From Italy

Greetings from Rome!

Apologies for not attending to my blog for so long.

I’ve been busy getting ready for this two-month trip as well as rehabbing from my knee operations and another unexpected surgery. I’ve also been preoccupied with Tarot readings for an increasing number of clients – not to mention readings for my immediate family.

All six of us (including my son-in-law) have birthdays in the span of a single month – from September 6^th to October 5^th. And this year I’ve decided to give each family member a 10-card Tarot reading. It’s been a lot of fun, but has taken time, since each reading (including visual representations of each card) runs to about a dozen pages.

With that behind me, I can now return to blogging.

So, again, greetings from the Eternal City.

Peggy and I are here visiting our son Brendan, his wife Erin, and their three children, Genevieve (4), Madeleine (2), and Sophie (8 months). We want to get to know those kids.

You may recall that Brendan works for the State Department. He operates out of the embassy in Rome and is doing quite well following previous postings in Mexico, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

You might also realize that in a sense, this visit represents my “return to the scene of the crime.” I mean, as a newly ordained priest, my first assignment was to get my doctorate in moral theology here in Rome. So, between the years 1967 and 1972, I obtained my licentiate in systematic theology at the Atheneum Anselmianum and that doctorate at the Academia Alfonsiana.

Those five years changed my life.

Having educated me for 12 years (from a callow high school freshman in Silver Creek, New York to an ordained priest in Milton, Massachusetts) the intent of the Society of St. Columban (my sponsoring organization) was for me to return from Rome and teach moral theology in its major seminary.

However, studying post-Vatican II theology and living abroad for five years radically changed my world vision and understandings of God, Jesus, church, priesthood, politics, etc. Consequently, without my knowing it, the rector of our Rome house eventually wrote to the Columbans’ Superior General that I was “too dangerous” to teach in the organization’s major seminary.

So much for that.

In any case, I’ve written about all that elsewhere in these pages behind the “personal” button in my blog’s table of contents.

I won’t bore you with repetition.

So let me do so instead by simply noting that:

• We’re here.
• We’ve been generously received by our hosts.
• The grandkids are a lot of fun.
• I’ve forgotten most of my Italian (confusing it with similar languages I’ve learned in the meantime, viz., Portuguese and Spanish).
• At this very moment, Peggy and I find ourselves aboard a high-speed train heading from Rome to Turin, where we’ll attend a conference on the world’s food system.
• Afterwards, we’ll spend three nights in Venice.
• Then we’ll return to Rome and the adventures that await us there and elsewhere in the country.
• And oh (by the way) around Thanksgiving and our planned trip home, the two of us will return to Spain’s Granada for a week. That’s where we spent about a year in 2022-23. It will be great to reconnect with friends there.

Till next time arrivederci!