St. Anthony Messenger October 2018

Sharing the spirit of St. Francis with the world V O L . 1 2 6 / N O . 5 • OCTOBER 2018

IN THIS ISSUE:

Father Pat answers your questions in “Ask a Franciscan” PAGES 10-11

OSCAR ROMERO

PASTOR, PEACEMAKER, SAINT POPE PAUL VI: A SAINT FOR MODERN TIMES

OCTOBER 2018 • $4.99 StAnthonyMessenger.org

MY JOURNEY TO BECOMING A FRIAR MILWAUKEE’S CAPUCHIN FRANCISCAN SERVICES

H OW TO SHARE & LIVE THE FAITH WITH OTHERS ◆ BUILDING THE BENEDICT OPTION Leah Libresco

A

combination spiritual memoir and practical handbook for Christians who want to build communities of prayer, socialization, and evangelization in the places where they live and work. Offers many good ideas and encouragement to make more room in one's life for others, and the joy that brings to all.

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"Leah is the den mother of the Benedict Option. This book will awaken to one's own gifts for hospitality and community-building."

— Rod Dreher, Author, The Benedict Option "Brilliantly offers us an original and exciting Benedict-tinged 'option' full of joy—one that works wherever one is planted."

— Elizabeth Scalia, Author, Strange Gods

◆ THE EVANGELIZING PARISH Cardinal Francis Arinze

A

highly respected Cardinal shows how the local Catholic parish in any town has tremendous potential to evangelize its surrounding community. Revealing the key roles both priests and laity have, this is a spiritually rich and practical guide for all parish members to better live and spread the Gospel.

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"Beautifully written, eminently practical reflection on enriching the evangelical spirit of the parish and extending its missionary outreach.”

—Most Reverend Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia “Offers the worldwide Church an important reflection on how the New Evangelization can ignite the spirit of mission in our parishes."

— George Weigel, Author, The Fragility of Order

◆ THE CATHOLIC ALL-YEAR COMPANION Kendra Tierney

I

f you’re wondering how to bring the rich traditions of the Church's liturgical year into your home and family, this is the book for you! A popular Catholic blogger and mother of many shares how her family incorporates traditional Catholic practices into today's family life throughout the Church year. Full of stories, decorations, activities, and foods to help celebrate the Catholic faith with your family.

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"If this book can help someone like me live out the liturgical year, it can help anyone."

-- Jennifer Fulwiler, Author, One Beautiful Dream “Kendra shares her vast experiences of celebrating the faith at home. Your children will love learning about saints, feast days and Church seasons with prayers, parties and special meals!”

—Michele Faehnle, Co-Author, Divine Mercy for Moms

www.ignatius.com P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522

(800) 651-1531

VOL. 126 NO. 5

OCTOBER

2018

COVER STORY

34 Oscar Romero: Pastor, Peacemaker, Saint Story and photography by Brother Octavio Duran, OFM

Two close friends of this new Latin American saint have a conversation about his life and love for the Salvadoran people.

14 A Ministry of Presence

By Colleen Jurkiewicz

People in need in Milwaukee come to Capuchin Community Services for the food, but they return for the fellowship.

18 The Church as Mother

By Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has encouraged Catholics to look to the Church as a source of warmth and spiritual nurturing.

20 The Marrow of the Gospel

By Richard Rohr, OFM

For St. Francis, the heart of Franciscan spirituality is found deep within the Gospel.

ABOVE: Every March 24, thousands of Salvadorans honor Romero on the anniversary of his death by carrying posters and flowers, singing, and playing clips of his homilies.

26 Becoming a Friar

By Richard Goodin, OFM

Many people—still living or long dead—guided me to the Franciscans. This is my vocation story.

40 St. Paul VI: Bridge Builder

By Mark P. Shea

A quiet leader, Pope Paul VI guided the Church through the sweeping and controversial reforms of the Second Vatican Council during turbulent times.

46 Nature’s Cathedrals

By Barbara Hughes

Faced with the demands of the world around us, St. Francis led the way to our finding peace in nature.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 1

VOL. 126 NO. 5

“Servants of God must always apply themselves to prayer or some good work.”

2018 OCTOBER

—St. Francis of Assisi

10 SPIRIT OF ST. FRANCIS 10 Ask a Franciscan

Why Gluten-Free Hosts?

54 POINTS OF VIEW 5

Your Voice

Letters from Readers

12 Franciscan World

24 At Home on Earth

12 St. Anthony Stories

32 Editorial

13 Followers of St. Francis

54 Faith & Family

OFM Merger Moves Ahead

Time to Reconnect

St. Anthony—Always Listening

Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA

#HeToo

48 MEDIA MATTERS

55

48 Reel Time

51 Audio File

50 Channel Surfing

52 Bookshelf

Crazy Rich Asians

The Circus

‘It’s Time, Holy Father’

Jack White | Boarding House Reach

Miracle in Shreveport

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE 4 6 51 56

Dear Reader Church in the News Pete & Repeat In the Kitchen StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 3

dear reader

ST. ANTHONY

MESSENGER

Brother Quinn

PUBLISHER

Daniel Kroger, OFM

S

preading the Gospel in the spirit of St. Francis can be exhausting. Fulfilling? Without question. Stressful? At times, yes. Fortunately, we at Franciscan Media have a remedy for our daily anxieties in the form of a 55-pound malamute mix named Quinn. He’s the trusted companion of St. Anthony Messenger’s art director, Mary Catherine Kozusko, but on Wednesdays and Fridays, when Quinn joins us in the office, he belongs to the company. And we love him.

