Thoughts on Turning 75! The Diamond Year!

celebrating with six of my granddaughters and my daughter, the photographer

Today is my birthday. My parents named me Mary after Our Lady's feast day yesterday for which I'm deeply thankful. And now, here I am, celebrating my birthday for the 76th time as I journey on toward the final goal. What comes to mind as I reflect on the past, the present, and the future?

First of all, how gracious the Lord has been to me giving me the tremendous blessing of being born in a Catholic family that loved children. Before they got engaged, my dad gave my mother Pope Pius XI's 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii (On Christian Marriage), the forerunner of Humanae Vitae. He told her he could only marry her if she agreed with it, which of course she did. For those who are unfamiliar with the document the pope roundly condemned contraception!

Our Texas diamonds in 2021. how blessed we are to live out the marriage blessing
of seeing our children and our children's children. 

My mom was one of two adopted children. Her sister was fourteen years older than she, so she essentially grew up as an only child and always regretted having no siblings close to her own age. She said when she married she wanted at least ten children and God, in his generosity gave her ten, plus my brother Jimmy who died in utero at almost full term and several babies miscarried later on. How I look forward to meeting those siblings in the City of God along with three of my brothers who have gone ahead.

In 2011 with eight of my nine siblings. My brother, Tom, died in 1996.

1930, the year of the encyclical was a significant year because the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church had just approved contraception in limited circumstances for married couples. That was the first domino to fall in the embrace of the anti-life attack on procreation and the family. Margaret Sanger's revolution to promote contraception and abortion was in full swing. (Yes, Virginia, Sanger was pro-abortion but was advised by Havelock Ellis that the world was not ready to accept it. So she, like all lying liberals, focused on how much she cared for the poor while, at the same time, she described them as "human weeds." Some things don't change!)

December 19, 2002: A day of joy and sorrow. Larry retired and we came home
and I sat by my mom's deathbed and prayed the rosary. 

At any rate, my parents married in 1939 and I was born in 1947 in the "baby boom" after World War II. I spent my early years in the relatively calm 50's despite the war in Korea which hardly appeared on my youthful radar screen. My parents didn't discuss world affairs much at the dinner table, but I vividly remember Mom urging us to eat our food and remember the "starving Armenians." Only later did I learn the reality of that genocide that killed so many Catholics.

Living through the turbulent 1960's was a time of confusion, much like today: confusion in the secular world with the war in Vietnam and the chaos in the Church during and after Vatican II. When I think of the liturgical abuses that I engaged in out of ignorance in the 60's and beyond I cringe: the home Masses with everyone gathered around the "altar" and married couples communicating each other, the casual use of the priestly stole to emphasize the "priesthood of the laity," polka Masses, clown masses, idiotic music, so much insanity in religious education, etc. What an era! Especially the sex abuse scandals which were so connected to dissent and facilitated by gatekeepers at the seminaries weeding out good men ("too rigid") and welcoming pederasts who turned seminaries into hotbeds of immorality. 

Circa 1988: our children with a crowd of cousins

I could go on. But memories need to be savored, not gobbled. My parents loved each other enough to create not just a village, but an entire city of new life going on now into the fifth generation. I rejoice at every single member of my family and pray for them daily. May God bring us together for the greatest reunion possible in heaven one day. In the meantime, I'll close with a photo of my parents who started it all. What a privilege to be their daughter!

Circa 1968, the day my dad was elevated to admiral in the U.S. Navy taken
 with me and three of my nine siblings