The Catholic Spirit - May 23, 2013

Newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

How will redefining marriage impact Minnesotans?

The Catholic Spirit

2B & 4B

News with a Catholic heart

May 23, 2013

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Needed:

‘A lot of

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Even after the initial death toll was cut by more than half, the human and material devastation of a string of tornadoes that buffeted areas of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City May 19-20 was incalculable.

“Our first concern is for the victims who have lost their lives or loved ones and suffered injury or loss of property,” said a May 21 statement by Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City.

“We are moved by the efforts of the first responders who have put their own lives on hold to help in this time of need. We owe them a debt of gratitude and assure them of our prayers,” Archbishop Coakley said.

St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Moore, an Oklahoma City suburb that bore the brunt of the EF-4 tornado that hit mid-afternoon May 20, was reported to have been mostly spared by the twister.

PLEASE TURN TO HELP ON PAGE 22B

CNS photo/Gene Blevins, Reuters

Two girls stand in rubble after a tornado struck Moore, Okla., May 20. The mile-wide tornado touched down near Oklahoma City, killing dozens, including many children, destroying homes, businesses and a pair of elementary schools in the suburb of Moore.

Zach Sobiech, right, of St. Michael in Stillwater, offers a gesture of congratulations to Matt Brown during Brown’s confirmation Mass at St. Mary in Stillwater April 22.

Sobiech, a friend of the Brown family since his early years, died of cancer May 20 at his home in Lakeland. He was Matt’s confirmation sponsor.

Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit

Inspirational teen succumbs to cancer

By Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

Zach Sobiech of St. Michael in Stillwater, who inspired thousands of people around the country and the world during his battle with cancer, and with the music he wrote and recorded during his fight, died at 6:30 a.m. May 20, surrounded by his family and girlfriend Amy Adamle. He was 18.

Three and a half years ago, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form PLEASE TURN TO AS ON PAGE 21B

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MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

The effect of redefining marriage Tuesday, May 14, 2013, was a dark, sad day for Catholics in the state of Minnesota as well as for all faith-filled people who believe in traditional marriage. A year ago, we were being told that a constitutional amendment on marriage was unnecessary as DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) would remain the law of the land. Well, that turned out, intentionally, to be untrue.

On May 15, I sent the following reflection to our clergy and those parish marriage coordinators who have worked so hard to defend our beliefs in the face of very adverse opposition. I share those thoughts here for those who have not yet seen them:

That They May All Be One Archbishop John C. Nienstedt

We must vow to continue to work to strengthen marriage and defend it against all forms of its weakening, for the good of all society

Our elected representatives in the Minnesota House and Senate have voted to redefine the meaning of marriage in our state. In light of this historically ill-advised decision, many people have asked me to offer some guidance to the Catholic faithful. I would like to respond to this development with careful reflection regarding its implications and what we Catholics can do now.

After all of the debate and tumult that have culminated in this legislative decision, one thing is very clear: pervasive misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of marriage — the foundational building block of human society — remains.

If marriage was only ever about love between consenting adults and their desires, it would have been changed centuries ago. But we know well that it is so much more.

Marriage reflects truths about the human person that no human being, advocacy group or popular trend can mute or change, no matter how much one wishes reality to be shaped according to one’s own making.

The traditional understanding of something is often considered as such because tradition reflects unchanging truth, not because of some stubborn death grip on the past, as some may choose to judge it.

We raised

Catholic Schools

“After all of the debate and

tumult that have culminated in this legislative decision, one thing is very clear: pervasive misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of marriage — the foundational building block of human society — remains.

”

ARCHBISHOP JOHN NIENSTEDT

Clearly, as Catholics, you and I still have much work to do to build up strong marriages as well as the proper understanding of marriage, in order to benefit the common good.

This work begins with sustained prayer. God is both the author of life and of marriage. He hears our prayers, and we must never doubt his power and love for humanity, even when we break our communion with him by our actions.

In fact, I call for all Catholic faithful to participate through their parishes in a special day of prayer — and fasting — as a continued sign of our commitment to living out and proclaiming the truth and goodness of God’s plan for marriage. Details and resources to PLEASE TURN TO CHURCH ON PAGE 21B

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His Excellency, the Most Rev. John C. Nienstedt, has announced the following appointments in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Effective June 15, 2013 Rev. Mark Joppa, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of Saint Ambrose of Woodbury. This is a transfer from his assignment as parochial vicar of the Church of the Nativity of Our Lord in Saint Paul.

Rev. Nathan LaLiberte, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of St. Michael, of Frankfort (St. Michael).

This is a transfer from his assignment as parochial vicar of the Church of St. Stephen, of Anoka.

Effective July 1, 2013 Rev. Thomas Balluff, accepted resignation as pastor of the Church of St. Boniface of St. Bonifacius and the Church of St. Mary (Delano), and appointed pastor of Saint John’s Church of Little Canada.

Rev. Joseph Bambenek, appointed pastor of the Church of St. Pius X of White Bear.

Rev. Daniel Bodin, appointed pastor of the Church of Saint Peter (Forest Lake).

Rev. Donald DeGrood, accepted resignation as pastor of the Church of Saint Peter (Forest Lake) effective June 30, 2013, and appointed pastor PLEASE TURN TO OFFICIAL ON PAGE 22B

Marriage MarriageDay Dayset setfor for June June 89at atCathedral Cathedral Married couples areare invited to join Married couples invited to Archjoin bishop John Nienstedt on June 8 at 10 a.m.

Bishop Lee Piché on June 9 at the Catheat the Cathedral of St. Paul for Archdiocesan dral of St. Paul at 10 a.m. for Mass, reMarriage Day featuring Mass, renewal of newal of vows, and a short reception. vows, and a short reception. Couples marwill Couples years ried moremarried than 25more or 50than years50 will be honbe honored in a special way and are ored in a special way and are invitedinto vited attend. Families andoffriends of attend.toFamilies and friends honored honored couples are welcome. couples are welcome.

The gathering is sponsored sponsored by by the the archarchdiocesan Office of of Marriage, Marriage, Family Family and and call(651) (651) 291-4488 Life. For For information, information,call 291-4488 or WWW .ARCHSPM .ORG.ORG . . visit WWW .ARCHSPM or visit Certificates signed Archbishop Nien Certificates signed by

by Archbishop Johnstedt are available for all married couples.

Nienstedt are available for all couples. To Requestsafor certificates must be made in receive certificate, contact call (651) writing byor June 1 and sent to: MFL MFL@ ARCHSPM .ORGoffice, .

291-4488 email 328 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102.

Freedom Forum is June 22 in Mendota

Denise Degerstrom, FIC 320-384-0339 Braham, Cambridge, Isanti, Mora

Mary Harens, FIC 651-295-2040 St. Paul area

Peter Ryan, FIC 763-972-8283 Delanoo, St. Michael, Albertville

Jim Suek, FIC 612-788-8051 N. Minneapolis, Blaine, Brooklyn Park, Fridley

Jon Gintherr, FIC 612-644-0563 W. Minneapolis Suburbs

Carol Lindnerr, FIC, LUTCF 952-657-2210 Waconia, Victoria, Norwood, St. Bonifacius

Ryan Selleck, FICFF, LUTCF 952-933-0780 S. Minneapolis, Richfield, Bloomington, Minnetonka

Sam Welterr, FIC 952-448-4865 Chaska, Cologne, Glencoe, Winsted

Michael Gross, FIC 651-641-1740 Mahtomedi, St. Paul, Roseville

Rick Mathiowetz, FIC 952-447-2546 Scott County

Mike Skillrud 952-448-4865 Burnsville, Cottage Grove, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights

Gail Hakes 507-254-7471 Austin, Pine Island, Zumbrota

Jeff Passe, FIC, LUTCF 651-955-2453 Woodbury, Cottage Grove, Stillwater

Home Office: St. Paul a l, Minn. © 2013 Catholic Unitted e Fiinancial

Official

www.catholicunited.org www .catholicunited.org inffo info@catholicunited.org o@catholicunited.org 1-800-568-6670

t -JGF *OTVSBODF t "OOVJUJFT t 3FUJSFNFOU 1SPEVDUT

A Freedom Forum addressing contemporary threats to religious freedom and the rights and responsibilities of Catholics will be held from 8 a.m. to noon June 22 at St. Peter in Mendota.

The day begins with Mass and features a slate of speakers: Seana Sugrue, associate professor of American Studies at Ave Maria University; J. Brian Menestad, professor of theology and director of the Catholic Studies program at the University of Scranton; and Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

The event is sponsored by the archdiocesan Office of Marriage, Family and Life. A free-will offering will be accepted.

For more information, call (651) 2914515.

“There’s so much depth in kids — there’s a lot more to them than you see when you watch them play lacrosse or basketball.”

Jo Culnane, retiring middle school teacher, Blessed Trinity in Richfield

Local MAY 23, 2013

News from around the archdiocese

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

3B

Three teachers retire after more than 40 years of service

By Jennifer Janikula For The Catholic Spirit

Teachers are collectors — always on the lookout for supplies and resources. As time passes, their collection grows with the thought “maybe I’ll use that next year.”

In June, after more than 40 years, Marie Murphy, Diane Wineman and Jo Culnane will stop collecting. Instead, their colleagues will battle over the treasures they leave behind.

Apparently, retirement does not require a Leprechaun costume, a table full of angels, a deer skull, a baby shark preserved in a jar, a time capsule from Earth Day 1990 or a large collection of windsocks.

Murphy, Wineman and Culnane were hired by their respective schools in the 1960s and felt so welcomed by their colleagues that they never left. All three teachers used humor and high expectations to motivate two generations of students.

Teacher Marie Murphy, center, helps seventhgraders Maria Clubb, left, and Kalia Quirk with social studies at Annunciation School in Minneapolis May 20.

Murphy, who has taught at the school for 48 years, is retiring at the end of the school year, which is June 7.

High expectations Marie Murphy will retire June 7 after 48 years of teaching religion and social studies to seventh- and eighthgraders at Annunciation School in Minneapolis.

Teachers and students describe Murphy as demanding, firm and dedicated. They appreciate her sense of humor and her ability to get the best from her students.

“There will never be another Marie Murphy,” said Dianne Brain, Murphy’s teaching partner for the last 20 years. “She is so dedicated to her work. She sets expectations high because she has a vision for each student.

They learn to trust her and they go along with her vision until they believe it themselves.”

Murphy set high expectations because she knew from experience that those who expect more usually receive more.

“I don’t expect more than they are capable of — I just feel they needed to be stretched a bit,” she said.

Murphy also admits that a sense of humor is vital when working with middle school students. “Middle school students have their own gifts — one is their ability to entertain their teachers,” she said.

Darcie Mullinax and Beth Sable, current teachers at Annunciation and Murphy’s former students, must have “entertained” Murphy on a regular basis. Both admit

Father Carroll celebrates 50 years Father Roger Carroll will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his priestly ordination during the 10:30 a.m. Mass June 9 at Maternity of Mary in St. Paul. A reception will follow the Mass.

Father Carroll was ordained Feb. 2, 1963 at the Cathedral of St. Paul. He served as associate pastor at the Cathedral of St. Paul. He then served as pasFATHER CARROLL tor at Blessed Sacrament, St. Columba and St. Andrew, all in St. Paul, and St. Michael, Prior Lake.

He retired from active ministry in 2003 and resides at the Leo C. Byrne Residence in St. Paul.

Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit

they spent lots of time in the hallway.

“As a student, I got in big trouble with Marie. I was pretty sassy as a middle schooler, but I had respect for Marie — she didn’t give in to me,” Mullinax said.

Sable shared a similar story, “When I had her she used to kick me out of class all of the time for talking. She said it would serve my purpose someday. I guess she was right, because now I am a teacher and I get paid to talk all day!”

Other students remember Murphy for her dedication to the Cornell Outline format. The outline provides a way for students to take notes from a textbook. As Murphy explains, “Middle school students need all of the organizational skills they can get.”

Teachers and students will miss the eighth-grade Christmas carolers the most. Each year on the day before Christmas break, Murphy led the eighth-graders through the

school, door to door, singing Christmas songs. “I did that with Marie as an eighth-grader and I will miss hearing that each year as a teacher,” Mullinax said.

After 48 years, Murphy “felt a great deal of peace and freedom” when she decided to retire. She said, “I promised myself that I would continue teaching as long as I laughed more than I cried. It wasn’t even close — there has always been more laughter.”

Inspired service Diane Wineman will retire on June 6 after 42 years of teaching fourth- and fifth-graders at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Savage.

Teachers and administrators describe Wineman as fair, compassionate and generous. They appreciate her sense of humor and the way she encourages staff and students to share their time, talent and treasure with others.

PLEASE TURN TO TEACHERS ON PAGE 6B

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CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

Impact of redefining marriage to be felt for years to come The Catholic Spirit The impact on both religious liberty and family law will be felt for years to come in the aftermath of the Legislature’s passage of a law redefining marriage in the state of Minnesota, according to the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

Although some accommodations for clergy and religious organizations were included in the new law legalizing same-sex marriage, they fall short in protecting the religious liberty of many Minnesotans in the pews who believe marriage is a union between one man and one woman, said Jason Adkins.

The courts will be forced to adjudicate the inevitable conflicts that arise over religious liberty concerns, while family law also will undergo fundamental changes, he said.

“Our family law and marriage was rooted in the idea of what’s in the best interest of children,” Adkins said.

“What we’re going to be seeing in family law is a transformational shift away from working for the best interest of children toward maximizing the happiness of adults.

Everything will become about accommodating the desires of adults instead of working for the best interest of children.”

“I think that’s an absolute travesty, and we’re going to be picking up the pieces of that for many years to come,” he said.

Gov. Mark Dayton signed the legislation redefining marriage into law May 14 less than a week after it passed in both the House and Senate. Minnesota is the 12th state to allow same-sex marriage. The law takes effect Aug. 1.

Archbishop reflects In a reflection sent to clergy and parish marriage coordinators following the law’s passage, Archbishop John Nienstedt reiterated the Church’s support for traditional marriage.

“After all of the debate and tumult that have culminated in this legislative decision, one thing is very clear: pervasive misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of marriage — the foundational building block of human society — remains,” he wrote.

“Let us vow to continue to work to strengthen marriage — with a renewed commitment to walk the talk — and defend it against all forms of its weakening, for the good of all society,” he said. “We can do nothing less than continue to propose and do our best to live out what we believe.” (The full text of the archbishop’s message can be found in his column on page 2B of this issue.)

Ongoing concerns Earlier this month, Rhode Island and Delaware became the 10th and 11th states, respectively, to legalize samesex marriage.

In November, Minnesota voters rejected a ballot measure to amend the state constitution to define marriage as only a union between a man and woman, but polls show Minnesotans remain divided over legalizing such unions.

Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit

From left, Barbara Sherf and her daughter Lauren of Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul and St. Joseph in West St. Paul participate in a candlelight vigil on the steps of the Cathedral of St. Paul on May 14, the day Gov. Mark Dayton signed into law a bill allowing same-sex couples to marry. The vigil was organized by Jenni Maas of Nativity, and Father Thomas McDonough read Scriptures and offered reflections.

The new law changes the definition of marriage from “between a man and a woman” to “a civil contract between two persons.”

While it stipulates that churches and members of the clergy will not be forced to solemnize same-sex wedding ceremonies, such protections are already inherent in the First Amendment, Adkins said.

Missing from the state law, however, are accommodations for individuals, non-religious non-profits, small business owners, religious organizations that receive public funds, and religious associations not directly connected with a church organization or diocese.

For example, a religious camp that rents its facilities for weddings or a Catholic caterer would “receive no protection from the language of this bill,” Adkins said.

The MCC, the public policy voice of the Catholic Church in Minnesota, is working with legislators on measures to write such protections into state law, he said.

And, it is working with a number of other groups and organizations to craft general advice and guidance for organizations, companies and people of faith who will be dealing with conflicts that emerge as a result of the new law.

Adkins said the state’s new genderless conception of marriage also will have legal implications that courts will need to address.

“We’re already seeing that in Iowa, where as a follow up to its imposition of same-sex marriage, they’ve now ruled that two persons of the same sex have a right to be listed as the parents on the birth certificate of the children of which one partner gave birth,” he said.

“That’s just one example,” he said. “I think we’ll see multiple partners being listed on birth certificates. We’ll see interesting custody battles, and we’re going to see other developments related to reproductive technology and surrogacy agreements as this all gets worked out.”

What passed, what didn’t? A brief look back at the 2013 legislative session The Catholic Spirit The Minnesota Catholic Conference was tracking a number of issues throughout the 2013 legislative session, which ended May 20. Here is a sampling of what passed and what didn’t: ■ Minimum wage: The MCC supported increasing the minimum wage as one way to help low-income, working families to achieve better economic security and “create a ladder out of poverty.” The House and Senate, however, did not agree on the amount of an increase before the 2013 session ended.

■ Human trafficking: The MCC supported the Safe Harbor/No Wrong Door implementation bill to provide a safety net of services for youth 17 years old and younger who are victims of sex trafficking

or at risk of exploitation. The measure was a result of the 2011 Safe Harbor Act, created to ensure that children who are sexually exploited or at risk of exploitation are treated as victims and not criminals.

The measure received a $2.8 million allocation from the Legislature — far less than what is needed to fully implement the 2011 law, the MCC said, adding that it is still an important step in the right direction.

■ “Ban-the-box”: The MCC supported so-called “ban the box” bills to forbid employers from asking a prospective employee about his or her criminal history until the applicant is selected for a job interview. “We think we should be working to help people reconcile themselves with the community and then reintegrate back into society,” Jason Adkins, MCC execu-

tive director said earlier in the session.

This includes being able to access employment opportunities, housing and other vital social services that will help keep them from reoffending. The measure was passed by the Legislature.

■ Bullying: While the MCC takes a strong stand against bullying and believes Minnesota should enact policies to protect all children, it opposed the so-called Safe and Supportive Schools Act because it threatened to imposed mandates and curriculum requirements on private schools, including Catholic schools, that violate constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. The MCC also had concerns that the measure would usurp the authority of parents to teach their children in areas such as gender and sexuality. While the measure was amended late in the session

to address the MCC’s most serious concerns, the bill itself was not passed by legislators.

■ Tuition for immigrants: The MCC supported the Minnesota “Dream Act” to provide students who came to this country as children with their families and who now want to become citizens with resident tuition rates at state universities and colleges. The measure passed the Legislature.

■ Charitable tax deduction: The MCC was concerned about legislation passed in the House to repeal the state charitable tax deduction and replace it with a partial credit, above a new threshold — thus reducing incentives for Minnesotans to make charitable donations. The proposal, however, was removed from the final tax bill.

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MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Faithful invited to ‘walk with Jesus’ in Corpus Christi procession

Workshops help parishes develop plans for hospitality from all angles

By Dianne Towalski

The Catholic Spirit

The Catholic Spirit

On Corpus Christi Sunday, June 2, (Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ), Bishop Lee Piché will lead the Archdiocesan Corpus Christi Procession.

The procession begins at the Little Sisters of the Poor Holy Family Residence at 2 p.m. and goes to the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Following the procession, there will be a Holy Hour — which will include praying the rosary, a meditation on Scripture, vespers and Benediction — in honor of the File photo by Jim Bovin / The Catholic Spirit Year of Faith, said Father John Corpus Christi procession, 2011.

Paul Erickson, director of the archdiocesan Office of Worship.

Buses will shuttle between the Cathedral parking lot and the Holy Family Residence, he said.

The feast day “celebrates one of the fundamental beliefs of Catholicism — the real presence of Jesus: body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist,” Father Erickson said, adding that the procession offers a public witness of faith.

“This day to walk with Jesus is a way of proclaiming to all the world that we believe that God is with us,” he said. “Just as we believe the Blessed Mother walks with us in the May Day procession, so, too — in an even more literal way — Jesus himself is walking with us in the city.”

“One of the beautiful aspects of Rediscover: is that individuals are being reminded of the deep importance of the sacraments,” he said. “I’m hopeful that individuals who perhaps have been away from the Church or maybe taken the sacraments for granted, maybe a fire can be lit and they can rediscover the power and the beauty of the sacraments. Certainly a public procession celebrating the ‘sacrament of sacraments’ can be one practical expression of this refound, rediscovered interest in the Eucharist and the power of the presence of Jesus with us.”

In his rule, St. Benedict writes, “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ.” But that was written 500 years ago. How can the Church, and parishes in particular, do that effectively today?

The archdiocesan Office of Parish Services sponsored three Hospitality 360 workshops around the archdiocese to help parishes assess how they are doing in several areas related to hospitality and learn how hospitality can be an effective means of reaching out to less-engaged Catholics.

“In our Catholic tradition, from the very, very beginning, hospitality has not only been there, it was expected,” said Renee Allerheiligen, the main speaker at the three workshops and a member of Our Lady of Grace in Edina.

Hospitality is one of the seeds for growth identified by the GROW pastoral planning process. Coordinated by the Office of Parish Services, GROW builds on the parish visitation process and flows from the archdiocese’s 2010 strategic plan. Through this process hospitality has been identified as a priority.

“Hospitality is foundational to virtually all aspects of parish life,” said Mark Dittman, director of parish services.

“If parishioners feel welcome, they are more likely to be open to the message of the Gospel. The Catholic Church has a long history of promoting hospitality — these workshops are about taking the best of that tradition and applying it to parish life.”

The workshops were held in early May at St. Patrick in Edina, St. John the Baptist in New Brighton and St. John Neumann in Eagan.

They were designed as a follow up to Father Jan Michael Joncas’ and Lou Carbone’s presentations on hospitality last month at Spring Formation Day, and enabled parish leaders to develop a concrete plan for hospitality at their parish.

“Hospitality can provide a gateway to the other Seeds for Growth identified in the GROW parish planning process — prayer, study, generosity and evangelization,” Dittman said.

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Forming a plan A large part of the workshop discussion was the “Hospitality Needs Assessment” and “Ministry Action Plan.”

Some participants filled out the assessment online before the workshops and were able to begin on the action plan.

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the ball rolling,” said Justin Stroh, steward of faith formation at Divine Mercy parish in Faribault who attended the workshop in Eagan.

The information gathered from the assessment will be mostly for each parish’s own internal use, but the Parish Services Office will look through the data to see if there are needs that everyone is identifying across the board.

“That way we will be able to target particular areas for future training and development,” said Julie Meyer of the Office of Parish Services.

If a parish did not participate in the workshops but would still like to complete the online assessment, they can email OPS@ARCHSPM.ORG for instructions.

Offering ideas Included in each person’s information packet was a deck of hospitality “Quick Cards” — simple, quick and inexpensive hospitality ideas that can be used immediately. For example, one card suggested putting a small basket of thought-provoking questions on each table during coffee and doughnut gatherings after Mass. This would get people engaged and talking about their faith instead of wondering what they should say to the people across the table.

“People need to feel welcomed, appreciated and valued,” said Rozann Reyerson, a volunteer at St. John Neumann. “If the parishes celebrate and implement the program, we will see an increase in participation because people will want to be a part of programs that place value on their presence.”

Plans for Hospitality 2.0 workshops next year are being considered, possibly with a longer format and additional content, Dittman said.

“I want us to acquire the heart of Jesus, who came to seek and to save the lost,” Stroh said. “This would become our reason for all we do, especially the first task of hospitality.”

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Hearing Tests Set for Senior Citizens Announcement — Free electronic hearing tests will be given all next week Monday thru Friday from 9 am to 4 pm.

