Charlotte was Both

Saints and Sanctity (11/1)

2021 Highlights: November

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He writes about St. Francis Xavier and frustration. What Burghardt notes strikes me as still absolutely timely, and despite the decades that have passed, not at all out-of-date. And, as I like to say, over and over again – an excellent antidote to the contemporary pop Christian baptism of the American striver and fulfilment culture which gives the distinct impression that if you’re not a “success” you’re not fulfilling God’s plan for your life – because God made you to set! the world! on fire!
And you’re spending your days scrubbing toilets and giving change at the convenience store?
You were made for more! Don’t you have…..dreams????
Well. Here ya go:

God is doing an old thing (11/2)

Trust God to work through the liturgy the Spirit has graced us with through the mysterious working of tradition.
Trust God and don’t hesitate to second-guess the temptation that arises to center your own needs, experiences and agendas in the experiences of those who walk through those church doors, seeking.

Julian and Margery (11/4)

As I say – to you and myself – all the time – anyone, living at any time in Christian history, must be acutely aware of the relationship between the flesh and the spirit in one’s own life and in the world. In short: as much as we are called to find God in all things, as powerfully true it is that Creation is God’s work, within which he has become incarnate, as much as our spiritual growth thrives in engagement with all God has made and the opportunities and obligations to love – for can “charity” be lived in isolation? Apart from the world? Of course not.
In spite of all of that, the great spiritual teachers and examples invariably point in the same direction:
To reject the temptation to baptize any aspect of life in this world: cultural, social, political or even personal, and to always remember Who we were created by and for and that the journey, as Julian and Margery both show, is all about less and more.
The question is, though –
less of what?
and more of…what?

Amen say ye for Saint Charity (11/6)

I have written before that as a teacher – both in the classroom, at home, and in my writing – I have long taken it as my responsibility – and great pleasure, in fact – to help students and readers dig through the initial strangeness of history, of literature, of theology and spiritual writing, of the lives of the saints, and indeed, of Scripture itself – to understand what is essentially and even eternally true there and to see that the questions posed in these works and traditions are, indeed, the same questions they grapple with. They are not alone. They are not the first to wonder. Which should, indeed, come as a tremendous relief, and a moment of yes, communion across space and time.

The Road Goes on Forever (11/10)

He Fills the hungry with good things (11/16)

There’s a mass social and cultural shake-up going on, one characterized by anxiety, tension and questions about mortality and meaning and Catholic leaders are having to beg people to come back to Church?
Maybe that’s a clue that something is off. Maybe the medium and message are stuck. Maybe there’s some rigidity at work that needs to be shattered.
Really. Enough with the anxiety-soaked nervousness of managers worrying about lost market share and image control.
Do we believe that in this time, in this weird, disturbing, unsettling time, that Christ offers peace in the turmoil and light in the darkness and hope in the despair in a way that no one or nothing else does? That he really is the Bread of Life, offering himself to nourish hungry hearts?
Then say it.

I no longer live but (11/19)

It would do the bishops well to admit that part of the reason they’ve lost people is because of the experience of not being missed or noticed or even acknowledged, not to mention outright driven away by locked churches, reservation systems at Mass and cancelled sacraments. To hear avuncular clerics plead for folks to come back to Mass because “we miss you!” is…amusing.

Don Justo, RIP (11/28)

Lacking in one thing (10/9)

2021 Highlights: October

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I’d much prefer, if trying to figure out how to make the Church a more powerful witness to the Gospel in the world today, to begin there – the Gospel and then the richness of two thousand years of experience and wisdom (and mistakes) – than just constantly being pointed to some ambiguous “new” thing that the “Spirit” is going to guide me towards.
Because you know what? All that talk, reducing authority to the person of the guy holding the microphone at the moment, all that ignore the past, trust the Spirit talk comes across to me as trust us more than anything else. Which in turn sounds like a call, not so much to clarity, but to rationalization.

The Kids Need Saints (10/25)

The Kids Need Saints because when they are immersed in the lives of these women, men and children, they see something unique, something that they find in no other institution, culture or subculture in human history. Yes, all cultures honor other human beings, they erect statues, some even have their miracle-workers. They have their wise men and founders, they have their holy fools and mystics.
But in what other human context are rulers and managers and the wealthy – the valedictorians, the Merit Scholars, the All-Stars and the Ivy-League bound – reminded, no exceptions, that their fulfillment – the actual, real fulfillment of their very real lives – might just be rooted in honoring, emulating and humbly seeking the prayers….. of a beggar?

