December 6, 2018

Mary:

Mission:

Advent:

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Guadalupana crusade marks 25th year

Novato parish outreach reaches thousands

‘No Santa stuff’ at parish Advent workshop

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO Newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco

www.catholic-sf.org

Serving San Francisco, Marin & San Mateo Counties

December 6, 2018

$1.00 | VOL. 20 NO. 24

Disaffiliation: Session explores church’s woe in handing on faith Nicholas Wolfram Smith Catholic San Francisco

To find Catholics who have left the church, start looking at the faces in the pews, according to a recent report. A 2018 study on young adults leaving the Catholic Church found people stopped identifying as Catholics at a median age of 13 years old, long before they ceased attending a parish. The report adds to the picture of a church that more people are leaving and that fewer ever want to return to.

At a Nov. 29 symposium prior to the start of the Santa Clara Faith Formation Conference, researchers from St. Mary’s Press discussed the findings from their study. Titled “Going, Going, Gone: the Dynamics of Catholic Disaffiliation,” the report presented an in-depth look at stories of the men and women who left Catholicism.

Robert J. McCarty, one of the study authors, told see disaffiliation, page 8

(Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)

Nativity’s gift to Paradise fire survivors

Jim Collins, right, and Greg Wright are pictured with a bounty of new backpacks that arrived Nov. 29 for fellow parishioners at St. Thomas More Parish in Paradise, where 640 of 800 community members lost their homes in the Camp Fire last month. The packs filled with toiletries, warm clothes and small luxuries were donated by Deacon Dominic Peloso and his wife Mary Ann Peloso of the Church of the Nativity in Menlo Park and included $9,000 in gift cards. The scene took place at the Newman Center in Chico, where initial recovery efforts for Paradise parishioners were organized. See Page 6 for more coverage.

Consolation ministers help the grieving navigate season of joy Christina Gray Catholic San Francisco

It is the most wonderful time of the year, as the iconic Christmas song tells it. But the season can be painfully less than merry if someone with whom you’ve shared a lifetime of Christmas joy has recently died.

Trained consolation ministers offering holiday-focused grief support workshops, seminars and groups at parishes throughout the Archdiocese of San Francisco told Catholic San Francisco why the holiday season is so difficult for those mourning a loss and what they can do to manage and move through the grief process in the season of celebration.

“The holidays are all about relationships,” said Mercy Sister Toni Lynn Gallagher, coordinator for the ministry of consolation for the archdiocese.

“When you don’t have the opportunity to be with a person that you love, it changes the way you are, the way you ‘be’ in the holiday.”

Sister Gallagher helps parishes in all three coun-

grief support Holiday grief support St. Dominic Parish, San Francisco: Holiday gathering for the grieving, Dec. 16, 3:30-5:30. RSVP Deacon Chuck McNeil, (415) 567-7824.

St. Dominic: Eight-week grief support group begins Jan. 13. Deacon Chuck McNeil, (415) 567-7824.

St. Gabriel Parish, San Francisco: Dec. 19. Sister Bernadette Hart, RSM, (415) 731-6161.

ties of the archdiocese respond to the grieving in their parish communities year-round by providing training, support and resources to staff and volunteers. She’s also a regular speaker on topics such as “The Upside of Loss” and more recently on “Death

by Suicide.”

During the Christmas season, she said, the five senses are activated. Sights, sounds, and smells connected to the memories of seasons past “remind you of the things you don’t have any more and the way you used to live in the world and the way you are living now.”

The grieving typically don’t want to play and “make merry,” she said. Yet they can feel pressured to take part of the holiday social scene or to maintain traditions they have no energy for.

Allow yourself to be in this “place of change,” advised Sister Gallagher, and the freedom to go through the holidays in a way that’s comfortable for you.

“Avenue of Flags”

Year-round parish grief support groups throughout the Archdiocese of San Francisco can be found at the ministry of consolation webpage at A personal way to honor your loved one’s patriotism to our country. sfarchdiocese.org/grief.

If you have received a flag honoring your loved one's military service and would like to it seedonate consolation, page 3 to the cemetery to be flown as part of an “Avenue of Flags" on Memorial Day, 4th of July and Veterans' Day, please contact our office for more details on our Flag Donation Program.

This program is open to everyone. If you do not have a flag to donate, you may make a $125 contribution to the “Avenue of Flags” program to purchase a flag.

For an appointmentHoly - 650.756.2060 | www.holycrosscemteries.com | CA Cross Catholic Cemetery, 1500 Mission Road, Colma, 650-756-2060

A Tradition of Faith Throughout Our Lives.

Index On the Street . . . . . . . . 4 National . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2 ARCHDiocesE

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Letter to the faithful

Need to know ‘RICHES OF CHRISTMAS’: Laura Bertone, director of worship for the archdiocese, visits with host J.A. Gray on “Mosaic,” Dec. 23, 5:30 a.m., KPIX Channel 5. The two unwrap “some of the forgotten or neglected treasures and tales of the sacred season when God became man,” producers said.

“The Christmas season offers a rich array of feasts and remembrances from Dec. 25 through Jan. 13, the baptism of Jesus.” sfarch.org/mosaic-tv.

ORGAN CONCERT: Christoph Tietze, music director and organist for St. Mary’s Cathedral, celebrates his 50th year as a church organist, in concert Dec. 23, 4 p.m., at the cathedral, Gough Street at Geary Boulevard, San Francisco. Chris notes that he played for his “first Mass Dec. 25, 1968.” The program will feature the works of Bach, Pachelbel, Daquin, Franck. Freewill offerings at door. (415) 567-2020. www.stmarycathedralsf.org.

California bishops, Catholic organizations urge end to death penalty: The California Catholic Conference with other Catholic organizations delivered almost 6,000 letters Nov. 19 to Gov. Jerry Brown “asking him to commute the sentences of the hundreds of men and women on death row before he leaves office,” a statement from the CCC said. “Gov. Jerry Brown, with just weeks left in office, has an opportunity to address this appalling inequity in California’s justice system by commuting the sentences of many on death row to life imprisonment. He can grant clemency to many of the nearly 750 people sentenced to die in California, or he can issue an executive order halting executions. In either case, the Golden State – which has more people on death row than any other state – can join the 19 other states in the Union who do not use the death penalty.” The statement also points to the updating of the Catechism of the Catholic Church “to reflect the official teaching of the church that the death penalty is ‘inadmissible.’”

Archbishop cordileone’s schedule Dec. 7: Clergy Adoration in Reparation, 9 a.m.6 p.m. at St. Matthew, St. Isabella and the cathedral Dec. 8: Guadalupana Mass, cathedral 2-3 p.m.

Dec. 9: Parish visit, Old St. Mary’s Dec. 12: Mass at Riordan High School, 11:15 a.m.

Dec. 12: Profession of Vows, Mission Dolores, 5:30 p.m.

Dec. 13: Presbyteral council and chancery meetings; benefit dinner, St. Brigid Choir Dec. 14-16: Parish and school visit, St. Gregory Dec. 14: Chancery Advent party, residence

Remember to give God in your gifts

November 15, 2018 My Dear People of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, As I write this message to you, I am in Baltimore, Maryland, for the plenary assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I can tell you I came prepared to work with my fellow bishops to move aggressively forward in dealing with the abuse issues that are confronting our Church right now, and will continue to do so.

Archbishop I was surprised along with Salvatore J. everyone else at the anCordileone nouncement that Pope Francis requested the U.S. bishops to delay implementing any new provisions until after he meets in February with the presidents of the various Bishop Conferences throughout the world. While this initially came as a disappointment, we have to trust the wisdom of our Holy Father, who sees the wider vision of the Universal Church. As St. Paul says, we are all members of the Body of Christ, and whatever happens with any one member affects the whole body. Any decision of the U.S. bishops will likely have a felt impact in other countries throughout the world. While we in the United States are feeling some impatience over this, it is good that we move together on it with our wider family of faith, under the direction of the Shepherd of the Universal Church. In the meantime, we, your bishops in the United States, will continue to make provisions locally that are within our competence, while maintaining unity with the Bishop of Rome.

At the level of our own Archdiocese, as many of you know I have recently completed five town hall meetings held throughout the Archdiocese, as well as continued my consultations with advisors, our priests, and the Archdiocesan Independent Review Board (IRB). I want now to bring you up to date on my next course of action in our Archdiocese to deal with the crisis of faith many have described to me as caused by clergy sexual abuse and its mishandling.

First, I offer my sincere thanks to all those who came to the town hall meetings to share experiences, concerns and ideas for dealing with the crisis.

Perhaps a total of 1000 people attended these meetings, and another 1000 have viewed a town hall video on-line. This video is still available at http://bit.ly/ SFArchTownHall. I also want to express my sincere gratitude to John McCord, a member of the IRB and a victim-survivor himself of clergy sex abuse, who movingly shared his experiences as both a survivor and an IRB member at the town hall meetings.

At these public meetings, I shared factual information about cases of sexual abuse and misconduct within the Archdiocese over the past thirty years.

Our preliminary review showed that in the 1990’s there were six instances of alleged abuse by clergy, and that there were three cases of abuse alleged to

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Sincerely yours in our Lord,

Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone Archbishop of San Francisco

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have occurred in the year 2000. There have been no allegations of any clergy abuse of minors said to have occurred since then.

In those town hall meetings I also spoke of the work of our Independent Review Board, whose duties include: • Advising the Archbishop on any allegations of sex abuse of minors by Church personnel; • Monitoring priests who have been removed from ministry for having abused minors (even if just once); • Reviewing, and advising the Archbishop on, our safe environment policies and our procedures in reporting abuse.

Our safe environment policies include background checks of all employees and volunteers who have regular contact with minors, on-line training of such employees and volunteers, as well as students in all of our schools and faith formation programs and their parents, on how to be alert to signs of abuse and how to report abuse. All Church personnel are informed that they are mandated reporters, and are trained on how to report abuse. You may read for yourselves all of our policies and procedures on our Archdiocesan website at https://sfarchdiocese.org/ policies-index: scroll down to C5-C8.

Importantly, I am engaging an outside, independent consultant to review all priest personnel files held by the Archdiocese from 1950 to the present. That review will include any allegations received since that time and how they were handled. This will be a review of the files of perhaps 4000 clergy personnel who have worked within the Archdiocese during that time period. This work will take a while, and when it is done I will report back the results to the Archdiocese.

Wednesday of last week, as I exited St. Patrick’s church after the Memorial Mass for the deceased homeless, a woman confronted me and asked me if I cared about children who are abused by priests. I told her that I care about all children who are abused, no matter who the abuser is. The scandal of sexual abuse of minors is not confined to the Church; it is rampant all throughout our society. I hope the experience of our Church will serve as a catalyst for all sectors of our society to deal more aggressively in rooting out this societal scourge. And while I find encouragement in the progress our own Church has made in trying to do so, there is still more to be done.

We need always to be vigilant and never, ever become complacent. I therefore continue to take under consideration possible further responses and modifications to policies and procedures of our Archdiocese, in order to attend to the need for ongoing improvement in the way we handle this most grave responsibility of the Church and her ministers.

Thank you again for your prayers, for your love of the Church, and for your support of our priests.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Consolation: Ministers help the grieving navigate season of joy FROM PAGE 1

“You don’t have to do what you’ve always done before,” she said, including hosting big family dinners, sending Christmas cards, holiday parties and gifts. “We can let those things go, put something in their place and be ok with it.”

Sister Gallagher invites the grieving to start the day with prayer, to take a walk or do something else that makes them happy and to “do one thing outside the house each day and to “stay in relationship” on your own terms.

“Invite someone whose company you like over and say no to the big things,” she said.

Fires raging 200 miles north in Butte County filled the skies with a choking smoke and a palpable sense of loss on Nov. 16, the day of Deacon Christoph Sandoval’s Hope For the Holidays Grief Seminar at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

The annual workshop supplements the cathedral’s monthly drop-in grief support group, according to Deacon Sandoval.

Part of the two-hour experience was a practical checklist of 15 tips for navigating grief during the holidays. First on the list was acknowledging that the holidays will be different this year.

“Acknowledge and affirm your reliance on Christ as the center of your life,” said Deacon Sandoval.

Other tips included being honest with friends and family about what you do or don’t want to do, deciding what traditions you want to keep and which you’d like to change, practicing

(Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)

From left, St. Mary’s Cathedral sacristan Stephen Unachukwu prays with Dorothy Kitt, a St. Vincent de Paul parishioner who recently lost her husband, St. Paul of the Shipwreck parishioner Brian Stewart and Deacon Christoph Sandoval at the end of a seminar on holiday grief led

by Deacon Sandoval on Nov. 16 at St. Mary’s Cathedral. self-care, spending time outdoors and volunteering to help others who are suffering.

Deacon Chuck McNeil, who facilitates the grief ministry at St. Dominic Parish, told Catholic San Francisco that he is forming a new eight-week

grief support group that will start this winter. The group is primarily for parishioners, but over the years has included people from other parishes as well as non-Catholics who walk in off the street after seeing an announcement.

“My orientation is that you can recover from grief but that you are a recovering person the rest of your life,” said Deacon McNeil who took over the ministry after completing his own grief work following the death of his mother.

The main advantage of group grief support, he said, is that the grieving are free to be exactly where they are in their grief process and don’t have to “hide” it from a culture that can be uncomfortable with the sights and sounds of it.

“In this room, we’re not going to turn anyone off, we are not going to bore people and no one is going to tell us to get over it,” said Deacon McNeil.

“We talk about our grief every single week.”

“Grieving persons sometimes don’t want to go to a social event because they feel toxic,” said Deacon McNeil.

“They feel that people can just look at them and see how miserable they are.”

St. Dominic is hosting a holiday gathering just for those who have recently lost a loved one on Dec. 16.

Deacon McNeil said the Catholic faith has much to offer the grieving, including vast tradition of ritual prayer and symbols of a life beyond this one.

A tour of the church building with its symbols of grief is a part of Deacon McNeil’s grief support group.

Included is a visit to the wood and marble purgatory altar.

“We have this concrete way of looking at the concept of grieving,” he said, quoting the Scripture engraved there: “We do not grieve like those who grieve without faith.”

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4 on the street where you live

‘We rely on volunteers like Tad,’ SVdP San Francisco says Tom Burke catholic San Francisco

St. Brendan parishioner Tad Tassone, a 35 yearvolunteer with the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco, wears his faith on his sleeve when it comes to the poor: “We look for the face of Christ in others Tad Tassone and reach out from our comfort zones to assist those less fortunate than ourselves,” Tad told me via email. SVdP director of development is Lisa Handley: “We rely on volunteers like Tad to serve meals and distribute clothing at our homeless shelter,” Lisa told me.

