Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
Archdiocesan retreat seeks to foster deeper Eucharistic life By Jack Smith
(PHOTO BY ROBERT BUSSELL, PH.D.)
More than 500 parishioners from the Archdiocese of San Francisco attended a daylong Eucharistic retreat September 10 at Sacred Heart Cathedral High School. The retreat and day of recollection titled, Come to the Table of the Lord, was originally called by Archbishop William J. Levada to bring to a close activities of the Archdiocese for the Year of the Eucharist called by Pope John Paul II. The retreat was sponsored by the Archdiocese Office of Evangelization and presented by Mystical Humanity of Christ, a Catholic non-profit which has run dozens of popular parish retreats throughout the West since its inception in 2000. Most of the retreat activities were split into language tracks with about 350 attending the English track and 150 attending the Spanish. The day began with prayer and a keynote talk by Michael McDevitt, executive director of Mystical Humanity of Christ. McDevitt is a parishioner at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Belmont and is the nephew of the founder of Mystical Humanity of Christ, Jesuit Father Frank Parrish (1911-2003). McDevitt spoke on “Living Eucharistic Bishop John C. Wester spoke on Mary, the Christ-bearer, at a Spirituality,” and began by retelling the story of
bilingual Mass for the Archdiocesan Eucharistic Retreat.
EUCHARISTIC RETREAT, page 20
Pope says sacred reading of Scripture helps to enrich spiritual life By Carol Glatz ROME (CNS) — The ancient tradition of “lectio divina” or sacred reading of Scripture should be promoted as a way to enrich the spiritual life of the church, Pope Benedict XVI said in an address to biblical experts. “The church must always renew and rejuvenate herself” through “the Word of God, which never gets old or expires,” he said. The pope urged a renewal of this ancient tradition, saying he was convinced it would “bring a new spiritual springtime to the church if promoted effectively.” The pope’s message came in a Sept. 16 address at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo to some 500 biblical experts, scholars and pastoral leaders attending an international conference in Rome. The Catholic Biblical Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity sponsored the congress commemorating the 40th
anniversary of “Dei Verbum,” the Second Vatican Council’s document on Scripture and revelation. Pope Benedict reminded his audience that he was “a young theologian” who took part in the “lively discussions” at the time that resulted in “Dei Verbum.”
“The church and the word of God are inseparably linked,” he said. The Vatican II document affirmed that “the church does not live off herself, but off the Gospel, and it is from the Gospel that the church always and again draws guidance for her journey,” he said. The practice of “lectio divina” should be encouraged, even using “carefully considered new methods” as a mainstay in biblical pastoral activity, the pope said. The pope described “lectio divina” as “the assiduous study of holy Scripture, accompanied by prayer, (which) initiates that intimate exchange” between God and the individual. “By reading, we listen to God who speaks and, by praying, we reply to him with faithful openness of heart,” he said. “One must never forget that the word of God is BIBLE, page 6
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION Cathedral shelter . . . . . . . . 3 News-in-brief. . . . . . . . . . 4-5
Seton’s Balance and Mobility Center ~ Page 7 ~ September 23, 2005
Marriage Encounter Weekend ~ Pages 10-11 ~ SIXTY CENTS
This Catholic Life
Wedding Guide . . . . . . . 9-12
~ Page 18 ~
Movie review. . . . . . . . . . . 17
Commentary . . . . . . . . . . 13 Benedict as monk . . . . . . . 15 Classified ads . . . . . . . . . . 19
www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 7
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No. 28
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Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
On The Where You Live by Tom Burke
The Catholic Daughters of the Americas, Court St. Raphael, #1406, honored winners of its annual essay contest and community service awards in recent rites. From left: Michael Reyes, Michelle Nguyen, Rose Marie Webb, Sobeyda Monterossa, Maureen Albritton, principal, St. Raphael Elementary School, Father Paul Rossi, St. Raphael pastor, and Marilyn Anderson. Michael, Michelle and Sobeyda are all 2005 grads of St. Raphael school. Michael is now a freshman at Terra Linda High School and Michelle and Sobeyda are members of the freshman class at Marin Catholic High School. Now installed and guiding the way are new officers of the Ladies’ Guild at St. Mark Parish in Belmont. From left: Eleanor Reiser-Braband, Suzan Desing, Joanne Bottini, Teri Baxter, Janet Leyte-Vidal. Not available for the photo was Lynn Fair. Also honored with a “Baccalaureate Blessing” by St. Mark’s pastor, Holy Ghost Father Al Furtado, were senior Youth Group members, Elyse Yousef, Pancho Pimentel, Rosheen Ashtiani, Andrea Deschler, Janelle Cruz and Marie Nicolopulos. On hand for the festivities was Youth Minister, Jill Leyte-Vidal.
The Blazers, a youth baseball team carrying some local talent on the roster, are on their way to winter national games after securing the under-eleven honors in recent competitions in Modesto. A swing of the bat salute to Orlando Razo and Tyler Holm, St. Pius Parish, Sean Walsh, St. Matthew Parish, Michael Rinaldi, Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, and Derek Azzopardi, and Tyler Vaudell of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in Redwood City. Thanks to Sean’s folks, Mary and T.J. for the good news. Sean’s brother, James is a freshman at Junipero Serra High School….T.J. is a name I share with the aforementioned Mr. Walsh, or was at least for the half-dozen or so years I tread the boards as a member of the Actors Equity union under the name T.J. Burke. The performers’ unions – most notably Actor’s Equity – allow only one person under each name and by the time I got to their membership rolls, Tom and Thomas were already taken. I’ve recently renewed some friendships from
Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
Official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco
Most Reverend John C. Wester, publisher Maurice E. Healy, associate publisher & executive editor Editorial Staff: Jack Smith, editor; Evelyn Zappia, feature editor; Tom Burke, “On the Street” and Datebook Advertising: Joseph Pena, director; Mary Podesta, account representative Sandy Dahl, advertising and promotion services Production: Karessa McCartney, manager Business Office: Marta Rebagliati, assistant business manager; Judy Morris, circulation and subscriber services Advisory Board: Jeffrey Burns, Ph.D., James Clifford, Fr. Thomas Daly, Joan Frawley Desmond, James Kelly, Deacon William Mitchell, Kevin Starr, Ph.D. 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 News fax: (415) 614-5633 Advertising: (415) 614-5642; Advertising fax: (415) 614-5641 Advertising E-mail: jpena@catholic-sf.org Catholic San Francisco (ISSN 15255298) is published weekly (four times per month) September through May, except in the week following Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, and twice a month in June, July and August by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, 1500 Mission Rd., P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014. Periodical postage paid at South San Francisco, CA. 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.
that time and it’s been a kick to be called by the abbreviated moniker again. My middle name is Joseph.….Congrats to Paula and Kevin Staszkow who were married July 8 at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Redwood City where Paula is Youth Minister. Kevin is Youth Minister at neighboring St. Pius Parish. The bride is a 2004 alum of Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont. The groom did his undergraduate work at UC Paula and Kevin Staszkow Berkeley later completing graduate studies at Oakland’s Double-duty Holy Names University…. A celebrations took Whew!!! salute to 2005 grads place over the of San Francisco’s Notre summer when Dame des Victoires Tessie and Elementary School who took George Estrada part in a recent Pentathlon at marked 55 years St. Ignatius College of marriage and Preparatory. Congrats to Tessie turned Kevin Mercado, now a fresh100 years old. man at Junipero Serra High The Estrada’s are School, Matthew Sauers, a longtime members freshman at SI, Tiffany Xu, of Holy Angels now cracking the books at Parish in Colma. Marin Academy, and
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Matthew Mah and Emily English, who continue as classmates at Lick-Wilmerding. Thanks to Emily’s folks, Kate and Dave, for the good news…Don’t miss this weekend’s festival at St. Robert Parish in San Bruno. “It’s fun, fun and more fun,” said Sarah Hillhouse, an organizer of the event. Remember, too, that the fun and food are also flowing at annual soirees of the parish festival type tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at St. Matthew’s in San Mateo and St. Philip’s in San Francisco. Stop by!!!….Remember this is an empty space without ya’!! The email address for Street is burket@sfarchdiocese.org. Mailed items should be sent to “Street,” One Peter Yorke Way, SF 94109. Pix should be hard copy or electronic jpeg at 300 dpi. Don’t forget to include a follow-up phone number. You can reach me at (415) 614-5634.
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September 23, 2005
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Cathedral’s role ends as emergency services center for hurricane evacuees By Evelyn Zappia and Maurice Healy Soon after Hurricane Katrina left thousands in the Gulf states homeless, Annemarie Conroy, head of San Francisco’s Office of Emergency Services, asked Bishop John Wester, Apostolic Administrator for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, if St. Mary’s Cathedral could be used as a shelter for an anticipated 300 evacuees. Bishop Wester consulted with Father John Talesfore, pastor of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Brian Cahill, head of Catholic Charities CYO, and others, and readily agreed to the request, suggesting an interfaith approach. But things were moving quickly in the days immediately following the hurricane’s damage and floods. Through a cooperative effort, which included the Red Cross, manager of St. Mary’s Cathedral shelter, San Francisco’s Department of Human Services and Department of Public Health, the Salvation Army, and Catholic Charities, a shelter with cots for 300 people was quickly established Sept. 3 at the Cathedral’s lower level Conference Center. Then the waiting began. The expected evacuation of people by the Federal Emergerncy Management Agency (FEMA) was scheduled, then cancelled, scheduled again and cancelled again. But people displaced by the hurricane and floods still managed to make their way to San Francisco. The San
Daughters of St. Paul farewell Mass An article last week incorrectly identified the location of a farewell Mass to be celebrated for the Daughters of St. Paul as they move from San Francisco to Redwood City. A Mass of Thanksgiving for the 35 years the Daughters of St. Paul have ministered in San Francisco will be held at St. Patrick’s Church in San Francisco on September 27 at 5:15 p.m. St. Patrick’s is located on Mission Street between 3rd and 4th Streets.
Francisco Red Cross estimates that hundreds of displaced families have been served – many of them at St. Mary’s Cathedral, which was transformed into an emergency services center from the full-time shelter originally conceived. As the flow of evacuees slowed, it became clear that existing sites could deal with the situation, and the City’s Office of Emergency Services determined that St. Mary’s Cathedral would no longer be needed after Sept. 16. During the two weeks the Cathedral Center was open, Catholic Charities and other local agencies assisted more than 200 families from the devastated Gulf Coast. Most of the evacuees came to San Francisco because of their Bay Area connections. Catholic Charities had 50 employees working on a rotation basis. “We performed a lot of comfort care,” said Doctor Glenn Motola, Catholic Charities’ programs and services director. He explained, “there was a lot of handholding, talking, and accompanying people to medical appointments.” Latonya Johnson happily announced that Catholic Charities secured housing for four families, accommodating a total of 21 adults and children. A young mother and child came to San Francisco to stay with “grandma.” They made their way to St. Mary’s hoping for some assistance. The child was enrolled at Megan Furth Academy. The grandmother described her granddaughter’s good fortune as “a real coming home” because she had graduated from St. Dominic School. “We managed to reunite two little girls with their families,” said Catholic Charities’ Carolyn Murph. “We bought them tickets for their return home to Louisiana.” One gentleman survivor of Katrina missed two weeks of chemotherapy treatments. A Catholic Charities staff member drove the man and his family to Veterans Hospital. The driver waited until the treatment was completed then drove the family back to their accommodations. “By serving our brothers and sisters affected by Hurricane Katrina, we are carrying out our mission to serve the poor, vulnerable and displaced. This is our daily
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calling,” said Brian Cahill, Executive Director, Catholic Charities CYO. Catholic Charities provided plane fares for family reunification, help with first and last month’s rent for displaced families, household goods such as mattresses and personal items such as eyeglasses, and the bulk of the transportation needs for hurricane victims at the Cathedral Center. Cahill said, “The Center received hundreds of calls from parishioners offering to help in any way they could. Some opened their homes to the people. And the parishes offered clothing, toys, and money, while Catholic Schools offered more than 100 places available tuition free.” Half of these were offered by The Megan Furth Academy at Sacred Heart/St. Dominic School. Cahill added, “Father John Talesfore and his staff at St. Mary’s Cathedral worked incredibly hard to make the Center open and available to the evacuees and agencies serving them.” Many events scheduled to use the Cathedral facilities had to be moved to other sites. With the closing of the center, the various services provided at St. Mary’s Cathedral Conference Center have been transitioned over to the Red Cross office on Second Street, according to Marti Sullivan of Catholic Charities’ development office. Laura Adelman, spokesperson for the San Francisco Office of Emergency Services, said “The Red Cross provided hotel vouchers for those needing shelter. The City provided families with various information regarding medical services. Some people were enrolled in social programs. And, the Salvation Army provided most of the food for the families.” Catholic Charities’ development office confirmed that Levi Strauss Co. planned to drop off clothing for the evacuees at one of the agency’s sites. Also, the GAP planned to provide certificates to the Old Navy clothing stores. “For several months, Catholic Charities plans to keep some employees available to follow-up on the progress of the people they assisted,” said Sullivan “ We just want to make sure they are okay.”
