February 17, 2012

Catholic san Francisco (PHOTO BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)

Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

Mary and Miles Butcher often sit together holding hands. “They taught us values – of loving one another and others,” said daughter Rita Gunther.

Meant for each other 65 Valentine’s Days later, pair remain ‘sweetest, most loving couple’ When it came to marriage, Mary Butcher, nee O’Connell, decided she’d better not take any chances: As a young woman – a native San Franciscan whose parents had emigrated from Ireland – she enlisted the help of the best husband she knew.

“I always prayed to St. Joseph for a good husband,” she said. “And I got one.”

Judging from the mountain of evidence that has accumulated since Mary O’Connell married Miles Butcher at St. John the Evangelist church 65 years ago, it would be foolish to argue with that statement.

Sitting beside her in the front parlor of their house on Prague Street on this winter afternoon, the 89-year-old Miles Butcher has done much more than simply pass muster as a husband.

But it is what the couple has accomplished together – say those who know them best – that is most inspiring: During their long marriage, they have managed to create, largely by example, a legacy of love and faith for their 10 children, 19 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

“They are the sweetest, most loving couple I know,” said daughter Rita Gunther. “They taught us values – of loving one another and others. We experienced a lot of love from them. Most of us have raised our children that way.”

Like her nine siblings, Gunther was educated at Church of the Epiphany and St. John schools. At one time, there were Butcher children attending seven of the eight grades at Epiphany. Her parents, said Gunther, paid tuition for 32 years.

“They sacrificed so much for us,” said Gunther’s sister, Joan Buckland. “They made sure we had everything we needed – not everything we wanted. We can remember our mother needing a winter coat, but wearing the same one.”

What still amazes Gunther is how the family managed to fit in the relatively small kitchen.

“When they first moved into the house together, they said, ‘What are we going to do with this enormous kitchen?’”

(PHOTO BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)

By Dana Perrigan

Left, Mary O’Connell and Miles Butcher as they looked on their wedding day 65 years ago.

Right, the couple are pictured at their home in San Francisco in February.

That was in 1946. Several years earlier, Miles – a serviceman on leave from the Navy during World War II – had been invited to a party in San Francisco by a Navy buddy. Mary’s best friend had, it turned out, invited her to the same party.

“I remember the first time I saw him,” said Mary.

“He was so tall, and I thought what a big man he was.”

Before his leave ran out, Miles – an only child who grew up in Daly City – managed a first date with Mary, an outing to Larkspur. That was followed by several Saturday night dances.

They were a couple by the time Miles returned to

his wartime duties in Italy and North Africa, and he wrote to her almost every day.

“He was a great letter writer,” said Mary. “He was so exacting.”

Mary kept the letters.

“Occasionally, he will slip one under her breakfast plate,” said Buckland. “They sit holding hands together – they’re quite the love birds. It never ceases to amaze me.”

Shortly after the war ended, Miles was discharged from the Navy. He took a job as a stereotyper for the LOVING COUPLE, page 19

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION On the Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 News in brief. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Question Corner . . . . . . . . . 16 Toward a just economy. . . . 17 Best family films . . . . . . . . . 18

HHS compromise ‘unacceptable’ ~ Page 5 ~ February 17, 2012

Catholic Healthcare West restructuring explained ~ Page 14 ~

Study of anti-Semitism valuable to all faiths ~ Page 19 ~

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Datebook of events . . . . . . . 21 Classified ads . . . . . . . . . . . 23

www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 14

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No. 6

Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

Where You Live

By Tom Burke USF was well represented at the recent Walk for Life West Coast. Senior Peter Aldana paid for the USF banner with winnings from a Las Vegas trip. Sister Mary Ignatius has been active in the respect life movement for decades. Also on board were Sarah Bertero, Kira Barros, Lacey Frasher, Michael Torre, Regina Fessler, Grace Allen and Dylan Hull-Nye. • Cathleen Gillies, campaign director for 40 Days for Life, has put out the call for the Lenten event’s San Francisco kickoff Feb. 21 at St. Paul Church. See Datebook.

• Students at Junipero Serra High School helped bring Christmas cheer to nine adopted families in San Mateo and Foster City. This year, they raised $4,000, which was used to buy toys, clothes and gift cards on family wish lists.

Twelve 55-gallon donation bins were filled by students with staples including soup, boxes of pasta and rice. According to Kyle Lierk, head of campus ministry, Adopt-a-Family is a mission-based activity that follows the example of Jesus. “Next year, we hope to expand the program so that we can help even more local families during the Christmas season,” he said.

• The Serra Club of San Francisco honored San Jose Auxiliary Bishop Tom Daly with gift of a miter at their Christmas party in December. Bishop Daly was a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco when named to San Jose last year. Bishop Daly is a former president of Marin Catholic High School. He is also highly respected nationally for his

Archbishop Riordan High School honored retired Navy Rear Admiral James Grealish with the Blessed William Joseph Chaminade Award Jan. 20. Pictured from left at the Jan. 20 ceremonies are former Chaminade Award winner Vincent Leveroni; Jim; Joe Conti, Riordan school board chairman; and Riordan President Patrick Daly.

The class of ’81 from St. Anne School in San Francisco celebrated a 30-year reunion at the Irish Cultural Center. Roll call was taken and “57 classmates and their spouses attended,” classmate George Rehmet told me. From left are planners of the get-together, Julien Nepomuceno, Christine Anderson, John Rodriguez, and George Rehmet.

USF at Walk for Life West Coast

efforts to increase vocations to the priesthood as director of vocations for the San Francisco archdiocese.

• Father Alex Legaspi, pastor, Gabriel

angels and parishioners of St. Andrew’s in Daly City hosted a baby shower for expectant mom, Marlyn Fine, Feb. 4. Seven months ago Marlyn saw a Gabriel Project sign offering help to pregnant mothers in

Spreading the news, and the good news Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

(PHOTO BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)

Tony Vallecillo delivers a reflection Oct. 7 St. Raphael Church, where he arrived Aug. 31 in the pastoral year phase of his training for archdiocesan priesthood. He holds a rosary, a critical part of his formation as a seminarian.

Seminarian answers repeated calls from God brother,” Vallecillo recalled. “It was the first time I felt the active presence of a personal God, and it changed my life.”

Until then, he had held a deist view of a distant, handsoff deity with no relevance to his life.

Born in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, baptized and confirmed in infancy, as that culture dictated, and

By Lidia Wasowicz educated in public schools after the family moved to San Complacent about his Catholic faith, Tony Vallecillo Francisco when he was one, Vallecillo lacked any formal had not attended Mass in 13 years when God started calling. religious teaching beyond first Communion classes.

His Catholicism was limited to attending Sunday Mass Over the next two decades, he got the message. and praying at mealtime He reconciled with the with his family. He found church, entered a seminary Christian life is an ongoing it “painless” to cease both and, on Aug. 31, arrived at when he turned 18 and St. Raphael Church in San conversation, constantly falling was no longer obliged to Rafael for a pastoral year do either. that will test his aptitude and affinity for diocesan A movie aficionado back only to grow again. priesthood. since adolescence, Vallecillo Along the journey, the tried his hand at filmmaking would-be film director and fiction writer repeatedly and writing, paying the rent with meager income from partrelied on heaven-sent signs to point him in the right time office jobs. He attempted to advance his avocation by direction. reading a book and a half each week for 20 years.

The first one came in a dream of his mentally ill brother He saw no significance in his life until, at age 29, he encased in a giant ice cube. Melted by his misery, Vallecillo awakened from the divine dream to a newly meaningful reached out to the estranged senior sibling. The man’s arm morning. He began advocating for his brother and growing shot skyward, morphing into a three-dollar bill, a symbol closer to his family and faith. On Valentine’s Day 1993, he Vallecillo equated with the Trinity. ended his self-imposed exile, drawn inside San Francisco’s “I knew the dream was from God, asking me to help my PASTORAL YEAR, page 12 Editor’s note: This is the first in an ongoing series periodically reporting on seminarian Tony Vallecillo’s journey through his pastoral year at St. Raphael Church in San Rafael toward his ordination as a priest in 2014.

East Palo Alto mayor, pastor oppose sale of low-income housing

By Valerie Schmalz Wells Fargo Bank plans to sell half of East Palo Alto’s low-income housing to a real estate company whose founder is a billionaire opponent of rent control – and whose representatives reportedly told the city’s mayor it plans to gentrify in one to five years.

The city of East Palo Alto’s mayor and City Council, tenants and affordable housing groups and the pastor of the city’s Catholic church all oppose the sale to Equity Residential. In addition San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, have written letters to Wells Fargo urging the bank to take steps to ensure the town does not lose affordable housing.

“We’re trying to stop the sale, which is like standing in front of a train,” said Father Lawrence Goode, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in East Palo Alto. “They intend to come in and gentrify.”

A petition is circulating against the sale, saying that “Equity Residential has a history of alleged violations of housing laws and disregarding the interests of tenants” and that Equity founder and chairman of the board Sam Zell is a “well-known opponent of rent control and tenant protection laws.”

The deal transferring the 1,800 units in 101 buildEAST PALO ALTO, page 22

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION MCHS’s campus priest . . . . . 3 Riordan goes global . . . 14-15 Pope Benedict . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Military chaplains . . . . . . . . 20

St. Monica Parish celebrates centennial ~ Page 10 ~

When the shoeless man said, ‘There is a God’ ~ Page 11 ~

October 14, 2011

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Catholic San Francisco

Missal series, Part 4: ‘And with your spirit’ ~ Page 24 ~

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Father Rolheiser . . . . . . . . . 21 Classified ads . . . . . . . . . . . 27

www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 13

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No. 32

January 27, 2012

January 27, 2012

By Valerie Schmalz and Dana Perrigan

Marchers move down Market Street in San Francisco toward the Embarcadero.

The demonstration blocked traffic on the city’s main artery for more than a mile.

SAN FRANCISCO – Tens of thousands of pro-life activists massed in front of San Francisco’s City Hall and then filled the city’s main thoroughfare Jan. 21, walking about two miles down Market Street to the Embarcadero.

Banging drums, praying and chanting “We are pro-life,” the enthusiastic throngs stopped traffic for more than a mile in a peaceful walk that took about an hour. Abortion rights protesters briefly stopped the walk by pulling orange netting hung with coat hangers in front of the walk. Police who rode bicycles and motorcycles in advance of the walk pulled the abortion protesters out of the street before the walk resumed, led by a group of young women carrying the walk’s signature banner, “Abortion hurts women.”

In Washington, D.C., the March for Life drew hundreds of thousands to walk along the Capitol Mall, ending with marchers visiting their representatives’ offices on Capitol Hill. New York Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan said that after nearly 40 years of legalized abortion, “we might be tempted to give up.”

But “not us,” said Cardinal-designate Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops, at the closing Mass of an all-night National Prayer Vigil for Life at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Jan.23. “Not for thousands who have stayed up all night here in prayer. Not for hundreds of thousands who will march today with the word we have received ringing in their ears.”

An hour before the opening prayer at Civic Center in San Francisco, signs jutted above a sea of people: “Defend Life,” “Men Regret Lost Fatherhood,” “California Nurses for Ethical Standards” and “Thank God You Were Not Aborted.”

“We are here to say life is the choice, and women are hurt by abortion,” said Dolores Meehan, who co-chairs the Walk for Life West Coast, which is held on the Saturday closest to the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion.

Eva Muntean, who also co-chairs the walk, urged participants to sign petitions to put a parental notification of a minor’s intent to procure an abortion on the ballot, an initiative campaign supported by the California bishops, and also urged support for a personhood amendment.

“For evil to win all it takes is for good people to do nothing.

So let’s get together and sign those petitions,” Muntean said.

At the rally, Dr. Vansen Wong, an obstetrician and gynecologist, told of performing abortions to pay off his medical school bills, saying he ended hundreds of lives over the course of seven years working at an abortion clinic.

Catholic San Francisco

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A C A D E M I C S

Struggling K-8 schools improving . . . . 3 How to pay? A pressing issue. . . . . . . . 6

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S E R V I C E

New high school religion texts . . . . . . . 8 Catholic education for all faiths . . . . . 10 Program combats bullying . . . . . . . . . 16 Gloria Naber

National campaign to fill Latino gap . 18

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WEEK

Teaching sisters making a difference Holy Angels Principal Sister Leonarda Montealto talks with children on the playground at the Colma school. The Dominican Sisters of the Most Holy Rosary teach at two of the eight schools in the Archdiocese of San Francisco where women religious maintain a significant presence. More than 25 schools have women religious on staff. See Pages 12-13.

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Catholic san Francisco

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Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

Around the archdiocese 3

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1 Students at Mercy High School, Burlingame are raising chamomile and lavender and nurturing some older trees on campus hoping they will again bear fruit. The chamomile is being dried and used to brew tea for visitors as they follow the footsteps of Mercy Sisters founder Catherine McAuley, who was known for “offering a comfortable cup of tea.” Tending the garden are, from left, freshmen Miranda Perry, Gianna Mazzoni and Nina Moutoux. 2. Dilsy Mendez and Marin Catholic High School President Tim Navone are pictured with Dilsy’s Heart of Marin Youth Volunteer Award. 3.

Junipero Serra High School physics teacher Eric Plett has had students building toothpick bridges since 1990. Here he looks over one of the projects with senior Griffin Herr, left, and Serra alumnus Matt Gomez.

4. Preschool students are pictured at St. Rita School, Fairfax.

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Notre Dame High School, Belmont MERCY HIGH SCHOOL

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Burlingame

WOODSIDE PRIORY SCHOOL

ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO

C H S 2011 – B2012 I ATHOLIC IGH CHOOLS NFORMATION OOKLET

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“Abortion is barbaric, abortion is intolerable,” Wong said, “Abortion has no place in any civilized society.”

A former Miss West Virginia, Jacquie Stalnaker, told of being forced at gunpoint to go to an abortion clinic by her boyfriend and of the toll it took from her life for 24 years. Stalnaker, who is now a regional representative for the “Silent No More” campaign, an organization of women who have had abortions and regret them, urged the crowd to ask pro-choice acquaintances to go to the group’s website to hear the stories of women who have had abortions. “We are real people with real stories to offer you,” she said.

The day began with a Walk for Life Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral where San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer told a packed cathedral, “You are the present and the future of this cause.”

In his homily, Archbishop Niederauer said, “Eternal life overcomes the culture of death.”

Marchers included a nun from New York City, seminarians from Portland, Ore., and Catholics from towns throughout California.

“We come to bear witness to the great gift of life,” said Sister Maria Joseph, a nun who traveled from New York with the Sisters of Life – a contemplative/apostolic community founded by Cardinal John O’Connor in 1991 – to take part in the rally and march. “Our fourth vow is to protect and enhance the sacredness of life.”

The Sisters of Life, she said, run a midtown Manhattan convent where pregnant women are invited to live during and after their pregnancy.

“It’s getting larger,” said Sister Maria Joseph of the annual Walk for Life. “It’s growing.”

A large banner made by Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Gridley was signed by members of the parish’s youth group and proclaimed “Youth Walking for Life.”

“We’re here because of the love of God,” said Marion Hughes, who arrived in one of three buses from Holy Trinity. “It’s the least we can do to spend a Saturday witnessing to the sacredness of life.”

For Hughes’ 14-year-old daughter, Claire, it was a chance for “everyone to come together for the same cause.”

Seminarians Ace Tupasi, 27, and Zani Pacanza, 30, rode in a bus Friday with 60 fellow seminarians from Mount Angel Seminary in Portland, Ore., to St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, where they spent the night and joined their fellow seminarians from St. Patrick’s for the rally and march.

“We love life,” said Tupasi. “We’re advocates for life. One of our missions is to value the sanctity of life.”

A small protest numbering 40 to 50 participants, called the West Coast Rally for Reproductive Justice, took place at Justin Herman Plaza at the end of the pro-life march route.

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Members of the group “Silent No More Awareness” face the crowd gathering at Civic Center Plaza. The Christian organization was formed 10 years ago “to make the public aware of the devastation that abortion brings to men and women.”

At this time, we ask your support in a special way.

Archbishop George Niederauer was principal celebrant at the day’s Mass for Life at St. Mary’s Cathedral. The full pews included many youths from the archdiocese.

Many Walk for Life West Coast marchers held signs expressing their support for the rights of the unborn.

PHOTOS BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO

Pastoral year

A pastoral planning process in the late 1990s identified the need for a full-circulation newspaper to serve as a key instrument of social communications for the archdiocese. Catholic San Francisco was created to fill this need. Today, the original formula of strong editorial and advertising content, frequent publication and full circulation to all parish members continues to distinguish Catholic San Francisco as a model diocesan paper. With a highly productive staff committed to sharing news of the church and faith, strong reader and advertiser loyalty and careful stewardship of the archdiocesan resources entrusted to this communications ministry – a copy of the paper costs only 40 cents, or less than 2 cents a page, to create and distribute – Catholic San Francisco has prospects as bright as its past.

This month the paper begins a new capital campaign, with an initial goal of $50,000. We’re asking donors to play a part in ensuring that this archdiocese retains the special advantages of a frequently produced, locally edited, full-circulation newspaper. Newsprint is uniquely popular with Catholic readers and uniquely suited to presenting information with nuance, context and reflection – all necessities for news of our universal church and faith, now more than ever. Your contribution will help the paper fulfill its double goal of constantly improving quality and constantly improving efficiency. A portion of your support will be invested in improved local content, special projects, added pages per issue, better design, new ways of presenting information, a new website scheduled to be launched later ‘We are pro-life’ this year, and other projects yet to be announced. Another Annual San Francisco walk draws portion will go to the bottom line: Every added dollar of tens of thousands of pro-life activists internal funds can spare a dollar of archdiocesan funds for other important work of the church.

F A I T H

Why I teach Two teachers at St. Finn Barr School in San Francisco share their vocation for Catholic education.

(PHOTO BY CNS)

On The

need and called the ministry for assistance.

