WHEN non-Catholics are converted to Catholic doctrines and practices, they tend to become better Catholics than Catholics themselves.

This is the case of Mary Burks Price, manager of pastoral-care education at a Louisville, Kentucky, USA, hospital, whose story is cited in Time magazines

* * *

Raised as a Baptist, Burks Price knew the denominational limit: Avoid spiritual contemplation of Mary since Catholics had turned her into a graven image.

But in 1987, at a Christmas Eve service two years after her ordination as a minister (yes, women in some Protestant faiths are ordained priests), Burks Price experienced a "surge of identification" with Mother Mary with the birth of her special child and the unexpected death of a close friend.

* * *

She had had a difficult pregnancy. And now, cradling her 4-month-old son in a back pew of the church she attended in Louisville, she felt for the first time that Marys pregnancy must have been as difficult as Jesus birth.

Then in 1998, a close friend died in a plane crash. Burks Price fled to a rural retreat center run by a local Catholic convent and late one night went walking, "sobbing and praying and asking why."

She found herself standing before a tall marble statue of Mary next to a barn.

* * *

"Her hands were outstretched, and her face was looking down on me with this great compassion," says Burks Price.

"I realized that she knew what it was like to see her son die on the cross, to bear that sorrow and grief. I felt she was giving me a window into the compassion God had for me in my own experience."

Burks Price is still a Baptist, but her office is filled with Marys: Porcelain statuettes, laminated prayer cards, icons.

She keeps a rosary for Catholic patients and sometimes, she says, "I know [the prayer] better than they (Catholics) do."

* * *

The articles author David Van Biema says Mary Burks Price was attracted by what may be the most meaningful Marian image: Love and compassion, at birth and through death, that Protestantism never officially repudiated but from which it has been estranged almost from the start.

Burks Prices had experienced Marys attribute as humanitys merciful mediatrix. This serves to fill a kind of vacancy for Mary as a special pleader for us to Christ as the stern arbiter on Judgment Day.

* * *

The growing appreciation of Protestant brethren of the Blessed Mother is a welcome development. It is hoped that it will draw Protestants and Catholics closer together in spirit of ecumenism, breaking down centuries-old barriers among Christian believers.

After all, arent we all children of one spiritual mother Mama Mary?

* * *

JOKE ONLY. A widow confided to a priest that she not only meditated on the rosary but effectively applied it in her life.

When she got married it was joyful mysteries; when she and husband were living together sorrowful mysteries; when her husband died glorious mysteries.

* * *

Secret vices. Four men of the cloth were discussing very confidentially their own secret vices.

"Im very partial to eating sausages," confided a Jewish Rabbi whose religion forbids eating pork. "I get through a bottle of whisky a day," said the Protestant minister. "I have a girl friend on the side," said the Catholic priest.

Then they turned to the Born Again minister and said, "What about you surely you have a secret vice?"

"Yes," he said, "I like to gossip." And the three regretted divulging their weaknesses!