An Interview with Thomas J. Burns, LMHC

by Gordon Nary

Gordon: When and where were you born? Tell us something about your family:

Tom: I was born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1948 and I lived on Buffalo’s East Side until I left home for the seminary when I was 14. My dad, one of fourteen Catholic offspring, grew up in  the coal mining region of Western Pennsylvania. He first met my mother through a pen-pal club sponsored by Our Sunday Visitor weekly national newspaper in the late 1930’s. She grew up in Buffalo. My dad served four years in World War II as a medic; it was only after watching Saving Private Ryan that I appreciated what a living hell he had gone through in that position. When he died in 2002, he was laid out with the rosary that “got me through the war.”

Having studied and practiced family therapy in my own adulthood, I have had the opportunity in my own old age to look back upon my family. Both of my parents were worn out by the war; my dad had malaria when he mustered out—and then he had to quickly make up lost time. He went to night school in accounting after managing a country movie theater for a time. By the time the children started arriving, my parents craved a calm and predictable lifestyle. Arduous work did not frighten them, but unpredictability troubled them. When my white neighborhood began its sojourn into “white flight mode,” my parents worried about the safety of their children and began planning for a move to the countryside, which they achieved in 1962.

Gordon: When did you receive your vocation, with whom did you first discuss it and what was their advice?

Tom: Back in the 1940’s or 1950’s a bishop famously told his seminarians: “There’s not an honest vocation among you. You’re all living your mother’s vocation.” Given that most seminaries today will not accept you earlier than college-aged, there are fewer of those sorts of maternal pressures now. [Nowadays it’s “give us grandchildren.”] But in my time, there was still a perceptible sense that many mothers prayed earnestly for one of their offspring to take the Roman collar. I don’t remember a time in my life when I did not want to be a priest; I played Mass in my room, for example, till age seven or eight. Priesthood, as I understood it, meant living or working in a parish like mine up the block. I was happy with that. The priests were good guys, as were the Christian Brothers who taught our middle school.

I do remember my second or third confession, my first one on a Saturday afternoon with the regular adult parishioners. I was standing in line with my little list in my head, but I noticed that some of the adults were taking a long time in the confessional. It opened my eyes to the fact that something more was going on—advice—and that intrigued me, that a priest could help you in some yet undefined way besides forgiving your sins. Interestingly, I would one day enter a religious order with a reputation for its confessors and later become a licensed psychotherapist. But that would be down the road. In elementary school I was a “sacristy rat,” helping around the church, serving as master of ceremonies for the Triduum, etc.

But I also liked sports, rock and roll, and the normal stuff as I progressed to the eighth grade. And, in the seventh grade I was “struck by the lightning bolt” when a girl I had been friendly with in my neighborhood all my life suddenly became the plan was always that I would become a diocesan priest in Buffalo, my hometown. It just made sense. But my mother became enamored with the Franciscans through her annual retreats, and early in the eighth grade I received acceptances to both seminaries.

The friars she had met described the multiple ministry options for my career and the happy community life of the Order, how the elderly friars always had care and companionship through their last days. The tradeoff: the Franciscan option meant starting high school 300 miles from home in a remote Catskill seminary, effectively leaving the family as an active member. [When I told this story to one of my staff years later, she burst into tears.] Even today, when people ask me socially about my background, I inevitably get the shocked look: “You left home at 14?”

I never sought any objective third-party advice about the pros and cons; it didn’t occur to me to do that, and where would I get it? I trusted my parents. I have to admit that as much as I hated leaving home, and as unhappy as I was in the early years of Franciscan formation to the priesthood, my years with the friars would open incredible ministerial opportunities for a kid from East Buffalo, more than I deserved, really.

Gordon: You attended several Colleges and Universities, please list them and the degrees that you earned.

Tom: When I left home in 1962, I took up residence at St. Joseph Seraphic Seminary in Callicoon, New York, about two hours northwest of New York City. The seminary included a full high school accredited by the New York State Board of Regents, and likewise a two-year accredited junior college which offered an A.A. degree in classical Latin and Greek. In my six-year tenure the educational and religious format was reflective of the dying old-school formula for training priests before the reforms of the Catholic Church Council Vatican II [1962-1965]. The day began with Latin Mass at 6 AM and ended with lights out at 9:30 PM.