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Christian Foundation for Children and Aging (CFCA) has been offering hope to poor children in developing countries for 24 years. Sponsorship helps remove obstacles of poverty by providing schooling, nutritious food and medical care. Through the Church’s call for families and communities to participate in putting the needs of the poor and vulnerable first, CFCA serves our brothers and sisters globally in our interdependent world. Through letters and photographs, you receive the blessings that accompany any nurturing relationship, learning about your sponsored friend’s culture, family, struggles and achievements. Make a difference in the life of a child or aging friend. Become a sponsor today by filling out the form below and mailing it to us. If you prefer, call us toll-free at (800) 875-6564, or sponsor online at www.cfcausa.org.
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September 23, 2005 creative technology, or NaPro technology for short. Through its Omaha headquarters and more than 150 satellite offices in the U.S. and abroad, physicians and other practitioners of FertilityCare offer reproductive services and obstetric and gynecological medicine that conform to Catholic teaching on marriage and responsible parenthood.
in brief
Bishops urge court to affirm same-sex marriage ban
WASHINGTON — The Vatican’s apostolic visitation of all U.S. Catholic seminaries and houses of priestly formation begins in late September. Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services will coordinate the visits, which include St. Patrick Seminary in Menlo Park. Sparked by the sexual abuse crisis that hit the U.S. church in 2002, the visitations will pay special attention to areas such as the quality of the seminarians’ human and spiritual formation for living chastely and of their intellectual formation for faithfulness to church teachings, especially in the area of moral theology. The Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education, which oversees seminary formation around the world, has appointed 117 bishops and seminary personnel as visitors. They are to visit each college- or theology-level institution, working in teams of three for smaller programs or four for the larger ones.
Vatican official speaks at U.N., backs reform, peace-building unit UNITED NATIONS — The Vatican secretary of state called for institutional reform of the United Nations “that is attentive to the real demands of our peoples rather than to the balance of power” and supported the establishment of a Peace-Building Commission to help people heal after conflicts. Speaking on the last day of the Sept. 14-16 summit of heads of state and government at U.N. headquarters in New York, Cardinal Angelo Sodano said “ordinary men and women, the many millions who constitute the ‘we the people’ of the U.N. charter,” are asking world leaders to “give us a modern institution, capable of taking resolutions and then enforcing them.” The cardinal added, “This is an insistent appeal issued to us by men and women who are disheartened by promises made and not kept, resolutions adopted and not enforced.” The high-level plenary session brought together leaders of more than 170 countries and resulted in a 35-page final statement that touched on terrorism, development issues, peace-building, human rights, the environment and international health.
Knights, other groups appeal ruling on Pledge of Allegiance WASHINGTON — The Knights of Columbus and other parties in a lawsuit filed over the Pledge of Allegiance have appealed a federal judge’s ruling that the pledge cannot be recited in public schools because of its reference to God. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento, Calif., said Sept. 14 that under a previous ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the practice unconstitutional, the current case is legally resolved already. In the previous case, the Supreme Court ruled in June that Dr. Michael Newdow lacked the legal standing to sue his daughter’s California school district over the practice of reciting the pledge. The high court declined to decide whether the words “under God” made it unconstitutional to recite the pledge in public schools. The new lawsuit was again filed by Newdow, a physician and an attorney who represented himself before the Supreme Court last
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Apostolic visitation of all U.S. seminaries begins
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, addresses the 2005 World Summit during the 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York Sept. 16. The summit's agenda included world peace, human rights, development aid and U.N. internal reforms.
March, but this time with the participation of other students who live in four Sacramento-area school districts.
Canadian bishop says culture makes church mission harder CORNWALL, Ontario — The outgoing president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Catholic Church faces a culture marked by divisions of values and beliefs that make its own mission ever more difficult. Archbishop Brendan O’Brien of St. John’s, Newfoundland, who was ending his two-year term as conference president, told bishops gathered in Cornwall Sept. 19-23 that “the stakes have become more far-reaching and more profound.” Archbishop O’Brien said, “While I do not want to be numbered among those who proclaim ‘the end of civilization,’ it seems to me that the debate on the basic values of civilization provides a useful perspective from which to look at the past year and at our conference’s continuing review of its activities and services.” He said, “The question this year is even more basic: What shape do we wish to give to the episcopal structures of our conference in order that we, the bishops of Canada, can be more effective in responding to urgent pastoral questions?”
Church offers morally acceptable options for infertile couples WASHINGTON — At least 15 percent of U.S. women experience fertility-related problems sometime during their reproductive years. And Catholic women are no exception. Although the growing field of assisted reproductive technology offers many options for those who have no moral qualms about in vitro fertilization or other methods that bring about reproduction outside the marital act, there may seem to be limited options for those who want to follow Catholic teaching. Not so, say staff members at the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha, Neb., and its Center for NaPro Ethics. The institute’s founder and director, Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, has developed the Creighton Model FertilityCare System, a natural method of family planning and monitoring gynecological health, and a comprehensive system of women’s health called natural pro-
ST. LOUIS — Catholic bishops in 21 dioceses in seven states have joined in a friend-of-the-court brief seeking the reversal of a ruling that the Nebraska Constitution violates the U.S. Constitution by defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The brief filed with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in St. Louis, represented the Catholic conferences of Nebraska, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri and the dioceses of Rapid City and Sioux Falls, S.D., and Little Rock, Ark. Also participating in the brief were Family First and Families for America, Nebraska-based family-advocacy organizations that joined the Nebraska Catholic Conference in a coalition supporting Initiative Measure 416 in 2000. The initiative, which was approved by 70 percent of Nebraska voters, amended the state constitution to read: “Only marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or recognized in Nebraska. The uniting of two persons of the same sex in a civil union, domestic partnership or other similar same-sex relationship shall not be valid or recognized in Nebraska.”
New pro-life spokeswoman for U.S. bishops named WASHINGTON — A woman who has worked for the National Institutes of Health, Feminists for Life and a Midwest diocese has been chosen as the U.S. bishops’ new spokeswoman on pro-life matters. Deirdre McQuade, who holds master’s degrees in both philosophy and theology from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, took up her new post as director of planning and information in the U.S. Deirdre McQuade Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities in early September. In addition to being spokeswoman, McQuade will be responsible for planning major outreach and advertising campaigns for the secretariat. She served most recently as a grant program analyst in the Office of Research on Women’s Health at NIH. In 2003, she was national program director for Feminists for Life, overseeing the organization’s college outreach program. From 1999 to 2002, she directed the Office of Pastoral Research in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., where she also served as an ecumenical officer.
Israeli rabbis urge pope to designate anti-Semitism day CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — Meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Israeli’s two chief rabbis proposed that the church designate an annual “day against anti-Semitism” to promote Catholic teaching on respect for Jews. The rabbis also asked the pope to speak out against the recent burning of synagogues in Gaza, following the departure of Israeli settlers there. The pope welcomed Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger at his summer residence outside Rome Sept. 15. Their meeting lasted about 45 min-
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September 23, 2005
New Orleans Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes surveys the destruction at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Slidell, La., Sept. 17. After the roof collapsed the church was flooded by the storm surge created by Hurricane Katrina. The parish elementary school also suffered severe flooding.
A Sudanese boy holds his malnourished cousin as he waits for medical assistance at a health clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Akuem, a village in southern Sudan, Sept. 11. The U.N. Human Development Report says there are only 16 doctors for every 100,000 people in Sudan.
utes. The rabbis told reporters afterward that the encounter was a positive one, marking another step in the deepening of relations between Catholics and Jews. They invited the pope to visit Jerusalem, an invitation made previously by the Israeli government. They said they had proposed to the pope that Oct. 28 be set aside as a churchwide anti-Semitism day. The date marks the anniversary of the 1965 promulgation of “Nostra Aetate,” the Second Vatican Council’s landmark declaration that called for an end to anti-Semitism and all religious discrimination.
Archbishop sees ‘genuine renewal’ of priestly life on horizon WASHINGTON — “I believe we’re on the brink of a genuine renewal of life of the priests of the United States,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of Milwaukee said at a symposium on priests’ spirituality Sept. 12. He said American priests have undergone “intense upheaval” in the past four years, but in the church’s long history “seasons of defeat and decline unfailingly lead to renewal.” Archbishop Dolan, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry, was keynote speaker at the halfday symposium. Held at the Life Cycle Center of The Catholic University of America in Washington, the symposium focused on the recently published book, “Stewards of God’s Mysteries: Priestly Spirituality in a Changing Church.” The book was developed out of a series of con-
sultations sponsored by the National Federation of Priests’ Councils. It is intended to offer practical guidance in priestly spiritual development similar to that given over the past three decades by “The Spiritual Renewal of the American Priesthood,” long a staple in many priests’ libraries.
Bishops’ committee head calls for action in war-torn Darfur WASHINGTON – The United States and the international community must do more to bring an end to the ongoing crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, said the chairman of the bishops’ International Policy Committee in urging support for a National Day of Action for the People of Darfur. “The crisis in Darfur must be ended,” said Bishop John H. Ricard, SSJ, of Pensacola-Tallahassee. The National Day of Action for Darfur on September 21 was organized by the Save Darfur Coalition, of which the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is a member. “Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and more than two million people face food and other insecurity as they languish in camps for the internally displaced or in refugee camps in neighboring Chad,” said Bishop Ricard. He also urged continuing pressure by the international community, including the African Union, on the government in Khartoum, the Janjaweed militias and the rebel forces to cease military operations and provide safe corridors for the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance. “We call upon the U.S. Congress to enact the Darfur
Accountability Act so that the African Union peacekeeping force might be expanded and given a stronger mandate to protect innocent civilians,” he said.
Caritas calls summit ‘missed opportunity’ VATICAN CITY – The failure of a recent U.N. summit to take concrete action against poverty represented a “missed opportunity of staggering proportions,” said the head of the worldwide Catholic charities organization, Caritas Internationalis. “The hope for achievements targeted for 2015 was daunting, but politically perfectly possible in a world
with the wealth and the technology to dent dehumanizing poverty,” Duncan MacLaren, Caritas secretary-general, said in a Sept. 15 statement. The intended focus of the Sept. 1416 U.N. World Summit in New York had been to review the Millennium Development Goals on alleviating poverty and investing in health, education and the environment in the poorest countries of the world. While the final document from the U.N. summit recommitted to the goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015 and addressed issues on U.N. reform, terrorism, human rights and peace-building, some critics said the document failed to fully address rich nations’ previous commitments to fight world poverty.
