October 1, 2010

California bishops: halt executions now

Catholic san Francisco

By George Raine

(CNS PHOTO/AMIR COHEN, REUTERS)

Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

A Palestinian argues with police as he tries to pass through the Lions Gate outside the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem Sept. 24. Israeli forces tightened restrictions for worshippers to attend Friday prayers at the mosque because of violence after an Israeli security guard killed a Palestinian man in East Jerusalem.

To ease abortion’s pain, priests urged to listen deeply, touch gently

San Bruno disaster CCCYO expanding mental health outreach

By George Raine

By Sam Lucero GREEN BAY, Wis. (CNS) – The role priests play in counseling people touched by abortion is critical, yet they often do not know what to say or do, Green Bay Bishop David L. Ricken said at a workshop for priests to help them learn about post-abortion healing.

He recalled an event that put the abortion topic in a new and disquieting light.

At a recent diocesan youth retreat, a 15-year-old girl was found crying before a crucifix. “One of the youth ministers went up to her and said, ‘Can I help you?’ and what came out was that this 15-year-old girl has already had three abortions,” said Bishop Ricken.

“So brothers, this is getting to be a very serious societal problem among Catholics,” he said. “I would say we are (needed) now more than we’ve ever been as far as our catechesis, our pastoral preaching and reaching out because there are so many broken families.”

He made the comments in an opening talk at the recent in-service session, sponsored by the diocesan Respect Life Office. The event focused on ABORTION, page 9

The Catholic bishops of California, just two days prior to a scheduled execution at San Quentin State Prison, this week called for a moratorium on use of the death penalty in the state in order to evaluate whether its use “serves the common good and safeguards the dignity of human life.”

The bishops said they are convinced it does not, and in a statement they implored all Californians “to ask themselves what good comes of state-sanctioned killing.”

The bishops spoke as the California Catholic Conference, representing the state’s 12 dioceses and 11 million Catholic faithful, reaffirmed its opposition to the death penalty and asked for clemency for any individual on death row.

The statement by Bishop Gerald Wilkerson, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and CCC president, was issued as lawyers for the state and condemned killer Albert Greenwood Brown sought eleventh-hour court orders that would either allow or postpone Brown’s scheduled execution Thursday at 9 p.m.

“We recognize the profound pain of those who lost a loved one to violence and offer them our prayers and our consolation,” Bishop Wilkerson said. “However, nothing can undo what was done – even taking the life of the convicted killer. The infliction of the death penalty does not make for a more just society.”

Brown’s execution was to be the first in nearly five years in California. He was convicted and sentenced in 1982 for the 1980 rape and murder of Susan Jordan, 15, attacked while walking to school in Riverside. After the murder, Brown called the girl’s parents and told them they would never see her alive again. He directed them to the orange grove where her body was found. Just four months before he killed Susan Jordan, Brown had been paroled from state prison after being convicted of a 1977 rape of a 14-year-old girl.

Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco this month asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to deny clemency for Brown. “This man showed no clemency EXECUTIONS NOW, page 10

The rule of thumb is that it takes about 18 months for people to begin to get through a trauma, from the initial shock to the long recovery.

It is early in the recovery period for people affected by the Sept. 9 San Bruno explosion and fire. And while some people have sought out mental health therapy, including four fire victims being seen by the Behavioral Healthcare staff at Catholic Charities CYO of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties, the expectation is that there will be long-term issues for many more.

“This is an event that will never be forgotten,” said David Ross, Catholic Charities’ clinical director of behavioral health. “Every year, I’m sure it will be in the news, so the chance for retraumatization is high.”

Ross and other Catholic Charities executives reacted quickly to the calamity, which killed seven people and destroyed or damaged 65 homes. Ross drove to the site shortly after the emergency was first reported. He had a personal interest: he and his family lived for a time in the 1970s in the Glenview neighborhood that was ground zero for the blast, and he spent his childhood in San Bruno.

He distributed flyers announcing counseling services – “Your loss is overwhelming … We are here to listen and support” – at St. Robert Church in San Bruno and elsewhere, and long-term planning for serving people in need began.

The enormity of the crisis, made worse because of the sense of safety so many people must have felt in their homes at dinner time, leads Ross and others in the mental health field to believe that long-term issues will trouble the victims. They also believe that many people who insist they are fine would benefit from counseling. Those people must be reached.

“I think, particularly, the timing of this event was incredible,” Ross said. “Here it was dinner time, basically, with the football game on. So, people are at home in what seemed to be a safe setting, having dinner. How much safer can it get? And, also coincidently, it was back to school night at St. Robert and maybe a couple of the other schools.”

Long after the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, several victims committed suicide, noted Jeffrey Bialik, executive director of Catholic Charities CYO. “To me, that is the absolute worst statistic, and we have to keep in mind that could be the horrible outcome MENTAL HEALTH, page 24

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION “King of instruments”. . . . . . 3 Theologians’ book rebuked . 5 Respect Life Month . . . . . 9-12 Health Directory . . . . . . 13-17 Guest editorial . . . . . . . . . . 18

Rome’s critical synod on Mideast Catholics ~ Page 4 ~ October 1, 2010

SF church seeks topiary artist ~ Page 15 ~

Angels of the Barbary Coast ~ Page 21 ~

ONE DOLLAR

Guardian Angel prayer . . . . 20 Datebook of events . . . . . . . 25

www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 12

•

No. 30

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Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

On The

Maureen Huntington, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of San Francisco; Elsie Foley; Tom Foley Memorial Scholarship winner Tariq Mukatash, Father James Garcia, pastor, St. Anthony of Padua Parish, San Francisco; and Dennis Ruggiero, principal, St. AnthonyImmaculate Conception School.

Where You Live

By Tom Burke Tom Gillespie, a longtime parishioner of St. Raymond Parish in Menlo Park, marked his 100th birthday August 19.

He was honored at St. Raymond’s August 22.

Tom still helps usher and take up the collection at St. Raymond’s 5:15 p.m. Saturday Mass and in his spare time enjoys sketching Tom Gillespie famous people and short walks every day, an extension of his former daily treks that often were miles long until a heart attack slowed him down a bit several years ago. Raised in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights and a mechanical engineer by profession, Tom worked for many years in oil fields of Southern California. “Thank you, Tom, for your dedication and service to our community and parish,” St. Raymond’s said in a recent bulletin. Thanks to Jack Deregt for the great details…. Sacred Heart Sister Helen Manning Lorch was honored at a 100th birthday celebration in August at Oakwood, the order’s retirement center in Atherton. The celebration began with a Mass, Emeritus Archbishop of San Francisco John Quinn presiding, followed by a birthday dinner and special “gouter”— a French custom of afternoon treats. On August Sister Helen Lorch, RSCJ 23, her birthday, the party continued with a picnic for family members from around the country. Called to religious life after her husband’s death, Sister Helen entered the novitiate of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in El Cajon. She had a long career at the University of San Diego as assistant professor of history, counselor and resident director….

Happy 60 years married to longtime St. Bartholomew

LIVING TRUSTS WILLS

PROBATE

parishioners, Barbara and Dick Thompson, who marked new IHM principal, Hannah Everhart. Greg Carbullido the milestone with family including Barbara’s sister, is the Cubs head coach and Bill Doheny is manager.

Don’t miss the Festival of Choirs October 3, part Marilyn Burke and her husband, Tom, who flew in from Michigan for the occasion. Barbara and Marilyn of the closing ceremonies for this year’s Festival of are both graduates of the now closed and much-missed Flowers at St. Mary’s Cathedral. The 4 p.m. concert St. Rose Academy in San Francisco Also raising the features voices from parishes including St. John of God, couple up were their six children, Michael, Donna, St. Thomas More, Mission Dolores, Mater Dolorosa, Paula, Joe, Camille, and Nanette, and their families…. Notre Dame des Victoires and St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Congratulations to Tariq Mukatash, a 7th grader The theme honors Our Lady of the Assumption - the at St. Anthony Immaculate Conception School, and Cathedral’s patron – in this 40th anniversary year of winner of the Tom Foley Memorial Scholarship. the cathedral’s dedication…. As we unfold Respect The award is in honor of Life month, keep your late St. Anthony School eye on Datebook. St. Luke alumnus, Tom Foley, and Parish in Foster City was instituted by his wife, welcomes Dana Cody of Elsie Foley. “The award the Life Legal Defense represents Tom’s love Foundation October 12 of learning,” the school at 7 p.m. She’ll discuss said in announcing the life issues and cases that recognition. “He was don’t always make the a school teacher and a mainstream media but life-long learner.”… Hats nonetheless raise vital off – especially baseball questions. Call (650) hats – for the Cubs of 345-6660. Also keep an Immaculate Heart of ear to the Archbishop’s Mary Parish in Belmont Hour where the topic of for their part in the contriRespect Life will be front bution of $1,000 to help in row. That’s Fridays at the San Bruno gas explo9:30 a.m. on Immaculate sion and fire recovery. The Heart Radio 1260 on your Immaculate Heart of Mary School’s Carter Norton money was donated by the AMen dial.

Beth and Scott Norton This is an empty space after presenting $1,000 check to Dan Uroz family whose fifth grade without you. E-mail items of St. Robert Parish baseball. son, Carter, is a member and electronic pictures – of the team. Third grade son, Jack, and first grade son, jpegs at no less than 300 dpi – to burket@sfarchdiocese.

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October 1, 2010

Catholic San Francisco

3

“The organ is the king of instruments, and this is my baby�

By George Raine St. Boniface Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin is synonymous with ministry for the needy and marginalized, but musicians also know it and revere it for its other worthy attributes – remarkable acoustics and a one-of-a-kind organ.

The instrument is considered among the finest in the city, certainly in the mind of St. Boniface’s volunteer organist, Garrett Collins, who performs on Sundays and also on a series Thursdays at 1 p.m., and who has embarked on a campaign to raise funds for its refurbishing and maintenance.

The organ is special and worthy of repair, he said, for this simple reason: “You hear in this organ the beautiful, romantic and symphonic textures, not usually heard in most churches. I and others also believe that St. Boniface is acoustically perfect for music.�

In the relatively small, focused world of organists, there is a must-read journal – American Organist magazine. Collins’ effort centers on asking friends of St. Boniface and others to purchase advertising in the publication that calls attention to the organ and the music heard on Sundays and Thursdays.

Collins believes that other professional organists will be intrigued by the notion of performing on the instrument and that will lead to donations and other gift-giving to cover repair and maintenance that could run from $500,000 to $1 million, if extensive renovation is required.

“My mission is to put St. Boniface on the map,� said Collins, 55, a San Franciscan since 1981 and the volunteer organist for a year and a half. “The organ is the king of instruments,� said Collins, quoting Mozart, “and this is my baby right now and I will make this campaign work.�

The softest stop can by heard clearly, and the loudest will blow you down the block. – St. Boniface organist Garrett Collins The church’s acoustics are ideal, he said, because St. Boniface is “just the right size so you can sing from the balcony and everyone can hear every word and the softest stop on the organ can be heard clearly, and the loudest thing will blow you down the block.�

The basis of the St. Boniface organ was manufactured

in England in 1876 by Henry Bevington & Sons. In 1923, it was augmented with parts created by the Austin Company in Hartford, Conn., but judiciously, because of the fine quality of the original.

Twenty-four of the organ’s 40 ranks, including the primary chorus stops, are from the Bevington shops.

According to a brief history of the instrument, this accounts for the unusual tonal structure of the instrument – quite atypical of the organs built in the early 1920s in America.

Collins, who has also played the organ at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, was reared in dairy farming country in Michigan. He began his musical career at five singing in the choir of his church, the then-Evangelical United Brethren Church. He was fascinated by the organ in the choir.

He studied music at Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College, and continued to study organ and opera in Paris and Boston. He plays music and sings at many San Francisco entertainment venues as well as churches, but, he said, he has a special relationship with the organ at St. Boniface. “I get a lot of satisfaction, and I show off the organ,� he said.

McCoy Church Goods Co. Inc. Pope: Mozart’s sacred music reflects hope in face of death CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) – Strongly rooted in his faith, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used his sacred compositions to celebrate God’s love and hope even in the face of suffering and death, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Specifically, Mozart’s “Requiem� is “an exalted expression of faith that fully recognizes the tragic nature of human existence� and yet it is also aware that human life is “illuminated

by God’s love,� he said.

The pope made his comments at the end of a special concert performed in his honor at the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo Sept. 7.

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Pope Benedict said he has always had a deep fondness for Mozart.

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In a letter to his dying father, Mozart demonstrated “a deep and simple faith� that is also reflected in his work, “Requiem,� the pope said.

The musical piece reminds the listener to fully appreciate earthly life as a gift from God and at the same time helps one transcend the earthly world by seeing death as being “the key� for opening the door to eternal happiness, he said.

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Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

BEIRUT (CNS) – What is to become of Christianity in the Middle East? Can it survive in the region of its birth?

And if so, what will be its role and character?

Catholic Church leaders are about to confront those questions in their Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, to be held at the Vatican Oct. 10-24.

The meeting “is an opportunity to revise the whole situation for Christians in the Middle East,” said Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, Iraq, who asked the pope in 2008 to convene such a synod.

The synod is a pastoral and practical synod, and not a dogmatic one. The theme: “communion and witness.”

“We need it because our faithful are leaving their countries,” said Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad.

“If we have peace and security, our people would not leave.”

In Israel, Melkite Catholic Archbishop Elias Chacour of Haifa said he hopes the synod will “define the reason why we need to stay in this country, which is not very favorable to our presence.

“What reason is there for our presence here as Christians?” he asked. “To propagate and introduce the value of reconciliation, which is not on the political agenda in this country?

NEWS

in brief

With forgiveness, reform will come: pope CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) – Forgiveness is the backbone of all true reform, both in the life of an individual Christian and in the life of the whole church community, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Today’s spiritual crisis is rooted in “obscuring the grace of forgiveness,” the pope said Sept. 25 as he met with a group of bishops from Brazil.

“We expect better understanding of our mission in this country, our role in the Catholic Church and more attention to our human presence than to that of the presence of the holy shrines.”

“We are hoping for very simple things,” the bishop said.

“We don’t want miracles.”

Catholics’ role in the Holy Land is recognized by the Holy See, but Archbishop Chacour said the faithful would like to see more consciousness of what they should do as a Christian minority.

Placed between two large majorities, Catholics are “facing the challenge of meeting every day thousands of pilgrims who come not only to walk on the dirt and see artifacts but also to see what remains of Jesus Christ, the ‘living stones,’” he said.

Archbishop Chacour said he would like to see Rome “encourage the local Christians here so they can really be aware of their role.”

“We need the Catholic communion to become more real,” he said.

Christian flight from the region is a major problem and the synod should try to solve it, said Msgr. Raphael Minassian, who administers the Armenian Catholic Exarchate of Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan.

When forgiveness and the sacrament of reconciliation are not recognized as being “real and effective,” people tend to feel free from guilt because “the conditions for the existence of (guilt) are never verified” or examined, the pope said.

But, “deep down they know it’s not true,” he said.

No one is “so cold as to not experience feelings of guilt,” he said, adding that such feelings are necessary “for the health of the soul.”

Everyone needs God “to remove the layers of dust and filth that have collected on God’s image inscribed in us,” Pope Benedict said. When those layers are removed, the individual begins to look like Christ and more like everyone else who has become more Christ-like through purification.

Make faith visible, London prelate says LONDON – One of London’s two archbishops has asked Catholics to make their faith more visible in daily life in the aftermath of Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to Britain.

Catholics should offer to pray for people, bless themselves openly with the sign of the cross or make such remarks to

(CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING)

“What reason is there here for our presence?” synod’s fateful question for Mideast bishops

An Iraqi Christian reads the Bible in Arabic at a refugee center in Amman, Jordan.

“It’s a matter of survival,” said Syrian Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan of Antioch. “We can’t just close our eyes and say we happen to be here and we have to continue.

“We have to ... try to convince the whole world, especially the developed world, that we can’t accept just to endure or take our destiny so negatively, as in saying ‘It’s the will of God, and that’s it.’

“We have to fight for our human rights.” people as “God bless you,” said Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster in North London.

In a pastoral letter read out in 214 parishes, Archbishop Nichols suggested that one first step would be “to be quicker to say to others that we will pray for them, especially to those in distress.”

“Prayer is the first fruit of faith in the Lord, and we grow so much by giving prayer its place in our homes and in our hearts,” he said. “Making faith visible is so much a part of the invitation the Holy Father has extended to us all.”

The archbishop said the Holy Father “has given us new heart for our mission,” highlighting the pope’s remarks at London’s Westminster Cathedral Sept. 18.

“He said we are to be witnesses to the beauty of holiness, to the splendor of the truth and to the joy and freedom born of a living relationship with Christ,” the archbishop said.

“In speaking of our faith, he was always so gentle and courteous, so sensitive to the achievements and anxieties of his listeners, so clear and reasoned in presenting difficult points, so humble and open-hearted,” he said. “We must strive for these same qualities when speaking about our faith, in witnessing to its truth.”

NEWS IN BRIEF, page 5

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October 1, 2010

Catholic San Francisco

5

Bishops critique theologians’ revisionist book on sexuality WASHINGTON (CNS) – Two Catholic scholars’ modernist reinterpretation of church teaching on sexuality was a “radical departure from Catholic theological tradition” and erred in its methods and findings, a U.S. bishops’ committee concluded.

In their 2008 book “The Sexual Person,” Creighton University theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler “reach a whole range of conclusions that are contrary to Catholic teaching,” the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine said in a 24-page critique released Sept. 22.

The committee cited errors in the book’s conclusions that homosexual acts, premarital sex, contraception and artificial insemination can be morally acceptable, in contrast to church teachings.

