August 2009

I had a meeting of our priest pension fund today. It was fairly routine: looking over the performance of our investments, checking on our conversion rate, and so on. We still have a large actuarial deficit, but things are looking up for our fund nevertheless.

I had a meeting today to look a building a fundraising project for the diocesan “Oeuvre des vocations”. This is the foundation that supports our seminarians, as well as seeks to promote vocations (especially to the priesthood). For some reason I am part of the team trying to develop a “look” for our fundraising program. The thing is, anyone who knows me knows that I am not the guy to go to for a winning “look”.

Bing! Is it a sound effect? Is it a search engine? In this case, it is a person: the wife of my old classmate Ian, who is presently in town with Bing and their daughter Chloe. This lovely little family used to live in Singapore, where I once visited them. Now they live in Shanghai, and have recently completed a major trip through Europe on their way to visiting Ian’s parent here in Montreal.

I got together with an old friend today: Keith Donoghue, a buddy from high school and university who is now a financial planner. He’s invested some of his own money to investigate a tool called Bible-based money management seminars. It’s a USA-based program, so some of the financial terminology would need to be translated for Canadian users. It also is coming out of a Protestant background, so our meeting was more about going over the material to see how it can be used in a Catholic context.

I spent today getting ready for the liturgy class I am teaching this fall. For the past few years I have given a very particular assignment: my students would hand in their course notes, and I would correct them. The best of them would be shared among the students to serve as study material for the final exam.

This Sunday we had an interesting experience at morning mass. It was extremely hot and humid. As I was presiding, I looked out and saw that an elderly gentleman was collapsing. Parishioners trained as nurses went to his side to see how he was doing, and at a certain point I stopped the mass and went down to see for myself. An ambulance was called, and at communion time I also offered this man the anointing of the sick. We aren’t sure if it was just the heat, or if he had a seizure of some sort (it’s possible it was both, actually).

Some friends of mine are up from Mexico, and tonight they treated me to dinner at a very special restaurant. It is called O Noir.

The food was excellent, as was the service, but to be honest here in Montreal a restaurant can’t survive without these basics. What makes O Noir so different is that you eat in the dark.

I mean really in the dark. Pitch black.

I had a particular joy this evening. Three years ago I had the chance to celebrate the marriage of Charlie Smith to his lovely wife Bernice. At that time, he had expressed his desire to enter into the Catholic Church – but then I got transferred from that parish, and it never got followed up.

A recent pastoral encounter has prompted me to write about a particular problem many people seem to suffer from: problem gambling. I’ve never been attracted to gambling myself, but I’ve known people who’ve gone down that road, eventually to their (possible) ruin.

A couple of years ago I was visiting the island nation of Saint Lucia, where I got a chance to meet a young girl and chat a bit about her life: school, friends, that sort of thing. At one point she said something that made me realise that I really was in another culture. We were talking about her Catholic faith, and I wondered if it was hard to be a good Catholic in her culture.

Hey blog readers,

Just a little update on what I’ve been up to.