Nov 24 colman b. 555 d. 611

Thommy and John,
Good morning
I love you.

St Coleman of Cloyne, County Cork, Ireland
b. 555? d. 611?
Cloyne is about 20 miles east south east from cork south off of the highway to Youghal.

[insert map of ireland here]


St. Colman of Cloyne
Feastday: November 24

I didn’t know where Cloyne is, thus the map. Not such a big place, as this map shows by not showing it. Not even a port on the bay….

Born in Munster. Omnes Gallus in tres partes. And Ireland is in four parts; Munster being the southern province. Caesar’s writings was part of my sophomore year of latin – and revisited in the novitiate. Not so hard to read in latin; and eloquent even in murky English translations….

Colman was a poet. So very Irish. It would be something else to have his and his contemporaries’ poetry extant today. But ours is much an oral tradition. And Colman pursued his vocation to the top of the hierarchy, becoming the royal bard of Cashel; which is about ten miles east north east of the city of Tipperary. In the tradition of Celtic bards, Colman must have been a wandering minstrel who developed his reputation on the road and won reputation then favor with the king of Cashel.

It’s said that St Brendan baptized Colman. Best bet, when Brendan had converted the king of Cashel, the good bard, then fifty years old, was also converted and baptized. And as the Irish do, Colman jumped into the new religion, the new faith, the assimilated way of life, with the zest and passion of, well, the royal bard of Cashel! As the bard, he was the story teller, seanachae [ok, the spelling’s wrong], thus then the preacher and of course the priest for these people. Following your vocation includes immersing yourself in your entire being. The baptismal vows are integral to who we are and our expectations of how to do what we do – for ourselves but more importantly for our family, clan, community, church…. That Colman was fifty when he was baptized, when he fully assimilated the faith into his life means that you may have plenty of time, and infinite opportunities to regain your stance….

Colman, so the story goes, was St Columba’s teacher. We are known by whom God gives us as parents and mentors as well as how we, to whom we, pass it all forward, never mind how we give it all back. Colman is a synapse from Brendan to Columba – and if he did no more than that he’d be a saint. As poet, bard, priest, and teacher Colman did so much more.

Colman was the first bishop of Cloyne. You figure out how he got from Cashel to Cloyne – a long walk, even today a goodly drive. Following his vocation is the short answer. When we stand at a particular point in our journey, a point on our trajectory, it appears to be so obvious how we got there. And how everyone in our life at that moment was there as well. However, back up just a smidgen and try to predict how that moment came into being, it makes for the essence of the story. How did you get to where you are at this moment? And how did everyone else get to be in the picture relative to you? And, just imagine how one better decision [or worse?] by you or anyone else in the picture would have brought you closer to God at this moment than you are? Purpose, to knowloveandserveGodinthislifeandbewithhimforeverinheaven. It’s one word in my Baltimore catechism memory [memorization].

And then there was this morning’s breakfast reading – and feeloughts sans your presence….

Mark Mangino. KU football coach. One heckuva story. And as I was reading the story, the story I read was the one about Mrs Mangino, or, better, about the marriage of mr and mrs mangino. How they are living their vows, their sacramental oneness. The story gives lots of credit to the values of the old neighborhood. Maybe so. But more maybe so is the essence of the faith, the sacrament, the living waters of their witness. Or so I want to believe – for my own hope [maybe I will find a wife for whom I will be a worthy husband: moreso my hope for my sons to find such a wife, to give a husbandly self, to live such a marriage. I am sorry I did not give you anything like this.

On tv this morning I was surfing channels and there was this super sophisticated conversation between a 12 y.o. boy and his divorced model-looking mother, in their very upper middle class living room. A sermon on modern family? The topic was that the mother’s man about whom she professed her deepest love. The man was going to move in with them, with her, in her bed. She made a point that he would keep his place and if it did not work out then he would move back to his place and she and her son would have the relationship they had before. Then the coup de grace, the selling point – the mother said that she loved this man and wanted to have a husband again and that this was the man she thought was the one BUT no matter what happened with this man that her son was the number one love in her life and that he was more important to her than anyone else in her life, now or forever.

