One other......
little intrusion on my bubble of Christmas happiness. This op/ed piece in the Wednesday Tribune was about as welcome on Christmas as the toy moose who poops chocolate jelly beans and not nearly as amusing..........

Being Catholic in a season of trial and love
By Delle Chatman.
I had recently found out that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--which is the strong-arm of the Curia in Rome, the Vatican's heavy-hitters--had put pressure on U.S. Catholic magazine, which is published here in Chicago by the Claretian order, to recant its pro-women's ordination ideology.

I had been featured in an article published in February 2001 that profiled five women who felt called to the priesthood. We simply shared our deep conviction that God had called us to serve as priests in the Roman Catholic Church. We were civil. We were calm. We were honest. And yet someone in the Chicago archdiocese wrote a letter to Rome because he felt the magazine needed to be censured officially for printing such feelings. Shortly after that I was told by my academic advisers at CTU that now that I was formally studying at the seminary and am also a very grateful recipient of the Augustus Tolton Pastoral Ministry, a scholarship that pays for my theological education, I have to be careful of what I say. I can no longer talk publicly about my call anymore. It had been excruciating to subvert my vocation in the first place, but I did so out of obedience and tried to find another acceptable way to serve.

As you can see, she is willing to talk publicly..........

Oh, well, go read the whole thing. I haven’t yet distilled my dismay into a letter to the Trib. (Which I would have done ASAP if it hadn’t been a holiday.) Wouldn’t it be a nice present from the Trib if they would just skip the dissident essays on a religious holiday? Just once?