St. Anthony Messenger June/July 2021

Sharing the spirit of St. Francis with the world VOL. 129/NO. 1 • JUNE/JULY 2021 • PUBLISHED BY FRANCISCAN MEDIA

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

Music and Summer Streaming PAGES 40–41

CATHOLICS IN HOLLYWOOD SEVEN STORIES OF FAITH FROM TINSELTOWN

JUNE/JULY 2021 • $4.99 StAnthonyMessenger.org

BLESSED STANLEY ROTHER’S LEGACY FICTION: MAILBOX HOW TO PRAY THROUGH PAIN

Join us in celebrating the

Feast of St. Anthony

Join us on June 13, 2021, at the National Shrine of St. Anthony in Cincinnati, Ohio, or from the comfort of your own home or location, to celebrate St. Anthony’s Feast Day: Mass: 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. (EST) Novena: 2:30 p.m. (EST) St. Anthony Shrine 5000 Colerain Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45223 Visit StAnthony.org/live to access the events virtually via livestreaming from your computer, phone, or device.

Visit StAnthony.org to read about St. Anthony of Padua, post your prayer requests, light a candle for your special intention, and much more!

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VOL. 129 N O. 1

JUNE/JULY

2021 20/21

30 30 Catholics in Hollywood

COVER STORY “My faith comforts me in hard times and keeps me focused and disciplined,” says actor and devout Catholic Mark Wahlberg.

By Sister Nancy Usselmann, FSP

COVER AND ABOVE: COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES/HOPPER STONE/SMPSP

Seven heavy hitters in Hollywood share their experiences of being Catholic in the movie industry.

18 Blessed Stanley Rother: Martyr, Missionary, Shepherd

By María Ruiz Scaperlanda

He traveled from Oklahoma to Guatemala to serve the poor and ended up giving his life in the name of peace and justice. His legacy continues to inspire those who want to live out the Gospel as he did.

24 Praying through Pain

By Colleen M. Arnold, MD

When you pray, mental and physical changes occur that help you cope with pain.

36 Fiction: Mailbox

Story by John M. Floyd; illustration by Jess Suttner

Who was Bobby’s secret pen pal?

COMING in the

AUGUST ISSUE

A profi le of Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, the archbishop of Washington and the fi rst African American to be elevated to the position of cardinal

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 1

T

he saints were real people with real stories—just like us! Their surrender to God’s love was so gen-

erous that the Church recognizes them as heroes and heroines worthy of being held up for our inspiration.

Join Franciscan Media in our daily celebration of these holy men and women of God. Sign up for Saint of the Day, a free resource delivered right to your inbox.

ST. MARGUERITE D’YOUVILLE June 15 Enduring a dysfunctional marriage and being left a widow, St. Marguerite d’Youville did not despair.

Rather, she founded the Sisters of Charity of Montreal (the “Grey Nuns”), rescued a failing hospital, and cared for the sick. Not even the destruction of the hospital by fire drove her to despair.

ST. ALOYSIUS GONZAGA

ST. MARY MAGDALENE

June 21 St. Aloysius Gonzaga was a precocious child who had a spiritual awakening at the age of 7. As a young adult, he entered the Jesuits where he had to learn to live and maneuver within the community and give up some of his independent ways of doing things.

July 22 Whether or not St. Mary Magdalene was a notorious sinner—and she most likely was not—she was one of the women who traveled with Jesus and the apostles and was present at the cross.

She also was the one chosen to bring the good news of the Resurrection to the apostles.

BLESSED STANLEY ROTHER July 28 Blessed Stanley Rother grew up in Oklahoma on his parents’ farm. Life changed for him when he was ordained a priest in 1963, and again in 1968, when he volunteered for the missions in Guatemala. Civil war reached his parish in 1980.

He was assassinated on July 28, 1981.

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IMAGES FALL UNDER PUBLIC DOMAIN USAGE RIGHTS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED; FAR RIGHT: ARCHDIOCESE OF OKLAHOMA CITY

Saints and blesseds featured in the months of June and July include . . .

VOL. 129 N O. 1

“We must refer every good to the most high supreme God, acknowledging that all good belongs to him.”

JUNE/JULY

2021

IMAGES FALL UNDER PUBLIC DOMAIN USAGE RIGHTS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED; FAR RIGHT: ARCHDIOCESE OF OKLAHOMA CITY

—St. Francis of Assisi

12 SPIRIT OF ST. FRANCIS 10 Ask a Franciscan

Living Our Faith Boldly

44 POINTS OF VIEW

15 Editorial | Pat McCloskey, OFM St. Joseph: Antidote to Toxic Masculinity

12 Followers of St. Francis

16 At Home on Earth | Kyle Kramer

14 Franciscan World

44 Faith & Family | Susan Hines-Brigger

Father Jim Bok, OFM

Let’s Go Big

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

End of an Era

14 St. Anthony Stories

Calling on St. Anthony for Help

40 CULTURE

40 Media Reviews

Music | Playlists for Work, Play, and Relaxation Streaming | Summer

Streaming

42 Film Reviews Four Good Days

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit The Perfect Candidate

6

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE 4 Dear Reader 5 Your Voice 6 Church in the News

45

45 46 48

The Long History of Pete Pete & Repeat Let Us Pray Reflection

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 3

dear reader Life Can Be a Pain

PUBLISHER

A

s I look back, my four decades on this planet have been relatively pain-free. I had migraines growing up. I broke my arm in youth and several ribs in adulthood, all due to clumsiness. But by and large, I’ve been lucky. Friends and family haven’t had as easy a road as I’ve had. Rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia: Those in my circle endure pain in ways I cannot comprehend.

When pain is our constant companion, peace of mind is sure to suffer.

According to a study by Mental Health America, living with pain daily can cause deep emotional stress. “Chronic stress is known to change the levels of stress hormones and neurochemicals found within your brain and nervous system,” the study found. “These can affect your mood, thinking, and behavior . . . and bring on depression.” Pain is unavoidable. But it cannot overtake us.

Dr. Colleen Arnold, a physician, offers a remedy of sorts in this month’s issue.

Go to page 24 for her article “Praying through Pain.” In it, she writes about how prayer can soothe the minds and hearts of those who wrestle with pain—chronic or otherwise. This holistic approach to self-care, of tending to our spirits as well as our bodies, is good medicine.

Speaking of self-care, go to page 9 to learn about a COVID-19 survey we’re asking our readers to fill out. Be well!

Daniel Kroger, OFM PRESIDENT

Kelly McCracken EXECUTIVE EDITORS

Christopher Heffron Susan Hines-Brigger

FRANCISCAN EDITOR

Pat McCloskey, OFM ART DIRECTOR

Mary Catherine Kozusko MANAGING EDITOR

Daniel Imwalle

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Sandy Howison

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Sharon Lape

Christopher Heffron, Executive Editor

WRITER Blessed Stanley Rother: Martyr, Missionary, Shepherd PAGE 18

María Ruiz Scaperlanda is an award-winning journalist and author whose books include The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run: Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr from Oklahoma. She lives in Oklahoma City with her husband of 40 years, Michael, and blogs at: DaybyDaywithMaria. blogspot.com.

EP Graphics Berne, IN

JESS SUTTNER ARTIST Fiction: Mailbox PAGE 36

Jess Suttner is an editorialfocused illustrator, designer, and visual green thumb. Born and raised in Chicago, he was educated at California College of the Arts in the Bay Area. He is currently based in Queens, New York. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Barron’s, and other publications. You can view his work at JSuttner.com.

4 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

SISTER NANCY USSELMANN, FSP

WRITER Catholics in Hollywood PAGE 30

Sister Nancy Usselmann, FSP, is the director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Los Angeles, California, and a media literacy education specialist.

She is a theologian, speaker, writer, film reviewer, and blogger for CatholicMom. com and BeMediaMindful. org. Her book, A Sacred Look: Becoming Cultural Mystics, is a theology of popular culture.

ST. ANTHONY MESSENGER (ISSN #0036276X) (U.S.P.S. PUBLICATION #007956 CANADA PUBLICATION #PM40036350) Volume 129, Number 1, is published 10 times per year for $39.00 a year by the Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist Province, 28 W. Liberty Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-6498. Phone 513-241-5615.

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MARÍA RUIZ SCAPERLANDA

PRINTING

POINTSOFVIEW | YOUR VOICE Feedback from Our Online Readers On the article “The Sorrowful Mystery of Racism,” by Herman Sutter (April 2021 issue)

Bless you! I feel fractured by this horrific ordeal in America, the world, and in the Catholic Church! In my prayers every day, I ask, “Where is the love and compassion for God’s people?” My heart has searched for relief. I am going to make a commitment to pray the rosary every day until I find my place as part of the solution.—Meri People don’t realize that we’re all brothers and sisters, that we’re all God’s children. . . . Jesus said to love one another. I’m a white man, and I love everybody. A time will come when things will change. —Gil Thank you, Herman Sutter! What a great way to pray the rosary! Taking the mysteries and applying them to everyday situations. I sometimes think of the mystery of the wedding at Cana as God’s way of telling us that you better do whatever your mother requests.—Fred

S. N 10 rs et, 5. iss rs, M,

all he le ce n-

g/ uc-

Very touching, sad reflection. Thank you for praying for all of us. Sometimes the burden we bear because of racism is too heavy to carry, and we become very weak in prayer. I will also try to pray with you. “The feeling of being seen not as a person but a problem” is very poignant.—Ivy On the April Let Us Pray Column, “Resurrection Song,” by Stephen Copeland This fits so well with my growing realization that all creation is holy, and I can learn from it as I protect it.—Mary This is beautiful writing and deep insight. The paradox of Western beliefs often contrasts with the deepest teachings of Christianity, but it does not have to if we look earnestly within.—Will

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

Time to Hold Other Countries Accountable I feel compelled to write in opposition to Susan Hines-Brigger’s editorial in the April issue about the Paris Climate Agreement (“Welcome Back, America”). I couldn’t disagree more with the author. The result of the

agreement is that developed countries—specifically the United States—are punished by the standards of the agreement, while China, India, and other countries get a free pass until 2030 and beyond. China cheats as a matter of policy and laughs at this agreement because the effect is to damage the US economy, while they are allowed to build theirs with impunity.

To bolster my point, I quote from the staff editorial of the Wall Street Journal on April 20, 2021: “Chinese leaders don’t mind Paris because they know it binds them to nothing while Western nations will harm their economies with new regulations and misallocated resources. The Chinese must be dumbfounded that a US Administration wants to kill the shale natural gas boom that has kept energy prices low and made the United States less reliant on foreign oil.”

We live in the real world with tough and aggressive players. Unfortunately, the kneejerk reaction is to criticize our own country for reasons I don’t understand. But defending China via climate protection is odd as China has no time for God in their lives—only power and wealth.

Joseph A. Lorusso, Malvern, Pennsylvania

Cheering on Deacon Art Miller

I’m writing to thank you for your cover story on Deacon Art Miller from the February 2021 issue (“A Catholic Response to Racism,”

by Susan Hines-Brigger). It was an honest portrayal of some of the nasty underside of Catholicism. I found myself cringing and then angry and then cheering, as Deacon Art recalled his family’s treatment by their neighborhood priest and parish and his mother’s subsequent determination to live her faith.

[Deacon Art expanded on this story from his childhood in the March Let Us Pray column, titled “My Mother’s Voice.”]

I would love to see more pieces like this in future issues of St. Anthony Messenger with examples and recommendations from parishes that are making truly concerted efforts to fight racism. Deacon Art’s mantra of “Thou shall not be a bystander” is something I hope I personally take to heart. I hope that Archbishop Leonard P. Blair of Hartford will be true to his word and accompany Deacon Art in his efforts toward justice and equality.

Tricia Santos, Stockbridge, Massachusetts

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 5

people | events | trends

Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis leads a prayer ahead of jury selection in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin.

F

ollowing the April 20 conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on the three counts he was facing, Catholic leaders across the country responded, calling for continued work on achieving racial justice for all, reported Catholic News Service (CNS).

Just prior to the verdict being announced, Minnesota’s Catholic bishops released a statement affirming their commitment—no matter what the jury decided—“to providing long-term leadership in eradicating structures of sin and racism in Minnesota and beyond.

“The Catholic Church in Minnesota invites all people of faith to come together to speak with one another in a civil and charitable manner. Let us pray with one another and for one another. Let us respect one another as children of God, created in his image,” the statement said.

In his homily at a Mass prior to the verdict, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis told those in attendance: “We can’t singlehandedly force healing to those who feel the wounds of racism in our land. We can’t bring George Floyd back to life, or Daunte Wright back to life. Does that mean we do nothing?

Absolutely not.” Daunte Wright was killed on April 11 in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center during a traffic stop when officers found he had an outstanding warrant, and he struggled to get back into his vehicle.

Police said it appeared that Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter, who later resigned, mistook her gun for a Taser, shooting Wright once in the chest. Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter.

After the Chauvin verdict was announced, Bishop Shelton J. Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, chairman of the

6 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, and Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, issued a statement addressing the need for change concerning issues of race and justice.

“The events following George Floyd’s death also highlighted the urgent need for racial healing and reconciliation.

As we have seen so plainly this past year, social injustices still exist in our country, and the nation remains deeply divided on how to right those wrongs.

“Let us pray that through the revelation of so much pain and sadness, that God strengthens us to cleanse our land of the evil of racism, which also manifests [itself] in ways that are hardly ever spoken, ways that never reach the headlines.

Let us then join in the hard work of peacefully rebuilding what hatred and frustration have torn down. This is the true call of a disciple and the real work of restorative justice.”

FDA CRITICIZED FOR LIFTING IN-PERSON REQUIREMENT FOR ABORTION DRUG

Mifepristone is a drug used to end pregnancies during the first 10 weeks.

A

recent decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding “in-person dispensing requirement” for chemical abortion pills during the remainder of the COVID-19 public health emergency prompted a challenge from the head of the US bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, reported CNS. On April 12, Dr. Janet Woodcock said the FDA will “exercise enforcement discretion” regarding its own requirement that is part of the risk management program for the drug mifepristone, as long as President Joe Biden’s declaration of a public health emergency for COVID-19 remains in place.

Also called RU-486, the drug is used to end pregnancies during the first 10 weeks.