I found those years restrictive and uninspiring. My grades plummeted from my earlier years with the Christian Brothers, and the relationship of the faculty with the students was stern and adversarial, unlike the pleasant experience of the clergy of my parish back home. I was very disillusioned. With the wisdom of age—and several books written on minor seminaries in the past generation, I have concluded that the purpose of all minor seminaries was that of a holding pen, keeping us safe from the temptations of the world so we would persevere till priestly ordination. I kept myself sane by daily reading The Imitation of Christ, playing sports and short-story writing. The best thing to happen in those years was making friendships among some of my classmates that continue to this day. A handful of us from the entry class of 1962 call or text whenever the spirit moves us today—friends for 63 years and counting.

My original class of 65 students dropped to about 30 who continued after graduation from St. Joseph’s Seminary to the Order’s Novitiate in Lafayette, New Jersey. Although not formally an academic setting, Novitiate is marked by the taking of the religious habit and 366 days of prayer, classes and study, and full introduction into the life of the vows and fraternity. In 1968-69 my novitiate was grasping about to find a renewed lifestyle in line with the Vatican II reforms. Novitiates were historically the most intense time of preparation—novices never left the premises. But our directors wanted us to have experience of “the real world,” and as an example I worked Saturday nights at a local pizzeria, an unheard-of thing at the time. There was also more than a whiff of amateur psychology in the air, and I was glad to take simple vows and progress in 1969 to the Order’s major seminary, Holy Name College, in Washington, D.C. 

Holy Name was a community of friars completing their final five years of study for solemn [lifelong] vows and ordination to the priesthood, alongside professional theologians and those friars’ completing doctorates, etc. Like our other formation houses, Holy Name, too, was struggling to reinvent itself in the light of the changing times. The discipline was relaxed and the atmosphere congenial. Between school and local ministries, we were on the go. It was not a contemplative house; the religious structure was a daily 5 PM Mass, with morning prayer and vespers. There was no community-wide program to develop formal ways to meditate, and after five years I absorbed an attitude that work was prayer. It was not until midlife that I came to realize the richness of structured personal prayer and the spiritual theology of such groups as the Trappists and the Jesuits.

I lived at Holy Name for five years. I completed my B.A. in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in 1971. Suffice to say that much of it went over my head and the subject matter did not connect with my later graduate theology studies if that was supposed to be the plan. In 1971 I began my quest for the master’s in theology degree, the final educational step toward ordination to the priesthood. My school, the Washington Theological Coalition [later Union in those days] was a joint effort of major religious orders to pool their best scholars into a first-rate faculty. Finally, after nine years, I was studying “religion,” the reason I left home as an idealistic kid in 1962. The WTC offered solid basic courses and intriguing electives in The Resurrection and Apocalyptic Worldviews, Canon Law and Annulments, pastoral psychology, etc. I discovered I had a yen for research. I even did a lengthy research paper on “Catholic Moral Teaching and Women’s Liberation,” a little far out for fifty years ago. [My faculty readers rolled their eyes, but they passed it.]  I had to visit the University of Maryland to find many sources for that paper!

I wanted to learn how to be a priest and living in a Franciscan friary inside the D.C. Beltway was one great immersion into ministry I would not have gotten in a diocesan setting. It did not hurt that I owned and played a Martin twelve-string guitar at the height of the “guitar Mass rage,” and played for the 5 P.M. Saturday night Mass at Fort Myer/Arlington Cemetery, followed by dinner in the officers’ club with the brass. But my best learning experience among many was youth work: specifically serving on and later leading our friary’s programs of weekend retreats for Washington high schools and parish religious education programs at rural retreat settings. The students and their faculty/parish chaperones were very receptive, and I had a magnificent chance not just to find my preaching voice but also to learn the dynamics of multi-day religious renewals. Later, when I left D.C., I would give week-long retreats to communities of sisters and laity. For several days after my ordination to the priesthood, I remained in D.C. to offer Mass at several of “our” retreat schools and hear confessions for the first time. I’ll never forget the emotion of that.

Gordon: When did you serve as Campus Minister at Siena College and what is one of your favorite memories when you were there?

Tom: I never planned to go to Siena. In my fifth year in Washington, as ordained deacons, my classmates and I had to submit our proposals for first assignments. I thought I had mine in the bag—a downtown New England Chapel with round the clock Masses, confessions, and counseling. But the Godfather of my Order’s personnel office demanded a favor—that I join my 12-year classmate and good friend in establishing a chaplaincy or campus ministry at Siena College outside of Albany, New York. Again, there was no real blueprint for college ministry in the early 1970’s. Today the term “evangelization” comes closest to what the powers that be were looking for. So, Bobby and I would be blazing a trail.

