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Ash Woden’s Day
And so Lent begins today. This is the first year since my awkward and stumbling embrace of Catholicism began that I will not be observing the day or the season. It is a fitting coincidence that today also marks the anniversary of my receiving my honorable discharge from the United States Marine Corps and became a civilian again. Leaving the Corps was an interesting experience, bringing with it a feeling of being unmoored and yet settled on a somewhat shrouded path. That’s a good description of how I feel today. I look outside and see the tiniest patches of green in the woods and little emerald dots along the length…
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It’s The Usual Question, Regina
It’s always a mistake when I think to myself, “I’ll just duck in here and pick up a few things. It’ll only take a few minutes.” So there we were, meee-eee-eee-eee and Mrs. — Mrs. Orr. (Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr…) There we were, fresh out of a grocery store where we’d stocked up, and on the other side of the parking lot I noticed the Dollar Tree…those places where, yes, everything’s a dollar. They’re great for things like notepads, generic anti-inflammatory drugs and pain relievers like Ibuprofen and acetaminophen, for cheap kitchen matches and implements that can be used in gardening (like colanders for…
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In the Lenten Season
Yesterday on Ash Wednesday, while Catholics were filing into churches (the few that are open, that is) to assist at Mass and to receive the ashes upon their foreheads. While this ancient ritual was going on, I was sitting in a podiatrist’s office, describing my symptoms and listening to the proposed treatment. The joint of my great right toe has been very stiff and painful for some time, and has been increasingly difficult to flex. It has begun to affect my gait, and I figured I’d better have it looked at before the warm weather arrives and my activity level increases with the arrival of grass and weeds and so…
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Ash Wednesday
God has given different gifts to different people. There is no basis for feeling inferior to another who has a different gift. Once it is realized that we shall be judged by the gift we have received, rather than the gift we have not, one is completely delivered from a false sense of inferiority. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen And the season of Lent begins. May our loving Father bless all those who sincerely use this season to seek a more intimate knowledge of Him and His ways. ~ S.K. Orr
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April’s Begun
I managed today to evade any attempts to ensnare me in April Fool’s shenanigans. When I look back at some of the jokes I played on people in the past, I am embarrassed. I am also grateful that I was never the victim of some of the more cruel jokes people play on this day. Some of the cruelty is unintentional, but it’s wise to remember that practical jokes can sometimes assume a life of their own, and once they do, it’s difficult to euthanize them. I’m thinking of a woman with whom I used to work. She made a point of telling everyone in the office, “Do not play…
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Coveting What I Do Not Have
Latin liturgy,Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony,meat-less Fridays,fasting before Mass,the Rosary,the Baltimore Catechism,retreats,the novena (in 1938, seventy thousand people attended thirty-eight novena services at Our Lady of Sorrows in Chicago every week), kneelers, large families dressed in their “Sunday best,”mantillas and chapel caps,religious in habits,statues,large Gothic or baroque churches with dark,quiet places and side altars, elaborate priestly vestments,the smell of incense,the sound of bells at the Consecration,the feeling of awe at the miracle of Transubstantiation—these were all common features of the American Catholic world in the time of the Church’s fastest growth and greatest self-confidence. from America’s Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen, by Thomas C. Reeves (2002, Encounter Books, p. 172) ~ S.K. Orr
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Faith In Exile, Part III – Conclusion
The Lenten season is upon us, and I am adrift. From what I understand, the majority of people who join the Catholic church are received into her arms during the Easter Vigil. Because of complications in my past life including divorce, along with complete uncertainty about which version of Catholicism I should be following, I have resigned myself to probably never being a real, official Catholic. Yet hope remains. I realized some time ago — gradually, like the sunrise, not an immediate clap of thunder — that I had come to believe the Catholic church is the one, true faith…that the Church truly is the pillar and bulwark of the…
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Faith In Exile, Part II
To continue… I began searching out and reading Catholic blogs and websites, and was soon dismayed at what I read. Well, let me clarify that. I was dismayed at what the articles pointed me towards. All the time I had been circling Catholicism, thinking in terms of doctrine and authority and salvation, I had managed to somehow ignore the fact that I was contemplating the Catholic church during a time of great upheaval. I found myself confronted with scism and sexual scandal and allegations of cover-ups and Vatican II this and sedevacantist that and vacant seats and impious popes and illicit popes and illegitimate popes and angry laypeople and apathetic…
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Faith In Exile, Part I
I’ve never until this moment written the following words down, and I’ve only spoken them aloud to my wife. I consider myself a Catholic. I was raised in a non-religious home, although my mother taught us to believe in the God of the Bible, and in His son, Jesus. She allowed us to attend church with friends if we wished, and she prayed with me at my bedside when I was a little fellow. The doctrines — if they can be called doctrines — that I was taught were standard but elusive. The Ten Commandments, and the Sinner’s Prayer, and Jesus waits to be invited into our hearts. But even…