I'm not sure what kind of readership I can expecf for a broken blog that's been neglected for a month and a half, but I figured I should pop in for moment to say hello.

Summer posting is sparce for everyone and it's no different for me. I just wanted to say that I haven't forgotten you, gentle reader.

For the last couple years, I have been working and praying for a particular intention that should mean a happy and good change in my life. We're getting close to seeing those work and prayers bear fruit. I can't really discuss it much on these pages at this time, but if you could take a moment and join me in a quick prayer of thanks and for continued support from the cadre of Saints who've guided my path thusfar.

I dedicate this work to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ under the watchful and kind intercessions of St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Theresa of Avila. They have been very kind and wise guides for me over these many months. Saints Gregory, Thomas and Theresa, pray for us!

I am sorry this post is so cryptic, gentle reader. If you have the chance to ask me in real life about the details, I'll be happy to share. And hopefully I can share the same details here on WhollyRoaminCatholic.com sooner than later.

Things are busy. You understand, right?

I'll be back to the blog shortly.

You don't have to be very handy with the google to find your share of nun jokes on the internet. Or disrespectful photos of women (or men!) dressed like nuns doing all kinds of awful things. Your local dinner-theaters are probably showing some zany stage production of nuns doing all kinds of wacky things. I bet you know a couple nun jokes that you would never tell to an actual nun.

Growing up, I never really saw what was so entertaining about these depictions of nuns. And it wasn't because I had some high-and-mighty holier-than-thou ideas about these women (like I have now), but it was really just some abstract disconnection to nuns that I couldn't understand. Heck, even though I went to Catholic school from Kindergarten through High School, I only knew 3 nuns the whole time. One of whom wore a simple brown veil, a tidy white blouse and a calf-length brown skirt every day--the other two did not dress in a traditional habit, rather dressing like a number of aging women of their generation in polyester flower-print dresses from the middle 80's, albeit a decade after these outfits went out of fashion.

I hope that sentence does not sound like criticism. I don't mean it like that, honestly. I just want to say that I can't relate to the picture of a fire-breathing, knuckle-smacking penguin jokes. The 3 nuns I knew from school were pleasant and demure women who did not fit the stereotype that another generation lambasted with such delight. By the time Whoopi Goldberg was making her nun movies, the real joke was that the convent she would have allegedly hidden in probably wouldn't have existed. For one thing, they all wore full black habits in an era where most convents had given up the formal dress for polyester suits. And most convents in the United States have been dying out for several decades now-- real life sisters have had a hard time replacing their numbers as their older members are beginning to wane. It was just a style of life and worship that lost its appeal. And really, it still hasn't caught on again.

I don't know exactly why American nuns so uniformly renounced their habits in the days after the Second Vatican Council. Any guesses on my part would be too-influenced by my 21-century cranky traditionalist Catholic mindset to be fair, so I'll charitably say that I'm sure they had good intentions at the time. In truth, this assuming that they had "good intentions at the time" sums up a lot of my opinion about the Council and its aftermath. But I digress.

"Father Z", the incomparable blogger at What Does the Prayer Really Say?, often writes about rekindling a sense of "Catholic Identity". I like this sentiment very much and have often wondered how to incorporate a Catholic Identity into my life (an undertaking of mixed success). Catholic Identity wasn't always a big focus for the Church--indeed, I'd say that in the days after the Council, the zeitgeist was actually quite the opposite. Catholics were encouraged to suppress their identity--to blend in and be unseen. And there is some theological and traditional merit to this argument. For instance, Jesuits have a very old rule that when they are working amongst the poor, they should shed their clerical dress for street clothes.

And priests don't actually have to wear their clerical dress every day for the rest of their lives. I've been a few camping trips with priests who wore clothing suitable for hiking and camping, and when Father goes to the beach, he doesn't actually have to wear that Roman collar while sipping boat drinks in the sand. And so it was with nuns, I suspect. In an age that was hostile to tradition and a era that was redefining its terms of authority, I suspect that a good number of convents began to feel that their habited dress was hampering their godly work. They might have thought that the habit was the weight of history and a yoke that kept other people from truly recognizing their work in the world. Alas, I've done what I promised not to do, trying to come up with reasons why so many convents cast their habits aside.

There is a new body of research that says something interesting though: for the last few years, there has been some anecdotal evidence that the few religious communities who still dress in a full religious habit are going strong. Now it looks like the data backs up these anecdotes. In a brief on the Catholic News Service:

Book says young women attracted to orders whose members wear habits

DENVER (CNS) -- While the last 40 years have seen an overall drop in the numbers of women entering religious life, a new book released by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious says orders that are more visibly countercultural seem to be flourishing. The council represents the superiors of more than 100 religious communities of sisters whose members wear an identifiable religious habit. A canonically approved organization founded in 1992 to promote religious life in the United States, the council notes that the average age of its member communities' sisters is under 35. The book, titled "The Foundations of Religious Life: Revisiting the Vision" and published by Ave Maria Press, is a project of the council. It explores why the orders represented by the council are gaining numbers and how they are living out the vision of consecrated life described by the Second Vatican Council. The book, released May 16, consists of essays written by six religious sisters representing five orders. The topics they address are: religious consecration, the spousal bond, the threefold response to vows, communion in community, and mission.

Particularly interesting to me is the phrase "visibly countercultural".

Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher (of CrunchyCon fame, linked in the sidebar) often makes the case that real cultural conservatism (as opposed to mainstream conservatism) is actually counter cultural. In the 60's and 70's, when you wanted to rebel against mainstream culture, you listened to rock music, did a lot of drugs and had lots of liberated sex. These days, that's not counter to the culture--it is the culture. In 21st Century America, if you want to rebel against your parents, it turns out that you're supposed to do well in school, respect authority and join a convent. Now that's countercultural! Ha!

You know, our modern world isn't all that different than the world has ever been. I think of St. Francis's famous moment where he rejected the modern world. Francis was born a rich boy of a very cosmopolitan family. His father was a successful merchant and provided well for his family. When Francis began to see that living a worldly life of wealth was destroying his soul, in an argument with his family, he famously went to the middle of town, stripped himself bare and left all his worldly possessions behind. Walking out of town, he decided to follow the Lord unencumbered by the desire to be rich. When Francis got dressed again, he wore a plain brown tunic. It was in this plain brown tunic that Francis founded one of the most venerable traditions in Catholic history: the Franciscan orders. Today, variants of Franciscan friars still wear a brown tunic as their dress. The Franciscan nuns that kept their habits wear brown as well.

The Ursuline sisters that taught in my Catholic high school for many years gave up their habits years ago. As their congregation has dwindled in numbers, they've put their convent up for sale and moved in with some Ursulines in Kentucky. It's really sad to see their good history disappear from Kansas. At the same time, a Benedictine convent in Oklahoma has joined up with some Benedictine nuns in Atchison, each without a habit.

Meanwhile in town, two other communities of nuns are thriving! The pale-blue habited nuns (and white habits and black habits) of the Sister Servants of Mary in Kansas City, Kansas are receiving vocations from all over the world. The Archdiocese has continued to be blessed by these nuns for generations. In our neighboring diocese in Kansas City, Missouri, the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles are a logic-defying congregation of fully-traditional, habited nuns. These Benedictines' history only goes back to 1995, but their fast growth and dedication to the Lord promises that they will be a very successful fixture in the God's vineyard for a long time.

Perhaps it is a logical fallacy to say that because nuns gave up their habits, they lost their distinct identity. Perhaps it is also a logical fallacy to say that losing a distinct identity is why so many convents are struggling to find new members of their congregations. Post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis is an enticing trap for traditionalist cranks like me. But still I wonder if there isn't some truth in the matter.

Catholic identity is something that needs to be preserved if it is going to survive. If we Catholics don't speak up to preserve our legacy, the little sparking-mouthed wind-up toys are going to preserve that history in our place.

