Really. A reader. Not me. Got it?<\/p>\n
May marks 25 years as a vagabond Catholic. It’s hard to concoct a list anymore of the dioceses, bishops, archbishops, priests, parishes. They sort of run together after a while. Some very liberal, some others would call ultra-conservative — all made of the same human flesh burdened with a job most of us have no aspiration to.<\/p>\n
As memories, some old, some just last week have come to the fore, the words of Augustine have invaded my meditation of late — coupled with ‘battle fatigue,’ I just cannot get too excited about this stuff.<\/p>\n
When confronted with the question of what to do about the validity of sacraments celebrated by determined heretics, he concluded that grace is grace, regardless of the pet heresy of the celebrant.<\/p>\n
So, no matter how lame the song, insipid the homily, posture rules regulated by the resident liturgy nazi, whether Fr elevates the host to a reverent altitude, etc., we all need to remember:<\/p>\n
Bread is blessed, bread is broken, Jesus comes–
\nand we should be grateful for His gift.<\/em><\/p>\nThe reality is there is no nirvana mass — at best, they are divinely inspired yet humanly hapless actions.<\/p>\n
The miracle is that God tolerates our obsession with ‘stuff’. And still chooses to dwell with us.<\/p>\n
That’s a real sacrificial love.<\/p>\n
So I figure that if God doesn’t smite the obsessive compulsive disordered music minister, neither shall I.<\/p>\n
If He compassionately tolerates the young rigorist priest who so fears “messing up” that he’s lost sight of the miracle in his hands, so shall I.<\/p>\n
If He has put up with Fr. Silver Fox and his good-feelin’ sermons for thirty years — I guess I can put up with one a month.<\/p>\n
If He hasn’t prematurely raptured the Closer to God Brigade that insists upon praying the rosary during the Mass, I’ll honor their devotion with a smile — and close my eyes if it drives me nuts.<\/p>\n
If He puts up with the old couple behind me who choose to substitute God for every masculine pronoun, I’ll tune it out and listen to the 99.5% who do not.<\/p>\n
\nIf He can put up with my own distractibility and frustration and yet, time and after time, guide my sight and hearing back to what He offers in front of my nose, I thank Him for counting me among His motley crew.<\/p>\n
Does this mean I no longer long for a ‘better’ mass? No. It’s just a matter of perspective and balance — the last I checked Howard Cosell’s Palestinian ancestor was not a guest at the Last Supper. [From Amy: huh?] <\/em>All I can do when it really comes down to it, is pray that all of us present, myself included, be open to the will of the Father.<\/p>\n
There’s just so much time I can devote to armchair liturgy discussions otherwise, it robs time from other pursuits like tending to my prayer time, preparing my RE lesson, helping my neighbor… so as best to follow the Will of the Father.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Really. A reader. Not me. Got it? May marks 25 years as a vagabond Catholic. It’s hard to concoct a list anymore of the dioceses, bishops, archbishops, priests, parishes. They sort of run together after a while. Some very liberal, some others would call ultra-conservative — all made of the same human flesh burdened with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
From a Reader - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/from_a_reader_16.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From a Reader - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Really. A reader. Not me. Got it? May marks 25 years as a vagabond Catholic. It’s hard to concoct a list anymore of the dioceses, bishops, archbishops, priests, parishes. They sort of run together after a while. 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May marks 25 years as a vagabond Catholic. It’s hard to concoct a list anymore of the dioceses, bishops, archbishops, priests, parishes. They sort of run together after a while. 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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\/7644","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=7644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}