It is said that Pope Paul VI, who authorized the radical re-formation of the Catholic liturgy in the 1970s, came into his sacristy the day after Pentecost. He found green vestments laid out for him rather than red for the Pentecost Octave, and he was consternated. He asked his liturgical assistant, Annibale Bugnini, what had happened to the Pentecost Octave. Msgr. Bugnini explained that it had been abolished. “Who did that?” the Pope asked with growing agitation. “You did, your holiness,” Bugnini replied. And it is said that Pope Paul VI wept.
 
I doubt the conversation between Paul VI and Bugnini happened just like that, but I don’t doubt that the Pope wept when he realized the Octave of the Holy Ghost had been done away with. Like the Octaves of Christmas and Easter, we used to celebrate Pentecost for eight straight days, each one a First Class Feast. In my parish, thanks be to God, we are still permitted to do that. I entered the sacristy this morning to find red vestments, and I asked my liturgical assistant which martyr we were celebrating. He explained that it was the Octave of the Holy Spirit. And I rejoiced.
 
The older I get, the more I appreciate the Holy Ghost. After all, I am getting a bit more ghostlike myself. God gives us (who live long enough) the gift of old age. Our bodies grow weaker so that our spirits may grow stronger, preparing for a splendid liftoff into eternity. We older folks can see so much farther than we used to; we have become strong enough to weather storms with deep serenity. My dear father, at whose grave I prayed yesterday, said at a family reunion when he was 94: “At my age, it’s getting harder to deny reality.” He had been a soft atheist since reading Marxism at Columbia in the 1950s, but seeing his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, he could only wonder at life’s beauty and tranquil order.
 
As my physical powers fade, I appreciate the Holy Spirit more. My body is ceding the tyrannical demands it once made so that I can think more clearly and see more deeply. My flesh is making more room for my spirit, and for the Holy Spirit of God. I too am becoming ghostlike as my hair thins (it’s been pure white for ten years already), my eyes dim, my limbs lose some of their bulk, and my memory fades. I’m looking up a lot more than looking down these days.
 
Don’t get me wrong: I’ll keep riding my bike until I fall off of it. We have to keep moving as long as we can, but there will be a day when I will stop moving, and then my spiritual transformation will be complete. The Holy Ghost will take over, I hope, and I will shoot into heaven. For this grace, gracious God, we beseech thee!

I have been trying to detransition, but I can't return to the way I was. Three surgeries that promised to enhance my body have irrevocably damaged my physical integrity. Ten months ago I decided to undergo a procedure that the medical establishment claimed was safe, would reduce my anxiety, and would improve my physical health. It wasn’t transgender surgery, but I made the same mistake that people with gender dysphoria often make: dissatisfaction with my body and overconfidence in medical technology. I felt entitled to perfect eyesight, and so I had cataract surgery even though I had no cataracts. To be sure, cataract surgery and “trans” surgery are essentially different: one replaces a diseased organ with a functional technology, and one replaces a healthy organ with a non-functional technology. I am grateful to my surgeons for improving my eyesight in one aspect, but I lament the damage done to my eyes in other ways. My eye surgeries, however, opened my eyes to the fundamental errors we currently make regarding medical technology and the human person.
 
When my father’s eyesight began to diminish, he refused to wear glasses. My mother simply began using readers, even though they were not perfect. At 62, I decided to purchase progressive lenses, but while in the doctor’s office I saw ads for a surgery that promised clear vision without glasses. So with the money my Dad left me after his death, I paid a surgeon to cut off my natural, God-given lenses and implant artificial lenses.
 
For most people, I’ve been told, cataract surgery involves few or no complications. The human eye, however, is wondrously complex, and as one physician told me, “no technology will ever be as good as your God-given lens.” My doctor did not inform me about all the possible complications, nor how it could affect my life as a unique individual. For example, he did not explain how the surgery would almost certainly make a blue-eyed person more light-sensitive, nor did he ask if I spend a lot of time outdoors, which has now become quite painful for me. This disregard for the individual indicates how contemporary medicine tends to regard the human person not as a unique body-soul composite but as a physical machine needing simple part replacements.
 
