Spiritual Spring Cleaning

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, April 2003

opportunities for spiritual renewal. Just as the advent of spring prompts us to do spring cleaning or yard work following the long, hard winter, this time in the Church year invites us to “get back in shape” spiritually through prayer, self-denial, and almsgiving.

Prayer connects us with God. It helps us to tune out the distractions of daily life. Prayer reminds us that God is the source of all life (and the center of our individual lives). It puts us in touch with the truth about ourselves and about our world. Prayer helps us to focus on what’s most important in life. It allows us to open ourselves to God’s grace and to live a richer and more authentic life.

Self-denial is profoundly counter-cultural. It demands that we learn to say “no” to our impulses (good and bad) and that we resist the relentless voices of a market-driven consumer culture that demands our undivided attention 24/7 …

– Read the full article –

Holy Spirit Gives Church Authority to Evangelize, Pope Explains

Catholic News Agency -- May 21, 2010

Vatican City, May 21, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News) -- “The conversion of the world to Christ is not something we produce, but something given to us,” the Holy Father told representatives of the Pontifical Mission Societies on Friday morning. Evangelization, he underscored, is reliant on the work of the Holy Spirit and needs missionaries “with their hands raised towards God.”

On Friday morning, the Holy Father met with members of the Superior Council of the Pontifical Mission Societies on the final day of their Ordinary Assembly in Rome, which has been in session since Monday.

The Pope remarked to them that the mission of evangelization is “immense,” especially today when “humanity suffers a certain lack of reflection and wisdom” and a God-excluding humanism has become so widespread.

“For this reason, it is urgently necessary to illuminate emerging problems with the unchanging light of the Gospel,” Benedict XVI said.

Referring to the preaching of the Word of God as an “inestimable service the Church can offer to all of humanity,” he described evangelization as “the call to liberty of the children of God” as well as a plea “for the construction of more just and united society to prepare us for eternal life.”

Pope Benedict noted that the person who participates in Christ’s mission “must inevitably face trials, contrasts and suffering because they clash with the powers of this world.” Following St. Paul’s example, “persecution is also proof of the authenticity of our apostolic mission,” he explained.

Facing the daunting task of such a mission is possible, he added, through the work of the Holy Spirit, which “unites and preserves the Church, giving her the force to expand, filling the disciples of Christ with an overflowing wealth of charisms.

“It is from the Holy Spirit that the Church’s announcement and apostolic ministry receive authority.”

And, for this reason, continued Pope Benedict, “evangelization needs Christians with their arms raised to God in prayer, Christians aware that conversion of the world to Christ is not something we produce, but something given to us.”

Present at the audience were consecrated and lay members of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples including its prefect Cardinal Ivan Dias. The cardinal gave an address outlining the results of the congregation’s meetings, underscoring that “we are further convinced that the effectiveness of our evangelizing activity depends solely on the potency of the Holy Spirit, and on the testimony of life that must accompany the announcement of the Kingdom of God.”

Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee Raises $46 Million

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – By Annysa Johnson – May 22, 2010

Additional $48 million in pledges expected in next 3 years

The Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee and its parishes have raised $46 million, nearly half of the $105?million goal set for the local church’s largest capital campaign ever, and another $48.3 million in pledges to be fulfilled over the next three years, the archdiocese is expected to announce Sunday.

In all, the church is projecting to raise $94.3 million, or 90% of its goal, a feat archdiocese officials described as extraordinary in the economic downturn and with the sex-abuse scandal and other issues facing the church.

“It’s staggering to think that could be raised at a time when the economy is so strapped,” said Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki. It shows, he said, “a tremendous confidence in the church.”

The archdiocese will announce the final numbers for the official close of the three-year run of the campaign at a special Mass at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. Parishes around the archdiocese have been invited to join in with their own Masses of thanksgiving.

Some congregations will continue to solicit pledges, and commitments in hand would be fulfilled over the next three years.

Former Archbishop Timothy Dolan, now archbishop of New York, launched the Faith in Our Future campaign in the summer of 2007 with an emphasis on bolstering the 127 Catholic schools in the 10-county archdiocese and enhancing faith formation for children and adults.

Some had questioned whether it was an effort to raise funds to finance potential judgments in looming sex-abuse lawsuits, which the church has said could bankrupt it. While the proceeds may ensure that Catholic education and faith formation would continue to be funded in the event of a bankruptcy, the church has said campaign proceeds are placed into a trust that cannot be tapped to fund litigation or settlements.

Working with parishes

The campaign was the archdiocese’s largest fund-raising initiative, and the first to split proceeds with parishes – they keep 60% of what they raise – and involve up to 15,000 parish volunteers, according to archdiocese development director Debra Lethlean.

It has led to a host of new initiatives around the archdiocese, including building expansions and renovations; updated technology; more tuition assistance for Catholic schools; and the addition of staff for expanded ministries, including parish nurses and youth ministers.

All but three of the archdiocese’s 210 parishes participated.

Most of the money raised to date has come from major donors, gifts of $50,000 solicited by bishops and campaign chairs Ed and Diane Zore. The archdiocese had set a $15?million goal for those gifts, but more than doubled that total with $32.8 million.

The largest individual gift was $5 million from the Reiman Foundation to expand Catholic ministry on college campuses, including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Howard Craig of O’Meara Ferguson Whelan and Conway, the Virginia-based consulting firm that worked with the archdiocese on the campaign, said the large-gifts portion of the drive was one of the most successful it’s worked on.

“It was an overwhelming response by the business community and major contributors, especially Catholic businessmen,” Craig said.

Participation rates varied

About a quarter of the 186,661 registered parish families that were solicited contributed.

And within parishes, participation ranged from 7% to 60%, according to the archdiocese.

Reasons varied, from economic hardships to frustration with the continuing clergy sex-abuse scandal and other issues facing the church, Lethlean said.

“We try to discourage people from voting about these things with their pocketbooks,” she said.

Those who give to such campaigns, Lethlean said, tend to be regular Mass-goers who “feel more connected to their parish and the greater church, and who may or may not know more about the mission.”

It’s unclear what effect, if any, the campaign has had on other giving in the church.

The annual Catholic Stewardship Appeal, which funds the operations and ministries of the archdiocese, is down nearly $227,000 compared with last year at this time.

Although the number of parishioners giving to the stewardship appeal is down nearly 2,000 this year, the average gift is up by $2 over last year.

Lethlean blames the shortfall on the economy rather than the capital campaign.

“We’re hearing from some of our loyal donors that they’re not able to give as much this year due to the sustained economic downturn,” she said.

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Purpose of the fund drive

The Faith in Our Future funds are divided into three long-term and three shorter-term initiatives:

Long-term endowments

$11 million for scholarships to Catholic elementary and high schools.

$5 million for religious education programs for children and adults in parishes.

$5 million for the archdiocese’s St. Francis de Sales Seminary and John Paul II Center, which provides training and formation of deacons and adult lay leaders.

Immediate-use initiatives

$6.85 million to ensure quality and competitiveness of the archdiocese’s Catholic schools.

$3.5 million to the John Paul II Center, to expand training and education for adults and families in the areas of marriage, family life and Catholic ministry.

$1.6 million for the global church, to fund Catholic education and faith-formation initiatives around the world.

‘Now is the time,’ Bishop Finn tells parish leaders

The Catholic Key (Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph) – By Kevin Kelly – May 14, 2010

INDEPENDENCE — The three “T’s” of stewardship — time, talent, treasure — are well known.

Borrowing from St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson, Bishop Robert W. Finn spoke of the three “P’s” — prayer, participation, payback — at the first diocesan Stewardship Day in seven years, May 7 at St. Mark Parish in Independence.

Keynoting to an audience of some 150 pastors, business managers and lay ecclesial ministers and parish council members who came from all corners of the diocese, Bishop Finn set the tone for the day and the following break-out sessions that stewardship isn’t about increasing parish funds. It’s about conversion to a way of life in which giving back in thanksgiving for gifts received comes naturally.

The first step is prayer, he said.

“If we are going to let God guide things, including our decisions about material goods, we need to listen to him better and more frequently,” Bishop Finn said. “The challenge is this: to give God a big chunk of your most valuable and high quality time in prayer.”

The bishop also reminded his audience that the quality and spirit of participation in the life of the church is as important as the quantity, and extends beyond the church walls.

“Do we participate in and contribute to the life of our communities, our neighborhoods, our workplace?” he said. “Do we bring our faith to bear in all arenas of our life, particularly our secular life?

“If we do not choose to participate fully as baptized persons of living and active faith, then who is going to transform the culture of death into the civilization of life and love? Who if not us?” Bishop Finn said.

“What would our parishes look like if we all gave a tithe of our time in serious prayer? How would our communities become better homes for our parishes if we were actively influencing them through authentic — full, active and conscious — participation?” he said.

Payback, he said, involves giving back to God, and to those people who formed us throughout our lives.

“Many of us are who we are because of someone who was faithful, perhaps a parent, a teacher or mentor,” he said.

“Many of us received a Catholic education,” Bishop Finn said. “If so, it is likely that our parents made some sacrifices, some generous choices that cost them.

“Now it is payback time,” he said. “What have we received? What have we inherited in the parishes where we worship? What will our generation create for those who come after us?”

Bishop Finn noted that even though he saw his parents every Sunday take their collection envelope to Mass, he himself did not begin tithing regularly until his second assignment as a priest, when a pastor spoke of the spiritual aspects of stewardship.

“I started donating to the parish, and throughout my priesthood, I continued to tithe,” he said.

“I still keep tithing through various efforts I have been associated with along the way, and I have been better off for it,” the bishop said. “I don’t budget it. I just take it off the top and sort out what’s left.”

Bishop Finn said parishes have to set budgets and financial goals, but the goal of a total stewardship program is different.

“The goal of stewardship is not ultimately money. It is something spiritual,” he said.

“It has to do with building holiness and a particular set of virtues within holiness. It has to do with becoming more thankful, less material and therefore more spiritual.

“It involves growing in trust with God, in relying on providence to a greater degree than we might otherwise,” he said.

“As such, it has to do with what the Gospel calls spiritual poverty, what Jesus referred to when he proclaimed, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’” the bishop said.

“Stewardship might help us to say, ‘God, I don’t have the material means to conquer every trial or challenge. My life is in your hands. I may have to do without, but I know you will get me through, perhaps more simply,’” he said.

“Stewardship has a goal,” Bishop Finn said. “It is to grow more holy, more detached, more peaceful even if we don’t acquire all the things we might be able to acquire.”

Bishop Finn told the parish leaders, “Now is the time for us.”

“I am aware, with admiration, of some amazing things many of you have done and are doing in your parishes in this area of spirituality and stewardship,” he said.

“Please don’t stop. But what can we do as a diocese beyond what we are doing in some blessed individual efforts?” he said.

“I believe that it is God’s plan for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph that we are great stewards, and that we can be exemplary in living this way as a diocese,” he said.

“I challenge you to join me in a new moment of stewardship in our diocese,” Bishop Finn said. “Can we pray, participate and pay back? Can we give God the best of our time, talent and treasure?”

Mans Darkened Reason

Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 3 – By Patrick O’Meara – May 24, 2010

Financial reform and individual responsibility

With the Financial Reform bill passing the senate it seems appropriate to frame the debate with a diagnosis of causal relationships for the financial crisis that go beyond the merely technical. Major banks and financial services companies on Wall Street must understand their relationship to the broader community. Their decisions strategically and tactically, or quarterly and even transaction by transaction must be rationalized from a perspective of a broader goal of what is in the best interest of their employees and society as a whole, not just their individual shareholders.

The important and appropriate move in corporate America to emphasize the duty of management and the corporate board to the shareholder has lead to several unintended consequences. This movement in the corporate sphere extended beyond an emphasis of a duty to the shareholder to an exclusive mantra fails to include the appropriate duties of the corporation to their workers and to society as a whole. The lexicon of corporate America almost completely eliminated the discussion of duty to anyone other than the shareholder. This is a gross generalization, but in large corporations this clearly seems to have been the case, particularly on Wall Street where there was no discussion of responsibility to the society in which the Wall Street firms operated and employees were merely viewed as consumable items.

Corporate boards and management have an immediate and direct duty towards their shareholder. Their duty to society is participatory and in general is not determinative of society’s welfare by their corporation’s individual actions or collectively by their industry. Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate refers to mans darkened reason that clouded the ability of the individual to see their responsibility to their coworkers and to the broader society or the common good of the polis. Their reason was darkened by their own selfishness and greed. The reasonable man would understand that they have a clear obligation to the society in which they live as well as to their coworker when they are given positions of responsibility. The canard of the sole duty to the shareholder serves as a helpful excuse as to why they can look to their own self interest and greed yet still fulfill a duty to a higher purpose than themselves. Other estimable duties are discussed such as to the environment, to which every major corporation at the very least pays lip service. Yet in the hierarchy of goods the polis in which they exist and operate must be at the top of those goods to which they owe a duty.

The duty to shareholder may be coincidental to a duty to the polis and to the employee, but they are in fact distinct. It can clearly be argued that duty to the shareholder in the long run should include a duty to employee and polis. The fact that this is the case cannot eliminate their distinct natures. They are contrary and may in fact at times become contradictory. It is only in understanding these duties as distinct can we understand that they must at time constrain each other.

It is incumbent upon us to strengthen the intellectual rigor with which these topics are discussed in the discourse of the marketplace. The well formed individual actor must acknowledge that economic downturns create human misery and as such their economic choices must contextualize the duty to the shareholder with other duties that at times may be competing and must be constraining of that duty. The chief among those duties is to employees and coworkers as well as a broader duty to the society in which they operate. When competing interests are in play an informed conscience can begin to look at the principle of double effect and weigh that the goods achieved and the unintended evils do not outweigh the good sought (needless to say the evil cannot be the intended consequence in a morally licit economic decision).

The fact that many companies have turned their employees into shareholders is not a fulfillment of their duty to their employees; rather it is a partial fulfillment of their obligation to their employees. The additional a priori duty is to the polis with in which they operate. Any reasonable man can and should see this obligation. The sole pursuit of power, money, and control breeds an unhealthy individualism that yields a fruit of loneliness, isolation, and entitlement. Mans reason becomes darkened.

Once again the duty to a faceless metonymy, the shareholder, has been used to baptize these pursuits outside of a context in which they are measured and healthy. To the degree that the moral compass of the market place fails we are reminded by Mr. Smith that government regulation will replace the failing compass resulting in the loss of freedom of the individual and the frictional imposition of regulation making the market less efficient.

It is clear that the moral compass failed in many corporations in America and increased financial regulation is on the way. This does not relieve us of our duties to bolster the moral underpinning of corporate America with a more informed, precise, and articulate discussion of corporate responsibilities based on sound Catholic moral teaching. The discussion of financial reform ought to begin with the enlightening of mans reason with two concepts;

1) The corporations duty, and hence the managements and boards duty, is to a broader constituency than the shareholder to the exclusion of all else, and
2) the regulation that eventually is enacted must ensure that the individual is the primary actor in the change needed both in themselves, the marketplace and the polis. Otherwise the dignity of each person begins to be eroded by a regulation by the outside that robs us of our rights and obligations and vests it in an organization that begins to become more valued or valuable than the individual.

We must insert into the discussion the contextual ideals of the communal and the individual rights and responsibility. Both must exist and both must constrain the other with a clear understanding that the communal obligations must exist and be reaffirmed, while doing so in a fashion that protects the individual rights of the corporation and the individual to compete in a marketplace not dominated by the giant corporations who alone have the ability to bear the burden of excessive government regulation.

It is easy to see the “solution” may be enacted that benefits those that brought about this crisis to the detriment of the small corporations that seek to compete in the financial marketplace. Financial reform ought not to dampen innovation and entrepreneurial activity. Professor Mark Roe of Harvard law school wrote an insightful critique of the hyper regulated single marketplace concept for financial derivatives. Regulation exists to protect the individual from being crushed between the marketplace and corporations, but the regulation must also protect small and medium enterprises, those enterprises with 10 – 250 employees. The Brookings Institute tells us that these types of entities are 90 % of corporations in the US, 50% of GDP, and 66% of employment. The financial regulation must extol the appropriate relationships and duties of each individual as an actor themselves and as they act within and on behalf of corporations. Let us return to the lexicon of corporate America the duty of the corporation to their employee and to the polis. Then we can intelligently delineate markets and who regulates each of them so that the barriers to entry are no so great that it stifles growth, innovation, and the individual’s ability act within the marketplace. This must include government-sponsored entities or GSE’s, which created so much of this crisis. Let us join into this discussion as Catholics with our rich social teaching and let us pray for our elected representatives.

Razing the Bastions, Yet Again

Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 3 – By Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J – As featured in the June 2010, Homiletic and Pastoral Review

In his 1952 Razing the Bastions (Schleifung der Bastionen) Hans Urs von Balthasar challenged the Church to replace any posturing of fear with a more world-friendly embrace. (1) In what proved to be a much disputed work, von Balthasar argued that the Church must leave the security of Catholic isolation and move into a more confident involvement with anti-Catholic worldviews and biases. Sensing the call to be more actively engaged with Protestants as well as non-believers in institutions of learning, in the marketplace, in laboratories and in all ranges of (legitimate) research, as well as in every aspect of society and culture, the Church left the “Catholic ghetto”, making the middle of the 20th century a unique opportunity to “take every thought captive in obedience to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). This of course meant risking a sense of surety for the entry into—but hopeful conversion of—those places of modernity where the Church was then still leery to tread.

The call foreshadowed by von Balthasar was vindicated by future Popes and (in part) realized with the Second Vatican Council’s aggiornamento (updating). Paul VI’s first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (1964), for example, presented God the Father’s love for sinful man as the fundamental dialogue (a term which appears 81 times in the English edition) in which God makes himself accessible and therefore vulnerable in the sending of his Son. Willing to enter into the “messiness” of human life, God thus invites all to a dialogue of mutual understanding and charity. God longs to bring all things into himself through his Church and, stripping himself of all glory, draws near to wherever the imperfect find themselves. Toward the end of this encyclical, Pope Paul VI called on all Catholics to continue this mission by being as catechetically learned and articulate as possible, by assuming the good will of those with whom they aim to evangelize, and by being sensitive to the needs and histories of others. Above all, charity must mark this exchange and here the Holy Father warned:

It would indeed be a disgrace if our dialogue were marked by arrogance, the use of bared words or offensive bitterness. What gives it its authority is the fact that it affirms the truth, shares with others the gifts of charity, is itself an example of virtue, avoids peremptory language, makes no demands. It is peaceful, has no use for extreme methods, is patient under contradiction and inclines towards generosity. (2)

But if the Church’s authority is known by its charity and generosity, as Pope Paul VI maintained, perhaps it is once again time to examine how we in the Church relate with one another, especially with those with whom we disagree or hold in contempt. It is once again time to look at how we interact with our adversaries because the landscape has surely shifted. For almost two generations after Paul VI’s fatherly admonition, can one not hear how the “bared words” and sometimes “offensive bitterness” are aimed not so much at those outside of the Church as at sisters and brothers within? Or as John Paul went to great lengths to point out, there remains a divisiveness within the Church that has only intensified since the Second Vatican Council and there must thus: “…be a sincere effort of permanent and renewed dialogue within the Catholic Church herself. She is aware that, by her nature, she is the sacrament of the universal communion of charity; but she is equally aware of the tensions within her, tensions which risk becoming factors of division.” (3)

I became a candidate for religious life almost two decades ago and then the divisions and tensions within the novitiate were thick. Holding fast to my defenses, I would dismiss someone just after one conversation. “Well, he’s one of them.” “He’s a dissenter.” At one level it was so understandable, so natural, yet so unChristian, so unloving. I see now that in a time of battle I allowed myself the uncharitable sally, the harsh judgment, the one-sided perspective, and then simply chalked it up to the tensions of the day or to the gravity of what was at stake. But how do we witness to the beautiful integrity of Catholic orthodoxy without putting up walls between ourselves and those who disagree with us? How do we live the truth in love? I see now how I used the Faith, not as a means of building unity, but as a sword of division and as a way of making myself feel good about my own position, my own worked-out systems, my own orthodoxy. Because I was not wholly motivated by love, fear was still present (cf. 1 Jn 4:18)—fear of looking dim, fear of not knowing more than those who criticized the hierarchy, fear that maybe the way I had learned or had come to explain the tradition was not as unassailable as it could be. How often the truth became a club, a place for my self-complacency and separation built on the implicit creed, “Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other men—extortionists, the unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Lk 18:13).

Yet twenty years later now, I realize that the teachings and practices central to our lives and worship as Catholics are never (and never were) going to change. The “revolution” of the 60s and 70s has obviously come to pass and only now after 40 years of sway, the barque of Peter has been clearly steered back on course. The self-appointed revolutionaries have grown old and with the passing of each day those battles lose immediacy and intensity, as what the Church teaches and where she is heading is clearer than ever. Today we encounter not so much an entrenched group of anti-Catholic ideologues, but rather a vacuum crying out for evangelization: for a bold and clear love of Jesus and the witness of his ability to convert all of human living.

Most of the young people I know here at Saint Louis University, for example, take their daily reception of the sacraments very seriously, they clamor for Eucharistic Adoration, common recitation of the Rosary and they organize their own Stations of the Cross on Fridays. They adored John Paul II and they are simply enamored with Pope Benedict; they pray for their priests and cannot wait until the next World Youth Day. During the week they also volunteer with the inner-city poor and illiterate. Over Spring Break they go and work with Habitat for Humanity in Appalachia, with Sioux children on the Reservations in South Dakota, or with the poor in Latin America. What these college-aged students (born the same year I entered religious life) have taught me is that my concerns are not theirs, my “siege mentality” does not resonate with their own ecclesiology. They don’t appreciate my jibes against a post-Vatican II liturgy gone awry nor do they understand one of my favorite jokes involving the Dutch bishops and a hot poker! They are not reacting against anything internally within the Church but only outwardly against the alienating harshness of secular modernism. In fact, they want to be led more intensely into the depths of doctrine, the splendor of sacred scripture, the beauty of Augustine’s Confessions and the symmetry of Thomas’ Summa. They see a Catholicism that only attracts, heals, and transforms.

This is surely why in comparison to just a couple of generations ago, many novitiates and seminaries are now having to renovate or build anew. See the diocesan seminaries of Detroit and Denver, or the Josephinum in Columbus, visit the burgeoning houses of Dominican sisters in Ann Arbor or Nashville, Franciscan sisters in the Bronx or in Alton, or the Apostles of the Sacred Heart in Hamden, Connecticut, to observe how the Holy Spirit is still calling young men and women up the mountain of prayer and sacrifice. Moreover, these “children of John Paul II” (as I call them) constitute one of the healthier generations in quite a long time. In a recent study Benedictine Sister Jane Becker has likewise witnessed how:

The core of the student population [today has] settled down as a less polarized group than in the eighties and a more psychologically sound group than in the seventies. The majority [of today’s seminarians and religious] are simply conservative youth seeking the sacred—God, Church, commitment, and symbolization of these values. (4)

Unlike Catholics a generation ago, this generation is more psychologically sound and in comparison with the similar sample group of 30 years ago, there is less polarization between “liberal” and “conservative”. So, what does this mean for how we teach and preach and live in what is becoming our “post dissent” Church? In the rest of this essay, I would like to offer four brief reflections that helped me to “raze the bastions” of my own short-sightedness and frigid lapses of charity when discussing the Faith today.

