Anchor 05.21.10

The Anchor Diocese of Fall River

F riday , May 21, 2010

Dabbling in the occult seen taking spiritual toll on youth

By Deacon James N. Dunbar

BISHOP’S BLESSING — Bishop George W. Coleman blessed and rededicated the newly-named St. Dominic’s Unit at Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River last week. The second-floor unit — formerly known simply as South 2 — has been redesigned and cares primarily for patients with a cancer diagnosis. St. Dominic was chosen as a namesake because of the saint’s ministry of healing, hope and humanity and also because the hospital was founded in 1906, the septenary of his founding the Dominicans, and is still staffed by the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

Fetal pain is the ‘next generation’ of abortion ban

By Christine M. Williams Anchor Correspondent BOSTON — Last month, Nebraska legislators passed a measure that could dramatically change the way other states craft laws that restrict abortion. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, scheduled to take effect on October 15, bans abortions after the 20week mark.

The law, the first of its kind, takes the focus off the viability of an unborn child, which is generally determined to be anywhere from 23-24 weeks gestation. Rather, it hones in on the scientific evidence that unborn children can experience pain.

Another unique feature of the Nebraska law is the ab-

sence of an exception for the mental health of the mother.

Exceptions to the ban can only be granted in cases of medical emergency — the mother’s imminent death or a serious risk of “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”

Advocates of the law say this provision gives them the opportunity to revisit health exceptions for abortion and speak about the negative impact of abortion on women. Numerous peer-reviewed studies demonstrate an increased risk of suicide, depression, anxiety and substance abuse after abortion.

According to Americans United for Life (AUL), the medical Turn to page 13

FAMILY AFFAIR — Scottie and Jerry Foley, program directors for the Fall River Diocese Family Ministry Office since its inception in 1980, officially retired from their posts last week after 30 years of service to the diocese. Story on page 12. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

ACUSHNET — Vampires, witches, Ouija boards, satanic rock music and dark video games — innocent fun?

“I don’t think so,” said Msgr. Gerard P. O’Connor, pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Acushnet. “Some of what seems fascinating to young people is downright dangerous, and it is sinful any time one invokes the devil or believes in astrology or in psychic readings.”

He said reading about Black magic and looking for messages on Ouija boards and on Tarot Cards “are insidious evils that some young people — even some in our Catholic schools — could become fascinated with, not realizing what could happen.”

Wicca and the many New Age practices such as Reiki, transcendental meditation and psychic divination “are being marketed as new, but they are part of old heresies and evils that have been around for a long time. But I must say they have become more prevalent today than they were 20 or 30 years ago,” Msgr. O’Connor commented.

New Age practices are characterized by an individual approach to spiritual methods and rejection

of religious doctrines or dogma. Reiki involves using a life force that promotes self-healing within the body. Wicca, the largest of the neopagan religions, is a form of modern witchcraft, and centers on worshipping the triple goddess and her consort, the horned god.

The occult burst onto the entertainment scene in the early 1960s with television programs such as “Bewitched,” “I Dream of Genie,” “The Munsters” and the “Addams Family.”

As for the long-running, popular yet controversial old “Harry Potter” series and its films, Msgr. O’Connor feels they could have an adverse impact “if young people begin to admire what those present outside of a fairy tale sense.”

He quickly added, “‘The Catechism of the Catholic Church’ is our guide to the teachings of the Catholic Church, and we are speaking of sins against the First Commandment”: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.”

Matthew in his Gospel says: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” Turn to page 18

Lay group spreads devotion to Our Lady

By Dave Jolivet, Editor

In the Fall River Diocese, A Father Alessandro Apollonio, FI, NEW BEDFORD — Last learned of the day and from there, Day With Mary “At first it started week, the papal trip to Fatima his order spread it throughout the slowly,” said Maggie Sweeney, a team member, “but as time went once again brought the atten- world. on, we started to get more and tion of the world to the mesmore people coming.” sage Mary gave the three The structure of the monthly shepherd children. Here in sessions is the same throughout the Diocese of Fall River, a the world. “We had four team team of 10 to 12 lay people members travel to England to has been bringing the same learn the format,” Sweeney message to parishes for more told The Anchor. “The mornthan a decade. ing session is Marian-themed, The lay team joins with the and the afternoon session is Franciscan Friars and Sisters devoted to the Eucharist.” of the Immaculate to promote Martha McCormack, a padevotion to Our Lady of Farishioner of St. Joseph’s Parish tima and the Eucharist on the in Fairhaven, was one of the first Saturday of each month. four sent to England to learn A Day With Mary is a the process. structured event based on the “I’ve been involved with Fatima message that adheres A Day With Mary since it bestrongly to orthodox Cathogan here nearly 12 years ago,” lic teachings. It had its beMcCormack told The Anchor. ginning in England in 1986 “As a child my mother fosthrough the efforts of Claudio tered in me a devotion to Our lo Sterzo, who was inspired to lead others to heed Mary’s traditional devotion — Brendan Lady that I hold to very dearly call for “prayer and penance Botelho of Good Shepherd Parish in Fall today. I loved the candlelight for the conversion of sinners.” River, adorns a statue of our Lady with a processions as a child, and as I Turn to page four In 1992, and Italian priest, crown of flowers. (C&R Media Photo)

News From the Vatican

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May 21, 2010

In Portugal, pope calls for new style of evangelization

By John Thavis Catholic News Service PORTO, Portugal — On a fourday visit to Portugal, Pope Benedict XVI turned the Church’s attention to Fatima and offered a new perspective on the continuing relevance of Mary’s appearances and messages there.

But the larger purpose of his May 11-14 trip, a point enunciated at each of his three stops, was to prod Catholics to adopt a more forceful and direct way of evangelizing in a largely secularized society.

In talk after talk, the pope spoke about how to be a missionary in the modern world, challenging Portugal’s Catholic majority — and its bishops — to stop acquiescing in a kind of silent surrender as the faith is marginalized and even ridiculed.

In the northern city of Porto May 14, in the final big event of the trip, the pope told 200,000 people at a Mass that their duty as followers of Christ was to announce his Gospel in every sector of society.

“We need to overcome the temptation to limit ourselves to what we already have, or think we have, that is safely our own: that would be a slow death for the Church as a presence in the world,” he said.

Pope Benedict has sometimes been presumed to accept the idea of a smaller but more militant Church, supposedly to strengthen the Church’s identity. But he made it clear in Portugal that “pruning back” is not his strategic goal.

In Porto, the pope said that to reach out more effectively, the church’s traditional idea of evangelizing must change. In today’s increasingly multicultural societies, he said, the Church needs to be able to mix dialogue with proclamation and witness of the faith.

He said the Church’s mission-

ary map is no longer geographical, however. Those awaiting the Gospel message are “not only nonChristian populations and distant lands,” but entire social and cultural areas that cut across national or continental boundaries.

His words seemed to prepare the way for an announcement, expect-

way to God.” Don’t be ashamed, he told Portuguese Catholics, to show the signs of your faith.

In a talk the next day to Catholics who work in social programs, the pope took aim at two issues that have illustrated the waning influence of the Church in Portuguese society: the liberalization of legal

fatima devotion — Pope Benedict XVI leads the recitation of the rosary during a candlelight vigil at the Marian shrine of Fatima in central Portugal May 12. (CNS photo/Hugo Correia, Reuters)

ed in coming weeks, of the creation of a “Pontifical Council for New Evangelization” aimed precisely at promoting broader missionary outreach in traditionally Christian countries.

The 83-year-old pope made it clear from the moment he stepped

At Fatima, pope says Mary’s message is still important for humanity FATIMA, Portugal (CNS) — Celebrating Mass at Fatima, Pope Benedict XVI said the prophetic mission of Mary’s apparitions there has not ended and has special relevance for a world still caught in a “cycle of death and terror.”

Speaking to a vast crowd at the Portuguese sanctuary, the pope said the message of Fatima was especially relevant at a time of waning belief in the divine and of continuing strife among peoples. “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete,” the pope said. From the earliest times, he said, humanity “has succeeded in unleashing a cycle of death and terror, but failed in bringing it to an end.” The German pope celebrated the liturgy May 13, the anniversary of the first in a series

off his airplane that his idea of “new evangelization” did not mean trying to reinstall Catholicism as the state religion. Arriving in Lisbon May 11, he told civil authorities that the church was happy to live in a pluralistic society, which challenges its members to articulate their beliefs and put them into practice.

of six Marian apparitions to three shepherd children in the village of Fatima in 1917. After arriving in his popemobile, he stood at the altar and looked out on an estimated 500,000 people who held up crosses, icons and the flags of many nations.

At the Mass, Pope Benedict offered a less personalistic perspective on the apparitions and the messages of Fatima. He said some people might react with jealousy to Mary’s apparitions to the three young visionaries, disappointed that they have not had such experiences. But that’s a mistake, he said, because God’s power is great. “God ... has the power to come to us, particularly through our inner senses, so that the soul can receive the gentle touch of a reality which is beyond the senses,” he said.

Addressing an overflow crowd at Mass in one of Lisbon’s main squares, he encouraged Catholics to be “radiant witnesses” of their faith in key social areas: the family, culture, the economy and politics.

In case they took that as a theoretical exhortation, he then offered an “Evangelization 101” lesson, focusing on enthusiasm and love for Christ.

“Bear witness to all of the joy that his strong yet gentle presence evokes, starting with your contemporaries. Tell them that it is beautiful to be a friend of Jesus and that it is well worth following him,” he said.

In Fatima, the pope’s attention focused on Mary and the devotional movement that has developed around the sanctuary there. He connected Mary’s apparitions with the evangelizing task and, in an evening prayer service with priests and religious, said Mary remains the model Christian for the modern Church.

Leading a nighttime rosary recital May 12 for tens of thousands of pilgrims, he said the faith in many places seems like a light in danger of being “snuffed out forever.” The Church’s absolute priority today, he said, is “to make God visible in the world and to open for humanity a

abortion in 2007 and the imminent approval of a gay marriage law.

He called both developments “insidious and dangerous threats to the common good,” prompting a huge wave of applause.

But the pope also challenged his listeners, saying it was important for the Church’s social programs to resist the materialistic and relativistic values of the dominant culture, which, if adopted, would drain faith and Christian hope from the their efforts. In effect, he asked that Church-run social programs strengthen their Catholic identity.

Later on May 13, the pope ad-

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dressed Portugal’s bishops and, in unusually strong language, denounced what he called a “silence of the faith” in the face of widespread attacks on religious values.

When politicians and the media have scorned religion, Catholics who are ashamed of their faith have given a “helping hand” to secularism by failing to speak up, he said.

The bishops themselves, he said, must respect pluralism and engage in dialogue, but without being “gagged” when it comes to defending the Church’s moral teachings.

Clearly, the pope sees evangelization today as a countercultural activity. As he said in his first talk in Portugal, in modern societies it can even lead to the “radical choice” of martyrdom.

The other big dimension of the pope’s visit was his interpretation of the message of Fatima. On the plane carrying him to Portugal, he surprised reporters by saying that the suffering of the Church prophesied by the Fatima visions could even include the priestly sex abuse scandal — an example, he said, of a “terrifying” attack on the Church from the sins of its own members.

The pope paid homage to Mary at Fatima, praying before her statue and at the tombs of the three shepherd children to whom she appeared in 1917.

Celebrating Mass for an estimated 500,000 people at the sanctuary May 13, the anniversary of the first apparition, the pope emphasized that the prophetic mission of Fatima had not ended, and indeed has special relevance for a world still caught in a “cycle of death and terror.”

The pope made it clear that he sees the messages and secrets of Fatima not as apocalyptic predictions, but as a continual call for conversion for a suffering Church and a suffering world.

This effort to “universalize” the message of Fatima fits in well with Pope Benedict’s theological approach to private revelations, but has left some Fatima enthusiasts wondering where the dire details went.

OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER Vol. 54, No. 20

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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 m arychase@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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May 21, 2010

The International Church

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Pontiff emphasizes Christian contribution to Portuguese culture B y J ohn T havis C atholic N ews S ervice

special children — Pope Benedict XVI prays at the tombs of the Fatima visionaries after celebrating Mass at the Marian shrine of Fatima in central Portugal May 13. Mary appeared to three shepherd children in 1917 at Fatima. Blesseds Francisco and Jacinta Marto died as children. Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos died in 2005 at the age of 97. (CNS photo/Stefano Rellandini)

At Fatima, pope asks Mary to help keep priests holy

By John Thavis Catholic News Service FATIMA, Portugal — Pope Benedict XVI prayed at the site of Mary’s apparitions at Fatima and entrusted the world’s priests to her, saying the Church needs “holy priests, transfigured by grace.”

The pope prayed that Mary keep priests from the temptations of evil and “restore calm after the tempest.”

While he did not explicitly refer to the priestly sex abuse crisis, the pope’s remarks May 12 in some ways echoed what he said on his flight to Portugal the previous day, when he called the scandal a “terrifying” example of sins committed by the Church’s own ministers and urged a process of penance and purification in the Church.

The German pope arrived at Fatima to the cheers of more than 40,000 faithful, many of them sick or disabled, who had waited for hours at the sanctuary.

Some watched from stretchers as the pope waved from a pavilion overlooking a vast plaza in front of the shrine, as cold rain showers alternated with sunshine.

The pope then knelt in the Chapel of the Apparitions, built on the site where three shepherd children witnessed a series of apparitions beginning May 13, 1917. In a prayer recited before a statue of Mary, he recalled that Pope John Paul II had placed in its crown a fragment of a

gunman’s bullet that seriously wounded him May 13, 1981.

He noted that the Polish pope was convinced Mary had saved his life that day.

“It is a profound consolation to know that you are crowned not only with the silver and gold of our joys and hopes, but also with the ‘bullet’ of our anxieties and sufferings,” Pope Benedict said.

He left a gold rose at the statue’s feet.

After celebrating evening prayer with priests, religious and seminarians, the pope pronounced the “act of entrustment and consecration of priests to the immaculate heart of Mary.” In the Year for Priests, he said, it was important to remind priests that Christ is their model of holiness.

“Help us, through your powerful intercession, never to fall short of this sublime vocation, nor to give way to our selfishness, to the allurements of the world and to the wiles of the Evil One,” he said.

The entrustment of the world’s priests to Mary was a late addition to the papal program in Fatima. It came as the pope and other Church officials have responded to disclosures of hundreds of past cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests in several European countries.

In his comments to reporters aboard his plane May 11, the pope described the scandal as a grave spiritual failing that highlights the need for penance and

spiritual conversion inside the Church. In a letter to Irish Catholics in March, the pope said abusive priests had betrayed the trust of innocent young people and would answer to God for their sins.

At the evening prayer service in Fatima’s immense and modern Church of the Most Holy Trinity, the pope told priests that their own spiritual lives were crucial to their effectiveness in proclaiming the radical challenge of the Gospel.

“How much we need this witness today. Many of our brothers and sisters live as if there were nothing beyond this life and without concern for their eternal salvation,” he said.

The pope encouraged priests to look out for one another’s spiritual health and intervene when necessary.

The pope also urged priests to help the Church discern new vocations. As with many European countries, Portugal has seen a gradual but consistent drop in the number of seminarians; today there are approximately 290 seminarians in the country, down nearly 60 percent from 35 years ago.

LISBON, Portugal — In a meeting with Portugal’s artistic and academic elite, Pope Benedict XVI warned that modern society’s exaltation of the present threatens to undermine the traditionally Christian culture of Portugal.

The pope said the Church’s role includes the defense of such cultural foundations.

