“At the breaking of the Easter dawn
may the Risen Saviour bless your home
with grace and peace from above,
with joy and laughter, and with love
And when night is nigh, and day is done
Make He keep you safe from all harm.”

Beannachtaí Ná Cásca oraibh!

May the blessings of Easter be upon you! Continue reading this post…

…from downtown Chicago

Health update April 2012 from downtown Chicago
Father Greeley is very much enjoying the Chicago Spring, but is also  looking forward to Summer, family celebrations, and more Bulls basketball and the start of baseball season.

Father Greeley enjoyed Christmas Mass and dinner with his family. “He’s generally in very good spirits,” commented a family member, and “In many ways he’s kind of his old self”.

Father Greeley is still interested in technology and spends time every week viewing his e-mails, He is doing his best to answer when possible. He has frequent visits from friends and colleagues; and enjoys short excursions around Chicagoland. His family arranges for him to concelebrate Mass in his home on a regular basis.

Father: Christ is risen, Alleluia.
Family: He is truly risen, Alleluia.

Father: The Lord is risen from the grave, Alleluia.
Family: Who hung upon the Cross for us, Alleluia.

Father: Let us pray. O God,
through Thine only-begotten Son
Thou hast overcome death on this day
and hast opened unto us the gate of everlasting
life; Continue reading this post…

Thought this might be food for thought, again. Fr. Greeley always seems timeley…

Let’s fill some trucks with books, drive them downtown and burn them in front of the Chicago Public Library. Let’s drive other trucks to the regional libraries and burn them, too . . . I mean the books, not the libraries, though libraries are the source of the problem. If it weren’t for the libraries, it would be hard for innocent young people to be corrupted by the filth pouring out of the country’s printers.

Instead of burning books or libraries, perhaps we ought to start smashing printing presses. They have served as tools of sin and the devil since Herr Gutenberg invented them.

When the radical evangelicals take over the White House, lists of books that one shouldn’t read or in fact are forbidden to read will spread around the country like wildfire, you should excuse the expression. Unless a much tighter control is imposed on distribution of books, the morals of the country will continue to deteriorate, which will in turn weaken us in the long war on terror.
I say that as a member of and indeed a priest in a denomination that originated lists of forbidden books. I don’t know whether we ever piled them up in front of cathedrals and set them on fire, but I can’t imagine that a tradition that has always valued dramatic rites could miss the possibilities of an auto da fe against books. If you’d burn humans at the stake, why not books? Continue reading this post…