Proper Profession is A Divine Gift to be Distributed

First is the intimate awareness that orthodoxy and rightful assent to the teachings of the Church is a gift from Christ. One’s theological positions are not simply the result of intellectual rigor and hours of study (as essential as these are). With Peter, we confess Jesus Christ as “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” because it has been revealed to us freely by our loving God: “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father” (Mt 16:17). Commenting on this passage, Pope Leo the Great preached that Peter’s blessedness—and by extension, the blessedness of every Christian—comes from the fact that the Father himself instructs him in the proper way to confess Jesus of Nazareth as Lord and Savior, because Peter was unwilling to “let human opinion deceive, but to let heavenly inspiration instruct”, an enlightenment, moreover, intended to give Peter a participation in the very nature of God (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). (5) Doctrinal orthodoxy leads to deification, a free and unmerited participation in the divine Trinity’s own life. The gift of orthodoxy must thus be translated into the loving appropriation of Christ’s life or else it lies dormant and maybe even inimical in our souls.

Ecclesial fidelity is Christ’s gift to the humble, something in which he asks me to participate but never something I myself possess. As such, it must not be turned into something I think I have worked out on my own, for myself, some problem that I myself have deciphered. God’s faithful children profess the creed rightly and strive to live lives of saintly heroism because they have first been called, eternally aware that their lives need not have gone this way. Such gratitude should enable the faithful to look lovingly upon dissenters, to forgive them for the hurt and division caused by these past decades of half-truths and conflicting agendas. In fact, “the left” were never the Church’s enemy—for her enemy is not flesh and blood (cf. Eph 6:12)—they are not the enemies but the victims, the sufferers of false promises. Accordingly, it is now time to recast our eyes, no longer on the old battlefields of division and disagreement but boldly on the Spirit’s call to forgiveness, freedom and holiness.

Christian Truth and Love Are Inseparable

Charity is the supreme and ultimately sole characteristic of a Christian. To rest content in “the truth” without seeking passionately for ways to communicate it in love and compassion is, simply not an option for Jesus’ disciples. To think with the Church is an indispensable part of personal holiness but such creedal and doctrinal correctness must be consistently translated into an undying love of neighbor. In fact, Jesus reserves his harshest words for those who think they have the truth but are unwilling to love those dismissive of God’s law.

In the Gospels Jesus Christ is never severe with those fragile, broken sinners who come to him to be healed, but he is rather most unyielding when he engages those who sanctimoniously act as if they do not need him (remember that hypo-crite was originally a theatrical term referring to one who wore a mask and thus spoke (crite) out from underneath (hypo) a face that was not his own). He never tells the Pharisees to quit keeping the law—quite the opposite (cf. Mt 23:1-3)—but Jesus instead spends his life to show such people how to expand their hearts to make room for love, mercy, and for the imperfect.

As Peter van Breemen has noted, “That the pharisee fulfills the law is to his credit. But he believes that by keeping the law he saves and justifies himself, and this is his mistake.” (6) As faithful Christians we must always follow Christ’s appointed and rightful teachers on earth, but doing so should enlarge our hearts to love those who do not yet see the truth, propelling us outward to preach Christ crucified and the glory of his ability to transform. In his interaction with the Pharisees, it is clear that Jesus never came simply to impart correct teaching. Christianity is more than orthodox belief (more, not less!) but a radically new way of entering into relationship with God and with neighbor. Only here is to think correctly to love ardently.

The Grace to Live With Ambiguity

Third, for the Christian, living with ambiguity is a sign of spiritual maturity. The most well known sociologist to address the new springtime of the John Paul II religious and seminarians described above is The Catholic University of America’s Dr. Dean Hoge, who reaches a rather challenging conclusion when he notes that,

some younger men are… coming from a very legalistic mentality, a very rigid mentality as well, and also, frequently, a lack of personal sensitivity. Anyone coming into a parish needs to be pretty flexible in dealing with people, in that you have to be accepting of where people are at and then you work with them. You try to move them from where they are. To come in and think that people are going to listen to you immediately just because you are a priest is unrealistic… (7)

Flexibility is itself of course not a virtue nor is it an end in and of itself. It is however a quality of the mystical life.

Unlike my own tendency in the past to police every differing thought and movement, I came to notice how the more spiritually advanced, the holier ones in the communities where I lived, did not get inordinately worried about every opinion uttered against the Church. “You will hear of wars and reports of wars; but see that you are not alarmed…” (Mt 24:6a). Or, to use an illustration closer to home (out my window, in fact), here in Saint Louis the Arch was built to “give” during winds and storms, the architects knowing that any solid rigidity would lead not to added strength but to its breaking in the winds that would inevitably assail it. I have long seen this as an apt metaphor for much of the spiritual life. Without (in the words of G.K. Chesterton) ever becoming so open minded that we become flat-headed, we must pray for the grace to live with the ambiguity characteristic of the saints most confident in the power of Christ to redeem and transform.

Such a spirituality is found in Christ’s parable of the wheat and the tares, imploring us never to grow desolate over the inevitability of imperfection which surrounds us, thereby perhaps “uprooting the good wheat as well” (cf., Mt 13:29). No stranger to dissent and factions, John Henry Cardinal Newman admits while the one true Church “cannot countenance any such misstatement of the truth, much less any degradation or depravation of it”, it is also true that,

she may find it quite impossible to root out the tares without rooting out the wheat with them-and is obliged to let them grow together till the harvest. At least, she is obliged to be patient, and waits her time—hoping that an evil will at length die of itself—or again that some favourable [sic] opportunity may occur, when she may be able to do what she has no means of doing at present. (8)

This is the springtime of the new evangelization, the “favourable opportunity” of not only rebuilding what has been torn down but, more importantly, bolstering and extending the reign of God to every area of human living and into every human person. But to do this we may have to be content with imperfection and with the shortcomings and questions of others.

Christus Victor!

Finally, the only way to bring the Gospel to the world rightly is to be ever mindful that the battle has already been won! I mean this both in the ultimate sense on Calvary but also in the more immediate sense in that the revolution sought in the 60s and 70s is simply not coming to pass. Not that it ever could have, as the Lord safeguards his Body from falling into certain pernicious gates, but these victories are more obvious now than they have been for half a century or even longer. So, as part of our prayer let us meditate on the confidence we should have in Christ’s power in and through us, as well as the consequent gratitude we should have for his including us in his victorious mission.

In founding a Church, the Son has united a collective and called-out—ecclesia—humanity to his own divine personhood. Such mediation is thus at the heart of our Christian discipleship; saying “yes” to the Church of Christ is Christ’s “yes” to his Father. As such, one cannot truly love God and despise his Church; one lies if he can say he has some sort of devotion to Christ but no regard for his Body on earth, the Church. The “whole Christ” is the Head and the Body, and Christ has decided to make himself wholly accessible only through this ecclesia. His body is where he longs to extend and continue his transformative power: his healing, his teaching, his acts of love and divine intimacy.

When von Balthasar called the Church to raze her bastions and confidentially enter the world with message and vision renewed, he wrote: “Let us therefore not cling tightly to structures of thought, but let us plunge into the primal demands of the Gospel, which are also the primal graces, visible and capable of being grasped in the example of Christ, who gave himself for all in order to save all.” (9) In the imitation of Christ we too must let go of all that keeps us from “plunging” into the demands of love: to know the truth, to preach the truth, and to embrace the truth and in him all others.

This article is featured in our newsletter, Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 3

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(1) Han Urs von Balthasar, Razing the Bastions, trans., Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993). – (return)

(2) Pope Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam (Aug 6, 1964) §81. – (return)

(3) John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliation and Penance (Dec 2, 1984) §25. – (return)

(4) “In A Word from the Seminary World: Today’s Candidates and Their Issues”, Sr. Jane Becker, O.S.B. as in Reclaiming Our Priestly Character, ed., Fr. David Toups (Omaha: Institute for Priestly Formation, 2008) 109. – (return)

(5) Leo the Great, sermon 4.2; my translation. – (return)

(6) Peter G. van Breemen, S.J., As Bread That Is Broken (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1974) 31. – (return)

(7) Dean Hoge, as in Reclaiming Our Priestly Character, ed., Fr. David Toups, op. cit., 110. – (return)

(8) John Henry Newman, Letters and Diaries, vol. 20, 470-71. – (return)

(9) Han Urs von Balthasar, Razing the Bastions, op. cit., 69-70. – (return)

(podcast) A Good Steward Receives God’s Gifts Gratefully

This article is featured in our newsletter, Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 3

“A Good Steward Receives God’s Gifts Gratefully” is the second of our five-part Spanish-language podcast series introducing the concept of Christian Stewardship to the Latino community. The podcast again features a conversational interview with O’Meara Ferguson Executive Consultant Koren Ruiz, and begins by discussing an exercise called “Inventory of Gratitude” – creating a list of the many ways in which God has blessed each of us in various areas of our lives. Recognizing how God has been generous in our lives will help us to develop an attitude of gratitude, which is a critical step in becoming a better steward of God’s gifts.

The discussion later emphasizes that we are only trustees, and not owners in this world. What we are given comes with a divine expectation that we will use whatever we have for God’s good purposes. Our time, talent and treasure are gifts from God, entrusted to us for a relatively brief time. Because of this, one of our first tasks in becoming a better steward of our gifts is developing an “attitude of gratitude” – acknowledging everything we have received from God, and then discerning how we can best manage and share those gifts according to God’s will.

PSALM 8: O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!Art Ledesma, Vice President, Mission Advancement Services, will be working in conjunction with Koren Ruiz on the remaining podcasts in the series.

Upcoming Podcasts:

• A Steward Cultivates God’s Gifts Responsibly
• A Christian Steward Shares God’s Gifts Lovingly
• A Christian Steward Returns God’s Gifts with Increase

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“Un buen Corresponsable Recibe los Dones de Dios con Actitud de Agradecimiento” es el título del segundo podcast en español (de una serie de cinco) para introducir el concepto de Corresponsabilidad Cristiana a la comunidad Latina. Este espacio informativo presenta de nueva cuenta una entrevista interactiva con el Asesor Financiero de O’Meara Ferguson Koren Ruiz, el cual comienza invitando a los audio escuchas a realizar un ejercicio llamado “Inventario de Gratitud” – crear una lista de las muchas maneras en que Dios nos ha bendecido en diferentes áreas de nuestras vidas. Reconocer como Dios ha sido generoso con nosotros nos ayudará a desarrollar una actitud de agradecimiento. De esa manera logaremos tomar un paso fundamental para llegar a ser mejores corresponsables de los dones de Dios.

Mas adelante la discusión enfatiza que solamente se nos ha confiado este mundo y que no somos los dueños de él. Todo aquello que se nos da, viene con la esperanza divina de que usaremos todo lo que tenemos para hacer la voluntad de Dios. Nuestro tiempo, talento y tesoro son dones que Dios nos ha confiado por solo un corto tiempo. Por lo tanto, uno de nuestras primeras tareas para llegar a ser un mejor corresponsable de nuestros dones es desarrollar una “Actitud de Agradecimiento” – estar verdaderamente conscientes de todo lo que hemos recibido de Dios, para así discernir como podemos administrar y compartir esos dones de acuerdo a la voluntad de Dios en nuestras vidas.

Salmo 8: Oh Señor, soberano nuestro, ¡qué imponente es tu nombre en toda la tierra!

Próximos Podcasts:

• Un Corresponsable Cultiva Responsablemente Los Dones Que Recibe De Dios
• Un Corresponsable Comparte Los Dones De Dios Con Amor.
• Un Corresponsable Cristiano Regresa Los Dones De Dios En Mayor Proporcion

The Church is a Miracle

Archdiocese of Washington -- By Monsignor Charles Pope -- May 20, 2010

If the Church were depending on human beings to exist and stay unified how long do think she would have lasted? Probably about twenty minutes, max!

There are no governments or nations that have lasted 2000 years. Very little else in this world can claim such antiquity and even if it does can it claim to have remained essentially unchanged in its dogma or teaching?

The Catholic Church is one, even after 2000 years. An unbroken line of Popes back to Peter and an unbroken line of succession for all the Bishops back to the Apostles through the laying on of hands. Not bad. Our history is not without some pretty questionable moments, in terms of the human elements of the Church. That the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church certainly suggests they would try again and again. But here we are, a miracle. Still standing after all these years! Christ is true to his promise to remain with us all days unto the consummation of the world.

We, the human elements of the Church may not live teachings of Christ perfectly, but the Church has never failed to teach what Christ taught even (as now) when the world hated us for it. At times we are tepid and struggle to find our voice, but Christ still speaks and ministers even in our weakness. St. Paul once wrote regarding himself and his fellow clergy: But we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us (2 Cor 4:7). When I think of the human weakness of the Church whether in the clergy or in the laity, I am absolutely struck by the truth that the continued existence of the Church all these centuries is a true miracle, right before our very eyes. Yes! A miracle.

Reflecting on God’s Gifts With Gratitude and Joy

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, May 2010

“Here lies the fundamental challenge that we face: to show the Church’s capacity to promote and form disciples and missionaries who respond to the calling received and to communicate everywhere, in an outpouring of gratitude and joy, the gift of the encounter with Jesus Christ. We have no other treasure but that. We have no other happiness, no other priority, but to be instruments of the Spirit of God, as Church, so that Jesus Christ may be known, followed, loved, adored, announced, and communicated to all, despite difficulties and resistances. This is the best service – his service! – that the Church has to offer people and nations.”

— (Concluding document, Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Conferences, Aparecida, Brazil, 2007, #14)

Bishop Jaime Soto quotes this powerful passage from the 2007 Aparecida Conference as he begins his vision statement for the Diocese of Sacramento. “We have always been a missionary people called to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God.” He continues, “Our diocese’s mission statement affirms this — challenging us to be disciples who spread the Gospel by our prayer, our personal witness, our sacramental life, and all the ministries provided by our parishes, schools and other diocesan services.”

What a powerful vision — to be disciples and missionaries who respond to the encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ with gratitude and joy! …

– Read the full article –

Prayer, Conversion Triumph Over Life’s Threats, Calamities, Pope says

Catholic News Service – By Carol Glatz – May 19, 2010

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A life dedicated to prayer, penitence, and conversion will overcome the threats, dangers and horrors that mark human history, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Our Lady of Fatima invites everyone to trust in God, experience his grace and “fall in love with him — the source of love and peace,” he said during his general audience May 19.

Speaking to about 13,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, the pope detailed some of the highlights of his May 11-14 trip to Portugal. He said the voyage was “unforgettable” and represented “a touching experience for me, rich with many spiritual gifts.”

The trip allowed to pope to pay homage to Our Lady of Fatima when he visited the Marian shrine marking the site where three shepherd children witnessed a series of apparitions beginning May 13, 1917.

“The demanding yet comforting message Our Lady left at Fatima is full of hope,” the pope said.

He said Mary calls everyone to a life of “prayer, penance and conversion, which surpass the threats, dangers, and horrors of history.” She invites humanity to have hope “in God’s merciful love and trust in his saving plan, which triumphs over the threats and calamities of history,” he said.

The pope recalled that during an encounter with Portuguese parish groups and Catholic organizations, he called on the faithful to serve Christ and promote the common good.

In fact, he said, at Fatima many young people experience the importance of serving the needy because the shrine is “a school of faith, of hope, and also a school of charity and service to one’s brothers and sisters.”

The pope said he encouraged all lay faithful to evangelize the places where they live and work and plant the seeds of hope.

Christians have the duty to give witness to the Gospel so that “every situation of difficulty, suffering or fear may be transformed through the Holy Spirit into an occasion for growth and of life,” he said.

We are Called to be Stewards of the Tradition of Catholic Prayer

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, February 2008

The Church in the United States owes a debt of gratitude to the Benedictine monks of Saint Meinrad for many gifts. For more than 150 years, the southern Indiana monastery has been a center of unceasing daily prayer, a school for the education of priests and lay ecclesial ministers, a beacon of hospitality and spiritual refuge for the thousands who visit there each year, a vibrant place of worship and Church music… and much more. Now, the monks have added to their long list of diverse apostolic works a form of stewardship that is truly distinctive. They have cultivated and generously shared with us the tradition of Catholic prayer.

Religious women and men who follow the Rule of St. Benedict dedicate their lives to prayer and work (ora et labora). They are contemplatives who participate actively in the Church’s ministry. This means they are called to understand, and practice in their daily lives, the rich tradition of prayer that the Catholic Church preserves and carries forward as an integral part of her divine mission. The tradition of Catholic prayer is ancient—dating back to the earliest experiences of the Jewish people throughout the Old Testament, to the prayer that Jesus gave his disciples and the worship of the early Christians, to the Eucharistic devotion of middle ages, the piety of the counter reformation and the diverse spiritualities of the modern era. To be good stewards of this precious heritage requires careful study and prayerful reflection. To share this tradition with others requires personal witness and the lived experience of prayerful people who are also great teachers.

The monks of Saint Meinrad accepted the responsibility to be stewards of the tradition of Catholic prayer when, as missionaries from the Swiss Abbey of Maria Einsiedeln, they established their first foundation in the hills of southern Indiana in 1854 …

– Read the full article –

Collateral Damage

Think and Act Anew – By Father Larry Snyder – May 12, 2010

Remember Gordon Gekko and his famous – infamous – speech in the 1987 movie Wall Street about how greed is good?

Instead of serving as a warning, Americans everywhere jumped on the free-for-all market of the 1980’s, adopting this belief in self-interest as the new gospel, the new truth – that by pursuing profit you were pursuing the common good. Wall Street was perceived not only as a respectable way to make money, but the most glamorous. There was an allure. Money would make money. Greed equaled good.

Until September of 2008, when it all came crashing down. Moses came down from the mountain and exposed the golden calf. Millions of Americans were thrown into poverty, lost their jobs, lost their homes. The collateral damage of “greed-is-good” was huge.

In the 80s our value base began to disappear and for three decades and four presidencies it continued to erode. There was a peeling away of the economic from the social in our society; growing the economy became central, social concerns were marginalized. Now Washington is debating new regulations to modernize the country’s financial regulations and hold Wall Street accountable. These efforts are a step in the right direction.

Pope Benedict VI instructs us in Caritas in Veritate, “I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: Man is the source, the focus, and the aim of all economic and social life.”

Achieving this requires innovative and fundamental change, in how we think and how we act. The Holy Father insists that it is not enough to merely bring economics and social concerns back together, but that the social element must be embodied in the economic one so that the market becomes an instrument of civilization once again. We need big, innovative ideas about how to meld our market economy with the common good so as to avoid collateral damage in the future.

In the U.K. a Robin Hood Tax has been proposed, a “tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty.” What do you think – is this an effective model that would produce a more inclusive economic recovery? Would this serve to connect the market and the common good, which Pope Benedict emphasizes as crucial to economic and social life? What are your ideas?

Charity is Principal Strength and Guide of the Church

Vatican Information Service – May 14, 2010

VATICAN CITY, 13 MAY 2010 (VIS) – At 5 p.m. today Benedict XVI went to the Church of the Blessed Trinity, part of the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, where he met with representatives from social pastoral care organizations. Along with the Catholic groups present, other national institutions that provide care for the needy also attended the meeting.

Following a greeting from Bishop Carlos Azevedo, auxiliary of Lisbon, the Pope delivered his own address to our “dear brothers and sisters working in the vast world of charity”.

He began: “Christ reveals to us that ‘God is love’ and at the same time teaches that the fundamental law of human perfection, and consequently of the transformation of the world, is the new commandment of love. … History currently presents us a scenario of socio-economic, cultural and spiritual crisis which highlights the need for a discernment guided by a creative proposal of the Church’s social message. The study of her social doctrine, which takes charity as its principal strength and guide, will enable a process of integral human development capable of engaging the depths of the human heart and achieving a greater humanization of society”.

“In its social and political dimension, this service of charity is the proper realm of the lay faithful, who are called to promote justice and the common good, and to configure social life correctly. … Attracting new lay workers to this pastoral field surely calls for particular concern on the part of the Church’s pastors as they look to the future. … United to Christ in His consecration to the Father, we are seized by His compassion for the multitudes who cry out for justice and solidarity and, like the Good Samaritan in the parable, we are committed to providing concrete and generous responses.

“Often however”, the Holy Father added, “it is not easy to arrive at a satisfactory synthesis between spiritual life and apostolic activity. The pressure exerted by the prevailing culture, which constantly promotes a lifestyle based on the law of the strongest, on easy and attractive gain, ends up influencing our ways of thinking, our projects and the goals of our service, and risks emptying them of the motivation of faith and Christian hope which had originally inspired them”.

At the same time, “the many pressing requests we receive for support and assistance from the poor and marginalized of society impel us to look for solutions which correspond to the logic of efficiency, quantifiable effects and publicity. Nonetheless, this synthesis is absolutely necessary, dear brothers and sisters, if you are to serve Christ in the men and women who look to you”.

Benedict XVI recalled how the Catholic Church is among “the many social institutions which serve the common good, and are close to those in need”, and he explained how such institutions must have sound guiding principles in order to be “clearly identifiable” in “the inspiration of their aims” and “in the serious and effective management of their means”.

“Beyond this issue of identity, and connected with it, it is vital to ensure that Christian charitable activity is granted autonomy and independence from politics and ideologies, even while co-operating with State agencies in the pursuit of common goals”, he said.

Educational and charitable activities “must be completed by projects of freedom whose goal is human promotion and universal fraternity. Here we can locate the urgent commitment of Christians in defense of human rights, with concern for the totality of the human person in its various dimensions”.

The Pope continued: “I express my deep appreciation for all those social and pastoral initiatives aimed at combating the socio-economic and cultural mechanisms which lead to abortion, and openly concerned with defending life and promoting the reconciliation and healing of those harmed by the tragedy of abortion”.

“Initiatives aimed at protecting the essential and primary values of life from its conception, and of the family based on indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, help to respond to some of today’s most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good. Such initiatives represent, along with many other forms of commitment, essential elements in the building of the civilization of love”.

At the end of the celebration the Pope blessed the cornerstone of a new centre belonging to the Portuguese Sisters of Mercy which is being built in Fatima. He then returned to the “Casa Nossa Senhora do Carmo” for his meeting with the Portuguese episcopate.

In Portuguese Capital, Pope Urges Catholics to Re-evangelize

Catholic News Service – By John Thavis – May 11, 2010

LISBON, Portugal (CNS) — At a Mass for more than 100,000 people in Portugal, Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholics to re-evangelize society by witnessing the joy and hope of the Gospel in every sector of contemporary life.

“Today’s pastoral priority is to make each Christian man and woman a radiant presence of the Gospel perspective in the midst of the world, in the family, in culture, in the economy, in politics,” the pope said May 11 at an open-air liturgy in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital.

To evangelize effectively, he said, Catholics themselves need to grow closer to Christ.

“Bear witness to all of the joy that his strong yet gentle presence evokes, starting with your contemporaries. Tell them that it is beautiful to be a friend of Jesus and that it is well worth following him,” he said.

The pope celebrated the Mass on a canopied altar overlooking Palace Square, which was packed with enthusiastic faithful. When he arrived in his popemobile, they chanted, cheered and held homemade signs welcoming “Bento XVI,” as he is known in Portuguese.

Despite a forecast of rain, sunshine lit the square and the Tagus River in the background, where schooners and other vessels cruised slowly. It was the first liturgical moment of a four-day visit that was also to take the pope to the Marian sanctuary of Fatima and the industrial city of Porto.

On the plane carrying him and his entourage from Rome, the pope told reporters he was concerned about radical forms of secularization that threaten the religious traditions of countries such as Portugal.

