The Catholic Spirit - December 7, 2017

Mass of Solidarity 5 • Net neutrality 17 • Retirement Fund for Religious 18 December 7, 2017 Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

‘I never lose hope’ Pope Francis expresses satisfaction with meetings on Rohingya crisis

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service

W

ell aware he was disappointing some people by not using the word “Rohingya” publicly in Myanmar, Pope Francis said his chief concern had been to get a point across, and he did.

“If I would have used the word, the door would have closed,” he told reporters Dec. 2 during his flight from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Rome. He spent almost an hour answering reporters’ questions after his six-day trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh.

In his speeches in Myanmar, Pope Francis repeatedly referred to the obligation to defend the lives and human rights of all people. But he did not specifically mention the Rohingya, a Muslim minority from Rakhine state.

The Myanmar military, claiming it is cracking down on militants, has been accused of a massive persecution of the Rohingya to the point that some describe it as “ethnic cleansing.”

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled across the Bangladeshi border since August, joining hundreds of thousands already living in refugee camps there.

For the government of Myanmar, the Rohingya do not exist; instead they are considered undocumented immigrants.

“I knew that if, in an official speech, I would have used the word, they would close the door in my face,” the pope told reporters who asked why he did not name the group. However, “I described the situation” publicly, knowing “I could go further in the private meetings” with government officials.

“I was very, very satisfied with the meetings,” the pope said. “I dared to say everything I wanted to say.”

It is true, he said, “I did not have the pleasure” of making “a public denunciation, but I had the satisfaction of dialoguing, allowing the other to have his say and, in that way, the message got across.”

Still, finally being able to meet some of the Rohingya refugees Dec. 1 in Bangladesh was an emotional moment.

Arrangements were made for 16 refugees to travel to Dhaka from Cox’s Bazar, where the huge refugee camps

Pope Francis greets a young Rohingya refugee from Myanmar during a Dec. 1 interreligious and ecumenical meeting for peace in the garden of the archbishop’s residence in Dhaka, Bangladesh. CNS

Pope: When it comes to interreligious dialogue, Christian witness is key — Page 8 are, so they could join the pope and Bangladeshi religious leaders for a meeting devoted to peace.

The refugees had traveled so far and been through so much that Pope Francis said he could not just let them shake his hand and be whisked away, as some event organizers seemed to think was proper.

“And there I got upset. I yelled a bit. I’m a sinner,” he said.

He had a few minutes with each of them, listening to their stories with the help of an interpreter, holding their hands and looking into their eyes.

“I was crying, but tried to hide it,” the pope told reporters. “They were crying, too.”

Listening to them was emotional, he said, and “I couldn’t let them leave without saying something” to

them. So he asked for a microphone and spoke about their God-given dignity and the obligation believers of all faiths have to stand up for them as brothers and sisters. He also apologized for all they had suffered.

Pope Francis refused to give reporters details about his private meetings with government officials and military leaders in Myanmar, but insisted they were marked by “civilized dialogue” and he was able to make the points important to him.

The pope was asked what he thought of recent criticism by human rights groups of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and de facto leader of Myanmar’s civilian government, over her handling of the Rohingya crisis. Pope Francis responded that people must take into account the challenges that are part of Myanmar’s transition from military rule to democracy.

Myanmar is at a “turning point” where it will be difficult to move forward, he said, but it also would be difficult to back away from change.

And, he said, “I never lose hope.”

The same God who made the meeting with the Rohingya in Dhaka possible will continue to work marvels, Pope Francis said.

ALSO inside

Joy at St. Joseph’s

A new home

Diaconate ordination

Catholic Charities honors two improv actors for their work with children at the Minneapolis home.

After 63 years in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Poor Clares are leaving their Bloomington monastery for Rochester.

As the Church marks the 50th anniversary of reinstating the permanent diaconate, 10 men will be ordained Dec. 9.

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2 • The Catholic Spirit

PAGE TWO

December 7, 2017 OVERHEARD

in PICTURES

“This drives home how important faith is. ... I found that people who are exposed to stress — their well-being goes down over time. Those who were Guadalupan devotees broke that pattern.”

Rebecca Read-Wahidi, author of a University of Alabama study exploring the link between faith and health. It demonstrated that those with a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feast day is Dec. 12, had fewer negative health issues related to stress.

NEWS notes

Holy day of obligation Dec. 8 The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception Dec. 8 is a holy day of obligation, which means that, like on Sundays, the faithful are obligated to attend Mass unless they have a serious reason not to, or that they have received dispensation from their pastor. The feast day celebrates the Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin.

PAPAL GREETING Pope Francis greets Father Brady Wagner, right, the superior of the Companions of Christ in Denver, following the weekly papal audience in Rome Nov. 22. At left are Bishop Andrew Cozzens and Father Tony O’Neill, superior of the Twin Cities Companions. A total of 41 Companions from both states made the trip to Italy Nov. 20-26 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Twin Cities Companions and the 10th anniversary of the Denver Companions. “It was very powerful and moving for all of us to introduce ourselves to the Holy Father, to say, ‘Here we are. We have something to offer the Church,’” said Father Michael Johnson, a Companion since 2007 who was ordained a priest in 2009. “At that moment ... seeing him up close, being 2 feet away, you just see the love of Christ in him. You just see the shepherd’s heart, you see God loving his people.” L’Osservatore Romano SWEET VICTORY Academy of Holy Angels football players pose with their state championship trophy Nov. 24. The Stars beat the Cloquet Lumberjacks 14-0 in the Class 4A Prep Bowl. Players with visible faces are, top row, from left: Lars Hansen, Mason Wolf, Tristin Wiggins and Connor McGarry. Bottom row, from left: Jason Miller, Gerone Hamilton Jr. and Jason Kraus.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda celebrated Mass before Holy Angels’ first game of the season against Maplewood’s Hill-Murray School Sept. 1 and attended the championship game.

Courtesy Mark Trockman

‘Man, Woman and Order of Creation’ Dec. 11 Six speakers will address male and female complementarity, transgenderism and “Laudato Si’” at “Man, Woman and the Order of Creation,” a daylong program Dec. 11 with a separate session 7:30–9 p.m. at the University of St. Thomas’ OEC Auditorium, 2115 Summit Ave., St. Paul.

Registration is required for the 9 a.m.–5 p.m. session. Both sessions are free; the deadline to order lunch has passed. For more information, visit www.stthomas.edu/spssod/about/events.

Holy Hour for vocations Dec. 12 The Office of Vocations is hosting its second monthly Holy Hour to pray for an increase of priests, deacons and consecrated men and women 7 p.m.

Dec. 12 at St. Stephen, 2211 Clinton Ave., Minneapolis. The hour of eucharistic adoration will be held through November 2018 on the second Tuesday of each month at parishes across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. For more information, visit www.10000vocations.org.

Luke Spehar Christmas concert Dec. 14 Local Catholic musician Luke Spehar will perform his third annual Christmas concert 7:30 p.m. Dec. 14 at the Heights Theatre, 3951 Central Ave. NE, Columbia Heights. Tickets are $15; $10 for students.

For more information, visit www.lukespehar.com.

Steven C. concert at Cathedral Dec. 14 Local pianist Stephen C. will perform a holiday concert 7:30 p.m.

Dec. 14 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. The all-ages event will feature songs from Stephen’s album “Christmas Beyond” and his new album, “Emotive,” which was recorded at the Cathedral. Special guests include the Cathedral’s Saints Gregory and Cecilia Children’s Choristers, and Cathedral organist Lawrence Lawyer. The event is free, but tickets are required. For more information, visit www.cathedralsaintpaul.org.

MILESTONES

ONLINE exclusives Recounting a lesson from his Catholic grade-school teacher, Father Paul Jarvis, senior associate pastor at St. Bridget in Minneapolis, encourages Catholics to make their parish their nonprofit to support. Read it at www.catholichotdish.com.

Describing his experiences in Tanzania, Father Michael Skluzacek, pastor of St. John the Baptist in New Brighton, recounts concelebrating a Mass of dedication for a new church in Ngujini named after his parish. Read it at www.catholichotdish.com.

The Catholic Spirit is published semi-monthly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Vol. 22 — No. 23 MOST REVEREND BERNARD A. HEBDA, Publisher TOM HALDEN, Associate Publisher MARIA C. WIERING, Editor

St. Casimir in St. Paul celebrated its 125th anniversary Dec. 2-3 with an all-class reunion and Mass with Archbishop Bernard Hebda. The parish was established in 1888 to serve Polish Catholics on St. Paul’s East Side, with a church constructed in 1892. The current church at Forest Street and Jessamine Avenue was built in 1904. Since 1916, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate have operated the parish. A school was built in 1923 followed by a convent in 1926 that housed the Felician Sisters. The school closed in 1992 and merged with Sacred Heart and St. Patrick to form Trinity Catholic School, which closed in 2009. Today the parish maintains its Polish heritage and is home to a variety of ethnic cultures represented in the neighborhood.

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December 7, 2017

FROM THE ARCHBISHOP

The Catholic Spirit • 3

Faithful teens represent archdiocese at national conference

I

’m often asked what gives me the most hope in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. It’s a tough question because there are so many signs of life in this local Church. A recent trip to Indianapolis for the National Catholic Youth Conference, however, may have tipped the scales in favor of the youth of this archdiocese.

The 90 young people from this archdiocese impressed me with their commitment to growing deeper in their faith, their interest in the big faith questions of our day, their willingness to step up to serve, and the ease with which they navigated racial, linguistic and ethnic differences to form new friendships. Even for our multicultural archdiocese, it was a particularly diverse group, with more than three-quarters of our delegation coming from immigrant families from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When our delegation gathered for a pre-event meal, grace was offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

I had been to this event twice before and always found it exhilarating — there’s an electricity in the air whenever you have more than 20,000 energetic teenagers gathered in one place to learn more about their faith, support one another in discipleship and give praise to God. You could have heard a pin drop on Friday evening as the Lucas Oil Stadium became a huge chapel of adoration. The teens embraced the silence and solemnity of the ritual far better than I. As providence would have it, the teens of our delegation were disproportionately represented in leadership roles at the gathering. I think that my brother bishops were tired of being poked as I pointed out that the readers at the prayer services were from the Twin Cities, as were the teens who led the opening procession, the Vietnamese dancers and a sizable portion of the choir. Whether they wore the uniform of the Vietnamese Eucharistic League or the unique “duck, duck, gray duck” T-shirts that had been designed for our delegation, they were easy to pick out in the crowd and on the jumbotron. I gave thanks to God for their talents, their creativity and their faith. I left Indianapolis more convinced than ever that the Lord has placed the future of our archdiocese in good hands.

I was particularly grateful when I recognized that so many of those hands — while Minnesotan through and through — belonged to young people from families that found their way to our archdiocese as refugees and immigrants. Not surprisingly, there were some young people and youth leaders with real ONLY JESUS anxieties about their future in our country or worries about their family members — worries that teenagers and young adults Archbishop shouldn’t have to shoulder.

Bernard Hebda

Adolescentes fieles representan arquidiócesis en la conferencia nacional

A

menudo me preguntan qué es lo que me da más esperanza en la Arquidiócesis de St. Paul y Minneapolis. Es una pregunta difícil porque hay muchas señales de vida en esta Iglesia local. Sin embargo, un viaje reciente a Indianápolis para la Conferencia Nacional Católica de la Juventud puede haber inclinado la balanza a favor de los jóvenes de esta arquidiócesis.

Los 90 jóvenes de esta arquidiócesis me impresionaron con su compromiso de profundizar en su fe, su interés en las cuestiones de gran fe de nuestros días, su disposición a prestar servicio y la facilidad con la que navegaban por cuestiones raciales, lingüísticas y étnicas, diferencias para formar nuevas amistades. Incluso para nuestra arquidiócesis multicultural, era un grupo particularmente diverso, con más de las tres cuartas partes de nuestra delegación procedentes de familias inmigrantes del sudeste asiático y América Latina. Cuando nuestra delegación se reunió para una comida previa al evento, se ofreció la gracia en inglés, español y vietnamita.

Había asistido a este evento dos veces y siempre me pareció estimulante: hay electricidad en el aire cada vez que tienes más de 20,000 adolescentes enérgicos reunidos en un solo lugar para aprender más sobre su fe, apoyarse mutuamente en el discipulado y alabar a Dios. Podrías haber oído caer un alfiler el viernes por la noche cuando el Lucas Oil Stadium se convirtió en

Participants from the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis process into Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis Nov. 16 for the opening general session of the National Catholic Youth Conference. Archbishop Bernard Hebda attended the conference with youth and adult leaders from the archdiocese. From left, Kelly Nguyen, Kathy Trinh, Elizabeth Pham, Yen Fasano and Theresa Lam. CNS Pope Francis has recently inaugurated a two-year campaign, “Share the Journey,” that calls for all Catholics to grow in our understanding of the experiences of our immigrant and refugee brothers and sisters in a way that increases solidarity. The Holy Father has asked us to get to know the stories of our neighbors who have left their homelands and found their way to our archdiocese, to become more aware of the circumstances that led them to immigrate or seek refuge, and to grow in our appreciation of the challenges they face and the ways in which we can be of fraternal assistance.

As part of that international campaign, I invite you to join Bishop Andrew Cozzens and me for a Mass of Solidarity that will be celebrated 5 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. Our hope is that we will be able to join together that evening in praising God in a variety of languages and cultural expressions, while asking the Lord’s blessings on our archdiocese and on the immigrant and refugee families that have brought such life to our local Church and communities. It promises to be a meaningful first step as we respond to Pope Francis’ invitation to “Share the Journey.” (See related stories on pages 5 and 6.)

una gran capilla de adoración. Los adolescentes abrazaron el silencio y la solemnidad del ritual mucho mejor que yo.

Como la providencia lo tendría, los adolescentes de nuestra delegación estuvieron desproporcionadamente representados en roles de liderazgo en la reunión. Creo que mis hermanos obispos estaban cansados de ​​ ser empujados cuando les señalé que los lectores en los servicios de oración eran de las Ciudades Gemelas, como lo eran los adolescentes que dirigieron la procesión inicial, los bailarines vietnamitas y una parte considerable del coro. Ya sea que llevaran el uniforme de la Liga Eucarística de Vietnam o las camisetas únicas de “pato, pato, pato gris” que habían sido diseñadas para nuestra delegación, eran fáciles de distinguir en la multitud y en el jumbotron. Le di gracias a Dios por sus talentos, creatividad y fe. Salí de Indianápolis más convencido que nunca de que el Señor ha puesto el futuro de nuestra arquidiócesis en buenas manos.

Me sentí particularmente agradecido cuando reconocí que muchas de esas manos, mientras que minnesotan de principio a fin, pertenecían a jóvenes de familias que llegaron a nuestra arquidiócesis como refugiados e inmigrantes. No es sorprendente que haya jóvenes y líderes juveniles con verdaderas ansiedades sobre su futuro en nuestro país o preocupaciones sobre sus familiares, preocupaciones que los adolescentes y adultos jóvenes no deberían tener que asumir.

El Papa Francisco ha inaugurado recientemente una campaña de dos años, “Comparte el camino”, que hace un llamamiento para que todos los católicos crezcan en nuestra comprensión de las experiencias de nuestros hermanos y hermanas inmigrantes y refugiados de una manera que aumente la solidaridad.

El Santo Padre nos ha pedido que conozcamos las historias de nuestros vecinos que han dejado su tierra natal y han encontrado el camino a nuestra arquidiócesis, para estar más al tanto de las

circunstancias que los llevaron a emigrar o buscar refugio, y para crecer en nuestro aprecio de los desafíos que enfrentan y las formas en que podemos ser de asistencia fraterna.