“Without funding to hire adequate staff, volunteers get the job done. We couldn’t operate without community support.”

Lisa explained how others can help at SVdP. “Throughout the Christmas season we supplement our programming to offer Holiday Cheer parties for our clients and are particularly looking for coats, hats and scarves, and toiletries to provide to clients. If individuals are looking for something easy and special to do for individuals experiencing homelessness, they can write a card/draw a picture for our clients and we are always happy to disperse. Simple gestures go a long way.” Visit www. svdp-sf.org.

ONLINE, ON TIME: San Francisco’s St. Anthony’s has announced that their annual holiday curbside donation event is now 100 percent virtual. “If you support our mission to feed, heal, shelter, clothe, serve, and care for the vulnerable and had hoped to visit us for a curbside donation drop-off, please consider

donating via Virtual Curbside, stanthonysf.org/virtual-curbside/,” Barry Stenger, executive director, said in a statement. The idea for the online mode came from the “current air quality public health emergency throughout the Bay Area, and the pressing need for all those who make Curbside such a success every year–beloved volunteers, generous donors, and dedicated supporters–to stay safe and healthy indoors,” Barry said. “The Virtual Curbside donations will not only make a Thanksgiving meal possible for those homeless members of our community suffering in particular during this crisis, but will also support our continued ability to be responsive to the emergency needs of our city during times such as these.”

St. Anthony’s staff will still be oncall to accept donations from those who have already purchased their donations and would like to drop them off, and from those who do not receive word in time that Curbside is all online this year, Barry said.

Church Goods & Candles Religious Gifts & Books“Virtual Curbside will be open year-round,” Rachel Ball, St. Anthony’s marketing and communications manager, told me. “Virtual Curbside was a very convenient, safe, and healthy option for our donor community during the height of the 5 locations in California recent poor air quality. The response to our launch was very enthusiastic Your Local Store: and generous!” Drive-up Curbside is 369 Grand Ave., S.San Francisco,650-583-5153 now closed until it opens again for Near SF Airport - Exit 101 Frwy @ Grand Christmas Dec. 20.

GOBBLE, GOBBLE: St. Emydius Parish has again “taken a bite out of hunger” with their Thanksgiving Turkey Drive. Goodwww.cotters.com hearts dropped off 327 turkeys Nov. 17. “All donations are brought to cotters@cotters.com ‘TIS THE SEASON’: Thank you the St. Anthony’s Dining Room to feed the homeless and poor families who depend on this organizaalways and very much to parishes tion for their daily survival,” said campaign coordinator, Pierre Smit, left, pictured with St. Anthony’s for their musical presentations in executive director, Barry Stenger. Volunteers on the detail included Joe Koman, Lisa Abinanti, Herb these weeks before Christmas. Just Jeong, Patrick Wenzinger, Getty Reeves, and Wendy Wang. Hams for St. Anthony’s Christmas pantry can be dropped off at St. Emydius, Dec. 22, 9 a.m.-noon. SFpierre@aol.com; www.sfturkeydrive.com/. a sampling: Most Holy Redeemer Parish welcomes singer composer Janet Sullivan Whitaker for “AdHIGH VOLTAGE: San Francisco’s St. Brendan Parish vent Graces: Sacred Scripture and has instituted a 5 p.m. Mass in its Sunday schedule. “Many Music for the Season,” Dec. 6, 7 p.m., people in the St. Brendan community, especially parents MHR Church, 100 Diamond St., San of school-age children, had been asking for a Sunday Francisco, free admission. St. Cecilia evening Mass because the rest of the weekend seems Choir under the direction of Russell to be crammed with sports and other family activities,” Ferreira presents “Lessons and CarFather Roger Gustafson, pastor, told me. “It seems that ols; An Advent Celebration,” Dec. Sunday evening is a ‘sweet spot’ for families.” Father 9, 4 p.m., St. Cecilia Church, 17th Gustafson said, however, the “Mass is for everyone” and Avenue at Vicente, San Francisco, that includes “any Catholic who appreciates uplifting worfree admission. ship services with high energy praise and worship music, lighting, and displays.” An “incredible band” will lead song Email items and at the liturgy, he said. “These are professional musicians electronic pictures who play throughout the Bay Area in churches and other – hi-res jpegs - to venues.” Mario Balestrieri, parish music director, will be on burket@sfarch.org or mail to Street, One the electric keyboard/synthesizer. “The band also consists Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco 94109. of a world-class electric guitarist, bassist, and drummer,” Include a follow-up phone number.

Father Gustafson said. “We have a full drum kit and shield. We’ve also been lucky enough to have Street is toll-free. Reach me at (415) a professional sound engineer with us to make sure that the music is professionally mixed. There’s 614-5634; email burket@sfarch.org. electricity in the air at St. Brendan’s! Join us for our Electric Mass.” www.stbrendanparish.org.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Walk for Life West Coast steps into 15th year Catholic San Francisco

The Walk for Life West Coast will welcome pro-life advocates for the 15th time Jan. 26 at San Francisco’s City Center Plaza, 12:30 p.m.

More than 50,000 people are expected for this year’s walk and its schedule Patricia of pro-life events Sandoval that follow, Cindy Northon, publicist for the walk, told Catholic San Francisco. “Demographically, the Walk for Life West Coast covers all ages, from babes in arms to seniors in wheelFather Boquet chairs; and every race and creed including atheists and agnostics, under the sun,” Northon said. “That said, the hallmark of the walk, noted by many observers and reporters, has always been the tremendous number of young people. It is the presence of so many young people that gives the Walk for Life West Coast its special flavor.”

Northon said Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone will be principal celebrant of Mass opening the day with additional bishops joining him.

Walk leadership seek “to convey to the world that every life is precious and that there are people ready, willing, and able to help others choose life!” organizers said in a statement.

Speakers this year include pro-life and chastity speaker Patricia Sandoval, a former Planned Parenthood worker. Sandoval shares a “riveting story of hope and redemption as she recalls a past marked by abandonment, drug use, homelessness, and three abortions,” organizers said.

Other speakers include Baptist clergyman Walter B. Hoye II, founder and president of the Issues4Life Foundation. “Rev. Hoye is an accomplished author and public speaker, who recognizes the devastating effect of abortion on the black community and the need for men to embrace their biblical roles as protector and provider,” organizers said.

Father Shenan Boquet, president of Human Life International, also will speak. “Father has journeyed over a million miles sharing the truth about the dignity of the human person, the nature of marriage, authentic social justice, and moral theology,” organizers said.

Volunteers should email their interest to info@walkforlifewc.com. Visit www. walkforlifewc.com.

‘Tis the season to treat yourself to a tour.

Please join us for our Home for the Holidays Tour of Homes to celebrate the holidays with seasonal cheer! Enjoy our beautiful holiday décor and delicious savory treats along with festive entertainment.

Discover a lifestyle full of social, cultural and recreational opportunities at our newly renovated senior living community. Find out for yourself why so many call Peninsula Del Rey home.

Home for the Holidays Tour of Homes Saturday, December 8th 2:00pm-4:00pm

To RSVP, please call 650.264.9050.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Catholics join hands in Paradise fire recovery Christina Gray Catholic San Francisco

Deacon Ray Helgeson left his home in Paradise on the morning of Nov. 8 with his wife Donna for daily Mass at the close-knit Butte County town’s only Catholic church. They never arrived.

On the short drive to St. Thomas More Church, where the deacon assists at Mass and heads the parish’s adult faith formation program, the Helgesons saw billowing smoke and a nearby peak in flames. They continued warily in the direction of the church but were soon intercepted by emergency crews, who diverted them from what would become California’s most destructive wildland fire.

The Camp Fire burned more than 153,000 acres, destroyed more than 14,000 homes and caused 85 fatalities, with 24 people still reported missing as of Dec. 3.

The fire left more than 80 percent of Paradise residents, including the Helgesons, essentially homeless and had a devastating impact on St. Thomas More parishioners, with an estimated 640 losing their homes out of 800 on the official roster.

“This stuff really confuses you,” Deacon Helgeson told Catholic San Francisco in a Nov. 28 phone interview from his son’s home in Citrus Heights outside Sacramento, a 90mile drive from Paradise.

He and his wife arrived Nov. 8 with the clothing they wore to church that morning, a short supply of necessary medications and Deacon Helgeson’s breviary. Like many residents, they have not been back to the fire zone, where recovery efforts are still underway, but have confirmed that their home is gone.

“Stability for human persons is huge and we don’t have a place now to call home now,” Helgeson said. “If your faith is weak, it’s going to be extra tough.”

The St. Thomas More church and school were spared but the parish hall and rectory were gutted.

Many displaced people have found refuge in the college town of Chico about 22 miles from Paradise. A campus Newman Center located a block away from St. John the Baptist Parish, one of two Catholic parishes in Chico, has served as the spiritual and organizational epicenter for the displaced parish.

On Nov. 18, 10 days after the fire began, Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto celebrated a Mass for St. Thomas More fire survivors at the center. On Nov. 25, the center offered a special Mass for St. Thomas More parishioners.

Jim Collins is a St. Thomas More parishioner and retired educator who is acting as commander-in-chief of a relief and communications center set up in the Newman Center hall. Collins, a Grand Knight in St. Thomas More Knights of Columbus Council 7772, is one of the few parishioners whose house didn’t burn.

Of the 107 Knights in the council, 69 lost their homes.

“This is really Job territory,” Collins said. “That imagery is perfect here.”

Collins and a small crew of fellow Knights spend their days tracking down missing parishioners, communicating with family members about their safety and whereabouts, helping find housing for survivors, distributing donated clothing, money and gift cards and raising money for

(Photos by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)

Some residents of Paradise whose homes were destroyed in the catastrophic Camp Fire in early November sought refuge in tents staked into a muddy field Nov. 29 in the nearby city of Chico.

A note hangs on a backpack filled with supplies donated by the Church of the Nativity in Menlo Park. Left, at the Newman Center in Chico, St. Thomas More (Paradise) parishioner Bill Vichi shows a photo of his destroyed Paradise home. long-haul recovery, he told Catholic San Francisco during a visit to Chico Nov. 29.

Collins pointed to rows of brandnew backpacks full with toiletries, scarves and little luxuries. The included greeting card was signed by Deacon Dominic Peloso and his wife Mary Ann Peloso from the Church of the Nativity in Menlo Park.

“We’re buried in backpacks!” Collins said. “Just this morning we got all of these backpacks and $9,000 in gift cards from your archdiocese.”

Fellow Knights Bill Vichi and Greg Wright are longtime St. Thomas More parishioners who arrived to help Collins. Nothing in their words or manner betrayed the fact that both were made homeless by the fire as they greeted Collins with back-slaps and jokes.

Vichi later shared that he lost everything.

“Actually I’m not distributing gift cards here today, I’m getting them,” he said matter-of-factly.

Wright had even less reason to smile, but did so easily and often. He was a renter without renter’s insurance, among those worst off after a disaster because they lack resources to start over, Collins said.

“I will follow wherever the Lord directs me,” Wright said.

Until Nov. 30, the Newman Center hall also served as an administrative home base for the Paradise parish. The effort was organized by St. Thomas More pastor Father Xavier Godwin, parish plant manager Greg Kidder and Deacon Helgeson. Kidder helped Father Godwin escape the rectory before it was destroyed and risked his own escape by taking the time to bring valuable parish records with them.

“Compared to what other people lost, mine is just little,” said Father Godwin, who was installed at the parish only five months ago. “I don’t care about that.”

On Nov. 30, St. Thomas More parish administration and relief efforts moved to Our Divine Savior, a Catholic parish in north Chico, at the Sacramento diocese’s direction.

Father Godwin said he intends to reintroduce the weekly night of “centering prayer” the parish offered each week in Paradise. “That could be healing,” he said.

Zooba Zwicker, the music director for St. Thomas More, and her husband Clint Freedle lost their home and his successful construction business in the fire. Still, she arrived to talk to Collins about music and logistics for the funeral of parishioner Larry Campbell on Dec. 15. Campbell,

who was terminally ill with cancer, escaped the fire with his wife but died two days later of a stroke.

Later in the afternoon, parishioners, clergy and staff from all three local parishes wandered in and out of the Our Divine Savior Parish office to discuss, often with much humor, their blended efforts at Catholic worship, sacraments and pastoral care.

“I have an office you can use to meet privately with parishioners,” Our Divine Savior pastor Father Francis Stevenson said to Father Godwin, who sipped unaware from a coffee cup ironically emblazoned with the words, “Fired Up,” a confirmation program of the Sacramento diocese.

Deacon Helgeson, who travels between Citrus Heights and his home parish three days a week for his pastoral duties, said the disaster has had its positive side.

“Something like this awakens something within us,” he said. “It gives the Lord a chance to pull triggers within us of generosity, of kindness and of gentleness with others.”

He said the fire and his faith have forged something new and unexpected in himself and other survivors.

“It’s an awareness of being without, but there is also a sweetness to it,” he said.

ARCHDiocesE 7

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Guadalupana Crusade marks 25th year Catholic San Francisco

(Courtesy photo)

Pedro and Martha Garcia with cathedral pastor Father Arturo Albano at St. Mary’s Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Sept. 9.

Father Albano will be a concelebrant of the Guadalupana Crusade Mass Dec. 8, 2 p.m. at the cathedral.

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Now in its 25th year, the archdiocesan Guadalupana Crusade will commence Dec. 8 from All Souls Church in South San Francisco at 6 a.m.

The pilgrimage welcomes members all along the 12-mile trek to St. Mary’s Cathedral. With respite stops along the way at locations including Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma and San Francisco’s St. John the Evangelist Church, the crusade reaches the cathedral at about 1:30 p.m. for a Mass at 2 p.m. with Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone as principal celebrant and homilist.

“I began Guadalupana Crusade, to practice and promote the devotion to Our Lady Mary of Guadalupe,” founder Padro Garcia told Catholic San Francisco. “At the same time to conserve Latin American devotion and roots of especially the Mexican.” Garcia’s greatest satisfaction beyond his own participation is “to see the devotion of the participants each year.”

Garcia put the number of pilgrims last year at 33,000 with 35,000 or more expected this year.

Most of the people return each year with about 3,000 new pilgrims each year, Garcia said.

