Abbey-Roads2

Smile Away. 

I had the best dream about the Pope.  In it he actually came to visit me because he had read my blog.  I was so embarrassed to meet him that I called Fr. Z and some other priests I know to be with me when I met him.  I hoped the Pope would pay more attention to them and lose interest in getting to know me.  I was afraid he would realize how uneducated and unaccomplished I am in comparison with these other brilliant bloggers.  But he wouldn’t have it.

He moved through the crowd of priests and other bloggers who showed up, and put his arm around my shoulder and said, “I hope you will excuse us, I came to see Terry.”  I turned beet red with embarrassment, and began to perspire.  After everyone left us, I felt much more nervous and tried to distract the Holy Father by directing his attention to the countryside.  (It semed as if we were at Holy Hill in Wisconsin, on a very sunny day, standing on the church steps, and we could see all the way to Lake Michigan.) 

He knew I was nervous and said, “Just relax and be yourself, we will spend the day together just like George and I sometimes do.”  (George is his secretary.)  He also told me I could just call him Father, like George does. 

“But I thought Monsignor Ganswein called you ‘Holiness’ and you called him  Father?”  I protested.   The Pope laughed and explained to me that was true in the office, but in the evening George calls him “Father”.  Anyway - that set the tone and put me at ease, since I realized the Pope wasn’t there to interrogate or evaluate me.  I thrilled to think he was simply there because he wanted to be with me.

We drove around in a 1930’s German sports car. I did the driving, and we made frequent stops to look at medieval chapels along the way.  He explained that the parishoners liked it when the Pope visited so they could mount a plaque commemorating the event after he left.   We picked up lunch at Bayonne, in the south of France, and decided to drive onto Rome after we ate.  The Pope wanted to show me something in his apartment at the Vatican, but wouldn’t tell me in advance what it was. 

The most pleasant aspect of travelling with the Pope, is that he actually cared about me, immersing himself in the present moment, without anticipating meeting anyone else.  He expressed genuine interest in what I had to say, and never talked down to  me.      He was quite like a loving father, very comfortable to be around, and completely unpretentious.  I recall thinking that for such a great academic, an intellectual of such international stature, he remained amazingly simple and down to earth.

I mentioned to the Pope how very different he is from John Paul II, that unlike his predecessor, he is actually much more personable and genuine.  I told him I thought John Paul II always seemed to be aware of, if not preoccupied with himself, his presentations and public appearances.  While on the other hand, Benedict seemed much more interested in others.  I tried to explain myself better by saying I thought JPII appeared to be there to dictate and expound intellectually.  I told him the former Pope impressed me more as a statesman or an international celebrity, and therefore remote. 

I soon realized I was embarassing the Pope, but quickly finished my critique saying,  “It is so hard for me to explain what I mean, but you appear to be much more available for others.  You are far more accessible and apt  to listen and encourage; respecting contrary beliefs and opinions, without compromising dogma.  You seem to convince others of what is right and good, rather than lecture them.   And you do it all so effortlessly.”

Suddenly we found ourselves in the Vatican, amidst a great hustle and bustle of activity.  (I was sure our trip ended becuse I had been so blunt as to my feelings about John Paul II.)  I noticed Pope Benedict had disguised himself as an ordinary Roman priest so that we wouldn’t be noticed.  We had to be secretive since it turned out everyone was looking for the Pope, and if we were discovered, they would accuse me of kidnapping him.  The Pope told me, “We must get back to the car and return to where we started.” 

I was thrilled he wanted to come home with me, but I said, “No Holy Father, we are here.  You must sneak back into the apartment and I’ll go home by myself.  Act as if you never ran away in the first place.  You are the Pope - you don’t have to answer their questions.”  Smiling, he blessed me, thanked me for the day, and told me he loved me.  I hugged him and assured him of my love and prayers, surprising him with a kiss on the cheek.  Then he left me, walking away quickly, deftly sneaking into a hidden corridor, smiling back at me as he disappeared through the secret passageway.

I walked away extremely sad, knowing we would never be able to spend time together like that again - he would be much too busy.  Looking back at the apostolic palace, I was thrilled to see the Pope standing in his window waving to me, holding up a cat.  That was the secret he had to show me.  He wanted me to see they allowed the Pope to have a cat in the Vatican, and to know he would be all right there alone.

[Top-most photo credit:  Gerald, Closed Cafeteria ;  Middle photo credit:  Catholic Mom of 10]

Just thinkin’ about nothin’.

#1)  Not all devout Catholics were always devout - some were great big sinners - even anti-Catholic - before they became devout.

#2)  Not all cradle Catholics practiced their faith their entire lives.

#3)  The rule that women should cover their heads  for Mass was never changed.

#4)  Many Catholics do not like the Stewardship Campaigns conducted by their parishes because it seems too much like the Protestant ethic of tithing - and even Protestants don’t like that idea.

#5)  The Pope looked very papal  at the consistory this weekend.

#6)  Oprah is going to teach  “A Course In Miracles”  based upon the book with the same title by Marianne Williamson which is based on a nonsensical New Age cult/belief system.  As the Irish might say - it’s a bunch of malarkey.

#7)  Nuns who wear traditional habits do not, as a rule, shave their heads, they simply cut their hair short.