But before we set out, on September 14, 1974, we were ordained priests by the future Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. I remember being more than a little overwhelmed with the sense that a twelve-year pilgrimage had reached its end. As for the future, lying on the floor of the church during the Litany of the Saints, I confidently assumed that the Sacrament of Orders would open the door to priestly understanding, i.e., that the wisdom of God would somehow show the way.

A week later we reported for work at Siena. The College served about two thousand students, equally divided between residents and commuters, the latter referred to as “baggers” by the residents because they brought their lunch from home. I never did solve the Rubik’s cube of outreach to the commuters: most of them worked off campus after school and had lives in the community. However, a number approached my office about getting married at the college chapel, which we were happy to accommodate as our campus ministry was designated a “canonical parish.” On average, I officiated over more marriages in those four college years than at any other period in my priestly work. Sometimes the weddings were held at the bride’s parish—I became familiar with marriage/minister license requirements in several states. [In 1975 I performed a wedding in Georgetown, and as an out of state minister I had to buy a D.C. city license to start my own religion.] 

The bulk of ministry, naturally, took place among the residents. Bobby and I leaned on the school to appoint us residential dorm counselors in the boys’ dorms as well as chaplains. College kids didn’t hike across campus to the official chaplain’s office, but they sure kept us busy once we moved into their dorms. It was known that I was available every night from about 7 PM till 1 AM, and that anybody, individually or in groups, could stop by my living room for counsel or for Johnny Carson’s monologue at 11:30. I was amazed at the Mass attendance. All three of our Masses, 6:30 PM Saturday, 11:30 AM and 10:15 PM on Sunday filled the house.

I still hear from alumni fifty years later, and the consensus seemed to be that we preachers talked to the students and not at them, and on subjects that they cared about. I used popular rock songs from time to time in my sermons, such as “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Dust in the Wind.” The college-aged cohort in general is, sadly, not exempt from tragedy. My hardest day as chaplain involved a call from a downstate sheriff’s department asking me to break the news to one of our students that his father had killed his entire family and himself in a murder-suicide. The student lived in my dorm, as it turned out, and had just finished his final exams. I drove him to his hometown and stayed there for several days; he asked me to preach at the multiple funeral Mass in his home church.

But my experience at the college overall was an exhilarating one, with opportunities for stimulating holiday and summer work at our downtown shrine churches in New England and at retreat houses in the Northeast. The students on campus were certainly friendly, and I was able to recruit a Dominican Sister for the campus ministry team. Siena was something of a “jock school” back then, and we were able to take a big step forward for the women students with our new teammate living in the women’s dorm. All the same, I did not plan to make a career of college work. At the end of my fourth year at Siena I put in for a pastorate in the Deep South, where the Franciscans served multiple dioceses. I felt that if full time retreat work was going to be my future, I needed to know something of the rigors of their lives—a credibility thing. Thus, I volunteered for a six-year hitch, and I was assigned to a parish about fifteen miles from Orlando, Florida in 1978.

Gordon: You served as Pastor of two parishes. What were they and tell us something about each of them.

Tom: The funny thing is that I signed up for my new parish for six years and ended up serving ten years, and my second parish for four. So that’s fourteen years as a pastor in the heart of Central Florida. Not exactly my 1978 game plan, but Florida did turn my life around in permanent ways.

My first parish was in Apopka, Florida, along U.S. 441 and across the street from a boarded-up Stuckey’s. Apopka identified itself then as “The Indoor Foliage Capital of the World,” and many parishioners operated family nurseries or at Disney World, which opened seven years before my arrival in 1978. But the town was growing with new housing development and an influx of white-collar workers. There were 250 registered households when I arrived, but there was a constant influx over the years.

The Apopka parish was canonically responsible for Hispanic farmworkers in the region, and a friar and a sisters’ community developed ministerial outreach to this population. It was not always easy; I do not speak Spanish, so I could not do a great deal about developing parish community or common worship between the cultures; we were something of a two-track parish, something I do regret today.

While it is true that management and finance consumed a lot of my time, the parishioners themselves were kind and patient, particularly given my age: I was 30 when I arrived, the youngest pastor in the Orlando Diocese to that time. My predecessor was 65, so it must have been something of a culture shock for all of us. But what I discovered was the eagerness of parents for pastoral attention to their children and teens. We eventually developed a summer program for 6th-12th grade whereby Tuesdays were education/Bible school days, and Thursdays were fun trips to the amusement parks.

