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The Catholic Church in Cambodia.
I write a column every two months in The Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville. It has been about mission with deaf people in Cambodia, but now I have explained my returning to the U.S.
Click here for the link to this week’s article.
My plan for re-establishing myself in the United States is to participate in different church and civic activities, find out what is and isn’t being done in Louisville and how I might help, and basically just trying get around so I can see what my future role(s) might be. One group I encountered is a theology discussion group that gathers to talk about a book on eco-spirituality by a theologian named O’Murchu. I met with them for the first time today and it was great group of people and a wise investment of interest and time.
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!
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.”
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”.
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.
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.