A Reader Writes: With ICE Raids in My City and a Parish Half Hispanic, My Parish Priest Is a Magical Being with His Head . . . Someplace

Thanks to Dulcis Memoria for this valuable comment in a thread here this morning:

Well, you'll be happy to know that the priest at the parish where I sing is doing his part to comfort the 57% and ignore the stranger in our midst.

First of all, I should mention that I live in Austin, TX, and that the parish is probably at least 50% hispanic.

But you wouldn't know it from the sermons these last two weeks. Last Sunday, the day after ICE raids throughout the city with families being torn apart by Immigration officers going door to door, our illustrious, ontologically superior being chose to ignore the Beatitudes and instead preach on the need to develop - are you ready? - a healthy and holy EGO, that is open to generosity. He never tied any of the Beatitude texts into what was going on. He never equated the vulnerable being forcibly deported with the "meek," or the "poor in spirit."

This past Sunday he proclaimed that the "love your neighbor as yourself" scripture was among the most misunderstood, and that it really meant that you can't love anyone else unless you love yourself. This created the perfect segue to revisit the healthy, holy ego concept and its importance to Christian/Catholic formation.

Priests and pastors like him remind me of the lead character in "The Constant Gardener." In the film, the diplomat is completely consumed with his efforts to get his personal garden just right, like it would have been in England. At the same time, his wife is sniffing out the terrible injustice that is happening right under their noses, for which she pays the ultimate price. Of course, he has to "return" to Africa to find out what really happened to her while he fiddled away.

I am now fully convinced that RCC priests are magical beings. After all, who else can breathe so well with their heads either in the sand or up their asses.