The City

The "Family Life Markers" tour continued yesterday (Tuesday) with a trip on the commuter North Metro line from Croton to Grand Central Station in Manhattan for a day of socializing and sightseeing. It was the first day of my life I ate two meals in GCS, if you could two giant black and white cookies as a supper meal before catching the 6:52 back to Croton.

After a leisurely two-hour lunch Margaret and I struck out on foot for the 40-block hike along Fifth Avenue to the Metro Museum of Art. Along the way we visited temples to God (St. Patrick's Cathedral) and mammon (Trump Tower, yes that Trump Tower). We thought about walking in and walking out of the latter just to say we did it, but suffice to say that the personnel and the firepower gave us cause to pause.

We stayed in the Museum till they threw us out at 5:30, and judging the speed (or absence thereof) of traffic, we decided to walk back instead of hailing a cab, and we did get back to GCS much faster. I don't have time to elaborate on the museum's collection, but the medieval collection is very interesting, particularly if you have any background in medieval spirituality or theology. It would be great to incorporate prints of such art into the blog from time to time; perhaps with some technical assistance down the road we can make that work.

The main reason for trekking into NYC was lunch with one of Margaret's good friends and former religious superiors. Quite a few years of collective religious experience and reflection at our little table. All of us had experiences with superiors in our formations who can only be classified as "crazy." We laughed (now, of course) but on a serious note we did reflect upon the mores of the times in the Church when such abuses went unchecked.

It would be nice to say that such abuses of power are a thing of the past, but I get regular emails personally and through the Cafe from individuals still suffering confusion and anger about excesses of clerical authority, even in my own parish. My generation still has enough foot soldiers to fight the wars, but the research and statistics are there to see that the younger generations are voting with their feet and moving on to other Churches or more likely to no defined assemblies, the "Nones" as they are called. I hope that CARA or PEW gets around to talking to these folks who used to be among us. At the end of the day, they just might have less patience than we did.