Parish Priest Quotes

From that time on the parish priest began to show signs of senility that would lead him to say years later that the devil had probably won his rebellion against God, and that he was the one who sat on the heavenly throne, without revealing his true identity in order to trap the unwary.

Not so many years ago the parish priest would not have let her be buried in hallowed ground. Not any fucking more. No fucking priests allowed instead.

None of this nine or ten nonsense and I don’t care what the parish priest says. There will soon be so many people on this planet that it will be standing room only.

Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.

Father Brendan Flynn: "A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man whom they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this. That night, she had a dream: a great hand appeared over her and pointed down on her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O' Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. 'Is gossiping a sin?' she asked the old man. 'Was that God All Mighty's hand pointing down at me? Should I ask for your absolution? Father, have I done something wrong?' 'Yes,' Father O' Rourke answered her. 'Yes, you ignorant, badly-brought-up female. You have blamed false witness on your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.' So, the woman said she was sorry, and asked for forgiveness. 'Not so fast,' says O' Rourke. 'I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.' So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. 'Did you gut the pillow with a knife?' he says. 'Yes, Father.' 'And what were the results?' 'Feathers,' she said. 'Feathers?' he repeated. 'Feathers; everywhere, Father.' 'Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind,' 'Well,' she said, 'it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over.' 'And that,' said Father O' Rourke, 'is gossip!

One of the great challenges in healthcare technology is that medicine is at once an enormous business and an exquisitely human endeavor; it requires the ruthless efficiency of the modern manufacturing plant and the gentle hand-holding of the parish priest; it is about science, but also about art; it is eminently quantifiable and yet stubbornly not.

Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our people, Papa told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared too much about huge church buildings and mighty statues. You would never see white people doing that.

I had been with them a little more than a year; I had been ordained a little more than two years. How inexperienced and immature I felt at this sudden crisis of such proportions. Supported by the routines of a parish priest, I had ministered to these people in their daily problems, helped them, consoled them, said Mass and brought Communion to the sick, anointed the dying. I had made many friends among them, and they trusted me, young as I was—the young American in their midst. But the war changed everything.

The parish priests themselves were often illiterate, and many complaints were made about their drunkenness and violence.

Although invariably kind and courteous he had the air of seeming not to be particularly interested in human beings – a somewhat doubtful quality in a parish priest, though it had its advantages.

Most of what's known about religious practices in pre-Hispanic Mexico has come to us through a Catholic parish priest named Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, one of the few who ever became fluent in the Nahuatl language. He spent the 1620s writing his "Treatise on the Superstitions and Heathen Customs that Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain". He'd originally meant it to be something of a "field guide to the heathens" to help priests recognize and exterminate indigenous religious rites and their practitioners. In the process of his documentation, though, it's clear from his writings that Father Ruiz de Alarcón grew sympathetic. He was particularly fascinated with how Nahuatl people celebrated the sacred in ordinary objects, and encouraged living and spirit realities to meet up in the here and now. He noted that the concept of "death" as an ending did not exactly exist for them. When Aztec people left their bodies, they were presumed to be on an exciting trip through the ether. It wasn't something to cry about, except that the living still wanted to visit with them. People's sadness was not for the departed, but for themselves, and could be addressed through ritual visiting called Xantolo, an ordinary communion between the dead and the living. Mexican tradition still holds that Xantolo is always present in certain places and activities, including marigold fields, the cultivation of corn, the preparation of tamales and pan de muerto. Interestingly, farmers' markets are said to be loaded with Xantolo.

have heard, again, from other sources — you may laugh, but it is always madness that first gives one an insight into the intensity of a passion — that he has promised vast sums in the way of donations both to the synagogue and to the parish priest in the event of his child’s recovery.

My parish is bored stiff; no other word for it.  Like so many others! We can see them being eaten up by boredom, and we can’t do anything about it.  Someday perhaps we shall catch it ourselves—become aware of the cancerous growth within us.  You can keep going a long time with that in you.

Had he, during the course of his ministry, changed a single life? He recalled the words of a woman overheard when he was leaving his last parish. 'Father Martin is a priest of whom no one ever speaks ill.' It seemed to him now the most damning of indictments." (p. 243). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I experienced a similar delight when I understood that we are called to read the Sacred Scripture every day. From the Altar, the parish priest asked us to promise then and there to do this. True delight overcame me. I decided to begin reading the Sacred Scripture. It was the daily reading of It that started to change my life.

§ 3. Therefore, no other person, not even if he is a priest, may on his own add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy.

evangelical churches often make extroversion a prerequisite for leadership, sometimes explicitly. “The priest must be … an extrovert who enthusiastically engages members and newcomers, a team player,” reads an ad for a position as associate rector of a 1,400-member parish.

When religious sociologists discovered that a parish had a zone of influence which typically radiated 700 metres around its church, Bergoglio told his priests – knowing that Buenos Aires churches were on average 2,000 metres apart – to set up something in between the churches:

Once, during my Catholic days, I was complaining with a Catholic friend about how terrible the teaching was in parish life. A priest listening to us said that everything we griped about was true, but we didn't have to resign ourselves and our children to this fate. 'You could go online to Amazon.com tonight and have sent to you within a week a theological library that Aquinas would have envied,' he said. 'My parents raised me in the seventies, which was the beginning of the catechesis nightmare. They knew that if they were going to raise Catholic kids, they would have to do a lot of it themselves, and they did. So do you.

Now, then, consider this fact, and observe its importance. Whatever the parish priest believes his flock believes; they love him, they revere him; he is their unfailing friend, their dauntless protector, their comforter in sorrow, their helper in their day of need; he has their whole confidence; what he tells them to do, that they will do, with a blind and affectionate obedience, let it cost what it may. Add these facts thoughtfully together, and what is the sum? This: The parish priest governs the nation. What is the King, then, if the parish priest withdraws his support and deny his authority? Merely a shadow and no King; let him resign. Do

Bergoglio was revolutionary when it came to administrative matters too. He put an end to the traditional system of young priests starting in poor parishes and then being promoted with the years to larger and wealthier ones. ‘Nor did he like the idea that the best priests would go off to jobs in Rome’, said Marcó. ‘He saw that as careerism.

