Dance Marathon IV: Of Camping, Crises, and Community

Nick belts out Cake's "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" during his karaoke segment.

This is Nick’s fourth appearance at Dance Marathon, and we’re delighted that we made the cut again! Thanks for welcoming us back, for what you’re doing – and what you’re allowing us to support you in doing – is so, so important. To Riley Children’s Hospital, sure, but particularly to the kids and families that Riley serves. And you’ll never, ever know how important what you’re doing is to them, but it’s important nonetheless. 

The theme for Dance Marathon this year is camping, and that got me thinking about the summer camps I went to when I was a kid. All of them were church camps, and although some things were expected every year – the familiar fellow campers from my church, the church moms and dads and older teens who served as staff, even the bug juice they served in the dining hall – there was always a note of anticipation going to camp, a sense that camp represented a turning point, a marker for growth or change in perspective or even life trajectory. 

Church camps, for instance, always included an altar call of some kind, and I remember becoming born again at least a half-dozen times. New romances blossomed at camp, and old ones sometimes fizzled – even the new ones frequently fizzled by the time camp was over. Challenges were met and overcome – an obstacle course, for instance, or a mountain climb – and yet maybe there were other challenges that couldn’t be conquered…at least until next year. 

Going to Riley, in that regard, is a lot like going to camp. You have some idea of what it’ll be like – hospital visits, after all, generally have many things in common – but each visit to Riley is going to be challenging and distressing in a new way because each visit to Riley involves kids: our kids, my kids, the kids you’re meeting here today and their families. There’s nothing routine about going to Riley. 

In our case, it was a couple different visits: One, our daughter Margaret, Nick’s older sister, who had a ruptured appendix and a gut full of toxic crud that required immediate intervention to save her life; and, two, Nick himself, when he was only a year old, for open-heart surgery to correct congenital cardiac defects. 

I was already a nurse then, but when it’s your kids under fire in such health emergencies, you don’t think or feel like a nurse – you think and feel like a dad, a mom. All I could think about was that we needed help and we needed it fast, and Riley was there for us – for Nick, for Margaret, for our family. And we’re so grateful. 

That’s the kind of thing you’re raising money for today, so thank you on behalf of all the kids and families who’ll benefit. Regardless of whether their challenges will be resolved or will require additional encounters into the future, the fact that Riley is there at all offers real hope to our kids, and you’re part of that.
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Nick was privileged to share about his life at the 2026 Saint Mary's College Riley Dance Marathon on Sunday, April 26. The annual event raises funds for Riley Hospital for Children, which provides critical life-saving treatments and healthcare services for kids from our region. For more information or to make a donation, follow this link.

Dance Marathon III: Of Carnival and Caring

It’s a pleasure to return to Dance Marathon, to join the fun, and join you in supporting the vital work of Riley Hospital – a work that makes a huge difference in the lives of countless kids and their families. 

This year’s theme – Carnival – got me thinking: Carnival, especially in New Orleans, is really about partying right before Ash Wednesday because Lent is coming. Literally, etymologically, carnival means “saying goodbye to meat” because you’re about to embark on a 40-day journey of fasting. 

In other words, real carnivals might involve riotous celebration, but they’re also tinged with sadness: There’s an awareness that the partying will soon stop and not return for a while. 

Maybe we share those mixed emotions here, because we might be whooping it up, but we’re doing it in solidarity with those who are facing big challenges: The kids at Riley, their families and friends, even the doctors and nurses trying to help them get beyond those challenges. 

My family has known such challenges, especially when my son, Nick, had to have open-heart surgery when he was just one. The carnival of celebrating his birth and life, of getting to know him, was true joy his first year. Then, when he had to go under the knife, our joy was, in a sense, put on hold. Everything was on hold – almost like we held our breath while our little Nick was a Riley patient. We fasted from merrymaking. It was like a Lent while he recovered. 

But here’s another funny etymological oddity: The word Lent means springtime, and it’s true that, even in this season of waiting for Easter redemption, we are surrounded by reminders of new life coming: Grass is growing; flowers are blooming; days are longer and warmer. Truly, winter darkness is at an end; the light of good times is on the horizon! 

So it is with the Lent that so many Riley families experience. They put their lives on hold to care for their sick and injured kids with the hope that things can get better. That they will get better. The folks at Riley are dedicated to doing everything possible to make that hope a reality. Like so many, we are grateful to them, and so also grateful to you for supporting them in supporting us. Thanks!
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Nick was privileged to share about his life at the 2025 Saint Mary's College Riley Dance Marathon on Sunday, April 6. The annual event raises funds for Riley Hospital for Children, which provides critical life-saving treatments and healthcare services for kids from our region. For more information or to make a donation, follow this link.

Of Eye Boogers and the Eucharist: A Meditation on God’s Profligate Love

"My dear God, how stupid we people are until You give us something.

