Well that was interesting and other random thoughts

St. Rita, patroness of impossible causes, pray for us

• I just read an article about my old parish, St. Rita's in 1P5. Normally I don't bother with Steve Skojec's site anymore but I was pleasantly surprised to see St. Rita's. Getting a glimpse of how someone else sees something you care about passionately is an interesting experience.. The author's view of St. Rita's and why things happened was pretty different from mine. He praises Fr. Scalia, who was the parochial vicar, and rightly so because he was pretty awesome (people wept when he announced that he was leaving to be a pastor at another parish), but the author failed to mention Fr. Donohue, the pastor during those years. Everything that Fr. Scalia did was made possible because Fr. Donohue allowed it and he ought to get some credit for that. I even remember Fr. Scalia giving a lecture series for Lent and at one point he said that being a parochial vicar was great because he had Fr. Donahue's backing for all his big ideas.
  
  Also, the number one reason why the music at St. Rita's is so good was not mentioned at all. Mr. Bowie the head of sacred music is not only a fine organist; he's also a very good judge of vocal talent. We never had screeching divas or lounge act tenors at St. Rita's. You had to be be able to sing complicated music. You had to work hard and you had to accept that the Mass is not about the lector and is not a Broadway musical. That was all on Mr. Bowie.The author also left out the reason why St. Rita's is so beautiful. Being in a not so great neighborhood with a  gang problem   heavy gang presence kept the busy bodies out of St. Rita's. So the church retains most of it's architectural beauty and the parish has been largely left alone.
  
  

•  Whenever someone cries poverty in one breath and then talks about their vacation   oh excuse me, pilgrimage to France I always want to laugh. C'mon we all know the plane tickets for the entire family were not free, nor was the hotel or the fabulous food or the trains in Europe. If you can afford to go to Rome and post the photos on your blog er.. lay apostolate, then you aint poor.
  
  
  
  
• I certainly don't want to defend  the odious Cardinal Wuerl but in all fairness there is no way to know if  he saying "I love you" in sign language to a woman in the pew, a man or a group of deaf people. I was not happy  that he was at Archbishop Wilton's installation  but we need to know who he was signing to before assuming that he's talking to a lover in public. 

• Some people are all upset about talk  of Martin Luther King Jr. being an adulterer. Except for the under 30 set, I have to ask, "Where have you people been? Do you not read? Did you grow up in the Twilight Zone?"  Dr. King's best friend the Reverend Ralph Abernathy wrote about the affairs and one night stands in his book''And the Walls Came Tumbling Down'. He wrote that on the last night of his life Dr. King was with two women and got into a shoving fight with a third. Abernathy was called a Judas and was shunned until his death. Georgia Davis Powers   wrote a memoir called I Shared the Dream, years ago. She said that she had a long intense relationship with MLK and was one of the women who was with him on his last night and would have gone with him to the hospital when he was shot had a quick thinking Andrew Young not stopped her. She was not ashamed and justified her behavior as nothing more than what millions of women would have done had they gotten the chance.
  
  The media ignored her book and those of us who read it knew better than to discuss it at work or school.  LBJ used to get a good laugh by playing the FBI tapes of MLK for visitors. JFK, interestingly enough heard them and was saddened. Jackie Kennedy privately told friends that MLK was no saint. It's said that the FBI even sent poor Coretta King a photo of her husband with another woman. In college, professors who did acknowledge that there were other women in Dr. King's life made excuses... he was under constant stress and never knew which day would be his last (true), women were constantly throwing themselves at him (very probably true), the FBI was constantly sending women to try to seduce him (possible) so he fell a couple of times (according to Ralph Abernathy it was more than a couple of times) and he and Coretta were not a love match and she understood that sacrifices had to be made for the greater good, (impossible to confirm as Mrs. King is dead).  None of what you may be reading is new.
  
  I come from a Baptist family. It is common for Baptist preachers to have affairs and as long as  he is discreet it is ignored. Complain and you'll be told, "Touch not, God's anointed," or that it's the pastor's wife's fault because she's not a good First Lady.  A family or two may be upset and leave for another church but nobody cares. A group of families may leave to form another church over it but that's happened so many times before that most churches know how to weather the financial storm until membership stabilizes again.