St. Gertrude Catholic Parish

Dear St. Gertrude,
Today is the official end of what the Church calls Christmastime. The added feasts of the Holy Family, Epiphany, and the Baptism of the Lord round out the attention given to the hidden life of Jesus. After today we enter what the Church calls ordinary time in which we follow the public life of Jesus. The Baptism is the beginning of His public life.

We have had some good news for the parish on the financial front:

• We have been named in two wills as beneficiary: two thousand dollars from each.
• The offer to give $10,000 at the end of 2003 if new money could be found from parishioners who had just recently registered or who hadn’t registered previously resulted in a $21,000+ bonanza. Thank you, Rosemary and Joe O’Neill for such a generous and creative gift.
• Other very generous gifts for Christmas give us a collection of $35,000 and climbing. We had budgeted for $30,000.
• Some very complimentary mail brought more end of the year generosity. All told, we have climbed out of our mounting deficit and we are very grateful for all this kindness.

We are also very grateful to Mary Horan for the wonderful job she did as a replacement for our musician extraordinaire, William Coble. William was busy at Harvard and Bellagio, Italy for eleven weeks. He was working on his doctorate degree in music and studying under a master musician. We have so much talent in our parish that we only had to look as far as Glenlake to find a replacement. Thanks so much, Mary, for your great work. (Mary had a recital in church last week for her piano students. Those lucky kids did a great job!)

Last week’s bulletin was musing about the three gifts the Magi brought. The world needed gifts for the Near East, Africa, and China. The Church could use three gifts. These are the gifts I think the Church needs:

1. A democratic spirit. Somehow, the choice of bishops, the priorities in a parish, the proper direction of the collections, should be influenced by the will of the people. If the American Church can offer anything to the full Catholic Church, it is the worth of a trust in the people’s intelligence and democratic spirit.
2. A married clergy. We have been making woeful choices since the hierarchy has admitted the shortage of priests. To avoid the obvious solution of ordaining people like Peter Buttitta (and I could name a dozen others in the parish) the bishops have gone outside our country, outside our local Church, outside our traditional urban theology to recruit a whole different breed of priest. They say it is the Holy Spirit. I say it is dumb choices.
3. A more balanced theology. The powers-that-be in the Church is very much like the powers-that-be in the Congress. There is a very partisan atmosphere, which is both belligerent and uncompromising. There is an all or nothing approach. Just read the Catholic New World to sense this offensive stance. We sure could use some of the suave kindness that Jesus showed in His encounters with those with whom He disagreed.

Thanks for listening,
WK

Filed under: Dear Saint Gertrude