I know the comments are messed up. I tried to put one of those ShareThis or AddThis widgets on my site. Neither worked, and apparently I've fuddled up some code while in the works. I don't have time to dissect the code and find the problem right now anyway. These things always take longer than necessary.

Sometimes I think that MovableType's heyday has come and gone. I still think that it's one of the best blogging interfaces-- I also like that the mechanism for blogging is wholly hosted on my site and that I don't have a lot of domain pointing kerfufflelry or design restrictions on the software. But when something breaks, I feel like I'm on my own for sorting out the problem.

Stay tuned. I hope to get it sorted out sooner or later.

As I type this, the 3-day weekend is about to begin. If you're the sort that visits gravesites on Memorial Day, take a moment to do more than leave a flower on the tombstone of your deceased family. Please say a prayer for the repose of their soul.

From a friend of mine who provided the caption for this image:

It's actually a Knights of Columbus poster done during WWI. The first national organization of Catholic bishops in the United States was founded in 1917 as the National Catholic War Council (... how awesome does that sound ... ) formed to enable U.S. Catholics to contribute funds for the spiritual care of Catholic servicemen during World War I. The Knights during this time period were quite active in this most honorable endeavor as this poster shows.

The Knights of Columbus Museum notes that the KofC had a big role in the war effort.

During the war the Knights' Committee on War Activities provided "huts" with the slogan "Everybody Welcome, Everything Free" and staffed by a secretary and a chaplain.

Stationery, candy, cigarettes and entertainment were provided for all, as well as Catholic religious services. Educational programs were sponsored by the Knights for returning soldiers.

The Knights' work is not just chronicled by other Knights. The Great War Society writes:

"Everyone Welcome, Everything Free" was the motto of the Knights of Columbus clubhouses which sprung up in Doughboy training camps, in major U.S. cities and wherever a Doughboy could be found. Manned by K of C secretaries who were affectionately known as "Caseys" the clubhouses provided recreation and a few of the amenities of home to any serviceman regardless of race or religion. And to Catholic servicemen they provided Chaplains and place to practice their faith. The Knights were one of the youngest volunteer organizations drawn into support to the AEF. They had been founded October 2, 1881 when a small group of men met in the basement of St. Mary's Church on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut. Called together by their parish priest, Father Michael J. McGivney, these men formed a fraternal society that would one day become the world's largest Catholic family fraternal service organization. They vowed to be defenders of their country and their families and their Faith. These men were bound together by the ideal of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the Americas, the one whose hand brought the Holy Faith to this New World. They called themselves Knights of Columbus.

During World War I, Supreme Knight James A. Flaherty proposed to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson that the Order establish soldiers' welfare centers in the U.S. and abroad. The Order raised more than $14 million for this program on its own, and was allocated another $30 million from a national fund drive. The pioneer work was done by half a dozen Knights of Columbus chaplains whoreached France in October 1917 and combined with their priestly duties the activities of Knights of Columbus secretaries. They were given a sum of money and one of them started the first Knights of Columbus club in France, at St-Nazaire, then the principal debarkation port of the AEF. A survey was made and the first group of secretaries arrived in March 1918. They set up headquarters at 16 Place de la Madeleine, Paris, and from that center the activities of the Knights radiated all over France, through England and Scotland, touching on Ireland and Italy, and following the Army of Occupation into Germany.

The Gjenvick-Gjonvik Archives recalls:

This organization is doing excellent work at the camp. One notices on each of its signs the inscription : "All Welcome."

"I want to emphasize the significance of those two words," one of the secretaries told me. "Some people think that the K. of C. building is for Catholics alone, but that is by no means the case. It makes no difference whether a man if a Catholic, a member of the society, or not; is he isn't, he will receive the same cordial treatment as any one else. We are not doing this work for the K. of C. men alone ; we are doing if for our soldiers, and we want every American soldier to make our house his headquarters."

The Knights were a valuable piece of hospitality in the midst of an awful reality. Their goal then is the same as ours today: be a Christian neighbor to those around us. In your weekend, sometime between baseball games and barbeques, take a moment to pray for the souls of the brave people who tried to show the light of Christ across the smoke of a torrid battlefield. Praying for the living and the dead is a corporal work of mercy.

The founder of the Knights of Columbus, Father Michael McGivney, is in the Canonization process of becoming a saint. There is some discussion as to whether a soul in purgatory can interceed with prayer the same way that a saint can interceed, as far as I can find, the matter is not known. Well, I'm going to try anyway. Fr. McGivney's humble Knights organization designed to care for widows has ended up caring for a good number of people since their founding in 1882. And in so many ways, Americans are still entrusted to his care-- so I'll ask his name without hesitation. Fr. McGivney, pray for us!

I keep public stats on my site. If you scroll down the right column of this blog and click on the number of "people served", you can see all the information about the traffic on this site. Most of you won't find it very interesting-- 95% of it is hardly useful. I am mainly interested in referrers-- that is to say: what websites link to mine. Since I don't sell anything on WRC and don't host any advertising, breaking down the specifics of the traffic isn't a very worthwhile activity. But I like networks of people, so referrers are my main interest.

Every now and then I check to see what people are searching for to find me. Most of them are people searching for "Wholly Roamin Catholic", which is an odd search term to me. Seems that people are either searching for this exact site (and can't remember the address?) or are irrevocably lost. Good luck, searcher. May I suggest St. Anthony? But the search keywords are just a novelty to me, since I don't write for search optimization anyway.

Anyway, here's a snapshot of an handful of the last searches that led people here.

Heh.

"Dysfunctional Catholic Parishes"? Sit down, let me tell you some stories!

"Homily Ascension Thursday High School Catholic"? Sorry Father, you're going to have to write your own sermon.

"catholic dinner invocations" I have to admit that the first few times I read this, I thought it said "catholic dinner invitations". Which I would have enjoyed a lot. Next time, just call-- you don't have to leave cryptic messages in my site counter!

"roman catholic serpent handling" (!) Not in church, thankyouverymuch! The only serpent handling that I plan on engaging in is if I cut the head off one with a shovel. Then I will handle him into (my neighbor's) garbage.

I hope all of these people found whatever they were looking for (except for the serpent handler guy). Somehow I doubt they found it with me.

I don't have time to really develop this thought as far as I'd like to take it, but here goes.

Many people say that the Catholic Church in the USA is just a mouthpiece for the Republican Party and that we are just angry political-conservatives. IMHO, these charges are levied most often by people who do not really study the Church or her positions. Because if that was true, then the Church would likely toe the party line and be accordingly pro-Capital Punishment. Because in today's zeitgeist of short-sighted and squishy moral philosophy, the people who speak out against the Death Penalty are bleeding heart liberals, right?

Bah. The Church recognizes the dignity of Human Life. And everyone, even murderers, has dignity.

From the Catholic Key blog today:

Bishop Finn Prays at Missouri Execution Vigil

About an hour ago, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon denied clemency for Dennis Skillicorn who's scheduled to die tonight. At the same time Kansas City - St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn was down on J.C. Nichols Plaza in KC, rosary in hand, joining death penalty opponents at a vigil. Here's the story filed moments ago by Kevin Kelly.

Bishop prays as Missouri resumes executions

By Kevin Kelly
Catholic Key Associate Editor

KANSAS CITY -- Just hours before Dennis Skillicorn was scheduled to die, Bishop Robert W. Finn prayed in public.

His rosary in hand, Bishop Finn joined the silent vigil May 19 at the J.C. Nichols fountain on Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, where the Western Missouri Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has conducted evening vigils for 20 years, just before Missouri executes another prisoner.

Skillicorn, 49, would be the 67th inmate put to death in Missouri in those 20 years since Missouri reinstated capital punishment. He will be the first since 2005, when executions by lethal injection in Missouri were put on a court-ordered moratorium that was lifted in 2007.

Bishop Finn told The Catholic Key that he offered his prayers for Skillicorn, who has been involved in Christian prison ministry since his conviction for the 1994 murder of Richard Drummond, an Excelsior Springs businessman.

