US Bishops reiterate objection to abortion wording in bill
Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
(CNS/KAREN CALLAWAY, CATHOLIC NEW WORLD)
Catholic News Service
Cardinal Francis E. George, president of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, visits a patient at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago in this December file photo. Cardinal George said March 15 that despite the good the Senate health reform bill might achieve, the bishops will continue to oppose it until concerns about the abortion wording are addressed.
By Carol Zimmermann WASHINGTON (CNS) – In the United States and Canada, membership numbers have gone up for the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Assemblies of God, among others, according to the 2010 edition of a yearbook published by the National Council of Churches. The 78th annual edition of the “Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches” also reported a continuing decline in membership of nearly all mainline Protestant denominations including the Southern Baptist Convention, which reported a loss of members for the second year in a row. With more than 16 million members, it is still the nation’s second largest denomination. The U.S. Catholic Church – the country’s largest denomination with more than 68 million members – reported a slight membership decline in the 2009 yearbook, but it rebounded this year with a 1.49 percent growth. The Latter-day Saints grew 1.71 percent to almost 6 million members and the Assemblies of God grew 1.27 percent to about 2.9 million CHURCH IN US, page 5 members.
‘Archbishop’s Hour’ On 1260 AM Radio “The Archbishop’s Hour” with San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer airs each Friday morning at 9 a.m. on Immaculate Heart Radio – 1260 AM in the Bay Area. Repeat broadcasts air Friday evening at 9 p.m., Sunday at 11 a.m., and Monday at 9 p.m.
March 19, 2010
Young Men’s Institute Catholic fraternal organization born in 19th century hopes for resurgence in 21st (PHOTO BY RICK DELVECCHIO/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
Catholic Church in US increases membership
WASHINGTON – “Despite the good” that proposed health reform legislation “intends or might achieve,” concerns about the abortion wording in the Senate-passed bill compel the U.S. bishops to “regretfully hold that it must be opposed until these serious moral problems are addressed,” Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago said March 15. A House vote on the health reform legislation was expected by March 20, with Senate and House action to follow on a separate bill containing a set of “fixes” proposed by President Barack Obama. In his statement, Cardinal George said, “Throughout the discussion on health care over the last year, the bishops have advocated a bipartisan approach to solving our national health care needs. They have urged that all who are sick, injured or in need receive necessary and appropriate medical assistance, and that no one be deliberately killed through an expansion of federal funding of abortion itself or of insurance plans that cover abortion. These are the provisions of the long standing Hyde amendment, passed annually in every federal bill appropriating funds for health care; and surveys show that this legislation reflects the will of the majority of our fellow citizens. The American people and the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status quo would be respected.” The statement from the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops came soon after the head of the Catholic Health Association called on House members to quickly pass the Senate legislation and make changes later. Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who is US BISHOPS OBJECTION, page 5
By John Wildermuth The clean, crisp ads have been showing up in Catholic San Francisco and Catholic diocesan papers across the state. “The YMI … Join the Brotherhood,” the ad proclaims, reminding readers of the 127 years that members of the Young Men’s Institute have been joined in service, faith and fraternity. The group is making an all-out effort to boost its aging and declining membership by using all the modern communication tools to get its message in front of today’s Catholic men. Besides the ads and public service announcements on Catholic radio stations, the YMI has a web site, an e-mail address and even a Facebook page, all designed to show that there’s still a place for the type of Catholic organization that has allowed tens of thousands of men to serve their
Mike Amato, a St. Veronica parishioner who is grand secretary of the Young Men’s Institute, kneels at the plaque that commemorates the fraternal organization’s founding in San Francisco 1883.
church and their community over the years – and have fun doing it. “In recent years we’ve found that many people, including clergy, don’t really know what the YMI does,” said Mike Amato, grand secretary of the YMI and president of one of its two San Francisco councils. “But we need to get our message out there and let people know we’re still here.” On March 4, 1883, a half-dozen San Francisco men met in the parish hall of St. Joseph’s Church and formed the Young Men’s Institute, an organization that would provide a religious, fraternal and social anchor for generations of Catholic men. A plaque commemorating the founding of YMI today is located at Notre Dame des Victoires Church at 566 Bush St., under a lamppost that was originally located at St. Joseph Church at 10th and Howard streets. YOUNG MEN’S INSTITUTE, page 4
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION Vatican defends efforts . . . . . 3 Construction in 3 counties . 6-7 Youth decathlon, retreat . . 8-9 Archbishop’s Journal. . . . . . 12 Scripture & reflection. . . . . 14
St. Patrick’s Day parade: News in brief ~ Pages 10-11 ~
In touch with the Lord: New books on priesthood. . 16 Rediscovering confession Datebook of events . . . . . . . 17 ~ Page 15 ~ www.catholic-sf.org
ONE DOLLAR
VOLUME 12
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No. 10
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Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
On The Where You Live By Tom Burke Notre Dame de Namur University has welcomed four local businessmen to its board of trustees. “All of the new board members have been active contributors to NDNU and the local community for years and I personally look forward to working with them in their new capacity as trustees,” said school President Judith Grieg. Charles Lynch of Atherton also served on the panel in the 1990s. He is chairman of Market Value Partners and former chair of several companies including Fresh Choice, Inc. Joseph J. Heinen is an alumnus of NDNU and married to San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Christine Sacino. The couple’s daughter, Catherine, is a sixth grader at St. Paul Elementary School in San Francisco. A former president of St. Paul’s pastoral council, Joseph is an executive with Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories in Daly City. Chester Fisher, a member of Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Belmont, is CEO of Pacific Core Ventures, Inc. of Redwood City and an active fundraiser for NDNU’s theater and music departments. James McGovern, a member of St. Denis Parish in Menlo Park, is founder of Belmont’s McGovern Insurance. A former president of the Belmont Rotary Club he has helped raise $1.6 million for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s annual Walking for Ben campaign, a charity he began in memory of his late grandson. NDNU was founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1851. Its 1,600 students attend classes on the
school’s 50-acre campus in Belmont….Holocaust survivor, Alice Braun, shared her experience of imprisonment at Auschwitz with students at Notre Dame High School in February. “Mrs. Braun gave a presentation that engaged the students with her tale of struggle in Nazi-occupied Slovakia, her survival, and her quest to build a better life with her husband in the United States” the school said. According to Notre Dame, Alice has been a part of Steven Speilberg’s `Shoah Project,’ a collection of testimonies from Holocaust survivors….The Marin Network for Life took advantage of the “Year for Priests” to show their support and appreciation for priests in Marin County. Almost 80 people attended. Laughs and good conversation marked the evening. Father Tom Daly, director of vocations for the Archdiocese of San Francisco and President of Marin Catholic High School, was among priests who talked about the vocation. In his work with seminarians he tells them to look at the parish priests who are successful. “It is not the priest who raises the most money,” he said. “Rather, it is the priest who takes seriously the words of Christ: ‘I come to serve, not be served.’” Other priests attending included Fathers Ken Westray, Alner Nambatac, Feliciano Mofan, Warlito Namo, Ngoan Van Phan, Mark Taheny, Paul Perry, William Nicholas, Paul Arnoult, Jack O’Neill, Tom Parenti, Cyril O’Sullivan, Michel Raimondi, James O’Malley, William Knapp and Msgr. Richard Knapp. Each priest went home with a gift bag filled with cards, pictures, spiritual bouquets, posters and letters from parish school children, CCD classes and parishioners. The Marin Network for Life gave spiritual bouquets to each priest. A Mass for their intention was celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome by Father Steven Lopes, personal assistant to former San Francisco Archbishop and now Cardinal William J. Levada. The Marin Network for Life includes members from St. Anselm, St. Cecilia, Lagunitas; St. Hilary, St. Sebastian,
Elan Scheinman, Mackenzie Scheinman ’13, Margaret Scheinman, Alice Braun; principal, Rita Gleason, and History teacher, Anne SchaeferSalinas following Alice’s talk on the Holocaust at Notre Dame High School, Belmont.
Charles Lynch
Joseph J. Heinen
Chester Fisher
James McGovern
and St. Raphael parishes…. This is an empty space without you. E-mail items and electronic pictures – jpegs at no less than 300 dpi – to burket@sfarchdiocese.org or mail them to Street, One Peter Yorke Way, SF 94109. Thank you. My phone number is (415) 614-5634.
From left: Father William Knapp, retired pastor, St. Stephen Parish, San Francisco, Monsignor Richard Knapp, retired pastor, St. Raphael Parish, San Rafael, Father James O’Malley, retired pastor, St. Kevin Parish, San Francisco.
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Vatican defends efforts by Pope, Church to curb sex abuse by priests VATICAN CITY – Amid new disclosures of priestly sex abuse cases in Europe, including one in the German archdiocese formerly headed by Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican strongly defended the Church’s response to the crisis and said the pope has led the effort to root out “filth” in the Church. The Vatican statements came in the wake of hundreds of past sex abuse allegations against priests and other church personnel that have surfaced in recent weeks in Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. The pope met with top German bishops March 12 and encouraged them to move ahead “with decision and courage” in investigating the widening scandal of sexual abuse of minors in Catholic schools, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, the head of the German bishops’ conference, told reporters. Later the same day, the Vatican responded to a report that a German priest accused of sexually abusing a child had been allowed to return to pastoral work in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising in the early 1980s, at the time Pope Benedict XVI was archbishop there. The Vatican press office noted that the archdiocesan official who had returned the priest to ministry had taken “full responsibility” for his “serious error,” and said the future pope, thenCardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was not involved in that decision. In 1985, three years after Cardinal Ratzinger had been called to serve as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal official, the same German priest faced new accusations of sexual abuse, and was eventually suspended from the priesthood and convicted in a civil court. The revelations about the German case made headlines around the world, and some commentators questioned how Cardinal Ratzinger could not have been aware of details of the situation at the time. The Vatican countered by strongly defending the pope against what it said was an aggressive campaign to drag him personally into the widening sex abuse scandal. “It is evident that over recent days some people have sought, with considerable persistence, ... elements that could personally involve the Holy Father in questions of abuse. To any objective observer, it is clear that these efforts have failed,” Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a written commentary. The same day, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, ran a front-page article under the headline: “The severity of Benedict XVI against the filth in the church.” It said Pope Benedict was being mischaracterized as an aloof administrator with little interest in the scandal, when in fact the
(CNS PHOTO/TONY GENTILE, REUTERS)
By John Thavis Catholic News Service
Pope Benedict XVI waves to the crowd as he leads the Angelus prayer from the window of his apartment at the Vatican March 14.
German pontiff had led the way in addressing past cases and preventing new ones. “It is thanks to the greater severity of the pope that various bishops’ conferences are turning a light on cases of sexual abuse, and also cooperating with civil authorities so that justice is rendered to the victims,” it said. In an unusual interview on March 13, a key Vatican official described in detail the steps taken by the Vatican to confront priestly sex abuse since 2001, the year the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under then-Cardinal Ratzinger, laid out strict new norms for processing such cases. The official, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, a doctrinal congregation official from Malta who deals directly with cases of priests accused of abuse of minors, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the allegation that Pope Benedict had covered up sex abuse crimes was “false and calumnious.” As head of the doctrinal congregation, he handled such cases with wisdom and courage, and as pope he has dismissed many priests from the clerical state, Msgr. Scicluna said. Msgr. Scicluna also emphasized that the Vatican’s insistence on secrecy in the investigation of these cases by church authorities does not mean bishops or others are exempt from reporting these crimes to civil authorities. “In some English-speaking countries, but also in France, if bishops become aware of crimes committed by their priests outside the sacramental seal of confession, they are obliged to report them to the judicial authorities. This is an onerous duty
because the bishops are forced to make a gesture comparable to that of a father denouncing his own son. Nonetheless, our guidance in these cases is to respect the law,” he said. In countries where there is no legal obligation to report sex abuse accusations, Msgr. Scicluna said, “we do not force bishops to denounce their own priests, but encourage them to contact the victims and invite them to denounce the priests by whom they have been abused.” Msgr. Scicluna said that since the doctrinal congregation took over juridical control of the sex abuse accusations in 2001, it has processed about 3,000 cases, dealing with crimes committed over the last 50 years. He said about 60 percent of these cases involved sexual attraction towards male adolescents, 30 percent involved heterosexual relations, and the remaining 10 percent were cases of pedophilia, involving an adult sexual preference for pre-pubescent children. Most cases of priestly sex abuse against minors have been handled without a church trial because of the advanced age of the accused, and the penalties in such cases has usually been the imposition of strict limitations on the priest’s ministry, he said. About 20 percent of the cases resulted in a church trial, with most of the accused found guilty (the conviction rate is about 85 percent overall). Punishment can range from restrictions or removal from ministry to dismissal from the priesthood. In the most serious cases – about 10 percent of the total – the pope has dismissed the offender from the priesthood, and in another 10 percent the priest has been laicized at his request, Msgr. Scicluna said. He said the number of new cases of sex abuse by priests has declined; last year there were 223 cases reported from around the world. And while the majority of the 3,000 or so cases handled by the Vatican since 2001 have been from the United States, by last year U.S. cases had dropped to about 25 percent of the total. The trend is toward a growing number of countries reporting cases, but a drop in the overall number of accusations, he said. Msgr. Scicluna said that in Italy, “the phenomenon (of priestly sexual abuse of minors) does not seem to have dramatic proportions, although what worries me is a certain culture of silence which I feel is still too widespread in the country.” Like others at the Vatican, Msgr. Scicluna noted that a very small minority of the world’s 400,000 priests were sexual perpetrators, which he said “does not correspond to the perception that is created when these sad cases occupy the front pages of the newspapers.” Contributing to this story were Sarah Delaney and Cindy Wooden in Rome.
