The Catholic Spirit - March 12, 2020

March 12 • Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

CULTURAL immersion

Smartphone art Young artist at Shakopee school dials up award-winning drawings with her mobile device.

— Page 20

Challenging men Father Paul Scalia, son of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, talks about the message he will share at the upcoming Archdiocesan Men’s Conference.

— Page 6

Voter privacy addressed Minnesota Catholic Conference helps priests navigate privacy concerns posed by presidential primary held March 3.

— Page 7

Tennessee tornadoes Diocese of Nashville provides assistance to those affected by tornadoes that tore through the state March 3.

Pilgrimage to Iowa?

Our southern neighbor is a day-trip destination for sacred sites and even a place for men to spend two weeks living with monks.

— Pages 12-15

MARIA WIERING | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Marilynn Neuville, left, and Deb Streefland, right, talk with Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny at their convent in Vandiperiyar, India, Feb. 4, 2019. Neuville and Streefland were part of a delegation to the Diocese of Vijayapuram organized by the Center for Mission in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

A year after the trip, Neuville continues to marvel at the way she saw the Church care for the needs of everyone, whether they be Hindu, Muslim or Christian, she said. “India is filled with wide varieties of sights, sounds, colors, smells and tastes, but most pervasive is the gracious hospitality and kindness that I encountered everywhere I went,” she said, noting that she plans to return one day. “The people are the real treasures of India.”

Maria Wiering, The Catholic Spirit’s editor-in-chief, was also on the immersion trip. Read her first-person account of the experience on pages 9-11.

Church urges precautions as coronavirus hits home The Catholic Spirit The novel coronavirus and the flu-like fever, cough and respiratory complications it brings is spreading rapidly across the globe, including as of press time at least three cases in Minnesota.

More than 100,000 people have been infected with the virus, COVID-19, that originated in China three months ago, and more than 4,000 have died. Global markets are seesawing, businesses are

slowing, and travel is impeded.

Religious institutions are impacted as they try to curb the virus’ spread. The Vatican closed St. Peter’s Square and Basilica March 10 through April 3 as the Italian government discourages people nationwide from all unessential travel and from leaving their homes except for going to work, getting food, medicines or seeing a doctor.

In yet another sign of concern over the virus, the iconic St. Patrick’s Day parade

in Dublin, Ireland, has been canceled.

Closer to home, the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul has called 47 students home for the semester from its Catholic Studies and St. John Vianney College Seminary programs in Rome.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda is urging all parishes to take precautions, such as suspending reception of the Eucharist from the chalice and emptying holy water fonts. Read more about the local, Catholic response on page 5.

Honoring Catholic business leaders whose faith shapes their work.

Nominations open through March 27 at TheCatholicSpirit.com Awardee luncheon with Archbishop Bernard Hebda Aug. 13

LEADING

FAITH

with

— Page 8

G o o d Wo r k

•

In Christ

2 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

PAGETWO NEWS notes

93

The number of clergy sexual abuse victim-survivors in the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota, who will begin to receive compensation under a $34 million settlement agreement that received final approval from a U.S. bankruptcy judge March 10.

Claimants voted unanimously to approve the settlement. The diocese also has committed to 17 child protection protocols. In a statement, Bishop John LeVoir of New Ulm apologized for the harm abuse survivors endured and said he knows the settlement can’t make amends for all that was taken from them. The bishop said the Church is a safer place for children and young people today thanks to abuse survivors’ bravery, perseverance and advocacy for changes to protect the vulnerable, and hold abusers and Church leaders accountable.

$20 million

The amount given to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul for a scholarship program designed to reduce the costs of tuition and room and board. The university will launch four-year scholarships to about 30 undergraduate students this fall, as it opens two new residence halls and prepares to require undergraduate students to live on campus their first two years beginning in 2021. Given by the estate of Irvin Kanthak, a 1959 St. Thomas graduate who moved to Los Angeles and invested in real estate, the gift also provides $50,000 to help students facing unexpected financial hardships.

$1,300 DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

PRAYER AT PLANNED PARENTHOOD From left, Kalley Yanta and Tom Wooden of Holy Family in St. Louis Park join others gathered outside Planned Parenthood in St. Paul March 10 to pray for an end to abortion during 40 Days for Life Twin Cities’ Lenten campaign. Elected officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul declared March 10 Abortion Providers Appreciation Day, decisions that Archbishop Bernard Hebda said made him “profoundly saddened.” “Given that each human life is created in the image and likeness of God and has value, to honor those who purposefully end such life is an affront not only to our Creator but to the foundational values of civil society,” he said in a March 10 statement. “There is no way around it — abortion kills children. What gives me hope, however, are the countless women and men of goodwill who tirelessly give of themselves to accompany women in crisis pregnancies, love and assist moms and babies, and work to create a culture of life in our communities and in our world. It is those people we should be honoring.”

Read more at TheCatholicSpirit.com about pro-life organizations’ efforts to oppose the decisions made by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and the St. Paul City Council to honor abortion providers.

The amount raised March 2 by Catholic Beer Club-Twin Cities and the Catholic Softball Group to help defray the costs of the Cathedral of St. Paul’s heating bill. The group hosted a trivia night at Finnegans Brew Co. in Minneapolis and charged $10 per person. The event sold out at 130 people.

3

The number of awards to recognize Catholic philanthropy given Feb. 28 by the Leadership Roundtable in Washington, D.C. Awardees of the Monan Medal included Mark and Karen Rauenhorst of Holy Name of Jesus in Medina, longtime lay leaders in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Archbishop Bernard Hebda and several other archdiocesan leaders acccompanied the Rauenhorsts at the Feb. 28 dinner and awards event. Officials in the archdiocese also participated in a Feb. 28-29 Leadership Roundtable summit titled “From Crisis to Co-Responsibility: Creating a New Culture of Leadership.”

24

The number of consecutive hours the sacrament of reconciliation will be offered this month during 24 Hours for the Lord at the Cathedral of St. Paul, 239 Selby Ave., St. Paul.

Confession will be available round-the-clock in several languages from noon March 20 to noon March 21. Eucharistic adoration will also be available during those hours. For more information, visit archspm.org/events.

1.5

The number of acres holding a chapel, lodge, small bunkhouse, grotto and Stations of the Cross that a former St. Charles of Borromeo in St. Anthony couple hope to sell near Bemidji to buyers willing to continue offering it to priests and religious brothers and sisters as a place to pray and relax. Featured last year in The Catholic Spirit, Sal and Beth Di Leo began their St. Francis Lodge by inviting four religious sisters to enjoy the property in 2003.

Now, the lodge and bunkhouse sleep eight for group and individual retreats. The Di Leos are in their 60s, and say the property is getting to be too much to maintain. Learn more about the lodge at stfrancislodge.org.

640

COURTESY HILL-MURRAY SCHOOL

STATE CHAMPS Hill-Murray players and coaches celebrate their state Class 2A boys hockey championship following their 4-1 win over Eden Prairie in the finals March 7 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. It was the fourth state championship for the Maplewood school, with the others coming in 1983, 1991 and 2008.

Senior Charlie Strobel was a key player in the tournament, scoring two goals in the championship game and the game-winner the night before in a 3-2 overtime win over St. Thomas Academy in the semifinals.

Strobel’s father, Mike, and uncle, Mark, played on the 1991 championship team. This year’s team finished with a record of 22-6-3.

The Catholic Spirit is published semi-monthly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Vol. 25 — No. 5 MOST REVEREND BERNARD A. HEBDA, Publisher TOM HALDEN, Associate Publisher MARIA C. WIERING, Editor-in-Chief JOE RUFF, News Editor

The number assigned to a bill in the Minnesota House of Representatives that would bring Choose Life license plates to the state. Five senators sponsored a companion bill, SF298, in the Senate. The nonprofit Choose Life Minnesota, working with Florida-based Choose Life America, initiated the legislation. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have approved the plate’s sales. To track both bills, visit the Minnesota Catholic Conference website, mncatholic.org, and choose “Bill Tracker” under “Legislation.”

2

The number of speakers scheduled to present at the first Archdiocesan Young Adult Day May 2 at St. Patrick in Edina. The 2–10:30 p.m. event is for ages 21 and older and features speakers Emily Wilson and Joel Stepanek. Event includes confession opportunities, Mass and adoration, praise and worship, and a social hour with cash bar. Cost is $20; limited walk-in registration is $25 per person. To register, visit archspm.org/events.

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MARCH 12, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 3

FROMTHEARCHBISHOP ONLY JESUS | ARCHBISHOP BERNARD HEBDA

Office of priest overrides party

H

ey, are you a Penguins fan?”

It was a question that I never anticipated coming up at confirmation. It was my first year as a bishop, and I was celebrating the sacrament in northern Michigan, solid Red Wings country. The young man had heard me mention that I was from Pittsburgh, and he was unwilling to be confirmed by anyone who cheered for Sidney Crosby. His parents and sponsor were stunned, and the congregation slightly amused. It was only after I convinced him that I had grown up in a family that was never interested in professional hockey that he stepped forward for the sacrament. I was grateful that he had not asked about the Steelers or the Pirates!

It’s amazing how secular divisions can creep into the practice of our faith, even affecting priestly ministry. It might be irrational, but it’s a fact of life.

It’s partly in response to that reality that the Church requires her priests to refrain from “taking an active part” in political parties (canon 289 of the Code of Canon Law).

When the staff of the Minnesota Catholic Conference called to my attention that Minnesota’s presidential primaries this year were “closed” primaries open only to those who align with a given party, I opted to share that information with our clergy, along with the MCC’s advice “that discouraging primary voting by clergy during this cycle (though not in the general election) is the prudent thing to do.” (See story on page 7.)

Given that the priest is called to act in the person of Christ for all of his flock, regardless of their affiliations, he needs to avoid those things that could unnecessarily sow division or undercut his ability to

Agentes de unidad

“O

ye, ¿eres fan de los Penguins?” Fue una pregunta que nunca anticipé que se avecinaba en la confirmación. Era mi primer año como obispo y estaba celebrando la Santa Cena en el norte de Michigan, sólido país de Redwings. El joven me había oído mencionar que yo era de Pittsburgh y que no estaba dispuesto a ser confirmado por cualquiera que vitoreado a Sidney Crosby. Sus padres y patrocinadores quedaron aturdidos, y la congregación se divirtió un poco. Lo convencí de que había crecido en una familia que nunca estuvo interesada en el hockey profesional, y después de eso dio un paso adelante para la Santa Cena. ¡Estaba agradecido de que no preguntara por los Steelers o los Piratas!

Es increíble cómo las divisiones seculares pueden entrar en la práctica de nuestra fe, incluso afectando el ministerio sacerdotal. Puede ser irracional, pero es un hecho de la vida.

Es en parte en respuesta a esa realidad que la Iglesia requiere que sus sacerdotes se abstengan de “tomar parte activa” en los partidos políticos (canon 289 del Código de Derecho Canónico).

Cuando el personal de la Conferencia Católica de Minnesota me dijo que las primarias presidenciales de Minnesota este año estaban “cerradas” las primarias abiertas sólo a aquellos que se

“

Given that the priest is called to act in the person of Christ for all of his flock, regardless of their affiliations, he needs to avoid those things that could unnecessarily sow division or undercut his ability to minister effectively to all of his sheep.

minister effectively to all of his sheep. As St. John Paul II reminded us, priests are called to be “agents of unity.” In the present politically charged atmosphere, it does not seem unreasonable to hold that a public labeling of a priest as a registered member of any party could diminish his ability to serve as an “agent of unity.”

Beyond that pastoral reason for the rule, there’s also a theological motivation, rooted in the Church’s understanding of the proper “division of labor” between the laity and clergy. While the whole Church has to be concerned about the common good, partisan politics falls more properly within the specific sphere of the laity (the renewal of the temporal order). By requiring priests to refrain from active participation in party politics, the 1983 Code, after centuries of clerical influence in the political arena, carved out a golden opportunity for the laity to exercise the leadership that is proper to them. In his 1988 exhortation on the vocation of the lay faithful,

alinean con un partido dado, opté por compartir esa información con nuestro clero, junto con el consejo del MCC “que desalentar el voto primario del clero durante este ciclo (aunque no en las elecciones generales) es lo prudente”.

Dado que el sacerdote está llamado a actuar en la persona de Cristo para todo su rebaño, independientemente de sus afiliaciones, debe evitar aquellas cosas que podrían sembrar innecesariamente la división o socavar su capacidad de ministrar eficazmente a todas sus ovejas. Como nos recordó San Juan Pablo II, los sacerdotes están llamados a ser “agentes de unidad”. En el ambiente actual cargado políticamente, no parece irrazonable sostener que un etiquetado público de un sacerdote como miembro registrado de cualquier partido podría disminuir su capacidad de servir como “agente de unidad”.

Más allá de esa razón pastoral de la regla, también hay una motivación teológica, arraigada en la comprensión de la Iglesia de la adecuada “división del trabajo” entre los laicos y el clero.

Si bien toda la Iglesia tiene que preocuparse por el bien común, la política partidista se enmarca más adecuadamente en la esfera específica de los laicos (la renovación del orden temporal). Al exigir a los sacerdotes que se abstuvieran de participar activamente en la política partidista, el Código de 1983, después de siglos de influencia clerical en la arena política, creó una oportunidad de oro para que los laicos ejercieran el liderazgo que les corresponde. En su exhortación de 1988 sobre la vocación de los fieles

St. John Paul II articulated well the distinct responsibilities of priests and laity in this area: “it is the right and duty of pastors to propose moral principles even concerning the social order and of all Christians to apply them in defense of human rights.

