The Catholic Spirirt - May 27, 2021

MAY 27, 2021 • Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

The Holy Spirit is ‘the great unifier’ At Pentecost vigil Mass, Archbishop Hebda opens Archdiocesan Synod’s third and final year with call for unity, participation in process

— Page 6

Archbishop Bernard Hebda addresses those gathered for an outdoor Pentecost vigil Mass at St. Bonaventure in Bloomington May 22 that included the official convocation of a Synod in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

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Marking a year since Floyd’s death: Various efforts aim to make a difference — Pages 12-13 BACK TO MASS 5 | NEW DULUTH BISHOP 7 | SUPREME COURT AND ABORTION 8 RETIRING TEACHER REFLECTS 15 | CHASKA SCHOOL’S LAST DAYS 17 | EXTREME FAITH CAMP CHANGES 24

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MAY 27, 2021

PAGETWO NEWS notes Profiles of the seven men expected to be ordained priests May 29 are at TheCatholicSpirit. com. The ordinands are Deacons James Bernard of St. Joseph in West St. Paul, William Duffert of St. Stephen in Anoka, Brian Fischer of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Michael Reinhardt of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis and Josh Salonek of St. Michael in St. Michael, who will be ordained priests of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Deacons Joseph Barron and David Hottinger, both Twin Cities natives, will be ordained for the religious community Pro Ecclesia Sancta. The 10 a.m. Mass is open to the public and will be livestreamed from the Cathedral's Facebook page. For more information, visit archspm.org/events.

The Catholic Cemeteries will not be holding its annual Memorial Day Mass at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but it provides special Memorial Day prayers on its website. Find the link at catholic-cemeteries. org/events. The Catholic Cemeteries’ five sites are open to visitors daily from dawn to dusk.

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

EAGLE SCOUTS Four members of this year’s senior class at Bethlehem Academy in Faribault have earned Eagle Scout honors: Gerald Friesen, left, Isaac Caron, Jason Shuda and Martin Brazil. In addition, Caron and Shuda earned Scouting’s top Catholic award, the Pillars of Faith pin.

Married couples are invited to celebrate their vocation at the Archdiocesan Marriage Day Celebration Mass 10 a.m. June 5 at the Cathedral of St. Paul. Archbishop Bernard Hebda will preside at the Mass, which will be followed by a reception. Couples celebrating silver and golden anniversaries will be honored in a special way. Masks are required.

Register for the event by calling 651-291-4488. Visit archspm.org/events for more information, including how to submit requests for a special certificate.

Archbishop Hebda, representing the Minnesota Catholic Conference, and Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, issued a statement April 27 welcoming President Joe Biden’s April 24 recognition of the Armenian genocide on Armenian Remembrance Day. Beginning in 1915, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed or deported under the Ottoman Empire. With an April 24 statement, Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to formally call their deaths a genocide.

Hong Kong Bishop-designate Stephen Chow Sau-yan, a Hong Kong native who also is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, told Hong Kong media that people must start with a sense of faith and not assume Beijing is the enemy, and he hoped for dialogue to develop a better understanding. The Hong Kong Diocese introduced the bishop-designate at a news conference May 18, the day after Pope Francis named him a bishop. Bishopdesignate Chow, 61, is provincial of the Chinese province of the Society of Jesus.

BARB UMBERGER | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SCHOOL GARDEN Fifth-grade student Kayla Kane, 11, takes her turn with her teacher, Matt O’Keefe, planting in a special garden May 18 at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Maplewood. O’Keefe and other teachers guided students on how deep to make the holes, space them apart and pat plants in place.

Presentation received a three-year grant from the Minnesota State Horticultural Society’s Garden-in-a-Box program. Participants receive free vegetable plants, up to 10 garden forms, soil and compost along with educational gardening materials and support. The students will give their harvest to food shelves as part of a parish initiative called Gardens of Giving, which encourages parishioners to plant a garden at home and share some of their harvest with people in need.

As we approach the May 29 ordination of new priests ministering in the archdiocese, The Catholic Spirit asks, “What’s the single best piece of advice you can offer a new priest?” Send responses of 200 words or less to CatholicSpirit@archspm.org with “Readers Respond” in the subject line. Your reflection may be included in a future edition of The Catholic Spirit.

PRACTICING Catholic On the May 21 “Practicing Catholic” show, host Patrick Conley interviews Father Joseph Taphorn, rector and vice president of The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, who gives insight into priestly formation. The other two segments feature four ordinands who answer get-to-know-you questions as they approach ordination May 29: Deacons William Duffert and Josh Salonek, and Deacons James Bernard and Michael Reinhardt. Listen each week on Fridays at 9 p.m., Saturdays at 1 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. on Relevant Radio 1330 AM. Listen to interviews after they have aired at practicingcatholicshow.com, soundcloud.com/ practicingcatholic or tinyurl.com/practicingcatholic.

The Catholic Spirit is published semi-monthly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

United in Faith, Hope and Love

Vol. 26 — No. 10 MOST REVEREND BERNARD A. HEBDA, Publisher TOM HALDEN, Associate Publisher MARIA C. WIERING, Editor-in-Chief JOE RUFF, News Editor

Conventual Franciscan friars have served St. Bonaventure in Bloomington since it was founded in 1958. But the last friar will serve there part-time through June 30, as numbers of friars and vocations have continued to decline in the U.S., said Conventual Franciscan Father Matthew Malek. In addition to his practice as a clinical counselor, Father Malek helps with Masses at St. Bonaventure along with Conventual Franciscan Father Steve McMichael from the University of St. Thomas. A new pastor will be announced soon. The parish is hosting a celebration of the friars’ service 6 p.m. June 8, starting with “Mass on the Grass” concelebrated by Archbishop Hebda and Conventual Franciscan Father Wayne Hellmann, minister provincial of Our Lady of Consolation Province. For more information or to register by June 1, visit saintbonaventure.org/farewell-to-the-friars.html.

Bishop Andrew Cozzens was the keynote speaker at the May 15 graduation ceremony at his alma mater, Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. A 1991 alumnus, he called the college “truly one of the premier Catholic Colleges of the 21st century” and encouraged the graduates to surrender their lives to Jesus. During the ceremony, Benedictine awarded Bishop Cozzens an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. He was hooded by his sister, Helen Healey, a member of the Benedictine College Board.

Father Erich Rutten, pastor of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul, was a recent guest on the new “Gloria Purvis Podcast” from America Media. Purvis is a radio personality and Catholic commentator. On the podcast, Purvis reflects on events since the police-involved murder of George Floyd last May 25 and speaks with Father Rutten about race in the U.S. and in the Church, and his experience at St. Peter Claver, a historically Black church. During the interview, Father Rutten recalls seeing the video of George Floyd’s death, calling it egregious and traumatizing. He says the parish quickly put together a video “just to try to speak out.” To hear the full episode, visit americamagazine.org/gloria-purvis-podcast.

CORRECTION A News Note in the April 29 issue of The Catholic Spirit misstated the name of the Netflix series “Black Mirror.” The series was discussed in a recent episode of the Center for Catholic Studies’ podcast “Deep Down Things.”

Materials credited to CNS copy­righted by Catholic News Service.

All other materials copyrighted by The Cath­olic Spirit Newspaper.

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MAY 27, 2021

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 3

FROMTHEMODERATOROFTHECURIA ONLY JESUS | FATHER CHARLES LACHOWITZER

No choice

M

y graduation from high school was most memorable. For those who read my last column on my first Communion, my graduation was nothing like it. In January of 1973, my senior year, I was drafted for the war in Vietnam. Two weeks later, my mother died very suddenly.

It had been a decade of assassinations, violent protests and unrest on college campuses and on main streets throughout the nation. It was a time of civil rights, equal rights and human rights. In the next few months, the draft was ended, the voting age was lowered to 18 and, in Minnesota, the drinking age was lowered to 18. By the time of my graduation, my life and the world around me had changed dramatically.

I began college with a list of adult choices, and it seemed that everything was a choice. In some ways, life is still the same today. For us older folks, the turbulence of this past year is reminiscent of the turbulence of a past era.

One lesson from the past is that when current events separate and divide us, falsely giving us the impression that we have to choose between, for example, being against the war in Vietnam and supporting our soldiers, it is really no choice. I remember when the television showed soldiers in an

Sin elección

M

i graduación de la escuela secundaria fue de lo más memorable. Para aquellos que leyeron mi última columna sobre mi primera Comunión, mi graduación no fue nada parecido. En enero de 1973, mi último año, me reclutaron para la guerra de Vietnam. Dos semanas después, mi madre murió repentinamente.

Había sido una década de asesinatos, protestas violentas y disturbios en los campus universitarios y en las calles principales de todo el país. Era una época de derechos civiles, igualdad de derechos y derechos humanos. En los meses siguientes, el draft terminó, la edad para votar se redujo a 18 y en Minnesota, y la edad para beber se redujo a 18. Para el momento de mi graduación, mi vida y el mundo que me rodeaba habían cambiado drásticamente.

Comencé la universidad con una lista de opciones para adultos y parecía que todo era una elección. De alguna

As disciples of Jesus Christ and as Catholics, we believe that no adjective in front of the words ‘human being’ justify treating people as less than God created them. airport returning from Vietnam and people around them spat on them and shouted profanities. The soldiers didn’t start that war, they were serving a nation that sent them. Some of us both hated the war and thanked the soldiers.

This lesson compels us to both advocate for racial justice and support our law enforcement personnel.

As a child of the 1960s, it is disheartening that our national progress on civil rights is a facade, behind which racism and discrimination are still active realities. The downward hand of mobility that keeps people in impoverished conditions and perpetuates poverty over generations has and will continue to create a deep anger that can explode in rage. Our law enforcement officers did not create these conditions.

Our municipal, state and federal authorities sent them to serve and protect us.

manera, la vida sigue siendo la misma hoy. Para nosotros, las personas mayores, la turbulencia del año pasado recuerda la turbulencia de una era pasada.

Una lección del pasado es que cuando los acontecimientos actuales nos separan y nos dividen, dándonos la falsa impresión de que tenemos que elegir entre, por ejemplo, estar en contra de la guerra en Vietnam y apoyar a nuestros soldados, en realidad no hay elección.

Recuerdo cuando la televisión mostraba a soldados en un aeropuerto que regresaban de Vietnam y la gente a su alrededor les escupía y gritaba blasfemias.

Los soldados no comenzaron esa guerra, estaban sirviendo a una nación que los envió. Algunos de nosotros odiamos la guerra y agradecimos a los soldados.

Esta lección nos obliga a abogar por la justicia racial y apoyar a nuestro personal encargado de hacer cumplir la ley. Como niño de la década de 1960, es desalentador que nuestro progreso nacional en materia de derechos civiles sea una fachada, detrás de la cual el

At the time of Jesus, the choice was between Sadducees or Pharisees; Jews or Gentiles; Judeans or Samaritans; Greeks or Romans. For Jesus there was no choice. All who came to him in faith seeking mercy were welcomed by him.

Several years ago, a Palestinian Catholic and a business owner in Bethlehem told a group of pilgrims that the biggest obstacle to peace was that people took sides. He said it was not a matter of Palestinians or Israelis. It is not a choice between them, but a choice for both of them.

As disciples of Jesus Christ and as Catholics, we believe that no adjective in front of the words “human being” justify treating people as less than God created them. All God’s children, from the moment of conception, are created good and possess great value in the eyes of God. Justice is not just a civil court matter. It is also a matter of the heart. The first steps are to treat people with dignity and respect as a practice of our faith. It is only then that we can collectively, as parishes and as a local Church, advocate against the sin of racism.

It is a cliché that being Catholic means “both-and.”

We don’t choose between faith or reason, it is both; grace or works, it is both. In a world of choices, sometimes it is no choice. It is no choice between our oppressed sisters and brothers and those who enforce the law for our common good. We support and pray for people of color, both Black and blue.

racismo y la discriminación siguen siendo realidades activas. La mano descendente de la movilidad que mantiene a las personas en condiciones de pobreza y perpetúa la pobreza durante generaciones ha creado y seguirá creando una profunda ira que puede explotar en rabia. Nuestros agentes de la ley no crearon estas condiciones. Nuestras autoridades municipales, estatales y federales los enviaron para servirnos y protegernos.

En la época de Jesús, la elección era entre saduceos o fariseos; Judíos o gentiles; Judíos o samaritanos; Griegos o romanos. Para Jesús no había elección.

Todos los que acudieron a él con fe buscando misericordia fueron recibidos por él.

Hace varios años, un católico palestino y dueño de un negocio en Belén le dijo a un grupo de peregrinos que el mayor obstáculo para la paz era que la gente tomaba partido. Dijo que no se trataba de palestinos o israelíes. No es una elección entre ellos, sino una elección para ambos.

Como discípulos de Jesucristo y como católicos, creemos que ningún adjetivo delante de las palabras “ser humano” justifica tratar a las personas como menos de lo que Dios las creó. Todos los hijos de Dios, desde el momento de la concepción, son creados buenos y poseen un gran valor a los ojos de Dios.

La justicia no es solo un asunto de la corte civil. También es una cuestión de corazón. Los primeros pasos son tratar a las personas con dignidad y respeto como práctica de nuestra fe. Solo entonces podremos colectivamente, como parroquias y como Iglesia local, abogar contra el pecado del racismo.

Es un cliché que ser católico significa “ambos-y”. No elegimos entre la fe o la razón, son ambas; gracia u obras, son ambas. En un mundo de opciones, a veces no hay elección. No hay elección entre nuestros hermanos y hermanas oprimidos y aquellos que hacen cumplir la ley para nuestro bien común.

Apoyamos y oramos por las personas de color, tanto negras como azules.

World needs witness of Christian unity, pope says at Pentecost vigil

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service The divisions among Christians are a result of sin and must be overcome with new efforts at reconciliation and unity so that the world will believe that the Gospel truly is good news, Pope Francis said.

“We have sinned against God and against our brothers. We are divided, we have broken into a thousand pieces what God so lovingly, passionately and tenderly made,” the pope said in a video message broadcast May 22 during an ecumenical charismatic prayer vigil in Jerusalem.

The Pentecost vigil, at the Anglican’s

Christ Church in Jerusalem, was organized by Charis, the Vatican-based international coordinating office of the Catholic charismatic renewal.

Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury offered a meditation and told participants, “Across every church that bears the name of Christ, the Holy Spirit makes the distance up (between communities) by filling the space we put between us, by calling us into unity and love — God willing, by grieving us when we grieve one another.”

The archbishop urged people to pray more urgently for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit “that the life of Christ may be renewed in us and his Church begin to look like Christ for the sake of the

world he loves.”

Pope Francis said that reading the biblical story of Pentecost, he always is struck by its description of “the community of believers in Christ: No one was in need because they held everything in common. And the people said of them, ‘See how they love one another.’”

“Brotherly love defines them,” the pope said.

But “how sad it is when people say of Christians, ‘Look how they quarrel,’” he said. “Can the world today say of Christians, ‘Look how they love each other,’ or can it truthfully say, ‘Look how they hate each other’ or ‘Look how they quarrel’? What has happened to us?”

Christian unity and love for one

another “is more urgent than ever,” the pope said. The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear that the world is suffering the effects “not only of a virus, but also of the selfishness and greed that make the poor poorer and the rich richer. Nature is reaching the limit of its possibilities because of man's predatory action — yes, man, to whom God entrusted the care and fruitfulness of the earth.”

Across the world on Pentecost, he said, Christians of every denomination pray that God will send out the Holy Spirit again and renew the face of the earth.

“Let us be changed by the Holy Spirit so that we can change the world,” Pope Francis said.

