10.02.09

Diocese of Fall River

The Anchor

F riday , October 2, 2009

Honduran visitors long for return of peace to homeland

By Dave Jolivet, Editor

FALL RIVER — There is fighting in the streets again. The sounds of gunshots ring in the air, and forced curfews have returned. Yet two teen-age boys and a parish priest were yearning to return to all of that. Home is home, no matter where it is. It is where their families and friends are. It is where their fellow parishioners are. It is where they live. It is home.

Their home happens to be Guaimaca, Honduras, and they should have been there last Tuesday. But the return of their deposed president put a halt to that.

Father Craig A. Pregana, pastor of the Fall River diocesan mission parish of St. Rose of Lima in Guaimaca, along with two guests, 18-year-old José Francisco Moncada Escoto, and 17-year-old Luis Orlando Garcia Hernández, have been visiting the Fall River Diocese for four weeks. They were scheduled to return home September 22, but

exiled former Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, surprised everyone by appearing at the Brazilian Embassy in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. Supporters of the ousted president took to the streets, and violence, injuries and arrests quickly ensued. Interim President Roberto Micheletti rapidly took action, part of which included closing Honduras’ four airports.

The trio’s American Airlines flight home was cancelled. While waiting for an opening to return to Honduras, Father Pregana, Escoto, and Hernández visited The Anchor office to report on what life in the central American country has been like since the June 28 coup, and Zelaya’s subsequent deportation.

According to Father Pregana, the exiled President Zelaya was trying to turn the democratic Honduras into a dictatorship.

“Zelaya works closely with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Turn to page 18

WELCOME GUESTS — Bishop George W. Coleman recently welcomed two young men from the diocesan mission in Guaimaca to his home for a visit. José Francisco Moncada Escoto, left, and Luis Orlando Garcia Hernández arrived in the area with Father Craig A. Pregana four weeks ago. Their return flight was delayed because of renewed political unrest in their homeland. (Photo by Father Pregana)

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD — Father John J. Oliveira, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in New Bedford, signs a peace covenant during a Faith Communities Against Violence program held at Centre Trinity United Methodist Church in New Bedford September 27. Sponsored by the Greater New Bedford Interchurch Council, the anti-violence program drew about 200 people to a planned peace walk that was cancelled due to inclement weather and moved indoors. Bishop George W. Coleman and other priests from the New Bedford Deanery joined fellow religious and civic leaders in signing the covenant and pledging to end the increasing amount of violence and deaths caused by illegal guns in the city. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

Stonehill College dedicates new $34M Science Center

By Deacon James N. Dunbar

EASTON — Stonehill College’s new, state-of-the-art Science Center that houses the departments of biology, chemistry, physics and psychology, including laboratories, classroom spaces and faculty offices, was dedicated with prayer and a reception on September 24.

Congregation of Holy Cross Father Thomas P. Looney, provincial of the Eastern Province of the Congregation and a 1982 alumnus, presided at the ceremonies of blessing and dedication.

President Father Mark T. Cregan, CSC, ’78 surprised the more than 225 guests when he announced that the new building would be named in honor of longtime friends and benefactors, Tom and Mary Shields.

The Shields’ gift of $7 million is the largest gift in Stonehill’s 61-year history and it moves the college closer to its $55 million “Attaining the Summit” campaign goal, having now secured more than $48

million of that total.

“Tom and Mary are true and loyal friends. We wanted to thank them in a special way for their generosity. By dedicating our signature building, the Thomas F. and Mary J. Shields Science Center, in their honor, we have ensured that the Shields’ legacy at Stonehill is rec-

ognized at a high profile location on campus, one that is a hub of activity for students and faculty. Given their dynamic support and all that they do for us, this is only fitting,” Father Cregan added.

“We are so touched that the college has recognized us like this Turn to page 17

STATE-OF-THE-ART — Science students at Stonehill College in Easton utilized the new state-of-the-art Science Center that houses the departments of biology, chemistry, physics and psychology, including laboratories, classroom spaces and faculty offices.

Father Clem Dufour dies at age 80

By Deacon James N. Dunbar

FALL RIVER — Father Clement E. Dufour, 80, who had courageously battled pancreatic cancer for nearly 20 years, died September 26.

The Fall River native and former pastor, who had retired from active ministry in the Fall River Diocese in November 1999, celebrated his 50th anniversary as a priest in February 2008.

Father Marc H. Bergeron, pastor of St. Anne’s Parish in Fall River, where Father Dufour’s funeral Mass was concelebrated Wednesday, and who was the homilist,

said, “He was magnanimous in fighting his illness and considered himself a survivor because he had fought it for so long, which is most unusual for pancreatic cancer.”

He recalled that as young priests, he and Father Dufour served as fellow curates at St. Anthony’s Parish in New Bedford and had later traveled together to a canonization in Rome and had gone on to visit Turn to page 19

News From the Vatican

2

October 2, 2009

Pope urges Czechs to regain values that inspired struggle for freedom B y Carol Glatz C atholic News Service

PRAGUE, Czech Republic — Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolt that brought down the country’s communist regime, Pope Benedict XVI urged people in the Czech Republic to rediscover the spiritual and moral values that sustained their fight for freedom.

In gatherings September 26-28 with political, social, cultural and religious leaders as well as the Catholic faith-

ful, the pope delivered a message of hope meant to inspire both the country’s majority of nonbelievers and the minority Catholic community.

Central to his message was that no society, no matter how democratic, could ever maintain a healthy and ethical sense of freedom without guidance from the truth found in God and the wisdom of faith.

The pope’s trip to Prague, Brno, and Stara Boleslav was his 13th trip abroad and his seventh to Europe. The fact

that more than half of his apostolic journeys so far have been to Europe reflects his deep concern for revitalizing the continent’s Christian heritage.

“True freedom presupposes the search for truth — for the true good — and hence finds its fulfillment precisely in knowing and doing what is right and just,” the pope said during a meeting with diplomats and political, civil, religious and cultural leaders in Prague’s presidential palace.

The Czech Republic represents a unique challenge for the Church. Nearly 60 percent of the population claims to profess no religious belief — making it the most secular country in Europe.

The largest faith community on the landscape is the Catholic Church, but Catholics are still only 30 percent of all inhabitants, and only a small percent say they are active members of the church.

“The Catholic Church must see itself as a creative minority that has a heritage of values that are not passe but are alive and relevant,” he said.

At a welcoming ceremony

The Anchor

at Prague’s airport, the pope said the impact of 40 years of an atheist totalitarian regime could not be underestimated.

The flame of faith has been kept alive thanks to the many “courageous martyrs whose fidelity to Christ spoke far louder and more eloquently than the voice of their executioners,” he said.

At an outdoor Mass to celebrate the feast of St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of the Czech Republic, the pope said bearing witness to the Gospel was not easy.

“It is not enough to appear good and honest: One must truly be so. And the good and honest person is the one who does not obscure God’s light with his own ego, does not put himself forward, but allows God to shine through,” the pope said in his homily.

Approximately 40,000 people assembled for the outdoor Mass in a large field in Stara Boleslav. The town, 15 miles northeast of Prague, represents the spiritual heart of Bohemia and the origin of Czech statehood. Every year on September 28 patriotic sentiment and OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER Vol. 53, No. 37

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religious devotion merge as citizens take part in a pilgrimage to Stara Boleslav, where St. Wenceslas, a 10th-century prince credited with bringing Christianity to the Czech people, was murdered by his brother.

The Mass seemed like a mini-World Youth Day celebration as past youth day theme songs were sung and thousands of young people cheered and waved the flags of various countries. Many slept overnight in tents and some even came by water on rafts from a small town three miles away.

After the Mass, the pope told the young people that Christ “knocks on the door of your freedom and asks to be welcomed as a friend.” While young people are often led astray by “illusory visions” of happiness, he said, only Christ can satisfy the human desire for happiness and meaning in life.

Kneeling before the 18-inchhigh statue of the Infant of Prague, which draws two million pilgrims a year, the pope gave a special blessing for all the children of the world and appealed for increased attention to children in difficulty.

The holy infant recalls the beauty of childhood, he said.

The papal visit drew Catholics from all over the Czech nation and from neighboring Austria, Slovakia, Germany and Poland, specifically for the outdoor Mass September 27 in the Moravian diocese of Brno, some 140 miles southeast of Prague. Local organizers said 120,000 people attended the event, making it the largest Mass ever celebrated in the Czech Republic.

October 2, 2009

The International Church

Universities are accountable to the ‘authority of truth,’ pope asserts

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC, (CNA) — During a meeting with academics held at the famous Castle of Prague Sunday evening, Pope Benedict called professors and students to exercise academic freedom as a gift that must bring them to know and proclaim the truth.

Before the audience of rectors, professors and students from around the Czech Republic, the pope again brought forward the issue of the dramatic transformations in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism.

“The great changes which swept Czech society twenty years ago were precipitated not least by movements of reform which originated in university and student circles. That quest for freedom has continued to guide the work of scholars whose diakonia of truth is indispensable to any nation’s wellbeing,” he said, using the Greek word for “service.”

“I address you as one who has been a professor, solicitous of the right to academic freedom and the responsibility for the authentic use of reason, and is now the pope who, in his role as shepherd, is recognized as a voice for the ethical reasoning of humanity.”

The Holy Father recalled that “the freedom that underlies the exercise of reason, be it in a university or in the Church, has a purpose: it is directed to the pursuit of truth, and as such gives expression to a tenet of Christi-

anity which in fact gave rise to the university.”

“Indeed,” he continued, “man’s thirst for knowledge prompts every generation to broaden the concept of reason and to drink at the wellsprings of faith. It was precisely the rich heritage of classical wisdom, assimilated and placed at the service of the Gospel, which the first Christian missionaries brought to these lands and established as the basis of a spiritual and cultural unity which endures to this day.”

Digging into the thorny issue of academic freedom in universities, and the autonomy usually claimed by the academic world, Pope Benedict said that the proper autonomy of a university finds meaning in “its accountability to the authority of truth.”

“Nevertheless, that autonomy can be thwarted in a variety of ways,” he added.

“The yearning for freedom and truth is inalienably part of our common humanity. It can never be eliminated; and, as history has shown, it is denied at humanity’s own peril. It is to this yearning that religious faith, the various arts, philosophy, theology and other scientific disciplines, each with its own method, seek to respond, both on the level of disciplined reflection and on the level of a sound praxis,” he added.

The Holy Father also recalled that he great universities springing up throughout Europe during the Middle Ages “aimed

with confidence at the ideal of a synthesis of all knowledge, it was always in the service of an authentic humanitas, the perfection of the individual within the unity of a well-ordered society.”

“And likewise today: once young people’s understanding of the fullness and unity of truth has been awakened, they relish the discovery that the question of what they can know opens up the vast adventure of how they ought to be and what they ought to do.”

“The idea of an integrated education, based on the unity of knowledge grounded in truth, must be regained. It serves to counteract the tendency, so evident in contemporary society, towards a fragmentation of knowledge.”

Speaking about the consequences of new technologies such as the Internet, Pope Benedict explained that with their massive growth comes “the temptation to detach reason from the pursuit of truth.

He then warned against relativism, which provides “a dense camouflage behind which new threats to the autonomy of academic institutions can lurk.”

3 Finally, the Holy Father briefly mentioned “the mending of the breach between science and religion,” calling it a “central concern” of his predecessor Pope John Paul II. “Each supports the other and each has its own scope of action, yet still there are those who would detach one from the other. Not only do the proponents of this positivistic exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason negate what is one of the most profound convictions of religious believers, they also thwart the very dialogue of cultures which they themselves propose,” the pope explained.

The Church in the U.S.

4

October 2, 2009

Notre Dame leader forms Pro-Life panel, vows to lead Mass for life B y C haz M uth C atholic N ews S ervice

GOOD NEWS — Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford, Conn., left, receives from Dominican Father Gabriel O’Donnell a package of sealed documents containing new evidence of an alleged miracle attributed to the founder of the Knights of Columbus, Father Michael J. McGivney, during a ceremony in Hartford. Father O’Donnell is vice postulator of the cause of Father McGivney’s sainthood. (CNS photo/Jack Sheedy, Catholic Transcript)

Miracle may lead to beatification of Knights of Columbus founder

HARTFORD, Conn. (CNS) — Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, said he hopes that consideration of new evidence of a possible miracle will lead to beatification for the founder of the Knights of Columbus within two years.

Anderson made the remarks to The Catholic Transcript, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Hartford, moments before Hartford Archbishop Henry J. Mansell signed documents containing new information gathered by the tribunal that is investigating the cause

for canonization for Father Michael J. McGivney.

The documents, which remain secret, were sealed September 22 before about 50 witnesses and prepared for delivery to the Vatican.

Father McGivney (1852-90) was a priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford who founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 in New Haven.

The cause for his sainthood formally began in Hartford in 1997.

Anderson said the ceremony marked “a very important day for the cause of Father McGivney because it is the conclusion of the

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medical evidence and assessment (of) the miracle that’s been submitted, or what we hope will be considered a miracle, and so this is a very important step for us.”

As to how much longer the sainthood process might take, he said, “Well, the fact that the Congregation has declared Father McGivney to be (a) venerable servant of God (in March 2008) means that it is now on a higher priority track, so we hope, once all the material that has been obtained through this process is assessed and put in a written report to the congregation, that they’ll act with expedition. So maybe within two years.”

Also present at the signing ceremony was Andrea Ambrosi, postulator or promoter for the cause of Father McGivney’s sainthood. Ambrosi, vice president and academic dean at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, took over the position about a year ago from Dominican Father Gabriel O’Donnell, who is now vice postulator.