The tests have been arranged for anyone who suspects they are not hearing clearly.

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THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

Group offers faith, fellowship to intellectually disabled

By Susan Klemond

few people in their lives who are not paid to be there,” said Susag, who with her family belongs to St. Joseph in Miesville. At Northern Lights, “people care about the Lord and them. It doesn’t get any better.”

For The Catholic Spirit

When asked recently if we can become disciples through the Holy Spirit, Kathleen Sweeney had an answer right away: “Just say yes!”

A member of Northern Lights, a community of intellectually disabled adults, Sweeney was in the spirit of Pentecost as she helped act out a New Testament story about St. Peter and the early Christians at a group meeting earlier this week at St. Joseph in West St. Paul.

Sweeney and 14 other adult members with intellectual disabilities from around the Twin Cities area, along with their friends, family and caregivers, get together monthly for prayer, singing, crafts and games, scriptural dramas and, above all, friendship.

“I like to be here,” said Sweeney who attended with her father, Jim. “It makes me feel good. I make friends.”

Sharing faith and fun One of more than 1,600 communities in 80 countries that make up the Faith and Light movement, Northern Lights’ mission is about not only faith but fellowship.

“It’s basically getting together and having these special people have some fun” along with sharing opportunities for prayer and singing, said Mary Jeanne Hemesath, a St. Joseph parishioner who has led the group at the parish for nine years with the help of a core team.

The first Faith and Light community in the Twin Cities was founded in Minneapolis in 1987 and eventually split into three groups, one of which became Northern Lights, said Maggie Demco, eastern province coordinator and St. John Vian-

Taking their rightful place

Jim Bovin for theCatholic Spirit

Maggie Demco, Provincial Coordinator of Faith and Light, visits with Kathleen Sweeney, center, and Kathleen’s father, Jim during a meeting of the group at St. Joseph in West St. Paul.

ney parishioner who attends Northern Lights meetings. The new group moved several times before settling at St. Joseph nine years ago.

Faith and Light was founded in France in 1971 by Jean Vanier and Marie-Hélène Mathieu. A Canadian philosopher, Vanier is known for founding in 1964 the L’Arche movement in which the intellectually disabled live together in one of 140 communities worldwide.

Acting out Scripture while wearing simple costumes is one activity Northern Lights members especially enjoy, and many are eager to play Jesus, said Heme-

sath, who’s been involved with Faith and Light for 23 years.

“We try to get all our members involved because they want to be involved and that is so good,” she said. “I think they get more of the information when it’s mimed out to them because then they understand it more than just reading it from the text.”

There aren’t many social groups for intellectually disabled adults, and Faith and Light fills that need, said Rebecca Susag, vice coordinator of Faith and Light’s eastern province whose daughter, Marta, is a Northern Lights member.

“People with adult disabilities have very

After the drama, in recognition of Pentecost, Hemesath gave battery-powered candles to each person, saying, “Be filled with the light of the Spirit,” and led them in a hymn.

Northern Lights is based on Christian teachings and values; the local community is interdenominational.

They know who Jesus is and they are very close to him, Hemesath said. “When we go around into groups and we share what’s going on in our lives and we ask questions of these special folks, they just bring up the word Jesus. He is right with us.”

The intellectually disabled serve in the Church in different parish ministries, said Demco. “Faith and Light wants friends with disabilities to take their rightful place in the Church.”

The Church can serve the intellectually disabled by welcoming them, she said.

“So many people just say ‘hi’ and they walk on by. [They just want] to have a few words. If they understood what you say that’s great and if they didn’t, they’ve understood in their own way by your expressions and talking slowly.”

As Hemesath discovered through Northern Lights, the intellectually disabled are a great gift to the non-disabled. “Our Lord gave us these special people to take care of and he did it for a reason,” she said.

Anyone interested in volunteering with Northern Lights should contact Mary Jeanne Hemesath at (651) 455-0781.

Teachers remember influence of religious sisters CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3B For Wineman, St. John’s is so much more than work — it’s the place she met her husband, it’s where her two daughters went to school, and it’s where she takes her grandson to preschool every day.

That connection between work and family, as well as the support of her colleagues, provided a solid foundation for Wineman’s success and longevity as a teacher.

“Diane enjoys her job so much,” said Mike Smalley, principal at St. John’s. “In 42 years, her passion and love for the job have never diminWINEMAN ished.”

How did she maintain her passion for her work?

Wineman said the students are the secret. “The kids give you energy and keep you young,” she said.

In addition to the kids, Wineman finds inspiration in memories of her third-grade teacher, Sister Timona.

“At the time, the Notre Dame sisters wore the full habit with big hats and long skirts. We didn’t think they had legs! They seemed to float down the hallway. But Sister Timona had legs. She would jump rope with us during recess. I just adored her. She had enthusiasm for life,” explained Wineman.

Like Sister Timona, Wineman shares enthusiasm with her students. She earns her nickname, Mother Earth, as founder and advisor of the Kids Saving the Earth club.

She encourages her students to serve others by providing Christmas gifts, Valentines, Easter baskets, blankets and school supplies to those in need.

Kathy Geis, Wineman’s fifth-grade teaching partner, respects Wineman’s commitment to the students. “She

really holds kids accountable for their work and behavior,” Geis said. “She expects them to achieve and produce and treat each other kindly.”

When summarizing 42 years of teaching, Wineman said, “It’s been an awesome journey.” She admits that retirement won’t hit her until the fall. She plans to give her gardens more attention, travel with her husband and volunteer at the Minnesota Zoo. If she gets bored during retirement, her co-workers have a few ideas for her. “They thought I could be a valet during the winter — start their cars, brush the snow off, then deliver their warm, clean cars to the door,” Wineman explained. “Either way, I guess I’ll be busy.”

Instilling Catholic values

Jo Culnane will retire June 5 after 44 years of teaching religion, language arts and literature to seventhand eighth- graders in three Richfield area Catholic schools (St. Peter’s, Assumption and Blessed Trinity). In addition to her classroom duties, Culnane directed 44 plays and edited 44 yearbooks. She will be remembered for her high standards, her witty quotations and her commitment to inCULNANE stilling Catholic values.

Culnane started her teaching career at a public school in Murdock, Minn., in 1942. After two years, she left Murdock and her teaching career behind to get married and start a family.

Fast forward to 1969. Culnane’s family life was busy and fulfilling, but her teaching career began calling to her in the form of Sister Hubert Marie from St. Peter’s Catholic school in Richfield.

“Sister knew about my background and was very impressed, but I had four kids,” Culnane said. “I was teach-

ing piano lessons, running a Campfire group and doing volunteer work. Sister asked me to come in and teach for just one day. Well, that day turned into 44 years.”

The joy of teaching religion and sharing her faith kept Culnane content in the classroom for four decades.

“We pray, talk about miracles, go to Mass, say a decade of the rosary,” Culnane explained. “We have to do it, it’s the only thing that is important — their relationship with God.” Brian Stock, Culnane’s former student and current coworker at Blessed Trinity, said Culnane “incorporates Catholic principles into everything she teaches.”

“She instilled in me Catholic values that I carried with me through high school and college,” he said. “Now, as a teacher, I don’t do that nearly as well as she does, but I try.”

Culnane shares many religious and secular quotations with her students. One of her favorites comes from Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

For Culnane, everything is a miracle, especially her students. “They are so eager to learn,” she said. “There’s so much depth in kids — there’s a lot more to them than you see when you watch them play lacrosse or basketball.”

Blessed Trinity Principal Patrick O’Keefe, explained that Culnane creates a culture that allows her students to become the leaders of their school.

“She expects them to be great people,” he said. “She believes they are great and will do great things.”

So, as Culnane prepares for her last days as a teacher and a future filled with lots of bridge matches, she still has wise words to share: “God gave us all brains. Use yours for the good of the world — make the world a better place.”

Local

MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

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Parish assessments help to fund ministries in local Church The Catholic Spirit While funds from the Catholic Services Appeal help to fund ministries in the archdiocese ranging from Catholic schools and Catholic Charities to seminarian education and youth programs, the CSA isn’t the only source of financial support for essential programs in the local Church.

Parish assessments also play an important role, said Tom Mertens, chief financial officer of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“Not only the CSA, but the assessments are essential to deliver the services, programs and ministries the archdiocese provides,” he said. “They work hand in hand.”

In fiscal year 2012, support for the CSA totaled $9.3 million, with parish rebates, Catholic education, seminarian and clergy services, and Catholic Charities accounting for the largest percentage of distributed funds.

Income from assessments — prescribed in the Code of Canon Law as a means for diocesan bishops to collect funds from parishes to help pay for the ministries of the local Church — totaled about $14 million last fiscal year.

Assessment revenue supports the archdiocese’s central offices, including the wages and benefits of its approximately

“Not only the [Catholic Services

Appeal], but the assessments are essential to deliver the services, programs and ministries the archdiocese provides. They work hand in hand.

”

TOM MERTENS Chief financial officer, Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

150 employees, and the work of offices such as the Metropolitan Tribunal, Worship, Parish Services, and Communications, said Mertens.

Assessments also pay for infrastructure and technology needs as well as dues and assessments the archdiocese owes to others, such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The formula Currently, parishes are assessed 8 percent on their collection plate and envelope income, and 8 percent on rental income and gifts.

Parishes are also assessed 8 percent on

capital improvement income, while being given a credit for 75 percent of the expenditures after they are made for the improvements.

Parish school tuition and income is assessed at 8 percent, but parishes receive a credit for each parochial student, each student attending a consolidated school and each student enrolled in their faith formation program.

The assessment rates are increased by 1 percent if a parish elects to have The Catholic Spirit circulated by the archdiocese rather than being billed by the newspaper directly.

Mertens said he believes the current as-

sessment rates are lower than most other U.S. dioceses and archdioceses.

Changes coming The archdiocese announced a new formula last year that goes into effect beginning in the 2015-2016 fiscal year, based on parish financials from the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

The changes are intended to simplify the assessment formula, correct potential inequities and support Catholic schools, Mertens said.

The new assessment formula outlines the following: ■ Parishes with schools — which include those that support a consolidated or regional school by contributing at least 15 percent of plate and envelope collections — will be assessed 8 percent on their offertory collections as well as other income.

■ Parishes without schools — including those that don’t support a consolidated or regional school — will be assessed 9 percent on their offertory collections as well as other income.

■ All parishes will be assessed at a rate of 2 percent on monies raised for building projects and debt reduction.

■ Assessments on school tuition and income are eliminated, as is the additional 1 percent assessment for The Catholic Spirit.

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Chancellor for Canonical Affairs Location: Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis; St. Paul, MN The Chancellor for Canonical Affairs supports the mission of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis through the application of canonical principles to its various aspects, through the development and implementation of sound canonical procedures in its activities, and through the provision of advice and responses to and on behalf of the Archbishop and other entities within the Archdiocese. Required qualifications include a degree in Canon Law (J.C.L. or J.C.D.) and a minimum of five years’ experience in Church ministry.

Assistant Principal Location: St. Agnes Catholic School; St. Paul, MN The Assistant Principal collaboratively serves with the Principal in the overall operations of the K-12 school. The candidate will have primary responsibility for student life, discipline, professional development, scheduling, policies, and nonpublic services. The Assistant Principal promotes and builds Catholic Identity, participates in strategic planning and furthers the goals and mission of the school. The candidate will engage the student body and learning environment through teaching a minimum of one course. Preferred qualifications include a Master’s degree and Principal Licensure.

Director of Faith Formation & Youth Ministry Location: St. Joseph Catholic Church; Red Wing, MN The Director of Faith Formation & Youth Ministry, under the direction of the Pastor, is responsible for managing the Faith Formation and Youth Ministry program (K-12) for the Parish. Plan Curriculum, assess needs, incorporate prayer, service and outreach at all levels of youth ages K-12; sacraments; mission trip; prayer groups, confirmation, Liturgy of the Word for Children, Summer Faith Formation programs, etc. Required qualifications include a Bachelor’s degree in education, religious studies, or a related field or equivalent experience and 5-8 years of experience in a Catholic religious education environment.

For more information on these and other job openings, or to apply online, please visit www.archspm.org/careers.

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“Part of our vocation as mothers is to be within our home and do our work with love, and [as Catholic bloggers] we can also do work that draws people closer to Christ and his Church.”

Lisa Hendey, Catholic mom and blogger

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Nation/World THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

News from around the U.S. and the globe

Catholic moms share faith as ‘digital disciples’

By Maureen Boyle Catholic News Service

One of Mary’s titles is “Christ’s First Disciple,” and some of Christ’s earliest followers were women, two of whom he appeared to first after his resurrection.

Now, some 2,000 years later, another special group of women, specifically Catholic moms who blog on the Internet about their faith, the Catholic Church, as well as the joys and challenges of parenthood and everyday family life, can be considered among Christ’s newest evangelizers or “digital disciples.”

“Part of our vocation as mothers is to be within our home and do our work with love, and [as Catholic bloggers] we can also do work that draws people closer to Christ and his Church,” said Lisa Hendey, a Catholic wife and mom blogger from Fresno, Calif.

In between carpool, dinner and homework duties, a growing number of Catholic moms have turned to Internet blogging as a newfound outlet to enrich their own Catholic faith, as well as the faith journeys of their regular readers, with whom they form a sort of spiritual camaraderie.

“We try to be supportive to parents in the trenches of the domestic Church,” said Hendey, a mom of two sons ages 18 and 21. She also is the author of “A Book of Saints for Catholic Moms” and “The Handbook for Catholic Moms.”

Hendey said her 8-year-old blog, WWW.CATHOLICMOM.COM, grew out of a website she launched in 2000.

A growing ministry Nowadays, she has about 150 regular contributors, mostly moms, a few dads — all volunteers — who are writing on various topics such as daily prayer, the Church’s liturgical seasons, marriage, family finances, books and movies. Hendey stressed that although the blog’s content covers a multitude of Catholic-related subjects, all essays must be in accordance with church teaching and doctrine.

A blog is a website on which an individual or group of users record and share opinions and information on a regular basis. There are more than 150 million blogs on the Internet, with nearly 3,000 of them designated as Catholic blogs. There are no stats on the number of blogs operated by Catholic moms, but it is a growing “ministry” in this era of the new evangelization, said Hendey.

“It allows us to put information and thoughts out there and invite readers into dialogue,” she told the Catholic Standard, newspaper of the Washington Archdiocese.

“There are comments, more voices and a real sense of being a part of a community,” she said, describing the difference between a website and a blog. “You’re not just reading something. It’s much more interactive.”

MAY 23, 2013

Gosnell’s conviction shows ‘ugliness of abortion,’ archbishop says Catholic News Service

CNS photo / Nancy Phelan Wiechec

Catholic mom and blogger Lisa Hendey of Fresno, Calif., attends a meeting between bloggers and bishops in Baltimore last fall.

Popular blogs written by or for Catholic moms The following is a list of some popular blogs written by or for Catholic mothers: ■ Lisa Hendey’s “Catholic Mom” features 150 contributors, writing on all aspects of the Catholic faith and in accordance with church teaching: HTTP://CATHOLICMOM.COM. ■ Mary DeTurris Poust’s “Not Strictly Spiritual” chronicles her Catholic faith, family life and other topics: WWW.NOTSTRICTLYSPIRITUAL.COM. ■ Rebecca Teti’s “Coffee Talk” at the Catholic Digest online can be found under recent blog posts and is an open forum for readers to discuss family, education, marriage, natural family planning, parenting and other related issues: WWW.CATHOLICDIGEST.COM. ■ Jessica McFadden’s “A Parent in Silver Spring” is a local Maryland resource guide to family-friendly activities: HTTP://APARENTINSILVERSPRING.COM. A similar resource can be found at her blog “A Parent in America”: HTTP://APARENTINAMERICA.COM. ■ Katrina Fernandez’s “The Crescat” is a blog about life as a faithful Catholic and a single mom: WWW.PATHEOS.COM/BLOGS/THECRESCAT/ABOUT. — Catholic News Service

Mary DeTurris Poust is a Catholic mom blogger from the Diocese of Albany, N.Y., whose blog, WWW.NOTSTRICTLYSPIRITUAL.COM, began about five years ago as a sort of “spiritual journal online.”

A former Catholic journalist and currently a monthly columnist for Catholic New York, the newspaper of the New York Archdiocese, Poust said she started her blog as a way to write about things she couldn’t always cover as a Catholic reporter.

“It’s a blend of all areas of my life,” said Poust, a wife and mother to three kids — ages 16, 13 and 7.

When readers respond positively to one of Poust’s blogs, maybe one she based on a personal life struggle, she said, “It really affirms what I’m doing — using social media tools to reach people who aren’t necessarily in the pews or churches,” she said.

Rebecca Teti, a member of St. Jerome Parish in Hyattsville, Md., is the moderator of the blog Coffee Talk, which can be found at WWW.CATHOLICDIGEST.COM and was launched more than one year ago.

It is an open forum for readers to discuss, ask a question, share a story or offer advice. Daily topics include parenting, natural family planning, education, marriage or the different issues facing members of “sandwich generation” — those raising children and also caring for aging parents.

An example of a recent Coffee Talk blog post came from a reader expressing her dismay over her 14-year-old son’s reluctance to receive the sacrament of confirmation. Several readers chimed in with suggestions about the importance of keeping the lines of communication open between parents and children, advice on the best catechetical resources, as well as promise of prayers for the woman and her son.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell may have been convicted May 13 of murder at his Philadelphia abortion clinic, but “nothing can bring back the innocent children he killed, or make up for the vulnerable women he exploited,” said Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

And, he added, “the repugnance of his clinic conditions” must be remembered.

In a May 14 statement, the Philadelphia archbishop said, “Gosnell is not an exception. Others just like him run abortion mills throughout our country.”

A Philadelphia jury May 13 found Gosnell guilty of murder in the deaths of three babies born alive during abortions and acquitted him of a fourth similar charge. He also was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death by a drug overdose of a patient who had an abortion.

Gosnell, 72, was charged with snipping the spines of babies born alive during illegal late-term abortions. Pennsylvania law prohibits abortions after 24 weeks of gestation.

Violence that must end “We need to stop cloaking the ugliness of abortion with misnomers like ‘proper medical coverage’ or ‘choice,’” Archbishop Chaput said in his statement. “It’s violence of the most intimate sort, and it needs to end.”

He said the detailed description of Gosnell’s clinic discussed at trial must remain “sharp in our memories,” and “we should remember the media’s inadequacy in covering his case.”

A few weeks earlier in the six-week trial, after the prosecution had rested its case, Judge Jeffrey Minehart of the Common Pleas Court, dismissed three other murder charges against Gosnell, saying they lacked evidence.

Late May 14, prosecutors said the doctor agreed to give up his right to an appeal so he would not get the death penalty. The judge then gave him two consecutive life sentences with no chance for parole on two of three firstdegree murder convictions.

At a May 15 sentence hearing, Gosnell received a third life sentence for the third murder conviction and another two and a half to five years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

Those sentences also are consecutive.

He also was convicted of hundreds of violations of Pennsylvania abortion regulations.

Nation/World

MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Audit shows number of abuse allegations in Church dropped in 2012

ibility of 15 of the allegations was still under investigation. Law enforcement officials found 12 allegations to be unfounded or unable to be proven, and one was a boundary violation.

The annual audit of diocesan compliance with the U.S. Catholic Church’s “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” found a drop in the number of allegations, number of victims and number of offenders reported in 2012.

Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which gathered data for the report, found “the fewest allegations and victims reported since the data collection for the annual reports began in 2004.”

Most allegations reported last year were from the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the alleged offenders already deceased or removed from active ministry.

StoneBridge Business Partners, which conducts the audits, said law enforcement found six credible cases among 34 allegations of abuse of minors in 2012. The cred-

Almost all dioceses were found compliant with the audit. Three were found to be noncompliant with one article of the charter. The Diocese of Lake Charles, La., was cited since its review board had not met in several years. The Diocese of Tulsa, Okla., was listed because auditors could not determine if parishes provided safe environment training to religious education students and volunteer teachers. The Diocese of Baker, Ore., was cited because students did not receive safe environment training while a new program was being developed, but the training has now resumed.

Background evaluations were conducted on more than 99 percent of clergy, 98 percent of educators, 96 percent of employees, and 96 percent of volunteers.

The report can be found at WWW.USCCB.ORG/

ISSUES-AND-ACTION/CHILD-AND-YOUTH-PROTEC TION/UPLOAD/ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-THE-IMPLEMEN

TATION-OF-THE-CHARTER-FOR-THE-PROTECTION-OFCHILDREN-AND-YOUNG-PEOPLE-2012.PDF.

Embryonic stem-cell advance decried As Oregon scientists announced May 15 that they had successfully converted human skin cells into embryonic stem cells, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities warned that the technique is morally troubling on many levels.

The audit reported that more than 99 percent of clergy members and 96 percent of employees and volunteers have been trained in safe environment programs. It also noted that more than 4.6 million children received safe environment training.

Scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University and the Oregon National Primate Research Center announced that

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they had successfully reprogrammed human skin cells to become embryonic stem cells, which are capable of transforming into other types of cells that could replace those damaged by illness or injury.

Many news reports on the announcement referred to the research as human cloning, but the university's release and a full report on the work in Cell magazine carefully avoided the term, except to say taking the work in the direction of reproductive cloning is unlikely.

The Oregon research team developed the unfertilized embryonic cells to seven days’ growth in a lab. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who chairs the bishops’ committee, said the process created and destroyed more than 120 human embryos, which the church considers human life that must be protected.

The cardinal said that no matter what the Oregon researchers intend to do with their studies, the techniques they have perfected might lead others to pursue human cloning that produces babies.

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This Catholic Life THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Opinion, feedback and points to ponder

MAY 23, 2013

Catholics told they must be ‘fearless leaders’ Catholic News Service

are suffering terribly — from inadequate schools, from unemployment or underemployment — at wages that can’t even keep up with the rising price of gas. They are disproportionately ill, intergenerationally downwardly mobile, and increasingly bereft of the fundamental goods of marriage and marital parenting, access to which I would argue should be the basis even for a new human rights, new civil rights struggle for those disadvantaged men and women who are called to marriage and parenting.”

The Catholic approach to poverty “has something to ruffle nearly everybody’s feathers,” she added. “Catholic teaching speaks clearly of the evils of consumerism, of the right to a living wage, and to educational opportunities and working conditions respectful of the dignity of workers and their families and their established communities and cultures, and respectful of the natural environment. These are radical proposals in an age of cutthroat price competition, skittish investors and a global marketplace.”

Alvare said Pope Francis is “fearless, both on the imperative to begin thinking again about the invisible poor, and about preserving the links between sex, marriage and childbearing. We are proud to see him evangelizing the world with such messages — even when the reception is chilly, or worse, contemptuous.”

In dealing with several serious issues confronting the church and society today, “the only question is how you respond, not whether you should,” said Helen Alvare at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, held May 9 in Washington.

The response Alvare suggested to her audience: “As our leader [Pope Francis] is fearless, let us be fearless leaders.”

Alvare, an associate professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va., a suburb of Washington, said Christians can’t merely find issues on which to work. “Rather, they find us,” she added.

“You live when you live, in the place where you’re put, and you’re given the issues you’re given,” Alvare said.