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MAY 27, 2021

SLICEof LIFE In touch with Mary

SLICEof LIFE

This second-class relic containing what tradition holds to be a piece of the veil worn by the Blessed Virgin Mary was one of more than 150 first- and second-class relics on display at Epiphany in Coon Rapids March 9, 2017 May 12. After a talk by Companions of the Cross Father Carlos Martins of Detroit-based Treasures of the Church, those attending were invited into the school gymnasium to venerate the relics, including pieces of wood from the Christ. Sister Avis St. cross Joseph of of Carondelet center, talks with Rose Carter, People touchedAllmaras, the reliquaries andwith Irene other Eiden at Peace House in with their handsleft, and south Minneapolis Feb. 27. Sister Avis religious items such and goes toas therosaries center weekly and visits frequent Carter. Eiden, of scapulars. Among the guests manylike parents St. William in Fridley, is a lay consociate who brought their children to the of the Carondelet Sisters. Peace House is exhibition was Carmen Campana a day shelter for the poorof and homeless.

“It’sLake, a real privilege to know these people St. Peter in Forest who came and hear their stories,” Sister Avis said. “I with her son, Lucas.

“So moving, so could not survive on the streets like they beautiful to seedo. allThere of the arerelics, so many and gifted people here.” Said of Sister(of Avis: “She’s especially the pieces of Carter the cross an angel. She hides her wings under that Christ),” she said of the experience. sweatshirt. She truly is an angel.”

“I just felt total peace and warmth Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit when we walked in there. I couldn’t help but smile.”Celebrating Epiphany was one of sisters six parishes in the Archdiocese ofWeek is National Catholic Sisters March 8-14. An St. Paul and Minneapolis toofficial hostcomponent of the relic display.Women’s History Month and

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‘Angel’ among us

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THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 5

Parishes adjust to ‘muddle in the middle’ as COVID-19 restrictions ease

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit Cities varied and so did parishes on COVID-19 precautions in mid-May as vaccination against the deadly disease began to become more prevalent and statewide restrictions were eased on masks and social distancing.

That means Massgoers should check their parish websites and bulletins for up-to-date practices, parish officials said May 20, six days after Gov. Tim Walz lifted the statewide mask mandate, encouraging only fully vaccinated people to stop wearing masks if they felt comfortable doing so. The six-feet social distancing protocol was to end May 28. Walz said he was following recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control.

“We’re going to be keeping masks on because it’s a Minneapolis thing,” said Julie Craven, director of communications and strategic initiatives at Our Lady of Lourdes. “But my hunch is that it won’t be much longer and that will change.”

Minneapolis had not lifted its mask mandate.

Neither had St. Paul, which requires masks for licensed businesses and city facilities, but not for churches.

Another Minneapolis church, the Basilica of St. Mary,

offered its parishioners a six-point account of its recent protocol changes, posted May 20 on its website.

“In regard to facemasks, while I realize the CDC has rescinded this requirement for people who have been vaccinated, the city of Minneapolis has not rescinded its facemask requirement,” said Father John Bauer, the Basilica’s rector. “Given this, we will continue to require people to wear a facemask at The Basilica.”

Meghan Hathaway, director of communications at St. Hubert in Chanhassen, said the parish is loosening its mask protocols for Sunday and daily Masses to allow fully vaccinated people to attend without face coverings. But for the JULIE CRAVEN foreseeable future, the 5:15 p.m.

Saturday Mass will require masks, providing those who want to continue that safety precaution full assurances they can celebrate the Eucharist comfortably, she said.

Craven suggested that everyone will need to be patient, as life lived in a pandemic since March 2020 continues to return to some sense of normalcy, thanks to vaccinations.

“We’re in the ‘muddle in the middle’ right now,”

Craven said of varying expectations around masking and other protocols.

In a May 14 message to parish leaders, leaders of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis advised pastors to take each city’s local mask-related ordinances into consideration before changing mask-related policies.

“It remains the prerogative of the pastor to determine an appropriate timeline for introducing changes, taking into consideration that time that the faithful may need to adjust to a change,” a message from the archdiocese stated. “Please note that the Governor’s latest Order does not change social distancing guidelines; consequently, we are still required to maintain six feet of social distance between households until May 28.”

The archdiocese’s Office of Worship also issued a May 14 memo to all parishes and institutions with additional details on liturgical impacts of Walz’s latest executive orders, such as collection and distribution of the gifts and distribution of Communion.

The temporary dispensation of Catholics’ obligation to attend Mass on Sunday that Archbishop Bernard Hebda granted in March 2020, as the pandemic first gripped Minnesota, continues.

North MPLS parishes offer eucharistic presence amid violence, tragedy

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit Father Dale Korogi, pastor of Ascension in north Minneapolis, brings the joy and suffering in his parish and the broader community to prayer every time he celebrates Mass. A rise in street violence in the last month with stray bullets hitting three victims age 10 and younger has brought suffering to the fore.

“Our church stands in the middle of the violence,” Father Korogi said. “The Eucharist is celebrated, prayer is celebrated, our presence is celebrated in the middle of all that.”

Ascension, St. Bridget and other parishes and Catholic ministries on the city’s north side unite their prayers with others in the community, such as Healing Our City’s daily virtual prayer sessions and the interfaith group Come Together, which walks the streets in prayer, organizers said.

Cece Ryan, a member of St. Bridget and St. Boniface parishes and a regular at Come Together prayer sessions, recently joined a group praying each day in front of North Memorial Health Hospital in Robbinsdale, where Ladavionne Garrett Jr., 10, and Trinity OttosonFATHER Smith, 9, were being treated after DALE KOROGI being shot in the head. Garrett was eating potato chips April 30 in the back seat of his parents’ car; Ottoson-Smith was jumping on a trampoline May 15.

“We pray,” Ryan said, for the children’s recovery, for their parents and loved ones, for an end to violence.

“It’s sung and spoken and silent prayer, and being with one another.”

A third child, Aniya Allen, 6, was struck in the head by gunfire while riding in a vehicle May 17. She died two days later.

No arrests have been made in the north side shootings. Another burst of violence occurred in downtown Minneapolis at bar-closing time early May 22, killing two people, including a senior at the University of St. Thomas, Charlie Johnson, 21, who was celebrating before his graduation later that day. One arrest has been made in that incident, in which eight other people were wounded.

Violence has surged in Minneapolis over the last several months, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

As of mid-May and before the May 22 shooting deaths, the city’s 27 homicides were nearly double what they were at the same point in 2020, and 187 people had been wounded or killed in shootings, a tally the city didn’t reach until June 21 in 2020. Twenty-two children have been struck by gunfire, half of them shot since

UST STUDENT KILLED A shooting as bars closed May 22 in downtown Minneapolis injured eight people and killed two more — including a University of St. Thomas senior, Charlie Johnson, 21, of Golden Valley, who was out with friends celebrating their upcoming graduation.

All three commencement ceremonies in St. Paul later that day included an empty chair with a cap and gown placed in Johnson’s honor. A member of his family accepted his diploma.

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

In this file photo from October 2020, members of civic and faith communities, including St. Bridget in north Minneapolis, bring out a banner for peace to stretch from St. Bridget across the street to Sojourner Truth Academy, formerly St. Bridget School, in response to violence in north Minneapolis.

March 28, the newspaper reported.

In response to the violence, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo have pledged to work with county, state and federal agencies to police the streets and arrest violent offenders, even as they work on proposals to increase economic opportunity and improve public safety.

Anti-violence advocates have encouraged north side residents to be alert and report violence, to be out in their neighborhoods and claim them back.

Father Korogi said he didn’t know what brought the latest uptick in shootings, but many people point to heightened economic and health insecurity and fear brought by the pandemic.

“Of course, we mark this week the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s killing (May 25, 2020) and all the awareness of racial inequality and racial prejudice that gets played out in neighborhoods like ours,” Father Korogi said.

There also are a lot of guns on the streets, he said. “A lot of young people have guns. It’s just a bad brew.”

Catholics who don’t live on the north side can take action to help, as well, Father Korogi said. First with prayer, but also through organizations that collaborate with Ascension and other parishes, such as One Body, a Catholic coalition that works with immigrants through the Isaiah Project; the Northside Achievement Zone dedicated to ending generational poverty; and Urban Homeworks, which redevelops houses for affordable housing.

“If neighbors want to help, be in touch with us,” Father Korogi said of his own parish.

At the same time, Catholics and others across the

“Our community is shocked and saddened by the news of Charlie’s death,” university President Julie Sullivan said in a statement. “We grieve with his family and friends and pray for their comfort. On a day he and his family should have been celebrating his graduation from our School of Engineering, we are devastated by this loss.”

Sullivan and officials with UST’s campus ministry were in touch with Johnson’s family. Campus ministry, counseling and psychological services were available for all students, faculty and staff.

— Joe Ruff

Twin Cities and beyond can tamp down violence by being kind to everyone they encounter, he said.

“This is so big, none of us can take it all on,” he said.

“Care for the person in front of us. Day-by-day, we have been given a specific charge. Take care of the children, raise them up, elevate their spirits and voices, there is trauma they are carrying with them every day. Do what we can to respond to what’s in front of us.”

A recent step Ascension has taken in that direction was the January hiring of a chief equity and impact officer for the parish and for Ascension Catholic Academy, which includes Ascension and St. John Paul II Catholic schools in Minneapolis and St. Peter Claver Catholic School in St. Paul.

Primarily working with the schools, Kevin Bennett — who most recently was with Boston-based studentlearning nonprofit ANet, or Achievement Network — is laying the groundwork to help the schools hear and heed more closely the needs of students and their parents. Ascension and St. Peter Claver serve many African Americans, and St. John Paul II serves many Latino families.

“I really think the faith-based community has to be a part of moving forward,” said Bennett, who is Christian and lives in the Twin Cities.

“It’s important that we give voice, choice, and land at a place of transformation and giving people agency. We are at the table as a partner for young people, families and our neighbors in the community.”

6 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

LOCAL

MAY 27, 2021

At Pentecost Mass, archbishop formally opens Synod, urges participation

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit After two years of preparation in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Archbishop Bernard Hebda officially convoked a local, yearlong Synod, which requires the participation of every parish, he announced May 22 at the beginning of an outdoor Pentecost vigil Mass in Bloomington. There he also expressed hope for deeper unity in the local Church through the Synod and beyond.

The declaration was made through a formal convocation decree, which outlined steps the local Church has taken since Pentecost 2019 to follow Pope Francis’ call to be a “listening Church,” including the archbishop’s participation in 30 Prayer and Listening Events that drew more than 8,000 participants and 35,000 comments.

The decree also listed the Synod’s three focus areas Archbishop Hebda identified last year: 1) Forming parishes in the service of evangelization; 2) Forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’ love and respond to his call; and 3) Forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young.

“Throughout this next year, every parish and deanery is to participate in the consultation process, discerning together how we can grow in unity and more vigorously proclaim the Gospel, guided by these focus areas,” he said in the decree. The Synod concludes next Pentecost Weekend, June 3-5, 2022, with an Archdiocesan Synod Assembly.

In the decree, Archbishop Hebda also called for the constitution of a Preparatory Commission tasked with preparing the Synodal Directory, which will govern the process of the Archdiocesan Synod Assembly. According to the decree, the commission’s members “are to be chosen from amongst the clergy and other faithful who are distinguished by their pastoral prudence and by their professional competence and who, in so far as possible, reflect the various charisms and ministries of the People of God present in this Archdiocese.”

Yen Fasano, a parishioner of St. AnneSt. Joseph Hien in Minneapolis and member of the Synod Executive

Committee, read the convocation decree on behalf of the archbishop. Like the vested clergy and many of the Mass’ attendees, she wore red, Pentecost’s liturgical color, which evokes the arrival of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles in tongues of fire.

The formality of the decree was a gentle contrast to the relaxed ambience of the 6 p.m. liturgy, celebrated under a blue-and-white striped awning on the lawn of St. Bonaventure. Hundreds attended, spread out over the grass on lawn chairs and blankets, many seeking shade from the hot evening sun. Eight priests concelebrated the Mass with Archbishop Hebda and Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens, including Father Joseph Bambenek, the Synod’s assistant director.

Three deacons also assisted at the Mass.

Members of the Twin Cities’ Catholic charismatic communities were especially encouraged to attend the Mass, and a worship band led music. The Mass led directly into a charismatic prayer meeting led by Brother Ken Apuzzo, a member of the Brotherhood of Hope and senior campus minister at the University of Minnesota.

In his homily, Archbishop Hebda recognized that even with a formal decree opening the Synod, the local Church is midway through the Synod process, and he urged all Catholics to participate as it moves forward.

“We can’t lose our focus,” he said. “We ask the Holy Spirit, we beg the Holy Spirit this night, to continue to lead us, so that we might feel his presence, that we might feel the warmth of that fire, that we might see the light of that fire, that we might experience the energy of that fire, and that we might go wherever it is that the Spirit leads us.”

Archbishop Hebda began his homily by reflecting on the Mass’ first Old Testament reading from Genesis about the Tower of Babel. “We certainly recognize that what happened was that great disunity that we always associate with Babel,” he said. “The Lord’s intention, though, is not disunity. The Lord’s intention is always that we be one.”

“Pentecost is the antidote for Babel,” he said, noting that when the Apostles received the Holy Spirit, they preached

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

A man and child worship at the Pentecost vigil Mass May 22 at St. Bonaventure in Bloomington. and everyone understood them, no matter their language. “The Holy Spirit was the great unifier,” he said.

Emerging from the Prayer and Listening Events that were held across the archdiocese from September 2019 to March 2020, “was a plea to the Lord for unity,” Archbishop Hebda said.

“We certainly recognize diversity as a great gift, but we also recognize how important it is that we as a Church would be one,” he said. “That we would represent that unity that God intended from the beginning of time, before Babel.

That we would be enlivened by the Holy Spirit that we would be able to witness to the unity that only God can bring. That, my brothers and sisters, is our prayer as we move forward in this Synod.”

As the Synod begins its third and final year, “we pray for that gift of unity, that out of all of the voices in our archdiocese, that we might be able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. … It’s the Lord’s desire that we together would be that body of Christ that would give witness to Jesus forever.”

All Catholics — not just the ordained — are priestly by virtue of baptism and are called to participate in the work of teaching, sanctifying and leading, he said.

“We need our Church to participate in this priestly way, and I call upon all of you to really commit yourself

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to be involved this fall as we move into this next phase of the Synod, this consultation in small groups in our parishes,” he said. “It’s the way in which we can exercise our priestly ministry. It’s the way in which we are able to call upon the Holy Spirit, to not only put sinew on the bones, but to breathe life into us, as well — so that we might be that Church that Jesus intended from the beginning, that we might be the Church that represents his body, that we might be the Church for which he died and rose.”

The Parish Consultation with Small Groups will be held in parishes this fall. Schedules will vary by parish, but in every parish, a six-week small group series is expected to take place between mid-September and mid-November to focus on the Synod’s three focus areas.

Archbishop Hebda said that he had to “marvel at the work of the Holy Spirit” because Pope Francis announced May 21 his desire for all dioceses around the world to conduct a local synod consultation ahead of a Synod of Bishops planned at the Vatican in 2023 with the theme, “For a synodal church: communion, participation and mission.”

(See related story on page 9.)

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THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 7

Bishop Felton ordained, installed for Duluth in northeastern Minnesota Catholic News Service During the May 20 episcopal ordination and installation of Duluth’s 10th bishop, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis confessed that he was “experiencing some envy” over new Bishop Daniel Felton getting to minister in northeastern Minnesota.

“It’s not just because Tobies is in this diocese, and not mine,” Archbishop Hebda said, referring to a renowned bakery located in Hinckley. “It’s not just because the bishop of Duluth has an office with the best view of any bishop in Christendom (looking out on Lake Superior). It’s not just because you can find here the most amazing ‘potiza’ this side of Ljubljana (Slovenia).”

“Rather,” he explained, “it’s because this diocese has a strong connection to my bishop hero” — Bishop Frederic Baraga, a candidate for sainthood given the title “Venerable” by Pope Benedict XVI May 10, 2012, for heroically living the Christian virtues.