He offered his prayers for the family of Drummond, who stopped along I-70 to offer Skillicorn and two other men assistance when their car broke down and was later robbed and shot execution style in a wooded area in Lafayette County.

And he offered his prayers for the sanctity of life.

"The principle reason we oppose the death penalty is because it is not necessary in order to protect society, and if it is not necessary, we ought not to kill another person," Bishop Finn said. "That is what we learned from Pope John Paul II."

In his 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II wrote: "Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this" and that society "ought not go to the extreme of executing offenders except in cases of absolute necessity . . . when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare if not practically nonexistent."

Pope John Paul II also personally appealed to Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan during the papal visit to St. Louis to spare the life of Darrell Mease, a Missouri inmate whose execution date was rescheduled to avoid the dates that the pope was in Missouri.

"The public witness is important," Bishop Finn told The Key. "Our laws need to be reconsidered."

Bishop Finn said that his presence at the vigil will also serve to register his personal protest against the failure of the Missouri General Assembly this year to fund even a study of the state's death penalty system.

"We wanted the possibility of a moratorium, but at the very least we should have had a study," the bishop said, noting that three persons have been released from Missouri's death row after they were later found to be innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted and sentenced to death.

"There are serious flaws in this process. Our elected leaders should have agreed that we ought to study this in a methodical way to determine if we are at least doing this in accordance to the law," Bishop Finn said.

"They failed in their responsibility to support that study," he said.

Bishop Finn said that he has been impressed to hear of how Skillicorn has spent his years on death row, ministering to other inmates, working in restorative justice, and editing a national magazine, Compassion, written by fellow inmates.

"I am happy that there are some indications of a conversion and a transformation," he said. "If that is the case, then thanks be to God."

Bishop Finn said he will pray for God's graces for the Drummond family.

"The incomprehensible suffering of the Drummond family needs God's healing, too," he said.

But Bishop Finn said he is compelled to offer public witness in defense of life.

"When we face the mysteries of life and death, prayer is the best thing we can do," he said.

"We stand up as free citizens and our neighbors need to learn that there is something here that is very important," Bishop Finn said.

"It has to do with the sanctity of life, even if someone has made a horrible, horrible mistake," he said.

"Our society will reject capital punishment before it is all said and done," Bishop Finn said. "There is no doubt in my mind."

There is also no doubt in the mind of Donnie Morehouse of the Western Missouri Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who was elated to learn that Bishop Finn would be joining the May 19 vigil.

"One of the things that the bishop's presence will mean is to point out how important this issue is, and it's about time that (Gov.) Jay Nixon pays attention and grants clemency to Dennis Skillicorn," Morehouse told The Key on May 18, less than 36 hours before Skillicorn's scheduled 12:01 a.m., May 20 execution.

The coalition "is a diverse group of people who realize that the death penalty is not good policy, it's not good criminal justice, and it's not something we should be doing," Morehouse said.

This was not a position that I used to hold. I was in the opposite camp, the "let 'em fry!" crowd. And it should be noted that Church teaching does, broadly, permit execution if the situation warrants it.

See Article 5 in the Catechism at section 2267 (http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt2art5.shtml):

Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm--without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself--the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

I suppose that you could leave it open to debate as to whether our penal system is much different today than it was 1000 years ago (when Church executions were pretty common), but I think that you'd have to make some pretty dramatic claims to get to that point.

The real issue here is that to be a Christian means to acknowledge the inherent worth of each person as a child of God. Humans have value. Souls have value. And it is hardly the role of the state to manipulate that value to serve their own ends.

I actually became pro-life (related to Capital Punishment) from a secular point of view several years ago when I was not very interested in living out the Faith. Still, I determined that if government was truly of the people, by the people and for the people, then it shouldn't be in the business of killing the people. Imprisonment, sure. Loss of voting rights, sure. Loss of many rights given by the state, sure. But life is not given by the state. The right of life is an inalienable human right. Looking back, I'd say that this was my first real understanding of natural rights, and their more-intimidating cousin, natural law. I can't say that my thinking was that far advanced when my head was rolling through Lincoln's civil-war rhetoric, but that's where I suppose that I began to really internalize the idea that some things can't justly be taken by a government which does not give that right. Truth be told, I'm really still not sure I understand all the implications of natural rights and natural law; I am sure that I understand that these questions are not as simple as we are often led to believe.

There is a patron saint of Death Row inmates. He is Saint Dismas, the "good thief", the man to Jesus' right at the execution. As you recall in Luke 23, there were two other men being crucified when Christ was slain. Tradition tells us that these men, Dismas and Gestas, held conversation with our Lord in his final hours. Gestas, the unrepentant man, mocked Jesus-- while Dismas rebuked the other.

And one of those robbers who were hanged, blasphemed him, saying: If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering, rebuked him, saying: Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art condemned under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done no evil. And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was killed by the state for a crime he didn't commit. The first saint of the Church, a man whom Christ Himself canonized, was killed by the state for a crime he certainly DID commit. And still 2000 years later, we make the same mistake as the Jews who called for Jesus' life and the Romans who willingly assented to their demands.

The Church is not interested in politics. She is not interested in the polls that say abortion or capital punishment is popular among Americans-- or in cutting off feeding tubes the bedridden or in stem-cell research or anything where opposition seems archaic and backwards. The Catholic Church is interested in saving souls for Christ. It is God who gives us those inalienable rights, and only He can judge with His natural law.

St. Dismas, pray for us!

Have you ever had the realization that when you pray for someone, you might be the only person on earth praying for them?

What a weight.

I have done a little updating to the links you see on your right. Many of the sites that I've been following have either gone stale or gone on tangents which do not interest me. Others are perfectly good, but do not update enough (save your pot-and-kettle quips, thankyouverymuch). They are listed in no particular order. Other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Sites do not necessarily need to be traditional Catholic, or even Catholic at all. They should, however, be smartly written and enjoyable to read. And update somewhat frequently. Points will be deducted for sites that are slow to load or are designed with "knockout font" of white letters on black background.

I look forward to your suggestions. The list to the right are, ultimately, blogs that interest me over and over again. There are a number of excellent sites on the webs that are interesting from many points of view, I don't want to speak badly about the ones that have fallen off my list over the last year or so. I am fickle.

Feel free to pump your own site. Sites that link to mine will be linked in kind, whether in the main list at the top of the right column, or in the "tagbacks" below.

So, what else are you reading?

One of my nephews had his Confirmation in the Church a few days ago. Confirmation is the sacrament of the Holy Spirit, where a person formally receives the Holy Spirit into their lives. Catholics carry on this action that was first described in the Bible in Acts 8. When the apostles heard that a number of Samaritans heard about the Good News of Jesus, they went out to confirm them in the Faith:

Now when the apostles, who were in Jerusalem, had heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John. Who, when they were come, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. For he was not as yet come upon any of them; but they were only baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw, that by the imposition of the hands of the apostles, the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, Saying: Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I shall lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said to him: Keep thy money to thyself, to perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

A note of vocabulary may be prudent here: The Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost are the same thing, er, are the same member of the Trinity. The terms can be used interchangeably, though in today's parlance, they seem to evoke different imagery. "Ghost" is the English version of the German word "geist", which approximates the word "spirit". But "ghost" also conjures up images of cartoonish floating white blobs, so the general trend has been to refer to the third person of the Blessed Trinity as the "Holy Spirit". Yet because "spirit" also seems a bit disembodied and impersonal, it leaves something to be desired. As well. Such is the weakness of our language, I suppose. Either term can be used interchangeably. But I digress.

In any measure, Confirmation is the charge of those first apostles that bishops carry on to this very day. Bishops of the Church are the holders of those original apostles today. Bishops are consecrated by other bishops, and thus they have a documentable lineage--and somewhere in a file of unending length, every Bishop can trace themselves back to the Biblical era. While this might seem like a clever piece of trivia or cocktail party tidbit, it actually has significant theological implications for Christianity. The term is "apostolic succession", and is considered one of the four marks of the church, "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic", that Christians (strangely, not just Catholics) profess in the Nicene Creed that sets out the basic beliefs of a Christian.

