So Where Have I Been These Two Weeks?

Was it Mark Twain who famously said, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated?” I need to explain that my ten-day absence was for good reasons. During the last two weeks I have been preparing a proposal/outline for an adult education program for my parish, the target audience being similar to the Catechist Café—motivated students of the Faith who wish to explore Catholic life and writings under a bigger microscope. I make my pitch next week, and most of the prep work is now completed—a one-year proposed curriculum. Hopefully, my program will help my parish next year, but my pastor wants a look under the hood, and rightly so.
 
I spent several days reconnecting with long-time friends via phone or over long lunches. And I have been researching Church life from the angle of sociology, which is not one of my strongholds. Back in 1971 I took an elective on “urban planning” at Catholic University as Washington, D.C.’s subway was being built, and that’s about it. What made me return to the social field was a new book from Eerdman Press—a company that continues to surprise me with valuable books and sponsored research. In this case the work at hand is The End of Theological Education [2023] by Ted A. Smith, a look at the agendas of seminaries vis-à-vis the exodus of people from organized religion, from the point of reference of human behavior.
 
What intrigued me about this work—admittedly after a lot of sweat—was the author’s focus upon mostly Protestant churches. Protestants, and even many Evangelicals, have gone off searching for spirituality without the “religious communities” or congregations of decades before. [The author seems to focus on Presbyterians, which brings hard specificity to the observations he makes.] Sometimes I can get so absorbed in Catholic issues that I overlook the experiences of our sister churches, many of which are far more painful than ours and possible indicators of worse to come for Catholics.
 
On another track entirely, our Trappist prayer group met this week. One of our members has completed her theological training for the Lutheran Priesthood…which brings up for me the question of ordaining women deacons in the Roman Catholic Church. From what I understand, this discussion is one of several that Pope Leo XIV wishes to discuss as he continues Pope Francis’ work of synodality and discernment for the Catholic future. I’ve started collecting resources for that topic.
 
This week marked the end of Windows 10, which means the computer that has served the Café faithfully over the years is now on borrowed time. I have a new model selected, but it’s the bells and whistles that drive you crazy. I am looking for an email program by which Café readers can get an instant link to a new post instantly. [A lot of our friends have given up on social media.] I have the Geek Squad on speed dial.
 
And finally, the happiest news of all: today Margaret and I celebrate our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. There is something incredibly special about love later in life; we were 50 years old when we married in 1998. These have been the happiest twenty-seven years of my life. To that I can only add that her energy, her humor, her spirituality, and her love and concern for the poor give me the example to push on into seniority with the idealism and energy of a teenager.
 
I’ll be back on Saturday or Sunday with a “plain old post. “