WASHINGTON — With President Barack Obama’s controversial May commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame several months past, the president of the Indiana school has forged ahead with plans for a national discussion on abortion.

Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins has announced the formation of a task force “on supporting the choice for life,” and he has pledged to lead a Mass for life in Washington this coming January 22, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.

This Mass for life would also coincide with the annual March for Life in Washington.

Father Jenkins’ decision to invite Obama to deliver the commencement speech and present him with an honorary law degree set off a firestorm of criticism by at least 70 U.S. bishops, and ignited a national debate on the university’s status as a Catholic institution.

Critics of Obama said his support of legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research made him an inappropriate choice to be commencement speaker at a Catholic university.

Father Jenkins’ supporters countered that Notre Dame was not condoning Obama’s support for legal abortion or embryonic stem-cell research, and that students at the university should be honored to have the first black U.S. president speak during their graduation.

“Coming out of the vigorous discussions surrounding President Obama’s visit last spring, I said we would look for ways to engage the Notre Dame community with issues raised in a prayerful and meaningful way,” Father Jenkins said in a September letter.

“As our nation continues to struggle with the morality and legality of abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and related issues, we must seek steps to witness to the sanctity of life,” he added.

The Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life was formed to recommend ways that the university can support the sanctity of life, he said.

So far the panel has started looking at how to foster discussion about a reasonable conscience clause, the most effective ways to support pregnant women, and the best policies for facilitating adoptions, Father Jenkins said.

“Such initiatives are in addition to the dedication, hard work and leadership shown by so many in the Notre Dame family, both on the campus and beyond,” he said. “The task force may also be able to recommend ways we can support some of this work.”

Father Jenkins acknowledged that Obama’s presence on campus last spring generated divisions among Catholics and in the Notre Dame community.

“I hope that we can overcome divisions to foster constructive dialogue and work together for a cause that is at the heart of Notre Dame’s mission,” he said.

October 2, 2009

The Church in the U.S.

5

Bishops say health reform should include all immigrants, legal or not

PEACE INITIATIVE — U.S. President Barack Obama watches as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas shake hands during a meeting in New York September 22. Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians to act with a sense of urgency to get formal peace negotiations back on track. (CNS photo/Kevin Lamarque, Reuters)

Cardinal, bishop, other religious leaders urge Middle East diplomacy

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Three Catholic clerics have joined a wide-ranging group of religious and ethnic leaders in supporting President Barack Obama’s effort to seek a diplomatic solution to the continuing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington; Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace; and Holy Cross Father Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, were among 30 people who signed a September 22 letter that said peace between Palestinians and Israelis is vital to American interests and could best be achieved by establishing “two viable, secure and independent states living side by side.”

“We find common cause in supporting strong U.S. leadership to achieve a negotiated, sustainable resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” the letter said.

The letter outlined several principles that the signers support and that they said will assure peace in the Middle East, including the right of Israel to exist and the right of Palestinians to have a “viable, sovereign and secure state of their own,” the importance of addressing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, ensuring that Syria and Lebanon are part of the peace process and the importance of normalizing relations between Israel and Arab nations.

While support for a two-state solution extends around the world, the letter expressed concern that the window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution to the conflict is closing.

“Both sides must take steps to move the process forward and we support the president’s effort to end Israeli settlement growth and to halt Palestinian violence and incitement,” the letter said.

“It is now time to move to the next stage of diplomacy and to address the tough issues that must be resolved to bring the conflict to an end.”

Other signers include Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine; Warren Clark, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace; Bishop Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church; and George R. Salem, chairman of the ArabAmerican Institute.

Meanwhile, on another Middle East front, a group of conservative religious leaders, including Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, are urging Congress to impose an arms embargo and a cutoff of exports of refined petroleum products to Iran.

The actions were detailed in a statement released by an ad hoc coalition called Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-Free Iran.

The leaders expressed concern over the potential danger that a nuclear weapons-armed Iran would pose for the world if such steps were not taken.

Other signers included Pat Robertson, president of Christian Broadcasting Network; Charles W. Colson, chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries; Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America; Gary Bauer, president of American Values; and Anthony Verdugo, executive director of the Christian Family Coalition.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Though Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., concedes there’s no political will in Washington to include illegal immigrants in health care reform, he believes it’s the country’s moral obligation to ensure that everyone in the nation receives proper medical care.

That includes those who enter the country illegally, he told Catholic News Service in mid-September.

“I agree that there is a special problem with those who have entered here without the permission of the United States, and that has to be looked at,” said Bishop Murphy, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. “But that’s a problem unto itself.”

Most U.S. Catholic bishops who have spoken publicly about health care reform have expressed the opinion that one of the richest countries in the world should find a way to guarantee that everyone within its borders has access to medical care, from conception to natural death.

Several Hispanic bishops met with members of the House and Senate Sept. 17 to convey their concern that immigrants — legal and illegal — might be left out of

health reform.

Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, Calif., said that in addition to President Barack Obama’s pledge not to provide governmentfunded care to people in the country illegally, concerns have been expressed that even legal immigrants might be left out of the system.

Bishop Soto said the exclusion of government-supported insurance for undocumented immigrants is an issue with which the bishops might disagree, but could concede as a political necessity. But the legislation “has to include at a minimum some kind of safety net for the undocumented,” particularly if the goal of a nationwide health care reform plan is to improve the overall health of society, he said.

If undocumented immigrants cannot participate in health insurance, he added, “they will end up in emergency rooms.”

Bishop Murphy said Catholic hospitals will not turn illegal immigrants away if they don’t have medical insurance, but he believes it will be more cost-effective if the undocumented are given an opportunity to buy into an affordable health insurance plan.

On “the issue of health care, if it leaves out immigrants, it is doing what some people want it to do in terms of the unborn,” he said.

6

The Anchor Principles for an authentic health care reform

In our continuing survey of Catholic analysis of the present health care reform proposals, we turn this week to the most comprehensive analysis to be issued by any of the U.S. bishops, a joint pastoral statement issued by Archbishop Joseph Naumann and Bishop Robert Finn, the ordinaries of the “two Kansas Cities,” the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.

Their statement is entitled “Principles of Catholic Social Teaching and Health Care Reform” and describes the relevant foundations of the Church’s social doctrine, applying them, in very clear language, to the present debate about the reform of health care. Their goal is not to just add two other opinions to the discussion, but to try to ensure that any changes in our health care system lead to “an authentic reform taking full consideration of the dignity of the human person.”

They begin their pastoral statement by praising President Obama for making health care reform a priority of his administration and by stressing that the Church’s interest in reform is far more than philosophical: one out of every four hospitals in the United States is run by a Catholic agency. They analyze the symptoms of the present inadequacy of our health care policy — the millions without medical insurance, the cost of health care, the pending insolvency of the Medicare Trust Fund, the shift in business practices to hire part-time or unmarried employees in order to minimize the cost burdens for health care, and the difficulties those with pre-existing conditions have in acquiring health care coverage — and note that almost everyone agrees that something must be done to fix it.

They remind us, however, that we have a duty to make sure that change is change for the better.

“Change itself does not guarantee improvement,” they declare, before adding that “many of the proposals which have been promoted” would in fact be changes for the worse, since they “would diminish the protection of human life and dignity and shift our health care costs and delivery to a centralized government bureaucracy.” Effective health care reforms, on the other hand, “must be built on a foundation of proper moral principles.” They affirm that the “rich tradition of Catholic social and moral teaching” is an excellent guide to guide the evaluation of the various health care reform proposals and remind the faithful that “no Catholic in good conscience can disregard these fundamental moral principles.”

They present four such principles, the first two of which we will consider today.

The first is subsidiarity, “the principle by which we respect the inherent dignity and freedom of the individual by never doing for others what they can do for themselves and thus enabling individuals to have the most possible discretion in the affairs of their lives.” This is one of the bedrock foundations of Catholic social teaching in general, but one which has not yet gotten sufficient application to the present health care debate, including in some Catholic circles.

With respect to health care, subsidiarity requires that “health care ought to be determined at the lowest level rather than at the higher strata of society.” Recourse should be had to higher levels of government, it teaches, only when lower levels are incapable of meeting the needs. Therefore, a health care plan administered by the federal government should be used only as a last resort, when it has been shown that medical needs cannot be met by other means.

The bishops describe the dangers of the failure to observe the principle of subsidiarity by turning to the authoritative and ardent teachings of the recent popes. They first invoke Pope John Paul II, who described from personal experience the anthropological and economic dangers of the welfare state in general in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. “By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility,” the pope wrote, “the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” They next turn to Pope Benedict who elaborated on the dangers of the neglect of the principle of subsidiarity to health care in particular in his 2005 encyclical Deus Caritas Est: “The State that would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person — every person — needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State that regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.”

Violation of the principle of subsidiarity, therefore, leads in practice to continual violations of human dignity by making services far less personal and dependent on personal freedom and responsibility. That’s why Archbishop Naumann and Bishop Finn declare that “it is vital to preserve, on the part of individuals and their families, the right to make well-informed decisions concerning their care. This is why some system of vouchers — at least on a theoretical level — is worthy of consideration. … Valuing the right of individuals to have a direct say in their care favors a reform which, reflecting subsidiarity, places responsibility at the lowest level” — rather than, one can infer, at the level of the Department of Health and Human Services in the nation’s capital.

The second principle they articulate is that “the life and dignity of the human person” must be the “driving force for care and the constitutive ground of human justice.” Here the bishops reiterate, first, that it is “imperative” that any health care reform package “keep intact our current public polices protecting taxpayers from being coerced to fund abortions.” They say that it is “inadequate” to propose legislation “that is silent on this morally crucial matter,” precisely because of “the penchant of our courts over the past 35 years to claim unarticulated rights.” They call for “explicit exclusion” of any vehicle to cover abortion services. An amendment to do just that has been under discussion this week in the U.S. Senate. Archbishop Naumann and Bishop Finn also state that in accordance with the dignity of health care workers and institutions, there must be clear protections for the “rights of conscience for individuals and institutions” so that they do not have to participate in procedures that violate their conscience.

Finally, they reaffirm that, flowing from human dignity, there is a “right to acquisition of health care,” especially for those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to work. They make, however, two important clarifications: first, that “the right of every individual to access health care does not necessarily suppose an obligation on the part of the government to provide it;” and second, that “in our American culture, Catholic teaching about the ‘right’ to healthcare is sometimes confused with the structures of ‘entitlement.’” After making these clarifications, they forcefully state: “The teaching of the Universal Church has never been to suggest a government socialization of medical services. Rather, the Church has asserted the rights of every individual to have access to those things most necessary for sustaining and caring for human life, while at the same time insisting on the personal responsibility of each individual to care properly for his or her own health.”

They add that this erroneous sense of “entitlement” has clearly contributed to the present health care crisis. “Part of the crisis in today’s system stems from various misappropriations within health care insurance systems of exorbitant elective treatments, or the tendencies to regard health care services paid for by insurance as ‘free,’ and to take advantage of services that happen to be available under the insurance plan. Such practices may arguably cripple the ability of small companies to provide necessary opportunities to their employees and significantly increase the cost of health care for everyone.” They imply that health care reform needs to happen not just in congressional corridors but in every home.

We will take up the third and fourth principles they describe — solidarity and the obligation to the common good — next week.

October 2, 2009

Reopening the great hospital of souls

“The great miracle of the Curé of Ars,” one sion to this simple priest in a tiny village? of his contemporaries said during the process They were coming, as one of the penitents for beatification “was his confessional, besieged once said, because they were encountering day and night.”

“God in a man.” In St. John Vianney, they found The fundamental reason why the Year for more than a man ordained to act in the person of Priests has been called by Pope Benedict on the Christ to absolve them of their sins. Any validly occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth ordained priest with faculties to hear confessions of St. John Vianney into eternal life is not be- could do that. They were coming to someone cause he left us a body of inspiring sermons like who incarnated the mercy of the Heavenly FaArchbishop Fulton J. Sheen. It’s not principally ther, who shared the Good Shepherd’s zeal to do because of the angelic way he would celebrate anything it took to bring back to the fold the one Mass, his all-night vigils of prayer, his fasting on lost sheep, who would rejoice with all the saints boiled potatoes, his legendary battles against the in heaven over the repentance of one sinner, and devil, or his famous love and care for orphans. who like Christ would willingly be hammered to What made him famous, what earned him the the wood of his confessional to save sinners. In reputation of being a saint in his lifetime and the him, they encountered not just a confessor who title of the patron saint of priests after his death, administered God’s power for the forgiveness of was what God did through him in his “besieged” sins, but the closest earthly approximation to the confessional. holiness of God. That drew them irresistibly and For much of his 41 years in Ars, a town that through all types of sacrifices to make the road to had 230 souls when he arrived, he heard con- Ars the road to Damascus. fessions of more than its entire population each His besieged confessional was miraculous day. He used to hear 12-14 hours of confessions even more so considering that in France in the in the winter and 16-18 hours in the summer.

19th century, the sacrament of penance was not Most of us, in hearing those numbers, would popular. Sometimes Catholics today can look naturally admire his commitment and dedica- back to the long confessional lines in the 1950s tion, much like we would commend anyone and think that that was always the way it was until who worked the present crisis 18-hour days in in faith and in the loving service of practice of conothers. When I fession. When was a seminarian, St. John Vianney I used to applaud arrived in Ars, the concrete “prihowever, most ority” he gave to people were not the sacrament of practicing the

By Father confession, which faith at all, not Roger J. Landry obviously would to mention not have required a having frequent lot of other sacrirecourse to the fices. It was only in December of 2000, how- sacrament of penance. ever — while hearing confessions at my first God used him, however, almost single-handAdvent penance service at Espirito Santo Parish edly, to bring the whole Church of France back in Fall River — that I really understood what St. to the beauty of his mercy.