Como parte de esa campaña internacional, los invito a que se unan al Obispo Andrew Cozzens y a mí para una Misa de Solidaridad que se celebrará a las 5 p.m. 9 de diciembre en la Basílica de Santa María en Minneapolis. Nuestra esperanza es que podamos unirnos esa noche para alabar a Dios en una variedad de idiomas y expresiones culturales, mientras pedimos las bendiciones del Señor a nuestra arquidiócesis y a las familias de inmigrantes y refugiados que han llevado tanta vida a nuestra Iglesia y comunidades locales. Promete ser un primer paso significativo al responder a la invitación del Papa Francisco a “Compartir el viaje.”

OFFICIAL Archbishop Bernard Hebda has announced the following appointments and change of clergy status in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis:

Effective December 4, 2017 Reverend Joseph Fink, appointed parochial vicar of the parish cluster of the Church of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin and the Church of the Holy Childhood, both in Saint Paul. This is a transfer from his previous assignment as pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Watertown.

Reverend Anthony O’Neill, appointed parochial administrator of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Watertown. This is in addition to his current assignment as pastor of the Church of Our Lady of the Lake in Mound.

4 • The Catholic Spirit

LOCAL

SLICEof LIFE

December 7, 2017 ‘Angel’ among us St. Joseph of Carondelet Sister Avis Allmaras, center, talks with Rose Carter, left, and Irene Eiden at Peace House in south Minneapolis Feb. 27. Sister Avis goes to the center weekly and visits frequent guests like Carter. Eiden, of St. William in Fridley, is a lay consociate of the Carondelet Sisters. Peace House is a day shelter for the poor and homeless.

“It’s a real privilege to know these people and hear their stories,” Sister Avis said. “I could not survive on the streets like they do. There are so many gifted people From left,ofAutumn Rauk,“She’s Brody here.” Said Carter Sister Avis: Rapphides and Wyatt Raukunder portray an angel. She her wings that the three during a sweatshirt.

She trulywise is anmen angel.” live outdoor Nativity at Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit St. Michael in Kenyon Dec. 2.

The parish hosts the event every year using live farm animals, while a concert is performed National Catholic Sisters Week is inside the church. Pastor Father March 8-14. An official component of Kevin Kenney played a Women’s History Month and shepherd. “This is what headquartered at St. Catherine University Christmas is all about,” said in St. Paul, the week celebrates women organizer Annette Kraft. “I think religious and their contributions to the the kids out there dressed up Church and society. View local events, have a new meaning of including two art exhibitions, at Christmas after they ... have www.nationalcatholicsistersweek.org. taken part in the live Nativity.”

Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

SLICEof LIFE

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December 7, 2017

Duo brings joy to St. Joseph’s Home Improv actors to be honored at Catholic Charities banquet

Improvisation artists Adam Fielitz, left, and Jim DeSimone teach their craft to youths at St. Joseph’s Home for Children in Minneapolis. Catholic Charities, which operates the home, named the two men winners of the Life of Distinction award.

Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit representative with the U.S. Census Bureau. He also has performed with ComedySportz and the HUGE Improv Theater in Minneapolis.

DeSimone got his start in improv in the 1990s with The Second City theater in Toronto before coming to the Twin Cities.

Fielitz’s interest in improv began as a youth in Chicago when he could see “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” in person at The Annoyance Theatre and Bar. He began performing while attending St. Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona.

While he primarily works as a corporate trainer with Verizon Wireless, he has performed and taught improv around the metro for 24 years.

Though not Catholic, Fielitz grew up knowing Brother Warren Longo, who became an Alexian Brother in St. Louis. Fielitz said Brother Warren’s influence has been lasting.

“He’s been a lifetime family friend — one of the kindest people I know,” Fielitz said. “He’s generous and giving.”

Fielitz himself felt inspired to give back while attending a Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Minneapolis several years ago and heard Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey speak about the

importance of service. Fielitz spent about nine months mulling over those words but not knowing what exactly he wanted to do.

“The one thing that’s easy for me to give back is improv,” Fielitz said.

“I know what joy it brings people.”

He learned about Catholic Charities through a co-worker and contacted St. Joseph’s Home five years ago about doing improv with the children. The institution accepted the offer.

When he couldn’t make it, he asked DeSimone to fill in. DeSimone then wanted to join Fielitz every week.

“It’s been incredibly challenging and wonderfully rewarding,” DeSimone said.

St. Joseph’s Home Director Jon Stumbras has seen the impact of DeSimone and Fielitz on the children.

“It’s always a surprise when they come,” Stumbras said. “You find some kids who you never think would respond to this because they’re fairly introverted and don’t express themselves, but they use this as an outlet for themselves, and they just blossom in front of the group with the kind of exercises that they do and the improvisation.”

Bishops invite faithful to Mass of Solidarity Dec. 9

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens will celebrate a Mass of Solidarity 5 p.m. Dec. 9 for Catholics in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“We want Catholics to come together with our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters from around the globe,” Bishop Cozzens said in an archdiocesan video posted on its website and Facebook page Nov. 27. “It’s a chance to hear their stories and share their struggle as we encounter Jesus Christ together in the Eucharist.”

The Mass at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis launches the archdiocese’s participation in the “Share the Journey” campaign,

in BRIEF BURNSVILLE

Bus bound for retreat overturns

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit Two local improvisation artists have relied on their talent for quickthinking and flexibility as they’ve adapted their teaching approach to fit a group of youths living with mental illness at St. Joseph’s Home for Children in Minneapolis.

“Initially, we were just trying to teach them improv,” said Adam Fielitz, 43. “They’re not always in that right place; so for us, it’s about motivating them to play.”

Fielitz and fellow improv colleague Jim DeSimone, 50, help around 10 youths unpack their creativity each week in a commons area at the Catholic Charities-run youth home. Catholic Charities will honor Fielitz and DeSimone Dec. 7 with the Life of Distinction award for service at the annual St. Nicholas Dinner in Minneapolis.

Each week, they begin by leading the group through basic improv games to break the ice. The instructors then set up a scene for the youths with specific roles.

“What they do often is just spectacular,” Fielitz said. “It’s fantastic.”

DeSimone and Fielitz credit the staff support at St. Joseph’s Home for the success of their improv venture. As for the award, “If this gets out awareness of volunteer opportunities, that’s great,” said Fielitz, a Minneapolis resident. “The staff at St. Joe’s should get the award. They do this day in and day out. We get to come in for an hour and then leave.”

DeSimone, a parishioner of Our Lady of Grace in Edina, added: “When they told us about it, I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t ever expect to get recognized for this. It’s an honor.’”

DeSimone teaches improv with his company, Henry’s Hat Inc., in addition to his work as a field

The Catholic Spirit • 5

“We want Catholics to come together with our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters from around the globe.”

Bishop Andrew Cozzens

which Pope Francis commenced Sept. 27 in support of immigrants and refugees. The two-year campaign seeks to raise people’s awareness of the plight of refugees and immigrants, and also to provide opportunities to encounter them.

In the archdiocese’s video, Bishop Cozzens noted that around 65 million people worldwide have been displaced, “the most since World War II.” Bishop Cozzens said he and Archbishop Hebda want to highlight locally the needs of youths affected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, adding that immigration reform is necessary in order for them to remain in the U.S. “The bishops of this country have said, ‘We judge ourselves as a community of faith by the way we treat the most vulnerable among us,’” Archbishop Hebda said in the video.

Cultural singing and dancing will precede the Mass at 4 p.m.

For more information about the Mass, visit www.archspm.org.

A school bus carrying high-school-age students from a Burnsville parish overturned Nov. 11 while traveling to a retreat. There were 31 students and adult chaperones from Mary, Mother of the Church on the bus. According to the Minnesota State Patrol, two adults and four students were injured and transported by ambulance to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester for treatment, but no injuries were lifethreatening. Most of the injuries were cuts and bruises. The bus was traveling to a confirmation retreat at Eagle Bluff in Lanesboro when it went off the road and turned on its right side shortly before 10 a.m. Nov. 11. The accident occurred southeast of Rochester on Highway 52. Icy road conditions were a factor in the driver losing control of the vehicle.

ST. PAUL

Retired priest ‘laicized’ Richard Jeub, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis since 1966, has been dispensed from the obligations of the clerical state, according to a Nov. 29 statement from the archdiocese. Jeub, 77, retired in 2002, but he has been prohibited from ministry since that year, following allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. Jeub served as an associate priest at St. Joseph, Hopkins, 1966-1967; Our Lady of Grace, Edina, 1967-1970; St. Mark, St. Paul, 19701976: Christ the King, Minneapolis, 1976-1978; Sacred Heart, Robbinsdale, 1996-1997; Sacred Heart/ St. Lawrence, Faribault, 1997-2000; and St. Rose of Lima, Roseville, 2000-2002. He ministered as a hospital chaplain at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park and Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina from 1978 to 1982. Jeub’s longest assignment was from 1981 to 1990 as pastor of St. Kevin in south Minneapolis, which merged with nearby Church of the Resurrection in 1991 to form Our Lady of Peace.

His assignment history has been posted since 2013 at the archdiocese’s website in a list of those with substantiated claims of sexual abuse of a minor against them. Commonly referred to as “laicization,” dispensation from the obligations of the clerical state is an action of the pope. Loss of the clerical state means that a man may not present himself as a priest. According to the statement, Jeub sought the dispensation.

St. Catherine University partners with community colleges St. Catherine University announced a new program Nov. 29 that assists students in completing a fouryear degree. With founding partners St. Paul College and Minneapolis Community and Technical College, “St. Kate’s Complete” provides a way for students graduating with a two-year degree from these schools to earn a bachelor’s degree that can be completed in a minimum of 24 months. In a statement, the school said the partnership will “allow thousands of students from diverse backgrounds to now have greater access to programs offered at St. Catherine University, including bachelor of arts, master of arts and doctoral degrees.” The program offers 15 major areas of study, scholarships, and flexible start dates and class schedules.

WOODBURY

St. Therese senior apartments open Catholic senior living and care organization St. Therese officially opened The Redwoods, a 64-unit independent senior living apartment building at its Woodbury campus Nov. 21. City officials joined St. Therese CEO and President Barb Rode for the ribbon cutting and offered remarks. Retired priest Father Stephen O’Gara blessed the new building.

St. Therese of Woodbury has residences for independent living, assisted living, and memory care.

Of its 64 units, 55 had been filled by its opening.

6 • The Catholic Spirit

LOCAL

December 7, 2017

Working with refugees builds friendships, teaches lessons at Oakdale parish Guardian Angels sponsors family of eight from Myanmar

By Bridget Ryder For The Catholic Spirit Parishioners at Guardian Angels in Oakdale have spent the last six months helping a refugee family from Burma acclimate to life in the United States.

Though their obligation to the family through Lutheran Social Services’ resettlement program ended in November, the experience has taught them about friendship, cultural expectations and even happiness.

“We had preconceived notions of what it would be like to help them acclimate,” said Joan Healy-Hauser, 63, one of the parishioners who volunteered to mentor the family. “We knew they were from Burma, spoke little English and that they had spent 12 years in a refugee camp. We had no idea we would be blessed with such a wonderful family.”

The family assigned to Guardian Angels was a married couple with six “We knew children, ages 9 to 19, from Myanmar, also known as they were Burma, in southeast Asia.

They were also reunited from Burma, with an older daughter who had already settled in spoke little Minnesota.

English and LSS found the family an apartment and assisted that they had with job placement, while Angels spent 12 years Guardian parishioners provided some financial help, in a refugee furnished the apartment camp. We had and guided the family through daily life, such as understanding public no idea we transportation and would be shopping.

The mentoring team, blessed with consisting of a group of 12 volunteers, met with the such a family twice a week. Each Monday and Thursday, wonderful four members of the team spent the evening in the family.” family’s home answering Joan Healy-Hauser questions, helping the children with homework and practicing English. The parishioners, though, said they learned as much as they were teaching.

Healy-Hauser recalled that the family arrived carrying all their possessions in six suitcases.

“We learned it’s not material possessions that make life blessed,” she said.

Parishioners of Guardian Angels in Oakdale sponsored this family of eight from Myanmar, pictured in their Twin Cities apartment in June. The family asked that their names be withheld. Courtesy Joan Healy-Hauser On another occasion, volunteers took the family on what they thought was a desperately needed trip to the grocery store.

“By our standards, the cupboards were bare,” Healy-Hauser said. “We later found out that they had a 25-pound bag of rice, and they thought they had plenty.”

Understanding and accepting cultural differences has been part of the learning experience for volunteers.

Meetings with the family, for example, took place on the floor, their preference over sitting at a table. They also learned new ways to communicate, such as using facial expressions. With the family’s limited English, communicating was difficult.

“When we did finally get a message across, they would give us a big hug,” Healy-Hauser said.

As such, parishioners also learned about the immigrant and refugee experience months before Pope Francis launched the “Share the Journey” initiative to draw attention to refugee and migrants’ plight worldwide. Suzanne Bernet, justice and outreach coordinator for the parish, was surprised to learn that the family is responsible for repaying the government for the cost of airfare to the United States, a considerable expense for a family of eight,

although some loan forgiveness is available. The parish is looking into helping the family apply for that assistance.

This is not the parish’s first time helping refugee families make Minnesota home. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, parishioners worked with Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis to resettle several Vietnamese families.

Judy Scheider, 78, who was involved with the first families the parish resettled, said Catholic Charities regularly turned to Guardian Angels for support in resettling refugees at that time. She and other volunteers worked with approximately eight groups of families. Many have become lifelong friends. One of those former refugees, now a restaurant owner, donated $1,000 worth of gift cards for his restaurant to assist with resettling the most recent family.

Now that the contract with LSS has ended, volunteers want to continue the relationship they built with the family. They have planned a meeting with an interpreter to see how the family would like to stay in touch with them going forward.

“We never expected them to become close friends, but they have,” Healy-Hauser said.

Blogs and commentary: CatholicHotdish.com

LOCAL

December 7, 2017

The Catholic Spirit • 7

Poor Clares leaving for Rochester Pro Ecclesia Sancta sisters will move to Bloomington monastery

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit With an aging community, the Franciscan Poor Clares will move from their Bloomington monastery in February after 63 years in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“We were very reluctant about it. However, in 2020, we will only have one sister under 80,” said the community’s abbess Sister Frances Getchell. “We can’t continue to keep up this monastery because of health.”

All nine sisters will live at Assisi Heights, the motherhouse for the Sisters of St. Francis in Rochester. The Franciscans had part of Assisi Heights’ retreat house renovated to accommodate the Poor Clares. Two additional Poor Clares will move from Catholic Eldercare in the Twin Cities to Assisi Heights, which has a retirement center and health care center.

The Poor Clares came to the archdiocese from Sauk Rapids in 1954 at the invitation of Archbishop John Murray, who blessed their monastery. For Sister Helen Weier, one of the six original sisters, the monastery has been home ever since. “It was an asparagus patch before it became our monastery,” she said.

An order exclusively dedicated to prayer as cloistered sisters, the Poor Clares will continue receiving letters and phone calls for prayer requests at their new location. At Assisi Heights, the Poor Clares will maintain their own community life but join the Franciscan sisters for Mass.

Like the Rochester Franciscans, the Poor Clares trace their founding to St. Francis of Assisi, who started their order in 1212 with St. Clare.

“Our sisters are very excited to have a deeper connection with the contemplative branch of the Franciscan order,” said Franciscan Sister Marlene Pinzka, treasurer of the Rochester congregation.

The two orders have crossed paths before at the

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it

From left, Samantha Nunez-Mudoy, Jillian Petty and Jacqueline Bucaro of Benilde-St. Margaret’s School in St. Louis Park react to seeing Col. Mark Vande Hei on the screen during a Nov. 28 video conference with him. Vande Hei, a 1985 graduate of the school, is aboard the International Space Station. Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

BSM students video chat with astronaut alum orbiting earth The Franciscan Poor Clares plan to move in February from their Bloomington monastery, above, turning the residence over to Pro Ecclesia Sancta sisters currently living in St. Paul.

Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit College of St. Teresa in Winona in the 1970s. The Poor Clares studied at the Franciscan-run college, which closed in 1989.

With the Poor Clare sisters leaving St. Clare Monastery, the Pro Ecclesia Sancta sisters in St. Paul will move into the monastery during the summer.

