08.26.11

Diocese of Fall River

The Anchor

F riday , August 26, 2011

Priest continues to nurture ‘ministry of consolation’

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

BOSTON — Losing a loved one is never easy. But as Catholics we have not only our faith to console and sustain us, but also the supportive community of the Church to remind us that death is not the end, but a new beginning.

One who perhaps knows this better than most is Father Terence P. Curley, a retired priest of the Boston Archdiocese and author of several books on bereavement including “Planning the Catholic Funeral” and “Peace Beyond Understanding: Consoling One Another.”

For nearly 30 years, Father

Curley has been, as he puts it, “trying to help people place loss into the context of faith.”

“Many families are often confused about what to do when a loved one dies,” Father Curley told The Anchor.

“How do we try to plan these things?

In this day and age, the more we catechize and try to instruct people, the better it will be.”

Noting that grief counseling or the more aptly named “ministry of consolation” is aimed not so much at celebrating the deceased person’s life, but rather praying for the person and giving hope to the family members and friends left behind, Turn to page 14

Bishops instruct Catholic politicians on real meaning and importance of marriage

By Christine M. Williams Anchor Correspondent

BOSTON — Recently efforts to defend marriage have received serious blows from two Catholic governors — Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Martin O’Malley of Maryland. The first signed same-sex marriage into state law in June and the second hopes to follow the same path during the next legislative session.

Both elected officials have caught the attention of their local bishops. This month, Governor O’Malley released private letters exchanged between himself and Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien.

Catholic public figures, including politicians, who dissent

from Church teaching certainly come from both ends of the political spectrum, but those who seem to catch the most attention from their bishops oppose Church teaching on abortion and same-sex marriage — two issues that the Church unambiguously opposes for the good of society.

David Franks, a professor of Catholic social doctrine at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, told The Anchor that the bishops have an obligation to respond when a Catholic politician takes a stand against the common good, particularly if that politician is Catholic.

“A bishop has a special responsibility, in charity and gentleness, to remind that politician Turn to page 14

Pilgrims’ Progress — The members of the World Youth Day pilgrimage group from St. Anthony of Padua Parish in New Bedford stop in Toledo, Spain, on their way to Madrid. Thirty pilgrims traveled with Father Roger Landry. Seen in the background in the center is Toledo’s famous cathedral and to the right the Alcazar.

Wind, rain can’t dampen the spirit of diocesan pilgrims at World Youth Day

By Becky Aubut Anchor Staff

MADRID – This year’s World Youth Day held in Madrid, Spain, drew 1.4 million pilgrims into the city, and even gusty winds and a torrential downpour during a Saturday Mass did little to dampen the spirits of those in attendance.

“I leave Spain very happy and grateful to everyone,” said Pope Benedict XVI in his farewell speech

Sunday evening at the Madrid airport. “But above all I am grateful to God, our Lord, who allowed me to celebrate these days so filled with enthusiasm and grace, so charged with dynamism and hope.

The feast of faith, which we have shared, enables us to look forward with great confidence in providence, which guides the Church across the seas of history. That is why she continues to be young and Turn to page five

Despite intense hardships, hopes are high for people, Church of South Sudan

By Dave Jolivet, Editor

chor, Father Peter said, “We are the U.S. for the past month-andFALL RIVER — Father Pe- so very happy to have gained a-half to help raise awareness of ter Loro Bambu, a priest of the independence, and despite in- the plight of the people of South Archdiocese of Juba in the newly- credible suffering, the people of Sudan, and to solicit prayers and garner financial supestablished country of port from American South Sudan in east Catholics. “We are a central Africa, is 40 new country, but we years old, and for all have to start everybut one month of his thing from scratch,” life, he has known the he said. “The counhardships and pains of try and the Church his people’s struggle there.” for independence.

Because of nearly That joyous occa40 years of warfare, sion occurred but four the infrastructure of weeks ago on July 9, when the new repub- the birth of a nation — Father Peter Loro Bam- the government and lic of South Sudan bu, right, a priest in the Archdiocese of Juba in South the Church was degained independence. Sudan, has been in the area telling the story the newly- stroyed. “Even our For the past 50 years, established country of South Sudan’s struggles for in- houses of worship, our churches have the South Sudanese dependence. been destroyed, but people have lived through war, extreme poverty and South Sudan are very hopeful for our faith remains our greatest consolation.” oppression in their efforts to be a brighter future.”

Father Peter has been in eastern Father Peter told The Anchor free.

In an interview with The An- Massachusetts and other parts of Turn to page 19

News From the Vatican

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August 26, 2011

Stop, listen, reflect on what God is trying to tell you, pope says

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) — Most people don’t leave any time in their day to stop, listen and reflect on what God is doing and saying in their lives, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“Our time is taken up by so many activities, commitments, worries and problems that often one tends to fill up one’s whole day without having a second left for stopping to reflect and nourish one’s spiritual life” by having contact with God, he said recently as he held his weekly general audience in the courtyard of the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo.

The pope continued his series of talks on prayer by focusing on meditation and the role it plays in a Christian life.

He said it is essential to consistently find a moment every day to be able to “collect our thoughts in silence and meditate on what the Lord wants to teach us, since He is present and acts in the world and our lives.”

Since the way to heaven involves believing in God, trusting in Him and carrying out His will, each individual needs to be able to hear and understand what God is saying and wants for each per-

son, and that happens through prayer and meditation, he said.

Meditation “means to remember how much God has done” and the bounty of His gifts, he said.

“Often we only see the negative,” he said, and people must also reflect on all the positive things in their lives.

The pope offered a number of ways people can meditate on God’s word and the mysteries of the faith: — Read a passage from sacred Scripture and the Gospels, especially the Acts of the Apostles or the letters of the Apostles.

— Read a page of a spiritual book that aims to bring people closer to God and make better known His presence in the world today.

— Talk with a confessor or spiritual adviser.

— Reflect on an “intense spiritual experience” or words in a homily that made a deep impression.

Each reflection must involve trying to understand what God is saying to the individual and what it is saying about the world today, the pope said.

It means “opening our soul to what the Lord wants to tell us and teach us,” he said.

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holy ground — Pilgrims join Pope Benedict XVI in Eucharistic adoration during the World Youth Day prayer vigil at Cuatro Vientos airfield in Madrid August 20. Despite enduring a downpour during the vigil, hundreds of thousands of young people from around the world spent the night on the open field. (CNS photo/Alessia Giuliani, Catholic Press Photo)

Take the World Youth Day experience back home, says Pope Benedict

Madrid (CNA/EWTN News) — Pope Benedict XVI left Spain on the evening of August 21, after giving a challenge to the million-plus young people who came to World Youth Day in Madrid over the past six days.

“Now I ask you to spread throughout the world the profound and joyful experience of faith which you had here in this noble country,” said the pope, on the tarmac at Madrid’s Barajas Airport.

“By your closeness and your witness, help your friends to discover that loving Christ means living life to the full.”

Pope Benedict led nine events during his four-day visit for World Youth Day. The peak moment was Sunday’s Mass at Cuarto Vientos airbase, with a congregation said to contain up to two million people.

Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia came to Barajas to bid the pope farewell on behalf of the Spanish nation.

“Holiness, you have addressed words of love and hope, encouragement and confidence to a youth that treasures values like solidarity,” said King Juan Carlos.

“I give the most heartfelt thanks for your visit to Spain.

Thank you for the hope and the vision that you have given to our youth.”

In response, the pope told them that “Spain is a great nation whose soundly open, pluralistic and respectful society is capable of moving forward without surrendering its profoundly religious and Catholic soul.”

The pope thanked World

Youth Day 2011’s organizers, giving special mention to Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity; Madrid’s Cardinal Archbishop Antonio Rouco Varela; and the event’s General Coordinator, Monsignor Cesar Augusto Franco Martinez.

About 200 young people got to come onto the tarmac to wave goodbye to the pope. As with his arrival at the same location, he was “protected” by a line of mini-Swiss Guards, Spanish schoolboys dressed in the uniforms of the illustrious Vatican army.

“I leave Spain very happy and grateful to everyone,” said the pope.

“But above all I am grateful to God, our Lord, who allowed me to celebrate these days so filled with enthusiasm and grace, so charged with dynamism and hope.”

He said the past week’s “feast of faith” should inspire “great confidence” in God’s love and care, keeping the Church “young and full of life, even as she con-

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fronts challenging situations.”

“This is the work of the Holy Spirit, who makes Jesus Christ present in the hearts of young people in every age and shows them the grandeur of the divine vocation given to every man and woman.”

The pope said that young people respond when “one proposes to them, in sincerity and truth, an encounter with Jesus Christ, the one redeemer of humanity.”

He concluded by urging the bishops of the world, and teachers of the faith at every level, to build on the lessons that young people have received in Madrid.

“Do not be afraid to present to young people the message of Jesus Christ in all its integrity, and to invite them to celebrate the sacraments by which He gives us a share in His own life.”

The pope then departed on his chartered Alitalia flight which will return him to Rome this evening.

And so ended World Youth Day 2011. Its effects around the world may have just begun.

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August 26, 2011

The International Church

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A rare breed: the World Youth Day pilgrim from communist China

tragic end — Refugees from Somalia pray before the burial of 18-month-old Sahro Mohamed, who died of acute severe malnutrition and dehydration, at the Kobe refugee camp in Ethiopia near the Ethiopia-Somalia border recently. Sahro and her family of eight arrived at the camp after walking 30 days from Modalita village in Somalia. She suffered for two weeks before succumbing to hunger.

More than 12 million people have been affected by the worst drought in decades in Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia. (CNS photo/Thom as Mukoya, Reuters)

Mood changes as pope, young people reflect on suffering in Way of Cross

MADRID (CNS) — The mood at World Youth Day changed dramatically late August 19 as Pope Benedict XVI and hundreds of thousands of young people turned their thoughts to suffering.

The vividly painted, graphic statues that illustrated each station of Jesus’ passion and death were accompanied by meditations focused on individuals, groups and nations enduring serious suffering today.

Many young people — even those blocks away, watching on Jumbotrons — read along in special prayer books included in pilgrim backpacks.

Ryan Titzer, a 17-year-old parishioner of St. Timothy Parish in Chantilly, Va., described the “pasos” as “3-D Stations of the Cross.”

“They show such reality in the way they depicted the scenes,” he said. “I had to get a picture of every single one to show my parents, just because they were incredible looking.”

“It’s different than seeing a painting or a picture of Him,” he added. “You could see the pain on Jesus’ face, and it just made it more real.”

One of Titzer’s fellow pilgrims, Bayleigh Aschenbrenner, 16, said the only thought in her head was, “It’s unimaginable that He went through all that for us.”

“It’s very humbling,” she said, and it gave her a greater appreciation for Jesus’ passion. “Being a more visual person, it’s definitely clicked a whole lot more.”

Many of the young people sacrificed their time and comfort by arriving hours early and standing in the hot sun to stake out a place near the papal platform in Plaza de Cibeles or in front of one of the station-statues set up along a main street leading to the plaza.

The meditations included prayers for the defense of human life, for peace in the Holy Land

and other areas where there is conflict, for the victims of natural disasters, for the unemployed, for those who suffer racial discrimination or religious persecution, for those with alcohol or drug addictions, and for the victims of sexual abuse.

A cross was carried from one station-statue to another by young people from countries or situations where there is suffering. They included Iraqis, immigrants, recovering drug addicts, unemployed and people from Rwanda and Burundi.

A local woman, tissue in hand, leaned out of her shutter-flanked balcony to watch the progress of the cross.

The “paso” depicting the ninth station, Jesus Is Stripped of His Garments, included a prayer for victims of sexual abuse.

A few days earlier, Jenny McGuire, 18, of the Irish Diocese of Ferns, said years of revelations of clerical abuse of children had caused most Irish Catholics to lose faith in the institution of the Church rather than their faith in God. “It’s not that they don’t believe in Jesus or that they don’t have faith in Jesus,” she said, “but it’s the institution of the Church and the priests that they’re losing faith in. It’s not that they’re completely nonreligious. There still is strong faith in Ireland.”

Seamus Sutton of County Wexford, Ireland, agreed, adding that World Youth Day, including the Way of the Cross, was a healing opportunity for pilgrims.

“I see this as a reconciliation with the Church and with how these people are serving God and what I’m following,” he said.

Lauren O’Reilley, also from County Wexford, said that the abuse allegations have been especially hard on the Irish priests “that are so good.”

“People in Ireland are losing their faith, especially young peo-

ple,” she said. “It’s nice to see all of us coming together to see that people still have faith.”

In his remarks at the end of the service, Pope Benedict acknowledged that everyone knows suffering, but he urged the young people to focus on Christ’s suffering out of love for all humanity and to imitate that love by committing themselves to alleviate the suffering of others.

Pope Benedict said meditating on Christ’s passion and death should lead Christians to ask, “What can we do for Him?” “Christ’s passion urges us to take upon our own shoulders the sufferings of the world, in the certainty that God is not distant or far removed from man and his troubles,” because Christ became human Himself, enduring suffering and death, the pope told the young people.

The pope prayed that Christ’s love would “increase your joy and encourage you to go in search of those less fortunate. You are open to the idea of sharing your lives with others, so be sure not to pass by on the other side” of the road “in the face of human suffering, for it is here that God expects you to give of your very best: your capacity for love and compassion.”

“The different forms of suffering that have unfolded before our eyes in the course of this Way of the Cross are the Lord’s ways of summoning us to spend our lives, following in His footsteps and becoming signs of His consolation and Salvation,” the pope said.

The harsh wood of the cross, he said, is a sign of the self-giving love that will give eternal life to all who ask.

“The cross was not a sign of failure, but an expression of self-giving love,” the pope said. The cross “teaches us to love what God loves and in the way that He loves. This is the good news that gives hope to the world.”

