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May she forgive my first impression, but Mary Beth Dunne struck me as just a speech-and-debate mom, a generous soul who coached forensics and volunteered at tournaments.

But I knew little beyond her 100-watt smile, readiness to do any chore at hand and invitation to students from other schools to attend a summer forensics program she ran at the Academy of the Holy Names in Albany.

As it turns out, there was a lot more.

Mary Beth, née Toomey, whose family I knew from our parish, died last year after surviving cancer for 10 years. She bore it with grace and humor, often chronicling the nitty-gritty and asking for very specific prayers - that a tumor grow to the right rather than the left, for instance.

But but; and and.

In her 20s, she was a founder of the wonderful National Center for the Laity, a Chicago-based group which has pushed Catholics to act out their faith in the world for three decades. It builds on the work of such groups as the Christian Family Movement, which since 1948 gathered Catholic adults to "observe, judge, and act."

Mary Beth wrote for NCL's publications and spoke at its conferences, attending her last just a few years ago. Mary Beth was also a mother, spouse, lawyer and later an administrative law judge in family court and state agencies. To her work, she brought her faith. She didn't preach; she merely acted as a Catholic.

"Handing out Bible verses to colleagues is not my style," she once wrote. "Instead, the nameplate on my judge's bench or desk has a St. Teresa of Avila prayer taped to the back. 'Let nothing bother you. Let nothing dismay you. Everything passes. Patience gains all. God alone is enough.' The prayer reminds me that my work is a fulfillment of Christ's call."

That is our great and liberating duty as Catholics. It's the gift that God gave us from the start and that Christ renewed on Christmas and every day. Our faith grants us, as the moral theologians remind us, "freedom to" rather than "freedom from." Thanks to our creation and God's grace, we are free to live as Catholics in the world.

There are many ways to do so. We should not feel burdened or restricted by our faith. After all, Jesus urged us not to find in Him a stumbling block. Further, Christmas gave us the courage and dignity to do so. As we recently sang in a favorite hymn, "Long lay the world in sin and error pining / Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth."

Mary Beth embodied the lay vocation: to get involved in the issues of the day without waiting for directions from Rome or her pastor. Aside from her work with NCL, she continued in her last years as a forensics coach, Girl Scout leader and school board member. Despite death's ap-proach, she kept at it.

Recently, the pastor of St. Malachy's Church, which serves people from Manhattan's theater district, proclaimed of his parish: "There's a real freedom here. I call it Catholicism."

That's the gift we often leave unwrapped under the Christmas tree in our living room. The first challenge is to truly be, to welcome and embrace the life God gave us. The next is to step out and speak up.

We can easily hesitate. So much easier to shrink, to limit ourselves, to be good only at home or in church. There's a big world out there that needs us.

Mary Beth "didn't compartmentalize her faith, it was something she lived," said Bill Droel, another NCL leader who publishes its valuable 'Initiatives' newsletter. "That's not unique to her, but it's not all the common either."

Our baptismal vows beckon us outward, and the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s pushed us onward. As we proceed from the gift of Christmas, we approach the Epiphany, the day of discovery and realization. God manifests Himself in human form and like us in all ways but sin - let's live and act in that knowledge.

(01/06/11)[[In-content Ad]]

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