Mine is a parish like all the rest.  They’re all alike.  Those of to-day I mean.  I was saying so only yesterday to M. le Curé de Norenfontes—that good and evil are probably evenly distributed, but on such a low plane, very low Indeed! Or if you like they lie one over the other; like oil and water they never mix.  M. le Curé only laughed at me.

Roth stared down at the table. He'd had a normal upbringing---two parents, no suicides, no murders, not even a single wayward touch from a priest in his parish. And yet he still found plenty of to complain about. What was wring with him? Just as people had a bad habit of dismissing others' problems and tragedies, so too did they have a bad habit of not appreciating what they have. Or had.

How often do we hear from the local diocesan people—the bishop, the communications director, the victim assistance coordinator, and others—that this abuse is not restricted to clergy, but, rather, it is a societal problem? It does occur outside in the public realm. When was the last time you heard of a sex offender not being held accountable for his actions once caught? The Church treated the abuse as a sin only and nothing more. Out in society, sex offenders are not moved to another community quietly. “But protest that priests are 'no worse' than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although the extent of the problem will continue to be debated, sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a fact. The reason why priests, publicly dedicated to celibate service, abuse is a question that cries out for explanation. Sexual activity of any adult with a minor is a criminal offense. By virtue of the requirement of celibacy, sexual activity with anyone is proscribed for priests. These factors have been constant and well-known by all Church authorities” (Sipe 227−228).

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis’s devotion to his heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry, it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed shade of the gardens, and down

Quote from Father Tim during a sermon given after the former priest was found after a suicide attempt. "      'Father Talbot has charged me to tell you that he is deeply repentant for not serving you as God appointed him to do, and as you hoped and needed him to do.         'He wished very much to bring you this message himself, but he could not.  He bids you goodbye with a love he confesses he never felt toward you...until this day.  He asks--and I quote him--that you might find it in your hearts to forgive him his manifold sins against God and this parish.'         He felt the tears on his face before he knew he was weeping, and realized instinctively that he would have no control over the display.  He could not effectively carry on, no even turn his face away or flee the pulpit.  He was in the grip of a wild grief that paralyzed everything but itself.          He wept face forward, then, into the gale of those aghast at what was happening, wept for the wounds of any clergy gone out into a darkness of self-loathing and beguilement; for the loss and sorrow of those who could not believe, or who had once believed but lost all sense of shield and buckler and any notion of God's radical tenderness, for the ceaseless besettings of the flesh, for the worthless idols of his own and of others; for those sidetracked, stumped, frozen, flung away, for those both false and true, the just and the unjust, the quick and the dead.           He wept for himself, for the pain of the long years and the exquisite satisfactions of the faith, for the holiness of the mundane, for the thrashing exhaustions and the endless dyings and resurrectings that malign the soul incarnate.           It had come to this, a thing he had subtly feared for more than forty years--that he would weep before the many--and he saw that his wife would not try to talk him down from this precipice, she would trust him to come down himself without falling or leaping.         And people wept with him, most of them.  Some turned away, and a few got up and left in a hurry, fearful of the swift and astounding movement of the Holy Spirit among them, and he, too, was afraid--of crying aloud in a kind of ancient howl and humiliating himself still further.  But the cry burned out somewhere inside and he swallowed down what remained and the organ began to play, softly, piously.  He wished it to be loud and gregarious, at the top of its lungs--Bach or Beethoven, and not the saccharine pipe that summoned the vagabond sins of thought, word, and deed to the altar, though come to think of it, the rail was the very place to be right now, at once, as he, they, all were desperate for the salve of the cup, the Bread of Heaven.             And then it was over.  He reached into the pocket of his alb and wondered again how so many manage to make in this world without carrying a handkerchief.  And he drew it out and wiped his eyes and blew his nose as he might at home, and said, 'Amen.'                 And the people said, 'Amen.

I wondered if he meant celibacy. “You’re right,” my father was saying. “Absolutely.” “I don’t mean it isn’t a sacrifice.” I supposed he did. “It’s a tremendous sacrifice. We had a young fellow, just out of the seminary, come to our parish a few years back, nice as could be, but he didn’t last. He couldn’t take it. Eventually he left and got himself married. So I know it’s a sacrifice. But get rid of it and the priests will become just like everyone, wait and see. You’ll do as well to confess to your barber.

The Church's obsession with sexual restrictions is and always has been wrong wrong wrong. Wrong to be contemptuous of naïve young women like Philomena and me. Wrong to ignore the men involved in creating "illegitimate" children. Wrong to demonize gays while knowing full well how many men and women of the Church are gay. Wrong to excuse and hide criminal priests, transferring them to new, unsuspecting parishes. Wrong to think that forbidding consensual human sexuality is more important than Christ's message of compassion and forgiveness.

Through technology the whole world has now become the media's parish, talk-show hosts the prophets, actors and musicians the priests, and any script will do for the Scriptures as long as moral constraints are removed. Sitting before a well-lit box is all the cultic performance needs, and each person can enthrone his or her own self as divine. Truth has been relegated to subjectivity; beauty has been subjugated to the beholder; and as millions are idiotized night after night, a global commune has been constructed with he arts enjoying a totalitarian rule.

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis’s devotion to his heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry, it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed shade of the gardens, and down the long saloon at the end of which the Venus stood, of those who for the love of man had denied themselves such delicate emotions and gone forth cheerfully to exile or imprisonment. These were the true lovers of the Lady Poverty, the band in which he longed to be enrolled; yet how restrain a thrill of delight as the slender dusky goddess detached herself against the cool marble of

There are many rules a priest can’t break. A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot harm the sacred trust his parish has put in him. Rules that seem obvious. Rules that I remember as I knot my cincture. Rules that I vow to live by as I pull on my chasuble and adjust my stole. I’ve always been good at following rules. Until she came. My name is Tyler Anselm Bell. I’m twenty-nine years old. I have a bachelor’s degree in classical languages and a Master of Divinity degree. I’ve been at my parish since I was ordained three years back, and I love it here. Several months ago, I broke my vow of celibacy on the altar of my own church, and God help me, I would do it again. I am a priest and this is my confession.

