Pivot

Yikes! Where have I been? Right here, trying to adjust to life without Sister St. Aloysius, who is off at her think tank as of last Monday. It already seems as though she has been gone for decades. Our replacement helper has not yet arrived and so the parish ladies that also work at the Catholic Charities are pitching in. Just after I finish adjusting to them, I will have to re adjust to whoever shows up to help next.

Sister St. Aloysius and I, although she is very....tightly wound....are a well oiled machine, particularly when it comes to the care and feeding of Sister Mary Fiacre. Her problem solving abilities have come in very handy. For example, she came up with the bread bag pivoter, in use several times each day.

Here's how it works! To get Sister Mary Fiacre, say, out of bed, we haul her to her feet. We have strategically placed the wheelchair at a slight angle by the bed and then we have to swing her around to land, PLOP! on her pile of pillows there in the chair. The problem was that while at some point she was able to shuffle her feet around for a step or two to turn around to sit in the chair, her feet now remain glued to the floor. So when we pivot her, she could snap an ankle.

What a mess that would be!

I had no idea what to do. We can't hold her in place while one of us picks her feet up for her. We can't simply leave her in one spot all day and night.

Sister St. Aloysius came up with the plan to put a bread bag (sans bread) under one foot and pivot her around on that. It works like a charm! The bread bag goes everywhere with us. Any plastic bag will do.

Paper or plastic? Plastic, please.

Try explaining this oddity to the new folks. "Bread bag!?!"

"Yes, it's right there by her shoes."

"Put it where?"

"Under her pivot foot. Let's see, we're going to swing her to the left, so put it on the left side."

"How?"

"You'll have to actually pick her foot up like you're shoeing a horse and put the bag down and put her foot back down on top of it."

"Oookaaayy...."

Everyone has been impressed with the results.

All of this has been compounded by the kitten.

I didn't mention this way back when because I didn't want to ruin everyone's Christmas, but our wonderful old cat, Teddy, expired in the middle of December. He suddenly got really thin and moved outside. We moved him back in, but he just wasted away. Poor old thing. We really missed him.

So back in April a neighbor found a little abandoned kitten. He was so little his ears were still round. He wasn't weaned. We had to give him a little bottle every two hours or so and set him on on a heating pad.

As a result, he is the dog of cats. With us every second, very involved and curious about every single thing we do. So now everything we do involves one extra step. Move the kitten out of the way. Ready to put Sister Mary Fiacre in the wheel chair? Move the kitten who is standing in there playing with the tassles on the pillow. Putting the laundry in the dryer? Remove the kitten several times while loading and double check before you shut the door. Trying to write a blog? Find someone to play with the kitten for an hour or so because it is not lost on him that you are playing with a mouse.

Of course, the kitten loves the bread bag. Happily, Sister Mary Fiacre is very amused by his attention to her feet. I guess she doesn't have much feeling there anymore.

At any rate, I haven't had a moment to visit with you. And I have a pile of questions to answer. I'll try to get to as many as I can before I have to readjust to the new new help.

The Decider

I'm a little nervous. Sister St. Aloysius will soon be on her way to her summer think tank. Last year we had the help of Sister Nicholas. Lovable as she was, every day was rather like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I'll be needing help, that is certain. And Sister Nicholas was a good cook. She made that pickle soup. I could go for some of that.

We shall see. Meanwhile, Sister St. Aloysius has immersed herself in information about the supercollider, which is supposed to find the "God particle" or some such nonsense. She has explained it to me several times and it gives me a physics haircut (as it zooms right over my head). She even gave me Stephen Hawkings' new book, "An Even Briefer History of Time", which is his own personal version of his other book "A Brief History of Time". This one is "A Brief History of Time" for dummies.

I'm extra dumb. I can't get my brain around that one either. I get the gist of it, barely, and then I get really tired.

