{"id":4529,"date":"2006-11-19T13:16:55","date_gmt":"2006-11-19T13:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/pologies-1.html"},"modified":"2006-11-19T13:16:55","modified_gmt":"2006-11-19T13:16:55","slug":"pologies-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/pologies-1.html","title":{"rendered":"‘Pologies"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the pastor of Christ the King parish in the Orange County diocese – the celebrant of the Halloween Mass. In this week’s bulletin:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

November 8, 2006 <\/p>\n

Dear Bishop Brown: Since 1998, when we first began celebrating liturgies here in Aliso Viejo, a particular dynamic has always been the youthfulness of our community with an obvious abundance of children. With this in mind, many of our programs have been developed to be of service to them and it was in this spirit that we began inviting children to wear their Halloween costumes to the Masses on the weekend prior to Halloween. Many parents inquired if they too could wear costumes so as to make it a family event, and thus, a Halloween tradition of having parishioners in costume at Mass was born. Based on our Catholic-Christian grounding of faith in Jesus Christ, we know that the assorted costumes of Halloween are a manner of poking fun and holding up to the light of Christ\u2019s Resurrection the things that may have once frightened us. <\/p>\n

I am aware that my enthusiasm for our family celebration of Halloween has caused me to neglect my pastoral duties of providing appropriate direction and instruction to our people regarding appropriate\/inappropriate costumes. Prior to the weekend of October 28-29 I failed to adequately instruct our assorted liturgical ministers as to what might be appropriate apparel for their ministry. Because of this oversight on my part, we had some lay ministers of communion attired in devil horns and assorted other costumes that, in hindsight, I could easily have prevented if I had been more attentive to my pastoral duties. Bishop Brown, I stress to you the goodness and faith-filled integrity of the ministers who were so attired, they are some of our most involved and faithful members. They accepted me at my word in regards to their costume making fun of fearful things, and would be mortified to think that they gave offense to people of good faith. The lay ministers are innocent of any wrongdoing, the offense is mine and I take full responsibility. <\/p>\n

I realize that my pastoral neglect and lack of prudent judgment has caused great concern and offense to many in the Church. I have given my life as a priest to the Church of the Diocese of Orange and it causes me great pain to realize that my lapse in judgment could so easily transform a wonderful family tradition into something questionable and repugnant to people of good faith. From my heart I apologize to you and to the larger community of the faithful for my pastoral neglect. I await your counsel and assistance in determining an appropriate manner of making amends for this matter. Sincerely, Reverend Fred K. Bailey <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s a start. Really, it is. Of course, the basic point is still not addressed, which is…and a Halloween Mass with anyone dressed up in costumes is consistent with the Christian liturgical tradition,<\/a> even as diverse as it might be….how? <\/em><\/p>\n

But. It’s a start. Things are moving in a different direction than they were in say, 1975, and we can pray, in good faith and hope and generosity, that they’ll just keep moving…<\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the pastor of Christ the King parish in the Orange County diocese – the celebrant of the Halloween Mass. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}