02 27 15

Diocese of Fall River, Mass.

F riday , February 27, 2015

Philosopher Peter Kreeft to speak at Proclaim & Magnify Conference

By Linda Andrade Rodrigues Anchor Correspondent

NORTH DARTMOUTH — Faithful from far and wide will gather at St. Julie Billiart Church tomorrow for the Proclaim & Magnify Conference 2015.

Sponsored by Catholic Radio CorMariae, 88.5 FM, the first annual event will feature renowned author and philosopher Peter Kreeft who will present “What’s New about the New Evangelization?” and “Why Are We Losing the Culture War?” A professor of philosophy at Boston College, Kreeft said on his website (www.peterkreeft. com) that he loves his five grandchildren, four children, one wife, one cat, and one God. In his two presentations he will speak about the current culture war and the role New Evangelization plays in a winning strategy.

“The master heresy of our civilization, our culture, our times, is basically the loss of the supernatural,” said Kreeft.

“Christianity isn’t static; it’s a living thing. It’s growing where it’s persecuted. It’s growing in China. It’s growing in, of all places, Islamic countries, always the hardest to evangelize; but for the first time in a thousand years, there are significant

Muslim conversions — almost all of them due to miracles and visions. What is God doing? God always raises up new answers in the Church to new problems in the world.”

Kreeft’s 75 books include four titles which will be available at the luncheon book signing: “Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas,” “A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interview with an Absolutist,” “Jesus-Shock” and “How to Win the Culture War: A Christian Battle Plan for a Society in Crisis.”

The Proclaim & Magnify Conference 2015 also will feature Allison Gingras, Radio CorMariae host of Catholic 24/7, which airs Wednesdays at 7 p.m. She will speak about “Radio, the New Evangelization and the Gospel.”

Gingras founded Reconciled To You ministries (www. reconciledtoyou.com) in 2009 to share her love of the Catholic faith and the many ways it can be lived out in our everyday, ordinary life. Her enthusiasm, passion and sense of humor open hearts and minds to explore the beauty and blessings of Catholicism.

“Catholic radio gives us a personal connection that Turn to page 14

Evangelizing starts at home

By Becky Aubut Anchor Staff

LAWRENCE — When 10-year-old Guadalupe Ospino arrived from Guatemala in 1992, her parents brought their Catholic faith to the footsteps of St. Patrick’s Parish in Stoneham and helped create a strong Spanish-speaking community in the parish.

“It wasn’t easy as compared to arriving to an already established Spanish-speaking com-

munity,” recalled Ospino, “but they did a lot of the groundwork.”

The groundwork included an annual Marian celebration in September, weekly prayer groups, visiting homes to pray the Rosary, posadas, Christmas Novenas and adding a bilingual Mass to the schedule that already included a Spanishspeaking Mass. The Spanish community began with 15-20 and now has grown to more

than 100 people celebrating the annual Spanish-based events.

“Those first memories really gave me an example of what it means to have a strong commitment to one’s faith,” said Ospino. “I think it would have been easy for my parents to say they didn’t want to do it, to spend the time contacting people, doing all these things, looking for resources — they Turn to page 14

Father Jay Maddock to be honored at NCEA convention

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

FALL RIVER — Father Jay Maddock, V.F., will receive the 2015 Distinguished Pastor Award from the National Catholic Educational Association for his dedication and commitment to excellence.

Father Maddock, who has served as pastor of Holy Name Parish and School in Fall River since July 2010, will be recog-

nized during the annual NCEA Convention and Expo that will take place April 7-9 in Orlando, Fla. “This is the first full-time assignment I’ve had which has a parish school,” Father Maddock said. “There are many challenges these days in running a parish school but the great benefit they bring to the faith of young people and their families makes it all Turn to page 15

Universal Church taps into diocesan talent pool to assist her mission

By Dave Jolivet Anchor Editor

Father Roger Landry, a priest of the Fall River Diocese, who has been appointed to an assignment at the United Nations for the next four years, recently went to the Catholic Memorial Home in Fall River to visit residents and former parishioners before leaving for New York. Back row from left: Connie Viveiros, activities assistant; Alice Mercier, resident; Father Landry; and Deacon Peter Cote. Front: residents Madeleine St. Pierre, Annette Phenix, and Jeannette Lavoie.

FALL RIVER — When a man hears a call from God to serve Him as a priest, and he answers that call, he never knows what roads lie ahead.

The Good Lord, in His infinite wisdom, utilizes the talents and passions of each individual whom He calls, to expand the Church begun by His Son Jesus more than 2,000 years ago.

Many priests who look back on 40, 50, 60 or more years serving the Lord will often express the road was not what they expected. Yet, in the same breath, will say they wouldn’t change a thing.

There’s no question God has utilized the holy men of the Fall River Diocese since its inception in 1904.

Fall River priests have been called to serve the Church elsewhere as missionaries, military chaplains, on Vatican boards and committees, or have gone on to become bishops and cardinals in other areas of the Church.

More recently, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk was called to serve as the director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, and Father David Pignato was asked to help prepare tomorrow’s priests as a professor of Theology at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton.

Beginning next week, the latest diocesan priest to be called to serve the Universal Church begins his assignment on the world stage. Father Roger J. Landry, pastor of St. Bernadette’s Parish in Fall Turn to page 18

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News From the Vatican

February 27, 2015

Don’t be a successful failure: Choose life over false gods, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Don’t use peer pressure, greed or laziness as an excuse to chase after false gods and become a wildly successful failure, Pope Francis said.

Slow down, reflect and choose the path that takes you closer to God and your loved ones, he said during a recent morning Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he lives.

One mistake in life, he said, is “always seeking one’s own success, one’s own benefit without thinking about the Lord, without thinking about one’s family,” he said.

Vatican Radio and L’Osservatore Romano released excerpts from his homily, which examined the day’s first reading from Deuteronomy, in which Moses sets before the people “life and prosperity, death and doom,” and encourages them to choose life by following the Lord.

Christians are still faced with the same difficult choice every day, the pope said, “to choose between God and the other gods — those that have no power to give us anything, just tiny little what-nots that are fleeting.”

It is not easy to make the right choice because “we always have this habit of following the crowd a little.”

“It’s easier to live letting ourselves be carried by inertia in life, by each situation, by habits,” and it’s easier to become a slave to “other gods,” he said.

“So often we are on the run, we are in a rush without realizing what the road we’re on is like and we let ourselves — without thinking — be swept up by needs, by the necessities of the day.”

“Why do we go so quickly

in life without realizing what path we’re taking?” he asked.

“Because we want to win, we want to profit, we want success.”

But, the pope said, the day’s Gospel reading from St. Luke’s Gospel has Jesus asking, “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself ?”

“Someone can gain everything, but in the end become a failure,” the pope said. They may have erected a monument, had a self-portrait made, “but you have failed; you did not know how to choose well between life and death,” the pope said.

The Church, especially during Lent, asks people to slow down and reflect on their lives, he said. “It will do us well to stop and think a bit during the day: What is my lifestyle like? What paths am I taking?”

Take five or 10 minutes each day to ask: “How fast am I living my life? Do I reflect on the things that I do? What is my relationship with God like and with my family?” he said, adding that just by reflecting on the last question, “surely we will find things that we have to correct.”

The pope asked people to pray for the grace to have the courage to make the right choice each time, every day, in all things.

Referring to the day’s responsorial Psalm, he said those who hope in the Lord and His counsel are blessed, and they know that God is always by their side to help them.

“He never leaves us by ourselves, never. He is always with us. Even during those moments of choosing He is with us.”

A child reacts after being kissed by Pope Francis as he arrives to lead a recent weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Giampiero Sposito, Reuters)

Liturgies need to help people experience awe, mystery of God, Pope Francis says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Liturgy should help the faithful enter into God’s mystery and to experience the wonder of encountering Christ, Pope Francis told priests of the Diocese of Rome.

People should feel the wonder and allure “that the Apostles felt when they were called, invited.

It attracts — wonder attracts — and it lets you reflect,” the pope said during an annual Lenten meeting with Roman pastors in the Paul VI audience hall.

Sitting behind a table and talking off-the-cuff, glancing occasionally at a few pages of notes in front of him, the pope recently led the pastors in a reflection on the homily and “ars celebrandi,” the art of celebrating the Liturgy well.

The Vatican press hall mistakenly broadcast via closed-circuit television the first 15 minutes of the encounter, which was meant to be closed to the media at the pope’s request so that he could speak more freely with his audience, said Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman. While the annual meeting had always been open to news coverage, Pope Francis has preferred private meetings with local clergy during his visits to different parishes in Italy, the spokesman said.

Priests who attended the twohour meeting said the pope spent about 40 minutes after his talk with a question-and-answer session — a format used frequently

by St. John Paul II in meetings with priests and seminarians and

by Pope Benedict XVI in the beginning of pontificate.

Pope Francis told the priests that “the homily is a challenge

for priests” and he said he, too, had his own shortcomings — pointed out in a reflection he prepared for a plenary meeting of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments on “ars celebrandi” in 2005.

As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he was a cardinal-member of the congregation. After he presented the reflection, he said, Cardinal Joachim Meisner “reprimanded me a bit strongly over some things,” as well as then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who “told me that something very important was missing in the ‘ars celebrandi,’ which was the feeling of being before God. And he was right, I had not spoken about this,” he said, adding that both cardinals had given him good advice.

“For me the key of ‘ars celebrandi’ takes the path of recovering the allure of beauty, the wonder of the person celebrating and the people, of entering in an atmosphere that is spontaneous, normal and religious, but isn’t artificial, and that way you recover a bit of the wonder,” he said.

Sometimes there are priests who celebrate Mass in a way that is “very sophisticated, artificial,” or who “abuse the gestures” he said.

If the priest is “excessively” focused on the rubrics that indicate the movements and particular gestures during Mass and “rigid, I do not enter into the mystery” because all one’s energy and attention are on the form, he said.

The other extreme, he said, is “if I am a showman, the protagonist” of the Mass, “then I do not enter into the mystery” either.

While the idea is simple, “it is not easy” to elicit this sense of

wonder and mystery, he said. But nonetheless, he said, the celebration of Mass is about entering into and letting others enter into this mystery.

The celebrant “must pray before God, with the community,” in a genuine and natural way that avoids all forms of “artificiality,” he said.

Concerning the homily, the pope again suggested clergy read Jesuit Father Domenico Grasso’s “Proclaiming God’s Message: A Study in the Theology of Preaching” and Jesuit Father Hugo Rahner’s “Theology of Proclamation,” adding that what distinguished Father Hugo Rahner from his theologian brother, Jesuit Father Karl Rahner, was that “Hugo writes clearly.”

Before the pope’s talk, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, vicar of Rome, said he and his audience were ready to reflect together with the pope on what French theologian Father “Louis Bouyer called the danger of the ‘nausea of the word’ in the Liturgy caused by an inflation of words that are at times repetitive, a bit trite, obscure or moralistic and that do not pierce the heart.”

The cardinal said they try to preach well, but are always looking for improvement.

“A good homily leaves its mark,” he said, while a homily “that is lacking does not bear fruit and, on the contrary, can even make people give up on Mass.”

“We want our words to set people’s hearts on fire” and want the faithful “to be enlightened and encouraged to live a new life and never be forced to suffer through our homilies,” he said.

February 27, 2015

A man carries buckets of water up a hill to his makeshift home in Canaan, a community on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, recently. Canaan, now with an estimated 250,000 inhabitants, emerged soon after the 2010 earthquake when the government said people could relocate there. (CNS photo/Bob Roller)

Earthquake-displaced Haitians live day-to-day, wanting a permanent home

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNS) — For the past five years, Elouisna Francois has lived where God sent her.

Never mind that it’s far from her old neighborhood in the capital — where she had made a good life until the country’s January 2010 earthquake — and that there are no basic services, like running water, sanitation or electricity.

For now, home is the sprawling community known as Canaan, in the rolling hills northeast of the city.

“God sent us here,” said Francois, 64. “Once God sends you to a place, you have to be there.”

Francois said she came to Canaan with a letter stating that the government “officially handed the land to the people.” She relocated with what little she could salvage from her apartment that collapsed during the earthquake.

While Francois acknowledged the drawbacks in Canaan, she said the peacefulness she experiences is more important. She travels to the city occasionally to pick up food and other items she needs to get by.

“I sleep here alone. I’m not afraid,” she said.

Francois is one of as many as 250,000 people who now reside in Canaan. Makeshift homes are scattered as far as the eye can see.

The small structures are made of corrugated steel, plywood and pieces of heavy canvas, cut to shape from the remnants of tents distributed by aid agencies in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Some residents have panoramic views of the nearby Gulf of Gonave.

The community emerged soon after the earthquake when the government declared the rocky, dusty land about 12 miles

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The International Church

from the Haitian capital the place where people could relocate.

However, Canaan exists in a legal limbo. While residents like Francois told Catholic News Service they believe the government approved their relocation, others said they are waiting to be told they can build a permanent structure.

Others have been forcibly evicted, said Dayrri Fils-Aime, a leader of one of the camp committees representing residents.

He told of an incident in December 2013: More than 30 families scurried to protect their meager possessions when a group of men, backed by a bulldozer, descended on the residents and began “breaking down” the homes. The families moved a few hundred feet up the foothills, with village leaders thinking the move was temporary. Fils-Aime said the community has not heard from anyone since. The land where they once lived remained vacant in midFebruary.

“It’s the government not doing its job to get these people somewhere,” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s pretty hectic around here,” Fils-Aime added. “You have to have the courage to survive around here.”

The government has said the sprawling settlement is not meant to be a permanent home for the displaced. It has banned construction of permanent homes and has no plans to introduce electrical, water or sanitation services.

A single police kiosk was the only government presence seen in Canaan along a half-mile section of Route 1, the main road to Haiti’s coastal cities. Advocates for the residents are concerned

that because of the absence of any government entities, Canaan will become a slum like the notorious Cite Soleil, where basic services and schooling are nonexistent and rival groups vie for control.

“They have a right to permanent housing,” said Edouardo Ilema, a community organizer with the Force for Reflection and Action on the Cause of Housing, a network of 27 nongovernmental organizations that helps Canaan residents understand their rights to safe and decent housing under the Haitian Constitution.

Much of Ilema’s work involves documenting living conditions, abuses and evictions. He said he has been attacked once and threatened several times by unidentified men while visiting residents.

Ted Oswald, who with his wife shares the position of policy analyst and policy coordinator for the Mennonite Central Committee in Haiti, said a recent conference that brought together leading nongovernmental organizations focused on the housing crisis the country is facing. While no solutions were finalized, some of the organizations involved are pressing the government to make housing a higher priority, especially for displaced people.

Meanwhile, former Port-auPrince residents such as Charity Dorelian continue to get by as well as possible. Dorelian, 58, lives in a cobbled-together structure that includes two other adults and four grandchildren.

She said she and her family moved to Canaan after living in a tent camp in Port-au-Prince for three years.

“The state gave some money so we got away from the camp,”

she said. “But since they gave us the money they don’t care about you.”

Dorelian said it would be nice if the government would provide water and electrical service. But she’s not holding out much hope at present.

Still, Dorelian appreciates that the family now owns a home rather than paying high rent in the capital. She described her two years in Canaan as safer than the time she spent in a camp in Port-au-Prince, where “bandits cut our tent with a knife.”

Down a hill, a bit closer to the shore, nine-month-old Gevens Jean-Pierre was snuggled in his mother’s arms as he watched his sister, Mitchellda, 12, grate

a fresh carrot into a bowl on her lap. She was making juice, a mid-morning treat.