At the time of the Emperor's coronation, some small matter of parish business took him to Paris. Among the influential personages whom he had occasion to visit was Cardinal Fesch, the uncle of Napoleon, and it happened one day, when he was waiting in the cardinal's antechamber, that the Emperor passed through on his way to call on his uncle. Seeing the old priest intently regarding him, he turned to him and asked sharply: "Who is the gentleman who is staring at me?" "Sire," replied M. Myriel, "you are looking at a plain man and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit." That evening the Emperor asked the cardinal the priest's name, and shortly afterwards M. Myriel learned to his great surprise that he had been appointed Bishop of Digne.

To my surprise, she knelt down by the side of the grave. "Do you remember me, Father Monroe?" she asked quietly. "Catherine Goggin." "You threw me out of the parish in 1945 because I was going to have a child. You tried to destroy me but you didn't. You were a terrible monster of a man and wherever you are you should feel shame for the way you lived your life." She looked as if she wanted to rip the stone out of the ground with her bare hands and break it over her knee but finally, breathing heavily, she stood up and moved on. I couldn't help but to wonder what might have happened to her if the priest had shown her compassion instead of cruelty, had he intervened with my grandfather and helped him realize that we all make mistakes. If the parish had rallied behind my mother instead of casting her out.

There are, after all, certain social duties that a priest has toward his parishioners, and if that priest is as I was--energetic and gregarious, with an aptitude for such occasions--these duties and occasions have a way of multiplying. There's a great attraction to this: he's doing what he likes to do, and he can tell himself that it's all for the honor and glory of God. He believes this, quite sincerely, and he finds ample support for such belief: on all sides he's assured that he is doing the much-needed job of "waking up the parish." Which is not a hard thing for a young priest to hear; he may even see himself as stampeding souls to their salvation. What he may not see is that he stands in some danger of losing himself in the strangely engrossing business of simply "being busy"; gradually he may find that he is rather uncomfortable whenever he is not "being busy." And, gradually too, he may find fewer and fewer moments in which he can absent himself from activity, in which he can be alone, can be silent, can be still--in which he can reflect and pray. And since these are precisely the moments that are necessary for all of us, in which spiritually we grow, in which, so to speak, we maintain and enrich our connection with God, then the loss of such moments is grave and perilous. Particularly so for a priest--particularly for a priest who suddenly finds that he can talk more easily to a parish committee than he can to God. Something within him will have atrophied from disuse; something precious, something vital. It will have gone almost without his knowing it, but one day, in a great crisis, say, he will reach for it--and it will not be there. And then...then he may find that the distance between the poles is not so great a distance after all....

In fact, properly speaking, no parish priest has any convictions on politics. At the back of his mind, he regards the state as an enemy that has usurped the temporal power of the Pope. Being an enemy, the state must be exploited as much as possible and without any qualms of conscience. Because of this innate and perhaps unconscious hostility to the state as an institution, the parish priest cannot see that it is the duty of a citizen to endeavour to make political life as morally clean as possible. He cannot see that the community as a whole must always come into the forefront of every citizen's political consciousness and that personal interests must be sacrificed to the interests of the nation. No. The parish priest regards himself as the commander of his parish, which he is holding for His Majesty the Pope. Between himself and the Pope there is the Bishop, acting, so to speak, as the Divisional Commander. As far as the Civil Power is concerned, it is a semi-hostile force which must be kept in check, kept in tow, intrigued against and exploited, until that glorious day when the Vicar of Christ again is restored to his proper position as the ruler of the earth and the wearer of the Imperial crown. This point of view helps the parish priest to adopt a very cold-blooded attitude towards Irish politics. He is merely either for or against the government. If he has a relative in a government position, he is in favour of the government. If he has a relative who wants a position and cannot get it, then he is against the government. But his support of the government is very precarious and he makes many visits to Dublin and creeps up back stairs into ministerial offices, cajoling and threatening. He is most commonly seen making a cautious approach to the Education Office, where he has all sorts of complaints to lodge and all sorts of suggestions to make. Every book recommended by the education authorities for the schools is examined by him, and if he finds a single idea in any of them that might be likely to inspire thought of passion, then he is up in arms at once. Like an army of black beetles on the march, he and his countless brothers invade Dublin and lay siege to the official responsible. Woe to that man.

With his Don Juan Mozart enters the little immortal circle of those whose names, whose works, time will not forget, because eternity remembers them. And though it is a matter of indifference, when one has found entrance there, whether one stands highest or lowest, because in a certain sense all stand equally high, since all stand infinitely high, and though it is childish to dispute over the first and the last place here, as it is when children quarrel about the order assigned to them in the church at confirmation, I am still too much of a child, or rather I am like a young girl in love with Mozart, and I must have him in first place, cost what it may. And I will appeal to the parish clerk and to the priest and to the dean and to the bishop and to the whole consistory, and I will implore and adjure them to hear my prayer, and I will invoke the whole congregation on this matter, and if they refuse to hear me, if they refuse to grant my childish wish, I excommunicate myself, and renounce all fellowship with their modes of thought; and I will form a sect which not only gives Mozart first place, but which absolutely refuses to recognize any artist other than Mozart; and I shall beg Mozart to forgive me, because his music did not inspire me to great deeds, but turned me into a fool, who lost through him the little reason I had, and spent most of my time in quiet sadness humming what I do not understand, haunting like a specter day and night what I am not permitted to enter. Immortal Mozart! Thou, to whom I owe everything; to whom I owe the loss of my reason, the wonder that caused my soul to tremble, the fear that gripped my inmost being; thou, to whom I owe it that I did not pass through life without having been stirred by something. Thou, to whom I offer thanks that I did not die without having loved, even though my love became unhappy. Is it strange then that I should be more concerned for Mozart's glorification than for the happiest moment of my life, more jealous for his immortality than for my own existence? Aye, if he were taken away, if his name were erased from the memory of men, then would the last pillar be overthrown, which for me has kept everything from being hurled together into boundless chaos, into fearful nothningness.

A visiting pastor at our church in Plains once told a story about a priest from New Orleans. Father Flanagan’s parish lay in the central part of the city, close to many taverns. One night he was walking down the street and saw a drunk thrown out of a pub. The man landed in the gutter, and Father Flanagan quickly recognized him as one of his parishioners, a fellow named Mike. Father Flanagan shook the dazed man and said, “Mike!” Mike opened his eyes and Father Flanagan said, “You’re in trouble. If there is anything I can do for you, please tell me what it is.ℍ “Well, Father,” Mike replied, “I hope you’ll pray for me.” “Yes,” the priest answered, “I’ll pray for you right now.” He knelt down in the gutter and prayed, “Father, please have mercy on this drunken man.ℍ At this, a startled Mike woke up fully and said, “Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.ℍ Sometimes we don’t feel much of a personal relationship between God and ourselves, as though we have a secret life full of failures and sins that God knows nothing about. We want to involve God only when we plan to give thanks or when we’re in trouble and need help. But the rest of our lives, we’d rather keep to ourselves.