Garcia and his wife, Martha, started the crusade in 1994 with several others including now-retired Bishop William J. Justice, then pastor of All Souls Parish. The first crusade Dec. 4, 1994, drew about 250 participants with the number growing through the years.

By way of the crusade “we grow in our Christian faith to glorify God now and forever,” Garcia said.

The pilgrimage is many hours in planning. “We have many volunteers to help us with all of the event operations, so far our mission has been a great success,” Garcia said.

Music for the Mass will be a new setting, “Mass for the Americas,” by composer Frank La Rocca. Leading song will be the cathedral choir enhanced with 16 additional professional voices.

Ash Walker will conduct. Cathedral music director Christoph Tietze is organist with additional instruments including a string quartet and hand bells. www.benedictinstitute.org.

Visit www.cruzadaguadalupana.org; call (415) 333-4868.

The Mass will be livestreamed on the archdiocesan website, www.sfarchdiocese.org, and televised by EWTN which is available on carriers throughout the archdiocese.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Disaffiliation: Session explores church’s woe in handing on faith FROM PAGE 1

the audience that about a third of respondents left over church teaching, most often that on same-sex marriage and homosexuality.

“Young people see dealing with the gay community as an issue of social justice and human dignity, not an issue of sexuality,” he said.

Study participants also said they stopped identifying as Catholics because of a disbelief in religion, or a personal or familial change in their religious denomination.

About half of those who left Catholicism joined another religion, while 35 percent became “nones,” unaffiliated with any particular religious tradition. Less than a fifth of respondents became atheists or agnostics.

According to St. Mary’s Press research, many of the respondents who stopped identifying as Catholics tended to have weak signs of attachment to the church. More than half of respondents said when they identified as Catholic they attended Mass a few times a year or less. Two-thirds of them had made their first Communion, but only a third had received confirmation. Nearly 60 percent had never been involved in any religious education or youth ministry.

Although their work focused on young adults aged 15-25, McCarty said disaffiliation from the church is not a problem of youth ministry but a systemic crisis in handing on the faith. According to Pew Research Center, a little over a third of the

(Photo by Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)

Youth and young adult ministers look on during a Nov. 29 conference on young adult disaffiliation from the Catholic Church. The median age for leaving the church is 13. adults born between 1981 and 1996 do not identify with any religion tradition. Around 13 percent of U.S. adults are former Catholics.

Part of the story of disaffiliation is the decline of social trust in all institutions. The young age of disaffiliation suggests families play an important role in choosing to leave Catholicism, McCarty said, but he also pointed to the experience of community at churches.

“Our faith community enables us to encounter Jesus: If the community doesn’t do that, it’s easier for us to walk away,” he said.

A preparatory document for the Vatican’s October 2018 Synod of Bishops on “young people, the faith, and vocational discernment,” made a similar point. Youth delegates wrote,

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“Young people who are disconnected from or who leave the church do so after experiencing indifference, judgment and rejection.”

Disaffiliation happens slowly, McCarty said, with faith gradually disappearing until a crisis forces people to make a choice. Above all, the rise in disaffiliation reflects “the secularization of culture where faith and belief are optional and not a given,” he said.

The end of religious practice is not the end of spiritual desire: McCarty noted study respondents were still intensely interested in finding meaning, dignity, justice and community.

But for 87 percent of respondents, nothing the church could do would bring them back to Catholicism.

Responses to disaffiliation have varied. Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron, a participant in the recently concluded youth synod, has argued for “a renewed apologetics and catechesis” that will allow for “an intelligent, respectful, and culturally sensitive explication of the faith.

“The church must walk with young people, listen to them with attention and love, and then be ready intelligently to give a reason for the hope that is within us,” he said.

John Vitek, one of the authors of “Going, Going, Gone,” has endorsed a pastoral care “that accompanies young people in their life’s task of freely constructing personal and communal religious identities and practices.”

Whether people will continue to form religious identities absent an interest in God is in question. A recent Pew Research Center study on what gives meaning to people’s lives found that only 10 percent of American adults under 30 mention “spirituality, faith, or God” when describing what affects their sense of meaning, compared to 20 percent of all U.S. adults. The church is also encountering loss through people who were never introduced to the faith. Parents raised as Catholics increasingly choose not to enroll their children in the sacraments of initiation. While Catholic fertility rates largely reflect that of the general population, fewer infants are baptized today than in the 1940s, according to Mark Gray, a senior researcher on Catholicism.

Youth ministers at the conference were energized by the idea of change but more cautious on the details. At a roundtable session, youth ministers talked about the difficulty of changing a parish’s mindset to focus on accompaniment and personal relationships instead of programming, and the difficulty of getting parents interested in their children’s faith.

“We need to change how we approach things because we’re still traditional in thinking things that used to work can work today,” Anna see disaffiliation, page 19

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Novato’s St. Anthony inaugurates evangelization project Catholic San Francisco

The parish inaugurated its first Parish Evangelization Project Oct. 16-21, led by 17 parishioners with help from Legion of Mary members from Arlington, Virginia, and San Francisco.

“Working four hours from Tuesday through Saturday and two hours on Sunday, the missionaries visited a total of 4,045 homes, with contacts made in 1,535 of those homes.,” Father Felix Lim, pastor, told Catholic San Francisco. A total of 1,678 persons were contacted, he said. Of these, 598 were Catholic, of whom 277 were inactive. The parish said 831 non-Catholics were visited.

Each day began with Mass and praying the rosary and the prayers of the Legion of Mary. During a planning meeting, an explanation of the approach was given and teams of two members each were formed. An inexperienced member was partnered with a more experienced missionary. They visited registered parishioners as well as fallen-away Catholics and non-Catholics.

“Most people were receptive to our visits,” Father Lim said. “Many were surprised that it’s the Catholic Church visiting them and not the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons. Many non-Catholics told us they have attended our rummage sale.”

During the visits, the team asked how the parish

(Courtesy photo)

Father Felix Lim, pastor, and missionaries from St. Anthony Parish, Novato, rest on the church steps following a six-day Parish Evangelization Project in October.

could serve them better. Suggestions for improvement included starting a seniors club; starting a Spanish Mass and offering religious education in Spanish; projecting lyrics of songs for all to see;

continuing the Alpha program; and attracting more young families and youth.

As part of every visit the teams asked if the parish could pray for the households visited and for any intentions they might have with a total of 158 prayer petitions collected.

Each home received a package of information that includes a letter from the pastor, a parish bulletin and a booklet explaining the basic teachings of the Catholic faith.

One non-Catholic expressed interest in becoming Catholic and was invited to join the RCIA. We encouraged those inactive Catholics to come back, offering miraculous medals and rosaries.

A total of 206 people were identified for follow-up visits. These included requests for a visit from a priest, anointing of the sick, and parish registrations.

A few fallen away Catholics expressed their anger with the church. The team listened to them patiently and apologized on behalf of the church. One man came to the rectory the next day to apologize for his rudeness to the visitors. One fallen-away Catholic family attended the parish 11 a.m. Sunday Mass as a result of the visit.

The parish has formed a new chapter of the Legion of Mary at St. Anthony in order to follow up on the visits made during the project.

Nigerian priest: Fund missions to help Christians under attack Valerie Schmalz

Father Raymondo Tyohemba has been known to join the police to patrol parts of his agrarian parish wielding a cutlass for defense against Islamist marauders intent on terrorizing his Christian flock.

Father Tyohemba is a pastor in central Nigeria, where 19 people including two priests were slain at a 5:30 a.m. Mass by Islamist fundamentalists in April.

He spoke at a religious freedom event at St. Pius Parish, organized by the archdiocesan Office of Human Life & Dignity and Youth and Young Adult Ministry, in honor of Christ the King Sunday Nov. 25. Father Tyohemba is currently in residence at St. Brendan Parish in San Francisco while studying for a graduate education degree at the University of San Francisco.

Father Tyohemba says there is a simple way for the American Catholic in the pews to help defend the persecuted church overseas: Contribute to missions.

“In my country, for instance, Saudi Arabia sends a lot of money for people to build a mosque. They can build a mosque in a month and it’s done. And it is huge, huge, huge,” the priest said. “We begin to build our churches and sometimes it takes five years. We don’t have the resources. We need to seriously continue to support missionary activity around the world.”

“Most parts of the world, including Africa, were Christianized because of the support that came from Europe,” said Father Tyohemba.

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Father Raymond Tyohemba spoke on religious persecution in Nigeria on the religious freedom day of Christ the King Sunday at St. Pius Parish in Redwood City.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 190 million people, is divided evenly between Christians in the south and Muslims in the north. But sectarian violence is increasing in the primarily Christian Middle Belt where Father Tyohemba serves.

The attack in April was in an area that is 99 percent Christian, according to the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. “There is a clear agenda to Islamize all of the areas that are currently predominantly Christian,” Nigerian Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Makurdi diocese said, according to the international Catholic charity which published a report in late November.

Across the country, tens of thousands of Nigerians have been killed in religious violence and millions displaced because of religiously motivated

attacks, according to “Religious Freedom in the World: Report 2018,” by Aid to the Church in Need.

At the same time, while radical Islamic forces are spreading into Africa, Europe and Asia, “There is increasing evidence of a curtain of indifference behind which vulnerable faith communities suffer, their plight ignored by a religiously illiterate West,” the report said.

After the slaughter of the people at Mass in April and the deaths of another 35 at a nearby village, Nigeria’s bishops called for the Muslim president of the democratic country to resign. “One bishop warned the international community: ‘Please don’t make the same mistake as was made with the genocide in Rwanda,’” the report said.

Father Tyohemba recounted how as a pastor he was forced to urge his parishioners to flee their village because the police told him they would not and could not defend them against an expected attack. But God is with those who believe in him, the priest told the group gathered at St. Pius, including a youth group from St. Mark Parish in Belmont.

“Let us cling to the Lord, the king of the universe.

He’s been through persecution himself and he says to us, if you want to be a follower of me, you must take up your cross and follow me,” Father Tyohemba said. “Persecution is in the Christian DNA.” Valerie Schmalz is director of the archdiocesan Office of Human Life & Dignity.

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10 ARCHDiocesE

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Catholic health conference gives dose of community and ethics Nicholas Wolfram Smith Catholic San Francisco

Mary Kate Bakh never expected to be involved in moral dilemmas when she became a nurse. Bakh, who often works in end-of-life care, said decisions about how to treat and care for patients at the end of their lives – how much morphine to use, whether to start a feeding tube – happen in moral “gray areas.”

“It’s often hard to determine the difference between promoting comfort for patients or making them pass more quickly,” she said.

For her and other professionals and students in the medical field, the Converging Roads Conference organized by the St. John Paul II Foundation Nov. 17 at St. Mary’s Cathedral was an opportunity to better understand Catholic teaching on health care ethics. Conference speakers discussed the conscience rights of medical professionals, Catholic social doctrine around care for the sick, and issues in end-of-life care. After the conference, attendees gathered in the cathedral to celebrate the archdiocese’s first annual White Mass for health care professionals.

The conference was jointly presented by the John Paul II Foundation, the Archdiocese of San Francisco, the

(Photo by Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)

Dr. Thomas Cavanaugh of the University of San Francisco talks with medical student Dillon Stull after the Converging Roads conference at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Nov. 17. The conference on Catholic health care ethics covered such topics as end-of-life treatment and conscience rights.

University of San Francisco and the Catholic Medical Association. Aubrie Miller, the conference organizer, told Catholic San Francisco she was pleased with the turnout for the event.

“It’s our first year here, and we’ve laid a great foundation that hopefully we’ll build on for future years.”

Bakh said she appreciated the nuanced discussion around proportionate and disproportionate means of continuing life, and what amount of treatment to give a patient. Just as

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under treatment can be an issue, “often a patient can be ready for death while the family wants to continue treatment,” she said.

Dr. Natalie Rodden, a physician at St. Anthony North Health Campus in Colorado, talked about palliative care in end-of-life treatment. By focusing on improving the quality of life for people who are nearing death, doctors can help patients “continue to grow while at the end of life.” As Catholics, she said, palliative care is an opportunity to help people prepare for eternal life.

Rodden criticized physician assisted suicide, which became law in Cali-

fornia in 2015, as a medical response to existential issues. Patients who choose assisted suicide can feel overwhelmed by their illness, misunderstand their diagnosis or feel they have lost their dignity. The end of life can be “a beautiful time for growth that suicide takes away,” she said.

Many attendees also enjoyed the opportunity to meet like-minded colleagues. Jung Gi Min, a Stanford University medical student, told Catholic San Francisco that seeing “successful physicians standing up for what is right is really encouraging.”

Being a practicing Christian can make it hard “to find solidarity at medical school,” he said, but praised the speakers for their discussions and the interest they had shown in mentoring the medical students in attendance.

The conference also marked the inaugural event of the San Francisco guild of the Catholic Medical Association. Dr. Cynthia Hart, a regional director for the CMA, told Catholic San Francisco that the association would “support and encourage compassionate, competent, faith-based care” in local medical professionals and offer education, fellowship and spiritual formation for members.

For more information on the Catholic Medical Association, visit their website cathmed.org. To join the San Francisco guild, email President Michel Accad at draccad@draccad.com.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Clergy appointments announced Father Raymund Reyes, vicar for clergy, announces the following clergy appointments on behalf of Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone.

Pastor

Our Lady of the Pillar Parish, effective Jan. 1, 2019; Father Tony S. Vallecillo, St. Peter Parish, San Francisco, effective Jan. 1, 2019; Father Richard H. Van De Water, St. Thomas More Parish, with ministry to the Arab-American Catholic Community, effective Nov. 15, 2018; Father Gabriel T. Wankar, Our Lady of Mercy Parish, effective Jan. 1, 2019.

William W. Young, Alma Via of San Francisco, effective Oct. 1, 2018.

Medical leave

Father Toan X. Nguyen, Atria of Burlingame, 250 Myrtle Road, Burlingame, moving to Serra Clergy House when his health allows; effective Nov. 1, 2018-Jan. 31, 2019.

Father Mark G. Mazza, Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, effective Nov. 1, 2018, has been serving there as administrator; Father Raymund M. Reyes, St. Augustine Parish, effective Jan. 1, 2019, continuing as vicar for clergy; Father Angel N. Quitalig, St. Mark Parish, effective Jan. 1, 2019, remaining in the Metropolitan Tribunal part-time as judge; Father Paul M. Zirimenya, St. Benedict Parish, effective Nov. 1, 2018.