#8)  The 6:30am Sunday Mass at St. Agnes in St. Paul is not as crowded as it was when Fr. Altier had the Mass, which concerns me because they could cancel that Mass at anytime.  (It also suggests to me that Fr. Altier did have groupies.)

#9)  I think I quit smoking, it has been 4 weeks since I had a cigarette.  I was happier as a smoker.

#10)  This is odd and useless:  It’s the story about the woman who had an abortion and sterilization  to save the planet from over-population.  It’s that old “Was man made for the sabbath or the sabbath made for man?” debate, only this question seems more transparent, “Was the planet made for man, or man made for the planet?”  With this woman’s logic, we should begin to exterminate children when the schools begin to get over-crowded.

#11)  Secularists do not believe in Divine Providence.

#12)  When the vernacular began to be introduced into the Mass, and the Novus Ordo came along, most average Catholics in the pew thought the only changes to the Mass had been the language and the novelty of the priest facing the people.  Few of the laity understood the rite was no longer extraordinary.

#13)  Marilyn Manson seems dangerous.  I don’t like him.

Seance On A Wet Afternoon was the title of a novel I read in the 1960’s, which was later made into a movie, starring Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough.  (It is interesting to note that in high school,  I was interested in the occult, as were most of my friends - long before Harry Potter.  I’m not saying that is a good thing, simply that it is a common curiosity for many young people.)  This post really has nothing to do with seances however, except it is a very wet afternoon in Minneapolis this Sunday.  In fact thunderstorms awakened me for prayer at 4am and I was off to 6:30am Mass at St. Agnes during the lull before the next round of storms came through.

When I returned home I bored myself sleepy with the Internet and took a 3 hour nap… troubled by dreams.  I awoke to more storms and heavy rainfall,  while my thoughts returned to the dreams, which must have occasioned my recalling the title of the book from the 1960’s.  Strangely, our memories and dreams can be somewhat like a seance, conjuring specters from the past, experiences long forgotten, along with emotions one hasn’t felt in years.

To be honest, I can’t remember the details of the dreams, only the emotions; the feeling of being lost, unable to reach my destination, accompanied by a woeful sense of abandonment, feeling unoticed by passers by, friends and family - almost as if I were a ghost.

Upon waking I had the uncanny realization that my mother had been sexually abused as a child.  Why, I don’t know.  Of course I can’t prove it - her two surviving siblings would not tell me even if they knew.  Yet I understood that is why she “knew” so much about that “kind of stuff” - and why she was so hurt and angry deep inside. 

For instance, when it happened to me - she “knew”.  I was in 5th grade and just returned home from the Sunday afternoon movies with a dollar a man had given me.   I showed my mother the money, explaining that I had found it on the floor in the theater, and asked her if I might keep it.

“What happened to you?”  She demanded angrily.  “Who gave you that money?”

“No one did - I found it on the floor.”  I explained, immediately understanding she must have known  what had happened.

“Go ahead, keep it.”  To my surprise she uncharacteristically dropped the matter and nothing was ever brought up again.

Sometimes, mostly late at night, her voice echoes in my head, not only from that experience but from other things she said to me about “stuff”, which suddenly makes  sense to me today.  It wasn’t just a mother’s intuition that informed her, something had happened to her as well - which must be how she knew “stuff”.  Although she never dealt with her experiences except to medicate herself with alcohol, along with the occasional escapes, seeking consolation through transitory extramarital intimacies with other men, and so on.

I remembered how she once referred to a very young girl as a “little whore” - which was a startling thing to say about a 4 or 5 year old.  (And may have been a revelation about how she perceived herself.)   Yet later, when the girl grew up, she was indeed promiscuous for a time, in a manner which suggested she herself may have been abused as a young child.  Without going into detail, I can’t help wonder if my mother sensed this girl would be abused or turn out the way she did.  Scarier still, what if there had been some sort of curse attached to my mother’s words?  No, I don’t believe in curses that just slip out like that.  And can I really attribute such great insight to my mother’s  neurosis? 

Nevertheless, my mother was very perceptive about these things - I have other examples that I won’t go into here.  I will never know for certain if she had been abused, but all the signs are there.  Shortly before my father died, he told me that he and my mother were hurt very badly as kids, but he couldn’t talk about it.  He just said, “My dad did things to me you wouldn’t believe.”  He was right, I didn’t want to know about it either.

In the movie “Seance On a Wet Afternoon” the plot revolves around the kidnap of a child by the husband of a psychic.  The psychic wishes to offer her skills in finding the child and thus gain fame as a medium.  If I remember correctly, the child dies accidentally.

Sexual abuse of children is like that, though the purpose was not to kill, something inside the child dies - “accidently”.  And despite the fact the child survives, the experiences often haunt the child for the rest of one’s life, reemerging unexpectedly in one’s consciousness,  something akin to a seance on a wet afternoon, if you will.

Photo: The actual place, Armageddon.

Korea is launching test missiles into the Sea of Japan today.

Iran is warning Israel against attacking Lebanon.

Our ships are performing military maneuvers off the shores of Iran.

China is developing long range nuclear capabilities to fire missiles at Taiwan and the U.S. - and so on.

Some-days, just reading the headlines on Drudge - it seems like Armageddon.  It could be just around the corner I guess.

I think I hear “Twilight Zone” music…