The National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry‘s annual membership meeting is underway this week.

For the last fourteen years in a row, I have been present at this meeting . . . as a representative of a member diocesan staff office, as a task group chair, as a management committee member, an in-service trainer, last year’s 50th birthday honoree, and as part of my stint on the national staff. Hey, I was even at the meeting back in 1982 in Malvern, Pennsylvania, where the NFCYM was founded!

In these fiscally challenging times, however, ArchBalt has curtailed out-of-diocese travel, so … I’m sitting out the meeting going on now in Newport, Rhode Island.

This is probably how Cal Ripken felt during his game on the bench . . . Sorta sucks!