The Catholic Spirit - October 26, 2017

Exorcism rite 9 • Cremation guidelines 19 • Halloween history 21 October 26, 2017 Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

life with a QUAD

SQUAD

— Pages 12-13

Matt Kopp reads a book to his quadruplets — Raphael, left, Theodore, Benedict and Cora — in the living room of the home in Crystal he shares with his wife, Justina, left, Oct. 17. The first-time parents turn to God often as they experience both the joys and struggles of parenting four 1-year-olds. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit

ALSO inside

Rosary procession

Catechetical Institute turns 10

Concert for Venezuela

Thousands take part in prayerful walk from Capitol to Cathedral, ending with prayer of consecration to Mary.

— Page 5

More than 2,000 receive education in the Catholic faith through two-year program that explores the Catechism.

Catholic singer Danielle Rose will perform at St. Stephen in Anoka to raise money for archdiocesan mission parish.

— Page 15

— Page 6

2 • The Catholic Spirit

PAGE TWO

October 26, 2017 OVERHEARD

in PICTURES

“We say that we are Christians, that we have a father, but we live — I won’t say like animals — but like people who don’t believe either in God or in humanity.”

Pope Francis speaking about taking seriously the words of the Our Father in a nine-part series the Italian bishops’ television station was to begin Oct. 25 with the pope parsing the Lord’s Prayer.

NEWS notes

National choir debuts ‘Holy Spirit Mass’ The National Lutheran Choir will present the world premiere performances of “Holy Spirit Mass” by Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen 8 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Basilica of St. Mary, 1600 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, and 4 p.m. Oct. 29 at the Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul. Tickets $10–$50; 17 and under free.

For more information, visit www.nlca.com.

AIRBORNE ROSARY Father Thomas McCabe, associate pastor of St. Albert in Albertville and St. Michael in St. Michael releases a rosary made of balloons Oct. 13 at St. Albert. A group of parishioners gathered to pray the rosary and release the balloons afterward. The day was the 100th anniversary of the final apparition of Our Lady of Fatima to three shepherd children in Portugal. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit

St. Gianna’s daughter speaking Oct. 28 Dr. Gianna Emanuela Molla, daughter of St. Gianna Molla, will be the keynote speaker Oct. 28 at Take My Hand, Not My Life, a symposium on end-of-life care 8 a.m.–12:30 p.m. at the University of St. Thomas, Anderson Student Center, 2115 Summit Ave., St. Paul. Registration $25. For more information, visit www.giannahomes.org/2017symposium.

Open house for discernment house Nov. 5 An open house for Bethany House, a new women’s discernment house in Minneapolis, will be held 2-4:30 p.m. Nov. 5. An initiative of the Office of Vocations in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the house is located at the Holy Cross Convent at 1615 University Ave. It is operated by the Office of Vocations and the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus. For more information, visit www.10000vocations.org.

Fiesta for Life Gala at St. Stephen Nov. 11 A celebration of marriage and Latino culture at St. Stephen, 2211 Clinton Ave. S., Minneapolis 6:30-9 p.m. Nov. 11 will support Sagrada Familia, the parish’s pregnancy help and family support apostolate. Tickets $80.

For more information, visit www.ststephenscatholic.org.

Our Lady of Grace concert to help refugees Led by conductor Osmo Vänskä, members of the Minnesota Orchestra will perform 3 p.m. Nov. 12 at Our Lady of Grace, 5071 Eden Ave., Edina, to raise funds for Questscope, a grant and loan-making organization helping former refugees rebuild lives in Syria. Tickets $75. A limited number of free tickets are available for students. For more information, visit www.olgparish.org.

CCF panel focuses on education Nov. 14 MARCHING ORDERS Senior Will Sutherland, right, and fellow pep band members of Hill-Murray School, Maplewood, play “When the Saints Go Marching In” for teachers and staff attending the Catholic Schools Summit Oct. 18 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. More than 2,000 faculty and staff from all 79 Catholic elementary schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis gathered for Mass, guest speakers and fellowship. The first-time event was organized by the Catholic Schools Center of Excellence in Minneapolis. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit

The Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota is launching Giving Insights, a panel series exploring Catholic philanthropy. The first panel event asks “Can urban Catholic elementary schools close the achievement gap and be self-sustaining?” with speakers from the Healy Education Foundation, Ascension Catholic Schools, Aim Higher Foundation and GHR Foundation. The event is 6-8:30 p.m. at Our Lady of Grace, 5071 Eden Ave., Edina. For more information, visit www.ccf-mn.org/forums.

CORRECTIONS ONLY ON THE WEB and social media If a health care provider opts not to perform a morally problematic procedure, but refers the patient to someone who can, does that make the provider complicit in sin? Bioethics expert Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk explores the ethics of referrals in his monthly column “Making Sense Out of Bioethics” at www.TheCatholicSpirit.com.

The Catholic Spirit is published semi-monthly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Vol. 22 — No. 20 MOST REVEREND BERNARD A. HEBDA, Publisher TOM HALDEN, Associate Publisher MARIA C. WIERING, Editor

In “Elevating Conversation” in the Sept. 28 edition, the years in which Sowers for Justice partnered with Discussions that Encounter for two events were incorrect. A conversation on white privilege was held in 2015, and a panel on incarceration and poverty was held in 2017.

Also in the Sept. 28 edition, “Fast Friends” misidentified Guardian Angels, Oakdale, running group member Adam Gibson, and it mischaracterized the relationship between runner Amy Lippert and the children she sponsors through World Vision. We apologize for the errors.

Materials credited to CNS copy­righted by Catholic News Service.

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October 26, 2017

FROM THE ARCHBISHOP

The Catholic Spirit • 3

Seeking Mary in the communion of saints

A

s the sun was coming up over Minneapolis Oct. 18, 2,000 Catholic school teachers, administrators and staff converged upon the Convention Center from every point of the archdiocese for the first Catholic Schools Summit, sponsored by the Catholic Schools Center of Excellence (CSCOE). It was an exhilarating day, with dynamic speakers, opportunities for sharpening skills and sharing best practices, and a joyful recommitment to the mission of Catholic education. I felt privileged to join with this army of disciples for Mass.

Frequently referenced throughout the day were the educational giants of past generations — religious sisters and brothers, dedicated laity and committed pastors — who had been the backbone of the Catholic schools of this archdiocese. I felt their presence as I celebrated Mass that morning, and I know that we continue to benefit not only from their example and hard work, but also from their prayers.

As the Church celebrates All Saints Day and commemorates All Souls Day, it’s not surprising that we would be mindful of the strong connections that bind us to our brothers and sisters in Christ, even those who have gone before us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us of the deep union that we as “wayfarers” share with those who sleep in the peace of Christ.

Just as we lean daily on our fellow pilgrims along the way — those with whom we share a pew at Mass, or who are in our Bible studies, or who serve with us at the local food pantry or shelter — who support us with their example and encouragement, so too we count on the heavenly intercession of the saints, whether canonized or not, and pray for those in purgatory.

Our Catholic understanding of the community of saints was front and center as we gathered for the Eucharist and rosary procession on the 100th anniversary of the last apparition at Fatima. It was a perfect night for a candlelight procession, and thousands of Catholics from across the archdiocese and seemingly representing every demographic ONLY JESUS gathered at the State Capitol and processed to the Cathedral, while praying the rosary and meditating on the mysteries of Archbishop Christ’s life.

Bernard Hebda

Buscando a María en la comunión de los santos

C

uando el sol se levantó sobre Minneapolis el 18 de octubre, 2,000 maestros, administradores y personal de la escuela católica se reunieron en el Centro de Convenciones desde cada punto de la arquidiócesis para la primera Cumbre de Escuelas Católicas, patrocinada por el Centro de Excelencia de las Escuelas Católicas (CSCOE). Fue un día emocionante, con oradores dinámicos, oportunidades para agudizar las habilidades y compartir mejores prácticas, y un feliz compromiso con la misión de la educación católica. Me sentí privilegiado de unirme a este ejército de discípulos para la misa.

Frecuentemente se hizo referencia durante todo el día a los gigantes educativos de las generaciones pasadas: hermanas y hermanos religiosos, dedicados laicos y pastores comprometidos, que habían sido la columna vertebral de las escuelas católicas de esta arquidiócesis. Sentí su presencia cuando celebré la Misa esa mañana, y sé que continuamos beneficiándonos no solo por su ejemplo y duro trabajo, sino también por sus oraciones.

Como la Iglesia celebra el Día de Todos los Santos y conmemora el Día de Todos los Santos, no es sorprendente que tengamos en cuenta las fuertes conexiones que nos unen a nuestros hermanos y hermanas en Cristo, incluso aquellos que nos han precedido. El Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica recuerda la profunda unión que nosotros, los “viajeros”, compartimos con aquellos que duermen en la paz de Cristo.

Así como nos apoyamos a diario en nuestros compañeros peregrinos en el camino, aquellos con quienes compartimos un banco en la misa, o que están en nuestros estudios bíblicos, o que sirven con

I was near the front of the procession and was amazed that when we arrived at the doors of the Cathedral, the flickering candles still stretched all the way back to the Capitol. It was a beautiful opportunity to recall the events of Fatima and the tender and maternal heart of Our Lady, who as Queen of Heaven continues to show such love for the Church on earth, especially for those on the peripheries.

Many of those who gathered at the Cathedral had been prayerfully preparing for weeks to make a personal act of consecration, asking Our Lady to set their hearts on fire with love for Jesus. I was inspired as they concretely illustrated our understanding of the communion of saints by entrusting themselves to Mary and, along with her, united themselves to Jesus’ perfect consecration to the Father.

Building on those personal consecrations, I felt privileged to lead those gathered in entrusting to Mary every aspect of archdiocesan life, asking her to mold us into the image of Jesus, her son, so that we might be the field hospital that he desires.

As we asked her to reveal her “tender motherly care for the infirm, the weak, the homeless, the addicted, the hurt, the estranged, the abandoned, the imprisoned, the doubting and all those living on the peripheries of our society,” I was confident that she would call forth from each of us a deeper generosity and solidarity with those in need, and deepen the unity, the communion, that we share as a local Church.

One of Mary’s great gifts within that communion is to be a unifier.

Depending on our ethnic heritage, we might come to her under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, or Our Lady of Knock, or Our Lady of Fatima, or Our Lady of the Clouds, or Our Lady of LaVang or Our Lady of Czestochowa — but the bottom line is that she’s a mother for all of us and, if we allow her, leads us and supports all of us together along the way.

As we prayed in the Cathedral Oct. 13, I turned to her as Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, a title that has been made popular by Pope Francis, with the hope that she will not only extricate the archdiocese from the knots of our ongoing legal challenges, but also guide us as we move forward to be a healing Church, a more united Church, committed to helping others to be freed from whatever binds them. May she accept the gift of our hearts and take all our prayers to the throne of her son.

nosotros en la despensa o refugio local de alimentos, que nos apoyan con su ejemplo y aliento, también contamos con la intercesión celestial de los santos, canonizados o no, y oramos por aquellos en el purgatorio.

los que viven en las periferias de nuestra sociedad”.

Confiaba en que ella sacaría de cada uno de nosotros una mayor generosidad y solidaridad con los necesitados y profundizaría la unidad, la comunión, que compartimos como Iglesia local.

Nuestro entendimiento católico de la comunidad de los santos fue el centro de atención cuando nos reunimos para la procesión de la Eucaristía y el rosario en el centenario de la última aparición en Fátima. Fue una noche perfecta para una procesión a la luz de las velas y miles de católicos de toda la arquidiócesis y aparentemente representando a todos los grupos demográficos reunidos en el Capitolio estatal y procesados a la Catedral mientras rezaba el rosario y meditaban sobre los misterios de la vida de Cristo.

Uno de los grandes dones de María dentro de esa comunión es ser unificador. Dependiendo de nuestra herencia étnica, podemos acercarnos a ella bajo el título de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, o Nuestra Señora de Knock, o Nuestra Señora de Fátima, o Nuestra Señora de las Nubes, o Nuestra Señora de La Vang o Nuestra Señora de Czestochowa - pero la conclusión es que ella es una madre para todos nosotros y, si la permitimos, nos guía y nos ayuda a todos juntos en el camino.

Estaba cerca del frente de la procesión y me asombró que cuando llegáramos a las puertas de la Catedral, las velas parpadeantes aún se extendieran hasta el Capitolio. Fue una hermosa oportunidad para recordar los eventos de Fátima y el corazón tierno y materno de Nuestra Señora, quien como Reina del Cielo continúa mostrando tanto amor por la Iglesia en la tierra, especialmente por aquellos en las periferias.

Mientras orábamos en la Catedral el 13 de octubre, me dirigí a ella como Nuestra Señora, Destrabe de los nudos, un título que ha sido popularizado por el Papa Francisco, con la esperanza de que no solo sacará a la arquidiócesis de los nudos de nuestro continuo desafíos legales, pero también nos guían a medida que avanzamos para ser una Iglesia sanadora, una Iglesia más unida, comprometida a ayudar a otros a liberarse de todo lo que los ata. Que ella acepte el regalo de nuestros corazones y lleve todas nuestras oraciones al trono de su hijo.

Muchos de los que se habían reunido en la Catedral se habían estado preparando en oración durante semanas para realizar un acto personal de consagración, pidiéndole a Nuestra Señora que prendiera fuego a sus corazones con amor por Jesús.

Me inspiré porque ilustraron de manera concreta nuestra comprensión de la comunión de los santos a confiándonos a María y, junto con ella, se unieron a la perfecta consagración de Jesús al Padre.

Sobre la base de esas consagraciones personales, me sentí privilegiado de guiar a los reunidos a confiarle a María todos los aspectos de la vida arquidiocesana, pidiéndole que nos moldee a la imagen de Jesús, su hijo, para que podamos ser el hospital de campaña que él desea.

Cuando le pedimos que revele su “cuidado maternal tierno para los enfermos, los débiles, los sin hogar, los adictos, los heridos, los distanciados, los abandonados, los encarcelados, los que dudan y todos

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

October 10, 2017 Reverend Biju Mathew Pattasseril, appointed parochial administrator of the Church of Saint Boniface in Minneapolis. Father Pattasseril replaces Reverend Daniel Griffith, who previously served in that assignment.

4 • The Catholic Spirit

October 26, 2017 ‘Angel’ among us

LOCAL

SLICEof LIFE

St. Joseph of Carondelet Sister Avis Allmaras, center, talks with Rose Carter, left, and Irene Eiden at Peace House in south Minneapolis Feb. 27. Sister Avis goes to the center weekly and visits frequent guests like Carter. Eiden, of St. William in Fridley, is a lay consociate of the Carondelet Sisters. Peace House is people walkand John Ireland aThousands day shelteroffor the poor homeless.

Boulevard in St. PaultoOct. 13 these duringpeople the “It’s a real privilege know Candlelight Rosary Procession, which and hear their stories,” Sister Avis said. “I started atsurvive the State and ended at could not onCapitol the streets like they theThere Cathedral of St. Paul.

The people event began do. are so many gifted at the Cathedral with Archbishop Bernard here.”

Said Carter of Sister Avis: “She’s Hebda celebrating in which hethat an angel.

She hidesMass, her wings under consecrated thetruly Archdiocese of sweatshirt.

She is an angel.”

St. Paul and Minneapolis to Mary Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit and invited those in attendance to make a personal consecration to Mary. Following the Mass, people walked to the Capitol for the procession, rosary National Catholicpraying Sistersthe Week is as they made their back tocomponent the Cathedral.

March 8-14.way An official of The Knights of Columbus led the Women’s History Month and procession withataSt. statue of Mary.

The headquartered Catherine University event ended with prayers inside the in St. Paul, the week celebrates women Cathedraland featuring a Gospel reading, religious their contributions to the homily by Archbishop Hebda, Church and society. View localexposition events, of the Eucharist another consecration to including two and art exhibitions, at Mary.

The Mass and procession coincided www.nationalcatholicsistersweek.org. with the closing of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit

SLICEof LIFE

Our Lady by candlelight

Celebrating sisters

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LOCAL

October 26, 2017

Cathedral rector: Massive turnout for rosary procession a sign of hope

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit Father John Ubel never anticipated the sight he saw Oct. 13 when he emerged from the confessional at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul.

Thousands of people were crowded in the Cathedral praying before the 5:15 p.m. Mass or waiting in line for confessions with eight other priests offering the sacrament. That included a couple of priests who, noting the long lines, had set up chairs in side chapels to hear confessions, since the Cathedral has only six confessionals.

Father Ubel, Cathedral rector, had arranged for only two priests to hear confessions before the Mass and annual Candlelight Rosary Procession that evening. “In 28 years as a priest, and even in my memory before that, I have never seen so many people visit the Cathedral for a Mass or prayer service,” Father Ubel said in his Sunday homily Oct. 15. “I was completely floored.”

