WAUKESHA, Wis. — Coffee shop operator Eileen Belongea will become a “consecrated virgin,” taking on an old Roman Catholic rite that was reinstated by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
The 41-year-old woman learned about the rite in 1999 while visiting one of her siblings, who is a nun with the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George in southern Illinois. She attended a youth rally during the late Pope John Paul II’s visit to St. Louis, Mo., and came away inspired.
“The Lord has given me the grace of virginity,” she said. “It is he who has preserved it my whole life, and I offer it back to him. Through God’s consecration, through the hands of the bishop, I’ll receive the strength and the grace that I will need.”
The operator of the Brewers Two Café at Meadowbrook Marketplace, a shopping center in Waukesha, and owner with her twin sister of that establishment and two other coffee shops admits that others find her choice unusual.
“When people find out I’m (becoming) a consecrated virgin, they’re very intrigued and they want to know more about it,” Belongea said. “I haven’t had anyone who didn’t treat it with respect. My employees know. Many of my customers know because it’s a neighborhood coffee shop and you become friends.”
…Citing church canons, the association describes the virgins as irrevocably “consecrated to God, mystically espoused to Christ and dedicated to the service of the church.
I wonder what consecrated virgins and women religious do at tax time? Mystically married to Christ or bride of Christ is not one of the options and besides how would you come up with his SSN?
12 comments
Well this is radically different from those bikini baristas…
Don’t priests have the same problem? The Church doesn’t have an SSN, either.
Peace,
–Peter
Well, Christ’s SSN is A?. Duh!
Postmoderns are an enjoyable field in which to do one’s harvesting. They’re already so dang “open” that anything new or interesting is worth a second look. Postmoderns are just waiting to be intrigued.
The next step is to show them the authenticity of one’s Christian life. So she’s got that going on–and the fields are ripe for the harvest.
Kathy,
Can you define Postmoderns please.
Thanks, Heidi
Heidi:
Sorry! By postmoderns I mean people who see things with a very relativistic outlook. They see each person, thing or idea as something new–not to be judged or evaluated, but simply to be “experienced.” Each thing has its own reality. Each story stands alone.
In college I knew a lot of people with this outlook. When they go wrong–when the isolation of individual persons and things becomes extreme, or when good and evil have no more meaning–they often veer headlong into nihilism, that is to say, meaninglessness and despair. A lot of vice in college comes from this despair.
But, for example, when we would read St. Augustine’s Confessions in seminar, the postmoderns really got interested. The Confessions isn’t just an “institutional religion” or a mental framework. It is an individual human person’s own narrative of an encounter with God. That was something that could be truly meaningful.
Coffee shops are full of postmoderns. I mean, they’re full of everyone, but mostly I think they are haunted by people who are beginning to get a little bored with their vanilla skim chai latte frapachinos and world music, and are ready to encounter something with a REAL meaning.
Everybody has his or her own life, but could there be something more? That’s why I think a coffee shop is an excellent place where a consecrated virgin could really make an evangelical difference. She could be like an in-house St. Augustine, just where people who need her can be found.
Jeff, the tax problem for those who are mystically married to Christ would be worse in Canada. What we have isn’t a social security number but a social insurance number. And we know that Christ is without SIN.
Peter,
In the USA priests are considered self-employed as far as the IRS is concerned.
I know that the various parishes etc have to have an employee ID # (corporate equivelent of the SSN) but there is no single number for the Church as a whole.
Peter and Al, that is only diocesan priests who pay taxes, not religious. Generally, religious turn all money over to their orders, receive stipends, and pay no taxes. They usually don’t even have a regular interest-earning savings account, they take a vow of poverty. Religious would be Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc. However, most parish priests are diocesan, they do not take vows, contrary to most people’s undestanding. And obviously the new breed of entrepreneurial priest, such as Andrew Greeley or John Corapi, do and SHOULD pay taxes.
Re: “new breed of entrepreneur priest”
Nothing new about priests writing books and making money.
“I wonder what consecrated virgins and women religious do at tax time?”
Run to the river and look in the mouths of fish?
Sheepcat – hee hee! When I got married, I moved from Texas to Alberta to live with my husband, and once I finally got PR and my Social Insurance card, a similar thought struck me. I told my husband, “Obviously the Canadian government believes in the depravity of man.” “What???” he replied (because of course the govt here is famous for its secularism). “Well,” I said, “why else would they require you to have a card declaring your SIN?”
Uggggh. I know. :^)
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