It is Fully Merry in Heaven! On Margery Kempe – (10/25)

Reflections on the book Going to Church in Medieval England

Pax Christi. Sometimes.

The Sunday Loaf

The Sabbath Christ

All Stand

What interests me here, though is something just a touch different. Basically, the regulation of the laity’s liturgical responses – or lack thereof.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? That since the focus and, frankly, burden of action was on clerical shoulders – that frequently-derided sense of a “drama” happening on the altar to which the laity were “merely” spectators – the laity’s behavior, beyond normal respect and decorum, really didn’t matter much.
Which leads me, before I offer you a quote from Orme’s book, to reflect on the direction of post-Conciliar liturgical reform, which has been offered in the name of getting us all involved and helping us understand and experience the liturgy as the “work of the people” (a worthy goal, the goal of the entire 20th century Liturgical Movement) – but have ended up, it seems to me, to be quite often more about Liturgical Police barking orders at congregations about their behavior or endlessly discussing – in print, online or at their (I repeat myself) endless meetings – what the congregation “should be doing.”

Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, October 2021

Where, when, how and why

October 15: Travel day, Salt Lake City

October 16: Capitol Reef National Park

October 17: Leprechaun Canyon, Blarney Canyon, Goblin Valley State Park, Moab

October 18: Devil’s Garden Trail hike, Arches National Park. Islands in the Sky overlooks, Canyonlands National Park

October 19: Fiery Furnace hike, Arches National Park, travel to Needles section of Canyonlands

October 20: Chelser Park Overlook hike, Canyonlands, Delicate Arch trail hike, Arches

More photos and videos at Instagram, both in posts and in “highlights.”

The Total Woman Thinking Positively about the Man Nobody Knows (9/7)

2021 Highlights: September

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Unsettled yet ready (9/5)

To separate oneself from the great literature from the past is to cut oneself off from community with the human beings who, in every time and place have grappled with the same mysteries you are wondering about tonight: I am choosing this…but am I really free? And if God is God , what place do my actions have?
It’s a deep disservice to young people to make the essence of education the exploration of their own feelings and identities, with no reference to the greater world, present or past.
No wonder they feel so alone.

Trends, fashions and fads. Popular religion reflects them. Religious practice reflects the culture in which it exists in great and small ways. We are not disembodied angels. We are embodied, Jesus was Incarnate, and the Church is His Body, He dwells in His tent among us and so this is who we embodied humans know Him – or anything. We can’t be or do anything else.
But perhaps this quick glance at some powerful spiritual fads of the past decades might remind us that a testing, discerning spirit is essential to the healthy, holistic Christian life. We know what Paul tells us – now we see through a glass but darkly – but do we know it? Do we admit that we are no different?

Ad Gentes and all that (9/7)

Contended with Stories (9/20)

This self-protective narrative construction can happen anywhere – in personal conversations, on social media, in institutions.
It’s fairly simple to identify, more challenging to combat. How to identify?
If the response to your question or inquiry is to call you a name, characterize you according to some identifier or alliance, or, more seriously, seek to expel you from whatever form of civilization is at stake – there you go.
And of course, social media, especially Twitter, lends itself to this tendency quite effortlessly and perhaps purposefully.
Even on Catholic Twitter (should I even say “even?” No reason to…) – the narrative-shaping, manufacturing of consent, caricatures and excommunications are constant – and as McLuhan says, there’s that media shaping the message again, because when you have 280 characters, who has time to present a case?
Slapping on labels – that is, creating the story – then pointing and laughing at whoever we’ve declared is to blame is much, much easier.

Restoration Comedy (9/24)

The story of Haggai, and more broadly, the return of God’s people to Jerusalem, is certainly an effective and suggestive way to reflect on the present situation of the collapse of Catholicism in Europe – and the West in general, as a well as a way forward. Read Haggai, and you’ll see it all, much of which Pope Francis brings out in his homily: the prophetic condemnation of fearful clinging to comfort, the call to courage, and evocations of the emptiness of life when we rely on ourselves and push God out of His rightful place.
So much more complex than a war between past, present and future, with the past always held up as the enemy.
For besides all the other problems with this framing, we might well ask: where does “the past” begin anyway?
What’s the cutoff?
100 AD? 1100? 1900? 1962? 2013?
How do we discern which part of “the past” is permissible to keep or draw from?
Because, you know, the Second Vatican Council started three generations ago. Long time!
When does a genial rootedness in “living tradition” transform into ideological “tastes?”
How can you tell?
What is this “restorationism” that “kills us all,” exactly?
Restoration of what from what part of the past?