Whip-smart, somewhat mischievous, but with a heart of pure gold, Quinn has become an important factor in our workweek. When he visits us in our individual offices throughout the day, he reminds us to breathe, to step away from our computers for a moment, and, if we’re so inclined, to give him treats. He’s become our therapy dog. Though he’ll never know it, Brother Quinn reminds us of an important component of the Franciscan charism: that all of life should be celebrated—maybe even spoiled.

Quinn is the Wolf of Gubbio legend in reverse: He’s tamed us, really. Too often we two-legged creatures are ill-tempered, even destructive. With simply his presence, Quinn reminds us to be grateful and grace-filled. Somewhere, St. Francis is smiling.

PRESIDENT

Kelly McCracken EXECUTIVE EDITORS

Christopher Heffron Susan Hines-Brigger

FRANCISCAN EDITOR

Pat McCloskey, OFM ART DIRECTOR

Mary Catherine Kozusko MANAGING EDITOR

Daniel Imwalle

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Jessica Coors, Design Erika Glover, Editorial Christopher Heffron, Executive Editor

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BROTHER OCTAVIO DURAN, OFM

RICHARD GOODIN, OFM

COLLEEN JURKIEWICZ

Oscar Romero

Becoming a Friar

PAGE 14

PAGE 34

PAGE 26

writer & photographer Octavio Duran, OFM, met Oscar Romero when Duran was a 21-year-old seminarian. He was known as Romero’s “unofficial photographer” for the last two years of the archbishop’s life. Duran says his camera “allowed me to better know this friend, pastor, and prophet.”

writer

Richard Goodin, OFM, is the director of vocations for the St. John the Baptist Province in Cincinnati, Ohio. Last April, he was featured in a nationally broadcast video produced by NBC Left Field, where he talked about his own vocation. You can learn more about his efforts at BecomeaFriar.org.

4 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

writer

A Ministry of Presence

Colleen Jurkiewicz writes for the Milwaukee Catholic Herald, the newspaper of the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

She has a degree in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and her work has appeared in regional and national publications. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two children.

ST. ANTHONY MESSENGER (ISSN #0036276X) (U.S.P.S. PUBLICATION #007956 CANADA PUBLICATION #PM40036350) Volume 126, Number 5, is published monthly 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. Periodicals postage paid at Cincinnati, Ohio, and additional entry offices. US POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: St. Anthony Messenger, PO Box 189, Congers, NY 109200189. CANADA RETURN ADDRESS: c/o AIM, 7289 Torbram Rd., Mississauga, ON, Canada L4T 1G8.

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POINTSOFVIEW | YOUR VOICE Messenger a Monthly Blessing I thoroughly enjoy every issue of St. Anthony Messenger and look forward to receiving it each month. Each issue brings new insight, inspiration, and information. The August issue is one that I especially enjoyed for its substance and style.

“Jesus, the Prophet,” by Father Roger Karban, was excellent. I was raised in a religiously divided home, and my Serbian Orthodox roots emphasized Jesus in his humanity whereas my Catholic roots were more focused on his divinity. After reading the article, I was struck by the simplicity and profundity of the message. Are we to live lives of being like Christ or worshipping him? In my mind and soul, they are one and the same.

Only by being like Christ, by being compassionate, empathetic, and kind, can we truly worship Jesus, both as prophet and as God. Secondly, I appreciated Christopher Heffron’s eloquent tribute paid to Anthony Bourdain in his “Channel Surfing” column.

He truly was a man who, under that cool exterior, had a warm and open soul to people of all lands. He was adaptable to situations, expressive, and genuinely engaged with how food brought people together. The final paragraph brought a smile and a tear to me. He would have dismissed such praise, but in his heart, I know he would be very pleased and proud of such a loving farewell. May he rest in eternal peace and God’s mercy.

Milka Stanojevich Chicago, Illinois

Scripture and the Historical Jesus Father Roger Karban’s article from the August issue, “Jesus, the Prophet,” was very interesting, but it contains some statements that are dead wrong and some statements of questionable validity. For example, he states, “We have absolutely nothing written by anyone who actually experienced the historical Jesus.”

Matthew, Peter, James, John, and Jude were apostles of the historical Jesus. Their epistles are a part of our sacred writings and were produced within decades of the Resurrection.