John Vianney’s commitment really meant. That This is one of the reasons why Pope Benenight, I sat in the confessional and heard confes- dict has called this Year for Priests to mark the sions for three hours in Portuguese and English. 150th anniversary of St. John Vianney’s death.

I likened it to Jesus’ three hours on the cross. He wants priests today to be willing to make the Even though I was once an intercollegiate ath- same heroic commitment to the confessional as lete used to pushing my body to the limit, I had their patron did, recognizing that the same miranever been so totally exhausted. My back ached. cle God worked in Ars for the Church in France My bottom ached. My whole body ached, but I he can work again. took solace at least that I could still feel it. My “Priests ought never to be resigned to empty mind, on the other hand, felt totally depleted. A confessionals or the apparent indifference of couple of years later, when preaching a retreat the faithful to this sacrament,” the Holy Father to 100 women in California, I heard 16 hours of wrote in a June letter to priests. “In France, at confessions stretched from Friday night through the time of the Curé of Ars, confession was Sunday afternoon. At the end of the retreat, I no more easy or frequent than in our own day, was basically comatose. since the upheaval caused by the revolution When I think now about the Curé of Ars’ had long inhibited the practice of religion. Yet hearing confessions for 12-18 hours a day, the he sought in every way, by his preaching and closest analogy I would give would be to run- his powers of persuasion, to help his parishioning 25-40 miles a day … uphill … into gale ners to rediscover the meaning and beauty of force winds… with ankle weights … and wrist the sacrament of penance, presenting it as an weights … in full body armor … made of lead. inherent demand of the eucharistic presence.

And he did it almost every day for decades. Per- He thus created a ‘virtuous’ circle. By spending haps you’ve heard of Dean Kamazes, the iron- long hours in church before the tabernacle, he man who each year amazingly runs 50 mara- inspired the faithful to imitate him by coming thons in 50 consecutive days. What St. John to visit Jesus with the knowledge that their parVianney did in the confessional is, to me, the ish priest would be there, ready to listen and ofphysical equivalent of doing a triathlon for the fer forgiveness. Later, the growing numbers of last 11,000 days of his life. It gives new meaning penitents from all over France would keep him to the term heroism. in the confessional for up to 16 hours a day. It This is the first reason why we can say that was said that Ars had become ‘a great hospital the great miracle of the Curé of Ars was his con- of souls.’” fessional, because his daily stamina makes Curt In a 1986 letter to priests on the bicentennial Schilling’s bloody sock, Kurt Gibson’s hobbling of the Curé’s birth, Pope John Paul said that the around the bases, and Willis Reed’s triumphant state of the world requires that all priests should return to the basketball court look like minor imitate the pastor of Ars in making themselves feats in comparison. “very available” for the sacrament of penance.

The second reason his confessional was mi- He asked them to give it “priority over other acraculous was because of what was occurring on tivities” so that the faithful will realize the value the other side of the screen. People from all over attached to this “most difficult, the most delicate, France were making their way to an inaccessible the most taxing and the most demanding [priesthamlet in the southeastern corner of the coun- ly ministry] of all — especially when priests are try, taking primitive trains, even more primitive in short supply.” horse-drawn carts, and often walking for miles Through his earthly vicars, Christ is askin fog, rain and mud. Once there, they would in ing his priests generously to open up again that general need to wait up to eight days in a church “great hospital of souls,” so that he can replicate that was stiflingly warm in summer and ice cold in the cities and towns of the Diocese of Fall in the winter in order to have their confession River and elsewhere the great miracle he worked heard. Why wouldn’t they have taken the easy through one priest in Ars. He’s also calling all the way out and just have gone to confession to one faithful to come to receive this universal spiritual of the priests in their own cities or town? Why health care. would as many as 4,000 people have shown up Father Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of one day, and 120,000 in a year, to go to confes- Padua Parish in New Bedford.

Putting Into the Deep

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Finding beauty and joy in all God’s creations

n his “Confessions,” St. Augustine wrote, “Late have I loved you,” as he finally came to realize the presence of God in all things around him, the creatures to which he had so long turned for fulfillment while recognizing only their external goodness and not the source from which that goodness flowed.

Many years later, the poet Francis Thompson was to write in “The Hound of Heaven”: “I tempted all His servitors, but to find / My own betrayal in their constancy, / In faith to Him their fickleness to me, / Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.”

By some design of the almighty’s plan, I was spared this conflict and was able to rejoice from an early age in the aweinspiring beauty and magnificence of both the creature and the creator. I spent hours on end exploring the world around me.

The wetlands, streams and ponds instructed me in the ways of fish, reptiles, insects, amphibians, strange animals about the size and shape of a horse hair, schools of baby catfish that looked like great black clouds moving underwater, the 20-pound snapping turtles that commanded respect by their long necks and the fact that a small jump could increase their reach, tadpoles and hellgrammites all added to my education in God’s creation.

I remember the first time, when walking a woodland trail

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he picture is fading although it’s still possible to make out most of the faces and the inscription Holy Cross School, Class of 1951. We were the eighth-graders about to become alumni. There were less than 40 of us.

What an average bunch of pupils we were. Very few of the class had parents with a college education. Most of our families depended on a weekly salary. Not many of our folks had cars. When we traveled it was by trolley or subway, sometimes by bus. A day at Pelham Bay Park’s Orchard Beach was an outing. We played made-up games after school and then went home for supper and homework. There was always homework and woe betide us if it was not done.

It’s been more than half a century since I graduated from Holy Cross School in the Clason Point section of the Bronx. The older I get, the more I appreciate the education I received there. The lay teachers and the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany ensured that we were prepared in what they

doctrine of the Pleroma of Christ as a youngster, that I came upon brings the whole universe to the an unknown plant and made a service of the creator. The music field examination that told me it and liturgy of the Church gives must be an orchid. It was later identified in a book as the orchid, voice to the entirety of creation in the worship of God, the Lord isotria verticillata.

The magnifying glass brought and creator.

This is the person who came me to the six-sided world of the to the parish of St. Anne in the snowflake, and the telescope showed me the craters of the moon and some of the other wonders of Year For Priests space.

Vocational Reflection I fell in love with all aspects of creation, but most especially with the

By Father delights of mathematics Martin L. Buote and physics. These interests have stayed with me even to the present. south end of New Bedford in the I subscribe to several journals early summer of 1980, where dealing with different aspects of I would end up serving for 24 science and occasionally have a years until my retirement in letter in one or another.

2004, when the parish joined This fascination is so much a with three other local Catholic part of me that just a few years churches to form a new parish at ago, I woke from a dream to St. James Church. write down a new method of Initially St. Anne’s had been determining the velocity of light established as an ethnic parish that I had worked out in my for French-speaking immigrants sleep. but by the time I arrived, imThis is the person who left migration was over, and it was MIT to enter the seminary to not many years before I was study for the priesthood of the asked to eliminate the last Mass Catholic Church. The beauty in French. Since the original of God’s creation now became purpose of the parish had been more evident in other ways as completed, it was appropriate I became aware of the sweep to ask what purpose the parish of God’s plan in what is called had for the future. “The parish the Economy of Salvation. The of St. Anne,” we responded in a doctrine of the Mystical Body mission statement, “reaches out of Christ caps the beauty and dito members of the community versity of created life, just as the

marginalized by age, color, race, substance abuse or by any other cause to bring the love and healing touch of Jesus.”

For nearly as long as I was there, there was an outreach to those suffering from various addictions. Positive Action Against Chemical Addiction), the local agency that has figured so prominently in the city’s efforts to meet and defeat the plague of addiction in our midst, was born in the parlor of St. Anne’s rectory in the late 20th century for the needs of the present.

Care for those in need continued even after the closing of St. Anne Church with meetings for Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups in the rectory and school halls, and a PAACA outreach program for young people (INSIGHT).

The closing of St. Anne’s Parish marked my retirement from assigned ministry. I continue to assist other priests and parishes as there is need, but now I have more time and opportunity to see and praise God in the wonders of nature as I did at the beginning of my life.

Several years ago, a good friend of mine, a priest, was murdered in Chicago. Confined to a wheelchair for the last years of his life, he was tied by wire in his wheelchair by home invaders and his mouth and nose were covered

The Class of 1951 — in 2009

proudly declared were the “Four ers among the graduating boys R’s:” reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic, entered the religious Brothers and and religion. taught for years in Catholic high As I look back, I find myself schools. Two girls entered the not only grateful for the educaAllegany Franciscans and have tion I received, but amazed at how played leadership roles in that much of a foundation for later life community. We’re spread all over was laid in that grammar school the country; very few are in the as the parochial school was then called.

When I came across The Value of that graduation picture of Catholic Schools my class standing with cap and gown grouped

By Bishop Timothy on the rectory steps, I began to wonder what A. McDonnell became of us. I found that the foundation laid in that Catholic school paid enorold neighborhood. The majority mous dividends in later life. We of my classmates married and have two doctors, one of whom moved away to raise their famispent years in India treating the lies, but they carried with them poorest of the poor. There are a the extraordinary educational handful of lawyers and financial foundation they had received in advisors, several nurses, a couple that Bronx parochial school. of civil engineers, and a profesSimilar stories can be told sor at Johns Hopkins University. about Catholic schools throughThere are civil servants, telecomout the nation’s history — not munications workers, transportasimply way back when, but here tion specialists, accountants and in the 21st century. In business, in secretaries. I was the only one to industry, in the law and judiciary, become a priest, but three othin politics, in telecommunications,

in the media, in civil service, in public safety, in all aspects of everyday life, the boys and girls who are the products of a Catholic school education have become men and women who make their mark in society. Catholic school graduates continue to be leaders in our business, civil and Church communities.

They continue to make a difference. The values on which Catholic education is based become the foundation which helps graduates generation after generation to build a better society. Catholic schools have made, are making, and will continue to make a difference in the lives of their students. And today that Catholic school education is needed more than ever.

In a 2005 document, “Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium,” the body of United States bishops reiterated the importance of Catholic schools: “Catholic schools collaborate with parents and guardians in

with tape so that he suffocated.

The following poem was found on his computer. I hope that something similar may be said of me, and of my service of God in the priesthood.

I was born poor, however, I leave with you the richest treasures this life can hold — the Blessings and the Memories of my Priestly Life!

Anointed, I celebrated Mass, forgave sinners, baptized, performed marriages, preached, prayed with the elderly, guided teachers, instructed children. I gave much but received more!

I instructed and guided thousands of children through the halls of education. I found beauty and joy in all of Your creations. I rejoiced; I sang!

Like Peter, I cast my net before you — my net, filled with the “catchings” of my Ministry, Thirty-two years of casting!

For two years, Your Hand threw me another net — it was strong, heavy. It carried the weight of my new Ministry — the loneliness, the depression, the disability. It did not sink the boat!

In my life I carried three nets — one for yesterday; one for today, one for tomorrow!

Tomorrow has come! I fling my net, my wheelchair to the side! I proudly WALK into the arms of my loving God! Father Buote, ordained in 1960, is a retired priest of the diocese and currently lives in New Bedford.

raising and forming their children as families struggle with the changing and challenging cultural and moral contexts in which they find themselves. Catholic schools provide young people with sound Church teaching through a broad-based curriculum, where faith and culture are intertwined in all areas of a school’s life.

By equipping our young people with a sound education, rooted in the Gospel message, the person of Jesus Christ, and rich in the cherished traditions and liturgical practices of our faith, we ensure that they have the foundation to live morally and uprightly in our complex modern world. This unique Catholic identity makes our Catholic elementary and secondary schools ‘schools for the human person’ and allows them to fill a critical role in the future life of our Church, our country, and our world.”

My prayer is that the numbers and impact of Catholic school graduates in our society may continue and grow.

Bishop McDonnell is bishop of the Diocese of Springfield.

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The most important moral decision of our time?

oday’s readings from holy Scripture focus on relationships — between man and woman as husband and wife, and on the relationships between parents and children.

They are very much needed expressions of God’s wisdom as we mark Respect Life Sunday this weekend. Those relationships are vital if our worldwide communities are to enjoy true peace and prosperity. But those very relationships are being threatened today more than ever.

Challenges to the very nature of marriage abound in our country.

Massachusetts and Vermont have already declared samesex “marriage” legal. There are likely to be other states that will follow suit. Despite the many references in holy Scripture, such as in today’s Gospel, that say very clearly that a marriage is a bond between one man and one woman, our society is attempting to redefine that most basic and important relationship. Until fairly recently, I never dreamed that anyone would be questioning how marriage should be defined. But

today, at least in some circles, the pews of our churches, would the trend seems to be away from they be in total agreement with traditional values, and to this our recent popes? What if we Catholic, it is frightening. could do a similarly accurate The sanctity of life is another survey of our religious Sisters traditional value that is continuingly being attacked in American Homily of the Week society. With nearly 50 Twenty-Seventh Sunday million legal abortions in Ordinary Time since 1973, it should be obvious that abortion

By Deacon continues to be a huge Joseph Mador problem in this country.

