Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield
@frjoshTX
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Priest @StRitaDallas + Author: Pilgrim Holiness @wipfandstock + The Crisis of Bad Preaching @avemariapress + Eucharist @litpress . At times @dallasnews .
Dallas, Texas
Joined March 2013
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I might have a book problem. But I don’t care.
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The evil of bad catechesis is truly felt when sitting by the bed of an elderly person who, though full of vague deistic sentimentality, knows not Jesus Christ at all. I can’t tell you how sad it is to sit with a Catholic at the end of his or her life who just doesn’t know Jesus.
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I know this picture (my mom took it) is public domain, but I still think it bad social media manners to broadside my family, exploiting our picture like this—which is what it feels like—having not been asked, just to further someone’s bad take. I really dislike Twitter sometimes.
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Never take pleasure in the ruin of a person’s vocation.
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For the gentleman who left Mass right after Communion who accosted me—“You’re one of the Fathers, right?!”—about the number and volume of children at Mass this morning, let’s just say that the conversation didn’t go like he thought it would.
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One last thought for the day...
At Mass this morning, by myself, empty in a huge church, at the moment of Communion, the thought, like a sound, an outside voice:
“This really is the most important thing in the world.”
Make of that what you will.
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After two years empty, filling this up today was honestly emotional. Been a tough few years, but we’re getting there.
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Just a reminder that Catholicism needn’t turn you into a right-winger or a left-winger nor a partisan of any sort.
In fact, if it has, something has most likely gone terribly wrong.
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One of the many reasons I love Saint Bernadette is because that sister kept it real. St. Bernadette, pray for us!
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My boy doesn’t go to a Catholic school. So, I was touched when he came home with a rosary and lovely token, gifts for his First Communion, from two of his non-Catholic classmates and their parents. A sweet reminder of how we can celebrate each other and the beauty of difference.
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I’m a married priest with, come August, five kids. I couldn’t do it without a great parish, a strong saintly wife, AND without the constant support of my celibate brother priests who help me in countless ways be the earthly father I also need to be. They get it, and I’m thankful.
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I should think the only informed take here is nausea. And to remember that this will have an effect upon souls (this is not a game), and so your Twitter glee or condescending commentary will not be helpful. Only your prayers have any chance of helping.
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To sit in a silent empty church as the color dances about: for peace, friends, try it.
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True story: as an Anglican seminarian I spent a week in Ars praying before the incorrupt body of the Curé d'Ars. I kept imagining him coming to, looking at me and asking, “Why are you here? Why aren’t you Catholic?”
I’m a Catholic priest now.
St. John Vianney, pray for us!
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5 minutes on Twitter, I’m like, “The Church is collapsing, faith is fading, everyone hates each other, it’s so depressing!”
5 minutes in my parish, I’m like, “God is at work, the Church is alive, it’s amazing how Christ is working!”
Friends, go where the soul is healed.
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As a priest, the pressure isn’t to be Catholic, the pressure is to be something other than Catholic. For that’s what it feels like sometimes: that our people and even our institutions want their priests to be something other than Catholic. This is the deep pain of many priests.
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I’m increasingly uneasy these days about my growing sense that we Catholics, in talking about so much else, have left off actually talking about Jesus—and just at a time when the world needs us to be talking about Jesus and not the so much else.
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Somebody did an awesome job serving her first Mass at St. Rita! But, of course, being her dad, I’m probably a little biased.
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Did you know you could read Winnie the Pooh in Latin?
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As a convert this I know: Never abandon the communion of Peter. To leave Peter is to leave Jesus. No matter what you think of any one pope. Don’t let the Twitterati, self-infatuated authors, YouTubers, and know-it-alls scare you out of remaining in communion with Peter.
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But, if you really want to know what I think in the topic, here you go:
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My expert homiletic advice for my fellow preachers, on how to deal with noisy children. It works every time; here’s what you do: You get over it.
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To opinion jockeys on Twitter who know how to fix the Church: All I can say is being a pastor changes your perspective. This site is an unreal space, light years away from the real care of souls. The parish has humbled me, crushed me, given me gentler wisdom. Seek that wisdom.
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If you can think of a person you don’t want to be in heaven with, I promise you, you won’t be.
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As an
@MLB
fan, this is deeply saddening to me. Celebrate whomever you please, celebrate good works; but can we refrain from mocking religion? No religion should be mocked. This plainly mocks Catholicism. This is the team of Vin Scully, of Gil Hodges. They would be so ashamed.
