A Blind Dog at Adoration

In the early days of my conversion to the Catholic Church, I spent an hour before the blessed sacrament five days a week, M–F, in what Catholics call eucharistic adoration.*

More recently, too much taken over by my life, I fell away from this regular devotion. Now, with the prompting of my friend Joanne, I am back on the adoration schedule in the lower church at St. Mary’s, one hour a week. I put it this way—on the schedule—because I do my best to make it, though life still has a powerful hold on me.

This week, I shared space in the chapel with an elderly woman and her dog. While she sat and knelt with rosary and breviary before the Holy Eucharist exposed in a monstrance behind the altar, the lady’s dog snuffled about and slept on a long soft blanket of crimson and gold, which the lady had arranged by her side.

Like many human-canine pairs, the lady and her pet resembled one another. I especially noticed a common squint: in the lady a sign of absorption in her devotions, in the dog a hint that the bitch (for it was a she-dog) was blind.

I became as interested in the blind dog before the Lord as I was in the Lord himself. Sadly, life takes over one’s life even in His presence. I was moved by the old woman and her steady squinty gaze toward the Holy Eucharist, but I was even more moved by the dog.

The dog was almost completely docile before the Lord, only getting up and shifting her position every few minutes, partly to sniff about and orient herself to her mistress. But otherwise: quiet, peace, serenity in the dog, and as I contemplated the dog, in me.

Finally, the woman rose to gather her things, held the dog’s leash in one hand while deftly folding the long gold and crimson throw with the other. I looked toward the woman’s face and asked, “Is she blind?”

“Yes,” she answered and then added, without missing a beat: “If no one’s here when you leave, would you please close the tabernacle?” With this single thought for the sanctity and safety of the consecrated host reserved behind the altar, she and her companion walked slowly out, the woman waiting for the dog to follow her nose at each turning.

A few minutes later, an old smart friend of mine came into the chapel, bringing me a magazine. It was a publication of The Society of Saint Pius X in which the question of “The Papacy and Sedevacantism” is debated. This friend is one of my oldest and dearest in the Church, and under many circumstances, I might have taken the journal home and read it, if only out of devotion to my friend.

But I had just seen a docile dog—blind and unblinking—kneeling before the Lord, and I concluded that I would rather be that dog than a man in his now-nearly-late 60s (i.e., me) torn by doubt and argument.

To put it another way, I would rather go to hell for being stupid and docile than to heaven stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey with the certainty of my own wisdom. Of course, neither is likely to happen. Blessed are the poor in spirit, and your little dog too.

* If you are unfamiliar with eucharistic adoration, take a look at this YouTube video. In a second video, Bishop Robert Barron explains in part why eucharistic adoration is enjoying a comeback today.

Revisiting the Church of My Childhood

I double-dipped today, attending the 8:30 mass at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church in Wayzata, Minnesota; then taking in the 10:45 at Wayzata Community Church (UCC) just west on the boulevard.

The Protestant church (pictured) is bigger by several times than it was in 1950, when my parents were married here, or in 1952, when I was christened. My first Bible (RSV with black leatherette binding) is inscribed to me by Wayzata Community Church and dated 1959. I still have it.

So when I returned, a Catholic convert, to my childhood community this weekend, visiting relatives, it was important to me to return to where my faith was born.

Four babies were baptized at Wayzata Community Church this morning in a rite conducted by pastor John Ross, and they helped me revisit the spirit of my own entry into the fold, at seven months old during my first Minnesota winter. My Uncle Truck, a longtime member of Wayzata Community, warned me that Pastor Ross would be sermonizing on the Protestant Reformation, the 500th anniversary of which we “celebrate” this month.

The sermon topic was being saved “by grace, through faith.” I noted that the Protestant preacher mentioned the pope only once and used the word works in a positive vein though also only once. I told the pastor so as we exited.

“You walked to the edge of the precipice, referring to works,” I said, “but you pulled back from the brink. Well done.” He laughed. I think Truck had warned him that Catholic relatives (my wife and I) would be in attendance, and Ross went easy on us.

Tonight, we had dinner with Truck’s two children, their spouses, plus three grandchildren, all of whom are faithful Christians. It was a rich and rewarding feast to celebrate my return home, geographically and religiously.

I record this short post to register my gratitude.

Posturing While the World Ends

My wife and I are in Minnesota, my home state, for our 33rd wedding anniversary. Friday, before visiting relatives outside town for the weekend, we spent the day in Minneapolis, mostly at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Rather, my wife did. You know how it goes at art museums, guys. She wants to look at every piece twice. You pick a couple of paintings, look at them a while, then go out for coffee or a beer or a nap, depending on time of day. I went for a nap at our hotel, but not before pondering Pierre-Jacques Volaire’s painting of “The Eruption of Vesuvius” (1771).