What does our Catholic Church say and Brothers, our deacons, our about same-sex marriages and priests and our bishops? Would abortion? She has proclaimed they all come down strongly her judgment loudly and clearly on the side of our Holy Fathers that both are morally unacceptagainst abortion, or, would able for practicing Catholics. some of them have different Let’s focus for a moment on opinions? abortion. Pope John Paul II said I think that the real questhat “abortion is the most imtion here is whether or not the portant moral issue of our time.” teachings of the Church are Pope Benedict XVI has spoken being effectively explained to often and clearly on the evil of the people of God, especially abortion. Consider this quesas they relate to abortion. As tion, however: do all practicing clergy, are we doing enough to Catholics strongly agree with make sure that our parishioners our popes regarding the evil realize that abortion is murder nature of abortion? If we could — murder of a defenseless child accurately survey the people in — murder of a human being

who has no voice, no vote and no political influence? And this is particularly important — do some of our American Catholics believe that abortion is somehow morally acceptable because the Supreme Court of the U.S. has ruled that it is “constitutional”? As a Church, are we doing enough to explain to our people that the Commandments of God always trump the constitutions of man?

“Thou shall not kill,” must always carry a grater weight with Catholics than a decision by a simple majority of nine of God’s creatures on the Supreme Court.

A tremendous amount of well-intended effort has been committed in recent years to the overturning of Roe v.

Wade so as to return abortion to its former illegal status. May those efforts continue. But are we spending enough time and energy in our educational efforts to reduce or eliminate abortions in the first place? As a Church, do we do a good enough job ex-

plaining the negative aspects of abortion on our young women and men? Do we place enough emphasis on the advantages of pre-marital abstinence? Do we publicize adequately the availability of organizations like “Birthright” and “A Woman’s Concern” as resources for women who are experiencing an unwanted pregnancy? Are we doing all that we can to make the process of placing newborn babies for adoption as easy as possible?

As the documents of Vatican II so clearly stated, “We are the Church — the hierarchy and the laity working together.” As a Church, are we really presenting abortion to the people entrusted to us as “the most important moral issue of our time”?

Deacon Mador was ordained in 1997 and is assigned to Holy Redeemer Parish in Chatham. He also serves part-time at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Wildwood, Fla. He is married to Ann and they have two adult children and three grandchildren.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. Oct. 3, Bar 4:5-12,27-29; Ps 69:33-37; Lk 10:17-24. Sun. Oct. 4, Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Gn 2:18-24; Ps 128:1-6; Heb 2:9-11; Mk 10:2-16 or 10:2-12. Mon. Oct. 5, Jon 1:1-2:1,11; (Ps) Jon 2:2-5,8; Lk 10:25-37. Tues. Oct. 6, Jon 3:1-10; Ps 130:1-4,7-8; Lk 10:38-42. Wed. Oct. 7, Jon 4:1-11; Ps 86:3-6,9-10; Lk 11:1-4.

Thur. Oct. 8, Mal 3:13-20b; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 11:5-13. Fri. Oct. 9, Jl 1:13-15;2:1-2; Ps 9:2-3,6,8-9,16; Lk 11:15-26.

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n October 4, the Baltimore Orioles will take the field at Camden Yards against the Toronto Blue Jays and, win or lose, complete their 12th losing season in a row — which, for losing streaks, puts my beloved Birds in roughly the same category as the 10th-century papacy under the Ottonian emperors. It was not always so; ample evidence for that admittedly counterintuitive claim is provided by a fine volume, “The Orioles Encyclopedia,” compiled by Mike Gesker (who works for Catholic Relief Services) and published recently by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Books like “The Orioles Encyclopedia,” and the love lavished on them by authors,

Job revisited: Notes of an Orioles fan

editors, and readers, make an day; they played for a “middle important theological point, to market” city that, truth to tell, which I shall avert in a moment. was coming unglued even as First, permit a brief a trip down the Birds won six American memory lane.

League titles and three World Hard as it may be to believe, after these last dozen years of futility, the Baltimore Orioles were the most successful team in the major leagues from the late

By George Weigel 1950s through the early 1980s: more successful than the Yankees, Dodgers, or Cardinals; more Series between 1966 and 1983; successful than anyone. They the franchise was always on the played in a rough-hewn old brink of financial disaster. But ballpark, Memorial Stadium, the the Orioles scouted wisely, built splinters from whose wooden from within, traded shrewdly, benches will likely be found in emphasized pitching and dethe bottom of my coffin somefense, and won more games than anyone over a quarter-century.

Like Job, they enjoyed an ample share of the world’s goods, and then lost it all — or, better, threw it away by abandoning the “Oriole Way,” cheating on the farm system, and lusting for the fleshpots of the free agent market (see “Davis, Glenn” and “Belle, Albert”).

As Mr. Gesker writes in his “Orioles Encyclopedia,” “Looking back at the championship year of 1983 from the vantage point of 2009, it’s startling to imagine the amount of money a

The Catholic Difference

bettor would have won if, while the champagne was still flowing in the Birds’ clubhouse, he proposed that the Orioles would not return to the World Series before the Boston Red Sox (twice) and the Chicago White Sox were crowned World Champions, and as two, yet-to-be-conceived expansion teams (Florida Marlins and Arizona Diamondbacks), and the Cleveland Indians, would appear in two World Series ... You can bet the fortune gained would have made Bill Gates look like a pauper.”

Beyond the superstars — the Bradys and T.O.s and Mosses, the Manning brothers, Big Ben, and the occasional defensive wizard like Ed Reed, Brian Urlacher, and Troy Polamalu — football is a rather anonymous game. Baseball, by contrast, is strikingly personal. The hard drive of my memory may need a good cleaning, but, in reading through Mr. Gesker’s encyclopedia, I was amazed at the hundreds of names I fondly recognized, from Jerry Adair to George Zuverink. And therein, I suggest, lies the theological lesson for the day.

Secular modernity teaches us that we can only come to know

and honor universal truths by stripping ourselves of our particularities. Precisely the opposite is true, as baseball demonstrates.

No one comes to know and love “baseball.” We come to know and love a particular team, composed of particular players. Through them, we come to love the game itself. That truth has applications in the spiritual life. John Paul II was frequently criticized for being “too Polish,” usually by people who thought that cherishing a particular place was an obstacle to embracing the complex worlds-withinworlds of the universal Church, much less the whole world of humanity. Yet it was precisely his Polish experience that prepared Karol Wojtyla to become a universally beloved embodiment of paternity to an astonishing variety of people.

We learn to know what is abstract and universal through what is concrete and particular.

We learn to love the big things through first loving the little things. There is no path to a broad empathy and sympathy that does not run through the person just in front of us.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

On the separation of Church and hate

its moral compass. Sometimes Sunday 27 September 2009 this can result in violence against — at home on Three Mile River — Last week to register to vote in Church members. It should never result in violence by Church the November general elections he Second Vatican Council urged us to read “the signs of the times.” The “signs of the Reflections of a times” are articulated in Parish Priest many ways: published

By Father Tim in an article, illustrated Goldrick in a piece of artwork, presented on stage, expounded in a book, etc. members.

One has to keep one’s eyes open.

Throughout our Church hisWhen I see a “sign of the times,” I use it as a subject of meditation. tory, Catholic men, women and children have died for couraI ponder how this sign relates to the Gospel and to the teachings of geously witnessing to what they believed to be right and just. the Church.

“Martyr” means witness. There The Church in any time and is an old saying, “The blood of place either reflects the mores of the martyrs is the seed of the the general culture or stands in Church.” When the Church is peropposition. The Church is at its secuted, it is then it grows most finest when it opposes the violarapidly. tion of justice and basic human Lately I’ve been meditating on rights by a society that has lost

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The Ship’s Log

A quiet man

which many friends were lost, lthough I have been he faithfully had Masses said to many funerals of for their souls in remembrance late, the most recent stood of particular events endured far out in some remarkable ways. from home. Having benefited The man was older — the last from a Catholic education sibling in a family of eight and the generosity of the children — and had never Sisters who made it possible, married. The wealth of nieces he always remembered their and nephews and their everbirthdays and took them out to expanding tribe gave tribute lunch — which was no easy to his generous affections and underscored the lifegiving nature of his great love of family.

The most telling comment from the priest presiding was his reference to the deceased as “paBy Genevieve Kineke triarch” of his clan — reminding us yet again that motherly feat given their ages and the love and fatherly love are hazards of northern winters. expressed in more ways than simply through marriage. Like He rejoiced in every birth and took to heart every death — all the foster-father of Jesus for the while sustained by the faith whom he was named, this of his fathers and in imitation Joseph expressed his paternal of the Father of all. affections for those entrusted There were subtle martial to him — in the former case elements imbedded in the first his family and then the sober farewell — hinting that universal Church, in the latter there are things worth fighting case his family, his comrades for — but Joseph knew that the from World War II, his fellow ultimate battle is over the self. parishioners, women religious Courage may indeed be proven he had known since his youth, in war, but is more often called and his parish and its memfor in ordinary life, and he sucbers. For all of these he sacceeded on both fronts. rificed — despite his growing Finally, the three faithful infirmities, his limited means priests who carried us through and his growing isolation as the solid, ancient rites offered they died one by one. their personal expressions of His love was expressed quifatherly love. Like the deetly — in sincere smiles, in afceased, they have forsworn fectionate words, and most imchildren of the flesh so that portantly in constant concrete they can be entirely devoted to acts of service and oblation. the spiritual flock under their Having survived the war in

The Feminine Genius

an actual sign, that is a bumper sticker, that has begun to pop up here and there around the country: “Support the Separation of Church and Hate.” What does this bumper sticker signify?

A tropical storm of rudeness has been gathering strength across our nation for some time. It has now been upgraded to a hurricane of hate. The “signs of the times” in our political system are lately signaling vitriolic hatred. This goes beyond incivility, disrespect, and political opinion to a frothing, shrieking, hatred instigated and sustained by a lunatic fringe.

News sources are full of reports of personal attacks against our democratically elected officials, up to and including the President of the United States.

“Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!” is just not something one shouts pub-

care — guiding them likewise along the paths of revelation and personal gifts, trusting in the bedrock of love that cannot give way or mislead.

I had the sense that everyone was edified — for his was a life well-lived and of full measure. In a culture hungering for truth, this man embodied it — both the fidelity of God and the incarnational invitation to give flesh to his love. The family will enjoy a vast storehouse of riches — in stories, anecdotes and memories, and his fellow parishioners could pay respects in a setting that was itself adorned with substantial gifts heretofore anonymous. In all we were reminded of the gentle ways of our creator, for both Joseph’s chaste love and that of the priests bore witness to the expansive nature of generous service.

Ultimately, women must recognize the need for men to give of themselves in such unique ways. The wider world needs such icons of fatherhood in all its manifestations. This man gave without fear, and there should be no surprise: the response to his gift of self was more love. Humbly, quietly, he gave flesh to spiritual fatherhood — and what could be more valuable to the spiritual orphans of our day.

Mrs. Kineke is the author of “The Authentic Catholic Woman” (Servant Books). She can be found online at www. feminine-genius.com.

licly at a head of state, especially in his own country and in the very seat of government. Hurling one’s shoes at the Commander-inChief of the United States is the act of a person rabid with hate.

Fist-shaking, placard-carrying hate mongers began this summer to sabotage the town meeting format, even within our own diocese. I see hatred in the public square.

I fear this hatred may seep into the Church like a toxic oil spill.

The Archbishop of Boston, according to reports, has been figuratively hung out to dry by those across the country who object to his recent television appearance. What did the cardinal do on television? He participated in a Mass of Christian Burial. The last I knew, burying the dead was a corporal act of mercy. Personally, I would probably conduct funeral rites for the world’s most notorious sinner. Who knows what goes on between a flawed human soul and our merciful God? I will not be the one to presume.

I suspect hate at one time or another has targeted everyone who serves in the public eye. Priests and bishops are not exempt. Over the years, I have heard of a local priest who actually received death threats from a parishioner. He wisely reported it to the police. I have heard of a priest driven to the verge of emotional collapse by the hateful tactics directed against him by parishioners. With all the seething letter-writing campaigns that

go on, there must be file drawers full somewhere in some Church office.

I myself was once denounced as an agent of Satan. The accusation was made as I stood in the sanctuary. I know I’m not perfect, but I’m certainly not the incarnation of evil. I deserve better treatment than that.

There was once a man who would refuse to receive holy Communion from me. He would routinely block the Communion procession until he and I were face to face and then abruptly switch over to the special minister of holy Communion. I still don’t know what that guy’s problem was, but he certainly had one. My guess is that it was all about hate.

They say a parishioner frequently approached St. John Vianney to arrange Mass for “a special intention.” Eventually, the holy priest inquired as to what this special intention might be. The answer was, “For your speedy transfer from this village of Ars.” Hate is not new but it is increasing in ferocity.

There can be no place in Church or government for hateful words and actions. We must never condescend to the tactics of hate.

Our task as Catholic Christians is to stand in firm opposition to hatred in all its forms. I have read the “signs of the times” on a bumper sticker. I cast my vote in favor of the separation of Church and hate.

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

10

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

The Anchor

October 2, 2009

When one door closes, another one opens

EASTON — Like many people who have been hard-hit by the recent economic downturn, Joe Struzik noticed a sharp decline in the amount of contract work he was getting as a project manager and business analyst for Fidelity Investments.

But when his contract work ceased altogether about a year ago, he optimistically saw it as an opportunity to devote more time to his family and home parish of Holy Cross.

“My availability is there, and I always have some type of project to work on,” Struzik said. “It’s given me some more time to give back to the parish and help out.”

For the 52-year-old, it only made sense to reciprocate a little back to his parish for all the comfort and support it had provided him in both good times and in bad.