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Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
(ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO ARCHIVES)
The Young Men’s Institute jubilee Mass in San Francisco, March, 2, 1958.
YMI’s George Maisel, third from right, and Gerald Murphy, second from right, with Father Joseph O’Reilly and two railroad employees, on an “All America” train tour in 1947.
Young Men’s Institute . . . ■ Continued from cover The YMI was founded less than 30 years after San Francisco’s second Committee of Vigilance had lynched, imprisoned or exiled more than two dozen people, most of them Irish. The Irish, said Ernest Seyd, a San Francisco merchant at the time, were the tools of “meddling politicians, Jesuits, demagogues and ballot-box stuffers.” By 1880, the Irish made up a third of the nearly 250,000 people in San Francisco and had a strong political presence in the city. But they were still the laborers, ignored, at best, by the business and social leaders of the city. Today, the YMI is struggling to connect with a new generation of Catholics at a time when fraternal organizations of all types are seeing their membership plummet. The organization last year donated more than $100,000 to a variety of causes, including the education of seminarians, scholarships to Catholic schools and food boxes for charities and needy families. It sponsors youth sports teams, runs essay contests for Catholic school students and works with local parishes. But despite the good works, it has been an uphill climb to convince Catholic men to join an organization that in their minds is forever linked to the past of their fathers and grandfathers.
“Times have changed,” Amato admitted. “When the YMI first started, many of its members were Irish immigrants. The YMI provided them with a social outlet, but also helped them with things like finding jobs and housing.” With a motto of “Pro Deo, Pro Patria,” – For God, For Country – the YMI grew to include not only those immigrants, but also their native-born sons, grandsons and friends, regardless of nationality. By World War II, there were an estimated 25,000 members and between 200 and 300 local councils in California and beyond. But as time passed, those immigrants became part of the larger community and didn’t need to depend on the services that church-based organizations could provide. By 1966, the YMI’s membership had fallen to around 5,000 members and 57 councils in California, Indiana and Hawaii. Today, it’s about half that, Amato said. There are now four councils in the archdiocese, with about 500 members. “You can blame some of it on TV,” Amato said with a laugh. “There are more forms of entertainment out there and more reasons to stay home. People aren’t as likely to get their entertainment from a church organization.” It’s not a problem unique to the YMI. The Italian Catholic Federation, founded in San Francisco in 1924, has seen its membership fall
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home council, which generally meets at St. Cecilia Church in San Francisco, the average age of the membership has steadily fallen in the past few years. There are similar recruitment efforts going on at the other councils in the archdiocese, which meet at Notre Dame des Victoires Church in San Francisco, All Souls Church in South San Francisco and in San Rafael. “We try and have events people want to be part of, whether it’s dinners, picnics, sports tournaments or even bocce ball,” Amato said. “We are trying to find activities that fit our niche.” That sense of fraternity, combined with the chance to do charitable work alongside fellow Catholics, is an important selling point for the YMI. “We’re starting to get some calls from people who have seen our ads and heard the public service announcements and we can refer them to their local councils,” Amato said. Rebuilding the membership is a slow, but necessary process, he added. “You know you’re going to be disappointed sometimes,” Amato said. “But for every three or four people we talk to, we can get one new member, so you have to keep going.”
Membership in the YMI is open to Catholic men over the age of 17. Information may be obtained by calling 1-800-964-9646 or by sending an e-mail request to ymius@aol.com. Additional information about the YMI is available on their web page, www.ymiusa.org or on their Young Men’s Institute Facebook page.
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from a peak of 30,000 to about 14,000 today. At its national convention in Jacksonville, Fla., last October, the leadership of the National Council of Catholic Women warned that declining membership could force the organization to shut down in the next two years. Other fraternal groups have seen similar declines. National membership in the Elks, for example, has fallen more than 40 percent since 1980, while Masonic lodges, which had 4 million members in the country in 1963, has seen that number drop to 1.6 million. In his 2000 book “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Harvard Professor Robert Putnam found that they’re Americans are increasingly unwilling to join community organizations, whether they’re bowling leagues and the PTA or the Elks Lodge and the Jaycees. But even if recruitment is a tough slog, for groups like the YMI, finding new members is a growing priority. “As our demographic gets older, we’re focusing on recruiting younger members,” Amato said. “We had 100 new members last year, but lost more than that, including 60 to death.” Catholic men between ages 45 and 60 are the YMI’s main target group. At Amato’s
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(PHOTO BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
More than 200 members of the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s Latino community attended a March 6 Lenten retreat at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory School in San Francisco. The retreat was organized by Father Francisco Gamez, parochial vicar of St. Mary’s Cathedral. The main speaker was María Clara Macías de Cuevas from Guadalajara, Mexico, who has more than 20 years of experience working as a pastoral agent in her own country and elsewhere in Latin America and Europe. Her message: Open your heart to God and make sacrifices to change your life during this time. Lent is the opportunity to change and to be a better person.
Canadian church bodies, giving a brief description of each and a listing of national headquarters, officers, periodicals and major agencies or boards. The yearbook also includes directories of U.S. and Canadian seminaries, religious periodicals, ecumenical organizations, cooperative religious organizations, institutions engaged in religious research and a selective directory of non-Christian religious organizations. Because it relies on data collected by the church bodies, the 2010 yearbook covers 2008 data gathered by the churches in 2009. The yearbook reports what year the figures come from, since not all churches collect new data every year. The yearbook’s description of church membership data also points out that the numbers may not reflect those in their 20s and 30s who might participate in church life but not be listed as members. Sixty-four churches contributed data to the yearbook’s section on church financial reporting. The members of those churches, roughly 45 million people, contributed almost $36 billion to churches in 2008.
■ Continued from cover The Rev. Eileen Lindner, editor of the yearbook since 1988 and NCC deputy general secretary for research and planning said in a statement that observers have attributed the membership decline in some churches to “an increasing secularization of American postmodern society and its disproportionate impact on liberal religious groups.” But Rev. Lindner, a Presbyterian minister, urged caution in interpreting the data and added: “American society as a whole has not experienced the kind and rate of secularization so clearly demonstrated during the last quarter-century in Western Europe.” The yearbook also looks at trends in church membership and the 2010 edition includes an essay on immigrants in the church, noting that most U.S. immigrants in the past 50 years have been Christian. The 440-page yearbook is an annual publication of the New York-based National Council of Churches. It lists U.S. and
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statement that CHA’s priorities for health care reform were to “protect human life and dignity,” including mothers and unborn children, ■ Continued from cover and to “alleviate the suffering of people who CHA president and CEO, said in a March cannot afford health insurance or cannot afford 13 statement that the Senate bill isn’t perfect the health care they need.” but would “make the lives of millions more A lengthy analysis posted on the USCCB secure, and their coverage more affordable.” Web site, however, said the “House-approved She told Catholic News Service March 15 health care reform bill follows indispensable that she considered the Senate language “an and long-standing federal policies on abortion acceptable way to prevent federal funding of funding and mandates, and conscience rights abortion,” even if it might not be the best way on abortion, while the Senate bill does not.” or the preferred way. Cardinal George said, “No provision Cardinal George said in his statement that in the Senate bill incorporates the longthe USCCB concerns were “not quibbling standing and widely supported protection over technicalities.” for conscience regarding “The deliberate omisabortion as found in the sion in the Senate bill of The American people Hyde/Weldon amendthe necessary language ment. Moreover, neither that could have taken the House nor Senate this moral question off and the Catholic bill contains meaningful the table and out of play conscience protection leaves us still looking for bishops have been outside the abortion cona way to meet the presitext. Any final bill, to be dent’s and our concern promised that, in any fair to all, must retain the to provide health care accommodation of the for those millions whose final bill, no federal full range of religious and primary care physician is moral objections in the now an emergency room funds would be used provision of health insurdoctor,” the cardinal said. ance and services that are He acknowledged that for abortion . . . contained in current law, the USCCB analysis “is for both individuals and not completely shared by institutions.” the leaders” of CHA. He added, “What is tragic about this turn They believe, moreover, that the defects of events is that it needn’t have happened. The that they do recognize can be corrected after status quo that has served our national consenthe passage of the final bill,” Cardinal George sus and respected the consciences of all with said. “The bishops, however, judge that the regard to abortion is the Hyde amendment. flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the The House courageously included an amendgood that the bill intends to promote. ment applying the Hyde policy to its Health “Assurances that the moral objections Care bill passed in November. Its absence to the legislation can be met only after the in the Senate bill and the resulting impasse bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in are not an accident. Those in the Senate who Midwestern parlance, to buy a pig in a poke,” wanted to purge the Hyde amendment from he added. this national legislation are obstructing the Sister Carol, who was at the White House reform of health care.” March 3 for Obama’s announcement of the Catholic San Francisco contributed to final push for health care reform, said in her this story.
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Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
Serra High School announces multi-million dollar campus improvements Junipero Serra High School announced March 10 that the City of San Mateo has given approval of Phase II of the school’s master plan for campus improvements. Groundbreaking for the $21 million project has been set for June 2010 and the facilities scheduled for use by August 2011. “Serra students deserve the best,” Lars Lund, Serra president said.”It is our responsibility to provide them with the best facilities possible to meet our standards of excellence.” The project includes a new Center for the Arts and Sciences that “features the latest instructional technology to maximize students learning” … equipped with “Smart Board and digital camera technology, student laptops, and wireless computer connectivity,” according to the information released by the school. Planned improvements include five new science lecture laboratories for biology, chemistry and physics; classrooms that integrate current advanced technology; new facilities for yearbook, newspaper and films; a new broadcasting
studio; expanded opportunities for engaging students in real world communication; a larger art room dedicated to painting, drawing and 3-D art; a new ceramics room; increased display and work space in the adjacent arts plaza; state-of-the-art band rehearsal and choral space; recording
facilities; a Green Room for the Theater Arts Program; a work room for instrument repair; expanded classroom space; a meeting room to accommodate family conferences; a separate small-group tutoring/collaborative study classroom; a new, swimming pool with standard dimensions
for competitive high school water polo and swimming; bleachers; expansion of summer programs including the Serra Swim School. “We can’t wait to get started with construction,” said Serra Principal Barry Thornton. “We are excited that this project will allow us to continue to move forward as the finest college preparatory school for young men.” The construction site is separated from the working campus, according to Serra. All possible measures will be taken to ensure that classrooms are quiet and that construction noise is contained to the fullest extent possible. The completed Phase I of the plan included construction of a new sports complex with an all-weather sports track, artificial turf football field that also accommodates soccer and lacrosse, and a stadium with seating for approximately 2,000. The complex also contains a refreshment booth, weight room and practice facility for wrestling teams, and a storage area. Bleachers were also added to the already existing baseball field.
St. Anselm begins construction of new rectory and offices By Tom Burke St. Anselm Parish in the Marin County community of Ross has begun construction of new parish offices, priest rectory and parish hall.
The idea for the expansion goes back to the 1970s with serious consideration of the plant modifications starting five years ago. The work is expected to begin in this month and continue over the next year.
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courtyard. The rectory portion of the building will contain two priest suites, a guest room, kitchen, laundry area and common living and dining room with a separate entrance. “Given the current state of vocations and the average age of priests in the Archdiocese, ST. ANSELM, page 7
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Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
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Old St. Mary’s Cathedral marks retrofitting milestone By Tom Burke Chinatown’s Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, an anchor of San Francisco for 155 years, has met retrofitting requirements imposed by the City of San Francisco subsequent to the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989. “This is a significant milestone reached after an arduous 20-year journey,� said Paulist Father Charles Kullmann, pastor at the parish since 2002. The Loma Prieta Earthquake instigated passage of a law that all unreinforced masonry buildings in San Francisco had to be retrofitted and brought up to current seismic codes. “For 20 years, Old St. Mary’s Parish has worked to achieve this goal,� Father Kullmann said. “Four pastors have worked on this – Paulist Fathers John E. Hurley, John J. Foley, and Robert L. Pinkston. Hundreds of parishioners and friends of the parish have worked countless hours to make this happen. Thousands of individuals, families, and foundations have contributed to the effort. At last, Old St. Mary’s is no longer on the UMB list!� Archbishop George H. Niederauer presided at a Mass of Blessing and Thanksgiving at Old St. Mary’s in October to
St. Anselm . . . ■Continued from page 6 the parish will never be served by more than two priests again,� the parish community was told in a recent newsletter outlining the construction. Father Warlito Namo is parochial vicar at the parish. Fathers Healy and Warlito are now living in a home rented from nearby San Francisco Theological Seminary. “It’s where I wanted it to be,� Father Healy said, “just
a five minute walk from the church and school.� Parish staff members are working from the first floor of the rented facility. Retired Father Peter McDonald, who has made his home at St. Anselm since his retirement in 2001, has moved from the premises to quarters at St. Bartholomew Parish in San Mateo. A dinner at St. Anselm in his honor has been announced for March 20. New guidelines ask retiring pastors to not continue residence at the parish where they last served. Cost of the new construction is $2.7 million, Father Healy said, and is expected to be met as part of a parish centennial collection
commemorate the work and those who made it possible. A plaque sent by the city with the Certificate of Final Completion and Occupancy affirms the church’s new standing as seismically safe. “We refer to this as the “$11 million plaque,� Father Kullmann said, noting the cost of the work during the 20 years has come to $11,385,434.94. “Every penny came from people who want to see this historic church continue its great ministry to Chinatown and San Francisco,� Father Kullmann said. “Not a cent of this came from government.� While what Father Kullmann called “required code work and plenty of deferred maintenance� still needs finishing, “the threat that Old St. Mary’s could be closed or torn down is now just a bad dream. Old St. Mary’s has been here for 155 years. Our aim is to keep it here for another 155 years.� The work still to be done and debt from work completed amounts to about $1.25 million. When asked if donations are being accepted, Father Kullmann said, “Boy, are they!� Information is available at www.oldsaintmarys.org or (415) 288-3800. begun in 2007 in ceremonies marking St. Anselm’s 100th year. Work already completed at the parish includes retrofitting of the parish school, as well as upgraded classrooms and technology at the school, and new roofs for the church, parish school and gym.
