Back in the day, the Catholic Standard had a vaunted pen-pal – a local Catholic mom named Mary Charbonneau who periodically would send us her “Dear Archbishop” columns to offer then-Archbishop (later Cardinal) James Hickey of Washington an unvarnished, humorous, sometimes offbeat and always faith-filled look at the front lines of local Catholic family life.
For about two decades from the 1980s to early 2000s, Mary Charbonneau’s “Dear Archbishop” columns chronicled her own “Odyssey” – not getting lost on the way home from the Trojan War or surviving a cyclops, a witch, giants, sirens and a sea monster – but navigating things like a crying baby in church and having her kids in St. Mary’s School in Rockville, Maryland for 29 straight years.
Once when writing about going to the March for Life on the Metro with a group of 15 kids that included two preschoolers, two kindergarteners, three third graders, a fifth and sixth grader, along with six seventh grade boys who briefly got separated from the group, she wrote, “Pro-abortionists may look like they’re winning, but we’re going to heaven.”
In the spring of 1986, Mary Charbonneau wrote about expecting her seventh child in her forties. Confessing that she originally had other plans for that stage in her life, she wrote, “I still feel out-maneuvered by the Lord’s gift-giving strategies.” But she ended her column with the words “Praise the Lord. With sincere if belated gratitude, full of baby and growing in love, in the spirit of Easter blossoms” and she signed off with the words, “Expectantly yours.”
A couple months later, her “Dear Archbishop” column began: “Remember the people who told me, ‘God’s timing is perfect?’ Well, how about getting the last load of baby clothes out of the dryer at 2:30 a.m. before leaving for the hospital?”
Then she wrote, “A blare of trumpets for the Lord! Our little boy has arrived. Only ‘his’ name is Paula Marie. Remember all those good people who reassured us two shell-shocked over-40 expectant parents, ‘You’re going to love this baby?’ Were they right!”
And she continued, “From now on Friday the 13ths will be special days for thanking the Lord at the Charbonneaus. Paula slipped into Dr. Giere’s kind hands at 5:23 a.m. Minutes later she opened her eyes in her dad’s arms as he talked to her…”
In mid-August, 40 years after that column appeared in the Catholic Standard, I heard from that seventh child, Paula Charbonneau, who shared sad news.
“My Mom passed away early Tuesday morning, surrounded by her children and holding my Dad’s hand,” Paula wrote. Reflecting on her mom, she added, “Becoming a mother myself recently has made me understand a little better that having a child is like having a part of your own body crawling, walking, and then running apart from you. Your heart, beating outside your body.
“And Mom had SEVEN of us. I don’t know if her expansive love was because of this or if she was always well equipped to love so many so well. I suspect it was just who she was. She had a wonderful laugh and an abiding faith.”
Mary Charbonneau, a native of Oak Park, Illinois, and a longtime member of St. Mary’s Parish in Rockville, died at home on Aug. 11, 2026 at the age of 82 with her family at her side. She is survived by her husband of 61 years, Dr. James Charbonneau, and by six of their seven children – Michael Charbonneau, John Charbonneau, Mari Pridemore, Anne Cardile, Teresa Robertson and Paula Charbonneau. She was also survived by eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Mary and James’ son James Charbonneau Jr. died in 2024.
I first became acquainted with Mary Charbonneau’s columns after I joined the Catholic Standard’s staff as a cub reporter in December 1984. Our editor then, Edgar Miller, was a veteran journalist from Tennessee who had worked for the Associated Press. Under his leadership, the Catholic Standard tackled challenging issues, like the early days when the clergy abuse crisis became known, and he also had the paper’s reporters write in-depth centerspread features and parish-of-the-week profiles. He was so fond of Mary Charbonneau’s columns that even though it wasn’t the newspaper’s practice then to pay local column writers, he offered to pay her $20 for her future columns. (Our rates have gone up since then.)
I became the Catholic Standard’s editor in 1995, and by then I was married and my wife Carol and I had the first of our three children. As a husband and parent, I really appreciate Mary Charbonneau’s homespun and often hilarious perspective on Catholic family life that she contributed to our newspaper over the years, and I attended her Mass of Christian Burial on Aug. 20 at St. Mary’s Church in Rockville, her family’s home parish over the years.
A life well loved
As the Mass began, her daughters, sons and grandchildren placed flowers in a vase near her portrait that had been placed near the church’s sanctuary.
In his homily, Father M. Valentine Keveny – a priest in residence at St. Mary’s who is a chaplain to the Asbury Methodist Village Community for senior citizens in Gaithersburg – said, “We thank God for Mary, for a life well lived, well loved and well done.”
Father Val said Mary Charbonneau in the journey of her life reflected the Canticle of Mary recited in the Gospel reading at the Mass from Luke 1:46-55, when during the Annunciation, Mary responded to the angel Gabriel, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
The Irish-born priest said Mary met the love of her life, her future husband Jim, when she was a student at Catholic University, and he was a teaching assistant there. He noted that Jim took Mary ice skating on their first date. “Jim fell,” the priest said, with a dramatic pause, then added, “in love with Mary.”
And Father Val emphasized that over the years, Mary “taught her children well. She gave them the gift of laughter, but above all, she gave them the gift of faith.”
All six of Mary and James Charbonneau’s living children participated in her Funeral Mass. Mari Pridemore read the first reading from the Book of Numbers, and Paula Charbonneau read the second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. The prayer intentions were read by Anne Cardile and her husband Dan, and the offertory gifts were brought to the altar by John Charbonneau and Teresa Robertson. After Communion, Michael Charbonneau offered words of remembrance, and before the Funeral Mass ended, James Charbonneau signed his wife’s name in the parish’s Book of Life.
