If anyone told me twenty-five years ago there would be women in the pulpit, I’d have been incredulous; if told I’d be one of them I’d have been aghast. Yet here I am, anno Domini 1990, completing ten years as parish lector. My presence near the altar is more accommodation than conversion to the practice. … Read more
It all started in third grade. Attending parochial school, I was introduced to the practice of “making visits” to church, aside from obligatory Sunday Mass. It is a custom which stuck. When it comes to church visits, I am a frequent flier. As a child, however, I became uncomfortably aware that altars of the Blessed … Read more
It reminded me of nothing so much as the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. When the earth rested, the question on everyone’s lips was, “Where were you when it happened?” To live in the San Francisco bay area is to experience a kind of perfection. It offers a dazzling combination of sea and hills, … Read more
I never subscribed to the notion that priests are just like everyone else. Anyone who makes God his first priority is not to be confused with the rest of us. Rank has nothing to do with it. If he is an unobtrusive curate or a well-publicized bishop, I regard him with equal esteem. Status or … Read more
First, a confession. I have never been enthusiastic about the pope. The office, yes. Scriptural proof validating the commissioning of Peter, and the lengthy Petrine succession aside, it amazes me that anyone could question papal authority. To paraphrase Voltaire, if it hadn’t been instituted, it would have had to be invented. But an omniscient God … Read more
The faces of grief flash before our eyes, television images reflecting catastrophe. They trigger instant empathy: we hold collective breaths with the distraught parents as we watch heroic efforts to extricate their toddler from the well; we identify with shocked, dazed families pacing airport terminals waiting to learn if relatives actually boarded the doomed flight … Read more
‘Tis the season to be introspective. Or is it? Tradition has it that January initiates a fresh start, a time to rid ourselves of less admirable qualities and strengthen those more commendable. The only question was how long we could persevere. But the impulse to improve, implying recognition of faults, indeed transgressions, seems to be … Read more
My son got his college diploma in 1986 as did most of his friends. His reads Columbia, theirs are similarly prestigious. Here, parallels end. His peers flocked to law school, to Wall Street, or to Silicon Valley; he joined the Air Force. He arrived at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas a gentleman and after … Read more
Last summer I got the shock of my life. In a movie I attended, only three expletives were uttered. Stunned by a script whose dialogue was not punctuated by foul language, it took me days to figure out the anomaly. Revelation: the movie was set in August of 1963—before public obscenity, actual or scripted, was … Read more
I don’t remember when it first dawned on me that I really lucked out being born female. Maybe it occurred during the oppressive humidity of a New Jersey summer, as I played with paper dolls on our screened porch, a place ringed by rhododendrons which, even when the temperature sizzled, provided a cool refuge. From … Read more
It’s coming any day now and it affects me like a muleta does the bull. Someone is going to say, in a tone of presumptive agreement, “Well, of course, Christmas is for children.” Not only does the iconoclasm of the phrase offend, but all the baggage it implies. My rebuff is honed to a mere … Read more
There was a great hullabaloo recently in our local press about the awarding of a medical degree to one of my neighbors. She had decided, at the age of forty, to become a physician. There was a lengthy interview, accompanied by a beaming photo. The awed journalist asked how on earth this belated vocation had … Read more
Not long ago, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati looked out over his diocese and discovered something missing. Catholics. At Mass. Alarmed by diminished congregations, a plight shared with most of his colleagues, he asked American bishops to study reasons for the decline, and what could be done about it. Perhaps I missed it, but I’ve … Read more
In fact it was a Christmas card that delivered her searing message. Under the words of holiday cheer she penned a few breezy lines, the last of which was, “Guess what? I have cancer, darn it!” Confronted with a terrifying diagnosis she was seized by neither despair nor self pity but exasperation. Cancer was a … Read more
Back to school used to mean piling the kids into the station wagon and heading for Payless. It meant Star Trek lunchpails and packets of wide-lined paper. It meant picking up new uniform jumpers crisply pleated, and hours on the phone with assorted parents, working out carpool schedules against myriad conflicts. It meant laying in … Read more
You learn, to your surprise, that surgery is indicated. Minor, but requiring general anesthesia, and there’s the rub. To you, the prospect of extinguishing the light carries with it the real possibility it will not go on again. But there seems no option; the alternative is to risk detection of cancer. So you agree, and … Read more
My daughter, who attends a prestigious Catholic university, recently lost her roommate. The girl moved across the hall to accommodate better sexual trysts with her boyfriend. Occupying the intended room is another “sexualÂly active” student, whose roommate moved in with my daughter to complete the switch. The game of musical beds was carried out with … Read more
It should have been the worst Christmas of my life. An only child from New Jersey who had not been farther west than Pennsylvania, I made a quantum leap when I took a job in San Francisco. This was the fifties, not yet the mobile society. But the lure of the position, coupled with determination … Read more
Yesterday I was characterized by a stranger as indifferent and aloof. The allegation was hotly denied by our mutual acquaintance who replied that, whatever my faults, I am the soul of amiability. Wherefore the distortion? My defamer monitors me at Mass and my reserved response of the Sign of Peace inflames her. She broadcasts my … Read more