Mila Ramirez is parish Gabriel Project coordinator at St. Andrew’s. “I will never forget all of you for the rest of my life,” Marlyn told Mila and all who had helped.

Fredi D’Alessio is program coordinator and the source of this good news.

• Italian long distance runner Ulderico Lambertucci started his cross-country trek from San Francisco to New York from the Porziuncola Nuova in North Beach Feb. 4. “He makes these long, long runs in an effort to bring focus on peace,” said Jim Brunsmann of the Knights of St. Francis of Assisi. The knights with Angela Alioto and a blessing from Capuchin Father Greg Coiro, rector of the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, sent Ulderico on his way in rites at the Porziuncola, Jim said.

Jim would not confirm this but I heard that Southwest Airlines dropped out as a sponsor of Ulderico’s U.S. trip because he’s running direct to the Big Apple and refused to take a layover in Denver. Ulderico’s other jauntsfor-peace have included Rome to Beijing and Rome to Jerusalem.

• Julio Escobar, a colleague here at HQ is deeply involved in ministry to young people who are incarcerated. His organization is gathering mentors and visitors for the effort at a two-day training Feb 25 and 26. See Datebook.

• As we approach Lent, thanks to Father Neil Healy for this recent homily exhortation: “Christ’s goal was not Good Friday it was Easter Sunday,” the pastor of St. Anselm Parish, said. Let our goal be the same, he added, knowing God will get us through our darkest days.

• Email items and electronic pictures – jpegs at no less than 300 dpi – to burket@ sfarchdiocese.org or mail to Street, One Peter Yorke Way, SF 94109. Include a follow-up phone number. Street is toll-free.

My phone number is (415) 614-5634.

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February 17, 2012

Catholic San Francisco

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(CNS PHOTO/ROBERT SORBO, REUTERS)

Komen official out over Planned Parenthood

Members of the Knights of Columbus gather outside the Capitol in Olympia, Wash., Feb. 8 to protest a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state.

Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the bill Feb. 13.

Washington now 7th state to allow same-sex marriage

DALLAS (CNS) – Karen Handel, vice president of public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, resigned Feb. 7 over a dispute of how the organization handled its grants to Planned Parenthood.

Komen announced Jan. 31 that it would no longer provide grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates for breast cancer screening referrals and then reinstated these grants Feb. 3 after significant protest.

In her resignation letter, Handel said she had supported Komen’s decision to stop providing funding to Planned Parenthood, but she also noted that discussion of the move had begun long before she joined the organization last year.

Handel said the decision to withhold grant funding from Planned Parenthood was nonpolitical and was “based on Komen’s mission.”

“What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision – one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact – has unfortunately been turned into something about politics. This is entirely untrue. This development should sadden us all greatly,” she wrote.

Initially, pro-life leaders hailed Komen’s announcement that it would no longer give grants to Planned Parenthood. Three days

later, when Komen reversed its decision, a pro-life leader called it the result of a “vicious attack” on the organization.

“I am troubled that the Komen foundation has come under such heavy fire for their recent decision to tighten and focus their funding guidelines,” said Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life.

“This week we have all been witness to highly partisan attacks from pro-abortion advocates and an ugly and disgraceful shakedown that highlights Planned Parenthood’s willingness to pursue a scorched-earth strategy to force compliance with their pro-abortion agenda,” she said in a statement.

Yoest also noted that Komen donors are “now confused about their association with the nation’s largest abortion provider.”

A statement from Komen’s founder and CEO Nancy Brinker posted on the Dallas-based organization’s website Feb. 3 apologized to the American public “for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”

Brinker said the reaction to the decision to discontinue the funding was “deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons.”

A Physician

For You.

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Gov. Chris Gregoire signed legislation Feb. 13 making Washington the 7th state in the nation to allow same-sex couples to marry.

“As governor for more than seven years, this is one of my proudest moments,” Gregoire said. “We stood up for equality and we did it together – Republicans and Democrats, gay and straight, young and old, and a variety of religious faiths. I’m proud of who and what we are in this state.”

Washington joins Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York plus the District of Columbia in allowing same-sex marriages.

The Washington state House of Representatives in Washington state voted 56-42 Feb. 8 in favor of a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. On Feb. 1, the state Senate approved it 28-21.

The Feb. 8 vote came one day after a federal appeals court in California struck down that state’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.

Several Republicans in the House argued against the bill, saying that it went against the tradition of marriage.

In Jan. 23 testimony before a Senate committee, Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain urged lawmakers to oppose the measure “based on the grave challenge this legislation poses to the common good. By attempting to redefine marriage, it ignores the origin, purpose and value of marriage to individuals, families and society.”

In a statement released Jan. 13, the state’s three Catholic bishops called on Washington citizens to support traditional marriage and contact their state senator and representatives to urge them to “defend the current legal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.”

The same-sex marriage law will take effect 90 days after the governor signs it, but opponents have promised to fight it with a ballot measure that would allow voters to overturn it.

– Catholic News Service, Catholic San Francisco

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Catholic San Francisco

NEWS

February 17, 2012

in brief

(CNS PHOTO/AFOLABI SOTUNDE, REUTERS)

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Abuse suit withdrawn VATICAN CITY – A high-profile federal lawsuit accusing Pope Benedict XVI of covering up sexual abuse has been withdrawn. Lawyers for the plaintiff in John Doe 16 v. Holy See filed a notice of voluntary dismissal Feb. 10, bringing the case effectively to an end. The lawsuit was filed in April 2010 in the U.S. District Court in Milwaukee by an unnamed Illinois man who claimed he had been molested by Father Lawrence Murphy during the latter’s time on the staff of Milwaukee’s St. John’s School for the Deaf.

The lawsuit claimed that the Vatican “has known about the widespread problem of childhood sexual abuse committed by its clergy for centuries, but has covered up that abuse and thereby perpetuated the abuse.” The lawsuit also sought to prove that the Vatican is a global business empire, engaging in “commercial activity” in Wisconsin and across the United States, and holding “unqualified power” over each diocese, parish and follower.

Jeffrey S. Lena, an American attorney for the Holy See, welcomed the withdrawal of “fallacious allegations of Holy See responsibility and liability for John Doe 16’s abuse. A case like this one against the Holy See, which was held together by no more than a mendacious web of allegations of international conspiracy, amounted to a misuse of judicial process and a waste of judicial resources,” Lena said in a statement. The plaintiff was represented by Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson, who has filed thousands of abuse lawsuits against priests and representatives of the Catholic Church. Anderson is still pursuing a sex abuse lawsuit against the Holy See in Oregon.

Another such case in Kentucky was withdrawn in 2010.

Chinese prelate warns of ‘schism’ VATICAN CITY – Chinese Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun warned that the Chinese Catholic Church is “on the verge of a schism” between communities cooperating with government structures and those who refuse to register with government authorities, and he called on the Vatican and other Catholics to shun “organisms that are not only foreign but clearly hostile to the church” in China. Cardinal Zen, retired bishop of Hong Kong, made his comments in an article published Feb. 8 by Asia News, a missionary news agency based in Rome.

“The situation of the church in China is particularly unusual because not bishops, but bodies outside the church ... are leading our church,” Cardinal Zen wrote, noting the government’s continued supervision of the church through

LIVING TRUSTS WILLS

PROBATE

Christmas bombing suspect Kabiru Sokoto, a suspect in a Christmas Day bomb attack on St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, near Nigeria’s capital, is guarded Feb. 10 inside the state security service office in the capital, Abuja. The Islamist militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the Dec. 25 bombing, which killed more than 40 people.

the State Administration for Religious Affairs and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. China’s more than 10 million Catholics are divided among communities registered with the communist government and those, sometimes called “underground,” who have refused to register. In recent years, as many as 85 percent of government-approved bishops have been recognized by the Holy See, a “strategy of compromise” that Cardinal Zen argued has demoralized the unregistered communities.

“We can see that the underground community that once flourished so well now runs the risk of dying of frustration and discouragement, because it seems to be neglected and considered inconvenient by the Holy See,” Cardinal Zen wrote.

British official fears secularism MANCHESTER, England – A “deeply intolerant” militant secularism is taking hold of Western societies, said a senior British government minister heading a delegation to the Vatican.

Such secularism “demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities,” said Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a Muslim. She said Europe must counter the threat by becoming “more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity.”

The Cabinet “minister without portfolio” and co-chair of the ruling Conservative Party made her remarks in an article

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published by the London-based Daily Telegraph Feb. 14, the first day of a two-day Vatican visit by the delegation of seven government ministers.

She said that in her Feb. 14 address to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which she said she wanted to “ring out beyond the Vatican walls,” she would be arguing that “to create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds.”

Jesuit denounces parish raid MEXICO CITY – A Jesuit priest denounced a raid on his parish and human rights center, calling it yet another attempt to intimidate activists who have been critical of Mexican government excesses in the crackdown on organized crime.

Jesuit Father Jose Castilla Plasencia, pastor of the St. Jude Thaddeus Parish and director of the Juan Gerardi Human Rights Center in the northern city of Torreon, spoke after a Feb. 9 raid, which he said was conducted without a warrant and prompted by an anonymous tip alleging drugs were in the installations. The raid, he added, included the search of crypts.

“This interruption by federal and state forces and the army shows, in a clear way, the current security policy, which, far from resolving problems, increases the vulnerability of the population that is subject to this kind of abuse,” Father Castilla said in comments published by the Monterrey newspaper El Norte. “The acts constitute a clear aggression and try to send an intimidating message against defenders of human rights,” he said.

Individuals working on human rights issues – including Catholic priests who protect undocumented migrants – have been subject to police and army raids, along with attacks from assailants in cases that largely go unsolved. Over the past four years, parish and diocesan human rights centers in Ciudad Juarez, Saltillo and Torreon have been either raided or robbed.

Catholics plan Cuba sojourn MIAMI – Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski will lead 310 other Catholics on a pilgrimage to Cuba when Pope Benedict XVI visits the Caribbean nation March 26-28.

Participants will have the option of taking part in both papal Masses as well as a Mass to be celebrated by Archbishop Wenski in Havana’s cathedral. When the Vatican announced that Pope John Paul II would become first pope to visit the island in January 1998, a pilgrimage by cruise ship was arranged but was canceled because of vociferous opposition by sectors of the Cuban exile community. Instead, Archbishop John C. Favalora, then head of the Miami archdiocese and now retired, flew to Havana to take part in the final papal Mass with a small group of south Florida priests, religious and laity.

Florida Catholics have waited 14 years for the chance to complete a Cuban pilgrimage. “That desire that remained a desire (14) years ago now is a possibility – the desire for a pilgrimage,” said Bishop Emilio Aranguren Echeverria of Holguin, Cuba, during a visit to Miami at the end of November. “That possibility is now a reality.”

– Catholic News Service

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Catholic San Francisco

5

Revised HHS mandate won’t solve problems, USCCB president says

By Francis X. Rocca

At a glance

Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan of New York is pictured after an interview with Catholic News Service in Rome Feb. 13.

– Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan said “we don’t see much sign of compromise” on conscience protection in the new health care mandate.

– The cardinal-designate said bishops would now be “more vigilant than ever” in seeking out judicial and legislative remedies.

– He said the U.S. bishops are “very, very enthusiastic” about the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, introduced by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. – Prominent attorneys, non-Catholic and even nonreligious, have volunteered to represent the bishops in fighting the mandate, he said.

– Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called the mandate an “aggressive attack” and the “the embodiment of culture war.”

– An administration official told Catholic News Service in an email Feb. 13 that the White House planned to convene a series of meetings “with faith-based organizations, insurers and other interested parties” to pursue a solution religious organizations can support.

as a convinced Catholic considers to be morally objectionable?” he asked.

Cardinal-designate Dolan said he emailed Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who heads the Catholic Health Association, on Feb. 10 to tell her that he was “disappointed that she had acted unilaterally, not in concert with the bishops.”

“She’s in a bind,” the cardinal-designate said of Sister Carol. “When she’s talking to (HHS Secretary Kathleen) Sebelius and the president of the United States, in some ways, these are people who are signing the checks for a good chunk of stuff that goes on in Catholic hospitals. It’s tough for her to stand firm. Understandably, she’s trying to make sure that anything possible, any compromise possible, that would allow the magnificent work of Catholic health care to continue, she’s probably going to be innately more open to than we would.”

In a Feb. 10 statement, Sister Carol praised what she called “a resolution ... that protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions.”

Cardinal-designate Dolan said Obama called him the morning of his announcement to tell him about the proposal.

“What we’re probably going to have to do now is be more vigorous than ever in judicial and legislative remedies, because apparently we’re not getting much consolation from the executive branch of the government,” he said.

The cardinal-designate said the bishops are “very, very enthusiastic” about the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, introduced by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. The cardinal said the legislation would produce an “ironclad law simply saying that no administrative decrees of the federal government can ever violate the conscience of a religious believer individually or religious institutions.”

“It’s a shame, you’d think that’s so clear in the Constitution that that wouldn’t have to be legislatively guaranteed, but we now know that it’s not,” he added.

In a phone interview with Catholic News Service in MANDATE, page 10

(CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING)

ROME (CNS) – Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan of New York said Feb. 13 that President Barack Obama’s revision to the contraceptive mandate in the health reform law did nothing to change the U.S. bishops’ opposition to what they regard as an unconstitutional infringement on religious liberty.

“We bishops are pastors, we’re not politicians, and you can’t compromise on principle,” said Cardinal-designate Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“And the goal posts haven’t moved and I don’t think there’s a 50-yard line compromise here,” he added.

“We’re in the business of reconciliation, so it’s not that we hold fast, that we’re stubborn ideologues, no. But we don’t see much sign of any compromise,” he said.

“What (Obama) offered was next to nothing. There’s no change, for instance, in these terribly restrictive mandates and this grossly restrictive definition of what constitutes a religious entity,” he said. “The principle wasn’t touched at all.”

In a statement issued late Feb. 10, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Obama’s decision to retain the contraceptive mandate “is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern.” The conference also said the continued “lack of clear protection for key stakeholders ... is unacceptable and must be corrected.”

“The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for (the Department of Health and Human Services) to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services,” it added.

Announced Feb. 10, Obama’s revision of the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate left intact the restrictive definition of a religious entity and would shift the costs of contraceptives from the policyholders to the insurers, thus failing to ensure that Catholic individuals and institutions would not have to pay for services that they consider immoral, Cardinal-designate Dolan said.

For one thing, the cardinal-designate said, many dioceses and Catholic institutions are self-insuring. Moreover, Catholics with policies in the compliant insurance companies would be subsidizing others’ contraception coverage. He also objected that individual Catholic employers would not enjoy exemption under Obama’s proposal.

“My brother-in-law, who’s a committed Catholic, runs a butcher shop. Is he going to have to pay for services that he

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

In this panoramic view, bishops of the world line the nave of St. Peter’s Basilica during the opening session of the Second Vatican Council Oct. 11, 1962.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the council, one of the monumental events in modern religious history.

Vatican Letter Vatican II: 50 years later, a year of faith and debate

By Francis X. Rocca VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Fifty years ago this October, Blessed John XXIII and more than 2,500 bishops and heads of religious orders from around the world gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica for the opening session of the Second Vatican Council.

Over the following three years, Vatican II would issue 16 major “pronouncements” on such fundamental questions as the authority of the church’s hierarchy, the interpretation of Scripture, and the proper roles of clergy and laity. Those documents, and the deliberations that produced them, have transformed how the Catholic Church understands and presents itself within the context of modern secular culture and society.

Because Vatican II was one of the monumental events in modern religious history, its golden anniversary will naturally be the occasion for numerous commemorative events, including liturgical celebrations, publications and academic conferences.

At a Vatican II exhibition at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, which opened in late January and will run until November 2013, the displays include original handwritten pages from

Pope John’s speech at the council’s opening session, and a Vatican passport issued at the time to a young Polish bishop named Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II. Yet Vatican II is not merely of historical interest; it is very much a living issue in the church today.

Scholars still debate to what extent the council’s achievements, in such areas as interfaith dialogue and liturgical reform, were organic developments in the church’s history or radical breaks with the past.

And clergy and laity alike differ over how expansively to apply the council’s pronouncements, whether sticking closely to the letter of the documents or following a more broadly construed “spirit of Vatican II.” Pope Benedict XVI has rejected what he calls the “hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture” in the present-day understanding of the council and has called instead for interpreting Vatican II as an instance of “renewal in continuity” with the church’s 2,000 years of tradition.

Exploring and promoting that idea will be a major goal of the Year of Faith that begins Oct. 11, 2012 exactly half a century to the day since Vatican II opened.

A relatively small but highly vocal number of Catholics reject the council

altogether, charging among other things that subsequent changes to worship have undermined the solemnity of the Mass and that a growing openness to other religions conflicts with the need to proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ alone. The most prominent such group, the Society of St. Pius X, effectively broke with Rome in 1988, when its founder, the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, ordained four bishops without approval from the pope.

Pope Benedict has made reconciliation with the traditionalist society a priority of his pontificate. He lifted restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass, now called the extraordinary form, in 2007. Less than two years later, he removed the excommunications of the four illicitly ordained bishops. And last fall, the Vatican held out the possibility of making the group a personal prelature if a full reconciliation is reached. A prelature is somewhat like a global diocese, a status currently held only by Opus Dei. As a condition of reconciliation, though, the Vatican has asked the society to give its assent to a summary of certain nonnegotiable doctrines. These have not been made public, but they presumably include the major teachings of Vatican II. Though the ongoing dialogue between the Vatican and the society remains confidential, both sides have recently published documents that give insights into their respective positions.

In early December, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published an article by Msgr. Fernando Ocariz, the second-highest official of Opus Dei and a participant in talks with the Society of St. Pius X. In the article, Msgr. Ocariz insisted that all the teachings of Vatican II require nothing less than “religious submission of intellect and will,” and that even the council’s apparent innovations in doctrine are properly understood as in continuity with tradition. But he also emphasized that “there remains legitimate room for theological freedom” in interpreting them.

