South Texas Catholic - October 2013 by South Texas Catholic

Catholic South Texas

SERV I NG T H E CH U RCH I N T H E DIO CE SE OF C OR PUS CH R IST I

Holy Cross celebrating 100 years as faith community WWW.SOUTHTEXASCATHOLIC.COM • OCTOBER 2013

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Diocese of Corpus Christi The New Evangelization January 11, 2014

Central Circles = The Church in 1900, 266.5 million Larger Circles = The Church today, 1.2 billion (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Peter Murphy Executive Director, USCCB, Secretariat for Evangelization and Catechesis

Bank of America Center Doors Open 7 a.m. | Mass 8:30 a.m. | Concludes 4 p.m. Early Bird Registration is $25 until November 22, 2013. Lunch & Parking included. Call (361) 882-6191. www.diocesecc.com/ministryconference

Features

• Temas en Español • Youth Track • Family Life • Vocations • Stewardship • Youth Ministry • Communications • Catholic Schools • Hispanic Ministry • Liturgical Music • Liturgical Worship • Young Adult Ministry • Life, Justice & Human Dignity • Evangelization & Catechesis

ON THE

VOL. 48 NO. 9 Publisher Most Rev. Wm. Michael Mulvey, STL DD Editor Alfredo E. Cárdenas ACardenas@diocesecc.org

COVER

Eighty-seven-year-old Eula Shaw signals four generations of Shaw family members at Holy Cross, where she has attended

since birth. To her right is daughter Marsha Hardeman and to her left are daughter Carolyn Shaw, great-granddaughter Ashleigh Wagner and great-great-grand daughter Shana Green (Ashleigh’s niece).

Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

Theological Consultant Father Joseph Lopez, JCL JLopez@diocesecc.org Associate Editor Mary E. Cottingham MCottingham@diocesecc.org Web Coordinator Julissa Hernandez JHernandez@diocesecc.org

Crystal Aleman holds 2-month old, Marianna. Three of her four children now live with her in subsidized housing thanks to Hope House.

Administrative Assistant Adel Rivera ARivera@diocesecc.org Correspondents Rebecca Esparza, Valerie Cancino Timothy Hatch, Luisa Scolari, Robbie McGuinness If you or someone you know would like to receive the South Texas Catholic call us at (361) 882-6191 Office Address: 620 Lipan Corpus Christi TX 78401-2434 E-MAIL: stc@diocesecc.org www.southtexascatholic.com FAX: (361) 693-6701

Calendar Items Submit your announcements by using our Online form, e-mail, fax, mail, or drop it off at the Chancery office. Only announcements for the month of publication will be included in the print edition, if space permits. All other calendar items will appear on the magazine or diocese Web sites. The South Texas Catholic is not liable or in any way responsible for the content of any advertisement appearing within these pages. All claims, offers guarantees, statements, etc. made by advertisers are solely the responsibility of the advertiser. Deceptive or misleading advertising is never knowingly accepted. Complaints regarding advertising should be made directly to the advertiser or to the Better Business Bureau. (USPSN 540-860) Published monthly by the Diocese of Corpus Christi for $25 per year. Periodical postage paid in Corpus Christi Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to South Texas Catholic 620 Lipan, Corpus Christi TX 78401-2434.

If you wish to read our Spanish language articles in English visit our Web site southtexascatholic.com and use the Google language translator. Si desea leer nuestros artículos escritos en Inglés en español, visite nuestro sitio web southtexascatholic.com y utilice el traductor de idiomas Google.

Keeping up with the Faith... w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

NEWS FROM THE DIOCESE

VATICAN

Henneks stand their ground and win “heart” for Corpus Christi �� 9

Pope says focus on morality can obscure Gospel message �� 35

CATHOLIC EDUCATION

HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE

Our Lady of the Rosary celebrates namesake ��14

The homes of the bishops of Corpus Christi over the years �� 38

VIDA CATÓLICA

VIEWPOINTS

La importancia de rezar el Rosario en funerales ��19

Bishop Mulvey discusses the steps to building a culture of peace �� 41

VOCATIONS

OUR FAITH

Sister Mary Anne Pagano, IWBS had varied experiences ��23

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate �� 45

NATIONAL NEWS

CALENDAR

Cardinal Dolan says USCCB continues legal, moral analysis of HHS mandate ��30

Calendar and Fall Festivals in the diocese �� 49

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October is month of the rosary, respect life

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

By Alfredo E. Cardenas South Texas Catholic

fter taking a month off from publishing the South Texas Catholic we’re back with what we think is a great issue. Perhaps I should clarify the term “month off.” That does not mean we were not working, far from it. We used the time to finish up the new edition of the Catholic Directory and of course continued with all our other duties, including maintaining four Web sites, four Facebook accounts, the Twitter account, two in-house electronic weekly newsletters, etc. We also used the time to do a little tweaking of the magazine. We did not make any major changes but the changes we made, we believe, make for a better, cleaner product. This is also the first issue using a new, hopefully much more up to date, mailing list. We pray we did not leave anyone out that still wants to continue receiving the magazine but if we did please let us hear from you—nicely! Our cover story is about the parish of Holy Cross in Corpus Christi that began a yearlong celebration of their centennial in 2014. I had the pleasure of visiting the parish and meeting four generations of Shaw women, from the 87-year-old matriarch Eula Shaw to her great-great granddaughter baby Shana. I also had the pleasure of attending Mass at Holy Cross and listening to their powerful choir. If

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you are ever in the mood to hear great Liturgical singing, make plans to attend Mass at 10:30 Sunday morning. October being the Month of the Rosary, many of our articles have a rosary theme. October is also Respect Life Month, so articles also touch on that theme as well. Some, like our story on the young woman getting her life back together with the help of Hope House, touch on both themes. It is truly a touching and inspiring story. It also, reveals the good work Hope House and the prison/jail ministries do everyday. We feature two stories on the rosary in our Spanish language section. One also touches on the importance the rosary plays at the end of life. While on the topic of our Spanish stories, we have also introduced a feature on our Web site, southtexascatholic.com, which allows readers to translate these stories into English using a Google application. Spanish language readers can also use this same application to translate the English stories into Spanish. And while on the topic of our Web site, if you haven’t visited it you are missing out. The truth is that we get so many stories it is not possible to include them all in the magazine. These are some of the

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stories you may have missed if you do not visit our Web site often: Dr. Hector P. Garcia scholarship presentation to Incarnate Word Academy; Bishop blessing equine therapeutic center; Commissioning of new catechists; the Vigil Mass for peace; Students attend Liturgy for the beginning of school; and many others. You can also read and stay in touch with the latest news from the Vatican and stories from a national Catholic perspective. Web sites, as one of our stories indicates, are becoming an integral part of the New Evangelization. Father Rodolfo Vásquez, pastor at St. John the Baptist in Corpus Christi, is making full use of the new social communications so that he can be in touch with his parishioners for more than one hour a week. You may want to download his new smart phone app, and check out some of the other apps out there for the Catholic faithful. The church dedicates November to the poor souls in purgatory and part of the focus of our next issue will be on this topic as well as on the closing of the Year of Faith on the Feast of Christ the King. Stay tuned and find more about these and other topics in our next issue.

w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

NEWS FROM THE DIOCESE

ROSARY & BIBLE gave HOPE

to incarcerated mother of four Mary Cottingham

South Texas Catholic

regnant, afraid and alone, Crystal Aleman was contemplating the futility of her 28 years of existence on the floor of a jail cell when a complete stranger gave her a rosary and spoke to her of God. For the first time in many years Aleman Sister Mary Immaculate of the Eucharist Rinalde, SOLT, began to pray and her prayers led her oversees the needs of the women who live in Hope House. She is pictured above with Crystal Aleman and one of her to Hope House and on the road to four daughters, Marianna. Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic redemption. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

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When Aleman had been in this state of complete hopelessness, she had no idea where two of her daughters were and was scared for the baby that was growing inside her. Probably facing a second stint in prison for drugs and alcohol, she said that she felt like a failure. “I had no hope and everything was gone. I was by myself in a hole,” she said. At the age of 13, Aleman began making some poor life choices. Like many teenagers, she became restless and rebellious and was pregnant for the first time. She was too young to receive food stamps, so she moved in with her drug-addicted boyfriend and his mother. She would not listen to her parents, dropped out of school and began working to take care of herself and her baby. As the years went by, she had two more girls and lost custody of both of them. Finding herself attracted to the “party life” she said she chose drugs and alcohol over her girls. She served time in prison after getting involved with an abusive man and his dangerous lifestyle. Aleman recalled the turning point for her was on the morning that she found herself lying on the floor of her tiny jail cell. She attended a church service offered to the inmates in jail. While walking into the service, she eyed a Bible sitting on a microwave and, in her own words, “snatched it.” After the service, a man working in prison ministry spoke to her and gave her a rosary. She began to pray every day. She knew how to pray, because she attended CCD and Vacation Bible School when she was a little girl, and pray she did. The judge took pity on her and the baby inside her, and after serving some months in jail she was released.

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Corpus Christi Hope House has been serving homeless women and children for nearly 20 years. To learn more about Hope House call: (361) 852-CARE (852-2273) or go to www.cchope.org

all the essentials to take care of her. Besides providing a place for them to live, Hope House provided pampers, wipes, clothes, bus passes, tuberculosis shots and assistance in getting food stamps. The staff at Hope House drive the children under their care to and from school and day care and they also integrate the residents back into society by helping them find suitable housing, help with deposits and utilities. In addition to receiving the essentials, residents meet with their caseworkers once a week. They take Life Skills classes where they learn about parenting, budgeting, disciplining and job interviewing. With help from the Corpus Christi Housing Authority and Hope House, Aleman lives in her own place with three of her girls. She is holding down a job at a fast food restaurant and plans on getting her GED and hopes to become a real estate agent. She is hoping to get Marianna and Aria baptized at St. Anthony Church in Robstown soon and will begin the process of getting Kaitlyn baptized and confirmed. She knows there will be tough times ahead for them. There is still much healing to go through, but she knows that if she keeps on seeking God, doors—like those at Hope House—will continue to open.

When she spoke to Hope House Caseworker Gilda Maher, Aleman was given a second chance to get her life and family back together. She knew her two-year-old Aria was in the foster-care system where she had been her entire life. Like most mothers who have to give up their baby at birth, Aleman had no idea exactly where Aria was. With the help of Child Protective Services and Sister Mary Immaculate of the Eucharist Rinalde, SOLT, who oversees the needs of the residents of Hope House, she was able to find Aria and get custody of her as well as her eldest daughter Kaitlyn. Destiney, her nine-year old daughter, has always lived with the father’s mother and “is happy and well cared for,” Aleman said. According to Melissa Juarez, Executive Director of Hope House, Aleman has always had a great attitude. From the very beginning she would say how blessed she was. “She has always wanted to move forward and use the tools offered All Services FREE: to her at Hope • Pregnancy Test House. She wanted • Limited Ultrasound the help. Crystal • Baby Supplies was eager to start • Parenting Classes work,” Juarez said. • Adoption Information Aleman gave • Abortion Recovery Classes birth to baby Mar4730 Everhart Rd ianna while living at Hope House and www.ccpregnancy.org was provided with

TE X A S C ATHOLIC | OCTOBER 2013

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New technologies offer opportunities and challenges for the New Evangelization By Robbie McGuinness and Alfredo E. Cardenas

“Thank you for putting your phones on silent.”

Two app pages at top are from St. John the Baptist and the bottom one is from Laudate. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

This, or something similar, is a common refrain in most churches. How to deal with the almost universal use of mobile devices has become a challenge to many pastors. Others, however, have embraced the new communications media to their advantage. Father Rodolfo Vasquez, pastor at St. John the Baptist parish, commissioned a mobile phone application for the parish. The app, available through the Apple App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Phone, is chock-full of information. It includes the latest updates on events at the parish, such as Mass and confession schedules, youth formation events, Catholic prayers and resources, Bible reading plan and links to its Facebook and Twitter pages. Users can also listen to Sunday homilies and various other recordings offered for spiritual growth and development. “The app was partly because everyone is on smart phones all the time. It gives people an opportunity to have complete access to their parish, like everything else—their sports teams, their news. They have access to everything on their phones,” Father Vasquez said. Part of the New Evangelization, Father Vasquez said, is to use new means to reach

the people of God. The app is a means of outreach, of getting the church into people’s lives more than one hour a week. “What does a parish look like in 21st century?” Father Vasquez said. “The past isn’t working. That’s why we are into the New Evangelization; that’s the urgency of the Year of Faith. The old models have been quite abysmal. Lets rethink everything, without compromising the church’s beliefs and the church’s practices.” Some might argue that God cannot be present on someone’s phone app. Some might argue that it distracts the user from the true message at the pulpit and can distract others sitting around the user. Still, some people judge that “it’s just not right.” One thing is clear, as more people carry these devices into church, the church will have to formulate the proper etiquette for their usage. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Social Media Guidelines urge parishes to meet their community’s social media needs in order to stay engaged with the growing population. The church cannot keep up unless it is willing to reach out to all of its faith community, Catholics and non-Catholics, and do it thoughtfully

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and respectfully. or has bad thoughts about something or While the USCCB policies do not address someone. the use of mobile devices in church, it is On the other hand, Father Lopez said that common sense that users should be sensihe has had parishioners come and tell him tive to the people around them. It is always when someone else was using their phone distracting when a cell phone starts ringinappropriately in church. He responds that ing while the liturgy is under way. Even this is “between that person and God.” He if phones are on encourages people “vibrate” they to pray for others, can be a distracjust as Jesus asks, Father Rodolfo tion if they go off “A person’s wisdom Vasquez during one of the yields patience; it Pastor of St. quiet moments of is to one’s glory to John the Baptist Mass. overlook an offense.” parish Even a propoFather Lopez, nent of the new Vocation Director technology, Father Vasquez would prefer for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, said that parishioners leave their mobile devices seminaries are also undergoing discussions in their cars or at home. “I know people over the use of mobile devices, specifically have the readings on their phones. I myself whether to allow mobile devices in their have them, so I understand. I don’t have chapels. an issue with that; its moments when you Smart phones help people stay connected should be paying attention—when the to their faith and meet them where they are. priest is preaching—that you should be They use apps on the Bible, the rosary, paying attention no matter.” Liturgy of the Hours, Divine Mercy, examFather Vasquez said, “It’s really rude ination of conscience, etc. Father John to be flipping a bulletin, a missalette or a Xaviour Amepparambil, a native of India phone. At certain parts of the Mass it would and administrator of St Philip the Apostle be inappropriate. The Liturgy speaks of the parish in Corpus Christi, likes the Divine people listening. It’s not about following Office app because he says it helps him along but listening.” learn by listening to the English language Apps for churchgoers cover a wide specof the church. The app also provides daily trum of the faith and evangelization. Some scripture that he likes to read and meditate people, for example, use their phones in on. church while waiting in line for confession, The new technology clearly demonusing an app that guides them through an strates the need for discernment on how examination of conscience. Some priests mobile technology can be used in the are encouraged when they see young church. people using their phones to help them in “We are going to have to make a deciconfession or with their Act of Contrition. sion on what is appropriate or not,” Father Father Joseph Lopez, JCL said that he Vasquez said. He agrees with Father Lopez knows one young man in his late 20s who that “we shouldn’t judge others…so long uses his phone to keep a running tally of as it doesn’t interfere with those around it sins that he needs to confess. Father Lopez shouldn’t be an issue.” was quite impressed with this young man’s “It’s about making things easy; it’s about diligence. The young man immediately getting the message out there as much as writes down when he has judged someone possible,” Father Vasquez said.