Seattle University invites applications for its Sullivan Leadership Award A four-year scholarship program including full tuition, room, and meals available to high achieving high school seniors from Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, or Washington State committed to _Service and Leadership _ Academic Excellence _Community _Spirituality _Global Awareness the application deadline for fall 2006 consideration is November 15, 2005 for applications or further information please call: Mikki Rozell at (206) 296-5803/(800) 426-7123 mrozell@seattleu.edu please check the scholarship website: www.seattleu.edu/sullivan
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Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
Bible . . . ■ Continued from cover the lamp for our feet and a light to our path,” the pope said. In an address to congress participants at the meeting’s venue in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Christian unity council, also called for a renewal of the sacred reading of Scripture. While “lectio divina” was “not a panacea that solves every problem in one fell swoop,” the cardinal said it was “an important pastoral task” that would help remind the faithful that the Bible dealt “with God’s word and God’s reality” and not “human words and theses.” In divine revelation, “God is talking to us as friends,” said the cardinal. The word of God is not an intellectual treatise on “supernatural reality or arcane doctrine,” he said; it is “person-to-person communication” with God’s loving voice speaking directly to the individual. Through “Dei Verbum,” the Second Vatican Council strove to emphasize the important role of Scriptures in the life of the
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church and put the Bible back in the hands of the faithful. “Unfortunately, it must be said, there is still little Bible in the lives of the faithful,” said Italian Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Catholic Bible Federation. Recent research conducted in Italy, Spain and France found that many Catholics consider the sacred Scriptures as something “reserved for the clergy” rather than as an accessible resource for them to draw upon for truth and inspiration in their own lives, he said. In other parts of the world, wide use of the Bible is a matter of access. Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, said, “In many places the cost of the Bible is beyond the reach of the average Catholic.” In general this is because “the so-called ‘Catholic Bibles’ are imported from abroad and are much more expensive than the highly subsidized Protestant Bibles,” he said. Archbishop Onaiyekan said the Catholic Church often restricts its own efforts “to the so-called major languages,” resulting in many people “condemned to hearing the Scriptures in a second or even third language.” “Again, here the Protestants have gone ahead of us,” Archbishop Onaiyekan said.
Mass for ‘first Filipino saint’ Sept. 24 at St. Veronica A Mass and conference commemorating the life of St. Lorenzo Ruiz of Manila will be celebrated Sept. 24, 2005 at St. Veronica Church, 434 Alida Way, South San Francisco beginning at 9 a.m. Msgr. Fred Bitanga, pastor of St. Patrick Parish in San Francisco, Father Ed Bohnert, pastor of St. Veronica Parish in So. San Francisco, and Father Raymund Reyes, parochial vicar at St. Isabella Parish in San Rafael will concelebrate Mass. In addition, Father Reyes is scheduled to be a presenter for some of the day’s talks. St. Lorenzo Ruiz is “the first Filipino saint,” according to material promoting the event. Born in Manila in the early seventeenth century, the martyr saint was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1987. His feast day is Sept. 28. The gathering also includes lunch and entertainment. Call Mario Vierneza at (415) 468-1346 for more information.
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Catholic San Francisco
Seton’s new center help seniors find their balance give the feedback to all the physicians that are taking care of the patient. Everyone involved must have the information,� he said, “includSeton Medical Center’s new Balance and ing the caregivers.� Mobility Center is solving a 50-year medical The Center’s good diagnostic testing allows dilemma for doctors with patients experiencSeton to treat the whole person, and provide ing problems with dizziness and balance. “The accurate treatment patterns that will enhance technology just wasn’t there, and people were the quality of life for the patients. repeatedly misdiagnosed,� said Dr. Steven Evaluation begins with clinical audiologist, Kmucha, medical director of the Center. Patricia Dallaire, who conducts tests involving The innovative Center with state-of-the art the middle and inner ear, vision, sensory recepequipment and specialized team services is tors, muscle/joints, brain responses and more. about a year old. It provides the only Bay Area She determines the likely problem and writes service (other than San Francisco’s Veterans an extensive report detailing her findings. Hospital) focused on diagnostic testing and Then physical therapist, Lena Hwang, rehabilitation for dizziness and balance probreviews reports. If the physicians rule out medlems. Kmucha said almost all of the high tech ical issues, such as neurological problems, testing is covered by Medicare and traditional Hwang works with the patients guided by the health insurance. computer’s individualized treatment program “One major piece of equipment at our cenwhich includes extensive customized exercises ter is a computerized dynamic posturographer for the patient at home. (CDP),� said GeneAnn La Moria, clinic direc“Our success rate is about 90 percent,� tor. She explained that the Center’s specially Patient Edward O’Donnell wearing goggles for the high tech said Hwang. trained staff place the patient in a simulatorvideonystagmography test given by clinical audiologist, Patricia Dallaire. Hwang explained that for people suffering type balance environment. Within the simulafrom dizziness or a balance problem, transtor the staff recreates many different balance situations that help the computer (CDP) to isolate the from the Center. He’s happy with his improvement and portation is difficult, especially for the seniors. So the patient’s problem. The patients wear a harness that allows pleased he does not need to take medication. “Seton excels Center schedules visits for the patients once a week or once every two weeks. The patients are expected to do them to move freely and securely without the fear of falling in this field,� he said. while experiencing various types of balance situations. Last year, Norma Evans of St. Augustine Parish in their exercise regimen at home, and demonstrate progress Kmucha, an ear, nose, and throat doctor, said for years South San Francisco suffered a severe attack of vertigo, at their next visit to the Center. Dr. Kmucha said that each person has a unique level and he saw people every day experiencing dizziness. The days leaving her unable to get out of her bed. She prayed to God ability of activity that they can safely do. “It’s important to are gone when patients experiencing dizziness are lumped that she would not be an invalid. into a single basket, prescribed pills, and sent home withKmucha said that vertigo is a challenge for physicians. talk to the person and find out if the patient’s goals are reaout a diagnosis, said the doctor. “It’s not okay to say any- It can take a long time to do a thorough workup to rule out sonable,� he said. “If they sit home and quilt all day long that requires a different balance exercise than the person more ‘your dizzy, live with it.’� trauma, concussion, or any kind of physical injury. Age is the most common reason for dizziness. “Think The Center informed Evans that a combination of her who likes to hike along the beach. We are now able to creabout what happens with the sensitivity of the body with thyroid, diabetes and a past stroke (unknowingly) played ate an accurate treatment plan for the patients because of age,� Kmucha said. “You don’t remember as well, don’t see roles in the severe vertigo that caused great difficulties for the Center’s good diagnostic testing,� said Kmucha. La Moria said the CDP testing also produces a record of as well, don’t hear as well, and don’t feel things as well.� her. “I couldn’t walk or read,� she said. As the body changes, so does the brain. “We lose nerve The Center prepared a customized treatment plan for the patient’s progress with the prescribed exercises. Letting cells, and that means balance becomes more unstable. The Evans, and she began her specialized exercises to alleviate people know how well they are doing is important feedback, she said. “What makes us unique is that we are givrate that the brain processes information from the body and the vertigo. the environment slows down. Age is a big factor,� he said. Still a patient of the Balance and Mobility Center, she is ing answers to the patients’ problems,� said Dallaire. Seton Hospital is a member of the Daughters of Yet there are a great number of other conditions that can extremely happy with her progress. “I recently graduated cause dizziness like diabetes, thyroid, and blood pressure. Even from a walker to a cane,� she said with a smile. “I’ve Charity Health System. The Balance and Mobility Center cholesterol can affect the function of the brain and the ear. improved greatly. It’s all about Seton. I have great confi- is a hospital-based program that offers a full range of services, specialists, and state-of-the-art equipment. For Last September, 87-year-old Edward O’Donnell suf- dence in the Center.� fered a stroke, leaving his left side weak, and causing him “Traditional medicine divides the patient into little tiny more information call 650-992-3077. occasional dizzy spells. Because of his unsteadiness he had pieces, and there is a specialist for each piece,� said fallen a few times after the stroke. Kmucha. “This may not be the best way to give the overall CHAS SCHOOL OF FILM, TELEVISION & THEATRE O’Donnell, a longtime parishioner of Daly City’s Our picture to the patient. At the Center, we compile all the What Our Students Say: 12 years of helping actors Lady of Mercy Parish praises the treatment he received problems of a patient together in one report,� he said. “We break into the business
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Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
Guest Commentary Priests in “non-retirement” By John Norris When is retirement not retirement? The answer is, “When you’ve spent your life as a Catholic priest.” Priests don’t retire, they simply move on to a life within the Church without a specific assignment. The Archdiocese of San Francisco has seventy-two retired priests. Some live at Serra Clergy House in San Mateo or Nazareth House in San Rafael. Others live in private residences, sometimes with family or other retired priests. Many live in rectories. If they are physically able, these men continue in their service of the people of God by substituting for priests in parishes for vacations, family events, or other occasions. They continue to witness marriages, baptize our babies, and bury our loved ones. Over lunch recently with a group of these “retired” priests, I learned some important things about them and about priests in general. On the reasons for becoming a priest, many say that it was not a logical process with a beginning, a middle and an end. It was more like something that “just happened.” God called, and they were sure that
it was God calling. Then, they responded. Some credit the example of priests who influenced their formative years, and all expressed appreciation for the nuns who had helped to form them and to teach them. “These were strong women!” All would do it all over again. Every priest at this luncheon expressed satisfaction with the life they have lived. Several said it was “exciting” and all talked about the genuine satisfaction they had experienced in working for the good of others. Pastoral work was preferred to administrative tasks. Without exception, these men related the joy of being with people to help them with the challenges of their lives and their families – and all expressed happiness that lay people are beginning to take on more responsibility for the administrative and financial tasks that make a parish run smoothly. “We don’t define ourselves by what we do – but by who we are” were the watch words. All appreciate the care and compassion of the Archdiocese and the people of our three counties. This luncheon was at Serra House, but these priests believed that every retired priest in the Archdiocese would
At home at Serra Clergy House are, from top, Father Bill Quinn, Father John Ward, Father Patrick Keane, Father Anthony Chung, and Father John Kavanaugh.