The Wish to Find out (9/27)

But it’s still amazing to encounter this blatant, casual, brutal bigotry, not just as a part of, but as the climax, the clincher in a ringing ode to free thought and reasoned discourse as opposed to the ignoble, blighted, darkness of “belief” that had held humanity back from real progress for millennia.
Of course, what’s essential to remember is that during this era, racism, bigotry and eugenics were considered “scientific” and “rational.”
One might say, in fact, that for these big brains dedicated to reason…. the science was settled.

St. Bernard, the papacy and criticism (8/20)

2021 Highlights: August

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Change of Season (8/2)

I can’t tell you how many times over the past almost 40-years of parenting, I’ve been in the midst of what seemed to be responsibilities and moments and circumstances that seemed they would never end: sleeplessness, driving kids to school along the same routes, day after day, week after week, loads of diapers, fixing lunches, writing checks, checking folders, then back into the car and driving again.
Did you ever do that? Did you even consider how many hours of your life you spent in the car or on the sidelines, how many lunches you bagged up?
Wow. That was a lot.
And just like that – interminable has turned into a memory. It will happen. What seemed like it would never, ever end doesn’t just fade – it all but disappears and becomes the faintest memory of a bit of minor suffering that made up a part of life back then, moments that I hope and pray I performed with grace and an eye, not towards what I was getting out of it, but what I was being called to give – in love.
And just like that, it’s almost done, and just like that, off they go.

Third, it gives us a look at some papal criticism. Yes, Bernard was a saint, spiritual master and Eugenius’ spiritual father, in a way, so he had standing. But even if none of us stand in that position to this or any other pope or even bishop, it’s helpful to read and study what Bernard says to Eugenius – what he deems fair game for challenge and examination, how he goes about it, and what he thinks it’s important to warn Eugenius about.
One more thing: sometimes when people allude to historical problems with the Church and papacy, it becomes a silencing weapon: Calm down! See! The Spirit always brings us through! Well, here’s the thing: The life of the Church is not a performance with the Holy Spirit pulling strings and waving wands, and the rest of us watching from the audience. The Holy Spirit works to preserve the Church through reformers, annoying critics, weird historical events and who knows what else.
Learning a bit of history does not offer any prescriptions for the present, nor does it define the present moment in either positive or negative ways. What I hope learning a bit of history does is disrupt, challenge and point us toward reform.

Fruits of our redemption (8/22)

Does the behavior of Catholic clergy, in general over the past decades, now frantically hectoring us to come back! We miss you! – indicate that they actually believe it’s Jesus they’re holding in their hands and sharing with us? Beyond how worship is conducted…way beyond that – when you consider the weight of scandal and – more importantly, really, for this discussion, the excuses made for it all – the person in the pew can’t be blamed for concluding that since so many clerics don’t seem to believe that this is the One, Really Present with them right now, to whom they are answerable for eternity – shrug.

A trip up to Tennessee

Here, here, here, here, and here

On the Prayer of St. Michael (8/28)

Sure, I don’t doubt that the whole scene can get a little confusing and probably not quite liturgically correct if there’s a seamless flow between Thanks be to God and Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle…especially if the priest starts it off and folks feel pressured to stay and pray it. And that’s a discussion important to have, for, as we’ve talked about endlessly, the Catholic Way is a dynamic one between what bubbles up from below and sifting from above.
But again…why?
Let’s talk about that.
Why are people calling on St. Michael? What are they asking from him, and why?

Longing to get in there (8/29)

But, as I have said so many times – unoriginally, but stubbornly – we, that Church, witness to the world through what we create. Our buildings stand in communities as witnesses to the presence of Christ in that community – strong, faithful and yes, beautiful and open to all. Our imagery and ritual evokes mystery and beauty which is not an obstacle to God, but a door, a gateway – a window.
No, not all who pass by will stay very long. We hope and pray they will remain, but for many, a moment in a lifetime, a glimpse – is all they will have of this concrete witness we’ve made with our hands, boldly and sometimes even wildly, out of love.
Yes, just a glimpse. And for some – like a little boy from across the way, straining to see inside, drawn by the colors and the scent and the sounds – that glimpse is an invitation. A graced invitation into mystery, creativity, and to explore hard, beautiful truth.
Why in the world would we think we’re blessing the world and all the seekers in it by taking all of that away?