The first surgery fixed my vision in one way but damaged it in five other ways. Seeking to repair these things, I got four other opinions from four other doctors, all of whom told me different things. In one of America’s premier medical facilities here in San Francisco, one physician gave his certain diagnosis, and ten minutes later a more senior physician gave me precisely the opposite diagnosis. I realized that doctors know some things about the marvelously complex human eye, but that they do not know much. In describing my complications, I was often met by a puzzled look and only that “I would hope it improves with time.” After my second surgery, with eight different complications, I still clung desperately to the hope that the medical establishment did know how to fix me, so I scheduled a third surgery. This procedure fixed one problem but created two more, damaging both my retina and my optic nerve.

Am I complaining? What I want to say is that modern medicine often promises what it cannot deliver. And if that is true of eye surgery, how tragically true it is of so-called transgender surgery. A person is hurting from some kind of sexual trauma and imbalance. The insurance and medical establishments rush in to promise that they can fix the problem, and we believe them. We spend tremendous amounts of money on risky surgeries under the illusion that technicians can “remake” us. But, actually, we should consider alterations to our bodily integrity only as a last resort. We should strive, rather, to be grateful for the bodies God has given us, and try to see meaning and purpose in our physical and mental limitations. We are, after all, not gods.
 
I grew up watching The Six Million Dollar Man TV show, where medical technicians “rebuild” an airman’s broken body. Most people under 40 don’t know who Colonel Steve Austin is, but they have been raised on the Six Million Dollar Myth: that with enough money, doctors can repair and rebuild anything. Which points to another problem: healthcare’s fantastic costs. The huge sums of money changing hands in all these surgeries would distort anybody’s professional opinion. If I pay a doctor $50,000 for a forty-minute surgery, he is less likely to discourage me from engaging his services than if I pay him $10,000.
 
One of my doctors, whom I now fully trust, is white-haired like me. I would guess he doesn’t need more money at this point in his life, and he tells the full truth about what surgeons can and cannot do. He told me not to get the third surgery, even though he is probably San Francisco’s best surgeon for that procedure. Nevertheless, I went to one of California’s most respected medical centers, got the 40-minute surgery, and received a bill for $60,000. It’s mostly covered by insurance (meaning I pay the entire amount over many years through insurance premiums). I’m sure the doctors don’t keep all that money, but they must keep a good bit of it, and with that kind of compensation, they might be less inclined to discourage patients from surgery.
 
My three eye surgeries cost me a load of cash, a year of anxiety and suffering, and (at this point) impaired vision. But consider how much more invasive are “transgender” surgeries, the complications to mind and body, and the lifelong hormone follow-up therapies. There is a lot more money to made in transgender “medicine” than in just about any other surgeries (some estimate around $2 million over one's lifetime). We mistakenly think we can control, manipulate, and reconstruct our own humanity, and we pay gobs of money to perpetuate this fantasy. As the voice-over technicians said on the Six Million Dollar Man show 50 years ago, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology….”
 
If we should approach the human eye with fear and trembling, how much more should we approach human sexuality? How much more delicate, wondrous, and mysterious is God’s gift of human love and the transmission of human life? Doctors, intellectuals, and politicians can tell us that sex is just recreation, and that the human person is just a meat machine, but there is far more evidence to the contrary. Our souls and our bodies are wondrous and unique gifts, much more a mystery to be discovered than a commodity to be manipulated.
 
I hope my body will recover its equilibrium some day. My most trusted doctor tells me that, with time and patience, I will recover to a large degree, both physically and psychologically. But even if I never regain full use of my eyes, I see more clearly that life is not a little lump of clay to be manipulated. Life is gift and mystery. Far better to respect this gift, and to thank God for this mystery in good times and in bad, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health. With that humility before the miracle of human life, and that trust in the Creator, it seems to me, we best practice the medical arts.

Today is the feast of St. Philip Neri, who reluctantly accepted priestly ordination and reluctantly submitted his prayer groups to canonical establishment, now known as the  Congregation of the Oratory. With invincible joy and simplicity, he largely converted the corrupt Church in Rome of his day (the Medici Popes et al.) back to heartfelt faith in God. I tried to start an Oratory here in San Francisco ten years ago but it was not to be. St. Philip, Apostle of Joy, pray for us!