How exactly did Armand Peugeot, the man, create Peugeot, the company? In much the same way that priests and sorcerers have created gods and demons throughout history, and in which thousands of French curés were still creating Christ’s body every Sunday in the parish churches. It all revolved around telling stories, and convincing people to believe them. In the case of the French curés, the crucial story was that of Christ’s life and death as told by the Catholic Church. According to this story, if a Catholic priest dressed in his sacred garments solemnly said the right words at the right moment, mundane bread and wine turned into God’s flesh and blood. The priest exclaimed, ‘Hoc est corpus meum! ’ (Latin for ‘This is my body!’) and hocus pocus – the bread turned into Christ’s flesh. Seeing that the priest had properly and assiduously observed all the procedures, millions of devout French Catholics behaved as if God really existed in the consecrated bread and wine. In the case of Peugeot SA the crucial story was the French legal code, as written by the French parliament. According to the French legislators, if a certified lawyer followed all the proper liturgy and rituals, wrote all the required spells and oaths on a wonderfully decorated piece of paper, and affixed his ornate signature to the bottom of the document, then hocus pocus – a new company was incorporated. When in 1896 Armand Peugeot wanted to create his company, he paid a lawyer to go through all these sacred procedures. Once the lawyer had performed all the right rituals and pronounced all the necessary spells and oaths, millions of upright French citizens behaved as if the Peugeot company really existed.

With his Don Juan Mozart enters the little immortal circle of those whose names, whose works, time will not forget, because eternity remembers them. And though it is a matter of indifference, when one has found entrance there, whether one stands highest or lowest, because in a certain sense all stand equally high, since all stand infinitely high, and though it is childish to dispute over the first and the last place here, as it is when children quarrel about the order assigned to them in the church at confirmation, I am still too much of a child, or rather I am like a young girl in love with Mozart, and I must have him in first place, cost what it may. And I will appeal to the parish clerk and to the priest and to the dean and to the bishop and to the whole consistory, and I will implore and adjure them to hear my prayer, and I will invoke the whole congregation on this matter, and if they refuse to hear me, if they refuse to grant my childish wish, I excommunicate myself, and renounce all fellowship with their modes of thought; and I will form a sect which not only gives Mozart first place, but which absolutely refuses to recognize any artist other than Mozart; and I shall beg Mozart to forgive me, because his music did not inspire me to great deeds, but turned me into a fool, who lost through him the little reason I had, and spent most of my time in quiet sadness humming what I do not understand, haunting like a specter day and night what I am not permitted to enter. Immortal Mozart! Thou, to whom I owe everything; to whom I owe the loss of my reason, the wonder that caused my soul to tremble, the fear that gripped my inmost being; thou, to whom I owe it that I did not pass through life without having been stirred by something. Thou, to whom I offer thanks that I did not die without having loved, even though my love became unhappy. Is it strange then that I should be more concerned for Mozart's glorification than for the happiest moment of my life, more jealous for his immortality than for my own existence? Aye, if he were taken away, if his name were erased from the memory of men, then would the last pillar be overthrown, which for me has kept everything from being hurled together into boundless chaos, into fearful nothingness.

There are features in the situation of the modern religious worker which are peculiar to our own times. The pace and pressure of life is now so great, the mass of detail supposed to be necessary to organized religion has so immensely increased, that it has created an entirely new situation. It is more difficult than ever before for the parish priest to obtain time and quiet of soul for the deepening of his own devotional life. Yet if it is true that the vocation of the clergy is first and foremost to the care of souls, and if only persons of prayer can hope to win and deal with souls in an adequate and fruitful way, then surely this problem of how to obtain time and peace for attention to the spiritual world, is primary for each of you.

Along with their bishops, pastors and priests and religious who administer Catholic schools and hospitals can also fall into the trap of picturing themselves as the proprietors of the Church. In her book The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day spoke of the “scandal of businesslike priests”—the grave spiritual damage done by busy clerics who pride themselves on handling the details of parish administration, giving short shrift to the welfare of the souls entrusted to their care.

the bishop, for instance, is the legal executive of the secular corporation that holds diocesan assets. But a bishop, a religious superior, or the chief officer of a Church-administered hospital does not own the assets; he holds them in trust, to be managed for the good of the faithful. Still, because there are few meaningful restrictions on a bishop’s legal authority over diocesan assets, bishops can and sometimes do misuse the resources that have been entrusted to their care. In the years before the sex-abuse scandal came to light, bishops routinely paid large settlements to the victims of priests’ predation, insisting that the cases must remain undisclosed. When the abuse came to light, bishops authorized additional payments of millions to victims as well as millions to the diocesan lawyers who contested the victims’ claims. In all those cases, there was precious little consultation with the laity, with the people who had donated the funds that were being so rapidly dissipated. When the frightening costs of the scandal forced the closing of Catholic parishes and parochial schools, again bishops made their own decisions about which parishes and schools would be eliminated, rarely providing opportunities for lay people—the parishioners and the parents of students in those schools—to participate in the decision-making process. More ominously, several bishops, in order to avoid prosecution for their endangering children and for failing to report crimes, entered into plea-bargaining agreements with local prosecutors. In a few cases, these agreements imposed obligations not only on the bishops themselves but on their successors; their dioceses were required to submit reports to, and clear policies with, local public officials. In other words, these bishops yielded up the religious freedom of the Church to preserve their own personal freedom. The deals they struck might be described as photographic negatives of martyrdom as, rather than laying down their own lives for the sake of others, too many of our bishops surrendered the patrimony of generations of Catholics to protect themselves. That has been one way in which bishops have betrayed the faithful in recent years.