Which brings me to today's question from a reader:


Hi Sister, I love your blog; its both informative and witty. I guess my question goes along with this theme of different sects... not quite sure. Anyways, I was wondering how the Catholic church feels about those who aren't IN the Catholic Church. I mean I really don't want to believe that some of my best friends who are Muslim, Jewish, and Methodist have to do "hard time" in the "furnace." I remember something like "baptism by acts" or something where they had a second chance. Do they just do more time in purgatory? Thanks

I don't know. Yes, I do.

Let's iron out a thing or two. No one does 'hard time' in the furnaces of Hell. "Hard Time" indicates that the time you spend in the pokey is really tough and long, but you'll be getting out. Once you end up in Hell, that's that. There is no "hard time", there is only "eternity". I only use quotation marks to be cute.

So the basic premise here is that only Catholics can go to heaven. That's because Jesus said you can only get to heaven through Him and the only True way to Him is through the Catholic church.

But there are loopholes. First of all, we don't know the mind of God. God might feel that your Baptist friend should be in heaven. We also don't know what any Jewish person, Muslim or Methodist may be thinking right before he or she kicks the bucket. They might think, "What was I thinking! I should have been Catholic!" As long as you're still able to think that, God will not turn His back on you.

So the answer to your question is: only Catholics can go to heaven, BUT we imagine God will let in whoever He wants, so we don't get to judge who got in and who didn't or who will or won't get there.

Does that help?

I know. It's as hard to understand as "An Even Briefer History of Time". Maybe that supercollider will work and we'll know the answer.

That was joke. The answer is not in the supercollider.

The other loophole, which I've touched on here, is the Baptism of Desire. That basically means that you really want to be Catholic, but you weren't able to actually be baptized. For example, you were on your way to be baptized when the Martians attacked, and you huddled together with the rest of your neighbors over at the Lutheran Church and then you were all vaporized. Or you were on a desert island or lost at sea or whatever.

There is also what is known as a Baptism of Blood. That means you died the death of a martyr for Christ. All martyrs for Christ go straight to Heaven, do not pass go, do not collect $200 even if they are from some lesser faith. Excuse me. I meant to say, even if they are separated brethren.

Which brings me to one final point in the 'be Catholic and at least you won't have to worry about it' discussion we've just had. Have you heard the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe. One of my favorite saints! Read about him here.

Why would he have done such a heroic thing for a bunch of guys who were just going to go burn in Hell for being the wrong religion? Of course, he would have been trying to administer the faith to them. I just really doubt that he had any takers. He understood that we simply don't decide. We're not the deciders here.

He did it because we must love everyone as Jesus did. What a guy!

2dz st

Wasn't there a movie once called "If This is Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium"? It was somehow linked to the thought that life becomes so hectic that the markers of everyday living become increasingly backwards. For a Catholic it would go something like, "I'm at Mass, so it must be Sunday".

Or not. Because it might be a holy day of obligation, or Saturday evening. It could be somebody's wedding or funeral.

With this in mind, we turn to today's question from a reader:

who is ur patron Sister?

Seriously, we are not texting here, people. Are we so insanely busy we can't be bother to use our pinkies to hit the shift key to capitalize the beginning of a sentence. Can we not take the millisecond to type two more letters for the word "your"? We're not tweeting here. We have an unlimited space in which to express ourselves.

For a moment there, my patron was St. Leander, the overly picky slave driver older brother and teacher of St. Isidore. St. Leander drove his brother to become the most educated man on the planet and therefore the patron saint of the internet.

I mostly roll with St. Martha, as I have so much in common with her.

But on any given day I might call upon the intercession of St. Anthony to find things that Sister Mary Fiacre has hidden but doesn't remember, not that she would tell us if she did remember.

At which point I will have to call upon the intercession of St. Theresa the Little Flower, the patron saint of people who are annoyed by the annoying habits of others.