CNS PHOTOS: LEFT: REMO CASILLI/REUTERS; RIGHT: PAUL HARING

CATHOLIC LEADERS RESPOND TO CHAUVIN VERDICT

By Susan Hines-Brigger

CNS PHOTOS: LEFT: DAVE HRBACEK/THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT; RIGHT: DANCO LABORATORIES HANDOUT/REUTERS

church IN THE NEWS

Dr. Woodcock said making women pick up the drug may increase their risk of contracting COVID-19. The FDA said it will temporarily allow clinics to distribute the drug via telemedicine, either directly by mail or through a mail-order pharmacy.

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, chair of the bishops’ committee, said the move is nothing more than “callous capitulation to the requests of abortion activists without regard for the health and safety of the women involved. An in-person evaluation by a medical professional is necessary to accurately determine the age of the baby (abortion pills are only approved for use in the first 70 days), whether the pregnancy is ectopic (which the woman has no way of knowing on her own), and to test and treat for Rh incompatibility between mother and baby. Without this information and proper treatment, a woman’s health, future fertility, and life are placed in serious jeopardy.”

Dr. Christina Francis, chair of the American Association of Pro-Life OB/GYNs, said in an April 13 statement that her organization “represents approximately 7,000 women’s health-care practitioners who will not allow our patients’ lives to be put in jeopardy in order to appease the abortion industry and their allies. An in-person visit is medically necessary and sound medical practice because it ensures that every woman receives a full evaluation for any contraindications to a medication abortion.”

CNS PHOTOS: LEFT: REMO CASILLI/REUTERS; RIGHT: PAUL HARING

CNS PHOTOS: LEFT: DAVE HRBACEK/THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT; RIGHT: DANCO LABORATORIES HANDOUT/REUTERS

T

PROTECTION OF MINORS COMMISSION HOLDS PLENARY ASSEMBLY

his past April, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors gathered both in Rome and virtually for its XV ordinary Plenary Assembly, where it welcomed a new member and addressed the realities, challenges, and directions for the commission and the Church. The plenary meetings, which are held twice a year, give the 17 members a chance to listen to each working group’s progress report and to lay the groundwork for future action.

At the beginning of the meeting, members welcomed Juan Carlos Cruz, who was appointed to a three-year term on the commission by Pope Francis in March of this year.

Cruz, who is from Chile, is a survivor of clergy sexual abuse and a survivors’ advocate.

He said he “hoped his presence and contribution will bring renewed impulse to the Church’s commitment to hearing, welcoming, assisting, and accompanying the children, men, and women who have been abused and in creating a space for them in the life of the Church.”

Juan Carlos Cruz

The new TutelaMinorum.org website and digital platform (@TutelaMinorum) was launched in English in February 2021. According to a statement on the site, analytics from traffic to the site and feedback from the Tutela Minorum Safeguarding Community help identify strengths and weaknesses in global safeguarding efforts. The platform has so far registered its highest user traffic and interaction in the Outreach and Safeguarding resource section, with peaks in traffic for spiritual and pastoral assistance to victims and survivors of abuse. The rollout in Spanish and Italian is scheduled for later in spring 2021.

VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM HELD IN APRIL

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, conveyed a message from the pope at a virtual symposium on child sexual abuse.

I

n April, the international and interreligious virtual “Symposium on Faith and Flourishing: Strategies for Preventing and Healing Child Sexual Abuse” took place. The event featured religious leaders, scholars, experts, and abuse survivors for the three-day symposium on faith, healing, and prevention.

Pope Francis sent a message to the event, which was hosted by Harvard University and its Human Flourishing Program and was sponsored by numerous organizations, including the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America.

A message sent on behalf of the pope by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, told participants that by joining “various fields in order to share research, clinical and pastoral experiences, and best practices, the symposium will contribute to a greater awareness of the gravity and the extent of child sexual abuse and promote more effective cooperation at every level of society in eradicating this profound evil.”

In the message, the pope also expressed his “gratitude for the continuing efforts being made to ensure the welfare of all of God’s children and to restore the dignity and hope to the survivors of abuse.”

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 7

church IN THE NEWS

people | events | trends

SPONSOR A STATUE OR GARGOYLE

T

Cardinal Pietro Parolin

Firefighters secure a statue with a strap outside Notre-Dame Cathedral April 16, 2019, a day after a fire destroyed much of the church’s wooden structure.

his past April, Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris unveiled an interactive website—RestoreNotreDame.org—that allows people to donate to rebuilding efforts for the cathedral by adopting or sponsoring pieces of precious art and artifacts that were damaged in the 2019 fire. Donors can choose from items such as gargoyles, paintings, or structural elements of the building. Progress of the work can be seen on the website.

According to its website, the organization was established in 2017 to support the preservation of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which was in desperate need of attention and infrastructure repairs. When fire damaged the cathedral in 2019, though, the group changed its focus to helping restore, rebuild, and preserve the cathedral.

The Vatican Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life is headed by Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell (left).

THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY recently launched a new podcast, website, and online store, all available at VaticanObservatory.org. The podcasts, which are available on several platforms, feature one of the pope’s own Jesuit astronomers speaking with notable figures in the world of space exploration or other sciences.

THE DIOCESE OF ROME and the Vatican Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life have jointly released the official prayer for the 10th World Meeting of Families, to be held in June 2022 in Rome. The theme of the event, chosen by Pope Francis, is “Family Love: A Vocation and a Path to Holiness.” The prayer is available at VaticanNews.va.

IN AN ATTEMPT to make sure that employees are not laid off but also contain costs, Pope Francis in April cut proportionally and indefinitely the salaries of cardinals (10 percent), department heads and secretaries (8 percent), and all priests and religious in service at the Holy See (3 percent). All employees will have automatic seniority pay increases frozen until 2023, except for lay employees with pay grade levels one to three. The decision was reportedly motivated by both the Vatican deficit over the years and the effects of the pandemic.

CITING FINANCIAL STRAINS and a lack of volunteers, the North American Conference of Associates and Religious (NACAR) recently announced that it will end operations at the end of June. The conference supports and promotes associates in the United States and Canada through programs and workshops, networking opportunities, and publications such as The Associate. It also has commissioned studies, created a leadership manual, and held workshops focused on the concerns and needs of associates.

8 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

CNS PHOTO: HARALD OPPITZ, KNA

The Vatican Observatory is located at Castel Gandolfo—the pope’s summer residence. It is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world.

CNS PHOTOS: TOP LEFT: PAUL HARING; LOWER LEFT: CREATIVE COMMONS 4.0 INTERNATIONAL; LOWER RIGHT: ROBERT DUNCAN

NEWS BRIEFS

CONTROVERSIAL THEOLOGIAN HANS KÜNG DIES

TELL US YOUR STORY DEAR VALUED READERS,

CNS PHOTO: HARALD OPPITZ, KNA

CNS PHOTOS: TOP LEFT: PAUL HARING; LOWER LEFT: CREATIVE COMMONS 4.0 INTERNATIONAL; LOWER RIGHT: ROBERT DUNCAN

F

ather Hans Küng, the sometimes controversial Swissborn theologian, passed away on April 6 at the age of 93 in Tübingen, Germany, where he had lived and lectured since 1960, reported CNS. Father Küng was a critic of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. He had worked with and studied with Pope Benedict, then-Father Joseph Ratzinger, in Tübingen in the 1960s. Along with then-Father Ratzinger, Father Küng was one of the youngest theological experts advising bishops at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Not long after the council ended, though, Father Küng stirred controversy with his views on papal infallibility.

Because of this, he had his “missio canonica,” the license needed to teach Roman Catholic theology, withdrawn in 1979. The action meant he was no longer allowed to teach as a Catholic theologian at Catholic universities. He became professor of ecumenical theology in Tübingen until his retirement in 1996. Father Küng remained a Catholic priest.

In the decades following Vatican II, he frequently criticized mandatory priestly celibacy, the loss of the Church’s credibility, the ban on women priests, and the “Kremlin-like” Roman Curia. He expressed support for the demands of grassroots organizations calling for more democracy in the Church.

After his retirement in 2011, Father Küng cofounded the Global Ethic Foundation at the University of Tübingen, “not least because my years are numbered, and I would like my life’s work to be continued after my death,” Father Küng told KNA, the German Catholic news agency, at the time.

The priest was a prolific writer and wrote several best sellers that were translated into more than 30 languages. In 2011, he published the book Can the Church Still Be Saved?, which spoke of clergy sexual abuse, saying the Catholic Church was seriously, possibly terminally, ill, and only an honest diagnosis and radical therapy could cure it.

In the book, he argued that the malady of the Church went beyond sexual abuse scandals and included resistance to reform, its secrecy, lack of transparency, and misogyny.

We at St. Anthony Messenger want to know how your faith and spiritual lives have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Please write in and let us know how you’ve navigated through these challenging times. We will also be conducting an in-depth survey to discover even more about this topic. Our September issue will include an article that details what we found out. Your responses might make it into the article, so let your voices be heard. We’re listening!

Send us your letters by mail or e-mail, and we encourage you to take the survey as well.

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 9

SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS | ASK A FRANCISCAN

By Pat McCloskey, OFM

Living Our Faith Boldly

Father Pat welcomes your questions!

ONLINE: StAnthonyMessenger.org E-MAIL: Ask@FranciscanMedia.org MAIL: Ask a Franciscan 28 W. Liberty St. Cincinnati, OH 45202

All questions sent by mail need to include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

?

Yes, the trend is worrying and may continue.

To be fair, many people in this age group were raised in families where religious practice was more social than reflective of any deep personal commitment. Many younger people are asking themselves, “Who needs that kind of religion?”

I think the answer is for all of us to live our faith in such a dynamic way that women and men in this age group will ask themselves, “What do they have that I don’t?” That seemed to attract people immediately after Pentecost.

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WE HAVE A DIGITAL archive of past Q & As. To get started, go to StAnthonyMessenger.org.

Material is grouped thematically under headings such as forgiveness, Jesus, moral issues, prayer, saints, redemption, sacraments, Scripture—and many more!

10 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Help Needed

Are there some resources you can suggest for the struggle I find myself surprised to be experiencing: believing that my mom, who died several months ago, is indeed in heaven with God?

These two Scriptures may provide some consolation for you: Wisdom 3:1–9 (read at many funerals and one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible) and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 (Paul’s advice to Christians who worried that deceased relatives and friends who died before Christ’s Second Coming would be at some disadvantage compared to believers still alive then).

The second passage is part of the oldest book in the New Testament. The first passage may have been written only 100 years earlier.

Stifling the Holy Spirit’s Work?

St. Paul told believers in Corinth, “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Cor 12:7).

He then identified gifts that the Spirit gives each believer, such as the ability to give wise advice, studying and teaching the word of God, special faith, the power to heal the sick, the power to perform miracles, the power to prophesy, the power of discernment, the ability to speak in

TOP AND LOWER LEFT: MC KOZUSKO/SAM; RIGHT: JOSH BLAKE/ISTOCK

Pat McCloskey, OFM

Over the past years, I have noticed a steady decline of the younger folks in the Catholic Church. I recently saw the results of a Pew Research Center study, which indicated that approximately 20 percent of all Americans and 33 percent of all Americans under the age of 30 have left the traditional Churches.

Do you have any explanation for this exodus? Could it be that they have had plenty of dogma and doctrine, but no personal spiritual experience? How can the Catholic Church mitigate this trend? Do you see this trend continuing?

TOP AND LOWER LEFT: MC KOZUSKO/SAM; RIGHT: JOSH BLAKE/ISTOCK

tongues, and the power of interpretation (12:8–10).

In the next verse, Paul states, “But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.”

If these gifts are intended to build up the Church, why are they not utilized in the traditional Church? Are we stifling the work of the Holy Spirit within the Church today?

Unfortunately, some people do not connect passages such as the ones you cite with St. Paul’s affirmation that all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to build up the Church, the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27 and Eph 4:11–12).

Because of today’s very anti-institutional bias, some Christians are tempted to believe that their every idea comes straight from the Holy Spirit and is being ignored by a hopelessly institutional Church. Would those people say the same if they used the term incarnational Church? I doubt it.

Genuine gifts become obvious when they are tested. No true gift of the Holy Spirit can be ignored forever.

Quick Questions and Answers What is Catholic teaching about Darwinian evolution by natural selection?

The Catholic Church makes no wholesale rejection of Darwin’s theory of evolution. It has two qualifications: 1) Everything starts with God; 2) Souls do not evolve (for example, chimpanzee “souls” cannot evolve into human souls).

In my RCIA group, someone asked if the Catholic Church can instruct you how to vote. As I recall, the answer was no. An individual Catholic needs to vote her/his conscience even if it might differ from what other parishioners favor. Is that true?

Yes, it is. The Church helps an individual believer form his/her conscience, but the Church cannot replace a well-formed conscience (what a person knows before God that he or she must do or avoid here and now). This is more clear in voting for a particular candidate than in voting on a specific ballot issue such as, “Should physician-assisted suicide be legalized?”

A recent TV show about UFOs and life on other planets got me thinking: If there are other beings somewhere out there, did Jesus visit them also and die again on the cross to free them from sin? What should we believe about UFOs and life on other planets?

God is in charge of the entire cosmos (everything created). The Bible describes salvation only for humans on planet Earth. We are free to speculate on various scenarios—as long as such speculation does not cause us to neglect our present responsibilities.

Light a candle for your father, or in memory of him, this Father’s Day.

When you light a candle on StAnthony.org, it will burn for three days at the National Shrine of St. Anthony in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Franciscan friars are ready to light a candle for you!

Visit StAnthony.org

What is an archangel, and is it real?

An archangel is simply an angel individually named in Scripture. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are the most famous archangels. The New American Bible uses this term only twice: once in the singular (Jude 1:9) and then as a possessive (1 Thes 4:16). Popular piety has set their number at seven, a perfect number according to the Bible.

The Franciscan Friars, Province of St. John the Baptist 1615 Vine St, Ste 1 Cincinnati, OH 45202-6492 513-721-4700, ext. 3219

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 11

SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS | FOLLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS

By Stephen Copeland

Proclaiming the Good News in Jamaica

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Father Jim Bok has been immersed in Jamaican culture for well over a decade. Above, he sports a traditional “rastacap,” or tam.

12 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Father Jim stands outside Mary, Gate of Heaven Church with Vilma, a volunteer.

