Category: Religion

Memories of Joseph Zarrella

Joe Zarrella, Catholic Worker pioneer, has gone home to God. Deo Gratias, as Dorothy Day would say. I first met Joe when I interviewed him for Voices from the Catholic Worker. The penetrating questions he asked me after the interview helped to seal my fate as a Catholic Worker. We became friends and I will never, ever forget him.
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Vegan Lent

Most Catholics in the US give up eating bird and mammal meat on Fridays during Lent. Since I became vegan five years ago, my friends and co-workers have teased me: “You’re not giving up anything! Maybe you should eat meat on Fridays!”

Adam Villani suggests that I give up soy on Fridays during Lent, and I’m going to take his advice. For a vegan, that’s giving up an especially satisfying part of the diet.

Gamera wishes Mike a slamin birthday (Bean Counter, Worcester)
This year I was surprised to receive a birthday cake that was both vegan and decorated with Gamera. Cake: The Bean Counter, Worcester. Photo: Claire Schaeffer-Duffy.

Easy conversations about things that matter

On page 19 of the new book The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins is an old Peter Maurin piece that I hadn’t seen before, or at least didn’t remember:

Easy conversations
about things that matter
would keep people
from going to the movies,
from talking politics,
from cheap wisecracking.
Easy conversations
about things that matter
would enable Catholics
to understand Catholicism,
to give an account of their faith,
and to make non-Catholics curious
about Catholicism.

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Prayer on the cutting edge

Karen Marie wrote:

My favorite prayer tool is a little tabloid called “2006 Milwaukee Archdiocesan Directory”. Twenty five-column pages of a long list of names and places. I’ve been caught by others with it a few times, and tried to explain how a long list of names becomes prayer. Not very effectively.

She later clarified what she meant, but not before speculation ran wild.
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Eucharistic adoration

(Last night someone threw a rock through the Catholic Worker’s window. It’s probably nothing personal; there’s lots of random vandalism hereabouts.)

Letter to the editor from Friday’s Worcester T&G:

…St. Francis Xavier Church in Bolton holds adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every Tuesday.

On a Tuesday early in November, I entered the church about 5 p.m. and was surprised and saddened to find no faithful in solemn veneration. When confronted with this scandal, the Rev. Thomas Fleming, pastor, vehemently defended this situation. Bishop Robert J. McManus was also informed. At about 10:45 a.m. on Dec. 27 I entered St. Francis Xavier Church and again found no faithful in solemn veneration.

MARY BRADFORD, Fayville

You non-Catholics are probably confused if you’ve read this far, so here is the deal. Continue reading “Eucharistic adoration”

Thanksgiving and other items

Let’s eat

Thanksgiving is one day when America not only makes a point of feeding the hungry, but feeding them in style.

There was a big crowd at St. John’s Free Meal for Thanksgiving Breakfast. Lots of hugs and smiles.

The St. John’s High School football team stopped by with a donation. (Later that day, they beat St. Peter-Marian 28-7.)

The breakfast conversation was sparkling, as always.

Mike: Why are they showing “Night of the Living Dead” on Thanksgiving?

Bruce: The dead gotta eat too, Mike!
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Basil Pennington’s suits and other Items

  • I agree with Elwood:

    “I love my president, but he doesn’t love us.”

  • Pie and Coffee contributor and cinemaster Adam Villani started a personal blog last week. The next day he was namechecked by Boing Boing. Auspicious.
  • Father Basil Pennington was a Trappist monk who died in June at St Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer. Many know of him because of his work with the centering prayer movement, revitalizing the contemplative tradition among Catholics in America.

    Tom Lewis happened to go to mass at the Abbey the morning after Fr Pennington had died, and saw him lying in state.

    Mike: So his body was there in the chapel?

    Tom: He had enormous feet.

    Dom Basil was in many ways a giant of a man. Even physically, he looked like someone who stepped out of the Old Testament with his huge frame and long beard. He was also interiorly a giant in the sense of one of those rare people who is filled with many, many, many ideas. Big ideas.
    (from a homily by Abbot Francis Michael Stiteler)

    I stopped by the monastery last week to pick up a donation of food for some shelters and soup kitchens in Worcester, and they also gave me several boxes with Fr Pennington’s clothes. It was like being handed a crate of holy relics. After sorting through it, a lot of the clothes went right to the thrift shop—there aren’t many homeless people in Worcester who are that big. His suits were size 50L.
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Archibald Baxter

Honouring the Prophets: Archibald Baxter–a moral leader for our time

Archibald Baxter It is strange to have to research in libraries to find information about someone who should be an icon of goodness and prophetic insight to a nation. But that is what was needed to piece together this story of Archibald Baxter (1881-1970), pacifist and moral leader to a nation intent on war.
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