Sister St. Aloysius will leave again soon for her summer brain trust, leaving me to try to remember how to boil water. I will be speaking with St. Lawrence, the patron saint of cooks as he was roasted to death on a grill. We'll think of him on the upcoming July 4th holiday as well.

If things get too pathetic in the kitchen, I'll call upon St. Catherine of Sienna, the patron saint of dieters. She survived only on the Host. (But not for long, she died in her early thirties. Don't try this at home.)

I often discuss strategy with St. John of God, who ran a makeshift hospital all by himself, as we run a make shift nursing home on a wing and a prayer here at the house. We have wheelchair to chair, wheelchair to bed, down to a science.

Lately, we've been having what is known as "June Gloom". Every day starts out gray and cloudy until the marine layer burns off later in the day. I love it. I much prefer day after day of June gloom to what lies ahead: Africa Hot. It always looks like it will actually rain, which is crazy talk after February. But I do love it when it rains. So I consult St. Swithin, the patron saint of rain. He loved the rain, too. He made a big fuss that he be buried in the church yard where the rain would always fall on him, but his sainthood caused him to be moved inside the church. Ironic.

Every time we crawl into our couch on wheels that passes for a car, we say hello to St. Frances Cabrini, the patron saint of avoiding car trouble. "Mother Cabrini, put down your linguine, look down from heaven and fix my machini." A reader passed that prayer onto us. While we're on the road, we may have to call upon Our Lady of LaSalette, the patron saint of road rage.


The list is endless: when I stubbed by toe I turned to St. Bartholomew, who had his skin peeled off. Certainly, he understands pain. We steel ourselves with St. Joseph when we have to brave the Home Depot. St. Bernadine of Sienna (gamblers) is great on Bingo night. Our recent graffiti incident turned our prayers to St. Luke, the patron saint of artists. We figured if he could put paint on, he could help us get it off.

"ur" patron saint must be St. Sebastian, the patron saint of the extremely busy.

One Small Step for Man

I think I mentioned the other day that I had an old neighbor, Bud, who did not believe in the moon landing. He was not alone in his insistence that the whole thing had been staged in a Hollywood studio. There are websites out there supporting this view.

Did we land on the moon?

Back during my Chicago days, I was visiting an office building for some fund raising. We know how much I love fundraising. I went to visit a man who was a big deal at Pullman Standard. As far as I know these are people that make cars on trains. I never bothered to learn a single thing about my contact there or the company. My spiel really doesn't change anyhow.

I was sitting in this man's office. He had a picture of the earth taken from space. On his desk, he had a little Apollo landing spaceship model. He had another picture of someone walking on the moon. "Hmph," I thought. "Great pictures. Guess he likes the space program." When suddenly I realized I had his name before: James McDivitt.


He was an Apollo astronaut! The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. An Apollo astronaut! I was thrilled to meet him. I asked him what it was like to walk on the moon. He said, "The moon is really boring. It's gray and brown and that's that. There is really not much to say about it." So I asked him about being an astronaut. He told me a few amusing things about that. For example, he said that every single person who ever went into space threw up at some point.

Who knew?

Did we go to the moon? I think we did. But I can't prove it.

Which brings me to today's question from a reader:

My sister is getting confirmed soon (~2 months time), but she's told me that she doesn't believe in God or anything. My parents want her to get confirmed, so she's just kinda going through the motions.. I don't think anything she's going to be taught in her preparation class is going to help change her mind/educate her about Catholicism, at least if they are still the same as when I did them, as I was literally taught nothing about the Catholic faith (not wishing to insult the lady running it, but I think that's true.. A lot of it was probably also down to my own immaturity though)... :/

Anyway - what can I do? Should she not get confirmed at all? Will the confirmation even be valid if she doesn't believe in God etc? My parents want her to be confirmed so that 'she'll have something to come back to when she's older.'

