In A Capsule

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

Much has been written about the tragic turn of events at Saint Gertrude the Great Church. In to order provide a summary as to the central issues involved in this scandal that could have been prevented if Bishop Daniel Dolan had taken the sound pastoral advice offered by Father Markus Ramolla to effect much needed changes at Saint Gertrude the Great School, I want to explain this matter in as short and as succinct a manner as possible:

1. Bishop Daniel Dolan and Father Anthony Cekada act, at least in a de facto manner, as though Saint Gertrude the Great Church represents the ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church, that to criticize them or their operations in any way whatsover is to attack Holy Mother Church's apostolic succession.
2. Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada have repeatedly stonewalled parishioners over the years who have brought to them various concerns, including serious complaints about the operation of Saint Gertrude the Great School. Some children have lost the holy faith as a result these abuses, something that is hardly a "molehill" or a mere "administrative concern."
3. Father Markus Ramolla sought to address his concerns privately, hoping to use his appointment as principal of Saint Gertrude the Great School to correct longstanding problems and to curb the influence of the former principal, who was to remain on the faculty of the school.
4. Realizing that he would be principal in name only to satisfy the desire of parents for a change in leadership at the school, Father Ramolla gave a sermon at the opening of Forty Hours on Friday, October 23, 2009, which was meant to be a criticism of Father Cekada's lack of care for the sheep of Saint Gertrude the Great Church and School.
5. Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada met with Father Ramolla on Tuesday, November 3, 2009, demanding that he apologize, preferably with tears, for his criticism of Father Cekada. Father just listened, and Bishop said he would give him time to think about it. (See Father Ramolla's account of this meeting at Letter to Bishop Dolan leading to his dismissal and Letter to Parishioners of St. Gertrude the Great regarding his plans on taking over the principalship of the school.)
6. Father Ramolla's work visa was revoked on Wednesday, November 4, 2009.
7. Father Ramolla was informed by Bishop Dolan on Thursday, November 5, 2009, that he had been dismissed from Saint Gertrude the Great Church and School, leaving him without a residence and with no money to support himself.
8. Father Ramolla posted a letter to Bishop Dolan and to the parishioners of Saint Gertrude the Great Church on Friday, November 6, 2009. I sent an e-mail to Bishop Dolan to plead with him to end his attacks on Father Ramolla.
9. Bishop Dolan responded with a letter to parents of the students of Saint Gertrude that Great School that he "blasted" around the internet on Friday afternoon, November 6, 2009. The letter was filled with misrepresentations and distortions of fact.
10. My own Sanctimony Won't Work This Time was published on Sunday, November 8, 2009, marking me as as "enemy" of Bishop Dolan's who was "filled with hate."
11. The Saint Gertrude the Great Information website opened to provide parishioners of Saint Gertrude the Great Church with information about this terrible scandal. (I do not own that domain nor do I have any control over the contents on the website. It is all I can do to manage one website, this one.)
12. Bishop Dolan used two sermons ( "Apology" and The Lord Hath Done This--transcripts provided below) on Sunday, November 15, 2009, the Commemoration of Saint Albert the Great), to attack and smear Father Ramolla. This prompted my own Shooting the Messenger, which was posted on Wednesday, November 18, 2009.)
13. That same Sunday, November 15, 2009, Father Ramolla offered Holy Mass for the first time at the Wingate Hotel in West Chester, Ohio. Over one hundred people were in attendance.
14. Bishop Robert Neville made the following announcement on Sunday, November 15, 2009, making claims that Father Ramolla is acting "outside of the authority of the Catholic Church" completely absurd: " Bishop Robert L. Neville has confirmed that he is in full support of Father Ramolla's priestly apostolate, and he has pledged to work with Father now and into the future."
15. Father Anthony Cekada issued his “School Dazed" on Sunday, November 22, 2009, to respond to critics, refusing to deal with specific facts and refusing to admit publicly what he had admitted privately to Father Ramolla on Tuesday, November 3, 2009, that he had been dismissive of various complaints that had been brought to him by parents and parishioners. Father Cekada did admit in School Dazed that an incident of the administration of corporal punishment by means of a paddle, an incident disputed by some who are not even in the United States of America but was witnessed by the Reverend Mr. Bernard Hall when he was a teacher at Saint Gertrude the Great School, did indeed occur.
16. Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., announced his own support for Father Ramolla from the pulpit of Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in Monroe, Connecticut, on Sunday, November 22, 2009.
17. A website was launched on November 24, 2009, to blow smoke in the face of readers with ad hominem attacks on Father Ramolla and me without its creators having the courage or the integrity to post their names to their work.

