The Catholic Spirit - November 10, 2016

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November 10, 2016 Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

Prayers for those who

protect and serve

On day of Des Moines officers’ killings, Archbishop Hebda offers Blue Mass for police, first responders

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit

“You pray that you have a safe tour and that at the end of the day you’re able to go home to your family.”

W

ith heavy hearts, law enforcement officers and first responders attended the first Blue Mass in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis since 2011.

Recent shootings of police officers in Wisconsin and Iowa warranted a somber atmosphere during the Nov. 2 liturgy at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. Earlier in the day, two police officers were shot and killed in Des Moines, Iowa. In an unrelated incident, another officer was killed Oct. 29 near Ladysmith, Wisconsin.

The Mass of Thanksgiving and Remembrance for Law Enforcement and First Responders had been scheduled prior to those deaths.

The police killings are “something that weighs heavily on the hearts of most law enforcement officers,” said Sgt. Mike Hankee of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, who attended the Mass.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda presided at the Mass. At the end, he recognized the more than 20 law enforcement and emergency workers present. He noted the significance of honoring law enforcement and emergency workers on All Souls Day, when the Church remembers those who have died but need continued prayers to pass from purgatory to heaven.

Sgt. Mike Hankee ABOVE From left, Sgt. Kevin Otto, Undersheriff Terry Soukkala and Deputy Sheriff Mike Schmid of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office attend the Blue Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul Nov. 2. Jim Bovin/ For The Catholic Spirit LEFT City of Minneapolis Police Officer Chris Cushenbery holds his son, Carter, during the Blue Mass.

Jim Bovin/For The Catholic Spirit

Please turn to BLUE MASS on page 6

ALSO inside

Parish ceasing operations

Vocation journey

Forgiving offenses

St. Michael in West St. Paul, which just turned 150, will celebrate final Mass Nov. 27.

At Jesuit Novitiate of St. Alberto Hurtado in St. Paul, men follow path of 16th-century saint Stanislaus Kostka.

— Page 9

Couple turns to Retrouvaille retreat to strengthen marriage amid difficulty.

— Page 5

— Pages 10-11

2 • The Catholic Spirit

PAGE TWO

in PICTURES

November 10, 2016 OVERHEARD “Hope is a gift of God. We must ask for it. It is placed deep within each human heart in order to shed light on this life, so often troubled and clouded by so many situations that bring sadness and pain.”

Pope Francis in a Nov. 6 homily during Mass with detainees and people who had been in prison. Detainees from several prisons in Italy and Spain were given special permission to attend the Mass for the Year of Mercy. Inmates from Italian prisons served as altar servers, while a choir composed of prisoners and volunteers from a prison in Bologna provided the music for the celebration.

REFORMATION COMMEMORATION Archbishop Bernard Hebda joins the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America bishops — Bishop Patricia Lull, center, of the St. Paul Area Synod and Bishop Ann Svennungsen, left, of the Minneapolis Area Synod — Oct. 31 at Luther Seminary in St. Paul for a viewing of the ecumenical prayer in Lund, Sweden, with Pope Francis and leaders of the Lutheran World Federation. Seated in the second row is Father Erich Rutten, pastor of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul and chairman of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Commission on Ecumenism and Interreligious Affairs. He said the event and others like it help build relationships. “I think it’s important for both Catholics and Lutherans to start telling the history in a more accurate way — that there was fault on both sides — and looking for ways to move forward,” he said. Courtesy Luther Seminary

“If suffering is a sign of being close to Christ, Cubs fans certainly understand suffering. Also, when you look at faith, hope and love — a Cubs fan has to first of all have faith that this is going to end one day, hope that this is the year, and finally, love, you have to love the team. You have to love it with the idea that even though they’re bad and they break your heart, they’re still part of your life.”

Father John Clemens, self-proclaimed lifelong Chicago Cubs fan and pastor of Our Lady of Hope in Rosemont, Illinois, after the team’s World Series victory, ending the famous and dreaded 108-year curse.

NEWS notes • The Catholic Spirit

Give to the Max Day is Nov. 16 Catholic parishes, schools and organizations in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis will participate in GiveMN’s annual Give to the Max Day Nov. 16. Visitors to www.givemn.org can search for organizations to donate to. GiveMN launched the statewide fundraiser in 2009, connecting donors to a variety of causes.

CCHD special collection set for Nov. 19-20 This year, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development is providing 205 grants, totaling more than $10 million, to organizations working to end poverty in their communities. The annual CCHD collection is the weekend before Thanksgiving, Nov. 19-20.

Twenty-five percent of funds collected remain in the dioceses for local use, and 75 percent are used for national grants, which may also be given to local communities.

SEVEN SISTERS APOSTOLATE About 300 members of the Seven Sisters Apostolate attended the third annual Half-Day of Reflection centered on a Holy Hour and Mass at St. Patrick in Oak Grove Nov. 5. The day included opening remarks from Archbishop Bernard Hebda and a talk by Father Joseph Johnson, pastor of Holy Family in St. Louis Park and spiritual adviser of the group. In 2010, Janette Howe started the Seven Sisters Apostolate, in which hundreds of women in the Twin Cities and around the country pray a Holy Hour on a particular day of the week exclusively for their pastor, priest or bishop.

Courtesy St. Patrick

WHAT’S NEW on social media On their way to a Catholic youth event, two priests and Bishop David Malloy of the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, make a rendition of “The Late Late Show” host James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke. See the video at: www.facebook.com/thecatholicspirit.

Dr. Nancy Miller, a parishioner of Holy Family in St. Louis Park, describes her work with patients who’ve experienced abortion and what the act does to families: www.catholichotdish.com.

The Catholic Spirit is published semi-monthly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Vol. 21 — No. 22 MOST REVEREND BERNARD A. HEBDA, Publisher TOM HALDEN, Associate Publisher MARIA C. WIERING, Editor

ACCW Advent retreat slated for Dec. 3 The Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women’s annual Advent Morning of Reflection will be 9 a.m. Dec. 3 at St. Peter in Mendota. With the theme “Year of Mercy: Where Do We Go from Here,” the day includes speakers Ann Marie Klein from the University of St. Thomas’ Catholic Studies program, and Father Michael Becker, rector of St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul, and Mass with Bishop Andrew Cozzens. Vendors will be available throughout the event. Cost is $15 before Nov. 23 and $20 after.

For more information, call 651-291-4545. To register online, visit events. archspm.org/accw-advent-2016.

in REMEMBRANCE Father John Brown, 96, died Oct. 24. Father Brown was born July 28, 1920, and ordained a priest in 1948. He was removed from active ministry in 2002 according to the norms of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. A funeral Mass was Oct. 28 at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Maplewood.

Materials credited to CNS copy­righted by Catholic News Service.

All other materials copyrighted by The Cath­olic Spirit Newspaper.

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November 10, 2016

FROM THE ARCHBISHOP

The Catholic Spirit • 3

Support those discerning their vocation by fully living your own

D

ioceses throughout the United States are marking National Vocations Awareness Week Nov. 6-12, an occasion for promoting vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life, and praying for those who are discerning their vocation in life. I feel blessed to be in an archdiocese that takes seriously the obligation to support our sisters and brothers in their discernment of God’s call. I have recently had the opportunity to host a Myriam dinner for young women contemplating a vocation to consecrated life and an Andrew supper for their male counterparts, and was impressed on both occasions by the conviction of our young people that God has a plan for each one of us. Their openness to the possibility that God could be calling them to consecrated life, the diaconate or the priesthood is inspiring.

The Second Vatican Council taught that “The duty of fostering vocations falls on the whole Christian community, and they should discharge it principally by living full Christian lives.” How insightful! The most effective way that we can support those who are still discerning their calling in life is by each of us living out our vocation to the fullest, whatever that may be. The young man who sees his parents or grandparents approaching married life as a true vocation, trusting in the God who has called them to the lifelong commitment of marriage, is going to be more open to trusting the Lord in the event that he’s being called to be a deacon or priest. The young woman who has an experience with women religious or priests who reveal they are fulfilled in their service is going to be more likely to be attentive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in her own life.

ONLY JESUS We’re blessed in this archdiocese not only with joy-filled priests and deacons and consecrated women and men, but also Archbishop with laity who are on fire with the faith. Allow me to offer just Bernard Hebda three recent examples.

I had the privilege of gathering with our lay ecclesial ministers and parish leaders Oct. 27 for our annual Fall Formation Day. I was humbled when I considered the breadth of the contribution that these men and women are making in our parishes, schools and archdiocese — and their willingness to come together to support one another.

Just a few days later, I spent the day with 1,300 young disciples at Archdiocesan Youth Day. While I was inspired by their energy and zeal, what really impressed me was the extent to which the day was overwhelmingly guided by lay faithful ministering here in the archdiocese. While the presence of the religious sisters and priests (and bishops!) who helped out at the event was clearly appreciated, it was our lay youth ministers and music ministers who moved me with their insights, their powerful prayer and their vision for renewal in the archdiocese.

The following day, I had the privilege of assisting a group of lay women and men who were leading a two-day retreat at the state correctional facility in Lino Lakes. As I listened that evening to the “insiders” speak of what they had gained from the retreat, I couldn’t help but thank the Lord for the way in which the Holy Spirit had stirred the hearts of the retreat participants through the generous ministry of the laity who had given up their weekend to preach the Gospel in word and action — as we are all called to do in virtue of our baptism. It was a privilege to be the Lord’s instrument at Mass that evening, but I realized once again that my work there was merely supplemental to the powerful ministry and witness that had already been so capably offered by others.

As we celebrate National Vocations Awareness Week this year, I would ask you to join me not only in praying for those who are discerning God’s call, but also in thanksgiving for the many women and men of this archdiocese — representing a wide range of vocations — who are discharging their “duty to foster vocations” by “living full Christian lives.” May their example inspire all of us each day to be sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who knows just what the Church needs.

Apoye a los que están discerniendo su vocación viviendo plenamente la suya Las diócesis en todo Estados Unidos están celebrando la semana Nacional del reconocimiento de las Vocaciones, noviembre 6 al 12, una ocasión para la promoción de las vocaciones al sacerdocio, al diaconado y a la vida consagrada y orando por los que están discerniendo su vocación en la vida. Me siento bendecido de estar en una arquidiócesis que toma en serio la obligación de apoyar a nuestros hermanos y hermanas en su discernimiento al llamado de Dios.

Recientemente tuve la oportunidad de organizar una cena Myriam para las mujeres jóvenes que contemplan una vocación a la vida consagrada y una cena Andrew por sus homólogos masculinos y me quedé impresionado en ambas ocasiones por la convicción de nuestros jóvenes que Dios tiene un plan para cada uno de nosotros. Su apertura a la posibilidad de que Dios los está llamando a la vida consagrada, el diaconado o al sacerdocio es inspirador.

El Concilio Vaticano II enseña que “el deber de fomentar la vocación afecta a toda la comunidad cristiana y que deben descargarla principalmente viviendo una vida plenamente cristiana.” ¡Qué acertado! La manera más efectiva que podemos apoyar a aquellos que todavía están discerniendo su vocación en la vida es que cada uno vivamos nuestra vocación al máximo, sea lo que sea. El joven que ve a sus padres o abuelos llevando la vida conyugal como una verdadera vocación, confiando en el Dios que los ha llamado al compromiso de toda la vida del matrimonio, va a ser más abierto en confiar en el Señor en el caso que esté siendo llamado a ser un diácono o sacerdote. La joven que tiene una experiencia con las religiosas o sacerdotes que muestran que están satisfechos con su servicio van a estar más interesadas a estar atentas a la inspiración del Espíritu

Santo en su propia vida.

Estamos bendecidos en esta arquidiócesis no sólo con los sacerdotes, diáconos y las mujeres y los hombres consagrados llenos de alegría, sino también con los laicos que están en fuego con la fe. Permítanme ofrecer sólo tres ejemplos recientes.

Tuve el privilegio de reunirme con nuestros ministros eclesiales laicos y líderes de la parroquia el 27 de octubre para nuestro “Día de formación de otoño”. Me sentí honrado cuando consideré la amplitud de la contribución que estos hombres y mujeres están haciendo en nuestras parroquias, escuelas y arquidiócesis y su voluntad de trabajar juntos para apoyarse mutuamente.

Sólo unos días después, pasé el día con 1,300 jóvenes discípulos en el “día de jóvenes arquidiocesano”. Mientras me sentí inspirado por su energía y entusiasmo, lo que realmente me impresionó fue el grado en que el día fue guiado por los fieles laicos ministrando aquí en la arquidiócesis. Mientras que la presencia de las religiosas y sacerdotes (¡y obispos!) que ayudaron en el evento se aprecia sinceramente, fueron nuestros ministros de jóvenes laicos y ministros de música que me movieron con sus ideas, su poderosa oración y su visión para la renovación en la arquidiócesis.

Al día siguiente, tuve el privilegio de asistir a un grupo de mujeres y hombres laicos que conducían un retiro de dos días en el centro penitenciario del estado en Lino Lakes. Mientras escuchaba esa noche a los “encarcelados” hablar de lo que habían aprendido del retiro, no pude evitar darle gracias al Señor por la forma en que el Espíritu Santo se había movido en los corazones de los participantes del retiro a través del generoso ministerio de los laicos que habían renunciado a su fin de semana para predicar el Evangelio con

la palabra y la acción, algo al que todos estamos llamados a hacer en virtud de nuestro bautismo. Fue un privilegio ser el instrumento del Señor en la misa de la noche, pero me di cuenta una vez más que mi trabajo era meramente complementario al ministerio poderoso y testimonio de que ya había sido ofrecido de manera tan competente por otros.

Al celebrar la Semana Nacional del reconocimiento de las Vocaciones este año, les pido que se unan a mí no sólo en

la oración por aquellos que están discerniendo la llamada de Dios, sino también en acción de gracias por las muchas mujeres y hombres de esta arquidiócesis, que representan una amplia gama de vocaciones, que desempeñan su “deber de fomentar las vocaciones” por “una vida plenamente cristiana.” que su ejemplo inspire a todos nosotros cada día para ser sensibles a los impulsos del Espíritu Santo, que sabe exactamente lo que la Iglesia necesita.