His mother, Suzette, stocks a small supply of staples — vegetable oil, beans, tomatoes, onions, soap — that she sells to her neighbors from a rickety table under a black-and-white patterned bed sheet that provides shade from the hot sun.

The money is paltry, but enough to help the family survive, she said.

Jean-Pierre said she and her husband decided to relocate to Canaan because they had no other option. She described conditions for her family of four children as “not easy at all.”

“Only God” provides hope, she said.

ROME (CNS) — The Ukrainian Catholic bishops intend to share “the truth” with Pope Francis about the ongoing crisis in their country: that it is not a civil war but “the direct aggression of our neighbor,” said the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. “We are here to convey the truth to the Holy Father about the situation of Ukraine. This is our whole proposal of the visit ‘ad limina,’” said Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, major archbishop of Kiev-Halych. “And the truth is that we, the Ukrainian people, are the victims,” he said recently.

The Ukrainian Catholic bishops met with the pope in a private audience February 20, as part of their six-day “ad

limina” visit to report on the status of their dioceses. “Our duty is to convey the truth, not to force somebody to change their mind,” the archbishop said about the audience with the pope. The archbishop was responding to questions put to him by Catholic News Service regarding a row reported in the media, following the pope’s comments on Ukraine at his February 4 general audience.

Critics said the pope’s choice of words suggested the Holy See views the crisis in eastern Ukraine as a civil war. They also accused the Holy See of using rhetoric in line with the Russian position on the conflict for the sake of keeping positive ecumenical relations with the Orthodox Church.

Ukrainian bishops to tell pope of ‘aggression of our neighbor’

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The Church in the U.S.

February 27, 2015

Cardinal Dolan: ISIS threatens whole civilization — no one can be silent

New York City (CNA) — With ISIS threatening all of human civilization, no one of any background or religion can remain silent, said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.

The ISIS militants who are perpetrating these acts of violence in the name of Islam “threaten civilization, everything that is decent and noble about humanity,” Cardinal Dolan warned, saying that their vicious acts are creating a worldwide crisis that cannot — and must not — be ignored.

“These aren’t sporadic attacks.

This is part of an orchestrated fanaticism, and ideology that sees Christianity, Judaism, and any religion of peace as the enemy,” he said recently in the New York Post.

The cardinal responded to a graphic video that was released on February 15 showing the execution of 21 Coptic Christians at the hands of ISIS militants in Libya.

“How much worse can it get?” the cardinal said, explaining that he was “deeply saddened to learn of the latest violence by fanatics who see anybody who disagrees with them as their enemy.”

Voicing distress at the recent acts of violence perpetrated by

ISIS militants, Cardinal Dolan said he was moved to tears and prayer because the Coptic Christians were killed for “nothing less than their religious convictions.”

In addition to killing Christians and other religious minorities, the cardinal also believes that the Islamic State is orchestrating “a phobia of Christianity” throughout the world in an effort to stifle religious freedom until it is completed wiped out.

He pointed to “a coordinated effort on behalf of fanatics to see that true religion which stands for friendship, peace, and the dignity of the human person and the Sacredness of human life, is stamped out.”

“We need Islamic religious leaders to stand up and say, ‘This is not Islam. This is a perversion of our faith,’” he continued.

Pointing to the civil unrest within Ireland over 40 years ago, Cardinal Dolan highlighted the Catholic bishops who stood up against the car bombings and violence committed by the Irish Republican Army, which “perversely identified itself as ‘Catholic.’”

These bishops should be seen as role models for the majority Islamic leaders who don’t identify with the Islamic State, Cardinal Dolan said, calling them to stand up against the extremist group and condemn their acts of terror.

“Fanatics want to take over, and we can’t let that happen,” he stressed.

Though many Christians have a price on their heads for their religious beliefs, Cardinal Dolan urged “men and women of all true creeds — Jewish, Christian and Islamic” to stand together and oppose the disordered system of the Islamic State.

“Simply because these Christians make the sign of the cross, there is a price on their head,” he observed, adding that “we cannot ignore their cries and cannot let their blood be spilled without moving us to tears and saying, ‘this must stop.’”

Lent, he continued, is a season of deep prayer, penance, and solidarity with the oppressed and suffering, offering people everywhere an opportunity to unite with the persecuted Christians around the world.

“This massacre leaves us not only with ashes on our foreheads, but with tears in our eyes, a lump in our throat and a burning in our heart.”

Retired Auxiliary Bishop Emil A. Wcela of Rockville Centre, N.Y., prays over two inmates at the end of an Ash Wednesday Mass at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead, N.Y. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

Interfaith working group calls for opposition to Pacific trade deal

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A recent interfaith coalition announced it opposes what it called “undemocratic” actions proposed by the Obama Administration regarding the much-anticipated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and called on other people of faith to do the same.

The Interfaith Working Group on Trade and Investment, based in Washington and made up of representatives from a range of faith-based organizations, criticized the administration for fasttracking the agreement.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade pact that has been in negotiation for about 10 years between the U.S. and about a dozen Asian countries that is expected to lift tariffs on goods and services and will govern an estimated 40 percent of U.S. imports and exports.

Fast-track negotiations “would limit Congress to only 90 days of deliberation for the bill with only 20 hours of debate and no amendment process,” the interfaith group said in a statement at the news conference.

The Trade Act of 2002 gives the U.S. president authority to negotiate international agreements that Congress can approve or disapprove but cannot amend or filibuster.

Besides holding a news conference, which was led by Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice lobbying group Network, the Interfaith Working Group on Trade and Investment also sent a letter to President Barack Obama and all 535 members of Congress.

In the letter, the coalition urged the White House and Congress to “oppose fast-track trade promotion authority for any trade agreement currently being negotiated”

on the grounds that “‘fast track’ is a broken and undemocratic process because it privileges the views of powerful global corporations in defining the terms of trade agreements, while excluding voices of those adversely impacted.”

Trade agreements should “receive a fair hearing in the public square, protect people living in poverty, promote the dignity of all workers, and responsibly protect God’s creation,” the letter said, adding that trade, “like the rest of the economy, must be a means of lifting people out of poverty and ensure a country’s ability to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of their citizens and the planet.”

“This shortcut is not aligned with the democratic values of our nation or the moral values of our faith traditions,” the Rev. Michael Neuroth said at the news conference. He is a policy advocate for international issues at the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries’ office.

The fast-track process contradicts American ideals and principles, said the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson II, director for public witness at the Presbyterian Church (USA).

It “undercuts the principles of real democracy” because “the intention of our Founding Fathers and these (constituting) documents was to include people in the ongoing development of this country,” he said.

“Eleven other countries will be involved in these partnerships and they will encompass 40 percent of global trade,” Rev. Nelson added, saying that people of faith “need to challenge (fast track) at its very core.”

The Trans-Pacific Partnership also has been brought up by advocates for victims of hu-

man trafficking.

At a recent Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing, a panel of witnesses discussed the agreement in terms of its potential to curb the practice of “modern-day slavery” in the Pacific.

“Our diplomacy must be much more robust and aggressive on tackling the root causes” of forced labor, Shawna Bader Blau, executive director of Solidarity Center, told the committee, adding that “it’s not too much to ask that we see real systematic changes” in how countries operate before agreeing to anything in trade negotiations.

“Slavery exists on a massive scale in the world today because there are huge swaths of the world where people don’t get in trouble for enslaving other human beings. In some regions of Southeast Asia, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be prosecuted or jailed for enslaving a poor person,” Gary Haugen, president and CEO of International Justice Mission, told the committee.

During the interfaith group’s news conference, Gerry Lee, director of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, said he agreed with Bader Blau and Haugen’s points, saying the potential impact of such trade agreements on human trafficking needs to be discussed. “We now only know rumors and leaks of TPP and it’s certainly a concern,” he said.

“Trade policies have an effect on that issue.”

Lee cited Harvard University research illustrating trade policies’ effect on how people are trafficked worldwide, before reminding the media that “we forget that trafficking is not only about sexual slavery but also about labor trafficking and it’s a huge problem.”

The Church in the U.S. Why the Religious Freedom Restoration Act matters to you

February 27, 2015

Washington D.C. CNA/EWTN News) — For the sake of religious liberty, it is vital that the religious rights of corporations — and not just individuals and churches — be upheld under federal law, a legal scholar has said.

“Most Americans, faithful Americans, they bring their religious commitment into all aspects of their life, including the workplace,” Gregory Baylor, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, told CNA after a recent congressional hearing on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. “We have Christian families, other folks, who own businesses and they want to operate their businesses in accordance with their religious principles,” he added.

“And the position of the government in these cases, and in today’s hearing, at least with respect to some of these representatives, is that your faith life is sort of within the four walls of the church, and that’s where it needs to stay.”

Baylor testified before the House Judiciary Committee about “oversight of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” The act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, was a reaction to a Supreme Court ruling that the government did not have to prove a compelling interest in substantially burdening one’s exercise of religion.

The act established that if a law places a “substantial burden” on a person’s exercise of religion, the burden of proof falls on the government to prove a “compelling interest” for the law, and that it is using the “least restrictive means” of action to pursue its interest.

The act certainly upholds the religious freedom of “entities like Catholic Charities, and Catholic University of America, and K-12 parochial schools,” Baylor said, adding that most, if not all, of those entities are “incorporated.”

“So you can’t say that corporations don’t have rights,” he continued.

At hand is the argument — exemplified in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell — of whether a business or organization must cover items in employee health plans against its religious or ethical beliefs.

The Supreme Court ruled that as a family-run closelyheld corporation, craft chain Hobby Lobby met the religious exemption under RFRA and did not have to cover items it considered abortifacients in employee health plans. The court said that the government did not employ the “least restrictive means” of forcing Hobby Lobby to do so.

Professor Nelson Tebbe of Brooklyn Law School said that Congress should amend RFRA. When a religious exemption for a business such as Hobby Lobby places significant costs on a third party — in this case, the employees who must pay for their own birth control and abortion-inducing drugs — the business must meet that need.

“These thousands of people have suffered harm that may well be irreparable,” Tebbe said of employees who have gone without coverage for their birth control.

When Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) asked Tebbe if this argument applied to religiously-affiliated organizations such as Catholic Charities having to cover late-term abortions, Tebbe said he was “reluctant” to answer that but that, using another example, Catholic Charities should have to provide adoption services to all couples, including same-sex couples.

Baylor said that argument meant that an organization with a religious mission, such as EWTN, would have to cover late-term abortions for its employees.

“It’s commercial, but clearly they [EWTN] have a religious mission at its core. Would that analysis mean that EWTN would have to provide lateterm abortion coverage, which is obviously something that people participating running

that organization very much would disagree with?” DeSantis asked Baylor.

“I think it does, and that’s very disturbing about some of these arguments that are being made about Hobby Lobby,” Baylor answered, “is that we tend to think it’s about contraceptives and actually the objection that was made

by Hobby Lobby is that they don’t want to facilitate access to abortion.”

Such a case is a reality and “not hypothetical,” he continued, pointing to laws in Washington, D.C. and California mandating that all employers — even Catholic schools and dioceses — cover elective abortions for employees.

The Reproductive NonDiscrimination Act of 2014 passed the D.C. city council and was signed into law

by Mayor Muriel Bowser in January. It mandated that employers could not hire or fire employees based on their reproductive health decisions, even if those decisions flatly contradicted the mission of the organization — such as a Catholic or Pro-Life organization.

Critics also said the bill forced employers to cover birth control and abortions in employee health plans. To clarify that it did not, Bowser introduced legislation after she signed the bill saying it did not apply to insurance plans but just employment decisions.

RFRA was understood from the beginning to apply to corporations and not just individuals, Baylor argued.

“It was understood at the time RFRA was passed, that it included not just non-profit religious corporations, but it included all corporations. This was non-controversial,” Baylor told CNA.

Synod on Family questionnaire correction FALL RIVER — In last week’s Anchor, columnist Claire McManus advised that individuals could share input in preparation for the upcoming 2015 Synod on the Family.

It was discovered that the shortened link printed in The Anchor only works if it is embedded in an email or website.

In order to copy and paste the questionnaire website, individuals must use the following address in its entirety: https://docs.google.com/a/dfrcs.org/forms/d/1-y_ nl9yDyqmyG3JiFVoliFyc8PZpJVeU-DAXPIyTSaQ/ viewform Once the form is completed, respondents are asked to press the “submit” button. The responses go directly to McManus and are anonymous. Responses are due by March 13.

For questions or assistance accessing the site, contact Claire McManus at 508-678-2828 or email cmcmanus@dfrcs.org.

Cases where a massive corporation would invoke religious freedom protections are so rare they’re almost hypothetical, he added.

“To be sure, for-profit, publicly-traded big companies, many of them, all of them I would hope, try to behave ethically. But I think it’s fairly rare for a corporation on the scale of IBM or General Motors to try to bring specific religious principles into the operation of their businesses.”

Despite the congressional threat to religious rights of corporations — for instance, the Senate’s attempt last summer to overturn the religious exemption for employers like Hobby Lobby in cases about coverage of birth control — threats from the judiciary are far greater, Baylor explained.

“We’ve seen that in some of the bad outcomes in HHS mandate cases that have been brought by religious non-profits where judges are denying that these entities are substantially burdened when the government makes them facilitate access to drugs and devices and services in violation of their religious consciences.”

Though critics might argue that interpretations of RFRA can restrain the civil liberties

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of employees, Baylor added that it protects the greatest civil liberty — the free exercise of religion.

“I think for example when a religious employer, a religiously-motivated family business refuses to provide abortion pills and pay for abortion pills to its employees, it’s not violating anybody’s civil liberties.

It’s just not the case that people have a fundamental, inherent, human right to get free abortion pills paid for by their employer,” he explained.

However, the law doesn’t always uphold the religious rights of organizations, he added.

“RFRA doesn’t dictate outcomes, it doesn’t say that religion always wins and other interests can be ignored. RFRA specifically orders the courts to assess whether the government is pursuing an important interest. And one of those interests might be a civil liberty of a third party. And courts are already empowered to take those interests into account when they make their decisions.”

“That’s why these calls to amend RFRA are perplexing, because RFRA already contemplates that interests will be balanced against each other,” he continued.

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February 27, 2015

Anchor Editorial

A new doctor of the Church

On Monday the Vatican Press Office announced that the preceding Saturday Pope Francis had met in an audience Cardinal Angelo Amato, S.D.B., the Prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints and during that audience the pope “confirmed the affirmative sentence of the Plenary Session of Cardinals and Bishops” of that congregation “regarding the title of Doctor of the Universal Church which will soon be conferred on St. Gregory of Narek, a priest monk, who was born in Andzevatsik (then Armenia, now Turkey) around 950 and died in Narek (then Armenia, now Turkey) around 1005.”

This was hardly the first time that this saint had been mentioned in recent times at the Holy See. Back on Feb. 18, 2001 St. John Paul II in his Angelus address referred to him as “one of Our Lady’s principal poets, the great doctor of the Armenian Church, St. Gregory of Narek.” Although the Polish pontiff used the term “doctor,” the Armenian monk did not formally hold that title at the time.

In that address the Holy Father reminded his listeners that “Armenia is thus considered the first nation to have embraced Christianity, even before it was accepted in the Roman Empire. In reviewing the 17 centuries of this people’s history, we note how martyrdom is a constant element in that history. On various occasions Armenians have had to pay with harsh suffering for their intention to remain faithful to their Christian identity, down to the tragic events at the end of the 19th century and in the first years of the 1900s. On this special occasion we wish to pay homage to the sacrifice of Armenian Christians, including those in the diaspora, who took the light of the Gospel with them and preserved all their Spiritual and cultural heritage.”

