Inside
NCR McCaffrey not average, and neither was Patrick
When a national newspaper calls a nun a slumlord,
its fair to assume shes no average nun. Last Sept. 26, NCR
called Sr. Margaret McCaffrey just that. A member of the Missionary
Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, her slum holdings included Hospitality
House, Mother Stewart House, Katy House and several other places to serve the
poor down and out in Shreveport, La.
For nearly 30 years she offered most kinds of service the urban
afflicted need. After all that experience of hardship, there she was on our
cover laughing a big, hearty laugh. Youd never guess she was dying.
She is less concerned about death from her relentless lung
cancer than she is about the survival of the Christian Service Program,
the article said. She was searching for a successor.
She died Feb. 23.
Since the illness took her to the hospital in mid-December, the
staff has kept her charitable empire alive. The board of directors is still
searching for a successor. There is a mighty challenge here for someone with
whatever it takes -- sanctity perhaps, for starters, but more than that, some
genius for bringing out the best in the lives you touch.
In our Feb. 6 issue we launched a new feature we called The
Examined Life. The title was my own doing and no one elses: I did not
realize there was a column by the same name in the magazine U.S.
Catholic, written for many years by Robert E. Burns, who, it turns out, was
associated with NCR in its early days.
Socrates had a mighty fine idea when he allegedly remarked that
the unexamined life is not worth living, and people have been
paying him homage ever since with variations on his theme. Two columns with the
same name, however, is one too many.
We have decided to call the column, which is scheduled to appear
monthly, Illuminations. This mellifluous tag hints at the occasional
inspiration that, if we are lucky, sheds its light on us from above and
beyond.
This week the subject is Jane Redmont. The author is -- again --
Arthur Jones, but this does not mean the versatile and prolific Jones will be
the only scrivener; others are standing by to pen other memorable lives. We
repeat our earlier appeal for suggestions of people who make a good story and
combine rumination with illumination.
It would have surprised the daylights out of St. Patrick had he
been told that his Confession would be republished by Doubleday late in
the 20th century.
I am Patrick, yes a sinner, and the simplest of peasants, so
that I am despised by the majority of men, the Confession begins.
It is a very short tract. Even with the addition of A Letter to the
Soldiers of Coroticus, the (probably apocryphal) Breastplate
and a couple of prefaces, it is still a slender volume. Yet is has made its
mark century after century, touching some chord of the imagination.
After recounting his miserable beginnings, Patrick is soon fired
up with divine zeal and puts humility on the back burner as follows: Even
if I am imperfect in so many ways, nonetheless I want my brothers and my family
to know my mettle, so that they may clearly recognize the set of my soul
(this new translation is by John Skinner).
There is irony all around. Some say St. Patrick never existed,
some scholars say there were two or more Patricks. Whatever his name -- and
Patrick is good as any -- someone sat down and wrote this little book during
the turbulent fifth century. And now its out just in time for
Paddys Day -- the day we are all Irish and ebullient and wearing green
and, God help us, having a drop of the creature. And Patrick is grinning
craftily in some snakeless, shamrock-strewn heaven because, whatever he was, he
wasnt Irish, except perhaps by adoption.
The Confession ebbs and flows, from sinking self-pity to
high-flying exaltation. It survived because it is somehow timeless and
universal. Its easy to see how the Hispanic Irish, the black Irish and
the Jewish Irish could equally claim Patrick on Patricks Day.
Our cover story this week tells a similar universal story.
Christianity is at last a world religion. A black Holy Family is as authentic
as the blond, blue-eyed Jesus so many of us grew up with. Bob McClorys
story of St. Sabinas Parish is a tale not told often enough about the
diversity of Catholicism in America.
The extraordinary sculpture carved by Jerzy Kenar expresses the
exuberance black Catholics bring to religion -- an exuberance, incidentally,
that the allegedly exuberant Irish seldom demonstrate in church.
African-Americans and Irish-Americans could equally say with
Patrick: I am sure in my mind of one thing: that before I was brought
low, I was like some great stone lying deep in mud, until he who is power came
and in his mercy lifted me up. Yes, thats how it was, he did indeed raise
me up, for he placed me on the very top of the wall.
Happy St. Patricks Day to Irish persons of all races, creeds
and colors.
National Catholic Reporter, March 13,
1998
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