The Catholic Spirit - September 24, 2020

September 24, 2020 • Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

She lost sons St. Paul woman finds hope and healing after tragic murders, although the pain of losing her two boys ‘is always there.’

— Pages 10-11

Inmate outreach Prison ministry participants may be able to resume visits to correctional facilities within six weeks, department commissioner says during Sept. 19 forum.

— Page 5

Fighting racism In MCC webinar, Bishop Shelton Fabre says Catholics ‘must assist’ in the battle to end racial inequity and injustice.

— Page 6

Homily reaction Archbishop Hebda writes letter to Catholics on priest’s controversial remarks about COVID-19.

— Page 7

ON YOUR MARK DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Retired, but not tired Christians in Commerce puts wisdom of experienced business leaders to work helping the next generation bring faith to the marketplace.

— Page 12

Deacon Matthew Damiani, front left, of St. Peter in Forest Lake gets ready to run a 5K called Piece of Cake at the parish with his son Nate, second from left, and daughter Maria Sept. 19. Another daughter, Libby, also ran the race. Deacon Damiani’s wife, Lisa (background, left, wearing red jacket), cheered them on with their three youngest children (in stroller): Peter, left, Veronica and Gemma. The socially distanced event was part of the annual parish festival, with many of the activities this year held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. A total of 21 people participated in the 5K, which was more than youth minister and race organizer David Flynn was expecting. “I’m happy and surprised” by the turnout, Flynn said. The festival “is more bare bones than in years past, but we’re making the best of it with the things that we can do” safely during the pandemic, he said. “That’s what Catholicism is all about — being in person and being in relationship.” Before the race, the pastor of St. Peter, Father Daniel Bodin, gathered with the participants and prayed a blessing. After crossing the finish line, everyone got a piece of cake. The winner of the race was Father Paul Shovelain, who served as parochial vicar of St. Peter from 2014-2016 and is now pastor of St. John the Baptist in New Brighton.

Two Catholic women judges top short list as possible Supreme Court nominees

By Carol Zimmerman Catholic News Service

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wo Catholic women judges are on the short list of possible candidates to fill the vacant Supreme Court justice seat after the Sept. 18 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The judges are Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appellate court judge in Chicago, and Barbara Lagoa, a federal appeals court judge in Atlanta.

President Donald Trump told reporters the afternoon of Sept. 19, and rallygoers later that evening, that he intended to pick a Supreme Court nominee in the coming days, and it would likely be a woman. He later said he planned to announce the nominee Sept. 26.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, pledged hours after Ginsburg’s death that he would hold a vote on Trump’s nominee to fill the court vacancy despite blocking President Barack Obama’s nominee in 2016, after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death that February, because it was an election year.

McConnell and other Republicans

CNS

Judge Barbara Lagoa of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit is seen in this 2019 file photo. Prior to becoming a federal judge, she was the first Hispanic woman to be appointed as a justice of the Supreme Court of Florida. have said the situation is different this time because the same party, Republicans, control both the Senate and the White House.

To move Trump’s nominee through the Senate would require a simple majority vote. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said that if he wins the election, he should be the one

CNS

Amy Coney Barrett is pictured in this undated photo. She is a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. to nominate Ginsburg’s successor.

One of the first names to emerge as a possible contender for Ginsburg’s seat — raised while mourners were gathered on the steps of the court chanting, “RBG!” — was Barrett, a 48-year-old who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit Court, based in Chicago.

PLEASE TURN TO SUPREME COURT ON PAGE 9

2 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

PAGETWO NEWS notes

18

The anniversary this year of the annual Children’s Rosary Pilgrimage, which includes the archbishop or auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis leading Catholic elementary and homeschool children in a rosary and reflection on the lives of Jesus and Mary. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s event will be held virtually at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 7 with Archbishop Bernard Hebda and the hosts, Father John Paul Erickson, pastor of Transfiguration in Oakdale, and students and teachers at Transfiguration School. Traditionally, about 2,500 children and their teachers fill the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. This year’s virtual event could draw even more school children from across the archdiocese — and now their parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors — because the “seating” online is unlimited. The rosary will be livestreamed at youtube.com/c/transfigurationoakdale.

10 CNS

FIRE AFTERMATH A woman displaced from the destroyed Moria refugee camp prays in the parking lot of a supermarket on the Greek island of Lesbos Sept. 15. The camp, which was mostly destroyed in fires Sept. 9, was home to at least 12,000 people, six times its maximum capacity of just over 2,000 asylum-seekers.

SCHOOL BLESSINGS Father Kyle Kowalczyk, pastor of St. Maximilian Kolbe in Delano, blesses fourth-graders in their classroom Sept. 11 as the parish school starts a new year. He also presided at a school Mass, blessed other students in their classrooms and the playground and school building.

Social distancing and other measures to prevent spread of the novel coronavirus are being followed at the school, and Father Kowalczyk prayed for the health and safety of everyone.

The number of people in a video from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, including Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Deacon Mickey Friesen, director of the Center for Mission in the archdiocese, congratulating Bishop Joseph Mwongela on his Aug. 29 ordination as bishop and installation as leader of the Diocese of Kitui, Kenya. The archdiocese has had a special “partnership of solidarity” with the Kitui diocese since 2004, and plans had been for Archbishop Hebda and others to travel to Kenya for the ordination. The coronavirus pandemic made that impossible, but the video sent to Bishop Mwongela expressed prayers and support.

71

The number of years ago that Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio first awarded a Poverello Medal, its highest non-academic honor. This year, the award went to West St. Paul-based NET Ministries, founded as a nonprofit in 1981 to organize teams of young adults to evangelize teens around the country through retreats and workshops.

The Poverello Medal recognizes organizations and individuals who imitate St. Francis of Assisi, “Il Poverello” (the little poor man), by their character, Christian charity, and love for and service to the poor. First presented in 1949 to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, awardees also include St. Teresa of Kolkata, who received the medal in person in 1976. NET Ministries received the Poverello Medal Sept. 15.

4

The number of parishes with ministries honored last year by the archdiocese’s Office of Stewardship with its inaugural Pillars of Stewardship Awards. The office is accepting written nominations for this year’s “Stewies” through Sept. 30. The honors include one award given for each pillar of stewardship: prayer, participation and generosity.

Nomination forms can be found at archspm.org/stewies.

20

The total number of people who participated in two online candidate town halls Sept. 19, coordinated by parishioners from the Church of St. Paul in Ham Lake and St. Patrick in Oak Grove. The Minnesota Catholic Conference is encouraging parishes across the state to host a town hall for candidates in their district’s House and Senate races. St. Paul and St. Patrick parishes are located in Minnesota Senate District 31, represented by Sen. Michelle Benson, a Republican, who participated in that town hall. Benson’s challenger was invited but could not attend. The second town hall featured Minnesota House District 31B incumbent Rep. Cal Bahr, also a Republican, who represents the area around the Ham Lake church. St. Patrick is in House District 31A, but neither the incumbent for that district nor the challenger could attend. Information about setting up a parish town hall can be found at mncatholic.org/townhall.

COURTESY MARY ZIEBELL, ST. MAXIMILIAN KOLBE SCHOOL

REDISCOVER:Hour On the show that aired Sept. 18, Rediscover:Hour host Patrick Conley interviewed Allison Spies and Zach Jansen of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office of Archives and Records Management about Catholic archives and ways to create personal archives at home. Jonathan Liedl discussed his article in The Catholic Spirit about racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement, and Laura Kelly Fanucci, a writer, speaker and author whose monthly column appears in The Catholic Spirit, talked about homeschooling in this “new normal.” Listen each week on Fridays at 9 a.m., Saturdays at noon and Sundays at 2 p.m. on Relevant Radio 1330 AM. Find past shows at rediscover.archspm.org.

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CORRECTION A story in the Sept. 10 edition incorrectly reported the years that the late Father George Thoomkuzhy ministered in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. He ministered in the archdiocese from 1996 to 2014.

The Catholic Spirit is published semi-monthly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Vol. 25 — No. 18 MOST REVEREND BERNARD A. HEBDA, Publisher TOM HALDEN, Associate Publisher MARIA C. WIERING, Editor-in-Chief JOE RUFF, News Editor

5

The number of sessions in a virtual series that runs through Oct. 11 called “Praying with Scripture,” held in preparation for the 2022 Archdiocesan Synod in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. After their initial release, each session also is archived and available online at archspm.org/synod. The third session, “Conversation with God: Acknowledge, Relate, Receive, Respond,” will be posted to the website Sept. 27. Each Tuesday, a new video is streamed at 7 p.m. on the archdiocese’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. Archbishop Bernard Hebda said the series came out of a desire Catholics expressed for prayer instruction during Pre-Synod Prayer and Listening Events that were held from September 2019 to March 2020. Led by Archbishop Hebda and Bishop Andrew Cozzens, the series uses videos and written materials. The series also can be found through the myParish app by searching for “Archdiocesan Synod.”

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SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 3

FROMTHEBISHOP ONLY JESUS | BISHOP ANDREW COZZENS

Living the Gospel of Life in 2020

W

hen St. Teresa of Kolkata received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, as everyone was watching to see what this saintly woman from the slums of India would say about peace, she shocked the world when she said, “The greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent, unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other?” She repeated the same line in front of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton at the national prayer breakfast in 1994. She also added: “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

This year as we celebrate Respect Life Sunday (Oct. 4), we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the landmark pro-life encyclical of St. John Paul II, “Evangelium Vitae: Living the Gospel of Life.” Interestingly, St. John Paul II has the same insight as St. Teresa of Kolkata. He says there can be no “true peace unless life is defended and promoted.” And he explains why: “It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. A society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized. Only respect for life can be the foundation and guarantee of the most precious and essential goods of society, such as democracy and peace.”

It is in the light of the prophetic voices of these two saints that we can come to understand the voting advice the U.S. bishops approved last November in their statement on the upcoming election: “The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the

Viviendo el Evangelio de la Vida en 2020

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uando Santa Teresa de Calcuta recibió el Premio Nobel de la Paz en 1979, mientras todos miraban para ver lo que esta santa mujer de los barrios pobres de la India diría sobre la paz, sorprendió al mundo cuando dijo: “El mayor destructor de la paz hoy es el llanto del niño inocente por nacer. Porque si una madre puede asesinar a su propio hijo en su propio vientre, ¿qué nos queda a ti ya mí para matarnos unos a otros?

Repitió la misma línea frente al presidente Bill Clinton y la primera dama Hillary Clinton en el desayuno de oración nacional en 1994. También agregó: “Cualquier país que acepta el aborto no está enseñando a su gente a amar, sino a usar la violencia para conseguir ellos quieren. Por eso el mayor destructor del amor y la paz es el aborto”.

Este año, al celebrar el Domingo de Respeto a la Vida (4 de octubre), conmemoramos el 25 aniversario de la histórica encíclica provida de San Juan Pablo II, “Evangelium Vitae: Viviendo el Evangelio de la vida”. Curiosamente, San Juan Pablo II tiene la misma percepción que Santa Teresa de Calcuta. Dice que no puede haber “verdadera paz a menos que se defienda y promueva la vida”. Y explica por qué: “Es imposible promover el bien común sin reconocer y defender el derecho a la vida, sobre el que se fundamentan y se desarrollan todos los demás derechos inalienables de las personas. Una sociedad

sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed.”

Of course, this does not mean that there are not many other ways that we are called to respect and defend life.

As the bishops also say in their statement: “At the same time, we cannot dismiss or ignore other serious threats to human life and dignity such as racism, the environmental crisis, poverty and the death penalty.”

If you read “Evangelium Vitae” which I highly recommend you do, you will find this full picture of what it means to respect life, which includes condemnations of euthanasia, racism and the death penalty as well as the Church’s concern for the poor, the immigrant and the environment. To be pro-life means we must work against all these evils because we proclaim a culture that welcomes and holds up the inherent dignity of each human life regardless of race, creed, sex, special need, age or nationality. Each life is directly willed by God from the moment of conception until natural death, and he desires each person to live with him in eternity. And yet the weakest and the most vulnerable have a special claim on our help, especially those who are too young to have a voice of their own. As St. John Paul II says, “Today there exists a great multitude of weak and defenseless human beings, unborn children in particular, whose fundamental right to life is being trampled upon …. Such attacks strike human life at the time of its greatest frailty, when it lacks any means of self-defense.”

This evil, which we perhaps have grown too accustomed to because it has been legal for 57 years, claims more innocent lives than any other in our culture.

Almost 1 million abortions happen in our country every year; that is more than 2,000 a day. (And this only counts the surgical abortions and not those done by chemical “contraceptives” that often also cause abortions.) The attitude that treats the inestimable gift of a human life as a choice to be disposed of continues to teach our children that not every human being has inherent dignity and that violence and death may be the answer to their problems.

As Pope Francis has made clear, “This defense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human

carece de cimientos sólidos cuando, por un lado, afirma valores como la dignidad de la persona, la justicia y la paz, pero luego, por otro lado, actúa radicalmente en sentido contrario al permitir o tolerar diversas formas de la vida humana es devaluada y violada, especialmente donde es débil o marginada. Solo el respeto por la vida puede ser la base y garantía de los bienes más preciados y esenciales de la sociedad, como la democracia y la paz”.

Es a la luz de las voces proféticas de estos dos santos que podemos llegar a comprender el consejo de votación que los obispos estadounidenses aprobaron en noviembre pasado en su declaración sobre las próximas elecciones: “La amenaza del aborto sigue siendo nuestra principal prioridad porque ataca directamente la vida en sí mismo, porque tiene lugar dentro del santuario de la familia, y por la cantidad de vidas destruidas”.

Por supuesto, esto no significa que no haya muchas otras formas en las que estemos llamados a respetar y defender la vida. Como también dicen los obispos en su declaración: “Al mismo tiempo, no podemos descartar o ignorar otras amenazas graves a la vida y la dignidad humanas como el racismo, la crisis ambiental, la pobreza y la pena de muerte”. Si lees “Evangelium Vitae” de San Juan Pablo II, que te recomiendo encarecidamente, encontrarás esta imagen completa de lo que significa respetar la vida, que incluye condenas a la eutanasia, el racismo y la pena de muerte, así como la La preocupación de

being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems. Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defense of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be” (“Evangelii Gaudium,” No. 213). We will not end racism and violence, we will not heal our culture of death, until we become a culture that recognizes the inherent dignity of the unborn child.

How then are we as Catholics called to proclaim this Gospel of Life?

First, we must always speak of God’s mercy to those who have been directly involved in abortion. We know that many women choose abortion under pressures that limit their culpability; this is why we sponsor healing retreats like Rachel’s Vineyard every year for those who have been wounded by abortion. No sin is beyond God’s mercy, and many women who have had abortions have become incredible pro-life advocates.

Second, we must work to make abortion unnecessary.

We are so blessed to have an incredible network of crisis pregnancy centers in the Twin Cities. No woman or man ever needs to choose abortion, because no child is unwanted. These wonderful centers in every community will walk with any woman in a crisis pregnancy and give her the resources to choose life for her child, including offering her adoption with loving parents if that is what the birth mother needs.

Third, we must work for the legal right to life for the unborn. This includes electing civil officials who will work to change our laws regarding abortion and implement other policies that work to safeguard the life and dignity of the unborn. As long as the law of our land enshrines the “right” to kill an innocent child, no one’s rights are safe.

What other right matters if there is no right to life itself?

During this Respect Life month, the Church appeals to every Catholic, and every member of society, as St. John Paul II did 25 years ago: “In the name of God: Respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life! Only in this direction will you find justice, development, true freedom, peace and happiness!”

la Iglesia por los pobres, los inmigrantes y el medio ambiente. Ser provida significa que debemos trabajar contra todos estos males porque proclamamos una cultura que da la bienvenida y sostiene la dignidad inherente de cada vida humana sin importar raza, credo, sexo, necesidad especial, edad o nacionalidad. Cada vida es querida directamente por Dios desde el momento de la concepción hasta la muerte natural y desea que cada uno viva con él en la eternidad.