In Redemptoris Mater No. 32, St. John Paul II refers to this new doctor of the Church. “St. Gregory of Narek, one of the outstanding glories of Armenia, with powerful poetic inspiration ponders the different aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation, and each of them is for him an occasion to sing and extol the extraordinary dignity and magnificent beauty of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Word made flesh.”

St. Gregory’s prayer No. 80 begins with a hint towards Mary’s Magnificat.

“Magnify your honor through me, and my Salvation will be manifested through you if you find me, Madonna, if you pity me, blessed among women, if you rescue me in my waywardness, Immaculate One, if you steady me in my doubt, repose, if you calm my anxiety, pacifier, if you show me the way from which I have strayed, praised one. You alone shall be on the pure lips of happy tongues.”

In a general audience on Oct. 18, 2000, St. John Paul again made reference to St. Gregory. “Let us express our desire for the Divine life offered in Christ in the warm tones of a great theologian of the Armenian Church, Gregory of Narek

(10th century): ‘It is not for His gifts, but for the Giver that I always long. It is not glory to which I aspire, but the Glorified One Whom I desire to embrace. It is not rest that I seek, but the face of the One Who gives rest that I implore. It is not for the wedding feast, but for desire of the Bridegroom that I languish’” (12th Prayer).

This 12th Prayer is also referred to as a “bedtime prayer.” It ends with this request to God: “Grant blissful rest like the slumber of death in the depth of this night through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God and the elect. Firmly close the windows of sight, sentient faculty of the mind, with impregnable fortifications against the waves of anxiety, the cares of daily life, nightmares, frenzy, hallucinations, and protected by the memory of your hope to wake again from the heaviness of sleep into alert wakefulness and soul-renewing cheerfulness to stand before You raising my prayerful voice in harmony with the Heavenly choirs of praise with the fragrance of faith, to You in Heaven, All Blessed King, Whose glory is beyond telling. For You are glorified by all creation forever and ever.”

Last year, in an address to the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church who was visiting Rome on May 8, Pope Francis said, “We praise God in the words of St. Gregory of Narek, ‘Accept the song of blessing from our lips and deign to grant to this Church the gifts and graces of Zion and of Bethlehem, so that we can be made worthy to participate in Salvation.’”

St. Gregory was keenly aware of his (and our) need to be made worthy by God’s mercy towards us sinners. Online you can access the Book of Prayer he wrote (http://www.stgregoryofnarek.am/book.php). It is quite good to use during this time of Lent, in which we meditate upon Psalm 51.

At the beginning of the book, in his “tenets of prayer,” St. Gregory explains that these prayers are “powerful salves for incurable wounds, effective medicines for invisible pains, multi-symptom remedies for the pangs of turmoil, for the passions of all temperaments, occasions for tears, impulses to prayer, prepared in response to the requests of the hermit fathers and the multitude in the desert, called the book of lamentations written by the monk Gregory of Narek Monastery.”

In Prayer 6 he confesses, “No less than pharaoh have I hardened my heart.

No less blameworthy than the frenzied Israelite mob, have I rebelled against my Creator. No less than the enemies of God have I taken the battlefield, and I did not refrain from denying the Creator of all from nothing. I make waves like the turbulent sea during a storm, but I do not tremble, humbled by Your severe commandment, like the waves of the sea against the shore. My countless misdeeds are measured like mounds of sand.”

May this new doctor help us approach the Divine Physician for healing this Lent.

Pope Francis’ Angelus message of February 22

Dear brothers and sisters, Last Wednesday, Lent began with the Rite of Ashes, and today is the first Sunday of this Liturgical time that makes reference to the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert, after His Baptism in the Jordan River. In today’s Gospel, St. Mark writes: “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and He remained in the desert for 40 days, tempted by Satan.

He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to Him”

(1:12-13). With these simple words, the evangelist describes the test voluntarily faced by Jesus, before beginning His Messianic mission. It is a test in which the Lord leaves victorious and that prepares Him to announce the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. He, in those 40 days of solitude, confronted Satan “in close combat,” He unmasks his temptations and conquers him.

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this victory in our daily lives.

The Church reminds us of that mystery at the beginning of Lent, so that it may give us the perspective and the meaning of this time, which is a time of combat. Lent is time of combat! A Spiritual combat against the spirit of evil (cfr. Collective Prayer of Ash Wednesday). And while we cross the Lenten “desert,” we have our gazed fixed upon Easter, which is the definitive victory of Jesus against the evil one, against sin and against death. This is the meaning of this first Sunday of Lent: to place ourselves decisively on the path of Jesus, the road that leads to life. To look at Jesus. Look at what Jesus has done and go with Him. This path of Jesus passes through the desert. The desert is the place where the voice of God and the voice of the tempter can be heard. In the noise, in the confusion, this cannot be done; only superficial voices can be heard. Instead we can go deeper in the desert, where our destiny

is truly played out, life or death.

And how do we hear the voice of God? We hear it in His Word.

For this reason, it is important to know Scripture, because otherwise we do not know how to respond to the attacks of the evil one. And here I would like to return to my advice of reading the Gospel every day. Read the Gospel every day! Meditate on it for a little while, for 10 minutes.

And also to carry it with you in your pocket or your purse. But always have the Gospel in hand.

The Lenten desert helps us to say no to worldliness, to the “idols,” it helps us to make courageous choices in accordance with the Gospel and to strengthen solidarity among the brothers.

Now let us enter into the desert without fear, because we are not alone: we are with Jesus, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. In fact, as it was for Jesus, it is the Holy Spirit Who guides us on the Lenten path; that same Spirit that descended upon Jesus and that has been given to us in Baptism.

Lent, therefore is an appropriate time that should lead us to be ever more aware of how much the Holy Spirit, received in Baptism, has worked and can work in us. And in the end of the Lenten itinerary, in the Easter Vigil, we can renew with greater awareness the baptismal covenant and the commitments that flow from it.

May the Blessed Virgin, model of docility to the Spirit, help us to let ourselves be led by Him, Who wishes to make each of us a “new creature.”

To her I entrust, in particular, the week of Spiritual Exercises, that will begin this afternoon, and to which I will participate in together with my collaborators of the Roman Curia. I ask that you pray for us, that in the desert of the Spiritual Exercises, we may listen to the voice of Jesus, and also correct so many defects that we have. And to also confront the temptations that attack us every day. I ask you therefore to accompany us with your prayers.

Anchor Columnists Bold Christian fasting

February 27, 2015

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n Ash Wednesday, Jesus spoke about three elements central to a Christian plan of life: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. He told us, “When you pray, when you fast, when you give alms,” not to do so to be noticed by others but exclusively in order to bring ourselves into a greater union with God the Father.

All three practices are essential to the Christian life. No one can truly heed Jesus’ Words to follow Him without striving to imitate Jesus’ constant prayer, His heroic fasting, and His giving of Himself as alms for others’ Salvation.

A Catholic who takes the faith seriously similarly prays, fasts and sacrifices for others.

It’s fitting for us, therefore, as we consider the Spiritual practices that are essential to a Catholic’s training for holiness, to examine prayer, fasting and almsgiving, which are meant to be lived not only during the 40day season of Lent but are meant to be a staple of Christian life throughout the year.

We’ve already pondered various aspects of Christian prayer — the Morning Offering, the General Examination, Mental Prayer and the Mass — and will consider others in upcoming columns. At the beginning of

W

Lent, however, it’s fitting for us of the devil has been to convince to focus on the need for fasting, many that fasting is an optional which we’ll do this week, and part of the Christian life — and almsgiving, which we’ll take up that rigorous fasting is a sign of next week. psychological imbalance, a sort of Fasting is one of the most Spiritual anorexia. minimized and underutilized The devil, of course, detests parts of a Catholic plan of life. fasting. His first temptation There are many Catholics who toward Jesus in the desert was fast only two days a year, on Ash directed precisely against His Wednesday and Good Friday, fasting, trying to get Him and even on those days legalistically have one big meal and eat throughout Putting Into the rest of the day just the Deep up to the limit of what would constitute a second meal. Others go beyond

By Father it, giving up, for example, Roger J. Landry chocolate, sweets or alcoholic beverages throughout Lent. egocentrically to prioritize His To a large degree, however, material hungers and use His fasting in this way is the equivagifts to convert stones into bread. lent of praying for a few minutes After exorcising a young boy of a day or giving a few dollars away a demonic possession that the in alms — they’re good actions, Apostles were unable to expel, but far from the heroism that Jesus revealed to them that some forms saints. They frankly don’t demons are expelled “only by resemble at all Jesus’ fasting in the prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:21). desert or the fasting of the NinThe devil abhors fasting the way evites after Jonah’s preaching, of criminals loathe armed police.

Esther and the Jews in Babylon, That’s because the evil one of Anna in the Temple, of the grasps why fasting is so imearly Church in Antioch, of St. portant: if we can’t control our Paul and so many of the saints physical appetites, he can use throughout the centuries. our physical, sexual and irascible One of the greatest triumphs appetites to control us. We can

Churches offer community opportunities for the blind

stantially. I guess you could say hile we, as blind that Divine faith should extend people, try our best to private industry: faith that to get involved in our comthe blind can do the average munities on our own, one vehicle that helps us accomplish this goal is Church. No matter what faith we are, blind people all over the country have been

By Robert Branco given an opportunity to be organists, lectors, and choir singers, as well as to hold other important positions within the job in the average workplace, and do it as well as any sighted congregation. employee.

I know several blind lectors As of now, I plan to become within my community, most of a lector in my own church, whom read from Braille text, because I know I can do it, which can be easily obtained. and it gives me much more of I know several blind organa Spiritual reists, one of whom has been ward. I receive performing in her church for the Propers in more than 50 years. Church Braille, but I choir directors open their had to submit doors to blind singers everya certificate of where, and the experience is blindness to quite rewarding.

If employers would give the the organization to prove blind as much of an opportuthat I need nity as churches do, I believe that the unemployment rate of the accessible material. the blind would go down sub-

Guest Columnist

When a blind person performs a service in a church, the public will experience an extremely close look at how normal the situation is, and that’s an important step toward equal treatment of the blind and the sighted.

Robert Branco is a resident of New Bedford, a graduate of UMass Dartmouth, an author of several books, including his most recent, “My Home Away From Home: Life at Perkins School for the Blind,” and a columnist and media liaison for several publications for the blind. Email him at branco182@verizon.net.

only hunger for “every Word that comes from the mouth of God” when we’re able to prioritize our Spiritual hungers over our bodily.

If we can’t say no to our stomachs, we’ll never be able to say a persevering yes to our souls. We’ll never truly be able fully to follow Jesus, Who insists that to be His disciple we have to “deny ourselves, pick up our cross each day and follow Him.” Fasting is a crucial starting point of that Spiritual self-denial that helps us to save our lives by losing them.

In the Gospel, Jesus makes two clarifications about Christian fasting that’s key for us to fast appropriately.

First, He said that the “wedding guests” can’t fast while the bridegroom is with them, but when he is “ripped way” then they will fast. This shows that the fundamental Christian attitude is joyful feasting, not gloomy fasting. When in Jesus’ presence, we rejoice like groomsmen celebrate at a friend’s wedding. Because Jesus is with us until the end of time, Christians are meant to be distinguished always by joy at His presence. At the same time, however, we are not always with Jesus, because whenever we sin, our communion with Jesus is ripped asunder, as when Jesus was ripped away from the Apostles in Gethsemane. So we fast seeking to unite our whole existence to Him. Second, Jesus said we cannot sew new patches onto old cloaks or pour new wine into old wineskins. In other words, our fasting is revolutionarily different from the fasting of the Pharisees or John the Baptist’s disciples, which was a fasting of religious discipline and duty meant to do penance for their sins and beseech God to answer prayers.

Christian fasting, on the contrary, is meant to be motivated by a love for the Father that seeks to bring us to hunger for what He hungers for.

God hungers for us to hunger and thirst for holiness. God hungers for us to hunger to set the oppressed free, to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter the homeless, to clothe the naked, to

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care for our own, as He tells us through Isaiah. God wants us to be hungrier to care for the poor, needy and oppressed than someone who hasn’t eaten for days would be for a piece of bread.

Our fasting is meant to help us to starve for what God starves, until every cell of our body joyfully desires what He desires.

When people begin to take God’s call to holiness earnestly, they recognize that they need to take fasting more seriously.

But they often fast impetuously and unwisely, in such a way that various unintended side-effects occur. We can and should fast boldly, but we need to avoid three pitfalls.

The first is pride, either trying to win others’ esteem or inflate ourselves because of our improved self-discipline.

The second is irritability, fasting so much that our bodily state leaves us uncharitably grumpy or snappy.

The last is fatigue or distraction, such that we cannot do the work that we need to do because we don’t have the necessary energy and concentration.

To avoid these pitfalls, I generally recommend most people in ordinary circumstances fast during Lent in a three-fold way: to drink only water (and diluted coffee if they really need the caffeine); to give up all condiments on food (salt, pepper, sugar, butter, ketchup, salad dressing); and to forsake all sweets and avoid snacks between meals.

This type of fast will often go totally unnoticed by others, will give us dozens of opportunities every day to practice holy selfdenial, will convince us that we don’t live on bread alone, and will help us to pray in the body a Liturgy of the Hours that will open our souls to grasp every Word that comes from the Father’s mouth.

“Do not work for the food that perishes,” Jesus told us in the Gospel, “but for the food that endures for eternal life.” That’s what bold Christian fasting enables as part of a Christian plan of life.

Anchor columnist Father Landry can be contacted at fatherlandry@catholicpreaching. com.

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February 27, 2015

I

n the Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Lent we are presented with the amazing account of the transfiguration of Jesus. On a mountain in Galilee Peter, James and John are privileged to have a fleeting glimpse of Jesus in all His glory. As these three disciples view the transfigured Jesus they better grasp the implications of what was revealed to Peter at Caesarea Philippi and what now is announced by the voice from the cloud; that Jesus the Christ is God’s beloved Son. Yet these disciples will not fully understand Jesus until they reach Jerusalem and witness all that will take place there as the Lord completes the work of redemption for which God the Father has anointed Him. Yet the impending events in Jerusalem explain why Jesus does not

Our eyes have seen the glory

wait until after His death injustice of the innocent to reveal Himself in glory being punished along with to some of His disciples. the guilty, of hate being Jesus knows He must go returned for love, and to the holy city to suffer death being dealt for life? and die and although He In fact isn’t the scandal has already predicted His Passion and death to His Homily of the Week disciples they have Second Sunday reacted to this of Lent news with disbelief.

So out of love

By Father Jesus prepares Edward J. Healy these three leaders for the scandal of the cross by letting them of the cross not only the see His final glory so as to manner of Christ’s execuenable them to endure His tion but also the injustice Passion with hope and to that occurs across the strengthen the other disciages and causes some to ples as well. What though grow angry with God and is the scandal of the cross others to even give up on for which Jesus is trying to Him completely? prepare His disciples and Indeed whenever we are us as well? Beyond the unmoved to ask “why” in the imaginable horror of Jesus’ face of tragedy, disease, own death by crucifixion, disaster and death, that is is it not also the scandal the scandal of the cross. of bad things happening When we are confounded to good people? Isn’t the that innocent people still scandal of the cross the suffer and that the good

may still die young, that is the scandal of the cross.