Consider, for a moment, just the physical resources built up by faithful Catholics in America over the years. Scrimping and saving so that they could contribute their hard-earned nickels and dimes, working-class Catholics bequeathed us beautiful churches, parish schools, hospitals, and universities. Now many of those churches and schools are closed, while the hospitals are being sold off to secular corporations. We cannot ignore the spending of over $3 billion to pay the costs incurred by an inexcusable failure to curb sexual abuse among the clergy—a squandering of resources that has now driven ten dioceses into bankruptcy. Parish closings are commonplace in America today, and prelates are praised for their smooth handling of what is seen as an “inevitable” contraction of the Church. A question for the bishops who subscribe to such a defeatist view. Why is it inevitable? The closing of a parish is an admission of defeat. If the faithful could support a parish on this site at one time, why can they not support a parish today? American cities are dotted with magnificent church structures, built with the nickels and dimes that hard-pressed immigrant families could barely afford to donate. Today the affluent grandchildren of those immigrants are unwilling to keep current with the parish fuel bills and, more to the point, to encourage their sons to consider a life of priestly ministry. There are times, admittedly, when parishes

The position and role of monastic and diocesan clergy evolved as the Church grew, and so did the liturgies they used. As cathedrals or monasteries were the anchors of society in the early Middle Ages, the bells that called priests and monks to prayer also drew in the laity from village and field. They would gather to listen as Lauds or Vespers were chanted. According to historians, the Divine Office was the daily liturgy most available during the week, for daily Mass, offered in public by parish priests, was not a universal custom at that time.

To collect the funding required to erect the papal capital in France, the French popes cut every corner they could, docking pay from parish priests and taxing bishops heavily. Under the loosening authority, the papacy encouraged the use of simony and indulgences, as well as the sale of relics, pearly gate passes, and ecclesiastical seats. 

I was gay because I didn’t know if it would jeopardize my plans for priesthood and nobody wanted an out-of-the-closet gay priest at their parish.

Until the outbreak of the war, Jedwabne was a quiet town, and Jewish lives there differed little from those of their fellows anywhere else in Poland. If anything, they may have been better. The Jewish community was not affected by significant rifts or protracted conflicts. There were a few Chasids in Jedwabne, but spiritual leadership of the community was recognized by all in the person of a pious and respected rabbi, Avigdor Bialostocki. A few years before the war the town saw the appointment of a new parish priest, Marian Szumowski, whose sympathies were with the nationalist party, but until then Rabbi Bialostocki and Jedwabne's Catholic priest had been on very good terms with each other. In addition, by a lucky coincidence, the local police commander was a decent and straightforward fellow who kept order in the town and went after troublemakers, irrespective of their political beliefs or ethnic background. And then the war came.

Do you have or have had a Red Button at your back, within your parish, and you are trapped? Lay red buttons throughout. Then all will have no doubt. There are evildoers about.

When the Archdiocese of Boston appointed Father Joseph Sullivan, a young parish priest from Quincy, as the new pastor, Moira and Katie shopped for dresses together.

with saying it was Waldren who killed Callum, I wonder how sympathetic the public would be to helping find the killer of the bad man?’ She was gathering her things together again and preparing to leave. ‘Well, start with DC Winter, isn’t it, at South Manchester? Bring him in. And I promise to see what else I can do.’ Ted was hoping he wouldn’t be too late getting away. It was his night for self-defence and judo. He’d warned Trev he would be unlikely to make it in time for the juniors but that he would try his best to get there for judo. Now that things were back to normal between them and Ted’s face was looking much better, though was still painful, it would do no harm to remind Trev that he seldom let his guard down without good reason. It could make for a lively evening, which was what he needed. It was late afternoon when Jo came to find him, just before the planned end of day get-together. ‘I’m just back from seeing Páraic’s parish priest, Father Hughes. John,’ Jo told him.

Thus then did I accomplish the vengeance that I had sworn to my father I would wreak upon de Garcia, or rather, thus did I witness its accomplishment, for in the end he died, terribly enough, not by my hand but by those of his own fears. Since then I have sorrowed for this, for, when the frozen and unnatural calm passed from my mind, I hated him as bitterly as ever, and grieved that I let him die otherwise than by my hand, and to this hour such is my mind towards him. Doubtless, many may think it wicked, since we are taught to forgive our enemies, but here I leave the forgiveness to God, for how can I pardon one who betrayed my father to the priests, who murdered my mother and my son, who chained me in the slave-ship and for many hours tortured me with his own hand? Rather, year by year, do I hate him more. I write of this at some length, since the matter has been a trouble to me. I never could say that I was in charity with all men living and dead, and because of this, some years since, a worthy and learned rector of this parish took upon himself to refuse me the rites of the church. Then I went to the bishop and laid the story before him, and it puzzled him somewhat.

How to Become Catholic If you (or someone you know) are interested in becoming Catholic, seek out a nearby Catholic parish and inquire about its RCIA program. RCIA stands for “Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults” and has always been present, in some form, since the beginning of Church history, as a way of preparing adults and older children to enter the Church. It’s also available to Catholics who have fallen from the practice of the Faith and want to come back, or who just want to learn more. Prospective converts to the Catholic faith are called catechumens, which means “ones being instructed.” A local priest or religious education director can determine what level of instruction a catechumen needs, but normally they will encourage the person to take part in a process that includes:

One of the more peculiar sins in medieval Christendom was curiositas, which St. Augustine defined as “the lust for experience and for knowledge.” As the rite of pilgrimage to places like Rome and Jerusalem became popular during the Middle Ages, church leaders fretted that curiositas might distract pilgrims from the task of religious piety. In the minds of many parish priests, a key danger of pilgrimage was that travel could be mind-expanding and pleasurable, and hence at odds with the prim prescriptions and hierarchies that underpinned their authority.

While the traditional movement is tiny in absolute numbers, it has (proportionally speaking) larger families and more vocations. It is a movement of youthful energy, not of church closures and mergers, lay-administered parishes, and elderly priests in retirement homes.

She sat up and stretched her arms above her head with another stout-hearted yawn, showing her navel for a split second. That simple peek sent ripples through him. He wanted to tickle it with his tongue. What have you become? A Victorian parish priest?

While we slept five-to-a-room, priests had nice, spacious houses. The parish priest's was by far the grandest on the estate. Even better, groups of curates lived together in what seemed to a ten-year-old boy the perfect circle of male pals. Priests had housekeepers to look after them – like having a mammy who was not the boss of you. They had cars – very rare in Crumlin. And they had prestige – people looked up to them and they could wander into any house at will for a cup of tea or a plate of rashers and eggs.