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Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
Catholic schools participate in academic decathlon; part of statewide competition
Sixteen elementary schools from the Archdiocese of San Francisco participated in the 14th Annual Academic Junior High Decathlon at St. Pius School on March 6, 2010. More than 300 schools competed statewide in 10 similar regional events. Winners from each region move to a statewide championship contest in May. St. Gabriel School won the overall competition and will represent the Archdiocese of San Francisco on May 1 at the state event in San Bernardino. St. Raymond School in Menlo Park placed 2nd and San Francisco’s Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires took 3rd place in the overall competition. The Academic Decathlon consists of 10 events, two of which are conducted for teams of ten students. The first team event is the logic quiz, consisting of twenty deductive and inductive logic problems in areas such as spatial reasoning, patterns, probability, mathematical reasoning, and word logic. The super quiz consists of 50 questions read aloud and answered collaboratively by team members. Individual
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St. Raymond Elementary School Decathlon Team: Back from left: James Albera, Joseph Diaz, Caoimhe MacRunnels, Molly Quinton, Katherine Yancey, Sarah Banks. Front from left: Colleen Hamilton, Ceci Marshall, Marifer McCavitt, Fiona Jackson Sarah Scannell, Yasmine El-Hage, Celia Kelly. Team Coach is Patrick Sullivan. (PHOTO BY BARBARA ROZZANO-KEEFE)
St. Gabriel Elementary School Decathlon Team: Kneeling from left: Nicole Morris, Isabella Cai. Standing from left: Caitlyn Yu, Mairead Ahlbach, Maggie Curran- Levett, Callum Watts, Sam Blumenfeld, Tristan Wentworth, Stephanie Joe, Andrea Huey. Team Coaches are Donna Bruno, Barbara Cecchin, Kathy Curran, Lynn Grier; pastor, Father Tom Hamilton, Mara Hill, Charlene McDonnell, Jim McGarry, Bernice Tonegato-Jarrell, and Dave and Pat Tucker.
Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires School Decathlon Team: Back from left: Awad Faddoul, Malaya Sadler, Nicholas Lee, Alyssa Viscio, Adair Rosin, Mrs. Shilstone, Claudia Rodriguez, Rebecca Harvey, Samantha Wilcox, Julianne Cravotto, Joelle Park, Ryan Linsey, Front from left: Katy McCarthy, Phoebe Gillan, Angela Iton, Jeff Ward. Team Coaches are Judith Shilstone, Megan Mulcahy, Kirstin Weihl, Brendan Barth Jenifer Lake, Aileen Albertson, Paul Briggs, Sharon Hupf.
events comprise the remaining eight elements of the decathlon: Religion, English/Spelling, Literature, Math, Science, Current Events, Social Science, and Fine Arts. The Decathlon’s five goals are to: • promote academic excellence • promote collaborative spirit and cooperative learning skills • promote logical and higher order thinking • recognize the contributions of parents, teachers, school administrators, and business and community members in supporting high standards for all students • celebrate the diversity, excellence and tradition of Catholic schools. “The Decathlon is a way for adolescent youth to challenge their minds to achieve new levels of excellence,” according to contest organizers.
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Good Shepherd Elementary School Decathlon Team: Front from left: Samantha David, Rosie Alvarado, Joelle Magdaluyo, Stephanie Borja. Back from left: Coach Brenda Johe, Conner Finsness, Bianca Cabrera, Kathleen Dougherty, Charlie Liu, Donovan Stewart, Andrea Hippler, John McGhee, Jessica David, Coach Rosmarie Thompson, Principal Patricia Volan.
Decathlon 2010 participating schools: All Souls School, School of the Epiphany, Corpus Christi School, St. Anthony-Immaculate Conception School, De Marillac Academy, Saint Charles School, Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires, Saint Gabriel School, Good Shepherd School, Saint Pius School, Mission Dolores School, Saint Raymond School, Nativity School, Saints Peter and Paul School, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School, St. Thomas More School. OVERALL First Place: Saint Gabriel School; Second Place: St. Raymond School; Third Place: Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires LOGIC First Place: Good Shepherd School; Second Place: Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires; Third Place: St. Raymond School RELIGION First Place: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School, Katherine Jabba; Second Place: Nativity School, Olivia Stone; Third Place: St. Gabriel School, Maggie Curran-Levett ACADEMIC DECATHALON, page 9
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March 19, 2010
Catholic San Francisco
9
‘Shadows to Light’ retreat and Lenten ‘Food Fast’ draw youth Youth of the Archdiocese of San Francisco found a welcome at two Lenten events. “Shadows to Light,” a retreat for youth was held Feb. 28 at St. Cecilia Parish in San Francisco with Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice facilitating talks and reflections on Gospels including the Woman at the Well and Lazarus. “We had 200 plus youth,” said Vivian Clausing, associate director for Youth Ministry and Catechesis for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Young people taking part in the day represented parishes including San Francisco’s St. Charles Borromeo, St. Ignatius, St. Thomas the Apostle, and St. Dominic, plus Mater Dolorosa and St. Veronica in South San Francisco, St. Andrew in Daly City, St. Dunstan in Millbrae, Our Lady of the Pillar in Half Moon Bay, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Belmont, St. Gregory in San Mateo, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Redwood City, St. Ignatius College Prep, Junipero Serra
Academic decathalon . . . ■ Continued from page 8 CURRENT EVENTS First Place: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School, George Ekas; Second Place: Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires, Malaya Sadler; Third Place: St. Gabriel School, Mairead Ahbach ENGLISH First Place: St. Charles School, Ellie McCartney; Second Place: St. Gabriel School, Tristen Wentworth; Third Place: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School, Cecily Mejia
At the “Shadows to Light” retreat for Youth, Jackson Foster, a senior at St. Ignatius, and Sacred Heart Cathedral juniors, Kelly Monfredini and Allison Hargrove read Scripture.
High School, Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, Stuart Hall High School, and St. Francis High School. More than 90 young people took part in an eight-hour Food Fast March 6 at St. Peter Parish in Pacifica. “The youth leaders in teams from parishes in Deanery 8 and 9
planned and facilitated six activity stations which challenged participants to learn about and take action to help those in need,” Vivian Clausing said. “We had so much fun that we hope to do it again next year.” Thomas Awaipo, a one-time beneficiary of the work of Catholic Relief Services and
MATHEMATICS First Place: Good Shepherd School, Charlie Liu; Second Place: St. Gabriel School, Isabella Cai; Third Place: St. Charles School, Daniel Sours
SCIENCE First Place: St. Gabriel School, Stephanie Joe; Second Place: Sts. Peter and Paul School, Jolina Lam; Third Place: St. Raymond School, Colleen Hamilton
LITERATURE First Place: Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires, Kate McCarthy; Second Place: St. Gabriel School, Nicole Morris; Third Place: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Camille Fassett FINE ARTS First Place: Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires, Rebecca Harvey; Second Place: Nativity School, Gabrielle Filloux; Third Place: St. Gabriel School, Sam Blemenfeld
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now a staff member with CRS spoke to the youth. The day ended with Mass. Father Mark Mazza, administrator of St. Peter Parish, was principal celebrant. Youth in attendance represented parishes including St. Peter in Pacifica, St. Augustine and St. Veronica in South San Francisco, St. Bruno in San Bruno, Holy Angels in Colma, St. Bartholomew and St. Gregory in San Mateo, St. Dominic in San Francisco, Our Lady of the Pillar in Half Moon Bay. Both events were sponsored by the Office of Religious Education and Youth Ministry of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Planning was done with the assistance of youth and campus ministers including Mariel Manela, Nichole Macaraeg, Ken Guzman, Chris Mariano, Jeannette Luna, Tammy Rozofsky, Liz Neopolitan, Roger and Christina Ugaitfa, Jaime Gonzales, Noberto Joya, Kathy Grosshauser, Stephen Baccari, Kyle Pierk, Sergio Vasquez, Patrick Lynch, Kathy Lorentz, and Elaine Rachko.
SOCIAL STUDIES First Place: St. Raymond School, Molly Quinten; Second Place: School of the Epiphany, Jorge Urroz, Jr.; Third Place: St. Charles School, Mar Lacayo SUPER QUIZ First Place: St. Raymond School; Second Place: St. Gabriel School: Third Place: Nativity School
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Catholic San Francisco
NEWS
March 19, 2010
in brief
VATICAN CITY – Priests are called to be prophets, especially today in a world that acts as if God doesn’t matter and as if fidelity were either impossible or an attack on personal freedom, Pope Benedict XVI told more than 550 priests, bishops and cardinals. “In his way of thinking, speaking, judging the what happens in the world, serving and loving, relating to others, even in his dress, the priest must draw prophetic strength from his sacramental belonging” to Christ, the pope said. Pope Benedict met at the Vatican March 12 with participants in a two-day theological conference on the priesthood, which was sponsored by the Congregation for Clergy as part of the Year for Priests. The pope said that too many people, including priests themselves, equate a priest’s identity with the functions he carries out in the church and the world, “almost like a social worker.” But when he receives the sacrament of Holy Orders, a man’s very being changes and he becomes part of the one priesthood of Jesus Christ, the pope said.
Confession shows God’s mercy VATICAN CITY – Priests today are challenged with the task of drawing the faithful back to confession and assuring them that their true repentance will be met with mercy and compassion, Pope Benedict XVI said. In an address to several hundred young priests, Pope Benedict said March 11 that “we must return to the confessional” not only as a place to confess sins and receive absolution, but also as a place where “the faithful can find mercy, counsel and comfort, feel loved and understood by God.” The pope addressed some 700 priests at the conclusion of a March 8-12 course designed to develop their skills as confessors; the course was offered by the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court that handles issues related to the sacrament of penance. Priests are called on to educate their flocks in the “radical requirements of the Gospel” and help them resist “the mentality of this world” and make choices that take courage and are sometimes unpopular, the pope told the group. The times are difficult, he said, and
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Priests called to be prophets
marked by “a hedonistic and relativistic mentality that cancels God from peoples’ lives.” This mentality makes it difficult to “distinguish good from evil and develop a proper sense of sin.” Priests must be particularly good examples in their lives so that Catholics will understand their own sins and find the courage and desire to seek God’s forgiveness, he said.
Pope will beatify Cardinal Newman in England during September visit LONDON – Pope Benedict XVI will preside at the beatification ceremony of Cardinal John Henry Newman in Coventry, England, during a four-day visit to the United Kingdom Sept. 16-19, British Catholic leaders said. The step is an unusual one because under Pope Benedict’s own rules, a beatification is to be performed by a cardinal in the diocese where the candidate for sainthood died. Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, told a March 16 press conference in London that to see Cardinal Newman “declared ‘blessed’ – a step toward sainthood – will be a very, very important moment.” “Cardinal John Henry Newman is a figure of great literary culture, a poet and a pastor,” he said. “He is a towering figure in English history over the last 200 years. Pope Benedict has a particular attentiveness to the writings of Cardinal Newman,” the archbishop added. “He is making an exception to his own rules to do this. ... This will be the first beatification he has carried out as pope.” Cardinal Newman was an Anglican cleric who founded the Oxford Movement to bring the Anglican Church back to its Catholic
SENIOR LIVING
An undercover Israeli police officer holds a weapon as another detains a Palestinian suspected of throwing stones during clashes in east Jerusalem March 16. Palestinians mounted violent protests in Jerusalem and U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy canceled plans to return to the region as a U.S.-Israeli crisis over Jewish settlement plans deepened.
roots. He became Catholic at the age of 44 after a succession of clashes with Anglican bishops and was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. He died in Birmingham in 1890 at age 89.
