Why I don’t like subject headers.

Because my blog has been far too serious lately and because it is likely to get serious again soon, I decided to be a bit more relaxed today.

I know many of you receive e-mails from me regularly and a lot of you get frustrated with the general lack of subject headers. I want to take a moment to explain that my not typing in a subject header is not laziness, or apathy but truly a conscious decision.

The trick is to use subject headers sparingly. I do use subject headers once in a while when the person pretty much knows my e-mail is light hearted or it is a completely professional e-mail and I have to think of something to say.

But these are some of the reasons I will not use a subject header in many e-mails and if your lucky I might indicate why I do use e-mail headers sometimes.

The con’s of subject headers.

First, they warn people of your mood and I just prefer people get a full blast of Bridget when they read the first paragraph. If I am angry they will know by the second sentence, if I am feeling a tad mischievous they will know that almost instantly too.

Second, sometimes they imply jovial and comedic content and the receiver may be in need of comedy but not the mood so they will simply delete your thoughtful message meant to make them smile for the sake of remaining in a bad mood.

Thirdly, often time the opposite is true. The receiver is need of a good laugh and opens their inbox hoping against hope that they will get a funny e-mail from a friend. Scanning their subject headers they find no funny headers and worse to mystery e-mails that could be funny so they begin to wade apathetically through their serious e-mails. But in my situation this person goes to the computer they know sometimes I am funny so they open it and at least attentively read my request.

But there is always the other reason, this is actually really only in one specific case. I have a friend who loves Subject headers, although his subject headers are useless. They are always the same they always say (and sorry if you know or are this friend) “to so and so from me this date and this time of day.” So to be just as helpful 9 times out of 10 or more like 29 times out of 30 I leave my subject headers blank. Yes it is spiteful, yes it is petty but it makes me smile and annoys someone I love. What more can I ask for in life. Although I have never been told it annoys anyone I know it does.

Of course there is laziness and apathy but really those are not the usual reasons. So now you know although annoying you is a perk of this no subject header thing, it is not the main reason I do it.

Liberal vs. Conservative

I can’t tell you how many times I get asked if I am a liberal or a conservative. This is usually by someone who doesn’t know me well or just has always thought of me in one light and sees something they didn’t expect. This question annoys me and I usually ask the grand inquisitor (in a less than inviting tone) if he/she is asking me if I am a liberal or conservative in light of my political leanings or in light of my ecclesiology. A few seconds pass before the vacant look on my interrogator’s face turns into indignation and I get a scolding, “well you have to be either liberal or conservative just tell me which you are.” At this point the teachable moment is too much for me to resist, I have now created a platform from which to get my point across and the interrogator is now in the uncomfortable situation of having to think for him/her self. I find 99% of the time this person is trying to figure out which of the two major political parties I line up with and so the following would help them but usually they just want the short answer.

So am I liberal or Conservative? I can’t answer that except to say I’m Catholic. I hold certain beliefs that inform my conscience and guide my decision making in and out of the voting booth. I find too often in American life we feel the need to lump ourselves in with a political party, we adapt our understanding of Catholicism to fit within a party platform instead of forming our own conscience and allowing that to dictate which lever we pull on the first Tuesday of November.

Sure we start out idealistic an open minded we go with the Republican Party because they are unabashedly pro-life, except the death penalty but other than that they are unabashedly pro-life. We can work on some of their faults later; right now it is just important that we have someone in government who wants to end abortion. Forget that they don’t have a plan to actually do that, they want to do it and the death penalty well I personally oppose the death penalty and I will make sure I always remember that. The right to life is paramount and we know that so we jump on board the pro-life party. We are good Christians so we forgive some of the blaring errors in the party’s platform and chalk it up to something we will get to later, once abortion is ended.

Or we have the other side of the coin. We go with the Democratic Party because they really prioritize the poor, they seek justice and end to war, fair wages and advocate immigrants rights. Yeah they don’t condemn abortion and they as a party have a stance that does not support the fundamental right to life but once we get rid of poverty and everyone is treated with dignity abortion will cure itself. We can forgive the mistakes of our party, because really we are dealing with one thing at a time and we will get to abortion, stem-cell research and all the other life issues. Hey at least we disagree with the death penalty, well kind of.