OFFICIAL Archbishop Bernard Hebda has announced the following appointments in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis: Effective October 31, 2016 Reverend John Sajdak, SM, appointed pastor of the Church of Saint Louis, King of France in Saint Paul. Father Sajdak is a member of the Society of Mary. He succeeds the former pastor, Reverend Paul Morrissey, SM, who has been assigned outside of the Archdiocese by his religious superior.

Effective November 4, 2016 Deacon Joseph Smith, appointed to exercise the ministry of a permanent deacon at the Church of Mary Queen of Peace in Rogers. This is a transfer from his previous assignment at the Church of Saint Therese in Deephaven.

Effective November 7, 2016 Reverend James McConville, appointed Director of the Office of Conciliation for the Archdiocese. This is in addition to his current appointment as Adjutant Judicial Vicar for the Metropolitan Tribunal.

Effective November 20, 2016 Reverend Andrew Brinkman, appointed parochial administrator of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Saint Paul. Father Brinkman previously served as parochial vicar of the parish cluster of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Saint Paul, the Church of Saint Matthew in Saint Paul and the Church of Saint Michael in West Saint Paul.

Reverend Robert Kelly, a Dominican, appointed parochial administrator of the Church of Saint Matthew in Saint Paul. This is in addition to his current assignment as chaplain at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale.

Effective December 18, 2016 Reverend James Adams, appointed parochial vicar of the parish cluster of the Church of the Nativity in Cleveland, the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Marysburg, the Church of Saint Mary in Le Center and the Church of Saint Henry in Le Center. This is a transfer from his previous appointment as pastor of the parish cluster of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Saint Paul, the Church of Saint Matthew in Saint Paul and the Church of Saint Michael in West Saint Paul.

4 • The Catholic Spirit

LOCAL

November 10, 2016

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The annual event featured speakers, activities and Mass celebrated by Archbishop Bernard Hebda. Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

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LOCAL

The Catholic Spirit • 5

St. Michael in West St. Paul to cease operation months after 150th anniversary

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit With finances drained, St. Michael in West St. Paul will cease operations in late November.

St. Michael’s parochial vicar, Father Andrew Brinkman, made the announcement at Sunday Mass Oct. 30. Father Brinkman explained that parish leadership made the decision due to parish finances.

“It was difficult for parish leadership to come to the decision to suspend operations, but as you may know from the two parish listening sessions in the past two months, there simply isn’t adequate money to continue paying the staff and keep the lights and heat on in December,” Father Brinkman read in his announcement.

The parish celebrated its 150th anniversary in late September, but financial struggles have been mounting at St. Michael in recent years. Less money in the collection plates due to shrinking Mass attendance and losing St. Michael School in 2012 hindered finances.

“It’s been a slow death with a number of factors involved,” said David Gjengdahl, a St. Michael parish trustee.

Gjengdahl and Pat Foley, both parishioners for more than 24 years, serve as St. Michael’s trustees. With pastor Father James Adams, they serve as the parish’s official representatives in civil law. The St. Michael parish leadership approached the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis earlier this year about the parish’s finances.

St. Michael’s parish leadership also met with trustees from the two parishes with which St. Michael clusters — St. Matthew and Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul — regarding options. Father Adams and parish leaders then hosted a listening session for St. Michael parishioners Aug. 30.

Decisions remained on hold when Archbishop Bernard Hebda and archdiocesan leaders visited St. Michael Oct. 17 for another listening session.

Archdiocesan staff explained the parish’s situation and options. They also fielded questions for the 100-plus people attending.

Archdiocesan Chief Financial Officer Thomas Mertens presented St. Michael’s financial state. A decline of

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$95,995 over the past three years in revenue from collections, festivals and building rentals hurt St. Michael financially. The parish had a remaining cash balance of $19,000 to work with at the time of the meeting, according to Mertens.

“We weren’t going to be able to pay our salaries in the month of December,” Foley said. “In justice, we had to let both the priests and the staff know that.”

While St. Michael will not have any staff or programs after Nov. 27, the parish’s corporate status remains intact. St. Michael’s final Mass will be Nov. 27.

The archdiocese’s Presbyteral Council was to meet Nov. 8 to discuss options for the parish, a requirement of canon law. Whether St. Michael will merge with another parish wasn’t determined prior to the meeting, which took place after The Catholic Spirit went to press.

Community of Saints Regional Catholic School, which rents the St. Michael school building, will continue to use the property. The school formed through the cluster when St. Matthew and St. Michael schools joined with St. John Vianney in South St. Paul to form Community of Saints in 2012.

St. Michael’s perpetual adoration chapel will also remain open. “It has a faithful group of adorers,” Father Brinkman said.

Father Adams was away from the parish and unavailable for comment at the time of the official announcement. Both Gjengdahl and Foley noted that St. Michael had a difficult financial situation several years before Father Adams’ arrival in 2015.

“I think he worked himself to the bone in trying to make it work,” Foley said.

Clustering with nearby parishes, which began in 2010, presented challenges for St. Michael. The number of Masses dropped because it had to share a priest with another parish and later a third parish in 2015. St. Michael parish paid severances to all St. Michael school staff in 2012 when Community of Saints formed.

Having seven other parishes within a 5-mile radius and experiencing a decline of practicing Catholics also hurt. “It’s the sign of our times right now,” Gjengdahl said. “Still, at the end of the day, God be praised.”

Community of Saints Regional Catholic School to remain open Although St. Michael in West St. Paul plans to cease operations this month, a Catholic school will continue to use the property.

Community of Saints Regional Catholic School, which opened in 2012, leases the St. Michael school property and uses the parish church for school Masses. Principal Bridget Kramer expects the arrangement to continue beyond the current school year.

“Our understanding is that we will be responsible for the property — ­­­ not like it being given to us, but that we will be staying on here,” Kramer said.

Kramer wants the school to have a 10-to-15-year lease with the next owner of St. Michael’s property. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Presbyteral Council was to discuss St. Michael’s situation Nov. 8.

“What I know is that we’re planning to stay here for the long term,” Kramer said.

Kramer said the school has a good financial situation and anticipates continued growth.

“This is our first year growing as a school, and we increased enrollment almost 10 percent this year,” she said.

Kramer expects that St. Michael families will continue to send their children to Community of Saints. She said they “seem very supportive of the school during this difficult time for them and their parish.”

Community of Saints school was created as a partnership among four parishes: St. Michael, Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Matthew in St. Paul, and St. John Vianney in South St. Paul. St. Michael, St. Matthew and St. John Vianney operated their own schools prior to the partnership.

— Matthew Davis

6 • The Catholic Spirit

LOCAL

November 10, 2016

BLUE MASS continued from page 1 “It’s a wonderful day in which we are able to pray for one another and maintain this sense of community, communion, of one another,” Archbishop Hebda said.

He encouraged praying for law enforcement officers and first responders daily, particularly for their safety and decision making. The archbishop emphasized the important role of such workers in society and locally.

“We’re blessed in this archdiocese and the communities that make up this archdiocese with men and women who are truly willing to go the extra mile so that we might have a safe community,” Archbishop Hebda said, “so that we might be able to pursue the common good [and] that, indeed, we might be able to build a community that reflects that unity of the heavenly kingdom.”

Deacon Rip Riordan, a chaplain for the St. Paul Police Department, said the demands alone that law enforcement officers or first responders face warrant significant prayers. He has seen some of those demands firsthand in ride-alongs with police officers.

He said physical injury is an ever-present danger for most officers.

“Many have been hurt while saving lives to prevent suicides,” Deacon Riordan said. “Some can’t work for a long time because of injuries. Some deal with lifelong injuries.”

Hankee called it a difficult year in general for law enforcement in Minnesota and beyond. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 54 officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty in 2016, a 59 percent increase from the same time frame last year. Meanwhile, law enforcement is under national scrutiny for police-involved shootings and deaths, especially of young black men. In July, a police officer shot and killed Philando Castile in Falcon Heights during a traffic stop. The incident was broadcast via Facebook Live and prompted an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal

“It’s a wonderful day in which we are able to pray for one another and maintain this sense of community, communion, of one another.”

Archbishop Bernard Hebda delivers his Homily during the Blue Mass Nov. 2 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul.

Jim Bovin/For The Catholic Spirit

Archbishop Bernard Hebda

Apprehension. The investigation’s findings were submitted to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office in September.

Hankee, a parishioner at St. Mary of the Lake in White Bear Lake, keeps focused on service each time he goes into his shift for Ramsey County. Prayer helps.

“You pray that you have a safe tour and that at the end of the day you’re able to go home to your family,” Hankee said.

“There’s also that understanding that you are to serve,” Hankee added. “You are there to protect others, and sometimes that protection causes you to put yourself in harm’s way where you might not be able to return to your loved ones at the end of the

day, of course.”

Several priests who serve as police chaplains including Jesuit Father Patrick McCorkell, Father George Grafsky and Father Terrence Hayes concelebrated the Mass with the archbishop. Deacon Riordan and Deacon Steve Maier, also a St. Paul Police chaplain, assisted at Mass.

In the United States, the Blue Mass tradition began in 1934 when Father Thomas Dade of Baltimore formed the Catholic Police and Fireman’s Society and celebrated the first Mass for police officers and firemen. The Mass draws its name from the traditional uniform color associated with those professions.

Catholic News Service contributed to this story.

in BRIEF MENDOTA HEIGHTS

Visitation, St. Thomas Academy to have separate sixth grades in 2017 Visitation School recently announced it will transition to an all-girls middle school effective next school year, making its co-educational sixth grade single sex, while neighboring St. Thomas Academy will add a sixth grade for boys. Faculty and teachers are working with parents on the transition and will collaborate with STA as it builds a sixth grade. As the only all-girls Catholic school in Minnesota, Visitation has a history of single-sex education, beginning in 1873. Currently, Visitation is coed through sixth grade and all girls in grades seven through 12.

Visitation plans to maintain its coed program in the Lower School, which is prekindergarten through fifth grade.

MINNEAPOLIS

BSM girls, STA boys soccer win state titles Benilde-St. Margaret’s School in St. Louis Park won its second consecutive girls state soccer championship Nov. 3 at US Bank Stadium. Maren Noble, a senior midfielder, scored two goals for BenildeSt. Margaret’s in a 2-1 win over Mankato West for a second-straight Class A title, finishing the season 18-4-1. St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights captured the Class A state boys soccer title Nov. 3 at US Bank Stadium. Senior defender Devin Kennedy clinched St. Thomas Academy’s

first state boys soccer championship on a penalty kick. STA prevailed 1-0 over Northfield in double overtime. The Cadets finished the season 18-4.

St. Albert the Great receives accessibility grant St. Albert the Great received a matching grant of $228 to make one of its washrooms wheel-chair accessible with the installation of grab bars and a higher, elongated accessible toilet. The grant is from the Inclusion In Worship ministry of Pathways.org, a Chicago based nonprofit, which distributed seven other grants to worship spaces across the United States.

MOUND

Mound parish opens food shelf and thrift store Our Lady of the Lake in Mound opened Grace Family Center Oct. 3 to house the Westonka Food Shelf and PennyWise Thrift Store. The newly constructed multipurpose facility resulted from a community-wide effort in 2015 to raise $800,000 for the project. The Westonka Food Shelf, which began more than 47 years ago and partners with local churches, serves families needing assistance in Mound and neighboring communities in the Lake Minnetonka area. Grace Family Center hosted a grand opening Nov. 3. A blessing ceremony and Mass with Archbishop Bernard Hebda are slated for Dec. 3. Father Tony O’Neill, pastor of Our Lady of the Lake, spearheaded the effort.

November 10, 2016

LOCAL

Marking 40 years, Wakota Life Care Center becomes Guiding Star affiliate

By Jessica Trygstad The Catholic Spirit Wakota Life Care Center celebrated more than its 40th anniversary Oct. 29 during a banquet at St. Joseph in West St. Paul. Executive Director Ginny Cronin announced to supporters that the pregnancy resource center is now an affiliate of the national Guiding Star Project based in Duluth.

“We think [Guiding Star’s vision and mission statement] marry really well together with what’s happening at Wakota and what we could be moving forward with,” Cronin said. “Really, the sky’s the limit. This affiliation really highlights what a Guiding Star center is — it’s key to family life.”

Wakota Life Care Center already offered free pregnancy testing, counseling and ultrasounds, low-cost testing for sexually transmitted infections, educational counseling on abortion and alternatives, and free baby supplies and maternity clothing. The affiliation allows the center to expand in the areas of natural fertility care and family planning, pregnancy and childbirth resources, breastfeeding and postpartum support, and family support, all under one roof.

Located at 1140 Robert St. in West St. Paul, Wakota Life Care Center serves between 200 to 250 families a month. In 2016, it added more than 300 new clients, said Cronin, a parishioner of Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville.

“So, it’s just kind of logically the next step that we would partner with an organization like Guiding Star with looking toward the future,” she said.

“We’re already serving these women. And it gives us and our clients access to resources … which will begin immediately.”

The Guiding Star Project launched in 2006 when Leah Jacobson, a wife and mother who lives in northern Minnesota, felt inspired to help young women and mothers make choices that would build a culture of life. Cronin said Wakota’s mission has

been doing just that for the last 40 years.

“If you look at the statistics that come out right now about women choosing abortions, over 60 percent who are choosing abortions are saying they already have one or two children, and part of that decision is truly on economics,” she said. “And so at Wakota, it’s our philosophy that we provide for our clients without conditions.”

Since January, Wakota has given out more than 20,000 diapers to clients, who also come to the center for clothing, baby equipment, classes and support.

“We’ve already established that relationship, and they know we’re going to walk with them,” Cronin added.

Karen Schultz, Guiding Star Twin Cities board chair and parishioner of Our Lady of Grace in Edina, said Guiding Star resources recognize the authentic needs of women regardless of their socioeconomic background.

And now they can refer women of diverse economic backgrounds to a center that covers their particular needs.