Droves of people going to confession began a spiritually packed evening at the Cathedral and the nearby State Capitol for the Candlelight Rosary Procession, which about 4,000 people attended this year. The event marked the 100th anniversary of the final Marian apparition at Fatima, with Archbishop Bernard Hebda reconsecrating the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that night.

Archbishop Hebda offered the consecration prayers both at Mass and in the procession’s closing prayers, ensuring that people who attended either part of the event had the opportunity to make personal consecrations. Repeating the prayer flows naturally from the need to consecrate oneself to Mary each day, he told The Catholic Spirit.

Consecration is about “entrusting ourselves to Our Lady and hoping that as we do that, it would be with real confidence,” he said. “She’s going to take us to Jesus to help us to see more clearly the path that we should be walking in the complex times of 2017.”

Reconsecrating the archdiocese on the apparition anniversary also ties into a request of Our Lady of Fatima, or Our Lady of the Rosary, who had asked the

pope to consecrate Russia and the world to her Immaculate Heart.

“The message of Fatima powerfully speaks to us today,” Father Ubel said in the homily. “It is not merely an historical event, but a sign of Mary’s love.”

He considers it one of the most significant apparitions in recent Church history, with messages encouraging prayer and conversion.

Devotion to Mary under the title Our Lady of Fatima and her message has grown among the faithful over the past century. In the archdiocese, that’s included annual rosary processions in May and October organized by the Family Rosary Processions Association.

Father Ubel said this year’s event was different. He sees it as a moment of healing and unity amid the clergy sex abuse scandal and the archdiocese’s related bankruptcy proceedings. The rosary procession and reconsecration provided an opportunity for people to pull together, he told The Catholic Spirit.

“We want to rejoice in our faith; we need to celebrate, and that is precisely what we did,” Father Ubel said in his homily. “We neither deny nor gloss over the serious issues that caused this situation, but we believe that God is calling us to move forward in faith, and that is precisely what happened.”

At the Oct. 13 Mass, Archbishop Hebda commented on the significant turnout. “Isn’t it great to be Catholic,” he said to resounding applause.

People again filled the Cathedral to standing room only for closing prayers after the procession returned from the State Capitol. The procession stretched the length of John Ireland Boulevard between the State Capitol and the Cathedral as people sang a hymn and prayed the rosary.

Joe Kueppers, chancellor for civil affairs for the archdiocese and a longtime volunteer organizer for Family Rosary Processions, said there were still people coming from the Capitol as people were entering the Cathedral. It was the biggest October rosary procession he has seen, he said.

Amy Cummings, a parishioner of All Saints in Lakeville who attended, said she was “just surprised and delighted” about the turnout. “I think it was just blessings and graces coming down upon people to come out.”

Congratulations to parishioners

Brad and Sarah Hackenmueller and

Dana and Shelly Zahler for receiving the St. John Paul II Champions for Life award.

May God continue to bless your work.

The Catholic Spirit • 5

in BRIEF MINNETONKA

Aim Higher names new president A local Catholic school scholarship-granting foundation named a former business consultant and school advancement director its new president, it announced Oct. 16. Jean Houghton will assume leadership of the Aim Higher Foundation Nov. 6.

Houghton brings to the position experience as a business consultant at McDonald’s Corporation and as director of advancement at St. Agnes School in St. Paul, where she has worked with enrollment, donor relations and a capital campaign. Houghton lives in St. Paul and is a St. Agnes parishioner. The Aim Higher Foundation provides need-based scholarships to students attending Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

ST. PAUL

Father James Devorak to return to ministry in archdiocese Father James Devorak will return to ministry in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Archbishop Bernard Hebda announced Oct. 20. A retired priest of the Diocese of New Ulm who had been ministering in the archdiocese since 2015, Father Devorak was accused in July of committing sexual misconduct in 1995. The alleged incident was reported to the Glencoe Police Department, which completed its investigation Aug. 31 and cleared the priest. The Diocese of New Ulm Clergy Review Board also investigated the allegation and reinstated Father Devorak to ministry Oct. 6. The archdiocese’s Ministerial Review Board determined that there was no basis for the claim, and, along with Tim O’Malley, archdiocesan director of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment, recommended to the archbishop that Father Devorak be reinstated to ministry. Father Devorak will return to ministry at Corpus Christi and St. Rose of Lima in Roseville.

ROSEVILLE

Catholic United Financial hacked Catholic United Financial experienced a security breach Sept. 6 resulting in unauthorized access to members’ personally identifiable information. The nonprofit fraternal life insurance company has contacted law enforcement to investigate, but no arrests have been made. CUF President Harald Borrmann said the company will provide two years of identity and credit monitoring services at no charge to its 80,000 members. CUF has already upgraded its data security measures. Borrmann said CUF finances, and members’ money, beneficiary or medical underwriting information, or account log-in information were not at risk.

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6 • The Catholic Spirit

LOCAL

Catechetical Institute draws people into the story of faith

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit Barbara Heil, a Pentecostal pastor, had been looking into auditing a class on Church history at the University of St. Thomas in 2011 when she stumbled upon an unfamiliar institute on its St. Paul campus at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinty.

“I couldn’t even say ‘catechetical,’” said Heil, a 2013 graduate of the Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute. “I started it not intending to become Catholic but loving the Church, and I ended it having become Catholic.”

Heil and more than 2,000 other lay people, clergy and religious have been formed in the Catholic faith over the past decade since the institute launched in 2008. For two years, students study the Catechism of the Catholic Church in depth through presentations, reading, small group discussions and writing on reflection questions. When finished, they receive catechetical certification.

“I really felt that we needed to create something that would introduce them into a life, which is what the Catechism is all about,” said Jeff Cavins, who founded the Catechetical Institute.

Cavins said the Catechism — a summary of the Church’s beliefs — begins with introducing that life, “a plan of sheer goodness,” which the Lord offers for each person. A local biblical scholar with a national following, Cavins had observed through leading his Great Adventure Catholic Bible Study series that lay people need to see the Catechism as a complete story, too, as they can with Scripture.

“Each instructor keeps bringing them back to that [story] every time and [at] every opportunity,” said Kelly Wahlquist, the institute’s executive director.

Barry McCullough, 44, a graphic designer and parishioner of St. Stephen in Anoka, originally thought of the Catechism as more of an encyclopedia.

He said the course helped him better understand the connection “between the Catholic Church, the Bible and God’s heart.”

“I finally started seeing how it all fit together like a wonderful unit,” McCullough said.

Wahlquist, a former assistant for the Great Adventure series, worked with Cavins to develop the institute in 2007.

Cavins had also been meeting with now-

Jeff Cavins, left, and Kelly Wahlquist join students of the Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute during the opening Mass Sept. 11 at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. Cavins is the founder and Wahlquist serves as assistant director. Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit Deacon Joe Michalak and Chris Thompson of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul to discuss the idea.

“We were in the early discussion phase of starting an institute, and at the same time, found out that Archbishop Flynn was interested in starting an institute,” Cavins said. “He wrote us a letter/ mandate about how one could be created at the seminary. At that point, we realized that the seminary would be the home.”

Seminarians participate in the Catechetical Institute, and it serves as a prerequisite for the permanent diaconate program. Catholic schools also use the institute for formation of their teachers through a partnership with the Catholic Schools Center of Excellence.

The institute also has strengthened parish staff, with some lay graduates moving from secular work to serving in the Church.

“With the deepening love of God and his Church I experienced through my time at the Catechetical Institute, it became ever clearer to me and my wife that God was asking me to work in a parish setting at this point in life,” said Eric Cooley, a pastoral minister for St. John the Evangelist in Little Canada.

Linda Harmon, a financial planner and parishioner of St. John the Baptist in New Brighton, said her experience in the Catechetical Institute has influenced how she approaches her work. She’s seen it reflected in her clients.

“They’ll refer to me more as a counselor

than financial advisor,” Harmon said.

“Not that I’m a counselor. That’s just how I sit across from people.”

Catechetical Institute alumni also tap into the institute’s ongoing formation opportunities. The naming of classes for saints, which began with the class of St. Paul during the Church’s Year of St. Paul in 2008, creates a bond among alumni.

“We have that intercessor, but we also have that identity,” Wahlquist said. “One of the most powerful things is the relationship among the classes, and the people in the class.”

Since beginning in St. Paul, the Catechetical Institute has spread around the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and beyond. Outer ring suburb parishes of Epiphany in Coon Rapids and Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville have been host sites for the course. That helped alumni such as McCullough take the course and build community with Catholics at neighboring parishes. He would go with a group after class to a nearby restaurant “to talk about, chew on what we learned,” he said.

The Catechetical Institute has also spread to St. Andrew in Elk River in the St. Cloud Diocese, and the institute has gone south to Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines, Iowa, for the Diocese of Des Moines. Heil, now an Iowa resident, played a support role in getting the institute started in Des Moines, and her husband, Jeff, has joined the course.

Whether in Des Moines, St. Cloud or the archdiocese, the institute follows the same structure. Teachers make a promise to instruct according to Catholic Church teaching, and the students have to adhere to the attendance guidelines and complete a short, semester-end paper in order to graduate.

“It tells the archbishop [or bishops] that these people have wrestled with and have walked through, prayed through all of the Catechism,” said Cavins. It also gives a bishop a body of formed laity with whom he can work, he added.

Wahlquist said the institute’s leaders hope it spreads to other neighboring dioceses and elsewhere in the country in the coming years.

Read more about Barbara Heil’s experience with the Catechetical Institute at www.TheCatholicSpirit.com.

October 26, 2017

Edina school donates desks to Ghana schools

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit Several Catholic schools in Ghana have newer desks and chairs for students and teachers after a shipment came from Our Lady of Grace Catholic School in Edina Sept. 18.

“This was tremendous for them,” said Father Neil Bakker, parochial vicar of Our Lady of Grace parish.

“They were so excited. They unloaded the containers immediately when they got there.”

Our Lady of Grace had its own new desks and chairs coming this year, which left a decision to make on what to do with the used furniture. Father Bakker said parish and school staff prayed about how to handle the surplus.

Our Lady of Grace began a partnership with a sister parish, St. Joseph, in Mampontang, Ghana, in 2003. In 2013, the Edina parish helped St. Joseph build a boarding high school for 800 students. The high school and several nearby Catholic elementary schools received Our Lady of Grace’s furniture.

Father Bakker said that shipping to Ghana presented challenges, with the desks and chairs needing to cross the Atlantic Ocean by boat.

The cost was subsidized by an anonymous donor.

A group of more than 100 people from Our Lady of Grace packed three shipping containers with 470 desks, 700 chairs, 150 tables and over 2,000 books June 24.

Father Bakker has received positive feedback about the shipment. “They would say ‘this just shows how much you love us, how much you care about us,’” Father Bakker said of the emails that came from priests in Ghana. “It really does, because it wasn’t just sending money.”

Besides helping schools in Ghana, Our Lady of Grace also purchased new desks and chairs for its local sister school, St. John Paul II School in Minneapolis.

October 26, 2017

LOCAL

The Catholic Spirit • 7

Companions of Christ celebrate 25 years with Mass

By Sharon Wilson For The Catholic Spirit On Oct. 21, 1992, five young men gathered with Archbishop John Roach and then-Auxiliary Bishop Robert Carlson to read the archbishop-approved decree that formally established the Companions of Christ as a public association of the faithful under canon law.

The men envisioned a priestly fraternity, but at that time none were yet members of the clergy. They were, however, a brotherhood that had sprung from the fledgling Community of Christ the Redeemer, a local charismatic lay association now based in West St. Paul.

The men had committed to live together in community, striving to live celibate and prayerful lives.

The association of priests, now some 30 strong, has served in the parishes, seminaries and administrative offices of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. One even serves as a bishop: Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens.

The Companions of Christ celebrated their 25th anniversary Oct. 11 with Mass at Our Lady of Grace in Edina with Archbishop Bernard Hebda and more than 250 friends and family.

That evening, Bishop Cozzens spoke of the “deep sense of fraternity” as one of the greatest gifts he has received from the Companions.

“I wouldn’t be the priest or bishop that I am today without the support I have received from some of these brothers,” he said.

This priestly fraternity is lived out, whenever possible, with communal living in households of three or more, where they observe a rule of life that includes praying together, common meals and holding each other accountable, as well as taking a yearly retreat together and participating in fraternal groups. Meanwhile, as diocesan priests, they are obedient to the archbishop’s ministry assignments.

“The fraternal groups that meet twice a month are where we share our lives and show our accountability,” Bishop Cozzens said.

A related brotherhood of Companions in Denver is also celebrating 10 years of its chapter association.

Eleven of the archdiocese’s current Companions moved to Minnesota specifically to be part of the fraternity as they discerned and entered the priesthood. Denver-native Bishop Cozzens, who as a bishop still shares a special fraternity with the Companions, is one of those 11.

“There are many practical reasons to be part of the Companions, but there are theological reasons, too,” Father Tony O’Neill, moderator of the Companions, told The Catholic Spirit. “Jesus sent out the disciples two by two. Priesthood is meant to be lived out in fraternity. This is a particular way to live out that fraternity.”

It is in these fraternal groups where they share their strengths and weaknesses, and their lives as priest,

Companions of Christ Father Tony O’Neill, moderator Father Jon Vanderploeg Father Jeff Huard Father Kevin Finnegan Father Peter Richards Father Tom Margevicius Father Michael Becker Father David Blume Father Michael Johnson Father Peter Williams Father Jonathan Kelly Father Nathan Laliberte Father Evan Koop Father Ben Little Father Brian Park Father Luke Marquard Father Marcus Milless added Father O’Neill, pastor of Our Lady of the Lake in Mound. “You learn you are loved even in your weaknesses as you are supported by your brother priests.”

At the anniversary event, Bishop Cozzens addressed the Companions, saying, “It is our knowing that we are actually weaker that brings us to seek the fraternity. We live these commitments in order to actually love the people better.”

Sheryl Moran, a parishioner of Our Lady of Grace in Edina, shared her gratitude to the priests at the celebration.

“They live as companions with each other, but also live as companions of Christ,” she said. “They say you become more like those whom you live with.

Father Marc Paveglio Father Jake Anderson Father Kyle Kowalczyk Father Chad VanHoose

Priest candidates Father Michael Daly Father Joe Kuharski Father Peter Hughes Father Matthew Northenscold Father Joe Zabinski Father Michael Barsness Father Tim Sandquist Father James Stiles

Fraternal relation with Companions Bishop Andrew Cozzens As Companions of Christ, they strive to become more like Christ. As priests they bring us the sacraments, but they also bring us their presence of who they are, and as they become more Christ-like, they show us by example how we can, too.”

The anniversary celebrations will continue in November when the Companions of Christ in Minnesota and Denver travel to Assisi and Rome, Italy, for a time of prayer, study and fraternity.

More information about the Companions of Christ can be found at www.companiansofchrist.org where they welcome inquiries by Catholic men interested in the priesthood and accept donations to further their work.

Men in in Christ Christ • Men Church •• Men Men Men of of the Church Menfor forOthers Others www.vianney.net • 651.962.6825 • sjv@stthomas.edu

8 • The Catholic Spirit

in BRIEF DAVENPORT, Iowa

Court upholds Iowa law requiring 72-hour waiting period for abortions An Iowa District Court judge Oct. 2 upheld the state’s 72-hour waiting period for abortions, signed into law in May by former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland had filed a petition for injunctive relief immediately after the bill was signed into law May 5, claiming that it would place an undue burden on patients, particularly low-income women who have to drive long distances for abortion services.

The Iowa Supreme Court ordered a temporary injunction halting enforcement of the law the same day.

Polk County District Court Judge Jeffrey Farrell upheld the law, ruling that it is legal because it does not place an undue burden on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Although he denied Planned Parenthood’s petition for an injunction, Farrell stayed implementation of the law to allow time for an appeal and for the Iowa Supreme Court to act. If enforced, the legislation would also impose a ban on most Iowa abortions after 20 weeks, although that provision was not a focus of the lawsuit.

VATICAN

Ex-head of Vatican hospital found guilty of abuse of office A Vatican court found the former president of the Vatican-owned pediatric hospital guilty of abuse of office for using donations belonging to the hospital’s foundation to refurbish a Vatican-owned apartment used by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, former Vatican secretary of state. Originally charged with embezzlement, Giuseppe Profiti was sentenced to one year in jail and fined 5,000 ($5,900) euros on the reduced charge, but the sentence was suspended. The judgments were handed down Oct. 14. The original indictment said Profiti, who was president of Bambino Gesu hospital from 2008 to 2015, and the hospital’s former treasurer extracted 420,000 euros for noninstitutional ends from 2013 to 2014 by using hospital foundation money to refurbish Vatican property in order to benefit a construction company. Profiti argued in court that the money had been an investment because the apartment’s refurbished areas were to be used for fundraising events to benefit the hospital.