Living in a troubled world where things often seem arbitrary and unfair we can suffer the scandal of the cross no less than the original disciples did.

As with those disciples on the mountain, Jesus wishes to prepare us so that we too will not be shaken to the core by the crosses that we must suffer or see other people endure.

Jesus invites us, just as He invited those privileged disciples, to accompany Him to a place where He might better reveal Himself to us. Indeed, every time we gather together to hear His Word proclaimed and to celebrate the Eucharist in His memory, Jesus Who has died but is risen is truly present in all His glory. Thus called to the holy mountain that

is Liturgy we are inspired

by His Word and nourished by the Eucharist and so enabled to persevere in hope before sickness, suffering, and injustice in whatever form these crosses may appear in our lives or in those of others. Privileged to glimpse Christ’s glory we are assured that no matter how difficult any situation may be, the triumph of life over death is God’s final plan for the world He has sent His beloved Son to redeem.

So let us persevere in faith and be able to strengthen others by relying on what Christ’s Paschal Mystery reveals to us; the truth that even the most challenging aspects of the human condition will one day be transfigured in the glory of the Resurrection.

Father Healey is pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in West Harwich.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. Feb. 28, Dt 26:16-19; Ps 119:1-2,4-5,7-8; Mt 5:43-48. Sun. Mar. 1, Second Sunday of Lent, Gn 22:1-2,9a,10-13,15-18; Ps 116:10,15-19; Rom 8:31b-34; Mk 9:2-10. Mon. Mar. 2, Dn 9:4b-10; Ps 79:8-9,11,13; Lk 6:36-38. Tues. Mar. 3, Is 1:10, 1620; Ps 50:8-9,16bc-17,21,23. Wed. Mar. 4, Jer 18:18-20; Ps 31:5-6, 14-16; Mt 20:17-28. Thurs. Mar. 5, Jer 17:5-10; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 16:19-31. Fri. Mar. 6, Gn 37:3-4,12-13a,17b.-28a; Ps 105:16-21; Mt 21:33-43,45-46.

Fall River Catholic churches hosting Lenten Mission

FALL RIVER — The Catholic parishes of the Greater Fall River area will be jointly sponsoring a Lenten Mission from March 9-12 each night at four different host parishes.

The mission will be given

by Father Paul Halladay, a major in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps and a priest of the Archdiocese of Mobile, Ala. During his 11 years in the Army, he has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, West Point and various other installations.

The theme for the mission will be “Lenten Lessons from a Combat Chaplain” and will involve different meditations on the Spiritual combat of Lent and the victory of Easter.

Father Halladay will illustrate his lessons by focusing on various Catholic saints and heroes who have distinguished themselves in combat, like St. Joan of Arc, St. Martin of Tours, Father Vincent Capodanno and Father Emil Kapaun.

The mission will take place on March 9, at St. Berna-

dette Church, 529 Eastern Avenue, Fall River; on March 10, at St. Bernard Church, 32 South Main Street, Assonet; on March 11, at St. Michael Church, 189 Essex Street, Fall River; and on March 12, at St. Anthony of the Desert Church, 300 North Eastern Avenue, Fall River.

Father Halladay’s presentations will take place each night at 7 p.m. within the context of Mass. The Sacrament of Reconciliation will be offered every night from 6-6:45 p.m. at the respective churches.

There will also be a shorter version of his mission talk offered each day as the homily during the 12:05 p.m. daily Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, 327 Second Street, Fall River.

The purpose of a Lenten Mission, Father Halladay explained, is to “help us to prepare for a Sacramental encounter with Jesus Christ at the very significant celebration of Easter.”

“The Triduum, the three

days when we annually remember the Passion and death of Jesus Christ, is the D-Day of our Spiritual lives: Holy Thursday, the eve of battle, and Good Friday, the day of combat,” he continued.

“While Holy Saturday looks and feels like a day of defeat, Easter Sunday shows us that from what appears to be defeat, God fashions a victory like no one or nothing could have ever anticipated.”

He said that his goal for the mission is to prepare people to meet Christ at Easter by sharing some of the stories from his time as a combat chaplain in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He encouraged people to come to the mission even if they might be able to attend only one night.

The mission is free of charge.

Each of the nights of the mission, the hosting parishes will be having a free reception for attendees in their respective parish halls.

February 27, 2015

Monday 23 February 2015 — Homeport: Falmouth Harbor — Lenten Monday No. 1 n a cave high in the Scandinavian mountains there has been found a frozen piece of oak. Inscribed in runes, it appears to be a transliteration from Yupik, the language of the Inuit, also known as Eskimos.

Some scientists speculate it was brought back from Arctic regions by a roving band of ancient Norse explorers. Others say it probably originated in modern times either in Stowe, Vt., or Vale, Colo. It’s signed by someone named Nanook of the North, but that’s probably a pen name. It contains a prayer for snow.

Oh Lord of Heaven and earth, Who alone doth send down upon the earth both rain and snow, Be pleased to bury us in huge mounds of freshly-fallen snow.

Let it be the thick powdery kind so as to be of greatest benefit to our ski resorts.

But preserve in a dry and safe condition the roads and highways leading to the slopes.

And may our packed surfaces last until the Fourth of July. Amen.

I’m certain this prayer is a forgery. I have evidence that proves it was written just this

I

T

he season of Lent is a time to look at ourselves, to take a deeper look into our lives and see what it is we may need to amend, what is good that we should continue to do and to take stock of all that God has done in our lives. It is also a time when we are asked to sacrifice, to be more conscientious of others and their needs, to look at the world around us laid bare by the starkness of winter, and ask ourselves what is it that God wants or needs from me.

We are loved beyond measure, an unconditional love that gave us Jesus Christ, the Paschal Lamb. We are not asked to make such a dire sacrifice, we are simply asked to love Him in a way in which we are willing to place our lives into His loving hands, trusting all we have into His care.

We see the trust that is asked of us by the example of Abraham (Gen 22) in the first reading for the second Sunday of Lent. Abraham is put to the test, a test that many of us as parents, grandparents or guardians would have a great deal of difficulty understanding, let alone actually doing. Yet his love

Anchor Columnists Prayer for snow this is, I imagine, what “Old winter season by a priest in North Conway, N.H. My source Faithful” sounds like.

I ran downstairs and, lo and is a parish secretary who wishes to remain anonymous due to the behold, there was the spitting image of another national park fact that she is unauthorized to right there in the visitor’s parlor speak.

To combat this North Conway prayer, I have written my own: The Ship’s Log “Dear Lord, please disReflections of a regard previous prayer Parish Priest from Conway. Amen.”

I hope it works, but

By Father Tim as of this writing, my Goldrick prayer from Cape Cod has not yet kicked in.

I know this because of — Niagara Falls. I can make recent events here at St. Patrick this comparison because I have, Church. in fact, been to Niagara Falls It was a dark and stormy on several occasions. I went to night. Father Wallace (FXW) and I were sitting in my quarters seminary in Ontario, Canada, as surely you remember, dear discussing the record-breaking readers. winter weather. Little did we Father Peter called the realize that the temperature plumbers. outside had reached a windIt was understandable that chill factor of minus-20 degrees. the plumbers could not rush I heard a thump and went to over immediately. They were investigate. It was probably just some snow sliding off the recto- being deluged by phone calls ry roof. I heard a second thump. reporting frozen pipes. Father Peter and I inspected the A plummeting icicle, perhaps?

Then I heard the gurgling sound church complex. We went to the farthest reaches of the heating of water. Not just a drip, mind system — the laundry room. The you, but a powerful rush of wafaucets weren’t working. There ter. Although I have never been were more frozen pipes near the to Yellowstone National Park,

first floor church office. Young Father Peter John could hear the drip clearly, but the sound was beyond the range of my much older ears.

Father Peter John called the Town Water Department to shut off the water from the street until the situation could be appraised. Nobody was home at the Water Department. The taped message instructed him to phone the police department. The police dispatcher had the number for the person on emergency call at the Water Department and proceeded to contact him. A town worker showed up at the door within minutes. He determined it would be unnecessary to shut off the water in the rectory and the church, so just the house was shut down.

The plumbers arrived the next morning early and went to work.

They certainly knew what they were doing. The repair work was done in stages. All water was restored by the end of the day. I telephoned the diocesan Insurance Office to alert them to the turn of events.

I now have even more “conversation starters” to add to

9 my display on the living room mantel — two cracked copper elbows and a broken valve. If anyone ever asks why it is that these strange things are on the mantel, it will be the perfect opportunity for me to launch into a story. I have Irish ancestry, you realize. Story-telling is in my genes. Oddly, I have noticed, though, that people seem to be avoiding asking me about the collection of “conversation starters.” I suspect the word has gotten around.

For me, it was just another day of chaos. Being a seasoned pastor, it was no big deal. The star of the day, however, proved to be Father Peter John to whom I had delegated many of the tasks. I mostly watched from a distance. He has to learn these things. He’ll need first-hand experience when he himself is named a pastor.

I hereby award Father Peter John Fournier a first-class certificate in advanced crisis management.

As for that priest from North Conway, I have a bone to pick when I get my hands on him.

Anchor columnist Father Goldrick is pastor of St. Patrick’s Parish in Falmouth.

When did I see You?

We finally get a moment to and devotion to God, and his belief that all things are possible ourselves and instead of sitting quietly in the silence, we fill it through our Lord, find him with noise. preparing to do what is asked.

We are so full of good Abraham chose to listen, to folintentions and a willingness to low and to trust. do what is right, yet we allow During this season are we ourselves to fall short. Guilty willing to listen, truly listen, and ask ourselves, What is God asking of me?

What is it that I need to do? What do I need to sacrifice? We may find that when we quiet our

By Rose Mary minds and listen with Saraiva our hearts, we come to the realization that it is love and a deeper relationship that is sought after and as charged! But yet God waits patiently for us, giving us the that God wants us to put our freedom to make our own trust in Him. choices, and even knowing us Often those nagging thoughts and ideas that seem to as He does, loves us anyway. To prove His love for us He sent us pop into our minds unbidden are messages that we sometimes Jesus to live among us, becoming one of us, helping us to find our ignore. We see a person strugway to God, Our Father. gling with a burden, our heart Do we choose to follow? is drawing us forward to give Are we willing to listen? The them a hand, yet we pull away.

We are asked to volunteer a few disciples were fortunate to not only have Jesus in their midst, hours to our community, and but to also experience God’s even though we would gain so voice instructing them: “This is much from the experience, we find excuses, generally citing our My beloved Son. Listen to Him” (Mk 9:2-10). Jesus may not be schedules and our lack of time.

In the Palm of His Hands

walking among us as in the days of the His ministry, yet I wonder if He isn’t. What? There is a song that always comes to mind when I am struggling with adding yet another item to my calendar, or taking a few minutes to help a stranger. “Whatsoever you do to the least of My brothers” is one of those songs that has stuck with me throughout my lifetime. It continually reminds me that Jesus is still very much a part of our lives.

The verses are quite simple: “When I was hungry, you gave Me to eat; when I was thirsty you gave Me to drink, etc.” When these verses play in my head, I start to wonder what I have missed.

Was Jesus staring back at me through the eyes of the lonely person who just needed a smile?

Was that Jesus Who struggled with the load they were carrying? By coming up with excuses for not volunteering did I rob myself of time with Christ? My Lenten mission, if you will, is to look at everyone I encounter and strive to not only see them, but to recognize the Christ within.

To truly see with the eyes of Christ, to recognize the person within the person, to look beyond their appearance and see them as Jesus would.

Recognizing Christ in others accomplishes so much in our lives, it takes us closer into a loving relationship with God, and reminds us of what God desires of us. Stepping out of our comfort zones and reaching out to others can be difficult at times, leaving us feeling vulnerable.

However, it is in these moments that we begin to understand what God is asking of us, often discovering where our talents lie, and what God wants and needs from us. It is in the sacrificing that we come to know, it is in the struggle that we begin to comprehend, and it is in the release that we gain so much. After all, we are preparing to celebrate the grace of our forgiveness, the gift of our Salvation and the hope in the Resurrection.

Anchor columnist Rose Mary Saraiva lives in Fall River and is the Events Coordinator and Bereavement Ministry for the diocesan Off ice of Faith Formation. She is married with three children and two grandchildren. rsaraiva@dfrcs.com.

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February 27, 2015

Return with tears to God’s loving embrace during Lent, pope says ROME (CNS) — Lent is a journey of purification and penance, a movement that should bring one tearfully back to the loving arms of the merciful Father, Pope Francis said at an Ash Wednesday Mass that began with a procession on Rome’s Aventine Hill.

After walking from the Benedictine monastery of St. Anselm to the Dominican-run Basilica of Santa Sabina, Pope Francis celebrated Mass. He received ashes on the top of his head from Cardinal Jozef Tomko, titular cardinal of the basilica, and distributed ashes to the Benedictines, the Dominicans, his closest aides and a family of five.

When a priest places ashes on one’s head or forehead, he recites: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” or “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

Both, Pope Francis said, are “a reminder of the truth of human existence: We are limited creatures, sinners always in need of repentance and conversion. How important it is to listen and accept these reminders.”

In his homily before the ashes were distributed, the pope

encouraged Catholics to ask God for “the gift of tears in order to make our prayer and our journey of conversion more authentic and without hypocrisy.”

The day’s first reading, Joel 2:12-18, described the Old Testament priests weeping as

Pope Francis celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

they prayed that God would spare their people: “It would do us good to ask, do I cry? Does the pope cry? Do the cardinals? The bishops? Consecrated people? Priests? Do tears come when we pray?”

In the day’s Gospel reading (Mt 6:1-6, 16-18), Jesus warns His disciples three times against showing off the good works they do “like the hypocrites do.”

“When we do something good, almost instinctively the desire is born in us to be esteemed and admired for this good action, to get some satisfaction from it,” the pope said. But Jesus “calls us to do these things without any ostentation and to trust only in God’s reward.”

“Do you know something, brothers and sisters, hypocrites do not know how to cry,” the pope said. “They have forgotten how to cry. They don’t ask for the gift of tears.”

The Lenten call to conversion, he said, means returning “to the arms of God, the tender and merciful Father, to cry in that embrace, to trust Him and entrust oneself to Him.” During the 40 days of Lent, he said, Christians should make a greater effort to draw closer to Christ, which is why the Church recommends the tools of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

But, he said, “conversion is not just a human work. Reconciliation between us and God is possible thanks to the mercy of the Father Who, out of love for us, did not hesitate to sacrifice His only-begotten Son.” In the reading from Joel, the prophet calls people to “interior conversion,” the pope said, a conversion that requires a return to God “with your whole heart.”

“Please,” the pope said. “Let’s stop. Let’s pause a while and allow ourselves to be reconciled with God.” Lent, he said, is time “to begin the journey of a conversion that is not superficial and transitory, but a Spiritual itinerary” that goes straight to a person’s heart, the focal point “of our sentiments, the center in which our choices and attitudes mature.”

What is more, he said, the reading makes clear that the call is addressed to the whole community, which is to “proclaim a fast, call an assembly; gather the people, notify the congregation; assemble the elders, gather the children.”

Pope Francis prayed that Mary would accompany Christians in their “Spiritual battle against sin” and would accompany them in their Lenten journey so they could exult with her at Easter.