Nicknamed the “Snowshoe Priest’’ and “Apostle of the Great Lakes,” he was the first missionary bishop of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and he also ministered in northeastern Minnesota, the area covered by the Duluth Diocese. He often had to brave Lake Superior by canoe to reach his flocks.

Archbishop Hebda, the principal consecrator, made the comments in his homily during the rite of ordination at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Duluth. Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, were co-consecrators.

Several other bishops were concelebrants, including Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio, and Bishop James Powers of Superior, Wisconsin — the diocese across Lake Superior from Duluth — and several priests, including Father James Bissonette, who was serving as Duluth’s diocesan administrator.

Then-Father Felton was named to head the Duluth Diocese by Pope Francis April 7. Ordained a priest for the Diocese of Green Bay June 13, 1981, he was Green Bay’s vicar general and moderator of the curia at the time of his new appointment.

The 66-year-old bishop succeeds Bishop Paul Sirba, a priest of the

Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who died at age 59 in December 2019 after suffering a heart attack. He had been Duluth’s bishop since 2009.

Bishop Baraga “was an amazing priest and an amazing bishop who selflessly gave of himself in ministry in the most difficult of circumstances,” said Archbishop Hebda, who said he first came to know about him in 2009 when he was ordained as the bishop of Gaylord, Michigan.

A native of Slovenia, then-Father Baraga came to the U.S. as a missionary in 1830, serving an 80,000-square-mile territory by canoe, boat, horse, snowshoes and dog sled. He was ordained a bishop and named apostolic vicar of the Upper Peninsula in 1853.

When the apostolic vicariate became the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie (now the Diocese of Marquette, Michigan) in 1857, Bishop Baraga served as its first bishop until his death in 1868. His sainthood cause was officially opened in 1952.

His work includes an Ojibwe-English dictionary, which is still in use today.

Archbishop Hebda paralleled the journey of the missionary bishop with that of Bishop Felton, saying: “A faithful and courageous priest travels from Wisconsin to Minnesota to fulfill a great pastoral need and experiences there the Lord’s incredible providential care.”

He recalled the story of how, in 1846, then-Father Baraga had learned of a possible epidemic among the Ojibwe in Grand Portage, Minnesota, and set out from Madeline Island, Wisconsin, in a small boat with an Ojibwe guide.

A terrible storm arose, but they were blown over a sandbar and safely into the quiet mouth of what came to be called the Cross River. In thanksgiving, they erected a small wooden cross at the site.

Later, it was replaced by a giant granite one, known as the Baraga Cross.

“A bishop must strive to serve rather than to rule, according to the Master’s commandment, ‘Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant,’” Archbishop Hebda said. “‘Be servants of all,’ the pope said — of the greatest and the least of all, but always be servants serving.”

He said the pope always emphasizes two principles bishops must especially follow: discernment and listening.

As the pope says, discernment is foundational and “born in the heart

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Bishop Daniel Felton, the 10th bishop of Duluth, receives his episcopal ring from Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis at his ordination and installation Mass May 20 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Duluth. and mind of the bishop through his prayer when he puts the people and the situations entrusted to him into contact with the Divine Word pronounced by the Spirit,” Archbishop Hebda said.

“Only in silence of prayer can one learn the voice of God, perceive the traces of his language and have access to his truth.

He said it was obvious from his ministry as a parish priest and moderator of the curia in Green Bay that Duluth’s new bishop is a man of prayer and discernment.

“I encourage you moreover to be the listening bishop that Pope Francis desires for his Church — Pope Francis says we need bishops capable of hearing the heartbeat of the community and of their priests even at a distance, (to be) apostles of listening, who know how to lend an ear even to what is unpleasant to hear.”

He said Bishop Felton has already distinguished himself as a collaborator and he will have strong collaborators in his new diocese’s priests and deacons, women religious and dedicated laity.

Before the rite of ordination, Archbishop Pierre read the papal bull, officially naming Bishop Felton to Duluth.

“As you begin your episcopal ministry and mission to the people of Duluth,” the archbishop said, “cling to the cross of Christ and proclaim it boldly

DEACON KYLE ELLER, THE NORTHERN CROSS | CNS

Bishop Felton shows the congregation at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary the papal bull from Pope Francis officially appointing him to head the Diocese of Duluth. among your people, for the cross is the instrument of our salvation.”

In his remarks at the end of the Mass, Bishop Felton thanked the pope, the nuncio, all the assembled bishops, priests, deacons, women religious and the lay faithful. He also commented that he planned to learn in coming days the names of all those who worked for seven days cleaning, mopping, waxing, polishing and preparing the cathedral for his ordination and installation Mass.

“This is what it means to be Church. I come to serve. I will know you by name to personally say thank you,” Bishop Felton said.

8 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 27, 2021

NATION+WORLD Court’s decision to take up abortion case brings issue front and center

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service When the Supreme Court decided May 17 to take up a challenge to a Mississippi abortion law, it brought abortion back to the front burner months before the court will hear oral arguments about it this fall.

The court’s announcement was not unexpected.

For months, people on both sides of the issue have been wondering when the court would take up the Mississippi appeal and speculating about why there was a delay.

The case initially came to the court in 2020. The justices repeatedly rescheduled, reviewing it until this past January, and then they still considered it 12 more times before announcing they would take it up next term.

Their agreement to hear the appeal means at least four of the nine justices found it had merit.

The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is an appeal from Mississippi to keep its ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which was struck down by a federal district court in Mississippi in 2018 and upheld a year later by the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

In announcing they would take this case, the Supreme Court justices said they would only review one of the three questions presented to them: “Whether all previability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

The viability aspect, when a fetus is said to be able to survive on its own, is key here because the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that states cannot restrict abortion before the 24-week mark. The ban on abortions after 15 weeks is more restrictive than current law.

Although the Mississippi case is not asking the court to overrule Roe v. Wade — the 1973 court case which legalized abortion —­people on both sides of the issue are expressing either alarm or elation that this could happen.

If the court sides with Mississippi, it would be the first time the court would allow an abortion ban before the point of viability and could lay the groundwork for other abortion restrictions which other states could follow, or it could push states to enact more abortion restrictions.

Besides Mississippi, 15 other states have tried to ban abortions before viability, but they have been blocked in court, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on abortion and reproductive health.

In a May 19 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans

Pro-life demonstrators argue with supporters of legal abortion outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 4, 2020.

CNS | TOM BRENNER, REUTERS

United for Life, said: “Many Americans might be surprised to know that since Roe in 1973, the Supreme Court hasn’t addressed an actual abortion prohibition that applied before fetal viability.” He also said many scholars “on both sides of the abortion issue agree that the high court has never given an adequate rationale for its viability rule.”

Kat Talalas, assistant director for pro-life communications at the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops, said this is the biggest abortion case to come before the court in almost 30 years. She was referring to the court’s 1992 decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, which affirmed Roe and also stressed that a state regulation on abortion could not impose an “undue burden” for a woman “seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.”

Talas said the justices in the Mississippi case could establish criteria other than viability, such as fetal pain, to restrict abortions or they could “overturn Roe and Casey (decisions) completely.”

A brief submitted to the court from the Mississippi Catholic dioceses of Jackson and Biloxi urging the justices to take this case similarly stressed the need to consider fetal pain. It said the court should “find that the state’s interest in protecting unborn children who have the capacity to feel pain is sufficiently compelling to support a limited prohibition on abortion.”

The brief also urged that a “sense of morality, and indeed, logic, must prevail in the courts on this issue.

How is it that Mississippi law recognizes that an

unborn baby can be a victim of a crime, and can have property rights, and yet the label of personhood at 15 weeks gestation is denied them?”

What the court will do, of course, remains a mystery. Many legal experts and advocates on both sides of the issue expect the court will stay away from the Roe decision.

In anticipating this could eventually happen, 10 states have what are called “trigger laws,” which in effect would automatically ban abortions in the first and second trimesters if the Roe decision is overturned.

Plenty have pointed out this is the first abortion case before the court since the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and many see her as sympathetic to anti-abortion legislation.

With the timing of an opinion in this case, before the end of June next year, politics also could play a role with the country heading into midterm elections.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters May 17 after the court said it was taking up this case that the Biden Administration was “committed to codifying” Roe but did not say how legislation supporting that would get through a divided Congress.

Commentators have said it is unlikely that Congress will be able to pass a law keeping the precedent set by the Roe decision because it would require the votes of at least 10 Republican senators and so far, only Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have said they would support it.

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NATION+WORLD

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 9

Vatican revises synod process, beginning with local consultation

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service Approving the revision of the entire process of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis has asked that it begin with serious, widespread consultations with laypeople on the diocesan level.

“In reality, without this consultation there would be no synodal process, because the discernment of pastors, which constitutes the second phase, emerges from listening to the people of God,” Cardinal Mario Grech, secretarygeneral of the Synod of Bishops, told Vatican News May 21.

The cardinal’s office issued a statement that day explaining how the next general assembly of the Synod of Bishops would work, noting that the broader consultation on the diocesan, national and regional levels would mean that the gathering of representative bishops from around the world would take place at the Vatican in October 2023 rather than in 2022, as previously scheduled.

The theme chosen by Pope Francis for the gathering is: “For a synodal church: communion, participation and mission.”

The pope will formally open the synod process at the Vatican Oct. 9-10 this year, the synod office said. And the bishop of every diocese will open the process in his diocese Oct. 17. The diocesan phase will go through April 2022, featuring a consultation with local Catholics discussing a preparatory document and questionnaire that the synod office will send out along with guidelines for how the consultation should work.

“For a long time, there was talk of communion as a constitutive element of the Church,” Cardinal Grech told Vatican News. “Today it is clear that this communion is either synodal or it is not communion at all.”

However, he said, for there to be true communion within the Church everyone must participate, “each according to his or her own function: people of God, College of Bishops, bishop of Rome.”

“Perhaps in the past there has been so much insistence on the ‘communio hierarchica’ (communion of the hierarchy) that there arose the idea that unity in the Church could only be achieved by strengthening the authority of pastors,” Cardinal Grech said. While that may be an important emphasis when faced with dissent, “that cannot be the ordinary way of living ecclesial communion, which requires circularity, reciprocity, journeying together with respect to the various functions of the people of God.” “The Second Vatican Council teaches that the people of God participate in the prophetic office of Christ,” he said.

“Therefore, we must listen to the people of God, and this means going out to the local churches.”

“The governing principle of this consultation of the people of God is contained in the ancient principle ‘that which touches upon all must be approved by all’ — ‘Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet,’” the cardinal said. “This is not about democracy, or populism or anything like that. Rather, it is the Church that as the people of God, a people who by virtue of baptism, is an active subject in the life and mission of the Church.”

Listening to every Catholic is “the true ‘pastoral conversion’ of the Church,”

LOCAL SYNOD PROCESS The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis just entered its third and final year of its own Synod process, which began in 2019 with 30 Prayer and Listening Events held across its 12-county area.

Each parish is now preparing to bring Catholics together in small groups this fall to address three focus areas: (1) Forming parishes that are in the service of evangelization, (2) Forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’ love and respond to his call, and (3) Forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young. The Archdiocesan Synod Assembly, Pentecost Weekend 2022, is the culmination of the consultation process. The Assembly will recommend pastoral priorities to Archbishop Bernard Hebda as he subsequently writes a pastoral plan for the archdiocese.

Archdiocesan Synod leaders told The Catholic Spirit that they are currently reviewing how Pope Francis’ call for diocesan consultation ahead of the 2023 Synod of Bishops on “a synodal Church” at the Vatican affects the local Archdiocesan Synod underway. For more information about the Archdiocesan Synod, see story on page 6 and visit archspm.org.

— The Catholic Spirit Cardinal Grech said. “God willing, one of the fruits of the synod is that we might all understand that a decision-making process in the Church always begins with listening, because only in this way can we understand how and where the Spirit wants to lead the Church.”

Once the diocesan consultations have concluded, members of national bishops’ conferences should have “a period of discernment” so they can “listen to what the Spirit has inspired in the churches entrusted to them.” A synthesis of that reflection should be sent to the Vatican’s

synod secretariat by April 2022.

The new indications also envision “continental” reflections between April 2022 and March 2023. All the listening sessions and discernment are meant to assist participants, mainly bishops, who will meet at the general assembly of the synod in October 2023, the cardinal said.

“We must not forget that the moment of discernment is entrusted above all to those bishops who are gathered in the assembly,” he said.

“Some may say that this is clericalism,” the cardinal said, but it is not, because in the Church, bishops have “a function of discernment, which belongs to them because of the ministry they carry out for the good of the Church.”

“The strength” of the new process, he said, is found “in the reciprocity between consultation and discernment. There lies the fruitful principle that can lead to furthering development of synodality, of the synodal Church and of the Synod of Bishops.”

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16 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT SPIRIT 10

13, 2021 MAY 27,

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“It’s backbreaking work, but in my experience, the local men and women engage in it joyfully because they understand the amazing blessing this water will be for their families. Most walked miles to get unsafe water.

Through this project, they will have a faucet right at their home!”

Teresa Camacho, one of Cross Catholic Outreach’s international project officers, meets with workers operating a well-drilling rig to discuss the project’s challenges.

Now that the project has been identified and a plan to handle its technical challenges is on the table, Cross Catholic Outreach is undertaking a U.S. fundraising drive to make it a reality. It is an appeal Cavnar is confident American Catholics will eagerly embrace, as they have in the past.

“We’ve managed scores of successful water projects all over the world, and I’ve always been humbled and gratified

EXAMPLE OF HOW THE CLEAN WATER PROJECT WORKS

Pump and water tank with filtration and chlorination system

Water at home

Water pipes

Drilled well reaching as deep as 300 feet, compared to much shallower hand-dug wells

by the way U.S. Catholics have risen to the challenge and generously sponsored the work,” he said. “I think there are three things that appeal to them. First, they understand the importance of water. It is necessary for life. Second, they rightly want to support Churchbased efforts to serve the poor because the Gospel calls all of us to that course of action. Third, they have safe water at their own fingertips, and they’re grateful to God for that blessing. This is their chance to bless others with that benefit in the Lord’s name.”

Readers interested in supporting Cross Catholic Outreach water projects and other outreaches to the poor can contribute through the ministry brochure inserted in this issue or send tax-deductible gifts to: Cross Catholic Outreach, Dept. AC01655, PO Box 97168, Washington DC 20090-7168. The ministry has a special need for partners willing to make gifts on a monthly basis. Use the inserted brochure to become a Mission Partner or write “Monthly Mission Partner” on mailed checks to be contacted about setting up those arrangements.

Cross Catholic Outreach Endorsed by More Than 100 Bishops, Archbishops Cross Catholic Outreach’s range of relief work to help the poor overseas continues to be recognized by a growing number of Catholic leaders in the U.S. and abroad.

“We’ve received more than 100 endorsements from bishops and archbishops,” explained Jim Cavnar, president of Cross Catholic Outreach.

“They’re moved by the fact that we’ve launched outreaches in almost 40 countries and have undertaken a variety of projects — everything from feeding the hungry and housing the

homeless to supplying safe water and supporting educational opportunities for the poorest of the poor. The bishops have also been impressed by Cross Catholic Outreach’s direct and meaningful responses to emergency situations, most recently by providing food, medicines and other resources to partners in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala impacted by natural disasters.”

Bishop Ronald W. Gainer of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, supports this mission, writing, “What a joy it

is to be part of the Lord’s redemptive work and to manifest his mercy on Earth by caring for our neighbors in need.”

In addition to praising CCO’s accomplishments, many of the bishops and archbishops are encouraged that pontifical canonical status was conferred on the charity in September 2015, granting it approval as an official Catholic organization.

This allows CCO to participate in the mission of the Church and to give a concrete witness to Gospel charity, in

collaboration with the Holy Father.

