(1) This sounds promising:
Wednesday of Holy Week, March 23:
7:30 PM Tenebrae Service (Gregorian Chant) St. John’s Catholic Church 6420 Linway Terrace, Mclean, Virginia 22101
(2) In April, there will be a Theology of the Body conference in Chantilly, VA. I attended this last year in Gettysburg, and found it worthwhile.
Tomorrow, I start my graduate seminar in Program Management, Quantitative Methods and Making My Brain Hurt. I will likely be relying on my compadres here at Catholic A’ight to fill in for me while I do Excel functions, statistics, etc.
Sad thing is, I wouldn’t know a two-tailed variance test if it was on the endangered species list…
RC – I will resist the temptation to call for assistance.
Springfield, MA, vocations director Fr. Thomas Pacholec is raising money for clergy abuse victims by running in the Boston Marathon April 19.
As some of you know, I will be in Brooklyn this weekend for a meeting of the Alhambra’s international executive. Friday night is free, so a group of us from the apologetics and St. Blog community are hoping to get together. (We did something similar in Chicago a few weeks, and had a great time!)
Below is the hotel information where I will be staying. Right now, we’re hoping to get together sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 pm. I should be around if you want to come earlier (either in my room, or wearing one of my conservative t-shirts in the hotel lobby or pub) but if you need to come later, please let me know in advance if possible — either by email before Thursday, or by leaving a message for me at the hotel on Friday.
Look forward to seeing you all…
> Marriott Hotel at the Brooklyn Bridge
> 333 Adams St
> Brooklyn NY
> Hotel # (718)246-7000
> Toll Free (888) 436-3759
Reflecting on the sex scandal comments, I’d like to propose a different way of thinking about problems within the Church. Before we, the laity, start criticizing bishops and priests, shouldn’t we ask what we have done to prepare the ground for a scandal? Have we supported good priests and bishops? Worked to make our parishes, schools, and institutions worthy of the name “Christian”? Striven to consecrate our culture to God, or at least to make sure it doesn’t offend him?
I’m not suggesting that bishops who covered up serious sins and crimes should not be punished, either by civil or canon law, nor am I suggesting that blame should be shifted from the perpetrators. The Church doesn’t operate franchises that provide holiness on demand, it provides houses of worship for sinners. The conditions within those houses are largely determined by those who inhabit them, and that means us, dear laymen. If our local house is out of order, perhaps the place to start the renovation is within our own souls.
