Day: August 19, 2012

Chi Trib, please, be clear about the Servites

You’re a Chicago reader.  You’re a Catholic.  You have some idea of who’s who among priests and nuns.  You think Chi Trib does its homework when it prints a story.  Well not always!!!

Story today about mail theft of donations, a dastardly act that does more than steal money.  It steals trust in the U.S. Postal Service, one of the pillars of society. 

But what of the newspaper that leads off with “The letters to the Servants of Mary were mailed from across the country” by which it means “the Servites, headquartered . . . at Our Lady of the [sic] Sorrows Basilica.”  The Sorrows?  It’s not how people talk!

Reporter is Annie Sweeney, who’s not a new arrival in town, as are not the copy deskers at her newspaper.  It’s been many years since Ed Eulenberg of Chi Daily News chewed me out for getting a standard Jewish term wrong in a story — and he the cheeriest and gentlest of men.  Time was . . .

Anyhow, in this case, we have Servite sisters, headquartered in Ladysmith,Wisconsin, who are called Servants of Mary, and Servants of Mary, Ministers to the Sick, Kansas City-based, founded in 1851 in Madrid, Spain.

Just a bit of Internet searching turns them up.  It’s easier than finding lost mail, that’s for sure.

A mere bagatelle for smutty Tribune

Trib writers Rick Pearson and Monique Garcia having fun in story about Gov. Quinn and pension reform:

Back in the 1970s, Quinn was a populist organizer known for launching petition drives to cut the size of the Legislature and starting tea-bag protests over legislative pay.

And:

Perhaps in an era of tea party politics helping to drive Republicans in the national debate over the size and cost of government, the Democratic governor and his tea-bag protests may be back in vogue after all.

Urban dictionary definitions?

Tea bag:

(v). To lower your body as to dip the testicles into her mouth as the woman is tonguing the scrotum.
And:
(n. or v.) To place testicles in someone’s mouth and proceed in a up and down motion.
And:
Placing your testes inside someones mouth and raising and lowering them to look like you are making tea.
As in:
I proceded to tea bag the homeless man.
Enough.  You get the idea.  Nice going, Chicago Tribune.

How to be a great anything

First, consider what great ones do. For instance:

Flannery O’Connor wrote: “Vocation implies limitation.”  In other words, if you want to be good at something, there are other things that you have to give up.  You can’t have it all, unless you want to be average or mediocre at everything you do.  O’Connor wanted to be a great writer, so after morning Mass and breakfast, she spent the next three hours of every day, writing, with no interruptions.  She said “no” to appointments, to visits, and even to reading before lunchtime, so that she could devote her entire self to writing, in order to become a great writer.  It worked.

Limit yourself.  You can neither be nor have everything.