“Your work with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development is a strong endorsement of your partnership with the work of the Universal Church,” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco said. “By providing hope to the faithful overseas by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, delivering medical relief to the sick and sheltering the homeless, as well as through self-help projects, you are embodying the papal encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

MAY 13, 27, 2021 2021

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 17 11

12 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

A year after Floyd Still hurting, still healing, but looking ahead

O

n May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed in south Minneapolis during an arrest after he allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. Derek Chauvin, a police officer, pinned Floyd’s neck down with his knee as Floyd said repeatedly, “I can’t breathe” before losing consciousness. A video of the incident went viral, sparking protests and riots, both in the Twin Cities and around the United States.

Between May 26 and May 29, 2020, rioters looted and vandalized more than 1,500 buildings in the Twin Cities, with dozens across the metro burned completely down.

Floyd was Black, Chauvin is white, and protestors drew comparisons to other recent police-involved deaths of Black men and women. Floyd’s death prompted conversations nationwide about police reform and racial injustices, exposing deep societal wounds around race. This spring, Chauvin was tried in Minneapolis, and on April 20, he was convicted of murder and manslaughter for Floyd’s death. Three other former officers involved in the incident face a Hennepin County trial in March 2022.

All four former officers also face federal charges.

As the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s death approached, Catholic leaders — including Archbishop Bernard Hebda — have called for the Church to play a pivotal role in healing society. In this edition, The Catholic Spirit shares the stories of people who are Catholic or connected to Catholic institutions and organizations about the ways they’re making a difference, from helping others process their feelings to launching technology aimed at mitigating police-civilian tension.

— The Catholic Spirit

Holy Angels alumnus’ new app hopes to ‘bridge gap’ in civilian, police inter

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit

P

ulled over by police, nervous and unsure of what to do? There’s an app for that, thanks to the work of an Academy of Holy Angels alumnus and his partners.

This month, they launched TurnSignl, a web application designed to connect someone who’s been pulled over by police while driving, or who’s gotten in a car accident, with an attorney who can advise parties of their rights and — importantly — is trained to defuse the situation if things get tense.

Jazz Hampton, TurnSignl’s CEO and general counsel, attended Catholic schools from sixth grade through law school, and he sees values from that education shaping both his decision to leave a rising career at a national law firm for a start-up, and the difference TurnSignl intends to make.

“I feel like I get all the success in the world if I can help people every day,” said Hampton, 30, whose Catholic education began at Blessed Trinity in Richfield and continued nearby at Holy Angels, where he graduated in 2008. Then he went to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul for his undergraduate degree before entering St. Thomas’ School of Law. Catholic education, he said, “really instilled in me to think whatever tool I have, whatever gifts I’ve been given by God, whatever opportunities are laid in front of me — how can I use them to help others?”

He’s convinced he can do that with TurnSignl. To use it, drivers download the app to their phone and pay a monthly or yearly subscription. If they’re pulled over or get into an accident, they open the app and press a button to video call an attorney. The phone screen shows the attorney and records the interaction. The attorney is there to advise drivers of their rights, and he or she is trained by national experts in de-escalation.

TurnSignl advises its users to keep phones in dashboard mounts and stick TurnSignl’s decal on their cars’ rear bumpers to signal to officers that they can expect the app will be used. It’s like having a lawyer sitting in the passenger seat, Hampton explained. They hope it becomes as ubiquitous as Uber.

MARIA WIERING | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

TurnSignl CEO and Academy of Holy Angels alumnus Jazz Hampton stands outside his company’s Minneapolis offices.

“I think everyone is uneasy during police interactions,” Hampton said, comparing them to going through airport security. “When I put my bag in the TSA security checking, I know exactly what’s in it, right, but you get a weird feeling in your stomach.”

TurnSignl has become available a year after the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, where the first interaction between officers and Floyd happened in Floyd’s SUV, and just weeks following the death in Brooklyn Center of Daunte Wright, who was shot April 11 by a police officer during a traffic stop.

Recent police-involved shootings of people of color nationwide have led to widespread calls for police reform on federal and local levels, including in Minneapolis, where TurnSignl’s offices are located.

But it was the 2016 shooting death of Philando Castile by a police officer during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights that prompted Hampton’s two TurnSignl colleagues to begin asking what they could do. A connection with an innovator with shared goals led them to start TurnSignl and recruit Hampton to run it.

“I thought to myself, as a person of color with a special set of skills and knowledge, rather than being sad and just going to the marches and the peaceful protests, what can I do to be part of the solution?” Hampton recalled thinking when offered the job. “I felt like I had a tool that I wasn’t using to its full ability.”

For Hampton and his partners, who all are Black,

TurnSignl is “a fulfillm to what we all believe i While tragic encoun police were the impetu Hampton also sees it a and drivers who feel vu To make it widely avai for people who can’t a Hampton is quick to an anti-police app,” he reasons: to protect driv interaction, and to get home safely.” He’s met jurisdictions to share th feedback about how it he’s heard has led to im Hampton is sensitive of division between pe and people who suppo he calls TurnSignl “an it’s a matter of recogni “A lot things around but it doesn’t have to b feel like they’re in one learned that nothing is Black Lives Matter sign don’t have empathy an He added: “There ha especially here, in Min police interactions. A v officers are wonderful p the gap. … We want ev we do it while protecti and by de-escalating th Hampton, a non-Ca two young children. In he is an adjunct instru of Law and a member of directors. In April, h assembly for Holy Ang them that no matter w use that education to h “Helping to make al and safe is at the core o

Catholic Charities CEO: Trauma of Floyd’s death, COVID taking toll on people ag

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit

L

ift each other up in the midst of trauma, poverty and injustice.

That’s the simple but profound advice from Michael Goar as he works through the anxiety and sorrow of clients and employees at the organization he leads, Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact one year ago of the death of George Floyd.

Many employees of Catholic Charities, and many of the people the organization helps, are Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American, said Goar, who is Black and Korean. He is president and CEO of the largest social services organization in the Twin Cities, with more than 500 employees serving 23,000 men, women, children and families each year.

“They lived this trauma in the course of the trial,” Goar said May 18. “The issue of racial reckoning has a tremendous impact on a personal level, not just an institutional level.”

Goar doesn’t leave himself out. “One thing I recall, when I first saw Mr. Floyd’s death at the hands of Mr. (Derek) Chauvin, I felt like that could have been me,” said Goar, who was born in South Korea, adopted at age 12 and raised in south Minneapolis. “I don’t have a stamp on my forehead that I’m CEO of Catholic Charities. I am a Black man in our community.”

Statistics show that homelessness and a lack of affordable housing disproportionately impact people of color, Goar said. Blacks are incarcerated at a higher rate than whites, and Minnesota is last among the 50 states for people of color graduating from high school, he said.

People seeking help from Catholic Charities often are unemployed, homeless, struggling with mental health, substance abuse or other challenges, feeling alone and isolated, he said. Those seeking help are met with compassion and understanding by employees who are trained in trauma-informed care, he said.

“It’s about recognition and empathy,” Goar said. “How to intervene and engage in that moment.”

When Chauvin’s trial began in late March, managers were invited MICHAEL GOAR to twice-weekly virtual “huddles” to discuss their feelings, needs and the needs of those they work with. A trained facilitator from Catholic Charities’ staff played host and discussions were wide ranging, Goar said. Held online to help prevent spread of COVID-19, meetings are now offered once a week. “It helps people to process out loud, express feelings and insights, emotions of hopelessness, sadness and joy,” Goar said. “It allowed us to create a healing community.”

Using trained facilitators, any business, parish or school can offer similar services and support, he said.

Goar, 55, took the helm at Catholic Charities in January, after nearly five years of leading youth mentoring organization Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities and serving in public education before that. The COVID-19 pandemic and Floyd’s death have been particularly hard on youth, who haven’t developed the coping skills of an adult, Goar said. School campuses were closed for months last year during the pandemic, limiting youths’ ability to seek counseling or other assistance if they needed it, he said.

Recent violence mak reflects some of the tra young children were st of two weeks in Minne year, the city has had m nearly double the num (See related story on pa “It’s profoundly imp the pandemic, Floyd’s that followed in the Tw country. “Young peopl to debrief and talk it ov single parents, food ins they process with? Wh witnessing young peop norms and engaging in A 12-member volun Charities has helped le greater equity and dive death and the broad di has evoked, Goar said h budget for a director of can help employees gr just in their dealings w seeking assistance.

Goar said he brings h knowing hunger and u his mother struggled to in an orphanage at age raised, loved and ment south Minneapolis.

“I know what it mea means to be homeless, “And how important i hand and lift you up.”

MAY 27, 2021 • 13

ractions

Minneapolis family writes children’s book with themes of empathy, acceptance

ment of our passion and living up in and how we can help.” nters between Black men and us for launching the app, appealing to parents of new drivers ulnerable in unpopulated areas. ilable, subscription fees are waived afford to pay. o make one point clear: “This isn’t e said. “TurnSignl is here for three vers’ civil rights, to de-escalate the t the driver and the police officer t with law enforcement in several the app’s potential and get could benefit them, too. What mprovements in the app. e, however, to a feeling in society eople who support people of color ort law enforcement. That’s why app to bridge the gap,” and said izing everyone’s human dignity. d policing (are) a hot button issue, be,” he said. “There are folk who e or the other camp, but … I’ve s that black and white. … I have a n in my yard, but it doesn’t mean I nd care (for police).” ave been some tragic cases, nnesota, of people dying during vast majority of law enforcement people. Let’s find a way to bridge veryone to get home safely, and ing the rights of drivers specifically he interaction.” atholic Christian, is married with n addition to running TurnSignl, uctor at Mitchell Hamline School of Academy of Holy Angels’ board he spoke to students during an gels’ Social Justice Week, telling what career they choose, they can help others. ll people feel like they’re included of what social justice is,” he said.

By Maura Keller For The Catholic Spirit

gency serves

king headlines in Minneapolis auma being felt, Goar said. Three truck by stray bullets in the course eapolis and one died. So far this more than two dozen homicides, mber at the same time last year. age 5.) pacting our youth,” Goar said of death and the protests and riots win Cities and around the le don’t have the tools and skills ver. On top of that, you have security, homelessness. Who will ho will they talk to? We are ple disengaging from community n destructive behavior.” nteer committee at Catholic ead efforts in the organization to ersity, Goar said. In light of Floyd’s iscussions about race and racism it he hopes to find room in the f racial equity and diversity who row still more aware, sensitive and with one another and those

his own experience to the table: uncertainty in South Korea, where o provide for him and placed him e 6. After being adopted, he was tored by his adoptive parents in

ans to be hungry, and what it , how humbling it is,” he said. it is to have someone take your ”

L

ast year was a challenging time for the world and the Twin Cities — first with the pandemic and then with the Minneapolis police-involved death of George Floyd. While adults have struggled with the turmoil, children have also grappled with understanding the unrest going on around them.

To help bring love and light to dark issues such as systemic racism and social injustice in a way that children can understand, Eric Ortiz, 47, worked with his 8-year-old daughter Emilia and 5-year-old son Calum, students at Risen Christ Catholic School in Minneapolis, to publish a children’s book.

“Risen Christ is a few blocks from where Floyd was killed on Memorial Day,” Ortiz said. “Our kids saw and heard the rioting that followed in Minneapolis. They are aware of the trauma that is impacting communities in the city. But these things are all heavy issues, even for adults.”

The book, titled “How the Zookalex Saved the Village,” is about someone who is different and mistreated by others because of those differences.

But instead of responding with hate, the mistreated one responds with love, and something wonderful happens.

“We wanted to create a story about fairness, acceptance and working together to build community. I wanted to show my kids the power of giving, empathy and peace,” Ortiz said. “We hope that our story can provide an uplifting message for everyone who reads it, children and adults alike.”

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Emilia, Eric and Calum Ortiz hold the book they wrote together outside their Minneapolis home.

The idea of creating a book as a family came before the social unrest and before COVID-19 hit Minnesota hard in March 2020. Those events simply inspired them more to tell a good story.

“Even though I wrote the book with my two younger kids, it was a family project, with the full support of my wife (Maria, 38) and oldest daughter” Eva, 13, who is graduating from Risen Christ in June and plans to attend DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis.

It took about nine months to complete the book. Ortiz developed the story idea with his son early last year and shared it with Emilia. They talked about the story, Ortiz typed everything up and shared the results with his children for feedback and suggestions.

“We had our first draft of the story in April. The

story evolved over time and went through many revisions and rewrites. We finished the written copy in November and I put it into book format,” Ortiz said. “That's when we started doing the illustrations. My daughter created the Zookalex drawing and made the cover. Then, my son drew a picture, I drew a few pictures, and my daughter drew the rest.”

The book was self-published and is available for $11.99 on Amazon.

Faith has played a big role for the Ortiz family, members of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.

“The Catholic Church has a history of social teaching that challenges us to live responsibly and build a just society. Social justice is an important part of Catholic tradition, and is at the heart of our family’s faith,” said Ortiz, who attended Loyola High School in Los Angeles. “I was taught the Ignatian ideal of ‘being a man for others,’ based on the life and teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This ideal says that every decision and

every action should be done for the greater glory of God.”

Ortiz and his kids spoke about the book to Calum’s kindergarten class at Risen Christ, a preschool class in Minneapolis and a secondgrade class in New York. Students and teachers loved the book, and the Ortiz family enjoyed the experience of talking about the story and its themes.

“We would love to continue these book readings and discussions with students and the community here in Minneapolis or anywhere,” Ortiz said.

Schools help students talk through feelings about Floyd’s death, Chauvin trial

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

S

asha Kirk, 15, a freshman at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis, said in April she sometimes talked with friends during lunch about the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death last year of African American George Floyd, which set off waves of protests and riots in the Twin Cities and around the country.

“Many of my friends are telling me experiences that they’ve had, like with police being around their houses,” Kirk said, “and some of them were talking about, ‘What if it (the verdict) didn’t go the way it should?’

Their main concern was that we wouldn’t get the justice that we needed.”

Two of her teachers asked students before class if they wanted to talk about the trial, Kirk said, which was being conducted only a mile from the school in downtown Minneapolis. “Right after the bell rings, they would say, ‘Before we start class, would anyone like to talk about what’s been going on?’”

“One or two would speak up,” she said.

“People were just saying how they felt about it, like if they were upset.”

DeLaSalle’s openness to students’ thoughts and feelings and its willingness to discuss issues of racial prejudice and inequity that emerged in the wake of Floyd’s death is one example of Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis taking on the unrest as a teaching moment.

Listening and dialogue were commonly offered to engage students.

Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in south Minneapolis is the closest Catholic high school to where Floyd died, and it was vandalized in the rioting that followed.

Principal Erin Healy said Chauvin’s trial, and the April 11 deadly police shooting in

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Kia Burton, alumni counselor at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis, smiles in front of a display she put up at the school called Periodic Table of Influential African Americans.

Brooklyn Center of another Black man, Daunte Wright, during a traffic stop, also was an emotional time for the school’s community: students, families, faculty and staff. “Our biggest focus has been how our students are feeling and processing,” she said.

“This has stretched us to consider what is most meaningful and impactful for students — how to listen, how to center students' voices, how to be responsive when something so traumatic feels overwhelming,” Healy said. “The verdict may have been a moment of accountability,” she said, “but this is still a somber understanding of how much work is ahead of us where each human life is valued and seen as a child of God.” Among her responsibilities, Kia Burton serves as an alumni counselor at Cristo Rey and staff advisor for the school’s Black Student Union. In the months following the deaths of Floyd and Wright, Burton has led many efforts to support students and graduates during a challenging time.

“It’s been a journey of supporting our students, a learning opportunity, because these have been trying times over the last

couple of years for many,” she said. “And being located where we are, we are definitely not immune to the widespread impact these tragic events have been having on our communities.”

In addition to various listening sessions, the school hosted a prayer service after the verdict came, and brought in spoken-word artists, Burton said.

“It was great because their art spoke of the heaviness of what people of color go through,” she said. “But it also motivated us to continue to ‘rise up.’”