“It’s an idea of women supporting women,” said Schultz, an NFP practitioner, postpartum doula and breast-feeding educator. “We are so connected nowadays to a technological community, but the goal of a Guiding Star center is that women keep coming back. It’s a place where women build community and find relationships that encourages [them] to choose life.”

While Guiding Star has affiliates in Iowa and Texas, its first fully operational center opened in Tampa, Florida, last year. Wakota Life Care Center — which will likely be called Wakota – A Guiding Star Affiliate, Cronin said — is the first Guiding Star center in Minnesota. As such, the Guiding Star Twin Cities board, which formed in 2014 with four members, will likely transition into work solely with Wakota.

In the next few years, Wakota will seek to expand its space, either undergoing renovations of its current site or purchasing a larger property, Cronin said.

The Catholic Spirit • 7

Archbishop Hebda: ‘tarantulas,’ credible parishes don’t mix

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit Speaking to almost 700 archdiocesan and parish staff members Oct. 27, Archbishop Bernard Hebda called for an extermination.

Of an attitude in parish life, that is.

His presentation at Fall Formation Day for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis concluded with a story about Pope Francis’ recount of a parish secretary in Argentina who had been called by many a “tarantula.” It grabbed the attention and laughter of the crowd gathered at St. John Neumann in Eagan, hearing the antithesis of being a welcoming parish.

“He [the pope] said everybody referred to her as the tarantula,” Archbishop Hebda said. “People were afraid to go to the parish because of what the tarantula would do. How important it is that we tame the tarantula in ourselves.”

Archbishop Hebda spoke of the need to become credible parishes at a time when the archdiocese still has more recovery to do following the clergy sex abuse scandals and general drifting away of people from the Catholic faith.

He emphasized that parishes need to seek Christ in a united approach and spread the core message of the Gospel. Moreover, all need to reach out to the poor and respond to the “real needs of the people.”

Archbishop Hebda also announced his desire for the archdiocese to have a synod. Better known as a meeting of bishops at the Vatican, a diocese can have a synod, though Archbishop Hebda said they’re rare.

“It’s a vehicle that the Church offers to us to be able to set a course for the local Church,” he said. “It’s the way in which the Church envisions the bishop being able to draw from the resources of the local Church.”

It calls for clergy and laity of the archdiocese to work together and prioritize. He indicated that it hasn’t been determined if a synod will take place before or after re-establishing an archdiocesan pastoral council.

Archdiocesan and parish staff will have another formation day in the spring at St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove with Bishop Frank Caggiano from the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bishop Caggiano’s talk will be a follow-up to last spring’s formation day, when he spoke at Pax Christi in Eden Prairie.

8 • The Catholic Spirit

FAITH & CULTURE

According to Lahl, because the baby is genetically unrelated, some women experience symptoms similar to those of a donated organ rejection.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth story in a series on surrogacy, which a Minnesota State Legislature commission is studying as it prepares to make public policy recommendations on the practice. Follow the series at www.thecatholicspirit.com.

Surrogacy pregnancies are also at risk for early labor, and babies are usually delivered by cesarean section, compounding potential complications and risks.

D

oes commercial surrogacy ask too much of women? Opponents of the practice say “yes.”

While any pregnancy is inherently risky, those risks increase in a surrogacy pregnancy — a fact opponents hoped was underscored in testimony before the Minnesota Legislative Commission on Surrogacy, which is studying the issue and plans to release a report next month. Minnesota does not legally recognize commercial surrogacy arrangements.

Public policy should protect women from surrogacy’s dangers, surrogacy opponents say, rather than create an industry that would submit them to serious potential health risks.

“A surrogacy pregnancy is not the same as a natural pregnancy, because these women have to mimic pregnancy to prepare a woman’s uterus to receive an embryo,” Jennifer Lahl, president of the Californiabased Center for Bioethics and Culture, told legislators at the commission’s September hearing.

Unnatural pregnancy Inducing a pregnancy typically requires a surrogate to take a mix of hormones and steroids for at least four months, and the pregnancy includes triple the normal risk for hypertension and preeclampsia, said Lahl, a pediatric critical care nurse.

About a month before the embryo transfer, the surrogate mother’s menstrual cycle is brought under medical control, often by first suppressing it with the synthetic hormone Lupron. According to Lahl and testimony by fertility industry representatives, the drug is not FDA-approved for use in artificial reproduction. It was developed to treat endometriosis and prostate cancer, and is a Category X drug, meaning if a woman gets pregnant while taking it, the drug can cause damage to the developing fetus.

After Lupron, estrogen and progesterone are administered to thicken and prepare the uterine lining.

Doses of the two female hormones can last another two months to prevent miscarriage.

The side effects of these drugs include bloating, depression and loss of bone density. Because the fertility industry is largely unregulated, there is little follow-up with surrogates and egg donors, and no studies on the long-term effects of the drug and hormone regimen in vitro fertilization requires.

One surrogate whose case was cited in the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology in 2013 developed pounding headaches from intracranial hypertension.

Relevant Radio to merge with California radio organization The Catholic Spirit Relevant Radio and California-based Immaculate Heart Radio recently announced a merger.

The united corporation will be Immaculate Heart Media under the Relevant Radio name and will broadcast radio programs over 108 AM and FM radio stations and translators in 36 states.

Relevant Radio currently broadcasts locally on 1330 AM. All programs will be live streamed and available on podcast through multiple Internet platforms.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis recently joined Relevant Radio’s board of directors. Relevant Radio is based in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Subscribe to the print edition today!

Call 651.291.4444

November 10, 2016

Pregnancy not a ‘job’ to be outsourced

Worth the risk?

Surrogacy commission asked to consider health implications as members look to final report

By Bridget Ryder • For the Catholic Spirit

“As matter of public policy, is it ethical to ask a young woman — and surrogates in this country are overwhelmingly young mothers — to compromise their own health?”

Jennifer Lahl

Many pregnant surrogates also take steroids to suppress their immune systems and prevent their bodies from rejecting babies who don’t share their genes.

Although many surrogate mothers who have testified before the commission reported no complications, other surrogates have had negative experiences.

Obstetrician Matthew Anderson, who practices at AALFA Family Clinic in White Bear Lake, submitted written testimony about a surrogate mother in his care who developed a condition that required her to stop working and go on bed rest. According to Anderson’s testimony, she was a single mother and the intended parents offered her no additional support when she was unable to work.

Other cases have made national headlines. Lahl pointed to the death of surrogate mother Brooke Brown of Idaho, who died in October 2015 from placental abruption just days before a planned cesarean delivery of the twins she was carrying.

Brown, who was married and a mother to three boys, had been a surrogate three times. Like Brown, all surrogates are already mothers, as they are required to have proven their ability to bring a pregnancy to term.

The twins Brown was carrying also died. Their intended parents were Spanish; American women often serve as surrogates for European couples because the practice is banned in Europe as exploitative of women.

Dr. Michael Feinman, a fertility doctor in California, wrote about Brown’s death last year on his blog, remarking, “Dying from a pregnancy-related complication is so rare in the U.S. that many people take it for granted and feel it is acceptable to transfer the risks of pregnancy to another woman.”

For opponents of surrogacy, Brown’s death and the instances of other women who have suffered severe health consequences during high-risk surrogacy pregnancies demonstrate that pregnancy is not a “job” that can simply be outsourced and regulated through public policy.

“You’re not going to be able to take away the health risks,” Lahl warned the commission.

Lahl and surrogacy opponents hope Minnesota’s surrogacy proponents look at the facts and have a reality check.

Lahl asked the commission: “As matter of public policy, is it ethical to ask a young woman — and surrogates in this country are overwhelmingly young mothers — to compromise their own health?”

VOCATIONS

November 10, 2016

The Catholic Spirit • 9

Formation a journey — literally — for local Jesuit novices

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit

S

tanding near the entrance of the Jesuit Novitiate of St. Alberto Hurtado in St. Paul is a statue of the patron of Jesuit novices: 16th-century St. Stanislaus Kostka, who as a teenager embarked on a 350-mile pilgrimage on foot from Vienna to Rome.

Modern Jesuit novices follow in his path, taking a pilgrimage in which they aim to leave comforts and depend on God. They begin with $35, a one-way bus ticket and a 30-day timeframe. From there, their compass is the Holy Spirit.

Novice Billy Critchley-Menor, 20, ended up spending four days and nights traveling cross country by bus during his pilgrimage in April. It wasn’t his plan, he said, but God’s.

During that long, uncomfortable trip to attend a funeral in New York City, God gave the Duluth native insights for his formation to become a Jesuit priest. He learned about offering himself to God, the essential role of prayer and seeing Christ’s incarnation in his poor traveling companions.

“When everything familiar falls away, your prayer is the only thing that is familiar,” said Critchley-Menor, who is among 29 men completing the two-year novitiate in St. Paul.

The group is the largest the novitiate has ever housed, said Jesuit Father Thomas Pipp, director of novices.

“People talk about ‘the Pope Francis effect,’ and I think that’s part of it,” Father Pipp said. He also attributes the increase to the assignment of more fulltime vocation recruiters.

Located on Summit Avenue next to St. Thomas More, a parish in the care of Jesuit priests, the novitiate serves the provincial territory from Kentucky to the Dakotas. The novices, mostly in their 20s, come from a variety of backgrounds and education levels.

Those interviewed said they joined to serve the marginalized and oppressed, and they were attracted

Nine Jesuit novices prepare to make their first profession of vows at St. Thomas More in St. Paul Aug. 13 — ­­ from left, Michael Bartlett, José Camacho, Pierce Gibson, David Inczauskis, James Kennedy, James McGivney, Jack McLinden, Thomas O’Donnell and Christopher Williams. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit to the order’s spirituality. As part of their formation, they complete a rigorous program of “experiments” or learning experiences in prayer, study, community life and apostolic service to people in need. While learning the importance of “contemplation in action” and reliance on God, the novices discern whether they are called to be brothers or priests in the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits.

In the novitiate’s comfortable “upper room,” novices share community life without smart phones, which aren’t permitted. St. Paul native and first-year novice

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National Vocation Awareness Week: Nov. 6-12 National Vocation Awareness Week is an annual weeklong celebration of the Catholic Church in the United States dedicated to promote vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life through prayer and education, and to renew prayers and support for those who are considering one of these particular vocations.

10 • The Catholic Spirit

Acts o

Like a rock Couple turns to stone for help with troubled marriage

The final installment in a 14-part series highlighting local Catholics who live out the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

By Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

C

arol Langan of St. Peter in Mendota was sitting in a room sizing up a bunch of rocks on a table during a meeting for separated and divorced Catholics in 2003.

The nun leading the session asked participants to pick a stone that represented the hurts caused by their spouse. They were to hang onto the rock and, when ready, present it to their spouse as a symbol of forgiveness.

Carol had one problem — the rocks were too small.

“You don’t have any boulders up there,” she remembers saying to the nun.

Why the need for such a large stone? Just a few months earlier, her husband of 28 years, Greg, had decided to leave. After Mass one Sunday, they discussed their plans for the rest of the day. He told her he was going to move out.

Carol was stunned. She meekly accepted, then could only sit and cry later that day. Eventually, she found out about the group for separated and divorced Catholics and started going.

A big part of healing their relationship and restoring their marriage would be forgiveness, which, they point out now, works both ways. Instrumental in the process was attending a Retrouvaille retreat in May 2003. The program is designed to help couples who have troubled marriages.

It features a three-day weekend retreat and 12 post sessions that take place on the following six Saturdays after the retreat.

The retreat’s Saturday night session deals with forgiveness. Just days later, Carol decided it was time to present to Greg her rock, which ended up being one of the smallest on the table and fit into her pocket. By that time, he had moved back into their Mendota Heights home. In fact, he moved in just hours after the retreat ended on Sunday afternoon.

For Carol, reaching that decisive moment took several months of soul searching. Seeking divine help was at the center of the process.

“I took the rock and I prayed that I could forgive him for leaving, and [for] the pain that I had gone through,” Carol said. “After Retrouvaille, I knew I was ready to forgive him. I gave him the rock.”

That simple act deeply touched Greg.

“To know that she had been carrying this rock around in her pocket for three or four months and that she was finally ready to give up the rock, the symbol of her anger

and pain, and tell me that I was forgiven, was really incredible,” Greg said. “It was emotional. On my part, I was in tears by that point, knowing that she really meant it.”

He also knew that it required something of him — a change in the hurtful behavior he had inflicted upon Carol. Self-examination helped him to identify three key areas where he had hurt Carol: making work too high of a priority, ceasing to talk to her about anything substantial, and being overly critical of her.

One thing he learned during the Retrouvaille weekend was just going back to old behaviors wasn’t going to cut it.

Carol took a big step in offering her forgiveness. Now, it was his turn.

“To know that all that stuff is [forgiven] is liberating,” he said. But, “it reinforces in you the fact that you better pick it up and straighten yourself out because I don’t know how many more rocks she’s going to be able to give me.

So, better take advantage of this rock. I carried the rock around with me for probably three or four months, then I decided that I don’t want to lose this thing.”

The rock now permanently sits on their bedroom dresser.

Greg knew the way to make the rock mean something was to treat Carol in a new way — concretely. That led to a conversation with her about it, and a decision.

“We have this deal that, if I screw up, I owe her three affirmations,” he said. “And, they can’t come right after [the forgiveness is granted]. They’ve got to come spaced out during the day. So, if I screw up, I need to recognize what I did and ask her to forgive me, but know that I have the penance [to do]. I’ve got to demonstrate that I’m serious about this with the three affirmations sometime during the remainder of the day.”

This formula has proven successful for the Langans over the last 13 years. Eventually, their marriage strengthened to the point where they became Retrouvaille presenters at weekend retreats and post sessions. They now point the way to forgiveness for dozens of couples every year. And, they also serve on Retrouvaille’s international board.

Today, there’s a visible spark in their eyes when they look at each other, and forgiveness is given and received with ease, partly because offenses are fewer.

