Sent?
A Pastoral Memoir
“I don’t pay
attention to politics,” she told me as I tried to engage her in a discussion of
Governor Inslee as she mentioned her relatives were from the State of Washington.
“Back off anus!”
posted in a church Facebook page in response to a cautionary post that despite
Trump’s edict churches not open:
“When was the last
time he worshiped? Does he have any understanding
of the dynamics of worship?”
Censored and
removed from that parish’s Facebook.
Pastor gets called
on the carpet
for being quoted in
the paper
while attending
a Methodist
discussion of Gay Marriage.
A wall chart of
casualties hanging in a church sanctuary as the war in Iraq escalates (circa 2003)
roils church
leaders:
“Too Political!”
A Just War Editorial
questioned:
“Pastor does not
speak for the church!”
Sent?
·
To
coddle Christians into the afterlife?
·
To
make sure the coffee is on?
·
To
entertain with jocular sermons?
·
To
buy into the latest ecclesiastical dog and pony show?
The Trial of the Catonsville Nine
All Rise: DANIEL BERRIGAN stands at pulpit-like reading desk with the other eight DEFENDANTS silhouetted behind him.
All Rise: DANIEL BERRIGAN stands at pulpit-like reading desk with the other eight DEFENDANTS silhouetted behind him.
DANIEL
BERRIGAN:
On a
June morning, I lay before the altar in the chapel — to be ordained a priest —
and the voice of Cardinal Cushing shook the house like a great war horse. His
hands lay on my head like a stone. I remember a kind of desolation, the cold of
the floor on which I stretched like a corpse, while the invocation of the
saints went over me like a tide, a death.
Would
these bones live? I arose to my feet and went out into the sunshine and gave my
blessing to those who had borne with me, who had waited for me. A most
unfinished man.
What
would it mean to be a Catholic? Who would be my teacher? It was, finally, the
world, the world we breathe in, the only stage of redemption, the men and women
who toil in it, sin in it, suffer and die in it.
Apart
from them, as I came to know, the priesthood was a pallid, vacuumatic enclosure,
a sheepfold for sheep.
Priests? Why priests kept their peace, muttered
the Mass, sidestepped queasily the public horror, made Jesus mild as milk, a temple eunuch.
Sent!
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