Pro Ecclesia Sancta sisters will continue their assignments at St. Mark in St. Paul, and Our Lady of Grace and Chesterton Academy in Edina. The local community has five sisters and a postulant.

“We want it to remain a house of prayer, service and loving devotion to the heart of Jesus,” said Pro Ecclesia Sancta Sister Emy Ychikawa. “We feel unworthy to carry on the Poor Clares’ legacy, but trusting in divine providence, we want to respond faithfully to God’s plans.”

By Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit A select group of 50 students at Benilde-St. Margaret’s School had an out-of-this-world conversation Nov. 28 with 1985 alumnus Col. Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station.

NASA arranged for him to have a video conference with his alma mater but limited the number of participants. Thrilled to be chosen was junior Amelia Backes, who dreams of becoming an astronaut herself.

“Meeting an astronaut alone is incredible,” Backes said. “But, talking to an astronaut while they are currently on the ISS orbiting the earth is just so surreal.

[That] is definitely the best word for it.”

“Mark gave us a great mix of the playful and profound,” said Stephen Pohlen, BSM director of learning and technology who emceed the event. “He inspired us with his responses about working through adversity and collaborating with an international crew.”

Read more at www.TheCatholicSpirit.com.

8 • The Catholic Spirit

U.S. & WORLD

In Myanmar and Bangladesh, pope calls for dialogue

Pope urges bishops to exercise authority as judges in annulments

A girl kisses Pope Francis’ hand as he visits the Mother Teresa House in the Tejgaon neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 2. CNS/Paul Haring “ideological colonization” sweeping the world and trying to make everyone the same.

“The unity we share and celebrate is born of diversity,” he said. Unity in the Church and in a nation “values people’s differences as a source of mutual enrichment and growth. It invites people to come together in a culture of encounter and solidarity.”

As Myanmar continues its transition to democratic rule and tries to deal with the challenges of development and full equality for all its ethnic groups, Pope Francis told the bishops to ensure that their voices are heard, “particularly by insisting on respect for the dignity and rights of all, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.”

Before leaving the country, he celebrated Mass Nov. 30 with thousands of young people from throughout Myanmar. He told them to be messengers of the good news of God’s love and mercy.

Witness was also the theme he highlighted at a large Mass in a park in Yangon, Myanmar’s capital.

“I know that many in Myanmar bear the wounds of violence, wounds both visible and invisible,” the pope said in his homily. The temptation is to think that “healing can come from anger and revenge. Yet, the way of revenge is not the way of Jesus.”

Pope Francis prayed that Catholics in Myanmar would “be faithful witnesses of the reconciliation and peace that God wants to reign in every human heart and in every community.”

In Bangladesh, his only public Mass was celebrated Dec. 1 and included the ordination of 16 priests, who came from different dioceses and religious orders.

The next day, before leaving Bangladesh, he met with priests, religious and seminarians at Holy Rosary Church in Dhaka. He told them the harmony, mutual respect and peace that should reign in relations between members of different religions must first be found among members of the Catholic Church.

U.S. Supreme Court allows Trump travel ban Catholic News Service The U.S. Supreme Court said Dec. 4 that President Donald Trump’s travel ban restricting entry into the United States by nationals from some countries can be fully implemented while legal challenges to the ban work their way through the lower courts.

In a brief unsigned order, the high court stayed a preliminary injunction on implementation of the ban, granting the Trump administration’s request to allow its latest ban, released in late September, to go into effect. The order also urged the two appeals courts with cases before them to render “with appropriate dispatch” a decision on whether the ban is constitutional.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor “would deny the application,” according to the order.

The Supreme Court’s order means that the Trump administration can fully carry out the ban, which is now in its third iteration. It currently restricts travel

in BRIEF VATICAN CITY

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service As on every papal trip, Pope Francis’ visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh included a mix of meetings with government officials and events focused firmly on the nations’ Catholic communities.

The political implications of his Nov. 27-30 stay in Myanmar and his Nov. 30-Dec. 2 stop in Bangladesh grabbed the headlines mainly because of the situation of the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority being pushed from Myanmar’s Rakhine state and seeking refuge in Bangladesh.

But the political and pastoral sides of his trip were interwoven, including his attention to the Rohingya and his defense of their rights. Meeting Rohingya refugees at the end of an interreligious gathering in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 1, Pope Francis said each human being is created in God’s image and likeness.

“Today, the presence of God is also called ‘Rohingya,’” he said after listening to each of the 16 refugees briefly tell their stories.

The Catholic communities in both Myanmar and Bangladesh are small; Catholics make up slightly more than 1 percent of the population in Myanmar and only a quarter of 1 percent of the population in Bangladesh. Yet, in both countries, the influence of the Church is disproportionately large because of the contributions of Catholic schools, hospitals and other organizations.

In Myanmar, the majority of people are Buddhist, and in Bangladesh, the majority are Muslim. On the return flight to Rome Dec. 2, Pope Francis was asked about how a Catholic should balance a commitment to interreligious dialogue and a commitment to evangelization with the hope of welcoming converts into the Church.

The key, the pope said, always is witness. It is not a Christian’s job to try to persuade someone to become Christian. That is the Holy Spirit’s job, he said, but individuals must prepare the way by offering a living witness of what it means to be Christian.

The main ingredients of witness, he said, are living according to “the Beatitudes, giving testimony to Matthew 25 (feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick), the Good Samaritan and forgiving 70 times seven.”

The pope met privately with a varied group of religious leaders in Myanmar before holding a formal meeting with leaders of the nation’s Buddhist community Nov. 29.

Quoting Buddha and a prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, the pope insisted that in a land where the powerfully bonded pairing of religion and ethnicity have been used to prolong conflict, it was time for religious leaders to reclaim the greatest values and virtues of their faith traditions.

Pope Francis also held separate meetings in both countries with the nation’s bishops. In Myanmar, he told the bishops the idea that differences are a threat to peaceful coexistence is an example of an

December 7, 2017

to the United States from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim. Most citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea will be barred from entering, along with some Venezuelan government officials and their immediate family.

A friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in midSeptember said the travel ban was “cruel and inhumane treatment” and that “denying refugee children life-saving entry to the United States based on an executive order clearly motivated by antireligious bias is both un-Catholic and un-American.”

“We are not surprised by today’s Supreme Court decision,” a White House spokesman said Dec. 4.

Trump administration officials say the restrictions are necessary because the nations on the list have either refused to share information with the U.S. government or have not taken necessary security precautions. They said, however, that these countries can be taken off the list if they meet certain conditions.

A diocesan bishop is the sole judge in the streamlined process for handling marriage annulments, Pope Francis said. The simplified process “is not an option that the diocesan bishop can choose, but rather an obligation that derives from his consecration and from the mission received,” making the bishop the sole and exclusive authority in charge throughout the three phases of the briefer process, the pope said. The pope made his remarks during an audience Nov. 25 with canon lawyers, priests and pastoral workers attending a course sponsored by the Roman Rota, a Vatican tribunal that mainly deals with marriage annulment cases. The pope encouraged them to be close to those who are suffering and who expect help “to restore peace to their consciences and God’s will on readmission to the Eucharist.”

WARSAW, Poland

After general’s suicide, Croatian archbishop deplores ‘unjust verdicts’ The president of Croatia’s bishops’ conference condemned “unjust verdicts” at a United Nations war crimes trial after a jailed general publicly committed suicide when his appeal was rejected. In a Dec. 1 Croatian Radio interview, Archbishop Zelimir Puljic of Zadar, Croatia, said he regretted Bosnian Croat military chief Slobodan Praljak’s action, but believed his claim to be “giving his life for the truth” had “positive connotations.” Praljak died of heart failure after drinking potassium cyanide during a Nov. 29 hearing with five other Croatian-Bosnian military leaders in The Hague. Ninety political and military officials have been convicted and sentenced by the tribunal for war crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. The conflict ended with the formation of separate Serb- and Muslimdominated territories in a single state after leaving 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.

WASHINGTON

2,400 faith leaders ask Senate to nix tax cut legislation More than 2,400 religious faith leaders, including hundreds of Catholic women religious and dozens of priests, asked the U.S. Senate to vote down tax cut legislation. In a Nov. 29 letter to senators, the leaders called the bill “fiscally irresponsible” and said that it “endangers our country’s economic health.” The letter added that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “disproportionately benefits the wealthy at the expense of vulnerable people and low-income families.” The letter expressed concern that the legislation was “being recklessly rushed through Congress” without enough time for review by voters.

Contraceptive mandate battle still on: States fight religious exemptions After the Department of Health and Human Services issued a new rule in October granting an exemption to the contraceptive mandate for religious nonprofits that oppose the mandate on religious grounds, Pennsylvania and California filed complaints against the federal government over the exemption. Delaware, Maryland, New York and Virginia joined California’s lawsuit to become the first plaintiff group to file a motion for a preliminary injunction seeking to prevent the new exemption rule from going into effect. This means the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have been in the spotlight with their objection to the federal government’s requirement that they provide insurance coverage of contraceptives for their employees, are going back to court. Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket, the law firm representing the sisters, said in a Nov. 21 press call that the HHS rule “should have been the end of the story.”

— Catholic News Service

December 7, 2017

U.S. & WORLD

The Catholic Spirit • 9

Uncertainty in Congress envelops children’s health care program Minnesota among states that expect to exhaust CHIP funds

By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service A health program that serves children from low-income families that has enjoyed bipartisan support for 20 years faces an uncertain future unless Congress adopts legislation reauthorizing it before funding runs out in the coming months.

Congress failed to meet a Sept. 30 deadline to continue the federally funded and state-run Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. Several states were preparing in late November to notify families that the program would end unless the federal government recommits to funding it.

“We’re getting perilously close to seeing states having to take action in one way or another,” said Tricia Brooks, senior fellow at the Center for Children and Families and Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.

“What’s happening with CHIP is unprecedented. We’ve never had a lapse of funding of this sort,” Brooks told Catholic News Service Nov. 29.

Nationwide, about 9 million children are enrolled in CHIP. They come from families with incomes too high to be eligible for Medicaid, but too low to be able to afford health insurance.

Further, CHIP supporters said, the program has worked as intended, reducing the number of children without access to health care from 15 percent in 1997 to 4.8 percent in 2016.

Brooks said the program has continued to operate with funds carried over from fiscal year 2017. The federal Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services also has distributed unused money from earlier years to the states, “but that cushion is wearing desperately thin now,” she said.

Bishop Frank Dewane, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and officials at Catholic Charities USA have urged Congress to reauthorize CHIP since the deadline passed.

Brooks, along with the center’s Joan Alker and Karina Wagnerman, wrote a report in October that said six jurisdictions — Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon — predicted they would run out of money for CHIP by the end of the year. And six other states — Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington — have said they will notify families before Dec. 31 that their programs face a shutdown even if funding has not yet run out.

Predicting when states will run out of money is a “moving target” because of variables that can change at any time, Brooks said.

Congress has primarily focused on enacting tax cut legislation since the new fiscal year started Oct. 1, much to the chagrin of CHIP advocates. Social workers have said the program, enacted in 1997 in a bipartisan effort and renewed repeatedly since then, is vital to low-income working families.

The press secretary for the Senate Finance Committee said CHIP “continues

to be a top priority” for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, committee chairman. Hatch wrote the original bill establishing CHIP with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts.

“The Senate Finance Committee reported out a bipartisan bill that would extend funding for five years,” Katie Niederee, the committee’s press secretary, wrote in an email to CNS. “The chairman is continuing to make progress in his discussions on how best to address this issue on the Senate floor and remains confident this will be resolved before the year’s end.”

The House also has considered similar legislation, but no formal vote has been taken. The differences in the bills largely come down to how to pay for the program.

Based on the Senate and House actions, observers expect Congress will include CHIP reauthorization in budget legislation that will be taken up soon after a final vote on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Even so, the reauthorization remained uncertain as Congress raced toward a Dec. 8 deadline to pass even more pressing legislation to fund the government through Sept. 30, 2018, and prevent a pre-Christmas shutdown.

The December deadline was included in legislation signed Sept. 8 by President Donald Trump that raised the debt ceiling and kept the government operating for three months.

CHIP’s unknown future concerns several Catholic organizations that focus on the needs of children, the poor and other vulnerable people. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Health Association and Catholic Charities USA have spent hours on Capitol Hill advocating for the program.

“There’s no valid excuse on earth to take care away from children,” Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity and president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, told CNS. “It has been one of the programs where the money spent has accomplished what it intended to accomplish. This is nothing but an obvious winner for the children of this country. Not keeping this going at a time when many of the other safeguards are going away would just be catastrophic,” she said.

At Catholic Charities USA, Lucas Swanepoel, senior director of government affairs, suggested a program that works well in promoting children’s health ought to “bring us together.”

Expressing confidence that congressional leaders will pave the way for re-authorization, Swanepoel cautioned that hurdles “that have nothing to do with CHIP” still must be overcome to reconcile the House and Senate bills that are expected to become part of the budget legislation.

The USCCB weighed in early on the need for CHIP. In an Oct. 4 letter to members of Congress, days after funding for the program ended, Bishop Dewane said re-authorization “is essential for the good of our nation’s children.”

Citing the words of Pope Francis, the bishop reminded Congress that health care is a human right, rather than a “consumer good.”

Travel to the

Heart of Italy

with Archbishop Hebda!

Assisi, Siena, La Verna and Rome Sept. 20-28, 2018 Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Father Sean O. Sheridan, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville, invite Catholics from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to travel with them to “the heart of Italy.”

In a letter of invitation, Archbishop Hebda wrote: “As we receive graces from these sacred encounters, we will travel in the spirit of the early Christian pilgrims. Central to the pilgrimage experience will be the daily celebration of the Eucharist, prayer, inspiring talks, and fellowship. Of course, we will also have ample time to enjoy the art, beauty and food of Italy (the first gelato is on me)!”

Estimated cost is $3,995.

RSVP with deposit due Dec. 15.

For a complete itinerary and more information, visit Franciscan.edu/Pilgrimages or call the Franciscan University Pilgrimage Office at 740-284-5812.

Read Archbishop Hebda’s invitation at www.TheCatholicSpirit.com.

10 • The Catholic Spirit

U.S. & WORLD

December 7, 2017

Newtown and gun violence: One place where the political became personal

By Mark Pattison Catholic News Service Dec. 14, 26 dead, five years.

Those are the basic grim numbers behind the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut, where the political became personal.

“We decided to not refer to it as an anniversary,” said Msgr. Robert Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima in Newtown.

“We choose not to celebrate. We’re going to have a Mass of remembrance. I asked him [Bishop Frank Caggiano of Bridgeport, Connecticut] to be the celebrant. It’s still quite emotional for me. I know this is going to bring more attention than the three- or four-year” interval after the tragedy.

Msgr. Weiss had been pastor at St. Rose 13 years at the time of the shootings, carried out by Adam Lanza, 20. He fatally shot 20 first-graders and six adults at the school before shooting himself.

The priest had funerals for eight of the victims at the church, and had a private funeral for a ninth child of split Catholicevangelical parentage. Within a year, both of his associate pastors had been transferred. So had the school principal.

Other civic leaders in Newtown, elected and unelected, also had moved on. He resolved to stay until his retirement from active ministry.

“We can legislate all these gun laws and changes, but guns will always be available,” Msgr. Weiss told Catholic News Service in a Nov. 28 telephone interview. “You never hear the mental health issue anymore on the federal and

state level. Just about everyone [responsible for mass shootings] has proven to have mental issues.

“We’re really screwing up, not taking care of that situation. I think people are more and more stressed, being more and more medicated,” he continued. “We’ve got to take account of the stress people are living with today.” In general, he added, “people have become hateful to themselves and hateful toward each other.”

Tucson, Arizona, psychologist Joel Dvoskin, an expert on how to recognize danger signs prior to violent eruptions, said the notion that “we need to keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill” is “dishonest, it is inaccurate and it’s harmful.”