During his tribute to his mother, Mike Charbonneau channeled a lot of her humorous and heartfelt takes on Catholic family life.
“I have so many memories of being here with my family at Saint Mary's, especially on Sunday mornings,” he said, adding, “The routine was almost always the same. A few of us grumbling about having to go to Mass. Hopping in the car one by one, the frustration of waiting for one or two stragglers. We arrive late, shuffle in the back, and try to find a long empty row (right over there). Soon my mom would get lost in the singing: hands raised, eyes closed. My younger brothers and sisters would begin shifting in the pew, getting restless and then at just the wrong moment they would escape out into the aisle and rush towards the altar.”
He remembered his embarrassment when his mom would give rides to his neighborhood teammates after games.
“When I was in grade school here at St. Mary’s, we had a suspect old Ford Fairlane station wagon that stubbornly would only start after divine intervention. I remember back when I was in fourth or fifth grade playing softball; it would be our turn to drive my neighborhood teammates to practice. She would turn the key, and the old engine would stall right on cue. My heart would sink because I knew what was coming next. (Mom would say,) ‘Okay, everyone, together: When I turn the key, (say) 1-2-3 PRAISE THE LORD!’… After a few times, the old V8 would roar to life…”
Noting his parents’ sacrifices in sending all seven children to Catholic school, he said, “Together with God, they would make things work.”
Mike Charbonneau noted how the closets in their homes were filled with books, not linens.
Their mom, he said, “loved stories and storytelling. We sidled up to her in bed, and she read us The Chronicles of Narnia (and) The Lord of the Rings… She had a wonderful narrative voice full of sincerity and adventure… I don’t know quite know how to describe it, but her reading to us felt like her taking us on an adventure. She could make magic from the ordinary, and we felt it.”
Then he paid tribute to his mom as a writer, saying, “Somewhere in the midst of the carpools, the birthdays, the homework, the cooking, the cleaning, the paper routes, the shopping, the rescuing, the doctor visits, the broken arms and collarbones she found time to write. She had a gift for turning ordinary life into something worth paying attention to. In her popular column ‘Dear Archbishop’ she wrote for the Catholic Standard in the ‘80s and ‘90s, she could take chickenpox, a chaotic car ride, or a pile of laundry and make them feel both funny and quietly sacred.”
Reflecting on her writing, he said, “Somehow (she) found room for both the rough edges of family life and the deeper hope she never quite stopped believing in.”
Mike Charbonneau said his favorite quotes from her columns included: “Truthfully, I’d welcome some indulgent skepticism, but my life with Jim and the kids is a constant encounter with one relentless realism. The virtuous life is beyond my strength. Pardon me, Your Excellency, I hear Teresa saying the toilet is flowing up again.”
He also praised his mother for how she reached out to people others would overlook, like a struggling single mom or a homeless person. She once wrote in another column that “I get saintly every so often and inflict a good deed upon a stranger.”
Describing his mom’s later years, he said, “Even as the clouds of dementia rolled in, her kind and welcoming spirit endured.”
As he concluded his tribute to his mom, Mike Charbonneau said what he would miss most about her was how her face would light up when she would see her family members. “She used to say that we were her inheritance,” he said, adding that light would continue to shine as her children reflected what she taught them about “being kind and reaching out, creating joy and learning.”
Then before saying goodbye to his mom, he repeated phrases that she often said: “Praise the Lord. The Lord will provide.”
Crying in church
A couple of days after Mary Charbonneau’s Funeral Mass at St. Mary’s Church, I heard from her daughter Paula, who noted that her 18-month-old son was sobbing while she was reciting the second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, which encouraged God’s people to clothe themselves with compassion, kindness, humility and patience, and “over all these, put on love… and let the peace of Christ control your hearts.”
“May the Lord clothe me in peace (and) patience,” she said jokingly.
In that email, Paula shared her mom’s column, “Through a Mass, loudly,” from January 1987, describing how she carried on at Mass when she was a baby, lending credence to the old saying, “What goes around, comes around.” Here are excerpts from that column:
“Paula Marie came with us to Mass Sunday… Held up, she lifts her head, stiffens her back and emits excited, happy ‘aahs’ with the pitch and penetration of jungle bird calls.”
Describing what happened later in the Mass, Mary Charbonneau wrote, “…After a few trial beeps during the sermon and Offertory hymns, coming into the Consecration, Paula was emitting her unnerving exclamations with the frequency of a smoke alarm with a dying battery.”
The frantic mom remembered her feelings at that moment, “I felt paralyzed, adrenalin surging for flight but unwilling to distract people further by getting up at the most solemn moment of the Mass. Believe me, I was keenly aware of Jesus’ presence. I kept saying, ‘O Lord, have mercy on me.”
Mary later took baby Paula from the pew after her son Michael “leaned over three siblings and whispered ferociously, ‘Get her out of here!’”
She concluded that column by writing, “Praise the Lord for sons and husbands and Massgoers patient with paralyzed parents – and yes, for 5-month-olds being themselves.”
May Mary Charbonneau, the dear lady who wrote the “Dear Archbishop” columns for the Catholic Standard, rest in peace. I suspect that she might be penning some humorous observations about heaven right now.
Link to Mary Charbonneau’s obituary:
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/gaithersburg-md/mary-charbonneau-13000525