Nothing New Under the Sun (7/2)

2021 Highlights: July

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If you wanted to offer young people (who are open to it! Black and white movies! Oh, no!) a little mini-course in the truth that Human Nature and Social Dynamics Don’t Really Change, you might show them this, Ace in the Hole, His Girl Friday (or The Front Page) and Sweet Smell of Success.
They’re a useful mirror – to see people acting in misguided or outright terrible ways sixty or seventy years ago, shake our heads at it, but then have the mirror held up to us – and to see that we’re no different, and in fact it’s worse, since, like nuclear weapons and the human urge to dominate – we can do so much more damage with the tools we have today.
Progress!

You’re Great, I’m Great, We’re all Great (7/15)

In every part of life, there seems to be the need to find the sweet spot – some might call it the happy medium – between scrupulosity and laxity.
We lurch back and forth between them in our lives as individuals and culturally as well. Religiously, too – obviously.
It’s an aspect of the modern parenting narrative, too.
For it’s all over the place isn’t it?
Don’t worry, Mama! You’re doing great! You’re doing your best!
Well, guess what?
You actually might not be doing your best. You might be doing a terrible job, as it happens.
This is where the sweet spot comes in, and I’m on a search for the best way to express what that is and how to settle into it.
For certainly, constant guilt-ridden second-guessing anxiety is a drain on healthy parenting. It hurts the parent, the child – everyone. And can do lifelong damage – to everyone.
But no, the necessary response is not – Everything you’re doing is GREAT!
That’s not healthy, either. And it’s not realistic.
Every time I run across one of those You’re doing your best, Mama! posts on social media, the same string of questions races through my mind, cynically, I admit:
Has she never heard of abusive mothers?
Neglectful?
Manipulative?
Has she never heard of mothers who ignore their children’s needs, dominate them, harm them by commission or omission or are generally clueless?
I mean, if Mama is always doing her best (just because she’s Mama, apparently), why are so many of us out here still working through our parenting issues well into adulthood?

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass… (7/15)

Vale, Rocky!

Going anywhere? (7/24)

There and back again (7/28)

The Bookshelf (7/16)

But here are those shelves, yes? I did carry them. Of all the stuff in my parents’ home that I could have taken or could have left behind, I did, indeed, keep those yellow shelves.
We are who we are, and we can’t deny it. These are our fathers, these are our mothers, this is us.
But we’re not fated. We have a choice – what will we do with what we are?
What will we carry?
What will we do with those bookshelves?

Where will we put them?
What will we use them for?
How, exactly, will they fit into our lives?
What will go?
What will stay?
And what will we pass on?

No Greater Commandment (6/3)

2021 Highlights: June

Posted in 2021 Highlights, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bible, Bible Study, Catholic, Christian, Church, Internet, Jesus, Joseph Dubruiel, Life, Liturgy, Michael Dubruiel, Movies, pro-life, Religion, Reviews, tagged 2021 Highlights, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholic, Catholicism, faith, history, Michael Dubruiel, religion, saints, travel on January 1, 2022|

But most of the rest of it is a manifestation of us privileged Westerners justifying career goals, personal aspirations, vanity and lifestyle, wearing it like the inspirational t-shirt we picked up on Etsy and comfortably leaning on it like our favorite inspirational pillow.
There’s not a thing wrong with seeking to flourish…thrive…follow your dreams….be your best self. But it’s not the Gospel, and it’s the Gospel of sacrificial love that we’re invited to put at the center of our lives every day, even as every day, we’re also tempted to replace it with something else.

Salt, Light, etc. (6/8)

It’s a tricky line to walk, as I’ve written before, countless times. We do have unique gifts that we’re called to use. It’s the purpose of those gifts – to turn over to the Lord’s will. But the temptation to put ourselves – without discerning our own temptations – at the center, rather than Christ, is a temptation as old as James and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right hand right after he’d predicted his Passion.