Later the same month, Father JeanMichel Gleize, a theologian who has represented the society in discussions with the Vatican, published a response to Msgr.

Ocariz’s article. Perhaps the most striking part of Father Gleize’s argument was his rejection of the hermeneutic of continuity as overly “subjective” and neglectful of the “unity of the truth” necessary in church teaching. That would seem to suggest an endorsement of the hermeneutic of rupture usually associated with the council’s most progressive champions.

Reading such an exchange, it’s not easy to believe that the Year of Faith will end with anything like a Catholic consensus on the meaning of Vatican II. But as someone well known to think in terms of centuries, Pope Benedict will surely be neither surprised nor discouraged by the continuing debate.

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February 17, 2012

Catholic San Francisco

7

WASHINGTON (CNS) - Some priests have decided to stay in battle-scarred Homs, Syria, even as government forces intensified their strikes against the heart of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, said the Vatican’s nuncio to Syria.

Archbishop Mario Zenari told Catholic News Service in an email Feb. 9 that he had been in almost daily contact with priests in Homs and that “with respect to their safety, the situation is, in certain respects, uncertain.”

“The decision to remain is theirs,” Archbishop Zenari said. “This morning a priest told me that it was impossible to leave the city. Various Catholic families have left the city of Homs in recent days.

“In situations where their own lives and those of their family members are at risk, as is now the case in Homs, the choice to remain or depart must be left to each individual,” he added.

The archbishop also advised Christians throughout much of the rest of Syria to remain in the country “except for situations in which one’s own life and those of one’s family members are in danger.”

Syrian forces have bombarded opposition-controlled neighborhoods in Homs with rocket and mortar fire since Feb. 2 in an attempt to quash the revolt. With 1 million residents, Homs is Syria’s third-largest city.

Despite the violence in response to the nearly yearlong uprising against Assad’s rule, Archbishop Zenari said the Vatican has no plans to close its operations in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

“Within the region, Syria is a model of religious tolerance, above all with respect to relations between Christians and Muslims,” he said. “Until now, Christians in Syria have enjoyed great respect from every side in the conflict.”

Pope: Syria must address citizens’ legitimate demands VATICAN CITY (CNS) – As a sectarian conflict in Syria intensified, Pope Benedict XVI called on all Syrians to begin a process of dialogue and reminded the government of its duty to recognize its citizens’ legitimate demands.

In St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Feb. 12, the pope expressed his concern for “the dramatic and increasing episodes of violence in Syria.”

At the end of his Angelus prayer, he said he was praying for everyone who has been killed, injured and affected by a conflict that is “increasingly worrisome.”

In Beirut, the patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church warned against toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, calling for dialogue to solve the crisis in the country.

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Nuncio to Syria says priests choose to remain despite violence

Syrian security inspect the site of an explosion in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo Feb. 10, in this handout photograph released by Syria’s national news agency SANA. Some priests have decided to stay in battle-scarred Homs, even as government forces intensified their strikes against the heart of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, said the Vatican’s nuncio in Syria. The Homs attacks killed 300 and injured hundreds in one week, Human Rights Watch said Feb. 9.

About 428,000 Catholics live in Syria, about 2 percent of the population of 20.1 million people.

Meanwhile, Melkite Patriarch Gregoire III Laham of Damascus called upon international leaders to prevent the

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

Vatican sex abuse investigator says bishops should be more accountable Church knows well that whenever one of its ministers, whether bishop, priest ROME (CNS) – The Vatican’s top or deacon, or lay pastoral agent, sexusex abuse investigator called for greater ally abuses a minor, a tragic wound is accountability under church law of inflicted on the community; subordinatbishops who shield or fail to discipline ed at it is by the indescribably repugnant pedophile priests. damage done to the child.”

Msgr. Charles Scicluna, promoter He said such conduct is reproachable of justice for the Congregation for the on various counts, of which the most Doctrine of the Faith, made his remarks important is that it “inflicts untold damto reporters in Rome Feb. 8, after age to the normal sexual development, addressing an international symposium self-esteem and human dignity of the on clerical sex abuse. minor concerned.”

“It is a crime in canon law to show In addition abuse is cause of scanmalicious or fraudulent negligence in the dal to Christians and non-Christians exercise of one’s duty,” Msgr. Scicluna alike, “a stumbling block on many a said, regarding the responsibility of bishpilgrim’s progress in faith”; it invariops to protect children and punish abusers. ably constitutes an abuse and a betrayal With respect to bishops who fail to of the sacred trust which the people of apply the church’s anti-abuse norms, God rightly have of their shepherds; it Msgr. Scicluna said that “it is not acceptdamages the credibility of the church able that when there are set standards, “and taints the beauty of her testimony people do not follow the set standards.” to the Gospel of Jesus Christ”; and it Acknowledging that the sanctions “discredits the ministerial priesthood Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, leads a Feb. 7 that canon law provides for the punand puts countless innocent clerics and penitential vigil at St. Ignatius Church in Rome to show contrition for clerical sexual abuse. ishment of clergy are sometimes not pastoral agents under the shadow of applied to bishops, he said that “eccledelinquency, crime and misdemeanor.” sial accountability has to be further developed.” attended by representatives of 110 bishops’ conferences The conference, “Toward Healing and Renewal,” was “What we need to do is to be vigilant in choosing can- and 30 religious orders that a “deadly culture of silence, or called to launch a global initiative aimed at improving efforts didates for the important role of bishop, and also to use the ‘omerta,’ is in itself wrong and unjust,” and that “no strategy to stop clerical sexual abuse and protect children and vultools that canonical law and tradition give for accountability for the prevention of child abuse will ever work without nerable adults. It was scheduled to run Feb. 6-9 at Rome’s of bishops,” Msgr. Scicluna said. “It’s not a question of commitment and accountability.”

Pontifical Gregorian University, with the support of the changing laws, it’s a question of applying what we have.”

In his address to the conference, published in full on the Vatican Secretariat of State and several other Vatican offices.

Earlier in the morning, Msgr. Scicluna told a symposium website of Vatican Radio, Msgr. Scicluna said “the Catholic – Catholic San Francisco contributed to this story.

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Priest resigns over Mass style BELLEVILLE, Ill. (CNS) – Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville has accepted the resignation of a longtime pastor with an “improvisational” style of celebrating Mass. Father William Rowe, who for the past 17 years has been pastor of St. Mary Parish in Mount Carmel, said he offered to resign after he was unable to resolve Bishop Braxton’s concerns about his celebration of the Mass, including his failure to follow the new English translation of the Roman Missal.

Over the years, Father Rowe said, some people have complained about what has been described as an improvisational liturgical style. Five years ago, the bishop called Father Rowe to his home for a talk about letters the bishop had received regarding the priest.

The two were unable to resolve their differences, and the priest offered to resign because it seemed “the best way to resolve the problem in a pastoral way.”

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February 17, 2012

Catholic San Francisco

9

Georgia Supreme Court ruling strikes down law on assisted suicide ATLANTA (CNS) – A unanimous decision by the Georgia Supreme Court that struck down a law banning people from publicly advertising to help with assisted suicide puts the elderly and people with disabilities in “grave danger,” said a national pro-life leader.

The 1994 state law did not prohibit assisted suicides, but it made it a felony for those who promote that they could assist with a suicide. In its Feb. 6 decision, the court said the law violated free speech rights.

“The ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court puts the lives of older people and those with disabilities in grave danger Cardinal Daniel because it opens the door for the fringe N. DiNardo advocates of doctor-prescribed death to openly advertise the practice in the state of Georgia,” said Burke Balch, director of National Right to Life’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics.

“This ruling essentially says if you want to advertise helping people jump off a cliff, you can hang out your shingle in Georgia,” he told National Right to Life News.

‘40 Days for Life’ prayer campaign starts Feb. 21 The annual “40 Days for Life” prayer campaign to end abortion will start Feb. 21 with a 6 p.m. Mass at St. Paul Church, 221 Valley St., San Francisco, followed by a prayer vigil at a Planned Parenthood clinic site and fellowship at the parish.

The campaign continues Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, through Palm Sunday, April 1, from 8 a.m-8 p.m. at Planned Parenthood, 1650 Valencia St., San Francisco. Contact sf40daysforlife@gmail.com or call (415) 613-8493.

A San Mateo kickoff rally takes place Feb. 19, 2-3 p.m., at Planned Parenthood, 35 Baywood Ave., San Mateo. The campaign continues at the site Feb. 22 through April 1, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Call (650) 918-9119 or (650) 572-1468 or visit fortydaysforlifesm@yahoo.com.

The Supreme Court’s 7-0 decision means that four members of the group Final Exit Network, charged in 2009 with helping a 58-year-old man with cancer die at his home in Georgia, will not have to stand trial.

In its eight-page ruling, the court pointed out that if the state had “truly been interested in the preservation of human life it could have imposed a ban on all assisted suicides with no restriction on protected speech whatsoever. Alternatively, the state could have sought to prohibit all offers to assist in suicide when accompanied by an overt act to accomplish that goal. The state here did neither.”

The state law was meant to discourage assisted suicide during the time when Dr. Jack Kevorkian was promoting his role in assisting in the deaths of more than 100 people.

Kevorkian, who died last June at age 83, was frequently in the spotlight throughout the 1990s, from his first role in an assisted suicide in Michigan in 1990 until 1999. That year, he was sentenced to serve 10-25 years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder for assisting in a nationally televised death of a man with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

He was released on parole in 2007 and was banned from assisting in suicides. He was, however, permitted to speak out

in favor of assisted suicide, which he did in numerous speeches, interviews and editorials.

Balch called on the Georgia Legislature to “quickly remedy” the Supreme Court’s ruling by enacting legal protections against doctor-prescribed death and other forms of assisting suicide.

Physician-assisted suicide was approved by voters in Washington state in 2008. It also is legal in Oregon, where voters approved it in 1994, and Montana, where a state court has ruled it is not against public policy.

The U.S. bishops issued a policy statement on assisted suicide last summer, calling it a “terrible tragedy, one that a compassionate society should work to prevent.” The statement, “To Live Each Day With Dignity,” said the assisted suicide movement “actually risks adding to the suffering of seriously ill people.”

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said last June that the statement is timely. “After years of relative inaction following legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon in 1994, the assisted suicide movement has shown a strong resurgence in activity,” the cardinal said in a news release.

When You Need Us, We’re Here “Residents are the heart of our community.”

Health care conference set A conference on Catholic health care reform, with a keynote address by Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa, will be held March 29-31 at St. Mary’s Cathedral and the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco.

The conference, “Make Straight the Pathway: An Integrated and Unified Solution for Catholic Healthcare Reform,” was initially presented by the Christus Medicus Foundation last year in Michigan and is sponsored in San Francisco by Christus and Life Legal Defense Foundation. Co-sponsors are the Archdiocese of San Francisco; the dioceses of Oakland, Sacramento and Santa Rosa; Catholic Medical Association; Pope Paul VI Institute; One More Soul; NFP Association, American Academy of Fertility Professionals; and CANFP. The cost of the two-day conference is $290 before March 1 and $325 after March 1. CME/CEU credit for doctors is offered for an additional $50. Scholarships for clergy, religious and students are available at $145, but space is limited so early registration is recommended.

For information and online registration, call (707) 2246675 or visit www.christusmedicus.com/conference2012.html.

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

Mandate revision ignores religious liberty concerns, say bishops WASHINGTON (CNS) – Catholic bishops across the country have expressed their disapproval of President Barack Obama’s newly announced revision to the contraceptive mandate in the health reform law, saying it does nothing to change what they and other religious leaders and organizations consider an intrusion on religious liberty.

“We can appreciate the efforts of the White House to quiet the furor over the president’s HHS mandate that would violate the religious freedom of millions of Catholics and other American citizens,” Miami Archbishop Thomas Bishop Blaise J. G. Wenski wrote Feb. 10. He noted Cupich that hundreds of Catholic universities, colleges, hospitals and other entities offered comments to HHS before the mandate was announced but they “were given short shrift by the administration.”

“The administration continues to insist that the issue is about contraception; we disagree. It is about the first freedom of our

Mandate . . .

■ Continued from page 5 Washington, Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, echoed what Cardinal-designate Dolan said about the need for legislative action to enact a religious right to conscience protection into federal law.

“Our religious freedom is too precious to be protected only be regulations,” Bishop Lori said. “It needs legislative protection. More legislators, I think, are looking at it.

There’s more bipartisan support for it. There should be a lot pressure exerted on Congress to pass it and for the president to sign it.”

In Rome Cardinal-designate Dolan said that some “very prominent attorneys,” some of them non-Catholic and even nonreligious, had already volunteered to represent the bishops.

“We’ve got people who aren’t Catholic, who may not

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Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said he found the president’s revision “troubling and frustrating.”

“Unfortunately, he did not really respond to the deep moral concerns raised by America’s Catholic community,” he said in a Feb. 13 statement.

The archbishop said the fact the revision requires payment of contraceptive coverage to now be borne by insurance companies, rather than religious employers, “completely misses the point.

The issue here is not one of bookkeeping or accounting. It is a matter of moral principle and religious liberty,” he said.

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago said he was disappointed the issue is being perceived as something that isolates the bishops from the faithful. “To try to divide Catholics is a new challenge to religious liberty,” he said.

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria, Ill., said no president has ever “tried to tell us what to believe or define what is our ministry.” The notion the church “must cooperate with intrinsic evil is appalling,” he said.

Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash., said the current situation about the HHS mandate provides an opportunity “to even be religious, who have said, ‘We want to help you on this one.’ We’ve got very prominent attorneys who are very interested in religious freedom who say, ‘Count on us to take these things as high as you can.’ And we’re going to.”

He said the bishops draw hope for that fight from the Supreme Court’s recent unanimous ruling in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, a case regarding the ministerial exception.

“You’d think that (the Obama administration) would be able to read the tea leaves, that these things are going to be overthrown,” the cardinal-designate said.

Bishop Lori told CNS that only after the original rule regarding contraception and sterilization coverage was revised and ready to be announced Feb. 10 did the White House contact Cardinal-designate Dolan and the USCCB. The bishop suggested that Obama administration officials would have better understood the concerns religious organizations have about the rule had they tried to talk with the Catholic bishops, evangelicals and Orthodox church leaders who objected to the measure.

“That certainly did not happen,” he said.

Such a meeting would have allowed the bishops “to bring it home that our ministries of charity, health care and education flow from what we believe and how we worship and how we are to live.”

An administration official told Catholic News Service in an email Feb. 13 that the White House planned to convene a series of meetings “with faith-based organizations, insurers and other interested parties to develop policies that respect religious liberty and ensure access to preventive services for

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U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement at the White House in Washington Feb. 10 about the federal mandate on contraceptive coverage. Standing next to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Obama outlined a plan that would allow religious employers not to offer such services to their employees but would compel insurance companies to do so.

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have a deeper and, on a prolonged basis, a fundamental dialogue about the role of religion in society in general and the nature of religious liberty, especially as it applies to faith-based charitable, health and social service ministries in the United States.”

Writing in the March 5 issue of America magazine, a Jesuitrun national weekly, Bishop Cupich quoted from Obama’s biography, “Dreams From My Father,” and his 2008 campaign speech on racism to show that “the president, relying on his personal experience with church, ... has not only the potential but also the responsibility to make a significant contribution to this more sustained and expansive discussion.”

The bishop offered points of “common ground that may shape both the dialogue that needs to take place to unpack the details following the president’s announcement Friday, and the further national discussion on the role of religion in society.”

He said the church “should make every attempt to clarify the misrepresentations about its intention,” emphasizing that it “is not trying to impose its will on others” by objecting to being forced to participate in activities that violate its core religious beliefs.

The state, for its part, should be reluctant “to make national policy that is so inflexible that it fails to take into account the country’s diversity,” Bishop Cupich said.

(CNS PHOTO/LARRY DOWNING, REUTERS)

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Catholic San Francisco

11

Catholics at risk of losing touch with the land, says professor about all aspects of agriculture policy, from feeding the poor to the use of genetically WASHINGTON (CNS) – Catholics are modified organisms, he said. at risk of losing their connection to the land, One factor may be the decline in the rural according to a professor from the University life conference’s membership, which mirrors of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. the decline in the number of farmers overall.

“There are 244 Catholic degree-granting As farms and ranches grow bigger because institutions in the United States, and not of consolidation, the numbers of people who one of them offers an undergraduate degree own and operate them shrink. program in agriculture,” said Christopher The rural life conference today claims Thompson, academic dean at the St. Paul about 2,200 members in 46 states. But Seminary School of Divinity, which is in 1941, the conference had 60 programs housed at the university. throughout the United States, with 1,700 In the classes he priests, 9,000 women teaches, he said he religious and 12,000 was baffled by his laypeople enrolled.

A teacher is baffled students’ seeming The rural life conferignorance of even by students’ ignorance ence’s meeting that some of the basics. year in Bismarck, Thompson said drew 15,000 of even such basics as N.D., one student asked participants, accordhim what a kinging to Thompson. bird and tree names. fisher was. (It is a About 30 – twobird.) Another stutenths of 1 percent of dent asked what an that number – were aspen was. (It is a tree.) A student from Los present at the Feb. 11 meeting.