Sounds compelling. And it is a truly modern morality scene. A scene of devastating immorality. That it is presented so matter of factly, so genuinely, so persuasively, is a sign of how far we have gone down this immoral and anti-Catholic and fractionating family/community/society road….

First the divorce – and the prelude to the sermon about the goodness of the experimental living together was about how the son had assimilated the mother’s portrayal of the father/husband [no mention of annulment, thus still husband and always father] as the evil doer of the unforgivable acts. [and maybe the guy is a shit, so one would say about Monica’s husband….] what is the indoctrination of the son? Qua husband? More importantly, about marriage – how to discern the choosing of vocation of marriage, the selection of wife, the way to be husband, how to be spouse – especially that the ‘til death do us part’ is not true, valid, to be kept promise/vow/covenant/sacrament. And what does it say about the responsibility of one parent to foster the relationship of the child with the other parent? Not to mention the duty of the parents qua spouses to their God given gifts of children?

Then, the rationale that it is the ‘best interest of the child’ that is the more important criterion, that is the essential point of all ‘this’. Sorry, wrong. Actually, not sorry – it’s very wrong. The foundational priority is the marriage. And without that, every action toward spouse and children is going down the wrong road. It is not about me. It is not about, for sure, the preeminence of the child above all others, above all else, even ahead of the parents’ the spouses’ self.
Practically, after divorce, the parent, especially the mother, who puts the child ahead of the husband, and, of course, the self ahead of both the child and the husband, has set in motion dysfunction in both parenting and marriage.

In the scene from the tv, there’s no reason to mention the immorality of the shacking up, the message that living together is a parentally endorsed lifestyle, or how great an idea that no commitment is….

But I digress. Or not. How more important a message that we could, should, be talking about?

The editorial in the Times about ‘modern travelers.’ I was talking the other night with our floor man at the hospital – about flying. There is no more fun in traveling by air – unless you’re a pilot and don’t have to take off your shoes to go thru the screeners. I find traveling by air degrading, insulting, and no fun whatsoever. I do admit that once past the “security” screeners and in the southwest seating area, and especially once on their plane, that southwest provides the closest thing to an enjoyable travel experience. Get in the southwest groove and it’s actually an ok experience.

Yesterday’s Journal. Stem Cell Breakthrough op ed piece. “patient specific pluripotent stem cells” … “embryonic stem cells” (can only be obtained by destroying human embryos) … the op ed piece suggests that the moral and ethical and political confrontations engendered by ESCs could be resolved scientifically. There would be no ends justify the means quandary if science could produce induced pluripotent state cells (iPSCs). Sorry, you don’t get off that easily. The moral, ethical, religious, faith principles require the same engagement even if we started with iPSCs and never had the ESCs at the beginning. Having a practical way to avoid debating [even within yourself] the necessary fundamental principles of faith does not negate the fundamental principles.

Also in the paper this holiday weekend was an article about a state supreme court, Texas I believe, that upheld the state law that makes is a double homicide for killing a woman and her fetus, regardless of the age of the fetus. The same state, as all others for the moment under Roe v. Wade, explicitly says it is not a crime to terminate the life of that same fetus so long as it is the mother’s choice [regardless of the father’s or the fetus’s desire, principles etc.]. So, we admit, when we [yes, we. We are each and all culpable] kill a fetus, a person in utero, that is exactly what we are doing. Whether we decide to make such an act criminal or not does not depend on the act itself or any principle of life, but it is a political decision about whether or not we wish to give societal permission to the mother to kill her child or not [well, so long as the child is in utero.]. The debate, no matter how much we inject principle, faith, right and wrong, is about legal or illegal. One rationale to make abortion legal is that we [not sure whom we is in this case] refuse to inject religion, faith, our beliefs about right and wrong and truth. So long as we keep that out of the conversation, we can make anything legal. [Nevada proved that for us quite some time ago.]

Now, back to the saints, for a while. See all this on the blog too or instead.

I love you
dad