August 13, 2004

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Children look at the illuminated A-bomb dome at night in Hiroshima, Japan, Aug. 6, the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The dome was one of a few reinforced concrete structures to remain standing after the devastating blast.

In a statement released on the anniversary, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, reiterated the church’s commitment to disarmament and the conduct of limited war only as a last resort.

ORDINARY TIME

The Cathedrals of St. Mary This year marks the 150th anniversary of the com- our Archdiocese in a special way through the naming pletion and dedication of Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, San of our cathedrals in her honor under the two titles of Francisco’s first Cathedral her Immaculate Conception after becoming an Join Archbishop Levada for and her Assumption.

Archdiocese in 1853. As we 1850 was the year prepare to celebrate the feast 11:00 a.m. Mass, Aug. 15th California was admitted to the of the Assumption of the Union; her first capital was at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Blessed Virgin Mary this comMonterey. The same year the ing Sunday, August 15, the Dominican priest Joseph title of Our Lady under which the new St. Mary’s Sadoc Alemany was appointed Bishop of Monterey. As Cathedral is dedicated, it seems to be a good time to soon as his ship reached port in the small town of San recall and renew the devotion to Mary that has marked Francisco, we are told he and his fellow passengers went

Archbishop William J. Levada

to the town’s first parish church, St. Francis of Assisi in North Beach – now the National Shrine of St. Francis – CATHEDRALS, page 6

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION K of C convention . . . . . . . 8 Msgr. Foudy at 90 . . . . . . . 9

A Wilde Catholic

News-in-brief

After the Council: Living Vatican II

~ Pages 4-5 ~

~ Pages 12-13 ~

August 13, 2004

FIFTY CENTS

~ Page 18 ~

Friars for the deaf . . . . . . 10 Stem cell fairy tales . . . . . 14 Scripture and reflection . . 16 Movie review. . . . . . . . . . . 19 Datebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 6

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No. 25

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

On The Where You Live

by Tom Burke Hats off to Christian Brother Chris Brady who has been named by Archbishop William J. Levada and the Regents of St. Mary’s Cathedral to receive the 2004 Assumpta Award. Brother Chris, now principal of his congregation’s De La Salle High School in the East Bay, is a ‘70 alum of Sacred Heart Christian Brother Chris Brady High School and played a major role in his alma mater’s merger with Cathedral High School and the birthing of Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in 1987. In fact, he served as first principal of the new school from its inception until 1999. In case you’re wondering, Brother Chris is the proud uncle of New England Patriots quarterback and Junipero Serra High School grad, Tom Brady. Set to be honored with the Cathedral’s newly-instituted Patrons’ Award are Mary Hehir, founder of the Cathedral Docents Program, and parishioner of St. Patrick’s, Larkspur; Young Adult leader, Scott Moyer, of St. Dominic Parish; and San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes White, lifetime parishioner of St. Stephen Parish. Father John Talesfore, Cathedral administrator, said the honorees, like the mother church, “inspire and serve our faith and society in these unique times and place.” (See Datebook)…A most enjoyable coupla’ days for me each year is singing and praying with Bishop Joseph Pepe and the priests of the Diocese of Las Vegas at their annual retreat at Vallombrosa Center in Menlo Park. In addition to Bishop Pepe’s goodness and obvious love for his priests, he is from Philly. I’ve stolen him probably too many times from conversations with his clergy to talk about the homeland but he has been most gracious and so have they. I earned a laugh and a lesson from this contemporary take by the bishop on the great reckoning. “On that final day,” he told me, “God will say, ‘All those on my right come into the kingdom. Those on my left go into a meeting and break into small groups.’”…Thanks to Father Bill Brown, pastor of Our Lady of Mercy for this wear-and-tear and supplies-saving tip. In answer to the tons of junk faxes the Daly City parish was receiving, it rerouted “incoming” to a computer allowing previewing of the message before printing. “We’ve been doing this about two months now

Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

Official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco

Most Reverend William J. Levada, publisher Maurice E. Healy, associate publisher & editor Editorial Staff: Jack Smith, assistant editor; Evelyn Zappia, feature editor; Tom Burke, “On the Street” and Datebook; Patrick Joyce, contributing editor/senior writer; Sharon Abercrombie and Jayme George, reporters Advertising: Joseph Pena, director; Mary Podesta, account representative Production: Karessa McCartney, manager; Tiffany Doesken Business Office: Marta Rebagliati, assistant business manager; Virginia Marshall, advertising and promotion services; Judy Morris, circulation and subscriber services Advisory Board: Jeffrey Burns, Ph.D., Noemi Castillo, James Clifford, Fr. Thomas Daly, Joan Frawley Desmond, James Kelly, Deacon William Mitchell, Kevin Starr, Ph.D., Sr. Christine Wilcox, OP. Catholic San Francisco editorial offices are located at One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109. Tel: (415) 614-5640 Circulation: 1-800-563-0008 or (415) 614-5638 Advertising: (415) 614-5642 News fax: (415) 614-5633; Advertising fax: (415) 614-5641 Adv. E-mail: jpena@catholic-sf.org Catholic San Francisco (ISSN 15255298) is published weekly except the Fridays after Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas and the first Friday in January, twice a month during summer by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, 1500 Mission Rd., P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014. Annual subscription rates are $10 within the Archdiocese of San Francisco and $22.50 elsewhere in the United States. Periodical postage paid at South San Francisco, California.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Catholic San Francisco, 1500 Mission Rd., P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014 If there is an error in the mailing label affixed to this newspaper, call 1-800-563-0008. It is helpful to refer to the current mailing label.

and it turns out almost 90 percent of the faxes that arrive via the computer don’t get printed, saving gobs of money and frustration,” Father Brown said….Congrats and prayerful best wishes to the newly elected leadership of the Presentation Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Sister Pamela Chiesa, PBVM, president; Sister Mary Jo Wise, PBVM, vice president; Sister Gloria Loya, PBVM, Councilor; Sister Patricia Anne Cloherty, PBVM Councilor. Thank you to outgoing officers, Sister Ann Therese Lynch, PBVM, Sister Mary Clauude Power, Congrats to the newly installed officers of the Sacred Heart Altar Society of St. Cecilia Parish, PBVM, Sister Stephanie San Francisco. From left: junior past prez, Vera Mahoney; past prez, Susan Black; president, Rose Still, PBVM, and Sister Marie Azinheira; moderator, Father Joe Landi; financial secretary, Dorothy Kays; vice prez, Mary Rosemary McKean, Stroth; marshall, Diana Raggio; recording secretary, Shirley Terry. Not available for the photo PBVM….Happy 50 years were treasurer, Mary Barrett; marshall, Josephine Quartaroli; and corresponding secretaries, married to Kathleen and Loretta Wasaez and Katrena Meyer. “We raise funds for altar breads, candles, vestments, flowers John Moran who renewed and other sanctuary needs,” Rose Marie said. See Datebook for info on their next Bingo. their vows June 12th at St. Catherine of Siena Church, Burlingame. Presiding was Father William O’Connor – who School….Happy 40 years married to Norene and Ray witnessed their marriage in 1954 at Sacred Heart Church in Thurman of Holy Angels Parish, Colma….Recently renewKlamath Falls, Oregon – and retired Father Frank Murray. ing their vows after 50 years married were Lena and Brinley Further commemorations included a celebration at the Irish Vital of St. Peter Parish, Pacifica….Proud as can be of his wife, Helen Marie McMonigle, is husCultural Center hosted by John and band Hugh. Married 47 years, they have Kathleen’s sons, Michael and Sean, as been parishioners of Good Shepherd well as daughter Maura Joyce, her husParish, Pacifica for just as long and their band Martin, and their children John, five children are all graduates of the Marty and Katie. In attendance was the parish school. Helen has been “playing groom’s sister, Anne Devine with her the organ and piano for Catholic liturchildren Frank and Catherine from gies” – including many years at Good England as well as Kathleen’s cousins, Shepherd – “for 59 years,” Hugh said.

Katherine and Denny Holl from The McMonigles are also big fans of pasOregon….Happy 36 years married to tor, Father Piers Lahey, and grateful for Geri and Bill Lynch, longtime parishhis leadership. Hugh added….Remember ioners of St. Isabella Parish. Also jointo send in those special moments of ing in the congrats are their children, Summer for inclusion here in On the Billy, Greg, Karen and Kevin…. It’s a Street Where You Live. Just mail a brief 50th wedding anniversary for radiodescription of the event, the names of partiller Bob Tanem and his wife, Bev, of Happy four months married to Terri and ticipating parties and a follow-up phone St. Anthony Parish, Novato, who Frank Lavin of St. Isabella Parish number to On the Street Where You Live, renewed vows earlier in the year with One Peter Yorke Way, SF 94109.

Father Brian Costello Fax (415) 614-5633; e-mail tburke@catholic-sf.org.

Do not presiding….Xiomara and Mike Neary celebrated their 17th send attachments except photos and those in jpeg please.

You can wedding anniversary May 22nd. The couple’s daughter reach Tom Burke at (415) 614-5634.

Monica is an 8th grader at Noe Valley’s St. Paul Elementary

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Catholic San Francisco

(CNS PHOTO COURTESY INTERNATIONAL SPORTS IMAGES)

August 13, 2004

(CNS PHOTO FROM REUTERS)

Heather O'Reilly plays (left) in a match against Mexico earlier this year in Albuquerque, N.M. At 19 she is the youngest member of the U.S. women's Olympic soccer team. Her family and parish in the Diocese of Metuchen, N.J., will keep close watch on the Athens, Greece, games, as she competes with her team members for the gold. Above, members of the U.S. men's 400-meter relay team -Shawn Crawford, Justin Gatlin, Coby Miller and Maurice Greene -- pose for a photograph at the Team Challenge event in Munich, Germany, Aug. 8.

Pope John Paul II urged that the Olympics, which begin Aug. 13 in Athens, Greece, be used "to promote peace and understanding among all peoples."

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And why, despite all, I still do what I do . . . onfessions are tough. Real tough. But, sometimes a confession can set the record straight, and I want to give credit where credit is due. Before I talk about my confession, though, let me say a few other things first.

Let me start by explaining the photo in this letter. You know, when I meet people in town they usually say, “Oh, yeah, I know you, you’re Dr. Leung. I’ve seen your advertisment with that picture of you and the cute little baby.”

Well, I’m the guy on the right.

Years ago something happened to me that changed my life forever. Let me tell you my story.

“Back then I was a student just about ready college, when my younger brother developed a painful leg condition known as ‘sciatica.’ In his case it came on suddenly. The pain in his leg was so intense that he couldn’t walk without limping, and sometimes he couldn’t straighten his legs to put on his socks. I remember him telling me it felt like someone was stabbing his leg with a screwdriver. He was afraid that he would be confined to a wheelchair if the disability continued. It all happened so fast, one week he was competing as an athlete at the national level and the next week he could barely take care of himself. He was devastated.

After considering surgery (that was the only option, according to the surgeon) he decided against it. I remember feeling so helpless, I wish there was something I could do for him. It was a very scary time . But there’s more . . .

A friend of mine convinced me to have my brother give their doctor a try. This new doctor did an exam, took some films, and then ‘adjusted’ his spine. He told me that the adjustment didn’t hurt, it actually felt good. He got relief, and he can use his legs again. Oh, did I mention that this doctor is a chiropractor? It worked so well for my brother, and I’m so impressed with the other ‘miracles’ I see in this doctor’s office, that

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I eventually go to chiropractic school myself.

And that’s how it happened!”

Now for my son Rion (pronounced Ryan), who is the baby in the photo. He’s not old enough to know how chiropractic works, but he loves to get his spine adjusted. Along with making sure that his spine develops properly, spinal adjustments keep Rion’s immune system working at its best. Rion rarely gets sick. That seems like a small thing, but it makes a huge difference to him. It seems like only a new puppy will be able to keep up with his energy.

It’s amazing how life is, because now people come to see me with their sciatica problems.

Also they come to me with their headaches, Forty-eight million Americans no longer migraines, chronic pain, neck pain, shoulder/ have health insurance, and those who do have arm pain, whiplash from car accidents, backfound that their benefits are reduced. That’s aches, ear infections, asthma, allergies, numbwhere chiropractic comes in. Many people find ness in limbs, athletic injuries, just to name a that they actually save money on their health few. care expenses by seeing a chiropractor. Another Several times a day patients thank me for way to save . . . studies show that a chiropractor helping them with their health problems. But may double your I can’t really take immune capacity, the credit. My Here’s what some of my patients had to say: naturally and withconfession is that “Body building takes toll on my neck and back. out drugs.

I’ve never healed Dr. Leung keeps me tuned up so I can be at my best.”

The immune anyone of any(Daryl Gee, marketing rep. for nutritional supplements) system fights colds, thing. What I do is the flu, and other perform a specific “No more migranes and no more neck pain!” sicknesses. So you spinal adjustment (Petra Anderson) may not be to remove nerve running off to the pressure, and the “I feel better than I have in a long time!” doctor as much. body responds by (Cathy Cheung, CPA) This is especially healing itself. We important if you are self-employed. And an get tremendous results. It’s as simple as that! entire week of care in my office may cost what Being a chiropractor can be tough, because you could pay for one visit elsewhere. there’s a host of so-called experts out there.

You Benefit from an Amazing Offer – Look, They tell people a lot of things that are just it shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg to correct plain ridiculous about my profession. But the your health. You are going to write a check studies speak for themselves, like the Virginia to someone for your health care expenses, you study that showed that over 90% of patients may as well write one for a lesser amount for who saw a chiropractor were satisfied with chiropractic. When you bring in this advertisement their results. That’s just incredible!

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And further care is very affordable and you’ll be happy to know that I have affordable family plans. You see I’m not trying to seduce you to come see me with this low start-up fee, then to only make it up with high fees after that.

Further care is very important to consider when making your choice of doctor. High costs can add up very quickly. By law, this offer excludes Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

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You’ll get great care at a great fee. My qualifications . . . I’m a Cum Laude graduate of Life College West who has been recognized by the California State Assembly for community service. I’ve been entrusted to take care of tiny babies to other health professionals such as Nurses, Physical Therapists, Dentists, Surgeons and Attorneys. I have been practicing in West Portal for four over years. I just have that low exam fee to help more people who need care.

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Call Ana or Jennifer for an appointment. We can help you. Thank you.

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

in brief

NEWS

Pro-life official praises Bush appeal on partial-birth abortion (CNS PHOTO FROM REUTERS)

WASHINGTON — Gail Quinn, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, praised the Bush administration Aug. 3 for its appeal of what she called a “dreadful decision” overturning the federal ban on partialbirth abortion. Attorneys representing the U.S. Justice Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft filed notice Aug. 2 that they would appeal a June decision by U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton of San Francisco that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was unconstitutional. The appeal would be heard by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also based in San Francisco. “We commend the U.S. Department of Justice for appealing this dreadful decision,” said Quinn in a statement. “There is no place in a civilized society for this cruel and dangerous practice.” Noting that the American Medical Association has said partial-birth abortion “is never medically necessary,” Quinn added: “To say that it is a fundamental constitutional right, as the federal judge in California did, makes a mockery of the Constitution.”

A Bangladeshi flood victim and her children wait for food at a shelter in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, Aug. 10. Church and civic groups have rallied to help the estimated 20 million people affected by the floods, which have swamped two-thirds of the country and killed more than 1,700 people.

more than 230,000 people. Bishop Gregory said the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “permanent reminders of the grave consequences of total war and symbols of our continuing struggle to balance determined action for justice with a profound responsibility to live Christ’s peace.” The bishop called on Catholics to commit themselves to the defense of human rights and the rejection of injustice and oppression.

