Anchor 08.06.10

Diocese of Fall River

The Anchor

F riday ,August 6, 2010

Diocesan mission in Honduras celebrates 10th anniversary

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

hope floats — A float created by the St. Francis Xavier Youth Group of Acushnet, bearing colorful flowers and carrying the likeness of a 13-foot monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament, a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, and other religious articles, appeared in last Sunday’s Blessed Sacrament feast in New Bedford, and also in a recent Acushnet celebration parade. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

St. Francis Xavier’s Youth Group’s float wins honors

NORTH DARTMOUTH — It was a decade ago during the jubilee year that then-Bishop Sean P. O’Malley established a mission parish in Guaimaca — located about two hours outside the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

For the past 10 years the St. Rose of Lima Parish mission has flourished through the efforts of diocesan priests, the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, and the generous support of laypeople throughout the diocese.

Friends and supporters of the Honduran mission recently joined Father Craig A. Pregana, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish, and Msgr. John J. Oliveira, director of the diocesan Propagation of the Faith Office, to celebrate a 10th anniversary Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Julie Billiart Parish.

The Mass was an occasion for those who have supported the mission from afar to meet the people working in Guaimaca and to thank God for the many blessings of this 10-year ministry.

“We’ve come a long way in 10 years,” said Father Paul E. Canuel, who served as the first pastor at the mission parish. “I’m just amazed with the way the people of the diocese have responded to the needs of the mission. It’s motivated so many volunteers.

So much has been done — and yet, it’s never finished. There’s always so much more that can be done.”

“The 10th anniversary allows us to pause for a moment and look at all the mission has accomplished,” agreed Father Pregana. “However, there is still much to be done. The poor still come looking for food, the chilTurn to page 17

Inspirational float draws applause at separate celebrations B y D eacon James N. Dunbar ACUSHNET — After a nearly three-month effort, the 20 teens who comprise St. Francis Xavier Parish’s Youth Group — and their devoted

parents — remain ecstatic over the popularity of their prize-winning float themed “Real presence of Christ” seen by thousands in recent weeks during an historic parade in

the town, as well as another in New Bedford.

On Sunday, the float bedecked with colorful flowers and carrying the likeness of Turn to page 16

Nearly one billion taxpayer dollars spent on pro-abortion organizations B y C hristine M. W illiams A nchor C orrespondent BOSTON — A government agency released a report that found six pro-abortion organizations spent nearly $1 billion taxpayer dollars over the span of eight years. The Government Accountability Office released the report on May 28.

It included data from 2002 through 2009, and updated a

similar report about data from 2001.

The nearly $1 billion figure relied on self-reporting by the organizations. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which performs onethird of all abortions in the United States, reported spending nearly 68 percent of that money. An additional 30 percent was reported by the Popu-

lation Council, an international non-profit that promotes the availability of abortion and contraception. The other organizations were Advocates for Youth, the Guttmacher Institute, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

The report, commissioned by 31 members of Congress, also included information collected from the Department of Health and Human Services and the United States Agency for International Development. Those two government agencies alone provided the six pro-abortion organizations with more than $500 million.

Turn to page 15

remember when ...? — Anchor news editor, Deacon James N. Dunbar rehashes his 13 years with the paper during a recent interview. Today is Deacon Dunbar’s last day with the publication.

(Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

Anchor mainstay retires after 13 years behind the desk

By Dave Jolivet, Editor FALL RIVER — Deacon James N. Dunbar’s duties at The Anchor officially end today, after a decade of dedicated service to this publication, the Church, and readers across the Fall River Diocese and beyond. But to say that Deacon Jim is retired would be a complete misnomer. The Tiverton, R.I., resident has a wife, Claudia, six grown children, 12 grandchildren, two great grandchildren and add to that he is an ordained deacon for the Diocese of Providence,

serving in many capacities at Jesus Saviour Parish in Newport, R.I. Deacon Jim has been news editor at The Anchor for the past 13 years, culminating a 53-year stint in the newspaper industry. He was with the Fall River Herald News for 37 years, and spent three years at the then-Providence Visitor, the official Catholic newspaper for the Diocese of Providence, now called The Rhode Island Catholic.

The life and times of Jim Dunbar could equally rival that of the Turn to page 12

News From the Vatican

2

August 6, 2010

Easy access to drugs trivializes abortion, says Vatican official VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Promoting easy access to RU486 and other drugs that induce abortion risks trivializing the termination of a pregnancy, said the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Commercializing abortion medication can turn “an unwanted pregnancy into being almost like an annoying cold to be gotten ridden of with a pill,” Msgr. Ignacio Carrasco de Paula told the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in an interview published July 30.

The Spanish monsignor, who is also a medical doctor, recalled working in Armenia after the 1998 earthquake. He said many of the women patients he worked with had already had more than 20 abortions and that “for them abortion had become like having a coffee.”

Such a blase attitude “is a serious phenomenon” that could easily spread to other parts of Europe, he said.

However, indiscriminate use of the abortion pill may increase the number of women who experience post-abortion syndrome, he said.

Msgr. Carrasco, who was named head of the life academy in June, said scholars are working on a document focusing on the psychological and emotional aftereffects of abortion because “it is certain that abortion, beside killing an innocent person, weighs heavily on the conscience of the woman who resorts to one.”

The academy will study the impact and nature of the syndrome more in-depth and release its findings and recommendations in a document by October 2011, he said.

“When abortion is being talked about, unfortunately, it

triggers many issues that always spark a heated debate, sometimes even within the Catholic world,” he added.

He said he believes the academy’s role is to “always go beyond polemics in order to reflect on every single aspect of the issue, even if it is uncomfortable to face. Internal or external debate does not scare us, rather, it enriches us.”

In an interview with the Italian Catholic online magazine Il Consulente Re, the monsignor criticized Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the new abortion law that went into effect in early July.

The Spanish parliament approved a measure that allows abortions without restrictions for up to 14 weeks. The new law allows 16- and 17-year-olds to have abortions without parental consent although the parents have to be informed. It also declares abortion to be a woman’s right.

The law “is foolishness, absolute foolishness, and it goes along with the mentality of Zapatero,” who presents every issue in terms of human rights, said Msgr. Carrasco.

The prime minister promotes everything as a human right, “but he is incapable of understanding what a right is,” he added.

The same dangerous tendency can be seen in other countries in which the relationship between patient and doctor is being eroded, he said. Medical decisions will no longer be determined by a medical professional who acts according to moral guidelines but by a judge, he said.

“Such a development is very disturbing because it would also mean an undermining of medicine,” he said.

dynamic duo — A 14th-century fresco of Jesus and St. Peter is seen on a wall of the top level of the Mamertine prison in Rome. Tradition holds that St. Peter was held in the prison before he was crucified. Recent excavations support that belief. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Conversion: Ancient prison went from pagan to sacred Christian site

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Tradition holds that St. Peter was jailed in Rome’s maximum security Mamertine Prison before he was crucified upside down and buried on the hill where St. Peter’s Basilica was later built.

And now after recent excavations in Rome’s oldest prison, archaeologists say they have uncovered evidence that, while not providing direct proof, does support that belief.

The prison, which lies beneath the Church of St. Joseph of the Carpenters facing the Roman Forum, was closed for the past year as experts dug up old floors and picked away plaster.

They found and restored a 14thcentury fresco of Jesus with his arm around a smiling St. Peter and an 11th-century fresco of Jesus with the oldest known image of the Campidoglio, Rome’s city hall, behind him.

Patrizia Fortini from the city of Rome’s department of archaeological heritage led the excavation and restoration project. She told journalists July 27 they found proof

that the site had been a place for venerating St. Peter by the seventh century, lending support to historical accounts that he had been incarcerated there.

The prison has two levels: the upper chamber called the “Carcer” and the lower chamber called the “Tullianum,” which was built in the sixth century B.C. In the Tullianum, Fortini said, they found “traces of a basin that must have been where water was collected — water which, according to tradition, sprang forth after St. Peter pounded on the stone floor.”

Tradition holds that after he miraculously made the water gush forth, he converted and baptized his two prison guards as well as 47 others while he was imprisoned there.

Near the basin, archaeologists found a trough which, centuries later, the faithful may have used to sprinkle themselves with water,.

The stone walls had been painted, she said, but time and humidity took their toll.

There is only one small fresco left in a dark corner under the stairs.

The ninth-century image, discovered in 2000, shows the outline of the hand of God emerging from a white cloud as he points down toward Earth.

A portion of the marble column, which tradition says SS. Peter and Paul were chained to, stands next to

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a simple altar.

One of the most interesting finds, Fortini said, was discovering what the Tullianum had been used for in pre-Christian, pagan Rome.

Experts removed old brick and wooden floors, digging down to the original stone floor.

Scholars had believed the domed prison was a cistern or a monumentalized fountain of sorts. Instead, Fortini said it had been “an ancient place of worship” specifically devoted to a water divinity such as “a nymph of underground water.”

They found ancient remnants of votive offerings to the deity, things such as small burned animal bones and floral or vegetable matter dating from between the fifth and third centuries B.C. Enemies of the Roman Empire were thrown into the watery pit of the Tullianum through a hole in the upper chamber of the Carcer. Romans believed the prisoners would then be carried away or just disappear into the netherworld — a fate worse than death, she said.

The structure was used a prison until the fourth century, when Pope Sylvester I officially made it place of worship and named it “San Pietro in Carcere” (St. Peter in Prison) in 314.

The Church of St. Joseph was built atop the former prison complex in 1598.

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PUBLISHER - Most Reverend George W. Coleman EXECUTIVE EDITOR Father Roger J. Landry fatherrogerlandry@anchornews.org EDITOR David B. Jolivet davejolivet@anchornews.org NEWS EDITOR Deacon James N. Dunbar jimdunbar@anchornews.org OFFICE MANAGER Mary Chase marychase@anchornews.org ADVERTISING Wayne R. Powers waynepowers@anchornews.org REPORTER Kenneth J. Souza kensouza@anchornews.org Send Letters to the Editor to: fatherrogerlandry@anchornews.org PoStmaSters send address changes to The Anchor, P.O. Box 7, Fall River, MA 02722.

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August 6, 2010

3

The International Church

UK official says pope’s September visit will be costly, but important

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — With Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United Kingdom just seven weeks away, the British government official working on organizing the trip said the pope’s visit will cost taxpayers more than originally foreseen, but it would be an important opportunity to highlight and promote cooperation on issues the British care about.

Vatican Radio interviewed Sir Chris Patten, the government’s papal trip coordinator and the former governor of Hong Kong, July 26.

The pope is scheduled to visit Scotland and England September 16-19, meeting Queen Elizabeth, Anglican and other religious leaders, celebrating public Masses and beatifying Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Patten said he had been appointed to coordinate the government’s part in the planning because after a new British prime minister was elected, “we were in danger of falling behind” in organizing the visit.

“I think at the outset, and

this is no criticism, people had perhaps underestimated the complexity involved in fitting together the state visit aspect and the pastoral aspects as if they were a seamless whole,” he told Vatican Radio.

“It’s incomparably more difficult arranging the state visit of the Holy Father than arranging the state visit, I suspect, of even President (Barack) Obama.

President Obama doesn’t go out and meet 80,000-100,000 people at an open-air venue,” he said.

Patten said he expected the four-day papal visit to cost British taxpayers more than $15 million, but he said April’s one-day summit of the leaders of the world’s largest national economies cost British taxpayers more than $30 million.

He said the pope’s visit is important for Catholics and other religious believers, but “I also think it gives us the opportunity to demonstrate that the government of a largely non-Catholic country still has a formidably large agenda to work with the Catholic Church on issues of consensus,” particularly regarding human rights

Sisters make public Cardinal Newman’s letters to young nun LONDON (CNS) — An English order of nuns has made public the letters between a dying nun and English Cardinal John Henry Newman, who founded the Oxford Movement to bring the Anglican Church back to its Catholic roots.

The letters show how the 19th-century theologian, who will be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in Birmingham, England, September 19, tried to console Visitation Sister Dominica Bowden after she discovered she was suffering from tuberculosis. The letters, copies of which have been shown to Catholic News Service, illustrate their friendship and reveal how the nun’s death left Cardinal Newman distraught.

Cardinal Newman knew Sister Dominica because her father, John William Bowden, was his best friend during his years at Oxford University. As an Anglican priest, in 1831 he had baptized the future nun as a

baby, “Marianne.” She became a Catholic in 1847, two years after Newman was received into the Church and three years after her father had died; she entered the convent at the age of 21. Cardinal Newman preached at the Westbury convent Mass at which Sister Dominica took her final vows.

The correspondence between the pair began soon afterward, and although only Cardinal Newman’s letters remain, they display deep affection. At the time, Sister Dominica was in her 30s and Cardinal Newman was in his 60s. In some of the letters, which have never been published, the cardinal reflects on day trips to the seaside or grumbles about growing old, struggling to pay the bills, or his frustration at being unable to open an oratory at Oxford.

and international development aid.

Patten, a Catholic, said the pope’s visit also could contribute to the government’s efforts to strengthen the relationships among British faith groups.

Several individuals and groups have announced plans to stage protests while the pope is in England, and Patten said that peaceful protests would be allowed since “we live in a free society.”

However, he said, the government wants “to ensure not only the security of the Holy

Father, but also that the pastoral events are not disrupted, because that would give serious offense.”

Patten said intolerance or even outright hostility toward religion is often directed more at the Catholic Church than other faith communities “because of the Catholic Church’s prominence and longevity and self-confidence in asserting some basic truths.”

“But I don’t worry too much about that,” he said. “I think we have to stand our ground, recognizing when we do so

that we’ve often been intolerant to others ourselves in the past. We should be arguing that it’s ironic that some secularists — not all — are being as intolerant of church groups as church groups were of them in the past.”

One of the challenges that members of every religion face in Britain, a challenge the pope will share, “is getting across the message that religion is not a problem, that faith is, for many people, the way they cope with the challenges of living in the 21st century,” he said.

The Church in the U.S.

4

August 6, 2010

Apostolic Signatura upholds right of bishops to close any parish WASHINGTON (CNS) — Canon law — the legal rules that guide Church operations and decisionmaking — allows a local bishop to close any parish as long as his decision is made with the best interests of the entire diocese in mind.

The responsibilities of a bishop regarding the opening or closing of a parish are covered in Canon 515, which was cited in a recent series of decrees issued by a panel of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, the Church’s highest court, in deciding the appeals of 10 closed parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston.

The court’s ad hoc panel is made up of five cardinals and archbishops serving on the Apostolic Signature bench. Its decrees are final with no option of further appeal under canon law.

An English translation of the decree involving one of the parishes, St. James the Great in Wellesley, Mass., was provided to Catholic News Service by the Boston-based Council of Parishes, which was organized in 2004 to challenge the closing of parishes in the Boston Archdiocese.

Issued May 7 but not certified

by Church officials until July 1, the decrees said now-Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston followed the correct procedure under canon law for closing the Boston parishes.

“He himself considered not only the condition of the parish, the focus of this case, but in truth also the entire archdiocese, so that he could provide for the salvation of souls in the entire archdiocese in the best possible manner,” the court panel said.

Two canon law experts told CNS the rulings essentially mean that a bishop can open or close parishes as he deems necessary for the good of the diocese as long as he consults with the local priests’ council. “(Canon 515) gives the local bishop almost unfettered discretion which parishes to erect, suppress (close) or change,” explained Father John P. Beal, professor of canon

law at The Catholic University of America in Washington. “All that is required is that he consulted with the presbyteral council before he acts.”

