Fr. Z's Blog

Editor’s Note: Due to the mention of Fr. Mark Rogers, we asked the mole to search back through previous photos to learn more.  Here is something of what was turned up from 2019.

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20 February 2019

Dear Diary,

There was a really bad storm last night that dumped a lot of snow.  It was fun to see Chester drag Fr. Charlie into the big piles that the plow pushed around.

Finance meeting.  It’s just not getting better.  Gotta get more staff in to figure out where the money is going.

The worst part of the day was dealing with Fr. Mark Rogers. He was one of those hang overs from the time of old Bishop Hughes. Super conservative.  For a long time he was at Hughes’s trad place – Shrine of the Martyrs of Islamic Terror – gotta do something about that name before the Nuncio gets on that one – because I couldn’t put him anywhere else.  He used Latin and wore a cassock all the time and his parishioners were always on my case.  He wouldn’t play ball.  When his people visited someplace normal like Fr. Bruce’s community, they were always kneeling for Communion and causing a scene.  Every time he or his people came up there was a headache. I figured he had psychological problems since he didn’t update. I sent him to that priest place out east, St. Leo’s.  He really fought going.  Not only that, when news got out about Fr. Mark leaving the Shrine and going to St. Leo’s an added positive was that a couple of the younger priests stopped showing up for things in cassocks.  Leo’s is expensive, but two birds, and all.  Some of the other bishops do this too, when they need to lay down the law and scare guys into line.  The doctors reports said that they worked wonders with Fr. Mark.  Odd, because he seemed sorta weird and downcast when he got back.  Not happy at all.

When Fr. Mark came back I put him at Sing* so he could get into the swing of ministering in today’s Church.  He came to see me several times and asked – pretty near begged – either to be moved or to be let go to do something like study or even go over to Black Duck where he knows some of the priests but I had to have bodies in the parishes. He didn’t want to live alone and wanted fellowship and community and worship with priests who were “actually Catholic”, which made me mad.  He really must have been loopy because he just up and quit one day, disappeared out of the nice apartment we were paying for.  I guess that proves I was right to send him in for treatment.  We haven’t heard from him and don’t know where he is.

Anyway, I signed some papers and couple of letters sent word to DC and approved an announcement for the Glimpse**.  Fr. Mark Rogers is suspended now and off the website.  Sad, but what was I supposed to do?  Fr. Charlie and Sr. Randi wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.  It’ll blow over in a few days.

Steaks and taters tonight with Dozer who is in town.

*Sing A New Faith Community Into Being Faith Community

**The newspaper of the Diocese of Libville.

Editor’s Note: Obviously it wasn’t possible for our mole to access the Diary while +F.Atticus was at the Bishops Meeting in Orlando. However, this just came over the transom.

17 June 2023

Dear Diary,

Florida. GAH!  Move and you sweat.  Don’t move and you sweat.  Fr. Gilbert did great, though. Annoying. It has been great to see Dozer, Jack, Mateo, Andrew, even Terry (or Larry? I can’t remember).  Jack Daniels is really fun after a couple of Jack Daniels!   What were his parents thinking?  As if I should talk!  HA!  Jude too, I guess. We’re neighbors, so “love thy neighbor” and all.  But Jude always makes an early exit from these things instant the meetings are over or lunch is over. He’s outta there. Fr. Tommy said one time that Jude ran out holding his prayer book. So who knows.

That thing with Jude and supper and him wanting to talk about Fr Mark Rogers who was one of ours.  Suspended.  We lost track of him after he disappeared and I took him off the books.  He’s been living alone in Black Duck.  Jude recognized him in the back of a church when he did one of those fancy Latin Masses and managed to chase down some info about him.  Fr. Mark was really into the Latin thing which was his problem. Jude reached out to him.  He said Mark seemed “broken”.  He wants to see if maybe he can’t somehow get him reinstated or something, put him to work in Black Duck but wants me involved. Review, excardination, that stuff.  Fr. Mark just drifted a while, cut himself off.  He’s living now by driving an Uber car.  Jude had some pretty hard things to say about that priest clinic place St. Leo’s out East which I made him go to and what they did to him.  I could tell by the way he was talking that he blamed me.   I don’t know what to do about this.  I don’t want yet another thing going to the Nuncio.  I don’t want Jude to be unhappy with me.

Anyway, the food was great in O.  Lot’s of surf and turf, which figures for a place full off golf courses surrounded by water.  The sessions of the meetings were an ordeal, as always, especially because they are on camera.  Cameras add ten pounds? Or twenty?  And the grandstanding!  Blah blah blah.  Delays lunch every time.  Since the Nuncio I found a spot behind old Billy Barnes, whose even bigger than I am.  I think he blotted me out.  I think the noonch is chapped about the white pantsuit couple.

Sr. Randi said that Chester was a handful, but that he didn’t do too much damage.  She had Chester proofed the apartment as best she could but there is now a new hole in her sofa.  Gotta buy her a new one.  I got her a nice Florida snow globe from a shop at the airport as a thank you.

With the travel and all, I’m really tired.  I think I’ll cancel my appointments for tomorrow and go golfing.  I’ll be nice to be outside and not feel like a sauna.