Just another writer
-
Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Elizabeth of the Trinity (three days late)
Saturday, I went to Mass at St Elizabeth of the Trinity, the new name of St Tarcissus church after the parish was merged with St Cornelius and St Thecla. All the Masses of the weekend celebrated the saint and used the readings for her feast rather than the regular ordinary time readings for the Mass.…
-
Father Chris
It’s kind of fashionable to write off Catholic priests as reactionaries and/or child molesters and/or hypocrites. And doubtless there are many priests who fit into one or more of those categories. Chris Ponnet, though was not one of them. I first met him on a Sunday morning in 1990 when I went to a Mass…
-
Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Queen of All Saints
For All Saints Day, I went to Queen of All Saints Basilica on the far north side of Chicago. Queen of All Saints is one of three minor basilicas in the Archdiocese of Chicago, a title which, as near as I can tell, means that the church is quite attractive and entitles the clergy to…
-
Writerly resolutions: October status
This is a truly lousy month for writing progress. Even though I took a few days to take a mini-writing retreat at a hotel an hour away, I got very little writing done. My sole real accomplishment on the novel was doing some post-workshop revisions on chapter six (and workshopping chapter seven last night). My…
-
Catholic nerd pilgrimage: National Shrine of St Jude (Our Lady of Guadalupe Church)
For the feast of St Jude, I really had no choice but to go to the National Shrine of St Jude since it plays a central role in my story, “St Jude’s Medallion.” Of course, I’d never actually been there and relied on photos online for that story. The church is smaller than I had…
-
Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint John Brebeuf
Thanks to having a spreadsheet with every parish church in the Archdiocese of Chicago along with the dates of the feasts of their patron saints, I would guess that I am one of a very small number of people who are aware that two of the churches in Niles have saints with the same feast…
-
“Elijah’s Funeral”: The story behind the story
I worked a long time on this story to make sure I got it absolutely right. I think maybe I did. The setting of the story is completely real. The Los Angeles Catholic Worker, Hennessy House and the Hippie Kitchen are all real places/institutions in Skid Row and Boyle Heights and were where I spent…
-
A visit with my younger self: 19 February 1989
I was still homeless and hanging out on campus because I was part of our Model United Nations delegation to the Harvard Model U.N. conference. At this conference, the Vatican delegation was represented by students from a seminary in the Boston area and I found them to be fascinating, thus the following: Story idea: Catholic…
-
Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Hedwig (a day late)
Once again, I forgot to actually write up my visit to a church on the day it happened. St Hedwig is the sister church of St John Berchmans in the two-church St Carlo Acutis parish that I visited on Sunday. But where St John Berchmans is a restrained church (designed by a protestant architect I’ve…