agree that their needs are being met. They are provided housing, food, subsistence, and healthcare. And, they appreciate it. We can be proud of these men, the service they have provided us, and the service they continue to provide. Unfortunately, the numbers of retired priests continues to rise, and more help is needed if we are to continue to meet their needs in retirement. On Sunday, Sept. 25, most of our parish-
es will take a second collection for the Priests Retirement Fund. Our generosity will send a clear message to these men that we love them as men, as priests, and as friends. Please look back on your own life, consider the influence priests have had, and give as generously as you can. John Norris is director of Development for the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
September 23, 2005
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Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
September 23, 2005
Catholic San Francisco
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LIFELONG SUPPORT FOR MARRIAGE - WORLDWIDE MARRIAGE ENCOUNTER WEEKEND Some wisdom from Marriage Encounter participants
Strengthing the Sacrament
Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler celebrated Mass at the Marriage Encounter National Convention this July in Maryland. feelings. It allows both husband and wife to share what’s going on inside and to be heard. “Love is a decision,” according to St. Bartholomew parishioner Dean Simonich. It is a decision that in marriage, is also a Sacrament – a Sacrament and decision which need the lifelong The weekend is not a retreat, a marriage clinic, a sensitivity group, or a substitute for counseling but support of the partners and the community at large. rather a unique approach aimed at revitalizing marriage. Couples attend talks One way that Dean and his wife of 38 years, Claire, have found to over the course of the weekend given by other couples as well as priest presensupport and improve the Sacrament of their marriage is through their ters. They can then share with each other privately through the techniques involvement in the Worldwide Marriage Encounter. learned throughout the weekend. One important method is the use of dialogue Worldwide Marriage Encounter was started in 1967 by three questions as starting points to understand how the other person is feeling. “It’s Catholic couples and a priest in Long Island, New York. It is based on not for problem solving,” Claire said, “you don’t necessarily have to agree with an experience created by Fr. Gabriel Calvo in Spain. Couples in New it, but it’s to walk in the other’s shoes.” York began presenting weekends in major cities in the U.S. asking At the end of the weekend, couples who are interested, can join a Marriage only that couples and priests in those areas pass the weekend on to Encounter community group called a circle. These groups meet once or twice other areas. Since that time, Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekends a month to help couples maintain the skills they learned on the weekend. have spread to 93 countries and millions of couples have attended. Whether or not one joins a circle, couples have learned skills over the weekPope John Paul II was among the many supporters of Marriage end and will receive materials which help them continue practicing their new Encounter and many priests and bishops are involved as presenters of skills. “You’re not going to have a perfect marriage after the weekend,” Claire Marriage Encounter Weekends, including Bishop William S. Skylstad, said, “but you’ll be working on it.” Couples who keep at the special form of President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. dialogue each day “get more and more in touch with each other and things start to change . . .Whatever is going on inside of you, someone is hearing it.” One reason for such strong Church support, Claire explained to Dean and Claire Simonich Catholic San Francisco, is that strong marriages obviously lead to strong When a couple registers for a Worldwide Marriage Encounter families, but also to strong parishes. It supports families because, “Unless Weekend, they are then contacted by the registrar couple and given a the marriage is strong, there is nothing for the kids,” she said. Husband Dean explained it choice of future Weekend dates. The next open weekend in the Archdiocese of San supports parishes by stressing the reality of the Marriage Sacrament. “Marriage is made Francisco is November 4th, 5th and 6th at the Burlingame Doubletree. up of three people,” he said, “the couple and the Holy Spirit. When people realize ‘We The Marriage Encounter Weekend starts Friday evening at 8:00 pm. and ends after are a sacrament,’ they look at God as part of their regular relationship.” Mass on Sunday at about 4:00 pm. Three Catholic couples and a priest present each weekend. After one of the couples and the priest have completed a presentation, the parMarriage Encounter Weekend is designed for couples with good marriages. It is not for ticipants are given a question to help them personalize what they have just heard. Couples seriously troubled marriages, Claire said (See Retrouvaille sidebar). “But,” she said, “Good is dialogue on their responses in the privacy of their own rooms between presentations. At the enemy of great. You get complacent when you’re comfortable.” Sometimes, she no time are participants required to speak in front of others. Couples are encouraged to explained, couples can be “physically intimate, but not emotionally intimate. Sometimes concentrate on their own relationships and not socialize with others except at meals. you’re both lonely and don’t know the other person is lonely.” Through the tools acquired There is a $50 registration fee to sign up for the Weekend, but scholarships are in a Marriage Encounter Weekend, couples grow to “be more than two ‘married singles.’” available for couples who need them. All couples are given a blank envelope on The Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend helps married couples look Sunday and asked for a donation to cover their weekend costs. However, donations deeply into their relationship with each other and with God. It teaches a techare voluntary and no couple is ever turned away due to lack of funds. To sign up for the nique of loving communication called Dialogue, that couples can use to enrich their November weekend or for more information call Paul or Yvonne at 650-366-7093. marriage at every stage of their lives. Dialogue is a non-confrontational way to share
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experience all of these wonderful blessings together, hand in hand. We are no longer ‘married singles’; we are a married couple. Together, with the encounter community and dialogue, James and I are becoming what God intended us to be.” Romeo and Gerry Agloro are a couple with teenagers from All Souls: “Marriage Encounter has touched our lives as a couple, as parents and as a family through relationship. “As a couple, we have improved our communication, and intimaCari & Jerry cy. We are able to work through the daily life issues of a married couple without the heightened stresses, conflicts and anxieties that are Komp often portrayed as a negative part of marriage by today’s media. (St. Gregory) “Our children ranged in age from 14 to 20 when we went on our and Romeo & weekend three years ago. For a period of time, we had three teenagers in Gerry Agloro. the house simultaneously. Marriage Encounter enabled us to show them how to communicate openly with us and each other and how to share their thoughts, concerns and feelings on any issue. By hearing what is in each other’s heart, we became more connected, lessening conflicts during those teen years. As a family, we now enrich each other’s lives through activities and outings with willing and active participation by all.” Bob and Judy Carlson are a retired couple from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel parish in Redwood City: “Judy and I have been married 45 years. For the past 20 years, we have used the marriage encounter weekends to celebrate several key events and transitions. The most recent transition was when we both retired. We decided to once again make a Marriage Encounter Weekend to help ease us into a 24/7 lifestyle. This transition could have been stressful for us. However, on the weekend, the reinforcement of the communication techniques known as dialogue enabled us to keep our love alive and our hearts and minds open to each other. Once again, dialogue fostered our emotional intimacy, which has always been a major part of our relationship.” Msgr. Richard Knapp is a Marriage Encounter priest presenter: “Although still busy at Our Lady of Loretto, I began a new ministry shortly after I retired in 1997. In the fall, I attended a Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend and prepared to be a priest member of the presenting teams. It took me some time to write my talks as the outline was strict about content and timelines. “I was part of a presenting team for the first time in the fall of 1998. That very first weekend convinced me that I had made a good choice. Just to see the couples at the end of the weekend was sufficient reward for our team efforts. They were in good marriages when the weekend began, but they rekindled their love and commitment to each other as the weekend went along. And followup participation with other encountered couples has shown that the results can last a long time. “Not only have I been impressed with the couples making the weekend, I have been equally impressed by the dedication of the presenting couples. I have worked with more than thirty presenting couples and believe me, they are dedicated to this mission of helping other couples improve their marriages. “I will be part of a presenting team for the twenty-fifth time this year. In those past Encounter Weekends, we reached out to four hundred couples. That’s almost as many couples as I prepared for marriage over the past fifty years. Yes, this ministry is a rewarding one. I would encourage couples to somehow fit a Marriage Encounter Weekend into their schedule.”
RETROUVAILLE, a Catholic peer ministry for couples in hurting or troubled marriages, has programs several times a year throughout the Bay Area, including June and November for the San Francisco Archdiocese. The program takes three months to complete. If a marriage has become unloving and uncaring or if the relationship has grown cold and distant—if there are feelings of disappointment, even despair—then Retrouvaille
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Paul Ziemba and Yvonne Leyba are a couple with small children from St. Matthias parish: “We weren’t sure what to expect on our Marriage Encounter Weekend a year and a half ago. We had left our two boys, an infant and a toddler, with family friends and were happy just to have a little time to ourselves. “Before the weekend, after chores like diapering, feeding, and laundry plus activities with the kids, we hardly spent any time focusing on each other. We had neglected our relationship, and the normal frictions of married life were obscuring our love. “During our encounter weekend we learned ways to nurture our tenderness for each other and to build our intimacy. As we became more in tune with each other, our reservoir of affection deepened and we were able to confront the stresses of work, kids, and schedule as a team. “The enrichment of our marriage extended to our children as well. Our older son, now 4_, freely expresses his feelings and is learning to be aware of the feelings of others. The tenderness we show each other echoes in the ways the two boys interact with each other and their friends with affectionate hugs and offers of help. Marriage Encounter has not only helped strengthen our marriage, but has also helped us to be more patient as parents and has drawn our family closer.” James and Judy Wolf are a couple with school age children from St. Catherine parish: “At the time James and I went on a Marriage Encounter Weekend in 2003, we had been married for 13 years and had been through many good times and many struggles. I stayed home with our four kids, ages 5 to 10, while working part-time and getting my graduate degree. James ran the engineering department at a budding startup. We thought that our married-with-children life was fine. Though we knew that our marriage could be better, we didn’t really know how to make it better. Then a friend suggested that we try a Marriage Encounter weekend. We had no idea what we were in for, but a weekend away from the kids was reason enough to go. “In the time since our weekend, we have made Marriage Encounter a priority in our lives. We participate in a circle and dialogue regularly. Dialogue helped us walk through the dark times that life sometimes throws our way and helped us find God’s will for us. During stressful and fearful times, we would find peace through dialogue. We learned to listen, not judge. We learned to share without fear. Dialogue has taught us to identify our feelings, share them with each other, and accept them without judgment. It has been the path to true intimacy and unconditional love. With the help of Marriage Encounter, we’ve learned to find strength in good times and bad. “But Marriage Encounter, for us, is much more than a set of tools. We are now part of a community of married couples. It is in this community that we find the strength and hope necessary to fuel our commitment to each other and to the tools that we learned on our weekend. By participating in a circle, we have made a host of friends. We are privileged to participate in their lives—to hear how they feel, to see how they deal with life and how they put our tools to good use to become, together, what God truly intended each of them to be. We share our experience, strength and prayers together, as Christ would have us live, in community. “Today we lead even busier lives—and we still have four kids! The difference is that we
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Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
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September 23, 2005
Catholic San Francisco
13
Family Life
Mother swears there will be no more cussing The canopy of cool, green leaves overhead offered a welcome umbrella from the late afternoon sun. I stood against a tree waiting to cheer on my two high school runners as they competed in their first cross-country meet of the season. Then, emerging from a well-worn dirt path came two teenage idiots. This probably sounds judgmental. I try hard not to make sweeping generalizations about people. So I wasn’t about to draw any unfair conclusions about them just because they looked scruffy, had cigarettes dangling from their lips and soft-pack coolers slung over their shoulders. In fact, I didn’t just judge these boys by their appearance, or because they were playing “disk golf” — a game that looks a lot like “hit a tree with a Frisbee” — while, all around them, more than 100 other teens exuded health and fitness by participating in a 3.1-mile running race. The basis of my conclusion was this: The teen “disk golfers” emerged onto the path in the woods to play the next “hole” of their game. Just before they could fling a disk toward its target, the crowd of spectators yelled “runners” to clear the path — and keep the golfer-teens from being trampled by a herd of approaching racers. Apparently this annoyed said “golfers” because they shouted back something about it being a public park, and their retort included an expletive heard most often in rap and hip-hop music and sometimes in the halls of Congress. Did I mention there were children lining the path to cheer on their older siblings? And grandparents? And others who find it uncomfortable, at best, when people drop an obscenity in public, loudly enough to reverberate through the trees and create a verbal mushroom cloud billowing upward toward the heavens? It seemed all of us shook our heads in unison at the selfish, uncouth behavior. I thought to myself, “Idiots.” Thankfully, at about this moment the first of the cross-coun-
try runners appeared from around the bend. If there was more swearing, it was drowned out by the enthusiastic screams of support from the families and friends of the racers. It’s not that I’m a prude about cuss words. In fact, I’ve given up swearing for Lent on more than one occasion and found myself confessing my shortcomings several times before Easter. I have several friends whose self-control in this area requires me to ask myself, “What in the hell is wrong with me?” I give myself credit for at least recognizing refined behavior when I see it — in others. But there’s swearing and then there’s shouting vulgarities in the woods, loudly, in front of families and strangers. It’s a moment that begs the question, what is wrong with our culture when we aren’t surprised to hear such language? Of course, it isn’t just foul words that pepper public communication with unpleasantness. Case in point: The Sunday we spent this summer at a minor-league baseball park, where the teens behind us debated — and I’m not making this up — the relative pain levels of getting tattoos in sensitive places or having a navel repierced after childbirth or labor and delivery itself. I could only thank my lucky stars the young man engaged in the argument had never experienced a kidney stone. There wasn’t much I could do to shield my young son and daughter from the graphic descriptions of needle placements, not to mention the uncreative (four-letter) vocabulary used to describe the comparative degrees of pain. After attempting to engage my children in some diversionary conversation (“How about that pitch — pretty fast, huh?”), I decided this was a problem I could solve by spending money. We took a break from the game to buy snacks and then moved away to some empty seats for a different view of the diamond. The language issue heats up for me as my son has started sixth grade — a time when all boys may not become men, but at least they can pretend they’re manly by echoing the blue vocab-
ulary heard in locker rooms all across America. I know the pressure to blurt out the occasional four-letter word will be intense. Already he uses some familiar stand-ins for cuss words, prompting me to raise an Marybeth Hicks eyebrow and remind him to be careful. If nothing else, the explosive language I heard from the “disk golfer” reminded me why it’s important to teach my son that regardless of the messages our culture sends about casual cussing, it’s still offensive and thoughtless. Swearing inappropriately — not to mention brash guttural outbursts — will cause people to conclude he’s an idiot. Of course, there are many more reasons to reassert a more respectable vocabulary than simply to avoid making a bad impression. Careful speech is a way to demonstrate respect for those around us. Worse, constant cussing seems to promote a coarse and caustic attitude. After all, if you can mindlessly curse and flip someone the finger on the highway, why not run him off the road? Outrage becomes road rage absent self-control. When you think about it, cuss words are just words, easily replaced with more colorful, descriptive choices for self-expression. I can’t help but think that if those teens in the woods had shouted something like “Oppressive health fanatics,” I would at least have thought they were articulate, even if they were scruffy-looking “disk golfers.” Marybeth Hicks is a columnist for the Washington Times.