The prime issue she raised in her talk was that “our government is today endorsing a view of intimate human relationships we might call ‘sexual expressionism.’ That is, it is championing as a cherished right, any consensual sexual act, with an emphasis on those [acts] divorced intrinsically or technologically from having kids, and even often divorced from forming any lasting adult relationship!”

In need of real solutions She referred specifically to matters of abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage.

Alvare cited “decades of experience with sex, marriage and parenting practices that violate Catholics’ and, really, most Americans’ deeply held beliefs about what promotes the flourishing of women — and men — and kids and societies.”

She added, “We know — even using the limited tools the world accepts as legitimate, that is, empirical data — that the new sex, mating and marriage marketplaces have treated women terribly — women who were supposed to reap most of all of the advantages of separating sex and marriage and kids via contraception and abortion.”

Alvare said, “Policymakers are all too often trying to deal with the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged on the cheap, right? First with more contraception, then more abortion, then when those don’t work, more long-acting, invasive contraception — marketed especially to the poor — or emergency contraception, even for kids, then by forcing even religious institutions to go along with their program.

“And all this despite evidence that the only groups who have in the past received free contraception and sometimes government-funded abortion, are the very groups who thereafter suffered the highest rates of nonmarital births, abortions and sexually transmitted infections,” Alvare continued.

“So not only do we have to challenge the government to take their mandates off conscientiously objecting individuals

Marriage and evangelization

CNS photo / Bob Roller

Helen Alvare, an associate professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va., spoke May 9 at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. She is pictured in a 2010 photo.

and institutions — and to insist that the government and their allies be held accountable for the damage their programs have done to women, children and to the poor in particular,” she said, but “we have also to be fearless in insisting that they turn their attention — real attention —

to the poor and to women, with ideas and programs that do more than say, ‘Here, swallow this or implant that. It’s free.’”

Alvare said, “The poorest citizens don’t seem to be anywhere near the top of anyone’s political agenda these days. This is despite increasing evidence that the poor

Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Colo., urged prayer breakfast attendees to be active in the church’s new evangelization efforts.

He said evangelization is “not simply about the spread of a message” but about making it “possible to have a relationship with Jesus, a personal relationship that gives new dimensions of meaning to our lives and demands from us a change of heart, a change in the way we live.”

The bishop also pointed out that part of the new evangelization is about “reevangelizing those whose faith has grown lukewarm and those who have fallen away” and presenting the Gospel to them “in a way that is fresh and attractive.”

He said Christian married couples have a particular role to play in evangelizing by the example of their lives and the encouragement they give others.

The bishop stressed that marriage and new evangelization go hand in hand.

“Marriage is integral to the new evangelization,” he said. He also added that today’s new evangelization “can lead us to a renewal of marriage.”

He said he admires married couples for their “love and sacrifice” and prayed that their love would always be a source of joy and abundant life. “This after all is what Christ came to bring us. Let him be the center of your life and relationships,” he added.

This Catholic Life / Opinion-Commentary

MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

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Starry night: the power of prayer, wherever you are

Twenty Something Christina Capecchi

Prayer is an honest measure of what’s on our hearts at any given moment

Simple prayers

A woman’s mind is like a teleprompter of to-dos that never stops turning.

Unanswered email, unwritten thank yous, unfolded laundry. Tupperware that needs to be washed and returned. Overdue RSVPs and expired milk. Empty gas tank, full memory card. Birthdays and deadlines, the personal and the professional knotted together beyond the point of repair.

Which is why Tammy Block needed a plan for the pool. The 39-year-old from Rosemount is raising two children and running her own law firm. When she added a weekly swim to her exercise routine, she found herself drowning in her thoughts. “My mind was all over the place,” she told me. “I was getting more stressed out. It wasn’t doing me any good.”

Perfect focus She knew she needed to find a focus, something that could quiet her head, and one day she came up with a remedy: the rosary.

Now Tammy prays a rosary during her morning swim. It times out just right for a workout, running 45 minutes to an hour, and it helps regulate her breathing.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “It has this calming effect.”

I’ve been reflecting on the many forms of prayer as we mark the half-way point of the Year of Faith initiated by one pope and advanced by another.

“The ‘door of faith’ is always open for us,” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote in his apostolic letter, “ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. . . . To enter

through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime.”

Jacob Rudd’s journey brought him to the seminary and, this past January, to a lakeside retreat center. On the last night of his silent retreat, after a week of cloudy skies, it finally cleared up.

The late hour and freezing temperature didn’t deter him.

“Something drew me to go outside, so I bundled up and went out onto the lake,” the 23-year-old from Oshkosh, Wis., told me.

Gazing up at the stars, he spotted the Orion constellation and turned to his go-to devotion, the 15 prayers of St. Bridget. It was a night of serenity and intimacy with God, a memory he keeps close as he discerns his future and plows through the final weeks of the school year.

Young adulthood is an important time to delve deeper into prayer, which I once approached as a poetry competition. Spiritual life was a classroom where I sat in the front row, raised my hand often and requested extra credit.

Now I just focus on showing up, being present and being myself. We aren’t graded on form.

Prayer is an honest measure of what’s on our hearts at any given moment, however ugly or ill formed. It’s handing those emotions over to the Carpenter who can sand our raw timber into character.

I’ve learned there is something profound in the elementary, that the simplest prayers often come from the deepest places.

Cardinal Tim Dolan of New York expressed a similar view last year on Twitter, writing: “A big chunk of my morning prayers are the words of St. Peter. Prayers like, ‘Lord, it’s good to be here’ and ‘Save me, Lord, I’m drowning!’”

Thanks! Help!

Every prayer we utter ultimately boils down to one of these two words. They are a lifeline to God. Offer them up freely, wherever you are, however you feel — in the pool or in the chapel, behind the wheel, before the meeting, after the sunset. Then prepare for a shift: a lighter struggle and a brighter view.

Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights. She can be reached at WWW.READCHRISTINA.COM.

The adventure of classical morality

Commentary Father Robert Barron

With final causality relegated to the margins, morality became a matter of selfexpression and selfcreation

One of the most significant fault lines in Western culture opened up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when what we now know as the “modern” world separated itself from the classical and medieval world.

The thinking of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Newton, Jefferson, and many others represented a sea of change in the way Western people looked at practically everything. In almost every telling of the story, this development is presented as an unmitigated good. I rather emphatically do not subscribe to this interpretation. It would be foolish indeed not to see that tremendous advances, especially in the arenas of science and politics, took place because of the modern turn, but it would be even more foolish to hold that modernity did not represent, in many other ways, a severe declension from what came before.

This decline is particularly apparent in the areas of the arts and ethics, and I believe that there is an important similarity in the manner in which those two disciplines went bad in the modern period.

Material and efficient Classical philosophy and science sought to understand things in terms of Aristotle’s four causes: material (what something is made of), formal (a thing’s essential structure), efficient (how it got the way it is), and final (its purpose or destiny). The founders of modernity became suspicious of our capacity to know form (for things seem to be in constant flux) and finality (for it just wasn’t clear where the universe was going). Accordingly, they put a great stress on the remain-

ing two Aristotelian causes, the material and the efficient. And this is precisely why the distinctively modern sciences — with their exclusive focus on what things are made of and how they got in their present state of being — developed the way they did.

But this elimination of formal and final causality and the hyper-stress on material and efficient causality had profound effects outside of the physical sciences. A classical sculptor, painter, or architect was trying to imitate the forms that he found in nature and thereby to create something objectively beautiful. It is by no means accidental, for instance, that architects from the classical period through the High Renaissance designed buildings that mimicked the dimensions and features of the human body. One reason that Michelangelo’s architecture is so deeply satisfying to us is that it was grounded in that artist’s particularly profound grasp of the body’s rhythms and proportions.

Non-conformity Thomas Aquinas defined art as recta ratio factibilium (right reason in regard to the making of things), and the rectitude he had in mind was none other than an understanding of the forms that God had already placed in nature. But a modern artist, unconvinced that objective form ought to provide a norm for her work, tends to see her art as the objectification of her subjectivity. The self-expression of the artist — the efficient cause of the work, if you will — is more important than any conformity of that work to a formal norm. This approach was beautifully

and succinctly summed up by the Dadaist painter Marcel Duchamp: “Whatever an artist spits out is art.”

With that statement, we have reached the polar opposite of recta ratio factibilium.

And the marginalizing of final causality had a deep and deleterious effect on the way moderns tend to think about morality. Classical moral thinkers — from Plato and Aristotle to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas — considered the ethical act in terms of its purpose or finality. What made an act good was its orientation toward its proper end. Thus, since the end of the speech act is the enunciation of the truth, speaking a lie is morally problematic; and since the end of a political act is the enactment of justice, unjust legislating is unethical, etc.

If art is recta ratio factibilium, then ethics, for Aquinas, is recta ratio agibilium (right reason in regard to action), the rectitude of the reason in this context coming from conformity to finality. But with final causality relegated to the margins, morality became a matter of self-expression and self-creation. The extreme instance of this attitude can be found in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. The nineteenth century German opined that the supreme morality — beyond good and evil — was the ecstatic self-assertion of the super-man, and the twentieth century Frenchman held that the “authentic” person is the one who acts in accord with her own deepest instincts. Sartre famously argued that existence (unfettered freedom) precedes essence (who or what a person becomes). And that is the polar op-

posite of a recta ratio agibilium ordered to objective finality.

If you think that all of this seems hopelessly abstruse and irrelevant to the contemporary situation, then think again. Even the most radical ideas of the moderns in regard to morality have trickled down, through a network of professors, teachers, script writers, television personalities, singers, bloggers, etc. to reach the ordinary person today.

And this, I would submit, is what makes the Catholic position on ethics so hard to understand. The modern person instinctually says, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” or “Who are you to set limits to my freedom?”

And the Catholic instinctually says, “Order your freedom to an objective truth that makes you the person you are meant to be.”

It would be the stuff of another article to explore, even with relative adequacy, the manner in which this dilemma might be resolved, but might I suggest, in closing, just one observation. The fundamental problem with modern ethics (as with modern art, generally speaking) is that it is boring. The self-asserting and self-expressing ego never really gets anywhere, never breaks out of its own clean, well-lighted space. But the human subject, enraptured by the objective good, sets out on a journey away from the narrow confines of the self and becomes an adventurer.

Father Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the rector/president of Mundelein Seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

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MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

At Pentecost vigil, pope shares personal stories of his faith

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service

With humor and passion, Pope Francis shared highlights of his personal faith journey and explained some key points of his teaching to an enthusiastic crowd of representatives from Catholic lay movements.

Celebrating a vigil on the eve of Pentecost with an estimated 200,000 people singing, chanting and waving their groups’ banners, Pope Francis focused on the importance of parents and grandparents educating their children in the faith, the knowledge that God wants a relationship with each person, the importance of caring for the poor and the need to pray for people who are denied religious freedom.

Without using a prepared text, the pope responded to questions presented to him prior to the May 18 event.

Life-changing confession Pope Francis, who often talks about the beauty of God’s mercy and the sacrament of confession, told the crowd about one confession that he said changed his life.

“It was Sept. 21, 1953. I was almost 17 years old,” he said. In Argentina, it was the first day of spring. He said he felt the need to go to confession and entered his parish church where there was a priest he had never met before.

“I found someone waiting for me,” he said. “I don’t know what had happened, I don’t remember why that priest was there or why I felt the need to confess, but the truth is that someone was waiting for me and had been waiting a while.”

“After that confession, I felt something had changed. I wasn’t the same,” he said.

“It was like a voice, I felt a call; I was convinced I had to become a priest.”

Pope Francis said people talk a lot about the need to seek God, but the truth is that God always seeks people out first, that he is always waiting for them and always ready to love them.

Implying that he would like to hear confessions in Rome parishes like he did as archbishop of Buenos Aires, he said, “but I can’t, because to leave to hear confessions — there is no way out of

CNS photo/Alessia Giuliani, Catholic Press Photo

Pope Francis greets a child after celebrating Mass on the feast of Pentecost in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican May 19.

here,” he said, leading to great laughter in St. Peter’s Square.

He told the crowd that often when he heard confessions in Buenos Aires, he would ask penitents if they had given alms to those begging on the church steps. If they said yes, he would ask if they looked the person in the eye and if they touched the person or just threw coins at him or her.

Catholics, he said, must “touch the body of Christ, take on the suffering of the poor. For Christians, poverty is not a sociological or philosophical or cultural category, it is a theological category,” because Christ made himself poor in order to walk the earth, suffer, die and rise to save humanity.

More than money Pope Francis said the current global financial crisis is about much more than the economy; it’s a crisis caused by a lack of values and by putting money ahead of concern for people.

“Today — and it pains me to say this — a homeless person dying in the cold doesn’t make the news” nor do the millions of children around the globe who go to bed hungry each night.

“This is serious. This is serious,” he told the crowd. “We cannot rest easy while things are this way” and Christians cannot say, “ ‘Well, this is the way things are.’ We cannot become stodgy Christians, so polite, who speak of theology calmly over tea. We have to become courageous Christians and seek out those who are the flesh of Christ.”

Asked how he came to have faith, Pope Francis responded, “I had the grace of growing up in a family in which the faith was lived simply and concretely; but it was especially my grandmother — my father’s mother — who marked my faith journey. She explained things to us, spoke to us about Jesus, taught us the catechism.

“We don’t find the faith in the abstract,” he said. Faith is something one

learns about from another person, and usually that person is a mother or grandmother.

The pope said he draws strength from praying the rosary each day and from praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament each night — “sometimes I nod off, it’s true . . . but he understands. And I feel such comfort knowing that he’s watching me.”

Pope Francis, who has spoken often at his morning Masses about the need for the parishes to have a strong outreach, returned to the theme with the lay movements, many of which focus on evangelization.

A parish that is focused only on being well organized and keeping members close to others who think and live like they do runs a great danger, he said.

“When the church becomes closed, it becomes sick.

“Think about a room closed up for a year,” the pope said. When someone finally enters, there is an odor and nothing feels right. “A closed church is the same way; it’s a sick church.”

While Jesus stands at the door and knocks, trying to get into people’s hearts and lives, he said, there is also a possibility that Jesus is shut up inside a parish and “knocks at the door to get out and we don’t let him out because we’re insecure.”

The church is called to be a light to the world, he said. The world needs Christians’ witness to the Gospel, its “witness of fraternal love, solidarity and sharing.”

Telling the crowd he would spare them a show of hands, Pope Francis also asked how many people pray each day for persecuted Christians. Before the pope spoke, the crowd had heard from Paul Bhatti, who took over as Pakistan’s minister of minority affairs after his brother, who held the same position, was assassinated in 2011. Bhatti spoke about the witness of Pakistan’s Christian minority despite discrimination and even violence.

“We must promote religious liberty for all people,” the pope said. “Every man and woman must be free to profess his or her faith, whatever it may be. Why? Because that man and that woman are children of God.”

Pope Francis unlocks app for Pontifical Mission Societies Cindi Wooden Catholic News Service

With slightly more of a swipe than a tap, Pope Francis helped the Pontifical Mission Societies of the United States broaden its reach around the world by unlocking a smartphone app.

At the end of an audience with national directors of pontifical mission societies from around the world May 17, Oblate Father Andrew Small, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, brought an iPad up to the pope for the launch.

Father Small — who brought two iPads and two mobile hotspots with him to the papal audience — had been called into the office of the pope’s secretary before the audience to explain precisely what he wanted the pope to do.

After the pope’s formal speech to the national directors and after personally greeting each one, it was Father Small’s turn.

“It was fantastic. Everything went ac-

cording to plan,” the priest said.

He gave the pope one of the iPads and told him, “We want to put the missionary Gospel in the pockets of every young person around the world.” The pope responded, “Good.”

Then the pope asked, “With my finger?

Here? Here?” and, Father Small said, the pope “used the index finger of his right hand — the one with the ring — very gingerly” to unlock the app.

Eight languages The Missio app — created by Little i Apps, the company that created the Rediscover: app for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis — offers news and information in English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic from Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news agency, and NEWS.VA. The news appears in the default language set on the mobile device. The app also includes videos from NEWS.VA and Catholic News Service.

“The app is a way for the church and

our Holy Father to reach the growing number of the world’s people who have access to handheld mobile devices, a way to connect as the body of Christ,” Father Small said in a statement.

The app was available for download before the official launch, but remained locked. When the pope activated the app by pushing a button marked “evangelizantur,” Latin for “they have been evangelized,” users were notified.

The app is supported by Apple and Android devices. It can be downloaded for free wherever apps are available.

The introduction of the app comes as the Vatican has increasingly taken advantage of new communication technologies, including a papal Twitter account, @PONTIFEX. Father Small said social media helps the church call more people to be followers of Christ, “and if used properly the new media allow for a more intimate relationship between peoples and nations, fostering peace and mutual understanding.”

CNS photo/courtesy of Little i Apps

A screen from the new smartphone app Missio is seen on a Google Android in this image released by Little i Apps. An effort of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, the app features Pope Francis' daily homily and news from Rome and around the world in eight languages. It was launched by the pope May 17.

“And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.

And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.”

Lee Greenwood

Memorial Day MAY 23, 2013

A special Catholic Spirit section

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

13B

Pioneer priests honored with new grave markers 64 new markers to be blessed at Memorial Day Masses

danger of losing more than 40 priests’ names from headstones — and more than 20 at St. Mary’s in Minneapolis — and I realized it would soon be impossible for people to pray for them by name,” said Father McDonough, pastor of St. Peter Claver and former vicar general of the archdiocese. “Of course, the day will come when we will all be known only to God, but I hoped to sustain our prayer for these priests for another century or two.”

A few weeks later, Father McDonough and Jungwirth met with John Cherek, director of The Catholic Cemeteries, and fundraising began. “We connected with the Knights of Columbus at St. Mary’s and raised some early dollars,” Cherek said.

The “adopt-a-marker” program was very successful, with several individuals and parishes donating $350 for a single marker. The University of St. Thomas also adopted the markers of two past presidents.

Additional donations came from a free-will offering at last year’s Memorial Day Mass.

By Dianne Towalski The Catholic Spirit

Phil Jungwirth has been visiting his uncle’s grave in Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul regularly throughout his life.

Father Charles Jungwirth died of influenza in 1918 while serving as an assistant pastor in Sleepy Eye, Minn.

And growing up in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, it was a Jungwirth family tradition to visit his grave on special occasions.

Buried in the pioneer priest section of the cemetery, his grave should be easy to locate. But over the years his marker and the markers of other priests who served the archdiocese in its earliest years have deteriorated so much that the names and inscriptions are unreadable.

“You just couldn’t read the names anymore,” Phil Jungwirth said.

The markers — dating back to the first priest to die in 1855 in what was then the Diocese of St. Paul — were made of limestone and sandstone, both of which are not as durable as the granite that is used today.

These priests — mostly born in Europe and Canada — ministered to the early immigrants coming to Minnesota, Jungwirth said.

“They ministered to these new Americans, developed churches and parishes associated with and catering to their ethnicity, and built the foundation and framework of what today is the St. Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese,” he said.

Raising funds Two years ago, Jungwirth decided the markers needed to be restored, and he approached Father Kevin McDonough at Calvary Cemetery after a Memorial Day Mass at which the priest presided.

“Phil Jungwirth helped me to see that we were in

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Grateful for response

Dianne Towalski / The Catholic Spirit

Several markers in the pioneer priest section of Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul, like the one above, are being replaced with granite ones because they have deteriorated so much they are unreadable. The new markers will look like the markers in the background, which were made of more durable granite and have not deteriorated.

A total of 64 new granite markers have been created at a discounted rate by Monumental Sales, a granite company in St. Cloud — 42 will be replaced at Calvary Cemetery and 22 at St. Mary’s Cemetery.

“I am so happy to see that our Twin Cities Catholic community responded enthusiastically to this devotion,” Father McDonough said. “It gives me great hope that we will continue to support one another — living and dead — in prayer.”

Jungwirth is grateful to everyone who responded to the adopt-a-marker project.

“It is exciting the markers will be blessed and will replace the existing ones, allowing people to locate these visionary priests and pay them the respect they so rightfully deserve,” he said.

The markers will be on display during the Memorial Day Masses at 10 a.m. at Calvary and St. Mary’s Cemeteries. They will be installed by cemetery staff over the next few weeks.

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Memorial Day

CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

Memorial Day Masses honor soldiers, pioneer priests The following cemeteries in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis will have extended hours throughout the Memorial Day weekend: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 25; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 26; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Monday, May 27.

Memorial Day Masses are scheduled for 10 a.m. May 27 at the following cemeteries, with refreshments served after the Masses. New markers for several pioneer priests’ graves will be blessed after Communion at Calvary and St. Mary’s cemeteries.

Calvary Cemetery 753 Front Ave., St. Paul Rain or shine at Calvary with Father Kevin McDonough, pastor of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul and Segrado Corazon de Jesus in Minneapolis. Following Holy Communion, 42 new gravestones will be blessed.

Resurrrection Cemetery 201 S. Lexington Ave., Mendota Heights Rain or shine with Archbishop Emeritus Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

St. Mary’s Cemetery 4403 Chicago Ave., Minneapolis Rain or shine at Calvary with Dominican Father Joseph Gillespie, pastor of St. Albert the Great, Minneapolis.

Following Holy Communion, 22 new gravestones will be blessed.

St. Anthony’s Cemetery 2729 Central Ave. N.E., Minneapolis Rain or shine with Father Earl Simonson, Pastor of St. Clement Parish in Minneapolis.

Gethsemane Cemetery 8151 42nd Ave. N., New Hope Rain or shine with Bishop Lee Piché, of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Grave decorations During the days before and after Memorial Day, artificial flowers, potted plants, decorations or other ornaments are allowed. Those decorations can be placed on graves beginning at noon Thursday, May 23, and remain until Sunday, June 2. Cemetery staff will begin pickup on Monday, June 3. After that time, fresh-cut flowers are requested only during the growing season.

Purchase flowers at cemetery Over the Memorial Day weekend, a variety of floral bouquets are available for purchase at Resurrection, Gethsemane, St. Mary’s and Calvary cemeteries. Flower stands are located near the entrances of each cemetery.

If you are unable to visit a cemetery on Memorial Day weekend but would like to have flowers placed on a grave, please call the cemetery office at (651) 228-9991 to order.

Cemetery staff will place an arrangement at the gravesite of your loved one a few days before the weekend.

Recognizing veterans This Memorial Day, The Catholic Cemeteries will offer a special salute to all veterans as part of the observance beginning at 10 a.m. at each of the five Catholic cemeteries. In addition, a local Boy Scout troop has placed American flags on the gravesites of veterans at Resurrection Cemetery that are marked by a gravestone provided by the Veterans Administration. This also occurs at Gethsemane Cemetery.

For families visiting the graves of veterans not marked with a VA-provided gravestone, flags can be purchased for a small charge at the outdoor flower stands. A limited supply will be available in the cemetery offices one week prior to Memorial Day. SOURCE: The Catholic Cemeteries, Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

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Memorial Day

MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

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While passing through, don’t forget to stop and visit Discovering his mother’s grave was not as simple a task as my friend had imagined. Finally, we headed to the cemetery office to expedite the search. The office building was rather imposing, befitting the reputation of Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, Calif. The staff member suggested that we come back on the following day, since the cemetery would be closing in about Father Joseph an hour. I mentioned that we were leaving the next day and just passing Gillespie through. Without any hint of humor, he looked at me, and said, “Aren’t we all, aren’t we all . . .”