Pope condemns deadly terrorist attack in Somalia Pope Francis prayed for the victims of a terrorist attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, that left hundreds dead and countless wounded in one of the deadliest attacks in the country’s history. Before concluding his weekly general audience Oct. 18, the pope expressed his sorrow and denounced the “massacre which caused more than 300 deaths, including several children.” Mogadishu erupted into chaos Oct. 14 when a minivan and a truck carrying military grade explosives exploded near a security checkpoint. The second explosion caused a nearby fuel truck to ignite, causing a massive fireball to erupt in the area. While no group has taken responsibility for the attack, government officials believe the militant terrorist group al-Shabab is responsible, the Associated Press reported.

WASHINGTON

Senate confirms Callista Gingrich as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See The Senate confirmed Callista Gingrich as the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Voting late Oct. 16, senators approved her nomination 70-23. More than 20 Democrats joined Republicans in supporting Gingrich, the wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a vocal ally of President Donald Trump. Gingrich, 51, a lifelong Catholic and a former congressional aide, has been president of Gingrich Productions, a multimedia production and consulting company in Arlington, Virginia, since 2007.

U.S. & WORLD

October 26, 2017

Catholic organizations, groups actively working on Puerto Rico’s recovery

By Wallice J. de la Vega Catholic News Service A month after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Catholic organizations, groups and individuals were still among the most prominent responders to the needs of a suffering people.

Despite early logistical obstacles, as of Oct. 20, the local Caritas chapter had disbursed more than $1.1 million in aid to an estimated 50,000 people — including food, clothing, first aid supplies, potable water and sundries. At its San Juan office, hot lunches also were being distributed daily to members of the community.

“We had to blindly design a response plan,” Father Enrique “Kike” Camacho, executive director of Caritas Puerto Rico, told Catholic News Service Oct. 19. “But after communications opened somewhat, we began improving the plan based on diocesan reports.

Today, we have a well-coordinated relief system at Puerto Rico’s 500 parishes in all six dioceses.”

Caritas has been closely working with Catholic Charities USA on Puerto Rico’s recovery since Hurricane Irma brushed the island’s northern coast two weeks before Maria followed Sept. 20.

Kim Burgo, senior director of disaster operations for Catholic Charities, told CNS: “One of our biggest challenges is money because there were two other hurricanes before ... but then Maria comes along, which in many ways was worse than Harvey and Irma, and people have donor fatigue and it is very difficult to get donations for Puerto Rico. The need here is so much greater, yet the financial resources are so much less.”

Puerto Rico’s post-hurricane

A man fills a plastic drum with spring water from a mountain Oct. 21 in Utuato, Puerto Rico. The town has been without power or water for more than a month after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. CNS recovery efforts have been largely a grass-roots impulse, spearheaded by newly formed young adult movements and religious groups that have become an alternative to slow, complex and bureaucratic government procedures.

Parishes in the inner mountain regions of Puerto Rico have fared the worst after Hurricane Maria.

Not only have their congregations’ financial support diminished due to massive unemployment, but also federal and local government support is not being received in their towns. Bishop Daniel Fernandez of Arecibo said the Diocese of Arecibo is distributing all aid coming from Caritas directly to its 59 parishes. His diocese and the Diocese of Mayaguez are the most damaged of the dioceses. The island has one archdiocese, San Juan, and five dioceses.

“I’m perceiving much unity and even calm within the faithful,” said Bishop Fernandez. “However, [the priests and I] are attentive because we know that as time passes and, if the situation doesn’t improve at an adequate pace, tolerance levels might diminish as the physical

exhaustion rises.”

Recovery after Hurricane Maria, one of the most destructive in Puerto Rico’s history, has been slow.

Official reliable statistics about hurricane damage, including an accurate death toll, have been scarce and widely debated by experts.

The latest government timetable for recovery announced Oct. 19 says 90 percent of the island will have its electric power normalized

by Dec. 15. That recovery plan is said to yield a totally new and diversified power grid that would bring back hydroelectric systems and add solar power components.

Traditionally a Catholic people, Puerto Ricans feel the Church tends to be the most trustworthy source of relief in disaster conditions. For Father Camacho, that represents one of the Church’s most important challenges.

“To me the greatest challenge in these situations is to meet our people’s expectations” he said.

“They expect a lot from the Church because they trust it, and there’s pressure on us. It’s a high standard and we cannot fail.”

Groups settle in lawsuit against HHS contraceptive mandate

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service Dozens of Catholic groups that challenged the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act have reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, they announced late Oct. 16.

The groups, including the Archdiocese of Washington and the Pennsylvania dioceses of Greensburg, Pittsburgh and Erie, were represented by the Clevelandbased law firm Jones Day. Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl wrote an Oct. 16 letter to archdiocesan priests saying the “binding agreement” ends the litigation challenging the Health and Human Services’ mandate and provides a “level of assurance as we move into the future.”

The Washington Archdiocese was one of dozens of groups challenging the mandate, which went to the Supreme Court last year in the consolidated case of

Zubik v. Burwell. Although it was most often described as the Little Sisters of the Poor fighting against the federal government, the case before the court involved seven plaintiffs and each of these combined cases represented a group of schools, churches or Church-sponsored organizations.

Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, whom the case is named for, said he was grateful for the settlement, which he described as an “agreement with the government that secures and reaffirms the constitutional right of religious freedom.” In an Oct. 17 statement, the bishop said the diocese’s fiveyear-long challenge to the mandate “has been resolved successfully” allowing Catholic Charities in the diocese and other religious organizations of different denominations to be exempt from “insurance coverage or practices that are morally unacceptable.”

He said the settlement follows the recent release of new federal

regulations that provide religious organizations with a full exemption from covering items that violate their core beliefs.

On Oct. 6, the Trump administration issued interim rules expanding the exemption to the contraceptive mandate to include religious employers who object on moral grounds to covering contraceptive and abortioninducing drugs and devices in their employee health insurance. The same day, the U.S. Department of Justice issued guidance to all administrative agencies and executive departments regarding religious liberty protections in federal law.

Cardinal Wuerl said in his letter to priests that the new guidelines and regulations were extremely helpful but that the “settlement of the Zubik litigation adds a leavening of certainty moving forward. It removes doubt where it might otherwise exist as it closes those cases.”

U.S. & WORLD

October 26, 2017

The Catholic Spirit • 9

Priest says exorcism is ministry of healing

By Peter Finney Jr. Catholic News Service Father Gary Thomas has served for the past 12 years in the Diocese of San Jose, California, as the priest authorized to perform the rite of exorcism.

The rite is the Catholic Church’s largely hidden and oftenmisunderstood ministry of healing that Hollywood has transformed into a cash cow of blood, gore and fantasy.

The reality, Father Thomas told priests attending the 2017 Louisiana Priests’ Convention in September, is that movie producers have only part of the story correct.

Yes, there is “intelligent evil” or satanic demons in the world that can and do take possession of a person in ways that defy medical or psychiatric therapy.

But movies often fail to track reality by ignoring the cautious and meticulous approach the Church uses in its healing ministry to those who believe they are possessed by demonic spirits, Father Thomas said.

“The ministry of exorcism and deliverance is a ministry of healing,” he told the priests. “It is not the drama of Hollywood, although there is drama. ... We have a responsibility as Church to provide pastoral care.

“Jesus had two parts to his public ministry: He taught and he healed.

Very often, information about exorcism is limited to the images we see on the screen. Many of those images and scenes I very often come in contact with. Every person who comes to seek out assistance in this area is suffering.

That’s what makes this a holy ministry.”

Rite now in English The first official English-language translation of the ritual book “Exorcisms and Related Supplications” was recently made available from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Distribution is limited to bishops, though exorcists, other clergy, scholars and seminary professors also can obtain a copy with a bishop’s permission.

Having it available now in English “should make it easier for a bishop to find a priest who can help him with this ministry,” said Father Andrew Menke, executive director of the USCCB’s Secretariat of Divine Worship.

The translation is from the rite that was revised following the Second Vatican Council. It was promulgated in Latin in 1999 and then slightly amended in 2004.

The USCCB approved the English translation at its 2014 fall general assembly. The Vatican gave its “recognitio,” or approval, of the translation earlier this year.

Utilizing a team of advisers, including three married couples, a psychiatrist and a psychologist, Father Thomas uses a step-by-step, collaborative, investigative process

Exorcism prayers The main part of the newly released English translation of “Exorcisms and Related Supplications” is the rite of major exorcism, and it also includes an introduction outlining criteria for its use. The text affirms the reality of evil in the world and more so affirms the sovereignty of Jesus to overcome any and all evil. Under canon law, only those priests who receive permission from their bishops can perform an exorcism after proper training.

Bishops automatically have the right to perform an exorcism and can share that authority with other priests. While most of the book is for the use of exorcists, it also contains an appendix of prayers that anyone can use, offering familiar as well as littleknown prayers, invocations and litanies. Titled “Supplications Which May Be Used by the Faithful Privately in Their Struggle Against the Powers of Darkness,” the collection of prayers will be particularly helpful for a person before or after an exorcism, as well as for family and friends who wish to pray for them. CNS in an attempt to identify “the root cause” of the person’s suffering.

Early questioning targets any possible medical, emotional, psychological or psychiatric issues that may be the cause.

Father Thomas said 80 percent of the people for whom he has performed exorcisms have been sexually abused.

In most dioceses, the bishop is informed about the need for an investigation, Father Thomas said, and the bishop will authorize one of the diocese’s mandated exorcists, with his team of experts, to visit the person “and ask a lot of questions to get to the root cause of what their suffering is.” Even before a decision is made to perform a formal rite of exorcism, the priest can offer “prayers of deliverance,” often called “minor exorcisms.”

Also, Father Thomas said, the person may not be suffering from possession by “intelligent evil” but may be suffering from “unforgiven sin or unforgiveness or rage or lust or hopelessness or fear. You can break those ties in confession.”

Only when exhaustive questioning convinces the team that a person may be under demonic possession is the decision made to perform the rite, the priest said.

‘The war’s been won’ Father Thomas, who is pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Saratoga, California, has performed more than 50 solemn rites of exorcism during his tenure in San Jose, and his ministry led him to become the subject of a book, “The Rite,” which later became a movie

starring Anthony Hopkins.

The best advice Father Thomas has for priests who encounter someone believed to be suffering — whether from a mental condition or evil spirits — is not to dismiss them but to intently listen.

“A lot of times priests are skeptical or don’t know what to do, and they dismiss them,” he said. “Satan loves to isolate. If people use the ‘e’ word [exorcism] or the ‘d’ word [demons], do not run for the hills. We have nothing to fear. Christ has already won the war. Even if you are skeptical, listen to them.”

Some of the important questions he asks are how long the person has been afflicted, and if he or she has dabbled in practices such as tarot card reading, black magic, white magic or “cleansing.” Even yoga, “used for purposes other than the purpose of exercise,” can be an open door to an evil spirit, he said.

“These are all pagan and all against the First Commandment,” Father Thomas said. “You cannot be a witch or a wiccan and be a Roman Catholic.”

Extreme care is taken with the actual rite of exorcism. Father Thomas never performs an exorcism during a work or school day but begins the rite at 5 p.m.

The church is locked, and the team anoints the doors and the stainedglass windows with chrism. The subject of the demonic condition is anointed with the sacrament of the sick. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed. The rite starts with the litany of the saints, followed by Scripture readings and the renewal of baptismal promises. Then prayers are intoned declaring the authority of Christ over demonic spirits.

“What makes an exorcism never completely orthodox depends on the reaction of the demonic spirits,” Father Thomas said.

In some cases, he has seen signs of prolonged physical illness and nausea in the possessed person that almost defy belief.

“Satan wants to stay hidden,” he said. “The greatest lie is that Satan has convinced people that he doesn’t exist. The prime role of the priesthood is that we are healers of souls. In this ministry, we are in spiritual warfare. I used to think I wasn’t comfortable with that term because it didn’t seem very Catholic, but I realize spiritual warfare takes many forms. Just because we can’t see something or measure something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

“However, the good news is that from the moment Jesus died on the cross, Satan lost. The battles go on, but the war’s been won. Christ is the exorcist.”

Read more about the new English translation of the rite and find an FAQ on exorcism at www.TheCatholicSpirit.com.

Residents embrace near the remains of destroyed homes Oct. 9 after wildfires in Santa Rosa, Calif. CNS

Long-term recovery ahead for California communities hit hard by wildfires Catholic News Service The Diocese of Santa Rosa “has been hit hard” and “is in an ongoing state of uncertainty” because of Northern California wildfires that began the night of Oct. 8, said Bishop Robert Vasa.

Fanned by warm winds, they devastated a vast swath of North California’s wine country and forced tens of thousands to evacuate. The fires left at least 42 people dead and 50 others missing. News reports said that fires spanned more than 330 square miles; as of Oct. 23, the five remaining fires were at least 90 percent contained.

In an Oct. 13 telegram to two California archbishops, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, conveyed Pope Francis’ “heartfelt solidarity and his prayers” for all affected by the disaster, especially those mourning the loss of loved ones and residents “who fear for the lives of those still missing.” The cardinal added the pontiff sent his blessing to all and offered encouragement to local civil authorities and emergency personnel assisting fire victims.

In a statement Oct. 12, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ domestic policy committee called for prayer for all impacted by the fires. Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, acknowledged that the natural disasters and other calamities the nation has endured as of late have left many feeling weary, but “we know that God cannot be outdone in generosity and charity.” He prayed God would provide all “with new wellsprings of love” to help those “hurting so deeply today.”

In Santa Rosa, Bishop Vasa reported that most of the parishes in the diocese were fine, but a Catholic high school and elementary school that share a campus suffered serious damage. The diocesan chancery was being used as an evacuation center. “So I am currently working from my car and trying to visit a few of the evacuation centers,” the bishop said.

Bishop Vasa called on all Catholics of the diocese to help their brothers and sisters who “have been severely impacted by the devastating fires and are in immediate need of your prayers. Please do not hesitate to offer your help though ongoing prayer, donations, and emotional support.”

“You may even be inspired to offer your home to a family who has lost everything. Simply imagine yourself and your family going through what many are experiencing now in reality, and act accordingly,” he advised.

10 • The Catholic Spirit

U.S. & WORLD

October 26, 2017

Pope’s pro-life challenge: Respect all life, oppose death penalty

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service Pope Francis’ recent statement that the death penalty is incompatible with the Gospel focused less on a government’s role in protecting its people and more on the need to defend the sacredness and dignity of every human life.

At least from the time of Blessed Paul VI in the 1960s, the Catholic Church has been increasingly critical of the use of capital punishment, even while acknowledging centuries of ANALYSIS Church teaching that a state has a right to punish offenders, including with the death penalty.

St. John Paul II, in his 1995 encyclical letter, “The Gospel of Life,” wrote of his alarm at “the extraordinary increase and gravity of threats to the life of individuals and peoples,” but said one sign of hope was the increasing opposition around the world to capital punishment.

“There is evidence of a growing public opposition to the death penalty, even when such a penalty is seen as a kind of ‘legitimate defense’ on the part of society.

Modern society, in fact, has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform,” he wrote.

Two years later, Pope John Paul II had the Catechism of the Catholic Church revised to strengthen its antideath penalty posture. The text now says that, “given the means at the state’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender ‘today ... are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.’”

Opponents of the death penalty cheered the pope’s move, and theologians recognized it as a “development”

of Church teaching.

Death penalty opponents also welcomed Pope Francis’ even stronger position against capital punishment, but his words set off a debate between those who saw his position as a further development of Church teaching and those who saw it as a “change” that contradicted both the Bible and the traditional position of the Catholic Church.

Edward Feser, a professor of philosophy at California’s Pasadena City College and author of “By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment,” told Catholic News Service that St. John Paul II’s teaching was “a nonbinding prudential judgment,” which was in line with centuries of Church teaching recognizing the right of states to impose the death penalty.

And, writing in Britain’s Catholic Herald Oct. 15, Feser said that if Pope Francis “is saying that capital punishment is always and intrinsically immoral, then he would be effectively saying — whether consciously or unconsciously — that previous popes, fathers and doctors of the Church, and even divinely inspired Scripture are in error.”

But Jesuit Father Jan Dacok, a professor of moral theology and theologian at the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court, said the Church always insisted there were limits to the conditions under which a state could legitimately impose the death penalty. St. John Paul II, he said, emphasized those limits to the point of saying that now that it is easier to keep a murderer in jail for life, the necessary conditions for legitimacy are “practically nonexistent.”