At Benilde-St. Margaret’s School in St. Louis Park, administrators and teachers worked to create an open dialogue about Chauvin’s trial to give students an opportunity to share their feelings, said Kari Knoll, communications director. The school prioritized making sure students knew they had several avenues for support, she said. The campus minister made himself especially available the day after the verdict was read, Knoll said, and in the days leading up to the verdict, even for a Zoom conversation.

For several years, Benilde-St. Margaret’s has trained students in the tenets of “respectful dialogue,” Knoll said. This school year brought a more concerted effort, she said, with training offered last fall.

“It was an important strategy for encouraging respectful dialogue in the classroom when some difficult topics come up,” she said. “It’s a lesson to really benefit from, whether you’re interacting with people on social media or in the classroom.”

At DeLaSalle, Kirk said she also participated in several restorative circles that were offered to students and faculty members as they processed the trial. She found talking with others in the circle “very relieving.”

“It was just a very nice and calm space for everyone to share their opinions about what was happening, and hear others’ points of view,” Kirk said.

14 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 27, 2021

FAITH+CULTURE

Son of refugees from Laos thriving at Cretin-Derham Hall

S

ean Xiong’s parents are refugees from Laos who haven’t practiced a formal religion. But they recognized the value of sending their son and his brothers to Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, initially for the academics. Xiong’s older brother graduated from the school and his younger brother is a sophomore there.

“My parents always said that education was perhaps the greatest opportunity that we can take,” said Xiong, 17, a senior.

Many Catholic teachings are core values that align with what his family believes, he said.

“We’ve always felt that Christianity and Catholicism has always been something that we can relate to,” he said. Some Hmong refugees have committed to Christianity, he said, and some, like his family, are “kind of in the middle and trying to find our faith.”

Going to a Catholic school and learning about Christianity has opened opportunities for the family to convert to the faith, something the family has considered, he said.

Essential Catholic beliefs and teachings most important to him include “just that sense of love for one another,” Xiong said.

“I believe we all have the ability to respect and offer that sense of dignity to another person,” he said. “I learned that from day one at Cretin-Derham Hall, recognizing the dignity of the human person.”

The Catholic emphasis on family and community participation also resonates with him, Xiong said.

“I think those really reflect who I am as a person.”

Xiong played intramural basketball in high school, led school assemblies, helped with school Masses and enjoys “doing as much service” as he can. Part of that has been feeding the homeless at Catholic Charities’ site in downtown St. Paul.

A cadet colonel in CDH’s junior ROTC, Xiong is on the rifle team, honor guard and color guard.

He volunteers at funerals, graveside services and banquets. He said he joined JROTC to develop leadership skills.

School peers chose him as a recipient of the John Ireland Award, which recognizes a senior male for his “faith (zeal), leadership, integrity, and commitment to service and social justice.”

With hopes of becoming a physician, Xiong will study pre-medicine, likely majoring in biology at the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences.

Hill-Murray School senior prioritizes kindness, values

E

llie Wagner, a senior at Hill-Murray School in Maplewood, has devoted 14 years to learning dance techniques, performing and competing for an elite dance studio, but she maintains her priority: to be a good person.

Wagner, 18, and her sister, Ava, 15, a sophomore at Hill-Murray, won the junior division of the World of Dance competition broadcast on NBC in 2019.

During a round called “duels,” which features headto-head competition, she recalled show producers goading the sisters to say something on air about their competitors, but the sisters declined.

“It wasn’t talking bad about each other, but more about the competitive part of it,” Wagner said.

Producers asked questions including, “Do you think you’re better?” and “Why do you think you’re going to beat them?”

“My sister and I were looking to make sure we stayed true to ourselves and what we believed in, and our values,” Wagner said.

Wagner said she believes that even a small act of kindness can help someone else. “You don’t know everyone’s story, what they’re going through, so just being kind to them can make their whole day,” she said.

Wagner attended Transfiguration Catholic School in Oakdale from kindergarten through sixth grade, then Hill-Murray since seventh grade. She and her family are parishioners at Transfiguration. She said her teachers at Hill-Murray influenced her by sharing their wisdom in class, including religion classes, and leading by example.

Wagner dances seven days a week and has been competing since she was 4. In grade school, she had a little more time for activities such as golf, tennis, soccer and gymnastics.

She made time to work on the school yearbook this year and she participates in Hill-Murray’s CARE program, which she said brings awareness to issues related to mental health, drugs and alcohol.

“I just want kids to know that with hard work and belief in faith they can do whatever they set their minds to,” she said.

Wagner said she feels a need to help people who are sick or hurting. She had hoped to go on a mission trip before college, but the pandemic quashed that plan. Wagner plans to study nursing at The Ohio State University in Columbus, hoping to focus on pediatric or neonatal intensive care.

And she will be on the university’s dance team.

RUSSEL JARVIS

ELLIE WAGNER

SEAN XIONG

SENIOR PROFILES

To honor graduating high school seniors in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, The Catholic Spirit asked three Catholic high schools — Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, Hill-Murray School in Maplewood and Holy Spirit Academy in Monticello — to nominate students for the following profiles.

The three students selected credit their Catholic education with deepening their faith and ommitment to living out its principles. The Catholic Spirit congratulates all high school graduates. — Stories by Barb Umberger, photos by Dave Hrbacek

Holy Spirit Academy senior inspired by teachers

R

ussell Jarvis, 17, is one of five seniors at Holy Spirit Academy in Monticello, which he entered freshman year after being homeschooled. The school, which has an enrollment of 41 today, gained formal recognition from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as a Catholic school last fall.

Jarvis, a parishioner of St. Luke in Clearwater, said the school has deepened his faith in several ways, starting with attending Mass three days a week and going to confession weekly, and praying the morning offering and Divine Office daily. Beyond that, Jarvis said what makes Holy Spirit Academy so special is its community, which is prayerful and devout.

“There are a lot of virtuous students,” he said, “which has been a really positive influence on my life.” A few students started a prayer group called the Angelic Warfare Confraternity, which prays for chastity for members of the confraternity and the broader world, Jarvis said. He is part of the group.

“It’s a good example of a student initiative started and run by students,” he said.

Holy Spirit Academy teachers have been the biggest role models in his life, Jarvis said, which is directing him to a career in education. “They’ve inspired me,” he said.

The school’s curriculum is ordered toward the study of theology, Jarvis said, with basics of the Catholic faith in freshman and sophomore years, and junior year classes focusing on philosophy for a grounding in logic and clear thinking. In senior year, “you go back into theology using what you learned in philosophy to study Catholic social teaching, Thomas Aquinas” and other great thinkers, he said.

Jarvis said he has enjoyed reading material for classes that emphasize “the great books” in Western literature. “We read from St. Augustine’s ‘Confessions’ this year for theology. It was a really formative experience to go through it” with a knowledgeable teacher, he said.

Jarvis has served on the student council for four years, including as vice president last year and president this year. He played basketball for the school in the three years it has offered a program, which is combined with a charter school’s program.

Jarvis is headed to Thomas Aquinas College in Massachusetts for a degree in liberal arts, which he said is equivalent to a degree in theology, philosophy and a minor in math and science. He plans to become an educator.

FAITH+CULTURE

MAY 27, 2021

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 15

Savage gym teacher Jan Jirik says goodbye after 39 years

By Christina Capecchi For The Catholic Spirit

it. I know now that’s not the case.” We talk about it.

Q How did COVID-19 challenge you

In 39 years teaching physical education at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Savage, Jan Jirik has had nine principals and 14 second-generation families. Now the grandma of soon-to-be six is retiring.

in your final year of teaching?

A It was the hardest year of my career.

Q The rhythms of the school year

must be deeply embedded in you!

A I’m a routine person. That keeps

me motivated. I’m going to miss the rhythm. My plans are to wake up when I wake up, have my cup of coffee, and now I will actually get to sit and read the newspaper, instead of waiting to read it after school. And I can go for a walk in the morning. I love walking.

Q Any new things you’ll be doing?

A I’ll be spending more time with my

dad, who’s 89. That’ll be good. And I’ll be watching my grandkids if they’re sick so my daughters can keep teaching.

Grandkids keep you young! You’re moving the whole time. They’ll say to me, “Grandma, set up (gym) stations for us!”

Q What’s it like to see your students make such progress in gym glass?

A I’m a believer in kids. If you

encourage them enough and they’re willing to take it in, they really do improve. Just to see their whole body go, “I’ve got this!” It’s worth all the years

COURTESY JAN JIRIK

of trying to help them. I am a hopeful person.

Q Did your teaching style change once you became a mom?

A I think you become more nurturing.

Now I hear kids say I’m like their grandma. This is my happy place, here in the gym.

Q You’re part of a great school community and a great neighborhood.

Savage, we moved on May 1, and our neighbors came in and brought us a May Day basket. I’ll never forget that! A community like mine makes a difference. It’s that feeling of, “This works. This fits.” It takes some of the stress out of your life.

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A You have to set them up first with

words and talk about encouraging each other. I always tell them, “Please tell each other ‘good game.’” Then the older kids carry it through. Now it’s “GG” (for good game).

of a daily assessment, they reflect on how they did.

A When they line up to leave, they

give me a thumbs up, a thumbs down or sideways. And sometimes I make mistakes. I don’t have a problem apologizing to kids, finding them later and saying: “Sorry, but this is how I took

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A I’ll miss the people. It’s the people in

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They gave me a big group hug before I left. That was just what I needed to make it through.

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of Assisi in the gym, preaching the Gospel and using words when necessary?

Q And when gym class ends, as part

A When we moved in our house in

invites you to

Q How do you make like St. Francis

My tech skills are remedial at best.

Initially, I lost confidence in how I teach because all these younger techie people around me were doing all these cool things for distance learning. It was a lot of prayer and self-talk, and I came to the realization that I had to take my own advice to the kids: Do your best and finish. I learned a lot about what other phy-ed teachers are doing with these webinars they posted. It was a time of growth, and I probably needed that.

It made me work hard again. When we did two weeks of distance learning after Christmas, I actually had fun with it. It’s been a different year, and we’re still trying to be creative. We tried a new game called Pickle Ball. My maintenance man put up nets in the church parking lot, from light to light. It’s like tennis, only you use a paddle. Four parking spots was one court.

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FAITH+CULTURE

16 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 27, 2021

Germany looks for Church reform, causing concern among some Catholics Catholic News Service

C

atholics around the world have their eyes on Germany as it works for change through its “Synodal Path,” which is debating the issues of power, sexual morality, priestly life and the role of women in the Church.

Although some Catholics fear schism, the head of the German bishops’ conference has said he wants Synodal Path reforms to be decided and implemented in close coordination with the Vatican. Pope Francis has told German Catholics to make sure their Synodal Path was guided by the Holy Spirit, with patience for change.

Limburg Bishop Georg Bätzing, conference president, has been walking a bit of a tightrope. The theologian has been careful to ensure things are done in accordance with Vatican teaching, yet during the Third Ecumenical Convention in Frankfurt in May, he reiterated calls for change. For instance, he said he hoped that, with the Synodal Path, the Catholic Church could reach an understanding on the issue of blessing same-sex couples.

“If couples are living their partnership in faithfulness and reliability and in a Christian attitude, then I would also like to find a possibility to bless them,” Bishop Bätzing told the convention. Such a blessing would be a “symbolic act,” he added.

However, the German Catholic news agency KNA reported that he repeated his criticism of the organized initiative for Church blessings given to homosexual couples all around Germany on and around May 10, because “it was ... regarded as a provocation.”

The blessing services came in response to a paper issued March 15 by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which said the Church did not have the right to bless same-sex relationships. Bishop Bätzing said he learned about the congregation’s paper only 15 minutes before it was published. He said he told

the Vatican that a change in Church doctrine regarding homosexuals was urgently needed.

As to the issue of equal status for women in the Church, he said it was unrealistic to hope that women could “soon” be ordained as priests.

As pope, in 1994, St. John Paul reaffirmed that the Church does not have the authority to confer priestly ordination on women and declared that this teaching is to be definitively held by all the faithful. But Bishop Bätzing, a theologian, said he saw that the theological arguments for barring BISHOP GEORG women from certain offices “are no BÄTZING longer accepted.”

Thomas Sternberg, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, also reiterated his calls for internal Church reforms, KNA reported. He said the topics of power, the role of women and sexual morality were relevant for the universal Church, as seen in similar reform debates going on in places like CARDINAL RAINER Ireland, Australia, Austria, France and MARIA WOELKI Italy.

The 69-year-old, who announced in April that he would not seek reelection in November, said the entire Church had a decades-long reform backlog, including on the issue of women in the priesthood. He reiterated his call for a Third Vatican Council to resolve issues and said its success would depend on how well controversial issues were debated beforehand in a synodal way throughout the entire Church, KNA reported.

But some Catholics are concerned that the German Synodal Path is signaling to Catholics that Church teaching and tradition are open to debate; those concerns have been pronounced particularly on social media.

“I would like to resolutely oppose a polarizing, often polemical and hysterical style of debate such as is promoted by the not-so-social social media,” Sternberg told the Central Committee of German Catholics in mid-April.

The pandemic disrupted the schedule of the Synodal Path, which began in December 2019 and was scheduled to run for two years. The aim is to restore trust in the Church lost in the clergy abuse scandal after the German bishops’ conference released a study that revealed an estimated 3,700 cases of sexual abuse reported in the German church from 1946 to 2014.

KNA reported Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki has criticized the theological standard of some of the working papers prepared for the Synodal Path and said, “The whole world is looking at the Church in Germany and at this Synodal Path right now, so we can’t just permit ourselves to embarrass ourselves theologically through ineptitude.”

He urged theologians in and outside the Synodal Path talks to become more involved in the debate. He also expressed hope that the process would succeed in “initiating a true reform, which is definitely needed in the Church.”

This reform, he said, must “correct all manifestations and realities that have led away from the nature of the Church.” The Church must not be understood as a “purely sociological entity,” but rather as “the work of God.” The goal of any reform of the Church must be to move toward Christ and his message, he said.

Many Catholics no longer know “who Christ is, what the Church is, they no longer know what a sacrament is, what the sacramental structure of the Church is,” the cardinal said.

He said it would be bad if “something like a German national church were to be created here.”

But Bishop Bätzing responded: “There are no tendencies to split us off as a national church.”

Pope asks all Catholics to step up commitment to saving creation over seven-year period

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service To help lead the world’s Catholics along a journey of intensified action in caring for creation, Pope Francis asked everyone to join a new global grassroots movement to create a more inclusive, fraternal, peaceful and sustainable world.

The new initiative, the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, is “a seven-year journey that will see our communities committed in different ways to becoming totally sustainable, in the spirit of integral ecology,” the pope said in a video message released May 25.

“We need a new ecological approach that can transform our way of dwelling in the world, our lifestyles, our relationship with the resources of the Earth and, in general, our way of looking at humanity and of living life,” he said.

This can only come about by everyone working together in a coordinated effort,

he said. “Only in this way will we be able to create the future we want: a more inclusive, fraternal, peaceful and sustainable world.”

The pope’s message was released on the last day of Laudato Si’ Week — the “crowning event” of a special Laudato Si’ Anniversary Year, which closed May 24.

But the end of anniversary celebrations of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” ushered in a new wave of initiatives including a new website in nine languages at laudatosi.va and an action platform at laudatosiplattform.org as part of a “road map” of action for the next decade. The platform is meant to help those who want to increase their commitment to bringing “Laudato Si’” to life by promising a set of actions over a period of seven years.

Integral ecology requires every member of the wider Church to contribute their skills and work together

on common goals, which is why the platform specifically invites: families; parishes and dioceses; schools and universities; hospitals and health care centers; workers, businesses and farms; organizations, groups and movements; and religious orders.

People can register May 25-Oct. 4 to assess what they are doing now and to see how they can further contribute to the seven “Laudato Si’” goals: responding to the cry of the Earth and environmental degradation; responding to the cry of the poor and vulnerable; creating an ecological-sustainable economy; adopting simple lifestyles; supporting ecological education; promoting ecological spirituality; and building community awareness, participation and action.