And so when bishops in 2009 lay their hands on the Confirmands today, they carry the same authority as those apostles in the book of the Acts of the Apostles quoted above. In some circumstances, bishops give this authority to regular priests who can confer the sacrament in their stead: the most notable example of this happens on the Easter Vigil every year where converts are received into the Church and confirmed by the priests in their local parish.

The bishop will cup his hands (like you would do if you were warming your hands over a candle) and place them on the confirmand's head, praying that the Holy Spirit would come upon him or her. Then the bishop will dip his thumb into a tin of chrism, a greasy blend of oil and balsam that has been blessed by the bishop, and mark a cross on the forehead of the confirmand, saying "N., I sign thee with the sign + of the Cross, and I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation; in the Name of the Father + and of the Son + and of the Holy + Ghost." In the old days, they'd give you a gentle (or not-so-gentle) slap on the cheek to toughen you up as a newly made soldier of Christ. But those days have come and gone in the new form of the sacrament.

Where the prayer above says N., the bishop will use the person's confirmation name. A confirmation name is the name of a saint that the person chooses as spiritual inspiration. Heh. I was confirmed when I was 14 years old (the conventional age for confirmation is sometime between second grade and junior year of high school unless a person converts to the Church later in life or otherwise missed their confirmation) and just wanted to choose a unique name. I picked Saint Wenceslaus. Seriously. I was a peculiar 14-year-old. Oh, I had some rationale, of course. I'm sure my Catholic grade school wouldn't have let me pick something just as a spectacle. Wenceslaus was the Duke of Bohemia in the modern-day Czech Republic; his mother was a pagan who, before Wenceslaus took control of the duchy, tore down most of the Catholic churches in Bohemia. Good King Wenceslaus (yes, of the Christmas carol) spent his short life as a duke rebuilding those churches before he was ultimately killed by his brother for faith-based political reasons. Back then, I was the Senior Patrol Leader in my Boy Scout Troop and it was my responsibility to plan and run our weekly Troop meetings. As I saw it then, the previous Senior Patrol Leader was suffocating the troop by just playing two-hand-touch football in the parking lot every week instead of holding meetings--each successive meeting was like trying to rebuild a proper Scout Troop with scouts who didn't want to be there. I thought Wenceslaus could commiserate with me. Ultimately I had a better fate than Wenceslaus; my year as SPL was up and someone else took the position from there. I wasn't murdered from someone else in the Arrowhead patrol to ascend to the throne. Lucky me!

The late Bishop Marion Forst confirmed me that year. He was gentle, kind and jovial bishop who chuckled when he read my confirmation name. He asked if I was Czech. "No, Wenceslaus was Bohemian", I replied, not knowing that Bohemia was in (then) Czechoslovakia and had a far-different context than geography. The bishop smiled and announced to the full parish, "Oh, he's a Bohemian!" Hahaha. Laughs all around! Har har! But he confirmed me and welcomed the next boy in line after I moved on, feeling lucky that I didn't get a slap. When Bishop Forst died in 2007, he was the oldest bishop in the United States. It's too bad. I would have liked to talk to him as an adult--his Excellency was among the last men on earth to have attended all 4 sessions of the Second Vatican Council. I bet he had some stories.

My nephew took the name "Boniface" as his confirmation saint. Saint Boniface was known as the "Apostle of Germany" for his work to convert the people of Deutschland. In one particularly famous story, Boniface once found a group of people worshipping some pagan god in the form of a 6-foot-wide oak tree. He took off his shirt, picked up an ax and cut down the tree while the people looked on aghast. Boniface jumped up on the stump and shouted to the crowd "How stands your mighty god? My God is stronger than he!" Boniface, predictably, was martyred shortly thereafter. I don't know what motivated my nephew to pick this medieval saint as his confirmation patron. But knowing 14-year-old-boys, I suspect it has something to do with the cool-sounding name "Boniface".

Adults who go receive the sacrament often pick a different kind of name, usually dedicating themselves to people with bittersweet stories of trial and redemption like St. Monica or with steadfast courage like St. Thomas More. Not to say that either St. Boniface or St. Wenceslaus don't have their own credibility, of course. I'm just saying that adult confirmands often have more complex reasons for choosing the saints as patrons than a cool sounding name. As one of the world's most recently canonized saints, St. Zygmunt Gorazdowski might be a real inspiration for people. But he also might get the interest of a 14-year-old boy for being the last canonized saint in the alphabet.

But confirmation is, of course, about more than just cool-sounding names and a chance to shake hands with a bishop. It is the moment where a Catholic dedicates him/herself to Christ and His Church; it is where the confirmand receives the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Gifts are particular traits that are present in a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) writes:

The gifts of the Holy Ghost are of two kinds: the first are specially intended for the sanctification of the person who receives them; the second, more properly called charismata, are extraordinary favours granted for the help of another, favours, too, which do not sanctify by themselves, and may even be separated from sanctifying grace. Those of the first class are accounted seven in number, as enumerated by Isaias (11:2-3), where the prophet sees and describes them in the Messias. They are the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety (godliness), and fear of the Lord.

The gift of wisdom, by detaching us from the world, makes us relish and love only the things of heaven.

The gift of understanding helps us to grasp the truths of religion as far as is necessary.

The gift of counsel springs from supernatural prudence, and enables us to see and choose correctly what will help most to the glory of God and our own salvation.

By the gift of fortitude we receive courage to overcome the obstacles and difficulties that arise in the practice of our religious duties.

The gift of knowledge points out to us the path to follow and the dangers to avoid in order to reach heaven.

The gift of piety, by inspiring us with a tender and filial confidence in God, makes us joyfully embrace all that pertains to His service.

Lastly, the gift of fear fills us with a sovereign respect for God, and makes us dread, above all things, to offend Him.

So we receive wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord at confirmation.

Well gentle reader, I can tell you that I was validly confirmed, yet I've spent a tremendous amount of my life since then acting totally without wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety or fear of the Lord. So was it all a scam? No, of course not. The gifts of the Spirit require sanctity to be efficacious--people have to be living a life inspired by Christ to be filled with these gifts. It reminds me of the rebuke from the ancient Jewish prophet Isaiah:

Hear, ye deaf, and, ye blind, behold that you may see. Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, but he to whom I have sent my messengers? Who is blind, but he that is sold? or who is blind, but the servant of the Lord? Thou that seest many things, wilt thou not observe them? thou that hast ears open, wilt thou not hear? And the Lord was willing to sanctify him, and to magnify the law, and exalt it.

So it is with the Lord, his gifts are freely given to those who accept them and totally ignored by those who abdicate them.

As I continue to type this post, it occurs to me that maybe Wenceslaus might still be an inspiration to me-- albeit one that I haven't considered in many years and in a way that I would have never consider until lately: So much of our world, of our Church, of our Faith has been destroyed by people with strange motivations. I will hesitate to call some "pagans", the evidence can speak for itself. Indeed, sometimes I am convinced that we need more holy leaders like St. Wenceslaus to rebuild a destroyed and devastated Church. Ack. This was way beyond my imagination as a happy and strange young kid. But so it is. And so it will be that the rebuilders and restorationists will have their reputation slaughtered by their brothers in the faith. Character assassination. Ecclesial martyrdom. We could all use another helping of those gifts.

St. Wenceslaus, pray for us.

Here and there I mention a pro-life story on this site. I don't generally engage the topic as much as other Catholic blogs for a variety of reasons. First and primarily, it's not really my focus for WhollyRoamin'Catholic.com. Second, by the time I get around to mentioning news stories, the topics have been covered ad nauseum elsewhere (and probably better). Third, I have a complex relationship to the issue of abortion that colors my point of view in ways that I think is hard for a lot of people to relate. Fourth, the issue is so externally complex that I get frustrated in the unhappy tangle of religion, politics, ethics, personality, history and hysteria--so much so that any talk about the subject is an inevitable mess.

