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Heartbreak

8/28/2018

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As I am sure every reader of this blog is experiencing great heaviness of heart over many crises in the Church.
There are wonderful articles about how to handle our grief in a way that will lead to holiness vs. despair, discouragement and rage.  I especially got a lot out of Ralph Martin’s piece and that of the Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin and Cardinal Burke’s response.  I follow especially those who speak on Raymond Arroyo’s weekly World Over shows on EWTN.
I don’t think I can do better, but I thought I should put up here some key moments in my long life as a Catholic since the year 1959 that pertain in one way or the other to various crises in the Church, not mentioning names of persons or institutions.
A friend who was a Catholic social worker and had many dealings with priests, talking about a group I worked with, remarked:
“They don’t like women.”
Later I realized this was a euphemism for a same-sex attraction orientation.
In a place where I was teaching ethics and would sometimes convince a college student to avoid pre-marital sex, one of the priests said: “She’s just a lay person. What does she know. It’s okay if you love each other.” The same priest was so surprised that 2 months later the student was planning an abortion!
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Years later, a priest who later became a Bishop told some seminarians “Never dissent from Church teaching!  Just teach conscience in such a way that the laity realize that they have a way out.”
A priest high up in the administration of a diocese was running a boys’ club where adult same-sex attraction men could bring their favorite youngsters.
I was teaching a book by Joseph Nicolosi entitled Reparative Therapy for Homosexuals. This psycho-therapist specialized in long term healing of causes of homosexual behavior and was able to bring his clients into a bi-sexual orientation with chastity on the same-sex side but also marriage and children.
When this same man blew the whistle on certain bishops and their ways with seminarians, I was no longer allowed to teach the course where the Nicolosi book was in the syllabus.
In another circumstance I noticed over familiarity among certain seminarians. Eventually the situation was investigated and proof was given of wrongful behavior and they were dismissed.
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My heart breaks for priests who no longer like to go out in public places wearing clerics because people come right over to them and call them pedophiles.
My heart breaks for parents of victims of abuse and for the victims themselves who felt silenced by the Church; especially for those who have left the Church.
My heart breaks for those accused of abuse falsely who have been removed from their ministries during long investigations.
My heart breaks also, though, for priests and bishops who felt called to their high vocation and yielded to the temptations of sin, and, perhaps, cover their shame with bravado.
My heart breaks for priests who are afraid, for fear of reprisals, to speak out about their concerns about the teachings of the highest member and other members of the Church’s priesthood.
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I believe that Jesus wants us to suffer with Him about all of this.
I believe that Jesus wants us to repent of all our own sins and to pray and do penance for all those involved in these heart-breaking situations. ​
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Greetings from Hot Springs, Arkansas, My new home

8/18/2018

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Many, many blessings. My granddaughter and family are renting on a lake here. It is beautiful and can be seen from an outdoor patio, by going for a swim, or from an indoor glass enclosed patio.  
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Generally I love the ocean best, but lakes are terrific also.
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I am delighted that my arrangement with the family includes dinners cooked by my granddaughter Jenny’s geology professor husband, who is a gourmet cook. In the last year since leaving the seminary dining room, the only way I could swallow the food I cook for myself is by ruminating about how ecstatic I would be to eat this if I was in the gulag!
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The parish is wonderful -  so magisterial that the pastor actually talked about hell-fire as real!  But friendly as can be which is my second most important feature of a parish.
A thought that will amuse some readers is that philosophical types, like me, try to substitute logic for common sense…
as in trying to figure out why my family insists that the 3 year old not climb on the table to run around since they let the cats do it. 
My grand-son-in-law, with common sense, explained that if they didn’t train little Teresa not to do this, she would be considered odd when visiting friends and leaping on their tables!
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A good thought on leaving my pseudo-hermitess existence in Corpus Christi for living with this family, in my own in-law  suite, but still immersed in family life: Mary wasn’t a hermit. Jesus gave her as family John, by analogy like living with Jenny and Sean  and Teresa and new-born Julia.  
 Speculation:  Could it be that  many mother’s-in-law and son’s in-law don’t get along because this is a mother figure who never nurtured him but thinks she can criticize him and give him advice.  And the mother-in-law feels the son in-law is could be doing imprudent things that will hurt her daughter’s future….???
 Some more on the theme of Games Catholics Play. If you didn’t read the blog where I explained this title, scroll down until you find it on the date of August 5!
Another example: You learn from friends and mentors what their worst experiences have been of insult, etc. but then you use these against them years later when you are angry at them!
Still another: old Catholic biddies, such as myself,  who have no one to boss  around can do it virtually on family and other chat boards by expostulating on what everyone should be doing “my way.”
Another:  Someone, usually a woman, loads down gifts on those she wants as friends and then makes them feel guilty for not responding in kind even though said potential friend never wanted our  friendship or our gifts!  Friends are a gift of God not a repayment!
Another: I don’t need spiritual direction because priests are too busy to give such direction, they just give a few words of advice.  This leaves out praying for a spiritual director who can be anyone holier than oneself!
I’m only angry because  everyone else is so obnoxious.  But, how come others remain peaceful in the same circumstances?
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Life in the Old Girl Yet