But, they are firm in pointing out that forgiveness was not a one-way street, meaning it only involved Carol forgiving Greg. She admits there were things she did to

The Catholic Spirit’s Acts of Mercy series is made possible in part through a grant from the National Catholic Society of Foresters. Learn about the organization at www.ncsf.com.

of

Mercy

November 10, 2016 • 11

Forgive offenses

By Father Michael Van Sloun To forgive offenses is one of the seven spiritual works of mercy. It is also variously known as to “forgive all injuries” and to “forgive sins.”

There are at least three major spiritual benefits: the one who forgives is liberated from bitterness and resentment, the one who is forgiven receives mercy and a new beginning, and the community experiences conflict resolution and the restoration of harmony.

Jesus gave the great commandment: Love God and love your neighbor.

Because of our flawed human Father Michael nature and our propensity to sin, everyone who offends VAN SLOUN against love and relationships is harmed or broken. The way to return to love, mend relationships and heal offenses is to forgive.

Forgiveness is the flip side of the love coin.

ABOVE Greg and Carol Langan laugh together today thanks to the forgiveness in their relationship.

Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit LEFT This rock symbolizes the forgiveness Carol Langan offered to her husband, Greg, in 2003, helping to restore their troubled marriage.

Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit

Retrouvaille offers help for troubled marriages Retrouvaille, which means “rediscovery” in French, offers help to couples with marital problems, including those considering separation and those already separated or divorced. The program consists of a weekend retreat followed by 12 post sessions taking place over six weeks. It provides tools to help couples rediscover a loving marriage relationship. For more information, call 1-800-470-2230 or visit www.retrouvaille.org.

contribute to their drifting apart.

“I’m a stuffer,” Carol said. “I don’t want any arguments.

I run away from [conflict] instead of having a fight. I won’t [argue] because I grew up that way with this constant fighting with my family and my parents.

“I figured that the way to have a happy marriage would be to never have a fight. So, every time [a conflict arose] I would back down and not have a fight. We never argued. I didn’t want it. And, by doing that, he resented my behavior and it kept building. By my holding in and not telling how I felt about things, he was resenting that and [feeling] that he had to leave.”

Greg and Carol say that it’s critical for each spouse to both offer forgiveness and seek forgiveness. And, they also note that there’s an effective way to word such requests.

“I used to say, ‘I’m sorry if I did something [wrong].’” she said. “Now I say, ‘I’m sorry I did this.’ And, I name the thing I did [and say] ‘Please forgive me. Will you forgive me?’”

Naming the offense is critical, and so is the request for forgiveness rather than simply saying, “I’m sorry.”

“To say, ‘Will you please forgive me?’ is stronger,” Carol

said. “It has more meaning than to say, ‘I love you.’”

Yet, when the exchange of forgiveness is made, there’s more work to do. That’s where Retrouvaille’s “48-hour rule” comes in. It has to do with burying the hurts after they’ve been dealt with.

“If you’ve been forgiven, you have to let it go,” Greg said. “We understand that people have strong emotional reactions to negative behaviors on the part of their spouses. And, [according to the rule] you’ve got 48 hours to fuss, rant and rave, do whatever you want to do about it. But, after 48 hours, you need to find a way to be on the track to forgiveness and to letting it go.”

Said Carol: “One person carries the pain, and the other person carries the guilt. And, therefore, if you’ve been forgiven, then both parties are free. The pain doesn’t disappear, but you made the decision [to forgive]. That’s what forgiveness is. You’ve made the decision to forgive.

And by doing that, then you’re working toward something instead of living in the past.”

What supplies the power to forgive is faith. That runs deep in both Greg and Carol and in their marriage. They are quick to credit God for the forgiveness and healing in their marriage.

“All you have to do is look at the cross,” Carol said.

“Jesus forgave every single person for every single thing they ever did [wrong]. Even things we haven’t even done yet, we are forgiven for. I see that, without the help of Jesus, we would not be forgiven, and we could not forgive each other.”

And, Greg credited the help of another member of the Trinity.

“The Holy Spirit was there guiding us, helping us understand [what forgiveness is],” Greg said. “This stuff just doesn’t happen without the Holy Spirit doing a lot of the heavy lifting and pushing us in the direction that we needed to go.”

Jesus is the best example of forgiveness. As Jesus hung in crucifixion, he forgave those who falsely testified against him, wrongly condemned him and cruelly tortured him when he prayed, “Father, forgive them” (Lk 23:34). If God is love, if nothing is outside of God’s mercy, and if Jesus is the son of God, then it was a spiritual imperative for Jesus to forgive those who had offended him. To do otherwise would have been to carry anger and resentment with him to the grave, which is no way to die, and it would have disproved his divinity.

Jesus did what God does. He was “gracious and merciful … abounding in steadfast love and relenting in punishment” (Joel 2:13).

Jesus demonstrated forgiveness again after his Resurrection. His disciples offended him when they abandoned him at the time of his arrest, and Peter further offended him with his denials. Jesus had every reason to be hurt and angry. Yet, when Jesus appeared to them on Easter Sunday night, his first words to them were, “Peace be with you” (Lk 24:36), which amounts to “I forgive you.”

Jesus knew the importance of the forgiveness and stressed it in his teaching. He taught that we should forgive those who trespass against us (see Mt 6:12; Lk 11:4). Once Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?” And almost congratulating himself, Peter added, “As many as seven times?” (Mt 18:21).

Jesus, unimpressed, replied, “Not seven times but 77 times” (Mt 18:22), a symbolic number for as many times as necessary because forgiveness is a never ending, life-long process.

Jesus was well aware that those who have been offended can be consumed with anger, bitterness and resentment. It is natural to harbor a grudge and want to strike back, take revenge, retaliate, punish, or get even. As the saying goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” It perpetuates a cycle of violence. It can be all-consuming and rob people of their happiness. It is no way to live. It does an immense amount of good to let go of our hurts and forgive those who have offended us. It gives release and freedom, and peace and joy.

Sometimes forgiveness seems unattainable, so far beyond us that it requires a superhuman effort.

Whenever we face what appears to be an insurmountable spiritual challenge, it is time to turn to God in prayer to ask for help. God will provide divine assistance, as the psalmist explained long ago: “The Lord answered me when I called in my distress” (Ps 120:1).

Father Van Sloun is pastor of St. Bartholomew in Wayzata. Read more of his reflections at www.catholichotdish.com.

12 • The Catholic Spirit

U.S. & WORLD

500 religious leaders join Standing Rock Sioux in opposing oil pipeline

Clergy of many faiths from across the United States participate in a prayer circle Nov. 3 in front of a bridge in Standing Rock, N.D., where demonstrators confront police during a protest of the Dakota Access pipeline. Demonstrations against the pipeline are taking place on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation near Cannon Ball, N.D. CNS

By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service When Sisters Aine O’Connor and Kathleen Erickson heard a call for a peaceful and prayerful presence on the front line of a campaign to protect sacred Sioux lands in North Dakota from a multibillion-dollar oil pipeline project, they knew they had to respond.

The two members of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas joined more than 500 ministers and religious leaders Nov. 4 for a day of prayer and conversation in south central North Dakota to confront what they contend is an ecological disaster waiting to happen.

“I was responding to the call to come and bear witness,” Sister O’Connor told Catholic News Service Nov. 4 as she prepared to return home to Baltimore.

Sister Erickson said that as a native of North Dakota who now ministers to migrant people in Omaha, Nebraska, she wanted to be on hand to stand with people whose rights are often ignored.

They were joined by Mike Poulin, a member of the Sisters of Mercy Justice Team’s West-Midwest region.

The call to which the trio responded came in late October from the Rev. John Floberg, an Episcopal priest serving the Standing Rock Reservation near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. He was concerned that violence was rising after two heavy trucks were set ablaze Oct. 28 following the forced removal of pipeline opponents by law enforcement authorities from a nearby camp.

In issuing the call, Rev. Floberg said it was necessary for people of faith to show support for the Standing Rock Sioux people.

The Sioux tribe has been joined by other indigenous people and hundreds of supporters at a camp near the pipeline route for months. Calling themselves water protectors, the tribal members since April have opposed construction of a leg of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline. They contend that the project endangers the reservation’s water supply and infringes on sacred tribal grounds.

November 10, 2016

Care for creation an act of mercy Texas-based pipeline builder Energy Transfer Partners maintains that it is following strict safety standards in building the 1,200-mile pipeline that will connect with a distribution network in Illinois. The company said the project is nearly complete except for the leg being challenged.

The federal government decided in September to halt construction pending another round of review after a federal court judge denied a tribal motion to stop the project.

Both sisters said the North Dakota witness is about more than one pipeline project.

“I’m concerned about the fixation on the petroleum industry and what we seem to be willing to give up long-term in favor of short-term [energy] solutions,” Sister Erickson said.

Sister O’Connor cited the call of Pope Francis of care for the environment as a corporal work of mercy and the questions he raised on the economy in his encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home” as reasons for the world to question the continued investment in fossil fuel development.

“We as Sisters of Mercy, in addressing the critical concerns we’ve adopted, have been challenged ourselves to ask the question about the structural causes of injustice and how they’re all related,” she said.

The day of events included walking from the camp to a bridge, which remains blocked by the burned-out trucks. The Mercy trio said the group remained under the watchful eye of heavily equipped law enforcement officers as a helicopter flew overhead throughout the day.

Eddie Carmona, campaign director of LA RED of the PICO National Network, a faith-based group engaged in congregation-based community organizing, told CNS that a group of ministers met with tribal elders and learned that the tribe wanted to have the trucks moved so that emergency vehicles could reach the reservation more easily.

About 100 of the religious leaders then went by caravan to the North Dakota State Capitol in Bismarck, about 50 miles away. There they were met by heavily armed police, Carmona said. However, 14 clergy managed to enter the capitol and conducted a sit-in demanding to see Gov. Jack Dalrymple, forcing officials to shut it down. When they refused to leave, they were arrested for criminal trespass.

Those remaining marched to the nearby governor’s residence seeking an end to the pipeline project, eventually returning to the Standing Rock Camp, Carmona said.

The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas’ Extended Justice Team was one of 15 faith-based organizations that signed a statement supporting the stance of the Standing Rock Sioux Sept. 19.

While saying a fair and unbiased evaluation of pipeline construction was necessary by the federal government, the statement also called for adequate consultation with the tribe concerning the project.

Other Catholic organizations that signed on include Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, Franciscan Action Network, Leadership Conference of Women Religious and Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.

Unlike World Series, prelates’ bet has winners in both cities Catholic News Service When civic leaders make friendly bets on which team will win a big championship with their counterparts in another city, one winner enjoys a feast, while the loser eats some humble pie.

But when bishops in the World Series’ home cities placed their wager on the winner of the Fall Classic, it turns out that while only one team could win, poor people in both cities also will win.

Cardinal-designate Blase Cupich of Chicago said that, in celebration of the Chicago Cubs ending a 108-year World Series championship drought, he would make good on his end of the bet and provide enough Chicago deep dish pizzas and baked goods to feed more than 100 guests of the Bishop William Cosgrove Center in Cleveland.

“Both teams put up a great effort, both cities very much wanted this victory, and today Chicago is giving thanks for this blessing,” said Archbishop Cupich in a Nov. 4 statement. “Our city is celebrating with our Cubs, and we want to include our friends in Cleveland.”

For his part, Bishop Richard Lennon of Cleveland said a Cleveland-style meal of pierogi, kielbasa,

“Both teams put up a great effort, both cities very much wanted this victory, and today Chicago is giving thanks for this blessing. Our city is celebrating with our Cubs, and we want to include our friends in Cleveland.”

Cardinal-designate Blase Cupich

sauerkraut and green beans would be on its way to feed more than 100 people at the evening supper program for the homeless sponsored by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

“Although we hoped the Indians would come out on top, we humbly accept our defeat and congratulate

our friends to the west in Chicago,” said Bishop Lennon in a Nov. 4 statement. “We are thankful for the pizzas and dessert, and hope Chicago enjoys a taste of Cleveland on us. We’ll be back next year!”

The Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in 10 innings Nov. 2 in the climactic Game 7 of the World Series, which featured a game-tying home run in the bottom of the eighth inning by Cleveland’s Rajai Davis, only to see the tied contest delayed by rain after nine innings were played. The Cubs scored twice in the top of the 10th inning. Davis singled in a run with two out in the bottom of the inning, but Cleveland could draw no closer.

The Cosgrove Center in Cleveland provides guests with access to such fundamental services as hot meals, shower facilities, mail distribution and many other forms of assistance. In addition, the center offers referrals to employment and training programs, health and mental health screenings, veterans benefit help and aid with obtaining housing subsidies.

Catholic Charities’ evening supper program for the homeless feeds approximately 135 individuals at each meal. It is just one of 150 programs, at 153 locations, run by Catholic Charities Chicago, assisting more than 1 million persons each year.

November 10, 2016

U.S. & WORLD

Pope Francis, Lutheran leaders mark Reformation anniversary in Sweden

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service Urging Catholics and Lutherans to take decisive steps toward unity, Pope Francis nevertheless offered no new openings to the idea of sharing Communion before full unity is achieved.

“We Christians will be credible witnesses of mercy to the extent that forgiveness, renewal and reconciliation are daily experienced in our midst,” the pope said Oct. 31 during an ecumenical prayer service in Lund, Sweden, in the Lutherans’ cathedral, which was built as a Catholic cathedral in the 11th century.

With the prayer service, Pope Francis and leaders of the Lutheran World Federation launched a year of activities to mark the 500th anniversary in 2017 of Martin Luther’s efforts to reform the Church.

For Pope Francis and the Vatican, Catholics are called to commemorate the event by focusing on concrete ways to express and strengthen the doctrinal agreements reached by Catholic and Lutheran theologians over the past 50 years. The most appropriate way to mark the anniversary, they said, was with common prayer and renewed commitments to working together to help the poor and promote justice.

The Lutherans agree, but many also saw the joint commemoration as a moment to recognize that the joint agreements on issues of faith over the past 50 years mean it is appropriate now to expand occasions when eucharistic sharing is possible.