Pope Francis took a further step forward, Father Dacok said. The pope “did not change Church teaching, but places it on a higher level and points out the path toward its perfection.”

“What is accomplished with the death penalty?” the Slovakian Jesuit asked. “Do you obtain the true repentance of criminals? Do you offer them the

possibility of correcting their ways, of asking for forgiveness?”

“No,” he said. “With the execution, the death, you irreversibly cancel the entire dynamic of hope” for repentance, conversion and at least some attempt at reparation.

“Obviously, Pope Francis cannot change the laws of individual countries, because that’s the competence of legislators,” Father Dacok said. “But he can continually encourage respect for the sacredness of every human life, because the death penalty truly is not necessary.”

Because security and justice can be served without capital punishment, he said, the urgent matter today is to demonstrate respect for the sacredness of every human life, “even the life of public criminals responsible for the death of others.”

Father Robert Gahl Jr., a priest of Opus Dei and a professor of ethics at Rome’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, said Pope Francis “continues the recent development of doctrine regarding the centrality of mercy for the Christian faith and the urgency to promote a culture of life in today’s throwaway culture,” where abortion and euthanasia are widely accepted.

“Pope Francis wants the Church to offer a radical example of the defense of all human life,” Father Gahl said. And “without condemning all past practices, he vigorously demands the elimination of the death penalty.”

The priest noted the Church’s historic concern for the impact of the death penalty not just on the criminal, but also on judges and executioners.

On the question of whether Pope Francis’ statement marks a “development” or a “change,” Father Gahl said the pope probably intended to “shake up theologians and to force us to reconsider traditional formulations of permanent teaching in light of this new and authoritative development of mercy and human dignity.”

October 26, 2017

U.S. & WORLD

The Catholic Spirit • 11

Health care law: uncertain outcome after multiple diagnoses

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service The Affordable Care Act — on the examination table since President Donald Trump came into office — has been poked, prodded and even pronounced dead while the fight to keep it alive keeps going.

Trump told Cabinet members Oct. 16: “Obamacare is finished. It’s dead. It’s gone. ... There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore,” but ANALYSIS that is not how those who want health care reform, including Catholic leaders, see it, and it’s not the general public’s view either, according to a recent poll.

The Kaiser Family Foundation poll said seven in 10 Americans think it is more important for Trump to help the current health care law work than cause it to fail.

Sixty-six percent of Americans want Trump and Congress to work on legislation to bolster the health insurance marketplaces rather than continuing their efforts to repeal and replace the ACA. The poll, conducted by the Washington-based group that examines key health policy issues, was released Oct. 13, the day after Trump announced some changes to the current health care law.

By executive order, he directed federal agencies to make regulatory changes to the ACA to allow consumers to buy health insurance through association health plans across state lines and lifting limits on short-term health care plans.

He also announced that he was ending federal subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out-of-pocket health care costs for those with low incomes.

Saving subsidies The president’s plan to end the subsidy payments prompted swift criticism from Democrats, U.S. health care groups and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice,

A protester wears a T-shirt at an Oct.12 SoCal Health Care Coalition protest at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, Calif. CNS Florida, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, said the bishops “will closely monitor the implementation and impacts of this executive order by the relevant administrative agencies.”

He said flexible options for people to obtain health coverage are important strategies, but he also cautioned that “great care must be taken to avoid risk of additional harm to those who now receive health care coverage through exchanges formed under the Affordable Care Act.” A possible fix to Trump’s cuts that would continue federal subsidies to insurance companies through 2019 was offered in a bipartisan Senate proposal by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, and Patty Murray, D- Washington, which Trump initially appeared to support but then backed down from a day later.

When the Obama administration authorized the subsidies, Republicans filed suit, saying they were illegal because Congress had not authorized the payments.

By Oct. 20, there was no word on when the bill — which also aims to provide states flexibility to skirt some requirements of the health care law —

might come to the Senate floor for a vote. Several senators have said they are waiting to see more details in the bill’s text. Support from the House doesn’t seem likely since House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, has said he opposes it.

Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity and president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, a leadership organization of more than 2,000 Catholic hospitals and health care facilities, has been keeping a close eye on the president’s action on health care and the response by Congress.

“Working out a deal to keep the subsidies for a longer-term plan is something that is very important and critical to the future, particularly for the most vulnerable among us,” she said.

National conversation Sister Keehan, who also is a nurse, told Catholic News Service Oct. 18 that she encourages the House and Senate to take immediate action to stabilize the insurance markets and delivery and “allow time for us to have a national conversation” about improving the health care law without letting those

Congratulations, Sharon King!

now covered with health insurance lose it or for “premiums to go out of sight.”

So far, she has only seen parts of the Senate bill, but she said the Catholic Health Association is “willing to do what we can to craft a compromise that will work in the short term until we have a longer-term solution.”

The Alexander-Murray bill is not the only text that needs a closer read to understand the future of the country’s health care system. The new rules that will be written by federal agencies, per Trump’s executive order, will also need a close look. These changes could appear within weeks but are unlikely to take effect before the end of the year.

Dr. Steven White, a pulmonary specialist in Ormond Beach, Florida, who is chairman of the Catholic Medical Association Health Care Policy Committee, said he is awaiting to see how new rules and regulations are written but is hopeful that some changes will be a move in the right direction.

White said his association sees less federal control and more patient control as a good thing and also would like the health law to offer more options, freedom and flexibility.

He told CNS Oct. 18 that pouring more money into health care isn’t the solution, but he also echoed Bishop Dewane’s concern that changes shouldn’t be made on the backs of those with low incomes.

He said if Congress backs legislation that supports subsidies, they need to balance that with the realization that such a plan “can’t last forever.”

“Something has to be done,” he said a few times during the interview.

But just what will happen still remains a mystery.

Another finding of the Oct. 13 Kaiser poll showed that despite Americans’ support for a bipartisan approach to health care, their confidence that Trump and Congress can work together to make this happen remains low.

Seven in 10 Americans said they are either not too confident or not at all confident that cooperation can happen.

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12 • The Catholic Spirit

Young couple describes joy, struggles of parenting 1-year-old quadruplets

F

By Maria Wiering • The Catholic Spirit

our high chairs line the kitchen counter at Justina and Matt Kopp’s rambler in Crystal. Four baby chairs sit on the living room floor, adjacent four stacked baby pillows.

Nearby, four 1-year-olds tumble with each other on the floor, bumble with awkward steps, and vie for their parents’ arms. Like expert ringmasters, Matt, 26, and Justina, 27, playfully navigate the acrobatics with a certain calm and confidence. They simultaneously soften falls and give out hugs, and then, at the first fussy cries of hunger, prepare and distribute pre-nap bottles with the ease and efficiency of an oft-performed routine.

The babies are Cora, Raph, Theo and Ben, who celebrated their first birthdays Oct. 16. They’ve been the stars of this sweet family circus since the day their parents first heard their heartbeats and discovered there was more than one.

Shock and awe When the Kopps learned they were pregnant in April 2016, they approached their ultrasound with some trepidation. Parishioners of Holy Family in St. Louis Park, they had recently miscarried their first child, and they knew the disappointment and loss that followed a silent ultrasound.

Strangely, Justina’s fertility hadn’t returned following that pregnancy, and they worked with a doctor at the Christian-based AALFA Family Clinic in White Bear Lake to help her cycles return. After a few months, they found out they were expecting again. However, Justina felt a sharp pain in her abdomen, and the two were nervous she had an ectopic pregnancy.

The ultrasound technician squeezed gel onto Justina’s abdomen and positioned the wand, picking up a gestational sac and a heartbeat.

The couple was elated. Then, a second sac and a second heartbeat. Twins! As the Kopps were wrapping their head around two at a time, the technician found a third sac and a third heartbeat. They were now outnumbered, and they started laughing.

Justina recalls teasing Matt, telling him that parents of triplets must automatically grow a third arm.

Then the technician came across a fourth sac.

Empty, she said, suggesting that there had been a fourth baby, but he or she had never developed.

Justina recalled feeling a sense of peace with that, trusting that he or she would join a sibling in heaven.

That’s when her doctor came into the room and grabbed her foot. As the technician was going over the three babies again for the doctor and to get more photos, she moved to show him the blighted ovum in the empty sac. This time, it didn’t look empty, and the technician found a heartbeat — the strongest of the four. The Kopps just continued to laugh in disbelief, they said.

“This is quite the shock, huh?” Justina recalled the doctor saying, obviously shocked himself.

Even with Justina’s fertility treatments, the probability of quadruplets was so low that statistics didn’t exist.

Justina and Matt said they laughed about the news for two days, and then, overwhelmed, they panicked. Family and friends’ joy helped them have courage that they could handle the task, with God’s help.

On Facebook, the couple, who married in 2015, designed an announcement that looked like a movie poster, with Justina smiling in a black dress and heels holding the four ultrasound photos, and Matt holding his head with a shocked expression. It read, “Quads: Two’s company, six’s a crowd.”

In the months that followed, Justina had to eat 4,500 calories a day to pack 50 pounds on her 5-foot, 100-pound frame. Defying the odds, however, she never went on bed rest. She carried the babies until 33 weeks gestation, four weeks beyond the average gestational age of quads. Born via cesarean section at less than 4 pounds each, the babies were premature but needed only routine care. Three weeks later, Matt and Justina brought them home from the hospital.

Today, all four are matching the weight and height of typical 12-month-olds, and on track with milestones such as walking. Their parents delight in their different personalities and quirks, which Justina said she even recognizes from their temperaments in the womb.

“We’re grateful,” Justina said of their life.

“And we love kids,” Matt added.

“Even when it’s hard,” Justina said, “it’s like, I love you deeply, and I’m not going to not do this.

Even on the days when I’m like, ‘I’m done, I’m moving to Iceland’ ... one look at Cora, and I’m like, I’m staying here.”

Valuing life The road to their quadruplets’ birth, however, was not without its challenges.

Justina’s care was transferred from her doctor at AALFA to a perinatologist practice, and from appointment No. 1, she felt at odds with her new doctors about her care.

The Kopps knew that the specialists would suggest “selective reduction,” a euphemism for the abortion of one or more of the babies, typically the weakest. At their first consultation, they immediately told their doctor that they didn’t want to discuss it. The goal, Matt told the doctor, was four healthy babies and a healthy mother.

The doctor said that while some parents begin with that mindset, they later change their minds, and that selective reduction gave them the best chance at bringing home babies. The risk of spontaneous pregnancy loss is 40 percent with higher order multiples, Justina said, but they wouldn’t consider aborting any of the babies to lower the risk.

Justina was incredulous at the doctor’s cognitive dissonance to go from “congratulations” to recommending abortion while calling them “babies.” The Kopps’ relationship with the specialist practice never recovered, Justina said.

“You’ve got a target on your back once you don’t listen to their advice,” she said. “You’re the crazy pro-life person, then.”

While Justina continued to see the specialists, she also had regular check-ins with her doctor at AALFA.

“I had to learn throughout that pregnancy how to advocate for myself,” she said, adding that she was grateful she studied biology in college so she could read studies and understand her options.

Abundant help When the babies were at 32 weeks gestation, her doctor at AALFA noticed her blood pressure was high for her, although it fell within the range of normal for the overall population. He ordered blood work.

When the labs returned, he called and sent her to the hospital. She had preeclampsia, a blood pressure condition that endangers both mother and babies. Mothers of fraternal multiples are at a higher risk because they also carry additional placentas, which may be a factor in the condition’s onset.

The babies, her doctor told her, would be delivered soon.

At Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, she received steroid shots to hasten

the babies’ lung developm the babies were delivered.

The first weeks and mo elements of the typical fir but multiplied by four. Th eaters, and the early feedi to-back. Sleep was elusive Meanwhile, they exper generosity from family an said they forged deeper fr people who surprised the help, from meals to gifts o said people have gone mo them than they would fo “because this is such an o Although the Kopps co quadruplets, they do see t prepare them for the chal love of science, including health, as well as being th having copious nannying Both Matt and Justina’s

1. M att and Justina Kopp play with their quadruplets in the living room: Benedict, left, Cora, Theodore and Raphael.

2. Justina gets her quadruplets ready for a snack: Benedict, left, Cora, Raphael and Theodore.

3. Justina coaxes steps from Benedict.

4. Justina keeps watch over Raphael, left, Benedict, Cora and Theodore as they drink.

5. C ora crawls through a tube as Matt watches.

6. Matt gets bottles ready as he holds Raphael.

October 26, 2017 • 13

they’ll always have each other, even as adults.

“I know that I’m close to my siblings, and I came from a family of four kids, and I know that it’s nothing like this. This is very, very unique,” Justina said of the bond she already sees in her children. “I hope that as they become little adults, that they stay so tight- knit and really rely on each other, and count on each other and cheer each other on. ... They’ve known about each other for as long as they can remember. They don’t know a time when there wasn’t an other.”

In the busyness of it all, Matt and Justina have prioritized a regular date night, in part because divorce rates are higher among parents of multiples. They’re both in Facebook groups for parents of multiples, and they frequently read disheartening posts of marriages falling apart.

Photos by Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit

“Our life is very chaotic, and it’s very easy to lose sight of one another in all of that,” Justina said. “I don’t feel like we’ve done that. ... With all of this insanity, I love that I look up and Matt is right there. He’s doing it right alongside me.”

6

While the Kopps were ardently pro-life before the pregnancy, their commitment has deepened.

Without the Church’s teachings, Justina said she may have been tempted to have a tubal ligation, ending the opportunity for more children and wounding the self-gift of their love. As it stands, the pair are open to adding to their family down the road, but they’ve been shocked at how many people assume they’re “done” — and say it aloud.

5

“People cross boundaries all the time,” Matt said, recalling a conversation in which a woman asked if he was “snipped,” and then was aghast when he said he wasn’t. Or, people ask if the quads were conceived naturally, or through in vitro fertilization.

Sometimes that’s the first thing people ask, even before the babies’ names.

1 2

ment, and 48 hours later, d. onths contained rst-time parenting blur, he babies were all slow ings were literally backe. rienced an outpouring of nd friends, and Justina riendships with some em by their eagerness to of boxes of diapers. She ore out of their way for or singleton pregnancies, outrageous thing.” ouldn’t have expected things God used to llenge. Justina noted her g biology and women’s he oldest of four and g experience. s parents live in the

3

4

“I understand the curiosity, since four is rare,” Justina said, “so I’m working on figuring out a way to handle these situations without taking away from the beauty of it, while still remaining an advocate for life and being a witness to that. But it’s really hard not to get irritated by all of that.”

Trusting in God’s providence The quadruplets’ full names are Cora Immaculée, Raphael Gerard, Theodore Ambrose and Benedict Peter. They reflect a mix of saint devotions and family names, including “Peter” to honor Justina’s dad, who died in the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in 2007. It was a name both she and Matt wanted to use before they knew they were expecting multiples.

Twin Cities, so help is a call away. Matt, meanwhile, is No. 5 of 10 kids, so a large family doesn’t phase him, he said. However, he added, “I can’t imagine raising quadruplets without a sense of faith.”

“It makes you have to trust in God a lot more, because you have to trust that everything will work out in the end, that the babies will stay well and job stuff will work out,” Matt said.

Having quadruplets compounds the sacrifice of becoming parents, Justina said, especially in the loss of day-to-day freedom. Although she had thought she would become a stay-at-home mom when she had kids, the expense of having quadruplets in daycare didn’t give her a choice.

She needs help even to leave the house with four infants, limiting the things she can do during the day. Unlike other first-time moms, Justina couldn’t attend moms’ groups or early childhood classes with her four infants, or run to Target with her babies, or even walk around the block without another adult, because she

can’t physically push two double strollers. (The Kopps decided to forgo the quad-stroller, “because of the spectacle aspect it would draw,” Justina said.)

A recent trip to Boston for her brother’s wedding required serious logistical planning, with both strollers, four Pack-n-Plays, four car seats and 16 bottles.

However, the Kopps say quadruplets also mean four times the joy.

“I get four times the smiles and four times the laughs. I get to see my kids’ first steps like bam, bam, bam — one right after the other,” Justina said. “Watching them interact and learn to love one another, and depend on one another and fight with one another, it’s really fun, it’s really joyful and it makes all the sacrifice we have to do more than worth it. It’s so beautiful.”

When Justina envisions her children’s future, she looks forward to watching the unique brotherhood develop among the three boys, and the understanding among all four that

Her father’s tragic death strengthened Justina’s trust in God, because she never felt estranged from him in her grief. That gave her hope when she was anxious about being the mother of quadruplets.

“God didn’t abandon me then, with this terrible atrocity,” she said of her father’s death, “so he’s not going to abandon me with this bountiful blessing he’s given us.”

