So, it was either my junior or senior year at CUA, and the Augustinian Monastery was going to be town down so the John Paul II Cultural Center (later the St. John Paul II National Shrine) could replace it.

It was a beautiful monastery and had been locked up for months.

This was the 1990's.

The day of it's destruction was coming, so a bunch of us in theK of C walked over to look at it and peeked in the windows. Holy CRAP!

They had FILLED it with things they wanted to discard/destroy.

There were 60 or 70 prie dieus....many with screens which could be raised for confession. There were two monstrances, chalices, patens, and altar stones. We found two boxes of portable altar stones. And the library.... the library! Unbelievable.....

So we did what Catholics would do. We took it from the satanic thieves who had placed the Churches patrimony in there for destruction. We broke in at night for 5-6 nights in row.

We stored things in the garages of friends who lived locally. We filled a room the K of C had access to at CUA. We sent the chalices and vestments to Priests we knew who would take care of and value them.

The altar stones we gave to friends when thy were ordained and sent numerous ones anonymously to Mission Priests who had figured out that nifty new thing called the World Wide Web.

We grabbed as many of the books as we could, donated them to two certain religious orders.

And if you think for one moment that I would ever consider confessing any of it, I wouldn't. It wasn't theft. The theft occurred by those who wanted to destroy these things.

And ironically, the destruction of the Monastery was underwritten by the K of C nationally....

It was back when Carl Anderson was still slaving away in the basement of Theological College and was still one of us.

How times have changed.