“For a society formed by a Catholic majority and whose culture has been deeply marked by Christianity, the attempt to find the truth outside of Jesus Christ is a dramatic development,” he said.

The 83-year-old pope made the remarks at an encounter in Lisbon May 12 with more than 1,000 representatives of Portuguese culture, including artists, filmmakers, critics, musicians, writers and academics. He was on a fourday trip to the country, which included stops in Fatima and Porto.

Seated on a throne in the center of a stage at the Belem Cultural Center, the pope heard a brief musical performance and then listened as 101-year-old Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal’s best-known film director, gave a welcoming talk.

Oliveira spoke of the “terrible doubts and disbelief” that have been raised in the modern age against the “faith of the Gospel that can move mountains.” He concluded by

saying that the roots of Portugal’s culture were Christian, “whether we want it or not.”

The pope said Oliveira’s words reflected a widespread anxiety caused by a modern culture that wants to “absolutize the present, detaching it from the cultural patrimony of the past.” This has naturally created a conflict with Portugal’s strongly Christian history, he said.

This cultural conflict is actually a “crisis of truth,” the pope said, because a culture that stops knowing the truth about itself and its own historical development ends up lacking clearly defined values and purposes.

He said the Church, in defending the truth of the Gospel and its power to shape cultures, remains open to dialogue with others, as long as the dialogue is “without ambiguity and respectful of the participants.”

The Church’s primary mission in contemporary culture, the pope said, is to “keep alive the search for truth and, consequently, for God,” and to lead people to seek the ultimate things that give life meaning.

He said the Second Vatican Council marked a turning point in the Church’s effort to have greater influence in the modern world. The council, he said, allowed the Church to welcome the best of modern culture while rejecting its “errors and blind alleys.”

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The Church in the U.S.

May 21, 2010

Lay group spreads devotion to Our Lady continued from page one

grew older and my mother was in a wheelchair, we still made every effort to join the Marian processions in May.” As McCormack grew into adulthood, her devotion to the Blessed Mother also grew. “I joined the Third Order of Franciscans and with that came a Marian vow to do Our Lady’s work, that of saving souls. It was natural for me to become involved in A Day With Mary. I need Mary, she’s my mother and I find it very satisfying to do her work.”

The day begins with a video of Our Lady of Fatima. “People sometimes forget the Fatima message, and this video is a great reminder of Our Lady’s call for penance and reparation,” said Sweeney. “Often people see the video and want to purchase it to take home and show it to their families and children. It’s a wonderful way to begin the day and set the tone.”

There is always a procession with a statue of Our Lady of Fatima and a crowning ceremony.

“We try to recite three rosaries during the course of the day, but sometimes, because of time restraints at the hosting church, we say two. And based on Mary’s call for repentance, confessions are available all day.”

The morning session ends with Mass.

Sweeney, a parishioner of St. Francis Xavier parish in Acushnet, said she has always had a great devotion to Mary and sees A Day With Mary as a way to help people “be Mary-like.”

The afternoon session includes exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and an Act of

Consecration. Attendees are also given the opportunity for Enrollment in the Brown Scapular and Conferment of the Miraculous Medal.

“At the end of the day, just as in Fatima, we process with the statue with the faithful waving tissues in farewell to Our Lady,” added Sweeney. “It’s quite moving.”

Sweeney said that attendance at the monthly Day With Mary has steadily increased. “Many of the people who come, have attended previous days,” she said.

“After attending for the first time, many ask when and where the next one will be. And then they come again.”

In an example of the resurgence of devotion to Our Lady, Sweeney told The Anchor that the team of which she is a member has been invited to Mableton, Ga., part of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, to hold a Day With Mary there. “The Fraternity of St. Paul asked us to go there in late June, and the Mass will be said in Latin,” she said. “We’re very excited about it.”

McCormack said that she finds more individuals coming to the Day With Mary sessions, “especially when the host pastor encourages his parishioners to take part. More people are joining us as associates, not having to become part of the core team, but joining us in prayer and at the sessions.”

Like McCormack, an increasing number of diocesan faithful are learning the importance of drawing close to the Blessed Mother, and A Day With Mary is an opportune time to do so.

daunting task — A crew collects and disposes of gelatin tar balls that have washed ashore on the west side of the South Pass near Port Eades, La. The fight to contain an offshore oil spill continued in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, where fishing and tourism industries are already feeling the pinch. (CNS photo/Sean Gardner, Reuters)

Worry grows over effect of oil spill on livelihoods of fishing families

By Peter Finney Jr. Catholic News Service NEW ORLEANS — Uncertainty over how the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will affect the livelihoods of south Louisiana fishing families as well as potential damages to the environment surfaced at several outreach gatherings in the New Orleans Archdiocese.

The sessions were sponsored

by Catholic Charities and Mary Queen of Vietnam Parish, which encompasses Vietnamese Catholics in the archdiocese east of the Mississippi River.

About 200 Vietnamese fishermen packed a meeting room at Mary Queen of Vietnam May 7 to question representatives of British Petroleum on their recovery plans and ensure that they were

being included among those the company is hiring to protect the coastline and clean up the spill.

The company has tried unsuccessfully to contain the spill with controlled burning, dispersal and plugging the leak since one of its offshore oil rigs exploded April 20. About 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking into the waters of the gulf every day, threatening the fishing industry, U.S. wetlands and all manner of wildlife.

“This meeting has helped surface the issues that our fishermen are facing,” said Father Vien The Nguyen, pastor of Mary Queen of Vietnam. “The meeting also shows government officials, as well as BP, that either they do things correctly or we will come together as a force.”

Father Nguyen said he was deeply concerned that Vietnamese fishermen, who may represent half of the commercial fleet in south Louisiana, were being underrepresented in BP’s hiring of local personnel to deploy protective booms along the coastline.

“If we are 50 percent of the fishing fleet, how many of our people are being hired?” Father Nguyen asked. “I know it’s not 50 percent. Is it 10 percent? I know it’s not 10 percent.”

BP spokesman Hugh Depland told the Vietnamese fishermen that of the 900 boaters who had signed up to make their vessels available for the deployment operation, only about 100 have been actually put to work for BP. However, Depland said, fishermen who file claims with BP over loss of work because of the spill “are eligible to expedited payments equivalent to one month’s earnings from fishing” up to a maximum of $5,000 per individual per month. Those monthly payments, based on the fisherman’s most recent income

tax records, are renewable in subsequent months “if you are still unable to fish,” Depland said.

At a marina in Hopedale May 5, the archdiocese’s Catholic Charities agency, Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana, the United Way and local nonprofit Santa on the Bayou teamed up to provide immediate relief to fishing families impacted by the spill.

Of the 124 people who lined up at the marina wharf, 105 received $100 gift cards for groceries at Winn Dixie supermarkets and 19 received boxes of groceries and baby supplies.

“I’m not surprised by the crowd because I know the need is there,” said Father John Arnone, pastor of St. Bernard Church in St. Bernard. “I see quite a number of faces of people who come to church every week, and there are others in the community that I see often.”

Waiting his turn to register for aid was Jesse Alfonso, a parishioner of St. Bernard Church, who said his biggest concern was the uncertainty of how long the oil spill would impact his crabbing and shrimping business.

“I’m doing a lot of worrying,” Alfonso told the Clarion Herald, newspaper of the New Orleans Archdiocese. “When are we going to go back? I’m completely shut down, and we don’t know when we’re going to be able to go back.”

BP has forwarded $25,000 to Catholic Charities to be used for direct assistance to eligible families, said Colleen D’Aquin, emergency management director for the archdiocese.

“We are in the process of doing further strategic planning to access more dollars,” D’Aquin said. “We’re looking at more ways to offer direct assistance.”

The Church in the U.S.

May 21, 2010

5

Catholic education is in ‘mission confusion,’ says longtime educator

landmark sandwich — Phyllis Gotta and Steve Penna work with other volunteers at Holy Cross Parish in Springfield, Mass., to prepare sandwiches for the homeless. The ministry recently celebrated the making of its 100,000th sandwich. (CNS photo/Peggy Weber, The Catholic Observer)

Massachusetts parish marks milestone of 100,000th sandwich for homeless

By Peggy Weber Catholic News Service

Catholic Observer, newspaper of the Springfield Diocese.

The Sandwich Ministry group assembles the sandwiches and bags two of them with a banana.

Since the beginning, Ann Marie Duffy of Coughlin’s Place has donated the fruit each week.

“She has given us 50,000 bananas so far,” said Deacon Toller.

than just the homeless.

“You are an inspiration. Priest, SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — A religious and deacons need to be milestone was reached recently at fed — and I don’t mean with Holy Cross Parish in Springfield sandwiches. We need to be spiriwith the making of the 100,000th tually fed, fired up and fed. And sandwich in the parish’s ongoing you do that by your presence efforts to feed the homeless. here every Sunday and by doing “This started as an outgrowth, the work you do,” Father Carrier four years ago, of our JustFaith said. ministry here,” said Deacon Bill Daisy Hernandez has been Toller. JustFaith is a helping with the sandor me, the joy of this is going wich ministry for 30-week formation program in Catholic social downtown and the interaction more than a year. She ministry. with the people for whom we provide got involved through a “We had a lot of unprogram at Holy Cross structured ideas about the meals. They are so incredibly grate- Parish, which brings how we would help the ful. And for me it is an absolute direct people from jail and homeless,” he said. response to what the Gospel calls us to pre-release centers to Since then, the small do.” church. group connected with Hernandez said she New England Christian started coming when Ministry and started He noted that he and Bob she was incarcerated. the Sandwich Ministry at Holy Tyer, a parishioner, slice the “My love for helping people Cross. meat each week. The Sandwich and giving back to the commuEach Sunday, after the 11 a.m. Ministry is a member of the Food nity and my love for God keep Mass, volunteers gather to make Bank of Western Massachusetts, me coming to church and helpsandwiches that are distributed and the meat and cheese come ing with the sandwich ministry,” later in the day to the homeless. from there, according to Deacon Hernandez said.

“We have no sign-ups, al- Toller.

She said she has been out of though we have some regulars Margie and Tom Mathews de- prison for about a year and is who come each week,” said Dea- liver the bread each week. And glad that she can help others. con Toller. countless volunteers lend a hand “When I was committing crimes They began by making 25 — literally.

I was hurting my community. sandwiches and now make 600 Father J. Victor Carrier, pas- Now I can give back and help,” each week. Deacon Toller said tor of Holy Cross, said those she said. it has been amazing to watch so who gather in the St. Michael’s Deacon Toller said it takes many people embrace this minis- Academy cafeteria each week about $20,000 each year to run try in so many ways. are people “who do the work of the sandwich ministry. He said “For me, the joy of this is go- God, who do it lovingly and gen- the “Lord has provided” as the ing downtown and the interaction erously.” community made its 100,000th with the people for whom we He said at a 100,000th-sand- sandwich. provide the meals. They are so wich celebration that he is espe“And it was important to recincredibly grateful. And for me it cially inspired by all the young ognize this milestone,” he said, is an absolute direct response to people who help out on Sundays. “because it is good to recognize what the Gospel calls us to do,” And he said the efforts of the the importance of being faithful he said in an interview with The Sandwich Ministry feed more to what you are doing.”

“F

WASHINGTON — Catholic education is in a state of “mission confusion” as the number of schools shrinks along with the student population, according to a longtime Catholic education executive.

“We are in very, very serious trouble,” said Patricia WeitzelO’Neill, the outgoing superintendent of schools in the Archdiocese of Washington.

She is taking a position as executive director at the Center for Catholic Education at Boston’s Lynch School of Education to work on approaches to stem the problems.

The downward trend in numbers results from “the consequences of making decisions — and the consequences of not making decisions, which has been happening for a long time,” Weitzel-O’Neill said May 7 during “A Washington Briefing for the Nation’s Catholic Community,” co-sponsored by Trinity Washington University and the National Catholic Reporter weekly newspaper.

“I’m stirring the pot,” she acknowledged, but “we’re on a very slippery slope.”

One issue, according to Weitzel-O’Neill, is the presumed target audience for Catholic elementary and high schools.

Schools in city centers are increasingly closing their doors, shutting out a potential immigrant and non-Catholic student body. “We lose our chance at evangelizing them,” she said.

“We closed all those schools in the ‘80s and we never replaced them,” Weitzel-O’Neill said.

More and more, affluent families are targeted to enroll their children in Catholic schools. In the Washington Archdiocese, the average elementary school tuition is $7,000 a year, and the least expensive Catholic high school’s tuition is $11,000;

some schools charge as much as $30,000.

The “parish model” of school sponsorship has grown less workable over the years, Weitzel-O’Neill said. In a past generation, Sisters taught at and ran Catholic schools for “nothing or next to nothing,” she added, noting that today’s lay teachers still aren’t paid a just wage, “though we’re getting better.”

Weitzel-O’Neill decried teachers’ unions, which she described as responsible for bottling up state and federal legislation that would permit public money to given to nonpublic schools. Saying the unions’ motivation was preserving the jobs of public school teachers, she added, “It isn’t about the adults.

It’s about the kids.”

Weitzel-O’Neill said vigorous support for Catholic education is lacking from both parents and pastors. Parents, she said, believe their children get a satisfactory education in suburban public school districts, while a growing number of pastors never attended Catholic schools themselves.

When Weitzel-O’Neill started her job in Washington eight years ago, the archdiocese had 114 grade and high schools.

Now the number is 96, including seven schools in the District of Columbia that changed to charter schools in 2008. “It’s probably one of the most horrible things I’ve ever done, to stand in front of poor people and tell them we don’t have enough money to keep the school going,” she said.

The slide is mirrored nationwide, as Catholic schools have closed at the rate of better than 100 a year over the past 50 years, with 5,645 fewer Catholic schools operating now than in 1960, according to figures from the National Catholic Educational Association.

6

The Anchor The pneumatological path of ecclesial renewal

The solemn feast of Pentecost, which the Church celebrates on Sunday, is an annual opportunity for authentic ecclesial renewal. This year the need for the Church to beg the Holy Spirit for the gift of true reform is altogether too obvious, because the mystical body is hurting due to the accumulation of so many self-inflicted wounds.

Pope Benedict called attention to these wounds during his flight to Portugal last week, when in the context of a question on the pope’s and the Church’s suffering in the third part of the Fatima message, he poignantly described that the greatest attacks on the Church are self-inflicted.

“Attacks on the pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This, too, is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church, and that the Church thus has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification.” Pope Benedict was clearly, but probably not exclusively, alluding to the sins of commission and omission involved in acts of clerical sexual abuse.

He also drew from the Fatima message the essential path of ecclesial healing, which he remarked involves “conversion, prayer, penance and the theological virtues [of faith, hope and love].”

Mary’s 1917 message in Fatima began with calling the three shepherd children, and through them the whole world, to “penance, penance, penance,” and finished by summoning all the faithful to receive the grace of conversion and imitate Mary in consecrating themselves to God. This is the path of ecclesial renewal on which the Holy Spirit always seeks to guide the Church.

A detailed application of the Holy Father’s general summons to penance and renewal was given by Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin a few days prior to the pope’s pilgrimage. In a remarkably candid May 10 address on “The Future of the Catholic Church in Ireland,” the Irish prelate tackled the various sins that have wounded the Church in Ireland and then sketched the arduous path that true reform of the Church must traverse. Most of his comments apply not just to the Church on the Emerald Isle, but here in the United States and throughout most of the northern hemisphere.