 

The issues involved in this needless crisis are as follows:

1. As noted above, Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada act as though they possess the ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church as they treat their sheep in the same manner that the Novus Ordo "bishops" have treated members of their clergy and laity who have complained to them about abuses that needed to be rectified.
2. Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada and Bishop Donald Sanborn, the rector of Most Holy Trinity Seminary, live in a world where it is believed that there is almost never a need to consult Catholics outside of their very tiny and most exclusive ecclesiastical sect, which has led to the scandals involving the public position they took on the murder by dehydration and starvation of the late Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo and the way in which Father Cekada's A Grain of Incense article was released as a fiat without any consultation with priests outside of the West Chester-Brooksville corridor.
3. Clergy not associated with Bishop Dolan, Bishop Sanborn, and Father Cekada are viewed with suspicion, at least at first.
4. This view of "superiority' over other clergy led Bishop Sanborn to use a written contract to require a seminarian, who is now studying at Mater Dei Seminary in Omaha, Nebraska, to attend only those Masses and to associate only with those priests "approved" by him, Bishop Sanborn, who stipulated that he was the sole interpreter of the contract. Bishop Sanborn told the seminarian orally that he could not attend any Masses or associate in any way with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen. The seminarian refused to sign the contract after being given time by Bishop Sanborn to think about the matter. It is said that the seminarian "left" on his own.
5. Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada play the victim card to draw sympathy for themselves as they term those criticizing them as filled with venom and hate, thus far, however, refusing to denounce the actual venom and hatred that characterize the website launched to attack Father Ramolla and Mr. Timothy Duff and me on personal, not substantive, grounds.
6. Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada have long sought to use mockery and scorn to deal with critics. Failing this, as is happening at the present time, they are never shy to denounce people publicly as "mentally ill" in order to discredit critics in the eyes of those who might be able to use their Catholic reason and see untruths and misrepresentations for what they are.
7. Bishop Dolan, being unable to accept the fact that he is not beyond public criticism according to the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, seeks to discredit a priest and a layman whom he had previously praised in public, both from the pulpit and in writing, without reservation or qualification. One will, for example, see in the "Bishop's Corner" of the following three bulletins (20060917 and 20081102) of Saint Gertrude the Great Church praise from Bishop Dolan for a lecture that I gave on September 10, 2006 ( "Living  in the  Shadow of the  Cross:  To  See  the  World  through the  Eyes of the True Faith”) and for an article (Step by Step) that I had written on this site on October 27, 2008., and for the website in general (on March 1, 2009.)   Leaving aside all of the other attacks and accusations made against me, to which I will continue to have no response at all, does the fact that I have stood with a priest whose work visa was summarily revoked because he had sought to correct longstanding abuses invalidate all of my own work that had been praised highly previously?
8. The egregious website that is filled with such hatred is being used as a means of intimidating other critics of Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada and Saint Gertrude the Great Church from coming forth to present their own stories. The latest to suffer in this way is Mr. Tim Duff, the founder of Saint Gertrude the Great School and the recently resigned choir director at Saint Gertrude the Great Church, who has been called "tone deaf" in a new litany that has appeared on the egregious website even though Bishop Dolan noted in a "Bishop's Corner" on Low Sunday this year, Sunday, April 19, 2009, that the choir under Mr. Duff's direction had "outdone itself." (See 20090419.)
9. Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada believe that loyalty to a school principal whose actions have scandalized many parents whose children over have been permitted by Father Cekada to bully and intimidate other children is worth causing this scandal and treating a priest with smears and lies and misrepresentations. (See a list of these abuses have been catalogued at A Litany of Reported Instances of Abuse of Discretion and Bad Judment.)