Isn’t it an odd thing that doubting doctrines and dogmas not fully articulated until the Middle Ages can make you a heretic? Admitting to your pastor or priest that you doubt God, the Church, or the Bible can get you excommunicated. Yet treating your fellow human beings as though they were worthless scum will get you elected to the parish council (or to the U.S. Congress). Being open and honest about your faith—or lack thereof—will gain you ridicule and contempt. But take heart, fellow Christians. If you pretend everything is good, and that you are a faithful believer in all things, you most certainly will gain the respect of everyone in your community. Well, except the most important person of all—the guy who railed against hypocrisy: Jesus of Nazareth.

Maximilian Kolbe (1894–1941) Dying for another Another victim of Nazi Germany, Maximilian Kolbe is one of the most remarkable saints of modern history. He was born in Poland in 1894 and became a Franciscan monk as a teenager. After being ordained a priest and serving a small parish for several years, Kolbe became the director of one of Poland’s great publishing houses. One of his journals had a circulation of 800,000. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Kolbe worked diligently to protect many Jewish refugees. The Nazis arrested him and sent him to Auschwitz in 1941. At this notorious death camp, the priest labored to set an example of faith and hope to the other prisoners. When a prisoner escaped, the camp’s commandant ordered that ten of the inmates of cellblock 14 be selected for retaliatory punishment. The Nazis would lock them in an underground bunker until they starved to death. One of the randomly selected ten, Franciszek Gajowniczek, began to weep. “My poor wife and children! I will never see them again!” Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place. “I wish to die for that man. I am old; he has a wife and children.” When the deputy commandant asked him to identify himself he responded simply, “I am a Catholic priest.” The startled commandant let him take Gajowniczek’s place. As his companions began to die in slow agony, Kolbe prayed and sang hymns with them. The next month Kolbe and three others were still alive, having consumed nothing but their own urine. The Nazis gave them lethal injections and cremated them in the death camp’s ovens. In 1982, Maximilian Kolbe was canonized a saint as the surviving Franciszek Gajowniczek looked on. Today, someone continually places flowers in the bunker at Auschwitz.

Thanks. But like I said, I'm not really Catholic, Protestant, or anything." The parish priest smiled. "Neither is God.

A bishop has to be able to preach, teach and hand on the Catholic faith in its integrity. He has to see to it that the seven sacraments are available to the faithful. And he has to see to it that the faithful are pastored by well-prepared priests, deacons and others so that they are loved in Christ’s name as they gather into parishes. Those are the three things he must do: the bishop governs, the bishop teaches, the bishop sanctifies.... It comes essentially, however, to three tasks — he governs, he teaches, he sanctifies. He’s shepherd, prophet, teacher, priest, because that is what Jesus is: shepherd, teacher and priest.

Twelve secret presses printed the text in Germany. A clandestine network of couriers carried copies to every parish. Catholic youth used backpack caravans and hiked through the Bavarian Alps, the Black Forest, and along the Rhine. Altar boys pedaled bicycles at night. High school athletes ran across barley farms. Nuns rode motorcycles to remote villages. In church confessional booths, the couriers delivered their cargo to priests. The priests locked the text in their tabernacles, and on Palm Sunday, they read it from every pulpit in the Reich.29

The first thing to do when laborers are lacking is not to apply our intelligence to restructuring a diocese, to reorganize the parishes by consolidating them—which is not to deny the possible usefulness and appropriateness of such a project. Instead, it is necessary to pray that God will raise up many holy vocations to the priestly ministry and the consecrated life. Do

February 2013 Continuation of Andy’s Message (part four)   The priest from Taer and Anak’s parish was as corrupt as they came. The day after I broke ties with the boys, they came to my lodging with their priest demanding monetary compensation for my intimate liaisons with them. I had no idea the Father ran a homeless shelter for runaway kids. This padre was a pimp: he dished out these runaways in return for food and protection.               That day, he labelled me a sinner and pelted me with fire and brimstone, accusing me of corrupting his innocent dependants. Then he proceeded to hound me to repent from my nefarious ways. According to this man of God, ‘the one and only way’ to cleanse my moral impurities was to confess and donate to his parish. He gave me an ultimatum to appear at his office at the soonest and told me he would not hesitate to contact the police if I transgressed. But as soon as they were out of sight, my buddies and I vanished to another island without trace. From there, we departed for Canada, knowing the threat had been nothing but fraudulent extortion. (Besides, I knew if I had gone in for confession, he would have tape-recorded my penance to blackmail me). My intuition had served me well: a year later, I came upon a TV documentary exposing the Marcos’ state and church corruption in the Philippines. One of the indicted priests was none other than the man who had accosted me the year before. Young, you probably are aware that corruption runs rampant in Third-World countries. This tale of mine is just one cautionary example of many. This disreputable experience had left its loathsome mark – one I had difficulty quelling, even though I wanted to see more of this awe-inspiring country. Maybe my apprehension will dissipate if I visit that part of the world with you, cherished memories in hand. You’re one fine specimen from that region.☺   Your loving ex, Andy XOXOXO