The Central Florida park prices were not exorbitant back then; we would charge maybe $2-$4 per student and pick up the rest, but the parks were very good to negotiate with: Wet N’ Wild, Six Gun Territory, Circus World, Boardwalk and Baseball, and Busch Gardens come to mind as they provided generous discounts. [Only Disney was too expensive, and Universal wasn’t built yet.] On a humorous note, we had more parental chaperones than we had seats on the buses for some trips. Those are happy memories. And we were a “coffee and donut parish” after all the Sunday Masses. Funny thing about donuts: we never charged and budgeted about $4000 annually for that, and some years we showed a profit. Senior parishioners would slip me big bills “for the kids.”

In 1984 I began a master’s program in counseling at Rollins College, through night school and summer school over the next four years. I knew the degree would be helpful in parish work, but I began to consider seriously that if I ever left the priesthood, I would need to make a living. And during my last years in Apopka, I was beginning to have my doubts about my vocation. As was so often the case in Florida in those days, a new pastor was usually faced with the need to build a larger church. We were still using a small wooden chapel seating 200 people when I arrived; after two years I relocated Sunday Masses to our social hall, which seated four hundred, as a stopgap measure.

The parish was not thrilled about the move—and I sure don’t blame them--but it did facilitate the planning and fundraising for an eventual new, permanent worship space—and guaranteed that I would see it through even if it took the better part of a decade, not six years. After six years of planning, fundraising, and construction, in 1988 the Bishop of Orlando dedicated a beautiful parish church—the fruit of two [!] pledge campaigns, an incredibly competent parish staff and council, and contracted outside professionals, ranging from a Catholic liturgical designer from Baltimore to the future creator/writer of the highly successful “Menopause: The Musical.” My job in all of this was to raise the money and then get out of the way. A prominent Jewish CEO in Orlando, a friend of a parishioner, gave me a lesson in fundraising: “All big donors to non-profits want to talk to the CEO. You can’t delegate that. And ask them for more money than they’ve ever given to anything in their lives.” For me, that was hard, and it took the better part of a year just to meet individually with major donors, in their homes.

The new church was barely a few weeks old when the Diocese asked me about moving and healing a parish nearby in need of some encouragement. I thought this was an excellent opportunity for the friars to expand into a growing region of the country. As tired and uncertain of my future as I was, I responded favorably to the Orlando bishop, touching off “tampering complaints” from my Order’s headquarters in New York. The Orlando Diocese took me into its presbyterate immediately in early 1989 and I spent my final four years as a pastor and parish priest in Sanford, Florida.

Four years is not a long time, but I squeezed a lot of living into it. A year after I arrived [1990], I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and spent my lunch hours every day at the noon meeting around the corner from the rectory. Shortly after I corked the bottle for the last time, a local psychiatrist diagnosed me with major depression, and we started a ten-year search for the most effective medication for me—which we eventually found. But most helpfully, he assigned me to a weekly therapist on his staff—a woman counselor of another Christian denomination who, over a two-year period, took me to levels of introspection and honesty I had never embraced before. It came at a suitable time: I was 43, entering midlife, and sorting out ways to live a life of service within the scope of my strengths.

The parish in Sanford was one of the oldest in the diocese. A former railroad hub in the 1800’s, Sanford lost its position to Orlando, and in the 1950’s a large military base was closed. In its heyday the parish and its K-8 elementary school were filled to the beams with worshippers and students, many from the base. The parish also had a cemetery; I had never been responsible for either a school or a cemetery before. The principal of the school arrived six months before me, eminently qualified and energetic to revive the reputation of the school. For my part, I had to quash an article of faith in some circles—instigated by the previous pastor--that our school was a financial drain on the parish. I hired a political polling company from Minnesota to interview every one of our parish households by phone to learn what people genuinely thought of their parish and school, and me. When I got the results, I burst out laughing: we had a sizeable number of folks who stated that 90% of the Sunday collection should go to the school! I knew immediately that an exceptionally generous portion of the parish loved their church and their school, and I never lost a minute’s sleep about that again. I think my biggest achievement in Sanford was boosting the morale of the parish and [as president of the Orlando Priests Council—yet again!] talking up the parish to future pastors of competence and enthusiasm.

And soon it would be time to tap one of those energetic pastoral priests. In early 1993 I decided to talk to the bishop about an extended leave with the strong possibility that I would be leaving the active ministry for good. I must say for the record that the Diocese of Orlando could not have been kinder or more helpful, and they replaced me with a pastor who skillfully rebuilt nearly every facet of the parish.