Angeles, after going on a Thompson-led The danger of such diminishing numbers, weekend retreat that visited three farms in Thompson pointed out, is “the loss of a Minnesota, remarked: “I didn’t know they theology of creation, a philosophy of nature, raised animals in Minnesota.” which lies at the heart of the church’s social A graduate student in Thompson’s tradition concerning the meaning of man and “Spirituality and Sustainability” class not the task of agriculture.” only had never heard of the chemical giant Man was involved in the fall from grace, Monsanto, he had trouble pronouncing its but “the order of lower creation, that is, the name. Another student told the professor, organic world of creatures, animals and “I’ve heard that sap from maple trees is plants, was not directly implicated in the poisonous.” (No; it is used to make maple fall,” Thompson said. But with genetically syrup.) Yet another student asked, “Is it safe modified organisms, “lower creation” may to put rainwater on a garden?” render man more culpable in our own time, “God does all the time,” Thompson told he added. members of the National Catholic Rural “One ignores the order of reality at the Life Conference during its Feb. 11 meet- risk of one’s own peril, as the practical ing as part of the Catholic Social Ministry wisdom of arming must submit to a ‘logos’ Gathering in Washington. which lies hidden in the order of things,” For Thompson, the topper may have been Thompson said. the student who read a recipe that called for “At the heart of all this is a subtle artichoke hearts and asked, “Do you know Pelagianism – which is a heresy, by the what an artichoke animal looks like?” way,” he said. The Pelagian theory held that “These are our best and brightest,” good will and strenuous effort without divine Thompson said, yet they “seem oblivious to aid could overcome sin. In agriculture, their surroundings, especially when it comes a Pelagian view would regard efficiency to the land and the food that sustains them.” as “a relevant problem. It is not an end,” It is not that the church has been silent Thompson said. “Efficiency does not proin its teachings on environmental steward- duce a spiritual result.” ship, he added; it’s just that “it hasn’t been As humans consider their relationship received.” to the land, they should keep in mind the That puts the church at risk of being ultimate worry, which Thompson described shunted aside when it comes to discussions as “global warming in the next world.”

(CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING)

By Mark Pattison

Papal snowman A child looks at a “popeman” built by students from the Rome program of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., after snowfall in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Feb. 11. This was the second snowfall in a week in a city where snow is as rare as a papal conclave.

New young adult council forming A young adult council is forming in the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the deadline for applications for the council is Feb. 29.

The council will be a driver for building a community of young adults in the Bay Area, sponsoring events and supporting the formation of parish young adults groups.

To obtain an application, email coordinator Jonathan Lewis, director of religious education at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, Mill Valley, at jonathanlewis86@gmail.com.

The council will be a way for young adults

to communicate with the archbishop of San Francisco about their needs and a way for the archbishop to have a formal connection with young adults, Lewis said.

The process of forming the council has been under way for more than a year and included two meetings with about 50 young adults and representatives of young adult groups in the archdiocese.

Representatives to the council will be both at-large young adults and delegates from existing young adult groups.

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

February 17, 2012

Catholic San Francisco

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BEHOLD NOW IS A VERY ACCEPTABLE TIME, NOW IS THE DAY OF SALVATION 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2, Ash Wednesday Mass

Lent: A time to renew baptismal vows

Reconciliation

Feb. 22: Ash Wednesday Feb. 26: First Sunday of Lent March 4: Second Sunday March 11: Third Sunday March 18: Fourth Sunday March 25: Fifth Sunday April 1: Palm Sunday April 5: Holy Thursday April 6: Good Friday April 7: Holy Saturday April 8: Easter

Abstinence: Everyone 14 and older is bound to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, the Fridays of Lent and Good Friday.

Fast: Everyone 18 and older but under the age of 60 is also bound to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

What does fasting mean? On these two days, the law of fast allows only one full meal a day, but does not prohibit taking some food during the day, so long as this does not constitute another full meal. Drinking liquids during the day is permitted.

Exceptions: When health or ability to work would be seriously affected, the law does not oblige. If in doubt concerning fast or abstinence, a priest assigned to pastoral ministry or a confessor should be consulted. In the spirit of penance, the faithful should not lightly excuse themselves from this obligation.

– Archdiocese of San Francisco Office of Worship

Spiritual reading Here is a selection of recent books that might be suitable for your spiritual reading during Lent: – “The Essentials of Catholic Spirituality: Living and Breathing Our Faith” by Father Joseph F. Classen. Alba House (Staten Island, N.Y., 2012). 197 pp., $12.95.

– “Rediscover Lent” by Matthew Kelly. St. Anthony Messenger Press (Cincinnati, 2011). 146 pp., $9.99.

– “The Sacred Heart for Lent: Daily Meditations”

by Thomas D. Williams. St. Anthony Messenger Press (Cincinnati, 2011). 118 pp., $12.99.

– “Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit” by Paula Huston. Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame, Ind., 2011). 192 pp., $14.95.

– “A Place at the Table: 40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor” by Chris Seay. Baker Books (Ada., Mich., 2012).

208 pp., $13.99.

– “Lent with the Saints: Daily Reflections” by Greg Friedman, OFM. St. Anthony Messenger Press (Cincinnati, 2011). 96 pp., $3.99.

– “A Cardinal Newman Prayer Book: Heart to Heart”

by John Henry Newman, with foreword by Cyril O’Regan.

Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame, Ind., 2011). 288 pp., $15.95.

– “A Year with the Angels: Daily Meditations with the Messengers of God” by Mike Aquilina. St. Benedict Press (Charlotte, N.C., 2011). 365 pp., $44.95.

– “5 Minutes with Christ: Spiritual Nourishment for Busy Teachers,” edited by Lou DelFra, CSC, and Ann Primus Berends. Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame, Ind., 2011).

207 pp., $12.95.

– Catholic News Service

tribution of money but through the sharing of our time and talents.

The key to fruitful observance of these practices is to recognize their link to baptismal renewal. We are called not just to abstain from sin during Lent, but to true conversion of our hearts and minds as followers of Christ. We recall those waters in which we were baptized into Christ’s death, died to sin and evil, and began new life in Christ - USCCB

Almsgiving

Pope Benedict XVI is pictured at the Vatican Feb. 8.

Communion

Lent marks renewed effort to bring Catholics back home

Lent summons faithful to justice, mercy, courage

Why go to confession? That is perhaps the biggest question many Catholics have about the sacrament of reconciliation. Just one quarter of Catholics go to confession once a year or more, according to the latest poll numbers.

During Lent the churches and schools of the Archdiocese of San Francisco increase opportunities for the sacrament of reconciliation, with communal penance services and individual confession. The Catholic Church requires each Catholic go to confession at least once a year.

Many people ask why they should confess their sins to a priest when they already pray directly to God, said Jonathan Lewis, religious education director at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Mill Valley. Jesus meets us in a special way in the sacrament of reconciliation, Lewis said.

“The authority to forgive sins only lies in Jesus and Jesus passed on his own authority to forgive sins to the apostles,” said Lewis. Through the sacrament of holy orders, priests receive that authority.

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: “The risen Lord instituted this sacrament on the evening of Easter when he showed himself to his apostles and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:22-23).

“It’s not some kind of punishment,” Lewis said. “Jesus wants to be with us and the way he does that is through the sacraments.”

Pope Benedict XVI said March 25, 2011 that the sacrament helps ordinary people achieve holiness through the “faithful and generous availability of priests to hear confessions – after the example of the great saints of the past.”

Sister Celeste Arbuckle, a Sister of Social Service and archdiocesan director of religious education and youth ministry, said “the sacrament is important because it puts me ‘right’ with my neighbor and Jesus.”

Father Dan Nascimento, pastor of St. Brendan Parish in San Francisco, offers confession Wednesday mornings after the 7:15 a.m. Mass during Lent, as well as at other times, including Good Friday afternoon and Holy Saturday morning. “If you make it available, people come,” he said “It can be very powerful.”

Msgr. Labib Kobti, pastor of St. Thomas More Church in San Francisco, where confession is offered before and often during and after every weekend Mass, estimates the church’s priests hear between 150 and 250 confessions a week.

“To save a sinner there is a great joy in heaven, great joy in heaven for one sinner who comes back to God,” he said. “Every time, we have people who have never been to confession. They come back to church. Sometimes these are people who have been gone for 20, 30, 40 years. They see people in line and they say, ‘Who am I not to go?”

Priests must carefully control their reaction, including facial expressions and gestures, when hearing confession, Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court that handles issues related to the sacrament of penance, said in a Jan 28 article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

Penitents open their heart and soul to the confessor because they see him as being “God’s minister, and if instead they find in him severity, not mercy, or doubts and obscurity, and not the light of truth, they will have been truly deceived,” the bishop said, according to a Catholic News Service report.

Just as they have during the season of Advent in recent years, some U.S. dioceses make concerted efforts at Lent to invite Catholics who have stopped going to church back into the fold.

Some dioceses have reported success with the “Catholics Come Home” campaign, while others have set their focus on using the sacrament of reconciliation during Lent to draw Catholics back who have drifted away from the practice of their faith.

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, which this year is Feb. 22. A day of fast and abstinence, it is not a holy day of obligation, but is one of the top three solemn occasions in the church that draws the biggest crowds.

Catholics Come Home, an organization based in the Atlanta suburbs, has been used in 33 dioceses with television commercials reaching an estimated 40 million viewers in regional Lenten and Christmas campaigns – and 250 million in national campaigns, said the organization’s founder and president, Tom Peterson.

Not all dioceses have before-and-after numbers, but “in those dioceses that have had historical census data and have been able to track since Catholics Come Home, Mass attendance has increased an average of 10 percent,” Peterson said.

Peterson told Catholic News Service that a campaign can be undertaken “that would be bringing souls home for about $11 apiece – a pretty good investment, in my view.”

The Diocese of Colorado Springs, Colo., used Catholics Come Home for “two or three years” when the program was still in its infancy, said Bishop Michael J. Sheridan.

“It was as successful as anything I had ever seen. I’m glad to see it’s gone national,” Bishop Sheridan said. “Pastors tell me that they’re in the confessional for hours, more than their regularly scheduled time. People will come, and they’ll sit in there for two or three hours to hear confessions. It’s clear that people want to get reconciled with God and the church. Many are regular faithful Catholics.

Others are returning to the practice of their faith after many years.”

The Archdiocese of Boston worked with Catholics Come Home last year during Lent, said Scot Landry, the archdiocese’s secretary for Catholic media.

Landry said he worked with Catholics Come Home last Lent, having Six-year-old Luke Likoudis receives ashes first gotten in touch with from Father John Tokaz during a 2011 Ash the apostolate in 2008, Wednesday Mass at St. James the Apostle after “somebody sent me Church in Trumansburg, N.Y. a link to their first commercial, and I thought I was the best presentation of the Catholic faith I had seen in just two minutes.”

Catholics Come Home served as a successor to “Arise Together in Christ,” an archdiocesan initiative that had finished the year before.

The markers for success are “a little bit higher here,” Landry told CNS. “Some folks are disgusted by the Catholic Church here.” The archdiocese was the epicenter of the clergy sexual abuse scandal that broke 10 years ago. In addition, by the middle of the 2000s, the archdiocese had to close or consolidate dozens of parishes.

“Many Catholics held their head low here for many years,” Landry said.

“But with the frequency of the commercials that were aired, they started saying, ‘Gee, I didn’t know the church had been involved in all this for all these years.’”

Although the archdiocese didn’t track the effects statistically, it asked pastors for the feedback they were getting from parishioners. “Those that were already coming to church felt that this campaign was a huge boost to their Catholic identify and their morale.”

We all know Lent is about more than giving up candy.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco is again participating in Catholic Relief Services’ Operation Rice Bowl as a way to help and identify with the poor and hungry. Seventy-five percent of the money raised will go to the U.S. bishops’ international relief agency and 25 percent will remain in the archdiocese, where the funds will be distributed to local Catholic food banks, said George Wesolek, director of the archdiocesan Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns.

Families are urged to prepare a simple meatless meal once a week and donate the money saved to Operation Rice Bowl. Trademark cardboard boxes are being distributed for contributions with a check to be written to CRS at the conclusion of Lent. Recipes for meals reflecting the diet of poor countries are posted on the crs.org website.

“Operation Rice Bowl is a great opportunity to reach out to those in developing countries who oftentimes live on less than $1 a day. It educates those who participate on conditions in lands far away,” said Wesolek.

“When people don’t have enough food across the world, then out of compassion for them having a simple meal or giving up something we’re accustomed to is a great reminder for us as a family,” said Anne McMahon, a parishioner at St. Martin of Tours in San Jose, in a story posted on the CRS website.

Fasting, almsgiving and prayer are at the heart of the Catholic Church’s primary penitential season Pope Benedict XVI reminded Catholics in his message for Lent, released in a Feb. 7 letter.

“In a world which demands of Christians a renewed witness of love and fidelity to the Lord, may all of us feel the urgent need to anticipate one another in charity, service and good works,” the pope said. “We should never be incapable of showing mercy toward those who suffer.”

“This is a favorable time to renew our journey of faith, both as individuals and as a community, with the help of the word of God and the sacraments,” the pope said. “This journey is one marked by prayer and sharing, silence and fasting, in anticipation of the joy of Easter.”

Operation Rice Bowl materials will be distributed at many parishes after weekend masses and will be available to Catholic schools, but may also be requested from the Office for Public Policy and Social Concerns, ramirezv@sfarchdiocese.org.

Lent reminds Catholics not only of their responsibility for communion, compassion and sharing of the sufferings of those in need but also for one another’s moral and spiritual good, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, said at the Vatican Feb. 7 in introducing Pope Benedict XVI’s 2012 Lenten message.

“We cannot overlook the fact that a certain ideology which exalts the rights of the individual can have the consequence of creating isolation and solitude,” he said. “When the call to communion is denied in the name of individualism it is our humanity that suffers, deceived by the impossible mirage of a happiness obtainable alone. Therefore we can help one another by discovering our reciprocal responsibility the one for the other.”

The cardinal added, “The church’s activity in the modern world must also be seen in the light of fraternal correction in truth and charity. Sometimes it is thought that the church’s concerns, her tenacious resistance to certain fashionable ideas, are moved by thirst or nostalgia for power. This is not the case. The church is moved by a sincere concern for mankind and for the world. Her activities are not moved by a desire to condemn or recriminate, but by a justice and mercy which must also have the courage to call things by their name. Only in this way can we expose the roots of evil, which continue to intrigue the mind of modern man. This task of the church is called prophetic mission.”

In the Old Testament, Cardinal Sarah explained, “a prophet was a man called and sent by God to announce his will to the people. ... Clearly the call for greater social justice is part of mission of the church,” which “cannot remain silent in the face of the fact that too many people die because they lack basic necessities while others grow rich exploiting their fellows. Yet the prophetic dimension of our words and deeds cannot be limited to these external phenomena without going to the moral roots of these injustices. Corruption, accumulation of riches, violence, unduly living at the expense of the commonwealth without contributing are all tumors that consume a society from within.

“Nor can we remain silent ... about the fact that the roots of the current financial crisis lie in greed, unrestrained and unscrupulous thirst for money without considering those who have less and who must bear the consequences of the mistaken choices of others,” Cardinal Sarah said. “Such attachment to money is a sin, and the church is prophetic in her condemnation of that sin, which harms both individuals and society.”

He said the church is a prophet in this world to denounce the absence of God. “Our secularized society lives and organizes itself without reference to God because it is affected by a poverty more tragic even than material want; a poverty represented by the rejection and complete exclusion of God from social and economic life, by the revolt against divine and natural laws,” the cardinal said.

He said the primary responsibility of the church is to remind each generation that this spiritual dimension is vital.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, “The prophet of today must tell the president of the Pontifical world that God exists, that without this Council Cor Unum Father who stirs us to solidarity and sharing life dies and fraternity dissolves into empty Utopia, that man has a supernatural vocation, that we have a conscience in which the voice of God speaks and to which we must one day respond.”

Cardinal Sarah said the pope’s message “aims to awaken people’s consciences with respect to the rights and duties of our fellows, but also with respect to our duties toward the ‘rights’ of God. All this comes about in the context of Christian communion ruled by the principle of reciprocity and fraternal correction, with a view to the temporal good of mankind and his eschatological salvation.”

–Valerie Schmalz

– Catholic News Service

– Valerie Schmalz

– Vatican Information Service

Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh hears a young woman’s confession prior to the March for Life in Washington, D.C., Jan. 23.

A good time to go to confession

(CNS PHOTO/NANCY WIECHEC)

Lenten regulations

Conversion

(CNS PHOTO/MIKE CRUPI, CATHOLIC COURIER)

Liturgical calendar

The three traditional pillars of Lenten observance are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The church asks us to surrender ourselves to prayer and to the reading of Scripture, to fasting and to giving alms. The fasting that all do together on Fridays is but a sign of the daily Lenten discipline of individuals and households: fasting for certain periods of time, fasting from certain foods, but also fasting from other things and activities. Likewise, the giving of alms is some effort to share this world equally – not only through the dis-

Brendan Angelotti, 9, sets the table for a Lenten dinner at his home in Centreville, Va., in this 2009 file photo. The Angelotti family has made Operation Rice Bowl, a nationwide Catholic almsgiving program, a centerpiece of the family table during Lent.

Operation Rice Bowl: Lenten solidarity with world’s hungry

(CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING)

Our observance of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, a day of fast and abstinence for Catholics. At Mass on Ash Wednesday, the imposition of ashes replicates an ancient penitential practice and symbolizes our dependence upon God’s mercy and forgiveness.

During Lent, the baptized are called to renew their baptismal commitment as others prepare to be baptized through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, a period of learning and discernment for individuals who have declared their desire to become Catholics.

(CNS PHOTO/GREGORY A. SHEMITZ)

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

Archbishop’s Journal

Catholic Healthcare West becomes Dignity Health: What does it mean?

In late January 2012 Catholic Healthcare West, a San Francisco-based health care system that operates 25 Catholic and 15 non-Catholic hospitals, announced that it had changed its governance structure and name, and would henceforth be known as Dignity Health. Several media headlines proclaimed that CHW undertook this action in order to “pare its ties with the church” in a “quest to grow.”

Some of these reports implied that Catholic bishops had approved such a result. These headlines and the stories that accompanied them have left many Catholics and the larger public with the mistaken impression that CHW’s Catholic hospitals had become secular health care facilities. This is not the case. I am writing to clarify the situation.