Archbishop Martin declared that, on the one hand, he could not be “pessimistic” about the future of the Church, because he knows that at each moment in the Church’s history God the Father sends the Holy Spirit to teach us all things in Jesus’ name (Jn 16:13). On the other hand, he confessed to being “disheartened and discouraged” about the generally low “level of willingness to really begin what is going to be a painful path of renewal and of what is involved in that renewal.” He listed a few of the discouraging signs: The first is an ecclesiological confusion about what genuine renewal entails. One group, more traditional, calls for a renewal that stresses a reinforcement of the Church’s institutional power structure in the face of ecclesiastical chaos and lack of accountability. The second group, more progressive, basically rejects the institution in favor of a bottom-up “We are the Church” ecclesiology. Archbishop Martin implied that both arguments are egocentric rather than theological.

“Perhaps on both sides there may be an underlying feeling that ‘I am the Church,’ that the Church must be modeled on my way of thinking or on my position.” For renewal to occur, however, we must recognize that it is “never our own creation,” but involves “returning to the Church that we have received from the Lord.” It’s disheartening to Archbishop Martin, however, that many are clinging to their ideas rather than to the Lord’s.

The second and “most obvious” reason for discouragement, he notes, is the “drip-by-drip never-ending revelation about child sexual abuse and the disastrous way it was handled,” the “subconscious denial on the part of many” about the extent of the abuse and its denial, and the failure on the part of many to accept “responsibility for what happened.” The Church, like individuals, will only be renewed by confessing her sins in number and kind, taking responsibility for her sins, and doing penance for them. Many, he said, are discouragingly still in denial over the extent of the evil and their responsibility for it.

A third and “deeper” root of discouragement is because many, he said, do not recognize the profound “crisis of faith” that exists among large sections of the Church. “Our young people are among the most catechized in Europe but among the least evangelized,” he declared, meaning that many know the truths of the faith without personally believing and living them, an assessment that likewise applies to many Catholic adults. “Catholic identity,” however, “is more than a vague ethos” of Gospel values. It is fundamentally about “witness,” about living the faith. The larger context not only for the crisis of sexual abuse but for almost all of the other crises in the Church, he suggested, lies in the fact that many Catholics, including clergy, have separated identity from witness, faith from life.

Archbishop Martin noted that there are a couple of reasons for this separation between Catholic identity and faithful witness which has led to the Church’s salt losing its flavor. Both involve knowing merely about Jesus instead of knowing him personally. The first is a general neglect of sacred Scripture. Catholics, he said, “do not know the Scriptures … [and] do not take the time to encounter Jesus in the Scriptures.” As St. Jerome said in the fourth century, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” The second cause is the way Catholic moral teaching is communicated. “The manner in which the moral teaching of the Church is presented to believers is far too often not adequately situated within the overall context of the teaching of Jesus, which is both compassionate and demanding.” Because of this lack of context, it becomes harder for Catholics coherently to grasp and persuasively to explain Catholic moral teaching within a contemporary culture that so often separates certain “hard” moral teachings from Jesus’ overall message of true love.

For true renewal to take place, Archbishop Martin said that Church history shows it must begin with “individual renewal” that leads to a thorough and “radical re-orientation” of parishes.

Parishes must be “strong and witnessing faith communities,” real schools of prayer, learning and sacrificial love. True renewal cannot occur without parish renewal because “the Church is not … just a collection of individuals. The proclamation of the Gospel cannot adequately be carried out by a correspondence course among people who never meet.” For those who want to see the Church reformed, therefore, they must help to reform their parishes, and that means they must stay involved and become more involved.

He also insisted that parish renewal must involve much greater emphasis on properly integrating young people into the life and mission of the Church. In many parishes, he said, there are very few programs to accompany teen-agers and young adults in their continued education in the faith, which is one of the reasons why many are absent. This for him is the greatest source of discouragement of all. He said that there is an urgent need for more demanding sacramental preparation programs that connect catechesis to sacramental practice and parish life and love. “A form of Religious Education that is separated from the parish will inevitably collapse.” In many places, he said, it has.

Archbishop Martin, like the Holy Father, stressed that the “agenda for change in the Church must be one that comes from its message and not from pressure from outside. … True reform of the Church will only spring from those who love the Church, with a love like that of Jesus which is prepared also to suffer for the Church and to give oneself for the Church.”

This Sunday is a time for the whole Church to beg the Father to send the Holy Spirit to bind the Church’s self-inflicted wounds, bring us to penance and conversion, help us to love the Church as Christ does, and renew the face and heart of the Church through igniting our parishes with evangelical fire.

May 21, 2010

The personification of the path to heaven St. John Vianney’s mission as pastor, as he availing ourselves of the means God provides mentioned the day of his arrival to eight-year- to make us holy. Sometimes we can have an old Antoine Givre, was to show the people of erroneous notion of holiness as something that Ars the way to heaven. The beginning of that mainly we do — through thousands of heroic pastoral plan was to try to help his parishioners acts of charity — rather than something God — through his preaching and his contagious does. Father Vianney stressed that we need to longing for heaven — to lift up their hearts from let God, who is “holy, holy, holy,” conform us earthly desires, concerns and goods in order to to his holiness. develop a deep desire for the greatest good of This conformation occurs fundamentally all: eternal life with the God who loves them. through prayer and sacraments. “The two Getting them to desire heaven, however, things we need to do to unite with our Lord was only the first step. The second was more and be saved,” he said, “are prayer and the sacchallenging: actually getting them on the path raments. All those who became saints have frethat leads to heaven. This meant persuading his quented the sacraments and have lifted up their people to turn around from the popular dead- soul to God in prayer.” end highways on which they were traveling to About prayer, he loved to quote a poor journey with him perseveringly on the narrow man of his parish who, in describing how he path that leads to life (Mt 7:14). made his holy hour, stated simply, “Those who His principal means to do this was to foster pray so devoutly are the saints. I have the inamong them a great devotion to, and imitation tention to do what they do, to say what they of, the saints. say.” To become a saint, we need to pray like Father Vianney sought to make the path to the saints. heaven simple by showing how the saints perWith regard to the seven efficacious signs sonified it. Each night he would spend a large of divine grace Jesus had instituted, the Curé portion of his minimal sleep time to read the of Ars would insist, “All those who approach lives of the saints so that he could pass on the the sacraments are not saints, but the saints will fruits of his contemplation to his people. always be among those who receive them ofHe also adorned the inside of the church ten.” He encouraged them to receive as often as with altars to the Blessed Mother, St. John the possible the sacraments of confession and the Baptist, and St. Philomena, as well as with Eucharist, the two means of grace Christ gave shrines to SS. Jous to sanctify us seph, Peter, Sixand sustain us retus, Blaise, Lawpeatedly on our rence, Francis of earthly pilgrimAssisi, Catherine age. To become of Siena, and a saint, we need Benedict Lato allow God to bre. The Curé of do in us what he

By Father Ars was pleased did in the saints when parishiothrough these Roger J. Landry ners began to gifts. comment that For Father the church was beginning to evoke the heav- Vianney, however, prayer and the sacraments enly communion of saints. That was his point, were not isolated means of sanctification, but to remind them that they were surrounded by two of the most important helps along the path a vast cloud of witnesses spurring them on to to holiness, which for him was synonymous victory and showing them the way (Heb 12). with “life according to the Holy Spirit” (Rom The other purpose for adorning his church 8:5). The Holy Spirit is the one who teaches with such images, he would joke, was a sacred us to pray as we ought (Rom 8:26). The Holy quid pro quo: “I willingly make a beautiful Spirit is the one who sanctifies us through the place for the saints here on earth so that they sacraments. The Holy Spirit is the one who may make me a small one in heaven!” helps us to live out our faith with ardent love Merely having a devotion to the saints, and courage. however, was not sufficient to be numbered The patron saint of priests once asked rheamong them one day. They also needed to be torically in a sermon what distinguishes the imitated. saints here on earth and allows them to detach A century before the Second Vatican Coun- themselves from earthly goods in order to seek cil proclaimed the “universal call to holiness,” and choose the things that are above. He replied Father Vianney was already preaching it, con- definitively that the saints “allow themselves to scious of the fact that he was not preaching to be led by the Holy Spirit.” Cooperating with the the choir. Most people at his time, like many work of the Holy Spirit in us, through prayer, still today, believe that God doesn’t really call the sacraments and Christian morality, was, for us all to be saints but just to be “good.” St. John Vianney, the secret of a holy life.

Vianney confronted this moral minimalism He used a powerful image of the process of head-on. He said he had often heard people sanctification by the Holy Spirit that captivated say, “Provided that I am saved, that’s all that’s his parishioners and is fitting for us to ponder necessary. I do not want to be a saint.” He re- as we approach on Sunday the Solemnity of plied by saying, “If you are not a saint, you will Pentecost: “The Holy Spirit is like a man with be a reprobate. There’s no middle ground. It’s a carriage with a good horse who is ready to necessary to be one or the other. Take note!” drive us to Paris. We have only to say yes and If we genuinely desire the end of heaven, climb inside!” The saints are the ones who Father Vianney emphasized, we must likewise have climbed aboard with trust and docility will the means of sanctity. The saints show us and allowed the Holy Spirit to drive them all how to do so. the way to life’s true capital.

“The saints are human beings just like us,” For Father Vianney, the path to heaven — the Curé of Ars often said, “but they love the to which he spent his priest life trying to guide good God more than we do.” They are not his people — is not principally an excruciatmembers of a rarified class of spiritual super- ing hike of human exertion up to heaven, but heroes, but are ordinary people who love God rather a wild chariot ride, in which the Holy and others according to Christ’s standard.

Spirit leads us through dark valleys and danTo those among his flock who thought that gerous passes, over crevices and canyons, at because of past selfish choices, they could nev- all types of speed through all types of weather, er become holy, he reminded them, “The saints even through death, until we arrive at our heavdid not all start out well, but they all finished enly home. Our main task is to get on board well. We may have begun badly, but let us fin- and hold on tight for the length of the journey. ish well!” He focused on the infinite diversity St. John Vianney did get on board for the of saints to help his people recognize that saints entire journey. He also inspired so many of his do not come from a divine cookie-cutter. “All parishioners to imitate him and the saints by [saints] do not take the same path,” he said, getting them to join him on that same heavenly “but they all arrive at the same place.” transport. There’s a spot reserved, too, for us.

In order for us to arrive at that place, he Father Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of said, we need to imitate the saints principally in Padua Parish in New Bedford.

Putting Into the Deep

May 21, 2010

I

The many people on the road to the priesthood

t all started in our own small family — just mom, dad, and me. It was a household of faith. There was never any discussion about whether to go to Mass, where to go, or even what time. The parking place and the pew were always the same.

It was the 8 a.m. Mass, and during the school year the students sat up front supervised by the Sisters. But outside of school time I was always placed at the end of the pew, to be sure I could see beyond the adults in front of me. That’s what it was like in the third pew from the back at St. Joseph Church in New Bedford.

At that time, there were the religious Sisters who staffed the school. Beyond the general role of living and practicing the faith in a relatively public fashion, they were “vocational recruiters.” They would occasionally show movies (16-mm sound movies in those days) depicting the work of missionary priests and Sisters in different parts of the world.

It was while watching one of these that I thought I might be called to do the work of these priests, but not so far from home. I was in the seventh or eighth grade at the time.

O

7

The Anchor

n a gray, rainy, melancholy February afternoon, a Harvard student stepped out of Widener Library and began a solemn walk along the Charles River. He stopped when he noticed the beautiful pale green buds and blossoms on the tree branches that lined the River. He did something very simple, then: he contemplated.

As he studied their beauty, this agnostic student realized that the organic complexity that produced the beauty of these budding trees didn’t seem like something so nebulous and undefined as “Nature.” It seemed the work of something sacred and undeniably intelligent.

This divine intelligence didn’t extend merely to these humble trees. It extended to the entire world, from the smallest of micro-organisms to the healing of the human body. “If, then, the very energies of growth and healing in the human body were hedged with sacredness,” this student later wrote, “was it not monstrous that we, incapable of creating a hair, should undertake to dispose of our whole being, heedless of its appointed end?”

Here we find another moment of conversion, where a previously resistant and skep-

The priests of the parGroup” that helped me learn ish were also an invitation how to put what I had learned to consider a vocation to the at the seminary into practice. priesthood by their presence, The older priests gave example their prayer, and their interand encouragement, and my est. There were four priests peers help provide challenge assigned to our parish all the and support. years I was growing up. Father Early in my priesthood I beLouis Boivin was the director came involved in the Cursillo of the school most of my time movement. The laity involved there, and I still have a clear helped me understand better image of his pacing up and down the sidewalk next to the church with his Year For Priests cassock flowing in the Vocational Reflection wind while he prayed his breviary (shorthand for Liturgy of the

By Father Hours).

Marcel H. Bouchard In high school there was plenty of interest and help from the Sisters, lay teachers (very few how to be a priest with and for there in the early days), and them, even as they committed the chaplain, Father Joseph themselves to helping the best Powers. Father Powers paid they could the priests in their great interest in the young men own parishes to carry out their contemplating a vocation to ministry. the priesthood, and I consider I’ve been nourished along him largely responsible for the way by many “moments keeping the idea alive in my closest to Christ.” The hapmind throughout high school. piest have been when I have The priest-professors at the been able to celebrate the joy seminary not only taught, but of new life at couples’ margave examples of the life of riages or when baptizing their a priest. But after ordination babies. The most challenging it was really association with — the times when my faith priests of various ages through was most used by the Lord as the “Vincent Dwyer Retreat a sign of his caring — were at

moments of the death of children from still-born to teens.

Ministering to people in this situation has been the hardest thing I have had to do, but these moments have always been times when the Lord has used my faith, and in so doing, strengthened it.

I have always thought my main responsibility is to bring people to God and to help them experience the joy of faith. So it’s not surprising that I have most experienced God’s love and the love of his faithful people as they responded by their own lives of faith, their stewardship of their time and talent, their generosity with their treasure, and their affirmation that they felt I was an agent of God’s goodness and grace.

If there’s one moment, or one experience, that really stands out in my priestly ministry, it would be from 19801984, when I was the director of Continuing Formation for priests in our diocese. In this position I had the opportunity to get to know just about all the priests in our diocese. I was continually impressed by the loving priestly hearts they manifested for the people they

were sent to serve.

Through my involvement with the national organization I was able to meet and work with some of the most wonderful priests throughout our country. Their ministries, their ideas, their hard work made a lasting impression on me.

I had the same experience with the priests with whom I was on sabbatical a couple of years ago at the North American College in Rome.

This all makes me feel so gifted by God — to be called to share the challenge and the joy of the ministry of the ordained priesthood in and for the Church.

The heart of my ministry is the joy of faith. It beats with the love of service. It’s nourished with the rewards of the prayer and work of the ministry. And it is sustained through the prayer of the people. It’s all God’s grace, but I want to thank all the wonderful, loving, supportive people who pray for priests regularly.

I’m convinced that it’s their prayers that have made my priesthood so wonderful and so happy.

Father Bouchard was ordained in 1972 and is pastor of Corpus Christi Parish in East Sandwich.

Paradoxically hopeful places tical intellect discovers, in a be “cradle Catholics,” we are daily moment, the interior truth not shut out from the process of and call of the one who created conversion. The “Catechism” him. The Harvard student’s asserts that “conversion of name was Avery Dulles. heart” and “interior conversion” Cardinal Avery Dulles was are the hallmarks of the Cathoborn to a political family (his lic faith. Caravaggio’s magnififather was Secretary of State cent painting “The Conversion John Dulles, after whom Dulles of St. Paul” reminds us of the Airport is named) and raised a interior drama of conversion in Presbyterian, eventually becoming a staunchly agnostic materialist.