In 1994 I began a decade working in public and non-profit counseling at several sites before opening my own practice in 2003. The money wasn’t much, but looking back, my work taught me a great deal about poverty in families, and children under the protection of the state. I had the opportunity to supervise graduate interns and counsel in an alcoholic rehab center—valuable human exposure that sharpened my own social justice awareness.

Gordon: When, how and why did you seek and receive laicization from Pope John Paul II?

Tom: By 1997 I felt certain that I would not be returning to the active ministry. My relationship with my diocese was particularly good, and I received fraternal support and technical assistance in submitting the proper forms to Rome. Much of the paperwork had been done back in the early 1990’s as I released my counseling records to the Vatican. In the final analysis, the Vatican carried a certain sympathy for priests trained in the 1960’s and 1970’s, a period of confusion in seminaries in the United States and elsewhere. For example, many of my seminary teachers and superiors had left the priesthood and religious life themselves. I received an affirmative release from “the clerical state” and permission to marry just three months after I petitioned Rome. And, hard to believe, I remained on the diocesan payroll until 2016, providing theological certification courses for catechists, Catholic school teachers, and parish staffs. When the program came to an end that year, my blog, “The Catechist Café,” was up and running, well on its way.

As to why I sought laicization? Again, from what I know of the Vatican decision, I was judged immature and inadequately prepared for ordination given the chaos of the times in my order. I can say I was not a man of profound prayer in my earlier years; I still struggle with that. A funny anecdote belongs here: when I studied counseling at Rollins, I took a course on psychological testing, and we administered the MMPI [personality test of hundreds of questions] to ourselves. I was surprised, to say the least, to see my schizophrenic score elevated. I rushed over to the professor’s office, and he laughed. Since schizophrenic personality disorder is a disorder of thought, he explained, a mild elevation is a gift: you think outside the box! You’re not a systems man.” I told him I was a Catholic pastor at the time, and he asked, “Just how is that working out?” 

Gordon: When and what did you teach at Daytona College and St. Leo University?

Tom: As I noted, the first year after I left the priesthood, I began at the bottom of the scale in the public health sector as a counselor, and I realized I’d need a second job. And just like that, a bolt from the blue: a department chair and old friend at Daytona College offered me an adjunct position in psychology and human services for the night school division. Then a few years later, St. Leo University negotiated a partnership of some sort with Daytona College which included religious studies. When it came time to fill adjunct positions with St. Leo on the same campus, somebody helpfully pointed out that “we’ve already got a guy accredited to teach religion….” How lucky is that? I taught at the Daytona Campus 1995-2002. I found the teaching an unmitigated pleasure, and I reluctantly gave it up when I opened my own psychotherapy practice.

Gordon: Please comment on mental health and catechetics.

Tom: Now there’s a challenge. If you have a Facebook account, you can find several streams aimed at catechists, nearly all of whom are volunteers, have little or no training or certification, and know nothing of developmental psychology a la Erikson, for example. Come August, watch your church bulletin for desperate calls for volunteers to teach catechism. And this shortage of certified laity in all the ministries of the Church will get worse instead of better. My parish, a large one, has been without a degreed faith formation director for about six months, and mine is a parish where the salary and benefits should attract at least several applicants. I worry about burned out lay ministers as much as I do priests; I used to counsel many of them, and the excessive pressures dampened their faith, in some cases.

We talk about evangelization in curious ways. For example, “come and join us” as if a convert or fallen-away Catholic is a beggar in the street and we can fix him. It never occurs to us that a prospective [or former] member may possess something of the wisdom of God that our community is lacking and desperately needs. Catholicism is riddled with arrogance, not the humility of the Cross. In our faith we use the term “clericalism,” which afflicts more than just priests; in more extreme cases a psychotherapist would coin such a stance as narcissism.

One of the biggest gulfs between two entities that ought to interact is confession and psychology. Again, we have a Catholic tendency to pare the apple to the core: i.e., absolution. We encourage people to go to confession frequently. But theologically and psychologically, the Sacrament of Penance is the place where the penitent brings the direction of his or her whole life into an act of what the Bible calls metanoia, or “turning your life around.” You can’t separate your “sins” from your being. The heart of penance is the guidance of the penitent toward sanctity. This takes, obviously, more time than the brief Saturday afternoon encounter before Mass. I would hope that parishes develop multiple opportunities for members to receive spiritual guidance and experience from competent directors in the multiple traditions of holiness: monastic routine, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, etc. Interestingly, I know of several lay groups who have undertaken small group identities for prayer and reflection. I belong to a small group founded by the Trappists and meet regularly via Zoom.