While having four kids at one time has helped the couple trust more deeply in God’s providence, they still can’t help but ask the question “why us?”

“Especially during the tough times, it’s like, why were we given quadruplets; why were we given this incredible cross? As much as it brings a lot of joy, it can also be a great source of suffering,” Matt said.

In the months since the babies’ births, Justina said she asks “why” less than she asks “how.”

“Like, how, God, are you going to help us get through this? How are you going to show us the way in all of this and provide for us in all of this?” she said. “I ask it every day.”

14 • The Catholic Spirit

FAITH & CULTURE

For semester, seminarians live on ‘Irish island’ in the center of Rome

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit

E

ach day, 11 St. John Vianney College seminarians staying at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome are served a side of potatoes with their Italian pasta as they experience a confluence of cultures through Irish hospitality and other glimpses of the universal Church.

While attending classes at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum, the seminarians from the college seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul are getting to know Irish seminarians and priests from dioceses around the world who are also staying at the College, located near the Roman Coliseum.

The College, which doesn’t offer instruction, can accommodate 60 students. Last year the College housed 14 Irish seminarians and 27 post-graduate priests.

The Minnesota seminarians gain from their hosts a new way of looking at hospitality, said Father John Bauer, who served as formator-spiritual director for the seminarians in Rome last year, and who is now parochial administrator at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Minnetonka.

Meanwhile, conversations with resident priests from Romania, the Netherlands, India and Africa expand seminarians’ understanding of the Church, he said.

“I think it was really a good experience for the men to see another perspective, to see Catholicism through a different lens,” he said.

Last year, SJV moved its housing for seminarians studying in Catholic Studies’ semester abroad program from St. Thomas’ Rome campus to the Irish College.

The change has given participants

October 26, 2017 MOVIES

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Seminarians at St. John Vianney College Seminary studying Catholic Studies have the opportunity to spend a semester in Rome, where they now live at the Pontifical Irish College, pictured, alongside Irish seminarians and priests from around the world. Courtesy Pontifical Irish College the opportunity to learn more about the priesthood as they continue their discernment, the seminary’s leaders say.

St. Thomas had made more rooms at its Bernardi Campus available for general liberal arts students, not just those studying in the university’s Catholic Studies program, as are the seminarians. In order to continue to have housing for seminarians studying in Rome, SJV looked into other options.

The Pontifical North American College, where St. Paul Seminary seminarians live, couldn’t house the SJV seminarians. However, the Irish College was able to accommodate about 15 men per semester, SJV Rector Father Michael Becker said. Father Paul Gitter, an SJV formator and spiritual director, is with the seminarians in Rome this year.

The College building was constructed in 1926, though the College has had a Roman presence since 1628. The College’s roughly two-acre walled campus features courts for tennis and soccer and a swimming pool.

Exiting its green gates, seminarians walk 25 minutes to their classes.

The campus “is like a little piece of Ireland in the big city of Rome,” said Dominic Shovelain, 21, an SJV senior who lived at the College last spring.

While the SJV seminarians study philosophy, literature, art and architecture, the Irish seminarians are further along in their formation and are completing their major seminary theology studies at the Angelicum and other universities. As such, they give the college-aged men a glimpse into major seminary life.

“I really appreciated chatting

with the guys about their experiences and taking their advice as well,” said Shovelain, a parishioner of St. Michael in St. Michael. “They are in the same process ... but they’re a little further down the road.”

Seminarian John Utecht, 22, also a senior, appreciated getting to know the Irish seminarians through chats on the College’s rooftop garden during the fall semester last year.

“Seeing these guys completely intending to become priests was a really awesome experience,” said Utecht, whose home parish is St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Hastings. “It was a taste of what’s to come. It affirmed my vocation a lot.”

Though the seminarians and priests were on different tracks, they had opportunities to pray together, and share meals and events.

“We worked together, studied together a little bit, prayed together and also recreated together,” Shovelain said.

Last fall, Utecht served as goalie on the winning Irish team in a soccer tournament the College hosts for the major Roman seminaries. In the spring, SJV seminarians joined in the College’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration, which included a play and festive luncheon attended by Irish dignitaries.

From their base on an Irish island in the center of Rome, SJV seminarians continue to learn about the priesthood from many perspectives.

“The heritage of the Irish Church inspires the men: the Irish saints, monks and priests,” Father Becker said. “We experience a tremendous gift of God beyond words.”

After a network of weather-controlling satellites designed to overcome the effects of global warming is sabotaged and begins causing a series of overwhelming natural disasters, its designer (Gerard Butler), his estranged brother (Jim Sturgess), a State Departement official, and the bureaucrat’s live-in girlfriend (Abbie Cornish), a Secret Service agent, team to uncover and defeat the conspiracy. Armchair apocalypse fanciers may relish the ravaging of cities around the globe and the threat of the titular civilization-destroying phenomenon. But anyone looking for more than mere spectacle in director and co-writer Dean Devlin’s by-thenumbers action flick will come away disappointed.

Though the dodgy domestic arrangement eventually moves toward marriage and the armed confrontations are mostly blood-free, this is still best suited to easily satisfied grown-ups. Much gunplay and other stylized violence with minimal gore, cohabitation, about a halfdozen uses of profanity, a couple of milder oaths, several crude and crass terms. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

“Only the Brave” (Columbia) Heartbreaking true story of the “Granite Mountain Hotshots,” the elite Arizona firefighting team that raced into a raging inferno in 2013 to save a neighboring town from destruction. Their leader (Josh Brolin) has honed his 20-member crew into a well-oiled machine with the assistance of his right-hand man (James Badge Dale). During a recruitment drive, an unlikely candidate (Miles Teller) appears, intent on turning away from a dissolute life to join the group. In adapting a magazine article by Sean Flynn, director Joseph Kosinski deftly juggles the intimate stories of the men’s personal lives (Jennifer Connelly plays Brolin’s wife) with grand set pieces that evoke the sheer terror and destructive force of the flames they battle. Scenes of extreme peril, mature themes, drug use, brief rear male nudity, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, several uses of profanity, pervasive crude language, some sexual banter, obscene gestures. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — ­ parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

“The Snowman” (Universal) Director Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of Jo Nesbo’s best-selling crime novel occasionally dabbles in pennydreadful sensationalism, then returns to plodding wearily across the frozen landscape of its unconvincing mystery story. Set primarily in Oslo, Norway, the film tracks the efforts of a gifted but alcoholism-plagued police detective (Michael Fassbender) to catch a serial killer who builds a snowman at each murder site.

Excessive gory violence and gruesome images, a suicide, strong sexual content, including aberrant behavior, an adulterous bedroom scene and brief upper female nudity, abortion, domestic abuse and cohabitation themes, a few uses of profanity and rough language, several crude terms. The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted.

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FAITH & CULTURE

October 26, 2017

If you go Catholic musician Danielle Rose is in concert 6:30 p.m.

Nov. 4 at St. Stephen, 525 Jackson St., Anoka.

A freewill offering will be taken to support the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Venezuelan mission and St. Stephen’s Latino community.

For more information about the concert, visit www.ststephenchurch.org.

For more information about the Venezuelan mission, visit venezuela.archspm.org.

Catholic musician Danielle Rose will be performing at St. Stephen in Anoka Nov. 4.

Courtesy Alma Leon

Concert to benefit Venezuelan mission

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit

K

nown for her clear, sweet-sounding voice and prayerful lyrics, Catholic singer Danielle Rose will perform a concert at St. Stephen in Anoka Nov. 4 in support of the Venezuela mission sponsored by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

St. Stephen parishioners Jude and Kathy Currier have been working with the parish’s solidarity committee to organize the event. Jude visited the mission with fellow parishioners in years past, and he described the experience as one that has motivated him to do more.

“It’s a way for us to stay connected, especially with all the needs that there have been in Venezuela and all the issues [there],” Currier said about the event.

The Curriers invited Rose to give the concert because they’ve heard her music before and observed how she incorporates faith and human dignity into her music. Rose has performed around the world since graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 2002.

“She has this great respect for life, for people and the poor,” Jude said.

Funds from the freewill offering event will support the work of Father Greg Schaffer and Father James Peterson, priests of the archdiocese who minister to the 65,000 people of Jesucristo Resucitado parish in

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Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela. The archdiocese has served the mission since the early 1970s.

The country is in the fourth year of an economic crisis that has led to shortages of basic food products and medicines and the world’s highest inflation. One study showed that 75 percent of the population has lost an average of 19 pounds as a result. The country has also experienced political unrest, including violence, leading up to its Oct. 15 gubernatorial elections.

Besides supporting the Venezuelan mission, the event will also aid the Latino community at St. Stephen. Folk dancers from the Latino community will also perform at the event.

“There’s a great need within our own Latino community at St. Stephen’s here,” Kathy Currier said.

“They are such kind, wonderful people.”

School Sister of Notre Dame Mary Anne Schaenzer, St. Stephen’s staff advisor to the peace and justice committee, said the event serves as an opportunity for the non-Latino and Latino communities to come together. With 4,325 households, the parish is one of the largest in the archdiocese and has a large Latino population.

“Everybody’s looking forward to where our community becomes more one,” said Sister Mary Anne, who serves as the director of pastoral care at St. Stephen.

— Catholic News Service contributed to this story.

The Catholic Spirit • 15

‘Least well-known and appreciated’ icons on display at Russian Museum

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit An Eastern Orthodox blessing cross from the collection of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul is among more than 50 19th-century icons and other religious objects on display through March 3 at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis.

“Russian Sacred Art: Connecting Heaven and Earth” opened at the museum Oct. 14.

According to the museum’s description of the exhibition, 19th-century icons are the “least well known and appreciated” in Russia’s centuries-old icon tradition. Their realistic style emerged a century earlier during the westernizing reign of Peter the Great, and An image of the Mother of God of deviates from the Vladimir is among 19th-century traditional Russian icons on loan to The Russian style of icon imagery.

Museum of Art in Minneapolis.

By the 20th century, Courtesy The Museum of the 19th-century icons Russian Art were considered inferior to earlier icons, because they depicted their subjects on a worldly plane, and not on the heavenly realm, the hallmark of Russia’s golden age of icon painting in the 15th and 16th centuries, said Masha Zavialova, the museum’s curator.

The exhibition’s run will coincide with All Saints’ Day, which the Catholic Church celebrates Nov. 1.

Some of the icons depict saints exclusive to Russian Orthodoxy, but Catholic visitors will recognize icons of saints from both Orthodox and Catholic traditions, including Sts. Barbara, Mary Magdalene and Nicholas, as well as Mary, the Trinity, the Evangelists and Old Testament figures.

The exhibition is the first to include this selection of icons from a significant collection in Minnesota.

For more information, visit www.tmora.org.

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16 • The Catholic Spirit

FUNERAL PLANNING

October 26, 2017

Resurrection Cemetery buries fetal remains

By Matthew Davis The Catholic Spirit

F

our times a year, remains of stillborn and miscarried babies arrive at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights, coming from two hospital networks in the Twin Cities.

The Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has worked with Fairview and HealthEast hospitals for more than a decade to ensure proper burial for fetal remains. Resurrection Cemetery, part of The Catholic Cemeteries, hosts a communal fetal committal and burial service quarterly for families who have lost a baby due to stillbirth or miscarriage. Gill Brothers Funeral Service and Cremation of Minneapolis receives the fetal remains from the hospitals and brings them to Resurrection Cemetery.

Sister Fran Donnelly, a member of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and director of fetal services at Resurrection Cemetery, said the number of babies buried averages around 100-125 per service.

Families need not be Catholic to have their fetus’ remains buried in the service.

“We’re really serving people of all different faiths by this service,” Sister Fran said. “No que stions are asked about people, so I think for most, they believe this is indeed a baby, a viable person.”

Sister Fran said the prayer services and burials are about the dignity of the unborn, a tenet of Catholic social teaching on respect for human life.

“It says something about our belief and passion about respecting all of life, from conception to death,” Sister Fran said. “It’s a person regardless if it’s six weeks gestation or 20.”

Sister Fran said the special burial ties into the cemetery’s mission to bury the dead “in whatever form that is,” a corporal work of mercy.

Although in some cases the remains of the miscarried babies might be very small, Sister Fran said, the hospitals treat them with dignity. She compared the burial of the unborn to those who have lived much longer.

A pastor’s funeral advice for the living: ‘Plan, plan, plan’ The Catholic Spirit

This marker for fetal remains is located in a special section at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights.

Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit “Gill Brothers treats it like they’re picking up an 85-year-old man’s body, and we treat it like this is the same,” Sister Fran said.

Such dignified treatment didn’t happen at Regions Hospital in a 2013 incident in which a stillborn baby’s remains were accidently discarded in the laundry. The mother, Esmeralda Hernandez, recently filed a lawsuit against Regions, which is part of HealthPartners. Hernandez wanted the baby cremated, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

“When that happened, it was such a wake-up call for me, and I thought, ‘How could this have happened?’” said Sister Fran, who added that she has limited knowledge of the situation.

“Nonetheless, this infant was treated horribly, and that family is going to deal with this forever, and they probably have their own boatload of guilt.”

Parents of stillborn or miscarried babies who want a Catholic burial have other options beyond working with their hospital to send the remains to Catholic Cemeteries. Sister Fran encourages parents to contact their pastor in the event of a stillbirth or miscarriage. She said most parish cemeteries can bury stillborn babies, but not always miscarried babies.

Mothers at Fairview and HealthEast hospitals can choose what to do with the remains, Sister Fran said, including cremation.

“Otherwise, the default for Fairview will be the group burial,” Sister Fran said. “Neither one of those healthcare systems just disposes of those remains.

They’re either buried with us or the family can take them.”

Parents are also welcome to bring their stillborn or miscarried baby to Catholic Cemeteries for the next quarterly burial with the remains collected from hospitals.

Regardless of the hospital where they received their care, parents can also bring fetal remains to Gill Brothers’ mortuary, which works with Catholic Cemeteries, after contacting Sister Fran.

Those families can also participate in the quarterly prayer and burial service at Resurrection Cemetery.

Gill Brothers receives the fetal remains from Fairview and HealthEast and then places them in small, sealed caskets. At the burial service, the caskets are interred at Resurrection Cemetery.

The cemetery staff places a stone marker engraved with the burial date, an angel and a faith-based phrase. The cemetery keeps a record of the mother’s name, so a family can visit the plot that includes its baby’s remains.

“We’re able to say to people, ‘You’ll always be able to locate your baby’s grave,’” Sister Fran said.

Volunteers from nearby St. Peter in Mendota offer flowers for families to place with the caskets and provide hospitality following the burial.

Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul hosted an end-of-life seminar Oct. 7 to offer information on funeral planning, preplanning with funeral homes and cemeteries, medical assistance, veterans’ benefits, financial issues and related topics. Speakers at The Catholic Cemeteries event emphasized that advanced planning includes making and updating wills, selecting a funeral home and choosing Father Patrick burial sites, but that HIPWELL there are other important factors.

To illustrate a point, Gary Pearson from O’Halloran and Murphy Cremation and Funeral Services in St. Paul cited similarities between funeral planning and wedding planning, such as choosing a venue and Scripture readings. “We take months to plan a wedding, yet we take maybe 24 hours or so at the time of death to plan out one of the most important events of our lives,” Pearson said, according to a press release. At a time of loss, “scrambling around the house, trying to find documents shouldn’t be one of the things we have to contend with.”

Father Patrick Hipwell, Nativity’s pastor, stressed the importance of planning, and shared the experiences of parishioners who hadn’t done enough of it.

“Plan, plan, plan,” he said.

Pope to honor fallen soldiers at American cemetery near Rome Catholic News Service Pope Francis will commemorate all those who have died in war by celebrating Mass at an Italian cemetery where thousands of American soldiers killed during World War II are buried.

The Vatican announced Oct. 6 that the pope will celebrate the feast of All Souls’ Day, Nov. 2, at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno, 45 miles south of Rome.

The Mass will commemorate “all who have fallen in wars,” the Vatican said.

More than 7,800 members of the U.S. military are buried at the 77-acre cemetery.

Many of the soldiers died in 1943 during Operation Husky, the Allies’ campaign to liberate the island of Sicily from the Axis powers.

The Allied victory led to the toppling of Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and weakened Nazi Germany’s foothold in Europe.

After the Mass, Pope Francis will visit the Fosse Ardeatine monument, the site of a mass execution in which 300 Italian civilians were killed by Nazi troops in 1944.

Blessed Paul VI, St. John Paul II and retired Pope Benedict XVI have each visited the memorial and paid their respects to those murdered in the massacre.