Special assignment

Father Ghislain Bazikila, supply priest for the Deaf Ministry, Diocese of Oakland, effective Nov. 1, 2018, with continuing residence at St. Benedict’s in San Francisco.

Father James L. Garcia, 1845 Monte Court, P.O. Box 4934, Rio Rico, AZ 85648, effective Oct. 1, 2018; Father Lee Kaylor, 3470 S. Zunis Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74105, effective Nov. 1, 2018

Administrator

Sabbaticals

Father Felix N. W. Just, SJ, USF faculty, residence at Loyola House, effective July 1, 2018; Father Plinio Gusmão Dos Reis Martins, SJ, Father Lourdu S. Mummadi, SJ, Father Jordan J. Orbe, SJ, Father Vincent P. Poulose, SJ, Father Leonardus E. B. Winandoko, SJ, USF studies, residence at Loyola House, effective Sept. 14, 2018.

Father William C. Nicholas, St. Vincent de Paul Parish, effective Dec. 1, 2018-May 31, 2019; Father Ngoan V. Phan, St. Peter Parish, Pacifica, effective Feb. 1-June 30, 2019

Parochial vicar

Father Jorge E. Arias Salazar, halftime St. Timothy Parish/half-time St. Matthew Parish, effective Jan. 1, 2019; Father Bonifacio G. Espeleta, St. Robert Parish, effective Jan. 1, 2019; Father Elpidio Geneta, JCL, St. Andrew Parish, effective Feb. 1, 2019; Father Martin Njoalu, St. Augustine Parish, effective Jan. 1, 2019; Father Nicasio G. Paloso,

Father Jerome P. Foley, Oblate sabbatical program, San Antonio, effective Jan. 1, 2019; Father Mark V. Taheny, ICTE program in Rome, effective Jan. 1, 2019 (away six months), returning to Star of the Sea, San Francisco; Father Kenneth M. Westray, effective Dec. 1, 2108, returning June 1, 2019 to St. Vincent de Paul Parish.

In residence

Father Paolo Maria del Carmen, St. Peter Parish, San Francisco, effective Sept. 1, 2018; Father Joseph Previtali, St. Francis of Assisi Parish, East Palo Alto, effective Sept. 1, 2018; Father

holidays

Book your Holiday Party

Address changes

Additional clergy news

New seminarian

Jimmy E. Velasco, College II, Bishop White Seminary, Spokane, Washington.

Upcoming departures

Father Lawrence Vadakkan, SDB, returning to Salesians, Chennai Province, India, effective July 1, 2019.

Vocation meetings Father Patrick Summerhays, director of vocations, welcomes men discerning a priestly vocation to monthly dinner meetings to help them discover more about the priesthood. “Discernment involves listening to God, learning about yourself, and seeking the guidance of others,” Father Summerhays said.

First Monday meetings are in Redwood City. First Thursday meetings are in San Francisco. The program each time is eucharistic adoration in the church, followed by dinner and discussion in the rectory: Dec. 6, Jan. 3, Feb. 7, March 7, 6:15-8:30 p.m., Church of the Epiphany, 826 Vienna St., San Francisco. For information or to RSVP, Father Summerhays (415) 614-5684; summerhays. patrick@sfarch.org. Dec. 3, Jan. 7, Feb. 4, March 4: 6:158:30 p.m., St. Pius Church, 1100 Woodside Road, Redwood City. For information or to RSVP, Father Tom Martin. martin.thomas@sfarch.org. https://sfarchdiocese.org/ vocations.

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San Mateo County Mental Health Emergency Numbers Police: 911 Tell the dispatcher you are calling regarding a person who has a mental illness. Request a CIT (Crisis Intervention Team_ trained officer and/or someone who has experience in dealing with the mentally ill. For non-emergency situations, call your local police department.

HELPFUL: Tips to prepare yourself for a 911 call are available on the BHRS website. Download “Mental Health Emergency” at www.smchealth.org/MH911 or...

Visit the blog: www/mcbhrsblog.org/2015/03/30/mental-health-emergency-materials-aka-family-script/.

24 Hour Crisis Line & Support Help: 650-579-0350 / 800-784-2433 Calling the local number will get you someone in San Mateo County. Calling the 800 number will get you the first person available. This person may not be in San Mateo County.

Psych Emergency: San Mateo Medical Center: 650-573-2662

Mills Peninsula Hospital: 650-696-5915

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Kaiser South San Francisco: 650-742-2511 Kaiser Permanente SMC: 650-991-6455

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For additional non-emergency numbers relating to Mental Health issues, access www.namisanmateo.org

12 ARCHDiocesE

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

(Photos by Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)

Lucy Soltau, youth ministry director at St. Denis Parish in Menlo Park, helps out at her parish’s family Advent workshop Dec. 2. Soltau said the event focuses on helping families prepare “for the Advent journey.” Right, children at St. Denis work on coloring their own Jesse Tree ornaments. The ornaments symbolize Jesus’ ancestors and significant events in salvation history.

‘No Santa stuff ’: Parish workshop focuses on Advent journey Nicholas Wolfram Smith Catholic San Francisco

Groups of children sat together cutting paper and coloring ornaments to make Christmas decorations at an Advent workshop Dec. 2 at St. Denis Parish to help families mark the new liturgical season at home.

Lucy Soltau, the director of religious education and youth ministry at the Menlo Park parish, told Catholic San Francisco that “there’s no Santa stuff” at the workshop. Instead, her focus is on helping families prepare themselves “for the Advent journey.”

The parish offered arts and crafts connected to Advent for kids. Children cut brightly colored paper into strips that could be assembled one day at a time into a decorative chain, while others colored symbols of Jesus’ ancestors to make Jesse tree

ornaments. Soltau said the workshop “gets kids involved in a way that’s fun for them” while showing that “Christmas is about more than shopping.”

Soltau said younger children like the hands-on activities, while older families appreciate things like the Advent wreath supplies, a list of ideas for celebrating Advent, and the Little Blue Book, a daily Advent devotional published by the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan.

Teaching children about Advent and Christmas while their minds are focused on presents can be a challenge. Some retail forecasts anticipate up to $1.1 trillion in sales during the 2018 holiday season, a sign of how strongly consumerism has been attached to a religious season.

For parents, that is just another part of the complexity of the world.

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that “the Christmas season is like a diamond, it has lots of facets.” One part is commercial, she said, “and a big part of it is religious.”

Sitting at a table with her husband Mike while their children Desmond and Rowan colored their own Jesse Tree ornaments, she said her children enjoyed the creativity of making ornaments, and “want to learn more about the Advent season acts of giving and loving.”

“The donuts are also a draw,” Prindiville said.

Heidi von Briel, whose children range from college age to grade school, said it can be hard for children to recognize the “true meaning” of Christmas, since good behavior and gifts are so heavily emphasized.

What helps her family focus on Christ is their nativity set, she said. The three Wise Men move each day closer to the creche, arriving on Jan. 6, the solemnity of Epiphany. Because of that, she said it shows her family that Christmas continues after the gifts are exchanged.

“It’s a time for real reflection,” von Briel said.

As Soltau moved between tables, helping children with their crafts, several were eager to finish up their activities all at once rather than slowly assemble them throughout Advent.

“That’s the hardest part of Advent: It’s all about the waiting,” she told them.

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national 13

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Bishops urge respect, compassion for migrants

HOUSTON – Laredo’s Bishop James A. Tamayo is calling church leaders and lay faithful to “extend the compassion of Christ” to those who come to Catholic churches in need. Bishop Tamayo leads the youngest diocese in Texas and the U.S. The south Texas city of Laredo borders the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, and local Catholic leaders are “preparing to help in any way ... should the caravan come to our doorsteps,” he said.

His comments come as tensions with tear gas and violence rise on the far west part of the U.S.-Mexico border in Baja California. Thousands of people with a caravan from Central America began arriving in Tijuana, Mexico, Nov. 13, and more continue to arrive. Bishop Tamayo said his diocesan and social services staff have met with local and national border officials to ensure that the position of the Catholic Church on immigration is known.

The government knows of the church’s respect of the nation’s laws, he said, “but also of our desire if some (migrants) come in need of health care, if some come to try to reunite with family members, we want to help them through the legal process or if they’re at our door and they need food, they need medical care and attention, they want to tell their story and seek asylum from violence and from the governmental structures of their own country, they should be heard.”

Santa Fe archdiocese to file for bankruptcy protection

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, said the archdiocese planned to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the recommendation of several consultative groups.

Archbishop The archbishop John Wester told a Nov. 29 news conference that he had considered filing for bankruptcy protection in recent years and decided to take the action because the archdiocese faces up to 40 active claims from alleged victims of clergy sex abuse.

“We could see where this was all heading and the trajectory wasn’t changing,” he told reporters. “We just don’t have any money. If we’re not here, we can’t help anybody.”

The announcement was the second major occurrence related to clergy sex abuse within the archdiocese in two days. Agents from the office of New Mexico’s attorney general executed a search warrant Nov. 28 to obtain records from the archdiocese regarding at least two former priests

credibly accused of child sexual abuse.

Texas archdiocese ‘fully cooperating’ with search

HOUSTON – The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston said Nov. 28 it “continues to cooperate, as we have since the outset,” with the Office of the District Attorney of Montgomery County in its ongoing investigation into a Catholic priest accused of abusing minors.

The archdiocesan statement was issued in response to the execution of a search warrant at its offices that morning. The district attorney is investigating the case of Father Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, a priest of the Galveston-Houston archdiocese, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by a man and a woman who were minors when the alleged episodes occurred about 20 years ago. He was assigned to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe from the late 1990s to early 2000s.

The priest, who denies the accusations, was taken into custody by police in September and charged with four counts of indecency with a child. He is out on bond and has a court appearance in January.

The archdiocese criticized news media for describing the serving of a warrant as a “raid.” “Please note any use of the term ‘raid’ is an inaccurate and unprofessional reference to a request for records to a party that has been cooperating and will continue to cooperate fully,” it said.

Etienne: Church has much to do on abuse, but hope remains for future

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – After reflecting and praying on the proceedings of the U.S. bishops’ fall assembly in Baltimore, Anchorage Archbishop Paul D. Etienne said he is sure of two things: that the “people of God need to hear from their bishops in the wake” of that meeting and that “there is hope for our future.”

The “show-stopper moment” came as the meeting opened, he said, when Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston Houston, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced the Vatican had asked that no vote be taken on several abuse-related protocols governing bishops behavior and accountability that he had hoped would be accepted during the three-day meeting.

The instruction came from the Congregation for Bishops, citing the upcoming February meeting of the presidents of the bishops’ conferences around the world to address clergy sex abuse and to ensure that the proposals were in line with canon law.

“Since that moment,” Archbishop Etienne wrote, “the one question that quickly surfaced was: ‘Why doesn’t the pope care about the abuse crisis in the United States?’

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by radical Hindus who are known as “cow vigilantes.” Cows are considered sacred in Hinduism.

The report was released Nov. 27.

The report’s executive summary took note of documentation by the human rights group Persecution Relief, which said that last year, there were 736 documented attacks against Christians in India, more than double 2016’s figure of 358.

CDC report shows continued decline in US abortion rate

WASHINGTON –The archbishop who chairs the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities cheered news that the abortion rate in the United States continues to shrink, as does the number of abortions overall.

“I am gratified that the number of abortions in the United States continues to decline,” said Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, in a Nov. 26 statement. “The reduction in the number of abortions is due to many factors, from declining rates of sexual activity, especially among teens, to pro-life legislative gains.”

According to a report issued Nov. 21 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the drop in both abortions overall and the abortion rate has declined each year for a decade. The CDC said the abortion rate in 2015 – the last year for which statistics are available – is at 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15-44. The rate has dropped eight of the past nine years since 2006’s rate of 15.9; the rate of 15.6 held steady in 2008.

Charity head: Ultranationalism threatens religious freedom

WASHINGTON – Ultranationalism is the chief reason behind the growing number of countries ranked worse than before on guaranteeing citizens their religious freedom, according to Thomas Heine-Geldern, executive president of Aid to the Church in Need.

One example was India’s “Hinduistic nationalist approach,” Heine-Geldern said, “which leads to condemning everyone who is a nonHindu a non-Indian. Then comes the discrimination.”

Aid to the Church in Need is an international papal charity that provides pastoral and humanitarian aid to persecuted and oppressed Christians and supports various church projects in more than 140 countries.

The organization’s report, “Religious Freedom in the World 2018” – one of the few non-U.S. sources for unbiased documenting of religious freedom issues – cited the case of 10 Muslims who have been murdered

Catholic News Service

1949

Mass of Remembrance in honor of

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Saturday, December 15, 2018 1:00 pm Mass Fr. John Jimenez, Celebrant Reception to follow Archbishop Riordan High School 175 Phelan Avenue San Francisco, CA 94112

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“Let me be very clear, while this was a disturbing moment, and a troubling way to begin our meeting, Pope Francis cares very much about what we are experiencing in the United States. But, he also recognizes that this is a problem of the universal church, and requires measures that will apply globally.”

He added that “it is important for the people in the pews and the public to know” that investigations “are now underway” into claims made against the retired Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick and into how and when church leaders were aware of these claims even years ago.

Friends of Fr. Seagrave and members of the community are invited to attend.

An RSVP is requested by December 12. Please visit www.riordanhs.org/seagrave-mass, email info@riordanhs.org or call (415)586-8200 ext. 266

14 faith

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Sunday readings

Second Sunday of Advent BARUCH 5:1-9 Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery; put on the splendor of glory from God forever: wrapped in the cloak of justice from God, bear on your head the miter that displays the glory of the eternal name. For God will show all the earth your splendor: you will be named by God forever the peace of justice, the glory of God’s worship.

Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights; look to the east and see your children gathered from the east and the west at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God. Led away on foot by their enemies they left you: but God will bring them back to you borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones. For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground, that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God. The forests and every fragrant kind of tree have overshadowed Israel at God’s command; for God is leading Israel in joy by the light of his glory, with his mercy and justice for company..

PSALM 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6 The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

When the Lord brought back the captives of Zion,

we were like men dreaming. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with rejoicing.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad indeed.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the torrents in the southern desert. Those who sow in tears shall reap rejoicing.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Although they go forth weeping, carrying the seed to be sown, they shall come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

PHILIPPIANS 1:4-6, 8-11 Brothers and sisters: I pray always with joy in my every prayer for all of you, because of your partnership for the Gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. God is my witness,

how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. LUKE 3:1-6 In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert. John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah: A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

A path not easy but sure

A

ll the talk of mountains and hills being brought low, valleys and gorges being filled in, and roads being made straight and smooth as the Lord arrives to save his people brings me to mind of that passage in C. S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” where the arrival of Aslan is announced. For years Narnia has been covered and “preserved” in a “pristine” winter state, but as Aslan draws nigh everything begins to melt, slosh around, and become generally disheveled.