Father Jim applies a fresh coat of paint to St. Luke Church in Little London with a group of volunteers.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FATHER JAMES BOK, OFM

hen Father Jim Bok, OFM, told his provincial he was THE BEGINNING OF A NEW CHAPTER volunteering to serve as a missionary in Jamaica, his That was September 2008. Today Father Jim lives in superior was surprised and responded, “You’re kidding!” the coastal tourism town of Negril in the civil parish of Father Jim, 61 at the time, was an unlikely candidate for Westmoreland on the westernmost tip of the country, servthe role—not only because of his age but also because he ing as a priest at Mary, Gate of Heaven Church and St. Luke had spent most of his life in Ohio. He grew up in the comin nearby Little London. After two years of being immersed munity of Reading, just north of Cincinnati. in Jamaican culture, Father Jim began to As a friar, he served as a teacher and principal see different potential avenues for outreach. for 17 years at Roger Bacon High School, folJamaica faces tremendous poverty, as about lowed by another 17 years as the director at the 20 percent of the nation’s population lives provincial development office, both of which below the poverty line. The lavish resorts in a were roles in Cincinnati. Serving as a friar place like Negril can be deceiving. Father Jim there for so long also allowed him to be close says many locals work for very low wages and to his tight-knit family—his three siblings, 10 struggle just to put food on the table for their nieces and nephews, and now grandnieces and families. grandnephews.

In many ways, everything Father Jim did Yet there he was, at an age when most are as a friar in Cincinnati has prepared him beginning to think about retirement, volunfor Jamaica. One Sunday after Mass in 2009, teering to move 1,500 miles away and essena group of parish women discussed with Father Jim Bok, OFM tially start life and ministry all over. Why? The Father Jim the idea of starting a soup kitchen answer, Father Jim says, was simple: “The Spirit touched me in downtown Negril. In 2010, they opened St. Anthony’s at a chapter meeting. There was a need, and I wanted to go.”

Kitchen and began serving 60–70 meals a day. There they It was one of those “aha moments,” he says—one of those began to notice an interesting trend. On Monday and times when the path lights up in front of you and you realize Tuesday, hardly any children showed up for lunch, but by there is no other way. the end of the week, children were showing up for meals in “Somebody once said to me after hearing my story, ‘You droves. really gave up a lot to go there, didn’t you?’” Father Jim says.

They learned this was related to families not being able to “I never thought about that, but I guess I did. Leaving a job I afford school expenses like lunch and taxi fare for the week. loved. Being away from family and friends.” Father Jim never How could they address this need? thought about what he was losing, perhaps because when In 2011, they launched the Get Kids to School (GKTS) seeking God’s will he has always felt as if he was gaining. program, which helps equip struggling families with uni-

BREAD “A hungry kid doesn’t learn,” says Father Jim. Children in the Get Kids to School program start their day with a nutritious breakfast.

forms, school supplies, taxi money (to get to school), and lunch money. They also started running a school bus to one primary school. And breakfast is provided to children at St. Anthony’s Kitchen before they head off to school.

Father Jim says they have seen school attendance and productivity drastically improve in their community in the past decade.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FATHER JAMES BOK, OFM

MEETING BASIC NEEDS

“A hungry kid doesn’t learn,” Father Jim says. A full-on local by now, the friar lights up when he talks about the resilient spirit of the hundreds he knows by name at St. Anthony’s, the inspirational students GKTS has helped to equip, the three youths who are now prospering in college—empowered by GKTS+, another program that was launched four years ago—the generosity of visiting tourists and donors, and his two mongrel dogs, JB and Stargirl.

“I never thought I’d be here for 12 years,” says Father Jim. “God has blessed me my whole life, and there are people who have had terrific disadvantages that I never had. I think of Matthew 25: 35: ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink.’ There are so many people who need basic stuff, and it’s not through their own fault. My Christian obligation and responsibility is to love my neighbor and do that the best I can.”

These days their work is more vital than ever. The demand at St. Anthony’s Kitchen has more than doubled, from 150 meals a day in 2019 to 400-plus a day in 2020, as a tourism-driven economy continues to plummet. Local residents can also come to the church, where they receive a bag of peas and rice, as well as a tin of mackerel.

They are also trying to meet the challenges head-on in education, as the pandemic has caused schools to go virtual. Many children have no access to Internet or have no devices to get online with. Accepting the challenge, Father Jim—in collaboration with Cornerstone Jamaica, a US nonprofit organization that helps create sustainable programs in Jamaica—is finding ways to provide students with Internet, workspaces, tablets, and adult supervision. To give you an idea of Father Jim’s influence during his 12 years in Negril, the CEO of Cornerstone wants to call these learning centers “Bok Spots.”

Father Jim is quick to point out that most of what he does is not possible without the support of many benefactors: “I frequently remind folks that in Luke 8:1–3, we read that Jesus went from town to town proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and there were some folks who sustained him out of their means.

From the very beginning of the proclamation, with Jesus himself, there were benefactors. I never forget that I am not in this alone. To use a popular expression these days, lots of folks ‘have my back.’ For them, I always give thanks!”

If you would like to support St. Anthony’s Kitchen, GKTS, GKTS+, and the Franciscan outreach in Jamaica, you can leave an online donation at StAnthony. org or send an e-mail to FriarWorks@Franciscan.org.

FRANK JASPER, OFM

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ST. ANTHONY

The National Shrine of St. Anthony is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Consecrated in 1889, it includes a first-class relic of St. Anthony and serves as a center for daily prayer and contemplation.

The Franciscan friars minister from the shrine. To help them in their work among the poor, you may send a monetary offering called St. Anthony Bread. Make checks or money orders payable to “Franciscans” and mail to the address below.

Every Tuesday, a Mass is offered for benefactors and petitioners at the shrine. To seek St. Anthony’s intercession, mail your petition to the address below. Petitions are taken to the shrine each week. viSit our webSite to:

StAnthony.org mAil poStAl communicAtionS to:

St. Anthony Bread 1615 Vine St. Cincinnati, OH 45202-6498

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 13

SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS “You can imitate our Holy Father Francis in his poverty.”

—Mother Antonia about the sisters’ extreme lack of goods

FRANCISCAN WORLD

By Pat McCloskey, OFM

La Crosse, Wisconsin

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ST. ANTHONY STORIES

Calling on St. Anthony for Help

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few months ago, our portable house phone went missing.

For three days, I looked in every room, on top of and under everything. I called it from another phone—no ring. So I decided to say a prayer (actually, several), asking St. Anthony to help. The third morning, I was going downstairs to my son’s room to get the second house phone so I could make a call. My son, Jason, had looked too. I picked up the phone and pushed the intercom button as I was coming back upstairs. As he was getting in his car to leave for work, he heard a ring from under the lawn chair in the front yard. “I told you to look out here,” he said, as he brought it in to me. “I had,” I said. Thanks, St. Anthony!

—Mary Ann Wharton, Asheville, North Carolina 14 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

MOTHER ANTONIA HERB, FSPA She led a fractured community to teach immigrants and Native Americans, establish hospitals, and eventually work in China.

IN 1849, zeal for ministry among German immigrants prompted 12 Secular Franciscans (seven women and five men) to emigrate from Bavaria to Nojoshing, Wisconsin (near Milwaukee). The women became Franciscan sisters. In 1851, the two diocesan priests died of cholera. Two men returned to Germany, and the other one left.

Disagreements over ministry commitments in 1873 caused the sisters to become two congregations: the School Sisters of St. Francis and the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, led by Mother Antonia Herb (d.

1882).

—Pat McCloskey, OFM

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WANT MORE? Learn about your favorite saints and blesseds by going to: SaintoftheDay.org

LOWER LEFT: MC KOZUSKO/SAM; TOP AND RIGHT: FRANCISCAN SISTERS OF PERPETUAL ADORATION

he Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration are among the 19 Franciscan women’s congregations that began working in the United States between 1840 and 1879. Most of them were founded in this country, first as diocesan congregations and later as congregations “of pontifical right.”

In 2020, Sisters Julia Walsh, Helen Elsbernd, Meg Earsley, Michele Pettit, and In 1873, 80 sisters and Corrina Thomas (from left to right) celebrated with blades of grass on Palm Sunday.

10 postulants from the congregation known today as Milwaukee’s Sisters of St. Francis (last month’s column) left and became the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, focusing on elementary and secondary schools. In 1883, they established a school on the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin for Chippewa Native Americans.

The sisters soon established an orphanage for girls and then hospitals in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Idaho. The sisters founded Viterbo University and served in hospitals, nursing homes, and parishes. Today, they sponsor three spirituality centers and Global Awareness through Experience. They minister throughout the United States, in Canada, and on Guam.

Sister Thea Bowman (1937–1990) may be the congregation’s most well-known modern member. She was a teacher, preacher, and evangelizer. The diocesan phase of her cause for canonization began on November 14, 2018, when it was approved and supported by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

This congregation can be contacted at fspa.org.

—Thanks to Jane Comeau and Mary Ann Gschwind, FSPA, for assisting with this profile.

POINTSOFVIEW | EDITORIAL

By Pat McCloskey, OFM

St. Joseph: Antidote to Toxic Masculinity Real men accept responsibility for all their actions.

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n 2019, Gillette released an ad that introduced many viewers to the concept of “toxic masculinity”—a sense that masculinity simply means having enough power and strength to dominate others, forcing them to take the action that he demands.

The ad was praised by a few people but ridiculed by many more. Think of all the raunchy and selfish ways that someone can complete—and has completed—a sentence that begins, “Real men . . . .” Generosity and patience usually appear as wimpy or “loser” virtues to people suffering from such toxic masculinity. To them, St. Joseph is a sick joke, hardly a man to be imitated.

The celebration of Father’s Day this month gives us a good reason to consider what constitutes genuine masculinity.

LEARNING FROM ST. JOSEPH

Pope Francis has probably not seen this Gillette ad, but he certainly understands the dangers of toxic masculinity. Last December 8, he signed an apostolic letter to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the naming of St. Joseph as patron of the universal Church. The pope also designated a Year of St. Joseph to extend until December 8, 2021.

In preparation for the 10th World Meeting of Families (held in Rome next June), Pope Francis asked last March 19 for continued reflection on his encyclical “The Joy of Love.” Fathers, single men, women, and the entire Church can certainly benefit from more attention to St. Joseph and family issues.

“Joseph teaches us,” Pope Francis writes, “that faith in God includes believing that he can work even through our fears, our frailties, and our weaknesses” (2).

WHITEMAY/ISTOCK

JUST BELOW THE BOILING POINT

The Gillette ad did not mention something that many of us have observed for several years: Numerous people (men more often than women) seem to operate regularly at 210 degrees F, a mere two degrees below water’s boiling point.

Therefore, such people very quickly reach that point.

Unfortunately, we have become used to mass shootings (almost always carried out by men). As I finish this editorial, 47 people in the United States have died in mass shootings in the previous 30 days. How many mass shootings will occur in our country between the time this issue goes to the printer

and you have a chance to read it? Too many, for sure.

How many people have decided that the US Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees everyone an absolute right to carry any type of firearm in any place?

Some regulation of firearms makes sense. “Only God is absolute,” a wise Scripture professor reminded me almost 50 years ago.

For those who ridiculed that Gillette ad and the concept of toxic masculinity, I think that these frequent mass shootings and the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol exhibited toxic masculinity at its worst.

Yes, some of the rioters were women, but they were acting on lies repeated mostly by men. By their words and actions, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and similar extremist groups embrace toxic masculinity as their infallible creed to identifying conspiracies. Which websites are more trustworthy regarding male spirituality: the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and similar groups or vatican.va, YearofStJoseph.org, or kofc. org?

According to Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph, Mary’s betrothed husband, was a “righteous man” (1:19). He says nothing in any of the Gospels, but his trust in God and steadfast action (flight into Egypt and return from there) provide a safe home for Mary and Jesus. Like Mary, Joseph also treasured everything that happened, pondering it all in his heart (Lk 2:19 and 51).

“Joseph set aside his own ideas,” writes Pope Francis, “in order to accept the course of events and, mysterious as they seemed, to embrace them, take responsibility for them, and make them part of his own history. . . . Only the Lord can give us the strength needed to accept life as it is, with all its contradictions, frustrations, and disappointments” (4).

St. Joseph exemplifies a male spirituality marked by creative courage, transparency, and a strong sense of accountability. Wouldn’t every family be greatly strengthened if those virtues increased among all its members?

Real men live deeply in the whole truth about life, avoiding all self-serving lies. Real men accept responsibility for all their actions and act compassionately.

According to Pope Francis, “Joseph found happiness not in mere self-sacrifice but in self-gift” (7). St. Joseph was “the real thing” and encourages all men and women to follow his example.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 15

POINTSOFVIEW | AT HOME ON EARTH

By Kyle Kramer

Let’s Go Big

Kyle Kramer

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WANT MORE? Visit our website: StAnthonyMessenger.org

’ve always been a small-is-beautiful sort of I should be quick to say that my pride isn’t person. I have an aversion to big: big busiblind or naive. I know that with America’s ness, big agriculture, big pharma, big brother, federalist system and deeply divided governbig box stores, and so forth—even as I, like ment, the vaccine rollout hasn’t been nearly everyone else I know, am hopelessly entangled as fast, smooth, or equitable as it could and in big’s grasp. should have been. I know that my good expeSince COVID-19 hit, however, I’ve been rience was most likely a function of where I rethinking some of my ideas live, my skin color, and my about big—especially since socioeconomic status. In a getting my vaccination for heartbreaking way, I know Our Christian COVID-19. In addition to that too many others, in my faith can be an feeling a lot of relief, as I had country and abroad, struggle essential aid for expected, I also felt something to get access to a vaccine— us as we discern, quite powerful that I didn’t certainly a justice issue if ever articulate, and expect: a profound sense of there was one. gratitude, pride, and even awe Even with all these evaluate largeat everything it took to get disclaimers, though, I am scale visions. that shot in my arm. still moved by how so many On the large scale, it took people mobilized and coopercoordinated efforts from ated to accomplish this large pharmaceutical companies to develop, test, goal of fast, broad-scale vaccination. We, who and manufacture vaccines at “warp speed.” have been gridlocked and dithering in the face It also took massive amounts of federal and of so many urgent needs, finally got our act state resources to manage the logistics of together and did something big. distributing those vaccines.

On the small scale, I was moved by the SMALL ACTS LEAD TO BIG CHANGES kind, quick, competent people who welcomed Sometimes—actually quite often—you have me to the vaccination site, gave me my shot, to go big, whether it’s defeating the Nazi and braved the rain to come check on me regime, stopping a pandemic, or addressing twice as I waited in my car afterward for any the myriad social and ecological challenges adverse reactions. In all of this, I felt deeply that we currently face. So, if we can’t avoid proud of my country. doing big things, how do we do them in the

16 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

ISTOCK IMAGES: TOP: WARCHI; RIGHT: CNYTHZL

EarthandSpiritCenter.org

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TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER; TOP: FERRANTRAITE/ISTOCK

Kyle is the executive director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, which offers interfaith educational programming in meditation, ecology, and social compassion.