Nevertheless, active participation in political parties is reserved to the lay faithful” (“Christifideles Laici,” 60).

A few community members have expressed concern that my letter to our clergy represented an improper infringement of constitutional rights. While I am always delighted when people stand up for our priests, I am not convinced that the analysis is accurate in this instance.

As U.S. citizens, we clerics indeed have the same rights as other citizens. When we are ordained, however, there are some of those rights that we voluntarily agree not to exercise. We agree, for example, not to exercise our right to marry. We similarly agree that, without specific permission from the Church, we won’t exercise our right to operate a for-profit business, or our right to exercise leadership in a labor union, or our right to volunteer for military service. We cherish our rights as Americans but give priority to following the universal law of the Church, recognizing that the unique demands of pastoral ministry might suggest that some individual rights are best not exercised. The shepherd has to put the sheep first, and the shepherd’s role is to lead the flock in the way of the Gospel, which transcends any party affiliation or political issue.

In the meantime, it falls to all of us, clergy and laity alike, to prepare to exercise our right and duty to vote in the November elections. As Pope Francis reminds us, “Every election and re-election, and every stage of public life, is an opportunity to return to the original points of reference that inspire justice and law.”

laicos, San Juan Pablo II articuló bien las distintas responsabilidades de los sacerdotes y laicos en este ámbito: “es el derecho y el deber de los pastores proponer principios morales incluso en relación con el orden social y de todos cristianos para aplicarlos en defensa de los derechos humanos. Sin embargo, la participación activa en los partidos políticos está reservada a los fieles laicos” (Christifideles Laici 60).

Algunos miembros de la comunidad han expresado su preocupación por el hecho de que mi carta a nuestro clero representó una violación indebida de los derechos constitucionales. Aunque siempre estoy encantado cuando la gente defende a nuestros sacerdotes, no estoy convencido de que el análisis sea preciso en este caso.

Como ciudadanos estadounidenses, los clérigos tenemos los mismos derechos que otros ciudadanos. Sin embargo, cuando somos ordenados, hay algunos de esos derechos que voluntariamente aceptamos no ejercer.

Estamos de acuerdo, por ejemplo, en no ejercer nuestro derecho a casarnos. Del mismo modo, estamos de acuerdo en que, sin el permiso específico de la Iglesia, no ejerceremos nuestro derecho a operar un negocio con fines de lucro, o nuestro derecho a ejercer liderazgo en un sindicato, o nuestro derecho a ser voluntarios para el servicio militar.

Apreciamos nuestros derechos como estadounidenses, pero damos prioridad al seguimiento de la ley universal de la Iglesia, reconociendo que las demandas únicas del ministerio pastoral podrían sugerir que es mejor que no se ejerzan algunos derechos individuales. El pastor

tiene que poner a las ovejas en primer lugar, y el papel del pastor es guiar al rebaño en el camino del Evangelio, que trasciende cualquier afiliación partidista o cuestión política.

Mientras tanto, corresponde a todos nosotros, clérigos y laicos por igual, prepararnos para ejercer nuestro derecho y deber de votar en las elecciones de noviembre. Como nos recuerda el Papa Francisco” “Cada elección y reelección, y cada etapa de la vida pública, es una oportunidad para volver a los puntos de referencia originales que inspiran justicia y derecho”.

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

Effective February 28, 2020 Deacon Robert Schnell, assigned to exercise the ministry of a permanent deacon at the Church of Saint Patrick in Edina. This is a transfer from his previous assignment to the Church of Saint Richard in Richfield.

Effective March 2, 2020 Deacon John Belian, assigned to exercise the ministry of a permanent deacon at the Church of Saint John the Baptist in New Brighton. This is a transfer from his previous assignment to the Church of the Holy Cross in Minneapolis.

4 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

LOCAL

SLICEof LIFE 4 • The Catholic Spirit

Lent for 9, 2017 littleMarch ones

LOCAL

Preschool student Chloe Fairchild works with a model of the city of Jerusalem at The Way of the Shepherd Catholic Montessori School in Blaine March 5. Behind her is Carolyn Kohlhaas, lead catechist at the school, who says St. Joseph of Carondelet Sister Avisway the hands-on activity is one Allmaras, center, talks with Rose to help connect the youngCarter, left, and Irene Eiden atseason Peace House students to the of Lent.in south Minneapolis Feb.of27.

Sister Avis Although some the Lenten goes toregulations the center weekly and visits concerning fasting frequent guests like Carter. of and abstaining from Eiden, meat are St. William in Fridley, a lay consociate meant for olderisCatholics, of the Carondelet Sisters.

House is Kohlhaas said LentPeace is for kids, too. a day shelter for the poor and homeless.

“The youngest child has the ability “It’s a real privilege know these people to handle thetodeepest truth,” and hear their stories,” Sisterthe Avis said. “I Kohlhaas said. “And, deepest could not survive theis: streets they truth of ouron faith Jesuslike was a do. There so many people realare person whogifted was born, died here.” and SaidisCarter Sister Avis:(school’s) “She’s risen.ofAnd, in the an angel.

She hides underabout that atrium, every her timewings we speak sweatshirt. truly is an angel.”

JesusShe who died, they (students) Dave Hrbacek/The Spirit say, ‘And, heCatholic has risen.’

So, the youngest child seems to understand, maybe more clearly than we do as adults, that the death and resurrection National Catholic Sisters WeekofisJesus ... Their ability Marchare 8-14.one Anmystery. official component of to enter into this season Women’s History Month and of preparing and waiting ... Catherine is beautifulUniversity to headquartered at St. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRITin St. Paul, watch.” the week celebrates women religious and their contributions to the Church and society. View local events, including two art exhibitions, at www.nationalcatholicsistersweek.org.

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THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 5

Archbishop Hebda urges liturgical precautions against coronavirus

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS RESPOND

As Minnesota reports presumptive cases of coronavirus illness, Archbishop Bernard Hebda is encouraging all parishes to take liturgical precautions that can help prevent the spread of the virus that originated in China three months ago.

At press time March 10, state officials reported a third coronavirus illness, known as COVID-19, in Anoka County. That announcement followed one case of the illness in Ramsey County and another case in Carver County.

In a March 7 statement, Archbishop Hebda urged all parishes to follow prevention guidance that was first issued March 4 by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office of Worship as suggestions for parishes.

“It is incumbent upon each of us to be vigilant and take all necessary precautions to slow down the spread of the virus,” the archbishop said.

“Earlier this week,” the archbishop said, “the Archdiocese’s Office of Worship issued suggestions to all clergy and parish staffs to minimize the risk to the faithful who will encounter each other at our more than 180 parishes in the 12 county Metro area. Please allow me to encourage all parishes and the faithful to follow the guidance immediately and until state officials give the all-clear: uStay home if you feel sick or have flu-like symptoms. You are relieved of your Sunday obligation if you are ill or are caring for someone who is sick. uSuspend the sign of peace or offer it without touching. uSuspend Communion from the chalice. uRefrain from hand-holding during the Our Father. uEmpty holy water fonts. uPlace anti-bacterial hand sanitizer where Mass attendees can access it before receiving the Eucharist. uRemind extraordinary ministers of holy Communion to sanitize their hands before and following distribution of the Eucharist.”

Tests to confirm the health department’s findings of the flu-like, respiratory illness are being sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But even before the first presumptive case, officials at the archdiocese had heard from people concerned about the coronavirus and seeking guidance on how to prevent any spread at Mass and church-related functions.

STAY INFORMED In issuing For updates, developments preliminary advice on the novel coronavirus, March 4, Father Tom go to thecatholicspirit.com.

Margevicius, the archdiocese’s director of worship, said developments could move rapidly and precautions grow more stringent as the coronavirus continues to spread in the United States and around the globe.

Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are taking steps to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The archdiocese’s Office for the Mission of Catholic Education issued advice to elementary and high schools March 3. The advice includes urging school officials to review health guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Minnesota Health Department.

In a letter to Catholic school leaders, which included weblinks to updates on COVID-19 by the CDC and MDH, Jason Slattery, director of the education office, said schools can take several steps without raising undue alarm.

They include: u Review school emergency preparedness plans with a focus on infectious diseases. The OMCE can provide resources for schools that need them. u Implement handwashing campaigns to increase awareness and improve observance.

CNS

An extraordinary minister of holy Communion uses hand sanitizer before distributing Communion during Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes in Atlanta March 8. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has joined the Atlanta Archdiocese and other places of worship around the country and abroad that have taken precautionary steps for the health and safety of congregations amid coronavirus concerns.

Dioceses across the country are taking precautions, each depending on its circumstances.

Precautions against coronavirus are similar to longstanding guidelines the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has had against the flu and other viruses.

Those include washing hands, particularly before Mass begins, and using an alcohol-based anti-bacterial solution before and after distributing Communion.

According to the Roman Missal, every communicant has the right to decide whether to receive the Body of Christ on the tongue or in the hand, so Catholics should receive using the method they are most comfortable with, Father Margevicius said.

For those concerned about suspending Communion from the chalice, the Church teaches that the body and blood of Christ are fully present under both species.

Father Margevicius emphasized that the obligation to attend Mass each Sunday is binding only on those healthy enough to do so. If attending Mass becomes excessively burdensome for any reason, the obligation is lifted as well, he said. The obligation also would not be binding if a priest who was expected to preside at Mass suddenly became ill and those gathered for the Mass couldn’t attend another Mass, Father Margevicius said.

This is not the case now in Minnesota, but if a bishop decides a contagious illness is running rampant he can order a temporary suspension of all Masses and urge people to stay home, also eliminating the Sunday obligation, he said.

u Review and remind faculty, staff and community members of the school’s norms for when to stay home with an illness and what procedures the school follows in sending sick children home from school. u Clarify internal procedures of monitoring student and faculty absenteeism. u Explore options for increasing school cleaning practices with an emphasis on cleaning common spaces and common surfaces.

In a follow-up email March 9, after two presumptive cases of coronavirus were reported in Minnesota, Slattery urged Catholic school officials to notify his office if there is a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19 in their school, and to notify his office before a public announcement is made if the school receives a recommendation or directive to modify educational services in any way.

“It is a great grace to see how Catholic school leaders and teachers are working together on preparedness and prevention efforts, while creating an oasis in the classrooms for the students to remain focused on their studies,” Slattery said in the March 9 email. “As a sign of solidarity, please keep in your intentions and prayers those who are suffering and those who care for the sick that God will grant them strength in their struggles.”­ — Joe Ruff

PRAYERS FOR THOSE AFFECTED Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis advice given March 4 to priests, deacons and liturgical ministers regarding liturgical practices and the coronavirus includes this suggested addition to prayers of the faithful at Mass: “For those affected by the coronavirus, influenza, and other illnesses: May the sick be granted a swift recovery, the medical personnel receive the support they need, and those grieving the loss of loved ones be sustained by the hope of eternal life and the care of the Church.”

Abuse claims against deceased New Brighton pastor under investigation

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is investigating an accusation of sexual abuse against a priest who served 27 years at St. John the Baptist in New Brighton and died in 1980. Msgr. Paul Koscielniak, the parish’s pastor from 1950-1977, has been accused of abusing an altar server multiple times between 1969 and 1975, when the boy was between the ages of 10 and 15.

In a Feb. 20 statement to the parish about the allegation, its parochial administrator Father Paul Shovelain said he was recently approached about the allegation and immediately notified Tim

O’Malley, the archdiocese’s director of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment.

“While I have heard hundreds of positive stories about Monsignor Koscielniak, this claim must be investigated thoroughly, and thus I am following the steps outlined by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis,” Father Shovelain said in the statement.

He noted that the alleged victim/ survivor’s family contacted the archdiocese about the accusation years ago, but it was not investigated. “Frankly, allegations such as this are handled differently by the archdiocese today,” Father Shovelain said. “Now, this matter will be addressed in accord with current

archdiocesan polices and procedures.”

Since making their accusation to Father Shovelain, members of the victim/ survivor’s family have met with Bishop Andrew Cozzens, O’Malley and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.

In a separate statement to the parish, Archbishop Bernard Hebda said that “all such allegations are taken seriously and investigated thoroughly in an effort to determine factually what occurred.”

“There should be no presumption of guilt or wrongdoing,” he said. “Facts will determine the outcome. In accord with archdiocesan policy, this matter will be investigated and referred to the Ministerial Review Board for a recommendation regarding whether the

allegation is substantiated or not.”

The Office of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment is investigating the claim, and it is seeking assistance from anyone with pertinent information.

Investigator Jane Laurence can be contacted at 612-961-8867 or laurencej@ archspm.org.

“We will continue to cooperate with the archdiocese and work to bring about the truth of what happened,” Father Shovelain said.

Msgr. Koscielniak, who retired in 1977, was the parish’s longest-serving pastor.

He founded and expanded the parish school and oversaw the building of a new convent, rectory and church. He died in a boat accident on Mille Lacs.

LOCAL

6 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

Handing down tradition Father Paul Scalia to challenge men at March 28 conference Interview by Christina Capecchi For The Catholic Spirit Father Paul Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, will be the keynote speaker for the March 28 Archdiocesan Men’s Conference at St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights.

Father Scalia serves the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, as episcopal vicar for clergy and as pastor of St. James Catholic Church in Falls Church. The sixth of nine children, he was raised in a devout Catholic family and FATHER observed his father PAUL SCALIA practicing the faith in the public square. Today, as Father Scalia’s own profile rises, he leans on that example.

Q What do you plan to share at the Men’s Conference?