“I’ve always had someone at my parish with whom I could share my ordeals,” he said. “It helps just knowing there’s always somebody there to talk to and encourage you to move on and not to give up. My faith has grown tremendously over the years and I think it’s because there’s always been somebody to encourage that faith and to help me work on it. I think I would not be

the same person I am now if I didn’t the social arm of the parish,” Struz- pare the meals and assist with cookhave the Church — specifically ik said. “We plan and coordinate all ing and serving. It’s a fairly sizable Holy Cross Parish — to lean on.” the different types of social events commitment.”

Of course, Struzik had already that take place during the year: Struzik also takes great pride in been active in a variety of parish from singles nights to picnics to working with the RCIA program at ministries prior to the change in special events for Halloween or St. Holy Cross Parish — a vibrant minhis work situation, but now istry that has introduced up he was able to commit even to a dozen converts annually more of his time to coordito the Roman Catholic faith. nating things like the parish “It started when paroGenerations of Living Faith chial vicar Father Lawrence program, the Church Family A. Jerge asked me to get Life Commission, and the involved with RCIA,” StruRite of Christian Initiation zik said. “We usually get for Adults. anywhere from eight to 12 “I’ve been involved in people who participate each a bunch of things over the year. Father Jerge has done years,” said Struzik, a paRCIA in other parishes and rishioner at Holy Cross for he’s always looking to bring the past 18 years. “I was more in. It’s been a great prochairman of the parish coungram.” cil for a while, I serve as an “Joe is one of the hardextraordinary minister of est working members of our holy Communion, and fill in parish,” said Father James as an usher when needed.”

Fenstermaker, CSC, pastor But Struzik lights up of Holy Cross Parish. “He is when talking about planning extremely generous with his parish social events with the time and can always be deChurch Family Life Compended upon when we need mission or discussing how someone to take leadership they prepare and serve full ANCHOR PERSON OF THE WEEK — Joe on a parish project.” meals as part of the GOLF Struzik.

For Struzik, his family program — things that help — both parish and home — him connect with fellow parishio- Patrick’s Day … things of that na- have always been the focal points of ners directly. ture. Anytime we have a gathering his life. And his devotion to God and “I guess you could call the in an organized fashion, the Church his Church has remained constant.

Church Family Life Commission Family Life Commission will be Before settling in at Holy Cross involved.”

Parish nearly two decades ago, Struzik said the parish’s GOLF Struzik grew up as an active parishprogram, which supplanted the for- ioner at St. Ann’s in Quincy, where mer CCD program three years ago, he served as an altar server and atis geared towards bringing families tended parochial school. together on a monthly basis and But he admits to “really gethe helps coordinate, prepare, cook ting involved” in parish volunteer and serve meals during each of the work when he first came to Easton. daunting 36 sessions held during His wife, Cheryl, is involved with the year. many of the same parish activities “We provide a full meal for the and the couple raised two children afternoon and evening sessions and — daughter Sarah, who sings with for Sunday morning sessions we the parish children’s choir; and son provide a full breakfast at the parish Jonathan, who is now a junior at hall,” Struzik said. “We have a great Westfield State — in what he calls group of volunteers who help pre- “an active and vibrant parish.”

“Most of the friendships that we’ve made here in town started through the Church,” Struzik said.

“The Church has always been sort of the nucleus for the friendships that we’ve built. I’ve always had a really close relationship with the pastor and parochial vicar throughout the years, too. Those friendships have always been important.”

So when he was faced with the recent change in his employment status, Struzik knew he could rely on his parish for comfort and support.

“The Church isn’t going to provide you with a job if you’re unemployed,” Struzik said. “But they’ve always been there for me to provide personal and spiritual support — just to have someone to talk to. It’s through the sacraments and participation in Mass that you grow in your faith. I don’t think the average parishioner really appreciates or takes full advantage of what their parish has to offer, and that’s unfortunate.”

And like every obstacle he’s encountered in the past, Struzik didn’t question why God had allowed such a thing to happen.

He accepted it, put his faith in the Lord to see him through, and forged ahead with the help and support of his home and parish family.

“Everyone goes through personal problems and challenges in life — and I’ve had my share — but I’ve always had the Church to encourage me to stay focused and be positive,” he said. “It helps to remind me that God doesn’t put anything in front of you that you can’t handle.”

“I’m a firm believer that when God sees fit to close one door, he always opens another one for you,” he added. “Sometimes we just focus on the one that’s been closed and don’t even realize that another door has been opened.”

To nominate a Person of the Week, send an email message to FatherRogerLandry@AnchorNews.org.

The Anchor

October 2, 2009

HAVING A BALL — Volunteers sorted multi-colored golf balls at the My Brothers Keeper golf fund-raiser at Golf Country in Easton.

During the qualifying round, up to 24 contestants compete simultaneously. Each contestant used a different color ball to identify which golfer hit which ball. More than 20,000 balls were hit.

Million dollar shootout a huge success for My Brothers Keeper

EASTON — The fourth Annual My Brothers Keeper Million Dollar Hole-In-One Shootout raised nearly $90,000 for the Easton-based Christian ministry that provides furniture, food and Christmas assistance to thousands in need in communities from Boston to Fall River.

Erich Miller, My Brothers Keeper executive director, said, “Last year this event raised $70,000. It shows the faith that individuals and companies have in the work of My Brother’s Keeper that $90,000 — 30 percent more — was raised in the current economy. The proceeds will help us take children off the floor and into a bed and put food on the table for thousands of families. Most importantly, each family we serve is given a crucifix with the message, ‘We’re just the delivery people. This is the person who sent you the furniture.’”

In addition to the golf competition the family-oriented event featured miniature golf, batting cages, a food court, and face-painting.

More than 100 children, parents

and grandparents volunteered their time and talent to assure the event’s success.

Jacob Lane, a 10-year-old fourth-grader and altar server at Immaculate Conception Parish in Easton, showed incredible initiative. He planned and ran his own activity, “KidzSpot,” geared specifically for children. Kids took chances to guess the number of golf tees in a giant jar and pulled lollipops from a lollipop-tree hoping to win a special prize. Jacob and his friends raised $200 which will be used at his request to provide beds for children in need.

Though the weekend was wet, hundreds of golfers showed up at Golf County in Easton to compete in the event.

Colleen Sessler, a senior at Oliver Ames High School and a communicant of Holy Cross Parish in Easton, is a regular volunteer.

“When I started at My Brothers Keeper, it was to get my required community service hours. Now, I’m going just because I love it. It’s very rewarding.”

NOV. 19th: Father Pat will celebrate Mass

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11

12

The Anchor

October 2, 2009

National speaker rallies local marriage supporters

By Christine M. Williams Anchor Correspondent

NEWTON — Local and national defenders of traditional marriage urge their supporters in Massachusetts to “keep the faith.” They also acknowledge that much must change in the Commonwealth before traditional marriage can be restored.

“There’s a lot to be done,” said Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, adding. “The fight is not over in Massachusetts.”

Brown, who co-founded NOM, spoke to traditional marriage supporters at an event held September 18 in Newton. The talk was sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage & Family, a group of local organizations dedicated to family issues, including marriage.

In an interview with The Anchor, Brown said he came to Massachusetts to encourage traditional marriage supporters not to be intimidated from speaking out about their values.

A recent telephone poll, commissioned by NOM and two local organizations, found that more than one-third of registered voters in the state know someone who is reluctant to say they oppose samesex marriage because they “worry about the consequences for them or their children.”

In 2005 a website, KnowThyNeighbor.org, was created for the purpose of listing the names and addresses of the more than 170,000 signers of the Massachusetts marriage amendment petition. The site’s creators encourage same-sex marriage proponents to confront their friends, neighbors, family and co-workers who differ on that issue.

The same tactic was used in California with those who financially supported Proposition 8, Brown said.

Brown added that efforts like these are meant to suppress and intimidate those who support traditional marriage. Supporters of same-sex marriage believe those who disagree are “bigots” on the “wrong side of history.”

“What they want to do is sap the will to fight before the fight begins,” he said.

Same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts by court order in 2004. Efforts to restore traditional marriage through the Legislature failed, and a citizen’s

petition was struck down by the Legislature in 2007.

Currently, the Coalition for Marriage & Family supports politicians who favor traditional values in their effort to oust those who opposed the citizens’ vote on marriage. Part of the proceeds from Brown’s presentation will benefit that effort.

“We need to turn the State House around and bring people with strength of character, who cannot be bribed or threatened, into public office,” their website reads.

The coalition chose Brown to speak because he is not “content to concede New England in the culture war,” said Chanel Prunier, the coalition’s executive director.

“Brian is a brilliant strategist that makes what seems impossible happen,” she added.

Brown, 35, a convert to the Catholic Brian Brown faith, has a master’s degree from Oxford and a doctorate in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was the executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, which helped block same-sex marriage legislation.

He lives with his wife, Susan, and their six young children. He said those fighting for marriage and family must first pay attention to their own marriages and families.

Brown and two others founded NOM, a national grassroots organization that supports traditional marriage, in 2007. They recently moved NOM’s central offices to Washington, D.C. and are hiring for outreach in Iowa. They are also working to oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage in New Jersey and New York as well as to overturn it in Maine and New Hampshire.

Their website warns that in as little as two years, more than onethird of Americans could live in states with legal same-sex marriage.

The site also lists talking points on marriage, which recommend framing the arguments for traditional marriage by speaking about the unique relationship shared by husband, wife and their children.

Supporters should say, “Gays and lesbians have a right to live as they choose; they don’t have the right to

redefine marriage for all of us.”

Although proponents claim that instituting same-sex marriage will not affect anyone else, it clearly has deeper cultural effects, Brown said.

“If you change the definition of marriage, you change it for everyone,” he said.

Brown noted that in Massachusetts, Catholic Charities of Boston was forced out of offering adoptions for refusing to place children with same-sex parents. Parents in Lexington were denied the right to know when books designed to mainstream same-sex unions were introduced in school.

The average American opposes same-sex marriage, and Brown reaches out to them through email updates that are friendly and enthusiastic. In a recent email, Brown said of a narrow defeat in electing a traditional marriage supporter to Iowa’s assembly, “My friends will tell you: I’m a guy who hates to lose.”

Brown believes eventually traditional marriage will win out. He notes that in all 30 states where voters had the chance to vote on an amendment to ban same-sex marriage, the amendments passed.

“If we can win in California, we can win anywhere,” he said.

Although legislation has recently been introduced in Washington to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law passed in 1996, Brown is more concerned about a future challenge of DOMA in the Supreme Court.

He believes that at some point the federal government will decide the marriage debate. Two separate marriage regimes cannot continue indefinitely. For this reason, NOM supports a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage.

A recent profile of Brown, published in the Washington Post, called him “pleasantly, ruthlessly sane.”

Nearly 300 comments — mostly deriding the story, its author and Brown — were posted on the paper’s web page in five days. Many took offense to the implication that supporters of traditional marriage could be sane. Others compared Brown to a Nazi, called him a false Christian or said his children will likely be homosexual.

The Post issued an apology.

Brown said it is sad that calling a supporter of traditional marriage “sane” necessitates an apology.

Brown said the personal attacks he receives are a cross to bear. He considers it an honor to support “the fundamental unit of society” and continue to speak the truth in love.

He added, “Without my faith, I couldn’t keep doing what I am doing.”

Diocese of Fall River TV Mass on WLNE Channel 6 Sunday, October 4 at 11:00 a.m.

Respect Life Sunday

Celebrant is Father Karl C. Bissinger, diocesan director of Vocations and a parochial vicar at St. Julie Billiart Parish in North Dartmouth

Little-known sister of St. Therese of Liseux to be subject of film

ROMEO, Mich. (CNS) — Once Barbara Middleton read about the little-known sister of St. Therese of Lisieux, she knew she had to share Leonie Martin’s life with others.

That project has developed into a 90-minute feature film involving nearly 100 actors, dozens of crew members, a neighborhood outside Detroit, a veteran Hollywood filmmaker, a new production company and, most of all, the grace of God. The film is expected to be released in the summer of 2010.

“I have never been involved in something more fulfilling, and rewarding, and exciting,” said director Joe Maher, referring to the film, “Leonie!” and the musicals he has directed at Assumption (Grotto) Parish in Detroit, his home parish.

“Nothing I ever did compares to the greatness of these things.”

For a few days this summer, the “greatness” Maher spoke of was taking place at a historic house in Romeo, already furnished with family pieces of the period, after filming the week before in a Warren school house.

Middleton, the film’s executive producer and a member of SS. Cyril and Methodius Parish in Sterling Heights, said once she read about Leonie Martin, “she captured my heart.”

“I was so taken by St. Therese’s sister” and the problems she had — fevers as a child, learning disabilities, fits of anger, illness, she said.

“She had a lot of struggles.”

Now, families with troubled children pray to her daily for her intercession. “Her life touched me,” she said. “Once I read about her, I decided we’re going to do a story on Leonie.”

So little is known about Leonie Martin, the book the production crew worked from, “Leonie Martin: A Difficult Life,” had to be ordered from Ireland. One of four surviving sisters of St. Therese, Leonie died in 1941 at age 78.

That lack of information doesn’t

stop Mary Rose Maher, a member of Assumption Grotto, who plays Leonie, from becoming the character during taping. “When I am in the habit, it’s just a total transformation,” she said. “I feel tranquility and peace.”

As she’s filming, she said, she looks to Leonie for her struggle to keep on going, because Leonie entered a religious order four times before finding a fit for life. She never gave up, “no matter how much people told her no,” Mary Rose Maher said.

Paige Pilarski, who plays Sister Jean Marguerite, a friend of Leonie, agrees: “It’s not only what she believed, but what she knew was God’s will,” she said. “She wasn’t going to let anything on earth stop her from that.”