He serves as a Catholic climate ambassador for the US Conference of Catholic Bishopssponsored Catholic Climate Covenant and is the author of A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt (Ave Maria Press, 2010).

He speaks across the country on issues of ecology and spirituality.

He and his family spent 15 years as organic farmers and homesteaders in Spencer County, Indiana.

ISTOCK IMAGES: TOP: WARCHI; RIGHT: CNYTHZL

TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER; TOP: FERRANTRAITE/ISTOCK

best possible way?

As I’ve been pondering this, I’ve been thinking there are two main variables that dictate a variety of large-scale outcomes.

There’s the big vision or plan, and then there are the means, which are always small: the myriad individual actions that add up to the end result.

The worst combination of these variables is when you have both a flawed vision and flawed means.

In this scenario, you get Hitler’s genocidal plan for a “pure” Aryan race. You get the Hutu militants of Rwanda attempting to kill all members of the Tutsi tribe. And in these and other kinds of atrocities, you get not only the madmen leaders but also the individual citizens who are willing to commit—or allow—atrocious deeds against their neighbors.

Less explicitly evil, but still a problem, is to have no overarching vision or plan and flawed means, where individual people and entities act in thoughtless, cruel, or selfish ways.

Most of our macro-level social, economic, and ecological dilemmas have arisen from this approach. We never made intentional, society-wide decisions to create climate change, widen economic disparity, and degrade our civic structures, but the sum total of our ignorance and moral blind spots has done so nonetheless.

A third path is to lack a grand vision or plan but to employ good means on the small scale. The resulting acts of personal kindness and generosity may indeed add up to or catalyze larger-scale good—I believe that they do—but no one can know in what way or whether the results will be on a time frame and scale sufficient to the need. I don’t discount this path; it’s a far cry better than the first two alternatives and could be a reasonable default stance for all of us, to do the good we can where we are, even if we don’t know if or how it fits into a larger picture.

On the fourth and most preferable path, we share a cohesive, healthy, inspiring vision and pursue it by honorable means. On this path, we can do big, good, necessary things like a fast, equitable, global-scale vaccination program, like a rapid transition to a sustainable, regenerative economy, like protection and healing for our ailing ecosystems, like ending all forms of racism and slavery, like ensuring universal access to the basic goods necessary for a fulfilling life.

ity, equity, belonging, and love. It also has a cosmic perspective, in which all human efforts and systems of knowledge, belief, and action end up being small and humble against the backdrop of the vast stretch of God’s time and the immense spaciousness—and strangeness— of God’s evolving universe. The Gospel inspires us to greatness even as it keeps big from going to our heads.

Our faith calls each of us to personal responsibility and action, in accord with the broader vision. All of us can—and must—leaven the larger loaf and plant the mustard seeds of our faith so that those seeds can grow large enough to shelter the birds of the air and even to move mountains.

HELPFUL

TIPS 1

GRAND VISIONS AND LARGE GOALS

As you consider the people you disagree with politically, do you think your differences are completely irreconcilable? Is there any large-scale goal you could agree on—like reducing poverty and hunger? Might you find common ground as well in personal actions you might undertake toward shared goals?

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Local parish life can and should be a place where we can be inspired with grand visions and supported to work toward them together. If your priest and pastoral staff aren’t providing this for parishioners, encourage them to do so.

LED BY FAITH

Our Christian faith can be an essential aid for us as we discern, articulate, and evaluate large-scale visions and as we perform the small, local actions that contribute to large-scale change. Our tradition has a big, inspiring vision: of inclusivStAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 17

blessed stanley rother

Martyr, Missionary, Shepherd

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

He traveled from Oklahoma to Guatemala to serve the poor and ended up giving his life in the name of peace and justice. His legacy continues to inspire those who want to live out the Gospel as he did.

18 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

O

n July 28, 1981, at 1:30 in the morning, three Spanishspeaking Ladino (nonindigenous) men snuck into the rectory of Santiago Apóstol Church in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, looking for the parish priest.

They found and seized Francisco Bocel, the 19-year-old brother of the associate pastor, put a gun to the terrified young man’s head, and threatened to kill him if he did not take them to the pastor.

Bocel led the attackers down the stairs and to the door of a corner utility room. He knocked, calling out in terror, “Padre, they’ve come for you.” That’s when Father Stanley Rother, aware of the danger to the young man, opened the door and let his killers in.

The assailants wanted to kidnap Father Stanley, turn him into one of the desaparecidos (the missing). But he would have none of that. He was aware of Bocel, of the nine unsuspecting sisters in the convent across the patio, and of the other innocents in the rectory that night—all in danger of also being dragged away.

And Father Stanley knew they would torture and, ultimately, kill him. The priest—affectionately called “Padre Francisco” because of his middle name, Francis—never called for help.

From his hiding place, Bocel heard the muffled noises of a struggle—bodies crashing into furniture and each other, several thuds. There was a gunshot. Then another. Then silence, followed by the sound of scrambling feet running away.

He rushed to wake up Bertha Sánchez, a nurse volunteer staying in the parish complex, alerting the Carmelite sisters across the courtyard from the rectory: “They killed him!

They killed Padre Francisco!”

The women ran in and found Father Stanley shot in the head and lying in a pool of his blood. They immediately began to pray. His dear friend Bertha pronounced Father Stanley Francis Rother dead at the scene. No one has ever been prosecuted for his killing.

40 YEARS LATER

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

By María Ruiz Scaperlanda Photography courtesy of Archdiocese of Oklahoma City Archives

This July 28 marks the 40th anniversary of Blessed Stanley Rother’s martyrdom, although due to the pandemic, it will be a much more subdued celebration than that of previous years. In Santiago Atitlán, and la Iglesia Parroquial de Santiago Apóstol, which gives the town its name, the people remember and honor a faithful priest, a shepherd who proclaimed the Gospel with his life, a courageous man who chose to remain with them even when violence threatened— and eventually took—his life.

In a very real way, “Padre Apla’s”—as his Tz’utujil Mayan parishioners named him in their native language—remains their priest. And they come to him daily, asking for his help and intercession—much as they did during the 13 years that he served them. His death, like his life, is one more outward sign of his deep and abiding holy love for them.

“El beato [The blessed] is our example in how he chose to remain with the needy and marginalized, especially during StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 19

a time of violence,” emphasizes 42-year-old Felipe Coché, a native of Santiago Atitlán. “Now more than ever, the same people that Padre Apla’s served in his time here are in need, especially in the fincas [rural areas] and remote areas outside Santiago. For me, el beato and his courage are my model for serving those in need,” adds Coché, speaking in Spanish, his second language after Tz’utujil.

For Coché, whose father was a close friend of Blessed Stanley and accompanied the priest on visits to the sick, the American martyr remains close to his heart, especially his love in service of neighbor and his bravery at a time of persecution. “We remember him for defending and proclaiming the good news of the Gospel, and how he did not abandon his people, even to his death.”

The town and parishioners are delighted to be able to celebrate and remember the 40th anniversary of Blessed Apla’s’

He struggled in his studies—especially with learning Latin, which led him to fail his first year of theology. When the seminary sent him home, suggesting that he consider a different vocation, Stanley requested another chance from his bishop, who agreed to look for a new venue for him.

When Stanley’s fifth-grade teacher, Sister Clarissa Tenbrink, heard the news that he had flunked out of seminary, she wrote Stanley a letter to encourage him. “He wanted to be a priest so badly. He was very discouraged. So I reminded him of the Curé of Ars,” French priest St. JeanBaptiste-Marie Vianney, who also struggled with academics and was notably deficient in Latin. “I told Stanley that if he really wanted to be a priest, then he should pray, and trust, and God would take care of things.”

In 1963, Stanley successfully completed his studies at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland,

“As a priest, his fatherly example guides me to emulate his love and his willingness to stand in the face of evil to protect his children, even to the point of great suffering and death. No matter where his people were, he would be with them.”

—Father Brian Buettner Stanley Rother seemed destined to become a farmer in his native state of Oklahoma, but God had different plans.

martyrdom, says Coché.

Although COVID-19 restrictions still forbid public processions or large town celebrations, “the people will venerate him in home devotions and a visit to the church,” explains the father of two girls. On July 28, the day of his death, the parish plans to celebrate an open-air Mass on the plaza in front of the church.

THE OKLAHOMA MISSIONARY

Born on March 27, 1935, in a farmhouse in the middle of an Oklahoma dust storm during the Great Depression, Stanley Francis Rother was listed in his high school yearbook at Holy Trinity Catholic School as president of the Future Farmers of America.

But the farm boy from Okarche decided to plant a different kind of harvest. After graduating from high school, Stanley crossed the Red River for San Antonio and the seminary. Yet the path to the priesthood would be more difficult than Stanley anticipated.

20 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

hometown of the first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton.

He was ordained a priest for the then Oklahoma City and Tulsa Diocese on May 25, 1963, at age 28. Father Stanley served the first five years of his priestly ministry without much notice in various Oklahoma assignments. But everything changed when he volunteered to serve in Guatemala.

When he arrived in Santiago Atitlán in 1968, Stanley instantly fell in love with the volatile and stunning land of volcanoes and earthquakes, but above all, with its people.

He and the other 11 people who made up the Oklahoma mission team established the first farmers’ co-op, opened a school, built the first hospital clinic, and created the first Catholic radio station, which was used for catechesis.

More importantly, when the first Oklahoma missionaries arrived at the 400-year-old parish, there had not been a resident priest for over a century at the oldest parish in the diocese. The people were as malnourished spiritually as they were physically.

While he did not institute the project, Father Stanley was a critical driving force in establishing Tz’utujil as a written language, which led to the New Testament in Tz’utujil being published after his death.

In a manner both humorous and courageous, the seminarian who struggled with learning Latin became the missionary priest who not only learned Spanish, but also became completely fluent in the rare and challenging Tz’utujil language of his 25,000 Tz’utujil Mayan parishioners.

“This language is fantastic,” Father Stanley wrote in a letter to his sister. “It isn’t related to any other here in Guatemala. There are 22 different Indian languages here.”

About the extra effort required, he added, “[I]t will be worth every minute when I can go out and be able to speak with

our heads down, preach the Gospel of love and nonviolence.”

To use Pope Francis’ image, Father Stanley was a shepherd who smelled like his sheep.

‘THE SHEPHERD CANNOT RUN’

In a letter dated September 1980 to the bishops of Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Father Stanley described the political and anti-Church climate in Guatemala: “The reality is that we are in danger. But we don’t know when or what form the government will use to further repress the Church. . . . Given the situation, I am not ready to leave here just yet. There is a chance that the government will back off. If I get a direct threat or am told to leave, then I will go. But if it is my destiny that I should give my life here, then

As a pastor in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, Father Stanley Rother was deeply connected to his parishioners, ministering to them and celebrating the sacraments.

all the people and not just the 20 to 30 percent who know Spanish.”

And the farmer from Okarche, who loved the land and recognized God in all of creation, was never afraid to get his own hands dirty working the land side by side with the people—a trait deeply loved by his parishioners.

When Guatemala’s violent civil war made its way to the remote village on the shores of Lake Atitlán in the late 1970s, Father Stanley’s response was to show his people the way of love and peace with his life. He walked the roads looking for the bodies of the dead to bring them home for a proper burial, and he fed the widows and orphans of those killed or parishioners who had gone missing.

“And what do we do about all this?” wrote Father Stanley to a friend in 1980. “What can we do, but do our work, keep

so be it. . . . I don’t want to desert these people. There is still a lot of good that can be done under the circumstances.”

Yet a few months later—and six months before his murder—Father Stanley and his associate pastor left Guatemala under threat of death after witnessing the abduction of a parish catechist. He returned, however, to his beloved Guatemala in time to celebrate Holy Week in April of 1981, ignoring the pleas of those who urged him to consider his own safety.

“He knew the dangers that existed here at that time and was greatly concerned about the safety and security of the people,” recalled Archbishop Emeritus Eusebius J. Beltran, in a 30th-anniversary message to the community of Cerro de Oro, one of the mission’s satellite churches near Santiago Atitlán. “Despite these threats and danger, he returned and StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 21

LEFT: Oklahoma City Archbishop Emeritus Eusebius J. Beltran, who began Father Stanley Rother’s sainthood cause in 2007, speaks at the 2017 beatification Mass.

RIGHT: Father Stanley Rother’s beatification drew an estimated 20,000 people to the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City, a testament to his legacy.

Father Brian Buettner, 38-year-old pastor of St. Joseph’s resumed his great priestly ministry to you. . . . It is very clear Old Cathedral in Oklahoma City. “As a priest, his fatherly that Padre Apla’s died for you and for the faith,” emphasized example guides me to emulate his love and his willingness to Archbishop Beltran, who served as bishop of Tulsa in 1981 stand in the face of evil to protect his chilwhen Father Stanley was murdered. dren, even to the point of great suffering and In his final Christmas letter from the misdeath,” he says. “No matter where his people sion to the Church in Oklahoma in 1980, “The shepherd were, he would be with them.”

Father Stanley concluded: “The shepherd cannot run at Even though the specifics of his life are cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for the first sign of much different than her own life, for high us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ danger. Pray for school teacher and Bronx native Valerie for our people, that our presence among them us that we may Torres, Blessed Stanley Rother is both relevant will fortify them to endure these sufferings in and inspiring. “The fact that he worked to preparation for the coming of the kingdom.” be a sign of the have the New Testament translated to the love of Christ for language of the Guatemalan community so AMERICA’S ORDINARY MARTYR our people, that that his community could read and pray with By constantly striving to be present to the our presence the Scripture in their own language truly people in front of him, to the needs in front of among them touches my students,” explains Torres, who him, Blessed Stanley Rother proclaimed a God will fortify them includes Father Stanley every year in her high who lives and suffers with his people. In the to endure these school curriculum at Aquinas High School in end, the choice to die for the Tz’utujil people the Bronx. was a natural extension of the daily choice sufferings in he made to live for them and in communion “In my community, the students and local preparation for youth often serve as translators for their parwith them. His death was nothing less than the coming of ents or grandparents. So many of our youth a proclamation of God’s love for the poor of the kingdom.” see their parents struggle to learn English, Santiago Atitlán.