Madrid (CNA/EWTN News) — The final Mass of World Youth Day was a sea of national flags. In the millionstrong crowd, however, it was hard to find one particular flag — China. That’s until CNA bumped into Thomas Zeng.

“This week has been absolutely fascinating,” said the university student who’s traveled all the way from Shanghai to be at World Youth Day in Madrid. Thomas says he doesn’t know of any other pilgrims from China.

“It is wonderful that I can meet so many Catholics, more than one million. That could never happen in my country, but I believe with the grace of God that it will one day.”

Thomas is actually one of eight to 12 million Chinese Catholics. About half of them, though, have ties to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a state agency founded in 1957.

Many bishops now belong to the Patriotic Association while maintaining commu-

nion with the Holy See, but the association’s principles of independence and strong nationalism make this position difficult. The Patriotic Association has recently ordained several bishops without Vatican approval.

Thomas says it’s “not difficult to be a Catholic in China.” But to be “a good Catholic,” he notes, might be a different matter: “If you want to proclaim Catholicism, you will maybe be in trouble.”

“I think after today I think I will be more brave to proclaim Jesus Christ to my friends, my classmates,” says the student of management science at his home city’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University, adding that he will no longer “be so afraid.”

“People in the Middle East, they have a worse situation than us,” he observed. “So we must be brave. We need not bear with fear, because God is with us and we have a lot of opportunities — especially in Shanghai, as it is a very open, international city.”

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The Church in the U.S. Increased cohabitation rates mean more instability for children

New York City (CNA) — Family instability continues to grow in the U.S. despite falling divorce rates for families with children. Researchers say an increase in cohabitation is part of the problem, adding that society’s “retreat from marriage” harms children and has particularly hurt poor and working-class communities.

“In a striking turn of events, the divorce rate for married couples with children has returned almost to the levels we saw before the divorce revolution kicked in during the 1970s,” said Professor W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia.

“Nevertheless, family instability is on the rise for American children as a whole. This seems in part to be because more couples are having children in cohabiting unions, which are very unstable,” he said.

Wilcox is the lead author of “Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” a report from the New York-based Institute for American Values’ Center for Marriage and Families.

More than 40 percent of U.S. children now spend time in a cohabiting household.

They are much more likely to experience a parental breakup than children of married couples.

In the U.S., the breakup rate is 170 percent higher for children born to cohabiting couples

up until age 12.

Wilcox said children of cohabiting parents are more likely than those from intact married families to suffer from “a range of emotional and social problems” such as drug use, depression, and dropping out of high school.

The report surveys more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles on marriage and family life in the U.S. and around the world. It also has original analysis of data from the General Social Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation.

“Whether we succeed or fail in building a healthy marriage culture is clearly a matter of legitimate public concern and an issue of paramount importance if we wish to reverse the marginalization of the most vulnerable members of our society: the working class, the poor, minorities, and children,” the report’s executive summary said.

The report found that children in cohabiting households are at least three times more likely to be physically, sexually or emotionally abused, compared to children from intact marriages between their biological parents.

Researchers have also discovered that family stability is part of a class divide. Children from college-educated homes have seen their family lives stabilize, while children from less-educated homes have seen their lives become increasingly

unstable. The highly affluent enjoy “strong and stable” families while others face “increasingly unstable, unhappy and unworkable ones.”

Divorces involving children have largely returned to levels before marriage laws were changed for easier divorce.

About 23 percent of children whose parents married in the early 1960s saw their parents divorced by the time they turned 10. The numbers for children whose parents married in 1997 were nearly similar.

The report authors concluded that an intact marriage between biological parents remains the “gold standard” for family life in the U.S. “Children are most likely to thrive, economically, socially, and psychologically, in this family form,” the Institute for American Values said in an August 16 statement. Marriage is “an important public good” with a range of economic, health, educational and safety benefits that help all levels of government serve the common good.

The benefits of marriage also extend to poor, working class and minority communities, despite the weakening of marriage in these demographics in the last four decades.

“The rise of cohabiting households with children is the largest unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of children’s lives in today’s families,” the institute said.

August 26, 2011

back to school — Jeannette Robles talks with a family picking up backpacks as volunteers from the St. Vincent de Paul Society distribute school supplies and food outside St. Gall School in Chicago recently. The annual “Back to School Book Bag Day” assists more than 2,000 families with necessities to start off the school year. (CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World)

Knights of Columbus head challenges youth to save religious freedom

Madrid, Spain (CNA/EWTN News) — The Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus told young pilgrims in Madrid that the right to practice their faith could be kept or lost in the future, depending on their public witness and awareness.

“What are you going to do about it? Because I think you’ll have longer time to do something about it than I will,” he said, addressing over 1,000 pilgrims at World Youth Day 2011.

The Catholic fraternal and charitable organization’s leader said the tone of Christians’ public witness would be central to preserving religious liberty.

What “we have to do is show people by the way we live our life that Christianity doesn’t frustrate human happiness — that Christianity actually promotes human happiness,” he observed.

The Supreme Knight was taking part in a panel discussion along with Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Law Professor Helen Alvare of George Mason University, Father Thomas Rosica of Canada’s Salt and Light Media, and Pablo Barrosa, producer of the upcoming film “Cristiada.”

Their venue was the Love and Life Center at Madrid’s Palacio de Desportes, a hub for Englishspeaking pilgrims this week.

“Religious liberty goes to the center of what it means to be a person,” said Anderson, echoing the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. “It is foundational. It is at the very heart of the human person because it involves the human conscience.”

The Supreme Knight explained that the free exercise of religion was also at the heart of the United States Constitution. He went on to discuss what motivates modern attacks on this central human right.

He pinpointed the influence of three 19th century thinkers who attacked faith from different angles: Karl Marx, the Communist thinker who dubbed religion “the opium of

the people;” Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who called Christianity “a slave religion”; and Sigmund Freud, the psychologist who labeled religion “an infantile delusion.”

The impact of these anti-religious attitudes, he observed, was now being widely felt in contemporary Western societies. There, he noted, opponents of the Christian faith, and religion in general, often believe they are removing an obstacle to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Religion, in other words, is being lumped in with a number of practices that harm society.

“What do you do with someone who promotes slavery, promotes drug abuse or promotes insanity?” asked Anderson, explaining this point of view. “Do you protect their right, their liberty to do this? Or do you attempt by all sorts of means to push these people to the side, to marginalize them?”

Anderson told his young listeners that they must show the opponents of religion, and religious freedom, that their view of the Christian faith is wrong. They should see instead that “people who follow the truth of Jesus Christ celebrate life and live joyful lives.”

“So if we are to protect our religious liberty,” he concluded, “we have be a people who practice and manifest our religious faith, and do so in ways that make people realize its value and its truth and the contribution it makes to society.”

Virginia resident Joe Duca, 19, left inspired by Anderson’s advice.

“What really struck is the idea that we must combat our culture with beauty and that will lead people to truth more so than posturing and political ideas,” he told CNA as he left the seminar.

Duca said many modern people seemed stuck in a “selfish” and “loveless” way of living. He was struck by Anderson’s message, and the need to witness through selfless love.

August 26, 2011

5

The Anchor saw the pope in person, the 16 year old was also taken in by the pope’s reaction to the chanting of so many voices in unison.

“I had only seen him on TV, and you never know what he’s really like,” said Farinha. “I felt humbled to be with him and in his presence because I realize this is the Vicar of Christ on earth. I have a very great respect for him.”

“It was an amazing experience because I had never understood

the full meaning of the pope until seeing him in person in a crowd of over a million Catholics from all around the world,” said Giraldo. “It was just amazing to have Mass with him in the morning and to finally understand what it means to have the Holy Father in our Church to lead us to everlasting salvation.”

The next World Youth Day will be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2013.

FALL RIVER WELL REPRESENTED — Pilgrims to World Youth Day from the Diocese of Fall River join former Fall River Bishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston after he celebrated Mass for New England pilgrims on August 20, at the Basilica of St. Francis the Great in Madrid. Leading the Fall River contingent was Claire McManus, Diocesan Director of Faith Formation, front left. (Photo by George Martell courtesy of Pilot Publishing)

Wind, rain can’t dampen diocesan pilgrims’ spirits at WYD continued from page one

full of life, even as she confronts challenging situations. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, who makes Jesus Christ present in the hearts of young people in every age and shows them the grandeur of the divine vocation given to every man and woman.”

This year’s theme was “Rooted and built up in Jesus Christ, firm in the faith,” (Col 2:7), and for 19-year old Rachel Campoli of Immaculate Conception Parish in New Bedford, one of the dozens of diocesan youth from the Fall River Diocese who traveled to the event, the experience cemented an already-established Catholic faith.

World Youth Day was a chanced to “be able to have that grow and flourish more, and to just be reminded, because sometimes even in Catholic atmospheres you forget that we are Catholic and we’re not alone in our faith,” said Campoli. “People get so distracted by the things of the world, and even though they may say they’re Catholic, they don’t always act Catholic. It was beautiful to actually get to pray with people and sing with people for a full 10 days and to really see people give their all and try to change and to be the best that they can be in Christ and make that conscious effort to grow closer to Him.” Campoli traveled with the group from St. Anthony’s Parish in New Bedford, which visited many Christian sites including Fatima and Santiago de Compostela, and attended the vigil of prayer on Saturday night and Mass on Sunday morning with Pope Benedict XVI on the outskirts of the city. The blistering heat of the day gave way to an evening prayer service highlighted by lightning, torrential rain, and strong winds that together

earned the nicknamed, “Hurricane Benedicto,” forcing the pope to cut his reflection short.

The symbolism of being in a crowd of more than a million faithful gathered in one area to pray and worship under an increasingly darkening sky that threatened to strike down those who continued to stay was not lost on anyone.

“My thoughts were that it was the devil doing all he can to prevent our worship with Jesus Christ and to be with our Holy Father,” said 20-year old Armando Giraldo of New Bedford, “and the group just came together as one family, as one Church under God and we defeated him through our faith alone.”

“I think it had a double meaning,” said 17-year old Darius Haghighat of New Bedford. “I think part of it was to test our faith and I think we responded very well by praising the Lord in the storm, and I think that spiritually, since the theme was rooted and built up from Christ in the faith, the storm was meant to water us and grow us into trees that would reach out and praise the Lord.”

“It was a little scary at first,” said Campoli, who smelled smoke after a bag was hit by lightning.

“Certain people started kind of freaking out and started to move their stuff and get up to leave, and I heard Father [Roger] Landry say in the back, ‘Jesus is in the boat, keep both feet on the ground.’

“We all, as an entire group of over a million of us, really started chanting and coming together for the pope. Even though there had been so much energy and enthusiasm, everyone was kind of segregated into their own little group of their own country or state, or wherever they had come from, and we all just bonded and united at that moment and came together in faith.”

When the pontiff returned to the stage, the crowd was amped up to the point that the air rang with the chant, “Benedicto”; an intense show of support for the pope, said Campoli, that was reflected in his face.

“To hear the joy and the reverence that we all have for him, and to see the respect back that he had for us, and the joy he had seeing us; you could tell he was a little tired but he was still so joyful to be there,” she said.

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The Anchor

The past and the future of the United States of America

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles is quickly becoming one of the most persistently prophetic voices in the Church of the United States. He is as cheerful, amiable and accessible as any bishop in the country, but at the same time he is earning a reputation as a truth-telling boat-rocker, unafraid to call to mind inconvenient truths that many outside the Church and some inside would prefer to ignore. On no issue has he been more candid and challenging than that of immigration.

In a remarkable July 28 address entitled “Immigration and the ‘Next America’: Perspectives from our History” to Catholics in Napa, Calif., he described his frustration over the immigration debate. “It seems like most people have made up their minds already on this issue” and that “we are just talking round the edges of the real issues.” The real issues are more than just border security, green cards, and what to do with immigrants in our country illegally. It concerns what America is, has been and will become. “Both sides of the argument,” he recognized, “are inspired by a beautiful, patriotic idea of America’s history and values,” but lately he’s been “starting to wonder: What America are we really talking about?” If there’s a great divergence about what America’s true history and values are, not even “patriotism” will unite it any longer.

“America is changing,” he noted forthrightly, “and it has been changing for a long time. The forces of globalization are changing our economy and forcing us to rethink the scope and purpose of our government. Threats from outside enemies are changing our sense of national sovereignty.

America is changing on the inside, too. Our culture is changing. We have a legal structure that allows, and even pays for, the killing of babies in the womb. Our courts and legislatures are redefining the natural institutions of marriage and the family. We have an elite culture — in government, the media and academia — that is openly hostile to religious faith. America is becoming a fundamentally different country. It is time for all of us to recognize this — no matter what our position is on the political issue of immigration.”

Because of this vast disparity of opinion among Americans on the dignity owed every human person, the value of marriage and family, and whether religious faith is good or evil, there is an enormous division over what to do with immigrants here illegally. Do we view illegal immigrants as dehumanized “criminaliens” or as fellow human beings, even brothers and sisters, whom no caring sibling would ever push to have deported to a situation of deprivation? Do we seek to keep families together in a time of confusion or do we do as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency did in the 2007 Bianco raid in New Bedford, flying parents to holding cells in Texas while their soonto-be-traumatized-and-practically-orphaned kids remained in school in New Bedford? Do we value the deep Christian faith and piety of the vast majority of immigrants or do we view it with hostility?

“We have to bring a Catholic faith perspective to this debate about immigration,” Archbishop Gomez declared. “We cannot just think about this issue as Democrats or Republicans or as liberals or conservatives. That means we have to listen to the teachings of our Church on this issue.”

He also said that we have to acquire a deeper Catholic perspective on “America’s history and purposes” with regard to immigration. When we do, he said, we will recognize not only that “immigration is not a problem for America” but is the “key to our American renewal.”