Cemeteries, famous or not, provide a place where the living can visit the dead. The time-honored rituals of visiting the graves of relatives and friends create opportunities for remembering the lives of those who have given us birth, shared our human journey, laughed and cried with us, loved or hated us, married or divorced us, died for us, soothed our fears or ruffled our feathers. Cemetery visits allow us to run the gamut of our emotions, exploring grief in all its complexities.

We soon learn that our grief or our joy is tempered by our sense of loss, or relief, and that our theologies and human skepticism are confronted in these hallowed sanctuaries. In her poem, “American Primitive,” Mary Oliver advises “. . . that to live in this world you must be able to do three things; to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones, knowing our own life depends on it; and then, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

Reflection

“Visiting the cemetery offers us a chance to be grounded in time and place.

”

FATHER JOSEPH GILLESPIE

Visiting cemeteries allows us to animate our dormant feelings about our own immortality, to sense the tangible absence of those who were so intimately bound to us, and then, in faith and hope and with ambivalent love, acknowledge their presence in a new way as we let them go.

Family stories Having grown up visiting the dead at St. Mary’s Cemetery in South Minneapolis, I always enjoyed the time with my parents as they respectfully cared for the graves of their parents, siblings, relatives and friends.

More than tending to the flowers or trimming the grass around the markers, it was the conversations, the spoken and unspoken memories, the laughter and the tears accompanying the stories, that allowed me to meet so many of my relatives who had died years before I was born. Generations of family members came alive, the stories of hardship, survival and stedfast faith in God helped to weave wreaths of memories that would adorn my imagination and allow me to meet the

living among the dead.

After my father died, my mother would jokingly ask me whether I would be visiting her at her new address after she died. As usual, on April 17, I visited my mother’s new address on the 15th anniversary of her death. I’ll probably be visiting again on May 28, a date that is both her birthday and the anniversary of my father’s death. Birth and death, the two great brackets of our existence, rolled into one date of remembrance.

Visiting the cemetery offers us a chance to be grounded in time and place, to sit or stand while we search for living memories of the dead. It is true that we are all “just passing through” this world, but it is nice to have a permanent address where family and friends can visit and know how good it is to be remembered.

Recently, I drove by St. Mary’s, and not having time to stop, I gently tooted my horn, knowing that if I was not careful, I might wake the dead. I smiled as I recited out loud a favorite poem by Billy Collins: “In a rush this weekly morning I tap the horn as I sped past the cemetery where my parents are buried side by side under a smooth slab of granite. then, all day long, I think of him rising up to give me that look of knowing disapproval while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.”

Father Gillespie is pastor at St. Albert the Great, Minneapolis.

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Memorial Day

CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

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What are the origins of Memorial Day?

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Are you having a parade in your town this Memorial Day? If the answer is yes, you’re not alone. Most towns do.

But the origins of Memorial Day? That’s another matter entirely. Where did Memorial Day come from? Who thought of it first? Those questions have more than one answer, and the correct response, more than anything else, seems to be a matter of geography.

One thing appears to be clear. Memorial Day emerged from the ashes of the Civil War, when casualties from both North and South reached epic proportions. People everywhere “wanted to do something,� and seemingly from every corner of the growing nation sprang the idea of honoring those who had fallen in battle. Most often that took the form of visiting cemeteries that were home to the war’s victims, and strewing the graves — “decorating� them — with flowers. (Older Americans are likely to remember when the holiday was referred to as Decoration Day.) One community with an apparent lock on the title of “first� is Waterloo, N.Y., where the observance of Memorial Day dates back to the years immediately following the Civil War. There’s even a congressional resolution saluting Waterloo as “the birthplace of Memorial Day,� echoing a proclamation by New York’s governor at the time, Nelson Rockefeller, and signed in a centennial observance in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson.

Other claims Congressional resolution or not, other claimants to the title were not to be deterred. There’s Boalsburg, Pa.; Carbondale, Ill.; Petersburg, Va. — the list goes on, numbering two dozen or so. The towns include Columbus, Miss., and Columbus, Ga., both of which lay serious claim to the honor.

A resident of the Georgia town, Mary Ann Williams, wrote a widely published letter in 1866 suggesting a national day of observance honoring the dead, in which residents would decorate the graves of fallen soldiers. But at roughly the same time, also in 1866, four women met in the Mississippi community named Columbus and proposed a day of remembrance honoring both Union and Confederate troops.

That proposal caught the imagination of Francis Finch in Ithaca, N.Y., whose poem, “The Blue and the Gray,� was written as a response and was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1867.

Wherever the honor lies, the idea caught on. Clearly the suggestion was a popular one. In time, of course, those who died in subsequent wars were added to the list of men — and, more and more, women — who fell in battle and were paid tribute on this holiday.

And so Memorial Day goes on, its exact origin of less and less importance and the memories it inspires meaning more all the time. That’s something to keep in mind in the midst of the parades and picnics, the speeches you’re likely to hear. A lot of your fellow Americans gave their lives so that all of them can take place. Remember them this day.

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THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

Tell us about a really good Catholic

Every year for the past 12 years,

business

The Catholic Spirit has honored people in the

owner,

their faith to the marketplace.

manager,

Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for bringing More than 100 people — from bankers to gas station owners to social work supervisors — have received

supervisor,

The Catholic Spirit’s Leading With Faith Award.

boss,

Nominating is easy.

and we’ll tell everybody else.

Contact Mary Gibbs – 651-251-7709 or gibbsm@archspm.org – and we’ll send you a nomination form.

The form is available online, too. Click on the Leading With Faith logo on TheCatholicSpirit.com or www.Archspm.org and print one for yourself.

Fill out the nomination form as completely as you can, and we’ll take it from there.

DO IT NOW: DEADLINE is June 21st

Give a GOOD Catholic boss a pat on the back!

The Catholic Spirit News W ith a Catholic Heart

“God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:8

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The Lesson Plan

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Reflections on faith and spirituality

CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 23, 2013

Daily Scriptures Sunday, May 26 The Most Holy Trinity Proverbs 8:22-31 Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15 Monday, May 27 St. Augustine of Canterbury, bishop Sirach 17:20-24 Mark 10:17-27 Tuesday, May 28 Sirach 35:1-12 Mark 10:28-31

“Christ doesn’t always

Wednesday, May 29 Sirach 36:1,4-5a, 10-17 Mark 10:32-45

take away our sufferings, but he did take on suffering so that, even in the midst of the deepest and darkest pain and despair, we can find him there.

Thursday, May 30 Sirach 42:15-25 Mark 10: 46-52 Friday, May 31 Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Zephaniah 3:14-18a Luke 1:39-56

”

Saturday, June 1 Sirach 51:12cd-20 Mark 11:27-33

D DEACON EACON A ADAM DAM W WESTPHAL ESTPHAL

CNS photo / Nancy Wiechec

Christ is united to us in our suffering

I

t is often asked, “If there is a God, why does he allow us to suffer?” Suffering, for the most part, is something we do not want.

Within the world today, there are those who quickly try and justify the ending of a life of suffering based on some ethereal idea of “quality of life,” whereby one determines that another’s life is not worth living because they are suffering too much or because they have some sort of disability.

But this desire to flee from suffering is not just the tendency Deacon of a fallen humanity.

Adam Christ himself, the Westphal perfect God-man, desired to give up his impending suffering if there was another way to achieve the Father’s will. Remember his prayer in the garden, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. But not my will, but yours be done.”

Christ, by enduring suffering, gave us the model of suffering. Often, when we are faced with suffering, we ask God, “What did I do to deserve this?” Fulton

Sunday Scriptures

Readings Sunday, May 26 The Most Holy Trinity ■ Proverbs 8:22-31 ■ Romans 5:1-5 ■ John 16:12-15

Reflection Where do you draw your strength to endure suffering? How has Christ been present to you?

Sheen answers this question with another one: “What did He do to deserve that?”

Christ doesn’t always take away our sufferings, but he did take on suffering so that, even in the midst of the deepest and darkest pain and despair, we can find him there. God allows suffering, for some mysterious reason, but he also has revealed himself to be with us, to be united to us, in our suffering.

Many saints have even asked for the ability to share in Christ’s sufferings — to either somehow mystically alleviate Christ’s suffering on the cross or to share in Christ’s redeeming work, so that they save souls through their pain.

St. Paul, from our second reading, falls into this category. He encourages those who are suffering, saying that through suffering we learn endurance.

He writes elsewhere that he is making up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. This is probably the hardest part of the Christian faith: to willingly endure suffering on account of it being the will of God and because it purifies us and it keeps us close to the cross of Christ.

This makes our Christian faith appear difficult. We, too, are called to suffer as Christians, called to imitate Christ — but we can count on his grace in the midst of suffering.

Suffering is easy to preach on, but hard to live out.

Sharing in suffering, joy If we are to follow the path of Christ, the path of the one who suffers, then our focus, like his focus, must be on the will of God. Suffering is the lot of the Christian, for it was the lot of Christ. But, just as we share in his sufferings, we share in his strength and his joy, as the Gospel promises.

Let us pray that Christ will strengthen us as we face suffering, and that he will give us the promise of eternal joy.

Deacon Westphal is in formation for the priesthood at the St. Paul Seminary for the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa. His home parish is Holy Trinity in Des Moines; his teaching parishes are St. Michael and St. Mary in Stillwater.

Sunday, June 2 Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) Genesis 14:18-20 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Luke 9:11b-17 Monday, June 3 St. Charles Lwanga and companions, martyrs Tobit 1:1, 3; 2:1a-8 Mark 12:1-12 Tuesday, June 4 Tobit 2:9-14 Mark 12: 13-17 Wednesday, June 5 St. Boniface, bishop and martyr Tobit 3:1-11a Mark 12:18-27 Thursday, June 6 St. Norbert, bishop Tobit 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a Mark 12:28-34 Friday, June 7 Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Ezekiel 34:11-16 Romans 5:5b-11 Luke 15:3-7 Saturday, June 8 Immaculate Heart of Mary Tobit 12:1, 5-15, 20 Luke 2:41-51 Sunday, June 9 Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 1 Kings 17:17-24 Galatians 1:11-19 Luke 7:11-17

“Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.”

Dale Carnegie

Arts & Culture Exploring our church and our world

MAY 23, 2013

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

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Argument club aims to help women grow in faith

By Susan Klemond

“

For The Catholic Spirit

It’s usually not hard to find an argument. But a constructive and thought-provoking debate tends to be less common.

With the introduction of the Argument Club for Women, Catholic women in the archdiocese now can hear — as men have for about 13 years — debates that identify different sides of important issues and offer insights into Church teaching.

The women’s club, which will take up the topic of contraception at its inaugural meeting May 28 at St. Michael in Stillwater, will feature the same format as the men’s popular Argument of the Month held at St. Augustine Church in South St. Paul.

But the women’s club will feature an approach and debate topics that reflect women’s interests and preferences, according to Deborah Savage, theology and philosophy professor at St. Paul Seminary and co-founder of Siena Symposium, an interdisciplinary faculty group at the University of St. Thomas dedicated to rebuilding families and culture through scholarship and insights of the Catholic faith.

Getting grounded in faith The women’s club isn’t a take-off on the men’s, but rather it reflects the desire of archdiocesan women to enter into a deeper understanding of their faith, she said.

“They’re realizing that they’re not equipped to articulate the reasons why the Church is right on a whole host of issues, and they’re losing their children . . . to the culture and [also losing] nephews, sisters, brothers,” she said.

Savage got the idea to start the club after hearing that women around the archdiocese were interested in the idea. A committee from different

We feel very confident in the Catholic Church and in her wisdom and in her philosophy that she has wonderful and brilliant things to say to us, not just on a theoretical level but very much on a practical level.

”

EILEEN DOUGLASS Executive director, St. Croix Catholic Faith Formation

parishes and St. Croix Catholic Faith Formation helped establish the women’s club and organized the May 28 meeting around the question: “Do Contraceptives Liberate Women?”

Debating in the affirmative will be the Rev. Kelli Clement of the Minnesota Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and in the negative, Anne Maloney, philosophy professor at St. Catherine University. Savage will serve as moderator.

The event will start at 6 p.m. with appetizers followed by the debate and question-and-answer period from 7 to 9 p.m. Organizers hope to draw 200 women, welcoming all points of view and faith traditions, Savage said.

Women’s club meetings will be held quarterly at different parishes on topics including history, politics and religion. The next event, on same-sex marriage, is scheduled for October,

If you have been abused or victimized by someone representing the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, we want to hear from you.

We are here to offer you help and healing. We will also help you make a formal complaint of abuse to this Archdiocese or assist you in contacting another archdiocese/diocese/eparchy.

Please call me, Greta Sawyer on my confidential phone line, 651.291.4497, or email me at sawyerg@archspm.org.

she said.

With St. Joan of Arc as their patron, club organizers want to help women understand and articulate Church teaching on a deeper level than legal arguments — something not often presented in the secular media, according to Savage.

The meetings should help level the playing field, said Eileen Douglass, executive director of St. Croix Catholic Faith Formation, which serves St. Michael and St. Mary in Stillwater, and St. Charles in Bayport.

“I think that women in their lives hear many, many, many different things,” she said, giving them an opportunity to address questions from a Catholic perspective “that they encounter in their daily lives and to have that complete conversation.”

Mary Henseler, who has been promoting the event at her parish, Na-

tivity of Our Lord in St. Paul, said she thinks the purpose “is to give Catholic women strong talking points so they can help change the culture one conversation at a time.”

She added, “I hope it also attracts women who are on the fence about this issue and need to hear the fullness of the Church’s teaching, even if it’s challenging.”

Taking back the culture Women’s club organizers met with men’s club members and decided to follow the same standard debate format, Savage said. While they emulate the men’s success, women’s club organizers are choosing issues women will appreciate, shortening meetings to accommodate mothers and serving heavy appetizers rather than a full sit-down dinner, she said.

They also learned that men attend their own meeting every month to hear two sides of an issue debated publically — including the Church’s side, Savage said. “The men say they come because there’s this great debate, but they also come . . . because every single time it becomes clear in the course of the debate that the Catholic Church is right.”

Said Douglass: “We feel very confident in the Catholic Church and in her wisdom and in her philosophy that she has wonderful and brilliant things to say to us, not just on a theoretical level but very much on a practical level.”

The women’s club “will help establish and solidify a strong base of Catholic women who also care about our culture and want to put their faith in action,” said Henseler.

It is a tribute to women in the area who are “absolutely hungry” for help in articulating the issues, Savage said.

“They can see what’s happened and maybe in some unspoken way realize that they’re responsible for taking back the culture.”

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If you want to attend ■ What: Argument Club for Women ■ When: 6 p.m., May 28 ■ Where: St. Michael, Stillwater ■ More info: Visit the events section on WWW.ARCHSPM. ORG.

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Calendar

CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

Dining out Fish fry at Knights of Columbus Hall, Bloomington — Every Friday: 5 to 9 p.m. at 1114 American Blvd. Cost is $10.95. Call (952) 888-1492 for reservations.

Chicken and rib dinner at Knights of Columbus Hall, Bloomington — Every Wednesday: 5 to 9 p.m. at 1114 American Blvd.

Cost is $12. Call (952) 888-1492 for reservations.

KC pancake breakfast at St. Thomas the Apostle, St. Paul — June 9: 8 a.m. to noon at 2119 Stillwater Ave. Cost is $7 for adults and $5 for children 6 to 12.

Parish events Festival at St. Hedwig, Minneapolis — June 2: 11 a.m to 5 p.m. at 29th and Randolph Street N.E. Food, games, raffles and more.

Prize drawings at 5:15 p.m.

40th ordination anniversary celebration for Father Robert Fitzpatrick at St. Rose of Lima, Roseville — June 2: 11 a.m. Mass followed by a reception at 2090 Hamline Ave. N. Corpus Christi Procession at St. Bonaventure, Bloomington — June 2: Following the 10 a.m. Mass, there will be a solemn procession with the Eucharist around the church grounds concluding with Benediction in the church. Located at 901 E. 90th St. Rummage sale at St. George, Long Lake — June 6 and 7: 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday ($4 bag day) at 133 N. Brown Road.

Prayer/ liturgies Sant’Egidio Community Evening Prayer at St. Richard, Richfield — every Thursday: 7 p.m. at 7540 Penn Ave. S. Legion of Mary prayers in front of Planned Parenthood, St. Paul — Every Friday: 3 p.m. at the corner of Vandalia and Charles. For

Catholic singles — ongoing Sundays: For Catholic singles to meet and make friends. The group usually meets in St. Paul on Sunday afternoons. For information, call Judy at (763) 221-3040 or Al at (651) 482-0406.

Don’t miss

Widow’s day of reflection set for June 29 The third annual Widow’s Day of Reflection: Hope Rekindled will be held June 29 at Our Lady of Grace in Edina.

The event features Bishop Lee Piché speaking on “Widows of the Bible” and Deacon Joe Michalak, director of diaconate formation for the archdiocese, on “Dying We Live.”

The day begins at 8 a.m. and concludes at 1 p.m. with prayer and a final blessing.

Cost is $20 and includes lunch.

Visit www.olgparish.org/event/hope-rekindled-3rd-annual-widows-day-reflection for information and to print a registration form. Please register by June 15.

The event is sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and Our Lady of Grace in cooperation with the Archdiocesan Office of Marriage, Family and Life. information, call (651) 439-9098.

Taizé prayer service at St. Richard, Richfield — June 7: 7:30 p.m. at 7540 Penn Ave. S. Taizé Prayer (an ecumenical prayer service that focuses on simple meditative songs, scripture, and contemplative silence) is held the first Friday of each month except July.

Healing Mass at St. Gabriel the Archangel, St. Joseph campus, Hopkins — June 25:

Rosary at 7 p.m. followed by Mass at 1310 Mainstreet. Father Jim Livingston will be the celebrant.

Singles Sunday Spirits walking group for 50-plus

Calendar Submissions DEADLINE: Noon Thursday, seven days before the anticipated Thursday date of publication. Recurring or ongoing events must be submitted each time they occur.

LISTINGS: Accepted are brief notices of upcoming events hosted by Catholic parishes and institutions. If the Catholic connection is not clear, please emphasize it in your press release.

ITEMS MUST INCLUDE the following to be considered for publication in the calendar: • Time and date of event.

• Full street address of event.

• Description of event.

• Contact information in case of questions.

E-MAIL: SPIRITCALENDAR@ARCHSPM.ORG. (No attachments, please.)

Singles group at St. Vincent de Paul, Brooklyn Park — ongoing second Saturday each month: 6:15 p.m. at 9100 93rd Ave. N. Gather for a potluck supper, conversation and games. For information, call (763) 4250412.

Other events The Inaugural Meeting of the Argument Club for Women at St. Michael, Stillwater — May 28: 6 to 9 p.m. at 611 S. Third St. Moderator: Dr. Deborah Savage, co-founder of the Siena Symposium. In the Affirmative: Rev. Kelli Clement, MN Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. In the Negative: Dr. Anne Maloney, St. Catherine University.

Cost is $10.

Minnesota Catholic Home Education Conference at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul — May 31 to June 1: Event opens Friday at 4 p.m. with a curriculum fair, used book sale and many vendors.

Saturday session begins with Mass at 7:15 a.m. and concludes at 5 p.m. Father Michael Schmitz, director of youth and young adult ministry for the Diocese of Duluth will be the keynote speaker. For information, visit WWW.MNCONFERENCE.ORG. Archdiocesan Corpus Christi Procession at Little Sisters of the Poor, St. Paul — June 2: 2 p.m. at 330 Exchange St. E. Bishop Lee Piché will lead a procession to the Cathedral of St. Paul. At the conclusion of the procession, a special Holy Hour in honor of the Year of Faith will take place in the Cathedral.

Prenatal Partners for Life benefit dinner at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul — June 11: 6 p.m. at the Anderson Student Center, 2115 Summit Ave. Former MN Viking Matt Birk will speak. For tickets and other information, visit PRENATALPARTNERSFORLIFE.ORG. Please RSVP by June 5.

Benedictines’ sacred music CD produced with the help of angels Catholic News Service

Some would say that the sisters of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles sound like angels when they sing.

If so, one of the singing sisters said in a video about the new album, “then the angels helped us. . . . They come in and sing with us.”

The sisters’ sacred music has proven popular. Their fifth album, “Angels and Saints at Ephesus,” was released May 7.

The music is a way for the monastic sisters to reach audiences far beyond their priory in Gower, Mo., in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

“We are happy to be able to share with the outside world a small taste of the peace and tranquility we experience here at the priory,” Mother Cecilia, the order’s prioress, told Catholic News Service in an email. “Oh, that all might discover with St. Augustine that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”

Award-winning producer The 17-track album features ancient hymns dedicated to a carefully chosen collection of saints and angels. It was produced by nine-time Grammy Awardwinning producer Christopher Alder, who

has produced albums for the likes of violinist Augustin Dumay, pianist Lang Lang, tenor Placido Domingo, and conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

“He (Alder) made them almost sound like an orchestra,” said Monica Fitzgibbons, co-founder of DeMontfort Music, which produced the compilation. Fitzgibbons and her husband started the label to help religious orders record music without having to leave their everyday routines and environments.

“The sisters don’t have to leave to go somewhere not natural,” Fitzgibbons said.

“We only ask them for three days of recording. . . . We get a producer and engineer, (and) . . . build a recording studio right there (in the chapel),” she said.

In the video, Mother Cecilia explains that music is an integral part of priory life.

Although the sisters chant seven times a day, much of their time is spent in silence.

Their daily routine includes manual labor: sewing the vestments, albs, surplices and altar linens used at Mass by priests. As part of the process, the sisters quietly pray for each of the men who will use the items.

Unlike most professional singers, the sisters do not engage in stringent practice

sessions; rather, their ability to sing well together comes from the many hours they spend glorifying God in song with each other in the priory’s chapel.

“It comes naturally because we’re so close in the heart of our work,” Mother Cecilia said in the video. With an extensive music background, Mother Cecilia arranges most of the pieces the sisters sing.

“All these sisters are incredibly talented,” said Fitzgibbons, noting that she and her husband will help develop a theme for a CD, but it’s the sisters who drive the

repertoire.

“We chose the theme angels and saints mainly in order to draw attention to the need we all have of helpers and intercessors on our journey towards heaven,” Mother Cecilia said in explaining the development of the new album.

“This is something people can listen to year round. Can you imagine what heaven would be like? I think (God) wants us to contemplate heaven a little more in our day,” Fitzgibbons said.

In the days after the Boston Marathon bombings, people reached out to the Benedictines for inspiration, asking them to make a piece available from the new CD. The sisters agreed and Fitzgibbons uploaded to YouTube a track by St. Francis Xavier.

“I think our society can get bogged down by the materialism and atheism that inundates our culture, (that) what you perceive with your senses is the only reality,” Mother Cecilia said. “Sacred music is an extremely powerful means to awaken souls to the truth of spiritual realities.”

For information or to order, visit HTTP://

BENEDICTINESOFMARY.ORG.

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THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

As confirmation sponsor, Sobiech was role model for fellow teen CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1B of bone cancer that strikes teenagers during their growth years. Last spring, the cancer spread throughout his body, rendering treatment ineffective in curing the disease.

Within hours of his death, his mother Laura wrote a message on his CaringBridge site: “Zachary passed away this morning.

He was surrounded by his sisters, brother, parents and girlfriend. We love him dearly.”