Spring was immanent; and it was messy and disorienting. It turns out that the arrival of the Lord into our lives can often feel this Father Mark way. Too often we easily Doherty and quickly pass over the accounts of miracles in the Gospel. As we read the accounts of our Lord’s miracles we don’t seem to

scripture reflection

Liturgical calendar, daily Mass readings Monday, December 10: Monday of the Second Week of Advent. Is 35:1-10. ps 85:9ab and 10, 1112, 13-14. Lk 5:17-26.

Tuesday, December 11: Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent. Optional Memorial of St. Damasus I, pope. Is 40:1-11. Ps 96:1-2, 3 and 10ac, 11-12, 13.

Mt 18:12-14.

Wednesday, December 12: Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent. Is 40:1-11. Ps 96:1-2, 3 and 10ac, 11-12, 13. Mt 18:12-14.

Thursday, December 13: Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Zec 2:14-17 or Rv 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab.

Judith 13:18bcde, 19. Lk 1:26-38 or Lk 1:39-47.

Friday, December 14: Memorial of St. Lucy, virgin and martyr. Is 41:13-20. Ps 145:1 and 9, 10-11, 12-13ab. See Is 45:8. Mt 11:11-15.

Saturday, December 15: Memorial of St. John of the Cross, priest and doctor. Is 48:17-19. Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6. Mt 11:16-19.

pause long enough to wonder at how incredibly disorienting the miracles must have been for those who were healed. Someone who had been lame from birth, or mute, or blind, all of a sudden must learn to live in a whole new way. New habits and routines must be learned. Jobs must be found and trades must be learned.

We ask ourselves: Is this really good news? Is this really what the arrival of the savior is supposed to feel and look like? In one sense Narnia seemed so clean and pristine before Aslan’s arrival. Things seemed to be in their place. With Aslan’s arrival everything seems to be thrown out of kilter.

And so it can seem when the first message of the Gospel – the good news – is a call to repentance, to an acknowledgment of sin and the submission to a baptism of repentance. Doesn’t that strike us as odd and counterintuitive? Isn’t that jarring and unsettling and disorienting?

In the course of my pastoral work I often encounter this phenomenon. People are unsettled by their encounters with the Lord and wonder what it portends. The road ahead had seemed clear but now it is obscured. How are we to position ourselves?

The encounter will always call forth an act of

faith. One aspect of that faith helps us orient ourselves toward the obscurity ahead. Faith always has the element of trust which allows us to take a step into the obscurity ahead. But this trust does not come from nowhere. It is not without a foundation. Faith also has an aspect grounded in the light pouring forth from our encounter with the Lord’s goodness, tenderness, care, and love and the truth that he reveals to us about ourselves and himself.

In the upheaval that can accompany an encounter with the Lord we must not lose touch with the fundamental qualities of the encounter, namely the care, tenderness and love that the Lord pours out upon us, even and especially when he points out our sins and calls us to repentance. It is the sure conviction in the experience of the Lord’s goodness that gives us the conviction to walk into the darkness that lies ahead.

Let us take heart, then, and make ready for the Lord’s arrival. It may entail some upheaval, but whatever his arrival portends we can be sure that it will be suffused with the warmth of his goodness and the light of his truth.

Father Doherty is currently studying moral theology at Fribourg University in Switzerland.

pope francis Advent is a time of vigilance and prayer

VATICAN CITY – Christians can turn Christmas into a “pagan” or “mundane” holiday by focusing on the gifts and the tree rather than on the birth of Jesus and his promise to come again, Pope Francis said.

Celebrating the beginning of Advent Dec. 2 with the recitation of the Angelus prayer and at morning Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae the next day, the pope focused on the attitudes of vigilance and prayer that should characterize the Advent season and preparations for Christmas.

“If we think of Christmas in a consumeristic climate, looking at what we can buy to do this or that, as a mundane holiday, then Jesus will pass by and we will not find him,” the pope said before reciting the Angelus with an estimated 20,000 people in St. Peter’s Square.

In the day’s Gospel reading from the 21st chapter of Luke, Jesus tells his disciples to be careful that their hearts “not become drowsy,” but to “be vigi-

lant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man” at the end of time.

“Be vigilant and pray – this is how to live this time from today until Christmas,” the pope said.

The drowsy heart described in the Gospel, he said, is a condition that comes from focusing exclusively on oneself, “one’s problems, joys and pains,” continually circling back around one’s own life.

“This is tiring, boring and closes off hope,” he said, while “Advent calls us to make a commitment to watchfulness, looking outside ourselves, expanding our minds and hearts to open them to the needs of people, of our brothers and sisters, and to the desire for a new world.”

The new world Christ promised is the desire of “so many people martyred by hunger, injustice and war; it is the desire of the poor, the weak, the abandoned,” he said.

Catholic News Service

opinion 15

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

letters The cold within

To those who advocate harsh treatment for those persons coming across the border I would ask them to read the following story. I do not know the author’s name but it involves five people who froze to death around a campfire on a bitter cold night.

The fire was dying out but each of them had a stick of wood they could contribute to keep the fire going. Each refused to give up their firewood.

A woman would not give up her stick because there was a man in the circle. A homeless man would not surrender his stick because there was a rich man there. The rich man refused because it would warm someone who was obviously shiftless and lazy. A Christian would not give up his stick of wood because a Muslim was in their midst. An African-American withheld his piece of wood to get even with white people for all done to him and his race over time.

The fire died out as did each of them as they all held on to their sticks of wood. They did not die from the cold outside. They died from the cold within.

Father Alfred Puccinelli, SM Notre Dame des Victoires Parish, San Francisco

Bishops’ remarks prompt tears

Having seen the video shared by the USCCB, (www.youtube.com/user/usccb/featured), I wish to comment.

The presentations/reactions from various prelates brought me to tears: tears of longing for peace, justice, transparency, simplicity, faith, future; tears of sadness for the goodness of so many bishops that is hidden by the facade of power masquerading as powerlessness; tears of frustration, shame and regret for the loss of our youth.

I heard Tyler, Texas, Bishop Joseph Strickland with an open heart. I heard Portland, Oregon, Archbishop Alexander Sample with great joy. I heard Jefferson City, Missouri, Bishop W. Shawn McKnight speak common sense and wonder how his comments are received by his fellow bishops; and I heard Newark Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin courageously ask the hard question – the silence before the storm was not a sign of peace, nor was it the indicator of a healthy or holy relationship between the princes of the church and the flock. The exodus had already begun.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski spoke of business as usual, but business as usual is a continuation of this mass exodus. The laity has experienced no watershed event; there has been no turning point.

The McCarrick scandal indicates clearly that no path to justice has been mapped out. To wave this off with the back of one’s hand is to miss, once again, the opportunity to lance the boil.

Maybe the great exodus from the church has less to do with sex scandals than with power structures where care of brother bishops for one another is the core value.

Maureen O’Riordan Lundy San Francisco

Exorcism preceded by rigorous process

It is unfortunate that the writer in the article (“Situating exorcism,” Father Gerald D. Coleman, PSS, Nov. 15) does not mention the process conducted before a major exorcism. In his article, this process was conspicuous by its absence. Prior to any major exorcism there is a thorough examination/review by a medical doctor, a psychologist and/or a psychiatrist.

The purpose of this review is to rule out the demonic.

Most, if not all of what the writer describes in his article as activity for a major exorcism would be ruled out at this level.

If the health professionals cannot diagnose nor cure the condition then a trained priest would conduct his own test, in order to make certain once again that the cause was in fact actually demonic. This is an objective test that is not based on the opinion of the afflicted. It should be noted that a major exorcism cannot be conducted by just any priest. A priest must apply for permission and receive faculties from the head of the local (arch)diocese. A priest/trained exorcist with faculties having keen knowledge of demonic symptoms and how they function within an afflicted person should be the one conducting the test.

All trained exorcists are well aware that they must be the main skeptic in the final determination. Major exorcisms are not given “on demand” as one exorcist states, they are preceded by medical health, mental health and spiritual health examinations.

If the process isn’t broken, there is no reason for the writer to fix or avoid it. This writer’s catechetical cure-all, is akin to telling a Navy Seal or a Green Beret don’t worry about being deployed, it’s all in the military manual – the catechism. There is no war,

just a police action. There are many baptized and confirmed based upon their “free will” who choose to leave the church given its current state of affairs. For these folks the writer’s catechetical solution is summarily rejected when they pass through the exits.

I’ll stop here. This is only a letter to the editor. Suffice to say, there are priests who are far more qualified and have a far better grasp of the subject matter than either the writer or myself. It’s a blessing if one has never seen a day in combat, however, that doesn’t mean that a just war does not exist. For the very few, their spiritual lives depend on the ministry of exorcism. It’s their only way out.

Christopher Courter San Francisco

The church is the person of Christ

With sadness I read the letter, “A painful farewell,” (Nov. 15). The anger is something many of us feel at this time. However, we have to realize that the Catholic Church is not the pope, bishops, priests, laypeople, be they good or bad. The church is a person, the second person of the blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ.

We are members of the mystical body of Christ, his body. Jesus thru his sacrifice on the cross and his sacraments, particularly the Eucharist thru the holy sacrifice of the Mass has given his life to us.

No priest regardless of his holiness, has any right to ordination. Through God’s infinite love for his creatures, and in an infinite act of humility, he allows himself to be sacrificed on the altar in Mass to give us his life. The consecration of the bread and wine into his body and blood is not dependent on the holiness of the priest.

When a Catholic walks away from the church as a result of the current scandals, they are not leaving bad bishops or priests. They are betraying the one person, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, who gave his life on the cross and continues to give us his life thru the sacraments.

Instead of leaving, it is time to double down on prayer and sacrifice for all those victims of the scandal and for those who have perpetrated it because they are at particular risk of losing their souls. Jesus himself wills that all be saved, particularly sinners.

A shout-out to the Padua Dining Room (“Padua Dining Room: No fees, no questions, and no one turned away,” Nov. 15). This is just another example of what Catholics do far better than anyone else: Helping the poor. Every day Catholics, all over the world, do these works of charity. They do it because they were called to by Jesus and the strength they get from the sacraments, His life and grace. Do not betray him by leaving his church.

Stephen Firenze San Mateo

Justified fury, but at what cost?

I was very sad to read the recent letter from a woman who is leaving the church after living as a Catholic all her life. Jesus is still Lord, Jesus has not left the church but is present in her until the end of days.

Why is the writer withdrawing from the grace of the sacraments: Absolution of sins, anointing of the sick and elderly, and most especially, the Eucharist, that sacred moment of Communion with Jesus, at every daily and Sunday Mass, the same Lord who says so clearly, “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you do not have fullness of life.” The author’s outrage and fury is totally justified, but why is she cutting herself off from the fountain of the church’s life-giving sacraments? Isn’t that what happens when someone stops being Catholic?

Father Piers Lahey Daly City

Historical perspective

Dear Kate Powell, Your letter of resignation, in my opinion, is at just the wrong time. The fact that your letter is published means you have a voice. It is the voice of the faithful that will eventually bring about at least some changes for which you long in the church.

Maybe not in my lifetime, because I am 86 year old.

You, at 75 years, may still see some of them. Yet we both should continue to hope that the changes will

come and use our voice. History tells us that the voice of the faithful is as powerful as the voice of theologians in bringing about change.

Historical perspective also tells us that the present crisis of abuse and what you call corruption was an episode that peaked, is now waning and was brief. Pope Benedict XVI apparently recognized both its existence and the fact that he could not cope with it and resigned. Many of the present hierarchy belong to Benedict’s hard-line, authoritative and paternalistic, historic time. They were not trained to deal with the abuse that they barely recognized and mostly got very poor advice. Most were not and are not corrupt. It may seem they were corrupt because in the past their absolute authority was based on guiding flocks of uneducated people and they could make better decisions than the flock. Our voices, like your voice, are the best way to tell them that it is no longer so. Like our own archbishop, they are beginning to listen.

Alex M. Saunders, MD San Carlos

Silence is consent

I read the article, “California, Mexican border bishops meet in ‘fraternal’ conversation,’” (Nov. 15). I was immediately drawn to the word “quietly” in the very first sentence. The bishops had “quietly” met to discuss migration as if they had to sneak to the border to meet. In a climate when the President of the United States was politically using the plight of the migrants who were coming up from Honduras and El Salvador by calling them dangerous and as part of an invasion (notice right after the mid-term elections, the “caravan” dropped out of the political propaganda), how is it possible for the bishops to remain quiet either during their meeting or after their meeting. Where was the proclamation? Where was the statement defending the migrants? Silence is consent. One can only think that the bishops agreed with President Trump.

If not, the bishops had an opportunity to present an alternative opinion in contrast to the vilification of the migrants but didn’t do it.

Most Americans have ancestors who were migrants fleeing either poverty or persecution. I know I did. It is not an easy decision for migrants to leave everything and everyone behind for the uncertain future in a new country, especially when the migrants are poor. Ask your immigrant relatives.

Americans seemed in the past to have understood this. We are becoming a nation that can be easily manipulated into fearing the migrant, the refugee, the other. This is yet another failure of the clergy to have the courage to stand up and defend fellow Catholics fleeing violence, poverty and persecution.

Rich Morasci San Francisco

Secrecy and the papacy

Why is no one mentioning the papal actions which were a definite factor in the cover-ups in the abuse cases? The church from its earliest times regarded child sexual abuse as a sin, punishable in the next life. By the fourth century it was also seen as a crime punishable by imprisonment as a minimum. As a result, the church put in canon laws which required any such problems to be turned over to civil authorities. These lasted for over 15 centuries.

That tradition was turned on its head when the 1917 Code of Canon Law was modified by Benedict XV to eliminate seven papal and church council decrees that had required clerics who abused children to be handed over to the civil authorities. Five years later, in 1922, Pope Pius XI (1922-39) issued his instruction, “Crimen Sollicitationis,” requiring all information about child sexual abuse to be subject to the strictest secrecy. He felt that the reputation of the clergy must be protected. That was why so many bishops covered up and protected the pedophile priests. At that point, we had gone from complete openness to complete secrecy.