Call to respect religious freedom GENEVA – The Vatican’s chief representative to the U.N. agencies in Geneva called upon the nations of the world to respect the right of all people to practice religion freely and urged world leaders to punish those who persecute religious minorities. Addressing a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in the Swiss capital March 12, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, the Vatican representative, said harassment of religious minorities often is “encouraged by the silent collusion of state authorities and by a judicial system that is ineffective or partial.” The archbishop called for the world’s governments to pass legislation imposing tough sanctions against those found guilty of harassing people because of their faith. Citing recent surveys that found nearly 70 percent of the world’s population living in countries that restrict religious practices, Archbishop Tomasi recalled how some religious minorities face physical harm or death threats, the loss of their homes and the destruction of houses of worship.
Church officials defend celibacy, reject link to sex abuse by priests VATICAN CITY - As the Year for Priests moves into its final phase, a chorus of Vatican officials and experts has defended priestly celibacy and rejected the idea that celibacy has anything to do with sexual abuse by priests. The latest to take on critics of celibacy was Manfred Lutz, chief of psychiatry at a German hospital and a consultant to the Congregation for NEWS IN BRIEF, page 11
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Catholic San Francisco
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Obama tells immigration leaders he’s committed to quick reform
News in brief . . . ■ Continued from page 10
Greater presence of women could have helped abuse crisis VATICAN CITY – A greater presence of women in decisionmaking roles in the church might have helped remove the “veil of masculine secrecy” that covered priestly sex abuse cases, a front-page commentary in the Vatican newspaper said. The article said that despite calls by popes and others for welcoming women into equal, though diverse, roles in the church, women have generally been kept out of positions of responsibility. As a result, the church has failed to take advantage of the many talents and contributions that could have been provided by women, it said. The article, published March 10 by L’Osservatore Romano, was written by Lucetta Scaraffia, an Italian journalist and history professor who has been a frequent contributor to the Vatican paper in recent years. As an example of what the church has lost by not taking advantage of women’s contributions, Scaraffia pointed to the “painful and shameful situations” of sexual abuse by priests against the young people entrusted to their pastoral care. “We can hypothesize that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of these misdeeds with silence,” the article said. “Women, in fact, both religious and lay, by nature would have been more likely to defend young people in cases of sexual abuse, allowing the church to avoid the grave damage brought by these sinful acts,” it said.
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Clergy. Speaking at a theological convention on the priesthood in Rome March 12, Lutz said people who view celibacy as “unnatural” fail to understand the positive value of self-control in human sexuality. “Science now tells us that there is no correlation between celibacy and pedophilia,” Lutz told an audience of about 700 priests at the Pontifical Lateran University. The assumption that celibacy represents a warning signal for psychosexual imbalance is also wrong, said Lutz, who helped organize a Vatican conference on sex abuse in 2004. On the contrary, he said, it’s the wider society that misunderstands sexuality and that promotes an “idolatry of the body” that has left millions of people unhappy. Lutz said there was no question that celibacy “is certainly not something for weak characters.” The commitment to celibacy usually falters in a priest when his spiritual life weakens, or when he becomes too focused on himself. For that reason, it may be a good idea to have priests live in communities when possible, he said. Irish eyes were smiling under blue skies March 13 in San Francisco at the City’s 159th annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Market St. The parade and related festival drew an estimated 100,000 people.
Pope urges young people: to follow their dreams VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI urged young people to follow their dreams, dedicate their talents to the common good, and grow in love and faith. The pope told the world’s young Catholics to not let life’s difficulties lead to discouragement. “Instead nurture in your heart great hopes for fraternity, justice and peace. The future is in the hands of those who know how to seek and find strong convictions in life and hope,” he said in his message for World Youth Day 2010. The Vatican and most dioceses around the world will mark World Youth Day on Palm Sunday, March 28. In his message, released in Italian and French by the Vatican March 15, the pope asked young people to build a more just and fair world. Changing the world for the better does not have to mean “performing heroic or extraordinary acts, but allowing your talents and potential to bear fruit and committing yourself to constantly growing in faith and love,” he said. The theme the pope chose for the 2010 celebration was from Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man in St. Mark’s Gospel: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
WASHINGTON – Just over a week before tens of thousands of people were expected in Washington for a rally in support of immigration reform, President Barack Obama told grass-roots and faith leaders that he remains firmly committed to passing legislation this year. For their part, participants in the meeting with Obama urged Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to release before the March 21 rally their plans for a comprehensive immigration bill – an outline of which the senators brought to their own meeting with the president the same afternoon. Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ migration committee, told Catholic News Service that he came away from the meeting with the president greatly encouraged about the prospects of getting reform legislation turned into law. “We know his commitment is real,” Bishop Wester said. Over the last couple of months, Catholics around the country have been asked to sign postcards to their members of Congress urging them to back immigration reform that keeps families together, unclogs the system for legal immigration and provides an avenue for legalization for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the country.
Court’s ruling on ‘under God’ seen as ‘breath of fresh air’ SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court’s ruling upholding the constitutionality of the phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is a “breath of fresh air from a court system that has too often seemed to be almost allergic to public references to God,” according to the head of the Knights of Columbus. Carl A. Anderson, supreme knight, also called the March 11 decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, a “victory for common sense.” The Knights of Columbus, which led efforts to persuade Congress to add the phrase to the pledge in 1954, joined the case as defendants when it was filed in 2005 by California atheist Dr. Michael Newdow, a physician with a law degree. Writing for the majority in the 2-1 opinion, Judge Carlos T. Bea said, “Not every mention of God or religion by our government or at the government’s direction is a violation of the Establishment Clause” of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “The pledge is constitutional,” Bea added. Newdow had charged that references to God in the pledge disrespected his religious beliefs. – Catholic News Service
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Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
Archbishop’s Journal
Lenten Journey: A time to ‘come to our senses’ The story of the prodigal son has been called the best and most familiar short story in the Western world, and it probably is the best-known of all the parables of Jesus. But I’m not so sure how really well-known this story is. For instance, if you were to stop 100 Christians on the street and ask them to tell you the story of the prodigal son, I’m willing to bet many of them would get it wrong. Here’s what I mean: I think if you asked those people “How does the story end?” many would say, “Oh, that’s easy. The son is a sinner, but he has a change of heart and returns to his father, and his father forgives him and welcomes him back. A beautiful story.” Well, yes, all of that happens, and it is a beautiful story, but that answer is wrong. Jesus’ story of the prodigal son does not end with “happy ever after.” The story ends with a question mark. At the end, the father is out in the field, trying to persuade his angry elder son to come in to the welcome home party for his younger brother. And Jesus does not tell us whether or not the son comes in. So much for a sweet, sentimental story with all the loose strings tied up neatly. In fact, the story of the prodigal son begins much more harshly than we realize. The crowd that heard the story for the first time would have noticed that. Jesus tells us that the younger son goes to his father and demands his inheritance now. In the Israel of Jesus the elder son received two-thirds of his father’s estate and the younger son received onethird. And they received it after the father’s death. So the younger son is saying to his father: “I’m bored out of my mind. I can’t wait around for you to die. That could take years. Let’s pretend you’re dead now, and I’ll take my share.” So far not a very sentimental story. But the father loves his son and gives him his share of the estate. The boy squanders it all and ends up feeding a rich man’s pigs. For Jews, pigs were the most unclean of animals, and eating their flesh was strictly forbidden. The younger son has fallen as low as he can. We are told that he “comes to his senses.” He realizes that being a slave back home would be better by far than staying as he is.
So the son returns to his father. His father has never stopped loving his son and watching for him, so he sees him coming when the boy is still a long way off. The father embraces his son and begins to give the servants orders to restore his son to his former status: a robe, a ring, and shoes for his feet. (Slaves were forced to go barefoot.) His father doesn’t even pay attention to the son’s little set speech about wanting to be only a servant now. It reminds me of the person who asked Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War how he would deal with the southern states after the war was over. Lincoln said: “I will treat them as if they had never been away.” Jesus tells this story to show his own disciples how forgiving God is toward sinners, and to respond to the Pharisees’ criticism of him for welcoming sinners and eating with them. St. John Chrysostom, a fourth-century theologian, commented on this parable. He said: “All God looks for is the slightest opening, and he forgives even great sins.” Chrysostom anticipated the question of self-righteous, judgmental people in every age; he said, “You will ask, ‘Is this what the son gets for his wickedness?’ and I answer, ‘not for his wickedness, but for his return home.’” The prodigal son’s elder brother is the first of a long line of self-righteous, judgmental people to question the judgment of the forgiving father. The older brother is an unhappy, resentful man, as judgmental people often are. In this story he is just angry enough to tell his father how he sees his own life on the farm as a grim round of duty; he demonstrates his complete lack of sympathy for his brother, whom he refers to as “this son of yours;” the elder son also has a nasty mind — he’s the one who imagines that his brother wasted his money with harlots. This story proves once again that each of us is better off by far to be judged by God than by one another! But one of the most important, hidden lessons of this story of the prodigal son is that each of us has a share of each of those brothers within us. We are the younger son: we know we are all sinners, that we wander far from God sometimes, wasting the gifts he has given us, loving him more for what we can get out of him than for himself and in response to his love for
Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
Hooray for youth coverage Congratulations! By including much more news about high school activities (CSF, March 12) you have made Catholic San Francisco a much more interesting publication. Your readership is bound to expand because most of us old San Francisco natives really enjoy learning about the activities of our younger generation. These kids are doing very remarkable work for their communities. Keep up the good work. Jack McCloskey Daly City
Appreciates sports section Kudos on the new prep sports section (Special Spring Sports Section, March 12), which is greatly needed now that high school sports coverage has been cut by the
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moribund commercial press. Reminded me of the old Monitor days. Hope Catholic San Francisco can someday get around to grade school leagues. Jim Clifford Redwood City
Stories of priests, religious are good The obloquy heaped by so many on the priests never seems to end. We are all so good at pointing a finger, but we rarely hear of solutions that would fix the problem. In fact, few are aware what priests do and what they have to go through. I think the Church and Catholic media should illuminate for the people, what the priests do and that priests are not saints and have the same feelings, desires and temptations that lay people have and like lay people succumb to temptations. Young people, especially, should be told about the wonderful work being done by our priests and nuns – most have left comfortable homes and family and have gone to foreign countries to work with the poor, the destitute and orphans, to do God’s work. They have poor housing and eat meals that are strange, they have no recreational or social activities. I have close priest friends and ex-schoolmates who are working in the villages – in some of these villages the Church has been attacked and the Catholics have been threatened by non-Christian fundamentalists. I ask my friends why they do
us. Lent is the season for us to “come to our senses” and return to our father. But we are also the older son: we sum up and write off others for their sins and failings, never forgiving them Archbishop or showing comGeorge H. passion. We resent God for treating his Niederauer other children better than we think he has treated us. And the judgmental elder son inside us often turns on the younger son inside us and says something like, “You’re disgusting. You’ll never get any better. You think God can love or forgive you, the way you are? Forget it!” Sometimes I imagine how this story would have turned out if the elder son had spotted his brother before their father did. We might never have had the reunion and reconciliation between the prodigal and his father. Then I imagine that many a Catholic never gets to confession because the voice of the older son inside him or her says, “Forget it. You could never be forgiven.” But that’s all wrong! What St. Paul is telling us in our second reading this morning is the good news: God our Father has reconciled all of us to himself in Jesus Christ. God’s Son, who was sinless, “became sin” on the Cross, so that we might share God’s life in its fullness. The old order has passed away; we are a new creation. This is the Easter good news, and Lent is given to us to “come to our senses,” to turn away from our own personal brands of “nonsense” and to turn back toward our sense of ourselves as loved children of the Father and brothers and sisters in Christ. San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer delivered the homily above March 14 at St. Robert Parish in San Bruno at an Installation Mass for new Pastor Father Roberto Andrey.
