I am new to Catholic Twitter, and not sure I like it. Every day there seems to be a new fight. But I’m going to have to jump into the ring swinging on this latest kerfuffle: a priest who humiliated a woman at Mass, and then another priest tweeted not in her defense, but in warning to women everywhere not to make priests do that to them again. Father Kevin M. Cusick, LCDR, wrote: “Ladies, a priest I know was... Read more
One of the wonderful things about our Church is that the seasons come round again and again, the fasts and the feasts returning in a cycle, with the same beautiful readings proclaimed again and again at the same time of year. One of the terrible things about spiritual abuse, is that it turns that cycle of readings into a series of little barbs that stick you at the same time every year. I have a lot of those barbs because... Read more
I have always been terrified of high places. As a child, when I went to the playground, I sometimes had to be rescued from the roof of the climbing structure because a dizzy spell would overtake me just as I got to the top. I couldn’t stand to ride the monorail at the state fair because it was too far off the ground. Now that I’m a grown woman, I get vertigo if I walk too close to the atria... Read more
This is the part of blogging I hate the absolute most. Getting spammed by combox trolls is preferable to this. This blog is how I feed my family right now. My fibromyalgia makes my health so unpredictable that my husband has to be the full-time homemaker and care for our daughter. I am our breadwinner writing three to seven literary art projects here at Patheos. And blogging has never been more than busking on the internet. I get... Read more
I have, on and off, been following the case of the seminarians in the Diocese of Buffalo who were allegedly subjected to sexual harassment and faced a backlash when they went to the press. Now, another article has come to my attention, about that same seminary and the diocese of Buffalo. WKBW Buffalo is reporting that the diocese of Buffalo has found three priests guilty of sexual misconduct– and the bishop is returning two of them to active ministry. Father... Read more
I’d finally gotten a couple of ten-dollar plastic sets of drawers so I could get rid of my smelly, broken old bureau I salvaged from Bulk Trash. This bureau was the bane of my existence. It made all my clothes smell like mildew and only two of the five drawers still worked. But I kept it for years, because new furniture is expensive– and besides, it was the heaviest piece of furniture I owned. It sat in my front... Read more
“Tell me about the theft,” said the policeman at the station, getting out his pad and pencil. “Well” I began, “We have a neighbor named K, white guy, looks kind of twitchy–” The police officer immediately supplied K’s last name. “What’d he steal this time?” he asked brightly. “A lawn mower or a weed eater?” “A bicycle,” I said, not skipping a beat. The man had come to our house pushing a lawnmower and asked to mow the lawn... Read more
When I was a girl, we used to vacation deep in the heart of West Virginia every year. There was a stream that ran past the rental cabins, where my cousins and I would catch crawfish in Dixie cups and put them in a jar of water. Crawfish are difficult to catch because they scoot backwards if you come at them from the front– that’s how you outsmart them. You lift the rock they’re hiding under, and then you poke... Read more
My Rosie is almost eight years old. She is beautiful, but she doesn’t care about that and is annoyed when I bring it up. Rosie wants me to hack her hair into a bowl cut that stays comfortably out of her face; she wears jeans or leggings and superhero t-shirts. Most of her friends are boys, because the girls find her odd. Her best friend is a boy I’ll call Jeremiah, who lives down the street. The two like to... Read more
I have been sick for a week. The nature of living on tips being what it is, we are having a lower-income May after three high-income months. We couldn’t get my tonics and herbal remedies I usually use to control my fibromyalgia when we meant to, and last weekend they ran out. We managed to scrape together another week’s worth eventually, but that exhausted our funds again and they won’t come in the mail until Tuesday anyway. The resulting... Read more
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