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Two pages at top are from the Pope app and the bottom one is from Year of Faith app. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

Henneks stand their ground with postal service and win “heart” for Corpus Christi By Rebecca Esparza

Correspondent

casual conversation with a friend at Villa Maria community not only intrigued Jerome and Audrey Hennek, it also inspired the couple to take action, as their intrigue soon sparked outrage. At issue was the United States Postal Service’s abbreviation of Corpus Christi as CRP. The abbreviation sounded too much like human waste. Their friend pointed out she thought the abbreviation was disrespectful for a name with such a dignified and spiritual meaning as the “Body of Christ.” “The more we reflected and prayed about it, the more we became angry that an abbreviation used to describe human waste, CRP, was also being used to designate Corpus Christi’s location for the postal service,” said Jerome Hennek, a resident at Mount Carmel Assisted Living along with his wife Audrey. “We were not going to just sit idly by and let this continue, so we set out to have it changed,” he said. “This was an insult to Christians everywhere.” w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

The Henneks, who marked 63 years of marriage last year with a special wedding anniversary Mass celebrated by Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey, moved to Corpus Christi four years ago from the Rio Grande Valley. Their letter-writing campaign began with correspondence to U. S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz in late January of this year. It only took a few weeks to receive responses from both senators, each expressing concern for the couple’s outrage at the usage of CRP as the postal abbreviation for Corpus Christi. Audrey and Jerome Henneck took on the postal service on behalf of the “Body of Christ.” Rebecca Esparza for the South Texas Catholic

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By March, the couple received a letter from Senator Cornyn’s office that the postal service had agreed to make the change, as per the Henneks’ request. The change would be reflected on the postal service’s Web site by mid-March and in mailer software by April. Direct mail pieces and the postal service Web site now reflect the new official postal designation for Corpus Christi is COR, which in Latin means “heart.” All thanks to the Henneks who still believe in the power of prayer to promote change for the better. “All three of our sons served in the military and one is now buried in Riverside National Cemetery, as a result of his wounds in the war. It was about time we showed respect to our Christian heroes by changing this abbreviation and we couldn’t be happier this change was made,” Jerome Hennek said. The Henneks received a congratulatory call from Corpus Christi Mayor Nelda Martinez about their work to change the abbreviation. “Mayor Martinez called to thank us for making a difference and it meant a lot that she took the time to contact us,” Audrey Hennek said. “We were thrilled.” “We care about our identity. We are very blessed to have a name so beautiful as Corpus Christi—the Body of Christ,” Mayor Martinez said. “We appreciate them for taking the

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initiative. Great example for others to follow.” The couple, who are both 83 and first met when they were eight-years-old at a swimming pool in St. Cloud, Minn., has done decades of missionary work and dedicated their entire lives to helping the less fortunate. They estimate distributing more than $7 million worth of merchandise via their vast Catholic-based charitable work. However, they feel strongly their work helping others is not done. Indeed, they are facing a new challenge with trying to get the Federal Aviation Administration to change the initials for Corpus Christi International Airport, which also is the negative sounding CRP. “It’s a condemnation,” Jerome Henneck said, upon hearing that the FAA uses the same distasteful acronym. “They should absolutely conform with the USPS. Having this designation for our airport is a crime and a sin to Christians everywhere. I’ll get started right away to change this abbreviation with the FAA, starting with our elected officials. It’s not going to be easy, but I’ve got plenty of time.” He said their experience proves people can move mountains when the Holy Spirit backs them up. “Never underestimate the power one person has to make a difference,” he said.

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NEWS BRIEFS

For the good of the people of God in the Diocese of Corpus Christi, effective Aug. 23, Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey has appointed Father Gerry Sheehan, SOLT as administrator of St.

John Nepomucene in Robstown for a one-year term. The bishop also assigned Deacon Armando Cavada as Parochial Deacon of St. John of the Cross in Orange Grove.

In Memoriam:

Sister Consuelo Ramirez, MDPVM Feb. 9, 1939 – Sept. 12, 2013 Sister Consuelo Ramírez, MDPVM passed away in Corpus Christi on Sept. 12 at the age of 74. She was a lifetime member of St. Martin Catholic Church in Kingsville where she served as a religious of the Missionary Daughters of the Most Pure Virgin Mary for 59 years. She was born on Feb. 9, 1939 to Candelario and Dolores Ramírez in Kingsville.

She served as Sister Superior and school principal for the parish communities of St. Martin in Kingsville, St. Anthony in Robstown, St. Joseph in Sunnyside, Washington and St. Joseph in Wenatchee, Washington. Her sister, Eva Ramírez, preceded her in death. Survivors include four brothers, Candelario (Irma) Ramírez, Jr. of Kingsville; Gaspar (Yolanda) Ramírez of Kingsville; Jesús (Gloria) Ramírez of Kingsville; and José (Irene) Ramírez of Corpus Christi; and numerous nieces and nephews. Sister Olga was laid to rest at Rose Hill Memorial Park in Corpus Christi.

Sisters of Incarnate Word bless new Motherhouse On Sunday, Sept. 8, sisters, priests, associates and other friends participated in a New Motherhouse Construction Blessing at Incarnate Word Convent located at 2930 South Alameda in Corpus Christi. Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey was main celebrant and homilist at the Mass. Concelebrants with the bishop were Msgr. Thomas Feeney, Msgr. Seamus McGowan, Msgr. Richard Shirley and

Msgr. Roger Smith. The blessing ceremony, enhanced by candlelight when a storm caused the lights to go out, took place at the conclusion of the Mass. For the cornerstone and groundbreaking ceremony, the ground

Sister Mary Ann Korczynski, from left, holds a flashlight and soil from one of the former Convent sites as Sisters Lou Ella Hickman, Mary Louise Mount, Elizabeth Close and Mary Paul Hon approach to add their shovel of soil to the mix with the soil from Lipes, where the new Motherhouse will be built. Contributed Photo w ww ww.Sout w.SouthTexasC hTexasCat athol holic ic.com .com

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was brought into the Chapel for the blessing. To symbolize consecration to Jesus, the Incarnate Word, of the past, present and future, soil from the sites of previous and present convents in Brownsville and Corpus Christi was added to a larger container of soil from the new construction site at 5201

Lipes Boulevard. To conclude the ceremony, Bishop Mulvey added soil from the Holy Land, and he and Sister Kuntscher, IWBS Superior General mixed all the soil in the central container, which was then blessed by Bishop Mulvey.

Attorney General Greg Abbot will speak at annual Red Mass for legal profession at Cathedral Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey will celebrate three special Masses in October for those who work in the legal, public safety and health related fields. The Annual Judicial Red Mass will be held at Corpus Christi Cathedral on Oct. 3, beginning at 6 p.m. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott will serve as keynote speaker. The Red Mass is the prayerful action calling upon the supreme lawgiver, God, for His blessings for the administration of justice and for those whose duty is to teach, judge and resolve legal matters. The event is for judges, lawyers, public officials and anyone with concern for justice. A Blue Mass, for those employed in the public safety field, will be held at Sacred Heart Parish in Mathis, on Saturday, Oct. 5, beginning at 6 p.m. A BBQ dinner and award ceremony will

follow the Blue Mass in the parish hall. The church is located at 217 West San Patricio Avenue. The Blue Mass honors St. Michael the Archangel, Patron Saint of law enforcement officers, correctional officers, emergency 911 dispatchers, emergency medical services personnel and firefighters. It also remembers those who have lost their lives in the line of duty and bring us together to pray for those who are employed in the public safety field and protect the safety of communities. A White Mass, honoring health care professionals, will be held at the CHRISTUS Spohn Shoreline Hospital Chapel on Oct. 17 at 6:30 p.m. The Mass is associated with St. Luke, the patron of physicians and surgeons. Mass will be followed by a presentation by Dr. Yvonne Hinojosa and a meal.

Our Lady of the Rosary hosts Rosary Fest 2013 Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, located at 1123 Main Drive in Corpus Christi, will host a Rosary Fest on Tuesday, Oct. 7. Participants will join in praying rosaries all day in groups and at a Mass at 6 p.m. The Rosary Fest will begin at 6 a.m. with the praying of rosaries by various groups and continues until 6 p.m. Rosaries will be offered for various needs of the church, including for: conversion of sinners, vocations, priests and religious, special intentions, world peace and harmony, souls in purgatory and personal intentions. The parish is asking different organizations to volunteer 30

minutes of rosary prayer for 11 hours. On the eleventh hour—at 6 p.m.—Mass will be celebrated, followed by a reception and fellowship. To participate in Rosary Fest 2013 call Juanita Escobar at (361) 241-6185 or Olga Gomez at (361) 851-1112 to schedule time preference. Prayer requests should be sent to the parish so that they may be placed at the feet of Our Lady of the Rosary. For more information please contact Father Gabriel P. Coelho, Pastor, at (361) 241-2004 or (361) 242-9571 or via email at ourladyoftherosary@stx.rr.com.

Mass for peace for Syria and the Middle East Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey celebrated the Vigil Mass at the Corpus Christi Cathedral on Saturday, Sept. 7, in communion with Pope Francis who called the universal church to commit to prayer and fasting on the vigil of the birth of the blessed Virgin Mother for peace in Syria and the Middle East. During his homily, the bishop read a letter that he had asked be read at Vigil and Sunday Masses throughout the diocese. In his letter he called the faithful to “join with the whole

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church through prayer and fasting to be peacemakers so that our world and the world that we leave to future generations will be a world ruled by peace.” After Mass, Bishop Mulvey gave a summary of the Holy Father’s homily earlier that day at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in which the pope called for an end to war and violence. The bishop also led the congregation in praying the rosary and in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

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Calendar of Events:

Oct. 12: Day of Prayer at St. Gertrude in Kingsville Oct. 17-20: Men’s Silent Retreat Oct. 26: Day of Prayer at Our Lady of Corpus Christi Nov. 1-3: World Wide Marriage Encounter Nov. 9: Day of Prayer at Sacred Heart in Rockport Nov. 14-17: Women’s Silent Retreat Dec. 7: Day of Prayer at the Cathedral in Corpus Christi Dec. 7-8: Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary retreat For more information and to register for the silent retreats, please visit www.deepprayer.org or Email: olccretreatcenter@gmail.com “Come and See” Jesus in our beautiful Perpetual Adoration Chapel!

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Bookstore: Ext. 309 Retreats: Ext. 321

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Ongoing Events: Every Tuesday from 7-8 p.m. Miraculous Medal Novena Holy Hour Every Friday from 7-8 p.m. Charismatic Renewal Mass and Healing Service Every 1st Sunday of the month at 4 p.m. St. Peregrine Healing Mass www.ourladyofcc.org AND “Like” us on facebook @ “Our Lady of Corpus Christi and Cafe Veritas”

OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Our Lady of the Rosary School will celebrate namesake

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CATHOLIC EDUCATION By Valerie Cancino Correspondent

ctober is the month of the rosary and Sister Begoña Divina Gracia, OP, principal at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School at St. Paul the Apostle parish, said that the school would most certainly do its part to commemorate the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary on Oct. 7. Few people know the history of the rosary better than the Religious Missionaries of St. Dominic that are in charge of Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School. The school’s name was chosen in part for the devotion of the sisters to the rosary but also as a token of gratitude to the order’s founder St. Dominic who propagated the teaching and devotion to the rosary. On June 7, 1991 Bishop René Gracida conceived a plan to create a place where parents could bring their children when they went off to work; a place where not only the children but also the parents could grow in the grace and love of the Lord. The learning center was intended to provide a great sense of joy for the community as well as the parish of St. Paul the Apostle. On June 12 of the same year the center was made possible by the work of the Kennedy Memorial Foundation. Soon after the construction was completed, parents voiced their desires for something more than just a daily drop off for their children. They wanted Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic a school and so School students learn about the rothis caused the sary. They are, from left, first grader sisters to rethink Savanna Coon and pre-k’s Madeline their decision of McPeak, Logan Miller, Jourdan Olaes simply hosting a and Paolo Vidal are pictured in front learning center. of the statue of the blessed mother. They began to Valerie Cancino for South Texas Catholic

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convert the center in to a private school. What started off as Our Lady of the Rosary Learning Center turned into Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School on March 12, 2009. The school opened with grades K2 through first and later second grade was added with the hope that the children would have the opportunity to be prepared to make their first Communion. Sister Begoña has been with the school since 2012 and loves interacting with the children who attend. She enjoys nothing more than sharing her stories of the rosary with these children as well as the history of the school with visitors. The school works alongside the parish of St. Paul the Apostle in serving the greater community. The sisters teach at the school and also devote some of their time to teaching Sunday school, serving as Eucharistic ministers during Mass and providing childcare for the parents who attend Mass. The children of Our Lady of the Rosary School also attend Mass every Friday. In this way, the Dominican Sisters live out their charism, “Contemplate and share with others what you have contemplated.” The sisters seek out every opportunity to teach and nurture the children who come their way and so childcare at Mass is more than just being mindful of those children. The sisters take the time to teach the children their prayers or inspire them to learn new hymns. It is because of their charism that they are certain to take advantage of every moment they have with the children. This is their mission in serving God, Sister Begoña said. The school also serves the parish by assisting with parish events. When it comes to parish raffles or fund-raisers, Father Peter Martinez, pastor of St. Paul the Apostle, does not hesitate to call upon the help of the parents at the school. From selling raffle tickets to sending out flyers, the school does its part to assist. The school also gets assistance from the parish in getting out the news during their enrollment period. It goes without saying that the parish and the school work hand-in-hand. Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School will celebrate the month of the rosary with what they call “Spirit Day;” a day full of activities in which the children will participate in, not only the praying of the rosary but spreading its practice to others. The children as well as their parents will receive rosaries so they can share the sisters’ charism with others.

OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Help Us Prevent Financial Abuse The Diocese of Corpus Christi at the recommendation of the Diocesan Financial Council and Presbyteral Council have furthered their commitment to good stewardship and nancial accountability on behalf of generous donors by instituting a nancial abuse hotline. The Diocese of Corpus Christi has selected an independent third party, The Network, to provide you with a new way to anonymously and condently report nancial abuse and fraud. Employees, parishioners, volunteers, vendors and other interested parties will be encouraged to report concerns they have regarding nancial misconduct within the Diocese of Corpus Christi. All inquiries will be treated promptly and discreetly. Callers will have the right to remain anonymous. Call 1-877-571-9748

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855-842-8001 Carmela A. Dupuis Executive Director

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VIDA CATÓLICA

Misión de las elaboradoras de rosarios de San Philip

Por Luisa Scolari Corresponsal

Grupo de jóvenes trabajan haciendo rosarios en la parroquia San Philip el Apóstol; incluyendo Cristina Gaxiola, Sarahí Vallejo, y primas Andrea, Nathalia, Verónica, Mary y María Viviana Fernández. Luisa Scolari, para South Texas Catholic

n la parroquia de San Philip el Apóstol en Corpus Christi, cada tercer jueves de el mes se reúne un grupo de personas para elaborar rosarios que posteriormente serán distribuidos por todo el mundo en donde sean requeridos. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

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El grupo, coordinado por su presipor todo el mundo, a través de la difudenta la señora Aurelia Irene Mota y la sión de el rezo del rosario. Al rezar el guía espiritual de el pastor Padre John rosario, además de recibir gracias y Xaviour Amepparambil, tiene como bendiciones, al hacerle una petición objetivo fomentar y difundir el rezo a la Virgen, ella actúa como intercedel rosario como tantas veces nos lo sora nuestra ante Dios nuestro Señor, ha pedido la Santísima Virgen, nuesa quien se le hace difícil negarle algo tra madre del cielo en sus diferentes a su madre, siempre y cuando no comapariciones. prometa nuestra salvación. Nos comenta la señora Mota, “Hace Los rosarios elaborados por este tres años, cuando empecé a asistir a grupo son gratuitos y se empacan y la iglesia de San Philip, durante mi envían por todo el mundo a donde primer misa me tocó presenciar una sean solicitados. Localmente, se iglesia llena de gente y entusiasmo reparten para ser rezados frente a la del grupo de retiros ACTS. Estaban clínica donde se practican abortos, en Sra. Mota coordina las fabricantes de rocantando con tanto ánimo que le dije las cárceles y prisiones, en los convensarios. a mi esposo, me gustaría pertenecer a tos, en las iglesias para la adoración en Luisa Scolari, para South Texas Catholic este grupo.” las capillas, en los centros de asistenCuando anunciaron que el RCIA inicia para personas mayores y en donde ciaría clases para refrescar cursos de los sacramentos, Mota sean solicitados. También elaboran unos rosarios con un mateatendió y aprendió más de la religión y firmo los papeles para rial especial para ser distribuidos entre las tropas militares. pertenecer al ACTS. Cuando regreso de el retiro estaba llena Mota nos comentó que, “A mi me inculcó el rezo de el rosade entusiasmo, motivada a seguir aprendiendo mas. Leyendo rio mi mamá, que siempre rezaba el rosario a Nuestra Señora sobre los beneficios e indulgencias que recibes cuando rezas de San Juan de los Lagos con gran devoción y me decía, ‘si el Rosario, se dio cuenta que esto era una manera de recibir pides con fe, te lo concede’. Ahora ya de grande y retirada, la salvación. tengo el tiempo para pasar en oración venerando a nuestra Al pertenecer al RCIA, Mota tenía que hacer un servicio madre de el cielo. Cada rosario que rezamos es como entregar comunitario y ahí es donde aprendió a hacer rosarios y pensó, una rosa a la Virgen, que ella entregará a Dios nuestro Señor.” “si estoy inspirada a hacer esto, por que no extender mi inspiEl grupo recibe muchas tarjetas agradeciendo y comentando ración a mis hermanas y hermanos en Cristo, y fue entonces en donde distribuyeron los rosarios y en ocasiones envían cuando el Espíritu Santo me inspiró a dirigir el grupo y repartir aportaciones para ayudar al grupo a comprar más materiales. mi fe y mi alegría de esparcir la palabra de Dios, lo que me Mota aprovecha para invitar, si hay otros grupos de elaha dado mucha paz y tranquilidad.” boradores de rosarios en otras parroquias, a que vengan a El grupo se inició hace dos años con 20 miembros y actualpasar una tarde con el grupo de San Philip para compartir mente son cerca de 30. Están muy agradecidos con el Padre experiencias. El grupo se reúne el cuarto jueves de cada mes Hanh Van Pham, ex pastor de la parroquia, ya que confió en de 3:30 a 8:30 p.m. el grupo y aceptó la organización como un ministerio de la Si alguien necesita o sabe en donde necesitan rosarios o iglesia, aprobó el uso de el centro juvenil donde el grupo se desean hacer un donativo para compra de materiales, pueden reúne para elaborar los rosarios y les compró los materiales comunicarse con la señora Mota al teléfono (361) 779-6200. que necesitaban. “La congregación de feligreses que asisten a la iglesia de San Philip son muy unidos y nos apoyan cuando hacemos nuesSi desea leer nuestros artículos escritos tras ventas de pasteles para conseguir fondos para la compra en Inglés en español, visite nuestro sitio de más materiales y aprovechamos para dar la bienvenida al web southtexascatholic.com y utilice el Padre John Xaviour Amepparambil, que recién ha llegado traductor de idiomas Google. a la Parroquia y nos ha brindado todo su apoyo también,” Mota dijo. El propósito de esta organización es llevar la palabra de Dios

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Diácono Armando Cavada dirige el rosario en un funeral. Luisa Scolari, para South Texas Catholic

La importancia de rezar el Rosario en funerales

Por Luisa Scolari Corresponsal

notando a San Ambrosio, dijo el Papa Benedicto XVI en su encíclica Spe Salvi, “No debemos deplorar la muerte, ya que es causa de salvación.”

La intención de rezar el rosario en un funeral, es porque acudimos a María en su papel de intercesora para solicitar el descanso eterno de el alma de el difunto y ayudarla a elevarse al cielo. Es una manera de ofrecer sufragio por el alma de el difunto. El Beato Juan Pablo II, en su carta apostólica “Rosarium Virginis Mariae,” nos explica que “…la especial relación con Cristo…hace de María la Madre de Dios, la Theotòkos, deriva, además, la fuerza de la súplica con la que nos dirigimos a Ella w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

en la segunda parte de la oración, confiando a su materna intercesión nuestra vida y la hora de nuestra muerte.” “El Rosario, a través de sus misterios, vivifica los temas de las Sagradas Escrituras, que son palabra de Dios,” el Diácono Armando Cavada dijo recientemente, después de rezar el rosario en el funeral de la señora Laura Elena Sobrado que falleció el 22 de agosto. El rosario se celebró en la capilla de Seaside Funeral Home.

OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

“Cada misterio tiene un tema y son tan abundantes, que nunca puede acabarse el contenido del misterio, cada vez surgen nuevas ideas,” Cavada dijo. “Yo lo que quiero que suceda en los rosarios, es que la gente medite el contenido de los misterios de el rosario, que los familiares y amigos eleven sus corazones y los integren en su camino por la vida cotidiana para santificarse. Y Dios nuestro Señor, siempre está aquí con nosotros, para acompañarnos, teniendo la certeza de que todos moriremos algún día y realmente de la manera en que vivimos esta vida terrenal, es como viviremos nuestra vida eternal. Y si vivimos una vida recta como El nos lo pide tendremos paz y alegría. Y si tenemos paz, lo tenemos a El.” El Diácono Cavada, refleja en su experiencia rezando el rosario en los funerales en donde lo invitan a participar. “Más allá del rezo del rosario, lo que más me gusta es la oportunidad que esto me ofrece para hablar con los familiares y amigos del difunto acerca de la resurrección. De como Cristo ya vino al mundo y El es la resurrección misma, el alfa y omega, el principio y el fin.” El Diácono Cavada dice que le gusta hablar acerca de el tema de el perdón y la falta de remordimiento, ya que algo “que nos

impide tener una buena relación con Dios es el rencor, que es la falta de perdón y la falta de remordimiento.” Cavada, quien actualmente cuenta ya con 20 años de haberse ordenado diácono, comento que él se inició rezando rosarios muy joven, antes de hacerse diácono. Tocaba la guitarra en un grupo, y cuando fallecía algún familiar iban a tocar en el funeral y la gente que los veía comenzó a llamarles pidiendo que tocaran en el funeral de algún familiar. El Diácono Cavada comenta que en 1966, el Papa Paulo VI, habla de la resurrección y el nacimiento a la vida eterna. “Debemos dejar que el Señor nos toque el corazón y entre a nuestra vida para transformarla y llenarla de paz. El evangelio nos dice ‘Yo soy la resurrección y la vida, el que vive en mi y yo en él, vivirá eternamente’,” Cavada dijo. Regresando a San Ambrosio, el Papa Benedicto XVI nos acuerda que “En efecto, la vida del hombre, condenada por culpa del pecado a un duro trabajo y a un sufrimiento intolerable, comenzó a ser digna de lástima: era necesario dar un fin a estos males, de modo que la muerte restituyera lo que la vida había perdido. La inmortalidad, en efecto, es más una carga que un bien, si no entra en juego la gracia.”

Ayudenos a Prevenir el Abuso Financiero La Diócesis de Corpus Christi por medio de la recomendación del Concilio Diocesano de Finanzas y el Concilio Presbiteral han llevado su dedicación mas allá para la buena administración y responsabilidad nanciera en nombre de donantes generosos al instituir un “hotline” para reportar el abuso nanciero. La Diócesis de Corpus Christi ha seleccionado un tercer partido independiente, La Red, para proporcionarle a usted con una manera para reportar anónima y condencialmente el abuso nanciero e fraude. Los empleados, los parroquianos, los voluntarios, los vendedores, y otros partidos interesados estan impulsados para reportar las preocupaciones que tengan respeto a la conducta de påca ética nanciera dentro de la Diócese de Corpus Christi. Todas las investigaciones serán tradas inmediatamente y discretamente. Personas que llamen tienen el derecho de mantenerse anónimas.

Llamada 1-877-571-9748

Alcance a las víctimas y sobrevivientes de abuso sexual por el clero y / o personal de la iglesia Obispo Wm. Michael Mulvey y el personal de la Diócesis de Corpus Christi se ha comprometido a ayudar en el proceso de curación de las víctimas y sobrevivientes de abuso sexual. Si usted o alguien que usted conoce está en la necesidad de dichos servicios, por favor llame a Stephanie Bonilla ante la Ocina de Protección de Niños y Jóvenes, (361) 693-6686 (ocina), (361) 658-8652 (celular).

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St. Theresa’s Catholic Church

Spookfest 2013

goodness . . . h save O the d ! e t ate and don’t be la presents

Brisket & S served wit ausage plates hP Beans, De otato Salad, sser Plates are t & Drink. Serving 1 $8 each 1 a.m. - 2 p.m. (Take-O ut Availab le)

Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Country Store • Live & Silent Auction • Costume Contest Coloring Contest • Craft Vendors • Food & Game Booths

1212 Lantana Street

For information regarding craft vendors contact jannell@popcorn etc: (361) 851-0372 For all other questions contact St. Theresa Church: (361) 289-2759

Your Invited St. Paul’s Barbecue / Arts & Crafts Show 2233 Waldron Road in Corpus Christi Sunday, October 6, 2013 Bring and e your fam from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. ily njoy AN th , gers r u b Ham tdogs Ho ames ies! G idd and r the k le fo

ilab ava

Purchase a barbecue plate, drink and dessert from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. at St. Paul, the Apostle Church Hall.

e day Dag r e a t alon g wit meal, h ente rtain LIVE men t!

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St. Paul’s Arts & Crafts Show with over 40+ vendors to choose from!

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OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Vows&promises:

The difference between diocesan and religious priests By Father Joseph Lopez, JCL Contributor

id you know there are two kinds of priests? There are diocesan priests and religious priests, and it is important to know the differences between them when we interact with young men discerning the priesthood. In many ways all Catholic priests are the same. Each priest has gone through years of education and preparation at a seminary before his ordination. All priests are ordained to preach the Gospel and serve God’s people in the person of Christ–that is, standing in for Christ. Most importantly, they administer the sacraments of the church to the faithful and help them get to heaven. The differences between a diocesan priest and a priest from a religious order are distinguished by contrasting the vows made by religious priests and the promises made by diocesan priests. A diocesan priest will make three promises to the church standing before his bishop. He promises to pray daily the Liturgy of the Hours, which include passages from the psalms and Scripture. This is to keep him very close to God. Secondly, the diocesan priest promises to obey and be loyal to his bishop. His bishop guides the priest and the priest ministers where the bishop asks him to serve. He does not represent the church differently than his

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bishop would. Thirdly, the priest promises to live a celibate life so that he can completely give his own life to Christ, the church–the people whom he has been called to serve. God gives him special graces to live this calling. The diocesan priest lives and works in a certain geographical area called a diocese. Most often, a diocesan priest is assigned to a parish by the bishop, and he lives and works in that area. He does not make a promise of poverty, and usually owns a car and other possessions in order to fulfill his duties and live independently. His main work is preaching the Gospel, offering Mass, anointing the sick and dying, baptizing, celebrating marriages, burying the dead and consoling those who need his help. He is focused on the needs of those in his parish. In contrast, a religious priest makes three solemn vows even before he is ordained. He vows poverty. He owns nothing or very little, and shares things in common with others in his community–such as a place to live and a car. He vows obedience to

TE X A S C ATHOLIC | OCTOBER 2013

his religious superior who may ask him to minister far away or have a particular role in the community. Finally, the religious priest vows chastity, which, like the diocesan priest, means he will not get married. These three vows–poverty, chastity and obedience–are called the “evangelical counsels.” Interestingly, the Catechism teaches that every Christian is called to live the counsels to some degree, though religious priests live them in a “more intimate” way. (CCC #916) The religious priest chooses a religious community based on its lifestyle or charism and mission. Some communities live very austerely while others do not. Some have missions with the elderly, youth or the poor. Some serve as teachers in schools or evangelists in other countries. Some are contemplatives or silent. Most often they live in community with each other instead of among people in a parish. Is one “better” or “holier” than another? Absolutely not. The right vocation for a particular man is simply a matter of where God is calling him to serve. As the vocation director, one of my duties is to help guide men as they discern what God is calling him to do. Feel free to refer a man with questions to me in order to help him. Thank you for your assistance in promoting vocations in our diocese. Our Lord has provided plenty of work in His vineyard.

