On Sept. 5, 1920, Laura Cardoso left the family home in which she had been born to marry Salustiano Roque de Freitas. Nearly 100 years later, I visited that home, now deserted, in her village in Goa, India.
Many years ago, I heard the story of a school principal in South Africa who quit his job rather than submit to the school’s apartheid policy of racial discrimination. His friends told him he was crazy, but he said, “One day I am going to meet God, and God will ask me, ‘Where are your wounds?’ If I reply that I have no wounds, God will ask me, ‘Was there nothing that was worth fighting for?’ I could not face that question.”
I am not a gardener. In fact, I moved into a house with a large garden a decade ago and I joke that I have killed off one species of plant each year. Except that it’s not a joke.
When I was in Grade 8 at St. Augustine School in Regina, one of the priests at the neighbouring Little Flower Church frequently asked me to be the altar server at funerals. After a few of these ventures, my teacher told me to stop taking time away from school to serve at these Masses. I considered his command and decided that since this was a Catholic school, being the server at these funerals was the right thing to do. So, I engaged in my first acts of civil disobedience.
Hate crimes
It’s sad that we have come to a time when churches and statues of saints are being defaced and vandalized.
The news that parishes have taken a financial punch to the gut during the pandemic is not surprising. What can’t happen is allowing them to wallow in financial uncertainty, threatening the services that have defined Catholic values and, in so many ways, our lives.
Whether or not you’ve heard the term “cancel culture,” you’ve undoubtedly been observing it just about everywhere, gaining more and more traction.
Near the end of June, I pulled into our parish parking lot full of gumption at the resumption of Masses after four months of COVID-forced church closures.
Persistence pays off.
Falling is on my list of least favourite things.
A new low
Re: Wanton destruction of religious art:
The standard dictionary definition for an iconoclast is one who attacks cherished beliefs and institutions and a destroyer of images used in religious worship.