This is a gross over simplification of the issue and I know that but it brings to light a deeper issue I struggle with. Which political party is right for a Catholic? Which political party actually represents what the Church believes? How can we ask Catholic’s vote in November and how can we be active citizens when our fundamental beliefs have us in opposition or agreement with everyone at least part of the time? I can’t answer that, I just hope everyone takes the time to struggle with those questions and doesn’t do the easy thing, doesn’t vote a straight ticket because that is what we always do.

I know there is more to the issue and I hope I can find the time and the energy to outline my ideal political platform. It should take about 5 or 6 posts but at least that way if I ever run for office my platform is already out and at least nominally disseminated.

What is our problem with a multi-cultural church?

For several weeks now I have been meaning to write about one of my greatest struggles with my fellow Americans, particularly those who recite the same creed as I. When did the statue of liberty get changed to read “give me your white, English speaking, semi-affluent Europeans?” And when did the Catholic Church become an appropriate place to espouse these ideas?

Let me address the later issue. The former is really just people being stupid and I can live with stupid people but I can not tolerate people using the Church to justify excluding others. So the later issue is the one that actually causes me to question what is being taught in churches and homes.

The first issue that brought this to my attention is the planning of bilingual or multi lingual ministry and masses. My first argument is this: are you kidding me? Did we deny the Sacraments to the Polish, the German, the Italian, the Spanish when they came to the United States and didn’t speak the language? No instead we had in some major US cities 4 Catholic Churches with 2 blocks of each other so each of these communities could live their faith deeply rooted in their culture. Granted for a large number of these communities the Latin mass was still the norm so nobody knew what was going on anyway, except the priest and maybe 15% of the congregation but still the culture and the language of our ancestors was embraced and accepted as being completely acceptable.

At the risk of sounding like an evil temptress who is out to destroy the Church I will publicly recognize Vatican II for the good things it brought to the Church. The first of these good things was a call to bring the mass, thereby the most real experience of the divine we have, into the vernacular of the people. I know it is an odd concept, although the graces where there all along actually letting people hear and understand what was going on. I mean what would these people do now that they actually get to hear the words of Christ and hear the words they pray in their own language? Certainly the benefits did not include people now being able to fully, actively and consciously participate in the liturgy.

So now we have the problem of discerning what the vernacular was. It certainly was not Latin, since again nobody speaks Latin in their homes and daily life. But what to do about these cultural churches that had popped up all over. The answer was clear in the Polish Church speak Polish, in the Italian Churches speak Italian, etc, etc. But oh no this is another problems people start getting married and having kids and those kids are not Polish or Italian or Irish or German they are products of America. These children of the melting pot speak English and the language of their ancestors. These children have both a Polish and an Irish identity. They are for a lack of better word Americans.

Now we add to the confusion of people no longer being defined by ancestry the diminishing number of priests. We have to start combining parishes and having priests ministering to larger communities. So these priests start offering masses in English and what ever language people still speak. We have problems with this like all other things. We got used to things being a certain way and now they go and change it all up on us. Darn these people!

All that rant is meant to do is illustrate that this is not a new phenomenon, developed in the last 5 years. What is so different about the current situation where we as a Church need to reach the needs of multiple communities with our limited resources? I have a lot of theories that don’t bode well for my respect for humanity so I am just going to assume because people have forgotten the past and don’t understand the present. I will avoid too many theories of racism or classicism and I will even avoid my most tempting theory and the one that gets my ire up most that people have exchanged their Catholic identity for a political affiliation and don’t even know it.

There is a reality we face as an American Church. We are the universal Church, we are not a European church or a United States church we are the universal Church. We were not called to speak only to those we understood, but to go forth and spread the good news to all nations and all people.

The church in the United States is called to minister to her people regardless of what language we speak. We are not all native English speakers and the vernacular of the people does not mean what we think the vernacular should be, but the real vernacular of the people. Wouldn’t mass be prettier if it were spoken in Latin? Yeah so why not have it in Spanish or Italian, those are Romance languages, and they are closer to Latin than American English could ever claim to be? The answer isn’t clear to me why people get so upset when they hear a bishop speak Spanish. I just don’t understand where this indignation comes from.

It makes perfect sense for me to hear and see the Church speak as many languages as possible, especially here in the United States where we really are called to embrace the call our country brides itself on. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

We as Catholics, especially we who are blessed to live in a place that’s principles speak so powerfully the message of Christ, are called to be the light beside the golden door and the light of Christ to the tired, poor huddled masses longing to breath. We are called to light the path to Christ and not hide our light under a bushel basket but put it on a lamp stand for all to see.