Diane Jesmore, owner of the 1870s-era Romeo home used in the film, said she had to do some moving around of things, such as hiding electrical outlets and her paperback books. She’s intrigued by the project and what it means to families.

“A lot of people with troubled children feel like it’s a modern-day issue,” she said, even though the Martin family’s faith in God helped get them through Leonie’s troubles even 100 years ago.

Jesmore’s house is full of antiques and family pieces of furniture, many of which are being used in the film. Middleton has been to the Martin house in France, and said the stair railing is almost identical.

Joe Maher, who also wrote the script, is originally from Michigan, but worked in California’s entertainment industry until his father died in 1999 and he returned to the area. He had loved his work, but was ready to accept that his film work was over.

“God has intervened all the way down the road,” he said. “We’re becoming a big family. People have helped us beyond what we could have expected.”

October 2, 2009

F

The Presbyterians: Calvin’s chief heirs

rom present-day Lutheran- been framed by a great number of ism we turn now to the Re- confessional statements, written by formed branch of Protestantism. different people in different places: Since there is no consensus on the the Gallic Confession (1559), the meaning of the term “Reformed,” it Scots Confession (1560), the Belgic isn’t easy to know how many groups Confession (1561), the Heidelberg belong to this category. Reformed Catechism (1563), the Westminster Christianity has usually been taken Confession (1646), and so on. Alto mean the CHURCHES origi- though there is consistency in the nating in the work of Calvin, but fundamental content of these conthis definition has lost some of its usefulness.

For one thing, classical Calvinist theology, with The Fullness its doctrines of double of the Truth predestination and limited atonement, nowaBy Father days carries little weight Thomas M. Kocik in most CHURCHES claiming Calvin as their father. Further, recent scholarship views the Reformed fessions, Reformed Christians rectradition as the product of multiple ognize no one confession as an abinfluences and not simply the out- solute, infallible statement of their working of Calvin’s own theology. faith. The Westminster Confession Further still, some denominations remains the standard of faith for stemming from Calvinism have, American and British Presbyterianas a result of mergers, been grafted ism, but its statement on predestinaonto branches of the Reformation tion has been drastically modified to other than the Calvinist. bring it much closer to the Catholic For our purposes, let’s define position. One would have to look to Reformed Christianity broadly, to the tiny Presbyterian sects to hear encompass all denominations having historic roots in the Calvinistinfluenced Reformation except for Anglicanism, which constitutes a category of its own. When Calvinists organized churches on the European continent they called them Reformed; in the British Isles and North America these churches were named Presbyterian to describe their form of government.

But alongside this came a brand of Protestantism, for the most part Calvinist, which insisted on the absolute autonomy of each local congregation and democracy in governance: Congregationalism.

From this group emerged the Baptists, whose views on baptism and the Church were less akin to Calvin than to the radical Anabaptists.

The Reformed/Presbyterian family predominates in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Netherlands and claims large memberships also in Switzerland, South Africa, Germany, and Hungary. As a result of Arian and Unitarian heresies, Presbyterianism in England crumbled in the eighteenth century; only later Scottish immigration saved Presbyterianism from extinction there. With the rapid expansion of missionary activity after 1800, Reformed and Presbyterian churches were established in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the East Indies.

The Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches, established in 1970, is a fellowship of 75 million Christians in over one hundred countries, representing more than two hundred Reformed, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and United denominations. In June 2010 it will merge with the much smaller Reformed Ecumenical Council to create the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

Reformed orthodox theology has

13

The Anchor predestination preached as it was in Calvin’s Geneva.

Puritan ministers brought Presbyterianism to America when they followed the dissenters out of the Church of England. Some switched to Congregationalism in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, while others remained Presbyterians. Reformed theology played a specific role in founding this nation, as Constitutional attorney Doug Phillips explains: “Calvin’s application of Christian theology to familial, civil, and ecclesiastical authority modeled many of the principles of liberty later embraced by our founding fathers, including the belief in transcendent principles of law as the basis of an ethical legal system, free market economics, decentralized authority, an educated citizenry as a safeguard against tyranny, and republican representative government which was accountable to the people and a higher law.” Nearly all Presbyterians backed the American Revolution, which in England was called “the Presbyterian Rebellion.”

Twelve of the 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Presbyterians, including the only clergyman to sign: the Reverend John Witherspoon.

In the United States today, Presbyterianism is largely English, Scottish, and Scotch-Irish. It has traditionally been strong in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, but enrolls large memberships in the Midwest and California also.

Some sixty American colleges and universities, including Princeton, are affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.

Each Presbyterian congregation elects ruling presbyters or elders and a teaching elder; the latter is the minister but is theoretically on a par with the other elders. The pastor and ruling elders are supervised by the regional body, or presbytery, to which it belongs. The presbytery, composed of all the ministers and one ruling elder from each church, ordains candidates for the ministry, installs and removes pastors, settles disciplinary and doctrinal questions, and starts new churches.

Synods, usually organized along state lines, do for the presbyteries what the presbyteries do for the local churches; the member pres-

byteries elect an equal number of ministers and ruling elders to the synod, which meets annually. Topping the Presbyterian structure in each country is the General Assembly, which includes an equal number of pastors and elders from each presbytery; its powers include the right to reorganize synods, settle disputes, and ratify mergers with other denominations.

Ninety percent of American Presbyterians belong to three denominations: the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), with 3 million members; the Presbyterian Church in America, numbering 279,000; and the 87,000-member Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

The PCUSA was created in 1983 from the merger of the United Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

In the early 1970s, some 41,000 people left the latter denomination in protest of its leaders’ support for abortion rights and other leftist causes; they formed the Presbyterian Church in America, which today provides a conservative alternative to the PCUSA. Father Kocik is a parochial vicar at Santo Christo Parish in Fall River.

14

The Anchor

Medjugorje news story questioned As a Roman Catholic, a daily communicant whose gift of “reversion” was granted in Medjugorje after I had slipped away for several years, I am writing to express sadness at the sensationalism found in the August 7 Catholic News Service article printed in The Anchor about the defrocked former Franciscan priest Tomislav Vlasic and his relationship to Medjugorje.

It is obvious that the unquoted statements displayed as “facts” were rather bits of misinformation disseminated by a long-time Medjugorje adversary based in London. We

October 2, 2009

Our readers respond

have to be concerned routinely about the spin on news we get through the secular press. I am very disturbed that we also seem to have to be concerned with the spin in the Catholic press.

The former Father Vlasic was never proposed or appointed as a spiritual director to the Medjugorje visionaries, no matter what Father Vlasic claimed. He has not even been in Medjugorje since 1984. His recent laicization has nothing to do with the visions themselves, but about his own personal behavior and a group in Italy called Queen of Peace.

I would ask that these types of articles by the Catholic

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Maureen O’Brien Attleboro

Hate crimes and false complacency The August 28 article by Gail Besse about the dangers of “hate crimes” legislation was a timely warning that our First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion are being eroded as the mainstream media obscures this by giving us biased and partial news.

The sarcastic attempt to deny this reality by a letter writer in your September 11 edition only illustrates this point. That he can think it’s ludicrous to imply a federal power grab is “impending” shows how much of the public is lulled into false complacency. We’re smack in the midst of an actual aggressive power grab, and this proposed legislation further tightens the noose on our freedoms. I’d suggest the letter writer check his facts with the Family Research Council, to which the article referred, and with the Media Research Center (mediaresearch.org).

We need to take our heads out of the sand.

Patricia Stebbins East Sandwich Giving a wrong impression At Senator Kennedy’s funeral Mass the homilist introduced himself as Senator and Mrs. Kennedy’s pastor. He referenced their participation in his parish and the fact that Senator Kennedy was a devout Catholic and how his faith sustained him. Ted Jr., referred to him as a devout Catholic.

But Senator Kennedy had a blatant anti-Catholic voting re-

cord. The following are some of his votes: NO on banning partial-birth abortions; NO on a criminal penalty for harming or the death of the unborn during a crime; YES to increase by $100M free contraceptives to reduce teen pregnancy; NO to notifying parents of a minor who gets an abortion; YES on expanding embryonic stem-cell research; NO on prohibiting same-sex marriage; NO on $75M for abstinence education; NO on ban on military base abortions; NO on the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” The “Catechism” states “abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes. Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life.”

How does a devout Catholic justify promoting the prochoice agenda?

In your editorial “Learning from our mistakes,” you lament the failure of the education alone approach with regard to pro-choice politicians, but the pro-choice, self-proclaimed devout Catholic politicians make the rules for a weak, ineffective, cowardly Church.

Gertrude C. Burke Pocasset A vote for Christian respect EWTN News Director Raymond Arroyo’s recent statements about Cardinal O’Malley’s participation at the funeral Mass of Senator Kennedy are un-Christian and absurd. According to a September 3 article in the Boston

Globe, Arroyo wrote in his blog, “The prayer intercessions at the funeral Mass, the endless eulogies, the image of the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston reading prayers, and finally Cardinal McCarrick interring the remains, sent an uncontested message: One may defy Church teaching, publicly lead others astray, deprive innocent lives of their rights and still be seen as a good Catholic, even an exemplary one.”

This ignores the value to all of us by the truly beautiful Mass and accompanying ceremonies shown throughout the entire world.

It is true that our world would be much better without acts of abortion, but it is also true that it, in fact, is a better world because of these acts of Christian respect by Cardinal O’Malley in his presence and participation in these funeral services. To take the position of opposing an abortion is an act of justice. To boycott a funeral for that reason alone, however, is an act of vengeance.

Along with Cardinal O’Malley and many others, I pray that Senator Kennedy will finally “rest in peace” with all our thanks for what he accomplished.

William H. Carey S. Dartmouth Hooked on The Anchor Thank you and congratulations on your well-developed editorials of September 4 and 11. I was never much interested in The Anchor since moving to the Cape from another diocese, but now you sure got me hooked. Thank you. We need you.

Vince Cremona Marstons Mills

October 2, 2009

The Anchor

15

WOMEN OF THE CHURCH — The Diocesan Council of Catholic Women recently held a Day of Recollection at Annunciation of the Lord Parish in Taunton, attended by nearly 30 participants.

From left: DCCW First Vice President and event chairman Virginia Wade; guest speaker Dr. Joan M. Kelly, a diocesan native now living in Westport, Conn., who spoke on “The Catholic Woman: Called and Gifted”; and Jeanne Alves, DCCW president.

GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANTS — Several jubilarians were recognized at the recent Day of Recollection for religious at St. Julie Billiart Parish in North Dartmouth. With Bishop George W. Coleman and guest speaker La Salette Father Joseph Bachand are, front from left: Sister Timothea Riley, RSM; Sister Jeanne D’Arc Fournier, SUSC; Sister Dorothy Kelley, RGS; Sister Bernadette Sullivan, SUSC; the bishop; Sister Catherine Donovan, RSM; Sister Gilberte Masson, SCQ; and Sister Claire Sinotte, OP. Back row: Sister Mary Lou Simcoe, SUSC; Father Bachand; and Sister Eleanor McNally, SUSC.

THAT’S LIFE — The annual Mass. Citizens for Life dinner was recently held in Randolph. Professor Anthony M. Esolen was the guest speaker. Bishop George W. Coleman gave the invocation. Marian Desrosiers, left, diocesan director of the Pro-Life Apostolate was presented the Ignatius O’Connor Award for outstanding contributions to the Pro-Life movement, and Madeleine Lavoie, right, received the MCFL Greater Fall River Chapter Award.

Youth Pages

16

PLANNING THEIR FUTURES — The Coyle and Cassidy High School Guidance Department hosted the first of two college mini fairs for current seniors and juniors.

There were more than 80 schools in attendance. Pictured are students from the Taunton school talking to a college representative. Lauren Benvie smiles as Emily Armstrong reviews a brochure.

October 2, 2009

READY FOR THE RUNWAY — Students from St. Margaret Regional School in Buzzards Bay and St. Francis Xavier Preparatory School in Hyannis model for the St. Mary’s Education Fund Fashion Show recently held in Osterville. Front, from left: Heather Gauvin, Jillian Hardy, Emily O’Brien, Katie Kane, and Lindsy Hardy. Back row: Kerry O’Brien, Katie O’Brien, Cassandra Robin, and Julianna Foresteire.

ALL TOGETHER NOW — Students at Holy Family-Holy Name School in New Bedford started the year off with some good times with Jedlie, preparing them to face QUICK ON THE DRAW — Bishop Feehan High School students officially started the challenges of the year. Jedlie is a magician and entertainer who visits schools the first full week of school with enthusiasm for their new classrooms and work teaching them to respect each other and maintain a bully-free environment for all. space. The newly constructed Mercy Hall building is already brimming with activity in its many new sunny spaces. Mercy Hall features 10 classrooms, a media/library center, a computer tech lab, six faculty work spaces, conference rooms, an outdoor amphitheater, office space and more. At an art class, models pose for figurative drawing in the sun at the new outdoor amphitheater.

Our Lady’s Monthly Message From Medjugorje September 25, 2009

Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Dear children, with joy, persistently work on your conversion. Offer all your joys and sorrows to my Immaculate Heart that I may lead you all to my most beloved Son, so that you may find joy in His Heart. I am with you to instruct you and to lead you towards eternity.

“Thank you for having responded to my call.”