I grew up 90 minutes from the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, and Mom would often take us there to wander about the vast interior. Lining the perimeter of this massive church are dozens of side altars, each portraying an apparition of Our Lady from a different country. When I became pastor of a large fixer upper in San Francisco eleven years ago, I had a problem on my hands. Not only the physical church was deteriorating, but the community itself was fading away. How could I restore both what was once a splendid church and a vibrant parish community? I figured I’d better keep it simple, so I would simply give the people Jesus and Mary: Eucharistic adoration and the rosary. The church seated 1000 people, but only 85 were coming to Mass, so I made one of the side rooms into a Eucharistic chapel, and I replaced 200 seats with 16 side altars to the apparitions of Our Lady.

The Mother of all apparitions, especially on the American continent, is her visit to the center point of both North and South America in 1531. She called herself “Guadalupe.” In drawing up plans for her altar, I came across two curious facts.
First, one best “reads” the complex and beautiful image on Juan Diego’s tilma from a distance. Details of the image are sharpest when viewed from twenty feet back; colors seem pale close-up but become fully vibrant at a distance; and the image itself appears reduced when one is near, but becomes larger than life at a distance.
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Second, an analysis from the University of Florida in 1979 discovered that the eyes of the image reflect light rays, as in a living human eye. The image itself is dynamic, as if it were alive, or at least the moving representation of a living person. In much the same way, analysis of the blood in various Eucharistic Miracles, such as that in Lanciano in the year 740, reveals living white blood cells, which cannot survive the death of the organism. The images and relics of Jesus and Mary themselves are dynamic. In 2006 a priest brought the relic of St. John Vianny—his heart enclosed in a glass case, to my parish in Modesto. Vianney died in 1859, but the day we brought the relic of his heart to a dying person in my parish, it began to sweat in the hot summer weather. How could a 150-year-old human heart still sweat unless that heart is still alive?
 
With these thoughts I begin my book on Our Lady’s apparitions, which I will complete during my 90-day sabbatical beginning June 15. The book will consider all the approved apparitions of Our Lady “from a distance,” looking at the common themes and events surrounding these apparitions from the year 50 (Our Lady of the Pillar in Spain) to 1983 (Our Lady of Kibeho in Rwanda). One doesn’t know if a book is worth writing until one writes it, so today I begin!

A blessed and happy Mother’s Day to everyone, but especially to those women chosen by God to carry children from heaven to earth and back to heaven again. All life on earth is from God, but a child outshines them all, radiating the image and likeness of God in purest beauty. God himself chose to become a human child, and to have a human mother. If we wonder why we love our mothers so, consider how God loves his own mother best of all. Next month we will honor our fathers, but this month we honor Mary and her fellow mothers.
 
I was giving a talk to our confirmation students on Thursday when two of their Moms bounded down the stairs of our retreat house. “White smoke!” they cried. Shortly thereafter, the grave and slightly trembling voice of the Cardinal Protodeacon sounded over St. Peter’s Square, Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus papam! Where were you when the white smoke appeared? At first, I didn’t allow myself to get excited like those two mothers. In my many years I’ve seen popes come and go, and the Church continues to decline. But these women stirred my hope. Where there is life, there is hope, and God has endowed women with the unique capacity to bear both life and hope. In the darkest times of my life it was my mother who bore me up, lifting my spirits with hope for the future. I think of my first semester in a large eastern university, terribly homesick and confused, and the Saturday morning phone calls with Mom that sustained me.
 
So the mothers announced at the retreat house, with hopeful enthusiasm, that we have a new Papa. After lunch we all drove down to a state park for a hike. At the entrance station a hippieish man with a long pony tail took my credit card and noticed my Roman collar. “We have a new pope,” he observed. “I like him. He’s a radical, like the guy before him, and I’m a radical.” I nodded politely. My new hippie friend is most likely not a Catholic, I thought, but at least he’s hopeful that this new pope will bring some good into the world.
 
Since Thursday I’ve been reading articles and listening to podcasts from mostly traditional Catholic perspectives about Pope Leo. Like my hippie friend at the state park, my traditional Catholic friends are excited and hopeful. On perhaps the most reliably traditional Catholic newscast of them all—Raymond Arroyo’s World Over program—the most often repeated word was hope. Will Pope Leo relax restrictions on the Latin Mass? “I’m hopeful.” Will the new Pope solve the Vatican’s financial mess? “There’s good reason to hope so.” Will he get a handle on Vatican-Chinese diplomacy? “We can certainly hope he will.” Can Pope Leo build bridges between liberal and conservative Catholics? “There’s every hope that he can do that.” And even this one: “we hope that Pope Leo, as an American, can communicate with Donald Trump more effectively!”
 
