There is a joke about a an Irish Catholic girl who went out with a Protestant boy. "What was he like?" her friend asked. She replied, "He is very quiet you know, he hasn't got much to say, he didn't know anything about Fr O'Malley or Father Flannagan or even Sr Maureen".
One of the horrible things about being a priest is that one is always the subject of gossip. The gossip often speculative and is rarely accurate. There has been some gossip about some "e-friends" of mine recently. There have indeed been some longstanding difficulties in their community. The gossip hasn't helped much in the solving of these difficulties. In fact it has produced a situation that St Paul deplored when he wrote to the Church of Corinth condemning those claimed they were for Paul or Cephas or Apllos. If we are in a faction we can be certyain we are not "for Christ".
There are no comments on this post, lest it encourages gossip!