TRUMBULL, Conn. — Lindsay Younce was a Quaker teenager on her way to morning Mass in Vancouver, Wash., when she first made the acquaintance of St. Therese of Lisieux. As a 16-year-old on the road to conversion, she did not know that one day she would portray the saint, known as the Little Flower, in a major motion picture, “Therese.” The film is scheduled for release Oct. 1. That morning the young actress didn’t know Lindsay Younce what to make of all the excitement about the saint’s relics arriving at the church for veneration. “That was my first encounter with Therese,” the 22year-old Younce said in a July 25 interview at Christ the King Church in the Diocese of Bridgeport. She was there for a conference celebrating the Holy Family. “I honored her relics although I didn’t know what it meant,” she said. “But I felt different, like some kind of veil came over me. Then I forgot about her.” But the Little Flower kept her eye on Younce.

Bishop calls for recommitment to disarm, war as last resort WASHINGTON – The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., said the Catholic Church must reassert a commitment to nuclear disarmament and to using war as a last resort. He called on Catholic policy-makers and public leaders to “make the work of peace a fundamental imperative of their individual vocations.” The bishop made his remarks in a statement released Aug. 6, the anniversary of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Nagasaki, Japan, was bombed three days after Hiroshima. The bombings killed or wounded

(PHOTO COURTESY LUKE FILMS)

Quaker-turned-Catholic actress plays ‘Little Flower’ in new movie

Missouri voters approve ban on same-sex marriage WASHINGTON — Heeding the recommendation of the state’s Catholic bishops, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The Aug. 3 vote was 71 percent in favor of the amendment and 29 percent against, according to unofficial state tallies. The Missouri amendment states: “That to be valid and recognized in this state, a marriage shall exist only between a man and a woman.” Similar amendments were set for votes later this year in at least nine states. An amendment in Michigan is awaiting formal approval to be placed on the ballot there. In a June 28 message, the bishops of Missouri’s four Catholic dioceses had said support of the amendment “will help to preserve the integrity of marriage and family life.”

Greeley says social action never needed more in church, society CHICAGO — The Catholic Church is in chaos and American society is awash in greed, and the time has never been better for those involved in social action, Father Andrew Greeley told Catholic social justice workers July 30. “Our church is a mess, society’s a mess, everything’s a mess,” Father Greeley said in the closing presentation to the six-day Social Justice Summer Institute in Chicago. “What a wonderful opportunity,” he continued. “In a chaotic church, in a greedy country, social action remains challenging and often frustrating. But, gentle souls, it never has been and never will be dull.” The church’s work for social justice has both been encouraged and become more difficult in the 40 years since the Second Vatican Council, the priest-sociologist and popu-

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lar author told his audience. The institute drew about 200 people for a week of workshops and presentations on the Lake Shore campus of Loyola University. Participants attended two main tracks, one on the biblical concepts of justice and one on effective social action in a changing church.

New retreat aims to strengthen, enrich father and son bond OMAHA, Neb. (CNS) — When the Archdiocese of Omaha’s Family Life Office introduced the “Between Fathers and Sons” retreat this summer, one goal was to provide an opportunity to strengthen the bond between fathers and sons.

“We organized this retreat to give fathers and sons a time and place apart from everything else in life to share faith, values and what’s important in their lives,” said Mary Jo Pedersen of the Family Life Office. “We wanted to help enrich the fatherson bond.” Well, it worked, two of the fathers and sons who attended the retreat told The Catholic Voice, the archdiocesan newspaper. “After my son and I talked about personal things in the retreat, it’s been easier to talk about other things,” said John Parr, an Omaha father who attended the retreat. “And now we’re communicating better.” He added, “In general, we’ve been closer after this retreat.” Twelve fathers and sons in the archdiocese took the opportunity to strengthen their relationship at the 24-hour retreat in June at the St. Benedict Center near Schuyler.

Woman starts Guatemala help for children living in dump GUATEMALA CITY — At Guatemala City’s garbage dump, 10-year-old Gustavo picks through refuse for recyclables like plastic, copper, aluminum and cardboard. Gustavo says he does not know his last name, but he can tell you he has been at the dump for three years and expects to remain there for a long time. For many Guatemalans who come to the city without job skills or education, life in the garbage dump becomes a career by default. For many such families, children are moneymakers, extra hands to comb the refuse. Fernando Gonzales Salazar, 34, and his wife, Wendy, 33, have six children. In an average day the couple can earn about $4. Because of a program begun in

August 13, 2004

Pope calls on Muslims, Christians to unite after Iraqi church attacks VATICAN CITY — Deploring a string of deadly car bomb attacks on five Catholic churches in Iraq, Pope John Paul II called on Muslims and Christians to unite against “all forms of violence” and to work together to bring peace and stability to the country. In a telegram released Aug. 2 by the Vatican, the pope said he was saddened and “deeply struck” upon hearing the news of the Aug. 1 attacks that left at least 11 people dead and 50 others wounded. A wave of explosions ripped through churches in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul early Aug. 1 just when parishioners were attending or leaving their places of worship. “At this time of trial, I am spiritually close to the church and the Iraqi people,” read the pope’s message, which was sent to the head of the Assembly of the Catholic Bishops of Iraq, Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim Delly.

China flood relief begins HONG KONG — A Catholic charity in China has begun flood-relief work, while local church personnel around the country are stretching their resources to assist people hard hit by rains and flooding. Since late June, unusually heavy downpours have hit 18 of the 31 mainland provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, mainly in central and northern China, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand. UCA News said that as of Aug. 5 more than 71 million people were reported to have been affected, with damage to 340,000 houses and nearly 14 million acres of crops, according to China’s Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. Some areas still report some heavy rainfall.

Beifang Jinde Catholic Social Service Center, based in Shijiazhuang, some 200 miles southwest of Beijing, is helping some people recover from the disaster. The center was established by the bishops of Hebei province. Sister Xia Xiaolei, head of the center’s relief section, told UCA News Aug. 5 that the organization has begun a relief project in Guangxi autonomous region, in southwestern China.

5

Catholic, Lutheran leaders visit areas affected by barrier JERUSALEM — Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem was part of a delegation of Christian leaders who visited several West Bank communities affected by the separation barrier being constructed by Israel. Patriarch Sabbah, Father Mtanios Haddad, head of the Greek Catholics in Jerusalem, and Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan of Jerusalem visited the West Bank communities of Tulkarem, Jayyous and Nablus Aug. 2. Delegation members met with Christian and Muslim religious and civil leaders. They also met with members of the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel who have been living in the West Bank communities, said an Aug. 5 statement released by the World Council of Churches. In the town of Tulkarem, where Israel has confiscated some 17,500 acres, church leaders were told that the wall has pushed the unemployment rate to 80 percent, the statement said.

(CNS PHOTO BY JOSEPH J. DELCONZO)

1999 by a Catholic woman from Yarmouth, Maine, instead of working at the dump, the four oldest Gonzales children attend school daily. The two youngest, twins, are in a day-care center.

Hanley Denning, 34, founded the Safe Passage program after being invited by a nun to visit the garbage dump. Denning said she was shocked by the plight of the thousands of people who scavenge through the dump daily and who live in the surrounding slums.

Catholic San Francisco

Bishop says pope to visit Lourdes to praise God, not seek healing VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II will make an Aug. 14-15 pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, not to seek physical healing but to praise God for his great gifts, including the gift of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said the papal trip organizer. “Lourdes is not just a place to seek healing, it is a place where people demonstrate their faith in God and their devotion to Mary,” said Bishop Renato Boccardo, the trip organizer and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. The 84-year-old Pope John Paul has billed his trip to the shrine in the French Pyrenees as part of his commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the solemn proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. “To look at this pilgrimage as the trip of a sick person among the sick is totally shortsighted,” Bishop Boccardo told Catholic News Service July 27.

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

Cathedrals . . .

■ Continued from cover to celebrate Mass. Mission Dolores (Misión San Francisco de Asís) was still a couple of miles out of town in those days.

St. Francis Church was pro-Cathedral when Alemany was appointed Archbishop of the new Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1853. Immediately Archbishop Alemany began the planning and construction of his new Cathedral church at the corner of California and Grant. Old St. Mary’s Cathedral has just undergone a major renovation, at the cost of some 8 million dollars to upgrade its seismic safety, and will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its dedication on Christmas Eve of this year. I am looking forward to joining the Paulist Fathers on that occasion, and I know that they, too, would welcome people from throughout the Archdiocese to join us at that joyful commemoration of an historic moment. Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, under the title of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, was the first Cathedral in the world to be dedicated in honor of the Immaculate Conception of Mary after the solemn infallible Declaration of her Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854.

Decades later Alemany’s successor, Archbishop Patrick Riordan, decided that the neighborhood around Old St. Mary’s was inappropriate for the location of the growing city’s principle church. He built “new” St. Mary’s Cathedral at Van Ness and O’Farrell, and dedicated it to Our Lady of the Assumption. “New” St. Mary’s Cathedral served through the episcopates of Riordan, Hanna and Mitty, only to burn down just a few months after Archbishop Joseph T. McGucken was installed as the fifth Archbishop in 1962.

Many members of the Archdiocese will recall the long years of planning, fundraising and construction of the spectacular replacement, also dedicated as St. Mary’s Cathedral of the Assumption, which opened its doors in the 1970s, and whose feast day we happily celebrate this coming Sunday on August 15.

Because this is an historic year, the Sesquicentennial Year of the establishment of the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s first Cathedral, I wanted to celebrate Mass at our current Cathedral on this feast day, as a sign of our continued devotion to the Blessed Mother, in whose honor these two Cathedral churches

Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral

Saint Mary of the Assumption Cathedral

have been dedicated. I cordially invite any members of the Archdiocese who can do so to join me in the celebration of this beautiful feast day of Our Lady of the Assumption at the Solemn Mass at 11:00 AM on this coming Sunday, August 15, at St. Mary’s Cathedral to add to our Archdiocese’s joyful cel-

ebration of the 150th anniversary year of our first Cathedral church, and to renew our privileged devotion to Mary expressed in the titles of our succession of Cathedral churches.

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

Holy Days Of Obligation The following solemnities will be observed as Holy Days of Obligation in the remainder of the year.

August 15, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Sunday) December 8, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Wednesday) December 25, Christmas (Saturday)

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PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING POINTS IN THIS REGARD: November 1, the Solemnity of All Saints, falls on a Monday and is not a holy day of obligation. According to the 1992 general decree of the NCCB, the precept to attend Mass is dispensed when this solemnity falls on a Saturday or Monday.

If a community offers an evening Mass on Saturday, December 25, the observance should be of Christmas (the Nativity of the Lord) rather than of the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, which is to be observed on Sunday, December 26.

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

By Catholic News Service DALLAS — After hearing from President George W. Bush on the opening day of their Aug. 3-5 international convention in Dallas, members of the Knights of Columbus closed their meeting by passing resolutions against same-sex marriage, anti-Catholic bias in the media and “morally offensive” entertainment programming, desecration of the U.S. flag and Catholic politicians’ support for keeping abortion legal.

“Catholic public officials who support abortion on demand are cooperating in evil and sinning against the common good,” said one of four resolutions approved by an estimated 2,500 Knights from the United States, Canada, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and Mexico.

“The principle of separation of church and state does not require separating moral principles and political choices, but protects the right of people of faith to act on their values in public life,” it added.

The resolution also reaffirmed the Knights’ long-standing policy against honoring any politicians or candidates who support assisted suicide, euthanasia, embryonic stemcell research or keeping abortion legal or inviting them to speak at Knights’ functions. The organization also prohibits its councils from renting space owned by the Knights to those politicians or candidates.

In their other resolutions, the Knights: — Called for passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment as “the only sure way to prevent courts from ‘discovering’ a right to same-sex marriage where before there was none.”

— Urged the entertainment industry to voluntarily refrain from producing or distributing programming “that is morally offensive, socially destructive or offensive to family values and religious faith” and asked the media to “assure that their coverage of such subjects as abortion, marriage, family values and religious faith is fair, balanced and free of bias against the Catholic Church, the pro-life movement and those who seek to uphold traditional family values.”

— Expressed support for “either legislation or a constitutional amendment that would safeguard the physical and symbolic integrity of the flag.”

In his Aug. 3 talk to the convention, Bush praised the Knights for their support of issues such as school vouchers, faith-based initiatives and pro-life legislation.

Among the references receiving the heartiest applause in Bush’s speech were his thanks to the Knights for “your working to protect the Pledge of Allegiance, to keep us one nation under God,” and his reminder that he had signed into law a ban on partial-birth abortion.

He also thanked them for “defending the values of faith and family that bind us as a nation,” and listed their support

E D U C A T I O N

of the Federal Marriage Amendment, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and proposals to ban human cloning.

Bush called the Knights “soldiers in the armies of compassion” and lauded the fraternal group as “one of the great American organizations dedicated to charity and mutual assistance and the fight for civil liberties.”

“You have a friend in this administration,” he said. “You have someone who wants to work with you.”

Bush’s appearance drew a few dozen protesters outside the Dallas hotel where the Knights met.

Many held signs saying, “Catholics for Kerry,” “Oneterm president” and “A vote for Kerry is not a sin,” while others chanted, “No more Bush.”

Most of the protesters objected to Bush’s decision to address the meeting of the Knights of Columbus, a move John Tackaberry of Dallas felt was a “cheap way of mixing politics and religion.”

In his annual report, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said Catholics must take the church’s opposition to abortion and support for traditional marriage into the voting booth and Catholic politicians must stand up for church teachings.

“We Knights have no higher calling. We must fight for laws that unconditionally protect the right to life,” Anderson said.

“And we must carry these convictions with us at election time.”

Those attending the convention included 13 cardinals and 60 bishops.

Among the Vatican officials addressing the meeting were Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, and Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, who thanked the Knights for funding international television transmissions of papal ceremonies and special events at the Vatican.

“The interest in telecasting papal events is increasing, not decreasing,” he said. “Never in the history of the church have so many people heard the word of God as are able to hear it through the international telecasts you have made possible for 30 years.”

Pope John Paul II also sent a message to the Knights, encouraging them to “continue to work as a leaven within American society for the promotion of social justice, the protection of human life and all forms of loving service to those in need.”

According to recently released figures, the nearly 1.7 million members of the Knights of Columbus contributed a record $130 million to charity in 2003. The number of service hours contributed by Knights also was at an all-time high at 61 million hours in 2003.

“Charity is the first lesson a member learns when he joins the Knights, and these figures show how much that means to him,” said Anderson in a statement.

(CNS PHOTO FROM REUTERS)

Knights of Columbus hear Bush, approve resolutions at convention

President George W. Bush greets members of the Knights of Columbus at the group's 122nd annual convention in Dallas Aug. 3. In remarks to the Knights, the president said he appreciates their aid to the poor and their efforts to protect unborn life.

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Catholic San Francisco

9

Monsignor Foudy still ‘unabashedly’ a priest at 90

By Tom Burke At 90 years of age and a priest for 64 years, Msgr. John Foudy has not lost his sense of humor. When asked about his future, the nonagenarian told Catholic San Francisco that it definitely includes Holy Cross Cemetery.

This man’s story however demands more space than an epitaph. A San Francisco native, he grew up in Most Holy Redeemer Parish. As it was then without a school, he attended Mission Dolores Elementary graduating in 1928. He then began studies at the now closed St. Joseph’s Seminary in Mountain View. He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop John J. Mitty from St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park on May 18, 1940. Pope John XXIII named him Monsignor in 1962.

Msgr. Foudy is the oldest of three siblings.