not leave and migrate. They reply who would do God’s work if they leave? So let us mainly pray for our priests, so that they might have the grace to strengthen their lives and to be able to carry on with their work. Let us not judge them – as Mother Teresa has said the final analysis is between them and God. Lenny Barretto Daly City
Kennedy’s speech misused by some
Not this reform I appreciate the letter Mike De Nunzio wrote in November in which he stated that 45 million Americans do not lack health insurance. Nine million uninsured earn over $75,000. and 8 million earn over $50,000. No U.S. citizen is denied health care. Mr. DeNunzio is a California Commissioner on Aging. The little boy President Obama exploited this week, who told us his mother died because she lost her health care, actually was a case where the mother had hospital care twice. The individual stories are an attempt to get our sympathy to push through the 2700 page health care bill that no one can read until it has passed. This bill will increase our taxes, even those earning less than $250,000, without giving benefits for three to four years. Why are politicians rushing to push this through? For power over Americans. If this passes the government will choose who will see the doctor and when, if you are too old then they can decide to deny your health care. This bill also contains a provision that will allow abortions with just a small co-payment. Doctors currently are denying care to Medicare patients because the government does not pay the doctors what is owed them. The government should fix Medicare first. This trillion dollar bill is not acceptable especially during a time when so many Americans are out of work and when we are in a recession. Now is when we need to pay less in taxes. Our rights and freedoms are given to us by God and this administration is taking away our freedom. This does not sound like the limited government in our constitution. Is this the change Obama promised? Claire Rogus O.P.L. San Mateo
L E T T E R S
With all respect to Archbishop Chaput, perhaps he was not quite fair to President Kennedy in attributing to him the uses to which his 1960 Houston speech was put long after his death, Views in the News, CSF March 12). The only reason Kennedy’s speech is remembered at all is because some Catholic politicians have found it useful in creating cover for their support of unrestricted abortion. Without the abortion issue, the speech would be an all-but-forgotten historical footnote. When Kennedy gave the speech, abortion was illegal in almost every state in the Union. When he spoke, no one remotely interpreted what he said as a call to repeal those state laws. To use his speech to promote support by Catholics of unrestricted abortion comes pretty close to blasphemy. But the responsibility should lie with those who do that, not with Kennedy. Should Kennedy have foreseen the misuse which would be made of the speech? It might have been nice if he had, but is it fair to blame a man for not being able to see the future? Albert Alioto San Francisco
March 19, 2010
Catholic San Francisco
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Consider This
Survey surfaces troublesome questions A recent survey concerning beliefs, attitudes and practices of Catholics raises some disturbing questions. It deals with the millennial generation, those between 18 and 29 years of age. Two-thirds of young Americans in general agreed with the statement that “morals are relative; that is there is no definite right or wrong for everybody.” When the same question was posed only to Catholics in that age group, 82 percent agreed with the statement. The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion conducted the survey at year’s end under the sponsorship of the Knights of Columbus. Plagiarism is a greater evil than abortion in the minds of the millennials. While two-thirds agreed that abortion is morally wrong, 87 percent feel claiming someone else’s work as one’s own is morally wrong. It’s difficult not to feel that a lot of tuition money has gone down the drain when young Catholics – in greater numbers than their peers – believe in relativism and feel that copying a term paper is a greater evil than abortion. The survey also found that 67 percent of Americans believe “moral values in the country are headed in the wrong direction.” (How can they determine the wrong path when the destination is relative?) The sponsors found some small comfort in other parts of the
survey. “There is much good news for the church in this survey, especially when we consider that two in three Catholic young people want to learn more about the faith,” said Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus. The first thing they need to learn is that faith is about relationship, not rules-following. Rules do not create relationships; relationships do not require rules. They would understand that what is wrong for everybody at all times is anything that violates any relationship and certainly the most important one – that with God. The millennials and others interested in learning more about Catholic faith could listen to Pope Benedict XVI, who hardly sounds like the hardnosed enforcer he’s often stereotyped to be. Christianity is not a set of moral rules but a path to a relationship with God, the pope told a group of young seminarians recently. Jesus told his disciples that they were not his servants but his friends, the pope said. This illustrates that Jesus does not call for a blind obedience of rules but a relationship in which his will would become the disciples’ will and his love their love, the pope said. Earlier the pope told a group of Scottish bishops that the church’s “positive and inspiring vision of human life” should not
be presented in a negative light of opposition but as a “message of hope.” “The church’s doctrine is perceived as a series of prohibitions and retrograde positions,” the pope said, “whereas the reality, as we Stephen Kent know, is that it is creative and life-giving.” Anderson, the supreme knight, sees an opportunity for the church to build upon with the next generation of Catholics. But, he said, “it must act and teach in a way that makes clear the reasons for Church teaching as part of what our pope calls our ‘yes’ to Jesus.” A place to start would be in recognizing the need for a right relationship with God. Perhaps what people would see is not so much the decline in moral values (a symptom) but the root cause (a decline in right relationship with each other and with God). Stephen Kent, retired editor of archdiocesan newspapers in Seattle and Omaha, writes a column for Catholic News Service.
Twenty Something
Toss or save? A Catholic take on spring cleaning Whether spring cleaners decide to toss it or save it may be determined by whether they tune into “American Pickers” or “Hoarders,” two reality TV shows that issue opposite edicts on excess accumulation. I started with the History Channel’s “American Pickers,” a likable Iowan duo who cruise backroads in search of antiques buried in barns and basements. “What most people see as junk,” the host explains, “we see as dollar signs.” When he scored a dusty old bike for $1,000, he squealed, “My pickin’ prayers have been answered.” I got sucked right in. When the pickers discovered a Remington typewriter, I blurted out, “I’d like one of those!” It’s not as if I’m nostalgic; I’ve never used one. And what would I do with it? Set it beside my laptop? Display it in a turn-back-the-clock, just-for-show office? Soon after I flipped to A&E’s “Hoarders,” which films packrats whose lives and piles of stuff are on the brink of collapse. There’s Shirley the cat collector who protests to the police, and Patty and Bill, who lost their kids to their unmanageable mess. That sent me straight to my closet, armed with a 39-gallon garbage bag. I knew it was time. I removed my jewelry, pulled up my hair, and turned to the What Women Want soundtrack. It began with a trumpet
blast and Sammy Davis Jr.’s warning, “When an irresistible force such as you meets an old immovable object like me you can bet just as sure as you live somethin’s gotta give.” In my case many things gave: leather belts, corduroy blazers, tweed skirts. Horizontal stripes, diagonal stripes, and vertical stripes. Tops that were juvenile and tops that were matronly. Pants that were too small and pants that were too big. I was tickled by the empty hangers and sense of order that emerged. That’s not to say I didn’t save a few sentimental items. The letter jacket I’ll never again wear in public. The black shirt I wore the day I got engaged. And the sparkly silver sweater I planned to wear the day I got engaged. I like to make a distinction that I hope is a fair one: I’m not a hoarder, but I am a documenter. So I do save the kind of stuff that tends to collect dust beneath staircases. Movie ticket stubs. Birthday cards. Name badges from conferences and conventions. The kind of stuff that could go in a scrapbook – if I decided to take up scrapbooking one day. I figure the Holy Father would understand. When he moved into the papal apartment, his collection of 20,000 books followed him. “For me it’s like being surrounded by friends, now that there are books on the shelf,” he said. Toss or save?
It’s a crossroads many of us stand at this spring, as we prepare the house and soul for warmer weather and lighter accouterments. To toss, in many ways, is to be relieved, to feel light and unfettered. Christina But to save can mean being grounded, glued Capecchi to tokens of a rich, welllived life. The Easter miracle illustrates both. We are freed from the earthly shackles of sin, just as Jesus was unbound by the tomb. Yet we are fastened to that moment, so deeply rooted that we pick and press all the flowers that have blossomed from those seeds. In Easter we celebrate our history and novelty, responsibility and possibility. Our closets may be full, but so are our hearts. Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights, Minn. Contact her at www.readchristina.com.
The Catholic Difference
Advice for Europe—and for us At an international symposium in honor of the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, held in Paris in February, I offered closing remarks on what the Church might do to combat aggressive secularism in Europe. As the same prescriptions apply in the United States, let me share them with an American audience: 1) Intolerance in the name of “tolerance” must be named for what it is and publicly condemned. To deny religiously-informed moral argument a place in the public square is intolerant and anti-democratic. To identify the truths of biblical morality with bigotry and intolerance is a distortion of moral truth and an intolerant, uncivil act, which must be named as such. To imagine that any state…has the authority to redefine marriage, a human institution that [is prior to] the state ontologically as well as historically, is to open the door to what John Paul II called “thinly disguised totalitarianism” – and this, too, must be said, publicly. This will require (western) Christians to overcome what (sometimes) seems to be a deeply-engrained and internalized sense of marginalization within contemporary society. 2) We must speak openly about the empirically demonstrable and deplorable effects of the sexual revolution on individuals and society, while calling our contemporaries to a new appreciation of the dignity and nobility of human love. In John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, believers and unbelievers alike have a more compelling account of our human embodiedness as male and female, and the reciprocity and fruitfulness “built into” that embodiedness and differentiation, than theories of human sexuality that reduce
sexual differentiation to a question of plumbing and human love to another sport. Young people, deeply wounded by a culture of promiscuity that tells them simultaneously that they must be sexually active and that sex could kill them, are yearning for the truth about love, as the remarkable impact of the Theology of the Body on university campuses and in marriage-preparation programs demonstrates. This weapon in the conversion of culture (must) be fully deployed: and if that requires making the public claim that the Catholic Church understands human sexuality better than the prophets of sexual liberation, then so be it. 3) The reduction of Christian history to the Crusades, the European wars of religion, Galileo’s trial, and the Inquisition must be publicly challenged, for these “black legends” put obstacles in the way of the conversion of culture. Contemporary scholarship has deepened our understanding of the Crusades as a legitimate, if often mismanaged and brutal, response to Islamic aggression; even as it has demonstrated that such horrors as the Thirty Years War were far more about politics than about the fine points of the theology of justification. As for the Inquisition, the Church has repented, publicly, of this and other unsavory alliances with state power; when will the (western) Left apologize for communism, which killed more men and women in a slow week than the Inquisition did in centuries? As for science, absent Christianity and its convictions about a world imprinted with the divine reason, it almost certainly would not have developed as it did in Europe (or anywhere else). I raise these matters of
historical record, not to score debating points, but to suggest that part of the challenge we face today is to recognize that the West is suffering from a false story about itself, and about the relationship of biblical George Weigel religion to its formation and its history. 4) The Catholic Church, while enriching its interior life through a deepened encounter with the sources of its faith in the Bible, the Fathers, and the sacraments (ressourcement), and while developing ever more winsome ways to make the Church’s proposal to a post-Christian Europe (aggiornamento), must also join forces with men and women of conscience who may not be believers, in order to challenge publicly the (encroaching) dictatorship of relativism of which Cardinal Ratzinger warned (in April 2005). The Church’s engagement with culture and politics, in other words, must be less diffident, less defensive, and more assertive – not in the sense of aggression, but of truth-telling “in and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2). George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
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Catholic San Francisco
A READING FROM THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH IS 43:16-21 Thus says the Lord, who opens a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters, who leads out chariots and horsemen, a powerful army, till they lie prostrate together, never to rise, snuffed out and quenched like a wick. Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers. Wild beasts honor me, jackals and ostriches, for I put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for my chosen people to drink, the people whom I formed for myself, that they might announce my praise. RESPONSORIAL PSALM PS 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6 R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy. When the Lord brought back the captives of Zion, we were like men dreaming. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with rejoicing. R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy. Then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad indeed. R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the torrents in the southern desert. Those that sow in tears shall reap rejoicing. R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy. Although they go forth weeping, carrying the seed to be sown, They shall come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves.
March 19, 2010
Fifth Sunday of Lent Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11 R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy. A READING FROM THE LETTER OF PAUL TO THE PHILIPPIANS PHIL 3:8-14 Brothers and sisters: I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.
A READING FROM THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN JN 8:1-11 Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery
Christ and the Adulteress, 1532, Lucas Cranach the Elder.
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ne of the characters of the classic film “Gone with the Wind” is a woman of ill repute named Belle Watling. Madam of the Atlanta brothel, she is shunned by polite society, especially by the respectable southern women of the city. Upon presenting herself as a “nurse” to the Confederate hospital in Atlanta, she is ATHER ILLIAM ICHOLAS turned down flat. When she offers her money to support the hospital, no one is interested in receiving money made from her business, until she approached Melanie Wilkes. Despite the bickering of the other women towards Belle, Melanie treated Belle with kindness, accepting her donation for the hospital with sincere gratitude for her generosity. Even Belle, herself, is a bit uncomfortable with Melanie’s acknowledgment of her only person in the town who ever treated before the gathered accusers, or after they have dispersed, but plainly declares kindness, saying, “I’m just a Confederate. her with respect. I am reminded of this minor of minor privately to her, “nor do I condemn you. Same as anybody else.” Years later, after the end of the Civil side-stories in the four-hour epic “Gone Go and sin no more.” When all is said and War, Belle takes advantage of an opportu- with the Wind” whenever I hear or read done, Christ’s actions toward the woman nity to repay Melanie for her kindness, a the story of Jesus and the Woman Caught constitute nothing more nor less than a kindness for which Melanie, again, wishes in Adultery. Ironically, if such an event simple act of kindness in the face of othto express her gratitude. When Belle were to occur today, in the midst of ers who would seek to judge and, more hears that Melanie plans to call on her our current social ambiance, we might ignobly condemn her, despite their own at her “house” to personally express her read such headlines as “Jesus Condones questionable morality. The Gospel of John never identifies thanks, Belle, visits Melanie under cover Adultery!” or “Christ’s Double Standard!” of night, hoping to prevent Melanie’s or even “Marital Standards Shattered this woman, nor do we know based on as Jesus Protects the Gospel what became of her. Our visit the next day, tradition, however, associates her with Adulteress!” and so do damage However, the Mary Magdalene; the same woman to Melanie’s repu‘…. the key to Christ’s key to Christ’s whom our tradition associates with the tation by openly actions lies not in Penitent Woman of Luke’s Gospel who associating with actions lies not in what what He does, but wept at Jesus’ feet, drying them with her her. In the clanin what He does hair (Lk 7:36-50), the same woman from destine exchange not do. Christ does whom, Mark tells us, Jesus expelled seven in Belle’s carriage, He does, but in what not listen to the demons (Mk 16:9), the same woman who parked in the street accusations made in John’s Gospel is one of Jesus most before Melanie’s He does not do.’ against the woman faithful, ardent friends and disciples, the home, one can see by the socio-re- same woman who in all four Gospels is both the gratitude ligious elite, nor among the women who approach Jesus and mutual respect the two women have for each other, one does He even pay them any mind, but Tomb to find it empty, and in three of four an honorable southern woman, the other simply doodles in the dirt as they carry Gospels, the first person to whom Jesus a woman of ill repute. It is a respect and on. He does not address their concerns appeared after the Resurrection. Combining all these accounts, and gratitude sparked not by any approval with any profound proclamation of the of Belle’s business and lifestyle, not by kingdom or declaration of a point of law, their association by our tradition as a Melanie’s elitist status as an honorable but “blows them off” with a terse state- community of faith, we see the fruits of southern woman, but by Melanie’s initial ment before returning to his doodling. He Jesus simple act of kindness toward a kindness, despite Belle’s social status; a does not condemn the woman, nor does woman of ill repute, a woman caught in kindness returned by Belle toward the He approve of her lifestyle and sin, either adultery. He did not condemn, nor did He
Scripture reflection
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and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
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“The One Without Sin...”