Some time ago, the bishops of the United States determined that Catholic hospital systems may not operate non-Catholic hospitals that do not follow all of the Church’s moral and doctrinal teachings. While CHW’s Catholic hospitals are expected to follow the church’s moral teachings, it’s non-Catholic hospitals were brought into the system under a different protocol that required them to follow Church teaching on abortion, assisted suicide and several other procedures, but allowed them to perform direct sterilizations, which the church does not permit. This arrangement was unsustainable because, among other important things, it was confusing for patients, their families, health care workers, church leaders and others, as they couldn’t be certain whether a hospital bearing the name Catholic Healthcare West was Catholic or non-Catholic.

In February 2011, in my capacity as the archbishop of the diocese in which CHW’s home office is located, I initiated discussions with representatives of the six orders of sisters that sponsored CHW to determine how this situation could be corrected. Earlier, in November 2009, the sisters and CHW’s board and management had begun their own examination of the problem and had formulated a proposed restructuring of CHW’s governance.

Under this proposal, CHW would no longer be a sponsored ministry of the Catholic Church – that is, it would become a secular nonprofit health care system governed by a self-perpetuating board, and would change its name to reflect that reality.

The new system would operate both Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals, and the six orders of sisters would, within the new system, continue to sponsor and retain important controls over the Catholic hospitals. The Catholic hospitals would be required to follow all of the church’s moral and social teachings; the non-Catholic hospitals would continue to follow their ethical protocol,

A move to clearly identify hospitals governed by U.S. bishops’ health care directives, and an opportunity to strengthen the historic Catholic character of 25 hospitals sponsored by religious orders. which, as noted above, does not allow them to perform direct abortions and certain other procedures. The sisters would be able to veto any proposed changes to this protocol.

The sisters who sponsored CHW expressed their conviction that while this proposal would regrettably end their sponsorship of the overall system, it nevertheless would enable them to continue sponsoring their Catholic hospitals, and continue to exercise a vital Catholic evangelical influence on the new system’s mission and culture. At the sisters’ request, their proposal became an important focus of our nearly nine-month-long dialogue.

During this time, I engaged several Catholic moral theologians to analyze the sisters’ proposal in terms of its effect on the Catholic identity and ethical integrity of

Catholic san Francisco

CHW’s Catholic hospitals, and consulted widely with both the bishops that have CHW facilities in their dioceses and the chairman Archbishop of the U.S. Conference George of Catholic Bishops’ Task Force on Health Niederauer Care. I also retained a nationally respected health care consultant to examine the proposal against other possible structures.

Based on these analyses and consultations, late last fall, I determined that the proposed restructuring is consistent with Catholic moral and doctrinal teachings and that the sponsors and their Catholic hospitals are, therefore, free to participate in it. I need to emphasize that my finding that the restructuring is consistent with church teaching does not imply that I, or any other bishop, believes it is necessarily the best possible arrangement for the sister sponsors and their Catholic hospitals, only that I found no moral reason to object to it.

Will the new arrangement work? Will the sister sponsors be able to sustain and strengthen the Catholic character of their 25 hospitals and exercise a profound evangelical influence on Dignity Health’s culture and its non-Catholic hospitals? Given the enormous challenges facing today’s Catholic hospitals, no one can answer that question with certainty; only time and careful observation will tell. The sisters, whose hospitals have been caring for the poor and sick in the Western United States for over 150 years, are firmly committed both to achieving these ministerial goals and maintaining effective relations and regular communication with the bishops in each of the dioceses in which they sponsor hospitals. I have assured them of my lasting gratitude for their Christian service and my commitment to help them measure and evaluate their progress as they proceed on this arduous, uncertain journey. Most important, I have also assured them of my prayers. They, and I, welcome yours.

’06 sisters’ mystery solved Readers who saw my letter to the editor in Catholic San Francisco Nov. 11, 2011, responded generously with clues to help me identify the two nuns who are waiting to board a cable car in front of the Ferry Building. The images come from a short, silent film made four days before the great earthquake and fire of 1906.

Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

The great struggle before us Re Father Robert Barron, “Secular totalitarianism” (Guest Commentary, Feb. 10): In his commentary on the new health care law Father Barron uses a phrase that I have not heard before: “liberal totalitarians.” It sounds quite insidious and possibly satanic. He names two journalists for Chicago newspapers arguing for women’s rights and calls them and their ilk “liberal totalitarians.” He then rightly speaks of demonization.

This demonization is the process whereby instead of using our God-given reason, logic and language to discuss and make our case we simply label the other as evil and dismiss their arguments out of hand.

Our opponents, once “demonized,” can never be accepted or forgiven by us or treated as Jesus told us we must treat our enemies. We see our-

selves as pure, unwilling to compromise and self-righteous about it. The other then becomes all that we are not – dark, evil, wrong. We see this every day on TV news and in the stunted political battles of ideology and base emotional appeals to groups for political power. Therefore, let the first commandment of human discussion and discourse be: “Do not demonize the other.” If both sides, or multiple sides, would observe this commandment then we could see more light and understanding emerge from discussion and dialogue and less anger and hatred being exchanged.

Churchmen should of course aim higher, much higher, than demonizing when seeking to instruct and persuade their audience. They should pursue a larger, more enlightened and inclusive vision.

In America, God has created a special challenge for all of us.

We are a large, diverse and democratic country. We cannot just dismiss or get rid of the others whom we disagree with using some totalitarian solution. Rather we must seek to enlarge our collective consciousness to embrace the whole and rise to a higher level of understanding where the sacred and the profane, left and right, can all exist in a human and dynamic whole. This is not weakness or wishful thinking but rather LETTERS, page 15

L E T T E R S

Letters welcome Catholic San Francisco One Peter Yorke Way San Francisco, CA 94109 Fax: (415) 614-5641 Email: delvecchior@sfarchdiocese.org, include “Letters” in the subject line.

Eventually I found better images of the two sisters from a much clearer version of the movie, which can be seen at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjNJXQcqx 90&feature=related Once clearer images were available, this 1887 photo of Mother Louis O’Donnell, a Dominican Sister of San Rafael, really started to ring some bells. The headpiece she wore seemed to match those of our 1906 “mystery sisters.”

I wrote to Sister Patricia Farrell of the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael. She did further research. After consulting with her community, she emailed the following on Feb. 8: (Editor’s note: Sister Patricia slightly modified her email for publication.)

Dear Brother Mark. We have decided. The sisters in the video are our sisters.

It is our veil, held with a shawl-like piece of fabric that the sisters used then to keep the veil from blowing off. The sisters also had floor-length black coats that buttoned, which in effect hid any sign of the white habit beneath. They wore a cloak over the coat. As to what looks like a cross, we believe that sister is holding a cane.

We have no way of determining which two sisters these are. They could very well be coming to San Francisco from San Rafael; St. Vincent’s School, Vallejo; or St. Catherine’s Academy, Benicia. We are the most likely sisters to be traveling to and from San Francisco on the ferry from those parts of the bay.

We will be showing this video to the sisters at our assembly in March.

Thank you for your persistence in finding us.

Sincerely in Dominic and Catherine, Sister Patricia Farrell, OP I’d like to thank all who helped. God bless you.

Brother Mark Folger, OFM Conv.

St. Paul of the Shipwreck Parish San Francisco

February 17, 2012

Catholic San Francisco

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Guest Commentary (CNS PHOTO/NANCY PHELAN WIECHEC)

Rescind the rule, restore liberty

By Bishop William E. Lori On Jan. 20, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that virtually all health plans provided by virtually all employers, including those affiliated with the Catholic Church, would now be forced to cover sterilization procedures, abortion inducing drugs, and contraception. Under the Obama administration’s unprecedented rule, the federal government would force the church to include these illicit “services” in many of its insurance plans and help cover their cost.

The immediate, popular uproar against this unacceptable infringement by the federal government on religious liberty is absolutely appropriate. For 2,000 years, the church has consistently taught that abortion and contraception are wrongs that strike right at the dignity of the human person. This is not a matter of the mere opinion of a few bishops or theologians. Now, the federal government would force the church to negotiate with insurance companies for this coverage, to purchase it and pay for actions it considers immoral. The question is not whether or not all Americans agree with the church’s teaching on these matters. The real question is whether or not the

The headquarters of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is seen in Washington Nov. 4, 2011.

church – as well as other religious bodies – should have the freedom to proclaim her teaching and to practice it in a nation founded on the right to religious liberty.

In the few days since the release of the HHS rule, protests against the administration’s infringement on religious liberty have united people of all faiths and people of good will across America. The impact is real. So now there are rumors of a possible “compromise.” If the name of the compromise is referral, it may run something like this: “We won’t make you include these services in your health plans, and you might not even have to pay for them. All you have

to do is tell folks where they can go to get them. Just refer them to a local provider, and that should do it.”

Hawaii is used as an example.

In that state, employers are mandated to cover contraception (though not sterilization), and there is a slightly broader religious exemption, but it also imposes certain requirements on those who would claim the exemption: They must provide written notification to employees of other ways they can directly access coverage for, or obtain, such procedures “in an expeditious manner.”

If such a solution were proposed, it would not address the basic problem – that of the law forcing religious entities into actions they consider immoral. The church cannot, even reluctantly, provide information, make arrangements for, facilitate, counsel or instruct people on how to obtain these immoral procedures. To do so would be to participate in the violation of the moral law and thus to act against conscience.

And so religious liberty remains front and center. The church must have the freedom to refuse to cooperate in any way in making these “services” available. It comes down to this: If we provide the means for another to act against the moral law, we ourselves become morally culpable as well.

We simply cannot and will not do that. The doctor simply cannot say, “Well, I will not kill your unborn child but let me send you to Dr. Smith who will.” Referral under these conditions is simply wrong.

The best solution is this: Restore religious liberty by rescinding the mandate.

Bishop William E. Lori is bishop of Bridgeport, Conn.

Spirituality for Life

On mourning and dancing Henri Nouwen used to publish some of his diaries under the title “On Mourning and Dancing.” The title was wholly appropriate since those diaries chronicled much of his own struggle to give public expression to what was bubbling up inside of him and, at the same time, respect a highly sensitive self-consciousness and reticence that made him hesitate to publicly express those same feelings. And so his writings are a rare expression of both inner freedom and inner fear. His thoughts and feelings are sometimes tortured, but that’s what makes them rich.

It’s not always easy to find that delicate balance between healthy self-expression and unhealthy exhibitionism, even if you are Henri Nouwen – or perhaps especially if you are Henri Nouwen.

The struggle to find a way to express oneself freely and deeply and yet not cross the line into unhealthy exhibitionism is a tough task for everyone. You see it done well in rare cases, Jesus and a number of great people like Mother Teresa. They can be great without being grandiose and can give public expression to what’s most intimate within them without making you cringe or feel uncomfortable or embarrassed for them. But that’s a rare talent; check out any dance floor.

How someone dances is often an indication of the kind of balance he or she has been able to achieve on this. Sometimes you see a healthy dancer who exhibits no inhibiting self-consciousness and, at the same time, no excessive self-focus or self-abandonment. A healthy

Letters . . .

■ Continued from page 14 the great struggle of mankind that God has set before us. This is the mountain we must struggle to climb up or stumble upon and fall back down into darkness, cursing. This health care kerfuffle is a difficult needle to thread but it must be done and calls for the concentrated effort and wisdom of all of us to do it. Totalitarians of either side could of course settle it in a stroke. I keep hearing people calling America “exceptional.” Well, here is our chance to rise up and prove ourselves exceptional or die trying.

Mike Burns Tiburon

Fundraising pastor inspires Your article (“Pastor excels at fundraising,” Jan. 27) on Father Brian Costello as fundraiser was true. First and foremost, though, hopefully he is also known for the love he shows to everyone, for his

dancer’s movements have an easy, natural flow that draws your eyes and attention to the dance and not to the dancer.

Moreover, even in the dance, a healthy dancer is still recognizably the person you know and not some impersonal, anonymous energy that is acting out in a dance. But it’s hard to dance well.

More often than not someone’s dance step is colored by his or her inner struggle and by where his or her internal compass has been set: Too self-aware, too cautious, too fearful, and we see a dance step that is reticent, halting and apologetic. Conversely, too little self-awareness and we see a dance step that’s free and uninhibited but which manifests an unhealthy exhibitionism. Sometimes our dance step reveals too little, just as sometimes our dance step reveals too much and we cross a line where self-expression becomes acting out and people see an unhealthy narcissism and self-abandonment in our dance step and are embarrassed for us.

And this, our struggle to dance well, mirrors another tension inside us, namely, the struggle between depression and inflation, between feeling too high or feeling too low.

Just as a healthy dance step is not easy to achieve so too is a healthy psyche, one within which our energies flow freely but without unhealthy narcissism or exhibitionism.

The problem is that we are forever being pulled up or down, over-stimulated in our grandiosity or undervalued in being. Both can leave us less than steady.

Life is hard for everyone, particularly if you are

forgiving spirit, for his example of being a true follower of Christ and last, but not least, his relevant and inspiring homilies.

Thank you.

Catherine Berriatua Mater Dolorosa Parish South San Francisco

Joy of Christ’s friendship “Evangelize with joy” (Feb. 3): What a wonderful, enriching column by Father Robert Barron. For much of my life, I had a perception of God as some sort of cosmic bookkeeper, painstakingly noting each of my numerous sins and occasionally offsetting some of them with my rare good deeds or works. It is only relatively recently that I have come to comprehend the passage, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

Father Barron speaks of the radiating sense of the joy that comes from a friendship with Christ and the infinite good of God that satisfies the deepest longing of the human heart. He states that ethics and a good life are the natural result for one

trying to live in a way that respects others even as you try to honor your own energies. If you are healthily sensitive it will always be a struggle: How do you properly honor, act out, and celebrate your own more exuFather Ron berant energies in ways Rolheiser that fully respect others and don’t cross any moral or aesthetic lines? Not an easy formula. Too little allowance for exuberance and you will find yourself overly reticent, tongue-tied, frustrated, sterile and dealing with a lot of anger; too much unchecked exuberance and you will act out in ways that embarrass you and embarrass others.

And so we should accept this struggle as a given and not be too hard on others and ourselves. We’re human and so we need to forgive each other and ourselves for being uptight and halting in our dance steps, even as we forgive others and ourselves for the acting out we’ve done on those same dance floors. There are very few free, fully healthy persons in this world. Nobody dances perfectly.

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

who has caught the zest of Christian life and finishes with, “First the joy, then the ethics.”

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).

Nick Scales San Francisco

Supporting archbishop’s stand We are proud to support Archbishop Niederauer and his opposition to the new federal rule that forces us to do things that go against our religious liberty (“Archbishop urges flock to fight ‘alarming’ religious liberty threat,” Feb. 10). As was said by another, “In many ways, thanks to President Obama, we are all Catholics now!” No matter what our religious preference we are Americans and one of our basic rights is to observe our religious values without the government telling us what we have to do. The administration is so wrong in putting this edict out. Enough is enough! We cannot

accept action which goes against our basic beliefs and the rights given to us by our Constitution and, more important, God. Bob and Jinx Larive San Francisco

Health care is personal choice Re U.S. bishops’ objection to the proposed federal rule regarding health insurance coverage of reproductive services: The bishops assert the right to force taboos on their workers that have been rejected by the vast majority of its employees. This is antithetical to the concept of liberty espoused by the father of our American Revolution, Thomas Paine.

His call for independence in “Common Sense” was to free Americans from the dictates of kings and aristocrats and to democratically enact rules of our own choosing. This concept of liberty requires that employees and not their employer have the right to choose whether they will use contraceptives.

Terry Lyle Modesto

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Catholic San Francisco

A READING FROM THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH IS 43:18-19, 21-22, 24B-25 Thus says the Lord: Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers. The people I formed for myself, that they might announce my praise. Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob, for you grew weary of me, O Israel. You burdened me with your sins, and wearied me with your crimes. It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM PS 41:2-3, 4-5, 13-14 Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.

Blessed is the one who has regard for the lowly and the poor; in the day of misfortune the Lord will deliver him.

The Lord will keep and preserve him; and make him blessed on earth, and not give him over to the will of his enemies.

Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.

The Lord will help him on his sickbed, he will take away all his ailment when he is ill.

Mark’s story describes four men who haul their paralyzed friend or family member to Jesus. But this story is unlike the typical ritualized healing scene where Jesus speaks to the sick person, lays hands on him, and says, “Your faith has saved you.”

By contrast, the healing here is like a scene from muscle beach, with hearty, strong friends lugging a man on a stretcher, pushing their way toward the house where Jesus is. Despite the gang of them, they can’t get through to the front.

The intensity of their physical task is underplayed by the laconic “they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.” Like medics in a war zone, the four improvise a way to get their patient to a place as near as possible to Jesus because they want him treated immediately.

Here, the ambulance crew of four moves the patient by stretcher. Their own physical vigor is akin to a team of nurses, doctors and orderlies in urgent care. They don’t waste time being polite or asking the owner of the house for permission to create another entry way. They probably go up the side stairs of a house. The four now join forces as a demolition crew; they break through the roof. They hack at the mud plaster to expose the thin crossbeams of wood, pull some of the wood slats out, rip out the straw compacted with

February 17, 2012

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Isaiah 43:18-19, 21-22, 24b-25; Psalm 41:2-3, 4-5, 13-14; 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Mark 2:1-12 Once I said, “O Lord, have pity on me; heal me, though I have sinned against you.”

Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.

But because of my integrity you sustain me and let me stand before you forever.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from all eternity. Amen. Amen.

Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.

A READING FROM THE SECOND LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS 2 COR 1:18-22 Brothers and sisters: As God is faithful, our

word to you is not “yes” and “no.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed to you by us, Silvanus and Timothy and me, was not “yes” and “no, “ but “yes” has been in him.

For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him; therefore, the Amen from us also goes through him to God for glory.

But the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.

A READING FROM THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK MK 2:1-12 When Jesus returned to Capernaum after

Scripture reflection SISTER ELOISE ROSENBLATT

Jesus heals spiritual paralysis mud, and finally, they let the stretcher down right in front of Jesus.