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VOCATIONS

Sister Mary Anne Pagano, IWBS

had varied experience before entering religious life By Sister Julianne Kuntscher, IWBS Contributor

ister Mary Anne Pagano observed her 25th anniversary in religious life on Jan. 23, 1988 when she made her first profession of vows. On Oct. 17, 1992 she made her perpetual profession of vows. Baptized Mary Anne, Sister Mary Anne was born Jan. 24, 1948 in Corpus Christi to Vincent Richard Pagano and Henrietta Roddy Pagano Newbury. Sister Mary Anne received her elementary education at Cathedral and St. Patrick schools. She graduated from Incarnate Word Academy in Corpus Christi, and after serving in various capacities, she entered the Congregation of Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament on Feb. 11, 1986. In August of that same year, she began her year of novitiate. Sister Mary Anne believes that a Cursillo experience helped her respond to her call to religious life. She admits that the call to religious life surfaced on and off for many years, until she finally considered the possibility of responding positively to that call. “I felt something missing in my life. I had everything I wanted, but deep down I was not satisfied,” she said. “Having w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

entered the convent, I found that serving and loving Christ was most fulfilling.” She met with the vocation director, spent a day in recollection and prayer, and obtained an application for entry into the Incarnate Word Congregation. Her decision to enter the convent brought her and her family much happiness. Church music ministry and service began for Sister Mary Anne when she became organist at St. Pius X Parish in 1963, at which time liturgy was celebrated at the Knights of Columbus Hall. Later she served as organist at the Naval Air Station’s Our Lady of Loreto Catholic Chapel in Corpus Christi. During this time she trained as a medical transcriptionist at Spohn Hospital. In 1969, she moved to Houston and held the position of organist for St. Anne’s Parish. She worked for M. D. Anderson, Methodist and Twelve Oaks hospitals while she resided in Houston. Other areas in which she served before

entering religious life were with Bexar County Hospital, at Lackland AFB and St. Vincent de Paul Parish in San Antonio. She also served with the Small Business Administration in Corpus Christi, St. Paul the Apostle parish, Memorial Medical Center, Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, Corpus Christi Cathedral and Christ the King parishes, and finally back to St. Pius X Church as organist. Sister Mary Anne has been a member of the “American Guild of Organists” and of the “Sparkling City Chapter of Sweet Adelines” of which her mother was a longtime member. She has taught religious education at Holy Cross Parish in Corpus Christi, and plays the organ at weddings and Sunday liturgies at various parishes. Sister Mary Anne also directed the children’s choir at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Parish. She has served as motherhouse receptionist, driver and organist for convent and school. She has served on various committees of the congregation and as a delegate to the General Chapter. Her hobbies include needlepoint, oil painting, cross stitching, music and playing the accordion, guitar and piano.

OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Outreach to victims and survivors of sexual abuse by clergy and/or church personnel EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS

Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey and the staff of the Diocese of Corpus Christi are committed to assisting in the healing process for victims and survivors of abuse. If you or someone you know is in need of such services, please call Stephanie Bonilla at the Office for Child and Youth Protection, (361) 693-6686 (office) or (361) 6588652 (cell) for immediate assistance.

Ss. Cyril y & Methodius

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Mount Carmel Home Religious Gift Shop at Ss. Cyril & Methodius Church All New Merchandise • A.C.T.S. • Silver Jewelry 3210 S.P.I.D. 10 - 5 P.M. MON. - FRI. & 8:30 - 2 P.M. SUN.

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Dine-In & Plates to Go Bar-B-Que Dinner & Trimmings Serving 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Donation $8.00 per plate For information call the parish office @

(361) 387-4434 All proceeds will be used for Church Repairs: Country Store, Children’s Games, White Elephant Booth Live Auction at 1 p.m., Drawing for Gift Certificate Vintage Farm Machinery and Visit Our Historic Church/Museum Built in 1910

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OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Holy Cross kicks off yearlong centennial celebration By Alfredo E. Cardenas

South Texas Catholic

San Martín de Porres, the patron saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony, stands in a prominent space in the sanctuary at Holy Cross Parish. Alfredo E. Cardenas, South Texas Catholic

26 SOUTH

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hen you have saint in your DNA, it is something to celebrate.

PARISH LIFE with those less fortunate. In 1891, she founded a religious order called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and “Colored” People. She used her wealth and her order to spread God’s word among America’s less fortunate. On March 9, 1915 Sister Katherine—through the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament—donated $1,000 “to aid in the erection of a church to be used for education of Mexican,

Parishioners at Holy Cross Parish in Corpus Christi kicked off a yearlong celebration to commemorate their upcoming centennial and St. Katherine Drexel will play an important role as she did 100 years ago when the parish got its start. In 1914, the new Diocese of Corpus Christi’s first bishop began to look for ways to serve the city’s black population. Following the lead of U.S. bishops who—after Emancipation—had decreed in 1869 that the church provide missions and schools for all black Americans in their dioceses, Bishop Paul Nussbaum, CP saw education as a critical need in the black community. Bishop Nussbaum believed that a school to serve the area’s children would be a good way to get the community to come to the church. He exchanged several letters in 1914 with an individual from South Dakota who expressed interest in the project, but nothing came of this exchange. Bishop Nussbaum appealed to the Saint Marsha Hardeman leads the choir at Holy Cross Church, including, from left, Joseph Society of the Sacred Heart, widely Gloria Hamilton and Elizabeth Vesely. known as the Josephites, to come to Corpus Alfredo E. Cardenas, South Texas Catholic Christi. In 1871, the Josephites had formed a mission society devoted to serving the “freedmen.” Indians or colored people” in Corpus Christi. In early DecemA Josephite, Father S. J. Kelly, SSJ, came to Corpus Christ ber 1916—while on tour of the south—she visited Corpus and began making contact in the black community. UnforChristi. The following January, she donated $5,000 to build a tunately, his order reassigned him to New Orleans where a “two-story building with church on first floor and second floor much larger parish needed his services. for school.” Finally, on April 12, 1917 she donated $2,500 to Father Mark Moeslein, CP, a Passionist priest like the build a residence for sisters. bishop, volunteered to help his brother Passionist with this Sister Katherine’s generosity made Bishop Nussbaum’s missionary work. His efforts soon bore fruit. On Aug. 12, dream a reality. On Sept. 20, 1917 Bishop Nussbaum blessed a 1915, Maria Josephina Little and her parents Willis John and new two-story structure at the intersection of Black and Lobo Maria Hattie Little were baptized at St. Patrick’s Cathedral that was to serve as Holy Cross Church and School. The chapel and entered into the Sacramental records of Holy Cross. was on the first floor and school on second floor. The campus The community had begun to respond, but Holy Cross still also included a rectory and a convent for the Ursuline Sisters did not have a church to call home and Mass was celebrated from Laredo who were to serve as teachers. at people’s homes. Enter Sister Katherine Drexel, SBS. Several religious orders, in addition to the Sisters of the Sister Katherine was heiress to a banking fortune and had Blessed Sacrament, contributed to the project. These included been taught by her parents from a very young age to share the Good Shepherd Sisters, Franciscan Sisters, Passionist

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OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Bishop Mulvey visits with parishioners at Holy Cross, from left, Andrew Duarte, Cora Houston, Luis Guerra and Deacon David Hanson. Alfredo E. Cardenas, South Texas Catholic

nuns, Sisters of St. Joseph, the Notre Dame Tabernacle Society, Passionist fathers and five Passionist parishes in the east coast. While Sister Katherine’s generosity served as the catalyst for the project, it was the Passionists who provided sustenance over the early years. Beginning with Bishop Nussbaum, Father Moeslein and Father Fidelis Stone, CP they provided the day-to-day presence to keep the parish growing. For 10 years, Father Moeslein built up

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the parish by “walking from house to house seeking souls.” In addition to their labor, the Passionists contributed more than $13,000 to the development of Holy Cross. Other generous donors included the Indian & Negro Bureau, the Catholic Education Board Among Colored People and the Diocese of Corpus Christi, itself. Holy Cross School,

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Bishop Nussbaum believed that a school to serve the area’s children would be a good way to get the community to come to the church.

which had served as the spearhead for the parish, closed in 1965. Three years later, the diocese designated the parish as a territorial parish and it no longer would serve as a national parish exclusively for the black community. Today, the parish community includes about 120 families composed of African Americans, Anglo Americans, Hispanic Americans and people of mixed race. “Everyone is welcome,” Pastor Father Eulalio P. Ibay, STD said. “Our parishes are different then what they were 100 years ago. Looking at this community; the diversity we express now, as a church, is our strength,” Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey said in his homily for the Mass opening the yearlong centennial observance. “Pray together, sing together, work together, witness to Christ together, be catechists together and never ever seal your lips. Let them be open to proclaim the love of God, the mercy of God, that God showed to us first and wants to show to every human being,” Bishop Mulvey said. The parish committee organized to oversee the centennial

Father Mark Moeslein, CP, was a Passionist priest who became the first pastor of Holy Cross Parish and served until 1925.

celebration has three public events planned. The first was the “kick off” Mass celebrated by Bishop Mulvey. They are also planning a closing Mass with the bishop. A second event is “something to showcase all pictures people have.” This will be done at the parish hall with the jazz band providing entertainment. Finally, a closing banquet is being planned off campus. The committee hopes to attract “famous alumni” from the school to attend, which may include many non-Catholics that attended Holy Cross School. A website for the centennial is being built but is not yet Online. The committee also plans to make use of social media to contact people. “The Lord has passed the torch To see more photos of this event of faith to us,” Bishop Mulvey said. “It is for us to preserve and build the faith www.SouthTexasCatholic.org/HolyCross for the next generation.”

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Photo taken of Father Moeslein, staff and students of Holy Cross Catholic School in 1925. Contributed Photo

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OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Cardinal says USCCB continues legal, moral analysis of HHS mandate

By Catholic News Service

n a Sept. 17 letter to U.S. bishops, New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops continues to study the legal and moral implications of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The USCCB also continues to “develop avenues of response that would both preserve our strong unity and protect our consciences,” he said. The letter from Cardinal Dolan, president of the USCCB, was a follow-up from the bishops’ Sept. 10-11 Administrative Committee meeting where they discussed the HHS mandate, among other topics. The HHS contraceptive mandate, part of the Affordable Care Act—also known as Obamacare, will require

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan

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most employers, including religious employers, to provide coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and some abortion-inducing drugs free of charge, even if the employer is morally opposed to such services. It includes an exemption for some religious employers that fit its criteria. The bishops’ “efforts are proceeding apace, and, as you know, include a careful legal and moral analysis of the final rule,” Cardinal Dolan wrote. He said further discussion will take place at the bishops’ fall general meeting Nov. 11-14 in Baltimore. “We are united in our resolve to continue to defend our right to live by our faith, and our duty to serve the poor, heal the sick, keep our apostolates strong and faithful, and insure our people,” he wrote. In the final HHS r ule on the mandate, an accommodation

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of religious ministries that do not fit the exemption, contraceptive coverage for those accommodated religious organizations with health insurance plans is to be provided separately through health insurance companies or thirdparty administrators who must ensure that payments for contraceptive services come from outside the objecting organization’s premiums. For self-insuring institutions, a thirdparty administrator would provide or arrange the services, paid for through reductions in federally facilitated-exchange user fees associated with their health insurance provider. The mandate does not include a conscience clause for employers who object to such coverage on moral grounds. The contraceptive mandate was initially slated to go into effect Aug. 1, but the HHS final rule issued this summer moved the date of implementation to Jan. 1. Starting Oct. 1, people can begin selecting and apply for health insurance coverage choices. In his letter to the bishops, Cardinal Dolan emphasized that the USCCB Administrative Committee was unanimous in its resolve to continue its struggle with the HHS mandate and he likewise voiced concern regarding the Catholic Health Association’s w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

“hurried acceptance of the accommodation” which he called “untimely and unhelpful.” “We highly value CHA’s great expertise in their ministry of healing,” Cardinal Dolan said, “but as they have been the first to say, they do not represent the magisterium of the church.” He said the final rule issued June 28 has “the same three basic problems” found in the original rule issued in February: a narrow definition of “religious employer” that “reduces religious freedom to the freedom of worship by dividing our community between houses of worship and ministries of service;” second-class treatment of such ministries through a “so-called ‘accommodation’;” and a “failure to offer any relief to for-profit businesses run by so many of our faithful in the pews.” He stressed that the Catholic Church has long been a leader in providing affordable health care. “The bishops on a national level have been at it for almost 100 years, and our heroic women and men religious have done so even longer.” But now, he pointed out, “instead of spending our time, energy and treasure on increasing access to health care, as we have done for many decades, we’re now forced to spend those resources on determining how to respond to recently enacted government regulations that restrict and burden our religious freedom.” Cardinal Dolan said that “while much remains uncertain,” the USCCB is continuing its efforts in Congress and in the courts particularly since the mandate “lessens the ability of our ministries to give full-throated witness to our faith, a central mission of all Catholic apostolates.” “As I’ve said before, this is a fight that we didn’t ask for, and would rather not be in, but it’s certainly one that we won’t run from,” the cardinal wrote. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

NATIONAL NEWS

Being part of ‘digital continent’ helps share God’s love, says bishop

By Catholic News Service

incoln Bishop James D. Conley told Catholics in his diocese that just as he had hoped to do after his installation last November, he has traveled around the 23,800-square-mile diocese, “spending time with you and your families, getting to know you and your communities.” He also has spent “time in prayer and fraternity among the priests, religious and families of the diocese” and the visits have confirmed what he thought when he became Lincoln’s ninth bishop —that “there is good news in the diocese…and the Lord is calling us to share it.” To that end, he has launched a new diocesan social media apostolate to especially “engage young people more actively” in the diocese and “proclaim the Gospel to those who might not hear it in a church or in their families. “We’ll start simply, by being present in the ‘digital continent’ to witness to God’s love,” Bishop Conley said in his weekly column in the Sept. 13 issue of the Southern Nebraska Register, Lincoln’s diocesan paper. “Over time, we’ll find ways to provide presentations of the Gospel in multimedia formats, and to facilitate real

dialogue, discussion and an invitation to the Christian community,” he said. “In the months and years to come, together we’ll find new ways to bring the Gospel to the ‘fringes of society,’” he added. “I am eager to discuss with the Catholics of our diocese how we can fulfill our missionary vocation. I am eager to find new ways to share the good news about what God has done for us in Lincoln.” Bishop Conley has his own Facebook page, www.facebook.com/bishopjamesconley, and as of Sept. 14 the diocese has a Facebook page and also is on To see more National News go to:

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Tumblr, http://dioceseoflincoln.tumblr. com. During World Youth Day, he said, Pope Francis told participants to “be unafraid to go and to bring Christ into every area of life, to the fringes of society, even to those who seem farthest away, most indifferent.” “We’re called, each one of us to be missionaries,” Bishop Conley said. “And we become missionaries by sharing the good news of what God has done for us—by joyfully proclaiming how the Lord has transformed our lives. How he has set us free. We become missionaries when we attest everywhere to the transforming power of Jesus Christ.” Last year Bishop Conley, who had been a Denver auxiliary bishop since 2008, succeeded Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz, who headed the Lincoln Diocese for 20 years.