Salzman chairs the theology department at Jesuit-run Creighton in Omaha, Neb., and Lawler, who retired in 2005, is a professor emeritus there.

The committee, chaired by Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, said the critique was prompted by “the pastoral danger that readers of the book could be confused or misled, especially since the book proposes ways of living a Christian life that do not accord with the teaching of the church and the Christian tradition.”

The issues treated by the book are vital for the life of the church today, the committee said, but should be thoroughly studied by theologians under the goal of “faith seeking understanding.”

“There is need of a standard above one’s personal experience – provided by natural law, Scripture and the magisterium,” the committee said.

Without overall authority to resolve conflicts among sources, the committee said, “there can only be ‘dialogue.’”

The committee defended natural law as liberating rather than impinging on human autonomy: “Contrary to what Nietzsche believed, the natural law reveals the grandeur and not the servility of the human person.”

Creighton University said in a Sept. 22 statement that it “accepts as authoritative” the committee’s statement and “presents to its students as Catholic doctrine only that which is deemed to be true doctrine.”

“As a comprehensive university, Creighton is nonetheless mindful of its obligation to honor the academic freedom of individual faculty members,” it added. “Indeed, in his April 2008 address to Catholic educators, Pope Benedict XVI ‘reaffirm(ed) the great value of academic freedom.’”

“The Sexual Person” won first place among theology books in the Catholic Press Association’s book competition for 2008.

News in brief . . .

tion to a controversial government river project, increased its credibility.

“Also, the clean image of Catholic priests and Religious and the sacredness of the Church also won the peoples’ trust,” Peter Lee Young-sik of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea said.

The plan would establish a commission with both Haitian and international members that will approve projects and ensure that building standards are met, Catholic News Service reported.

■ Continued from page 4

Catholicism is Korea’s ‘most trusted religion’ SEOUL – The Catholic Church is the most credible religion in Korea, according to a recently published poll in a popular current affairs magazine.

A wide-ranging survey recently conducted by the Sisain weekly showed that Catholicism came out on top as the most trusted religion, the Union of Catholic Asian News reported.

Asked “to select two credible religions in Korea,” 57.6 percent of respondents selected Catholicism followed by Buddhism with 50.0 percent, Protestantism with 26.4 percent and Won Buddhism, 6.2 percent.

The survey was jointly conducted by the magazine and Media Research on Sept. 1-2 in telephone interviews with 1,000 people aged 19 and above.

The Church also came out on top with every generation, especially those in their 50s who gave a 66.3 percent approval rating.

Sisain said the increasing number of Catholics and the Church’s public stance on social issues, such as its opposi-

Haitian bishops OK rebuilding plan WASHINGTON – Haitian bishops agreed Sept. 24 to a rebuilding plan for parishes and schools destroyed in January’s earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince.

The Haitian church has struggled to recover since the magnitude 7 earthquake Jan. 12 destroyed 70 parishes, including the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Port-au-Prince, dozens of schools, several convents and the national seminary.

Haitian bishops met in Miami Sept. 22-26 with Catholic officials from the United States, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guadeloupe and Mexico and the Inter-American Development Bank. The bishops were considering the proposal developed over several months primarily by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Relief Services.

Cardinal urges Hispanics to stay rooted in faith ROSEMONT, Ill. – Hispanic Catholics can be leaven for the church, but that can only happen if they remain rooted in their faith, Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George said in a Sept. 24 address at a national Hispanic ministry congress.

“You will be leaven not because you are Hispanic but because you are Catholic,” he said. But some Hispanic Catholics are leaving the church, lured by fundamentalist Protestant churches, and even more by the secularism that threatens all faiths. “Their temptation is to be Catholic only on Dec. 12 and Ash Wednesday, and forget everything else,” said Cardinal George. Dec. 12 is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The goal of the event was for people who work in Hispanic ministry to decide what that ministry will look like as Hispanics become more mainstream members of the U.S. Church. Hispanics already account for more than 35 percent of U.S. Catholics and more than 50 percent of Catholics under age 25.

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Catholic San Francisco

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My Day in a icaraguan

Garbage Dump An Eyewitness Report by Rachael Joyner The following is an excerpt from the field report of Rachael Joyner, a writer for Cross International Catholic Outreach. During a recent trip to icaragua she experienced the harsh realities facing hundreds of families struggling to survive the horrifying conditions of a city garbage dump...

I didn’t know which was worse: the smell of burning tires and decomposing trash or seeing a 3-year-old, with no shoes and a dirty face, digging through that trash. My stomach sank as I held back tears. I had only been in Chinandega’s garbage dump for a few hours and I was desperate to leave.

I had seen developing-world poverty before in Haiti and east Africa, but it paled in comparison to what I saw in this 20-acre garbage dump in northern Nicaragua. Maybe it was the hopeless look in their eyes, or the immediacy of their poverty that sent me reeling. It’s hard to get much lower than living in a garbage dump, and more than 300 families in Chinandega have been doing it for a decade. Most are refugees whose homes were destroyed during Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Left without jobs, houses, or help, these families turned to the dump for survival.

They live in dilapidated shacks made from scraps of cardboard, wood, and tin collected from the dump, which offer little protection during the rainy season. Their days are spent scavenging the dump for plastic bottles, aluminum cans, bits of steel and glass, and pieces of paper to sell to recycling companies so they can feed their families. Some of the children attend school, but most work alongside their parents in the dump.

The area next to the dump where these families live is called El Limonal, but people in Chinandega have another name for it: the Triangle of Death. It gained this nickname because the triangular piece of land where they live is surrounded by the dump, an overflowing cemetery, and a contaminated river

where the city’s sewage is dumped.

The nickname is not an exaggeration.

The first thing that hit me as I walked through the dump was the overwhelming smell and the smoke, a kind of thick haze that engulfs everything. It stung my eyes and, with each breath, burnt my throat.

It reminded me of Dante’s description of the Inferno in his book the Divine Comedy. There were people everywhere digging through mounds of garbage and little children rifling through bag after bag of trash. I watched one little boy, who couldn’t have been older than 4, pull a rotting banana peel from a bag and chew on it. He had probably not eaten yet that day because his family was too poor to buy food, and now he was turning to garbage to ward off his hunger.

It was hardest seeing the children in the dump. Most of them had no shoes.

Their clothes were tattered, and a thick layer of dirt covered their bodies. When I first got to the dump, a crowd of people were gathered around a young boy, who was maybe 8 or 10. He had a hole in his foot the size of an orange.

Though he was shaking from the pain, he didn’t make a sound. Like many in the dump, he didn’t have shoes and made the mistake of stepping in a pile of trash that was still burning underneath.

The heat burnt the skin right off of his foot, leaving the large, oozing sore we were all staring at. Finally, his father carried him home to “put some cream” on his foot. (They were too poor to go to the clinic.) I spent the rest of the trip wondering if that boy would lose his foot or spend the next six months dealing with an infection that could have been prevented with something as simple as a pair of shoes.

Health hazards such as these abound in the dump, and children are especially susceptible. As the families pick through the garbage, they inhale toxic fumes from routine waste burning, which cause respiratory problems, such as asthma,

Rachael Joyner (photo at left) waits with children beside a dump truck full of trash. When it empties its load, the scavangers will go to work, searching for food and useful items.

chronic bronchitis, and pneumonia.

Parasites from the garbage cause intestinal problems and bleeding. Bugs burrow into the families’ skin, causing rashes and sores. Though most of these are treatable ailments, the majority of families are too poor to go to a clinic or buy medicine, so they suffer for years and some die.

That’s when I realized the desperation of these families’ situations. As one woman put it, “I work in the dump because I have no other options. I live in a house made of cardboard because it is all I have.” These people have nothing. I hardly lasted four hours in the dump, and these families have been living here for years.

The desperation of the families and the graphic images of the dump are

what led John Bland, founder and executive director of Amigos for Christ, to quit his job in the U.S. and devote his life to helping them.

“I had never seen such hopelessness until I came here,” said Bland, a devout Catholic whose Nicaragua-based organization has been ministering for nearly a decade to the poor families living and working in Chinandega’s garbage dump. “These people desperately needed help. And I thought, why not me?”

Since its founding, Amigos has helped hundreds of poor Nicaraguans start a new life in communities outside of the dump. In addition to a sturdy new house, these poor families receive health care, education for their children, and vocational training and micro-credit loans to begin new jobs — all the things these families need to rebuild their own lives. Bland also mobilized the local Catholic Church, who now works closely with Amigos to tend to the spiritual needs of the people.

As Bland led me though the dump that day, he explained that none of this life-changing work would be possible without the financial support of organizations such as Cross International Catholic Outreach and its generous Catholic donors in the U.S. “We could not do this work without Cross International Catholic Outreach.

We need help with the resources to accomplish the work and that’s one of Cross Catholic’s strengths. Working together is tremendous... because something very positive that glorifies our awesome God comes out of it.”

As we discussed Amigo’s newest project, building homes for 50 families from the dump, Bland was overjoyed that Cross Catholic’s donors were willing to support him in his lifechanging work. I felt a lift from the conversation too. It made that terrible day bearable.

To make a tax-deductable contribution to Cross International Catholic Outreach and its work with Catholic ministries overseas, use either the enclosed postage-paid brochure or send donations to: Cross International Catholic Outreach, Dept.

AC00668, 490 White Pond Drive, PO Box 63, Akron, OH 44309-0063.

October 1, 2010

Catholic San Francisco

7

PAID ADVERTISEMENT

Rescuing the Poor in Uncertain Times American Catholics are embracing God’s economy as they help the poor in Latin America Sandra Maria, 54, goes to work each day even though she knows it is slowly killing her.

Maria, a mother of five and a grandmother, spends each day scavenging in a city garbage dump in northern Nicaragua for recyclables, which she later sells for money to buy food. The work is hard — toxic fumes rising up from the mounds of putrid garbage sting her eyes and burn her throat as hoards of mosquitoes buzz around her body — but not having food for her family is harder.

“The smoke is killing us and we bathe in dirty water,” says Maria, who lives in the shanty town inside the garbage dump with her family. “We would do anything to get away from the dump, but right now it is the only way for us to make money to survive.”

Maria’s family is one of hundreds who scrape by a living each day in Chinandega’s 20-acre garbage dump.

In many Latin American countries, the poor flock to city garbage dumps because it is often the only steady work they can find and they can earn at least enough to guarantee their children a meal. Still, the pay is meager — the equivilent of between $2 and $10 U.S. dollars a week.

The dire situation in Chinandega is just one example of the intense poverty plaguing Latin America. A millennium study by the World Bank found that nearly 40 percent of the 569 million people living in Latin America live below the poverty line. Haiti, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Guatemala are often cited among the poorest countries in the world. The fact that families are turning to garbage dumps for survival, is an indication of how serious the situation has become.

“Garbage dumps and dirty streets are terrible playgrounds for children to be growing up in,” says Jim Cavnar, president of Cross International Catholic Outreach, whose ministry supports several aid programs across Latin America for families struggling to survive intense poverty. “If we don’t do something to break the vicious cycle of poverty these children are trapped in, they are doomed to become adults — still living in the same deadly environment.”

Despite the dismal statistics and fear over the future of an uncertain economy, dozens of local outreach ministries run by strong Catholic missionaries are tapping into God’s economy to help the poor in Latin America. And, already, they’ve seen great returns as lives are being restored.

One such life is Maria Elena. The mother of four used to work in the horrific 42-acre garbage dump in Managua, Nicaragua. She barely made enough money to feed her children, let alone send them to school. They often came to work with her in the dump, which she hated because it made them sick.

Elena is now part of a jewelry-making program run by a local Catholic ministry where she earns enough money making necklaces and bracelets from recycled material to comfortably support her family — even send her children to school.

“This program has been a great help,” she says. “I don’t know what we would have done without it.”

Sandra Maria (right) is one of many dump scavangers who have been helped by Cross. She fears for the children who work on the smokey, dangerous site and prays they’ll have a better future.

The simple program that changed Elena’s life is one of several projects in Latin America supported by Cross Catholic. Thanks to contributions provided by its U.S. donors, Cross Catholic is able to partner with Catholic ministries in the field who are running great programs but don’t have the funds to sustain them. Support from American Catholics keeps these important projects up and running.

“We’re amazed by the unwavering compassion and generosity of these donors. Even at a time when people are hurting here in the U.S. because of the economy, they are still giving to help the poor around the world,” says Cavnar, president of Cross Catholic.

“They show great faith, and we are seeing the positive returns of that faith in the lives of the poor.”

Those positive returns are especially visible in the fight against world hunger.

For example, monthly financial support from Cross International Catholic Outreach allows Las Mercedes Nutrition Center in Honduras to feed more than a hundred poor, malnourished children who they find abandoned in garbage dumps and in the streets. Cross Catholic also feeds thousands of poor children through the support of school feeding programs and food shipments to countries such as Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

“It is amazing what God can do when you trust him,” said John Bland, executive director of Amigos for Christ, a Nicaraguan ministry founded to minister to the people living and working in Chinandega’s city garbage dump in the northwestern part of the country.

With help from Cross Catholic, his ministry plans to build 50 homes for families living in the garbage dump — families such as Sandra Maria’s, who are wondering if they’ll be able to collect enough plastic bottles tomorrow so they can buy food.

“The poor have unbelievable faith, as do these Catholic ministries serving in the field, helping them each day,” Cavnar says. “We count it a privilege

to help them and, in doing so, live out our faith.”

To make a tax-deductable contribution to Cross International Catholic Outreach and its work with Catholic ministries overseas, use either the enclosed postagepaid brochure or send donations to: Cross International Catholic Outreach, Dept. AC00668, 490 White Pond Drive, PO Box 63, Akron, OH 44309-0063.

How to Help: Your help is needed for Cross International Catholic Outreach to bring Christ’s mercy to the poorest of the poor. Use the enclosed postage-paid brochure to mail your gift or send it to: Cross International Catholic Outreach, Dept. AC00668, 490 White Pond Drive, PO Box 63, Akron, OH 44309-0063.

Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

Hundreds visit Hill in anti-poverty push WASHINGTON (CNS) – Hundreds of Catholic Charities leaders and staffers took to Capitol Hill Sept.

28 to promote new legislation that they believe could transform the U.S. approach to fighting poverty.

Participants in Catholic Charities USA’s centennial gathering in Washington visited their senators and representatives on the convention’s final day to urge support for the National Opportunity for Community Renewal Act, introduced that day by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

The $125 million bill, drafted by Catholic Charities USA itself, would set up 10 community demonstration projects, including three in rural areas and one near a military base, that would operate with more up-to-date poverty measures and create “individual opportunity plans” for each client.

“With this legislation, today we tell the tens of millions of Americans living in poverty that there is a new hope,” said Father Larry Snyder, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, in a breakfast talk Sept. 28.

“That they are not destined to live in poverty for their entire lives. That with the help provided in this legislation, people in need will be propelled onto a path of self-sufficiency, enabling them to achieve new legacies of health and happiness for their families.”

Catholic Charities USA acknowledged that the bill “will not make it through Congress this session,” but added, “We feel that a conversation on poverty needs to be had, and your support for their bill will help start that conversation.”

The legislation would establish three targeted levels of social services – services to prevent people from falling into poverty, services to help those who have fallen on hard times recover and services for those who require long-term support to live a dignified life.

In a talk to convention participants about the legislation Sept. 26, Candy S. Hill, Catholic Charities’ senior vice president for social policy and government affairs, said poverty is “too complex, too personalized to be solved by a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.”

“We need a system that has as its first priority the desire to guide people onto a path of self-sufficiency and dignity, and away from the safety net,” she added.

“This is not charity; it’s justice, and we must demand it.”

Hill said it “has been more than 40 years since this country has experienced a truly transformative moment for social change.”

EDUCATION & SPORTS

Parishioner can’t imagine a day without praying rosary

By Dave Crenshaw HARTSHORNE, Okla. (CNS) – Charles Lee is never far from a rosary. There are three or four on an end table next to his recliner. He keeps one on a kitchen cabinet and a few more next to his bed. He seems always to have one or two in his pocket wherever he goes.

Just in case he forgets, there is another in the glove compartment of his pickup, which, by the way, has a bumper sticker squarely in the middle of the tailgate that reads, “Pray the Rosary.”

“I have rosaries all over, but none of them is fancy or expensive. I give a lot of them away to people I pray with.

Besides, it’s what’s in your heart when you pray that matters, not how much the rosary costs,” he said.

Lee prays the rosary every day, and he has for more than 60 years. He said he started his daily devotion in fifth grade while attending Catholic school in his hometown of Hartshorne.

“The school was run by Carmelite sisters, and we prayed the rosary and Our Father every day before class started. I just never stopped,” he told the Eastern Oklahoma Catholic, monthly magazine of the Tulsa Diocese.

Aside from eight years spent teaching vocal music at an elementary school in Missouri and four years in the Army, Lee has spent his life in Hartshorne and at Holy Rosary Parish. When his former music teacher retired, she helped him get a job in Hartshorne Public Schools, where he stayed until his retirement.

Lee, 76, has been the organist at Holy Rosary and an active member of the parish for 50 years.

He said that reciting the Hail Marys and contemplating the rosary’s four mysteries – joyful, sorrowful, glorious and luminous – help take his mind off the troubles of this world.

The luminous mysteries, also known as the mysteries of light, were added by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

“Next to the Mass, the rosary is everything to me. It takes away a lot of anxiety. It calms me. It keeps me in touch with our Lord, his mother and the saints,” he explained.

The 115-year-old Holy Rosary Parish has a long and colorful history. Lee has witnessed the closing of the parish

school and seminary, the church being destroyed by fire in 1948 and control of the parish being passed from the Carmelite order to the diocese. But when asked about the biggest change he has seen, his thoughts turn to liturgical matters.

