THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #70 Time Will Tell Today is Monday. It is my day off. Most people I know don’t think a priest should take a day off. I didn’t either, until I had been a priest for more than twenty years. Most people have not been a priest…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST #69 / EL DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO #69
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #69 Jessie Vocations, or callings, to the priesthood, diaconate, and consecrated life are funny things. We believe that they come from God, but exactly how they come is something of a mystery. Nevertheless, there are discernible patterns, and only after a long time of observing…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST #68 / DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO #68
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #68 A Big Chicken The first few years of my life as a priest were at once simple and difficult. They were simple because I was not a pastor, and the Church in the United States was still, to some extent, basking in Her…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST #67 – EL DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO #67
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #67 The Gingerbread House “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was a song made famous by singer Cyndi Lauper in 1983, four years after it was written by Robert Hazard. It was the first major single released by Lauper and became something of a feminist anthem…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST #66 / DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO #66
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #66 Scenes from Italian Restaurants A close priest friend and I enjoy a meal together with some frequency. We prefer Italian restaurants and Chinese restaurants. The reason is that we spent a few years together in Rome, Italy as seminarians. As inhabitants (without jobs)…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST #65 / DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO #65
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #65 Ghost Busting From time to time, I receive calls from people who think they are the victims of demonic activity. They may be, and they may not be. I do not relish these calls as I want nothing to do with such things. I…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST #64 / DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO #64
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #64 “Good Paper” On occasion I recall my days in the seminary and how, against all odds, I was finally ordained to the priesthood. I am not sure how the average Catholic imagines the life of a seminarian, if he ever does at all,…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST #63 -DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO #63
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #63 The Unity Candle In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, while I was working as a musician, long before I was ordained to the priesthood, the Unity Candle was not only a staple at every wedding, but a sine que non. A wedding without a Unity…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST # 62 – DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO # 62
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #62 A Long Story Having completed some of the most pleasant years of my priestly life at my first assignment at a suburban parish, I was sent to teach in an inner-city Catholic high school. I continued to live at the first parish, about a…
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THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST # 61 – DIARIO DE UN SACERDOTE URBANO # 61
THE DIARY OF AN INNER-CITY PRIEST Diary Entry #61 The Weird Smile There have been numerous unintended negative consequences of the historically relatively recent push for versus populum i.e., “priest facing the people” celebration of the Mass in the Novus Ordo Missae. (For the uninitiated, the New Order of Mass, which…
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