In his homily in Lisbon, which the pope delivered in Portuguese, he said that despite Portugal’s long Catholic tradition, it is “less and less realistic” to presume that the Christian faith is present among its people. Part of the problem, he said, is that the church may have placed too much trust in ecclesiastical structures, programs, powers and functions.

The pope said it was important now to return to more fundamental things and to proclaim with vigor and joy the death and resurrection of Christ, the “heart of Christianity.”

“A vast effort at every level is required if every Christian is to be transformed into a witness capable of rendering account to all and at all times of the hope that inspires him,” he said.

He asked Catholics to grow in friendship with Christ, listen to his words more carefully and learn to recognize him in the poor.

“With your enthusiasm, demonstrate that, among all the different ways of life that the world today seems to offer us — apparently all on the same level — the only way in which we find the true meaning of life and hence true and lasting joy is by following Jesus,” he said.

The pope said that while the church may have “quarrelsome and even rebellious sons and daughters,” the real models of holiness are its saints. He reminded Portuguese Catholics of their own rich history of saints and missionaries who have taken the Gospel to every continent and helped shape cultures all over the world.

Earlier in the day, Pope Benedict said the church was ready to live in a pluralistic society as long as it can give witness to its beliefs, and as long as religion was not reduced to the private sphere. His message was aimed at the increasing numbers of Portuguese who have fallen away from practice of the faith. In theory, Catholics represent 88 percent of the population in Portugal, but the number of practicing Catholics is diminishing.

Portuguese church leaders are also concerned about other trends — for example, Portugal’s marriage rate has declined by 40 percent over the past 25 years, while its divorce rate has soared over the same period.

The church’s own statistical markers signal similar tendencies in Portugal: a gradual and persistent decline in the numbers of baptisms, church marriages, first Communions and confirmations, along with a drop of nearly 60 percent in the number of seminarians over the past 35 years.

Portugal’s pluralism today includes an increasing immigrant population. In a talk to the pope at the start of the Mass, Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo of Lisbon said the capital has welcomed outsiders, including those of different faiths, with love and respect. The church is committed to dialogue and seeking common values, he said, and “a Catholic majority does not rob anyone of his place” in society.

At the end of the liturgy, the pope read a message blessing a giant statue of Christ the King that stands on a hill above Lisbon. He said the statue should inspire Catholics to build a society based on Gospel values, in particular by working in favor of the poor and the oppressed.

Illinois Priest to be New Lafayette Bishop

Indianapolis Star – May 12, 2010

The Vatican announced this morning that a priest from the Rockford, Ill., diocese will be the new bishop of the Lafayette diocese.

A press release published in Italian on the Vatican’s website today has named the Rev. Timothy L. Doherty, 59, of the Diocese of Rockford, Ill., the new bishop of Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana.

Doherty will succeed Bishop William Higi, who has announced his retirement.

He is expected to be introduced this afternoon in Lafayette during a meeting at St. Mary Cathedral in Lafayette.

Born Sept. 29, 1950, in Rockford, Doherty attended Saint Mary’s Minor Seminary in Crystal Lake, Ill., then Saint Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa.

According to the Vatican, Doherty earned his bachelor’s degree in theology at the Pontifical North American College in Rome in 1976. He was ordained a priest in the Rockford Diocese later that year.

Since 1995, he’s served as the Ethicist for Health Care for the diocese and has served as administrators for several parishes.

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The Bishop is the steward of grace of the supreme priesthood, especially in the Eucharist…. The Eucharist is the center of life of the particular Church. The Bishop and priests sanctify the Church by their prayer and work, by their ministry of the word and of the sacraments. They sanctify her by their example, not as domineering over those in their charge but being examples to the flock. Thus, together with the flock entrusted to them, they may attain to eternal life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church #893)

O’Meara Ferguson welcomes Bishop Doherty to his new ministry as Bishop of Lafayette-in-Indiana. We promise our prayerful support as he assumes his new responsibility as a “steward of grace” for the Church of Lafayette-in-Indiana.

Christ Assures Us Nothing Will Destroy the Church, Pope states

Catholic News Agency – May 11, 2010

Lisbon, Portugal, May 11, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News) – During his apostolic visit to Portugal, the Holy Father presided over Mass in Lisbon’s Palace Square on Tuesday evening. Despite negative media attention over sexual abuse that has dogged the Catholic Church in recent weeks, the Pope assured the crowd of 160,000 people that the “resurrection of Christ assures us that no adverse power will ever be able to destroy the Church.”

At the sun-filled open air Mass, a cheering throng welcomed Pope Benedict and the hundreds of clergy who led the procession to the altar. With Lisbon’s Tagus River serving as a backdrop, local Cardinal Jose de la Cruz Policarpo presented the Holy Father with the gift of a crucifix featuring seafaring imagery and representing the identity of the country.

In his homily, the Pope centered his message on the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, where Christ told his disciples, “I am with you always to the close of the age.”

“These words of the risen Christ take on a particular significance in this city of Lisbon, the Pope noted, recalling that from the city “generations upon generations of Christians – bishops, priests, consecrated and lay persons, men and women, young and not so young – have journeyed forth in great numbers in obedience to the Lord’s call.”

The Holy Father praised the country for its missionary commitment, saying that Portugal “has gained a glorious place among the nations for the service rendered to the spreading of the faith: in all five continents there are local churches that owe their origin to Portuguese missionary activity.”

“Today, as you play your part in building up the European Community, you offer the contribution of your cultural and religious identity,” he said. “Indeed, just as Jesus Christ joined the disciples on the road to Emmaus, so today he walks with us in accordance with his promise: ‘I am with you always, to the close of the age.’”

“We too have a real and personal experience of the risen Lord, even if it differs from that of the Apostles,” the Pope observed.

“In the living river of ecclesial Tradition, Christ is not two thousand years distant from us, but is really present among us: he gives us the Truth and he gives us the light which is our life and helps us find the path towards the future.”

But Christ’s presence in the Church can be taken for granted, Pope Benedict warned. “Often we are anxiously preoccupied with the social, cultural and political consequences of the faith, taking for granted that faith is present, which unfortunately is less and less realistic,” he said. “Perhaps we have placed an excessive trust in ecclesial structures and programmes, in the distribution of powers and functions; but what will happen if salt loses its flavor?”

“In order for this not to happen,” the Pope said, “it is necessary to proclaim anew with vigor and joy the event of the death and resurrection of Christ, the heart of Christianity, the fulcrum and mainstay of our faith, the firm lever of our certainties, the strong wind that sweeps away all fear and indecision, all doubt and human calculation.”

“The resurrection of Christ assures us that no adverse power will ever be able to destroy the Church,” Pope Benedict underscored.

He then exhorted the faithful, saying “Never doubt his presence! Always seek the Lord Jesus, grow in friendship with him, receive him in Communion.”

“Learn to listen to his word and also to recognize him in the poor. Live your lives with joy and enthusiasm, sure of his presence and of his unconditional, generous friendship, faithful even to death on the cross,” the Pope urged.

“Bear witness to all of the joy that his strong yet gentle presence evokes, starting with your contemporaries,” he added.

“Tell them that it is beautiful to be a friend of Jesus and that it is well worth following him. With your enthusiasm, demonstrate that, among all the different ways of life that the world today seems to offer us – apparently all on the same level – the only way in which we find the true meaning of life and hence true and lasting joy, is by following Jesus.”

To read Pope Benedict’s full homily, click here.

Pope to Convey Message of Hope to Crisis-hit Europeans on Portugal Trip

Washington Examiner – By Barry Hatton (AP) – May 10, 2010

LISBON, PORTUGAL — Pope Benedict XVI will speak about the economic crisis during his four-day trip to Portugal this week, telling Europeans to seek solace in their faith, a senior church official said Monday.

The pontiff intends to deliver a message that “the joy of faith and hope” is a remedy for the gloom of financial hardship, said Carlos Azevedo, the auxiliary bishop of Lisbon and the visit’s coordinator.

“The moral values guiding the economy and politics show that there is a spiritual crisis,” Azevedo told a news conference, adding: “Europe needs to be awoken.”

The pontiff, who arrives Tuesday in Lisbon, has been alert to the social problems caused by the economic crisis. His 2009 encyclical “Charity in Truth” specifically addressed the global financial meltdown and he has repeatedly urged leaders to ensure the world’s poor don’t bear the brunt of the financial pain.

Benedict says the downturn shows the need to rethink the purpose of the global financial system.

The pope will convey “a message of hope which says it is possible, if we are guided by ethical and spiritual values, to find paths to a new future,” Azevedo said.

The pontiff will also visit the famous Catholic shrine at Fatima, in central Portugal, and Porto, the country’s No. 2 city.

The timing of his visit has proved apt as Portugal, western Europe’s poorest country, has become one of the main casualties of the continent’s economic troubles.

Portugal’s economic growth has been pedestrian for years, averaging less than 1 percent between 2001-2008, and the global downturn brought a steep contraction of 2.7 percent last year.

The result is that last year around 342,000 people took home the minimum salary of just euro475 ($615) a month. That was roughly double the number who earned that much in 2006. The average Portuguese salary is estimated at around euro900 ($1,160) a month.

A three-year austerity plan to ease the country’s crippling debt load is expected to bring greater hardship to a people already feeling the pinch.

The Catholic church provides welfare programs and food handouts for the needy. Portuguese bishops last year called attention to what they called “scandalous levels of misery.”

Benedict is also expected to address the drift in Portugal, and in much of western Europe, away from church teaching on key issues.

Portugal’s center-left Socialist government passed a law in 2007 allowing abortion on demand. In 2008, it introduced a law allowing a judge to grant a divorce even if one of the spouses is opposed. In January, Parliament passed a bill seeking to make the country the sixth in Europe allowing same-sex couples to marry. Conservative President Anibal Cavaco Silvo now has to decide whether to veto or ratify the bill.

Azevedo said one of the pope’s main themes in Portugal would be the need “to awaken slumbering Christians and also, to some extent, a Europe whose values have become somewhat decadent, to different values.”

Portugal is nearly 90 percent Catholic, but only around 2 million of the country’s 10.6 million people describe themselves as practicing Catholics.

Religious sentiment, however, runs deep. At least 500,000 people are expected to attend the pope’s Mass in Fatima on May 13, the anniversary of the day in 1917 when three Portuguese shepherd children reported having visions of the Virgin Mary.

The visit to Fatima, where Benedict will spend two nights, is the centerpiece of his trip. On Friday morning he will celebrate a Mass in Porto’s main downtown avenue before returning to the Vatican.

Jesus Is Still With Us

Catholic New York – By Archbishop Timothy Dolan – May 6, 2010

Did you happen to see former Governor Mario Cuomo’s letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal of April 8, 2010?

In the ink spill over the recent fury about the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, Governor Cuomo’s remarks stand out for insight and balance. Simply put, he states that Jesus Christ—not sinful priests or negligent bishops—is the cornerstone of our faith. The governor reminds us that the leader of the apostles, the first pope, St. Peter, was far from some radiant saint, but an awful sinner, who actually denied even knowing Jesus three times on the night of His passion.

The Church is sinless, concludes Governor Cuomo; members of the Church, even her sisters, priests, bishops and popes, are not.

Our Catholic faithful, like Mr. Cuomo, are savvy, intelligent, perceptive women and men. Are they shocked, saddened and angered by daily, unrelenting reports of immorality of decades ago? Yes! Are they tempted to lose their faith? No!

Because they know it’s all about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior, the way, the truth and the life. He remains with us in His Church, whose members are big sinners.

So, thank you, Governor Cuomo! You are right on target: our faith is not in the Church, but in a Person, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ, who promised us He would be with us in the Church until the end of time, and that not even the “gates of hell will prevail against her.”

A reporter recently asked me, “Are you shocked and scandalized in the newest round of publicity about decades-old sexual abuse?”

“Well, yes,” I replied, as I would hope such nauseating immorality would always sadden me. But, I went on, “I happen to have a Ph.D. in scandal, so it doesn’t shake my faith. I have my doctorate in Church history, which is one long tale of sin, scandal and shock, always redeemed by the grace and mercy of God.”

And the apostles, our first priests and bishops, serve as the best example of how God’s wisdom trumps stupidity, His mercy erases sin, His grace is victorious over hardheadedness.

Last Monday, the Feast of Sts. Philip and James, two of the apostles, provides a good example. Ignorant Philip asks Jesus to “show us the Father.”

Poor patient Jesus! You can detect the exasperation in His response: “Philip, come on now, I’ve been with you every day for three years and you still don’t get it? Whoever sees me sees the Father.” Stubbornness, ignorance, right from the start.

A bigger blooper will come at the Ascension. Jesus had taught them so well, and right before He’s to return to heaven, His apostles reveal how dense they are, as they ask one of the sillier questions in the Gospel, “Lord, now will you restore the kingdom of Israel?”

What dolts! How often had He told them His was not a political agenda, yet they never got it!

And of course nothing was worse than the night of His passion: of His 12 best friends, one betrayed Him for 30 pieces of silver, one denied even knowing Him three times, and nine ran off like scared jackrabbits. Only one, the youngest, stuck with Him.

Not a good track record. If the survival of the Church depended upon the brightness, the virtue, the courage, the holiness of her bishops and priests, the Church would have collapsed only hours after the ordination of her first ones, the apostles.

So, a tort attorney can brag, “I’m not resting until there’s a ‘going-out-of-business’ sign in front of every Catholic Church.”

So columnists can say that this scandal only shows that the Church has to conform her “paleo-teaching” on faith and morals to this “enlightened, liberated” era, forgetting that the scandals hardly came because of Church teaching but because people ignored it.

So commentators will predict that the Church will now obviously collapse under the pressure of this scandal, and the days of the Church having any normative say in the lives of her people or in culture are numbered.

Wrong… we’ve been through it all before, starting with our first batch of priests and bishops.

Pardon the Latin, but, ecclesia semper reformanda: the Church always needs reform.

Actually, the sin and scandal in some—a very small minority—of Church leaders really shows that the Holy Spirit is in charge. As the British historian Lord Macaulay observed, “No mere human institution could have survived a fortnight!”

Which is another reason we need Sunday Mass, what I’ve been writing about lately. To quit going to Sunday Mass because of the sin and scandal among a few priests, sisters and bishops is like refusing to vote because we’re fed up with Washington, or like refusing to go to a doctor because there have been some real quacks.

Most spasms of scandal, sin, embarrassment and shock—like now—lead to renewal and purification in the Church, making her stronger and more effective.

That’s not natural. It’s supernatural.

Ask St. Peter…ask Philip…ask our resilient Catholic faithful…ask Mario Cuomo.

In the end, it’s not about us anyway. It’s all about Jesus.

He assured us that “the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.” He didn’t assure us they wouldn’t keep trying.

Lourdes Displays the Catholic Paradox

The Catholic Herald (Diocese of Sacramento) – By Bishop Jaime Soto – May 8, 2010

Since my time of service in the Diocese of Orange, the Order of Malta has been after me to accompany them and the “malades” in pilgrimage to Lourdes, France. The Order of Malta is an ancient Catholic association of men and women who dedicate themselves to defending the Catholic faith and serving the infirmed.

“Malade” is the French word for someone who is sick. After arriving in Sacramento, it was not long before the Sacramento members of the Order took up the urgings of their Orange County companions to keep on pushing me.

I have always admired the members of the Order of Malta for their good work and cheerful zeal but finding time in late April and early May to take up the pilgrim’s staff did not appeal to me. After all, this was the height of the confirmation season as well as budget season, priest personnel changes, graduations around the corner, and lots of other pastoral issues that seem to thaw out in the springtime. Going to Lourdes seemed comparable to jumping off a fast moving train and then figuring a way to jump back on again.

After some gentle but firm pushing I found myself throwing together a suitcase, taking a 12-hour flight from Salt Lake City to Paris, catching a commuter plane to Pau, then a shuttle to Lourdes, arriving at the hotel in time to be told that I had 30 minutes before walking over to the Basilica of the Rosary for Mass.

There was a cascade of reflections during the holy days spent in the sacred surroundings of Lourdes, but I will speak of only one.

Lourdes displays the Catholic paradox that perplexes so many people. Much is made of the miraculous cures that draw millions of people from around the world. The fact that most of the frail, anguished, limping, weary and infirmed pilgrims come to Lourdes and then leave still frail, anguished, limping and infirmed, befuddles the more pragmatic, sensible mind. Not that the rational observer would have expected otherwise.

What baffles many about the infirmed pilgrims of Lourdes is the hope that brings them and how Lourdes does not disappoint them. The continuous convergence of those crippled by their physical ailments ignites the air with joy. This seems unexplainable, even absurd. Shouldn’t these people be disappointed? Wasn’t God letting them down again? Where are the spectacular miraculous displays?

The power of Lourdes is found in the glory of God revealed through human frailty. The credence in the Incarnation is tested in the crucible of human suffering. It is precisely in such moments that his glory is revealed.

Lourdes is considered a Marian shrine but, as all sites related to the Virgin Mary, its core is Christ. Mary helps us meditate on our share in work of her son, Jesus. At Lourdes, she brings us to contemplate the wondrous mystery of her Son’s glory reflected in our brothers and sisters who are crippled by sickness and bodily frailty. Those who are so often hidden or shuffled out of sight come into full view. Most often their predicaments are spoken of in hushed tones. In Lourdes they are announced. They become a sacramental sign of the Body of Christ. Their need for assistance and care during the pilgrim days in Lourdes make manifestly clear that which is true for all of us: We are all one body.

Often times the sacraments of penance and the anointing of the sick are celebrated as “private” sacraments, away from much public display. This is due to the manner of the sacramental rituals as well as the circumstances under which the sacraments are celebrated, in a hospital or in a confessional. While much of this is true and necessary, these sacraments, as do all the sacraments, possess a public character. The sacraments, even when administered to an individual, are intended to strengthen and console the whole church.

While penance and the anointing of the sick are for the sinner and the sick, these sacraments also make the sinner and the sick occasions for God’s grace revealed to the church as well as to them. Their weakness and frailty is the opportunity for God’s hand to bring healing and mercy. This is the same testimony about which Paul speaks to us when he says: “I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.” (II Cor. 12.9)

At Lourdes, the sick and frail openly “boast” of their weakness so that Christ may dwell in them. At Lourdes, the whole Body of Christ joins them in this paradoxical boast. In this way, the sick and frail minister to the rest of the church. They become an occasion of joy for what Christ has done and continues to do for all the members of His Mystical Body.

In creating at Lourdes a place for the sick and the crippled members of the church, the Virgin Mary continues to reveal the grace and mercy of her son, Jesus. Many may still remain puzzled by the fervor of Lourdes. I saw the joyful Magnificat of the young woman of Nazareth resonating ceaselessly in the pilgrims’ songs: “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” (Lk. 1.49)

Caritas In Veritate Guides Academy for Social Sciences

Vatican Information Service – May 5, 2010

VATICAN CITY, 5 MAY 2010 (VIS) – Today in the Holy See Press Office Mary Ann Glendon, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, presented a summary of the academy’s sixteenth plenary assembly which took place in the Vatican’s Casina Pio IV from 30 April to 4 May on the theme: “Crisis in a Global Economy. Re-planning the Journey”.

Ms. Glendon pointed out that this was the first gathering of the academy since the publication of Benedict XVI’s Encyclical “Caritas in veritate”, and that the deliberations took account of the guidelines contained in that document. She also observed that, as the plenary assembly had coincided with the crisis in Greece, it “was marked by an analysis of recent events in a manner more immediate than is customary in the rhythms of academic life”.

The three main themes on which the participants focused were: Financialisation of the Economy and of Common Life; The Consequences of the Crisis on the Poor, and Governance of Economic Activity.

On the first of these subjects, the participants highlighted how “the fragility of the economic system was partly a consequence of over-reliance on speculative financial activities separated from productive activity in the real economy”. Examining the consequences of the crisis on the poor, the academy noted that, “for the first time, our world will soon have one billion malnourished people”.

“If one compares the relative cost of the financial bailouts to the amounts needed for basic nutrition, for example, one cannot avoid the conclusion that this crisis has distracted greatly from urgent questions of development”, said Ms Glendon.

Finally, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences reaffirmed that “the principles laid out in ‘Caritas in Veritate’ about the need for stronger regulation of international finance were discussed with various concrete measures suggested in order to ensure greater transparency in financial instruments and to avoid the moral hazard problems arising from bailouts”.

We Are All Immigrants, the Pilgrim People of God

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, May 2006

People who travel from one place to another in search of a new earthly home and a better life are called immigrants. People who wander from place to place in search of their spiritual homeland, and a better way of living, are called pilgrims. Every baptized Christian is a pilgrim on a journey to the better world that is to come. Every one of us is an immigrant in search of our final resting place, our heavenly home. The debate that is raging today over immigration reform would benefit from this fundamental spiritual perspective: None of us “owns” the land we live in or the turf we protect so jealously. We are stewards, not owners, of this land and this nation. It is true we are a nation of laws. These must be respected. And it’s true that we have to have borders (physical and cultural boundaries) that safeguard our identity and protect us from those who would do us harm. But we are stewards of this great land, not owners in any absolute sense. The God who gave us this place asks us to do two things as his stewards (caretakers, custodians or guardians). He asks us to care for this land and its people. He asks us to share our abundant blessings with others.

Immigration reform should not be about race or economic or social status. It should be about the stewardship of our nation — taking care of and sharing the incredible gifts that we have all received as temporary residents of this earthly homeland. Immigration reform should not be about politics or privilege. It should be about helping one another to find our true dignity and our ultimate destiny as fellow pilgrims journeying toward God.

As a pilgrim people, we know what it means to be homeless, to be on the way to a better life and a new world. As disciples, we know that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. We are called to follow him – the one who had nowhere to lay his head, the one who wandered from place to place until the Father called him home …

– Read the full article –

Suffering Shown in Shroud of Turin Gives Us Hope, Pope Benedict Teaches

Catholic News Agency -- May 2, 2010

Turin, Italy, May 2, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy Father celebrated Mass Sunday morning in St. Charles Square in Turin. During his homily, he taught about the new commandment of Christ and told how Christ’s passion, witnessed in the Shroud of Turin, gives us hope.

Pope Benedict arrived at Turin on Sunday morning for a Pastoral visit to the city. The first event in a day filled with commitments was Mass with 25,000 people in St. Charles Square.

Teaching from the day’s Gospel reading, the Holy Father said that Jesus, in proposing the new commandment to love one another as he loved them, gives the disciples a means “to continue his presence in a new way among them.”

The Pope pointed out that this remains true: “If we love each other, Jesus continues to be present among us.”

What differentiates the call to love from a similar command in the Old Testament, explained the Holy Father, is that Jesus adds, “Just as I have loved you, so also must you love one another.”

This new commandment differs from that of the Old Testament because loving “as Jesus has loved” means “a love without limits, universal, able to also transform all of the negative circumstances and all of the obstacles … to progress in love.”

In giving us this new commandment, the Pope added later, “Jesus asks us to live his same love, which is the truly credible, eloquent and effective sign for announcing to the world the coming of the Kingdom of God.”

In his extensive homily, the Holy Father called particularly for priests and deacons to know, in the face of the great deal of work, how to draw strength to carry the good news to the people from their “relationship of love with God in prayer.”

He also told them to focus their existence on the Gospel, to “cultivate a real dimension of communion and fraternity” with those around them and to provide a witness in their ministry to the “power of love that comes from on high.”

To all Christians, Benedict XVI said that in the face of the great variety of difficulties life presents, we can be fortified to live through them by the “certainty that comes from the faith, the certainty that we are not alone, that God loves each of us without distinction and (that) he is close to everyone with his love.”