“One of the problems we have today,” he said in the most provocative part of his talk, “is that we have lost the sense of America’s national ‘story.’ If our people know our history at all, what they know is incomplete. And when we don’t know the whole story, we end up with the wrong assumptions about American identity and culture. The American story that most of us know is set in New England. It’s the story of the pilgrims and the Mayflower, the first Thanksgiving, and John Winthrop’s sermon about a ‘city upon a hill.’ It’s the story of great men like Washington, Jefferson and Madison. It’s the story of great documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. It’s a beautiful story. It’s also true. Every American should know these characters and the ideals and principles they fought for. From this story we learn that our American identity and culture are rooted in essentially Christian beliefs about the dignity of the human person.”

“But,” he continued, “the story of the founding fathers and the truths they held to be self-evident is not the whole story about America. The rest of the story starts more than a century before the pilgrims. It starts in the 1520s in Florida and in the 1540s here in California. It is the story not of colonial settlement and political and economic opportunity. It’s the story of exploration and evangelization. This story is not Anglo-Protestant but Hispanic-Catholic. It is centered not in New England but in Nueva España — New Spain — at opposite corners of the continent. From this story we learn that before this land had a name its inhabitants were being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. The people of this land were called Christians before they were called Americans.

And they were called this name in the Spanish, French and English tongues. From this history, we learn that long before the Boston Tea Party, Catholic missionaries were celebrating the holy Mass on the soil of this continent. Catholics founded America’s oldest settlement, in St. Augustine, Fla., in 1565. Immigrant missionaries were naming this continent’s rivers and mountains and territories for saints, Sacraments and articles of the faith. This is the missing piece of American history.

And today more than ever, we need to know this heritage of holiness and service — especially as American Catholics.”

Archbishop Gomez was not trying to argue that Blessed Junipero Serra, Venerable Antonio Margil, Father Jacques Marquette and Mother Joseph should supplant Washington, Madison, Jefferson and Franklin in American history books, but rather he wanted to acknowledge — and get all Americans to acknowledge — that what the former did and established is crucial to understand not only how the nation we are today was formed but one of the factors that led it to become great.

The genesis of the United States today was not constructed exclusively on the foundations of the 13 colonies.

America was founded not on ethnicity or common territory but on a creed, a deeply Christian belief that all men and women are created equal, with God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the Los Angeles prelate stressed. Our country has always been a “nation of nationalities,” made one out of many (e pluribus unum). When this American creed is taken for granted — as happened with the native Americans at the birth of the nation, with the Know-Nothings in the mid-1800s, and with the Japanese-American internments during World War II — and we begin to believe that the “‘real Americans’ are exclusively of some particular race, class, religion or ethnic background,” we damage our country. “That’s why it is essential that today we remember the missionary history of America — and rededicate ourselves to the vision of America’s founding ‘creed.’”

American Catholics, he said, have a “special duty today to be guardians of the truth about the American spirit and our national identity” as well as to be “witnesses to a new kind of American patriotism,” one that challenges those who “would diminish or ‘downsize’America’s true identity.”

That American patriotic identity is expressed perhaps most forcefully and beautifully by Emma Lazarus’ unforgettable words chiseled at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The torch that Lady Liberty lifts high must continue to burn brightly for our country to be true to itself and to be renewed. Archbishop Gomez is prophetically calling on all Catholic Americans to join him in carrying that torch aloft.

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August 26, 2011

Benedict in America!

that our Holy Father addressed was that n continuing this series on Pope of higher Catholic education. To a group Benedict XVI, I would like to reflect of Catholic college and university educatoday upon Pope Benedict XVI’s papal tors and presidents our Holy Father said visit to the United States during April of that “Clearly, then, Catholic identity is not 2008. dependent upon statistics. Neither can it be The pilgrimage was focused on the equated simply with orthodoxy of course Successor of Peter’s bringing a message content. It demands and inspires much of hope, healing and reconciliation to a country much in need of these three things. more: namely that each and every aspect of your learning communities reverberAllow me in this article to highlight some ates within the ecclesial life of faith. Only of the pope’s encouraging words. May in faith can truth become incarnate and they remind us of what our Holy Father reason truly human, capable of directing said to us as American Catholics during the will along the path of freedom. In this those very special days. way our institutions make a vital contriIn preparation for this visit, the pope bution to the mission of the Church and explained the central theme of his trip: “I truly serve society. They become places have chosen as the theme of my journey in which God’s active presence in human three simple but essential words: “Christ affairs is recognized and in which every Our Hope!” I come to United States of young person discovers the joy of entering America as pope for the first time, to into Christ’s ‘being for others.’” proclaim this great truth: Jesus Christ is In the open air Mass at the Washinghope for men and women of every lanton National’s Stadium Pope Benedict guage, race, culture and social condition. returned to the Yes, Christ idea of hope. is the face of He recalled the God present rich tradition among us.

Putting Into of hope that Through Him, the Deep America was our lives reach built upon fullness, and explaining, together, both

By Father “Americans as individuals Jay Mello have always and peoples, been a people we can become a family united by fraternal love, according of hope: your ancestors came to this country with the expectation of finding new to the eternal plan of God the Father. freedom and opportunity, while the vastUpon his arrival in Washington D.C., ness of the unexplored wilderness inspired Pope Benedict was greeted by President in them the hope of being able to start Bush who warmly welcomed him at the completely anew, building a new nation on White House. In his opening remarks, the new foundations.”

Holy Father said, “I come as a friend, a The Christian virtue of hope is “the preacher of the Gospel and one with great hope poured into our hearts by the Holy respect for this vast pluralistic society.

Spirit, the hope which supernaturally America’s Catholics have made, and purifies and corrects our aspirations by continue to make, an excellent contribufocusing them on the Lord and His saving tion to the life of their country. As I begin plan — that hope has also marked, and my visit, I trust that my presence will be a source of renewal and hope for the Church continues to mark, the life of the Catholic community in this country.” in the United States, and strengthen the In New York, Benedict XVI prayed resolve of Catholics to contribute ever inside a Jewish synagogue. He also more responsibly to the life of this nation, engaged in several interreligious and of which they are proud to be citizens.” ecumenical discussions striving to deepen Over the following days in both our nation’s capital and in New York, our Holy and strengthen relations between people of faith, setting for us an example. “Only Father did not shy away from addressby ‘holding fast’ to sound teaching (2 ing the challenges and problems that the Thes 2:15) will we be able to respond Catholic Church in America continues to the challenges that confront us in an to face. First among them was the sexual evolving world, he said. Only in this way abuse crisis. Pope Benedict XVI showed will we give unambiguous testimony great compassion in addressing this issue to the truth of the Gospel and its moral on five different occasions and even perteaching. This is the message which the sonally meeting with victims himself. world is waiting to hear from us. Like the In his meeting with the bishops of the early Christians, we have a responsibility country, he addressed this issue clearly, to give transparent witness to the “reasons emphasizing, “It is your God-given for our hope.” responsibility as pastors to bind up the On the final day of his trip, before the wounds caused by every breach of trust, to foster healing, to promote reconciliation open air Mass at Yankee Stadium (though I am sure he isn’t a Yankees fan!), Beneand to reach out with loving concern to dict made a solemn and prayerful visit to those so seriously wronged.”

Ground Zero. In the place marked by intolBut there were also other challenges confronting the Church in America that the erable violence and pain, our Holy Father knelt in prayer remembering those who pope addressed. He spoke about a growlost their lives to terrorism. Once again, ing materialism, the deteriorating state of Benedict pointed to Christ as the source of marriage and the family, the shortage of our hope! priestly vocations, and declining Mass May Benedict’s historic visit to Ameriattendance. Our Holy Father reminded ca, his clear articulation of the Gospel, his our bishops of their role in engaging in message of hope and his call for a greater dialogue in the public square, but also reminded each of us of the great responsibil- fidelity to the Gospel remain ever fresh in ity that comes along with the freedom and our minds.

Father Mello is a parochial vicar at St. rights that we enjoy as Americans.

Another particular area of American life Patrick’s Parish in Falmouth.

August 26, 2011

Q: I am from Pennsylvania and due to significant demographic changes in the last couple of decades, many Catholic houses of worship have been closing, oftentimes being converted to secular (and, sadly, unseemly) purposes such as nightclubs. My question: While the Anglican usages provide for a “desacralization” of a house of worship in the book of “Incidental Services,” I understand that in Roman rite there is no such rite or office, not even in the so-called Tridentine usage. My understanding is that the mere removal of the altar, relics, and other appurtenances performs this function. If this is correct, it seems at the least peculiar; if so, why would there not be such a rite? — K.Y., Butler, Penn.

A: I have not been able to find anything regarding a specific rite of relegation to profane use, probably because, until recently, a Catholic church rarely lost its consecration, even if no longer frequently used.

In the past a church would lose its consecration or solemn blessing in two principal cases.

One case was through the destruction of the greater part of its walls. But even in this case it was not desacralized if the walls were destroyed and rebuilt in several stages. Nor was it desacralized if new walls were less than the original.

Another case is if the local bishop reduces the building to profane use, as is still foreseen in Canon 1222 of the Code of Canon Law, to wit: Ҥ1. If a church cannot be used in any way for divine worship and there is no possibility of repairing it, the diocesan bishop can relegate it to profane but not sordid use. Ҥ2. Where other grave causes suggest that a church no longer be used for divine worship, the diocesan bishop, after having heard the presbyteral council, can relegate it to profane but not sordid use,

When a church is desacralized

treasures of relegated churches with the consent of those who should find a new home in other legitimately claim rights for churches in the diocese or in themselves in the church and other Catholic domains. This is provided that the good of souls both a sign of continuity of the suffers no detriment thereby.” faith in spite of demographic This relegation to profane changes and an act of respect use takes place only after the for those generations who built bishop issues a formal decree the original churches with so removing the church’s dedicamuch love and sacrifice. tion or consecration.

The beauty of no small numThe subsequent removal of ber of modern church buildings relics, altar and other items of has been greatly enhanced at sacred art is a consequence of relatively low cost by incorthis decree, but not necessarily the cause of the building losing its consecration.

In order for the decree to be valid, the bishop must first obtain the consent of

By Father any persons (juridical Edward McNamara or physical) who can claim rights over the church. In practice this porating altars, stained glass means the consent of the parish windows, statuary, and other usually through the pastor undecorative elements from older less the parish has already been no longer used churches. suppressed.

Another reader asked if I If the church or the land on would comment on the sale of which it is built is the property religious items, statues, altars, of a religious institute, then the etc., by the church itself. What consent of the competent religious authority is also required. exactly does the Church’s legIn some rare cases a physical islation have to say about these types of sales? person might have a claim on The reader offered examples a church such as a major donor of two sanctuaries from supwhose grant was accepted on condition that the church would pressed parishes being offered on eBay and concluded: “Even remain a sacred place for a if the church itself sold these certain period. items to a ‘reputable dealer,’ The bishop must also deshould not this be a practice that termine that the proposed use would be considered improper? of the place will not be sordid.

If nothing else, it is an affront This is a prudential judgment to the hardworking people who that can vary according to time built these holy places and often and place. But every effort should be made that no unseem- sacrificed personal wealth to establish a temple to the glory ly activities should be allowed of God.” in the future.

In most cases these sales In at least one country in would be covered by specific which the Church has had to norms issued by the bishop who close several relatively modern would be the proper authority to churches, it has preferred to decide what is appropriate. have them demolished rather Many dioceses that have had than turned over to unseemly use. This is not usually possible to close down churches have placed sacred items in storage when closing churches that have significant architectural or and give priority to selling them to other parishes and institutes historical merits.

As far as possible the artistic within the diocese itself.

Liturgical Q&A

Pope hears confessions at WYD’s ‘Forgiveness Festival’

MADRID (CNA/EWTN News) — Pope Benedict XVI heard confessions from four young people in Madrid at the August 20 event billed as a “Forgiveness Festival,” where 200 priests also offered the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

A drawing took place from the pool of World Youth Day volunteers who wished to go to Confession with the Pope, according to Vatican Press Office Director Father Federico Lombardi.

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The Anchor

To be included in the pool, the volunteers had to be able to speak one of the three languages that the pope speaks best: Italian, French or German.

Two volunteers from France, one from Switzerland, and one from Spain were chosen. Originally, three young people were to be chosen, but a fourth was selected in case one could not attend. In the end, however, all four arrived and met with the pope.

Pope Benedict concluded the

confessions in the morning and went to the Cathedral of El Almudena, where about 2,000 seminarians were expecting him for a special Mass.

A World Youth Day volunteer named Guadalupe was at the Forgiveness Festival, and told CNA that she had “never seen anything like it in my life.”

Young people “cried with joy and excitement. It was very nice to see so many people united,” she reflected.

If the diocese has no likely outlet for them, then they may be offered for sale beyond the diocese. These sales, rather than just donating the church furnishings, are justified in order to defray the costs of dismantling and storage as well as providing funds for building new churches or other charitable purposes.

Even in these cases the asking price is frequently well below the cost of commissioning new sacred art of similar quality. Indeed, some churches have been beautified for a relative pittance with reused artwork that would have cost millions if newly commissioned.

The reason for this is because most sales are motivated by a desire to see the artwork used once more for its original purpose rather than languishing in storage. To our mind this solution is more respectful of the donor’s original intention.

Regarding the offer on eBay, I would say that, if this is merely a system of putting someone with a legitimate right to sell these objects into contact with those who have a bona fide reason for purchasing them, then as such there are no more objections to the practice than to placing an advertisement in

the diocesan newspaper.

If, however, the sale is an open auction with no way of controlling who is bidding and the definitive intended use of the purchased object, then it would certainly be an unsuitable means for selling a sacred object and an affront to the memory of those who contributed to its making.