—Father Stanley’s final struggle to learn to read,” making his attenYet in a very real way, Blessed Stanley lived Christmas letter an ordinary life. He chose to make it a life of tiveness to language very meaningful. ordinary heroic virtue, with confident trust It is Blessed Stanley Rother’s love, courage, perseverance, and presence that make him the in Divine Providence and a keen awareness American saint we need, emphasizes Torres. “He embraced of God’s presence in the small and insignificant quotidian the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. He witmoments of parish life, as well as in the unfamiliar and often nessed Jesus each day of his life! unexpected events of missionary life.

“While we focus a lot on his heroic example through “We need US witnesses. We need witnesses who reflect our communities. We need contemporary witnesses,” she his martyrdom, my heart always returns to his example adds. Blessed Stanley reminds “our youth and their famiof fatherhood. By following the Lord’s supernatural call, lies—[and] all of us striving to live holy lives—that we are this ordinary man drew many people to Christ,” declares 22 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

TOP: A 3-D aerial rendering of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine details just how expansive this place of pilgrimage will be. LEFT: Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley blesses the site of the chapel where Blessed Stanley Rother will be entombed. RIGHT: Loved ones of Blessed Stanley Rother and those involved with the building of the shrine sign one of the major support beams used in its construction.

A Beacon of Faith and Discipleship THE BLESSED STANLEY ROTHER SHRINE will open in 2022, a stone’s throw from I-35, the major north-south highway crossing the middle of the United States from Minnesota to the Mexico border.

The 2,000-seat church, designed in the Spanish mission style echoing Blessed Stanley Rother’s church in Santiago Atitlán, will include a chapel where his body will be entombed. “I hope this shrine will be a beacon on I-35 drawing many to come and find out more about Blessed Stanley, to open their eyes and hearts to the power of faith in our Lord,” says Molly Bernard, chair of the Rother Shrine Building Committee.

on the path to sainthood, even as we strive to dream and fulfill our God-given mission.”

According to Father Lynx Soliman, a newly ordained priest for the Diocese of Newark, Blessed Stanley Rother is the saint needed for the Church in America “precisely because he had the heart of a missionary,” and all of us are called to be missionary disciples. “As the first American martyr, I’m excited to see how many seeds will sprout from his blood for the glory of God and the good of souls,” Father Soliman says.

“And the universal Church will benefit from [declaring] such a saint because of how ordinary Blessed Stanley was,” notes Father Soliman, “and yet how attractive was his ‘ordinariness’! The world needs a man like Blessed Stanley to be declared a saint so that the mission of the Church will

“I have come to appreciate Blessed Stanley’s humility and service. He is a role model for us when we face tough situations,” notes Bernard, “and I pray to him daily to intercede for us in our archdiocese. He is truly a hero.”

“I hope that having this shrine in the heart of Oklahoma and in the heart of our archdiocese will teach all of us about pilgrimage as a model for a life of discipleship and mission,” emphasizes Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley. “I hope it will be a center for evangelization and formation that will nurture the faith of all who come.”

continue to thrive in a world that often tries to suffocate it.”

For Shellie Greiner, it is both his faithfulness and his modern-day story that make Blessed Stanley Rother attractive. “We have come to know him as ordinary, but [also] extraordinary,” explains the Oklahoma native.

“And I am ordinary, [so] can I become extraordinary through his example of simple living, of giving himself completely? Would I have the boldness to stand up for the Catholic faith and be willing to die for it today? I hope I don’t have to, but please, Lord, let me be bold always like Stanley Rother!”

María Ruiz Scaperlanda is an award-winning journalist and author of The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run: Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr from Oklahoma (Our Sunday Visitor). She and her husband, Michael, live in Norman, Oklahoma.

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When you pray, mental and physical changes occur that help you cope with pain.

W

hen my husband died, one of the most frequent comments I heard was, “At least he’s not in pain anymore.”

I knew the words were meant to be reassuring, but they weren’t. They implied that pain was to be avoided at all costs, even at the cost of one’s life.

Pain is a universal experience. Whether it is the temporary hurt of a broken ankle or something more permanent like arthritis, every single human being suffers it at some point in their lives. There is no such thing as a pain-free life this side of heaven. It can be physical, mental, or spiritual, and despite the best work of our health-care providers, it will always be present to some degree.

FOCUS ON THE POSITIVE

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If we accept the idea that pain and suffering are part of this life, how do we stay positive? How do we enjoy the good and not let pain sour our moods and relationships? In his article “Transforming Our Pain,” Richard Rohr, OFM, writes, “If we don’t transform our pain, we will transmit it—usually to those closest to us.” How do we keep pain from becoming our life’s focus? Being a Christian adds an extra dimension, for Jesus invites us to take up our crosses and follow him.

First, we need to remember that pain is not a punishment from God. It might be the result of our own bad choices or sins—but it is not something he intentionally inflicts.

Allowing pain is not the same as causing pain, and we are not victims of God’s intentional wrath. He works in and through this imperfect world and can bring good out of even the worst suffering and tragedy.

The second thing to remember is that our pain has meaning. As Catholics, we believe in the concept of redemptive suffering: We can offer up our pain for the benefit of our own souls or someone else’s. We are already forgiven for our sins—Jesus made sure of that when he died on the cross— but our pain can be an offering that relieves some of sin’s consequences. As a child, when I complained about anything, my mom was quick to say, “Offer it up for the poor souls in purgatory.” Our suffering also teaches us to be compassionate and understanding with other people; we learn to help others as we have been helped.

PRAYER IS YOUR SUPPORT

Prayer is a great ally in living with pain. Often our prayers are those of supplication (“Please, dear God, make my pain go away”) or intercession (“Please, dear God, make my daughter’s pain go away”). Even if our prayer doesn’t bring about a cure, it still has benefits. It changes our perspective and makes us humble. It slows heart rate and breathing and brings about a calm peacefulness.

Once we accept that pain is not punishment and that it can have purpose, we are free to speak openly in our prayers.

We can vent our fury, our frustration, our fixation. As we share with the One who can take it, our hearts become open to his grace at work within us, and through that grace we feel his presence. In his letter to the people of Genoa on the first anniversary of the deadly Morandi bridge collapse, Pope Francis wrote, “God’s answer to our pain is a closeness, a presence that accompanies us, that never leaves us alone.”

By Colleen M. Arnold, MD StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 25

LISTEN. No judgments, no comments, no suggestions, no taking it personally. Let your person vent his or her anger and frustration.

Sometimes simply unloading eases pain. Don’t absorb it; let it bounce off you. Try not to respond to negative with negative.

HELP. Not just an offer, but an action. If the trash needs to go to the recycling center or the dishwasher needs unloading, simply do it. I promise no one will be offended, and even if they offer a protest, it will be half-hearted.

ACCEPT. People with certain conditions such as fibromyalgia and complex regional pain syndrome look perfectly healthy, so it’s hard to understand how much they are hurting. If they say they are in pain, believe them. They are not being lazy or dumping on you; let go of anger, guilt, and blame.

BALANCE. Yes, you should listen to your loved one, but be sure you share your feelings too. Use “I statements” (“I feel. . .”) and avoid accusatory comments. Being a caregiver is an exhausting role, and you can’t take care of someone else if you aren’t taking care of yourself first. Be sure you get enough sleep, exercise, and time alone.

LEARN. Educate yourself about the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. Knowledge is power, and you can be an advocate for your loved one.

LOOK FOR POSITIVES. There is joy to be found even in the midst of pain: flowers blooming, glowing sunsets, kind gestures, a gentle touch. Gently calling them to attention can help widen your loved one’s perspective.

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PUTTING PAIN IN PERSPECTIVE

In the practice of prayer we can also use three of pain’s greatest enemies: acceptance, distraction, and gratitude.

How do we simultaneously accept our pain and distract ourselves from it?

Aren’t they opposites? And how can we express gratitude for anything when all we can think about is how much pain we are in?

By acceptance, I do not mean the victimized sense of, “Woe is me.”

Instead, I mean the acceptance with which Jesus prayed: “Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will” (Mk 14:36). Scientific research has repeatedly verified that people who accept unpleasant symptoms and emotions without judgment do better with everyday stressors.

Trying to ignore pain or feelings can allow them to fester and eventually explode.

By distraction, I do not mean using drugs or alcohol or other forms of release, but rather resisting the temptation to allow pain to be the primary focus. In this world, good and bad go hand in hand: The pain of childbirth accompanies the joy of a baby.

The flowers of spring bloom even as thunderstorms rage around them. With practice, we can focus on the good without ignoring the bad.

Finally, by gratitude, I mean awareness and appreciation of the gifts I have been given. We all have talents, relationships, and blessings. We can refuse to be like Eve, who was fixated on the apple she couldn’t have. We can choose to be delighted with the other delicious fruits available instead.

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t’s hard when someone you love is in pain. He or she can be irritable and short-tempered. What to do?

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When Someone You Love Is in Pain

One of the frustrations of chronic pain is the feeling that no one understands. No one else realizes how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning without piercing back pain, to walk without wincing, to be unable to wash your own hair or brush your teeth because your shoulder hurts too much.

In prayer, God’s grace reassures us that we are understood, our suffering is seen, our distress recognized.

Pain Relief Meditative Prayer ACTION STEPS

So how does all this work in daily life? Here is a practical example of a pain relief prayer meditation that includes acceptance, distraction, and gratitude.

You may not be able to do every component, depending on your underlying health issues, so please adapt as needed.

STEP ONE: Opening

Start by making the sign of the cross. Sit in the most comfortable way you can, perhaps with feet on the ground and hands in prayer position. Take a deep breath in for a count of six. Hold it for a count of two, breathe out for a count of six, then hold for a count of two. As you focus on your breath, ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with his presence. Repeat the cycle two or three more times or until you begin to feel able to concentrate on the prayer.

STEP TWO: Acceptance

Pray these words: Dear Lord, help me accept your will and trust that you want only the best for me. Help me remember you can bring good out of anything. Let me believe that your purpose is good.  Look around the room for three things that are white. White is the color of the Resurrection. Remind yourself that Jesus has already defeated pain and death, so you don’t have to. You are more than your pain.

 Look around the room for three things that are red. Red is the color of blood. Remind yourself that Jesus suffered pain and humiliation and understands your own.  Look around the room for three things that are green. Green is the color of spring and new beginnings. Let yourself embrace a new attitude of grace that allows you to join your suffering to Jesus’. You can live a life filled with joy.

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 Look around the room for three things that are blue. Blue is the color of our Blessed Mother. Remind yourself that Mary suffered, too, and graciously accepted all God asked her to do for his glory. You have purpose in this life.

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STEP THREE: Distraction

Pray these words: Dear Lord, help me remember that I am not my pain; I am a child of God—loved, gifted, welcomed, wanted.

Concentrate on what you feel besides your pain.  Press your feet into the ground or floor. Feel them support you.  Notice the place in which you sit—a soft cushion or a hard chair? Does it touch your back too? What other parts of your body feel supported?  Can you feel your clothes around your waist or at your neck?  Find the air on your skin. Is it the chill of the air conditioner or the warmth of the sun?  Notice everything you can in this moment—except your pain.

STEP FOUR: Gratitude

Pray these words: Dear Lord, I am grateful for my body and my life. It isn’t perfect, but I know that one day in heaven it will be.  Look around the room again and thank God for the eyes that let you see.

Relish for a few moments the most beautiful thing in your field of vision.  Identify any noise in the background. Make note of your favorite sound and enjoy it before you move on. Thank God that you have ears to hear.  Search for any smells in the room. If there are any, breathe them in deeply.

If there aren’t, inhale deeply anyway. Thank God for the breath that sustains you. Let your breath flow for a few seconds, slow deep breaths in and slow deep breaths out. As you do, once again picture the Holy Spirit filling you with each breath.

STEP FIVE: Closing

Pray these words: Dear Lord, I know that you love me. I accept the cross you have asked me to carry. I don’t like it, and I don’t want it, but I will do it. I will use it to bring you glory and am forever grateful that you are at my side. Yes, Lord, I am yours. Amen.

Make the sign of the cross.

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Colleen M. Arnold, MD, is a physician and writer residing in Lexington, Virginia. She also holds a master’s degree in pastoral ministry. Learn more about her at her website, ColleenArnold.org.

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When you finish, you will feel simultaneously relaxed and energized. Let this meditation be a reminder that there is no perfect life. We will all have pain, some more than others, but God will never leave us to suffer it alone.

He is always there to help carry the burden.

When to Get Help

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ost episodes of minor pain resolve on their own within three months. Chronic pain doesn’t go away. There is no promise of future relief, like a cut that heals over time or appendicitis that gets better after surgery. So how do you know when you need help?  Any pain that is sudden and severe requires medical evaluation. Some types of pain are more dangerous than others: Stiff neck, severe headache, pain with numbness or weakness, chest pain, or severe injury are all potentially life-threatening and need prompt attention.  Chronic pain can vary in degree from mild and easily ignored to severe and unrelenting.

It is unrealistic to expect complete relief, but a reasonable goal is being able to take care of yourself and fulfill your daily responsibilities.

It’s important to work with your doctor to find treatments that are not only effective but also safe for long-term use. When your pain is affecting your life, it’s time to get help.

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 Because chronic pain affects every area of your life—sleep, work, activities, finances, relationships—it often leads to depression. If you feel hopeless, helpless, or start to daydream about hurting yourself, you need help. Medication, counseling, and behavioral therapies are all options, and your doctor will help decide what is right for you.

CONNECT WITH US

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CATHOLICS IN

W

hen I moved to Los Angeles, I discovered that the general perception about Hollywood by people outside Southern California is of glamorous celebrities, powerful studio executives, Beverly Hills, and, of course, the Oscars, but not necessarily a place where faith informs entertainment. I meet people who believe that Hollywood is antireligious or pushing agendas contrary to a Christian worldview, a creator of cultural artifacts that demean the human person and destroy morals.

There are definitely those elements present, but it is not the case for every film set or person working in the industry.

There are many whose faith informs their craft; they want to make a difference by telling stories that uplift and inspire.

Hollywood, and the industry it represents, is a place where art, creativity, and storytelling come together. It is also a place populated by searchers. “Despite what people say or think of Hollywood . . . it is a very spiritual place,” says Theodore “Ted” Melfi, film writer, director, and producer (Hidden Figures, St. Vincent). “It’s a very soulful place and

people; especially in California, Los Angeles, and Hollywood [people] are always searching.” What are they searching for?