Y, sin embargo, los más débiles y vulnerables tienen un derecho especial a nuestra ayuda, especialmente aquellos que son demasiado jóvenes para tener una voz propia. Como dice San Juan Pablo II, “Hoy existe una gran multitud de seres humanos débiles e indefensos, en particular niños por nacer, cuyo derecho fundamental a la vida está siendo pisoteado…. Estos ataques afectan la vida humana en el momento de su mayor fragilidad, cuando carece de cualquier medio de autodefensa”.

Este mal, al que quizás nos hemos acostumbrado demasiado porque ha sido legal durante 57 años, cobra más vidas inocentes que cualquier otro en nuestra cultura. Casi 1 millón de abortos ocurren en nuestro país cada año; eso es más de 2000 al día. (Y esto solo cuenta los abortos quirúrgicos y no los que se realizan con “anticonceptivos” químicos que a menudo también causan abortos). La actitud que trata el inestimable regalo de una vida humana como una opción para desechar continúa enseñándoles a nuestros hijos que

no todos El ser humano tiene una dignidad inherente y que la violencia y la muerte pueden ser la respuesta a sus problemas.

Como ha dejado claro el Papa Francisco, “Esta defensa de la vida no nacida está estrechamente vinculada a la defensa de todos y cada uno de los demás derechos humanos. Implica la convicción de que el ser humano es siempre sagrado e inviolable, en cualquier situación y en cada etapa de su desarrollo. Los seres humanos son fines en sí mismos y nunca un medio para resolver otros problemas. Una vez que esta convicción desaparece, también desaparecen bases sólidas y duraderas para la defensa de los derechos humanos, que siempre estarán sujetos a los caprichos pasajeros de los poderes fácticos” (“Evangelii Gaudium”, n. 213). No acabaremos con el racismo y la violencia, no curaremos nuestra cultura de la muerte, hasta que seamos una cultura que reconozca la dignidad inherente del feto.

Entonces, ¿cómo estamos llamados católicos a proclamar este Evangelio de la vida?

Durante este mes de Respeto a la vida, la Iglesia apela a todos los católicos y a todos los miembros de la sociedad, como lo hizo San Juan Pablo II hace 25 años: “En el nombre de Dios: ¡Respeten, protejan, amen y sirvan la vida, cada vida humana! ¡Solo en esta dirección encontrarás justicia, desarrollo, verdadera libertad, paz y felicidad!”

Lea una versión más larga de esta columna en español en TheCatholicSpirit.com.

4 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

LOCAL

Second goodbye Gianna Borg, with help from her parents, Tricia and Brian, and Archbishop Bernard Hebda, sprinkles holy water on the ledger, or grave stone, of Archbishop Harry Flynn at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights Sept. 22, the one-year anniversary of his death, during a blessing ceremony. The Borgs, members of Holy Family in St. Louis Park, named the second of their five children Peter Flynn, after the archbishop, a long-time family friend who was the celebrant at their wedding Mass in 2012. “The day Peter Flynn was born (May 18, 2015), we called him (Archbishop Flynn) to tell him that he was born and his name (would be Peter Flynn),” said Tricia, 32. “At first, he was speechless. And, he said, ‘I’ve had buildings named after me and institutions and all sorts of things, but I’ve never had a child named after me.’ … For us, it was a beautiful way to honor him and the gift that he gave to us.”

The family’s friendship extended to Archbishop Flynn’s two beloved dogs, Megan and Katie, who accompanied him to numerous places, including the Borgs’ home and the home of Tricia’s parents, Dr. Peter and Lulu Daly of St. Peter in Mendota. “Not surprisingly, Peter Flynn’s our animal lover,” said Brian, 33. “He loves dogs. We don’t have one, but we have lots of dogs in the neighborhood. And, Peter is always the one that’s out there petting the dogs.” Tricia remembers and treasures the first prayer Archbishop Flynn prayed for Peter Flynn: “May he only know love.”

She added: “Archbishop was such a loving soul.

And, that’s all he wanted was for people to know the love of God.”

SLICEof LIFE DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

celebrating THE GENEROSITY OF THE LEGACY SOCIETY

Members of the Legacy Society have entrusted their charitable legacies to the perpetual, faith-consistent stewardship of the Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota. In all, these members have committed more than $100 million to benefit the parishes, schools, missions, and ministries of our Catholic community. When endowed, these gifts will yield $4 million in grants to our community every single year – forever.

For it is in giving that we – and future generations – receive.

Please join us in offering a prayer of thanksgiving for the collective, visionary generosity of the Legacy Society of the Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota.

To learn more about the Legacy Society, call 651.389.0300.

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LOCAL

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 5

After COVID-19 shutdown, in-person prison ministries may soon resume

By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit

PEN PAL POTENTIAL

Prison ministry participants — whose faith, hope and mercy are often part of inmates’ successful return to society — may be able to enter prisons again within the next six weeks following the prisons’ COVID-19 shutdown, according to Paul Schnell, Minnesota Department of Corrections commissioner.

Schnell spoke Sept. 19 along with Archbishop Bernard Hebda at a forum on prison ministry.

“The very people who oftentimes have been the cornerstones of transformation of hope, of safety, … the members of faith communities are disconnected from that opportunity to connect,” since the shutdown began last March, Schnell said, adding that the return of faith-based and other volunteer groups will depend on a threshold of virus positivity set by the Minnesota Department of Health.

Connecting with a faith community while in prison helps inmates return to society sooner, Schnell said.

“We are working to transform the lives of those in the system and also demonstrate, in the way we live and help others see the world, that people are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done,” he said.

The forum, “Christian Prison Ministry in a Time of Change: Finding the Future Together,” also featured a panel discussion with prison chaplains and employees. It was sponsored by Twin Cities Prison Ministry and organized in partnership with the University of St. Thomas and the Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota, all based in St. Paul, and the Center for Mission in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

It was held at the University of St. Thomas with about 100 in-person and virtual participants, including pastors and ministers, and representatives of non-Catholic prison ministries.

Transformation often results when ministry participants proclaim God’s mercy, said Archbishop Hebda, citing Pope Francis’ teaching on people who are incarcerated.

“We have to remember that we have a God who is

By becoming a pen pal, Catholics can offer people in prison contact with the outside world, especially as in-person visits are restricted during the coronavirus pandemic.

Through a pen pal program started five years ago by the Order of Malta’s American Association, about 500 men and women are writing at least one letter per month to U.S. or Canadian prison inmates, according to Knight of Malta Steve Hawkins, program coordinator and a parishioner at St. John Neumann in Eagan.

The Order of Malta is an international lay religious order with roughly 2,000 U.S. members and volunteers. The ministry matches pen pals with inmates who share interests while protecting the writers’ anonymity, he said. Order of Malta membership isn’t required, but pen pals agree to maintain the correspondence for at least a year. The program is free, and pen pals can access letter writing tips.

About 100 U.S. inmates are waiting for pen pals, Hawkins said, adding that they often learn about the program from a prison chaplain.

Pen pals contribute to inmates’ successful reintegration into society, he said.

“Those of us on the outside show care and concern for them while they’re serving their sentence, and the results are simply astounding,” he said.

For more information about the program, email tcpm.linda@gmail.com or search “pen pal program” at orderofmaltaamerican.org.

— Susan Klemond

merciful and always sees that we have a future, who always recognizes the possibility of true conversion and aims for reconciliation,” the archbishop said.

Because prisoners can come to know the merciful God, especially through Scripture study and prayer, the Church needs to encourage Catholics to pray more, find creative ways to support those in prison and help parishioners respond to a call to prison ministry, he said.

Close to half of Minnesota’s 8,330 adult inmates identify as Christian, and just under 9% are Catholic,

according to the Department of Corrections.

A goal of the forum was building the relationship between the archdiocese and Department of Corrections, said Fay Connors. She and her husband, Kevin, are members of St. Joseph in Rosemount and co-founded Twin Cities Prison Ministry. The organization aims to increase Catholic involvement in prison ministry inside and outside of facilities.

Although they can’t currently serve inside prisons, ministry participants can help inmates through prayer and through organizations that help families of incarcerated people, Kevin Connors said. Twin Cities Prison Ministry provides prisons with videos for Ignatian-inspired retreats.

Pope Francis urges everyone to be involved in rehabilitating inmates and helping them find freedom, not just from prison but from addictions and other problems, Archbishop Hebda said.

To do this as credible evangelizers, ministry participants need to reflect hope in their own lives, he said.

“If we find that we don’t have hope, that we’re bound by our past, it’s very difficult for us to engage in that work convincingly,” the archbishop said.

“We have to always be involved in that process of conversion ourselves.”

For inmates to believe they have an opportunity for transformation, they need to feel safe, Schnell said. “Frankly, that safety doesn’t come from the bars keeping others who are incarcerated from them, but in fact that sense of safety comes from the connection that our staff and (ministry participants) bring,” he said.

Panel member Elise Goebel, volunteer coordinator at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Red Wing, encouraged attendees to increase connection by sharing their gifts in a variety of ways with juvenile young men at the facility.

Another panelist, Martin Shanahan, chaplain at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater, said corrections should be about restoration, not retribution. “I believe what corrections ought to be is a system and a possibility of reconnection,” he said.

Catholic Cemeteries aims to help families inter cremated remains

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit As cremation grows in popularity, more and more people — including Catholics — are keeping cremated remains in their homes, said Catholic Cemeteries Director Joan Gecik. Many people with cremated remains intend eventually to inter them, but for various reasons have yet to do it.

Others inherit the remains of a loved one and aren’t sure what to do with them.

“People feel, ‘Well, I’ll make the decision eventually,’ but ‘eventually’ can wind up being years, or they (the remains) can be abandoned,” Gecik said.

Gecik hopes The Catholic Cemeteries can help people bury the cremated remains of a loved one through a new initiative, Bringing Them Home. Through Oct. 2, the organization is accepting cremated remains for interment during an Oct. 24 committal service at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights. Archbishop Bernard Hebda will preside.

According to the Cremation Association of North America, by 2025 an estimated 48% of Americans who die will be cremated. Last year, nearly 70% of Minnesotans who died were cremated, according to The Catholic Cemeteries, which manages five metro-area Catholic cemeteries and provides consultation to parish-owned cemeteries. The Catholic Church teaches that cremated remains

must be treated with the “fundamental dignity of the human person,” and that those remains should be interred.

A Catholic Cemeteries document about the Bringing Them Home initiative states “that we protect and secure the things we hold dear. Yet, we find cremated remains left in attics, closets, garages, storage facilities and even Goodwill stores. Some are left abandoned at church doors or never picked up from funeral homes.

Some people scatter the cremated remains at a lake cabin, bury them in their own back yard, or dump them on a relative’s grave at a cemetery. Some are made into jewelry, tattoo ink or put into bullets.

None of these methods show respect for one who was baptized into a community of love — one who was a child of God.” Gecik said that while cremated remains should be treated with the same respect and reverence as an intact body, most people have good intentions when they delay interment.

“Sometimes their grief makes them want to hold on to the cremated remains because then they feel that person is closer to them. And they have every intention of doing something with the cremated remains, but as time goes on, it’s just one of those things on a list that never gets done,” she said.

It’s her hope that the Bringing Them Home initiative motivates families to put their plans into action, and that it assists people who have received remains but

have been uncertain what to do with them.

Through the initiative, families can have a permanent resting place for their loved one’s remains and peace of mind that those remains will be cared for in perpetuity, Gecik said. The cost is $200, hundreds to thousands of dollars less than the typical cost for interment of cremated remains, she said.

To be eligible for the Bringing Them Home initiative, cremated remains must have been held for at least five years, or be those of someone who died this year of COVID-19. They need not be Catholic.

Additional requirements include the full name of the deceased and death date, authorization from the legal next of kin and a copy of the cremation certificate (if available). Once the remains are interred, they will be unable to be disinterred.

The Catholic Cemeteries has dedicated a crypt for the cremated remains, and those interred there will be memorialized in the Book of Remembrance in the Chapel Mausoleum.

People who are interested in the initiative need to make an appointment with a Catholic Cemeteries family service counselor, who will guide them through the process and paperwork.

Because of COVID-19, the Oct. 24 committal service is not open to the public, but it will be recorded and made available on The Catholic Cemeteries’ website, catholiccemeteries.org.

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LOCAL

6 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Racism is a struggle in law and the human heart Webinar focuses on Church’s response to racism

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit Catholics must educate themselves on the Church’s teaching on racism and nurture the passion to respond to racism — both personal and structural — with the same vigor that they respond to other attacks against the sanctity of life, such as abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia, Bishop Shelton Fabre said during a Sept. 9 webinar organized by the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

Racism is a life issue, he said, referring to the U.S. bishops’ 2018 pastoral letter against racism, “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love.” In that letter, the bishops unequivocally stated that racism is a life issue, Bishop Fabre said.

“As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must assist in dismantling racism as it exists in people’s hearts, in our society and even in our Church,” said Bishop Fabre, leader of the Diocese of HoumaThibodaux in southern Louisiana and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for African American Catholics, as well as a member of its Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church.

The police-custody death of George Floyd, an African American, May 25 in

Minneapolis sparked protests across the country and discussions about ongoing racial inequity and injustice in America.

MCC held the forum to provide the chance for formation and reflection on these issues and how the Church can respond.

Titled “Open Wide our Hearts: The Catholic Church Confronts Racism,” BISHOP the webinar included SHELTON FABRE a welcome from Archbishop Bernard Hebda and a panel of Black Catholic leaders. The session was held primarily for priests, deacons, educators and lay ecclesial ministers, but was open to the public.

For far too long, racism has blocked people from fully being the community that God created all to be, said Bishop Fabre, who is Black. It’s not only a struggle in the realm of civil law, he said, but a struggle within the human heart.

“Racism has no place in the Christian heart, and racism is a moral problem that requires a moral remedy, a transformation of heart that impels us to act,” he said.

Catholics need to seek the conversion of their own hearts and the hearts of others to truly overcome racism, Bishop Fabre said.

That comes with engaging the world, he said, including those on the peripheries of people’s limited view, and seeking dialogue with those who are

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victims of racism, first to understand their suffering and then by working to resolve it.

Touching on the question of the sometimes fraught relationship between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Catholic Church, Bishop Fabre said the sentiment the movement expresses is about great pain and suffering in the Black community, and that suffering needs the Church’s focus.

It is possible to support the sentiment expressed by Black Lives Matter without supporting the national organization, which has espoused things that the Church cannot support, he said.

However, discussions about Black Lives Matter sometimes divert from the real focus, he said, which is addressing racism right now because people in the Black community are hurting, and people are losing their lives.

“When we say ‘Black lives matter,’ it means that, right now, as we have seen played out in so many different ways … there’s pain, there’s suffering, there’s outrage and anger in the Black community,” he said. “It all roots itself in racism.”

Prayer changes people, he said, and people change situations.

“Authentic prayer always leads us to constructive action, and our constructive action must always be guided by authentic prayer,” he said.

“As people of faith, it is important that we undertake our efforts to overcome racism guided by prayer.”

He added: “Prayer is often dismissed in these times as having no effect, but as people of faith, we know the power of prayer because we ourselves have experienced it.”

The webinar included a panel discussion with Damon Clarke Owens, an international speaker and evangelist; Loralean Jordan, an advocate for social justice at St. Peter Claver in St. Paul and the Twin Cities community; and Lannette Turicchi, a Catholic convert who has worked at The Walt Disney Company and now focuses on public speaking and media projects.

Jordan said pastoral letters from the bishops, including those describing racism as a sin, are “well and good, but what we need is action. We need bold action that backs up the statement that racism is a sin that will not be tolerated in the Catholic Church.”

Parishes need to facilitate what can be a tough conversation around race, she said.

“We need to check ourselves to see how we are treating people who don’t look like us,” she said. “Are we as a Church open to the stranger? Do we follow social justice teaching in its entirety, not just picking and choosing what feels comfortable to us?”

