December 2008 Archives

I'll resume my parsing of the Johnson County Pastoral Plan soon. (Does it interest anyone besides me?) But first, an excerpt from one of my favorite blogs, Conversion Diary. She talks about Christmas as an atheist when she began to wonder about the big questions in life.

During this time I always paused when I heard the song What Child is This?, its slow, ethereal melody sending chills down my spine, the simple question it asked seemingly whispered in my ear by something closer than the tinny mall sound system.

It haunted me, challenged me, to stop everything and consider the baby who was born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, to look at the manger scenes that dotted the winter landscape of my city, and ask:

What child is this?

Go read the whole thing.

As religious people are tempted to disbelieve, ahteists are tempted to believe.

A tilma (or tilmatli) is an article of clothing that Aztec men wore in the early days of Colonialism in central Mexico. It was either worn like an apron or draped over the shoulders. The richest men in the upper classes wore tilmas made from cotton, poor men's tilmas were made from ayate--a fiber made from cactus. Men would carry things in their tilma as they walked; rich men would wear theirs like a cloak.

Juan Diego was a Indian man in who lived in a village North of where Mexico City is today, he was a farmer and a weaver--he was the kind of guy whose tilma would have been made from the rustic cactus fiber. These things don't last forever, as they age and dry out, the cloth just kind of falls apart. Even if they were never used, they only last about 15 or 20 years before they disintegrate.

He was lonely and quiet in the years after his widow died--he spent a lot of time in silence walking to and from Church on Saturdays and Sundays. On one Saturday morning in December of 1531, he was walking alone when he heard birds on the hill and someone calling his name--and a woman who looked like an Aztec princess appeared in front of him, but Juan Diego recognized her as the Blessed Virgin Mary. She asked him to tell the bishop that she wanted a shrine to be built on top of that hill in her honor, saying:

"I wish that a temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection. Because I am your merciful mother, to you, and to all the inhabitants on this land and all the rest who love me, invoke and confide in me; to listen there to their lamentations, and remedy all their miseries, afflictions and sorrows. And to accomplish what my clemency pretends, go to the palace of the bishop of Mexico, and you will say to him that I manifest my great desire, that here on this plain a temple be built to me."

So he ventured back to town and asked His Excellency, Juan de Zumarraga, Bishop of Mexico to do what Mary had requested.

Bishops are important people. They've got a lot going on and a lot to do. Bishop Zumarraga was a Basque from the Castille region of Spain--he had a reputation as a kind hearted but no-nonsense administrator. The job as Bishop of Mexico was no small task--it had political importance, spiritual authority and secular power. It was a big job. Mexico was important to the Spanish and to the Church, Zumarraga was in the middle of power struggles and controversies that held stakes for the Spanish crown as well as the Catholic Church. So when a poor, old and lonely native man shows up on his step saying that he saw a vision of Mary and she wants a church to be built in some hill in the country--I understand why Bishop Zumarraga didn't spend a lot of his time listening to Juan Diego's pleas. There's a lot of people who say they see visions of the Blessed Virgin in their backyards or in the patterns on their waffle syrup or whatever. Of course the Church doesn't want to miss an important appearance of Our Lady if she's got something important to say--but professional religious people have to spend a lot of time sorting our credible appearances from people who are willing to zone their garages as small shrines with corresponding gift shops. So Bishop Zumarraga sent Juan Diego away and told him that if he comes back with some evidence that the Diocese can review, they'll look into it. It was a polite way to get rid of him. And understandably so. Juan Diego left.

Some people might think it is strange that Juan Diego thought that Mary looked like an Indian woman. In a lot of European Art or traditional imagery, she looks fair skinned--almost alabaster white. In real life, Mary was a poor middle-eastern Jewish woman--probably not alabaster white, but certainly not like an Indian princess! But Our Lady often appears to people in a way that they would recognize. When Mary appeared to Bernadette at Lourdes, she appeared dressed in the way that the girls dressed at the nearby Catholic school--in a white dressy robe with a blue waist sash. Mary also has a tendency to find very humble and simple people. People who are poor and who have a very poor education. (I want to say that they're often not even very bright. But most of the people who have seen Our Lady have gone on to be Saints of the Church, so I'm going to not say that sometimes Our Mother appears to people who aren't very bright). But for years and years later, they can repeat back the exact details and retell exact conversations they had with Mary with remarkable clarity--as if each moment was etched into their brain.

Juan Diego went back to Tepeyac Hill and told the Blessed Virgin that the bishop wanted a miraculous sign for proof, then asked her to send someone else--he was an unworthy messenger whom the bishop would never believe. Mary told him to go to the top of the hill on the next day and she would give him a sign. She has a thing for unworthy people.