“Vatican II,” he answers quickly. “That was the big change.”

He said he prefers the Latin Mass, and he is thankful that Holy Rosary Charles Lee prays the celebrates the Tridentine rosary at Holy Rosary votive Mass of the Angels Church in Hartshorne, Okla. on a regular basis. “We’re pretty conservative here,” he said.

A group, usually including Lee – “If I’m not at church, I’m sick” – meets every Sunday before Mass to pray the rosary.

During October, the month of the rosary, it is recited daily.

On the Sunday closest to Oct. 7, which is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, a special Mass is celebrated.

Lee and a small group of friends frequently pray the rosary together whenever and wherever they can.

He has followed the same unorganized schedule with his personal devotion. There is no set time or place for his prayers; he simply makes sure that he prays every day. In the unlikely event that he doesn’t have rosary beads nearby, he counts the prayers on his fingers: “It’s easy. There’s 10 Hail Marys, and God gave us 10 fingers.”

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8

October 1, 2010

RESPECT LIFE ❧

Catholic San Francisco

9

SUNDAY OCTOBER 3, 2010

SF cord-blood project expanding to aid Asians with chronic blood disorders

By George Raine A San Francisco-based non-profit organization is preparing to launch an umbilical cord blood collection program that in particular will benefit Asian, Pacific Island and mixed-race patients, for whom supplies are often limited.

Donors needed for third-grader’s therapy, Page 16 The effort by the Joanne Pang Foundation, named for a young leukemia victim – a St. Cecilia Elementary School student who died in 2003 at the age of nine – is a partnership with an existing cord blood bank at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The foundation is in talks with area hospitals to form a collection and storage program, with the foundation responsible for shipping the units to Houston. The goal is

Abortion . . .

■ Continued from cover Project Rachel, a post-abortion ministry founded in Milwaukee in 1984.

Vicki Thorn, Project Rachel founder and executive director of the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, showed the priests how to recognize post-abortion trauma and help women deal with their grief.

“I don’t know about you, but when I’ve heard confessions and it involves abortion,” Bishop Ricken told the priests, “sometimes I feel helpless, not knowing what to do, what to say.”

Thorn told the priests that “from the beginning priests were at the core of this ministry. What you do, what you say, your presence is so important to the walking wounded that you encounter – and they are everywhere.”

She said that while some 50 million abortions take place each year in the United States, it is hard to know how many people have been affected.

to be operational by the end of the year, said Sally Brien Holper, a Pang Foundation board member.

Effectively, the foundation will be establishing the first public cord blood collection program in Northern California.

It is widely supported because it is a non-controversial source of stem cells and potentially can help save the lives of people with many blood disorders, including leukemia and sickle cell anemia. As is, most umbilical cord blood is discarded.

The foundation will be accepting cord blood from all donors but will put an emphasis on Asians since their population numbers are great in the Bay Area.

The foundation was launched in 2004, the year after Joanne Pang’s death, and originally had the goal of raising $2.5 million for the first umbilical cord blood bank in the Bay Area.

However, the foundation in time realized it would take years to raise the money, and be an expensive process in itself, and the decision was made to partner with an existing cord blood bank.

Fund-raising has not been halted, however, and the foundation hopes to raise from $250,000 to $500,000 in the next

two years to cover its costs that will be associated with blood collection and shipping. The foundation is seeking grants, donations from individual donors and plans fund-raising events, including one Feb. 26, 2011, at the San Francisco Zoo. An Oakland physician, Dr. Bertram Lubin, president and CEO of Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland, helped seal the partnership between the foundation and MD Anderson Cancer Center. The foundation and Stanford University Medical Center are finalizing a contract by which the hospital will collect cord blood, and California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco has agreed to move forward on a proposal it collect blood for the foundation.

The foundation was begun by Joanne Pang’s father, Joseph Pang, a chemist, who died this year at 52. He was jogging around Lake Merced, on March 22, 2010, when he collapsed. Since then, the remaining six members of the Joanne Pang Foundation board have carried on his work: Sally Brien Holper, Scott Hildula, Gregory Porter, Helen Vydra Roy, Lisa Napoli and Richard Chan.

“Abortion didn’t start with Roe v. Wade,” Thorn said. “It’s been forever a human problem. So we need to know there are old women in our congregations and in our nursing homes who have had abortions.”

She offered the priests practical advice: “If you get a call from the nursing home or the hospital that Mrs. So-and-So should have died yesterday but she’s so agitated, get your stole and get to the hospital and say to her there’s nothing that God can’t forgive. And then name a couple of the favorite sins of your parish and put abortion in there.

You’ll see her eyes fill with tears.”

Older women did not have counseling after abortions. “They went to confession many times,” Thorn said, “but in death there’s a series of questions they need answered and you can be the person” to answer them.

Thorn talked about abortion’s impact on women’s health, including an increased cancer risk.

She stresses that an abortion is not a routine medical procedure. “Because you’re forever carrying this biological memory in your body,” she said. “Furthermore, you started

a pregnancy and you didn’t finish it. That has implications.

Thorn cited research by a cancer specialist in Seattle who discovered that girls under 18 who have abortions, and who have a history of breast cancer in their immediate families, increased their risk of breast cancer by 100 percent.

Thorn told the priests that she understood the challenges they face talking about abortion.

“I know that when it comes to pro-life stuff, you can’t do anything right,” she said. “Because whatever you say, someone’s going to be unhappy with you. It’s either too much or not enough.”

She called abortion a “heart debate (because) people are so impassioned.”

Don’t argue with an angry parishioner, Thorn advised.

“Nobody’s ever been argued into the pro-life movement,” she said. “Simply say to them, ‘Why don’t you share with me why you feel so strongly about this. I’d like to understand.’

“Shut up and just let them talk,” she continued. “When they are done, thank them. If you can, lay your hand on their arm.

Gentlemen, 20 seconds of touch is powerful healing in people.

It sets off that chemistry of connection.”

Many Americans have lost a child or a friend to abortion *** Many still grieve a nightmare that was never about “choice.”

there is hope —Jeremiah 31:17

*** But if we give God the broken pieces, He can make all things new.

Find help. Offer help. Learn more including: “The Top 10 Reasons They Call It the Unchoice” TheUnChoice.com

healing: 1-877-HOPE-4-ME

RESPECT LIFE PROGRAM OFFICE OF PUBLIC POLICY & SOCIAL CONCERNS – ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO

Project Rachel Post Abortion Ministry offers sensitive confidential help and healing.

• referral for Sacramental reconciliation • individual guidance and mentoring • small support groups • referral to therapists and to retreats • healing programs in English and Spanish

One Peter Yorke Way • San Francisco, CA 94109 • www.sflifeandjustice.org

Please call Archdiocesan Project Rachel 415-717-6438

10

Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

RESPECT LIFE ❧ Executions . . .

■ Continued from cover to the young girl that he tormented before strangling her to death and dumping her body in an orange grove,” Pacheco wrote.

“He is least among us who deserves clemency.”

Susan Jordan’s family members feel likewise. Her mother, Angelina Jordan, 70, wrote Schwarzenegger also petitioning him not to grant clemency. “Albert Brown has cleverly, blatantly, manipulated the courts by filing appeals these past 30 years. He is a cold-blooded murderer, full

of hate, cruelty and malice. He has been a plague on society and all that is decent,” she wrote.

She added, “Where is our clemency? How much longer must Albert Greenwood we endure this Brown injustice?”

The Catholic Church believes, however, that capital punishment not only diminishes respect for human life but is unnecessary while there is the alternative penalty of life

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imprisonment without parole. Moreover, said Bishop Wilkerson, “the application of the death penalty is deeply flawed – with those who are poor or from racial minorities most often its subjects.”

He added, “As Catholic bishops, we teach and preach the Gospel vision of a ‘culture of life.’ We believe that each human person is created in God’s image.

We are compelled to teach a consistent ethic of life and to speak publicly that the use of the death penalty does not protect human life, does not promote human dignity, and does not reduce violence in our society.”

Bishop Wilkerson said the California Catholic Conference reaffirms U.S. bishops’ 2005 statement “A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death,” which launched the U.S. Bishops Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

Meantime, Virginia executed a 41-yearold woman, Teresa Lewis, last week, while the Virginia Catholic Conference protested.

The first woman executed in the commonwealth since 1912, she was convicted of planning the 2002 murders of her husband and 25-year-old stepson. The two men who killed the victims were given life sentences.

Lewis’ lawyers argued that her IQ of 72 made her effectively disabled.

In Kentucky, the execution of a death row inmate, Gerald Wilson, is on hold indefinitely after a Kentucky judge stopped it when questions were raised about Wilson’s mental ability and the state’s execution protocol. Pope Benedict XVI opposes the execution as do the Catholic bishops of Kentucky and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

At the Archdiocese of San Francisco, George Wesolek, director of the Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, noted that fear reigns in our communities because they are permeated with violence. “I think

many people think that the execution of criminals will stop some of that violence,” he said. “We know that instead of stopping violence, state-sponsored killing of criminals only serves to increase the atmosphere of revenge and retribution.”

He added, “Our Catholic social teaching calls for protecting the innocents in our community, but doing so by keeping the offender locked up and the community safe. Our principle of the dignity of every human life extends to even the most heinous of criminals. All of us, sinners that we are, are offered the hope of repentance, change and forgiveness.”

Catherine Huston, coordinator of the Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty, based in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, was among the organizers of a vigil planned this week in opposition to Brown’s execution.

She recalled the story of the woman about to be stoned to death for committing adultery – and how Jesus challenged the crowd saying he who was without sin should cast the first stone. No one could.

He turned to the woman and said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on sin no more.”

Jesus realized, said Huston, “That when we are face to face with the very worst in ourselves, we can choose to become something different, something better. And, he provided the chance.”

She added, “So, for us today, as a society we have to ask ourselves, ‘Have we set up systems to treat people as disposable, unredeemable, or do we value life?”

Huston added, “We can choose vengeance or we can choose respect for human dignity. We can plant seeds of hope, believing as Jesus so beautifully exemplified, that no one is beyond redemption and that it is not up to us to calculate and plan for death, but rather to stand on the side of life.”

The application of the death penalty is deeply flawed, with those who are poor or from racial minorities most often its subjects.

– Los Angeles Auxilary Bishop Gerald Wilkerson

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11

Catholic San Francisco

RESPECT LIFE â?§ SUNDAY OCTOBER 3, 2010 Hope for married The Gabriel Project

By John T. Bruchalski, MD Alone in the bathroom, staring blankly at the negative test, you tearfully ask yourself, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why am I not pregnant yet?â&#x20AC;?

Later, you may find yourself talking to your doctor about a â&#x20AC;&#x153;take-home babyâ&#x20AC;? and come face to face with the costly, invasive and sometimes morally questionable reality of fertility treatments. You wonder, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Is there any hope for me?â&#x20AC;?

As a Catholic gynecologist working with a team of prolife physicians, I want to tell you, there is hope. You may have tried to conceive for a year, the minimal duration to be considered infertile. However, you are a person, not a statistic.

Your desire to be pregnant is real and is screaming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now!â&#x20AC;?

As a physician, I agree. Now is the time to find out why you are not conceiving. You are not alone, and there is help.

More and more couples find themselves childless after â&#x20AC;&#x153;tryingâ&#x20AC;? for a period of time. After being married for six years, Jen and Bob were still childless. Sadly, Jen was diagnosed with Chlamydia as a younger woman, and she always thought that it might prevent her from having children.

Although she had quit smoking and improved her nutrition to optimize her fertility, she also sought medical help due to worsening pain at the time of her periods. Through laparoscopy, we found mild adhesions from her Chlamydia infection long ago, and many manifestations of endometriosis. The problems corrected, six months later Jen came into our office carrying her positive pregnancy test, with a smile and a tear of joy after many years of trying to conceive.

Diagnosed with irregular cycles since she was a teenager, Hillary knew she had a hormonal imbalance. Starting abruptly after college, Hillary gained weight, became constipated, noticed the drying of her skin and began to feel cold all the time. She and her husband of one year, LeVar, came into the office to talkâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not only about their desire to have a child but more importantly about the riddle of her hormonal health. A good health history and physical exam complemented the Natural Family Planning (NFP) charts Hillary had done for the last six months. In addition to a diagnosis of polycystic ovaries, Hillary also had low thyroid function. She was also given medications to help her ovulate more efficiently. After several months, Hillary walked into our office with that same smile Jen had shown us. She said she appreciated both the help with conceiving and the attention to her underlying hormonal problems.

But what happens when no underlying problems are found?

That is the story of Miriam and Cole. In their early thirties and MARRIED COUPLES, page 12 <Ĺ?Ä&#x161;Ć?Í&#x203A; dĆľĆ&#x152;Ĺś WĆľĆ&#x161;Ć&#x161;Ĺ?ĹśĹ? Ä&#x201A;Ç&#x2021; Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E;Ä&#x201A; Ä?Ĺ&#x161;Ĺ?ĹŻÄ&#x161;Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E;Ĺś Ä&#x201A;Ć&#x161; Ć&#x161;Ĺ&#x161;Ä&#x17E; Ä&#x17E;ĹśĆ&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152; ŽĨ ĨÄ&#x201A;ĹľĹ?ĹŻĹ?Ä&#x17E;Ć? Ä&#x201A;ĹśÄ&#x161; ŜŽĆ&#x161; Ĺ?Ĺś Ć&#x161;Ĺ&#x161;Ä&#x17E; ĹľĹ?Ä&#x161;Ä&#x161;ĹŻÄ&#x17E; Ç Ĺ&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ĺś Ć&#x2030;Ä&#x201A;Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E;ĹśĆ&#x161;Ć? Ć?Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x2030;Ä&#x201A;Ć&#x152;Ä&#x201A;Ć&#x161;Ä&#x17E; Ĺ˝Ć&#x152; Ä&#x161;Ĺ?Ç&#x20AC;Ĺ˝Ć&#x152;Ä?Ä&#x17E;Í&#x2DC; ^Ć&#x2030;Ä&#x201A;Ä?Ä&#x17E; Ĺ?Ć? Ä&#x201A;Ç&#x20AC;Ä&#x201A;Ĺ?ĹŻÄ&#x201A;Ä?ĹŻÄ&#x17E; Ĺ?Ĺś ŽƾĆ&#x152; &Ä&#x201A;ĹŻĹŻ tĹ˝Ć&#x152;ĹŹĆ?Ĺ&#x161;Ĺ˝Ć&#x2030;Ć? Ĺ?Ĺś ĨĹ?Ç&#x20AC;Ä&#x17E; Ä&#x201A;Ç&#x2021; Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E;Ä&#x201A; ŽƾŜĆ&#x161;Ĺ?Ä&#x17E;Ć?Í&#x2DC; Ç&#x2021; Ä&#x201A;ĹŻĹŻ Ć&#x161;Ĺ˝Ä&#x161;Ä&#x201A;Ç&#x2021; Ć&#x161;Ĺ˝ Ä&#x201A;Ä?Ä?Ä&#x17E;Ć?Ć? ŽƾĆ&#x152; Ç&#x20AC;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152;Ç&#x2021; Ć?Ć&#x2030;Ä&#x17E;Ä?Ĺ?Ä&#x201A;ĹŻĹ?Ç&#x152;Ä&#x17E;Ä&#x161; Ć&#x2030;Ć&#x152;Ĺ˝Ĺ?Ć&#x152;Ä&#x201A;ĹľĆ?Í&#x2DC; Ď°Ď­ĎąÍ&#x2DC;ϳϳϳÍ&#x2DC;ϾϾϳϳ Ç Ç Ç Í&#x2DC;ĹŹĹ?Ä&#x161;Ć?Ć&#x161;ĆľĆ&#x152;ĹśÍ&#x2DC;Ĺ˝Ć&#x152;Ĺ?

A chance for parishes to help pregnant women in need

By Fredi Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Alessio On Sept. 12 we celebrated the first anniversary of The Gabriel Project, our archdiocesan ministry to assist pregnant mothers in need. We are grateful to Archbishop George Niederauer for his embrace of the project and for his words of encouragement to pastors to welcome this ministry in their parishes. If you are unfamiliar with The Gabriel Project, I encourage you to visit our very informative website. You can also arrange to have an informational meeting at your parish.

Our Archdiocese of San Francisco stands in communion with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops by responding to its call to establish a parish-based ministry to assist pregnant mothers in need.

There are a number of reasons why I consider The Gabriel Project to be a very special ministry.

Answering the call of our bishops and the fact that there is no substitute for this ministry are among them. Others include the special attention given to pregnant mothers seeking our assistance and how they are affected by our volunteersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; acts of love and kindness. Then, there are those special persons, our volunteers, who have responded to the call of Jesus to love and serve. What makes them special is their willingness to put Christâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s call to love into action.

When I introduce the ministry to interested parishioners, I point out Blessed Mother Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s example of Christian discipleship â&#x20AC;&#x201C; even before Christ Jesus was born: When Mary set out to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was in her sixth month with child; she had just learned that she would soon give birth to the Son of God. Out of charity, without concern for the difficulties she might face, Mary put her self-interest aside

and hastened to the aid of her cousin who was elderly and fragile. Mary remained at Elizabethâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s side for three months.

I then pose the question: How often do we put our personal interests aside and reprioritize our obligations and responsibilities so that we can go to the aid of others?

Of course we know that Mary was an extraordinary person, but we also know that ordinary persons can treat others as being special to them and in turn reveal how special they are themselves.

We shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think The Gabriel Project is a difficult ministry or that it is beyond our capacity to love and serve others. It was founded 20 years ago in Texas, where it has been successfully operating since and has spread throughout the country. So, too, can it succeed in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Our ministry is modeled after The Gabriel Project of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, a model highly recommended by the U.S. bishops.

