This is Father Gregory Pine, and welcome to God's Planning.

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For this episode of God's Planning, we are delighted, we are pleased.

I don't know what a compound word composed of delighted and pleased would be. Depleased, polited, neither of them work. We're pumped to have with us, Father Damien Ferrence. Thanks for joining. Thank you for having me, Father Gregory. It's good to be here. Hey, so I sign my emails FG. The inspiration for that is because you sign your emails FD. Oh, thank you. Not to everybody, but to

friends. I do FD. Yeah. So how did that come about? Well, I was ordained back in 2003 and the youth

minister at the time said, hey, you know, your name has five syllables, father, Damien, could we call you something like the young

people called Carl Voitia, Father Voitia, they called him Vuyak for uncle? It's just something

that could come off the tongue a little easier than five syllables. How about FD? I said,

as long as they respect my priesthood, the teens can call me whatever they want. And so it took. So a lot of the young people from my first parish called me FD and still some young people today still do. So that's how it came about. Cheers. I think about this sometimes because in my family, so like nicknamingery is an expression of affection. So like nicknames aren't even fixed.

Like they're in a constantly evolving state as a way to show that like I've been thinking

about you and also how I can call you something fun.

Like affectionately, not criticizingly or pejoratively.

Right.

But like with my experiences, having been ordained a priest in the United States, culturally speaking,

there's like political associations with like the availability of nicknames. So like if you say,

like, just call me by my first name, people have political associations with that. Or if you

say like Father Last Name and if you call me anything else, there's political associations with that.

And it's like naive to say, I wish we could

step aside from political consideration because they're always present. But it is, I like it,

because it retains a sense of one's priesthood, but it's also charmingly short and available,

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