When he returned to Tepeyac the next day, he found a field of roses in full bloom--in the middle of a December winter. In case you're not a gardener, you should know that roses do not bloom in the winter. They thrive in the warm summer sunshine and go almost totally dormant in the short days and cold winter air. The roses on the hill were the kind that only grow in the Castille region of Spain, Bishop Zumarraga's home. So Juan Diego started cutting roses and gathering them in his ragged tilma. This would be proof enough to take to the bishop of his apparition--and Mary told him not to show anyone what he had in his tilma until he got to the bishop. He gathered up as many roses as he could handle and trekked the long road back to town. When he finally made it in front of the bishop, Juan Diego stood upright and dropped open his tilma and poured out the roses at His Excellency's feet... the good bishop fell to his knees.

Emblazoned on Juan Diego's simple cactus fiber tilma was the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in every detail that Juan Diego described. She stood in the center of glowing rays of light, crushing the horns of evil and cloaked in a mantle the color of night blue sky covered in starts. She wore a black sash--like the maternity belt that Aztec women wore when they were with child and her hands were joined in prayer. It was not the roses that Juan Diego was to bring to the bishop, Our Lady wanted him to bring this image on his simple rugged tilma.

Bishop Zumarraga built the shrine.

Construction began in the year 1531, but would not be totally finished until 1709. I don't know why it took so long, but I think that there's something to be said for a Protestant work ethic. Juan Diego's tilma with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe hung in this church from its completion in 1709 until 1974. In this church, it was simply tacked up aside the high altar and hung out in the open-- subject to temperature changes, humidity, incense and candle smoke, and the kisses of thousands of those paying homage; it survived the bomb explosion of a terrorist protestor in 1921 that destroyed a large part of the marble altar and tore up a lot of the interior of the basilica. A few decades later, it occured to someone to encase the tilma in bulletproof glass.

In 1974, the Diocese opened an ugly round spaceship church next door and hung the tilma there instead. The wall on which it hangs has a certain jenga-like quality that can only be explained by saying out-loud these words:

"1970's church architecture is stupid".

Go ahead and say it. I'll wait.

"1970's church architecture is stupid"

Some things you just can't explain. I guess that's what happens when you hire the same architect who built Aztec Stadium in Mexico City.

Outside of the Vatican, no Catholic shrine gets more visitors, adorers and pilgrims than Our Lady of Guadalupe. Over 30 Masses are offered in the Basilica and her 9 chapels every day. There are hundreds of baptisms every week. And as if the world is taunting me with awesome confession times everywhere in the universe except Johnson County, confessions are heard every day of the year from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. The main basilica space seats 10,000 people and can expand up to 40,000 with temporary seating for major events. The atrium of the basilica is also a marketplace for local merchants who sell local traditional food there. It's a pretty busy place from what I hear. There's even some expectation of a Domino's Pizza opening up in the atrium, though it's sparked some controversy. Hey, it makes sense to me. Benedictus Domino means "Bless the Lord", maybe Our Lady would like a Brooklyn style sausage pizza. I'm just sayin'.

But the main attraction is not the beautiful old basilica or the strange new spaceship basilica. It is not the pizza stands or the fiestas on the atrium plaza. People flock to Tepeyac hill to see the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The image, still as bright and as clear as the day Juan Diego showed it to the bishop in 1531, is the star of the show. A poor man's tilma only lasts a handful of years before it falls apart in disintegration. But the same poor man's cloak that brought the bishop to his knees over 477 years ago still brings Catholics to their knees today.

Nobel laureate Octavio Paz wrote in 1974 that "the Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery".

Today is the Feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is the only officially recognized appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary in North America--and one of only a couple to occur outside of Europe. Under this name, she is given the title of Patroness of the Americas and we are entrusted to her love, compassion, help, and protection. It's nice to know she's looking out for us.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Here we are, just about halfway through Advent and only two weeks away from Christmas. Does it feel like it for you? If I'm thinking like a proper Catholic, I should be asking myself if I'm fully in the Advent spirit. After all, Advent is the time before Christmas. The Christmas season doesn't actually begin until Christmas. But since I'm not a very proper Catholic, I end up asking myself if I'm really in the Christmas spirit.

The period of my life from Novemberish 2003 through Decemberish 2004 was the worst time of my life. I was a wreck of a person--and I was trying to take everyone down with me. Truly, I don't understand why some of my friends are still my friends after that time in my life. I was a crummy roommate, a crummy pal, a crummy boyfriend (to the patient and kind woman who is now my wife, Laos Deo!). There was this time in December 2003 where I was really in the Christmas spirit--in the crummy Christmas spirit. It was Christmas and I was sad about it. May I suggest my December 9, 2003 post from my old blog to explain what I mean? (Language note: there's an f-word in the middle of that post. Just in case you're easily startled.) Man, I was a really good writer back then. *pats self on back*

It was sometime after I wrote those words that life really started to bottom out for me. I'd go on a string of broken jobs, rubber checks and empty bottles of wine. It's hard to remember, exactly, how I got to that point and why I didn't just *snap out of it*. I didn't want to snap out of it. Eventually I decided that I'd failed at everything I tried to do by myself--and looked for some help from above. When I started this blog, I briefly wrote about that moment in the post where I tried to better introduce myself. I didn't tell anyone about it in 2004, probably because admitting out-loud to the world that I was sitting alone and sobbing in a quiet and cold adoration chapel while fumbling through rosary beads was a little more than I wanted to tell people. But it was true nonetheless. Those days began a humble start of getting me back on the good path that would take me to finishing college, getting a stable job and eventually proposing to and marrying my wife. So it's only with a little distance can I empathize and chuckle with this blog post from 2004 about trying to find a decent parish to attend. If I had a time machine, I'd like to go back to then and give myself a pointer or two. Heh heh.