Oh, yes," Father Mancuso nodded. "As Father Ryan mentioned, I've seen and heard many who've come to me as a psychotherapist and as a parish priest." Chancellor Ryan picked up the thread. "Then there are the so-called extraordinary activities of the devil in the world. Usually these are material things around a person that are affected; that might be what you're up against. We call it infestation. It breaks down into different categories which we'll explain in a minute." "Obsession," Father Nuncio put in, "is the next step, in which the person is affected either internally or externally. And finally there is possession, by which the person temporarily loses control of his faculties and the devil acts in and through him." When Father Mancuso had come to the Chancellors' office to keep his appointment, he had been somewhat embarrassed as to how to approach his problem. But he relaxed as the two priests had shown keen interest. Now with their spelling out the guidelines he must take in this kind of situation, Father Mancuso raised his hopes for deliverance from this evil. "In investigating cases of possible diabolical interference," Chancellor Ryan went on, "we must consider the following: One, fraud and deception. Two, natural scientific causes. Three, parapsychological causes. Four, diabolical influences. And five, miracles. In this case, fraud and trickery don't seem plausible. George and Kathleen Lutz seem to be normal, balanced individuals. We think you are too. The possibilities therefore are reduced to psychological, parapsychological, or diabolical influences." "We'll exclude the miraculous," Father Nuncio broke in, "because the Divine would not involve itself in the trivial and foolish." "True," said Father Ryan. "Therefore the explanation would seem to include hallucination and autosuggestion - you know, like the invisible touches Kathy experienced - and when George thought he heard that marching band. But let's take the parapsychological line. Parapsychologists like Dr. Rhine, who works at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, define four main operations in the science. The first three come under the general heading of ESP-extrasensory perception. They are mental telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, which could explain George's visions and 'picking up' information that seems to coincide with known facts about the DeFeos. The fourth parapsychological area is psychokinesis, where objects move by themselves. That would be the case with the Lutzes' ceramic lion - if it did move," he added. Father Nuncio got up to refill his cup. "All of what we've said, Frank, is part of the suggestion we have for the Lutzes. Have them contact some investigative organization like Dr. Rhine's to come in and look at the house. They'll do extensive testing and I'm sure they can come to some conclusion short of diabolical influence.

With his deep understanding of the needs of the Church, Pius X often saw things with a most remarkable clarity. An interesting conversation of the Holy Pontiff with a group of Cardinals was reported in the French clerical publication, “L’Ami du Clerge.” The Pope asked them: “What is the thing we most need, today, to save society?” “Build Catholic schools,” said one. “No.” “More churches,” said another. “Still no.” “Speed up the recruiting of priests,” said a third. “No, no,” said the Pope, “the MOST necessary thing of all, at this time, is for every parish to possess a group of laymen who will be at the same time virtuous, enlightened, resolute, and truly apostolic.

Mary seems unsympathetic to the need for evidence, and occasionally is willing to cure only those who had believed the account of her apparition before she supplied 'signs'. And while there are no therapists, per se, the society is suffused by a network of influential parish priests and their hierarchical superiors who have a vested interest in the reality of the visions.

The clergy of the TV religion are those entertainers, newscasters in particular, who nightly spread the Word from their cathode-ray pulpit. The network newscasters are the High Priests and High Priestesses of Satanism, bending the minds of viewers to the requirements of consumer marketing. The local newscasters are the parish priests, yawking, ribbing and emoting over the latest local tragedies. Celebrities, whether local or national, are all part of the hierarchy of the church, men of the cloth. There should be no complaint regarding network High Priests arriving to report on scenes of devastation in white stretch limos. After all, they are royalty within the Church and should be accorded the same privileges as a visiting Pope, Cardinal or Archbishop.

An "exorcism" carried out by these untrained individuals very often becomes a source of misinformation, unecessary pain, a sideshow circus atmosphere. Not to mention the very serious dangers inherent in the actions of such dubious individuals for the victims body and soul. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that we are able to recognize and find a legitimate exorcist. The first step should always be to ask your parish priest for direction. And as a rule NEVER pay money for such ministry.

Alice knows those stories. The routiers and condottieri of the Free Companies, who fight the wars of whichever prince will pay their fees, and amuse themselves in between times, are said to commit every kind of crime: from eating meat in Lent to slitting open pregnant women to kill their unborn and unbaptised children. The countryside of the southern lands is supposed to be full of their victims: a sea of vagabonds - priests without parishes; destitute peasants; artisans looking for work. ‘So you’, Alice says, ‘were one of the famous sons of iniquity…’ The Pope calls them that when they rob churches. But the Pope also uses them regularly. Alice knows she sounds a little breathless. She can’t altogether keep the admiration out of her voice. If she’d been a man, she thinks, she might have done exactly the same thing as Wat, to better herself fast.

Kevin defended him. The parish in Yonkers was 100 percent Irish, he rationalized, and the priest had no choice but to affirm his community's values. I disagreed. Bigotry is not a value.

Under the wind ,a wren, in the sunlight among fallen laves in a dry ditch seemed suddenly divine , like a small brown priest in a parish of dead leaves and wintry hedges , devoted till death.

The illicit Irish homemade spirit, poitin was frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which made its manufacture grave enough of a sin to require a bishop's absolution rather than that of the regular parish priest. Ah, the lengths the Irish will go to for "the demon drink!

86. Priests engaged in the sacred pastoral ministry will offer the praises of the hours with greater fervor the more vividly they realize that they must heed St. Paul’s exhortation: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thes 5:17). For the work in which they labor will effect nothing and bring forth no fruit except by the power of the Lord who said: “Without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).

Every hundred years or so a new Grim Anoukie is made; the Parish Priest at the time picks a victim, usually someone who has pissed off the church or simply wouldn’t be missed. He then buries them alive in the Virgin Grave; the rest is... history.” Nicky Peacock “The Virgin Grave

Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (Michael Joseph, 1983) The Arthurian myth is told here from the women’s perspective, first through the story of Igraine, and later concentrating on Morgaine, Arthur’s sister, and her training as a priestess on the Isle of Avalon, presided over by the Lady of the Lake. War in Heaven, Charles Williams (Faber, 1930) The Holy Grail is discovered in a country church, occasioning a struggle for its possession between the forces of darkness and of light, in the persons of a group of occultists and their black magic rituals, and a parish priest.

Ames looked on with arms crossed, the pleased and pompous priest. But I wasn’t a member of his parish. I was my own god, and his church was about to be burned to hell. He just didn’t know it yet.

demons are extremely legalistic and know who has authentic spiritual authority over them. The diocesan bishop has jurisdiction in his diocese, as do the mandated exorcist and his team. Your parish is considered your spiritual home; your parish priest, your spiritual father. For your spiritual protection, be aware of authority and jurisdiction.

Later, when my mom, Loretta died in September 2019 the local parish priest at Saint Isadore’s in Riverhead, N.Y. refused to let me eulogize my mother because he knew of my sexuality and about some of my published writings. Rather than be empathic and allow me to honor our mother he rejected me, a gay man.

This Roman view is, moreover, imposed on bishops, theologians and parish priests by its incorporation in routine oaths of loyalty. It causes great anxiety to theologians who cannot admit the validity of Rome's arguments. 'I use mental restriction', one lecturer at a theological faculty told me. But are we allowed to compromise with truth? What if we know Rome is wrong? Does complicity with non-truth not undermine everything we are trying to do, as the community of Christ, as priests, as theologians? I believe it does.