Regarding Peter’s response to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Father Karban asserts that it is “a postResurrection statement of faith read back into the Gospel. If Jesus hadn’t yet risen from the

dead, no one would, or could, have come to that conclusion.” This is questionable. Peter— after witnessing Jesus raising people from the dead, instantly curing leprosy and blindness, the Transfiguration, and other miracles— could logically conclude that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. Daniel F. Healy Seattle, Washington

In Defense of Ranching I’m writing in regard to Sister Rose Pacatte’s “Reel Time” column from the August issue of St. Anthony Messenger. I take exception to the inclusion of the review of the documentary Eating Animals. I’m sure the magazine staff enjoy steak and hamburger as much as anyone does.

I have been in the cattle-raising business all of my life, coming from a long line of ranchers. It would not behoove us to raise animals the way the documentary claims we do. As ranchers in northern Nevada, we have grazing rights on public land, where our cattle graze on natural feed, with water in troughs or from springs. We do this through the summer months. During the winter, we feed them grass and alfalfa hay. When we sell our steers to cattle buyers, they do go to feedlots, which are crowded. However, it is in open air and certainly not the way the documentary portrayed it. I hope you understand that these animals are raised for human consumption and are a real contribution to our society.

Lorraine Sestanovich Battle Mountain, Nevada

Thank You, Rabbi I was delighted to read Rabbi David Osachy’s letter in the “Your Voice” column from the July issue (“Jewish Wedding Customs”). His letter was a beautiful, fuller explanation of rabbinic law. If we Catholics were more educated about other religions, we would realize that we are more united than separated.

As a devout cradle Catholic, I love the Jewish religion and always remember our beloved Savior was a devout Jew. I console myself that the Bible says, in the end of days, we will be one flock with one shepherd. I love your magazine.

Betsy Ueber Fort Wayne, Indiana

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 5

church IN THE NEWS

people | events | trends

By Susan Hines-Br ig ger

FORMER NUNCIO ACCUSES POPE, CHURCH OFFICIALS OF COVER-UP

n a letter published early August 26, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States, accused Church officials—including Pope Francis— of failing to act on accusations of abuse of conscience and power by now-Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, reported Catholic News Service (CNS). Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal McCarrick from the College of Cardinals on July 28.

Archbishop Viganò served as the Holy See’s chief diplomat in the United States from 2011 to 2016. He said that he felt compelled to write the letter regarding his knowledge of then-Cardinal McCarrick’s misdeeds because “corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy.”

In the letter, the archbishop names nearly a dozen former and current Vatican officials who he claims were aware of the accusations. He also criticizes Pope Francis for not taking action against Cardinal McCarrick after he says he told the pope of the allegations in 2013.

Archbishop Viganò writes that Pope Benedict XVI had placed unannounced sanctions on Cardinal McCarrick, barring him from celebrating Mass publicly or traveling, and ordering him to a life of prayer and penance. No such sanctions, which normally are made public, were announced by the Vatican at the time, however. The sanctions, he claims, had been lifted by Pope Francis until recently.

“Pope Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church and for bishops and faithful to act with parrhesia [boldness of speech],” writes Archbishop Viganò. “The faithful throughout the world also demand this of him in an exemplary manner. . . . Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.”

6 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Archbishop Viganò himself has been accused of suppressing an investigation into alleged homosexual activity committed by retired Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

In a 2014 memo to St. Paul-Minneapolis Auxiliary Bishop Lee A. Piche, Father Dan Griffith, a former delegate for Safe Environment for the archdiocese, said Cardinal Viganò’s call to end the investigation against Archbishop Nienstedt and to destroy a piece of evidence amounted to “a good oldfashioned cover-up to preserve power and avoid scandal.”

On the return flight from Ireland on August 26, Pope Francis briefly addressed the report, saying: “I read the statement this morning and, sincerely, I must say this to you and anyone interested: Read that statement attentively and make your own judgment. I think the statement speaks for itself, and you have a sufficient journalistic ability to make a conclusion.”

His lack of comment, the pope said, was “an act of faith” in people reading the document. “Maybe when a bit of time has passed, I’ll talk about it,” he said.

One day after the letter was published, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was “eager for an audience” with Pope Francis to gain his support for the bishops’ plan to respond to the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The cardinal reiterated his call for an apostolic visitation, working with a national lay commission granted independent authority, to investigate the “many questions surrounding Archbishop McCarrick.

“The questions raised deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence. Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusation, and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past,” said the cardinal.

CNS PHOTOS, TOP: CHAZ MUTH; RIGHT: JACLYN LIPPELMANN, CATHOLIC STANDARD

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CNS PHOTOS, LEFT TO RIGHT: GREGORY A. SHEMITZ; DIANNE TOWALSKI, COURTESY OF CATHOLIC SPIRIT (2); PAUL HARING

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò (left) accused Pope Francis and others of covering up abuse by Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick. Archbishop Viganò has been accused of suppressing an investigation of activities by retired Archbishop John C. Nienstedt (second from left). The investigation eventually led to the resignation of both Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee A. Piche (third from left).

