A Sound of Sheer Silence

In the past, I have written about the project that I was a part of called the Community of Mary, Mother of the Redeemer .  As of last Thursday, I am no longer part of CMMR.  It still exists, just without me (and other core members).  I would love to be able to say that I have all the confidence in the world that CMMR will grow and flourish, but that would be a lie.  I think the far more likely outcome is that CMMR is heading for a fiery crash of one of a couple different sorts.  And part of me thinks that flourishing, at least of the public sort, would be the worst possible outcome for all concerned. In any event, my participation in CMMR is over, and thus one could say it was a failure.  In fact, I would definitely say it was a failure.  There are some people who want to relativize failure, to say something along the lines of "well, it wasn't a failure because I learned from the experience."  It is good to learn from experiences, to be sure, but ...

All four of my grandparents have passed on.  My father's father died when Dad was in college, long before my mother (and, thus, I) came on the scene.  Dad's mother died when I was two, so I don't really remember her.  But Mom's parents I remember very clearly.  Grandpa died in October of 1991, and Grandma passed away in August of 2001. There are a handful of things that I remember from those funerals.  For Grandpa's, I remember the torrential rains in the 24 hours beforehand, flooding the streets and requiring the police in the small town where they lived to take us to the church in the "paddywagon."  For Grandma's, I remember that the pastor of the parish in which she had been a member for 50 years couldn't be bothered to come to the wake.  But what I remember maybe the most clearly was one of the hymns, sung at both of those services. It was "On Eagle's Wings," by Fr. Michael Joncas.  This song came to mind because President-elect J...

History is the story we tell about our present, using the past as the main characters. Up until I was ten, I lived in New Jersey.  For those readers who do not live in the United States, New Jersey is a small state (in terms of area, not population) located between two large metropolitan areas--New York and Philadelphia.  Where we were, in central New Jersey along the coast, we were in the orbit of New York, and so we got all of the New York media and New York oriented content.  And yet, Oceanport was not a suburb, at least in the newly-built post-World War II sense of a suburb.  It was really more of a small town--older, more conservative--that happened to be 90 or so minutes on the train from New York City. Fourth grade was the last year I lived in Oceanport, and for social studies we spent the whole year on New Jersey history.  That study culminated in the fourth grade class putting on a play about New Jersey history.  I think about this play a lot, most...

About nine months ago, I wrote a paean to Nativity Parish in Fair Haven, New Jersey , the first Catholic parish where I really had a experience of God and of faith.  The pastor of Nativity when we were there was Richard C. Brietzke.  His name is on the list released today of priests in the Diocese of Trenton who have had "credible accusations" of abuse .   According to this list, he was "removed from ministry." What is interesting is that this seems to have come as a surprise to everyone.  This article from the local paper suggests that this was not a known fact about him .  This is backed up by a glowing piece in the Diocesan paper upon his retirement , providing no indication that anything was amiss.  One wonders, though.  Brietzke was the chancellor of the Diocese of Trenton in the 00s, during the period when, or so we are told repeatedly , the Roman Catholic Church "fixed" its problems with the Dallas Charter.  And the man responsible f...

1.  The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I spent a week in Tallahassee, Florida at an event called Boys' State.  It was put on by the American Legion (an association of foreign war veterans), and it was a government/civics-oriented thing.  The highlight, at least for me, was that you could get yourself "elected" to various positions in a faux state government, and then form up and go through the motions of being legislators and other politicians.  I got "elected" to the State Senate, and we deliberated in the actual Florida State Senate chambers, voted on proposed legislation, and all the rest.  I "served" the State Senate with my (still to this day) close friend Justin (now Father Justin, the Russian Orthodox priest), and we had a grand old time. In addition to the legislative stuff, there was a great deal of, well, political content, for lack of a better term.  The biggest part of this was that we all had to prepare "Am...

I remember what a beautiful day it was.  It was late October, by far the best time of year in most places but especially in the Midwest.  It was probably in the low 50s, with the wind blowing the fallen leaves around, making that distinctive crackling/shuffling sound that will always be associated in my mind with autumn.  The sun was shining in that low, pre-winter angle that gives everything a glow.  It was like something out of a picture book. The night before we had a storm.  I remember that because I was up most of the night, lying in my bed, listening to the wind.  I love listening to the sound of storms normally--I usually find it very soothing, relaxing.  But not that night.  That night, I remember very clearly having this fantasy of the wind blowing down the tree outside my window, driving it through my bedroom, and killing me.  It seemed so real, so plausible.  And, on that night, there was a very real part of me that wanted i...

My first memory of church was my grandmother's parish, Church of the Precious Blood in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey.  It was pure white on the outside with red doors (kind of like an Episcopal Church, ironically), but the inside was small and dark--big dark wood beams bracing the ceiling, lots of 50s-style "Catholic kitsch" statutes.  I remember going with grandma mostly, but we didn't go much otherwise without grandma, especially after the pastor, Earl Gannon (who has been there since the 60s, back to when mom was a kid), publicly called out my mother in the middle of Good Friday service for not keeping her young boys from making more noise than he felt acceptable.  Monsignor Gannon's successor was a child molester, who, based on the timeline set forth in this article, was shuffled off to Precious Blood to get away from the "mess" he created at Incarnation Catholic Church in Ewing .  His  successor never bothered to visit my grandmother--a parishoner of ...

1. In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:  “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler    who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’  Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go a...

Let me tell another story.  I've been thinking about this story quite a bit in the last few days.  I'm not particularly proud of this story, but I think it is worth telling. When I was in law school, someone I knew well and cared about quite a bit came to me and told me a story.  A very well known and much beloved and admired by a certain segment of the legal world (though, not my segment--more on that below) federal judge came to speak at the school, and several students and prominent faculty went to dinner with this judge afterwards.  One of those people was my friend.  At this dinner, the federal judge groped a number of the female students, evidently in public and in front of the (male) faculty members.  My friend did not say so specifically, but I believe she was one of the one's groped. She told me this story a day or so after the incident.  I believed her--truthfully, it never occurred to me to doubt what she was saying.  But I also nev...

Six years is not a long time.  I've now lived in Columbus for six years, and it seems like a blink of an eye since I was living out on the West Coast.  But not all blocks of six years are created equal.  Six years in your thirties, as the last six years have been for me, is not the same thing as six years when you are younger.  Context and timing matter. From August 1990 to August 1996, I lived in Jacksonville, Florida.  That period of six years corresponded with my two years of middle school and my four years of high school.  I was 12 at the beginning of that period and 18 when it ended.  There is an argument to be made that this is the most significant six year period in any person's life, and I am coming to the conclusion that it is the most significant period of my life, by far.  And it was spent entirely in a strange place called Jacksonville, Florida. If you have never been to Jacksonville, you probably have certain associations with "Fl...

1. One of my favorite movies, and a movie I will defend to the death, is The Fountain.   The conventional wisdom is that The Fountain  (2006) was a weird misstep in director Darren Aronofsky's career between the critically acclaimed, commercially successful hits Requiem for a Dream  (2000) and The Wrestler  (2008) (and, later Black Swan (2010)).  That conventional wisdom is wrong-- The Fountain is every bit as good as those films (and I think better than Requiem and Black Swan , though I really like those films).  It is, I will admit, less accessible than some of his other films--it doesn't have a conventional narrative structure, but instead intertwines three related stories.  But if you take the time to work through what is going on, it will reward you. [Also, a quick aside--the soundtrack to The Fountain  by Clint Mansell and Kronos Quartet, is absolutely fantastic.  Even if you don't see the movie, listen to the soundtrack--it i...