A close family friend, Anne Brown, visited the Sobiech home in Lakeland to offer comfort to the family the morning Zach died.

Zach was her son Matt’s confirmation sponsor April 22, when Bishop Lee Piché came to St. Mary in Stillwater to offer the sacrament during a Mass for the two families and close friends.

“The next day, he couldn’t have done that,” Anne said. “So, it’s miraculous the timing of everything. Everything happened in the right time. It was a special

thing and something Matt will never forget. He’s heartbroken.

“The kids grew up together and Zach was like the older brother that Matt never had. When we asked him who he wanted his sponsor to be, there wasn’t any question.

“He knew he wanted it to be Zach. At the time [last fall], we weren’t even sure if Zach was going to still be here. But, it wasn’t something that we ever questioned. It was just never going to be anybody else.

In Zach, we lost a great role model for

Matt.”

The funeral for Zach was scheduled for 11 a.m. May 23 at St. Michael, with visitation for one hour beforehand.

The faith journey of the Sobiech family was featured in the May 9 edition of The Catholic Spirit. Those interested in the story can visit THECATHOLICSPIRIT.COM. “Zach was a beautiful person, and he was loved by everyone he met,” Anne Brown said. “He’s going to be sorely missed.”

Church advocacy for marriage rooted in commitment to common good CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2B support this endeavor will be announced soon.

Our work also includes living out our beliefs with great joy and love, and often with courage, fortitude and patience. We can look no further than Pope Francis for a beautiful example of this. Our new pope is unequivocal about the truths of the faith, and he goes boldly into society to proclaim the truth with deep compassion and with the very love that Christ calls us to when he says, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Pope Francis has never wavered on the reality of what marriage is and what it isn’t. Likewise, he has never wavered on what truly sacrificial and compassionate love of neighbor must look like. They are one and the same.

With Pope Francis’ example of living out the truth with love, living out our belief about God’s plan for marriage means that husbands and wives must work every day to invest in their relationships with one another and their children.

It means that those of us who believe in traditional marriage must redouble our efforts to walk the talk. I know of a husband and wife who recite a portion of their wedding vows to one another every evening and every morning: “I will love you and honor you all the days of my life!” They have been doing it for nearly 20 years. Not surprisingly, their Christian home abounds with love and harmony.

Their children are gently formed by the love of mother and father for each other, together in communion with Christ. Expressing love surely increases love!

Healthy and loving traditional marriages and families are the best possible way to demonstrate the beauty of God’s plan for marriage and the dignity of every human life.

Importantly, our work also includes continuing to tell the truth, always with love, about societal trends that damage and degrade the common good, especially when these trends are sometimes, even with the best intentions, codified in civil law by legislation or judicial fiat.

The redefinition of marriage in Minnesota is only the most recent example of such destructive laws. We see plainly, with 40 years of experience since the Roe v.

Wade decision, the heart-breaking impact of abortion-on-demand.

It is estimated that the nascent lives of more than 55 million children have been snuffed out over these years. The terrible damage done has not only destroyed these 55 million lives, it also has wounded deeply the mothers and fathers of these lost children.

Societally, we experience a sad callousness about human life that manifests itself

Archbishop’s schedule ■ Friday, May 24: 10 a.m., St. Paul, Chancery: Conference call with USCCB Committee on Doctrine.

Noon, St. Paul, University of St. Thomas: St. John Vianney College Seminary senior graduation banquet.

5 p.m, St. Paul, The St. Paul Seminary: Holy hour for priesthood ordination.

■ Saturday, May 25: 10 a.m., St. Paul, Cathedral of St. Paul: Priesthood ordination.

■ Monday, May 27: 5 p.m., St. Paul, Archbishop’s Residence: Mass and dinner with Jesuit novices.

■ Tuesday, May 28: 8:30 a.m., St. Paul, Archbishop’s Residence: Scheduling meeting with staff.

9:30 p.m., St. Paul, Chancery: Archbishop’s Cabinet meeting.

1:30 p.m., St. Paul, Chancery: Archbishop’s Council meeting.

4 p.m., St. Paul, Chancery: St. Thomas Academy board of trustees annual meeting.

■ Wednesday, May 29: 11 a.m., St. Paul, Archbishop’s Residence: Priests’ jubilarian Mass and luncheon.

6 p.m., Forest Lake, private residence: Live auction item dinner for Church of St. Jude of the Lake.

■ Thursday, May 30: 10 a.m., St. Paul, Chancery: Meeting with provincial of Wisconsin Province Jesuits.

11 a.m., St. Paul, Chancery: Archdiocesan Center for Mission board meeting.

2 p.m., St. Paul, Conference call with USCCB. 7:30 p.m., St. Paul, Cathedral of St. Paul: St. Thomas Academy graduation commencement.

■ Sunday, June 2: 11:30 a.m., Deephaven, Church of St. Therese: Ground breaking and blessing of senior housing facility.

■ Monday-Tuesday, June 3-4: Washington, D.C. Catholic University of America board meeting.

■ Wednesday, June 5: 11 a.m., St. Paul, Chancery: Minnesota Catholic Conference board meeting.

■ Thursday, June 6: 8 a.m., St. Paul, St. Catherine University: Board of trustees’ retreat.

3 p.m., St. Paul, Chancery: Development Planning Committee meeting.

5 p.m., St. Paul, The Saint Paul Seminary: Solemn vespers, dinner and lecture — Commemoration of the World Day of Prayer for Sanctification of Clergy.

in the extreme with increased violence. Is the Kermit Gosnell case in Philadelphia what the 1973 Supreme Court imagined would result from its collective decision?

Sadly, while the details of this case are abhorrently graphic, no one can say that this situation is an isolated one. In fact, grave violence to young children in the womb is committed every day in cities across the United States.

It wasn’t that long ago that most politicians on both sides of the political spectrum uniformly sought measures that would make abortion “rare.” And yet, we know it is far from rare; it has become a sad entitlement, vociferously protected, because the accepted norm is to think of a developing human life as a baby when we want one, and an inanimate “clump of tissue” when we don’t. Here again, the desires of adults trump the truth at the expense of both children and society.

Imagine how beautifully the common

good and the dignity of every human person would be served if we all protected the lives of the innocent with passion and dedication!

As human persons, we have an extraordinary ability to deceive ourselves, especially when we narrow our focus to our personal desires.

We are often brilliant at rationalizing just about anything. When we make decisions and establish laws that are unhinged from or even in defiance of God’s moral law, we often see the gravity of our errors in judgment only in the rearview mirror of history. And, even then, we sometimes choose to ignore the truth, or simply attempt to discredit those who try to tell it.

It is a story that has been repeated throughout the course of human history.

Today, it has played out in our state as the wholesale redefinition of marriage meant, primarily, to assuage the desires of adults

without much long-term consideration for children or how all this will affect the future of society.

In Minnesota, as in every state, the Church’s public advocacy for the protection of traditional marriage has always been and remains rooted in her commitment to advance the common good for human society. This is the same spirit that guides the Church’s pursuit of economic justice, health care and immigration reform, and the defense of human life and dignity from conception to natural death.

Faithful Catholics believe they must stand up for policies that promote the common good, even when they are unpopular. We are guided by both faith and reason, ordered to the good of society, and grounded in the truth of the human person, God’s clear plan for marriage, and respect for human life.

Consistent with our respect for every human life, we can never forget that our brothers and sisters with same-sex attraction must always be treated with respect and love. We offer prayerful support to families, especially parents, who often struggle with this issue when it occurs in their own homes. We cannot claim to be Christian and treat others with derision.

Support for traditional marriage must never translate into lack of charity for our neighbor.

Today, my brothers and sisters in Christ, let us renew our pledge that we will continue to build up this community according to just principles, including giving voice and unwavering defense to the unborn, the poor and forgotten, the abused and the lonely.

Let us vow to continue to work to strengthen marriage — with a renewed commitment to walk the talk — and defend it against all forms of its weakening, for the good of all society. We can do nothing less than continue to propose and do our best to live out what we believe. We hold dear the truth revealed by God, who is love, and who requires us to keep his commandments, in and out of season, throughout the passing of time.

To each of you, and in accordance with Jesus Christ’s exhortation to love another as he has loved us, I offer my continued dedication to these principles, in all of their manifestations, in order to protect and defend the common good.

I also thank with deep personal gratitude all those who have worked so hard to defend and protect the traditional understanding of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Let us all move forward together, united in faith, hope and love.

God bless you!

22B

MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Official CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2B of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament of St. Paul. In addition, Rev. DeGrood is appointed Vicar for Clergy.

Rev. Timothy Dolan, accepted resignation as pastor of the Church of Our Lady of the Lake of Mound (effective June 30, 2013), and appointed pastor of the Church of Saint William of Fridley.

Rev. David Kohner, accepted resignation as pastor of Saint John’s Church of Little Canada (effective June 30, 2013), and appointed pastor of the Church of St. Bridget of Sweden (Lindstrom).

Rev. Jules Omba Ombalanga, appointed chaplain to the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview.

Rev. Anthony O’Neill, appointed pastor of the Church of Our Lady of the Lake of Mound.

Rev. Joseph-Quoc Vuong, appointed pastor of the Church of St. Boniface of St. Bonifacius and the Church of St. Mary (Delano).

Rev. Mark Wehmann, accepted resignation as pastor of the Church of St. Bridget of Sweden (Lindstrom) effective June 30, 2013, and appointed pastor of the Church of St. Boniface (Minneapolis), in addition to his assignment as chaplain to the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview.

Rev. Joseph Whalen, appointed pastor of the Church of Our Lady of Peace (Minneapolis).

Effective June 15, 2013 Rev. Leonard Andrie, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of Saint Joseph of West Saint

Paul and chaplain to Convent of the Visitation School.

Rev. Andrew Brinkman, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of the Nativity of Our Lord (St. Paul).

Rev. John Drees, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of Saint Hubert of Chanhassen.

Rev. Joah Ellis, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of St. Stephen, of Anoka.

Rev. Spencer Howe, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of Divine Mercy of Faribault.

Rev. Andrew Jaspers, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of St. John Neumann (Eagan).

Rev. Luke Marquard, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of the Epiphany of Coon Rapids.

Rev. Brian Park, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church St. Charles Borromeo of Minneapolis and chaplain to De La Salle High School.

Rev. James Peterson, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Church of St. Odilia, of Shoreview.

Rev. Andrew Stueve, pending presbyteral ordination on May 25, 2013, appointed parochial vicar of the Holy Name of Jesus of Medina (Wayzata).

Vermont called ‘death state’ with doctor-assisted suicide law Catholic News Service Now that Vermont allows “doctor-prescribed suicide,” the “magnificent landscape of this state, which echoes life from its majestic mountains to its powerful waterways, no longer is reflected in the laws which govern the Green Mountain State,” said the head of the statewide Diocese of Burlington.

“Vermont is now identified as one of the few death states where it is legal for life to be terminated at its beginning and end stages,” said Bishop Salvatore Matano in a statement issued May 20, a little more than an hour after Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law a bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide.

“It is a tragic moment in the rich history of our state that our elected officials have passed and signed into law legislation placing medical professionals in the position of legally prescribing medicines with the sole intention of terminating human life,” the bishop said.

Vermont becomes the first state to have such a law passed by the Legislature.

Under Vermont’s new physicianassisted suicide law, doctors can prescribe death-inducing drugs to ter-

minally ill individuals who want to commit suicide, who then administer the medication themselves.

The Vermont law limits the prescriptions of death-inducing medications to residents of the state.

Physician-assisted suicide has been legalized in Oregon and Washington by a ballot initiative and in Montana by court ruling.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said May 21 that passage of the Vermont law was “a tragic moment” for that state and said it points to an “alarming trend nationwide.”

“The ‘slippery slope’ that critics of the euthanasia agenda have long warned against is in full view here,” Cardinal O’Malley said in a statement. “I invite Catholics and all people of good will to fight the future passage of such laws, which offend human dignity and undermine true respect and care for people with serious illness.”

In his statement, Bishop Matano said Vermont’s new law “asks those in the medical profession, which is a vocation dedicated to the service of life, to destroy the very lives they have pledged to save and to comfort at life’s most critical moments.”

Help for Oklahoma tornado victims on the way CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1B Archbishop Coakley told Catholic News Service in a May 21 telephone interview he was planning to visit the site at the conclusion of the interview, adding the church had lost power and water.

Ordained to the priesthood in the Diocese of Wichita, Kan., Archbishop Coakley said he had been in Wichita attending to matters dealing with the estate of his recently deceased father when he got word of the first round of storms.

“I immediately returned, soon after the storms had gone through. But it was impossible to get into Moore. I-35 has been closed down,” Archbishop Coakley told CNS. “It was just utter chaos there.

There was a lot of debris in the roads and utter gridlock.”

He added the Our Lady of Guadalupe Youth Camp had suffered “some pretty severe structural damage” in the initial round of tornadoes May 19.

The revised number of those confirmed dead stood at 24, including at least seven children, as of midday May 21, down from the original estimate of 51. A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma City medical examiner at one point had put the death toll at 91 with more than 140 injured, nearly half of them children.

Archbishop Coakley said the consensus is that this twister “even surpasses the one that's become even the most well-known one in Oklahoma — May 3, 1999. They're saying that this one appears to have been even greater in terms of damage and property that has been destroyed.”

Officials with the Society of St. Vin-

cent de Paul were expected to arrive in Norman by midday May 21 to meet with members of the society's local conferences in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to assess needs of tornado victims throughout the state.

“We're trying to make a determination of unmet needs and what our appeal will be,” Elizabeth Disco-Shearer, executive director of the society's south-central region, told Catholic News Service as her three-member team traveled from West, Texas, where she was assisting families who lost homes in a mammoth fertilizer factory explosion April 17.

“We go in and work with the local authorities and integrate into the process.

Within the first 72 hours, it's a fact-gathering mission to determine where we can be most effective,” she said.

Plans call for the agency to bring in specialists in a rapid response team, she added.

Disco-Shearer has been scrambling of late. Her office also was assisting families in the north Texas communities of Granbury and Cleburne struck by violent tornados in mid-May. “In the south-central region, we certainly need a lot of prayers right now,” she said.

“Catholic Charities OKC and we as an archdiocese will work with many others to ensure a smooth and comprehensive response not only to the immediate needs of those affected by the violent storms, but also to their long-term needs as they rebuild their lives,” Archbishop Coakley said in his statement.

He told CNS, “We're not as evident as other first responders,” citing the American Red Cross as an example. “We focus

on the long-term recovery efforts to help people rebuild their lives long after the disaster's struck.”

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City planned to send teams into the ravaged areas as soon as possible, said Sonny Wilkinson, associate director for mission advancement. The May 20 twister left a 20-mile path of death and destruction.

In addition to Moore, Wilkinson said teams were planning to head to Edmond and Shawnee.

“None of our parishes suffered any damage,” he said. “We'll do the assessment and help with immediate needs.”

Network responding Meanwhile, Catholic Charities USA's disaster response program has contacted the local agency asking about the assistance it can offer, but Wilkinson said he will not know what is needed until the initial assessments are made.

“They've been great in offering assistance,” he said. “We haven't asked them to come, but I imagine that is on the horizon.

“We've heard from Catholic Charities in Joplin (Mo.), Tulsa (Okla.), Las Vegas, Baton Rouge (La.). The Catholic Charities network is really responding to this and wanting to help.”

Nationally, the Knights of Columbus sent $10,000 to the Oklahoma state council to assist with the relief effort.

The organization said in a May 21 statement it is waiting for recovery efforts to “calm down” before sending in a team to assess how else it might respond.

“Our prayers are with the people of

Oklahoma today. And we will back up those prayers with deeds for as long as it takes,” President Barack Obama said in remarks at the White House May 21, a day after he signed a major disaster declaration covering the state of Oklahoma and committing federal aid and resources to five Oklahoma counties.

“There are homes and schools to rebuild, businesses and hospitals to reopen, there are parents to console, first responders to comfort, and, of course, frightened children who will need our continued love and attention,” he added.

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23B

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

150 graduate from Catechetical Institute The Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute held its graduation ceremony last week at the St. Paul Seminary Chapel.

A total of 150 men and women, which were named the Class of Blessed John Paul II, received their certificates of The completion from Catholic Spirit Archbishop John Nienstedt during a ceremony following a Mass he celebrated May 14. That number brings the total number of graduates to 500.

The next class, the Class of St. Francis, will begin Sept. 16, and classes will be held at Epiphany in Coon Rapids for the duration of the two-year program.

For more information or to obtain an application, visit CISTUDENT.COM. The application deadline is June 1.

News Notes

Totino-Grace president attends international assembly in Rome

vision of St. John Baptist de La Salle, patron saint of teachers.

Dr. William Hudson, president of Totino-Grace High School in Fridley, was among twenty delegates from North America attending The Second International Mission Assembly in Rome May 5 to 17.

The gathering was hosted by The Institute of the Brothers of Christian Schools (De La Salle Christian Brothers).

The 140 participants from around the world represented approximately 5,000 brothers and 80,000 partners who serve nearly 900,000 students in 80 countries.

The goal of the assembly was to develop a long-term plan to respond to the needs of today’s students in the

Last chance to complete capital campaign feasibility study The Steier Group, which is conducting a comprehensive feasibility study to test the level of support for a proposed archdiocesan capital campaign, will continue gathering feedback from clergy and lay people until 5 p.m. Friday, May 24.

Individuals interested in participating in the study are encouraged to visit the feasibility study website at HTTP://STUDY. ARCHSPM.ORG. The study may also be accessed on the home page of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

MN Twins to host altar server appreciation The Minnesota Twins will host altar server appreciation days during three baseball games in September at Target Field in Minneapolis.

The Twins have set aside blocks of tickets for: ■ 1:10 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, when they take on the Tampa Bay Rays; ■ 3:10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, against the Cleveland Indians, and ■ 1:10 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, when they also play Cleveland.

Special discount seating, starting at $11, is available. Call 1-800-TWINS and reference “Altar Server” at the start of the call. Order deadline is Aug. 23. Seating is limited for the discount tickets. Game times and days are subject to change.

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The full position description will be posted on the parish website at WWW.STPETERFL.ORG. Interested candidates are encouraged to submit a letter of application along with three letters of reference, resume, copies of current license and transcripts to: Mr. Eugene Schommer Parish Business Administrator Church of Saint Peter 1250 South Shore Drive Forest Lake, MN 55025 Fax: (651) 982-2226 ESCHOMMER@STPETERFL.ORG

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24B

Overheard THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Honored for hope Msgr. Aloysius Callaghan, left, rector of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, stands with Archbishop Emeritus Harry J. Flynn, during Relevant Radio’s Christ Brings Hope Banquet May 15 at the Golden Valley Country Club. Msgr.

Callaghan, 66, won the radio station’s second annual Christ Brings Hope Award. It is presented to an American Catholic who “has worked with extraordinary dedication to bring the good news and hope of Christ to all souls,” according to the station’s website. Last year’s winner was Kathy Laird, former director of the archdiocesan Office of Marriage, Family and Life.

Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit

Quotes from this week’s newsmakers

MAY 23, 2013 “We want to put the missionary Gospel in the pockets of every young person around the world.”

— Oblate Father Andrew Small, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, speaking May 17 to Pope Francis about the society’s new Missio app that offers news and information in English and several other languages

“Nothing can bring back the innocent children he killed, or make up for the vulnerable women he exploited.”

— Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, after a jury on May 13 found Dr. Kermit Gosnell guilty of murder in the deaths of three babies born alive during abortions, and involuntary manslaughter in the death by drug overdose of a patient who had an abortion

MEET OUR NEW PRIESTS

Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit

From left, Deacons Leonard Andrie, John Drees, Andrew Jaspers, Brian Park, James Peterson, Andrew Brinkman, Joah Ellis, Andrew Stueve and Luke Marquard are scheduled to be ordained priests of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis May 25 at the Cathedral of St. Paul. Another member of this year’s ordination class is Deacon Spencer Howe (not pictured), who is studying in Rome but will be ordained with his classmates at the Mass. Find out where they will serve after ordination on page 22B.

Read Q & As with the 10 men who will be ordained priests for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

Ordination Mass 10 a.m., Saturday, May 25 The Cathedral of St. Paul

The Catholic Spirit May 23, 2013 TheCatholicSpirit.com 12-page wrap-around section

2A T

HE

ORDINATIONS

CATHOLIC SPIRIT • MAY 23, 2013

Eucharistic adoration leads to thoughts of priesthood What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

On a whim, I signed up for a weekly hour of eucharistic adoration when I was a senior in high school. It was after a couple months of eucharistic adoration that I met Jesus.

Not too long after that I began to ask questions about my life, and the priesthood was a prospect.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

I was doing a lot of skateboarding with my friends and working at a pastry shop in Ann Arbor.

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

I didn’t know the Lord Jesus in a personal way. And, I was very busy skateboarding and doing my own thing.

Also, the priesthood is not easy, and I think the prospect of living celibate for my whole life was scary.

When was the first time you thought about the priesthood?

My mother has a photo of me “celebrating” the Mass with my older brother at the age of 4, but I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. I thought about it when I was 9, but also began to unthink about it at the same time.

I thought about the priesthood seriously when I saw John Paul the Great

The Catholic Spirit

The Catholic Spirit’s mission is to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

It seeks to inform, educate, evangelize and foster a spirit of community within the Catholic Church by disseminating news in a professional manner and serving as a forum for discussion of contemporary issues.

Vol. 18 — No. 12 MOST REVEREND JOHN C. NIENSTEDT Publisher SARAH MEALEY Associate publisher JOE TOWALSKI Editor Materials credited to CNS copyrighted by Catholic News Service. All other materials copyrighted by Catholic Spirit Publishing Company.

Subscriptions: $29.95 per year Senior 1-year: $24.95 To subscribe: (651) 291-4444 Display Advertising: (651) 291-4444 Classified advertising: (651) 290-1631

Age: 27 Hometown: Ann Arbor, Mich.

Home parish: St. Stephen, Minneapolis

E-MAIL: CATHOLICSPIRIT@ARCHSPM.ORG

USPS #093-580

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

During his apostolic journey in September 2011, Pope Benedict said to the German Parliament that the emergence of the ecological movement in Germany was a sign of hope.

The growth of the so-called green movement has some promising aspects to it, some of which mesh with the natural law and the Gospel.

I would like to see the evangelization of and conversion of the green movement to the Lord Jesus.

Parents: Ronald and Christine Brinkman Education: Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of St. Thomas Teaching parish: St. Stephen, Minneapolis Pastoral learning experiences: Door-to-door evangelization in Minneapolis Hobbies: Skateboarding, biking, listening to music and reading Favorite book: “Island of the World” by Michael O’Brien.

Favorite movie: “Fiddler on the Roof” Person you most admire and why: Paul Melton. He recently died at the age of 88. I admire him because he loved life, the Lord and the Church, and he was very good to me.

Thanksgiving Mass: 11 a.m. May 26 at St. Stephen in Minneapolis

at the age of 16.

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

A family friend, Tom, my dad, my cousin Kyle, the good influence of some

Congratulations Fr. Andrew Brinkman Fr. Spencer Howe Fr. Andrew Jaspers on your Ordination to the Priesthood and thank you for your ministry among our parishioners!

May your priestly service be pleasing to God and bring lasting good to Christ’s church.