The Christian community, he added, “must be a concrete instrument of this love.”

He continued exhorting everyone, especially young people, never to lose the hope that comes “from the Risen Christ, from the victory of God over sin and death.”

This, he said, is the message of the Shroud of Turin, in which we see our sufferings “mirrored” in the suffering of Christ.

It’s for this reason, he went on, that it is a sign of hope.

Christ took on the cross to put evil in check, said the Holy Father, and in his Easter is “the anticipation of that moment in which, also for us, every tear will be dried and there will no longer be death, mourning, lamenting, or worry.”

Economic Life Should Be Oriented to the Common Good

Vatican Information Service – April 30, 2010

VATICAN CITY, 30 APR 2010 (VIS) – The Holy Father today received participants in the sixteenth plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is meeting between 30 April and 4 May to discuss the world economic crisis in the light of the ethical principles enshrined in the Church’s social doctrine.

“The worldwide financial breakdown has”, said the Holy Father addressing the group in English, “demonstrated the fragility of the present economic system and the institutions linked to it”.

He continued: “Rather than a spiral of production and consumption in view of narrowly-defined human needs, economic life should properly be seen as an exercise of human responsibility, intrinsically oriented towards the promotion of the dignity of the person, the pursuit of the common good and the integral development – political, cultural and spiritual – of individuals, families and societies”.

“In my Encyclical ‘Caritas in veritate’, I observed that ‘the current crisis obliges us to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to discover new forms of commitment’”.

The Pope explained how “the Church, based on her faith in God the Creator, affirms the existence of a universal natural law. … As part of the great heritage of human wisdom, the natural moral law, which the Church has appropriated, purified and developed in the light of Christian revelation, serves as a beacon guiding the efforts of individuals and communities to pursue good and to avoid evil, while directing their commitment to building an authentically just and humane society”.

“Among the indispensable principles shaping such an integral ethical approach to economic life must be the promotion of the common good, grounded in respect for the dignity of the human person and acknowledged as the primary goal of production and trade systems, political institutions and social welfare. In our day, concern for the common good has taken on a more markedly global dimension. It has also become increasingly evident that the common good embraces responsibility towards future generations; intergenerational solidarity must henceforth be recognised as a basic ethical criterion for judging any social system.

“These realities point to the urgency of strengthening the governance procedures of the global economy, albeit with due respect for the principle of subsidiarity”, added the Holy Father. “In the end, however, all economic decisions and policies must be directed towards ‘charity in truth’”.

This, Benedict XVI concluded, is because “without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation”.

Pope: There is No Charity Without Life in Christ

Students Who Attend Catholic High Schools More Likely To Graduate, Go To College, Report Finds

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) – April 28, 2010

WASHINGTON—Students who attend Catholic high schools are more likely to graduate and attend college than students attending other schools, according to The Annual Statistical Report on Schools, Enrollment and Staffing , United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools 2009-2010, a report recently released by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA).

Catholic secondary schools report a graduation rate of 99.1 percent, higher than rates reported by other religious schools (97.9 percent), non-sectarian schools (95.7 percent) and public schools (73.2 percent). Students graduating from Catholic high schools are also more likely to attend four year colleges (84.7 percent) than students graduating from other religious (63.7 percent) and non-sectarian (56.2 percent) schools. Catholic school graduates are twice as likely to attend four year colleges as graduates of public schools (44.1 percent).

Data for this analysis was collected from several publications of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as well as information collected by the NCEA.

“This report illustrates the ongoing excellence of Catholic schools,” said Marie A. Powell, Executive Director of the Secretariat of Catholic Education of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). “Catholic high schools have a remarkable record of graduating their students and preparing them well for post-secondary education. Their effectiveness in educating students, even from disadvantaged backgrounds, has been cited consistently in research published over the last 25 years. The Catholic community can be very proud of their support for such schools.”

We Will All Be Held Accountable For the Protection and Care of Our Children

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, April 2010

What can we say that hasn’t already been said many, many times before, especially in recent years? The sexual abuse of children is an unspeakable moral evil. Anyone who commits such a heinous crime – especially family members, priests, teachers, coaches, youth workers or others who are entrusted with the care of children – deserves to be punished to the full extent of both civil and Church law.

By now it is common knowledge that many bishops, law enforcement officers, medical professionals and social scientists seriously misunderstood, or grossly underestimated, the nature of this moral evil. Now we know that the abuser cannot be “cured” — or at least that the risks involved in recovery and rehabilitation are too great. Now we know that those who have previously abused children cannot ever be placed in situations that would put children in danger. We know this now — clearly and beyond any doubt. Now we have “zero tolerance” for any behavior that violates the innocence of our children. Now we immediately remove predators from any assignment that would place our children at risk.

We know these things now. Sadly, that was not the case in the past. Not so very long ago, abusers were sent away for treatment. When they returned, if they had repented, and if the appropriate health care professionals recommended it, they were often reassigned — to a parish, a school, or even youth work. Sometimes they were transferred to a different city or diocese, to a place where no one knew them or their histories. Now we know what a grave mistake that was. That would never happen now. Tragically, it happened too often in the past — with the approval of church officials and with the support and encouragement of health care and social service professionals. We are all paying the price for these serious misjudgments. Especially the victim-survivors and their families. Especially the parishes, religious communities and dioceses all over the world where these crimes were committed …

– Read the full article –

Study to help determine diocesan high school needs in Diocese of Kansas City–St. Joseph

The Catholic Key (Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph) – By Marty Denzer – April 23, 2010

KANSAS CITY — For a number of years, the population of Eastern Jackson County has been growing and is poised to continue growth. Sleepy country towns and Catholic parishes alike have boomed and expanded. As a result, the Diocese of Kansas City –St. Joseph began thinking in earnest about secondary school needs in the areas east of Interstate 435 to the eastern border of the county. The school study and pastoral plans developed by Meitler Consultants several years ago collected data that indicated the diocese should “take a closer look at Eastern Jackson County.”

Steve Hilliard, director of the Diocesan Planning Office, said the St. Louis firm O’Meara, Ferguson, Whelan and Conway Consultants has been retained to conduct interviews and surveys that will help ascertain the Catholic high school needs of the region. The collaborative study began Feb. 1 and will continue through June 1, focusing on “just Eastern Jackson County diocesan secondary school needs. All other areas, while perhaps interested or marginally affected, are not being studied, just included if they are close to the study area.” The consulting firm will present their findings to Bishop Robert Finn in early June.

An informational letter was sent to pastors, parishes and Catholic elementary school principals, past and present high school parents and prospective future families. The letter was also sent to Archbishop O’Hara and St. Mary’s high schools, which currently serve parts of the targeted area.

Families who chose public secondary schools or other private high schools, homeschooling families, grandparents and everyday moms and dads have agreed to participate, Hilliard said. “There are quite a few interested people in the area. The O’Meara group is conducting personal interviews and facilitating discussion forums along with the online survey. We look to receive a comprehensive look at the needs of the area, including demographics and history. Even some people who are skeptical of another study have agreed to participate.”

Hilliard said the goal of this study is not to be predictive; the diocese is open to what needs to be done. A two-week online survey, specific to the high school needs of Eastern Jackson County was to be ready April 26, open to all interested parties.

The interview and survey processes are intended to gather information. The consulting firm plans to meet with the school boards of St. Regis, Our Lady of Lourdes, St. John LaLande, Our Lady of the Presentation and Nativity of Mary diocesan grade schools and O’Hara and St. Mary’s high school boards. The land purchased by St. Mary High School in 2003 as a potential site for an expanded facility will be taken into consideration, also.

There is a high level of interest in this process, Hilliard said. “I am impressed with the interest and the willingness to participate. I’m not actively participating in the survey process, but I’ve made literally hundreds of phone calls all over Eastern and in Western Jackson County to parents who send their kids to St. Mary’s and O’Hara, and I’ve encountered great enthusiasm.”

Hilliard said an approach to the interview and survey responses will be formulated after the presentation to the bishop in June.

“We will have to evaluate demographic development,” he said, “both existing and potential facilities, including roads, and population shifts. What would be the best location? Will there be enough families with children in the area to support a diocesan high school, say five years from now? How will St. Mary’s and O’Hara be affected? There are a lot of aspects to look into, a lot of questions to be addressed.”

Strategic Planning: A Process and A Journey

Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 2 – By Paul Votaw – March 23, 2010

This article is the first in a series on planning that leads to ministry formation. The purpose is to provide short bites of information that will set a framework for enhancing the life and ministry of your organization through strategic planning.

Effective strategic planning must be done in a way that:

• brings unity to the organization without stifling creativity
• provides clear direction with goals and benchmarks
• creates energy and promotes ownership from its members
• provides opportunities for service (living out one’s faith)
• provides avenues for individual and corporate faith formation
• has an ultimate end to bring glory to God and God alone

Imperative to this type of planning is a clearly defined mission, “why we exist”. The ultimate goal of an organization is defined in its Mission. You could say that an organization’s mission is its coherence. Mission is the glue that holds an organization together. Every decision that is made whether it is financial, ministry, facility, outreach, or staff is subordinate to mission and must be made in light of and move an organization toward the realization of its mission.

The other key component to strategic planning is vision. Vision brings the mission to life in concrete ways and provides the strategies that enable an organization to carry out its mission. (“Vision is the incarnation of mission.” Pat O’Meara). Vision provides direction but just as importantly it generates energy, passion, momentum, and something for people to grab hold of and take ownership of. “Without prophesy (vision) the people become demoralized.” (Proverbs 29:18a)

Vision points toward specific accomplishments within a framework of time providing tools and vehicles for moving the organization forward. While the mission is an organization’s coherence, the vision is an organization’s contingence. That is to say, two organizations may have the same mission but have very different visions because the vision is guided by the culture and context of the organization and built upon the gifts and passions of those within the organization. Obviously, mission and vision must be anchored in the specific call of God for an organization as well as the overall mission and vision of the universal and local church.

Without a clear mission and a vision that looks beyond the present an organization may grow and be exciting for a time, but it will eventually run out of energy and the target will change depending upon short term interests and changes in leadership. One could say that such an organization is subject to whims rather than to the call of God. In such a scenario it is not unusual to see fifteen different programs going fifteen different directions with no common unifying purpose.

Unfortunately, the mission and visioning process is neglected by most organizations. As a result we end up doing programs rather than carrying out mission. That’s not to say that good is not accomplished or that God is not glorified. But imagine the enthusiasm, the energy, the spiritual formation that would grow in an organization that is built upon and subjects itself to the specific mission and vision to which it has been called by God.

Programs take us around the block. Mission and vision lead us from city to city, country to country, milestone to milestone. We look back and see the journey rather than a list of events. So the questions becomes: “where do we start?”

As a leader do not take the first step until you have settled the issue of resolve. The planning process is not easy and it does not end. It is a journey, but not a journey for the faint hearted. Rather it is a journey for disciples who seek to discover what God wants to accomplish through them. It is for people who are grounded in prayer and the Eucharist, driven by the Spirit and buoyed by their gratitude to God as well as love for God. If you decide to take this journey, it will transform you and ultimately your organization, leading you to be more completely what God calls you to be – the heart, hands, and feet of the Body of Christ. “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.” (I Corinthians 12:27)

In the coming months Dan Conway, Frank Ferguson, Bentley Foster, Pat O’Meara, Michael Shumway, and I will provide simple but effective tools to help you begin and move forward in this journey. We will also suggest activities in which to engage between articles. The purpose of these activities is to help you move from the theoretical to the practical. Get a planning journal to record your thoughts and activities.

Between now and our next article in April:

• Pray Daily
• that you will be open to God’s will for you and your organization
• that God will prepare the hearts and minds of people to join the journey
• that God will show you the people He wants to help you lead this effort
• Read Daily
• the Bible to discover all you can about God’s mission for the Church
  • Matthew 25:31-46 and 28:16-20
  • I Corinthians 12
  • Romans 12
  • The Book of Acts
  • James 1:19-27
• Observe
• What are your passions and unique gifts?
• What are the passions and unique gifts of the people in your organization?
• Do the activities/ministries of our organization move in a certain directions?
• How do these passions/gifts fit into God’s overall mission for the Church?
• What are the needs of your community, the world?
• Share
• Tell a few select people (confidants) what you are doing and ask them to pray for you. Let them know that you will check in with them in a month and talk with them about what you have discovered/concluded.
• Talk with people outside your organize whom you trust and whose wisdom you value. Ask them for feedback and advice.
• Dream
• If you could see 5 – 10 years from now, what would your organization look like?
• What people do we need to make it happen?
• What gifts and skill sets do we need?
• What resources and funding do we need?
• What facilities will we need
• What kind of team do you need to assemble to lead the way?

Following is an outline of the topics we will cover. I hope you will join us and read our monthly newsletter. Your participation and feedback are valued and appreciated.

Topics

1. Mission and Vision: The Heart of Strategic Planning
   1. Mission: Why we exist
   2. Vision: The response to mission
2. What is a Strategic Plan
3. Assembling a Team
4. Laying the Foundation (Organizing the planning process)
5. Leadership Dialogue and Polemics (the role of consensus
   building in strategic planning)
6. Charting the Course (Creating the strategic plan)
   1. Access current operation
   2. Analyze data from listening and consensus building activities
   3. Determine operational needs
   4. Establish the benchmarks
7. The Journey Begins (Implementing the strategic plan)

This article is featured in our newsletter, Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 2

Liturgy Speaks a Language of Love

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, July 2006

Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.

On June 15, during their national meeting in Los Angeles, the Catholic bishops of the United States approved a new English translation of the Order of Mass. This new translation involves the most basic and familiar parts of the Mass – the penitential rite, Gloria, creed, Eucharistic prayers and acclamations, Our Father and other prayers, and responses used daily. The changes are expected to take effect in the next year or two – following Vatican approval.

The new translation is bound to be controversial. For one thing, it changes expressions that have become a familiar part of the prayer of English-speaking Catholics since the early 1970s. Secondly it uses a stricter (more literal) interpretation of the original Latin, which is bound to be somewhat clumsy given the differences in grammar and syntax between these two very different languages. Finally, the new translation takes what might be called the blunt character (or directness) of “plain English” and attempts to provide the Mass with a richer and more expansive symbolic vocabulary. …

– Read the full article –

Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Named New Bishop of Springfield Diocese

Diocese of Springfield in Illinois — April 20, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Archdiocese of Chicago to be the new bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. He succeeds Archbishop George J. Lucas, who was named Archbishop of Omaha last June.

The appointment was announced at 5 a.m. April 20 in Washington, D.C., by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

“We are grateful to God, to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI and to Francis Cardinal George for choosing such a gifted and dedicated priest and bishop to serve us,” said Msgr. Carl Kemme, diocesan administrator, who introduced Bishop-designate Paprocki to the community during a news conference later that morning at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield.

“We are most grateful to Bishop Paprocki for accepting this appointment. Together, we pledge our prayers, support and loving cooperation to him in the ongoing work of proclaiming the Gospel,” Msgr. Kemme said.

Although he has been an occasional visitor to Springfield, Bishop-designate Paprocki said he sees his new ministry as bishop of the diocese and a “blessing” and looks forward to learning more about the Catholic community of central Illinois.

“I am deeply grateful for the confidence shown by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in appointing me to serve as the ninth Bishop of Springfield in Illinois,” Bishop Paprocki said. “I look forward to working with the priests, deacons, men and women religious, the lay Christian faithful and all people of good will here in our State Capital to carry out the mission entrusted to us by Jesus Christ to proclaim the Gospel. I pledge to do my best with the help of God’s grace to build on the fundamental blessings established through the dedicated ministry of the previous bishops of Springfield, especially my immediate predecessor, the Most Reverend George Lucas, now Archbishop of Omaha.”

Bishop-designate Paprocki is a native of Chicago, born Aug. 5, 1952. He was ordained to the priesthood on May 10, 1978 in Chicago. He is a canon lawyer, with a doctoral degree from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (1991), and is also a graduate of DePaul University College of Law in Chicago (1981).

In addition to his parish assignments, he served the Archdiocese of Chicago as vice-chancellor (1985-2000) and chancellor (1992-2000). He was ordained auxiliary bishop for the Chicago Archdiocese on March 19, 2003. He serves Chicago Cardinal Francis George as vicar for Vicariate IV; the cardinal’s liaison to Polonia (the Chicago Polish community); the cardinal’s liaison for Health and Hospital Affairs.

An installation liturgy and Mass of Welcome will be held Tuesday, June 22, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield. More information on the installation and related events will be announced later.

The Diocese of Springfield in Illinois comprises approximately 146,000 Catholics in 131 parishes in central Illinois. The diocese includes the following counties: Adams, Bond, Brown, Calhoun, Cass, Christian, Clark, Coles, Crawford, Cumberland, Douglas, Edgar, Effingham, Fayette, Greene, Jasper, Jersey, Macon, Macoupin, Madison, Menard, Montgomery, Morgan, Moultrie, Pike, Sangamon, Scott and Shelby.

For complete press kit and downloadable materials, visit the diocesan Web site at: www.dio.org/bishop.

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The Bishop is the steward of grace of the supreme priesthood, especially in the Eucharist…. The Eucharist is the center of life of the particular Church. The Bishop and priests sanctify the Church by their prayer and work, by their ministry of the word and of the sacraments. They sanctify her by their example, not as domineering over those in their charge but being examples to the flock. Thus, together with the flock entrusted to them, they may attain to eternal life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church #893)

O’Meara Ferguson welcomes Bishop Paprocki to his new ministry as Bishop of Springfield in Illinois. We promise our prayerful support as he assumes his new responsibility as a “steward of grace” for the Church of Springfield.

Former Baltimore Archbishop William D. Borders dies at 96

Archdiocese of Baltimore — April 19, 2010

Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, Archbishop of Baltimore, announced today that Archbishop William D. Borders, 13th Archbishop of Baltimore, died this morning at 10:03 at Stella Maris in Timonium. He was 96 years old.

“Archbishop Borders was a man of deep faith, great humility and great love for God, the Church and this Archdiocese,” Archbishop O’Brien said. “As a result, he was universally loved by the people of this local Church, by his brother bishops and priests, and by all who were blessed to call him Archbishop, Father, teacher, brother and friend.

“By any measure William Donald Borders served an extraordinary life. From the very date of his birth on October 9, 1913 in the middle of a flood so fierce it lifted his family home off its foundation and the doctor had to be transported to the home by boat, to his chaplaincy service during World War II in North Africa and Italy, which earned him the Bronze Star for Valor, the Archbishop’s quiet strength would guide him throughout his life of service.

“That strength would be called on throughout his tenure as the first-ever Bishop of Orlando and eventually the 13th Archbishop of the oldest Catholic diocese in the Nation, as he was forced to tackle a number of pressing issues, including the desegregation of public schools, housing for the poor, and the role of the laity in the Church.

“Ever the teacher, the Archbishop would guide the faithful on these and other issues with his prolific writings, many of which remain relevant today and serve as guides for Church leaders throughout the United States.

“The Church and people of God of this Archdiocese benefited immeasurably from his visionary leadership, indefatigable spirit and generous love. On a personal note, I counted him among my most worthy advisors since my arrival in Baltimore and will miss his fraternal love and supportive and joyful presence. May he be welcomed into God’s kingdom where he will suffer no more and where he will know God’s peace for all eternity.”

Archbishop Borders served as Archbishop of Baltimore from 1974-1989. Prior to leading the oldest Catholic diocese he led the newest, serving as the first Bishop of the Diocese of Orlando from 1968-1974. He was the fourth-oldest living Catholic bishop in the United States at the time of his death and the longest-surviving of the (arch) bishops of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Arrangements have not yet been finalized.

Additional information and statements can be found on the Archdiocese of Baltimore website.

Orlando’s Bishop Wenski named Archbishop of Miami

Orlando Sentinel – By Jeff Kunerth – April 20, 2010

Orlando Catholic Diocese Bishop Thomas Wenski was named Archbishop of Miami by Pope Benedict XVI, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced Tuesday.

Wenski, 59, will replace Archbishop John C. Favalora, 74, who will reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in December.

“I am being called back to that local Church where I was ordained a priest and where I served as a parish priest and auxiliary bishop,” Wenski said in a statement released Tuesday. “I am deeply grateful to the clergy, religious and faithful of the Diocese of Orlando who almost seven years ago welcomed me as coadjutor bishop on August 22, 2003. As your bishop since November 13, 2004, I have enjoyed your support and affection.”

Wenski will be installed as the fourth Archbishop of Miami on June 1, 2010. Pope Benedict will name Wenski’s successor, but no date for that decision was announced Tuesday. In the interim, a diocesan administrator from among its clergy will be chosen.

Wenski, who speaks Creole, has made several trips to Haiti in recent months following the earthquake. In the 1980s, Wenski served as a priest with the Haitian Catholic Church in Miami. Wenski has been an ardent champion of immigrants and immigration reform.

In his six years as bishop, Wenski convened the first-ever Diocesan Synod, “Starting Afresh from Christ” which helped set the priorities for the diocese that spans nine Central Florida counties, according to the Orlando Diocese. During his tenure, eight new parishes or missions were established and the number of seminarians doubled, the Diocese said.

Most recently, Wenski initiated an “Alive in Christ” capital campaign that has reached $100 million in pledges and gifts. He also pushed for the renovation of St. James Cathedral in downtown Orlando currently underway.

Thomas G. Wenski was born Oct. 18, 1950, in West Palm Beach, Florida. He attended St. Vincent de Paul Seminary in Boynton Beach, and was ordained a priest of the Miami Archdiocese in 1976. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of Miami in 1997, and bishop of Orlando in 2003.

Bishop Wenski holds a Master of Arts degree in sociology from Fordham University and has served as chairman of the Committee on Migration of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC). He also has served as chairman of the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, and a member of the Task Force on Cultural Diversity in the Church.

Archbishop Favalora, a native of New Orleans, was named archbishop of Miami in 1994. Before that he was bishop of Alexandria, La., 1986-1989, and bishop of St. Petersburg, Fla., 1989-1994.

The Miami Archdiocese includes 4,958 square miles. It has a population of 4,264,581, with 736,089, or 17 percent, of them Catholic.

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The Bishop is the steward of grace of the supreme priesthood, especially in the Eucharist…. The Eucharist is the center of life of the particular Church. The Bishop and priests sanctify the Church by their prayer and work, by their ministry of the word and of the sacraments. They sanctify her by their example, not as domineering over those in their charge but being examples to the flock. Thus, together with the flock entrusted to them, they may attain to eternal life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church #893)

O’Meara Ferguson welcomes Bishop Wenski to his new ministry as Archbishop of Miami. We promise our prayerful support as he assumes his new responsibility as a “steward of grace” for the Church of Miami.

Archbishop Kurtz: He’s ‘Our Gifted Shepherd’

National Catholic Register — By Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz — April 11, 2010

Archbishop Kurtz is the archbishop of Louisville, Kentucky, which was established as the Diocese of Bardstown in 1808 along with the dioceses of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, out of the territory of the Baltimore Diocese, the first Catholic diocese in the United States.

How quickly five years have passed since the April 19, 2005, news of the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. I recall my gratitude and elation at the news. Five years later, this gratitude has only deepened.

I recall the ad limina visit of United States bishops in 2004. As part of Region V, I was in the group that met with the Holy Father during the first week of December. Our last day, Saturday, was the richest by far. Of course the highlight was our group meeting with the then very frail Pope John Paul II at noon.