So what healing does Jesus do? Which is easier to say: “Your sins are forgiven” or “Take up your mat and walk”? Isn’t this embarrassing, to call a paralyzed man a sinner? The logic is that Jesus first restores the man’s dignity and rescues him from the shaming that seems endemic in every religious culture: You are sick, paralyzed or disabled as a punishment for sin. It’s a primi-

tive notion of divine retribution: Since you did something bad, something bad happens to you.

The first healing Jesus does, then, is to relieve a paralyzing idea in people’s heads.

So he says, “Your sins are forgiven,” which means, “You aren’t a sinner; you are not a bad person; you are not paralyzed because of any sins you have.” What a relief for the man. He is exonerated from any shame or guilt that has immobilized him relationally.

some days, it became known that he was at home. Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them, not even around the door, and he preached the word to them. They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.

Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd, they opened up the roof above him.

After they had broken through, they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”

Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves, “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?” Jesus immediately knew in his mind what they were thinking to themselves, so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?

Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk?’ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth” -he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” He rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”

The second healing is the “Arise.” Jesus encourages him to pick up his own mat and walk. It’s time to unstiffen, get up, become independent and get moving on his own. We can interpret this spiritually, too. Picking up your mat can symbolize the achievement of personal freedom that comes after an arduous process of self-development and recovery from alcoholism, addiction, sexual abuse or incarceration.

At the end, when the paralyzed man is walking on his own, and everyone is astonished, there’s still a mess to clean up. Everyone else was happy, but did the owner’s wife despair as she saw the property damage? What a pile of mud clods, straw, broken beams and dust all over the floor. Who was going to clean this up?

So we have to consider the “after-care” aspect of this healing account. Healing in the spirit of Jesus means looking not just at the miracle done for an individual, but at the needs of those who care for the sick. Someone has to take care of the caretakers. Those four husky, burned-out friends were probably pretty thirsty after their effort, and glad for some down-time.

Mercy Sister Eloise Rosenblatt, Ph.D., is a theologian and an attorney in private practice in San Jose.

Question Corner

Baptisms during Lent; too much contrition?

Question: Why, if we truly are children of a loving Father, does the Catholic Church push so much guilt on us? I have been faithful to my spouse. I’ve tried my best to raise my children in the Catholic faith. I’m honest and hardworking.

I go to Mass and receive Communion every Sunday. Unless illness prevents me, I support my parish and I respect people of all races, colors and religions.

Why is it, then, that in the Mass we have prayers of guilt and repentance? How many times a day do I have to say “I’m sorry,” and why am I “unworthy” to receive Communion?

(Covington, Ga.) Answer: The stock answer to this question has two elements. First, it’s the reminder that God is perfect and we are not (Proverbs 24:16: Though the just fall seven times, they rise again) and that we are forever in need of God’s forgiveness and strength.

It would then be pointed out that the Eucharist is a prize of infinite value – standing, as it does, that Jesus died and rose for us and now offers himself to us in intimate friendship – and that we should never consider ourselves worthy of such surpassing generosity.

But your question is well-reasoned, deeply felt and deserves further comment. I’m wondering whether your dismay has been triggered by the revised language of the confiteor in the new translation of the Roman Missal.

If so, I can understand your concern, and a brief history lesson might help. An ancient Christian document called the “Didache” noted that the early Christians gathered for Eucharist on the Lord’s Day “after first confessing their sins.”

For centuries, the confiteor was the private prayer of the

priest and the servers. It was recited at the foot of the altar as Mass began. With the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, when language moved to the vernacular and the confiteor was extended to the assembly, its wording was softened to reflect a contemporary spirituality.

It sought to balance a healthy self-regard with a proper humility in the face of human weakness.

Perhaps the latest English version of the confiteor tips the balance too far back in the direction of self-flagellation.

I sometimes wonder, as I look out at a Sunday congregation, how many of them are really guilty of “most grievous fault.”

I prefer the wording of other options for the penitential rite, especially the one that highlights that God sent Jesus “to heal the contrite of heart.” It asks for the Lord’s promised mercy.

As for the protestation of our unworthiness just before Communion, those words reflect the faith of the centurion (in the eighth chapter of Matthew) who has complete trust in Christ’s power to save his dying servant.

Question: During Lent, our parish does not perform the sacrament of baptism, and holy water is removed from the fonts. Is this proper and is it required? (Swedesboro, N.J.) Answer: No church law prohibits baptisms during Lent, and the matter is up to local discretion. A fair number of parishes choose not to do Lenten baptisms. Canon 856 of the Code of Canon Law says that baptisms should ordinarily be done on Sundays or, if possible, at the Easter Vigil.

This guideline is based on the intimate link between Christian baptism and the saving resurrection of Jesus. Some pastors make the judgment that once Lent has begun, it is reasonable to delay the baptism of a healthy infant until Easter to

highlight that connection.

The baptisms of adult converts are almost always done at the Easter Vigil ceremony.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that infants should be baptized “shortly after birth” (No. Father 1250) and Canon No. Kenneth Doyle 867 is a bit more specific, noting that “parents are obliged to take care that infants are baptized in the first few weeks” after birth.

“Shortly” and “few” are seen by some pastors as an opportunity to wait until Easter, once Lent has begun. An infant in danger of death should, of course, be baptized immediately, as Canon No. 867 points out.

As for removing the holy water from fonts, I suppose that if baptisms are delayed until Easter, it makes some sense to empty the baptismal font to signify the “dryness” of the Lenten desert experience before the life-giving joy of Easter.

But I would argue against it if the baptismal font doubles as a holy water font where people sign themselves with water when they enter church.

Father Doyle’s column is carried by Catholic News Service. Send questions to Father Kenneth Doyle askfatherdoyle@gmail.com and 40 Hopewell St., Albany, N.Y. 12208.

February 17, 2012

Catholic San Francisco

17

Guest Commentary

By Father Kenneth Weare BRUSSELS, Belgium – The last week of January witnessed the gathering of the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland. The freezing temperatures and falling snow were more than a weather report. It forecast the economic mood among the corporate giants, the politically powerful and all vestiges of the so-called 1 percent.

There were professors, purveyors and pundits who ventured to speak in positive terms of a turnaround recovery.

But their seemingly collective naivete vanished. The likes of Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve; Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank; and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, all reaffirmed their commonly shared pessimistic view that the economic recovery from the 2008 crisis will take far longer than initially thought, and further into the future, perhaps into 2015 and beyond. For now, as Lagarde lamented, the economic reality for the eurozone and for the world is “uncertain and dangerous.”

In Davos, as well as in Brussels the following week as the 27 European Union heads of state gathered in continued discussion, the underlying question – bigger than any elephant in any room – remained: “What is the future of capitalism?”

It was in Los Angeles, a few weeks ago, that Octavia Spencer received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as a housekeeper in civil rights-era Mississippi, in the social justice film “The Help.” In her acceptance speech, she honored domestic workers both past and present, as she quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying, “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance.”

In Rome, a few days before, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the meaning of such justice. “Justice,” he said, “is not a mere human convention. When, in the name of supposed justice, the criteria of utility, profit and material possession come to dominate, the value and dignity of human beings can be trampled underfoot.”

The economy and labor have been the overarching concerns of people at all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum, from the 1 percent to the 99 percent.

Not choosing to remain silent in the face of society’s growing economic crisis, the Catholic bishops of the European nations entered the fray Jan. 12, publishing a 25-page position paper on the concept of what they term a “social market economy.”

“Solidarity and responsibility” as economic principles The bishops of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, based here in Brussels, considered at length how most effectively to respond to the current economic and financial crisis affecting Europe, and by extension the rest of the world. They recommend and urge the European Union to become “a viable ‘Community of Solidarity and Responsibility.’”

The foundations for the phrase “social market economy” are historically based in Europe’s philosophical, religious, and specifically Christian tradition. While it is more commonly utilized in the German-speaking nations, it is also used in other countries including those on other continents. In Vietnam, for example, the phrase used is a “socially oriented market economy.”

In a contemporary perspective, a social market economy usually is understood to mean that the free and competitive market is positioned in the context of the principle of solidarity for the purpose of advancing greater social equality, achieved through the role of the state.

Key to understanding the cultural underpinnings of the social market economy is “the recognition that life is an inalienable gift.” The predominant idea is that Christian theology has decisively modified the earlier philosophical notion of justice by a “belief in the fundamental equal worth of all people and the commandment to love of neighbor.”

From this the bishops argue that the concept of social justice to which this gives rise “is first and foremost geared toward the dignity which is equal for all people.”

Gift, then, refers to the free activity exercised as a function of solidarity. Such free action, together with the role of the state, is essential. The bishops explain: “Assistance rendered to others as a free form of active love and solidarity – not motivated by obligation, with no expectation of receiving anything in return immediately or directly, and which often has its origin in religious faith – must not be stifled, either through bureaucratic forms of state solidarity or through market solutions motivated by short-term considerations.”

The bishops do affirm that organized in the right ethical

way, a market economy “can be a place for interactions that create relationships.” Similarly, from a practical point of view, they note that markets need to be economically efficient so that governments can receive the revenue necessary to provide for social welfare needs.

Following in the line of modern Catholic social teaching, the bishops straightforwardly criticize any economic model that focuses solely on the accumulation of capital.

They emphasize that such a profit oriented economic model “threatens to overshadow the social and ecological dimensions of quality of life, which often cannot be directly expressed in monetary terms, and ignores the impact of economic activity on others, especially the generations to come.”

In addressing the issue of economic and financial reform, the bishops speak positively, at least in the long term, of developing what they and others have called “a true world political authority with supranational structures and institutions … (that) should show due regard for the principles of justice and ecological responsibility.”

In short, the bishops are calling for an economic reform that embodies institutional and professional ethics, authentic morality and genuine virtue.

The Catholic bishops of Europe are well within the prophetic vision of Catholic social teaching. They are also European – that is, they have an historic economic development recognizably distinct from that of Great Britain and North America.

The European challenge to individualism It is important to recall, at least in general terms, that a free market or neoliberal capitalism dates back to the Protestant Reformation. The rise individualism sustained through the centuries has permeated both economic activity and religious practice. Church became defined as a collection of individual persons functioning for their salvation apart from other individuals. As one commentator noted: “Adam Smith, in the spirit of the Presbyterian skepticism of the Scottish Enlightenment, stated that when some individual engaged in business purely to make a profit for himself, he would, by the action of ‘an invisible hand’ (the hand of God), provide a benefit to society.”

In rebuilding Europe following World War II, politicians and economic leaders on the continent moved away from such self-centered individualism and looked for insight and inspiration from the developing Catholic social teaching’s communitarian principle of the common good as articulated by Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI. As a result, the European Union’s foundational ideals reject the goals and objectives of the kind of laissez faire capitalism practiced in the United Kingdom and the United States. Instead, they opted for the economic model of the social market economy.

It is precisely within this exact context that the beloved Blessed John Paul II spoke so aggressively against capitalism. He reflected on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, as well as the seminal encyclical of Pope Paul VI, “Populorum Progressio.” He recognized everything that made people poor: a lack of food, a lack of all the basic necessities of life, as well as a lack of freedom and all other human rights. He then proclaimed that it is the poor who will judge the rich. The poor, he said, “will judge those people who take these goods away from them, amassing to themselves the imperialistic monopoly of economic and political supremacy at the expense of others.”

The social market economy is one imbued with the virtues and values of Catholic tradition. It is created to be of service to the common good of all, in equality and freedom. It is achieved by a communal effort. Its goal is the common good. The goal is not exclusively profit, relying on some “invisible hand” to construct a social safety net.

Increasingly, the Occupy Wall Street movement has given voice in over 800 cities and towns worldwide to the rank and file condemnation of the 1 percent’s breakdown of the global banking system in 2008. Neoliberal capitalism is also blamed for the tragic array of sovereign debt crises that has forced European nations to seek bailouts sustained by dramatic and swift austerity measures impacting the socioeconomic life of their respective citizenry.

The judgment of economists and ordinary citizens, especially the poor and nearly poor, is that the whole economic crisis is the result of blatant personal and corporate greed as well as the fault of the very system itself, that is, the neoliberal economic model still dominant in the English-speaking world.

Austerity economics with such devastating cuts in public spending cannot generate the needed economic growth, as Paul Krugman and other noted economists have repeatedly argued. Instead, it creates more debt as the good citizens of Great Britain and elsewhere are now coming to realize.

(CNS PHOTO/TAMI CHAPPELL, REUTERS)

Toward a Catholic economy founded on equality, justice

A job seeker looks through job listings last Dec.1 in Atlanta. Congress has a “moral obligation” to help the unemployed and their families, Stockton Bishop Stephen E. Blaire said in a Dec. 12 letter to House members.

“Neoliberalism cannot deliver” The formidable foe remains the fortified wall of resistance by Wall Street and the City of London, in a nonnegotiable defense of the free-market neoliberal system that has so negatively impacted national economies and the common good for all peoples. As one astute commentator succinctly stated: “The flow of history is on the European side; neoliberalism cannot deliver, and the self-interested individualism that it depends upon and encourages is fast becoming a destructive social disease.”

It is not only the Catholic bishops of Europe who have included within their call for economic reform the idea of “a true world political authority with supranational structures and institutions.” In Rome, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has likewise recently called for just such a global public authority.

As one of the latest positive contributions of Catholic input in laying the foundation for creating a new economic model based on the heritage of Catholic social teaching, the pontifical council issued a 13-page document titled “Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.” The document received worldwide media attention and generated numerous and various responses. Of particular note was the council’s call for the establishment of a global public authority.

That call echoes the original proposal of Pope John XXIII in his 1963 prophetic encyclical “Pacem in Terris.” There he expressed the hope that someday “a true world political authority” would be created to serve the common good of all people.

Recognizing the complexity and political sensitivity of establishing such a supranational authority, the pontifical council recommends that a realistic structure should be created gradually. It should be inspired by the values of charity and truth, and “should be the outcome of a free and shared agreement and a reflection of the permanent and historic needs of the world common good.”

As we responsibly progress forward into a future of our making, Catholics and others in the United States might do well to once again review, reflect, and respond to the 1986 pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops, “Economic Justice for All.” At the very start of that increasingly relevant and important teaching document, the bishops state: “Our faith calls us to measure this economy, not only by what it produces, but also by how it touches human life and whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person.” They continue with the following challenge as a call to conversion and action: “Every perspective on economic life that is human, moral, and Christian must be shaped by three questions: What does the economy do for people? What does it do to people?

And, how do people participate in it?”

The Catholic time is now, to build a Catholic economy founded on equality, justice and the common good of all.

Father Kenneth Weare, Ph.D. is pastor of St. Rita Parish, Fairfax. He writes from Brussels during his academic sabbatical at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Leuven, Belgium, where he is engaged in research, writing and lecturing on the moral issues concerning the economy, the right to food and climate change.

18

Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

Innovation becomes tradition: 2011’s top 10 films, best family films Lonsdale) living in Algeria during that nation’s civil war in the 1990s. (A-III, PG-13).

In “The Way,� after his semi-estranged son (Emilio Estevez) dies while hiking the ancient pilgrimage route to the Spanish shrine of Santiago de Compostela, a California doctor (Martin Sheen) resolves to complete the journey as a means of honoring the lad’s memory. (A-III, PG-13).

And here are the 10 best films for families.

In “The Adventures of Tintin,� director Steven Spielberg’s visually sumptuous animated adaptation of Belgian cartoonist Herge’s famed comic books, the curiously coiffed young reporter (voiced by Jamie Bell) finds himself drawn into a centuries-old mystery. Themes congruent with Judeo-Christian values are advanced through sympathetic main characters, a screenplay faithful to its classic source material and envelope-pushing 3-D technology (A-I, PG).

Actor Samuel L. Jackson narrates “African Cats,� an impressive nature documentary charting the varied fortunes of a pride of lions and a clan of cheetahs. Directors Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill provide the whole family with a top-quality cinematic safari (A-I, G).

Director Joe Johnston’s comic book adaptation “Captain America: The First Avenger� relates the origins story of the superhero (Chris Evans) with a complete absence of cynicism and a crackling undercurrent of dry wit (A-II, PG-13). “Cars 2,� director John Lasseter’s winsome sequel, sees a veteran racecar (voice of Owen Wilson) competing against a cocky Italian speedster (voice of John Turturro) in the first-ever World Grand Prix. (A-I, G).

In “Gnomeo & Juliet, “it’s love at first ceramic clink for two garden gnomes – voiced by Emily Blunt and James McAvoy.

Director Kelly Asbury’s clever animated comedy offers wholesome fun for the entire family (A-I, G).

Vivid animation and a ringing endorsement of the traditional family combine to make director and co-writer Simon Wells’ endearing adventure “Mars Needs Moms� a film kids can enjoy and parents will appreciate. (A-I, PG).

Kermit the Frog (voice of Steve Whitmire) and Jim Henson’s other singing, dancing, wisecracking puppets return to the big screen in “The Muppets,� an old-fashioned and genuinely funny comic outing directed by newcomer James Bobin. (A-I, PG) “Rio� is a buoyant animated adventure with music about a Brazilian-born macaw (voice of Jesse Eisenberg) who returns to his homeland after being raised as a cosseted pet in Minnesota.

Lessons about environmental stewardship and love-inspired loyalty are decked out in kaleidoscopic colors in director Carlos Saldanha’s 3-D flight of fancy (A-I, G).

Director Sean McNamara’s fact-based drama “Soul Surfer� recounts the story of a devoutly Christian competitive surfer (Anna Sophia Robb) whose life is changed forever by a shark attack. It’s an uplifting tale bolstered by stunning cinematography and an unapologetic treatment of religious faith (A-II, PG).

In “Winnie the Pooh,� directors Stephen Anderson and Don Hall’s delightfully innocent, predominantly animated adaptation of A.A. Milne’s classic children’s books, the immortal bear (voice of Jim Cummings) finds his characteristic quest for honey interrupted by his friend Eeyore’s (voice of Bud Luckey) latest crisis – and by other complications (A-I, G).

NEW YORK (CNS) – In late 1965, the three-decade-old National Legion of Decency announced that it was changing its name to the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures.

