There is no feeling to describe going to the church of your childhood, and hearing one of the worst sermons you've ever heard in your life. I'm sitting there thinking, this is why I don't go to catholic church.

In a good way, I feel totally vindicated in deciding to worship at the church that I do, and in a bad way, I cannot help but feel sadness that I cannot worship at the church of my childhood.

Maybe I just had priests growing up who were black sheep, different from the typical catholic church priest. My childhood priests preached great sermons, preached the biblical text and showed how to relate it and make the ancient word of God viable in our current life.

My childhood priests never ever politicked from the pulpit in the form of a sermon. They preached the word of God straight from the biblical text, much like a presbyterian priest does. And when my presbyterian minister tried to politic from the pulpit, he gets dinged for it by the congregation.

Okay, so here's what the priest at the 8:45 am mass sermonised about today.

The old testament text was the Genesis story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Sarah couldn't get pregnant, so she asked Abraham to produce a child with Hagar. Hagar starts getting all haughty and everything, so Sarah throws her out. Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, and according to one recent author, Abraham through the birth of Ishmael gave birth to the Arabic race.

There are lots of way to preach this problematic piece of old testament text. Here's what the catholic priest chose to talk about.

1) the pro-life position
2) why the catholic church opposes not only stem cell research, but genetic engineering and research science in general, because it's tinkering with God's plan for us.
3) why luxury is bad and poverty is better.

How he got these three points from the Genesis story, "only God knows", but then he went on.

Tomorrow the church is having a mass for Father Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, so the priest talked about that.

The priest He was in Rome for the canonization of Father Escriva de Balaguer and had a ticket to even go to the canonization, but he didn't go because 1) it was cold in Rome since it was October and 2) Father Escriva de Balaguer is a controversial saint.

The priest decided to take the train the Milan instead. But he concluded his sermon by saying that what he liked about now Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer was his emphasis on the centrality of Eucharistic thought.

Thank your Mr. Priest.