Until these actions are made public and reversed, there is great doubt as to the efficacy of any other actions by the bishops.

Denis Nolan Daly City

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

A lesson in a parking lot

ur natural instincts serve us well, to a point.

They’re self-protective and that’s healthy too, to a point. Let me explain.

Recently I was at a football game with a number of friends. We arrived at the game in two cars and parked in the stadium’s underground parking lot.

Our tickets were in different parts of the stadium and so we separated for the game, each of us finding our own seats. When the game ended, I arrived at the cars with one of our party about 10 minutes before the FATHER ron others showed up. During rolheiser that wait, my friend and I scanned the crowd, looking for members of our party.

But our scanning eyes drew some unwelcome attention. Two women approached us and, angrily, demanded why we had been looking at them: “Why were you looking at us? Are you trying to pick us up?”

That’s when natural instinct cuts in. Immediately, before any rational reflection had a chance to mitigate my thoughts and feelings, there was an automatic flash of anger, of indignation, of injustice, of coldness, of shame, and, yes, of hatred.

Those feelings weren’t asked for; they simply flooded in. And, with them, came the concomitant accusatory thoughts: “If this is the “Me Too” movement; I’m against it! This is unfair!”

Fortunately, none of this was expressed. I apologized politely and explained that we were scanning the crowd for our lost party. The women passed on, no harm done, but the feelings lingered, lingered until I had a chance to process them, set them into perspective, and honor them for precisely what they are, instinctual, self-protective, feelings that are meant eventually to be

B

Our feelings are important and need to be acknowledged and honored, but we’re always more than our feelings. We’re called beyond instinct to empathy. replaced by something else, namely, by an understanding that goes beyond reflexive reaction.

On reflection, I didn’t see this incident as an aberration of the “Me Too” movement or as something to be indignant about. Rather, it helped me realize why there is a “Me Too” movement to begin with. The reaction of these two women no doubt was triggered by a history of injustice that they themselves (or other women they’ve known) have experienced in terms of sexual harassment, unwanted solicitation, and gender violence – injustices that absolutely dwarf the mini-mosquito bite of “injustice” that I experienced by their gratuitous remark.

It’s not without reason that this kind of exchange occurs in parking lots. Recently, I read statistics from a study that concluded that more than 80 percent of women in America have experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime.

In my naivet, that figure seemed high, so I asked several women colleagues for their reaction to that statistic. Their reaction caught both me and my naiveté by surprise. Their reaction: “80 percent is far too low; it’s everyone! Rare is the woman who goes through life without experiencing some form of sexual harassment in her life.”

Given that perspective, the paranoia expressed in the parking lot no longer seemed out of order.

Something else too: Reflecting further on this, I began to see more clearly the distance between natural instinct and mature empathy. Nature gives us powerful instincts that serve us well, to a point. They are inherently self-protective, self-

ish, even as they contain within them a certain amount of natural empathy. Instinct can sometimes be wonderfully sympathetic. For example, we are naturally drawn to reach out to a helpless child, a wounded bird, or a lost kitten. But what draws us to these is still, however subtle, selfinterest. At the end of the day, our reaching out to them makes us feel better and their helplessness poses absolutely no threat to us. Natural instinct can be quite empathic when it is not threatened in any way.

But the situation changes, and very quickly, when any kind of threat is perceived; when, to put it metaphorically, something or somebody “is in your face.” Then our natural empathy slams shut like a trap door, our warmth turns cold, and every instinct inside us raises its self-interested head and voice. That’s what I felt in the parking lot at the football game.

And the danger then is to confuse those feelings with the bigger truth of the situation and with who we really are and what we really believe in.

At that point, natural instinct no longer serves us well and, indeed, is no longer protective of our long-term good. What’s good for us long term is, at that moment, hidden from our instincts. At moments like this we are called to an empathy beyond any feelings of having been slighted and beyond the ideologies we can lean on to justify our indignation: “This is political correctness (of the right or the left) gone amuck! This is an aberration!”

Our feelings are important and need to be acknowledged and honored, but we’re always more than our feelings. We’re called beyond instinct to empathy, to pray that the day will soon come when these two women, and their daughters and granddaughters, will no longer need to feel any threat in a parking lot.

Oblate Father Rolheiser is president of the Oblate School of Theology, San Antonio, Texas.

Avoiding another Roman fiasco in February

y peremptorily ordering the American bishops not to vote on local remedies for today’s Catholic crisis of abusive clergy and malfeasant bishops, the Vatican dramatically raised the stakes for the February 2019 meeting that Pope Francis has called to discuss the crisis in a global perspective. How the Americans taking decisive action last month would have impeded Roman deliberations in February – the strange explanation offered by the Vatican for its edict – will remain an open question. Now, the most urgent matter is to george weigel define correctly the issues that global gathering will address. As there are disturbing signs that Those Who Just Don’t Get It are still not getting it, I’d like to flag some pitfalls the February meeting should avoid.

1. The crisis cannot be blamed primarily on “clericalism.”

If “clericalism” means a wicked distortion of the powerful influence priests exercise by virtue of their office, then “clericalism” was and is a factor in the sexual abuse of young people, who are particularly vulnerable to that influence. If “clericalism” means that some bishops, faced with clerical sexual abuse, reacted as institutional crisis-managers rather than shepherds protecting their flocks, then “clericalism” has certainly been a factor in the abuse crisis in Chile, Ireland, Germany, the U.K., and Poland, and in the McCarrick case (and others) in the United States.

There are more basic factors involved in the epidemiology of this crisis, however. And “clericalism” cannot be a one-size-fits-all diagnosis of the crisis, or a dodge to avoid confronting more basic causes like infidelity and sexual dysfunction. “Clericalism” may facilitate abuse and malfeasance; it doesn’t cause them.

2. The language describing the crisis must reflect the empirical evidence.

“Protecting children” is absolutely essential;

Ireland and Quebec demonstrate that sexual abuse occurred in the pre-conciliar church. Still, the data suggest that there was a large spike in abuse in the late 1960s, 1970s, and much of the 1980s: decades when dissent from Catholicism’s settled moral teaching was rampant among priests, tacit among too many bishops, and tolerated for the sake of keeping the peace. that is the ultimate no-brainer. But the mantra that this entire crisis — and the February meeting — is about “child protection” avoids the hard fact that in the United States and Germany (the two situations for which there is the largest body of data), the overwhelming majority of clerical sexual abuse has involved sexually dysfunctional priests preying on adolescent boys and young men. In terms of victim-demographics, this has never been a “pedophilia” crisis, although that language has been cemented into much of the world media’s storyline since 2002. If the Rome meeting ignores data and traffics in media “narratives,” it will fail.

3. Don’t ignore the devastating impact of a culture of dissent.

Ireland and Quebec demonstrate that sexual abuse occurred in the pre-conciliar church. Still, the data suggest that there was a large spike in abuse in the late 1960s, 1970s, and much of the 1980s: decades when dissent from Catholicism’s settled moral teaching was rampant among priests, tacit among too many bishops, and tolerated for

the sake of keeping the peace. That appeasement strategy was disastrous. February meeting-planners have said that the church needs a change of culture. Does that include changing the culture of dissent that seems to have been involved in spiking the number of abusive clergy and malfeasant bishops? Then let the bishops gathered in Rome in February issue a clarion call to fidelity to the Church’s teaching on the ethics of human love, as explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. And let them affirm that ethic as a pathway to happiness and human flourishing, rather than treating it a noble but impossible ideal.

4. Forget bogus “solutions.”

How many times have we heard that changing the Church’s discipline of celibacy would reduce the incidence of clerical sexual abuse? It’s just not true. Marriage is not a crime-prevention program.

And the data on the society-wide plague of sexual abuse suggests that most of these horrors take place within families. Celibacy is not the issue. The issues are effective seminary formation for living celibate love prior to ordination, and ongoing support for priests afterwards.

5. Resist playing the hierarchy card.

Drawing on lay expertise does not diminish episcopal authority; it enhances it. Bringing lay expertise to bear on this crisis is essential in getting at the facts and to restoring the badly-eroded credibility of too many bishops – and the Vatican.

The leadership of the U.S. bishops’ conference understood that, and the majority of American bishops were prepared to act on that understanding with serious remedies. The February meeting must be informed of those remedies – and it should consider how Roman autocracy made a very bad situation worse.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C.

opinion 17

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Abortion funding: Cutting off the blood supply

A

mericans have long been disturbed by the fraud and waste that often surrounds the federal government’s use of their tax dollars. They now have further reason to be up in arms because of the way those tax dollars support the practice of abortion, even though such support, technically speaking, remains illegal.

The 1976 Hyde Amendment, a rider attached by father tadeusz Congress to pacholczyk federal spending bills each year, states that federal tax dollars – particularly for Medicaid – cannot be used to pay for abortions. Yet, approximately half a billion dollars of taxpayer money is received annually

by Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of “pregnancy terminations” in the United States.

Although Planned Parenthood does not directly receive Medicaid reimbursements for the abortion procedures it performs, the inherent fungibility of funds means that any money provided to Planned Parenthood ends up supporting and indirectly financing the their primary business, which is elective abortion. Taxpayer funding props up the nation’s largest abortion chain, with more than 300,000 abortions carried out under the auspices of Planned Parenthood each year.

Many Americans object to taxpayer subsidies for this organization, seeking to avoid any cooperation or involvement in the serious evils it promotes. This is why pro-life Americans and individuals of conscience are urging that the organi-

making sense out of bioethics

Despite their ‘health care provider’ veneer, Planned Parenthood is much more of a menace than a benefit to the health and well-being of Americans. zation be defunded, to put a stop to the de facto circumventing of the Hyde Amendment that happens every time Planned Parenthood takes advantage of some form of government funding.

Yet Planned Parenthood continues to expand like a cancer not only in the U.S., but also globally.

As cancer tumors need blood and oxygen for their continued growth, Planned Parenthood requires a lifeline of government aid to support its killing activities. As cancer tumors release special chemicals to make new blood vessels sprout nearby to nourish themselves, so Planned Parenthood continues to tap into a number of federal and state governmental funding sources, including Medicaid and grants from Title X of the Public Health Services Act. Eliminating this financial lifeline would significantly decrease the availability of direct abortion and diminish its promotion, much as using selective pharmaceuticals to shut down the growth of new blood vessels in tumors can starve them of their lifeline so they wither away.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which functions as a research arm of Planned Parenthood, has plainly acknowledged the importance of governmental subsidies: “Because Title X grants offer up-front funding to providers (rather than payment after-the-fact, as with Medicaid or private insurance), the program provides essential infrastructure support that allows health centers providing family planning services to keep their doors open for clients. Up-front funding helps supply a cash-flow cushion for providers …”

Despite their “health care provider” veneer, Planned Parenthood is much more of a menace than

a benefit to the health and wellbeing of Americans. The organization has faced a string of scandals ranging from the sale of baby body parts to overbilling and unsanitary clinic conditions, from cover ups of sexual abuse of minors to botched abortions, from falsified medical information to LGBT activism, to the promotion of offensive forms of sex education to impressionable children. As House of Representatives member Diane Black notes, “Planned Parenthood is both the largest abortion provider in America and the largest recipient of Title X dollars. While Title X grants are intended to fund critical women’s health services for low income Americans, Planned Parenthood misuses taxpayer dollars to [subsidize] its abortion services. … Abortion is not health care. It destroys one life and damages another.”

The United States needs to eliminate the financial lifeline of Planned Parenthood by defunding the organization of taxpayer dollars. Planned Parenthood supporters, however, argue that if this were to happen, low-income women would not be able to get needed

health care. Yet federally qualified health centers (community health centers) could be encouraged to take up the slack. They receive broad government funding and offer care regardless of the patient’s ability to pay, making available an even broader array of primary care services than Planned Parenthood does, so women would actually have more health care choices and options. Also, there are many more community health centers than Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide.

Jamie Hall and Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation sum it up this way: “To ensure that taxpayers are not forced to subsidize America’s number one abortion provider, Congress should make Planned Parenthood affiliates ineligible to receive either Medicaid reimbursements or Title X grants if they continue to perform abortions. Taxpayer money from these programs should instead be redirected to the more than 9,000 federally qualified health center sites throughout the country that provide comprehensive primary health care for those in need without entanglement in abortion.”

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, and serves as the director of education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

If gay priests, religious can’t be celibate, they should leave, pope says

VATICAN CITY – The Catholic Church has been slow to recognize the presence of homosexual men in the priesthood, which is why superiors must exercise care in helping gay candidates prepare for a life of celibacy or leave the seminary, Pope Francis said.

“Homosexuality is a very serious matter, which must be discerned adequately from the beginning with candidates, if it is the case. We must be demanding,” the pope told Claretian Father Fernando Prado in the new book-interview, “The Strength of Vocation: Consecrated Life Today.”

Excerpts of the pope’s interview with Father Prado, which was conducted in August, were printed in newspapers Dec. 1 ahead of the book’s release.

In 2013, Pope Francis had told reporters, “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has goodwill, then who am I to judge him?”

Some media outlets contrasted that remark with what Pope Francis told Father Prado, even though Pope Francis made it clear in the new interview that he was talking about homosexual activity among priests and religious who make vows of chastity and celibacy.

“In consecrated life or that of the priesthood, there is no place for this type of affection,” the pope said. “For that reason, the church recommends that persons with this deep-seated tendency not be accepted for ministry or consecrated life.”

“Homosexual priests, religious men and women should be urged to live celibacy wholly and, especially, to be perfectly responsible, trying to never create scandal in their communities or for the holy people of God by living a double life,” the pope said. “It would be better if they left the ministry or consecrated life rather than live a double life.”

Pope Francis told Father Prado that today “in our societies it seems that homosexuality is fashionable, and this mentality has in a way also influenced the life of the church.”

Seminary and religious formation programs, he said, must be updated to take the issue seriously, help seminarians and aspirants understand themselves and the obligations of celibacy, promote maturity and enable discernment about whether a candidate is ready and able to live a celibate life.

International group of women’s superiors urge sisters to report abuse

VATICAN CITY – The International Union of Superiors General has called on women religious who have suffered abuse to come forward and report it to their congregations and church and state authorities.

“If the UISG receives a report of abuse, we will be a listening presence and help the person to have the courage to bring the complaint to the appropri-

Cardinal: No one has right to demand a pope’s resignation

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MANILA, Philippines – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte renewed his attacks on Catholic leaders and urged Filipinos to stop going to church altogether.