Good. Now do clerics. (6/11)

Then throw 21st century social media, a decades-long focus on personality as the core appeal of the globe-trotting papacy, the temptation to power-trip, messiah complexes and the assumption that evangelization=establishing a personal connection with a really cool person, and oy….
Give me Flannery’s ideal, instead, any day:

An Ode (6/14)

An aspirational, achievement-oriented culture seeds anxiety as pervasive as the mushrooms in my yard this morning. Especially among the young. In addition, more pertinent to this writer’s point, are the heightened expectations of the Awesome Excitement and Fulfillment we’re all due – because that’s what we see everyone else experiencing, right? And isn’t our God an Awesome God? And if He’s around, and we’re right with him, shouldn’t we always feel Awesome, too?
A church that doesn’t fight this, a church that, in its institutions and official and unofficial spokespeople, feeds this is not truly counter-cultural.
Counter-cultural is remembering the lilies of the field, the whispers to Elijah, a teen girl’s fiat in a backwater village, a priest’s angelic encounter in the midst of his dull routine duties, a traveling evangelist mending tents. Counter-cultural is reminding ourselves of our creaturehood and that we only see through a glass darkly right now, and God is not about emotion but about trust that yes, He lives, in this moment, here, no matter how ordinary and even no matter how sad. Counter-cultural is encouraging, above all, the holiness borne of living in that actuality, wiping newborn bottoms and holding aged, frail, cool hands, pushing a wheelchair, sweeping a floor, listening when you’d rather not and, as Parker says, forgiving the idiots, even yourself.

Seeds (6/14)

Apertif…soutane…genuflect? (6/18)

Here I am, a 60-year old woman, writing a few things, tending to the people in her life in 2021, contemplating words noted down from a dead Palestinian scholar from a book written by a Canadian around the time I was born about the Writing Life in Paris circa 1929, around the time my mother was born. In Canada.
Almost a hundred years.
I don’t know what the connection means. I can’t explain, can’t think of a cozy, succinct circle to draw. All I know is that I like it.
I like the actual piece of paper and the photograph printed on paper surprising me, fluttering to the ground from the book made of paper that I bought in a garage in a real house from real people – the daughters, maybe, or granddaughters of the man in the picture – a mile or so from my real house – that somehow connects me to those people, and then to Palestine, to Paris, to Toronto, to all kinds of people, real people, trying to make sense of life, and caring enough about it all to leave their questions, if not their answers, behind for me to find.
ineffable…profligate….
…genuflect (?)

Keep Listening (6/23)

Abram’s home was in a land of idols. Of anxious worship directed at man-made objects of stone and wood, at the forces of nature, the points of light in the sky.
And in the midst of this time and place in which no sane person would have done anything else but shape his life according to these objects and forces, God spoke to Abram.
To yearn for a culture more sympathetic to our sense of truth and reality is reasonable, and to work to shape it is as well, and perhaps even necessary.
But just as we let life pass us by if we are constantly waiting for the perfect moment to act or we declare that we are just living for the weekend to come or for the kids to move out or for retirement – we’re closing our hearts to God’s usually startling invitation right now – if we convince ourselves that God’s reach is constrained by the world’s weakness, sin and misdirection.
Or even our own, right?

The Fatal Contrast (6/18)

Hardly any of us, no matter how many solid individual bishops we know of, have much faith in the American bishops as a group. I’m just here to point out that this is nothing new. And the emancipation of enslaved peoples is a good way to understand that.
Just pick up any objective (aka, non-triumphalist) history of the Church in the United States and you will read that the leadership of the American Church (along with most Catholics south and north) stood in opposition to abolition of slavery and anything but gradual – very gradual – emancipation. I’m not going to rehash all that history here. It’s easily available. Last month, I highlighted this good, brief article in The Catholic Thing on the subject.

Mother’s Day at Mass (5/4)

2021 Highlights: May

Posted in 2021 Highlights, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, art, Bible, Catholic, Catholicism, Christian, Easter, education, evangelization, homeschooling, Internet, Jesus, Joseph Dubruiel, Living Faith, Mass, Michael Dubruiel, Pope, Reading, Religion, tagged 2021 Highlights, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholic, Catholicism, history, Michael Dubruiel, religion, saints, travel on December 29, 2021|

Catholic life and tradition has a lot to say and do when it comes to parenthood – in ways, if you think about it, that aren’t sentimental and take into account the limitations of human parenthood and root us, no matter how messed-up our families are or how distant we feel from contemporary ideals of motherhood – in the parenthood of God. Live in that hope, share it, and be formed by that, not by commercially-driven American pop culture.