St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, Anoka

Published bi-weekly by the Catholic Spirit Publishing Company, a non-profit Minnesota Corporation, 244 Dayton Ave., St. Paul, MN 55102 (651) 291-4444, FAX (651) 291-4460. Periodicals postage paid at St. Paul, MN, and additional post offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to The Catholic Spirit, 244 Dayton Ave., St. Paul, MN 55102.

WWW.THECATHOLICSPIRIT.COM

During my seminary formation, I have had the opportunity to work and pray with other men who have received this call to the priesthood.

The fraternal life that has grown out of our priestly call has given me strength and inspired me.

Deacon Andrew Brinkman

priests back in Ann Arbor — Fathers Ed Fride, Eric Weber and Bob Roggenbuck.

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

I look forward to being a part of a band of brothers.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

Entering the seminary has helped me mature — most especially by teaching me how to make a commitment.

The prospect of making a lifelong commitment is daunting, but the seminary has taught me to experience joy in making a lifelong commitment for the Lord and his Church.

Brothers, don’t be afraid to make a commitment to the Lord.

Congratulations On your Ordination to the Priesthood

Father Andrew Stueve Let our prayers surround you as you move forward in your priestly ministry.

Mary Queen of Peace in Rogers, MN Your Home Parish

Congratulations Father Joah Ellis on your ordination to the priesthood.

The Church of Saint Timothy

THECATHOLICSPIRIT.COM

Maple Lake

Your Teaching Parish

ORDINATIONS

MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

3A

Three women play guiding role on road to vocation What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

As an altar boy, I experienced a joy and deep peace unlike anything outside of Mass. I knew my life had to be based on nearness to the Eucharist in a consecrated way. As people at daily Mass would ask if I ever considered priesthood, I replied, “I’d love to be a priest, and I will seek this as soon as I can.” These questions kept the desire fresh in my mind.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

I was a teacher at Creighton University in Omaha. I also wrote philosophical articles for the New Catholic Encyclopedia and various Catholic ethical journals. I thought that I had a vocation to the Jesuits and would spend 10 years as one. But the Lord ultimately showed me that I could be led to greater humility through diocesan priesthood.

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

No. I was considering it from the first moment thoughts of a profession and vocation came up.

When was the first time you thought about the priesthood?

It was on my heart at a very early age due to my service as an altar boy. But, when I was about 10 years old, my mother told me that I would have supernatural powers if I became a priest.

I was highly interested in this, and

Deacon Andrew Jaspers Age: 34 Hometown: Lake Crystal Home parish: Cathedral of St. Paul Parents: Dr. Anthony and Mary Education: Honors B.A. in philosophy, Marquette University; M.A. in philosophy, Fordham University; MAT and masters of divinity, St. Paul Seminary Teaching parish: Epiphany, Coon Rapids Pastoral learning experiences: Spiritual direction, giving the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola on silent retreats, and crisis pregnancy counseling Hobbies: Foreign languages, traveling, writing philosophy Favorite book: After the Bible, G.K. Chesterton’s, “The Everlasting Man” Favorite movie: “Into Great Silence” Person you most admire and why: After the persons of the Holy Trinity, Mary and the saints, the recent popes, my archbishop and my seminary rector. They lead me to holiness and have shown me a joy that the world cannot give.

Thanksgiving Mass: 10 a.m. May 26 at the Cathedral of St. Paul

always kept it in mind as I grew up.

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

Three women in my life: My grandmother, who gave me “The Imitation of Christ” and St. Augustine’s

“Confessions”; my mother, as stated above; and my high school girlfriend, who when I asked if she thought we would marry replied, “No, you’re going to be a priest.” Also, almost every priest I met drew me closer to the priesthood.

None of them were particularly extraordinary, they were just good priests.

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

The sheer number of souls that I can teach to pray, offer the sacraments, and grow in charity toward. I also am looking forward to entering more deeply into redemptive suffering. Through joining people in their suffering and joys, I draw nearer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the love of my life.

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

I would like to lead couples and families to discover their baptismal call and help them gather many others into communion with the Catholic Church, hopefully including door-knocking. I would like to unlock the resources of our faith through Bible studies and education about our saving doctrines in order to strengthen the evangelizers in their faith.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

A young man should give at least a half hour to the Lord in silence every day. One cannot hear the Lord speak if one is always busy and assertive. A young man has to imitate Mary at the Annunciation, and wait for the great news that God will give him about his plan for his life. Then, he should resolve to try the call that God gives him, as he is only called to try and not necessarily to succeed.

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Our new priests are a great blessing… but they leave

10 new openings at the seminary!

Maybe one is meant for you.

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/reginamedicalcenter @reginahastings www.reginamedical.org

Vocation Office Fr. Troy Przybilla, Director of Vocations www.10000vocations.org Archdiocese of Saint Paul & Minneapolis

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New priest to celebrate first Mass with gifted chalice What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

There are several things that made me take a closer look at priesthood.

One of them was the fact that my family invited priests from our parish over for dinner. We had the opportunity to talk to them, get to know them, even play basketball or other games with them.

Through these experiences, I came to see that while these men were living an extraordinary call, humanly speaking, they were ordinary men.

In much the same way, the Team Vianney program and the Vianney Visits also helped me see that the priesthood was a real possibility.

Through those events, I met college seminarians and learned about the life of a seminarian. I realized that they were not that much different than I, and that made considering the call to priesthood much less intimidating.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

I was in high school before I entered seminary. After my high school graduation, I spent the summer working for the Parks and Recreation Department of Anoka County, and in the fall I entered the college seminary. That makes me the youngest man in my class. “Say not, I am too young…”

(Jeremiah 1:7) Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

There certainly were things that I considered doing instead of entering seminary. I had volunteered at a public access cable TV station in high school, and I thought it would be exciting to pursue a job on a television or film crew.

In addition, I have always been fascinated by computers and how they work, and considered a career as a computer programmer/software engineer.

When was the first time you thought about the priesthood?

I remember first encountering the idea that God calls us to a certain vocation in grade school, through the faith formation program of the parish we then attended.

However, it was not until middle school that I first thought seriously about it. That was about when I became

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

Evangelization, in its simplest form, is sharing the Truth with others. Jesus, who is the Truth, has certainly impacted my life in a big way, and I want others to have that experience of encountering him, too.

For me as a priest, that means giving witness to the Truth to those at the parish to which I am assigned, so that they can evangelize those around them.

This can and must happen through preaching and teaching, but I believe it must always include personal relationship as well.

So, it will be important for me to get to know the parishioners I am serving.

This is the approach I would take with anyone — whether they belong to the parish or not — but I anticipate my focus being the parish itself.

Deacon Joah Ellis Age: 26 Hometown: Blaine Home parish: Epiphany, Coon Rapids Parents: Daniel and Carrie Ellis Education: B.A. degree in philosophy, Catholic Studies and computer and information services from St. John Vianney College Seminary/University of St. Thomas Teaching parish: St. Timothy, Maple Lake Pastoral learning experiences: Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE): Resurrection Health Care, Chicago, Ill.; summer deacon assignment: St. Vincent de Paul, Brooklyn Park Hobbies: Playing piano, bicycling, brewing/drinking tea, playing board/card games Favorite books: “The Robe”by Lloyd C. Douglas, C.S. Lewis’s “Space Trilogy,” science fiction in general Favorite movie: “I, Robot” Person I most admire and why: Lately, I’ve been very impressed with Pope Francis. I admire his humility and simplicity, both in his personal life and his interactions with others.

Thanksgiving Mass: 11 a.m. May 26 at Epiphany, Coon Rapids

an altar server at my parish. People would tell me that I did a great job, and then ask me if I had thought about being a priest.

I was always polite in my response, but in reality I did not like being asked about that and tried to avoid the question when possible.

However, in spite of myself, it did get me thinking about the possibility that God was calling me to priesthood.

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

There are many people that played a role in helping me hear the call of God. One of them was Father Tom Wilson, who served as the parochial vicar at my home parish and then as the vocations director for our archdiocese. He was one of the priests who came over for dinner, giving me the opportunity to see that priests are normal people, too.

I believe that my parents were also crucial in this process. They did their

best to live their faith and pass it on to us. By their decision to home school my siblings and me, they also gave us the opportunity to attend and serve at daily Mass, which was a key part of my call as well.

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

I am most excited about celebrating the sacraments, and especially offering Mass.

I am also looking forward to working with people instead of books and homework. Learning is great, but I have been in school continuously since kindergarten, and I would be lying if I said I was not looking forward to being done with classes and coursework.

What’s more, it is truly inspiring to see the faith of those in our parishes, and the way the Lord Jesus is working in their lives.

I am excited to witness that and to help foster it in whatever way I can.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

When I was considering priesthood, a priest told me to pray an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be every day so that I would know what God’s call was, what he wanted me to do.

I would give the same advice. If God is the one who has the plan for our lives, we will only come to know it by speaking to him and by listening to him in prayer.

Taking time for silence is another thing I would recommend because it helps us hear God’s voice. It is so beneficial to take even a few minutes each day to turn off the music, TV, cell phone and computer, and to sit in quiet.

Anything else you would like to add about your journey to priesthood?

My home parish is Epiphany, and I have many memories of serving Mass for Father Bernard Reiser.

When he died a year and a half ago, I learned that he wanted his chalice to be given to the next man to be ordained from the parish.

So, it has been passed on to me. I will use it for my Mass of Thanksgiving at Epiphany.

I am humbled to be entrusted with this sacred vessel, which is such a significant part of the parish’s history.

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Letter from archbishop stirs priestly thoughts What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

When I was a senior in high school (1997), Archbishop Harry Flynn was in the custom of annually inviting one boy and one girl from every Catholic high school in the archdiocese to his residence for dinner. I was selected as a representative from Bethlehem Academy.

At the time, I was an involved Catholic — serving as an altar server, lector and extraordinary minister of holy Communion. I did not, however, really know who the archbishop was or what he did. I only knew that this was a special invitation.

At dinner that evening, the archbishop told me that I reminded him of a priest from New York. I didn’t think much of the comment that evening.

About two weeks later, I received a letter from the archbishop, in which he thanked me for joining him for dinner and in which he included some pictures of this priest along with a note that read: “This is what you’re going to look like when you’re older.”

My immediate reaction was: “Oh man.

That means I’m going to look like a priest when I’m older.” The idea didn’t make much sense to me. I had a girlfriend. I was in a terrible rock band.

And my college plans were already in place. Though the idea didn’t make sense to me, it was an idea that I couldn’t shake.

I tried to shake it for about 10 years, pursuing interests and careers that I thought made more sense. The Lord was

Deacon Luke Marquard Age: 33 Hometown: Faribault Home parish: Divine Mercy, Faribault Parents: Stephen and Mary Marquard Education: Bachelor’s degree in journalism at Butler University, master’s degree in education at the University of Notre Dame Teaching parish: St. Peter, Forest Lake Pastoral learning experiences: Institute for Priestly Formation (Omaha, Neb.), Clinical Pastoral Education at St. Louis University Hospital, deacon summer placement at Nativity of Our Lord, St. Paul Hobbies: graphic design, cycling, coffee Favorite books: “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” (Jonathan Safran Foer); “Brideshead Revisited,” “Decline and Fall” (Evelyn Waugh); “A Confederacy of Dunces” (John Kennedy Toole); “The End of the Affair” (Graham Greene); “The Old Man and the Sea,” “The Nick Adams Stories” (Ernest Hemingway); “Pardon and Peace” (Alfred Wilson); “Modern Catholic Dictionary” (John A Hardon); The Catechism of the Catholic Church; Ancient Christian commentary on Scripture Favorite Movies: “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “Big Fish” Person you most admire and why: Following our term in Rome, I’m particularly drawn to St. Philip Neri. I am inspired by his zeal for souls, especially as this played out in his evangelization to the young men of Rome and to his practice of hearing confessions for so many hours each day. He’s known to have gone to the young men of his day, to the places where they gathered, and to simply ask: “Well, brothers, when shall we begin to do good?” This zeal and this approach seem appropriate to our day.

Additionally, I greatly admire my mother, who recently displayed great courage, great hope in the Lord, and great joy amid sadness and suffering in her diagnosis and treatment of cancer. She bore well the cross given her, exemplified gratitude for the prayers and support of others, and pointed readily to the efficacy of prayer.

Thanksgiving Mass: 10 a.m. May 26 at Divine Mercy in Faribault

very good to me during these years, allowing me enough freedom to explore what I thought best, but never allowing me to stray too far from him.

Proud of our Son,

Fr. Luke Marquard

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

I studied journalism at Butler University in Indianapolis and remained

in that city doing public relations and marketing work for a large insurance PLEASE TURN TO MARQUARD ON PAGE 12A

Congratulations Fr. John Drees From the Catholic community of Shakopee

May God Bless you in your ministry!

Congratulations!

40th Anniversary (Class of 1991)

(Class of 1997)

Fr. Robert Fitzpatrick pastor at Saint Rose of Lima and Corpus Christi

Celebration: Sunday, June 2nd, 11:00 a.m. Liturgy followed by a reception.

' " 3 * # " 6 - 5 t . * / / & 4 0 5 "

THECATHOLICSPIRIT.COM

•

ARCHSPM.ORG

Ordained June 2, 1973

Saint Rose of Lima

2090 Hamline Ave. N, Roseville, MN 55113

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Witness of family congress participants provided inspiration What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

I attribute it to various reasons: I have always gone to Sunday Mass, including the time when many young adults stop going; being relatively open to God guiding my years after high school (i.e. post-high school education, 10-year career as an accountant, four-year home owner); and my Catholic faith being affirmed and not ridiculed in the home.

For three consecutive years beginning in 2001, I attended the Fatima Family Congress in Alexandria, S.D. It was led by now-deceased Father Robert Fox of the Diocese of Sioux Falls and held annually over one weekend in the month of June.

I was experiencing much joy with the Catholic faith, for there were many families, religious sisters, priests, etc., present. It was largely their witness to the faith that inspired me to, for the first time, pray about the priesthood. I did this during my final year at the congress.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

After graduating from Buffalo High School in 1991, I enrolled in the accounting program at Hennepin Technical College in Brooklyn Park and graduated in 1994 with an associate’s degree in accounting.

From 1994 to 1995, I worked for several temporary accounting agencies, and from 1995 to 2004 I worked as an accountant at Dura Supreme in Howard Lake. From 2000 to 2004, I owned a townhouse in Montrose.

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

friendships with other people who have helped me as well. The prayers and support of all these people have proven to be a great blessing.

Deacon Andrew Stueve Age: 40 Hometown: Hanover Home parish: Mary Queen of Peace, Rogers Parents: Bernard and Kay Stueve Education: B.A. in Catholic Studies, minor in philosophy at the University of St. Thomas; associate degree in accounting at Hennepin Technical College Teaching parish: Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Maplewood Pastoral learning experiences: Various experiences through the teaching parish Hobbies: Family genealogy, history, listening to various music of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, watching movies of ’40s, ’50s and ’60s Favorite book: “He Leadeth Me” by Father Walter Ciszek Favorite movie: “Meet Me in St. Louis” Person you most admire and why: My parents for their unfailing love and support of me and the rest of my family Thanksgiving Masses: 2 p.m. May 26 at Mary Queen of Peace (St. Walburga Campus) in Rogers; 10:30 a.m. June 9 at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Maplewood

Despite the fact I served as an altar server for about 10 years, and attended Sunday Mass all my life, I never considered for myself the possibility of becoming a priest. And for that matter, I was never discouraged implicitly or explicitly from considering such a calling.

What people and/or experiences

were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

The initial experience was at the Fatima Family Congress. For the next year, until I enrolled at the St. John Vianney College Seminary, I consulted several people.

They included my family, Father Timothy Cloutier and Father Mark Moriarty. In addition, I also have many

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

Being with the people, and being able to bring them to the sacraments.

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

The foundation of being with the people, the foundation of having the desire to bring the sacraments to the people is the constant need for an interior conversion of heart. Manifested in the spousal relationship of a priest to Jesus Christ, it includes obedience and fidelity to one’s bishop, fidelity to the Liturgy of the Hours, fidelity to daily prayer, fidelity to Scripture study.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

Allow the Holy Spirit to open their hearts to the work of grace, and know saying yes to this calling will bring about the greatest sense of freedom in the lives of those who are being called to the priesthood.

Anything else to add?

The first and only Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Walburga was on October 4, 1927. I am humbled to be the second (at 2 p.m. May 26). St. Walburga goes back to 1857! That priest was Father Robert Russell (1901-1986). He and his family are buried in the cemetery across the street from the church.

The Cathedral of Saint Paul wishes to congratulate our parishioner Deacon Andrew Jaspers on his upcoming ordination

May God bless you as you begin your priestly ministry!

From the parishioners and staff of the Cathedral of Saint Paul

Congratulations, Father Brian Park!

Do you dish? HTTP://CATHOLICHOTDISH.COM THECATHOLICSPIRIT.COM News with a Catholic Heart from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis ARCHSPM.ORG

Congratulations to all the new priests!

We rejoice with you in your ordination to the holy priesthood. We wish you many blessings as you continue your journey with Our Lord beyond your May 2013 ordination.

The Parishioners, Staff and Faculty of Saint Joseph’s Church and School of West Saint Paul, Minnesota

— From The Catholic Spirit

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Thoughts about priesthood started at age 9 What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

I had first thought about priesthood when I started serving Mass at the age of 9. In middle school, the idea of [being a] priest continued to surface in my mind, but I kept pushing that thought away. To a certain extent, I saw the idea of the priesthood as a threat to fitting in with my peers.

Age: 26 Hometown: Shakopee Home parish: St. Mary of the Purification, Marystown Parents: John and Marie Drees

I started looking seriously at the priesthood a couple of months after receiving the sacrament of confirmation.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas

I was in high school at the time. The Lord showed me that even though I went to Mass and was a practicing Catholic on the outside, I was just going through the motions. I was not living my life as the Lord wanted me to and was rationalizing certain behaviors.

Teaching parish: St. Pius X, White Bear Lake

The Lord showed me how far I was from him. I knew something needed to change in my life.

Hobbies: Reading and spending time with family and friends

I began to pray daily on my own for the first time and began frequenting the sacrament of penance.

Through prayer and confession, the Lord opened the ears of my heart to his voice.

Shortly thereafter, the Lord presented the priesthood to me. My response was, “Yes, I want to do your will, Lord. If you are calling me to be a priest, that’s what I want to do with my life.”

At around the same time that I was deepening my faith, my home parish received a new priest. His name was Father Charlie Prass, O.M.I. After getting to know him, he mentioned to me after Mass one Sunday, “You would make a good priest.”

I received this as a sign from the Lord that the idea of becoming a priest wasn’t just in my head.

Over the next year and a half, Father Charlie’s words of encouragement helped strengthen my desire to become a priest.

During my senior year of high school, I applied to St. John Vianney College

said to me that I would make a good priest. His encouragement to me to look into the priesthood was a great help.

The priests who serve on the faculty at both St. John Vianney Seminary and St. Paul Seminary have been very instrumental in helping me both to discern my vocation and to deepen my relationship with Christ.

Before entering seminary, I could not have believed that I could have the relationship with the Lord that I have with him now.

I thank them for helping to form me into the man and priest that the Lord is calling me to be.

Deacon John Drees

Pastoral learning experiences: Hospital ministry in Grand Forks, N.D.; deacon summer assignment at Sts. Peter and Paul, Loretto, and St. Thomas the Apostle, Corcoran.

Favorite book: St. Francis de Sales’ “Introduction to the Devout Life” Favorite movie: “Princess Bride” Person you most admire and why: My father because his example of fatherhood has played such an important part in forming me in how to be a spiritual father.

Thanksgiving Mass: 10 a.m. May 26 at St. Mary of the Purification in Marystown

Seminary and entered in the fall of 2005.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

I was going to Shakopee High School. I entered the college seminary, St. John Vianney, right after high school.

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

In middle school, I did not look into the priesthood out of a fear of what my peers would think if they found out that I was thinking about priesthood.

Two times in middle school, I had the assignment of doing a report on a career in which I was interested. Both times, I briefly thought of doing a report on the priesthood, but did not have the courage, and chose something [else].

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

My parents, John and Marie, have been very instrumental in helping me to come to know my vocation. Their example of sacrificial love toward my sibling and I is something I treasure, and for which I thank the Lord.

My family was the seedbed of my vocation. Without the family life I had, I don’t think I would have been open to the Lord and his plan for my life in my high school years.

Father John Gilbert, for whom I first served the Mass, helped to plant the seed of a vocation to the priesthood into my mind. His gentle and friendly presence made serving the Mass enjoyable. I looked forward to serving Mass.

Father Prass was instrumental in my vocation, for he was the first person who

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

I look forward to a whole host of things.

I can’t wait to offer the sacrifice of the Mass and be God’s instrument of forgiveness in the sacrament of penance.

I look forward to opening up the Word of God daily in preaching and in helping families and individuals develop a deep life in Christ.

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

I hope to answer the call to evangelize as a priest mainly through strengthening marriages and families so that they can be a witness to the world of the beauty of Christ’s vision of marriage and family.

I want to know the joys and struggles of those whom I am assigned to serve, and find ways to strengthen them in the faith so that they can permeate the secular world with the Gospel.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

Do not be afraid to tell a priest that you are considering the priesthood. He will be able to help shed light on your thoughts about priesthood and can be a great source of encouragement if the Lord is calling you to be a priest.

Congratulations On your Ordination to the Priesthood

Father Luke Marquard From your teaching Parish Saint Peter Catholic Church of Forest Lake, MN

What’s on the Archbishop’s mind?

Find out in every issue of The Catholic Spirit

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Texan says, ‘Holy Spirit lassoed my heart’ What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

I first began sensing a possible call from the Lord to be a priest when I was 19 years old (sophomore in college). The year before, when I was 18 and a freshman in college, I had a powerful conversion experience one Sunday at Mass at my home parish in Ft. Worth, Texas.

At the time, I was not doing a very good job of living out my faith, but that Sunday, the Lord really broke through to me in a powerful way. I experienced the Lord and his love for me and his desire to be in relationship with me in a way that I had never experienced before.

After that Mass was over, all I knew was that I wanted to follow Jesus, and come to know him more and more.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that this newfound desire to follow Jesus would lead me one day to become a priest in the Twin Cities (I don’t think I even knew what the term “Twin Cities” meant nor did I know where they were located when I was 18!).

After this powerful encounter with the Lord, I began to get active in my faith and strove to leave sinful behaviors behind. I joined a Christian fraternity, I began going to daily Mass on occasion, I started praying daily and began to read and study the Scriptures, I read books on Catholic apologetics and theology, I frequently went to confession, and I did my best to share my faith with other students on campus.

Deacon Brian Park Age: 32 Hometown: Ft. Worth, Texas / West St. Paul Home parish: St. Joseph, West St. Paul Parents: Paul and Mary Kay Park Education: B.A. in history from Texas A&M University Teaching parish: St. Agnes in St. Paul Pastoral learning experiences: NET Ministries (2003-07); Institute for Priestly Formation in Omaha, Neb. (summer 2009); CPE at the V.A. Medical Center in Minneapolis (summer 2010); Spanish immersion in Guadalajara, Mexico (summer 2011); deacon summer assignment at Divine Mercy in Faribault (summer 2012) Hobbies: College football (especially Texas A&M football!), watching movies Favorite book: “Life of Christ” by Archbishop Fulton Sheen Favorite movie: “Braveheart” Person you most admire and why: St. Paul, because of his great love for Jesus Christ and his tremendous zeal for souls and for spreading the Gospel Thanksgiving Mass: 9 a.m. May 26 at St. Joseph in West St. Paul

I can’t remember a specific day or a specific conversation that helped me first think about becoming a priest. All I can say is that somewhere around this time in my life, the Holy Spirit “lassoed” my heart and slowly began to pull me in the

direction toward priesthood.

