Dear Sister,
What a thrill to log on and see your response to my request. Thank you! You have certainly given my daughter some great Saints to consider - and your readers did too.
Funny, when I was confirmed I chose the name James as it was my grandfather's name. However, during the ceremony, the Bishop just couldn't get his head around the idea that a girl would choose a male name. I remember the back and forth I had with him, in front of the whole congregation. He asked me what name I had chosen and I answered "James".
"Aah, Jane" he answered.
"No, James"
"Yes, Jane it shall be"
I was confirmed Jane - but I still consider James to be my patron Saint.
It really seems like in this day and age, no one would much care about if a girl took a boy's name. And for Heaven's sake let's not forget St. JoseMaria Escriva (the patron saint of diabetics). He has "Maria" right in there. If your Bishop had his way, the founder of Opus Dei would have been St. JoseMark Escriva.
Which is why I thought of the Pope. Wouldn't our Pope say, "Great! Whatever name you'd like to have. Whatever saint you'd like to call on for help and guidance and whatever saint you'd like to put right into your own name in order to bond with that saint. Let's not worry about, of all things, gender."?
I would step in if someone picked a fake saint, which I sure has happened. And I might mention to a Confirmation kid that maybe St. Expeditus and St. Philomena didn't exist. But....we can imagine that some little girl was buried in the catacombs and we can go ahead and call her Philomena, just like we call Mary's mother "Anne" although in truth we have no idea what her parents were called. Joachim and Anne? Sure. That's much more personable than just "Mary's parents".
You know, there are things I used to care about that I just don't care about anymore. We used to have conniption fits about penmanship, back in the day. How many of you were tortured by "The Palmer Method"? I certainly was. And then I had to torture other children with it and poke at left handed kids.
Good riddance to all of that. I still say, "Work on the handwriting kid! Someday someone's life my depend on it!" And I still think it's important to use good grammar and turn in work that is neat, because how you present yourself to the world will affect your quality of life.
But hey, you might be Vincent Van Gogh and I'm not going to tell you which brush to use.
I wonder if you can change your Confirmation name? I've never heard of anyone trying. I imagine there are people who don't even remember what their Confirmation name is.
Who cares? As long as they show up for Mass.
3 comments:
Hey Sister, Ive got a bit of a pickle. My friends are going to be baptizing their daughter next month. The priest has asked them to come to three services before the date, they are not church goers and unless God comes into their hearts, I don't think they ever will. They know I'm a practicing Catholic, and have quite openly told me that they were planning on lying to the priest about their presence (its a well-attended downtown church, it most likely wont be noticed) and not attending at all. I've offered to accompany them, and to even drive them to and from the church but they are adamant and are really not respectful of the church, the faith, or the priest. The only reason why they are baptising their daughter is because her grandmother demanded it, and because the mother had a dream about red devils capturing her daughter's soul in a ball of flames, so took it as a sign that it needed to get done. My question is, what can I do to help them out, encourage them into actually attending those three services, and knowing what they plan to do, am I supposed to say something to the priest?
I'm sure by now you've heard of the little boy that ran up to the pope and started chillaxing in his white chair. Thoughts?
Happy All Saints Day!
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