The youngest is brother, Father Denis Foudy, who died in 1998. Father Foudy is remembered most recently as pastor of San Francisco’s St. Monica Parish but spent many earlier years teaching in seminaries in Africa.

The priests’ sister, Mary Foudy, a longtime St. Brendan’s parishioner, has had a leadership presence for decades with the Legion of Mary and organizations including the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women.

Msgr. Foudy said having two priests in the family was “quite an honor” and that Mission Dolores had been known as a birthplace for clergy and religious. “The parish had a great tradition of sending a couple of guys every year down there,” Msgr. Foudy said. He said his class of ’28 produced three priests for the Archdiocese as well as two Jesuits and Christian Brother Columban Derby, retired principal of Sacred Heart High School. Not a classmate but a cousin is Paulist Father Joseph O’Looney, now retired

and living at Nazareth House in San Rafael.

Mary Foudy’s role in her brother’s vocation cannot be overstated, Msgr. Foudy said.

“I wouldn’t have been ordained if it hadn’t been for my sister,” he said. “Our mother died when I was in minor seminary. Along with all of her own responsibilities Mary took over. She worked downtown and at the same time cooked and took care of the three men of the house.”

Msgr. Foudy said he’s “never been unhappy” with any of his assignments. “I wouldn’t say all of them showed me at my best but I was always happy,” he said.

Msgr. Foudy, who earned a doctorate from Catholic University in 1945, was part of the Department of Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese, including seven years as superintendent, for nearly 20 years.

“I found the school years to be very interesting,” Msgr. Foudy said. “Of all the special assignments I could have had, I think the schools department was the right one.” His steadfast sense of humor showed itself again when he said, “Of course I didn’t choose it.

There wasn’t a lot of democracy in those days.”

He remembers the baby boom and its hallmark “stuffed classrooms” fondly. “We had a very hard time enforcing the rule that there should not be more than 50 kids in a classroom,” he said.

The women religious of the time have his highest respect. “They were something and friendly as can be,” he said. “You were warmly welcomed at any convent. We can all take pride in the development of Catholic schools but if it hadn’t been for the Sisters there wouldn’t have been that development.”

He was named pastor of St. Agnes Parish in the Haight-Ashbury District in 1964. While he said many of his friends thought serving at St. Agnes among the flower generation must

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have been fun, Msgr. Foudy disagrees. “I didn’t think it was all that wonderful,” Msgr.

Foudy said. “Simply you could see that the parish was suffering and I couldn’t do anything. All the people who built the parish were gradually moving out and not being replaced. Through it all, the parishioners were very good to me though. I wasn’t helpless but knew I didn’t have any solutions for the kids coming here from all over the country.”

“I was at St. Anne’s for 20 years,” Msgr.

Foudy, pastor of the Sunset District parish from 1970 to 1990, said. He remembers the two decades happily pointing to “active parishioners” and the “annual Novena to St. Anne.”

While Msgr. Foudy has abided Vatican II, the Church overhaul of four-decades ago was a bit of a “disappointment” to him.

“They talked it up and I thought we’d have an in-pouring of people which we didn’t. I also think we went too fast with the change to the vernacular and the liturgy.”

“It’s our job to be unabashedly priests,” Msgr. Foudy said about himself and his fellow retired priests. “Despite recent scandals people are very good to us and I think we’ll get over this hurdle. I’ve been blessed and very proud to be a priest.”

Msgr. Foudy was thanked and honored at St. Cecilia Parish with a Mass and reception June 27. Msgr. Foudy has lived at St. Cecilia

Monsignor John Foudy in his new residence at Alma Via.

since his retirement from St. Anne of the Sunset in 1990. “St. Cecilia Parish family gives thanks to God for Msgr. Foudy’s 14 years of faithful service to our parish and we wish him all of God’s blessings,” the parish said in a bulletin announcing the event. The Mass and reception were also a sending-off for the priest who recently took up residence at San Francisco’s Alma Via community.

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

Religious community for deaf men being formed in Oakland Diocese Coughlin. “History has proved that integrating deaf candidates into hearing religious communities is difficult, if not impossible.”

OAKLAND, Calif. — A new religious community He knows these challenges firsthand from his time as for deaf men is taking form in the Oakland Diocese a Dominican brother before he left the community to under the sponsorship of Bishop Allen H. Vigneron study for the priesthood for the Diocese of Honolulu. and the leadership of Father Thomas Coughlin, admin- He believes deaf men will be more likely to persevere in istrator of St. Benedict Parish for the Deaf in San their vocation if they can use sign language in all Francisco. aspects of their lives, particularly when The community, known as the living in a religious community.

Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Because of his familiarity with Apostolate, will begin as an association Dominican life, Father Coughlin wanted of the Christian faithful. The canonical to incorporate those traditions and designation is the initial step for the officharisms into the new community, but cial establishment of a religious commuthe group will be an autonomous connity, the first such community for the gregation, reporting only to Bishop deaf in the United States.

Vigneron.

Bishop Vigneron formally approved The Dominicans “will be like ‘big the community in February and the first brothers’ to us, helping us to be formed group of eight candidates was scheduled as a new Dominican community of deaf to enter the novitiate in August. They missionaries,” he told The Catholic will reside in the convent at Assumption Voice, Oakland’s diocesan newspaper.

Parish in San Leandro and participate in The order will not have legal or fiscal a joint novitiate program with the responsibility for the new group, which novices of the Dominicans’ Western will be “self-reliant, primarily for the Father Thomas Coughlin province. sake of the deaf apostolate which The program, to be held at St. Dominic’s Church and requires candidates who are deaf or who are familiar Novitiate in San Francisco, will teach the deaf candi- with sign language,” he said. dates the basics of Dominican life, the order’s constituFor novitiate classes, the deaf novices will be “maintion and its charism of preaching. streamed” with the hearing Dominican novices and will Calling the new community a “worthy initiative,” use the latest Internet technology. The instructor will Bishop Vigneron said there is a tremendous need for speak into a microphone that will relay his words priests and brothers to minister among deaf Catholics. through the Internet to a sign language interpreter, probThe new community will train men to provide pastoral ably based in Sacramento. care throughout the United States using American sign The interpreter will repeat the words in sign lanlanguage. guage, which will be digitally transmitted over a TV Father Coughlin, who is deaf, said it is difficult for screen for the deaf novices to read in the same classdeaf men to live in a religious community of individu- room in which they were spoken. als who can hear. In the new community the men will “It will cost a great deal of money and I am looking use sign language as their primary mode of communi- for a grant to help defray this cost,” Father Coughlin cation for community life, socialization, prayer and said. preaching.

The deaf novices, who range in age from 23 to 46, “Deaf priests and religious brothers need to live in come from a variety of backgrounds. In addition to their cultural milieu as deaf persons,” said Father Father Coughlin, two are from France, and the others

By Monica Clark Catholic News Service

are from Cameroon, Haiti, Ghana, Congo and the Philippines. Three more candidates are applying for the summer of 2005.

Father Coughlin is also trying to help three deaf women who want to become sisters. “We are looking at the possibility of forming a conventual Dominican laity chapter of deaf women living together as religious for the deaf apostolate,” he said. “It needs further exploration.”

In the meantime, he is planning for a Sept. 2 ceremony at which the men will receive their new habits — white tunics with black scapulars.

“The friars felt that this (ceremony) will bring a powerful message on the part of the Dominican order assisting a group of disabled and marginalized to become a community in our society and church,” he said.

Father Coughlin, a native of Malone, N.Y., obtained his high school education at St. Mary’s School for the Deaf in Buffalo, his bachelor’s in English from Gallaudet University in Washington and his master’s in religious studies from The Catholic University of America in Washington.

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

August 13, 2004

AFTER THE COUNCIL: LIVING VATICAN II

Pope John Paul II appears on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after being elected pope Oct. 16, 1978.

By George Sim Johnston

In that moral masterpiece, Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II begins with the Gospel episode of the rich young man before Christ, and it’s not a bad place to start a discussion of the Catholic Church since Vatican II. It is easy to think of this encounter as a parable, but it really happened and that well-to-do young man is somewhere right now. In the Gospel story, he’s a devout Israelite who, as John Paul puts it, has grown up “in the shadow of the Law.” He has faithfully followed its precepts. But something is missing, and he asks Christ what it might be. Christ’s answer—“Come, follow me”—is completely unexpected. It goes well beyond the young man’s idea of “religion,” and so he walks away sad and perplexed.

Pope John XXIII signs the papal bull opening Vatican Council II in 1962.

The rich young man is not unlike a pre–Vatican II Catholic in the affluent West. He has spent his life (mostly) following the rules and understands “eternal life” as an extrinsic reward for having done so. And yet despite the double consolation of economic security and religious correctness, it occurs to him that something more is needed. Christ tells him to keep the commandments. The young man replies, “I have kept all these. What do I still lack?” At this point, like a good pre–Vatican II Catholic, he’s probably expecting to be told to perform extra devotion: Go and recite the seven penitential Psalms. Or an extra discipline: Don’t eat meat on Fridays.

Instead, Christ offers him precisely the challenge that Vatican II made to the Catholic world. It is a challenge both personal and deeply supernatural. The council was a call to Catholics to break from their harness of legalism and externalism. To stop compartmentalizing their religion and risk a transformation in grace. To pass from a merely objective faith— something you have—to one fully lived. It suggested that the more fruitful line of questioning is not, What is prohibited? or, What is required? but rather, What sort of person am I to be?

And it proposed the Person of Christ as the answer. Only after absorbing this truth can we fully comprehend why it is we follow His commandments, which otherwise can be a joyless burden.

The Second Vatican Council was a call to full spiritual maturity. It was time to take off the training wheels—to stop living “in the shadow of the Law”—and take our vocations as Christians seriously. The pre–Vatican II Church “worked” marvelously well, which is why there are those who are nostalgic, but it wasn’t spiritually creative. The council offered the difference between a minimalist, rules-oriented Catholicism and full discipleship, especially for the laity. In its focus on the human person, rather than on dogmatic truths about the divine order, it reminded us that we’re obliged to become the person God wants us to be and that this isn’t a limitation of our freedom—as the rich young man supposes—but its guarantee.

Once we had achieved that freedom through the call to holiness, we could go out and change the world. This has been the program of John Paul’s pontificate. But the pope has faced serious obstacles within the Church in implementing the council. The problem has been summed up by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: “What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it.” In fact, it’s striking how ill-equipped the Church—clergy and laity included—was to receive the teachings of the council (and, for that matter, Humanae Vitae a few years later). The philosophical richness and originality of the documents were missed entirely. Instead of spiritual renewal and a new evangelization, what we got was a fight between “conservatives” and “liberals,” both stuck in previous categories of Church thinking.

It is safe to say that most of the bishops who attended the council had little idea how to

Catholic San Francisco

13

implement it. That generation of American bishthere is a dread of anything smacking of preconciliar ops had many strengths, but an appreciation of Catholicism. Latin, Gregorian chant, Renaissance Pope John XXIII’s aggiornamento, and the thepolyphony, incense, gothic and baroque architecture, ological vision behind it, was not among them. dogmatic definitions—all evoke a reaction wellThey returned to business as usual, and the described by Stove: “A sensation of darkness, stillness, council’s teachings became a dead letter. In one enclosure, and, above all, of weight or pressure....” chancery (I am told) a few months after the And the impulse of these progressive Catholics is to council ended, the archbishop was sitting with do exactly what their counterparts have done in the his retinue, and a monsignor spoke up: secular culture: Knock down everything they find left “Shouldn’t we do something about the council?” standing from the old days.

As a result, the reception of the council by “libTo which the archbishop shot back, “You do erals” amounted to no more than the commandeersomething about the council.”

It was this failure of the Church’s leaders to ing of a few phrases—such as “people of God” and explain the council that allowed it to be so easily “signs of the times”—out of context. It was time to hijacked by progressives. Unfortunately, the story break the fetters. A loud “Non serviam!” erupted doesn’t end there. Powerful mid-century prelates like within the Church, along with a surrender to the secFrancis Cardinal Spellman of New York and James ular world, which itself was going through a massive Pope Paul VI presides over a meeting Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles, presiding as they identity crisis. These dissidents conjured away the did over an American Church that was a great “succouncil’s demand for inner reform and apostolic of the Second Vatican Council. cess story,” didn’t appreciate a deeper problem that zeal, substituting in its place a generic Christianity had been working through the Church for decades and was about to turn it upside down. that is indistinguishable from bourgeois liberalism’s understanding of the common decencies.

That problem was described by the great French Thomist Jacques Maritain who, in The As for the Catholic laity: Do not underestimate the role of rising affluence in the troubles Peasant of the Garonne (1966), asked why so many priests and religious took such a bad since the council. The post-conciliar mischief was initiated by disaffected clergy, but during turn even before the council ended. The explanation, according to Maritain, was a malaise these years, an increasingly wealthy and assimilated laity was perfectly happy to follow the that had been building for half a century. In the preconciliar Church there had been a kind path of least resistance marked by dissident theologians. In 1937, the Protestant thinker H. of “practical Manichaeism,” which involved “purely moralistic prohibitions, injunctions to Richard Niebuhr drew attention to a soft-core spirituality among Americans: “A God without flight, habits of fear, disciplines of denial in which love had no part, where science was held wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations the enemy of religion...the almost exclusive recourse to disciplinary measures, the spiritual of a Christ without a cross.” Was it likely that Catholics would be immune once they emerged impoverishment of the laity, who thought the call to the perfection of charity is the exclusive from the ethnic ghetto, moved to the suburbs, and joined the mainstream? The Book of concern of monks.... [A]ll this was going to build up, in the unconscious of a great many Revelation’s warnings to the Christians at Laodicea—who “say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, Christians, clerics and laymen, an enormous weight of frustration, disillusionment, repressed and I need nothing...’”—no doubt find application in every age but have particular reledoubts, resentment, bitterness, healthy desires sacrificed . . . . ” vance for the contemporary Catholic who has made his comfort zone the ninth Beatitude.

“Then,” Maritain continues, “comes the aggiornamento. Why be astonished that at the It is easy to look at the Church today and be pessimistic. There’s an easygoing spiritualvery announcement of a Council...the enormous unconscious weight which I have just menity among the laity, disaffection and heterodoxy among the clergy, an episcopate that veers tioned bursts into the open in a kind of explosion that does no honor to human intelligence?” between laxity and damage control, and, of course, the scandals. Looked at in a certain way, Romano Guardini similarly noticed in German theology professors decades before the counpost–Vatican II Catholicism would all seem a downward spiral, a crisis from which there’s no cil a Catholicism that was merely liberalism kept in check by a reluctant obedience to dogma. obvious exit. But any such pessimism is misplaced. First, as someone once said, the Church In the very heart of many religious orders and theology faculties, the Faith was experienced isn’t a museum of saints but a hospital for sinners. This includes all of us. Human failure will as a fetter, an imposed burden, a set of rules. Do you remember the “bad” nun in the movie always be generously spread among the faithful. Christ warned about this explicitly. It isn’t The Song of Bernadette? It would have been impossible to remain in this state, council or no clear that the Church today is any worse off than it was in 500 or 1500. In fact, there’s probcouncil. A crisis was inevitable, and perhaps not entirely regrettable. If the journals of the late ably now a higher proportion of good bishops, dedicated priests, and devout laity.

But history has even more important lessons. Christopher Dawson once identified six great Alexander Schmemann, a gifted Russian Orthodox priest and theologian, are any guide, one periods of Church history, and each one begins with a crisis. Nearly all of the 21 ecumenical counproblem with modern Eastern Orthodoxy has been the lack of a crisis, resulting in an increascils have upset the Church’s equilibrium. The aftermaths of Nicea and Chalcedon shook the Church ingly ossified, ahistorical religiosity that has no idea how to engage the modern world.

