“There is a story about Clare Boothe Luce [1903-1987] complaining that
she was bored with hearing about the Holocaust.
A Jewish friend of hers said he perfectly understood
her sensitivity to the matter; in fact,
he had the same sense or repetitiveness and fatigue,
hearing about the crucifixion.”
Herbert Gold, Selfish Like Me

For more than thirty years, Father Skipper wrote short stories as his Christmas Eve Mass-gift for family and friends. In 2020 and through the kindness of Michael Keister and his family, the collection was published as A Toy Truck For A Marine And Other Christmas Tales From A Simple Missionary Priest.

For more than thirty years, Father Skipper wrote short stories as his Christmas Eve Mass-gift for family and friends. In 2020 and through the kindness of Michael Keister and his family, the collection was published as A Toy Truck For A Marine And Other Christmas Tales From A Simple Missionary Priest.

Every now and then, a high school or college professor will write an especially difficult exam beginning with “You will have one hour to complete this test. You must remain at your desk until the hour has ended. Read the entire exam carefully before beginning to write your answers.”

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Yes, these may forget, yet I will not forget you!
Behold how much I love you,
I have engraved you on the palms of my hands!”
Isaiah 49:15-16

If only some “pastors” knew Latin.

If some “pastors” knew Latin, we’d hear them imploring:

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti… quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

The story – told by one of my seminary professors – is probably apocryphal.

But it makes the point.

Members of the United States House of Representatives are aiming [No pun intended.] to introduce new legislation to prevent gun violence-associated deaths nationwide.

The Miami Dolphins’ “Perfect (1972) Season” ended with a January 14, 1973 14-7 Super Bowl VII victory over the Washington Redskins.

Their “next-best game” was probably this year’s September 24 70-20 trouncing of the Denver Broncos.

One week after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoum was stab twenty-six – 26 – times with a serrated military-style knife with a seven-inch blade.

He was born in the United States; he was Muslim.

He was “the world’s worst dressed priest.”

He may have been the best of the best mid-Twentieth Century missioners.

The formal (in a clergy shirt and collar) portrait accompanying his obituary does no justice to the man who taught me (and many, many others) so much.

“You must then say in the presence of the LORD your God,
‘My ancestor Jacob was a wandering Aramean…’”
Deuteronomy 26:5

Jack Rousseau was one helluva guy!

Almost “Master of the Internet,” champion Twitterer, erudite blogger, and (almost) most popular commentator of all time on cable networks.

Well, sortta.

‘Cept he wasn’t.

At first glance, there’s nothing particularly special about the portrait.

It might have been of our parents or grandparents.

It’s somewhat stilted.

More than eighty years old, it quintessentially from a different time and culture.

To misquote Shakespeare’s Mercutio, “A plague on your houses.”

Speaking about the 45th president’s Himalayan-sized range of legal problems, the one-time vice-presidential candidate who later quit her gubernatorial post half-way through her term told a conservative commentator:

“I want to ask them: What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this. I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.”

My father died in 1998 at age 79; my mother was just months shy of her 103rd birthday when she died in 2021.

Their lives taught a simple lesson about why anti-abortion legislation is failing across the nation.

They had their own very personal versions of Philadelphia-born Irish Catholicism.

“Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker…”
Proverbs 14:31

“Open your mouth for the mute,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
Proverbs 31:8-9

It’s settled!

By Divine (with a capital D) fiat (as in “fiat lux et facta est lux”)!

Alabama Jack’s conch fritters and crab cakes are the best. [We might have said “divine” but that would be hooky.]

How good are they?

It was a tragedy played-out in two acts.

Through decades.

Perhaps three or more generations.

Every counselor or priest who’s been “on the job long enough” has the story that will stay with them forever.

Here’s mine.

On January 6, 2021, braggadocios Californian Evan Neumann was captured on footage wearing a red [we’ll just say it’s a four-letter acronym with two As] hat, using a barricade as a battering ram and shouting at Capitol Police, “I am willing to die, are you?” When he was indicted on fourteen charges, including assaulting police officers, he fled – and begged for refugee status in Belarus.