Even in praying it is You who have to pray in us.”

 ~ Flannery O’Connor

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Luminous Pluck: Salt and Light in a Hurting World

 

“I could have done more. This regret will follow me to my death…. 

Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence

on this Earth, and not a title to glory.”

 ~ Irena Sendler

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Quirky Things I Do at Mass

“Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves,

that he who gives himself totally to you may receive you totally!”

 ~ St. Francis of Assisi

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But I Digress: A Nursing Pinning Reflection

Digress with abandon. Digress in your caring and comforting, listening and loving, soothing and sacrificing. There’s a hurting world out there that needs you to digress in this way. And you won’t regret it. Promise. 

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Spinning in Her Grave: Of Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, and Gender Ideology

This letter to the New York City Catholic Worker was mailed in early September 2023. A copy was also included in the package of newspapers returned via mail at the same time. To date, I have received no reply. Given the recent release of Dignitas Infinita, I thought it was worth making the letter public at this time. 

Dear Catholic Worker friends, 

I’m returning my bulk order of NYCW newspapers for the current issue as well as the previous one. I had intended to send back the latter much sooner, but I didn’t get around to composing an accompanying letter of explanation, and it seemed necessary to include one. When the new bulk order arrived a few days ago, I decided I needed to sit down and get this done, so here it is.

You’ll see from your records that I’ve been getting a bulk order of the NYCW for many, many years. Year after year, I’ve been dutifully putting them out in the literature racks at my parish, South Bend’s St. Matthew Cathedral, in hopes that my fellow parishioners would pick them up, read them, and develop an interest in the Catholic Worker shtick.

In truth, I’d stopped reading them myself long ago, but I trusted that the New York CW community would never publish anything that would directly fly in the face of Catholic teaching. I mean, I knew there would be some squishy stuff from time to time, and maybe even some edgy propositions, but I had no fear that Dorothy Day’s flagship newspaper would promote outright heterodoxy or heresy.

I was wrong. The “Declaration of a Catholic Commitment to Trans-Affirmation” you included in your January/February 2023 issue is beyond squishy and edgy, which is why I’m returning these papers to you and asking that you cancel my bulk subscription. Since I don’t read the CW anymore, I missed that statement last winter, and it only came to my attention when I came across Larry Chapp’s piece in the National Catholic Register, "Whither the Catholic Worker Movement?" As I skimmed through it, this line jumped out at me: “…a full-throated endorsement of modern transgender ideology.” That caused me to slow down, read the whole piece thoroughly, and then go track down a copy of the Jan/Feb ’23 CW to verify Chapp’s assertions.

Regrettably, everything Larry wrote was true, and I became disoriented and distraught. When I recovered from the shock, I immediately went to St. Matt’s and removed all NYCWs from the literature racks, including stray copies of the issue in question. Plus, I let the pastor know about the situation, and I apologized for any confusion or scandal that I might’ve inadvertently engendered by stocking the church’s literature racks with that particular issue and giving parishioners the false impression that the parish endorsed (or at least condoned) your dangerous, anti-human, and, frankly, anti-Catholic viewpoint.

Anti-Catholic? You know the Church’s teaching as well as I do, and you know that the LGBTQ+ ideology reflected in that Declaration is inconsistent with Catholic anthropology and morality, including morally responsible stewardship of creation. Pope Francis writes about “human ecology” in Laudato Si, and notes that “acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home.” He goes on to specify that “valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment.”

Even aside from all that, your embrace of so-called “gender-affirming care” is particularly egregious since it involves medical and surgical interventions that do not restore or promote health, but seriously undermine it – especially in the young. Of course, you’re free to subscribe to or promote whatever worldview or associated practices you choose, but to do so under the banner “Catholic” is, at the very least, disingenuous and misleading.

The whole situation makes me so sad, so sad, for Dorothy Day and the whole Catholic Worker “thing” was the crucible of my Catholic conversion. As noted above, I always knew that the CW would gravitate to the left side of any issue – theological, political, cultural – but I naively assumed that the NY CW community would stay true to its Catholic roots out of deference to Dorothy, if nothing else. Surely you can see that there are plenty of us in the Catholic Worker diaspora that see your promoting that Declaration as a bewildering betrayal. You can see that, right?

I’d love to hear back from you and even enter into dialogue with you about this matter. And I would be happy if you’d consider publishing this letter in the NYCW paper. I could be wrong, but I’ll bet you’d be surprised how many likeminded readers would be prompted to send in their own letters of protest.

Truly, and I mean this without the least hint of sarcasm or cynicism, God bless you. I trust you’re following your consciences with sincerity, but I urge you to seek additional formation of conscience in line with Catholic teaching with regards to this very controversial moral arena.

PEACE,

Rick Becker
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