Spiritual Life Center of Marian Community One Marian Way Medway, MA 02053 • Tel. 508-533-5377 Paid advertisement

THE JOINT WAS JUMPING — Recently, students in grades K-8 at St. Mary-Sacred Heart School in North Attleboro, enjoyed a motivational jump-roping assembly followed by individual grade appropriate “hands on” jump roping workshops that focused on fitness and character building. The Family School Alliance sponsored the enrichment activity conducted by Mark Rothstein, a professional rope jumper, entertainer, and educator. Here, kindergartners Rylie Robinson and Brooke Geisel stretch in preparation for their jump-roping class.

October 2, 2009

T

here is an energy present when people pray together and work together to bring others closer to God. Parish Religious Education programs are starting up, school retreats are underway, confirmation candidates are choosing sponsors, and the Holy Spirit flows through it all. Even in a classroom situation, I am constantly amazed and humbled that I have a part in bringing someone closer to God. Right now at Bishop Stang High School, about 90 upperclassmen are preparing to serve on the freshman retreat. These juniors and seniors have taken an active role in their spiritual development and now they will take on the role of bringing the youngest members of our family just a little closer to God. Right now, through the Catholic REC Ministry, a team

Youth Pages The stakes are high

of Catholic women and men are preparing to invite 25 women living at the Dartmouth House of Correction to get to know Christ on a deeper level through a three-day retreat. Right now, in every parish in the diocese, there are men and women, young and old, who will pass on the knowledge of their faith to a new generation.

What an incredible joy, as well as an awesome responsibility. In each of these situations, we come to realize that the effort we put into the preparations for the retreat or the classes will really have an impact of the faith development of another human being. The stakes are high. We have to do our part to the very best of our ability and we have to pray that God will bring it all to perfection.

I am blessed to be a part of our school retreats, and to be a part of the REC ministry, and to be a classroom teacher who has the privilege of teaching teen-agers about the heroes of

Be Not Afraid

By Jean Revil

our faith and how to develop a stronger prayer life. Each of these situations, while aiming to feed the faith of the students or retreat candidates, has inevitably fed my own faith life, too. When students share pieces of their lives, it will often add another dimension to my

Stonehill College dedicates new $34M Science Center continued from page one

because we feel part of the Stonehill community. Our friendships here are long standing and every time we come to the campus, we are invigorated by the people and by what’s happening at Stonehill,” Tom Shields said.

The campaign, chaired by Daniel E. Somers, Class of 1969, also assists an ongoing healthy scholarship endowment, which in 2006-2007, awarded $21.3 million in scholarships and grants.

In the midst of its celebration, the college, founded in 1948, took time to offer tribute to one of the pioneers of its science program, Father Francis Hurley, CSC, as its “Father of Biology.”

In May, Father Hurley, who for 47 years taught biology and served as department chairman, celebrated his 80th birthday and was named professor emeritus.

“I never would have gone into biology if I hadn’t attended Stonehill,” said Professor of Biology Maura Geens Tyrrell, Ph.D., who was among the speakers at the ceremonies.

“When I was a freshman in 1960, a friend kept telling me about this professor who made biology into a detective story,” she added.

The 89,639 gross square-foot signature building that anchors the southern part of the 375-acre campus, is 33 percent larger than MacPhaidin Library, and is the most recent major academic construction at the college.

It features innovative laboratory spaces that allow the integration of dedicated labs for cutting-edge research and teaching. Combined classroom/labs allow students to immediately translate theory into practice. Faculty offices are organized to promote interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration.

A large and beautiful atrium provides 500 seats for hosting conferences, academic events, or informal student gatherings.

Even as it sought to meet modern academic needs, the new building showcases energy efficiency and is an icon of science itself.

It integrates many green, high performance or sustainable features that minimize water usage, reduced green house gases and deployed recycle materials.

In an innovative “clunkers for steel” con-

cept, 95 percent of the structural steel framing came from recycled old cars; while the carpet and countertops in many locations are comprised of 40 percent recycled materials.

And the soil and plants in the rooftop garden over the atrium reduce the cooling load and slows the run-off from that portion of the roof.

Construction of the Center, which began before the economic downturn in fall 2008 was completed in May of this year, and 45 students in the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience program established in 1996, began research with faculty members in the summer and into the current fall semester full-time.

The new world class Science Center not only offers countless possibilities for students, faculty and people in the local commu-

prayer life. When someone has a moment of clarity where the teaching of Christ connects to their life, it helps me make connections in my life, too. When we witness someone receiving one of the sacraments, and we know that somehow we were a part of the journey, it’s just beyond words.

Sometimes the road is rough when we are bringing others to God. Christ warned us that it would be. There will be questions and doubts of those we are teaching, there will be snags in the schedule of a retreat, there will be problems we had not expected, but we “press on toward the goal” as St. Paul would say. There is no more worthy a task than bringing souls to Christ.

What will you do to take part

Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow in the laboratories of S. J. Benkovic at The Pennsylvania State University.

The number of students studying science at Stonehill increased eight percent, to more than one-fifth of the total 2,300 enrollment, with the college’s decision to “focus on the sciences” and build a new facility, Father Cregan reported.

Liotta’s research interests lie at the intersection of chemistry and biology, particularly in the area of bioorganic chemistry.

His teaching approach has two prongs to it, he said. “First I hold my students to a very high standard so they realize what they are capable of. Also I help them do science, not just hear science. I give them projects I don’t already know the answers to, and together we engage in the process of inquiry,” said Liotta, who was named distinguished faculty scholar 2006-2007; and who holds the Louise Hegerty Award for Excellence in Teach-

THE HOME OF GREAT THINGS — The brand new, state-of-the-art Science Center sits proudly on the beautiful Stonehill College campus in Easton. The center was blessed and dedicated with a service on September 24.

nity, “but it also means attracting outstanding students,” said Professor Louis Liotta, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Chemistry.

“Once you see this building and all it offers students of science, there’s no doubt in my mind that they will want to come here,” said Liotta, who joined the chemistry department in 1993 after three years as a National

17

ing 2005-2006.

Professor Tyrrell, who has been at Stonehill since 1975, spoke of the transformation of science at the college. She said the design of the new Center provides the open space “that the original facility used from 1948 to 1960 for science — merely a classroom — never offered. Some of its furnishing dated

in this effort? Does your parish need more teachers or teachers’ aides? Are there young people in your life whose spiritual development you can encourage? Do you know of someone you could invite to Mass, or Bible study, or a prayer group?

As I said, the stakes are high, and we all have to do our part.

This weekend REC No. 46 will take place in Dartmouth. Please pray for us and with us. Find out when the second-graders in your parish will receive first penance and first Communion and pray for them and with them. There will probably be a confirmation retreat that will need prayer partners as well.

Everyone makes a difference.

Jean Revil teaches theology and is campus minister at Bishop Stang High School.

Comments welcome at: jrevil@ bishopStang.com.

to the Civil War. Even the 1980 building that replaced it — and doubled its size — could never have been retrofitted to meet current codes for healthy air flow needed for laboratory use.”

“But at the time we’d thought we’d died and gone to heaven,” she noted. Although the old facility had good equipment, the increased number of students and faculty during the past decade “found us overcrowded. There was the need for students to do independent research; there were new majors, all of which altered scientific study. We’ve inched the bar up over the years in quality and expectation.”

Tyrell recalled how she began studies at the college in 1960, but overwhelmed by having to commute from Brockton because there was no housing for women on campus at that time, she transferred to Trinity College in Washington, D.C., which is her hometown.

Her graduate work involved marine biology, and marine ecosystems is among the courses she presents. Currently she is involved on the evolutionary biology of Armillaria, a basidiomycete fungus with the potential to cause severe economic damage when it switches from saprotrophic to parasite nutrition.

Tom and Mary Shields’ relationship with Stonehill dates back to the 1980s. One of their first initiatives was the creation of a scholarship program for pre-medical students from the Brockton area. Subsequently, they expanded the Shields Scholars program and, today on average, 10 Stonehill students benefit from a Shields Scholarship every year.

First elected as a Stonehill trustee in 1987, Tom became vice chair of the board in 1991 and chair in 1994. As chairman, Tom played a critical role in the success of the college’s first capital campaign in 1992-1997 which raised more than $23 million. In 1994, Tom received an honorary doctor of humanities degree and in 1998. The couple was honored with the Moreau Medallion for their outstanding dedication and service to the college as it marked its 50th anniversary.

For Stonehill, more is on the agenda.

The next academic focus for the college will be business, said Father Cregan. Already, 25 percent of Stonehill students study business, including marketing.

18

The Anchor

October 2, 2009

Home is home — No matter what the circumstances continued from page one

and Chavez wants Honduras,” he said. “Honduras has a constitutional law that the president can serve only one four-year term and cannot seek re-election. Zelaya wanted to change that so he could remain in power. That is what caused the coup to ensure that the constitution wouldn’t be changed. But Zelaya has the support of surrounding countries and the United States.”

“When things first happened in June, I thought it would be just a short-term thing,” Escoto told The Anchor. “But the fighting and shootings and curfews went on and on and on. Things are so very different in Honduras now. Our quality of life has gone downhill.”

Guaimaca is a two-hour ride from the troubled capital, but residents there can still feel the effects of the unrest. When curfews are issued, all normalcy ceases. Folks cannot even leave their homes to attend weekend Masses, which have to be cancelled. Occasionally, the violence and unrest spills into the mountain villages like Guaimaca. “I remember after a Mass one day, there was pushing and shoving outside,” recalled Escoto. “Then guns were fired into the air. I knew then things were changing.”

The 18-year-old lives with his mother and father and four siblings. Another brother, Daniel, is a seminarian. “Whenever we go to pick Daniel up for a visit, we’re nervous about what we’ll encounter.”

Escoto has visited the Fall River Diocese before, but this was Hernández’s first visit outside of Honduras, and his first flight. “I am sad for my country,” he said.

“When the coup first happened I tried to continue life as normal.

Like José, I thought the trouble

EasternTelevision

would pass in a few days. But every day it seemed to get bigger and bigger.” Hernández has a 25-year-old brother who works to help support him, his mom and dad and younger brother. “He travels to Tegucigalpa to work, and I worry about his safety.”

In the weeks following the June 28 coup and eviction of Zelaya, things slowly became more settled in Honduras, but Zelaya’s surprise return last week resurrected the violence and unrest — and the uncertainty of the people of Guaimaca.

Escoto and Hernández are very much aware of the prayerful support of their brothers and sisters in the Diocese of Fall River. “Knowing that people here are praying for us gives us great joy,” said Escoto. “We receive peace, comfort and some sort of normalcy at our home parish in Guaimaca, and the prayers of the people of the Fall River Diocese help very much.”

“Your prayers mean a lot to us,” added Hernández. “They help to motivate us, help us feel stronger, and help us to know that God is there to help us.” The 17-yearold also credits Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa. “The cardinal supports the new president, and he guides the Church in our country.

He tells us to have faith in God, and peace will happen. He says that peace comes from Christ and God will help our country.”

“Cardinal Rodriguez is such a credible force in Honduras,” said Father Pregana. “The people and many government officials believe in him and trust him.” Father Pregana also told The Anchor that ex-president Zelaya brought corruption to the Honduran government, including the marked increase in drug trafficking. He said that with that comes more violent crimes and murder. “The people that are showing support for Zelaya’s return are being paid

to do so. The Honduran people do not want him back. It’s financial backing from Chavez that allowed him to show up in Tegucigalpa again.”

Father Pregana said that not only has life become unstable in Guaimaca because of the unrest, but the flow of supplies and help from the Diocese of Fall River has all but ceased. “We can’t have any groups visit us any more … for now,” he said. “It’s too dangerous and travel is very restricted.

That means what little the people of Guaimaca had, even with the help from the Fall River faithful, they have even less now.” But the St. Rose of Lima pastor asks for continued prayers from those faithful — something he’s very confident will continue.

Father Pregana, who published two letters in The Anchor updating faithful in the Fall River Diocese about the events in Honduras, said he has heard from quite a few readers that they received a different account from him than they have heard on network news.

New presidential elections in Honduras are slated for November 29. With Zelaya’s return, those plans are now up in the air.

Escoto is eligible to vote for the first time in November, but there is an apprehension about doing so. “I want to vote for the right person,” he said. “I don’t want to put the wrong candidate in office, and I’m nervous about that.

I have been studying each of the five candidates very closely, and I hope I make the right decision.”

Hernández is one year short of voter eligibility, but he too has been closely observing the candidates platforms. “When it is my turn to vote, I will know that this must be taken very seriously. Now I know what a coup is and the violence that can result.

I want to make an informed vote when the time comes.”

Father Pregana told The Anchor that there are many people in Honduras who would love to come to America, even if illegally, to make a better life for themselves and their families.

“Some want to leave there very badly, and Luis, José and I want just the opposite. We want to return very badly.” There are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and parishioners to be reunited with.

On Saturday, Father Pregana, Escoto, and Hernández were able to get the first flight allowed back into Honduras. There they witnessed the new unrest and what it was like to be under curfew again.

Home is home — no matter where it is, and what the circumstances.

PLACE OF HEALING — From left, Sister Vimala Vadakumpadan, OP; trustee Karl Hetzler; pastoral care team member Charley Foley; Jame Andrews; and Msgr. John A. Perry, VG, look on while Father Karl C. Bissinger blesses one of the crucifixes to be installed in each room of the new Saint Anne’s Hospital Radiation Oncology Center in Dartmouth. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

Saint Anne’s regional cancer care center blessed in Dartmouth

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

DARTMOUTH — The new state-of-the-art Saint Anne’s Hospital Regional Cancer Care Center located in the Hawthorn Medical Center complex on Faunce Corner Road was formally dedicated and blessed during a reception and open house for VIPs September 25.

Msgr. John A. Perry, VG, presided over the blessing of the facility while Father Karl C. Bissinger blessed the individual crucifixes to be installed in each room of the center.