Owens described the need to see people through “the lens of God” — “not just racism in an isolated sense, but to see the root of it as our inability to see one another as an … image and likeness of God.” In recalling news stories of Black men shot by police, Turicchi said she asked herself what the issue is with racism, the police and Black men. She concluded that America has a “Blackness issue.”

“If there is a fear of Black people, the darker (the) skin, the more fear you have,” she said.

But the Black community also has to take responsibility, she said, calling education the great equalizer.

She cited multiple statistics on lagging reading abilities for Black children.

Forbes magazine, for example, reported in a June 6 commentary that in 2019, only 18% of Black fourth-graders scored proficient or above in reading on national tests.

“Reading means freedom,” Turicchi said. “Reading means prosperity.

Reading means power. … Reading well is the essential step to solving almost every problem in the Black community. … Black people must be responsible for teaching children to read.”

She advised parents to demand change in local schools and not vote for people who don’t represent their needs.

Apply to Catholic or charter schools, she said, and make education as important as the mantra “Black Lives Matter.”

Catholics of all races need to come together to help break down this issue of education, she said. “Lack of education is the systemic racism of today.”

Turicchi added that Catholics need to support their local Catholic schools so they become the centers of change for ending racism.

“Black Catholics need to invite their families to church,” she said. “The Black community has always had its roots in religion and God. Catholic parishes need to be more welcoming to African Americans and people of color.”

She noted that all three panelists had different backgrounds and lifestyles, but they shared their Catholic faith.

“Reach out and find common ground with people and stop worrying about what makes you different from them,” she said. “If you took color away … (and suddenly) we’re all the same color, the next issue would be well, you’re fat and I’m skinny, and you’re rich and I’m poor, and you live in a better house than I do.”

People need to stop name calling and get back to “the heart of it,” she said.

People have more in common than they do apart, she said. “We have to start focusing on what’s in our hearts and believe that God can soften hearts, and the Holy Spirit can move mountains.”

The only way people are going to deal effectively with racism, Turicchi said, is to invite the Holy Spirit in. “This is bigger than all of us,” she said. “We can’t change 1,000 people, but we can have a conversation, and conversations do change lives.”

Archbishop Hebda opened the session with a prayer, including references to St. Peter Claver, a 17th-century Spanish Jesuit missionary to African slaves in the Caribbean, whose feast was celebrated that day. He is a patron of African Americans and interracial justice.

“May we, like St. Peter Claver, see our neighbors as true brothers and sisters, recognizing that you created one human family and endowed each person with great dignity,” he said.

More than 500 people were registered for the event. The Minnesota Catholic Conference is the public policy voice of the state’s Catholic bishops. A recording of the webinar is available at the MCC website, mncatholic.org/ openwideourhearts.

LOCAL

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 7

Archbishop responds to priest’s controversial homily on COVID-19 Letter includes MN Health Department refutation, resources on ethical vaccination development

By Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit Priests should not use homilies to “present medical or scientific speculation,” Archbishop Bernard Hebda wrote in a Sept. 22 letter to Catholics in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, responding to a homily Father Robert Altier gave at St. Raphael in Crystal Sept. 6.

“The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is blessed with many fine priests. We have reason to expect them to teach the truth of the Gospel, faithfully passing on the teachings of our Church,” Archbishop Hebda said. “None of our priests or bishops, however, is an expert in public health, infectious disease, epidemiology or immunology. It would be a mistake to attribute any expertise in these areas to us simply on the basis of our ordination.”

The parochial vicar of St. Raphael, Father Altier preached a 20-minute homily questioning the severity of the novel coronavirus pandemic and calling COVID-19 a man-made virus used by world leaders to instill fear.

In the homily, he said he rejected the three major vaccines in development on moral grounds, and that he had advised his elderly parents not to receive a COVID-19 vaccination. The homily was posted on the parish’s website as “The Coronavirus: The Truth Revealed.”

In his letter, Archbishop Hebda said that he has spoken with Father Altier, and, while he “remains firm in his opinions on the pandemic situation,” the priest “has acknowledged that his remarks were inappropriate in the context of a homily during Mass.”

“The General Instruction on the Roman Missal (n. 65) directs that the homily ‘should be an explanation of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.’

Pope Francis has said that it is to be ‘a consoling encounter with God’s word, a constant source of renewal and growth,’” Archbishop Hebda said, quoting the pope’s 2013 apostolic exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel.”

Using a homily for “medical or scientific speculation could be seen as an abuse of the cleric’s position of authority to address an issue unrelated

to the liturgical celebration,” he said.

“In the context of the liturgy, no member of the assembly, even if the world’s greatest expert in this area, would have been in a position to contradict (Father) Altier or to offer alternative points of reference.”

Attached to the letter was a response from the Minnesota Department of Health to some of Father Altier’s points. Archbishop Hebda noted that he consulted with both the MDH and the local chapter of the Catholic Medical Association, and that the CMA “essentially shared the critique by the Minnesota Department of Health (other than the section on vaccinations).”

The letter included a link to COVID-19 resources on the national CMA chapter’s website, as well as links to additional resources from the CMA, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia on the ethical development of vaccines.

For Catholics, much of the vaccination controversy revolves around the ethics of developing — and later receiving — vaccinations using stem-cell lines derived “some time ago” from fetal tissue from aborted babies, according to the NCBC. “Allow me to note that the Catholic Church has long recognized that there are at times ethical questions involved in the production of vaccines,” Archbishop Hebda said. “Back in April, bishops serving as committee chairmen at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voiced to the Food and Drug Administration that ‘It is critically important that Americans have access to a vaccine that is produced ethically: No American should be forced to choose between being vaccinated against this potentially deadly virus and violating his or her conscience.’ The bishops stressed that there was no need to use ethically problematic cell lines to produce a COVID vaccine, or any vaccine, as other cell lines or processes that do not involve cells from abortions are available and are regularly being used to produce other vaccines.”

He pointed to a joint statement released Sept. 21 from the CMA and NCBC on COVID-19 immunization practices, in which the organizations stated that they have publicly asserted “the need for ethics to be maintained in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine” ahead of a Sept. 22 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The CMA and NCBC said they detailed ethical concerns around development using non abortionderived cell lines; informed consent, safety and efficacy; government mandates; exemptions for

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HEALTH DEPARTMENT WEIGHS IN The letter from Archbishop Bernard Hebda regarding Father Robert Altier’s Sept. 6 homily included an unedited response from the Minnesota Department of Health to six of the priest’s claims. It labels as “false” four of Father Altier’s claims: SARS-CoV-2 was man-made in a lab in North Carolina, people are getting bacterial infections from wearing masks, doctors and coroners are inflating the number of deaths due to COVID-19, and that a vaccine developed by Moderna Therapeutics is designed to change the RNA in a person’s body so the very cells in that body change. The MDH supplied links to documents supporting their refutation.

The MDH also provided information about a global pandemic exercise that took place Oct. 18, 2019, which Father Altier characterized as an indication that world leaders planned to weaponize a coronavirus in order to manipulate people. There is “nothing concerning about the date of this exercise in that it took place shortly before the recognition of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 virus) circulating in Wuhan, China,” the MDH states. “Exercises using disease scenarios have been taking place for decades and occur at the local, state, national and international levels.

Minnesota and every state in the U.S. was required to develop and participate in exercises following the 9/11 and anthrax attacks of 2001. The fictional coronavirus that was used to cause a pandemic in this exercise was used because it is a virus that could be in the same family as other new coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. Both SARS and MERS are caused by viruses in the same family, the coronavirus family, as COVID-19.”

— Maria Wiering immunization requirements; and allocation of immunizations with initial limited availability.

“From a Catholic understanding of the common good, vaccines should be developed following ethical standards that never compromise the dignity of life, are distributed in a just manner, and are not coercively disseminated.

Under such standards, the vast majority of the population can participate in an immunization program to protect public health and exemplify the inviolable connection between sound science and universal morality,” Dr. Greg Burke, co-chair of CMA’s ethics committee, said in the Sept. 21 CMA and NCBC statement.

Archbishop Hebda said that Catholics can look for more teaching on the ethics of COVID-19 from the Holy See, the USCCB and the archdiocese in the months to come.

“In the meantime, please join me in praying for all those who are sick with COVID-19, those who care for them, those who are working on vaccines, and all those individuals and families affected in any way by the pandemic,” he said. “Our Lady, Health of the Sick, pray for us.”

Father Michael Tix, the archdiocese’s vicar for clergy and parish services, previously responded Sept. 10 to explain that the controversial homily was “under review.”

“Stemming from our belief in the dignity of all human life, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is committed to the safety and well-being of all people and has consistently collaborated with public health officials and government officials in the development of safety protocols for our parishes and schools,” Father Tix said in the statement.

8 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

NATION+WORLD

Oregon Catholic family, good Samaritans survive terrifying canyon fire

By Kristen Hannum Catholic News Service Rick and Debra Keating never got the reverse 911 call to evacuate their town of Gates, Oregon, as a wildfire consuming the canyon came closer.

Instead, Madeline Keating, a recent Catholic high school graduate, got the news and awakened her dad and stepmom after midnight Sept. 8. They scrambled to get out, taking little more than Bailey, their St. Bernard dog, and Marley the cat. Rick Keating drove the couple’s Toyota RAV4. Madeline followed in her Toyota Prius.

They were the last ones left in the neighborhood — and found their way out blocked by a downed tree.

Rick detoured through a neighbor’s yard. Thick smoke slowed them as they headed west, out of the Santiam Canyon. The highway was blocked, so they snaked east on back roads, houses burning on either side. Flames edged the shoulders, fingering onto the tarmac. “The sky kept getting redder and redder,” Rick told the Catholic Sentinel, Portland’s archdiocesan newspaper.

“We stayed on the phone, talking to one another.”

Hours later, they made it to Salem — just 35 miles west of their home. They checked into a motel about 5:30 a.m. Later that morning, they heard the news their new home, which Rick had partly built himself, was gone. It would later prove to have been a false report.

But Gates, a working-class town with a population of about 500 in the Santiam Canyon, is now mostly gone, as are the Oregon towns of Detroit, Talent and Phoenix.

More than 1 million acres of land in Oregon have been burned and at least 10% of the state’s population is in evacuation zones. Across California, Oregon and Washington, fires sparked by August thunderstorms and later ignitions in early September, driven by dry conditions and high winds, have burned millions of

CNS

Firefighters in Paisley, Ore., battle a blaze in the Fremont National Forest Sept. 18. acres, destroyed and damaged thousands of homes and businesses and killed more than 30 people.

The Keatings had gone to bed Labor Day night, Sept. 7, feeling varying degrees of alarm over the windstorm, gusting in hot, dry blasts from the east.

Madeline woke up Rick and Debra with the news that they had to flee after getting a call from her mother, who lives about 40 miles northwest, telling her that Gates was in the evacuation zone.

Rick, a member of the Knights of Columbus and St. Joseph in Salem, is a photographer who has often shot photos for the Catholic Sentinel and the Archdiocese of Portland. Since he and Debra moved into their new home by the Santiam River, they’ve attended Mass at St. Catherine of Siena in the old lumber town of Mill City.

Near Gates — but not frighteningly close — were the Beachie Creek and Lionshead fires, which had been burning since Aug. 16. The Keatings never imagined either fire could reach their home, nestled in the woods close to the Santiam River. “We had no idea there were fires nearby,” Rick said.

Then came the winds.

According to the Forest Service’s InciWeb, prior to the historic windstorm that arrived in the region Sept. 7, the Beachie Creek Fire was estimated at 469 acres. The fire grew overnight to more than 131,000 acres, fueled by high winds and extremely dry fuels. Together with the Lionshead fire, 200,000 acres were burning.

By Sept. 9, three adult brothers, Travis, Jared and Shane Newton, who live just west of Gates, decided they couldn’t just sit and do nothing any longer. “It was Shane’s idea,” said Travis. “He said, ‘What are we doing?

We need to be helping people.’”

The three got water and food together and set out to help the people they’d known all their lives.

When the Newton brothers came across the Keating house, there was fire within an inch of its concrete foundation. “We got the bark chips away,” Travis said.

“I think it could have started burning within minutes.”

The men also shoveled dirt and toted bucket after bucket of water from a neighbor’s hot tub to douse hot spots that kept bursting into flame. They put out a fire in the tree next to the Keatings’ propane tank.

Travis, videotaping, encouraged people who might know the Keatings to have the family call him. He ended the video saying someone had just pulled up. “It might be the Keatings.”

It was them. “Everyone was working like it was their house,” said Rick. “We’re so blessed and thankful.”

“This is the Blessed Mother, this is a miracle,” Rick said of his home’s survival.

Clergy abuse survivors face a lifetime of recurrence of PTSD

By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service New job in hand, Jim Richter was adjusting well to life in Minneapolis several months after leaving his hometown of Chicago.

He was enjoying his fellowship at the University of Minnesota Medical Center despite the long hours and he was coming to realize his move was a good one.

Sexually abused JIM RICHTER as a teenager by a South Side Chicago Catholic priest who had similarly assaulted other young men, Richter wasn’t expecting to hear more about the clergy abuse scandal in Minnesota.

Then, news broke about Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who eventually resigned in 2015 over accusations he had mishandled allegations of abuse against an archdiocesan priest. Archbishop Nienstedt also faced allegations he had engaged in sexual misconduct with adults as a priest and as a bishop, claims he denied. Richter said he felt he had been “assaulted” again when listening to news reports on the radio as he drove to work. The reports, he said, triggered a recurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD. “This was in the same sense being reminded that the Church has lots of bad actors all over the place. That was something I did not need to be reminded of,” Richter told Catholic News Service.

PTSD often occurs in a person who

has experienced or witnessed a traumatic event. It can last for months or years with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.

Symptoms can include nightmares, unwanted memories, avoidance of situations that bring back those memories, anxiety or depression.

Richter, who is now 49 and who continues to practice his Catholic faith, eventually sought counseling to cope with the disorder. He acknowledged that he can experience PTSD at any time — as can any survivor.

“It could be the news, a book, a story someone is sharing,” he said. “There’s still no question when there’s particularly national stories, these absolutely bring about a season of fresh hell for people.”

Realizing he’s not alone, for the last three years Richter has helped facilitate “peace circles” — parish-based discussion groups primarily for clergy sexual abuse survivors but open to anyone interested in responding to the abuse crisis.

Richter works voluntarily. He has consulted with victim assistance coordinators in the Archdioceses of Chicago and St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The circles offer a safe space — originally in person but now online because of the coronavirus pandemic — to any survivor wanting to discuss his or her experience.

Richter’s recurring PTSD is not unusual.

Mental health experts said sexual abuse survivors can experience ebbs and flows of PTSD and that it never quite goes away.

“Everyone is different. So, depending on an individual’s situation anything can trigger it,” said Deacon Bernard Nojadera, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholics Bishops’ Secretariat of Child

and Youth Protection.

When a survivor reaches out, Deacon Nojadera said, his office or the appropriate diocesan office acknowledges “this hurt that had occurred in their lives, extending an apology.” Most important, though, he explained, is to listen to what the person has to say.

Dioceses and eparchies have spent $143.8 million from 2004 through 2019 for therapy, living expenses and legal expenses for survivors, according to statistics compiled by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

The figures were included in annual reports detailing diocesan and eparchial compliance with the U.S. bishops’ “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

From 2004 through 2013, the data show $70.8 million in payments for therapy for survivors. Beginning in 2014, the category was expanded to include living and legal expenses, with payments to victims during the last six years coming to more than $71.9 million.

Victim advocates such as Tim Lennon, president of the board of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said others may shy away from Church assistance, feeling that the institution that harmed them has no interest in making things better. No matter to whom a survivor turns for help, Lennon, a survivor himself, said each person deserves broad support.

Richter is a member of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Ministerial Review Board. He said his connection to the Catholic Church has enabled him to address PTSD when it rises anew. He said the peace circles he coordinates, while not with a formal Church connection,

can do the same for others: “I recognize that every day of my life is impacted by what happened to me when I was a teenager: the way I think, the way I see work, the way I approach others, the way that I talk. But it doesn’t define me.”