Everyone is hopeful: aging hippies and young traditionalists, practicing and non-practicing Catholics, believers and atheists. Hope springs eternal for the human race, and “we are not dead yet” (my favorite line from the Ukrainian national anthem). We can thank our mothers for giving us that life, and that hope. Let us keep hoping, even after honeymoons are over.

,​First, the Pope is dead. Where were you when he died? My sexton informed me of it on Monday morning as I entered the sacristy for Mass. Later that day, I was at the uber-secularist University of California, San Francisco, to see an eye doctor. The scheduler kindly made my next appointment and then, noticing my Roman collar, said “my condolences.” I didn’t know what she meant at first, but then realized she was offering thoughtful sympathy for the death of the Pope. From there I popped by Costco and the checkout man, noticing my Roman collar, said with some energy “and what are we going to do now?” I was pleasantly surprised, as one who wears a Roman collar 18 hours a day, that the Roman Pope is still a thing for modern man. It seems that we do want, after all, a papa, even if most of the time we ignore him. When he dies, some of us get rather nervous. Most of our troubles, one sociologist observed, are “daddy wounds.”
 
From Pope Francis’ death to his funeral, I was offering Masses for his soul. Now that he is safely in the ground, I’ve switched to offering Masses for the Conclave, because…
 
Second, the Church must elect another Pope. In anticipation of this event, some clever screenwriters came up with a movie called “Conclave,” which I have not and will not see. A friend did see it and told me the music and cinematography are exquisite, and at the end, it is revealed that the new pope is … wait for it! … non-binary. “Of course!” I laughed. “It has to be like that today!” We live and breathe politics and the ideologies du jour that fuel our politics.
 
The recent papacy had some strengths and some weaknesses, as do all papacies. Pope Francis’ cardinal weakness, it seems to me, was to politicize the Office of Peter. How much of that was his fault is open to debate, but his policy pronouncements and PR statements forced people into one of two political camps: either pro-Francis or anti-Francis. This was a great tragedy for the Church, for the Pope is to be father of us all, the visible source of unity to all his spiritual children. The Pope is the vicar of Christ, not merely a political influencer. The Pope bears the Christian Gospel, the perennial truths that lead to eternal life, not merely human proposals for improving our brief moment in history.
 
I’ve been a bit disappointed, and quite bored, with both “liberal” and “conservative” speculations on the upcoming Conclave. Most of us are thinking about the papacy now as merely an exercise in politics. The word “Conclave,” con-clavus in Latin, means “locked together. After all 133 cardinals are comfortably seated in the Sistine Chapel, a Vatican functionary locks the door behind them, pocketing the clavus, the key, and there they remain, liberal and conservative, with the Holy Spirit. Their one task is to reach an agreement on the next Pope. Most of us seem to have forgotten that the Holy Spirit is also in the room.
 
Recently a group of editors from one of my favorite journals speculated on who will be the next Pope. Many gave their best guess, some tongue in cheek, but only one editor kept his Catholic head on straight. He said simply “I think the next pope should be whomever the cardinals elect.” I think that’s the best approach, along with lots of prayers for the Church at this time. As for me, I am offering the Mass pro eligendo summo pontifice every chance I get until the next vicar of Christ is announced.

​I live in one of America’s most secular cities, and we pride ourselves on our French restaurants. Our secularism comes largely from France, along with our escargots à l’ail gratinés. Did you hear the one about Descartes in a French restaurant? “Monsieur Descartes,” the waiter asked, “would you like the escargots à l’ail gratinés?” The father of the Enlightenment replied “I think not.” And he disappeared…. Certainly the French are clever people, and in some fundamental ways their laïcité (google it) has given us the secular city.
 