condone in a crass effort to win her over by being “understanding” and “accepting.” He did not join in the sentiment of the crowd, nor did He take the exact opposite position, but maintained the fact that she had, in fact, sinned. He did not participate in the extreme measure of stoning her, nor did He take the opposite extreme and excuse her. Rather, His simple act of kindness toward her – treating her not as a adulterous woman, not as a mere subject of a point of law, not as an object to be used by men as a means of gratification and pleasure, but as a woman, a human being with dignity before God and a recipient of His love, His compassion and His corrective mercy – bore fruit as she, according to our tradition, became one of Christ’s most grateful and devoted followers, one of his closest friends and one of few who, in the Gospels of Matthew (27:56), Mark (15:40) and John (19:25), never abandoned Him, even when He faced crucifixion. We too are called to imitate Christ in simple acts of kindness, even, perhaps especially to those who might otherwise be considered, rightly or wrongly, sinners, outcasts or people of ill repute. If we consider our Gospel accounts along with our Church’s tradition regarding Mary Magdalene, we see how far a simple act of kindness carried a woman otherwise condemned to stoning, or a continued life of adulterous behavior. Who knows how far our own simple acts of kindness can go? Neither condemning nor condoning, neither prejudiced nor permissive, but aimed at reflecting the corrective call we all hear to overcome our sinfulness, we like Christ, can carry others to a stronger life of grace and virtue, of living the life Christ calls us to live, to overcome the sinfulness that weighs us all down; a call given continuously by the One without sin, who invites us to turn away from sin, and be faithful to the Gospel. Father William Nicholas is Parochial Vicar at Our Lady of Loretto Parish in Novato. Visit his website at www.frwcnicholas.com.
March 19, 2010
Catholic San Francisco
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Spirituality for Life
Being one with the saints in praising God We are all familiar with a refrain that echoes through many of our Christian prayers and songs, an antiphon of hope addressed to God: Grant that we may be one with all the saints in singing your praises! But we have an over-pious notion of what that would look like. We picture ourselves, one day, in heaven, in a choir with Mary, Jesus’ mother, with the great biblical figures of old, with the apostles and all the saints, singing praises to God, all the while feeling lucky to be there, given our moral and spiritual inferiority to these great spiritual figures. We picture ourselves spending eternity feeling grateful for having made a team whose talent level should have excluded us. But that is a fantasy, pure and simple, mostly simple. What would it mean to be among the saints singing God’s praises? We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we are one with them in the way we live our lives; when, like them, our lives are transparent, honest, grounded in personal integrity, with no skeletons in our closet. Being one with the saints in singing God’s praises is less about singing songs in our churches than it is about living honest lives outside of them. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we radiate God’s wide compassion; when we, like God, let our love embrace beyond race, creed, gender, religion, ideology, and differences of every kind. We are one with the saints in praising God when our heart, like God’s heart, is a house with many rooms. Being one with the saints in singing God’s praises means being compassionate as God is compassionate, it means letting our sun shine on the bad as well as the good and letting our empathy embrace too those whose ideas oppose us. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we tend to ‘widows, orphans, and strangers,’ when
we reach out to those most vulnerable, when we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick and imprisoned, when we work for justice. Being one with the saints in singing God’s praises means reversing nature’s proclivity for the survival of the fittest and working instead to enable the opposite, the survival of the weakest. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we work for peace, when in both our personal lives and our politics we strive to radiate God’s non-violence, when we refuse the temptation to try to end a cruel violence by a morally superior one. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises whenever we forgive each other, particularly when that forgiveness meets a bitterness that does not seem worthy of the gift. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we absorb hatred, anger, violence, and murder itself and, like Jesus, not give back in kind, when we forgive our enemies. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when, like them, we give away our time, talents, and our very lives in self-sacrifice without counting the cost, when we live altruistically, accepting that our own personal fulfillment is not the first aim of our lives. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we live in a healthy self-effacement, when we dethrone ourselves as the center of the universe, when we take the lower place without resentment, when the conversation need no longer be about us. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we are one with them in prayer, when, like them, we regularly lift our eyes upward beyond the horizon of the present world to ground ourselves in a reality beyond this world. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we live in patience and endurance, when we accept
without bitterness that all symphonies must remain unfinished and that we must live in inconsummation, when we live among the frustrations of this life without murmuring so that life can unfold in God’s Father good time. Ron Rolheiser We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when we live in hope, when we ground our vision and our energies in the promise of God and in the power that God revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when, like Julian of Norwich, we live in the belief that, irrespective of any present darkness, the ending of our story is already written, that in the end all will be well and every manner of being will be well. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises when, rather than living inside of envy, resentment, bitterness, vengeance, impatience, anger, factionalism, idolatry, and sexual impatience, we live instead inside charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, fidelity, mildness, and chastity. We are one with the saints in singing God’s praises only when we live our lives as they lived theirs. A theologian, author and teacher, Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, is a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio TX. Visit www.ronrolheiser.com.
By Father Ronald Lawler, O.F.M. Cap. Happily, many people are discovering again the rich peace and the great blessings of frequent Confession. In the past, the Sacrament of Reconciliation never was a cheap or an easy blessing. In the days when fathers and mothers and families went regularly to Confession, it did involve trials. Confession brought great peace, but it meant a certain hard work. It takes much effort to look honestly into my heart for the less happy truths about myself, and to struggle to make promises to turn away from the baser things to which my weakness and the sadness of the world drive me. It took some energy and courage to go off to Confession on a Saturday afternoon or evening; to tell the priest my sins, and to stir up my faith to make myself realize: it is really to Christ that I am talking. Realization of the great truths of faith does not come lightly. For example, faith teaches that Christ is most near to me, and that He cares about everything in my heart and in my inner life. He has personal interest in me, and my life is important enough to my Lord that I really should struggle to make it be what God wants in the face of so many pressures. But only those who are willing to give time to be with Him in the Sacrament of Confession experience and realize the greatness of that mercy. Confession deepens personal faith. But it takes faithful energy to be faithful to go to Confession regularly. And many fell away from Confession. First, they went less often. Only gradually did they begin to realize that they were losing the warmth of their friendship with Christ and ceasing to be entirely honest in their relations with their God. Only gradually did they realize that they were drifting into the worldly and sensual ways of the mass media, the broken ways of the world and losing the joy of a strong life of faith. There are many excuses for not going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We can say (even though it is not true) that the Second Vatican Council discouraged frequent Confession. We can say (though the Church and the saints and the Scriptures always taught the opposite) that mortal sin is very rare, and that people as good as I need never worry about falling into grave sin. The Church has always urged its priests, religious and faithful to confess their sins often. In Confession, we learn from Christ Himself repentance, which deepens our faith and gives deep roots to our love. If we cease leaning on Christ’s gift of the Sacrament of Penance we tend to lose
our firmness in faith, and our happiness in Christian life. The recent World Synod of Bishops begged us to come back to this sacrament. The Holy Father constantly, out of the living tradition of all the saints and all the experience of lived faith, urges all the people of God to seize again for themselves, the blessed treasure of frequent Confession. In this sinful and broken world there is much mortal sin. People, even Catholics, do commit horrible crimes: abortion, adultery and terrible crimes with the power of money and the cruelty of drugs. But there are also mortal sins of a less spectacular kind: lustful deeds deliberately undertaken and deliberate lustful desires to which this fallen world leads one. Ordinary people sometimes do hateful and cruel deeds. They are surprised at themselves for falling into these things, especially if they stop receiving the Sacrament of Penance regularly, which gives them the power they need to keep from sin. Even when, happily, God’s mercy keeps us from grave sin, we benefit immensely from frequent Confession. As Pope John Paul reminded us, the frequent use of Confession is in many ways the safeguard of love and peace. We must not lose the sense of sin or we will rationalize all our selfishness and wrongness of heart. But it is also true that we must not focus too much on sin or we will become bitter and harsh. What we need to do is remember our sins in the very sacrament of healing in which Christ touches us with mercy. Here He teaches us to turn sorrow into love and our own being healed into the forgiving of others. Confession leads us to the kinds of acts that make hearts repentant: to remember honestly before the Lord how frail we are, so that we can trust in his mercy with greater determination. Confession requires us to make serious resolutions in our hearts not to offend those we love, to forgive those who hurt us and to do those things our life needs, but the world does not incline us to do. Confession creates personal friendship with Christ. In this sacrament He personally touches our lives. We speak to Him and He makes us realize (as we seek more faithfully to receive the sacrament well) how deeply concerned He is to bless our lives with grace and healing. When the priest speaks words of absolution, our faith knows that it is the Lord who now, personally, speaks mercy and does mighty and merciful deeds in our lives. He enables us to see through the deceptive images woven by the world, to begin to realize the really important things of life. He enables us to taste his
(PHOTO BY ARNE FOLKEDAL)
In touch with the Lord: Rediscovering the Sacrament of Reconciliation
Father Roland De la Rosa, associate pastor at the Church of the Nativity.
power: to see that it is not impossible or saddening to keep his Commandments and to walk in his ways. The return to the Sacrament of Penance does not mean a return to a shallow routine: to Confessions without thoughtful reflection or to sacraments received without realizing how near the Lord is to every corner of our lives. For each one of us, it is important that we seek out and find a good confessor and learn again, as the Church urges us, to confess our sins with faithful frequency. The Sacrament of Penance is the sacrament of peace and of freedom. Those who receive it regularly, with faith and with reverent trust in God’s saving power, experience this deeply. If we have drifted away from frequent Confession, nothing will replace coming again to the Lord in this healing sacrament. This, each one must taste and experience personally. Father Ronald David Lawler died in 2003. He was a Capuchin Franciscan priest and a noted professor, writer, lecturer and catechist. This reflection is an excerpt from his writing.
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Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
Three new books provide insider perspectives on Catholic priesthood “BORN OF THE EUCHARIST: A SPIRITUALITY FOR PRIESTS,” edited by Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti. Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame, Ind., 2009). 175 pp., $15.95. “A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES: UPS AND DOWNS OF TODAY’S PARISH PRIEST” by Msgr. Dennis Murphy. Paulist Press (Mahwah, N.J., 2009). 137 pp., $15.95. “BE THOU MY VISION: MEDITATIONS ON THE PRIESTHOOD” by Bishop David L. Ricken. Institute for Priestly Formation Publications (Omaha, Neb., 2009). 160 pp., $14.95.
Reviewed by Allan F. Wright Catholic News Service In his book, “Born of the Eucharist: A Spirituality for Priests,” Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti offers reflections from 26 Catholic priests on how the Eucharist and the celebration of the Mass have affected their spiritual lives. Notable clergy such as Cardinal Francis E. George, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, Franciscan Father Benedict J. Groeschel, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl share their stories of how Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist drew them to Jesus, the church and the priesthood and how the Mass continues to sustain their faith today.
The late Cardinal Avery Dulles offers a beautiful overview describing the intimate interconnectedness of the Eucharist and the priesthood when he states, “It is no accident that we celebrate both the institution of the Eucharist and the ministerial priesthood on the same night, Holy Thursday. The Eucharist and the priesthood are interwoven and share a common identity.” One of the most moving stories comes from Archbishop Dolan, now archbishop of New York, as he recounts his anxiety the evening before he was to be publicly introduced as the archbishop of Milwaukee. His predecessor, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, had been surrounded by scandal and was stepping down. These two men were different in many regards, yet when he went into the chapel at 4:45 a.m., due to sleeplessness, “there sat Rembert Weakland, with his breviary, before the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle. My fears evaporated.” While these two men were at different points in their life and had varying theological viewpoints, the Eucharist brought them together without either saying a word. “Born of the Eucharist” is an easy read and most chapters are only a few pages in length. The reader gains insight into the
Also worth noting . . . Father Eugene Hemrick, director of research at Washington Theological Union has written “Habits of a Priestly Heart” (World Library Publications, 99 pp., $24.95), designed to help today’s priests better understand, accept and live with the challenges of the third millennium. Father Patrick Berquist, pastor of St. Raphael Parish in Fairbanks, Alaska, compares the trials of the long Alaskan winter to the enduring darkness of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in his new book, “The Long Dark Winter’s Night: Reflections of a Priest in a Time of Pain and Privilege” (Liturgical Press, 130 pp., $16.95). “A Priest’s Life: The Calling, the Cost, the Joy” (Word Among Us Press, 192 pp., $11.95) offers 30 essays on the priesthood from authors that include Redemptorist Father Tom Forrest, Jesuit Father John Dear, Bishop Victor Galeone of St. Augustine, Fla., and Pope Benedict XVI. Norbertine Father Alfred McBride offers his fellow priests encouragement, advice and spiritual reading in “A Priest Forever: Nine Signs of Renewal and Hope” (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 118 pp., $12.95). St. John Vianney, to whom Pope Benedict dedicated the Year for Priests, is the subject of Father Frederick L. Miller’s “The Grace of Ars” (Ignatius Press, 226 pp., $15.95), with a foreword by Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal.