Sitcom writer’s ro Church no laughi By Mark Pattison Catholic News Service

om Leopold is a very funny guy. He’s also a Catholic. He has been funny longer than he has been a Catholic. But being a Catholic doesn’t stop him from being funny. “I can’t go more than two lines without getting a laugh,” Leopold told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview

from New York. Leopold has spent the better part of his adult life writing sitcoms, including episodes of “Cheers,” “Seinfeld” and “Will and Grace.” He recently came back from England, where he did what he called some “punching up” of a batch of scripts for new episodes of “The Muppet Show.” He has written for such diverse comic talents as Bob Hope and Chevy Chase, and written with some of the most inventive minds in comedy, including Christopher

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oad to Catholic ing matter Guest and Harry Shearer. But Leopold joined the Catholic Church only last year. It took a family crisis to set him on a path toward Catholicism. “My daughter had this very serious, life-threatening eating disorder,” Leopold said. She was in treatment in Arizona, where the hospital would not release her until Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, he recalled that he and his wife went to bed. “We’re trying not to let the other one know how sad we were,” he remembered. But for Leopold, “that’s the first time I prayed.” However, since he had—by his own count, “one day of religious training” in his life, he said he prayed “like they prayed on (the old TV western) ‘Wagon Train’: ‘Lord, I’m not a prayin’ man, but if you’ll just see us through Comanche territory.’” Early Christmas morning outside his hotel, Leopold said he encountered “this 75-year-old ex-Marine (who) pulls up on this homemade motorcycle with deer antlers for handlebars. He tells me his name is Shepherd. He introduces his wife to me and tells me that she brought him to Jesus at 33—and Jesus died at 33. And the sun’s rising behind his head like a halo. And I haven’t said a word. “I thought it was the Ambien kicking in.” The cyclist’s last words before he roared off into the desert, according to Leopold, were “God is watching you.” “This is the first of many shocking kinds of coincidences that made it impossible for w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

me not to come to the church,” Leopold told CNS. But why Catholicism? “I prayed, and Jesus was the first to show up. What else am I going to do?” he replied. Many of the other shocking coincidences are detailed in Leopold’s one-man show, “A Comedy Writer Finds God,” which he wrote with some help from another sitcom veteran, Bill Persky. Leopold has performed it five times, mostly in and around the New York area, but was headed to Santa Clarita, Calif., for a one-night engagement at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church there. When he did the show at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, his home parish, he got butterflies like any performer. He said he especially worried about the reaction of Catholics who were thinking, “I didn’t vote for this guy to come into the religion.” Much to his relief, he found that “everybody responds in pretty much the same way. Everybody laughs in the same places. Everybody kinds of gets it.” Leopold was born a Jew. “I was very proud to be Jewish,” he said. “I’m still very proud. I’m Jewish with an asterisk, like Roger Maris,” who bested Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, but needed a longer season to set the mark. “That’s for the sports fans out there,” he joked. His closest friend, “Late Show With David Letterman” band leader Paul Shaffer, “threw me a ‘Tom Leopold’s Last Day as a Jew’ party at Sammy’s Romanian Restaurant” in New York the night before

Tom Leopold

Leopold was received into the church through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. “Harry Shearer came dressed as a Hasidic rabbi and tried to perform an intervention.” Among the shtick at the party, Leopold said, was this line: “’Mom, your hair looks great. Guess what, I’m going to become a Catholic.’ She didn’t hear anything after ‘Your hair looks great.’” Leopold’s not in the grind of churning out script after script of a sitcom, but he still dabbles in comedy. For TV, he’ll be writing the jokes for the Mark Twain Prize later this year, with Carol Burnett as the honoree. On radio, he teams with Father Leo Patalinghug on the weekly show “Entertaining Truth,” which airs at 1 p.m. ET Thursdays on the SiriusXM Radio’s Catholic Channel, with four repeats over the course of the week. At home, “strangely enough, I don’t watch a lot of sitcoms. Sitcoms were on at the time my kids were going to bed,” Leopold said. “I’m a news junkie. And I like reality shows. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. They did a number on my business for a few years. “But one reality show I’d like to see is ‘Celebrity Ice Road Truckers’ -- people like Ellen DeGeneres driving a big rig across the frozen tundra.”

OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Displaced Christians in Lebanon experience a life in waiting By Doreen Abi Raad Catholic News Service

he misery experienced by Mariam and husband, Ephrem, and their three young children is just one example of hundreds of thousands of Christians in the Middle East, displaced by wars in which they are not participating. The family’s place of transition is a single room in a run-down building in Beirut. It is a building full of people like them who have fled the war in Syria, all attempting to eke out an existence. A glimmer of hope momentarily appears in the eyes of Mariam’s neighbors congregating on the stairwells when a stranger accompanies Ephrem to the family’s room on the third floor. That’s likely a reflection of their dream that someday, someone can arrange to rescue them from their misery. The refugees requested that only their first names be used to protect their identities. At first, just Ephrem, Mariam and their children lived in the room. But as the situation in Syria worsened, more of Ephrem’s family fled to neighboring Lebanon. Now, seven adults and five children are crammed into the small space. Holding year-old Youssef, Mariam greets a visitor as she and her husband roll up foam mattresses still on the floor. Youssef’s siblings, Takla, 4, and Nada, 2, are sound asleep on the two single beds pushed together in the sparsely furnished room. Suitcases are piled atop the standalone closet beside a small couch. There are no toys. Before coming to Lebanon, the couple

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and their children had lived in Darya, a suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus. Ephrem’s job as a teacher at an electronics institute had been enough to support the family and for Mariam to stay at home with the children. Not long after the initial uprising against the Assad regime, their neighborhood had seen intense fighting, caught between posts for the Syrian army and the rebel group, the Free Syrian Army. “Before, we were living in a good way with Muslims. But when the Al-Nusra

Front, came in—we could recognize them by their long beards and long shirts—many of the Muslims turned fanatic,” Ephrem said, referring to the al-Qaeda linked jihadist group. When leaving the house became too risky, Ephrem quit his job. Before long, the couple saw no other alternative but to flee Syria. It was a predicament all too familiar for Mariam, who was about to become a refugee for the second time. “I never imagined that I would experience Iraq all over again. I felt the same fear,” she said. In 2007, Mariam, her parents and siblings fled to Damascus from their native Baghdad to escape the same kinds of danger. Amid the family’s misery as refugees, Mariam, then 22, soon met and fell in love with Ephram, a Syrian Christian, and they married. By 2010, the rest of Mariam’s family had

Syrian refugees cook outside tent in eastern Lebanon.

TE X A S C ATHOLIC | OCTOBER 2013

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been resettled in Canada and Holland by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Even though by that time she had her own family and was happy that her parents and siblings could begin a new life, “I felt that I was left alone,” Mariam said. The exodus of Christians from Iraq has reduced their numbers from 1 million to less than 400,000, according to the office of the Chaldean Catholic patriarchate. Amid Syria’s deteriorating situation, the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq has received more than 100,000 refugees, some 46,000 who arrived during a two-week period in September, Caritas Iraq reported. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the overall number of Syrian refugees passed the two million mark in early September. Tiny Lebanon, with its population of about 3.5 million people, has received more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees, the most of any country in the region. Before the Syrian crisis began there were already more than 50,000 Iraqi refugees living in Lebanon. When Mariam and Ephrem went to

register their family with the Refugee Agency after arriving in Lebanon in December, they learned they did not qualify because the organization already had a file on Mariam as an Iraqi refugee. Consequently, the family is eligible for a single monthly voucher of approximately $25, instead of the nearly $125 they could have received as a registered family. They said they hope to be resettled under Mariam’s case. Ephrem’s mother and single brother were the latest family members to arrive in Lebanon in July. A month earlier, Ephrem’s 30-year old niece was killed in a bombing in Damascus. “She went out only to buy bread,” Ephrem’s 78-year-old mother said. “Her body was unrecognizable. They only knew her by her shoes.” “A lot of Christian people are being killed in this war,” Ephrem said. “Why is the world closing their eyes to this?” Meanwhile, no one in Ephrem’s extended family has found work in Lebanon, and the meager funds they came with are running dry. “My children are not getting enough

VATICAN nutrition, not even enough milk. We’re not able to give them what they need,” Mariam said. “With all these pressures, it’s hard for us to show love to one another.” Maintaining hygiene is a major problem. Aside from the 12 people in their room, a single bathroom on the floor also is shared by six of their neighbors. In their building water only flows for a maximum of five hours a day, a casualty of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. Residents who can afford it typically rely on private water companies for deliveries. The family is grateful to the Syriac Catholic patriarchate for paying the refugees’ rent. Syriac Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan previously told CNS that refugees from Syria regularly come looking for help and that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find housing for them. Meanwhile, refugees continue to pour into Lebanon at a rate of about 10,000 to 12,000 a week, Father Simon Faddou said.”

Pope says focus on morality can obscure Gospel message By Francis X. Rocca

Catholic News Service

n a lengthy and wide-ranging interview with one of his Jesuit confreres, Pope Francis spoke with characteristic frankness about the perils of overemphasizing Catholic teaching on sexual and medical ethics; the reasons for his deliberate and consultative governing style; and his highest priority for the church today. The pope’s remarks appeared in an interview with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, editor of the Italian journal La Civilta Cattolica. The interview, conducted in August, w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

was the basis for a 12,000-word article published Sept. 19 in the U.S. magazine America, and simultaneously in other Jesuit publications in other languages.

According to the editor of America, Jesuit Father Matt Malone, Pope Francis personally reviewed the article and approved its publication.

OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” the pope said in the interview, noting that he had been “reprimanded” for failing to speak often about those topics. “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent,” the pope added. “The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. “Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things,” he said. “We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. “The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.” The pope reaffirmed one of his major themes: the need for mercy rather than judgment when approaching sin. “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful. It needs nearness, proximity,” he said. “The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you,” the pope said. “The confessional is not a torture chamber,” he said, “but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. “Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists—they have a static and inward-directed view of things,” Pope Francis said. “In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.” Pope Francis also spoke extensively about

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his approach to church governance. “Many think that changes and reforms can take place in a short time,” the pope said. “I believe that we always need time to lay the foundations for real, effective change. And this is the time of discernment. “Sometimes discernment instead urges us to do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later. And that is what happened to me in recent months,” he said, though without specifying the action in question. The pope described the evolution of his governing style, starting with his appointment at age 36 as superior of the Argentine province of the Jesuits. “My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,” Pope Francis said. “I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.” Later, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, he adopted another approach, meeting often with his auxiliary bishops. “I believe that consultation is very important,” the pope said, “not ceremonial consultation.” With respect to the Vatican bureaucracy, whose reform he has made a clear priority of his six-month old pontificate, Pope Francis pointed to the need to devolve more authority to local churches. Some Vatican offices “run the risk of becoming institutions of censorship,” he said. “It is amazing to see the denunciations for lack of orthodoxy that come to Rome. I think the cases should be investigated by the local bishops’ conferences, which can get valuable assistance from Rome. These cases, in fact, are much better dealt with locally. The Roman congregations are mediators; they are not middlemen or managers.” In matters of belief rather than governance, Pope Francis said that the pope and bishops share authority with the laity. “The church is the people of God on the

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journey through history,” he said. “Thinking with the church, therefore, is my way of being a part of this people. And all the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief.” The pope quickly added that “we must be very careful not to think that this ‘infallibilitas’ of all the faithful I am talking about in the light of Vatican II is a form of populism. No; it is the experience of ‘holy mother the hierarchical church,’ as St. Ignatius called it, the church as the people of God, pastors and people together.” Among the other topics the pope addressed in the interview was the challenge of finding a more visible role for women. “I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of ‘female machismo,’ because a woman has a different makeup than a man,” he said. “The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church. Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity.” Pope Francis, whose simple way of celebrating Mass has attracted criticism from traditionalist Catholics, also took up the controversial subject of liturgy. Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 decision to lift most restrictions on celebrating the Tridentine Mass “was prudent and motivated by the desire to help people who have this sensitivity,” Pope Francis said. “What is worrying, though, is the risk of the ideologization of the (old Mass), it’s exploitation.” The pope also said that the liturgical reform that followed in the wake of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council is “absolutely irreversible.” To see more Vatican News go to:

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Pope: Digital domain needs loving dialogue, not spiritual engineers By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service

elping the church get the Gospel message out to the digital world depends more on a loving passion for reaching out to others than being tech savvy or a verbal warrior, Pope Francis told Catholic communicators. “I believe that the goal is to understand how to enter into dialogue with the men and women of today in order to appreciate their desires, their doubts and their hopes,” he said. Despite the temptation that exists today, dialogue and bringing people to Christ have nothing to do with hounding others into submission in a kind of “theological brainwashing,” he said. The pope’s comments, which included a number of off-the-cuff remarks, came during a special audience with participants of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications’ plenary assembly meeting Sept. 19-21 at the Vatican. The discussions focused on the church and digital communication. In a world of rapidly changing

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methods of communication, “the issues are not principally technological,” the pope said. He said it is important “to know how to dialogue and, with discernment, to use modern technologies and social networks in such a way as to reveal a presence that listens, converses and encourages.” Some people “sometimes feel let down by a Christianity that to them appears sterile and in difficulty as it tries to communicate the depth of meaning that comes with the gift of faith,” the pope said. He emphasized that meeting Christ requires a personal encounter that cannot be forced or engineered. “We have a great temptation in the church today” to engage in “spiritual harassment, the manipulation of con-

science, a theological brainwashing,” which, in the end, he said, only leads people to an encounter with Christ in name only and not with the living person of the Lord. Meeting Christ involves the living Christ and the individual experiencing the encounter, “not what’s wanted by the ‘spiritual engineer,’ who wants to manipulate people,” the pope said. People are searching for the “precious treasure” of the Gospel, which brings light and hope to a world that often lacks meaning, direction and purpose, he said. Communicators need to portray “the face of a church, which is ‘home’ to all,” and convey the beauty of faith and joy of meeting Christ. “Thorough and adequate formation” is key, he said, because religious and lay Catholic communicators need to be able to venture into the darkness of indifference without losing their way; “to listen to (people’s) dreams without being seduced; to share their disappointments without becoming despondent; to sympathize with those whose lives are falling apart without losing our own strength and identity,” he said. In fact, “we ourselves are means of communication,” he said and “the real problem does not concern the acquisition of the latest technologies, even if these make a valid presence possible.” The pope ended his talk by asking for people’s prayers “because I have this mission, too,” of communicating Christ to the world. The digital world is in many ways very abstract, and it can be isolating and disorienting, while it has many benefits, people cannot forget that human beings are meant to be in relationship with others.