What struck me about the painting is the three gentleman relaxing on a safe ledge in the foreground. Even their dog looks unconcerned. A caption alongside the painting suggested that the men were “consuming the scene with  an air of detachment, as though the eruption were a controlled experiment. It mirrors the way men and women of means consumed science at the time, as public presentations and social encounters.”

The men in the foreground didn’t make me think of science; their “detachment” or nonchalance led me to think instead of the collapse of our culture while the rich look on, getting richer while embracing each new progressive cause, walling out the disadvantaged with gates and private security guards while throwing money at the poor with invisible tax dollars. Ten billion for programs? Check! A dollar into the hat of the toothless man leaning against the building? Never! Better yet: take the man out for coffee. Are you serious?

My juices must have been stirred by the pope. On the plane from Boston I read Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelic Gaudium, or The Joy of the Gospel. As in his first encyclical, Laudato Si, our pope lays into the money world. “In this system,” he writes, “which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.”

One line struck me most forcibly: “How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”

For me, as for Hamlet, the time is out of joint. Everything seems out of proportion, and we do not connect the dots, the only exercise that could possibly put things back in perspective.

L’Arche may be to blame for my sense of dislocation. I was always skeptical of philanthropy, as a sop to rich guilt, but since I began “sharing time,” as we say in L’Arche, with men and women having intellectual disabilities, I have grown appalled at my own ignorance, detachment, and nonchalance. A neighbor would call, ask for $100 for a cause, and I would write a check, never once trying to bridge the gap between my safe ledge and the uncomfortable lives of the actual human beings “beneath me” in the lava, the people my charity check allegedly benefited.

A few months at L’Arche Boston North in Haverhill, Massachusetts, changed so much for me. Beginning with me myself. To change I had only to get off my ledge and jump in. A terrifying thought? Yes. It was.

Standing at the Door

While on retreat a year ago, I was offered spiritual direction by a priest in residence. Things did not go quite the way I might have hoped.

As a convert to the Catholic Church (Easter class of 2008), I told the spiritual director of my journey before and after that memorable vigil mass. My account was filled with more obstacles and detours than The Odyssey. It was an impressive little mini-epic of man-finding-Church against the odds he had stacked against himself, or something.

The priest listened carefully, and then responded: “It sounds to me like you’ve arrived at the door of the Church but haven’t come inside yet.”

Uh, were you even listening to me, Father? . . . I was hurt, offended, and puzzled beyond telling.

I love the Catholic Church. I have never regretted becoming a Catholic a day in my life. How could this seemingly wise, sensitive, and perceptive spiritual director tell me—ME—that I wasn’t even inside the door?

What a Difference a Year Makes

It is hard to know what to credit for the recent changes in my life, but I will start with spiritual direction.

Through a Cursillo made a year ago (the cross at left is a Cursillo logo), I was introduced to a spiritual director, Mary Ann McLaughlin. Last May I began meeting with her once a month at her office in the Pastoral Center of the Archdiocese of Boston in Braintree. Mary Ann is a wise and radiant Christian lady completely without bullshit. When she sees something, she says it. She may deliver the barb with finesse, but it’s a barb all the same. I have taken a few barbs in twelve months.

Pentecost Vigil at the Cathedral: Come, Holy Spirit!

Anyone with a shred of doubt about the Catholic Church must have missed yesterday’s vigil mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in South Boston.

You could not have celebrated Pentecost with Cardinal Seán O’Malley and a full house including about twenty new catechumens and a colorful, boisterous, visibly multicultural collection of Catholic ecclesial movements and thought the Church is a fossil, the Church is a scandal, the Church is in decline.

The Church is alive, baby. It’s alive right here in Boston. And Cardinal Seán O’Malley is a great leader for the Church in a century still aborning.

The Seven Deadly Sins: A Guide for Newlyweds

The seven deadly sins are an old-fashioned notion, kept current in our culture mostly by popular entertainment. “Se7en” (1995) was a heck of a thriller, if not exactly a moral lesson. 

But Wednesday night I had a chance to see just how (damn) relevant the seven deadly sins can be. I attended a men’s faith group. The leader is getting married next month, and he asked advice of the other men around the table, most of us married, some for many years.

He brought a list of questions and potential problems for the married man, none greater than lust. In fact, it may not surprise you that we spent at least half of our time talking about the pitfalls of lust and its manifestations, including infidelity, pornography, masturbation. Yeah, we talked about bachelor parties. Probably too much.

But after one man in the group confessed that he had been unfaithful to his wife, another said, “I’ve never been unfaithful, but alcohol just about wrecked my marriage. Along with the anger I expressed. Alcohol’s not lust. I guess it’s gluttony.”

