I love Catholic Media! Especially that which is accessible via the Internet. Searching for kindred spirits is what brought me to the world of blogging in the first place. But honestly, I don’t have enough time to enjoy as much Catholic Media as I would like. After all, if I just consumed Catholic Media, I would never create any for you to consume.

Look at what time I am posting this, for example. It is almost 2130, which is 9:30 PM for all you civilians out there.

My excuse is the same one it has always been: I’m a Catholic, a husband, a dad, an employee, and THEN I am a Catholic blogger too. Sometimes, after all of that, I even get to eat and sleep. Did I mention that I just got home from my oldest son’s baseball double-header? Actually, it’s something of a miracle that I get to post anything at all.

But since it is Catholic Media Promotion Day, I’ll first thank everyone who chose Why I Am Catholic as one of your favorites. Thank you kindly! Sure, it’s presumptuous to assume anyone did actually chose us as one of their favorites, but you never know. It just might have happened.

Listen! I even lent my voice to this promo clip! See if you can pick out my voice.

As always, let me be frank (pun, very much intended) with you even further in stating that there is no way in hell that I have the time to listen to podcasts, or even to download them. Not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent! But here are my favorite sites and blogs that I use or actually read pretty much on a daily basis. And yeah, I’m breaking the rules and sharing more than three. Oops!

Universalis, the LOTH

The Deacon’s Bench, Deacon Greg Kandra

Catholic and Enjoying It, Mark Shea

Chronicles of Atlantis, Athos

BadCatholic, Marc Barnes (aka, “The Kid”)

Happy Catholic, Julie Davis

The Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia

New Advent

Patheos Catholic Portal

CatholicJukebox.com

and would you believe,

the YIMCatholic Bookshelf? I’m always using that resource.

Now, I need a beer and to go to bed…Pax!

Today is a High Holy Day for Marines like me. On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress agreed to form two battalions of Marines. The committee that decided this met at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, over beers of course, and the Continental Marines were born.

So those of us who have earned the title Marine, have two birthdays, the second of which we all celebrate today. I’m thankful that I was blessed to be a Marine. But I also know that my time in the service, and those of my brother and sister Marines, has left me with an unsettled feeling about the wars we have been called on to fight of late. Coming up on 10 years in Afghanistan? Sheesh.

Sigfried Sassoon (that’s him in uniform above) is regarded as one of the best “war poets” of all time. He served bravely during World War I, and was awarded a medal for gallantry. But he also experienced the horror of total war, and this in a war that destroyed an entire generation of the “best and brightest” of Europe.

Below are thoughts of Sassoon’s that were published in the English newspapers in 1917. They caused quite an uproar at the time. But the salient points he raises should, in my humble opinion, be raised again today.

Sassoon’s Public Statement Of Defiance

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerity’s for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

Later in life, Sassoon converted to Catholicism. It is difficult to readily find any of his later Catholic poems (you can find most of his war poems easily) but I did find this one to share. This is the prayer of an old soldier. Someone who has seen the world at its worst, despite it’s best intentions, and has found solace at the foot of the Cross.

A Prayer in Old Age

Bring no expectance of a heaven unearned
No hunger for beatitude to be
Until the lesson of my life is learned
Through what Thou didst for me.

Bring no assurance of redeemed rest
No intimation of awarded grace
Only contrition, cleavingly confessed
To Thy forgiving face.

I ask one world of everlasting loss
In all I am, that other world to win.
My nothingness must kneel below Thy Cross.
There let new life begin.

Semper Fidelis

I have friends, good Catholic friends, who seem to relish nothing more, especially after a couple of beers or in the case of our men’s group while chomping coffee and donuts, than to bemoan the pitiful state of contemporary culture. You know the litany. A conservative Catholic cultural critique can be merciless. (A liberal Catholic cultural critique is an oxymoron.)

I’m pretty sure now, after nearly three years a Catholic, that all such criticism is worthless.

The idea is that “the world”—the cold godless culture of death—is in sore need of conversion. This may be true; no doubt it is true. But there is little point, or honesty, in converting the world before I convert myself. Whether I’m a cradle Catholic, a convert, or a non-Catholic in discernment, what I have to do is to come myself to a conversion.