But something strange is happening in France this Easter. A record number of French citizens are seeking baptism—over 10,000 this year, compared with 5,500 last year. What to account for a 45% increase in those seeking the holy and Catholic religion in France, the birthplace of secularism? Another strange statistic: the annual three-day pilgrimage from Notre Dame in Paris to Notre Dame in Chartres has been steadily growing (from 16,000 two years ago to 18,000 last year). This year the number of registrations overwhelmed the computer systems, which had to shut down until after Easter! And not only in France: almost every diocese in this country has recorded steadily increasing numbers seeking baptism. Baltimore has reported a 28% increase, and Los Angeles a 38% increase. I just read that Malasia, of all places, had 2000 people enter the Church yesterday.
 
I have not a few French parishioners here in San Francisco, but my first one was an atheist. He was raised in Paris with no faith and came to San Francisco to work as an animator at Lukasfilms. He had a good job, a beautiful Swedish wife, a lovely apartment in a chic neighborhood, but he came knocking on the parish door. “Why do you want to be baptized?” I asked him. David replied: “because life without God doesn’t work. I grew up in Paris with steadily increasing social chaos, and my personal life has no fundamental meaning. I want to see if Christ can give me a fuller life.” David was baptized in 2016 and has since returned to France with his beautiful Swedish wife and beautiful three children, for which he thanks God unceasingly.
 
Yesterday I ran to Costco to pick up some fixins for the Easter Vigil reception. Twelve were baptized in my parish last night, and I needed some grapes and cheese to go with my French wines. I put my card up to the reader at the entrance and a nice Filipina smiled at me. “Thank you, Father,” she said. It made me feel all warm inside. Inside the vast Costco, I next approached a massive security guard. He was sitting, but I think he was about six foot five, and he looked straight at every person entering the store through his wrap-around black sunglasses. He was a black man, rippling with muscles, and looking as scary as the Terminator. I shyly waved at him, and he said, without cracking any kind of smile, “Happy Easter, Father.” I hurried on, rejoicing to have received the best Easter gift of all, the shared joy of a man who is not allowed to smile and not allowed to be religious. The six foot five security guard is there to scare people from shoplifting, but he knows, too, that life without God is dark and boorish. He knows, in his great heart, that Jesus rose from the dead!

​If I do not have the early Mass, I spend a morning hour in the chapel as our choir school practices on the third floor. As I rest with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, or read the daily Gospel, I often hear snatches of sacred music wafting from across the schoolyard. This morning, as I beheld the Sacred Host, two 8th grade voices floated through the walls of the chapel. They were singing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu. In 2001, The New York Times referred to Webber as "the most commercially successful composer in history.” If you’ve heard musicals such as Cats or Phantom of the Opera or Evita, you’ve heard his delightfully capturing melodies. While Sir Andrew described himself as an agnostic to the same The New York Times, his high Anglican boyhood has inspired pieces like the Requiem he wrote in memory of his father. It is from that Requiem that the two eighth grade girls we harmonizing this morning as I sat before Jesus.
 
“Pie Jesu” is a Latin verse from the Mass of the Dead (the “requiem”). The verse goes: “Tender Jesus, grant them rest….” Andrew Lloyd Webber, however, expands the verse for pious effect, repeating “pie Jesu” four times:
 
Pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem.
 
Pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu....
 
Webber wrote these verses, and this devout melody, for his father, who had died, and whom his son hoped would be granted eternal rest after a life of toil and struggle. Webber, the agnostic, hopes yet that “Jesu” (Jesus in the nominative case) will show tenderness to his father, because, in the face of death, no one else can. Death is the great leveler, but even agnostics, mostly, hope for some tenderness even after death. Only Jesus can do what no one else can when someone dies.
 
Today is “Spy Wednesday,” when the daily Mass gospel tells the tale of Judas, selling Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Tender Jesus is betrayed and yet, going to His death, He is serene. He knows His Father will care for Him, as our Father cares for all His children. We do have a Father in heaven, and we do have a Savior on earth. I was looking at Him this morning, reading about the greatest tragedy in human history, but hearing a prayer for a tenderness that will undo even that tragedy.
 
May we all find Jesus in this year’s Sacred Triduum, and a blessed Easter to you all. 

Dear Readers,

The other day I hiked a few waterfalls in Yosemite (at this moment there are dozens in full force resounding throughout the Valley) but left a bag in the bear box at the backpackers' parking lot. If anyone plans to be in Yosemite Valley in the next 7 days, I would ask you to retrieve the bag for me (I can explain in detail where it is and what it looks like). Just call the parish office and I'll fill you in: 415-751-0450. Thanks!