FUNERAL PLANNING

October 26, 2017

The Catholic Spirit • 17

Neglected works of mercy: burying, praying for forgotten dead

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service

W

hen a friend’s beloved dog died, Adrian Cruz dug a grave, prepared a box, cleaned the dog and helped bury the animal in a way that helped his grieving friend mourn the loss of her pet.

Earlier the same day, Cruz, a Catholic mortician, tried to comfort an acquaintance who was devastated to find out what would happen to a friend who died and whose family was unwilling to give him a proper burial.

“While driving home and thinking about that day, I realized that my friend’s pet dog had more of a dignified burial than the unclaimed bodies I buried for the government. It troubled me, thinking of how I whispered prayers while burying these poorest of the poor as the government machines unceremoniously dumped dirt on their unmarked graves,” he told Catholic News Service.

The work of mercy that often gets most overlooked, he said, is burying people who died poor, estranged from family, abandoned in old age or as wards of the state, or babies who were aborted.

Also, funerals, even cremation, are expensive and “churches can often drive people away from Christian burial because of the costs. Families are often embarrassed that they can’t afford” them, Cruz said in a series of email responses to questions in mid-October.

The for-profit system of health care in the United States exists in “the death industry,” too, he said, creating higher costs for many. Just as the poor and marginalized “get trampled” on when they are alive, he said, the same disregard for their dignity often awaits them after death.

The unclaimed deceased are eventually considered “a public health hazard,” he said, and the local public health agencies or coroner’s office bids out for a socalled “pauper’s burial” to funeral homes, he said.

“I felt God whisper and I called to mind, ‘Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.’ And right then and there I decided I would do something about it.”

Adrian Cruz

“These unfortunates are often buried in body bags with cardboard cremation coffins, with no ceremony to mark the passing of their life, no prayers to soothe their souls,” since they are being buried by private mortuaries by government contract.

Just interring the deceased is not enough, Cruz said.

“We strive to give dignity and meaning to the life of this person and the situation they are in.”

While Catholic cemeteries try to fill in some of the gaps by offering free or low-cost grave sites, a dedicated group of laity is still needed, Cruz said.

“Somebody has to ‘claim’ the dead in order to properly bury them” and get a burial permit, “coffins need to be made, remains need to be transported, pallbearers need to physically carry them to the grave.”

This situation is happening often silently in every diocese, Cruz said, “so there need to be Catholic funeral homes and dedicated laity to help carry out this task and pray for the poor souls in purgatory.”

Cruz, a former seminarian, became a mortician in California after an Augustinian priest friend helped him get hired at a parishioner’s funeral home. His love for the profession led him to become a successful coowner of a mortuary in San Diego, he said.

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He opened his own funeral home in Guam in 2008 after he moved there to be closer to his aging grandparents, who had raised him.

Recently, he closed his business to be able to pursue other interests; however, “God had other plans, as he usually does,” he said.

His experience helping bury his friend’s dog and the memories of burying the unclaimed deceased were fresh in his mind one day as he was driving, flipping through radio stations, he said.

Someone on air was reading a Bible passage about Joseph of Arimathea — a respected figure who took it upon himself to bury Jesus after his crucifixion.

“My funeral home, which I just closed, was called Arimathea Funeral Services. I felt God whisper and I called to mind, ‘Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.’ And right then and there I decided I would do something about it.”

Cruz established the Arimathea Society on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows to gather laypeople together for spiritual works of mercy, prayers for the dead, offering Mass for the poor souls in purgatory and preparing for burials.

“Praying for the poor souls in purgatory is often overlooked or regarded as ‘old-fashioned’ in many modern American Catholic minds,” he said.

He said there are not a lot of priests who have the time to do a funeral Mass. “Often they don’t want to step out of parish boundaries for Masses or can’t say Masses in venues outside of churches, like mortuary chapels or veteran’s cemetery chapels.”

Cruz said he hopes to get permission from the local archbishop to allow Mass at his family’s private chapel to reduce costs and to hold a monthly rosary and Mass for the dead at different parishes. The idea is to broaden the network of prayers, fundraise and find other people interested in this forgotten ministry, he said.

18 • The Catholic Spirit

FUNERAL PLANNING

October 26, 2017

Catholic cemeteries inter the poor and forgotten

By Mark Pattison Catholic News Service

A tombstone in Mendota Heights at Resurrection Cemetery, one of The Catholic Cemeteries’ five locations in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Catholic Cemeteries’ Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Compassionate Assistance Fund covers burial costs for people whose family cannot afford the services. The fund honors Archbishop Emeritus Flynn for his pastoral concern for families. The fund also supports The Catholic Cemeteries’ ministry to families who have lost babies to miscarriage. For more information about the fund, visit www.catholic-cemeteries.org.

Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

I

t is not as if anyone has organized a parade or a public relations campaign to say so, but Catholic cemeteries around the country have, do and will bury the indigent and those whose bodies have gone unclaimed.

“It’s a way to help those in need. A program to help the poor,” said Stephen Bittner of the Cincinnati Catholic Cemetery Society and president of the Catholic Cemetery Conference, the Illinois-based nationwide association for diocesan Catholic cemetery organizations.

The national association will sponsor Cemetery Sunday Nov. 5 following All Souls’ Day, Nov. 2. The day’s activities will include discussions with interested Catholics about the burial of indigents as well as other services Catholic cemeteries provide.

Burial of the poor “is a very common experience across the United States, and many dioceses have many services, and provide the services in a different way,” said Roman Szabelski, who oversees matters for the 45 Catholic cemeteries in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Szabelski was at the Catholic Cemetery Conference’s national convocation in Nevada in September, where these and other initiatives were discussed.

Parishes in some dioceses — he mentioned Cincinnati as one of them — take up collections to defray the costs of indigent burials, particularly if the parish has its own cemetery. Many Catholic cemeteries, according to Szabelski, often include a line item in their budgets for indigent burials.

Cemeteries also have been known to conduct burials of unborn children at no cost as part of their ministry, said Rita Coffman, associate executive director of the Catholic Cemetery Conference.

“Sometimes they [Catholic cemeteries]

have agreements with the civil authorities, which is what we have,” Szabelski told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview.

“About three years ago, Chicago, like usual, had a story in the news that the county morgue was backed up with bodies. It was horrific, the sheriff made a big stink about it,” he said.

“We stepped up. ‘You say you have 300 bodies. We have the capacity to do the burials.’ [They said,]‘We can’t bury them in a Catholic cemetery,’ but that [argument] didn’t make much sense,” Szabelski added. “We provided the services for three years.”

The Chicago Catholic cemeteries have stepped in on other occasions as well.

The coroner’s office in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, “moved away from another contractor where they were stacking up the bodies, and family members couldn’t find their loved ones,” Szabelski said. “They pressed us [to conduct the burials]. They paid us one-

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third of the going price.”

He cited the Burr Oak Cemetery scandal of 2009-10 as another instance where the Catholic Church stepped in to help.

“Burr Oak Cemetery [outside Chicago] was accused of disinterring, scattering the remains of people, doing double burials [in the same plot]. It brought headlines, international headlines, at that time,” he told CNS. “The story ends with the state of Illinois and the Cook County sheriff asking me to come in and calm the storm and bring some record-keeping to see what was disturbed and what was not.

There was new legislation not only in the state but across the states, and federal legislation of cemeteries, to make sure we were doing things properly.”

“We never say ‘free’” to avoid stigmatizing the next of kin of an indigent decedent, Bittner said. “But it is a service we provide.”

The practice is not reserved solely for Catholics, he added. “When that person’s

body arrives, there are prayers said for the burial, even if the priest or minister is unavailable. We go into all faiths. We service all Christians who come to us in need. So if there isn’t a priest or a minister to arrive that day, we make sure we have prayers of dignity.”

“In many cities, if you die indigent and have no family, you become a ward of the city. Those types of people who die that way are going to be cremated and going to be put into a common space that the county pays to provide,” Bittner said. “In some cases, you have limited information on who those people are,” despite being “in a country of such wealth.”

Even in a more mobile and ultraconnected society, things can happen.

There have even been circumstances, he said, where someone will call to say, “’I haven’t heard from my brother for months,’ only to find out that that person died alone in that apartment, there was no one around, and the city took ownership of the deceased, and there was no one to call. It’s rare to see, but you can see how that can happen in today’s world,” even in families that can afford a burial.

Another consequence of a mobile society is that family burial plots purchased well in advance for children don’t get used because those children, once grown, have moved far from home and established a family, career and life elsewhere.

“We can put them [the plots] in our inventory to be used” by others if the family wishes to donate them, Bittner said. “But [if] you really want the special effect, donate it to the parish where you’re going to be buried from. Tell Father Bob or Father Bill, and what Father Bob or Father Bill are going to do — if they know someone who is indigent and there is a death in the family — they’re going to have that ready.”

October 26, 2017

FUNERAL PLANNING

The Catholic Spirit • 19

How should ashes properly be handled after cremation?

Editor’s note: A version of this story ran at www.TheCatholicSpirit.com in November 2016.

In 1963, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an instruction permitting cremation as long as it was not done as a sign of denial of the basic Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead.

The permission was incorporated into the Code of Canon Law in 1983 and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches in 1990. However, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the congregation, told reporters in October 2016 that Church law had not specified exactly what should be done with cremated remains, and several bishops’ conferences asked the congregation to provide guidance.

That request led to “Ad resurgendum cum Christo” (“To Rise With Christ”), an instruction “regarding the burial of the deceased and the conservation of the ashes in the case of cremation,” issued October 2016.

The document’s release prompted many Catholics to ask whether it changes any regulations about cremation. Catholic News Service provided some of those questions to the staff of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Divine Worship. Their answers follow.

Q. The new document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith spells out regulations regarding cremation. Does it change anything in how the Catholic Church in this country has regulated this issue?

A. No, the new document from the CDF doesn’t change anything for us in this country. For example, we already have permission to have a funeral Mass in the presence of cremated remains.

What the Instruction does do, however, is reiterate the Church’s preference for the burial of the body in normal circumstances, and, when cremation is necessary, its insistence that the remains be properly interred.

Q. If the document says that

traditional burial is preferred, does that mean cremation is wrong?

A If the Church saw cremation as “wrong,” it wouldn’t permit it.

Sometimes cremation can truly be necessary. However, the ancient custom and the preference of the Church is to bury the body, whenever possible.

Q. What should I do if I’ve already scattered the ashes?

A. We can’t change the past, of

course, and if you truly didn’t realize at that time that it shouldn’t be done, then you shouldn’t burden yourself with guilt. Remember that what happens to a person’s body after death has no bearing on what happens when that person’s soul meets the Lord on judgment day. However, you might wish to offer extra prayers for the person’s happy repose.

Q. If I plan to donate my body to

science, after which it will be cremated, is that OK? What if the laboratory disposes of these ashes?

A. This would seem to be a valid

reason for cremation. However, it would be important to make sure that arrangements are made for a funeral Mass, and that a trusted relative or friend is able to receive the remains and see to their proper burial.

Q. How do I convince my dad to let me bury my mother’s ashes, which he now has at home?

A. Only you would know the best way to approach a situation like that, and it would depend a lot on his reasons for keeping the remains and on his own personal faith. Perhaps making him aware of the Church’s preference would be enough to convince him, or the assurance that his own earthly remains will one day be buried alongside those of his wife. Also, the Vatican’s instruction itself articulates some compelling reasons: “The reservation of the ashes of the departed in a sacred place ensures that they are not excluded from the prayers and remembrance of the Christian community. It prevents the faithful departed from being forgotten, or their remains from being shown a lack of respect … .”

Q. Entombment of ashes is expensive; is there any ‘consecrated ground or consecrated place’ where Catholics can place ashes for free?

A. That would vary from place to

place. There have been some Catholic dioceses and cemeteries that have even organized special opportunities for the interment of cremated remains for no cost at all, just as a way to encourage people who might have been keeping the remains without a good idea of what to do with them. You might wish to bring this question to the office of your local bishop — the people who assist him might be able to help you find an appropriate place, particularly if the expense is an important factor.

Q. I am afraid I did something wrong. When my daughter died, I could not afford to bury her, but I had her cremated and her ashes will be buried with me. I also had some

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Cremation trends About 45 percent of burials at Catholic Cemeteries in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are of cremated remains, said John Cherek, Catholic Cemeteries director. That number has been on a steady rise since the Catholic Church removed the prohibition from the practice after Vatican II. Catholics, however, lag behind the general trend toward cremation, which is now how more than 50 percent of remains overall are handled, Cherek said. He attributes the trend, in part, to the perception that cremation is a less expensive option than full body burial.

While that can be true, it also might not be as much as some people think.

Cremation alone costs around $2,000, but the Catholic Church prefers Catholics cremate remains following the deceased’s wake and funeral Mass, which contribute to costs. Total costs of funeral and burial of cremated remains may be around $7,000 or $8,000, just a few thousand less than the average cost of a body burial. ­­— The Catholic Spirit ashes put in crosses for her kids. I am distressed I did something very wrong.

A. Clearly you did that with good intentions, and weren’t aware of what the Church wants us to do with the mortal remains of our loved ones, so you shouldn’t burden yourself with

guilt over this. Would it be possible now to find a cemetery plot where you can bury her remains, and make arrangements so that your own remains can someday go into the same location? If at all possible, the ashes in the crosses should also be buried or interred along with them.

Q. Many people die and are never buried properly. Perhaps they die at sea or in an explosion or whatever.

Why is the Vatican worried about something like this when there are so many other problems in the world?

A. This instruction isn’t concerned with those kinds of situations. Burial at sea is necessary at times, as is cremation. The main purpose for this instruction is to help foster a healthy respect for the human body, even after death, especially in light of the move in recent years away from traditional burial in favor of more expedient and economical means. Where contemporary culture today may well question what difference it makes, the Church is reminding us to recall that the human body is an integral part of the human person, deserving of respect even after death. The earliest Christians buried the bodies of their dead, and this set them apart from many of their contemporaries. We bury our dead out of reverence for God our creator, and as a sign that we look forward to the resurrection on the last day.

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20 • The Catholic Spirit

FOCUS ON FAITH

SUNDAY SCRIPTURES

Deacon Michael Nevin

What do we love?

Many years ago, my wife decided to do some interior decorating in our home, and stenciled the “Great Commandment” from the Gospel of Matthew on the walls of our stairway: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Seeing these words of our blessed Lord daily as I descend and ascend the stairway has become a valuable tool in examining the question posed to us all: What do we love?

Because we were created in the image and likeness of God who is love, our vocation in life is to love. In this short passage, Jesus says “you,” “your” or “yourself” eight times, emphasizing the personal call to enter into the divine beatitude and be transformed into the image of the Father’s only Son. He commands us to love God with the totality of our very being that makes up a rational creature: heart, soul and mind.

To love with all our heart is to encounter God in the most hidden place of being, especially in prayer; to love with all our soul is to live in union with God, because it has its origin and final end with God in heaven; to love with all our mind is to give assent to

October 26, 2017

We face the temptation to love the many things that God has created, especially ourselves out of selfishness, but God has not abandoned us while we make this pilgrimage. the truth that God has revealed to us by choosing the good with our intellect and will.

Jesus also uses the word “all” to emphasize the point that we owe everything to God, and that he wants from us the total gift of self as an offering of the creature to the creator.

The second half of the commandment, to love our neighbor, flows out from this gift of self. Enraptured by the totality of giving oneself to God, love overflows generously to others who were also created in the image and likeness of God. One cannot love God and hate his or her neighbor, nor can we hate God and love our neighbor, because love for God is inseparable from love of neighbor; its wellspring is the very heart of God. Most of us know, from lived experience, that practicing this two-fold commandment to love is very difficult. By faith, we know that it is impossible to love as we should without God’s grace. God has blessed us

iStock/Vicenfoto with so many gifts, and yet it is easy to allow our disordered passions and weakened wills to steer us off course from our eternal homeland.

We face the temptation to love the many things that God has created, especially ourselves out of selfishness, but God has not abandoned us while we make this pilgrimage. God has sent his only Son and his Holy Spirit upon the Church, to help us make the holy decision to love God and neighbor. May we be strengthened to choose this love.

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

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, Oct. 29 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Ex 22:20-26 1 Thes 1:5c-10 Mt 22:34-40

Wednesday, Nov. 1 Solemnity of All Saints Rv 7:2-4, 9-14 1 John 3:1-3 Mt 5:1-12a

Monday, Oct. 30 Rom 8:12-17 Lk 13:10-17

Thursday, Nov. 2 Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls) Wis 3:1-9 Rom 5:5-11 Jn 6:37-40

Tuesday, Oct. 31 Rom 8:18-25 Lk 13:18-21

Friday, Nov. 3 Rom 9:1-5 Lk 14:1-6

FAITH FUNDAMENTALS

Father Michael Van Sloun

Secret baptisms against the parents’ wishes Unbaptized children. It is happening more and more these days.