A A challenge to men, reflecting on

both the gifts that men bring to the faith and also the responsibilities. A man is going to witness to the fatherhood of God in a way that only men can because he conveys that trait of fatherhood, those qualities that we traditionally associate with men: of courage, of steadfastness, that complementarity.

All of the sociological statistics indicate the need for strong fathers and how much better off kids are when they have strong fathers.

Q The conference theme is “Embrace

the Challenge.” What are the challenges of participating in politics today?

A One of the challenges is how to enter into politics and appeal to people without sacrificing our principles. The

patron saint of my diocese, St. Thomas More, is a great example of how to live in public life without surrendering one’s principles — and also how to do this cheerfully. St. Thomas had a winsome, witty way about him.

What we have to say to society is challenging, but it is good. What we have to say about life in the womb, what we have to say about man and woman and marriage — these are ultimately for the common good, but because they’re so controversial, they can come across as harsh. So how do we convey this with the sense of joy and gladness that it deserves?

Q How does that joy play out in your daily life?

MEN’S CONFERENCE With the theme “Embrace the Challenge,” the annual Archdiocesan Men’s Conference will be held 9 a.m.–3:30 p.m. March 28 at St. Thomas Academy, 949 Mendota Heights Road, Mendota Heights. Confessions will be available at 8 a.m. Cost is $30, or $20 per person for groups of five or more. For more information or to register, search “Men’s Conference” at archspm.org.

Q What’s your message to Catholics

who are discouraged by how divisive the political climate has become?

A Christ is risen! (Laughs.) And listen,

Q What time does your alarm ring?

A 5 or 5:30 a.m.

back in the 19th century, leading up to the Civil War, there was an account of one congressman beating another congressman on the floor of the Senate with his cane. So yeah, things have been bad before.

One of the great things about being Catholic is this sense that we’ve seen it all. This is not the first time we’ve been in a tough situation. We look at all the saints who lived in difficult times but lived through them with a sense of joy.

Most of all we look to our Lord who suffered persecution, suffered opposition, but in the midst of it all, tells us that we should be full of joy.

Q That’s early! And to get up

Q You reject the term “conservative”

A Honestly, it is in prayer and the

sacraments. When I get up promptly, and I say my prayers promptly and I prepare well for Mass, then everything else is not necessarily easy but put in its proper perspective. It’s also from periodic moments of prayer — for example, the Angelus, pausing in the middle of the day at noon and calling to mind our Lord’s incarnation.

promptly takes discipline. It means going to bed early enough the night before.

A All the great spiritual writers and

guides emphasize this: That the victories of today were sewn last night.

This is particularly important for men.

For men, one of the great vices is screens and staying up late — and the threat and scourge of pornography, that’s ruined things not just for that night but it means in the morning you’re not going to be at your best. So there is that discipline.

This is why the Church has a liturgy of hours. The whole concept of night prayer, Compline, is that we end the day well.

as a political category. Would you elaborate on that?

A Conservative, liberal — they are

political labels, and they’re not good in the Church. Catholics used to be Democrats, and Democrats used to be conservative, so these things are too fluid. Those labels confine us and prompt people to see us as not welcome to them, and we want to welcome everyone because the truth of Christ is meant for everyone.

Our faith has political implications, and we need to live those out, and at the same time, we have to avoid these terms that I think equate our faith with politics too much.

Q You’ve also said that when a

person is adhering to Church teaching, there will always be someone who thinks you are too traditional and someone else who thinks you’re not traditional enough.

A Catholics have to be traditional. We have to be rooted in the fundamentals that are handed down to us because those are unchanging. If they’re not unchanging, then we have nothing to give to the world.

Q And for those who may be viewed as not traditional enough?

A Today there are some, unfortunately, who see a legitimate change as not legitimate. We shouldn’t confuse small-t traditions with the fundamentals of our faith. Just because they did things one way in the 1950s doesn’t mean we have to do it that way now. Things can change.

Q What did you learn from your father when it comes to being a Catholic in the public eye?

A He was not bashful about his faith.

He understood that speaking about matters of faith was an encouragement to people. When he died, I was astounded by the number of people who expressed to me their gratitude for that — and people of all faiths.

Q How does his example, along with your faith, influence you now that you’re a public figure? What does that look like?

A What it looks like is remaining

rooted. I am a priest, and I simply want to make the truth of Christ known. If that brings me public notice, OK, fine.

If it doesn’t, fine. But the point is not the envelope, it’s what’s inside. It’s not the messenger, it’s the message.

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MARCH 12, 2020

LOCAL

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 7

Archbishop Hebda shares MCC counsel with clergy Privacy concerns drive guidance in presidential primary voting

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit Concerns about voter privacy won’t be part of the Aug. 11 Minnesota primary for federal, state and local offices, nor the Nov. 3 general election.

But privacy was a major issue in the state’s March 3 presidential primary, and Catholic clergy were urged to consider advice from the Minnesota Catholic Conference that they shouldn’t vote at all.

Before the election, which saw voters in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominate former Vice President Joe Biden for the Democratic ticket, and GOP voters choose President Donald Trump for the Republican, Archbishop Bernard Hebda shared with priests and deacons some of the concerns the MCC raised.

Those concerns stemmed from the fact that given the pastoral need for a priest to be able to minister to all segments of his flock, the universal law of the Church requires that priests not “have an active part in political parties.”

In the Minnesota presidential primary, a priest, by making a ballot choice for a particular party, was attesting that he generally agreed with that given party’s principles. In addition, the names of priests (and all those who had participated in the process) would be given to major party leaders, without restrictions on how the party leaders might use that information.

Canonically, permanent deacons are not under the same strictures as priests.

But MCC’s guidance regarding the presidential primary was shared with deacons to consider on a practical pastoral level, the archbishop said.

Only the DFL and Republican parties appeared on the ballots. But ballot choices made by voters also were made available to leaders of the GrassrootsLegalize Cannabis Party and the Legal Marijuana Now Party.

People enter Nativity of Our Lord church in St. Paul March 3, with the church serving as a polling place for the presidential primary of Republicans and Democrats.

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

“The possibility that the data may become public should discourage clergy from participating,” MCC’s guidance stated. “If the law were different and protected privacy, maybe the calculus would change. But it is the opinion of the MCC that discouraging primary voting during this cycle (though not in the general election) is the prudent thing to do.”

The counsel that was shared with priests was not related to the Church’s tax-exempt status in the choice of a ballot because priests can endorse candidates in their individual capacities, the conference said.

Jason Adkins, MCC’s executive director and general counsel, said in a separate statement that priests, generally, are discouraged from participating in partisan political activities. MCC staff, who act as the public policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops, advised the bishops that because information about a priest’s participation and ballot selection could be made public, it would be imprudent for them to participate in this year’s presidential primary, Adkins said.

Archbishop Hebda opted to pass that information and advice on to clergy in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Subsequent to the communication with the clergy of the archdiocese, the Minnesota House voted Feb. 26 to restrict how party officials could use voter data obtained in the primary.

The Senate did not take similar action.

Priests were not the only category of

persons who were discouraged from participating in partisan political activity. MCC policy staff, for example, are also prohibited from participating in partisan political activity, Adkins said. He also noted that other organizations advised employees or their members to consider not voting in the primary if they were worried about their choice of ballot being made public.

8 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

NATION+WORLD

Diocese, Catholic community begin long recovery from devastating tornadoes Debra Geiger, second from right, a resident of East Nashville, Tenn., and a parishioner of Christ the King in Nashville, greets neighbors while cleaning out her house March 4, the day after deadly tornadoes swept through the state.

The top floor of her house was ripped off by the storm, but she and her husband and son were not harmed.

Numerous volunteers descended on the neighborhood in the days following the storm to help with recovery efforts.

CNS

Catholic News Service At the Church of the Assumption in Nashville’s Germantown neighborhood, the pastor, Father S. Bede Price, was asleep in the rectory when a massive tornado roared through the Tennessee neighborhood in the early morning hours of March 3. He was roused by the sound of an exploding electrical transformer behind the church and the building shaking as the storm passed. He ran outside and saw the destruction in the street. “My first thought was that a plane had crashed,” he said.

Then the chimney of the rectory smashed onto the sidewalk near where he was standing, and he realized something else was going on. As he started checking the church, he saw that several stained-glass windows had been blown out or were broken, including one near the altar, with only a picture of the face of the infant Jesus surviving the damage. The tornado also ripped a hole in the back wall of the sacristy and had blown vestments and other items around the room. The tabernacle also had been blown open, so Father Price removed the Blessed Sacrament and transferred it to a safe place in the rectory.

The damage to the church, built in 1859 and one of the oldest in the diocese, is extensive.

Besides the damaged stained-glass windows, part of the west wall collapsed. The powerful winds of the tornado shifted the position of the roof, which caused damage to the walls of the church. The steeple is tilted and will need to be repaired.

However, the altar and much of the art in the church were spared. A full assessment of the damage and the repairs needed are still under way, but the church likely will not be usable for quite some time.

Across the Nashville metro area, homes, churches and businesses were damaged or destroyed in the March 3 tornado. For some, all that is left is a pile of rubble. Others, reduced to a concrete slab, have even less remaining.

Within minutes after the tornado passed, Catholics joined the rest of the community to offer help and hope to those hit the hardest. There were 24 deaths; among the victims were children as young as 3.

In the Nashville area, the tornado ripped a path of destruction through the North Nashville, Germantown, East Nashville, Donelson and Mount Juliet communities, felling trees, flattening homes,

knocking out power and shaking historic structures.

Pastors, parish staff and fellow parishioners across the diocese quickly sprang into action, checking to make sure everyone in their communities were safe and trying to determine what the families hit hardest might need. Catholic Charities of Tennessee began working with Metro and other community organizations to assess the needs of the people hurt by the tornado and planning long-term assistance. The Knights of Columbus jumped in with a promise to raise funds and materials to help as well as offering their hands to do the hard work of cleaning up.

Assumption suffered, by far, the most extensive damage of any church in the diocese in the wake of the tornado. “They’re number one on the list,” said Deacon Hans Toecker, chancellor of the Nashville Diocese. “It’s going to require extensive renovation and repairs.”

The significant structural damage that has left the Church of the Assumption unusable until repairs are made has led to some changes in Mass schedules. Daily Mass will be celebrated in the old school building next door to the church, and Sunday Mass will be celebrated at the Monroe Street United Methodist Church across the street from Assumption. The parish has received permission from the diocese under Canon 933 for the Masses to be celebrated in a church building of a non-Catholic Christian community.

Holy Rosary Church, spared any damage to its facilities from the tornado, opened its doors to its neighbors in the Donelson community. Holy Rosary became a Red Cross shelter for families who lost their homes. Other parishes, such as Holy Name, Assumption, St. Stephen in Old Hickory and St. Thomas Aquinas in Cookeville were busy in the days after the tornado offering material and moral support for their neighbors in need.

And individual Catholics from across the diocese jumped up to offer their help wherever and whenever they were needed. Wendy Overlock, who oversees the Loaves and Fishes community meal program at Holy Name Church in East Nashville, managed a regularly scheduled March 4 meal service while also serving as the Catholic Charities emergency assistance coordinator, fielding calls from those in need, those who want to help, and communications with state emergency management officials.

“It’s a lot,” she said. “But we have a lot of helpers.”

HEADLINES u Pope urges priests to tend to sick, health care workers during epidemic. Pope Francis prayed that priests would find the courage to visit those who are sick and offer accompaniment to health care professionals and volunteers working during the coronavirus epidemic. During a live broadcast of his daily morning Mass March 10, Pope Francis again prayed for the many people who have fallen ill because of the virus and for health care workers. The Italian government issued a late-night measure March 9 extending “red zone” restrictions already in place in the north to all of Italy, urging people to stay at home and avoid all unessential travel as part of already implemented plans to prevent the further spread of the virus. u Pope chooses ‘synodality’ as theme for 2022 synod. Pope Francis has decided the next world Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, which will take place in October 2022, will have the theme: “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission.” The Vatican announced the choice of “synodality” as the theme in a brief communique March 7. “Synodality,” which literally means “walking together,” has become a key topic of Pope Francis’ pontificate. In 2018, the International Theological Commission, which advises the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published a document on the topic, “Synodality In the Life and Mission of the Church.” u New center at border called ‘model’ for how migrants should be treated. A new Catholic-run, 18,000-square-foot Migrant Outreach Center at the international border in Nogales, Mexico, is just across the border from Nogales, Arizona, which is in the Tucson Diocese. The Kino Border Initiative’s $1.5 million facility replaces the humble “comedor,” or dining hall, across the street that was established in 2009. Since then, the hall has distributed two meals a day for the poor blocked from entering the U.S. or who have been returned from the U.S. while their asylum cases are pending. The new center will have 170 beds for “several thousand” immigrants each year in Nogales. u A divided court examines Louisiana abortion restrictions. In oral arguments March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed mixed views about a Louisiana law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and whether the abortion providers have the legal standing to challenge the state law on behalf of their patients. More than 70 friend-of-the-court briefs were filed on both sides of this case with health care professionals, researchers, lawmakers, states, and religious and advocacy groups alike weighing in. Catholics groups that filed briefs in support of the state law included: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Thomas More Society and the National Association of Catholic Nurses along with the National Catholic Bioethics Center. A decision is expected at the end of June. u Alabama executes inmate after Supreme Court denies last-minute stay. Nathaniel Woods, a 43-year-old inmate in Alabama, was executed by lethal injection March 5 after the U.S. Supreme Court, which initially granted a temporary stay, denied the inmate’s petition to put his execution on hold. Woods was convicted, along with Kerry Spencer, in the 2004 killings of three police officers in Alabama. The prosecution argued that Woods was an accomplice and Spencer has repeatedly claimed to be the only shooter. Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille and longtime opponent of the death penalty, tweeted March 5: “No! No! No! Another African American man in the Deep South killed by the state for ‘guilt by association.’ Is this really the ‘worst of the worst’?

