Monday 15 August 2016

Toomas Karmo: Failure of 2016-08-14 Archdiocese-Outreach Effort (Pertinent to DDO&P Conservation)

A rather sad shot, from a day which was in its wider context not all that sad. My 2016-08-14 effort at reaching out in a meaningful way to His Eminence Archbishop Cardinal Thomas Collins having failed, I got this shot of him from his final seconds in public view, before he disappeared into the Marylake Augustinian monastery. 


Quality assessment:


On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3'5 is "mediocre pass", 4.5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 4/5. Justification: There was enough time to develop most of the appropriate points to reasonable length.

Revision history:

UTC=20160816T0003Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He retained the tight to make nonsubstantive tweaks over the coming 48 hours, as here-undocumented versions  1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, ... . . 


[CAUTION: A bug in the blogger software has in some past weeks shown a propensity to insert inappropriate whitespace at some late points in some of my posted essays. If a screen seems to end in empty space, keep scrolling down. The end of the posting is not reached until the usual blogger "Posted by Toomas (Tom) Karmo at" appears.]  


Having today written a follow-on to  last week's posting on the Muzzo family, I continue in the same vein, writing a second follow-on to that same posting. 

The original posting, now a week old, discussed not only the then-impending morning memorial to Marco Muzzo's victims, but also a happier afternoon event, the then-impending Marylake Shrine appearance of His Eminence Cardinal Archbishop Collins. 

My initiative yesterday (Sunday afternoon) with the Archdiocese, like my Sunday-morning initiative involving the Muzzo family, in essence failed. 

At the key moment, I did indeed approach His Eminence, kissing his ring for the second time in my life. 

The first time had been in that anxious late winter of 2013, when our beloved Archbishop was standing outside his cathedral, taking the best wishes of his flock as he prepared to leave Toronto for the conclave that would shortly elect Pope Francis. 

Words somewhat failed me on Occasion Number Two, as I raised my head upon making Sunday's kiss. It additionally seemed to me that His Eminence did not himself make the requisite mental connection between the various e-mails I had been transmitting to archbishop@archtoronto.org and the worried face now in front of him. My best hypothesis - I formulate it with just 60-percent confidence - is that my mails for archbishop@archtoronto.org have been inspected by someone other than Archbishop Cardinal Collins himself, and that whoever has been doing the inspections has judged my repeated submissions to be inappropriate for our Cardinal Archbishop's eyes.

I cannot leave matters in this unsatisfactory state. 

It will be necessary for me to request, respectfully, a five-minute appointment with His Eminence, in which I briefly explain the communal grief over the destruction of 32 hectares out of the 77-hectare DDO&P greenspace, and in which I add that young Marco Muzzo's incarceration is peripherally (not centrally, I shall have to stress) related to DDO&P. I shall perhaps have to finish by asking His Eminence to pray with me for a moment. 

The making of such a five-minute appointment can wait for some days, for some weeks, or conceivably even for some months. It cannot, however, be put off beyond this coming winter. 

****

In its wider context, the Marylake event was a resounding success. I left it around 18:30 EDT (UTC=2230Z) not particularly sad. 

The proceedings opened at 14:00 EDT with a brief, solid concert of classical and sacred music. Conspicuous here was a fine rendition, from a solo tenor or baritone, of Franck's "Panis Angelicus". The pageantry, as concert gave way to Eucharist, and Eucharist to the blessing of Marylake's new Rosary Walk, was almost worthy of the Vatican City State. 

True, there were no Swiss Guards, and no halberds. True, there were only one or a few Vatican flags. 

But oh, those Knights of Columbus! They turned up in their dozens, under plumed headgear, and under capes in various coloured fabrics (perhaps silks). 

Further, many in that crowd of perhaps more than a thousand will have tasted with gratitude the Knights of Columbus burgers - supplied free to anyone who needed free food, and otherwise supplied (as to me) for a suggested donation of just 2.00 CAD, and containing huge patties of correctly grilled hot meat. 

Then there was the wonderful error in pronunciation by one of the presiding microphone personages - just enough to keep the proceedings down to earth and appropriate for the poor and struggling: again and again, he said into his microphone not "Holy Sepulchre" but "Holy Sepukler". 

On contemplating all this - the plumes, the capes, the unpretentiouis "Sepukler"; or again the various monastic habits; or again my friends from Madonna House, in their secular garb, but with their simple pectoral crosses emblazoned "PAX/CARITAS" - this is what I thought: The Church is practically the only institution in today's world that not merely tolerates the poor in its pomp and pageantry, but unselfconsciously, in its fancy dress, ministers to them. 

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