The Gabriel Project isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a ministry for the extraordinary among us; it is a ministry for ordinary persons representing Christâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presence among us.

Fredi Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Alessio, a member of St. Mary Star of the Sea parish in Sausalito, is program coordinator for The Gabriel Project of the Archdiocese of San Francisco For more information, go to http://sfgabrielproject. wordpress.com. Contact Fredi Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Alessio at (415) 614-5551 or sfgabrielproject@gmail.com for parish informational meetings, flyers or ways to volunteer as an Auxiliary Angel.

7th Annual

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Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

Conference pursues truth about women’s health, fertility GREENVILLE, S.C. (CNS) – Doctors from around the world gathered in late July to present the latest breakthroughs in helping improve women’s health, fertility and overall well-being.

On the theme “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Truth,” the 29th annual meeting of the American Academy of FertilityCare Professionals was held in conjunction with the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb. The conference, open to medical professionals and the general public, included three days of education about women’s health issues and fertility as well as building happy, healthy and holy families.

Topics ranged from “Adrenal Fatigue and Research Assessment and Connection to NaProTechnology” by Dr. Thomas Hilgers, director of Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha, to “Family-Centered Chastity Education: The Family Honor Model” presented by Brenda Cerkez, executive director of Family Honor, a South Carolina organization that promotes family-centered programming on chastity and other issues.

“The conference has provided such a broad scope of topics relating to the theology of the body that virtually every participant will be able to take back to

their ministry or family (some) spiritual, philosophical and intellectual treasures,” Cerkez said.

Expounding on the life theme of the meeting, Creighton-trained Dr. Ingeborg Collins, an obstetrician-gynecologist from Shelby, N.C., spoke on celiac disease, an inherited autoimmune disease caused by a reaction to gluten, a type of protein commonly found in grains such as rye, barley and wheat.

Collins said it is hard to detect the disease because the symptoms may vary, but studies have shown a correlation with problems such as increased rate of infertility, increased rate of miscarriages, delayed menses and early menopause.

Celiac disease affects 20 percent of those of Irish descent, according to research.

In his keynote address on “Christianity and Culture,” Father Dwight Longenecker, an author and pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Greenville, spoke about the different ways people see Christ and themselves as Christians interacting in the current culture.

“Following the footsteps of our Lord Jesus, we are called to be in this world but not of this world,” he said. “Sometimes we are in conflict with culture and sometimes the relationship is easier.”

CPBC Annual Dinner honoring

Msgr. James Tarantino

Married couples . . .

■ Continued from page 11 after being married two years, they came to the office to see why they were not yet pregnant.

Both worked in high-stress jobs, and time was at a premium. Though meticulous and thorough, their history and physicals didn’t reveal the “why” behind their infertility. Laboratory tests showed no chronic diseases.

Stressed beyond their tolerance and depressed at not yet being parents, Miriam and her husband wanted a second opinion from a local, highly successful clinic specializing in in vitro fertilization (IVF). That procedure involves removing mature eggs from the mother’s ovaries, fertilizing them in a glass dish (in vitro is Latin for “in glass”), and then inserting the resulting embryonic children into the mother’s womb in the hope that one (but not multiple children) will implant and develop normally. As Christian physicians, we had to counsel them: “The central question you and your husband must answer before you do is this: Are the embryos made at the clinic your children or your property? If they are children, which your faith says they are, you ought not to make three to get one ‘take-home baby.’” We lost contact, but several years later, Miriam and Cole were back in the office with two children, Jason and Jackie. Both were adopted. At a defining moment, Miriam and Cole’s faith helped her see the humanity of any embryonic children she may help produce and the dangers to which she’d be exposing them through IVF. Restorative, holistic, integrative, respectful, and effective—these words describe how our faith wants us to approach the misery, agony and challenge of infertility. There are scientifically sound, as well as surgically and medically effective ways to treat the causes of infertility in a thoroughly compassionate manner. There are doctors across the nation who have learned the art and science of looking into the causes of infertility and, as appropriate, addressing a couple’s condition medically, surgically, psychologically and spiritually.

Many successful options exist for Christians who want a morally sound way to treat infertility, and who need help combating the sadness, frustration, and even anger

Every year, the Catholic Professional and Business Club honors a priest or bishop of our Archdiocese with a celebratory dinner. This year we are pleased to welcome Msgr.

James Tarantino, our new Vicar for Administration and Moderator of the Curia. He has has served as a priest for nearly 30 years, in parishes including St. Gabriel’s, St. Robert’s, Our Lady of Mt Carmel, and most recently as pastor of St. Hilary’s in Tiburon. Please join us for dinner and an inspiring talk by Msgr. Tarantino.

WHEN: WHERE: COST:

Wednesday, October 13, 8, 2010, Cocktails 5:30pm, Dinner 6pm Caesar’s Restaurant, 2299 Powell Street at Bay Street, SF, 94133 $36 per members, $40 for non-members (become a member for $45) Includes full three-course dinner and no-host bar.

RESERVATIONS: Mail your contact information & a check payable to “CPBC-ADSF” to: CPBC, Attn: John Norris, 1 Peter Yorke Way, SF, CA 94109 or pay at the door.

RETREATS •

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops teaches that in vitro fertilization raises many grave moral issues.

These are explained in the bishops’ 2009 statement “Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology.”

Divine Mercy Care: tepeyacfamilycenter.com, divinemercycare.org Fertility Care Practitioners: fertilitycare.org NaProTechnology: popepaulvi.com Natural Family Planning: familyplanning.net, marquette.edu/nursing/nfp

OCT. 22-24

MARRIED COUPLES RETREAT Fr. Rusty Shaughnessy, OFM Anne & Terry Symens-Bucher

NOV. 5

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER Clare Ronzani

NOV. 6

WRITING WORKSHOP Dennis Hock, Ph.D. Jan Haag

NOV. 12

A STUDY DAY FOR CLERGY Fr. Garrett Galvin, OFM

NOV. 26-28

RECOVERY RETREAT Sr. Briegeen Moore, OSC SAN DAMIANO RETREAT

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VALLOMBROSACENTER …where challenging issues of the day are explored in a reflective and prayerful environment.

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OCTOBER 15-17 22-24

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Calendar of Events

November 6th

“Engaging the Heart”, Pre-Cana Workshop

“

For more information

2010 THEME:

CONFRENCE

This facility is available for

!UGUST n

John T. Bruchalski, MD, FACOG (Fellow, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology), a practicing obstetrician- gynecologist, is chairman of Divine Mercy Care and founder of the Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Va. He is a regular guest on The Archbishop’s Hour on Immaculate Heart Radio.

Celebrating the Goodness of God

www.cpbc-sf.org

July 10

that can come from the inability to “have a child.” We all need to discern the course God has for us—physicians as well as couples.

Sound science based on the dignity of the human person is available to help couples to cooperate with our Heavenly Father and conceive a child. Some may be called to adopt a child whom God has sent via another set of birth parents. Or perhaps some couples have a unique vocation that does not involve raising children. It is our challenge as believers of the living God to know that he loves all of us profoundly and that he knows us better than we know ourselves.

A Retreat for Family and Friends of Alcoholics Engaging the Heart” Catholic Marriage led by Fr. Tom Weston, S.J.

A.A. & AL-ANON WOMEN RETREAT A.A. & AL-ANON WOMEN RETREAT Call Cathy

NOVEMBER 9am – 5pm

5-7

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“In the Garden With the Lord,” Retreat for Women Religious led by Fr. Tom Weston, S. J.

4pm (8/22) – 10am (8/27)

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Private Silent Retreat

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12-14 19-21 26-28

SPANISH RETREAT – WOMEN Fr. Eugenio Aramburo SPANISH RETREAT – MEN & WOMEN Fr. Alberto Cabrera CHINESE RETREAT THANKSGIVING – NO RETREAT

(831) 423-8093 • Fax: (831) 423-1541

October 1, 2010

Catholic San Francisco

13

By Valerie Schmalz Poor pregnant women receive high quality care for themselves and their unborn children at one Catholic hospital clinic, while at another Catholic hospital clinic impoverished AIDS patients, and poor adults suffering from congestive heart failure, diabetes or high blood pressure can count on expert medical attention.

The clinics – one affiliated with Seton Medical Center in Daly City, and the other associated with St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco – continue more than a century of commitment to meeting the needs of the poor, say Catholic hospital officials.

The St. Elizabeth Ann Seton New Life Center was founded in 2003 to provide prenatal and maternity care to poor expectant mothers – regardless of legal status or income. Four hundred to 500 mothers deliver their babies at Seton Medical Center each year and receive care before and after birth at the clinic, going home with new baby clothes, car seats and other perks, said clinic manager Margarita Mendoza.

“It’s a very nice, welcoming, caring, compassionate environment and very respectful,” said Sister Eileen Dunn, one of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul who founded the New Life Center.

“You get a lot of patients who are undocumented too, so you protect their privacy as well.”

The Daly City clinic continues the Daughters of Charity’s commitment to the poor and under-served as embodied by the hospital since its founding as St. Mary’s Help Hospital in 1891, Sister Dunn said.

Seton Medical Center, located on a hill overlooking U.S. 101, supports most of the clinic’s costs, supplemented by money from the Seton Health Services Foundation. Only Medi-Cal eligible patients are accepted at the clinic, said Mendoza, health educator and clinic manager. Medi-Cal is California’s

Medicaid program and participants qualify based on income and disability.

A few miles away from Seton Medical Center and a city block from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, St. Mary’s Medical Center continues its 150-year commitment to the poor with the Sister Mary Philippa Health Center, an outpatient clinic which serves 3.500 low-income San Francisco residents. St. Mary’s hospital was founded in 1857 by eight Sisters of Mercy from Ireland. The clinic was started in 1923.

At the Sister Mary Philippa Clinic in San Francisco, the 3,500 members receive “vertically integrated,” care so patients are treated by hospital doctors and other staff and are admitted to St. Mary’s Medical Center for hospitalization if needed, said Barry Lawlor, director of community health services. Most patients receive either MediCal or are part of San Francisco’s Healthy San Francisco health plan, but the hospital ends up picking up a large portion of the cost of treatment, Lawlor said. For instance, the state of California cut all outpatient vision and foot exams and treatment for Medi-Cal patients, but St. Mary’s continues to provide that care, Lawlor said.

Most of the clinic’s patients are suffering from chronic conditions including diabetes, HIV/AIDS, congestive heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis, and high blood pressure, Lawlor said. The clinic treats about 400 HIV/AIDS patients.

Both clinics offer extensive education in healthy living, from managing diabetes to nutrition and wellness classes. The New Life Center also offers help with breastfeeding once the babies are born.

“Here in San Francisco, most private doctors will not see a Medicaid or Medi Cal patient because the payment is so low it doesn’t even cover the cost of the doctor going into the room,” Lawlor said about the HOSPITALS, page 14

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Medical Assistant Maria Amas with patient Deisy Meraz at the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton New Life Center affiliated with Seton Medical Center.

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14

Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

Bishops oppose mandated contraception, sterilization coverage WASHINGTON (CNS) – Two officials of the U.S. bishops’ Office of General Counsel have told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that it should not mandate that group and individual health plans include coverage of contraception or sterilization as part of what the federal agency considers preventive care for women.

“These drugs, devices and procedures prevent not a disease condition, but the healthy condition known as fertility,” said Anthony Picarello and Michael Moses, who are general counsel and associate general counsel, respectively, at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

They said contraception and sterilization “pose significant risks of their own to women’s life and health; and a federal program to mandate their inclusion would pose an unprecedented threat to rights of conscience.”

Picarello and Moses made the comments in a Sept. 17 letter that was hand-delivered to the HHS Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.

Their letter was sent as HHS continued its deliberations on a final list of required preventive services under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care reform

Health Directory

bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in March.

Picarello and Moses said that contraception cannot be considered “preventive” on the grounds of preventing abortion because “abortion is not itself a disease condition, but a separate procedure that is performed only by agreement between a woman and a health professional.”

“Studies have shown that the percentage of unintended pregnancies that are ended by abortion is higher if the pregnancy occurred during use of a contraceptive,” they said.

“Prescription contraception as well as chemical and surgical sterilization are particularly inappropriate candidates for inclusion under mandated ‘preventative services’ for all health plans,” they said.

Such services are not like other preventive measures, for example blood pressure and cholesterol screening, diabetes screening, counseling with regard to tobacco use and obesity, and screening for sexually transmitted diseases, Picarello and Moses said.

“These services are emphasized because they can prevent serious or life-threatening conditions that once they do occur, will demand treatment to cure or reverse them,” they said.

“This rationale simply does not apply to contraception and sterilization,” they continued.

“The condition prevented by contraception and sterilization is pregnancy, which has its own natural course ending in live birth if not interrupted by medical intervention,” they said.

They noted that at least one drug already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for “emergency contraception” can actually cause early abortions, so a mandate of prescription contraception coverage as a preventive service would “be in direct tension with (the health reform law’s) statutory prohibition on mandating any abortion service.”

They also noted that such a mandate would threaten “rights of conscience for religious employers and others who have moral or religious objections to these procedures. In this regard, the (Obama) administration’s promise that Americans who like their current coverage will be able to keep it under health care reform would be a hollow pledge.”

This “would also contradict long-standing federal precedents on respect for conscientious objection to such procedures and such coverage,” including the church amendment, which since 1973 has protected conscientious objection to abortion and sterilization.

Hospitals . . .

from a healthcare business perspective,” Dangberg said.

“We know the reason we are in these communities is to serve these patients.”

The New Life Center began in 1992 as the Mother and Infant Wellness Program, but took on a larger reach driven by several Daughters of Charity, including Sister Dunn, Mendoza said. Most of the expectant mothers are unmarried, Mendoza said, adding “When a patient comes to us, married or unmarried, we’re there to provide prenatal care. We are not there to pass judgment.”

That’s not to say that the clinic, named after a saint who was both a mother and later a religious, avoids its Catholic identity.

“From the get-go, we do give our position that we are a Catholic institution and that we do follow all the Catholic teaching and tenets. That encompasses no birth control or sterilization,” Mendoza said. “If they ever say, ‘I want to abort this baby,’” no way do we refer. We will do referrals to those agencies which are pro-life, such as First Resort or Alpha Pregnancy Center that are Christianbased that can help them in determining what is the right choice for them.”

■ Continued from page 13

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government paid health program for poor people. “We see that as part of an expression of our mission and values to see those people and take the payment from Medicaid and Medi-Cal as payment in full.”

However, the clinic now has a waiting list of more than 60 days, so the clinic is not taking new patients, Lawlor said. There are 34 health clinics which are part of Healthy San Francisco’s health plan, Lawlor said. All clinic patients are required to provide proof of residence and economic need, he said.

St. Mary’s and Seton’s subsidy of outpatient and hospital care are examples of the type of care that Catholic hospitals were founded to provide, and endeavor to continue offering, said Lori Dangberg, vice president of the Alliance of Catholic Healthcare, the organization that represents Catholic hospitals in California.

“Regardless of the reimbursement, their commitment is to serving patients in the clinic. We don’t go into this

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Catholic San Francisco

15

By Valerie Schmalz Pastor Msgr. Labib Kobti donated his salary for a year to fulfill his dream for his church, St. Thomas More in San Francisco.

The vision: to create a series of murals on the church’s outside walls representing the many cultures that make up the community of St. Thomas More.

That project, begun almost a year ago, is close to finished. The outside is complete, but still in progress are murals inside the vestibule of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.

Now, Msgr. Labib is ready for the project’s next phase. His parish is looking for someone who would sculpt the many shrubs and trees around the church’s grounds into images of Christ as the Good Shepherd and other religious figures.

Just ask for the glory of God, and the rest will be given to you – Msgr. Labib Kobti The object is to continue to create a place of refuge and spiritual retreat, he said.

The murals are a visually unifying symbol of the community of St. Thomas More Church, which draws distinct ethnic groups, students, and the elderly living at an adjacent assisted living center, Alma Via of San Francisco. The church is located on Brotherhood Way, a short street with the Park Merced housing development on one side and a series of churches and synagogues and religious schools on the other. St. Thomas More is also the designated campus ministry for San Francisco State University.

The Lebanese priest came to California in 1992 and established Arab Catholic Maronite missions in Pomona and in San Francisco. Ordained a priest in 1975, and with a Ph.D. in canon law from the Lateran University in Rome and a master’s in theology, Msgr. Kobti brought experience as a teacher, pastor, and marriage tribunal judge in Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Rome.

One of Msgr. Labib Kobti’s first acts as pastor after his assignment to St. Thomas More in 2002 was to invite his fellow religious leaders to join together in the Brotherhood Way Association.

The first mural on the outside of the church has the inscription “Interfaith and Ecumenical Dialogue and Sharing,” with a painting of the churches and synagogue along the street.

The second mural in the series is of Blessed Franciscan Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the California Missions. Others include saints of Arabs, Filipinos, Burmese, Italians, Irish, Spanish, and Brazilians. They include St. Rifqua, St.Hardini, St. Alphonsene, St.Sharbel, St. Patrick, St. Agatha, St. Martin de Porres, St. Lorenzo Ruiz, Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman (as the church is also a Newman Center), Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Infant Jesus, St. Damien, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, St. Pius X and St. Bakhata, who was a slave in Sudan.

St. Thomas More is also the home of the Arab American Catholic community. Msgr.

Kobti celebrates the Maronite Rite using the Syro-Aramaic language of Jesus. In addition to English and Arabic, Msgr. Labib says Mass weekly in the Latin Rite in Portuguese and Tagolog and once a month in Burmese.

