I've Been Thinking About This…

So I dropped off my Tres Dias candidate for the weekend at Our Lady of Calvary retreat center. Tres Dias is an ecumenical movement that came from the Roman Catholic Cursillo weekends, and as such, Tres Dias is mostly Protestant (since Roman Catholics tend to go to Cursillo). There are still some Roman Catholics in Tres Dias, but certainly not as many as Protestants.

One thing that happens at the very beginning, during the introduction the weekend, is that the director of the retreat house is given a chance to say a few words about the venue. (I’ve got a vague feeling that I introduced this practice when I was either rector of Tres Dias #27, Coordinator of Aventura #12, or running one of the SNECYR weekends for area youth at Camp Washington. But then again, many of the brilliant and insightful thoughts I think I’ve had turn out to have come from others, so maybe I didn’t. But I digress…)

Up gets Sister Theresina to have her chat. I like her – she’s a bubbly and feisty nun who seems to barrel her way through the day. She introduces the founder of their order (The Sisters of the Cross and Passion, aka “The Passionists”); she mentions that Elizabeth Prout grew up as a member of the Church of England before converting to Roman Catholicism, and is part-way through being canonized by Rome. She notes that this will be the first time someone who started out as a member of the C of E has ever been canonized by Rome.

She then goes on to ask us all to pray that this canonization will be successful… basically asking a bunch of Protestants to pray for the public acknowledgement of someone who switched sides to Roman Catholicism as an ‘in your face’ to the Church of England.

She’s a riot.

   Send article as PDF to