But this is the season of Advent, not the season of Christmas, and it's the time where we're getting ready to receive Christ our Lord. The churches are getting ready right now, they've got little envelopes in the pews and notes in the bulletins that they're accepting donations for Christmas flowers and poinsettias with which they will decorate the church. Catholic Relief Services sure has been preparing to get some money out of me. And yet in all of this external preparation, it's time to do the internal preparation as well. On December 2nd, I noted that I was adding a day of fast and abstinence to my regular routine, as well as planning an extra trip to confession. Progress report: mixed results. Confession, check. Fast, well, notsomuch. Mmmm... food... I also hoped to spend a little time in quiet prayer as well.

A couple of months ago, I was telling a friend of mine that I was not a very good pray-er. He looked at me with quick glance of strange puzzlement and said that he didn't know that some people could be good or bad at praying. Indeed. I didn't know that people could be good or bad either--until I tried to do it on my own over and over. So I take a little comfort when I read the "Conversion Diary" blog post last month where Jennifer F. relates learning how to pray: (reformatted)

Up until my late twenties, I'd never said a single prayer in my life. I tried to follow advice like, "Start by committing to only five minutes of prayer per day!" but I actually managed to fail at that. Maybe it's that it was a brand new habit or that I have some strong ADD tendencies, but my efforts at five minutes of prayer tended to go something like this:

Is this thing on? No, kidding. Hi, Lord, it's me. I guess you knew that though. Anyway, I am grateful for all the good things in my life today, and sorry for the things I did wrong. (What can I say, I just don't know where those f-bombs came from. At least it wasn't in front of the kids.) Anyway, I ask you to strengthen my faith, and to help me be a better person...

72 seconds later:

...and when they say "dolla' dolla' bill, y'all" in Sweetest Girl, I wonder if that would be considered sampling WuTang. Let's think here about what technically constitutes sampling: to use a portion of a recorded song. So since they did not actually play anything originally recorded in C.R.E.A.M., it would probably be more accurate to say that Wyclef Jean was "drawing upon the wisdom" of Wu rather than "sampling" Wu. That reminds me of Busta Rhymes lifting Dangerous from a public service announcement. You cannot tell me that was an accident...

That is about a direct transcript of my first attempts at prayer. Trying to read the Bible for five minutes didn't go much better. I'd end up getting hung up on some technicality, getting lost in the footnotes and wandering over to the computer after about 45 seconds to Google questions about some verse.

And I should also admit that I'm not very good at the practiced prayer which has defined Catholicism for centuries. I can read and recite the words just fine, but I'm hardly in the habit of putting prayer into my everyday life. I don't say a daily rosary, I'm awful about saying nightly prayers, and it truly doesn't occur to me to say grace before meals. It doesn't make a very good Catholic role model, I know. Confiteor! God bless you contemplatives out there. Really, I don't know how you do it. One day, I'm going to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in my regular life, but I don't know what day that'll start. I'm not making any plans.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight the path.

I'm working on it. Preparation. Penance. Prayer. Pray for me, gentle reader. I'll pray for God's blessing on you. And so I don't forget, I'll pray for you right now. Just as soon as I hit the "Save" button here and post this entry. Oh, that reminds me, I've got to look over those emails I've been neglecting. Which reminds me that I've got some real mail sitting at home. I wonder if I remembered to unplug the Christmas Lights at home? I need to change that light bulb in the garage, don't forget that Joe. Arrgh. The garage is a mess. And I've got to take the recycling up to that bin at Church. Oh! Church! That's right. I'm supposed to pray. Right. Right after I hit the "Save" button and post this entry...

It's a simple game. Run 100 meters. The keys Q-W-O-P move your legs.

http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html

It is the most frustrating game I have ever played. My record? 3.3m.

In the third part of this wandering series on the Archdiocese's Pastoral Plan for Johnson County, I'm going to focus on the "Key Findings" section. Please turn to page 6 of your packet.

It's no surprise to any Johnson Countian to learn that our county is growing on its Southern and Western boundaries while remaining fairly stable (or declining!) in its interior and Northern boundaries. The growth is uneven. Likewise, the infrastructure, neighborhoods and people of the county are aging unevenly. While I think I live in a nice and decent part of an older section of the county, you don't have to go very far from my house to find some really crummy apartments or a suffering neighborhood. But my job shows me the growth and decline in a fairly exaggerated way, so I have to be careful not to overstate the growth, stability decline or revitalization of neighborhoods--I may have too intense of focus on that topic.