“The bishop is the ultimate authority in his diocese. He’s the one who best judges how to best provide for the pastoral care of the people,” Father Beal added.

Father Kevin McKenna, pastor of Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester, N.Y., said Canon 515 gives a local bishop “quite a bit of leeway” when it comes to deciding the fate of parishes.

“It’s so wide because he has the authority to suppress, erect or alter parishes. That’s a pretty extensive responsibility entrusted to diocesan bishops,” he said.

Consulting with fellow priests is a vital part of determining a parish’s future, Father McKenna added.

“The purpose of the consultation would give him some feedback on what he has intended to do,” he said.

Parishioners in dioceses across the country awaiting decisions on their appeals of parish closings from the Church’s high court likely will find little solace in the decisions by its ad hoc panel.

In Boston, Peter Borre of the Council of Parishes, told CNS that after consulting with a canonist in Rome, he believes the recent decrees essentially mean that “no parish is safe.”

“The decision means ... now the center of gravity (in the Church) becomes the diocese, not the parish,” he said. “The parishes become expendable.

“This is a powerful message for some of these parishes if they think (in their appeals) they can dodge bullets,” he said.

The decision of the Vatican high court’s panel “doesn’t seem to be anything different from what we’ve expected in Cleveland,” said Robert Kloos, vice president of Endangered Catholics, an organization formed to oppose the closings and mergers.

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healing touch — Rachel and Gabe Lozano pose with an icon of Blessed William Joseph Chaminade after a prayer service marking the closing of the investigation into Rachel’s cure from cancer July 16 at Our Lady of the Pillar Church in Creve Coeur, Mo. If her case is declared an authentic miracle by the Vatican, it would be the final step needed for Blessed Chaminade’s canonization. The French priest founded the Society of Mary, also known as the Marianists, in 1817.

(CNS photo/Rebecca Venegoni Tower, St. Louis Review)

St. Louis woman’s cancer cure could be miracle for Blessed Chaminade

By Jennifer Brinker Catholic News Service ST. LOUIS — Rachel Lozano sometimes feels a sense of disbelief that she could owe her life to a miracle.

After suffering three bouts of a rare form of sarcoma, a cancer that affects the connective tissue, the 27-year-old has been cancerfree for the past six years.

Her survival is being attributed to the claim of a miracle through the intercession of Blessed William Joseph Chaminade, founder of the Society of Mary, also known as the Marianists.

On July 16, the St. Louis Archdiocese and the Marianists closed their canonical investigation into the alleged miracle. The findings from that investigation will be presented to the Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes.

If declared an authentic miracle, it would be the final step needed for Blessed Chaminade’s canonization.

That leaves Lozano with “an amazing feeling.” She said the experience has strengthened her faith as a Catholic.

Lozano’s first diagnosis with cancer was in December 1998.

She was 15 and a sophomore at St. Joseph’s Academy in Frontenac. Doctors discovered it was an Askin’s tumor, a rare, malignant cancer affecting the chest wall.

She had emergency surgery, followed by chemotherapy and six weeks of daily radiation.

Her doctor, Robert Bergamini,

and the staff at the Cardinal’s Kids Cancer Center in Creve Coeur took a holistic approach to her illness, including the art therapy sessions that inspired Lozano to pursue the subject for a master’s degree in the fall.

In 2001, the cancer came back, this time in her bone marrow. Intense chemotherapy in the first half of 2001 forced her to miss the second half of her senior year. That June, doctors recommended an autologous stem-cell transplant. The procedure almost killed her. She spent months afterward recovering. “I pretty much had to learn how to eat and walk again,” she recalled.

In November 2002, doctors discovered a tumor had reappeared, this time in the area of her heart, lungs and spine. It was about the size of a small Nerf football, Lozano said.

Doctors told her she would live “a few weeks, maybe a few months max,” she said. In May a surgeon removed the tumor.

During the treatments, Lozano was one of two teens from her parish chosen to fly to Rome for the September 2000 beatification of Father Chaminade. The cure of an Argentine woman’s lung cancer had been attributed to his intercession.

Lozano, who knew of Blessed Chaminade from growing up in a Marianist parish, said she felt an instant connection to the French priest, who died in 1850. “I started praying more” after the expe-

rience, she added. “I left feeling very peaceful.

After the group returned from Rome, Marianist Father James Tobin, pastor of Our Lady of the Pillar, noticed Lozano’s improvement in health, leading to questions about whether Blessed Chaminade truly could have interceded. The priest wrote his superior general at the time, Father David Fleming. They decided to formally look into whether a miracle could have happened.

Because the alleged miracle took place within the boundaries of the archdiocese, the Marianist community contacted St. Louis Archbishop Robert J. Carlson to open an investigation.

Msgr. John Shamleffer, judicial vicar for the archdiocese, explained that the process for investigating an alleged miracle has a prescribed course, as defined by the Vatican saints’ congregation.

In April, a six-member tribunal was formed, including canon lawyers and medical experts with no ties to Lozano’s treatment. Msgr. Shamleffer said the purpose of the investigation, which ended with an evening vespers service at Our Lady of the Pillar, was to “certify everything and attest to the truthfulness of the witnesses and the process. The information is then sent to the congregation, and they make the determination of whether or not this is a miraculous cure.”

5 The Church in the U.S. Beyond Arizona law debate, common ground seen on immigration solutions August 6, 2010

By Catholic News Service LOS ANGELES — The heated national debate over Arizona’s tough new immigration law has drawn much-needed attention to calls for immigration reform, but it also has obscured the fact that there is “actual common ground” among Americans on “key elements” of reform, according to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles.

The cardinal listed five elements that he said when presented to Americans elicited more agreement than he expected.

He said those elements are: the responsibilities of countries of origins of immigrants; a need for more secure borders; a balance between the need for workers and the supply of workers; agriculture jobs; and

the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or the DREAM Act. The proposed measure would allow children of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States at an early age to become legal residents and qualify for in-state tuition.

Cardinal Mahony said the one area that “creates sharp divisions among us” is a discussion of the path those currently in this country illegally can take toward legal residency, he said.

Some Americans see any method to help people legalize their status as amnesty, commonly defined, he noted, as “a general pardon,” or “a forgetting or overlooking of any past offense.”

But immigrant advocates are not

proposing a “general pardon, forgetting or overlooking of the past without penalty or stringent obligations,” he explained. “Immigrants here without permission would be required to pay for their transgression and ‘get right’ with the law, then earn their way toward eventual citizenship. This is not amnesty.”

He concluded by saying: “There is no excuse for inaction on what is perhaps the country’s most pressing social problem — all-inclusive immigration reform.”

Cardinal Mahony made the comments in a statement dated July 12. Catholic News Service received a copy of it July 15.

To his first point, about the responsibilities of other countries, the cardinal said: “The nations whose

Catholic professor reinstated by University of Illinois for fall term WASHINGTON (CNS) — A Catholic professor barred from teaching courses on Catholicism after he defended in class the Church’s teaching on homosexual behavior has been reinstated by the University of Illinois.

Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor in the university’s religious studies department, learned of the decision July 29. He did not return phone calls from Catholic News Service seeking comment.

The reinstatement came days after a deadline for suing the university set by the Alliance Defense Fund, which had taken on Howell’s case.

Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., the alliance is a nonprofit Christian legal defense organization specializing in religious liberty, sanctity of life and protection of family issues.

Attorney Jordan Lorance, part of the alliance’s legal team working on Howell’s case, told CNS the university’s decision came as a surprise. He charged that the university had violated Howell’s First Amendment right of free speech by firing him.

“The matter is resolved for the moment and we’ll be watching to make sure this is a long-term resolution to the matter,” Lorance said, noting that Howell’s teaching status for the spring semester is unknown.

Howell was dismissed in May following the spring term after a student described as “hate speech” his explanation of the Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are morally wrong.

The reinstatement was announced in a press release from Robin Neal Kaler, the university’s associate chancellor for public affairs. The release said Howell will be on the university’s payroll when he teaches “Introduction to Catholicism” this fall.

Since he began teaching at the university in 2001, Howell had been paid by the Diocese of Peoria, Ill. The teaching assignment was part of his responsibilities as director of the Institute of Catholic Thought at the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center on campus.

Howell also taught a class called “Modern Catholic Thought.” The status of that class is unknown.

The reinstatement appears to be temporary. A faculty committee continues to review Howell’s dismissal to determine if his academic freedom or right to due process were violated.

Another faculty committee studying how Howell was paid concluded that the arrangement between the university and the Newman Center was inappropriate.

“The university values its relationship with the Newman Center and plans to continue offering courses in Catholic studies,” the release said.

When Howell was let go by the university, he also lost his job at the Newman Center because the position was dependent on teaching the courses.

Howell’s dismissal led to a campaign by students and alumni to reinstate him to the position.

Supporters established a Facebook page, Save Dr. Ken, which had gained more than 5,000 followers.

In a July 30 statement, attorney Patricia Gibson, chancellor of the Diocese of Peoria, praised the decision by the University of Illinois to reinstate Howell, adding that diocesan officials would meet with him the first week of August to determine an ongoing role for him at St. John’s Catholic Newman Center to complement his teaching at the university.

The Newman Center and the diocese, she added, “adamantly embrace the whole of Catholic teaching as decreed by the magisterium of the Church.”

citizens must migrate to other countries for decent employment have the primary responsibility to provide economic development and decent job opportunities for their people.

“Too many national governments have simply not taken their responsibility seriously and have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution,” he said.

Next, Cardinal Mahony said, nearly everyone agrees that the United States “has not taken all of the steps possible to secure our national borders.”

But the concern is not just the U.S.-Mexican border, he said, but the U.S.-Canadian border and the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. He also noted that “countless visitors” come through U.S. airports on visas but never leave “when their visas expire,” he said.

The United States does not have the amount of money or personnel to make the borders impenetrable to those wanting to cross illegally, he said.

But he suggested part of the solution to security lies in immigration reform that would increase “the number of employment and family visas for unskilled workers, enabling them to migrate safely and

legally through ports-of-entry.”

“Such a program must ensure that the rights of United States and foreign-born workers are respected,” the cardinal said.

He pointed out that lawmakers and citizens alike seem to agree the agriculture industry needs employees for irrigation, pruning, harvesting, packing and shipping. To address the industry’s cyclical need for workers, he said Congress must pass the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act, “which would legalize farm workers and streamline their entrance into the country.”

He said that to address the status of the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country, any reform measure must require them to register with the federal government, to pay fines and all taxes, and to learn conversational English.

Once these requirements are met, he said, these individuals would be granted permanent resident status.

They would wait another five years to apply for citizenship, like other permanent residents, and would have to demonstrate writing and reading proficiency in English, know U.S. history and meet all other requirements.

6

The Anchor

The Church’s, and the media’s, response to the Graviora Delicta On July 15, the Vatican released updated norms to handle what canon law calls “graviora delicta” or the “more serious crimes.” The publication of these new norms was occasioned above all because of calls to improve and expedite the Church’s procedures with regard to the clerical sexual abuse of minors. Since 2002, there has been particular law in the United States, passed by the American bishops in Dallas in 2002 and ratified by the Vatican, that has given stateside bishops many more potent and prompt procedures to discipline and remove clerics who have harmed the young. These new Vatican norms on the graviora delicta, while not identical to the U.S. Dallas norms, codified many similar improvements in the universal law of the Church.

The norms extended the “prescription” or statute of limitations for the abuse of a minor from 10 to 20 years, until a minor alleging abuse turns 38, while renewing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s ability to waive the statute of limitations on a case-by-case basis. It treats the abuse of an adult without the use of reason as it does the abuse of a minor. It codifies the acquisition, possession, or distribution of pornography of children under 14 as a grave crime subject to the harshest penalties. It accelerates the process and simplifies the procedures for the formal removal of an abusive priest from the priesthood through a decree rather than a trial when the priest’s guilt is evident. It allows for Church tribunals to function more efficiently — and perhaps more effectively in trials of clerics accused of abuse — by allowing lay people to serve as judges and lawyers, provided that they have at least licenses (and not doctorates) in canon law.

It gives the CDF the power to “sanate” or “clean up” any irregularities in the acts of diocesan tribunals, so that clerics guilty of the sexual abuse of minors will not get off on procedural technicalities. There was even the specification that the CDF now has the power — which formerly belonged only to the pope — to judge cardinals, bishops and their equivalents. This means that the CDF not only can judge a prelate who has been guilty of the sexual abuse of minors, but also one, as canon law specifies, “who through culpable negligence illegitimately places or omits an act of ecclesiastical power, ministry or function with harm to another” (1389.2). The CDF now has the ability, in other words, to investigate and judge those bishops who may have culpably transferred priests they knew to be abusive or who failed to act when they became aware. These are all important, substantive changes.

The headlines on July 15-16 all should have read, “Pope Benedict continues his crackdown on abuse.” They didn’t, however, because many segments of the secular media chose to make the story about another update that was made to the Church’s general norms on handling the gravest ecclesiastical crimes: the Vatican codified in the new revision of norms what Pope Benedict had decreed in 2007, that anyone who attempts to confer sacred ordination on a woman, or any woman who attempts to receive sacred ordination, is automatically excommunicated. Several of the headlines and stories pretended that the Catholic Church was implying that those who attempt to ordain women or women who attempt to become Catholic priests — it is impossible for a woman validly to be ordained a Catholic priest — are the equivalent of child molesters. The Church wasn’t saying anything of the sort, as any objective and honest reporter or news organization should have recognized and recognized readily and easily. There was a threefold effect of the deceitful spin, however: first, it took the focus off of the major improvements the Church was making with regard to handling the cases of the sexual abuse of minors; second, it implied that the Church was trying to “change the subject” from abuse to something else; and third, it sought to ridicule the Church’s teachings on the inadmissibility of women to the sacred priesthood, suggesting that the Church is handling the issue of the ordination of woman just as poorly as in many places it handled the clerical sexual abuse of minors.

The first thing that must be said in response is what the Vatican was genuinely doing: it was updating the Church’s norms for all of the most serious ecclesiastical crimes. The section on woman’s ordination was just one of 31 articles, 142 out of 4475 words, or approximately three percent of the document. The document did not involve only updates on the sexual abuse of minors and the ordination of women, but sections on all types of other grave ecclesiastical crimes, whether they be against the faith (heresy, apostasy and schism), against the practice of the sacraments, or against morals (like the sexual abuse of minors). The section on crimes against the sacraments, into which the article on women’s ordination was inserted, was particularly lengthy.

It included crimes against the holy Eucharist, like desecrating the sacred Host or the precious Blood, a priest’s celebrating Mass without faculties or attempting to “concelebrate a Mass” with members of ecclesial communities who are not validly ordained priests or do not have a valid eucharistic rite. It also included crimes against the sacrament of penance, like a priest’s breaking the seal of confession, soliciting sexual sins from penitents, absolving partners in sexual sins, hearing confessions when one does not have the faculties to do so, or a layperson’s pretending to be a priest and hearing confessions.

The context of the document should have communicated to a sincere reporter or reader that the Church considers the sexual abuse of minors as seriously as it does the gravest crimes against the sacraments and the faith and moral life of the Church. That was the Vatican’s intention in publishing the new norms on the sexual abuse of minors within the context of the most serious ecclesiastical crimes. A far more accurate headline would have been that the Church equates the moral desecration of a child — who is by baptism a temple of the Holy Spirit — with the desecration of the Lord himself in holy Communion. It is true that the small section on women’s ordination was new to the document, but the reason for this is historical: in the past, when the Church was putting together the list of the gravest crimes against faith, morals and the sacraments, the attempted ordination of women in the Catholic Church was unheard of. It is something that has only recently become an issue and this was the first new compilation of the Church’s graviora delicta since Pope Benedict made his 2007 decree.