He added, “There is no correlation between serious mental illness and gun violence. It’s the worst and cheapest kind of scapegoating.”

Dvoskin said that instead, “The best indicator of future behavior is recent past behavior. Being symptomatic of mental illness doesn’t indicate violence; being violent does. If you want to be sensible about who shouldn’t be toting a gun, look at people who have committed acts of violence while they are intoxicated and they still drink. Look at people who have committed acts of domestic violence and they’re still in the same situation.”

On the congressional level, action is slow. A Nov. 9 letter to House leaders on both sides of the aisle urged Congress to take action to ban the purchase and sale

Children react outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 after a shooting in Newtown, Conn. CNS of assault weapons, establish universal background checks and close the privatesale loophole, oppose reciprocity legislation that allows concealed-carry permit holders in one state to have the same privileges in other states, enact a law to bar the purchase or possession of firearms when deemed by a judge to pose a danger to self or others, and to close what is known as the “boyfriend loophole,” which allows convicted abusers and stalkers to buy and own firearms.

Among the Catholic organizations in Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence, which wrote the letter, are the Catholic Health Association, Catholic Health Initiative, Catholics United, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, the Franciscan Action Network, the Leadership Conference of Women

Religious, the Catholic social justice lobby Network, Pax Christi USA and three women’s religious orders.

Assault weapons were used at Sandy Hook, and at a Baptist church in Texas this fall that left another 26 dead.

Msgr. Weiss told CNS that he thought the Sandy Hook tragedy would have changed people’s minds about gun safety.

When a new mass shooting takes place, “I’m always hopeful this is the one that will spin people’s heads back on straight,” he said. “I don’t know how many more there will be. You’re not safe at home, you’re not safe at church, you’re not safe at a concert, at a movie theater.”

In the absence of hard data, Msgr. Weiss has anecdotal evidence of the Sandy Hook aftermath. “We had all the behaviors they predicted: alcohol, prescription drugs — especially for sleeping and depression — an increase in domestic violence situations, marital breakups. Not to an overwhelming magnitude, but they became very evident.”

Parishioners with no connection to Sandy Hook come to Msgr. Weiss for counseling, and he said he has to remind himself they deserve the same level of pastoral care he’s given to surviving family members.

He said, “You have so many poignant moments, you have great moments, but you remember the painful ones as well: what sports they would have taken, whether they would be dating, or what they want for Christmas.”

“ My sister was to be a nun, and I was to be a mother,” says Notre Dame Sister Mary Ann Hanson (foreground), 79, “but God had other plans.” During 61 years of religious life, she has joyfully followed those plans. Along with the senior religious shown here—and 32,000 more across the United States—Sister Mary Ann benefits from the Retirement Fund for Religious.

Your gift helps provide nursing care, medications, and other necessities. Please be generous.

Roughly 94 percent of donations aid senior religious.

Retirement Fund for Religious Please give to those who have given a lifetime.

To donate: National Religious Retirement Office/MSP 3211 Fourth Street NE Washington DC 20017-1194 Make check payable to Retirement Fund for Religious.

Or give at your local parish December 9–10.

www.retiredreligious.org Photo (from left): Sister Gloria Rodríguez, MGSpS, 80; Father Albert Bunsic, OCD, 81; Sister Alfonsina Sanchez, OCD, 96; Sister Mary Ann Hanson, SND, 79. ©2017 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC. All rights reserved. Photographer: Jim Judkis.

December 7, 2017

DIACONATE ORDINATION

The Catholic Spirit • 11

Deacon Joseph Michalak reads the Gospel during the opening Mass of the Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute Sept. 11 at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul. Serving as acolytes are, from left, Joseph Connelly, Gregory Sauer and Lawrence Oparaji. Dave Hrbacek/Courtesy St. Paul Seminary

Ten men to be ordained permanent deacons Dec. 9

By Jessica Trygstad The Catholic Spirit

T

he 10 men who’ll be ordained permanent deacons for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Dec. 9 prove what Deacon Joseph Michalak knows to be true about the permanent diaconate — that there is no certain type of man who is called to the vocation.

“Jesus calls men from all gifts and walks of life,” said Deacon Michalak, director of diaconate formation and permanent deacon formation at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul.

He noted that among this year’s candidates are a plumber and an engineer, with ages spanning from 40 to 63. The permanent diaconate, he added, isn’t just for retired or married men.

“The diaconate is for mature, young, ecclesiasticallyminded apostolic men who are willing to give their lives away,” he said, adding he’s convinced that Jesus is calling more young men to the diaconate.

Currently in formation are men in their 30s.

The 10 men will be ordained 10 a.m. Dec. 9 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. Their formation for the last five years has entailed parish projects and internships with social service agencies, and it follows the same four dimensions as that of the priesthood: human, intellectual, spiritual and pastoral. Formation continues after ordination, much like the process for transitional deacons before they’re ordained priests, Deacon Michalak explained.

In order to apply to the diaconate, men must be a graduate of or participant in the Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute in St. Paul. The process formally begins when a man is admitted to the aspirancy, much like a novitiate year, after which he has four more years of candidacy for holy orders.

Permanent deacons are ordained every two years, and there are two classes of deacons currently in formation, slated to be ordained in 2019 and 2021.

Deacon Michalak, who was ordained in 2010, hopes this class of deacons will live the vocation wholeheartedly.

“That may sound obvious, but one of the great challenges for deacons is living a vocation that is largely not understood and not well known,” he said, describing the life of a deacon as an “integration of several vocations.” This, he added, demands that deacons live a life of contemplative prayer and that their lives belong to the whole Church.

“If they don’t have that core, that foundation of contemplative prayer and receiving from the one who sends them — Jesus himself — they’ll become activists and social workers, but they won’t become deacons,” he said.

Gordon Bird

All Saints, Lakeville As a deacon, Gordon Bird hopes “to serve with a kind, open and humble heart that listens prudently and affectionately to the hearts and needs of others,” he said. He aims to do that by serving in a parish and drawing on his communications expertise to engage others in dialogue about “how much our trinitarian God loves them.”

Bird, 60, is communications director for RC Family Farms, an Iowa-based agribusiness. He also bikes, hikes, fishes and hunts. Over the years, he’s received “nudges” from friends and acquaintances to consider the diaconate, and he also felt a desire to deepen his involvement in the Church’s evangelization efforts, which led him to join the diaconal formation program.

During formation, he worked to build fraternity

Daniel Brewer

St. Joseph, West St. Paul “[The] diaconal call was a curveball for me,” Daniel Brewer said. He “thought it was for retired guys and priest wannabes.”

But then, he said, “my desires exploded as I learned more.”

Brewer, 53, works as the director of administration for NET Ministries, a youth evangelization organization based in West St. Paul. An outdoorsman who enjoys hiking mountains, hockey and “fixing things,” Brewer is a 30-year member of the Community of Christ the Redeemer, a Catholic covenant community based in West St. Paul. He and his wife, Rachel, have six children ages 7 to 19.

While preparing for the diaconate, he volunteered

John Cleveland

St. Therese, Deephaven John Cleveland, 63, has several people to thank for encouraging him to pursue the diaconate. His fatherin-law was ordained a deacon in 1978, one of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ first classes.

“I watched his formation process and went to his ordination,” Cleveland said. “The diaconate was kind of a mystery then since it was so new, but I admired his vocation.”

Then, he was among several men to receive a letter from then-pastor Father John Bauer suggesting they consider the diaconate program, followed by Franciscan Clarist Sister Tresa Jose Athickal telling him not to miss the bulletin article about the upcoming diaconate inquiry sessions, which he attended with his wife, Kathy. The couple has three children and seven grandchildren.

among Catholic men with regular parish-based gatherings, which he noted was a discipline of Catholic Watchmen, an initiative of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minnesota. His wife, DiAnn, joined him in many of the formation activities, he said. The couple has two adult children.

A Catholic convert, Bird said, “Perhaps the Holy Spirit has taught me [over] the past few years, and will continue to teach me in his wisdom, that the diaconate is not about being worthy of being a deacon, it’s about answering the call and just ‘being’ a servant of Christ.” in St. Paul at Catholic Charities’ Mary Hall, apartments for homeless adults; Cerenity Humbolt, a senior care community; and Ramsey County’s jail.

He also helped his parish improve its efforts to welcome new parishioners.

As part of his diaconate formation, Brewer appreciated forming relationships with the nine other “wonderful” men in his ordination class, he said.

As a deacon, he hopes “to reach out to the marginally churched [to] show them the amazing Gospel that we possess,” he said.

“The most challenging part of this vocational pursuit has been learning to integrate my formation into my family and work life,” said Cleveland, a partner at The Cleveland Company in Bloomington, which consults with businesses regarding employee health benefit plans. “The discernment and formation process has become a part of my life, but [it] has not replaced or lessened other responsibilities. Rather, the ministry has been assimilated into these other facets of my life; it has become a part of who I am. It has enriched my marriage and my work life. Everything just seems to work out, but not without sacrifice by my wife and other personal interests and activities.”

12 • The Catholic Spirit

DIACONATE O

The permanent diaconate at 50: M

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit

W

hen Deacon Thomas Langlois was ordained one of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ first permanent deacons in 1976, he couldn’t ask advice from a veteran deacon — there had been almost no permanent deacons in the Church for a thousand years.

“Each step was a new experience for us,” said Deacon Langlois, 87, who lives with his wife, Elizabeth, at the Little Sisters of the Poor Jeanne Jugan Apartments in St. Paul, and who has ministered as a deacon at a public housing project and in parishes and lay organizations.

Nine years before Deacon Langlois and 11 other men of diverse backgrounds and ages began forging their way as permanent deacons, the Second Vatican Council called for restoration of the permanent diaconate, which had been dormant since the Middle Ages.

Now, 50 years after Pope Paul VI re-established the permanent diaconate in 1967, the vocation has flourished, especially in the United States. Church leaders, however, continue to consider the permanent deacon’s role in relation to the laity and to seek ways to attract younger men to the vocation. They also aim to better meet the needs of deacons’ families and fine-tune formation.

Service at heart The word deacon is taken from the Greek “diakonia,” which means “service” — a central characteristic of the diaconate. Permanent deacons are servants of the Word, the Eucharist and the charity of Christ, which means they proclaim the Gospel and preach, assist at the altar during Mass and other liturgies, and minister in the Church and broader community. They can administer two of the seven sacraments — marriage and baptism — and also typically take on roles serving the poor, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and ministering to the dying.

The U.S. Church has embraced the diaconate more than other countries, said Deacon James Keating, director of Theological Formation at the Institute for Priestly Formation in Omaha, Nebraska. But, he said, “We are still in a learning curve about who the deacon is and how he is best formed to serve the new facets of our Church, such as dwindling church attendance, fewer and fewer sacramental marriages for young people, even a lessening interest on young people’s part for spirituality and prayer.”

Deacon Robert Cross, 92, remembers that the archdiocese was still working out its diaconate curriculum when it decided to ordain the first class — of which he was a member — while they still had a year of formation to complete.

“We sensed in a way that it was experimental,” he said.

Deacon Cross, who served as a minister in Baptist and Presbyterian churches before converting to Catholicism, said he appreciated the thoroughness of the formation.

He now attends St. Michael in Stillwater.

Diaconate formation has developed considerably from the rudimentary programs offered 50 years ago, Deacon Keating said, adding that there is room for improvement in human formation and in formation on self-awareness, marriages, contemplative prayer and preaching.

Deacon James Thornton, 88, was also a member of the archdiocese’s inaugural class. He recalled that initially, some archdiocesan priests were uncertain about the new diaconate role, but the confusion cleared up after the first year.

The first deacons interviewed for this story had different reasons for applying for the diaconate, but all experienced a call. At one time a Dominican novice, Deacon Thornton said the diaconate enabled him to respond to a call to the clergy. The highlight of his ministry has been serving on the altar, with homebound and with Loaves and Fishes programs, he said.

“It’s been a blast,” he added. “I’d do it again.”

His classmate Deacon Cross had felt called to preach

RIGHT Deacon Sean Curtan proclaims the Gospel during Mass at St. Columba in St. Paul.

Dave Hrbacek/ Courtesy Franciscan Brothers of Peace MIDDLE RIGHT Deacon Russ Kocemba, left, baptizes Nathan DiPasquale at Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul Oct. 18, 2015. Holding Nathan are his parents, David and Jessica DiPasquale.

Dave Hrbacek/ Courtesy Mark Lauer FAR RIGHT Deacon Carl Valdez, pictured Nov. 29, serves as a chaplain for the Minneapolis Police Department in the Fifth Precinct.

The precinct headquarters are near Incarnation, where he serves.

Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit

and teach the Bible as a Protestant minister, and when he became Catholic, he continued to preach and teach in the diaconate at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis and several other parishes.

“I became Catholic, and God is very good because as deacon I could preach, teach and serve in the Church,” he said.

Wife collaborators In the archdiocese, men from age 35 to 60 can apply for the diaconate; they must be ordained by age 65.

Unlike Roman Catholic priests, deacons can be married.

Deacon Langlois’ wife, Elizabeth, has been his partner in ministry as well as life. Just before ordination, she told him she’d be on the altar with him spiritually.

While raising their seven children, the couple led pastoral groups and ministered at the St. Paul housing project where they lived for seven years. With her background in psychiatric nursing, Elizabeth lent support to her husband’s parish ministry.

em gra “It was pastoral ministry, so we worked together ... [and] we made a good team,” Deacon Langlois said.

The first deacons struggled to balance demands of family, work and the diaconate. As he and his wife raised five children, Deacon Thornton taught high school chemistry and ministered at what is now the combined parish of Sts. Joachim and Anne in Shakopee, where he still serves occasionally.

“Most of the time it was out of balance,” Deacon Thornton admitted.

However, as members of the clergy whose lives often mirror the laity, permanent deacons serve as a bridge for the laity and priests in their relationship with God, said Deacon Larry Lawinger, 59, who ministers at St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park.

“A deacon helps the lay community work towards their true calling of being a priestly people,” he said.

Deacons also animate the lay vocation, Deacon Keating said.

“Among the laity at work in the secular world,

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ORDINATION

December 7, 2017 • 13

Memories and modern challenges

mbedded within that fabric, is a man who carries the ace of Christ the servant,” he said.

Deacon Langlois’ interest was in the people.

“You don’t realize at the time you are touching eople. It’s sacramental how it affects you,” he said.

Being a deacon isn’t about “good works,” but rather eing in relationship with Christ, who sends him from ithin that relationship to those longing to hear the ospel, Deacon Keating said.

“Remaining with and in Christ is the real gift of the aconate, whether we are feeding the hungry or vangelizing through the internet,” he added.

rowing need

Across the country, permanent deacons being dained are not replacing those leaving ministry. ccording to the CARA study, 94 percent of active eacons are at least 50 years old.

The Church needs both mature men and younger en as deacons, Deacon Keating said.

“We don’t want to give the impression that religion is st for older men,” he added. “Those few young men hat are left in our pews need to see their own faces in he pulpit … encouraging them to enter a deeper

FAR LEFT Deacons Eric Gunderson, left, and Martin Meyer carry oil into the sanctuary during the Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul April 6.

Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit LEFT Deacon John Shearer, left, is vested

by Deacon Tim Zinda during the last permanent deacon ordination Mass, which took place Dec. 5, 2015. Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

Diaconate in history The number of permanent deacons in the United States has grown steadily from 898 in 1975 to about 14,500 in active ministry, according to a 2014-15 study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. There are 124 active permanent deacons in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Deacons have served in the Church from the time of the apostles. Early deacons preached, ministered in the liturgical assembly and distributed food to the poor. St. Stephen, the first martyr, and St. Lawrence of Rome, who died in 258, were among the early deacons.

spiritual life.”

Deacons also need to represent the family as much as the secular world in the call to holiness, said Deacon Lawinger, who also serves as the archdiocesan diaconate director.

“With that recognition comes more acceptance of younger men for the diaconate and [potential candidates] not saying, ‘We’ve got a younger family, [so] we can’t do that,’” he said.

