Helping the Poor
Author: Charles Dittmeier
Liturgy Books to Cambodia
Every year I have asked the liturgy office of the Archdiocese of Louisville to get various liturgical books for the English Catholic Community in Cambodia. We had books for lectors and other ministers that were quite useful. Now that I am back in the U.S., I picked up the books in Louisville and yesterday shipped them to Phnom Penh via DHL. They have already arrived there, an amazing time since last year another service took 3+ weeks. But shipping the books cost 3 1/2 times their purchase price!
DEI
A draft document from the chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on African American Affairs defended diversity, equity and inclusion, saying, “Diversity reaches out to all people. … Equity is the truth of the justice of God applied to everyone. … Inclusion is living the law of the Lord as one.”
Fratelli Tutti
Pope Francis’ Encyclical: Political Charity
180. Recognizing that all people are our brothers and sisters, and seeking forms of social friendship that include everyone, is not merely utopian. It demands a decisive commitment to devising effective means to this end. Any effort along these lines becomes a noble exercise of charity. For whereas individuals can help others in need, when they join together in initiating social processes of fraternity and justice for all, they enter the “field of charity at its most vast, namely political charity”. [165] This entails working for a social and political order whose soul is social charity. [166] Once more, I appeal for a renewed appreciation of politics as “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good”.
Candlelight Vigil
Candlelight Rally
Turn Out the Vote
Tonight a group of political activists gathered at a local pub to write postcards to potential voters in a special congressional election in Tennessee next month. The postcards urged people to vote without mentioning any candidates or parties by name.
Six of us from the larger Dittmeier family turned out to write postcards.
Bardstown Dinner
This evening three of us retired priests drove south to Bardstown, Kentucky to the St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral where we had dinner with Fr. Randy Hubbard, the pastor there. Randy followed me as the priest with the Catholic deaf ministry in our archdiocese.
First Kentucky Snow
Today the Louisville temperature went down to the mid 20ºs and we got a few snow flurries and a little accumulation for an hour or two. This is the first time I’ve seen snow falling for 20 or 30 years.
Psalm 121:8
The Lord will guard you as you come and go, both now and forever.
The bishop’s office asked me to take masses at St. Boniface Church in Louisville for November and December, until the new pastor is in place, and I am happy to do that. I just need to limit my work mainly to places within bicycle range. St. Boniface is only three miles from where I live so that was no problem.
Where to put my bicycle during the morning masses was another question. The liturgical minister solved it by our taking the (expensive) bicycle into church to a side chapel where a trustworthy guardian could keep an eye on it.