26 | May | 2012 | Paroxysm of Giggles / Critical Mass

I love ordination! I have such a heart for priests that this ranks perhaps as my second-favorite Mass of the year, right after the Chrism Mass. (Who doesn’t love having *hundreds* of priests renewing their vows?!?)

The other thing I love is that I get to go down to the cathedral where, invariably, I meet up with a lot of my friends and get a lot of hugs! 🙂

Okay, okay, back to the men! And my overabundant enthusiasm. 🙂 I can neither confirm nor deny that I said something like, “Muahahahahaha! Your lives are about to be changed FOREVER!!!” prior to the start of the Mass. Or was that *during* the Mass?

No matter. I’m sure you are anxious for me to get to the photos! After all, this is what I do best, right? Take tons of pix? 🙂 Click here if you want to see *all* the pictures.

Here is (transitional) Deacon Salvatore Palazzolo and Deacon Paul Snyder, processing in:

The Altar: what it’s all about!

Dcn. Mateja, with Dcn. Palazzolo and Dcn. Snyder in silhouette in the foreground:

Dcn. Palazzolo:

Dcn. Snyder:

My priest, Fr. John, praying over the new Fr. Steven Mateja, who will be joining us at Our Lady of Good Counsel in July! 🙂

Another of my priests, Fr. Eric Fedewa, praying over Fr. Steve:

And over Fr. Paul:

My apologies to Fr. Sal, I was seated, yes in an aisle seat, but halfway to the back of the cathedral and didn’t have a clear line of sight to you! 😦

Fr. Lee Acervo praying over Fr. Steve:

The mothers of the new priests got to present the gifts to Archbishop Vigneron.

Since this seems to be turning into a Fr. Steve post (as I had the best line of sight to him), I’ll continue with this theme…
Here’s where he gets hugged a lot. I think they call it the Fraternal Kiss. First, with Bishop Byrnes:

Bishop Hanchon:

Bishop Cepeda:

Cardinal Maida:

Msgr. Monforton:

Fr. Steve Pullis:

Fr. Lee Acervo:

Incensing the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist!

And the Recessional with the newly ordained Fr. Salvatore Palazzolo, Fr. Paul Snyder and Fr. Steven Mateja!!! YAY!

I admit it. I really hate to be asked to sign a petition. I think a lot of it comes from a dislike of having my name attached to something on the public record. Like I think The Government will come after me or something. LOL!

The other reason, is that I like to sign ONLY if I can do so with integrity. What this means is that I will ask 1,000 questions of the person administering the petition to make sure that I understand the issue at hand. In my experience, these people either (a) don’t understand the issue that well themselves or (b) get visibly irritated at my questions. So, I tend to not sign.

Just a couple minutes ago, a woman came to my door asking for me to sign a petition to have an issue put on the ballot in November for the people of Troy to consider recalling our mayor.

Now, I don’t really know our mayor, but she made some convincing arguments that led me to think that perhaps there was enough there that the people of Troy might want to revisit the issue and determine if there is sufficient cause to recall the mayor.

As I was signing the petition, I noticed in the wording at the top that some of the reasons that they included for asking for the mayors recall were not issues that I agreed with. However, this petition was to put the issue up for examination on the ballot — not to actually vote her out of office. So, I did sign.

And I took their flyer. So that I can examine their arguments, and as a reminder to take a look at the other side of the story. Because, if this does make it to the ballot, I’d like to be informed so that I can vote with integrity.