Traditionalist Catholics who blame all the Church’s recent problems on Vatican II should ponto its foundations in a way that makes recent decades look like a tea party. That most of the Church der a few questions: If the Church was in such good didn’t immediately “get” the teachings of Vatican II shape before the council, why did things fall apart so also has ample precedent. The same happened after rapidly in the 1960s? How do you account for the fact the Council of Trent, whose decrees were ignored in that the rebellion was the work of bishops, theoloFrance for almost a century. St. Augustine reminds us gians, and priests who came out of the Tridentine systhat the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church is slow, tem? Had all those priests and nuns who suddenly often imperceptible, but without interruption. wanted to be laicized received adequate formation And just as the Council of Trent was implementunder the old system? Why was there so much dissated—in fact, rescued—by a few great popes, especialisfaction? It won’t do simply to rattle off statistics ly St. Pius V, we now have in the pontificate of John about the decline of the Church since the council.

Paul II the council’s definitive interpretation. One There’s no question that there were good and holy reason for Wojtyla’s election in 1978 was the conCatholics in the old days—even some saints—and clave’s awareness of his vigorous promotion of the that since the council we have lost much that is good. council’s decrees in the Archdiocese of Kraków. Even But there were also problems waiting to erupt. Might before the council ended, Bishop Wojtyla told his not the Magisterium have been correct in addressing flock, “I want to awaken the Archdiocese of Kraków to them in the council’s documents? the true meaning of the Council, so that we may Called by the council to full spiritual adultbring it into our lives.” Such words were not heard on hood, a significant number of priests and religious this side of the Atlantic. Catholic dissenters who cominstead broke out in adolescent rebellion, a displain that this pope has “betrayed” the council forget charge of decades of narrow, rules-based formathat John Paul was an enthusiastic participant in all tion and institutional frustration. It seemed that four sessions, strongly aligning with the “progresthe preconciliar Church had produced legions of sives” against the ecclesial bureaucrats who wanted clerics who were incapable of intelligently and simply to reiterate doctrine in the accepted neoprayerfully studying the council’s documents. And scholastic format. And he hasn’t changed at all.

The most extraordinary—and providential— their bishops certainly weren’t going to insist. fact of recent Church history is the alignment of Imagine Father Burner in J. F. Powers’s devastating Karol Wojtyla and Vatican II. From the very beginshort story “The Prince of Darkness” (1947) pickning, when he was a philology student in the late ing up Gaudium et Spes; he would quickly fix 1930s, Wojtyla had been pursuing a philosophical himself a drink and turn on the television.

The late philosopher David Stove, an acute diagproject that dovetailed remarkably with the connostician of the modern age, writes about how what cerns of the council. He was ready for Vatican II in An image of Pope John XXIII hangs from passes for much of modern philosophy is no more a way that few other bishops were: He put a strong than an acting out of a horror of all things Victorian. mark on the council’s three most important docuSt. Peter’s after his beatification by This syndrome has its counterpart in the modern ments—Lumen Gentium, Dignitatis Humanae, Pope John Paul II Sept. 3, 2000.

VATICAN II, page 17 Catholic Church. Among Catholics of a certain age,

14

Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

Imaging the future church

Guest Commentary Of stem cells and fairy tales “PEOPLE NEED A FAIRY TALE,” Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, told Washington Post reporter Rick Weiss, explaining why scientists have allowed society to believe wrongly that stem cells are likely to effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease. “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.”

Or maybe Big Biotech needs access to taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell and cloning research—private investors generally give companies engaged in these endeavors a cold shoulder—and they are using famous grief stricken families like the Reagans to do their political lifting.

If true, it demonstrates a depth of insincerity and disingenuousness that is as cruel as it is unjustifiable.

Here’s the story: Researchers have apparently known for some time that embryonic stem cells will not be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s, because as two researchers told a Senate subcommittee in May, it is a “whole brain disease,” rather than a cellular disorder (such as Parkinson’s).

This has generally been kept out of the news. But now, Washington Post correspondent Rick Weiss, has blown the lid off of the scam, reporting that while useful abstract information might be gleaned about Alzheimer’s through embryonic stem cell research, “stem cell experts confess . . . that of all the diseases that may be someday cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer’s is among the least likely to benefit.”

But people like Nancy Reagan have been allowed to believe otherwise, “a distortion” Weiss writes that “is not being aggressively corrected by scientists.” Why? The false story line helps generate public support for the biotech political agenda. As Weiss noted, “It [Nancy Reagan’s statement in support of ESCR] is the kind of advocacy that researchers have craved for years, and none wants to slow its momentum.”

This is a scandal. Misrepresentation by omission corrupts one of the primary purposes of science, which is to provide society objective information about the state of scientific knowledge without regard to the political consequences. Such data then serves as a foundation for crucial moral analysis about whether and how controversial fields of scientific inquiry should be regulated, a debate in which all are entitled to participate. But we can’t do so intelligently if we are not told the truth.

Some scientists have become alarmed by how politicized science has become. As Roger Pielke, Jr., Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado warned two years ago in the prestigious science journal Nature, “Many scientists [now] willingly adopt tactics of demagoguery and character assassination as well as, or even instead of, reasoned argument,” in promoting their views. This politicization of science, he worried, has led some scientists, “not to mention lawyers and those with commercial interests,” to “manipulate ‘facts’ to support” their advocacy, “undermining the scientific community’s ability to advise policy makers.” Consequently, he warned, science “is becoming yet another playing field for power politics, complete with the trappings of political spin and a win-at-all-costs attitude.”

Political science has gotten so bad that a few biotech advocates have resorted to outright misrepresentation. One of the most notorious of these cases occurred in Australia where Alan Trounson, a leading stem cell researcher (as reported by the Australian on August 27, 2002) admitted that he released a misleading video to “win over politicians” during that country’s Parliamentary debate over embryonic stem cell research. The video depicted a disabled rat regaining the ability to walk after being injected with embryonic stem cells—or so Trounson claimed. In actuality, the experiment used cadaveric fetal tissue from five-to-nine-week old aborted human fetuses, an altogether different approach that was irrelevant to the embryonic stem cell debate. Parliamentarians were furious, forcing a highly embarrassed Trounson to apologize abjectly.

If biotechnology advocates would allow a grieving widow to believe cruel untruths about the potential for stem cells to cure Alzheimer’s, what other fairy tales are they telling us—or allowing us to believe—to win the political debate? This is a crucial question, given that the decisions we make today will have a tremendous impact on the morality of the twenty-first century.

The time has more than passed for the media to do some serious digging.

Wesley J. Smith, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His next book, Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World will be published in the fall. Reprinted with permission from National Review.

I read with nostalgia the July 30th centerpiece essay by Charles Fracchia, “A Great Sense of Loss: Catholicism in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1965.” As a native San Franciscan born in the 1940’s, I share that past.

However, I do not share his sense of loss. I look to the promise of the future. The old predictable, comfortable and symbolic era is indeed gone and with it thankfully has gone the blind and unconscious obedience, the rigorous and meaningless rituals, and the forced and useless separateness.

And I say, “Amen.”

The Church is not the hierarchy and its symbols of structure, order, obedience and separateness. We, the people, are the Church. I hope that someday bishops will be gone; dioceses will disappear and parish boundaries will be irrelevant. I hope that there will be no “laity.” I hope that priests will be anyone who “bears the name of Jesus on his forehead.” I hope that all will be followers of Christ, and the real Church, His kingdom, will be born in America.

I look forward, not backward, to the day when He will dwell amongst us all and we “inherit the kingdom prepared for you.”

Michael McGreevy San Francisco

Clerical climatologists

L E T T E R S

My parish of St. Patrick in Larkspur recently held a discussion session concerning the problems currently facing our Church. Lack of religious vocations, the exodus of young people from weekly Mass and other topics were discussed.

I read on page four of the July 16 issue of Catholic San Francisco that, “The chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ domestic and international policy committees sent a joint letter to members of the U.S. Senate urging action on global warming…” The existence of global warming is not a fact.

Debate on the subject is ongoing.

I believe that our parish discussions were much more on point than were the bishops’ stab at regulating the weather.

The bishops should stick to subjects about which they have knowledge and can actually do something about.

Richard Austin Corte Madera Ed. Note: Committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops cover a full range of issues facing the Church and contemporary society. Concern for environmental issues is well within the Catholic realm.

Archbishop’s leadership I want to express my appreciation for the Archbishop’s article, “Catholic teaching in the public square - Part II.” (CSF – July 30) The letter written by the 48 Catholic members of Congress reminded me of the “man who didn’t” get caught in

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adultery. The woman caught in adultery had her sins forgiven. But what of the man who continued on without being confronted with any opportunity to repent?

What becomes of those who are allowed to continue in error, unchecked?

And what if that “error” is equivalent to 1.5 million innocent pre-born children?

And what is the accountability before God of those ministers of Truth who did not use the God-given authority of their office to prevent the “error” from continuing?

It is with great difficulty that I realized that the souls of those pro-aborts (doctors, politicians, lobbyists, advocates, fundraisers) are as precious to God as the souls of the innocent. (In my estimation, the women who choose abortion are victims of abortion as well as their unborn children.) How clear the issue becomes when you consider what will enable those individuals to enjoy eternal salvation and what puts their eternal salvation at risk.

What minister of the soul can ignore the dangers of a soul in error and still remain faithful to his priestly ministry?

The issue of denying communion to Catholic political figures who legislate in favor of abortion, is not just to stop the scandal of their witness to error, but also to call them to repentance, just like the “woman caught in adultery.”

Finally we must ask, how will history judge Church leaders who remain silent in the face of such evil as the evil of abortion?

Again, thank you to the Archbishop for his leadership in articulating these Truths.

Respectfully submitted.

Dolores Meehan San Francisco

Politicians bear responsibility

Our Archbishop has asserted a position on the treatment of Catholic politicians who publicly advocate abortion on demand.

Through most of his June 30 column “Catholic Teaching in the Public Square- Part II” he writes about different people having different views on the subject and appropriately debunks the concept of equivalence among the many aspects and issues in Catholic social teachings. He then quotes Pope John Paul II and his predecessor Paul VI, who each exercised true leadership with strong and clear statements of Catholic principles on abortion. Then, in conclusion, he defers to a contemporary pabulum, effectively, if not actually, condoning the analogous glib mush espoused by the subject Catholic politicians. How does this make actively pro-life politicians like Ray Flynn (a Democrat) feel? I remember Catholic friends who had divorced and remarried being told by priests not to present themselves for Communion. Where’s the consistency here? The Catholic pro-abortion politicians bear major responsibility for the deaths of millions of innocent children, certainly a far more serious offense. It is terribly, terribly disheartening to those sincere Catholics actively trying to support the Pope’s Evangelium Vitae, and to all who feel the best and last hope for the advancement of Western Civilization is our Catholic Church.

G.P. Heckert San Mateo

Never, not ever?

Can you prevail upon Archbishop Levada to add a Part III to his series on Catholic teaching in the public square?

I thought I followed him, and Evangelium Vitae, which he quotes in his penultimate paragraph, saying, “in the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is never licit to obey it, or to take part in a LETTERS, page 21

August 13, 2004

Catholic San Francisco

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Guest Commentary

Even our virtues must be burned away I sit on the board of Dayspring Homes a not-for-prof- ing and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up We give lip service to the it corporation that runs residential homes for mentally chal- the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she idea that every individual lenged adults. The founder of this organization is a devout, recognized at once as those who...had always had a little of has intrinsic worth, but our passionate, indefatigable nun. Though Dayspring accepts everything and the God-given wit to use it right...They were actions belie the sentiresidents from all religious backgrounds, the atmosphere in marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable ment. The notion that the homes is distinctly Catholic. as they had always been for good order and common sense every individual from the Recently, I attended a Mass for the residents, employ- and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she time of his or her concepees and board members of Dayspring Homes. Though I had could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their tion matters to God is as spent time with the residents before, I had never had the virtues were being burned away. radical an idea today as it Jennifer Ferrara privilege of worshipping with them. As I watched them Mrs. Turpin pities all those who have not had her luck was in Jesus’ time. Jesus, receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, I was deeply in life. In fact, “to help anybody out that needed it was her in fact, takes it one step moved by their obvious, if somewhat boisterous, reverence. philosophy of life.” But her pity is the face of contempt. further and proclaims those who are of no value to society are The look of sheer, childlike joy on their faces was unlike She pities those to whom she feels superior, those whom precisely those to whom the kingdom of God belongs. “Let anything I have ever witnessed. she has determined serve no use. Yet, those whom society the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such For several years, I have taken a group of students sees as serving no purpose are often the ones closest to God belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 19:14). As von from my children’s school to one of the Dayspring homes because they recognize their dependence upon Him. Balthasar points out, the value of childhood lies in its “useto help out with cleaning and yard work. Every time, lessness.” Children understand they are wholly dependseveral mothers have told me they make their children ent upon another. A culture that does not understand the go so that their kids might see how fortunate they are We do not learn how blessed we are importance of “uselessness” (utter dependence) will be a in comparison to others. It is so easy, they point out, culture in which abortion is widespread, and mentally to take all that we have for granted. Though I have from the mentally challenged, we challenged babies will be the first to go. That which is never had the courage to tell them so, these well not useful is dispensable, and the unborn are useful only meaning moms are mistaken. We do not learn how learn how small and how deficient we insofar as they serve our needs, which is why, as a sociblessed we are from the mentally challenged, we learn ety, we both dote upon and kill our children depending how small and how deficient we are in comparison. are in comparison. They are the saints upon the value we assign to them.

They are the saints who reveal to us our shortcomings.

Above all else, we value technological knowlWhen I think about my experiences with the who reveal to us our shortcomings. edge and power because they give us the illusion we mentally challenged, I am reminded of a short story, can control our own fate; there is little room for the Revelation, by the great Catholic writer Flannery weakest among us. As Pope John Paul II writes in O’Connor. The main character, Mrs. Turpin, is a middle- Meanwhile, those traits which we admire most in ourselves Evangelium Vitae, human “conscience itself, darkened as it class, Southern, church-going, white woman who in her and others—intelligence, wealth, self-reliance, common were by . . . widespread conditioning, is finding it increasown words has “a little of everything, and a good disposi- sense, respectability—become occasions for sin. They cre- ingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what tion besides.” Whenever she thinks about her blessings, she ate barriers in our relationship with God because they concerns the basic value of human life.” If we are ever brims with gratitude. She just feels like shouting, “Thank become points of pride and prejudice. We shall have to give again to see clearly, our “virtues”—those qualities we you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is! I could them up (or, at least, our reliance upon them) in order to admire most in this society—will have to be burned away. have been different.” enter the kingdom of God. The mentally challenged can help us regain our sight.