That said, those who charge that the Vatican should have released only the new norms of clergy sexual abuse and waited to include them in a later publication of revised graviora delicta have a point, at least in terms of prudence. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the 13th century that everything is received according to the conditions of the recipient. The vast majority of Catholics and others receive their news about the Church through the secular media, and many in the secular media have repeatedly demonstrated that they are disposed to sensationalize their coverage of the Church, to downplay the efforts and success the Church has been making with respect to the clerical sexual abuse of minors, and to be downright hostile to the Church’s teachings on sexuality, abortion, and the inadmissibility of women to be priests. It is good, on the one hand, that Church leaders do not teach on the basis of opinion polls and hypersensitivity to the moral values of those of the secular journalistic world. On the other hand, Christ does call the children of the light to be as savvy as the children of the world (Lk 16:8) and one lesson that the Church as a whole needs to learn from this episode is that we need to be more conscious of the prism through which many in the secular media are prone to distort what the Church says and does.

August 6, 2010

Avoiding spiritual suicide

In this mini-series on the truly Catholic re- wrote in a pamphlet to the people on Thonon sponse to the scandals, we have looked at the ex- that “those who forge scandals for themselves,” ample of saints, for every crisis in the Church is who “persuade themselves that they will die if a crisis of saints and the holy ones are the “crisis they do not alienate the part that they have in the management team” raised up by God in every Church” are “much crueler than the man who age to show us the path God wants us to follow gives scandal, because to commit suicide is a more unnatural crime than to kill another.” to lead us out of the darkness into the light.

He reminded the people of the Chablais that We began with St. Josemaria Escriva, whom God used as an instrument to call all people, in- Jesus had said, “Scandals are sure to come, but cluding the secular clergy, to a truly holy life, to woe to him by whom they come” (Lk 17:1). genuine fraternity and fraternal correction, and There will always be scandals, Jesus implied, to the sincerity that counteracts the multiple lev- because there will always be people of influence els of mendacity we’ve all seen in the scandals. who commit grave sins. It is appropriate, Jesus We then focused on SS. Charles Lwanga and Jo- continued, for scandalizers “to have a great seph Mkasa who demonstrated for us the horror millstone fastened around his neck and thrown all of us should have toward sexual sins against into the depth of the sea” (Mt 18:6). St. Francis the young and how we are called to do all it takes added, however, that, if we allow scandals to to stop such abuse within the Church and within destroy our faith, we essentially tie a millstone society, even to the point of martyrdom. Next, around our own neck — and toss ourselves out we turned to SS. Gerard Majella, Vincent de of the barque of Peter, where Christ is at the Paul and John Vianney, who exemplified how to helm, and into the depth of a sea of misery. The respond in a holy way to false accusations, even worst sin against charity we could ever commit those alleging the most wicked behavior. Last against ourselves, he said, would be to commit time, we looked at the life of St. Maria Goretti, spiritual suicide in this way.

St. Francis’ powerful candor and patient exwho showed us how to respond in a saintly way to suffering sexual abuse and whose example planations of the teachings of the Church in these not only illuminated the path of forgiveness for pamphlets began to have an impact. A steady stream of lapsed members of her Catholics began family but eventuto seek reconally even brought ciliation, and he her abuser to total welcomed them repentance. with great merToday we turn cy, meekness to the last segand joy. Within ment of the minithe span of five series and focus

By Father years, the holy on the largest Roger J. Landry “Apostle of the group of people Chablais” had affected by the re-evangelized clergy sex abuse scandals: the multitude of Catholics and others and reconciled almost the entire region.

St. Francis’ thoughts, words, courage, and who neither suffered nor committed abuse, who haven’t witnessed it, who haven’t been directly holy example need to be reiterated and emuinvolved in it, and who haven’t been accused of lated by those in the Church today. There are it, but whose faith has been profoundly shaken multitudes who have downgraded their practice by it. The saint who perhaps best illustrates the of the faith or given it up altogether as a result pathway forward for those in this circumstance of the clergy sex abuse scandals. We need new is St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the great apostles of Chatham and Chelmsford, Chelsea apostle of the Chablais in eastern France after and Charlton.

The challenges we face in evangelizing those the Protestant Reformation.

When St. Francis was ordained a priest in who have distanced themselves from the Church 1593, the Diocese of Geneva was in shambles. in recent years likely will not involve sleeping in Decades of scandals among the clergy had made garrisons or being ambushed by assassins. But it very easy for Calvinism to spread throughout the Lord needs us in 2010 just as much as he the region. The people were so poorly catechized needed Francis de Sales 416 years ago.

May St. Francis from heaven move us to rethat they were not able to respond to Calvinist arguments. They were, moreover, so angry at spond as modern Good Samaritans, going out the hypocrisy of their local churchmen that they like he did after those who are tempted toward were easily incited to turn on the Catholic faith, spiritual suicide, showing them by words and run their priests out of town and take up a form witness what the Church truly is, and patiently of Christianity that at least seemed to be moral. and heroically helping them to remove the millThe Bishop of Geneva even had to flee the see stones from their neck. ******************** city and take up residence in Annecy, France.

This is not just the last article in this miniSome reports stated that there were only about series on responding to the scandals but the last 20 Catholics left in the vast region.

Nine months after Francis’ ordination, the column for the foreseeable future in my contribishop asked his priests for volunteers to try to bution to this “Putting into the Deep” series.

I have asked Father Jay Mello to take over re-evangelize the region, knowing that it was minimally a tough assignment, but likely could the column, which he will begin next week. He prove to be a fatal one. Francis was the only one is going to take a slightly different approach to step forward. The 27-year-old, traveling by than mine, and try to guide us practically on foot, set out to try to win back the vast geograph- how to launch into the full depth of the means of ic area. The work was rough and dangerous. For holiness God has given us. I’m looking forward his protection, he was ordered to sleep at night very much to his series.

I will continue to write the editorial every in a military garrison. On two occasions, assassins ambushed him along the way; both times, week on this page. I am going to dedicate the however, he survived, seemingly miraculously. extra time that not needing to write this column On another occasion, he was attacked by wolves will give me to focus on a few longer writing and had to spend a glacial night in a tree. But he projects: finishing a book for seminarians on St. John Vianney, taking up again some longlabored on.

Because preaching was proving so danger- shelved academic work on John Paul II’s mesous, he began to write leaflets patiently setting sages to young people, and, if all goes well, forth Catholic teaching, charitably explaining penning a book for priests on John Paul II’s thethe errors of Calvinism, and tackling head on ology of the body.

I thank you for making this series a part of controversial issues.

To those who still harbored anger toward the your weekly reading over the past few years. clerics for their scandalous behavior, he didn’t I very much enjoyed writing it and examining hesitate to say that what the clerics did was the with you the greatest heroes in the history of equivalent of spiritual murder. But just as plain- the world. I pray that the saints will continue ly, he called the residents of the region not to do to guide us from above and intercede for us for something even worse, to commit spiritual sui- God’s grace so that we might follow in their cide through focusing on the scandals so much footsteps.

Father Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of that they cut themselves off from Christ in the sacraments and in the Church he founded. He Padua Parish in New Bedford.

Putting Into the Deep

August 6, 2010

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ohn Henry Newman is famous for his views on the laity’s role in the Church.

He’s also famous for his mature views on Catholics’ duties toward the papacy.

Of the first, Newman wrote, “If even in the preparation of a dogmatic definition, the faithful are consulted, as lately in the instance of the Immaculate Conception, it is at least natural to anticipate such an act of kind feeling and sympathy in great practical questions.” That is, though bishops are successors to the Apostles, and thus superior in the governing and teaching authority they exercise within the mystical Body, precisely for this reason it’s unbecoming for them to ignore the views of lay Catholics in practical matters.”

He followed up this comment with a brief article entitled, “On Consulting the Laity in Matters of Doctrine.”

Though Newman penned this article anonymously, attacks on him were so severe he ceased to write for five years, until he published his autobiography “Apologia pro vita sua.” John Coulson called “On Consulting the Laity” “an act of political

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The Anchor

What is the province of the laity?

suicide from which his career didn’t consist of protest but, in within the Church was never fact, precisely its opposite: the fully to recover.” Retorting to fact that the consensus of the Newman, a monsignor rhefaithful had preserved central torically asked, “What is the teachings — communion with province of the laity? To hunt, Rome — when many bishops to shoot, to entertain.” Given had failed to do so. A test case that many of us don’t shoot for Newman was something of our own free will, and that on which he was an expert: the sadly few Americans have leisure to “entertain” anymore, this left The Enduring lay people with precious Importance of little to do. It earned Newman “the reputation Cardinal Newman at Rome of being the Dr. Peter J. Mango most dangerous man in England.” One bishop requested that he be “Arian Controversy.” denounced for heresy.

Arians had believed that Newman was deeply woundChrist might be “divine,” ed, but he had never asked to perhaps somehow proceeding “democratize” the Church. from God eternally, but that he Though many in Rome made him suffer, Newman didn’t seek was in no way equal to God. (Islam, with its cry “Allahu independence from Rome. If akbar” — “God is greater!” — that’s what he had wanted, he is an echo of this controversy could have become Protestant 1,700 years later.) Overnight, again — perhaps even founded St. Jerome wrote, “the whole his own sect. Yet it was “low world groaned and marveled church” Protestantism that to find itself Arian.” Many Newman had rejected after bishops signed off on Arianreading the Church Fathers. ism. Yet within the confines of Newman’s knowledge of the empire the laity never took ancient Christianity revealed to Arianism. They believed in something else to him too. It

I like New York

towering structure, I told her t was a chance to broaden it was “no big deal.” What I Emilie’s horizons ... giving didn’t tell her was that I clung to her an opportunity to witness in the deck walls for dear life. As person, the comings and goings Denise always says, “Fight your of the self-proclaimed capital of fears.” the world.

We disembarked at Penn Everyone should get to New Station, hopped on the A train York City at least once in a to Brooklyn for our home away lifetime to see what makes the Big Apple tick. Despite my deep-seeded disdain for the N.Y. Yankees, our vacation consisted of a four-day visit to one of the busiest cities in the world — it was for EmiBy Dave Jolivet lie, mind you.

The train ride south was pleasant enough, but from home, and settled in. Wastwhen we rumbled through the ing no time, we hit the A train Bronx, I couldn’t wipe the sneer off my face. The passenger sitting back up north to midtown Manhattan for the sights, sounds and beside me (Emilie and Denise were sitting together) edged slow- smells of the Apple.

After a walk around Times ly away as I quietly growled.

Square and a trek to Central Park Once into Manhattan, the to Strawberry Fields, the tribute bitter taste of pinstripes waned and the excitement of the big city to the late Beatle John Lennon, and getting a look at the Dakota swelled within me. I had been to where he was gunned down, we NYC several times, but I was excited for Emilie. I quickly pointed made our way to our Mt. Everest.

We had supper in a bar and out the Empire State Building, for grill in the Empire State Buildwhich we already had tickets to ing before we started our ascent. ascend to the observation deck.

Emilie didn’t eat too well. I graEmilie, like her old man, is ciously helped clean her plate. afraid of heights, and viewing After clearing the security the nearly-1,500-foot edifice, her jaw dropped and she whimpered, lines, we were herded into the elevator ... all 16 of us ... for the “I’m not going up there.”

80-story liftoff. That was the part Having already climbed the

My View From the Stands

Emilie feared most. In less than 30 seconds we spilled out of our little box-shaped chariot for another ride up six more flights.

Out we stepped, and there we were ... 1,200 feet above The City. Emilie was amazed.

She snapped pictures like a pro — pictures of uptown, pictures of downtown, pictures of Queens, pictures of Jersey. She even peered down to the streets below.

She loved it.

I was so proud — especially since, unbeknownst to Emilie, I didn’t peer down to the streets directly below — uggghhh.

The rest of the trip was a whirlwind of visits to the somber Ground Zero, to the Cake Boss’ bakery in Hoboken, N.J., to a Broadway play with seats in a box a la Abe Lincoln, a fun lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe surrounded by Beatles memorabilia, and countless rides beneath the NYC streets. And no effort was made to visit Yankee Stadium.

In all, it was a great trip to an exciting city. I do like New York ... the city. But I can’t bring myself to say, like millions of others, “I love New York.” That would be like staring straight down from the Empire State Building observation deck — not going to happen.

Christ’s divinity, even when many intellectually fashionable bishops didn’t.

Newman wrote of the laity that “their advice, their opinion, their judgment on the question of definition is not asked; but the matter of fact … their belief, is sought for, as a testimony to that apostolical [sic] tradition, on which alone any doctrine whatsoever can be defined.” (The next time you read Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church “Lumen Gentium,” No.12, remember Newman — because he’s most likely behind it.) If such was the case with doctrine, all the more reason should bishops respect lay people offering opinions on practical matters. As for Rome, Newman affirmed that “a pope, as a private doctor, and … bishops, when not teaching formally, may err, as we find they did err in the fourth century.”

Yet Newman didn’t propose receiving the laity’s opinions through broadsides or character assassinations. He didn’t advocate organizing demonstrations to browbeat bishops.

Newman wrote to the Duke of Norfolk, “I shall drink — to the pope, if you please — still to conscience first, and to the pope afterwards.” This expression is understandable only

in light of what Newman says elsewhere in this letter, however: “There is only one oracle of God, the Holy Catholic Church and the pope as her [visible] head.” That is: if one’s conscience is formed in accord with the “obedience of faith” — of which St. Paul wrote — one obeys the pope precisely because one obeys conscience first. One doesn’t obey a wellformed conscience in disobedience to the pope in matters of faith; for Newman this would be a complete contradiction.

In the end Newman believed in giving the Church the benefit of the doubt even in matters not touching directly on doctrine.

“Trust the Church of God implicitly,” he advised, “even when your natural judgment would take a different course from hers, and would induce you to question her prudence. … Recollect what a hard task she has; how she is sure to be criticized and spoken against, whatever she does — recollect how much she needs your loyal and tender devotion.”

Dr. Mango, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Cardinal Newman, teaches philosophy at the Thornwood Center for Higher Studies as well as at the Archdiocese of New York’s St. John Neumann Pre-Theology Program and Institute for Religious Studies. This is the eighth in a 10-part series.

Revised and updated ...

2010-2011 Diocese of Fall River Catholic Directory ... shipping August 2010 Published by The Anchor Publishing Company P.O. Box 7, Fall River, Massachusetts 02722 Please ship _____ directories x $18 each, including shipping and handling. Total Enclosed $_____ NAME ____________________________________________ ADDRESS _________________________________________ CITY _____________________ STATE _______ ZIP _____ Please make checks payable to “Anchor Publishing” For more information, email theanchor@anchonews.org, call 508-675-7151, or order online at www.anchornews.org

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any of us have heard the story of a man who found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, and he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.

Then the butterfly seemed to stop making any progress.

It appeared as if it had gotten as far and could not go any farther.

It was then the man decided to help the butterfly.

He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly came out of the cocoon easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch because he expected that, at any time, the wings would enlarge and expand and be able to support the body that would contract in time.