Assuring the specifically religious and Catholic use of sacred objects should be a condition of sale so as to avoid any danger of such objects ending up in unseemly or profane environments. This has sadly happened in some cases with altars used as bars, tabernacles as jewelry cases, and even confessionals converted into television or book cabinets.

Finally, it is important to remember that a sold sacred object loses any blessing or consecration it may have had.

Even if an altar is purchased to be reused as an altar in a different church, it should be blessed or consecrated anew before use.

Father Edward McNamara is a Legionary of Christ and professor of Liturgy at Regina Apostolorum University in Rome. His column appears weekly at zenit.org. Send questions to liturgy@zenit.org. Put the word “Liturgy” in the subject field. Text should include initials, city and state.

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August 26, 2011

The Anchor

Renewing our minds and transforming society

he Catholic Church has consistently taught that human life is sacred from the moment of conception, and that there is a divinely mandated and inseparable link between sexuality and procreation. For this reason, the Church condemns contraception, sterilization, abortion, and in-vitro fertilization as gravely immoral. Yet statistics reveal that Catholics contracept, abort, and initiate new life in laboratories at about the same rate as the general population. Granted, most Catholics have never read “Humanae Vitae,” the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI, which beautifully sets forth the Church’s fundamental vision of human sexuality and family life. Nor have most Catholics read Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical, “Evangelium Vitae,” which provides an illuminating vision of the battle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of

death.” Even so, I suppose the other way around. We’re most Catholics are at least tempted to believe that scisuperficially acquainted with ence and technology (scithe Catholic perspective on ence’s offspring) have all the these issues. At any rate, the answers and make everything evidence suggests a widespread abandonment of Catholic Homily of the Week moral teachings, Twenty-second Sunday which typically leads in Ordinary Time to the loss of faith altogether.

By Father In the Second Timothy E. Driscoll Reading, taken from the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul challenges Christians to live permissible. We know so in a way that sets them apart much about the world today, from the surrounding culture. about how things work and “Do not conform yourselves how things are made. We’re to this age but be transformed so advanced, so sophisticated; by the renewal of your mind, yet we’ve made the decision that you may discern what is to limit our intelligence and the will of God, what is good our reason to only what we and pleasing and perfect” can experience directly or (Rom 12:2). prove by laboratory experiToday, much like in firstments. This causes us to treat century Rome, it’s easy to faith as a purely private matallow the culture to instruct ter, as if religion in general and transform us, rather than and Christ in particular have

no place in the public square.

Worse still, many of us fail to speak up when our faith and our Church are ridiculed.

We all need to heed St. Paul’s advice, allowing ourselves to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.

Our faith is a matter of the head as well as the heart. With the Internet, we literally have at our fingertips a wealth of information about what the Church believes and teaches — and why that is so. Every Catholic home should have a copy of the Bible (the inspired Word of God) and the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (at least the abridged version, known as the Compendium).

Reading a few pages of holy Scripture and the “Catechism” each day will go a long way in deepening our knowledge of the faith.

If your parish offers adult

faith formation or Bible study, I encourage you to take part in it. If not, attend classes at other Catholic parishes. St. Paul warns against a permanent infancy in faith. He pronounces fierce judgment on the Corinthians who remain milk-drinking believers, never learning to eat the rich meat and drink the good wine of the Gospel (see 1 Cor 3:1-3).

In our Western and secularized culture the public influence of religion, meaning mainly Christianity, will not be easily restored. In fact, it seems to diminish by the day.

The more promising prospect is for a renewal of Christian faith and life within the Church itself. Only then can we hope to transform the surrounding culture. But transform we must, for what is at stake is the truth about human nature, dignity, and destiny.

Father Driscoll is pastor of Annunciation of the Lord Parish in Taunton.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. August 27, 1 Thes 4:9-11; Ps 98:1,7-9; Mt 25:14-30. Sun. August 28, Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Jer 20:7-9; Ps 63:2-6,8-9; Rom 12:1-2; Mt 16:21-27. Mon. August 29, 1 Thes 4:13-18; Ps 96:1,3-5,11-13; Mk 6:17-29. Tues. August 30, 1 Thes 5:1-6,9-11; Ps 27:1,4,13-14; Lk 4:31-37. Wed. August 31, Col 1:1-8; Ps 52:10-11; Lk 4:38-44. Thu. Sept. 1, Col 1:9-14; Ps 98:2-6; Lk 5:1-11. Fri. Sept. 2, Col 1:15-20; Ps 100:1-5; Lk 5:33-39.

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ixty-four years ago, on Aug. 14, 1947, Great Britain’s empire in the Indian subcontinent was divided into the independent, self-governing Dominions of India and Pakistan. The division of the subcontinent into two states was bitterly opposed by the Indian Congress Party and Winston Churchill, but supported by the Muslim League (with Congress, one of the two major pro-independence parties in the British Raj) and the Attlee government, which had displaced Churchill in 1945.

Congress proposed powersharing plans that would hold the

Martyrdom in Pakistan

subcontinent together as a politi- or colonial empires, to their cal unit; they were all rejected by wills. Jinnah was an exception: the leader of the Muslim League, no Jinnah, almost certainly no a Scotch-drinking, porkeating, and rather secular lawyer named Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

More than any other single factor, Jinnah’s iron will created Pakistan

By George Weigel out of several Muslimdominated provinces of the Raj, thus splitPakistan. ting the subcontinent into three Thus the fact that Mohamparts (for the original Pakistan mad Ali Jinnah died on Sept. 11, included East Bengal, which is 1948, a mere 13 months after now independent Bangladesh).

Pakistani independence, poses Individuals rarely bend history, one of the great “What if?” questions of modern history. What if Great Britain had held out for another 18 months, insisting on religious freedom and political power-sharing within a pluralistic India that included the provinces that became Pakistan?

What if this pluralistic nation had, over time, become what India is today: the world’s largest democracy, with a vibrant free economy and the world’s biggest middle class? What if the experience of pluralism had led, not to the enduring hatreds born 64 years ago in the slaughters that followed mass population transfers as people sorted themselves out between “India” and “Pakistan,” but to a genuinely tolerant, multi-faith society in

The Catholic Difference

which religious freedom was respected? What if that experience of pluralism had bred, not the fanatical “Hindu fundamentalism” and Islamist jihadism that beset India and Pakistan today, but more tolerant forms of each faith, both of which could then accept the Christians in their midst with equanimity?

A lot of the history of the last six and a half decades has at least something to do with the failure of British intelligence to figure out that Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a man whose time was running out just as the British Empire was preparing to divide its crown jewel at Jinnah’s insistence — including the personal history of Shahbaz Bhatti, who was born a generation after Jinnah’s will created Pakistan.

The 42-year-old Bhatti, a Catholic and Pakistan’s federal minister for religious minorities, was murdered — or, to be more precise, martyred — this past March 2 while being driven to work. His murderer left a note in which he explained that Bhatti had to die because he opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law, a crude attempt to oppose a form of Islamic sharia on the country.

Shahbaz Bhatti knew that his life was in danger. Some weeks before his death, he made

clear in interviews that he was fully aware of the risks he was running. But he was determined to hold fast to his faith and to his convictions about religious freedom. “My struggle will continue,” he said, “despite the difficulties and threats I have received. My only aim is to defend fundamental rights, religious freedom, and the life of Christians and other religious minorities. I am prepared for any sacrifice for this mission, which I carry out with the spirit of a servant of God.” One of those interviews was with Al-Jazeera, which seems an unlikely source for a reading in the Liturgy of the Hours. But if, as I am confident, the Church will one day celebrate the feast of Blessed Shahbaz Bhatti, martyr, this good and brave man’s confession of faith to AlJazeera — “I know the meaning of the Cross and I am following the Cross” — would make an exemplary second reading in the Office of Readings. Between now and then, spend a minute and a half with Shahbaz Bhatti, courtesy of YouTube, and be inspired by a 21st-century Thomas More: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=oBTBqUJomRE George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

I can’t read your writing and, besides, you talk funny

Sunday 21 August 2011 — Hoover, Alabama — Poet’s Day efore you know it, summer vacation will be over, school buses will emerge from hibernation, and children everywhere will be returning to their classrooms for yet another year of reading, writing and arithmetic — or maybe not, dear parents.

I’ve been noticing trends

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in education (possibly because I serve on a local school advisory board). Students are

still taught to read, but don’t presume they read books.

They’re more likely read-

ing Kindles, iPads or other devices. Books, some say, are passé, not to mention newspapers. There are even cutting-edge school libraries that have no books. Everything’s stored electronically.

I’m not so oldfashioned as to pine for the days of parchment scrolls and illuminated manuscripts. I’m a big fan of the printing press. I do, however, prefer my printed material to be, well, print-

World peace and whirled laundry

or years now I have had a gorgeous, black and white photograph of a mother and child tacked onto a bulletin board in my kitchen. Under the photograph is a quote from Blessed Teresa of Calcutta that reads, “What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”

I can think of few words that are more empowering of intentional Catholic parenting than those. Blessed Teresa knew that every big, peace-making, and world-shaping event does not get captured on the evening news.

She knew that most of the life-changing things we say and do, do not even get noticed much less “tweeted” around the world or posted on someone’s Facebook wall. Even more importantly Blessed Teresa knew that right in our own homes and neighborhoods are people who are deserving of our love and attention.

I have to admit that early on in my parenting, sometimes I could embrace Blessed Teresa’s quote and its accompanying world view, and sometimes I couldn’t. I wanted to do something great with my life as most young adults do, and having only ever been taught that the way to do that was by having a big, lucrative career or some other all-consuming passion outside of the home, I was conflicted when our children began to arrive.

I felt this new desire to be a hands-on parent, but would I be throwing away everything about “me” if I focused my attention on them instead of on my other passions? Fortunately, as our family grew, I grew in understanding of Blessed Teresa’s spiritual ideology. I

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August 26, 2011

read more of her words of wisdom like, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one;” “love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand;” and “love begins at home, and it is not how much we do ... but how much love we put in that action.”

After years of meditating on these spiritual pearls, I found that I stopped worrying about the great things I couldn’t do and started fully applying myself to those I could do right at

home.

To that point, this month will mark the sixth anniversary of this one, small family life column. In that time, the seeds of spiritual insight planted right here in the Diocese of Fall River have become like the ivy plants on the brick buildings in Harvard Square.

Rooted, watered, and fertilized locally, the column’s little insights are amazingly now spreading widely, reaching out to families all over the world through the miracle of radio, online media, and this month by being published in a new book called “Homegrown Faith; Nurturing Your Catholic Family.”

Working with the publishers to promote my new book has led me to ask myself what more I could write or say to encourage parents to put even more love into their families.

I thought of many practical things, but then I also thought that, like myself when our children were younger, maybe

there were some parents out there who still had conflicted feelings about the value of Blessed Teresa’s spiritual ideology. So, if anyone desires really to understand the power of one and of acting locally in order to have a global impact, then here’s my one suggestion: change the brand of laundry detergent you use for one month. Seriously.

I did this by accident one month and was astounded.

Not only did my laundry area and our clothes smell better, fresher somehow, but so did my toddler’s stuffed animals, my daughter’s pillow at a sleepover, my teen-agers’ towels at the beach, my husband’s work clothes, the wash the college kids brought back to school, and the clothes I handed down to another family. I began to notice everything with a new freshness.

Now imagine if somehow it had been a greater love that had been infused into each of those people instead of greater freshness that had been infused into their laundry. Wow! It was only one small change in my housekeeping, but it quickly carried throughout our home and to the world beyond, and so can any single choice we make to put more love into our family members.

What can you do to be convinced of the singular power of loving more intentionally and locally? Go home and use a new laundry detergent, and while you’re at it, love your spouse/infant/toddler/teen/ young adult in a fresh new way, too!

Heidi is an author, photographer, and full-time mother of six. To contact her, email homegrownfaith@gmail.com

ed. There’s something about holding a printed page in your own two hands. You can read at your own pace. You can use real, not virtual, bookmarkers.

You can scribble hand-written notes in the margins. You can keep your favorite books on an actual bookshelf, where they will call out to you for another reading. Books are your friends. A man or woman can bond with a book, but not that I know of, with a technological tablet.

“At least we still teach writing in our schools,” you say? Think again. Forget the Palmer Method. In fact, forget cursive writing altogether. It’s becoming extinct, replaced by keyboards and smart phones.

They say more than 40 states no longer require handwriting in their core curricula. Computer savvy and typing ability are the life-skills of tomorrow. Forget, too, traditional typing methods, what finger goes on what key. The quick brown fox no longer jumps over the lazy dog (the classic pangram). Texting works best when all of your fingers are thumbs.

School districts may still provide the option of honing handwriting skills. Those who choose this option prefer to teach cursive writing in third grade. In first and second grade it’s printing. That’s as far as many students get. Even in third grade, there is less time spent teaching students how to write legibly. I just hope today’s kids learn how to sign their names. The next generation is already emotionally detached from the written word. If words lack passion, they are bland and “BORing,” as the kids say.

I’m reminded of the classical Greek and Roman schools of philosophy. Rhetoric and oratorical skills were paramount. This was once also the case in America. Consider Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or, more recently, President John F. Kennedy’s inspiring speeches. These were filled with the passion of the spoken word. They stirred emotion.

They live forever in institutional memory. They were anything but boring.

Lincoln, being from the midwest, spoke in a way that modern linguists would consider something for which

to strive. Even very recently, the midwestern accent was desirable among television announcers, newscasters, and movie stars. President Kennedy, on the other hand, spoke with a definite New England accent. It added a certain charm to his words: “Paak the cah in Haavid Yaad,” and all that.