Conversion to me means turning myself completely and radically toward God, toward Jesus Christ. If I am a layperson, a husband and father, as I am, this does not mean turning away from my life commitments, from my vow of marriage, from my responsibility to provide for my family; it means to turn and open my heart continually, repeatedly, insistently to the love of God and to the presence of his Son, Jesus Christ, in my life. And to let that presence shine into my marriage, my family, my life of work.

Every serious Catholic must have a friend like my friend “Mike,” a born-Catholic guy who has turned himself away from the Church and therefore from the presence of Christ. Armed with “good reasons,” ready to take aim at every slightest failing of the Church, Mike has closed a door in his mind and will not give himself permission to open it again. What am I going to do with Mike?

My first impulse is to argue with him, to prove him wrong, to get Mike to come back, to convert. But to my continuing surprise I have found that my presence does not have the effect of, say,  St. John Vianney or Mother Teresa, and all of my frontal attacks on Mike gain nothing, except Mike’s resentment. Mike’s back, when up, is immovable.

And all the time I am assuming that there’s something wrong with Mike, that I must change Mike.

I must change myself.

I’m pretty sure that if I were St. John Vianney or Mother Teresa, Mike would melt. To be in the presence of either of these saintly people must have been like being in the company of Christ. In fact, that’s probably exactly what it was. How do you explain the conversion of much of the Mediterranean basin in the century after Christ’s death? A whole lot of souls on fire.

Why is my presence any different? Why am I lukewarm? Because I am seldom in Christ’s company. I seldom think of Him. I think of Mike, though, plenty, and how far he is from Christ.

At times like these, I find that nothing works for me better than reading the saints—turning to those men and women who turned themselves so wholly to Christ. And who better to turn to than St. Thérèse of Lisieux, known in her French religious life by the name  Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus de la Sainte Face—Thérèse of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face—wow, what a name! (That’s her holy card at the top of this post.)

At the age of thirteen, already thirteen years baptized, Thérèse experienced what she called “a complete conversion.” 

“God,” she wrote, “worked a little miracle to make me grow up in an instant.” Out of that conversion grew her “Little Way,” an endless rosary of little deeds of love and devotion, performed with her heart turned totally to God.

“I see that it is enough,” she wrote, ”to recognize one’s nothingness and to abandon oneself, like a child, into God’s arms.”

About the time of her “complete conversion,” at about age thirteen, she wrote:

“I didn’t have, as did the other students, any teacher with whom I was on friendly terms and could spend several hours. I was content, therefore, to greet the one in charge, and then go and work in silence until the end of the lesson. No one paid any attention to me, and I would go up to the choir of the chapel and remain before the Blessed Sacrament until the moment when Papa came to get me. This was my only consolation, for was not Jesus my only Friend? I knew how to speak only to Him; conversations with creatures, even pious conversations, fatigued my soul. I felt it was far more valuable to speak to God than to speak about Him, for there is so much self-love intermingled with spiritual conversations!”

With only one Friend, with only one Person with whom she could speak, Thérèse’s heart was turned totally toward Christ. I’m willing to bet that she would melt Mike if they met today. All I want to do is change him.

This post was written after some reflection on the introduction to “Living is the Memory of Me,” a recent talk by Fr. Julián Carrón to the Assembly of Responsibles of Communion and Liberation. You can find a link to it at the CL home page.

Yesterday was my 59th birthday, and the party was impromptu. At two in the morning Wednesday, the inspiration had hit me: I would send e-mails to people I would like to see; tell them I planned to be home on Sunday from 4 to 9; and propose that they drop in, or not. There were only two rules: no gifts and leave when I tell you. I sent about 40 messages, then helped Katie get the house ready for the arrival of the Magi.

My party was as impromptu as my wedding. Katie and I knew each other for twelve years before we started dating in 1984. After dating for four months we decided on a Monday to get married on Saturday. Whereupon I called my mother and asked her if she and Dad were doing anything on Saturday morning, early, about 8 am. She said:

“We were planning to play tennis.”
“Can you break your date?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“My wedding.”
“To whom?!!”