After that gray February day, however, Dulles converted fully, first to theism and then to Catholicism, which proBy Jennifer Pierce pelled Dulles on a path to ordination as a Jesuit priest and eventually incorporation into the College its dramatic depiction of Saul, of Cardinals. Along the way, he on his way to Tarsus, struck wrote more than 700 articles blind off his horse. The image and 22 books on theology and evokes the scriptural account of the Catholic faith.

St. Paul’s conversion, the voice Conversion isn’t just for and presence of God making non-believers, it is the model itself undeniably manifest. for the Christian interior life.

Though conversion can actuMany of these Catholic Thinkally be like that, more often it ers were not born into Catholihappens daily in the ordinary, cism but fly into it in a dramatic every day things that make up act of will and faith, giving the minutes and hours of our their writing urgency and addlife. True conversion, however, ing a certain narrative charm to always feels like that; true contheir biographies. They serve to version is like that. remind: though many of us may Quite simply, conversion

Great Catholic Thinkers

is repentance. Though we aren’t literally struck blind and knocked from a horse, in the experience of true conversion and repentance, we see the whole world and everything in it anew. The experience of it bears the mark of the voice of God: clear, simple, unmistakable, and seeming to arrive despite rather than because of ourselves.

Even faithful Catholics — those who believe, who attend Mass, who pray the rosary, who receive the sacraments — still have dark places of heart and mind, places where we try to block the indwelling of Christ; it is the mark of original sin and a feature of our fallen natures.

What the story of Cardinal Dulles tells us, however, is that we should neither fear those dark corners nor deny that they are there; when we look within and see them, when we feel them, or note them in passing thoughts and moods throughout the course of our day, when they make themselves manifest in habitual sin and a dull apathy toward our friends, family, and neighbors, Dulles reminds us that these are paradoxically

hopeful places; for these are the places where God can become most present to us. On his own conversion he wrote: “In the darkness of my inner world the highest human instincts were confronted with a vacuum.

Into that vacuum stepped the Grace of God. The barren desolation of my materialist philosophy, its utter falseness and my humiliation at discovering it so, gave God his chance. The very extremeness of my error made conversion easier.”

Cardinal Dulles worked tirelessly on interfaith dialogue throughout his life. Though he suffered a great deal at the end of his life (December 2008), the optimistic faith that characterized his conversion emanated from his farewell address, which had to be read for him as he was unable to speak. He saw in his ailments yet another dark vacuum into which the Lord would step, as he wrote: “If the Lord now calls me to a period of weakness I know well that his power can be made perfect in infirmity.”

Jennifer Pierce is a parishioner of Corpus Christi in East Sandwich, where she lives with her husband Jim and two daughters.

8

I

n her book, “A Candle at Midnight,” Mary Heidish describes the Gospel accounts of the upper room this way: “Gray men in a gray room behind a locked door.

Here they are, hiding out: the disciples of Jesus. Here they have been since Gethsemane.

No lamps are lit. No one moves.

Light from small windows, set high, settles like ash over them all.

Peter glances at his comrades. They seem to have aged and grown frail. Their faces are pinched, cautious look of old beggars. Sounds below in the street make them flinch. Is Jerusalem still dangerous? Was it ever dangerous — for them? No one goes to find out. Instead, they sit silent. Like Lot’s wife, they have looked back. Now they cannot look forward, nor can they look at one another.

The women have brought food and news, as did John, and the terrible story has been told.

The disciples have pictured it

May 21, 2010

The Anchor

Pentecost: A gracious and wider life between the mountain top experiall, every scene. In every scene ences in life which the disciples they are missing. The future is experienced at the transfiguramissing. Sickening gaps have aption, when faith is strong, the peared. Jesus, gone? Their plans, vision is clear, hope is very alive; their part in a great endeavor — and the times of the cross, which all are gone. There are moments, even hours when they cannot believe it, and so they sit in silence and try Homily of the Week not to think of the past or Pentecost the future. There is only Sunday the present; only this room.”

By Deacon The disciples experiBruce J. Bonneau ence a crisis of confidence and become paralyzed by fear. They do have are places of the tomb, times of a choice, however, they can be waiting, when everything seems truthful, leave the room and live lost and where it seems nothing is as disciples in the world or they happening. can remain in hiding, preferring These in-between times and a safe silence. They cannot do “thin places,” are when we are both. Instead they wait until Jesus vulnerable and fragile, tender brings the light of his resurrection moments of deep emotion; when to fill their darkness. our plans have not worked out; The 12 experience what we when dreams are shattered, all experience; gaps in our faith when jobs are lost, when friends, which remind us that faith’s real children, and parents are lost enemy is not doubt, it is fear. It or die and we wonder how will is the space in which we are in

we continue without them? Life seems to lose out to despair and makes no sense; two and two does not equal four and meaning is questioned.

However these times come into our lives, they are the times and places of true transformation. We are finally forced to let go of the comfortable worlds we invent for ourselves, and the little lies of control and security that get us through the day.

These little deaths are the paths to redemption, where we realize that only that which is handed over and let go of can be remade, recreated, and transformed, when we are finally free of our agendas and open to God’s agenda. These are sacred wounds where the Holy Spirit can break through the narrow cracks with his many gifts. Gifts which we are always waiting for but seldom prepared for. The time and place of the outpouring of grace when all

time is tied together and something new is possible. Life as we experience it is widened and more gracious.

And then it happens. We recognize that Christ is in our midst and he announces a contagious peace that cannot and will not be contained. We are filled with his power from on high. It penetrates the locked rooms and dim hideouts we all have and heals our small and cowardly ways. This peace is not about being right or being safe. It is knowing we are never abandoned. We cannot add or subtract from this peace because it is not won nor is it negotiated. It is all gift. When we can be confident that our God is loyal to us even though we have not been loyal to him. Where paradoxically and almost ironically, we can be both truthful and safe at the same time.

Deacon Bonneau is assistant director of the diocesan Adult Faith Formation and Spirituality Office and serves at St. Mary’s Parish in Fairhaven.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. May 22, Acts 28:16-20,30-31; Ps 11:4-5,7; Jn 21:20-25. Sun. May 23, Pentecost Sunday, Acts 2:1-11; Ps 104:1,24, 29-31,34; 1 Cor 12:3b-7,12-13 or Rom 8:8-17; Jn 20:19-23 or Jn 14:15-16,23b-26. Mon. May 24, 1 Pt 1:3-9; Ps 111:1-2,5-6,9,10c; Mk 10:17-27. Tues. May 25, 1 Pt 1:10-16; Ps 98:1-4; Mk 10:28-31. Wed. May 26, 1 Pt 1:18-25; Ps 147:12-15,19-20; Mk 10:32-45. Thur. May 27, 1 Pt 2:2-5,9-12; Ps 100:2-5; Mk 10:46-52. Fri. May 28, 1 Pt 4:7-13; Ps 96:10-13; Mk 11:11-26.

I

t’s hard to imagine a more depressing spectacle in contemporary American public life than the immigration reform “debate.”

What a friend who’s bailing out of the mainstream media recently deplored over lunch as “bumpersticker politics” dominates the so-called “public discourse” on the question, and, truth to tell, some prominent Catholics have added more heat than light to the mix. How might Catholic social doctrine and a Catholic optic on politics turn the mutual exchange of rhetorical barrages into a real national conversation? Herewith are some preliminary thoughts: — Catholic political theory places a high value on the rule of law, which it regards as morally superior to the alternative, which is the rule of willfulness imposed by brute force.

— The laws we make through our elected representatives are

An immigration debate primer

Catholic in the United States today under the scrutiny of the natural moral law we can know by reason, is the descendant of immigrants (in my case, from Germany in the which means that our political early- and mid-19th century). This judgments should be rational, not demographic fact, which reflects glandular. the national tradition of hospital— The inalienable dignity and ity to the stranger, should create a value of every human being from predisposition to be pro-immigrant conception until natural death is the bedrock personalist principle from which Catholic thinking about public policy begins. The dignity does not confer an absolute right on anyone to live wherever he

By George Weigel or she chooses. A proper Catholic understanding of limited and constitutional government grasps that the state — within the Catholic community in America. That the vast majority of which in the American case means Catholics in the United States tothe national government — has a day are law-abiding citizens whose right to enforce its citizenship laws economic and social well-being is and a duty to conduct that enforcemade possible by living within a ment in a just way. law-governed political community — With the exception of our should incline us to live that proNative American brethren, every

The Catholic Difference

immigrant predisposition through the mediation of the rule of law.

— It is absurd to suggest that the United States has become xenophobic, racist, or anti-immigrant. Last year, as my colleague Robert Royal pointed out in a recent article, the United States naturalized 1 million new citizens, most of them from Mexico, and over the past decade we have naturalized another 10 million people who have worked their way through the system legally. Millions more are in the legal immigration pipeline or are working in the United States with legal permits.

If these are the marks of a racist or xenophobic nation, it’s a nation that displays its racism and xenophobia in very odd ways.

— The canons of justice dictate that people should not be rewarded

for law-breaking, and that is what illegal immigrants do: they break the law. Realism dictates that we cannot send some 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants home. The present situation — border porousness, which is exploited by criminals as well as by those looking for work; a large population of illegals; millions of people seeking U.S. citizenship while playing by the rules — is intolerable. Any morally acceptable solution to immigration reform will address all three facets of the present mess.

— Responsible citizens who wish to be generous and uphold the rule of law and create a solution to the problem of illegals that doesn’t divide families or otherwise treat unjustly those who have, as Bob Royal put it, “taken advantage of a situation we Americans have allowed to exist for too long” should demand that politicians stop playing the demagogue on this issue. Responsible citizens, while understanding the angers of fellowcitizens along the southern border of the United States who are appalled at the situation they face on a daily basis and while demanding that the government fulfill its duty to protect the border, will also appeal to the common sense of their neighbors who imagine that deportation is a real-world solution.

Within these principles and facts, I suggest, lies an acceptable, if not perfect, solution to immigration reform.

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

May 21, 2010

Ancient diet plan discovered by parish priest

21 May 2010 — at home in reading (in Latin) of the Roman Old Dighton Village — St. Chris- Martyrology was taking place. topher Magallanes and companThe Martyrology is the official ion martyrs account of the lives and deaths of n my day, young seminarthe saints. We were expected to ians didn’t speak to each meditate as we ate. Multi-tasking other at suppertime. The main meal of the day was taken in silence. Sitting together at long refecReflections of a tory tables, we developed Parish Priest signals for such essential phrases as “Please pass

By Father Tim the butter” and “Milk Goldrick pitcher, please.” Our silence was not a symptom of antisocial behavior. It is nothing new. was The Rule, modeled after the Few of us were so fluent in standard operating procedures of Latin that we could understand monasteries. We were supposed every obscure word of the Martymini-monks. rology. When the readings began While we sat in total silence, to be proclaimed in English, we munching our meatloaf, a public could understand what was being

I

The Ship’s Log

A

9

The Anchor read to us. This was not a good thing.

The excruciating pain and horrific torture undergone by the martyrs were described to the last gory detail. The accounts were far more descriptive than anything you will find today in a violent movie or video game. I shall spare you examples.

At any rate, the reading of the Martyrology in English had a seriously adverse effect on our appetites. Hearing the gory details of, say, the death of St. Isaac Jogues or St. Lucy, some of the more sensitive brothers had to rush to the rest rooms. Many in the student body became dangerously weak and underweight.

Much food was being returned,

Of lions and lambs

human chattel on parade was lmost 20 years ago, inspected for its suitability we dodged a bullet.

— whether for the home, the One particularly energetic field or discreetly undefined daughter wanted dance lesuses. sons and along came the As bad as it is that young end-of-year recital. Her adults consider this a fitting young class danced to the paradigm for modern relasingular ’60s hit, “The Lion tionships, watching parents Sleeps Tonight” in darling (if overpriced) jumpsuits — neon acquiesce to their little girls’ full throttle imitation of the orange complete with little original — not to mention lion-ish headpieces. Their paying great sums of money performance was kitchy and for the privilege — is deeply cute. The rest of the show, not so much.

Even then, the rest of the numbers showcased scowling little girls dressed in black — stomping, lunging and generally acting

By Genevieve Kineke out in ways shocking for the under-10 set. I was rattled at grievous. A mother of one of the time, and grateful that my the participants insisted that daughter had been spared the the dance was harmless and worst of it. the costumes “very normal.”

This memory was jarred Giving voice to the attitude loose with the latest viral that trends are not to be anavideo found online, in which lyzed or resisted, she admita gaggle of eight- and nineted, “This is pop culture, and year-olds — dressed like minunless you completely isolate iature hookers — writhed to your children from television Beyonce’s wildly popular hit and music, they’re going to “Put a Ring on It.” (For the be singing and dancing to uninitiated, the music video tunes that are popular on the has the usual risqué outfits radio.” and slithery moves, with the One rational response is overall theme being: If you that isolation is not the only like what you see, commit.) way to fight this. Responsible While some are pleased parents should assess the elethat this song takes relaments of pop culture and live tionships beyond the basan informed life of engageest hook-up setting to some ment and counter-point. This vague realm of fidelity, there can begin when their children is nothing virtuous about the are in elementary school and premise. Indeed, it reduces continue into adulthood, with men to their lusts and women age-appropriate discussion of to objects created to satisfy what makes for good enterthose lusts. It’s just a 21sttainment and healthy relationcentury version of the old ships. slave markets, where the

The Feminine Genius

One might begin with the foundational point that eightyear-olds shouldn’t imitate pole dancers or prostitutes.

From there, if one’s child is discovered humming such tunes (revealing that all the kids in Mrs. Butterball’s third-grade class adore this song) then a difficult conversation must ensue. Furthermore, discovering that the song was featured in the children’s movie “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,” might cause parents to reconsider where they spend their entertainment dollars.

Christians are called to be counter-cultural, to affirm that some actions are objectively sinful and that the purity of our children is worth defending. Sadly, the image that comes to mind is a corral teeming with little lambs. Innocent, docile and yet curious — they trust that their caregivers will lead them to safe pasture and guard them from marauders. In our culture, though, the gate has been left ajar and they have been abandoned to various predators, whom they’ve never learned to identify.

Most likely, many of these mothers were similar misled, and haven’t quite figured it out. But from the outside looking in, the sacrifice of the lambs is a painful spectacle, from which even the angels shrink in horror.

Mrs. Kineke is the author of “The Authentic Catholic Woman.” She is the editor of woman.catholicexhange. com.

uneaten, to the kitchen. The reading of the Martyrology at meals was quietly dropped.

Forget all these fad diets, dear readers. If you want to lose weight quickly, read the Martyrology at mealtime. You will lose 10 pounds in a week, guaranteed.

Perhaps the reading of the Martyrology at supper was overkill, so to speak. Nevertheless, we need to know something about our role models in the faith. All of us, especially the young, need heroes.

In days gone by, parents would carefully consider the naming of a child. What saint did they want their son or daughter to be like? What saint would be their role model? Mary and Joseph were the most popular names. It was not uncommon to baptize the child after the saint on whose feast day he or she was born. Emmanuel, or a derivate, was also popular. Emmanuel means, “God is with us.”

