People are asking me…

…about the recent announcement from the Vatican concerning the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). For my part, I continue to read, but I thought I would at least share some the commentary that is out there on the net.
  • from my local ordinary, Bishop Robert Lynch of St Petersburg – the first episcopal blogger – For His Friends
  • from John Allen, undoubtedly the most experienced of Vatican reporters in the English language: Notes on the LCWR Overhaul. He makes the point that this Vatican action is not the same apostolic visit to women’s religious congregations which occurred last year.
  • E.J. Dionne, Jr, of the Washington Post, Are Catholic sisters being bullied.
  • There are a host of other web sites, blogs, etc – but many seem to be reacting rather than offer well honed analysis – I will leave those to you to search out.
  • …and of course, you should read the original document itself

The casualties of war…

from Nicholas Kristoff (NYT, Apr 26):

He was a 27-year-old former Marine, struggling to adjust to civilian life after two tours in Iraq. Once an A student, he now found himself unable to remember conversations, dates and routine bits of daily life. He became irritable, snapped at his children and withdrew from his family. He and his wife began divorce proceedings.  This young man took to alcohol, and a drunken car crash cost him his driver’s license. The Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. When his parents hadn’t heard from him in two days, they asked the police to check on him. The officers found his body; he had hanged himself with a belt. That story is devastatingly common, but the autopsy of this young man’s brain may have been historic…. read more

There are some things, once broken, that cannot be fixed in this life. May we take care not to break such fragile things and may we be compassionate with the love of God to those that are broken.

“See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” (1 John 3:1-2)

Ambiguity

As we do each Tuesday, my community of Franciscan friars comes together in the late afternoon to discuss the Scripture readings for the upcoming weekend. This coming Sunday is “Good Shepherd” weekend as the reading for the Gospel is always from John 10. It is also Vocation Sunday. In the course of the discussion, one of the friars remembered the key points of the homily at his ordination Mass. The presiding bishop said that the qualities of a good priest, a good shepherd, is a man who is joyful, lives simply, is a man of prayer, and one who can faithfully live in the ambiguity and uncertainty of parish life.
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