So often the grandparents did their best to practice their Catholic faith and pass it on to their children, but to their great dismay, their own children have lost fervor for their faith. Their adult children go to Mass occasionally or not at all. They do not pray all that much at home. The teachings of Jesus and the Church are used to a lesser extent to guide their lives, marriage and family. And when these adult children have children, because their faith has slipped as a priority for them, they do not have their

Saturday, Nov. 4 St. Charles Borromeo, bishop Rom 11:1-2a, 11-12, 25-29 Lk 14:1, 7-11 Sunday, Nov. 5 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time Mal 1:14b–2:2b, 8-10 1Thes 2:7b-9, 13 Mt 23:1-12 Monday, Nov. 6 Rom 11:29-36 Lk 14:12-14

Tuesday, Nov. 7 Rom 12:5-16ab Lk 14:15-24 Wednesday, Nov. 8 Rom 13:8-10 Lk 14:25-33 Thursday, Nov. 9 Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome Ez 47:1-2, 8-9, 12 1 Cor 3:9c-11, 16-17 Jn 2:13-22

children baptized.

Grandparents are keenly aware that baptism is necessary for salvation and have great angst over the fact that their grandchildren are not baptized. The ordinary ministers of baptism are the ordained clergy, bishops, priests and deacons, but in an emergency situation, anyone can baptize. Sometimes grandparents, fretting over the fact that their grandchild is not baptized, consider the situation to be an emergency, take the matter into their own hands, and secretly baptize a grandchild without the parents’ knowledge or without asking the parents’ permission.

Is a secret baptism against the parents’ wishes the right thing to do? No. In fact, the Church prohibits a secret baptism without the knowledge or approval of the parents, except if the child is in immediate danger of death.

So a grandparent, relative or a concerned individual wonders, “If the child is unbaptized, what should be done?” If the parents do not have a sincere desire to have their child baptized, the child should remain unbaptized.

Infant baptism presumes that the parents are practicing the faith, and if they are not doing so, and if there is not a well-founded hope that the child will be raised in the practice of the faith, and if the parents do not choose the faith for their child, essential

Friday, Nov. 10 St. Leo the Great, pope and doctor of the Church Rom 15:14-21 Lk 16:1-8 Saturday, Nov. 11 St. Martin of Tours, bishop Rom 16:3-9, 16, 22-27 Lk 16:9-15 Sunday, Nov. 12 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Wis 6:12-16 1 Thes 4:13-18 Mt 25:1-13

conditions for infant baptism are missing. In that situation, baptism is to be delayed.

Then the hope is that when the child reaches the age of reason, usually as a teenager or an adult, the person will intentionally choose the Catholic faith for him or herself. At that point, the proper route to the reception of baptism is the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA).

In the meantime, what can grandparents or other concerned individuals do?

They can practice their own faith with fervor to give good example to the parents, inspire them and, hopefully, motivate them to act. They can pray for the parents and their unbaptized child. And, if the opportunity should ever present itself, they might gently and tactfully suggest or encourage the parents to both give more attention to their own practice of the faith and to have their children baptized, and to make these suggestions calmly and kindly — without being pushy, preachy or authoritarian — with great diplomacy and being extremely careful not to alienate. Baptism is the gateway to the sacraments and the Christian life, and it is a precious grace to those who receive it.

Father Van Sloun is pastor of St. Bartholomew in Wayzata. This is the seventh column in a series on baptism. Read more of his writing at www.CatholicHotdish.com.

THIS CATHOLIC LIFE • COMMENTARY

October 26, 2017

YOUR HEART, HIS HOME

Liz Kelly

Money in his bank My first job out of university was working as a teller in a bank. I was singing a lot on the weekends and working on my writing, but I needed a regular income, too. My mom had suggested I apply at a bank. She thought it might be useful for me to learn a bit more about how money works, and to that end — bless her heart — she was right.

In another sense, it turns out, I might have been the worst bank teller in all of Lawrence National Bank’s history. On one particularly foul day, I could not — though I tried valiantly — balance my till. I was rushing to finish so I could pick up my sister at the airport, and the harder I tried to close my drawer, the more complicated and larger the error became. My teller station was being taken over by yards and yards of teller tape that dangled and swelled like a terrible paper tentacle. At one point, I thought it might come to life, reach up and choke me.

In pity, and I think in some well-earned dread, the bank manager finally let me leave without resolving the issue. She said, “Go ahead, I’ll balance your drawer for you.”

But she couldn’t. It took a specialist in the main bank’s downtown accounting division to find my error over two days of working on it to put it right again. I would have been fired without her effort. Even though my colleagues knew I did not take any money from my

CATHOLIC WATCHMEN

Vincenzo Randazzo

Rooting out sin I recently watched a video prescribed by the USCCB for parents informing them about the dangers of pornography and cyberbullying. It opens up with a conversation between two mothers talking at the kitchen counter. One is looking for a recipe online for her friend. “That’s strange, my history is deleted,” she says ignorantly.

“Uh oh,” says her friend. “That’s not a good sign.”

“What do you mean?” asks the first woman.

“Well, let me tell you about what happened with my son Billy ... .”

You get the picture.

Please know that I do not watch these instructional videos with popcorn or in my spare time. It was a part of training for my work, and the video is certainly a good thing, despite its inevitable all-around awkwardness. Its lesson for parents was to install internet filters on all devices, be compassionate to your children if they fail, and keep a close eye on children’s use of technology.

All good things. However, if pornography is a war tactic of the devil, and that video was supposed to be a counter attack, then — well — God help us.

“There has to be a better way to fight this,” I thought.

“This video is like mortification or penance.”

Then I realized there is a better way: mortification and penance.

St. Paul wrote, “If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death; if you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life.”

In 2017, when occasions of sin seems directly proportional to occasions of internet access, mortification is necessary for Catholics. It’s reported that a quarter of internet searches are for pornographic material, and it is a third of downloaded material.

drawer, on paper it appeared that my till was short a large amount.

At the end of the calendar year, as a part of a company-wide annual report, all teller offages for the entire year were reported in a statement several pages long at the back of the document. It read something like this: Ashley Baker ... $0.00. Mary Davis ... $0.00. Teresa Franks ... $0.05. Ann Jackson ... $0.00.

And then came my reporting line: Elizabeth Kelly ... $1,879.14.

Failure can be an excellent teacher, and spectacular failure can be a spectacular teacher. A few months later I was on my way to Alaska where I had been rather miraculously recruited for a creative writing program.

No doubt, all of Lawrence National Bank breathed a sigh of relief. And me along with them.

I am mindful of the many occasions I have tried to be someone I wasn’t, someone I thought the world wanted me to be, someone I thought might please someone else. I am wildly grateful for the mentors the Lord has sent me over the years to tease out my gifts and charisms, to help identify them and then to steward them and put them at the service of my heavenly Father. For in this way, I decrease and he must increase.

And someone far better suited and more capable than I can cash your paycheck correctly.

Loving Father, thank you for the gifts you have given me and the opportunities to make you better known and loved through them. Remember all those who are searching for suitable work. Do not tarry in helping them to discover their talents and to put them at your service.

Kelly is the author of six books, including “Jesus Approaches: What Contemporary Women Can Learn about Healing, Freedom and Joy from the Women of the New Testament” (Loyola Press, 2017).

Meanwhile, technology addiction could be affecting even more people. CNN reported that American teens spend nine hours a day in front of a screen, with all sorts of negative consequences on the brain.

While it might seem like we need something extraordinary to fight this culture, I fear we are forgetting the Church’s ordinary prescription for fighting sin: sacrificial offerings, fasting, prayer and mortification. Mortification has been the way saints purified their souls and the souls of others since the crucifixion. A sacrifice, offered up to God in love and as a prayer to purify our culture, is an effective way to fight this battle. This does not mean becoming a hair shirtwearing desert monk, but it might mean doing something extreme.

“If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off,” Jesus said. He exaggerates to prove a point: There are things in our lives that have to go, and to get rid of them might hurt. But it’s worth it. If you are unwilling to cut off the source of your sin, don’t mope; pray God gives you the strength to overcome your addiction and cut something else off, even if it seems unrelated. Cut off coffee or TV or music in your car. Do something for the love of Christ. And pray for the strength to grow in self-control. It’s sacrificial love.

But, to be clear: If your computer is causing you or your child to sin, forget the Net Nanny. Consider throwing your computer out. Show repugnance for sin.

Really, I mean it. If your smart phone is an occasion for you to sin, get rid of it. Do it. You and I both know it is better for you to enter heaven without your iPhone than to go to hell looking at the Apple’s “forbidden fruit” logo and thinking to yourself on the way down, “That’s ironic.”

It might be a very difficult thing to do, but who cares?

In “The Way,” St. Josemaria Escriva wrote, “To defend his purity, St. Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, St. Benedict threw himself into a thorn bush, St. Bernard plunged into an icy pond. ... What have you done?”

Let’s do something.

Randazzo is an evangelization manager in the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and director of development at St. Stephen in Minneapolis.

The Catholic Spirit • 21

GUEST COMMENTARY

Joe Kelly

The Church and Halloween The medieval Catholic Church created the feast of All Saints on Nov. 1 to honor the blessed people who could not be included in the Church’s formal list of saints. In England, the word “hallow” was used to mean the sacred, and thus there the day was All Hallows’ Day. But also of great importance was the day before it, Oct. 31, which was a traditional pagan harvest feast day.

Trying to counter pagan beliefs, the English Catholic Church called this day All Hallows’ Eve, which then became Halloween. The new Christian day took over the pagan harvest festival, and the saints replaced — but not always! — the pagan fertility gods.

Furthermore, the saints substituted for the gods in warding off all the terrors — sprites, trolls, goblins — that roamed the world on All Hallows’ Eve. This was a popular day for medieval Christians.

But as Halloween moved into the modern era, the feast and the Church had to deal with the earthquakes of the Protestant Reformation and then English attempts to stamp out the feast of All Hallows’ Eve. Protestants insisted that they would be guided only by the Bible, and they claimed that the cult of the saints was not there. All Saints’ Day and thus Halloween disappeared in many Protestant locales.

Yet people missed the traditional day, so the English created a substitute festival. On Nov. 5, 1605, British authorities arrested and later executed several English Catholics accused of trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament. One was named Guy Fawkes, thus generating a raucous festival known in England and thus in the British American colonies as Guy Fawkes Day, a substitute for the “Catholic” Halloween.

This new day was popular in the Colonies, but during the Revolution, George Washington feared that the celebration’s blatant anti-Catholicism would offend the rebels’ French Catholic allies.

After the Revolution, Guy Fawkes Day declined, while Halloween would triumph in the United States, which officially separated church and state. Many immigrants had been persecuted in Europe, and so they loved the freedom to celebrate their own religious holidays.

Halloween was observed by the few Scottish immigrants, but especially by the millions of Irish who came to the U.S. They kept their traditions but also changed some, for example, carving scary faces in pumpkins rather than turnips as back in the old country, thus creating jack-o’-lanterns.

Some American Protestants, especially farmers, had also kept some of the old traditions associated with the harvest. The rise of Halloween also helped meet America’s need for holidays since the Colonial ones did not survive the Revolution.

Unfortunately, another tradition, anti-Catholicism, had also crossed the ocean, and Catholic traditions were not always welcome. But as immigrants became Americanized, their traditions became accepted.

The contemporary Church has no official position on the celebration of Halloween since its religious character is largely gone. Rectory doors have been known to be open for trick-or-treaters, and Catholic schools put up Halloween decorations.

Finally, clergy will remind believers that, no matter how secular it has become, Oct. 31 is the eve of a holy day, and some recognition of that is not out of place.

Happy Halloween.

Kelly is professor emeritus at Jesuit-run John Carroll University in Ohio.

22 • The Catholic Spirit

THIS CATHOLIC LIFE • COMMENTARY

FAITH IN THE PUBLIC ARENA

Jason Adkins

Overdoses, violence and God-talk Our society is failing to get to the bottom of the issues. We spend our energy trying to treat the symptoms of social crises, while either ignoring or remaining in denial about the deeper problems in today’s world, which exist first and foremost within the human heart.

Mass shootings, suicides, drug addiction — the litany of crises goes on. We hear about them all the time.

Conferences, rallies and awareness campaigns sprout up at every turn as we seek solutions and meaningful change. But unless we address these problems with an eye to the whole of the human person — a union of body and soul made for relationship with God and others — that change will not come.

For example, a recent column in MinnPost’s Health section cited statistics from the Minnesota Department of Health showing that drug and alcohol-related mortality and suicide are on the rise. This disturbing trend is attributed to an increase in “diseases of despair,” meaning Minnesotans are suffering from an increasing lack of hope, with grave consequences.

The author of the article identifies unemployment, income inequality and lack of opportunity as the main sources of this hopelessness. The implied solution, therefore, is to intervene in some way to change these socioeconomic conditions, which have fomented widespread despair.

If people are more economically secure and have more opportunities, the thought goes, their sense of hopelessness will disappear. Although unemployment or opportunity gaps certainly have some explanatory value in this case, the overall approach of the article is a

Support the Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act In the aftermath of a natural disaster, houses of worship often play an irreplaceable role in the recovery of a community. Discrimination that treats houses of worship as ineligible for federal assistance in the wake of a natural disaster hurts the very communities most affected by the indiscriminate force of nature.

The Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act of 2017 (H.R. 2405/ S.1823) will ensure that churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship damaged in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as well as in future disasters, will be eligible for federal financial aid to repair their damaged buildings on the same terms as other, similarly eligible nonprofits that receive aid from FEMA. The Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act does not ask for special treatment, just equal treatment that conforms to constitutional protections.

Call Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken today and ask them to support S.1823.

Sen. Klobuchar: 1-888-224-9043 Sen. Franken: 651-221-1016 striking example of what Pope Francis calls the “technocratic paradigm” in action.

In his most recent encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis describes the technocratic paradigm as “the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society.”

A technocratic approach to social crises, then, is one which reduces them to considerations of science — social or hard sciences — and technology alone.

Put another way, it’s an instance of reducing a complex human problem to simple economics.

October 26, 2017

Hopelessness can allegedly be engineered out of society, if we create the right program or implement the right policy. Even the term “diseases of despair” is telling.

Despair is now considered a disease, and a disease can be treated, for example, by the state health department.

Of course, we ought to address the difficult problems of mass shootings, substance abuse and suicide, and use all of our means to combat them. Yet, though this sort of action is necessary, it is not sufficient. It fails to speak to the whole of the human person, which is why we continue to struggle with solutions.

Despair is not like the flu; it reaches deep into the human soul. For this reason, Pope Francis calls technocratic solutions one-dimensional; they address only one aspect of the human person, and often overlook the most important human realities.

Is it any wonder that in an increasingly secular society people do not know for whom or what they are made?

Without such knowledge, they develop psychoses, or chase things to fill the God-sized hole in their heart, falling into behaviors that are destructive or that lead them into despair.

As Pope Francis puts it: “When human beings fail to find their true place in this world, they misunderstand themselves and end up acting against themselves.”

Therefore, we cannot stop at the level of the specifically scientific when it comes to social crises. We must look deeper to the root causes, which lie at the heart of what it means to be human.

It is our duty as Christians to remind people — all people, regardless of belief — that they are made for loving relationships, with God and with others.

Such “God talk” is not inconsistent with a commitment to pluralism or respecting others. It’s instead a reminder to all people about the reality of who the human person is: created by God, body and soul, which, as the ancients and our nation’s founders could attest, is a truth that can be known by reason outside the light of faith.

Unless we propose an integrated vision of the person, we will be unable to address fully all of the causes of the social crises around us.

Adkins is executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

LETTERS

Urban missionaries?

Compliments to The Catholic Spirit on its publications of Jason Adkins’ columns and, most recently, “Combating racial disparities” (Sept. 28). The column includes these observations: Racism cannot be fully eradicated by public policy; primary factors contributing to socioeconomic disparities are education, criminal justice and the family; those impacted are categorized by skin color, ethnicity or race; and black children’s family instability is an important part of the U.S. stratification story.

I offer some further observations: The primary, and ranked, factors are the family, education and criminal justice; generalizations overlook a socioeconomic continuum within each of the skin color, ethnicity and race categories; and America’s “racial” issues principally relate to those who are both slave descendants and multigenerational welfare dependents, the majority of whom live in big cities and, by some definitions, live within “another world.”

Catholic missionary priests have historically evangelized within the “underdeveloped world” and influenced the spirituality and culture of millions.

America’s inner big cities are in desperate need of an equivalent commitment of missionaries — call

them “urban missionaries.”