We all seek purpose, meaning, communion, and intimacy that this world cannot satisfy. Ultimately, we are all seeking the spiritual, the supernatural, God. Among the searchers in Hollywood are those whose art expresses their faith experience and learned values. I meet many of them at press junkets, red-carpet events, and film screenings. When I tell them that I pray for them and that there is a group of religious sisters who pray for all media professionals (the Paulines), they are flabbergasted. Many describe their heartfelt gratitude for these prayers, saying, as Harrison Ford did at a press junket for The Call of the Wild: “I so appreciate that. More than you know.”

Many seek spirituality and find it in their Catholicism.

I asked a selection of known practicing Catholics in Hollywood what they love most about their faith, what it means to their craft of film or television, and what challenges they face being Catholic in the industry.

By Sister Nancy Usselmann, FSP 30 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

TOP: COMPOSITE: VATICAN: MCKOZUSKO/SAM; ISTOCK IMAGES: HOLLYWOOD: CSA-ARCHIVE; FILM: TRAFFIC ANALYZER ALL PROFILE PHOTOS ARE PROVIDED BY THE INTERVIEWEE DIRECTLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Seven heavy hitters in Hollywood share their experiences of being Catholic in the movie industry.

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BEST KNOWN FOR his role in The Fighter alongside Christian Bale, and as Sergeant Dignam in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, actor and producer Mark Wahlberg says, “I hope God is a movie fan!” His viral Instagram posts show him going to church and thanking priests for their service to the people of God. “My faith comforts me in hard times and keeps me focused and disciplined,” Wahlberg says. “It provides the comfort and motivation to become a better person, a better father, a better husband, and to be an example.”

His faith leads him to inspiring stories. “Certainly the things that I usually gravitate toward most are the true stories and things that people find inspiring. I’m on this mission to make this movie about Father Stuart Long,” he adds. A former boxer and actor, Long miraculously survived a serious motorcycle accident, then became Catholic and later was ordained a priest. He died in 2014 at the age of 50 from a rare autoimmune disease.

Wahlberg calls the story “something that would challenge me as an actor but really have a huge impact on society as a whole. Like The Fighter, it will be one of those movies well worth the uphill battle to get the story and script in great shape and then the best version of the movie. It’s something I’ve been very passionate about for quite some time.”

mark wahlberg StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 31

ACTOR JONATHAN ROUMIE, most recently known for his role as Jesus in the crowdfunded streaming series The Chosen, says, “My faith energizes me and comforts me knowing I have access to the true presence of Christ in the sacraments.” His faith informs his character acting as well. “The roles I get and am drawn to are characters that are challenged but have a good heart.

“I bring all of who I am,” he says.

“I bring an authenticity and genuineness to the role, and I accept people for who they are and try to understand them and be compassionate.”

Playing Jesus in The Chosen, Roumie says, “is the preeminent honor not only of my career, but of my life.”

However, in any role he brings the depth of his faith to his craft. “As an actor, I love being able to create. It is an opportunity to grow closer to the Divine, the Master Creator.”

jonathan roumie 32 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

ted melfi

Actor Octavia Spencer and writer/director Ted Melfi

NOT ONLY DOES FAITH give meaning and purpose to life as an artist, but it is also the one constant element. As Ted Melfi says: “Relationships, friends, projects, business, the 10,000 things, they come and go. The one thing I have that’s constant is my faith and my belief in God. It’s always a comfort to me in the hard times and the good times, and I can always lean on it.” For Melfi, a writer, director, and producer, character development provides the heart of any engaging story. “I think I am always searching for a character’s faith internally and, in some fashion, what drives them and what allows them to do what they do, what makes them rise higher than they are as humans,” he says.

Melfi directed The Starling, a Netflix release earlier this year. Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd portray a married couple who suffer intense hardship, and the film gently reveals how every person deals differently with grief.

As Jack (O’Dowd) seeks professional help, Lily (McCarthy) keeps busy with work and home. Every time she goes outside, a pesky starling attacks her to the point that she becomes obsessed with eliminating the perpetrator.

In a comedic way, the starling becomes the catalyst for Lily’s journey to acknowledge and confront the realities of life. Every character learns intrinsic value, even if the change is small. “And it’s the small change that means the most,” Melfi explains. “That’s the value we all have in God and God has for us. . . . We are all his children, and so we all have that inborn value, and that’s what I really love to find in the character and let the character discover their own value.”

THE DOCUMENTARIAN writer and producer of The Dating Project and Pray: The Patrick Peyton Story, Megan Harrington says: “The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, so that is the strength that sustains me.

The Eucharist is the foundation for everything.” Her story of Father Peyton, known as the “Hollywood Priest,” shows him wholly devoted to the Eucharist and Mary as he developed rosary crusades including the catchphrase “The family that prays together, stays together.” The film shows this man dedicated to bringing Christ to the culture and befriending many celebrities.

Documentarians seek the true story that lifts our spirits to see the good in the world or the harsh realities that need our attention. “My job is not to convert anybody,” says Harrington, “but in stories . . . even if God is not present [directly] . . . there is a truth and beauty . . . [we] are telling.” She codirected and coproduced her newest film, The House That Rob Built, a story about a women’s college basketball coach in Montana in the 1970s. The film says nothing about faith, but the sense of belonging provides for a spiritual experience. “There is something beautiful about that value that sports can do, but there’s no mention of faith; there doesn’t have to have mention for it to be there.” She says that faith “is the very essence of who I am, so I can’t separate it.”

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FAITH IS A FOUNDATION for many Hollywood professionals. Elisabeth Bentley, producer of A Hidden Life, a film about World War II conscientious objector Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, says: “It is a great consolation to know that I am not the final arbiter of the meaning of all this [life]. Faith augments a person’s sense of self. It gives one a more open perspective because it is the onus of the artist to think they have to have the final answer.”

Jägerstätter was a lifelong, devout Catholic farmer in rural Austria. When he was drafted into the army, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich and was sentenced to death. He was declared a martyr and blessed by the Catholic Church on October 26, 2007.

Bentley says, “The more truthfully we represent the human experience as on a path of redemption, the more true we are to ourselves.”

Though it took her more than a decade to get A Hidden Life made, she reflects on the experience this way: “Having a Catholic perspective and understanding broadens us because we see beauty, freedom, and truth in the here and now. . . . It gives us perspective, because the Catholic experience leaves more ranges of gray to the human story.”

FOR MANY CATHOLIC artists in Hollywood, their faith comes from the depths of who they are and gives life to characters, challenging all of us to reach for transcendence through everyday circumstances. Actor Michael Harney (Project Blue Book, Orange Is the New Black) says that the foundation for his craft is the belief that “every breath is a sacrament.

The unconditional love of Jesus, the complete humility of Jesus, includes everyone, and so you can say that after I do the technical things of learning lines and figuring it out . . .

I always come to a place of: Where is the heart of Christ in what I am doing?”

As he creates the character, even if it’s someone who acts without a conscience, he reflects: “Then it’s an opportunity to experience an individual without a conscience. Then it’s an opportunity for me to go in that lost place and have an organic experience what that might be like. So, that, in that way, it’s an act of compassion.”

In the popular Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, Michael Harney played Sam Healy, a counselor for inmates at the fictional Litchfield Penitentiary. He appeared in 67 episodes from 2013 to 2019.

michael harney 34 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

SEAN MCNAMARA: PHOTO COURTESY OF SISTER NANCY USSELMANN, FSP

elisabeth bentley

sean mcnamara

Sean McNamara, a Catholic producer, writer, and director, is flanked by two Daughters of St. Paul: the author of this article on the left and Sister Rose Pacatte on the right. The number of Catholics working in the film industry may be small, but they can have a huge impact on audiences.

SEAN MCNAMARA: PHOTO COURTESY OF SISTER NANCY USSELMANN, FSP

IS THERE FAITH IN HOLLYWOOD?

Most of the artists responded that they do not face any particular opposition for being Catholic in the industry.

Wahlberg says, “It’s never been an issue, and I still have a great connection to many other people in Hollywood who are Catholic and love the Lord.” As McNamara says, “That’s what has allowed me to survive in this business . . . just kind of being open to what everybody else says, but also let them know my opinion and what I think.”

Harrington suggests, “We need to talk about the things that bring us together and not the things that bring us apart.”

If your story is profoundly human, says Bentley, and it “resonates with something deeper, that’s what Hollywood is looking for.”

Hollywood is a place of searchers. It is the place where people of faith tell stories that resonate with the wider human experience. Though they may be few, as Catholics,

WITH 16 YEARS OF CATHOLIC education and Jesuit training along with a devout Irish Catholic mother, Sean McNamara feels his Catholicism is well embedded in him. Everything goes back, he says, “to love God above all and treat everyone as you want to be treated.” The producer, writer, and director of numerous teen television shows and films (That’s So Raven, Soul Surfer, The Miracle Season) says: “I have a sense of fairness on the set. I just try to talk to my actors and my crew, and it’s definitely not like Hollywood, or the version of what people think Hollywood is.

“My sets are really nice and quiet, and people can bring up their ideas and feel free to float ideas . . . and then we talk about it. It’s a really nice environment for expression.” Even though he does some films that have faith values, he tries to address the larger audience, because “I think good values apply to everybody. Catholics don’t like to be banged over the head by being preached to in a movie, but if you can insert it organically, I think it really works, and that’s what I try to do.”

His next film expresses these values as well. An Artist at War traces the lives of a Jewish couple, Joseph and Rebecca Bau, during World War II when they were helped by Oskar Schindler. They fell in love in a death camp, lost each other, survived Auschwitz, and found each other again. McNamara says: “The Catholic religion opens your heart to all people to listen to their stories, and we are all connected on some level. This is a definite departure from Soul Surfer, which is a Christian story, but now I’m finding this Jewish couple and telling their story.”

these artists see that faith informs every aspect of their lives—and especially their craft of filmmaking and television production—in real but subtle ways. They seek to tell stories that are profoundly human and do so with great depth coming from their own lived faith experience.

Melfi says: “I find that Jesus’ best work was his parables, and he told stories in parables. And that’s what great filmmaking does. Great filmmaking tells the story of the parables and gives you a message without you ever knowing you got a message.”

Sister Nancy Usselmann, FSP, is the director for the Pauline Center for Media Studies, located in Culver City, California. She has a bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Emmanuel College and a master’s degree in theology and the arts from Fuller Theological Seminary. Sister Nancy also gives media mindfulness workshops, presentations, and film retreats around the country to young people, seminarians, teachers, and media professionals.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 35

Mailbox Who was Bobby’s secret pen pal?

Story by John M. Floyd | Illustration by Jess Suttner

36 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

fiction

B

obby Hanson was 10 years old that summer, a small boy in a small town in the golden heart of the South. It was the 15th day of June, and he was playing alone in the side yard of his house, kicking a soccer ball through grass that he knew he should probably be mowing instead of running around in. Meanwhile, his mother sat on their back porch with a cell phone pressed to one ear and her laptop open in front of her.

For almost two years now, ever since Bobby’s father had died of a heart attack and Sherry Hanson had quit her job at the bank, she had managed what had eventually become a successful Internet business. Working from a home office was not only fun, she told Bobby; it was practical. She was always there when he arrived home from school, and during the summer she was there all day every day—even if she was mostly inside.

Bobby swerved left, cut right, and kicked the ball in a long, lopsided arc that ended between the trunks of two sweetgum trees. “Score!” he shouted, throwing up both hands. Then he stopped and looked around. No one had seen or heard him, for which he was grateful. But just before he ran to fetch the ball from his imaginary goal, Bobby’s gaze stopped on an unusual sight.

A hundred feet away, at the intersection of his front walk and the shady sidewalk that lined Allgood Street, stood the family’s mailbox, a standard black metal container with “Hanson” printed on the side and a movable red flag above the name. The odd thing was, the flag was only halfway up, slanted at a perfect 45-degree angle.

Bobby had never seen it like that before. Had his mom put out some mail for pickup and failed to raise the flag all the way? Had the mail carrier come early, picked up outgoing envelopes, and lowered it only halfway by accident? Curious, Bobby sprinted to the mailbox, pushed the flag down to its resting position, and looked inside.

The only thing in the mailbox was a folded sheet of white paper. Frowning, Bobby took it out, opened it, and read the six carefully printed words: “Trying this out. Check again tomorrow.” What in the world was that supposed to mean?

Bobby Hanson, not as practical-minded as his mother but every bit as impatient, thought no more about it.

That is, until the next day, when he was again playing outside—this time with his dad’s old golf clubs and a muchused white ball—and once more glanced at the mailbox.

Sure enough, the red flag was again at half-mast. What was the deal here?

When he ran across the yard to look inside, he found another sheet of paper. This time it said: “So far so good.

Keep checking.”

This was too strange. He started to show the note to StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 37

fiction his mother, but something made him hesitate. Instead, he tucked it into his shirt pocket beside the first one (his mom hadn’t noticed he was wearing yesterday’s grass-stained clothes again, which was probably just as well), pushed the flag down to its horizontal position, and continued his golf tournament.

T

he following morning he was again outdoors, and—after again seeing the slanted flag—started across the lawn toward the mailbox. But just then his mother marched out the front door with a handful of envelopes. Bobby watched her open the mailbox, glance inside, and then shove her envelopes in. She didn’t seem to notice the odd position of the flag. She just raised it to its upright, mail’s-ready-forpickup position and headed back to the house.

Bobby waited a minute, then went to the box and looked inside. There was the note on the bottom of the stack of stamped envelopes. Had his mother not seen it? He took the paper out and unfolded it, and it said simply, “Keep at it.”

The next day was Sunday—no mail—so Bobby checked the box on Monday morning. Again the flag was slanted at the halfway point. Wherever this crazy correspondence was coming from, it seemed to keep the same hours as the US Postal Service. Bobby pushed the flag down and took the paper out. This time it said, “By now you know this is just you and me, right?”

What? He read it again, looked all around, and thought about that for a while. Who and me? But there were no answers to be found, and no one to ask anyway, so he pocketed the note and hightailed it around the corner of the house to add some windows to the cardboard fort he was building against the back fence.