The Catholic Church has insisted that regular sharing of the Eucharist will be possible only when divided Christians have attained full unity.

In his homily at the Lund cathedral, the Rev. Martin Junge, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, expressed his hope for shared Communion sooner.

While in the past, Catholics and Lutherans sometimes carried stones to throw at each other, he said, that is no longer possible “now that we know who we are in Christ.” The stones cannot be used “to raise walls of separation and exclusion” either, he said.

“Jesus Christ calls us to be ambassadors of reconciliation,” he said, using stones for “building bridges so that we can draw closer to each other, houses where we can meet together and tables — yes,

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service The Catholic Church’s insistence that it cannot ordain women to the priesthood and episcopacy is a teaching likely to last forever, Pope Francis said.

After being hosted by the Lutheran Church of Sweden, which is led by Archbishop Antje Jackelen of Uppsala, the nation’s first woman primate, Pope Francis was asked Nov. 1 if the Catholic Church might one day have women priests and bishops.

As he has done in the past, the pope responded that the question was settled in 1994 by St. John Paul II, who taught that because Jesus chose only men as his apostles, the ordination of women in the Catholic Church is not possible.

In one of his briefest airborne news conferences, Pope Francis spent just over 40 minutes with reporters and answered six questions ranging from Sweden’s newly restrictive immigration policy to the role of women in the Church. He also was asked about his experience with charismatics and Pentecostals, the roots of his concern about human trafficking, secularization in Europe and his meeting in late October with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

in BRIEF WASHINGTON

Pope appoints Cardinal-designate Tobin as new archbishop of Newark Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Archbishop John Myers of Newark, New Jersey, and Nov. 7 named Cardinal-designate Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis to succeed him. The 64-year-old cardinal-designate, who is a member of the Redemptorist order, has been the archbishop of Indianapolis since 2012 and was named a new cardinal by Pope Francis Oct. 9. Archbishop Bernard Hebda was positioned to succeed Archbishop Myers prior to his appointment as archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis in March 2016. Archbishop Myers, Newark’s archbishop since 2001, is 75, the age at which canon law requires bishops to turn in their resignation to the pope.

Pope Francis embraces the Rev. Martin Junge, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, during an ecumenical prayer service at the Lutheran cathedral in Lund, Sweden, Oct. 31. CNS/Paul Haring

National Shrine’s final dome mosaic in the works

tables — where we can share the bread and the wine, the presence of Jesus Christ, who has never left us and who calls us to abide in him so the world may believe.”

A joint statement signed in Lund by Pope Francis and Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan, president of the Lutheran World Federation, said, “Many members of our communities yearn to receive the Eucharist at one table as the concrete expression of full unity.”

Particularly referring to Catholic-Lutheran married couples, the two leaders’ statement said, “We experience the pain of those who share their whole lives, but cannot share God’s redeeming presence at the eucharistic table. We acknowledge our joint pastoral responsibility to respond to the spiritual thirst and hunger of our people to be one in Christ.”

Pope Francis began the service praying that the Holy Spirit would “help us to rejoice in the gifts that have come to the Church through the Reformation.”

In an interview released Oct. 28, he said those gifts were greater appreciation of the Bible as God’s word and an acknowledgment that members of the Church are called to a process of ongoing reform.

In his homily, Pope Francis insisted that Catholics and Lutherans must “look with love and honesty at our past, recognizing error and seeking forgiveness.”

MANCHESTER, England

Pope: Women’s ordination not likely On papal plane, Pope Francis addresses women’s role in Church, immigration, Venezuelan politics

The Catholic Spirit • 13

Christians must never close their hearts to refugees and migrants, but governments have a duty to regulate the influx of newcomers as they allocate resources for their integration into society, he said.

As he has in the past, Pope Francis insisted nations live up to international agreements offering special welcome and protection to refugees fleeing war and persecution. While Catholic social teaching holds that every person has a right to migrate in search of a better life, accepting newcomers is a serious obligation when the person’s life is at risk.

Europeans should not be frightened by the latest wave of newcomers, he said. “Europe was made with a continual integration of cultures, many cultures.”

The key, he said, is to ensure a proper integration of newcomers with language lessons, a home, schools and jobs. “The danger is that when a refugee or migrant is not integrated, he or she is ‘ghetto-ized.’”

Responding to a question about Maduro, Pope Francis said he met with him at the president’s request. “I listened to him for half an hour,” he said.

“I asked a few questions. I heard his opinions. It’s always good to listen to both sides.”

The Vatican, he added, is supporting dialogue in Venezuela and, at the invitation of both the government and the opposition, has sent Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig, the nuncio to Argentina, as an observer.

After nearly 100 years since construction began on the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the placement of a final mosaic — inside the Trinity Dome — is expected to be completed in December 2017. The final mosaic will be the “crowning jewel” of what is the largest Catholic church in the United States, and will complete it from an architectural standpoint, said the senior managing director of OPUSfidelis, a Virginia-based marketing agency that is working to promote the project. The dome mosaic will depict the Trinity, Mary and 13 saints associated with the United States or the national shrine, the four evangelists and words from the Nicene Creed.

Cardinal apologizes to unmarried women coerced to give up babies Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster has apologized for the “hurt caused” to young unmarried mothers pressured by Church agencies in the mid20th century to surrender their children for adoption.

He expressed regret for the actions of the Church in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when about 500,000 British women were encouraged to give up their babies for adoption. “The practices of all adoption agencies reflected the social values at that time and were sometimes lacking in care and sensitivity,” Cardinal Nichols said. “We apologize for the hurt caused by agencies acting in the name of the Catholic Church.” The role of the Church in adoptions in the 1950s was examined in the 2013 movie “Philomena,” which tells the true story of the search by Philomena Lee for her son some 50 years after nuns in Ireland persuaded her to give him up for adoption.

OXFORD, England

Dutch cardinal says papal encyclical on gender theory might be needed Cardinal Willem Eijk of Utrecht, Netherlands, said the spread of gender theory is misleading so many Catholics that a papal encyclical or other magisterial document may be required to correct the errors of the ideology. He said even Catholic parents were beginning to accept that their own children can choose their genders partly because “they don’t hear anything else.” The Church, he said, now has an urgent duty to remind them of the truth of its teaching about the human body. “From the point of moral theology, it’s clear — you are not allowed to change your sex in this way,” he said. The cardinal’s Nov. 7 remarks came ahead of the Anscombe Memorial Lecture, which he gave in Blackfriars, a Dominican monastery in Oxford, on the theme, “Is Medicine Losing its Way?” A moral theologian and a former medical doctor who worked at the Amsterdam university hospital before he became a priest, Cardinal Eijk, 63, said he would be addressing the rise of nontherapeutic medical practices, including gender re-assignment.

— Catholic News Service

14 • The Catholic Spirit

U.S. & WORLD

The Basilica of St. Benedict in the ancient city of Norcia is seen Oct. 31 following an earthquake in central Italy. CNS/Remo Casilli, Reuters

Priests to celebrate Masses outdoors after massive earthquake in Italy

By Junno Arocho Esteves Catholic News Service Priests in central Italy were instructed to celebrate Mass outdoors following another devastating earthquake that rocked the region and brought one of its most spiritually and historically significant churches tumbling down.

The 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck Norcia in the early morning Oct. 30 and reduced the Basilica of St. Benedict to rubble.

The church was built atop the birthplace of Sts. Benedict and Scholastica. St. Benedict is considered the father of western monasticism, as he established a community of monks and wrote a rule for communal life.

At the noonday Angelus Oct. 30, Pope Francis prayed for “the wounded and the families that have suffered major damage as well as for the personnel involved in rescue efforts and in aiding the victims.

“May the Risen Lord give them strength and Our Lady watch over them,” the pope said.

The Benedictine monks of Norcia assisted in relief efforts as well as helping to guide anxious residents to the town’s main square and lead them in prayer.

“After offering spiritual support to the people in town following this morning’s intense earthquake, the entire monastic

community is together again at our mountain monastery which overlooks a now fractured Norcia,” the monks said in a message posted on their blog.

The Benedictine monks said they hoped the image of the destroyed church may “serve to illustrate the power of this earthquake and the urgency we monks feel to seek out those who need the Sacraments on this difficult day for Italy.”

Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti of PerugiaCitta della Pieve advised priests to not celebrate Mass indoors over the next several days, including Nov. 1, the Solemnity of All Saints, which is also a national holiday in Italy.

While there were no deaths and some 20 reported injuries, it was the strongest quake in Italy since 1980 when a 6.9 earthquake struck the southern region of Campania.

The quake was felt along much of the Italian peninsula including 100 miles away in Rome, forcing city officials to close subways and several churches in order to assess any damage. Rome’s mayor Virginia Raggi also ordered schools to be closed the following day while the safety of the buildings was checked.

Vatican firefighters assessed potential damage to the four major papal basilicas in Rome, which were later reported to be safe and open to the public.

November 10, 2016

A wooden crucifix from the 14th century is pictured to showcase its restoration in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Oct. 28. The restoration was funded by the Knights of Columbus.

CNS/Paul Haring

Medieval crucifix in St. Peter’s Basilica ‘resurrected’ from obscurity

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service A newly restored 14th-century wooden crucified Christ “has been resurrected” from obscurity — once caked over with dark paint and left forgotten behind an elevator shaft, said Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica.

“We have discovered a hidden treasure under the dust of many centuries,” he told reporters at a Vatican news conference Oct. 28.

The oldest crucifix in the basilica’s possession, it was made by an unknown sculptor sometime in the early 1300s, and hung in the original fourth-century basilica of St. Peter, built by the Emperor Constantine, said Bishop Vittorio Lanzani, secretary of the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the office responsible for physical care and maintenance of St. Peter’s Basilica.

The 7-foot-long torso and legs were made in one piece from a solid trunk of seasoned walnut, he said. The arms — spanning nearly 6 and a half feet — and head came from the same already centuries’ old tree. Antique prints and a rich trail of archival material track the crucifix’s condition and its various locations inside the old basilica and its

transfer to the new basilica when it was completed in 1620.

Though made of strong solid wood, the bishop said, termites feasting on it for 700 years caused considerable damage, leaving bore holes peppering the face and body and excavating large areas by the armpits. Early restorers filled the gaping holes with wads of cloth, reinforced weakened areas with canvas wrappings and stucco, and hid dirt, discoloration and black termite burrows with dark “bronze-colored” paint, the bishop said.

Moved in 1749 to make way for Michelangelo’s marble masterpiece, the Pieta, the statue was gradually moved farther and farther away from the main area of the basilica, eventually ending up in closed chapel.

“Darkened and confined in a neglected spot and nearly unreachable, it was forgotten by many and was in some way taken away from the devotion of the faithful,” Bishop Lanzani said.

When Pope Francis called the Year of Mercy, the basilica accelerated plans to have the crucifix studied and restored, which took 15 months, Cardinal Comastri said. The newly restored crucifix was to be shown to the public for the first time Nov. 6 during Pope Francis’ jubilee for prisoners to be “a beautiful sign of hope and a message of mercy.”

Panel ponders path to civility following presidential election

By Mark Pattison Catholic News Service If Catholics have a role in helping heal divisions after a turbulent presidential election year, they may need to start looking inward, according to some panelists at a Nov. 1 forum at The Catholic University of America on “Citizenship and Civility: The Role of Catholics in Rebuilding the American Political Culture.”

And in Stephen Schneck’s view, perhaps civility ought not be on the agenda.

“Conflict is a part of political life. It’s always been a part of political life,” said Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at Catholic University and an associate professor of politics there.

Effigies of King George of England burned on “liberty trees” during the American Revolution were “an incivil, uncivil act,” Schneck said, but it brought about a necessary change of how those living in a fledgling United States were governed.

Chad Pecknold, a Catholic University associate professor of systematic theology, said he was reminded of the late educator and social critic Neil Postman, who 30 years ago wrote “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” which Pecknold said gives an apt analogy for the

presidential campaign. “It’s not about the state taking over, but the citizenry giving up and giving in to entertainment,” he added. “We’re all suffering from political exhaustion ... yet we’re tuning in by the millions to inane debates.”

“In my working life, there’s never been this level of vitriol,” said Melinda Henneberger, a longtime political columnist who is on the board of contributors to USA Today who traces her career back to 1988. She also is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies.

She called this the “‘unfriend me now’ election,” based on Facebook posts that warn readers to “unfriend me now” if they don’t support the writer’s candidate.

Jonathan Reyes, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, suggested that self-righteousness has been at work throughout the election and that humility was needed.

“We’ll never get to the bottom of our differences” if all that’s done is checking off policy positions, he said.

Henneberger resisted the attempt to put Pope Francis in a camp; she was one of three panelists who quoted from his speech last year to Congress during his 2015 U.S. visit. “He’s not on one side or the other. He’s Catholic,” she said. “That’s a model for us.”

Moderator Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor-at-large of National Review Online, as well as panelists Pecknold and Schneck acknowledged during the discussion that each had had the epithet “baby-killer” hurled at them — Schneck for having chaired Democrats for Obama in 2012, and Lopez and Pecknold for being part of the “Never Trump” movement this year.

“Sometimes, family fights are more bitter than fights on the outside,” said Reyes, who grew up outside of Detroit, adding the city is now seeing cooperation between Republicans and Democrats in the wake of the city’s emergency from its 2013 bankruptcy filing, “making things that don’t work, work.”

“We have to get our house in order. I include myself in that,” Reyes said. The way to connect with others is to make intentional friendships with people not like oneself, but even to do that, he said, “we have to unplug” from the continuously connected lifestyle.

Co-sponsoring the forum with Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies was the National Review Institute, a nonprofit set up by National Review magazine founder William Buckley to advance the conservative principles he championed, as well as the university’s College Republicans and College Democrats clubs.

FOCUS ON FAITH

November 10, 2016

SUNDAY SCRIPTURES

Deacon Chad VanHoose

Some consolation: Jesus, not a politician, is lord and king Every other November in the United States, we can count on contentious political elections as we hear doomsday readings at Sunday Mass. Coincidence?