Would it ever happen to a white person of means?” u Lack of faith can impact validity of marriage, commission finds.

A lack of faith and a misunderstanding of marriage can mean no sacramental marriage occurred, even if both the husband and wife had been baptized, said a new document from the International Theological Commission, “The Reciprocity Between Faith and Sacraments in the Sacramental Economy.” Members of the theological commission did not claim to resolve completely the question of the validity of sacramental marriages in the absence of faith, but they did insist that much greater care must be taken to educate Catholics in the meaning of faith, the significance of the sacraments and the meaning of marriage.

— Catholic News Service More national and world news at TheCatholicSpirit.com.

MARCH 12, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 9

RETREATS+PILGRIMAGES

P

NEAR AND far

ilgrimages, mission trips and retreats can be taken halfway across the world or much closer to home. That fact is celebrated in this special section of Retreats+Pilgrimages, which includes The Catholic Spirit editor-in-chief Maria Wiering’s first-person account of the Center for Mission’s immersion trip to India last year, as well as a focus on pilgrimage sites and a retreat opportunity just a short drive away, in our neighboring state of Iowa. Additionally, local Catholics look back 40 years on their pilgrimage to see Pope St. John Paul II at Living History Farms near Des Moines, during the pope’s first trip to the United States.

— The Catholic Spirit

MARIA WIERING | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Jessica Ottman, right, holds a baby as Deb Streefland, left, smiles during a Feb. 3, 2019, celebration following the blessing of a roadside shrine in the Indian state of Kerala. Ottman and Streefland were among local Catholics who traveled to India Jan. 27-Feb. 7, 2019, on an immersion mission trip organized by the Center for Mission in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Cultural immersion, a year later

E

ight of us Minnesotans were sharing stories with a community of Indian sisters over tea, bananas and savory pastries at their kitchen table when they began to detail a catastrophic flood that affected their convent in the fall of 2018. And then one sister, who had a generous smile, turned serious. She closed her eyes and started to sing a solemn song, her voice trilling the melody.

The other sisters joined in.

The song was about God’s providence.

“Whatever happens, he is with us. He is ever faithful to us,” another sister explained. The previous August, the nine sisters, members of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, watched the Periyar River crest over its deep banks bordering their property in the city of Vandiperiyar, in the southwest Indian state of Kerala. By breakfast time Aug. 15, river water filled their courtyard and was lapping at their doorstep. Thirty minutes later, it had risen several feet, eventually reaching above their front door. When the water receded five days later, it left a mess that took months to clean.

But here the sisters were, five months later,

hosting us for morning tea, speaking about their joy in God’s care.

This tea with the sisters wasn’t on our agenda. The day before we were eating lunch as part of a blessing celebration for a new roadside shrine to Mary, when one of the sisters sat beside me. She told me that her convent was adjacent to the parish retreat center where we were staying, and we should visit. I smiled, said thanks and a noncommittal, “We’ll have to see.” Our schedule was packed, and while the offer was generous, I doubted we could accept. But the next morning’s plans fell through, and, by what can only be explained as divine appointment, we ambled out the door, down a short hill and through iron gates to the convent. They welcomed us with open arms, and, like almost everyone we met in India, the universal sign of hospitality: something to eat.

Our delegation from Minnesota spent nine days in the Diocese of Vijayapuram, one of Kerala’s 12 Latin Catholic dioceses. The trip was organized by the Center for Mission in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and

designed as an immersion mission experience.

That meant we were there to encounter people, form relationships, live in the culture and get a taste of its life. We were explicitly not there to fix problems or donate money.

So for a little more than a week, the eight of us visited priests and parishes, schools and homes. We joined small groups for intimate prayer meetings, and a crowd of thousands for a charismatic Mass and adoration. We explored hilly tea plantations by bus, river backwaters by boat, and rural hills and city streets by foot.

And we listened attentively to stories of faith, like the one shared by the sisters. “We spent a lot of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and we prayed that the Lord would give us courage and strength to face the difficulty,” a sister said of the ordeal.

Along the way we wondered how these encounters would change us, what would stick after our return to normal life.

— Maria Wiering For a feature story on the trip, turn the page.

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RETREATS 10 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

D

espite the Center for Mission’s best efforts to prepare us, none of us knew quite what to expect as our plane cleared India’s Malabar coast and prepared for landing in Kochi, Kerala’s largest city. Our flights took us from Minneapolis to Chicago and then to a long, nighttime layover in Abu Dhabi before continuing on to Kochi.

From our windows, we could see standing water and other evidence of the devastation of the fall floods, something we had followed with interest in the news.

There were palm trees, red roofs and squares of lush cropland, a welcome sight in late January. Once through customs — a bit tricky, as they thought some of us were missionaries, and several of India’s states have antiproselytization laws — we were met by two priests of the Diocese of Vijayapuram, Father Jose Navez Puthenparambil and Father Paul Denny Ramachamkudy, holding roses and welcoming us to India.

Father Jose, 67, was a key reason we were there, getting on a small bus in Kochi and taking a two-hour drive away from the coast to Kottayam, the diocese’s see city. After studying at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, and then Fordham University in New York, he spent three years ministering at Epiphany in Coon Rapids, two Twin Cities hospitals and the Lino Lakes Correctional Facility. Now his diocese’s chancellor, he returns to Minnesota annually for financial appeals on behalf of his diocese, one of the mission territories supported by the Pontifical Mission Societies. In the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, funds for the Pontifical Mission Societies are collected by the Center for Mission.

On the trip to Kottayam, we wound through cities and countryside, amazed by the chaos of people and traffic and the vibrancy of it all — the sights, the smells, the sounds. Right away we noticed the profusion of Catholic shrines: St. Jude, St. Sebastian and others met us at bends in the road or in front of churches, statues prominently encased behind glass with flowers and architectural flourishes. Meanwhile, storefronts became their own litany: St. George’s Bakery, St. Thomas Kids Garden, St. Joseph’s Motor Driving School. Even vehicles had saints’ names or other religious decals.

In our group from the archdiocese were a married couple, both pharmacists, and six other women, including a canon lawyer, a retired teacher and a 30-something entrepreneur who makes naturalingredient soaps. Most of us had traveled abroad before, but not to India. For one of us, it was the first time outside of the United States.

Kottayam has an estimated population of 357,000, somewhere between the populations of Minnesota’s two largest cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Our home base was the “bishop’s house,” a complex with a priest residence, chancery offices, guest rooms and college seminary. We ate most of our meals there with Bishop Sebastian Thekethecheril, who has led the diocese since 2006, and the priests who serve, his chancery staff.

They sat down with us on our first full day there to give us the lay of the land: Kerala has the highest Christian population of any Indian state, but it’s still only 20 percent of the population. Of the Christians, 61% are Catholic. And, of the Catholics, most belong to Eastern Catholic rites, the Syro-Malabar Church and the Syro-Malankara Church, both of which are based in Kerala. Overall, Catholics make up just 2.5% of the Indian population. The Diocese of Vijayapuram struggles with many of the same problems faced by the Church in the United States: declining numbers of practicing young adults, infringement on religious freedom, and widespread poverty and other pressing social justice concerns among the flock. But there were a lot of reasons to be hopeful about the Church’s future in India, as we would see.

That afternoon, we drove four hours northeast from Kottayam for two days and nights in Munnar, a “hill station” for escaping hot summer weather, surrounded by the rolling hills of verdant tea plantations. We also spent two days and a night in Vandiperiyar, also in the High Ranges, or mountains, but south of Munnar.

As we drove, tea plants were as ubiquitous as Midwestern cornfields, but the land was anything but flat. Praying a rosary on the way home one afternoon, I found myself, while reciting the Fatima Prayer’s “save us from the fires of hell,” mentally adding, “and the High

Ranges” as we zigzagged down mountain switchbacks, dodging cars whose drivers ill-timed their chance to pass. A Mary statue glued to the dashboard held firm.

It was near Vandiperiyar that we met the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, distinct in their beige saris, and we attended a blessing of the roadside shrine to Mary. Silver streamers fluttered down over the crowd of a couple hundred people as Bishop Sebastian stood in the newly constructed grotto and blessed it with holy water. Then, one by one, people came up to venerate the statue of Mary and the Christ Child, some kissing it, others leaving flower necklaces around Mary’s neck.

That night, we split into two groups to attend prayer meetings hosted by the parish’s Basic Christian Communities, or BCCs. The families, members of the “St. Mary’s Family Unit,” gather regularly to read the Gospel, pray and sing, and share their intentions and needs with one another. We crowded with about 15 families into a very small and humble, windowless row house. Like the other homes we visited, it had a living room shrine dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After the formal prayers ended, three young children stood up to recite from memory the entirety of Psalm 91 — which begins, “You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High and abide in the shade of the Almighty” — which they learned at their Catholic school.

We visited three BCCs in three different cities, and the diocese is energized by their success. Father Jose was instrumental in their formation; in the 1980s, when he was a young priest serving a parish in Munnar, he began organizing families to meet, pray and care for each other’s needs, adopting a model that has also taken root in Latin America. The diocese later instituted it in all of its parishes, and now it has been formally implemented in all Latin Catholic dioceses in Kerala. They’re “ the lifestyle of the Church in Kerala,” Bishop Sebastian said.

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Authentic ‘enco of archdiocese’s first

Stories and photos by Maria

A year later

When Lucy Johnson reflects on her time in India, snapshots run through her mind: A church, a mosque and a Hindu temple on the same corner in a small town. A gigantic replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà on a mountaintop in the middle of a city. Thousands of people — Christians, Muslims and Hindus — packed into a Tuesday morning Mass at a Kottayam shrine dedicated to St. Anthony.

“I did not expect to see Catholicism practiced so much in the open, yet shared with Hindus and Muslims,” she said, a year after the trip.

Johnson and her husband, Jeff, are parishioners of St. Francis de Sales in St. Paul, and both were on the trip. Lucy still marvels at that Tuesday morning shrine experience, where thick crowds sang with music so loud it vibrated through the building, and Father Sebastian Poovathumkal, who coordinates worship at the shrine, prayed in tongues, or a prayer language, during eucharistic adoration. Indians remove their shoes before entering homes and churches, and at the shrine, piles of shoes littered the area outside the worship space. Although we typically followed the custom, we were advised to keep ours on in this instance, since we weren’t likely to find them again.

An estimated 36,000 arrive weekly — some staying for the whole day, to pray in adoration, attend Mass, hear compelling preaching, go to confession or receive spiritual counsel. Many of them aren’t even Catholic or Christian; some are Muslim or Hindu, but they’re drawn to the teachings of Christ and his Church, the diocese’s ABOVE A young woman and her grandmother smile at a celebration followin priests explained. For cultural and legal reasons, Mary near Arnakal, Kerala, Feb. 3, 2019. the Hindus and Muslims are not likely to convert, LOWER LEFT Maria Wiering, bottom right, poses for a photo with elementary but some have a vibrant faith in Jesus, read the attended a high school talent show.

Bible and express devotion to the saints.

During the trip, Lucy asked a group of priests LOWER RIGHT Father Jose Navez Puthenparambil, a priest of the Diocese o about a statistic that amazed her: an estimated 90 lesson during a houseboat ride on Kerala’s famous backwaters Feb. 2, 2019. percent of Indian Catholics attend Mass. “What’s communicated with gestures, iPhone photos and the your secret?” translation of our accompanying priests. But some The BCCs, explained one priest. Each BCC includes things needed no translation. At one meeting, a woman 15-25 families, and they’re intentionally kept small so shared how she and her husband experienced infertility, they’re manageable. “Familiarity with the family does wonders,” he said of keeping the family in the Church and but they prayed, and God gave them a child. Then, an elderly woman explained that her brother, a longtime connected to the community. “We know them by name.” companion, had died, and now she felt she had no one.

While the clergy we met spoke English, most of the lay people we met through the BCCs did not, so we She wept.

PILGRIMAGES

ED faith

ounter’ at heart t delegation to India

a Wiering • The Catholic Spirit

MARCH 12, 2020 • 11

which turned into an impromptu time of prayer.

Our encounters sparked questions about the nature of India, its history, religious expressions and cultural norms. India is inherently a religious country, Father Jose said on one of those trips. Several world religions have origins in India, and that allows for “a religious spirit” there, he explained. “People are very much into spiritual layers. Even though there is secularism here, still it is mostly religious.”

Recognizing that God made every person in his image guides Catholics’ interactions with adherents of other faith traditions, he said. “According to the thinking of Christianity, it’s about seeing God in everything: seeing all as the creation of God, and all the people as children of God.” He insisted that while the Church has the full revelation of truth, Catholics cannot put God in a box, reducible to points of debate. “People try to make God an object of discussion or dispute, and they want to prove that their God, their thinking is right,” he said. “I would say that (approach) is not about the real God; it’s about themselves. They become too self-centered, thinking I am the greatest, my thinking is the right one, and if you don’t think as I’m thinking, then you are wrong. That attitude is not correct. It’s about allowing God to be God.”