One other thing - can you think of a good patron saint for her? I've suggested loads of names (e.g. Monica, because she prayed for her son's conversion for years, so I reckon she's a dab hand, Mary, because you may as well go straight to the top, and so on and so on..), but she's rejected them all... Thank you sister! :)

Truthfully, she should not get Confirmed at all. But we both know that's not going to happen.

There are a few things you can do, but I think you could talk yourself blue in the face and not convince her of anything. You may as well go argue with Bud Gillman about the moon landing.

Here are things you can do:

Pray a lot. I'd suggest St. Paul, the patron saint of dramatic conversion. Or St. John the Baptist. He certainly shook people up. Or St. Ignatius of Antioch.


Get a green scapular.

Set a good example.

God is there, just like the moon. Confirmation is the point where you confirm your willingness to be a Catholic. So, even if she marches around in a pretty dress or a robe and gets a slap from the Bishop, she isn't going to be confirmed in anything. Sacraments are a two way street. If you go to confession and you're not sorry or you purposely lie or omit sins, your reconciliation does not take place. You haven't reconciled a thing.

The moon is there. You still have to fly over and land on it.

All is not lost. God's not going anywhere. He is going to be there for your sister no matter what. Who knows, maybe the instruction will take! Or maybe, on her way to the altar and the Bishop, she'll have an epiphany! Maybe after it is all over with and she'll realize that she really does want to be a part of this and then 'poof' she will be. Since God has been there waiting the whole time, her Confirmation will just be....retroactive.

As for the Confirmation name, since she doesn't really believe in any of this Bishop-y mumbo jumbo in the first place, I'll wager she's holding out for a cool sounding name, period. She doesn't care that the city of Santa Monica was named for St. Monica because when the Spanish conquistodors first arrived there, the first thing they saw was a rock that was burbling water non-stop and it reminded them of St. Monica, endlessly crying for her son.


I would suggest a very cool saint with a very cool sounding name. How about Maximillian Kolbe? There's a guy who took his Soldier of Christ status very seriously! And her confirmation name could be "Max".

It turns out, by the way, that Mr. McDivitt never actually went to the moon himself. He was the commander on Apollo 9, which orbited the earth and he was in charge of the the Apollo program from the ground. Perhaps that's why he didn't want to talk about the moon.

It Really Isn't Any Fuss

Happy Father's Day all you dads! I always think of Groucho Marx's song on Father's day. Here are the lyrics, sans the tune:

Today, Father, is Father's Day
And we're buying you
a tie,
You say that it was nice of us to bother.
But it really wasn't any fuss,
for according to our mother, you're our Father, and that's good enough for us.
Yes, that's good enough for us.

Amusing. None of those Marx brothers were particularly good role models, though.

The ultimate role model, of course, was St. Joseph, who also had to take someone's word for it where paternity was concerned. The fact that he did is in no small part the reason for his sainthood.

Some scientists recently came out with more information on what happens to us when we dream. The basic premise of their findings was that dreams allow us to strip the emotion out of our daily drudgery, encounters and problems.

This sounds like a bad thing, but it isn't. It's a very good thing. According to these scientists, the process actually makes us more compassionate towards others by getting rid of some of our own emotional baggage. It's why conventional wisdom has always been to "sleep on it". It's why you often see things more clearly in the morning.

I have been saying this myself for years and years. Dreams are to the brain as de-fragmenting is to your computer at night.

Which brings us back to our Father's Day pal, St. Joseph, whose sainthood was brought to us by a couple of important and enlightening dreams. Let's not forget, however, that St. Joseph had the help of angels in his dreams.

But I can't help but think after a good night of REM sleep, how much easier it must have been for St. Joseph to get with the program. Sure the angel told him everything was okay with his situation with Mary, but hearing that and feeling good about it are two very different things. He still had to deal with the whispers of the nosy neighbors, no doubt. I'm sure he didn't really feel much like packing up the donkey and moving to Egypt in the middle of the night, either, but maybe his dreams helped him handle it all.

