Here’s a moment I know you’ve been waiting for: the transcript of the September 21, 2010 “Face-to-Face” at the Crossroads Cultural Center in NYC with the truly wonderful Msgr. Albacete. Monsignor is a priest, physicist, theologian, one of the leaders of the international Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation, and the author, among other things of God at the Ritz. But more than that, or I should say maybe the reason he’s able to do all that so well, is that he has a sense of humor.
From God at the Ritz: “Have you noticed that many horrendous murderers and serial killers are said, at one time, to have been very religious? I always looked at my most pious altar boys with deep suspicion, wondering what was going on within their religiously agitated minds.”
I think we need no further introduction, except to thank, deeply, poet Rita A. Simmonds for transcribing. And to say Cor ad cor loquitur (one of the three or four Latin phrases I now know): Heart speaks to heart.
Wonderful interview; thank you. I'm going to be pondering Msgr Albacete's concluding words about joy and suffering for quite a while.
The reference to the 'disinterested gaze' reminded me of a sermon of Meister Eckhart that had a big effect on me when I read it years ago: About Disinterest. I really need to return to it soon.
Oh I will put the Meister Eckhart essay on "my list" and look for it at the library…and ever since our conversation, I, too, have been pondering Msgr. Albacete's observation that joy precedes suffering and not the other way around…