He believes the Catholic Church has a responsibility to do more to help people overcome PTSD. “It would seem to me they would want to address this in some way beyond Virtus (safe environment training) and naming sometimes unqualified and reluctant folks that come with a title ‘victim assistance coordinator,’” he said.

Deacon Nojadera said that although the Church has spent millions of dollars for counseling and other mental health needs of survivors over the years, the work of helping survivors heal is far from complete. He said dioceses and the USCCB continue to seek stronger responses to the struggles of survivors in the hope of rebuilding trust.

“Will we ever eradicate this question of clergy sexual abuse and the inappropriate sins of the flesh? No. That’s part of the human condition. But our role, our mission, is to try to bring that down to as minimal as possible. And when it does occur, the Church needs to know the importance of handling and stepping up to handle the situation in morally and ethically sound ways,” he said.

Richter also suggested that in cases where the Church’s response to the needs of abuse survivors is insufficient, the Church should forge stronger partnerships with community organizations and counseling-based professionals that can offer the appropriate assistance.

“Just,” he said, “don’t do it badly.”

NATION+WORLD

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

HEADLINES u Vatican reaffirms, clarifies Church teachings on end-of-life care.

With the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia in many countries, and questions concerning what is morally permissible regarding end-of-life care, the Vatican’s doctrinal office released a 25-page letter offering “a moral and practical clarification” on the care of vulnerable patients. “The Church is convinced of the necessity to reaffirm as definitive teaching that euthanasia is a crime against human life because, in this act, one chooses directly to cause the death of another innocent human being,” the document said. Titled, “’Samaritanus bonus,’ on the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life,” the letter by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was approved by Pope Francis in June and released to the public Sept. 22. u Mass marks beginnings of Washington’s national shrine a century ago. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception inaugurated its jubilee year Sept. 20 during a 100th anniversary Mass to commemorate the centennial of the placing of the shrine’s foundation stone, upon which the largest Catholic church in North America was built to honor Mary. Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory said those who began the project a century ago could not have envisioned the thousands of faithful who would join the efforts throughout the decades to sustain and support the basilica. u Cardinal likens fading Christian presence in Middle East to a sinking ship. Lebanese Cardinal Bechara Rai warned that the Christian presence in the Middle East is shrinking and Church leaders “are called to face the winds that blow in our homelands.” The assessment by the patriarch of Maronite Catholics during a meeting of the Middle East Council of Churches executive committee Sept. 18 underscored the dire reality facing Christians in the tumultuous region. “The ship threatened by strong winds and waves” that is sinking symbolizes “the witnessing church in the sea of our Middle Eastern countries troubled by the winds of conflicts and wars, political, economic, financial and livelihood crises, and the corona epidemic,” Cardinal Rai said. The cardinal said that the threat “reached its climax” in Lebanon with the catastrophic double explosion in the port of Beirut Aug. 4. The disaster left nearly 200 people dead, injured another 6,000 and displaced more than 300,000 people. u Pope: Coronavirus vaccine must be for all, not just the wealthy.

As countries around the world scramble to find a vaccine for COVID-19, Pope Francis again called for an ethical distribution of the vaccine to everyone, especially those who are struggling financially. Addressing members of the Italian Pharmaceutical Bank, a charitable organization that provides medicine to the poor, the pope said that the economic crisis generated by the pandemic has shed a light on poverty in the world, including “pharmaceutical poverty. I repeat that it would be sad if, in providing the vaccine, priority was given to the wealthiest, or if this vaccine became the property of this or that country, and was no longer for everyone. It must be universal, for all,” he said Sept. 19. Meanwhile, the St. Louis-based Catholic Health Association highlighted its stance on the vaccine’s development and distribution in a September letter to a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The letter, signed by Mercy Sister Mary Haddad, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, stressed that Catholic

SUPREME COURT

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The judge, a former law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a mother of seven, is not an unknown. She was viewed as a potential candidate for the nation’s high court in 2018 after Justice Anthony Kennedy retired, a slot that was filled by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Barrett, a former clerk for Scalia, was the focus of Senate grilling during her 2017 confirmation hearing to serve on the 7th Circuit, when she was asked about the impact her faith would have on her interpretation of the law.

At the time, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, told her: “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”

Barrett responded: “It’s never

health officials appreciated the committee’s work outlining the eventual distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. She said the draft outline shows respect for human dignity and recognizes the role health care providers and communities have in vaccine distribution. It also “emphasizes distributive justice by ensuring the vaccine is provided in a manner to not only save lives, but also address health inequities.” u House passage of Pregnant Workers Fairness Act called ‘huge win for women.’ The measure, H.R. 2694, passed Sept. 17, prohibits employment practices that discriminate against making reasonable accommodations for job applicants or employees affected “by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” This applies to private sector employers with over 15 employees as well as public sector employers. “This vote respects both the dignity of the worker and the dignity of the human person,” said a statement from the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, based in Silver Spring, Maryland. u Study: Teens’ religious practice less than that of their parents.

A Pew Research Center study released in September shows that teens’ religious practice is less than that of their parents. The lessened observance cuts across all denominational lines. And religious practice by adults, the study noted, has itself declined in recent decades. One key finding of the report is that 43% of parents said religion is “very important in their lives,” and that, of teens ages 13-17, only 24% feel the same. Surveys were taken of 1,811 adults who had given Pew permission for one of their teen children to later take the same survey. The surveys were conducted in April-June 2019, long before the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. u Abraham Accords called ‘truly historic milestone’ in Middle East peace. A Catholic congressman who is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee called the Middle East peace accord signed Sept. 15 at the White House a “momentous pact” he hopes “is the beginning of several future peace accords to strengthen peace within the region. The United States has again brought strength to Israel — one of our strongest allies in the region — and strength brings peace,’” U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, said in a statement.

President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence welcomed Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed and Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani to the White House, where the leaders signed the document, which is being called the Abraham Accords. “It is important to note, after decades of conflict, this is the first such agreement between Israel and any major Arab country since 1994,” said Smith, who witnessed the signing, which he called “a truly historic milestone in Middle East peace.” u Pew sees religious voters’ support for 2020 nominees mirroring past elections. Support for Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden from voters who identify as religious appears to adhere to earlier patterns, a Pew researcher told a Georgetown University panel Sept. 15. According to recent Pew Research Center polling, 59% of white Catholics say they’re voting for Trump, with 40% supporting Biden. Hispanic Catholics shift the other direction, favoring Biden at 65%. Ninety-two percent of Black Protestants say they’re voting for Biden, and as for Trump, 83% of white evangelicals say they’re either voting for him or leaning in his direction. Abortion, survey results indicate, is a more important

appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law.”

After this hearing, several Catholic leaders spoke out against the line of questioning used on her that focused on her faith.

Feinstein had referred to Barrett’s speeches and a 1998 article she wrote about the role of Catholic judges in death penalty cases. The senator questioned Barrett about upholding Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal.

When Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, asked Barrett if she considered herself an “orthodox” Catholic, Barrett said: “If you’re asking whether I take my faith seriously and am a faithful Catholic, I am. Although I would stress that

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 9 issue for white evangelicals (61%) than for white Catholics (38%), Hispanic Catholics (39%) or Black Protestants (33%). The response on abortion trailed the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign policy, immigration and climate change as top election issues. u Vandalism at El Paso Cathedral destroys a nearly 90-year-old statue of Jesus. Authorities in El Paso, Texas, have apprehended a suspect who is said to have entered the border city’s St. Patrick Cathedral Sept. 15 and destroyed an almost 90-year-old statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. El Paso authorities have not released the name of the suspect or other details. But the diocese’s Facebook post said the suspect walked into the sanctuary, which is open for prayer, at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 and attacked the statue, which was behind the main altar of the church. The post included photos of the statue on the floor, knocked off its foundation, with its right arm broken off and most of the face, except for the jaw, smashed. u Groups file complaint after report alleging immigrants subjected to hysterectomies. Groups that support immigrants have lodged a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General saying that a nurse has come forward with detailed allegations of mass hysterectomies she said have been performed on immigrant women in detention in a Georgia facility. The groups say a nurse who worked at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, said that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, run by private prison company LaSalle South Corrections, was the setting for the procedures she alleges took place and that the women, who spoke little or no English, may not have understood what was happening to them. Various news agencies have identified Dawn Wooten as the nurse, who also publicly spoke of negligent conditions to deal with COVID-19 at the facility, in the complaint filed Sept. 14 by the Government Accountability Project and Project South. Other local groups backing her included the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, South Georgia Immigrant Support Network and Georgia Detention Watch, who also have joined the complaint. ICE has said that it does not comment on matters pending before the inspector general. u Wisconsin bishop says ‘both sides’ urge response to priest’s ‘divisive’ video. The bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, said Sept. 9 that he has privately begun “applying Gospel principles” to correct a pastor who in a video says Catholics who are Democrats must “repent” of their support for the party or “face the fires of hell.” “Canon law indicates that before penalties are imposed, we need to ensure that fraternal correction, rebuke or other means of pastoral solicitude will not be sufficient to repair the scandal,” Bishop William Callahan said in a statement about Father James Altman, pastor of St. James the Less Parish in La Crosse, and his video. The priest’s nearly 10-minute YouTube video was posted Aug. 30 by Alpha News MN on its website.

As of Sept. 22, the video had more than 855,000 views. “Here’s a memo for clueless, baptized Catholics out there: You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period,” the priest says. “Their party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic Church teaches,” especially Church teaching that abortion is a “moral evil.” The priest has become “a social media phenomenon and is now a mainstream media story,” Bishop Callahan said. “The amount of calls and emails we are receiving at the diocesan offices show how divisive he is. I am being pressured by both sides for a comment; one side holds him up as a hero or a prophet, the other side condemns him and vilifies him and demands I silence him.”

— Catholic News Service

my present church affiliation or my religious beliefs would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”

The other name that emerged as a short-list contender for the Supreme Court — and quickly gained traction as a potential election boost for Trump — was Lagoa, the 52-year-old Miami-born daughter of Cuban exiles.

Last year, Lagoa spoke at a Florida reception of the St. Thomas More Society after the annual Red Mass, which prays for lawyers and judges, at St. Anthony Church in Fort Lauderdale.

She said her Catholic education instilled in her “an abiding faith in God that has grounded me and sustained me through the highs and lows of life.”

Lagoa, a judge of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, asked the audience if “one could be a strong advocate for one’s client

and still be a Catholic?” She answered the question by saying faith was “more than going to Mass every Sunday, and to me at least, it means having a personal relationship with God that in turn informs how we treat others.”

She also gave the example of St. Thomas More and said he shows how legal professionals should not compartmentalize professional lives from spiritual lives to justify a lapse in faith or moral conviction.

“Perhaps it starts with reminding ourselves, even when it is hardest, of the dignity of each human being — even the most difficult opposing counsel — and it also starts with reminding ourselves that none of us are perfect, and that we ourselves can contribute to or exacerbate a difficult situation,” she said.

10 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

T

hey’d been expecting a big snowstorm that day. But in the early morning hours of March 3, 1985, brothers Tom and Joe Fournelle, 13 and 15 respectively, began their Sunday like they always did: with a paper route.

“I had a big van,” said the boys’ mother, Joanne Grimsrud. “They used to love tossing the papers out of the back of that thing.”

Later that morning, she would head to a friend’s house with plans to meet her boys at a hockey banquet in the afternoon. Her estranged husband, Robert, who was also the boys’ hockey coach, would spend the day with their sons in their quiet Highland Park home in St. Paul, and then they’d all meet up at the banquet.

Grimsrud, a secretary and dog handler, was just 17 when she married, and the marriage had been difficult and abusive.

By this time, divorce proceedings had been filed and Robert had moved out. At one point, Grimsrud had a restraining order against her husband, so to avoid any turmoil during times of visitation, she would leave the house before her soon-to-be-ex-husband arrived. For all anyone knew, the veteran of Vietnam was a good father who loved his children.

He coached their hockey teams, took them hunting and fishing. Co-workers said he was “a nice guy.” Only the night before, he had joined the whole family at their home to celebrate Joe’s birthday.

As she drove away that morning, Grimsrud saw her ex-husband’s car approaching. He was early. She wondered why. That moment — passing by his car — haunts her to this day.

Sometime soon after, on that terrible snowy Sunday, Robert Fournelle entered the home, shot and killed three family dogs, his two sons, and later, himself.

Grimsrud, 71, a member with her second husband, David, of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, said she always wanted to tell her story. A priest-friend had encouraged her that maybe now was the time.

“It seems these days, all you hear about is evil,” said Grimsrud, “and it just sucks the life out of you.” But she knows better: Evil will not have the last word.

The unthinkable unfolds As the snowstorm grew stronger that day in 1985, Grimsrud called home to let her boys know she might be a few minutes late to the hockey banquet, but not to worry, she’d be there. She got no answer. She called a neighbor who had a key to the house and asked him to deliver the message in person. He knocked and got no answer. It was strange that the dogs didn’t bark, so he entered the home.

A few steps in, he saw one of the dogs, shot, lying dead. He immediately backed out, shut the door, and called the police.

The next hours were like something out of a horror movie. The police called Grimsrud and told her to lock the doors and windows at her friend’s home and to keep a careful watch. They didn’t know if there was someone still in the house or if someone was on their way to find and kill Grimsrud. So, she had to wait in helpless terror at her friend’s house about 30 minutes away.

Meanwhile, a SWAT team arrived at her home. They shot canisters of tear gas inside, breaking every single window.

After several hours, when there was still no response, they finally entered the home. It had been badly vandalized with strange, nonsensical messages spray painted on the walls.

The story was eventually pieced together this way: Robert Fournelle entered the back of the home, where he shot two of the family dogs. The boys had been downstairs watching television when their father approached them, and another family dog, with a gun. Joe never knew what happened; he was shot in the head. The third dog attacked Robert but was shot and killed. Tom, the younger boy, had defensive wounds. He was also shot in the head.

It was the most devastating detail of all. Grimsrud remembered, “My younger boy knew what was happening.”

Robert was found upstairs in her bed with the covers pulled up around him.

He’d shot himself.

Early in the investigation, Grimsrud was considered a suspect.

“All my assets were frozen, I had nothing,” she remembered. “(Only) the clothes on my back. All of my other things were in the house, teargassed, all my documents, everything.” The devastation washed over her like a flood.

“I had to shop for clothes for my boys to be buried in,” she recalled. “I had to shop for clothes to wear to the funeral.

Where do you bury your children? I’d never thought about burying my children. All those decisions. How do you even make those choices? It was overwhelming.”

A veritable army rose up to surround her with help and support. Her father and best friend put on gas masks to enter the house and retrieve her insurance papers and other documents and salvage a few clothes. A friend with means paid for the funerals. Another, a businessman, walked her through the insurance nightmare — it stretched out for years.

In a journal entry marked 5:45 a.m.

Saturday, March 9, 1985, she wrote: “It’s been almost a week. I still can’t believe or understand. So many things to decide and do. So many people. So much evil yet so much love. I’ve asked God to pray for me now because I can’t. I’ve asked him to give me the right answer I think he has. So much I don’t understand or know yet. Little bits keep coming out.

How they died, when, where, how long.

I need to know all of it yet don’t want to know.”

At the time, she would have referred to herself as a “casual Catholic.” She had a strong belief in God, it was important to her that her children were receiving a Catholic education, and she attended church, though not regularly. She didn’t know it then, but the very tragedy that could easily have turned her away from God would instead turn her toward him and a life of service.

A walk along the river In the months following the murders, she lived with her parents. Emotionally, it was impossible for her to return to her home, so she built a new one. She bought a piece of land in a rural area in Wisconsin and rented a trailer to live in

A choice to

l

When the unthinkable hap one woman learns ‘evil can’t take

By Liz Kelly • For The Catholic Spirit

Joanne Grimsrud stands on the bank of the St. Croix River near Osceola, Wis., Sept. 4. It was during a walk along this river a little over a year after her two sons were murdered that she felt “this clear sense of, ‘You need to make a choice here.

You need to choose to live.’”

while the house was being built. The location proved healing. She’d always felt God’s presence in nature, and in that quiet countryside, she began to have many conversations with him in prayer.