The Hollywood stars are setting a poor example. Here are a few: “Pirate” (Deven & Jonathan Davis), Jett (Kelly Preston & John Travolta), “Coco” (Courteney Cox & David Arquette), “Heaven” (Lil’ Mo), “Seven” (Erykah Badu), “Fuddy” (Damon Wayans), “Aurelius Cy” (Elle MacPherson). “Moxie CrimeFighter” (Penn Jillette), “Zola Ivy” (Eddie Murphy), “Hopper” (Robin Wright-Penn & Sean Penn), and “Pilot Inspektor” (Jason Lee). These celebrity kids will have a long row to hoe in life. What are their parents thinking? Maybe they’re not thinking at all.

Can the kids live with these names? Keep the terrors of middle school in mind. Will someone with this name ever be a CEO? Did you know, dear readers, that every year since 1997 the Social Security Administration annually releases the top baby names in the United States? (And

you wonder where your tax dollars go?)

According to the latest report of the Associated Press, the top names in the country are Isabella for girls and Jacob for boys.

“Malia” (as in Malia Obama) is the fastest rising name for girls.

“Emma” got bumped from number one after a one-year reign.

The fastest rising name for boys is “Cullen.” Edward Cullen is the lead character in a series of teen books and films. Cullen is not a saint. Cullen is a vampire. Do you want your son to grow up to be a vampire? Two other names from the series are Isabella (Cullen’s girlfriend) and Jacob. The next most popular names for boys (in order) are Ethan, Michael, Alexander, and William. Girl’s names are a bit more untraditional. The next most popular names for girls (in order) are Emma, Olivia, Sophia and Ava. At confirmation time, candidates get to choose their own names. It must be the name of a saint or biblical personage. The baptismal name is preferred, if possible. If not, then another is chosen. I require confirmation candidates to research their patron saint’s names and be prepared to explain it. So many high school students are clueless about the origin of their name.

This is sad.

My kids do their homework.

They chose some interesting patron saints this year: the Archangels Gabriel and Michael, the Apostle Nathaniel, SS. Genevieve, Rose of Lima, Genesius, Nicholas, Monica, Valentine, Christopher, Lucy, Phoebe, and Roch. One young woman, named after a river in Ireland, chose instead St. Joseph. Why not? These saint names are far better than Chrystal Shanda Lear.

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

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The Anchor

Prelate discouraged by reluctance to renew Church after scandal

Caring sums up longtime ministry of Sister Rose

DUBLIN, Ireland (CNS) —The lack of willingness in the Catholic Church to begin “a painful process of renewal” in the wake of the clerical abuse scandals has left Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin “disheartened and discouraged.”

In a talk to the Knights of St. Columbanus on the future of the church in Ireland, the archbishop said the most obvious source of his discouragement was “the drip-bydrip, never-ending revelation about child abuse and the disastrous way it was handled. There are still strong

forces which would prefer that the truth did not emerge,” he said. “The truth will make us free, even when that truth is uncomfortable.

There are signs of subconscious denial on the part of many about the extent of the abuse which occurred within the church and how it was covered up. There are other signs of rejection of a sense of responsibility for what had happened. There are worrying signs that despite solid regulations and norms these are not being followed with the rigor required.”

By Deacon James N. Dunbar

May 21, 2010

Sister Rose remembers that “it was run all by NEW BEDFORD — It seems no matter where volunteers. After school I would go to the shelter she turned or was assigned, Mercy Sister Rose El- for the night. We took in men and women from 5 len Gallogly was called upon to take care of the p.m., until 6 o’clock the next morning.”

In 1983, Sister Rose became the shelter’s execupoor, homeless, and those less fortunate.

“It began long before I became a nun, in our tive director and a paid staff was added the followfamily in South Providence, one of the poorest Irish ing year.

“God’s love and guidance made good things sections of that city in Rhode Island,” Sister Rose reminisced as she looked back at the greater part of continue to happen,” she said. “After the generosity of the city, we moved to our current site at 60 Eighth a century.

“There were three girls and four boys and my Street in 1984. We began to receive from the Masmother also ran a boarding house for men in the sachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance tenement upstairs, and I was called to help her. toward our $500,000 annual operating budget; and Even when we girls were at the Tyler grammar we became non-profit in 1998.

“We bought adjacent property that same year, school, the Sisters let us go home at lunchtime to and now we run a food pantry that serves approxiassist with the meals,” she recalled.

“My mother was a wonderful woman, so car- mately 150 people once a month,” she explained.

“The shelter, which serves only men, can handle ing to our family and everyone she met, and I think 32 and there are breakfasts and dinners, and a lunch what I was later called at the soup kitchen,” the on to do is because she nun-director reported. taught me so well, and it While proud of what is her gift to me.” has been and is being ac“I’m 80 years old tocomplished, Sister Rose day — yes, on this Thursmade it clear, “I was not day feast of the Ascenthe founder of all this, sion of the Lord — and and there have been so I am so blessed, because many volunteers and genwherever I went God sent erous people who made everything I needed,” all this possible, I want the executive director of you to know. There have Market Ministries in New been so many wonderful Bedford for the past 26 relationships formed.” years told The Anchor.

She also announced, While the seeds of “Although I’m in good charity were well sown health, I will be retiring in family and Catholic as executive director as of schools, they began bearJune 1. I have recently celing fruit after Rose Ellen ebrated my 60th jubilee as graduated from St. Xavia Sister of Mercy, and at er’s Academy in 1948. age 80 it might be a good She entered the Sisters time to enter some kind of of Mercy and after proretirement,” she said. fession served in several “She will certainly be “tough” communities in- Anchor person of the week — Mercy missed,” said Maria Sulcluding St. Michael’s and Sister Rose Ellen Gallogly. (Anchor photo) livan, in her third year as St. Edward’s in Providence. She also found time to earn a bachelor’s de- administrative assistant at Market Ministries.

“Sister Rose is a wonderful nun, educated, kind, gree from The Catholic University of America in caring, and she’ll help anyone. She is perfect for the Washington, D.C. Her assignment to teach English as a second responsibility she has taken on,” said Sullivan. “She language to students from immigrant Hispanic and has been my mentor and I have learned so much Portuguese communities in New Bedford’s public from her.”

Mercy Sister Catherine Donovan, the episcopal schools as part of the Regina Pacis program of the Sacred Hearts Fathers was her introduction to the representative for religious in the diocese, described Sister Rose “as a delightful person. She always has Whaling City.

“There were six of us Sisters sent here to teach the welfare of the poor and needy in mind, especialin the South End. We also set up a safe haven where ly throughout the City of New Bedford, which has runaway girls were cared for. I’ve been here ever been her ministry for so many years. She reminds since, and I love every minute of it,” Sister Rose me in many ways of our founder, Mother Catherine McCauley, who exemplified the same kind of carsaid with a wide grin, her blue eyes sparkling.

With time off from school during the summer, ing.”

Sister Rose was asked whether it would be easy she began in 1982 volunteering at the soup kitchen operated by the Pilgrim United Church of Christ. to leave the ministry so close to her heart.

“No, it won’t,” she said candidly. “But I inStaffed by volunteers from four churches, it was open two days a week for lunch, serving soup and tend to keep my hand in a bit and serve … and continue to enjoy the people in this wonderful peanut butter sandwiches.

Noticing the homeless people had few blankets, community of New Bedford I have come to love Sister Rose met with the Rev. David Ransom, pas- so well. And I will continue to worship at Our tor at Pilgrim United, board members and other Lady of the Assumption as well as St. Lawrence Martyr Parish.” volunteers to address the issue.

But first there is an 80th birthday party waiting.

Set on opening a homeless shelter, the group “My extended family of many, many nephews is was offered free space on Purchase Street as well as cots all provided by the City of New Bedford. taking me to some big restaurant near Providence,

By March 1983, a group that includes Sister Rose and I’m eagerly looking forward to it,” she said laughing. formed Market Ministries, Inc. To nominate a Person of the Week, send an It was a name indicating that it was an agency in email to FatherRogerLandry@anchornews.org. the market place that began with a ministry.

The Anchor

May 21, 2010

W

11

So that’s how they felt

shudder just writing those words, ow, now I know how yet they must be written, for New fans of the 2004 New Englanders fell prey to them last York Yankees felt. Two of the week. most irritating sayings for me The Boston Bruins, themare, “Everything happens for a reason,” and “What goes around, selves on an over-extended championship drought (38 comes around.” It’s probably years), surprised the hockey because they’re true.

It’s the second of these adages world by bumping off a tough Buffalo Sabres team, advancthat makes me feel like a New ing to the second round of the Yorker of six years ago. We all remember the scenario.

It was the 2004 American League Championship Series with the Yanks duking it out with the Red Sox for the A.L. pennant.

By Dave Jolivet The Evil Empire went up in the series by a whopping three-gamesNHL playoffs. The team that to-none margin. For the Bosox, had struggled just to make the all was lost ... again. Not. playoffs roared to a three-gamesThe Home Towne Team to-none lead in the second round, mounted the most incredible against the gritty Philadelphia comeback in Major League Flyers.

Baseball history, storming back A la the 2004 N.Y. Yankees, to win the next four games, en route to its first World Series title the 2010 Boston Bruins snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 86 years.

Not only was it fun to revel in and blew the three-game lead.

To make matters worse, they led the uncharted territory of being 3-0 in Game 7, only to helplessly on top of the baseball world, but watch the visiting Flyers score it was equally enjoyable to poke four unanswered goals to win the fun at the Yankees’ monumental game and the series. choke.

I must admit, like thousands But remember, Dave, what of other New Englanders that goes around, comes around. I

My View From the Stands

night, I sat in front of the tube in disbelief when the final buzzer buzzed. But I was able to shrug it off in a very short amount of time — which is surprising for me.

It took me weeks to get over the Bucky Dent game, the ’86 World Series, and the 2003 Red Sox collapse in Game 7 at Yankee Stadium. But not this one.

I think only because earlier in the week, I witnessed live the unveiling of Bobby Orr’s “The Goal” statue, as was stated in last week’s column. So many of my childhood heroes from that 1970 Bruins’ team were there.

And earlier in the week, NESN aired a special on that team.

Even before the great collapse of 2010, I knew there would never again be a team like the ’70 Bruins. It was a team in every sense of the word, and nothing will ever come close to that again.

The ’70 and ’72 Bruins, like their predecessors, will always be Bruins. This Bruins’ team may wear the spoked B on their chests, but that’s as close to being a Bruin as they’ll ever be. Why? It’s every man for himself now.

Why? I’m not quite sure, but things happen for a reason.

in the big leagues — Phil Pereira leads the St. Michael School Choir in the singing of the American and Canadian national anthems at Fenway Park on May 11. Students from the Fall River school also received a tour of the park and tickets to the game.

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The Anchor

Bishop to bless Centerville garden in memory of Father Francis Connors CENTERVILLE — A beloved Centerville priest will be honored May 29 when Bishop George W. Coleman blesses the Mary Garden at Our Lady of Victory Catholic Community in memory of the late Rev. Francis B. “Chub” Connors. Family members and friends of the former pastor have been invited to join parishioners at the 4:30 p.m. ceremony.

The garden graces a hillside overlooking South Main Street where rows of evergreens form a living rosary. Designed 25 years ago, it has been enhanced by a walkway of paving stones, new landscaping and lighting. Visitors will find a tranquil space for quiet prayer and reflection during the day and evening hours.

In planning the celebration, Father Mark R. Hession, pastor, noted that 2010 has been designated as the Year For Priests. “It

is fitting at this time to remember a priest who wanted nothing for himself, whose only wish was to honor the Blessed Mother,” Father Hession said. He thanked the Knights of Columbus who sponsored improvements at the site and the parishioners who made memorial donations.

Father Connors was spiritual leader of Our Lady of Victory Catholic community during the entire decade of the 70s when he exerted a profound influence on parish life. He is remembered for organizing Cursillo retreats for adults and for introducing ECHO (Encountering Christ in Others) which brings high school students together for a weekend faith experience under the direction of priests and lay leaders.

The ECHO program continues as one of Our Lady of Victory’s 25 parish ministries.

Diocese of Fall River TV Mass on WLNE Channel 6 Sunday, May 23 at 11:00 a.m.

Celebrant is Father David A. Frederici is chaplain at Cape Cod Hospital and diocesan director of Scouting.

“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)

Includes Airfare, Ground Transportation & Lodging with a FREE Continental Breakfast each morning.

Also, we are planning side trips to the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Montezuma’s Castle, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, St. Maria Goretti’s in Scottsdale, St. Timothy’s in Mesa, & in Phoenix, we will visit Canaan in the Desert, the garden of Jesus’ Suffering & Resurrection, as well as other side trips.

For further information you may contact Margaret Oliverio @ 781-762-2029 or @ 781-344-2073

May 21, 2010

Even in retirement, family remains their focal point

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

NORTH DARTMOUTH — In many ways, Jerry and Scottie Foley are the ideal couple.

Not only does their mutual respect and love for each other enhance everything they do, they also perfectly complement and support each other.

Even now, as they look back on 30 fruitful years as directors of the Fall River Diocese’s Office of Family Ministry — positions from which they retired last week — they effortlessly finish each other’s sentences and corroborate facts and figures from their tenure.

“We have very different work styles, so when Jerry came to work in the office full-time, I had my doubts about how this was going to work out,” Scottie said. “I have to get things done this minute, and Jerry will always say: ‘Think about it for a moment.’”

“It has been very nice for us to have worked together for the last nine years,” Jerry said. “We have just enough of a sense of humor and enjoy being with each other and it’s made the time pass quickly.”

While the couple has served as co-directors alongside an appointed priest for the diocesan Office of Family Ministry since its inception in 1980, Jerry was previously selfemployed as a computer consultant until he came to work full-time with his wife at the office housed within the Family Life Center — a former convent nestled between Bishop Stang High School and St. Julie Billiart Parish.

“The primary mover here since we began has been Scottie,” Jerry said. “Now that I’ve had a chance to see just how busy this office is, I have enormous respect for what she’s done over the years.”

It would seem that fate and faith played equal roles in bringing the Foleys to their lifelong ministry three decades ago.

As a newly-married couple and parishioners at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Seekonk, the duo went on a Marriage Encounter weekend — a Catholic enrichment experience for couples — that led to their becoming involved with the national leadership of the movement.

That year the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had issued a pastoral letter entitled “A Family Perspective in Church and Society,” and Jerry explained how then-Bishop Daniel A. Cronin was one of the first to fully support and

endorse a diocesan family ministry office, appointing then-Father Ronald A. Tosti as its founding priest-director.

Scottie credits Msgr. Tosti with having a clear vision for a centralized Family Life Center for the entire diocese.

“I guess we showed so much interest in the meetings that Father Tosti soon asked us to help run them,” she said. “A priest from Marriage Encounter, Father Chuck Gallagher, a Jesuit from New Jersey, then asked us if we would go to Regis University in Denver, Col., to get a master’s degree in our ministry.”

While studying at Regis University, Scottie explained how Father Tosti was diverted with building a new parish on Cape Cod, so he asked them to help oversee the entire Office of Family Ministry in his absence.

“Msgr. Tosti was very good at delegating responsibilities,” Jerry said. “He let Scottie run the office when he wasn’t available. That trend has continued with our successive priest-directors and it’s worked out very well.”

Over the last three decades the couple has been blessed with four “very gifted priest-directors,” Jerry said — Msgr. Ronald A. Tosti, Father Horace Travassos, Father Thomas Frechette and Father Greg Mathias.

“We think the combination of a priest and couple is a very good image for the Church to see the two sacraments supporting each other and how much more effective we are working together,” Scottie said.