Choosing the biblical time frame of seven years “enables us to work slowly but surely without being obsessed with immediate results,” said Salesian Father

TS

T& S

Joshtrom Kureethadam, coordinator of the ecology and creation desk at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

“We envisage the first year to be dedicated to the three fundamental tasks of community building, resource sharing and drawing up concrete action plans for each of the Laudato Si’ goals,” followed by five years of solid concrete action and a final year as a sabbatical year “to praise and thank God,” he said May 25 at a Vatican news conference unveiling the new projects.

The strategy, he said, is to create a snowball effect by enrolling increasingly larger numbers of groups each year “to create the critical mass needed” for achieving real change in the world.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, the dicastery’s prefect, said at the news conference that “we must look at the world we are leaving to our children, to future generations.”

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FAITH+CULTURE

MAY 27, 2021

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 17

Chaska school’s final days marked with celebrations, memories

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit

GUARDIAN ANGELS MILESTONES

A

s Guardian Angels Catholic School in Chaska prepared to close its doors for good May 28 — more than a century after it opened — students, teachers and parents marked the moment with a special Mass, a final-day picnic and fond memories.

“It was just kind of a family,” said Jim Smyth, father to Rosalyn, an eighth grader who graduated this year with nine classmates; fifth-grader Audrey, kindergartner Lilian, and Charlotte, who would have been in preschool at Guardian Angels next school year.

“People who had been there awhile kind of picked up the ball, showed us the ropes,” Smyth said of moving to Chaska in 2010 with his wife, Stephanie, and finding a strong faith community at the school and parish. “Kindergartners are hugging the seventhand eighth-graders … It’s more on the family side.”

Catholic education will continue for the Smyths’ children, however, with Rosalyn set to attend Holy Family High School in Victoria and the younger children at St. John the Baptist School in Jordan.

Busing to both schools is available, Smyth said May 14.

Other Catholic schools in the area include St. Hubert School in Chanhassen and Shakopee Area Catholic School in Shakopee. The families of about two-thirds of Guardian Angels’ 64 elementary school and 16 preschool students have decided to continue sending their children to an area Catholic school, and one-third were still deciding, said Lynn Arnal, business administrator for Guardian Angels parish and nearby St. Nicholas parish in Carver.

The school’s storied history includes the fact it was also a high school for 50 years, from 1923 to 1973. In the 1940s, part of the school was open to the public as a community bowling alley, with regulation lanes and leagues for men and women. The school was staffed first by Benedictine sisters from 1869 to 1873, then lay teachers, followed by Sisters of Christian Charity for 115 years, from 1877 to 1992.

But the 108-year-old building housing the school needs costly updates and repairs. It also has seen declining enrollment over the last 20 years, in part because of its location in the lower reaches of the Minnesota River bluffs, Guardian Angels officials said.

After discussions that included three town-hall type meetings with the pastor, Father Tony VanderLoop,

u1 869 Catholic school education begins in Chaska as Guardian Angels parish purchases property across the street and converts a house on the new property’s west end into a school, staffed by Benedictine sisters. u 1873 The Benedictine sisters leave and inexperienced lay teachers instruct the students. u 1876 Franciscan Friars are assigned to serve the parish. They ask the Sisters of Christian Charity to teach in the parish school. u 1880 A new school and convent are dedicated by Bishop Thomas Grace, the second bishop of the Diocese of St. Paul.

COURTESY ARCHDIOCESAN ARCHIVES

Guardian Angels School and Convent in Chaska in 1884. The current school building was dedicated in 1914.

Guardian Angels on Feb. 18 announced the decision to close.

A new, regional Catholic elementary school near Chaska is being discussed, in part to help meet the needs of a growing population around St. Nicholas and areas higher in the bluffs along U.S. Highway 212. That would take time to develop, but there is potential, Arnal said.

Meanwhile, students, teachers and parents wound down the school year at Guardian Angels with a mix of fun, faith and finals, Arnal said May 13. “Yesterday, we had llamas,” she said of a local farmer’s recent visit to share the animals with Guardian Angels students.

There was a talent show, a May 26 final Mass with Archbishop Bernard Hebda and plans for eighth-grade graduation May 27 and an end-of-school picnic May 28.

A kindergarten teacher, Peg Scott, was saying her final goodbyes as well, which for her includes retiring after 41 years in Catholic education, 36 of them at Guardian Angels. Many of those years were spent teaching first graders, but Scott said she also has taught second and third graders and has been assistant principal and interim principal.

“It’s been a family,” said Scott, 63. “It’s really hard to talk about, even now. When I go out in the community, the parents are friends that I see.

Kids will come over just to talk when I’m in the classroom.”

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u 1914 A new Guardian Angels School is dedicated. A new convent is dedicated in 1916. u 1923 The elementary school becomes part high school. u 1925 A tornado destroys the southwest corner of the school, including the auditorium and some classrooms. With extensive repairs, the school also is expanded for more high school students. u 1940s Part of the school is a community bowling alley. The lanes are conditioned to American Bowling Congress regulations. u 1973 The high school graduates its final class before closing. u 1992 The Sisters of Christian Charity leave the school as the order faces aging members and declining numbers of religious sisters. u 2021 The elementary school closes.

— Adapted from “Guardian Angels Church, Chaska, Minnesota, 150th Anniversary 1858-2008” Guardian Angels challenged students academically and encouraged them in the faith, said Scott, a parishioner of St. Joseph in Waconia. She recalled one group of students about three years ago who felt so close to their schoolmates that upon graduating from eighth grade they came back and formed a youth group for the school.

“They bonded so much with kids at the lower grade levels,” Scott said May 14. “We have a buddy system, they made friends throughout the school. That’s what drew them back. They wanted to spend time with them.”

18 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 27, 2021

FOCUSONFAITH SUNDAY SCRIPTURES | FATHER BRYCE EVANS

Mystery of the Trinity Too often Christian believers are prone to regard the mystery of the Trinity as a piece of theological trivia, with little practical relevance for their lives.

“The God I believe in is three-persons-in-oneessence, or so I am told,” we might hear ourselves saying. “It’s weird, but it’s the way it is, and we may as well just accept it and move on.”

As an incomprehensible and strange doctrine, it can be difficult to see how the tri-unity of God can impact our daily, lived reality.

There is a truth here: The mystery of God is indeed transcendent, far beyond the grasp of our minds. Even in the next life he will remain incomprehensible to us in his infinite majesty. As such, the mystery of God’s threefold unity as Father, Son and Spirit will always be something that remains above and beyond us. It will never be something we can fully master, much less reduce to the categories of our experience so as to render it “merely practical.”

But this is only part of the story. If we were to stop here, we would miss an essential dimension of the Christian doctrine of God. For while the mystery of the Trinity is something that transcends our understanding and experience, it is also something that embraces us in a way that shapes our identity and existence as baptized Christians.

Consider the words of St. Paul from his letter to the Romans, which we hear in our second reading this Sunday: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”

Paul teaches us here that we have received the “Spirit of adoption” (the Spirit of God), who transforms us into children of God and “joint heirs with Christ,” thus enabling us to cry out to God as “Abba, Father.” Through the Spirit, then, we are so intimately

ASK FATHER MIKE | FATHER MICHAEL SCHMITZ

How do I support my seminarian ex-boyfriend?

Q I am a young woman who was dating a

terrific young man. Things were going along really well for us when he broke up with me because he believed that he needed to enter seminary and discern whether or not God is calling him to be a priest. I want to support him, but I’m not sure how.

A Thank you very much for writing and for this question. In

addition, thank you so much for wanting to support your exboyfriend in his active discernment of the next step God might be calling him to. I can only imagine how tough this has been for you. Any breakup can be difficult, but when the other person is “pursuing a calling,” one can feel a little guilty about the sadness. I’ve spoken with folks who have been broken up with because the man was entering the seminary (or the young woman was entering the convent) who feel like they ought not to be sad or angry because the other person is trying to do God’s will. And yet, it can still be a sad thing. You were both invested in the relationship, and I imagine that the both of you had talks about a possible future together. To have to let go of those dreams gets to be difficult. You have permission to be sad and even angry about it.

But I want to invite you to keep something in mind before all

united with Christ that we are able to claim as our own his unique relationship with the Father, even to the point of taking his words upon our lips. We are thus invited to enter into the very relationship between the Father and the Son. In this sense, the Trinity, while remaining “ever greater” in its transcendence, also comes very close to us, embracing us and, in a certain way, enveloping us. And while we will never be able to fully grasp it, we can come in a certain way to “know” this mystery within the dynamics of our Christian life and existence.

What does it mean to be a “child” of God? It means to relate to God as the Son relates to the Father. And the heart of this relation is revealed to us in the perfect surrender of Jesus in his Passion, when he says “not my will but yours be done,” and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” So too, Mary shows us what it looks like to enter into this relationship when she utters her fiat to the message of the angel, “Let it be done unto me according to your will.” So too, the saints, in the manifold diversity of their lives, show us what it looks like to live as children of God when they, each in their own way, surrender themselves perfectly to God. So too, each of us, who have received the “Spirit of Jesus” in baptism, can come to know from within something of what it means to live as children of God, as the Spirit teaches us both in prayer and in action how to surrender ourselves to God and neighbor without reserve. It is indeed an essential aspect of the joy of faith to learn that this “losing of self” in Christ-like love in fact coincides with the fullness of life. In truth, it is a share in God’s trinitarian life, where Father, Son and Holy Spirit have themselves only by giving themselves to one another without reserve. As we learn this mystery and enter into it by our own practice of Christian charity, we at once discover something of the joy contained in sacrifice, and gain a small glimpse of how it is that many can live as one when they are united in the mutual sharing of perfect love.

The Trinity, then, is not simply an arcane doctrine that is purely external to us. If we live out the gift of grace that has been given us in baptism, it is a mystery that we can know from within, a mystery that we can participate in, and even gain an inner sympathy for. This is pure joy. And knowing this makes all the difference for our daily Christian life.

Father Evans is parochial vicar of Our Lady of Lourdes in Minneapolis and co-director of the Habiger Institute for Leadership at the University of St. Thomas’ Center for Catholic Studies in St. Paul. He can be reached at frbevans@ourladyoflourdesmn.com. else: This is not just his story. So often, when I talk with someone in your position, altruism kicks in, and they will say things that indicate they see the breakup as only about the one who is entering the seminary or the convent. Yes, your ex-boyfriend is responding to a potential call from the Lord to be a priest. But this is a part of your story, too. This relationship, this breakup and this pain that you are going through is your story. If God is calling this young man in a different direction, remember that he is also calling you in a different direction. You are not an “extra” in your ex-boyfriend’s vocation story. You have your own story, and God is calling you forward.

Again, do not ever forget that where you are right now is a necessary part of your story. Obviously, things could be different, but the very fact that God has allowed you to be in this situation and go through this pain indicates that he wants to do something in your heart through this. Your call is to enter into whatever God is doing in this.

You get to ask the question: How is God loving me in this moment? God never ceases to love you. He never ceases to draw you closer to his heart. How is he calling you to draw closer to him in faith? How is he calling you to trust him more radically? This is the question for all of us in any season.

In order to respond with your whole heart, I invite you to pray like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prayed, “Father, let this chalice pass from me.” He didn’t pretend that everything was great.

And his prayer echoes the pain in his heart. He let himself be honest with the Father. But then he continued, “Yet not my will but yours be done.” In the midst of his honest prayer, he also expressed his trust.

God is doing something in your moment of loss. He is loving you.

Enter into his love with honesty and trust.

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.

KNOW the SAINTS ST. CHARLES LWANGA AND COMPANIONS (d. 1885-1886) Charles and 21 other Ugandan martyrs, ages 14 to 30, were officials and pages in the court of King Mwanga II of Buganda. The king, after first accepting Christianity among his people, began to insist that converts abandon their new faith. He also preyed sexually on the young men at court. As head of the pages and their chief catechist, Charles tried to protect his charges. But, when they would not reject Christianity, they were killed in 1885-86; some were speared to death and others, like Charles, were burned alive. These first martyrs from sub-Saharan Africa were canonized in Uganda in 1964 by Pope Paul VI; they are the patrons of African Catholic Youth Action, converts and torture victims. Their feast day is June 3.

— Catholic News Service­

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, May 30 Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Dt 4:32-34, 39-40 Rom 8:14-17 Mt 28:16-20 Monday, May 31 Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Zep 3:14-18a Luke 1:39-56 Tuesday, June 1 St. Justin, martyr Tb 2:9-14 Mark 12:13-17 Wednesday, June 2 Tb 3:1-11a, 16-17a Mk 12:18-27 Thursday, June 3 St. Charles Lwanga and companions, martyrs Tb 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a Mk 12:28-34 Friday, June 4 Tb 11:5-17 Mk 12:35-37 Saturday, June 5 St. Boniface, bishop and martyr Tb 12:1, 5-15, 20 Mk 12:38-44 Sunday, June 6 Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Ex 24:3-8 Heb 9:11-15 Mk 14:12-16, 22-26 Monday, June 7 2 Cor 1:1-7 Mt 5:1-12 Tuesday, June 8 2 Cor 1:18-22 Mt 5:13-16 Wednesday, June 9 2 Cor 3:4-11 Mt 5:17-19 Thursday, June 10 2 Cor 3:15–4:1, 3-6 Mt 5:20-26 Friday, June 11 Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Hos 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9 Eph 3:8-12, 14-19 Jn 19:31-37 Saturday, June 12 Immaculate Heart of Mary 2 Cor 5:14-21 Lk 2:41-51 Sunday, June 13 Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Ez 17:22-24 2 Cor 5:6-10 Mk 4:26-34

FOCUSONFAITH

MAY 27, 2021

CUPPA JOE | FATHER EVAN KOOP

Joseph, young husband of Mary We have become so accustomed to the white-haired Joseph depicted in so many paintings and icons that we almost take it for granted that he was an old man. Where does this idea come from? Scripture tells us nothing about his age, but the tradition that Joseph was an aged widower with children of his own reaches back at least to the second century. It served to emphasize the perpetual virginity of Our Lady, and also offered a possible explanation for the so-called “brethren” of Jesus in the Gospels.

However, already in the early Church there existed a contrary tradition that Joseph was a young man who had never been married. One of its most zealous champions, St. Jerome, engaged in a fierce debate with a certain Helvidius, a Roman layman who argued that Mary and Joseph had normal marital relations after the birth of Jesus. Jerome, however, countered: “You say that Mary did not continue a virgin: I claim still more, that Joseph himself on account of Mary was a virgin, so that from a virgin wedlock a virgin Son was born” (Contra Helvidium, 21). Jerome’s insight here is a profound one. He claims not only that Joseph happened to be a virgin, but that he freely chose to remain so out of his love for Mary.

This reveals much about the true nature of the vocation to celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom. The

image of Joseph as an old man tends to reinforce the idea that celibacy is nothing but a diminishment, a limitation of love or an inability to love. We think of chastity as a simple “no,” a negative value. The image of Joseph as a young man, still unmarried and at the height of his vital powers, helps us to understand virginity and chastity instead as an effusion of love, as love rightly ordered. It is a whole-hearted “yes!” to a higher love, a total gift of self to another person, which then as a consequence simply makes us unavailable to give ourselves away to another. Joseph loved Mary completely, with his whole heart and with his whole body. And because Mary’s whole heart and body were given exclusively to God, Joseph took on Mary’s virginity and made it his own. By giving himself completely to her, he was by that very fact given to God. But how, then, can we speak of Joseph as Mary’s “husband” in any real sense? Here Scripture is crystal clear: Joseph and Mary were indeed truly married. In the space of a few verses, Matthew twice calls Joseph the “husband” of Mary (1:16, 1:19), and Mary the “wife” of Joseph (1:20, 1:24). St. Thomas Aquinas explains that the perfection of marriage consists in “a certain inseparable union of souls” and in “the begetting and upbringing of children” (ST III, q. 29, art. 2). The marriage of Mary and Joseph possessed both of these characteristics, though in a uniquely perfect way. Their hearts were united by the bond of supernatural charity for one another, and although they did not beget Jesus together, they received him and raised him as their common child.