But still, the issue exists. And as a human being and as a Catholic, I have some interest in the subject. I also have another interest.

There's a brief story about a woman who I have never really met, but whose story became inextricably intertwined with mine many years ago. Only recently have I learned that this woman has a name (yeah, I always knew she had a name. I just didn't know it until recently), but for basically all of my life, she was a nameless person. More like a reference point. She's always been known by pronouns: her/she et cetera. So it is. Part of this story is my construct, part is made of little details that I've gleaned over the years, and I've told myself this semi-true story so many times that I don't know how to separate the facts from the fiction--and truth be told, I don't worry about that too much.

Some years ago, this girl from a dinky little country town South of my own was seeing this guy from Oklahoma. I hear that it was somewhat of a serious relationship, so much so that they'd even talked about getting married at one point. As far as I know, they never did. Just one of those relationships that we all go through: dating, searching, learning. Making some bad decisions, making some good ones. I've got similar stories, I'm sure you do too. Loves come and gone and those things that don't kill us hopefully make us stronger. Hopefully, right?

Anyway, she was in college back then. Studying music and living the life of an 18-year-old in the world. Living the dream that every 18-year-old dreams, to be in college and free, off to become whatever we can make for ourselves. Those paths of girl from a small Kansas town and the guy from Oklahoma crossed a few times; and before they diverged again, the girl from the small Kansas town ended up pregnant.

It's a classic story now but it was a traumatic one then. We're talking about 1978 here. Sure, it's not Leave it to Beaver's era, but small towns in Kansas hover perpetually sometime around the year 1961--even today they're like some kind of time warp. So much more so then, right? But this was also just a scant 5 years after Roe v Wade, and Kansas was part of those first 11 states to loosen abortion laws since 1967 in the wake of the sexual revolution. It would have been an easy decision, I'm sure. Unmarried mother, unable to care for a baby. Out of town father who had his own life to lead as well. Both in a panic, both scared and confused, desperate and faced with a set of decisions that weren't prepared to make, didn't want to make and to which neither one could really commit. It would have been an easy decision, I'm sure. George Tiller had already gotten notoriety as Kansas' abortion provider of choice since he set up shop in Wichita in 1970 and his famous Women's Care Clinic had been operating since 1975. She was just a college student and didn't have any means to care for a baby--heck, as a 18-year-old, she was just a kid herself.

It would have been an easy decision, I'm sure.

But she did not make that easy decision.

Rather, she made just about the hardest choice I'm sure that the 18-year-old girl had ever made in her life. She decided to have that baby and put that young infant up for adoption. It was all handled by the doctors and a cadre of lawyers. All she had to do was make it 9 months, give birth and walk away. Other people would pay for it all. All of it. The medical fees, the child birth, the legal arrangements, the responsibilities of raising that little baby, clothing him, feeding him, raising him, picking him up when he fell, teaching him to ride a bike, sending him to Boy Scout camp, buying his first car, sending him off to college, seeing him get married one day and live for the rest of his life.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I'm crying a bit at the moment. Because if you haven't figured it out yet, that little baby was me.

Thirty years ago this week, one scared and confused expectant mother from a little town in Kansas gave me the best birthday present that I would ever get. She made a sacrifice for which, I owe my everything. That woman took the hard way out rather than the easy way out. She knew that being pregnant meant more than a panic and was more an inconvenient situation that could be fixed by a guy in a doctor's mask--it was a little baby boy! Not some problem to be fixed!

And now three decades later, that little baby boy types these words to you, gentle reader. My thirtieth birthday is in a few days, and I owe it all to a woman whom I have never really met. A woman who had every choice that women in her same situation have now thirty years later. A woman who did not make the easy decision. Who made the hard one. And God bless her for it!

Now before you ask: yes, I've always known that I was adopted. And no, I never had those traumatic experiences that you hear about. No, I've never tried to contact my biological mother (or biological father) and no, I've never really had any urge to do so. Yes, I know that I look like other people in my adopted family and no, I don't make a big deal out of it. The people to whom I refer as my mother and father are the people who raised me and to whom I am eternally and lovingly grateful.

But as I sit here on the crest of thirty years, I want to say a word of thanks. Thanks to a woman who was pro-life when it would have been so so so so easy to get an abortion. And if you are ever in a similar situation, please choose life as well.

God bless her. I owe her my life.

Sunday is Mother's Day. Just so you know. Get your cards/flowers/phonecalls/whatever.

And if your mother has passed away, then take a moment to pray that her soul is in Heaven-- that's what we do when we say that someone "rests in peace".

Thanks Mom, for everything.

Last week, a friend of mine sent me this article about why people stop practicing their religion. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, most people don't stop going to church because they have some major falling out with their church or their faith, most of them just stop because they just kind of stopped going to church. The article is reprinted below with my emphaises.

Study Shows Americans Leave Religion Due to Drift, Not Rupture
By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 27, 2009; 12:11 PM

More Americans have given up their faith or changed religions because of a gradual spiritual drift than switched because of a disillusionment over their churches' policies, according to a new study released today which illustrates how personal spiritual attitudes are taking precedence over denominational traditions.

The survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is the first large-scale study of the reasons behind Americans switching their religious faith and found that more than half of people have done so at least once during their lifetime.

Almost three-quarters of Catholics and Protestants who are now unaffiliated with a religion said they had "just gradually drifted away" from their faith. And more than three-quarters of Catholics and half of Protestants currently not associated with a faith said that, over time, they stopped believing in their religion's teachings.

Pew Forum senior fellow John Green said that result surprised researchers, who had expected policy disputes or disillusionment over internal scandals -- such as the clergy sex abuse controversy in the Catholic Church -- to play more of a role in people's decision to leave a faith. Among former Catholics who became Protestants, one in five cited the sex abuse scandal as one of several reasons why they had left the faith. But only a small percentage -- 2 percent to 3 percent -- cited it as the lone reason.

"It suggests that what leads people to leave their faith is that, somehow for some reason, it isn't meeting their needs," Green said. "Religion becomes less plausible to the person."

The study is a follow-up to a Pew report on religious identity released last year that was one of the largest polls of its kind. Researchers recontacted 2,800 of the 35,000 adults they previously interviewed for that study for in-depth interviews on how many times, and why, they had changed religious affiliations.

Researchers interviewed non-Christians, but focused their analysis on Christians, among whom they had large enough groups to permit close scrutiny, said Pew research fellow Gregory Smith.

Researchers discovered that the "churn" among the faithful and formerly faithful was higher than first estimated. In this second round of interviews, they found that some people who currently belong to the same religion in which they were raised actually had tried a different faith at some point, causing researchers to raise their estimate of the people who have changed faith at some point in their lives from 44 percent to 56 percent.

They also found that up to one-third of people who have left their childhood faith have jumped around among three or more other faiths.

The results are a "big indictment" of organized religion, said Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and author of a book on evangelical leaders. "There is a huge, wide-open back door at most churches. Churches around the country may be able to attract people, but they can't keep them."

At the same time, the large and growing number of people who report having no religious affiliation are actually surprisingly open to religion, researchers said. Contrary to the popular perception that many have embraced secularism, a significant percentage appeared simply to have put their religiosity on pause. Having worshiped in at least one faith already, about three in 10 said they had just not yet found the right religion.

"We tend to think that when people leave [religion] they leave," said Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University. "But a lot of these unaffiliated are unaffiliated for now. . . . It's not a one way street. It's not like after you've left a religious affiliation, you can't get back in."

A lot of things in this article ring very true to me, especially with today's Christian culture of broad Jesusy platitudes and the Prosperity Gospel teaching that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died at the hands of man so that you can be rich and live in a nice house. Is that an unfair characterization of Joel Osteen? Maybe so.