This year is no different as we contemplate the future of our country in light of Jesus’ prophetic words about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the apocalyptic images that will mark the end of days.

Today it seems that most of the world is increasingly at odds with Christian ideals. Indeed, as we read the signs of our times, some might even wonder if that day of wrath is soon approaching when

natural disasters will swell, wars will escalate, and the Church will endure severe persecutions.

Yet, every age has its trials, and American Christians in 2016 would do well to study how the Church has responded under difficult circumstances throughout the various epochs. In this examination, a second-century letter written to a man named Diognetus might be helpful to ponder.

The anonymous author of the letter describes Christians as “[living] in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full

The Catholic Spirit • 15

role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country.”

Whether or not we have politicians who represent Christian interests in the government is of secondary importance when we examine our situation from an eternal perspective.

These days of November culminate every year with the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, as a lasting reminder to Christians that despite our troubles in this world, Jesus has conquered the world (Jn 16:33). We can have peace knowing that Jesus is both lord and king, and his kingship goes beyond this world.

The Letter to Diognetus concludes by describing this longed-for reality: “Christians live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven.” While we live here, we should certainly work to make the world a better place by loving others and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sunday, Nov. 13 Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings • Mal 3:19-20a • 2 Thes 3:7-12 • Lk 21:5-19 God’s kingdom is already in our midst, yet we pray for its consummation every time we pray the Lord’s prayer. Worrying about whether the final tribulation is just around the corner will only leave us empty and anxious. But giving the Lord permission to reign in our hearts today will bring us security and eternal peace that no one can take away.

Deacon VanHoose is in formation for the priesthood at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. His teaching parish is Blessed Sacrament in St. Paul, and his home parish is St. Joseph in West St. Paul.

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, Nov. 13 Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time Mal 3:19-20a 2 Thes 3:7-12 Lk 21:5-19 Monday, Nov. 14 Rv 1:1-4; 2:1-5 Lk 18:35-43 Tuesday, Nov. 15 Rv 3:1-6, 14-22 Lk 19:1-10

Wednesday, Nov. 16 Rv 4:1-11 Lk 19:11-28

Saturday, Nov. 19 Rv 11:4-12 Lk 20:27-40

Thursday, Nov. 17 St. Elizabeth of Hungary, religious Rv 5:1-10 Lk 19:41-44

Sunday, Nov. 20 Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe 2 Sm 5:1-3 Col 1:12-20 Lk 23:35-43

Friday, Nov. 18 Rv 10:8-11 Lk 19:45-48

Monday, Nov. 21 Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Rv 14:1-3, 4b-5 Lk 21:1-4

SEEKING ANSWERS

Father Michael Schmitz

Why do we say ‘I am not worthy’ at Mass?

Q. I struggle each Mass when the congregation says, “I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof … .” I understand its biblical significance, but maybe I’m just bothered by the phrase “I am not worthy.” My parents taught me I am worthy because I’m a child of God. We are all worthy just by the fact we were created in God’s image.

A. You are not the first person I’ve encountered who has been bothered by the implications of not being worthy. So, what are we saying when we utter those words?

I am all about encouragement and positivity, possibly to a fault. I can sometimes err on the side of “let’s try and find something good to say about this person or this situation” to the degree that I miss the full truth. So I want to be

quick to affirm your goodness. The Church affirms your goodness.

The Catholic Church has always taught on the universal goodness of, well, the universe. Further, the Church teaches a number of powerful truths related to human dignity. First, “man has been created ‘in the image and likeness’ of the Creator” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1701). Further, “It is in Christ, Redeemer and Savior, that the divine image, disfigured in man by the first sin, has been restored to its original beauty and ennobled by the grace of God” (CCC 1701). And third, “The divine image is present in every man” (CCC 1702).

The Church affirms that these incredible realities are true for all human beings, regardless of race, sex or life experience. Every human being is created good. Every human being is fallen,

Tuesday, Nov. 22 St. Cecilia, virgin and martyr Rv 14:14-19 Lk 21:5-11 Wednesday, Nov. 23 Rv 15:1-4 Lk 21:12-19 Thursday, Nov. 24 Thanksgiving Day Sir 50:22-24 1 Cor 1:3-9 Lk 17:11-19

wounded, scarred by sin. And every human has been redeemed by Jesus (though not every human being participates in this redemption). So, yes, you are good. Yes, you are fallen. And yes, you have been redeemed. But does that make one “worthy”?

Before we get to that, a very important question arises: Where does “our” goodness come from? The Church teaches that all of our goodness comes from God. Not some — all. God is the source of everything that is good in us. I cannot overemphasize this point. If we start claiming dignity or worth as our own apart from God, we wander into a very dangerous trap.

So, you are completely correct in affirming the worth of every human being in relation to other human beings.

But at this particular moment of the Mass, we are not speaking of our worth in relation to other human beings. We are talking about our worth in comparison to God himself.

Because all of our goodness comes from God, human dignity is something we can scarcely imagine. But this does not make us even close to becoming equals with God. I think that this might be the source of your difficulty. We are so used to comparing our worth with other human beings that we take the same comparisons and confidences into our relationship with God. But in comparison with God, I am literally

Friday, Nov. 25 Rv 20:1-4, 11—21:2 Lk 21:29-33 Saturday, Nov. 26 Rv 22:1-7 Lk 21:34-36 Sunday, Nov. 27 First Sunday of Advent Is 2:1-5 Rom 13:11-14 Mt 24:37-44

“zero.” I offer nothing. I am nothing. In comparison to his infinity, I remain completely and utterly unworthy.

We are not talking about being worthy of just and honorable treatment by another human being, or being worthy of respect and equality in the community in which we live or being worthy of the love of the people around us. We are talking about whether we believe God “owed it to us” that we deserved that he should die for us. We are talking about whether we deserved that God “emptied himself and took the form of a slave … [and] obediently accepted … death on a cross!” We are dangerously close to asserting that we are so worthy that the Lord of the Universe ought to humble himself to the point of becoming our food. I am not worthy of that. God is so good, however, that he offers me this.

Remember, pride is still the deadliest of the deadly sins. And pride that is simply dressed up as “self worth” remains deadly. In comparison with God, I am not worthy, yet his goodness desires to bridge the gap between his worthiness and our unworthiness, which is why we continue, “but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.”

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.

16 • The Catholic Spirit

THIS CATHOLIC LIFE • COMMENTARY

November 10, 2016

EVERYDAY MERCIES

Alyssa Bormes

‘You are the disciple Jesus loves’ The other day, I found myself having another magnetic resonance imaging test. There have been about a dozen trips to the narrow white tube for me.

Each time, the technician compliments me on how still I was during the test.

The secret? That crazy confine is a great place for prayer!

This last “holy hour” in the cramped cylinder had me praying that God use my suffering for another soul. Oddly, I didn’t have to wait long for the answer.

Just recently, three women gave me a ride. One of the women asked a question that began a conversation about suffering. This later prompted an email to me from one of them who was aching both physically and spiritually.

She was then about to have — and has now had — a surgery that has uncovered the need for another, more

aggressive surgery. The physical pain has tapped into the spiritual pain. It nearly always does.

From the beginning of our email exchanges, we had spoken about the difficulty of praying through pain; longer prayers are too much sometimes, as concentration can be so difficult. We have walked through some very short prayers of “Jesus, I trust in you,” “Come, Holy Spirit,” and even just “Help.” But one night, it was a bit different. She spoke of the wall between her and Christ, and her inability to let him in.

Yes, I remember those days; I still have them at times. It was just such a time when a dear friend wrote to me saying, “You are the disciple Jesus loves.” Of course, my reaction was, “Are you crazy? I am not!” In my mind I

You are the disciple Jesus loves.

Stand in the ruins of your own walls, and let his mercy wash over you wave by merciful wave. could hear his voice saying, “Yes you are.” And so I really did ponder it in my heart.

In a text conversation, it was time to write this to my friend in pain. Off went the message, “You are the disciple Jesus loves.”

Her response was so beautiful. “I like that. It’s hard for me to believe, but if I say it enough, hopefully it will sink in.”

And here was mine: “Amen! He loves you and it makes him ache because you find it hard to believe, but you are the disciple Jesus loves. Let him tell it to you by you repeating it so often that the walls are too hard to hold up. There will be crumbling bricks all around you.

Let yourself be too tired to rebuild your walls. Just let them crumble, and stand in the rubble of it all, and let him gaze

at you. He is wildly in love with you, not having to overlook your wounds, but loving you all the more because you had to endure them, and to suffer them. It is right there when you think you look your worst that he loves you the most. In his eyes is an ocean, and the name of the ocean is Mercy!”

This prayer has followed me for years now, in the darkness, in the bright white confinement of the MRI test, and has found its way through my fingers to this article.

You are the disciple Jesus loves. Stand in the ruins of your own walls, and let his mercy wash over you wave by merciful wave.

Bormes, a member of Holy Family in St. Louis Park, is the author of the book “The Catechism of Hockey.”

TWENTY SOMETHING

Christina Capecchi

A cure for election overload, a quest for peace It’s almost as if November’s Mass readings were written for election-weary Catholics, with their foreboding tones and calls for “perseverance” and “endurance” amid distress.

“They will seize you and persecute you,” St. Luke warns.

“Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light,” St. Paul exhorts.

Polls confirm what Facebook makes clear: We were disgusted by this presidential campaign. And when our two candidates registered record highs in unfavorable ratings, we knew many would be unhappy no matter the victor.

Election Day, in many ways, resolved very little; the commercials have ceased and the yard signs have been taken down, but the discord lingers.

The interviews I conducted this fall revealed a disenchanted electorate. I spoke to a 69-year-old farmer in Iowa who was harvesting soybeans. This year had brought his highest yield ever — 83 bushels an acre — a measure of consolation amid political turmoil. “I’m getting to a point where I don’t like to turn the news on,” he told me. “I’d rather think about the beans.”

But it was hard to escape, and even at the grain elevator, he found himself discussing Donald Trump’s tax returns.

He shook his head at the daily allegations of sexual assault.

“Is this what our country has come to?”

A college student hanging out at Barnes & Noble on a Friday afternoon lamented the relationship young voters now have with American politics. “For a lot of my peers, it’s become tainted,” he said, casting his eyes downward.

“Many first-time voters feel like they have to pick the lesser of two evils.”

Surely, he added, the discourse during the final weeks before Election Day had marked a rock bottom in the history of our presidential campaigns. “It can’t get worse.”

He still scanned headlines, but he’d stopped reading the articles. “It just makes me feel worse about my day.”

An Ohio 20-something making his way in New York City — the kind of earnest Catholic who has always been concerned about the arc of the moral universe — tweeted grimly: “2016 has only confirmed my suspicion that ‘unity’ is a sly rhetorical device used to silence difficult criticism.”

A 30-year-old Target supervisor told me she’d boycotted TV since early October. “It’s been a lot more peaceful,” she said. The presidential campaign found her relying, more than ever, on her morning devotional, “an armor against negativity.” She smiled brightly: “I have faith! I have faith in God that everything’s going to be OK.”

He is the glue when the center threatens to fall through. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

I found a reprieve from all the noise last weekend on a solo road trip across Wisconsin. Sailing along in my gray Honda Accord, I felt blanketed by a patchwork of autumn foliage — burning crimson and rusted gold amid deep greens, white slices of birch forming the stitches. The quiet refrain rang through my head: “How great thou art.”

It is a time for prayer, for humor and generosity, for little neighborly deeds that make the world feel right again. In a word: mercy.

I circled back to November’s Mass readings, and this time the power of hope stood out amid looming turmoil.

We hear of “redemption” and “forgiveness,” of the Lord’s house being

raised up as the highest mountain, toward which “all nations shall stream.”

It is a time to trust in the bigger picture, in that which we cannot see but believe, St. Paul reminds us. “For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him … .”

In a splintered era, Christ offers us fullness that is not of this world.

He is the glue when the center threatens to fall through. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights and the editor of www.sisterstory.org.

THIS CATHOLIC LIFE • COMMENTARY

November 10, 2016

WORD ON FIRE

Bishop Robert Barron

The trouble with the ‘You Go Girl’ culture Two recent films, “Deepwater Horizon” with Mark Wahlberg and “Sully” starring Tom Hanks, represent something of a breath of fresh air, for both movies feature men who are intelligent, virtuous and quietly heroic. If this strikes you as a banal observation, that just means you haven’t been following much of the popular culture for the past 20 years.

One of the distinctive marks of films and television programs the last couple of decades has been the Homer Simpsonization of men. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of the “The Simpsons” and laugh at Homer’s antics as much as the next guy. But the father of the Simpson family is stupid, boorish, drunk most of the time, irresponsible, comically incompetent and childish. In the cartoon world, he is echoed, of course, by “Family Guy’s” Peter Griffin, who is similarly buffoonish. In both cases, the wives — Marge in “The Simpsons” and Lois in “Family Guy” — have the brains, the competence and the moral responsibility. And in “The Simpsons,” Homer is imitated by his son, Bart, who is sneaky, stupid and unmotivated, and Marge by daughter Lisa, who is hyper-smart, uber-competent and morally alert. In one memorable episode, Lisa is worried that she has inherited her father’s terrible qualities, but is relieved to discover, by the show’s end, that the “stupid gene” is communicated only to the males in the Simpson line. In another of my favorite “Simpsons” scenes, Homer is told, at a

moment of moral crisis, to consult that “little voice that tells you right from wrong,” and he responds, “You mean Lisa?”

If you think this male-bashing is restricted to cartoons, think again. Ray Romano’s character in “Everybody Loves Raymond,” Ed O’Neill’s hopeless father in “Married With Children,” and Ty Burrell’s hapless goofball in “Modern Family” — all are variations on the Homer Simpson theme. Add to all this the presentation of fathers as not just inept, but horrific in “Game of Thrones,” and the absent, indifferent fathers of “Stranger Things.”

And I wonder whether you’ve noticed a character that can be found in practically every movie made today? I call her the “all conquering female.”

Almost without exception, she is underestimated by men and then proves herself more intelligent, cleverer, more courageous and more skilled than any man. Whether we’re talking about a romantic comedy, an office-drama or an adventure movie, the all conquering female will almost inevitably show up.