The president, who earlier this year called God “stupid,” suggested in a Nov. 26 speech that people should instead build their own chapels where they can pray, ucanews.com reported. “You don’t have to go to church to pay for these idiots,” said Duterte referring to bishops who have condemned the wave of drug-related killings in the country.

Duterte’s tirade against church leaders came days after he accused Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan of giving church donations to his family. He offered no supporting evidence for his accusation. “You, David, you be quiet. You go on asking for contributions. ... Where does the people’s money go?” the president said Nov. 22. “You know, the truth is, I tell you, the offerings, the pineapple, avocado, bananas, where do they go? You want to know? I will show you. To his family,” Duterte said.

In a statement, Bishop David, a vocal critic of drug-related killings in the Philippines, said “people who are sick sometimes do not know what they are talking about.”

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – A Honduran court found seven men guilty of the murder of indigenous human rights and environmental advocate Berta Caceres. An eighth defendant was cleared and freed in the trial that ended Nov. 29.

Caceres, who founded the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras in 1993, was murdered in her home in La Esperanza early March 3, 2016, two days before her 45th birthday, in what police initially called an attempted robbery.

The Lenca indigenous leader was internationally known for her opposition to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River in western Honduras. Construction of the dam would have flooded larges areas of land and cut off food and water supplies for hundreds of people.

Caceres’ efforts earned her the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, an award considered the Nobel for ecological actions. Judges in the case determined that two of the convicted assailants who worked for the company building the dam had planned the killing along with a former Honduran army solider. The company, Desa, has denied any involvement.

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VATICAN CITY – People can disagree about problems and the best ways to resolve them, but no one should launch a formal accusation against a pope much less ask for his resignation, German Cardinal Gerhard Muller said.

Such public attacks put into question the church’s credibility, he said in an interview with the Italian website Vatican Insider Cardinal Nov. 27.

Gerhard Muller “I am personally convinced that Pope Francis is doing everything possible to oppose the phenomenon of abuse against minors and to foster a new spirituality among priests who must act with the heart of Christ and do what is good for all people, above all for children and young people,” he said in a lengthy question-andanswer piece.

Asked about Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s public call for Pope Francis to resign because he felt the pope knew about the alleged sex abuse involving U.S. Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick’s but still failed to act, Cardinal Muller said, “No one has a right to indict the pope or ask him to resign.”

“Clearly it is possible to have different opinions about existing problems and the ways to resolve them, but we have to discuss this,” each according to his or her role and in a discreet way, the cardinal said.

Such discussions must never become “a public controversy with attacks that end up calling into question the credibility of the church and her mission,” he said.

The former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is charged with handling cases of clerical sex abuse, said, “We all have to cooperate in order to overcome this crisis (of abuse) that wounds the credibility of the church.”

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“Unfortunately, we have these groups, these ‘parties’ – the so-called ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives.’ We are all united in the revealed faith and not by the biases of political ideologies,” he said.

ate organizations,” it added in a statement published on its website Nov. 23.

The group – whose members are 2,000 superiors general of congregations of women religious across the world, representing more than 500,000 sisters – said it wished to express “deep sorrow and indignation over the pattern of abuse that is prevalent within the church and society today.”

“Abuse in all forms: sexual, verbal, emotional or any inappropriate use of power within a relationship, diminishes the dignity and healthy development of the person who is victimized,” it added.

“We stand by those courageous women and men who have reported abuse to the authorities. We condemn those who support the culture of silence and secrecy, often under the guise of ‘protection’ of an institution’s reputation or naming it ‘part of one’s culture.’”

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world 19

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Women: Church leaders must hear survivors Philippa Hitchen Catholic News Service

ROME – Three female survivors of sexual abuse by priests called on church leaders preparing for a February summit at the Vatican to listen to the voices of victims and to end a “culture of cover-up” that has dragged on for decades.

The women, from the United States, Peru and Germany, spoke of their experiences of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse during a Rome seminar, “Overcoming Silence: Women’s Voices in the Abuse Crisis.” All three survivors urged victims of abuse to “go to the police,” adding that they believed internal investigations by the church have consistently failed to address the problem since the first cases were reported by journalists in the 1980s.

One of the speakers was Doris Wagner, a German former nun who joined The Spiritual Family The Work community when she was 19. She explained how she was taught to obey her superiors unquestioningly and to cut off contacts with family and friends outside the mixed-gender community. She said that when the superior of the house came into her room and raped her one night in 2008, she felt confused and powerless to resist him. She added that she did not tell anyone about the assault because she feared the community would “blame me.”

Wagner left the congregation in 2011 and published a book about her ordeal of being “controlled, manipulated (and) sexually abused.” She said she decided to speak out because, for many years, she believed she was “the only nun ever to have been raped in the church” and she wanted to prevent other women from suffering similar experiences.

The Vatican conducted an apostolic visitation of the community from 2013 to 2014, which called for a revision of its constitutions and the implementation its recommendations.

Pope Francis has convened a summit on sex abuse in the Vatican Feb. 21-24. All 10 members of the Union of International Superiors General leadership – representing 500,000 women religious world-

wide – will be attending the summit, which will bring together heads of bishops’ conferences from across the globe to discuss the church’s response to the abuse crisis. Survivors will not be at the meeting, but will be part of the preparatory work and be present at a penitential liturgy, said Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna of Malta, a member of the organizing committee for the meeting.

All three women who shared their stories at the Nov. 27 event said the February summit in the Vatican would be ineffective unless “victim-centered listening” was at the heart of the bishops’ discussions.

Another survivor who shared her story at the Voices of Faith event was Peruvian theologian Rocio Figueroa Alvear, who worked for the Pontifical Council for the Laity as head of the women’s section. She recounted her experience of joining the lay movement, Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, as a 15-year-old. The movement was founded in Peru in 1971 and was granted papal approval by St. John Paul II in 1997.

Figueroa described how the former vicar general of the movement, German Doig, began touching her during spiritual direction classes. She said she “felt guilty and knew it was wrong” but added she was very naive and “had no words to describe” the abuse.

In the late 1980s, Figueroa was among a group of women tasked with setting up a female branch of the movement, known as the Marian Community of Reconciliation. When she complained about the way women were treated, Figueroa was sent to Rome, a move she described as “the beginning of my liberation.” There she met a priest to whom she was able to speak, for the first time, about her ordeal and who helped her “to lift the veil of silence.”

Barbara Dorris, former executive director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, held up the cream-colored dress she was wearing the first time she was raped by her parish priest as a 6-year-old. She described how she had “spent my childhood looking for a safe place” to hide from her abuser. He told her she was so evil that she could “make a priest sin.”

Disaffiliation: Church’s woe in handing on faith FROM PAGE 8

Brown, a youth minister at St. Maria Goretti Parish in San Jose, told Catholic San Francisco.

She said the symposium had encouraged her to be more focused on building relationships through her ministry, but acknowledged the difficulty ahead for the church.

“I think it’s going to take the power of the Holy Spirit to take over,” she said.

Amanda George, coordinator of youth and young adult ministries for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, told Catholic San Francisco that the study showed “the way youth ministry has been done is not working.” Youth are looking for different ways to be spiritual, she said, and the current ministry paradigm can stifle opportunities to create deep friendships that can guide people in their faith.

“Ministry really happens in regular moments, not in the structured environment of youth ministry,” she said.

George said the church needs to be bold in addressing the challenge of youth ministry, since inaction means “we won’t have anything left.”

George cautioned against downplaying the church’s worldview in order to open up avenues for dialogue.

“It’s good to know what others are saying, and listen generously, but it’s also important to remember that sin is real, the devil is out there trying to get souls, and we have to stay close to the sacraments to fight our spiritual battles,” she said.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Legatus inaugurates San Francisco chapter

obituary Sister Constance Madden, PBVM

Catholic San Francisco

On Oct. 25 the new 21-member San Francisco Chapter of Legatus held its first meeting at St. Dunstan Parish in Millbrae. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was principal celebrant of a Mass opening the proceedings with concelebrants including Auxiliary Bishop Robert Christian. The Benedict XVI choir led song. A formal dinner followed the Mass at a nearby country club.

“The new San Francisco Chapter is really a muchneeded shining light right now, in the midst of a very anti-faith, anti-Catholic culture,” Ty Soto, Legatus’ west regional director, said in information about the evening supplied to Catholic San Francisco by Melissa Jagel, West Region development officer.

Dan Vogl is president of the San Francisco chapter.

“Most business leaders and executives I meet keep their faith hidden,” Vogl said. “Many older businesspeople seem to be tired, and not willing to commit to what they perceive as another financial and time commitment. But even some younger business people that I have encountered fear the perceived consequence of mixing business with religion. The great news is that those who have joined the new chapter have all expressed that it has been a blessing and answer to their prayers.”

Each new member was presented with a special rosary, made of Italian silver-oxidized blood-red (Courtesy photo) crystal beads, featuring a red enameled cross and St. Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone; Ayde and Dan Vogl; and Michael centerpiece.

Legatus founder Tom Monaghan at opening gathering of the Guests included Legatus founder, and chairman new San Francisco Chapter of Legatus. and CEO Tom Monaghan. In early September, Nov. 16 letter. “Let us continue to do so; it is evident Monaghan with other board members decided to that it is going to take time for the current crisis in withhold the group’s annual tithe to the Vatican, the church to be addressed to the point where the this year almost $900,000. “Since that time, I know The Most Requested Funeral Directors in of board believes the reinstatement of ourFrancisco annual tithe you have been ardently praying for the church and The Most Requested Funeral Directors in the the Archdiocese Archdiocese of San San Francisco all of our leaders,” Monaghan said to members in a would be prudent.”

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Presentation Sister Constance Madden died Oct. 28 at the Presentation Motherhouse in San Francisco. She was 84 years old and a Sister of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary for 65 years.

Born in San Francisco, Sister Constance was a dedicated educator and taught in Presentation schools including St. Elizabeth, Sister Constance St. Teresa, and Epiphany in San Madden, PBVM Francisco. She also ministered in parish visitation, catechetical formation and at various migrant camps. She served in retreat ministry with the Franciscans in Santa Barbara, and with the Franciscan Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, later returning to parish ministry.

Most recently, Sister Constance has lived at Presentation Motherhouse where she devoted herself to a ministry of prayer.

A funeral Mass was celebrated Nov. 2 at the Presentation Motherhouse with interment at Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma.

Remembrances may be made to the Sisters of the Presentation Development Office, 281 Masonic Ave., San Francisco 94118.

Priest alumnus to be remembered Father Thomas Seagrave, a 1960 graduate of Archbishop Riordan High School and a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco for 47 years at the time of his death in 2015, will be remembered at a Mass Dec. 15, 1 p.m., at the San Francisco school.

Father Seagrave received the school’s Chaminade Award in 2011 and, though quiet about it himself, is known to have supFather Thomas ported students with tuition Seagrave at Riordan and other Catholic schools from his own means for many years. Riordan’s Chapel of the Assumption of The Blessed Virgin is named in his honor. Father Seagrave is a former pastor of San Francisco’s Church of the Visitacion, St. Peter, and St. John of God parishes.

“Father Seagrave’s impact on the Catholic community in San Francisco is like no other,” said Riordan communications director Victoria Terheyden. “We will honor him at a Mass on Dec. 15, and The Seagrave Fund at Riordan will help continue his important work of supporting students and their families who desire a Catholic education.”

In a November 2017 article in Catholic San Francisco, friend John Moriarty said about Father Seagrave: “He is the hardest-working priest I know. We can be proud of Father Seagrave for many reasons, and especially for his generosity in paying from his own resources tuition for many students in Catholic schools through the years.”

Those wishing to attend the Mass should RSVP to info@riordanhs.org or call (415)586-8200, ext. 266, by Dec. 12.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

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help wanted

Catholic Elementary Principals Sought for Archdiocesan Schools The Department of Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, is seeking elementary principal candidates for the 2019-2020 school year. Candidates must be a practicing Roman Catholic in good standing with the Church, possess a Valid California Standard Teaching Credential or the equivalent from another State, a Master’s Degree in an educational field and/or California administrative credential or the Certificate in Catholic School Administration from Loyola Marymount Unniversity *, be certified as a catechist at the basic level** and have five years of experience in teaching and/or in administration with Catholic school experience *Principals who are not in possession of both educational qualifications, must complete the requirement within a three year period of time from date of hire. ** Principals who are not in possession of basic certification in religion at the time of hire, must complete the process before they start their position.

Application materials may be downloaded from the official DCS website by clicking on the following link: www.sfarchdiocese.org/ employment The requested material plus a letter of interest should be submitted before February 15 to:

Christine Escobar, Human Resources Manager Department of Catholic Schools One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109-6602

Salary will be determined according to Archdiocesan guidelines based upon experience as a teacher or administrator and graduate education. Medical, dental, and retirement benefits are included.

ARCHDIOCESAN STATEMENT OF NON-DISCRIMINATION The Archdiocese of San Francisco adheres to the following policy: “All school staff of Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of San Francisco shall be employed without regard to race, color, sex, ethnic or national origin and will consider for employment, qualified applicants with criminal histories.” (Administrative Handbook #4111.4)

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help wanted Business Manager, Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption Reports to: Pastor FLSA Status: Full Time Exempt POSITION SUMMARY: The Cathedral Business Manager serves as a key resource in support of the pastor, fulfilling administrative needs in managing finances, overseeing buildings, grounds, property maintenance and personnel. Works independently while advising the Pastor and collaborating with the Chancery offices.

Responsible for developing and managing to the annual operating and capital budgets.

RESPONSIBILITIES: • Manages operations of offices, event center, gift shop and team of five employees • Administers cash flow management system and is responsible for recording and depositing of all Cathedral Revenue • Purchasing and inventory • Monthly, quarterly and year-end financial reporting • Prepares and presents financial and operational performance reports for Pastor, Finance Council and ADSF Finance Department • Negotiates contracts with suppliers, vendors and construction firms in coordination with Archdiocesan Finance Department.

• Maintains the premises and anticipates needed repairs and replacements as part of facility maintenance and capital Improvements plans • Develop and update a three-five year Capital improvement and maintenance plans for the Cathedral.

These should be prepared in collaboration with the Archdiocesan Real Property Support Corporation (RPSC), Pastor and Moderator of the Curia • Maintenance of Cathedral membership and sacramental records • Administers archdiocesan salary, hiring and benefit policies as directed by the pastor in coordination with the Archdiocesan Human Resources Department.