During my time in college, I received a lot of great advice and help from the priests at St. Mary’s in College Station, Texas (the campus ministry parish for Texas A&M University, where I went to

school) about life as a seminarian and as a priest.

I was greatly blessed to be at a campus parish that was (and still is) very active and did a lot (and still does) to promote vocations to the priesthood. By the time I was a senior at Texas A&M (2002-03), I was pretty sure the Lord was calling me to go to seminary and study for priesthood. However, I knew that I wanted to take a year off from school to do some mission work before I started seminary for my home diocese of Ft. Worth, Texas.

So, during my senior year, I applied to serve with NET Ministries and was accepted for the 2003-04 year. Before I came to Minnesota to begin my training with NET in August 2003, I began the application process to become a seminarian for my home diocese of Ft. Worth with the intent that after my year of service with NET was over, I would start seminary in the fall of 2004.

However, the Lord had a different plan.

During my year of service with NET, which was an incredible year of traveling around the nation with 10 other young Catholics and putting on evangelistic retreats for Catholic teenagers, the Lord made it quite clear to me that I needed to stay with NET longer. So, toward the end of my year on the road with NET, I applied to be a team supervisor for NET, and I was accepted.

In June 2004, I officially moved from PLEASE TURN TO PARK ON PAGE 9A

Congratulations!

Leonard Andrie John Drees Andrew Jaspers Brian Park James Peterson Andrew Brinkman Joah Ellis Andrew Stueve Luke Marquard

Spencer Howe

!

www.saintpaulseminary.org

Spencer Howe completed his studies at The Pontifical North American College in Rome.

We are blessed to have walked with you in your journey toward priesthood.

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Catholic convert desires to make ‘real sacrifice’ What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

In August 2004, the summer before my senior year of high school, I was on a pilgrimage to England with the American Chesterton Society. It was one of my first extended times away from my family.

I was particularly enamored by the stories of the English martyrs, who became priests to bring the sacraments back to England, knowing that they would eventually be hunted down and put to death. Their witness spoke to me across the centuries.

It didn’t hurt that the vocation director from Worcester, Mass., was along on the trip. Our conversations along the way opened my ears to the possibility of the Lord’s call to the priesthood.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

I entered seminary right out of high school. I was able to attend the University of St. Thomas for my senior year of high school through the PSEO program. In large part, it was meeting the St. John Vianney seminarians on campus that drew me in. I was deeply inspired by their strength of fraternity and common sense of mission. I wanted to be a part of it.

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

I grew up going to North Heights Evangelical Lutheran Church, but began to experience a steady tug to learn about Catholicism. My maternal grandmother was a very devoted Catholic and my mother had rediscovered her own Catholic roots in 1999.

I, too, wanted to know what the Church was all about. In 2001, I decided to attend a series of classes on the fundamentals of the faith taught by Father Robert Altier. A few weeks in I knew there was no turning back. My dad and I were received into the Catholic Church and received our first Holy Communion and confirmation together

sisters, reading them poetry and listening to their stories.

They really prayed me through the seminary and showed me through the witness of their lives that fidelity to Christ’s call is possible by saying “yes” one day at a time.

Over the years, I have seen many of these dear sisters go to meet the Lord. I am forever grateful that I have been able to come to know them and many other religious sisters in the archdiocese and abroad.

Deacon Spencer Howe Age: 26 Hometown: North Oaks Home parish: St. Paul, Ham Lake Parents: Jeffrey and Janette Howe Education: B.A. in philosophy, Catholic Studies and classical languages from the University of St. Thomas / St. John Vianney Seminary, and bachelor’s degree in sacred theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, working on license in sacred theology at the Pontifical Lateran University with a focus on Church history Teaching parish: I have spent extended time at St. John the Baptist in New Brighton and St. Stephen in Anoka Pastoral learning experiences: Summer 2010 service with the Missionaries of Charity in Ethiopia, visits to Regina Coeli Prison and work with students at John Cabot University in Rome Hobbies: Landscaping and other forms of “getting my hands dirty,” hiking, camping, biking, skiing, snowshoeing, canoeing, reading, dabbling in poetry and Gregorian chant Favorite book: GK Chesterton’s “The Catholic Church and Conversion” Favorite movie: Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” Person you most admire and why: Bishop Paul Dudley was one of the men most radically given over to the Lord that I have ever known. The great fruit of the Holy Spirit with which his life effused was joy. I am grateful that my family and I were able to come to know him during his last years.

Thanksgiving Mass: 10:30 a.m. May 26 at St. John the Baptist in New Brighton

on Dec. 13, 2001.

When was the first time you thought about the priesthood?

During my years growing up, I was never drawn to become a Protestant minister. And, yet, I can remember as a brand new Catholic recognizing that the Catholic priest was somehow different.

He was a marked man; he spoke and acted in the person of Christ in the sacraments.

The priesthood had an appeal because there was real sacrifice — Christ’s

sacrifice on the altar, and the priest’s sacrifice in laying down his life for the flock.

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

I would point in a special way to women religious in my life. My mother was serving as a nurse in the infirmary of the Good Shepherd Sisters, whose convent was near our home. I used to stop by the convent to visit my mom and began to get to know the elderly

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

To exist for the service of families. I love family life, and I praise God that as a priest I will be called to share in the joys and sorrows of so many families. I think all of my classmates could agree about how much we have come to appreciate marriage and family life. Our commitment to live chaste celibacy sets us apart to love with the breadth and generosity of the heart of Christ.

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

I am eager to encourage Catholics to explore the depths and riches of the heritage of the faith which is ours. I remember what it was like not to have the holy Eucharist and the sacrament of penance. I hungered for such a concrete encounter with Christ. My hope is that I can help people to realize the true gifts that these are for us. I believe the priest’s mission extends in a special way to those who have fallen away from the practice of the faith.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

My encouragement is to be patient with the Lord’s call and with yourself. He wants your happiness more than anything. Desire holiness, but realize that it must be sought over a lifetime. Be willing to set aside your hopes for your own life in order to honestly consider (even for a moment) his plans for you.

Be prepared to be surprised.

Park CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8A Texas to West St. Paul to begin working full-time at NET’s headquarters. I had the great privilege of working for NET as a team supervisor for three years (200407). It was during these three years, living in the Twin Cities, when the Lord made it clear that he wanted me to stay in Minnesota and apply to become a seminarian for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

In the fall of 2007, I entered the pretheology program at the St. Paul Seminary, and I have never regretted it!

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

When I was growing up, I never heard anyone talk about it, and if they were, I sure was not listening. Also, I can’t remember anyone ever telling me that I should be a priest, or even encouraging

me to think about the possibility. It was not until I had really met Jesus, and encountered his love in a personal way, and began to learn about the beauty of the Church that I ever considered becoming a priest.

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

My conversion experience; being around a great campus ministry and great priests at Texas A&M; my four years with NET Ministries and the thousands of young people I encountered on retreats, the members of my NET team, the people with whom I served on NET staff, and NET volunteers I served as a team supervisor; my parents; and many wonderful priests along the way.

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

The idea that my whole life will be

dedicated to helping people come to know and love Jesus Christ and his Church; celebrating the sacraments; and preaching.

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

By looking at everything I do as a priest — whether sacramental celebrations or preaching or administration or counseling — as an opportunity to help people come to know and love Jesus Christ and his Church. The essence of my mission as a priest is to evangelize — to bring people to the Eucharist, to bring back Catholics who have fallen away, to help all men and women know of the great love that our Father in heaven has for us all.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

“If some of you hear the call to follow

Christ more closely, to dedicate your entire life to him, be generous, do not be afraid; the prize that awaits you is God himself. Young people who are listening to me now, always say yes to God.” — Blessed John Paul II You have nothing to fear in giving your whole life to Christ. He takes nothing away from us, only our sin. To follow Jesus Christ as one of his priests is a tremendous gift. Open your hearts to the possibility that the Lord might be calling you. Trust in him, he will never lead you astray.

If you start to sense in your heart a possible call to the priesthood, tell someone about it — a priest, your parents, a trusted friend — and then do something about it. Pick up an application, go visit a seminary, talk to your vocations director, etc. God cannot steer a parked car. You have to cooperate with him. Just start moving; he will guide your steps.

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Grandfather’s handiwork is at the heart of it all What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

That darn little voice, so beautiful, yet so insistent, saying to me, “Lenny, follow me.” Eucharistic adoration was a tremendous help in this regard. Plus, various people saying with a slight jest now and then, “You’d make a great priest” certainly didn’t hurt.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

Before entering seminary, I worked at a financial firm in downtown Minneapolis for five years. After working with young adults in preparing them for confirmation during that time, I decided to return to school to become a teacher.

I taught for two years in the Commonwealth of Virginia before entering the seminary — first fifthgraders at a parochial school, and then algebra to freshmen at a public school.

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

The first sign working against me was getting temporarily kicked out of religion class as a youngster. I was a squirrelly kid. I drifted away from the faith for most of my adolescent years.

After college, I returned to the faith through a non-denominational Bible study. After that, the good Lord and I wrestled for about five years before I finally said, “All right Lord, you win.”

When was the first time you thought about the priesthood?

I first thought about the priesthood when deciding to leave my job and go back to school to become a teacher in 2004. After making the decision to become a teacher, I figured that I was done discerning. However, the Lord remained persistent. I finally said “yes” to the call three years later.

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

I witnessed a number of great priests who, simply put, loved the Lord and loved being priests. There was something quite contagious about them.

With regard to experiences, my father was diagnosed with ALS and passed away while in my first month of seminary. The images of his suffering and the way he handled it were quite instrumental in developing my vocation.

I only hope that I can handle suffering

Deacon Leonard Andrie Age: 36 Hometown: Inver Grove Heights Home parish: St. Patrick, Inver Grove Heights Parents: Rick Andrie (deceased) and Sandy Werner Education: B.B.A. in finance at the University of Notre Dame; M.A. in Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas; M.A. in theology at the University of St. Thomas; M.A. in divinity at the University of St. Thomas Teaching parish: St. Odilia, Shoreview Pastoral learning experiences: Institute for Priestly Formation (Omaha, Neb); Guadalajara, Mexico for Spanish immersion; Venezuela for two-week mission trip; St. Joseph in West St. Paul for diaconate summer; and St. Odilia teaching parish Hobbies: Reading, traveling, taking walks, going to movies Favorite book: “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis Favorite movie: “Big” with Tom Hanks Person you most admire and why: Pope Benedict XVI because of his intellect and humility Thanksgiving Mass: 5 p.m. May 25 at St. Agatha in Coates

in such a noble and beautiful way.

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

Knowing that it is a life filled with certainty — celebrating daily Mass and hearing confessions — and yet, tremendous uncertainty: what the Lord in his wisdom has in store each day.

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

Consistency is key. I enjoy teaching and would like to do something in that capacity again one day. Additionally, celebrating the sacraments reverently and being available for the people of God. What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

For me, the hardest part about discerning was having this “inkling” that I knew what the Lord wanted me to do, yet squashing it because of fear.

Additionally, contacting the vocations

director can be quite frightening.

Finally, even while filling out the application, at times I thought to myself, “Seriously, what am I doing?” I even hid the application under my bed for a couple weeks and pretended that it wasn’t there.

In the end, the goal is to listen honestly and give your “yes” like our Blessed Mother did in the Annunciation and at the foot of the cross.

There is an interesting story involving your Mass of Thanksgiving after ordination and your grandfather. Talk about that.

Every seminarian looks forward to the day of his ordination and his first Mass of Thanksgiving. They look with fondness to the day when they are able to approach the altar for the very first time.

As expected, I, too, look forward to this moment. In particular, I look forward to this time because the altar that I will approach was built by my grandfather, Leonard Werner.

At the age of 22, he was struck with polio, which confined him to a

wheelchair and paralyzed his left arm.

Only two years into his marriage with my grandmother, this greatly altered their plans of working and raising a family on the Werner farm.

Consequently, he and my grandmother moved to the little town of Coates, where they began an accounting business. They lived and raised their three children next door to St. Agatha’s parish.

When the little parish was in need of an altar, my grandfather, along with his friend, Jerry Frandrup, stepped forward and constructed it in the basement of my family’s home. When the parish needed a confessional, they built that as well. Without question, my grandfather was greatly admired, as evidenced by the fact that he served as mayor of the little town for 20 years.

Unfortunately, just a few days before my birth, my grandfather suffered complications from a routine surgery, causing him to fall into a coma. As my mother went into labor, my father and other family members did their best to move back and forth between hospitals.

After I was born, my family went to see my grandfather, and upon telling him about his new grandson, a little tear came forth from one of his eyes. He died the next morning.

Somewhat akin to the opening of Charles Dickens’ novel, “A Tale of Two Cities,” for my family, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In a matter of 24 hours, my mother suffered the loss of her father and was blessed with her first baby boy.

As I have made my way through seminary, like every seminarian I had my doubts and struggles about my vocation.

During those times, I often pictured the smile on my grandfather’s face and kept in mind the beautiful altar that he built.

I am told that he never complained, and displayed an infectious joy that was simply contagious.

Even more, I have thought about the beauty of God’s plan not just for me and my family, but for all of his children. My family certainly could not have imagined during those most trying times that one day, their little boy born the day before Leonard passed away would one day celebrate his first Mass on that altar.

And yet, it has been the Lord’s plan all along. Indeed, the Lord has a plan for each of us and it is really something. Our task is to welcome it in joy and ask for the graces needed to cooperate with it for the Lord’s glory and our own good.

Congratulations,

CONGRATULATIONS! Fr. Lenny Andrie

Deacon Fabian Moncada Benavides

On your priestly ordination.

on his ordination to the priesthood June 7th, 2013 for the Diocese of Des Moines.

Many blessings as you continue the journey God has planned for you!

God Bless you!

Your teaching Parish, Church of St. Rita, Cottage Grove

ORDINATIONS

MAY 23, 2013 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

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Well-timed letter helps forge path to vocation What led to your looking seriously into the priesthood?

Three pivotal life experiences led me to seriously consider the Catholic priesthood: Receiving a letter from the associate pastor of my home parish when I was just 10 years old, encouraging me to prayerfully consider a priestly vocation; attending a Calling of St. Andrew Dinner at the archbishop’s residence when I was 15 years old and witnessing the joys of diocesan priesthood; and participating in the wedding of my twin sister, Renée, when we were just 21 years old, seeing that a lifelong vocational discernment could be made freely and peacefully.

What were you doing before you entered the seminary?

Before entering the St. Paul Seminary, I was finishing up my undergraduate degree in theology from St. John’s University in Collegeville. In addition to competing on the track and field team, working as a student ambassador for the Office for Institutional Advancement and studying Spanish, I also was involved in a men’s discernment group that met on a weekly basis. This helped me to realize that other men my age were also prayerfully considering what was God’s plan for their lives.

school; my grades were not great, I was taunted and bullied by my peers, and my outlook on life was not all that cheery.

Deacon James Peterson

Through that dark stretch of my vocational journey, my parents loved me and encouraged me to cast my cares upon our Heavenly Father and seek the help of our Blessed Mother Mary.

Age: 27 Hometown: Minnetonka Home parish: St. Hubert, Chanhassen

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

As a Catholic priest, I will be sacramentally consecrated to Jesus Christ. Participating in his priesthood, I will be able to celebrate those milestone moments of faith with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I am most excited to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to instrumentally reconcile men and women with the Lord through the sacrament of reconciliation, to anoint the sick and homebound, and be a radical witness of Christ’s merciful love for the world.

Parents: Jim and Ann Peterson Education: B.A. in theology from St. John’s University, Collegeville Teaching parish: Immaculate Heart of Mary, Minnetonka Pastoral learning experiences: Clinical pastoral education at the Mayo Clinic in the summer of 2010; Spanish-immersion experience in Guadalajara, Mexico in the summer of 2011; diaconate-summer placement at the archdiocesan mission parish of Jesucristo Resucitado in Venezuela during the summer of 2012 Hobbies: Bowling, board games, frisbee golf, following the professional world of track and field, watching “The Simpsons,” jogging, and playing soccer Favorite book: “The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It” by Neal Bascomb Favorite movie: “Chariots of Fire” Person you most admire and why: Our pontiff emeritus, Benedict XVI, is a man of faith for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration. His joyful witness to the priesthood of Jesus Christ and his reverential celebration of the Church’s liturgies have been inspirational for my own vocational journey. His consistent emphasis on proclaiming the truth with charity in his vast writings and many addresses has been a powerful encouragement for me of authentic Christian discipleship.

Were there any reasons why you had not considered the priesthood earlier in your life?

When I reached the end of my four years at Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria, I was wrestling with the decision of where to go for ongoing education. While there were tugs on my heart to attend St. John Vianney College Seminary on the campus of the University of St. Thomas, I was also strongly considering St. John’s University.

Uncertain as to where I should go, I put the question to Father Bob Thurner, a good priest friend of my family. He had been a “lifer,” meaning he had attended high school seminary, college seminary, and the St. Paul Seminary for his priestly studies. I was a little surprised when he advised me to go up to St. John’s for at least one year, so that I could have life experience outside of a seminary setting.

Father Thurner told me that if God was calling me to the priesthood, the time that I spent in Collegeville would help me to have a more grounded understanding of the world around me. Instead of one great year, I spent four blessed years in the Land of the Johnnies, and I do believe it has positively contributed to my vocational journey.

I was about 7 years old the first time that I thought about the priesthood.

Sunday Mass had just concluded and my family lingered within the church to talk with some of our friends. Feeling particularly bold that morning, I wandered into the sanctuary, walked past the altar, and then sat down in the celebrant’s chair.

While I thought this was pretty neat, my parents were mortified. With raised eyebrows and a concerned look on his face, my Dad exclaimed, “James, what are you doing? That’s where the priest sits. Get down from there!”

Just before leaving the presider’s chair I sat there in a poignant moment of transcendent thought as I engaged the idea of some day being a priest.

In God’s delightful sense of providential humor, my very first Mass of Thanksgiving as a priest will be celebrated in that same church community.

When was the first time you thought about the priesthood?

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and

Thanksgiving Masses: 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. May 26 at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Minnetonka; 10:30 a.m. June 2 (Mass of Corpus Christi) at St. Hubert in Chanhassen

developing your vocation?

There have been dozens of people and thousands of experiences within my life that were instrumental in identifying and developing my vocation to the priesthood. Certainly at the forefront have been close family members, especially my parents. Both of them are converts to the Catholic faith and have consistently emphasized the importance of faith in all areas of life.

My four siblings — Sean, Renée, Sarah and Robert — have lovingly supported me and gently challenged me over the course of my 27 years of life to grow as a man of integrity, a brother of firm convictions, an uncle and godfather who allows the Lord to be at the center of his life, and a member of the family with a heart set on serving others with love.

During my formative years, the associate pastor of my home parish wrote me a letter inviting me to prayerfully discern a calling to the priesthood. This message came to me at a time when I was struggling to fit in at

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

It is one of my sincerest hopes for my priestly ministry to have a consistent way of life wherein I evangelize at the parish, in the grocery store and everywhere that I happen to be.

I will do my best to help people discover or “Rediscover” the Catholic faith through my words and actions. By being a prayerful man of hopeful confidence and loving trust in the Lord God, I will strive to evangelize others by the witness of a joyful life.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

For those young men discerning a vocation to the priesthood, I would encourage you to be open to it, pray about it, and talk about it with someone you trust. Ideally it would be a pastor, but it could also be a youth minister, a teacher or even a coach.

Be a man of prayer, spending at least one hour a week before our eucharistic Lord Jesus during a time of perpetual adoration, sharing the depths of your heart with him who knows you and loves you.

Stay close to our Blessed Mother Mary through the rosary or another devotion.

Finally, pay attention to the work of God in your life. He has orchestrated everything in your life as part of the Divine Conspiracy, that is to say, his providential plan for your ultimate happiness, peace and joy.

Holy orders: The sacrament of ordained ministry

By Father Michael Van Sloun For The Catholic Spirit

Holy orders is one of the seven sacraments. It, along with the sacrament of marriage, belongs to a special group of sacraments known as the Sacraments of Commitment. These two sacraments are “sacraments at the service of communion,” “directed toward the salvation of others,” and “serve to build up the people of God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1534).

While all of the baptized share in the universal priesthood, holy orders is the sacrament of the ordained ministry. Holy orders come in three degrees: deacon, priest or presbyter, and bishop. Only two degrees share the ministerial priesthood, bishops and priests. Priests are co-workers of the bishops, while deacons assist priests.

Holy orders is “holy” because it has a sacred character and is “ordered” because it is structured, tiered with increasing levels of responsibility. For instance, a deacon can preach and baptize, but cannot offer

Mass or hear confessions; a priest can offer Mass and hear confessions, but cannot ordain; a bishop can ordain, but not only can he ordain, a bishop can perform every priestly function because he possesses the fullness of holy orders. These ministries give “holy order” to the church.

The beginnings of the ministerial priesthood are found in the Old Testament.

Melchizedek was a priest of God, the first to offer bread and wine (Genesis 14:18).

Then, beginning with Aaron, the Levites were especially chosen for priestly service

(Numbers 3:5-10).

The priesthood of the First Covenant anticipates Jesus, the one and only eternal high priest, “the one mediator between God and the human race” (1 Timothy 2:5), and ordained priests participate in his priesthood.

The ministerial priesthood was established by Jesus when he asked his apostles to continue the ministries that he began.

On Holy Thursday night when Jesus inPLEASE TURN TO HOLY ON PAGE 12A

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Marquard CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5A company. Though I enjoyed the work, it ultimately left me unsatisfied. I felt the call to do something more, and the priesthood emerged as the answer to this call. But I wasn’t ready. I opted instead to take a job writing, editing and designing a quarterly magazine and other publications for a non-profit organization in Chicago. I stayed there for about four years — the work and the city were fascinating to me. In time, however, I recognized that the satisfaction I felt didn’t penetrate very deeply. Though enjoyable, this was not where the Lord wanted me to be.

Priesthood again emerged, but I tried to shake it one more time.

My next move was to the Alliance of Catholic Education (ACE), a program out of the University of Notre Dame. In this program, students take master’s level courses during the summer months and teach in under-resourced Catholic schools during the academic year.

I taught in Denver. My time in this program was instrumental to my openness to the priesthood. First, because in the program I was surrounded by peers who were supportive and excited about the idea of the priesthood.This was a new experience for me, and gave me confidence to be more open about it.

Second, my time in the religion

classroom helped me better understand the beauty of our faith and my desire to teach it.

Third, during my time in Denver, I made the Lenten resolution to attend daily Mass and to frequently participate in the sacrament of penance. Through these practices, the Lord made clear to me that my next move should be to the seminary.

When the program ended, I entered pre-theology at the St. Paul Seminary.

Almost immediately, I knew a deep peace and satisfaction that had been absent in my previous pursuits. During my time of formation, I grew to appreciate more and more the great gift of the priesthood and was drawn closer and closer to Jesus Christ.

What people and/or experiences were instrumental in identifying and developing your vocation?