However, this sanguine view of herself and her life is When I am with my mentally challenged friends, I am They remind us that existence, itself, is intrinsically beautiful shattered while she sits in a doctor’s waiting room reflect- acutely aware of what is lacking in my relationship with because every life has been created by God. My friends are ing upon her good fortune in comparison to the poor crea- God—childlikeness, amazement and wonderment—qualities not to be pitied. God chose them from all eternity to be His tures who are waiting with her. Suddenly, unprovoked, a which are so much in evidence when they receive the saints among us and to teach us what is truly important. I am very unattractive, upper middle-class white girl attacks her Eucharist. In Unless You Become Like This Child, theologian indeed blessed to know them and to learn from them somesaying, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old Hans Urs Von Bathasar says childlikeness is a sense of the thing about the true nature of sin and virtue, faith and love. wart hog.” Mrs. Turpin knows this is a message from Jesus, intrinsic worth of each moment of existence. According to him, and she is furious. She demands to know what He means by Jesus, Himself, looks up to the Father with an eternal childlike Jennifer Ferrara, a Catholic convert, and former such a statement. The answer comes in the form of a vision. amazement: “this amazement derives from the much deeper Lutheran pastor, is the co-editor of “The Catholic She sees a purple streak in the sky: amazement of the eternal Child who, in the absolute Spirit of Mystique: Fourteen Women Find Fulfillment Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward Love, marvels at Love itself as it permeates and transcends all in the Catholic Church” (Our Sunday Visitor). heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean that is.” Therefore, to be Christ-like is to be childlike.

Reprinted with permission from The Cresset, for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers Our culture, the culture of death, does not value those in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shout- qualities that make people childlike and, therefore, Christ-like.

1409 Chapel Dr., Valparaiso, IN 46383.

Spirituality

Helping create a symphony of prayer Theologians make an important distinction between what they call “devotional” and “liturgical” prayer.

“Devotional” prayer, they tell us, is private in nature and is meant to help sustain us personally on the spiritual journey.

“Liturgical” prayer, by contrast, is public by nature, the church’s prayer (not our own), is universal in scope, and is intended for the needs of the world.

We don’t always grasp this, to the detriment of both kinds of prayer. Perhaps we might understand this better if we put different names to these. What helps clarify things for me are the terms “affective” and “priestly” prayer.

“Affective” prayer refers to private prayer, prayer that’s about us, focused precisely on bringing us and our feelings to God. “Priestly” prayer, on the other hand, is not about us, is about the world, is public in nature, and it doesn’t have to be meaningful personally to be of value. But how can this be? How can prayer be of value if it isn’t personally meaningful?

An analogy might be helpful. Imagine you’re part of a symphony orchestra, playing an instrument that contributes to an overall musical score. Night in and night out, you’re playing the same piece in the same theater, helping to create a beautiful symphony for the audience.

The public prayer of the church, priestly prayer, works exactly like that. It’s a symphony intended for the benefit of everyone and open to everyone.

This has a number of ramifications. First of all, it clarifies some age-old questions about who benefits from our prayer and who doesn’t. Are people who have others to pray for them luckier than those who don’t? Imagine two people, both in pain and in need of prayer. The first is a very well-loved individual, part of a big and loving community, perhaps even a public figure, and he has many people praying for him. The second person isn’t as lucky. She’s

alone, without family and friends, unknown to the world, with nobody to pray for her. Are we to believe that the first person has drawn a lucky straw and will benefit from all the prayers offered for him, while the second will languish alone, without the benefit of prayer, since she has nobody to pray for her?

No. That’s not the way prayer works, at least not the “priestly” prayer of the church. It creates a symphony that’s intended for everyone, includes everyone, and benefits everyone — the loved, the unloved, the lucky, and the unlucky — all equally. When a symphony is being played, it’s not selective or discriminatory; the music is for everybody.

Granted, in its explicit expression, our “priestly” prayer might sometimes be directed toward the needs of one particular person (“Let us pray for Martha who’s ill and in the hospital”), but everyone, Martha included, is given the benefit of the symphony. Indeed, such an understanding of “priestly” prayer should challenge us precisely to continually stretch ourselves in terms of the universal intent of our public prayer when we gather as church. Our public prayers on a Sunday are not so much intended for some individual Martha who’s ill and in pain, as for the whole world in all its ills and pains, Martha and her pains included.

This analogy of public prayer as a symphony sheds light on another issue as well, namely, on why our public, priestly prayer does not have to be meaningful to us personally to be valuable.

Imagine again that you’re part of an orchestra that, night in and night out, plays the same musical score.

You’ve played the same piece many times over and, most evenings, are bored with it. You’d love, for your own stimulation, to play something else which would give you more energy. But the symphony isn’t yours, isn’t intended for

you, and depends on many things beyond your tastes and preferences. Your participation is in function of something else. You’re playing this for somebody else. So you play the same piece, night in Father and night out, not for Ron Rolheiser your own benefit, but for the audience. You contribute your efforts to the symphony for the benefit of others, even as you yourself would prefer to be playing something else.

That’s how “priestly” prayer works; it makes a symphony of prayer for the benefit of everyone. That’s the intent of all Sunday services and all liturgical prayers of the church.

What constitutes “priestly” prayer? It’s the public prayer of our churches, the Eucharist, the sacraments, Services of the Word, Sunday worship. It’s also the Office of the Church (the Liturgy of the Hours, the Breviary). All of these, by essence and definition, are public prayers, intended first of all not for the private nourishment of those praying them, but as a symphony of prayer for the benefit of the whole world.

The next time you’re at a church service and telling yourself that this isn’t nurturing you, remember that the function of an orchestra is, first of all, not to entertain itself but to make music for others.

Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author.

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Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Scripture

Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56 A READING FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION (RV 11:19A; 12:1-6A, 10AB) God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth. She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne. The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed One.” RESPONSORIAL PSALM (PS 45:10, 11, 12, 16) R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

The queen takes her place at your right hand in gold of Ophir.

R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

Hear, O daughter, and see; turn your ear, forget your people and your father’s house.

R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

So shall the king desire your beauty; for he is your lord.

R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

They are borne in with gladness and joy; they enter the palace of the king.

R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

A READING FROM THE FIRST LETTER OF SAINT PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS (1 COR 15:20-27) Brothers and sisters: Christ has been

raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through man, the resurrection of the dead came also through man. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order: Christ the firstfruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ; then comes the end, when he hands over the Kingdom to his God and Father, when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for “he subjected everything under his feet.”

A READING FROM THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE (LK 1:39-56) Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

And Mary said: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”

Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

FATHER GERARD O’ROURKE

We still call her blessed It is always a blessing when a great Feast day like the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on a Sunday, as it does this year! This day celebrates the completion of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary on this earth and her homecoming to join her Son, Jesus, in the eternal life of Heaven.

The Scripture Readings for this Feast Day capture some of the apocalyptic, poetic language of the Book of Revelation. This kind of language empowers us to get a glimpse of the bigger than life reality of the place of Mary in the divine plan of salvation. She and her Son Jesus are at the center of the battle for Redemption with the “huge red dragon,” the ancient symbol of chaos and evil. Mary is seen as the new Eve who will thwart and conquer the evil one. The dragon is identified with the Serpent of the story in the Book of Genesis. This first Reading from Revelation provides startling language almost begging to be filmed by a genius like George Lucas.

In the Second Reading, Jesus, the Son of Mary, is seen as the second Adam who has transcended death by his resurrection from the dead. Through the sin of the old Adam, all of us die. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the new Adam, all of us will be redeemed and receive resurrection at the end of time. We must wait for this moment of the general Resurrection to receive ours. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, has received her resurrection in her Assumption into Heaven! She is already at home!

All this we must admit is very heady stuff.

It challenges the range and limits of our Faith. It definitely places us outside the ken of safe theology or manageable mystery!

And yet people of faith have resonated to the mysterious challenge of the Assumption from the beginning of the Church. When it was defined by Pope Pius XII on Nov. 1, 1950 the impetus came from the wishes of the faithful throughout the world!

Today most Christians, especially all Catholics, and all Orthodox Christian people embrace and celebrate this great event with very special devotion and love. In some areas of the Church, the Feast of the Assumption is aligned to the devotions of the people at the

The Apocrypha Q. In our interfaith Bible-study group, we frequently run into problems with the apocrypha, books that are in the Catholic Bible but not in the Protestant Bible.

What exactly are these books? (Florida) A. Catholic Bibles contain all or part of several books in the Hebrew Scriptures that are not recognized in Protestant biblical tradition. These books include Tobias, Judith, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, Ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Wisdom, and parts of Daniel and Esther.

Typically, Protestants refer to them as apocryphal (“hidden”) books. Catholic biblical literature generally calls them deuterocanonical, or second canon, books.

Most of the Old Testament was, of course, written in some idiom of Hebrew. Eventually a Greek translation was needed because of the growing presence of Greek people and culture in Jewish territories.

Probably around 130 B.C., the most influential translation of the Old Testament into Greek, called the Septuagint, was completed in Alexandria, North Africa, and it included the so-called apocryphal books. This was the version widely accepted by the early Christian church. Most quotations from the Old Testament in the Gospels, for example, whether spoken by Jesus or someone else, are based on the Septuagint.

The aprocryphal books were not accepted, however, by the Pharisees, who, about the year 100 A.D., established the list of canonical books for dispersed Jewish communities. Because they were written in Greek and because they originated rather late in the Old Testament

harvest time and the special joys and celebrations associated with thanksgiving for a good harvest. This fits in very appropriately with the spirit of joy and celebration that is very much a part of the Assumption theme.

There is a tradition that Mary lived her last days in Ephesus. It was a city associated with John the Apostle whom Jesus requested to take care of his Mother. The tradition is that her last house and home was in Ephesus which is in Turkey, a Muslim country. For many years Muslim women of that locality have taken care of Mary’s last home on earth..

May their generosity through the intercession of Mary be a source of healing among all of us Christians and Muslims worldwide.

As we reflect again on the Gospel Reading, may our hearts be touched with the powerful words of Mary in the Magnificat, the great poem spoken by Mary on her visit to Elizabeth: “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” and “from this day all generations will call me blessed.” Once again on this Assumption Day we of this generation continue to call her Blessed, as we celebrate and acknowledge her presence with God in her celestial home.

We in this Archdiocese have a very special reason to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption because our cathedral church is dedicated to Saint Mary of the Assumption.

May we reach out to our great patroness on this day to bring blessings and peace to all of us in the Archdiocese but also to all of the people who live in our Archdiocese.

Assumption Day is a feast day for praise, for victory and for thanksgiving. As Mary speaks to us in her Magnificat in the Gospel reading we are awed by her sense of presence; by her comprehensive vision of her place in history; by her commitment to all of us people on earth and especially for those of us who are going through times of weakness and lowliness! Mary is truly a woman to reach out to, to emulate and above all to appreciate, to acknowledge and to honor. Let our hearts and souls ring out to her in love - Hail Holy Queen.

Father Gerard O’Rourke is Parochial Vicar at Saint Gabriel Parish.

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QUESTION CORNER Dietzen Father John

period, perhaps 150 or 200 years before Christ, it was not considered proper to include them in the Jewish Scripture.

The history of these apocryphal books in Christianity is long and complex. Eventually, however, in the 16th century, the Protestant reformers desired to return as much as possible to biblical purity. Accepting only the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament, without the books in the Greek version, seemed one way to do that. Thus began this difference between “Protestant” and “Catholic” Bibles.

Interestingly, the aprocrypha often found their way into Bibles published under Protestant auspices. Martin Luther himself included them as an appendix to his translation, noting that they “are useful and good to be read.”

Early English Bibles, including the King James version, regularly contained the apocrypha at least in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments. Only in 1644, under Puritan influence, were these books excluded.

All the books discussed above are considered apocryphal by Protestants and recognized as authentic Scripture by Catholics.

August 13, 2004

San Francisco Archbishop Joseph T. McGucken (far right) in Rome with bishops gathered for the Second Vatican Council.

Vatican II . . .

■ Continued from page 13 and Gaudium et Spes. And as pope he has given us a gloss on the council, starting with those astonishing 130 Wednesday audiences on the “theology of the body,” whose depth and originality exceed anything that has come out of the papacy since Leo XIII, or perhaps even St. Gregory the Great.

This pope has taken the documents of Vatican II for what they are: marching orders for the new millennium. And he has expanded their richness and application. Whoever the next pope may be, he won’t have to do much writing. The Church’s middle management has been slow to absorb John Paul’s writings— in many chanceries and seminaries they remain, in Mary Ann Glendon’s phrase, “unopened letters”—but this won’t be determinative. They have touched enough intelligent Catholics, especially among the laity, to change the Church in the long run.

This is how the Holy Spirit works. Two thousand years have taught us the Church’s remarkable recuperative powers. And whether it was the sixth or the 16th century, spiritual renewal has always been a matter of grassroots movements inspired by and working with the papacy. The difference now is that whereas for Gregory the Great and Pius V the agents of evangelization were monks or Jesuits, for John Paul II it will be the laity.

The arsenal for this renewal will be the documents of Vatican II and the writings of this pope, which form a perfect continuum.

Both are a call to personal conversion—to a maturity in self-giving—that goes far beyond simply obeying laws and commandments. The question for each orthodox Catholic is whether to take up the Magisterium’s challenge or be content with the “fundamental option” of the rich young man, who is more comfortable with a religion based on rules than on self-donation. Of course, the challenge is hardly new. Sts. Paul and Augustine taught that the fruit of Christian conversion is a new freedom wherein the rules (important as they are) hardly matter. This is the only possible meaning of Augustine’s “Love God and do what you will.” But this was not the message of Tridentine Catholicism, and in fact, not since Augustine has there been so much emphasis in sound Catholic theology on personal freedom.

The new Christian humanism proposed by the council and John Paul II is the only possible solution to the crisis within the Church. The modern world wants “freedom.”

The rebels within the Church want “freedom.” Complaints about the Church are mainly about its moral teachings, which are perceived as putting a lid on everyone’s freedom.

This problem isn’t going to be solved by a further insistence on the rules, but rather by a call to holiness and a positive vision of the human person and the uses of his freedom.

This is what the pontificate of John Paul II has been all about. Those who view him as an authoritarian who keeps tightening the screws are not paying attention. This papacy is all about freedom. But the pope insists that authentic freedom is based on the truth about the human person; otherwise, it will be a counterfeit and make us unhappy. Building on the council, he has proposed a sweeping vision of the human person that invites us into depths barely touched by the old scholastic casuistry. Right now, those in the Church who are shaping its future are busy unpacking these teachings.

John Paul’s writings basically try to answer the question, What is man? Having lived under the two worst totalitarianisms that the 20th century had to offer, he’s convinced that the principal philosophical error of modern times is a misreading of the human person. Today, either man is a thing—a chemical accident, a mere collation of atoms—or he’s a Cartesian ghost inhabiting a machine. The first reading leads straight to the concentration camps and abortion mills. If man is no more than disposable biological matter, then disposable biological matter he will be. The second reading, which is that of dissenters from the Church’s sexual teachings, treats the body as an extrinsic object that can be manipulated for whatever purpose. Put another way: It erroneously supposes that what we do with our bodies has little to do with who we are. This led to the sexual revolution.

The pope answers the Darwinian proposal of man as a “thing” by insisting on our mystery and transcendence. Human creativity—everything from the Sistine Chapel to the infield fly rule—cannot be a mere epiphenomenon of matter. Nor can human love. We are created in the image of a Trinitarian God,

Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (later John XXIII) with school children.

three persons in the act of eternal, mutual self-giving. We have the “law of gift” inscribed in our being. There are two sentences from Gaudium et Spes that John Paul quotes repeatedly; they are the leitmotiv of his pontificate. First: Man “can fully find his true self only in the sincere gift of self.” In other words, contrary to our hedonist culture’s notions of happiness, we find our humanity more in self-giving than self-assertion, in relationship rather than self-sufficiency. And the second is like it: “Christ the new Adam...fully reveals man to himself.” The truth about ourselves is ultimately not a proposition but a Person, who Himself is defined by total self-donation.