But that said, let me totally agree with this article--at least from the point of view of a guy who grew up as a mainstream Catholic in America. Can I tell you something that I am probably not supposed to say? Church stinks. It's boring. The songs can be stupid, the sermons are most likely dippy. I have other stuff I'd like to do on Sunday mornings--especially after a good fun Saturday night. Most people my age grew up understanding religion as a watered down Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=moralistic+therapeutic+deism) of "Jesus wants you to be nice to people!". And to a certain extent, that's true--love your neighbor and whatnot. But the problem is that for somewhere around half a century, that's been the only message of Catholicism, and I suspect, Christianity in general. Frankly, when theological reductionists boil down Eternal Salvation to broad Jesus-y platitudes, then people think that the only reason churches exist at all is to facilitate pot luck dinners--which are largely attended by old ladies that people my age don't want to hang out with anyway. You don't have to go to church to be a good human being, so you can love your neighbor and whatnot at home on your couch while watching Mythbusters. Which is more fun than showering, shaving and wearing pants on Sunday morning. Trust me. I've done a lot of both.

I don't even need to get into the living-with-someone-else's-rules thing right now. If you never show up to church, the "rules" thing kind of takes care of itself. It wasn't until I learned more about the rules, philosophy and tradition of the Catholic Church that I really recommitted myself to Religion. I had to find out the long, slow, tedious way that there's more to the Mysterium Fidei than broad Jesus-y platitudes about loving neighbors and whatnot.

There is a famous quote from G.K. Chesterton: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." It's true. Especially the more you learn about Religion. I think Jesus should have added an ninth Beatitude: Blessed are the invincibly ignorant, they don't have to mess with all this stuff. It's actually not true, soteriologically speaking, but still. The more you know, the harder it gets. And if you never go to Church at all, then you don't end up worrying about it at all.

I've been meaning to write on this topic for a long time. There are interesting statistics about the influence that husbands and fathers have on their families in religious matters. The article below originally appeared in Touchstone Magazine in June 2003.

The article appears to be presented to an Anglican reader, but there's much to teach the Catholic family as well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, if inconvenient or contrary to the biggest wishes of modern society, men have a role in the family, in the church and in their community that cannot be replaced. Is this news? I don't know. Maybe it is.

Emphasis mine.

The Truth About Men & Church

Robbie Low on the Importance of Fathers to Churchgoing

Most of us, I suspect, are not great students of "the small print." We employ lawyers and accountants because we recognize that carefully constructed small print may contain disclaimers, definitions, and information that effectively drive a coach and horses through our assumptions about the general argument and make utterly null and void the common understanding that we thought we had. Allow me to introduce you to a piece of very small print.

Not many will have whiled away the long winter evenings by reading "The demographic characteristics of the linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland" by Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner of the Federal Statistical Office, Neuchatel. It appears in Volume 2 of Population Studies No. 31, a book titled The Demographic Characteristics of National Minorities in Certain European States, edited by Werner Haug and others, published by the Council of Europe Directorate General III, Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, January 2000. Phew!

All this information is readily obtainable because Switzerland always asks a person's religion, language, and nationality on its decennial census. Now for the really interesting bit.

The Critical Factor

In 1994 the Swiss carried out an extra survey that the researchers for our masters in Europe (I write from England) were happy to record. The question was asked to determine whether a person's religion carried through to the next generation, and if so, why, or if not, why not. The result is dynamite. There is one critical factor. It is overwhelming, and it is this: It is the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children.

If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers, and 41 percent will end up attending irregularly. Only a quarter of their children will end up not practicing at all. If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars. Thirty-eight percent will be lost.

If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly. Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church.

Let us look at the figures the other way round. What happens if the father is regular but the mother irregular or non-practicing? Extraordinarily, the percentage of children becoming regular goes up from 33 percent to 38 percent with the irregular mother and to 44 percent with the non-practicing, as if loyalty to father's commitment grows in proportion to mother's laxity, indifference, or hostility.

Before mothers despair, there is some consolation for faithful moms. Where the mother is less regular than the father but attends occasionally, her presence ensures that only a quarter of her children will never attend at all.

Even when the father is an irregular attender there are some extraordinary effects. An irregular father and a non-practicing mother will yield 25 percent of their children as regular attenders in their future life and a further 23 percent as irregulars. This is twelve times the yield where the roles are reversed.

Where neither parent practices, to nobody's very great surprise, only 4 percent of children will become regular attenders and 15 percent irregulars. Eighty percent will be lost to the faith.

While mother's regularity, on its own, has scarcely any long-term effect on children's regularity (except the marginally negative one it has in some circumstances), it does help prevent children from drifting away entirely. Faithful mothers produce irregular attenders. Non-practicing mothers change the irregulars into non-attenders. But mothers have even their beneficial influence only in complementarity with the practice of the father.

Father's Influence

In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife's devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife's devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.

A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure rises to 80 percent!

The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. You cannot buck the biology of the created order. Father's influence, from the determination of a child's sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society.

A mother's role will always remain primary in terms of intimacy, care, and nurture. (The toughest man may well sport a tattoo dedicated to the love of his mother, without the slightest embarrassment or sentimentality). No father can replace that relationship. But it is equally true that when a child begins to move into that period of differentiation from home and engagement with the world "out there," he (and she) looks increasingly to the father for his role model. Where the father is indifferent, inadequate, or just plain absent, that task of differentiation and engagement is much harder. When children see that church is a "women and children" thing, they will respond accordingly--by not going to church, or going much less.

Curiously, both adult women as well as men will conclude subconsciously that Dad's absence indicates that going to church is not really a "grown-up" activity. In terms of commitment, a mother's role may be to encourage and confirm, but it is not primary to her adult offspring's decision. Mothers' choices have dramatically less effect upon children than their fathers', and without him she has little effect on the primary lifestyle choices her offspring make in their religious observances.

Her major influence is not on regular attendance at all but on keeping her irregular children from lapsing altogether. This is, needless to say, a vital work, but even then, without the input of the father (regular or irregular), the proportion of regulars to lapsed goes from 60/40 to 40/60.

Of Huge Import

The findings may be for Switzerland, but from conversations with English clergy and American friends, I doubt we would get very different findings from similar surveys here or in the United States. Indeed, I believe some English studies have found much the same thing. The figures are of huge import to our evangelization and its underlying theology.

First, we (English and Americans both) are ministering in a society that is increasingly unfaithful in spiritual and physical relationships. There is a huge number of single-parent families and a complexity of step-relationships or, worse, itinerant male figures in the household, whose primary interest can almost never be someone else's child.

The absentee father, whoever's "fault" the divorce was and however faithful he might be to his church, is unlikely to spend the brief permitted weekend "quality" time with his child in church. A young lad in my congregation had to choose between his loyalty to the faith and spending Sunday with Dad, now 40 miles away, fishing or playing soccer. Some choice for a lad of eleven: earthly father versus heavenly Father, with all the crossed ties of love and loyalties that choice involves. With that agonizing maturity forced on children by our "failures," he reasoned that his heavenly Father would understand his absence better than his dad.

Sociologically and demographically the current trends are severely against the church's mission if fatherhood is in decline. Those children who do maintain attendance, in spite of their father's absence, albeit predominantly sporadically, may instinctively understand the community of nurture that is the motherhood of the Church. But they will inevitably look to fill that yawning gap in their spiritual lives, the experience of fatherhood that is derived from the true fatherhood of God. Here they will find little comfort in the liberalizing churches that dominate the English scene and the mainline scene in the United States.

Second, we are ministering in churches that accepted fatherlessness as a norm, and even an ideal. Emasculated Liturgy, gender-free Bibles, and a fatherless flock are increasingly on offer. In response, these churches' decline has, unsurprisingly, accelerated. To minister to a fatherless society, these churches, in their unwisdom, have produced their own single-parent family parish model in the woman priest.

The idea of this politically contrived iconic destruction and biblically disobedient initiative was that it would make the Church relevant to the society in which it ministered. Women priests would make women feel empowered and thereby drawn in. (As more women signed up as publicly opposed to the innovation than ever were in favor, this argument was always a triumph of propaganda over reality.) Men would be attracted by the feminine and motherly aspect of the new ministry. (As the driving force of the movement, feminism, has little time for either femininity or motherhood, this was what Sheridan called "the lie direct.")

