For the Sick

As folks keep asking after him, the latest update on Fr Andrew Greeley says the Chi-town cleric who gave the world Blackie Ryan is "doing much better" and, while still hospitalized, is "receiving intensive therapy and showing improvement."

On a side-note, the Good Samaritans -- a California couple in town for a wedding -- who rushed to Greeley's aid after his "freak fall" from a taxi in early November didn't know who they had helped until they Googled him.

Meanwhile, prayers would likewise be much-appreciated for Fr Richard John Neuhaus -- the celebrated convert, commentator and life-force behind First Things, the "ecumenical journal" he founded in 1990.

Last week, a dispatch circulated among Neuhaus' friends said that he had been admitted to Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center with a "serious cancer," its treatment made more difficult after the cleric "was taken dangerously ill" over Christmas "with what seems to be a systemic infection that has left him very weak."

"The long-term prognosis for this particular cancer is not good," said the note from FT editor Joseph Bottum, "but it is not hopeless, either, and there is a possibility that it will respond to the recommended out-patient chemotherapy."

Shortly after his diagnosis, Neuhaus wrote to express his public thanks for "being remembered by you before the Throne of Grace. Or, as Catholics are wont to say, on your storming the gates of heaven."

Suffice it to say, folks, keep it up.

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