And of course, everything is harder to bear when you're tired.

Right, Moms?

May I propose this idea for the perfect Father's Day gift? In honor of Dad and St. Joseph, let Dad sleep in. Take the kids to Mass without him and let him go to the late Mass. Or send him off to 5 o'clock Mass tomorrow.

Then do all Dad's chores while he snoozes on the couch like Dagwood Bumstead. Speaking of Dagwood, feed Dad a turkey sandwich for lunch. The tryptophan in there will have him out like a light.

The Second Coming of Corn Flakes

Remember not too long ago, when I was talking about the history of the Protestant churches and how it all started with Henry the VIII and Martin Luther and went downhill from there? I was admonished by some for being 'too simplistic', a criticism I fully embrace. My excuse? It's only a blog. Each denomination could take up several volumes. As time goes on, new denominations spring up like weeds in a vacant lot and their seeds blow in the wind and plant even more denominations. Today's answer to a question from a reader on a patron saint matching will take us on a whirlwind trip like weed seeds in the wind.

Sister, please give me some advice regarding a suggestion for a saint match up. I am sponsoring a young woman in RCIA, she is a former Seventh Day Adventist and was wondering if there are any saints that were former Adventists? I couldn't locate any, but I'm not as knowledgeable as you regarding these matters. Thank you for any help you can provide. ~Catherine

I don't know of any saints who were converts from the Seventh Day Adventist Church, or saints who specifically converted Seventh Day Adventists. Therefore we are going to have to find your friend a patron saint through extrapolation, and to do that, we're going to have to understand a little bit about being a Seventh Day Adventist.

I'm tired already.

A man named William Miller became obsessed with the Second Coming of Christ. Specifically, just when Christ would return. I believe Mr. Miller was a Baptist, but his obsession caused a new denomination to arise. Millerites were very plentiful in the year 1844. Mr. Miller (through his study of scripture) pinpointed the date of the return of Jesus to be sometime between March 1843 and March 1844. When Jesus failed to return by the end of that year, Mr. Miller's followers recalculated and came up with October 22, 1844.

The fiasco that ensued is known as The Great Disappointment.

An understatement, I'm sure.

The leftover Millerites fell into three (and if anyone's counting, so far, we've had the Baptists and the Millerites and now we'll move onto five denominations arising from this mess) groups who had three different interpretations of what went wrong. One of these groups was the Seventh Day Adventists, who believed that Jesus went somewhere on Oct. 22, 1844, it just wasn't here. I think Jesus entered His Heavenly Throne Room. Something along those lines.

At this point, a former Methodist (demonination #6 in our tale) who had become a Millerite and and then a Seventh Day Adventist, enters the picture. Meet Ellen G. White, a visionary (and by this I mean don't mean 'very forward thinking', although she was that, too....more on that later) started preaching about her visions, which I believe involved watching Jesus go into His Throne Room, but most certainly involved messages as to how the faithful should behave.

And on this count, I have to say, Ellen was a good egg. The basic tenets of her faith are not so different from the Catholic Church. The Holy Trinity, Jesus as Redeemer, the nature of God, really not so different. They do believe that when you die your soul sleeps until the Second Coming. Oops. I'm sure there are quite a few other such...misconceptions.

Although Mrs. White did not found the Seventh Day Adventists, she became the most influential person with that group, the de facto leader of the church. Her books, based on her visions, are the foundations of the church.

I should mention that Mrs. White got hit in the head with a rock at age nine. Her visions began at age 14. Is there a correlation? I wouldn't discount a rock to the head.

And one other thing: Mrs. White was a health nut. I say 'nut' in the kindest of tones. I am a fan of health nuts. She was such a health nut that her believers eventually got into the health care business. She influenced that super health nut, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who invented corn flakes. (Not to be confused with his brother who started the cereal company. He was the one that dumped all the sugar into those boxes.) Dr. Kellogg eventually had a falling out with the Adventists and left the denomination. Happily he did not form yet another religion.