Then along came the California accent. To me it sounded ignorant and uneducated, but it caught on. As I watch television today, I hear people raising their voices in elongated syllables at the end of each sentence, whether it happens to be a question or not. I find myself blurting out “Stop at the period. Drop your voice at the end of a sentence, you silly Valley Girl.” It’s a good thing I watch TV alone.

I read recently (in print) that there are local courses offered by speech coaches on how to overcome the handicap of a New England accent.

People sign up because they want to appear on stage and screen or because they think their regional accent sounds stupid.

Where did we ever get the idea that dialects are uncouth?

What’s so wrong with a local accent? Location is important. Celebrate diversity. Why should we all dress and act and think and speak alike? It’s un-American, I tell you. And it’s soooo BOR-ing.

Linguistic studies show that only about 15 percent of us speak consistently in a New England accent. An additional 40 percent can turn the accent off as the situation requires.

If we want to, we can “put on the dog.” It sounds phony to me.

I went to college in Ontario, Canada. My classmates would say, ‘You talk like President Kennedy!” When I returned home on vacation, my friends and neighbors would suggest I drop the pretentious British accent (Ontarians have a slight British accent). Sometimes, you just can’t win.

In the words of Paul Simon, “My lack of education never hurt me none. I can read the writing on the wall” … but maybe not for long.

Father Goldrick is pastor of St. Nicholas of Myra Parish in North Dighton.

Visit The Anchor online at www.anchornews.org

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The Anchor B y Becky Aubut A nchor Staff

August 26, 2011

Living the faith wherever he is

OSTERVILLE — ­­­ William Christie may split his time during the year living in three geographically different areas in the United States, but regardless of where he is hanging his hat, he always carries his faith.

“I was always encouraged family-wise; my mother was the ‘queen of the volunteers’ in town,” said Christie.

Originally from Long Island, N.Y., Christie calls Osterville, his home each summer, and has been a member of Our Lady of Assumption Parish for the past 12 years.

“I always like Osterville because it reminded me of the town I grew up in Long Island,” said Christie.

While growing up in New York, Christie was a member of St. Mary’s Parish in East Islip and became an altar server in the second grade. Attending St. Mary’s parochial grammar school saw Notre Dame nuns from Baltimore guiding the very young Christie through his academics.

“They were sort of a semi-cloistered order, very strict,” said Christie. “But certain nuns would leave an impression; things they said would stick with you, sort of beads of wisdom.”

Christie attended a Catholic high school, incidentally meeting his future wife while taking the same train as both traveled to the same high school. Though they waited until Christie’s senior year in college to start dating, the couple will be celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary this coming November.

“My wife and I are on the same track and we’ve always attended holy Mass; we pretty much go every day wherever we are. Daily Mass has always been a part of our lives,” said Christie, who began to attend St. Patrick’s Parish in Bay Shore, his wife’s longtime parish, after they were married and ultimately served on its parish council.

After graduating from Providence College, from where he recently received an honorary degree for his lifelong passion for Catholic and humanitarian causes, Christie became a commissioned officer in

the United States Marine Corps. Shortly after leaving the military, he established a Lion’s Club in his area. He also took a page out of his mother’s volunteer handbook and joined the Good Samaritan Hospital, becoming a board member for 25 years,

Anchor Person of the Week — William Christie. serving as president for a few of those years.

He soon called the state of Florida his legal residence, joined the Holy Cross Parish in Vero Beach, and within a few years became involved in the parish’s soup kitchen.

“That’s something we got involved in supporting because we felt they were really hurting, and just surviving. The first thing we did was, my wife and I sponsored and paid for a dinner for 275 people and asked that they bring some food items,” said Christie.

The fund-raising event raised close to $20,000 with the money going to buy a piece of property to help increase the soup kitchen’s storage area, said Christie, adding that so much food was collected that night that a tractor-trailer was needed to ship it all out. Twenty years later, Christie is proud of how both he and his wife continue to be active in the soup kitchen by helping to serve food on a weekly basis.

When his pastor at Holy Cross Parish proposed to help another parish in the diocese help renovate its building, Christie was one of the first to volunteer.

“We took them on as a sister-project. People were unbelievable in the way they responded,” he said of the parish that is heavily populated with migrant workers from the area. “We got them up and running, not only the church renovated but also a computer center established where they could learn the English language. We put in a full basketball court for the kids.”

One of Christie’s most rewarding experiences has been his being part of the Knights of Malta.

With fellow knights in Florida, he raised money to send to Haiti to help build concrete homes for the poor as part of the “Happy Houses” program. He has also been a part of the group that travels every other year to Lourdes, France, in order to bring the “malades” (French for those who are sick) to the revered site of the 1858 Marian apparition and of so many physical and spiritual healings.

“We take people with all kinds of health problems, and we take them for the week and administer to them the whole week we’re there. It’s totally a spiritual exercise,” said Christie. “You start working the minute you arrive because you are assigned a ‘malade’ for that week. You accommodate them in every way possible; you never leave them.

It’s very demanding but it’s very rewarding also.”

Christie’s latest endeavor comes way by a request from his sister who lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

“That’s a project that my sister, who has been on the board of a nonprofit called Bread for the City for nine years; she called me and asked if I could help in raising funds for a dental clinic in northeast Washington for the poor people who frequent the Bread for the City medical facility. She wanted to have it named in honor of my father who was a dentist in Islip, Long Island for 25 years; he died prematurely at age 61,” said Christie.

Close to $100,000 has been raised, the equipment is in place and now the only “cog in the wheel,” said Christie, is finding a dentist. Until then, the father of five and grandfather of 16 said he will enjoy the last few days of summer before closing up his Osterville residence.

He said there’s no question that his faith has played the foundational role in his humanitarian efforts.

“Life is short. Live helping people and giving back. That’s the joy in life,” said Christie.

“We encourage our neighbors and our friends to try and get involved.”

To submit a Person of the Week nominee, send an email with information to fatherrogerlandry@ anchornews.org

August 26, 2011

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The Anchor

August 26, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI defends the dignity of the disabled

MADRID (CNA/EWTN News) — Pope Benedict XVI visited a center for mentally and physically disabled young people as part of his World Youth Day visit to Madrid.

“Dear friends, our society, which all too often questions the inestimable value of life, of every life, needs you,” the pope told those at the Instituto San Jose in Madrid on August 20.

“In a decisive way you help to build the civilization of love. What is more, you play a leading role in that civilization.”

Pope Benedict met many of those who use the center, including 20-year-old Antonio who is both

mentally and physically handicapped. He explained to the pope how his parents’ love had helped him overcome adversity.

“It was thanks to the love they showed me, even when faced with what could turn out to be an obstacle in their lives, they decided to look toward the future,” the young man said. “This attitude helped us to excel. It helped us to never give in.”

In response, the pope said that the modern world often struggles to cope with suffering, such that “when suffering appears on the horizon of a young life, we are shaken; perhaps we ask ourselves:

‘Can life still be something grand, even when suffering unexpectedly enters it?’”

But the pope pointed out that “the true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer,” adding that “a society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through compassion, is a cruel and inhuman society.”

Madrid’s Instituto San Jose was founded in 1898 and is run by the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God. The pope praised the commitment of all those involved in

the center, saying it proclaims “the greatness to which every human being is called: to show compassion and loving concern to the suffering, just as God himself did.”

He said the presence of the young people at the institution “awakens in our often hardened hearts a tenderness which opens us to salvation,” so that the “lives of these young people surely touch human hearts, and for that reason we are grateful to the Lord for having known them.”

Earlier in the day the pope also met with the organizers of World Youth Day at the papal nuncio’s residence in Madrid to thank them

for their efforts.

“Only love for the Church and zeal to evangelize young people can explain this generous commitment of time and energy, which will bear much apostolic fruit,” the pope told those who have worked for years to make this week’s events possible.

His thanks went out to both civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

“Since Jesus tells us that not even a cup of water given in his name will go without reward,” said the pope, “how much more will be rewarded the daily and unceasing contribution to the organization of a Church event of such importance as the one we are now celebrating.”

COMPANIONS ON THE JOURNEY — Pilgrimage groups from St. Patrick’s Parish in Wareham and St. Anthony of Padua Parish in New Bedford get together for a photograph after Mass on August 20 before heading to Cuatro Vientros Airfield in Madrid. Accompanying them are Father Ron Floyd of St. Patrick’s and Father Roger Landry of St. Anthony’s, both on left.

August 26, 2011

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The Anchor

Let’s see some ID: New evangelization office targets Catholic identity

day one — Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess star in a scene from the movie “One Day.” For a brief review of this film, see CNS Movie Capsules below. (CNS photo/Focus Features)

CNS Movie Capsules NEW YORK (CNS) — The following are capsule reviews of movies recently reviewed by Catholic News Service.

“Conan the Barbarian” (Lionsgate) This blood-saturated 3-D action-adventure — based on the 1930s pulp fiction of Robert E. Howard — stars Jason Momoa as the eponymous warrior out to avenge his father’s murder by a warlord (Stephen Lang). The latter, together with his half-witch daughter (Rose McGowan), also kidnaps a martial arts maiden (Rachel Nichols) in his quest to dominate the mythical land of Hyboria. Bringing 21st-century moviemaking techniques to the

sword-and-sorcery subgenre, director Marcus Nispel offers up a visually dynamic yet exceedingly violent piece of hokum, bereft of positive values. “No mercy” could be its mantra, applying equally to those on screen and off. Pervasive graphic violence — including decapitations, severed limbs and torture — explicit nonmarital sexual activity, considerable upper female and brief rear male nudity, some sexual innuendo, one instance of crude language. The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive.

The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted.

Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

“Fright Night” (Disney) A Las Vegas-area teen (Anton Yelchin) suspects his new neighbor (Colin Farrell) is a vampire responsible for the sudden disappearance of his boyhood best friend (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

So he seeks the aid of an occult-

Diocese of Fall River TV Mass on WLNE Channel 6 Sunday, August 28, 11:00 a.m.

Celebrant is Father Riley J. Williams, currently on summer assignment at St. Mary’s Parish in Mansfield

obsessed illusionist (David Tennant) as he tries to protect his mom (Toni Collette) and girlfriend (Imogen Poots) from the toothy predator. Initially restrained bloodletting gives way to gore galore in director Craig Gillespie’s nocturnal remake of a 1985 horrorcomedy mix while Marti Noxon’s script is peppered with obscenities throughout. Excessive graphic violence, a benign view of teen sexual activity, brief rear nudity, several uses of profanity, pervasive rough and crude language.

The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive.

The Motion Picture Association of America is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

“One Day” (Focus) Turgid screen version of the best-selling romance novel scripted by the book’s author, David Nicholls, and directed in a plodding style by Lone Scherfig. Illassorted Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess — she a prim children’s writer, he a whiny, boorish TV host — are shown in a series of 20 annual episodes, beginning with their college graduation in 1988, as they progress from awkward friends to something more. Though their relationship is mature and broadly, if not always straightforwardly, moral, viewers’ interest is likely to be fatally depleted by the excessively wordy dialogue of Nicholls’ verbose script well before the fivehanky ending. A shadowy glimpse of female frontal nudity, brief rear nudity, implied cohabitation, a single instance of rough language.

The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A new Vatican council is tackling an old task: bringing God to the world in new ways.

The Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization is just a year old, but “it is one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council,” said the council’s president, Archbishop Rino Fisichella.

“The dicastery doesn’t spring from nothing. It springs from groundwork laid the last 50 years — preparation for making a new impact, a new culture, a new way to present the Church to the world,” he told Catholic News Service.

Even though the term “new evangelization” doesn’t appear in conciliar texts, he said, the concept is well apparent and gets further fleshed out in Pope Paul VI’s 1975 apostolic exhortation on evangelization, “Evangelii Nuntiandi.”

New evangelization stems from the particular challenges facing the Church in bringing the Gospel to those already familiar with it, he said.

“It’s easier to proclaim Jesus Christ to those who have never heard of him,” said the Italian archbishop.

“The challenge is much more difficult, much bigger, to have to talk about the faith, the need for faith in Jesus Christ to people who presume to have the faith or to those who have left (the Church) for reasons including the behavior of people of the Church.”

The test is knowing “how to reach everybody by means of a credible style of life as well.”

Pope Benedict XVI has been determined to confront the increasing secularism of the modern world.

A concrete sign of that is the new council, which he established in June 2010. Just a few months later, he announced that “new evangelization” would be the theme for the 2012 world Synod of Bishops.

The pope’s missionary prayer for August asks that Christians in traditionally Christian countries “rediscover the freshness and enthusiasm of their faith.”

To spearhead this renewed mission, the pope chose a leading theological adviser to the Vatican.

Archbishop Fisichella taught fundamental theology for 20 years at the Pontifical Gregorian University and was rector of Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University before he served as president of the Pontifical Academy for Life for two years.

His books and lectures have been about how to present Christianity to today’s world, especially in using language that makes the truth of the Gospel easily understood in today’s cultures, he said.

However, he said, after years of

developing his ideas as a professor, “now I have to be able to put them into practice.”

He has built a simple, twopronged plan of attack: help build identity so Catholics learn what it means to be a Christian today, and re-instill a sense of belonging to the Church.

Many Christians lack basic knowledge of the faith, he said, and one of the reasons is that catechetical instruction typically stops after the Sacrament of Confirmation in the teen years.

“Faith also needs to be studied,” even as an adult, he said, so people know not only what the faith teaches, but how to live that faith in today’s world with today’s challenges.

“If someone doesn’t know the fundamental tenants of the faith, it’s difficult for that person to know who he is” and what being Catholic means, he said.

Building community and a sense of belonging to the Church are also tied to identity, he said, since “there can be no full Christian identity if it’s not in reference to the community, and there can’t be a community made up of people who are weak, lacking identity.

“So we need to know the faith, know who we are in the world and know our tradition in our culture to build up a Catholic identity,” which is also built up in relationship with other Catholics in both good times and bad, he said.

