I attended mass at St. John Vianney's parish in Mentor, Ohio yesterday and the celebrant was a Jesuit missionary from Nepal (with the co-celebrant his Jesuit Nepalese superior).
During the homily the priest mentioned encountering a man in Nepal who asked him what his religion was. When Father responded, "I am a Catholic," the man put his hands near his heart, then extended them out as wide as possible, as if to say, "Your Church is the Church of the big, wide-open heart." I felt my eyes suddenly well up with tears--grateful that this Nepalese man had encountered Catholics who made him think so highly of our Church; and saddened that that so many bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes of late have made our church seem quite the opposite--a small-hearted, mean-spirited church, full of angry rules and boundaries.
I remembered Pope John XXIII and the great Catholic parish priests and even some bishops of my lifetime who believed in the big, wide-open-heart Church. And I wept thinking this Church seems to be disappearing.
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