Fr. Joseph Illo

Last night my parish school held its Spring Concert. Everyone got dressed up: 3rd grade boys in crooked bow ties, 5th grade girls in springy Easter dresses, 7th grade boys in manly jackets and sober ties, and 8th grade girls in elegant evening gowns. It is almost Easter, and while two 8th grade girls sang Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Dona eis requiem in the spirit of passiontide, many pieces portrayed the glory of Easter rebirth. Everybody was there, of course, and no parent would miss their own children singing, or playing a violin, or swinging a handbell, on our little auditorium stage. School concerts and plays are like family reunions for the school community, where even bitterly separated spouses share a room for an hour, putting aside animosity as their children sing with grace and beauty.
 
The Catholic school is the most important apostolate of the Catholic parish, after the sacraments themselves. No other service organization or ministry or social group reaches the depths and attains the heights of Catholicism like the parish school. Studies show that the parish school is three times more likely to surface priestly vocations in a parish than even the most exciting youth program.
 
Catholic schools can be the pastor’s greatest consolation, or they can be the pastor’s greatest frustration. A Catholic school can easily become quite independent of its parish, and it’s the pastor’s job to keep their schools faithfully Catholic. In many urban dioceses, the parishes are failing while their schools are flourishing, but not necessarily as Catholic schools. These have become schools with a parish attached, rather than parishes with a school attached.
 
The parish, however, must be the mother and inspiration of the school. If the parish fails in that maternal role, the schools gradually cease to be Catholic. They become simply less expensive private schools, usually controlled by small groups of determined parents rather than inspired by the pastor. A pastor can restore the Catholic identity of his school, but it will cost him dearly. To maintain the Catholic identity of his school will require much work and no little suffering from the pastor. But if he manages to do that, the school will be the parish’s greatest blessing and among the pastor’s greatest consolations. Bishops and pastors are tempted to back off when determined parents and teachers move their schools toward the world and away from the Gospel.  But a parish school is worth fighting for, and if the fight is won, it becomes the greatest source of positive energy for the parish.
 
The final number in last night’s concert was sung by all 90 students, who lined up along the perimeter of the auditorium. Our dear music teacher stood in the middle, facing the 270-degree arc of bright faces. As the children sang Dona nobis pacem in rounds, and the teachers glowed with love, and the parents smiled from head to foot. I too melted with affection, for the little boys and girls I used to know are now young gentlemen and ladies, pouring forth truth and beauty from innocent hearts. Well, not completely innocent, of course, but they are well on their way to heaven!

At today’s blessed 7am Mass of the Annunciation, five boys showed up to serve from our school. “You can tell he’s a good altar boy,” one of the sacristans told me, “because he serves the Mass not just for the chocolate.” There is a special drawer in the sacristy filled with fun-sized chocolate bars, and each server gets to choose one Baby Ruth, Snickers, Crunch, Mr. Goodbar, or Butterfinger after Mass. These treats are certainly an incentive to serve at the altar, but I evacuated the chocolate drawer on Ash Wednesday, and the boys are still coming to serve. Today, however, I replenished the drawer and announced, after the final blessing, that a Feast Day like today merits chocolate. They rushed the drawer and selected their poisons.
 
But I cannot join them, for I must fast, even on this feast day. I have eye surgery in an hour and must fast from midnight before the procedure. No one likes to fast, I suppose, but all Catholics used to fast from midnight before the morning Mass. That’s one reason Masses were as early as possible, and one reason we hope to get early surgery appointments. But if I can fast from midnight before my surgery, surely I can fast from midnight before receiving the Body of Christ.
 
I’m hoping my surgery will improve my vision today, and I would be grateful for a prayer or two from you. But in the long run, my eyes are not half as important as my soul. The blessed Eucharist heals my soul, while the surgeon today, hopefully, will heal my left eye. If I can fast for my physical healing, surely I can fast for my spiritual healing. Do American Catholics still fast? You bet we do—before our surgeries. More American Catholics are discovering the value of the fast before Mass, such as those five rug rats from the school this morning. Their Snickers and Baby Ruths tasted all the better for having been the first food of the morning, after they had received the Bread of Life at Holy Mass.