Years ago, I remember hearing someone say that it is a hallmark of a healthy parish if they span a wide range of ages. A parish should have plenty of baby baptisms, kids in the schools, young adults getting married and parents acting as den mothers and troop masters, they should have professionals on the committees and retired folks in the organizations, and sadly, funerals for their lifelong parishoners. If a parish only has funerals, they're in trouble. If a parish only has baptisms, they're going to be unstable. If a parish doesn't have either, they're incomplete. You've got to have it all!

I am heartened to read that the Archdiocese wants greater cooperation between the parishes in terms of Mass times. I actually think that we've got a pretty good range of potential Masses in Kansas City. Have you seen MassTimes.org yet? If you accidentally overslept on Sunday morning and missed church, it'll help you find a service that you can attend--and it's good for just about everywhere in the USA. I even keep a listing of Masses at different times around the city saved on my cell phone that I can look at if I'm in a pickle. I wish that parishes had greater variation in time that daily Mass was offered (only a few happen before most of us have to be at work or after the workday is done) and I REALLY WISH that there was a wider array of times that Confession is offered (Saturday afternoon is THE WORST time to hold confession) around town in accessible places. But that is worth a post all of its own. In any matter, I'm glad that the Archdiocese is considering coordination. That is a good thing.

Of particular note is the statements about Spanish Masses--three County parishes offer the Mass in Spanish, each around the same time on Sunday afternoons. I mention this principally because I think that this is continuing the trend in how parishes will approach their Liturgies in the near future. Think about your own home parish--if there are 4 Sunday Masses, it'd be pretty common to have one of the Masses be "atypical"--the vestiges of the 70's, 80's and 90's are still hanging around in the 21st Century in the forms of the "folk Mass", the "children's Mass" and the "LifeTeen Mass". Who's still going to the folk Mass these days? The children's Masses are on the way out. The LifeTeen debacle seems to be going strong. But in how many parishes were these types of liturgies added into the roster of Sunday Masses, and in how many replaced Masses that were suffering for attendance? I don't know. It is my amateur opinion that some of the parishes offering a Spanish Mass would benefit from offering the Spanish liturgy in the place of one of its ordinary Masses--and thus give the Spanish liturgy a conventional churchgoing time somewhere in the County. And hey, since we're on the subject, consider this a formal request for a Tridentine Latin Mass in Johnson County and to have it at a typical churchgoing time. Thank you in advance, Archdiocese.

But one of my favorite lines in the whole report is section 22 on page 7:

Several parishes will soon start a new chapter in their life as a parish. The vision and drive of these parishes has been raising capital dollars to build new facilities. Within five or ten years, a group of parishes will retire their debts and facilities will be basically completed. A compelling new vision with new goals is needed for the next ten and twenty years.

This section of the report also introduces the findings on Catholic Elementary and High Schools. Not every parish in the County has a grade school, but most of them do. I think there are a number of challenges facing Catholic education in the near future, most of which focuses on defining the purpose and identity of Catholic Schools. I mean, Johnson County has pretty good schools in its four public school districts. There are other places in the city or the country which are not in this situation. If the public schools are garbage, then families that can afford private schools often put Catholic education on the table--even if they're not Catholic families. Catholic schools carry a reputation of academic excellence. But if the public schools also have that reputation, then Catholic schools need to bring something else to the table for families to pony out the burden of private tuition. Catholic Schools need to be Catholic schools. That means more than hanging a crucifix in each classroom and going to Mass once a week. I'll get further into Catholic Schools in future posts. The Archdiocesan Pastoral Plan covers them more in depth later--and Catholic schools are a particular interest to me.

The Key Findings section of the Pastoral Plan wraps up with a subsection called "Pastoral Concerns" that briefly notes that parishes need to make sure that they are doing an adequate job of reaching out in their ministry to parishioners (agreed) and a further note that there is a greater need for "collaboration instead of competition". Perhaps there is some unfriendly rivalry between parishes? Perhaps. I know I'm guilty in pushing that too--I know that there are some parishes where I will decline to attend. But I'd say that it is not a matter of parishes as much as it is a matter of pastors--pastors are like little dukes in their duchies and build liturgies that appeal to different parishes (and I'm sure that newly re-assigned pastors take the opposite view). In short, the ordinary Mass is so customizable that there is a lot of variation between different parishes and different priests. It results in good liturgies and bad liturgies. I'll steer clear of the bad ones, thankyouverymuch. Is that parochialism? If so, then I am parochial. Confiteor!

There's a photo that is going around the internets (around and around) of some Anglican women who were picketing to be named bishops in the Anglican church.

It reminds me of a story that I can't confirm, but happily retell about Blessed Pope Pius IX:

A group of distinguished Anglican clerics were visiting Rome in the nineteenth century, and had the good fortune to be admitted to the presence of the Pope. After a few brief words, the leader of the Anglican party asked the Holy Father whether he might be willing to confer his blessing upon them.

Pius IX paused, evidently aware that their situation as Anglican clerics might lead to any gesture being misinterpreted. And then, with a warm smile, he gave the following blessing:

"Ab illo benedicaris, in cujus honore cremaberis. Amen."

