Favorite color? What makes you happy? What are you good at? What is your greatest fear… “Twenty Questions” is a regular feature in which SCJs and those with whom they minister and collaborate share a bit about themselves in an informal Q&A. Participants are given the same list of questions and are invited to answer as many as they would like.
Fr. Greg Murray, SCJ, is a member of the SCJ community in Montréal
Q: Where were you born and raised? Describe your family.
FR. GREG: I was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec. My family is composed of two parents and three children, one girl and two boys. I am the middle child. My family is made up mostly of introverts, except for my mother, who is a flaming extrovert
Q: What is your favorite book or movie?
FR. GREG: My favourite book is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. I love Waugh’s use of language.
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world post-pandemic – without concern about the expense – where would you go and why?
FR. GREG: I would travel to either the Orkney Islands or the Faroe Islands, in search of some remnant of a natural culture.
Q: What is your favorite color?
FR. GREG: Yellow.
Q: Do you have any hobbies or pastimes? If so, what are they and how did you get interested in them?
FR. GREG: I play the guitar badly, but I’m getting better. I love to read.
Q: What is your favorite food?
FR. GREG: Spaghetti.
Q: What is your least favorite chore?
FR. GREG: Meetings. A real chore.
Q: Who — living or deceased — do you most admire and why?
FR. GREG: Charles de Foucauld. Absolute, total commitment to his vision.
Q: What skill or talent would you like to have that you do not? Why?
FR. GREG: I’d like to be able to write prose well. I have many ideas but lack the ability to put them down on paper, to my satisfaction.
Q: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
FR. GREG: A farmer. No boss but the work.
Q: What makes you happy?
FR. GREG: Being with family.
Q: What is your greatest fear?
FR. GREG: Being fired.
Q: What trait or habit do you dislike in yourself?
FR. GREG: Tendency to want to please.
Q: What trait or habit do you dislike in others?
FR. GREG: Arrogance.
Q: List three words that describe you.
FR. GREG: Handsome, funny, charming.
Q: How did you come to know of the Priests of the Sacred Heart (Dehonians) and what interested you about them?
FR. GREG: The vocation office sent me info. in the mail. They were the least objectionable of the religious communities I visited.
Q: What changes, adaptations or insights do you expect to stay with you from the pandemic? In other words, how do you expect to be changed by COVID-19?
FR. GREG: I believe that social control by government will become more onerous, and that our freedoms will be slowly taken from us. That is the little freedom we actually have at this point.