QUALIFICATIONS: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty.

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

• Bachelor’s degree; two to five years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Must be a practicing Roman Catholic who upholds and understands the teaching and traditions of the Catholic Church.

• Ability to read, analyze, and interpret financial statements, general business periodicals or governmental regulations.

• At least three years of management experience and strong knowledge of finance and budgeting and should have knowledge of MS Word, Excel and Outlook. Proficiency with QuickBooks Desktop and On-line sotware Please submit resume and cover letter to: Attn: Christine Escobar-Human Resources Manager Archdiocese of San Francisco One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109-6602 E-mail: escobarc@sfarch.org Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified candidates with criminal histories considered.

22 community

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Around the archdiocese

1

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PRAYER FOR DECEASED PRIESTS: Bishops, priests, deacons and seminarians gathered Nov. 9 for Mass remembering deceased priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco at Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma where more than 500 clergy are interred in the cemetery’s Priest Plot. Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone was principal celebrant with concelebrants including Bishop Robert Christian, Bishop William Justice and Bishop Daniel Walsh. “Mass was celebrated in the rotunda of the historic Holy Cross Mausoleum, where archbishops and bishops of the archdiocese are entombed,” Monica Williams, cemeteries director told Catholic San Francisco. A procession to the Priest Plot for prayer and visiting, and a luncheon followed the Mass. There is still room at the site and priests are not charged for the graves, Williams said. There is also a small section off to the side of the Priest Plot where priests can get graves for their parents and family and be buried together. At the center of the Priest Plot is a memorial carving of the Last Supper with Scripture’s “You are a priest forever.”

2

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: Archdiocese of San Francisco restorative justice coordinator Julio Escobar holds a tray of food, as he brings a special Thanksgiving meal to those in San Francisco County Jail in San Bruno Nov. 19. The restorative justice ministry was able to hold four Thanksgiving lunches for 144 men and 48 women—all thanks to “an incredible donor,” Escobar said. The meal purchased at Boston Market included turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, spinach dip, gravy, dinner rolls, cranberry relish , apple and pumpkins pies and lemonade. Prayer services were also led at the jail by Catholic chaplain Marist Father Rene Iturbe and Escobar.

(Photo courtesy Debra Greenblat)

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HOLY CROSS CEMETERY, COLMA: Prayer was offered Nov. 12, Veterans Day, for deceased veterans buried at Holy Cross and for all who have served in the Armed Forces. Leading the service were priest/chaplains of the Armed Forces. Pictured, from left, at the cemetery are Capt. Alner Nambatac USA, pastor, St. Timothy Parish, San Mateo; Col. C. Michael Padazinski USAF (ret), pastor, St. Patrick Parish, Larkspur; Monica Williams, cemeteries director; and

(Photo courtesy Office of Human Life & Dignity)

aCmdr. Alex Legaspi USN, pastor, Holy Angels Parish, Colma. At front are Girl Scouts Troop #31971, and a Boy Scout Troop #343, who also helped with the

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event. The Veterans Day tribute is one of many special Masses and prayer services held at Holy Cross each year. www.holycrosscemeteries,com, (650) 756-2060.

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calendar 23

Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

THURSDAY, DEC. 6 VOCATION MEETINGS: Father Patrick Summerhays, director of vocations, welcomes men discerning a priestly vocation to monthly dinner meetings to help them discover more about the priesthood. “Discernment involves listening to God, learning about yourself, and seeking the guidance of others,” Father Summerhays said. First Monday meetings are in Redwood City. First Thursday meetings are in San Francisco. The program each time is eucharistic adoration in the church, followed by dinner and discussion in the rectory: Dec. 6, Jan. 3, Feb. 7, March 7, 6:15 – 8:30 p.m., Church of the Epiphany, 826 Vienna St., San Francisco. For information or to RSVP: Father Summerhays (415) 614-5684; summerhays.patrick@ sfarch.org. Jan. 7, Feb. 4, March 4: 6:15 – 8:30 p.m., St. Pius Church, 1100 Woodside Road, Redwood City For information or to RSVP: Father Tom Martin martin.thomas@sfarch.org. https://sfarchdiocese.org/vocations.

‘SCRIPTURE AND MUSIC’: Most Holy Redeemer Parish welcomes singer composer, Janet Sullivan Whitaker, for “Advent Graces: Sacred Scripture and Music for the Season,” 7 p.m., MHR Church, 100 Diamond St., San Francisco. Free admission.

FRIDAY, DEC. 7 MASS AND BREAKFAST: Marin Catholic Breakfast Club, Mass at 7 a.m. with breakfast following with talk by Auxiliary Bishop Robert F. Christian. Members breakfast $10, non-members $15. St. Sebastian Church, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Bon Air Road, Greenbrae.

Reserve at Sugaremy@aol.com. St Sebastian’s is collecting donations for their SVdP Food Pantry. Items needed include paper products, laundry detergent, dish and bar soap and nonperishables including jam, peanut butter, canned fish and meats, condiments, soups.

SATURDAY, DEC. 8 HANDICAPABLES MASS: Mass at noon then lunch, Catholic Charities Senior Center, 65 Beverly St,, San Francisco. All disabled people, caregivers invited. Please RSVP by contacting

Diane Prell, activities coordinator, (415) 452-3500; www.Handicapables.com.

Dates are subject to change.

NEW MASS SETTING: Frank La Rocca’s Mass of the Americas will be introduced Dec. 8, 2 p.m., at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough Street at Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone principal celebrant.

Leading song will be the cathedral choir enhanced with 16 additional professional voices. Ash Walker will conduct.

Cathedral music director, Christoph Tietze, is organist with additional instruments including a string quartet and hand bells. www.benedictinstitute.org.

The Mass will be livestreamed at www. sfarchdiocese.org.

CHRISTMAS REMEMBRANCE: Msgr.

John Talesfore presides at the annual Christmas Remembrance Mass, 10 a.m., All Saints Chapel, Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma, (650) 756-2060; www.holycrosscemeteries.com.

‘ALPHA’: Alpha season at St. Dominic’s, Parish Hall, 2390 Bush St., San Francisco, 7-9 p.m.. Alpha is an opportunity to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, ask questions, and be welcomed. Enjoy dinner, a dynamic short film, and conversation. Invite a friend.

Sign-up at stdominics.org or at the parish office; or just show up. For more information, contact Michael O’Smith at michaelosmith@stdominics.org or (415) 567-7824, ext. 102.

TUESDAY, DEC. 11 ‘ADVENT SCRIPTURE AND SONG’: “An Advent Evening of Scripture and Song,” Mercy Center Chapel, Burlingame, 7:30 p.m. All are welcome to this time of prayer, song and listening to God’s word. Refreshments following. Music by Mercy Sister Suzanne Toolan and choir.

THURSDAY, DEC. 13

SUNDAY, DEC. 9 3-DAY MISSION: Dominican Father Nathan Castle with “Follow, Follow, Follow: Advent in Oz,” St. Peter Church, 700 Oddstad Blvd., Pacifica, Sunday 1-3 p.m.; Monday and Tuesday 9-10:30 a.m., 7-8:30 p.m., ample parking, voluntary offering. Eileen Barsi, (650) 438-7877, Eileenbarsi@gmail.com.

‘LESSONS AND CAROLS’: St. Cecilia Choir under the direction of Russell Ferreira presents “Lessons and Carols; An Advent Celebration,” 4 p.m., St. Cecilia Church, 17th Avenue at Vicente, San Francisco, free admission.

CHRISMAS EMPORIUM: St. Ignatius Parish, 650 Parker Ave., San Francisco, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Enjoy delicious refreshments, joyful sounds of the season, raffle prizes and a visit with Santa.

More than 25 specialty vendors.

MONDAY, DEC. 10 RELICS EXPOSITION: Vatican collection of first class relics, 6:30 p.m. with talk from Companions of the Cross Father Carlos Martins, St. Bruno Church, 555 W. San Bruno Ave., San Bruno, (650) 588-2121.

RELICS EXPOSITION: Vatican collection of first class relics, 6:30 p.m. with talk from Companions of the Cross Father Carlos Martins, St. Francis of Assisi Church, 1425 Bay Road, East Palo Alto, (650) 322-2152.

SATURDAY, DEC. 15 REUNION: Mercy High School, San Francisco, Class of 2008, Mercy High School, 3 p.m., Veronica Granucci, vgranucci31@gmail.com.

HANDICAPABLES MASS: Marin Catholic High School, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Bon Air Road, Kentfield. Mass at noon in chapel followed by lunch and entertainment in the St. John Paul II Student Center. All disabled people, caregivers invited.

RSVP Cheryl Giurlani, (415) 308-4608; cherylgiurlani@gmail.com. Sponsored

by Order of Malta.

SUNDAY, DEC. 16 ‘CANTIAMO CHRISTMAS’: Cantiamo Sonoma presents a concert of a cappella Christmas music, both familiar

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SATURDAY, DEC. 22 TURKEY DRIVE: Bring turkeys and hams to St. Emydius Church parking lot, 350 DeMontfort Ave., San Francisco, 9 a.m.-noon. All donations benefit St. Anthony’s Dining Room, contact Pierre at SFPierre@aol.com, www.

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SUNDAY, DEC. 23 ‘RICHES OF CHRISTMAS’: Laura Bertone, director of worship for the archdiocese, visits with host J.A. Gray on Mosaic, Dec. 23, 5:30 a.m., KPIX Channel 5. The two unwrap “some of the forgotten or neglected treasures and tales of the sacred season when God became man,” producers said.

The Christmas season offers a rich array of feasts and remembrances from Dec. 25 through Jan. 13, the baptism of Jesus. sfarch.org/mosaic-tv.

ORGAN CONCERT: Christoph Tietze, music director and organist for St. Mary’s Cathedral, celebrates his 50th year as a church organist, in concert Dec. 23, 4 p.m., at the cathedral, Gough Street at Geary Boulevard, San Francisco. Chris notes that he played for his “first Mass Dec. 25, 1968.” The program will feature the works of Bach, Pachelbel, Daquin, Franck. Freewill offerings at door.

(415) 567-2020. www.stmarycathedralsf.org.

LIVE NATIVITY: Porziuncola Nuova, Vallejo and Columbus, San Francisco, 4:30-7:30 p.m. Presented by The Knights of St. Francis, www.knightsofsaintfrancis.com.

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Catholic san francisco | December 6, 2018

Christmas Remembrance Mass/ Feast of the Immaculate Conception We invite you to gather with us for Christmas Remembrance Mass and Feast of the Immaculate Conception Mass on Saturday, December 8th in the All Saints Mausoleum Chapel at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, Colma.

As we prepare for the Christmas season, remembering our loved ones, Rev. Msgr. John Talesfore will celebrate our Christmas Remembrance Mass at 10:00 am. On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we pray for Our Lady’s motherly care and comfort in our grief.

During this Christmas season, the names of those you wish to remember and your message of love may be written on ornaments decorated by Our Lady of Mercy School students and Girl Scout Troop #31971. We invite you to place an ornament on our Memory Trees in our All Saints Mausoleum Chapel. These Christmas Trees represent the ongoing hope of life and will remain in All Saints Mausoleum chapel from December 8th until January 8th, 2019.

Please stop by our Cemetery Office to pick up an ornament and write your greetings. You can place the ornament on the trees or we will be happy to hang the ornament for you.

There is always a staff member available in All Saints Mausoleum on weekends and holidays to assist you.

They will also have memory tree ornaments available for your messages through December 31st.

Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery 1500 Mission Colma, CA Colma CA | 650-756-2060 Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery 1500 Road, Mission Road, HolyCross CrossCatholic Catholic Cemetery Cemetery Mt. Holy Mt.Olivet OlivetCatholic CatholicCemetery Cemetery Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery 650-756-2060 Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery Santa Cruz Ave. @Avy Ave., Menlo Park, CA | 650-323-6375 Santa Cruz Ave. @ Avy Ave., Menlo Park, CA 270 Los Ranchitos Road, San Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery Mt. Olivet Catholic Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery Santa Cruz Ave. @ Avy Ave., Menlo Park, CA 270 Los Ranchitos Road, Cemetery SanRafael, Rafael,CACA 1500St.Mission Road, Colma, CA Anthony Cemetery 650-323-6375 415-479-9020 Santa CruzTomales Ave.650-323-6375 @ Avy Catholic Ave., Menlo Cemetery Park, CA 270CA Los Ranchitos Road, San Rafael, CA 1500 Mission Colma, CA Tomales, 1400 DillonRoad, Beach Road, | 415-479-9021 415-479-9020 650-756-2060 Stage Road, Pescadero, CA 650-323-6375 415-479-9020 650-756-2060 Tomales Catholic Cemetery Cemetery Stage Our Lady of the Pillar Cemetery St. Anthony Road,Cemetery Pescadero, CA | 650-712-1675 650-712-1679 Tomales Catholic Cemetery St. Anthony Our Lady of the Pillar Cemetery 1400 Dillon Road, Tomales, CA Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay, CA Tomales Catholic Cemetery St.Los Anthony Cemetery Our Lady theHalf Pillar Cemetery Olivet Catholic Cemetery 270 Ranchitos Road, San Rafael, CA | of 415-479-9020 1400Mt. Dillon Beach Road, Tomales, CA Stage Road, Pescadero, CA Miramontes St., Moon Bay, CA St. Mary Magdalene Cemetery 415-479-9021 650-712-1679 1400Our DillonLady Beach Road, Tomales, CA Stage Road, Pescadero, CA Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay, CA 415-479-9021 650-712-1675 of the Pillar Cemetery Miramontes St., Half 650-712-1679 16 Horseshoe Hill Road, CA Moon Bay, CA | 650-712-1679 415-479-9021 650-712-1675 650-712-1679 415-479-9020 St Mary Magdalene Cemetery 16 Horseshoe Hill Road, Bolinas, CA | 415-479-9021

Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery 1500 Mission Road, Colma | 650-756-2060 Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery Santa Cruz Ave. @ Avy Ave., Menlo Park | 650-323-6375 Tomales Catholic Cemetery 1400 Dillon Beach Road, Tomales | 415-479-9021 St. Anthony Cemetery Stage Road, Pescadero | 650-752-1679 Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery 270 Los Ranchitos Road, San Rafael | 415-479-9020 Our Lady of the Pillar Cemetery Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay | 650-712-1679 St Mary Magdalene Cemetery 16 Horseshoe Hill Road, Bolinas | 415-479-9021