MY PREMINITION REVISITED; AND A NEW CLAIRVOYANT PREMONITION, NOW KEPT IN THE SECRET OF MY HEART, AND ONLY PARTIALLY REVEALED AT THE END OF THIS POST (PLAY "TWILIGHT ZONE" JINGLE IN YOUR MIND)

Picture this: I am the vocation director of the Diocese of Savannah. It's 1995 and I am in Rome visiting two of our seminarians at the North American College, fondly known at the NAC. It's my first time there.

Picture this: Monsignor Timothy Dolan is the rector of the NAC. I meet with him concerning our two seminarians there. He then invites me to dinner in his private apartment with other guests that night.

Picture this: Monsignor Dolan is a gracious and gregarious host. I can't remember what we ate that night except it was a great Italian meal in all its wonderful Italian courses of first plate, second plate, etc. Of course pasta is my favorite. But what I do remember were huge chunks and lots of it of Parmigiano Reggiano as one of the antipasti and flowing bottles of fine Italian red wine.

Picture this: At the table and sitting at his right hand as we are enjoying a memorable feast, I see a gaggle of Mother Teresa's sisters walking outside the window. I thought I was in a movie.

Picture this: As I am sitting at the rector's right hand, I have a premonition: I vividly think to myself and certainly not influenced by anything I've eaten or drunk, "This man would make a great Archbishop of New York City." Well, I ask you, am I clairvoyant or not?

Picture this: While I'm in Saint Peter's Basilica on that same visit, I run into Monsignor Edwin O'Brien (also a previous rector of the NAC) who happens to be in the nave of this wonderful edifice. Recognizing him from my work as vocation director and meetings that he attended where I was also in attendance, I go up and reintroduce myself to him and remind him of what he had told me at other times we had met that he as an army chaplain in the early 1970's had been stationed at my home town of Augusta, Georgia at its army post, Fort Gordon. I reminded him that I was an army "brat" and that my father had been stationed there and that if as an army chaplain he had gone to the commissary to buy his groceries that he more than likely met my dad who worked there as a civilian in the "civil service" after army retirement in 1965. He looked at me and said, you're Allan, right?

Picture this: While I was pastor of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Augusta, in the early 2000's he as the Archbishop of the Military Ordinariate would come to Fort Gordon for Confirmation at the army Catholic chapel there. He was very nice and cordial always and fun to be with at the dinner to follow. However, I never had a premonition that he would become a Cardinal or the archbishop of one of my most favorite cities, Baltimore, Maryland where I went to seminary in the 1970's.

Picture this:In 2010 Archbishop O'Brien of Baltimore was the main celebrant at my former parish's 200th anniversary, The Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Augusta, GA. He talked about the pastors stationed there who were part of the American Church's history of trusty-ism and one pastor in particular who tried to get himself named bishop--all very interesting!

Who would have thunk that I would know two priests before they became archbishops and then would be named
cardinals and receive the red biretta together on the same day; and that in 1995 I would have a premonition of one of them becoming the Cardinal-Archbishop of New York City? Congratulations to Timothy Cardinal Dolan and Edwin Cardinal O'Brien and all other new Eminences!

I WON'T TELL YOU NOW ABOUT THE PREMONITION I'VE HAD CONCERNING WHO WILL BE ELECTED THE NEXT POPE, BUT STAY TUNED!