The relationship of Mary and Joseph thus teaches us not only about the virginal vocation but also about the beauty of Christian marriage. The hearts of Mary and Joseph were united by their mutual love of God, in the person of the child Jesus they bore in their arms!

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 19

“Cuppa Joe” is a series of 10 talks by 10 theologians on the 10 wonders of St. Joseph, taking place at 10 locations in our archdiocese entrusted to the patronage of our spiritual father.

These talks premiere the first Tuesday of the month, March through December, at 4 p.m. — just in time for your afternoon coffee. The next presentation, “Virginal Father of Jesus” by Kelly Wahlquist, will be posted June 1. It was recorded at St. Joseph in Red Wing.

— The Catholic Spirit

Not just any common love or shared interest can join spouses together forever; only a shared love of Jesus can ultimately unite the souls of spouses in an inseparable bond. Furthermore, genuine married love always bears fruit, just as Mary and Joseph did by bringing Jesus to birth and helping him grow. Christian spouses, too, fulfill their mission by bringing Jesus to birth in the world — in the souls of their own children, if God grants them that gift, but ultimately also in the souls of all those in their lives whom they welcome into their home.

Ordained in 2012, Father Koop is a priest in study at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul. Father Koop adapted this essay from his May presentation for “Cuppa Joe,” a 10-part series on the spiritual wonders of St. Joseph.

Maple Grove parish grew out of St. Joseph church in Minneapolis Editor’s note: This is the third story in a monthly series on 10 places in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis with connections to St. Joseph.

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit In 1884, a north Minneapolis parish moved a number of blocks, nearly to downtown Minneapolis — literally pulling St. Joseph church, its school and other buildings on rollers to an area near Washington and Plymouth avenues.

After building a second church in 1889, the parish moved again decades later, forced in 1975 by an Interstate 94 expansion to sell its church and property.

While no buildings were transported, the change was even more dramatic as St. Joseph added “the Worker” to its name and prepared to break ground for a church 14 miles away, in Maple Grove.

From its roots as the German national parish of St. Joseph in Minneapolis until today, the parish continues to find inspiration in its patron, now as a thriving suburban parish of 2,500 households with an active social justice outreach.

“When I first came here (in 2000) we had several parishioners who were from the downtown church,” said Father Michael Sullivan, the parish’s pastor.

“They had moved out here earlier and they were so delighted” to learn that the parish was coming to Maple Grove, he said.

Inspired by St. Joseph, parishioners in Maple Grove serve others on issues including affordable housing, alleviating

hunger, domestic abuse awareness and missions, Father Sullivan said.

“I think even from the small town of Nazareth, (St. Joseph) was saying, ‘How do I help my neighbors?’” he said. “We’re still tending to try to do the same.”

German, Hungarian and Austrian Catholics who had attended St. Boniface in what is now northeast Minneapolis received permission in 1869 to form the St. Joseph parish closer to downtown Minneapolis. The following year, Bishop Thomas Grace, a Dominican, blessed their church. It was a mission parish of St. Boniface until parishioners welcomed their first resident pastor in 1875 — one of many Benedictine priests from St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville who served the parish for more than 100 years.

At that time, parish boundaries extended north and west of Hennepin Avenue and west of the Mississippi River, according to archdiocesan records. In 1889, Archbishop John Ireland blessed the parish’s second church on that site, built in a German Romanesque style with beige bricks and brown-red sandstone.

Four bells were purchased for its twin steeples.

Nancy Berg, 72, a parishioner of St. Joseph the Worker, said she remembers her father ringing the bells as a St. Joseph usher at the Minneapolis church in the 1940s and 1950s. Now, the bells are part of the church in Maple Grove.

“I remember seeing the cords and the knots and how difficult it was for even the men to ring those bells,” Berg said.

In the move to Maple Grove, parishioners found there were several St. Joseph parishes in the area. To avoid

St. Joseph the Worker church today in Maple Grove.

DAVE HRBACEK THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

duplication, “the Worker” was added to the parish name. Changing the name completely would have meant forfeiting the old church’s assets, according to canon law at the time, Father Sullivan said. The parish didn’t build a school because there were several schools nearby, he said.

The first St. Joseph the Worker church in Maple Grove was dedicated in 1977; the second and current church was dedicated in 2003. Both churches used white marble, the tabernacle, and statues of St. Joseph, the Virgin Mary and Christ’s Sacred Heart from the original Minneapolis church. A newer, life-sized wooden statue of St. Joseph and the child Jesus now stands in the gathering space.

When Berg and her husband, Don, joined St. Joseph the Worker in 1993, Nancy recognized the old statues from her childhood parish in Minneapolis.

“That’s where I got reacquainted, because all of the statues and the different parts of the church there brought back memories from knowing

COURTESY ARCHDIOCESAN ARCHIVES

St. Joseph church in Minneapolis in the 1800s. and seeing my old St. Joe,” she said.

“St. Joseph has always been a dear, dear saint that I have looked to for guidance and help.”

20 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 27, 2021

COMMENTARY YOUR HEART, HIS HOME | LIZ KELLY

A mother, a Father and the thoughts of God There was a woman who, at nearly 40 years old, after having had six children and one miscarriage, learned she was about to have another child. Though she loved being a mother, the weight of this reality did not fill her with joy.

Honestly, she was worried. She wondered where she would get the energy to do it all again — cloth diapers and midnight feedings and juggling six other children with a newborn. She thought she was finished having babies, and now, six years after her last, here came number seven.

As beautiful as the culture of life is, it makes some mighty demands and, for the moment, she was feeling the full weight of them.

But this woman had a strong faith, and she took her weary heart to God in prayer. She got down on her knees and started to tell him about her fears and worries, and he, in his tender, generous mercy replied by filling her with a distinct impression: It was as if he leaned down and whispered to her heart, “My daughter, I need this child, and I need you to be his momma.”

She rose from that prayer filled with new energy and determination. She would welcome this new life with joy and gratitude and together with her husband, they would raise this child as they had been raising all of their children — to know they had purpose and a call, that they were needed by God himself.

Though I’m biased, I think she must have done an unusually fine job. As you may have guessed

that woman is my mother, Mary, and her eighth pregnancy resulted in my little brother, a priest, who celebrates his 10th anniversary of ordination this month. He was recently appointed rector at St. John Vianney Seminary, and he has helped countless souls through his vocation. My mother, now nearly 88, is no longer able to kneel, but she still spends her days in prayer — and no doubt they do more than their fair share to keep the world turning.

It seems especially fitting that so many priestly ordinations take place in the month of May — in this month when we celebrate mothers and motherhood, and especially the Blessed Mother — that in this month, so many fine men are launched into spiritual fatherhood. Every time any woman says yes to life, she can take strength in knowing that the Blessed Mother made the same courageous choice and in less-than-perfect circumstances. She might have been worried, too. She may have had days when she wondered about how she would accomplish all that was asked of her. But she knew her son was needed, and that she was meant to be his momma.

Though we sometimes speak of pregnancies as “accidents,” we should be wary of our nomenclature.

As Pope Benedict XVI has said, “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

In this season when we celebrate motherhood, I am especially grateful to my mother for never letting me forget that God had a place for me, that I was needed, and for saying yes to being my momma.

Father, shower down your richest blessings on mothers everywhere, fill them with the joy of knowing the fullness of their participation in your imagination. So too bless the men receiving priestly ordination this spring. Remind them that they are each a unique, unrepeatable thought of God, and oh how they are needed.

Kelly is the award-winning author of nine books, including “Love Like a Saint: Cultivating Virtue with Holy Women.” Visit her website at lizk.org.

FAITH AT HOME | LAURA KELLY FANUCCI

Start small like God loves to do

How often do you think about how small you are?

Not your size or shape, but the fact that you were once tinier than the period at the end of this sentence. Or the truth that you are one of almost 8 billion people on the planet today. Or the mindboggling statistic that you are among over 100 billion humans who have ever lived.

Each of us — no matter our age or accomplishment — is only a small speck in the span of the universe.

Yet we are beloved by our Creator, known and cherished by God who gave us life from the moment of our conception.

What does it mean that we all start small?

For seven years, I had the joy of taking part in a theological seminar on vocation across the lifespan.

With an interdisciplinary group of scholars, we studied each phase of human development, from infancy through the elder years, to explore how God calls us at each stage of life.

During our meeting on childhood, I was pregnant and parenting two children. Yet I laughed with the delight of discovery when the theologian seated next to me started the meeting by saying, “This may seem obvious, but children are small! That matters.”

Children’s small size is the first reason we need families. Despite being a mother of many small children (and a child myself before that), I never pondered this truth until I read Maria Montessori’s

iSTOCK PHOTO | IKNUITSIN STUDIO

Every time any woman says yes to life, she can take strength in knowing that the Blessed Mother made the same courageous choice and in less-than-perfect circumstances.

to reorient our lives around the smallest ones in greatest need of our care.

Two microscopic cells once combined to become you. You are one of the grains of sand promised to Abraham, one of billions of stars shown to our ancestor in the night sky thousands of years ago. But together — children and adults — we become bright lights in the darkness, each of us part of God’s kingdom.

reflections in her essay “God and the Child”: “Let us imagine for a while that the world consisted only of adults, because man was born already developed and mature; and because of this could dispense with parents.

“The most basic community, the family, which of all natural communities exerts a deeper and more lasting influence on the spirit of man, and which sets itself up both by means of, and because of the child with his many needs, would then have no more reason to exist.”

Humans could have been created to start life as full-grown adults: strong, smart and independent.

Instead, God designed us as the utter opposite: small, weak and needy. God loves to start small.

I believe that matters. As adults, we are called

For the past two years, I have been training as a catechist in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

This approach to faith formation teaches adults the importance of honoring the youngest children’s existing relationship with God. It also invites us to see how God is always working through what looks small: people, places and actions that work toward the coming of the kingdom, no matter how miniscule.

Jesus started his earthly life as an embryo.

Bethlehem was a tiny town in the backwaters. Our own faith can feel like a mustard seed or a pinch of leaven. But God cares about one wandering sheep, one lost coin and one precious pearl.

Look what happens when a single seed falls to the ground and dies, Jesus told his friends. It bears great fruit, bringing forth wild abundance from the humblest beginning.

Two microscopic cells once combined to become you. You are one of the grains of sand promised to Abraham, one of billions of stars shown to our ancestor in the night sky thousands of years ago.

But together — children and adults — we become bright lights in the darkness, each of us part of God’s kingdom.

If you feel too small or insignificant to make a difference, fear not. If you long to teach the youngest ones in your life about the vast mysteries of faith, don’t be daunted.

This is exactly how God loves to start: small.

Fanucci is a writer, speaker, and author of several books including "Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting." She is a parishioner of St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove. Her work can be found at laurakellyfanucci.com.

COMMENTARY

MAY 27, 2021

CATHOLIC WATCHMEN | DEACON GORDON BIRD

Lift up your heads, hearts and heels

Say what you want about some of the creative dialogue produced in “The Chosen,” if indeed you have viewed any parts of the popular series, but there is a compelling visual and verbal exchange in an early episode that truly moves the heart.

It happens during the “Miracle of the Fish” episode, while Jesus and Simon are engaging face-to-face for the first time. Our Lord miraculously assists in filling the net of the disgruntled, catch-barren fisherman.

The conversion of the heart begins.

Simon is moved to get on his knees, declaring his unworthiness to be in the presence of the Lamb of God. Yet, Jesus commands benevolently, “Lift up your head, fisherman. … Follow me.”

Now committed and set on a path that was certainly much different than what he had planned, Simon — later named Peter by our Lord — is proof that Jesus chooses us: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (cf. Jn 15:16).

God is always seeking us out, as he did in this beautiful mystery of the Incarnation-at-work in his ministry. Our choice is in our response.

As we learn from the first apostles chosen by Jesus, if we follow him, we will never come back the same way.

That is the whole idea with Jesus — change is a given process, but not for God who is constant. But change is perhaps an unnerving, transformative process in life for all who decide to follow the King of the Universe.

“Sometimes you’ve got to stir up the water,” Jesus says to his apostles in another episode, as he

is ministering throughout the land, transforming a narrow-minded, hard-hearted, pride-filled world. He stirred up the water because his teachings were often viewed by his enemies as rampant, competitive ideas that smacked against a rigid, misunderstood law that lacked forgiveness, mercy and love.

Jesus, though, is not an idea, and he is certainly not just a piece of history. He is all about a person — the “visible image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) — who came to move our hearts, bodies and souls.

He is all about relationship as the person of Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity, who came to save us for the sake of eternal life. Still today, he engages and asks us to follow his way and his ways — through the Scriptures, in prayer, the sacraments, traditions — as witnesses, so we, in turn, can provide witness to the love of Christ to others. For Catholic Watchmen, this starts at home so it can spread genuinely to parish life, neighborhoods, workplaces and the greater community.

Catholic Watchmen have the opportunity to lift up their heads, hearts and heels by witnessing their faith in solidarity on Catholic Father’s Day, June 19, participating at Mass and in eucharistic procession.

And, of course, sharing a meal!

Bishop Andrew Cozzens will preside at Mass at 4:30 p.m. at Maternity of Mary in St. Paul.

Immediately following, we will process in unity with the Blessed Sacrament within the Lake Como neighborhood. We finish by feasting together outdoors on the parish grounds.

Save the date and have a rosary in tow, as our Blessed Mother and St. Joseph will be our spiritual guides and parents on this trek designed to promote spiritual fatherhood. Look for more information to follow for this nationwide event in which our archdiocese is taking part. The Catholic Father’s Day processional route was tried and tested recently by some dedicated point-men; their feedback and subsequent refinements will make this an enjoyable, prayerful and transformative experience.

Lift up your heads, hearts and heels to participate and pray for the conversion, transformation and

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 21

Men are needed by our families, our parishes, our country and our world as courageous, spiritual fathers.

iSTOCK PHOTO | CHRISTINLOLA

mobility of the hearts of men. Men are needed by our families, our parishes, our country and our world as courageous, spiritual fathers.

Deacon Bird ministers at St. Joseph in Rosemount and All Saints in Lakeville, and assists the archdiocese’s Catholic Watchmen movement. Learn about the Catholic Watchmen at archspm.org/faith-communities/men. Learn about the national Catholic Father’s Day initiative at catholicfathersday.com.

INSIDE THE CAPITOL | MCC

LETTER

Recess is no time for rest The Legislature’s regular session came to its constitutionally mandated end May 17 and it is officially in recess. However, this “recess” is not a time for rest and relaxation. In fact, the clock is ticking again.

Legislators, who are now divided into various “working groups,” have until June 4 to finalize the texts of their omnibus budget bills. This deadline was set by state leaders as part of a broad budget agreement reached on the final day of session.

If the working groups cannot resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of a given budget bill, chairs will present their differences to the triumvirate of Gov. Tim Walz, Majority Leader Sen. Paul Gazelka and Speaker of the House Rep. Melissa Hortman, who will negotiate the various policy proposals. In anticipation of this, the Minnesota Catholic Conference is submitting a letter to the three leaders outlining key provisions that should be in the final bills, including: uNonconforming Drivers’ Licenses and Identification Cards for Immigrants uEducation Savings Accounts for Students uPayday Lending Reform uEarned Sick and Safe Time uDriver’s License Suspension Reform uEmergency Services and Shelter Program Funding uExpansion of Medical Assistance program to include at least six months of coverage for postpartum women In the two weeks before adjournment, 16 conference committees (made up of representatives and senators) reviewed and debated details of each body’s omnibus budget bills to reach a consensus for state spending. Without an

Vaccines shouldn’t have abortion ties Stay vigilant! Register for email/text alerts from the Catholic Advocacy Network ahead of the special session. Many issues impacting life, dignity and the common good remain viable and subject to negotiations leading up to the 2021 Special Session. Your voice can help ensure the right proposals arrive at the governor’s desk and get signed into law.