While the community of 1,500 is growing, it operates on a shoe string, he said. However, the generosity of parishioners is amazing, Msgr.

Kobti said. For example, the initial bid for a new disabled-accessible restroom was in the tens of thousands of dollars, and the priest said there was nowhere to find that money. But an

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Wanted at San Francisco church: topiary artist with a religious bent

Msgr. Labib Kobti has covered the outer walls of San Francisco’s St. Thomas More Church with murals depicting the faithful’s global heritage. Next: Does anyone know a topiary sculptor who can shape the shrubbery into the forms of religious figures?

Arab-American parishioner who is a contractor offered to donate his labor if Msgr. Kobti could pay for materials. Total cost: $9,000.

A similar story is behind the church’s fresh coat of paint. The bid for that job was $100,000.

So Msgr. Kobti purchased the paint and contacted parishioners and put parish maintenance workers to work. The cost, again, was about $9,000.

“Ask just for the glory of God,” Msgr.

Kobti said, “and the rest will be given to you.”

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Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

Bone marrow screening to help third-grader San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s St. Anne School is holding a bone marrow screening on Oct. 7 in an effort to help in the therapy of a seriously ill third-grader.

In August, the youngster â&#x20AC;&#x201C; his first name is Christian and his family requested that his last name not be made public â&#x20AC;&#x201C; was diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia, in which the bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bone marrow stops producing blood cells. He is undergoing drug therapy to suppress his immune system from attacking healthy tissue. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Christian is currently receiving multiple transfusions to sustain him,â&#x20AC;? said Tom White, principal of St. Anne School. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No family member is a match, so the next best hope is to find a non-relative donor whose bone marrow can be used to generate healthy bone marrow.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;If every adult who reads about Christianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s condition can only put themselves in the place of Christianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parents, I am hopeful that they will respond to this need and come to the screening,â&#x20AC;? White said.

A rare and serious condition, aplastic anemia is most common in younger people. The condition was once considered fatal but advances in treatment have improved the prognosis, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The screening will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at St. Anne School, 1320 14th Ave., between Irving and Judah streets. Donors must be between 18 and 60 years old and in good health.

For more information, call St. Anne School (415) 664-7977.

TIFFANY MAI NGUYEN, DDS

To nourish one another, even unto death

By Marie T. Hilliard, RN, JCL, Ph.D. Tragically, some families have been wrongly advised by the medical community that preserving their loved oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;dignityâ&#x20AC;? and ending their suffering require ending their life â&#x20AC;&#x201C; by active intervention, or more frequently, by omitting basic care.

Many families are unsure about moral options for the care of their loved ones. Fortunately, the popes and bishops of the Catholic Church have provided invaluable guidance concerning end-of-life decisions, including issues of pain control and consciousness, the provision of food and water to dying or unconscious patients, the right to refuse certain treatments, and the duty to care, even when a cure is no longer possible.

What does the Church teach about providing food and water to unconscious or dying patients?

Pope John Paul II taught: â&#x20AC;&#x153;I should like particularly to What does the Church underline how the adminisWith euthanasia, there is an teach about pain control tration of water and food, and consciousness? even when provided by explicit intent to terminate the The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ethical and artificial means, always Religious Directives for a natural means patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life, representing a grave represents Catholic Health Care of preserving life, not a Servicesâ&#x20AC;? (ERDs) state: medical act. Its use, furtherevil with eternal consequences. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Patients should be kept more, should be considered, as free of pain as possible in principle, ordinary and so that they may die comproportionate, and as such fortably and with dignity, and in the place where they morally obligatory, insofar as and until it is seen to have wish to die. Since a person has the right to prepare for attained its proper finality, which in the present case conhis or her death while fully conscious, he or she should sists in providing nourishment to the patient and alleviation not be deprived of consciousness without a compelling of his suffering.â&#x20AC;? This principle has been affirmed by the reasonâ&#x20AC;Ś.â&#x20AC;?

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and incorporated In some cases, pain control may require brief or pro- into the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ethical and Religious Directivesâ&#x20AC;? in 2009. longed periods of unconsciousness. Pain control can be provided even if, in rare cases, the needed doses may have What does the Church teach about the patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right to an anticipated, but unintended effect of hastening death. refuse or forego certain medical treatments?

The intention is to control extreme pain, not to hasten The papal encyclical â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Gospel of Lifeâ&#x20AC;? condemns death. With euthanasia, however, there is an explicit intent euthanasia, drawing a key distinction between euthanasia and to terminate the patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life, representing a grave evil with the decision to forego â&#x20AC;&#x153;medical procedures which no longer UNTO DEATH, page 17 eternal consequences.

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Currently, three states allow physician-assisted suicide.

Some states practice a more covert form of euthanasia, providing patients who suffer from physical or even psychological pain with high doses of sedation, when other effective relief is available. Then assisted nutrition and hydration are withheld, causing death by dehydration or starvation, not the underlying pathology. This is sometimes called â&#x20AC;&#x153;terminal sedation,â&#x20AC;? distinguishable from the legitimate use of sedation as a last resort to treat patient suffering in their last days.

The difference is in the physicianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intent, whether it is to end life or control pain.

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Unto death . . .

■ Continued from page 16 correspond to the real situation of the patient, either because they are by now disproportionate to any expected results or because they impose an excessive burden on the patient and his family. In such situations, when death is clearly imminent and inevitable, one can in conscience ‘refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted.’”

It is clear that there is no moral requirement to utilize burdensome treatments that merely prolong the dying process. Unless the patient is very near death, however, the provision of nutrition and hydration, even by artificial means, should be administered as long as they can sustain life and alleviate suffering without imposing serious risks or side effects to the patient.

Today active interventions or omissions of basic care are proposed for ending the lives of not only the dying, but also patients suffering from a long-term cognitive disability, such as advanced dementia or a so-called persistent “vegetative” state. Some argue that patients who cannot consciously respond have lost their “human dignity.” This view is dan-

gerously wrong: Human beings never lose their dignity, that is, their inherent and inestimable worth as unique persons loved by God and created in His image. People can be denied respect affirming that dignity, but they never lose their God-given dignity.

Human beings never lose their dignity, that is, their inherent and inestimable worth as unique persons loved by God and created in His image.

What does the Church teach about our duty to care for dying or vulnerable family members?

When a family or health care providers refuse to provide basic care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, and prevention of complications from confinement to bed), finding it “inconvenient” to accompany the loved

Catholic San Francisco

17

one on the final journey, the assault on human dignity is grave. When such abandoning of the disabled or unconscious patient is codified in state laws, the implications for society are frightening. Pope Benedict XVI states in his 2007 encyclical “In Hope We are Saved (Spe Salvi),”: “The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer…. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘com-passion’ is a cruel and inhuman society.”

Christ calls us to love one another: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you” (John 15:12).

He loved us unto death, even death on the cross. Few are called to such a sacrifice; but we are called to be companions to each other, especially to those suffering on life’s journey.

“Companion” is taken from the word “cum-panis,” meaning “with bread.” Thus, we are called to share the bread of Eucharist with each other, responding with Christ’s sacrificial love. We are asked not only to care for each other, but to nourish each other, even unto death.

Dr. Hilliard is the director of bioethics and public policy for The National Catholic Bioethics Center.

She is a canon lawyer and a registered nurse.

Bishops: durable power of attorney is prudent for medical decisions The California Catholic Conference and the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide recommend that everyone 18 and older sign a durable power of attorney for health care in the event they are unable to make their own medical decisions.

With this document, you name someone you trust to make health care decisions for you if you are ever permanently or temporarily unable to make such decisions for yourself. A model document is available online from the CCC at www.embracingourdying.com. The International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide – www.internationaltaskforce.org – also offers a

durable power of attorney for health care. Both specifically prohibit euthanasia or assisted suicide.

The Roman Catholic directive explicitly incorporates key sanctity-of-life principles as taught by the Church and is usable by non-Catholics as well as Catholics.

The changing health care landscape makes a directive increasingly important, both organizations say.

Federal regulations require every hospital and health program that receives Medicare or Medicaid funds to inform you, upon admission, of your rights regarding an advance directive. As a result, many facilities are giving

patients a living will or durable power of attorney to sign at the time of admission that may include agreement to “futile care” guidelines and allow withholding of food and water.

Previously, family members were automatically considered the decision makers for a loved one, but this is rapidly changing, the International Task Force says.

Further, since the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) went into effect, some health care facilities have refused to provide information to anyone - even family members - about a hospitalized adult unless the patient has given written consent.

Pope Benedict XVI: “No believer should die alone or abandoned” Addressing an international conference at the Vatican in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed that the Church opposes all forms of euthanasia.

Reflecting on the moment of death, the pope said that it “concludes the experience of earthly life, but through death there opens for each of us, beyond time, the full and definitive life. ...

For the community of believers, this encounter between the dying person and the Source of Life and Love represents a gift that has a universal value, that enriches the communion of the faithful.”

This moment of encounter, the Holy Father emphasized, should draw the community along with close relatives around the dying person in support as they face the last moments of their life.

“No believer”, he said, “should die alone and abandoned.”

The pope addressed international delegates to the conference, called “Close by the Incurable Sick Person and the Dying: Scientific and Ethical Aspects.” The event was

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promoted by the Pontifical Council for Life as part of their general assembly.

All society “is called to respect the life and dignity of the seriously ill and the dying,” the pope said. “Though aware of the fact that ‘it is not science that redeems man’, all society, and in particular the sectors associated with medical science, are duty bound to express the solidarity of love, and to safeguard and respect human life in every moment of its earthly development, especially when it is ill or in its terminal stages.

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Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

Guest editorial A timely encounter on marriage and family

By Vicki Evans Marriage and family is certainly in the news these days.

Opinions abound on what a family is and on how to build one–-or keep from building one. This year’s Archdiocesan Respect Life Conference, “Rediscovering the Family in a Technological Age: Bioethical Challenges,” is an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of marriage and family and its design in the natural moral law.

October is Respect Life Month.

More news on pages 9-12 If our modern world does anything, it gives us choices.

Society tells us that there is more than one acceptable form of marriage. Medicine tells us we can prevent conception temporarily, permanently, or after-the-fact. Science tells us that instead of creating a baby the old-fashioned way, we can use artificial reproductive technologies to produce a child according to our timetable and specifications.

But the fact that something is possible does not make it licit. What the Catholic Church tells us is which of these choices is right.

Popular culture claims that everything is relative and changing. The Church teaches that there are absolute universal moral norms and these do not change. They are obligatory for all people, in all situations, in all times and places, in every culture and generation. Reflection on natural law informed by reason opens the door to moral truth.

That is the message of this year’s conference. What are the biological and ethical problems and challenges inherent in today’s hot-button issues like marriage, contraception and artificial procreation?

Our speakers, Father Tad Pacholczyk and John Haas, Ph. D. from the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, will look at traditional marriage: why it’s good for society and why same sex “marriage” poses bioethical problems for the person and for society. They will examine moral and biological issues surrounding fertility, including contraception, sterilization and Natural Family Planning (NFP). They will discuss the moral status of artificial reproductive technologies like IVF and ICSI and answer the often-asked question of how a pro-life Church can forbid the use of these technologies to couples who cannot bear children.

The conference’s final session will be on the impor-

Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

Jesus the bridegroom, the Church his bride

Celebration quality is key, not language

With reference to Mr. Hurd’s letter to CSF, Sept. 17, I feel compelled to point out that if God hasn’t made it known in the last 2000 years that He wishes women to be ordained priests, it appears unlikely He ever will. With God being outside of time and space, where everything is in the present moment for Him, it would seem highly improbable that Jesus, because He was linked to a particular time in history when women were a subjugated gender, would not have included them at the Last Supper when He ordained the apostles. Surely, as a Divine Person, He would have been looking to the future – to the end of time - and therefore, had He intended women to be priests, wouldn’t He have done something about it regardless of the times in which He lived?

Jesus is the bridegroom and the Church is His bride. The male priest, representing Jesus, is therefore married to the Church. Are we now to expect women to be marrying the Bride of Christ!? In our crazy society where the feminist agenda continues to be vigorously promoted and misguided tolerance and accommodation are the norm, I derive tremendous comfort in the fact that the Church stands like a rock, steadfast and unchanging in the turbulent waters of moral relativism.

I pray constantly for vocations, that the Holy Spirit will guide more men to Holy Orders. Good men who, mindful of Christ’s words to His apostles: “He who hears you, hears me,” would not be afraid to speak on the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church.

Vivienne Beasley San Carlos

Like many of your readers I have read of the changes in the Revised Order of the Mass; my reaction is not, however, one of consternation. As I am old enough to remember the initial post-Vatican II translation and the even older English translations in Missals for the Latin Mass, the “new” translation strikes me as familiar. Objections to the changes seem to be largely that they are old-fashioned. But, religious language is often old-fashioned both to set it apart from ordinary speech and to forge in our minds conscious links with those who have gone before us in faith. The Our Father with its “who art” and “hallowed be thy” and the Hail Mary with its “blessed art thou” are hardly models of modern speech. Nor should they be. Our prayers speak to the future certainly, but they also speak to the past, and the prayer that a child learns today, no matter how modern its language, is going to sound old-fashioned by the time they are bouncing a grandchild on their knee.

It so happens that I am fond of the Latin Mass. It was the Mass of my childhood and of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and generations whose names are lost. That it was set aside and that young people are so ignorant of its beauty and history seems regrettable but no more than that. I do not wish it back, but I do wish that it were more commonly heard. However, whether Latin or vernacular, it is the Mass. It always has the same great potential for beauty and to engage us in its sacred mystery. What is sad about the vernacular Mass is that it is performed carelessly. The ordinary postVatican II parish Mass seems in general to be rushed and confused with too many choices, too many alternative forms of this part and that part with the result that priest and people are not really engaged in what is our central act of worship. The language of the text is going to change over time, and arguments can be made for both conservatism and modernism in its language. Our concern should be with our celebration of and participation in the Mass.

Kevin E. Ahern San Francisco Editor’s note: A U.S. bishop’s article on the new Missal appears on Page 23.

Letters welcome Catholic San Francisco welcomes letters from its readers.

Please send your letters to: Catholic San Francisco One Peter Yorke Way San Francisco, CA 94109 Fax: (415) 614-5641 E-mail: delvecchior@sfarchdiocese.org, include “Letters” in the subject line.

tance of robust conscience protections in health care. The world has shifted into a mindset where more than a few preferences are now labeled rights–-the right to abortion, the right to a child, the right to procreate with the partner of your choice. But if someone has a right, there must be a corresponding obligation resting on someone else to fulfill that right. Who will that someone be? If we are not vigilant, it will be the Catholic doctors, nurses, pharmacists and hospitals that provide whatever procedures are defined as health care.

The conference takes place Saturday, October 9, 2010, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.at St. Francis Hall in St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1111 Gough St. at Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. It includes a continental breakfast and a buffet luncheon. Continuing education is available for doctors and nurses. Registration is $40 for the general public, $60 for nurses’ continuing education, $90 for doctors’ continuing education. Register in advance online at www. ncbcenter.org/netcommunity/SF2010. Limited registration will be available at the door. For more information, contact Vicki Evans, Respect Life Coordinator, Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, Archdiocese of San Francisco, at (415) 614-5533 or vevans1438@att.net.

Too much marble Architecturally, St. Mary’s Cathedral is as Archbishop John Quinn states (CSF, Sept. 24). Her interior, however, lacks a warm feeling, because of its all-pervading mass of marble present. All it would take to mitigate this situation is a carpet runner down the main aisle, and, perhaps, along the front of the vestibule. I have mentioned this a number of times to various cathedral committees, none, of whom, will at least tell me that I am all wet with non-holy water!

John Lum San Francisco

Marianists’ service to youth Do follow up on Brother Arnold’s request that Catholic San Francisco commemorate the Marianist contribution to education in San Francisco. My own time of connection to the Marianists dates back to Brother Arnold’s days here (I was at St. Rose Academy) when all the principals worked and celebrated together for the youth of our city.

Sister Karen Marie Franks, OP Dominican Sisters of San Rafael

Father Rolheiser too strict on public piety

of the Mass do not allow priests to invent liturgical practices according to their own whims. This should be cause for concern.

Ultimately, Father Rolheiser’s article is nothing more than an admission that he has, himself, succumbed in large part to the prevalent train of thought that has infected most all our politicians today, namely, that religion should be relegated to the private sphere.

Walter Clarkson Toronto

Bigotry’s many masks I had missed the column by Father Daly regarding the “mosque controversy” (CSF, Sept. 10) until I saw the letters criticizing his comments. As far as I am concerned, Father Daly got it absolutely right when he described what is happening in this country against Muslims. He uses logic and not emotion. What the mosque protesters are doing is assigning guilt by association, clear and simple. This mentality sent away loyal Japanese-Americans to internment camps because the country of their origin attacked Pearl Harbor.

The U.S. was led by hysteria against all Japanese after Pearl Harbor. In the 9/11 case, it took 10 years for people to fuel hysteria against all Muslims.

Have we forgotten that Muslim workers also died in the Twin Towers? One letter writer claimed that two blocks was too close to Ground Zero for the Muslim center, yet protests against mosques are happening in parts of the country many miles away from Manhattan. Father Daly tries to remind us of the prejudice that existed against Catholics. Al Smith? JFK? Controlled by a foreign power (The Vatican)?

Bigotry can disguise itself in many ways. It’s now called “sensitivity.”

We, as a country, never seem to learn anything from our own history.

Richard Morasci San Francisco

L E T T E R S

There is certainly a lot to be said about the merits of private prayer.