And she has to show her worth in a domineering way, that is to say, over and against the men. For her to appear strong, they have to appear weak. For a particularly good case in point, watch the most recent “Star Wars” film.

Now, I perfectly understand the legitimacy of feminist concerns regarding the portrayal of women in the media as consistently demure, retiring and

subservient to men. I grant that, in most of the action/adventure movies that I saw growing up, women would typically twist an ankle or get captured and then require rescuing by the swashbuckling male hero — and I realize how galling this must have been to generations of women. And therefore, a certain correction was undoubtedly in order. But what is problematic now is the Nietzschean quality of the reaction, by which I mean, the insistence that female power has to be asserted over and against males, that there is an either/or, zero-sum conflict between men and women. It is not enough, in a word, to show women as intelligent, savvy and good; you have to portray men as stupid, witless and irresponsible. That this savage contrast is having an effect especially on younger men is becoming increasingly apparent.

In the midst of a “you-go-girl” feminist culture, many boys and young men feel adrift, afraid that any expression of their own good qualities will be construed as aggressive or insensitive. If you want concrete proof of this, take a look at the statistics contrasting female and male success at the university level. And you can see the phenomenon in films such as “Fight Club” and “The Intern.” In the former, the Brad Pitt character turns to his friend and laments, “we’re 30-yearold boys”; and in the latter, Robert De Niro’s classic male type tries to whip into shape a number of 20-something male colleagues who are rumpled, unsure of themselves, without ambition — and, of course, under the dominance of an all conquering female.

It might be the case that, in regard to money, power and honor, a zero-sum dynamic obtains, but it decidedly does not obtain in regard to real virtue. The truly courageous person is not threatened by another person’s courage; the truly temperate man is not intimidated by the temperance of someone else; the truly just person is not put off by the justice of a countryman; and authentic love positively rejoices in the love shown by another. And therefore, it should be

The Catholic Spirit • 17

altogether possible to hold up the virtue of a woman without denying virtue to a man. In point of fact, if we consult the “all conquering female” characters in films and TV, we see that they often exemplify the very worst of the traditional male qualities: aggression, suspicion, hyper-sensitivity, cruelty, etc.

This is what happens when a Nietzschean framework has replaced a classical one.

My point is that it is altogether possible — and eminently desirable — to say “you go boy” with as much vigor as “you go girl.” And both the boys and the girls will be better for it.

Bishop Barron is an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

LETTER Immigration rhetoric Re: “Cardinal-designate Tobin notes fears around immigration, refugees,” Oct. 27.

This is just another ultra-liberal prelate sticking his nose into politics, but attempting to justify illegal immigration as a religious issue.

He chooses his words carefully in order to disguise what he truly means: “open borders.” He attempts to mislead us into believing that “open borders” is a “good,” whereas in truth, it is a foolish and very dangerous concept.

No, I’m not buying his very dishonest rhetoric.

James Guldan St. Paul Share your perspective by emailing CatholicSpirit@archspm.org. The Commentary page does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Catholic Spirit.

Letters may be edited for length or clarity.

An Advent Concert of Gratitude

A benefit for Southside Family Nurturing Center

Michael Joncas On Eagle’s Wings

David Haas You Are Mine in their final Twin Cities concert together

Marty Haugen All Are Welcome

Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016, 4:00 PM • Guardian Angels Church • 8260 4th St. N. Oakdale, MN Tickets $20 (children under 12 free) Tickets may be purchased online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2603441 or at the door.

NOTICE

Look for The Catholic Spirit advertising insert from

CATHOLIC CHARITIES in all copies of this issue.

18 • The Catholic Spirit

CALENDAR

November 10, 2016

Dining out

Prayer/worship

St. Boniface pancake, waffle and sausage breakfast — Nov. 13: 8 a.m.–noon at 8801 Wildwood Ave., St. Bonifacius. www.stboniface-stmary.org.

Charismatic prayer meeting — Nov. 10 and 17: 7:30 p.m. at St. Albert the Great, 3200 E. 29th St., Minneapolis. www.newlifecrm.org.

St. Bridget’s Come Together prayer service and walk — Nov. 13: 4–5:30 p.m. at Zion Baptist Church, 621 Elwood Ave. N., Minneapolis.

St. Odilia Men’s Club pancake breakfast — Nov. 13: 8 a.m.–12:30 p.m. at 3495 N. Victoria St., Shoreview. www.stodilia.org.

CCRO Fall Pentecost Mass of Thanksgiving — Nov. 20: 2–5 p.m. at St. Raphael, 7301 Bass Lake Road, Crystal. www.ccro-msp.org/city-annual-charismatic-pentecost-mass.

Little Sisters of the Poor Christmas boutique and ham dinner — Nov. 19-20: 11 a.m.–5 p.m. at Holy Family Residence, 330 Exchange St. S., St. Paul. www.littlesistersofthepoorstpaul.org/christmas-boutique-2016.

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

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

St. Peter Thanksgiving Community Dinner — Nov. 24: 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m. at 1250 S. Shore Drive, Forest Lake. Thanksgiving Dinner for students, singles, widowed, seniors, families and those who would otherwise spend Thanksgiving alone. Free-will offering for Haven Home.

First Friday day of prayer — Dec. 2: 8 a.m.–5 p.m. at St. Richard, 7540 Penn Ave. S., Richfield. www.strichards.com/first-fridays.

Retreats

Music In Remembrance – Faure’s Requiem in D Minor — Nov. 11 and 13 at St. John’s Church of Little Canada, 380 Little Canada Road E., Little Canada, and St. Rose of Lima, 2048 Hamline Ave. N., Roseville. www.saintroseoflima.net.

Jazz vespers — Nov. 13: 7 p.m. at Guardian Angels, 8260 Fourth St. N., Oakdale. www.guardian-angels.org.

Concert for the Conclusion of the Year of Mercy — Nov. 19: 7:30 p.m. at the Basilica of St. Mary, 1600 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis. www.mary.org.

Ongoing groups Faithful Spouses support group — Third Tuesday of each month: 7–8:30 p.m. in Smith Hall of the Hayden Building, 328 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul. For those who are living apart from their spouses because of separation or divorce. 651-291-4438 or faithfulspouses@archspm.org.

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

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

Parish events St. Patrick, holiday open house — Nov. 12-13: 10 a.m.–3 p.m. at 7525 Dodd Road, Faribault. spshieldsville@qwestoffice.net or 507-334-6002.

Christian Mother’s Guild Christmas bazaar — Nov. 12: 10 a.m.–2 p.m. at St. Boniface, 629 Second St. NE, Minneapolis. 612-670-7145.

St. Therese fall market — Nov. 12-13: 9 a.m.–7 p.m. at 18323 Minnetonka Blvd., Deephaven. www.st-therese.org/events.

St. Maron Lebanese bake sale — Nov. 12-13 at 602 University Ave. NE, Minneapolis. Pre-order: 612-379-2758.

St. Joseph of the Lakes Christmas bazaar — Nov. 12-13 at 171 Elm St., Lino Lakes. www.mystjoes.org/events.

St. Alphonsus Christmas bazaar — Nov. 12-13 at 7025 Halifax Ave. N., Brooklyn Center.

St. Therese fall market — Nov. 12-13 at 18323 Minnetonka Blvd., Deephaven. www.st-therese.org.

Special Followers of Christ fall festival — Nov. 18: 6:30–8 p.m. at St. Stephen, 52 Jackson St., Anoka. 763-712-7439. For youth and adults with special needs, their families and caregivers.

Our Lady of Guadalupe craft and bake sale — Nov. 19-20 at 401 Concord St., St. Paul. www.olgspchurch.com.

Schools Honoring Our Veterans — Nov. 11: 1–2 p.m. at Holy Trinity Catholic School, 745 Sixth Ave. S., South St. Paul. www.holytrinityssp.org.

Guardian Angels trivia night — Nov. 19: 6–8 p.m. at 8260 Fourth St. N., Oakdale. www.guardian-angels.org.

Singles

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary turkey bingo — Nov. 19: 6–10 p.m. at 1725 Kennard St., Maplewood. www.presentationofmary.org.

Holiday sale to support Quilters for a Cause — Nov. 19-20: 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m. at St. Jerome, 380 E. Roselawn Ave., Maplewood. Mary Selby 651-489-4177.

St. Mary sausage supper and bingo party — Nov. 20: Noon– 5:30 p.m. at 8433 239th St. E., Hampton. www.stmarysnewtrier.com.

St. Michael turkey bingo — Nov. 20: 6–8 p.m. at 16311 Duluth Ave. SE, Prior Lake.

St. Boniface turkey and ham raffle — Nov. 22: 7:30 p.m. at 629 NE Second St., Minneapolis.

CALENDAR submissions

LISTINGS: Accepted are brief no­tices of upcoming events hosted

by Catholic parishes and institutions. If the Catholic connection is not clear, please emphasize it in your press release.

ITEMS MUST INCLUDE the following to be considered for publication in the calendar: • Time and date of event • Full street address of event • Description of event • Contact information in case of questions.

(No attachments, please.)

Guardian Angels turkey bingo — Nov. 13: 2–4 p.m. at 8260 Fourth St. N., Oakdale. www.guardian-angels.org.

A note to readers

MAIL: “Calendar,” The Catholic Spirit 244 Dayton Ave., St. Paul, MN 55102 As of Jan. 1, 2016, The Catholic Spirit no longer accepts calendar submissions via email.

Please submit events using the form at www.thecatholicspirit.com/calendarsubmissions.

Sunday Spirits walking group for 50-plus Catholic singles — ongoing Sundays. Kay at 651-426-3103 or Al at 651-482-0406.

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

Speakers Devoted Life-Women’s Speaker Series — Nov. 8, Jan. 10, March 14, May 9: 7–9 p.m. at St. Bartholomew, 630 E. Wayzata Blvd., Wayzata. www.st-barts.org/community/devotedlife.asp.

Mary White: Our Human Condition and the Mercy of God — Nov. 15: 7–9 p.m. at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. www. stpaulsmonastery.org.

Conferences/seminars/workshops

DEADLINE: Noon Thursday, 14 days before the anticipated Thursday date of publication. Recurring or ongoing events must be submitted each time they occur.

FAX: 651-291-4460

St. Odilia turkey bingo — Nov. 18: 6:30–8:30 p.m. at 3495 N. Victoria St., Shoreview. www.stodilia.org.

Centering prayer and lectio divina — Nov. 25-27 at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. www.stpaulsmonastery.org.

St. George holiday boutique — Nov. 19: 9 a.m.–4 p.m. at 133 N. Brown Road, Long Lake.

St. Thomas the Apostle turkey bingo — Nov. 13: Noon–3 p.m. at 20000 County Road 10, Corcoran. www.saintsppta.org/events/ st-thomas-turkey-bingo.

Sts. Joachim and Anne grandparents event — Nov. 16: 8:45 a.m. at Nativity of Our Lord, 1900 Stanford Ave., St. Paul. 651-696-5401.

Birthmothers’ day of Reflection — Nov. 12: 9:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. at Our Lady of Grace, 5071 Eden Ave., Edina.

More online

True Leadership, a Higher Calling dinner and discussion — Nov. 14: 5–8 p.m. at the University of St. Thomas Anderson Student Center, Woulfe Alumni Hall, 2115 Summit Ave., St. Paul. www.stthomas.edu/business.

Other events Fontanini Nativity Presentation and Signing — Nov. 12: 10 a.m.–1 p.m. at Leaflet Missal, 976 W. Minnehaha Ave., St. Paul. www.leafletonline.com.

Bringing the Saints to Life – portraits of the saints by artist Christopher Santer — Through Nov. 14: 10 a.m.–8 p.m. at Pax Christi, 12100 Pioneer Trail, Eden Prairie. www.paxchristi.com.

Vianney Visit — Nov. 17: 4 p.m. at St. John Vianney College Seminary, 210 Selby Ave., St. Paul. www.stthomas.edu/vianney/events/visittheseminary.

Art Exhibit: Movement = Life — Through Nov. 18: 9 a.m.–6 p.m. at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. Free exhibit features work of interdisciplinary artist Lara Hanson. www.stpaulsmonastery.org.

Alpha — Through Dec. 13: Tuesdays, 6:30-8:45 p.m. at Guardian Angels, 218 W. Second St., Chaska. www.gachaska.org.

Women with Spirit Bible study — Through April 4, 2017: Tuesdays, 9:30–11:30 a.m. at Pax Christi, 12100 Pioneer Trail, Eden Prairie. www.paxchristi.com/wws.

Build your business with The Catholic Spirit display and web advertising.

Call 651-291-4444 for information.

VOCATIONS

November 10, 2016

The Catholic Spirit • 9

Formation a journey — literally — for local Jesuit novices

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit

S

tanding near the entrance of the Jesuit Novitiate of St. Alberto Hurtado in St. Paul is a statue of the patron of Jesuit novices: 16th-century St. Stanislaus Kostka, who as a teenager embarked on a 350-mile pilgrimage on foot from Vienna to Rome.

Modern Jesuit novices follow in his path, taking a pilgrimage in which they aim to leave comforts and depend on God. They begin with $35, a one-way bus ticket and a 30-day timeframe. From there, their compass is the Holy Spirit.

Novice Billy Critchley-Menor, 20, ended up spending four days and nights traveling cross country by bus during his pilgrimage in April. It wasn’t his plan, he said, but God’s.

During that long, uncomfortable trip to attend a funeral in New York City, God gave the Duluth native insights for his formation to become a Jesuit priest. He learned about offering himself to God, the essential role of prayer and seeing Christ’s incarnation in his poor traveling companions.

“When everything familiar falls away, your prayer is the only thing that is familiar,” said Critchley-Menor, who is among 29 men completing the two-year novitiate in St. Paul.

The group is the largest the novitiate has ever housed, said Jesuit Father Thomas Pipp, director of novices.

“People talk about ‘the Pope Francis effect,’ and I think that’s part of it,” Father Pipp said. He also attributes the increase to the assignment of more fulltime vocation recruiters.