Poor Mom had no idea.

Setting aside the usual stresses that hosts experience when preparing for a party, and ignoring the inevitable frost-heaves on the matrimonial highway that such stresses can throw up, Katie and I actually had a pretty good time getting ready for the party—which included a soothing stop at Dick & June’s, our favorite ice cream spot. At 4pm I sat down in my favorite chair with a favorite book and waited. I thought I would be pretty cool about it, but by the time the doorbell first rang at 4:28, I already was not half as popular as I thought.

The first arrivals were an elderly couple bearing pierogi, a Polish delicacy that would later be acclaimed the gastronomic exclamation point of the evening. The next arrivals surprised me. Not that I hadn’t invited them, but in all my imaginings of the odd concussions likely to take place when friends from different sectors of my life came face to face, I had not factored in my Venezuelan-born doctor and his lovely children. They proved to be the light of the party for the next 90 minutes.

That’s partly because my guest list of 40+ seemed to be a long roll of regrets as late as 5:45. Then, in about 30 minutes’ time, we ran out of room. Not that there weren’t other “party spaces” carefully arranged in advance by Katie, but at 6:15 we had about 30 people wedged onto our patio, together with a cooler filled with beer and wine, a refreshing jug of Mrs. Tindall’s Punch, a monstrously flaming grill, and plenty of pierogi. I think the surprises began about this time. Because when you leave it to the Lord—as I had by inviting people who have nothing in common except my affection for them and then sitting back to watch what happened—life fills up with surprises.

First there was the elderly gentleman and first arrival (EG/FA). I was sitting inside with a great friend, a good guy I’ve played some so-so golf with (the patio was just not big enough by now). In came EG/FA and sat down, weary, breathless. Oh no, I thought, EG/FA is sucking oxygen and my golf buddy came here to blow off steam. EG/FA and WGB (Webster’s golf buddy) did not seem to have much in common. Separated by 30 years of age and several brackets of income, I figured they would be unlikely to run into one another anywhere else, and I wondered, with the paranoia of an amateur host, How is this going to work?! It worked like a charm: Both hailed from the same small town in upstate New York. (I had no idea.) They spent the next 90 minutes topping each other with stories of 1962 state championship football teams and the arcana of small-town politics. When EG/FA staggered out on his cane, WGB kindly, slowly helped him carry the pierogi pan to his car.

Then there was the Korean-American seminarian (helping out in the parish this summer) and our next-door neighbors, whom I have always had a fondness for but never reached out to in 25+ years of living on either side of the lilac bushes. How did they ever end sitting together?! But Betty (one of the neighbors) ended talking engineering (her job) with Kwang (the seminarian, a former PhD candidate in ocean engineering at MIT). Katie’s jaw dropped, eavesdropping on this one.

By 7:30, or about the time the Case of the Purloined Yankee Banner had been solved (long story involving Father Barnes, Kwang, and CL pal Vangie, not necessarily in that order), Katie and I were exchanging happy glances and eye-rolls. Then in about 15 minutes between 8:30 and 8:45, just as the main crowd was moving on, three members of our School of Community arrived individually, and from 9 to 10, or an hour past my bedtime, we had at least the quietest if not pleasantest hour of the evening: Katie, and I, with members of the Beverly CL mafia.

I am not doing the evening justice. But I need to get back to work here, so this will have to do. I am left with an amazing gratitude for the friends in my life—as mismatched as they may be—and the good Lord who puts them there, in exactly the order He chooses.

Maybe this is what Fr. Julián Carrón means when he writes: “The ‘wholly human’ consists in what is open to totality. . . . Everyone can verify how he faces the signs that the Lord is making happen. . . . Whoever follows what the Lord is making happen before our eyes, blossoms . . . ”

(Note: The picture adorning this post was not taken at yesterday’s party but at another midsummer birthday about five years ago. It shows a much younger me with our two beautiful daughters, who sadly could not join us yesterday from New York or Argentina. Just shows you that the miracles you hope for don’t necessarily come true, but if you remain open and accept what life brings, there will be surprises.)

