Christmastide: Day 11 (St Elizabeth Ann Seton)

“On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, eleven pipers piping ...”

While you may catch a tune from an online performer, you’re unlikely to hear a peep in person from the Pipers this holiday season. With the pandemic triggering the shutdown of most performance-based industries, these musicians will be tuning their instruments in hopes of a return in 2021.

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The end of Christmastide draws near, but is still with us. And yet, as the workweek begins to return to normal on this day, the party is effectively over. Trees are taken down to sit on the curb, and commercials for "holiday sales," having been extended just beyond the first day of the new year, fade into the realm of yesterday's news. Meanwhile ...

Today is the feast of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, the foundress of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph, the mother of the Nation's parochial school system, and patroness of Catholic schools. Raised to the altar by Pope Paul VI in 1975, she was the first native-born American to be so recognized.

From the original motherhouse in Emmitsburg, Maryland, a branch house was established out west, known today as the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, based at Mount Saint Joseph-on-the-Ohio, on the city's once-predominantly-Catholic west side. This order did much, not only to build the parochial school system in this part of the Midwest through their teaching apostolate, but the health care system as well, through the establishment of Good Samaritan Hospital in 1852.

Concerning the role of women Religious and the health care apostolate, much has changed in recent years, to say the least. In light of certain health care legislation signed into law in the United States, and the capitulation by certain "leaders" of women religious orders, in forcing others to cooperate in acts against the Gospel of Life, let us pause for a moment to consider the irony.

And hope for a restoration of common sense, not to mention the Gospel of Life, to the issue.

See all twelve days in progress at the "xmas12days2020-2021" label.