One of the couple’s key missions was the diocesan Marriage Preparation Program — a curriculum they devised and fine-tuned themselves.

“There were several parishes doing some form of marriage preparation, but they ranged from an hour to a whole day to an entire weekend,” Scottie said. “The bishop said he wanted something uniform. He also wanted them to receive the same preparation throughout the diocese. So that became our master’s thesis: to create a program that could be used by the whole diocese.”

“We put together a program that blended the best of social science research along with the Church’s teaching about the sacrament of marriage,” Jerry added. “We tried to take the best ideas available and combine them into a program de-

signed just for our diocese.”

The Foleys said they are proud that more than 15,000 couples have gone through the diocesan Marriage Preparation Program while they were directors.

“Hopefully these are couples that have learned how to have a successful marriage and have carried that on in raising their families in the Church,” Jerry said.

Other programs under their purview for the last 30 years have included support groups for couples who are separated and divorced; grief support groups for children who have lost parents due to divorce, separation or death; training and classes in Natural Family Planning; and Remarriage Preparation for couples who are widowed or divorced.

Although the Foleys are looking forward to spending their retirement years with their own family — which has now expanded to include eight grandchildren — they admitted leaving the Office of Family Ministry was bittersweet.

“We have 172 volunteers working for us now, but over the years we’ve had thousands,” Scottie said.

“You get to meet a lot of people.

Some have given us a year or two, others have been here 25 years.”

“We have tremendous admiration for all the people we’ve worked with,” Jerry agreed.

“They’re terrific people, they’re good friends, they’re wonderful Catholics, and they’re an inspiration to us. It’s been very uplifting just to be associated with people of this caliber.”

The couple especially wanted to thank John Kearns of the diocesan Communications Office and The Anchor for always helping get the word out about their programs and services over the years.

And they expressed their heartfelt thanks to Bishop George W. Coleman for his ongoing support.

“This diocese has been outstanding in its commitment to Family Ministry the whole time we’ve been here,” Jerry said. “Fall River has also been outstanding on a national level and I would expect that would continue.”

While Jerry said he looks forward to spending some time playing guitar and Scottie hopes to dabble with a few painting projects, even in their retirement years the dynamic duo remains committed to family.

“Family Ministry is our way of life,” Jerry said. “We’re leaving this job, but we have a large extended family now and our ministry to them will continue.”

“Not to sound maudlin, but the most important thing in the world to us is family,” Scottie agreed.

“And I’m not just talking about our own. I’m talking about the whole concept.”

Fetal pain is the ‘next generation’ of abortion ban continued from page one

consensus is that 10 to 30 percent of women experience serious, prolonged negative psychological consequences following abortion.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion legal group based in New York City, called the Nebraska law “unconstitutional” and vowed to fight the law in court. Late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart, based in Nebraska, is also expected to take part in the legal battle.

“If some of these other antiabortion bills have been chipping away at Roe v. Wade, this takes an ax to it,’’ Nancy Northup, president of the center, told the Associated Press. “It absolutely cannot survive a challenge without a change to three decades of court rulings.”

Opponents of the law will likely submit a challenge before it takes effect and get it enjoined. A court challenge will take at least a couple of years.

Denise M. Burke, vice president of legal affairs for AUL, told The Anchor that crafters of the legislation intended to provoke a legal challenge. The measure could make its way to the Supreme Court and challenge Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in 1973. Since then, more than 50 million unborn children in the United States have been aborted.

Burke said of the crafters, “They would certainly love to see a direct challenge to Roe, but they would take anything less too. If we can do anything to roll this back, then we have a tremendous victory.”

The result of a successful legal battle would likely be that many states would implement similar laws, she added.

“I think you would see a

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The Anchor

May 21, 2010

stampede of other states following suit,” she said.

Teresa Stanton Collett, professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minn., told The Anchor that the evidence that at 20 weeks unborn children can feel pain is “pretty overwhelming.” Some doctors even argue that an eight-weekold unborn child can experience pain, based on the fact that the cortex has developed.

Collett put it this way, “If I put plumbing in and turn the knob, can’t we assume that water’s going to come out of it?”

At 20 weeks, a fetus has the anatomy, physiology, hormones, neurotransmitters and electrical current that create the conditions needed to perceive pain.

Like an adult, the child will move away from painful stimuli. Doctors have discovered that such a reaction diminishes when the child has been given anesthesia.

In testimony submitted to the Nebraska legislature, Collett said, “If there is a single issue in the abortion debate where common ground could be found, one would hope it might be on the issue protecting the unborn from the pain of abortion by limiting abortions at 20 weeks or later to cases in which the mother’s life or physical health is at risk.”

Like 37 other states, Nebraska currently has an enforceable post-viability ban on abortion.

Nebraska’s law has a broad health exception that includes mental health. Viability has been a “moving line” for many years as medical technology improves and younger preemies survive. The state also has laws for informed consent, parental notification and notifying women of abortion alternatives.

Last month, Nebraska leg-

This week in 50 years ago — The Blackfriars Guild of the Diocese was in rehearsal for its production of “Our Lady of Fatima” to be presented two nights at Sacred Hearts Auditorium in Fall River. Directed by Ralph Martin and Barbara Lanzisera, the cast included Maureen Harrington, James Pieroni, Judith Callahan, Gertrude Miller and Joseph D’Elia.

25 years ago — Saint Anne’s Hospital dedicated its new multi-million dollar Harold K. Hudner Oncology/Radiation Center in Fall River, at which Msgr. John J. Regan presided in the absence of Bishop Daniel A. Cronin, who was attending a consistory in Rome. It was named for Attorney Hudner, who had been a member of the hospital’s board of governors for 39 years. He was a lector at the dedication Mass.

islators also passed a second first-of-its-kind abortion law that requires doctors to screen women seeking abortions for mental and physical risk factors. The law does not define those factors, but requires doctors to keep up on current medical research.

In 2007, the United States Supreme Court upheld the federal partial-birth abortion ban, which re-ignited the debate about what abortion does, opening people’s eyes to the “horrors of abortion,” Burke of AUL said. She hopes the fetal pain 20-week ban will do the same.

“It represents the next generation of an abortion ban,” she said.

Although it will only directly affect a small percentage of abortions, it will likely have a much broader impact on the abortion debate. Already, more Americans — 51 percent — call themselves Pro-Life than ever before.

“For more than 20 years we have been accumulating victories,” Burke said. “Each year, state by state we have made tremendous inroads at fencing in the abortion license.”

In other Pro-Life news across the country, battles continue over late-term abortion and ultrasound laws.

On May 3, the Kansas State House overrode the governor’s veto of a bill that would enforce a 1998 law that limits late-term abortions. Two days later the senate voted the override down, falling short by just one vote.

The senate could try a revote this year.

The Kansas law limits postviability abortions and requires late-term abortion practitioners to issue a precise diagnosis to the health department. According to state statistics, there have

Diocesan history 10 years ago — Franciscan Friars of the Renewal Father Stan Fortuna, 42, a professional jazz musician, composer, recording artist and guitarist prior to ordination, brought his music ministry to St. John Neumann Church in East Freetown for a Youth Mass opening the Diocesan Eucharistic Congress.

One year ago — Bishop George W. Coleman received a Doctor of Humane Letters degree for his commitment to helping the poor and disadvantaged communities from Stonehill College during its 58th commencement. The bishop’s dedication to oversee charitable efforts throughout the diocese and beyond were also cited as reasons for the distinctive honor.

been 3,000 late-term abortions performed without medical justification. This is the fifth year in a row that legislators have attempted to ensure the law will be followed. The new bill would codify the requirement that a second consenting physician needed for approval of late-term abortions be licensed in Kansas, and it would allow a woman to sue if she believed the abortion was done illegally.

Last month two states —

Florida and Oklahoma — gave final approval to ultrasound laws. Oklahoma’s law differs from past laws because it requires that a monitor be placed where the woman can see it and that the practitioner describe the child’s body parts to the woman. Opponents criticize the law for its lack of exception in cases of rape and incest. Within hours of the bills approval, the Center for Reproductive Rights sued and received an injunction.

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The Catholic Response

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May 21, 2010

Pope says sex abuse crisis ‘terrifying’ example of failings inside Church ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT TO PORTUGAL (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI said the priestly sex abuse scandal is a “terrifying” crisis that comes from inside the Church — not from an outside attack — and requires purification and penance to overcome.

The pope made some of his strongest remarks to date on the sex abuse cases during an in-flight press conference May 11 on his way to Portugal for a four-day visit that was to include the Marian shrine of Fatima.

Asked if the message of Fatima, which foresaw times of trials and suffering for the Church, could be applied to the sex abuse crisis, the pope indicated that, in a general way, it could. The vision of Fatima foresaw the need for the Church to undergo a “passion,” which continues in various ways until the end of time, and which requires a response of continual conversion, he said.

“Among the new things that we can discover today in this message is that attacks on the pope and the Church come not only from the outside, but the suffering of the Church comes from inside the Church, from sins that exist inside the Church,” he said.

“This, too, we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way, that the biggest persecution of the Church doesn’t come from the enemies outside but is born from sin inside the Church,” he said.

“And so the Church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. And forgiveness does not

substitute justice,” he said.

“We have to relearn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance,” he said.

The pope, who helped explain the third secret of Fatima when it was published in 2000, said the Fatima messages extend in time to apply to the Church’s continuing journey, which is accompanied by suffering.

The pope also spoke about the economic crisis that is shaking Portugal and the rest of Europe, saying it illustrates the need for a greater infusion of ethics and morality in the market.

“I would say this economic crisis has a moral dimension that no one can fail to see,” he said. “The events of the last two or three years have demonstrated that the ethical dimension must enter into the world of economic activity.”

Pure economic pragmatism will always lead to problems, he said.

The Church’s social teaching has a big role to play, seeking to create a serious dialogue with the financial world and highlighting the moral responsibilities of economic systems, the pope said.

“So here we need to enter into a concrete dialogue. I tried to do this in my encyclical, ‘Caritas in Veritate,’” he said.

The pope said secularism was not a new problem in Portugal or Europe, but had taken a more radical turn in recent years. He said here, too, the Church needs to engage in bridge-building and dialogue, making sure its voice is heard and helping to restore an openness to transcendent reality.

Vatican secretary of state blocked action on abuse, Cardinal Schonborn says VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn said a top Vatican cardinal had blocked an investigation of sexual abuse and offended victims by calling their complaints “petty gossip,” according to news reports from Austria.

Cardinal Schonborn made his remarks about Cardinal Angelo Sodano, longtime secretary of state under Pope John Paul II and now the dean of the College of Cardinals, in a private conversation with Austrian news editors at the end of April, the news outlets reported. A spokesman for Cardinal Schonborn, who is archbishop of Vienna, said by phone May 10 that the archdiocese would have no comment on the reports.

According to the reports, Cardinal Schonborn said Cardinal Sodano had hindered the

investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of minors by the late Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who was forced to step down as archbishop of Vienna in 1995. He served as prior at a Benedictine monastery until 1998, when additional allegations of abuse surfaced, and he relinquished all public ministry.

Cardinal Groer died in 2003 without having undergone a canonical trial. Cardinal Schonborn, who replaced Cardinal Groer in Vienna, said Pope Benedict XVI, then head of the Vatican office in charge of investigating accusations of clerical sex abuse, had been thwarted by Cardinal Sodano in his efforts to take more direct action on the accusations against Cardinal Groer, the reports said.

support for belgium — Pope Benedict XVI talks with Belgian bishops at the end of their recent “ad limina” visits at the Vatican. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

Pope meets Belgian bishops after abusive bishop resigned B y C indy Wooden C atholic News Service VATICAN CITY — In the wake of a case of sexual abuse by a bishop, the Catholic Church in Belgium has been “put to the trial by sin,” Pope Benedict XVI told the country’s bishops.

The pope prayed that Belgian Catholics “would not forget that only Christ can calm every storm” and that Belgian priests would find “new courage and strength to live a holy life in full fidelity to their ministry, to their consecration to God and to Christian witness.”

Pope Benedict spoke to the Belgian bishops May 8 at the end of their “ad limina” visits to the Vatican to report on the status of their dioceses.

The pope did not specifically mention Bishop Roger Vangheluwe of Brugge, who resigned April 23 after admitting that while a priest and during the first years he was a bishop, he sexually abused a boy.

Meeting reporters after the papal audience May 8, Archbishop AndreJoseph Leonard of Mechelen-Brussels, president of the Belgian bishops’ conference, said the pope “obviously referred to the drama we lived in Belgium, in the archdiocese of Brugge, and he spoke about it briefly, knowing that all the rest was already understood and already said.”

Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp told Catholic News Service May 7 that as cases of clerical sexual abuse were being reported in several European countries over the past few months, the Belgian bishops urged their own people, “if there is a problem to bring it out. If the statute of limitations has not expired to go to the police and the courts and if it has expired, to go to the commission” set up by the bishops 13 years ago.

“Some people came forward, but we didn’t find any new cases, only old ones and only a few,” Bishop Bonny said.

Then, he said, Bishop Vangheluwe’s past “was brought up by his own family because he abused one of his nephews.

So it was a child in his own family and it was his own family who couldn’t live

with the secret anymore.”

At a news conference at the Belgian College in Rome May 7, Archbishop Leonard said, “In Belgium, we are truly determined to be firm, transparent and rigorous on this question.”

The Church’s “first task is transparency and humility,” he said. “We want to ensure that never again will we have a priest — or bishop — with such a grave sin in his past.”

Archbishop Leonard told L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, that victims of clerical sexual abuse in Belgium are strongly encouraged to go to the police as well as to report the abuse to the Church commission.

“We can offer them only moral assistance and support. It is very important that the victims are listened to, but they must also report the facts to the magistrate,” he said.

The bishops have encouraged reporting abuse to the police not only because “the judicial authorities have the means to conduct investigations and to ascertain the truth of the facts,” he said, but also “because we want to avoid being accused of shielding the guilty or trying to settle.”

Pope Benedict’s speech to the bishops focused mainly on the need to strengthen Belgian Catholics’ faith and their commitment toward living that faith publicly, including in their political lives.

In the past few years, Belgium has legalized abortion, euthanasia, samesex marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples.

Bishop Bonny told CNS it was obvious that the sex abuse scandal has made it even more difficult for the bishops to be taken seriously when they try to address matters of public policy.

“Obviously, it has damaged our credibility and people’s trust in us and that’s a shame,” he said. “But it also may bring some Catholics together in a renewed awareness of their own responsibility” to bring Christian values to public life, he said.

May 21, 2010

Abortions decrease under Mass. health care reform The Anchor article “Abortions decrease under Mass. health care reform” (4/9/2010) reiterates the frequently stated, but erroneous claim, that abortion rates have been going down in recent years. It is true that the most quoted statistics on the subject, those provided by the Guttmacher Institute (formerly an affiliate of Planned Parenthood), report that the number of abortions fell from 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2005, the most recent year for which detailed data is available.

In that year Guttmacher says that 13 percent of the recorded deaths were RU-486 medical abortions, with the balance being surgical. Guttmacher does not count any deaths caused by “contraceptives” as abortions.

Thus not included in the total are an additional six to 11 million babies, which the American Life League estimates are killed annually by the pill and other chemical and mechanical forms of birth control.