In seeking to draw younger men to the diaconate, the Church needs to do more to bring their families into the vocation — as it has with deacons’ wives — but without disrupting the family, Deacon Lawinger said.

Younger deacons are needed to serve in youth ministries, high schools and universities, said Deacon Joseph Michalak, archdiocesan director of diaconate formation. Younger deacons could also serve in business and men’s ministry.

“These are the areas the diaconate is now being called into, and because of this much greater diversity of ministry, there’s greater need for formation,” he said.

After the fifth century, the number of deacons declined, and the diaconate became more of a transitional step toward priesthood, rather than a distinct vocation. Exceptions include St. Francis of Assisi, who in the 13th century was ordained a permanent deacon rather than a priest.

The Council of Trent called for restoration of the permanent diaconate in the 16th century, but the directive wasn’t enacted. Following calls during World War II and the 1950s to restore the permanent diaconate, the bishops participating in the Second Vatican Council strongly endorsed the restoration, which is reflected in the document “Lumen Gentium” (“Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”), promulgated in 1964. However, the council fathers didn’t clearly articulate the diaconate’s role in the Church, said Deacon Joseph Michalak, archdiocesan director of diaconate formation.

In 1967, Pope Paul VI implemented the Council’s renewal of the permanent diaconate, stating that it should have its own “indelible character” and special grace.

After dioceses experimented with the permanent diaconate in the decades that followed, the Vatican issued basic norms in 1998.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops later developed particular norms for four-stage formation focusing on spiritual, human, intellectual and pastoral dimensions, Deacon Michalak said.

— Susan Klemond

14 • The Catholic Spirit

DIACONATE ORDINATION

December 7, 2017

Patrick Hirl

Alan Nicklaus

Paul Ravnikar

Michael Redfearn

Patrick Hirl, 52, and his wife, Denise, were both discerning calls to religious life when they first met. But then their friends set them up on a blind date.

“What better date for a future nun than a future priest,” he quipped.

After marriage, Patrick’s desire to serve the Church continued. He met a deacon at graduate school at the University of Notre Dame and then at St. Joseph in Hopkins, where he received encouragement and support from Deacon Francis Tangney, now retired, to apply to the diaconate. He said other deacons in the formation program have been great role models, showing firsthand how to integrate family life, secular work and diaconal ministry.

“My greatest hope is to help people inside and outside the Church have an encounter with Jesus and then grow in their relationship with Jesus,” said Hirl, an engineer.

Hirl, a father of four, particularly looks forward to performing baptisms in his diaconate ministry.

“I am excited about the opportunity to be an instrument of the Holy Spirit in creating a new child of God,” he said.

Alan Nicklaus, 53, felt called to a deeper understanding of his faith, so he enrolled in The Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute. “I grew more deeply in love with the Church and open to God’s call on my life,” he said.

He said the 46-page diaconate program candidacy application took him two months to complete. Of the program, he said, “I appreciated the excellent instructors, mostly doctors in their field of study, who imparted a wealth of knowledge and opened my eyes to many treasures of the faith.”

A native of Minneapolis, Nicklaus is a sourcing manager at Strategic Source in Bloomington. He and his wife, Anne, have five children ages 9 to 19.

As part of his diaconate preparation, he worked to identify homebound parishioners at Our Lady of Grace and trained volunteers to visit them. He also volunteered at St. Joseph’s Home for Children in Minneapolis, the Ramsey County jail and St. Therese in New Hope, a senior care facility. After ordination, he looks forward to “[serving] the Church in worship at the altar and to be Christ to all people I meet, especially the imprisoned, the lonely and the ill.”

For 20 years, Paul Ravnikar, 59, felt an “interior nudge from God” about entering the diaconate. It grew stronger as he got older, he said, and in 2004, he attended an inquiry meeting.

“The road to ordination was not a straight path,” he said, “but during these past 13 years, I have grown closer to God and his Church. This lengthy process has been very fruitful for me.”

Ravnikar points to a memorable part of his formation when he served as the cross bearer at the diaconate ordination Mass in 2015.

As part of his formation, he volunteered at Catholic Charities’ St. Joseph’s Home for Children in Minneapolis; Benedictine Health Center at Innsbruck, a senior care facility in New Brighton; and the Ramsey County jail.

A commercial plumber at Seitz Bros. Plumbing in Brooklyn Park, Ravnikar and his wife, Mary, have one daughter and three grandchildren.

As a deacon, he looks forward to serving at Mass, visiting the sick and working with people in a parish.

From the time Michael Redfearn, 40, started working in parish ministry, others encouraged him to pursue the diaconate.

“At first, I have to admit, I was not eager to embrace the call, especially because my children were young,” said Redfearn, who with his wife, Michelle, has three children, 15, 12 and 9. “[But] as my kids got older, and even strangers encouraged me to become a deacon, I took the idea to prayer and heard God calling me to the diaconate also.”

Redfearn, the stewardship and RCIA coordinator at St. Bonaventure in Bloomington, is pursuing a master’s degree in pastoral ministry through the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul.

As part of a project during formation, he interviewed daily Massgoers at St. Bonaventure who were not registered parishioners to learn if there were pastoral needs that the parish wasn’t fulfilling.

“These interviews led most importantly to new friendships and relationships,” he said. “It also led to the parish acquiring materials in Spanish and offering an English as a Second Language class last spring.”

St. Gabriel the Archangel, Hopkins

Our Lady of Peace, Minneapolis

Congratulations

Deacon Dan Brewer

Ordained permanent deacon on December 9 From the Priests, Deacon, Staff and Parish Community West St. Paul

The Parish of St. Gabriel the Archangel in Hopkins wishes to extend our

Congratulations to Deacon Patrick Joseph Hirl

St. Vincent de Paul, Brooklyn Park

St. Wenceslaus, New Prague

Congratulations Deacon Alan Nicklaus

We pray that God would bless your ministry!

Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church and School Community

Congratulations Deacon Dan Brewer

on your ordination to the Permanent Diaconate!

From your brothers and sisters at Community of Christ the Redeemer

COMMUNITY OF CHRIST THE REDEEMER Catholic Lay Association of Christian Faithful

DIACONATE ORDINATION

December 7, 2017

James Reinhardt

Holy Family, St. Louis Park James Reinhardt’s favorite Scripture verse is from 1 Peter: “As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another.” He started feeling like he should be serving the Church as a deacon about 20 years ago, when he was in his late 30s or early 40s.

“I inquired and learned at that time that they would not consider men with children at home. I had several at the time, and unbeknownst to me, several to come,” said Reinhardt, 56, father of 10. “I later learned that the policy of not ordaining men with children in the home had been relaxed.”

That opened the door to his serious discernment of the call for himself and his wife, Nadine. In pursuing the diaconate, “Our love for the Lord and for each other has grown significantly,” Reinhardt said. That love extended to his fellow candidates, he added. “I am certain that they will all be lifelong friends.”

As part of his formation, he connected Holy Family parishioners to local long-term care facilities, where they were able to serve the sick and elderly. As for his own service, “I have no expectations at this time,” he said.

“I am excited to see where the Holy Spirit directs the archbishop to ask me to serve the archdiocese.”

Ronald Schmitz

Holy Trinity, South St. Paul Ronald Schmitz, 56, describes his diaconate formation like a river: “We eventually realize [that] this river is intended to be enjoyed by simply being in it, by flowing with it to its end. The river takes us where it wills; it takes us where God wills.”

He said he’ll trust God’s will when he’s assigned a parish in his new ministry.

“I have enjoyed learning at the St. Paul Seminary [School of Divinity] at the University of St. Thomas, and hope that I can continue to learn about our faith, the Church, ministry and our savior, Jesus Christ,” said Schmitz, president and CEO of Grand Avenue Software in St. Paul. He is married to Peggy Schmitz.

Schmitz credits several priests and deacons with helping him discern his call to the diaconate.

“Their unrelenting love for our Lord and his Church inspired me and helped me to eventually desire to say yes to God’s call,” he said.

He added that the “time, talent, knowledge, enthusiasm, witness and love of Jesus and his Church” among formation instructors is a “tremendous gift to our deacon class and to the entire archdiocese.”

Congratulations,

Donald Tienter

Diaconal duties

St. Cecilia, St. Paul Donald Tienter, 58, long felt what he called “a subtle calling” to serve the Church as a deacon.

“Looking back in retrospect on my life, I have always had a servant’s heart,” he said. He felt “God’s gentle nudging” in prayer and others’ remarks that he’d make a wonderful deacon, or asking if he had ever considered the vocation.

He first thought about the vocation more than 20 years ago, but at that time, his marriage and family life were his first priorities. In 2012, he and his wife, Maria Tice, enrolled in the Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute, where they heard Deacon Joseph Michalak, the archdiocese’s director of diaconate formation, speak about diaconate information sessions.“The spark was rekindled, and here I am,” he said.

Tienter, an information technology specialist and father of five, ages 17-34, served his parish in engagement and marriage ministry during his diaconal formation. Like his classmates, he also volunteered in positions serving poor, elderly and incarcerated people. He encourages other men considering the vocation to be open, listen and “be bold and step through an open door.”

“Trust the process of formation,” he said.

When restoring the permanent diaconate in 1967, Pope Paul VI outlined in “Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem” 11 functions that a bishop could authorize a deacon to fulfill:

1. “To assist the bishop and the priest during liturgical actions ... .”

2. “To administer baptism solemnly and to supply the ceremonies which may have been omitted when conferring it on children or adults.”

3.

“To reserve the Eucharist and to distribute it to himself and to others, to bring it as a Viaticum to the dying and to impart to the people benediction with the Blessed Sacrament ... .”

4. “In the absence of a priest, to assist at and to bless marriages in the name of the Church by delegation from the bishop or pastor ... .”

5. “To administer sacramentals and to officiate at funeral and burial services.”

6. “To read the sacred books of

Scripture to the faithful and to instruct and exhort the people.”

7. “To preside at the worship and

prayers of the people when a priest is not present.”

8. “To direct the liturgy of the word,

particularly in the absence of a priest.”

9. “To carry out, in the name of the

hierarchy, the duties of charity and of administration as well as works of social assistance.”

10. “To guide legitimately, in the

name of the parish priest and of the bishop, remote Christian communities.”

11. “To promote and sustain the apostolic activities of laymen.”

The Parish of St. Vincent de Paul

Deacon John Cleveland!

wishes Deacon Paul Ravnikar

congratulations and blessings on his ministry.

We thank God for His call to you and for your “yes.”

May the Holy Spirit guide you in your ministry.

St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in St. Paul Park congratulates our pastor,

DEACON GORDON BIRD

Ordained to the Order of Permanent Deacon for the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis on December 9, 2017.

The Catholic Spirit • 15

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Galatians 2:19-20

Father Joseph Anthony Andrade, on the 25th anniversary of his ordination.

16 • The Catholic Spirit

December 7, 2017

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given ... and His name shall be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6 A note from The Catholic Spirit: This year, the Fourth Sunday of Advent falls on Dec. 24. Masses prior to 4 p.m.

Dec. 24 will observe the Fourth Sunday of Advent, unless special permission has been granted to a parish to offer a Christmas Eve Mass before that time. Masses celebrated after 4 p.m.

Dec. 24 will commemorate Christmas Eve. Both the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas are holy days of obligation, and both liturgical observances require attendance at Mass.

(There are no “two-for-ones”!) Catholics should plan on attending Mass sometime in honor of the Fourth Sunday of Advent, whether that be at a Vigil Mass on Dec. 23 or at a Mass during the day Dec. 24, and attending Mass sometime in honor of Christmas, whether that be at a Christmas Vigil Mass or on Christmas Day itself.

CATHEDRAL OF ST. PAUL 239 Selby Ave. • St. Paul www.cathedralsaintpaul.org Sat., Dec. 23 Confessions 10–11:30 a.m. & 3:30–5 p.m.

Vigil for Fourth Sunday of Advent: 5:15 p.m. anticipatory Mass Sun., Dec. 24: 8 a.m.,10 a.m. & noon Mass Christmas Masses Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 4 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass with the Children’s Choristers Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day Midnight Mass – Most Rev. Bernard A. Hebda, celebrant with Cathedral Choir (preceded by carols at 11:15 p.m.)

10 a.m. – Mass with Cathedral Choir (Most Rev. Andrew H. Cozzens, celebrant) 8 a.m. and noon – Mass with organ and cantor (9 a.m. Mass at the St. Vincent de Paul campus)

CHURCH OF ST. THERESE OF DEEPHAVEN 18323 Minnetonka Blvd. • Deephaven Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve: 4 p.m. (Vigil), 9 p.m. (Mass at night) Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 8 a.m. & 10 a.m.

Sat., Dec. 30: Feast of the Holy Family: 5 p.m.

Sun., Dec. 31: Feast of the Holy Family: 8 a.m. & 10 a.m.

Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day: 9 a.m.

Sat., Jan. 6: Epiphany: 5 p.m.; Sun., Jan. 7: 8 a.m. & 10 a.m.

Blessings to you this Christmas Season and throughout the New Year!

ST. BARTHOLOMEW CATHOLIC FAITH COMMUNITY 630 E. Wayzata Blvd. • Wayzata 952-473-6601 • www.st-barts.org

Sun., Dec. 24: Fourth Sunday of Advent: 9:30 a.m.

Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve: 3 p.m., 5 p.m. & 10 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 10:30 a.m.

Please join us to celebrate this blessed and holy season!

ST. ALBERT THE GREAT CHURCH E. 29th St. and 32nd Ave. S. • Minneapolis 612-724-3643 • www.saintalbertthegreat.org Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 5 p.m. Children’s Mass, 10 p.m. Candlelight Mass Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 10 a.m Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: 10 a.m.

Rich tradition, open minds, warm hearts!

NATIVITY OF OUR LORD

ALL SAINTS CATHOLIC CHURCH

Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 3 p.m., 4:30 p.m. (church & school auditorium) 6 p.m. & midnight (11:30 p.m. prelude) Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 7 a.m., 8:15 a.m. & 11 a.m.

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 4 p.m. (church) & 4:15 p.m. (Murphy Hall) 6 p.m. (ASL), Midnight Mass Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 9 a.m. & 11 a.m.

Sat., Dec. 30 & Sun., Dec. 31: Feast of the Holy Family Sat.: 5 p.m.; Sun.: 7:30 a.m., 9 a.m., 11 a.m. & 5:30 p.m.

Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: 9 a.m. & 11 a.m.

1938 Stanford Ave. • St. Paul

Please join us on our patronal feast!

BASILICA OF ST. MARY 1600 Hennepin Ave. • Minneapolis 612-333-1381 • www.mary.org Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 3 p.m. Vigil Eucharist with organ, cantor, children’s choirs 5:30 p.m. Vigil Eucharist with Mundus & Juventus, contemporary and youth choirs 8 p.m. Vigil Eucharist with piano, cantor, guitar 11 p.m. Choral music for Christmas with organ, cathedral choir, harp, flute 11:30 p.m. Vigil of Lights with organ, cathedral choir Midnight Solemn Eucharist with organ, cathedral choir, brass, harp Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day 7:30 a.m. Eucharist at dawn with organ, cantor, violin, soprano soloist 9:30 a.m. Solemn Eucharist with organ, cathedral choir brass, strings Noon Solemn Eucharist with organ, cathedral choir, brass, strings 4:30 p.m. Eucharist with music from around the world

OUR LADY OF PEACE 54th St. and 12th Ave. • Minneapolis

19795 Holyoke Ave. • Lakeville

ST. LOUIS KING OF FRANCE 506 Cedar St. • St. Paul

Sat., Dec. 23: Vigil for Fourth Sunday of Advent 5 p.m. Low Mass Sun., Dec. 24: Fourth Sunday of Advent 7 a.m. Low Mass, 9:15 a.m. Sung Mass (with cantor) 11 a.m. High Mass (with quartet), 12:30 p.m. Low Mass Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 5 p.m. Sung Mass, 7 p.m. Mass in French (6:45 p.m. French carols) After the French Mass, the church will be closed until 10:45 p.m.