In addition to Archbishop Flynn and the ACE program, my family played an important role in the vocation, most especially through their witness of joy and service in the Lord.

My parents led by quiet example, faithful in their obligations and to their prayer. One particular instance that stands out happened while visiting my grandparents in Omaha. We arrived early to a Saturday Vigil Mass, and priests were hearing confessions. My dad simply stated that he was going to confession.

Watch ordination live on cable TV, web stream A live television broadcast of the ordination Mass will air from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. May 25 on Comcast cable in St. Paul, Minneapolis and some Twin Cities’ suburbs on the following channels: Cable channel 15 – CTV15.ORD Cable channel 16 – TOWNSQUARE.TV Cable channel 14 – SPNN.ORG Cable channel 16 – MTN.ORG Cable channel 14 – SCCTV.ORG Cable channel 15 – QCTV.ORG Live coverage is available using a roof top antenna and the same TV

equipment used to receive TV stations such as 4.1, 5.1, 9.1 and 11.1. Twin Cities wide — free over-the-air DTV broadcast on channel 16.3 — STMICHAELBROADCASTING. COM. Replay: 1 p.m. May 25 and May 26 on Metro Cable Network/Cable Channel 6.

A live web stream also will be available at WWW.CTVNORTHSUBURBS.ORG/VOD/ ORDINATION.HTML. DVD copies of the ordination will be available through CTV North Suburbs; call (651) 792-7515.

Holy orders CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11A stituted the Eucharist, he told his apostles, “Do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19).

When the risen Jesus appeared to the apostles in the Upper Room, Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21), and to equip them for their commissioning, Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).

Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he instructed the apostles, “Go, make disciples of all nations. Baptize them. Teach them” (see Matthew 28:19,20).

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, asked Peter to continue his shepherding duties when he said, “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep” (John 21:15,16). Jesus’ final words of instruction to his apostles were, “You will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The call to a vocation to the priesthood begins with God, not the person. The letter to the Hebrews explains, “No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God” (Hebrews 5:4).

The priest serves “in persona Christi,”

While I don’t know whether he had intentions beyond that, his statement really struck me. I was not in the regular practice of confession at the time — in fact, I rarely participated in the sacrament.

I knew that day that I should go, too.

This was a turning point in my faith journey, as afterward I made confession a more regular part of my life. As I continued to discern the vocation, my family showed great support and encouragement. For that, I am thankful.

Father Kevin Finnegan played an important role. Though I was away from Faribault, and had no history with him, he was generous in his availability and support. Whenever I would come home to visit, he was quick to invite me to spend time with him, to answer questions about the priesthood, and to share his joy in the vocation.

Additionally, he introduced me to the Companions of Christ — for which I am grateful. My time with the Companions has helped me to deepen my relationship with Jesus Christ, to recognize the vital importance of priestly fraternity, and to see the beauty in the evangelical counsels.

What excites you most about becoming a priest?

I am most excited about celebrating the holy sacrifice of the Mass and absolving sins in the sacrament of

penance. Additionally, I look forward to — in the example of St. Philip Neri — finding those who are searching for something more, and helping them find it in Jesus Christ.

How would you like to answer the call to evangelization in your priestly ministry?

I know from my years of searching, and from my experiences with peers, that many young adults lack deep and lasting peace, and that they search for it in all sorts of things, even some very good things. I also know that what they actually desire is not a what, but a who — Jesus Christ. I pray that I can help them encounter him and his Church.

What encouragement and/or advice do you have for young men who may be considering the priesthood?

First, make Mass, prayer and confession a regular part of your life.

Second, enter into the silence. Remove distractions. Rest. Recognize where your heart finds peace, and where peace is lacking. Bring these things to the Lord in prayer.

Third, pray with the image of yourself as a priest. Take note of where this prayer leaves your heart.

Fourth, spend time with priests. Ask them about their lives. Ask them about the priesthood. Ask them what they recommend regarding discernment.

Congratulations FR. LENNY ANDRIE On your ordination to the priesthood May God continue to bless your ministry The Staff and parish of The Church of St. Patrick

Latin for “in the person of Christ.” The priest never serves on his own behalf.

Rather, Christ takes over his very being, and in his humble, loving service, he is the visible presence of Christ in the community.

The foremost ministries of the priest are to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass and to preach the Gospel. The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life, and without priests, the church would be without the Eucharist.

The priest is also a preacher, and he must preach first with his holiness of life, and then, and only then, with his words. The priest is a sanctifier, a vehicle of God’s grace to the people, and the shepherd who leads the people to greater virtue, and their conduit to a more intimate bond with God. A priest must never draw attention to himself. He is to be transparent. When the people see the priest, they should be able to see through him to the true focus of their prayer and their heart’s desires, God alone.

Father Van Sloun is pastor of St. Stephen in Anoka.

Inver Grove Hts., MN Your Home Parish

We rejoice with you in your ordination to the holy priesthood and we wish you many blessings as you continue your journey with Our Lord.

St. Hubert Catholic Community

Chanhassen, MN

The roots of our faith Learning more about our faith The Catholic Spirit’s 4-page Rediscover: pullout section in each issue of 2013 highlights a new Rediscover: theme for you to reflect on and discuss with others.

Coming up June 6: What is the Creed and why does it matter?

Church’s beginnings rooted in Christ, sending of apostles

J

HEART OF THE MATTER Father MICHAEL VAN SLOUN

esus formed the Church. He was a community builder. He began by calling disciples, first the Twelve Apostles, then a further 72 and more and more believers who together formed his band of followers, initially known as “The Way” (Acts 9:2) and later called “Christians” (Acts 11:26) as well as the Body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12).

Jesus is the keystone of the building (Ephesians 2:20), the one who holds the entire structure together and keeps it strong; without him, it pulls apart and collapses (Ephesians 2:21).

Jesus also is the Word (John 1:1), and his word, the Gospel, is the charter or constitution of the Church, the founding document. Love is the distinguishing feature of his followers (John 13:35). All members are called to repentance, to turn away from sin and grow in virtue and holiness.

The Church is unified and strengthened by the sacraments that he instituted, particularly the Eucharist that he gave at the Last Supper, and from his wounded side from which blood and water flowed out (John 19:34).

The Catholic Spirit • May 23, 2013

Building the foundation The Church is built on the foundation of the apostles (Ephesians 2:20). Jesus sent out the Twelve two by two and gave them authority to do his work (Mark 6:7). He commissioned them multiple times: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19); “I send you” (John 20:21); and “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep” (see John 21:15-17).

Jesus told Peter, “Upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). As the building blocks of the Church, Jesus asked his disciples to preach, baptize, reenact the Last Supper, forgive sins, heal the sick and drive out demons.

The Church formally began with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The Spirit unified the Church as the disciples were “of one heart and mind” (Acts 4:32).

Jesus wanted his Church to have a worldwide mission: “You are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Holy Spirit

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“Jesus wanted his Church to have a worldwide mission: ‘You are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).”

Father Michael Van Sloun

In the beginning The modern world is becoming increasing anti-Christian, and particularly violent toward Catholicism. With this as the backdrop, I have been thinking a lot about the first Christians of late. They were, after all, living in fear of being fed to the lions.

If we are going to convert the present age, I think there is much for us to learn from the first Christians. After all, they did convert the pagan world. How did they do that? What are the similarities between the first century and the 21st century?

The first century was a time that was harsh, cold, impersonal and, in many ways, brutal. Side by side with this harshness, the warmth of Christianity received a lot of attention.

The people of that time were able to easily see that the first Christians lived differently, loved differently and worked differently than their peers. They stood out in very positive and CELEBRATING attractive ways. Their communities were warm, inviting, caring and personal.

CATHOLICISM In the same way, the 21st century is becoming increasingly harsh, cold, impersonal and, in Matthew many ways, brutal. This provides a real opportunity for Christianity to shine by KELLY comparison.

We will convert the modern world in the same way our earliest Christian ancestors converted the people of their times: with authentic Christian lives, love and community.

How are you doing?

Could you be convicted by a jury of your peers of being a Christian?

If people in your community had to gather evidence that you were a true Christian, how easy or difficult would it be for them to gather that evidence?

As modern Catholics, the way we live and love tends to blend in.

There are very few distinctions to be found between the average Catholic and someone who has given themselves completely over to the secular culture.

What set the first Christians apart? In a word: holiness. They were striving relentlessly to live in God’s will. And the thing about holiness, and it might be the one truth about our faith that the antiCatholic culture cannot get it’s hands on, is this: There is nothing more attractive than holiness.

Holiness is possible Like it or not, every single one of us is a billboard for Catholicism.

What message do people get about Catholicism when they look at you and your life?

Here’s the problem: Most modern Catholics don’t actually believe that “If people in your holiness is possible. They may believe it is community had possible for someone else, but not for them. This is the insidious poison of the to gather modern culture pumping straight into the veins of the Church. evidence that But this is the truth, the Good News: you were a true Holiness is possible.

If you set your heart, mind, body and Christian, how soul to it, you will see that you can create a moment. easy or difficult holy What is a holy moment? It is a moment would it be for when you are who God created you to be and you do what God is calling you to do. them to gather You can create a holy moment. And if you create one, you can create two, four, that evidence?” can six, eight, etc.

The saints created one holy moment at a Matthew Kelly time. So did the first Christians. This is what we are called to do as modern Catholics. A holy life is built one moment at a time.

The beautiful thing about holiness is it is irrepressible. So, in a culture that seeks above all else to suppress Christianity (and particularly Catholicism), holiness is the strategy that cannot be defeated.

So, go forth and create some holy moments. This is how the faith spread in the beginning, and how the faith will always be spread most effectively.

Kelly is an international best-selling author, speaker and founder of The Dynamic Catholic Institute.

The Catholic Spirit • May 23, 2013

Pilgrimages to Holy Land, Rom

By Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

When Deb and Pat Larson of St. Stephen in Anoka hear a Gospel passage, it usually brings a flashback.

Just two months ago, they “walked the footsteps of Jesus” during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with 46 others led by their pastor, Father Michael Van Sloun, who has put together a number of such faith journeys during his time at the parish.

When the two read the Scripture passage in which Jesus explains how his sheep know his voice, they think of their visit to caves in which sheep are kept overnight. With seven or eight shepherds putting up to 30 sheep each in the same cave, chaos would unfold the next morning except for one thing — the sheep had learned to identify the voice of their shepherd and come only to that sound.

This passage and more have deeper and clearer meaning because they have taken the time to explore and rediscover the roots of their faith.

Tangible memories It all started in 2008 when they went on their first pilgrimage, which took place in Italy and centered on the beginning and early years of the Catholic Church. One of the highlights was seeing numerous relics, including the bones of St. Peter underneath St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

“I learned a lot about the saints,” said Pat. “What impressed me the most was the true cross [on which Jesus was crucified] and the whole story behind it.”

They enjoyed that pilgrimage so much that they went on one to the Holy Land in 2010. They visited the Jordan River, where Jesus was baptized, and walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where he taught the crowds.

It turns out that once wasn’t enough for them, so they went back on another pilgrimage to Israel and Jordan in March. Far from merely a duplicate of the previous one, it featured some unexpected twists.

Like the chance to take home water from the Jordan River.

“Our grandson is going to be baptized with it,” Deb said. “How awesome is that?”

Said Pat: “It ties him back to the roots of his faith. He’s getting baptized as a Christian and this [Jordan River] is where it all started.”

Another memento from the trip is a rosary with beads made from olive wood. Deb held that rosary in her hand when she took time to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, where she was surrounded by olive trees. It is believed that some of the trees are old enough to have been there when Jesus prayed in the garden right after the Last Supper and shortly before he was betrayed by Judas and arrested.

“I just sat down on one of the rocks and started praying the rosary using the Sorrowful Mysteries,” Deb said. “It was pretty powerful.”

Now, when she prays, her mind takes her back to that precious hour she spent in the place where Jesus embraced his Father’s will to give his life for the forgiveness of her sins.

“It makes it real,” she said. “It brings Scripture to life. I feel really blessed to have gone on [these pilgrimages]. . . . When I’m praying my rosary and the Sorrowful Mysteries, I’ve just got these fantastic visual images in my mind. It’s awesome.”

Not only did they get to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, but they also walked the Via Dolorosa (Way of the Cross). They were able to do it on both of their Holy Land pilgrimages, but with an added

“It makes it real. It br I feel really blessed to pilgrimages]. . . . When and the Sorrowful Myst fantastic visual images in Deb L

bonus on their most recent trip ther “You could see where he [Jesus] fe [along the way],” Pat said. “This last

St. Paul proclaimed Good News throug Continued from first page of section

Cananaean to Egypt and Persia, and Persia.

empowered the disciples to speak boldly and, to facilitate their widening scope, enabled them to speak in a variety of languages and gave them the special gifts necessary for evangelization.

After his conversion, St. Paul set o Jesus, and he founded new Christia locations.

Expansion

He made three separate missionar to Cilicia, Syria, Cyprus and Galatia Minor and Greece; and the third (52 Macedonia, Illyricum and back to C

After Pentecost, the apostles followed Jesus’ instructions to go “to the ends of the earth.” They traveled far and wide to establish new churches and there was rapid early expansion. In a partial list of their missionary endeavors, Peter went to Rome, James the Greater to Spain, John to Ephesus and Patmos, Andrew to Greece, Philip to Phrygia and Asia Minor, Thomas to India, Bartholomew to Armenia, Matthew to Ethiopia, James the Lesser to Jerusalem, Simon the

The most notable churches that h Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae whom he wrote letters. Paul took th most important places of the ancien

The things they carried

me bring Scripture to life

rings Scripture to life. o have gone on [these I’m praying my rosary eries, I’ve just got these my mind. It’s awesome.”

arson

re. ell, and all of the little side chapels t time, we got into all of them. It

just drove it home and intensified my faith.”

Wonderful surprise As if to clearly make the connection between the ancient Church and the modern one, the Larsons experienced a surprise on the last evening of their most recent pilgrimage in March.

“We were on the rooftop [of the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem] doing a farewell drink for everybody,” Deb said. “And, the church bells kept ringing and ringing all over. We were like, ‘What’s going on?’ And, we asked Father Mike. He said, ‘Well, I would guess we have a new pope because they just voted [earlier that day].”

Turns out, he was right. So, in the ancient Jewish city where many of the important events in the time of Jesus and the early Church took place, Pat and Deb Larson heard the news on March 13 that Pope Francis was named the next successor to St. Peter.

Said Deb: “That was a nice ending.”

ghout Mediterranean area

d Jude to Mesopotamia and

out with great zeal to proclaim n churches in many different

ry journeys: the first (c. 37-46 AD) a; the second (46-51 AD) to Asia 2-56 AD) to Ephesus, Corinth, Corinth.

he founded were in Corinth, e and Thessalonica, all churches to he message of Jesus to the two nt world, to Athens, the center of

Greek culture and learning, where he preached on the Areopagus (Acts 17:22-31), and to Rome where he “proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:31).

Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire, the principal city of the world in the first century, and both Peter and Paul went there. It was imperative to both preach the Gospel and establish the Church in Rome. It gave the Church much greater visibility on the world stage. It confirmed its universal mission. It facilitated the broad dissemination of the Gospel message to the outlying areas. It was the ideal place for an international headquarters. And the Roman provinces gave the Church an initial organizational plan for its regional churches.

Curious George almost didn’t make it to America.

His creator, Hans Rey, had to flee a Nazi invasion near Paris, where the Jewish artist lived. Hans and his wife Margret had no car, and few trains were running at that tumultuous time in June 1940, so he rushed off to a bike shop, where he learned that all the bikes had been sold. He scraped together some spare parts and managed to assemble two bikes by himself.

On a rainy Wednesday, Hans and Margret began pedaling toward Spain. They were leaving their lives behind them, except for a few belongings that fit in the baskets strapped to their bikes, including an unpublished manuscript about a mischievous monkey and his friend in REFERENCE the yellow hat.

The couple slept wherever they could — in a POINTS barn, in a school, in a restaurant. Four months later they sailed past the Statue of Liberty and Christina settled into a new home.

CAPECCHI Shortly after their arrival in New York, Hans met with an editor who commissioned a book about the spirited primate he’d dreamed up in Paris. “Curious George” was published in 1941 and became an instant classic, its yellow cover depicting a smiling monkey flanked by firefighters.

Their harrowing expedition was not unique. Many immigrants sailed across the Atlantic, compressing their lives into a single trunk: a tattered Bible, a framed wedding portrait, a pair of sturdy boots.

For Just the essentials. reflection Their offspring also made difficult In what ways are calculations. Americans serving in the Vietnam you working to War shouldered great weight as they trudged pass on your through the jungle. Minnesota native Tim Catholic faith O’Brien details those loads in his bestselling to the next novel “The Things They Carried”: pocket generation? knives and love letters, can openers and chewing gum.

“They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct,” O’Brien writes. “They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various root sand molds. They carried the land itself — Vietnam, the place, the soil — a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules.”

Passing it on The most remarkable survival story, though, may well be that of the Catholic Church, whose early leaders risked their lives time and again because they were so moved by the Messiah’s radical message and abundant love.

They hatched codes and drew fish on their doors, passing on the Good News through ink and late-night stories told over blazing fires.

They traveled by donkey and by foot, by teams and by self, from Jerusalem to Rome and far beyond, and they carried mementos of Jesus’ ministry: a pebble from the stormy sea he had calmed, the veil Veronica wiped his face with and the imprints on their hearts.

These messengers were imperfect and indispensable; there was no back-up plan. Together they built a system on inspired Scripture, sacred tradition, original truth and apostolic succession.

Their early efforts laid an enduring foundation: Catholicism, the oldest Christian faith, spans two millennia and claims more than 1 billion believers. You and I are among the descendants, charged with a pressing mission to pass it on and live it out.

Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights.

Father Van Sloun is pastor of St. Stephen in Anoka.

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Personal witness is key to evangelization efforts The Catholic Spirit If Catholics want to be effective in bringing more people into a deeper relationship with Christ and the Church, they must serve as “bridges,” meeting people where they are at and offering a personal witness of how the faith has made a difference in their lives, said Father Peter Laird.

At a gathering of Rediscover: leaders May 11 at St. Peter in Mendota, Father Laird, vicar general of the archdiocese, told the story of a woman who Father Laird contacted him recently to share her gratitude.

She had been reading Matthew Kelly’s book, had visited the Rediscover: website and told Father Laird: “I [found] the courage to acknowledge I didn’t have power over alcohol. Alcohol had power over me. Rediscover: helped me realize that I could trust God more than I could trust alcohol. It gave me the courage to go to an AA meeting, where I acknowledged my own dependence.”

She spoke to another woman about how the Rediscover: initiative was a gift in her life, when that woman pulled out her iPhone and pointed to the Rediscover: app that she had downloaded. “This is what helps me trust God every day,” she said.

The story illustrates just one example of how the Rediscover: initiative “is trying to be where people are,” Father Laird said.

“Jesus went to where people were,” he told the approximately 75 Rediscover: parish and book club leaders from about 50 parishes. “Our parishes are tremendous gifts, but

Steps for developing a personal testimony To help attendees at the May 11 Rediscover: Leadership Day craft their 3-minute personal testimonies of faith, Father Peter Laird provided an outline paralleling the Gospel story of Jesus healing the blind man: ■ Ask yourself: What was my life like before my personal relationship with Jesus? Perhaps focus on an instance or period of time when you lived your life for something else before you lived it for Jesus. (“I was blind.”)

■ Then, focus on the encounter with Jesus — what led you to want Jesus to be a bigger part of your life? (“Jesus healed me”).

■ Finally, focus on how your life changed after this. (“Now I can see.”)

For a handout on Father Laird’s talk about the power of personal witness and a more detailed approach for developing a personal testimony, visit REDISCOVER-FAITH.ORG, click on the program support button, and then scroll down to Rediscover: Leadership Day. — The Catholic Spirit they’re fixed into the soil . . . . The bridge is the power of personal witness” in our families, workplaces and social lives.

“If we’re going to transform the world, if we’re going to evangelize the world, it’s not going to be primarily in the physical structure of our parishes,” he said. “It will be the way in which people who are nourished and transformed by the saving graces that come through the sacraments go back out into the world and share the Good News.”

Evangelization is at the core of the Church’s mission, and it is the responsibility of everyone, not just

priests and bishops, Father Laird said.

The earliest Christians, without the benefit of a catechism or even the Scriptures at that time to convey the faith to others, understood the importance of personal witness.

“It was all about my ability to articulate to you, to share with you what Christ had done in my life,” Father Laird said.

If it is done with love and joy, it will attract people who will want to know more about how a personal relationship with Christ can transform their lives and help them to become “the best version” of themselves, he said.

Speaking the words But, while actions often speak louder than words, words — particularly when it comes to evangelization — are still essential.

“We all need to walk the walk. We all need to have the life of Jesus as the number one priority of our life. But we have to share in words,” Father Laird said.

The pages of Scripture are filled with personal testimony about how God or Jesus transformed someone’s life.

In giving their personal testimony, he said, today’s Catholics need to do only two things: “speak to people where they are, and point them to Jesus.”

Last fall, in his pastoral letter on the new evangelization, “I believed; therefore I spoke,” Archbishop John Nienstedt encouraged Catholics to develop a personal testimony so they are prepared to share it when the right circumstances arise.

At the meeting, Father Laird gave attendees 15 minutes to prepare their own 3-minute testimonies (see box), which they then delivered aloud to the person next to them.

SAVE THE DATE!

Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the St. Paul RiverCentre Registration now open on line at Rediscover-faith.org

Tune in Fridays at 9 a.m. on Relevant Radio1330 AM Rebroadcast: 6 p.m. Saturdays • 9 a.m. Sundays The Catholic Spirit • May 23, 2013

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Summer Share Project gives Catholics easy way to evangelize The Catholic Spirit As part of Rediscover: Leadership Day May 11 at St. Peter in Mendota, Sarah Mealey, archdiocesan director of communications, highlighted the newest Rediscover: initiative — the Summer Share Project.

The project’s goal is to give Catholics “a quick and easy way to connect people who you know and who you meet with the resources of Rediscover:,” she said.

The project makes available free cards — the size and shape of business cards — featuring the Rediscover: website on one side, and the site where the Rediscover: app can be downloaded on the other. Both sides of the cards also feature “QR codes” that people can scan with their smartphones, which will then take them directly to the sites.

Summer is an ideal time for the project because Minnesotans can finally head outdoors after the long winter to spend time with family, friends and other acquaintances — whether it involves firing up barbecues, attending neighborhood block parties, or spending weekends at the lake. It’s also a popular time for reunions, weddings and graduation parties.

People are encouraged to keep cards in their purses or wallets and hand them out in situations where it seems right to steer people to what Rediscover: has to offer.

Representatives from each parish attending Leadership Day were given a box of 500 cards to take back and use. The cards were provided to all parishes in the archdiocese this week for their Rediscover: kiosks.

Mealey specifically encouraged book club leaders to focus on building up relationships among their members this summer and to give two of the cards to each person in their group.

She said, “Tell them: Your mission is to take two and give them away by the end of the summer. Just two — more if you can. God already knows who you’re going to give those cards to. Take two and share two.”

You can learn more about the Summer Share Project and the different ways to share resources — articles, videos and more — contained on the Rediscover: website and the Rediscover: app by watching a new video on the topic to be posted soon at REDISCOVER-FAITH.ORG.