Sunday, May 25

Click on the picture if you want an explanation. Not that it will help.

A remembrance of four chaplains who sacrificed all on a troop ship in 1943

The freezing waters of the North Atlantic were sapping the life from young Ernest Heaton as he floated next to a lifeboat too full to take him aboard.

"So I asked a guy, 'If I put one arm in the lifeboat, could you hold it against the side of the boat?' He did."

The 19-year-old U.S. Army Air Forces soldier hung there until dawn, when a Coast Guardsman pulled his near-lifeless body from the water.

Heaton, now 80 and living in Vero Beach, is one of 230 men who survived the sinking of the Army troop transport ship Dorchester. Another 672 died during the terrible early morning hours of Feb. 3, 1943, after Nazi submarine U-223 torpedoed and sank the Dorchester.

The incident has become an American legend because of a stirring example of faith and courage shown by four chaplains who were aboard the Dorchester.

The four lieutenants, all of different faiths, went down with the doomed ship. After working to calm hundreds of scared GIs, the chaplains gave four of them their own life jackets.

Alexander D. Goode, a Jewish rabbi; John P. Washington, a Catholic priest; George L. Fox, a Methodist minister; and Clark V. Poling, a Dutch Reformed minister, were last seen praying on deck with their arms linked as the ship went down.



It's been a bad week for Catholic ordained types and the outdoors here in Indiana. Maybe it's the long winters or something. A priest in Terre Haute was arrested at an interstate rest stop for public indecency, and right here in our own Fort Wayne, the word comes across the wire that a permanent deacon, who was given a big community service award a couple of months ago was arrested and pled guilty to an indecent exposure charge, and was suspended from his duties by the bishop.....why blog this? Well, because it's weird that two things like this happen in one state in a week. Secondly, this second case is particularly sad and interesting. The deacon in question is a pillar of the local Hispanic community, and is on the staff of the mostly-Hispanic parish here in town that the diocese just last week announced it's closing and merging with another parish.

By the way, those of you who have been with me for a while have heard me rail about skewed priorities, particularly in relation to Hispanic ministry in an area like this, which has an exploding Hispanic/Latino population. Yes, that's the answer. CLOSE their parish. No. Let's close TWO of their parishes - one in South Bend and one in Fort Wayne. That's the way the Catholic Church in the US grew and flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Actually, the test will be what, exactly they do with the 1200 members of St. Paul's (the FW parish) that they're throwing in with St. Patrick's. The test will be if they get a primetime Sunday morning Spanish language Mass (as, of course they had three of at their own parish), or if they get the good old 2pm Sunday afternoon liturgy, as is so often the case.

We'll see. And we'll see what the story is with this unfortunate case of the Deacon in the Park.

An updated story on the official announcement of the parish closings from today's paper, with the good news that the pastor of St. Paul's (the predominantly Hispanic parish) is being named pastor of the parish with which they're merging. So perhaps there's hope.

Molokai's other saint

A Roman Catholic nun whose ministry to Kalaupapa's leprosy patients on Molokai lasted twice as long as Father Damien's may take her first step toward sainthood.Mother Marianne Cope, who garners just a fraction of the attention given the Belgian priest who died in 1889, is on a Vatican waiting list for a hearing on her canonization cause -- an inquiry that could lead to her designation as "venerable."News of that progress in Rome comes as the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints reviews a miracle attributed to Father Damien de Veuster -- an unexplained healing that, if verified, could make the Belgian missionary a saint.



Dallas Catholics respond to their bishop in the letters section of the Dallas Morning News

Former Church insiders in Boston complain that they're being frozen out.

God bless anyone who does anything for the Church, and there is no doubt that Boston is still a mess, still in an absurd bunker mentality, still trying to figure out how what to do and how to proceed, especially since they still do not have anything but interim leadership...but there's something about anyone complaining about feeling "left out" that always irritates me. Maybe it's because as a child, the most frequent correction I received (or at least that I remember) was, "Stop whining." You want to help? There are Catholic schools that are struggling mightily in your Archdiocese. Lend your help to them. Go get your hands dirty, unless that's not the high-profile savior role what you had in mind and think you deserve when you offer to "help.."

You can tell that I hold wealthy lay benefactors who like being tight with church hierarchy in the same high esteem as I hold...the church hierarchy, in general.

With all due respect, of course.

Good, balanced piece from the Baltimore Sun on Catholic colleges - new and established.

and another one from The Boston Globe, focusing on Magdalen College in NH, (and before you get riled up, the Globe piece is by Naomi Schaefer, regular contributer to the WSJ, who's writing a book on religious colleges.)