“Good Bioethics Makes Good Business Sense”
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Allan F. Wright is coordinator of parish evangelization directors for the Diocese of Paterson, N.J, and author of “Jesus in the House” and “Silent Witnesses in the Gospels.”
SCRIPTURE SEARCH Gospel for March 21, 2010 John 8:1-11 Following is a word search based on the Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Cycle C: the story about adultery and sinners. The words can be found in all directions in the puzzle. MOUNT PEOPLE WOMAN MOSES AGAINST HIM FINGER CONDEMNED
Ethics are indispensable during the due diligence process for any good business investment. What about bioethics? Are companies in your portfolio investing in human cloning or embryonic stem cell research? How do we keep them accountable?
there is so much “job satisfaction” among priests and specifically what’s attracting the younger, often more conservative seminarians, who are slowly gaining in numbers, to the priesthood. “Be Thou My Vision: Meditations on the Priesthood” is an inspiring and rousing series of mediations on what it means to be a priest of Jesus Christ. With titles such as “Faith and Fearlessness,” “Hope and Fidelity” and “The Courageous and Steadfast Man,” this book approaches the priesthood with vigor and vitality and one senses the impact of Pope John Paul II implicitly throughout his meditations. Offering examples of priestly fidelity and personal sacrifice, Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay, Wis., presents numerous examples of priests and saints who strived for holiness and persevered in truth despite obstacles from all sides. One of the most poignant statements concerns the source of joy in the midst of failure and weakness that a priest will inevitably experience. “Our joy must be in God, in a living faith, in divine providence that never deserts us, and in a passion for something beyond the events and circumstances in which we live,” the bishop writes. Ever the teacher, Bishop Ricken reflects upon Mary’s role in the life of the priest and ends with guidance concerning the study of sacred Scripture, which must be the very soul of theology. The book is an excellent resource and source of strength for clergy who are faced with many challenges to their call to follow Christ in today’s world.
minds of many of the leading clergy in the American church and the language is accessible to the lay reader who will find these priests grounded in the Eucharist, which is both inspiring and reassuring. “A View From the Trenches” offers a look at the priesthood in light of recent cultural phenomena that have influenced the role and perception of priesthood in North America. Msgr. Dennis Murphy comments on the decrease of religious vocations, the lack of transparency in the church, the hesitation to accept the evolving role of the laity in the church, religious illiteracy and the contemporary search for God. There are many reasons for the decline in vocations and misunderstanding about the priesthood and many of these reasons come from poor catechesis and years of neglect of authentic Catholic teaching. Yet Msgr. Murphy astutely points out that the church is often in disfavor due to its faithfulness to the Gospel. In discussing the multifaceted role of the priest he reflects, “With Isaiah and Jeremiah, we believe we are called by God in a special way – but called to what? Are we leaders or facilitators? Are we servants or the ‘main man’? At liturgy are we the celebrant or the presider?” With all the tensions that can arise from differing personalities between priests, conflicting perspectives on ministry, obedience to the bishop and living in a pluralistic culture, ultimately a priest is a man of charity and Msgr. Murphy gives the lay reader his assessment of the difficulties and challenges that lay ahead for the church and the priesthood. Early on in the book he mentions that in surveys of job satisfaction, men who are Catholic priests are statistically some of the most fulfilled men in society. While the challenges are clearly laid out in his book, it would have been educational to read why
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Lenten Opportunities March 20, 7:30 p.m.: Join us at St. Sebastian Church, Bon Air Rd. at Sir Francis Drake Blvd., in Greenbrae for a Gabriel Project Conference Video Presentation. An abridged version of The Gabriel Project Conference of September 12, 2009, conducted by the Archdiocesan Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, will be shown. “The Gabriel Project can be a marvelous way to show your community that your parish cares about pregnant mothers in need and that there is no reason for any pregnant mother within its boundaries to feel that she is helpless and alone,” said Fredi D’Alessio, program coordinator. E-mail sfgabrielproject@gmail.com or call (415) 614-5551. You may also visit http://sfgabrielproject.wordpress.com March 22, 6 p.m.: San Francisco County Council of Catholic Women’s Annual Evening of Recollection at Holy Name of Jesus Parish Center, 1555 - 39th Avenue, San Francisco. The evening begins with Mass, followed by dinner. Spiritual Director for the evening is Father Michael Quinn, ordained last year and now parochial vicar at St. Brendan Parish. Price is $20 per person. For more information/reservations, please call Diana Heafey at (415) 731-6379. All women of the Archdiocese are invited to attend. March 24: “Spirituality of the Priesthood” with Sulpician Father Jim McKearney, president and rector of St. Patrick’s, and a priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford, CT. Tickets are $10. Seating is limited. Register on-line at www.stpatricksseminary.org under Speaker Series. Register by mail with payment to: Speaker Series, St. Patrick’s Seminary and University, 320 Middlefield Road Menlo Park 94025. March 30, 5:30 p.m.: Chrism Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough St. at Geary Blvd. in San Francisco. Archbishop George Niederauer is principal celebrant joined by priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and Religious Order priests. All members of the Archdiocesan family are invited. A choir comprised of singers from parishes throughout the Archdiocese will lead song. Interested choristers can contact Joseph Murphy at (415) 614-5505 or murphyj@sfarchdiocese.org. April 2, noon: Live outdoor enactment of the Stations of the Cross at St. Thomas More Church, 1300 Junipero Serra Blvd. off Brotherhood Way in San Francisco. Call (415) 452-9634 or visit www.stmchurch.com. April 2, 9 a.m.: Coit Tower Stations of the Cross process from that San Francisco landmark to the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in North Beach. Call (415) 452-9634 or visit www.stmchurch.com. Wednesdays through March 24, noon – 1 p.m.: The St. Thomas More Society offers study sessions of Parables found in the Gospels. The talks take place at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, Room 6, across from Hecker Hall. Jesus often instructed his disciples by parables stories. In their original form the parables of Jesus are generally believed to be historically accurate. Being instructed by these parables is like sitting before Jesus and listening to him. Don Carroll, a former President of the St. Thomas More Society will open the parables for us. Don has had an interest in Scripture since his seminary days. All are invited. Membership in the St. Thomas More Society is not necessary. Admission is free. Visit www.stthomasmore-sf.org Daily through March 28, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.: “40 Days for Life,” a campaign of fasting and prayer to end abortion during Lent at Planned Parenthood, 815 Eddy St., San Francisco. (between Van Ness & Franklin). A peaceful prayerful presence will be there every day. Call (415) 668-9800 or visit www.40daysforlife.com/sanfrancisco Daily through March 28, 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.: A “40 Days for Life” prayer vigil will be at Planned Parenthood, 2211 Palm Ave, San Mateo. Sign up at www.40daysforlife.com/sanmateo or by calling (650) 572-1468. Immaculee Ilibagiza, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and whose story is described in Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, will speak April 16, at 10:30 a.m. at St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco. All proceeds benefit Catholic Charities programs for children and families. Tickets available at www.littlechildrensaid.com.
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reflections on death and immortality. Lunch tickets are $16. Non-members welcome. Contact Paul Crudo (415) 566-8224 or e-mail pecrudodds@aol.com
Datebook
Food & Fun March 26, 27, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.: Rummage sale benefiting the Little Sisters of the Poor’s St. Anne’s Home, 300 Lake St. in San Francisco. Huge sale includes art, jewelry, furniture, books, clothing, collectibles, and items for the home. Call Sandra Gulli at (415) 776-8664. May15, 1:10 p.m.: “Parish Family Day at AT&T” advance ticket sales - $14 per person - only by March 30. The SF Parish & School Baseball League will host a free ‘tailgate’ party of hot dogs and sodas, and we will feature 84 of our longest throwers in a ‘long-toss’ competition by grades 3 - 8. If he is not pitching, Giants’ long-toss champ, Barry Zito will hand out the trophies. Parishioners wishing to attend should contact their Athletic Director, or they can contact e-mail bstableford@sfpsbl.org or phone (415) 559-8728.
Consolation Ministry
San Francisco’s Epiphany Center, a more than century old ministry of the Daughters of Charity to at-risk women and their children, held its traditional evening of live musical comedy January 27 at the Great American Music Hall. Co-chaired by Terry Keyes and Ann Kauffman and sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank, Katie Budge, and ticket sales, 175 people attended. The “rousing evening of fellowship and merriment,” said Development Director, Amy Miller, opened with a moving testimonial from a woman and mom who has benefited from the program. “Every person at Epiphany has touched my heart and I am grateful,” the alumna said. “I went from getting high on meth and running the streets to becoming who I am today — a loving, beautiful, smart, courageous, willing, trustworthy, and devoted woman to myself, kids, family and friends.” Cast of the evening’s entertainment included Epiphany Center supporters, back from left, Cynthia Baggott, David Pettus, Don MacLean, Ceseli Foster, Paul Pelosi, Christina Waldeck, Katie Budge, and Gualtiero Negrini and, front from left, David Fleishhacker, Lizanne Suter, and Erich Stratmann. Nuova Porziuncola chapel, Vallejo at Columbus in San Francisco - March 18, 7 p.m.: Stations of the Cross, rosary. Lenten Soup and Substance, various dates and locations through April 1: Experience and Reflect on the Good Works of Catholic Charities CYO at a series of open houses during the Lenten Season. See the actual work of CCCYO. Each visit includes a simple meal and tour as well as reflection with program staff and, when appropriate, the people served. There is no charge to attend the series, but a response is requested for planning purposes. For specific dates and locations, contact CCCYO Parish Partnerships Director Jane Ferguson at (415) 972-1227 or e-mail jferguson@cccyo.org. You may also visit www.cccyo.org/soupandsubstance. Locations to be visited in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties include Homelessness Prevention Programs, Assisted Housing and Health Programs, Refugee and Immigrant Services; Canal Family Support Program; San Mateo Counseling Services; Family and Youth Programs; Derek Silva Community, Housing and Support for people with disabling HIV/AIDS.
St. Mary’s Cathedral Gough and Geary Blvd. in San Francisco. Call (415) 567-2020 Stations of the Cross, Fridays at 12:40 p.m. in the Cathedral, following the 12:10 Mass. Lecture Series, “Penitence: The Call for Us to Change, The Call for Us to be Transformed by Christ,” 10:15 – 10:45am in the Msgr. Bowe Room. March 21: Surprised by Love: Penitence in the Poetry of Dante Alighieri Strength for the Journey, a ministry of support for people diagnosed with life-threatening illness and the families, friends and caregivers, is in its inaugural stage at the cathedral. Deacon Christoph Sandoval is director. Cal (415) 567-2020, ext. 203, or e-mail Rcs7777@comcast.net.
St. Thomas More Society Contact Bob Zaletel at rzaletel@littler.com or (415) 288-6343. You may also visit www. stthomasmore-sf.org March 25, noon: Lunch at the Family Club, corner of Bush and Powell Streets, San Francisco. Attorney, Steve Lanctot, a member of the board at Immaculate Conception Academy, will speak on the school’s new Cristo Rey model. Tickets are $45 for those with over 10 years in practice, $38 for those with 10 years or less in practice, and $20 for law students and clergy. For reservation, contact Bob Zaletel at (415) 288-6343 or e-mail rzaletel@litller.com
Good Health March 22, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.: A free Diabetes Awareness Fair at St. Mary’s Medical Center, hospital cafeteria, level B at 450 Stanyan St. in San Francisco. Participants, at no cost, can have blood glucose test, their feet screened by a podiatrist, conversation with a physician plus lessons from diabetes staff on nutrition and exercise. Call (415) 750-4896.
Arts and Entertainment March 19, 20, 26, 27: The St. Catherine of Siena School Drama Club presents Newsies, a musical of the 1899 New York newspaper boy strike! Performances at 7:30 p.m. This year’s cast includes over 50 St. Catherine’s junior high students, parents, school alumni, and teachers! General admission is $9. Students/ Seniors are $6. For more information, contact Michael Miller at grade8@stcos.org or call (650) 344-7176.
