ghosts

Evening at the Chateau de Healy.
Watching the ultimate proof that God has a sense of humour, ie the Catholic channel EWTN.
The Dad and Paddy Pup are also present.
We are watching Father Benedict Groschel.
Father Gro is one of the station's superstars.
It's hard to describe him.
He's seventy years old, craggy enough, a bit wizened, occasionally impatient, thoroughly good humoured.
Not your standard TV presenter.
The quality that makes him stand out is a quality he shares with EWTN's other improbable superstar Mother Angelica, whom I have occasionally, and wrongly, styled The Insane Nun.
The quality of the genuine.
Let me be serious for a moment.
The quality of the genuine which you find on EWTN (much maligned and misunderstood though it may be) is like fresh air compared to the cynicism, negativity, and rampant exploitationism that one finds on most other television stations.
When Father Gro or Mother Angelica say something you have the strangest intuition that they are speaking from the heart.
The simplicity of Mother Angelica and the intellectualism of Father Gro carry an equal profundity.
Their words strike home.
No really.
And as we join tonight's programme, Father Gro is sharing a wry reminiscence.
He seems to look directly at the viewer.
He says: "People are always telling me: Father, Catholic teaching regarding abstinence from sex outside of the married state is so difficult. I say to them: Tell me about it. I've been a friar for fifty years."
Well bold readers.
This was quite the funniest thing I've heard in ages.
You'd have to see the way he did it to get the full richness of his sense of humour.
The programme continued with an email from a viewer being read out live on air.
The email was asking for advice on Catholic attitudes regarding the existence of ghosts.
Father Gro's craggy facial expression deepend into a sort of whimsical roguishness.
"Look," he said. "We Catholics tend to think about ghosts in the sense that they shouldn't be here. They should be in heaven, or maybe in purgatory, or God forbid, in hell. But there's so much anecdotal evidence, one has to be cautious about coming to any conclusions. Our order of monks runs a home for boys in New York city. We opened the home in 1968 after taking over a building no one else wanted. The building was in an area that wasn't really considered safe. We were told though that the reason it had remained unused for years was because it was haunted. So we took it over. Then the boys came to me and said: Father there's someone walking around upstairs every night and he keeps turning out the lights but when we go to look, there's no one there. So this went on for a while. Finally we said a mass for the ghost. We even gave him a name. We called him McGuinness. We told him: Hey, you're welcome to stay as long as you don't harm anyone, and maybe if there's a break in, you might chase away the burglars. We've been running that home for boys for forty years. We've never had a break in. I don't know if it's McGuinness chasing them away. I just keep an open mind."
The Dad was most enthused by Father Gro's anecdote.
It prompted him to share some reminiscences of his own about the paranormal.
I'm going to print the Dad's accounts verbatim without comment.
At least I'm going to try.
"Your Grand Aunt Margaret," he told me, " was a nun. Her name in religion was Sister Mary Anthony. She was supposed to be a bit psychic. I can remember at least three experiences she was supposed to have had. Once in France as a young nun, she got lost. There was a lot of anti clericalism in France at the time and the streets weren't safe. She met another nun, whom she didn't recognise, and the newcomer guided her through the streets of Paris to the convent. The unknown nun left her at the gate. When your Grand Aunt got inside the convent she saw a picture of the one who had guided her there. It was Saint Therese of Lisieux who was of course deceased."
Ah yes gentle travellers of the internet.
Of all the Saints in heaven Saint Therese is most likely to be the one who makes personal appearances in stories like this.
I happen to know that Randall O'Sullivan of Rolling Stone magazine claims to have received similar personal assistance from a nun who resembled Saint Therese of Lisieux on the mountainside at Medjugorje.
Apparently Saint Therese gets around.
Anyhoo.
The Dad's anecdotage continued.
"Your Grand Aunt was my mother's sister. She used to write home to us regularly when she was stationed at the orphanage in West Grinstead. I still have one of her letters in which she describes an apparition of the Virgin Mary which she says she witnessed at the convent. That part of England would have seen a lot of Catholics martyred for the faith during the Reformation. It would be holy ground."
Paddy Pup and me both tried to keep straight faces.
"You don't believe that?" said the Dad. "Okay, how about this. While Sister Mary Anthony was at the orphanage in England, her father Thomas Mahon died. He was your Great Grandfather by the way. He was a tall man with a great bushy white beard. We sent a telegram to Sister Mary Anthony to let her know. She wrote back to say she'd known already, and that her late father had visited her himself to tell her he had passed on. Not only that, she told us one of the children had come to her the next day and said: Sister I'm going to tell the Mother Superior on you, because I saw Santa Claus coming out of your room last night..."
Well bold readers.
My noble friends.
My gentle voyagers of the blogosphere.
A few paragraphs ago, I promised to print the Dad's words without comment.
I have not been entirely successful.
Occasionally a comment or two may have slipped out.
I shall not comment on the final story though.
Not now.
Not ever.
Santa Claus indeed.