 

As one whose work has been criticized throughout his career, I have always been able to see the hand of God in the criticism of me even when I believe that it has been unjustified and very much "over the top." One who writes and speaks for public consumption is going to have his views dissected and criticized, something that must be accepted as one attempts to keep focused on issues and the veracity of various statements rather than on complete denunciations of one's critics. We can disagree with others without hating them, without considering them our "enemies," without misrepresenting a criticism of their positions and tactics as a rejection of them and every good thing that they have ever done in their lives.

Bishop Dolan spoke about hatred and poison in his sermom, "The Lord Hath Done This:"

And I am horrified and I am humbled and like some I lower my eyes and I do not want to see so many pious and generous and prayerful and devout folk exposed all of the secret wounds of their souls which they have perhaps nourished now a long time. Exposed an image so ugly, so heavy, and so sharp, this poison that the cloud exploded. It has borne them away. (The Lord Hath Done This)

 

What has been revealed for the world to see on the website whose creators identify themselves only as a "genuine poet" and a "student of psychology," people who are spending a whole lot of time tweaking and revising their attacks, is precisely the description that Bishop Dolan used on November 15, 2009, to character assassinate his critics, some of whom are longtime parishioners who made the building of Saint Gertrude the Great Church and School possible, people who are not suffering from "mental illness" and who are not at all filled with any degree of hatred or poison.

Bishop Dolan's demand for absolute, unswerving loyalty to his person and his positions has nothing to do with the Catholic Faith. I, for one, was willing to put my loyalty to Bishop Dolan above one friendship and one professional association (with The Four Marks), something that matters not at all to him now as all it takes to fall from grace with him personally is to slip on one banana peel, that is, to refuse to go along with a plan to railroad a good, honest young priest who was attempting to address longstanding problems that many of those who have now left Saint Gertrude the Great Church knew existed but were afraid to speak about lest they themselves be considered "disloyal." There is no gratitude for past loyalties, only anger and revulsion at those who have seen through the mask of clerical tyranny that has covered the operation of Saint Gertrude the Great Church and School for so long. Bishop Dolan has proved himself to be "nice" and "tolerant," perhaps even a little condescending, of people he deems privately to be be "uncultured" and oafish only so long as they refuse to criticize him. Whatever this is, good readers, it has nothing to do with genuine charity.

Unlike Bishop Dolan, however, those of us whom he considers his "enemies" (even though we tried to entreat with him privately without success) are indeed grateful to him for all that he has taught us and for all that he has done for us. Our Lady sent Father Ramolla to help Bishop Dolan correct things that needed to be corrected. Bishop Dolan sent Father Ramolla packing without any place to lay his head, wanting him to get out of the country as soon as possible. Readers will have judge why it was Father Ramolla and not the family at the epicenter of this terrible turn of events who was sent packing and then subjected to smears and lies from the pulpit, which he continues as a forum of self-pity, implying on Sunday, November 29, 2009, that Our Lady herself inspired him to dismiss Father Ramolla as he, Bishop Dolan, was praying the Rosary, a "revelation" that contradicts his previous assertions that Father Ramolla "decided" to leave on his own (see Letter from Bishop Dolan to Parents Concerning the Dismissal of Fr. Ramolla).

Bishop Daniel Dolan is not the ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church. Saint Gertrude the Great Church is not the "ark" outside of which there is little in the way of truth and salvation. Alas, the bishop has fostered a mentality in his parish whereby some of his parishioners believe that "Gertrudians are the only 'true Catholics' (a sentiment that was expressed in the Saint Gertrude the Great Church Bulletin in 2005 during the Terri Schiavo crisis). Several longstanding parishioners have accused those who have left Saint Gertrude's at this time of having apostatized. Whoever is adding content to the egregious attack site that has demeaned the priestly dignity of Father Markus Ramolla are referring to those who assist at the latter's Masses at the Wingate Hotel in West Chester, Ohio, as "eunuchs." These are sentiments that have been bred by Bishop Dolan himself, and they have nothing at all to do with the Catholic Faith.