Gene Delaune St. John the Baptist, New Brighton

Engaging lay leadership In “Unfinished” (Oct. 12), Father Lachowitzer gives a heartfelt insight into the long path of healing from the sexual abuse crisis that lies ahead of our local Catholic community. He rightly points out that it goes beyond the legal and compensation issues. It goes to the heart of our community. As such, it needs to actively involve us in the lay community.

If we remain as spectators to the court proceedings and the other efforts of the archdiocese to address this issue, we will be shirking our “responsibility to bring the light of Christ” to this darkness. How can the archdiocese engage us in the lay community to answer Father Lachowitzer’s call to participate in this healing process? One step is to create a structure through which we in the lay community can select representatives who can lead us laity in addressing this and other relevant archdiocesan issues.

Ed Walsh St. Joan of Arc, Minneapolis

Transgender considerations Transgender therapy is rightly the province of scientific research and the medical community and not of

ideological conservative religious groups, like those Jonathan Liedl relies on in “Switching Sexes? Transgender ideology and the Church” (Sept. 28). Jason Adkins, director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, contends that humans are created male or female, disregarding the fact of intersex and the issue of transgender. Liedl discredits the American Psychiatric Association and turns to a single psychiatrist, Dr. Paul McHugh, a Catholic whose critique of transgender therapy ran in “The New Atlantis,” a journal unassociated with the medical profession. Liedl references The American College of Pediatricians, a far right Christian group that the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled “an antiLGBT hate group,” that has protested same-sex adoption, that claims — without evidence — a strong link between abortion and breast cancer, and that is frequently quoted in Breitbart.

Catholics deserve a more balanced discussion of a complex condition.

Mary Ellen Jordan Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis In response to “Switching sexes?”

(Sept. 28), Joe Kruse submitted a letter (Oct. 12) calling out any criticism of the transgender movement as antithetical to the pro-life work of the Church. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pope Francis, a champion of the unborn, as well as the environment, the immigrant

and the poor, has sharply criticized gender ideology on a number of occasions, calling it antithetical to human dignity. Pope Francis explains that our bodies and our planet are both gifts to be received, not mere material to manipulate as we please. In “Laudato Si’,” the pope states, “[T]hinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.” The earth is not ours to plunder and our bodies are not ours to mutilate. The pro-life ethos that undergirds the Catholic response to gender ideology would never condone the direct harm of anyone, let alone someone who is confused about their sexual identity. In fact, a pro-life response to gender ideology must be to teach others that the human body — whether it’s ours or someone else’s — is a gift from God deserving of respect and dignity. The Church has no choice but to reject the ideology of gender if it wants to show real love to those who have fallen under its spell.

Alexa Kuwata St. Mark, St. Paul Share your perspective by emailing CatholicSpirit@ archspm.org. Please limit your letter to the editor to 150 words and include your parish and phone number.

The Commentary page does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Catholic Spirit. Letters may be edited for length or clarity.

CALENDAR

October 26, 2017

Bloomington. $10 adults, $5 children ages 6-11, free 5 and under. 952-888-1492 or www.bloomingtoneventcenter.com/events.

CALENDAR submissions DEADLINE: Noon Thursday, 14 days before the anticipated Thursday date of publication. We cannot guarantee a submitted event will appear in the calendar. Priority is given to events occurring before the next issue date.

www.blessedsacramentsp.org.

St. Timothy’s Christmas Fair — Nov. 4: 9 a.m.– 3:30 p.m. at St. Timothy, 707 89th Ave. N.E., Blaine.

Christmas Craft Fair. Bake shoppe and luncheon.

All-you-can-eat pancake breakfast — Nov. 12: 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. St. Odilia, 3495 N. Victoria St., Shoreview. Proceeds support athletic department. www.stodilia.org.

LISTINGS: Accepted are brief no­tices of upcoming events hosted by Catholic parishes and institutions.

If the Catholic connection is not clear, please emphasize it in your submission.

ACCW Holiday Bazaar — Nov. 4: 9 a.m.–3 p.m. at Assumption, 305 E. 77th St., Richfield. Annual holiday bazaar featuring handmade crafts, baked goods, games, food, gifts, vendors and a silent auction. www.assumptionrichfield.org.

Fall Festival pancake breakfast — Nov. 12: 9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. at St. Richard, 7540 Penn. Ave. S., Richfield. www.strichards.com.

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

Music A Celebration of Catholicism’s Timeless Beauty — Oct. 29: 7 p.m. at St. Mark, 2001 Dayton Ave., St. Paul. Will feature one decade of the rosary in song, a Palestrina work and Mozart’s “Exultate Jubilate.” Speaker Dale Alquist on beauty in the Catholic faith. www.saintmark-mn.org.

calendarsubmissions

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

Hope Sings Eternal — Nov. 4: 7:30–9 p.m. at St. Olaf, 215 S. Eighth St., Minneapolis. The St. Paul Vocal Forum and Central Presbyterian Choir are joined by organist David Jenkins to perform Morten Lauridsen’s “Lux Aeterna” and other songs of hope. www.spvf.net.

Festivals: thecatholicspirit.com/festivals

Dining out KC Pro-Life Dinner — Oct. 28: 6–9 p.m. at St. Albert, Parish Center, 11400 57th St. N.E., Albertville. 6 p.m. social followed by 6:30 p.m. chicken dinner. Speaker Brian Gibson. For reservations, call 763-497-3909. www.kc4174.org.

Waffle breakfast — Oct. 29: 8 a.m.–1 p.m. at Guardian Angels, 8260 4th St. N., Oakdale. www.guardian-angels.org.

Dad’s Belgian waffle breakfast — Oct. 29: 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. at St. John the Baptist, 835 Second Ave. N.W., New Brighton. $8 per person, children under 5 free, carry-out plates. www.stjohnnb.com.

KC breakfast — Oct. 29: 9 a.m.–noon at St. Patrick, 1095 Desoto St., St. Paul.

Bloomington Knights of Columbus Auxiliary spaghetti dinner — Nov. 7: 5–7 p.m. at Bloomington Event Center, 1114 American Blvd.,

The Catholic Spirit • 23

Fair and ethical trade sale — Nov. 11: 10 a.m.– 5 p.m. at St. John Neumann/St. Thomas Becket, 4030 Pilot Knob Road, Eagan. Sale of handmade crafts, tea, food items and chocolate produced by artisans and farmers from around the world. www.sjn.org.

Turkey Bingo — Nov. 11: 6:30–8:30 p.m. at St. Odilia, 3495 N. Victoria St., Shoreview. Prizes include turkeys and cash. www.stodilia.org.

Turkey Bingo — Nov. 12: 5:30–9 p.m. at St. Michael, 22120 Denmark Ave., Farmington. Hosted by the Farmington Knights of Columbus. Sloppy Joe dinner at 5:30 p.m. followed by bingo. $8 per person, maximum $25 per family. www.stmichael-farmington.org.

Speakers

Parish events Eucharistic miracles exhibition — Oct. 26–28: 3 p.m. at Our Lady of the Prairie, 200 E. Church St., Belle Plaine. A photographic exhibition of eucharistic miracles from around the world will be on display.

Free. 3–8 p.m. Oct. 26 with a speaker presentation at 6:30 p.m.; 9–11 a.m. and 3–8 p.m. Oct. 27 with speaker at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m.; 10 a.m–8 p.m. Oct. 28 with speaker at 10:30 a.m. www.ourladyoftheprairie.com.

Andrew Dinner — Nov. 9: 6–8 p.m. at Lumen Christi, 2055 Bohland Ave., St. Paul. For men ages 16-50 who are discerning the priesthood. Hosted by Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Bishop Andrew Cozzens and vocations director Father David Blume. Register before Nov. 6 at www.10000vocations.org/events.html.

Boutique and bake sale — Oct. 28: 9 a.m.– 5:30 p.m. at Church of St. Paul, 1740 Bunker Lake Blvd. N.E., Ham Lake. www.churchofsaintpaul.com.

Come and See Retreat — Nov. 3-5: at St. Peter, 2600 Margaret St. N., North St. Paul. Sponsored by Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. For women ages 18-35 who would like to take time to discern if God may be calling them to religious life. www.carmelitesistersocd.com/come-and-see.

John Paul II and the Fall of Communism — Nov. 4: 9 a.m.–noon at Blessed Sacrament, 2119 Stillwater Ave. E., St. Paul. Includes screening of the documentary film, “Liberating a Continent: John Paul II and the Fall of Communism.” Mass at 9 a.m. followed by screening of the 112-minute film.

Retreats

Vianney Visit — Nov. 16-18: at St. John Vianney College Seminary, University of St. Thomas, 2115

Summit Ave., St. Paul. For young men ages 16-24 to learn more about seminary. www.stthomas.edu/vianney/events/visittheseminary.

Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina — Nov. 24-26: at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. www.stpaulsmonastery.org.

Conferences/workshops Training for Early Catholic Family Life program — Oct. 28: 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Annunciation Catholic School, 525 54th St. W., Minneapolis. $200. Alan or Joanne Foley at 612-704-7306 or alanfol@gmail.com.

Aging with Dignity — Nov. 7, Dec. 5: 7–9 p.m. at The Benedictine Center at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood. 651-777-7251 or www.stpaulsmonastery.org.

Deepening Spirituality Series, Benedictine tradition — Nov. 13, Dec. 12: 6:30–8:30 p.m. at St. Catherine University, Coeur de Catherine, Conference Room 362, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul.

Learning from Christian spiritual traditions. www.stkate.edu/news-and-events.

Schools All-school open house and preschool and kindergarten play date — Nov. 4: 9:30 a.m.–noon at Immaculate Conception School, 4030 Jackson St. N.E., Columbia Heights. Play date 9:30–11 a.m. Free.

Open house 9:30 a.m.–noon. 763-788-9065 or www.ICCSonline.org.

Young adults Cathedral Young Adults Barn Dance — Nov. 11: 6:30–10 p.m. at Cathedral of St. Paul, Hayden Hall, 239 Selby Ave., St. Paul. Square dancing 7-9 p.m.; swing, polka, waltz and foxtrot 9-10 p.m. www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/cya.

Other events Art and Spirituality Art Exhibit — Through Nov. 1: 9 a.m.–6 p.m. at The Benedictine Center at St. Paul’s Monastery, 2675 Benet Road, Maplewood.

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

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24 • The Catholic Spirit

THE LAST WORD

October 26, 2017 LEFT Iconographer Nicholas Markell, left, demonstrates a painting technique to Diana Lein of St. John the Baptist in New Brighton Oct. 11 during an icon workshop at St. Mary in Stillwater.

BELOW This original work depicting the Infant of Prague will be part of Markell’s display at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.

Photos by Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

In a

different light

Work of local iconographer subject of Basilica exhibition

By Melenie Soucheray For The Catholic Spirit

F

or years, icons created by local iconographer Nicholas Markell have been included in the Basilica of St. Mary’s icon procession, held annually at the Minneapolis parish to coincide with All Saints Day. This year’s procession Nov. 4 will be no exception.

It coincides, however, with the opening of “Windows to Heaven: A Visual Hymn of Praise,” a retrospective of Markell’s work and life. On display in the Basilica’s John XXIII Gallery, the exhibition will focus on Markell as an artist and theologian.

For 20 years, Markell, 56, has been creating liturgical art, primarily focusing on icons, stained glass design and graphics for publications. His word-ofmouth clientele is international, but he’s done many local commissions. His work is visible in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis at several churches, including St. Michael in St. Michael; St. Thomas the Apostle and Our Lady of Lourdes, both in Minneapolis; and St. John the Baptist in Savage.

Iconography, or the painting of icons, is different from other forms of artmaking, Markell explained. Rather than being a realistic depiction, an icon packs symbols into the representation of a holy person.

To illustrate the point, Markell pointed to St. Francis of Assisi.

“If you have a beautiful painting of St. Francis and he is preaching to the animals in the forest, it’s a very natural depiction,” he said. “It’s an image that reminds us that he walked on the earth, that he did good things, that he was one of us in earthly things and history.”

He continued: “If you look at an icon of St. Francis, it reminds you more of who he is now — in heaven, in the spiritual realm — not who he was historically, but who he is mystically.

He’s not with us anymore. He has died.

His body is in the grave. But, he will be

resurrected with the resurrected body.

So, the icon of Francis opens up another realm of him that history could not.

That is more real to why he’s present with us now.”

Markell is expanding his work in liturgical design, and he conducts workshops for iconographers of varying levels of experience. His weeklong workshops have been held at his home parish of St. Mary and St. Michael in Stillwater; Mary, Mother of the Church, Burnsville; St. John the Baptist, Savage; and St. John the Baptist, New Brighton.

He’s also given workshops in California.

“One of my favorite things with icons is doing the workshops, because it helps expose people to a very rich tradition, some for the first time,” he said. “They get to experience just how deep and rich the tradition is and how prayerful it is.

That energizes me and stretches my commitment to what I’m doing. It’s important, and it’s affecting people’s lives. You can’t ask for more.”

In 2013, Father Erich Rutten commissioned Markell to create an icon of St. Thomas Aquinas for the University of St. Thomas’ Center for Campus Ministry. Then the center’s director, Father Rutten gathered information from St. Thomas faculty, including theology professor and Aquinas scholar John Boyle, to inform Markell’s design. Called “Holy Thomas,” the finished 65-by-44-inch icon hangs in the center’s lobby.

“The icon reminds us to keep the love of Christ in our hearts,” said Father Rutten, now pastor of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul.

Markell can create a smaller icon in as little as a week, he said, but “Holy Thomas” took six months. The exhibition’s catalogue includes 170 icons he’s painted over three decades.

“Holy Thomas” is one of Markell’s favorites, as is the icon of the Holy Family he created for St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul. He favors the icons he creates that allow him to “go deeper into the tradition,” and apply that tradition to the needs of the Church today, he said.

A native of Owatonna, Markell earned a bachelor of arts degree in fine arts from the University of St. Thomas in St.

Paul. After working for a short time in marketing, Markell entered the New Jersey novitiate of the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, aka the Paulists, in 1985. He was drawn to that community because it was the first American male Catholic religious order, he said. The Paulists work extensively in the media, including book publication, filmmaking, and radio and television production.

He described his discernment with the Paulists as a six-year journey, during which he encountered icons. He first wrote papers about them, then began creating them.

“I had been somewhat familiar with icons through my art studies, but not so much from a theology point of view,” he said. “It was more from an art point of view.”

From New Jersey, he went to Washington, D.C., where he lived at a house for Paulists studying in the area.

He pursued theological studies at the Washington Theological Union in Silver Spring, Maryland, and then earned a master of arts in sacred theology and a master of divinity degree.

Along the way, he anticipated ordination, but at the end, he felt like he had been called to the experience of seminary rather than the priesthood.

He left the order, but apprenticed in stained glass-making in Virginia before moving back to Minnesota in 1995.

He maintained his connections to the Paulists, working part-time creating studio illustrations and book covers for the Paulist Press. In 1997, he opened Markell Studios in Hugo.

Today, Markell is married and has a son who attends St. Croix Catholic School in Stillwater.

In addition to painting icons, Markell is also a wildlife artist. It’s a hobby, but he’s won several competitions for his efforts, including the 2018 Minnesota wild turkey stamp.

“I come from a background where there were a lot of wildlife artists. I grew up with that,” he said. “It’s relaxing to focus on the natural, but also I do bring in something, which is light.

“In iconography, you’re concerned with light, because Christ is light,” he added. “You are depicting a spiritual

Icons on parade For 23 years, the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis has displayed a collection of icons in its sanctuary to coincide with the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, Nov. 1 and 2. This year, the annual Festival of Icons will open Nov. 5 with the Procession of Icons during the 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. Masses. Nearly 80 icons will be on display this year.

“Whenever we gather for worship, we gather within the communion of the saints, and they are there with us, though we may not see them,” said Johan Van Parys, the Basilica’s director of liturgy in the sacred arts.

People also bring photos of loved ones who have died.

“They place those photos on the side altars so that we are surrounded by all saints and all souls during the month of November,” said Van Parys. “It’s very much a sacred exhibition, and we treat the icons as they ought to be treated. They are not just works of art; they are sacred objects. They should be revered, because the icon is the visual word of God.” — Melenie Soucheray light, so it’s not a natural light.

Ironically, the work that I’ve done depicts light in a way that maybe would never be depicted in the natural realm.

It’s beautiful, and it makes great design.

I probably would not have done that wildlife art had I not become an iconographer in the meantime.”

The retrospective of Markell’s iconography at the Basilica is funded through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Arts and Culture Heritage Fund. It’s free and open to the public throughout November on Saturdays, 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. For more information about Markell’s work, visit www.markellstudios.com.