them glad they came and shared in a spiritual happening. Take an interest in the work of the liturgy committee so that the meaning of what transpires is fresh in the mind. Add some life and happiness, so that our people don’t feel inclined to wander off to other denominations looking for entertainment. That’s not what church is all about! Come up with additional ideas, and share them with parish leaders.

Many people identify themselves as Catholics but don’t fully follow the ways of the Church or even totally exclude it from their lives. Maybe those with enough interest to go off to some other church looking for spiritual stimulation are in a better place than the Cafeteria Catholics and the stay-at-homes. Neither course, to leave the Church and shop around for a more exciting venue, as is so common in the U.S., or to have bored and indifferent Catholics in name only, as I have heard is common in Poland, is desirable. In either case, Catholicism is the loser. Or is it that they feel the Church requires too much of them?

Priest in confessional to woman:

“Try to tell me your own sins, and not your husband’s!”

Our meeting today was hosted by one of our members who is temporarily in a nursing home. A private room was provided for our group of eight, and we were served an elegant luncheon beofre we began our meeting. We are all old hands so the transition from lunching mode to discussion mode was seamless. The readings we considered were tose of the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B Cycle. The mysterious story of Job left us a bit uncomprehending, but the cure of Peter’s mother-in-law seemed to evoke the most comment and interest. It morphed into considerations of the role of women in Biblical times, the Middle East today, and our own American society. There seemed to emerge a sense that long entrenched soical patterns dictate much of our reality andmake it less than likely that much progress is to be made in bettering the human situation. Yes, we are lost without a Savior.

Woman to pastor greeting the people leaving church:

“I want to thank you, Pastor. Your sermons are the only thing that helps my husband’s insomnia!”

I remember on occasion going to church on some special day of other when there was a Solemn High Mass and my father, seeing three vested priests on the altar, would comment snidely, “Three Bulls!” I never asked him what the hell that was supposed to mean, well aware that he and I had widely differing outlooks on church matters, and any explanation he might give would not blend smoothly into my own understanding of what it all was about
Looking back, I am sure his observation would mean something to some subgroup of men somewhere which he was addressing in his mind: his friends, or work associates, or farmers, bullfight afficianados, cattle breeders, slaughterhouse workers, whatever. I could vaguely perceive some resemblance between the studiedly independent carriages of the priests moving about the altar with an unstoppable inevitability and my limited knowledge of bull behavior.
But since I was not part of that unknown group of peers all that came across to me was that he was alienated from the Church or certain aspects of it and saw the lavish liturgy on the altar as some kind of clown trot.