Personal Perspective
What’s so threatening about design? By Brian Killian No one seemed to take much notice when Pope Benedict, in his homily at his installation mass, said that “we are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” It wasn’t until Cardinal Schonborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, published an article entitled “Finding Design in Nature” in The New York Times that a simmering controversy exploded into the public eye. In that article, Schonborn points out that “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neoDarwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection — is not.” Schonborn thus objects to an ideological science that is committed to explaining life through chance and necessity alone, while ignoring or suppressing contrary evidence about life’s origins. There are those, however, that see evidence of design in nature and they belong to a movement called “intelligent design”, or ID. Schonborn is not alone. Over 400 scientists have signed a statement of dissent from Darwin’s theory of evolution, and school boards in the U.S. and Australia are pushing to have Darwinism challenged and supplemented by ID. As polls have shown, a significant portion of the public does not believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution, and not just because of religious beliefs, but because people know a con when they see it. Up until just a few years ago, the National Association of Biology
Teachers (NABT) began its definition of evolution as “an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process …” Notice the adjectives “unsupervised” and “impersonal”, similar to “unguided” and “unplanned” that the Cardinal was objecting to. A definition of evolution that uses these adjectives is not, in fact, a biological definition. It is more like a mission statement for atheism masquerading as biology. And so a double standard exists in public schools. Religion must not enter the domain of the science classroom, and yet the science classroom becomes a place to teach kids atheism in the guise of Darwinian evolution. Reluctantly, NABT dropped the offending words from their definition, but not the atheism-as-science attitude that spawned it. Those who are suspicious of Darwinism are vindicated by the fact that the Darwinists themselves are not too subtle about their religious motives. A new research program at Harvard aims to study how life began. One of its researchers put it this way: “My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention.” How can divine intervention be the subject of scientific research? Something is wrong when science becomes a project to keep atheists feeling intellectually satisfied. On the other hand, ID is not concerned with the Divine, but with intelligence and the characteristic features found in nature that indicates design. Divine intervention may be an inference from design, but that is the business of theologians and philosophers. Intelligent Design is not controversial when it is part of
other sciences like cryptology, forensics, archeology, or S.E.T.I. (search for extraterrestrial intelligence). But when it is applied to biology, the Darwinists begin gnashing their teeth. It is the implications of ID that is so intolerable to the biological establishment. They complain that ID is creationism — religion in disguise — but their eagerness to reject ID as science because of the implication of a design inference reveals their ideologically driven definition of science. They think good science should only implicate chance, and not will; descendants of apes, and not thoughts of God. But good science is not defined according to its implications. Science looks at the facts and lets them speak for themselves. When they aren’t allowed to speak you get pseudo-science. This is why people are crying foul regarding Darwinian dogma. Darwinism is very much like a religion. Its historical narrative has become the creation myth of secular culture. But it can no longer hide behind the façade of science. Science itself has changed enough over the centuries that it is beginning to expel the parasite that lived within it for so long. Science is increasingly becoming inhospitable to the materialism that has attached itself to it in order to bask in the glow of its authority. And maybe someday it will be science that in its own way points to the spiritual nature of the person and the fact that he, and the world he lives in, has been willed. Brian Killian is a freelance writer and columnist for the Atlantic Catholic in Nova Scotia.
This isn’t God’s punishment, but God is here By Father Eugene Herrick When we’re feeling dumbfounded by a national, natural disaster like that of Hurricane Katrina, one way to sooth our troubled minds is to talk it out with others. Below are some of the first thoughts that came to mind when I heard of Katrina. Please allow me to talk them out with you. In 1970, I was sent to Biloxi, Miss., to study the aftermath of Hurricane Camille. It was devastation like none I’d ever experienced in my life. As I viewed the aftermath of Katrina, its catastrophic devastation left me speechless — and wondering why God allows misery like this to happen. Some might say that it is God’s way of punishing us for our sinful ways. Heaven only knows we are all sinful. But what about the innocent babies who were drowned, crushed and died of dehydration? What about good people trying to raise a family and make a decent living? What about elders who sacrificed all their lives to make a better home for their children?
No doubt events like Katrina remind us to live a better life, but I believe they are not punishments. Rather, they are a means God can draw upon to raise our thoughts to a higher level about him and our existence. In his book “Power and Responsibility,” the great theologian Romano Guardini foresaw that human beings would develop abilities to control power as never before. He was especially concerned about the birth of our nuclear age with its positive, as well as negative, powers. But while we have harnessed great power and energy, I believe that Katrina teaches us there are still powers beyond our control and that beyond all these is the Creator of power. Today there is concern about a rising secularism in which people live for the moment. I believe, as the psalms teach us, that we are passing guests in this world and that as much as we want to possess the moment, we are never “in possession” of life. For some reason that only God knows, life suddenly has been turned upside down, and we now realize more than ever
that we don’t control it. As finite beings we can never fully understand God, who is infinite and works in mysterious way. One good thing that may well come of all this is that our level of humanity will rise as we pursue God’s ways in the months ahead — reaching out to each other in ways heretofore unimagined. When human beings sacrifice for other human beings, we see humanity at its best. More than this, we glimpse God’s Spirit working among us in new and touching ways. Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida: They’ll rise from this chaos. The faith, hope and love of the people are an assurance of this. Isn’t their story the same as that of the Israelites, who saw Jerusalem destroyed and went into exile only to return to a New Jerusalem? And isn’t this a family story of “resurrection” as well, a story about the occasions when God finds ways to draw good out of evil by making his presence felt in our lives? Fr. Eugene Hemrick is a columnist for Catholic News Service
14
Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Ezekiel 18:25-28; Psalm 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14; Philippians 2:1-11 OR Matthew 21:28-32. A READING FROM THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL (EZ 18:25-28) Thus says the Lord: You say, “The Lord’s way is not fair!” Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair? When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die. But if he turns from the wickedness he has committed, he does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins that he has committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die. RESPONSORIAL PSALM (PS 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14) R. Remember your mercies, O Lord. Your ways, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your paths, guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior. R. Remember your mercies, O Lord. Remember that your compassion, O Lord, and your love are from of old. The sins of my youth and my frailties remember not; in your kindness remember me, because of your goodness, O Lord. R. Remember your mercies, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord; thus he shows sinners the way. He guides the humble to justice, and teaches the humble his way. R. Remember your mercies, O Lord. A READING FROM THE LETTER OF SAINT PAUL TO THE PHILIPPIANS (PHIL 2:1-11) Brothers and sisters: If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any
compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. A READING FROM THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW (MT 21:28-32) Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people: “What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ He said in reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards changed his mind and went. The man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did his father’s will?” They answered, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.”
Scripture FATHER PHIL BLOOM
Are God’s ways unfair? When you come down to it there are only two moments in our lives that matter: the present, now, and the final moment, the hour of our death. We acknowledge that every time we say the Hail Mary, “Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.” The prophet Ezekiel says as much in today’s first reading. “When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die.” In other words, just because you are doing pretty good right now, don’t get overconfident. St. Paul warns against presumption*, “I work out my salvation in fear and trembling, lest after having preached to others, I myself be lost.” Those are sobering words; they make us recognize we have to rely constantly on God’s grace. However, if it is possible to forfeit everything at the very last, the opposite is also true. Ezekiel says, “But if he turns from the wickedness he has committed, and does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life.” As a priest I have seen many end of life conversions. It is one of the most beautiful things about being a priest. A family was once gathered around the bed of their dying father. All his life he had mocked the faith. His wife endured it years and prayed quietly for her husband. As he was slipping away, she placed a small crucifix in his hand. To the astonishment of the family he grasped it and lifted it to his lips. Touching that crucifix to his lips was his last conscious act. Now to some people this can seem unfair. How can a person ignore God and be saved by a deathbed conversion while someone else does good all his life, then loses everything by committing a serious sin? But God turns the question around, “Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?” We can be sure of one thing: God is completely just and fair. But he never allows us to peer into another man’s heart. We can only see our own. Some worry about the people who have never heard about Christ. How are they saved? That is a legitimate question; our Catechism addresses it. (#1260, see also #161ff.) But worrying about other people can be a way of avoiding a much more
important and immediate question: what about you? You and I do know about Jesus and our salvation will depend on how we respond to him. Regarding salvation Jesus tells us today about two sons. The first was told to get into the vineyard and work. He said, “no,” but later changed his mind. The second said, “yes,” but then never went. Jesus asks a simple question, “Which one did his father’s will?” Which one will be saved? You can hear Jesus’ listeners swallow hard, “The first.” The one who got into the vineyard. The point is almost identical to last Sunday - the parable of the workers in the vineyard. What counts is not necessarily all the good work you’ve done, but where you are at the end of the day. Those who came at the last hour get the same pay as those who worked all day. God does not operate on the “equal pay for equal work” principle. God is generous. He is also fair, but in a deeper way than our ordinary standard of justice. So what is the moral of this story? I am afraid for many people it is, “Enjoy now, repent later.” I’ll stop swearing and drinking, but not now. I’ll start getting serious about praying and going to Mass - when I’m older. Surely God won’t send me to hell just because I do a little messing around. That way of thinking is fatal. When a person makes a deathbed conversion, I am convinced it was not only an act of God’s grace, but there was something which all along prepared the person. The same with the apparently good man who trips at the end. Remember the saying, “As you live, so shall you die.” When that moment arrives, what will count is not your good intentions, “I was planning on repenting, but when I turned seventy.” God is not interested in a lot of lovely promises. He wants action. Are you in the vineyard or not? Sure, the Church has a lot of imperfections. It’s composed of imperfect people, like you and me. But what will endure forever is Jesus and his bride the Church. When our time comes, may we be found working in the vineyard. Father Phil Bloom is pastor of Holy Family Parish in Seattle.
Prayer for the intercession of Pope John Paul II O Holy Trinity, we thank you for having given to the Church Pope John Paul II, and for having made him shine with your fatherly tenderness, the glory of the Cross of Christ and the splendour of the Spirit of love He, trusting completely in your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, has shown himself in the likeness of Jesus the Good Shepherd and has pointed out to us holiness as the path to reach eternal communion with You. Grant us, through his intercession, according to your will, the grace that we implore, in the hope that he will soon be numbered among your saints. Amen. Ezekiel - Michelangelo Buonarroti, c. 1510, from the Sistine Chapel.
- L’Osservatore Romano – July 6, 2005
September 23, 2005
Catholic San Francisco
15
Year of the Eucharist
A great school of peace The tragic devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has seared its way into our national consciousness. As Americans, most of us grow up walking on concrete; our feet never touch bare earth, and we think that our technological advances have subdued the forces of nature. The recent catastrophe has shown how foolish our presumption is, and how fragile is the web of relationships which bind us to one another. We watched the material destruction with a sense of horror, but the collapse of social structures with a sense of shame. The havoc wrought by a natural disaster hits home for us: as we witness what happened in the Gulf States, we cannot help but wonder how prepared we are for the impact of a major earthquake. Along with material preparations, we must attend to our spiritual readiness, and would do well to consider the social aspects of the Eucharist, which Pope John Paul described as “a project of solidarity for all humanity”. As Catholics, we believe that in this life there is no more profound union with God possible than in the Eucharist. But if it offers communion with divine life, the Eucharist also fosters the unity of the People of God (CCC 1325) and deepens our communion with every human being. The great sign of our faith is the cross. In our cathedral, the baldachino over the altar symbolizes the vertical arm of our union with God, while the windows open to the city and world symbolize the horizontal arms reaching out to embrace the entire human family.