Communion of saints

Father Jose was indefatigable throughout our trip’s extensive traveling, early and late nights, generously answering our range of questions, from Keralan cuisine and yoga to more serious issues such as religious synchronism, class conflict, women’s roles and sex abuse. On the bus rides, he asked us our stories, shared his own, inspired group prayers and impromptu theology lessons, led songs and rosaries, shared snacks, and laughed and laughed. He so frequently exclaimed “praise the Lord!” that we couldn’t help but exclaim it, too. He explained Keralan customs, including the unique “head bobble” — a side-to-side nod of the head — that means yes, or maybe or any number of things, and how to eat rice with our hands, making a scoop out of the three middle fingers of our right hand.

With him, the practical was never separate from the spiritual. Father Jose shared stories of miracles and took us to several shrines, including the Franciscan-run Shrine of Our Lady of Good Health, which is connected to claims of apparitions of the Virgin Mary and healing for infertility. We also stopped by a roadside cross believed to have alleviated the suffering of local people when it was erected in its spot a century ago. It was covered with written prayer requests, rolled tightly and secured with string. It continues to draw up to 600 people for First Friday Novenas.

With the crowds dedicated to devotions, it was clear Indians believed miracles were possible. At a church near Arnackal, a couple heard Father Jose was there, and they brought their disabled son Augustine to receive the priest’s prayers.

We also visited a shrine at the tomb of St. Alphonsa, a Franciscan nun who died in 1946 and was the first canonized saint of the Syro-Malabar Church, but we expected to see more devotion overall to Indian-born saints — or even St. Thomas the Apostle, believed to have evangelized in India after the Resurrection; or the 16th-century Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier; Mother Teresa. Instead, most statues were of western saints, such as St. Jude, St. George or St. Anthony of Padua. St. Therese of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun, was popular, too: The diocese has strong ties to the Carmelite order — the ng Bishop Sebastian Thekethecheril’s blessing of a roadside shrine to first two bishops were Spanish Carmelite priests — and the diocesan priests feel they inherited the order’s y students of Mount Carmel School in Kottayam, where the delegation spirituality, said Father Sebastian, the priest who oversees St. Anthony’s Shrine and is rector of the diocese’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Vijayapuram who has ministered in the Twin Cities, teaches a theology of Mary.

In the background is delegation member Michelle Schram.

In conversations with the priests, appreciation of We shared, too: some fears, some sorrows, some hopes. the universal Church is palpable. The European And in that encounter and so many others, we saints “are our forefathers,” Father Sebastian said, discovered the essence of the immersion mission trip: emotion causing his voice to catch. “ They are not like connection. We found it in the couple we met at a shrine foreigners. ... They’ve touched our lives. They made us who were there to give thanks for the birth of their who we are.” daughter; the priest whose parishioner was found dead in Reflecting months after we returned, several members the mud after a flood-related landslide; the innkeeper of the delegation remarked that the trip deepened their couple who invited us into their home for morning tea, appreciation for the Church’s universality, too.

WHAT IS AN IMMERSION TRIP? An immersion mission trip is one of accompaniment, said Eric Simon, mission promotions manager for the Center for Mission in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who organized the India trip and handled logistics during the trip from Minnesota.

“It means being with our brothers and sisters (in Christ), not necessarily doing something, which you would call a ‘service trip,’ (or) a ‘service mission,’” he said. “It’s immersing yourself into a culture. ... Learning about the people.”

The Center’s trips encourage “mutuality and solidarity,” he added.

“It’s about how we’re brothers and sisters. It’s about sharing gifts together, (sharing) ourselves.”

Some travelers struggle with the idea of not “doing something,” like building a house or some other work in places where there’s high poverty levels, but the point of an immersion trip is about being changed in some way by the relationships people develop with the people they meet, Simon said. And it may take time to mentally and spiritually unpack what one received from an immersion trip.

“I would say that 75 percent of people who go have some kind of conversion moment where they think, ‘Now I know why I went. Now I understand the value of Catholicism,’” he said. “When two hearts meet in this intercultural situation, it’s an amazing experience for everybody.”

Ours was the first trip to India the Center for Mission organized.

Simon and the center’s director, Deacon Mickey Friesen, had previously traveled to Kottayam to explore the possibility, and then added it to the roster of other immersion trips to the dioceses of Fairbanks, Alaska; and Mandeville, Jamaica. A partner trip to Kenya is scheduled for June. Tentatively scheduled are trips to Jamaica in 2021, Alaska in 2022 and India in 2023.

For more information, visit centerformission.org.

MINNESOTA CONNECTIONS Bishop Sebastian Thekethecheril, 65, has a Minnesota connection.

He was financially supported as a seminarian by Rose Ann Mayer, who lived in St. Joseph, Minnesota. As a young priest, he met and befriended Mayer’s daughter, Kathy Rennie, who had traveled to India with her husband to adopt a child. The friendship persisted and inspired the We Share Program, Rennie’s Bloomington-based ministry supporting charitable causes in Kerala.

Involvement in We Share is what inspired Deb Streefland to go on the trip. A parishioner of St. Nicholas in Elko New Market, she was the delegation member who had never taken an international flight, yet her son-in-law is Indian, so she had cultural insights others of us lacked. Through We Share, she and her husband helped a family build a house in December 2017, and throughout the trip, she held onto hope that she might be able to meet that family. On the last day, she and longtime friend Marilynn Neuville took a trip outside the city for that reason. She met both parents and their four daughters.

What will remain with her is “seeing their joy and happiness in the fact that they had a roof over their head,” she said. “They were kind of shy but very happy.”

Streefland said she felt inspired not only by that family, but all the people she met throughout the trip. “I was truly humbled by these people, these people’s faith. ... I think (God) just wants to use what I’ve experienced to humble me and to take the faith that I’ve seen ... to use that and increase my faith.”

Marta Pereira, the delegation’s leader, described the trip as a gift she is still slowly unwrapping. Likewise, Amy Tadlock, a judge in the archdiocese’s tribunal, said she is still sorting through the experience.

“I believe in lifelong opportunities for growth and transformation. One way those things happen is if you do and experience things you’ve never done before,” she said. “So for me part of the trip was having this unique opportunity, knowing that I would come away with a different worldview, a different understanding of Catholicism. ... I know my perspective, my worldview has changed, (but) I don’t know if I can articulate it quite yet.”

On our delegation’s last day in India, we met with the members of the curia to reflect on the experience. “I feel like I’m on holy ground,” Lucy told the priests. “We came on a mission trip, and it became a pilgrimage.”

RETREATS+PILGRIMAGES

12 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

Prayer, beauty, quiet draw visitors to New Melleray Abbey

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

T

rappist Brother Paul Andrew Tanner remembers the day 24 years ago when he drove to the New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa, to attend his first retreat there. “Until I pulled into the parking lot, I had my CD player going and my radio going,” he said. “And then I turned that off and had a weekend of quiet — religious quiet.”

The abbey’s atmosphere spoke of a rhythm of prayer, he said. “When I left, I thought I might have a monastic vocation. It was a very powerful experience.”

Brother Paul Andrew, 65, now lives with 20 other monks at New Melleray, a monastery founded in 1849.

About half are ordained priests; the others are brothers.

They belong to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, known as Trappists.

The monks rise at 3:15 a.m. and follow a strict schedule. Days begin and end with prayer.

Brother Paul Andrew is coordinator of the monastic center, a separate area of the abbey’s guest house, where men ages 20 to 70 can experience daily life as a monk for a few days or up to two weeks. About 60 men participate each year, but the program can accommodate more.

The program is free, although free-will offerings are encouraged, and it is restricted to men because they join the cloistered monks in their daily labors and prayers, including sitting in the choir seven times each day for prayer and daily Mass. Guests outside the monastic center take their seats in a designated area at the back of the church. Accompanying the monks is one advantage of the program, Brother Paul Andrew said.

“These times of common celebration and prayer form the heart of our day,” he said.

Attendees also do physical labor, working in the

COURTESY NEW MELLERAY ABBEY

Trappist monks at New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa, chant in the church. garden, on the grounds or in the kitchen.

“Labor is an important part of our spirituality,” Brother Paul Andrew said. “You can’t work all the time, and you can’t pray all the time, but you can pray while you’re working.”

Father Jonah Wharff, 72, is guestmaster and chaplain for the abbey’s guest house, where men and women can stay for personal, themed or preached retreats. About 1,700 visitors each year attend guest house retreats.

Visitors often feel a sense of peace at the abbey that is different from the rest of the world, he said. The focus is on what life is about and what matters most, he said.

“Life is about the love of God that we are to pass on to others,” Father Wharff said. “What matters most is our relationship with him.”

Located on 1,800 acres of farmland and 1,300 acres of forest, the abbey was a working farm for 160 years.

About seven years ago, the abbey started leasing the land to farmers, with proceeds going to charitable organizations. The abbey’s Trappist Caskets business covers the abbey’s expenses and employs 26 people

from outside the abbey. Last year, they shipped more than 1,600 caskets.

Dan McKenzie, 64, of St. Peter in Hokah, Minnesota, fell in love with New Melleray the first time he walked in the door — as a young man considering priesthood back in 1973. “You just know there’s something amazing here,” he said. “The silence overwhelms you.”

McKenzie, a widower who during college was a longdistance runner, compared adjusting to prayerful silence to a runner enjoying a marathon.

“After two to three miles, they get into this zone, and don’t want to stop,” he said. “Then it’s a struggle.

They’re pushing themselves, trying to keep running; they get tired but don’t quit. Then once they’re over the hump, it overwhelms them, and they just want to run for the next 10 years.”

The abbey is a great place to rearrange your priorities, he added, “to understand what’s really important, to get back in touch with yourself and what’s real. ... It helps you center your life on God.” McKenzie is a frequent visitor to the abbey. He said his car almost knows the way from his home about 120 miles away. “I need to get away from the noise and clear my mind,” he said. “Live the simple life. When I go there, it’s almost like going home. And when I leave, it’s like leaving where you belong.”

Rick Brown, 76, a parishioner of St. Benedict in Decorah, Iowa, has been a regular parishioner visitor to the abbey since 1986. Visiting is a time for dropping all distractions, said Brown, who lives about 100 miles from New Melleray.

“That is the great benefit. Between that and the structure, (the abbey) is profoundly a place apart,” he added.

Men interested in participating in the monastic center program can email mc@newmelleray.org.

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MARCH 12, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 13

Pilgrimage to Iowa grotto: A spiritual and geological experience

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit

J

ohn and Natalie Sonnen have seen many Catholic shrines, but when the St. Paul couple visited the Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption in northern Iowa on their way home from a convention last September, they were particularly impressed.

“It was something I was not expecting at all,” said Natalie Sonnen, referring to the series of nine manmade grottoes encrusted with precious and semiprecious stones from around the world chronicling Christ’s life.

“It was really stunning and completely original.”

“It’s little pieces of the whole planet,” John Sonnen said. “There is a theme: It’s redemption and beauty, but also nature. That’s what makes it such a unique sacred space.”

He appreciated the shrine’s Stations of the Cross, which ascend a hill to Calvary. “To be able to pray and make your way through the stations and end at the top, it’s just very cleverly done.”

During their afternoon at the shrine located about 180 miles from Minneapolis in West Bend, Iowa, the 40-something parishioners of All Saints in Minneapolis toured the shrine and adjacent church, prayed and took pictures.

Designed and built largely by a German immigrant priest during the first half of the 20th century, the Grotto of the Redemption attracts 50,000 pilgrims and visitors annually to view the salvation story from the Fall to the Resurrection told with rocks, minerals and statues.

Pilgrims can view the shrine, museum and the parish church of Sts. Peter and Paul, which also houses a grotto, within a two-city-block area in the town of 700.

The shrine is open year-round at no charge, and the

COURTESY SHRINE OF THE GROTTO OF THE REDEMPTION

Statues depict the fall of Adam and Eve in the Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa. church offers regular Mass and confession times, said Andy Milam, marketing and public relations coordinator.

A shrine owned by the Diocese of Sioux City, the Grotto of the Redemption is the largest man-made grotto in the world and appears on the National Register of Historic Places, Milam said The shrine depicts the Trinity, St. Michael, Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden of Eden, the Ten Commandments, Christ’s birth, the Sermon on the Mount, Gethsemane, the Stations of the Cross, Calvary, Jesus’ entombment and the Resurrection.

“From (the empty tomb) we understand salvation, and that’s how it’s told, which is the last key to the whole thing,” Milam said.

A West Bend pastor, the late Father Paul Dobberstein, began building the shrine in 1912, partly to fulfill his

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promise to the Blessed Virgin after recovering from pneumonia.

But “the real reason he (built the grotto) is because he loved people, and he wanted to bring God’s story through the Incarnation so everyone could experience it,” Milam said.

Drawing from his family’s stone masonry background and his study of geology, Father Dobberstein and an assistant collected rocks and precious stones, sometimes hauling carloads from South Dakota and other places around the country.

The grottoes are made of concrete slabs covered with thousands of rosettes, which are larger stones with smaller stones cemented around them. Precious stones including jasper, calcite, quartz and amethyst are incorporated with more common stones. Petrified wood, stalactites and stalagmites are also used.

Father Dobberstein set the most fragile precious stones in the church, including a 300-pound Brazilian amethyst. He worked on the shrine while building and running the parish and school until his death in 1954.

His successors built two more grottoes outside.

Ten volunteers regularly restore the grottoes from erosion, resetting loose rocks and rosettes that come off during winter freezing and thawing. But Father Dobberstein left no blueprints or notes for expansion, Milam said.

The Sonnens hope to bring their 7-year-old daughter to the shrine to see Father Dobberstein’s work.