Whew.

Anyhow, Mrs. White was a vegetarian. A vegetarian in the Midwest in the 1860's. The midwest, where to this day your plate of food will consist of a piece of meat, some version of a potato and something that passes as a vegetable. (For example, if you order a Whopper and fries, the lettuce and tomato on your Whopper are your vegetables. Am I exaggerating? Not even a little.) My hat's off to her on that count.

Now, to answer your question, we have several saints that fit the bill.

First, St. Paul, the patron saint of converts, knocked off his horse by Jesus Himself.

Second, St. Stephen, the first martyr, who well understands what it's like to get hit in the head with a rock.

Third, St. Martin de Porres, a great patron saint for those who adhere to holistic medicine and herbal treatments and that sort of thing. He was very much a believer in that stuff himself.

I'm also a fan of St. John of God, who ran all around not knowing what to believe for a very long time, until Jesus had a chat with him. He founded a hospital, too!

Holy Harry Potter

Sometimes I am really not up to the task here on the old blog. Sometimes it's because people ask questions that would be irresponsible for me to answer.

Hello Sister Is there a saint for women in abusive marriages and what are your thoughts as to whether they should stay or leave?

I've talked why I can't just answer this is some Dr. Laura, blanket type statement.

The patrons saint of bad marriages is St. Rita. She had a hum dinger. Her husband was so rotten the mob bumped him off.

And no one should stay in a place where they are abused. What constitutes abuse is a whole other kettle of fish. I would go out on a limb here and say that if a person feels they are being abused, they are correct. Everyone deserves respect and children must always be protected.

Then there are questions that are so large in scope that I never feel I can adequately explain.

I am not sure where to put this, so I am going to try here. Can you please explain holy water to me? I know why it is used in baptism and in the church fonts, but why do Catholics bless objects with it? I would like to be able to properly defend the church and its use to people who say we use it like magic. Thanks.


My hat's off to you to try and explain this one to the separated brethren. And I really don't take my hat off, you know. Deep breath.

You might try this tactic. Rather than go into a whole long, falling on deaf ears explanation of sacramentals and blessed objects, maybe you should just explain the difference between God's grace and magic. I think they might actually understand that. Especially if they are of the 'if you read Harry Potter you'll go to Hell" stripe.

And the difference is really, really simple. There is no such thing as magic and there is such a thing as God's grace. No one can wave a wand and say abracadabra and change a toad to a ruben sandwich. But holy water can wash away sins.

It's not the water. It's God's grace.

Unfortunately, this is a very half baked explanation. The separated brethren don't seem to differentiate between mortal and venial sins. Holy water only washes away venial sins.

The separated brethren also seem to confuse 'magic' with devil worship, which is why Harry Potter scares them. It seems to scare some Catholics as well. I say, since there is no such thing as magic or Harry Potter, you might just as well fear Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. There are witches over there, too.

There are people who use incantations and 'prayers' to call upon the power of Satan. A powerful tool to keep them at bay: holy water.

I have a headache. I'll offer it up to the Poor Souls in Purgatory. The separated brethren aren't 'into' that either.

In order to understand why we bless objects with holy water, one has to first understand all about holy water, which is a giant topic reaching far back into the Old Testament and on into the Fulfillment of the New Testament and all the rituals of all of that time, from cleansing oneself to enter the Temple, to Jesus Himself being baptized, to Jesus using mud to heal blindness.

Mud. That would be water, blessed by Jesus, and dirt with water blessed by Jesus on it.

Holy water 101:

Water cleanses.
Water sustains life.

God cleanses.
God sustains life.

Holy water cleanses and sustains the life of the soul, as it is blessed with the Grace of God.

So we cleanse and bless objects that help us to sustain the lives of our souls by calling on the Grace of God.

Hey! My headache's better!