This social aspect of the Eucharist is expressed in the Mass. In all of the liturgical traditions of East and West, the Lord’s Prayer is recited or sung as a preparation for Holy Communion. As far back as the third century, St. Cyprian noted: “We do not say ‘My Father, who art in heaven’ …we pray in public as a community, and not for one individual but for all.” As the Catechism teaches, “God’s love has no bounds, neither should our prayer”. (CCC 2793) Another manifestation of this social aspect of the Eucharist is the sign of peace. In most liturgical rites, this takes place at the end of the liturgy of the word, but in the Roman Mass the kiss of peace is exchanged just before we receive Holy Communion. Both arrangements have a solid foundation: exchanging the sign of peace before beginning the liturgy of the Eucharist is based on the Lord’s admonition that we should be reconciled to one another before we bring our gift to the altar (Mt 5:23); our Roman custom expresses in gesture what we have just prayed in the Our Father, in which we ask the Father to forgive us as we forgive one another. This solidarity extends beyond our own community, and the Eucharist nourishes our work for peace and justice. Our perception of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist should sharpen our spiritual senses to recognize His presence in others, especially in the poor. (CCC 1397) One of the great teachers of this truth in our own time is Mother Teresa; her sisters pour out their lives in
service to the poorest of the poor only after they have spent the first hours of their day contemplating and adoring Christ present in the Eucharist. This social aspect of the Eucharist is not some “extra” of value only for those with a penchant for social justice. Pope John Paul went so far as to claim that the degree to which we devote ourselves to the needs of others is “the criterion by which the authenticity of our Eucharistic celebration is judged”. As he repeatedly emphasized when speaking of the Eucharist, it is significant that at the same meal in which Christ gave us the Eucharist, He washed the feet of His disciples. There is a story which illustrates the difference between heaven and hell. In hell there is a long banqueting table laden with delicious and savory dishes, but none of the people there can eat a morsel, because they each have one hand tied behind their back, and in the other a fork so long that they cannot put the food into their mouths. The scene in heaven is identical – but there the people use their forks to feed the person across the table from them. The Eucharist is the school of such charity. Part of a series presented by the Liturgical Commission of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Guest Commentary
The Monk under the Mitre “Radical continuity”, in fact, is the key to his style. He is developing the The Pope, I wrongly informed a journalist before World pontificate of John Paul II not by trying Youth Day, would use the Mass in Cologne to launch a broad- to stand in his shoes but by taking them into new territory. If he walks differentside against the Dictatorship of Relativism. I was not the only one surprised to find that, instead of an ly, it is only in part because his is a conArmada, there came a humble man, almost uncertain, floating trasting temperament—cerebral and down the Rhine on a ferry. No crusader this, he put you in retiring, where John Paul II’s was vismind of a professor recently released from a lecture hall. His ceral and mercurial. But if he chose in voice, curiously high-pitched, was clear and gentle; even his Cologne to propose rather than oppose, German was softened by his rustic Bavarian accent. His arrival it was a conscious strategy—the fruit of for the open-air Mass was the most subdued any of the discernment in the fortnight-long daily pre-conclave meetings of reporters who covered the Vatican could remember. He the cardinals in Rome, when they weighed up the Church and the wagged no fingers, did not shuffle to music, and smiled coyly world, and the Wojtyla legacy. In journalism—and this is true of the best sermons—the at the loud applause from youth in Benedetto T-shirts. When the crowd became too boisterous he raised a finger to his lips. rule is “show, don’t tell”. John Paul II was good at telling; he If this was an offensive, it was free of offence. It roused exhorted better than anyone. He could capture a crowd and prayer, not adulation; it was less holy crusade than medita- encourage it to look heavenwards. But if you were not with tion for a silent retreat. While Catholics for a Free Choice him, you were left gazing elsewhere. One of the questions gave out condoms, the Pope never even mentioned contra- that troubled the cardinals in Rome was why, when John ception. Those who hoped for a hammering of the heretics Paul II was such an effective communicator, so many could admire him but ignore his message. And why, when the were left twiddling their whips. The Word Youth Day homily was just that: not a mani- Church’s prestige on the international arena was so great, festo; not a Gettysburg address; not even rhetoric tailored to Europeans in particular were staying away from churches. “There are many ways of communicating,” the Pope’s television. It was a superb, old-fashioned piece of catechetics, unafraid to be bookish, which paid young people the compli- spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, told journalists in ment of not patronizing them. In the age of CNN and MTV it Cologne. “There is not just one way.” Asked about the way takes real daring to explain the Eucharist in front of a million Benedict excels, he was crisp. “Concepts”, he told them. A concept is a framework for understanding; an effecyoung people by dwelling on the nuances of the word ‘adotive concept opens the mind to embrace a truth. It is the theration’ in Greek (proskynesis, in case you wondered). It was a flawless performance: the Pope smiled and waved, ologian’s charism—to clarify by an appeal to reason. The radiated hope, reached out to Protestants, Jews and Muslims, and assent of the mind opens the door to the assent of the heart. confirmed hundreds of thousands of young people in their faith. It is showing, not telling. Pope Benedict is a superb conceptualist. At his inaugural Not only did Cologne exorcise the Panzerkardinal demons, but Benedict “left critics taking a new look at the Church he leads” Mass, for example, he pithily identified the main difference according to the Reuters religion editor, Tom Heneghan. “It was between ideology and Christianity—a difference not of aims but of means. Ideologies “justify his humility,” clapped The the destruction of whatever Times, “that captured hearts”. would stand in the way of Some have tried to explain “A concept is a framework for progress and the liberation of the surprise at this “new” Ratzinger by depicting it as a understanding; an effective concept humanity,” he said, whereas “God, who became a lamb, tells role-reversal, or even a return to the “pre-conservative” opens the mind to embrace a truth. us that the world is saved by those who are crucified, not by Ratzinger. But anyone who those who crucify.” Dwell on knew him, or read his memIt is the theologian’s charism—to that concept, and you clean the oirs, had no trouble recogniswindow onto modern history. ing him. “The Pope has swept In 1978 John Paul II away much of what clouded clarify by an appeal to reason.” inherited a Church that was his reputation in this country in recent years,” said the Archbishop of Mainz, Cardinal Karl unsure, after the battles under Paul VI, what it believed. In Lehmann, who once crossed swords with the former CDF pre- 2005 he left no one in doubt. It falls to Benedict to make fect over abortion counselling centres in Germany. Benedict, clear why the Church believes what it believes, to show that said Lehmann, was never the Rottweiller of popular imagina- what it teaches sets us free. Benedict’s task is to convey the beauty of belief, and that believing must involve belonging. tion, and Cologne showed it. “He charmed everyone.” In an interview before Cologne, he said he wanted young The idea of two Ratzingers is anyway false: the “progressive” peritus of Vatican II is of a piece with the “conservative” people to know “how beautiful it is to be a Christian.” People of the 1970s. The Pope’s memoir Milestones makes clear that think “Christianity is composed of laws and bans which one has what troubled him at that time were not the innovations of the to keep and is therefore toilsome and burdensome”, whereas Council (he helped after all to bring them about) but the attempt being Christian “is like having wings.” Or consider his words at by some to see them as a discontinuity with the preconciliar era. the funeral of Luigi Guissani, the founder of Communion and
By Austen Ivereigh
Liberation. Guissani understood, he said, that Christianity “was not an intellectual system” but “an encounter, a love story.” Love and condemnation sit awkwardly together. So in Cologne Benedict did not deplore promiscuity but pointed out that “freedom is not simply about enjoying life, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness, so that we ourselves can become good.” Rather than deploring relativism or supermarket religion, Benedict explained why DoIt-Yourself faith “cannot ultimately help us. It may be comfortable, but at times of crisis we are left to ourselves.” The papacy’s new humility is well suited to a Church whose transgressions are all too well known. John Paul II bravely confessed the sins of history, but hesitated to admit those of the present. He was a product of the Church’s struggle against Communism, when weakness and division could be exploited by its enemies. But in a sceptical age, suspicious of propaganda, teachers only convince if they face facts. When, in his meeting with Muslims, Benedict rhetorically asked how many evil wars have been waged in the name of God, it was the kind of question you might hear at a dinner party. When he said there was much about the Church that was troubling—”it is a net with good and bad fish”—he was conceding what is self-evident to his listeners. When he said that “secularism and dechristianisation continue to advance” and that “the influence of Catholic ethics and morals is in constant decline,” he was stating what is obvious to us but not, we worry, to popes. Because Benedict sees things as they are, we listen more carefully to how he thinks they should be. Benedict, as his choice of name made clear, looks to the counter-culture of European monasticism in the early Middle Ages, which served society precisely by being quietly—but no less awkwardly—in contradiction to it. Hence his emphasis, in Cologne, on fostering vital cells of church life which emphasise quality not quantity (“Form communities of faith!” he urged). Gone is the triumphant city on the hill; Benedict’s is the era of leaven in the mass, of small but vibrant faith groups in parishes, of movements and associations which operate like underground cells, attracting believers and supplying the vitality which the Church needs above the ground. Pope Benedict has a style. And he has a strategy. If we find them hard to make out, it could be that our eyes need to adjust. We are so used to waiting for a flag-waving crusade that we fail to notice the flap, flap of a monk’s cowl. Austen Ivereigh is director for Public Affairs of the Diocese of Westminster (London, England) and former deputy editor of the Catholic weekly, The Tablet. This article first appeared in The Catholic Herald (www.catholicherald.co.uk).
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Catholic San Francisco
St. Mary’s Cathedral The following events are taking place at or are coordinated by the Cathedral of the Archdiocese located at Gough and Geary St. in San Francisco. Call (415) 567-2020 for more information. Please check with Cathedral to see if your event has been relocated. Oct. 1: The San Francisco Archdiocesan Respect Life Program will offer an Education Day, 8 a.m. – 3 p.m., for parish respect life coordinators to help them learn more about the complex life issues they face today. The $20 registration fee includes a Continental breakfast and a buffet lunch. Speakers include William Hurlbrut, MD, Consulting Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University and a member of the President’s Bioethics Counsel and Vicki Thorn, Director of the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing. Both talks will include give and take with the audience in a classroom-type setting. Bishop John Wester will celebrate Mass at 12:10 p.m. followed by a commissioning of Respect Life coordinators. After lunch, Sarah Silva, who works in Parish Outreach and Organization, will lead a panel discussion offering tips for organizing a parish Respect Life Program. For information and reservations, call Vicki Evans at (415) 945-0180 or email evansv@sfarchdioces.org. Due to the cathedral’s service as shelter for Hurricane Katrina victims, the event will be held on the USF Campus, Xavier Hall, Maraschi Room. Free parking is available at the Koret Center. Oct. 7, 8, 9: Catholic Charismatic Conference. Friday: Praise Night at 7 p.m. Free admission. Doors open at 8 a.m. Sat & Sun. $20 per day/$30 for the weekend. Lunch available for $5. Call (800) 7001849 or (415) 753-3732. High School/Middle School Youth Teen Holy Spirit Conference, Friday night Upbeat Praise/Worship at 7pm, Doors open at 8am Sat./ Sun, Special $10 price for weekend includes lunch. Visit our web-site www.sfspirit.com/events or call 1-800-700-1849.
Food & Fun Sept. 23. 24 25: St. Matthew Catholic School’s Annual Harvest Festival - Streets of San Francisco. With over 2,000 people expected, this year’s festival includes games and food booths, plus a boutique, new carnival rides, entertainment, bingo and casino games, a chili cook-off, a Saturday Tri-tip dinner and a $20,000 cash raffle. Fri.: 6 – 10 p.m.; Sat.: 1 – 10 p.m.; Sun.: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Visit St. Matthew’s website www.stmatthewcath.org. Sept. 24, 25: St. Philip Annual Festival, a Noe Valley tradition for almost 70 years. Free admission with games for children, teens and adults plus homemade foods, arts and crafts, and live entertainment. All proceeds benefit St. Philip Elementary School. Open 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. both days. Call (415) 282-0141. Sept. 24: Huge Saturday Sale benefiting Vincentian Help Desk of St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. at 425 4th St. at Harrison, SF. Lots of furniture, electronics, DVD/VHS movies, household items, tools and more. Cash/credit cards only. Donations and dealers welcome. Call Sally Rosen at (415) 202-9955. Sept. 24: Hawaii on the Bay Luncheon/Bingo sponsored by League of the Sacred Heart Altar Society of St. Cecilia Parish, 17th and Vicente St., SF at 11 a.m. Plenty of parking. $25 ticket includes lunch and free bingo card. Reserve by Sept. 20th to (415) 753-5680. Oct. 1: Carnivale benefiting Holy Name of Jesus
Oct. 9 – Nov. 20: The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University will feature a moving exhibition of photographs by English photographer Michael Kenna documenting the physical legacy of the Nazi concentration camps. Impossible to Forget: The Nazi Camps Fifty Years After, is a collection of 88 images, selected from the thousands Kenna photographed during his travels across Europe. In addition, the museum will host Multiply by Six Million: A Personal Perspective on the Holocaust: Portraits of Survivors from the Legacy Project by Evvy Eisen. Museum hours are Tues. through Sun., 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. Closed Mondays and Nov. 21, 2005 and Jan. 26, 2006. Call (408) 554 - 4528 or visit http://www.scu.edu/deSaisset/exhibits/index.html.