Not all of the party were certain of what had been said, but others understood only too well. The Pope had just given the Anglicans the blessing more normally used for incense during Mass: "be thou blessed by Him in Whose honour thou shalt be burned."

It is not recorded how much longer the group stayed in Rome.

P.S. Yes, that's a dalek.

Today is a Holy Day of Obligation-- that means that Catholics are obliged to go to Mass today. No arguing. And unlike some Holy Days of Obligation, this one was not "transferred" to Sunday. Today is the day. Go.

Nearly every parish has a rigorous Holy Day schedule-- it's even pretty common to have noon Masses that Catholics can attend on their lunch breaks. That's what I'm going to do today.

Go. It is obligatory. This is one of those "price you pay for being Catholic" days.

I live in a somewhat older part of Johnson County--my house is in its 6th decade. My work often takes me out to the fringes of the county where large tracts of soybean fields are being turned under to put brown houses on Cul de Sac lots. At one of the Southerly parts of my work territory, there's a large green sign on the edge of a subdivision that reads "Proposed Catholic Church & School" that interests me. It sets my mind to wander as to what it portends for the future of Catholic life in Johnson County.

There are other parts of town that are not building big new facilities, there are some Catholic churches struggling to retain parishioners, struggling to attract new parishioners, facing the changing realities of keeping the Faith in the 21st Century... these are hard days to be Catholic. They are hard days for the Church.

The Archdiocese evaluates each parish on a fixed rubric called the "Signs of Parish Vitality". (Please turn to page 2 in your Pastoral Plan for the Johnson County Region.) These "Signs of Life" are seven items to point to a healthy parish: Mission, Community, Liturgy and Prayer, Evangelization & Catechesis, Service, Finances and Facilities, and Collaboration. That's a pretty comprehensive lens!

1. Mission It has always seemed strange to me that individual Catholic parishes have their own mission statement. It seems like they should all be on the same page: to offer the Mass and to make more & better Catholics. Am I being too simple here? At least the Archdiocese asks that the parish mission statement is "Christ-centered and in solidarity with the mission of the Church". While Johnson County doesn't have any blatantly renegade parishes like so many other Dioceses in the United States (Google "Most Holy Redeemer" "San Francisco" to see what I mean by "blatantly renegade"), there is a notable difference in character between parishes, maybe some are tempted to stray from the party line.

2. Community There's two parts here: butts in the seats and names on the sign-up list. The former is a measure of support: are there enough people to justify having all the expense of a full-service parish? It is a harsh reality that sometimes the answer is no. Sadly, as some parts of town are atrophying, they're taking their community services with them. The latter part of "Community" is making sure that while there's enough Catholics in the area to justify a church, they're actually building a community in that parish. This is hard. The church in which my lovely wife and I were married is (in my humble opinion) one of the neatest churches in Kansas City; it was remodeled in 2000 and the diocese spared no expense to make it spectacular. I'm also confident in say that this church also has one of the best Novus Ordo liturgies in Kansas City. Really. It's great worship. But I'll be danged if I could find any shred of "community" there at all. I signed up for some adult education and even attended a social event or two, but nothing stuck on me. Being a parishioner there often felt pretty darned lonely. Maybe it was just me. In any event, it was a strong lesson to me that community matters and is really hard to foster for itself.

3. Liturgy and Prayer Aha. The Piece de Resistance. This is the thing that gets tradition-minded cranks like myself all aflutter. I am having a hard time thinking of intelligent yet charitable things to say about this point. The Archdiocese strives for parishes to have "high quality liturgies, especially homilies and music." Indeed. In fairness, I should say that aside from the hours of dull rambling from a few notable priests in my churchgoing history, I think that the Archdiocese does have high-quality sermons from its priests. At least they are recognizably Catholic. Other dioceses are not so lucky. Music? If only. These things are hard to explain in a few pithy sentences, but let it suffice to say that I'm not sure that too many Catholic hymnals could survive an inquisition. I will let J. A. Turner do the talking here, there's no reason to repeat what has been said better in other places. Finally, please let the record show that the measure of a good Mass is not summed up by a non-heretical homily with a rousing rendition of "Lord of the Dance" during Holy Communion.

4. Evangelization & Catechesis For many years, my parents helped with the classes for non-Catholics who might be interested in learning more about Catholicism. They also spent a lot of time in various scriptural studies and have put a lot of time into developing their Faith on spiritual, emotional and intellectual levels. They were good models for me in this regard and I am quite grateful for their example. Rarely but occasionally, I'd tag along with them in these classes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I got to see the same two-to-three dozen people sitting in the same seats year after year--the crowd really never changed. And I was usually the youngest person in the room by three decades. Who's teaching people my age? It's hard to say. No one, I guess. (Aside: the neighboring diocese, the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, has a marvelous program called the Bishop Helmsing Institute to help in adult education. My schedule hasn't permitted me to sign up for any of their classes yet, but I will as soon as I can.) The school-age kids usually have it better, most parishes have a grade school and a program for young kids who don't go to Catholic school. I really can't talk enough about Catholic education, and I don't just mean a school system. For the future of Catholicism in America, all parishes have to focus on making more and better Catholics.

