Welcome
I'm Patrick J. Mc Ateer, S.J., and I am a Catholic priest in the Society of Jesus, a religious order of the Catholic Church. I am an assistant pastor at St. Ignatius Church in Chicago, Illinois
I took up duties as an associate pastor at Saint Ignatius Parish in Oct. '97. Before coming to St. Ignatius I was pastor at an international English speaking parish, Saint Leonhard, at Frankfurt, Germany. There I spent an interesting year being pastor to English speaking peoples from nineteen countries. Prior to that I had a sabbatical year some of which I spent in studies at Boston and Rome. Most of the second half of the year I worked at a women's shelter on the outskirts of Dublin. Before my sabbatical year I was a university chaplain at Loyola University, Chicago.
I am a native of Ireland, specifically County Down in Nr. Ireland, and I emigrated to North America in 1957. After a short time in Canada, I came to the United States where I worked at various jobs in Cleveland and Chicago and served in the US Army. In August, 1964, I entered the novitiate of the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus and covered the regular course of studies. After ordination in my home town in Ireland, I returned to my province. Since then I have taught in St. Xavier H.S. at Finneytown, Ohio, been university chaplain at Creighton, in Omaha and Loyola Chicago. The Summers of these years were spent giving the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises in traditional form to religious and lay men and women and to college students in annotation form. I have worked with women recovering from the effects of abortion through reconciliation and healing. At St. Ignatius I continue my pastoral ministry and retreat direction. Since coming to the parish I have begun offering retreats to parishioners during the Advent and Lenten seasons. Recently these exercises have proven to be popular and helpful to some members of the parish. They have graduated from spiritual exercises in group form to "taking on" the exercises under the supervision of a director/guide. All have found these retreats helpful to their spiritual growth and maturation.

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By asking at the Annunciation, "How can this be?" "I do not know man," Mary herself introduced the question of sex and sexuality. Today a young woman might say, "I haven’t had sex; I’m not sexually active."

What kind of man would the father be? Would he be someone she knows or a stranger? Would her partner be violent or caring?

Who is this person telling her what to do with it and with whom, even if the child would be the Messiah?

This encounter could be a violation of her body and her person (pp. 49-50).

Ulanov has the courage to claim the sexual imagery that invades prayer. It enters the interior of the soul more intensely than aggression. We are meant to accept that our sexuality pervades our spiritual life as it does our physical life. It is to be experienced and accepted as we feel and accept our aggression. Whether we do that by repression or disidentification, its factual presence must be acknowledged and approved. Can it be "neutralized" in some way that it doesn’t intrude so strongly into prayer? For the serious person seeking God there can be no "acting out" one’s sexuality, neither is there any "acting in" as in feelings of shame, guilt, embarrassment around sexuality. Shame and guilt about one’s sexuality is not that of the mature person (p.138),