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February 27, 2015

Receiving Certificates of Completion in the recent “Beginning Apologetics” course held at St. Anthony of Padua Church in New Bedford were, from left: Norris Shook, St. Francis Xavier Parish, Acushnet; Vida Orinda (accepting for Leonora Couto) Immaculate Conception, New Bedford; Maria J. Simas, Immaculate Conception, New Bedford; Maria V. Pimentel and James Johnston, St. John Neumann, East Freetown; Paula Briden, Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. James, New Bedford; Aline Laferriere, St. Anthony of Padua, New Bedford; Sandra Domingos, Holy Name of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, New Bedford; and Deacon Leo W. Racine (facilitator), St. Anthony of Padua, New Bedford. Absent from photo was Walter Wnek, St. Anthony of Padua, New Bedford.

Diocesan faithful complete ‘informative, helpful’ ‘Beginning Apologetics’ course

NEW BEDFORD — Six women and three men, representing six parishes in the New Bedford Deanery, received Certificates of Completion at St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford after attending 36 class hours of “Beginning Apologetics: How to Explain and defend the Catholic Faith.” The course was facilitated by Deacon Leo W. Racine.

It is a series of nine wellwritten, doctrinally-sound texts especially designed by the San Juan Catholic Seminars of Farmington, N.M. Under the guidance of Jim Burnham and Father Frank Chacon, the course strengthens Catholics in the faith by helping to charitably defend the most commonly challenged beliefs and respectfully confront Protestant evangelism.

Sandra Domingos from Holy Name of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in New Bedford, said, “‘Beginning Apologetics’ has helped me very much. I will be able to converse with non-Catholics and defend my faith.” Paula Briden from Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish at St. James Church in New Bedford added, “I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the Bible and it has given me some courage to help defend my faith.”

The text’s forwarding remarks indicate an entire booklet is devoted to the understanding of Islam while taking a Catholic approach “to recognize its inherent weaknesses, and to evangelize Muslims.”

Other sources needed to complete the course are: “The Faith of the Early Fa-

thers, Volume 1” by William Jurgens, “The Catechism of the Catholic Church” and the Holy Bible. The new Ameri-

can Bible, or the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition are recommended.

Other attendees also had kudos for the “Beginning Apologetics” course. James Johnston a new member to the Catholic faith stated, “Becoming a member of the faith, set me on fire with the Holy Spirit. The knowledge of all the faiths strengthens my faith in the one, apostolic, Holy Catholic Church.”

Johnston is a member of St. John Neumann Parish in East Freetown.

Aline Laferriere a parishioner of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford said, “I was given much information to defend our beliefs against misinformation and myths.”

Maria J. Simas from Im-

maculate Conception Parish in New Bedford added, “I learned how to defend my Church and faith. It will help me to be a better CCD teacher. I recommend this course to all Catholics.”

Maria Pimentel, also from St. John Neumann Parish said, “The more I learn about the Catholic faith, the more I fall in love with it and the God Who instituted it,” and Norris Shook from St. Francis of Xavier Parish in Acushnet said, “Thank you for teaching the apologetics class. I know far more now about my Catholic faith than I did before the course.”

Anyone interested to learn more about the course may call Deacon Leo W. Racine at 508995-5753.

Visit us online at www.anchornews.org

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February 27, 2015

Award-winning Pope Francis documentary coming to TV, DVD FALL RIVER — Through a special partnership with the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission and the ABC Television Network, Canada’s Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation is pleased to announce that its 2014 awardwinning documentary “The Francis Effect” will be broadcast at select times in the U.S. to coincide with the second anniversary of the historic transition in the papacy of 2013.

A special 58-minute version of the original 75-minute production will air locally on March 22 at 2 p.m. on Channel 5 (WCVB, Boston).

Copies of the full-length feature version DVD can also be purchased and a link to buy or rent the documentary through Vimeo’s Video-OnDemand service can be found at www.saltandlighttv.org/ thefranciseffect.

On Mar. 13, 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio received the call in the Sistine Chapel to go, rebuild, repair, renew and heal the Church. It wasn’t long into the pontificate of Pope Francis before everyone knew this one was going to be different. The spontaneity of his words and actions and his down-to-earth style generated unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive global attention.

“The Francis Effect” takes a critical and in-depth look at how the Catholic Church is rapidly changing under the leadership and vision of Pope Francis. The film begins by situating the pontificate of Francis in a wider historical context, referencing an essay written by German theologian Father Karl Rahner, S.J. — one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the 20th century. Father Rahner pro-

poses that the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s was the beginning of a fundamental transformation of the Catholic Church into a fully world religion. The person and ministry of Pope Francis are seen as part of the continuing realization of that transformation.

The body of the film is divided into six chapters representing the major themes of Francis’ first year as pope.

By analyzing these themes individually and collectively, a more complete picture of the Francis effect emerges, namely, the realization of the Second Vatican Council and a concrete expression of how to preach the Gospel in today’s world. The film concludes by raising the essential question: what happens now? Will those who are inspired by Pope Francis transform their communities and society as a whole, by living and sharing the Gospel of mercy and love?

Pope Francis has not come to overturn doctrine and ageold beliefs that are the bedrock of our Catholic faith. He wants to make those teachings understandable and part of our lives. He opens doors to a faith that offers attractive, compelling answers to questions deep in the hearts of all men and women. There is something incredibly appealing here not only to Catholics, but to Christians and all men and women of good will. Is it any wonder then, why the world is listening to him?

Pope Francis reminds us each day of the words of his predecessor, St. John XXIII, more than 50 years ago at the beginning of Vatican II: “The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, and the way it is presented is another.”

‘Timbuktu’ film provides models for withstanding oppression NEW YORK (CNS) — “Timbuktu” (Cohen Media Group) offers one of the most gently lyrical and original portrayals of withstanding tyranny ever shown.

The oppression comes at the hands of jihadists who occupied northern Mali, imposing sharia law based on a fundamentalist reading of the Quran. They’ve banned music and soccer. Bullhorn-wielding “enforcers” with pickup trucks and motorcycles harass and arrest violators.

Director Abderrahmane Sissako’s camera lingers on a group of young men, warmed by the midday sun, defiantly and joyfully playing soccer. Or so it seems.

There’s no ball. They’re just pantomiming a game, getting full enjoyment out of it as they jostle in formations and celebrate “goals.” When the enforcers drive past, the players mutely perform calisthenics.

“No, it’s not based on a real incident,” Sissako, speaking French, explains through an interpreter. “But since my film talked about three things — what is forbidden, what is justice and our way of looking at women during a jihadist occupation — I thought about how cinema would show that.” He thought the game “a form of collective resistance.”

Most of “Timbuktu,” an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, is based on events occurring in early 2012. That’s when ethnic Tuareg rebels, assisted by the Islamist group Ansar Eddine, known to be linked to alQaida, overran parts of Mali, a landlocked nation in western Africa.

Their goal was to establish a separate state. The French military expelled the jihadists the following year.

Catholics comprise less than two percent of Mali’s predominantly Muslim population of 15.3 million. Archbishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako and Catholic Relief Services delivered humanitarian aid for displaced persons in the aftermath of the military action.

Jay Weissberg, praising “Timbuktu” for the trade paper Variety, wrote that the film “confirms his (Sissako’s) status as one of the true humanists of recent cinema.”

The director forgoes awkward political debates to show

the occupation’s impact on a tent-dwelling herdsman, Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed).

Kidane is devoted to his wife, Satima (Toulou Kiki), his 12-year-old daughter, Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed), and to Issan (Mehdi A.G. Mohamed), an orphaned boy the family has taken under its wing.

Mali has a long tradition of tolerance. So at first, the locals resist their young occupiers with simple refusals. A halfdozen jihadists storm into a quiet mosque during prayers.

The imam (Adel Mahmoud Cherif ) reminds them they can’t enter a mosque wearing shoes and toting guns.

“But we can,” one replies.

“We’re doing jihad.”

The imam is unimpressed: “Please leave.” So they do.

Another jihadist insists that Satima must keep her hair covered. “If he dislikes it, he shouldn’t look at it,” she retorts. An angry fishmonger in a market dares the men to cut off her hands for not wearing gloves while she works. They back away.

Sissako also displays the occupiers’ hypocrisy — banning soccer games even as they eagerly discuss their favorite teams and players. Silencing music sometimes confuses them: “I found out where the music’s coming from,” one jihadist tells the others. “They’re singing praise to the Lord and His prophet. Shall I arrest them?”

The true horror arrives after Kidane is arrested and sentenced to death for slaying a fisherman who killed one of his cattle. A couple whose only crime was having relations out of wedlock are buried in the sand up to their necks and stoned.

Young girls are forced into marriages. Fatou (Fatoumata

Diawara), a singer, croons softly in protest, without screaming in pain, as she receives 40 lashes for the crime of making music.

Sissako, who co-wrote the film with Kessen Tall, was born in Mauritania, educated in Mali, and now divides his time between his homeland and Paris. Sissako filmed “Timbuktu” mostly in Oualata, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mauritania he calls the titular locale’s “twin city.”

How does Sissako think his measured presentation can counterbalance such desperate acts as the Charlie Hebdo slaughter in Paris and murders

by Islamic State fighters in the Middle East?

“I believe that when you want to tell about violence, it’s important not to show violence as a spectacle,” he says. “Showing violence in a spectacular way makes violence banal. I don’t need to see five liters of blood to know that a person is dead.”

He explains, “Art always needs to create a respectable distance when it wants to evoke something. (The film is) a protest against violence, barbarity and terrorism.”

Is it also, in any way, an expression of his personal religious faith? The question, one so blithely asked by Americans these days, takes him aback: “I find that to be a somewhat delicate question — because I think faith is a personal matter.

To bring it up to other people, personally, it disturbs me,” Sissako replied.

“What interests me is a person’s ability to defend human values. These values belong to every religion.

“I have a humanist point of view. That’s what really interests me. A gaze is neither Christian nor Muslim. It’s just a gaze, that’s all.”

Diocese of Fall River TV Mass on WLNE Channel 6 Sunday, March 1, 11:00 a.m.

Celebrant is Father Richard D. Wilson, pastor of St. John the Evangelist and St. Vincent de Paul parishes in Attleboro.

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February 27, 2015

Knowing and loving our enemies

R

ecently, our news has been full of stories of atrocious killings perpetrated in the name of religion: ISIS, or the so-called Islamic State, and Nigeria’s Boko Haram lead the list of perpetrators, but there’s also the murder of cartoonists in Paris at Charlie Hebdo and in Denmark. Closer to home we have the Boston Marathon bombings, where the federal courts are trying to seat a fair-minded jury and determine whether Boston is the appropriate venue for trial. What these atrocities have in common is a link to certain fanatic and extreme interpretations of Islam, one of the world’s great religions in number of adherents, geopolitical importance, and doctrinal complexity.

Of course, as President Obama noted at the recent Washington Annual Prayer Breakfast, using violence in the name of religion is not an exclusively Muslim problem, and he used the Crusades and the Inquisition as examples of ostensibly Christian violence. But that was then, centuries ago,

who do not share its rigid and this is now. The White ideology. Two-hundredHouse has been reluctant to million Shiites, for example. recognize the distinctively We really do have to make Islamic character of most of an effort to understand our the recent terrorism. It also enemies if we want to defeat underestimated the threat them. And defeat them the posed by ISIS. As Graeme Wood notes in civilized world must, to put a stop to their evil doings. his masterful article “What Writes Wood: “Centuries ISIS Really Wants,” in the have passed since the wars March issue of The Atlantic, “President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as ‘not Islamic,’ and as al-Qaeda’s ‘jayvee team,’ statements that reflected confusion about the group, and

By Dwight G. Duncan may have contributed to significant strategic errors.” of religion ceased in Europe, People would be welladvised to read that in-depth and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of article to get a real sense of arcane theological disputes. the ideology behind ISIS, and the threat it poses, rather Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which than rely on the politicallyWesterners have greeted news correct, naïve bromides of of the theology and practices our president. of the Islamic State.”

Of course, ISIS poses a Pope Francis spoke out threat not just to Christians about the Coptic Christians and Jews (witness the rewho were martyred by ISIS: cent beheadings of Coptic Christians in Libya), but also “Their only words were: ‘Jesus, help me!’ They were to the majority of Muslims

Judge For Yourself

killed simply for the fact that they were Christians. The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! The martyrs belong to all Christians.”

But for Christians, knowing our enemies is not enough. Jesus told us to “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). Christ does not want the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live.

Just as Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek, He Himself died praying for those who killed Him, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). St. Stephen, the first martyr, died with a similar prayer on his lips: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).

It’s a question of trying to live the Golden Rule, to do unto others as we would have

them do unto us. As St. Josémaria liked to say, we have to drown evil in an abundance of good. Just because terrorists don’t abide by the Golden Rule is not sufficient reason for us to reciprocate in kind.

The temptation, of course, is to do unto others as they have done unto us, rather than do unto others as we would have them do unto us. The recent report about the killing of three Muslim students in North Carolina, though ostensibly motivated by a parking dispute, involved a self-described “guntoting atheist.” Police are (and should be) investigating whether it was a hate crime.

All human lives are valuable and precious in the eyes of God and of the moral, and hopefully civil, law. In facing up to our enemies, we should not forget who we are.

As Christians, we should of course hate the sin but always love and seek to win over the sinner.

Anchor columnist Dwight Duncan is a professor at UMass School of Law Dartmouth. He holds degrees in civil and canon law.

For Coptic Christians, threat of martyrdom is part of daily life

Washington D.C. (CNA/EWTN News) — The recent brutal murder of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya at the hands of ISIS is shining a light on the reality faced by many of Egypt’s Christians on a daily basis.

“These 21 victims, they were not the first and they will not be the last. There is a flowing river of Christian blood in the Middle East,” said Mina Abdelmalak, one of the organizers of a D.C. candlelight prayer vigil outside the White House on Ash Wednesday.

The prayer vigil commemorated the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded last week by the Islamist terror group ISIS. The Christians had been working in Libya to support their families back home. They were abducted by ISIS in December and January.

In an Internet video published by the extremist group, the Copts were marched along the Libyan coast and then murdered, with the video title, “A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross.”

The video caught the atten-

tion of the world, garnering significant media attention and responses from world leaders.

While this act of martyrdom was heroic and newsworthy, several Coptic priests stressed that for many Christians in Egypt, the threat of death for the faith is a daily reality that goes unnoticed by the rest of the world.

“Most people living in those areas, really every day they live by the grace of God,” explained Father Anthony Messeh of the St. Timothy and St. Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Church in Arlington, Va. “They’re not as shaken by these things as we are, because they count every day as a gift from God.” Their public faith could mean “the end of their life,” he told CNA. One local Coptic Orthodox priest in attendance at the Washington, D.C., prayer vigil voiced fear and hope in response to the Libya massacre.

“We are afraid about the spreading of the devil all over the world,” said Father Domadious Rizk of St. Mark Coptic

Orthodox Church in Fairfax, Va. “The only thing can face this devil is Christ Himself.”

“We believe that the Lord will overcome all this darkness and spread it away,” he said.

Rural Egypt, where many of the Christians hailed from, is no friend of Christianity, Father Messeh said. While he has not lived in Egypt, he conveyed the situation there from accounts of those who had.

The plight of the Copts was “very bad” under the rule of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, he said.

Now, the situation has “officially” improved with the new president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who has said and done the right things. However, many Christians are still persecuted, especially in the rural areas where they are very much a minority.

The differences between Egypt and the U.S. are striking, Father Messeh said, and the hardship for Christians in Egypt is difficult for Americans to truly grasp. Faith for the Copts is everything, “a life that they’re willing to lose for

the sake of their faith.”

This is why the “extreme bravery” of the Coptic martyrs is so compelling, he said.

“They’re doing the stuff that we’re preaching.”