Right before that meeting we went to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and it was at this meeting that I had my first personal experience with the future pope. I remember a cordial and engaging meeting that began when he shook hands with each of the 20 bishops. As he moved around the table to say hello, I was struck by his gentle personality and by the warmth of his hospitality. He brought a calming effect to the spirit of that encounter. This is not always the case when a leader enters. I remember thinking to myself that the vibrations were so good.

The meeting revealed a man who listened carefully to the questions raised by the bishops and who grasped the issues and addressed them directly. I was very impressed. The future pope approached the 20 bishops with all the elements of good dialogue: civility, respect, a listening ear, a capacity to articulate his understanding of the truth, and the capacity to respond. It was an example of dialogue at its best.

That summer I traveled to Cologne for World Youth Day and saw his gentle but powerful presence again, this time with one and a half million of his closest friends. As I prayed with him and this multitude in silence before the Blessed Sacrament, I recalled his description of himself at the time of his election: “a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.”

Since his election I have become much more familiar with his homilies of past and present and see him as a gentle and courageous “teaching” Pope. It is said that multitudes crowded St. Peter’s Square to “see” Pope John Paul II, but even greater multitudes come to “hear” our great shepherd.

His constant theme of unity in truth and charity resonates throughout these five years and from continent to continent. His presence in the United States for our bicentennial year, so special to the Archdiocese of Louisville — formerly the Diocese of Bardstown — continues to inspire our local Church. Even in the midst of the challenges within and beyond our Church, he is a beacon who humbly and eloquently points to our Savior, Jesus Christ.

May this Vicar of Christ on Earth have good health for many years as we give thanks for his great leadership as our shepherd.

Pope Benedict XVI Celebrates 83rd Birthday

American Papist/CatholicVoteAction.org -- April 16, 2010

AD MULTOS GLORIOSQUE ANNOS!

This day, eighty-three years ago in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, the future Holy Father was born.

Today let us pray for the Holy Father in a special way. The Cardinal Newman Society is close to its goal of 1,000,000 prayers pledged for the Holy Father by the fifth anniversary of his election as pope (this coming Monday).

Archbishop Aymond: Christ Completes the Puzzle

Clarion Herald (Archdiocese of New Orleans) – By Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond – April 10, 2010

Sometimes getting to the bottom of a very complex story is like putting a puzzle together. It is confusing when an important piece of the puzzle seems to be missing. It causes us to ask that all-important question: What really happened?

That was the question the women asked as they went to the tomb on that first Easter morning. What really happened? They were trying to put together pieces of this puzzle, but there were pieces missing.

They went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. To their surprise, the stone already had been rolled back, but it became more complex because they could not find the body. Something was not right. As the Gospel tells us, they became not only puzzled but terrified.

When they could not find the body, their first thought was not about the resurrection. Rather, it was a question of, “Where is he? Who stole the body? Who took him from the tomb?” Then the messenger from God said to them, “He is not here. He has been raised. He is alive, just as he foretold.”

The Gospel very clearly tells us the apostles and the other disciples took the women’s story as nonsense. They did not believe. They could not believe. Peter ran to the empty tomb and saw the burial cloth of Jesus.

Let us be clear. For the women who came to the tomb, as well as for Peter, it was not the empty tomb that brought them to believe in the resurrection. It was their faith. It was placing faith in those words of Jesus when he said, “I will be crucified and die, and then on the third day I will rise again.” That faith allowed them to believe in the resurrection, and their faith was strengthened as the risen Christ appeared to them.

There was great confusion on that morning. But what became clear to the women and the other disciples was that Jesus had overcome death, sin and evil.

The Easter Vigil is our feast of hope. It reminds us that as Christians, we can never despair. It is our feast of light – we will never ever live in darkness. It is summed up in the ritual. Into a darkened cathedral comes one single light – the Easter candle. And as that candle breaks the darkness, we sing, “Christ, our light.”

What does this resurrection mean for us personally and also for all of humanity?

Personally, it reminds us that we are to look inside of ourselves. There are times when we sense darkness, which is caused by concerns about health, finance, tensions within our families or workplace or broken relationships. Tonight we acknowledge that darkness and acknowledge that Christ comes to bring light and hope into the darkness.

What does the resurrection of Christ mean to the world? In Haiti and Chile, there are earthquakes and people grieving and rebuilding. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there is war and the rumor of more war. In the U.S., civility in the public arena has been replaced by hostility, and we live in a time of instability of finances. In our own great city of New Orleans, we see darkness in crime, racism and murder.

As we look at that list, it would be very easy for us to become cynical or negative. But this is the feast of hope. This is the feast of light. As we embrace the sufferings and deaths of our own lives and in our own world, we have been promised that Christ, our light, comes to scatter the darkness and bring us his light, which gives meaning and depth to our lives.

Where is this risen Christ to be found in Easter 2010? Not in the tomb. We meet the risen Christ in this very celebration, when he becomes present to us in the word of Scripture and as he becomes intimately present to us in the Eucharist.

The risen Christ is in you and in me. He is among us tonight. And we can join St. Paul who said, “It is not I who live but it is the risen Christ who lives within me.”

We also go forth as the messengers. It is no longer the angels of old or those men with dazzling clothes at the tomb or Mary Magdalen or Peter. In 2010, you and I must become the messengers.

We have put the puzzle together. We know the story. He was crucified and he breathed his last. His body was dead and lifeless. He rose from the dead. The tomb was empty. He lives in you. He lives in me. And we are the messengers who bring his light to others in the world – to family, to coworkers and to friends.

Christ is our light. This is our feast of hope. This is our feast of light, and we will never ever live in darkness.

Vatican Prefect says Religion in Schools is the Tool for Understanding Others

Catholic News Agency – April 13, 2010

Vatican City, Apr 13, 2010 / (CNA) – Last week at the 15th European Forum for the Teaching of Religion, the prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski described the importance of teaching religion in schools as a “privileged tool for understanding and accepting others.”

According to segments of the Vatican prelate’s address delivered to participants of the forum and reprinted by SIR news, he remarked that religion must be recognized in education as a “genuine discipline, in dialogue with other subjects.”

In this light, he said, religion classes “will not hinder an authentic intercultural education, but will become the privileged tool for understanding and accepting others.”

However, he warned, “A teaching of religion that merely presents the different religions in a comparative or neutral manner can create confusion or relativism” and a mindset of indifference to religion in students.”

In response to the great ethnic and religious diversity in modern-day Europe, Cardinal Grocholewski noted the importance of “a high-quality confessional teaching, capable of retaining the identity of the teaching, introducing the students to the understanding of the Catholic religion…”

Through this methodology, continued the prefect, the foundations will be laid “to raise confident identities, that will thus be able to communicate with the other religions as well.”

Pope’s Encyclical Uses Love as Framework for Justice, Archbishop says

Catholic News Service – March 12, 2010

NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” is not a political program, but rather a guideline for ethical principles that should be put into action, a German archbishop told an audience at the University of Notre Dame.

Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising said when he first read it, he was surprised to find the encyclical begins with love, because he felt that it should have started with justice. With his second reading, however, he said he understood Pope Benedict’s new point that social justice must begin with love.

“When we realize everyone is loved, then we build a society where everyone will have his place,” the archbishop said. And when love is the framework for thinking about what is good for mankind, then the idea of globalization will have a new dynamic, with a new recognition of the notion of the family of mankind in which everyone is loved by God, he said. “We cannot build solidarity without the idea that everyone is in this communion,” Archbishop Marx said, and to achieve this, there must be a re-thinking of global issues, with Catholic social principles playing an active role.

Church’s Mission is to Announce God’s Merciful Love, Teaches Pope Benedict

Catholic News Agency – April 11, 2010

Vatican City, Apr 11, 2010 / (CNA/EWTN News) – The Holy Father welcomed from the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo, focusing his address before the Marian prayer on Sunday’s reading from the Gospel of John. In his words, he acknowledged the value of Thomas’ doubt for Christians today and reflected on Jesus’ imparting of the Holy Spirit and the mission of the Church.

St. John’s account which narrates Jesus’ visit to the disciples in the Cenacle after his resurrection, said the Pope, is “rich” with “mercy and divine goodness.”

Benedict XVI quoted St. Augustine who explained the scene in which Christ’s body, “inhabited by divinity,” is not impeded from entering the closed doors of the Upper Room. St. Gregory the Great, he noted, described the Redeemer’s arrival in a state of glory, with an uncorruptible and palpable body.

Once in the room, Jesus allows the “incredulous” Thomas to verify the signs of the passion present on Jesus’ body, recalled the Pope, adding that the “divine compliance” of Jesus in permitting Thomas to touch him continues to be as profitable for us as it was for the other disciples.

“In fact, touching the wounds of the Lord, the doubtful disciple cures not only his, but also our diffidence,” he observed.

Putting the scene in perspective, the Holy Father explained that the Risen Christ’s visit was not limited to the Cenacle, “but goes beyond, so that everyone may receive the gift of peace and life with the ‘Creating Breath.’”

In Jesus’ words and actions in the locked upper chamber, he establishes the mission of the Church ever aided by the Holy Spirit, which is, the Pope said, “to carry out to all the glad announcement, the joyous reality of the merciful Love of God …”

Pope Benedict concluded his words by encouraging priests, “in light of this word,” to follow the example of St. Jean Vianney in helping people to “perceive the merciful love of the Lord” whose announcement and a “witness to the truth of Love” is important also today.

“In this way we will make ever more familiar and close He that our eyes haven’t seen, but of his infinite Mercy we have absolute certainty.”

Beginning the Regina Caeli prayer, he asked for the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles, in “sustaining the mission of the Church.”

In his post-prayer address, he remembered those from Poland who died in a tragic plane crash on Saturday morning in Russia. He also welcomed the opening of the exposition of the Shroud of Turin and wished a blessed Divine Mercy Sunday to all.

Catholics in U.S. Donate Nearly $60 Million to Haiti Relief Effort

Catholic News Agency – April 9, 2010

Washington D.C., Apr 9, 2010 / (CNA) – A collection initiated in January by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to help victims of the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has raised nearly $60 million dollars to date.

Since Cardinal Francis George and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York made an appeal for donations the day after the natural disaster, the USCCB has collected $58.7 million in aid from American Catholics.

“I cannot even begin to say how thankful we are to all the people who have so selflessly given to help the people in Haiti,” said Archbishop Dolan, who is chairman of Catholic Relief Services (CRS). “It is an amazing example of love and faith in action.”

“CRS, with over 300 staff on the ground in Haiti, started helping people immediately,”Archbishop Dolan related. “They have been providing food, temporary shelter, hygiene kits, water and sanitation services around the clock for tens of thousands at parishes, makeshift camps, and other sites throughout the Port-au-Prince. In the long run, CRS will be there with the Haitian people to help them rebuild.”

CRS has also received funds outside the special appeal collection from corporations, schools and individuals and foundations. “Together with a portion of the proceeds from the special collection, these additional funds will allow CRS to help save many lives and bring back hope,” the New York archbishop added.

Archbishop Jose Gomez, who serves as the chairman of the USCCB Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America, also commented on the Church’s longstanding support for Catholics in Haiti.

“A key goal is to help the Haitian Church get back on its feet,” Archbishop Gomez said on Thursday. “Life in Haiti revolves around the parish communities. Reconstituting parishes is vital to bringing back some sense of normalcy to people’s lives.”

“We are starting with temporary rectories but foresee chapels, schools and community centers to follow,” he added. “Fortunately, CRS, with its expertise and large presence in Haiti, can be a source of valuable assistance and advice to the local Church in her work to rebuild.”

Pope Benedict exhorts all Christians to proclaim ‘He is Risen!’

Catholic News Agency – April 7, 2010

Vatican City, Apr 7, 2010 / (CNA/EWTN News) – “Christ is truly risen!” exclaimed the Holy Father again from St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday. The Pope spoke to pilgrims at the General Audience about the extraordinary event of Easter and the call for all Christians to be inspired in their proclamation of the “good news.”

Wednesday’s audience was “inundated by the luminous joy of Easter,” observed the Pope during his address to the more than 21,000 people gathered in the Square, still decorated with tens of thousands of Dutch flowers and plants remaining from Easter celebrations.

In these days and until Pentecost, the Pope said, “the Church celebrates the mystery of the Resurrection and experiences the great joy that comes from the good news of the triumph of Christ over evil and over death.”

“The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” is the “good news” that continues to be passed from generation to generation, he told the crowd.

Easter is an “absolutely extraordinary event,” said the Holy Father, calling it “the most beautiful and mature fruit of the ‘mystery of God’. … Yet it is also a real historical fact, witnessed and documented. It is the event upon which all our faith rests. It is the central point in which we believe and the principal reason for which we believe.”

The “divine mandate” of transmitting the news that “He is risen,” which is entrusted to the women in the Gospel accounts who act as “messengers,” is also meant for us, said Pope Benedict XVI.

“Yes, dear friends, all our faith is founded on the constant and faithful transmission of this ‘good news.’”

We are all called to be “enthusiastic and courageous” in our witness to this Good News, he continued. “This is the precise, demanding and exciting mandate of the risen Lord.”

“The ‘news’ of new life in Christ must shine in the life of the Christian, it must be alive and working in who bears it, truly able to change the heart, the entire existence,” the Pope exhorted.

As St. Mark wrote at the end of his Gospel, the Holy Father recalled, the Apostles go out and preach with the help of the Lord “who confirmed the message by the signs which accompanied it.”

We are called still today to be “announcers” said the Pope, “We also, in fact, are certain that the Lord, today as yesterday, works together with his witnesses.”

The fact that he accompanies us can be recognized when we push for lasting peace, provide an example inspired by respect for justice, work without ulterior interests and make sacrifices personally and as a community, said the Pope.

“Unfortunately,” the Pope lamented, “we see in the world also so much suffering, so much violence, so much incomprehension. The Celebration of the Paschal Mystery, the joyous contemplation of the Resurrection of Christ, who defeats sin and death with the force of God’s Love is a propitious occasion to rediscover and profess with greater conviction our faith in the Risen Lord, who accompanies witnesses of his word working marvels alongside them.

“We will be truly and fully witnesses of Risen Jesus,” taught Pope Benedict, “when we let the marvel of his love shine through in us; when in our words and, even more, in our actions, in full coherence with the Gospel, the voice and the hand of Jesus himself is recognized.”

Following the audience, the Holy Father was taken back to his residence at Castel Gandolfo by helicopter to continue resting after finishing a busy Easter schedule.

Without Christ, Life Would Have No Hope, Pope says in Easter Message

Catholic News Service -- By Carol Glatz -- April 5, 2010

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Without Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection, life would be without hope and human destiny would end only in death, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Easter message.

However, “Easter does not work magic,” and the human journey will still be marked by grief and anguish, as well as joy and hope for the future, he said April 4 in his message “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world).

Humanity today needs to free itself from sin, not by making superficial changes, but through a true moral and spiritual conversion, he said.

“It needs the salvation of the Gospel, so as to emerge from a profound crisis, one which requires deep change, beginning with consciences,” the pope said in the message broadcast from St. Peter’s Square to millions of people worldwide.

In an unusual departure from the Vatican’s traditional Easter ceremony, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals and former Vatican secretary of state, read aloud a message of Easter greetings and support for the pope before the start of the Easter liturgy in St. Peter’s Square.

In reference to the heightened criticism about how the church and Pope Benedict have handled clerical sex abuse cases, ,Cardinal Sodano told the pope that the church and “the people of God are with you.”

The cardinal thanked the pope for his strength and courage, and said Catholics’ faith will not be shaken by the “current petty gossip” and other “ordeals that occasionally strike the church community.”

The basilica’s steps and central balcony were carpeted with colorful tulips, hyacinths, blooming trees and other greenery; the more than 24,000 flowers and shrubs were donated by companies in the Netherlands.

Under a cold rain, Pope Benedict read his message and gave his blessing after celebrating Easter morning Mass with tens of thousands of people gathered in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. Even huddled under umbrellas, the crowd was jubilant, chanting the pope’s name and waving soggy banners and flags.

The pope offered Easter greetings in 65 different languages, including Tamil, Aramaic, Chinese and Guarani.

The night before, during the Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict baptized and confirmed a woman from Sudan, a woman from Somalia, two women from Albania and a man from Japan.

The pope also baptized a small boy from Russia. The boy’s godfather, a priest, hoisted the boy up in his arms to hold his head over the baptismal font.

The pope used a golden shell to pour the holy water over each catechumen’s head. The newly baptized, wearing white shawls, had a brief personal exchange with the pope when they brought the offertory gifts to the altar.

In his homily at the vigil Mass, the pope said baptism marks the beginning of a process of renouncing a world of greed, lies and cruelty and a culture that worships power.

Through baptism, the person is freed from the pursuit of pleasure, which has done nothing but destroy all that was best in humanity, he said.

Becoming a Christian is not “mere cleansing, still less is it a somewhat complicated initiation into a new association. It is death and resurrection, rebirth to a new life,” he said.

Once stripped of the “old garments” of one’s life of sin, he said, the Christian puts on new clothes of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Baptism is “the beginning of a process that embraces the whole of our life — it makes us fit for eternity,” so that a person is worthy of appearing before God and can live with him forever.

The next morning, after celebrating the Easter Mass, the pope called for an end to “the multiple tragic expressions of a culture of death which are becoming increasingly widespread, so as to build a future of love and truth in which every human life is respected and welcomed.”

He called on world leaders to find the inspiration and strength to promote economic policies that follow “the criteria of truth, justice and fraternal aid.”

In his Easter message, he called for an end to war and violence in the Middle East, especially in the Holy Land; he offered consolation to persecuted Christian minorities, especially in Iraq and Pakistan; he denounced “the dangerous resurgence of crimes linked to drug trafficking” in Latin American and the Caribbean; and he expressed his hopes that the people of Haiti and Chile could rebuild the areas struck by earthquakes earlier this year.

The pope also called for peace and reconciliation in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea and Nigeria; and he asked that social harmony come to those places experiencing terrorism and social and religious discrimination.

Before celebrating the Resurrection, Pope Benedict presided over the candlelit Way of the Cross at Rome’s Colosseum April 2.

“The day of greatest hope is Good Friday” when Christ, through his death, becomes the source of life for all of humanity, he said.

Christ’s gift of love on the cross transforms reality, he said, so that “from betrayal can come friendship, from repudiation, pardon, and from hatred, love.”

Thousands of people, most holding candles, attended the evening service and listened to the meditations written by Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini.

Under an awning on a hill overlooking the Colosseum, the pope stood and then knelt through the entire 90-minute service while women and men from Haiti, Iraq, Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy, as well as two Franciscan friars from the Holy Land carried a black wooden cross through and around the Colosseum.

After the 14th station, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the papal vicar for Rome, handed the cross to the pope, who stood and held it aloft.

Pope Benedict left the Vatican after the Holy Week and Easter celebrations to spend a few days resting at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

Reciting the “Regina Coeli” prayer with hundreds of visitors gathered in the courtyard of the villa April 5, the pope said that like the angel that told the disciples Jesus had risen, Christians are called to be messengers of Jesus’ resurrection, his victory over evil and death, and bearers of his love to the world.

“Certainly, we remain men and women, but we receive the mission of angels, messengers of Christ,” he said.

The text of the pope’s Easter message in English can be found online at the Vatican website

Pope Appoints Coadjutor Archbishop for Los Angeles

Archdiocese of Los Angeles -- April 6, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI has named Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of San Antonio, Texas, as Coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles. The appointment was announced today, April 6, in Washington, D.C., by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

As Coadjutor, Archbishop Gomez, 58, will automatically become head of the three-county Archdiocese of Los Angeles upon Cardinal Roger Mahony’s retirement at age 75 on February, 27, 2011. A Mass of Reception for Archbishop Gomez is scheduled for May 26.

Cardinal Roger Mahony will introduce Archbishop Gomez today, Tuesday, April 6 at a 10 a.m. press conference inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Officially credentialed members of the media are invited to attend the press conference.

“I welcome Archbishop Gomez to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with enthusiasm and personal excitement,” said Cardinal Mahony. “The Auxiliary Bishops and I are looking forward to working closely with him over the coming months until he becomes the Archbishop early in 2011.”

Born in Monterrey, Mexico, and spending his early priesthood in Texas, Archbishop Gomez will become the first Hispanic Archbishop of Los Angeles. When he succeeds Cardinal Mahony in 2011, Archbishop Gomez will head the largest Catholic Archdiocese in the United States, with more than five million members, 70 percent of them Hispanic.

‘I’m very grateful to the Holy Father for giving me this opportunity to serve the Church with a mentor and leader like Cardinal Roger Mahony,” Archbishop Gomez said. “I’m grateful to the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, for supporting the Holy Father’s confidence in me. I will try with all my strength to earn that trust.”

For more information, please visit coadjutor.la-archdiocese.org

Video of the press conference can be found in the links section at
coadjutor.la-archdiocese.org/media

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The Bishop is the steward of grace of the supreme priesthood, especially in the Eucharist…. The Eucharist is the center of life of the particular Church. The Bishop and priests sanctify the Church by their prayer and work, by their ministry of the word and of the sacraments. They sanctify her by their example, not as domineering over those in their charge but being examples to the flock. Thus, together with the flock entrusted to them, they may attain to eternal life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church #893)

O’Meara Ferguson welcomes Archbishop Gomez to his new ministry as Archbishop of Los Angeles. We promise our prayerful support as he assumes his new responsibility as a “steward of grace” for the Church of Los Angeles.

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(podcast) Introducing the Concept of Christian Stewardship to the Latino Community

This article is featured in our newsletter, Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 2

O’Meara Ferguson is announcing its first original Spanish-language podcast, entitled “Introducing the Concept of Christian Stewardship to the Latino Community”. This is the first podcast in a series of five, and features a conversational interview with O’Meara Ferguson Executive Consultant Koren Ruiz. The podcast begins with a general definition of Stewardship – the idea that God is the creator and the giver of all things, where the stewards have the opportunity to manage and to share those gifts according to what God wants to do in their lives – and then it moves into an engaging discussion about different ways the Latino community can begin to understand this relatively new concept as a way of life.

As stewardship is a relatively new concept for many in the Latino community, the podcast focuses more on the basic idea of being grateful for everything God has given us, and discovering through prayer how to best manage and share those gifts according to God’s will for our lives. This tool also provides several practical ways in which people in the Latino community can apply this new concept to their daily lives. It emphasizes that Stewardship is truly a way of life, rather than a list of things we need to do to become grateful and responsible stewards of God’s gifts.

Art Ledesma, Vice President, Mission Advancement Services, will be working in conjunction with Koren Ruiz on the remaining podcasts in the series.

Upcoming Podcasts:

• A Steward Receives God’s Gifts Gratefully
• A Steward Cultivates God’s Gifts Responsibly
• A Christian Steward Shares God’s Gifts Lovingly
• A Christian Steward Returns God’s Gifts with Increase

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La compañía O’Meara Ferguson se complace en presentar el primer espacio informativo de audio (de una serie de cinco) completamente en español titulado “Introducción de la Corresponsabilidad Cristiana a la Comunidad Latina”. Esta herramienta interactiva es una entrevista con el Asesor Financiero de O’Meara Ferguson Koren Ruiz. La entrevista comienza con la explicación de la definición de Corresponsabilidad – la idea de que Dios es el creador y dador de todas las cosas que existen, en donde el corresponsable tiene la oportunidad de administrar y compartir sus dones de acuerdo a lo que Dios quiere hacer en sus vidas – de ahí, la entrevista parte a una discusión muy interesante acerca de diferentes maneras en que la comunidad Latina puede empezar a entender este nuevo concepto como una manera de vida.