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‘A dwelling among the fl

he bishop’s house currently under renovation is one in a long line of homes that the bishops of Corpus Christi have used both as a home and office over the years. The homes of the bishops of Cor In the years of the Republic of Texas and the initial decades after statehood, the Catholic bishop residing in Galveston had responsibility for all the flock of Christ in the state and spent much of his time traveling to the far corners of a vast expanse. However, by 1874 the Catholic population of Texas had grown sufficiently to justify the erection of what were then the Diocese of San Antonio in the western section of the state and the Vicariate of Brownsville in the south portion of the state. Two cousins who had been raised together, studied in the same seminary, and been ordained for the Diocese of Mobile were appointed to assume leadership in those newly designated areas. While Bishop Anthony Pellicer settled in San Antonio to serve as shepherd to the vast central and western areas of the state, his cousin Bishop Dominic Manucy spent a brief time in Brownsville before choosing to reside further up the coast in Corpus Christi.

Msgr. Michael Howell Contributor

Bishop Manucy had several reasons for his decision. Among the factors that precipitated his move was trouble he had encountered with members of the Masonic Order in Brownsville. However, the other reason he chose to move north was the fact that there was already a large representation of the Catholic

Church in the far southern city of Brownsville. The presence of the Oblate Fathers, who restricted their missionary work primarily to the cities and ranches along the Rio Grande River, and the presence of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament who had a Motherhouse in Brownsville provided a firm foundation for the faith in the Rio Grande Valley. When Bishop Manucy moved to Corpus Christi, he was welcomed by the Catholic religious and lay leadership and given a place for his residence and office in the rectory that had been originally built to serve the pastors of the only Catholic church in Corpus Christi–St. Patrick’s, which became the first cathedral when the Diocese of Corpus Christi was established in 1912. Father John McGee built this residence sometime between 1861 and 1862, according to the memories of the early pioneers of the city. Subsequent pastors such as Father Peter Berthet and Father Pierre Claude de la St. Jean had also lived in the one and

Bishop Manucy’s home

Bishop Verdaguer’s residence in Corpus Christi.

Bishop Manucy’s residence

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HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE

lock’

rpus Christi over the years

PART 1 a half story wooden structure that had a few rooms on the bottom floor as well as a room above. Bishop Manucy wrote to the Propagation of the Faith for funds to also make further improvements to the building so that he could accommodate priests visiting from the missions. The building continued to serve the pastors of the parish as well as the bishop whenever they were not away visiting other Catholic communities in the area for Mass or on Confirmation tours. Father Claude Jaillet who served as delegated administrator of the Vicariate of Brownsville from 1884 to 1890–between the administrations of Bishop Manucy and his successor Bishop Peter Verdaguer–continued to use the home both for a residence and parish offices. It was a building whose first floor had also served the local Catholic community as a boys’ school during the pastorate of Father St. Jean. Much later–in 1912–another smaller building was added to this structure to serve as St. Joseph’s School where the Sisters

Home of Msgr. Claude Jaillet. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

of Incarnate Word taught. In 1915, this house was next to the Spanish-speaking parish (diagonally across the street from the “Catholic” block bounded by North Carancahua, Antelope, North Tancahua and Leopard). This church while located on N. Tancahua Street was originally named Our Lady of Guadalupe, then Corpus Christi, Blessed Sacrament and later Sacred Heart. In that location Bishop Manucy’s old home became a school for the children who spoke only Spanish and was staffed by Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. After that, the parish church that had served as Blessed Sacrament was moved to serve Holy Cross and the old former bishop’s house was again moved and renovated as the Carmelite Day Nursery. By 1967, the Carmelites built a new nursery in another part of town and the historic structure was razed in 1969. By that time, the old building had undergone multiple renovations and modifications, but it had served the Catholic community of Corpus Christi in some capacity for more than 100 years.

Bishop Verdaguer home On May 1, 1891 when Bishop Peter Verdaguer–who had been consecrated for the Vicariate of Brownsville–arrived and took formal possession of the Vicariate at Corpus Christi, there was no bishop’s residence other than the one that had been used by Bishop Manucy and upon the new bishop’s arrival housed the clergy and offices of old St. Patrick’s parish. Bishop Verdaguer consequently chose to reside in one of the small houses on a lot that had been purchased by Father Jaillet, the pastor of the parish. This small house was located between the residence of Father Jaillet and a home owned by Mrs. M. Campion whose family had served in the parish as well as Catholic education programs.

Bishop Verdaguer’s principal residence in Laredo.

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Father Jaillet commented that at the time of Bishop Verdaguer’s coming, “We had here only three little houses, one with two little rooms, one for the priest and another used for dining room and kitchen.” The house chosen by the bishop had the kitchen and dining room in the lower floor and a bedroom upstairs with separate access by an outside stairway. The house sat behind the Blessed Sacrament church that served the Spanish-speaking Catholics of Corpus Christi and fronted on N. Tancahua, just north of Antelope Street. Diocesan archivist Sister Mary Xavier, IWBS, recorded that Father Jaillet remembered that Bishop Verdaguer only remained there for a few months before transferring his residence to Laredo where there was a larger population and his native Spanish was needed more. Sister Xavier notes in her thesis on the history of the Diocese of Corpus Christi that Bishop Verdaguer left Corpus Christi on Aug. 31, 1892, but that whenever he returned to Corpus Christi for confirmations or a visit, he would occupy the old house. This lasted until about 1906 when Father Jaillet insisted that the bishop stay with him in a new house he had built to serve as home and offices for both the bishop and the clergy of St. Patrick’s church. Like Bishop Manucy’s residence, this house would serve the Catholic population under many different forms. Originally located on the northwest corner of Antelope and N. Tancahua, this building was a larger two-story structure with multiple rooms. As the residence and offices of the original Catholic parish of Corpus Christi, it was also used by the Catholic community for such functions as the wake of Father F. J. Goebbels who died in a rectory fire at his parish of St. Boniface (later to become Ss. Cyril and Methodius Church). The rectory built by Father Jaillet also received guests who came to pay respect to the remains of Bishop Verdaguer after his death on a confirmation tour in Mercedes. Subsequent to the arrival of Bishop Paul Nussbaum, C. P., this house was moved in June 1915 across the street to the “Catholic Church Block” so that Bishop Nussbaum could build his new residence and offices on the location formerly occupied by the residence built by Father Jaillet. In its new site this building became the hall of the now St. Patrick’s Cathedral community. It was modified and assumed the title “Charity Hall” where it hosted classes, social activities of the parishioners and special events like breakfasts for the Catholic military stationed at Camp Scurry during the period around World War I after their Communion Sundays. However, the principal residence of Bishop Verdaguer during his administration was one he built in Laredo–next to St. Augustine Church–with the help of local Catholics and funds solicited from the Propagation of the Faith in France. Bishop Verdaguer utilized St. Augustine as his “proto-cathedral.” After Bishop Verdaguer’s death, this building continued to

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house the clergy of St. Augustine and the bishops of the Diocese of Corpus Christi when they visited the Catholics of Laredo. The building was modified over the years with temporary walls to create multiple small rooms on the two floors. After it suffered a fire in the late mid-1990s, it was restored more to its original condition. The rooms are large, with high ceilings and large window-doors that allow for ample ventilation during the hot Laredo summers. To honor Bishop Verdaguer’s memory a large stain glass window graces what was the original baptismal cove in the church. The window contains a full length image of the bishop along with places and dates associated with his life. After his death arrangements were also made to bury his remains in a small chapel located at what was then the center of the Catholic cemetery in Laredo. With his passing in 1911, the Vicariate of Brownsville became the Diocese of Corpus Christi with the wooden St. Patrick’s Church built by Bishop Manucy as the designated cathedral. This development demanded a new residence to house the first bishop of the Diocese of Corpus Christi. (Editor’s note: This is the first in a series on the homes occupied by the bishops of the Diocese of Corpus Christi.)

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The steps to building a culture of peace

VIEWPOINTS

By Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey

Bishop of Corpus Christi

resident John F. Kennedy, in his 1961 address to the United Nations, declared: “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.” More than a half-century later, we are still straddling the brink President Kennedy feared. Extremists of every stripe, in every corner of the world threaten the peace that finds its origin in God. In September, Pope Francis raised his voice of deep concern for the survival of peace for the human family. The events that are taking place in Syria are only the tip of an ever-increasing march towards more violence and war. Throughout the Middle East violence prevails. The same is true in many parts of the world, even in so-called civil societies. The events in Syria are horrifying, but they are only the latest assault on peace in that beleaguered country. The

conflict in Syria has claimed more than 110,000 lives and displaced six million of their citizens. The people of the world cannot remain silent while our sisters and brothers suffer. In other parts of the world, including our own beloved country, attacks on peace may not necessarily be aimed at individuals but against the human spirit and the love that God has planted in the human heart. Attacks against the unborn, neglect and indifference toward the elderly and “The conflict in Syria has claimed people at the end of life, the manipmore than 110,000 lives and ulation of God’s creation in labodisplaced six million of their ratories, constant citizens. The people of the world threats to religious liberty, disregard cannot remain silent while our for the poor, sisters and brothers suffer.” mistreatment of

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immigrants, are seen by many, not as acts of violence, but signs of “progress.” Yet, these offenses against the dignity of the human person strike at the very root cause of conflict, violence and even war. Disinterest or disregard for the created order results in “chaos” that goes against human nature created to be in harmony with God, the human family and all of creation. Amidst this deterioration of society and attacks against peace and harmony, the humble pastor from South America challenges all of us to return to the love of God; to once again experience an encounter with his unconditional mercy and love. Pope Francis’ appeal is not to Catholics alone, indeed he asks all people of goodwill, irrespective of religious beliefs, to join him in his quest for peace and harmony. Pope Francis has urged world leaders to take courage and overcome “blind opposition.” He further pleads with the international community “to promote clear initiatives for peace in Syria, based

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on dialogue and negotiation.” We should reject the illusion that peace can result simply from legislation and much less that it can be achieved through acts of violence and war. The great proponent of non-violence Mahatma Gandhi said, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” Is peace possible? Absolutely! But what can we do? Too often people feel helpless and hopeless with events that seem to overwhelm the world. All of us–Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and women and men of goodwill, can begin with prayer. Once people discover the harmony with God, they not only regain hope, but also begin to discover individually and as a community new paths to peace. Never underestimate the power of prayer. It is God who has created and who can, with our help, restore all creation to a new harmony and peace. Write to your congressman, email the president, talk to your neighbors, but above all engage in earnest prayer for peace. Pray in the quiet corner of your room; pray with your family at the dining table; pray with your friends and neighbors at your church, synagogue, mosque or temple. But pray, pray, pray. Today we are called in a new way to embrace peace in our own lives, love and harmony with God and peace with our neighbors. We can work together in the everyday events of life to build a culture of peace through a culture of encounter and a culture of dialogue with each person we meet. Each one of us can decide to commit ourselves to be peacemakers so that our world and the world that we leave to future generations will be a world ruled by peace and harmony.

The darkened eye of pornography

(Editor’s Note: This article appeared as an opinion piece in the editorial page of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on Sept. 11.)

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By Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.

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Contributor

he world was shocked when the tragic and twisted case of Ariel Castro recently burst into the limelight. Before he took his own life in prison last month, Castro had kidnapped and repeatedly raped, humiliated and beaten three young women held captive inside his Cleveland house for more than 10 years. At his sentencing in August, he blamed his longstanding habit of watching two to three hours a day of pornography for his crimes. “I believe I am addicted to pornography to a point that it really makes me impulsive and I don’t realize what I’m doing is wrong,” he said. To what extent pornography is directly related to violence remains up for debate; explaining any complex human behavior in simple cause and effect terms can be exceedingly difficult. What is beyond dispute is that pornography sets the stage for viewing women in an exploitative way, as sexual fodder for the gratification of men. In fact, the widespread availability and consumption of pornography has arguably become the most pervasive objectifying force in

society today. In a recent newspaper discussion about pornography, one male participant remarked that most men do not end up marrying supermodels, so he thought pornography was not a bad thing, since it enabled “the goods” that a few women possessed to be spread around and shared. He seemed to have no compunction about using women as pawns in the endgame of satisfying male lust. The gaze we direct towards each other can easily go astray, demeaning not only ourselves, but also others around us as well. When one’s gaze is directed askance, as Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, Virginia noted in a 2006 letter on pornography, “one becomes the kind of person who is willing to use others as mere objects w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

of pleasure.” The impure gaze of pornography, focused on “body parts,” or “performances,” takes on its own momentum and quickly draws us away from the relational commitments and responsibilities implied in our human sexual nature. One of the key objections to pornography is that it sets up a fantasy world without the risks and challenges that exist in real relationships. It warps and distorts the beautiful gift of human sexuality, so it no longer serves as an interpersonal force for bonding and building families, but instead devolves into an exploitative and isolating force in the lives of those who fall prey to it, changing its clients, in the words of one commentator, into “basement dwellers” and “bottom feeders.” On the other hand, the glance of authentic sexual love, flowing from a pure gaze, avoids denigrating others as a means for self-gratification, and draws man and woman into an abiding,

life-giving union. The need for that pure inner gaze has never been more succinctly expressed than in that timeless pronouncement uttered two millennia ago: “Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.” (Lk 11:34) We see just how dark the darkness was in the life of Ariel Castro. Through pornography addiction, a skyrocketing phenomenon today, our eye easily becomes darkened and shuttered. This darkness affects not just the men who view it, but also women who may not themselves be regular consumers of pornography. Women may be drawn into the subtle and demeaning trap of objectification when they are pressured to serve as compliant proxies for the acting out of their spouse’s hard-core pornographic fantasies. Instead of relating to the actual person they are with, they may instead feel obligated to play a role in satisfying various desires and fetishes. In this way, pornography may impact the way consensual relationships develop between men and women, weaving a warped and exploitative element into the early stages of the relationship.