To believe that one place and one place alone represents the Catholic Church is to believe in a schismatic sect, an organization characterized by carefully crafted methods of mind control, sometimes subtle, sometimes quite blunt, designed to keep the flock from using the faculty of reason given them by God to assess with sobriety and clarity actions that are contrary to the good of souls and/or outside of the authority of men with no apostolic mandate in this time of apostasy and betrayal to impose upon them under pain of mortal sin.

This all will pass. Those who want to engage in endless attacks will do so. In the meantime, of course, the Modernists continue to assault the truths of the Faith. Barack Hussein Obama continues to bankrupt the country and to increase the size, the power, and the scope of the Federal government as he issues executive orders that have resulted in the deaths of innocent preborn babies with our own taxpayer dollars. It is to these enemies of Christ the King that we must turn our attention as we seek to sanctify and to save our immortal souls during this penitential season of Advent, seeking to make reparation for our sins as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our state in life permit.

We must forgive others as we pursue justice and expose deeds of darkness without any malice at all. We will not be forgiven our sins unless we forgive those who trespass against us, recognizing that nothing anyone does to us or says about us is the equal of what one of our least venial sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death.

Let us keep this whole matter uppermost in our prayers, especially in the Rosaries that we are to pray today.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Gertrude the Great, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix A

Saint Thomas Aquinas on Rebuking One's Clergy

"It must be observed, however, that if the faith were endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly."

"Article 2: Fraternal correction is a matter of obligation (precept) out of charity for the sinner. And if the order of fraternal correction has been observed (beginning with private admonitions until there is no other recourse for the sake of the faith than to publicly proclaim the prelate), to do so for the sake of the faith can be meritorious." (Saint Thomas Aquinas)

Appendix B

Bishop Dolan's "An Apology" as transcribed at my request by a reader of this site

Before I give the sermon this morning I want to make an apology to you and in order for me to do this I think I first of all have to apologize.  You may have noted some familiar faces in church are missing and the choir sounds a tad thin, although’ they really do still sound very good, of course. And you may have been exposed to some unsettling conversations, or speculations -- that sort of thing, or it may be that you have heard nothing at all, and what I am going to say may disturb your Sabbath peace.  In either case, I do beg your understanding and forgiveness.

There has been quite a little controversy in our church, really for a number of months now, and finally the truth has come to light and I must break the rule that I have observed – I think for 31 years.

I don’t speak about these things at Mass or from the pulpit ever, but it is so grave that I have decided that it is my duty.

Tomorrow will be the second anniversary of the ordination of Father Markus Ramolla a young German priest who had been with us for just over a year He taught some courses at our school and was the pastor at our mission church St. Clare in Columbus.

If you are aware of any of these controversies or are missing someone today, know that it is because Father Ramolla began a systematic program of both denunciation and whispering to destroy first the seminary and the bishop who trained him for the priesthood – he began that before he was even ordained, it comes to light – the bishop who had educated him from our . . . garden nursery store to a rather polished and impressive young priest.  He arrived here just over a year ago and soon turned his campaign against this church and its clergy and our school, and its principal and their family whom he hated and hounded and humiliated, and for this I am particularly sorry.  But in all that he said and did and incited others to say and to do he meant to destroy us personally as well as in our capacity as clergy or as lay workers in a Catholic Church.

Now, I alone bear the blame for all of this.  I ordained Father Ramolla, indeed I brought him here from Germany, and then I sent him to St. Gertrude Church in effect to break hearts and to bring us low.  He ought never to have been ordained. 

Of all people a poor man who is a former seminarian and taught for a few months at our school, someone who struggles with mental illness and has now been running a full time internet campaign against St. Gertrude’s and so forth – of all things this man had warned me 2 years ago not to ordain him to the priesthood, citing the counsel of a certain lady who lived near Germany who was the housekeeper of our dear friend Father Schoonbroodt in Belgium.

This lady had gotten to know this seminarian, Markus Ramolla, very well, and on her death bed – she died of cancer – she warned this priest and others of the disaster that would happen if he were ordained.  But I did not listen because that’s not my way.  Um, he seemed to be so pious and I am an optimist, and after all he had signed a promise of obedience to me as to a bishop.  He signed a promise of obedience.  And I thought to myself “Well now he ought to be given a chance as I was when I was a seminarian.” 