And children--our children--would come flocking into the new feminized Church, attracted by the safe, nurturing, non-judgmental environment a church freed of its "masculine hegemony" would offer. (As the core doctrines of feminism regarding infants are among the most hostile of any philosophy--and even women who weren't totally sold on its heresies often had to put their primary motherhood responsibilities on the back burner to answer the call--children were never likely to be major beneficiaries.)

The Churches Are Losing

Nor are these conclusions a matter of simple disagreement between warring parties in a divided church. The figures are in and will continue to come in. The churches are losing men and, if the Swiss figures are correct, are therefore losing children. You cannot feminize the church and keep the men, and you cannot keep the children if you do not keep the men.

In the Church of England, the ratio of men to women in the pre-1990s was 45 percent to 55 percent. In line with the Free Churches (which in England include the Methodists and Presbyterians) and others that have preceded us down the feminist route, we are now approaching the 37 percent/63 percent split. As these latter figures are percentages of a now much smaller total, an even more alarming picture emerges. Of the 300,000 who left the Church of England during the "Decade of Evangelism" some 200,000 must have been men.

It will come as no surprise to learn, in the light of the Swiss evidence, that even on official figures, children's attendance in the Church of England dropped by 50 percent over the Decade of Evangelism. According to reliable independent projections, it might actually have dropped down by two-thirds by the year 2000. (Relevant statistics abruptly ceased being announced in 1996, when the 50 percent drop was achieved.)

And what have we seen in the societies to which the churches are supposed to be witnessing? In the secular world, a fatherless society, or significant rejection of traditional fatherhood, has produced rapid and dreadful results. The disintegration of the family follows hard upon the amorality and emotional anarchy that flow from the neutering, devaluing, or exclusion of the loving and protective authority of the father.

Young men, whose basic biology does not lead them in the direction of civilization, emerge into a society that, in less than 40 years, has gone from certainty and encouragement about their maleness to a scarcely disguised contempt for and confusion about their role and vocation. This is exhibited in everything from the educational system, which from the 1960s onward has been used as a tool of social engineering, to the entertainment world, where the portrayal of decent honorable men turns up about as often as snow in summer.

In the absence of fatherhood, it is scarcely surprising that there is an alarming rise in the feral male. This is most noticeable in street communities, where co-operatives of criminality seek to establish brutally and directly that respect, ritual, and pack order so essential to male identity. But it is not absent from the manicured lawns of suburban England, where dysfunctional "families" produce equally alarming casualty rates and children with an inability to make and sustain deep or enduring relationships between male and female.

The Churches' Collapse

One might have hoped, with such an abundance of evidence at hand, that the churches would have been more confident in biblical teaching, which has always stood against the destructive forces of materialistic paganism which feminism represents. Alas, not. Their collapse in the face of this well-organized and plausible heresy may be officially dated from the moment they approved the ordination of women--1992 for the Church of England--but the preparation for it began much earlier.

One does not need to go very far through the procedures by which the Church of England selects its clergy or through its theological training to realize that it offers little place for genuine masculinity. The constant pressure for "flexibility," "sensitivity," "inclusivity," and "collaborative ministry" is telling. There is nothing wrong with these concepts in themselves, but as they are taught and insisted upon, they bear no relation to what a man (the un-neutered man) understands them to mean.

Men are perfectly capable of being all these things without being wet, spineless, feeble-minded, or compromised, which is how these terms translate in the teaching. They will not produce men of faith or fathers of the faith communities. They will certainly not produce icons of Christ and charismatic apostles. They are very successful at producing malleable creatures of the institution, unburdened by authenticity or conviction and incapable of leading and challenging. Men, in short, who would not stand up in a draft.

Curiously enough, this new feminized man does not seem to be quite as attractive to the feminists as they had led us to believe. He does not seem to hold the attention of children (much less boys who might want to follow him into the priesthood). He is frankly repellent to ordinary blokes. But a priest who is comfortable with his masculinity and maturing in his fatherhood (domestic and/or pastoral) will be a natural magnet in a confused and disordered society and Church.

Other faith communities, like Muslims and Orthodox Jews, have no doubt about this and would not dream of emasculating their faith. Churches in countries under persecution have no truck with the corrosive errors of feminism. Why would they? These are expensive luxuries for comfortable and decadent churches. The persecuted need to know urgently what works and what will endure. They need their men.

A church that is conspiring against the blessings of patriarchy not only disfigures the icon of the First Person of the Trinity, effects disobedience to the example and teaching of the Second Person of the Trinity, and rejects the Pentecostal action of the Third Person of the Trinity but, more significantly for our society, flies in the face of the sociological evidence!

No father--no family--no faith. Winning and keeping men is essential to the community of faith and vital to the work of all mothers and the future salvation of our children.

Robbie Low is vicar of St. Peter's, Bushey Heath, a parish in the Church of England, and a member of the editorial board of the magazine New Directions, published by Forward in Faith, in which a version of this article first appeared. For more on the subject of men, women, and church attendance, see Leon Podles's "Missing Fathers of the Church" in the January/February 2001 issue.

I am less interested in vilifying feminism as a concept than many traditional Catholics are; but I remain skeptical that a real gender neutral world can--or should--exist. I'm not talking about women having professional jobs or getting mortgages or whatnot. I'm down with that, really--at least as much as anyone should have jobs and mortgages. But when people lose the essential qualities of feminine and masculine, husband and wife, mother and father... well, you end up with an emptiness in those realms.

Husbands and fathers have a role in their family. And when they abdicate that role, it doesn't get filled by the wives and mothers--it gets distorted, askew and broken. I particularly love the line above about "feral male". Raised wild and unable to fit into the society which abandoned him.

St. Joseph, ora pro nobis.

Hat tip to Fisheaters for pointing me towards the article.

In the Act of Contrition prayer, Catholics profess their sorrow for their failings and promise to avoid the "near occasions of sin". Of course it seems like that promise is always a little harder to practice than to preach.

Enter: Kansas State University. The K-State geography department has plotted a national map of the seven deadly sins showing what parts of the lower 48 encounter the highest rates of each type of sin. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/mar/26/one-nation-seven-sins/.

However cliche, the American South is speckled with high rates of gluttony, Las Vegas has a lot of greed and most of the sunny Southwest enjoys their siestas in sloth. It is unsurprising that K-State's Riley County is remarkably humble-- there's not much of which to be proud in Manhattan Kansas.

The data was scientifically collected and plotted, but K-State's geographers themselves admit that the task was a silly exercise.

(img Neatorama)

In the list of the 10 commandments, the first one seems like a total no-brainer. I am the Lord, thy God. Thou shall not have other gods before Me. Check and double check, right? It's not like there's too many people sacraficing oxen to the Egyptian god Ra, right? Right.

Of course, there are other things that people can worship like a god even if they don't actually worship that other thing consciously. The classic example is people who place attaining money higher than any other pursuit. I've always felt smug about this suggestion that other people chase dollars more than salvation-- and my relative poverty helped back up my smugness. Yessir. Smug all the way to work on Sundays instead of Holy Mass. When I worked in the restaurant business, I often ended up with a Sunday shift-- and I usually didn't use the late-starting days of the hospitality industry to go to Mass early.

Don't get me wrong. Some people have to work on Sundays. Is that a violation of the commandment to keep holy the Lord's day? I confess that I don't know and don't want to get into that now. Hey, I usually have to do a little shopping on Sundays or go out to eat on Sundays. Am I complicit in the sin of people who staff the stores or restaurants? Again, I don't know. But I do know that it points me in a direction that, until a few months ago, I'd never considered.

I am a slave to time.

Really, a total slave to time. To scheduling. To getting busy doing stuff-- any kind of stuff-- from work stuff to leisure stuff to family stuff to house chores stuff. All of it. I put it in a schedule and have a hard time deviating from that schedule. Oh, God is in the schedule too. He's right there on Sunday before lawn mowing or burger grilling, right after newspaper reading and dog playing. He's even got His own category in my Microsoft Outlook calendar.