That switch represented more than just altered terminology.

It signaled an intent on the part of the U.S. church’s officially sanctioned film agency to take a more open and positive – though by no means uncritical – approach in its assessment of cinema.

In keeping with this new emphasis, that same year, the film office issued its first list of the 10 best movies released over the previous 12 months.

As with many an innovation, the list gradually became a tradition, one that the Media Review Office of Catholic News Service – which now performs the work originally done by the Legion and its successors – intends faithfully to honor. So here – in alphabetical order -- are, first, our choices of the Top 10 films of 2011 suitable for a variety of audiences, followed the 10 best films for family viewing.

Here are the 10 best films overall.

A modern-made silent film, “The Artist� recounts the contrasting fortunes of a dashing star (Jean Dujardin) for whom the arrival of the “talkies� presages decline, and one of his adoring fans (Berenice Bejo) who’s destined for stardom. French director Michel Hazanavicius’ film is, by turns, zany and hilarious, sad and affecting, uplifting and inspiring (A-III, PG-13). “The Conspirator� is an engrossing historical drama about the lawyer (James McAvoy) who defended Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the pro-Confederate widow charged with conspiring to

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Jean Dujardin stars in a scene from the movie “The Artist.�

assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Director Robert Redford’s portrait of a protagonist admirably committed to the rule of law is made all the more effective by the fair assessment of those with other legitimate priorities (A-III, PG-13).

Stylish – though frequently violent – “The Debt� follows a game of cat-and-mouse across two time periods as three Mossad agents (Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds) track down and capture a Josef Mengele-like Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen). While suitable only for mature viewers, as directed with flair by John Madden, this gritty drama will certainly keep them guessing right up to the end (L, R).

In “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,� director David Yates’ gratifying wrap-up to a decade of blockbuster adaptations, the titular wizard (Daniel Radcliffe) continues to battle his evil nemesis (Ralph Fiennes) aided, once again, by his two closest friends (Rupert Grint and Emma Watson). Many of the symbols and themes in this final narrative echo Scripture and comport with Judeo-Christian beliefs (A-II, PG-13).

Set in the early 1960s, the warm, deftly acted drama “The Help� compellingly portrays the efforts of a rebellious white Southerner and would-be journalist (Emma Stone) to write a book documenting the lives of group of black housemaids (most prominently Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer). (A-III, PG-13).

The 3-D fable “Hugo� follows the adventures of a 12-year-old orphan (Asa Butterfield) who lives in one of Paris’ great train stations during the 1930s. Director Martin Scorsese’s paean to the City of Lights, the human imagination and the pioneers of early cinema casts a charming spell (A-II, PG). “The Ides of March� is a savvy but raw political drama about an up-and-coming press spokesman (Ryan Gosling) who discovers that the campaign manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) for whom he works and the candidate (George Clooney) in whom he deeply believes are not all they seem. (L, R).

Writer-director Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,� asks the question: Would you be happier living in a long-ago, mythically remembered past? A frustrated Hollywood screenwriter and would-be novelist (Owen Wilson) gets to find out when he gains mysterious entree to the French capital of the 1920s (A-III, PG-13). “Of Gods and Men� is a brilliant dramatization of real events, recounting the fate of a small community of French Trappist monks (led by Lambert Wilson and including Michael

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

19

Readers of all faiths can benefit from study of anti-Semitism “A CONVENIENT HATRED: THE HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM” by Phyllis Goldstein. Facing History and Ourselves (Brookline, Mass., 2011). 405 pp., $17.95.

Reviewed by Eugene J. Fisher (CNS) Phyllis Goldstein’s “A Convenient Hatred” is a major work of history that illuminates perhaps the most persistent and tragic source of hatred and violence in the history of Western civilization. It has behind it the resources of a major international research and educational organization, Facing History and Ourselves. A substantive foreword is provided by Sir Harold Evans, head of the Reuters news agency.

Goldstein aims for and achieves an admirable objectivity, which makes the study accessible for readers of all faiths and backgrounds. She begins in the centuries before the rise of Christianity, with anti-Jewish canards in ancient Greek and Roman literature stemming from the Jews’ refusal to worship pagan gods (and the Roman emperor as a god) and their persistent revolts against Greek and Roman domination, revolts which ended only with their decisive defeat in the second century of the Common Era. As the church gradually separated from the synagogue during the patristic period, Christians, most notoriously St.

John Chrysostum, picked up the negative stereotypes of Jews common in ancient literature, adding to them the notorious “deicide” charge – the absurd notion that Jews were collectively guilty for the death of Jesus.

This despite the fact that, as the Gospels record, only a few Jews, mainly the chief priest of the temple, were actually involved and the fact that Jesus’ crucifixion was extremely unpopular in Jerusalem, and unknown to most Jews in the then-known world until centuries later.

Goldstein misses, at this point, the true significance of the writings of St. Augustine on the Jews. While presuming the deicide charge, Augustine also noted that Jews give witness to the validity of their Scriptures (which Christians called the “Old Testament” although its message about the One God of Israel is ever new and challenging), without which the message of the “good news” of the New Testament makes little sense. Goldstein also misses the significance of the fact that the

popes adopted Augustine’s protective view of Judaism so that it alone among all the religions of the ancient world survived.

Goldstein provides the invaluable larger context, historically, in which these can be understood. That larger context was increasingly grim for Jews as the centuries progressed, especially after the First Crusade in which thousands of Jews were murdered, and the institution of ghettos, forced conversion, the blood libel and violation of the Eucharist charges, pogroms, and expulsion from all of the nations of Western Europe save for the Italian peninsula, where papal protection prevailed.

Goldstein rightly spends a good percentage of her time on the events leading up to the Holocaust in Europe and on increasing anti-Semitism in the Arab/Muslim world today.

The latter began before the existence of the state of Israel and independently of Zionism.

She concludes with a call to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike to view each other with mutual respect, citing Elie Wiesel that “although we today are not responsible for the injustices of the past, we are responsible for the way we remember the past and what we do with that past.” The volume includes helpful illustrations and bibliography.

Fisher is distinguished professor of Catholic-Jewish studies at St. Leo University in Florida.

Loving couple . . .

■ Continued from cover San Francisco Call – which would later morph into the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin. In 1990, he retired after working 45 years as a photo engraver with both the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Following their marriage, the couple bought the house they still live in today.

“We didn’t waste much time,” said Mary. “He carried me over the threshold and said I weighed a ton, but it was the wedding gown.”

After the war, the blue-collar neighborhood was populated by veterans and their wives and their growing families.

Buckland remembers Prague Street as a playground, swarming with 80 kids who played together until they were called home by their parents – most of whom knew one another.

“My dad had a whistle,” she said.

“When it was time for dinner, he would walk out into the street and blow it.”

Now a parishioner at St. Bonaventure in the Diocese of Oakland, she remembers the many family picnics at CrockerAmazon Park.

“They had so much love for us children,” she said. “And they gave us all a very strong faith.”

Now married with three children of her

Mary and Miles Butcher have 10 children, 19 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. They paid Catholic school tuition for 32 years, and at one time there were Butcher children attending seven of the eight grades at Church of the Epiphany School.

own, Nancy Beasley remembers that when the first African-American family moved into the neighborhood, her parents made a special effort to make the newcomers feel welcome.

“They taught us not to judge people,” said Beasley. “To live our lives by our faith.”

As the eldest child, Kathy Gaehler remembers the spirit of volunteerism that her parents worked to instill in their children. Her father, in addition to serving as the boys’ baseball coach at Epiphany, was a member of Knights of Columbus and the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

“We would go down to the gym and sort all the clothes that had been donated,” said Gaehler, a nurse who has worked at the intensive care nursery at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto for 37 years.

Gaehler, who has two children, also remembers the children being fined 25 cents for saying “shut up” at the dinner table.

Daughter Barbara Loof, who lives in Elk Grove, near Sacramento, with her husband and three children, recalls that her parents would never argue in front of the children. If there was a disagreement between them, they would go into another room and shut the door.

“They were a united front,” said Buckland. “There was no running from one to the other to try and get your way.”

“We were a team,” said Miles Butcher.

“Definitely,” said Mary.

Asked to explain the success of their long marriage, Miles said, “In a word – faith.”

“There weren’t just two of us,” said Mary. “There were three of us – God was in the middle.”

It also helps, they say, to adapt to whatever circumstances present themselves.

“I never imagined I would have 10 children,” said Mary. “I thought it would be nice to have two or three. But I’ve enjoyed raising the children, and I hope they have enjoyed me.”

SCRIPTURE SEARCH Gospel for February 19, 2012 Mark 2:1-12 Following is a word search based on the Gospel reading for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B: the healing of the paralytic man. The words can be found in all directions in the puzzle.

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

J. ANTONIO NIERRAS ATTORNEY

AT

LAW

DENIED SOCIAL LEGAL GUIDE SECURITY OR SSI? For information about

Board Certified Social Security Disability Specialist No fee if no recovery • 30 years experience

advertising in the Certified Specialist, Immigration & Nationality Law State Bar of California, Board of Legal Specialization

P.O. Box 1854 Burlingame, CA 94011

Tel. 415.370.8679 Email: jnierras@hotmail.com

Gregory p. O’Keeffe Mary Gemma O’Keeffe Attorneys at Law Probate, Estate Planning and Elder Law 1514 Taraval Street San Francisco, CA 94116 Tel: 415-664-6788 Fax: 415-664-7280

JAMES A. BACH CERTIFIED SPECIALIST IN IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY LAW State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization

Law Offices of James A. Bach The Shell Building 100 Bush St., Ste. 1980, SF, CA 94104-3902 (415) 248-3100 Website: www.immilaw.com

Law Offices of

ARNE J NELSON Personal Injury Claims & Litigation

Serving Injured San Franciscans Since 1991 (automobile, motorcycle, bicycle collisions; trip & fall, premises liability)

p.h. 415.398.7200 www.ajnlaw.com 110 Sutter St., Ste. 400 San Francisco, CA 94104

Timothy P. Breen Notary Public

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO LEGAL GUIDE

CYNTHIA G. STARKEY

call (415) 614-5642 or email penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Offices in San Mateo, Fremont and San Jose

FREE Consultation with Attorney Employment Law

Kendall David Coffman

(650) 378-2421 www.sanmateobankruptcylawyer.com 1670 S. Amphlett Blvd. #214 San Mateo, CA 94402

Law Offices of JULIA P. WALD

Free Initial Consultation & Case Evaluation

JULIA P. WALD* MICHAEL YONGUE TIMOTHY J. CHAMBERS, Of Counsel * Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law by the California State Bar Board of Legal Specialization

1108 Fifth Avenue, Suite 202 San Rafael, CA 94901 415-482-7555; fax 415-482-7575 www.waldlawyers.com

MANOS

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LLP

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DENNIS L. FAORO attorney at law

JERRY R. MANOS, ESQUIRE CATHLEEN M. CURL, ESQUIRE www.manoscurl.com

520 S. El Camino Real #430, San Mateo, CA 94402-1754 phone 650.696.8350 fax 650.696.8365

Family Law ● Construction Law ● Civil Litigation Personal Injury ● Real Estate

REAL ESTATE, CONSTRUCTION AND BUSINESS LAW

700 El Camino Real, Suite 200 Millbrae, CA 94030

Tel. (650) 871-5955 Fax. (650) 588-7101

JOHN A. MANGINI ATTORNEY AT LAW

“FREE INITIAL CONSULTATION” 400 OYSTER POINT BLVD., STE. 205 SO. SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94080 650-876-0188

Ruth Downs Sullivan Laura Sullivan Van Zandt John B. Sullivan (1989) Specializing in Estate Planning, Trusts, Wills, Probate, Family Law 605 Market Street San Francisco 94105 Tel: 415.495.3800 Fax: 415.495.7204

Se Habla Español

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LAW OFFICES OF JACK RIORDAN* KERRY RIORDAN SYKES** MAUREEN S. MCFADDEN ** Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law by the California State Bar Board of Legal Specialization

377 West Portal Avenue, San Francisco (415) 661-9050 No Charge for Initial Consultation *Jack Riordan (1926-2005)

LIVING TRUSTS WILLS

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MICHAEL T. SWEENEY ATTORNEY AT LAW 782A ULLOA STREET SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127

(415) 664-8810 www.mtslaw.info FREE INITIAL CONSULTATION

Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 CRAB FEST: St. Timothy Parish, Third Avenue and Norfolk, San Mateo, beginning at 6 p.m. Tickets are $40 per person. Call the Aquinos at (650) 619-8010 or the Agustins at (650) 806-4165.

PLAY BALL! A St. Agnes Parish, San Francisco fundraiser, 6 p.m. at St. Ignatius College Preparatory, San Francisco. Theme is baseball so wear your favorite team’s attire. Tickets $40 for adults, $20 for children 12 and under. Come and enjoy a fun night with some of San Francisco’s finest gourmet food trucks, live music and dancing. Tickets are now being sold in the back of church after Mass. Call (415) 487-8560 or email zack@saintagnessf.com.

SINGLE CATHOLIC SCHOOLERS: Catholic Alumni Club of the Bay Area celebrates the Chinese New Year at Yat Sing, 38 Woodside Plaza, Redwood City. Beverages are at 6 p.m. with dinner at 6:30 p.m. Contact Bill Lewellyn at (650) 364-8007 or Bigfoote1@juno.com. CAC is for single Catholic professional men and women to meet and share their faith at a variety of activities.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19 LIFE: San Mateo kickoff rally for 40 Days for Life takes place 2-3 p.m., at Planned Parenthood, 35 Baywood Ave., San Mateo and continues at the site Feb. 22 through April 1 from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Call (650) 918-9119 or (650) 572-1468 or visit fortydaysforlifesm@yahoo.com.

CONCERT: Father Paul Perry, organist, St. Sebastian Church, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Bon Air Road, Greenbrae at 12:30 p.m. The one-hour program includes works by Bach, Brahms and others. Admission is free.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21 LIFE: San Francisco “40 Days for Life” kicks off at 6 p.m. at St. Paul Church, Church Street and 29th Street, San Francisco, with opening Mass and prayerful pilgrimage to a nearby Planned Parenthood facility. Campaign continues Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, through Palm Sunday, April 1, from 8 a.m-8 p.m. at Planned Parenthood, 1650 Valencia St., San Francisco. Visit http://www.40daysforlife.com/ sanfrancisco/ or call (415) 613-8493.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 TRIBUTE: Church of the Epiphany Parish honors late pastor, Msgr. Bruce Dreier, in a remembrance weekend. A basketball tournament named for Msgr. Bruce as well as a parish athletic hall of fame induction are part of the celebration. San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop Robert W. McElroy presides at a memorial parish Mass Feb. 25 at 5:30 p.m. Email Ken at maltaman1@comcast.net or Julinda Pastor at labx10@aol.com.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25 PASTA FIESTA: St. James School Presents!

Enjoy food, talent show, games at Immaculate Conception Academy auditorium, 24th Street at Guerrero in San Francisco, 4-8 p.m. Tickets are $10 adults/$8 children under 12. Parking is available in lot at Fair Oaks near 23rd Street.

Proceeds benefit neighbor St. James School.

Visit www.stjamessf.org or call (415) 647-8972.

CIOPPINO: St. Thomas More School’s 20th

CATHEDRAL: Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, Gough Street at Geary Boulevard, San Francisco. When available, docents are on duty in the cathedral Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-noon, Saturday from 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and Sunday after Masses.

The Docent program also offers special tours and a school program. Schedule a tour by calling (415) 567-2020 ext. 207. Visit www. stmarycathedralsf.org.

Datebook

performances by The Jerry Grosz Jazz Kitchen!

Menu includes: appetizers, marinated cold crab, roast chicken, plus wine and beverages. Tickets are $50 per person. All attendees will be entered for a chance to win an Apple iPad! Visit http:// stmonicasf.org/parents/auction.php or call (415) 751-9564.

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26: Catholic Daughters of the Americas, Our Lady of the Miracle, #1707, has High Tea in Novato, 2-4 p.m. at Our Lady of Loretto Parish hall, 1801 Virginia Ave. Tickets are $15 per person. Call (415) 892-3834.

Pictured enjoying a cup is CDA regent, Beverly Pierson, with member, Jean Emma Bova pouring.

Anniversary Cioppino Celebration. Enjoy a tantalizing menu of antipasto, mussels, salad, cioppino or chicken, and dessert. Doors open at 5 p.m. Evening includes Father Don D’Angelo’s heavenly garlic bread, silent auction, dancing. Reservations required. Tickets are $50 per person. Contact Linda Shah @ lp1114@aol. com or Jessica Ramirez @ hepkat_79@yahoo. com or visit the school website @ stthomasmoreschool.org.

CATHOLIC SCHOOLERS: The Catholic Alumni Club meets at Tommy’s Joynt, 1101 Van Ness at Geary) Boulevard, San Francisco at 5:30 p.m.

CAC is for single Catholic professional men and women to meet and share their faith at a variety of enjoyable, interesting and fulfilling activities. Visit http://catholic singles-sfbayarea.com.

CRAB FEST: Crab Feed St. Finn Barr Church, Goode Hall, 415 Edna Street, San Francisco, no-host bar 5:30-6:30 p.m. with dinner 6:30 -9 p.m. and dancing and entertainment from 9 p.m.

Tickets are $45 per person in advance and $50 per person at the door. Contact St. Finn Barr rectory at (415) 333-3627 or email alguidry@ comcast.net.

GROW YOUR FAITH: Timely Topics for Today’s Catholics: Part II at Notre Dame des Victoires Church, 566 Bush St., San Francisco across from Sutter/Stockton Garage, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Marist Father Thomas Ellerman facilitates the day. Father Ellerman will explore the teachings of the Catholic Church on the following: How we should live together on this earth and share its resources. How we should organize ourselves to build human community. Please bring your own lunch. Beverages will be provided. Call (415) 397-0113.