“And there’s the anger,” a third man added.

Already we had three of the seven. By the end of the night we had covered each of them, without naming the seven deadly sins as such.

History Proves It: God Sets Us Straight

Passover 30 AD was not exactly the best night of Peter’s life.

Set aside his boo-boo of lopping off the ear of the soldier in the Garden—quickly corrected by Jesus, who told Pete to put his sword away. Set aside, too, the three denials before the crowing of the cock.

Turn the clock back a few hours and you’ll see: The whole night was a cock-up where The Rock was concerned.

Here it was, Jesus’s last meal with his closest followers, they were all gathered in the Upper Room, Jesus was fixing to wash Peter’s feet, and Peter wouldn’t let  him.

Then when Jesus insisted that he must wash his feet or Peter would lose his “inheritance,” Peter demanded an all-over bath instead!

Earth to Peter! This is the Lord!

One of Those Moments

This morning after the 10:45, just down from the choir loft with the Attende Domine still echoing in my head and my wife near the front of the nave catching up with friends, I stood waiting for her alone at the rail at the rear of the sanctuary.

What I beheld was like what you see in the picture above—that’s my parish church—except that the scene was peopled with small groups of parishioners greeting one another, taking their sweet time at the end of mass.

Three Catholic Friends

In his new book Miracles, Eric Metaxas describes miracles that have happened to people he knows personally. I am not sure that this approach works as science but it is compelling as testimony.

An e-mail received this morning prompted me to think of a companion volume I could write called Friends. Such a book would describe Catholic people I have met since being received into the Church seven years ago. For those who think Catholicism is medieval and therefore unnecessary, such a book might not be convincing, but it could open a few eyes.

My friends are central to my experience of the Church. Asked if and how I know Christ and where and when I meet Him, I would say that, first of all, I meet Him in the faces of my “church friends.” Let me write briefly about three of them. I will use their real first names, no aliases needed.

The Week in Review: Go in Peace, Gulliver

I recognize that this blog is not the norm in Catholic blogs, if “Witness” is a Catholic blog. For one thing, I don’t go in for politics, not most of the time. Generally, I am writing about my experience as a meat-and-potatoes Catholic man, working out his salvation one day at a time, one post at a time.

Even the rare “political” post linked to the previous paragraph, about certain comments of Cardinal Burke, had a personal point. It celebrated my female friends in the Church, who are dear to me.

The highly personal nature of some posts may annoy or offend some readers. It may even make you squirm. That’s all part of the deal, I think. This, I am saying, is what it is to be a Catholic man today, at least for this one Catholic man. Not always easy to live. Seldom easy to write about.

But my experience is all I have to offer. I am not a priest or theologian, any more than I am a political commentator.

So when I look back over the posts of the past week, or any week, I see my life. For example, this week:

How Can An Abuse Victim Be a Happy Catholic?

In yesterday’s post summarizing my memoir, I dodged a critical question, knowing that I would come back to it. I wrote the following, referring to myself and my experience:

It is reasonable to ask how a man who was sexually abused by a spiritual teacher could have ended up in a Church with its own well-documented sexual abuse problem. I don’t have an easy answer to that question.

There are no easy answers to evil, especially evil that has touched something one loves. In my case, evil has touched the Catholic Church.

I love the Catholic Church, having entered it as a convert in 2008. I did so as a victim of sexual abuse myself, knowing that the Church was—even at that time—tragically guilty of abuse within its ranks.

How could I have done so? And how can I be a happy Catholic this morning, ready and willing to attend 7 a.m. mass, with fresh accusations of abuse staring at me from my computer screen?

Catechetical Question: Why Did God Wait So Long?

With the offensive taste of an anti-Catholic book on pilgrimage still in my mouth, I am reading Eric Metaxas’s new book on Miracles to cleanse my palate. It’s very good eating.

In an early chapter, Metaxas writes of many scientists who are devout Christians, thus demonstrating that a life of faith and a career in science are not irreconcilable. He notes that the Big Bang theory is generally accepted now, even by Christians, and reels off recent confirming evidence.

This led me to the following question: If you accept the Big Bang theory, which says the universe began about 14 billion years ago, then why did God take so long to make man?

Genesis says it took God six days. Science says fourteen billion years. Explain.

I Have More Girlfriends Than You Do, Cardinal Burke

Cardinal Raymond Burke made news this week bemoaning the “feminization” of the Catholic Church, which he blamed for the fall-off in priestly vocations. Burke also blamed sexual identity politics for the priest abuse scandal.

Gosh and golly, Burke even picked on altar girls. Since 1983, when the Church began allowing girls to serve at the altar, fewer boys have chosen to become priests. Burke sees a direct causal relationship: “Young boys don’t want to do things with girls. It’s just natural. I think that this has contributed to a loss of priestly vocations.”

