R, T, Saturday, August 22, 2020

Dear Parishioners and Friends of St. Francis Parish, I’m hoping we get one of those scattered thunderstorms they promised. Won’t hold my breath. Back to these 90 weathers. Enough. I want October.

We keep more and more stuff for the tag sale. Now we are not sure where to put it. We have already sold over $1,000 worth of stuff. A real fun event.

Yesterday I went to CVS to get a prescription and ended up getting three shots, Flu, Shingles and a combo of three others. They were really busy, so I told them I was not in a hurry. I just live up the street. But some very important and very busy guy, early sixties I’d say, was really upset because his script was not ready. So, he made a jerk of himself by yelling at the pharmacy people, who were super busy. Yes, he came back in about three minutes, just as I was leaving. Hope he calmed down. Doubt it.

Today was my niece’s Jennifer birthday. I remembered her at mass this morning with the Gianelli sisters. You can’t make this stuff up, happy ending.

Detroit man thought he was a priest. He wasn’t even a baptized Catholic – Denver Newsroom, Aug 22, 2020 / 02:10 pm MT (CNA). – If you think you’re a priest, and you really aren’t, you have a problem. So do a lot of other people. The baptisms you performed are valid baptisms. But the confirmations? No.

The Masses you celebrated were not valid. Nor the absolutions or anointings. And the marriages? Well…it’s complicated. Some yes, some no. It depends on the paperwork, believe it or not. Father Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit learned all this the hard way.

He thought he’d been ordained a priest back in 2017. He’d been doing priestly ministry since then. And then this summer, he learned he wasn’t a priest at all. In fact, he learned he wasn’t even baptized. If you want to become a priest, you must first become a deacon. If you want to become a deacon, you must first be baptized. If you’re not baptized, you can’t become a deacon, and you can’t become a priest.

Of course, Fr. Hood thought he had been baptized as a baby. But this month, he read a note issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The note said that changing the words of baptism in certain ways make it invalid. That if the person doing the baptizing says “We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” instead of “I baptize you…” the baptism is not valid. He remembered a video he’d watched of his own baptism ceremony. And he remembered that the deacon said, “We baptize you….” His baptism wasn’t valid.

Father Hood called his archdiocese. He needed to be ordained. But first, after three years of acting like a priest, living like a priest, and feeling like a priest, he needed to become a Catholic. He needed to be baptized. In short order, he was baptized, confirmed, and received the Eucharist. He made a retreat. He was ordained a deacon. And on Aug. 17, Matthew Hood finally became a priest. For real.

Yes, I was baptized at St. Michael church in Brattleboro, Vermont. I think I have a copy of the certificate. I hate these mind twisting pictures, so I’ll let you enjoy them.