VISIT ME: Attend two-day training in preparation for visiting youth in jail. The ministry is Comunidad San Dimas and their “One Youth at a Time: Responsibility, Rehabilitation, Restoration” program. Contact Julio Escobar at (415) 2445594 or email info@comunidadsandimas.org or visit www.comunidadsandimas.org. Applicants should be 18 years of age or older. Interview required before attending the training. Visiting is with youth 11-18 years old. Monthly meetings are mandatory. Spanish-speakers especially welcome.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26 PASTA BINGO: Le Donne d’Italia, San Francisco’s new Italian women’s club, announces a day of bubbly and bingo at San Francisco Italian Athletic Club, 1630 Stockton St., San Francisco. Lunch is at 11:30 a.m. and bingo games start at 1:30 p.m. with special paper games and regular games, too.

Tickets at $30 per person include two free bingo

NOE VALLEY L AW O FFICES

ST. PATTY’S DAY: Hibernian-Newman Club holiday lunch at the Westin San Francisco, 50 Third St. at Mission Street. No-host reception is at 11 a.m. with traditional Irish music with Irish lunch at noon.

Tickets are $85 per person. Proceeds benefit Catholic campus ministries. Keynote speaker is San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr. Walter Farrell will be honored as Hibernian of the Year. Call (415) 386-3434.

SATURDAY, MARCH 31

cards. Contact Antonette at (415) 931-4810 or www. ledonneditalia.com.

LUNCHEON: Columban Fathers lunch and raffle at the United Irish Cultural Center, 45th Avenue at Sloat Boulevard, San Francisco honoring Jim and Eileen Kyne. No-host cocktails at noon with lunch at 1 p.m. Tickets are $40 per person. Call Pam at (415) 566-1936 or Anne at (415) 586-8017.

FRIDAY, MARCH 2 FACE TO FACE: Marriage Encounter Weekend to be held in San Mateo. Call Paul or Yvonne at (650) 366-7093 or visit www.wwme12.org.

RUMMAGE SALE: Mother’s Club of Church of the Visitacion, 701 Sunnydale at Rutland, San Francisco, Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and Saturday March 3, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. All kinds of items are for sale including clothes, furniture, books, and a new items booth.

Call (415) 494-5517.

SATURDAY, MARCH 3 CRAB FEST: St. Luke Church Crab Feed in the church community center, 1111 Beach Park Blvd., Foster City. Enjoy all-you-can-eat crab, salad, pasta, dessert and coffee with music for dining and dancing, door prizes and a cash raffle. Social hour is at 6 p.m. with dinner at 7 p.m. Tickets are $40 per person with no-host bar. Call John Bernat at (650) 341-4045 or (650) 345-6660.

FASHION: St. Stephen Women’s Guild presents Via Passerella at the Olympic Club Lakeside.

Contact Renee Wallis at (650) 994-9212 or Samantha Martinez at (650) 438-1839.

SATURDAY, MARCH 10 YOU’RE IN: Catholic Charities CYO Athletics Hall of Fame Dinner at the Father O’Reilly Catholic Charities CYO Center at 6:30 p.m. at St. Emydius gym, San Francisco. Inductees are Steve Phelps and Paul Watters who will be honored for their extraordinary impact on the CYO Athletics community. For information about the dinner, tickets or sponsorship opportunities, visit http://athletics.cccyo.org/hof/ or call Mary Beth Johnson Deel at (415) 972-1252.

SOLD! Belmont to Broadway Auction and Show benefiting Notre Dame High School, Belmont at the Foster City Crowne Plaza Hotel. For ticket, sponsorship, or volunteer opportunities contact Denise Severi at (650)595-1913 ext. 446 or dseveri@ ndhsb.org.

CRAB FEST: Bleu Bayou: St. Monica School Annual Auction Fundraiser Dinner, an evening of fun, food, and friends at the Parish Hall, Geary Boulevard and 23rd Avenue, San Francisco. This adults-only event starts at 6 p..m with live jazz

RELIGIOUS LIFE TODAY AND TOMORROW: “Sharing the New Wine: Vowed Religious in a Postmodern Age,” a day of communal reflection and dialogue on the present reality and future of religious life, at Santa Clara University, Locatelli Hall, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, 8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m.

Visit www.sharingthenewwine.blogspot.com and www.scu.edu/jst/religiouslife. Day is sponsored by California Province of the Society of Jesus, Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity, and others.

FRIDAY, APRIL 13 SEW: St. Vincent de Paul Society-San Francisco’s “Discarded to Divine,” with unique fashions and home decor from recycled clothes, benefitting homelessness and domestic violence programs. Complimentary public preview 6-8 p.m., de Young Museum. Gala reception, live show, auctions, April 26, 6-10 p.m., San Francisco Design Center Galleria. Tickets are VIP $195 and general admission $95 ($75 if purchased by March 31). Visit http://www.discardedtodivine.org/.

THURSDAY, APRIL 26 SEW: St. Vincent de Paul Society-San Francisco’s “Discarded to Divine,” with unique fashions and home decor from recycled clothes, benefitting homelessness and domestic violence programs.

Gala reception, live show, auctions from 6-10 p.m., San Francisco Design Center Galleria. Tickets are VIP $195 and general admission $95 ($75 if purchased by March 31). Visit http://www.discardedtodivine.org/.

SATURDAY, MAY 12 REUNION: Mercy High School, San Francisco, class of ’67 at the school. Contact Stephanie Mischak Lyons at (415) 242-9818 or smlyons@ earthlink.net or on Facebook at Mercy SF ‘67.

SATURDAY, JUNE 9 ALUMNAE DAY: “Notre Dame High School Legacy Luncheon” at Notre Dame High School, 1540 Ralston Ave., Belmont. Invitations will be mailed in late April. Contact Denise Severi at Dseveri@ ndhsb.org. Reunions for class of ’87, Aug. 5, contact Heather Oda at moda@co.sanmateo.ca.us; class of ’67 Oct. 27, contact Susan Angle at susanangle@ comcast.net or (925) 680-4917.

CONTACT US: Datebook is a free service for parishes, agencies and institutions to publicize events. Copy deadline is noon Friday before requested issue date. Send item including who, what, where, when, cost and contact information to burket@sfarchdiocese. org or Datebook, One Peter Yorke Way, SF 94109.

ROBERT T. RODDICK ATTORNEY AT LAW

Protect Your Family Now! Call for a Free Consultation.

Living Trusts • Wills • Estate Planning • Probate Specialty Trusts

21

WWW.NOEVALLEYLAW.COM

1330 Castro at 24th San Francisco

(415) 641-8687

LEGAL GUIDE For information about advertising in the

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO LEGAL GUIDE call 415.614.5642

22

Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

SERVICE DIRECTORY For information about advertising in Catholic San Francisco's Service Directory, visit www.catholic-sf.org, Call (415) 614-5642, Fax: (415) 614-5641 or E-mail: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Construction Counseling Home Health Care Healthcare Agency MATT JOYCE

Murray Bowen, M.D. Founder, Georgetown Family Center

415.314.8415

A child may be suffering from:

www.vtconstruct.com

The bully at school, adolescent adjustment, A separation /divorce or a new“blended family�

They are withdrawn, angry, acting out, Failing in school or just sad or too quiet.

118 Mateo St., San Francisco CA Lic. #: 903690

Cahalan Const.

Remodels, Additions, Paint,Windows, Dryrot, Stucco

415.279.1266 Lic. #582766 415.566.8646 mikecahalan@gmail.com

QUALITY HOME CARE SERVING THE BAY AREA SINCE 1996 * Attendants * Companions • Insured • Bonded

Family Systems Therapy has guided families for nearly 50 years.

If you would like to talk over your family issues call for a free phone consultation.

Lila Caffery, MA, CCHT

San Francisco 415 759 0520

InnerChildHealing.com

S.O.S. PAINTING CO.

(415) 242-3355

Interior-Exterior wallpaper hanging & removal

–

When Life Hurts It Helps To Talk

415-269-0446 650-738-9295

• Family • Work • Relationships • Depression • Anxiety • Addictions

www.sospainting.net

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Over 30 years experience • Reasonable Fees

Dr. Daniel J. Kugler Confidential • Compassionate • Practical (415) 921-1619 • Insurance Accepted

FREE ESTIMATES

1537 Franklin Street • San Francisco, CA 94109

Painting & Construction Remodeling ➤ Hauling ➤ Job Site Clean-Up ➤ Demolition ➤ Yard Service ➤ Garbage Runs ➤ Saturday & Sunday

John Holtz

Ca. Lic 391053 General Contractor Since 1980

(650) 355-4926

Painting & Remodeling •Interiors •Exteriors •Kitchens •Baths Contractor inspection reports and pre-purchase consulting

Electrical ALL ELECTRIC SERVICE 650.322.9288

*Irish owned & operated

Certified Signing Agent

YOELSHAULING@YAHOO.COM

NOTICE TO READERS

–

Licensed contractors are required by law to list their license numbers in advertisments. The law also state that contractors performing work totaling $500 or more must be statelicensed. Advertisments appearing in this newspaper without a license number indicate that the contractor is not licensed.

➎ ➎ ➎ ➎

Exterior / Interior Additions ➎ Baths Foundations, Stairs, Dry Rot Replacement Windows ➎ Kitchen Remodeling Architect Available ➎ Senior Discount

Call: 415.533.2265 Lic. 407271

Contractor 0F*XLUH 6RQV 0F*XLUH 6RQV & 2 1 6 7 5 8 & 7 , 2 1

6WDWH /LFHQVH ( V W

Fully Licensed • State Certified • Locally Trained • Experienced • On Call 24/7

DEWITT ELECTRIC YOUR # 1 CHOICE FOR Recessed Lights – Outdoor Lighting Outlets – Dimmers – Service Upgrades • Trouble Shooting!

Ph. 415.515.2043 Ph. 650.508.1348

Lic. 631209) 9)

(415) 786-0121 • (650) 871-9227

PLEASE RECYCLE THIS PAPER! Catholic San Francisco

Handy Man All Purpose Cell (415) 517-5977 (650) 757-1946 NOT A LICENSED CONTRACTOR

Lic. # 907564

Plumbing HOLLAND Plumbing Works San Francisco

Painting

BILL HEFFERON

PAINTING INTERIOR, EXTERIOR All Jobs Large and Small

ALL PLUMBING WORK PAT HOLLAND CA LIC #817607

BONDED & INSURED

415-205-1235

Garage Door

10% Discount: Seniors, Parishioners

Call BILL 415.731.8065 • Cell: 415.710.0584 bheffpainting@sbcglobal.net Member of Better Business Bureau Bonded, Insured – LIC. #819191

Fences & Decks G ARAGE D OOR R EPAIR

John Spillane Same price 7 days Lic. # 376353

Visit us at www.catholic-sf.org

Contact: 415.447.8463

Expert interior and exterior painting, carpentry, demolition, fence (repair, build), decks, remodeling, roof repair, gutter (clean/repair), landscaping, gardening, hauling, moving, welding.

Electrical Service Changes Solar Installation Lighting/Power Fire Alarm/Data Green Energy

Serving San Francisco, Marin & the Peninsula.

Roofing

),1( :25. $7 5($621$%/( 35,&(6

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Home Healthcare Agency Specializing in home health aides, attendants and companions.

For more information, contact: Contractors State License Board 800-321-2752

LAST-MINUTE SERVICE AVAILABLE

KEANE CONSTRUCTION

The Irish Rose

PHONE: 415-846-1922 FAX: 415-702-9272

FREE ESTIMATES! • Fast & Affordable

PAUL (415) 282-2023

1655 Old Mission Road #3 Colma, SSF, CA 94080 415-573-5141 or 650-993-8036 *Serving from San Francisco to North San Mateo

* Member National Notary Association *

www.christianscounseling2.com

Lic # 526818 Senior Discount

“The most compassionate care in town�

Breen’s Mobile Notary Services Timothy P. Breen Notary Public

• Spiritual problems

SUPPLE SENIOR CARE

Notary

• Marriage problems • Loss and grief

Electronic filing Individual returns Business - Schedule fee By appointment

650.328.5010

David Nellis M.A. M.F.T. • Individual problems

(650) 580-6334 / (925) 330-4760

Since 1991 • • • •

Eoin Lehane

www.Irishpainting-sf.com

Long hrs. - $10, Short hrs. - $18, Live-in - $170

Maria’s Tax Service

415-337-9474

415.368.8589 Lic.#942181

Marin 415.721.7380

Tax Service

Graduate, Georgetown Family Center

Irish Painting

We Provide reliable & experienced caregivers to help seniors in their own home. *Companionship, Bathing, Alzheimer, Dementia & more.

www.irishhelpathome.com

The family gathers together to understand, support and heal.

Single parents and couples have their issues. Depression, infidelity, gambling, substance abuse , often unspoken in the family, take their toll.

Painting Discount to CSF Readers

Irish Help At Home

Family Systems Therapy

BETTER HEALTH CARE FOR SENIORS WITH SPECIAL NEED OF CARE

(415) 931-1540 24 hrs.

Lifetime Warranty on All Doors + Motors

• • • •

Retaining Walls Stairs • Gates Dry Rot Senior & Parishioner Discounts

650.291.4303

Lic. #742961

Children reflect the strains of childhood within and outside of the family

Lic. A020881

VONNEGUT THOREAU construction On-time — on-budget.

February 17, 2012

Catholic San Francisco

classifieds

Chimney Cleaning

For Advertising Information VISIT www.catholic-sf.org CALL 415-614-5642; FAX 415-614-5641 EMAIL penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Summ e Speciar/Fall ls

EXTRAORDINARY THANK YOU Archdiocese of San Francisco for the Extraordinary mass in San Francisco’s Immaculate Conception Chapel at 3255 Folsom Street San Francisco, CA 94110 (cross street Cesar Chavez)

Sundays at 5 p.m.

$89

$119

$139

Help Wanted caregiver

with Gregorian Chant Choir

Learning and Loving

Traditional Latin Tridentine Mass

Job Opening For DIRECTOR / PRINCPAL Job Opening For

Rides for the Elderly 415-626-5362

Education Center

Job description and application is found on our website DIRECTOR/PRINCIPAL www.learningandloving.org 16890 Church Street #16, Morgan Hill, Ca • voice (408) 776-1196

Novenas PUBLISH A NOVENA Pre-payment required Mastercard or Visa accepted

Cost $26

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

St. Jude Novena May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be adored, glorified, loved & preserved throughout the world now & forever. Sacred Heart of Jesus pray for us.

St. Jude helper of the hopeless pray for us.

Say prayer 9 times a day for 9 days.

Thank You St. Jude.

Never known to fail.

You may publish.

M.P.L.

Your prayer will be published in our newspaper

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

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

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

Please return form with check or money order for $26 Payable to: Catholic San Francisco Advertising Dept., Catholic San Francisco 1 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109

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

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

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

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

Say prayers 3 days.

M.R.

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

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

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

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

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

Say prayers 3 days.

C.O.

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

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

M.R.

Help Wanted GOSPEL CHOIR DIRECTOR POSITION AVAILABLE!

Personal companion, medications, grooming, appointments, shopping, driving, & Alzheimer’s care over 20 years experience, honest and reliable, outstanding references, bonded.

Call (415) 713-1366

Room For Rent Richmond district in SF, $575/month. Room for rent for working person, non-smoker, no pets, references required. Leave message at

(415) 666-3542 $800 a month. Large, attractively furnished room for rent, Westlake district, Daly City. Includes utilities, access to kitchen/ dining room. Great view! Use of laundry facilities. Bus to shopping center, BART.Prefer mature business woman. Non-smoker.

Retired; one woman household with two indoor/outdoor cats.

Please call (650) 756-1536.

Catholic San Francisco

23

cookbooks Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery 125th Anniversary Cookbook of Memories As food has always been a comfort to families who have experienced a loss, it seems only fitting that Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery would create a cookbook in honor of its 125th Anniversary. We would like to create a cookbook of memories – special recipes of your loved ones who are interred in Holy Cross. If your Grandmother, Mom, Dad or Great Uncle Sam made a special dish and is interred in Holy Cross, we hope that you will share that favorite recipe.

You may forward your recipe to the attention of Christine Stinson by email costinson@holycrosscemeteries.com, by mail to Holy Cross Cemetery, P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014 or drop it off at our office or All Saints Mausoleum on weekends. Please include your loved one’s name, date of burial and grave location with the recipe. Also, please include your name and contact information.

Help Wanted ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS SOUGHT The Department of Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of San Francisco is seeking elementary principals for the 20122013 school year. Candidates must be practicing Roman Catholic, possess a valid teaching credential, a Master’s degree in educational leadership, an administrative credential (preferred), and five years of successful teaching experience at the elementary level.

Please send resume and a letter of interest by March 16th, 2012 to: St. Paul of the Shipwreck Catholic Church has a fabulous Gospel Choir, and we are looking for a Director to direct our choir and musicians at the 10:30 a.m. Sunday Gospel Mass.

Salary is negotiable within range of the Archdiocese of San Francisco established guidelines. Email your Resume/Application to spswoffice@aol.com, or FAX to (415) 468-1400. For more details, call Rev. Mr. Larry Chatmon, Deacon, daytime at (415) 557-5330, or evening (510) 430-0353.

Bret E. Allen Associate Superintendent for Educational & Professional Leadership One Peter Yorke Way San Francisco, California 94109 Fax (415) 614-5664 E-mail: allenb@sfarchdiocese.org

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Catholic San Francisco

February 17, 2012

Mercy High School San Francisco

Celebrates 60 Years In light of this momentous occasion, we recognize all of the Bay Area women who have attended single gender schools including: Notre Dame, Star of the Sea, St. Brigid, St. John, St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Rose, and Presentation High Schools.

You are invited to join us in honoring women’s education.

Mercy’s 60th Gala Celebration March 24, 2012 McAuley Pavilion Visit mercysf60thgala.eventbrite.com for more information

3250 Nineteenth Ave.~San Francisco, CA 94132~ 415-334-0525 www.mercyhs.org