Beyond that, we are woefully weak across the board on exploring and teaching the psychological dimensions of all Church sacraments. Adult baptism is a profound psychological rite of conversion. The newly baptized are told they are entering a Spirit-filled community—but psychologically, ask one hundred mental health practitioners what a “community” is, and you will get two hundred answers. We overwork the terms “church,” “parish,” and “community.” We need conversation with social scientists as well as our Scripture scholars to sort out our expectations of the experience of Church and how best to define the rites, the rubrics, and the arrangements of life in a parish and in the Church at large.

Gordon: There has been an increase in priest suicides over the past several years. What are some of the factors resulting in suicidal ideation? What can dioceses and other organizations do to reduce these challenges?

Tom: The latest data I could find is from 2023. Reputable polling and research provide mixed messages. Majorities of priests report they are reasonably happy, though they report fatigue and challenges. The number of suicides is low [though one is too many]; some commentators report that a percentage of suicides may be related to public accusations and/or prosecution of child abuse. One 2022 statistic to note: only 50% of priests report trust in their bishop; 25% distrust all bishops. As one priest famous put it recently, “In the past my bishop looked upon me as a spiritual son; now he looks upon me as a potential legal liability.”

These numbers may give us a place to start at the top, specifically. I’m referring to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The USCCB has numerous pastoral problems it needs to address for the morale of the American Church, its priests, employees, and the faithful at large. For starters, the Conference needs to disengage from American politics and reengage with the universal Church and the Holy Father. That our bishops were not in sync with Pope Francis was painfully obvious; the Synod on Synodality was essentially ignored. Consider how useful parish synodal bodies, in communion with the local chanceries, would have been in discussions on parish rearrangements and closings. Beyond that, the Conference needs to revisit [actually, visit] the quality of faith formation personnel, including the laity; a national standard of certifications for the traditional and new parochial ministries would assist priestly ministry and workload.

Gordon:  Tell us about The Catechist Cafe

Tom: Since about 1998, when Jeff Bezos used to give out Christmas mugs to his early book purchasers, I have written 200 reviews of works on novels, history, psychotherapy, and of course theology. I have always enjoyed writing and like to put it to a beneficial use. From 1978-2016 I taught theology to lay catechists and Catholic school teachers. It was a thoroughly enjoyable ministry but inadequate to meet the daily and long-term needs and interests of the teachers.

The idea of “The Catechist Café” for church ministers came to me around 2014, the same year I retired from fulltime counseling. Originally, I thought of it as an on-site coffee house, so to speak, with discourse on religious topics and resources. But after three years I expanded the intended audience to any Catholic “whose religious instruction ground to a halt at the eighth grade.” My parish, for example, has hundreds of successful professionals across the board, people who read voraciously and might enjoy an introduction to Roman Catholic authors, be they theologians, researchers, or novelists.

The Café is a niche site. There are so many religious blogs/pods that focus on either inspirational daily messages or commentary on current events that I saw no reason to add another. [Thinking outside the box, LOL.] Thus, I am always scouring book sites—the major Catholic ones such as Liturgical Press, Paulist Press, or the Jesuit America Magazine or Yale Divinity School or Eerdman Press. Each Café entry [one of two per week] reviews and comments on a particular text. I live with no pretention that everyone runs out to buy the book—but readers at least know what’s out there. A busy Church minister might not have time to read Maximo Faggioli’s Theology and Catholic Higher Education [2024] or Maureen K. Day and fellow researchers’ Catholicism at a Crossroads: The Present and Future of America’s Largest Church [2025, currently in review]. But Café readers can stay in the loop, so to speak. And they can kick back with Catholic novelists, present day and classic, as the Café introduces those works, too.

I will be 78 on my next birthday, so I read somewhat slower than years ago, and I never totally mastered fine arts or photography, but no one has complained and I plan to continue the Café as long as anyone finds it worth his or her time to look in. There will never be a subscription charge. Facebook and Linked In are two sites where new posts from “The Catechist Café” are posted immediately.

A FINAL WORD:

My wife Margaret and I celebrate 27 incredibly happy years of marriage this coming October. We married at age 50 before the Vicar General of our Diocese...…proving that whatever struggles one encounters on life’s roads, there are wonderful blessings out there, too.

Gordon: Thank for an exceptional Interview.