“For us, you can get by with a Sunday-only faith,” he explained. “They can’t, because every day of their life they see in front of them the decision to follow Christ does impact the grades they get in school, it impacts which customers will come to their stores.”

And in some cases, their public faith is met with death.

The video of the beheadings shook his Virginia parish, Father Messeh admitted.

“It shook us up because it kind of put all those stories that we hear about, it kind of put it in pictures,” he said of the beheading video circulated by ISIS. “Somehow this one really struck a chord with everyone, even people who have no connection with Egypt whatsoever.”

A Church united in prayer over the killings will only be strengthened, Father John

Farag of St. George Coptic Orthodox Church in Cabin John, Md., told EWTN News Nightly.

“Copts live on prayers,” he remarked, explaining that the people are relying upon prayer and solidarity.

Local Coptic parishes held prayer services last weekend for the martyrs. Bishop Paul Loverde of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington even reached out in condolence, Father Messeh revealed, and offered to do a joint prayer service with St. Timothy and St. Athanasius parish. It was a gesture Father Messeh “really appreciated.”

He also thanked Pope Francis for offering a memorial Mass for the slain Coptic Christians earlier this week.

The pope mourned their deaths and hailed them as martyrs, also praying especially for Patriarch Tawadros of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

“The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard,” Pope Francis said.

“Their only words were: ‘Jesus, help me!’”

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February 27, 2015

Peter Kreeft to speak at conference continued from page one

other mediums do not,” said Gingras. “In my work I really desire to connect in an honest conversation and encounter to inspire people to seek a deeper relationship with Jesus and the Catholic faith. We are literally reaching into people’s cars, homes, phones and computers and bringing this into their lives in such a beautiful way.

Catholic radio can play such an important role in evangelization, bringing people back to the Church and inspiring them to learn more about their faith.”

An official affiliate of the EWTN Radio Network, Radio CorMariae (Heart of Mary) is a nonprofit Catholic broadcasting station operated by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate in New Bedford.

Its core mission is to bring all hearts to Jesus and Mary.

“We’re very excited about this event,” said Anita Taylor, outreach director of Radio CorMariae.

“I think that the radio station has a responsibility — not just to those of the Catholic faith but to the whole community — to educate and to connect with God,” said Taylor. “We came up with the intent that the Proclaim & Magnify Conference will be held yearly offering the option to hear tremendous speakers.

Peter Kreeft is very dynamic and will reach out to a broad section of the community, not only Catholics. We can connect our brothers and sisters to bring wisdom and understanding, simply because it relates directly to Mary alone with the Magnificat. It’s connected to her, and that’s going to resonate with other people.”

Evangelization begins at home

Friar John Mary also stressed the importance of the Blessed Mother to the New Evangelization.

“The way our culture is now, we need answers,” he said. “The Church’s response in this period of history is to spread the truth of the Gospel, and Our Lady magnifies this truth.”

“Radio CorMariae is of the Immaculate, and the work of Our Lady is to bring people to Jesus Christ,” added Father Guardian Maximilian Mary.

“This event is part of the station, and it’s her work to make it known.”

The Proclaim & Magnify Conference 2015 program will begin at 9 a.m. on February 28, with the Rosary, led by Friar Gabriel, followed by the welcome and program overview by Father Roy and David Wroe, a longtime benefactor of the station. Gingras will speak about Catholic radio from 9:35 to 10:25 a.m., and Kreeft will talk about the New Evangelization from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. There will be two lunch periods with booksignings.

Kreeft will make his second presentation on the culture war from 1:15 to 2:50 p.m., followed by a question-andanswer period. There also will be opportunities throughout the day for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Tickets to the conference cost $25 and are still available by calling 508-9968274 or registering online at www.proclaim2015. brownpapertickets.com. Lunch will be provided. St. Julie Billiart Church is located at 494 Slocum Road in North Dartmouth.

This week in 50 years ago — All priests serving in the Fall River Diocese attended a spring conference at Jesus Mary Academy in Fall River to study the new revisions in the Mass and Sacraments that were implemented as a result of Vatican II. 25 years ago — The diocesan Office of Family Ministry offered two spring weekends for the widowed at the Family Life Center in North Dartmouth. Both retreats included Mass and the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

continued from page one

didn’t have to but it was important for them to express their faith that was familiar to them.”

After earning her bachelor’s in social psychology and master’s in pastoral theology, Ospino joined her husband at St. Patrick’s Parish in Lawrence as co-coordinator of the parish’s Hispanic ministry.

There was already an established Spanish community at St. Patrick’s but it has continued to grow under the Ospinos’ guidance. Ospino’s husband, Hosffman, has helped organized the Spanish community by providing opportunities for adult Faith Formation and Religious Education programs in Spanish.

“I think one of the challenges of many Spanishspeaking communities is they don’t have a model to follow to get organized,” said Ospino.

“You have people from different backgrounds with different ideas of what a parish community should look like, but when they come to the United States, that changes. What worked in Mexico may not necessarily work here with the youth; or how a Religious Education program was held in the Dominican Republic may not translate into the context of the United States.

“You have all these experiences together and you’re trying to make them work. When you talk about Hispanic ministry, you’re not just talking about ministry done in Spanish; they may share a language but have different cultural backgrounds.”

Ospino says she understands the challenges families face, especially young adults,

Diocesan history

10 years ago — Father Brian J. Harrington and his siblings, Mercy Sisters Patricia, Kathleen and Sheila, were named the New Bedford Friendly Sons of St. Patrick’s “Persons of the Year.”

One year ago — International Shroud of Turin expert Russ Breault, who has been featured in several documentaries on the artifact, brought his captivating “Shroud Encounter” presentation to Christ the King Parish in Mashpee for Lent.

which is why programs like Fe Y Vida (www.feyvida.org) are such a valuable resource: “They have an amazing program that helps young adults coordinate youth groups because it’s not just about [going to church], you really have to have a structure and a program to follow — that leads to growth.”

Regardless of a family’s cultural background, the parents are the foundation that children use to form their own commitment to faith. Ospino credits her own parents for helping shape her Catholic identity: “In order to be effective Catholic parents, we really need to think about our own personal commitment to faith. Going back to my parents, their commitment to our faith was very strong, therefore they went above and beyond what was required of them to help us and live our faith. I tell parents you really need to lead by example; you can’t just baptize your baby, bring him or her to Religious Education and expect this person to grow up to be a committed Catholic.

It just doesn’t work that way.”

Parents need to think about their personal commitment to their faith, and it can start with self-exploration. Ospino suggests parents make a journal and take note of how many times the family attends Mass, prays together, or reads Bible passages. If you want your children committed, it starts with the parents, said Ospino, and it helps if both parents are on the same page.

“In my experience, both my parents had their different gifts. My mom had the leadership role, and my dad was there to help in any way. To me, that’s a lesson that God gives us different gifts, and you are blessed if you can find a partner who can complement your gifts,” said Ospino.

Ospino added, “It’s important to create a strong Catholic identity. It’s ideal when you have two parents at home, but I always tell them that it doesn’t take away that if it’s just mom or dad — whatever children see at home will make a difference in their lives.”

Children should know what’s negotiable and nonnegotiable, said Ospino: “I always tell my four-year-old son, what is good for your health and things related to faith are non-negotiable. Going to Mass is non-negotiable. Being respectful to others is non-

negotiable. Praying is non-negotiable; that’s time as a family we need to spend together — anything can wait but those things need to happen when we’re together.”

Challenges, like sports conflicting with Religious Education, should be non-negotiable issues: “If you let your child know that going to basketball is more important than going to Mass or Religious Education, that says a lot about your commitment to your faith,” said Ospino.

She cited the Patriots recent Super Bowl win and how families went to see the parade together, dressing in their favorite Patriots’ player jersey; “It’s freezing cold but they’re all making an effort and celebrating, so you know as a family they celebrate the Patriots,” said Ospino. “Well, as Catholics we need to do the same thing. We need to have a strong identity as Catholics. What makes us Catholic? It’s a question parents need to ask themselves, and needs to be answered for their children.”

Parishes can play a huge role in helping shape the parental commitment. When families come to St. Patrick’s Parish in Lawrence, said Ospino, adults are invited to join prayer groups if prayer is important in their lives. If they have children, parents are invited to volunteer or serve in the Religious Education program. The parish immediately engages the parents in a welcoming atmosphere that can help the parents shape their faith, and then spread that commitment to the children at home.

“It’s really the responsibility of the parish to offer a place for parents to participate actively in the parish,” said Ospino. “I tell many of the leaders of the parish that if they see families with small children, offer a smile and tell them we’re happy they’re here.

Offer a welcoming space for families; they need so much support. The best resource for parents is to be a welcoming parish.”

Children pick up cues from their parents, said Ospino, and if you want your children to be dedicated Catholics, it doesn’t start with a parent simply telling their children to go to church: “We need to create a strong Catholic identity, and families can decide what that looks like.”

15

February 27, 2015

Of wrestling and kitty litter

L

ent began for me a few years ago, and the desert feeling of the Liturgical season just won’t let go.

There are weeks when thoughts for this column flow as easily at the drops running down the 20-foot icicle hanging outside my office window.

Then there are weeks when my creative juices run as dry as the kitty litter I spread across

My View From the Stands

By Dave Jolivet my deck in order to give traction from the easily flowing icicle drops hanging from my eaves.

I put kitty litter down because salt hurts Igor’s tender feet, and with four of them, I imagine that could be quite annoying.

I know there are ice melts out there that are pet-friendly, but kitty litter is cheaper.

But, be careful what kind of kitty litter you sow on your walkways ... I happened upon one that had clay and it left a lava-like residue on my deck that will be there until August. I broke down and bought petfriendly ice melt.

But, as I often do, I digress.

I don’t like to get too far into my personal life in my columns, but what I can divulge is that the

last several months have been a “dark night of the soul” for me.

I’ve never had a problem communicating with God — good or bad, and the battle continues.

While I’m not getting the answers I want from the Good Lord, I know I am getting answers, but like Jacob from the Bible, I wrestle with God. Now one would think that because I earned a wrestling varsity letter in high school I would have the upper hand in this match. Not. For two reason: one, I only won three matches out of 19 in my senior year; and two, I’m wrestling God! I came within a whisker (gray ones on my part) of not writing a column this week because I felt I had nothing concrete to offer. But my wrestling adversary nudged me in this direction. I think He’s trying to talk to some of you out there who are like me — struggling with the faith. Hang in there.

I hope I did God good this week. Otherwise back down on the mat I’ll go!

And if anything, at least I’ve taught some of you not to use clay-based kitty litter in lieu of salt or salt or sand for the rest of this beast called winter. davejolivet@anchornews.org.

Money is flying out the window The Anchor spends nearly $2,000 in postage change fees each year!

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Father Maddock to be honored at NCEA convention continued from page one

worthwhile.

“I accept this award on behalf of the countless number of priests, principals, faculties, staffs, parents, grandparents, and benefactors here in the Diocese of Fall River who make so many sacrifices to see the mission of parish schools succeed.”

Pastors, principals and teachers who have demonstrated a strong Catholic educational philosophy as well as exceptional ability, dedication and results, will be honored during the annual awards ceremony. Also being recognized will be home and school associations whose excellent programs are outstanding contributions to Catholic elementary schools.

“Catholic elementary schools have a rich tradition of dedicated pastors who inspire their communities with their leadership,” said Jim King, interim director of the Elementary Schools Department for the NCEA. “These awardees are a blessing to their communities. Catholic education reaches deserving families because of these pastors’ guidance and support.”

“Father Maddock is a highly dedicated and supportive pastor for Holy Name School,” agreed Dr. Michael S. Griffin, superintendent of the Fall River diocesan schools. “He regularly gives of his time to be present at the school, to celebrate Mass with the students and faculty, to recognize student achievements, and to provide Spiritual support and guidance to the school community.”

Griffin noted that Father Maddock’s level of involvement with the school’s advisory board and administration, along with his focus on high academic standards, were among key reasons for this deserving recognition.

“Father Maddock is representative of the many pastors and priests of the diocese who recognize the value of Catholic schools and give of their time and energy to help ensure their future for the benefit of our Church,” he told The Anchor.

Recipients for the NCEA Distinguished Pastor Award were selected from a slate of nominees submitted by teachers, principals, parents, and school board members.

Parent and Holy Name School Advisory Council member Goretti S. Joaquim was among those who nominated Father Maddock for the honor.

“When I initially recommended Father Maddock for the award, one of his strongest char-

acteristics that kept resonating with me was his deeply strong and compassionate commitment to his parishioners, students and everyone he meets,” Joaquim said. “As a council member and parent of a child at Holy Name School, I have seen Father Maddock lead with an upmost level of integrity. His communication skills and his ability to listen and care for those he interacts with are some of his exceptional leadership qualities.

“Father Maddock also has an ability to display a strong positive attitude that is apparent to everyone he meets — to the students at Holy Name School, to the prospective parents at our Open House, and to all his parishioners — he greets everyone with a caring smile and a sincere interest in what they have to say.

We are so very lucky to have him at Holy Name and are very happy and proud of this welldeserved recognition.”

Tom Librera, another Holy Name School parent and board member, echoed Joaquim’s sentiments.

“Father Maddock is vital to the continued success of Holy Name School,” Librera said. “He brings together and oversees a variety of voices from the school and parish community to assist in achieving the school’s mission.

He is also very active in the dayto-day activities of the school, ensuring that the students receive Spiritual guidance and instruction. Father Maddock doesn’t seek this recognition, but he is certainly most deserving of it.”

“For his outstanding support to Catholic elementary education everyday, I can’t think of anyone who deserves this award more,” agreed Suzanne Lefevre,

a teacher at Holy Name School.

“Father Maddock’s devotion to Holy Name School is evident in many ways, including his frequent meetings with the principal, his always being available to the faculty, staff, students, and anyone who needs his help and guidance, his regularly providing for the Spiritual needs of the school, and his attendance at all the special activities at the school.”

“Father Maddock is a pastor who witnesses to his faith at all times, is a Catholic role model (and) a wonderful person and priest,” Lefevre said.

NCEA’s annual convention, held this year in collaboration with the Diocese of Orlando, is the largest private education association gathering in the country. It draws participants from all facets of Catholic education, including elementary and secondary schools, Religious Education programs, and colleges and universities. The event features professional development sessions, Liturgies and an exhibition of educational products and services.

Founded in 1904, the NCEA is a professional membership organization that provides leadership, direction and service to fulfill the evangelizing, catechizing and teaching mission of the Church. NCEA’s members include elementary schools, high schools, parish Religious Education programs and seminaries.

“The Catholic Schools Office is very pleased that Father Maddock will be honored for his service by the National Catholic Educational Association and we look forward to the recognition ceremony in April,” Griffin said.

For more information, visit www.ncea.org/convention.

16

Youth Pages

February 27, 2015

Students from Bishop Connolly High School in Fall River (from left) Lucas Wu of Beijing, China; Emma Watson; Katelyn Harrington; Madison Squizzero; and Stevilyn Dybowski display the artwork recently featured at UMass Dartmouth’s Emerging Young Artists Invitational Exhibition.

Held January 26 to February 7, the third annual exhibit showcased the artistic talents of students from 29 high school art programs in Massachusetts.

Participating schools were selected in recognition of their longterm commitment to art education and the exceptional merit of their art students’ work.

The fourth-graders at St. John the Evangelist School in Attleboro recently presented the annual Presidents’ Presentation. Each student dressed up as a particular president and gave a two-minute speech about the importance of their presidency. In addition, students rapped to a song that included all the presidents and made poster boards about their president’s life.

