Listen and get involved

I forget now what I wanted to tell you! How often do we find ourselves in this position? It can be very frustrating as we lose a thought that we felt a moment ago was significant enough to share it with another. To make it worse we were probably interrupted by someone sharing a valuable insight into the dog's need to take a walk! Why do people always interrupt me on those rare occasions when I'm thinking? These rare thoughts are such precious gems of wisdom so thoughtlessly squandered.

And we then waste so much time trying to regain that momentary, fleeting vision, so fleeting that we did not have time to put it in words. I can drive all the way to Orlando trying to recall it without success, unless I'm distracted ny my wife's screaming: "Billie, the light is red". Now I'll never have the opportunity to share with Mario Rubio how to solve the country's economic problems.

It's a sad fact that brilliant minds cannot get a hearing when boring blow-hards grab the floor and

laicization & bishops

We’ve talked about “laicization” and the dismissal of priests from the active ministry, but it might be interesting to dig a little deeper into what the implications are. Back in grade school I learned that three sacraments cannot be repeated, they are conferred permanently. As I recall the image was that they put an “indelible mark or stain” upon our soul, somewhat “like indelible ink”. These sacraments were Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. Their effects were irreversible. I’m not a Graham Greene fan and I’m not suggesting that he is an expert on the details of Catholic sacramental theology, but I seem to remember that this was a basic element in his depiction of the “whiskey priest”. This was a distinction between “ex opere operato” and “ex opera operantis” in traditional theology, a distinction between the work done and the one who did the work.

So it seems that laicization does not deprive the priest of his priestly powers, specifically the power to preside at the celebration of the Eucharist, it merely forbids him to do so. Given that the penalty is usually imposed as a consequence of the priest’s disobedience to an order from a superior, bishop or pope, such a prohibition is unlikely to prevent him from doing what his conscience tells him is

Canonizing John Paul II

Apart from the fact that we are all called to be saints and that canonization merely recognizes officially that the subject has heroically fulfilled his responsibilities in the role to which God has called him, the process of canonization is primarily intended to present the subject as one worthy of emulation by the faithful. The Vatican has announced that Pope John Paul II will be beatified (the first step to canonization) in the near future, probably on May 1st.

Several questions arise about the whole process which has been fast-tracked by dispensing with the traditional delay of several years before beginning the investigation of the candidate’s life and