PENNSYLVANIA GRAND JURY REPORT UNVEILS HISTORY OF ABUSE

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CNS PHOTOS, TOP: CHAZ MUTH; RIGHT: JACLYN LIPPELMANN, CATHOLIC STANDARD

CNS PHOTOS, LEFT TO RIGHT: GREGORY A. SHEMITZ; DIANNE TOWALSKI, COURTESY OF CATHOLIC SPIRIT (2); PAUL HARING

Pittsburgh resident Jim VanSickle (left) is one of many victims of clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania.

ollowing the release of the grand jury report in Pennsylvania that documented decades of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Vatican and Church officials expressed outrage and sorrow.

The 900-page report by a Pennsylvania grand jury of 23 people describes graphic accounts of more than 1,000 people who say they were abused by over 300 priests in the Catholic dioceses of Pittsburgh, Harrisburg,

Allentown, Scranton, Greensburg, and Erie.

During the August 14 news conference for the release, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said that while most of the crimes are too old to be prosecuted, “for many of the victims, this report is justice.

“We’re going to shine a light,” Shapiro added. “We can tell our citizens what happened.”

According to the report, “despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the Church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades, monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.”

The same day, Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh said: “The Diocese of Pittsburgh today is not the Church that is described in the grand jury report. It has not been for a long time. Over the course of the last 30 years, we have made significant changes to how we prevent abuse and report allegations.”

Greg Burke, head of the Vatican press office, released a written statement addressing the grand jury’s report, saying: “Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith. The Church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur.”

Boston Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, who heads the Pontifical Academy for the Protection of Minors, released a statement on August 16 saying that something must be done right away.

“The clock is ticking for all of us in Church leadership, [and] Catholics have lost patience with us and civil society has lost confidence in us,” he said. “But I am not without hope and do not succumb to despondent acceptance that our failures cannot be corrected.”

Cardinal O’Malley has recently faced criticism over his failure to respond to a letter from Father Boniface Ramsey, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church Yorkville in New York City, regarding the actions of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Cardinal O’Malley has said he takes full responsibility for the office procedure that resulted in his not seeing the letter.

POPE: DEATH PENALTY IS ‘INADMISSIBLE’

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n early August, Pope Francis announced a change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church that asserts that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” reported CNS. The new wording strengthens language St. John Paul II updated in 1997, expressing skepticism about the need to use the death penalty in the modern world.

Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said, “The new text . . . affirms that ending the life of a criminal as punishment for a crime is inadmissible because it attacks the dignity of the person, a dignity that is not lost even after having committed the most serious crimes.”

WORLD YOUTH DAY CROSS TOURS UNITED STATES

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he official World Youth Day Cross and Marian Icon made a five-city tour across the United States this past August, marking the 25th anniversary of the first and only World Youth Day (WYD) in the United States (Denver, Colorado, in August 1993). As part of the tour, the symbols traveled to Chicago, Miami, Youth carry the WYD Houston, Washington, cross in Washington, DC. DC, and Los Angeles.

Each of the stops featured special events and liturgical celebrations to commemorate the journey. The WYD Cross and Marian Icon then traveled to Panama, where they will tour that country in advance of the next international WYD with Pope Francis, which is being held there in January 2019.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 7

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church IN THE NEWS

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people | events | trends

POPE ATTENDS WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES IN IRELAND

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mid news reports of clergy sex abuse, Pope Francis traveled to Ireland August 24–26 to take part in the World Meeting of Families, reported CNS. The theme for the gathering, which is held every three years, was “The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World.”

Welcoming Pope Francis to Dublin Castle, Leo Varadkar, the 39-year-old prime minister, acknowledged how much the Catholic Church has done over the centuries for the people of Ireland. He also, however, pointed out ways in which the Church has failed people, often the most vulnerable.

“In place of Christian charity, forgiveness, and compassion, far too often there was judgment, severity, and cruelty, in particular toward women and children and those on the margins,” he said, citing the Magdalene laundries—where women considered promiscuous were forced to work—illegal adoptions arranged for children of unwed mothers without their consent, and the sexual abuse of children by clergy.

Afterward, the pope stated: “With regard to the most vulnerable, I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education. . . . The failure of ecclesiastical authorities—bishops, religious superiors, priests, and others— adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments.”

He added that he hoped “the gravity of the abuse scandals, which have cast light on the failings of many, will serve to emphasize the importance of the protection of minors and vulnerable adults on the part of society as a whole.”

Later that day, the pope met with eight survivors of clergy sex abuse for about 90 minutes. Afterward, two of the survivors said in a statement that “Pope Francis condemned corruption and cover-up within the Church as caca—literally filth as one sees in a toilet, his translator clarified.”

In the evening, over 80,000 people gathered for the

Festival of Families in Croke Park Stadium. The two-hour celebration featured performers such as the Irish dance troupe Riverdance, The Priests—a classical Irish trio of priests—Irish country singer Nathan Carter, and tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Families from India, Canada, Iraq, Ireland, and Burkina Faso stood onstage near the pope while prerecorded video versions of their testimonies played.