The universal Church touched every corner of western Europe and practically all aspects of life from politics to market behavior, but it was not a monolithic institution. Very much the opposite: Because it channeled and encompassed practically all spiritual life, the Church, by necessity, had to be a big tent. It contained multitudes: poor, illiterate priests in isolated rural parishes with secret wives and broods of children, who rarely saw their uninterested parishioners; charismatic Dominican preachers capable of attracting crowds of thousands in towns and cities; places like the brand-new castle church of Wittenberg, built in Renaissance style and packed with holy relics in expensive gilded cases; towering Gothic cathedrals, already centuries old, dominating the skylines of the continent’s prosperous urban centers and serving as headquarters for rich, powerful bishops who pulled political strings from London to Leipzig; leaky-roofed monasteries, housed by a few elderly monks in threadbare robes begging for donations to fix a tumbledown refectory; university theologians steeped in the brutally dense works of Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham who spent their time teaching students and arguing about scholastic philosophy; devout laywomen, reading books of hours in the privacy of their prosperous homes; sword-swinging Hospitaller Knights, soldier-monks in armor and black habits, beheading Muslim sailors on the decks of galleys under a blue Mediterranean sky. The Church was all of these things: corrupt and saintly, worldly and mystical, impossibly wealthy and desperately impoverished.

Then it was time for Holy Communion. Seamus was introduced as a “distinguished priest all the way from the Holy Name parish in New York City.” I could see that it sounded great to others. But I still saw the old man who made fart noises when I tried to discipline the kids.

All round about us, in our parishes, in our daily contacts with men, are countless masses of souls that are like gold ingots covered with dross. And we, if we but had the fire of the Spirit, would burnish them into jewels of the Kingdom of God!

In her book Leaving Church, former parish priest and award-winning preacher Barbara Brown Taylor describes what it was like to feel her soul slipping away. She says: Many of the things1 that were happening inside of me seemed too shameful to talk about out loud. Laid low by what was happening at Grace-Calvary, I did not have the energy to put a positive spin on anything. . . . Beyond my luminous images of Sunday mornings I saw the committee meetings, the numbing routines, and the chronically difficult people who took up a large part of my time. Behind my heroic image of myself I saw my tiresome perfectionism, my resentment of those who did not try as hard as I did, and my huge appetite for approval. I saw the forgiving faces of my family, left behind every holiday for the last fifteen years, while I went to conduct services for other people and their families. Above all, I saw that my desire to draw as near to God as I could had backfired on me somehow. Drawn to care for hurt things, I had ended up with compassion fatigue. Drawn to a life of servanthood, I had ended up a service provider. Drawn to marry the Divine Presence, I had ended up estranged. . . . Like the bluebirds that sat on my windowsills, pecking at the reflections they saw in the glass, I could not reach the greenness for which my soul longed. For years I had believed that if I just kept at it, the glass would finally disappear. Now for the first time, I wondered if I had devoted myself to an illusion.

On September tenth, after a busy day at the parish, and without any forethought, I stopped at a liquor store before I headed upstate to the Villa. I wouldn’t allow myself to recognize the insanity of drinking a bottle of wine as I drove to a rehab facility. I flashbacked to my father’s beer cans, in paper bags, between his legs as he drove. I was sure God was tapping on my shoulder, but I wasn’t responding. I coasted comfortably on autopilot, one of the most dangerous modes a human being can find themselves.

same-sex marriages of women to women in the eighth century. These were legitimate marriages undertaken by parish priests who recorded the marrying women’s names in parish records in the usual way. As England came under the same papal jurisdiction, women-only marriages probably took place in English churches too. The wording of English marriage services from the tenth century speaks of a ‘wife’ and a ‘bride’ and blesses future children of the marriage but does not define the marriage as heterosexual.

The students had been to Villaviciosa but what they wanted was to find the highway to Ures or Hermosillo. Each night they made love to her, in the car or on the warm desert sand, until one morning she came to meet them and they were gone. Three months later, when her great-grandmother asked her about the father of the child she was expecting, the young María Expósito had a strange vision: she saw herself small and strong, she saw herself fucking two men in the middle of a salt lake, she saw a tunnel full of potted plants and flowers. Against the wishes of the family, who wanted to baptize the boy Rafael, María Expósito called him Olegario, the patron saint of hunters and a Catalan monk in the twelfth century, bishop of Barcelona and archbishop of Tarragona, and she also decided that the first half of her son’s last name wouldn’t be Expósito, which was a name for orphans, as the students from Mexico City had explained to her one of the nights she spent with them, said the voice, but Cura, and that was how she entered it in the register at the parish of San Cipriano, twenty miles from Villaviciosa, Olegario Cura Expósito, despite the questioning to which she was subjected by the priest and his incredulity about the identity of the alleged father. Her great-grandmother said it was pure arrogance to put the name Cura before Expósito, which was the

You’re the parish priest – your word weighs a hundred times a normal man’s, two hundred times a woman’s, three hundred times a child’s. Your word is a silver weight in the palm. Your word is worth trading money for. It would cut like a stone through water.

Chelo, our housekeeper, told me that the sounds of the wind blowing through the trees were lost spirits snagged on the branches and calling out. How they sighed and moaned. They’re searching, Chelo would say, and when I asked for what, she’d laugh and answer, ¿Qué sé yo? What do I know? Chelo and I never mentioned the significance of those sighs to Grandmother, because she, like our parish priest, didn’t approve of “superstitious nonsense.

In 1523 Luther was still arguing that a Christian congregation had the authority to judge all doctrines and to call its own In effect he called upon Christian parishes to expel Catholic priests who taught doctrines contrary to the word of God and to install in their place preachers of the gospel. But when peasants demanded the right to choose their pastors and installed preachers whose doctrines differed radically from Luther's, he quickly and with characteristic vehemence retreated from this dangerous democratic impulse. The puritans who followed the teachings of John Calvin continued to insist on the right of congregations to choose their pastors-and so contributed mightily to the ideals of democracy in Scotland, England, and the United States. Germany was to go in another direction, and although Luther cannot be blamed for this authoritarian German bent, his growing distrust of the common people was so great that his Reformation did not oppose a broader national evolution to rule from the top.