Try to enter the narrow way...

Abba Matoes said that three old men went to Abba Paphnutius, who was called Cephalus, to ask a word from him. The old man said to them, 'What do you want me to say to you? A spiritual word, or a bodily word?' They said, 'A spiritual word.' The old man said to them, 'Go, and choose trials rather than stillness, shame rather than glory, and to give rather than to receive.' - Abba Matoes

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Friday, August 07, 2009

And yet people think I'm bizarre.


The Transfiguaration, Hiroshima, a priest, the anniversaries, the protest at the missile silo: The clown priest loves such symmetry... and who doesn't?
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Father Carl Kabat awoke early Thursday morning, put on his clerical collar, grabbed his clown suit and quietly strolled out of his longtime friend's Arvada home.
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William Strabala, who has known the Catholic priest since their days in the seminary more than 50 years ago and had hosted him since he arrived from St. Louis, simply sighed. It was pointless, he knew, to attempt to talk the 75-year-old priest out of what he was about to do.

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Shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday, Carl Kabat arrived outside a N-8 Minuteman III nuclear missile silo near New Raymer in Weld County. He donned his signature clown costume and breached the fences that surround the silo.
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He hung banners on the fence. He kneeled in his yellow wig, his one-piece blue jumper adorned with patches and smiley faces and his outsized red shoes. And he prayed.
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Military authorities quickly arrived.
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Carl Kabat, who has spend most of the past two decades in federal prison for more than a dozen similar anti-nuclear-weapon protests, was led once again to jail, facing charges of criminal mischief and second- degree criminal trespass.
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"What is the date today?" Bill Strabala asked when I contacted him. "It is the 50th anniversary of his ordination as a priest, the 64th anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan."

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Carl Kabat, he said, loves such symmetry. - Story
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Photo: Fr. Kabat in his habit.
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Why do clowns always make me think of Fr. R? LOL!

5 comments:

LarryD said...

Man, did I nail the letter "N" in my Illustrated Progressive Catholic Alphabet, or what?!? LOLOL!!!

pml said...

Makes me wonder if such long term practices become just the "tale" itself and has no effect on the "cause". That the message is long lost. One can say there has been perseverance in a practice ...

Thom Curnutte said...

He'd have a horde of support if it were an abortion clinic he were protesting.

Fr. Erik Richtsteig said...

Terry, people think you are bizarre because you are. But this guy is stupid and deluded.

What am I thinking? When does clown hunting season start in Colorado.

Austringer said...

Father R?

The age of the priest is telling -- yup, one of those aging fellas still breathing in the heady fumes of "The Spirit of Vatican II". Groovy, Father. Dig that whole symmetry thing.