But sometimes I find myself scrambling to fit Him in. Even Holy Mass on Sunday often gets to be some kind of a calculus project in finding a suitable time and location to worship Him-- and get in all the other stuff done on His day! But it's not just Sunday, it's every day. From the moment I wake up in the mornings until the day crashes into night-- it's always a race against the clock.

Oh, how many times have I wished for a 28 hour day! Wouldn't that change the world? Imagine the possibilities! I promise, Lord, that I won't waste it on watching Cash Cab or eating snickerdoodles. I'll use it for good and Holy purposes like washing the car or cleaning the bathroom. Honest, I will!

How pathetic.

I do not own my day. The hours and minutes own me. Some days they feel like my false gods, to which I submit with every reminder of my Blackberry.

I am the Lord, thy God. Thou shall not have other gods before Me.

Yes, Lord. You've made a good point. I need to turn over more of my day to You and spend less time chasing my most precious commodity: time. We are all given the same set of 24 hours every day.

Every day is His creation. I don't want to squander His blessings by fiddling away the hours on the couch while Seinfeld re-runs peel away the day. But neither to I want to dishonor His creation by letting it enslave me and push me around.

Tempus fugit, time flies. Isn't man to have dominion over the things of the air? *sigh* So it is.

I need to give up some of the binds of time. Right. I'll schedule that for sometime next week.

Father Mitchel Zimmerman is the vocations director for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and one of the finer priests in this part of the country.

In his Easter Vigil sermon, Fr. Zimmerman commented on an interesting characteristic of living a Christian life in the 21st Century: it's countercultural. There was a time where it was rebellious to leave your religion-- it was edgy and earned you come cultural cache points to be liberated from the chains of organized religion. Today, the opposite seems to be true: the rebels have become the mainstream and only the truly countercultural people are the ones that still give pride of place to Faith in their lives.

To join the Church today, or to renew our baptismal promises, is actually to go against the tide. There is no doubt about that. Even as Christians are still the majority, and some 2/3 of Americans will attend a Church service today to celebrate the Resurrection, professing faith in the Resurrection of Jesus is not the latest craze like Hannah Montana. It is not like becoming a fan of chocolate chip cookies on facebook, which I did last week. No, it is more fashionable today to lose religion, not to find it.

Go read the whole thing! http://frmitchel.blogspot.com/2009/04/easter-vigil-homily-2009.html
The text is not very long, but is one of the best reflections on living a life in Faith that I've read in a very long time.

Luke 24: 1-6:
And on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled back from the sepulchre. And going in, they found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were astonished in their mind at this, behold, two men stood by them, in shining apparel. And as they were afraid, and bowed down their countenance towards the ground, they said unto them: Why seek you the living with the dead?

He is not here, but is risen!

Have a blessed Easter.

Christe, eleison.

Gentle reader, we're almost there. How are your lenten resolutions going? I'm doing okay at mine. I still have to take care of some almsgiving and I missed my extra-hour with the Lord last week. I'll do better this week. I promise. But the meatless thing is still going strong, though I'm dreaming of bacon dancing with beef in a delicious field of sausages. Come on, Easter!

Aside: remember that part in Matthew 6 about not complaining about your prayerful sacrifices? Yeah. I stink at that. I'm not trying to show that I'm holier than thou, just acknowledging that I'm weak and human and miserable just like the rest of your lousy people. That's solidarity for you.

These are the last few days of Lent. They're also the hardest, spiritually speaking. They represent the week leading up to and including Jesus' execution, death and resurrection.

Every Catholic on planet Earth is required to receive communion at least once a year-- and it should happen right about now. Well, it should be "Paschal Time" specifically, which is the period starting on Easter Sunday and runs until Whit Sunday (now more commonly called Pentecost). But this once-a-year rule is part of the deal for being Catholic; it's specifically stated in Canon 920 in the Code of Canon Law. But since most people aren't Canon Lawyers, we turn to the Catechism of the Catholic Church for a little direction-- which says in Part Two, Section Two, Chapter One, Article 3, VI, Paragraph 1389 (and this is easier?) that:

The Church obliges the faithful to take part in the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feast days and, prepared by the sacrament of Reconciliation, to receive the Eucharist at least once a year, if possible during the Easter season. But the Church strongly encourages the faithful to receive the holy Eucharist on Sundays and feast days, or more often still, even daily.

So there we have it: go to Church every Sunday and receive communion at least once a year. BUT. We need to be prepared by the sacrament of Reconciliation first.

Reconcilation, as we have discussed before, is another name for the sacrament of Confession. It's that time in the booth where we actually say out loud that we're broken sinners and that we resolve to amend our lives.

I love the theological and cultural implications of admitting my failings. I like what it means to my soul and as an ethos of life. I mean, I'm a grown up. I can admit that I err. It's children who pretend that they never screw up, right?

Oh, would that it were!

From a totally selfish point of view, excluding God and man, confession is ridiculous. There! I said it. It's totally ridiculous. Why would anyone ever admit to the stuff that they do? Why would I stand in line to tell some guy that I don't really know that well about how crummy of a human being I am? And he's just going to give me a little advice, say that I'm forgiven and send me out? Why on God's Green Earth would a rational human being do that?!!

Because we live on God's Green Earth, I suppose. And one day, I'd like to make it out of here.

Can I tell you something? Something that I'm not sure I'm supposed to think or admit? *gulp* Here goes:

For me, confession is totally about being selfish. I mean, yeah, I'm there confessing that I've hurt people. And in truth, I don't want to hurt people. I'm also confessing that I've hurt God-- and I don't want to hurt God either. But even though I love God and love mankind and want to do well by both parties-- I'm really there because I don't know when I'm going to die. It could happen any day now. Hopefully not, of course. I'd like to be an old man one day. But it could happen sooner than that. And when it does, I'd rather not go to hell. Really. I fear hell. Hell is real. Sin is real. I'm serious here. That's one of the biggest things that gets me in the booth: fear of dying with a dirty soul.

Gentle reader, please give a little consideration to your Eternal Salvation. I'd like to see you in Heaven one day. If one of the two of us ends up in Hell, I don't think that we can hang out.

All Catholics who have received their First Communion are required to keep it up. Yearly at the minimum. Which means that unless you're some kind of superhuman, you've got to go to confession at least yearly. It's time to do that now. This is it. Find a parish with a confession schedule-- every Catholic parish on the planet has a confession schedule. Of course, Holy Week is a busy time, so the regular times might be moved, limited or augmented based on the demand. Look into it.

Here's a list of some Kansas City area parishes with upcoming confession times: if you're not in beautiful Kansas City, look into your own parish and take your turn in the booth. Go. Please don't put it off. Give a little consideration to your Eternal Salvation.

Tuesday
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception 11:40, 1:45-2:15 PM, 4-4:15 PM
Ascension 6:30 AM, 11:30 AM
Old St Patrick's Oratory 5:30 PM
Blessed Sacrament 6:00-6:30 PM

Wednesday
Redemptorist 6:30-7:00 AM, 10:30-11:00 AM
Ascension 4:30-5:30 PM, 7:00-8:00 PM
Holy Trinity 6:30 PM
Blessed Sacrament 6:00-6:30
Old St Patrick's Oratory 5:30-6:00

Thursday
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception 12:15-1:15 PM
Old St Patrick's Oratory 6:00-6:45 PM

Friday
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception 12:Noon-1:00 PM
Old St. Patrick's Oratory 5:30-6:15 PM

Saturday
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception: 12:Noon-1:00 PM
Holy Spirit, Prince of Peace, St. Paul, Ascension, St. Joseph (all in Johnson County) 3:30
Holy Trinity 3:45
Old St Patrick's Oratory 7:30-8:15 PM

If you have any updates/edits to this list, please alert me in the Comments box below. Note if they are unique to Holy Week or recurring times. I'd like to build a big "confession times database" for Kansas City area parishes.