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“A dishonest Catholic does far more harm than an honest heretic.”
-St. Bernard of Clairvaux
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Though you may not see him, you never carry your cross alone.
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Today, go to Mass only to praise God, to long for him, to taste him. Think of nothing else. Go not for any answers, go not to hear what anyone may say about the rages of the day; do not care where your priest or parish “stands” on anything at all. Just seek him. For he seeks you.
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Here’s your reminder: When you see a married Catholic priest, it is no scandal, nothing somehow less Catholic, no creeping modernism. Rather, it’s a sign of the Catholic Church’s profound mercy and also of her real commitment to Christian unity.
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Occasionally a person, often a parent, will come to me, expressing a desire to deepen his or her Christian life—finally take it seriously, be more intentional. The desire is real, genuine, beautiful. For better or worse, they come to me for advice.
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Three Anglican seminarians drive to Ars in the middle of the night in a blizzard. We pray before the body of the Curé d'Ars for a week. A decade later we’re Catholic priests celebrating Mass together at St. Peter’s. These two pilgrimages are connected. Holy Curé, priez pour nous!
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Being a parish priest, I’ve gained a strange special love for sinners, for myself too. A lot of people struggle silently with some really bad stuff. Yet God loves them still; I too. The priest’s job, as I understand it, is to whisper hope into their darkness until dawn breaks.
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Twenty years ago today I was made an Episcopal priest. Although God has brought me along a much different path than I anticipated, I am grateful for its winding. Because I’ve made so many friends. I’m so unutterably happy now to be a Roman Catholic. Ut unum sint.
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As a married Catholic priest, a convert (you know my story), a parish priest for a long time now: I’ve come to cherish priestly celibacy and admire it profoundly. And I’ve come to look on most of my celibate brethren as something like heroes, a handful of them as saints.
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When you ask the Church for the Sacraments, don’t hold it against the Church when the Church asks you to live the sacramental life. For the Church isn’t rejecting you but in fact respecting you, offering you what your soul really wants, really needs—a real shot at holiness.
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The tiresome thing, from my limited parochial experience, is that it seems now people ask me about controversies, prelates, and pundits more than they ask about the Lord or prayer or happiness. We’re suffering it seems a profound lack of spiritual focus. Our eyes aren’t on Jesus.
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Proud of my girl making her first Confession (not to me)! I’ve learned that when we promise God we’ll raise our kids in the faith, we’re basically just allowing God to give us even more gifts, for watching my kids draw near the Lord in the Sacraments are gifts indescribable.
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A good day. A baptism. A sacred day. Psalm 128:3 and grateful.
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Anyway, we must come to know Jesus. We must help our people find Jesus. We must help our people fall in love with him, live with him, talk with him, trust in him. The Catholic faith is true. It is the fullness of faith—but only with Jesus. For there is only darkness without him.
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Quite sad. I doubt
@SabrinaAnnLynn
had any concept she desecrated a place of worship, but that’s indeed what she did. I doubt she stopped to think. That there’s little grasp or empathy for such an act says many sad things. Forgive her, for she and many know not what they do.
It’s officially the final day of spooky season — but as
@SabrinaAnnLynn
captures in the music video for “Feather,” men tend to be scary all year long.
Watch:
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Talk about Jesus more than you talk about the Church. It’ll be better for the Church if you do, better for your soul too.
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From the Whitfield Family to all y’all, Happy Christmas!
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For me it’s one of the strangest most beautiful gifts of priesthood that when hearing confessions, hearing all that weakness and sin, I can’t help but love these people more, love humanity more, hope more too. I feel it even. I don’t know; it’s weird. God’s in it, I think.
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The first day of school is always fun. So grateful for Catholic education.
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Your bitterness won’t save the Church. It won’t even save you. It’s not a sign of fidelity but of something else. Be careful. Rest, remember God’s love for you; then, remember God’s love for everyone else. You will never let God down by loving others.
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It is a cold, scared, unscripted feeling seen in the eyes and heard in the voice; the scramblings of self-justification, the ignorance of one’s sins, the strange pleading for just the right ritual, feeling alone without any idea of Jesus, that he is there waiting like a lover.
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"Even holy men sometimes suffer from a wandering of mind when they pray..."
-St. Thomas Aquinas
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I wear black clerical shirts because I love Jesus.