11:30 p.m. carols and music Midnight Christmas Mass (with choir) Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day 7 a.m. Low Mass, 9:15 a.m. sung Mass 11 a.m. High Mass (with choir), 12:30 p.m. Low Mass

Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve: 4:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 10 a.m.

Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: 10 a.m.

ST. CASIMIR CHURCH

ST. STEPHEN’S CATHOLIC CHURCH

Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve St. Casimir: 4 p.m. & 11 p.m., St. Patrick: 4 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day St. Casimir: 9 a.m.

St. Patrick: 10:45 a.m.

525 Jackson St. • Anoka 763-421-2471 • www.ststephenchurch.org Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 4 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 7 p.m. (Spanish) & 10 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day 8:30 a.m. & 10:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. Spanish) Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day: Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God 9 a.m. (12:30 p.m. Spanish)

May this Christmas season be a special time of grace and blessing!

CHURCH OF SAINT PAUL 1740 Bunker Lake Blvd. NE • Ham Lake

Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve: 4:30 p.m. & 11 p.m.

Incense at both Masses Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 9:30 a.m.

Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day: 10 a.m.

May Jesus be born in your heart this Christmas filling the New Year with Peace!

ST. VINCENT DE PAUL 9100 93rd Ave. N. • Brooklyn Park Fourth Sunday of Advent Sat., Dec. 23: 5 p.m.

Sun., Dec. 24: 8:30 a.m. & 11 a.m.

Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 4 p.m. (two locations), 6 p.m. & 10 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 8:30 a.m. & 11 a.m.

934 Geranium Ave. E. • St. Paul

ST. PATRICK CHURCH 1095 DeSoto St. • St. Paul

The cluster parishes on the east side of St. Paul invite you to join us for the Christmas celebration.

CHURCH OF ST. RITA 8694 80th St. S. • Cottage Grove www.saintritas.org

Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve: 3 p.m., 5 p.m. & 10 p.m.

Music begins at 9:30 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day: 10 a.m.

Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: 10 a.m.

CHURCH OF ST. EDWARD 9401 Nesbitt Ave. S. • Bloomington 952-835-7101 • www.StEdwardsChurch.org Sun., Dec. 24: Christmas Eve 4 p.m. & 10:30 p.m.

Come early for prelude music at 10 p.m.

Mon., Dec. 25: Christmas Day 8:30 a.m. & 10:30 a.m.

Mon., Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God 8:30 a.m. & 10:30 a.m.

Celebrate the Glory, the Wonder, the Miracle of Christmas with us!

December 7, 2017

FAITH & CULTURE

Transforming the culture Recent college grad spreads message of human dignity, sexual integrity

Strong net neutrality protections called critical to faith community Catholic News Service

By Jessica Weinberger For The Catholic Spirit

A

s he anticipated tossing his cap on graduation day, University of Minnesota Duluth biology major Jesse Orenge envisioned transitioning right into medical school. But after joining the Catholic Church as a junior, his plans shifted, along with his outlook.

“Ever since coming into the Catholic Church, God looked at my plans and my heart and said, ‘I have a script for you to follow,’” Orenge said.

That script involved a call to missionary work.

Now the 22-year-old Mound native and parishioner of St. Hubert in Chanhassen travels the country with The Culture Project International, an initiative that promotes virtue through presentations aimed at young people on the dignity of the human person and sexual integrity.

The organization’s mission invites young people “to become fully alive,” in part through living out one’s faith with integrity. It was a concept that Orenge struggled with before becoming Catholic.

Growing up in a Pentecostal home, he understood the importance of faith and God’s word, but he’d often abandon his nice-guy reputation on the weekends and join the party crowd.

He carried that double life into college, but the disconnect between his beliefs and his actions caused him to reassess his priorities and faith.

He began attending Mass at the Newman Center alongside his roommate, a future Fellowship of Catholic University Students missionary. Together, they soaked in UMD chaplain Father Mike Schmitz’s messages, especially on St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which articulates an integrated vision of the human person, including love and sexuality.

“It’s all about willing the good of the other, and growing to love others and loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind and soul, and loving your neighbor as yourself,” Orenge said. “That was a beautiful thing, but [I wondered] how do I do that in my own life?”

He continued to pursue a deeper faith, and he eventually joined the Church with the guidance of his peers and Father Schmitz, whom he selected as his sponsor and godfather.

Orenge first discovered The Culture Project, which is based in Philadelphia, during FOCUS’ annual SEEK conference while visiting exhibitor tables promoting vocations, religious orders and missionary organizations.

Seeing the clear link with the teachings of Theology of the Body and feeling drawn to the organization’s four main pillars — formation, prayer, outreach and community — he felt God was calling him to its mission. Orenge joined in June, weeks after graduation, and made a one-year commitment.

“While Jesse has always been a natural leader and a man of action, by following Christ, his life has taken on greater expanses and greater depths,” said Father Schmitz, whose Q&A-style column appears monthly in The Catholic Spirit. “Through his prayer and his faithful following of Jesus, Jesse has been brought to the place where he is now: serving others by transforming the culture.”

Missionaries with The Culture Project, which was founded in 2014, undergo two months of training on topics ranging from marriage and family preparation to Church teaching on pornography, homosexuality and abortion prior to leading talks.

With one team stationed in Toledo, Ohio, and another in Los Angeles, California, The Culture Project relies on a third team — Orenge’s team — to go wherever it is called.

This year, the traveling team of two men and three

The Catholic Spirit • 17

Jesse Orenge, a parishioner of St. Hubert in Chanhassen, is spending a year serving with The Culture Project, a Pennsylvania-based initiative that promotes virtue, human dignity and sexual integrity through presentations aimed at teenage audiences. Courtesy The Culture Project women has ministered in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Vancouver, with the group sleeping in convents, rectories or other available spaces. Each missionary funds his or her own salary through savings and donations, and travels with only one suitcase and carry-on bag.

Churches, schools or dioceses hosting The Culture Project missionaries choose between one of two presentations: human dignity, which focuses on the splendor of the human person and defines human dignity as the unique value inherent to each person; or sexual integrity, which focuses on how happiness and love can feel unattainable, yet the freedom of living a virtuous life gives deeper meaning to intimacy.

Audiences range from five to 500, and each presentation includes a Q&A session and time for the missionaries to connect with the students or young adults one-on-one.

Sharing a countercultural view on these topics is more important than ever before, Orenge said.

He pointed to statistics on rampant pornography use, citing national expert Fight the New Drug: By 11 years old, 80 percent of boys have been exposed to pornography. Overall, it’s estimated that 33 percent of men and 20 percent of women are addicted to pornography.

He feels affirmed by the difference he’s making through The Culture Project, recalling a time he encouraged a shy eighth-grader to approach his parents about attending Mass more regularly as a family, and the event where a large group of students completed chastity commitment cards after one of his sexual integrity talks.

“I know it’s making a difference, whether it’s from the responses of the kids or their parents or the young adults; I can see it in their faces,” Orenge said. “We’re in the business of planting seeds and allowing the Lord to allow those seeds to grow into beautiful flowers. We, The Culture Project, know that we’ve done our work of proclaiming the truth.”

Orenge wants to show young people that there’s a different, more fulfilling way to live, and that they don’t have to follow the status quo to achieve real happiness and love. And wherever God leads him next, he hopes to be a voice that breaks into a culture so often misguided on love and sex.

“Through my actions, thoughts and words, I want to show the people I encounter and this world that there’s hope, and we cannot do it alone,” he said. “We have to raise the bar and meet the requirement of what love demands.”

The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Communications has urged the Trump administration to keep current net neutrality rules in place because an open internet, he said, is critical to the nation’s faith communities and to how they interact with their members.

“Without open internet principles, which prohibit paid prioritization, we might be forced to pay fees to ensure that our highbandwidth content receives fair treatment on the internet,” said Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vermont.

“Nonprofit communities, both religious and secular, cannot afford to pay to compete with profitable Bishop commercialized content,” he said in a Nov. 28 statement.

Christopher The concept of an open COYNE internet has long been called “net neutrality,” in which internet service providers neither favor nor discriminate against internet users or websites. Neutrality means, for example, providers cannot prioritize one type of content over another, nor can they speed up, slow down or block users access to online content and “Nonprofit services.

On Nov. 21, the communities, current chairman of both religious the Federal Communications and secular, Commission announced his cannot afford to proposal to roll back pay to compete rules on neutrality put in place in 2015 with profitable by the Obama commercialized administration.

Bishop Coyne content.” urged that the current rules remain Bishop Christopher Coyne in place. “Strong net neutrality protections are critical to the faith community to function and connect with our members,” he said.

These protections are “essential to protect and enhance the ability of vulnerable communities to use advanced technology, and necessary for any organization that seeks to organize, advocate for justice, or bear witness in the crowded and overcommercialized media environment,” Bishop Coyne said.

He added: “Robust internet protections are vital to enable our archdioceses, dioceses and eparchies, our parishes, schools and other institutions to communicate with each other and our members, to share religious and spiritual teachings, to promote activities online, and to engage people — particularly younger persons — in our ministries.”

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement that under his plan, “the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet. Instead, the FCC would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices.”

The FCC is scheduled to vote on Pai’s proposal at its monthly hearing Dec. 14. Observers predict the vote will fall along party lines. Chairman Pai is Republican as are Commissioners Brendan Carr and Michael O’Rielly. Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel are Democrats.

18 • The Catholic Spirit

FAITH & CULTURE

For the ages When retirement fund helps care for members, religious communities can better support their ministries

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit

I

n the five decades Sister Kathleen Mary Kiemen has been a religious sister, her work has included teaching, parish ministry and environmental activism. For a time, she also helped fellow members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame transition successfully from working to retirement.

But, as her own life attests, a religious member’s retirement rarely means that he or she is not engaged in some initiative or service. Sister Kathleen Mary, 75, officially retired in January after years of working with the Center for Earth Spirituality and Rural Ministry, the Mankato-based sisters’ environmental stewardship nonprofit. She still spends a significant amount of time volunteering with the Land Stewardship Project, which similarly focuses on farmland stewardship and sustainable agriculture. However, Sister Kathleen Mary has fewer job responsibilities than she did before her retirement, for which she is grateful.

For years, her work helped to fund the needs of older sisters in her community. Now, she’s among the sisters supported by others’ work, she noted with a smile.

According to the National Religious Retirement Office, only 41 percent of the 539 U.S. religious communities that provide data to the office report they are adequately funded for retirement.

Men and women religious historically received small

Sister Kathleen Mary Kiemen is a retired sister who volunteers with the Land Stewardship Project. Her community, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, receives support from the Retirement Fund for Religious. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit stipends for their daily needs, but extra funds were channeled into ministry and education, the NRRO states on its website, www.retiredreligious.org. As the median age of religious rose, the income generated by younger members hasn’t kept up with elderly members’ care expenses. The annual cost of care for men and women religious older than 70 is $42,344 per person, with skilled care reaching beyond $63,000 per person.

For this reason, the NRRO raises funds for the care of retired religious through the Retirement Fund for Religious, which is collecting funds this month. Last year, the School Sisters of Notre Dame Central Pacific Province — which includes the Mankato campus — received more than $1 million from the Retirement Fund for Religious.

The province includes about 950 sisters, with 238 of them associated with the Mankato campus. The Mankato sisters’ median age is 78.

December 7, 2017 The Fund’s support is “very important, as we ... have aging members, we have fewer sisters that are out receiving compensation ... because of age. The benefits that we receive from the Retirement Fund have been very, very helpful,” said School Sister Rose Mary Snaza, the Mankato campus’ assistant treasurer who, at 76, still works full-time.

Last year, the NRRO received more than $30.6 million in donations, which fund direct care assistance, financial education and financial planning. Catholics from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis donated $394,779 to the national fund.

A St. Paul native, Sister Kathleen Mary lives with two other School Sisters on the campus of St. Rose of Lima in Roseville. She was taught by School Sisters at St. Francis de Sales in St. Paul through ninth grade, and then at Good Counsel Academy in Mankato, where she was an aspirant. She entered the community in 1960 and took final vows in 1967. She taught for nine years, earned a master’s in theology, and then began pastoral ministry at parishes in the New Ulm diocese before working at St. Mary in Waverly. She then served in her community’s leadership and earned a second master’s degree before working as the director of justice and outreach at St. Gerard Majella in Brooklyn Park from 1995 to 2004. In 2005, she began helping retiring sisters and leading the Center for Earth Spirituality and Rural Ministry, which includes a community garden with 200 plots. She worked as the center’s director and co-director until the end of January.

From her days helping other sisters transition from working to retirement, Sister Kathleen Mary knows it can be tempting for people, consecrated religious or not, to place their personal worth in their work, not their humanity. And, so, although religious men and women often do continue to contribute to the Church and community well beyond their 60s, that’s not the reason they deserve the broader Catholic community’s support.

With the retirement fund, elderly sisters “can be cared for in their aging,” Sister Kathleen Mary said. “It helps us gain funds to support our sisters, so at the same time, we can carry out our ministries.”

December 7, 2017

FAITH & CULTURE

The Catholic Spirit • 19

Silver screen sermon Priest plays himself in ‘Lady Bird’

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service

P

art of a voice-over in the trailer for “Lady Bird” ­— playing over scenes from the movie and in between dialogue — comes from a homily delivered to Catholic high school students attending a school Mass in the beginning of the movie.

“We’re afraid that we’ll never escape our past. We’re afraid of what the future will bring. We’re afraid we won’t be loved, we won’t be liked, and we won’t succeed,” the priest says.

Not all of the sermon, even what was shown in the trailer, made it to the final cut of the coming-of-age movie, but that’s OK with Claretian Father Paul Keller, who spoke these words.

“Making connections, that’s what preachers do,” he told Catholic News Service Nov. 20 in a phone interview while he was at the airport in Ottawa, Ontario, awaiting a flight to Los Angeles.

The priest looks natural addressing Father Paul the movie’s students in the congregation KELLER because he really is.

He has celebrated Masses before at the church, St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Altadena, California. It’s a real church — not a Hollywood set.

Moviegoers won’t be trying to remember what other movies they have seen the priest in — as they might do for the two actors portraying priests in the movie, directing school plays with students from the fictional all-girls Immaculate Heart School, where the main character, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) attends, and the neighboring Jesuit high school.

In the movie credits, Father Paul Keller is listed as playing Father Paul Keller, a priest who is never actually named in the movie because his role is celebrating four Masses, shown in quick cuts during the movie’s school year. The Internet Movie Database page for “Lady Bird” describes him as “a priest in real life.”

It is precisely as a priest in real life — residing at San Gabriel Mission, not far from the church used in the movie — that Father Keller got his role. The parish priests weren’t available for the shoot, so they asked nearby priests who have helped at the parish if they could be in the movie.

Preaching to Hollywood Father Keller, originally from Iowa, was recently named provincial prefect of spirituality for the Claretian Missionary Fathers, which in his words means he’s in charge of morale and he travels a lot. His schedule also is flexible, so he was free for what turned out to be a 12-hour day on the movie set. His new role in the order’s province also meant he just cut short his time ministering in Tanzania to five months instead of five years.

For the movie, the priest gave four homilies, and a small portion of one was used in the film. But he also led the “congregation” of actors in prayer and distributed ashes for an Ash Wednesday service that made the cut.

He explained to the cast how they should do certain things at a Mass, such as hold their hands for Communion and make the sign of the cross. His day on the set started with his homilies, all culled from previous ones he had given, especially from his six years working at a Catholic high school.

He addressed the actors and extras, who were wearing Catholic school uniforms, as if they were truly getting this homily, since this wasn’t a script. For the first homily, for the movie’s Mass at the start of the school year, he spoke for 12 minutes instead of his usual 10 for homilies. When he was done, the congregation stood up as if to say the Nicene Creed and someone on set yelled: “Cut!” “It was deadly silent for two beats and then there was applause,” the priest said.

The movie’s writer and director, Greta Gerwig, came running up to him with tears in her eyes and told him, “That was so perfect.”