The pope then spoke to those in attendance, telling them: “You, dear families, are the vast majority of the people of God. What would the Church look like without you? A Church of statues, a Church of lone individuals. It was to help us recognize the beauty and importance of the family, with its lights and shadows, that the exhortation ‘Amoris Laetitia’ on the joy of love was written, and that I wanted the theme of this World Meeting of Families to be ‘The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World.’”

The following day, Pope Francis visited the Shrine of Knock. After praying before a statue of Our Lady of Knock, the pope told those gathered that he prayed for “all the survivors of abuse committed by members of the Church in Ireland. None of us can fail to be moved by the stories of young people who suffered abuse, were robbed of their innocence, were separated from their mothers, and were left scarred by painful memories. This open wound challenges us to be firm and decisive in the pursuit of truth and justice.

I beg the Lord’s forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family.”

Before the closing Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, the pope again asked for forgiveness for the thousands of cases of sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy in Ireland. In his homily, he urged families to use their joy to transform the world into a place where all feel loved, welcomed, and supported in their commitments to each other.

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CNS PHOTOS: PAUL HARING (3)

During his two-day visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families, Pope Francis took part in the celebrations (center) and made a visit to the Shrine of Knock (left and right). The pope reinforced the importance of families in today’s world and addressed the damage that clergy abuse has had on the country’s Catholics.

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SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS | ASK A FRANCISCAN

By Pat McCloskey, OFM

Why Gluten-Free Hosts?

I understand the Church’s teaching on Eucharist. Transubstantiation means it changes completely from bread and wine to the flesh and blood of Jesus. I believe in the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith. I also understand that our senses cannot tell the difference.

Therefore, why are gluten-free hosts needed?

T

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.

does not remove gluten. Devout faith in the Eucharist by a person with celiac disease will not change how her or his body reacts to a gluten host received in holy Communion.

This explains the need that some Catholics have for a gluten-free host.

Sections 1373–77 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explain the Church’s understanding of transubstantiation in greater detail.

Change on Death Penalty How did Pope Francis recently change the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty?

?

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WE HAVE A DIGITAL archive of “Ask” Q & As, going back to March 2013.

Just click: • the Ask link and then • the Archive link.

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

O

n August 2, 2018, he amended Number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to read: “Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

“Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

The quote in the final sentence above comes from his speech on October 11, 2017, to participants at a meeting sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.

10 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/RUDOLF YELIN D. Ä.CIRCA 1912

Father Pat welcomes your questions!

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Pat McCloskey, OFM

hanks for asking. The Church’s teaching on transubstantiation, officially taught at Lateran Council IV in 1215, uses scholastic philosophy’s distinction between substance (what something really is, its essence) and accidents (what is variable within the same substance). The Catholic Church believed in the Real Presence long before the term transubstantiation was officially approved.

At Mass, the substance of the bread is changed into the substance of Christ’s body.

The same is true of the wine.

The accidents such as taste, smell, weight, and color, however, remain the same.

According to this terminology, gluten is an “accident.” The host that had gluten before it was consecrated will still have gluten after it is consecrated. Likewise, the alcoholic content of wine remains the same after it is consecrated during Mass.

A person with celiac disease needs a gluten-free host because consecration at Mass

Jesus and Slavery

I have been a Catholic from birth but often have questions about some of the issues we are facing today, such as the evils associated with slavery. The Romans had slaves, but is there any evidence that Jesus condemned that institution?

eeking answers is a normal way of growing in faith. You are correct that in the Gospels Jesus does not explicitly condemn slavery, but everything there provides a challenge to the institution of slavery, the belief that a master or mistress can own another person in the same way that the master or mistress can own property or clothing.

The word frequently translated in the Gospels as servant is the same word that people then used for slave.

Other parts of the New Testament provide stronger support for Christians not to hold slaves. St. Paul chastised the Corinthians for allowing rich/poor divisions to enter into the celebration of the Eucharist (1 Cor 11:17–22). Many of the poor people he had in mind were slaves. In his Letter to Philemon, St. Paul tells this Christian slaveholder that he should not apply the death penalty (standard punishment under Roman law for runaway slaves) to Onesimus, whom Paul had baptized and was returning to his “owner” with that letter. If Philemon had rejected Paul’s request, the Letter to Philemon probably would not have been saved.

Pagans quickly understood the challenge to slavery that Christianity represented, often criticizing it as a religion of slaves and women, two very vulnerable groups in the first centuries after Christ. Biblical passages such as “Slaves, obey your human masters” (Col 3:22) were allowed to shout down Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5–7).

Some Christians reaped enormous profits from slavery into the 19th century and forbade slaves to learn to read because they would see that, in effect, the New Testament challenges slaveholding.

Quick Questions and Answers

BREAD s

FRANK JASPER, OFM

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:

How could Adam and Eve sin when they were able to “walk with God” in paradise and had the preternatural gifts? Will sin still be an option in heaven?