8/6/2018

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I was at our apartment complex outdoor swimming pool with my scrawny, wrinkled old body doing my breast stroke slowly and watching two 8 year old girls trying to learn to dive.  I thought “I haven’t tried to dive in 40 years – I used to dive sometimes at the Loyola Marymount pool when I took my twins there, but I hated the feeling of the water going into my nose and then my throat.”
Then I thought, maybe I should dive just one last time on this earth.  I hesitated. Finally I decided I would just do it.  A young man who had been swimming laps saw me hesitating at the edge of the deep end. “Do it. I’m supporting you,” he yelled out.
I plunged in. On the way up, I remembered that awful sensation in the nose. But it was worth it. The little girls and the young man clapped. I felt it was a symbol of diving into the adventure of the next part of my life in Hot Springs.
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Games Catholics Play

8/5/2018

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Many decades ago a psychologist, Eric Berne, wrote a book called Games People Play. It became a best seller.  Wikipedia says it has sold 50 million copies!  Part of the metaphor is that we often use childish strategies to avoid blame. Consider the phrase “See what you made me do!” shifting blame from our own free will decisions to someone else.
Through the years I always dreamed of writing a spin-off book called GAMES CATHOLICS PLAY. It would consist of describing situations where Catholics unconsciously manipulate others under the guise of virtue.
I would like to devote some of this blog to instances that come up.  Now most of these are my own manipulative techniques, so you shouldn’t think I am accusing my wonderful readers of such mechanisms, but of course, if the shoe fits!!!!
Here is one that anyone who knows me personally has witnessed all too often:
I can become angry to the point of yelling at anyone who disagrees with me even in public situations.  Of course, I think I am right, but since we are to “speak the truth with love” not with anger most of the time, it doesn’t take long for me to stop yelling and apologize.
It is good, of course, to apologize immediately whenever we do something wrong that hurts or belittles another person.
Here is the game!  I not only apologize publicly but I insist that the victim forgive me immediately.
Usually the victim just looks at me with a puzzled slightly hurt expression on his or her face.
If the victim is a priest I start begging him to hear my confession asap.
Why is this a “game?”
I finally figured it out. I am shifting the attention from my fault or sin onto the victim as if he or she is to blame for not forgiving me profusely and immediately.  I give the victim no time to think about the incident or respond with a refutation of “my” truth.
I become a kind of spiritual drama-queen.
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Now, since I am working with my spiritual director, Al Hughes, on getting to the bitter root of such behavior, this is what I figured out:
Because of my father leaving us twins when we were 8 years old, I have pervading fear of rejection. I am assured, even though I didn’t feel it at the time, that children consider the separation of their parents as somehow their fault, not the fault of the spouse.

Now, symbolically, through the years, I have a need to be reassured of the love of others for me by demanding total public forgiveness whenever I do something wrong.

​So, how would I react differently if I were more sheltered in the love of Jesus for Ronda, the sinner?

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When anyone questions some truth I have enunciated, I need to take these steps: 1. Pause; 2. In a short prayer, bring the incident to Jesus, asking Him for help; 3. Ask for a clear understanding of any truth, even half-truth, my interlocutor was expressing; 4. Start my next words in a calm voice with something like: I think what you are trying to get across is __________________. Now that is true, but, on the other hand, I don’t think it is incompatible with my contention…
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Toe-Hold in Hot Springs

8/4/2018

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The best contemporary spiritual book I’ve read recently is by Father Donald Haggerty, a chaplain of the Missionaries of Charity. It is called Conversion and is published by Ignatius Press. It is an evocation about the graces that await us if go beyond the first conversion that brought us to become ardent Catholics, to a future union with Jesus.  If you fit into the category of ardent Catholic but still feel there is more to come while still on this earth, get hold of this book. 
By the way, I loved, loved, love the O'Connor book The Edge of Sadness about this reformed alcoholic 50's priest.
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Moving

8/1/2018

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NOTE TO READERS OF RONDA’S BLOG:  
RONDA WILL BE MOVING TO HOT SPRINGS ARKANSAS TO LIVE WITH FAMILY THERE.
​THERE WILL BE A FEW WEEKS WITHOUT BLOGS AS SHE SETTLES IN.

If you recall, the funny title I gave to this period of my blog was
Ruminations of a Demented Pseudo-nun. 
In line with the semi-dementia problem I am experiencing I got this happy thought. You know how many spiritual writers tell us with have to stay in the NOW, not live in the past or the future. Well, if I can hardly recall most of the past and I am not even sure what day tomorrow is, then
​THERE IS MUCH MORE ROOM TO LIVE IN THE NOW!!!!
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    Author

    Ronda Chervin received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University and an MA in Religious Studies from Notre Dame Apostolic Institute. She is a dedicated widow, mother, and grandmother.
    Ronda converted to the Catholic Faith from a Jewish, though atheistic, background and has been a Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Loyola Marymount University, the Seminary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and Franciscan University of Steubenville. She is an international speaker and author of some fifty books about Catholic thought, practice and spirituality. One of her latest is LAST CALL, published by Goodbooks Media.
    Dr. Ronda is currently retired and living in Corpus Christi, Texas after her years of teaching philosophy at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.
    You can contact her via e-mail by clicking here or by emailing [email protected] directly.

    Visit her websites:
    here and here.

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