Located on Summit Avenue next to St. Thomas More, a parish in the care of Jesuit priests, the novitiate serves the provincial territory from Kentucky to the Dakotas. The novices, mostly in their 20s, come from a variety of backgrounds and education levels.

Those interviewed said they joined to serve the marginalized and oppressed, and they were attracted

Nine Jesuit novices prepare to make their first profession of vows at St. Thomas More in St. Paul Aug. 13 — ­­ from left, Michael Bartlett, José Camacho, Pierce Gibson, David Inczauskis, James Kennedy, James McGivney, Jack McLinden, Thomas O’Donnell and Christopher Williams. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit to the order’s spirituality. As part of their formation, they complete a rigorous program of “experiments” or learning experiences in prayer, study, community life and apostolic service to people in need. While learning the importance of “contemplation in action” and reliance on God, the novices discern whether they are called to be brothers or priests in the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits.

In the novitiate’s comfortable “upper room,” novices share community life without smart phones, which aren’t permitted. St. Paul native and first-year novice

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National Vocation Awareness Week: Nov. 6-12 National Vocation Awareness Week is an annual weeklong celebration of the Catholic Church in the United States dedicated to promote vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life through prayer and education, and to renew prayers and support for those who are considering one of these particular vocations.

November 10, 2016 The Catholic Spirit • 19 NOVICES continued from page 9

Parents play role in encouraging — and discouraging — vocations

Mark Hakes, 28, said the idea of this shared life made him both excited and nervous.

“It’s the most beautiful thing, but it’s also the most difficult thing,” he said.

Hakes will make his pilgrimage next spring. “I just feel like it’s going to be very liberating,” he said. “You have the clothes in your bag and you’re at the mercy of other people — a total dependence and surrender to God.”

There is no single answer to what spurs a young man or woman to consider a vocation to religious life or the priesthood.

“Vocation is a very complex chain of events,” said Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

There is no doubt, according to Gray, that the influence of family contributes to a son or daughter’s decision on whether to pursue a religious vocation. But, just as parents can encourage a vocation, they also can discourage consideration of a vocation.

Gray, who is director of CARA Catholic Polls, points to a study issued jointly last year with the National Religious Vocation Conference, “The Role of the Family in Nurturing Vocations to Religious Life and Priesthood,” as particularly telling on a family’s effect on vocations.

Family members of seminarians, priests and religious are usually Catholic themselves and are more likely than Catholics in general to have attended a Catholic school, according to that study. They are more likely than other Catholic adults to say that their faith is the most important part of their daily life.

One in five also had a priest or a religious already in their extended family, according to the study.

These family members report a more engaged prayer life than do other Catholic parents or other Catholic adults in general, the study said. Nearly nine in 10 pray daily, compared to just over half of U.S. Catholic adults and just

Looking back to look inside While Pope Francis may be the best known living Jesuit, the novices are strongly influenced by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the order’s founder. While praying in a Spanish cave in 1522, the 32-year-old began developing his Spiritual Exercises, a series of meditations, prayers and contemplative steps that now comprise one of the most influential spiritual books.

The prayers offer “an experience that reaches down in the foundations of how you understand yourself, your relationship with the Church and with those the Church serves,” said Taylor Fulkerson, 23, of Lanesville, Indiana, a second-year novice.

The exercises and prayer lay the foundation for the apostolic work the first-year novices will offer during a 30-day retreat, Father Pipp said.

Reaching into the community The novitiate’s patron, St. Alberto Hurtado, was a 20th-century Chilean Jesuit priest who wrote about Catholic social teaching and service to the poor.

Novices minister to those in need by serving as Catholic grade school catechists, teachers and helpers to immigrants, and chaplains at the Ramsey County Correction Facility and Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center.

The novices are “outstanding in their devotion to their faith; they’re very much people of prayer,” Father Pipp said. They’re “searching for faith and community life, they’re very zealous, compassionate toward the poor.”

First-year novice John Weinandy, 25, of Bowling Green, Ohio, has found it challenging to tutor middle school kids, but the experience helps him discern his vocation.

“It very much is a house of discernment, so with all the things we’re doing, it’s really looking at Jesus’ life and … illuminating that,” he said.

Novices have served at Learning in Style School for adult immigrants in Minneapolis for more than 10 years, said its director, Sister of St. Joseph Agnes Foley.

The school is a ministry of her order.

“We profit greatly from them [the novices], but on the other hand, they have an opportunity they’ll never have again to find out what it’s like to be without an education, and what is it like to try and communicate with someone who doesn’t speak or someone who doesn’t know what letters are,” she said.

over a third of Catholic parents. They also feel more strongly than Catholic adults in general that it is important that younger generations of the family grow up Catholic.

“The importance of family is in encouraging. But it takes more than one person,” Gray said. “If it’s just your mom . . . or just your dad, that’s probably not enough. If two people encourage you or three people encourage you,” a person is more likely to consider a vocation, he added. Friends, priests and sisters can assist in this process.

“Unfortunately, it’s just as often that sometimes parents are the people that discourage you” from consideration of a vocation, Gray said. That’s the reverse from two generations ago or more, when families were happy to have a son or a daughter enter a convent or the priesthood.

“There’s a real sense of ‘that’s not my role,’” Gray said.

Those attitudes, he added, stem from “a sense of individual autonomy that people should pursue their [own] interests — ‘I want my children to follow their dreams’ — rather than some sort of negative attitude toward the Church.”

While parents may influence priests or religious decisions about religious life, more survey respondents said they got encouragement from parish priests, other religious and friends.

Mothers did more encouraging than fathers, but new male religious got more encouragement from parents to pursue a vocation than did women religious by roughly a 2-to-1 margin.

— Catholic News Service St. Ignatius’ prayer of surrender, the Suscipe, which informs novices’ prayer and life, goes with them as they continue their formation — a process of study and apostolic service that can take up to 10 more years.

The prayer includes the lines, “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty ... . All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it.”

Speaking about the prayer, Hakes said, “Everything is yours, do with it what you will. You know everything that I have, Lord. You’re the one who gets to use it ... . If that’s what you feel that I need to do, then I guess that’s what I’m praying for. Everything is yours.”

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20 • The Catholic Spirit

THE LAST WORD

November 10, 2016

Jubliee Year of Mercy concludes a fruitful pilgrimage for area Catholics Lord’s invitation to mercy continues beyond Nov. 20 closing of Holy Doors

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit

F

or Jesus Christ to offer humankind his mercy, it took offering his pain and suffering from his passion and death on the cross.

Pope Francis called the world to “constantly contemplate the mystery of mercy” in his papal Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, which will conclude Nov. 20 on the feast of Christ the King. The Holy Father wrote, “At times we are called to gaze even more attentively on mercy so that we may become a more effective sign of the Father’s action in our lives.”

In the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, a group of lay men and seminarians led by Father John Bauer of St. John Vianney Seminary embraced that call.

They walked more than 30 miles on a cool March day in order to contemplate God’s mercy. The group of eight men journeyed along the Gateway State Trail near Stillwater on March 19 and completed their pilgrimage at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, entering through the Holy Doors for the jubilee year.

“Obviously the purpose was to gain the indulgence,” said pilgrim Shane Dowell, a parishioner of St. Michael in Stillwater. “We could have just driven there and walked through the doors. That would have fulfilled the requirement, but it is really the spirit of penance, I think, is what motivated it. We didn’t have to go 32 miles.”

Along the way, they prayed the Liturgy of Hours, the rosary and sang hymns. They made the walk on the feast of St. Joseph in 12 hours to reach the Cathedral in time for Mass.

“We did want to really kind of feel the indulgence,” Dowell said. “That’s what you do when you do penance.”

Going to Mass didn’t give the pilgrims a reprieve from their blistered feet. They attended the vigil Mass of Palm Sunday, which has the longest Gospel of the year, when all stand for an extended period to hear a reading of the Lord’s Passion.

“It was a beautiful way to end it though,” said St. John Vianney seminarian Connor McGinnis. “It kind of put some finality to it. Like Christ walking the road down into Jerusalem, we hiked our way to the Cathedral at the end of it.”

The pilgrimage began at 4 a.m. in Scandia at Shane and Chiara Dowell’s farm. Shane Dowell, a teacher at Chesterton Academy in Edina, joined Father Bauer, McGinnis, Clayton Forner, Austin Barnes, Michael Bielejeski and Matt Trom. Max Rosenthal, a 13-year-old, also joined in the journey.

Mercy: an everyday call Celebrating the Year of Mercy, which began in December 2015, led some people to simply continue spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

“For me, mercy is all the time,” said Kathy Larsen, a parishioner of St. Patrick in Inver Grove Heights. “Love and mercy, that’s everything we hear [at Mass].”

Larsen serves as a divine mercy apostle with the Divine Mercy Cenacle that meets at St. Peter in Mendota. She said many acts of mercy take place regularly with the work of the cenacle. The group meets once per week to study the Diary of St. Faustina and pray the rosary and Divine Mercy chaplet for those in need.

“We show mercy there,” Larsen said.

They also did so for a member of their group this year who was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. The group prays for her and brings her meals. Recently, the group devoted its prayers for the police officers shot and killed in Iowa Nov. 2 and the souls in purgatory for All Souls Day. Larsen also serves with St. Patrick’s funeral volunteers.

Losing her husband in 1999 raised her awareness of the good those volunteers do in offering the hospitality of a funeral luncheon.

“You’re giving that family time to meet with all of their people, and you’re putting that meal together and cleaning up and doing that kind of thing,” Larsen said.

“Those are works of mercy.”

Holy Family’s guide for the Year of Mercy Father Joseph Johnson had a Year of Mercy booklet assembled for parishioners at Holy Family in St. Louis Park to use during the Year of Mercy. It gave them a road map for living a life of discipleship, making a good confession and practicing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

The booklet also helped parishioners take part in the indulgences and devotions of the jubilee year such as going through the designated Holy Doors in the archdiocese. Early in the booklet, Father Johnson outlined three main goals for using the guide.

“It was to deepen your commitment to daily prayer, connect more with fellow Christians and let the Gospel shape your everyday life,” said Mary Hagen, a parishioner who helped Father Johnson put the booklet together.

Year of Mercy-related events such as book studies connected Catholics who belong to different parishes, Hagen added.

Father Ubel a missionary of mercy Another unique opportunity for the jubilee year came at the request of Pope Francis. He selected Father John Ubel, rector of the Cathedral of St. Paul, as one of 800 priests from around the world to be a Missionary of Mercy and have the papal authority to absolve certain sins reserved to the Holy See. “Without question, I believe that this year has made me more patient, more compassionate and more appreciative of the Church as a ‘field hospital’ to us, a phrase coined by Pope Francis,” Father Ubel said.

Father Ubel dedicated at least an hour five days per week for the year hearing confessions at the Cathedral at the regularly scheduled times. He noted an increase of people coming this year for confessions.

“It was rare that I was absent from the confessional this year during my usual days, and when I had to be because of a meeting, etc., to be honest, it bothered me,” Father Ubel said. “I felt that I being here was much more important.”

Vatican invite for Basilica of St. Mary choir Schola Cantorum, the chamber choir at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, will sing at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome at the invitation of the Vatican for the closing Mass of the holy year Nov. 20. The Basilica of St. Mary choir will join the Sistine Chapel Choir in leading the music for the liturgy.

“We have worked with the organizer on several international trips and so he knew of the quality of our work,” said Johan van Parys, Basilica of St. Mary director of liturgy and sacred arts. “So he proposed [it to] us and we were accepted. It is a great honor to be selected and a delight to sing.”

Three local sets of Holy Doors Chorbishop Sharbel Maroun of St. Maron Maronite parish in Minneapolis hosted mercy-themed events throughout the year.

With the Cathedral and Basilica, St. Maron has designated Holy Doors for the jubilee year, and it welcomed visitors from around the archdiocese over the past 11 months.

“We’ve had many people come to visit the door of mercy,” Chorbishop Maroun said.

St. Maron hosted various spiritual activities to aid people in returning to confession and practicing the works of mercy.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda will celebrate the jubilee year’s closing Mass at the Basilica Nov. 20 at 6:30 p.m.

Courtesy St. Croix Catholic Iconographers Guild

Icon prompts prayer, reflection during Year of Mercy

By Jessica Trygstad The Catholic Spirit A Year of Mercy-inspired icon has been visiting parishes around the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and will be featured at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis Nov. 20 for the closing Mass of the Year of Mercy.

“Mercy, Christ the Teacher” is the work of Stillwater-based St. Croix Catholic Iconographers Guild. Measuring 4 feet by 5 feet, the icon depicts Christ blessing with his right hand and holding an open book in his left hand. He stands before a jeweled door that symbolizes the door people are invited to enter to receive Christ in their lives, said Judy Symalla, 52, a parishioner of St. Michael in Stillwater who formed the guild two years ago. The door has additional significance — it represents the Holy Doors of mercy.

Symalla, who started iconography in 2013, said many people with a critical eye have expressed joy and remarked on the icon’s beauty upon seeing it.

Master iconographer Nicholas Markell of Stillwater designed the image, and about eight local guild members — including Symalla — began the work in January and finished at the end of September. Last month, Pax Christi in Eden Prairie featured the mercy icon among a gallery of others by guild members, who comprise approximately 100 from around the country. The icon is currently at St. John the Baptist in New Brighton.

“Icons are meant to be sent — that’s the whole idea,” Symalla said. “They’re not meant to be hung on the wall. They’re meant to be portable, and given and have a life. And this icon of Christ has a life — it will have a full life by the time it finds a permanent location.”

Symalla, a homemaker, noted how an icon is a prayer in and of itself. Writing the icon has served as her Year of Mercy observance. Guild members took on the project as a way to participate in the Year of Mercy.

“Days can go by where we just kind of go on with life, but if you’re working on a project that keeps reminding you it’s the Year of Mercy, you focus on that,” she said.

Parishes interested in hosting the icon or acquiring it as a permanent part of their liturgical setting can contact the guild, www.stcroixiconography.org.