The reason for this huge statistical discrepancy is not generally well known to the public, and often is ignored by those who are aware of it, but who have a vested interest in spreading the myth that the abortion rate is falling. For example, National Right to Life News published in its February/March 2010 issue an article replete with fraudulent Guttmacher statistics, including the 1.2 million total as the number of abortions done in 2005. This deception has been facilitated because the definition of pregnancy was changed some years ago by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology from “beginning at fertilization” to “beginning at implantation.” If you follow their definition, this means that human beings killed during the first to second week period between fertilization and implantation will not be counted as abortions. Catholics, of course, are taught that the embryo must be treated as a person from conception. This means that we may not disregard those killed between conception and implantation, even if it is difficult to get an accurate fix on the number of lives lost during this period. Consider, for example, the abortifacient “emergency contraception” known as Plan B or the morning-after pill, which recently has become increasingly popular and now is freely available at pharmacies, hospital emergency departments, Planned Parenthood and even from some school nurses.

Each of the millions of doses

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The Anchor

Our readers respond

of this medication which have been distributed in recent years was capable of causing an early chemical abortion. Even if there has been a drop in the number of surgical abortions, this has been more than made up for by what certainly must be a rapidly growing number of uncounted deaths due to the expanded use of just this one form of abortifacient birth control.

Charles O. Coudert Sherborn

Who’s Who in Pro-Life A recent Anchor story on Massachusetts health care reform inaccurately characterized the partisan group Catholic Democrats as a Pro-Life organization (Abortions decrease under Mass. health care reform, 4/9/2010).

Catholic Democrats do not support legal protection for human life from conception to natural death, do not support the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and do not support “Humanae Vitae.”

As an organization, Catholic Democrats is a pro-abortion front group whose cynical purpose is to spread disinformation about the mainstream Pro-Life movement by asserting that ProLife opposition to pro-abortion politicians is motivated by some partisan Republican agenda. Its stock in trade is intellectual dishonesty.

Faithful Catholics should view Catholic Democrats as having the same credibility as Frances Kissling’s Catholics for Free Choice.

C. J. Doyle Executive Director Catholic Action League of Massachusetts Grateful for priest features I have written you before, describing how much I enjoy your newspaper and also applauding the changes that have been made to the Fall River Diocesan Directory. I just wanted to tell you how much I have enjoyed the articles by priests reflecting on the priesthood as well as the series on the Curé de Ars during this Year For Priests. I enjoy the paper, and look forward to it every week. Keep up the good work.

Father David M. Misbrener Rootstown, Ohio The secret in giving The Catholic Charities appeal is underway. Every year the names of those who give $100 or more are published in The Anchor. Jesus says, “When you give alms, do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret” (Mt

6, 3-4). Why, then do you publish these names? Those who give $100 or more are afforded the opportunity to indicate that they do not wish for their names to be published. Why do they not want their almsgiving to be secret?

Barbara A Knight Sandwich Grateful for those who formed a new parish It seems everyday I rush around to work, activities for my son, meetings or other obligations for various community groups. So many times this past couple of years as I was hearing about our new church and all the hard work people were putting in I thought to myself I should go to that next meeting.

Needless to say I was always too busy with never enough time. Sitting in the beautiful new building on April 25, I was so thankful to the many people

who gave time to the building process. All of those who found the time missed dinner to attend a planning session, went to permit meetings, hosted receptions or those who worked on spreadsheets at night after the kids went to bed. We gave what money we could but those who gave their time will forever have my gratitude. Since joining St. Mary’s in 2006, I have always compared it in my mind to my former parish, but Sunday I felt so proud of my home parish that I never once thought of where I used to worship. Every speaker took time to give thanks and praise to the others in the group. So often we hear there is no “I” in team, but this dedicated group of volunteers seems to take that slogan to heart. So today, as I am once again fighting time, I wanted to stop and take five minutes to thank those who gave so generously of their time to build a

new home for all of us.

Rachel Williams Norton Supplement on first Communion well done Thank you for the first Communion supplement, “Jesus, the Bread of Life.” It was a wonderful presentation of our Church life.

L.D. La Flamme Dennisport Letters are welcome but the editor reserves the right to condense or edit for clarity if deemed necessary. Letters should be typed, no longer than 100 words and should include name, address, and telephone number. Letters do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of The Anchor.

Letters should be sent to: The Anchor, Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 7, Fall River, MA 02722-0007, or emailed to fatherrogerlandry@anchornews.org.

Best Serving — Eighty members of the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women attended its 57th annual Convention May 8 at Corpus Christi Church in East Sandwich, with the theme “The Greatest Among You is She Who Serves the Rest.” In top photo from left, DCCW President Jeanne Alves, Past President and convention chairman Betty Mazzucchelli, Bishop George W. Coleman who celebrated the convention’s Mass; guest speaker Dr. Joan Kelly, Boston Province Director Helene Beauregard, and DCCW Moderator Sister Eugenia Brady, SJC. In bottom photo are recipients of Our Lady of Good Counsel Awards. From left, Jeanne Souza of District 3, Taunton; Arlene Zajac of District 1 in Fall River; President Jeanne Alves who presented the awards; Joan Doyon, who accepted the award for Marlene Johnson of District 2 in New Bedford; and Mary Sem of District 5, Cape Cod and the Islands. (Photos courtesy of Maddy Lavoie)

Youth Pages

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May 21, 2010

a day with jesus — St. Francis Xavier Parish in Hyannis celebrated its first Communion Mass on Mother’s Day. (Photo by C.M. Moniz) for you, mom — In honor of our Blessed Mother, Rebecca Farias, a sixth-grade student at Holy Trinity School in Fall River, places a crown of flowers on Mary during a crowning ceremony.

a day to remember — Msgr. John J. Oliveira, pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in New Bedford, recently celebrated a first Communion Mass for 49 boys and girls, some of whom are pictured with him.

old faithful — A chemistry class at Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, taught by Cassandra Arena, experimented with cola and six Mentos candies to create a 15-foot tall geyser.

class clowns — Students in grades K-Five at St. John the Evangelist School in Attleboro recently attended the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus held at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence. Along with the circus clowns, the students were entertained by elephant and lion acts, tricks and sideshows. Each student was given his or her own clown nose to take home. Shown are second- and third-grade students on the bus ride back to school with second-grade teacher, Kathy Harrington.

it’s all about mom — Kindergartners at St. Mary-Sacred Heart School in North Attleboro, recently put on the traditional “Mother’s Day Tea.” They recited a poem, “Only One Mother.” The students presented their mothers with many goodies: home-made paper flowers, a hand-decorated cup with tea bag and sugar, and a hand-decorated votive candle along with other hand-made crafts. Kindergarten teachers Elizabeth Moura and Maria Stathakis rendered striking silhouettes of each student that the children presented to their mothers. The event closed with a reading of “A Child’s Angel.” The group then enjoyed hot and cold tea and cupcakes. Pictured is Isabella Lucchetti and her mother Claire.

T

his Sunday we celebrate the birth of the Church, the feast of Pentecost. In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke tells us that the Apostles and Mary were in one place together and a noise like a strong driving wind came from the sky and filled the entire house. Then there appeared tongues of fire which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. I don’t know where the expression “fired up” comes from, but when I think of the Apostles at Pentecost, I think of getting fired up — literally. Filled with the Spirit of God, Peter spoke so convincingly that 3,000 people were baptized that day. That’s being fired up.

I watch high school students get fired up for their athletic events. They play the kind of music that will excite and energize, they run the drills that

L

ast year on May 18, 2009 I lost a friend to suicide. Cate was not one of my best friends; in fact it had been a while since I had last seen her. But our friendship was real and, after her death, I asked all of the questions that any friend would: “What if I had called? Might I have stopped her? What if hearing my voice had allowed her to stay strong?”

These are not selfish questions, but rational ones that need to be asked. I’m convinced that if you don’t ask them you will lose your mind.

So I asked them, again and again. I called every friend of mine that I shared with her and sought answers. It had similarly been a long time since I had spoken with them, too.

The days that followed the notification were filled with phone calls, tears, rage, confusion, shock, and sitting on couches just to get our bearings. Driving into the funeral home parking lot I saw the group of teen-agers with whom I had graduated from the diocese’s 2005 Christian Leadership Institute. One of the smallest groups to participate since the program’s inception, we had all met on a week-long retreat-like experience at Cathedral Camp. It was where Cate had graced us all with her beautiful presence and today, after four years of being apart, we had all come together again to grace her with our own.

A strange feeling overtook

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Youth Pages

May 21, 2010

Get fired up!

will help them focus and get their heads in the game. If the captains are successful in “firing up” the team, the players take the field with confidence and determination. But this is small potatoes in comparison to being fired up with the Spirit.

When we fire ourselves up, we can meet with some success, but when we allow God to fire us up with his Spirit, we become his instruments to do his work and his results will be astounding.

Just think about Peter, who went from hiding like a scared rabbit to proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ in broad daylight in the middle of Jerusalem, and 3,000 people were baptized that day. I know I’m repeating myself, but 3,000 people being brought into the family of God in one day is really worth repeating.

Catholics today need to get fired up. We need the grace of the Holy Spirit to be bold, courageous and committed. We need the Holy Spirit to pray more effectively and to love more fully. We need that holy fire of

Be Not Afraid

By Jean Revil

inspiration guiding our words and actions to spread the Gospel message. Each one of us has been created just as we are for a purpose. Each of us, because of the way God made us, will attract different people and therefore be able to evangelize a different population. Too often

we hear that our young people are the Church of the future.

That’s not exactly accurate.

They may be the leaders of the future Church, but they are active members of today’s Church.

Who better can evangelize the young people of our world than committed Catholic young people who are filled with the Holy Spirit? There is no time to wait for the future, the world needs you now. The young people of the United States need to hear God’s truth now.

If you allow the Holy Spirit to fire you up, they will hear you and who knows how many will be baptized … or how many of the baptized will live the way of Christ more boldly and courageously. What better time than the feast of Pentecost to open ourselves up and invite the Holy

Spirit to enter more fully into our lives?

Pray daily for the Holy Spirit’s influence in your life.

Perhaps this prayer of St. Augustine will be helpful: “Breathe into me, Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy.

“Move in me, Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.

“Attract my heart, Holy Spirit, that I may love only what is holy.

“Strengthen me, Holy Spirit, that I may defend all that is holy.

“Protect me, Holy Spirit, that I may always be holy.”

May we all be attentive to the movement of the Spirit and respond wholeheartedly as the Spirit instructs.

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

Comments welcome at: jrevil@ bishopStang.com.

Death and resurrection

me as I counted the faces and that we had returned back to called to mind their names. camp. Bogged down by our We were all in shock. At the memories and still in a state same time, I could barely of shock, we each took a small contain my joy in seeing some candle and walked down to the of them, on an occasion when same beachfront toward which such emotions felt wrong. I four summers previous we was filled with sandy memooften had run for relief from ries of the summer four years before when we found the presence of Christ in each other. I had flashbacks of planning sessions, group prayers, and

By Renee A. Bernier the anticipation of bringing back to our parishes all that we had learned. Eventually, howthe humid days spent indoors. ever, the remembrance of our Linking arms, we served as sporadic contact unsettlingly strongholds for each other found its place in our minds, when we were anything but along with a hatred that too strong. much time had passed withWhen we got down to the out a simple “hello” and that waterfront there was more we were only now together silence. We stood, unsure of because one of our own had how to proceed. None of us died. could have imagined that this Despite the various paths place filled with such happy our lives had taken, we were memories of simpler times all there and each of us was would be infiltrated by a grieving. The wake itself was world that continues to grow difficult and the funeral would increasingly complicated. As prove to be almost unbearable. we gathered in a circle, the After the wake, however, we moments that followed were did something that reminded unforgettable. us of who we really are and Standing on the sandy what we had failed to do beach, we all recalled our within the past few years. We favorite memories of Cate. We returned to Cathedral Camp, remembered silly moments, the place where many of us contemplated the more serious had first met each other and ones, smiled at how big her Cate. smile was, and laughed beIt was eerily quiet as we cause she was always smiling. pulled into the East Freetown In the back of our minds we retreat center. For some of us, still asked those tough quesit was the first time since CLI tions: Why did this happen?

Guest Columnist

Could I have made the difference?

But in that time and space, we opened ourselves up to prayer — for her family, for each other, for healing, for the grace to know the things that could not be changed and those that could, and for Cate’s soul, that she rest peacefully.

This return to camp, this revival of a time when innocence was real and life wasn’t so hard, was a time of true wonder and awe for me. Whether we all realized it then or not, this was because at the moment we all returned to Christ.

He had dwelled among us four years before and presented the 17 of us with a challenge. He had asked us to step up to be leaders not only in the Church but in the world at large. To this day, he’s been with us as we’ve gone with the ebb and flow of life. He’s been with

us even at our lowest points, when we have failed to see him and lost our way, and or in some cases lost our faith.

He has remained with us, never losing sight of us even though sometimes we have lost sight of him.

It is unfortunate that life has to be so complicated, but it is, and Cate’s death was a very real reminder of that. But Cate’s death was likewise a reminder of our responsibilities, those we have to each other as Christian men and women and those that we have toward all those in the world around us.

One thing is certain: God kept us strong and did not let us fall as we, against the backdrop of the setting sun, said “adieu” to our friend in the most perfect way: entrusting her literally “to God” as God was entrusting us to each other.

Renee A. Bernier, from Swansea, just completed her freshman year at Stonehill College.

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The Anchor

Dabbling in the occult seen taking spiritual toll on youth continued from page one

(4:10).

The “Catechism” in No. 2116, states: “All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to unveil the future.

Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God.” It is the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church that the devil and his angels were created good but chose of their own free will to reject God. The Book of Revelation tells us that when the devil was cast down by the valiant Archangel Michael, “his tail swept a third of the stars from the sky” (12:4).

This has been commonly interpreted in Church history as the rebellion of a third of God’s angels, who joined Lucifer in his apostasy.

“With this in mind it is important for us to realize that the fallen angels are in this for keeps” and “are deadly serious about their mission to bring us into their rebellion and thus separate us eternally from God,” said Father Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Virginia-based Human Life International, and one of a small group of priests authorized to perform exorcisms in their dioceses.

In a telephone interview with The Anchor, he said, “It’s clear that young people don’t have the sophistication to directly make contact with the devil, but the gateways opening up that possibility are the seductive social phenomena like Harry Potter of a decade ago and now the vampire culture, where teen-age girls are falling in love with that young man Eddie from the movie ‘Twilight,’” Father Euteneuer

explained.

“For the devil the prize is our eternal, human soul, and the proliferation of many dark forces is creating a subculture of youth who are suffering the effects of occult involvement,” he said.

“We see dabbling in New Age and Wiccan phenomena and sinful behavior like promiscuity and taking drugs are creating huge openings to let the devil in. Spending time surfing the Internet to meet people allowing themselves to be lured by them and seriously using the Ouija board are exacerbating the evils making it easier to make contacts with the devil in the occult.”

Among teen-agers the Ouija board historically marketed by Parker Brothers has long been considered merely a game for entertainment purposes. But fascinating advertisements on the Internet are designed to lure new players into the unknown. Christian faith communities have for decades understood it as a dangerous occult tool that opens the door for Satan to come in, and can lead to spiritual famine.

Dating to the mid-1800s, its name derived from the French and German word for “yes,” oui and ja, — the divination board includes letters of the alphabet, numerals one through nine, and a heart-shaped pointer on three felt legs. One or two people place their fingertips on the pointer, which is felt to move to answer questions.

Initially designed as a psychograph to read people’s minds, it has frequently been a vehicle to induce trances, séances, and attempts to contact or communicate with the dead, all expressly forbidden by Catholic teaching.

