I love my parish

Today was Respect Life Sunday, which is a day set aside at the beginning of October (which is Respect Life Month) for everyone in the Catholic Church to reflect on the necessity of respecting human life at all ages and stages.

I know in some places they "dodge" the issue and try to pretend that Respect Life Sunday doesn't exist (tooo easy to disobey the bishops, grrr), but that's not the case at St. Paul's. Our priest gave a wonderful, "no-compromises" pro-life homily; he is of course orthodox in all areas (death penalty, for instance) so no one can accuse him of being political. The special insert in our weekly bulletin discussed the Terri Schiavo case and quoted Papa Benedict: "Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." Lovely.

Also, it has been announced that in late October there will be a Eucharistic procession and adoration with Bishop Conlon; it's an event for the Nativity of Mary deanery, and my priest is the dean - which means folks from parishes all over southeastern Ohio will show up. Today our priest told us all to brush up on our Latin chant skills, because we are going to be singing "Ubi Caritas" during the procession. "We have to keep the Latin hymns alive," he said. Yaaaaaay!