I haven’t been blogging much at all in the past few weeks. Frankly, I have had too much on my plate and am now just catching my breath.
I have been the Assistant Director of the Diaconate for the Diocese of Winona this past year, and my term is wrapping up at the end of the month. Since January, I have been pouring over application materials that men and their wives have sent to chancery, each of them hoping Bishop Quinn will call them to an aspirant year of discernment for the permanent diaconate. Thirty-two men voiced interest, 30 requested applications, and 26 returned them. This resulted in around 2000 pages of documents I read, word by word. Last week, I and the rest of the Diaconate Review Board finished the last step in the application process: we interviewed the men and their wives, made our recommendations to the bishop who will now pray about this and make his decisions.
On top of that, work at the clinic has been going gang-busters. Parish and family life is alive.
There seems to be so many things changing in our American society in recent years with the continual push to redefine marriage (here in Minnesota the legislature and the governor just enacted into law “same-sex marriage”) and more and more people either unaware or unaccepting of the nature of the human person. I am glad that I am in the later stages of my career as a psychotherapist and a marriage and family therapist. Within a few years it will be next to impossible to practice this profession and remain true to the Catholic faith and a clear understanding of the human person. Therapists who attempt to do so will find themselves maligned and discredited. Mark my words on that….
I continually go to the phrase “muddy thinking” in these matters. There is a real inability in many people to think critically. The disciplines of philosophy and logic are not widely taught in schools anymore, and people seldom question their assumptions or even aware of them. This “muddy thinking” has certainly had its way in the political arguments when it comes to redefining marriage, homosexuality, transgender issues, and the breakdown of family life. I could go on for many pages about this inability and unwillingness to use critical thinking by so many, but I have neither the time or energy tonight to do so.
Many of my colleagues, even the most “liberal” ones on the political spectrum, are admitting that the absence of either a father or a mother in a child’s development harms that child’s maturation and security. With so many orphans (i.e., fatherless children) nowadays, the result is often is psychological and social dysfunction.
So, I can only pray and continue to faithfully serve the needs of those before me. I can try to educate and elucidate when the opportunity arises. Then I have to trust that God has a plan and his will will come to pass.
Hope to write a few more posts in the next week. Stay tuned.