Neither of his expecta-

August 6, 2010

The Anchor

Sometimes we need struggles in our lives tions happened. In fact, the achieve what he expects from butterfly spent the rest of its us. life crawling around with a At times in our daily life swollen body and shriveled we need to wait patiently for wings. It was never able to results, or for things to hapfly. pen. If we lose patience, then What the man in his kindit could or will hurt us badly. ness and haste to help did Life often in and of itself not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the Homily of the Week struggle required Nineteenth Sunday for the butterfly to in Ordinary Time get through the tiny opening were God’s

By Deacon way of forcing fluid Edward J. Hussey from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight is a matter of waiting. We once it gained its freedom need to wait for love to hapfrom the cocoon. pen. We need to wait for that Sometimes struggles are new baby. We need to wait exactly what we need in our for a doctor’s appointment life. If God allowed us to go for ourselves or loved ones. through our life without any We need tremendous patience obstacles it would cripple us. for life to change for better.

We would not be as strong A farmer for example as we could have been. And sows the seeds and waits we could never take flight to for the seed to sprout, and

then he needs to do a series of things to get this seed to grow and bear fruit.

Waiting has a special effect of growing in patience.

We try hard to better our situations around us. We wait for things to happen. We wait for the better house, better health, and better amenities around us. What about our experience of the Lord?

Do we try to better our relationship with him? Are we too tired to spend time in prayer?

The first reading tells us of the faith of our forefathers who waited for liberation from the captivity of the Egyptians. They waited in hope that the Lord would come and help them in their time of pain and uncertainty.

He promised through the prophets and delivered his children and destroyed their

enemies.

Our second reading tells about the faith and patience of Abraham, his wife Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob (Heb 11: 8-9). Abraham obeyed God, left his homeland, lived in tents his entire life always looking towards the city of joy in the Lord. In his heart he desired a better country — ­ one filled with joy.

Our reading from the Gospel of Luke is an exercise in patience telling us to be prepared in the sense of persevering in our living faith.

Our faith lives take work and patience, and after having preserved in our living faith throughout our lives, we cannot afford not to have our lamps lit waiting for him.

Our waiting and patience and living a life in Christ will bring us the reward we desire.

Deacon Hussey serves at St. Patrick’s Parish in Somerset.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. Aug. 7, Hb 1:12-2:4; Ps 9:8-13; Mt 17:14-20. Sun. Aug. 8, Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Wis 18:6-9; Ps 33:1,12,18-22; Heb 11:1-2,8-19 or 11:1-2,8-12; Lk 12:32-48 or 12:35-40. Mon. Aug. 9, Ez 1:2-5,24-28c; Ps 148:1-2,11-14; Mt 17:22-27. Tues. Aug. 10, Lawrence, Deacon, Martyr, 2 Cor 9:6-10; Ps 112:1-2,5-9; Jn 12:24-26. Wed. Aug. 11, Ez 9:1-7; 10:18-22; Ps 113:1-6; Mt 18:15-20. Thur. Aug. 12, Ez 12:1-12; Ps 78:56-59,61-62; Mt 18: 21-19:1. Fri. Aug. 13, Ez 16:1-15,60,63 or 16:59-63; (Ps) Is 12:2-3,4bcd,5-6; Mt 19:3-12.

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ne does wonder sometimes about God’s ways with his most devoted servants. Several years back, Father James Schall, S.J., one of the greatest of American Jesuits and the living embodiment of Catholic liberal learning at Georgetown, was struck by an illness that cost him an eye. This summer, Father Schall is recovering from some nasty surgery, which involved removing a cancerous jawbone and its attendant teeth and replacing the jaw with bone taken from Schall’s leg. Father Schall has taken this with his customary faith, good humor, and sang-froid; his convales-

In praise of Father Schall cence, and his enormous grace at peace with the absurdities amidst suffering, prompt me to of the world, which he knows pay him long overdue tribute. to be part of a divine plan he He is a deeply learned doesn’t presume to grasp fully. man, yet he wears his learning Yet he is no ambiguist: he lightly. He looks the part of would rather thrust his hand the old-school Jesuit he is: if into the fire than put a thought someone told me that, like the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, Schall uses duct-tape to fix his battered shoes, or that he cut chunks out of old Clorox bottles to make

By George Weigel the tab collars for his faded clerical shirts, I wouldn’t be surprised. not congruent with the truths He is a marvelous teacher and of Catholic faith on paper. I a great spiritual director; and imagine he would happily die he is both because he is a man a martyr; the thought of the axeman’s face, confronted with Father Schall’s smiling, one-eyed visage, is worth a meditation.

He is the author of many books: some, exercises in political philosophy of the highest caliber; others of a more popular sort. His scholarly work is finely balanced between Jerusalem and Athens, embracing both revelation and reason. And while he has written on just about everything, from Plato to American sports, he brings to whatever engages his attention that sense of wonder with which all true think-

The Catholic Difference

ing starts.

The man is also very, very funny. Indeed, he once concocted the greatest book subtitle since Gutenberg. Another Sort of Learning is a guide for university students adrift in the vacuities and disarray of so much of contemporary higher education. An insight into Father Schall’s qualities as mentor to those lost in the groves of academe (or to those wondering, years later, what happened to them there) may be gleaned from what follows the invitation to “another sort of learning” on the book’s cover: “Selected Contrary Essays on How Finally to Acquire an Education While Still at College or Anywhere Else: Containing Some Belated Advice about How to Employ Your Leisure Time When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in Spite of Your Highest Earned Academic Degree, Together with Sundry Books Lists Nowhere Else in Captivity to Be Found.”

Were I ever to find anything I had written on a James Schall book list, I would face the final assize confident that I could give a satisfactory answer to the question of what I had

done to all those trees.

How did Catholicism get great priests and teachers like Father Schall? That’s perhaps the most urgent question facing Catholic higher education today, as the generation of giants that emerged from the Catholic intellectual renaissance of the mid-20th century passes from the scene.

My hunch is that the giants we have known — and, in the case of Father Schall, hope to know for years to come — combined a distinctively Catholic rootedness in the intellectual tradition of the West with a sense of adventure in engaging a modernity of which they were neither overawed nor afraid. A solid son of the American Midwest (Pocahontas, Iowa, in his case), James Schall could think clearly in the turbulence of the late 20th and early 21st century because he was solidly grounded in the enduring truths, and because he was a man of faith who knew that God’s purposes would, finally, win out in history. May God grant him a swift recovery and many more years of showing us the way.

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

August 6, 2010

What I didn’t do on my summer vacation Friday 30 July 2010 — on is that there are no deadlines. vacation in my mind — AnVacations provide the opchor column deadline for 6 portunity to reconnect with August people in the place I live the hat did I do on my rest of the year. Relationships, summer vacation? not exotic destinations, are In a nutshell, dear readers: not a blessed thing. Isn’t that what summer is all about?

Reflections of a Having spent some 20 Parish Priest years of ministry on Cape Cod, I know that

By Father Tim summers there are very Goldrick busy. Such is not the case in The Dightons.

The summer schedule here is what refresh my soul. “Vacarelaxed. tion’’ is a state of mind.

I enjoyed the couple of As I write this column, I’m weeks I didn’t have an Anchor sitting on my patio recondeadline hanging over my necting to Mother Nature. head. Father John Driscoll, Actually, it’s a “patio” in my who worked so many years in imagination only. There’s no the Anchor office, says that pavement. There isn’t even the best thing about retirement grass. It’s just a patch of bare

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The Ship’s Log

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The Anchor earth. Until a month ago, this is where the undersized garage and makeshift breezeway stood. The garage was only large enough for a Model T Ford. It was useless. The breezeway was infested with toxic black mold and voracious carpenter ants. The add-on structures have been leveled and the exterminator called. The exterior wall of the house is again exterior.

So, here I sit.

I can’t bear a patch of bare earth, no matter how small. It’s such a waste. “Plant, plant!” my conscience told me, but I couldn’t. Soil needs preparation before it’s planted. Planting arid, compacted land is an exercise in futility, not fertility.

Then it hit me — containers.

The Elizabethan Age revisited

superstition.” The title of the s part of my relaxing book indicates the enthusiasm summer, I read “Come with which many embraced Rack! Come Rope!” by Robert torture and death, which often Hugh Benson — a riveting tale became necessary in witnessset in Elizabethan England, ing to the one true faith. where recusant Catholics are While we are not presently pressured to submit to their living in such an age, I read sovereign in matters of faith. the book with the troubling The queen was following in backdrop of our own generaher father’s footsteps, insisting that she — rather than the pope tion, in which the foundational institution of marriage is in — was the legitimate head of danger of being redefined. the Church, and that adherence to the Church of Rome was thereby an act of treason.

There were a series of punishments for those who refused to obey, beginning with fines for those who

By Genevieve Kineke would not make their “Easter duty” at the local state-sponsored State after state is insisting that church. While many chose to we change our views on what pay the fines, their increase constitutes a valid marriage over the years added a cumulain order to leave behind its tive burden that led many to cave over time. The prospect of association with a life-long, fruitful union between a man selling off entire properties to and a woman. Other countries raise the required funds caused beyond our borders are doing deep conflicts within families, likewise, despite deeply held who would likewise be unable beliefs to the contrary, with to find meaningful work in the the Judeo-Christian view now community. considered to be bigoted and English priests continued to hateful. be formed in French seminarTo this end, a graduate ies, returning home in disguise student at a state school in and being spirited from house Georgia was recently told to house to evade capture. The that “her Christian beliefs are lives of the priests and the lay unethical and incompatible faithful who harbored them with the prevailing views of were forfeited, though there the counseling profession.” were usually opportunities to Thus she cannot share her repent: the first capture drawfaith with others, she must add ing a warning, the second leadintense remedial reading to her ing to more dire consequences, heavy load, write essays on her with the ultimate price being response to each piece and unhanged, drawn and quartered if dergo diversity training. If she they held fast to their “popish

The Feminine Genius

cannot bring herself to eschew what her faith teaches her about marriage and intimacy then she cannot be certified in her chosen field.

Similarly, in Spain the government has just imposed a heavy fine on a media group for airing a commercial supportive of traditional family values. For many years now, various human rights commissions in Canada have fined those who publicly defend traditional marriage, including priests, journals and even one local council of the Knights of Columbus.

Many business owners in the U.S. and Canada who cater to the various aspects of wedding celebrations are extremely apprehensive about their conscientious right to reject services to same-sex couples, fearing dire consequences.

Soon enough, the Elizabethan Age may be fully upon us, with the state standing ready to demand the suppression of the conscience of its citizens.

No longer will only pharmacists wonder what they will be required to dispense, but every person may have to “diversify” his creed to accommodate what he finds objectively sinful — or suffer the consequences.

It’s hard to relax this summer with such a looming mandate to relax the standards of our faith.

Mrs. Kineke is the author of The Authentic Catholic Woman (Servant Books) and associate editor of woman. catholicexchange.com.

I rushed over to my favorite store, Ocean State Job Lot, and bought some pots. I filled the containers with rich earth and planted them. I hung a bird feeder. I picked up a couple of inexpensive garden features.

Now here I sit on the bare earth, surrounded by container plants and watching the squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, and occasional cardinal gobble the birdseed. I have reconnected to the Wild Kingdom outside my backdoor. This vacation is going well.

Sitting out in the yard, I get to meet my neighbors. When the man next-door returned on furlough from military duty in Afghanistan, I walked over and joined the celebration.

When the great grandmother found herself locked out of the house, we were both worried that an unattended infant was inside. I tried but failed to break into the neighbor’s house. I phoned the Dighton Police. It turned out the baby had gone for a ride with his mother. Summer is about being neighborly.

I hosted a backyard cookout for my brother priests of the Taunton Deanery. What’s most important about offering hospitality, it seems to me, is not the ambience or even the food. It’s the company.

A dozen or so men were able to spend a couple of hours together enjoying each other’s company and taking the occasion to thank Father Jay Maddock, formerly Dean of Taunton, as he transferred.

Farewell speeches were forbidden. The men seemed to enjoy themselves and the weather was perfect. We priests have so little time to socialize with each other these days. This is not a good thing.

Priesthood is not an easy life.

We get by with a little help from our friends.

Having time to do so, I adopted yet another retired racing greyhound. My friends told me I was crazy, but what else is new? Gabe (aka Starfire) is a senior dog, almost 10 years of age. After his retirement from professional sports, he lived for five years in a neighboring village.

Arlene, his previous owner, mentioned to her veterinarian, Doctor Meg, that Gabe was constantly crying. Diagnosis: this animal athlete was lonely.

Referral: contact the Dog Father of Dighton (that would be me.) Gabe has now joined the pack of two other greyhounds (Transit and Cleopatra) and the alpha dog (that being me also.) Gabe wouldn’t eat for the first two days. Now he scoffs two meals a day with the other dogs. I sneak him an extra portion. If I leave the room while they’re feeding, though, Gabe abandons his food and follows me. Gabe follows me everywhere.

Gabe came from a house with no stairs. He had to be taught how to climb stairs.

He whined downstairs for a couple of nights. On the third night, Gabe mustered his courage and came upstairs. This was both good news and bad news. Descending the stairs is scarier than ascending them.

Gabe barricaded himself on the second floor and refused to budge. I grabbed him and carried him down. He weighs 70 pounds. Thankfully, Gabe has now learned to handle stairs on his own.

I did nothing on my summer vacation, but it’s been productive.

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

Shrine of The Little Flower of Jesus JUBILEE CHURCH & SHRINE

17th Annual Feast Day Celebration First Shrine To St. Theresa In America

Sunday, August 15, 2010 Rain or Shine

10:30 AM ~ Prayers at Holy Stairs 11:15 AM ~ Stations of the Cross 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM ~ Lunch 1:00 PM ~ Concert 1:30 PM ~ Outdoor Living Rosary 2:45 PM ~ Procession with St. Theresa 3:00 PM ~ Chaplet of Divine Mercy Solemn Feast Mass - Celebrant: Father John Randall (Pastor Emeritus of St. Charles Borromeo Church, Providence, R.I.) Blessing with St. Theresa’s Relic ~ Continuous video showing of St. Theresa’s life ~

• Gift Shop • Food & Refreshments • Canopy - Covered benches at outdoor altar • Bus Groups welcome • Priests are invited to concelebrate the Feast Mass • Bring Chairs and umbrellas for the sun

For information please call (401) 568-0575 • (401) 568-8280 E-mail: shiirl@cox.net www.SaintTheresaShrine.com

Shrine is located at intersection of Rt. 102 and Rt. 7 in Nasonville (Burrillville), R.I. (near Wright’s Farm Restaurant)

10

The Anchor

August 6, 2010

Dedicated parishioner quietly works behind the scenes

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

SOUTH EASTON — Although he downplays his volunteer efforts at Holy Cross Parish in South Easton, Larry Hassan is clearly one of those indispensable people who quietly works behind the scenes to keep his parish community afloat.

“I think my involvement with the parish has helped to enrich not only my own, but everyone else’s faith,” Hassan said. “In my opinion, it’s not something you can get from just going to Mass for an hour every week.

You’ve got to practice it in your daily life.”

For nearly a decade now, Hassan has been a member of the South Easton parish; but it wasn’t until his daughter, Victoria, started preparing for her first Communion a few years ago that he decided to get involved with the parish Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.

“The reason I started going to RCIA was our daughter had just gone through classes for first Communion,” Hassan said. “I always felt awkward about just dropping her off.

She was going to get educated and I began wondering about what she was learning. When she started asking me questions I realized I couldn’t answer many of them. That’s when I decided I’m going to go reeducate myself.”

It was Hassan’s initial curiosity about RCIA that led to his active participation in other parish activities,

including the newly-implemented intergenerational Generations of Living Faith program to which he now devotes a great deal of his time.