The average woman may also struggle with a sense of inadequacy when it comes to competing with or measuring up to the naked women of the Internet, particularly in the face of pervasive airbrushing, silicone implants and photo shopping of porn models. These concerns about undue pressure on women apply not just to the pornography industry but also to the modern fashion industry with its frequently provocative designs, and to the numerous soft porn initiatives such as the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. It should come as no surprise when ordinary women and girls manifest loathing and abusive tendencies towards their own bodies, when they feel threatened by impossible comparisons and expectations. The enduring glance, sparked by the sexual attractiveness of the other, is never meant to be directed askance by the vicious snare of pornography, but instead it should point towards a personal and committed marital love, purified of exploitative and objectifying tendencies. (Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org.)

…pornography…warps and distorts the beautiful gift of human sexuality, so it no longer serves as an interpersonal force for bonding and building families, but instead devolves into an exploitative and isolating force in the lives of those who fall prey to it, changing its clients, in the words of one commentator, into “basement dwellers” and “bottom feeders.” w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

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Where the 20th century happened By George Weigel

Contributor

his past August, while contemplating the beauties of the Ottawa River from the deck of my family’s cottage on Allumette Island, Father Raymond de Souza, the Canadian commentator and a former-student-become-friend-andcolleague, offered an interesting take on World Youth Day 2016, which will be held in Cracow. When you think about it, he said, “the 20th century happened in Cracow.” I think I know what Father de Souza meant. Cracow and its people suffered terribly under both Nazi and communist occupation; the murders at Auschwitz took place a few dozen kilometers away; the city-without-God, Nowa Huta, was built outside Cracow, as payback for the city’s failure to vote correctly in a bogus communist election. Yet the bad news was not all the news

there was in Cracow. For in this same city, the divine answer to the unprecedented human wickedness of the 20th century was given, in the visions of the divine mercy that seized the religious imagination of St. Faustina Kowalska, an obscure Polish nun. And it was from Cracow that there came a man who brought Sister Faustina’s message of divine mercy to the world. When he was a young adult, that …the 20th century proved that man often walked men and women could indeed past Sister Faustina’s convent in freezing organize the world without God; winter weather, clad but without God, they could only only in clogs and denims, to his work organize it against each other. as a manual laborer. When he became a

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bishop two decades later, he took up Sister Faustina’s cause and helped clarify misunderstandings in Rome about the nun’s spiritual diary that were impeding the spread of the divine mercy devotion throughout the world. And finally, that man, now the Bishop of Rome, celebrated the canonization Mass at which Sister Faustina Kowalska was proclaimed the first saint of the third millennium. The 20th century happened in Cracow. And the answer to the 20th century was given there, too. Prior to Sister Faustina’s canonization, some grumbled that Blessed John Paul II was privileging a unique, Polish experience of Catholic piety by putting the divine mercy at the center of the Great Jubilee of 2000. That didn’t strike me as very persuasive then. And in light of Father de Souza’s insightful observation about the singular way that Cracow embodies the 20th century, it doesn’t strike me as very persuasive now. Pope John Paul II had a keen insight into the way in which the two totalitarianisms of the 20th century had shredded the moral and spiritual fabric of humanity. The Gulag and the Nazi death camps; the Ukrainian terror famine; the genocide of the Chinese “cultural revolution;” the Cambodian genocide; —all of this, and more, had left 21st-century humanity with a terrible burden of guilt. w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

And to whom could those terrible crimes be confessed; those sins that had made an abattoir out of a century imagined, at its outset, to be one of unlimited human progress? How could the guilt piled up by of so many crimes be expiated? According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, another man who read history through Slavic cultural lenses, the unique horrors of the 20th century had taken place because—as the Russian novelist and chronicler put it in his 1983 Templeton Prize lecture—men and women had forgotten God. “The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century,” Solzhenitsyn said. French theologian Henri de Lubac made a similar point in “The Drama of Atheist Humanism;” the 20th century proved that men and women could indeed organize the world without God; but without God, they could only organize it against each other. Pope John Paul II knew all of this. That is why he wanted to “universalize” the message of the divine mercy that had been given in Cracow as the answer to the anguish and despair caused by the horrors of the 20th century. The God of the Bible, a God of infinite mercy, was the One to whom the burden of the 20th century could be brought for expiation. Keeping all this in mind would help the planners of World Youth Day 2016 give that gathering a particular focus and resonance. (George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. The Denver Catholic Register distributes his column.) w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

OUR FAITH

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate By Father J. Patrick Serna

Contributor

n our study of the Nicene Creed, we step back a bit from high theology and delve into low human history. There are five persons mentioned by name in the Nicene Creed: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary and then Pontius Pilate. Having the name of the person who sentenced our Lord to death by crucifixion, in the middle of God and Our Lady’s names, is at once both odd and intriguing. Why are we expected to mention the name of the one who sentenced Jesus to death; why can’t we just remember this part of Jesus’ passion during Holy Week only? God wants us to learn about Pontius Pilate’s human nature, since we have that in common with him. If one can learn from the weakness and failure of another, rather than fail oneself, then a good thing will be accomplished. Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judaea from 26-36 A.D., and as such he had supreme judicial power; he was the

only one who had the authority to execute a criminal. When the Church’s magisterium places Pontius Pilate in the Creed, we are being told that this politician was someone important, at least, in the eyes of the world. Indeed, Pilate was important and for that reason we hear about him extensively from renowned historians like Flavius Josephus and Philo of Alexandria. In the course of history, there have been times that “enlightened scholars” questioned the historicity of Jesus Christ. As G. K. Chesterton said so eloquently, “The opponents of Christianity will believe anything except Christianity.” History has deemed it impossible to deny the historical truth of Pontius Pilates’ existence, so necessarily, history deems it equally impossible to deny the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Our Lord was indeed crucified by Pontius Pilate, in truth and in history, not in myth or fable. The fact that the evangelists write as

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much or more about the last week of Jesus’ life and death, as disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate. He the entire three years of His public ministry, is meaningful. feared they might impeach him with respect to other particulars But what does it mean? What it means is that God loves us so of his government, in respect of his corruption, and his acts very much and He was willing to suffer excruciatingly for us. of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, The word “excruciating” comes from the two Latin words that and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried mean “from the cross.” and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and God loves us so much that because of us He did not run from most grievous inhumanity. Therefore, being exceedingly angry, false accusations, or suffering or death on a cross. Jesus’ suf- and being at all times a man of most ferocious passions, he fering and resurrection are why we can have our sins forgiven, was in great perplexity, neither venturing to take down what but we have to do our part and he had once set up, nor wishing choose to love Him faithfully. to do anything which could be At one point or another, the acceptable to his subjects.” Christian who prays the rosary Flavius Josephus, in his hisor bible will ask the question torical work The Jewish War I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven “How could Pontius Pilate (78 A.D.), gives another historand earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one have done that? He KNEW! ical account of how Pilate was Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the He struggled! He washed his a consummate people pleaser. Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true hands.” We read in the bible, Pilate did not enforce the law God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with “While Pilate was sitting in the because he wanted to please the Father; through Him all things were made. For us men judgment hall, his wife sent him local Jews. and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and by the a message, ‘Have nothing to do Pontius Pilate was expected Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became with that innocent man, because to make a choice when standman. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, in a dream last night, I suffered ing face to face with Jesus, and He suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the much on account of him’.” (Mt he made the wrong choice. In third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into 27:19) His conscience was the end Jesus is Pilate’s judge, heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will shouting to him, but Pilate and he had to give an accountcome again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His chose to ignore it. ing for not acting virtuously. kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Why didn’t this politician, Every day, we have chances Lord the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the who represents those who place to stand up for Jesus, just like Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, value on power and being liked Pilate did. On a daily basis we who has spoken through the Prophets. I believe in one holy, by people, have the backbone can choose to act for Jesus, or Catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the to do what was right? How did not. Inertia and fence stradforgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of he get to the point of killing dling usually do not qualify for the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. the God Man? Chesterton puts taking a stand for Jesus. One it nicely; “The Truth was cruciday we will be face-to-face fied by the man who represented the world, a man who claimed with Jesus who judges the living and the dead, so we must he would not take a position, who tried to wash his hands of choose wisely and subdue human nature’s temptations with the whole thing. But you cannot be neutral about the Truth. prayer and the virtues. And you cannot avoid it…Jesus is the Truth that is still under attack.” (“The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G. K. Chesterton”) The man who takes no position, the man who straddles the fence and plays all sides, the man who falls into inertia, Our Lord was indeed crucified is pleasing to no one. by Pontius Pilate, in truth and in History allows us to see manifestations of Pilate’s human nature, which was not subdued by virtue. In this excerpt history, not in myth or fable. from Philo of Alexandria’s Embassy to Caligula (circa 37 A.D.) we read that Pilate “was a man of a very inflexible

Nicene Creed

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The healing power of By Sister Anne Marie Walsh, SOLT

W Contributor

e live in a wilderness, a wilderness of noise. Noise is not just about sound. It has to do with the constant barrage of stimulation to our senses, emotions and even our intellect, (read information overload.)

good sleep brings, we become sick. Anyone who struggles with insomnia knows the anxiety and frustration lack of sleep brings. “If I could just sleep, I would feel better,” is the all too common cry. For those saints who were able to pray the night away and not be ill-affected, it was because they entered a deep contemplative silence that so rejuvenated soul and spirit, the body was refreshed and strengthened by it. In the Liturgy, given to us by God through Moses on Mt Sinai, and Jesus at the Last Supper, there are spaces for silence. That tells us that silence is part of a Divine Rhythm, part of the rhythm of life in heaven...it tells us silence is a good thing, a medium for God’s communication of Himself to us. The lives of Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph, in particular, bear striking witness to the inseparability of silence from great holiness. In those who are progressing in prayer, in the inner experience of the presence of God, silence becomes a medium for God’s deeper and deeper communication of Himself to the soul. St. Teresa calls one of the early stages of contemplative prayer, the “Prayer of Quiet.” God begins to suspend, or silence or still the human activity of the mind, the will, the memory, the imagination, the passions, so that He can communicate Himself more deeply. And in that, the soul itself begins to be healed of its defects and weaknesses and disorder. We are all interested in healing these days. This is the true healing we seek, that which comes to us from God Himself, the Divine Physician, which heals us from the inside out and orders our inner being to bring it into communion with He Who is our ultimate bliss and fulfillment. If we want to be healthy, we must cultivate spaces of silence in our lives. Not the isolating silence so many live in, but a

The problem with all this noise, pure and simple, is that it is an obstacle to our own inner order and peace, and more importantly, to a living communion with God and with others. For some reason, many of us either seem afraid of silence, or, more likely, we have lost familiarity with the wonders of silence. Yet it is essential to our physical and spiritual well-being. Authentic silence is not emptiness. Things come to us in the silence. We hear new languages. We are visited by penetrating peace, insight, God Himself, His wisdom, light, His perception and understanding. In authentic silence we hear new sounds and enter new worlds. In silence we come to know our own hearts. It is interesting to note how often people observe that the sounds God has put in creation: wind rustling in the trees, birds chirping, the lapping of waves at the ocean, are a balm to the soul. This stands in stark contrast to the agitation and disturbance created by the sounds of the modern world driven by mechanical energy and a volume, a pitch that does violence to one’s nerves, stressing them beyond what they are meant to endure. Silence is almost completely exiled In those who are progressing in from our modern culture. Yet it is exceedingly importprayer, in the inner experience of the ant for us. Silence in fact is so important to us that it may be one presence of God, silence becomes a of the main reasons God has structured us to sleep a medium for God’s deeper and deeper third of our days. We know that when we can’t sleep, when our bodies and minds are deprived of the stillness

communication of Himself to the soul.

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silence that nurtures peace within and communion without. One place to begin is to keep our Churches as sanctuaries of silence, not places for chit chat. Another concrete step is to actually set aside real time for silence. Silent prayer. Not vocal prayer but a prayer of presence, of being, in silence, in the presence of the Lord, even for five minutes a day, preferably in a place where there is no outside noise. That may be early in the morning before the rest of the family rises. Simply ask the Lord to take you into Himself for five minutes, to be still and know that He is God. Over 100 years ago, Maria Montessori noted that children have an innate need for intervals of stillness and silence, silence for her, meaning the cessation of every movement: “One day I came into class holding in my arms a baby four months old, which I had taken from the arms of its mother in the courtyard…The silence of the little creature struck me, and I wanted the children to share my feeling…To my amazement I saw an extraordinary tension in the children who watched me. It seemed as though they were hanging on my lips, and felt deeply all I was saying. “Then its breathing,” I went on, “how soft it is. None of you could breathe as it does, without making a sound...” The children, surprised and motionless, held their breath. In that moment there was an extraordinary silence; the tick of the clock, which generally could not be heard, became perceptible. It seemed as if the baby had brought with it an atmosphere of silence such as does not exist in ordinary life.

This was because no one was making the smallest movement. And from this came the wish to listen to the silence, and hence to reproduce it.” (“The Secret of Childhood”) She created the “Silence Game” in which children begin practicing this kind of silence for small intervals at first (even 30 seconds), and then for longer periods. There is a joy the children—and the teacher—experience, when they are able to do this. They later come to ask for the Silence Game when things become chaotic or noisy, recognizing that this silence has the power to restore their inner peace and equilibrium. Then, as a year progresses, the silence begins to happen spontaneously, within the whole group. The children will look up when this happens, smile, and go back to their work. The natural, contemplative spirit of the child, over time, is released. It may seem like passivity to focus on silence when the world is screaming for answers and actions to address it’s many grave problems. Yet, “if The Lord does not build the house, in vain do the builders labor.” Likewise, the walls of Jericho would never have come tumbling down, nor would the people have persisted in the right action, if they had not consulted and stayed faithful to the Lord’s rather odd directions. It has become an almost urgent necessity today, to ask Our Lord and Our Lady to lead each of us to the kind of silence we speak of. The release of a true contemplative spirit among us, one in which the Lord lives and moves us, will, in the end, be the key to the salvation of our modern world.