Homilies are also an important way to evangelize, he said, especially when they are delivered during a Mass that may be attended by many lapsed or non-Catholics, such as weddings, baptisms and funerals.

“If the priest is able to give a message that is both intelligent and able to touch people’s hearts, it is a very important example of new evangelization,” the archbishop said.

The council will launch a pilot project called “metropolis mission” during Lent 2012 in 12 different European cities “because the Lord sent 12 in the beginning” to evangelize, he said.

The bishops of the cities will be united around implementing the same initiative in ways that are unique to the dioceses.

The Lenten programs will include putting the spotlight on the sacrament of reconciliation because “new evangelization demands knowing the truth about oneself,” he said.

This truth is found “where you feel welcomed, loved, and forgiven,” he said; and it’s the Sacrament of Confession where people come face to face with their sins and contradictions and yet experience God’s mercy and love.

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The Anchor

August 26, 2011

Bishops instruct Catholic politicians on importance of marriage Priest nurtures ‘ministry of consolation’ continued from page one

of his responsibilities to the common good and the truth,” he said.

In his letter, dated July 20, the archbishop urged the governor to desist in promoting the redefinition of marriage.

“Our voices are not motivated by hate or ignorance, but by a faithful adherence to the nature of men and women and their unique capacities as mothers and fathers. Nor do we speak solely from religious principles.

Preserving the central role of the natural family union has always been — and should continue to be — the reason why our government recognizes marriage as existing between one man and one woman,” he wrote.

Archbishop O’Brien also acknowledged the intensified pressure on the governor since same-sex marriage became legal in New York, but reminded O’Malley that “Maryland is not New York.”

In Maryland, the legislature voted down same-sex marriage last year, despite what the archbishop refers to as “intense pressure” in its favor. Those representatives had the courage to resist the “pull of partisan allegiances and political ambition.”

He added that such courage is rare in politics.

Franks said that the pressures of individualism have led to a confused notion of the common good. Many people fail to recognize that the dignity of the human person flourishes in the life

of a loving family.

“We tend to think of our lives as matters for our own disposition and not intrinsically bound up with the lives of others. The common good as a concept has become evacuated of its real meaning. If we did have a memory of what the common good in fact is, we would have little doubt about the centrality of the defense of life and the defense of the family,” he said.

In his reply to the archbishop, Governor O’Malley specifically mentioned his desire to uphold the common good. He cited examples of serving the poor, the sick, children, workers and immigrants but excluded what he called “the public issue of equality of civil marriage rights.”

“I have concluded that discriminating against individuals based on their sexual orientation in the context of civil marriage rights is unjust,” he said.

Franks said the governor fails to see clearly that marriage is a public good that serves all society’s members. Cementing in the law that “sodomy constitutes a union between two people” leads to more confusion and gives rise to scandal. In addition, it affects the religious groups that, because of their beliefs, cannot recognize same-sex marriage.

“I don’t think politicians are thinking clearly about how much of an impact that’s going to have on society since the Church gives so much in terms

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of social services to the nation,” he said. “How the laws regarding life and family are framed have a profound impact on how much the Church can engage in the ministry she wants to engage in to help people. It is assumed by too many politicians that the Church will continue to provide the services she provides, but the fact is — no matter how much we want to continue to do that — if we are compelled to act against the truth, we must withdraw.”

Franks added that he believes many bishops have privately contacted their legislators to encourage them to stand for truth.

“Their goal isn’t to stir up publicity. Their goal is to win over the hearts and minds of those in their care for the sake of that person and for the sake of the whole state,” he said.

But when Catholic politicians publicly continue to advocate positions that fly in the face of Church teaching, there are different schools of thought on how to proceed.

Franks said that Catholic politicians who disregard the defense of life and family even after receiving instruction from their bishops have separated themselves from the communion of the Church and should not receive the Eucharist. In those cases, bishops have to determine a prudential approach to the matter.

“Should they police parishes to ensure that a prominent politician doesn’t receive Communion?” he asked. “There are reasons to think that this wouldn’t be a good policy. How prominent is prominent enough to warrant that interdiction?”

Rep. James Lyons (R-Andover) told The Anchor that when a Catholic politician takes a stand that is contrary to Church teaching, it creates confusion.

Lyons added that he sees his role as a politician and a Catholic on a parallel path. He specifically cited upholding marriage and life, saying that each is “more than just a Catholic issue.”

Rep. Marc Lombardo (RBillerica) told The Anchor, “The message of love, forgiveness and being good to your neighbor is good for society as a whole.”

When approaching a vote on a piece of legislation, elected officials need to consider its impact on individual citizens, families and the broader community, he said.

Lombardo added that he could no more separate being a Catholic from his identity than being an American.

“It’s just part of my makeup.

My values are what guide me in every decision that I make,” he said.

continued from page one

Father Curley said the Catholic Church plays a pivotal role in this ministry.

“There are many models for funerals and they are changing all the time,” Father Curley said.

“I think the Church offers the best model of all — because we help people to redefine their relationship in faith. Whether they feel sadness or loss or, in some cases, relief because their loved one isn’t suffering any more, we try to focus on the underlying purpose, which is to enter into the Kingdom of God.” Father Curley first became interested in funerals and the grieving process while a student at Boston University.

“I wrote my dissertation on the ‘New Order of Christian Funerals’ that had come out in 1989,” Father Curley said. “I thought it was an appropriate topic to write about. The ministry, really, is unfolding all the time. As priests we do so many funerals each year and I find, especially now, there’s confusion about the funeral ritual — a lot of people are becoming very secular.”

One practice that caused some confusion among Catholics, according to Father Curley, was whether or not the Church supported cremation.

“In the early days of the Church, cremation was almost seen as a pagan ritual and that the body wasn’t being treated with reverence,” he said. “It was viewed as a denial of eternal life. We strongly believe in the bodily resurrection — that the Lord will raise us up. But the manner of burial isn’t important.

Even St. Paul says don’t worry too much about it. What matters is that we’re lifted up. Cremation is very popular now … but what’s important is that the remains are treated with dignity.”

The Church teaches that funerals with cremated remains can be allowed in extraordinary circumstances when there is no denial of the resurrection of the body and the cremains will be buried in the ground, in a columbarium or mausoleum for urn, or intact at sea.

While there are parts of the Christian funeral rite that have changed and evolved over the years, Father Curley said it remains true to the tenets of our faith.

“The Church has been very consistent in helping people to realize that healing comes from the very beginning through our rituals,” Father Curley said. “If you can identify with the signs and symbols, the funeral ritual comes full circle. We are called to be followers of Christ by virtue of our Baptism.”

To that end, Father Curley noted how the funeral Mass itself begins with a blessing with Holy Water and a pall being draped over the casket — two symbols linking directly back to Baptism.

For those faced with the difficult challenge of planning a funeral, Father Curley’s handy reference guide, “Planning the Catholic Funeral,” offers stepby-step instructions on making the necessary vigil and Mass arrangements, picking out the appropriate readings and hymns for Mass, and even how to select pallbearers. His companion book, “Peace Beyond Understanding,” focuses more on grief counseling for the surviving family members and friends.

“The two books really complement each other,” Father Curley said. “‘Peace Beyond Understanding’ is an expansion of a book I wrote in 1993.”

In the latter book’s introduction, Father Curley writes: “We as a Church have to foster the ministry of consolation, especially with our end of life rituals.

These rituals are essential for our community’s spirituality. They are also essential for the grieving process.”

In recent years, many parishes have established bereavement committees comprised of lay people who assist fellow parishioners in the grieving process.

“People are called to console one another,” Father Curley said.

“We see the lay ecclesial ministry working with the priest to bring healing to families. The best way to express grief is with the support of a community.

“I think with many pastors running multiple parishes, we need to pool our resources and having lay ministries like bereavement committees is a great help. We’re all looking for meaning and our rituals certainly help us enter into a deeper relationship with God. We have that dimension always in our faith. We are there for people at the most critical times.”

Over the years Father Curley has continued to study and research grief counseling and he is passing on his knowledge to others by teaching courses on the subject for the master’s program at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton.

“It’s changing all the time and there’s no one complete theory when it comes to the ministry of consolation,” Father Curley said.

“There really is a moment of change for all of us when we experience loss. We have a change of heart but we also find ways to become better Christians. Grief ministry is not about death so much as it is about life.”

August 26, 2011

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The Anchor

Our land and Our Lady

ver since Columbus’ journey to the New World aboard the Santa Maria, and the English Catholic colonists landing on Mary’s Feast of the Annunciation, March 25 in the year 1634 in a place they named Maryland, two years before our Puritan forefathers founded Harvard College, our land has had a special connection to Our Lady. This week we celebrated the feast of her Queenship on August 22, a week after the feast of her Assumption body and soul into Heaven.

Even though our U.S. Constitution forbids titles of nobility, its injunctions don’t apply to the after-life, or to our life of religion. (After all, the First Amendment forbids our government from “establishing” a religion.) Jesus is our King, and his mother Mary is our Queen, and also our mother. We want to honor this greatest of the saints, and to go to her for help.

Indeed, here in Boston we have two shrines dedicated to Mary, one in Orient Heights to Our Lady Queen of the Universe, with a 35-foot statue overlooking Logan Airport that is often visible when

flying in and out of Boston.

A new book, Thomas A. The other is beautiful ReTweed’s “America’s Church: demptorist Mission Church, The National Shrine and the Basilica of Our Lady of Catholic Presence in the Perpetual Help, on Mission Nation’s Capital,” pubHill, where the image of Our lished by Oxford University Lady of Perpetual Help, a copy of the original in Rome, has been venerated since 1878.

I’m originally from Washington, D.C., and I have fond

By Dwight Duncan childhood memories of May processions in our parish church of St. Mary’s in Rockville, Press in 2011, tells the story Md.; and also of visiting of the creation and buildthe Basilica of the National ing of the National Shrine Shrine of the Immaculate to Mary in Washington. In Conception, in the Brookland 1846, our country’s bishops section of Washington, next named Mary under her title to Catholic University. My of the Immaculate Concepmother grew up in that area, tion as patroness of the a kind of Catholic enclave United States. This was eight that included the Franciscan years before Blessed Pius Monastery which has replicas IX formally proclaimed the of shrines in the Holy Land. dogma of the Immaculate (She also went to Trinity Col- Conception in 1854, and 12 lege, next door to Catholic years before Mary appeared University.) Nowadays, many to St. Bernadette at Lourdes Pro-Lifers who are Catholic in France in 1858, telling her stop at the National Shrine that “I am the Immaculate for a Mass or a visit during Conception.” the annual March for Life The National Shrine is a on the anniversary of Roe v. wonderful and inspiring story Wade. of faith. Bishop Thomas J.

Bishop George W. Coleman has decreed that the Church of Saint Paul in Taunton be relegated to profane but not sordid use.

This action was taken in accord with Canon 1222, §2 of the Code of Canon Law. The decree was given Friday, August 26, 2011 and will take effect on Thursday, September 15, 2011.

DECREE ISSUED Relegation to profane use is a term used in Church law when a Church building is converted from sacred uses and will no longer be used for Catholic liturgical worship.

The former Saint Paul Parish and the former Saint Joseph Parish, also in Taunton, were joined in 2008 to become the Saint An-

Judge For Yourself

This week in 50 years ago — Four new high school classrooms were constructed at St. Mary’s School in Taunton to accommodate 82 incoming freshmen as well as the 140 upper classmen registered for the coming school year.

Shahan (1857-1932), then rector of Catholic University, convinced Pope St. Pius X at a private audience in 1913 of the merits of the project, and in 1920 James Cardinal Gibbons laid the cornerstone. The beautiful lower Crypt church was constructed in the 1920s, with contributions from people in the pews around the country; but the Great Depression and World War II halted further building until the 1950s, when the huge Byzantine Romanesque Upper Church was added. Great figures of American Catholicism like Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, the outstanding Catholic evangelist and media personality, both of whose causes for canonization are underway, made important visits to Mary’s Shrine.

Over the decades since, chapels and artwork and decoration have been added, and both John Paul II and Benedict XVI visited the America’s Church on their visits to the nation’s capital

in 1979 and 2008, respectively. The various ethnic groups that make up the Catholic Church in this country are virtually all represented with their Madonnas and chapels, most recently the Filipinos and African-Americans. My personal favorite is the mosaic chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. There are images of America’s saints, like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. John Neumann, and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.

The shrine is apparent when passing through Union Station by train or metro. It, like the Episcopalian National Cathedral, or for that matter the U.S. Capitol itself, is built on one of Washington’s many hills. While its huge size and style were the object of some criticism, over the years it has become a muchloved and important place of pilgrimage for natives of and visitors to Washington. Don’t miss it on your next trip to the nation’s capital. For a Catholic, it is a must-see, like going home to see your mother.

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

drew the Apostle Parish in that city. In accordance with Canon Law, the decision of the bishop to issue the decree on the Church of Saint Paul followed consultation with the pastor of Saint Andrew the Apostle Parish, parish leadership councils, and the Presbyteral Council of the Fall River Diocese.

St. Francis Xavier Church

Diocesan history

10 years ago — The 100th anniversary of the solemn consecration of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, the Fall River Diocese’s mother church, was commemorated with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Sean P. O’Malley, OFM Cap., followed by a reception at the Abbey Grill on Rock Street in Fall 25 years ago — Father Marcel H. Boucha- River. rd, parochial vicar at St. Julie Billiart Parish, One year ago — More than 200 people North Dartmouth, participated in the 17th filled St. Lawrence Martyr Church in New annual Blessing of the Fleet in New Bedford Bedford to celebrate the 100th birthday of Harbor. Father Bouchard took the place of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, foundress the late Father John F. Hogan, St. Julie’s pas- of the Missionaries of Charity. Many attendtor, who had participated in the festival since ees were also present during Mother Teresa’s it began. historic visit to the church on June 14, 1995.