“Just imagining him there building that place for 40 years and putting in every single little stone,” Natalie Sonnen said. “And every stone is placed with forethought. It’s ordered according to color or shape or texture or the different kind of rock that it is. This man’s devotion was incredible, and that’s what struck me and inspired me.”

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RETREATS+PILGRIMAGES

14 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

‘On the same ground as the pope’: St. John Paul II in the heartland

By Debbie Musser For The Catholic Spirit

A HISTORIC HIGHLIGHT

D

ial back to the fall of 1979. A new pope, John Paul II, set out to embark on a nine-day apostolic journey to the United States that included a special visit to Des Moines, Iowa, only 230 miles from the Twin Cities.

Robust and active at age 59, the pope also presided at a welcome Mass in Boston; an appearance before the United Nations General Assembly in New York; and stops in Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the historic trip, the first of seven Pope St. John Paul II would make to the U.S. Following a stop at St. Patrick’s Irish Settlement, a small rural church settled

by Irish immigrants near Cumming, Iowa, the pope arrived by helicopter Oct. 4 to a crowd of 350,000 people at Living History Farms in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale.

For some in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, it was a challenging but delightful pilgrimage.

“The weather was cold and clammy, and we were sitting like sardines for hours,” said Father Kevin Finnegan, pastor of Our Lady of Grace in Edina.

“As the pope’s helicopter came over the crowd, the clouds started to break and the sun came out.”

Finnegan was 19 years old at the time and in his first year at St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul.

“The seminary rented a couple of buses. The night before the pope’s visit we slept on the floor of a nearby furniture store,” Finnegan said. “At 6 a.m., we hiked the few miles to Living History Farms, got there by 7 a.m., and waited all day for the pope’s arrival. It was a very festive, wonderful atmosphere.”

The Iowa stop came about after the late Joe Hays, a farmer from Truro, Iowa, sent the pope a handwritten invitation to visit rural America, the nation’s breadbasket.

St. John Paul II celebrated Mass on a knoll set among fields of corn and soybeans before the largest crowd in the history of Iowa, calling attention to conservation of the land, offering gratitude to the heavenly Father, and urging generosity and service to others.

“Knowing that the pope traveled all those miles to celebrate the Eucharist there made a big impact on me as a

Bishop Richard Pates, recently retired from the Diocese of Des Moines and former auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, said Pope St. John Paul II’s 1979 visit is a historic highlight in Des Moines and the state of Iowa.

While Bishop Pates, now serving as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois, was not in Des Moines at the time, he was involved in the papal visit as secretary of the Apostolic Delegation (now known as the Apostolic Nunciature) in Washington, D.C. He worked closely with Archbishop Jean Jadot, apostolic delegate to the U.S., and his team, coordinating preparations for the pope’s travel, official celebrations and events.

“Pope John Paul II had stirred interest and was very popular, so it was tremendously exciting to be close to him the two days he was in Washington, D.C.,” Bishop Pates said.

“He led a Mass at the National Mall, visited religious men and women at the National Shrine, and also met with President Jimmy Carter. He worked very hard, and I recall that he was very excited about his speech at the United Nations.

ABOVE Pope St. John Paul II accepts fruits of the harvest from gift bearers at the Mass at Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa, Oct. 4, 1979.

“We had meals with him, and he spoke English very well,” Bishop Pates continued. “While he was very outgoing and related extraordinarily well to the crowds, in private he was a lot more subdued. He was friendly, very observant, but quite quiet.”

RIGHT St. John Paul II moves through the crowd at the site.

COURTESY LIVING HISTORY FARMS

new seminarian aspiring to be a priest,” Father Finnegan said. “Our Church has a person who stands at the head to serve, and that’s very tangible.”

Bobbi Vaughn, 80, a parishioner of St. George in Long Lake, was 40 years old when she made the trek to Des Moines with a group from St. Alphonsus in Brooklyn Center, her parish at the time.

“One of the young priests organized a busload of us, and I recall we traveled through the night,” she said. “It was a big piece of land, and we were a long way away, but we were on the same ground as the pope, which was exciting.”

Vaughn admired St. John Paul II, noting he initiated World Youth Day for Catholic youth and young adults.

“And I thought it was wonderful that he came from Poland, especially since

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that country suffered so much in World War II.” St. John Paul II spoke 12 different languages and used nine throughout his papacy, which lasted until 2005, when he died at age 85. The first nonItalian pope in 455 years, he was one of the most traveled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries as pontiff. He was canonized April 27, 2014.

“He was approachable, had a charisma with youth and a desire to be right down with the people as shown by his visit to rural America,” said Jon Cassady, director of advancement at Our Lady of Grace.

Cassady, who was a University of St. Thomas freshman in the fall of 1979, traveled to Iowa with his parents and siblings for the pope’s visit. “My sister lived right next to Living History Farms at the time, so we literally did a family pilgrimage through the cornfields,” he said.

St. John Paul II’s visit occurred on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and the environment. In his homily, he said, “You are stewards of some of the most important resources

2020 fish fry

Bishop Pates recalls one evening after dinner, the pontiff asked for a “micro” — a microphone — to address the crowd that had gathered on Massachusetts Avenue outside the Apostolic Delegation’s building.

“The archbishop advised against the Holy Father going out there, telling him there were people protesting some of the teachings of the Church and that might call attention to those,” Bishop Pates said.

“The pope got quiet, then said, ‘Andiamo’ — ‘let us go’ — and went outside, where he gained cheering and a very positive reaction.

The protests kind of melted away.”

— Debbie Musser

God has given to the world ... the land must be conserved with care since it is intended to be fruitful for generation upon generation.”

Cassady recalls a beautiful banner featuring the colors of a farm community on the altar, which was made of 100-year-old wood planks.

“It was a joyous occasion set in the simplicity of a farm,” Cassady said.

“The pope noted that while the farmer prepares the soil, plants the seed and cultivates the crop, God makes it grow as he alone is the bread of life. That was such a beautiful message.”

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RETREATS+PILGRIMAGES

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 15

Statues of Jesus and Mary guide pilgrims to peace at Iowa shrine

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit

A

t Trinity Heights Queen of Peace Shrine, a 30-foot-tall stainlesssteel statue of Mary, Queen of Peace, welcomes 80,000 visitors a year with an outstretched hand. With the other, she points across the shrine’s statues and gardens to the source of peace — a slightly taller statue of Jesus revealing his Sacred Heart.

“You get a lot of people that will come up, and they’ve just lost somebody, or they’ve gotten a bad diagnosis,” said Terry Hegarty, 64, the shrine’s executive director. “This is a place that they come to because they can find that peace, and they might find that connection that they don’t have, that they might not ever have had.”

The 14-acre shrine of the Diocese of Sioux City, located in Leeds, a Sioux City suburb in north-central Iowa, contains more than 24 smaller shrines and green spaces, a chapel, museum and meeting center. Its life-sized bronze, marble and composite sculptures of saints inspire visitors and volunteers alike who also come for Mass, eucharistic adoration and catechetical programs. Admission is free, and the shrine is open year-round.

A Sioux City pastor, the late Father Harold Cooper, first envisioned the shrine in 1985. After seeing a 30-foot statue of the Blessed Mother in California, he hoped to place one on property that once held Trinity Heights College and High School, which closed in 1949, Hegarty said.

With backing from Trinity alumni and others, the property was purchased, the school buildings razed and South Dakota sculptor Dale Lamphere was commissioned to create first the Queen of Peace, then Sacred Heart statues.

Father Cooper died in 2007. Trinity Heights Queen of Peace is now owned by a nonprofit lay group and is supported through donations, Hegarty said. A small staff and more than 80 volunteers care for the shrine.

Near the Sacred Heart statue are the Stations of the Cross, shrines to approved Marian apparitions, and the Beatitudes. One area is devoted to the saints, and in another part is a St. John the Baptist statue added in 2019.

Around the Queen of Peace statue are the mysteries of the rosary and the seven sorrows of Mary. And indoors at the St. Joseph Center Museum is a 22-foot-long wooden sculpture of the Last Supper.

Mass and eucharistic adoration are offered during the week, and the shrine offers periodic conferences and lecture series, Hegarty said.

This year the shrine will open a garden dedicated to the Divine Mercy that will feature a mural of St. Faustina Kowalska and a statue of Pope St. John Paul II created by Lamphere.

When he began work on the Queen of Peace statue, Lamphere, 72, said he felt a responsibility to recreate an icon of faith using modern materials.

He said he’s seen his own faith deepen as the shrine has grown.

“They’ve developed it into a really rich tapestry of faith.”

Lamphere also created the shrine’s

bronze works of St. Michael, St. Francis, Moses and Father Cooper.

Community members sometimes seek the shrine’s peace on their lunch hours, said Margie Lancaster, 57, who manages the museum.

It’s a place of catechesis for the diocese’s clergy and a place to reconnect with faith, she said.

De De Niles, 65, started welcoming visitors at the St. Joseph Center as a volunteer five years ago because she wanted to give something back to the shrine, where she often was attending Mass.

“I feel like I get more from the Queen of Peace than I can give to anyone,” she said, calling it a blessed place of miracles, peace and faith.

Everyone who visits the shrine takes something with them, Niles said. “It’s a grace, it’s a blessing in so many ways, so many forms we’re not even aware of, what miracles are beseeched just from someone visiting here.”

COURTESY TERRY HEGARTY

The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at Trinity Heights Queen of Peace Shrine in Leeds, Iowa.

16 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

FOCUSONFAITH SUNDAY SCRIPTURES | FATHER JOSEPH BAMBENEK

Learning how God sees us

One of the most helpful insights I gained in seminary was learned from therapist Paul Ruff during a talk he gave on the importance of friendship in the priesthood: the deepest desire of the human heart is to love and be loved, to know another and to be known by one whom we love.

That insight’s reality is on full display in Jesus’ encounter with the Woman at the Well. Here was a woman who was known, in the biblical sense of the word, by a long list of men. And her behavior was well-known by the townspeople. That she was at the well, by herself, in the hottest part of the day would have been understood in Jesus’ time to indicate that she went to that place of social activity for women when no one else was there to avoid being ostracized. She would have done so, in her shame, to avoid the comments, to avoid the latest details of her life becoming known by people who most likely would have used whatever they learned to further shun and judge her.

Then her life changes: She encounters an unknown man who would have had no earthly way of knowing the details of her life. This man sees her not as an object of lust but a woman to be loved. When she makes herself slightly vulnerable to Jesus by admitting that she does not have a husband, she experiences what it is to be truly known, but not in the biblical sense by yet another man. Jesus shares what he knows about her and treats her with love and respect anyway. Oh how delighted she is: The deepest desires of her heart are met in a way that

ASK FATHER MIKE | FATHER MICHAEL SCHMITZ

Is Christianity about relationship, not religion?

Q Some of my co-workers seem to think that I believe my religion saves me. They say that Christianity is about a relationship, not a religion.

A This is a very good question. Of course we are

brought into a new and miraculous relationship with God through his Son, Jesus. What a massive gift! But there has been this strange rise in a false dichotomy between faith in Jesus and faith in the Church he founded. You find more and more people who maintain that they “love Jesus but not the Church.” It is even another step away from the truth to claim that a person doesn’t need the Church. There are so many reasons why this is not only shortsighted but is demonstrably false and contrary to the way in which God has interacted with his people.

First, before we go into any more complex reasons why the Church is not optional, you could ask your friends who believe in Jesus how they know who he is. You might get some responses that include “He is my Lord” or “He is my savior” or “He is God.” Someone might even state the formulation, “Jesus Christ is true God and true man.”

These would all be good answers. But then you could ask the necessary next question: How do you know that? They might say they know this from reading the New Testament. And that is good.

But there are at least two critical errors with that simplistic answer.

First, where did they get the New Testament? Who chose those particular Gospels and not any others? Who selected those writings of St. Paul and St. Peter and others, and did not choose other writings that existed at the same time? If they are basing their knowledge of Jesus off the Bible, we are able to point out that they only have the Bible because of the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church gave us the New Testament (and even codified the writings of the Old Testament).

What is more, how do they know that Jesus is true God and true man? There was quite a bit of debate over Christ’s identity in the early centuries of Christianity. Some doubted whether Jesus was

they probably have never been met before. In her joy, she shares her experience with those very townspeople from whom she had been hiding just minutes before.

This story is so rich it has many possible lessons; let me share just a few. First, is this not the cycle of many in our culture today? As we seek to meet our deepest desires of being reciprocally known and loved, how many today reveal ourselves in sexual ways not in keeping with what Jesus teaches: from immodest dress to inappropriate banter to sexual activity outside of marriage.

But rather than fulfilling those deep desires, those actions leave us ashamed and wanting to self-protect from future hurts after feeling used. The tragic irony is that those consequences make it even harder to fulfill our deepest desires.

Second, Jesus knows and loves us perfectly, better than we know ourselves. Because God does not force himself upon us, he will wait to act in our lives to bring healing only after we invite him. Lent is a good time to make ourselves vulnerable to him by bringing him our sins through the sacrament of penance, trusting that if we do, we can experience his love for us and be known by him in new and powerful ways.

Finally, I’m told that retreat master Msgr. John Essef, a priest of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennyslvania, sometimes tells his retreatants there are three “I am” statements: I am who others see me to be; I am who I see me to be; and I am who God sees me to be. And only one of those is true.

The latter is the truest. The latter is also the best as it leads us, like the Woman at the Well, to experience the deepest desires of our hearts and to share the good news of Jesus with others.

At the Pre-Synod Prayer and Listening Events, participants are invited to prayerfully reflect on how God sees us as we discuss how to spread the Gospel.