Corresponsabilidad es un término relativamente nuevo para muchas personas en la comunidad Latina, esta entrevista se enfoca en las ideas básicas de ser agradecidos por los dones que hemos recibido de Dios y de descubrir a través de la oración como podemos administrar y compartir nuestros dones de acuerdo a la voluntad que Dios tiene para nuestras vidas. Esta herramienta de audio provee también diferentes maneras prácticas en que la gente de la comunidad Latina puede aplicar este nuevo concepto a su vida diaria. Además, enfatiza que la Corresponsabilidad es en verdad una manera de vida y no una simple lista de cosas que debemos hacer para llegar a ser corresponsables más agradecidos o más responsables de los dones de Dios.

Próximos Podcasts:

• Un Corresponsable Recibe Los Dones De Dios Con Actitud De Agradecimiento
• Un Corresponsable Cultiva Responsablemente Los Dones Que Recibe De Dios
• Un Corresponsable Comparte Los Dones De Dios Con Amor.
• Un Corresponsable Cristiano Regresa Los Dones De Dios En Mayor Proporcion

Profound Experience of Joy

“The history of Christianity can be said to begin with joy – the greeting of the Angel to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid; for behold I proclaim to you news of great joy.” (Lk. 2:10) And, of course, the most profound experience of joy is found in the Easter mystery – Jesus’ victory over sin and death in the Resurrection. Here the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and in Jerusalem and Galilee, encounter the Risen Lord and find their deepest longings fulfilled and their hearts burning with joy.”

   - Pope Benedict XVI

Holy See to UN: What About Bailout Money for Poor?

Zenit.org – March 19, 2010

NEW YORK, MARCH 25, 2010 (Zenit.org) – The Holy See is noting that the countries who found bailout money to save financial institutions in the economic crisis should also have resources for helping the poor.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See’s permanent observer at the U.N. offices in New York, stated this Wednesday in an address before the 64th session of the U.N. General Assembly.

The address was delivered before the 4th High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development under the theme “The Monterrey Consensus and Doha Declaration on Financing for Development: Status of Implementation and Tasks Ahead.”

The prelate noted that the “devastating impact of the recent financial crisis on the world’s most vulnerable populations” is “a concern shared by governments and citizens all over the world.”

“Indeed,” he continued, “the dark shadow of this crisis is likely to frustrate efforts made so far to help reduce poverty and only add to the skyrocketing numbers living in extreme poverty.”

On the positive side, the archbishop noted, the crisis has “given rise to unprecedented international political cooperation, evident in the three successive high-level G-20 meetings in Washington, London, and Pittsburgh during 2009.”

“These meetings were able to reach agreement on emergency measures to reignite the world economy, including fiscal and monetary stimulus packages that have prevented a global catastrophe,” he affirmed.

“Nevertheless,” Archbishop Migliore added, “the stabilization of some economies, or the recovery of others, does not mean that the crisis is over.”

“Indeed, the whole world economy, where countries are highly interdependent, will never be able to function smoothly if the conditions that generated the crisis persist, especially when fundamental inequalities in income and wealth among individuals and between nations continue,” he asserted.

Moral imperative

Thus, the Holy See representative emphasized the view “that we cannot wait for a definitive and permanent recovery of the global economy to take action.”

He explained that “a significant reason is that the re-activation of the economies of the world’s poorest people will surely help guarantee a universal and sustainable recovery.”

“But the most important reason,” the prelate added, “is the moral imperative: not to leave a whole generation, nearly a fifth of the world’s population, in extreme poverty.”

He underlined the “urgent need to reform, strengthen and modernize the whole funding system for developing countries as well as U.N. programs, including the specialized agencies and regional organizations, making them more efficient, transparent, and well coordinated, both internationally and locally.”

“In the same vein,” the archbishop added, “the crisis has highlighted the urgent need to proceed with the reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, whose structures and procedures must reflect the realities of today’s world and no longer those of the post World War II period.”

“The international community, through the World Bank and relevant multilateral agencies, should continue to give priority to the fight against poverty,” he asserted.

Archbishop Migliore acknowledged that “at the end of World War II, the international community was able to adopt a comprehensive system that would ensure not only peace but also avoid a repetition of global economic disruption.”

He continued: “The current global crisis offers a similar opportunity requiring a comprehensive approach, based on resources, knowledge transfer and on institutions.

“To achieve this, all nations, without exception, need to commit themselves to a renewed multilateralism.”

“At the same time,” the prelate pointed out, “the effectiveness of measures taken to overcome the current crisis should always be assessed by their ability to solve the primary problem.”

He concluded, “We should not forget that the same world that could find, within a few weeks, trillions of dollars to rescue banks and financial investment institutions, has not yet managed to find 1% of that amount for the needs of the hungry — starting with the $3 billion needed to provide meals to school children who are hungry or the $5 billion needed to support the emergency food fund of the World Food Program.”

Long Applause for New York Prelate Who Defends Pope

Zenit.org – March 29, 2010

NEW YORK, MARCH 29, 2010 (Zenit.org) – Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York brought hearty approval from a standing-room-only crowd at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Palm Sunday when he defended Benedict XVI against “unrelenting insinuations” in the scandals of sexual abuse.

The archbishop asked the congregation for a couple of minutes of patience at the end of the lengthy Mass, and then said the “somberness of Holy Week is intensified for Catholics this year” by a “tidal wave of headlines about abuse of minors by some few priests, this time in Ireland, Germany, and a re-run of an old story from Wisconsin.”

“What deepens the sadness now is the unrelenting insinuations against the Holy Father himself, as certain sources seem frenzied to implicate the man who, perhaps more than anyone else has been the leader in purification, reform, and renewal that the Church so needs,” Archbishop Dolan stated.

The 60-year-old prelate suggested that Sunday Mass is “hardly the place to document the inaccuracy, bias, and hyperbole of such aspersions,” but it is “the time for Catholics to pray for Benedict our Pope.”

According to the Associated Press report of the archbishop’s words, the congregation responded with 20 seconds of applause.

Archbishop Dolan suggested that Benedict XVI is suffering “some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob, and scourging at the pillar, as did Jesus.”

“No one has been more vigorous in cleansing the Church of the effects of this sickening sin than the man we now call Pope Benedict XVI,” he affirmed, asserting that the “dramatic progress” made by the Church in the United States “could never have happened without the insistence and support of the very man now being daily crowned with thorns by groundless innuendo.”

He continued: “Does the Church and her pastor, Pope Benedict XVI, need intense scrutiny and just criticism for tragic horrors long past?

“Yes! He himself has asked for it, encouraging complete honesty, at the same time expressing contrition, and urging a thorough cleansing.

“All we ask is that it be fair, and that the Catholic Church not be singled-out for a horror that has cursed every culture, religion, organization, institution, school, agency, and family in the world. [...]

“The Eucharist is the Sunday meal of the spiritual family we call the Church. At Sunday dinner we share both joys and sorrows. The father of our family, ‘il papa,’ needs our love, support, and prayers.”

Full audio of Archbishop Dolan’s statement is below:

Cardinal George’s Reflections on Holy Week

(Archdiocese of Chicago) Catholic Chicago Blog – By Cardinal Francis E. George – March 29, 2010

Wednesday of Holy Week brings us face to face with Judas Iscariot, who engineered Jesus’ death by betraying him to his enemies. In recent years, there have been a few attempts to “rehabilitate” Judas, to explain away his apparently evil intentions and paint him as someone who really only wanted to force Jesus to show his power in extreme danger.

It seems to me that efforts like that say a lot more about us than about Judas. We love victims of previous era’s prejudices because accepting them confirms how enlightened we are. Even Judas, whom the poet Dante put in the lowest pit of hell, becomes a foil for our sense of superiority.

Judas kissed Jesus, the Gospel tells us. Did Jesus kiss his betrayer? Jesus died praying that his Father would forgive his enemies, and that would include Judas. We don’t know Judas’ eternal fate, but we do know that forgiving your enemies means you can’t feel superior to them.

I like to read the Psalms because they are filled with threats against the Psalmist’s enemies, and I would like to see my enemies destroyed. But our greatest enemies are our own sins. It’s hard to keep a sense of enlightened superiority when examining our sins. They put us in Judas’ league. Rehabilitation, however, isn’t a matter of finding excuses; spiritual rehabilitation follows from confessing one’s sins and accepting forgiveness with humble gratitude.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Holy Week are days uniquely sacred. I like to think of Holy Thursday as the day of the great promise, of Good Friday as the day of the great sacrifice, and of Holy Saturday as the day of the great silence. Reading the Epistle to the Hebrews sets the stage for living these three days.

The Day of the Great Promise

Holy Thursday is the anniversary of a promise fulfilled. When Jesus (Jn.6) promised that he would give his flesh as food and his blood as drink, many of his first disciples left him. Those who did not leave him witnessed bread and wine transformed into body and blood at the Last Supper. But the Last Supper brings another promise: the bread and wine, separately consecrated, stand in for or symbolize the separation of Jesus’ body from his blood; they are a sign of his death. Jesus’ death is still to come on Thursday night, although Christ’s self-sacrifice is the meaning of the Last Supper. The new promise is that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross will be really present to his disciples each time that bread and wine are consecrated to become the body and blood of the Lord.

Our lives are lived between promises made and fulfilled. A promise is a way of marking out the future without being able to control it. You can tell the deepest meaning of a person’s life by examining the promises they’ve made and, even more, by looking to see if the promises have been kept. Jesus always keeps his promises.

The Day of the Great Sacrifice

“Christ became obedient for us unto death, even to death on the cross.” Sacrificing things is a sign of generosity; sacrificing yourself is a sign of love. Christ loved his Father and he loves us, so much so that he gives himself freely to death for our eternal life. Jesus crucifixion by others is a sacrifice of himself, “a death willingly accepted.“

When we look at the crucifix on Good Friday, Christ might seize the moment to ask us who or what we are willing to die for. If we don’t have a ready answer, he might then ask us whether we are capable of loving.

The Day of the Great Silence

While Jesus’ dead body lay in the tomb, those who had gone before him in death came to know that the gates of paradise were open. Did they shout? Will heaven be noisy? I believe those who are saved for all eternity know whatever they have to know without speaking. The contact with God and others is immediate.

Death leaves us speechless, and Holy Saturday is a day without its proper celebration of the Eucharist. The Church on earth is silent.

A day of silence is becoming more rare. “Texting,” I’m told, puts one into constant contact with others. There is no unexpressed thought or unrecorded feeling. To me, this constant and immediate contact would seem more like hell than like heaven, but that’s probably just a generational difference and a difference in personal formation. When I was a seminarian, great periods of the day and all of the night were spent in silence: no talking, no phone calls, no radio, no television. Once I got used to it, I welcomed it. Silence became friendly and useful. Without it, how can one reflect on what is most important? Jesus, the Gospels often say, went apart to spend whole nights in silence, not to be alone but to be more clearly aware of his Father’s presence in prayer. Yet some great saints, given totally to a noise-filled apostolate, like St. John Bosco in his work with young people, seemed to be without the luxury of long periods of silence.

At least, long periods of silence show us what interior resources we have or don’t have. Jesus who, through his death and resurrection, is closer to us than we are to ourselves fills Holy Saturday and every day with his presence.

Easter Sunday

Christ’s resurrection brings him into new life and promises the same for us. Not just eternal life, although that’s part of it, but genuinely new life. Change is hard, as so many people tell me and as I know myself. Left to our own devices, we’d probably just settle for an improved version of our present life. But risen life, life lived in radical freedom and perfect unity with God, comes when death is suffered and conquered, which is the kind of radical change our imaginations can’t handle. Even science fiction is mostly ringing changes on what we know or re-arranging things we can imagine. No wonder Jesus’ closest friends and disciples were surprised.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, draws on an old belief that Jesus first appeared to his mother, Mary, when he rose from the dead. In inviting us to imagine the scene, St. Ignatius leads us to believe she wasn’t surprised. Every mother knows her son, and Mary probably thought: “Isn’t this just what Jesus would do?” As we get to know Jesus more intimately, we come to see that rising from the dead to give us new life is just the thing he would do. It’s called seeing with the eyes of faith.

Have a blessed Holy Week!

Archbishop Dolan: Holy Week Passeggiata

Catholic New York – By Archbishop Timothy Dolan – March 25, 2010

During the happy years I spent in Rome, I grew fond of the Italian custom of a passeggiata—a casual stroll, always with a friend, usually after a good meal, in the evening when the sun began to set and the cool breezes arrived.

A passeggiata is a ritual. If someone asks you to go on a passeggiata, it is a compliment. It means he or she enjoys your company and wants to get to know you better. The conversation on this walk is usually substantive. You end it by having shared something significant with each other.

In a way, Holy Week is a passeggiata. Jesus invites us to take a walk with Him, to accompany Him on the way to His death and Resurrection. He wants us near, He wants us close, because He has important matters to confide in us. As He asked His apostles on the night before he died, “Will you keep me company?”

We begin on Palm Sunday, walking with Him on His entry into Jerusalem, waving palms and acclaiming Him our Lord, our Messiah, our Savior; the palms are blessed before Mass, and then we process with the branches into church for the solemn liturgy opening Holy Week.

Throughout the week, we might walk with Him again as we make the Stations of the Cross, actually tracing His painful journey on the Via Dolorosa, stopping 14 times to reflect on His Passion.

We’ll take a passeggiata with him again on Holy Thursday, after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, as we process with the Holy Eucharist to the altar of repose. At that time we’ll reverently recall His walk after the Last Supper to the Garden of Gethsemane where He underwent His agony. Many of us will then “stay awake with Him” in adoration before the tabernacle.

On Good Friday we walk with Him again, on the Way of the Cross, and process at the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion up to the cross to venerate it with a kiss. Thousands upon thousands, millions around the world, will jam churches to journey up the aisle and kiss the wood of the cross.

On Holy Saturday, at the Easter Vigil, we process with the paschal candle from the new fire into the darkened church, proclaiming Christ as the light of the world. Then we take a passeggiata with those to be baptized back to the font as they “die” to their old self with Christ on the cross, and are reborn as children in the family of faith we call the Church.

Holy Week is a week of walking, accompanying, knowing.

Hopefully, when we are finished with this annual passeggiata, we’re much better friends with Jesus, brimming over inside with His radiant new life of Easter.

“We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee because by Thy Holy Cross and Resurrection Thou hast redeemed the world.”

Catholic Relief Services: New Hope for Ethiopia

(Archdiocese of Chicago) Catholic Chicago Blog – March 22, 2010

Fr. Kevin J. Feeney – “For I was hungry, you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me…”

A group of eight seminarians from Mundelein Seminary, two priests from the east coast, Fr. Joe and Fr. Manny, and myself journeyed to Ethiopia last month to witness the Gospel in action, C.R.S. style, in Ethiopia. This “mission trip” is part of the seminary pre-theology field education program, the focus of which is service of the poor. Our mission was simple: to witness by means of our presence to the care of the Church for the poor while witnessing the work of C.R.S. and their partners in Ethiopia.

After some pre-trip reading and discussion here at the seminary, focusing mainly on the Church’s social teaching, we spent a couple of days in Baltimore (C.R.S headquarters) to prepare with the help of various presenters for our experience.

We eventually arrived in Ethiopia, an ancient and proud country – the cradle of civilization – which faces many challenges: Life expectancy of 52 years; 35.9% Adult Literacy; 22% have no regular access to potable water; 23% live on a dollar a day.

The scarcity of water is particularly troubling in a country that depends so heavily on agriculture. Rains have become less dependable, droughts longer and deeper in the past few decades in Ethiopia. I had read somewhere that the average Ethiopian daily uses the amount of water that we in the U.S. use to brush our teeth each day. When we saw the vast stretches of dry land, all of us began to re-think how we would use the precious gift of water when we returned home. We had the opportunity to visit a number of the impressive water management projects which have transformed some of this parched land into brilliant green terrain. Catholic Relief Services is providing funds and technical assistance for these projects. It was a delight to hear the beneficiaries speak of how their lives had changed and to see the crops that are growing in areas that had been desolate not long ago.

This is the second such mission trip that I have taken with C.R.S. (last year it was to Ghana and Burkina Faso), and I have an even deeper respect for the agency’s work to provide food water and promoting development and peace in Ethiopia and in over 100 countries throughout the world. C.R.S supports the work of the Missionaries of Charity with funds and food as that impressive group serves the poorest of the poor in Ethiopia. All of us who participated in the mission trip came home changed by the experience; we will live with a greater sense of responsibility and connection to the world’s poor. Join us in supporting the work of Catholic Relief Services.

Stewardship in Jamaica

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, May 2009

During the beginning of Holy Week 2009, I was privileged to visit St. Patrick’s Foundation in Kingston, Jamaica. The Foundation is a non-profit human and community development organization established more than 25 years ago in some of Jamaica’s poorest communities. St. Patrick’s Foundation is an expression of stewardship in action, a testimony to the miracles that can occur when people share their time, talent and treasure for the benefit of others!

I was welcomed warmly by Monsignor Richard Albert, Founder/Director, and by Mr. Fabian Brown, Managing Director. I had the opportunity to see first-hand the four centers operated by the Foundation and to meet with many dedicated staff and clients from diverse backgrounds, ages and experience levels. I also met with several board members who shared with me their personal commitment and support for the work of St. Patrick’s Foundation. Finally, I enjoyed the gracious hospitality of His Grace, the Most Reverend Donald James Reece, Archbishop of Kingston, who emphasized the importance of St. Patrick’s Foundation to the overall mission and ministries of the Archdiocese.

The purpose of my visit was to offer some observations and recommendations on the fundraising potential of St. Patrick’s foundation – especially in light of the global economic crisis that has had a negative effect on donations to the Foundation – from both local and international sources. The following observations are based on my observations and conversations while in Jamaica, but they also represent foundational principles and “best practices” in stewardship and development for Catholic organizations …

– Read the full article –

Jesus is Justice in Person, Declares Benedict XVI at Angelus

Catholic News Agency -- March 21, 2010

Vatican City, Mar 21, 2010 / (CNA/EWTN News) -- The Holy Father prayed the Angelus with the faithful in St. Peter’s Square today, their numbers increased by pilgrims taking advantage of a long weekend due to the Solemnity of St. Joseph. On the Fifth Sunday of Lent, he offered a perspective on the day’s liturgy in which Jesus condemns the sin and saves the sinner.

Sunday’s Liturgy offers the story of Jesus defending the adulterous woman from the scribes and Pharisees. Wanting to condemn her to death by stoning, they present the case to Jesus’ judgment, wishing also to put him to the test.

“The scene is loaded with drama,” said the Pope at the Angelus, “the life of that person depends on the words of Jesus, but his life does too.”

When the “hypocritical accusers” entrust the case to the judgment of Jesus, “in reality it is actually him that they want to accuse and judge.”

“Jesus, though, is ‘full of grace and truth,’” pointed out the Pope. “He knows the heart of every man, he wants to condemn sin, but save the sinner and unmask hypocrisy.”

Benedict XVI cited the observation of St. Augustine on the Biblical account. Augustine examined the meaning of Jesus’ bending down to write on the earth with his finger while under the insistent interrogation of the accusers.

“This gesture shows Christ as a divine legislator,” he said, alluding also to God’s action of writing the law with his finger on the stone tablets.

“Therefore, Jesus is the Legislator, he is Justice in person.”

Jesus’ words that call for the man without sin to cast the first stone are “full of the disarming force of the truth, that topples the wall of hypocrisy and opens the consciences to a greater justice, that of love, in which consists the full fulfillment of every precept.”

He added, “It is justice that saved also Saul of Tarsus, transforming him into St. Paul.”

As the accusers leave the scene Jesus absolves the woman of her sin, said the Holy Father, therefore giving her “a new life oriented to the good.”

This is the same grace, pointed out the Pope, that later influenced the Apostle’s words to the Philippians, “Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”

“God desires for us only the good and life,” summarized Pope Benedict. “He provides the health for our soul by way of his ministry, freeing us from evil with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so that no one is lost, but all have a way of repenting.”

He continued with an exhortation to all priests to follow the model of St. Jean Vianney, patron of priests, in the ministry of Sacramental forgiveness, “so that the faithful rediscover the meaning and the beauty, and may be healed by the merciful love of God…”

The Pope concluded by calling for us to learn from Jesus’ example “to not judge and to not condemn our neighbor” and “to be intransigent with sin – starting with our own! – and indulgent with people.

“May the holy Mother of God who, exempt from every fault, is mediatrix of grace for every repentant sinner, help us,” he prayed.

After the Angelus, Pope Benedict recalled the celebration of the 25th anniversary of World Youth Day on Palm Sunday. He said he expects numerous youth at St. Peter’s Square on Thursday to celebrate the milestone in a special encounter.

Cardinal Bertone Calls for Jobs, Not Welfare States

Zenit.org – March 19, 2010

ROME, MARCH 19, 2010 (Zenit.org) – Jobs need to be created and protected, and financial support for employers is part of the recipe, says Benedict XVI’s secretary of state.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone reflected on job creation in a talk Tuesday with members of Confindustria, the Italian employers’ federation.

The cardinal noted that job security is so important because work is more than just the means to earn a salary.

“The problem of employment and its protection certainly arouses much anxiety,” he observed. And that’s because the “loss of work for so many workers and the lack of employment prospects for so many thousands of young people, though qualified, goes beyond the loss of a salary.”

“Persons thrown out of work or without work prospects enter an existential crisis, because work is a constitutive part of a person, who, without it, feels out of place and useless,” the cardinal said. “Not infrequently he enters into difficulty in family relationships, with well-known social consequences.”

The cardinal cited Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in Veritate” in calling for system reform that favors employment.

Cardinal Bertone also touched on the issue of immigration, recommending better education for would-be immigrants, starting in their home countries, or in the nations through which they pass.

He also reiterated that the recession is the result of a “deficit of moral values.” Thus solutions cannot be egotistical or discourage human life, the cardinal declared.

“To do business is a potentially very high mission, but it is an element for the well-being of man, who is not only matter, and because of this calls for great attention to his spiritual needs,” he said. “To ensure the development of a business, one must believe in life and sustain it with all means, helping families to form themselves, supporting birth and the care of children, thus ensuring a true and sustainable development for the industrial system.”

Furthermore, Cardinal Bertone added, “to foster the creation of business’ wealth, economic development should be distributed and extended to everyone. Only thus will it be able to be maintained.”

“The economy and technology cannot have moral autonomy and, being means,” he concluded, “they must be used for the common good and the good of the person.”

The Spirituality of Stewardship

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, May 2004

When the American bishops published their pastoral letter on stewardship in 1992, the title they chose for this historic document was Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response. Why did they choose this particular title (a disciple’s response) and how does it contribute to our understanding of stewardship as a way of life?

Stewardship is a relatively new term in the Catholic vocabulary. The underlying principles (gratitude, accountability, generosity and giving back with increase) are ancient – dating back to themes in the Old and New Testaments and to the earliest Christian writers. But their application to the choices of modern living is new. Until recently, Catholic Christians were asked to approach “stewardship” as an obligation – either to support the work of the Church or as an expression of Christian charity. There was not much emphasis on the personal, spiritual dimension of Christian stewardship as a way of life.

The bishops’ pastoral letter sought to change the emphasis from giving out of a sense of obligation to giving as a response to God’s love for us. Stewardship is not simply an obligation, the bishops say. It is a joyful response to the Lord’s invitation: Go, sell what you have. Give it to the poor, and come follow me. Stewardship is a response in faith. It is our “yes” to God’s invitation to totally give ourselves to him …

– Read the full article –

Current Crisis Calls for World Financial Reorganization

Vatican Information Service – March 18, 2010

VATICAN CITY, 18 MAR 2010 (VIS) – At midday today in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall the Holy Father received members of the Union of Industrialists and Businesses of Rome.