Visit mncatholic.org/actioncenter to contact lawmakers and sign up to receive email/text alerts from MCC’s Catholic Advocacy Network. agreement, a conference committee of five members from both bodies works out differences and creates a final report that must pass the Senate and House and be signed by the governor.

Often, by the time a bill reaches a conference committee, MCC has weighed in, but this stage presents another opportunity to keep the Catholic voice present. So, in the final weeks of the regular session, the Minnesota Catholic Conference wrote letters, met with legislators and tracked specific bills in seven committees.

For example, MCC submitted a letter to the Health and Human Services conference committee highlighting support for the Emergency Services and Shelter Program Funding and an Expansion of Medical Assistance program to include at least six months of coverage for postpartum women.

Additionally, MCC’s Catholic Advocacy Network members sent over 2,000 emails to legislators urging support of a provision to help end usury and reform payday lending in Minnesota by establishing a 36% interest rate cap for shortterm consumer loans. These provisions would positively impact the lives of poor and vulnerable Minnesotans.

“Inside the Capitol” is an update from Minnesota Catholic Conference staff during the legislative session.

In response to a May 13 letter regarding vaccines: It is a welldocumented fact that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the U.S. were produced and/or tested on abortion-derived cell lines. Even the pharmaceutical companies admit this. After sincere deliberation, many Catholics and other Christians have chosen NOT to take these vaccines out of love and a sense of justice towards preborn children and out of concern for the souls of abortionists, researchers and others involved in the trafficking of body parts from aborted human beings.

We have the moral right to refuse these ethically-tainted vaccines. There is no need to use aborted children to develop vaccines or other drugs. We should all be speaking out in support of the ethical vaccines and treatments being developed. In fact, the U.S. bishops have sample letters to pharmaceutical companies posted on their website (usccb.org) to do just that.

Debra Braun St. Agnes, St. Paul Share your perspective by emailing TheCatholicSpirit@archspm.org. Please limit your letter to the editor to 150 words and include your parish and phone number.

The Commentary pages do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Catholic Spirit.

22 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 27, 2021

Why I am Catholic

By John McCarty

O

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

On Jan. 1, 1961, I was baptized at St. Mark’s church

trying to make a living. But by the time I was almost 30,

in St. Paul. I was 5 days old, the youngest of seven

I was married and found myself back at St. Luke’s having

children and a cradle Catholic. I was born in the

my firstborn baptized. This experience reignited my

final days of pre-Vatican II life in the midst of Irish

spiritual journey. Since then, I have gone to church almost

Catholic culture in the great city of St. Paul.

“

every Sunday and often attend daily Mass. My beautiful

When I was a few years old, our family moved to

wife, Linda, and I spent many years at St. Luke’s in the

St. Luke’s parish in St. Paul, a special place where I

Prepare ministry. I have passionately served on boards

cultivated many of my formative memories of faith. My

of Catholic schools that focus on many of our families

mother joined the choir, my siblings and I attended the

in need. For the last 16 years, I have been a member at

parish school, and our family was soon immersed in a new

the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, a place that is

spiritual community.

During those years, we could see

I believe that faith is a journey, and as the world, the Church, and my life have changed, so has my faith.

the changes of Vatican II starting to occur in our own parish. I received my first Communion and became an altar boy. I remember getting up early to serve 6 a.m. weekday Mass and memorizing the Apostles’ Creed, among other aspects of the Mass. I loved the beauty and the artwork

a bountiful feast of Catholic gifts and has been a truly extraordinary spiritual home.

I believe that faith is a journey, and as the world, the Church, and my life have changed, so has my faith. My childhood faith is different than my faith today and will be different than my faith 10 years from now. And that is why I am a Catholic. Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, the Church embraces you and invites you into community. All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.

of the church, and I cherished the lively and supportive parish community of which I was a part. On April 1, 1973, I was proud to be confirmed by

McCarty, 60, a lifelong downhill skier, has three adult children with his wife of 31 years.

Archbishop Roach at St. Luke’s in the company of all my classmates and family. Not long after, we began to have guitar Masses in the lower level of the church. Vatican II was in full swing, and things were changing.

In my 20s, my faith took a backseat as I worked hard

“Why I am Catholic” is a new ongoing series in The Catholic Spirit. Want to share why you are Catholic?

Submit your story in 300-500 words to CatholicSpirit@ archspm.org with “Why I am Catholic” in the subject line.

MAY 27, 2021

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 23

CALENDAR MASSES+CELEBRATION

Discuss “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead” by Brene Brown. Free. Register at kaempfferp@archspm.org.

Priestly ordination — May 29: 10 a.m. at the Cathedral of St. Paul, 239 Selby Ave., St. Paul. archspm.org/events.

Archdiocesan Marriage Day Celebration — June 5: 10 a.m. at the Cathedral of St. Paul, 239 Selby Ave., St. Paul. Mass with Archbishop Bernard Hebda, reception follows. Silver and golden anniversaries honored in a special way; request certificate by May 30 to mfl@archspm.org or Office of Marriage, Family and Life, Marriage Certificates, 777 Forest St., St. Paul, MN 55106.

Masks required. Free. Registration required at 651-291-4488.

SPEAKERS+ CONVERSATION Heart-to-Heart book study for victim/ survivors — Through June 30, first and third Wednesdays of the month: 6:30–8 p.m.

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.

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 ONLINE: TheCatholicSpirit.comcalendarsubmissions

Summer book club — June 2-July 22: 7–8 p.m. Wednesdays and 10–11 a.m. Thursdays at Risen Savior, 1501 E. County Road 42, Burnsville. “A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota.” Virtual or in-person. Register at risensavior.org.

“Stable Housing: The Foundation of Community” — June 7: 7–8 p.m. at Corpus Christi, 2131 Fairview Ave., Roseville. Online event. Alan Arthur, president/CEO of Aeon, a Twin Cities-based developer of affordable homes, and CJ Simmons-Faye Jones, an Aeon resident. Register at ccmn.org/housingforum.

PARISH EVENTS “Strings, Scraped and Banged” — May 28: 6:30–7:30 p.m. at Our Lady of Peace, 5426 12th Ave. S., Minneapolis. An eclectic program from the concert hall to Tin Pan Alley and from the sanctuary to the jazz club. Hour-long, free concert either in-person or online. RSVP is required. olpmn.org/events Alpha — June 2-Sept 1: Wednesdays 6:30– 8 p.m. at St. John Neumann, 4030 Pilot Knob Road, Eagan. Alpha sessions explore the Christian faith. Includes meal, video and small group conversations. sjn.org/events/alpha-program-2021 16th Annual Northeast Eucharistic Procession — June 13: 3–5 p.m. at Holy Cross, 1621 University Ave., Minneapolis.

Seven-church walk ending at All Saints with Benediction. Shuttle bus between parking lots. ourholycross.org/events

PRAYER+RETREATS Retrouvaille: Help for struggling marriages — June 4-6, Aug. 6-8 at Dakota Ridge Best Western Hotel, 3450 Washington Drive, Eagan.

The Retrouvaille program is for married couples

MARK YOUR CALENDARS Archbishop Bernard Hebda has asked all parishes in the archdiocese to host Synod Small Groups this fall for Catholics to learn, pray and share ideas on three focus areas ahead of the 2022 Archdiocesan Synod.

Focus areas are: Forming parishes that are in the service of evangelization, forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’ love and respond to his call, and forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young. Small groups will meet for six, 2-hour sessions between mid-September and mid-November. Watch for communications from your parish about how to participate in a small group there, and the specific dates and times they’ll meet. Learn more about the Archdiocesan Synod process at archspm.org/ synod.

facing difficult challenges in their relationship. helpourmarriage.org

Cathedral rector saves baby gray fox

COURTESY FATHER UBEL

Cathedral of St. Paul rector Father John Ubel, right, stands with a veterinarian from the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Roseville holding a gray fox discovered in the window well of the Cathedral May 14.

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit

OTHER EVENTS “Life Is Wonderful” virtual walk/run — May 9-June 20: “Life is Wonderful: Let’s Step Up” with Abria Pregnancy Resources. Donate or participate. supporters.abria.org.

Life Legal Defense Foundation Annual Dinner — June 12: 6–8:30 p.m. at Knights of Columbus, 1114 American Blvd. W., Bloomington. Speaker Melody Olson. Contact Russ Rooney at 612-875-2733 or lifelegalmn.wpcomstaging.com.

Natural Family Planning (NFP) — Class listing at archspm.org/family or call 651-291-4489.

Restorative justice events — monthly: 6:30– 8 p.m. via Zoom. Open to all victim/survivors; first Mondays for those abused by clergy as adults; second Tuesdays for friends or relatives of victims of clergy sexual abuse; third Mondays victim/survivor support group; third Wednesdays survivor peace circle; fourth Wednesdays for men sexually abused by clergy/religious. Paula Kaempffer, 651-291-4429. archspm.org/healing

Father John Ubel recently spied an adult gray fox scurrying around the grounds of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. The Cathedral rector took note of the urban vixen, but didn’t give it much more thought — until he found its kit in the Cathedral’s 15-foot window well late May 14. The baby fox had been crying and was starving.

He made a series of calls for aid May 15, leaving messages while becoming increasingly frustrated with a lack of response. Meanwhile he tried — unsuccessfully — to trap the animal, but fed it bananas and water. He finally connected with the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota in Roseville, which sent veterinarians May 16. When the WRC veterinarians arrived, a wildlife expert told Father Ubel she didn’t expect the kit to survive the night.

But it did. A May 19 WRC Facebook post said the 3-month-old fox had low blood pressure and lead poisoning. “Time will tell if the fox will survive the trauma his body is going through. ... Many thanks to Fr. Ubel for everything he did to make sure this fox was rescued.”

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24 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MAY 27, 2021

THELASTWORD

Extreme Faith Camp part of extremely big plans

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

A

popular Catholic youth summer camp in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is joining forces with an Ohio-based Catholic organization to expand programming for parishes and schools, with the goal of establishing a permanent, year-round campus within two hours of the Twin Cities by 2024.

The transition begins this summer, with a collaboration between Extreme Faith Camp and Damascus Catholic Mission Campus’ Catholic Youth Summer Camp.

John O’Sullivan, youth minister at St. Michael in St. Michael, founded Extreme Faith Camp 20 years ago as a week-long summer camp experience for Catholic middle school students. It is not a formal organization, but rather a parish-run collaborative camp organized by O’Sullivan and several other parish youth ministers as part of their youth ministry responsibilities.

Each year, participating parish youth leaders plan Extreme Faith Camp, which has been held at various locations. They agree on a common theme and essential programming. One lead youth minister typically is assigned to direct the camp for all parishes attending a particular week.

Last year, attendance at Extreme Faith Camp was lower due to COVID-related restrictions. But in 2019, about 1,800 campers and leaders participated. This summer, it has scheduled eight weeks of camp — including its first-ever week for high school students — for 42 parishes at Trout Lake Camps in Pine River, about 30 miles north of Brainerd.

Also new to this year’s camps are 20 Damascus “missionaries” who will help plan and run the camp.

Damascus’ missionary formation and training are “top notch,” and its missionaries will help create more unity and a similar experience week to week, O’Sullivan said.

Four Damascus missionaries plan to live in the archdiocese year-round. “They’ll continue to build those relationships with the parishes that were involved and continue to grow the camp ministry,” O’Sullivan said, “as well as bless the parishes that are involved by volunteering at different events, retreats, talks.”

Damascus’ youth summer camps serve middle school and high school youth.

After a permanent campus opens, the summer camps will no longer be called Extreme Faith Camp, but Damascus will collaborate with youth ministers

Youth clap and cheer at an Extreme Faith Camp in Minnesota in 2014.

DAVE HRBACEK THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

from Extreme Faith Camp parishes, said Dan DeMatte, Damascus’ co-founder and executive director.

Damascus also will collaborate with parishes and schools for various retreats, conferences and programs.

“We will run most of the retreats in collaboration with schools, but parishes and schools will also be able to rent the facilities to run their own programs as well,” DeMatte said.

He described Damascus missionaries as “spirit-filled, joyful evangelizers of the Gospel.” The name draws from the ancient city of Damascus (capital of presentday Syria). St. Paul was traveling to Damascus when he had his dramatic conversion to Christianity.

Extreme Faith and Damascus summer camps are similar in many ways, O’Sullivan said, from being sacramentally focused to using high adventure activities such as high rope courses and zip lines. Other activities range from entertainment to daily Mass, confession and eucharistic adoration.

One unique factor about Extreme Faith Camp is how it stayed parish based, O’Sullivan said, creating a camp experience that is connected to the life of a parish. A parish leadership team of high school teens and adults enables a natural, ongoing, relational ministry before and after camp, he said. And Extreme Faith Camp merging with Damascus will make Damascus even more focused and bring about transformation not only in the lives of young people, but within parishes and the archdiocese, O’Sullivan said.

Bishop Andrew Cozzens, auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, strongly supports the initiative.

Extreme Faith Camp has been an important part of evangelization in the archdiocese, he said, with many college-level seminarians citing the experience as the point at which they first started considering priesthood.

Damascus can take the experience a step further, he said.

“What I saw with Damascus was the same evangelistic spirit that I knew existed in Extreme Faith Camp,” he said. “That’s had a profound impact on our archdiocese already. But I can see that they took it to the next level with professionalism and depth.”

That depth and professionalism rose in part from Damascus’ permanent campus near Centerburg, Ohio, built on 471 acres, Bishop Cozzens said. In the past five years, the campus has welcomed 20,000 people annually from across the country, including 10,000 youths.

Funds to purchase property in Minnesota are being raised by local Catholics “who are enthusiastically supportive of the effort,” Bishop Cozzens said.

YEAR-ROUND CAMPUS Dan DeMatte, co-founder and executive director of Ohio-based Damascus Catholic Mission Campus, said the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis invited the Catholic lay apostolate of missionaries to partner with its parishes and schools, and open a campus with a focus on youth evangelization.

The goal is to buy about 200 acres on a usable lake this year within a two-hour drive of the Twin Cities and build a 25,000-square-foot lodge that holds 1,000 people, cabins for 350-400 people and a retreat center, DeMatte said. The facility would allow year-round parish and archdiocesan retreats, and activities for schools, such as environmental learning and science retreats.

The facility would be named the Minnesota Damascus Catholic Mission Campus. Extreme Faith Camp will become Catholic Youth Summer Camp.

“Having a camp here will offer a lot more opportunities for our youth than we are currently able to do through Extreme Faith Camp, because we won’t have a ‘mission camp’ — we’ll have a ‘mission campus,’” said Bishop Andrew Cozzens.

Damascus missionaries will also assist youth ministers during the year to help continue what happens at camp in the summer, he said.

Bishop Cozzens offered an example of archdiocesan Catholic schools participating in science excursions. “What if we had Catholic science retreats that show the intimate connection between faith and science, and that offered opportunities for adoration, reconciliation in the evening, as well as gave them a great place to do their scientific learning in the outdoors?”

— Barb Umberger “We are partnering with Damascus to run the camp,” he said, “as they have done so successfully in Ohio.

Experience has shown that the camp will be selfsustaining going forward.”

Coincidentally, Damascus and Extreme Faith Camp were both founded in 2001 as one-week, parish-based faith-awakening summer camps. Both rented camp facilities at various sites in their respective states. In 2016, Damascus built its Centerburg campus.

Minnesota marks Damascus’ first foray outside its own state, but it hopes to build camps across the U.S. to serve 100,000 young people every summer.

Our goal is to reach young people,” DeMatte said, because “there are too many Catholic youths who are falling away from the Church.”