Serra Clubs March 25, noon: Serra Club of San Francisco lunch at Italian American Social Club, 25 Russia Ave., off Mission Street. Father Charles Puthota, pastor of St. Veronica Parish will talk about “the truth about dying”,
Grief support groups meet at the following parishes: San Mateo County: Good Shepherd, Pacifica; call Sister Carol Fleitz at (650) 355-2593. Our Lady of Mercy, Daly City; call parish at (650) 755-2727. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Redwood City; call parish at (650) 366-3802. St. Bartholomew, San Mateo; Barbara Syme (650) 343-6156. St. Peter, Pacifica; call parish at (650) 359-6313. St. Pius, Redwood City; call parish at (650) 361-0655. St. Robert, San Bruno; call Sr. Patricia O’Sullivan at (650) 589-0104. Marin County: St. Anselm, San Anselmo; call Brenda MacLean at (415) 454-7650. St. Anthony, Novato; call parish (415) 883-2177. St. Hilary, Tiburon; call Helen Kelly at (415) 388-9651. Our Lady of Loretto, Novato; call Sr. Jeanette at (415) 897-2171. San Francisco County: St. Dominic; call Deacon Chuck McNeil at (415) 567-7824. St. Gabriel; call Monica Williams at (650) 756-2060. St. Mary’s Cathedral; call Sister Esther McEgan at (415) 5672020 ext. 218. Alma Via; contact Mercy Feeney at (650) 756-4500. Young Widow/Widower Group: St. Gregory, San Mateo; call Barbara Elordi at (415) 614-5506. Ministry to Grieving Parents: Our Lady of Angels, Burlingame; call Ina Potter at (650) 347-6971 or Barbara Arena at (650) 344-3579.
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. Would you like support while you travel the road through separation and divorce? The Archdiocese of San Francisco offers support for the journey. The Separated and Divorced Catholics of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (SDCASF) has two ongoing support groups in the 1st and 3rd weeks of each month. There is one on the Peninsula, at St. Bartholomew Parish, 600 Columbia Dr, San Mateo, on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays, at 7 p.m. in the Spirituality center on the main floor of the ‘school’ building. The other one is in the parish hall of St. Stephen Parish near Stonestown, San Francisco, on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays, at 7:30 p.m. Call Gail (650) 591-8452, or Joanne at St. Bart’s, (650) 347-0701 for more information.
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
March 19, 2010
PASSION PLAY 2010
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July – August 2010
8 Days • 10 Meals: 6 Breakfasts • 1 Lunch • 3 Dinners
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Highlights…Budapest • Hungarian Horse Show • Mathias Church • Fishermen’s Bastion Renaissance Dinner • Vienna • Schoenbrunn Palace • Grinzing Evening • Danube River Cruise Prague • Hradcany Castle • Oberammergau Passion Play
Catholic San Francisco invites you
to join in the following pilgrimages
$4,999 (100% inclusive, air, taxes, gratuities)
ITALY
Holy Shroud of Turin
Discover Switzerland
April 20 – 30, 2010
May 17 - 26, 2010
Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage
with Oberammergau’s Passsion Play 10 Days • 15 Meals: 8 Breakfasts • 1 lunch • 6 Dinners
Highlights…Engelberg • Bern • Bear Pit • Lucerne • Innsbruck • Austrian Alps • Salzburg Mirabell Gardens • St. Peter’s Restaurant • Bavaria • Oberammergau • Passion Play
Double $4,699 (100% inclusive, air, taxes, gratuities)
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Visit: Milan, Turin, Florence, Assisi, Norcia, Rome (papal Audience)
Shroud of Turin
OBERAMMERGAU plus Munich, Salzburg, Vienna & Budapest Sept. 28 – Oct. 8, 2010 Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage
3,999
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Mexico’s Colonial Jewels
featuring Mexico City, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Zacatecas, Tequila & Morelia
Feb. 20th, April 17th, May 29th, 2010
($4,099 after June 20, 2010)
Fr. Dennis Duvelius, Spiritual Director
Schöenbrunn Palace
Visit: Munich, Neuschwanstein, Oberammergau, Salzburg, Danube River Cruise, Vienna, Budapest
12 Days • 17 Meals: 11 Breakfasts • 6 Dinners
Highlights…Our Lady of Guadalupe • Pyramids of Teotihuacan • National Folkloric Ballet Performance • San Miguel de Allende • Granaditas Museum • Rafael Coronel Museum • El Eden Silver Mine • Hospicio Cabanas • Tequila Agave Fields • Patzcuà ro • Morelia - National Museum of Anthropology
Double $2,189 (100% inclusive) All tours depart from SFO
THE HOLY LAND November 11 – 21, 2010 Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage
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Fr. Tony Stevenson, Spiritual Director Visit: Tel Aviv, Netanya, Caesarea, Nazareth, Mt. Carmel, Jerusalem, Masada, Jericho
DOOR TO DOOR Airport Transportation ( 100% included for all tours)
For a free brochure or information contact
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California Sellers of Travel #1003860-40
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For a FREE brochure on these pilgrimages contact: Catholic San Francisco (415) 614-5640
Please leave your name, mailing address and your phone number California Registered Seller of Travel Registration Number CST-2037190-40 (Registration as a Seller of Travel does not constitute approval by the State of California)
March 19, 2010
PUBLISH A NOVENA Pre-payment required Mastercard or Visa accepted
Cost $26
If you wish to publish a Novena in the Catholic San Francisco You may use the form below or call 415-614-5640
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. M.P.L.
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Please return form with check or money order for $26 Payable to: Catholic San Francisco Advertising Dept., Catholic San Francisco 1 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109
St. Jude Novena May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be adored, glorified, loved & preserved throughout the world now & forever. Sacred Heart of Jesus pray for us. St. Jude helper of the hopeless pray for us. Say prayer 9 times a day for 9 days. Thank You St. Jude.
M.P.L.
St. Jude Novena
Prayer For Motherhood
May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be adored, glorified, loved & preserved throughout the world now & forever. Sacred Heart of Jesus pray for us. St. Jude helper of the hopeless pray for us. Say prayer 9 times a day for 9 days. Thank You St. Jude.
O good St. Gerard, powerful intercessor before God and Wonder-worker of our day, I call upon thee and seek thy aid. Thou who on earth didst always fulfill God’s design help me do the Holy Will of God. Beseech the Master of Life, from Whom all paternity proceedeth to render me fruitful in offspring, that I may raise up children to God in this life and heirs to the Kingdom of His glory in the world to come. Amen. S.F.
L.S.
RUMAGE SALE
RUMMAGE SALE Friday and Saturday, March 26th and 27th 9:00 am – 3:00 pm
Little Sisters of the Poor St. Anne’s Home 300 Lake Street, San Francisco Wide diversity of merchandise, furniture, art collection, fine & costume jewelry, books, vintage & fine clothing,
house hold furnishings, crafts, shoes, food!
Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail. Most beautiful flower of Mt. Carmel Blessed Mother of the Son of God, assist me 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. T. & L.B.
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. M.S.
VISIT US AT CATHOLIC-SF.ORG For your local & international Catholic news, Datebook, Digital Paper, website listings, advertising information, “Place Classified Ad” Form and much more
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Catholic San Francisco Classifieds
FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION
Call: 415-614-5642 Fax: 415-614-5641 Email: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org
Live-In Companion Seeking mature, healthy, sincere, honest, single woman for a live-in companion. Free room and private bath. For more information, please call (415) 921-8337
Certified Geriatric Aide CERTIFIED GERIATRIC HOME AIDE, native San Franciscan, 19 yrs. exp. seeks employment with elderly woman exc. ref. Will work overnight shifts 415-252-8312
Help Wanted We are looking for full or part time
RNs, LVNs, CNAs, Caregivers In-home care in San Francisco, Marin County, peninsula Nursing care for children in San Francisco schools
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Room for Rent Master bedroom w/private bath, $650/month plus utilities. Non-smoking/drinking. PLEASE CALL (415) 341-5427
Help Wanted GOSPEL CHOIR DIRECTOR St. Paul of the Shipwreck Catholic Church is looking for a Gospel Choir Director to direct its choir and musicians at the 10:30 a.m. Sunday Gospel Mass. Shipwreck has a rich tradition of Gospel music as a main component of its Gospel Mass, which strives to preserve and promote the African American spirituality within the Catholic Church as a gift to enrich and unite all people. Desired qualifications include basic music skills with one year or more academic training or experience as choir director. Salary negotiable within range of Archdiocese of San Francisco established guidelines.
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OFFICE SPACE AVAILABLE Approximately 2,000 to 10,000 square feet first floor office space available (additional space available if needed) at One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco (between Gough & Franklin), is being offered for lease to a non-profit entity. Space available includes enclosed offices, open work area with several cubicles, large work room, and storage rooms on the lower level of the Archdiocese of San Francisco Chancery / Pastoral Center. We also have mail and copy services available, as well as meeting rooms (based on availability). Reception services available. Space has access to kitchen area and restroom facilities. Parking spaces negotiable. Ready for immediate occupancy with competitive terms. Come view the space. For more information, contact
Katie Haley, (415) 614-5556 email haleyk@sfarchdiocese.org.
If you are generous, honest, compassionate, respectful, and want to make a difference, send us your resume: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN Fax: 415-435-0421 Email: info@sncsllc.com Voice: 415-435-1262
Email Resume/ Application to spswoffice@aol.com, or FAX to 415.468.1400. For more details, call Fr. Paul Gawlowski, Pastor, at (415) 468-3434.
PLEASE RECYCLE THIS PAPER! CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
San Francisco Archdiocesan Secondary
Teacher Job Faire Saturday, March 20, 2010 10:00 am–12:00 pm St. Ignatius College Preparatory Carlin Commons 2001 37th Avenue San Francisco, California 94116 Host High Schools include: Archbishop Riordan High School (San Francisco) Convent of the Sacred Heart (San Francisco) Immaculate Conception Academy (San Francisco) Junipero Serra (San Mateo) Marin Catholic (Kentfield) Mercy High School (Burlingame) Mercy High School (San Francisco) Notre Dame (Belmont) Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory (San Francisco) Sacred Heart Preparatory (Atherton) Saint Ignatius (San Francisco) Stuart Hall High School (San Francisco) Woodside Priory (Portola Valley) Bring copies of your resume to the Faire
Catholic San Francisco
March 19, 2010
SERVICE DIRECTORY
FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION Visit our website: www.catholic-sf.org Call 415-614-5642 Fax: 415-614-5641 E-mail: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org
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Home Healthcare Agency Specializing in home health aides, attendants and companions. Serving San Francisco, Marin & the Peninsula.
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Call (650) 757-1946 Cell (415) 517-5977 NOT A LICENSED CONTRACTOR
Clinical Gerontologist Care Management for the Older Adult
CAHALAN CONST.
Family Consultation –Bereavement Support
Foundations, Earthquake Dryrot, Termite, Siding, Stucco
Kathy Faenzi, MA, Clinical Gerontologist Office: 650.401.6350 Web: www.faenziassociates.com
Additions. Remodels lic# 582766
415.279.1266
NOTICE TO READERS 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.
Striving to Achieve Optimum Health & Wellbeing
Roofing
email: Augustshi@sbcglobal.net
Notary
Breens’ Mobile Notary Services
Certified Signing Agent
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* Member National Notary Association *
Carpet Cleaning Safe Non-Toxic, No Shampoo, Dry in Hours not Days Commercial & Residential Serving SF & San Mateo Co. St. Charles Parishioner
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Counseling Do you want to be more fulfilled in love and work – but find things keep getting in the way? Unhealed wounds can hold you back - even if they are not the “logical” cause of your problems today. You can be the person God intended. Inner Child Healing Offers a deep spiritual and psychological approach to counseling: ❖ 30 years experience with individuals, couples and groups ❖ Directed, effective and results-oriented ❖ Compassionate and Intuitive ❖ Supports 12-step ❖ Enneagram Personality Transformation ❖ Free Counseling for Iraqi/Afghanistani Vets
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MARRIAGE COUNSELING DEPRESSION COUNSELING David Nellis M.A. M.F.T.
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Confidential • Compassionate • Practical (415) 921-1619 • Insurance Accepted 1537 Franklin Street • San Francisco, CA 94109
Construction LIC. 789093
WOODSMYTH C o n s t r u c t i o n C o. REMODELS, ADDITIONS, FOUNDATIONS, RETAINING Walls BILL: 650.591.6191 RAY: 415.420.6850
Matthew W. Johnson General Contractor 650.591.7243 www.mwjqc.com • Residential kitchen and bath remodeling • Additions • Free estimates • Safe clean secure worksites Free counter top appliance w/completed proposal Free food processor with kitchen
(415) 786-0121 • (415) 586-6748
For more info, contact: Contractors State License Board
800.321.2752
A-A Limousine Service • 415.303.2028
Lila Caffery, MA, CCHT
Handy Man MORROW CONTRUCTION
N. San Mateo County - SFO…$30* San Francisco - SFO………….$40* *plus airport fee Any other charter with reasonable price. Good Service.
415-205-1235
Since 1972 Ca License # 663641 24 Hour Emergency Service
Construction
Airport Special
Bonded, Insured – LIC. #819191
Lic # 526818 Senior Discount
Healthcare Agency The Irish Rose
10% Discount: Seniors, Parishioners
Call BILL 415.731.8065 • Cell: 415.710.0584
Interior-Exterior wallpaper hanging & removal
Quickbooks & Bookkeeping
Senior Care
INTERIOR, EXTERIOR All Jobs Large and Small
Contractor inspection reports and pre-purchase consulting
415-269-0446 650-738-9295 QUALITY HOME CARE SERVING THE BAY AREA SINCE 1996
PAINTING
Limousine (TCP 10851P)
20
Lic. # 907564
KEANE CONSTRUCTION ➮ Exterior / Interior Additions ➮ Baths ➮ Foundations, Stairs, Dry Rot ➮ Architect Available ➮ Senior Discount
Call: 415.533.2265
Lic. 407271