“It’s a great program that covers a lot of material,” Hassan said, adding that he’s gone through it with his wife and daughter.

“They provide good information about Scripture, the sacraments and other tenets of our faith. You go with your family, you share in prayer and a meal, and then they have talks and classes on different topics.

Sometimes they have breakout sessions for the younger children. It all pivots around the topic of the day. Anchor person of I think a lot of Hassan. families have gotten a great deal out of it.”

The GOLF programs runs five or six sessions a month from October through May and Hassan has stayed

on to help with the meals for every session since going through it himself.

“Other people prepare the food, but I help with setting up the tables, getting the coffee ready, and doing all the setup and clean up,” he said.

Although similar to the RCIA process, Hassan said GOLF is a little less formal and is open to everyone.

“It’s a great way to stay in tune with and educated about your faith,” Hassan said. “My wife, daughter and I all agree that our experience of going to Mass every week is a lot better having through the week — Larry gone it. It opens your eyes a little bit more to what our religion is all about.”

Hassan’s initial foray into parish activities would soon lead to other stints like assisting his wife Michelle as liaisons to the diocesan Family Ministry Office; preparing the Liturgy of the Word for Sunday children’s Masses; and a seat on the pastoral council, which he’s held for the past year.

“When I was first nominated to join the pastoral council, I was thinking: ‘What am I going to bring to the table?’” he said. “Having now been on it for a year, I think it’s made a difference. I’ve had people come up to me and say ‘thank you.’ So I think getting involved has made an impact.”

Through his involvement in various parish activities, Hassan has also developed a greater appreciation for his parish community.

“It’s funny how you build relationships and friendships by getting involved,” he said. “I’ve become good friends with many of my fellow parishioners. I got to know all these people that I would always see in church every week and I didn’t know who they were. There were a lot of people I’d say ‘hi’ to at Mass and I never even knew their names. It’s just been a great experience.”

Hassan’s pastor, Father James Fenstermaker, CSC, described him as a generous and devoted parishioner.

“Along with being a very hard worker, perhaps the word that would best describe him is humility,” Father Fenstermaker said. “He is a person happy to work behind the scenes, not seeking attention or accolades.”

So it’s understandable that Hassan felt somewhat undeserving of being The Anchor’s Person of the Week.

“It’s funny how some of the things you do can make a difference,” he said.

“You realize some of the things you do people are really thankful for.”

Having now become actively involved with his parish, Hassan encouraged others to consider doing the same.

“I always thought I was too busy to get involved,” he said. “But it’s not about expending a lot of time and energy. Even if you’re only able to help out for an hour or so — people appreciate the help. People just need to ask around at their own parish and I’m sure they can find some way to pitch in. When I first started, I didn’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing now. But you just find your own groove and your own niche. Once you do that, it becomes fun.”

And with ever-changing pastoral assignments, Hassan noted how important it is for parish members to participate to keep things going.

“You always forget that the pastors and priests aren’t going to be around forever, but we’re the parishioners — we’re the ones who are going to be there all the time,” he said. “So the more involved we are, the better our parish will be.”

To nominate a person, send an email to: FatherRogerLandry@anchornews.org.

August 6, 2010

11

The Anchor

Archdiocese sends results of Father Peyton inquiry to Vatican B y George P. Matysek Jr .

C atholic News Service BALTIMORE — Holy Cross Father Patrick Peyton, a priest whose popular radio and television programs promoted family prayer, is a step closer to sainthood.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore recently completed an exhaustive investigation into Father Peyton’s life and ministry, and archdiocesan officials sent copies of its 16,000-page report to the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes.

Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien celebrated the closing of the archdiocesan inquiry with a July 20 Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.

Citing the archdiocese’s experience with other sainthood causes, the Vatican asked Baltimore to take over the investigation of Father Peyton’s cause from the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., in 2006. His cause was opened in June 2001 in that diocese. Father Peyton, who died in 1992, is buried in Easton, Mass.

Father Gilbert Seitz, Archbishop O’Brien’s delegate for the inquiry, said the Vatican will use the Baltimore report to determine if Father Peyton lived in a heroic manner, which, if confirmed, would result in the Church declaring him venerable.

Church authorities will then investigate possible healings that could be attributed to Father Peyton’s intercession. If a healing is determined to be miraculous, Father Peyton — currently known as a servant of God — will be declared blessed.

Another miracle will be needed for him to be canonized.

Father Peyton, who came to the United States from Ireland at age 19, was the founder of Holy Cross Family Ministries, which includes Family Rosary, Family Theater Productions, Father Peyton Family Institute and Family Rosary International.

“It was fascinating coming to know Father Peyton,” said Father Seitz, noting that approximately 80 witnesses who knew or worked with Father Peyton were interviewed for the report.

There were 50 witnesses from the United States and 30 from 13 other countries.

“He was fierce in his loyalty to the Church and he was very proud to be Catholic and to share his faith,” Father Seitz said told The Catholic Review, Baltimore’s archdiocesan newspaper. “He probably was the first to see the role that electronic media could play in evangelizing.”

Dolores Hope, widow of entertainer Bob Hope, was among the American witnesses interviewed. Joseph Campanella, a Hollywood actor, also gave testimony. Father Peyton came to know them and many movie stars and celebrities after founding Family Theater Productions in Hollywood, Calif., in 1947. His ministry produced more than 600 radio and television programs and 10,000 broadcasts.

The priest also conducted rosary crusades for millions of people in dozens of countries.

“He was extremely dedicated to promoting devotion to the Blessed Mother through the rosary,” said Father Seitz.

The Baltimore team asked the bishops of 19 dioceses in the United States and 13 dioceses in other countries to appoint boards to take testimony and forward it to Baltimore. Father Seitz said the inquiry reached out to people “from Sydney to San Diego and from Rome to Rio de Janeiro.”

“Our task was to coordinate

the gathering of all that information,” he said. “We also gathered archival material. A historical commission was appointed and its members visited seven different archival depositories to gather historical documents.”

CNS file photo

Servant of God Holy Cross Father Patrick Peyton

Father Peyton, the “rosary priest,” is well known for coining these phrases: “The family that prays together, stays together,” and “A country without prayer is a country without peace.”

Eileen Gerwin, a parishioner of Our Lady of the Angels in Catonsville, served as Father Peyton’s first secretary from 1945 to 1948 in Albany, N.Y. She met the priest when she was a sophomore at Vincentian Institute, a high school Father Peyton often visited to speak about the rosary.

“He used to dictate letters to me after school and I would type them up,” remembered Gerwin, who was one of the witnesses in the inquiry. “They went out to priests and bishops and others to promote the rosary.”

Gerwin remembered Father Peyton as being a “gentle” and “brilliant” man who was wholly devoted to Mary.

“He loved her and didn’t mind telling people all she did for him and his family,” Gerwin said. “He dedicated every minute of his life to her. I never remember him going to a play or a sports event or movie. He almost seemed to have no other passion than our Blessed Mother.”

Gerwin said she felt like she was in the presence of a holy person whenever she was near Father Peyton.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he’s a saint,” she said.

12

The Anchor

Pope begins writing last volume on life of Jesus VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI is dedicating his holiday to writing the third and final volume in his series on the life of Jesus, which will cover his infancy and childhood.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, told journalists July 23 that just a few days after the pope arrived at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo July 7, he already showed signs of being fully “restored and beaming.”

The pope “immediately began to dedicate himself to reading and studying which, even though it’s demanding, it doesn’t tire him out,” he said.

“It’s clear, therefore, how important it is for him to finish this great project begun years ago,” he added.

Pope Benedict started writing the first volume of the work during his summer vacation in 2003, two years before he was elected pope.

After his election, the pope said in that volume’s preface that he used all of his free time to complete the book, which was published in the spring of 2007 and covered Jesus’ life from his baptism to his transfiguration.

In the United States, the English translation was published by Doubleday.

The pope handed his editors the final draft of the second volume of his book, “Jesus of

Nazareth,” in May. Father Lombardi said it’s not expected to be on sale in bookstores until next spring since the work must be translated and published in different languages.

The second volume is dedicated to the Passion and Resurrection and takes up where the first volume ended, the Vatican has said.

The first volume, which ran more than 400 pages, highlighted what the Bible says about Jesus, what the moral implications of his teachings are and how reading the Scriptures can lead to a real relationship with Jesus.

Father Lombardi said the 2008 world Synod of Bishops on the Bible showed how critical it was to have a book on the life of Jesus. The pope’s book is a “guide for the faithful to encounter, through the Gospels, the person of Jesus,” he said.

The Vatican spokesman also said that the pope has reviewed the materials for another volume in the series, “The Complete Works of Joseph Ratzinger.”

The first volume of the 16tome series, being published in German and Italian for now, was presented in 2008. The works, almost all of which were completed before the pope’s election in 2005, are meant to reflect the pope’s personal theological thought and not the magisterial teaching of the Church.

Diocese of Fall River TV Mass on WLNE Channel 6 Sunday, August 8 at 11:00 a.m.

Celebrant is Richard D. Wilson, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish at St. James Church, New Bedford

August 6, 2010

Deacon James Dunbar retires from Anchor after 13 years continued from page one

great American Benjamin Franklin in the diversity and wide spectrum of experiences and activities. Deacon Jim spent six years in seminary for the Columban Fathers, earned a degree in English/Journalism from Boston College, was a student teacher, was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in Korea jumping from transport planes as a paratrooper, has participated in countless Civil War reenactments on the battlefields of Gettysburg, Penn., and eventually found his niche in the print media in 1957.

While it may seem he has newsprint running through his veins, Deacon Jim’s first love has always been God and his Church. The six years spent in seminary and his Catholic experiences at Boston College had always remained entrenched in his soul, even in the secular world. “My Catholic beliefs never left me while I was a reporter for the Herald News,” he told The Anchor. “As a newsman, I learned that there are two sides to every story and the readers must know both sides. The good and the bad must be told. That was reinforced by my Catholic background. People should know all sides of the story to make decisions and see how those decisions affect others. I always told the truth and never compromised my faith. I made it a point to keep the picture clear, and even in the secular world, God would always come forth.”

Deacon Jim also said a good newsman “never lets himself become part of the story. It’s important to let God be the judge, not us.

And good can overcome bad. As a court reporter for many years, I saw that as the justice system administered punishment to those who wronged society.”

Despite his love for his journalistic career, Deacon Jim felt a tugging at his soul strings, and answered the call to enter the diaconate program for the Diocese of Providence. “With my schedule at the Herald, and the schedule for a master’s at Providence College, a requisite for the diaconate, I knew there was no way I could do both,” he said. “With the blessings of Claudia, who has always been there for me, I took a leap of faith and left my job as acting city editor at the Herald, not knowing how we would make ends meet. Within five days after I left the Herald, then-Providence Bishop Louis E. Gelineau approached me and asked if I would be interested in working as an editor/writer for the Visitor. It was perfect. The office was in Providence and after work I would go to my twice-weekly classes at P.C. It was a blessing from God.” He was ordained as a permanent deacon in October of 1998

and assigned to Jesus Saviour Parish. For the last dozen years, Deacon Jim has served at the altar, baptized infants, performed wedding ceremonies, preached homilies, taught in Religious Education programs, preached retreats, and participated in domingas and other ethnic feasts and celebrations. But his greatest diaconal duty is serving at Newport Hospital as an extraordinary minister of holy Communion, bringing the precious Body of Christ to hundreds of Catholic faithful, many of whom will never leave alive. Often, he is there with an individual as they draw their last breath, providing words of comfort to the patient and the family. “It is the most satisfying of my ministries,” said Deacon Jim. “I never dreamed working in a hospital environment could be so rewarding.”

The deacon’s foray into the Catholic print media has also enriched his already strong faith. “I found working in the Catholic press more rewarding,” he told The Anchor. “In the secular press there is always the need to sell.

The news must be sensational.

In the Catholic press it’s telling the truth with God’s word and revealing his power to save. Stories should be inspiring and the stories that are much needed are those about simple individuals striving to be saints, which is what we’re all called to do. I find those stories very inspiring.”

Although Deacon Jim has covered hundreds of events and written countless news stories and features, it was the later life and eventual death of Pope John Paul II that he found most inspiring in his 16 years in the Catholic press.

“Pope John Paul II was such an inspiration in life and in death,” he said. “When he died I preached at Jesus Saviour on his life and times,

and it was covered by the secular press. That was the first time I’ve ever had the press at one of my preachings. John Paul II was an inspiration for all of us to become better people, better Catholics. To be a deacon in the Church led by such a wonderful, saintly priest was a blessing.”

Through the years, Deacon Jim’s experiences could fill several volumes if ever put in print. He once interviewed a suspected murderer not knowing the man had a gun beneath his raincoat pointing Deacon Jim’s way the whole time; he traveled to Rome to cover the installation of Bishop Sean O’Malley as a cardinal; and he’s interviewed teen-age students who are “striving to live saintly lives.”

As a newsman, he’s seen and done more than most.

He said don’t expect to find him in a backyard garden. Now it’s time to spend more time with the family who has “always been most important to me. I’m happiest with them.

As a deacon, I don’t get the chance to go to Sunday Mass with Claudia, and now I hope to go to Mass with her more often. She’s been a saint to me. When I need her, she’s always there, and when she needs me, I’m there. God has been so good — always there for us.”

Deacon Jim doesn’t plan on writing any more, except for his homilies. “I think I’ve done my share with words. But I will definitely miss the people I work with, and I’ll miss scouring the Catholic wire for news stories every day.

But I’ll still be busy.”

The Anchor may be losing a valuable asset and friend, but the Church won’t. Deacon James N. Dunbar will continue his diaconal ministries with relish and humility. And his family will get to see more of the man they inspire and who inspires them.

Award winning documentary selected for 2010 R.I. International Film Festival PROVIDENCE, R.I. — “The Calling,” an acclaimed documentary that explores the nature of belief and the bonds of family, as it delves into to enduring questions that provide meaning and value to our lives; has been selected for the 2010 Rhode Island International Film Festival.

“The Calling” is scheduled to screen at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium Arts and Cultural Center August 11 at noon.

For more info or to RSVP visit: www.film-festival.org.

Winner of the Best International Documentary award at the seventh Queens International Film Festival, and the Special Mention for Cinematic Achieve-

ment award at the fourth Gasparilla International Film Festival; the film follows members of a Catholic community who aid the poor in Lima, Peru.

“The Calling” was also on Official Selection at the 29th Breckenridge Festival of Film, the 26th Chicago Latino International Film Festival, and the fifth Staten Island Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Documentary. “‘The Calling’ will be very helpful for those discerning a priestly or religious vocation, we are pleased to share your artistic endeavor with others.” Father David Toups — director for the USCCB’s Secretariat for Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocation.

13

The Anchor

August 6, 2010

S

hortly after Pope John Paul II embraced him at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1979 as a loyal son of the Church who “had written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus,” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the most prominent Catholic evangelist in our country’s history, died. His cause of beatification and canonization is now awaiting decision at the Vatican.

Born in 1895 in El Paso, Ill., his family soon moved to Peoria, where he went to high-school. After ordination to the priesthood in 1919, he obtained advanced degrees in philosophy and became a philosophy professor at The Catholic University in Washington from 1926 to 1950.

