Our weekend getaway to Kansas City is complete. A rush of nitrogen and oxygen buffeted our mid-size car on I-35 on the way north this afternoon. Otherwise, it was a good beginning to a year which, hopefully, will be an improvement on what was a mostly crummy 2011.
Years, I think, are successful or crummy to the extent we are able to engage their obstacles and emerge unscathed, if not smiling. I count up a good pile of obstacles: financial slippage on the rental house in Kansas City and my wife’s continuing worries about “losing everything,” a brother sent off to eternal life (my young nephew in contrast, lost a dad, a grandpa, a great-grandfather in 2011), a mostly ridiculous MR3 translation. On that last point, I noticed my old KC parish had a significant number of worshipers using the old words. Who knows why: ticked off at the bishop; upset about prioritizing deck chairs above the safety of children? Anybody’s guess.
Speaking of my old parish, my friends reported on an Advent penance service there designed to help people work past anger at Bishop Finn and mismanagement of predators and child safety. I have to say I’m less angry and more worried. My wife reported our daughter sang at Mass for the first time in months and even recited the new Creed.
Saint Paul advises that a bishop be blameless. This is certainly not the case in my old diocese. I’m sure that parishes are paying dearly for this. Not to mention the hemorrhaging of the Body. I’ve been debating internally about writing my last bishop. Not to ask him to resign. From a ministry viewpoint, I think he probably needs to go to a monastery somewhere. But he might need to hear from a worried parent concerned that he and his priest have damaged the faith of a young person who, to the best of my knowledge, only got as close to a predator as the harming of her peers.
Ah well. Bishop Finn is at war. I don’t think he realizes which one. Happy New Year all. We’re going to need one.