The cardinal, recently demoted by Pope Francis, made his comments in an interview with Matthew James Christoff, who heads a Catholic men’s ministry called the New Emangelization Project. The interview, or the reporting of it, suggested that the Catholic Church is being overrun by females.

“Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,” Burke told Christoff. “The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.”

To which I say, with all due respect, Your Eminence, bunk.

God Smiles at the Cold

I don’t know what’s more remarkable: Patriots D-lineman Chris Jones practicing in shorts with temps in the 20s (left), or a head count of 30 at daily mass, when the thermometer hanging off the front of the bank sports a minus-sign.

Since Jones got a story and photo in the Globe sports this morning and my fellow daily-mass nuts get no ink at all, I’ll go with them.

I counted more than 30 at mass this morning, including one priest, one deacon, one seminarian serving as lector, and one lay altar server (me). The usual count is 50-plus, but it is pretty cold today, coldest day of our Boston-area winter so far.

A Disturbing Poem About Abortion

I have never had a political bone in my body. So while I know where I stand on “the social issues” (I am a Catholic) I generally don’t “go there” on this blog.

However, I read a poem about abortion this morning that is so disturbing I thought I would share it. You can judge for yourself in this feed from The Writer’s Almanac, which I read every day.

If I knew it was so easy to write a poem these days, without rhyme or meter, I might try myself. But meanwhile, I look on aghast at word choices that are as cold as the author is (or pretends he is?).

It was an accident . . .
She wants to keep it . . .
Dave has his doubts . . . 
Confusion . . . Pain . . . Couples Counseling . . . 
X-raying their relationship . . . 
Tongueless little sachet of cells . . . 

And of course the punch line:

Not My Problem.

We Three Kings: A Sacerdotal Selfie

My wife and I attended a small dinner party of church friends last night. Three of the guests—the most honored guests—were priests who formerly served in our parish.

I gather that the photo above is a sacerdotal selfie, taken by Fr. Kwang Lee, featuring (l to r) the priestly photographer, Fr. David Barnes, and Fr. Ixon Chateau.

Our former pastor and my first, Father Barnes is now the Catholic chaplain at Boston University. He posted about the event in his wonderful blog, “A Shepherd’s Post.”

You can read his words here.

The Burden of Sin in Mark and The Pilgrim’s Progress

We have begun praying on Scripture in the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises (19th Annotation Retreat, Archdiocese of Boston).

Unfortunately, I think I failed the first test.

Given the parable of Christ healing the paralytic (Mark 2:1–12) and this painting of the parable by an unknown 16th-century artist, I decided in prayer that Christ had played a trick on everybody.

After being challenged by scribes over his claim that he could forgive the sins of the paralyzed man, Jesus asked which was easier, to forgive sins or cure the man’s paralysis?

Then, “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” Jesus told the paralytic to stand up, take his mat, and go home.

The trick is, Jesus healed the man but did not remove his burden of sin! Ha ha! How did I know this “in prayer”? Two reasons:

Co-opting the Immaculate Conception

I have spent the past day mulling two interpretations of the Immaculate Conception.

In the Catholic world, which I inhabit body and soul these days, the Immaculate Conception is a beautiful teaching that I embrace. The idea that Mary was conceived free from original sin was an article of popular belief held by Catholics for centuries before Pope Pius IX made it dogma in 1854.

Four years later, in 1858, the Immaculate Conception was validated beautifully, at least to my satisfaction, by the apparitions at Lourdes. The woman appearing to an unlettered shepherd girl said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” My first visit to Lourdes in 1972 was a deeply convincing experience and became one of the paving stones leading me to the Catholic Church thirty-seven years later, in 2008.

Ironically, I made that first visit to Lourdes with Gulliver, a cradle Catholic and my guru, who offered a dramatically different interpretation of the Immaculate Conception. As I have written, Gulliver had been running a so-called growth center in upstate New York, where I met him in the fall of 1970. When Lilliput went bankrupt, Gulliver announced that it was closing on December 8, 1970. He then explained to me, his newly fledged follower, that this date was “highly seeg-nee-fee-cant.”

Final Degree, Unfinished

Three true stories:

I was accepted at one of the best small liberal-arts college in America and dropped out after three semesters.

I was offered a chance to work with arguably the best stage director in the English-speaking theatre of the 20th century and declined.

I was accepted to arguably the best MBA program in the world and didn’t go.*

All that happened by the time I turned twenty-five. As I look back over the timeline of my life, it is easy to see a pattern of failure. No wonder my recurringest dream is of being a freshman at that college again, on the first day of classes.

I’ve always wanted a chance to start over. Now I finally have it. Simple reason: