3D Dialogue: The Catholic Worker Movement

For more info contact:

Zacchaeus CW House
5 Close Ave
Toronto ONT M6K 2V2
Ph 416 516 8198
E-mail zacchaeushouse@sympatico.ca

take action against the police

On August 20th a Union leader stopped members of the Quebec provincial police dressed as black bloc Anarchists from inciting a riot at the anti-spp protests the footage below was taken at the scene. Below that is a way to take action to let our politicians know that this can not go on. As citizens of an allegedly free country we have the right to voice our dissent without fear of reprisal or police attempts to discredit our movements. Please take a moment to write parliment, and share this with others.



I have written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper urging him to investigate what happened in Montebello, and if there were undercover police officers trying to incite violence.

To join me, go to http://www.rightoncanada.ca

Click this link to take action now!!

Nick Drake is my musical hero

so some updates...

After thinking further on the place at 70 mile house and talking with james, also after looking at a map of BC we've both agreed that it's not the place to start.

I'm leaving in the morning for Kenora/Grassy Narrows with Christian Peacemaker Teams I'm pretty excited about this I don't know what to expect at all.

I'm still questioning whether I ought to remain in the Roman Catholic Church. I havn't been to mass in a couple of weeks and the last time I was part of an eucharist was in Guadalupe at the Catholic Worker. I'm kind of in a different space than I was last year at this time, though I still disagree over the Papal claims and the Vatican I Doctrines I'm no longer angry with the church just sad and though I believe that God wouldn't let the Roman church out to dry because the Pope wants to grasp at power I also get this twinge each time I recite some of the prayers in my Catholic prayer book whenever Mary's immaculate conception is mentioned.

Also I find it difficult to go to church in Vancouver generally, the parish I like I have difficulty getting to and I'm the youngest person there by about thirty years and the Cathedral downtown is full of fanatics and I'm not using hyperbole, I have heard some very distressing homilies there and I don't feel comfortable in a place where I have to remind myself that I'm there for the Eucharist not some man's opinion.

I'm currently still trying to sort out my vocation. I have no doubt that the life I want to live is the life of a Catholic Worker, in community and poverty and in servise and solidarity with the poor. But since going to Assisi a new dimension has arisen. I can't recall if I wrote about this here but when I was on the steps leaving San Damiano I had for just a moment this clarity about going into Holy Orders. It was at once exciting and infuriating and has left me with a lot to think about and it's clarified my position on something, marriage is very important to me and I don't feel that I could live a life of service apart from the life of a husband and father. So you can understand one reason I've had issue with the Catholic position on clerical celibacy.

I've been thinking about going back to St. Nina's or St. Raphael's and I hope that my trip to Kenora will help me think clearly about this issue.

In other, non church-related news work on the new CD is coming along really well, I'll be wrapping up the studio sessions when I get home and I've written two new songs that I hope to put on the album. I'm also thinking about starting a band but I'm not certain how or with whom. I've got gear and I've got a whole bunch of songs that I'd love to play with other people but for now I think that just getting the CD finished and pressed and playing around town will be a lot of work to start with.

I think that's it for now. I'm going to go to bed I've got an early morning.

zine machine rides again

Making zines can be really addictive. I've been putting together some that I've wanted to make for quite a while now. In the last two days I've made zines out of writing by Ched Myers, Jon Sobrino and Monk Damascene Christensen. It's my hope that I could print them off and sell them to help with the expenses of The Christian Radical. Also it's really awsome to put something together in a way that looks good. I wish I could print them out but I think my printer has officially bought the farm it's only printing junk these days no good for anything not even copy.

Speaking of buying the farm I was talking to my mom yesterday afternoon and she told me that she knew a guy near 70 Mile House who wanted to sell this huge acreage with a big house that has a stage and can sleep something like 20 people for $400,000. I was really pretty excited and my mom would help with the cash but 7o Mile House is really far away from everything and I do mean everything (it's a six hour drive north of Hope BC). I've been looking at info about the area where this place is and I'm starting to have serious doubts. On the one hand the place sounds palatial on the other hand the place sounds palatial, it's also really far away from the area that I originally thought about starting a CW Farm and I have no idea wether I want to live somewhere so far away and so cold in the winter.

I told James about it and he got cold feet, I said that there's no way I can even get away to look at the place until September or late August because of CPT and after thinking about it more I'm getting hesitant myself. I wish there was some way for James and I to actually spend some time together that's not at his work but he's there open to close every day until Alan gets back from his vacation so any time spent with him has to be while he's at work. yech.

I'm going to try and get together with him in the afternoon maybe we can talk further, I'm also going to talk a bit more with my mom and I think that no matter what there's still a lot of prayer and discernment that needs to happen around this.

If you reading this are so inclined as to pray we could use and would appreciate your prayers for starting a new Catholic Worker community.

end of internship update

What follows is my essay for The Catholic Agitator it'll be printed in their October issue along with whatever other interns wrote. just to preface I had a great time with my friends in the community though I never fit in with the other interns and by the end of the six weeks I had given up at even trying. It's remarkable what a four year age difference can do. I really felt alone some of the time because I wasn't an "intern" in the same way as the rest of them were and being straight edge I couldn't really mix with them easily in our off hours because they were all about partying and that's something I burnt out on a long time ago. I'm also not quite a member of the LACW because I an a Catholic Worker in Vancouver though I have hopes and plans to go down there for six months to live and work with them when they are short staffed in the winter but that's not going to be for a year at least I have stuff I want and need to do up here in the interim. Here's the essay:

Where Am I and What Am I Doing?
Chris Rooney

So it’s the evening before the end of the summer program and I’m in the Agitator office trying to hammer something out. Writing about my faith journey would take a long time and, it’s something that I’ve been trying to write about for years, one of my more successful attempts took three hundred pages before I ran out of steam and gave up.

A lot of things have combined in my life to bring me to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker. On my first trip here I wrote on what I called Divine Futility, knowing that caring for people and trying to serve the homeless wouldn’t ever end homelessness and that in a strange way the act, though at times wearying, had in itself a kind of perseverance and that this perseverance comes from God.

I think that when I wrote that essay I downplayed the very mundane feelings that come along with it. It scares me a little to write about the other side of that coin and as I do I’m reminded of the title of Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness. The other side of this vocation for bringing good things into the lives of the poor is the real and heavy feeling that some times you have a lot to carry around and that it might never get any easier.

I was making the August issue of The Christian Radical when I asked Catherine what she did when she felt defeated. She made a knowing sound and told me that the trick she’d learned was to keep so busy that you don’t have time to think about it; that’s solid advice, but it’s not always easy to follow.

This past year has been one of searching and reconciliation for me. As I returned to Vancouver from my pilgrimage here, and to Jonah House, and the Toronto Catholic Worker I was coming to terms with the history of the Catholic Church and with the false doctrine of papal infallibility. I found it easier to be a Catholic without thinking about this, but as I started to read more what I learned was enough to make me want to leave. Leaving was an easy thing for me to do because I don’t really have any special attachment to the Vancouver Archdiocese. I don’t have anything good to say about the Roman church in Vancouver so I’ll talk more about the things I found while I went looking, and what I did with them.

Coming back to Vancouver I started attending mass at the Old Catholic church where I found a community which was pleasant enough but though I have an affinity for the Old Catholics I didn’t feel that I fit in there and I didn’t feel comfortable talking with the clergy or most of the congregation. I left after a lot of hard questioning, and after even more questioning I started going to an Orthodox mission with one of my best friends. The community I found there was young and vibrant and intellectual, concerned about social justice and interested in the Catholic Worker movement. To date they are the only church in Vancouver that reads The Christian Radical and they are like family I don’t visit enough. As I struggled for more understanding of where I was and what I was doing I wrote to Fr. Steve Kelly and he also gave me some good advice about the importance of prayer, I don’t remember if I ever thanked him.

I was preparing to become a catechumen in the Orthodox Church and all the while ignoring that I was doing it because I was running from the Catholic Church. My pastor at the Orthodox mission told me early on that if I weren’t running towards Christ in choosing to convert then it would be better for me to remain Catholic despite my issues. And that’s why I’m not an Orthodox Christian right now. I had to admit that my whole reason for leaving the church in the first place was because of my unwillingness to forgive it for lying and for the awful things it has done in Christ’s name. Faced with this I had no other choice but to start going back and to forgive this church for it’s sordid past and present. I’ve said this a lot and it keeps proving true that sooner or later everyone has to forgive their church, I’ve had to do it a number of times already and I’ll probably have to do it a lot more before I’m dead.

I’ve still got issues with Catholicism but they are mine and I know these things won’t change on my or anyone else’s account, all I can do is remember that I’m charged with the responsibility to forgive unconditionally and to try and do my small part to be a Christian in the midst of a heavily corrupted institution.

As I packed my bags I asked myself one question everyplace I left last year; “If I could only go home with one thing what would it be?” Last year when I was packing to leave this place I said to myself that it was the graciousness and total hospitality that I was shown by this community, this year it’s the stoic determination that Catherine hinted at when she advised me to just plow on through.

The last time I went to the Cathedral in Vancouver I was upset by signs that had been taped to the inner doors of the church. The signs told people absolutely not to sleep in the pews or on the floor inside. I wanted to take the signs down but as people started to exit I got scared of being caught and I left them up. When I go home I’m going to go back up to those doors and if they’re still there I’m going to take those signs down. And I hope to get caught doing it I want to remind the priests that the church is the mansion of the poor. That no matter how much wealth it accumulates, no matter how much they might want to close and lock their doors to the panhandlers on the steps outside, those are the people Christ came to meet, not the rich families who gather there for mass every Sunday.

So this brings me back here, to me sitting in the office trying to make something for the Agitator. I have to thank God for stoicism; I think that it might be an underrated grace. Perhaps it’s the only way to keep living this vocation, like Dennis Appel said in a talk he and Tenzie gave here, the spirit of God blows where She will and we’re all just holding on until She blows back in. Sometimes it can be easy to feel alone in this work but then there are these moments where for one reason or another I’m reminded that my struggle is just a small part of a very beautiful thing, something that is so very much larger than any one person, and I thank God as I write this that despite my occasional lonliness the view is still better from the cross.