Adam and Eve always had the freedom to accept God’s rules or not—just as the fallen angels did before them. Because every sin is a failed shortcut around God’s ways, it will not be an option in heaven, where those ways will already have been accepted definitively.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/RUDOLF YELIN D. Ä.CIRCA 1912

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S

s

ST. ANTHONY

If a daughter or son decides to take care of aging parents until they pass away, does that daughter or son have a vocation once the parents have died?

If you mean “vocation to priesthood or religious life,” that is possible, depending on the current age of that daughter or son. It is also possible that this person never had such a vocation. Only testing that vocation will clarify things. In any case, the Bible praises those who care for aged parents.

StAnthony.org

s

mAil poStAl communicAtionS to:

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

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 11

SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS “If St. Aloysius had been as I am, he would have become a saint in a different way.”

—St. John XXIII

FRANCISCAN WORLD

OFM Merger Moves Ahead

By Pat McCloskey, OFM

A

HE HAD RECENTLY turned 21 when he wrote the words above. He also wrote, “God desires us to follow the examples of the saints by absorbing the vital sap of their virtues and turning it into our lifeblood, adapting it to our own individual capacities and particular circumstances.”

He became a Secular Franciscan as a seminarian.

Between 1925 and 1953, he served as a papal diplomat in Bulgaria, Greece, and France.

He went into the1958 conclave as patriarch of Venice and emerged as pope. The first session of Vatican II began in 1962.

Pope John XXIII was canonized in 2014. His feast is October 11.

—Pat McCloskey, OFM

?

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

Brother Caoimhín Ó Laoide, OFM

process ahead. The provinces involved are headquartered in California, New Mexico, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York City (31st Street).

St. Francis of Assisi adapted the structure of his brotherhood to respond more effectively to the changing needs of the Church and society. What is now happening in the United States continues that process.

ST. ANTHONY STORIES

St. Anthony—Always Listening

S

t. Anthony hears me even when I don’t ask. A couple of months ago, while we were talking on the phone, a friend of mine told me that she was missing a key. I told her about St. Anthony and encouraged her to say, “Tony, Tony, turn around; something’s lost and must be found.” She just laughed and didn’t ask for help.

The funny part is that, the next day, I found an earring I had lost many years ago. It was in my dishwasher!

At that time, I was starting to lose my faith. However, knowing that St. Anthony is paying attention to me has brought me back to the faith. Thank you, St. Anthony.

—Patricia Keller

12 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

PHOTO COURTESY JULIA WALSH, FSPA

He had a pastor’s heart though he was a local bishop for only five years.

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ST. JOHN XXIII

s our “Church in the News” reported in August, six of the seven OFM provinces in the United States have requested to become a single province. On July 25, the general council of the Order of Friars Minor appointed Caoimhín Ó Laoide of the Province of Ireland to accompany this process for one year. A new province is not expected before 2022 at the earliest.

Since 2011, these six provinces have been in serious dialogue internally and with one another about this merger. Special teams of friars have shepherded this renewal and revitalization process, working with others experienced in such endeavors. The six provincial ministers and their councils met for several days last month regarding the next steps.

The provincial ministers have monthly conference calls; four times a year they will meet for two to three days to move the

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FOLLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS

Helping the ‘Least of Us’ “For me, living the Gospel is advocating for justice. It’s doing service work—it’s doing outreach.”

PHOTO COURTESY JULIA WALSH, FSPA

S

ister Julia Walsh’s deep-rooted belief in her Christian call has propelled her into eye-opening encounters with many different people from across the United States. This Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration (FSPA) grew up in the rolling hills of northeastern Iowa and now finds herself at home tucked away in the Northwoods at Marywood Franciscan Spirituality Center, situated on Trout Lake in Wisconsin. She never thought she would end up in a place like Marywood. But just as God surprised her with this rustic locale, he has also led her to a number of other places she never expected to live in.

One of these was inner-city Chicago, where Sister Julia taught at an all-boys high school. It was there that she taught young men whose lives “were practically prescribing them to go to jail or end up dead in the streets.” But these young men chose a different route. She recounts how, on many Friday evenings, her students would volunteer at the local soup kitchen with her and a friar. “It taught me about the real mission of Christians.” The boys’ drive to learn and prove their inherent worth to themselves and the world allowed Sister Julia to understand more fully how, in every aspect of her life, she was meant to be a teacher.

Following her experience in Chicago, Sister Julia worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Sacramento, California, at Tubman House. There, she and the other staff worked with young homeless women and their children, helping them escape the vicious cycle of poverty while instilling valuable parenting skills. Day after day, she found herself surrounded by the strengths of all of these women, and

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Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA

while their lives were so full of trauma and tragedy, they were determined to make a positive impact on this world.

After getting to know these young women, Sister Julia found herself wondering: How can I serve as these women did? How can I answer my call?