But now I am afraid that we all have been paying and rather dearly and I beg your pardon for myself and for my poor priest son, Markus Ramolla.  His only experience in the holy priesthood these two years has been to destroy what we have built up at St. Gertrude the Great over the last 31 years when the mission of St. Gertrude was begun in Milford, Ohio with some thirty people.  Numbers don’t really worry us one way or another. But let me say again that I am so very sorry. Let me ask your prayers for those who have made themselves our enemy and for this poor, wretched priest and for SGG and for her children, her devoted workers, our lovely little school, our church, and our clergy, indeed our clergy throughout the world who have felt the wrath of this priest’s tongue. 

Now, I want to make a particular request of you, tomorrow’s our anniversary day: Could you see it in your own heart to begin tonight a nine-day Rosary novena -- to pray the Rosary nine days in a row in honor of St. Gertrude the Great and Our Mother of Good Counsel for all of our very pressing needs at this time. If you, if we will all do this, I have no doubt that Our Lady, through her Rosary, will protect us once again.

Appendix C

Bishop Dolan's The Lord Hath Done This Sermon (as transcribed by a reader of this site)

I take my text this morning from the Church’s Divine Office of Prime — Her morning prayer — recited when the sun has fully risen. The 117th Psalm of the 23rd verse: “This is the Lord’s doing and it is wonderful in our eyes.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

What has He done these “Days of Woe” for us which we could ever say is wonderful in our eyes. The poet expresses the wish that we could see ourselves as other see us. Now image if it were given to us today to be seen by all as God see us from the perspective of eternity and as God will judge us when time is no more.

To see ourselves as sometimes the priest in the shadows of the confessional is permitted to glimpse for one terrifying instant of recognition and reality before the saving words of absolution and their soothing forgiveness wash away the sins from our soul. To see ourselves as we are seen by God before the judgment at the end. “At the end of our lives,” say the Little Flower St. Therese of Lisieux“we shall be judged on love.”

I believe that in the last days and weeks we at our church have been judged by God; and this is a grace for those who still have more time. This is the grace, the wonderful thing that “the Lord hath done” which spills forth from the crisis which so afflicts our hearts. We hear the crunch and the crash of breaking glasses – our facades fall. For the congregation of this church stands revealed before God and neighbor in the shame of its nakedness – Adam and Eve-like – caught in sin.

“Diligis me?” Our Lord asks. “Lovest Thou Me?” “Yea, Lord! Thou knowest that I love Thee.” See all of my prayers and see how careful I have been to [?commend / ?condemn] all those whom I know love Thee not. “Lovest Thou Me?” No, because then thou wouldst have loved the least or the greatest of thy brethren.

I think what has happen here, anyone who has been first carried away by the plague – the poison of hatred or of criticism or of resentment the refusal to forgive the cold cruelty of that morbid curiosity we call gossip – has been taken away, the kind of an anti-rapture, if you will.

I do not speak today of the flash-point sins: anger, impatience. Nor of the sins of the flesh, there are weak wills. I speak rather of the carefully guarded toxin of hatred which was found in this congregation and directed against it and its work and its clergy and its bishops. And, yes, against our school and our lovely and loving staff and our seminary and its good bishop.

[Anyone who has harbored] It could have started you know with just some hurt, but which festered (perhaps unknowingly) due to a want of examination of conscience of due spiritual advertence. Some excess of self indulgence in this matter of sins against charity above which I have been preaching without much result now for almost exactly a year.

But now during these extraordinary days of grace of our patron Saints, St. Albert the Great and St. Gertrude the Great and of our anniversaries. Souls stand revealed. And I am horrified and I am humbled and like some I lower my eyes and I do not want to see so many pious and generous and prayerful and devout folk exposed all of the secret wounds of their souls which they have perhaps nourished now a long time. Exposed an image so ugly, so heavy, and so sharp, this poison that the cloud exploded. It has borne them away.