5. Service Can I tell you something? I am not very good at this part. Strange, I know--considering that I was an Eagle Scout and that my parents are volunteering-machines and that I went to Catholicy school more focused on teaching kids to be good people than on good Catholics. Maybe I'm rebelling? Maybe it's just neglect. But I digress. Parishes have to serve their world, not just themselves. Love thy neighbor is an action, not a state of being. I think most parishes are good at feeding lambs and tending sheep. Catholic schools, kitchens, clinics, shelters, counselors, ministers, hospitals--Catholics are good at service. There is obviously a lot of work left to do. (Have you seen Catholics Come Home yet? Click on the video "Epic" to see what I mean.) Parishes are the "local arm" of the entire Church, they need to be in the world.

6. Finances and Facilities This is the part that no one wants to talk about. Any priest can tell you about the outraged letters and emails he receives when "Stewardship Sunday" rolls around! But those big buildings don't pay for themselves. And what happens when the buildings start to fall apart? Eek. I had an old coworker of mine complaining one time about how much his parents' church was spending on building some fancy new church building, saying that they should be spending that money on the poor instead. On the face of the matter, he makes a compelling case. Catholics view their churches as temples to God, not buildings for Man; our church buildings need to be fitting areas to be called "God's House". Parishes need good staff, they need to make their budgets work and they need to be planning for the future. In Johnson County, there are some very strong parishes in this regard and some very weak ones--and it's in all the predictable places.

7. Collaboration Parishes should work together in the Archdiocese and get along with their neighbors. How nice! My only point here is anecdotal: I am a parishioner at St. Joseph in Shawnee--I grew up there and still just live up the road. I love the parish and the parish drives me crazy; our relationship is complicated. There are two other Catholic parishes in Shawnee: Sacred Heart, which is pretty far West for me, and Good Shepherd, which is practically in walking distance from my front door. A couple years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about different Catholic parishes around town. He said that he went to Mass at Good Shepherd, but that he wasn't going to ever go there again. I asked why. His response: Because I'm not Methodist. I snickered. Maybe I'm not good at this part either.

The report continues to give a stronger overview of the Church in Johnson County and to get specific about some parishes and some schools. All material for future posts, probably sometime next week. I've learned to not make too many specific predictions about when I'm going to do some future posts. But in my opinion, this document is so important to Catholics in the county that it merits discussion.

I will continue (start?) my look at the Johnson County Pastoral Plan soon. I'm pressed for the time at the moment.

In the meantime, check out this listing of the Worlds Most Bizarre and Intriguing Water Fountains.

Three of Kansas City's fountains made the list. Fun fact: Kansas City claims to have more fountains than Rome. This claim is in dispute.

In the time while I was hiat'in, the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas released an overview and plan for its Johnson County region, available on the Archdiocesean website. I'm going to go over this document over the next few posts. I live in Johnson County and think that are in a happily and sadly average part of an average diocese in the United States.

First, a primer: the entire globe is divided into territories, called Dioceses. The head person of a diocese is the Bishop-- he is (oversimplification alert) the spiritual and secular CEO of that geographic area. The Bishop's boss is the Pope, though there are other groups and organizations who have influence on him, including other Bishops (in the USA, all Bishops belong to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops which operates like a loose coalition. The USSCB does not speak for any particular Bishop, but makes advisements and creates a single-ish voice for all American Bishops. Suffice it to say that the group has it's share of internal politics, for better and worse.) and a Vatican committee called the Congregation for Bishops, which is (again, oversimplification) the HR department for Bishops.

Important dioceses are given the title of Archdiocese and their Bishops are called Archbishops. In the United States, basically the biggest Diocese in a state is called the Archdiocese. Off the top of my head, the only state that I can think of with two Archdioceses is California, with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Archdiocese of San Francisco. It is important to note that in practice, there is no material difference between a Diocese and an Archdiocese or a Bishop and an Archbishop. One is as good as another. In the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, our Ordinary (another name for bishop) is Archbishop Naumann.

There are some Archbishops who do not serve an Archdiocese. Rather, they serve the Vatican itself and usually have some role that affects people spanning a lot of Dioceses or perform some particular function not related to operating a diocese. These Bishops are called Titular Archbishops. Some Dioceses have Auxiliary Bishops, who are like "assistant Bishops". It is particularly common if a Diocese covers a big geographical area or has a lot of Catholics in the Diocese; not all Dioceses have Auxillaries. When Bishops retire, they are given the title of Bishop Emiritus. These Bishops retain all the spiritual faculties of a Bishop, but they're retired from the operations of a Diocese. Some Bishops carry the rank of Cardinal. The most significant duty of a Cardinal is that he elects a new Pope. Not all Cardinals are bishops-- a fact that surprises even many lifelong Catholics. We could go on about this for a long time, but there is a good website that explains every office, role and officeholder in the church at http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/. The site in encyclopedic and is maintained by a Kansas City area man. It's his hobby. Wow. He's also a nice guy. (plaid shirt, fourth picture) But I digress.