I wear black clerical shirts because I love Jesus.
I wear black clerical shirts because I love Jesus.
#Priesthood
in
#Texas
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Some Roman Catholic clergy have the very bad habit of always explaining the liturgy during the liturgy. It is out of place and annoying. Celebrate the liturgy well and let the liturgy speak for itself. Really, stifle yourself. The liturgy does not need a play-by-play commentary.
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Being a religious guy sometimes people ask me why I got vaccinated like they expect some sort of deep theological explanation or something about how my faith led me to get vaccinated. Nope, I just wanted to try and not get sick. Covid bad, vaccination good. Ain’t complicated.
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Being a parish priest, I’ve learned the holiest person often is not the one you’d think. That holiness is hidden, of course, is often true of clergy too. Each heart is a mystery. Which is why each deserves love and hope, even the apparently wicked as much as the apparently holy.
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In charity, some advice: Stop following grifters and their nonsense. Without this medium, this guy would just be that guy sending mean emails to people. This take is wrong and utterly devoid of the Spirit. The damage these silly people do because it’s their business is sickening.
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That wicked, weak-willed, repeat sinner—making his or her broken way again and again to the confessional, sometimes to confess the worst, most pathetic things—is just so beautiful a soul. I almost always see a saint in such, the beginnings of heaven. Because that’s how God works.
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“There must be no hostility in our minds, no contempt in our eyes, no insult on our lips.”
-St. John Bosco
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Whoever did this homemade Valentine that my kid brought home, you win. This is how it should be done. Awesome.
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“…nevertheless I am sent from God.”
-St. Joan of Arc
St. Felicity and all the Martyrs of Africa, pray for her. St. Joan of Arc and all the Saints of France, pray for her.
Welcome to our family, little one. It’s infinite, this family, more than just us, made of eternal love.
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You’re not going to settle the Church’s controversies with that zinger of a tweet you’ve been wanting to write nor find peace reading one. We celebrate the incarnation in just a few days. Chill. And step away from this anti-sacrament of anger to prepare yourself for the true one.
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Those infuriated by Jesus’s teaching, who tried unsuccessfully to throw him off a cliff, I’ve always thought more honest, possessing more integrity, than those of us who praise Jesus on Sundays but then throw him out of our daily lives the rest of the week.
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I’m a Catholic priest thanks to St. JP2. Pope Benedict XVI himself signed my rescript. Thus, I’ll mute and pray for those who sickly belittle a daughter of a priest who just wants to serve, who in grave error think themselves more learned or orthodox than the Successors of Peter.
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God’s not an accountant. God’s not an auditor. God’s forgiveness isn’t an itemized deduction. God is love. He is merciful. So, quit second guessing God’s grace. Quit second guessing God’s love for you in the Sacraments. He loves you. He does. He wants to be with you. Be at peace.
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Your pastor, remember, also has to love and lead people who don’t at all think the way you do, who also are as adamant and convinced of things as you are. Remember that, and then cut your pastor some slack. Being pastoral is sometimes slow work.
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Look…
1. I just tweeted my appreciation for my celibate brethren because I’m deeply thankful.
2. That I’m a married priest is NOT hypocrisy by any reasonable measure. I will not engage in argument here.
3. Was just trying to say something beautiful, but Twitter, you know…😕
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It repeatedly amazes me the feeling I get hearing confessions, a simple but profound feeling, a love for sinners I discover within myself but which I know is not a love of my own making, not empathy or sympathy; its origin is outside of me. It’s the wildest thing, beautiful.
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St. Thomas Aquinas carried a relic of St. Agnes on his person at all times. He even healed his buddy Reginald with it. He had a terrible fever, and St. Thomas just busted out the relic and took care of it. Let’s go back to theologians doing stuff like that again.
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Not leaving Mass early is as pious a thing as receiving Holy Communion on the tongue.
😉
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The geese of St. Rita, all good Catholics as you know, have decided upon a religious procession this morning, all in a straight line squawking their praises to our wonderful God. Happy Sunday!
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A convo after Mass...
Maggie: “Dad, you and mom only name your kids after saints, right?”
Me: “Correct.”
Maggie: “So, if you had a boy, what would you name him?”
Me: “Nolan Ryan.”
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Picking up the pieces of so many bad decisions made in the past—all in the name of being “pastoral”—is a very real and very sad part of ministry today. I don’t know about other priests, but sometimes it’s just depressingly overwhelming how much we’ve let our people down.
