Father's Day

by David Lins  |  06/19/2022  |  (Being) Catholic Matters

On Monday, I dropped my daughter off at her new school for KinderCamp. The next day, she turned five. And this weekend is Father’s Day. Blend these up and you get a dad thinking quite a bit about his relationship with his daughter.

One day, there is a good chance some young man is going to come along and ask if he can marry my little girl. I’m going to ask him if he thinks he is worthy of her.

Want to know the answer I’ll be hoping for?

“No sir. But I’ll spend my life trying.”

Our diocese found out the name of our new incoming bishop just over a week ago. A million snap judgements were made (mostly after some quick Google searches and skimming an article or two). Catholics across a solid chunk of Arizona were scrambling to decide if he was “our kind of bishop” or “their kind of bishop.”

At his press conference, the wolves of the press were out in full force with questions about clergy abuse transparency, LGBT acceptance, does he prefer Coke or Pepsi, etc. (Okay— maybe not that last one.) And I couldn’t help but think of how people continually tried to trip up the Lord.

I think it might be wise for us to take a step back and pray for Bishop John P. Dolan. After all, can you imagine what this man is going to face?

I grew up in a house with seven children. There weren’t many moments when all of us were pleased with the decisions our parents made. There are 1.2 MILLION Catholics in the Diocese of Phoenix. Get what I’m saying?

“Well, if I were Bishop, I’d do this and that and the other thing.” But God hasn’t allowed you to be the bishop, now has he? And are you even able to hear the pride in that thinking? In this month, where our culture is currently obsessed with pride (the worst of the seven deadly sins), how about a return to humility? As the people of this diocese, our first instinct shouldn’t be to “run a background check” (and I was as guilty of this as any of you), but to drop to our knees in prayer for our new bishop.

Is he worthy? I don’t know. But I can only pray if he was asked, his honest response might be something like, “No sir, but I’ll spend my life trying.”

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