It turns out, he said, his sermon’s message about fear and love and how most people are motivated by one or the other in the choices they make was essentially a summary of the movie.

Gerwig met Father Keller at San Gabriel Mission prior to the movie shoot and told him she had sketches for the homilies but that he could say what he wanted.

“I was preaching right at them,” the priest told CNS. He took his role seriously, saying he likes working with people who don’t go to church, citing, but not comparing this to, his prison ministry.

The Claretian charism is missionary evangelization, he said, which makes him pretty much comfortable speaking anywhere.

Beauty in Catholic education Father Keller’s takeaway from the long day, which he was paid for, was “how

Saoirse Ronan, left, stars in the movie “Lady Bird.” At right is writer and director Greta Gerwig.CNS

“There’s plenty of stuff to make a joke out of [in Catholic schools], but what if you didn’t? What if you took it seriously and showed all the things that were beautiful about it?”

Greta Gerwig, “Lady Bird” director

ridiculously hard they work” and how nice everyone was. The next day he told Gerwig how much he enjoyed it, and she promised he would get another role sometime.

Father Keller said “Lady Bird’s” characters are not always moral, but they are human, not caricatures.

The CNS classification for the film is L — limited adult audience — citing its underage nonmarital sexual activity, mature themes, a same-sex kiss, a scene of marijuana use and frequent coarse language. CNS reviewer Kurt Jensen said the film “shows a very strong old-school moral compass at work” but the “problematic material” he cites “requires thoughtful discernment by grown viewers well-grounded in their faith.”

Father Keller said the movie is filled with characters that he wanted to know more about and that it was a compliment to Catholic schools, which both Gerwig and Ronan attended. Gerwig, who is not Catholic, told America magazine: “There’s plenty of stuff to make a joke out of [in Catholic schools], but what if you didn’t? What if you took it seriously and showed all the things that were beautiful about it?”

On the set, during breaks and lunch, some of the actors came up to Father Keller to thank him, talk about their faith

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The next day he went back to being a priest in real life, but when “Lady Bird” was being shown in film festivals before its public release, he was paying attention. His brother talked him into going to the Telluride Film Festival where it was being shown in Telluride, Colorado, over Labor Day weekend.

The priest drove there from Los Angeles only because he could stay halfway at a Claretian parish. He stood in line for the movie, counting how many people were in front of him and not sure if he would get in, when he heard someone say, “Father Paul!”

It was Gerwig, who then escorted him into the show, where he sat with her mom. Gerwig’s mother wanted to be sure the priest knew the movie was not drawn completely from Gerwig’s real life, noting the character’s mother gives her daughter the silent treatment, something she said she wouldn’t do.

Taking this all in, months later, the priest said it almost seems like an accident to him. He didn’t know exactly what he had been signing up for.

“I could’ve been in a direct-to-DVD cartoon talking to turtles,” he said, noting how he got to take part in a movie that is already getting award buzz.

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20 • The Catholic Spirit

FOCUS ON FAITH

SUNDAY SCRIPTURES

Deacon Michael Nevin

Are you prepared?

As we draw ever closer to the great celebration of Christmas, many of us are busy preparing for the festivities that accompany such a great season of joy.

The stores have been filled with holiday displays for months, front yards are resplendent with lights and decorations, and life is busy buying gifts for our loved ones.

With all the activity leading up to Christmas, it is easy to forget that the Church has set aside this liturgical season of Advent not only to prepare for Jesus’ first coming in Christmas, but also to renew our ardent desire for his second coming on the last day.

December 7, 2017

The Church is asking us to reflect on a difficult question: Are we prepared for the return of Jesus Christ to judge the living and the dead?

The second Letter of St. Peter says that God has allowed a period of delay for his second coming because he is patient and “does not wish that any should perish, but all should come to repentance.”

But after this time of patience, the Lord will come like a thief, and the heavens and the earth will pass away by fire, and all our conduct and secrets of our heart will be brought to light. Because we will be judged by how we responded to God’s grace in loving God and our neighbor, the Letter of St. Peter admonishes us to prepare for this judgment by “conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the Day of God.” Likewise, it says, “Be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace.” Our eternal beatitude in heaven, or our eternal suffering in hell will depend on our preparedness for his glorious return when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

The Gospel from St. Mark gives us a model of

preparedness in the greatest of the prophets, St. John the Baptist. St. John was blessed with an encounter with Jesus and Mary before his birth, and this encounter with grace led him to a vocation to go out and preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins, making the world ready for the first coming of Jesus into the world.

Following this example, we are also called by our own vocation to holiness and our encounter with grace to humbly and boldly proclaim to the world that one mightier than we is coming.

May God renew in us this Advent the desire to pray, “Our Lord, come!” and find us prepared for his glorious coming.

Deacon Nevin was ordained for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2010 and serves the parishes of St. Thomas the Apostle in Corcoran and Sts. Peter and Paul in Loretto. He also works with the Institute of Diaconate Formation at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity and serves the archdiocesan Office of Worship.

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, Dec. 10 Second Sunday of Advent Is 40:1-5, 9-11 2 Pt 3:8-14 Mk 1:1-8 Monday, Dec. 11 Is 35:1-10 Lk 5:17-26 Tuesday, Dec. 12 Our Lady of Guadalupe Zec 2:14-17 Lk 1:26-38

Wednesday, Dec. 13 St. Lucy, virgin and martyr Is 40:25-31 Mt 11:28-30 Thursday, Dec. 14 St. John of the Cross, priest and doctor of the Church Is 41:13-20 Mt 11:11-15 Friday, Dec. 15 Is 48:17-19 Mt 11:16-19

SEEKING ANSWERS

Father Michael Schmitz

When sharing the faith, don’t just rely on the ‘three Ps’ Q. I have a co-worker with whom I get along very well who has taken a deeper interest in Catholicism. How do I best direct him to a parish that will make him feel welcome and engage him in a personal way?

A. Thank you for being so willing to help your friend in his journey to the Catholic Church. The fact that he knows you as a Catholic is to your credit. So many of us live and work in such a way that no one we work with would have any clue whether or not we belong to Christ. You must be living out your faith in such a way that he not only knows it, but also finds it attractive. Praise God for your willingness to be a public follower of Jesus!

That said, I see three issues with the question as you present it: Programs, Professionals and Procedures.

As Catholics, we can tend to be a bit preoccupied with these “three Ps.” When it comes to sharing the faith or helping someone come to a deeper relationship with Christ and his Church, we default to the question about Programs. “Is there a class happening somewhere for people interested in Jesus?” “Where can my friend get ‘plugged in’ in this parish?” “What does the parish offer for those who are on the fence?”

Saturday, Dec. 16 Sir 48:1-4, 9-11 Mt 17:9a, 10-13

Tuesday, Dec. 19 Jgs 13:2-7, 24-25a Lk 1:5-25

Friday, Dec. 22 1 Sm 1:24-28 Lk 1:46-56

Sunday, Dec. 17 Third Sunday of Advent Is 61:1-2a, 10-11 1 Thes 5:16-24 Jn 1:6-8, 19-28

Wednesday, Dec. 20 Is 7:10-14 Lk 1:26-38

Saturday, Dec. 23 Mal 3:1-4, 23-24 Lk 1:57-66

Monday, Dec. 18 Jer 23:5-8 Mt 1:18-25

Thursday, Dec. 21 Sg 2:8-14 Lk 1:39-45

Now, as someone who appreciates the usefulness of Programs (and who has written and filmed a few of them), I need to offer a word of caution. Programs don’t replace people. Jesus never called people to show up to participate in a Program. He didn’t send the apostles out into the world to create Programs. And the Church has not spread across the globe through her fantastic use of Programs. Yet, this is often our default.

We next look to the Professionals. We will say things like, “If only we had a priest who was more friendly and welcoming.” Or if your priest is welcoming, we may wish that he was more accessible. “If only my friend could meet Father and spend time with him, I bet Father could answer all of his questions.” If we don’t look to the priest, then we look to the paid staff of the parish to perform this task. We have become a Church where we want to give the everyday work of the ordinary disciple to the Professionals.

Of course, our priests have the role of being missionaries themselves, and priests must take that call seriously and actively. And yes, we want the staff of the parish to share themselves with the world beyond the walls of the church building. But as the past four or five popes have been reminding us, the missionary work of the Church is not limited to a certain “class” of Christian; it does not belong to the Professionals. It is the work of the average and ordinary disciple to reach out to people and in places where priests and staff cannot.

Because of the truth that reaching out is not the result of a good Program and is not solely the responsibility of the Professionals, we know that outreach is the job of the person in the pew. A problem with this, even when Catholics agree with this and want to live it out, is that the tendency is to ask for a Procedure. “What is the proper Procedure for sharing my faith with my friend?”

“What are the steps that I should lead them through?”

I acknowledge that we most often bring up these kinds of questions because Catholicism can often seem so “Procedure bound” and so complex that we assume there must be something like “How to Share Your Faith With Anyone (in Five Easy Steps).”

Sunday, Dec. 24 Fourth Sunday of Advent 2 Sm 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16 Rom 16:25-27 Lk 1:26-38

The response that I offer here is to raise your eyes above the need to rely exclusively on Programs, Professionals and Procedures. Instead, begin to trust in a fourth P: Personal. Rather than hoping that your friend meets a friendly, welcoming priest or community, why not be the friendly, welcoming Catholic?

Your co-worker doesn’t immediately need a relationship with some random stranger at the parish; he already has a relationship with you. You are his connection to the Catholic Church. You are the one who will give him the sign regarding whether or not he will meet people at the parish willing to allow their schedules and lives to be “interrupted” by a stranger who wants to know Jesus better. If you, who already has a relationship with him, are not willing to share your relationship with Jesus, who in your parish will?

If you are not willing to make the effort to invite him to brunch after Mass with you and your family, who in your parish will randomly notice the new person sitting in the pew and ask him?

St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Thessalonica about how he interacted with them. He wrote, “With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us” (1 Thes 2:8). The model Apostle highlights that he was not going to rely upon Programs, Professionals or Procedures. He would allow the Gospel to be Personalized through him.

Your co-worker already has a connection with your parish: you.

One last note on “sharing your faith.” That sounds an awful lot like giving a lesson on the Catechism. It doesn’t have to be. It can simply be this: Sharing your relationship with Jesus with the people who are interested. But more on that later.

Father Schmitz is director of youth and young adult ministry for the Diocese of Duluth and chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Reach him at fathermikeschmitz@gmail.com.

THIS CATHOLIC LIFE • COMMENTARY

December 7, 2017

TWENTY SOMETHING

I’ve been reflecting on the art of gift giving —

Christina Capecchi

The art of giving, the challenge of Advent Oprah Winfrey sings and claps when presented with the $69 lunch box that makes her 2017 “Favorite Things” list.

“I looooove!” she belts out in mock falsetto.

She doesn’t need to finish her sentence by naming the object of her love. The list is expansive and, in a video of the selection process for her biggest gift guide, it covers 102 items, totaling $13,400 in value and ranging from a $2,000 55-inch Samsung highdefinition TV down to a $10 earbud case.

“People spend the best years of their lives either trying to untangle their charger cords or track down missing earbuds,” Oprah quips in the December issue of her magazine, O, which pictures all her favorite things.

Also among them are a $600 espresso maker, a $200 bird house, a $200 automated dog bone and a $250 “lip vault” by Ulta containing 25 tubes of “lip mousse.” Oprah claims to have ordered them “for every woman I know,” and, incidentally, they were sold out before Thanksgiving.

There’s plenty of warm-fuzzy — buffalo plaid on slippers, shirts, pajamas, blankets and boots — and frivolous, like $50 blueberries. “My new definition of everyday luxury,” Oprah writes, “a five-pound box of organic wild blueberries frozen within 24 hours of harvest from Josh Pond Farm in Maine.”

It seems every so-called “influencer” now curates a gift guide if, for nothing else, the kickback from Amazon affiliate links. Online shoppers take the expert’s word, making transactions that require a

FAITH AT HOME Laura Kelly Fanucci

The ones who won’t be home for the holidays This season sparkles with joy. We open our homes to family and friends, greeting each other at wreathdecked doors under twinkling lights.

But a small moment often catches in our throat. We set one less place for Thanksgiving dinner. Or we cross a name off this year’s Christmas list.

Wherever we gather around holiday tables this year, there will be holes left by those who aren’t there.

Relatives who have died. Loved ones lost to addiction.

Babies who never got to be held. Families divided by divorce. Gaping holes left by grief.

Other changes are temporary but still weigh heavy on the heart. The kid not coming back from college this year. The family members deployed. The friends on the other side of the globe.

Holidays often set this truth in stark relief: Our families — and our lives — don’t always look the way we expected or planned.

I learned — after infertility and miscarriage and

The Catholic Spirit • 21

what it can do for us, at its best, and what it neglects to do at its hastiest.

iStock/Nadianb nanosecond of engagement.

And so goes the drumbeat of commercialism: more, more, more.

All the while we Christians are called to answer Advent’s hushed invitation for less, less, less. To clear out our closets and turn off our phones, to resist the click-and-procure in favor of the wait-and-wonder.

What a challenge it is to make space for the other, for the divine. Filling sets off all our bells and whistles; emptying requires discernment and allows for quiet.

Americans prefer the former. We have so much self-storage space, the Self Storage Association once pointed out, it is physically possible that every American could stand at the same time under the canopy of self-storage roofing.

I’ve been reflecting on the art of gift giving — what it can do for us, at its best, and what it neglects to do at its hastiest. The more you put in, the more you get out.

My neighbor recently showed me her favorite Christmas picture book, Holly Hobbie’s 2007 charmer “Toot & Puddle: Let It Snow,” in which a pair of best friends — who happen to be pigs — struggle to determine the perfect gifts for each other. Puddle

child loss — that smiling faces on Christmas cards don’t tell the whole story. Maybe the parents lost so many babies before they finally got to bring one home. Maybe they never wanted a huge brood, but the kids kept coming. Maybe their marriage is crumbling and no one knows.

Human nature is quick to judge what we see on the surface, quick to idealize others’ lives. But the truth runs deeper.

I look at my own family, and I ache for my children who aren’t here and my brother who’s long gone. I want to set three more places at our table, even as I delight in those around me.

But here’s a truth worth celebrating in a season of wonder: We keep going.

Suffering and grief are met by an even stronger force: that God made human hearts resilient. We do not have to despair when our reality does not match our hopes or others’ expectations. We can still embrace the good work of living out our callings.

Even amid the dreams that have died and the shadows of what might have been, we can still show up and choose joy.

Think about the holiest of families. Mary and Joseph could never have imagined how parenthood would begin for them.

But both embraced the life that God set before them, even with its suffering and heartache. They must have known great joy, too. Holiness was caught up in all of it.

So do not fear this year if your heart aches for the ones who aren’t here. You are not alone.

After a month that started with All Saints and All Souls and ended in Thanksgiving, we can be grateful that our struggles are part of a greater mystery: The

labors in his attic, painting an image of the twosome in the woods. Toot, meanwhile, spends “every spare minute in his workshop in the basement” building a sled on wheels — one that will work with or without snow.

“He knew that the best present was usually something you made yourself, a one-of-a-kind thingamajig, not just a whatsit anyone could buy in a store,” Hobbie writes.

Indeed, the sweetest gifts require a commodity more precious than treasure: time. That’s the gift my mom extends to me every day with her availability and assistance, delighting in the giving, expecting nothing in return. Time is the resource we try to circumvent with apps and outsourcing, but it can never be replicated.

If you want Advent to remake your heart — to stretch it out like pizza dough and squish it back into something soft and supple — you must make the time for real giving, for glitter and glue and hours and minutes.

Leave the lip vault to Oprah.

Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights.

Even amid the dreams that have died and the shadows of what might have been, we can still show up and choose joy.

communion of saints in which the living and the dead are held together in the love of God. Together we are only — but always — joined in this sacred wholeness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “We believe in the communion of all the faithful of Christ, those who are pilgrims on earth, the dead who are being purified, and the blessed in heaven, all together forming one Church.”