A pioneer in broadcasting, he was a regular speaker on NBC’s “Catholic Hour” radio broadcast beginning in

An American televangelist who may be a saint: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

1930. In 1940 Bishop Sheen verts included “housekeepers, presided over the first-ever flight attendants, ministers, telecast of a religious service. beggars at the door, houseIn the 1950s he would bewives, alcoholics and college come famous for a television students,” as he recalls in his show, “Life is Worth Living,” autobiography “Treasure in which ran on ABC and reached an estimated 30,000,000 each week.

In 1952 he received an Emmy as television’s “Most Outstanding Personality.” At one point his show was

By Dwight Duncan the most popular on television.

He brought many Clay.” converts into the Church, He was national director of including prominent individuthe Society for the Propagaals like Clare Boothe Luce, tion of the Faith, appointed congresswoman (and wife

by Pope Pius XII in 1950, a of Time-Life founder Henry Luce); the journalist Heywood position he occupied for 16 years under three popes. He Broun, and Louis Budenz, editor of the Communist Daily was responsible for two-thirds Worker. Of course, not every- of the mission funds of the Society collected from around one was a big shot. His con-

Judge For Yourself

Our readers respond A need to know Thank you so much for printing the article “What to do about Pornography” in the July 16 issue of The Anchor. I found it to be very informative. We need to be aware in this media-filled society of the dangers to marriage and families. As a mother of young adults, some of whom are newly married, I am passing along this article hoping they will find it as enlightening as I have found it to be. It contains many practical suggestions for dealing with this in our daily lives. Please continue to print such practical and timely articles to help us all to become better informed parents.

Christine Glasheen Brewster Vatican’s revised sex abuse rules An article written in the Boston Globe on July 16, entitled “Vatican revises its rules on clergy sex abuse,” did not make some people happy. I agree with Vatican Msgr. Charles Scicluna that it does not solve all the problems but is a step forward. All Catholics and non-Catholics should try to understand that priests are human beings just like you and me and none of us is perfect. I like the analogy that Father Corapi gave in one of his homilies: “If God wanted perfect priests, he would have sent down his angels to be priests.”

Al Laurino Plymouth Deserving tribute Thank you, Dave Jolivet for

the excellent article “Defending our liberties,” (Anchor 7/9/10). I will save it and reflect on it. It was a fitting tribute to our veterans.

Jack Russell Boston Lament over pastor’s transfer It is with sorrow for us, the parishioners of Holy Family Church and the whole city of Taunton that Father Jay Maddock is being transferred to Holy Name Parish in Fall River.

We met Father Maddock shortly after his ordination in 1975 when he was assigned as curate at Sacred Heart Church in Taunton.

He’s been pastor at Holy Family Parish in East Taunton for 13 years. He is a devoted priest, an excellent orator, a person of hope and inspiration to the young, the middle-aged and the elderly, and is admired and respected throughout the city of Taunton.

One of Father Maddock’s greatest accomplishments at Holy Family was the recent construction and opening of a new parish center that we hope one day will be named after him.

We pray that God will bless Father Maddock as he prepares to serve his new parishioners with the same dedication he served Catholics here.

Gene and Marilyn Gorey Taunton Concerns for the future of healing ministry Caritas Christi’s life-affirming mission as “rooted in the healing ministry of Jesus” is on a fast track to being replaced by a

medical delivery system, whose prime focus is “the bottom line.”

The agreement to sell the Caritas medical facilities, including Saint Anne’s in Fall River, is a pact with a venture capital firm whose holdings range from a fund used as a feeder for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities to firearms manufacturing.

Having attended a Bostonarea public hearing, I came away fully convinced that capital and not Christian compassion was the foremost theme driving this agreement.

Examining the escape clauses allowed to Cerberus Capital Management’s newly-formed Steward Health Corporation should make clear to anyone of vision that the end of Roman Catholic health care in Eastern Massachusetts could be within this decade. The first change can come in only three years.

The Catholic faithful seem to be completely out of focus regarding this transaction.

What is being served up as progress is not the delivery of “the highest quality of care with compassion and respect” as stated in Caritas Christi’s mission.

Rather, it is a temporary infusion of dollars — and only temporary Cerberus history is to break up and sell off for profit their business ventures. These two organizations are unequally yoked, and this marriage should never be allowed to be consummated. It is certainly not made in heaven.

May God be with us.

R. T. Neary Medfield

the world. He was appointed to Vatican II’s Commission on the Missions, the only American member.

Named bishop of Rochester, New York in 1966, he retired in 1969, when he was named titular Archbishop by Pope Paul VI. He spent the 10 remaining years of his life speaking and preaching retreats, particularly to clergy and religious.

His cause of beatification and canonization was formally opened in Peoria on Sept. 9, 2002.

The investigative stage was concluded there in 2008, and all the evidence forwarded to Rome for the decisionmaking stage. Three volumes comprise the Positio, or legal brief, arguing that Archbishop Sheen exhibited heroic virtue in his life. In addition, testimony has been taken regarding two alleged miracles due to his intercession, one in Peoria and one in Pittsburgh.

In order to be beatified, the Holy Father must approve a decree of heroic virtue, making him “venerable,” as well as one miracle due to his intercessory power. An additional fresh miracle would then be needed for him to be

declared a saint.

For more than 60 years, he spent a Holy Hour every day, praying before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. He earned $26,000 every week from his television show, and he gave it to the missions for hospitals and schools around the world.

He was deeply devoted to our Blessed Mother, celebrating Mass every Saturday in her honor and confident that when he stood before God at the final Judgment, Jesus would say, “I heard My Mother speak of you.”

There is a compelling new one-hour documentary entitled “Servant of All” about Archbishop Sheen. It had its broadcast debut this past Easter Sunday on Chicago public television station WTTW. A two-minute promotional trailer is available online at www. sheenfilm.org, along with more information. Hopefully, it will be available for viewing in Massachusetts in the near future. At a time when the media is full of reports of priests and bishops who have sinned grievously, it is nice to be reminded of the saintly priests and bishops among us.

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

“Phoenix/scottsdale, arizona” Fr. Joseph P. McDermott

is the Spiritual Director of a Pilgrimage/Tour to Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona

OCTOBER 19 - 28, 2010

10 Days/9 Nights for $1,595.00** (per person - double occupancy) ** (effective until August 15, 2010)

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14

The Catholic Response

New Irish bishop says abuse scandal made Church look in mirror

DUBLIN (CNS) — In the wake of a series of clerical child abuse scandals, the country’s newest prelate, Bishop Liam S. MacDaid of Clogher, called on the people of his diocese to join him in “a repentant return to the well of salvation.”

Speaking at his consecration at St. Macartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan, July 25, Bishop MacDaid said: “Society has forced us in the Irish Church to look into the mirror, and what we saw were weakness and failure, victims and abuse. The surgeon’s knife has been painful but necessary. A lot of evil and poison has been excised. There comes a time when the surgeon’s knife has done what it can, is put away and a regime of rehabilitation for the patient is put in place.

“We have been brought to our knees, but maybe that is no bad thing. It can bring us closer to the core of the mystery,” he said.

“So while society keeps the mirror in front of us and rightly checks that we are sincere in our intentions and efforts toward rehabilitation, can I invite you, priests and people of the Diocese of Clogher, to join me in a repentant return to the well of salvation. The journey will include for many ... the enormous challenge of forgiveness. Despite his intense suffering, Jesus forgave those who

mocked, spat at, scourged and abused him. One of the co-crucified could not bring himself beyond abuse and excluded himself; the other rose to embracing forgiveness and was welcomed into the kingdom. There are many painful experiences in life where only forgiveness can bring closure.”

Last year, public confidence in the Catholic Church in Ireland was undermined after the publication of two government reports, the first detailing decades of neglect and abuse of children in Church-run residential institutions, the second faulting the Archdiocese of Dublin for the way it handled 325 sex abuse claims in the years 1975-2004.

Born in Bundoran, County Donegal, July 19, 1945, Bishop MacDaid was ordained a priest in 1969. He has served most of his ministry as a teacher at St. Macartan’s College, where he was president for nine years until 1989, when he began a six-year term as chairman of the diocesan priests’ council. After spending three years serving in parishes, he was appointed diocesan secretary and chancellor before being named successor to Bishop Joseph Duffy, 76, who retired May 6.

Bishop MacDaid is a fan of Gaelic football and was a player on the County Donegal team in the 1970s.

August 6, 2010

Vatican fills in blanks on history of sex abuse procedures VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Along with its revised norms for dealing with priestly sex abuse, the Vatican in mid-July released a detailed, five-page history of its treatment of such crimes over the last century.

The background report, prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, traced the evolution of Church law and papal decisions on the issue, acknowledging that a comprehensive legal approach to clerical sex abuse has been a relatively recent development.

The history of the Vatican’s handling of sex abuse has been like a jigsaw puzzle, and the report for the first time pieced the puzzle together. In doing so, it sought to counter allegations that the Vatican has for decades been orchestrating an effort to cover up cases of sexual abuse by priests.

The report explained that the 1917 Code of Canon Law reserved the handling of several canonical crimes to the Holy Office (now the doctrinal congregation). This included the crime of “solicitation,” when a priest used confession to solicit sex.

In 1922, the Holy Office issued an instruction, “Crimen sollicitationis” (The Crime of Solicitation), which gave detailed instructions to local dioceses and tribunals on the procedures to use when dealing with this crime. The document, stressing the need for confidentiality, said these procedures could also be used for other crimes, including sexual abuse of children by priests.

“Crimen sollicitationis” has been seen by critics as a kind of “smoking gun” evidence that the Vatican had knowledge of sex abuse cases in the universal Church and the authority to deal with them, yet was more interested in keeping a lid of secrecy over the problem.

The Vatican’s historical overview, however, sees that as a misreading of the document.

First of all, it said, “Crimen sollicitationis” was primarily concerned with crimes committed in the confessional. That presented particular problems of investigation, because in most cases the priest could not be interrogated fully without putting the seal of confession in danger.

The 1922 document, therefore, offered an “indirect method of achieving the moral certitude necessary for a definitive decision” in such cases, including the investigation of the credibility of the accuser and the life and behavior of the accused priest.

“The accusation itself was considered the most serious accusation one could bring against a Roman Catholic priest. Therefore, the procedure took care to ensure that a priest who could be a victim of a false or calumnious accusation would be protected from infamy until proven guilty,” it said.

“This was achieved through a strict code of confidentiality which was meant to protect all persons concerned from undue publicity until the definitive decision of the ecclesiastic tribunal,” it said.

Although “Crimen sollicitationis” said these procedures could also be used, with adaptations, for cases of same-sex clerical misconduct, sexual abuse of prepubescent children and bestiality, the document focused primarily on crimes committed during the sacrament of penance.

“The Instruction ‘Crimen sollicitationis’ was, therefore, never intended to represent the entirety of the policy of the Catholic Church regarding sexual improprieties on the part of the clergy,” it said. It said it was “gravely

anachronistic” to look to that document of 1922 as a form of comprehensive legislation on the sexual conduct of priests.

Moreover, it said, the 1922 instruction was never really published. Instead, it was given as needed to bishops who had to deal with cases concerning solicitation, clerical homosexuality, sexual abuse of children and bestiality.

In 1962, Pope John XXIII authorized a reprint of “Crimen sollicitationis,” adding a short section on procedures to be used when religious priests were involved. The idea was to give copies to the bishops gathering for the Second Vatican Council; in fact, only a few copies were handed out, and most were never distributed.

The period between 1965 and 1983, the Vatican report said, was marked by a changing approach to canonical crimes, with preference given to a “pastoral attitude” toward misconduct. A therapeutic model often prevailed, it said.

“The bishop was expected to ‘heal’ rather than ‘punish.’ An over-optimistic idea of the benefits of psychological therapy guided many decisions concerning diocesan or religious personnel, sometimes without adequate regard for the possibility of recidivism,” the report said.

During this time, cases involving the solicitation of sex in the confessional remained under the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which used the instruction “Crimen sollicitationis” in dealing with them.

The doctrinal congregation also dealt with a small number of cases concerning sexual misconduct of clergy with minors. Some of these cases were linked to abuse of the sacrament of penance, while some involved requests for laicization of priests, which for a period was handed by the doctrinal congregation. It did not, however, have general responsibility over clerical sex abuse cases in the Church.

In 1983, the new Code of Canon Law updated the Church’s approach to clerical sex abuse, saying that a priest guilty of sexual offenses with a minor below the age of 16 should be punished “with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state.”

In such cases, Church trials were to be held in diocese; appeals went to the Roman Rota, a Vatican tribunal.

In 1994, the Vatican granted special rules to U.S. bishops, raising the age for sexual abuse against a minor from 16 to 18, and extending the statute of limitations to 10 years after the victim’s 18th birthday. Again, bishops were told to conduct local trials when these cases arose.

In 2001, after much internal Vatican discussion, Pope John Paul II issued new rules which placed the clerical sexual abuse of a minor among the “more grave crimes” reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

A whole new set of norms and procedures were given to local bishops, who would now handle local cases under the oversight of the doctrinal congregation — which at the time was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. On May 21, 2010, Pope Benedict approved revisions to the 2001 norms, extending the statute of limitations to 20 years after a victim’s 18th birthday, including child pornography as a form of sexual abuse of minors and streamlining procedures to make it easier to remove abusive priests from ministry and, in some cases, from the priesthood.

August 6, 2010

15

The Anchor

Millions of taxpayer dollars spent on pro-abortion organizations continued from page one

The news outraged Pro-Life leaders. They said that even if the monies do not directly pay for abortions, the massive amount of taxpayer dollars freed up funds for that purpose.

Rita Diller, national director of STOPP, told The Anchor, “Obviously every penny that is given to Planned Parenthood is feeding its abortion business in one way or another.” As government money increases, so do the number of abortions, she said.

“You can look at the statistics year by year, and you will see that continually Planned Parenthood gets more money from the government, and every year its abortion numbers thrive, almost in lock step with the federal funding,” she said.

STOPP is a project of the American Life League dedicated to working against the pro-abortion organization.

Diller added that in the GAO report Planned Parenthood documented spending more than $650 million in federal funds, but its annual reports for the same time period show that it received more than $2 billion of taxpayer money, leaving a $1.3 billion gap. The most recent report, covering 2008, showed Planned Parenthood receiving $350 million in federal grants and contracts along with an $85 million profit.

But Diller said it is much worse than that. “We believe that they’re receiving a whole lot more than that, but it is recorded as clinic income in the form of Medicaid waivers and Medicaid income,” she said.

“We would love to see Planned Parenthood de-funded, obviously. It continues to

receive our money and continues to not account for how its spending it,” she said.

In a column published in The Washington Times on June 18, Diller asked, “Is there no end to the amount of our hardearned tax dollars that will be poured down the bottomless pit known as Planned Parenthood to quench this socialengineering agency’s thirst for sexualizing our children, stealing their souls and dumping the mutilated bodies of our children’s children into our nation’s waste bins?”

Patricia Doherty, executive director of Catholic Citizenship, told The Anchor that the most recent polls show that the slight majority of Americans are Pro-Life. “The fact that Americans are being forced to pay for abortions with their hard-earned money is an absolute disgrace.”

She called it “extremely sad” that for the last 25 years Massachusetts state funds have paid for abortions in the Commonwealth due to a Supreme Judicial Court ruling.

Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, told The Anchor, “That means our money is being used to kill babies.” Many people are unaware that federal tax dollars fund groups like Planned Parenthood and believe the Hyde Amendment prevents such spending.

The Hyde Amendment is a rider, not a permanent law, that first passed in 1976 and has been routinely attached to annual appropriations bills since that time. It bars the use of federal dollars for elective abortions but only applies to funds allocated by appropriations bills.