As for the second modern error about man—the Cartesian ghost in the machine—the pope’s answer is to be found in his voluminous writings about marriage and sexuality. These writings are extraordinarily important. They are the best response to the modern world’s principal objection to the Catholic Church. As early as 1926, G. K. Chesterton predicted that the “next great heresy” would be an attack on sexual morality, and in recent decades every institution has surrendered except the Church. The Church needs to explain her teachings about sex to the world—and also to herself, since it’s safe to say that three-quarters of American Catholics don’t accept them. This should be the first area of the Church’s self-evangelization, and it is going to be mainly the work of the laity.

Pope Paul VI presents the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity to San Francisco’s own Catherine Kennedy McCarthy. Mrs. McCarthy died at the age of 97 in 2002.

First, what’s the position of dissenting theologians regarding sex? They want to baptize the sexual morality of the postKinsey culture. How do they get there? By arguing the primacy of conscience (the autonomous self as a little god, decreeing right and wrong); by divorcing personhood from the body (a Cartesian anthropology that posits a free-floating “I” that has nothing to do with one’s concrete acts); and by consulting “experience” rather than nature (which in practice allows the three concupiscences to run on their own program).

The pope’s responses to the dissenters, and to the culture in general, are deep and convincing. First, he argues that the purpose of a conscience isn’t to manufacture the truth but to locate it. Truth is something we discover rather than invent. And once we do find a truth, there isn’t merely an obedient and grudging application, but rather a creative response that translates it into positive virtues. Second, the pope vigorously rejects the idea of man as a vaporous “subject” that happens to have a body. We are our bodies, and we are what we do with our bodies. And when it comes to sex, our body has a language, a nuptial meaning that expresses the “law of gift” written at the core of our being. The pope insists that sex is such a deep and wonderful thing that when you use it improperly inside or outside marriage, making your partner an object, a vehicle of pleasure, the result will be the “culture of death” that’s all around us.

In fact, if Catholic dissenters were serious about consulting “experience,” they would look honestly at the results of the sexual revolution. What they would see are the results of a denial of nature, of the “truth” about our sexuality. The question finally is whether we create ourselves on our own or receive our nature as gift. Adam and Eve chose the first option;

Catholic San Francisco

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Archbishop Karol Wojtyla receives the cardinal’s red biretta from Pope Paul VI June 26, 1967.

their sin was not about an inordinate love of apples but about freeing themselves from the “givens” God put in their nature.

It is an impulse shared by heterodox theologians. But we’ve discovered—as did our first parents—that this “liberation” is a false freedom. The pope argues that the human person is truly free only when he acts on truths that are received and not invented. The perfection of freedom doesn’t consist in radical self-creation but in the choice to live in accord with our nature.

One of the hopeful signs in the Church today is that energized laity like Christopher West, Janet Smith, Mary Beth Bonacci, John Haas, and others are out there explaining to audiences the beauty of the pope’s “theology of the body.” There already is some recognition among twenty-something Catholics that the baby boomers didn’t exactly solve the mystery of sex and that it must mean something more than an exchange of pleasure between consenting adults. The pope has the answer: It is an exchange of persons, and its ramifications are never entirely private. The health of the entire culture depends on it. Which is why the pope has spent so much intellectual energy explaining sex to a culture trying to evacuate it of its mystery and transcendence.

But this pontificate is about much more than sex and marriage. It is a clarion call to evangelize the culture, which John Paul II insists is what really drives history. Catholics have to stop being preoccupied with intra-Church issues and recover a sense of having a message for the world. For centuries— maybe since the Treaty of Westphalia—the Faith has been privatized, so that many Catholics think it’s mainly something you carry around inside your head. Vatican II proposed evangelization as the deepest identity of the Church, but it’s going to require some digging to recover this lost truth.

We need a great relearning guided by the true “spirit” of Vatican II. The Church is going to have to rebuild itself from the bottom up by personal decisions made by Catholics inspired by the rich teachings of the Magisterium. The three most important realities in the Church today are a great teaching pontificate, the lay initiatives at the grass roots, and the new religious orders whose demographics are the reverse of the older ones. History tells us that this is more than enough for a new springtime of faith.

But for the renewal to gain momentum, there’s one change demanded by the council that has yet to happen: the retirement of the old clericalism, the idea that priests and nuns constitute the “real” Church. Most laity still have the odd notion that they must wait for a signal from the bishop or local pastor to do anything. The council taught that if you have the Faith, you spread it. John Paul’s understanding of this point may come from his experience in Poland, where visible, clerical-mandated lay associations were virtually impossible under the Communist authorities; individual Catholics had to show initiative and not wait for clerical permission to live their Christian vocation.

Finally, a Catholic restoration will depend on individuals who answer the call to holiness. Cardinal Ratzinger, who has been more sober than John Paul in his assessment of the aftermath of the council, knows his Church history well enough to sense that the legacy of an ecumenical council is always at risk: “Whether or not the Council becomes a positive force in the history of the Church depends only indirectly on texts and organizations; the crucial question is whether there are individuals—saints—who, by their personal willingness, which cannot be forced, are ready to effect something new and living.... [It] depends on those who will transform its words into the life of the Church.”

This generation of Catholics has been given much by the Magisterium. Much should be asked of it.

George Sim Johnston is a native of Manhattan, where he lives with his wife Lisa and four children. A graduate of Harvard, he received his bachelors degree in English and then worked as an investment banker at Salomon Brothers. Since then, he has been a full time free-lance writer, published in Harper’s, Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Crisis, National Catholic Register, and other publications. He is a three-time winner of the Journalism Award from the Catholic Press Association.

Reprinted with permission from Crisis.

18

Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

From the Gutter to the Stars Why Oscar Wilde is important to Catholics

By Joseph Pearce “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

It is perhaps a paradox of Wildean or even Chestertonian proportions that the road to hell can sometimes lead to heaven. Had not poet Charles Baudelaire, the father of the French Decadence, proclaimed with provocative precision that only Catholics knew the devil?

Baudelaire, author of The Flowers of Evil, knew more painfully and grotesquely than most that we must know our sins in order to know ourselves. One who does not know that he is a sinner does not know himself, nor does he know the God who made him. We must know the hell within ourselves, and the hell to which it owes allegiance, before we can know the heaven that is promised us.

This “discovery” was hardly an original innovation of the French or English Decadents. Six centuries earlier, Dante had discovered the same perennial truth, conveying it with unsurpassed genius in his descent into the inferno en route to purgatory and paradise.

If it is true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it is also true that the road to heaven is sometimes paved with bad ones. Our very sins, if we repent, can be our teachers and guides. In recollecting our sins, and in recoiling from their consequences, we can be kept on the narrow path that leads purgatorially upward toward paradise.

Thus the scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites, imagining themselves on the path to heaven, might be heading for an unpleasant surprise, whereas the publicans and sinners, learning from their mistakes and amending their ways, might reach the Kingdom to which Christ has called them.

It is, therefore, a paradoxical pleasure to be able to celebrate the Decadent path to Christ taken by Oscar Wilde not

as a celebration of decadence per se (heaven forbid!) but as a celebration of the path to Christ that it represents. God is always bringing good out of evil and the Catholic literary revival has reaped a wonderful harvest from the seeds planted in decadence during the 19th century.

One only needs to examine the life and work of Wilde, the godfather of the English Decadence of the 1890s, to see that the literature of death and decay can prophesy the poetry of Resurrection.

The first thing we must know about Wilde is that he was at war with himself.

Wilde the would-be saint and Wilde the woeful sinner were in deadly conflict.

Throughout his life, even at those times when he was at his most “decadent,” he retained a deep love for the person of Christ and a lasting reverence for the Catholic Church. As an undergraduate at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, he began to befriend priests and appeared on the verge of conversion.

His father, horrified at the prospect of his son “poping,” sent him to Oxford in the hope that it would put him out of the reach of the Church’s influence. It was an ill-conceived idea, not least because Oxford’s dreaming spires had spawned a spate of high-profile converts, the most famous of whom was John Henry Newman. Wilde already held Newman in the highest regard, even as a student in Dublin, and now, in Oxford, he would walk the streets of a city in which Newman’s presence was almost palpable.

The result was that Wilde’s flirtation with the Catholic faith was roused to new levels of intensity. This could be seen in the poetry he wrote after a visit to Florence in 1875. Inspired to unite

Wilde celebration at USF A celebration of Oscar Wilde’s 150th Birthday will be held at the University of San Francisco September 23 in the Del Santo Room on USF’s Lone Mountain Campus. The event is a benefit for USF’s Gleeson Library.

Joseph Pearce will make the main presentation with response from San Francisco City College Professor Christoph Greger. San Francisco Literary Society President Peter Robinson will provide an introduction and moderate the event.

Introduction and presentations begin at 6:30 p.m. Champagne and birthday cake at 7:30.

Early bookings are advisable by calling 415-381-6671. Suggested donation is $10.

Mr. Pearce will be signing his book The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde at the celebration.

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his love for Fra Angelico with the artist’s angelic visions of the Virgin, Wilde poured forth his desire for faith: See, I have climbed the mountainside Up to this holy house of God, Where the Angelic Monk has trod Who saw the heavens opened wide, And throned upon the crescent moon The Virginal white Queen of Grace, — Mary! Could I but see thy face Death could not come at all too soon.

Similarly, in another poem, “Rome Unvisited,” the Pope, in elevating the consecrated host, “shows his God to human eyes / Beneath the veil of bread and wine.”

Wilde, quite clearly, was ripe for conversion.

A year later, in response to Anglican opposition to the Pope’s promulgation of the Immaculate Conception, Wilde defended the Church’s dogma with the sort of cuttingly orthodox wit more often associated with G.K. Chesterton or Ronald Knox. It was, he wrote, “very strange that they should be so anxious to believe the Blessed Virgin conceived in sin.”

In marked contrast to his lauding of the Church militant to anyone who would listen in Oxford, Wilde was careful to keep his papist sympathies a carefully concealed secret from his father in Dublin. Eventually, however, news of his flirtation with the “Scarlet Woman of Rome” leaked across the Irish Sea. His father was as outraged as ever and threatened to disinherit his son unless he desisted in his love affair with the Church. Reluctantly, Wilde bowed to parental pressure.

Years later, after the homosexual scandal that brought about his imprisonment, Wilde remarked wistfully that his decision to turn his back on Rome was ultimately disastrous.

“Much of my moral obliquity is due to the fact that my father would not allow me to become a Catholic,” he confided to a journalist. “The artistic side of the Church would have cured my degeneracies. I intend to be received before long.” He was finally received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed.

In truth, however, Wilde never completely turned his back on the Church. Throughout his life, and particularly through the medium of his art, he continued to reveal his love for Christ and his Church. His poetry either exhibits a selfless love for Christ or, at its darkest, a deep loathing of his own sinfulness.

His short stories are almost always animated by a deep Christian morality, with “The Selfish Giant” deserving a timeWILDE, page 21

ST.TERESA’S PARISH OPENS TO THE POTRERO HILL AND MISSION BAY COMMUNITIES FOR MONTHLY PEACE VIGIL St. Teresa Church on Potrero Hill, in response to continuing violence in Iraq and the Middle East, will open its doors the first Friday and first Saturday of the month for an informal peace vigil.

Everyone is welcome to use the sanctuary for personal prayer and meditation.

“The crisis in Iraq and the Middle East leaves our community with a sense of helplessness and a deep longing for peace,” said Reverend Edward K. Murray, pastor of St. Teresa Church. “This is a time for prayer for our soldiers and their families, for the people of Iraq, and for a region and world shattered by violence.”

Beginning August 6, 2004, St. Teresa Church will open the first Friday of the month during lunchtime from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. and the first Saturday of the month after the 4:15 p.m.

Mass, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.

What:

Peace Vigil

Where: St. Teresa Church Corner of Connecticut and Peter Sammon Way (19th St.), San Francisco When:

Friday, August 6, 2004 from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. and Saturday, August 7 following the 4:15 Mass, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.

The Peace Vigil is sponsored by St. Teresa’s social justice ministry.

For more information, call (415) 285-5272.

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August 13, 2004

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19

Stage

Open Water – Bone-chilling thriller with bite

By David DiCerto Catholic News Service NEW YORK — Fear runs deep in “Open Water” (Lions Gate), a hair-raising thriller about a pair of scuba divers stranded at sea in shark-infested waters.

Made on a shoestring budget by the husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Chris Kentis (who wrote, directed and edited it) and Laura Lau (who produced it), this modest movie packs more fright for its buck than screamfests with much heftier price tags. In fact, it’s one of the scariest movies — big or small — in recent memory.

Inspired by true events, the story centers on a career-consumed yuppie couple — Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and her boyfriend, Daniel (Daniel Travis) — who take a vacation to the tropics in order to decompress and reconnect emotionally.

But their island holiday becomes a fight for survival when a head-count mix-up during a scuba-diving excursion causes their tour boat to take off accidentally without them.

Left behind — adrift in the middle of nowhere — they must fend off stinging jellyfish, ravenous sharks and the creeping realization that their chance for rescue grows slimmer by the hour.

Shot on weekends and vacations over a three-year period, the movie’s lack of financial resources works decidedly to the filmmakers’ advantage. Unable to afford costly special effects, Kentis and Lau, who financed the film with their own money, were forced to rely almost entirely on suggestion (e.g., a flash of menacing fins) to keep moviegoers’ ice-cold sweat on a slow drip.

Like “Jaws” — to which it will be inevitably compared — “Open Water” wisely leaves a lot to the viewer’s imagination, tapping into primal fears and dread of the unknown. It rates high on the taut-nerve meter because it keeps its horrors, for the most part, hidden. Kentis sustains tension by giving viewers an unsettling sense of foreboding of what lurks below.

In a scene out of a Melville nightmare, Daniel and Susan cling not only to each other in the pitch darkness, but also to their sanity. Lit only by pulses of lightning, it is one of the most terrifying sequences ever filmed.

Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis star in the thriller “Open Water.”

Ryan and Travis, who endured 120 hours in the water with real sharks, both deliver solid performances, conveying their characters’ psychological unraveling convincingly. Their no-name status makes it easier for viewers to get lost in the story and lends the film greater believability than had their wetsuits been filled by more recognizable stars.

No less important a character is the ocean itself, whose shifting moods propel the deep-sea thriller toward its harrowing conclusion. The images of the two divers bobbing helplessly in the vast expanse of ocean serve as humbling reminders of our fragility in the face of nature’s immensity.

Without revealing too much, the film ends on a somewhat morally ambiguous note. However, any judgment concerning the action in question must be considered in light of the character’s brittle mental state.

The no-frills cinematography is bone-chillingly effective. Shot on digital video, Kentis keeps the camera eyelevel with his protagonists, putting the audience right in the water with them. In fact, each seat in theaters showing this film should come equipped with a life preserver.

This is one summer movie with bite.

Due to sustained suspense, brief frontal nudity, and scattered rough and crude language, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted.

DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Catholic San Francisco

Food & Fun Aug. 18: Catholic Networking Night, a support group for job seekers, at St. Dominic’s Church, 2390 Bush St. at Steiner, SF from 7 – 9 p.m.

Exchange ideas and brush up on job search skills.

Admission is free. Those attending are asked to bring a snack to share. Reservations are requested.

Contact Connie at daura@ccwear.com or (415) 664-0164. Future meetings Oct. 6, Dec. 1.

Aug. 22: Celebrating its first year at the service of women leaving incarceration is Catherine’s Center.

Birthday festivities include a concert at 2 p.m. by well-known and popular church musician Jesse Manibusan whose audiences have included Pope John Paul II. Takes place in the Sequoia Room of Mercy Center, 2300 Adeline Dr., Burlingame. For ticket information, contact St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Mateo County at (650) 373-0637.