She also returned to Mass, attending Assumption Church in Farmington, Wisconsin, where she met a priest with whom she became close friends.

Grimsrud remembers, “He’d say to me, ‘You’re Mary. You lost sons. She lost her son. Pray to Mary.’”

“It was good for me there,” she said, “because it was a little country church.

People were very kind and quiet. ... I became much more religious than I ever had been.”

And she needed her faith to fight the

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 • 11

live

ppens, e everything’

PHOTOS BY DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

FAR LEFT Joanne Grimsrud works with Ava Mayer and her dog, Milo, in a dog training class called Junior Showmanship at Animal Inn in Lake Elmo Sept. 8.

LEFT Grimsrud works with Mary Tyson and her dog, Tori, during an adults class called Winners, also at Animal Inn.

self-pity, darkness and depression that would threaten to cripple her in the days and years ahead.

A little over a year after the murders, she remembers taking a walk along the St. Croix River. It was a moment that she would revisit many times in her mind and heart.

“I had this clear sense of, ‘You need to

make a choice here. You need to choose to live.’”

She prayed for the strength to get up one more day, to somehow find a way forward. In the meantime, friends had taken up a collection to buy her a Labrador puppy, Skeet.

“I didn’t think I would ever laugh again until she came into my life,” said Grimsrud. “But there she was, this little roly-poly furball.”

Some solid counseling, Skeet and lots of long walks along the river acted like a very gentle, steady healing rain after the most wicked, prolonged drought. After some years had passed, Grimsrud got other dogs and began working with them in pet therapy. She served in numerous hospitals and schools, quietly letting her dogs do the heavy lifting of reaching the unreachable who were trapped in trauma, illness and grief.

By far, the most intuitive dog she worked with was her yellow Labrador, Trip.

“There was a doctor who hated the dogs in the hospital, and one day his nurse came running to find me,” Grimsrud recalled. “(He told me,) ‘I’ve got a patient and he won’t talk to any of us, he won’t answer any questions, he won’t tell us anything. One thing we do know is that he had a dog. Would you go in the room with him?’”

Grimsrud and Trip went to work.

The patient was an elderly man, and when Grimsrud walked into the hospital room with Trip, he would not acknowledge her or the dog. So, she pushed a big recliner next to the bed and put Trip in it.

“There’s somebody here that really wants to see you,” she announced to the patient. “You better roll over.”

He did, and there sat the 86-pound Trip.

“The nurses started whispering different questions to be asked,” said Grimsrud, “and I would say, ‘Trip wants to know this’ or ‘Trip wants to know that,’ and he would talk to the dog.

Everything they wanted to know he told the dog.”

For eight years, Grimsrud toted Trip around the metro, visiting the sick and the traumatized.

“I’ve never seen an animal who knew so exactly what you needed,” Grimsrud said.

God’s closet Many describe grief as coming in waves, and in fact, grief has visited Grimsrud in strong and unpredictable waves over the past 35 years. Even years after the death of her boys, there was a particularly challenging period throughout which she feared she might have a nervous breakdown. So, in her imagination she built a closet, and she filled it with the things she couldn’t face.

“It had a big black door and a gold doorknob,” she recalled. A psychologist encouraged her to lock the door, saying “You never have to open it again. If you want to go in sometime and take something out to look at it, you can.”

“It’s one of those pieces that you have to let go,” said Grimsrud. “There’s no way to reconcile it, there’s no way to take that pain away. I believe that God gave me the ability to put it where I needed to put it,

that he gave me the mind to create (that) closet and ... I don’t need to worry about it, he’s taking care of it. It’s in his hands.”

There were other things she turned over to God as well, like the extraordinary act of forgiveness.

“If the forgiveness piece was up to me, I don’t know if I could do it,” she said. “I had to let that be God’s responsibility. I tell people it’s not my job to forgive (Robert); that’s God’s job. I have to let go of the anger. That’s my job.”

And miraculously, she has. “I really don’t hate him anymore,” she said. “I feel sadness, I feel pity, I often wonder what it was that could make someone do that. ... But I don’t harbor any anger toward him anymore.”

Getting there was a long and painstaking process full of lessons she is happy to share with others.

“I don’t allow people to use the word (hate) in my house,” said Grimsrud. “It’s the worst four-letter word on the planet.

It’s like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. That’s all you’re doing (when you hate) — you’re poisoning yourself.”

Still, Grimsrud has no illusions of a perfectly complete healing this side of heaven.

“I don’t think you ever feel like you make it through,” she said. “It’s like a wound. Today you have this gaping wound, and it’s all you can think about.

But pretty soon you see it starts to close, and you think about it, but it doesn’t take your whole day. And pretty soon it’s a scar and you remember everything about it, but you don’t think about it all the time. It’s there, it’s always there, it will always be a part of me, and I have to accept that.”

Grimsrud eventually remarried and has two grown step-children and three step-grandchildren. She’s survived three serious bouts with cancer. She starts each day with her Bible and rosary. The Book of Job and Psalm 23 are favorites, as are the simple Hail Mary and Our Father. She prays constantly these days, and on their birthdays every year, she asks the Blessed Mother to give her boys a kiss.

“My two boys were so different,” Grimsrud said, smiling. “My older boy was more like me, quiet and more prone to stand back and watch things. My younger son was good looking, all the girls loved him! ... Funny, outgoing, bubbly ... I often wonder what they would be like and what kind of kids they would have had.”

These days, Grimsrud works at the Animal Inn in Lake Elmo with adults and kids 8 to 18 who want to train and show dogs. There, she is clearly beloved by the dogs and students both; students consistently refer to her as “the best instructor I’ve ever had.”

Smiling, she said, “These kids are wonderful. ... I just love those kids. You see them change. They grow in confidence, they look you in the eye, they become self-confident. … It’s pure joy.”

She also worked as a secretary for many years in an elementary school. “It was the perfect job for me,” she said, “Instead of having two children, I ended up with 731.”

When people who know her story ask her how she keeps going, she will say,

‘THE SPLENDOR OF DOGS’ Joanne Grimsrud was instrumental in initiating volunteer pet therapy programs in multiple hospitals and schools in the Twin Cities area, including Regions Hospital in St. Paul and Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater. And Trip, an 86-pound, award-winning, purebred yellow Labrador was a chief factor in winning over even the most skeptical administrators.

His hospital volunteer ID said it all: “Rated #1 in the Twin Cities for Patient Satisfaction.”

In the beginning, Grimsrud would suggest to administrators, “Why don’t you meet Trip before you make up your mind?” Trip, with his charm and personality, always passed his “interviews.”

“Truly good therapy dogs have an intuition,” said Grimsrud. “They know.”

Grimsrud recalls visiting a father and his young son, about 8 years old. They’d been in a car accident and had adjoining rooms at the hospital.

She and Trip first entered the father’s room, but he quickly begged Grimsrud to head next door to his son. “My son needs this dog,” he said.

And once the charge nurse approved it, Trip climbed into the boy’s bed.

Grimsrud remembers, “(The boy) had his arms around him the whole time like he was just a big stuffed dog, and Trip never moved.”

Some of Trip’s most notable work, however, was accomplished in schools when there had been a suicide. Trip would absorb the grief and trauma of the students most affected like a sponge.

In one instance, a high school boy whose friend had committed suicide had become hysterical. He was taken to a private room where they sent in Trip.

“Trip sat next to him,” said Grimsrud, “and pretty soon he put his hand on Trip, and he was still crying very hard, but you could see him start to calm down.

He was able to start talking about his friend.” When the boy’s emotions escalated once again, Trip put himself in the boy’s lap.

“He just draped in his lap,” Grimsrud recalled, “and the boy just grabbed ahold of him and he calmed back down and he talked some more.”

“The more I watched that dog work,” she said, “the more amazed I was. You can teach a dog manners, but you cannot teach what he knew.”

As Trip got older, he and Grimsrud adopted a new mission field — adults with disabilities who lived in a group home behind Grimsrud’s house on Cathedral Hill.

Grimsrud and Trip would walk out the back and visit the residents, who would sometimes help give Trip a bath. She recalled smiling, “When they saw Trip out and about in the neighborhood they would say, ‘That’s our dog!’”

Trip has since passed away, and Grimsrud’s attention turned to a sick friend that she cared for, and then her own recovery from hip surgery. She doesn’t have a dog at the moment, but if she found the right one, she’d be open to continuing her pet therapy work.

“Seeing the good that Trip did gave me a purpose in life,” said Grimsrud, who continues to work with dogs as a dog trainer at Animal Inn in Lake Elmo. “It helped me to not focus on myself. ... That’s the splendor of dogs, they bring so much joy.”

— Liz Kelly “How do you not? It’s just this strong belief that there is a purpose and something I was put here to do or accomplish.

“I want to remind people that evil can’t take everything.”

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

12 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

RETIREMENTPLANNING

Christians in Commerce benefits workers and retirees alike

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

M

aster electrician Jim Ingram left full-time work about eight years ago. In good health at 73, Ingram said using his mechanical gifts to help others is one way he can serve the Lord.

“I want to continue … asking the Lord, ‘What can we do today to build the kingdom of God?’” For Ingram, a parishioner of Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville, the answer includes involvement in Christians in Commerce, a national organization with two chapters in Minnesota that provides fraternity, a faith-filled focus, resources for workers — and value to retirees.

Ingram said the wisdom and knowledge he has accumulated over the years is valuable to helping younger people in a group like Christians in Commerce, no matter if they are working in an office or a blue-collar trade.

Even in retirement, there’s still so much that older people can contribute to the group. “It’s the perspective I bring,” he said.

People tend to compartmentalize their lives and leave faith at the door, said Steve Becker, 74, a member of Christians in Commerce’s executive committee and also a parishioner of Mary, Mother of the Church.

Based in Minneapolis, Christians in Commerce tries to break down that silo by promoting the workplace as yet another place to live out faith, integrity and excellence that glorifies God, he said.

Founded in 1983 with three chapters in Minneapolis, Phoenix and South Bend, Indiana, the organization welcomes people from any Christian denomination, but most of its members are Catholic, Becker said.

Currently, more than 50 people are involved in the Minneapolis and Duluth chapters; nationwide, 800 to 1,000 people participate in more than 30 chapters and

ROBERT CUNNINGHAM | COURTESY CHRISTIANS IN COMMERCE

Will DeSanto, left, a member of the Minneapolis chapter of Christians in Commerce and of Annunciation in Minneapolis, chats with James Ganther from the Tampa, Fla., chapter at the organization’s 2019 annual conference in Bloomington. small groups. Members attend chapter meetings held weekly or twice a month, small group meetings usually held weekly (all now virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic), weekend retreats and an annual, national conference.

The organization recently launched a national initiative called WorkLight, designed to help unite Christians as the light of Christ in their workplaces.

“We do this … by encouraging and supporting Christians of all occupations, traditions and positions with practical, on-demand resources that are adaptable and free,” said Becker, a retired advertising and marketing executive.

A website, worklight.org, helps fuel the effort, with a video library of inspiring stories, testimonies and “firsthand accounts of God at work.” It includes

podcasts, a blog, monthly newsletter, a link for emailed reflections and more.

Almost all members of Christians in Commerce stay involved, even in retirement, Becker said, because of fellowship and friendships.

“We’d also like to see them engage in reaching out to the next generation, and that is what WorkLight is designed to do,” he said.

At 68, John Daly of St. Bonaventure in Bloomington has been involved with Christians in Commerce for exactly half his life. He is grateful he found it at an early age.

“We talk about how we can be Christ in our workplace,” he said. “But … not just the workplace, really 24/7. … It’s had an impact on my formation as a Christian.”

A retired attorney, Daly said many retirees miss the collegiality of being with coworkers, but his retirement has been great because he still has his colleagues at Christians in Commerce.

“One of the guys in my (small) group … retired two or three years before me. So what a wonderful thing to have in a mentor,” Daly said.

They talk about prayer and pray for each other’s needs. “It’s a very consistent way of plugging in to people who … value living the life of Christ (and) challenging each other to continue it,” he said.

God is counting on Christians to be his representatives, said Diane McGinty, 75, who belongs to a chapter in Gilroy, California.

“Seeing your job as more than the tasks you do to earn a paycheck changes everything,” said McGinty, a retired financial planner.

“Part of being a Christian is building relationships of love and trust with the people in our lives,” she said, “and this … changes the atmosphere of the workplace and makes work more satisfying.”

Seven Steps to Retirement Security Tom Hegna, CLU, ChFC, CASL, is an award-winning author, speaker and economist. He

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

RETIREMENTPLANNING

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 13

Creating a successful retirement means more than financial planning Interview by Maria Wiering The Catholic Spirit Psychologist Richard Johnson, 73, literally wrote the book on retirement for Catholics in 1999, when Liguori Press published “Creating a Successful Retirement.”

In the years since, he’s RICHARD published two other JOHNSON books that connect psychology and faith to life after work.

He is the founder and president of the Johnson Institute in St. Louis, which helps people, especially older adults, deepen their communion with God. He continues to write and speak about retirement and other aspects of aging, which he calls “the master teacher.” “The more thoughtfully an individual sees retirement as a classroom of continuing learning, grasps the spiritual undercurrent of meaning of retirement and embraces the opportunity of life enhancement inherent in retirement, the more she (or) he can appreciate the intrinsic value of the retirement years as pearls of wisdom from God,” he told The Catholic Spirit. Johnson lives in St. Louis with his wife of 52 years, Sandra. They have three children and six grandchildren. He answered questions for The Catholic Spirit via email. His work can be found at senioradultministry.com and spiritualstrengths.org.

Q When people think about “planning for retirement,” usually it means meeting with their financial advisor and making decisions about money and investments. You see a bigger picture. What is that, and why is it important?

A Financial planning, while vitally

important for our sustenance and survival in our retirement, is only the means to the real purpose of retirement: to find the deep peace of mind and heart of knowing (not simply believing) that we are children of God, motivated by love, and called to offer the gifts and talents given to us by God to others.

Q What questions should Catholics be asking themselves as they approach retirement?

A What are the gifts and strengths God

has invested in me? What is my purpose now? How can I help bring about the “reign of God” on this earthly plane?

Q What pitfalls do you see Catholics

making as they prepare for — or enter into — retirement?

A Seeing retirement as “rest and play.”

Rest is wonderful; play is refreshing, but rest and play are given to us as means of respite from our primary calling of pursuing awe, wonder and delight — all consequences of luxuriating in faith, hope and charity. Retirement is yet another life stage when we can more confidently pursue awe, wonder and delight. If we are not, then something needs changing.

Q Retirement is often pictured as a

time when people reap the rewards of years working and can focus on the things they want to. How might a Catholic consider spending this new

time that is reflective of his or her faith and values?

A Regular involvement in sacraments, prayer, spiritual reading, Bible study, retreats, spiritual growth groups, classes, online spiritual formation, Catholic radio, etc.

Q People often talk about looking

forward to retirement, but it also can come with certain losses: fulfilling work, a regular routine, relationships with coworkers, the stability of a paycheck, a work identity. You’ve noted that loneliness is a problem you’ve observed in your work. How can retirees form new friendships and deepen existing ones?

A The answer to this is easy. However,

bringing this to life is tremendously difficult. Practice virtue. Virtue is God’s spiritual energy. Virtue powers the six functions of our personality: believing, perceiving, thinking, feeling,

deciding and acting (behavior). Virtue gives us purpose, life, spiritual vigor, psychological refreshment. (If you would like to know your six signature virtues, take the Spiritual Strengths Profile online at spiritualstrengths.org.)

Q What role does one’s relationship with God play as retirees form their post-work lives?

A To paraphrase a well-known quote by

the late football coach Vince Lombardi: “Relationship with God is not the biggest thing. It’s the only thing!” Retirement is God’s gift to people of faith to follow their God-calling, their ministry, their new-life purpose and find peace.

Q What is important for the children and friends of a recent retiree to understand about this life transition?

A The retiree is going through what we

call in psychology a “crisis of attrition.”