Father Euteneuer made it clear he was talking mainly about adolescents, those in their early teens, “but the cultural data does often drop into preadolescents through cartoons and what seems like innocent games. For instance, there an a Ouija board newly on the market for younger

kids put out by Toys R Us,” he said.

“What is devastating is that preadolescents are easily drawn into the occult, because they really don’t know what’s happening.”

Asked if there have been exorcisms for the young people, Father Euteneuer said, “Indeed there are exorcisms for children who are victimized by the devil.

But not a lot of them. There has to be a great deal of investigation before we go that route.”

Asked what is his main message to staying clear of Satan and his works, he advised, “I say to parents and kids, stay away from things are ambiguous or have direct cultural significance. ‘Harry Potter’ involves kids and images and language and toys that they may not understand. If so, don’t become involved, don’t play with it.”

Instead, says Father Euteneuer, “use Christian images and games that are Christ centered. If we don’t, we are off into dangerous territory. And I might add, we’re off on a total waste of time if Christ is not involved.”

Two of his newest books will be out in two weeks.

The first is “Exorcism in the Militant Church.”

The second, “Demonic Abortion” talks of abortion as the work of the devil.

“The latter is about the satanic nature of the industry and the culture of death which frequently involves some very young women, “ he reported.

“Abortion is the devil’s work,” he asserted. “I’m not saying all those who seek an abortion are involved in the occult. But the industry is populated by those in the occult.”

He added, “To confront a force this strong, you need a massive amount of prayer. That’s why I like the 40 Days For Life group, because they bring us what we need where we need it.”

He predicts that in the next 10 years or so, we’ll see an explosion of occult activity … in soft-core occultism as well as what Wicca and the New Way will present.

“These are the gateways to hard-core stuff. As society becomes more faithless, the wickedness comes and fills the vacuum,” he pointed out.

He said the problem of demonic infestation has already become, “shall we say ‘legion’ in our culture and the sheer magnitude of these demonic influences has already left us with a wounded generation of youth, many of whom will receive liberation and healing only through the priestly ministry of exorcism.”

He related a story of a young

May 21, 2010 unbaptized man who sought him out at a parish in Florida saying “something had led him there.”

“But more likely it was the Spirit of God leading him to the Church for deliverance from the demon,” the priest said.

“He had immersed himself in satanic music. He admitted to doing drugs and experimenting with all kinds of occult matters that glorified Satan in overt as well as indirect ways. He was fond of violent movies and video games, basically a soulless cyberaddict,” said Father Euteneuer.

Hospitalized after a drug overdose, “in a coma on the hospital bed, he felt he was descending down a long, cold and dark corridor … felt something grab his arm and enter into his chest.

From that point on he was demonized.”

Father Euteneuer contends that priests in pastoral ministry — that is, those on the front lines of the Church — will have to deal with this growing problem of occultism sooner or later, most especially among our youth, who are the prime targets of Satan’s wiles.

“Every manner of dark seduction now pervades our culture. In its soft form, we see the proliferation of filth and blasphemy cleverly packaged and sold to spiritually stunted souls as entertainment or self-help services.”

In an article published in March, Father Euteneuer noted that television shows like “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Charmed,” and what he called “their popular spawn,” especially target the young generation and are followed with fanatical fervor.

“A whole generation of teenage girls is absolutely swooning about the new vampire flick ‘Twilight’ and its sequel ‘New Moon.’ Some are going to this movie in prom dresses, fantasizing about what it would be like to fall in love with a vampire!

“This is anything but a fantasy,” said Father Euteneuer. “It is a potential gateway to grave spiritual danger for lonely, isolated kids who are ‘spiritually hungry’ enough to explore the occult.”

Father Jay Mello, chaplain at Bishop Stang High School in North Dartmouth, said “generally speaking, young students find an awkward fascination in paranormal activity and especially with some of the current films that have to do with the darker side.”

The students learn what the Catholic Church teaches and warns about the occult, “and I often meet students at several schools and some talk about the Ouija board. But I don’t see a great growth in such interests… although the greatest deceit by

the devil is that he doesn’t want us to know he even exists,” he added.

“We are not doing our job to educate Catholics about Church teachings on the First Commandment, the occult and to stay away from opening the door to demonic spirits with séances, psychic readings, and the such,” contends Mary Cardoza, 46, a member of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Acushnet.

“People easily get hooked, first because they are ignorant of the fact the devils are seriously seeking lost souls, and second because they don’t believe in these spirits and argue that its just ‘stuff,’” she said.

The result is “that people of all ages, sadly including many in nursing homes, are currently enjoying séances and occult readings and visits by fortune tellers thinking sorcery is all fun and games, and not realizing such activity is sinful,” said Cardoza.

Trying to help people recognize such practices are innocuous has become something of a mini-ministry for Cardoza, a dental hygienist. It began after a lecture by Moira Noonan, author of “Ransomed From Darkness.”

For more than 20 years, Noonan was a minister in the Church of Religious Science, and taught about the New Age practices.

She fell so deeply into New Age darkness that eventually she was exorcized, said Cardoza, returned to the Christian faith and her book calls for Christian preachers, teachers and laity to awaken from their enchantment and the seductions of New Age gurus and return to Christ.

Father Euteneuer cited statistics contending that Wicca is the fastest growing “religion” in the United States, with no fewer than 700,000 Internet sites for “teenage witches.”

Recalling an exorcism he performed, “the demon screamed out from the mouth of the young woman it had possessed, ‘Lost!

Lost! Lost soul!’ Ah, I countered, she was lost, but Christ found her and sent her to his Church.”

While exorcism is a pastoral and important ministry of the Church, said Father Euteneuer, “the sacrament of confession is a much more important ministry, because it pulls out the sins which are the conditions for possession,” he said.

Father Thomas J. Euteneuer, 48, a native of Detroit, Mich., was ordained a priest in 1988. He became president of Human Life International in December 2000.

It is the world’s largest Pro-Life organization with affiliate associates in 80 countries worldwide. A trained exorcist, he has traveled more than a million miles in his unique service mission.

Diocese collects more than $53,000 for Madeira flood, mudslide victims FALL RIVER — A special collection taken up in several parishes in the Fall River Diocese and individual donations raised a total of $53,381.78 to assist in relief work continuing on the Portuguese island of Madeira in the wake of the devastating February flooding and mudslides. The diocese transmitted a check in that amount to Caritas of the Diocese of Funchal, Madeira. Caritas is the island’s Catholic relief, development and social services organization; it has been involved in relief efforts since the disaster hit on February 20.

Bishop George W. Coleman expressed his gratitude to all who contributed to the special collection.

“I want to thank everyone who contributed to our relief collection for Madeira, whether through their parish or individually. In certain areas of our diocese, many of our Catholic people have roots going back to Madeira and some still have family there. The death and destruction brought by the floods and mudslides affected them in a direct way. I am very grateful that along with our prayers our Diocese of Fall River was also able to offer financial support to assist relief and rebuilding work on the island,” the bishop said.

Massive rains caused flash flooding and mudslides that killed 42 persons and caused severe destruction of the island’s infrastructure. Hundreds were left homeless. The island’s capital of Funchal and residential towns and villages just south of the city were hit hardest.

In response, Bishop Coleman authorized pastors who wish to do so to take up a special collection to assist the vic-

In Your Prayers

Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks May 24 Rev. James F. Clark, Founder, St. James, New Bedford, 1907 Rev. Patrick Heran, SS.CC., Former Rector, Sacred Hearts Seminary, Fairhaven, 1985 May 25 Rev. Michael P. Kirby, Former Assistant, St. Mary, North Attleboro, 1925 Rev. James V. Mendes, Pastor, Our Lady of Angels, Fall River, 1961 May 28 Rev. Lionel A. Bourque, Former Chaplain, Cardinal Cushing Hospital, Brockton, 1982 May 30 Rev. Jordan Harpin, O.P., Dominican Priory, Fall River, 1929 Rev. Edmond J. Potvin, Pastor, St. Jean Baptiste, Fall River, 1937 Rev. James M. Quinn, Pastor, St. John the Evangelist, Attleboro, 1950 Rev. Robert T. Canuel, Assistant, St. Anne, Fall River, 1993

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May 21, 2010

tims. Donations for the Madeiran relief collection were also

accepted at the diocesan Chancery office.

Around the Diocese 5/21

A retreat weekend for parish workers and religious educators will be held at La Salette Retreat Center, 947 Park Street, Attleboro, this weekend. The retreat will be facilitated by Karen Laroche, M.A., and Claire Lamoureux, Ph.D. For information or to register call 508-222-8530.

5/24

The Pro-Life Prayer Groups of Holy Trinity and Holy Redeemer parishes will sponsor a Holy Hour on May 24 at 1 p.m. at Holy Trinity Church, Route 28, West Harwich. The rosary will be followed by Benediction of the most Blessed Sacrament.

5/27

Holy Trinity Charismatic Prayer Group, Route 28, West Harwich, will host David Thorp as speaker during its prayer meeting on May 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Damien Hall to celebrate Pentecost. Thorp has been active in Catholic Charismatic Renewal for years and was head of the Boston Archdiocese Renewal. For more information call 508-398-1139.

5/31

A Memorial Day Mass will be celebrated May 31 at 8 a.m. at St. Mary’s Parish Cemetery, Franklin Street, Mansfield. In case of inclement weather, Mass will be celebrated at 8 a.m. in the church. All community members are welcome and lawn chairs are recommended.

6/3

Holy Cross Family Ministries, 518 Washington Street, North Easton, will commemorate the 18th anniversary of the death of its founder, Servant of God Father Patrick Peyton, CSC, and the 68th anniversary of Family Rosary on June 3. The event will include rosary at 4 p.m. at the Rosary Walk and Mass at 5 p.m. at St. Joseph Chapel with a light reception to follow. For more information call 508-238-4095.

6/5

St. John the Baptist Parish, corner of County and Wing streets, New Bedford, is hosting a Ministry Fair and Registration Drive on June 5 from 3 to 6 p.m. and on June 6 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Come learn about the ministries available at the first Portuguese Catholic parish in North America. For more information call 508-992-7727.

6/6

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 perpetual eucharistic adoration in the Adoration Chapel located at the (south) side entrance at 208 South Main Street. For open hours, or to sign up, call Liesse at 401-864-8539.

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.

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.

Sacred Heart Parish, corner of Seabury and Pine streets, Fall River, is holding a “Giant Indoor Yard Sale” on June 6 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to benefit the parish.

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.

The feast of Corpus Christi will be celebrated at Our Lady’s Chapel, New Bedford, with a procession of the Blessed Sacrament starting at 2 p.m. on June 6. During the procession participants will be singing hymns and reciting the rosary in English and Portuguese. For more information call 508-994-5035.

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.

6/6 6/6

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

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

6/6

Messa Italiana (Mass in Italian) will be celebrated at St. Thomas Chapel, Falmouth Heights Road, Falmouth on June 6 at 2 p.m.

The feast of the Holy Spirit will take place June 6 beginning with a procession at 9:30 a.m. from 154 Leawood Lane, Attleboro, to Holy Ghost Parish, 71 Linden Street, Attleboro, where Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Traditional free sopas will be served in the church hall following Mass. For more information call 508-226-1115.

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

WAREHAM — Beginning in May, 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. 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.

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The Anchor

May 21, 2010

New diocesan website provides personal look at priestly callings

By Dave Jolivet, Editor

electronic witness stories — This is a partial view of the homepage of a new diocesan website that provides users with an inside look at the calling to the priesthood of 11 diocesan priests.

The site is www.fallriverdiocese.org/yearforpriests.html

FALL RIVER — While the Year For Priests ends on June 19, God’s call for new priests and religious has no timeline.

With that in mind, Father Marcel H. Bouchard, chairman of the diocesan Committee for the Year For Priests enlisted the assistance of John E. Kearns Jr., diocesan director of Communications, to collaborate on a project suggested by the committee: a series of video reflections on the priesthood by diocesan priests.

The fruits of their labors have sprouted, as this week, they announced the opening of a website that provides users with access to testimonies of 11 priests regarding their call to serve, and reflections on that calling.

“The cooperation of the Year For Priests Committee was very evident when it came

up with this idea for the website link,” Father Bouchard told The Anchor. “We felt it would be advantageous to use modern communication means to get people to know the gift of the priesthood. This was a great example of how when people work together for a common goal, it bears great fruit.”

The site, which can be accessed via a link on the www. fallriverdiocese.org site, invites visitors to share the personal thoughts of these men, in a well-done, professional video session produced by Dave Fortin, who has worked on many audio and video projects for the Fall River Diocese.

The 11 participants represent a cross section of diocesan clergy. There are at least two priests ordained in each decade going back to the 1960s, including Bishop George W. Coleman, and two priests ordained only last year. The other 10 are Msgr. Thomas J. Harrington and Fathers Bouchard, Kevin A. Cook, David C. Deston Jr., Peter J. Fournier, Edward J. Healey, Daniel W. Lacroix, Jay T. Maddock, John J. Murray, and Richard D. Wilson.

Priest participants were invited to respond, on camera, to three of the following questions: Why did I become a priest? When did I hear the call to serve? What is at the heart of my ministry? What experiences or moments define my priesthood?

“I think the videos can help strengthen the relationship between priests and the lay faithful,” said Father Bouchard.

“People enjoy hearing stories of what the priesthood means to priests and the videos are really each priest personally speaking to each person visiting the site. The testimonies have a freshness to them, and all of them reveal what is in the hearts of each of the priests.

And I was most grateful that Bishop Coleman took part.

He’s such an unassuming man, but he saw the importance of the site.”

“All of the participants came well prepared to offer their reflections and completed them for the most part on the first take,” said Kearns. “They were recorded on different days over several weeks to meet everyone’s schedules.

“I found the responses shared by our priests to be honest and heartfelt. I think they offer insight into our priests and their sense of calling or vocation, and I think demonstrate

the deep satisfaction they find in their ministry serving the people of our diocese.”

A brief biographical sketch accompanies each of the priests’ videos, as well as his year of ordination. The home page also includes “A Prayer For Priests,” that diocesan faithful are encouraged to recite for the men who have given so much to follow God’s calling.

“John Kearns and Dave Fortin did a remarkable job putting this site together,” added Father Bouchard. “John did yeoman’s work, acting as a go-between with the priests and Dave Fortin. John exhibited fortitude and perseverance in putting together a schedule to video the priests amid very busy schedules. The site is a star in the crown of the Communications Office.”

The official Year For Priests may be nearly over, but the testimonies on the website are timeless. “While the reflections were videotaped as part of the Year For Priests observance, I see them also serving for a longer time as wonderful resources for vocations initiatives,” Kearns told The Anchor.

For someone considering a vocation to the priesthood, they provide a brief, easily-experienced glimpse into the life of a priest and some understanding of the road that led him there.”

He added, “I encourage people to visit the site to learn more about our bishop and our priests. All visitors to the site need do is place their cursor over the photo of each priest and click it. A new page will open and the initial first reflection will then begin. Options on the page will allow access to the other ones.”

“I know this site comes at the tail end of the Year For Priests,” said Father Bouchard, “but it’s a nice way to conclude it, with a final gift of the priests to the people of the Diocese of Fall River. These are happy priests, and it definitely shows in their testimonies.”

Kearns told The Anchor that the videos will also be available on YouTube and there are plans in the works to put together a half-hour vignette of highlights from the testimonies that will hopefully find their way to local cable TV stations and perhaps on DVDs. The Year For Priests testimonies can be accessed via a link on the diocesan website, fallriverdiocese.org, and on a link on The Anchor website, anchornews.org.