But the cloud – toxic gases – will soon dissipate this is my word of confidence for all of you today. It does takes some victims with it, it is true, but eventually comes the fresh air, and it passes as all things are passing here below.

But how did this singular act of the Divine Justice in our midst – some of the choices and the best souls – how did it come about for those who refused or who limited His mercy? It must be, I am thinking, so heinous a thing to harbor hatred against one’s spiritual home, one’s Father-in-Christ, or one’s family and to harbor it all boiled down to some small half forgotten [?vial / ?vile] of the soul’s poison.

A jealousy maybe? some suspicion? some refusal to forgive the church? or the school? or its clergy? or its seminary? or its good priests? or lay worker?

This church which has given with your help so much glory to God. This church which has saved some of the very souls who now do not blush to take up a bat and to try to knock it down. And this church which has saved countless other souls in the mercy of the Divine Plan of the Latter Days.

Here the Church is eclipse and we stumbled about in darkness but still the works gets done. And not only here but in foreign lands directly and indirectly are souls being saved today because of the work of this church; which has by some been judged so inadequate and so sinful.

It must be – and I tremble at the thought – so grave a sin of ingratitude to the Good God and so unspeakable of blasphemy against Our Lord and God who signs His name Love. That this same Good God could suffer it no longer in our midst. “Out!”, He says, that He by His priests never say those words to a sinner , but always to the sin.

And how did all of this our sad state of affairs this anniversary weekend, how did it come about? There came into our midst as so often before a young man, a foreigner, a priest from another land. Like so many others meant to help for a time and to be helped by us in turn. But this one was different, he turned almost from the start to be a kind of a pied-piper of hamlin town if you will. He knew, he sensed, he smelt resentment and hatred, the littlest mustard seed he sniffed out and then he approached and he played the tune customized music to some ears. Whatever the resentment was he was able to pipe that melody. For some he did it daily and for others just once and at the certain point others picked up the melody and started playing in his diabolic symphony orchestra. Playing on whatever poison was harbored in the hearts of each man or woman or child. Perhaps something half forgotten, that odd attraction which hatred holds for human hearts to harbor it in the long term.

But now the mirror is smashed and the true face is emerged and it is not a beautiful sight. But still it is passing, it is passing. And in our own hearts we feel a sense of relief. And something approaching that peace which the apostle says “passeth all understanding.” We feel too, poverty, today, literally perhaps a lower Sunday attendance and certainly it will be felt a bit in the offering basket. And this too, had been planned for months and months as was every detail of this campaign I have discovered. It was planned not by some priest, some poor priest, or by some people in collusion with him. It was planned by the Prince of this World the One below who seethes with resentment and hatred.

But the crushing poverty we feel today is for those who have left. And some of them are scared and thus they’ve scattered and some of them are struggling themselves with some mental or emotional ailment and they cannot bear anymore. And others, well, they have been bitten by the bug just a bit or a bunch to which they were exposed from which they did not defend themselves. And we have been rob of our brethren and our cross and of our crown and they perhaps have the opportunity of amendment before the end.

But such is the inscrutable Will of God. This was done by the Lord and to our eyes it is full of wonder. We are horrified and humbled to see such hatred exuding from the pores of those whom we thought we knew. And if God judge so severely and so suddenly in this life the secret hatred of our hearts. For hatred is the defeated breath of Hell. However shall we stand the last judgment do you think? That “dies magna et amara valde” we sing about when we give the Absolution over the Dead “that great day and exceedingly bitter.”

How shall we stand, [some Latin word], Thou Shalt Love. “If there were a tiny part of my heart which did not love God with every fiber of its being and therefore neighbor too for His sake. I would ripped it out,” these are the words of the good gentle bishop of Geneva, St. Francis de Sales. And these are days of grace, the days of Gertrude the Great and Albert the Great have come around again. Wouldn’t today be a great day to start ripping?

I conclude my sermon in an unusual way and I beg your indulgence. If you are able to may I ask you please to kneel down and to recite with me in your heart or by memory the Act of Charity:

“Oh my God, I love Thee above all thing with my whole heart and soul. Because Thou art all good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me and ask pardon of all whom I have injured.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.