A Catholic Laywoman’s Viewpoint (5/11)

When looking for a printable version of [Hemingway’s “The Killers] , I came upon a “reprinting” of the original Scribner’s publication, so I happily printed it out – all the better because it had illustrations.
What I hadn’t noticed until yesterday, when we talked about the story, was the piece that directly followed it. It’s an essay by one Grace Hausmann Sherwood called “A Catholic Laywoman’s View-Point.”
Sherwood, from my brief research, wrote a couple of books – one a volume of poetry, and the other, a history of a religious order.
I’m going to type out the introduction and then just toss up images of the rest of the piece here. It’s a bit scattered – it seems in part to be a general apologetic for the seemingly counter-cultural aspects of Catholicism as well as an explanation for the role of women in Catholicism. I think anyone who’s interested in Catholicism, religious history, social history and women in religion will find it useful.
It’s also a helpful antidote to the caricature of pre-Vatican II Catholicism as a closed, inner-looking system, Sherwood frequently points to analogies and subversive justification for Catholic practices and beliefs in other faiths and in the secular world, and has no problem in saying, for example, that a Catholic woman is bound by beliefs that seem strange and unnecessary to other women, “as good and often much better Christians than herself..”
And of course, most interesting – and depressing for the current moment – of all is that there was actually a time in which it was perfectly normal for a major, national, popular magazine’s pages to lead directly from stories by Ernest Hemingway to an essay by a religiously observant woman explaining her faith.

The Altar of the Algorithm (5/20)

…the most counter-cultural, pastoral thing we can do for our kids is to fight this, and to tell them again and again that this is not real life or connection and their worth is absolutely unrelated to their social media impact, even within their own circle of friends.
And that it’s largely a waste of time – sorry, it is – and a net loss for actual human flourishing and connection. I’m convinced of this, no apologies.
And to fight it, not just through our words, but through our actions as well, as purported evangelizers and ministers and such – every chunk of time you encourage your followers to spend listening to you online is a chunk of time that’s those followers are not engaging with the real people around them.

Much Obliged (5/21)

Pasting Labels and Folding Mantles (5/25)

The other day, my organist son substituted at the local Maronite Catholic parish. It was Pentecost, and the young priest preached an excellent homily.
Here’s what was refreshing about the homily, especially in the context of contemporary pop spiritual discourse…..

Time, Weighing (5/26)

The content that’s produced by …producers on media platforms that seeks your attention and time, that draws you in, that creates a narrative designed to hook you in, drama to get invested in – whether it’s my weight loss journey or watching my kids grow or following my pregnancy or joining us on our RV trip or home reno project. Not to speak of getting you involved in endless, fruitless arguments that change no one’s mind, ever.
All of that can be encouraging and even educational. But it can also be a massive time-suck from which you emerge, dazed, and perhaps saying to yourself – did I really need to spend all that time watching random people I don’t know and will never meet talk to me about their morning routine or show me what they wore last Sunday or gripe/brag about their kids?

“Go out to the world”..seriously…*go out* (4/17)

2021 Highlights: April

Posted in 2021 Highlights, Alabama, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bible, Catholic, education, Faith, Family, Family Travel, history, Jesus, Joseph Dubruiel, Life, Liturgy, Michael Dubruiel, Reading, Religion, roadschooling, Saints, tagged 2021 Highlights, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholic, faith, history, Michael Dubruiel, religion, saints, travel on December 29, 2021|

As I said before, saints’ days, most holy days and special topics (movies, books, gender, TC, synod) are and will be collected elsewhere. We’re just plugging away at the months right now.

Bishops started anxiously exhorting us to get back to Mass. Why?

Perhaps it would be clearer if you look at the situation, not from the perspective of the administrator anxious about the bottom line, but from the outside.
Perhaps from the perspective of the average person, not “Involved” in much in the parish, who, pre-pandemic did make it to Mass most Sundays, got their kids through at least First Communion and maybe even Confirmation.
What has she been through this past year?
And what has the Church offered her in comfort and assistance, especially if she’s not a known quantity in the parish, if she was pre-pandemic “nothing more” than a name on a registration list? What wisdom, what outreach, what presence, what hint that in her and her family’s suffering, confusion and frustration, Jesus offers, still and now more than ever, his consolation and hope?
Anything?
Has anyone even called her?
Has anyone reached out in a personal way at all?