Our Lady’s Monthly Message From Medjugorje July 25, 2010 Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina

“Dear children! Anew I call you to follow me with joy.

I desire to lead all of you to my Son, your Savior. You are not aware that without Him you do not have joy and peace, nor a future or eternal life. Therefore, little children, make good use of this time of joyful prayer and surrender.

“Thank you for having responded to my call.”

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In an executive order, President Barack Obama assured that the Hyde Amendment would apply to health care reform. On March 30, he signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act into law.

In a press release, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston praised a clarification by HHS that abortion would not be covered with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. He also called for a permanent law that

would exclude abortion from all programs under health care reform.

“The issue of government involvement in the taking of innocent human life should not remain subject to the changeable discretion of executive officials or depend on the continued vigilance of Pro-Life advocates,” the cardinal said.

Already, pro-abortion organizations get around the measure by agreeing not to spend the money directly on abortions, though the same is not true for abortifacient contra-

This week in

ceptives.

Fox’s biggest concern is for the future. She worries that if Planned Parenthood has received this kind of funding in the past eight years, they will receive all the more through health care reform.

“It’s already being spent and that’s a travesty; it’s atrocious, but I think also it is a real call to say that we have to repeal Obamacare.” Fox urged citizens to react to this news during elections this fall. “It is a call for every Pro-Life person to get out and vote,” she said.

Diocesan history

50 years ago — Msgr. Raymond T. Considine, pastor of St. William’s Parish in Fall River, broke ground for a new parish church building to be located east of the rectory on Chicago Street. Capacity for the new structure was estimated to be 800 and the project was slated to be completed by Easter of the following year.

10 years ago — More than 80 young adults from the Fall River Diocese headed to Rome for World Youth Day 2000, joining Bishop Sean P. O’Malley, OFM Cap., for the weeklong event. The pilgrimage kicked off with a Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Seekonk and the Fall River delegation was among an estimated 17,000 youth in attendance.

25 years ago — Bishop Daniel A. Cronin made a pastoral visit to Holy Trinity Parish in West Harwich on Cape Cod to greet parishioners and assist pastor Father Gabriel Healey, SS.CC., in tearing up the paid-off mortgage on parish-owned properties.

One year ago — Welcome Home Veterans Housing, Inc., led by Vietnam veteran Kathleen M. Splinter, a parishioner of Notre Dame Parish in Fall River, secured an out-of-service sweater mill at 280 North Street that will be transformed into 19 apartments for U.S. veterans in need.

Youth Pages

16

August 6, 2010

Acushnet youth group float draws praises continued from page one

summer tradition — From left, Mary Jane Poyant and Marcel Poyant and their son René Poyant meet with Bishop George W. Coleman at the annual St. Mary’s Fund Dinner on Cape Cod held recently at the New Seabury Country Club in Mashpee. The Poyants served as the event chairmen for the 13th annual gathering. All proceeds benefit the students in the diocese, providing “need-based” scholarships to those in need of financial assistance to attend one of the schools of the Diocese of Fall River.

Annual motorcycle run to benefit youth of St. Vincent’s Home FALL RIVER — St. Vincent’s Home’s fifth annual Motorcycle Run and Raffle will be held on August 15 beginning at 9 a.m. at 2425 Highland Avenue in Fall River.

The 50-mile Bike Run will travel through the scenic back roads of Freetown, to the shores of Dartmouth and Westport, ending back at St. Vincent’s for a cookout, raffle, and silent auction. Raffle prizes and silent

auction items donated by area businesses will include motorcycle accessories, gift baskets, gift certificates, and much more.

Trophies for favorite bike as judged by St. Vincent’s youth will be awarded at the end of the run.

Tickets are now available, and participants should have a great time while helping the children of St. Vincent’s. Advance reg-

istration is $20 for drivers, $15 for active military and veterans, $5 for a passenger, and includes coffee and donuts in the morning and a cook-out immediately following the run.

St. Vincent’s fifth annual Motorcycle Run is sponsored by S & S Concrete Forms Construction. To register or volunteer, contact Melissa Dick at 508235-3228 or email mdick@ stvincentshome.org.

a 13-foot monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament; a statue of Our Lady of Fatima; a model of St. Francis Xavier’s red brick church; as well as a statue of a sheep known to parishioners as “Behold,” appeared in the afternoon procession heralding the annual Blessed Sacrament Feast — also known as the Madeira Feast.

It was the float’s second appearance.

Its premiere showing, which gained attention and copped a third-place prize, was in the gala July 11 parade in Acushnet, capping the town’s 150th birthday celebrations.

“After that parade we were going to take the float apart and then, unexpectedly, we were invited to enter it in the August 1 feast parade that processes from Brooklawn Park to the feast grounds,” reported an enthusiastic Rosa Moniz, whose son, Jordan, age 14, is a member of the Youth Group.

“But I think I became more involved than he was,” she added, laughing. She’s also proud that her four-year-old daughter, Alison, “held a little brush and helped with the painting.

But this whole idea came from the teens themselves and they certainly worked hard to create the float and make it a success.”

While Cory Cordoza drove the vehicle hauling the float in the Acushnet parade, Rosa’s husband, Daniel Rosa, hauled the float on Sunday in one of his trucks from Concrete Foundation, the family business.

“Because the replica of the monstrance on the float is so tall we had to park the float in our company garage,” she explained. “It was a wonderful project, unforgettable, as members of the Youth Group and so many of us parents would meet three times a week over many weeks to work on the float.”

Another involved, Michelle Cordeiro, whose 15-year-old son Michael is a member of the Youth Group, talked of the experience as all worked to build the beautiful sevenfoot mountains and the church model from cardboard and paper mache.

“These young people are so talented, so dedicated, and looking back, it was such a

wonderful experience, and we all had such a good time,” she said.

As she talked to The Anchor, she was “touching-up” the gold decorating the fivefoot tall plaster statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which, she said, “has been in our church in the adoration room and the school for many years.”

The sheep statue seen on the float has its own story.

“It was made popular by our former pastor, Father Dan Lacroix,” Cordeiro explained.

“Its name is ‘Behold,’ and Father Lacroix would point it out at Christmas in the Nativity Scene and I think he also used it for the class making its first Communion.”

Asked whether the float proved a costly project, she estimated it probably cost a total $175.

“It will be paid for from the funds realized in the redeemed cans project run by the Youth Group,” she reported.

Msgr. Gerard P. O’Connor, pastor of St. Francis Xavier’s, had high praise for the teens and their families.

“What a great accomplishment and it demonstrates their great faith in many ways, especially how families — parents and children — can work together in various ways,” he noted.

The publicity the float has brought as well as the tribute to its Youth Group, is eventful as the parish marks its 104th birthday.

“But we’re nowhere as old as the town of Acushnet,” he quipped.

For him and those parishioners attending the 10:30 o’clock Sunday Mass on the morning of the town’s sesquicentennial parade, a singular, unforgettable memory was forged.

“We had all hoped the parade over the mile-and-a-half route would not arrive near the church until later so that we could all see the float,” Msgr. O’Connor told The Anchor.

“But somehow the parade moved quickly and I am told by parishioners that just as I raised the sacred host at Mass at the time of consecration, they could see our float — and the tall monstrance holding a likeness of a host — passing by. It was great timing,” he added.

L

ucia, the oldest of my five sisters, passed away almost two years ago. But it wasn’t until after her death that we, her family, began to learn of her real compassion and charity toward others. Not that this was a surprise to us, but just the same, it was wonderful to hear from people who said that Lucia made a big difference in their lives in her own very quiet way. I always remember my sister’s life as a gift and model of humility. She heard the voice of Jesus when he said to her, as he does to all of us, “I came to serve. What about you?”

I often watch Father John Corapi on EWTN, and a certain episode was the inspiration for this column. The night before his ordination he prayed with his pastor. He admits he can’t remember much of what his pastor shared with him, except one thing: “Come as a servant.”

Father Corapi has lived that advice since his ordination in 1991 by Pope John Paul II. He says that in order to serve you really need only one thing

17

Youth Pages

August 6, 2010

Come as a servant

retreating, I shall from now on — humility. It is humility that be your helper and shall make leads to holiness. It is holiness your name celebrated far and that leads to heaven. wide as my faithful servant.”

Humility, first of all, is What acts of humility do you knowing the truth. The truth is see daily? You needn’t look any that God exists and he created us. Humility, by no means, is a sign of weakness. This is a big misunderstanding among many people.

Believe it or not, humility is a great weapon to fight off Satan. LegBy Ozzie Pacheco end tells us that Satan admitted to St. Anthony of the Desert, in one of their many encounters, further than your own parish.

“I am powerless over your acts For example, see how catechists of humility.” St. Anthony had use their time and talents to never, nor would he ever fall teach and evangelize the Word into Satan’s temptations. And of God to the youngest of our he was rewarded for it. At the brothers and sisters. This minisend of his life, St. Anthony try is not about themselves, it is cried out to the Lord, “Lord, about the greater good that can where were you when these sufferings and tribulations came be done for others. They came to serve. What about you? Look upon me? Why didn’t you help me?” He heard a voice in reply: to your parish’s youth ministers. It takes a unique person, “I was here, Anthony, but I wanted to witness your combat. dedicated and humble, to sit down with teen-agers and listen Having seen that you withto their problems, offering them stood your adversary without

Be Not Afraid

empathy and affirmation, guidance and direction. Imagine having your own problems to deal with, yet finding it important enough to become involved in other’s as well. They came to serve. What about you? Barry is an extraordinary minister of holy Communion in my parish, among his other parish ministries. But, it’s what he does every Sunday morning that’s aweinspiring. He brings the holy Eucharist to dozens of faithful at an area nursing home. He talks and prays with the faithful. He brings hope into their lives, the hope that there are people who still love and care for others. Like all our extraordinary ministers of holy Communion, Barry has come as a servant.

What about you?

If you’re up to the challenge of becoming a servant of God, first put on humility. But, be strong in your servitude for you may be mocked for it, laughed at and persecuted for doing it.

Just don’t shoot off your mouth in response. The only true response is to give your blessing and be on your way. Win over your enemies with acts of kindness, compassion and mercy, and your reward will be great in heaven.

The song, ‘“Day By Day,” from the Broadway musical, “Godspell,” tells us, “Day by day, oh dear Lord, three things I pray: To see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.” Wonderful words to live by. Pray to see the Lord more clearly — this is humility. Pray to love the Lord more dearly — this is holiness. Pray to follow the Lord more nearly — this is heaven.

“No humility, no holiness.

No holiness, no heaven,” Father John Corapi says. Live always with the hope that you will see God face to face, so he can say to you, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” God bless you, Lucia.

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

his first year in college because he met other young people from the diocese on their visit to the mission.”

Sister Marta is proud of their first 10 years and said the support and prayers of all the people in the Fall River Diocese have been an integral part of the mission’s success to date.

“The work is being done here with the cooperation of so many people — the parishes around the diocese, the laypeople who have sent their support, the volunteers who have come here to help build the church and work at our mission,” she said. “Hopefully we can continue this ministry and the good work of the Lord here in Honduras for years to come.”

Looking back over the past decade, Father Canuel is proud of having been involved with

getting the mission in Guaimaca started.

“I was always hopeful the mission would succeed, but to see it happen so quickly has been an overwhelming blessing for me,” he said. “It made worthwhile all the sacrifices that we made to be there.”

And while the first 10 years is certainly cause for celebration, Father Pregana was cautiously optimistic about the road ahead.

“I remember summer vacations travelling in the car and asking my parents: ‘Are we there yet?’” he said. “The same could be asked of the mission — are we there yet? No, we’re not. As Robert Frost wrote, we still have ‘miles to go before we sleep’ and we’re committed to continue the work.”

Diocesan Guaimacan mission celebrates 10th anniversary continued from page one

dren still work on the farms rather than go to school, and there are still homes without running water or electricity. We can easily become discouraged with all that needs to be done, however the generosity of the people of the diocese spurs us on to continue making a difference and brighten the horizon for the Honduran people.”

Established in 2000, St. Rose of Lima Parish was originally one of two parish missions sponsored by the Fall River Diocese.

The second — St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Orica — was turned over to the local Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa in the summer of 2007 when Father Canuel was reassigned to St. Mary-Our Lady of the Isle Parish back here in Nantucket, leaving the newly-assigned Father Pregana as the sole priest to minister in Honduras.

“I don’t want to sound too ‘super spiritual,’ but it really was the Lord calling me to serve here,” Father Pregana said. “Through various people and circumstances, I feel that God called me to serve here for this season of my life. I say that because I feel very much at peace with living among the poor here, and very content in the ministry. I feel the Holy Spirit was working in my life.”

St. Rose of Lima Parish serves a large area of approximately 40,000 people in Guaimaca and the 25 surrounding villages — many of which are quite distant and without easy access. As

such, sometimes Mass celebrations are limited to once a month rather than weekly.

“Actually, the work I do here as pastor is no different than the work any pastor does in a parish,” Father Pregana said. “I celebrate the sacraments, visit the sick, preach the Word. Some villages are quite distant and the ministry requires lots of travel on dirt roads over mountains, and across rivers. The rain and weather make it difficult to do the pastoral work, but it’s part of the living conditions in which we find ourselves.”

The parish is also home to a health clinic and the Marie Poussepin Center for the Integral Formation of Young Women, which provides education to the young women of the villages while teaching them important life skills like sewing and agriculture.

“We have the clinic, we have the school to provide education, and the agricultural farm — so they have a place to worship, to learn and to work,” said Sister Marta Ines Toro, O.P., one of four Dominican Sisters of the Presentation currently at the mission. “The basic focus is on growing together as a Catholic community. It is a very young parish — people here are very young — and they are the present and the future of the parish.”

Sister Marta praised the vision and foresight of Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley who decided to es-

tablish the mission parish when he was Bishop of Fall River in 2000.

“I think the laypeople of the Fall River Diocese have been a tremendous asset to the mission,” she said. “It is thanks to them that the mission has managed to flourish in such a short time.”

“I was looking around at the Mass of Thanksgiving — there were about eight priests, about six Dominican Sisters, and more than 100 people in attendance — and it was interesting to see so many relationships that had blossomed out of this mission,” Father Canuel said. “Of course, Bishop George W. Coleman coming out there every year is a tremendous boost to the effort and to the people of Guaimaca.”

Looking back over the past few years, Father Pregana said he can recall many high points in his ministry in Honduras — from the child who came to the clinic so malnourished that he didn’t have a real chance at survival to the high school-aged youth who was planning to leave school to go work in the fields.

“Through the care of the Sisters at the clinic and a simple regime of children’s vitamins and a grain/milk product, that malnourished child is now happy and healthy,” Father Pregana said. “The mission also provided a scholarship to help that high school student with tuition and encouraged him to continue his education. He’s now finishing

Pope sends condolences for deaths of youth at music festival CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI expressed sorrow for the deaths of 20 young people who were trampled to death during a music festival in Germany.

After reciting the Angelus prayer July 25 at the papal summer residence, Pope Benedict prayed in German for “the young people who tragically lost their lives at Duisberg.”

“For their bereaved family

and friends, as well as for the many injured people, I ask for closeness and comfort from the Holy Spirit,” he said.

Twenty were killed and hundreds injured July 24 at the annual Love Parade when concertgoers moving through a crammed tunnel began to push to get out, creating panic and a stampede.

A police investigation was under way July 26 to determine the causes of the tragedy.