Until I became a Catholic I never went to a Super Bowl party. Last night, Catholic friends invited me to two. Bob and Deb invited the Beverly CL crowd to their place, and I would have happily gone there. But Ferde had been making chili since Wednesday, and he sealed the deal by accepting a bet on the game.

A footnote about my pre-Catholic Super Bowl experience. I’m not the misanthrope that makes me sound. Until a few years ago, Katie and I and our daughters all performed together in Sunday afternoon performances of a world-famous magic show, after which we were always exhausted and wanted only to get home and crash in front of our own tube. Our theatre friends came to our place, if they weren’t exhausted too.

But back to last night’s party. It was a friendly crowd packed into Ferde and Heidi’s cozy TV room. Their daughters, Jenean and Elaine, were there, along with Marty (whom Ferde is sponsoring in RCIA), Jonathan, and myself. (Katie was in New Hampshire helping her sister move into a new home.) Father Barnes even put in an appearance at the party, though he’s the exhausted one nowadays Sundays at six, and he begged off early, after wings and a beer. When the tide of the game began turning about 8 pm, I got a text message from the padre: “Is Ferde still taking bets?” When I texted that Ferde wanted to know “your proposition,” Father sent back a sermonette that I’m still pondering: “Beware of trees with $50 bills hanging off of them.” That forestalled negotiations.

Frank’s post today refers to four virtues: mercy, pity, peace, and love. Our reading in CS Lewis this week refers to the four Cardinal Virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. These four were mostly on display at Ferde’s last night, though once Father Barnes was gone, temperance got a run for its money. It took fortitude to eat all of the tasty foods Ferde and Heidi had prepared (I had to eat three brownies as an act of charity); and justice was served because my side bet proved prudent. I had the Saints, along with a generous spread of seven points. The Saints won by fourteen.

I’ve never gone wrong taking the saints.

I never met my mother-in-law, Ruthie McNiff, but I feel a new kinship with her now that I have become a more frequent visitor to the first Catholic chapel ever established in an American shopping mall. Katie says her mother, who died before we were married, was a big fan of the St. Thérèse Carmelite Chapel-in-the-Mall, tucked behind the Carmelite Gift Shop in the basement of the Northshore Mall in Peabody, Massachusetts, right under Joe’s American Bar & Grill. I was there again last night and felt her presence.

I attended a new men’s group in the reception area behind the chapel vestry and sat directly opposite the portrait of St. Thérèse that adorns the top of this post. No, that’s not Ruthie, but I’m pretty sure she was there too. Katie’s father died when Katie was seven—and Ruthie’s seven children ranged in age from one to ten—leaving the unemployed, newly single mother alone to fend for herself. Which she did, in a Cape Cod–style house the size of a jumbo postage stamp, notably with God’s help. Ruthie was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1983, before Katie and I began dating in earnest, so we never met face to face, not yet anyway.

But last night, there was St. Thérèse and there was I and there was Ruthie too, observing as a group of nine guys passed a rosary around and talked about their experiences as Catholic men, with a focus on action, piety, and study. The words exchanged were very private, except for the presence of a cloud of witnesses, so I won’t get into details. But I’ll be back next week and the week after that. This whole phenomenon of Catholic men’s group meetings—for God, not for beer—is starting to grow on me.

As is the chapel itself. I may return more often, especially on Thursday mornings, our one off-day for daily Mass at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea in Beverly.

The chapel, shown here, also features a large book and gift shop next door. It was founded in 1960, when the Northshore Mall was an exposed strip-type mall like the one Allison Salerno described in her guest post today. And boy, hasn’t Allison stepped into the breach since my writing yesterday that I may slow my own posting for a few days? Her piece yesterday for Candlemas was right on the money, too.

Allison writes of another mall-based Catholic chapel-cum-bookstore in New Jersey near her home, a chapel that regrettably has closed. God be praised, the Peabody Carmelite chapel is being renovated this month, for its 50th anniversary, thanks to the genial leadership of Carmelite Fathers Mario López, Felix Prior, and (director) Herbert Jones. Please keep them in your prayers, along with my mother-in-law, Ruthie McNiff.