The next day, Tuesday, he got up early, wrote “Who are you?” on a slip of paper with a red-ink ballpoint pen—he loved to write with that pen—and then went to the box and placed the note inside. He started to raise the flag to 45 degrees but decided not to. But it worked anyway. An hour later he pushed aside the cardboard window of his fort, looked past the corner of the house, and saw what he’d expected: The flag was halfway up. When he jumped over the moat he’d dug around his fort (castles had moats, he figured, so why shouldn’t forts?), he dashed out to the mailbox to find that his note was indeed gone. In its place was another note, written in the usual black ink, saying (in response to the one he’d just sent, he supposed), “You’ll figure it out.”

B

obby did finally figure it out, but it took a while. For the rest of that month and into July, he and the mysterious writer swapped messages. No one ever interfered. Once, when Bobby was gone all morning to his friend Kevin’s house, the mail carrier came early and deposited about a pound of mail into the box, and Bobby’s mom carried it all into the house. But the note from Bobby’s correspondent was sitting in the mailbox when he finally got home, waiting for him with the red flag at the halfway position. Neither

38 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Mom nor the mailman had moved the note, which probably meant neither of them had even seen it. Which also meant they probably couldn’t see it. The secret writer had been correct: This was just between him and Bobby.

The flag was puzzling enough on its own. Bobby stayed in his room all one morning and watched the little red banner closely, wanting to see it move. It didn’t. But after he returned from a quick trip to the bathroom, he saw that it had moved halfway up and was waiting for him.

What was even weirder was that whoever was doing this seemed to know exactly what Bobby was doing each day, where he was going, even what he was thinking. Bobby fell into the practice of asking his pen pal carefully worded questions about things Bobby needed or wanted to know, and the Mailbox-to-Another-World consistently provided answers.

Well, not answers, really—just responses. And most were a little vague. Some of the early exchanges were:

“Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“Where are you?”

“Far far away.” (Bobby wondered if it was also in a galaxy a long time ago.)

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want to.”

“Will we ever meet?”

“Someday.”

And, little by little, from some of the more honest and detailed personal replies, the answer drew closer, and the truth eventually popped into his head. He knew who the message sender was. It was crazy—in fact, it was impossible—but it was true.

He was talking to his father.

Bobby sat in the grass beside the mailbox, holding the latest note with trembling fingers and listening to the pounding of his heart. It had to be. He couldn’t believe it—but it had to be. No one else but Robert Hanson would know the answers to some of these questions.

As time went on, Bobby had made more and more specific inquiries, about himself and his mother and their daily lives. One of them was: “Mom works too much—how can I make her smile?” The response was: “Remind her of the time her boss’s pants fell down at the bank.” Bobby had never heard about that, but he mentioned it anyway—and she burst into laughter. Another was: “Why didn’t we keep our old blue car?” Answer: “It used too much oil.” At one point, Bobby came right out and wrote, “What is your name?” The reply: “Look on the side of your mailbox.”

At last he accepted it, insane or not. Somehow, Bobby was exchanging messages with his father, his hero, the tall man with the kind heart and great smile who had dropped dead in his T-shirt and jeans one Saturday afternoon while mowing the grass when Bobby was barely 8 years old. Now the two of them, due to some kind of mind-blowing cosmic magic, were “talking” almost every day, through handwritten notes that apparently no one else could see.

fiction When this at last dawned on him and Bobby asked again why all this was happening (the how was something he didn’t even want to think too much about)—the answer was a simple “You’ll see.”

A

ll the way through early August, he and his father swapped messages. “What is it like there?” Bobby asked once. “Beautiful,” the note said the next day. “I miss you,” Bobby said; “I miss you too,” his father answered. They talked about incidents in Bobby’s day, his adventures in the woods behind the lot next door, his problems with one of his playmates, the new action figures his mom had bought him, his progress with the dam he was trying to build in the stream that bordered the backyard.

As always, no one else seemed to notice these exchanges.

Part of the magic, Bobby figured. On the occasions that his mother saw him printing his red-inked notes, Bobby just explained that he had a secret pen pal, and she paid it no real attention. His mom was too busy with her work these days to spend much time watching him anyway. Her online business was vitally important to them both. It was what paid the bills.

Many times, Bobby was tempted to take the notes to his mother, show them to her, tell her about this miracle, allow her to get in on the party. Why should only he feel this happiness? But he never did, for what he felt was an excellent reason: He didn’t think she’d be able to see the notes.

On one memorable day, the folded piece of paper said, “Tell her I loved her.” Bobby felt tears in his eyes then, not for the first time, and he did indeed tell her that. She just smiled and hugged him tight. “I know he did, baby. I loved him back, and he loved you.” They hugged for a long time, after which he saw her wiping her eyes, and Bobby wondered again if he should share the secret with her. But even if she were able to see the evidence, she probably wouldn’t believe him. Why should she? Nobody believed otherworldly stories without proof. And she already knew he had an overactive imagination.

The messages continued.

The next weeks and months passed quickly—too quickly—and Bobby spent a large part of them not at school but in the hospital or in his own bed. He never played outside anymore. In fact, he no longer played at all.

Lying in his bedroom at the front corner of the house one day, fighting his most recent infection and a bout of pneumonia, he snuck a glance through the curtains at the distant mailbox. Once again, the flag was where it was supposed to be: lying down, like him. His conversations with his dad were over.

And pretty soon everything was over.

O

ne summer day six months after Bobby died, his mother—functional but still desperately heartbroken— trudged out her front door to put a letter to her cousin in the mailbox. When she did, she saw something odd: The flag was halfway up. Puzzled, she pushed it down and looked inside the box, where she saw a folded piece of white paper.

On it was a happy-face drawing and the words “Trying this out. Check again tomorrow.”

They were printed in red ink.

John M. Floyd, a former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, is a prolific writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mississippi Noir, and the Saturday Evening Post.

John and his wife, Carolyn, live in Mississippi.

NEW FROM KYLE KRAMER

A

few days before school started, something happened that made Bobby almost forget about his supernatural correspondence. He’d been feeling weak and feverish for some time now, and his mother finally took him to the doctor.

After several days and several embarrassing and often painful medical tests, his mother and the doc had a long, solemn talk. Bobby overheard the words sickle cell anemia and hemoglobin SS, and though he didn’t understand what any of that meant, he understood the look on his mother’s face.

It scared him silly, and although she later tried tearfully to explain it to him, he also wanted to talk to his dad about it—but he couldn’t. Now, when he took a written note out to the mailbox, it remained undelivered, and every time he looked, the flag was sometimes straight up and sometimes horizontal. Never halfway.

Most of us fall short of fully living out our values— Kyle Kramer knows that struggle. In Making Room, he writes not only as an eco-spiritual expert but also as a fellow pilgrim on the journey toward simplicity. Find out: • why living simply can give you true satisfaction • how simplicity benefits you, the poor, and the earth • tangible ways to begin living more simply Buy your copy today at shop.franciscanmedia.org.

Use discount code SAMMakingRoom25 to receive 25% OFF!

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 39

By Daniel Imwalle

jazz, pop, and Christian. The “Road Trip: Folk” playlist, for example, features songs from some personal favorites of mine, such as Fleet Foxes and Iron & Wine, but many of the artists featured were new discoveries for me.

If you have little ones or small grandchildren, there are plenty of kid-friendly playlists and even lullabies to help bring the energy level down at bedtime. A playlist titled “Disney Sleep” transforms popular tunes from the Disney universe into sleep-inducing musical renditions.

Finally, Apple Music offers its own spin on curated lists with both in-house and usergenerated selections. One of many enjoyable mixes available on Apple Music is “Cooking Music,” put together by the curators at PMB Music. The description of the playlist reads: “Food is better when music is involved.

Mellow tunes, with a cozy and heartwarming ambience—because a silent kitchen isn’t one worth cooking in.” Most of the music included is jazzy bossa nova, acoustic, or reggae-infused, but all of it works well as part of the ambience of sizzling skillets, bubbling pots, and enticing aromas. For those looking for music to inspire prayer time and reflection, the playlist “Relaxing Religious Chants and Gregorian Hymns,” compiled by Deutsche Grammophon, features over two hours of tranquil choral music from various religious orders and church choirs.

ICONS

music

books

podcast tv & streaming

film

video

e-learning & online

LEFT TOP, MIDDLE, AND RIGHT: NETFLIX; RIGHT TOP AND BOTTOM: HBO MAX

s much as I love discovering a new artist or listening to an album start to finish, sometimes it’s nice to take a break and let someone else’s music picks take me on a sonic journey. Much like mixtapes back in the day, streaming playlists serve as a way to find new artists or rediscover old favorites, and they can fit just about any occasion. Some services curate playlists based on the type of activity you’re engaged in, from exercise to meditation to taking a road trip.

Take Spotify’s “Soundtrack Your Home,” for example (open.spotify.com/genre/ at-home-playlists). With many people housebound these days, it’s important to try to maximize the potential of a space that alternately serves as an office, gym, classroom, and home. “Coffee Table Jazz” and “Stress Relief ” are two playlists in this group that do well as background for work or study, while “Workout Beats” is a great playlist for burning off COVID calories. Some of the other options are more educational and include podcasts, such as “Family-Friendly Fun” and “Stay in the Know,” which features more news-related content.

Hop over to Amazon Music, and there is yet more to get immersed in. For those taking long car rides to vacation destinations, Amazon’s music experts have curated a number of road trip playlists that cover a wide range of genres, including country, folk,

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

A

MARTIN-DM/ISTOCK

Playlists for Work, Play, and Relaxation

By Christopher Heffron

Now showing on HBO Max

Summer Streaming

T

hough the light at the end of this long COVID tunnel grows bigger and brighter, we’re not quite there yet. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of docuseries available for streaming. Here are five to consider.

Now showing on Netflix

THE KEEPERS

O

ne of the greatest true-crime series in recent memory, The Keepers is, on the surface, about the 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnick, a teacher at a Catholic high school in Baltimore. But peel a layer back and director Ryan White’s true thesis is revealed: how lies, sexual abuse, cover-ups, and corruption surrounding the case linger to this day. At once engrossing and infuriating, The Keepers is a peerless plunge into unresolved crimes and the survivors who will not be silenced—as Sister Cathy was. TV-MA

PRETEND IT’S A CITY

S

arcastic and hilariously disaffected, Fran Lebowitz has made a career out of being in a bad mood. But under the guidance of director Martin Scorsese, she shines here. Pretend It’s a City is about the humorist and writer, sure, but it’s really about New York City, her hometown and playground. Lebowitz walks viewers through this ever-changing metropolis, showing how the relationship between New York and its residents is like a seasoned marriage: loving, deeply aggravating, and always real. TV-14

Q: INTO THE STORM

S

poiler alert: QAnon is a discredited, farright conspiracy theory whose followers believe Satan-worshipping pedophiles in Washington, DC, and Hollywood run a child sex-trafficking syndicate. Now brace yourself for director Cullen Hoback’s raucous look at how this dangerous movement got its start, how it disseminates misinformation, and how President Donald Trump became a deity to its supporters. Illuminating but far too raw for young viewers, Q: Into the Storm is above all terrifying because, while the group’s beliefs are pure fiction, their devotion to lies is all too real. TV-MA

&

LEFT TOP, MIDDLE, AND RIGHT: NETFLIX; RIGHT TOP AND BOTTOM: HBO MAX

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

MARTIN-DM/ISTOCK

CRIME SCENE: THE VANISHING AT THE CECIL HOTEL

O

n January 31, 2013, Vancouver native Elisa Lam disappeared at the historic Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Joe Berlinger’s eerie, hypnotic masterwork uncovers what happened to Lam in this famous—or infamous—LA landmark. While the central mystery is enough to keep viewers hooked throughout its four episodes, Crime Scene cuts even deeper by showing how mental illness, a haunted hotel, and a bruised city conspired against an imperiled tourist. TV-MA

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HAVE A FAVORITE CULTURE ITEM YOU WANT US TO REVIEW? Let us know about it: MagazineEditors@FranciscanMedia.org

ALLEN V. FARROW

N

ot for the faint of heart, Allen v. Farrow is worthwhile for its humane treatment of Dylan Farrow’s recovery journey after the sexual abuse she allegedly suffered as a child from her father, writer-director Woody Allen.

This four-part series can be brutal to watch, as Dylan and her mother, Mia Farrow, delicately guide viewers through the scandal that rocked their family, and their subsequent healing.

Some have cried foul that the series tilts too far to one side—and they’re right—but it’s still a powerful look at celebrity and the resiliency of the human spirit. TV-MA

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 41

CULTURE

By Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP

Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP

FAVORITE SUMMER

FILMS

The Way Way Back (2013) Moonrise Kingdom (2012) Troop Zero (2019) Do the Right Thing (1989) Independence Day (1996)

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WANT MORE? Visit our website: StAnthonyMessenger.org

O

ne day, Molly (Mila Kunis) knocks at the door of her mother, Deb (Glenn Close), and stepfather Chris (Stephen Root). She is in the midst of withdrawal from heroin— again. Deb refuses to let her in because she has stolen and lied so often over the years. She has been to rehab 14 times since she became addicted to oxycontin, following an accident when she was 17.

But Deb relents and takes her to rehab where, after three days, the doctor tells her about a monthly treatment called an opiate antagonist that will render her brain and body immune to getting high. It is not a cure-all but could be part of the road to sobriety. But Molly must be clean for a week or the treatment could kill her.

Deb—with love, hope, and some distrust—agrees to let her daughter stay with her and Chris so she can have four good days and then begin treatment. But she tells Chris, who has been through this many times before, that she doesn’t know if she even wants to love her daughter anymore.

During the four days, Molly gets to see her two children and her ex-husband, who asks her for painkillers. Deb, who left the family when Molly was young over issues with her former husband, feels guilty about her role in her daughter’s addiction. She lashes out at Chris, who is tired of the dysfunctional dynamic that appears every time Molly shows

42 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

up. To his credit, he remains supportive.

As the fourth day looms, Molly manipulates and convinces Deb to take a risk that could bring everything crashing down again.

Four Good Days, written by Eli Saslow, is adapted from his 2016 Washington Post article, “How’s Amanda?” The interactions between Deb and Molly are gritty, raw, and heartbreaking. Close, once again, delivers an award-worthy performance, and Kunis is outstanding as the junkie lying her way to another chance at health and healing.

Rodrigo García directs in a way that breaks your heart but gives hope as well. The film is for addicts and those who love them.

Not yet rated, R • Drug use, family dysfunction, lying, graphic withdrawal scenes.

WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT: WARNER/FRÉDÉRIC BATIER, SOMMERHAUS; THE PERFECT CANDIDATE: COURTESY OF MUSIC BOX FILMS

Sister Rose’s

FOUR GOOD DAYS

LEFT: COURTESY SISTER ROSE PACATTE, FSP/MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS; FOUR GOOD DAYS: INDIGENOUS MEDIA

Sister Rose is a Daughter of St. Paul and the founding director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies. She has been the award-winning film columnist for St. Anthony Messenger since 2003 and is the author of several books on Scripture and film, as well as media literacy education.

THE PERFECT CANDIDATE

M WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT

WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT: WARNER/FRÉDÉRIC BATIER, SOMMERHAUS; THE PERFECT CANDIDATE: COURTESY OF MUSIC BOX FILMS

LEFT: COURTESY SISTER ROSE PACATTE, FSP/MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS; FOUR GOOD DAYS: INDIGENOUS MEDIA

I

t is 1933 in Berlin, Germany. Nine-year-old Anna (Riva Krymalowski) and her older brother, Max (Marinus Hohmann), live a comfortable life with their nonobservant Jewish parents. Just before the election that the parents fear will lead to Hitler’s victory, Dorothea (Carla Juri) tells the children that their father, Arthur (Oliver Masucci), has gone to Prague but will meet them in Switzerland. Critical of Hitler and the Nazis, Arthur is a theater critic who needs to move his family to safety. Anna is allowed to take only one toy with her. She loves her pink rabbit but cannot make up her mind which toy to take.

Once in Switzerland and reunited with Arthur, the refugee family settles in a mountain village where the people speak a Swiss-German dialect. The family adapts to the new language and customs. They learn from a family friend that Nazis came soon after they fled Berlin and emptied the house of all their possessions. When money is short, Arthur and Dorothea go to Paris to seek work. Arthur returns for the children while Dorothea prepares a tiny apartment for them. They learn another language and, for the first time, encounter anti-Semitism.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is based on part one of the best-selling 1974 memoir written by Judith Kerr. Krymalowski is wonderful in her first feature role.

The filmmakers let us see and feel the story of this political refugee family through the character of Anna. In small ways that go right to the heart, the film tells the story of a child’s grief, loss, and fear during the years leading up to the Holocaust.

Not yet rated • Mature themes, talk of suicide, anti-Semitism, peril.

Catholic News Service Media Review Office gives these ratings.

A-1 General patronage

A-2 Adults and adolescents

A-3 Adults

L Limited adult audience

O Morally offensive

aryam (Mila Al Zahrani) is a surgeon who works at a clinic outside of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Every day she must park her car and cross the unfinished road in front of the clinic to get to work. She applies for a grant to complete the work, but it is denied.

She leaves for a medical conference in Dubai, but she isn’t allowed to board the flight because her travel permit is not accessible online. She must find a male relative to vouch for her. Her widowed musician father is on tour and won’t answer the phone because his daughters cause him anxiety.

Maryam approaches a male cousin who thinks she is there to run for town council. It will be difficult, he tells her, and he signs the application. She explains why she is there, but he does not feel he can help her with her travel issue and hands her the candidate application.

Maryam returns home to tell her sisters Selma (Dae Al Hilali) and Sara (Nora Al Awad) that she is running for office in order to get the road fixed.

Together they plan a campaign, trying to avoid the rules and cultural mores that govern women’s behavior.

Directed and cowritten by Haifaa Al-Mansour, the story deals with bias against women but also celebrates their strength as Maryam, her coworkers, and sisters take on challenges to improve the lives of the people.

Not yet rated, PG • No objectionable content.

Source: USCCB.org/movies

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 43

POINTSOFVIEW | FAITH and FAMILY

By Susan Hines-Brigger

End of an Era

Susan has worked at St. Anthony Messenger for 26 years and is an executive editor. She and her husband, Mark, are the proud parents of four kids—Maddie, Alex, Riley, and Kacey. Aside from her family, her loves are Disney, traveling, and sports.

Susan welcomes your comments and suggestions!

E-MAIL: CatholicFamily@ FranciscanMedia.org MAIL: Faith and Family 28 W. Liberty St. Cincinnati, OH 45202

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WANT MORE? VISIT: FranciscanMedia.org/ faith-and-family

44 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

TOP: SAM ARCHIVES; PETE & REPEAT: TOM GREENE

Susan Hines-Brigger

n life there are so few things that are started with Tom’s hand-drawn and handdefinite. So it’s nice when you are blessed painted illustration, which he would drop off with something that is. That’s what it was like at our office every month. working with Tom Greene, the illustrator for And to think that it all started with a tree.

Pete and Repeat. Ever since I took over this In the second grade, Tom received recognicolumn 20 years ago, I could always count on tion for a pencil drawing of a tree that he a phone call from Tom to discuss that month’s created. From then on, he began to create art illustration. and seek to make it his life. Tom attended Each month, I would painstakingly creCarnegie Mellon University, where he studied ate the four-line poem that accompanied stage design. He then attended the University the cartoon. of Cincinnati, Writing those where he met four lines—with Shirley. The a very distinct couple married rhyme scheme in 1965. created well Tom thrived before my time— as a commercial often proved artist, using his more challenging domestic life, than writing my wife, children, actual column. cats, and dogs as Eventually, the subjects for many first part of the illustrations. He rhyme disapbecame the art peared. director for the Sometimes department store the theme Tom Mabley & Carew, came up with then served as was associated an illustrator in with what I had many commerwritten. Most cial art studios times, though, throughout he would suggest Cincinnati. something that The last 17 tied into a certain years of his season, event, or corporate career holiday. were spent teachNo matter ing illustration Tom Greene sits at his drawing desk, where he created more than 500 what he chose, and design at Pete and Repeat cartoons for over 40 years. though, we the Art Institute always knew that he would come through. of Cincinnati. Tom’s freelance work over the Over the years, he introduced us to Pete’s paryears has included partnerships with not only ents, his sister, numerous friends, and his dog, this magazine, but also Yankee Magazine, Scruffy. Those characters were based on Tom’s Focus on the Family, Standard Publishing, own family—his wife, Shirley, and their three Campbell’s Soup, and many others. kids—as well as friends. Shirley says the famThat is why, when Tom announced his ily would often discuss the drawings around retirement earlier this year, it hurt so much. the dinner table.

Suddenly, we were going to be closing the Based on Tom’s illustration, our art direcchapter on a golden era—an era that has tor would then make the subtle changes that brought joy to so many over the years. All have stumped readers for years. But it all thanks to Tom Greene.

TOP LEFT: MC KOZUSKO/SAM; MIDDLE: COURTESY GREENE FAMILY ARCHIVES

I

FAITH and FAMILY

THE LONG HISTORY OF PETE

JANUARY 1974

JUNE 1987

AUGUST 2007

OCTOBER 2018

“I

do this first before reading anything!”

“I’ve been enjoying this since I was a child (over 50 years ago).”

“I know it’s for kids (and I was first introduced to it as a kid!), but I enjoy the brief mental challenge.”

“I tear this out and send to my prison pen pal.”

“I’m guessing it was designed for kids, but we’re all called to be kids at heart. And I like it as a way to keep me mentally sharp.”

When we recently asked our readers what they thought of Pete and Repeat, these are just some of the many responses we got. Their responses support what we’ve always known from our surveys—and our own feelings about the column.

Pete is loved.

Pete has been around for a long time—since the late 1950s. According to the book Pete and Repeat: Can You Spot the Differences?, the editors of St. Anthony Messenger were inspired by a German Franciscan magazine whose title is lost from memory. The art originally came from that magazine. The editor at that time, Victor Drees, OFM, his assistant, Marie Frohmiller, and young assistant editor Mary Lynne Phillips came up with Pete’s English-language rhyme scheme—a new verse for each month, followed by a standard rhyming challenge. The task of seeing Pete from beginning to end has gone through a few hands—and a few changes, such as being produced digitally. Still, the basic format has remained—and will continue in our next issue with a different artist and some interesting changes. Stay tuned!

TOP: SAM ARCHIVES; PETE & REPEAT: TOM GREENE

These scenes may seem alike to you, But there are changes in the two.

So look and see if you can name Eight ways in which they’re not the same.

(Answers below)

GET THE FUN FOR BOOK ALL AGES! Go online to order: Shop.FranciscanMedia.org For ONLY $3.99 Use Code: SAMPETE ANSWERS to PETE & REPEAT: 1) There is no longer a collar on Pete’s shirt. 2) Sis’ headband is wider. 3) The hill is higher. 4) A stream from the green firework is missing.

5) Sis’ friend is now wearing short sleeves. 6) Pete’s sleeve is longer. 7) The loop on the left side of the blue bow is larger. 8) The hair in Pete’s cowlick is thicker.

TOP LEFT: MC KOZUSKO/SAM; MIDDLE: COURTESY GREENE FAMILY ARCHIVES

PETE&REPEAT

LET US PRAY

reflect | pray | act

By Deacon Art Miller

Daddy’s Home

Deacon Art Miller

n old tune by Shep and the Limelites brought me back to my teenage years as I pulled into my driveway. I sat and listened to the soulful verses: “You’re my love, you’re my angel, you’re the girl of my dreams. I’d like to thank you for waiting patiently. Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home to stay.” I sat for a moment with my eyes closed, captured by the music.

It was a quiet Friday afternoon in the summertime; a long and much-needed weekend welcomed me. I gathered my papers and briefcase while humming the tune “Daddy’s Home.” I walked into the warm home that my wife, Sandy, and I had built just a few years earlier. We were a young family: three children, a dog named Snoopy, and nice neighbors in a neighborhood that we adored.

As I entered, I heard Sandy at the kitchen sink creating something special for dinner.

After my hearty hello, she smiled. Looking over her shoulder, with a noticeable exhale, she said, “I don’t like hitting you with this when you just get home, but your daughter tore up that old baseball card of yours. The one your father gave you.”

46 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Alarm bells went off.

“She’s upstairs in her room,” Sandy added.

“Please don’t overwhelm her.”

The idea of a restful summer evening shriveled into dust as my anger blossomed.

I felt an uneasiness in my stomach, as if someone had just punched me. The great joy I felt when I walked into the house instantly became great anger. I was furious, disappointed, and frustrated. It wasn’t just some old baseball card that my daughter, Nikki, had torn up. It was a Jackie Robinson baseball card. My father and I didn’t have a great relationship when I was young. One of the few topics we were able to talk about was the old Negro League baseball and the great players who never got a chance to play in the majors.

I was angry.

FATHER AND CHILD

That anger was fueled by more than just the destruction of a baseball card; it was that my daughter destroyed something I specifically told her to never touch. In some deep and hidden place, I was also reminded of the troubled relationship I had with my father. I

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WANT MORE? Check out our daily online prayer resource, Pause+Pray: FranciscanMedia.org/ pausepray

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TOP LEFT: SESHU PHOTOGRAPHY; TOP RIGHT: PIQSELS

Deacon Art Miller was ordained in the Archdiocese of Hartford in 2004. He was arrested during the summer of 1963 as he sat in peaceful protest over segregation. He was 10 years old when his schoolmate Emmett Till, 14, was murdered in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman—an incident that energized the nascent civil rights movement. His book, The Journey to Chatham (AuthorHouse), details the events seen through the eyes of Till’s friends.

stormed up the stairs. With each thunderous step, I drew closer and closer to Nikki’s room. When I got there, I could hear her muffled sobs through the closed door. She was afraid because Daddy was home, and he was angry.

I opened her bedroom door. I heard Nikki’s sobs and watched the blankets that covered her move up and down with each breath. She was afraid.

Undeterred, I crossed her bedroom and threw the blankets off of her. I looked down at my little girl. Her eyes, once a beautiful brown, were swollen and red from crying.

“Daddy, I’m so very sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Through hiccups and tears, Nikki’s voice pleaded with me to not yell at her.

I looked down at my little 8-yearold girl. I was struck by a love that brought me back to the many moments when I needed forgiveness—the times my thoughtlessness brought about hurt and harm. My heart melted, and my anger and disappointment evaporated.

I swept my daughter up in my arms. I held her close as her tears dampened the collar of my shirt. I could feel her frightened body shake against my chest.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.”

I spoke the words that crashed against my anger with a force that was irrefutably the love of God: “Darling, don’t you know that there is nothing you can do that can stop me from loving you?”

Her little arms encircled my neck.

Her sobs eased. A silence extinguished any words of lingering anger I might have said. Father and child were in an embrace of forgiveness and love.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

Many years have passed since I held my little girl on that Friday evening.

There have been soccer games, graduations, marriages, and children born.

There have been moments of great anger. There have also been moments of deep joy, love, grace, and blessings.

No matter the time and space, I am a father who has learned that the most precious thing I could possibly own is not a thing. It is that remarkable moment when I came to realize what St. Paul said in his first letter: There is nothing that can overcome love.

Love has a twin. It’s called forgiveness.

A SPIRIT UNBOUND Lord, give me the grace to uncover and unbind my spirit, whose very essence relies on your love.

When facing earthly storms, grant that I do not miss the intricate patterns that comprise your boundless creation.

Give me grace that I might stop and dwell in your presence.

Amen.

PRAYERFUL QUESTIONING THE RULES There will always be moments when we are overtaken by affronts to our authority, our dignity, our status, or our station.

All of this is a part of our cultural bindings. Like the Pharisees of old, we concern ourselves more about the rules than the love that might have created the rules. We forget that when love is lost, corruption takes its place.

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TOP LEFT: SESHU PHOTOGRAPHY; TOP RIGHT: PIQSELS

TIPS1

Consider the times when you might have defended a rule without embracing the love that underpinned the rule. Or worse—when you did not question why the rule existed but followed it blindly.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | June/July 2021 • 47

reflection Live in the sunshine.

Swim in the sea.

Drink in the wild air.

PHOTO CREDIT MARTIN PRESCOTT/ISTOCK HERE

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

48 • June/July 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

reflect + pray + act Reflect Francis of Assisi was born into privilege and gave it up to embrace simplicity and poverty. In this era of opulence, could you do the same?

Pray Dear God, your servant, St. Francis, showed us that material wealth is immaterial: We cannot carry it with us on the journey.

Show us how to give to those in need, to be loving to those who feel unloved, and to welcome those who feel neglected, just as Francis did.

Amen.

Act A seminal moment in St. Francis’ life was when he embraced the leper outside the walls of Assisi. Who are the lepers in our society today? How can we embrace those on the periphery? ..................................................................................

Pause+Pray is a free, daily e-mail. To see more and to subscribe, please visit:

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