CATHOLICISM

El Rrun Rrun: The Immaculate Conception Cathedral is beautiful and the seat of the Brownsville Diocese, but Bishop Daniel Flores is in Hidalgo County and has abandoned Brownsville. The Church here is failing, like so many other things under the mismanagement of Mayor Tony Martinez.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I am a Catholic. From first through eighth grades, I went to working-class Catholic schools. I never attended a school like St. Joe where sex and drugs were running amok and most of the brothers were gay. I was taught by Irish priests who in many cases left the church to marry. I served as an altar boy from third through eighth grade when the mass was in Latin and moving the Bible from the right side of the altar after the epistle to the left side for the gospel was as arduous as Jesus carrying his cross. I should write a novel about my Catholicism. At the age of six, after listening to the nuns, I was sure that I would spend eternity in hell and I still haven't escaped the paranoia more than six decades later. When I was employed at the Guatemala News, I traveled to San Salvador to interview Archbishop Oscar Romero a few months before he was gunned down in his church by government assassins. When I gaze at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, I flash back to the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. As most of my family and friends know, I have lived downtown on various occasions. Seeking refuge from the summertime heat, I have ducked into the cathedral, relaxed in the cool sanctuary and listened to the Gregorian Chants. I'm at home. I recognize all the saints, the stations of the cross I have often walked and the incense wafts me back to my youth. Through my Catholic upbringing I first knew spirituality and wrestled with those questions whose answers will always elude us. Not only for the pedophile clergy, but I resent the Church these days because it takes no stand against poverty, ignorance and corruption in Brownsville. I know nothing about Bishop Flores because he has done nothing. He strikes me as being effeminate. As to Mayor Tony Martinez, he makes a mockery of his Catholic beliefs with his many hypocrisies. Nevertheless, despite the Church's many imperfections, the Immaculate Conception Cathedral is as close to perfection as Catholicism will ever know.