18

The Anchor

August 6, 2010

South Coast medics treat mountain poor in Honduras Special to The Anchor

By Mary Mitchell Hodkinson, R.N. GUAIMACA, Honduras — Two doctors, a dentist, two nurses and some of their staffs and family members — 15 people in all — flew to Honduras in early July to offer their services to the people of Guaimaca, a dusty village of 12,899 people.

For most of the volunteer health workers it was the dream of a lifetime but one in which they encountered the nightmare of so many Guaimacans (living) a life of stark poverty and heart-wrenching living conditions.

Most families live in a 12- by 15-foot room with dirt floors, open windows, open doors, cement block walls and rusting tin roofs. They call it home.

They cook on blocks of cement with an opening at the base to burn scraps of wood they collect in the fields. As they prepare their beans and rice, the smoke from the fire pollutes the air. We see many of these people in our medical clinic at the mission with multiple respiratory problems.

The diocesan mission at St. Rose of Lima Parish in Guaimaca will celebrate its 10th anniversary in October. Here over the years hundreds of lay people, diocesan priests and religious have had the privilege of living the life of a missionary, if only for a week. The mission by Father Craig Pregana, who is often seen driving his pickup truck through the mountains bringing the sacraments, comfort and material help to the people.

There is no doubt the people here appreciate our volunteer efforts. Each evening after the 7 o’clock Mass we get a rousing applause. “You come from another land and care enough to truly be our brothers and sisters,” is a common refrain.

The day starts at 5:30 a.m. Some in our group offer to make breakfast — pancakes and scrambled eggs being the favorite. Then the work day begins.

New Bedford gastroenterologists Dr. Chris Cheney and Dr. Thomas Vallone diagnosed and treated more than 800 patients in four-and-a-half days. Cheney’s son and daughter, Patrick and Rebecca, assisted. This was their sixth year at Guaimaca, having started in high school and continuing through college.

Somerset dentist Dr. Philip Robitaille gently performs mouth miracles, filling cavities and extracting hundreds of teeth ruined by poor diet. His gentle care and compassion for every patient matches his personality.

Julie Robitaille works side by side with her father, a calming presence as good as any anesthesia, especially for the children.

Roberta Costa and Priscilla Sousa, who staff Robitaille’s dentistry practice at home, are the gentle hygienists who patiently clean hundreds of teeth. Thanks to their sense of humor and calming dispositions, even the youngest children show no fear, though many are seeing a dentist for the first time.

Carol Oliveira of New Bedford, a Spanish teacher in Fall River, was constantly called on with “Carol, what are they saying?” This was Carol’s sixth time of giving her time and talent to the poor of Guaimaca.

Louis Teves, an Acushnet engineer, is a much-needed interpreter and jack-of-all-trades.

Philip Teves is a Tufts University student who has visions of some day being called “Dr. Teves.” He is a summer volunteer at Saint Anne’s Hospital emergency room. Phil was my interpreter.

My job is to triage incoming patients and write their problems in English for the doctors to diagnose and treat. I am assisted by Carla Rodrigues, R.N., a New Bedford native and first-time missionary who is excellent at patient assessments.

Carla was a great asset to the medical team. Carla’s daughter,

in appreciation — Grateful for the gift of their new bed, this 85-year-old couple offer a return gift of bananas to Mary Hodkinson, center.

Rachel Rodrigues, a Bishop Stang High School student, witnessed the poverty and suffering for the first time. I marveled at this teen-ager’s empathy for the people.

Luis Pedro Pereira, a photographer for the New Bedford Standard-Times has travelled the world and met such people as the Dali Lama. He spent many hours capturing the spirit of the people in his photos. The stories he shared of his adventures highlighted our evenings.

The Dominicans are Sister Maria Ceballos, a Dominican Sister of the Presentation, is a nurse practitioner in charge of the clinic and director of the boarding school where 62 girls from the mountains study and live. She has a disposition so happy and peaceful one would think she is on vacation. She is joined by Sisters Marta Ines Toro, Sylvia Christina Leon, and Rosa Gloribel Mendoza, the backbones of the girls’ school.

We brought food, small toys, candy and water as small gifts to people gathered on the edge of town, people beyond poor — they are truly destitute. There is no source of water except the rivers, which are mostly contaminated. They must boil their water. There is no indoor plumbing. Even at night, they must walk to small outhouses in the fields. Some of these

people are 85 to 90 years old.

As we were handing out our gifts, a small boy approximately 10 years old shuffled his bare feet in the dirt as he stood in front of me. His large brown eyes were wide with excitement. Looking at me he said, “I want to give you a gift.”

He bent down and picked up a stone from the dirt and handed it to me, as he smiled and said “Gracias.” I will keep that stone for the rest of my life.

Before I left home in Massachusetts I met a woman who told me she was unable to travel to Guaimaca and pressed a hundred dollar bill into my hand. “Please take this and do something special for someone,” she said. A moment came when I found that special moment. A woman named Mary who works in the mission kitchen has 85-year-old parents who live on the outskirts of Guaimaca. Mary’s mother and father walk a mile each evening to the 7 o’clock Mass. Her mother, barely a hundred pounds, has a sun-weathered face, blue eyes and an infectious smile.

One afternoon I asked Mary if there was anything her mom and dad needed. Mary began to cry. “They have no bed,” she said. “They had a metal frame that rusted and eventually collapsed in the middle. The inch and a half mattress now slants to the center. Each night they must hold on to sides so as not to slide into the middle.”

The next afternoon, accompanied by two young men from the village, we walked a half mile to a place that made bed frames with hand tools in a primitive manner. After the usual bargaining, we bought one. We borrowed Father Pregana’s old pickup truck, placed the frame in, and drove to the outskirts of town to Mary’s father and mother’s cement block home. When they saw their new bed the couple cried with surprise — like they won the Powerball. Out came the broken metal frame and out came the father with a bunch of bananas: “This is the only payment I can offer you,” he said. The following morning Mary’s mother walked to our mission post, gave me a hug and said, “That was the first real night’s sleep we’ve had in years.”

Our eight days in Guaimaca ended too quickly. As the 757 jet flew over Honduras and I looked down at the mountains below, they looked so majestic and peaceful. One would never imagine the very real scenes of poverty below. And I remember the words of Jesus, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.”

These days were full of spiritual but somber moments.

Massachusetts is 2,188 miles away. Though in a different time zone, the sun rises and sets for them the same as it does for us. But what a different way of life it rises on for them.

Our love for them is trying to change that for the better.

Readers wishing to support the mission at Guaimaca should send donations to the Propagation of the Faith, 106 Illinois Ave., New Bedford, MA 02745, marked “For medical supplies.”

Papal charity donates $250,000 for Haitian school reconstruction VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A papal charity donated $250,000 for the reconstruction of a school in Haiti and as a sign of Pope Benedict XVI’s concern for the earthquake-devastated population.

Cardinal Paul Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, led the delegation to the Haitian capital, Port-AuPrince, to present the check July 22, Vatican Radio reported.

The money will go toward the reconstruction of the St. Francis de Sales School, which was destroyed along with much of the city and 20 percent of the country in the January 12 earthquake, Vatican Radio said.

The idea was not to offer only economic aid, the radio report said, “but above all a gesture of closeness by Pope Benedict to the victims of the earthquake, who are still suffering greatly.”

Cor Unum is the Vatican agency that coordinates the charitable operations of the church and follows the suggestions of the pope. Its funds, used to help ease situations created by natural disasters, war, poverty and hunger, are built through donations from around the world.

Cardinal Cordes’ group visited many camps for displaced Haitians run by the country’s Catholic organizations, includ-

ing Caritas Haiti. The delegation also met with representatives of the numerous humanitarian agencies at the papal nunciature in the capital, Vatican Radio said.

The radio also reported that the pope had made an additional donation to Caritas Haiti.

Cor Unum distributed $1.87 million for emergency aid in 25 countries in 2009, Vatican Radio said. It also described additional papal foundations supporting different charitable projects.

In 2009 the John Paul II Foundation for the Sahel donated $2.3 million in aid to African countries affected by desertification, it said.

Cured U.S. deacon to read Gospel at Newman’s beatification Mass LONDON (CNS) — An American who was inexplicably healed from a crippling spinal condition after praying to the intercession of Cardinal John Henry Newman will proclaim the Gospel and serve as a deacon when Pope Benedict XVI beatifies the cardinal in September.

Deacon Jack Sullivan of Marshfield, Mass., told Catholic News Service he was asked to participate in the September 19 Mass by Father Timothy Menezes, the master of ceremonies for the beatification, when the English priest recently visited the United States.

“I am extremely excited that I have been asked to assist at the papal Mass as deacon, for it best reflects my simple prayer, ‘Cardinal Newman, help me to walk so that I can return to classes and be ordained a deacon,’” he told CNS in a July 29 email.

“For years I suffered as patiently as I could and was rewarded instantly by a simple prayer,” he said.

“I am most grateful now that the Church has seen fit to reward Cardinal Newman as he courageously followed the light of truth.”

Pope Benedict will beatify Cardinal Newman, a 19th-century theologian who founded the Oxford Movement to bring the Anglican Church back to its Catholic roots, September 19 in Cofton Park in Birmingham, England.

Father Jan Nowotnik, the Birmingham Archdiocese’s coordinator for liturgy, said that, besides proclaiming the Gospel, “Deacon Sullivan and his wife, Carol, along with other representatives will form part of a procession that will immediately follow the Rite of Beatification when the new Blessed John Henry Newman is proclaimed.”

Pope Benedict is waiving his own custom to perform a beatification as pope for the first time, instead of sending a high-ranking Vatican official to conduct the cer-

In Your Prayers Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks

emony. The pope has studied his writings throughout his adult life and, in 1991 as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, told the U.S. bishops that Cardinal Newman was the most important thinker on the subject of conscience since St. Augustine of Hippo.

The Sullivans will spend six days in Britain around the time the pope makes his September 16-19 visit to England and Scotland. The couple will stay with Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, who met them during a recent visit to New York.

Eucharistic Adoration in the Diocese Acushnet — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Parish on Mondays and Wednesdays 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 and Wednesdays end with Evening Prayer and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.; Saturdays end with Benediction at 2:45 p.m.

ATTLEBORO — St. Joseph Church holds eucharistic adoration in the Adoration Chapel located at the (south) side entrance at 208 South Main Street, Sunday through Thursday from 6 a.m. to midnight, with overnight adoration on Friday and Saturday only.

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.

FALL RIVER — St. Anthony of the Desert Church, 300 North Eastern Avenue, has eucharistic adoration Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on the first Sunday of the month from noon to 4 p.m.

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

HYANNIS — A Holy Hour with eucharistic adoration will take place each First Friday at St. Francis Xavier Church, 21 Cross Street, beginning at 4 p.m.

FALL RIVER — Good Shepherd Parish has eucharistic adoration every Friday following the 8 a.m. Mass until 6 p.m. in the Daily Mass Chapel. There is a bilingual Holy Hour in English and Portuguese from 5-6 p.m. Park behind the church and enter the back door of the connector between the church and the rectory.

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

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

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

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

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

Aug. 12 Rev. Victor O. Masse, M.S., Retired Pastor, St. Anthony, New Bedford, 1974

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.

Aug. 13 Rev. Edward J. Sheridan, Pastor, St. Mary, Taunton, 1896 Rt. Rev. Leonard J. Daley, Pastor, St. Francis Xavier, Hyannis, 1964 Rev. Gabriel Swol, OFM Conv., Former Associate Pastor, Holy Rosary, Taunton, 1991

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.

Aug. 14 Rev. Raphael Marciniak, OFM Conv., Pastor, Holy Cross, Fall River, 1947 Rev. Conrad Lamb, O.S.B., Missionary in Guatemala, 1969 Aug. 15 Rev. Charles W. Cullen, Founder, Holy Family, East Taunton, 1926

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WAREHAM — Adoration with opportunities for private and formal prayer is offered on the First Friday of each month from 8:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. at St. Patrick’s Church, High Street. The Prayer Schedule is as follows: 7:30 a.m. the rosary; 8 a.m. Mass; 8:30 a.m. exposition and Morning Prayer; 12 p.m. the Angelus; 3 p.m.

Divine Mercy Chaplet; 5:30 p.m. Evening Prayer; 7 p.m. sacrament of confession; 8 p.m. Benediction.

WEST HARWICH — Our Lady of Life Perpetual Adoration Chapel at Holy Trinity Parish, 246 Main Street (Rte. 28), holds perpetual eucharistic adoration.

We are a regional chapel serving all of the surrounding parishes. All from other parishes are invited to sign up to cover open hours. For open hours, or to sign up call 508-430-4716.

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

Around the Diocese 8/7

A Day With Mary will be held tomorrow beginning at 8 a.m. at St. Patrick’s Parish, 306 South Street, Somerset. The day will include Mass of Our Lady celebrated by Father Marek Tuptynski, pastor, recitation of the rosary, silent adoration and conclude with a procession with Our Lady at 2:55 p.m. Lunch break is at 11:25 a.m. (please bring a bag lunch).

For directions or more information call 508-672-1523.

8/8

The next meeting of the Separated and Divorced Catholics will be Sunday from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Christ the King Parish Center, Mashpee Commons, Mashpee. The topic will be “Starting Over: Saving for the Future” by Paul Harney, LLC. For more information contact Mary Ann Eaton at ma_eaton_46@yahoo.com.

8/10

Deborah Peters-Goessling will speak at Our Lady of the Cape Parish, Brewster, on August 10 beginning at 7 p.m. Deborah was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in January 2008 and despite her physical disabilities, she continues to work as a full-time tenured professor at Providence College. Her inspiring witness talk will focus on her own life struggles with ALS. Following the presentation, anointing of the sick will be administered. For more information call 508-385-3252.

8/10

Chris Catalano and Voices of Faith will perform an evening of original Christian music at Christ the King Parish, Mashpee Commons, Mashpee, on August 10 beginning at 7:30 p.m. For more information call 508-477-7700 or visit www.chriscatalanomusic.com.

8/14

“A Life in the Spirit Weekend” will be offered at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Parish (formerly St. Mary’s), 385 Central Avenue, Seekonk on the weekend of August 14-15. Sign-up deadline is August 4. For more information or to register call Rita Beaudet at 508-399-7519 or Janet Nerbonne at 508-944-2431.

8/16

Summer Vacation Bible School for kindergarten through grade five students will be held at Holy Cross Church, 225 Purchase Street, South Easton, August 16-20 from 9 a.m. to noon. Registration forms are available at the parish office or online at www.holycrosseaston.org. For more information call 508-238-2235.

8/30

The Diocesan Health Facilities third annual Golf Classic will be held August 30 at LeBaron Hills Country Club in Lakeville. The day begins at 10:30 a.m., rain or shine, with registration. Shotgun start is noon with a “Florida Style Scramble” format. Registration deadline is July 30. To register call 508-679-8154 or visit www.dhfo.org.

9/9

The Lazarus Ministry of Our Lady of the Cape Parish in Brewster is offering a six-week bereavement support program called “Come Walk With Me” that begins September 9 and runs through October 14 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The program meets at the parish center and is designed for people who have experienced the loss of a loved one within the past year. Pre-registration is required. Contact Happy Whitman at 508-3853252 or Eileen Birch at 508-394-0616 for additional information.

9/19

The Legion of Mary will have a Day of Recollection on September 19 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Cathedral Camp Retreat Center, East Freetown. The day is open to members and non-members and will include a talk by Father Joseph Medio, formerly of New Bedford now serving the Archdiocese of Boston. For reservations call 508-995-2354.

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