Sept. 3: Catholic Marin Breakfast Club gathers for Mass and special presentation. Featured speaker is Jesuit Father Joe Daoust, president of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley who will speak on Empty Churches, Empty Pews. Oct. 1, hear Jesuit Father Steve Barber, chaplain at San Quentin State Prison. Nov. 5, it’s the group’s official 10th anniversary celebration with Yakima Bishop Carlos Sevilla, who was the Breakfast Club’s first speaker a decade ago. Dec. 3 you can hear Dominican Sister Gervaise Valpey who will speak on Catholic Education and Women Today. The morning begins with Mass at 7 a.m. in St. Sebastian Church, Bon Air Rd. and Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Kentfield. Breakfast and presentation follow in parish hall. Reservations required to Sugaremy@aol.com or (415) 461-0704 daily.

Members $7, others $10. Dues $20 per year.

Sept. 11: Luncheon and Bingo in St. Cecilia Lower Church benefiting the League of Sacred Heart Altar Society $20 per person. Call Rose Marie at (415) 753-5680.

Sept. 13: 12th Annual Capuchin Seminarian Golf Tournament at Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club, Menlo Park. Format is 18-hole Scramble with check-in at 10 a.m. followed by lunch, shotgun start at noon and hosted cocktails and dinner at 6:30 p.m. Prices are $260 for golf with cart and dinner. Dinner only is $50. For tickets and information, call Mike Stecher at (650) 3424680 or Anne Hahn at (650) 692-5044.

Oct. 7: St. Mary’s Cathedral Assumpta Award Dinner takes place Oct. 7, 2004 at the Cathedral. Honorees include Christian Brother Chris Brady and SFFD Chief Joanne Hayes White as well as retired Cathedral volunteer, Mary Hehir, and young adult Scott Moyer. For ticket information call Maryanne Murray at (415) 564-3846.

Oct. 16: “Did you ever think church was boring?” asks J.R. Jaldon of St. Stephen Parish. If so buckle your seatbelt and settle in for the rollicking Late Night Catechism tonight at 7.pm. at St. Stephen’s, 601 Eucalyptus Dr. next to Stonestown Mall. Tickets are $35 per person and group discounts are available. Call (415) 681-2444, ext. 26.

Sundays: Concerts at St. Mary Cathedral at 3:30 p.m. Gough and Geary Blvd., SF. Call (415) 567-2020 ext. 213. Concerts are open to the public. Aug. 22: Frances Norbert, Whittier College, organist. Aug. 29: Simon Berry, organist.

Admission free.

East Meets West, third annual luncheon and auction benefiting the Viet Blind Children Foundation, Sept. 18th at St. Matthew Parish auditorium, 9th Ave. at El Camino Real, San Mateo. Father Thuan V. Hoang, a native of Vietnam and a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, is president of the foundation’s board of directors. Doors open at noon to silent and live auctions as well as raffles for cash prizes and other fun. For ticket information, please contact the foundation at (415) 713-2481 or (408) 296-6557. Visit the Web site at www.vietblindchildren.org.

August 13, 2004 Young Widow/Widower group meets at St. Gregory, San Mateo. Call Barbara Elordi at (415) 564-7882.

Information about children’s and teen groups is available from Barbara Elordi at (415) 564-7882.

Datebook

Returning Catholics Programs for Catholics interested in returning to the Church, have been established at the following parishes: Marin County: St. Hilary, Tiburon, Mary Musalo, (415) 435-2775; St. Anselm, Ross, call (415) 4532342; St. Sebastian, Greenbrae, Jean Mariani at (415) 461-7060; Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Mill Valley, Rick Dullea or Diane Claire at (415) 388-4190; St. Mary Star of the Sea, Sausalito, Lloyd Dulbecco at (415) 331-7949.

San Francisco: Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, SF, Michael Adams at (415) 695-2707; St. Philip the Apostle, 725 Diamond St. at Elizabeth/24th, SF. Call (415) 282-0141; St. Dominic, SF, Lee Gallery at (415) 221-1288; Holy Name of Jesus, SF, (415) 6648590.

San Mateo County: St. Bartholomew, San Mateo, Dan Stensen at (650) 344-5665; St. Catherine of Siena, Burlingame, Silvia Chiesa at (650) 685-8336; Our Lady of Angels, Burlingame, Dorothy Heinrichs or Maria Cianci at (650) 347-7768; St. Dunstan, Millbrae, Dianne Johnston at (650) 697-0952; Our Lady of the Pillar, Half Moon Bay, Meghan at (650) 726-4337; St. Peter, Pacifica, Chris Booker at (650) 738-1398.

Jennifer O’Neill, on whom every young son had a crush following her 1971 film Summer of ’42, and today an acclaimed and sought after pro-life advocate is featured speaker for the 2004 Respect Life Conference of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The event takes place Sept.

11th, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at St. Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco. Joining the film and television star on the program is Wesley Smith of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide and heard often speaking in defense of life on major network news programs. Ms. O’Neill will speak on post-abortion counseling. Mr. Smith will address Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Tickets $20 per person. Contact the Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns at (415) 614-5567. In the evening, Ms. O’Neill will speak at St. Sebastian Church, Greenbrae on behalf of the Marin County Respect Life Program. Contact Vicki Evans at (415) 945-0180.

TV/Radio Mon – Fri., KVTO 1400 AM, 7:30 p.m.: Catholic Radio Hour features rosary, music and commentary with Father Tom Daly.

Sunday 6 a.m., WB Channel 20/Cable 13 and KTSF Channel 26/Cable 8: TV Mass with Msgr.

Harry Schlitt presiding.

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

3rd Sun, 6:30 a.m., KRON Channel 4: For Heaven’s Sake, featuring conversations about Catholic spirituality.

Prayer Opportunities/Lectures Aug. 30: Healing Mass at St. Andrew Church, 1571 Southgate Ave., Daly City at 7 p.m. with preliminary rites beginning at 6:30 p.m. Jesuit Father Robert Faricy will preside. Call (650) 756-3223.

Young Adults Office of Young Adult Ministry: Connecting men and women in their 20s and 30s to the Catholic Church. Contact Dominican Sister Christine Wilcox, (415) 6145595, wilcoxc@sfarchdiocese.org, or Mary Jansen, (415) 614-5596, jansenm@sfarchdiocese.org.

Sept. 18: Fall Fest, Choices: What’s God Have to do With it? at University of San Francisco with keynote address, workshops, exhibits, Mass, din-

“IF YOU LIKE ITALIAN FOOD, EAT WHERE THE ITALIANS EAT”

ner and dance. Bishop Jaime Soto of Orange is among the speakers. Registration is $40 in advance and $60 at the door. Call (415) 6145594 or www,sfyam.org.

Consolation Ministry Groups meet at the following parishes. Please call numbers shown for more information.

San Mateo County: St. Catherine of Siena, Burlingame. Call (650) 344-6884; Our Lady of Angels, Burlingame. Call Louise Nelson at (650) 343-8457 or Barbara Arena at (650) 344-3579.

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Redwood City. Call (650) 366-3802; Good Shepherd, Pacifica. Call Sister Carol Fleitz at (650) 355-2593; St. Robert, San Bruno. Call (650) 589-2800.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Belmont. Call Ann Ponty at (650) 598-0658 or Mary Wagner at (650) 591-3850. Marin County: St. Isabella, San Rafael. Call Pat Sack at (415) 472-5732.

Our Lady of Loretto, Novato. Call Sister Jeanette at (415) 897-2171.

San Francisco: St.Gabriel. Call Barbara Elordi at (415) 564-7882. St. Finn Barr in English and Spanish. Call Carmen Solis at (415) 584-0823; St. Cecilia. Call Peggy Abdo at (415) 564-7882 ext. 3; Epiphany in Spanish. Call Kathryn Keenan at (415) 564-7882.

Ministry for parents who have lost a child is available from Our Lady of Angels Parish, Burlingame. Call Ina Potter at (650) 347-6971 or Barbara Arena at (650) 344-3579.

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Meetings 2nd Wed.: Men’s Evening of Reflection: Being Catholic in the Modern World at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, 610 Vallejo St. at Columbus, SF beginning at 7 p.m. Call (415) 983-0405.

Courage, a Catholic support group for persons with same-sex attraction, meets Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Call Father Lawrence Goode at (650) 322-2152.

Taize Prayer 3rd Wed. at 7:30 p.m. with the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in their Province Center Chapel, 1520 Ralston Ave., Belmont across from Ralston Hall on the campus of their Notre Dame de Namur University. Call (650) 593-2045, ext. 350 or www.SistersofNotreDameCa.org.

1st Fri. at 8 p.m. at Mercy Center, 2300 Adeline Dr., Burlingame with Mercy Sister Suzanne Toolan. Call (650) 340-7452; Church of the Nativity, 210 Oak Grove Ave., Menlo Park at 7:30 p.m. Call Deacon Dominic Peloso at (650) 3223013.

2nd Fri. at 7:30 p.m. at St. Peter Church, 700 Oddstad Blvd., Pacifica. Call Deacon Peter Solan at (650) 359-6313.

3rd Fri. at 8 p.m. at Woodside Priory Chapel, 302 Portola Rd., Portola Valley. Call Dean Miller at (650) 631-2882 1st Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at SF Presidio Main Post Chapel, 130 Fisher Loop. Call Catherine Rondainaro at (415) 713-0225.

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.

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August 13, 2004

Letters . . .

■ Continued from page 14 propaganda campaign in favor of it, or vote for it.”

But then in his final paragraph, he said applying these principles poses “complex challenges.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) devotes barely three lines to defining the word never: “1: not ever : at no time. 2: not in any degree : not under any condition. “ (Etymology and examples omitted.)

That seems fairly simple to me.

Perhaps the Archbishop can be persuaded to explain its complexity.

E. L. Gelhaar Millbrae

Model cooperation San Francisco’s Ten Year Planning Council was an example of a successful public-private partnership. The City should convene similar councils for other issues.

(San Francisco changes focus on Homeless, CSF - July 30) Chairwoman Angela Alioto led the

Wilde . . .

■ Continued from page 18 less accolade as one of the finest Christian fairy stories ever written. His plays are more than merely comedies or tragedies; they are morality plays in which virtue is vindicated and vice vanquished. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a masterpiece of Victorian fiction, the overriding moral of which is that to kill the conscience is to kill the soul.

“You knew what my art was to me,” Wilde wrote plaintively to Lord Alfred Douglas, “the great primal note by which I had revealed, first myself to myself, and then myself to the world; the real passion of my life; the love to which all other loves were as mere marsh-water to red wine.”

These words, written from prison to the man who was largely responsible for the scandal that caused his downfall, show the extent to which Wilde knew that the Christianity

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Partisan politics were off the table: Mayor Newsom wisely appointed business leaders, health officials, public safety professionals, foundation executives, non-profit specialists, homeless advocates and homeless persons.

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expressed through his art was far more important than the sinful passions of the flesh to which he had succumbed.

In the same letter to Douglas he also referred to the homosexuality that had been the bane of his life during the 1890s as his “pathology,” his sickness.

Mindful of the planks in our own eyes, we should not join the scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites who point selfrighteously at the mote in Wilde’s. For, as Lord Darlington says in Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

To look for Wilde in the gutter, whether to wallow with him in the “marsh-water” of sin or to point the finger of self-righteous scorn, is to miss the point. Those wishing a deeper understanding of this most enigmatic of men should not look at him in the gutter but with him at the stars.

In the end Wilde was cured of his “pathology” by the healing hands of Christ as ministered by the priest who received him into the Church and who gave him the last rites. His sins forgiven, he was granted the saving embrace of Holy Mother Church on his deathbed, reconciled with the Bride of Christ in extremis.

Catholic San Francisco

Bush’s Homeless Czar, Philip Mangano, and Veteran’s Secretary, Anthony Principi, and representatives from HUD and the Department of Labor have visited San Francisco to meet with the mayor, Ms. Alioto and council members. Local businesses, unions and foundations contributed $100,000 to fund this public-private partnership, and the City provided an equal sum in administrative services.

Mike DeNunzio Chairman – Finance Committee, Ten Year Planning Council San Francisco

One imagines that Dante, Wilde’s great precursor, would have smiled with knowing benignity at the divine symmetry of the happy ending.

The final words do not belong to Dante, however, nor do they belong to Wilde; they belong to Ernest Dowson, Wilde’s friend and fellow Decadent, who also was received into the Church. Writing with the beauty, eloquence and gratitude of a truly repentant sinner, Dowson rejoiced at the saving power of the last rites of the Church in his poem “Extreme Unction”: The feet, that lately ran so fast To meet desire, are soothly sealed; The eyes, that were so often cast On vanity, are touched and healed.

Joseph Pearce is author of The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde (Ignatius Press, 2004), editor of the Saint Austin Review and writer in residence at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida. Reprinted with permission from National Catholic Register.

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22

Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004 Catholic San Francisco

Classifieds

Healing Mass Fr. Richard McAlear Ministry of Hope and Healing

HEALING MASS For Infor mation Call: Fax:

415-614-5642 415-614-5641

Email: jpena@catholic-sf.org

Caregiver Companion Seeking Catholic Caregiver 2-3 days/week; preferably weekend relief. Live in. $100/day including room and meals.

303-692-1577

May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.

May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it.

– 1 Thessalonians 5:23,24 August 18 @ 7:30 p.m.

Presider: Rev. Richard McAlear, O.M.I. St. Charles Borromeo Church 1315 Lomitas Ave. Livermore, CA 94550 Information: Gaye (925) 828-1945

Loan Wanted

$360,000 WANTED A loan in this amount is wanted for a maximum of five years, secured by a first deed on four very nice condos in Los Altos.

Loan will be interest only at 8% fixed rate.

You will get a $2,400 interest check every month. Borrower has excellent credit and has owned this property for over 30 years.

No banks please.

(650) 854-6428

Starting the San Francisco Giants on their way to a shutout win over the Cincinnati Reds Aug. 3 at SBC Park was Marianist Father Tom French, co-principal of Archbishop Riordan High School. Father French was invited to toss the game’s first pitch by SBC executive Chuck Smith. Father French is Riordan’s principal for fiscal affairs. Gabe Crotti is the school’s principal for academics. Named for San Francisco’s second archbishop and founded in 1949, ARHS begins its fifty-fifth school year Aug. 16.

S E R V I C E

D I R E C T O R Y

For Advertising Information Call 415-614-5642 • E-mail: jpena@catholic-sf.org

PAINTING & REMODELING John Holtz

Ca. Lic 391053

General Contractor

Since 1980

(650) 355-4926

Religious jewelry Over 600 Pieces

Interiors Exteriors Kitchens Baths

HOLLAND

Contractor inspection reports and pre-purchase consulting

IT’S A SAFE BET! You Can Reach 90,000 Catholic

650-244-9255 Spells Wally 650-740-7505 Cell Phone

Plumbing Works San Francisco ALL PLUMBING WORK PAT HOLLAND CA LIC #817607 BONDED & INSURED

All Mfg. Warranty: Rebates and Special Dealer Finacing goes to Registered Owner/s P.O. Box 214 San Bruno, CA 94066

St. Robert’s Parish San Bruno

INSURANCE

415-614-5642

COUNSELING

Healing Your Inner Child Lila Caffery, MA, CCHT

Al Zeidler Insurance Agency

Christian Family Counselo r

35 Mitchell Blvd. Suite 9-B, San Rafael, CA 94903

415-205-1235

* Homeowners * Life * Business * Bonds * Umbrella’s Serving The Entire Bay Area

CONSTRUCTION

Phone: (415) 507-0231 Fax: (415) 507-0236 Email: zeidlerins@sbcglobal.net

REPAIRS & PRESSURE WASHING

Households with this Ad!