September 23, 2005
Datebook
Oct. 8: A Memorial Mass and Healing Liturgy at the Rachel Mourning Shrine in Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma at 11 a.m. The prayerful hour remembers children living and dead and asks for the healing of their families and friends. A luncheon follows. Sponsored by the Project Rachel Ministry of the Archdiocese and Holy Cross Cemetery. Call (415) 717-6428 or (415) 614-5572. Last year’s Mass drew several hundred people. Concelebrants included, from left, Father Mark Taheny, Paulist Father Charles Kullman, Father Bob Cipriano, Maryknoll Father Manuel Mejia, and retired Father Donald McDonnell. Elementary School “Carnavale” from 10am to 5pm. Enjoy carnival games, rock-climbing, a variety of food and more. Holy Name is located at 3300 Lawton Street (at 40th Ave.) Admission is free. Call (415) 731-4077 or visit www.holynamesf.com for more information. Oct. 8, 9: 86th Annual Columbus Day Bazaar benefiting St. Peter and Paul Elementary School on Washington Square, SF. Sat.: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. and Sun.: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. A North Beach family festival of games, food and entertainment. Call (415) 4210809. Oct. 7, 8, 9: All Souls Parish Festival featuring games, prizes, music, food, silent auction and more. Fri,: 6 – 10 p.m.; Sat.: noon – 10 p.m.; Sun.: 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. Come join the fun at 315 Walnut Ave. in South San Francisco. Oct. 15: Annual Fall Festival benefiting St. Thomas More Elementary School, 50 Thomsa More Way, Sf, 11:30 a.m. – 9 p.m. Booths, games, food, and plenty of fun for all. Call Patricia at (650) 7569525 or Linda at (650) 755-1297. Oct. 16: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Fashion Show 2005 at the Argent Hotel, 50 3rd St. between Mission and Market in SF. Proceeds benefit St. Brendan Elementary School. Festivities include silent auction and raffle. Tickets: $60 adults/$45 children. Call (415) 731-2665. Oct 22: The Saint Stephen Women’s Guild is sponsoring its annual fashion show at the Olympic Club Lakeside at 11am. Tickets to this fun event— ”Cougar Couture”—are still available through event chairs Nancy Crowley and Colleen O’Meara. Raffle tickets are also available for grand prizes including a $500 shopping spree at Stonestown Galleria. (Winner need not be present to win; free drawing ticket available at school office upon request.) Contact Nancy @ 415/664-7164 or email: nancycinsf@aol.com; or Colleen @ 415/731-4736 or email: colleenomeara@comcast.net.”
Social Justice/Family Life Oct. 2: San Francisco Life Chain, a peaceful, prayerful witness to life at 2:30 p.m. Takes place on Park Presidio Blvd between Geary Blvd. and Clement St. in San Francisco. “Give an hour to save a life,” said Beatrice Smalley , an organizer of the event. Call (415) 567-2293.
TV/Radio 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, 5 a.m., KRON Channel 4: For Heaven’s Sake, featuring conversations about Catholic spirituality.
Reunions Sept. 24: Presentation High School, 30 Year Reunion at The Luxor in South San Francisco (at the old Brentwood lodge) Noon to 6 p.m. (and wherever it leads us.) Tickets at door, $60.00 to Linda Dellanini@ Sept. 24: Class of ’50, St. James Boys Elementary School is planning a reunion. Please contact Mike Miller at (650) 344-1074 for details. Reunion in planning for Class of ’55 from St. Cecilia Elementary School. “Come back to the finest, the greatest and the best,” said classmate. Andi Thuesen Ibarra. Contact Andi at (415) 6650959 or andrea.ibarra@med.va.gov. Class of ’56, Notre Dame des Victoires High School is planning a renion for June 2006. Call Marilyn Donnelly at (650) 365-5192. Marin Catholic High School announces Homecoming for Sept. 24 as well as upcoming reunions for class of ’75, Sept. 22; ’85, Sept. 23 – 24; ’50, Sept. 24; ’55, Oct. 1; ’65, Nov. 5; ’95, Nov. 26. Contact LeAnn Tarrant at (415) 464-3843 or ltarrant@marincatholic.org. . Oct. 1: Dinner/Dance for all who graduated in the ‘70s from St. Paul Elementary School in San Francisco beginning at 5:30 p.m. Contact Anne Cunningham Campbell ay (650) 365-3653 or annec@3cisfca.com. Tickets not sold at door. Oct. 1: All Class reunion for St. Brigid High School at St. Brigid school, Broadway at Van Ness. Contact Adrienne Mansi at (415) 479-2974. Oct. 1: Golden Diploma ceremony for 1955 graduates from Marin Catholic High School beginning with Mass at 4 p.m. in MC’s St. Francis Chapel. Father Tom Daly, school president, will preside. Dinner and dancing follows at Marin Art & Garden Center. Call Tracy Hogan at (415) 464-3843.
Oct. 1: Calling all Stars who graduated in 1965 from Star of the Sea Academy - a 40th Reunion. Contact Teri Baldocchi at 650-592-6763 or xbaxter11@comcast.net. Oct. 29: Class of ’55, Immaculate Conception Academy at Embassy Suites in Burlingame. Contact Anne Nolan Dowd at (650) 359-2601 or andown@aol.com. Oct. 8: Class of ’50, Holy Name of Jesus Elementary School. Contact Joe Murray at jdmsail1@cs.com or www.holynamesf.com/alumni. The school is searching for class members from’65. Contact Helen Sigmund Fisicaro at (415) 973-1022. Oct. 19: Class of ’40, Presentation High School at Delancey Street Restaurant on the Embarcadero. Contact Anne Brickley (516) 824-7990 or Grace Schotz at (415) 664-9678. Nov. 5: Class of ’85, Mercy High School, San Francisco, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Patio Espanol, 2850 Alemany Blvd, San Francisco. Tickets are $40 per person. Please contact mercyhs85@yahoo.com or call (510) 845-5728 for tickets. Nov. 4, 5, 6: Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory Reunion Weekend 2005. Friday, Nov. 4 begins the festivities with Back to School Day. Saturday, Nov. 5, enjoy the reunion dinner featuring cuisine from the various diverse neighborhoods of San Francisco. Sunday, Nov. 6, attend Alumni Mass and Brunch. For more information, contact Gregg Franceschi, Director of Alumni Relations at 415.775.6626 ext. 636 or gregg.franceschi@shcp.edu.
Prayer/Lectures/Trainings Oct. 1: Third Annual Gospel/Jazz Mass and Prayer for World Peace at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough and Geary St., SF at 5:30 p.m. The Inspirational Voices of St. Paul of the Shipwreck Gospel Choir will join with the Jubilation Choir of Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in a “dialogue of cultures,” information promoting the event said. “All are invited to come and share in this joyful and much needed Day of Prayer for World Peace.” The Annual Blessing of Animals will be celebrated earlier the same day at 10 a.m., in the Geary Boulevard Plaza of the Cathedral. Children’s Choirs from throughout the Archdiocese will participate. “Bring your pets - on a leash - or pictures of pets, and don’t forget your pooper-scooper!” Oct. 15: Training for New Lectors, 9 a.m. -3:30 p.m. at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, San Francisco. Sponsored by the Office of Worship. Please pre-register at 415-614-5585 or at vallezkellyp@sfarchdiocese.org. Cost $15. Sept. 29 – Oct. 7: Novena for Peace at St. Anthony’s Church 3215 Cesar Chavez St. at Folsom, San Francisco. Rites include Mass, Scriptural Rosary, sung Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and a sermon on peace. Guest speakers include Wayne Weible, author of “Medjugorje the Message”. Father Anthony Rosevear and Father John O’Brien will preside. “Don’t miss this chance to make a vital difference by praying for peace and divine protection for our city and our world,” said Christine Watkins, an organizer of the novena. Sept. 29: 7-9 p.m./Sept 30: 4-6:45 p.m./Oct. 1: 7-9:30 p.m./Oct. 2: 1-3 p.m./Oct. 3 through 6: 7-9 p.m./Oct. 7: 5-7 p.m. Contact Christine Watkins at (415) 931-5517, or christinew@runbox.com. Oct. 4: Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont is pleased to announce that the first speaker of their Catholic Scholars Series is Sulpician Father Gerald Coleman who will offer a talk “Addressing the Stem Cell Issue” at 7 p.m. in Ralston Hall on the University campus. The free lecture is open to the public. For more information call Sister Roseanne Murphy at (650) 508-3551.
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.
NOW
AVAILABLE – AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK ON CATHOLIC HISTORY IN THE BAY AREA! “These essays, which first appeared in Catholic San Francisco, contribute to the goal of joining the past and the future. Through portraits of people and events, which demonstrate the firm commitment of our predecessors to the mission of building up the local Church for the greater glory of God, we are able to draw hope and inspiration.” Most Reverend William J. Levada, Archbishop Emeritus, Archdiocese of San Francisco
This extraordinary book, with a preface by Archbishop William J. levada, contains 39 essays on Catholic history in the Bay Area over the past 150 years. The 300-page hard-cover book, with scores of historical photographs, includes essays on Catholic pioneers, immigrants, schools, and women and men religious, as well as topics of labor, civil rights, church-state conflict, local impact of Vatican II, and more!
Catholic San Francisco: Sesquicentennial Essays can be obtained by sending a check for $24.95 to Communications Office; One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109. The new book also is available at Kaufers Religious Supplies and Pauline Books and Media in San Francisco, and McCoy Church Goods in San Mateo.
Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
Music TV
Books RADIO Film
17
Stage
Just Like Heaven By Steven D. Greydanus Watching Just Like Heaven, a romantic-comedy ghost story of sorts from director Mark Waters (Mean Girls, Freaky Friday) starring Reese Witherspoon (Vanity Fair) and Mark Ruffalo (13 Going on 30), I was repeatedly reminded of one of the better romantic comedies of the last five years: Bonnie Hunt’s 2000 charmer Return to Me. Both Just Like Heaven and Return to Me are winsome romantic comedies with at least a hint of the supernatural, and address death and loss as well as love and laughter. Both are wiser than the average date movie about the temptation to withdraw from life and human relationships in the face of grief, and also about the annoyance of well-meaning friends trying to draw one out for one’s own good. Both films are also chaste romances about a couple who fall in love without tumbling into the sack. (Indeed, this isn’t even a possibility in Just Like Heaven — though the film does include some decidedly unchaste behavior from a supporting character, as well as a good bit of rude dialogue.) What Return to Me has that Just Like Heaven doesn’t is its affectionately depicted context of Irish-Italian culture and Catholic piety. On the other hand, while Return to Me has raised problems for some Catholics with respect to moral issues of life and death, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Just Like Heaven is its distinctly life-affirming, even pro-life twist with respect to end-of-life issues. Here is a light comedy that — without remotely getting maudlin or morbid — dramatizes how: - a person not yet incapacitated is in no position to sign away life-sustaining measures in case they should ever become incapacitated, since what they would actually want under the circumstances may well be completely different from how they feel now; - incapacitated patients may be more aware of events around them than we might give them credit for; - doctors who compassionately counsel pulling the plug may not be giving family members the straight facts; and - family members need to resist such pressure and defend the rights of their loved ones. Waters’ previous hit comedies, Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, each had their problems, but boasted smart scripts and assured direction as well as solid performances from talented stars. Just Like Heaven may be lighter and more formulaic than his earlier films, but it has the same basic strengths. The film benefits greatly from its appealing stars,
Witherspoon and Ruffalo. Witherspoon, especially, shines as Elizabeth, a dedicated but overworked young ER doctor who has no life outside the hospital walls, until that life is taken away from her in a way she can’t understand. Ruffalo brings brooding charisma to the role of David, a withdrawn young man who seems to have no connection to anything or anything, except that he seems to have a connection somehow to Elizabeth, who mysteriously appears out of nowhere in his apartment — or is he in her apartment? No one knows but Darryl (Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder in a similarly surreal supporting role), a kind of stoner Zen-talking clerk in an occult bookstore (he’s sort of the counterpart to Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Ghost). The themes of the workaholic professional who needs to find a life outside the workplace and the withdrawn loner who needs to rejoin the human race are common ones in comedies, but they’re developed here with more conviction than usual. The script is smarter than the typical rom-com, and Waters directs cannily, never letting either the emotion or the comedy get out of control. (A late-breaking plot twist had the potential to go completely off the rails, but Waters gets exactly as much humor out of it as possible and then stops.) Plotwise, the film is refreshingly clever about the dilemma of characters dealing with an extraordinary situation that they will have trouble convincing other people is real. I appreciate the forethought David puts into what he will need to say to one of Elizabeth’s relatives in order to persuade her that he isn’t crazy — and also how the conversation doesn’t quite go as planned. It’s not without drawbacks. In contrast to the positive Catholic milieu of Return to Me, Just Like Heaven turns to Catholicism only for a satiric punchline, with a brief parody of a scene from The Exorcist (along with Ghostbusters). To be fair, it’s more a movie joke than a religion joke, but it’s still in wincingly poor taste. And the aforementioned unchaste behavior from a supporting character, a temptress neighbor of David’s, goes further than it needed to (though nothing happens and her behavior isn’t condoned). Some viewers may also be turned off by the flaky newage spin on the movie’s circumstances represented by Darryl. For me, though, any misgiving about the film’s spirituality is short-circuited, first of all, by the way things turn out not to be quite what you might expect, and also by the sheer goofiness Heder brings to Darryl. Clearly it’s all a fantasy conceit; the movie isn’t in the least making a seri-
Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo star in Just like Heaven. Filmed in San Francisco.