October Liturgical Calendar Oct. 1 Tue Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church white | Memorial | Zec 8:20-23/Lk 9:51-56 (456) Oct. 2 Wed The Holy Guardian Angels white | Memorial | Neh 2:1-8 (457)/Mt 18:1-5, 10* (650) Pss Prop Oct. 3 Thu Weekday green | Neh 8:1-4a, 5-6, 7b-12/Lk 10:1-12 (458) Oct. 4 Fri Saint Francis of Assisi white | Memorial | Bar 1:15-22/Lk 10:13-16 (459)

Oct. 9 Wed Weekday green/red/white [Saints Denis, Bishop, and Companions, Martyrs; Saint John Leonardi, Priest] Jon 4:1-11/Lk 11:1-4 (463) Oct. 10 Thu Weekday green | Mal 3:1320b/Lk 11:5-13 (464) Oct. 11 Fri Weekday green | Jl 1:13-15; 2:1-2/Lk 11:15-26 (465) Oct. 12 Sat Weekday green/white [BVM] Jl 4:12-21/Lk 11:27-28 (466)

Oct. 5 Sat Weekday green/white [BVM] Bar 4:5-12, 27-29/Lk 10:17-24 (460)

Oct. 13 SUN TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME green | 2 Kgs 5:14-17/2 Tm 2:8-13/Lk 17:11-19 (144) Pss IV

Oct. 6 SUN TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME green | Hb 1:2-3; 2:2-4/2 Tm 1:6-8, 13-14/Lk 17:5-10 (141) Pss III

Oct. 14 Mon Weekday green/red [Saint Callistus I, Pope and Martyr] Rom 1:1-7/ Lk 11:29-32 (467)

Oct. 7 Mon Our Lady of the Rosary | white | Memorial | Jon 1:1—2:2, 11/Lk 10:25-37 (461) Pss Prop

Oct. 15 Tue Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church white | Memorial | Rom 1:16-25/Lk 11:37-41 (468)

Oct. 8 Tue Weekday green | Jon 3:1-10/Lk 10:38-42 (462)

Oct. 16 Wed Weekday green/white/white [Saint Hedwig, Religious; Saint Margaret

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Mary Alacoque, Virgin] Rom 2:1-11/Lk 11:42-46 (469) Oct. 17 Thu Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr red | Memorial | Rom 3:21-30/Lk 11:47-54 (470) Oct. 18 Fri Saint Luke, Evangelist red | Feast | 2 Tm 4:10-17b/Lk 10:1-9 (661) Pss Prop Oct. 19 Sat Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, red | and Companions, Martyrs | Memorial | Rom 4:13, 1618/Lk 12:8-12 (472)

Lk 12:39-48 (475) Oct. 24 Thu Weekday green/white [Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop] Rom 6:1923/Lk 12:49-53 (476) Oct. 25 Fri Weekday green | Rom 7:1825a/Lk 12:54-59 (477) Oct. 26 Sat Weekday green/white [BVM] Rom 8:1-11/Lk 13:1-9 (478) Oct. 27 SUN THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME green | Sir 35:12-14, 16-18/2 Tm 4:6-8, 16-18/Lk 18:9-14 (150) Pss II

Oct. 20 SUN TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME green | Ex 17:8-13/2 Tm 3:14—4:2/Lk 18:1-8 (147) Pss I

Oct. 28 Mon Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles red | Feast | Eph 2:19-22/Lk 6:12-16 (666) Pss Prop

Oct. 21 Mon Weekday green | Rom 4:2025/Lk 12:13-21 (473)

Oct. 29 Tue Weekday green | Rom 8:18-25/ Lk 13:18-21 (480)

Oct. 22 Tue Weekday green | Rom 5:12, 15b, 17-19, 20b-21/Lk 12:35-38 (474)

Oct. 30 Wed Weekday green | Rom 8:2630/Lk 13:22-30 (481)

Oct. 23 Wed Weekday green/white [Saint John of Capistrano, Priest] Rom 6:12-18/

Oct. 31 Thu Weekday green | Rom 8:31b39/Lk 13:31-35 (482) w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

OCTOBER CALENDAR

Red Mass On Oct. 3 at 6 p.m in Corpus Christi Cathedral. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott will serve as keynote speaker. The Annual Judicial Red Mass is for judges, lawyers, public officials and anyone with concern for justice.

Diocesan Catholic Educators’ Conference On Oct. 4 from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz International Center.

Faith Educators’ Workshop On Oct. 5 from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. at St. Joseph Parish in Alice (801 S. Reynolds). This workshop is for catechists, youth ministers, faith formators and Catholic school teachers and its free to attend. For more information call Nellie Serna, Office of Religious Education, at (361) 882-6191, ext. 634.

One Day trip to Basilica of St. Therese in San Antonio On Oct. 5 from 6 a.m. - 10 p.m. Most Precious Blood Church, Our Lady of Guadalupe Society, is sponsoring a one day bus trip to Basilica of St. Therese in San Antonio, followed by lunch at Market Square and evening Mass at the historical St. Joseph Catholic Church. Limited seating available. The cost will be $40 per person. For more information contact Javier or Senona Casas at (361) 960-7229.

Pre Cana Seminar On Oct. 5 from 8:45 a.m.-5 p.m. at Corpus Christi Cathedral St. Joseph’s Hall. The seminar is designed to inform engaged couples preparing for marriage or couples married civilly for less than one year of the spiritual and practical aspects of a Catholic marriage. For more information call Deacon Stephen Nolte at (361) 693-6638.

Blue Mass On Oct. 5 at 6 p.m. Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey will celebrate the Blue Mass at Sacred Heart Church on 217 West San Patricio Avenue in Mathis. The Blue w w w.Sout hTexasC at hol ic .com

Mass honors St. Michael the Archangel, Patron Saint of those employed in public safety including law enforcement officers, correctional officers, emergency 911 dispatchers, emergency medical services personnel, and firefighters. A barbecue dinner and award ceremony will follow the Blue Mass in the parish hall.

Our Lady of the Rosary hosts Rosary Fest 2013 On Tuesday, Oct. 7 from 6 a.m.-6 p.m. at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, (1123 Main Drive in Corpus Christi.) To participate in Rosary Fest 2013 call Juanita Escobar at (361) 241-6185 or Olga Gomez at (361) 851-1112 to schedule time preference. Prayer requests should be sent to the parish so that they may be placed at the feet of Our Lady of the Rosary. For more information please contact Father Gabriel P. Coelho, Pastor, at (361) 2412004 or (361) 242-9571 or via email at ourladyoftherosary@stx.rr.com.

Convalidation Seminar

On Oct. 12 from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. at St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles on 3901 Violet Road in St. Matthew’s Hall. The seminar prepares couples who are seeking to validate a civil or otherwise irregular marriage. A $50 fee per couple is required. Must be pre-registered to attend. Deadline to register is Oct. 7. For more information call Deacon Stephen Nolte at (361) 693-6638 or to register or pay on line go to: www.diocesecc.org/Convalidationform.

Women’s Conference On Oct. 12, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at Corpus Christi Cathedral. This year’s Women’s Conference entitled “Women of Vision, Women of Faith.” The event is sponsored by the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women. Join special guests Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey, Eileen Love and Sonja Corbitt in their talks to inspire women.

All-You-Can-Eat Waffle Breakfast

Daughters Court #2460 is hosting this event. Donation is $6 payable to CDA court members or pay at the door.

50th Anniversary St. Joseph On Sunday, Oct. 13, at 5 p.m., Oct. Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey will celebrate a Mass to commemorate 50th Anniversary and re-dedication of St. Joseph in Kingsville.

10th Anniversary Mother Teresa Shelter On Monday, Oct. 14, at 10 a.m. Mother Teresa Shelter will celebrate its 10th year with blessing and opening of a new area.

‘A Covenant of Love with Mary’ Classes at OLPH On Oct. 14 beginning with Mass at 6:15 p.m., followed by a video and talk at 6:45 p.m. and then a light dinner and celebration.

New CCD building at Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos On Oct. 16, Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey will bless new CCD building at Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos, Madre de la Iglesia. The blessing will take place at 5 p.m. and will be followed by Mass at 6 p.m.

Men’s Silent Retreat On Oct. 17-20 at Our Lady of Corpus Christi Retreat Center on 1200 Lantana in Corpus Christi. For more information go to www.deepprayer.org.

White Mass On Oct.17 at 6:30 p.m. a Mass, honoring health care professionals, will be held at the CHRISTUS Spohn Shoreline Hospital Chapel. Mass will be followed by a presentation from Dr. Yvonne Hinojosa and a meal.

2013 Annual Jazz Mass

On Oct. 13 from 9 a.m.-noon, at St. Pius X Parish Hall in Corpus Christi. Catholic

On Oct. 20 at 12 p.m. in St. Pius X Church (5620 Gollihar Road.)

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FALL FES VALS

March for Life Pilgrimage Meeting Oct. 24 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Diocese of Corpus Christi Chancery Office, 1st Floor Conference Room. These meetings are for those who plan on attending the 2014 March for Life Pilgrimage. For more information or to register go to www.diocesecc.org/MarchforLife.

Cursillo de las mujeres (Español) Cursillo de mujeres se celebrará del 24 a 27 octubre en el Corpus Christi Cursillo Center localizado en el 1200 Lantana en Corpus Christi. Para obtener más información, por favor llame al América López, Vocal del Pre-Cursillo-mujeres, al (361) 592-1927 o americalopez@yahoo.com. Hacer un amigo, ser un amigo, y traer a un amigo a Cristo!

Director of Religious Education and Youth Minister’s Retreat From Oct. 25-26 at the Lighthouse Inn in Rockport. Check In is after 3 p.m. on Friday and Check Out is before 2 p.m. on Saturday. For more information, please contact the Diocese at (361) 882-6191.

Cathedral Rummage Sale From Oct. 25-27. If you have any items that you would like to donate, call (361) 883-4213, ext. 27 for more information.

IN THE DIOCESE OF CORPUS CHRISTI

All festivals will include a variety of food, games, entertainment and fun

◗◗ St. Martin Festival/Rodeo, Arts & Crafts Show | Oct. 5 at the J. K. North-

way Coliseum (Kingsville) from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. There will be a children’s and adult rodeos.

◗◗ 30th Annual Czechfest | Oct. 6 from 9 a.m.-8 p.m. (or when all items from

the auction are sold) on the church grounds of St. Thomas the Apostle Church at 16602 FM 624 (3.5 miles west of the Five Points Shopping Center in Calallen.)

◗◗ Three Rivers Sacred Heart Annual BBQ | Oct. 6 beginning at 11 a.m. in Sacred Heart Parish Hall (307 E. Alexander) in Three Rivers.

◗◗ St. Paul’s Barbecue/Arts and Craft Show | Oct. 6 from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. in St. Paul, the Apostle Parish Hall (2233 Waldron Road.)

◗◗ 13th Annual Jamaica Fest | Oct. 12 from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. on St. Joseph Parish grounds in Alice (801 S. Reynolds St.)

◗◗ Our Lady of Guadalupe Festival in Tivoli | Oct. 13 from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Serving BBQ at 11 a.m. Look for signs on Hwy. 35 at Tivoli.

◗◗ Our Lady of Guadalupe Family Fest 2013 | Oct. 13 from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Corpus Christi (540 Hiawatha St.).

◗◗ Our Lady of the Rosary’s Annual Jamaica | Oct. 13 from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. at 1123 Main Dr. (Take Exit 7 Tuloso Rd. and Suntide Rd. from I-37 to Leopard St.)

◗◗ Our Lady of the Pilar Jamaica Festival | Oct. 13 from 12 p.m. - 8 a.m. at Our Lady of the Pilar Parish on 1101 Bloomington St. in Corpus Christi.

Corpus Christi Catholic Engaged Encounter

◗◗ St. Patrick School 51st Annual Halloween Carnival | Oct. 18 from 5:30-

On Oct. 26-27 beginning Saturday at 7 a.m. at Our Lady of Corpus Christi Retreat Center on 1200 Lantana St. in Corpus Christi. For more information call the Diocese of Corpus Christi Family Life Office at (361) 882-6191 or go to www.DioceseCC.org/FamilyLife or Deacon Ron Martinez at (361) 765-1124 or Email: deaconron@olphcc.net.

10:30 p.m. at 3340 S. Alameda in Corpus Christi.

◗◗ St. Anthony’s 62nd Annual Oktoberfest | Oct. 20 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at St. Anthony Parish in Violet located on 3918 County Rd. 61 (off Hwy. 44).

◗◗ St. Pius X 30th Annual Halloween Carnival | Oct. 25 from 5:30-10 p.m. at St. Pius X Catholic School on 737 St. Pius Drive in Corpus Christi.

◗◗ Sacred Heart Church’s Annual Octoberfest | Oct. 26 from 11 a.m.-8 p.m.

at Central Catholic School grounds on 1218 Lipan and Alameda. Allison Vela, who will be performing from 3-4 p.m. and a live band from 6-8 p.m.

◗◗ Fall Festival at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Sinton | Oct. 26 from 11 a.m.11 p.m. at the San Patricio County Fairgrounds Events Center at 219 W. 5th in Sinton.

To see more calendar events go to:

SouthTexasCatholic.org

◗◗ Fall Festival at Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos Madre de la Iglesia | Oct. 27 from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. at 1755 Frio St. in Corpus Christi. ◗◗ St. Therese’s Spookfest 2013 | Oct. 27 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. at St. Theresa’s Church on 1212 Lantana in Corpus Christi.

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◗◗ St. John’s 3rd Annual Festival | Nov. 2 from 12 - 9 p.m. at St. John the Baptist

TE X A S C ATHOLIC | OCTOBER 2013

Catholic Church on 7522 Everhart in Corpus Christi.

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OC TOBER 2013 | SOU TH TE X A S C ATHOLIC

Oct. 2013 Issue SOUTH TEXAS CATHOLIC P.O. Box 2620 Corpus Christi, TX 78403 (361) 882-6191

Pray and give generously

World Mission Sunday The Society for the Propagation of the Faith a Pontifical Mission Society

October 20, 2013