125 Main Street, Acushnet, MA 02743 Sat., 3 September 2011• 508-995-7600

SELECTION OF VENUES FOR 2011: Saturday, 1, Oct Corpus Christi Church, East Sandwich, MA Saturday, 5 Nov St. Lawrence Church, Brookline, MA Saturday, 3 Dec St. Brendan Church, Bellingham, MA

Youth Pages

16

August 26, 2011

Pope tells young to build on their faith, share it with the world

MADRID (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI saw that 1.4 million young people could be buffeted by gusty winds and drenched by a driving rain and still fall silently to their knees to adore the Eucharist.

At the final Mass closing World Youth Day August 21 in Madrid, the pope challenged the Catholic pilgrims to take that faith, make it grow and share it with the world.

Despite the hardships of getting to the Cuatro Vientos military air base in blistering heat August 20 and the downpour during the nighttime vigil with the pope, hundreds of thousands of young people from around the world spent the night on the open field, praying, singing and perhaps trying to snatch a few hours’ sleep.

But they were up, ready and rowdy when the pope arrived for the morning Mass.

The pope noticed.

In his homily, he said, the vision of that sea of happy souls “fills my heart with joy.”

“I think of the special love with which Jesus is looking upon you.

Yes, the Lord loves you and calls you His friends,” the pope told the young.

To the joy of the crowd, particularly the Brazilians present, at the end of the Mass, the pope announced that the next international gathering of World Youth Day would be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2013.

In his homily at the Mass, Pope Benedict said faith is not about un-

derstanding a bunch of facts, “it is an ability to grasp the mystery of Christ’s person in all its depth.”

Even if it feels like a struggle at times, faith is not primarily about people working out their thoughts about God; it starts with the gift of

God’s love and God’s reaching out to each person, he said.

Faith entails “a personal relationship with Christ, a surrender of our whole person, with all our Subscribe to

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help them see they are right when “their heart tells them that more authentic values do exist” and they resist being “seduced by the empty promises of a lifestyle which has no room for God.”

SURROUNDED BY HIS CHILDREN — The popemobile carrying Pope Benedict XVI makes its way through a throng of young people as the pope arrives to celebrate the World Youth Day closing Mass at Cuatro Vientos airfield in Madrid August 21. “The Lord loves you and calls you His friends,” the pope told the 1.5 million pilgrims attending the finale. (CNS photo/Sergio Perez, Reuters)

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understanding, will and feelings,” he said.

But the pope went even further, telling the young that a personal relationship with Jesus always must be transformed into action,

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service and love for others. In addition, it must be lived within the Church, the community of believers to whom Jesus entrusted His message and His mission of salvation.

“We cannot follow Jesus on our own,” he said. Those who try “approach the life of faith with the kind of individualism so prevalent today” and risk not encountering the real Jesus or “following a counterfeit Jesus,” he said.

Christ asks each person, “Who do you say that I am?” the pope said.

“Respond to Him with generosity and courage, as befits young hearts like your own,” he told the young.

“Let me urge you to strengthen this life of faith which has been handed down from the time of the apostles,” he said. “Make Christ, the Son of God, the center of your life.”

Pope Benedict told the young people, who had been texting, tweeting and posting Facebook updates about their adventures, that whenever we really “like” anything, we share it, and that must hold true for faith as well.

“You, too, have been given the extraordinary task of being disciples and missionaries of Christ in other lands and countries filled with young people who are looking for something greater,” the pope said.

Share the faith, he said, and

Even before Mass began, officials of World Youth Day broadcast another challenging message to the crowd, telling them that most pilgrims would not be able to receive Communion during Mass and asking them to offer it up as a sacrifice for the pope.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the plan was to distribute Communion from 17 eucharistic chapels set up on the perimeter of the airfield.

The storm August 20 destroyed several of the chapel-tents, and police asked organizers to dismantle most of the others because they posed a danger in the wind.

Canadian Bishop Donald Bolen of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, joined about 80 pilgrims from four groups in his diocese.

He said the pilgrims found the whole experience “enjoyable and meaningful, and in some instances, transformative. Will they pray daily, celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation frequently, help those who suffer, and take time to discern their vocation?

“I think if you asked them now, many of them would say yes, they will try,” he said. “It is my profound hope that the experiences of the past two weeks will stay with them, and that the experience of God’s presence and of the Church which they have felt here will be the seedbed for a deepening commitment to Christian discipleship.

But as with all of us, time will tell.

“Many of the youth have already shown signs of serious commitment to a life of Christian discipleship; others are certainly searching. There is no doubt, however, that the experience of World Youth Day is a gift for both those already committed and those still searching,” he said.

James Arblaster of Woodland, Australia, told Catholic News Service he struggles with the Church’s teaching on the Theology of the Body and the Church’s stance on homosexuality.

“I’ve been able to attend catechesis and learn about more of the in-depth arguments for different (teachings the Church has). That has assisted in explaining a lot of positions, although I still remain unconvinced on homosexuality,” he said.

Arblaster said one of the priests at Confession also helped clear up some of the Church’s teachings on sexuality for him.

Brigette Liss, a 26-year-old from Chicago, said she has a difficult time attending church every Sunday while working.

“This experience has helped me come back to Mass and see how important it is to keep up on your faith and be sure that every day you take time out to pray and think of God,” she said.

Liss said it was the catechesis and the witness of so many young people alive in their faith —”wearing it on their sleeves” — that helped her. She also went to Confession for the first time in four years.

Father Loreto “Bong” Rojas, pastor of St. James Parish in Davis, Calif., traveled to Madrid with 33 youths, ages 14-24, from the Diocese of Sacramento.

He said just the way they handled the hardship of getting to Cuatro Vientos — squashed like sardines on the Metro and walking miles in the heat — shows they got the message, especially about charity.

“They may not be able to verbalize it on a theoretical level, but on a practical level, they are there,” he said. “It’s very real. We’re a big group and they are very mindful of each other. Some were not up to the walk and others, who wanted to experience the 8-kilometer (5mile) walk, volunteered to stay with them.”

Yago de la Cierva, director of World Youth Day Madrid, told CNS the event was planned to be “more religious and less entertaining” than some previous youth gatherings.

“We are proud of our Catholic identity. This is who we are. It is what we wanted people to know and what we shared,” he said. “It was really moving how people participated.”

Youth Pages

August 26, 2011

L

17

One day at a time

ast month I shared with you the joys of the summer season — bright, warm, sunny days relaxing and keeping God a part of all your wonderful summer time activities. Whoa! Where has the summer gone? Some of you are already in school wondering where the summer went, and the rest of you are probably anxious about starting school.

In the blink of an eye summer is over. But, don’t fret, don’t be discouraged. If you lived your summer vacation, one day at a time, then you enjoyed it to the fullest.

Today, I want to talk to you about anxiety — the times we’re so busy thinking about the things of tomorrow that we forget to live for today. That anxiety, either in the presence or absence of psychological stress, can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness, and dread.

Why would anyone want that?

Isn’t it better to make everything you do and every day you live count for something? In this modern age we have become so fast-paced that it’s a wonder how our minds can keep up with our bodies and our bodies with

our minds. This crazy “rat race” You can handle each of those. makes us forget what really mat- First, you must prioritize them ters — God, family, others and in order of most importance and ourselves. then execute each one at a time.

I look at anxiety as the fear After all, we’re all only human that what should be will not be (sometimes we tend to forget and the fear that what I should that). When I fall into that trap, become I will not become. Put I listen to a song entitled “One that anxiety to rest and reflect Day At A Time, Sweet Jesus” (I on these words of Jesus to His like Daniel O’Donnell’s verdisciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and

By Ozzie Pacheco the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither sion): storehouse nor barn, and yet “I’m only human, I’m just God feeds them. Of how much a woman. Help me believe in more value are you than the what I could be and all that I birds! And can any of you by am. worrying add a single hour to “Show me the stairway I your span of life? If then you are have to climb. Lord, for my not able to do so small a thing sake, teach me to take one day as that, why do you worry about at a time. the rest?” (Lk 12:22-26).

“One day at a time sweet Reading, writing, arithmetic, Jesus, that’s all I’m asking from homework, studying, cramming, You. Just give me the strength to work, socializing, etc. That’s a do everyday what I have to do. lot on your plate. But don’t be Yesterday’s gone, sweet Jesus, anxious, don’t fear, don’t worry. and tomorrow may never be

Fall River — The TJX Foundation has, for the fourth consecutive year, awarded a $5,000 grant to St. Vincent’s Home which will directly benefit youth in the Life Skills Program. St. Vincent’s Life Skills staff work with youth, ages 14 to 21, to engage them in school-to-work experiences, helping them to master the thinking, self-confidence, teamwork, and problem-solving skills necessary to compete in the workplace or in a post-secondary education placement. Many youth have participated in school-to-work opportunities, acquiring an abundance of employment skills through St. Vincent’s connection with the Dartmouth TJ Maxx Store and most recently the Fall River TJ Maxx location.

Dartmouth Store Manager Paulette D’Amato and Fall River Store Manager Dan O’Brien have provided opportunities for St. Vincent’s youth to learn employable skills in the retail field. “TJ Maxx is pleased to help St. Vincent’s youth achieve their goals of becoming successful young adults,” said Paulette D’Amato.

The Life Skills staff work with youth on a daily basis to provide education, skills development, job coaching and support as youth prepare for careers, explore extracurricular activities, and plan for transition to independent living and young adulthood. The Life Skills program is funded through public and private support including foundations like The TJX Foundation.

Be Not Afraid

TJX Foundation awards fourth year of funding to St. Vincent’s Home

mine. Lord, help me today, show me the way one day at a time.

“Do you remember, when You walked among men? Well, Jesus, You know if You’re looking below it’s worse now, than then. They’re pushing and shoving, and crowding my mind, so for my sake, teach me to take one day at a time.”

So, what are your worries, your anxieties, your fears? Give them all to the Lord. Don’t keep them for yourself. He’s happy to take them from you, and in return, He will give you rest and peace of mind.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:6-7).

And, don’t be like the rich man who produced a bountiful harvest and worried about storing it for himself for years to come. God said to him, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to

whom will they belong?” (Lk 12:19-20). The truth is that by living each day and making it count is a step closer to heaven.

There alone is the real treasure, not anything we store here on earth.

I’ve met many young people who just don’t like to read.

Maybe it’s the anxiety of getting beyond a single page, or the worry of not understanding what is being read. I have a proposition for you: go to your local bookstore, or online or any other means available to you and get yourself a copy of Justin Fatica’s book, “Win It All: The Way To Heaven For Catholic Teens.” Read the last chapter first, entitled, “Live Every Day As It Were Your Last.” Then, go back to the beginning and read the book in its entirety — I bet you can, and I know you’ll be hungry for more. As Justin puts it, “Winning it all is about rising on the last day with Christ in His glory.”

Now, that’s something you should be anxious about each and every day.

Ozzie Pacheco is Faith Formation director at Santo Christo Parish, Fall River.

early start — Incoming freshmen at Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro recently completed the optional two-week long “Summer Academic Academy” and got first-hand classroom and campus experience as well as a taste of what’s to come in terms of their service to others by participating in St. Vincent de Paul’s “School Supplies Drive.” In addition to English and math classes, 140 students learned the layout of the campus and tips for a smoother transition to Feehan, but probably of the most impact, was learning the role they will play in serving the community and beyond. “I want them to give for giving’s sake,” said Principal Bill Runey of this voluntary drive that resulted in each of six classrooms filling a large crate to capacity with a wide variety of school supplies which will be distributed by the local St. Vincent de Paul Society to families in need. From left Benjamin Calder, Principal Bill Runey, Emily Cataloni, Maxwell Newman, and Kathryn LaBelle with a few items donated for the drive.

generous to the maxx — St. Vincent’s Home staff members, Carlton Rodriguez, left and Rachele Foley, right, along with youth Mark Stroud accepts a check from North Dartmouth TJ Maxx Store manager Paulette D’Amato.

Send us your summer youth program photos! We’d love to run them. schools@anchornews.org

18

The Anchor At Mass with seminarians, pope says he’ll proclaim new doctor of Church

MADRID (CNS) — Telling seminarians they must prepare seriously for the priesthood by devoting themselves to becoming saints, Pope Benedict

XVI gave them a role model: St. John of Avila, who will become the Catholic Church’s 34th doctor of the Church. At the end of a Mass August 20

Around the Diocese 8/27

A Big Band Night Dance for Life will be held tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m. at Our Lady of the Cape Parish Center, 468 Stony Brook Road, Brewster. The popular Silver Foxes Jazz Band will entertain with dance favorites, old and new. Free admission and refreshments. Donations will benefit Massachusetts Citizens for Life.

8/29

The Diocesan Health Facilities’ Fourth Annual Golf Classic will be held August 29 at LeBaron Hills Country Club in Lakeville. All proceeds will benefit the more than 900 individuals served in the skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers and community programs within the Fall River Diocese. For details call 508-679-8154. More information and printable registration forms are available online at www.dhfo.org

9/5

A Mass will be celebrated on the feast day of Blessed Mother Teresa, September 5 at 10 a.m., at St. Lawrence Martyr Church, 110 Summer Street, New Bedford. After Mass, there will be a screening of the movie “Legacy” about her life. All are welcome.

9/8

The Lazarus Ministry of Our Lady of the Cape Parish in Brewster is offering a six-week bereavement support program called “Come Walk With Me” that begins September 8 and runs through October 13 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The program meets in the parish center and is designed for people who have experienced the loss of a loved one within the past year. Pre-registration is required and there is a nominal charge for materials. Call 508-385-3252 or 508-385-8942 to register or for more information.