I live in Kansas, which has 4 dioceses (Kansas City, Dodge City, Salina, Wichita). The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas covers 21 counties and a big chunk of the state. For administrative purposes, it is further broken down into a number of regions. The Archdiocese, with the help of consultants, has been developing a "Pastoral Plan" for each region. The goal is to make sure they are meeting the needs of the Church now and in the future.

This is a good idea. I hope every diocese is doing it, and I hope that they continue to develop these plans over time. Populations are shifting, country churches are having a hard time keeping parishoners as the rural towns are slowly disappearing-- but the remaining Catholics in the area need to still be served. And like they're changing politics and business and schools and everything else, the growing Hispanic population is changing things. A significant number of Hispanics are Catholic; the Church needs to be ministering to them. And though there's some evidence that the number of men applying to the priesthood is on the upswing, the hemmoraging has been so significant since the Second Vatican Council that they've got a long way to go to replace them all. (Aside: earlier this year, I bought a concise book called The Index of Leading Catholic Indicators that cataloged what has happened to the Church in America since the 60's. It's truly stunning. The introduction to the book was written by Pat Buchanan, reprinted here. Some of Buchanan's rhetoric is over the top-- pure PJB. But the facts are inarguable. Read it. It'll make your jaw drop. I had no idea how far we've fallen.) It's good to have a plan to make sure that you're covering all the bases.

The Johnson County Pastoral Plan is notable for its comprehensive look at parishes and schools. And though the report is fair, it does not pull punches. Some of our parishes are in trouble, some are coming out of the woods and some are in good shape. I am particularly interested in the information on the Catholic schools-- both grade school and high school.

So read the Johnson County Pastoral Plan. It's important to know what's going on in your neighborhood.

I'm sure that you've heard about all the trouble in India over the last several weeks. Terrorist attacks tore up the city of Mumbai (Bombay) and ongoing violence plagues the rest of the country. Extremists have even put a $250 price on the head of every Christian pastor killed in the country. Want to make some money? Kill a Christian.

These are hard days, gentle reader.

In May, I wrote about the violent earthquakes rocking China and how St. Francis Xavier led his mission trips through the East into China in the 1500's. (a Google cache will have to suffice until I've loaded all the old posts back onto this site).

Today is the feast day of St. Francis Xavier, 456 years and a day after his death. He died from sickness in the land where he worked so hard to bring Christ's message. His missionary work in India and Southeast Asia took him to the poorest and most forgotten people in the East--some in cities that don't look a lot different today, save for the mopeds and call-centers for American businesses.

In India, he landed in the city of Goa where he immediately took to ministering in the city's hospitals. In the evenings, he'd walk the streets ringing a bell to call children from their homes where he would teach to them. Later Francis Xavier lived for several months in a seaside cave in the coastal village of Manapad to teach and serve the pearl fishers. His missionary work was focused on the poorest and the sick, moving from India to the Indonesian islands and later Japan.

He survived risky sailing on dangerous seas, sickness and persecution by local rulers to spread the Gospel--only to have it largely undone by Portuguese soldiers and misguided inquisitors just a few years after his death.

Today, his casket and remains are interred in a public display in a church in Goa, India--in the very city he landed in May of 1542.

Francis Xavier never had it easy in his mission trips--missionaries live a hard and lonely life away from their home, often in parts of the world where they don't speak the language, are seen as hostile invaders with an unwelcome message and where sometimes their only friend is Christ Himself, to whom they dedicate their arduous work. I can't even imagine.

Those, too, were hard days, gentle reader.

What a strange world in which we live. These days where police are still finding explosives in train stations and the two most unpredictable members of the "nuclear weapons club" are raising their dander towards each other while we Americans try to stick our nose in the middle of the fight... well, these are hard days.

St. Francis Xavier, pray for us.

So Sunday began the season of Advent in the Church. Happy new year!

The Church year is broken up into different seasons. Advent is the first season, leading up to Christmas. Though the radio starts playing Christmas songs somewhere around Halloween, the Christmas season really starts on Christmas day.

For the purposes of this post, I will refer to the Catholic liturgical year based on the Novus Ordo--which is to say that I'm referring to the calendar that most of the modern Church is using. There is another calendar that the Church is concurrently using in parishes that use the Tridentine Latin Mass. In many ways they overlap, in many ways they do not. Save me your debates over which one is superior--I'm over it and don't care to entertain anyone's posturing. Everyone's in Advent right now.

Advent is really a time of preparation for Christmas. In a secular sense, that means that people are doing their shopping and hanging their lights on their house--and you can count me in that number too. But in a spiritual sense, this is when all Christians are called to get themselves ready for the coming of Christ. The Church season has been "Ordinary Time" for several months now--the priests have been wearing green vestments, our churches have been decorated with all kinds of plants and flowers--Ordinary Time is a period of life and vitality. As a kid, I thought "Ordinary Time" sounded a bit... pedestrian. Mundane. Ordinary. As a grown-up, I've come to really appreciate the times that are predictable. Mundane. Ordinary.