ous statement about spirituality, as it is with respect to endof-life issues. What makes Just Like Heaven even more notable is the remarkable dearth of decent romantic comedies in the five years since Return to Me. In that time Hollywood has churned out a steady stream of disposable date movies featuring likeable stars in variously tepid, embarrassing or downright insulting stories: 13 Going on 30, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Maid in Manhattan, Kate & Leopold. (Okay, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was all right, but that was technically an indie film.) Just Like Heaven is the first Hollywood film since Return to Me that I would put in the same league as that earlier film, and that’s saying something. This article originally appeared in National Catholic Register. Reprinted with permission.
Catholic San Francisco invites you to join in the following pilgrimages FRANCE
GUADALUPE November 29 – December 6, 2005
April 18 – 28, 2006
Departs San Francisco 8-Day Pilgrimage
Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage
only
$
2,499
only
(tips and taxes not included)
($2,599 after 1/8/06)
Fr. Martin Gillespie
Spiritual Director
Spiritual Director Eiffel Tower
Visit: Mexico City, Puebla, Ocotlán, Tlaxcala, San Miguel
January 9 – 19 , 2006
November 28 – December 7, 2005
Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage
Departs San Francisco 10-Day Pilgrimage
only
2,249
only
$
2,299
($2,399 after Oct. 6, 2005)
($2,349 after Aug. 2005)
Frs. Chuck McCabe & Michael Tapajna
Fr. Donald Eder
Spiritual Director
Spiritual Director
Visit: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Upper Galilee
Our Lady of Ocotlán
ITALY
HOLY LAND
$
1,799
($1,899 after Aug. 21, 2005)
Fr. Tim Mockaitis Visit: Paris, Lisieux, Normandy, Versailles, Chartres, Nevers, Paray-Le-Monial, Ars, Lyon, Toulouse and Lourdes.
$
Via Dolorosa
Visit: Venice, Florence, Assisi, Rome (Papal Audience), Siena
St. Peter’s Basilica
For a FREE brochure on these pilgrimages contact: California Registered Seller of Travel Registration Number CST-2037190-40 (Registration as a Seller of Travel does not constitute approval by the State of California)
Catholic San Francisco
(415) 614-5640
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Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
a t C h s o i
Learning life’s lessons “I just want to help people,” Ralph said. “I don’t like to Felicitas Cronin would send them down to me. Their folks think about it. I just like to do it.” would later pay for the haircut and any class time they Ralph’s dad, Leo, was a well-known clarinet player who missed they spent after school.” made his living in bands at popular venues in the City includWhile the service at Ralph’s shop is still as attentive as it ing the now-closed DiMaggio’s was 40 years ago, don’t expect and John’s Rendezvous. Later on, the place to smell like a barberhe worked as a truck driver for shop of old. “Talcum Powder is San Francisco’s daily newspagone because it’s bad for your pers, retiring from the Examiner. lungs,” he said. Colognes and “My dad played all the big balms as well as the aroma of clubs and had us all learn to the burning cigarette have also play the piano,” Ralph said. “I met their end. Ralph said. switched to trumpet in high “They’re all gone now.” school.” After high school “One of saddest things is Ralph played trumpet with the watching your customers get Sixth Army band alongside, older,” Ralph said, noting that Herb Alpert, who would go on through the years he has more to fame as well as lend his name and more been taking his servto the Tijuana Brass. “I used to ices to the homebound. “Going cut his hair,” Ralph recalled. to the people’s homes and cut“My Uncle Sam Catalano ting their hair is a great complihad a barbershop in the City at ment to me,” he said. “You also 26th and Mission,” Ralph said. bond with the families when “I was unsure about what I you visit the homes.” wanted to do and he said, ‘Why Ralph hasn’t forgotten that for don’t you go to barber school?’ many people, a haircut means a I worked for him for awhile chance to relax and that he can then cut hair in the Army. I sometimes become a confidante. opened the shop at 18th and “People really want to talk someRalph Catalano has been cutting Irving 42 years ago.” times and tell me things they Ralph remembers how Good won’t tell others, I guess,” Ralph Brian Lalor’s hair for 15 years. Brian is Friday was not complete withsaid. “That’s an honor for me, too. a 1990 graduate of Riordan High School. out a placard in the shop winI can also sometimes empathize dow saying “We’ll be closed from noon to 3 p.m.” with them so they know they’re not the only one suffering.” “The Catholic schools would bring them around and Ralph said he’s most grateful for his marriage to Linda, with it being a Catholic neighborhood, if you weren’t their children and their four grandchildren who he said “are closed for the three hours you heard about it.” our diamonds.” Surprise customers from St. Anne Elementary School Ralph is not looking to retirement but when he does, he –still just down the street at 14th Avenue - were also a part knows the transition will be easy. “The church will just get of days gone by. “If a kid’s hair was too long, Sister me more,” he said.
lic
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Life By Tom Burke Ralph Catalano’s life is about caring for others - his family, his fellow parishioners and customers at his Sunset District barbershop. The 1955 graduate of Archbishop Riordan High School has no trouble tracing the origin of the gift. “The service thing comes from my mom, Mary, who did so much for so many people,” Ralph said in an interview at his Burlingame home. “She was devoted to our family. You had anything wrong and she would take care of it.” Ralph and his wife Linda have been married for 47 years and parishioners of Our Lady of Angels in Burlingame for more than 30 years. Their adult children are Lori, Connie and Marc, a lieutenant with the San Bruno Police Department. Ralph said the Franciscan Fathers from his days at San Francisco’s Immaculate Conception Parish and St. Anthony Elementary School also helped him understand the importance of service. “The Italian priests really had an effect on my life,” Ralph said. “I used to help them work around the church.” “Around the church” is still where Ralph puts much of his energy. He is chief nurturer of the flowerbeds at his parish and plays the trumpet regularly at the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass and other liturgies.
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September 23, 2005
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In anticipation of St. Francis’ Feast Day (October 4), the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption will celebrate its Third Annual Gospel / Jazz Mass and Prayer for the World Peace on Saturday evening, October 1, 2005 at 5:30 p.m. The inspirational Voices of St. Paul of the Shipwreck Gospel Choir will join with the Jubilation Choir of Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory. The very heartwarming and traditional Annual Blessing of Animals will be celebrated earlier the same day, at 10 a.m., in the Geary Boulevard Plaza of the Cathedral. Children’s Choirs from throughout the Archdiocese will participate. Bring your pets – on a leash – or pictures of pets and don’t forget your “pooper-scooper”!
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Catholic San Francisco
September 23, 2005
Eucharistic Retreat . . . ■ Continued from cover
Interfaith gathering for peace in Iraq Sept. 25 An “Interfaith Convocation on Ending the War in Iraq” will be held Sunday September 25 at St. Francis Hall below St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. The day is sponsored by numerous faith communities including Pax Christi, the San Francisco Archdiocese Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, American Friends Service Committee, Tikkun, and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. The day begins at 3:00 p.m. and will include prayerful reflection, song, interfaith sharing, and renewal. The service is part of three days of action on the war in Iraq planned in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities. The Convocation is non-partisan and presents an opportunity “to be prayerfully mindful of peaceful resolutions to the current war in Iraq,” according to Tim Kortenkamp, Peace and Justice Coordinator in the Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns.
The image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was at the center of the Eucharistic Retreat. (PHOTO BY ROBERT BUSSELL, PH.D.)
the first Eucharist, asking participants to imagine they were there, and drawing them into the solemnity and unprecedented wonder of the event. He then drew on the writings of Pope Benedict XVI to show retreatants that the Eucharist includes not only the words of initiation, but the suffering and death of Christ, His resurrection, and ultimately the participation of the faithful in Eucharistic life. Retreatants reflected on the words of Father Frank Parrish, “Christ died and left the world true, but He continues to live in His resurrected life through our humanities. To me this is the very heart and apex of our Catholic faith. And this is why the Eucharist is the cornerstone of our faith.” McDevitt said that Christian should live a Eucharistic spirituality, “inviting our Lord to come to us, to dwell within us everyday, even when we can’t go to Mass . . . He is going to accept that invitation.” He invited people to make “spiritual communions” on days they could not attend Mass or otherwise could not receive communion. By doing so, “we’re always reminded of the presence of Jesus in our lives and we take Him with us wherever we go.” The participants also learned a simple prayer which could be used to make a spiritual communion each day, “Lord, I invite You to relive Your humanity through me today.” Following the keynote, attendees focused on reflections and teachings on various aspects of the Eucharist including, misconceptions about the Eucharist, the Real Presence, and membership in the Mystical Body of Christ. Along with McDevitt, presentations were made by Dr. Robert Bussell of the Diocese of Monterey, Michael Huston of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Msgr. Jose Rodriquez, Vicar for Spanish Speaking of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and Alvaro Bonilla of the Archdiocese. After each talk, participants seated at tables of eight to ten would discuss reflection questions among themselves, such as, “If Jesus, the living God, is present and alive in you, how does this knowledge – this reality – impact your behavior? How does it affect your self image?” Following table discussions, representatives from each group were invited to share something from their reflections. After the morning reflections, the Spanish and English groups joined together at St. Mary’s Cathedral for a bilingual Mass celebrated by San Francisco Apostolic Administrator, Bishop John C. Wester. Bishop Wester’s homily titled, “Mary, Woman of the Eucharist,” explored how Christians could look to the Mother of the Lord as the chief example of living a Eucharistic spirituality which is both contemplative and active. Bishop Wester asked the assembly to be “Christ-bearers as Mary is Christ-bearer.” He said that Mary is called blessed “because she is a woman of faith, as evidenced by her obedience to God and blest because she bore the Christ Child . . . Mary is blessed in direct relationship to her union with God.” Following Mass, Bishop Wester was presented with the Father Frank Parrish “Person of Faith Award” by Mr. McDevitt. Bishop Wester prayed that “the Mystical Humanity of Christ continues to dwell in us and help all of us to bring that wonderful, beautiful, necessary Presence to our global world.” Following Mass was lunch and further reflections at Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep. Before closing prayers, the English and Spanish tracks came together for a blessing ceremony. As a way of showing reverence to the Mystical Body of Christ, participants blessed each other with a Sign of the Cross on the forehead using fingers or a cross and reciting, “May God bless you with all the desires of the Eternal Father and bless the wishes of your soul . . .” At the close of the day, participants were blessed with a reliquary which had belonged to Father Parrish containing relics of St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, St. Margaret Mary, St. Claude Columbiere and Mother Cabrini. Parishes interested in hosting a Mystical Humanity of Christ Retreat should contact Michael McDevitt at 650-595-1704.
Groups gathered at tables in the Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep. cafeteria to discuss Eucharistic life.
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