Father Bambenek is assistant director of the Archdiocesan Synod. He can be reached at bambenekj@archspm.org.

fully human. Others maintained that Jesus was part God and part human. The Catholic Church consistently defined and defended this reality of Jesus, and the Council of Nicaea in 325 settled the matter. There are many, many things that people who “don’t need the Church” believe that they merely inherited from the official and visible institution of the Catholic Church.

But that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface regarding our need for the Church. This goes all the way back to the way God entered into relationship with people from the very beginning.

From the start, when God entered into covenants with people, those covenants always involved an individual and a corporate component. For example, if a man was brought into relationship with the Lord God, he would be circumcised, and this meant that he was not only in covenant relationship with God but also with the People of God (the Jewish people).

There was never merely an individual relationship with the Lord God. And this is brought to fulfillment in the New Covenant.

When we are baptized, we are made into sons and daughters of God the Father, but we also become members of the household of God (Eph 2:19). We are brought into a family. If there is one thing we need to remember about family, it is that family implies real relationship. And real relationships involve real rights and real responsibilities. Because we are part of God’s people, we have access to the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. But we also have responsibilities to God — and to his family, the Church.

This is how God has established it from the beginning, and he did not abolish it, but brought it to fulfillment in Christ (Mt 5:17).

We have to do away with this silly notion that “religion” is a bad word. Actually, let’s look at the word itself. Religion comes from the word “religare” which means “to bind.” At this point, I can hear someone saying, “Exactly! That’s all religion does! It makes people ‘bound’ to man-made rules and regulations!”

But that isn’t what the word refers to. Yes, it refers to the fact that religion “binds” us to the Lord and to his Church. We are made into members of his body (Eph 5:30). But there is another aspect.

Consider the word “sin.” This word has a complex etymology, but one strain of the word comes from the word “sunder.” To sunder is to be divided, to be pulled apart, to be split. And this is our experience. Sin has sundered our hearts and our relationships, not only within ourselves, but also with God. Isn’t “binding” exactly what a sundered heart and a sundered world needs? If you agree, then you would also agree that this world needs religion, not merely a relationship.

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.

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, March 15 Third Sunday of Lent Ex 17:3-7 Rom 5:1-2, 5-8 Jn 4:5-42 Monday, March 16 2 Kgs 5:1-15ab Lk 4:24-30 Tuesday, March 17 Dn 3:25, 34-43 Mt 18:21-35 Wednesday, March 18 Dt 4:1, 5-9 Mt 5:17-19 Thursday, March 19 St. Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2 Sm 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16 Rom 4:13, 16-18, 22 Mt 1:16, 18-21, 24a Friday, March 20 Hos 14:2-10 Mk 12:28-34 Saturday, March 21 Hos 6:1-6 Lk 18:9-14 Sunday, March 22 Fourth Sunday of Lent 1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a Eph 5:8-14 Jn 9:1-41 Monday, March 23 Is 65:17-21 Jn 4:43-54 Tuesday, March 24 Ez 47:1-9, 12 Jn 5:1-16 Wednesday, March 25 Annunciation of the Lord Is 7:10-14; 8:10 Heb 10:4-10 Lk 1:26-38 Thursday, March 26 Ex 32:7-14 Jn 5:31-47 Friday, March 27 Wis 2:1a, 12-22 Jn 7:1-2, 10, 25-30 Saturday, March 28 Jer 11:18-20 Jn 7:40-53 Sunday, March 29 Fifth Sunday of Lent Ez 37:12-14 Rom 8:8-11 Jn 11:1-45

MARCH 12, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 17

COMMENTARY TWENTY SOMETHING | CHRISTINA CAPECCHI

‘Joyful momentum’ when two or more are gathered

There comes a moment when something clicks. At a book club or a Bible study. In a carpool circle or a coffee shop. A connection is made, and a gathering turns into a group, taking on a life of its own.

Elizabeth Tomlin has experienced it many times, and as a nomadic Army wife, she’s come to rely on it.

There was the time she had just moved to Texas, and she showed up at a parish get-together with a casserole. The other young moms embraced her. Fresh flowers, name tags and free childcare eased her entry.

Their warm smiles sealed the deal.

There was the time her teenage son broke his arm while her husband was deployed, and a new friend arrived at the hospital with a stroller and blankets, whisking away her 1-year-old.

And there was the time last summer, after yet another move, that housing plans were delayed and her family had to stay in a hotel for 50 days. Elizabeth and another newly relocated mom met at a laundromat once a week. Doing the laundry together became a highlight of the summer.

With each new beginning came more insights into the vital role of women’s ministry. No, she could not bubble wrap her heart every time the family packed up and moved out. But she could share it with others, experiencing the power of vulnerability and shared faith.

Elizabeth became a founding member of the Military Council of Catholic Women. She served as a

SIMPLE HOLINESS | KATE SOUCHERAY

Skill-building in marriage

Some people might think a good marriage is made in heaven. Those who understand how a good, lasting, encouraging marriage works know it is built on the skills couples develop as they work to manage the ups and downs of their relationship.

Skill-building is a task that all individuals must engage in if they hope to improve and master whatever endeavor they undertake.

A baseball player who has a .300 average is considered one of the best in the game. Hockey players become nearly as excited about the assists they make as they are about the goals they score.

Individuals working in a business setting know they must learn to work as a team to achieve the desired results they have set for themselves and their organization. These individuals, whether they are engaged in baseball, hockey or the corporate office, all know that achieving their goals will involve setbacks and disappointments, as well as successes and highlights. In addition, they all accept that practice is essential to attain success. Marriage is no different.

Learning to work with your partner to build a successful marriage and become more skilled at handling discussions begins with working out disagreements. A couple who perceives a disagreement as a negative experience will have much more than the issue at hand to manage. The resentment that can build up as one or both partners believe they have to give in to keep the peace can

iSTOCK PHOTO | EVGENIIAND

“

Something I learn and re-learn is that when you accept hospitality, you are also helping the person serving you because you are affirming that person’s service ... God put us into community to lift each other up.

Elizabeth Tomlin

de facto consultant to Catholics trying to start or grow women’s groups.

The Washington-based mom with curly red hair, an adventurous spirit and a buoyant faith came to realize she had something to say. She began rising at 5 a.m. to write in the dining room, coffee at hand. Stories poured out. Practical tips interspersed with spiritual insights. Reflection questions, prayers and accounts of female saints. Soon she had written a book, which was just published by Ave Maria Press. eventually erode the happy marriage they are both hoping to create. Additionally, when a couple believes that compromise is the answer to solving a problem, they often experience one partner or the other holding a grudge and keeping score.

In good, lasting marriages, couples are not afraid of disagreements, but rather see them as opportunities to become closer through good discussions. They know that if a discussion becomes an argument, hurtful comments can be made that erode the happiness the couple is trying to build. Oftentimes, all a couple needs is a little direction to help them reinvigorate the love that drew them together in the first place.

A good text for helping couples work toward the marriage they desire is “Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work” by Matthew McKay, Patrick Fanning and Kim Paleg. The authors state “relationships that endure and deepen are formed by couples who know and practice basic interpersonal skills: listening, clear communication, negotiation and handling anger appropriately.”

While this book will not replace good counseling for couples, it can help a couple develop greater intimacy, which Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel contends is another way of saying “into me see.”

Intimacy is one of the most rewarding experiences of a good, solid, connected marriage. It is also one of the most vulnerable experiences we will have in life. It is from intimacy that trust emanates. As Samuel Gladding, a professor of counseling in the Department of Counseling at Wake Forest University explains, there is no such thing as instant intimacy or trustworthiness. Rather, both are generated through patterns of behavior that demonstrate care and concern.

“Couples Skills: Making Your Relationship Work” offers helpful, clear suggestions for couples and teaches listening skills, how to express feelings and reinforce good communication. It also addresses the importance of clean communication, identifying

The title — “Joyful Momentum” — alludes to the biblical friendship that offered the perfect starting point: the visitation between Mary and her pregnant cousin, Elizabeth. An exchange that was equal parts joy and mystery.

The title also conveys the practical nature of the book: keys to growing the kind of ministry that develops momentum. It explores how to cultivate spiritual friendships, practice hospitality, embrace your strengths, serve the community, resolve conflict and mentor new leaders.

Women need relationships — more so than ever, perhaps, in an Instagram age.

“Our faith is incarnational,” said Elizabeth, now 39.

“We are supposed to walk alongside our sisters in Christ. Face-to-face connections cannot be replicated by social media, and if we try to substitute emoji hearts for actually having a heartfelt conversation, we will fall into the trap of becoming digitally addicted yet interpersonally detached.”

As she settles into her two-story brick colonial on an Air Force base near Tacoma, Elizabeth has an opportunity to live out the lessons she wrote.

“Something I learn and re-learn is that when you accept hospitality, you are also helping the person serving you because you are affirming that person’s service,” she said. “God put us into community to lift each other up.”

There is plenty of laughter along the way.

Elizabeth likes to quote St. Ignatius of Loyola, who said: “Laugh and grow strong.”

Laughter helps an absurdity look more like an amusement, an adventure. It softens as it strengthens.

Just as surely as it bonds women finding humor in a shared experience, it also directs them to God, Elizabeth said. “We laugh when our spirits are light. I think of laughter as an involuntary expression of gratitude. When our spirits are light, it’s easy to see God’s goodness.”

Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights.

ACTION CHALLENGE Check your parish library, ask your parish priest for resources or consider purchasing a book at your local bookstore to help your marriage become even better. Make the quality of your marriage a priority in 2020. one’s own negative thought patterns and how these thought patterns contribute to problems in a relationship. Anger and conflict, as well as tackling the impact old established patterns have on our thinking and our behaviors, are also addressed.

As with any good marriage text, “Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work” offers homework assignments, which allow couples to practice the ideas that are taught. Just as baseball players, hockey professionals and corporate executives must practice the skills they are working to master, a good marriage requires the same kind of attention.

Take time this month to become closer to your spouse through learning new skills of listening, communication, negotiation and handling anger issues more effectively. If you find yourselves needing an outside resource, reach out to friends and ask who they have seen for marriage therapy. You will also find information about Worldwide Marriage Encounter or Retrovaille on the internet or through your parish priest. Decide that 2020 is the year to make your marriage even better.

Soucheray is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a member of Guardian Angels in Oakdale. She holds a master’s degree in theology from The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul and a doctorate in educational leadership from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota.

COMMENTARY

18 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

TO HOME FROM ROME | JONATHAN LIEDL

Lent, ‘the least of these’ and our parents

Lent is marked by prayer and fasting, but also “almsgiving,” or works of mercy. Regarding this final category, Christ’s words in Matthew 25:40 are a clear foundation: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”

Christ identifies “the least of these” as the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. But the deeper quality that unites them all is their poverty. People experiencing these hardships are in need without having anything to offer in return.

This understanding of “the least of these” finds a parallel in Luke’s account of the Gospel, when Christ instructs us to invite “the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind”— not our friends or peers — to our banquets and feasts. In so doing, we’re blessed precisely “because they cannot repay you.” Serving the “least of these” is love at its purest, because it seeks the good of another without any regard for what we get out of it.

In applying this type of selfless love, we tend to think of those on the margins of society — perhaps someone experiencing homelessness or a refugee family — and rightfully so. They need and deserve our mercy as a matter of justice. But perhaps it’s also good to reflect upon how “the least of these” can sometimes be even closer to home — and therefore all the more easy to overlook.

I was recently reminded of this in a humbling way while spending a couple of weeks with my mom. In many ways, we had an enjoyable time together, but I must also admit that I too often did not love my mother in the way that she deserved. At times I was impatient, easily annoyed and even dismissive.

At the end of our time together, I apologized to my mom for my lack of charity. Deeply chastened, I wondered if I was the only one who experienced this kind of dynamic with a parent. But shortly thereafter, I saw that a friend from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had

posted about the exact same topic on Facebook. Her post read, in part: “Don’t treat the person who loves you the most … the worst. Don’t take your mom for granted.”

Why is it so easy for us to take our moms, and our parents in general, for granted? It might sound strange to say, but as we mature and grow in independence, our parents can become “the least of these” for us. They are “poor,” not necessarily because of material hardships, but because what they have to offer us — their unconditional love — is already given. No matter how we treat them, their love for us is likely to stay the same.

Therefore, consciously and willingly giving our parents the love they deserve can be a truly selfless kind of love, a love that brings us nothing from them that we wouldn’t already have. For this reason, it can be more challenging to love our parents than it might be to love a friend, a coworker, or someone else who likely wouldn’t put up with disrespect or being taken for granted.

The Church teaches that the mercy we are to show “the least of these” isn’t altruism or pity, some kind of “bonus” good we do, but is rather obligated by justice. In an even deeper way, this is true of the love we should have for our parents. The Fourth Commandment, which exhorts us to honor our father and mother, makes this clear, not only in its content, but also in its context. By linking the first three commandments, which refer to the things of God, to the last six commandments, which address the things of men, the Fourth Commandment acts as a kind of connector between heaven and earth, emphasizing our parents’ role as a mediator of God’s authority. To love them is to love God. The primacy of our parents receives special attention in the New Testament as well. For instance, St. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 5:8 that anyone who neglects his own family “has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Serving the poor, the sick and the hungry is essential, but it can never become an excuse for failing to love our families, especially our parents, to whom we owe a debt that can never be repaid.

Lent is already underway, but perhaps we can consider adding some “parental works of mercy” to our practices.