9/10

The Our Lady of Grace Council of Catholic Women will be sponsoring a Yard Sale at the parish center, 569 Sanford Road in Westport, on September 10 and September 11 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days, rain or shine. The kitchen will be open serving food and refreshments. For more information call 508-672-6900.

9/10

The Parental Rights Organization will examine the controversial “United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child” in a special program on September 10 at 7 p.m. in the Corpus Christi Parish Center, East Sandwich. If ratified by the Senate, this U.N. proposal could be used to override family and parental rights in our country. For information contact Barbara Bowers of the Cape Cod Family Life Alliance at 508-385-7867.

9/11

“For God and Country,” a special 10th anniversary commemorative observance of the September 11, 2001 tragedy will be presented by the Holy Trinity Choir under the direction of Steven Grubiak on September 11 at 3 p.m. at Holy Trinity Parish, Route 28, West Harwich. Come join with the choir to sing traditional patriotic and sacred songs, Music will include “God Of Our Fathers,” “America the Beautiful,” “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” “America,” “God Bless America” and other selections familiar and easy to sing along for all.

Prayers will be offered for our country, our government, our men and women in the service of our country and for the victims of 9/11. The service is free and open to all.

9/24

The Women’s Guild at Immaculate Conception Parish in Fall River will be sponsoring a Flea Market on September 24 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. They will be accepting clean items in good condition September 14 through September 23, which can be dropped off at the church hall on County Street. For more information call 508-674-8695 or email dotnic566@verizon.net

9/24

The Fall River District Council of the St. Vincent de Paul Society will host the fourth annual Friends of the Poor Walk at 10 a.m. on September 24 beginning at Kennedy Park in Fall River at the corner of Bradford Avenue and South Main Street. All proceeds will directly benefit those in need in greater Fall River. For more information call the Thrift Store at 508-672-9129, Lou Yokell at 508-642-3440, or visit svdpfriendsofthepoorwalk.org

with some 6,000 seminarians from around the world, the pope announced he soon would add the 16th-century Spanish saint to the short list of saints formally recognized for making a big mark on Catholic theology through their teaching and writing.

His remarks were greeted with sustained applause in Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral. Pope Benedict entrusted all the seminarians, as well as priests and bishops, to the intercession of St. John, a master of spirituality and a renowned preacher. “As they persevere in the same faith which he taught, may they model their hearts on that of Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd,” the pope prayed.

Pope Benedict did not say when he would make the formal proclamation, and while the announcement was a bit of a surprise, it was almost a replay of how the news came out the last time a pope declared a doctor of the Church.

The 33rd saint honored with the title was St. Therese of Lisieux. It was during World Youth Day in Paris in 1997 that Blessed John Paul II made the announcement; the formal ceremony was held at the Vatican two months later. The doctors of the Church are all saints and come from both the Eastern and Western Church traditions.

In Your Prayers Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks Aug. 27 Rt. Rev. Francisco C. Bettencourt, Pastor, Santo Christo, Fall River, 1960 Rev. Msgr. Hugh A. Gallagher, P.A. Retired Pastor, St. James, New Bedford, 1978 Rev. James E. Tobin, C.S.C., Missionary and Teacher, 2008 Aug. 29 Rev. Joseph DeVillandre, D.D., Founder, Sacred Heart, North Attleboro, 1921 Msgr. William H. Harrington, Retired Pastor, Holy Name, Fall River, 1975 Aug. 30 Rev. Frederick Meyers, SS.CC., Former Pastor, Our Lady of the Assumption, New Bedford, 2008 Aug. 31 Msgr. Armando A. Annunziato, Pastor, St. Mary, Mansfield, 1993, Rev. Thomas M. Landry, O.P., Former Pastor, St. Anne, Fall River, 1996 Sept. 1 Rev. Jorge J. de Sousa, Pastor, St. Elizabeth, Fall River, 1985 Rev. James F. Lyons, Retired Pastor, St. Patrick, Wareham, 2008

August 26, 2011

Eucharistic Adoration in the Diocese

Acushnet — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Parish on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays and Fridays 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Thursdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturdays 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays end with Evening Prayer and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.; Saturdays end with Benediction at 2:45 p.m.

ATTLEBORO — St. Joseph Church holds eucharistic adoration in the Adoration Chapel located at the (south) side entrance at 208 South Main Street, Sunday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

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 following the 11 a.m. Mass until 7:45 a.m. on the First Saturday, concluding with Benediction and Mass. buzzards Bay — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Margaret Church, 141 Main Street, every first Friday after the 8 a.m. Mass and ending the following day before the 8 a.m. Mass.

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 Sandwich — Eucharistic adoration takes place at the Corpus Christi Parish Adoration Chapel, 324 Quaker Meeting House Road, Monday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. Also, 24-hour eucharistic adoration takes place on the First Friday of every month.

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, following the 8 a.m. Mass until Benediction at 8 p.m.

FAIRHAVEN — St. Mary’s Church, Main St., has eucharistic adoration every Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to noon in the Chapel of Reconciliation, with Benediction at noon. 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 8:00 a.m. Mass until Rosary and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.

FALL RIVER — Notre Dame Church, 529 Eastern Ave., has eucharistic adoration on Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the chapel.

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 until 6 p.m. in the Daily Mass Chapel. There is a bilingual Holy Hour in English and Portuguese from 5-6 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.

HYANNIS — A Holy Hour with eucharistic adoration will take place each First Friday at St. Francis Xavier Church, 347 South Street, beginning immediately after the 12:10 p.m. Mass and ending with adoration at 4 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.

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.

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 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.

OSTERVILLE — Eucharistic adoration takes place at Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 76 Wianno Avenue on First Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and every Friday from noon to 5 p.m., with Benediction at 5 p.m.

SEEKONK ­— Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish has 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.

WAREHAM — Adoration with opportunities for private and formal prayer is offered on the First Friday of each month from 8:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. at St. Patrick’s Church, High Street. The Prayer Schedule is as follows: 7:30 a.m. the Rosary; 8 a.m.

Mass; 8:30 a.m. exposition and Morning Prayer; 12 p.m. the Angelus; 3 p.m. Divine Mercy Chaplet; 5:30 p.m. Evening Prayer; 7 p.m. Sacrament of Confession; 8 p.m.

Benediction.

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 from other parishes are invited to sign up to cover open hours. For open hours, or to sign up call 508-430-4716.

WOODS HOLE — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Joseph’s Church, 33 Millfield Street, year-round on weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. No adoration on Sundays, Wednesdays, and holidays. For information call 508-274-5435.

independence day — A man waves South Sudan’s national flag as he attends the Independence Day celebrations in Juba July 9. Hundreds of thousands of people celebrated independence after decades of civil war. (CNS photo/Thomas Mukoya, Reuters)

Struggling South Sudan nation has hopes for a bright future continued from page one

that it was “the message of Christ, His great love for us, that kept everyone going. We truly believe in His care for us. We have seen it through the kind works of people from all over the world, especially in the United States.”

Within the Archdiocese of Juba are 11 parishes, but each of them has up to 103 chapels associated with it. The fledgling nation’s largest parish, St. Mary Immaculate is roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island, with just two priests to cover the area, traveling over many under-developed roads, often on foot.

“Throughout the struggle, Holy Mass was the consolation of the people,” he said. “The people move not only your sense of faith, but also show what humanity is about.”

In his talks to area Catholics, Father Peter relayed that the faithful often travel many miles to attend one of the chapels, encountering dangerous obstacles like land mines, killing some and maiming others.

“Some children are kidnapped on the journey, often on their way

Be sure to visit the Diocese of Fall River website at fallriverdiocese.org The site includes links to other diocesan and national sites, including The Anchor.

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to their first Holy Communion,” he lamented. Yet, he continued, the people are willing to risk their lives and safety to receive the Eucharist and other Sacraments.

The long, hard road to freedom began five decades ago when the country was a colony of Britain until 1956, at which time the political and economic powers were held by an Arab majority north of Sudan. The southern region was mostly Christian, and often persecuted and treated as second-class citizens.

In 1955 the people of southern Sudan opted to be independent, but most of the country’s resources were in the north. The result was a long, difficult civil war until 1972, when a 10-year period of relative peace prevailed.

Despite the silencing of gunfire, the people of southern Sudan suffered greatly because of intense poverty.

In 1983, a new regime declared the area an Islamic country and civil war flared again. Another peace agreement was reached in 2005, and on July 9 the nation of South Sudan was born.

Father Peter, who lost two brothers to the fighting, said that since 1983, two million people died as a direct result of combat, or conditions resulting from the long war.

Now that independence has been achieved, the war-torn region must be rebuilt, “from almost nothing.”

Churches and Catholic schools must be rebuilt and that is a daunting task considering how poor the country’s inhabitants are.

The Archdiocese has plans to add seven more parishes to the 11 existing ones, but there are only 54 priests in the whole country.

On a Boston radio broadcast,

Father Peter recently said, “There is a need for the Catholics of the United States to support the priests of South Sudan to provide spiritual and pastoral services to the people. If they cannot travel to the villages scattered throughout their parishes, they cannot bring Christ and the Gospel to the people.”

He said in his short time in the region, he has spoken to several parishes about his country and countrymen. “I see that a great many people here do not know what has been going on in South Sudan,” he said. “But when I tell our story, I have been moved by the concern from the people. So many have said to me, ‘How best can we help?’

“I tell them, as I appeal to Anchor readers, help us to come out of the situation of a culture of war.

Our nation is one month old. Help us stand on our feet again. We are starting from almost nothing, but we still celebrate this great victory, having made great sacrifices for many years. They will never be forgotten.”

Father Peter went on to say that U.S. Catholics would understand his people’s plight and as a Catholic family, they would want to help their brothers and sisters.

He said that the U.S. has been most helpful to South Sudan and has been “the driving force that has resulted in the independence of South Sudan.”

Father Peter singled out Catholic Relief Services as a key benefactor in the country’s relief efforts, citing CRS workers have “helped enormously in an education, health, and building capacity, adding that they have often given of their own means and

have “suffered with the Sudanese and even died with them.”

“There was a time when I never once thought I’d be able to come to the United States,” he told The Anchor. “But now I can and I hope the people here can open their arms to us and help us and console us as fellow Catholics. The U.S. has been so good to us, but it’s important for many others to know what is going on in South Sudan. Too many still don’t know.”

The new nation of South Sudan has between eight and nine million inhabitants and many have to choose between the bare necessities of food and shelter or education for their children. “The people live on less than one dollar a day, which can provide a meal,” he said. “But that wouldn’t be considered a meal in the U.S., and yet some can’t even afford that.”

Father Peter is in the U.S. for another week or so before making his way back to his new homeland on September 5. Until then, he continues to speak out about the struggles and the enormous faith of the people of South Sudan.

“We are optimistic,” he told The Anchor. “Now that we are a country the future looks bright. I pray that U.S. Catholics will help us out financially and also keep us in their prayers. We will make it.”

To make a financial contribution to the Church of South Sudan, please send a check to Catholic Relief Services, 228 Lexington Street, Baltimore, Md. 21201, with “South Sudan” in the memo line. Contributions can also be made online at crs. org, putting “South Sudan” in the “special request” box in the online giving form.

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August 26, 2011

A dolphin fan in Patriots territory

t the risk of giving my dolphin’s reputation for rescusports amigos a coronary, ing man goes all the way back to I must admit that I am a huge Greek lore. dolphin fan. Relax Patriot looIt’s said by some experts that nies, it’s not the Miami Dolphins. the dolphin is the second-most More precisely, it’s the bottleintelligent creature on earth; nose dolphin.

My 16-year-old daughter Emilie and her good friend have an ongoing feud about their favorite critter (with the exception of Igor of course). The friend is a

By Dave Jolivet big shark fan, and was recently in her glory with “Shark Week” on cable, not to mention on the Cape. Emilie is a dolphin- runner-up to only humans. I’m lover. She has researched the not sure I agree totally with that sleek sea mammal with the theory. I think it may actually Jimmy Durante schnozzola, and be reversed. Consider this: the has learned of their intelligence greatest threat to the dolphin isn’t and their great affection for other the Great White or killer whale creatures, including humans.

— it’s man.

Dolphins are well-known Like their “superior” beings, for their heroic efforts helping the dolphin has a strong instinct humans, and even whales, out of to protect and defend its young. sticky predicaments. In fact, the Unlike man, dolphins don’t allow

My View From the Stands

that instinct to be clouded by each other or their surroundings.

If they were sports fans, you wouldn’t find dolphins shooting each other in the parking lot after a football game.

You wouldn’t find dolphins stomping the life out of another dolphin because it was a L.A. Dodger fan.

You wouldn’t find pods of dolphins gathered around a cage screaming for blood shed while two of their own fought nearly to the death for pride and payola.

And in the real world, you wouldn’t find dolphins gleefully running through cities and villages senselessly destroying homes, businesses and lives.

You wouldn’t find dolphins grouping together to attack dolphins halfway across the world because of a difference of religion, race, or lifestyle.

You wouldn’t find thousands of dolphins starving to death because other more fortunate dolphins refused to share.

And you certainly wouldn’t find dolphins murdering their unborn pups in the womb.

So much for the “secondmost” intelligent creature on earth.

Man is so much like the dolphin in its instincts and protective nature. Unfortunately, mankind possesses a defining character trait more powerful than instincts — the ability to think logically.

Man can use logic to justify any action or reaction. It’s here where the dolphin becomes the “superior” being.

Every summer cable TV celebrates “Shark Week,” with programs highlighting cold, calculated attacks on innocent prey. The thing is, one can find that any day of the year on the evening news or in the sports pages. If only mankind could celebrate “Dolphin Week,” and actually exhibit care and concern for each other.