\t\t\t\tDecember reminds us of Christmas and the birth of Christ in a manger creating a creche – the nativity scene. I am particularly reminded of that scene since I recently finished painting a Nativity scene. I learned too that the word \u201ccreche\u201d in Britain means a day nursery for babies and young children.\u00a0 That word reminds me of the objections that are made to having a cr\u00e8che on your property! That is because in our culture we have taken \u201cChrist\u201d out of Christmas and replaced him with an \u201cX\u201d, the symbol for the \u201cunknown\u201d. In a way the \u2018X\u2019 is proper since a great number in our culture don\u2019t know Christ and don\u2019t even bother to try to discover him. (I was recently advised that the \u201cX\u201d is really the beginning of a Greek word for Christ!)<\/p>\n
As I grew up, the Christmas Tree and gifts were in what was called a \u2018sitting room\u2019. We would stand in a line in the hallway outside that room having been to Mass or served as an altar boy at one . Sometimes we would have to wait longer since one of my brothers would be singing in the choir at the \u2018high\u2019 Mass. The sitting room was on the second floor. It was a very large room with an alcove and windows at the far end of it. Through those windows you could see the brick street, that ran from our garage to Chester Avenue a block away. It was in this alcove that the tree was placed and around it on the floor was a small train with cars running around a small village all sitting on a what looked liked snow!<\/p>\n
As you came into the room, on your left was a wall full of pictures. They were all framed\u00a0 8\u201d by10\u201d\u2019s and ran across the entire wall. There were four rows of them. The first row had a picture of one of us as a baby. Next there was one of Mom holding the baby. Down on the next row was a picture of one of us in our first communion outfit and last row had a picture of Mom and Dad and the child, or children, as they moved along the wall. All fifteen children were thus shown, even Rita who died a few months after being born. In her case they just had different views of her as a baby. From Frank the eldest, to Rosemary the youngest there was the growing McSorley family. Where the pictures ended the wall bent a bit to the right and part of it from the ground up was a fireplace. Above the fireplace there were more pictures but I can only remember a couple of Rosemary. They were taken of her because as a young child she had some ailment that the doctors\u2019 thought might cause her death shortly. But it didn\u2019t happen and she is now 77 with over 50 years as a Holy Child Nun, including 10 or more as an attorney running a Community Legal Service\u2019s office. We are all very happy that the doctors were wrong.<\/p>\n
We stood there outside the \u2018sitting\u2019 room in the hallway waiting for that door to open and as soon as we could hear the train running we knew any moment now we would enter!<\/p>\n
Writing about the possibility of Rosemary\u2019s dying reminds me of a true event that happened in the life of my brother John.\u00a0\u00a0 John was a Marine in WW II and made the landing at Guadalcanal. It was a major turning point in the war in the Pacific. The Marines landed in August 1942 and it was finally secured in January 1943. A short time after landing his platoon was seemingly surrounded and his buddies were falling all around him. He found himself on the ground watching Japanese bayoneting Marines. As they neared him he closed his eyes and prayed. He then opened them upon hearing firing and found the enemy had fled. He was taken with others to a medical center. He had survived! He had minor wounds but was ordered out of the area and back to the States. He was given the choice of going to any other part of the Corps and he chose the Marine Air. He went to Pensacola with the idea of flying but didn’t make it as a pilot. He was trained as a gunner-photographer on a Douglas dive-bomber (DC-7). It was in this capacity that he later found himself in the Philippine Islands engaging in the cleaning up of guerillas still fighting in lower parts of the Islands. MacArthur as he promised had “returned” in September of 1944. The city of Manila and the area around it of Luzon was soon once again in American hands. But scattered about the lower islands, especially the island of Mindanao, the Japanese survivors were still active as a guerilla force. In one of those engagement John\u2019s plane was hit between the tail and where he sat facing it. He and the pilot survived the crash and John soon found himself in Manila where it appeared that the lower part of his leg was so badly injured that they were planning to amputate it. John\u2019s brother Frank, the oldest in the family and a missionary there, was now free from being incarcerated by the Japanese in Santos Tomas in Manila. He learned of the proposed amputation. He came and apparently exercised enough authority that they didn\u2019t amputate. John had a bad leg the rest of his life but at least he had a leg.<\/p>\n
John was also one of the reason we first came to Florida. In 1990 he was in the VA hospital here. He had been retired and living in his son\u2019s Richard\u2019s home in Shore Acres in St. Petersburg. The VA hospital is outside the city.\u00a0 We visited I think in January or February and hoped to return later in the year. In fact he said we could stay at his son\u2019s home and we would play golf. However he died there on April 7,1990.<\/p>\n
As November ended there was a newspaper report of the Catholic Bishop of Rhode Island attacking verbally Rep. Patrick Kennedy, son of the recently deceased Sen. Ted Kennedy. Apparently it happened in 2007 when asking the Congressman not to receive communion \u201cdue to his support for abortion rights\u201d. And now the whole matter was back in play in 2009 since Kennedy criticized the \u2018nations Catholic bishops\u2019 for threatening to oppose the overhaul of the nation\u2019s health care system. The Bishops wanted tighter restrictions on abortion. They have since been added to the bill. But for these reasons the Bishop stated\u00a0 \u201che is not properly prepared to receive Holy Communion\u201d\u2026 no one has a right to receive Holy Communion\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0(emphasis added). This means he\/she must be \u201cproperly prepared\u201d. He must do certain things before being qualified or has a \u2018right\u2019 to received communion! Bishop by Franz Josef van Beck, a Catholic theologian wrote this about the \u2018right\u2019. \u201c It is impudent for bishops to push the envelope by threatening politicians who vote pro choice with refusal of Holy Communion, since the grounds on which the threat is based arguably does not hold up under scrutiny, even if the bishop is enjoying proper authority.\u201d<\/p>\n
I read all the verses in the Gospels written about the Last Supper and could find no place where Christ decrees that only certain people have a \u2018right\u2019 i.e. are qualified to receive His Body and Blood. In fact one could argue that Judas was still there and took the communion along with the others. Certainly that is an example of Christ permitting sinners to partake of his Body and Blood.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered that the Catholic Church does not act under scripture \u2018alone\u2019 but makes \u2018tradition\u2019 as part of their right to act. So I checked out the history of the Eucharist or Holy Communion and found it probably began to be considered as a \u2018right\u2019 as far back as the 12th & 13th centuries. In an article on the Catholic Theological Society of America, it noted the one of speakers Gary Macy\u2019s \u201cvirtuoso excursion into medieval eucharistic theology..well-calculated to\u00a0 destabilize conventional Catholic assumptions about ordination, real presence, and the relationship among transubstantiation, reception, eucharistic devotion,\u00a0 and spiritual communion. Macy argued that the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries witnessed a \u2018clericalization of the West\u2019 in which the ordained consolidated power over the Eucharist…including access to the Eucharist redefined as spiritual communion\u201d So it could be that this is when the \u2018right\u2019 to communion first was encountered. The Reformation led by Luther wanted to rid the Church of some of these \u201cunwarranted\u201d traditions but the reform failed. We thus ended up with a separate religion now called Lutheranism in, which for most part communion is available to all. There are some exceptions in certain synods but the objections to such acts are just the same.<\/p>\n
We wish you all a Happy and Holy Christmas!!<\/p>\n
Until next time Pax Tecum!\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
December reminds us of Christmas and the birth of Christ in a manger creating a creche – the nativity scene. I am particularly reminded of that scene since I recently finished painting a Nativity scene. I learned too that the word \u201ccreche\u201d in Britain means a day nursery for babies and young children.\u00a0 That word … <\/p>\n