Opening his remarks to them with a reference to the current economic crisis, the Pope noted how it has “sorely tried the economic and productive systems of various countries. Nonetheless, it should be faced with trust because it can be considered as an opportunity for the revision of development models and the reorganization of global finance, a ‘new time’ – as it has been described – of profound reflection”.

Benedict XVI then went on to recall how in his own social Encyclical “Caritas in veritate” he had encouraged the world of “economics and finance to focus on the person, whom Christ revealed in his profoundest dignity. Moreover, while recommending that politics not be subordinate to financial mechanisms, I encouraged the reform and creation of an international juridical and political order (adapted to global structures of economy and finance) in order more effectively to achieve the common good of the human family. Following in the footsteps of my predecessors, I underlined that the increase in unemployment, especially among young people, the economic impoverishment of many workers and the emergence of new forms of slavery require that access to dignified work for everyone be a priority objective”.

“No-one is unaware of the sacrifices that have to be made in order to open a business, or keep it on the market, as a ‘community of persons’ which produces goods and services and which, hence, does not have the exclusive aim of making a profit, though it is necessary to do so”, said the Pope. In this context he also highlighted the importance of “defeating the individualist and materialist mentality which holds that investments must be detracted from the real economy in order to favor the use of capital on financial markets, with a view to easier and quicker returns.

“I would like to recall”, he added, “that the most sure way to contrast the decline of the entrepreneurial system in a particular territory consists in establishing a network of contacts with other social actors, investing in research and innovation, not using unjust competition between firms, not overlooking social obligations, and ensuring a quality productivity that responds to the real needs of people”.

“A business can … produce ’social wealth’ if business people and managers are guided by a far-sighted vision, one that prefers long-term investment to speculative profit, and that promotes innovation rather than thinking only to accumulate wealth”.

The Holy Father went on: “Business people attentive to the common good are always called to see their activity in the framework of a pluralistic whole. Such an approach generates – through personal dedication and a fraternity expressed in concrete economic and financial decisions – a market that is more competitive and, at the same time, more civil, animated by a spirit of service”.

Benedict XVI concluded his remarks by saying that “development, in whatever sector of human existence, also means openness to the transcendent, to the spiritual dimension of life, to trust in God, to love, to fraternity, to acceptance, to justice and to peace”.

Our Lenten Penance

Catholic New York – By Archbishop Timothy Dolan – March 11, 2010

I guess I should have warned you the day before Ash Wednesday, but, better late than never…

Anyway, just to alert you, every Friday of Lent I have spies at all the street carts in downtown Manhattan to take the names of any Catholic buying a hot dog. Those names will then be turned into your parish priests for immediate punishment.

Seriously, folks, but our Lenten penance is…well, serious.

Mortification is, in fact, an essential part of the teaching of Jesus. So, some sort of self-denial should always be part of our spiritual regimen. To help remind us of this, the Church requires it during Lent.

Old-timers scoff at how little the Church requires of us anymore. They can recall how we Catholics used to have to abstain from meat every Friday, not just on the six Fridays of Lent; they can remember how we had to abstain from all food for three hours before Holy Communion (now it’s a measly hour for those who even remember), and how the eves of Holy Days, and other days each of the four seasons called Ember Days, were also times of fast (two light meals, one main meal, no eating between meals) and abstinence (no meat).

They snicker at us slouchers of today, who simply have to abstain on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent, and fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday…and still often forget to, or whine about it and ask for “dispensations.

These veterans worry that we’ve neglected an essential part of our faith: to do penance.

Jesus doesn’t really tell us what we should exactly do for penance—although He does extol fasting, cutting down seriously on food—but He sure insists that we undergo some self-sacrifice.

Yes, it may be eating less, giving up certain foods, or doing laudable acts we find tough.

All you need to do is look at me to conclude that I’m hardly an expert in fasting. But, believe me, I highly appreciate its value, take it seriously in Lent, and realize that it is a big boost to my spiritual (and physical) health.

Why does Jesus instruct us to fast? Why does the Church expect some fasting— however light the current discipline is—and encourage self-denial, especially in Lent?

For one, when we give up something we enjoy, especially over an extended period of time, like the 40 days of Lent, we create a craving, an emptiness within. For instance, about now, I really miss a cold beer, or a piece of pie, because I’m giving up alcohol and dessert for Lent. This is valuable, because it reminds us that we all have a craving, an emptiness deep down that, really, only God can fill, a hunger, a thirst that only God can satisfy.

Two, our acts of penance bring us a little closer to the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Sure, His is infinitely greater, and we could never approximate it. But, especially in Lent, we want to unite ourselves more intimately to our Lord on Calvary so we can be with Him in glory on Easter.

Three, when we mortify ourselves in some way, we remind ourselves that to follow Jesus is not easy, to be faithful to His teaching and loyal to His Church will always entail some sacrifice, as anything worthwhile does.

Four, some penance in our lives brings us closer to those who suffer all the time. Our little sacrifices during Lent put us in solidarity with those poor who have to do without every day. Thus, fasting is particularly valuable when accompanied by generosity to those in need.

In one way, our culture appreciates the value of sacrifice. Just look at people groaning on treadmills, grimacing while jogging, or scrupulous about avoiding rich foods. Trouble is, this kind of self-denial is only for an earthly goal.

Jesus and His Church expect us to fast and do penance for a supernatural reason: to empty our lives of some pleasure so God can fill it; to grow in closeness to Jesus on the cross; to toughen ourselves for the hardship our faith always brings; and to sensitize us to the needs of the poor.

So, our Lenten strategy is clear: prayer, fasting, charity.

I got a letter from a group of eighth-graders at a wonderful Catholic school. The tradition of the school is that every Friday the eighth-graders have pizza the last 15 minutes of class. They love it.

Well, they’ve decided that, on the Fridays of Lent, they’re going to give up pizza; what’s more, for those 15 minutes, they go to church and pray the Stations of the Cross; and, get this, the money they save on the pizza is now being sent to Catholic Relief Services to help the poor in Haiti.

Well done, kids! Thanks for the good example! You’ve understood Lent well: prayer, fasting and charity.

Remember, stay away from those hot dog carts! My spies are watching!

Catholic Education: Living Off the Legacy

Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 1 – By Frank Ferguson – March 16, 2010

At its June 2005 meeting, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (the USCCB) approved the document Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium. This document is addressed to all bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and laity and urges them “to continue to strive towards the goal of making … Catholic elementary and secondary schools available, accessible, and affordable to all Catholic parents and their children, including those who are poor and middle class.” (1) The document is in response to the Bishops’ call to “the entire Catholic community … to assist in addressing the critical financial questions that continue to face … Catholic schools.” (2)

In Renewing Our Commitment … the Bishops set forth four specific goals.

1. Catholic schools will continue to provide a Gospel-based education of the highest quality.
2. Catholic schools will be available, accessible, and affordable.,
3. The Bishops will launch initiatives in both private and public sectors to secure financial assistance for parents, the primary educators of their children, so that they can better exercise their right to choose the best schools for their children.
4. Catholic school will be staffed by highly qualified administrators and teachers who would receive just wages and benefits, as we expressed in our pastoral letter Economic Justice for All (3).

A decisive factor in achieving the Bishops’ goal to have Catholic education “available, accessible, and affordable” is to ensure that Catholic schools and Catholic school systems are fiscally sound and endowed to provide for their long-term economic health.

It is crucial that Catholic education maintain its tradition of academic excellence, that teachers and principals are highly educated and expert in their fields, and extra-curricular opportunities continue to be available to students attending Catholic schools. Moreover, as the Bishops have rightly discerned, schools managed with a single view towards academic excellence, without the necessary and commensurate understanding of sound fiscal management, will likely be forced to close due to insufficient funding.

Catholic schools are not for-profit enterprises. Rather they are charged to pass on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet, sound financial principles and planning are necessary instruments to propel the mission of each school. The result of inadequate financial planning and management will be fewer Catholic schools, a failure to meet the Bishops’ objectives, and the loss of one of the Church’s most important and effective evangelization tools.

Today, many Catholics, including some within the hierarchy itself, seem content to preside over the graceful death of Catholic education either because they have given up on Catholic Schools as an important evangelization tool, or simply because they see no support among the laity to fund Catholic education. Of course many factors, cultural, financial, and spiritual, have contributed to the intense pressure on Catholic schools, and rather than responding, we can be accused of spending down our rich heritage and living off the long legacy of Catholic education in the United States.

Overview of Catholic Education in the United States

In His parting words to His disciples, Jesus commands them saying: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Mt. 28:18-20)

Catholic education is one of the Church’s primary responses to this command. The Catechism of the Catholic Church rightfully expounds on this saying that “At the heart of catechesis we find a Person, the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son from the Father … Christ, the Incarnate Word and Son of God … is taught – everything else is taught with reference to him. (4) This is the heart of Catholic education and the revelation of Christ acts as leaven in reading, writing, arithmetic, and all the other subjects taught in Catholic elementary and secondary schools.

The importance of Catholic education is no where more plainly revealed than in the fact that in May 1852 the bishops of the United States at the First Plenary Council of Baltimore decreed that “Bishops are exhorted to have a Catholic school in every parish and the teachers should be paid from the parochial funds.” (5) With this decree, the Catholic school system in America as we now know it was born. Throughout the United States as parishes were built bishops ensured that whenever possible a Catholic school was built along side them to make certain that Catholic youth were instructed in the truths of the Catholic faith as well as, as an integral part of, the traditional subjects of elementary and secondary education. (6)

Catholic schools have long provided access to the Church’s sacraments and worship as well as assisted in the conversion of non-Catholics to the faith. Parents see participation at Mass and the ability to make confessions throughout various times of the school year as one of the greatest benefits of sending their children to Catholic school. Indeed, Catholic schools teach their students the underlying doctrine of the sacraments and provide them with an atmosphere to probe and understand these realities more fully. The stories of priests and religious who first came to hear their calling to the priesthood or religious life while attending Catholic schools are innumerable. Catholic schools are a fertile ground for future vocations. Catholic schools have also traditionally provided students with opportunities to perform corporal acts of mercy by serving in soup kitchens, visiting the elderly, sending money to missions, as well as learning the Church’s social teachings. Students who receive a Catholic education are taught that their lives are to be in the service of their neighbor, and this forms the men and women who graduate from Catholic elementary and secondary schools to see themselves as extensions of Jesus Christ in the world, serving others with their time, talents, and treasure.

Historically, Catholic schools have employed a business model that included significant support from their respective parishes and the broader Church. This support came both in the form of parish subsidies and reduced operating costs in the form of religious men and women who served as administrators and teachers. (7) The traditional sources of revenue for Catholic schools have been tuition, annual fundraising events, subsidies, and other gifts. It must also be added that class sizes of 30 to 35 students contributed greatly to the economic vitality of most parochial schools. Today, however, many Catholic schools have student bodies with a significant number of non-Catholic students. This has changed the relationship of the school to its original parish sponsor, and in some instances the parish can no longer provide sufficient support to the school.

In other places the school’s new sponsor is no longer the local community/parish, but the diocese itself. These changes have altered both the source and amounts of revenue parochial schools can expect to receive with no commensurate modification in the schools overall operating model. (8)

The National Catholic Educational Association’s annual statistical report shows that there are currently 7,799 Catholic elementary and secondary schools in the United States, which enroll over 2.4 million students. Since 1990, the Church has opened more than 400 new schools and currently over 2,600 Catholic schools have waiting lists to attend. (9) Non-Catholic attendance has grown by more than 500% since 1970. (10) Overall, since 2000, however, both the number of students and the number of Catholic elementary and secondary schools have declined. (11) This would lead to the conclusion that waiting lists are the result of school closings and consolidations rather than significant enrollment increases.

In Renewing Our Commitment …, the Bishops reported that “Since 1990, the average tuition in both elementary and secondary Catholic schools has more than doubled.” (12)

DDespite all of the dramatic changes experienced by Catholic schools over the past 40 years, Catholic schools have only a 3.4 percent drop out rate (compared to 14.4 for public schools and 11.9 for private schools), and ninety-nine percent of students graduate with ninety-seven percent of them going on to some form of post-secondary education. (13)

Stress on Catholic School Systems

After the end of the Second World War, the Catholic Church in the United States experienced a period of rapid growth. In the forties, fifties and sixties, schools were built at maximum pace to accommodate the many children who were seeking Catholic education. With priests and religious vocations at an all time high many staffed Catholic schools. As the population began to dip and the baby boom generation made its way through elementary and secondary Catholic education, schools began seeing decreases in enrollment. Simultaneously, the post-Vatican II Church has undergone a difficult period in which priests and religious have left their vocations and in many instances the Church itself. These two factors alone have put tremendous stress on Catholic school systems across the United States.

As priests and religious became increasingly unavailable to serve in schools, the laity stepped forward to replace them. While lay salaries are higher than the stipends paid to religious, these salaries remain below market.

The Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, rightly recognized this challenge in its 1982 document Lay Catholics in Schools: Witness to Faith, in which it states: “[L]ay people must receive an adequate salary, guaranteed by a well defined contract, for the work they do in school: a salary that will permit them to live in dignity, without excess work or a need for additional employment that will interfere with the duties of an educator.” (14)

At the same time, modern education theory was taking hold in both public and secular private school classrooms. Changing curriculum, special education programs, and reduced student-teacher ratios worked together to increase the per student cost of education as well as to radically reduce the available revenue per classroom. Higher costs were now distributed over a fewer number of students in each classroom. The impact on Catholic schools was particularly dramatic since most Catholic schools operated with class sizes of over 40 and sometimes as many as 60 students. In response to “competitive” pressures Catholic schools split classes into two and three units per grade.

Smaller class size and the new stress of market-based salaries for lay faculty were not the only factors putting stress on Catholic school systems. The demographic shifts of the seventies, eighties, and nineties saw a mass exodus of middle class Americans from urban neighborhoods to the suburbs. In the early years of the United States most population centers were in the cities and large urban areas with parishes and schools scattered throughout. As the migration from city to suburb took place, Bishops found themselves striving to keep up financially to build new parishes and schools in the suburbs, while at the same time seeking ways to keep their inner-city schools open.

Inner-city neighborhoods do not normally have a problem finding parents who wish to send their children to a Catholic school. The problem has been that many of those who send their children to inner-city Catholic schools are poor and struggling for survival, let alone pay tuition. Catholic schools often allow poorer students to attend while only paying a portion of tuition, or often, no tuition at all. Significantly, inner-city Catholic schools have experienced a shift in student population from primarily Catholic children to a much larger percentage of non-Catholics. The Catholic Church has always been missionary oriented and has a long history of educating non-Catholics. However, the traditional revenue model employed by the Church and Her schools, has been to have a parish or a group of parishes fund a Catholic school through subsidizing tuition. With the growth of non-Catholic student-bodies in recent years, parish subsidies to schools have significantly declined and in some instances have ceased altogether. (15) This, along with shrinking class sizes, closures, consolidations, and increased salary costs, has left many remaining schools with full enrollments and chronic operating deficits.

How the Traditional Business Model Compounds the Stress

The changing profile of Catholic education, demographic shifts, increasing numbers of non-Catholic students, reduced parish-based financial support, higher lay teacher salaries, and reduced revenue per class room due to dramatically smaller class sizes have all contributed to the inversion of the Catholic school business model; driving up costs while at the same time limiting needed revenue. Today, many of the nation’s poorest children – many of whom are not Catholic – are being educated in Catholic schools funded by Catholics who are in effect subsidizing failing public schools.

This challenge can, in part, be addressed by engaging in behaviors that drive new revenue from new sources into Catholic schools and school systems. That is to say, that Catholic school administrators and superintendents can develop new lines of communication and begin to foster new relationships outside the Catholic community. Weekly parish offertory alone can no longer be the primary source of subsidies for Catholic schools. New relationships with both civic and philanthropic partners must be built to help support the growing need for successful Catholic education in our inner cities.

Moreover, the Catholic schools cash-based business model (16) compounds the challenges facing many Catholic schools and in particular inner city schools where a larger percentage of students do not pay full tuition, primarily by constraining liquidity and “locking up” the schools’ most significant capital resource in equity in school buildings. Liquidity is constrained because working capital is limited to tuition receipts that on average fund roughly 60 percent of operating costs, parish subsidies (now down to less than 25 percent of operating costs) and fundraising that is sporadic and principally occurs once a year. (17) In fact, many schools will draw down on prepaid tuitions for the upcoming school year to fund current operating needs.

Capital needs (new schools, renovations, and expansion) are also typically funded with cash. Once a need has been identified, a parish will conduct a capital campaign to raise the funds necessary to pay for the anticipated construction. These campaigns are sometimes conducted in conjunction with diocesan capital campaigns. Once a designated portion of the capital campaign pledges and cash proceeds have been received, construction can begin. (18) Any gap in funding is either met by a loan from the diocese to the parish or financing from a local bank. However, as campaign proceeds are received any loans are quickly paid down, most in three to seven years. To avoid debt service payments, cash is used to eliminate debt rather than fund operations or to provide incremental investment income. As new needs arise, more fundraising is needed to fill the gap left by inadequate revenues.

The inevitable result is schools that are constantly cash-poor with a fatigued donor base, but with buildings and equipment paid in full. (19)

The unintended consequence of this operating approach is that schools and parishes are driven by liquidity constraints. That is, the need to generate funds to support operations becomes a primary focus and the school leadership is no longer mission driven in it decision making. This hand-to-mouth has tended to limit strategic planning, force reactive rather than proactive decision making, and constrain leadership attention to immediate, tactical problem solving to avoid insolvency.

In many cases school leadership teams and dioceses are unsuccessful. School consolidation, closings, or conversion to secular charter schools have been the result. Too often dioceses, in an effort to preserve financial resources have chosen to retain decaying school buildings and surrendered their mission of Catholic education. Since 1990, the NCEA reports that nearly 2,000 Catholic schools have been lost.

In their document Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium, the Bishops of the United States have called on the entire Catholic Community to assist in addressing the critical financial questions that continue to face Catholic Schools. Catholic schools have served as the incubator and nourishing center of Christian formation for generations of Catholics in the United States, and it appears the Bishops have set out into the deep for a catch of new souls through soliciting input to financially strengthen Catholic elementary and secondary schools to help to ensure that they are available, accessible, and affordable to Catholic parents and students.

The financial challenges facing Catholics schools are well known. By understanding these challenges and the practices that have been successful in the past, but that may no longer be applicable for today, its is hoped that today’s challenges can be addressed with the understanding and insight necessary to make changing time honored strategies easier and more fruitful.

Future articles will focus on the expanding need for Catholic schools, new civic and philanthropic partnership that can help revitalize Catholic education, and specific, viable revenue models for Catholic schools including dramatically new resource management strategies to permanently fund and grow Catholic education in the United States.

This article is featured in our newsletter, Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 1

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(1) United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium, 2005, p 1 – (return)

(2) Ibid, p11 – (return)

(3) Ibid, p2; “Because work is this important, people have a right to employment. In return for their labor, workers have a right to wages and other benefits sufficient to sustain life in dignity.”, United State Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All, 1986, p 23. – (return)

(4) Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, 426, 427 – (return)

(5) First Plenary Council of Baltimore, Decree XIII, 1852 – (return)

(6) The first documented Catholic parish school was established in 1782 by St. Mary’s Church in Philadelphia. At the first Council of Baltimore in 1829, the Bishops of the United States recommended the establishment of schools in connection with churches and permitted the use of parish funds to pay teachers. This was at the same time state supported free public schools were being developed that included a common core of religious education based on Protestant teachings. In 1858, the Second Provincial Council of Cincinnati mandated that all pastors build a parochial school under pain of mortal sin. Some parishes denied the sacraments to parents who did not send their children to Catholic schools. In 1884, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore mandated the establishment of a school in every parish, the obligation of the pastor and parishioners to support the school, and the requirement of parents to send their children to parochial schools. Catholic elementary and secondary schools reached their peak in the 1960s when 12 percent of all elementary and secondary students in the United States, nearly 5.5 million students were enrolled in 13,000 Catholic schools in 1965. (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, A portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States, 2000, p 63 – 68.) – (return)

(7) By 1950, 87 percent of Catholic elementary and secondary school positions were filled by sisters, brothers, scholastics, and priests. (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, A portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States, 2000, p 74.) – (return)

(8) Today, religious men and women make up only seven percent of Catholic school staffing. Between 1964 and 1984, 40 percent of Catholic high schools and 27 percent of elementary schools closed. In 1998 there were 2.7 million students enrolled in 6,925 Catholic elementary and high schools. (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, A portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States, 2000, p 69.) – (return)

(9) National Catholic Education Association, United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2006 – 2007, p 17. – (return)

(10) National Catholic Education Association, United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2006 – 2007, p 21. – (return)

(11) McDonald, Dale, National Catholic Education Association, United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools, The Annual Statistical Report on Schools, Enrollment and Staffing, 2000 – 2003, Exhibit 1, p 2. – (return)

(12) United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium, 2005, p 5. – (return)

(13) McDonald, Dale, National Catholic Education Association, United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools, The Annual Statistical Report on Schools, Enrollment and Staffing, 2000 – 2003, Exhibit 1, p 5. – (return)

(14) Sacred congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witness to Faith, no. 78 – (return)

(15) In 2001, the percentage of school income from parish subsidies was 24.1%. National Catholic Education Association, Balance Sheet for Catholic Elementary Schools: 2001 Income and Expenses, Exhibit 18, 2001, p 18.

In 2009, the percentage of school income from parish subsidies was 7.7%. National Catholic Education Association, Financing the Mission: A Profile of Catholic Elementary Schools in the United States, 2009, p 17. – (return)

(16) The term business model refers to the value proposition Catholic schools offer parents, the sources and uses of funds needed to operate the school, and the capital costs of construction (depreciation) and ongoing capital improvements and corrective and preventative maintenance. – (return)

(17) Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Information Project, The Catholic Church in America – Meeting Real Needs in Your Neighborhood, Average Percentage of Elementary School Revenue from Various Sources, December, 2003, p 10. – (return)

(18) Most dioceses establish minimum campaign pledge and cash received amounts prior to authorizing expenditures for construction. Limits range from a low of 30 percent of total estimated costs received in cash for new parishes in growing dioceses to 100 percent in older dioceses with minimum growth. – (return)

(19) It could be argued that schools and parishes have equity in an appreciating asset. While this is true, any appreciation is only realized upon the sale of the school. Moreover, most schools are sold because of declining demographics in their specific location that has resulted in declining enrollment. Consequently the school is not sold in an attractive market. Then too, the school building itself is highly purpose built limiting the number of alternative uses and attractiveness to potential buyers and its resale value. Catholic schools are bad real estate investments. – (return)

Stewards of the Gift of Marriage Must Cooperate with God’s Grace

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, March 2008

In the mid 1970s, the late Monsignor Charles Koster traveled from Indianapolis to Saint Meinrad once a week to teach a class on the Sacrament of Marriage to seminarians. Monsignor Koster was well-qualified for this assignment. At the time, he was Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and Pastor of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church.

Having personally dealt with thousands of married couples—in both good times and bad—Monsignor Koster was keenly aware of the importance of this sacrament for the health and vitality of the family, the Church and society. During one of his classes at Saint Meinrad, he summed up his view of marriage by saying, “It’s unreasonable to think that any two people should be able to stay together for life—without the grace of Christ assisting them. There are many serious obstacles to a successful married life. God’s grace can overcome these, but only if the couple cooperates.”