Al Zeidler Broker Lic: 0B96630

GARAGE DOOR REPAIR

Leaks, Dryrot, Decks Mike: (650) 355-8858

St. Dominic’s Parishioner

•Individuals, Couples, Family •Addictions; Food, Chemical, Love •Enneagram Personality Work •Spiritual Direction• Sliding Scale

415-337-9474 • 650-888-2873 www.innerchildhealing.com

Lic #: 778332

Barbara Elordi, MFT

PLUMBING

– Senior Discount –

Licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist.

Offers individual, couple + family and group counseling.

Plumbing • Fire Protection • Certified Backflow

Home Services

Phone: 415.468.1877 Fax: 415.468.1875 100 North Hill Drive, Unit 18 • Brisbane, CA 94005 Lic. No. 390254

EXPERT ROOTER

drain cleaning & plumbing professional

PAUL K. KAPUNIAI III ~ Owner & Operator Experience Quality Service at Honest Affordable Rates Senior and Military Discounts LIC. NO. 769967

Expert Plumbing Repairs General Repairs Clean Drains & Sewers Water Heaters ●

SANTI PLUMBING & HEATING

FAMILY OWNED

415-661-3707

Lic. # 663641

All purpose: Painting, Fencing, Carpenter, Small Roofing Repairs, Skylight Repairs, Demolition Work, Rain Gutter Repair & Cleaning, Landscaping, Gardening, Hauling, Moving, \Janitorial.

Call (650) 757-1946 not a licensed contractor

Cellularized Mobile Shop

24 HR

Carpentry, Cabinetry, Painting,Refinishing Floors and Furniture, Door & Window Instal.,Cement Work.

Se habla Español & Tagalog.

Serving also the East Bay, Contra Costa,&Marin Counties

(650) 591-3784

Lifetime Warranty on All Doors + Motors

974 Ralston Ave. #6, Belmont, CA 94002

SOUND SYSTEMS Intelligent Sound and Communications Solutions Since 1985

415-239-8491 not a licensed contractor

KANSORA COMMUNICATIONS

CHURCHES – SCHOOLS – THEATRES COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS – SPORTS FACILITIES ●

●

The Peninsula Men’s Group, now in it’s 7th year, is a support group which provides affordable counseling in a safe and nurturing setting. Interested candidates may call for a free brochure.

( 415 ) 931-1540 24 hrs.

HANDYMAN

CALL FOR FREE ESTIMATES (650) 742-6746

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G ARAGE D OOR R EPAIR Same price 7 days

John Bianchi

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Auto Broker

www.crossesonline.com

PLUMBING

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

Wally Mooney

of Crosses, Patron Saints Medals in Gold & Silver.

Fine Workmanship!!!

Painting & Remodeling

Call

AUTO SALES

Sound Systems Digital Carillons / Bells

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Intercoms / Paging Systems Cable TV & Data Systems

415-453-2898

WWW.KANSORA.COM CA LICN # 747210

When Life Hurts It Helps To Talk • Family • Work • Depression • Anxiety

• Relationships • Addictions

Dr. Daniel J. Kugler Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Over 25 years experience

Confidential • Compassionate • Practical (415) 921-1619 1537 Franklin Street • San Francisco, CA 94109

PAULA B. HOLT,

LCSW, ACSW Adult, Family, Couple Psychotherapy, LCS 18043 Divorce resolution, Grief resolution, Supportive consultation.

Substance abuse counseling, Post trauma resolution, Family Consultation.

Support and help a phone call away!

415-289-6990

4000 Geary Blvd., Suite 201, San Francisco, CA 94118

August 13, 2004

Organist

Elderly Care

Help Wanted

Professional Available

ORGANIST WEDDINGS • FUNERALS

Please confirm your event before contracting music!

for personal care, companion, shopping, appointments, grooming, doctor appointments.

Drive. Honest and reliable.

Many years experience.

Bonded. Excellent references.

415.713-1366 or 650.952.2750.

Piano Lessons

Employment Opportunity

Piano Lessons

Public Relations Director position available at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo.

Worship Services, Catholic Experience Marie DuMabeiller 415-441-3069, Page: 823-3664 VISA, MASTERCARD Accepted

By a Conservatory Graduate

Adult Beginners Children of all levels

Yearly Recitals At Clarion Hotel $50 mo. once a week lesson

650-438-2846

Please contact Lars Lund, Principal (650) 345-8207

PUBLISH A NOVENA Pre-payment required Mastercard or Visa accepted

Cost $25

Your prayer will be published in our newspaper

Name Adress Phone MC/VISA # Exp. Select One Prayer: ❑ St. Jude Novena to SH ❑ Prayer to St. Jude

❑ Prayer to the Blessed Virgin ❑ Prayer to the Holy Spirit

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.

Never known to fail.

You may publish.

S.M.

Prayer to the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, you who make me see everything and who shows me the way to reach my ideal.

You who give me the divine gift of forgive and forget the wrong that is done to me. I, in this short dialogue, want to thank you for everything and confirm once more that I never want to be separated from you no matter how great the material desires may be. I want to be with you and my loved ones in your perpetual glory. Amen. You may publish this as soon as your favor is granted.

J.V.

Northern California's Weekly Catholic Newspaper

●

CLASSIFIEDS e-mail: jpena@catholic-sf.org

Special Needs Nursing, Inc. RNs or LVNs We are looking for you.

Work FULL or PART time while your children are in school.

Nurses are needed to provide specialized nursing care for children in the San Francisco Public School setting.

Computer Teacher

Generous benefit packages for generous nurses.

Fax resume with cover letter to (650) 697-5203 or send to 1133 Broadway, Millbrae, CA 94030

Fax your resume to: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN 415-435-0421

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Send your resume: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN Special Needs Nursing, Inc. 98 Main Street, #427 Tiburon, Ca 94920

The St. Vincent de Paul Society Particular Council of San Francisco, part of a 140 year old worldwide Catholic Organization focusing on outreach to the poor and needy, is seeking an Executive Director who is an an effective leader.

To best meet our mission of serving the needy the successful candidate will be guided

by Vincentian values while being especially respectful of the diverse beliefs of the people served by the Society.

Please return form with check or money order for $25 Payable to: Catholic San Francisco Advertising Dept., Catholic San Francisco 1 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109

\

Catholic Elementary School (K-8) on the Peninsula is seeking experienced, credentialed teacher for the 2004–2005 school year.

23

Call (415) 614-5642 or Fax: (415) 614-5641

TEACHER

The Executive Director will manage a diverse Staff of approximately 120 employees through six different programs and thirty + parish-based conferences with a budget of approximately $6 million. The successful candidate will have a minimum of seven to ten years experience in general management, fiscal planning, operations, and marketing. Social Service and development experience are plusses. Excellent verbal and written communication skills are mandatory. Bachelor’s degree is required; Master’s degree is desirable.

If you wish to publish a Novena in the Catholic San Francisco You may use the form below or call 415-614-5640

Catholic San Francisco

Catholic San Francisco

The Position is located in San Francisco. Salary will be competitive with similar non-profit positions. Other benefits include paid vacations and medical insurance.

Please send resume and compensation requirements in a letter detailing style of leadership to Mr. Andrew Whelan, Saint Vincent de Paul Society, 425 4th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 or e-mail sullivanrw@yahoo.com.

Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply.

Special Needs Companion Services We are looking for you.

• Honest • Generous • Compassionate • Make a Difference • Respectful

Work Full or Part-time in San Francisco – Marin County • Provide non medical elder care in the home • Generous benefit package Fax your resume to: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN 415-435-0421 Send your resume: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN Special Needs Nursing, Inc. 98 Main Street, #427 Tiburon, Ca 94920

RETAIL CUSTOMER SERVICE POSITION 40 hours per week. $10.00/hr. Full medical(Kaiser), mandatory union membership, must be able to lift 35LBS., fluent in English, basic computer and data entry skills.

Resumes to: Sally Rosen, Vincentian Help Desk Administrator 470 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94102 Tel. #: (415) 202-9955 Fax #: (415) 202-9956 Email: Vincentianhlpdsk@aol.com

We expect to fill the position by August 31, 2004.

CLASSIFIED AD INFORMATION

TO PLACE AN AD: By phone, call (415) 614-5639 or (415) 614-5640 or fax (415) 614-5641 or e-mail: vmarshall@catholic-sf.org; Mail or bring ads to Catholic San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109; Or by (please include credit card number & expiration date).

DEADLINE THURSDAYS - 3 PM

COMMERCIAL ADS: (Four line minimum) $15 for four lines, $2 per EXTRA line – applies to Business Services, Real Estate, Buying or Selling for profit, and Transportation Dealers.

PAYMENT: All ads must be paid in advance. Money order, or imprinted checks. Credit Cards by telephone, mail, or fax. ONLY VISA or MASTERCARD ACCEPTED.

PRIVATE PARTY ADS: (Four line minimum) $10 for four lines, $1.00 per EXTRA line – applies to individuals only, Garage Sales, Help Wanted, Transportation / Vehicles.

1st line has 19 spaces, subsequent lines have 26 spaces. Every letter, punctuation mark or spaces between words counts as a space.

START HERE

CATEGORIES:

Announcements Appliances Business Opportunities Child Care Children’s Misc.

Collectibles Counseling Education/Lessons Electronics Employment Financial Services For Sale Garage Sales Health & Fitness Home Furnishings Miscellaneous Office Equipment Personals Pet Supplies Professional Services Religious Articles Wanted to Buy Automotive Real Estate

☛

PRIVATE PARTY

(Please Print Legibly)

COMMER.RATES

Classified display ads may be prepaid or billed.

RATES

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VISA

CREDIT CARD # SIGNATURE

ADDRESS ZIP

$15 $17 $19 $21 $23 $25

ADD $1 PER EACH ADDITIONAL LINE

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$10 $11 $12 $13 $14 $15

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TERMS We reserve the right to reject or cancel advertising for any reason deemed appropriate. We want our readers to know that it is not always possible to verify promises made by our advertisers.

24

Catholic San Francisco

August 13, 2004

In Remembrance of the Faithful Departed Interred In Our Catholic Cemeteries During the Month of July Anne P. Desposito Maria E. Donohoe Sr. Marie Patrice Donohoe, SND Norma T. Dragon Joan Buckley Driscoll Rita Fenech Agius William I. Dunn Anthony Joseph Agius Florentina L. Edwards Juanita Aguilera Helen Erickson Antea E. Aiello Nicholas A. Ernser Francisco B. Alonzo Julia L. Espinoza Dora Alvarenga Katherine Virginia Fazackerley Ann Aquilina Joseph A. Feldhaus Jeanne R. Arpin Leonila D. Fernandez Eulalia T. Ayon Attilio J. Ferrari Ida M. Baker Joseph C. Filzen Raquel Teresa Bangert Maria Concepcion Frias Anne M. Banks Ronald E. Gaggero Jean Dukich Behrens Frances P. Gallaway Lydia I. Beltran Raymunda O. Gamboa Ida A. Bertocchi Frank C. Giarritta Mary G. Bianchi Margaret A. Gilley Beatrice Bielli Louis Giomi Rena Rose Bisetti Carol J. Godfrey Jia Kennie Blackwell Velma P. Gollier Mary Borg Frances Gonzales Mario A. Borja, M.D. Feliciana V. Guevara Rogelia P. Briones John R. Guiney Sr. Mary Ellen Brown, RSM R. Eduarda Gutierrez Marjorie G. Burnell Elvira A. “Vera” Gutierrez Rev. Msgr. Daniel R. Cahill Rose Bloise Hennessy Mary F. Carrick Marcos Antonio Castro-Hernandez Mikaila Ann Esteves Hickam John F. Holtz Eulogio C. Chavez, Sr. Patrick J. Hubert Gail M. Chetcuti Teresa Marie Ibarra Amelia G. Coelho-D’Aquino Chester C. Ireton Margaret C. Connolly Everett W. Jackson Joseph Corollo Mary C. Kilarr David Corsiglia Charles “Sam” Klauber Louis J. Coudray Dorothy Leahy Santiago Cruz Richard F. Curtin Filomena L. DelRosario Vicente F. DelRosario

HOLY CROSS COLMA

Harold A. Lerma Eduardo L. Lo William Lopez Anthony L. Lowenstein Richard William Lowry Louis S. “Lulu” Machado J. Carmen Madera Generoso C. Magat Dr. Maria C. Magat Jeanne Mannu Dolores L. Manzano Julia Marroquin Maria L. Martinez Ursula A. Martinez Clarence J. Mateik J. P. Mayberry Natalie Honora McCutcheon Dorothy A. McKittrick Joseph W. McMillan Alejandro L. Mendoza Carol A. Meyer Christian B. Molina Rita Morales Delia M. Moran Ernesto Moreano-Rivera Gladys H. Moura Anita Muller-Misuraca Regina Adislet Munoz James J. Murphy Sana F. Nazzal Edith Nichols Valeriana C. Nicolas A. F. Tony Noronha James V. O’Toole Enoc L. Olivas John N. Olsen Frank L. Ortega Modesto Padilla Evelyn S. Palacio

Romeo Calzado Palana Stephen Paniak Joyce Lewis Paul Joseph E. Perez Mateo Perez Clara M. Pietrowiak Roberto Carlos Plascencia James L. Plummer Eugene R. Pometta John Procarione Ofelia M. Re Gladys I. Rich Ines Rios Robert A. Rodriguez, Jr. Pablo E. Romero Ronald P. Rosales Tomas S. Sandoval Rosemary A. Savage Kurt Thomas Schneider Maude A. Seamon Hattie Sepulvida Betty L. Simonetti Theresa C. Skog Trygve L. Skog Luisa O. Solis Mario De Guzman Soriano Mary Soto Flora Spadini Thomas N. Spina Elizabeth M. Storer Joan P. Sullivan, Ed.D. Nikolao Talivaa Kenya Ebone Taylor Mary T. Tripp Marie Varalli Alphonse R. Velasquez Virginia L. Velasquez Edna T. Villanueva Lena Vollelunga Mamie Walker

Aileen F. Wallace Jeanne Ward Joseph G. Welsh Ann P. Williams Mildred Frances Wilson Leonard F. Yipp

HOLY CROSS MENLO PARK Alejandro “Chocolate” Aburto Dr. Gerald E. Cahalan Melvin L. “Mel” Pennoyer Sergei V. Utechin

MT. OLIVET SAN RAFAEL Jennie Bootorick George W. Borden Matilde DeFenzi Mark Sterling Fogg Lloyd W. Kendall Inez Taylor Loustau Donna M. Magnaghi Lenore E. McCarthy Sarah I. McCarthy Elsie B. O’Connell Patricia M. Schneider Nola V. Shanahan Lillian Tambussa George N. Walker

HOLY CROSS CATHOLIC CEMETERY, COLMA announces a new ground burial area

Our Lady of Antipolo Available September 15th Please call (650) 756-2060 to receive your Discount Coupon.

Please call to make an appointment to view this beautiful new area.

First Saturday Mass Saturday, September 4th, 2004 – 11:00 a.m.

Rev. Kirk Ullery, Celebrant – Our Lady of Lourdes Parish All Saints Mausoleum Chapel

The Catholic Cemeteries Archdiocese of San Francisco Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery 1500 Mission Road, Colma, CA 94014 650-756-2060

Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery Intersection of Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 650-323-6375

Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery 270 Los Ranchitos Road, San Rafael, CA 94903 415-479-9020

A Tradition of Faith Throughout Our Lives.