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A timely Collect today. Funny how timely the prayers of the Church often are. Pray for peace.
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Why is going to Confession regularly a smart thing to do? For the same reason it’s smart to put out little fires before they become big fires. Less chance of getting yourself burned.
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God gets first dibs on your schedule. Otherwise, this Christianity thing doesn't work.
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I have become quite enamored of the massive commentary on Matthew by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. His mediation on Matthew 2, for instance, has been swimming in my brain for days. This passage on the magi avoiding Herod…may God deliver us from a “false sense of apostolate.”
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"If we fail to forgive, we're rejecting our own faith."
-Fr. Emil Kapaun, US Army
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If a theologian isn’t actively part of a real Christian community (e.g., a monastery or an ordinary parish) contributing, tithing, teaching, ushering, humbly worshipping alongside others—then be very wary of that theologian. Very wary.
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I baptized the tiniest baby today in NICU—with the help of joyful, tearful strong parents and godparents, a compassionate and profoundly kind Methodist chaplain, a patient translator, and some awesome nurses. If you wanted to know what Christian love and hope were up to today.
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Dialogue with a twelve-year-old:
Me: “Don’t get on X.”
Youth: “X isn’t cool anymore. I mean, it’s nothing but a bunch of old people in their forties depressed.”
Me:
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The Church shouldn’t beg us to go to Mass on Sunday. If you think about it, if in the Spirit you understand it, then it’s we who should do the begging. If you need the Church to beg you to go to Mass, then, I think, spiritually speaking, you’re in a quite dangerous situation.
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Was an honor and pure joy to walk with this great family as they came into the Church. Devin and his daughters are just really awesome people.
Former NBA star Devin Harris has become a Catholic, per a report on his recent graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he once featured at guard.
The 40-year-old basketball analyst wrote his thesis on an infamous Renaissance Dominican.
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Can always tell when the Catholic Amazon delivery guy comes. He gets it. He knows all about Our Lady, protectress of packages.
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You with your struggles, no matter how humiliating or grotesque, are no less on the path to holiness than another person struggling with something else. Don’t, for mistaken shame, think yourself more lost than anyone else. Just be, happily, a beggar for grace. And never quit.
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So many Catholics constantly caring so much about what’s going on at the Vatican is a relatively new thing, and not a healthy new thing. Neither the attention paid nor the objects so obsessively observed measure the truth of Catholicism or the work of the Spirit. Be careful.
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Catholics mustn’t be ruined by cultural anger. Joylessness kills faith. Ours is a beauty belonging to eternal beauty. We shouldn’t act like truth can ever be destroyed; it can’t. Rather, we must be known for our unconquerable desire, the mark of that desire being our strange joy.
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I’m one chuffed dad seeing this strong young woman celebrating her Confirmation! St. Joan of Arc, pray for her!
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Once again:
Babies making noise—laus Deo.
Phone going off—anathema sit.
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Sharing the confessional with a giant wasp for two hours this morning was, let’s call it, a spiritual exercise of intense focus.
😳
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Remember, for most of us the greatest impact we’ll have on the Church will be in the parish: by showing up, praying, serving, befriending. Beware then, spiritually, of your grander ambitions, for sometimes pride confuses vocation. You can do more in your parish than on Twitter.
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I love it when I pop in and the choir is practicing. Our parish choir is just, man, well, I’ve never heard better. Beauty is part of the mission.
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Christians should be radicalized, every last one of them. It’s just that they should be radicalized by the Gospel, not by petty ideologues with Patreon accounts.
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Since COVID I’ve done away with reconciliation rooms. So I asked my awesome facilities staff to look into making portable Confession screens. Because who wants to pay $1k for a blooming screen? “Easy, Father!” they say. Few hours later they email me a pic of the prototype. 🤔🙄🤣
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We who believe ourselves pro-life must examine ourselves much more thoroughly, unblinded, admitting to ourselves what is clearly not pro-life about us. We must repent, then work to build a world truly cherishing life. We have A LOT work to do, no time to rest, no time to gloat.
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That this doesn’t happen more shows the strength of diocesan priests. Belittled within the Church by an expert caste and class, clerical and lay, and without by the worldly, some of the cruelest things ever said to me have been said by the faithful. Don’t just pray, be kind too.
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