A Mixed-Bag Stroll Through Our Parish Times

After the May 19th Mass I picked up the May 2019 issue of Our Parish Times.  This issue is focusing on school graduations, namely those from Catholic schools.  However, to read the various articles, one would not detect anything particularly Catholic about them.  The articles state that graduates are "prepared to meet the challenges of the real world".   Well, that's nice, in and of itself, but what about the schools' mission to prepare students to be faithful Catholics and to attain eternal salvation?  So far I see not one peep regarding that goal - a goal that surpasses by far all the scholarships and focus on this world.

I'm looking right now at page 16.  All the graduates from St. Bartholomew's School (on River Road in Bethesda) are pictured, with favorite quotes underneath each picture.  Not one quote is from a Catholic saint or even Our Lord Himself.  We see things from Ghandi and Martin Luther King.  We even read quotes from (this is no joke) Freddy Mercury and Whitney Houston.  Why no quote from any Catholic who takes Jesus Christ seriously?  I find that omission to be curious.  Was that deliberate?

After all that, it was refreshing to read on page 34 how the kindergarten class at Holy Redeemer made Rosaries for the missions.  They also made some to present to their mothers on Mothers' Day.  Equally good to see were accounts of May Processions and First Communions.

That oasis came to a bitter end when I read on page 22 (St Michael page) some tripe that does obeisance to envirowhackoism.  What else can it be when the authors mindlessly recite the mantra from the so-called "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change", the one that predicts that if we don't go green within 12 years, well, they don't really say what will happen, do they?   One wonders just how much carbon footprint was caused by the creation of that IPCC report, what with all these wonks in their private jets, the paper wasted, etc - but I digress!

Again, to end on a happy note, go to page 59 (St Raphael) and read of the conversion of a Jewish man to the One True Faith.  That is the goal of authentic ecuminism - not some "go along to get along" nonsense but leading to Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.