Retirees are experiencing loss (even if they

don’t seem so). They are to some degree mourning this loss. The loss is internal: loss of status, loss of the meaning of “earning a living,” loss of connection, meaning, relationships, purpose, productivity, etc. The mourning process can last months or, if unsuccessful, can last years, perhaps even a lifetime.

Q Your work emphasizes the importance of adult faith formation and parishes engaging older adults. How can people use their retirement years as a time to more purposely grow in faith?

A The only course is to follow the lead of Christ. Christ is our model for successful living. So, what did Christ do? Christ was known as the teacher and the healer.

We are called to do the same, always guided by the gifts, talents, strengths and interests we have been given. How does one achieve all this? Investigate your deeper spiritual self and, of course, pray.

PLEASE TURN TO RETIREMENT ON PAGE 14

The Anatomy of a Catholic Estate Plan A good estate plan has the bones to hand down the things you’ve worked hard for in life and to plan a proper funeral. A great estate plan has the brains to consider how your affairs are handled and how assets are distributed. But a Catholic estate plan ensures your legacy lives on — it has a heart. A Catholic estate plan ensures that not only are your assets passed on, but so, too, are your values.

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The heart of a Catholic estate plan

A Catholic estate plan ensures that the end of your life is as faith-filled as all the years before. One important component that conveys your faith is a medical directive. This document helps your loved ones and healthcare providers understand the end-of-life and palliative care you’d prefer.

CATHOLIC ESTATE PLAN

The bones of a good estate plan

A will or trust will give your estate plan the structure it needs to express what you want done with your estate.

If you don’t have a will or trust in place, state law determines who inherits your property.

• will or trust • funeral directions BRAINS • power of attorney (POA) • strategically assign beneficiaries HEART • medical directive • ethical will • charitable legacy

Including funeral directions in your estate plan ensures that your celebration of life has structure, too. Plus, it lets your loved ones know where you’d like your sacred resting place to be.

The brains of a great estate plan

It’s smart to have a power of attorney (POA) in place with your estate plan. A POA is a legal document that permits someone to handle financial and legal matters and to make decisions in the event that you are incapacitated.

Another way to make your estate plan smart is to strategically assign beneficiaries for your funds and assets. Some assets are more tax-efficient for heirs than others.

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An ethical will or legacy letter is one way to pass on the intangible things you hold dear: your faith and values. This is typically something you personally write to your children, godchildren, or close friends, detailing stories that demonstrate how you lived your values.

Another way people choose to pass on their faith and values is through a charitable legacy. By naming your parish or favorite charity as a beneficiary of your estate, you can continue to support its mission in death as you did in life. And, with a gift to a permanent endowment, you can support that cause perpetually.

Talk to an expert

To ensure your estate plan has all the right parts, work with your legal advisor.

And to give your estate plan a Catholic heart, talk to the experts at the Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota. We’re happy to provide options that will ensure your faith and values live on forever.

Catholic Community

FOUNDATION OF MINNESOTA

RETIREMENTPLANNING

14 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

RETIREMENT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 I recommend parish ministries specifically targeted to help accomplish these vitally important goals.

Q Have you seen uncertainties around

COVID-19 affecting people’s retirement decisions?

A COVID-19 brings uncertainty,

vulnerability, insecurity. I have no data to back this up, but “my gut” tells me that when we are apprehensive, we generally try to “stay the course.” Psychology tells us that when we are frightened, we either “fight, flee or freeze.” Yet, when we are “with” God, we are at peace in mind and heart. Our faith gives us the strength, fortitude, commitment, purpose, hope, empathy, transcendence and inspiration (to name but a few).

Q What advice do you have for

someone preparing to retire, or recently retired?

A Read my book “Creating a Successful

Retirement: Finding Peace and Purpose” and take the Christian Retirement Challenges Profile. The CRCP is a 120-item questionnaire that generates a 20-page comprehensive picture of how well you are addressing the 15 factors of retirement success (see related sidebar), whether you are preparing for retirement or already retired. The CRCP results provide you with your individualized report: an accurate picture of the retirement success factors where you are doing well, and those that need more focus. Both the book and the CRCP can be found at senioradultministry.com.

Q What else would you like to add?

A Pray to the Blessed Mother!

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

MAKE RETIREMENT AN ADVENTURE What are core psycho-spiritual ingredients that spell the difference between retirement years of fragmentation and lifelessness, and years of advancing meaning and fullness of life? Fifteen questions can help bring a new perspective about retirement growth. Read all 15 at TheCatholicSpirit.com. Here are 11:

to retirement as a meaningful and spiritually uplifting time in life.

1. How do I disengage from my work/career and maintain my unique sense of self? Try to psychologically move away from a full-time job as a major source for self-identity, and emotionally take on other activities (recreational, social, spiritual) with a deepened mental framework as a child of God, which supports a self-esteem of new definition.

4. How can I thrive, and not merely survive in retirement? Inspiration and joy. Strive to experience wellness physically, emotionally and spiritually.

2. How do I find genuine value in my retirement years without my work/career? Value will be found in the worth and significance given

3. How will I order the structure of my retirement life without work? Rely more on God rather than primarily on an internal sense of self-direction for making plans and decisions.

Don’t rely on others giving direction.

5. How will I be able to support my lifestyle in retirement? Courage and self-discipline. Plan for retirement finances that can maintain an adequate standard of living.

6. How can I find genuine happiness in retirement? Wholeness and patience.

Life-satisfaction (psychology’s code word for happiness) includes personal contentment, physical health, home life harmony, self-esteem and spiritual integration.

7. How can I develop and maintain hope in the future? Hope and perseverance. Set the stage for life-satisfaction in the next chapter of life.

Pre-Planning lets you focus on life.

8. What level of personal meaning and purpose will I find in my retirement years? Trust and Inspiration. Find and implement a sense of purpose and meaning.

When you plan the ceremony of your life in advance, you’re free to focus on the here and now. We make pre-planning your final wishes easy and affordable.

9. How can I find supportive, genuine leisure in retirement? Joy and love-finding. Endeavor to rejuvenate the body, stimulate the mind and enrich the soul.

10. How can I remain fully open to new growth and development on all levels in my retirement years? Adaptability and humor. Consciously adapt to changes by making modifications from within.

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11. How can I remain as fully alive in retirement as I did in previous stages? Wisdom and empathy. Find love, inner beauty and spiritual distinctiveness.

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SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 15

FOCUSONFAITH SUNDAY SCRIPTURES | FATHER ROBERT HART

Saying yes to those in need Two themes jumped out at me when I first glanced at this Sunday’s readings: fairness and the ability to say no. In the first reading (Ez 18:25-28), we hear Ezekiel talking about fairness. “You say the Lord’s way is not fair! Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?”

If we need to be reminded that life is not always fair, all we have to do is read a newspaper or watch the news. Is it fair that we are living in such a divided world, country, state, city or town? Is it fair that so many parts of our country are in turmoil? Is it fair that young people die before their time? No, none of that seems fair.

But last I heard, no one guaranteed us that life would be fair.

Perhaps I am yet another example of the unfairness of life.

You see, if life was fair, Archbishop Hebda wouldn’t keep asking me to come out of retirement. Recently, he said in front of a fairly full church that he won’t let me retire, try as I might. I guess I could change my number or block calls from him. But I dare say, he would track me down somehow and I would again say yes to my boss. After all, he IS my boss.

I suppose I could say no to his request, but that wouldn’t be a very good thing for me to do to him or the archdiocese. The late author Charles Spurgeon, an English Particular Baptist preacher, once said that learning to say “no” would be of more use than

being able to read Latin. I took Latin at Fenwick High School outside of Chicago, but to be honest, I don’t remember much if any of it. So, I guess, when it comes to saying no, I will continue to use caution, mixed with good judgment, and take into account where and who the request is coming from.

In the Gospel (Mt 21:28-32), we hear of two brothers being asked to work in their dad’s vineyard. One says no, but in the end, goes out into the field. The other says, “Sure, I’ll go,” but ends up not going. Jesus asks the chief priests and elders which son did their father’s will, and of course they answer that the first did. It’s then that Jesus says tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom before them because the tax collectors and prostitutes listened to John the Baptist when he preached about righteousness.

Remember, when Jesus spoke of tax collectors and prostitutes, he was using them as examples of notorious sinners, at least in the eyes of the leaders of the day. This surely must have stung the hearts and minds of these leaders. So, is it fair that the good die young, that the bad don’t always get what’s coming to them, that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom before the chief priests and elders?

The late author Brennan Manning and Pope Francis have both said that the Church needs to be a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. Which means if we’re in a hospital, we need to be the doctors and nurses who take care of those in need, who take care of each other. We all have that responsibility. So, say “yes” to those in need when they ask, whether it’s a family member, a friend, a stranger — or even the archbishop!

Father Hart is parochial administrator of St. Bonaventure in Bloomington. He can be reached at fatherbob@saintbonaventure.org.

FAITH FUNDAMENTALS | FATHER MICHAEL VAN SLOUN

The gifts of the Holy Spirit

Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are imparted on those who receive the sacrament of confirmation. Six are listed in the “Immanuel Prophecy,” which describes an expected future ideal Davidic king: wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength (fortitude), knowledge and fear of the Lord (Is 11:2). The translators of the Hebrew Bible to Greek, the Septuagint, added a seventh gift, piety, to achieve the symbolic number for completeness. Jesus was blessed with these gifts by his Father, and those who are confirmed are blessed with these gifts by the Holy Spirit. They supply the spiritual power and strength a person needs to accomplish his or her vocational calling and mission in life.

The bishop asks God to bestow these gifts on the confirmation candidates in the prayer he offers with outstretched hands before the anointing: “Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought these your servants to new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, freeing them from sin: send upon them, O Lord, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete; give them the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety; fill them with the spirit of the fear of the Lord.”

Wisdom is the ability to exercise good judgment. It distinguishes between right and wrong, seeks and upholds truth and justice, and balances personal good with the common good.

It is in touch with reality, demonstrates common sense and is prudent. It often increases as a person advances in years and gains life experience. In the Old Testament, wisdom is personified by “Sophia,” the mythical mother of faith, hope and love; while in the New Testament, wisdom is personified by Jesus himself.

Understanding is the gift of intelligence and enlightenment.

It is the ability to think clearly; to perceive, comprehend and interpret information; and to have insight and discern meaning.

Counsel is good advice. It is the ability to teach, inform, guide, direct, warn, admonish, recommend and encourage. It is not limited to the giving of advice but extends to the ability to graciously receive it. The gift is needed by parents, teachers, coaches, supervisors, mentors, therapists, lawyers, clergy, consultants, elders and spouses — anyone who offers advice to others.

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, Sept. 27 Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Ez 18:25-28 Phil 2:1-11 Mt 21:28-32 Monday, Sept. 28 Jb 1:6-22 Lk 9:46-50 Tuesday, Sept. 29 Sts. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, archangels Dn 7:9-10, 13-14 Jn 1:47-51 Wednesday, Sept. 30 St. Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church Jb 9:1-12, 14-16 Lk 9:57-62 Thursday, Oct. 1 St, Thérèse of the child Jesus, virgin and doctor of the Church Jb 19:21-27 Lk 10:1-12 Friday, Oct. 2 Holy Guardian Angels Jb 38:1, 12-21; 40:3-5 Mt 18:1-5, 10 Saturday, Oct. 3 Jb 42:1-3, 5-6, 12-17 Lk 10:17-24 Sunday, Oct. 4 Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 5:1-7 Phil 4:6-9 Mt 21:33-43

A person who receives the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of confirmation must cooperate with these special graces and put them to good use.

Fortitude is an unwavering commitment to God or a proper course of action, and it shows itself as moral strength, courage, determination, patient endurance, long suffering, a resolute spirit, stamina and resiliency.

Knowledge is the ability to study and learn; to acquire, retain and master facts and information; and to put what is learned to good use for constructive purposes.

Fear of the Lord is awe, reverence and respect for God. It acknowledges that everything comes as a gift from God, downplays personal achievement and self-sufficiency, and gladly offers praise, worship and adoration to God. Piety is personal holiness, and it includes devotion to God, prayer, virtue, goodness, decency, self-mastery, innocence, the avoidance of sin and obedience to God’s will.

A person who receives the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of confirmation must cooperate with these special graces and put them to good use. To fail to do so would be like purchasing a new computer and leaving it in the box or buying a new car and leaving it in the garage. For the computer to work, the owner must plug it in and turn it on. For the car to work, the motorist must put it in gear and drive it. For confirmation to work, the recipient must cultivate the divine gifts by using and applying them, not just occasionally, but consistently throughout each day.

Father Van Sloun is pastor of St. Bartholomew in Wayzata. This column is part of an ongoing series on confirmation. Read other installments at TheCatholicSpirit.com.

Monday, Oct. 5 Gal 1:6-12 Lk 10:25-37 Tuesday, Oct. 6 Gal 1:13-24 Lk 10:38-42 Wednesday, Oct. 7 Our Lady of the Rosary Gal 2:1-2, 7-14 Lk 11:1-4 Thursday, Oct. 8 Gal 3:1-5 Lk 11:5-13 Friday, Oct. 9 Gal 3:7-14 Lk 11:15-26 Saturday, Oct. 10 Gal 3:22-29 Lk 11:27-28 Sunday, Oct. 11 Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 25:6-10a Phil 4:12-14, 19-20 Mt 22:1-14

16 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

COMMENTARY

In my day job, I serve as managing editor to “Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture.” It’s an academic quarterly, interdisciplinary in nature, and our readership spans the globe.

In our current issue, I was delighted to meet a remarkable spiritual thought leader, especially for Catholic youth of the last century in Germany, Ida Friederike Görres (1901-1971). We are printing a new translation of “Trusting the Church,” a prescient talk she delivered post-Vatican II when the Church in Germany was reeling in change, along with the eulogy from her funeral given by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, who called her an irreplaceable and fearless voice for the Church.

Görres was the sixth child of an Austrian diplomat and Japanese mother, and her early life was marked by a deep loneliness and lovelessness. But her ardent involvement in the Catholic Youth Movement set her on a course to become one of the century’s more prolific and fiery voices in support of Catholicism.

She once said, since sadly she did not have children of her own, that “All my strength ... has been focused on the Church.” Thus, did she become a kind of

THE LOCAL CHURCH | DEACON GORDON BIRD

Timeless vigilance in Christian prayer

A fellow Catholic Watchmen leader recently shot me an e-mail, asking if our parish was going to resume hosting monthly Saturday prayer vigils. Perpetual adoration was postponed due to the pandemic last March, and he reminded me of how important this hour of prayer had been up to that point in time. No matter the hour of the day or the watch of the night, those who realize prayer is so essential in Christian life always have time for prayer.

“The Midnight Watch” still resonates with me more than four years after the Catholic Watchmen movement introduced the practice. Inviting men to join the call to spiritual battle, a two-minute video designed to demonstrate the importance of a vigilant prayer life did its job at the Minnesota Catholic Men’s Conference. Imagine it is 11:40 p.m. as midnight approaches. A man gets up quietly, so as not to disturb sleeping souls in the household. You can see his breath as he heads outside in the windy cold, dons a stocking hat, scrapes some snowy slush off the windshield and drives down to the local parish. He opens the church door with a passcode as two faithful friends join him in fellowship. They enter the chapel.

The Blessed Sacrament is exposed on the altar in the monstrance. Rosaries in tow, they give each other a nod and kneel in prayer in a spiritual fight for the protection of their families, parish and community.

The time 11:59 p.m. displays on the clock at home,

Görres is especially timely in reminding us that the Church is ‘the continually living Christ,’ and that the Church doesn’t ‘change with the times.’ She is uninterested in approval ratings or in being chic.

Instead, she will be true. formidable “Church mother.”

