Fr. Matthew

Seems Fr. Matthew is not at all convinced of the visionary we saw the other night. I love Fr. Matthew. He's one of my people, pretty young, and very orthodox. But not Orthodox with a big O. Last night he proved that and I breathed a big sigh of relief. See, in the Eastern Churches there is a lot of Orthodox sympathy. Then there are the Uniates, like me, who are completely obeidiant to Papa. The Orthodox call the Uniates "traitors" and basically resent us for reuniting with Rome 500 years ago. I was scared maybe Fr. Matthew was Orthodox minded but he's not. He proved it to me last night. He's not, however, very keen on the Latin Catholics either so, he's exactly a Ukrainian Catholic. I can dig that, even if I am basically just as Latin as I am Ukrainian.
Chris Matthews on Hardball (who has two aunts who are nuns) told everyone to take their priest to dinner. There are a lot of lonely priests. So now Fr. Matthew is going out with us on Thursday. Awesome. I thought we'd have to cajole him into it but he actually seemed quite pleased. Fr. Matthew isn't only awesome, but he looks awesome. He's taken Benedictine monk vows, so he's a monk (I guess?) as well as a parish priest. He wears this huge black hat and this cool black cassock under his vestments. His parish is HUGE, since his is the only Ukrainian church in the region. When asked where his parish stretches, he'll stop and think and then say, "My parish stretches from, hmmm, Alabama to Florida, to the Carolinas, all of Georgia....etc." It's awesome. It's funny, and he knows it, because obviously though his territory is that immense, those people can't drive all that way. So every Sunday his tiny chapel is still not full, while the Latin parish down the street is packed. What a great priest.