However, Father Ron Rolheiser (“Piety and Propriety,” CSF, Sept. 3) is incorrect in claiming that Matthew 6:5-6 bans all “public display of piety, however sincere.” It is not for example, “unhealthily exhibitionistic” for priests and nuns to wear their collars and habits in public. Nor is it “bad art” to say the rosary in groups or for the laity to receive Holy Communion on their knees. Indeed the Church strongly encourages these public displays of piety despite the fact that they are widely disdained by the vast majority of our priests and bishops. If these things make people like Father Rolheiser “squirm” and become “irritated” and “uncomfortable” they might try examining their own suspicious nature and level of sincerity in regard to their personal piety.

Clearly, and contrary to Father Rolheiser, Matthew does distinguish between acts that come from a “sincere heart” and those that come from a “false” one. Father Rolheiser admits this himself where he states that Christ is, in this passage, “admittedly, warning against hypocrisy”. The example Father Rolheiser uses to justify his disdain for public piety – that of an auxiliary bishop placing his arms on the altar in adoration for over a minute - is a bad one because obviously the rubrics

“Disgusted by this paper” I am very upset that the editors of this paper a “Catholic” paper thought they had the right to put the faces of the children crying at the funeral of their friend on the front page of the paper. I would expect the lack of respect for the children and their feelings from the other Bay Area newspapers but this paper I would have hoped that more prayer and discernment would have been part of the process instead of just a plain photo opp. How sad that with all the other media attention that the paper that represents the religious affiliation of so many of the victims of the San Bruno disaster cannot be more supportive at this time.

Disgusted by this paper!!

Kathy Hanley Pacifica

October 1, 2010

Catholic San Francisco

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Spirituality for Life

Does God have favorites?

Does God love some people more than others? Does God have favorites?

This is an old, disputed question with centuries of history: Is there a chosen race? Are some people predestined for heaven or hell? Does God love the poor more than the rich? Does God love sinners more than the righteous? Does God love virgins more than married persons? On the surface at least, it would seem that Scripture suggests that God loves some people more than others. But is this true?

The question is hard to answer because partly it’s a false one. Generally whenever we set up these kinds of oppositions (Does God love this person more than that person?) we are formatting the issue in a wrong way: For example, when Jesus tells us that there is more joy in heaven over the conversion of one sinner who has strayed than over ninety-nine others who seemingly have no need of repentance, he is not affirming that God loves sinners more deeply than righteous persons. For Jesus, speaking in this specific context, there are no righteous persons. There are only sinners (people who feel their need for conversion) and self-righteous persons (people who are sinners and have not yet acknowledged their need for repentance). Conversion, at least in this particular context, is not a precondition to the Christian life. It is the Christian life. There are no righteous persons, only sinners, and the Christian journey is always a journey of conversion, a returning to the fold.

We open ourselves to receive the love of God whenever we are conscious of that. God does favor sinners, but that includes all of us.

The same is true regarding whether God loves the poor more than the rich. Jesus tells, seemingly without equivoca-

tion, that God has a preferential love for the poor, but does that mean that God loves the rich less?

Again, we must be careful in how we contrast these categories: poor versus rich. What’s being affirmed is not that God loves us better when we are poor than when we are rich.

Rather the idea is that God loves us in our poverty - and that we more easily let ourselves be loved and more easily express gratitude when we acknowledge our poverty. For Jesus, there are only two kinds of persons: Those who are poor and those who are not yet in touch with their own poverty. And it’s not that God prefers us to be poor and loves us better when we are poor. Rather it’s when we are poor and in touch with our poverty that we more easily invite in love, both that of God and that of others. God does favor the poor, but, if we truly know our own condition, that’s all of us.

The same principle needs to be applied to questions surrounding holiness and sexuality. Does God love us better when we are sexually inconsummate than when we are not?

The Gospels emphasize that Jesus was born from a virgin womb, that he was buried in a virgin tomb, and that we are invited to have a virginal heart. Because of this, inside of Christian spirituality as well as in the spiritual traditions of all the great world religions, there has always been a stream of thought that suggests that God somehow blesses the celibate life more than the non-celibate life, that virginity is the preferred spiritual state.

Does God love us more when we are virgins?

Again, we must be careful in how we contrast the categories: virgin and non-virgin. What’s being taught is that God loves what is virginal inside of us. The contrast is not between those who sleep alone and those who don’t, but between those who protect what is virginal inside of themselves and those who don’t,

and between those who can sweat blood so as to carry the tension of living without consummation (of all kinds) and those who cannot.

It’s when we protect what is virginal inside us and when we don’t short-circuit Father life’s proper innate rhythms because of our tensions that Ron Rolheiser we open ourselves up more to receive love, God’s love and human love. God does favor virgins, but, if we live our lives with the proper reverence and patience, that includes all of us.

The same thing might be said about Jesus’ holding up little children as an ideal. He is not teaching that God loves children more than adults. The contrast is not between little children and grown-ups, but between those who, like little children, know their need for help and those who because of pride or wound no longer admit their need for God and others. It’s when we admit the deep truth that we are not self-sufficient that we open ourselves up, preferentially, to be loved by God and others. God does favor those who are childlike, but, hopefully, that includes all of us.

Does God play favorites? Yes, but not between and among different persons, but between and among different states inside our own souls.

Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher, and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.

Of Grace and Sippy Cups

Why I bring my boys to Mass When my little family boards an airplane, you can practically feel the chill in the air. Scott and I shepherd our small sons down the center aisle, shouldering backpacks stuffed with toys, and the people in the seats have unwelcome written all over their faces. You can almost hear their fervent, silent prayers: Please, God, let that family sit as far away from me as possible.

Thankfully, I almost never get this reception at church.

The topic of children in Mass always provokes strong opinions. I’ve read blog posts and letters to the editor suggesting that bringing small kids to church is an imposition on anyone within hearing distance (which, in an echoing church, is basically everyone). But the reality is that I’ve hardly ever encountered visible disapproval from my fellow Mass-goers.

What have I experienced? I’ve experienced the helpful man who went out of his way to return a thrown sippy cup.

I’ve encountered the lady who, when Luke accidentally bumped her out of her quiet prayer, opened her eyes, smiled, and gently accepted my apology. There are the people who entertain my offspring silently, with wide cartoonish

expressions, just when the boys are about to lose it. I’ve experienced all of this, and it tells me that we are welcome.

Of course, we try to be good neighbors, too; if our kids start to cry, we take them out. That said, even kids who are not wailing generate certain noises: the rumble of a toy car, the crunching of goldfish crackers, the rustle of a diaper bag. And though I know some people find these noises offensive, I want to thank all of those who give us a smile or a sympathetic glance when my boys do something mildly distracting. I appreciate it more than I can say.

Because I think it matters that my boys are in church each week. If I kept them at home – which would be far easier for me, honestly – I’d be denying them the weekly awareness that faith is not about rugged individualism. When they go to Mass, they learn that faith involves being present in a community. Tempting as it is to go it alone, we really do need each other, in faith as in life. We need one another’s stories and support, perspective and prayers. It matters that we show up every week, ready to give and to receive.

Young as my boys are, I believe that these lessons are sink-

ing in. I wonder where they will ultimately lead. The little boy pushing a train along the kneeler may one day be a social justice activist, a theologian, or a priest.

He may be a saint. He may be a father bringing his own Ginny kids to Mass, continuing the life of the Church.

Kubitz Moyer Or he may be what so many of us are: a seeker who comes back Sunday after Sunday to be part of something larger than ourselves. We find it here, in a church that welcomes the young and the old, the distracting and the distracted. No matter who we are, it matters that we are here.

Ginny Kubitz Moyer is the author of “Mary and Me: Catholic Women Reflect on the Mother of God.” Contact Moyer via her blog at www.maryandme.org.

Twenty Something

Mile markers on the Christian journey In the face of the unknown, Christopher Columbus counted.

“On the 33rd day after I departed from Cadiz, I came to the Indian sea,” he wrote King Ferdinand’s treasurer. “There are in the island Juana seven or eight kinds of palm trees.

In all these islands, each man is content with only one wife, except the princes or kings, who are permitted to have 20.”

On that historic October in 1492, Columbus encountered a vast wilderness – an island “large and without perceptible end,” “trees stretching up to the stars” – and he responded in the best way he could. The system he had learned as a boy – one, two, three, four – worked for charting a new course, for mapping a New World.

The impulse to count is timeless. Humans put numbers to the angle of the sun. They tracked the ebbing tide and the falling snow. They tallied their steps and their silver, their daughters and their donkeys. By counting they created cosmos out of chaos.

When a baby is conceived, we count weeks and trimesters and heart rates, waiting for three seasons to come and go. When it is born, we count inches and ounces, then months and teeth.

The church understands this impulse, giving us a liturgical calendar that lends rhythm to the year. This month we slide

toward the end of ordinary time – the 28th week, the 29th, the 30th – which brings us to four weeks of Advent, 12 days of Christmas, 40 days of Lent and 50 days of Easter. It may sound mechanical, but it is mysterious too: Deep down we know life is so un-ordinary that each week is worth counting.

My husband and I just returned from a cross-country road trip. As we set off, the windshield seemed to expand before us, opening a lid to a big, bright sky. I felt the sting of possibility, a release from the confines of the routine. Soon I was examining the flat, grey underbellies of the clouds. “When you really study the clouds,” I told my captain, “they’re amazing!”

Later Ted was urging me to behold the crisscrossing beams of New York’s Tappan Zee Bridge. “Look up!” he said. “Isn’t this cool?”

Amid the staggering beauty, I counted. From the beginning to the end, I tallied everything I could. We covered 2,800 miles of road – nearly an oil-change worth – 108 gallons of gas, $56 in tolls and 10 states, one-fifth of The Fifty Nifty.

Measuring our progress began as a source of motivation, but there was more to it: It was a way to orient ourselves, to grasp the infinite space ahead.

By counting we get hard proof that we were here. We make meaning, we mark our place, we insert ourselves into history.

Counting helps us close the gap between what we can see and what we can touch, where we are and where we hope to be.

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke articulated this idea in his poem Christina “A Walk.” He wrote: “My eyes already touch Capecchi the sunny hill. Going far ahead of the road I have begun, so we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has inner light, even from a distance – and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are.”

We are progressive pilgrims, building God’s kingdom day by day, brick by brick. The journey is long and hilly, but we advance as simply as our ancestors did: one, two, three, four.

Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights, Minn. She can be reached at www.ReadChristina.com.

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Catholic San Francisco

A READING FROM THE BOOK OF HABAKKUK HAB 1:2-3; 2:2-4 How long, O Lord? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?

Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord. Then the Lord answered me and said: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM PS 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9 R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord; let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us joyfully sing psalms to him.

R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

October 1, 2010

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10 Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord who made us.

For he is our God, and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.

R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Oh, that today you would hear his voice: “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert, Where your fathers tempted me; they tested me though they had seen my works.”

R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

A READING FROM THE SECOND LETTER OF PAUL TO TIMOTHY 2 TM 1:6-8, 13-14 Beloved: I remind you, to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.

So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.

M

Scripture reflection DEACON MIKE MURPHY

We trust Him – and that’s enough me, can be very difficult when we’re not sure exactly where He’s leading us.

It’s easy to see why having faith can be such a challenge. As we get older, we discover the world is often a frightening, scary place. We have a tendency to grow more cynical and our faith can grow weak and tepid. We’re overwhelmed at times by an avalanche of bad news. The war in Afghanistan, oil spills, job loss, scandals in the Church – it seems like everything has gone haywire. Tempted to despair, we may still pray, we might still trust in God, but we can’t help hedging our bets, wondering if God hears us, if He really cares. In our everyday lives, where the rubber meets the road, does our faith have any meaning?

At first glance, it certainly might not seem so. Yet if we pause for a moment to look more closely at everything going on around us, we can see the answer to these questions, against all odds, is a resounding yes. Often without fanfare, our faith and the faith of others make a huge difference in so many ways. Faith changes lives, makes people better, strengthens us all.

What’s more, God uses our faith to help make present His grace in tangible and substantial ways, creating a world of hope and light, overcoming fear and darkness.

In the Gospel this week, Jesus points out that it’s faith in God that can move the mulberry tree. In life, we discover that it’s faith in God that brings about His Kingdom.

A READING FROM THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE LK 17:5-10 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. “Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table?’

Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished?’ Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?

So should it be with you.

When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”

The Lord answers our Gospel prayer and increases our faith as we see the faith of others change lives, including our own, every day. Ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things because their faith in God gives them abilities to do things they never thought possible. In my parish of St. Charles, as I’m sure in many others, incredibly generous men and women give of their time and talent as they visit the sick and dying, bring Communion to those in jail, teach in our religious education program, build homes in Mexico, and much, much more. The list is endless as people are always there for one another, in good times and in bad, motivated by a selfless love of God and others. My faith increases by leaps and bounds as I see such faith in action!

Little does my son know, our four-mile hikes often turn into unplanned eight-mile adventures as my map reading skills leave a lot to be desired. Yet he trusts me, and that’s enough. We’d never get anywhere if his faith in me didn’t give him the ability to take those first steps down the trail. This week, we turn to God in trust so that we can take those first steps on our journey as well. Knowing He works through our trust in Him to make us better people and our world a better place, we pray in confidence those same words we see in Luke’s beautiful Gospel, “Lord, increase our faith!”

Mike Murphy is a permanent deacon serving at St. Charles Parish in San Carlos. He teaches religion at Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton.

Making room for your guardian angel Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

– Guardian Angel prayer

By Valerie Schmalz

(CNS PHOTO/NANCY WIECHEC)

y son Pat and I occasionally go backpacking up in the Sierra Nevada wilderness. I see it as a great bonding adventure, and Pat, who would prefer to bond over a nice quiet computer game, is kind enough to go along with me. We hike a few miles into the backcountry, explore nearby lakes and rivers, eat some tasteless dehydrated food, and hang around the campfire at night. It’s a great time! aMany years ago, as we were trudging out to our campsite, a much younger Pat asked me the name of a lake we were passing, and it suddenly occurred to me that he had absolutely no idea where we were. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much trust he was putting in me. Not only did he not know where we were or where we were going, he had no idea how much water we had, whether we had enough food, or what he would do should I suddenly disappear over a cliff (always a distinct possibility.) He had complete faith that I would take care of things; that if he listened to me and followed me, everything would be all right.

I thought of my son and the trust he had in me when I read this week’s Gospel.

The apostles are speaking for many of us when they turn to our Lord and ask Him to “Increase our faith!” In theory, it’s easy to say our faith is strong, that we would have no problem uprooting that Gospel mulberry tree and sending it into the sea.

But when reality rears its ugly head and life’s complications kick in, we recognize how weak our faith actually is. Trusting in God, following Him as my son follows

Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us.

Father Tom Hamilton, pastor at San Francisco’s St. Gabriel Parish, remembers the days when Sister would ask the little ones to move over just a little bit in their seat “to allow room for their guardian angel.”

Oct. 2 is the Feast of the Guardian Angels – a day that the Church reminds us that, yes, Catholics do believe in angels, not just the fluffy cherubs with wings who appear on Christmas cards, but pure spirits who are assigned by God to care for each individual during his or her time on earth.

In the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Catholic kindergarteners are taught the Guardian Angel Prayer as part of the religious education curriculum.

Each individual has a guardian angel, the Church teaches. “From infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession.

Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and

shepherd leading him to life,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Who are angels? “As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will; they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness,” the Catechism says. The Old and New Testaments mention specific angels – St. Gabriel, St. Michael, St. Raphael, the Cherubim and Seraphim – and it mentions guardian angels.

“The whole life of the Church,” the catechism states, “benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels.”

Guardian angels are a particular comfort to mothers.

But everyone needs a guardian angel, Father Hamilton said: “The Feast of the Guardian Angels reminds us of how God faithfully provides us with companions for the journey – messengers of grace and blessing.”

The Catechism calls “devotion to Mary, the angels and saints” an area parents should emphasize in helping the young “see a living faith in those they love.”

Valerie Schmalz is Assistant Editor of Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

Catholic San Francisco

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Angels of the Barbary Coast

F

ranciscan missionaries had planted Roman Catholicism almost 80 years before at Mission Dolores, the city’s first parish. The Catholics were therefore ready in 1850, when hordes of Forty-Niners descended on the formerly sleepy Mexican village. Local Catholics moved quickly to meet the newcomers’ most pressing needs.

The city’s second parish, St. Patrick’s, was from its inception concerned with both spiritual and corporal needs. In 1851, the first church services were held in the wooden shell of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum.

There probably weren’t more than a thousand children in the city then, but their needs were immediate. The asylum was finished in September 1852, just as an outbreak

of cholera struck. Five hundred fatalities only exacerbated the city’s orphan problem.

Fortunately, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, a nursing and teaching order of women religious, arrived just as the asylum was completed. Led by Ireland’s Sister Frances McEnnis, the Daughters brought the asylum its first inmate, a little girl who’d lost her parents on the Ohio, the steamer that brought the sisters to San Francisco.

St. Patrick’s expanded again when the St. Vincent’s Day School, San Francisco’s first parish school, opened in October 1852. The first master was Rev. John Maginnis, another native of Ireland. Maginnis taught the boys while the sisters managed the girls. Beginning with 50 pupils, St. Vincent’s had 90 pupils by New Year’s Day. Demand for communal structures and services shaped the city’s third parish, St. Mary’s. The Very Rev. John J. Prendergast, Rev. James Croke, and Rev. Thomas McSweeny, all Irish immigrants, oversaw construction of the cathedral, which commenced in July of 1853. Like St. Patrick’s, construction of the house of worship was paired with the forming of another parish day school.

The overcrowded city had only one public medical facility. Indeed, the city counted on the churches and private charities for health care services. When the S.S. Uncle brought another cholera epidemic in September 1855, officials turned administration of the City Hospital over to the Sisters of Mercy.