Like so many of her time, she lived through the Second Vatican Council with “joyful attention,” but she found the consequences ambiguous. “She instinctively saw that which is indispensable in limbo.” And yet, her message was one of unyielding hope. The words of her lecture in 1971 bear a kind of timeless promise: “(The Church is) the great, the whole, the long-lived, immortal on earth, the one that is identical with her own beginning ... in spite of all

and then suddenly clicks to the next minute — the third watch. His wife and kids sleep peacefully as the hour of prayer commences: “Our Father … Hail Mary … Glory be …”

A signature element of the CW movement, “The Midnight Watch” is meant to inspire and transform men by demonstrating what a dedicated, disciplined life of prayer looks like in the spirit of accountability, and that instituting and persevering in a daily spiritual prayer life at home is essential. Their spouses are not to go it alone — as much research shows happens — and more men need to step up their spiritual leadership. Praying with persistence with a devotion to Jesus, Mary and Joseph emulates the holiest of families, who certainly had their share of spiritual warfare.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The ‘spiritual battle’ of the Christian’s new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer” (2725). Spiritual battles are won through a regular, active prayer life: rising, eating, reflecting, examining, contemplating.

“Without prayer, a man is like a soldier who lacks food, water and ammunition,” Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix wrote in 2015’s “Into the Breach.” A family prayer routine of thanksgiving at meals, rosaries, litanies, Mass, adoration and vigils are all opportunities to feed, hydrate and equip the soul.

All hours of the day, all watches of the night.

Some battles are tougher than others, and that’s why watchmen do vigils. The human condition compels us to engage in a life and death struggle with the rotten fruits of evil: division, deception, materialism, etc. Hence, we must always pray for Christ’s help. Jesus taught prayer, forgiveness, mercy and love amid enemies looking for opportunities to deceive him. He defeated death, gave hope, provided strength and taught the good fruits of holiness to his followers. We are to learn from his saving knowledge, press on and do the same. That means leading,

the fashionable concerns about this terrifyingly weighty discourse of older theology, (the Church) is nevertheless the ‘continually living Christ’ who speaks and responds to us in the Church as the place of His grace, as His custodian. The recipient of that rock-solid trust of our fathers is still the same one. ...

It is not a system, an idea, an ideology, a structure, a society, but the tremendous living establishment, which has existed since the apostles until today, fulfilling her history from century to century, growing, unfolding, struggling, ailing, recovering, living out her destiny and maturing toward the return of the Lord.”

The forthcoming election feels weightier than any other of my life. We stand at the crossroads of revolution or renewal. One fed from rage, the other from repentance; one bent on destruction, the other on rebirth — and there is only one that will bring life, only one that is proper to the “tremendous living establishment,” the Church. Görres is especially timely in reminding us that the Church is “the continually living Christ,” and that the Church doesn’t “change with the times.” She is uninterested in approval ratings or in being chic. Instead, she will be true.

Görres writes: “I believe in God’s faithfulness. ... I trust the Church’s tremendous powers of regeneration — they will be awakened when the need is at its greatest. Precisely because she is a poor bride in misery now, she is more at the mercy of His grace than ever.” She continues, “We must always pray ... to defend that which is holy tenaciously, bravely, stubbornly, and at all costs. ... This courage must grow with darkness and threat.” Indeed.

Our Lady of the Americas, pray for us, that we will defend that which is holy with courage, tenacity, intelligence, compassion and without fear. Amen.

Kelly is the author of nine books, including “Love Like a Saint” (2021). You can access the “Logos” article by Görres on her website, lizk.org.

iSTOCK PHOTO | PCESS609

Renewal or revolution? Ida Görres on God’s faithfulness

COURTESY LIZ KELLY

YOUR HEART, HIS HOME | LIZ KELLY

LEARN TO PRAY Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Bishop Andrew Cozzens are teaching a five-part virtual series on praying with Scripture, which launched Sept. 13. Find more information at archspm.org/synod.

unifying and encouraging family members to embrace a vigilant, active prayer life — inside and outside of the home.

A conversation with God has no boundaries and no time zone. St. John Damascene states, “Prayer is a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God, the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.” Come Holy Spirit!

Deacon Bird ministers at St. Joseph in Rosemount and All Saints in Lakeville, and assists the archdiocese’s Catholic Watchmen movement. Reach him at gordonbird@rocketmail.com. Learn about the Catholic Watchmen at archspm.org/faith-communities/men or at facebook.com/thecatholicwatchmen.

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

FAITH IN THE PUBLIC ARENA | JASON ADKINS

What’s a Catholic voter to do?

Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, addressed questions about Catholics and political life — including voting according to Catholic values — ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Nov. 3. A version of Adkins’ responses was first published in the September issue of “The Big Question” series in The Central Minnesota Catholic, magazine of the Diocese of St. Cloud.

Q What does the Church say about Catholics’

involvement in political life and voting? Shouldn’t the Church stay out of politics? Is there any scriptural basis for its involvement?

A Pope Francis says that politics is one of the highest

forms of charity because it serves the common good.

Participating in the political process is an act of loving service or charity (“caritas”) because it is part of our responsibility to love our neighbor (Mk 12:30-31).

To love our neighbor means to work for his or her authentic good. Part of working for the good of our neighbors — whether they live near or far, and whether we know them personally or not — is enacting policies that protect human dignity and promote the common good.

In the Church’s social teaching, this responsibility is known as the “call to participation” in community.

A community is literally a “sharing of gifts,” and if we do not participate, we deprive the community of our perspective and the gifts that we have been given to share. Certainly, we do not all have the same responsibility, as we have different gifts (1 Cor 12:12).

So, even though you may not be the elected official who votes yay or nay to enact a law, you can use your gifts to advocate for good policies. We can do this by building relationships with our elected officials.

Each of us cannot do everything, but we can all do something.

Relatedly, if we find that there are some who are excluded from political life, including voting, then we have a special responsibility to work for their inclusion (Mt 25). We must work to give a voice to those who have none, and prioritize the needs of the poor and vulnerable who often don’t have the resources or organization to bring an effective voice to the public policy conversation.

Voting is one small but important part of the call to participation. In a representative government, it is important to choose carefully those who make important decisions on behalf of those whom they represent and the broader political community. But we cannot reduce the call to participation in public life to voting and be content with checking that box.

Taking part in the political process is an activity of service where people come together to discuss how we ought to order our lives together. It should not be a power game. People who object to the Church offering its moral perspective on the issues of the day or the participation of religious people in public life often view politics through the prism of power. In this way, they do not want religious people imposing their views on others who do not share their faith.

Catholics, too, can fall into the trap of viewing politics solely through the lens of power, and not wanting the Church to undermine its ability to reach people with the Gospel by causing stumbling blocks for people. But the Church calls us to see politics through the lens of service and a community conversation about what serves the common good.

Therefore, we cannot sit on the sidelines of these important matters.

When we engage in the political process in the right way with the right principles, our witness will

COMMENTARY

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 17

be evangelical and bring people closer to Christ. The political arena is mission territory (Mt 28:20). That is certainly my experience after almost 10 years serving in this position.

can come to different conclusions about the wisdom of various choices. Because we operate in an electoral system dominated by two parties, with candidates chosen by a small group of very ideological activists, we are sometimes not given a choice between two good candidates, but instead we are picking the lesser Q What principles/values should we take into of two evils. We ask ourselves, “Which candidate account when casting our vote? Should Catholic will do the least damage to the dignity of the human social teaching be our guide? person and the common good?”

In some cases, a person in good conscience cannot A We need to FORM our consciences with the right principles, and then INFORM our votes. Doing so will vote for either of the major-party candidates. Voting for a third-party candidate or skipping a vote in a help TRANSFORM our legislatures. particular race are legitimate The Church does not tell us options. They are not “wasted how to vote in every election. votes” but actions taken out of Rather, it provides the principles Voting is important, principle and in good conscience. for shaping our participation Not voting altogether because in community life. Formed in but it’s not a sacrament. one does not like the options those principles, we go out and at the top of the ballot seems Ultimately, it is a question transform the world and restore imprudent. There are many all things in Christ. of conscience. other candidate races on a Catholic social teaching is that ballot that merit study and Like everything else we toolbox of principles. It is not a careful consideration. As we set of prescriptions or ready-made do, how we vote should have been reminded during this answers. Instead, it is a mental pandemic, major decisions are model for well-formed Catholics reflect Gospel values and made at the state and municipal to guide their actions. How those levels, and we cannot ignore a commitment to seeking principles apply in addressing those candidates and issues out social problems or when voting is first a kingdom that is of disgust at what goes on in a question of prudence. Prudence Washington. is a virtue that allows us to do the not of this world.

That being said, some right thing in the right way at the Catholics, such as Dorothy Day, right time. rarely voted. Though one cannot Sometimes, Catholics will differ ignore voting and public life, it in their prudential judgments, may reach a point where the refusal to vote is its own that is, the application of the principles of Catholic form of witness. Voting is important, but it’s not a social teaching in politics and in elections. That is sacrament. Ultimately, it is a question of conscience.

OK. The key, however, is for Catholics to be operating Like everything else we do, how we vote should on the firm foundation of the right principles. To do reflect Gospel values and a commitment to seeking so, we must form our conscience (conscience means first a kingdom that is not of this world. “with knowledge”).

If we fail to form our conscience in the truth of the Q What are some do’s and don’ts for Minnesota Church’s teachings, or malform our conscience with parishes when it comes to election season? the opinions of TV news talking heads, we will not only fail to bring the Gospel into public life, we may A MCC offers a guide to permissible political do more harm than good. activities during election season. It can be found at

Q “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”

identifies two temptations in public life that can distort the Church’s defense of human life and dignity: 1) a moral equivalence that makes no ethical distinctions between different kinds of issues involving human life and dignity; and 2) the misuse of these necessary moral distinctions as a way of dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity. How should Catholics navigate through these two temptations?

A First, read “Forming Consciences for Faithful

Citizenship” to be rooted in a consistent ethic of life that protects human life from womb to tomb and promotes human flourishing in between.

Not all issues are created equal. But the full spectrum of issues should be part of the voting calculus. An issue may not seem like it affects you or be your issue of preeminent concern, but it likely affects someone else and needs to be considered. That is called voting in solidarity with others.

Further, as Pope Francis reminds us in “Laudato Si’,” everything is connected. For example, if you are concerned about marriage and the well-being of the family, you should also be concerned about economic policies and social supports that help create the conditions for stable family life.

Second, avoid starting with a preferred voting outcome and then working backward to justify it.

People can take some portion of the Church’s social teaching to justify almost any vote. But we should strive to think with the mind of the Church and let our actions and our votes be rooted in the right principles.

Q What if you feel no candidate for a particular

office fully embraces a commitment to the dignity of the human person? How do you decide for whom to cast your vote?

A Again, voting is a question of prudence. Catholics

mncatholic.org/election.

Parishes are often afraid of overstepping permissible bounds and endangering the parish’s tax-exempt status, and therefore avoid any election-related programming. This is a mistake. Parishes have broad latitude to offer non-partisan educational material and events to inform voters.

A few key recommendations: Avoid endorsing candidates explicitly. Similarly, to avoid the appearance of a strongly implied endorsement, do not distribute voter guides from partisan organizations that are not approved by your bishop.

Q What resources and tools does Minnesota

Catholic Conference offer to assist Catholics in having a voice in public policy and advocacy after Election Day?

A First, ahead of election day, we are equipping

parishes to help Catholics get to know the candidates.

This year, for the first time, we are encouraging parishes, with the support of our state’s bishops, to host parish town halls with their state legislative candidates. It is a great way to help inform parishioners about who the candidates are, and where they stand on issues important to Catholics across Minnesota and issues that matter to people in the pew at that particular parish.

We have created an extensive toolkit for parishes that wish to host a town hall. It can be found at mncatholic.org/townhall.

To stay informed year-round, join the Catholic Advocacy Network. Go to mncatholic.org/actioncenter to register. By joining, you will receive regular updates on what is happening at the Minnesota Legislature, ways for you to bring your faith into the public arena, and action alerts that allow you to send a message to your legislators on issues impacting life, dignity and the common good.

Adkins is executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, public policy voice of the Catholic Church in Minnesota.

COMMENTARY

18 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

THE LOCAL CHURCH | DURSITU S. AGAMSO

My Catholic school, a second home As a single mother from Ethiopia, I have seen the difference between a good education and a bad one.

A school that teaches discipline and respect and one that does not.

A child who knows their God and one who is still searching.

As a working mom in America, I know how important it is to send my children to a school I trust and to leave them in the care of people I can call family. This is why I chose a Catholic school for my children. After the many challenges of the past six months, I know God blessed that decision.

Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Columbia Heights is not a school as much as it is a second home. In my tradition, those you welcome into your home are your family. And my family, my Immaculate family, has helped me raise my children.

Because of their Catholic school, my children, I am grateful to say, know right from wrong. They know their God. They know their Bible. When my friends from my Orthodox church ask how my children can answer all the questions on Sundays, I am proud to say, “Because they go to Catholic school.”

When the pandemic began, my Immaculate family made sure the students didn’t stop learning. Because of the small class sizes, when we switched to distance learning, my children saw their teacher every day.

They saw their principal every day. They were able to have one-on-one conversations and have all their questions answered. The school also made sure all the students had necessary supplies and meals.

Like so many parents, my life and my children’s lives have changed so much since the pandemic

As a working mom in America, I know how important it is to send my children to a school I trust and to leave them in the care of people I can call family.

iSTOCK PHOTO | AARON007

began. I find myself saying “I used to” more often than ever before.

I used to work from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for the county. I now work from home at all hours in between meeting the needs of my three, also at-home children, doing dishes and laundry, and taking care of my sick mom who lives with us.

I used to spend my evenings working concession stands at Target Field and U.S. Bank Stadium. I used to, but that work has gone away, and now my oldest son and I have found evening jobs at FedEx to make sure he can go back to DeLaSalle this fall.

Even though I say “I used to” more than before, I give thanks to God that I do not have to say that I used to send my children to Catholic school.

Through the many challenges I have faced since moving to this country both before and after the

pandemic began, so many people have been generous and have made sacrifices to give my children the gift of their Catholic school. Thank you to Immaculate Conception for my financial aid. Thank you to the many donors of the Aim Higher Foundation who make my daughters’ tuition-assistance scholarships possible.

With all of their help, my children can go to Catholic school. My children have the opportunity to be successful. They will get to know their God better.

And as they return to in-person classes this fall, I know they will be able to continue to experience everything America has to offer when they are older.

Agamso is a parent of Catholic school students. The Local Church is an occasional column featuring guest writers.

LETTERS Humble means Thank you for an inspiring read in The Catholic Spirit. Personally, I enjoy very much all the writers at the end of the publication, beginning with Sunday Scriptures. Then I read the rest of the paper. Because of COVID-19, I tune into EWTN on TV Sunday mornings for Mass.

It struck me all the gold I saw — candle holders, chalices, crucifix, tabernacle for the Blessed Sacrament, etc. The thought of every parish contributing the money to their out-of-work parishioners, their poor, the food shelves and community.

It would mean selling the gold and using vessels of humbler means. To serve humbly. To serve all. It’s what Jesus would do.

Christine Corlett St. Richard, Richfield

Wary of BLM agenda (Re: “What to make of Black Lives Matter,” Sept.10) Our Catholic faith is firmly rooted in the sanctity of human life. We believe that Black lives matter, and that all lives are made in the image of God. An organization like BLM should be attractive to Catholics then, right? While Black lives do matter, the organization is one that supports some beliefs that should raise a red flag to Catholics. One of the most disturbing is that, according to its website, BLM strives to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” To disrupt the Christian, nuclear family, which is the domestic church (CCC 2204), is to destroy the foundation of the Church.

The BLM organization has at its core an agenda, much of which is contrary to Church teaching, that we as Catholics need to be aware of. Black lives do matter, so let’s support organizations that not only aid Black lives, but are concurrent with the teachings of the Church.

Tracy Tourville St. Charles, Bayport

Anonymity detracts In general, your centerpiece on Black Lives Matter was informative and helpful.

I appreciate receiving the facts. Thank you. However, I object to you publishing a quote from a woman theologian who refuses to identify herself. At the very least, her inflammatory quote should have been taken out of the story. It lacked a confirmation, and without attribution, it could be considered totally false. We readers have had enough false statements already and don’t need another to demean a movement that certainly, as testified to by other named people, has merit.