As an FSPA, Sister Julia has worked to follow God’s call with full trust. The order, based in La Crosse, Wisconsin, was founded in the 1800s and primarily served German immigrants. The community has always been involved with the poor and marginalized. “It’s not the type of community where you will be told to go fill a spot; it’s a process of discernment to find your spot in the community doing, well, everything—whatever our passions lead us to,” Sister Julia says with a smile.

She visited the community shortly after college and was immediately drawn to it because of the sisters’ continuous dedication through prayer to the Eucharist. Beyond their unwavering faithfulness, the sisters can be found living out their ministries wherever they are needed, be it tutoring or teaching.

In her time with the community, Sister Julia’s gifts and abilities have developed due to the encouragement of and relationships with her sisters.

Since joining the sisters, she has begun to take writing more seriously, posting on her personal blog and contributing to a number of publications. With the help of a new environment and steady support from her community, Sister Julia has found a new way to answer God’s call: by using her voice not only to teach, but to love all, especially those on the margins.

—Erika Glover

St. Anthony Messenger has a digital edition that is available FREE to all print subscribers.

• Does not change your print subscription

• Easy to register at: StAnthonyMessenger.org

Want more inspiration?

Visit the website FranciscanMedia.org for: • Saint of the Day

• Minute Meditations

• Franciscan Spirit blog • Family resources

• Information on the seven sacraments

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 13

A Ministry of Presence People in need in Milwaukee come to Capuchin Community Services for the food, but they return for the fellowship.

I

t’s not really about food at Capuchin Community Services’ St. Ben’s Community Meal site in downtown Milwaukee. That’s the nuts and bolts of it, perhaps: Six nights a week, anyone from any background can stop by the hall below St. Benedict the Moor Church on North 9th Street and get a hot meal, no questions asked.

But it’s not a meal ministry. At St. Ben’s, they prefer to call it a ministry of presence. The meaning isn’t in the mashed potatoes or the glass of milk.

It’s in the smiles, the friendly nods, the simple act of serving someone and breaking bread with him or her— whether that be a stranger or an old friend.

From those who prepared the meal in their parish, synagogue, or mosque kitchen, to the men and women dish-

ing out entrées and salads in the food line, to the servers refilling beverages, they’re not only giving nourishment; they are giving themselves. And if you spend time talking to any one of them, they’ll assure you they receive in kind.

At some point during the evening, usually toward the end of the night when the lines have shortened and the workload is lighter, most of the volunteers will sit down next to the diners.

But they’re not really taking a break— this is when the real work begins, says Brother Rob Roemer, executive director of Capuchin Community Services.

“It’s not just about doing something; it’s about being present,” says Brother Rob. “It’s easy to hide behind a table. It takes a lot of effort to sit down with someone and just let them talk— let them know that somebody cares

14 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

and will listen to them.”

John is a middle-aged man who usually comes to the meal site every day and has been a regular for more than 10 years. A transplant from the South, he lives a dozen blocks away and isn’t working at the moment. “Bipolar and schizophrenia isn’t a good mix if you want to work,” he explains. So why does he come here?

“The food’s good, but the company’s better,” he says.

“We like to use the analogy of the table,” says volunteer Jacs Friello, a Chicago native and current Marquette University student who volunteers at the meal regularly through the university’s Midnight Run volunteer service program. “It’s about sharing things together. It’s a mutual relationship. It’s not, ‘I do something for you.’”

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF CAPUCHIN COMMUNITY SERVICES, PROVINCE OF ST. JOSEPH

By Colleen Jurkiewicz

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF CAPUCHIN COMMUNITY SERVICES, PROVINCE OF ST. JOSEPH

HOUSE OF PEACE

That’s a theme that translates to the other aspects of Capuchin Community Services, a ministry of the Friars of the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph, of which the community meal is only one part. In Milwaukee, a second site of Capuchin Community Services is House of Peace, where the working poor are welcome to stop by to collect needed clothes and emergency food or to access a number of other services—perhaps, most important, a sympathetic ear.

House of Peace doesn’t have clients or visitors, says Capuchin Community Services’ administrative director Gerri Sheets-Howard. “We call them guests because they come to our house,” she says. “What ends up happening is that we enter into relationship with them.

If there are things going on in their families and lives, often they are going to come in and share that with us.”

The House of Peace’s mission has always been “a place where those who are blessed with more than they need have shared with those who have less than they need, whether the need be food, clothing, emergency financial assistance, nursing assistance, a shoulder to cry on, or a friend to lean on,” says the Capuchin Community Services website.

The House of Peace is currently one of the few pantries in the city open five days a week, says Sheets-Howard. “Our guests are able to come to the emergency food pantry once every 30 days, and we’ll give them enough food to get through,” she says.

A full-time social worker on staff helps guests deal with issues that typically impact the working poor. “Maybe they don’t have a stove or a refrigerator; maybe they’re facing eviction and need some counseling. If the children don’t have food or proper clothing or beds, they can come in and speak with our social worker regarding that.”