Students in grade five at St. James-St. John School in New Bedford recently made Valentine’s Day cards for some of their classmates.

Meighread Dandeneau, New Bedford’s Outstanding Teen of 2015, is pictured with ambassadors at the recent Open House at Holy Family-Holy Name School in New Bedford. Dandeneau is a 2011 graduate of HFHN and was very proud to return to her alma mater. She spoke to families about the excellent education she received at the school and how her faith was strengthened through prayer, service and Mass.

Students in grades five through eight at St. Francis Xavier School in Acushnet recently gathered for an assembly to meet Msgr. John Cihak, pictured with Msgr. Gerard O’Connor, pastor at St. Francis Xavier Parish. Msgr. Cihak is an official of the Congregation of Bishops in Rome and a Papal Master of Ceremonies who recently accompanied Pope Francis on his trips to Korea and Sri Lanka and will likely travel with the pope on his trip to the U.S. this fall. The students were excited to see pictures he shared, hear his wealth of experiences, and also had an opportunity to ask questions about life behind-the-scenes at the Vatican.

February 27, 2015

I

don’t know about you but the weather this month has left me sort of confused, out of sorts, discombobulated.

I find that the lack of a normal schedule, caused by these incessant storms, disrupts my routine such that I fall out of my normal routine and for me that can spell disaster.

Waking up early to plow the snow from the driveway, or scraping off the icicles from the gutters, will most often disrupt the rest of my day. My morning prayer in the Breviary may be forgotten. Even a meal or two may be passed over. Masses on campus have had to be cancelled. We don’t see the students as much and that begins to affect everything else. I think this semester, so far, feels like we’ve been off campus more than we have been on! We all love a snow day, but at this point, I’ve heard many students say, “Enough is enough!” So, from a post I read on Facebook, I’ll restate the sentiment, “Please, whoever is praying for snow, please stop!”

I miss my usual routines.

Routines are patterns of behavior that we repeat often. We all have them. We’re all creatures of habit. Some routines are positive and some types of routines drain us and rob us of a good life.

Sometimes our routines can get disrupted and it can throw us for a loop as these snowstorms have.

Youth Pages Discombobulated Other times, a life situation or a did you pick up a bad habit as change can cause us to abandon a result of having so much time our routine or perhaps begin a on your hands or did you use new one. the extra free time on snow days This weekend I am on retreat to improve a part of your life by with young adults from the reading a book or going to the diocese and from UMass Dartgym. mouth. We are on the “Who As the spring approaches, and Do You Say I Am — The Jesus daylight is extended, we’ll have Retreat.” Stepping away from my regular routine, as well as this crazy weather pattern, has given me an opportunity to think about routines,

By Deacon specifically about makFrank Lucca ing room for God in our lives. That somewhat worries me and I want to be more time in the day for acsure to keep Him in mind as old tivities. Will you hang out with routines end and new routines others who may build you up or develop in the months ahead. bring you down? Will you make After all, this is the time of year more room for God in your life that the weather changes (for or will you place Him on the the better, hopefully!) and dayshelf until you need Him? light is extended. As a result of So, how do things stand these and other changes, we may between you and God? Where find our daily routines changing are you coming from, and where a bit. is your life in Christ growing?

I mention this to you because We can answer such questions I’ve noticed in the last month satisfactorily only if we take with all of the snowstorms, and time to reflect. A retreat is a in my life in general, I can some- perfect opportunity to break the times replace good routines with ordinary routine of our lives and a less worthwhile routine and open us up to new opportunities. then wonder what happened.

The Charis Jesus Retreat that What about you? Will you get we are currently experiencing out of the routine of studying is a retreat program here in the since so many classes and school Diocese of Fall River, specifically days have been disrupted? With for young adults. It is a Jesuit the great number of snow days retreat built on the teachings of

Be Not Afraid

How Catholics, Lent, and bowls of rice are changing the world Baltimore, Md. (CNA/ EWTN News) — Catholic Relief Services’ Rice Bowl program aims to continue its 40-year Lenten tradition of supporting hunger relief — and one of its past beneficiaries is now a spokesman for the project.

“Many years ago when I was a hungry boy in Ghana and living without parents or family, the smell of food lured me to the village school. There I was nourished and lifted off the path of likely death,” Thomas Awiapo said recently.

“That school food program existed because of the little box we call rice bowl.”

Awiapo was orphaned in his home country of Ghana before he was 10 years old. He credits a Catholic Relief Services-supported lunch program he discovered at age 12 with changing his life, and the lives of his children.

Awiapo now works for Catholic Relief Services and trains community leaders throughout Ghana and is presently touring the U.S. to speak about the rice

bowl program.

The mainstay of the program is a small cardboard box. Families and individuals, as well as parishes and schools, put in a small amount of money each day of Lent to help hunger relief around the world.

At present there are an unprecedented number of hunger emergencies in Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic, and South Sudan, where war has caused interruptions to food supplies, unemployment, and homelessness, forcing millions to live as refugees. Another food emergency is in West Africa, where the Ebola outbreak has been a major disruption to normal life.

Since its creation in 1975, CRS Rice Bowl has raised $250 million to fight hunger, the relief agency reports.

“CRS Rice Bowl offers families, schools and faith communities an opportunity to put their faith into action while learning about the lives and struggles of our brothers and sisters around the world,” said Beth Martin, the program’s director. “We’re encour-

aging people to reflect on what 40 years of CRS Rice Bowl has accomplished and challenging them to put one dollar for every day of Lent in their rice bowl.”

Last year the program added a new app to help people track their donations. The Rice Bowl app, available in English and Spanish, now has new Lenten reflections, integrated Twitter support, and improved tracking for Lenten sacrifices.

Other new material for 2015’s rice bowl includes the “What is Lent?” video series. It will provide viewers with Lenten reflections from Catholics such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, and CRS president Carolyn Woo. The CRS Rice Bowl Global Kitchen Video Series will feature television personality and cook Father Leo Patalinghug teaching how to cook five meatless recipes from the five countries in focus this year: Tanzania, Nicaragua, Niger, Lebanon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

St. Ignatius of Loyola.

During this retreat we have an opportunity to learn and pray the Examen as one of many prayer types we will experience this weekend. The Daily Examen is a technique of prayerful reflection on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and discern His direction for us. I have utilized this form of prayer routine each evening for a number of years. Sometimes we just don’t know how to pray and as a result we revert to the rote prayers of our youth and that becomes our routine. Because we aren’t actively engaged in conversation with God, we may soon just say the words without much thought. I know that’s what happened to me. I have found this Examen format a good daily “just before bedtime routine” for me. It keeps me engaged and thoughtful. It’s a routine but it isn’t rote. It changes daily depending on what I’ve done and what God wants me to learn. I find it worthwhile, easy to follow and powerful. It doesn’t take a lot of time either. There are five simple steps to the Examen, which should take about 15 minutes to complete. This prayer can be made anywhere — on the beach, in a car, at home, in the library. I present it here for your consideration.

This short prayer exercise, Adapted from Joseph Tetlow’s “Choosing Christ in the World,” seeks to increase our sensitivity to God working in our lives and to provide us with the enlightenment necessary to cooperate with and respond to God’s presence.

Step 1: Giving thanks — I take time to thank God for the good things that came into my day. I review the many details of the day in no particular order.

For instance, I thank God for sunshine, for getting an article written on time, for feeling good, for my family, for having the ability and energy to complete my work. In this process, I may well come across some action that I did or some emotion or desire that I entertained for which I cannot thank God, since it was offensive or sinful.

Step 2: Asking for light — I then ask the Holy Spirit to show me what God wants me to see and how I am growing more fully alive in God as a result of all that He has given me.

Step 3: Finding good in all things — Then I look over the events of the day. I ask the Holy Spirit to show me where

17 God has been present in my life, either in me personally or in others, and in what God has been asking of me. I try to look over my moods, feelings, and urges to see what stands out even slightly. I look for such things as joy, pain, turmoil, increase (or decrease) of love, anger, harmony, anxiety, freedom, presence of God, or isolation.

In what general direction do I think that God is drawing me?

How have I been responding to these experiences or situations that draw me toward the Lord and which invite me to be more like Jesus?

Step 4: Responding to God in dialogue — Now it’s time to chat with God. I try to determine if there is any one area that I’m being nudged to focus my attention on, to pray more seriously over, to take action on?

This is where my energy needs to be exerted instead of on the many other things I may think are important. I discuss this with Jesus, expressing what needs to be expressed: praise, sorrow, gratitude, desire for change, intercession, etc.

Step 5: Asking for help and guidance for tomorrow — Here I ask God to give me what I need for tomorrow. I place my trust in God and not in myself.

He never lets me down.

Since I began utilizing this prayer routine I feel that it has helped me see God working in my life and it helps me recognize and receive God’s care and assistance. St. Ignatius told his Jesuit brothers that the Examen is the one prayer they should not eliminate; it is the one prayer they absolutely must engage in every single day. The Examen is a simple prayer, a prayer for busy people who are continually seeking to do the Lord’s will, like me.

In any case, in whatever way you choose to engage and dialogue with God, be sure to make room in your routine for Him each and every day.

Well, it’s time to go downstairs to join the retreatants for our first experience of the Examen prayer this weekend. I hope that it is as helpful to them as it has been to me, and helps you and them to learn about themselves and about how God is working in their life.

The weather has disrupted our routines and perhaps time dedicated to prayer each day.

Spending some 15 minutes with God before bed can help us detect God’s presence in our lives and to discern His direction for us. It’s one routine worth having.

DeaconFrankLucca@comcast. net.

18

February 27, 2015

Universal Church taps talents of diocesan priests continued from page one

River, a dynamic teacher, retreat leader, preacher and writer, will begin a four-year commitment to assist with the Church’s work at the United Nations in New York City.

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the papal nuncio to the Vatican’s Permanent Observer Mission at the United Nations requested permission from Fall River Bishop Edgar M. da Cunha, S.D.V., to release Father Landry to assist at the multi-national organization.

Bishop da Cunha told The Anchor, “Our diocese has been blessed with many talented and generous priests. We are grateful to God for giving us such great gifts. As they have been gifts to us, we are glad to be able to share those gifts with the Universal Church. We are proud of them and wish them God’s blessings as they contribute to the mission of our Catholic Church in our country and in the world.”

In a December letter to his parishioners, Father Landry wrote, “Bishop Edgar da Cunha shocked me with the news that, essentially, the Lord through His Church was asking me to move.

He informed me that Archbishop Auza had spoken to him requesting that I be released temporarily from service in the Fall River Diocese to come to assist with the Church’s work in New York at the U.N.” In an interview with The Anchor, a publication he guided as executive editor from July 2005 until June 2012, and with which he is still a columnist, Father Landry said, “When the bishop asked to speak with me in early December on short notice I thought that a change might be coming, but I never anticipated being asked to go to the United Nations. The general work that I’ll be doing has been ably getting done by the staff at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See at the United Nations for decades, but Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the papal nuncio, is reorganizing the responsibilities in the office and so there’s a chance I may be asked to cover a larger range of issues.

“I will be representing the Holy See at the United Nations in various deliberations.

The U.N. has six main committees and Archbishop Auza has asked me to work on the second and third committees, which are focused on a wide variety of issues from the defense of the unborn, to the needs of the family, human rights, development,

population control, economics, international finance and trade, poverty eradication, globalization, the environment, women’s issues, the protection of children, the treatment of refugees, racism, aging, people with disabilities, crime prevention, criminal justice, international drug control and various other items.” He quickly added, “I think I’m going to be busy!”

Father Landry was ordained a priest of the Fall River Diocese on June 26, 1999 at St. Mary’s Cathedral by then-Fall River Bishop Sean P. O’Malley, OFM, Cap. During his nearly 14 years as a Fall River priest, Father Landry served as a parochial vicar at SS. Peter and Paul Parish at Holy Cross Church and Espirito Santo parishes in Fall River; as parochial administrator at St. Anthony’s Parish in New Bedford; and as pastor of St. Bernadette’s Parish in Fall River.

Father Landry told The Anchor, “I will miss so many of the daily exercises of priestly Spiritual paternity: bringing Christ to people hungering for Him at daily and Sunday Mass, forming people with the Gospel in homilies, adult education courses and other means, seeing the wonders God does in the Confessional, sharing the joys of Baptisms and Weddings and the faithfilled grieving of funerals. Even though I will still be celebrating Mass every day, giving some Spiritual direction, preaching some weekend retreats and doing some teaching and writing, I will miss the responsibility before God that every pastor has for those entrusted to them and the specific graces He always gives to fulfill those responsibilities. I will also miss the easier contact with so many people within the diocese: my brother priests in the diocese, many of the parishioners who have been my right hands, the members of the Team of Our Lady for which I’m a chaplain, the young people whose vocations I’ve worked long to promote, the various families whose homes have become real Bethanies for me.”

On the other hand, he is excited about his new assignment and the challenges and rewards it has to offer: “I’m looking forward to the work and the way that it will draw together four different phases of my life: my study, my experience in politics in Washington, D.C., my languages, and my priestly pastoral

work focused on serving people with ideas. When I was a college student, I was told, ‘God needs your brain.’ I’ve always taken study seriously because I know that ideas have consequences and I’m happy that every day I’m going to be challenged to use the fruits of that study to serve the Church. I’m happy to have a chance, in the various negotiations in which I’ll be asked to participate, to use for the Church the political training I received. Although most of the work at the U.N. is in English, I’m happy that there will be a chance to use the hard work I’ve done in trying to maintain various languages for many of the important, informal conversations that take place where goalposts can be moved. And I look forward to the challenge of trying to ‘preach the Gospel to all nations,’ especially in a context that I anticipate I may encounter the ‘hardened soil by the wayside’ that Jesus indicates in His parable of the Sower and the Seed.”

Father Landry realizes he is one of many skilled priests whom the Church has called upon to serve her in other capacities: “I’m honored to be a member of a diocesan presbyterate full of talented priests who are able to serve God, His Church and His people in a number of ways to try to help Christ’s Kingdom take a greater root in individuals, in our communities and in society at large.

“I’m proud that the bishops of Fall River have given the priests of our diocese a formation that has prepared us to serve the Church for a time teaching in seminaries, advancing the Church’s light in bioethical darkness, working in the Vatican, serving the Holy See and in other ways. I’m also very impressed by the generosity, faith and love for the Church of the bishops of our diocese; it’s certainly not easy, at a time when there’s a pressing need for priests in diocesan parishes, for a bishop to respond positively to a request to let one of his priests go for a time to a specialized form of pastoral work.”

Having an already full schedule of being a pastor, leading retreats, preaching, teaching and writing, Father Landry realizes that his responsibilities will somewhat shift in his new position. “While Archbishop Auza has generously allowed me to keep a few of the commitments that were already on my calendar, that work will be dramatically

Sister Helen Prejean, author of ‘Dead Man Walking,’ to speak at Stonehill

NORTH EASTON — Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J., author of “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States” and “Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” will be speaking at Stonehill College in North Easton on March 3 beginning at 7 p.m. in the school’s Martin Auditorium.

The presentation, entitled “Dead Man Walking: The Journey Continues,” is part of the college’s 2015 Andre Lecture Series and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow and refreshments will be served.

A member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Sister Helen began working in prison ministry in 1981 when she dedicated her life to the poor of New Orleans. While living in the St. Thomas housing project, she became pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teen-agers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison.