Terry Kolb Griep St. Thomas More, St. Paul

Need for urban missionaries The Special Report on Black Lives Matter (Sept. 10) poses “how should Catholics engage?” A more precise question is “how should our St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese engage?”

St. Peter Claver parishioner Bill Butchee points to “the demise of families in

the Black community” as being “the greatest contributor to disparities within the Black and white people in America.” Minnesota Catholic Conference Executive Director Jason Adkins (“Combating Racial Disparities,” September 2017) observes, “a major difference in the percentage of white and black children born to married parents (64 to 30) is perhaps the most significant cause of racial disparities, and one that creates a cycle of poverty and exclusion that leads back to the school-to-prison pipeline.” Iconic Catholic missionary organizations (Jesuit, Maryknoll, etc.) have long and successfaully evangelized within other countries. They have influenced the spirituality and cultural values of millions. It appears that America’s “racial” issues mainly relate to those who are both slave descendants and multi-generational welfare dependents, the majority of whom live in larger cities. Could America’s inner cities represent an unparalleled evangelistic opportunity were they a Catholic missionary priority? Might not our archdiocese community realize some distinguishable societal results were dedicated missionary resources engaged within the strategic, inner-city areas?

Call them “urban missionaries.”

Gene Delaune St. John the Baptist, New Brighton

Missing masks I was inspired to read in the September 10th issue of the pilgrimage of the teens from the parishes in Stillwater

(“Stillwater teens step into action”), but I was deeply dismayed to see that not one of them in any of the pictures, including their adult leader, was wearing a mask.

This, despite urging and encouraging by civil and Church leadership. Very difficult to understand.

Sister Carolyn Puccio, CSJ St. Paul

Mask up First, I agree with the comments in the “Mask mandate” letter on page 18 (Commentary, Sept. 10). Second, I thought it inappropriate for you to publish the photo on the cover showing the Stillwater teens with no masks. Frankly, I am embarrassed by the failure of the Church to follow the recommendations of the governor in protecting us from COVID-19.

Larry McIntyre Lumen Christi, St. Paul

Keep it simple Are you pro-life? Wear a mask. It’s that simple.

Christine Larson Mary, Mother of the Church, Burnsville Share your perspective by emailing TheCatholicSpirit@archspm.org. Please limit your letter to the editor to 150 words and include your parish and phone number.

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

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 19

CALENDAR Archdiocesan Synod: Praying with Scripture Series — Sept. 13-Oct. 17: This virtual five-part series offers practical tools for growing in holiness, drawing upon the rich tradition of the Catholic Church. Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Bishop Andrew Cozzens teach the fundamentals of praying with Scripture and explain how to use a Prayer Companion resource to enrich the prayer experience. Watch at your convenience with family, friends or on your own. Videos will be posted online and available on the Archdiocesan Synod website.

The videos will be livestreamed Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on Facebook and YouTube. More information at archspm.org/praying-with-scripture-series.

St. John the Baptist Fall Fest — Sept. 26-27: 835 Second Ave. NW, New Brighton. Appropriately socially distanced, safe events and opportunities for community building at the 2021 Fall Fest! Our signature pig roast and Booya will be takeout-style this year. A variety of virtual events available including “Grill the Priest” and livestreamed Masses. stjohnnb.com.

Discipleship Sunday: “What is a Disciple?” — Sept. 27: 9:30–10:30 a.m. at St. John the Evangelist, 4621 McMenemy St., Little Canada. Archbishop Bernard Hebda will present. Activities and presentations also geared toward sharing and growing in faith in a family-friendly, socially safe environment conveniently positioned between both Sunday Masses to encourage attendees from each to attend and participate. sjolc.org/discipleship-sunday.

SoulCollage Sunday Circles — Sept. 27, Oct. 18, Nov. 8, Dec 13: 1:30–4 p.m. online through St. Paul’s Monastery. These casual afternoons (via Zoom) give participants the time, space and silence they need to create and reflect on their lives. Sessions include

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

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

If the Catholic connection is not clear, please emphasize it in your submission. Included in our listings are local events submitted by public sources that could be of interest to the larger Catholic community.

ITEMS MUST INCLUDE the following to be considered for publication: uTime and date of event uFull street address of event uDescription of event uContact information in case of questions ONLINE: T HECATHOLICSPIRIT.COM/ CALENDARSUBMISSIONS

spiritual reflection, collage making and creative exercises. No previous experience is necessary. benedictinecenter.org.

in REMEMBRANCE Priest remembered for smile, sharing God’s love

Heart to Heart — Sept. 29: 6 p.m. online. Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Father David Blume, director of vocations, invite women, ages 16-35, who are discerning consecrated life to join this evening of prayer and conversation with consecrated women sharing their testimonies and a virtual tour of Bethany House (Women’s Discernment House). RSVP before Sept. 27 at 10000vocations.org. Questions? Email stpaulvocations@10000vocations.org or call the Office of Vocations at 651-962-6890. Register here: 10000vocations.org/miriam-dinner.html.

By Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

Attentive Companions: Spiritual Direction and the Journey with God — Sept. 29: 7–9 p.m. online hosted

by St. Paul’s Monastery. A spiritual director listens to concerns, shares insights and creates a safe place to talk about spiritual issues and deepen the ability to hear the voice of God. benedictinecenter.org.

October Rosary at the Cathedral — Oct. 2: 7 p.m. online. While the pandemic prevents gathering for the annual October Rosary Procession, it cannot prevent prayers to the Blessed Mother. This October, join Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Bishop Andrew Cozzens virtually for eucharistic adoration, praying the rosary and Benediction. archspm.org/october-rosary-at-the-cathedral.

Drawn into Friendship: An Interactive Art Retreat — Oct. 2: 8 a.m. online hosted by St. Thomas More in St. Paul. Ignatian Spirituality encourages affective experiences in prayer. Take part in this at-home, interactive art retreat based on the creation story in Genesis. Includes seven days of prayer material and a “creation sketchbook,” with prompts for daily sketches. morecommunity.org/art-retreat.

“Into the Breach” video series — Oct. 4-Dec. 20: 7–9 p.m. at 2229 Pinewood Dr., Mounds View. Catholic men face a spiritual crisis today. Explore the call to be better husbands, fathers and Catholics with this videobased program of spiritual growth. All Catholic men are invited. More information and registration at mnknights.org.

The Biblical Temple: Where Man Meets God — Oct. 6-Nov. 10: 7–8:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Catholic School, 1954 Marshall Ave., St. Paul. The Biblical temple is a structure of deep significance. Learn what Scripture says about the temple, examine the various temples throughout salvation history and reflect on the implications for life in Christ. Remote attendance available. onestrongfamily.org/biblestudy.

Lean Times, Living Stories — Oct. 8: 9 a.m.–noon online, hosted by St. Paul’s Monastery. Participants examine and consider different ways to tell their life stories — to themselves and others. Different perspectives can deepen understanding of difficulties, transitions, diminishments and possibilities experienced. benedictinecenter.org.

For decades, Father John Clay attended the parish festival at St. Stanislaus in St. Paul, where he served as pastor from 1975 to 2019. One of his tasks was to draw the winner of the annual parish raffle.

The festival and drawing always took place on the second Sunday of September, according to long-time parish sacristan Pat Heroff. This year, it was Sept. 13. Just hours after the $10,000 prizewinner was announced, Father Clay died. He was 94.

“I think it’s very fitting,” said Heroff, 81, whose husband, Jerry, 85, attended the parish elementary school. “The day of our raffle for the fall festival, he went to heaven.”

Pat and Jerry moved back to the Twin Cities in 1979, giving her many opportunities to observe Father Clay’s involvement in parish life, including the festival.

“He was always so active that day,” she recalled. “He was really kind of funny.

He had this little straw hat that he would put on the day of the festival. And, he used to say, ‘Well, you guys do all the work, and all I have to do is walk around in my straw FATHER JOHN CLAY hat and smile.’ And, that’s what he did. He had a smile on his face constantly. It was a happy day when we had our fall festival.”

Throughout the years, Father Clay’s trademark smile illustrated a phrase he often used when talking with people: “Smile, God loves you.”

“That was his motto,” Heroff said. “He said that to everybody, it was put at the end of everything he wrote.”

Father Clay grew up in New Ulm and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1951. In addtion to St. Stanislaus, Father Clay served at St. Olaf in Minneapolis, Our Lady of the Lake in Mound, St. Joseph in Red Wing and St. Peter in Richfield.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a virtual funeral will be posted on the parish website at a later date. Interment is at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights.

Father Stenger served in Brooklyn Center for 12 years

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit Redemptorist Father Joseph Stenger, who served St. Alphonsus in Brooklyn Center for 12 years, died Sept. 2 in Liguori, Missouri, at age 88.

A native of Glennonville, Missouri, Father Stenger joined St. Alphonsus in 2003 as associate pastor and retired in 2007, but continued to minister to parishioners there until 2015.

Father Pat Grile, pastor of St. Alphonsus from 1999 to 2011, said he served the parish with Father Stenger for eight years. Although Father Stenger was 72 when he joined St. Alphonsus, Father

Grile remembers his energy, humor and fondness for visiting the sick and suffering.

“He became known for that,” Father Grile said, noting he would travel from the northwest metro to locations including St. Paul to visit parishioners, day or FATHER JOSEPH night.

STENGER A funeral Mass was celebrated Sept. 12 in Imperial, Missouri, followed by burial at the Redemptorist Cemetery in Liguori.

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20 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

THELASTWORD

She has a dream

As Josie Johnson of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul approaches her 90th birthday next month, she maintains her passion for civil rights and has a deep concern for young African Americans of today.

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Long-time St. Paul civil rights activist was there the day MLK inspired the nation

By Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

J

osie Johnson was a young civil rights activist when she boarded a plane in 1963 headed for the March on Washington.

It was a whirlwind affair, with her and a contingent of Minnesotans landing in the nation’s capital just hours before the event, then hustling back to the airport for the return flight not long after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech echoed down the National Mall and reverberated across the country.

She reflected on that speech, and on decades of civil rights activism, on Aug. 28, the anniversary date of the march, which she recalls every year and commemorates in some fashion. This year, she chose to be interviewed

by The Catholic Spirit about her experiences then and now, saying near the end, “Catholics have a lot of work that we can do” when it comes to racial justice and equality.

This is a proud African American woman, approaching her 90th birthday in October, who both absorbed the words of King and other civil rights leaders, and took her own turn at the microphone over many decades to add her voice to the conversation about race. Her demeanor offers a blend of grace and class, her gentle, Southern accent infused with both kindness and passion.

Now in the twilight of her days engaging in the struggle, she stands hopeful and nervous about the future of African Americans in the U.S. These conflicting emotions are encapsulated in a book she published in 2019, a memoir titled “Hope in the Struggle.” She is encouraged by some of the progress that has been made in her lifetime — progress she helped bring about through involvement in advocacy organizations such as the NAACP and legislative issues like fair housing and education (see sidebar) — but worries that current tensions may have stalled the march to full equality that King envisioned.

She has deep compassion for young Black people today, holding them in her heart like she does her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She wants young people of all colors to read her book and follow in her footsteps of stepping up and speaking out.

“I hope what they will do is look at just a plain, ordinary person who loves her community, her people,” said Johnson, a Houston native who still would be marching in today’s peaceful protests were it not for the risk of contracting COVID-19. “And, I hope what they will see is that a Black woman can indeed be engaged in the community and make a difference.”

She also wants to “encourage young Black people to be productive, creative, hopeful and to move forward.”

That’s what she was trying to do 57 years ago when she took her place in a crowd of about 250,000 gathered to march in Washington and hear speeches by civil rights leaders. King was the last to speak, and she noted that his remarks went beyond what he had planned to say.

On that “very hot day,” she and others from Minnesota, including Sen. Hubert Humphrey, were

gathered near the Lincoln Memorial. As a co-chair of the Minneapolis NAACP, she helped organize the trip from Minnesota, and learned that there were threats made against the marchers in D.C. who were there to protest racial injustice that Blacks were continuing to endure despite legal and cultural shifts toward equality.

“We were urged to get out of D.C. as quickly as possible (after the march),” said Johnson, a long-time member of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul who once served as interim principal of the school. “And, that’s what we all did, immediately after the speech of Dr. King.”

Their quick departure, however, did not lessen the impact of all the speeches they heard that day, especially King’s.

“It was thrilling to hear this man,” Johnson recalled.

“Mahalia Jackson, who was on the stage (singing gospel songs during the event), urged him to share with the gathering his dream about freedom, and love of peace and harmony. And, that’s when he shared his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. He had given portions of that speech to audiences at earlier times, but that day pulled everything (together) that he had said over time about Black people having a dream of freedom and liberation.”

Though she was in Washington for only a few hours, she called it “a day you don’t forget.”

“It was — as you can imagine — just an unbelievable, fast-moving, deeply spiritual, deeply felt moment,” she said. “And, I don’t think you realize that that is history being made, and you and your colleagues from Minnesota and all across the world are part of that historical movement.”

On the flight back home, Johnson and others from the Minnesota delegation already were planning “how we would follow that charge from Dr. King.”

So, 57 years after those immortal words were spoken, how does Johnson feel King’s vision has materialized?

What is her assessment of a country still mired in racial tensions, exacerbated by the death of George Floyd May 25 and the ensuing protests and riots that have sprung up all across the country?

“We are not doing well,” she said, noting inequities in housing, employment and education, all sustained by attitudes going back to the time when African men, women and children were forcibly pulled by the thousands from their villages, put on ships and turned into slaves in a country called “the land of the free.”

“The struggle goes on,” she said, “in part, because when our ancestors were brought here from Africa as slaves … that became very deeply etched in the fabric of America. So, laws and policies and attitudes followed that rationale for abusing our ancestors and enslaving them. And, it still is there.”

What to do? The answer is rooted in what she witnessed in Washington nearly six decades ago and sometimes commemorates by picking up the transcript of King’s immortal words and reading it quietly in her St. Paul apartment.

CIVIL RIGHTS LEGACY Josie Johnson’s involvement in the civil rights movement in the Twin Cities stretches back to the 1950s, shortly after she and her husband, Chuck, moved to Minneapolis. After meeting several influential African American civil rights activists in the Twin Cities, she was asked to join the board of the Minneapolis NAACP chapter. She later became co-chair and helped organize a trip to Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington in 1963.

Johnson also joined the League of Women Voters and became the first Black woman to hold an office on the Minneapolis board and the first to serve on its national board. She remained active in both the League and the NAACP, even while raising three daughters, the first of whom was born in 1954. She later got involved with the Minneapolis Urban League, and channeled her efforts to help in the areas of housing, education and health care.

Along the way, she earned a doctoral degree in education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

She has continued engaging in the struggle for equality over the last six decades, becoming in 1971 the first African American to be elected to the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents after teaching courses in the African American Studies Program created in 1969. At a U of M event in her honor in 2018, she was called the “Harriet Tubman of our time,” according to a Minnesota Public Radio news story. She has met influential elected officials along the way, all the way up to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, the first African American to hold that office. He came to Minnesota in 2012, and she had her picture taken with him, a photo that appears in her 2019 book “Hope in the Struggle.”

— Dave Hrbacek “Honoring Dr. King today and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech needs to be the fuel that we need to ‘keep on keeping on,’ as my father would say, and just see what difference we can make for that young group of people you are looking at today, who are honoring (King’s legacy) and have worked hard to complete their education,” she said. “They need to know and feel that it really matters.”

One way to do that is to highlight the achievements of African Americans who have distinguished themselves in education and in their careers. Too often, Johnson said, media portrayals of Blacks are negative.

Instead, media need to search out and shine a spotlight on what people in the African American community call “Black excellence.”

“We’ve got to show more examples of what’s positive and hopeful,” Johnson said. She noted that King was motivated to go to city after city by growing up in an atmosphere of “hope and inspiration.”

And, it’s what today’s young African American people need, she said.

“We have to reinvent that opportunity for our children to believe.”