Saturday, February 10, 2007

Priests are People, Too

Thankfully, today's Newark Star-Ledger carries a story about outer space that doesn't involve an astronaut, a diaper, and a car tank of gas.

Newark's Archbishop John Myers has collaborated with his lifelong friend, writer Gary K. Wolf, to produce a science fiction novel. "Space Vulture", a 400 page novel, will be published either late this year or early in 2008.

This is another great example of the humanity of Priests. Too many times when the media reports about "the other side of Priests", it's a story about something sinister or criminal. But it's great to hear about the positive things that Catholic clergy do in their free time. Other examples?

  • We've all heard of Pope Benedict's piano playing (something shared by New York's Cardinal Edward Egan, though Egan is also a cellist)
  • Pope John Paul II's love of skiing (made abundantly clear in the memoirs recently published by his longtime secretary, Cardinal Dziwisz of Krakow)
  • The hockey playing of Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki
  • The hiking of Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix
  • Scranton's retired Bishop James Timlin is a licensed airplane pilot, as was Bishop Michael Kaniecki, S.J., of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska, before he died in 2000 (and before you ask, not from a plane crash)
  • The racquetball prowess of Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput

Me? I'm with a fellow goalie with Bishop Paprocki. Maybe it's because of all the "saving" involved.

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