“What is to prevent me from being ba p tized?” (4/22)

Post-Vatican II liturgical life prioritized the role and presence of community in celebration. This has, it seems, two unintended consequences: First, to minimize the object nature of the ritual action, and secondly, to ill-equip Catholics to engage in sacramental life when that community life is disrupted.
Traditional Catholic life, as it had evolved over the centuries, balanced this, by presenting a solidly objective sense of the workings of grace through word, matter and action and then allowing culturally-varied traditions and practices to grow up around these rituals.

Educated, not destroyed (4/26)

Secondly, Edman recounts a discussion in which which some Bach was played on a phonograph in a group that included some Very Modern Musicians. Discussions ensued, of course. He concludes:
The arts are the languages of men, and a passionate conflict over a symbol may be as symptomatic as the quarrel over a religious and political creed. But in such matters quarrels become discussions, and the discussions are innocent. Our quarrel over taste divided but educated rather than destroyed us.
To want to learn. To be willing to have your worldview challenged and maybe even blown up. To disagree, as one does, but to seek to learn through that disagreement, rather than to wield power and claim victory?
What a world. What a world.

Day trip to the Fitzgerald Hom e in Montgomery (4/30)

I never really liked Dr. Seuss much, anyway. (3/3)

2021 Highlights: March

Posted in 2021 Highlights, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Bible, Catholic, Catholicism, Christian, evangelization, history, Joseph Dubruiel, Michael Dubruiel, Religion, Tennessee, Travel, tagged 2021 Highlights, Amy Welborn, Amy Welborn's Books, Catholic, Catholicism, history, Michael Dubruiel, saints, Tennessee 2021, travel on December 28, 2021|

Continuing the series. What I don’t include here are posts related to saints or particular topics that I’m collecting thematically (books, movies, TC, synod on synodality on synodalism in the synod, etc). Those are grouped at the end of each post as I move through the year.

So, March.

Remember when book banning was bad? Remember when parents who didn’t want, say, in my day, Go Ask Alice or Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret on the shelves were excoriated for narrow-mindedness? Or every classroom and library scuffle since then in which those who wanted to limit children’s access to books were told that it was wrong to shelter kids from ideas and realities? That they just needed to toughen up for the real world? When, yes, concerned parents were told…great art will…startle and make us angry and force us to think through our assumptions and convictions?
No, let’s not forget that.
Banned Book Week should be interesting this year
Scratch that. It won’t be. It never is.

Spiraling (3/3)

When the primary mode of reaction and analysis to literature becomes …”How does this make you feel?” and “What’s your reaction to this?”
At that point, you have set up a system which prioritizes the impact of a piece of art on your emotions and your very person.
And you have, right there, set in motion the endless cycle of cultural reaction grounded in offense and affirmation. You’ve not even given individuals the chance to learn how to interpret culture in any other framework.

Trip to Great Stone Door, Tennessee (3/12)

Born Blind (3/13)

It seems to me to be a very accurate account of how faith grows and develops – in response to questions and challenges in which we are forced to examine our encounter with God, who we think God is, exactly, open ourselves more and more to him until finally, we meet him again, having been through the ringer, from within and without, and can finally put our ultimate trust, no matter what others say we should do, in the One who touched us way back when.

The End of Ownership (3/14)

There are two streams of conversation I’ve been having about this over the years. The first, related to Church, has been, essentially, glad to see churches (we’re talking Catholic here) use the tools to get information out there. But – but – I’ve been wary of parishes, dioceses and other entities viewing content on a screen as a replacement for one-on-one engagement. I’ve said it over and over again – for example here – your “digital outreach” is worth nothing if you don’t prioritize face-to-face outreach. Always. To recognize digital outreach, not only as a gift but as a temptation – a gift of being able to reach more people with some sort of content, but also the temptation to take the easier road – because throwing stuff out there for a bunch of anonymous eyes is a lot easier than knocking on someone’s door, encountering their pain and really and truly accompanying them on their journey.

Do Something (3/18)

The truth is, we do live a story. It’s really one of the most important gifts we give our children, as family and on a social and cultural level as well. This is the story of creation, of human being. You’re a part of it. Do something.
The question is…what? And…what story?

Deplatform and Cancel the Problematic (3/22)

For if confronting the limitations and even evil mixed in with the good of the past can teach us anything, it seems it should be, not Memory Hole…but rather, to consider how right all of these people thought they were, how noble their aspirations were seen to be, and indeed, what good did come out of their actions – and, knowing how both right and wrong they were – to bring an acceptance of that same possibility of being both right and terribly wrong to our own actions and views in the present moment.