Sister Mary Baptist Russell, another Irish newcomer, had recently brought this second order of women religious to San Francisco.

St. Patrick’s parish, with the help of the Daughters of Charity, supported another small hospital through the 1860s. As St. Vincent de Paul had discovered 200 years earlier, good works often began with the zeal of Catholic women.

Even after the Gold Rush, San Francisco remained an expensive place to live, especially during periods of economic uncertainty.

Volatile as the local economy was through the 1850s and 1860s, it was even worse in the 1870s. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, simultaneously wrecking the economy and doubling the population.

Local charities struggled to keep up with demands for aid. In 1869, the Society gave gifts of cash to 335 families, or 1,340 individuals, to help them secure the basic necessities. By the winter of 1875, the effects of a national depression finally filtered west to San

“Rogue do-gooders” Frontier-town San Francisco Vincentians casual use of St. Vincent de Paul’s name prompted an admonishment in 1862 by Archbishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany: no confraternity, stated the prelate, could operate in the diocese without “canonical approval.” It seems they had been a headache for the archbishop from the start. Since 1860 and the formation of San Francisco’s first, informal Vincentian group at St. Patrick Church, the Archdiocese had been warning the upstarts that they should align Archbishop Joseph with the formal Society of St. Vincent de Paul, founded Sadoc Alemany by young scholar Frederic Ozanam in the 1830s to aid slum dwellers in Paris. But the warnings, writes Mary Ann Irwin in her new history of the Society in San Francisco, were ignored as the Vincentians went about their work of Christian charity for the poor. It wasn’t until 1885 that the “rogue do-gooders” formed their first official Ozanam-style conference. Archbishop Patrick W. Riordan succeeded Archbishop Alemany that year and made a special project of formalizing the city’s Vincentians, Irwin writes. By year’s end, 1885, seven conferences (Mission Dolores, St. Francis, St. Mary, St. Joseph, St. Brigid, St. Peter, and St. Rose) had requested formal recognition of the Superior Council of New York. The requests for recognition came as a complete surprise to New York’s Vincentian officials, who were somewhat peeved that they hadn’t known that the San Franciscans had taken matters into their hands long before. Irwin notes drily: “Relations between New York and San Francisco remained testy for the next several years.”

(SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY)

This is one in an occasional series on the history and current work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco. Men and women who strive to grow spiritually by offering person-to-person service to individuals in need, Vincentians believe in Jesus’ identification with the poor.

A Fourth of July parade passing in front of Old St. Mary’s Church at Dupont and Grant streets, 1864. In post-Gold Rush San Francisco, St. Mary and St. Patrick parish members organized informally in the name of the St. Vincent de Paul Society to help the poor.

Francisco. In 1878, when an estimated 15,000 men were out of work, local churches and charities fed more than 2,000 people a day.

Large events like national depressions wreaked havoc on the population as a whole, but smaller daily disasters took a greater toll.

Overnight, a fire, lost job, or brief illness could push even a middle-class family into poverty—and often did. The death of a husband and father usually meant the orphanage for small children, as their mothers had no one to look after them during working hours.

Residents could expect little help from the city. Like many cities of the period, San Francisco provided only “indoor relief,” meaning institutionalization in the jail, City Hospital, Industrial School, or Alms House.

From 1850 to 1906, city leaders refused to give money directly to the poor, called “outdoor relief.” The only exception came in 1881, when a wealthy citizen left $40,000 to the city with the request that the annual interest be given in cash to poor women and children. Unfortunately, these sums were small. In 1887, for example, the Society received a whopping $150 from the Robinson Bequest, which it divided among five conferences. With so few alternatives available, the poor depended on organizations like the St. Vincent de Paul Society for basic survival.

Rising property values allowed local Catholics to expand services again in 1873, when the Archdiocese sold its valuable Market Street property. Orphan girls were

relocated to another new facility, the Mount St. Joseph’s Infant Asylum, a farm in thenpastoral South San Francisco.

The Society underscored their support of the orphanages by regularly holding their meetings onsite. In 1886, leaders of the San Francisco conferences met at Mount St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum. Afterwards the men inspected the facility and enjoyed “an entertainment given by the children, very creditably rendered.” Conference leaders gathered next at St. Vincent’s in San Rafael.

Time spent at these institutions, remarked the Archbishop, allowed members to see the fruit of their labors and spurred “renewed efforts to perfect ourselves in the work in which we are engaged.”

Local Catholics founded programs for older children as well. In 1874, with the blessings of Archbishop Alemany, community leaders organized the Youths’ Directory. The Directory offered all “destitute lads in quest of work” free use of its “refectory, dormitory, lavatory, and reading room,” regardless of religion, while volunteers found them work “in town or country.”

Sister Frances confers with the archbishop This is an excerpt from Daughter of Charity Sister Frances McEnnis’ letter to Father Burlando, dated San Francisco, July 4, 1866. Thanks to the Daughters of Charity and the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco for sharing the historic document.

At last our worthy Archbishop has made up his mind to let us have an Infirmary for the poor sick. Our people are talking about it for the last six months; but fearing we would not be asked to take it, I did not write. This Infirmary will be little in the beginning, but with God’s blessing I trust it will be something great before long. Knowing, dear Father, you have long wished for such a work for our dear Sisters, I sent for our dear Sister Scholastica and we went to see our good Archbishop together. He seemed to be pleased, but told me I must make my arrangements with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and I think it is much a better plan. The Infirmary is to be supported by the Ladies and Gentlemen of that Society. They (offer) to furnish the house, provide wines, bury the dead and pay us $4.00 per week for each patient. The house and lot is ours and I think large enough to begin in. I hope, my dear Father, it will meet your approbation and please give us your permission to go on.

(PHOTO COURTESY DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY)

They were independent. They were cantankerous. Men and women, they were tough as nails – and had to be.

They were the Vincentians of boomtown San Francisco.

A new history written to mark the 150th anniversary of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco opens in the early 1860s.

Vincentians, many of them Irish immigrants, organized at St. Patrick and St. Mary parishes to provide nourishment, shelter, medicine and schooling to people exposed to the elements and the fates in the frontier town.

Such Vincentian men as Forty-Niner Dennis Oliver of Galway were the forerunners of today’s stalwart Irish Catholics. (Son B.P. Oliver, an exceptionally generous parishioner, was a member of the Society’s St. Ignatius Conference and is probably best known today for his role as foreman of the 1906 San Francisco Graft Trials that ended the political career of “Boss” Abraham Reuf.)

Joining the parish Vincentians were women religious from Ireland, notably Sister Frances McEnnis of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The opening of her 1866 letter to Vincentian Father Burlando, the Daughters’ director in Maryland, concerning a successful meeting with Archbishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany perhaps says it all about Vincentian spine and spirituality: “At last,” she wrote with a glint of steel behind the formality, “our worthy Archbishop has made up his mind to let us have an Infirmary for the poor sick.”

The new book is Mary Ann Irwin’s “Servant to the Poor: The St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco, 1860-2010.”

(Manuscript submitted for publication.)

Following, reprinted with the Society’s permission, are condensed excerpts from the book’s chapters about the Society’s work in the first four decades after the Gold Rush. The story begins when the city of 55,000 was still a Gold Rush boomtown. Public services were weak, and religious and voluntary associations formed a social safety net for rich and poor alike. Their hands were full. There were fires, layoffs and workplace injuries to contend with, to say nothing of the cholera spread by arriving ships and the needs of the orphans those ships deposited on the new shore.

22

Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

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Catholic San Francisco

23

New Missal leads the faithful to deeper understanding

By James Breig Microsoft Vista and “New Coke” have proven that not every change is for the better. Furthermore, when change comes to important elements of life, it is often resisted with the cry of “we never did it that way before.”

However, experts who are enthusiastic about the changes to the Roman Missal – the book that contains the prayers for the Mass – think the alterations are improvements that will lead to a deeper spiritual experience.

“Because a new edition of the Latin Roman Missal was issued in 2002, it is necessary for all the countries of the world to translate this missal into the vernacular,” says Msgr. Anthony Sherman, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Divine Worship, in explaining why the changes are being made.

But translation is not something easy to accomplish, concedes Msgr. Kevin Irwin, dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

“We all bring our own prejudices and ideas to translation,” he says. “It is hoped that the new texts will be more accurate so that our faith and our statements of faith are reliable.”

Msgr. Irwin says changes to the Roman Missal are rare.

“The previous Roman Missal (in Latin) was published in 1570, with minor adjustments [being made] in editions through 1962,” he says. “After the Second Vatican Council, the new [Roman Missal] was published in 1970, followed by a 1975 edition with minor adjustments and then the third edition in 2002 with additional prayers for new saints’ feasts etc.”

Father Paul Turner of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri elaborated on the latter point, saying that the missal “includes additional saints’ days that are now on the calendar, as well as some Masses for other circumstances. In addition, the rubrics in Holy Week have many small emendations.”

What makes the translation of the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal different is that this translation is carried out under the latest Vatican guidelines for translating the Mass into vernacular languages. This new guideline, Liturgiam Authenticam, published in 2001, urges a stronger adherence to Latin wording and structure than earlier directives.

Mass. Before the change, it is bread and wine. After the change, it looks like, smells like and tastes like bread and wine, but now it is something totally different.”

In Father Turner’s view, vocabulary is not a major problem. “People will readily understand the texts,” he says. “The reason the missal includes such words is that the vocabulary in the Latin originals is so broad. Latin uses a variety of synonyms for words like ‘sacrifice,’ ‘love,’ ‘mercy’ and ‘wonderful.’ In order to represent “We all bring our own prejudices that diversity and to provide variety among the prayers in English, a broad vocabulary is being used in the translation.” and ideas to translation.

In recognition of the disturbance change can bring, he adds that bishops’ conferences It is hoped that the new around the world have repeatedly stressed that these translations should not be used without texts will be more accurate prior and significant explanation. “One of the things we did not do 40 years ago, when the so that our faith and our liturgy was first put into the vernacular, was to explain the changes fully,” he says. “We statements of faith are reliable.” need several layers of education and instruction about the translations, but even more importantly about the Mass itself.”

Msgr. Sherman counters that “in the United States This article was distributed by the Office of Media today, people are almost daily learning new vocabulary, and Relations of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. sometimes it is quite technical. The words in our liturgical prayers can afford celebrants the opportunity to reflect on the broader context of those words and so lead the faithful This is one in an occasional series of news and in a deeper understanding of the beliefs being explained.” opinion articles on revisions to the Roman Missal.

He grants that “the new translation is not perfect because, “The Roman Missal, Third Edition,” the ritual text in a certain sense, no translation can be perfect. The differcontaining prayers and instructions for the celebration ences of opinion on the translation will be wide. At some of the Mass, has been approved for U.S. dioceses by the future date, the Holy See may substitute a different prayer Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of for what we now have. On the other hand, some have already the Sacraments. The first use of the new text will be on expressed the opinion that this translation sometimes capthe First Sunday of Advent, Nov. 27, 2011. tures with a greater eloquence the content of the particular prayers.”

Bilingual Staff Msgr. Irwin says that the Church uses technical words Information and Referrals ● Care Coordination in its vocabulary sometimes because those words capture concepts of the faith that would not be easy to understand Italian-American Community Services Agency Providing Services to the Italian Community since 1916 without using a lot of other words. “For example, since the Casa Fugazi ● 678 Green Street ● San Francisco 94133 13th century, we have used the term ‘transubstantiation’ to describe the change that occurs in the bread and wine at Tel: 415-362-6423 www.italiancommunityservices.org The results have led to some concern, voiced even by bishops, that the new English translations of the missal are not user-friendly. In the words of one critic, the language “tends to be elitist and remote from everyday speech and frequently not understandable. The vast majority of God’s people in the assembly are not familiar with words ‘ineffable,’ ‘consubstantial’ and ‘inviolate.’”

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Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

obituarIES

Sister M. Guadalupe Partida, SHF, 81 A funeral Mass was celebrated Sept. 18 for Holy Family Sister M. Guadalupe Partida at the Sisters’ Motherhouse Chapel in Fremont. Sister Guadalupe was 81 years of age and a religious for 61 years. She died Sept. 13.

Sister Guadalupe attended public schools and when she began to think seriously about religious life, she visited various religious congregations and was attracted to the congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family because of their love and service to people and for their hospitality.

She joined them in 1949.

St. Francis Day Home in San Francisco was Sister Guadalupe’s first assignment where she enjoyed helping in the daily care of young children. The purpose of the Congregation and their work with the Day Homes was, and still is, to keep families together while the parents worked. Many times over the years Sister Guadalupe would reminisce of her ministry in the Day Home and of her love of working with the young children and especially those in the nursery.

Sister Guadalupe later served in rural areas of San

(PHOTOS BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)

Bishop George Pallipparambil of the Diocese of Miao, India, and a Salesian of Don Bosco, visited St. Anne’s Home in San Francisco during a recent visit to the Archdiocese of San Francisco to extend a sister diocese relationship created last year between the two Catholic communities. Here, the bishop blesses two St. Anne’s residents, Anne Longo, 105, above and Consuelo Figueroa, 90. St. Anne’s Home for the aged was established by the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor in 1904.

Ministers of Light: special Mass Oct. 9 The Ministers of Light, a parish-based ministry for survivors of domestic violence, will host its second annual archdiocesan domestic violence awareness Mass, “Renewing the Spirit of Empowerment,” on Oct. 9, at 5 p.m. at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Redwood City. The Mass will commemorate Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

According to Michelle Jackson, a Minister of Light and St. Dunstan parishioner, the purpose of the Mass “is to acknowledge the strength of domestic abuse survivors in whatever situation they are in, be it in an abusive relationship or not, and to renew in them the hope and knowledge that they can and will get through the difficulties of their journey.”

The mission of the group is violence prevention, crisis intervention and pastoral healing. The organization was started in response to U.S. bishops’ teachings in 1992 and 2002

SCRIPTURE SEARCH Gospel for October 3, 2010 Luke 17:5-10 Following is a word search based on the Gospel reading for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C: lessons about faith and being prepared for the Lord.

The words can be found in all directions in the puzzle.

APOSTLES FAITH ROOTED PLOWING COME PREPARE HE DID

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INCREASE TREE THE SEA THE FIELD RATHER SAY DRINK DONE ALL

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Diego in religious education posts and became a social justice advocate when transferred to San Antonio, Texas. Classes at the Mexican American Cultural Center and Incarnate Word University helped her advocate for the marginalized. Sister Guadalupe also served in Cursillo and parish ministry.

In 2007 when Sister Guadalupe was called to serve the Sisters of the Holy Family as a Congregational Councilor, she said she was privileged to be chosen and expressed her gratitude, her joy and her challenges to have been able to work with and minister to children and their families of all nationalities over the years – Filipino, Portuguese, Hispanic, African Americans and Caucasian groups.

Remembrances may be made to the Sisters of the Holy Family, PO Box 3248, Fremont 94539.

Sister M. Patrice Bradshaw, SHF, 88 A funeral Mass for Holy Family Sister M. Patrice Bradshaw was celebrated Sept. 22 at the Sisters of the Holy Family Motherhouse in Fremont. Born in Oakland, Sister Patrice was 88 and a religious for 63 years. She died Sept. 17.

Sister Patrice entered the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1947. She held an undergraduate degree from Holy Family College, San Francisco and a graduate degree in religious education from the University of San Francisco.

Sister Patrice served in religious education ministry at parishes including St. Charles Borromeo, San Francisco in 1948, and in 1949, Holy Angels, Colma; St. Dunstan, Millbrae; St. Charles, San Carlos; Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Redwood City; St. Gregory, San Mateo; Church

of the Nativity, Menlo Park.

She served as Religious Education Director at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Daly City from 1973 to 1975 and as a Parish Sister at St. Raymond, Parish in Menlo Park in 1985. After retirement to the motherhouse she entered into a ministry of prayer.

Burial took place at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma.

Remembrances may be made to the Sisters of the Holy Family, PO Box 3248, Fremont 94539.

condemning domestic violence against women and calling for the Church to ignite a moral revolution against the problem.

The Mass will include a survivor testimonial, survivor prayer with unity candle, and a special blessing and commissioning of newly trained Ministers of Light. Following the Mass will be a light dinner and celebration in the hall. There will be security to ensure the Mass is a safe space for victims and survivors. All are welcome and encouraged to wear something with the color purple in observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Complimentary parking will be available in the school yard between the church and the hall.

The group requests that cameras not be used during the Mass to respect the anonymity of victims and survivors.

For more information: www.ministersoflight.org; minister@ministersoflight.org; (888) 410-5366

Each choir will perform a solo anthem and be part of a choral selection featuring the entire ensemble. Admission is free.

Choral festival: Flower Fest finale A Festival of Choirs serves Oct. 3 as a finale piece of the annual Festival of Flowers at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough and Geary streets. in San Francisco. “Heaven and Earth Resound the Hymn” is the theme of the 4 p.m. concert featuring voices from parishes including St. John of God, St. Thomas More, Mission Dolores, Mater Dolorosa, Notre Dame des Victoires and the cathedral.

The theme honors Our Lady of the Assumption during the 40th anniversary year of the cathedral’s dedication.

Mental health . . .

■ Continued from cover if we are not able to get in front of some of these issues that are developing.”

So often, Bialik added, victims will not seek help, “and so we need to work through the parishes, we need to work through community groups and families,” to spread the word that mental health counseling can be helpful in the aftermath of a crisis.

“We need to be cognizant that there are people in our communities who are hurting but they are hurting on the inside and you can’t necessarily see it,” he said.

Counseling, in a word, is listening, Ross said. It is also letting clients know they’re being supported, and helping people to see what their options are to move on in their lives, he said.