Look around the table at those here to celebrate with you. Remember those who are gone. When you find yourself holding them together ­— the living and the dead, the lost and the found ­— then you enter more deeply into this holy mystery.

Even in absence, we can love in the present tense.

Fanucci, a parishioner of St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove, is a mother, writer and director of a project on vocations at the Collegeville Institute in Collegeville.

She is the author of several books, including “Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting,” and blogs at www.motheringspirit.com.

22 • The Catholic Spirit

THIS CATHOLIC LIFE • COMMENTARY

THE LOCAL CHURCH

For an apology to truly resonate, it cannot be a carefully crafted public relations message. Instead, an authentic and complete apology is one that signifies a person will change his or her life.

Father Nathaniel Meyers

The art of apology My mother passed away this summer rather suddenly, but her many lessons remain with our family. While I learned countless things from my mom, one of the most important things she taught me was the significance of an apology.

Unsurprisingly, as a child I would do stupid, foolish, inconsiderate and selfish things followed by a quick “I’m sorry” (usually prompted when my behavior produced undesired consequences for me personally).

Mom would respond to these rushed apologies with a steadfast refrain: “‘Sorry’ means you’ll change.”

I have been thinking about this motherly instruction in the wake of the various reports of sexual misconduct by major figures in our society. Whether these accusations involve politicians, movie titans or journalists, each of them has produced some form of an apology. Yet, despite these apologies, it seems that few people are convinced of the accused person’s contrition or that justice is being served through such apologies.

Why do these apologies from prominent men in our culture come across as empty gestures?

The answer can be found in the fact that we see no real sense of change on the horizon. For an apology to truly resonate, it cannot be a carefully crafted public relations message. Instead, an authentic and complete apology is one that signifies a person will change his or her life. In essence, a real apology is a statement of conversion that begins with accepting responsibility for one’s own life. Excuses, scapegoats and conditions are not included in sincere apologies. A good apology begins to redress the errant behavior by acknowledging the truth that one has sinned.

Sin is an offense against God and his creation, so the

best way for us to offer a valuable apology is to consider the damage our behavior has caused in our relationship with God and our fellow man. The other person’s faults are not our concern when we offer an apology; the focus must remain entirely on our own responsibility and the impact our behavior has had on another.

Naturally, as Catholics, any sincere apology to another person will also be accompanied by a sacramental confession to God. In fact, the sacrament of penance is a perfect place to begin our efforts at reconciliation with other people, for a good confession not only bestows God’s forgiveness, but it also grants us the grace of conversion to overcome future sin.

Part of our confession to God involves a firm purpose of amendment. In seeking to turn away from sin, we must also have a specific plan of how to change our life. The amendment that we seek to produce in our life cannot be a vague sentiment to try again or be better, but it must have concrete goals on how we will turn our life over once again to the good things of God. Apologies that take full responsibility for one’s own action, acknowledge the damage caused by the offense and clearly articulate a means of becoming virtuous are what allow the process of reconciliation to begin.

In apologizing for our sins, our purpose is to hold ourselves to a higher standard so that our lives may present no obstacles to Christ in this world.

Father Meyers is pastor of St. Francis Xavier in Buffalo.

If you suspect abuse of a minor, your first call should be to law enforcement.

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You are also encouraged to contact the archdiocese’s Victim Assistance Program at 651-291-4475.

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For confidential, compassionate assistance from an independent and professional local care provider, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, contact Canvas Health at 612-379-6363.

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BEHINDTHESCENES

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December 7, 2017

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CALENDAR

December 7, 2017 Dining out

CALENDAR submissions

Senior Christmas luncheon — Dec. 12: Noon at St. Richard, 7540 Penn Ave. S., Richfield. RSVP to 612-869-2426. www.strichards.com.

Pancake breakfast and bake sale — Dec. 17: 9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. at St. Jerome, 380 E. Roselawn Ave. (lower entrance), Maplewood. www.st.jerome-church.org.

DEADLINE: Noon Thursday, 14 days before the anticipated Thursday date of publication. We cannot guarantee a submitted event will appear in the calendar.

Priority is given to events occurring before the next issue date.

2Oth annual Festival of Lessons and Carols — Dec. 15: 7 p.m. at St. Bartholomew, 630 E. Wayzata Blvd., Wayzata. Featuring Father Joncas.

952-473-6601 or www.st-barts.org.

Carols & Chestnuts — Dec. 15: 7:30 p.m. at Guardian Angels, 8260 Fourth St. N., Oakdale. www.guardian-angels.org.

Rejoice! Christmas Concert — Dec. 17: 2 p.m. at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1725 Kennard St., Maplewood. www.presentationofmary.org.

ITEMS MUST INCLUDE the following to be considered for publication: • Time and date of event • Full street address of event • Description of event • C ontact information in case of questions ONLINE: www.thecatholicspirit.com/

Ongoing groups Faithful spouses support group — Third Tuesday of each month: 7–8:30 p.m. at the Chancery, 777 Forest St., St. Paul. For those who are living apart from their spouses because of separation or divorce. 651-291-4438 or faithfulspouses@archspm.org.

calendarsubmissions

FAX: 651-291-4460 MAIL: “Calendar,” The Catholic Spirit 777 Forest St., St. Paul, MN 55106

More online:

Career transition group meeting — Third Thursday of each month: 7:30 a.m. at Holy Name of Jesus, 155 County Road 24, Medina. www.hnoj.org/career-transition-group.

www.thecatholicspirit.com/calendar

Wednesdays: 10:30 a.m.–noon at St. Joseph’s Hospital, second floor, maternity classroom 2500, 45 W. 10th St., St. Paul.

Friday Night at the Friary — Third Friday of each month: 7–9 p.m. at Franciscan Brothers of Peace, 1289 Lafond Ave., St. Paul. Men, ages 18-35, are invited for prayer and fellowship. www.facebook.com/queenofpeacefriary.

Parish events

Music

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 submission.

The Catholic Spirit • 23

Dementia support group — Second Tuesday of each month: 7–9 p.m. at The Benedictine Center at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. 651-777-7251 or www.stpaulsmonastery.org.

CARITAS cancer support group —

Christmas tree sale — Through Dec. 24 at St. Pascal Baylon, 1757 Conway St., St. Paul.

3–9 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m.–9 p.m. weekends.

Bible Study, Catholicism: The Pivotal Players — Tuesdays through Dec. 12: 7–8:30 p.m. at St. Mark, 2001 Dayton Ave., St. Paul. www.saintmark-mn.org.

Prayer/worship Taize Prayer — First Friday of each month: 7:30 p.m. at St. Richard, 7540 Penn Ave. S., Richfield. www.strichards.com/first-fridays.

Taize Prayer — Third Friday of each month: 7 p.m. at The Benedictine Center at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood.

651-777-7251 or www.stpaulsmonastery.org.

Retreats Advent days of prayer — Dec. 14: 9:30 a.m.– 2:45 p.m. at Franciscan Retreat and Spiritual Center, 16385 St. Francis Lane, Prior Lake. www.franciscanretreats.net/adventdaysofprayer.aspx.

Retreat for families led by Patrick Conley — Dec. 16: 8:30 a.m.–2 p.m. at Immaculate Conception, 4030 Jackson St. NE, Columbia Heights. www.iccsonline.org.

St. Catherine University, 2004 Randolph Ave., Coeur de Catherine Conference Room 362, St. Paul.

Singles Sunday Spirits walking group for 50-plus Catholic singles — ongoing Sundays: For Catholic singles to meet and make friends.

The group usually meets in St. Paul on Sunday afternoons. Kay at 651-426-3103 or Al at 651-482-0406.

Singles group — ongoing second Saturday each month: 6:15 p.m. at St. Vincent de Paul, 9100 93rd Ave. N., Brooklyn Park. Gather for a potluck supper, conversation and games. 763-425-0412.

Young adults Christmas caroling on Summit Avenue — Dec. 13 and 20: 7–8:30 p.m. Meets at the Cathedral of St. Paul, Hayden Hall, 239 Selby Ave., St. Paul.

Organized by Cathedral Young Adults. www.facebook.com/events/130077757639253/.

Other events Christmas at the Monastery, 10th anniversary — Dec. 9: 4–7 p.m. at 2675 Benet Road, St. Paul. www.tinyurl.com/christmasmonastery2017.

The 3 1/2 Stories of Christmas — Dec. 16: 7–8:30 p.m. at St. Pius V, 410 Colvill St. W., Cannon Falls. www.spvadventplay.brownpapertickets.com.

Women with Spirit Bible Study — Tuesdays through April 10: 9:30–11:30 a.m. at Pax Christi, 12100 Pioneer Trail, Eden Prairie. www.paxchristi.com.

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24 • The Catholic Spirit

THE LAST WORD

Seeking the ‘Night of Silence’

Daniel Kantor of St. Thomas the Apostle in Minneapolis plays the piano in his Bloomington home. He wrote the Advent hymn “Night of Silence” in 1981, and the piece has been performed and recorded by choral groups, ensembles and singers around the world.

Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

Best-selling Advent hymn’s composer aims to draw audience into the quiet of the season

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit

I

t was the light that caught Daniel Kantor’s eye.

He was on retreat in Superior, Wisconsin, praying in a chapel with thick, block glass windows. Although it was September, the quality of white light that filtered through them reminded him of snow and winter and of home.

He was a junior at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul studying piano, and he was still adjusting to city living after growing up in small-town Spooner, Wisconsin. The surprising thought of winter made him nostalgic for Advent and Christmas, and of being home with family.

He took that feeling to his piano, where he wrote the first draft of what would become the Advent hymn “Night of Silence.”

That was in 1981. The following year, St. Thomas’ liturgical choir performed the piece at the university’s Christmas concert. Then, two years later, GIA Publications, a major liturgical music publishing house in Chicago, published it. It lists the piece as its bestselling Christmas octavo, or booklet-style sheet music, with more than 30,000 copies sold. According to GIA’s website, “‘Night of Silence’ has been broadcast worldwide on PBS and NPR, and performed and recorded by some of the world’s finest choral groups, orchestras, ensembles and singers.”

Kantor, a parishioner of St. Thomas the Apostle in Minneapolis, is amazed that “Night of Silence” has continued to resonate so well with choirs and their audiences. Other liturgical composers — including locals David Haas and Lori True — have created new arrangements of the piece for different ensemble types.

Thirty-six years after writing the piece, Kantor, 57, said he feels more like its “steward” than its owner.

Because of its success, and because it’s available in several forms, he started building a website to serve as a resource to help people find the arrangement that best fits their needs. Then he realized the website’s purpose should be broader and bigger, and draw people into the meaning of the song, so they can more deeply engage with the season of Advent.

The website, www.nightofsilence.com, includes links to the song’s various arrangements, but it also includes videos and blog posts explaining the story behind the song and reflections on Advent symbolism such as the rose, the “holy practice of patient waiting” and the cosmic Christ of Advent. Contributors include Haas, fellow composer Father Michael Joncas and Stillwater iconographer Nicholas Markell.

Kantor sees the website filling a real need.

“I think Advent is being elbowed out,” he said. “We go from Thanksgiving to Black Friday ... and the next thing you know, we’re into Christmas. Advent has all but disappeared, at least in the secular world. And even in the Catholic world, it’s easy to honor the season of Advent by attending a Sunday service, but it should be more than one hour on Sunday morning. Advent is an opportunity to lower ourselves down, to empty ourselves, to quiet ourselves, and do that at a time of year when we are more busy than we are through the rest of the year.”

The preparation inherent in Advent points to a beginning, not an end, he said, noting that in the Church, Christmas doesn’t end on Dec. 25, but lasts through the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

“I don’t know that you can build up to something

December 7, 2017

‘Night of Silence’ Cold are the people, winter of life, We tremble in shadows this cold endless night, Frozen in the snow lie roses sleeping, Flowers that will echo the sunrise, Fire of hope is our only warmth, Weary, its flame will be dying soon.

Voice in the distance, call in the night, On wind you enfold us you speak of the light, Gentle on the ear you whisper softly, Rumors of a dawn so embracing, Breathless love awaits darkened souls, Soon will we know of the morning.

Spirit among us, shine like the star, Your light that guides shepherds and kings from afar, Shimmer in the sky so empty, lonely, Rising in the warmth of your Son’s love, Star unknowing of night and day, Spirit we wait for your loving Son. Silent night, holy night, All is calm, all is bright, Round yon Virgin Mother and child, Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace, Sleep in heavenly peace.

Weary, its flame will be dying soon. like Christmas without preparing for it,” Kantor said.

“Christmas is deserving of that kind of presence in our life.”

As a song, “Night of Silence” has been used to bridge Advent and Christmas, as it is a “quodlibet” with the classic “Silent Night.” As such, it begins with Kantor’s music and lyrics, but then switches to “Silent Night,” and then the two are sung simultaneously, the new hymn complementing the familiar carol. The quodlibet technique is difficult to achieve, Father Joncas observes in a video about the piece’s origins.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is a work of genius,’” Father Joncas said. “A quodlibet ... is very hard to write. It is a counter melody that stands on its own and is perfectly legitimately sung without any reference to another melody, but when that other melody is brought in and the two play against each other, that is just glory.”

Connecting “Night of Silence” with “Silent Night” gives the piece a “sense of nostalgia and a connection with our past and a connection with our tradition and where we’ve been,” Kantor said. “It takes ... ‘Silent Night’ and breaks it open and makes it new again by

redirecting people to that time in the liturgical year that precedes Christmas.”

Because “Night of Silence” includes “Silent Night,” choirs often use the piece throughout Advent and into the Christmas season, Kantor noted.

The song’s imagery includes roses in the snow, a symbol Kantor delves into in a blog post, “The Advent Rose.” Noting the 15th-century Advent hymn, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” he wrote that the symbol has “a rich and ancient history” with “paradoxical meanings.” The post goes on to explain the rose in Scripture and tradition, from the Rose of Sharon and the Virgin Mary as the mystical rose to the Golden Rose, an ornament that the pope traditionally sends to Catholic dignitaries on Lent’s Laetare Sunday.

“The rose is both a symbol of purity and passion; heavenly perfection and earthly passion; virginity and fertility; death and life,” Kantor wrote. “What the rose means to Catholics in the United States might be different to Anglicans in England.”

“Night of Silence” has resonated beyond the Catholic Church. St. Olaf College music professor John Ferguson arranged a score for voices and instruments for the Northfield college’s annual Christmas concert.

Well-known hymn composer Marty Haugen also featured the song in a 1995 album named “Night of Silence,” and he traditionally ends an Advent concert with the piece at Mayflower United Church of Christ in Minneapolis, where he is a composer in residence.

“Traditionally, there haven’t been many Advent [carols],” Haugen said. “It’s very hard to create a new musical piece that catches on as well as “O Come, O Come Emmanuel; that’s always going to be the staple for communities. But ‘Night of Silence’ comes close.”

He added: “Dan has tried to say that what we sing can also help shape how we understand the season, and I think music, as we all know with Christmas carols, we couldn’t do Christmas without the carols; it just wouldn’t [feel like] ... the holidays. ‘Night of Silence’ was intended to be an Advent carol, and I think it spawned more writing of Advent music because people realized that was an unmet need.”

Simplicity shapes Kantor’s work as a graphic designer, and his life with his wife, Sara, in their Bloomington home, he said, where he believes “less is more.”

“We live in a smaller house. We’ve learned the benefits of paring down and not surrounding ourselves with a lot of noise and stuff we don’t need or use,” he said. “Advent is the season for minimalists because it’s asking us to pare down, to get rid of the noise in our lives, to quiet our minds.”

He added: “I’m not surprised now in hindsight that at a time in my life when I really needed to compose a piece that was somewhat healing for me to do, that I composed a piece like ‘Night of Silence.’ ... I was telling myself that there is hope, and you have permission to simplify your life and focus on what really matters.

Composing that piece is a message to myself that I’m still receiving.”