Success in marriage involves much more than simply “staying together.” It requires a partnership that is spiritual, emotional and physical. It means committing to a lifelong journey that will require ongoing conversion from self-centeredness to a genuine openness to another. And it requires the willingness to sacrifice individual goods and desires for the sake of others—spouse, children and an extended family that opens out to the entire community. Without patience, perseverance and a profound sense of the presence of God’s grace, the sacrifices that even ordinary married life demands can seem overwhelming. And in times of severe doubt or trial, God’s grace is especially needed to keep the couple together, to heal their wounds and to strengthen the bonds that selfishness, sin and serious neglect too often weaken or tear apart. …

– Read the full article –

The Role of Annual Support in the Overall Development Program

Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 1 – By Michael Shumway, CFRE – March 16, 2010

In most basic courses on fundraising and development, students are taught that the first program to begin is a program for generating annual support. It has become a maxim in the advancement profession that an annual support program is an essential ingredient in any well-designed development effort. With this understanding, it seems strange that many annual support officers are left to wonder what their role is—and even their importance to the effort of the development program at their institution.

The four prime functions

• Educate prospective and current donors (Education),
• Acquire new friends and donors (Acquisition),
• Cultivate and build these initial and sometimes tenuous relationships (Cultivation), and
• Continue support from existing friends of our institution (Ongoing support).

Education

There is no doubt that one of the most important of these four functions is education. Many donors base much of what they know of an organization on the materials they are sent. Everything must always be informative, but this is even more critical when asking for money. With the “ask”, we tend to have the donor’s attention. This is a golden opportunity to provide useful and important information that may not be able to be communicated as effectively in any other venue.

Acquisition

Another very important function of the annual support officer is the acquisition of new friends and donors for the institution. In the well-known pyramid of donors, it is most often through annual programs that new donors are added to the bottom of that pyramid, and begin their relationship journey with the organization and its mission. This is when first-impressions are made, and it is through annual support programs that most our donors gain these first impressions of an institution.

Cultivation

Once new donors are acquired, how they are treated in the first stages of the relationship will often determine their potential for rising through the donor pyramid and becoming significant benefactors. Once again, the majority of relationships with donors are cemented through annual programs. This is a fragile time, and excellent programs are needed to ensure strong friendships are built with as many of these new donors as possible.

Ongoing support

Finally, it is vital not to ignore these carefully built new relationships. Frequently, annual support programs provide donors regular contact with an institution, even if they become transitional or major donors (described below). Careful design and segmentation of annual support efforts will ensure that all four of these prime functions are fulfilled.

Where does annual support fit?

Having said all this, where does annual support tie in with the rest of the development program? Many reputable “generalist” consultants in the industry believe the first thing a new development program must establish is a solid annual support program. This is best illustrated through a slightly different look at the classic “donor pyramid,” a look from an annual-support perspective.

In this perspective, as with the traditional donor pyramid, annual support programs make up the base of the pyramid. However, this new perspective shows more depth than the traditional view – showing annual support programs as an integral part of at least the first four stages of a relationship with any donor.

It is through the annual support programs that the organization acquires the donor, and then maintains and builds that ongoing relationship. Some of these donors will grow, through annual cultivation, into “major annual donors.” These are people who have increased their giving to the point where they are demanding more attention. It is at this point that they should become “transitional donors.” This is the stage where annual programs and major gift cultivation efforts must be able to join forces in further developing these relationships and moving these donors into becoming major gift benefactors and planned-gift or life-gift prospects. Throughout this process, many donors will continue to make annual gifts through your various annual support vehicles.

Annual programs are vital

It is an unfortunate fact in the world of development that annual support is often considered the least of our programs, frequently entrusted to an entry-level staff member. Foundational to many such programs is the belief that the bulk of development efforts must be focused on major-gift cultivation and solicitation. However, experienced chief development officers recognize that in order for a major-gifts program to thrive and endure, an efficient and well-run annual support program must constantly feed it with new individuals.

There is a lot of talk today about the tremendous generational transfer of wealth that will be taking place over the next decade or two. This is often a rallying cry for a renewed effort at cultivating and securing those major and life gifts – and it should be. But it is important to remember that once the transfer has taken place, continued support must come from those to whom this wealth was left. It is mainly through well-conceived annual support efforts that organizations will be able to attract this new group of donors to their mission.

Annual support is a complex and vital part of development efforts. If overall advancement programs are to thrive, they must recognize the importance of annual support and allocate to it the care and effort so willingly allocated to the more “glamorous” work in major gifts and planned giving.

This article is featured in our newsletter, Tertium Quid – Vol. 1, Issue 1

Tremendous Catholic Response to Haitian Relief Efforts

For His Friends (Diocese of St. Petersburg) – By Bishop Robert Lynch – March 3, 2010

How are We Doing in Haiti?

Thought you might be interested in the following figures for Haiti relief efforts in the five weeks since the earthquake:

• $276,000,000 – American Red Cross (includes 6 million from the “Hope for Haiti Telethon)
• $3,200,000 – Adventist Development and Relief Organization
• $5,500,000 – American Jewish World Service
• $1,300,000 – Catholic Medical Mission Board and has also received 10.6 million in medicines and medical supplies
• $60,400,000 – Catholic Relief Services ($1.4 million from the Diocese of St. Petersburg)
• $2,300,000 – Habitat for Humanity
• $3,200,000 – Lutheran World Relief
• $11,600,000 – Mercy Corps
• $10,800,000 – Salvation Army
• $18,200,000 – Save the Children USA and another $48 million from its international affiliates
• $11,000,000 – United Methodist Committee on Relief
• $27,600,000 – World Vision US
• $774,000,000 – Total Raised by American Charities for Haiti

Americans are, indeed, generous people even in a moment of local economic distress. Thanks to all who gave.

Holy See Proposes Human Rights to End Recession

Zenit.org – March 8, 2010

GENEVA, Switzerland, MARCH 8, 2010 (Zenit.org) – Defending human rights will contribute to ending the financial crisis, according to a Holy See representative at the United Nations.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer at the Geneva U.N. offices, affirmed this in his address last Wednesday to the 13th session of the Human Rights Council.

“The delegation of the Holy See wishes to reaffirm its conviction that the perspective of human rights offers a positive contribution for a solution to the present financial crisis,” the archbishop said. “Although it is true that some signs of recovery are being seen, the crisis continues to worsen the situation of millions of people in their access to essential needs of life” and “compromises the retirement plans” of many.

Regulations are needed that will ensure lasting and global development, the prelate proposed. And he said there is a “unique opportunity” to tackle the “roots of the crisis” by implementing human rights in the “economic, civil and political” realms.

Equality and justice

The Holy See representative reflected on the United Nations Report on the negative consequences of the financial crisis: the scandal of hunger, growing inequality, millions of unemployed, millions of new poor, failure of institutions, lack of social protection for vulnerable people, etc.

Citing Benedict XVI’s social encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” he pointed out the imbalances that occur when “separating economic management, to which the production of wealth alone corresponds, from political action, which should have the role of obtaining justice through redistribution.”

“Equality and justice are the essential criteria to manage the world economy,” stressed Archbishop Tomasi.

And it is possible to promote human rights, the prelate affirmed, if states “translate principles into laws and make on the spot changes a reality.”

Governments are the primary protagonists in implementing human rights, the Holy See representative stated, but collaboration with civil society and the international community should not be lacking.

“The common objective,” he said, “is the protection of human dignity that connects the whole of the human family,” a unity “rooted in these four fundamental principles: the central character of the human person, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good.”

Ignoring people

The prelate cautioned against solutions to the crisis that consider the “reform of the financial system” or of “economic models” without taking into account the needs of people.

On the contrary, “access to resources” must be guaranteed “to improve their conditions of life” and to allow them to “put their talents at the service of the local community and of the universal common good,” he said.

To make this happen, Archbishop Tomasi explained, “the rules that govern the financial system” must be modified, leaving aside the “old forms of greed that have led to the present crisis” and encouraging the promotion of an “effective integral development and the implementation of human rights” because “the person, in his integrity, is the first capital to protect and appreciate.”

Archdiocese of Boston Sees Significant Financial Recovery for Catholic Appeal

Catholic News Agency – March 9, 2010

Boston, Mass., Mar 9, 2010 / (CNA) – The Archdiocese of Boston has launched its 2010 Catholic Appeal, with recent figures indicating significant financial recovery since Cardinal Seán O’Malley took over the leadership of the archdiocese in 2003.

“The Archdiocese is blessed by the continued generosity of our parishioners and friends,” Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, commented. “In a particular way the priests, deacons, religious and lay members of our parishes are able to build up communities of faith and service because of the contributions in support of the Annual Appeal.”

Monetary contributions to the Catholic Appeal have increased nearly 75 percent, $6.3 million, since 2002. That year, reports about the archdiocese’s treatment of priests accused of sexual abuse sparked great controversy that led to the resignation of the cardinal’s predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law.

Since Cardinal O’Malley’s 2003 installation, monetary contributions to the Catholic Appeal have increased by 44 percent.

Cardinal O’Malley launched the 2010 Appeal, themed “Called to Love and Share,” in the Flatley Room of the archdiocese’s Pastoral Center.

The cardinal in his homily for the weekend discussed Christian charity.

“All that we have and all that we are is a gift. When we give to help others, we are acknowledging that we are not absolute owners of our possessions, but administrators of the goods God has entrusted to us. Scripture teaches us that there is more joy in giving than in receiving. When we do things out of love, we express the truth of our being.”

He added that we have been created “not for ourselves, but for God and our brothers and sisters.”

Scot Landry, the archdiocese’s secretary for institutional advancement, said that the Appeal is the “main source of funding” for the archdiocese’s central ministries.

“In many ways, the Catholic Appeal is to our Archdiocese what the offertory collection is to our parishes or what an Annual Fund is to universities,” he explained. “Through the Catholic Appeal, Catholics in our 291 parishes come together as one Church to pass on our faith, care for those in need, and gather to pray and worship together.”

The Catholic Appeal provides 74 percent of the resources for the archdiocese’s Central Operating Fund, which supports over 50 ministries, programs and offices in the archdiocese. Almost half of the gifts support specialized services to parishes, while almost 23 percent fund education, formation and evangelization efforts.

Slightly over ten percent of the Appeal supports general and operational services of the archdiocese, while 8.2 percent supports the mailings, materials and management of the Appeal itself.

“To everyone who has supported the Church’s works of mercy and evangelization I express my sincere gratitude.” Cardinal O’Malley continued. “Today, I ask all Catholics to be generous in contributing to the 2010 Catholic Appeal. Every gift matters. Working together in the name of the Church we can go forward to build a civilization of love.”

Be Living Models of the Good Samaritan, Benedict XVI Encourages Volunteers

Catholic News Agency -- March 6, 2010

Vatican City, Mar 6, 2010 / (CNA/EWTN News) -- The Holy Father met with thousands of members of the Italian Civil Protection Service on Saturday in the Paul VI Hall. He commended their voluntary service in protection of the common good and the dignity of man, comparing their work to that of the Good Samaritan.

Drawing attention to the strength of the volunteer organization in its approximately 1.3 million members, Pope Benedict XVI called it “one of the most recent and mature expressions of the long tradition of solidarity,” which has its foundation “in the altruism and generosity of the Italian people.”

Italian Civil Protection Service’s (ICPS) mission and “vocation” of protecting people and their dignity, he said, is well-represented in the name of the organization.

The ICPS provides assistance and security for national and international emergencies as well as major events, such as World Youth Day 2000 in Rome. They offered a massive response following the earthquake that rocked L’Aquila, Italy April 6, 2009.

“This mission,” he continued, “does not only consist in emergency management, but in a precise and worthy contribution to the realization of the common good” which is always the goal of human coexistence “especially in the moments of great trials.”

These occasions, said the Pope, provide a chance for “discernment and not desperation” and they offer the opportunity to design new plans for society oriented towards virtue and the good of all.

In the figure of the Good Samaritan, said the Holy Father, we see a model for the protection of the person and commitment to the common good. “This person indeed demonstrated charity and humility tending to an unfortunate person in the moment of utmost need.”

While others turned a blind eye, the Good Samaritan taught us to “walk towards the emergency and to prepare … the return to normalcy,” he pointed out.

As these pages in Luke’s gospel show us, said Benedict XVI, “love of our neighbor cannot be delegated: the State and politics, though with the necessary attention for welfare, cannot replace it.”

Pope Benedict XVI repeated the words from his encyclical, “Deus caritas est” saying, “Love will always be necessary, even in the most just society” and this “requires and will always require personal and volunteer commitment.”

For this reason, the Holy Father told the group of an estimated 7,000 people from the ICPS, volunteers are not just “hole-fillers” in society, but they are people who “truly contribute to delineate the human and Christian face of society.”

“Without volunteer work, the common good and society cannot last long, as their progress and their dignity depend in great measure exactly on those people who do more than their strict duty.”

The Holy Father called the members of the ICPS to be “living icons of the Good Samaritan,” giving attention to their neighbors, remembering the dignity of man and inciting hope.

“When a person doesn’t limit himself to just completing his duty in his profession and in the family, but he works for others, his heart delights. He who loves and serves another freely as a neighbor lives and acts according to the Gospel and takes part in the mission of the Church, which always protects the entire human and wants to make him feel the love of God,” Pope Benedict concluded.

Learning the Lessons of Lazarus and the Rich Man

Archdiocese of Washington – By Monsignor Charles Pope – March 5, 2010

The well known story of the Lazarus and the Rich Man was read at Mass yesterday morning. At one level the story seems plain enough: to neglect the poor is a damnable sin. But there are other important teachings contained in this Gospel, teachings about death, judgment, heaven and hell. They are hidden in the details and are somewhat subtle. But that is the beauty of this story, its subtlety. Let’s take a look at some of the teachings beginning with the obvious one.

1. Neglect of the Poor is a damnable sin – There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores …
2. Though in torment the Rich Man has not changed – The Rich Man in torment, raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’ …
3. The Rich Man does not ask to come to heaven – It is a very strange fact that the Rich Man does not ask that he might come to heaven but asks that Lazarus be sent to Hell. One of the saddest facts about the souls in Hell must be that they would not be happy in heaven anyway. After all, heaven is about being with God, it is about justice, love of the poor, chastity, the heavenly liturgy, the celebration of the truth, the praise of God, and God (rather than me) being at the center …
4. The Great Reversal – Abraham further indicates to the Rich Man and to us the “great reversal”: My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. We spend a lot of time trying to be on top in this world …
5. To refuse the truth of Revelation is a damnable sin – The Rich Man does not repent to God, neither does he seek to be reconciled with Lazarus. But he does have some concerns for his brothers, for his family. We need not assume that the souls in Hell have no affections whatsoever. It simply remains true that their affections are not for God and what God esteems …

Five basic teachings from a well known parable. We do well to heed these lessons!

– Read the full article –

New Report Shows Economic Benefits of Catholic Schools

The Catholic Review – By George P. Matysek Jr. – March 4, 2010

A newly released report by the Sage Policy Group, Inc. has found that Catholic school students in the Archdiocese of Baltimore produce higher test scores, are more likely to graduate and are more likely to attend and graduate from college than their public school counterparts.

The study found that the presence of Catholic schools is of disproportionate benefit to older and lower-income communities, with Catholic school graduates expected to earn more money and support more jobs, income formation and business sales in the broader economy.

Catholic school graduates will contribute more to state and local government coffers than their public school counterparts, the study said, and are more likely to emerge as societal leaders and organizers.

The Sage report also noted that Catholic schools reduce state and local public educational expenses by tens of millions of dollars every year and can be a stabilizing presence in older communities.

“All policymakers and donors should be aware of the myriad benefits produced by Catholic schools and their graduates,” the report said, “and should be willing to support emerging models that are successfully building Catholic school capacity anew, including in older communities with large numbers of low-income residents and in newer communities that are yet to enjoy the benefits of being able to select a Catholic education.”

Sage analysts determined that the schools of the Archdiocese of Baltimore support nearly 5,400 jobs in the region associated with labor income of $212 million. The report found that Catholic schools in the Baltimore archdiocese saved Maryland $180 million in 2008-09, including $72 million in Baltimore County and $22 million in Baltimore City.

“Based on the average cost of supplying educational services to a public school student in Maryland,” the report said, “the State of Maryland saved roughly $200 million per year in expenditures due to the presence of Catholic school capacity. This equals over $380 million total funds saved by state and local governments per year.”

Citing high Catholic school test scores, which rank above the national percentile rankings, the report said higher educational attainment translates into higher lifetime earnings.

Sage analysis showed that for every 23,100 Catholic school graduates, lifetime earnings will be $5.2 billion more than for the equal number of public school graduates. That translates into approximately $225,000 per graduate over the course of a working lifetime, the report said.

The report noted that in the 2008-09 school year, 82 percent of graduating seniors from Archdiocese of Baltimore high schools were preparing to attend college.

“Once one adds in data for those set to attend two-year colleges,” the report said, “the number rises to an astonishing 97 percent or more than 30 percentage points higher than the public school proportion.”

What Are You Doing to Celebrate the Year For Priests?

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, February 2010

Last summer at a prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI formally opened the Year for Priests. “The Church needs priests who are holy, ministers who help the faithful experience the merciful love of the Lord and who are convinced witnesses of that love,” the Holy Father said.

The Year for Priests coincides with the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. It is an opportunity to reflect on the blessings of priestly ministry — an especially important witness at a time when the image of the priest has been tarnished by scandal.

Pope Benedict reminded the world’s priests (more than 400,000 worldwide) that they have been consecrated to “serve, humbly and with authority, the common priesthood of the faithful.” He also warned that “nothing makes the Church and the Body of Christ suffer so much as the sins of its pastors.”

“Ours is an indispensable mission for the Church and for the world which demands full fidelity to Christ and unceasing union with him,” the pope said. “It demands, therefore, that we tend constantly to sanctity, as St. John Vianney did.” …

– Read the full article –

Pope Prays for World Economy

Zenit.org – March 1, 2010

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 1, 2010 (Zenit.org) – Benedict XVI will pray this month that justice and equity will be the ruling principles for the world’s economy.

The Apostleship of Prayer announced the intentions chosen by the Pope for March. His general intention is: “That the world economy may be managed according to the principles of justice and equity, taking account of the real needs of peoples, especially the poorest.”

The Holy Father also chooses an apostolic intention for each month.

In March he will pray: “That the Churches in Africa may be signs and instruments of reconciliation and justice in every part of that continent.”

Life’s Joys Are Not the Goal, Says Pope

Zenit.org – February 28, 2010

VATICAN CITY, FEB. 28, 2010 (Zenit.org) – The joys of life are not the final goal, but rather lights on the path to an eternal destination, says Benedict XVI.

This was the conclusion the Pope came to at the end of a reflection today on the Transfiguration, which he called an “extraordinary event” that is “an encouragement in following Jesus.”

Before praying the midday Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square, he noted that the three disciples who witness the Transfiguration were asleep: “It is the attitude of those who, although spectators of divine prodigies, do not understand them. Only the struggle against the torpor that assails them allows Peter, James and John to ’see’ Jesus’ glory.”

“As Moses and Elijah depart from Jesus,” the Holy Father said recounting the Gospel account, “Peter speaks, and while he is speaking, a cloud covers him and the other disciples with its shadow; it is a cloud that, although it conceals also reveals God’s glory, as happened for the people of Israel on pilgrimage through the desert.”

“The eyes can no longer see,” he added, “but the ears can hear the voice that comes from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, my chosen one; listen to him!’”

Benedict XVI explained that suddenly, “the disciples are no longer before a transfigured face, nor before a dazzling garment, nor a cloud that reveals the divine presence. Before their eyes there is ‘only Jesus.’

“Jesus is alone before his Father as he prays, but at the same time, Jesus is everything that is given to the disciples of all times: It is what must suffice on the journey.

“He is the only voice to listen to, the only one to follow, he who, going up to Jerusalem, will give his life and one day ‘will transfigure our miserable body to conform it to his glorious body.’”

“The Transfiguration reminds us that the joys sown by God in our life are not the destination,” reflected the Holy Father, “but they are lights that he gives us on the earthly pilgrimage, so that ‘only Jesus’ is our Law and his Word the criterion that guides our existence.”

We All Suffer from a Form of Soul Sickness. Penance is the Cure.

Saint Louis Review – By Archbishop Robert J. Carlson – February 24, 2010

“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mark 2:17).

Deep down inside we all know that something is not right with our world — or with ourselves. War and crimes of violence continue to dominate our headlines. Misuse of the human body has become widespread: drug and alcohol abuse, the ever expanding traffic in pornography. Suicide, divorce and abortion continue to be both a symptom and a cause of the disintegration of family life. These are signs of a soul sickness that afflicts the world and each one of us every day.

The eyes of faith discern a common pattern in these symptoms: alienation that results in the loneliness of isolation. The bonds of communion between persons are pulled apart, and as a result society is fragmented and broken. To the Christian believer this should come as no surprise. Knowing that sin pulls us away from the truth of our being, we might have guessed that all sin would draw us away from communion and into isolation. Every sin — not only those we think of as social, but also those we tend to think of as purely individual — pulls us away from our call to communion with God and each other, and draws us into the isolation of loneliness.

Most of us have at least some idea of the peace that comes from living in communion with God and with our brothers and sisters. In moments of contented stillness here and there, or on days when everything seems to go just right, we all catch glimpses of the joy for which we were created. But we have also tasted the anguish and recrimination that come from broken promises, selfishness and fear. There is a longing in every human heart for the joy, peace and serenity of communion. There is a corresponding ache in each of our hearts when that communion is lacking. And yet the irony is that our own attitudes and actions are often the cause of our heartache!

Consider a simple analogy: On the physical level we all say that we want good health. But how easily we find ourselves pulled away from the exercise and healthy eating that are needed to achieve and maintain good health! We want — and yet we do not really want — physical health. So, too, in the spiritual life: We say that we want the peace, joy and serenity that come from communion with God and each other. Yet how easily we find ourselves pulled into attitudes and actions that destroy the possibility of genuine communion! We say that we want spiritual health — and yet our actions show that we do not want it badly enough to change the way we live!

This internal struggle was described by St. Paul when he said: “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate … I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want … I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Rom 7:15, 19, 22).

Spiritual health comes when we recognize that we are inwardly divided and that we need God’s grace to make us whole. It comes when we confess our sins, when we open ourselves to the healing power of God’s grace, and when we let Jesus absolve us from our sins so that we can begin anew.

The Church gives us the season of Lent to help us diagnose the soul sickness that affects every one of us to some degree or another. During Lent, the readings at Mass, our prayer, the penitential practices we are called to observe (fasting and abstinence) and the good works we are invited to perform (almsgiving) all help us to admit our sinfulness and to change from a self-centered way of life to lives of generous service.

I invite every Catholic family to make this Lent a time of spiritual healing, especially by your reception of the Sacrament of Penance. A good Confession paves the way to curing our soul’s sickness. It helps us to admit our sinfulness, to do penance and to resolve to sin no more.

The Sacrament of Penance is a time-honored and proven-effective cure for the multiple symptoms of soul sickness that so many of us suffer from today. Try it. Even if it’s been a long time since your last Confession. You’ll be glad you did.

Archbishop Dolan Reveals the Extraordinary in the Ordinary Faith-lessons of Life

Metro Catholic – February 21, 2010

HUNTINGTON, Indiana