But Advent is different. It's time to get out our Advent wreathes and to mark the time until when God becomes Man. The word itself is from the Latin word "Adventus", meaning "coming" or "arrival". Many Protestants (and many confused Catholics) are sticking blue candles in their wreathes these days. The theory is that Royal Blue is a sign of Royalty and that blue is the color of the sky just before the dawn or the waters of a new Creation like in the book of Genesis (cite). Historically though, Catholics have turned to the penitential purple color for most of Advent. Getting ready to accept Christ in our world means that we have to get ourselves ready for Christ. To purify. To rid ourselves of sins.

(At the Walberg Estate, we're making a concession to recession and using some white candles that we had in a cupboard, but in our mind, they're purple. Well, all of them except the third of the four candles. That one is imaginary-rose. Some people may call it a "pink" candle, some people get really up-in-arms (usually priests) that the candle--and their vestments--are not pink. They're rose. It's a big deal. I guess. Who am I to argue?)

The church buildings that have been teeming with signs of life are getting a little bit more plain for a few weeks. The plants and the flowers are gone. The choir, fresh off of their summer hiatus, have only sang "On Eagles' Wings" for a few weeks before they start practicing the somber songs. Truthfully, there's only one Advent song that everyone knows--"O Come, O Come Emmanuel". And all the songs at church have that same weighty tempo and spirit.

It's the time of the year that people begin to set up their Nativity scenes around their house. It's a pretty common custom to get everything ready--except to leave the Baby Jesus out of his feed-stall crib. Again, we're skipping that step at the Walberg estate. I have this strange fear that if I took Baby Jesus and hid him for the next 25 days, I wouldn't be able to find him on Christmas morning, so Christ would never come and the Gates of Heaven would have never opened and we'd all be Jewish (or Muslim) today. That's a lot of pressure on me, so Jesus is away in his manger the whole time. I hope the Advent Police will go easy on me.

There are a number of family customs about what to do during Advent--most of which seem to be well geared to children. Things like an Advent Calendar or a Jesse Tree a great for kindergarteners and young kids, but adults have it a little harder.

In my case, I'm adding a day of fast and abstinence for Wednesdays (like the Orthodox do). I also plan on adding an extra trip to confession on my 8ish-week routine during the Advent season. I'm not as good with going to confession as I should be-- largely because it's harder than heck to find a confession time that isn't on a Saturday afternoon... which is like the hardest day of the week to go to confession. A poor excuse, I know. But I have to think that other people are in the same boat as me-- if confessions were held on a Thursday night from time to time-- yeah! I'd go much more often. I digress.

Advent is a time of stripping down to basics. The days are getting short. The time of Christ is growning near. Get ready to receive Him.

Yesterday was the first day of Advent.

But is it Christmas?

Let's find out! http://www.IsItChristmas.com

Just checkin'.

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

So if I've got any readers left, let me take a moment to extend a hearty welcome to my re-opening party. Glad to see you.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to see the re-dedication of Old St. Patrick's Oratory in beautiful Kansas City. The church is dedicated to the old Latin Mass and has been a bit of a pet-project of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The church building is the oldest in Kansas City. When it was turned over to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (a fraternity of priests who use the older form of Catholic rites and rituals), the building was in a bad state of neglect and disrepair. It was a long way back from green shag carpet and robin's-egg-blue walls to one of the prettier churches in the city. Christopher from Lost Lambs took some good pictures that he shared in this post from October.

Going to a rededication of this magnitude was a very special privilege for me, and it was a pretty big deal for the diocese. Catholic dignitaries came in from all over the country for this event-- and it sent the parish community scrambling to make sure everything was finished in time. They assembled the confessional the night before the rededication; they were still attaching kneelers to the pews until just a few hours before the first few guests arrived. I was told that the first few pews (where a number of priests sat) didn't have the kneelers even in place yet. Which was unfortunate, because the rededication was about 5 hours long--most of which was spent kneeling.

That's a long time on your knees. It's even longer if your knees are on the church floor. Man. Oh man.

They used a temporary organ at the rededication, the permanent organ wasn't ready for go-time. A Catholic church has relics of saints encased in the altar(s) which are extremely precious. OSP's relics were late coming and didn't arrive until the very last minute; there was some concern that they wouldn't arrive in time at all. Some parts of the rededication could have been glossed over--you can't really skip the relics. They gotta be there. But they arrived at the last minute and the show could go on.

Here's what I'm saying: maybe things aren't perfect around this site's rededication. There's broken links and a couple dead pictures. There might be some strange formatting or layouts over the next couple days. You'll notice that some of the banners have changed, there's even a couple new ones in the rotation. If a blog had kneelers, this one may not have the ones in the front rows finished yet. Be patient. Patience is a virtue.

But it's nice to be back. Welcome in. Tell your friends.