Auntie Charo's Soapbox

There's a half page ad in today's PDN about a gathering of all Catholics and friends sharing and celebrating the Eucharist of our Catholic faith on the 16th and 17th of April with Steve and Janet Ray who are converts of the Catholic Faith, it's a regional gathering to be held at the Agana Basillica. I'm sure that the experience is one that will leave heartprints for days to come, but it'll be forgotten the next time the attendees attend mass because the clergy aren't loving, or caring or even compassionate towards the lost souls that come to the church looking for their psyche(s) to be healed.
My neice actually attended the New Life Covenant Church last week and was bold enough to tell me that she felt that she 'belonged' there, was made to feel as if she was a child of the 'father' in the 'father's' place, that the people there were friendly towards her and didn't push her to come back but invited her to return whenever she needed a place to come and talk or come for help that there would always be someone there for her, no matter the time. I climbed off my high horse, how could I fault a bunch of people who are out there serving the needs of people?
But, I'm Catholic first and until such time as I defect, I will continue to defend my faith, its faults and all. I beg the Bishop to gather his priests, his deacons and his nuns and to impress upon them that to spread love and caring and kindness and be genuinely interested in the things that our Catholic needs in their lives to keep them from leaving the church. We need not to worry whether a man and woman are married if they want their child baby baptized Catholic, perhaps that their baby is Catholic is reason enough for them to marry and raise that child Catholic. These days, the clergy seems to go out of their way to make it hard to be a practicing Catholic....if you make it hard to be a Catholic, and it's easy to be a protestant and one wants to be close to God in some way, then one will chose the easy path...and many are obviously chosing that path.
We have spent millions of dollars on beautiful buildings, even a beautiful Catholic cemetary, but we haven't put much strength or stock on how it is we're going to save our members from leaving our members. What a pity to lose Catholics when John Paul II spent 26 years sacfrificing his life to keep the church together only to find that he lost members of the church because we weren't paying any attention to the amount of love it needed to keep it together.
There's a priest in Tumon that takes the time to greet his parishoners after his mass.......almost makes me feel like I'm worth meeting before he has to speed away for breakfast! Thanks, Father, your homilies are pretty good as well!