“We do not create the options,” he said, “we don’t tell them what to do, but we try to work with what they are saying and say, ‘try this, try that.’”

Catholic Charities provides mental health services to people of all faiths every day throughout the Archdiocese, mostly to the poor and to others Ross calls “the poor in spirit.” But it is largely invisible because it is an outreach

Capuchins marking 100 years in West The Capuchin Franciscans will celebrate their order’s 100th anniversary of service in the Western United States at a Mass, dinner and celebration on Oct. 9 at Our Lady of Angels Church in Burlingame, which the Capuchins have administered since 1926.

Tickets are $48 and the event includes a buffet dinner and dancing, with music by the Ben Hunter band. Information is available at the church, (650) 347-7768.

In 1919, the Irish Capuchin Franciscans were invited to serve in Eastern Oregon by the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Baker, Ore. In 1919, they were petitioned to serve in Mendocino County, and in 1926 the order was asked to found and serve at Our Lady of Angels Parish. The church at the site today was built in 1950.

The Capuchin Order dates to 1528 when a group of Franciscans decided to seek a way of life more in keeping with the spirit of St. Francis, who was, among other things, an itinerant teacher, said Capuchin Father Michael Mahoney, the pastor of Our Lady of Angels Church.

Currently, there are 30 students in formation for the priesthood and religious life at the order’s mission in Durango, Mexico. Also in California, the order does parish work in Los Angeles and Solvang and sponsors a high school in La Canada-Flintridge.

that takes place in private, said Bialik. Tragedies like the San Bruno fire bring such issues to the surface, Bialik said.

Bialik added that because of the natural resistance some people have to therapy, Catholic Charities likely will create a counseling group in which people can discuss their experiences. This will serve people who are more comfortable in a group setting and prompt some to seek individual counseling when they realize what the benefit is, he said.

Ross said victims may recall traumas of years ago and have nightmares – perhaps a mother will be overcome with fear for her children, and fear letting them out of her sight. Some school children will refuse to go to school, concerned about being away from their parents.

Victims, too, will confront the fact that being safe cannot be guaranteed – and yet they know they can’t “walk around in fear all the time either,” Ross said.

He added that all the San Bruno victims will recover in some fashion. It is not a matter of successful versus an unsuccessful recovery, he said. Everyone recovers differently.

“I would say, use the support you have – family, friends, church, work,” Ross said. “They want to listen.

They want to be a part of helping. Allow these people to do that. This is a community-wide event. The community wants to help.”

October 1, 2010

National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi La Porziuncola Nuova Columbus at Vallejo in San Francisco’s North Beach The Porziuncola and “Francesco Rocks” Gift Shop are open every day but Monday from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Visit www.knightsofsaintfrancis.com The National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi will celebrate the feast day of the shrine’s, and the archdiocese’s patron saint beginning on Sunday, October 3.

Oct. 3, 10 a.m.: The Schola Cantus will provide music for the 10 a.m. Mass at the National Shrine and the first Sunday of each month thereafter.

October 3, 3 p.m.: Capuchin Father Gregory Coiro, rector of the Shrine, will conduct the traditional blessing of the animals in the church.

Oct. 3, 7 p.m.: In the Shrine’s Porziuncola Chapel, the passing of St. Francis into eternal life will be celebrated with a Transitus Service, traditionally conducted by Dominican friars. St. Francis and St. Dominic were friends and their respective friars maintain that friendship, especially in the observance of each founder’s feast day.

Oct. 4, 12: 15 and 7 p.m.: Celebration of Mass in the National Shrine’s church. Music will be provided by Rogil Birco at the Shrine’s famed Schoenstein organ. The sacrament of penance will be available at 11:30 a.m. in the church, or by appointment in the rector’s office.

Arts and Entertainment Oct. 8, 8 p.m.: A Night of Prayer and Song with musicians Bob Hurd and Dan Schutte at St. Kevin Church, 704 Cortland Ave. in San Francisco. Songs written by the pair include Pan de Vida and Here I Am Lord. Tickets at $25 per person include refreshments at 7:30 p.m. Visit www.lanier.org/st-kevin or contact Matt Lanier at (650) 738-1632 or matt@lanier.org.

Proceeds benefit the parish.

Social Justice / Lectures Respect Life Saturdays through Dec. 18, 9 a.m. – 11 a.m.: Scripture Study at Mater Dolorosa Church, 307 Willow Ave. off Grand in South San Francisco. $15 covers materials. Contact Gloria Flores at matergf@aol.com.

Oct. 4, 11, 7:30 – 9 p.m.: Presentations on upcoming November ballot measures and perspective on California government reform at St. Matthias Church, 1685 Cordilleras Rd. off Edgewood Rd. in Redwood City. Call Evie Dwyer at (650) 368-9372.

October 10, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.: An evening of Education, Prayer, Discernment and Dialogue on the Death Penalty at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, Kavanaugh Hall, Fulton and Catherine St. in Redwood City. (Enter from the parking lot.) Admission is free. Evening offers the film, “The Empty Chair: Death Penalty Yes or No,” which examines four murders and the effects on the victims’ survivors, the offenders and others involved in the cases, and small group discussion.Participants will gain a greater appreciation of the Church’s stance on the death penalty and its ramifications for society as a whole.

Contact Susan at (650) 474 2628 or susan-swope@ att.net. Sponsored by the OLMC Social Concerns Committee.

Saturdays: San Mateo Pro-Life prays the rosary at Planned Parenthood, 2211 Palm Ave. in San Mateo at 8 a.m. and invites others to join them at the site. The prayer continues as a peaceful vigil until 1 p.m. The group is also open to new membership.

Meetings are held the second Thursday of the month except August and December at St. Gregory Parish’s Worner Center, 138 28th Ave. in San Mateo at 7:30 p.m. For more information, call Jessica at (650) 5721468 or visit www.sanmateoprolife.com The St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco’s Brennan Award Civic Luncheon will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, located at 55 Fourth Street, on October 6, 2010. The event begins at 11a.m. with a silent auction and reception, followed by lunch and the awards presentation at noon. For information or to purchase tickets, please call (415) 977-1270 x3079 or visit www.svdp-sf.org/brennanaward.

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Bruno Cable Channel 143, DISH Satellite Channel 261, Direct TV Channel 370. For programming details, visit www.ewtn.com

Datebook

Single, Divorced, Separated Information about Bay Area single, divorced and separated programs is available from Jesuit Father Al Grosskopf at grosskopf@usfca.edu (415) 422-6698.

Oct. 22-24: A Beginning Experience Widowed, Separated and Divorced Weekend at Vallombrosa Center, Oak Grove Ave. in Menlo Park. Contact Cathy at (408) 262-3718 or Helen at (415) 388-9651 You may also e-mail SJBeginExp@aol.com or visit www.beginningexperience.org. Jesuit Father Al Grosskopf is the group’s spiritual director.

Reunion

Oct 2, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.: “Our Lady of Loretto Fall Festival!” A family-oriented day at Novato Blvd. and Grant Ave. in Novato with jumpees, a climbing wall, a trackless train ride, Mexican food, hot dog lunch, carnival booths, bingo, Beer and Wine Garden, Italian dinner, and raffle. Proceeds benefit the OLL School Alumni Fund. Back from left: Chrissy Gates, Darcy Quinn, Isabel Quinn, Mary Murphy, Emmett Murphy, and Katherine Garvey. Front from left: Michael Gates, Andy Gates, Michael Quinn, Shane Murphy, Patrick Garvey and Kaley Garvey.

Vocations/Serra Clubs Oct. 13, 6 p.m.: The Serra Club of San Francisco’ honors women and men religious at annual Appreciation Dinner at El Patio Espanol Restaurant, 2850 Alemany Blvd. in San Francisco. Tickets are $35 per person. Contact Vivian Mullaney at (415) 239-8280 or e-mail vivianmullaney@yahoo.com Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m.: “Come and See Gathering with the Society of Jesus” – the Jesuits - at Loyola House/ USF, Lone Mountain campus, 2600 Turk Blvd. in San Francisco, for single men ages 18 – 45. This informal gathering enables Catholic men who would like to explore a possible vocation to religious life, serving as a priest or brother, to get to know the Jesuits of the California Province. Participants will hear vocation stories, life as a Jesuit, the spirituality and work of the Society. There will be opportunities to listen to, ask questions, and speak with Jesuit priests, brothers and men in formation. Pizzas and refreshments will be served afterward. There is no cost for this event, but pre-registration is requested. To register, call Teresa Rechsteiner, Loyola House secretary, at (415) 422-4200 or e-mail trechsteiner@usfca.edu. For more information, call Brother James C. (Jim) Siwicki, S.J., vocation director, at (408) 884-1613 or e-mail jsiwicki@calprov.org.

Food & Fun Oct. 2, 3, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.: “Good Stuff Rummage and Bake Sale” benefiting Sacred Heart Parish in Olema, 10189 State Rd/Rte. 1. Call (415) 663-1139.

Oct. 3, 7:30 a.m. registration: Seventh Annual Strides for Life, a four-mile walk or run benefiting colon cancer research and founded in memory of Dylan Cappel who died from the disease at age 23 while training for a spot on the 2004 Olympic Rowing Team. Dylan was a graduate of St. Dunstan Elementary School and Junipero Serra High School. Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States and 90 percent of them are preventable

with proper diagnosis and treatment. Teams and solo runners welcome. The event takes place around Lake Merced from Lake Merced and Sunset Blvd. in San Francisco. Pre-registration is $35/$45 on race day.

Fees include shirt, goodie bag and breakfast after the race. Call (650) 348-5800 or visit www.stridesforlife.org Oct. 9, 10 a.m.: Star of the Sea Parish and School festival with live entertainment, crafts, Touch -a- Truck and kids games. Get some holiday shopping done at the upstairs boutique while you enjoy homemade treats. Bingo at 11am-5pm. Family pasta dinner starts at 5p.m. Free parking available. Come to Star of the Sea Parish Center at 345 8th Ave. between Clement and Geary in San Francisco. Call (415) 751-0450 for tickets or information.

TV/Radio Fridays at 9 a.m.: The Archbishop’s Hour on Immaculate Heart Radio, KSFB - 1260 AM, San Francisco. Enjoy news, conversation and in-depth look at local and larger Church. Program is rerun Fridays and Mondays at 9 p.m. and Sundays at 11 a.m. e-mail info@sfarchdiocese.org with comments and questions about faith. 1260 AM also offers daily Mass, rosary and talk on the faith. Visit www.ihradio.org Sunday, 6 a.m., KOFY Channel 20/Cable 13 and KTSF Channel 26/Cable 8: TV Mass with Msgr.

Harry Schlitt presiding.

Sunday, 7 a.m.: TV Mass on Filipino Channel (TFC) (Channel 241 on Comcast and Channel 2060 on Direct TV. Saturday, 4 p.m.: Religious programming in Cantonese over KVTO 1400 AM, co-sponsored by the Chinese Ministry and Chinese Young Adults of the Archdiocese.

1st Sunday, 5 a.m., CBS Channel 5: “Mosaic,” featuring conversations on current Catholic issues.

EWTN Catholic Television: Comcast Channel 229, AT&T Channel 562, Astound Channel 80, San

Oct. 11: 18th Annual Capuchin Golf Tournament at Green Hills Country Club in Millbrae. $300 includes golf, range and cart as well as lunch, dinner, beverages, tee prizes and tournament prizes. Tickets at $50 include dinner only. The Capuchin Friars are celebrating their 100th anniversary in the Western United States in 2010. Proceeds benefit social service programs of the Capuchin Friars of the Western America Province. For reservations, call Bill Mason at (650) 906-1040 or Roy Nickolai at (650) 760-6584. For dinner reservations only, call Anne Hahn at (650) 692-5044.

Oct. 23: Class of 2000 Notre Dame High School, Belmont with campus tours at 4:30 p.m. and celebratory event at 7 p.m. at King Fish Restaurant in San Mateo. E-mail ndbjaguars2000@gmail.com.

Oct. 23: Archbishop Riordan High School, class of ’60 dinner dance, at the Italian American Social Club in San Francisco. Contact Tucker Spolter at teespot@earthlink.net or (415) 461-4628, or Tom Aspell at aspellt@al.com.

Oct. 24: St. John Ursuline High School, San Francisco is having the class of ’75, ’76, ’77 Reunion Lunch at the Irish Cultural Center.Contact Karen Grimley (75’) at karen.grimley@ssf.net or Theresa Keane (77’) at theresakeane@gmail.com for information – please respond by by Oct 1.

Nov. 20, 4 – 8 p.m.: Class of ’60, Holy Name of Jesus Elementary School in San Francisco on school campus at 40th Ave. and Lawton. Contact Dennis Norton at (415) 454-3184 or danort@comcast.net

Special Liturgies Sundays, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.: Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with Benediction at Notre Dame des Victoires Church, 566 Bush St. between Stockton and Grant in San Francisco. Convenient parking is available across Bush St. in StocktonSutter garage. Call 397-0113.

Oct. 28, 5:30 p.m.: Mass commemorating 75th anniversary of Shrine of St. Jude at St. Dominic Church, 2390 Bush St. at Steiner in San Francisco.

Archbishop George H. Niederauer will preside. Call (415) 931-5919 or e-mail info@stjude-shrine.org. Visit www.stjude-shrine.org.

Traditional Latin Mass The traditional Latin Mass celebrated according to texts and rubrics of the Missal of Blessed John XXIII of 1962 is celebrated at four locations within the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Sunday, 12:15 p.m.: Holy Rosary Chapel at St. Vincent School for Boys in San Rafael. For more information, call St. Isabella Parish at (415) 479-1560.

First Fridays, 7 p.m.: St. Francis of Assisi Church, 1425 Bay Rd. at Glen Way in East Palo Alto. For more information, call (650) 322-2152. Father Lawrence Goode, pastor, is celebrant.

First Sundays, 5:30 p.m.: Mater Dolorosa, 307 Willow Ave. South San Francisco. For more information call (650) 583-4131.

Second Sundays, 5:30 p.m.: St. Finn Barr Church, Edna St at Hearst in San Francisco. Call (415) 333-3627.

Datebook is a free listing for parishes, schools and non-profit groups. Please include event name, time, date, place, address and an information phone number.

Listing must reach Catholic San Francisco at least two weeks before the Friday publication date desired. Mail your notice to: Datebook, Catholic San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, S.F. 94109, or fax it to (415) 614-5633, e-mail burket@sfarchdiocese.org, or visit www.catholic-sf.org, Contact Us.

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Catholic San Francisco

October 1, 2010

Construction SERVICE DIRECTORY CAHALAN CONST.

FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION Call 415-614-5642 Fax: 415-614-5641 E-mail: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Additions. Remodels lic# 582766

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(650) 994-6892 lic. 343633

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Investment Clinical Gerontologist

Licensed contractors are required by law to list their license numbers in advertisments.

The law also state that contractors performing work totaling $500 or more must be state-licensed. Advertisments appearing in this newspaper without a license number indicate that the contractor is not licensed.

Care Management for the Older Adult Family Consultation –Bereavement Support

For more info, contact: Contractors State License Board

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27

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St. Jude helper of the hopeless pray for us.

Say prayer 9 times a day for 9 days.

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Never known to fail.

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Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

Most beautiful flower of Mt. Carmel Blessed Mother of the Son of God, assistme in my need. Help me and show me you are my mother.

Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to help me in this need.

Oh Mary, conceived without sin. Pray for us (3X).

Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands (3X).

Say prayers 3 days.

P.R.

Most beautiful flower of Mt. Carmel Blessed Mother of the Son of God, assistme in my need. Help me and show me you are my mother.

Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to help me in this need.

Oh Mary, conceived without sin. Pray for us (3X).

Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands (3X).

Say prayers 3 days. C.O.

Public Service Announcement St. Brunoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Church (650) 588-2121

555 W. San Bruno Avenue, San Bruno, CA 94066

Calling on all old-time parishioners of St. Bruno Church: St.Bruno Parish celebrates the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the church with a bilingual mass on October 9, Saturday at 6pm; food sales and entertainment are on the following day. You are cordially invited.

Also, two years from now (2012), St. Brunoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s celebrates the 100th anniversary of its foundation as a parish. If you have old pictures and stories that represent that history of St. Brunoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, kindly lend them to us for exhibit purposes so that these beautiful memories mayb shared by others. Thank you.

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Public Service Announcement Bone Marrow Screening St. Anne School is holding a bone marrow screening on October 7th in an effort to save the life of third-grader, Christian.

Christian was diagnosed, shortly before the start of school, with severe Aplastic Anemia, in which the bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bone marrow stops producing blood cells. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Christian is currently receiving multiple transfusions to sustain him,â&#x20AC;? said Tom White, Principal of St. Anne School. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No family member is a match, so the next best hope is to find an non-relative donor whose bone marrow can be used to generate healthy bone marrow for Christian,â&#x20AC;? Mr. White said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are appealing to every family and asking for their support. If every adult who reads about Christianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s condition can only put themselves in the place of Christianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parents, I am hopeful that they will respond to this need and come to the screening on Oct. 7.â&#x20AC;?

The Bone Marrow Screening is Oct. 7th from 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. at St. Anne School at 1320 - 14th Avenue (between Irving and Judah Sts.), San Francisco. The screening is simple. Donors must be between 18 - 60 and be in good health. Donors will fill out a consent form and do a cheek swab. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s it for the screening. In approximately 10 minutes you could save a life.

In the meantime, Christian is undergoing immuno-suppressant drug therapy which suppresses the white blood cells from attacking healthy cells and tissue. For more information, call St. Anne School 415-664-7977. We thank you for your participation!

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PLEASE JOIN US FOR SAC R E D H EA RT CAT H E D R A L P R E PA R ATO RY

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