These don’t have to be extravagant: a weekly phone call, an invitation to spend time with the grandkids, a ride to a medical appointment. Whatever we might discern to do, we can’t go wrong in being more intentional about loving our parents. Because, like serving any of “the least of these,” loving our parents is not only an act of mercy, but a requirement of justice given by Our Lord.

Liedl is a seminarian in formation for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.

The Official 2020 Minnesota Catholic Directory Visit TheCatholicSpirit.com/mn-catholic-directory to order today.

MARCH 12, 2020

LETTERS ‘Metro missionaries’?

The Feb. 27 edition features gender ideology and sexual identity articles. Pope Francis is reported to have spoken to the need to combat gender theory as an ideology, in that it seeks to erase the idea of family and the complementarity of men and women. Within the 2,400 words that comprise the articles, the word “parent” (or, a variation thereof) is mentioned only five times. The Minnesota Catholic Conference guidelines for diocese policies are encouraging. But combating gender ideology begins in childhood within a child’s family environment. The progressive left’s definition of a family is conceptually comparable to “gender nonconforming.” The CSAF lists 20 ministries and missions to be funded. All ministries must be evaluated on their returns on invested time, talent and treasure. There are many and varied metro-area pockets of secular decadence that await a faith propagation, modus operandi that is not conceptually different from the American Indian, Latino and Venezuelan ministries and missions. The metro loop (I-494/I-694) begs for “metro missionaries.”

Gene Delaune St. John the Baptist, New Brighton

Not our values On the nightly news, recently, a woman held up a sign saying “Reproductive rights is a Catholic value.” I believe that statement needs correcting. Reproductive rights might be that person’s value, or the value of some Catholics, but it is not a Catholic value. The woman holding the sign shouldn’t be speaking for the Catholics who believe that we don’t have the right to kill babies. The beginning of life, the right to that life, and when a life ends, belongs to God alone.

Lucille Carlson St. Peter, Forest Lake Share your perspective by emailing CatholicSpirit@archspm.org. Please limit your letter to the editor to 150 words and include your parish and phone number. The Commentary page does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Catholic Spirit.

MARCH 12, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 19

CALENDAR FEATURED EVENTS Prayer and Listening Event — March 14: 9 a.m.–noon at St. Alphonsus, 7025 Halifax Ave. N., Brooklyn Center. Bilingual, Spanish and English. Join Archbishop Bernard Hebda for prayer, discussion and sharing about the blessings and challenges in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as it prepares for the 2021 Synod. The event is the final Prayer and Listening Event of 20 held around the archdiocese since September. archspm.org/synod.

Rise Up Twin Cities — March 21: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. at Providence Academy, 15100 Schmidt Lake Road, Plymouth. The event for middle school youth from around the Midwest will include keynote talks by Jimmy Mitchell and Katie Hartfiel, Mass with Archbishop Bernard Hebda, adoration, reconciliation and praise and worship led by the band Sonar. Cost is $60. Register at partnershipforyouth.org/rise-up.

“Conversations for Discipleship: From Encounter to Sharing Your Faith” — March 23 and 24: 7–9 p.m. both nights at St. Odilia, 3495 Victoria St. N., Shoreview.

Workshop will feature nationally-renowned speaker Andre Regnier on how to encounter the Lord more deeply and how to effectively share the faith with others. Freewill offering at the door. No registration necessary. For more information, contact Cami Berthiaume at berthiaumec@archspm.org or visit archspm.org/ events.

Music “Raise Us Up From Dust to Glory”: A Lenten Hymn Festival and Concert — March 22: 4 p.m. at St. Therese, 18325 Minnetonka Blvd., Deephaven.

Organist Rob Glover and director Jeff Judge. Pasta dinner to follow with freewill offering for 1997 Reuter pipe organ.

Dining Out Check out The Catholic Spirit’s Fish Fry and Lenten Meal Guide at thecatholicspirit.com/nomeat.

Corned beef and cabbage dinner — March 15: 11 a.m.–3 p.m. at St. Joseph, 23955 Nicolai Ave. E., Miesville. 651-437-3526. stjosephmiesville.com.

Feast of the Golden Fork Dinner — March 21: 6:30–9:15 p.m. at Holy Childhood, 1435 Midway Parkway, St. Paul. For tickets, call 651-644-7495. holychildhoodparish.org.

Parish events Lent service project — March 15: Noon at St. Richard, 7540 Penn Ave. S., Richfield. strichards.com.

Ham bingo — March 21: 7–10 p.m. at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1725 Kennard St., Maplewood. presentationofmary.org.

Ham bingo — March 21: 6:30–9 p.m. at St. Vincent de Paul, 9100 93rd Ave. N., Brooklyn Park.

Living Stations of the Cross — March 25 and 26: 7–8:30 p.m. at St. Paul, 1740 Bunker Lake Blvd. NE, Ham Lake. churchofsaintpaul.com.

Showing of “Unplanned” movie — March 26: 6:30–8 p.m. at St. Joseph, 13900 Biscayne Ave. W., Rosemount. stjosephcommunity.org.

Prayer/worship Taize Prayer Around the Cross — March 20: 7–8 p.m. at Pax Christi, 12100 Pioneer Trail, Eden Prairie. paxchristi.com.

24 Hours for the Lord — March 20-21: Noon–noon at Cathedral of St. Paul, 239 Selby Ave., St. Paul. Eucharistic adoration and reconciliation offered in several languages. archspm.org.

Retreats Women’s Lenten retreat — March 14: 8:30 a.m.–1 p.m. at Immaculate Conception, 4030 Jackson St. NE, Columbia Heights. Presenter Ann Marie Cosgrove. 612-916-8365. iccsonline.org.

Lenten Day of Prayer: “The Man Born Blind” presented by Kathy Berken — March 19: 9:30 a.m. at Franciscan Retreats and Spirituality Center, 16385 St. Francis Lane, Prior Lake. franciscanretreats.net.

CCW Women’s Retreat: “Jesus Encounters Woman” — March 21: 8 a.m.–noon at St. Peter’s historical church, 1405 Henry Sibley Memorial Highway, Mendota. Celebrant and speaker Father Steven Hoffman. stpetersmendota.org.

“Embracing the Holy Time of Lent” — March 22: 3:30–6 p.m. at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. Led by spiritual director Peter Watkins. benedictinecenter.org.

Lenten Day of Prayer: “The Raising of Lazarus” presented by Cindy Geiger — March 26: 9:30 a.m. at Franciscan Retreats and Spirituality Center, 16385 St. Francis Lane, Prior Lake. franciscanretreats.net.

Women’s silent weekend retreat — March 27-29 at Christ the King Retreat Center, 621 First Ave. S., Buffalo.

“Broken, Blessed and Sent” presented by King’s House Preaching Team. kingshouse.com.

CALENDAR submissions 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.

LISTINGS: Accepted are brief no­tices of upcoming events hosted by Catholic parishes and organizations. If the Catholic connection is not clear, please emphasize it in your submission. Included in our listings are local events submitted by public sources that could be of interest to the larger Catholic community.

Conferences/Workshops “The Uncluttered Mind” — March 21: 7:30 a.m.– 5 p.m. at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood.. Sessions led by Vic Klimoski, a published poet, teacher and editor. benedictinecenter.org.

“Lean Times, Living Stories” — March 26: 9 a.m.–1 p.m. at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. Learn about Narrative Theory, a process to support leaders who are feeling overwhelmed by pressures and limitations. benedictinecenter.org.

Archdiocesan Men’s Conference: Embrace the Challenge — March 29: 9 a.m.–3:30 p.m. at St. Thomas Academy, 949 Mendota Heights Road, Mendota Heights. Keynote speaker Father Paul Scalia. archspm.org/events.

ITEMS MUST INCLUDE the following to be considered for publication: uTime and date of event uFull street address of event uDescription of event uContact information in case of questions

Schools

ONLINE: thecatholicspirit.com/calendarsubmissions

Immaculate Conception 80th Anniversary All Class Reunion — March 14: 3–9 p.m. at Immaculate Conception School, 4030 Jackson St. NE, Columbia Heights. iccsalumni.org.

MAIL: “Calendar,” The Catholic Spirit 777 Forest St., St. Paul, MN 55106

Speakers “The Encyclicals and Faithful Citizenship” — March 14 and 21: 5:30 p.m. at St. Peter, 6730 Nicollet Ave. S., Richfield. stpetersrichfield.org.

Lenten Mission with Paul George — March 15 and 16: 7–8:30 p.m. at St. Paul, 1740 Bunker Lake Blvd.

NE, Ham Lake. churchofsaintpaul.com.

“Evangelization in the 21st Century” with George Weigel — March 17: 6–9 p.m. at St. John the Baptist, 680 Mill St. Excelsior. stjohns-excelsior.org.

SSND Women’s Leadership Luncheon — March 26: 11 a.m.–1 p.m. at Midpointe Event Center, 415 Pascal St. N., St. Paul. Speaker Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon. ssndcp.org.

“The Pascal Mystery” with Father Tony Salim — March 28: 9:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. at St. Maron, 602 University Ave. NE, Minneapolis. 612-379-2758 or secretary@stmaron.com.

Other events

Art exhibit featuring Kathy Fleming’s Simply Blessed Meditations — March 15-April 15: 10 a.m.–1:30 p.m. at Pax Christi, 12100 Pioneer Trail, Eden Prairie. kflemingart.com.

“The Passion of Jesus in Music, Word and Light” — March 19 and 21: 8 p.m. at St. Mark, 350 Atwood St., Shakopee. Peggy at 612-849-3485. shakopeepassionplay.org.

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VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY HOUSEHOLD MANAGER The Stillwater Catholic Worker Community is seeking an energetic and compassionate woman to manage and live at Our Lady Queen of Peace House, a home for women and their children in transition. Room and board included with this volunteer position.

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thecatholicspirit.com

20 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MARCH 12, 2020

THELASTWORD

Digital

brush strokes

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Taylor Wright holds her phone displaying a piece of artwork she created with it, titled “Citizen,” which was on display at the University of Minnesota’s Regis West Gallery.

At 13, Taylor Wright is painting a bright future

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

L

ike many 13-year-olds at a Catholic school, Taylor Wright is preparing for confirmation. Unlike those writing a report about a favorite saint, she is drawing her saint.

That decision surprises no one who knows her. Wright is an award-winning artist.

Although her subjects vary, drawing is one way to express her faith, she said. “There are a lot of Jesuses in my sketchbook.”

Two of Wright’s paintings recently won “gold key” Minnesota Scholastic Art Awards in the digital art category. They were displayed at the Regis West Gallery at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and automatically advanced to the national Scholastic Awards competition. Later this month, she learns if either (or both) wins national recognition and display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Wright created the paintings using an app on her

smartphone’s 2-inch-by-4-inch screen. Born to an Asian mother and an American father, she also created them out of emotions she felt after some children called her names. So Taylor picked up her digital easel.

One award-winning painting, “Yellow,” shows Wright wanting to change herself. The second one, “Citizen,” depicts Wright proud to be who she is.

“The drawings came from the depths of my mind and the depths of my heart,” she said. She hopes other Asian Americans will understand the turmoil she felt and find their own closure, she said.

“I don’t always express how I feel with my words,” Wright said. “Sometimes it’s easier to do it in pictures.”

Other children might do so through singing, dancing or poetry, she said. Drawing works for her.

“Just getting the feelings out and not having to think about or feel them anymore is important,” Wright said. “Put them somewhere where you and others can appreciate them.”

Wright said she’s had “a lot of ups and downs,” but she is grateful for her grandparents, who are raising her. Her mother died when she was 8 years old. She sometimes feels lonely, but knows she will never be alone because God will always be there.

“I’ve had long nights, but it helps to pray and go to church,” she said. The family attends Sts. Joachim and Anne in Shakopee.

Wright chose St. Lorenzo Ruiz for her confirmation saint. “When I read about him, I saw a lot of parallels,” she said, “so I feel a connection.”

Born around 1600 in Manila, Philippines, St. Lorenzo was biracial himself — Filipino and Chinese. He lived a quiet, simple life, Wright said, and worked as a church calligrapher. “If that was a position today, I’d want it,” Wright said. “I love calligraphy and script.”

When falsely accused of murder, St. Lorenzo escaped to Japan, only to be arrested for the crime

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of being Christian. He was imprisoned, tortured and killed for not renouncing his faith.

Largely self-taught in art, Wright took one class from Janice Lennox, art instructor at Shakopee Area Catholic School, where she is in eighth grade.

Wright has amazing natural talent, and she has worked hard to develop it, Lennox said.

“I have ... watched her grow in skill and confidence into the wonderful, faith-filled, determined young woman that she is,” Lennox said.

The past two years, Wright earned first- and second-place finishes at the regional level in an annual poster competition sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. The theme is “Keep Christ in Christmas.”

She awaits the status of her latest entry. Wright’s poster shows Jesus kneeling in front of a small girl, with “a light effect” shining on him. The girl reaches for the star of Bethlehem, which Jesus is handing to her.

“It is so precious,” said Sherrill Ostergren, Wright’s grandmother and biggest fan.

On March 1, Wright placed third out of 140 entries in the visual arts competition with a digital painting at the Shine On talent competition for Catholic schools at Providence Academy in Plymouth. The competition for fourth- through eighth-graders was hosted by the Catholic Schools Center of Excellence, which supports Catholic elementary schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Wright received a $500 award to further her education in the arts and a $500 grant for her school’s art classroom.

Wright applied to Benilde-St. Margaret’s School in St. Louis Park for ninth grade. She wants to attend a college preparatory school on her path to becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist. Of course, art will always be part of her life, she said.

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