-Michaela (younger sister of Catharina Senensis)

BTW, where the heck were you guys back in ‘02? I ended up getting involved in a prot group on campus because they were less of a danger to my soul than the CCC! lol

God Bless,
Maria

Another guy it would have been nice to have met, though I guess he left the area before I got to Cornell.

I met a fellow at Juventutem/WYD 2005 who survived similar campus ministry antics at Ithaca College (class of ‘03 if I remember correctly).

He’s currently in the middle of his first year at the FSSP seminary in Nebraska.

Well, if that’s the bishop’s plan, to draw vocations for the diocese from the campus of Cornell, I’m afraid he’ll be sorely disappointed.

As it turns out, there are a number of people at Cornell seriously considering vocations, and not one of them has been fostered or encouraged by the chaplaincy, and each one of them is in horror of Bishop Clark.

I’m afraid for now that my prayers will have to suffice. I don’t have any strings to pull in my own province much less the Eastern Province! I’ve only been solemnly professed for two years and ordained a priest for seven months. Campus ministries are tricky b/c bishops like to keep them around for vocations. However, they can budget-problems if the diocese is picking up the tab. My guess is that your bishop would not easily surrender a prestigous campus like Cornell to a religious order. But if you want to try, write to the EDP Provincial, Fr. Dominic Izzo, in NYC and ask for a friar or two. You might get lucky.

Fr. Philip, OP

A priest or religous without their habit or collar is like a blank billboard…you don’t know what they are advertising.

One of many solid daily Mass homilies at Franciscan!

I am glad you are praying for us here at Cornell. Can you pull some strings to have a few solid Dominicans take over the campus ministry here at Cornell in the St. Joseph Province as well? I have this wild imagination that once one becomes a priest he can not only pray for people but also pull strings!! Thanks for the prayers!

I believe I was at the Mass you mentioned…and I remember thinking after the Mass how solid the homily was. I remember Fr. Leo speaking of a parishoner telling him that “he doesn’t need to come to Mass to meet God…he can meet him fishing on his boat.” Fr. Leo then added that it is true that God will meet us while fishing…but God tells us to come to Mass on sunday. I had never imagined Fr. Leo would promote people to come to Mass on Sunday but it was very nice to hear!

I have to agree: comments that work in conversation can fall flat and cause false impressions in print.

For the sake of anyone who feels left out by this “insider” exchange… the Doctor Asinorum is a member of our group who has now graduated and moved on. His efforts on my behalf were nothing short of Herculean but may not have been entirely disinterested; we’re now engaged to be married.

So, you see, the SGT really does accomplish great things. Even beyond saving souls, it has managed to find a wife for a poor doctoral student who had almost given up hope. :)

Subtle irony may yet be your undoing. If/when liberal — and “conservative”! — detractors find this site, this is the sort of thing they will latch onto. If you’d written “ultramontanists,” there’d be no occasion for objection.

Ambrosius and I (not to mention One Step) stormed heaven for your sake, but the Doctor did drive you. :)

Moreover, there greatest aspiration in life is to be inclusive. For them this is the summum bonum, the end of human existence, the toleration of all. Some liberals of course, fail miserably on this point, but our chaplains are actually pretty good at being inclusive: they want to welcome Catholics of all stripes, even sede vacantists like us.

With that policy of toleration in place, we get along with them fairly well and for the rest, they forgive us out of their deep Christian charity.

Secondly, there was some other guy who also had a lot to do with my being received into the Church at the FSSP parish… I can’t quite remember his name though…

“Wow!” I thought. “Orthodoxy from Fr. Leo!” I’d never been so impressed at Immaculate Conception Church before. But my joy was premature, because immediately after giving the above explanation, he ruined it.

“I don’t really know what the Vatican is thinking,” he continued bitterly. “I sometimes think that all they want is to make more work for priests. It’s like they’re afraid someone will slip through the cracks, not really be sorry, and so they insist that priests have to listen to every single sin, it’s just…”
He paused, perhaps realizing that it looks a bit bad to tell your congregation point-blank that you are bored by their sins. He amended, “It’s just that sometimes you get a person coming back to the Church after twenty or thirty years and you can’t spend any time with them because you have to be thinking about the line. It’s just terrible.”

My happy mood was spoiled, but it’s nice to see that that even Fr. Leo has been put under pressure to start actually hearing confessions.

On a happier note, we are indeed blessed to have a student group like this at Cornell. Thanks to the efforts of Ambrosius, Iosephus and others, I entered the Church in an FSSP parish and not under the instruction of either Sister Donna or the folks at the parish mentioned above, and from the time of my arrival at Cornell I’ve been immersed in Rosary-praying and other wholesome Catholic activities instead of the heterodox writings of Richard McBrian. And the CCC chaplains don’t even know who I am. Groups like the SGT may not be able to fix everything, but in the lives of a few of us they can make a tremendous difference.