Upon Sonnier’s request, Sister Helen repeatedly visited him as his Spiritual advisor. In doing so, her eyes were opened to the Louisiana execution process. Sister Helen turned her experiences into a book that not only made the 1994 American Library Associates Notable Book List, but also became number one on the New York Times’ best-seller list for 31

weeks.

In January 1996, “Dead Man Walking” was developed into a major motion picture starring Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen and Sean Penn as a death row inmate. The movie received four Oscar nominations including Tim Robbins for Best Director, Sean Penn for Best Actor, Susan Sarandon for Best Actress, and Bruce Springsteen’s “Dead Man Walking” for Best Song.

Susan Sarandon won the award for Best Actress.

Sister Helen’s second book, “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” was published in December 2004.

In it, she tells the story of two men, Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O’Dell, whom she accompanied to their executions. She believes both were innocent. In the book she takes the reader through all the evidence, including evidence the juries never heard either due to the incompetence of the defense lawyers or the rigid formalities of court procedure. Sister Helen examines how flaws inextricably entwined in the death penalty system inevitably lead to innocent people being executed and render the system unworkable.

As the founder of “Survive,” a victim’s advocacy group in New Orleans, Sister Helen continues to counsel not only inmates on death row, but the families of murder victims as well.

curtailed because my work at the U.N. will require my presence Monday through Friday,” he said. “But Archbishop Auza and Bishop da Cunha have encouraged me to take advantage of the weekends to preach retreats for lay people, speak at weekend conferences, and the like, something I could do very rarely because a pastor could only be away from his parish four weekends a year. So I anticipate that work will grow.”

The plan also includes continuing to write his “Putting Into the Deep,” Anchor column, citing support from the bishop and Anchor executive editor Father Richard D. Wilson.

Father Landry also hopes friends and peers will continue to remain in contact with him.

“I’m happy that I’m not being transferred to Antarctica and that my cell phone and main

email addresses will still work!

I anticipate many friends will get in touch when they’re coming to Manhattan and I would hope to be able to connect with some when I drive to visit my parents in Lowell every eight to 10 weeks.”

Concluding his Anchor interview, Father Landry asked for the prayers and support of the people he passionately served for the last 14 years. “I would like to ask Anchor readers to pray for the work of the Holy See’s vital mission at the United Nations to try to serve as a leaven for international negotiations about the common good and especially for the fruits of Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to the U.N. this September. I’m excited that one of the major tasks I’ll have this year is assisting Archbishop Auza in preparing for that important visit.”

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February 27, 2015

Eucharistic Adoration in the Diocese Acushnet — Eucharistic Adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Parish on Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Tuesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Evening prayer and Benediction is held Monday through Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

ATTLEBORO — Eucharistic Adoration takes place in the Adoration Chapel at St. Vincent de Paul Parish, 71 Linden Street, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.

ATTLEBORO — The National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette holds Eucharistic Adoration in the Shrine Church every Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. through November 17.

ATTLEBORO — There is a weekly Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration Thursdays from 5:30 to 6:30 pm at St. John the Evangelist Church on N. Main St. Brewster — Eucharistic Adoration takes place in the La Salette Chapel in the lower level of Our Lady of the Cape Church, 468 Stony Brook Road, on First Fridays beginning at noon until 7:45 a.m. First Saturday, concluding with Benediction and concluding with Mass at 8 a.m. buzzards Bay — Eucharistic Adoration takes place at St. Margaret Church, 141 Main Street, Monday through Saturday, from 6:30 to 8 a.m.; and every first Friday from noon to 8 a.m. on Saturday.

East Freetown — Eucharistic Adoration takes place at St. John Neumann Church every Monday (excluding legal holidays) 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the Our Lady, Mother of All Nations Chapel. (The base of the bell tower).

EAST TAUNTON — Eucharistic Adoration takes place in the chapel at Holy Family Parish Center, 438 Middleboro Avenue, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. On First Fridays, Eucharistic Adoration takes place at Holy Family Church, 370 Middleboro Avenue, from 8:30 a.m. until 7:45 p.m.

FAIRHAVEN — St. Mary’s Church, Main St., has Eucharistic Adoration every Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the Chapel of Reconciliation, with Benediction at 11:30 a.m. Also, there is a First Friday Mass each month at 7 p.m., followed by a Holy Hour with Eucharistic Adoration. Refreshments follow.

Fall River — Espirito Santo Parish, 311 Alden Street, Fall River. Eucharistic Adoration on Mondays following the 8 a.m. Mass until Rosary and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.

FALL RIVER — St. Bernadette’s Church, 529 Eastern Ave., has continuous Eucharistic Adoration from 8 a.m. on Thursday until 8 a.m. on Saturday.

FALL RIVER — St. Anthony of the Desert Church, 300 North Eastern Avenue, has Eucharistic Adoration Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

FALL RIVER — Holy Name Church, 709 Hanover Street, has Eucharistic Adoration Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the Our Lady of Grace Chapel.

FALL RIVER — Good Shepherd Parish has Eucharistic Adoration every Friday following the 8 a.m. Mass and concluding with 3 p.m. Benediction in the Daily Mass Chapel. A bilingual holy hour takes place from 2 to 3 p.m. Park behind the church and enter the back door of the connector between the church and the rectory.

Falmouth — St. Patrick’s Church has Eucharistic Adoration each First Friday, following the 9 a.m. Mass until Benediction at 4:30 p.m. The Rosary is recited Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

MANSFIELD — St. Mary’s Parish, 330 Pratt Street, has Eucharistic Adoration every First Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., with Benediction at 5:45 p.m.

MASHPEE — Christ the King Parish, Route 151 and Job’s Fishing Road has 8:30 a.m. Mass every First Friday with special intentions for Respect Life, followed by 24 hours of Eucharistic Adoration in the Chapel, concluding with Benediction Saturday morning followed immediately by an 8:30 Mass.

NEW BEDFORD — Eucharistic Adoration takes place 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 233 County Street, with night prayer and Benediction at 8:45 p.m., and Confessions offered during the evening. Please use the side entrance.

NEW BEDFORD — There is a daily holy hour from 5:15-6:15 p.m. Monday through Thursday at St. Anthony of Padua Church, 1359 Acushnet Avenue. It includes Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Liturgy of the Hours, recitation of the Rosary, and the opportunity for Confession.

NEW BEDFORD — St. Lawrence Martyr Parish, 565 County Street, holds Eucharistic Adoration in the side chapel from 7:30-11:45 a.m. ending with a simple Benediction NORTH DARTMOUTH — Eucharistic Adoration takes place at St. Julie Billiart Church, 494 Slocum Road, every Tuesday from 7 to 8 p.m., ending with Benediction. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is available at this time.

NORTH DIGHTON — Eucharistic Adoration takes place every Wednesday following 8:00 a.m. Mass and concludes with Benediction at 5 p.m. Eucharistic Adoration also takes place every First Friday at St. Nicholas of Myra Church, 499 Spring Street following the 8 a.m. Mass, ending with Benediction at 6 p.m. The Rosary is recited Monday through Friday from 7:30 to 8 a.m.

NORTH EASTON — A Holy Hour for Families including Eucharistic Adoration is held every Friday from 3-4 p.m. at The Father Peyton Center, 518 Washington Street.

OSTERVILLE — Eucharistic Adoration takes place at Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 76 Wianno Avenue on First Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

SEEKONK ­— Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish has perpetual Eucharistic Adoration seven days a week, 24 hours a day in the chapel at 984 Taunton Avenue. For information call 508-336-5549.

Taunton — Eucharistic Adoration takes place every Tuesday at St. Anthony Church, 126 School Street, following the 8 a.m. Mass with prayers including the Chaplet of Divine Mercy for vocations, concluding at 6 p.m. with Chaplet of St. Anthony and Benediction. Recitation of the Rosary for peace is prayed Monday through Saturday at 7:30 a.m. prior to the 8 a.m. Mass.

Taunton — Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament takes place every First Friday at Annunciation of the Lord, 31 First Street. Exposition begins following the 8 a.m. Mass. The Blessed Sacrament will be exposed, and Adoration will continue throughout the day. Confessions are heard from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. Rosary and Benediction begin at 6:30 p.m.

WAREHAM — Eucharistic Adoration at St. Patrick’s Church begins each Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. and ends on Friday night at midnight. Adoration is held in our Adoration Chapel in the lower Parish Hall. ~ PERPETUAL EUCHARISTIC ADORATION ~ East Sandwich — The Corpus Christi Parish Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 324 Quaker Meeting House Road, East Sandwich. Use the Chapel entrance on the side of the church.

NEW BEDFORD — Our Lady’s Chapel, 600 Pleasant Street, offers Eucharistic Adoration seven days a week, 24 hours a day. For information call 508-996-8274.

SEEKONK ­— Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish has perpetual Eucharistic Adoration seven days a week, 24 hours a day in the chapel at 984 Taunton Avenue. For information call 508-336-5549.

WEST HARWICH — Our Lady of Life Perpetual Adoration Chapel at Holy Trinity Parish, 246 Main Street (Rte. 28), holds perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. We are a regional chapel serving all of the surrounding parishes. All are invited to sign up to cover open hours. For open hours, or to sign up call 508-430-4716.

Pope: Don’t let meatless Fridays be selfish, soulless, seafood splurge

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Real fasting isn’t just restricting food choices, it must also include cleansing the heart of all selfishness and making room in one’s life for those in need and those who have sinned and need healing, Pope Francis said.

Faith without concrete acts of charity is not only hypocritical, “it is dead; what good is it?” he said, criticizing those who hide behind a veil of piety while unjustly treating others, such as denying workers fair wages, a pension and health care. Being generous toward the Church, but selfish and unjust toward others “is a very serious sin: It is using God to cover up injustice,” he said during his homily at a recent morning Mass celebrated in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he lives.

The pope’s homily was based

In Your Prayers Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks Feb. 29 Rev. Msgr. James Dolan, Retired Pastor, St. Mary, Taunton, 1980 March 1 Rev. James F. Masterson, Founder, St. Patrick, Somerset, 1906 Rev. Msgr. P L. Damase. Robert, P.R., Pastor, Notre Dame, Fall River, 1948 Rev. John McCarthy, CSC, Stonehill College, North Easton, 2003 Rev. William W. Norton, Retired Pastor, Our Lady of Lourdes, Wellfleet, 2004 March 2 Rev. Antoine Berube, Pastor, St. Joseph, Attleboro, 1936 Rev. James J. Brady, Retired Pastor, St. Kilian, New Bedford, 1941 Rev. Tarcisius Dreesen, SS.CC., Sacred Hearts Monastery, Fairhaven, 1952 Rev. Alphonse E. Gauthier, Pastor, Sacred Heart, New Bedford, 1962 Rev. J. Omer Lussier, Pastor, Sacred Heart, North Attleboro, 1970 March 3 Rt. Rev. Msgr. Timothy P. Sweeney, LL.D., Pastor, Holy Name, New Bedford, 1960 March 5 Rev. James McGuire, Pastor, St. Mary, New Bedford, 1850 Permanent Deacon Manuel H. Camara, 1995 Rev. James A. McCarthy, Retired Pastor, St. Mary, Falmouth, 2007 March 6 Rev. Joseph F. McDonough, Former Pastor, Sacred Heart, Taunton, 1906 Rev. John W. Quirk, Founder, St. Joseph, Taunton, 1932 Rev. Bernard P. Connolly, S.S., St. Charles College, Maryland, 1932 Rev. Antoine Lanoue, O.P., 1996 Rev. Jerome Lawyer, C.S.C., 2006

on the day’s reading from the book of Isaiah in which God tells His people He does not care for those who observe penance passively — bowed “like a reed,” lying quietly in a “sackcloth and ashes.”

Instead, God says He desires to see His people crying out “full-throated and unsparingly”

against injustice and sin, “setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless.” In the reading, God also points out the hypocrisy of the faithful who fast, but treat their workers badly and fight and quarrel with others.

Around the Diocese

The parishes of St. John the Evangelist and St. Vincent de Paul in Attleboro will be hosting Father Charles Coury, CSSR, for a Lenten mission from March 1-5. The theme of the mission will be “Christ Be Our Light” with 9 a.m. morning sessions MondayThursday at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 71 Linden Street; and 6:45 p.m. Sun and 7 p.m. MondayWednesday evening sessions at St. John the Evangelist Church, 133 North Main Street. All are welcome. For more information call 508-222-1206.

A Mass of Healing will be celebrated on March 2 at 6 p.m. at Our Lady of Victory Church, 230 South Main Street in Centerville in the Msgr. Perry Parish Center. The Mass is sponsored by Our Lady of Victory Catholic Cancer Support Group. The February meeting was cancelled due to a snowstorm, but the speaker, Tom Duffy, has graciously agreed to return for the March meeting. He is an auxiliary member of the Knights of Malta and had the privilege of travelling to the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes several times. He will share his slides and recollections of the healing process he witnessed on these pilgrimages and will be collecting petitions from anyone who would like to send them to Lourdes. He will also have Holy Water available from the shrine. For more information contact Geri Medeiros at 508-362-6909.

Deacon Bruce Bonneau of the Diocese of Fall River, Office of Faith Formation — Adult Evangelization and Spirituality, will be guest speaker at the March 6 meeting of the Fall River Area Men’s First Friday Club, which consists of members from 17 diocesan parishes. The evening at St. Joseph’s Church, North Main Street in Fall River, begins with Mass at 6 p.m. celebrated

by Father Jay Mello, followed by a hot meal in the church hall.

Any gentleman interested in joining them for the hot meal prepared by White’s of Westport should contact Daryl Gonyon at 508-672-4822. The Mass is open to the public.

The Women’s Guild of St. John Neumann Parish will sponsor an Attic Treasure Sale on March 7 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the parish hall, 157 Middleboro Road in East Freetown. A continental breakfast and hot homemade lunch will be served and the hall is wheelchair-accessible. Admission is free and all are welcome. Take the Chace Road exit off Route 140. For more information call 508-763-2569.

Renew your faith and rekindle the Spirit with Holy Cross Landings. If you have been away from the Church for a while, Holy Cross Parish, 225 Purchase Street in Easton, is inviting you back by joining them on eight consecutive Mondays beginning March 9 from 7 to 9 p.m. The program is friendly and supportive and is not parish-specific. For details or more information, contact Harold Smith at 508-238-1899 or visit www.holycrosseaston.org.

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February 27, 2015

Why this bishop is staying in Libya after ISIS massacre

Tripoli, Italy (CNA/ EWTN News) — “I should stay! How can I leave the Christians alone?”

These are the words of Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, apostolic vicar of Tripoli, in response to the Islamic State’s threats that it plans to take over the country and continue beheading Christians, as it did this past weekend, killing 21 Coptic Christians.

In statements to Vatican Radio, Bishop Martinelli said, “We could go, it’s true.

Probably at some point (the jihadists) will take us and say: ‘You are against Islam’ and that will be the end. We are in an ambiguous situation. This is because of a lack of dialogue: there has been a lack of dialogue for so long that now we need to recover time.”

While acknowledging that Christians in the area are scared, he emphasized that they are there to bear witness “to that which Jesus asks us to do.”

Asked about whether he himself is afraid, Bishop Martinelli said, “I don’t think so. If it weren’t for the faith, we would not be here.”

Not only are Christians suffering, he added, but also “the Libyans themselves who love us, and want what’s good for us, who are doing everything to bring back more normal relationship.”

For this reason, he exhorted the international community to be willing to “launch a dialogue with this country that is divided” and to “strive to be instruments of unity” rather than only seeking after one’s own interests.

To advertise in The Anchor, contact Wayne Powers at 508-675-7151 or Email waynepowers@ anchornews.org