“Bishop Coleman really wanted to be here today, but he was unable to make it and he asked me to come here and congratulate you and express how much of an impact this facility is going to have on the whole area,” Msgr. Perry said.

The $21 million facility will provide unprecedented access to advanced radiation oncology therapies for cancer patients throughout the Greater New Bedford and Upper Cape Cod regions in one convenient location and will further expand the services already offered through the hospital’s Hudner Oncology Center in Fall River, consultation offices at the Prima Care and Truesdale Clinic sites in Fall River, and satellite office at Newport Hospital in Rhode Island.

Noting that Saint Anne’s medical oncology program was founded more than 30 years ago in 1976 as a medical oncology outpatient clinic of Boston University, hospital president Joseph E. Ciccolo Jr. said they currently care for more than 5,800 patients annually and this new facility will “strengthen our already outstanding program.”

“What a joyous and proud moment this is for the Saint Anne’s community,” Ciccolo said. “This is truly a spectacular facility and something we can all be proud of.”

According to Sister Vimala Vadakumpadan, OP, chairman of the board of trustees and major superior of the hospital’s founding Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, this new facility will help

continue their original mission of continuing the healing ministry of Jesus.

“What is unique about Saint Anne’s is the way we care,” Sister Vimala said. “With charity and compassion, we remain a Catholic hospital that reaches out to our culturally-diverse community.”

The new 21,000-square-foot cancer center is a long way from the one-room clinic started in the basement of the hospital’s main campus on Middle Street in Fall River, Sister Vimala said, and they are now considered the area’s premier cancer care provider.

“This expansion in Dartmouth demonstrates the continuing need for cancer care in this area and the success of our program,” Sister Vimala added. “I pray that patients will come with a heavy heart, but with hope and trust in the Lord and in their doctors.”

The facility is equipped with cutting-edge technology such as 4D CT simulation for advanced treatment planning; image-guided radiation therapy, which delivers highly-targeted radiation therapy to tumors; and intensity-modulated radiation therapy, which offers advanced treatment of certain tumors using a beam to pinpoint the tumor and avoid critical organs. Highdose rate radiation therapy will also be administered onsite to patients with certain gynecologic, skin and early breast cancers.

Funded through private donations and a $5 million capital campaign sponsored by the Friends of Saint Anne’s Hospital, trustee vice chairman Karl Hetzler noted they are about halfway to meeting their goal but are still seeking contributions.

“We need as much help as we can get,” Hetzler said. “The generous help that we get from the people of this community will help us continue to provide quality health care. Prior to Saint Anne’s coming on the scene with oncology, most people from the area had to travel as far away as Boston. That doesn’t have to happen anymore.”

October 2, 2009

Around the Diocese 10/2

The Fall River Area Men’s First Friday Club will meet today at Good Shepherd Parish, 1598 South Main Street, Fall River, This is the first meeting of the season of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Father Freddie Babiczuk will celebrate a 6 p.m. Mass, followed by guest speaker, Father Roger J. Landry.

For information call 508-672-8174.

10/2 10/3 10/3

First Friday devotion Mass will take place at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Fall River, today at 12:05 p.m., followed by adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, ending with Benediction at 1 p.m.

A Day With Mary will take place tomorrow from 8:30 a.m. to 2:50 p.m. at St. Bernard’s Church, 30 South Main Street, Assonet. For information call 508984-1823.

Holy Name Parish at 850 Pearce Street, Fall River, will host a yard sale tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The food court will open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be a bake sale, blood drive, crafters, entertainment, games, pony rides, face painting, a bubble bouncer, raffle, Chinese auction and more.

10/4

The annual Respect Life Walk to aid mothers and children will kick off from the Boston Common Sunday at 2:30 p.m. A bus sponsored by the Greater Fall River MCFL chapter will be available. Call 508-674-8695 or 508-678-3351 to reserve a seat. Pickup is at the Taunton Galleria Park and Ride at 12:15 p.m.

10/4

A traditional Living Rosary, sponsored by the Legion of Mary will take place Sunday at St. Joseph-St. Therese Church, New Bedford at 3 p.m. beginning with a procession from the school yard. Intentions include the Respect Life Walk that day in Boston, and the Year for Priests. Father Philip Hamel will welcome attendees.

10/4 10/9 10/11

A night of prayer around the image of Our Lady of America will take place at St. Kilian’s Church, New Bedford, including a holy hour at 6 p.m., Mass at 7 p.m., and a talk by Yves and Anne Jacques. All welcome.

The Villa at St. Antoine, 400 Mendon Road in North Smithfield, R.I., will hold an open house at the assisted living facility on October 9, 16, 23, and 30 at 2 p.m. For information call 1-401-767-2574.

The Sacred Hearts Community invites everyone to celebrate the canonization of Blessed Damien October 11 at a gathering at the Sacred Hearts Retreat Center, Great Neck Road in Wareham from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a special Mass at 11 a.m. Free parking. For information visit www.retreats@sscc.org or call 508-295-0100.

10/14 508-965-9296.

A meeting of the Divorced and Separated Group will meet October 14 at the Family Life Center in North Dartmouth. This will be an open meeting discussing topics regarding separation and divorce. For information call

10/19

Three hours of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament will take place at Damien Residence, 73 Adams Street, Fairhaven, on October 19 beginning with Mass at noon. Intentions are for the reparation of sins against human life, especially abortion.

Eucharistic Adoration in the Diocese

ACUSHNET — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Parish on Mondays 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Fridays 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Saturdays 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Mondays end with Evening Prayer and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.; Saturdays end with Benediction at 2:45 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 of the month, 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 TAUNTON — Eucharistic adoration takes place First Fridays at Holy Family Church, 370 Middleboro Avenue, following the 8:30 a.m. Mass until Benediction at 8 p.m.

FAIRHAVEN — St. Mary’s Church, Main St., has a First Friday Mass each month at 7 p.m., followed by a Holy Hour with eucharistic adoration. Refreshments follow.

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.

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 508336-5549.

OSTERVILLE — Eucharistic adoration takes place at Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 76 Wianno Avenue on First Fridays following the 8 a.m. Mass until Benediction at 5 p.m. The Divine Mercy Chaplet is prayed at 4:45 p.m.; on the third Friday of the month from 1 p.m. to Benediction at 5 p.m.; and for the Year For Priests, the second Thursday of the month from 1 p.m. to Benediction at 5 p.m.

TAUNTON — Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament takes place every First Friday at Annunciation of the Lord Church, 31 First Street, immediately following the 8 a.m.

Mass and continues throughout the day. Confessions are heard from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m., concluding with recitation of the rosary and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.

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.

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The Anchor Father Clem Dufour battled pancreatic cancer continued from page one

Venice.

“Father Clem enjoyed traveling and was a fine priest and delightful to be with,” Father Bergeron said.

“And he had special fondness for dogs and had several of them as companions over the years,” he added.

During an interview with The Anchor a few days before his jubilee, Father Dufour said that although he was a resident at the Cardinal Medeiros Residence, he continued to maintain a “two-bed doghouse in Fairhaven” — at West Island — with his 16-year-old lhasa apso “Whitey” and they took a walk together each day.

“I can’t have a dog at the Cardinal Medeiros Residence, so I commute back and forth each day,” he said.

Father Dufour noted that he was the last of his classmates who was ordained to the priesthood on Feb. 1, 1958 by the late Bishop James L. Connolly in St. Mary’s Cathedral.

His first assignment was to the former St. Michael’s Parish in Swansea, where he remained until December 1958 when he was transferred to St. Theresa’s in New

Please remember the annual Respect Life Walk to Aid Mothers and Children is Sunday beginning at the Boston Common at 2:30 p.m.

Join them if you can, and if not, join them in prayer for this important cause.

In Your Prayers Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks Oct. 5 Rev. Jean D. Pare, O.P., Assistant Director, St. Anne Shrine, Fall River, 1999 Oct. 6 Rev. Stephen B. Magill, Assistant, Immaculate Conception, North Easton, 1916 Rev. Roland Brodeur, Uniondale, N.Y., 1987 Oct. 7 Rev. Caesar Phares, Pastor, St. Anthony of the Desert, Fall River, 1951 Rev. Msgr. Arthur G. Dupuis, Retired Pastor, St. Louis de France, Swansea, 1975 Rev. Andrew Jahn, SS.CC., Sacred Hearts Seminary, Wareham, 1988 Oct. 8 Rev. Roger P. Nolette, Our Lady of the Assumption, Osterville, 2006 Oct. 9 Rev. Paul J. Dalbec, M.S., La Salette Shrine, Attleboro, 2000

WEST HARWICH — Our Lady of Life Perpetual Adoration Chapel at Holy Trinity Parish, 246 Main Street, holds perpetual eucharistic adoration. For open hours, or to sign up call 508-430-4716.

Oct. 10 Rev. James C.J. Ryan, Assistant, Immaculate Conception, North Easton, 1918 Rev. Boniface Jones, SS.CC., Chaplain, Sacred Heart Home, New Bedford, 1987 Rev. Joseph A. Martineau, Retired Pastor, St. Theresa, New Bedford, 1990

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.

Oct. 11 Rev. James A. Downey, Pastor, Holy Ghost, Attleboro, 1952

Bedford, where he was to spend nine years.

In 1967 he became the parochial vicar at St. Anthony’s in New Bedford, until 1977 when he returned to St. Michael’s in Swansea as pastor.

Recalling assignments to parishes where several priests resided in cramped rectories, “Things brightened up when I became a pastor,” he said with a laugh, and it was at St. Michael’s where he and the parish celebrated his 25th anniversary as a priest.

He remained there until October 1983 when he became pastor of St. George’s in Westport.

Beginning in June 1988, he was pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in New Bedford, until his 1999 retirement.

“Those years at Sacred Heart — the final assignment — were probably the best, most enjoyable years, although it is hard to say which is best because the people in all of them were wonderful to me. Being with the people and serving them well is what the priesthood is all about, and what brings the fondest memories,” Father Dufour said.

Among his colleagues at the Cardinal Medeiros Residence, Father Manuel P. Ferreira considered Father Dufour “a very dear friend and brother priest.”

“Living under the same roof we pray for each other and offer each support — especially when one of us faces a critical illness,” Father Ferreira added. “Father Clem talk-

ed about how he had ‘escaped’ for so many years, but he knew well it couldn’t last. His health had been going downhill since June and he was hospitalized for a time and then entered the Catholic Memorial Home because he needed constant treatments. He was a wonderful priest and we are sure going to miss him.”

Other priests recalled how Father Dufour in his retirement continued on call to help out in area parishes hearing confessions and celebrating Masses although he had no regular assignment.

One of four children born to Gedeon E., and Albertina (Cote) Dufour, he was baptized in the former St. Mathieu’s Church in Fall River and spent his grammar school days in its parochial school.

He graduated from the former Msgr. Prevost High School in Fall River.

He attended Assumption College in Worcester for two years before entering St. John’s Seminary in Brighton for theological studies. He was a member of Club Richelieu and a former chaplain of the Knights of Columbus in New Bedford.

He leaves a brother, Roger P. Dufour of Somerset; and nieces and nephews. He was also the brother of the late Paul A. Dufour and the late Theresa Dufour Proulx.

The Auclair Funeral Home in Fall River was in charge of arrangements.

20

I

The Anchor

The Nation expands

n the book of Revelation there is mention of a mission While in my office, the pair of Guaimacan teens seemed to spread the name of Jesus to every corner of the enamored with my collection of Red Sox memorabilia, Earth: “Then I saw another angel ranging from a Red Sox Mr. flying in midair, and he had the Potato Head, to a Curt Schilling eternal Gospel to proclaim to babushka doll, where a smaller those who live on the earth — to version of Curt emerges from every nation, tribe, language and each doll you open. people” (Rev. 14:6).

I asked them if they were While not nearly as important Yankee fans. Despite their

By Dave Jolivet a task, the goal of every Red Sox limited English they quickly fan is to spread Red Sox Nation nodded “no.” to make believers of the Home Towne Team of every living creature with two legs and thumbs.

So far things have been going very well. We’ve seen Red Sox Nation expand to every state in the union, including Hawaii and Alaska. Countries include Canada, Mexico, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.

On the official Red Sox Nation website, they claim that more than 40 countries have “registered” members of Red Sox Nation, although they don’t list them by name.

Well, we may be able to add one more if it’s not already on the list — Honduras. And if it is on the list, we’ve added at least the mountainous region of Guaimaca, Honduras.

In a cover story in this week’s edition, I interviewed Father Craig A. Pregana, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Guaimaca, along with two Guaimacan teens who had accompanied Father Craig to the States.

The trio came to my office to explain what is happening during this period of chaos and uncertainty in Honduras.

Luis, 17, and José, 18, have seen, heard, and experienced more than a teen-ager should. Add to that the fact they mostly live with just the basic necessities, these fine lads have nothing compared with their brother and sister peers here in the Fall River Diocese.

My View From the Stands

October 2, 2009 With that I gave them each a Red Sox flag and a pennant I had hanging in the office for years. They seemed quite pleased with the small token.

I know it’s not much, but it seemed to make them quite pleased, and that pleased me. It reawakened the old adage it is better to give than to receive.

But just as important was the fact that I knew I had just expanded Red Sox Nation a wee bit. Somewhere in the mountains of Guaimaca, Honduras, is evidence of Red Sox Nation. And the beauty of it is that thanks to the Fall River Diocese and the efforts of Father Craig and many others, the Gospel of Jesus has already reached our brothers and sisters there. I call that a win-win situation.