OPPOSITE PAGE: Brother Rob Roemer, executive director of Capuchin Community Services, pours milk for a guest at St. Ben’s Community Meal in Milwaukee. In 2016, the facility served meals to over 102,000 guests. THIS PAGE, TOP: Capuchin Father Johnson Jayaraj gets a quick lesson in packing a blessing bag. Derrick Crawford, a guest and volunteer, and Dominique McGhee, director of the House of Peace Emergency Food Pantry, show him how it’s done. MIDDLE: The smile on Eric’s face speaks volumes: The food is important, but the fellowship is vital as well. BOTTOM: Catholics from a suburban Milwaukee parish deliver Christmas gifts to the Good Shepherd House of Peace to be distributed to children in need.

FIFTY YEARS AND MORE

Capuchin Community Services dates to early 1968, when the House of Peace was founded by Capuchin Brother StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 15

“It doesn’t matter what our religion is—we all have the same belief, that it’s important to care for others.”

—Brother Rob

Capuchin Brother Booker Ashe founded the House of Peace in Milwaukee in 1968 and continued to run this outreach center for over 25 years. Although Brother Booker died in 2000, his legacy lives on in the faces of those helped by the organization.

Booker Ashe. This was an era of Milwaukee history distinguished by racial and social tensions. During the previous July, violence and riots over housing discrimination and police brutality had rocked the city, resulting in four deaths and a citywide curfew. One of the earliest incidents of violence took place at the St. Francis Social Center on North 4th and West Brown streets. It was that same St. Francis of Assisi Parish that, several months later, would sponsor the outreach ministry of House of Peace.

Around the same time as the House of Peace’s founding, Irish immigrants Michael and Nettie Cullen, parishioners at St. Benedict the Moor Parish in downtown Milwaukee, opened their own kitchen to individuals in search of a hot meal. Inspired by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, the couple called their ministry “Casa Maria House.” As more and more migrant workers, hungry young mothers and children, and others heard of the Cullens’ generosity, the crowds became too much for the makeshift meal program, and the parish took on the ministry in 1970.

Now under the same umbrella of Capuchin Community Services, both the House of Peace and St. Ben’s Community Meal continue their original missions in a complementary manner. In 2016, the ministry fed over 102,000 guests on 302 nights. The House of Peace Emergency Food Pantry fed 16,730 people—providing 600 families with infant formula, distributing close to 6,000 boxes of necessities to local seniors, and providing over 18,000 individuals with clothing from the Capuchin Clothes Closet.

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EXPANSION PLANS

Across the church parking lot from the community meal site, the St. Benedict Friary is staffed by the friars, three fulltime employees, and two part-time employees who help to connect individuals with a variety of crucial services, such as bus tickets for stranded travelers, eyeglasses, hygiene bags, free showers, assistance with prescription co-pays, GED scholarships, and much more.

Those services will be able to expand dramatically with the completion of the St. Anthony Project, a Capuchin Community Services collaboration with Heartland Housing to repurpose the historic St. Anthony Hospital, located on the same block as St. Ben’s. Built as a teaching hospital for African American medical professionals in 1930, the building went on to become a work-release facility and later fell into disrepair. Once renovation work is completed on the building, it will contain 60 living units on the upper floors, with space on the first floor for Capuchin Community Services offices.

In addition to offering an opportunity for the expansion of its other services, the St. Anthony Project will give the community meal site a waiting area able to accommodate well over 100 guests who now gather on the sidewalk of West State Street.

The building will also allow for more volunteers to partake in the community meal. Currently, the meal is served by 25 to 30 dedicated volunteers each night; these volunteers are provided by religious and community groups, busi-

nesses, and schools that sign up for regular service on the community meal’s calendar. One group cooks the food while another provides servers and waitstaff.

BRIDGING THE GAP

Much has been written about the racial and economic segregation that exists in the Milwaukee area. The community meal is served just a stone’s throw from Interstate 43, and if you drive just 15 minutes north or south on it, you’ll reach the communities of many of the meal’s volunteers—where people don’t often wait in line for anything, let alone food.

On an early fall evening, the meal is being served by volunteers from Holy Angels Catholic Parish in West Bend.

John Ritger is the coordinator for the church’s program and has been volunteering at the meal for 12 years with his wife and two daughters.

It’s the “presence of God,” he says, that keeps him coming back night after night, but he also feels the meal provides a unique opportunity to interact and dialogue with a segment of the population that he wouldn’t encounter otherwise.

Often the church will bring Confirmation candidates or youth outreach groups, and the Capuchins will provide the volunteers with a context for the meal—who these guests are and why they’re here.

“Where we live is predominantly white. The people are not racist, but they don’t know,” says Ritger. “But any time you can bring people to share a little bit, it’s got to be enlightening.”

‘WE ALL LIKE THE PACKERS’

Marquette students pass members of the homeless population on their way to class every day, but the St. Ben’s Community Meal site gives them an opportunity to dialogue with these individuals.

“The Jesuit mission is to be men and women for others, so I think it’s really about living out that actual mission statement. What does it actually mean to be men and women for others? It’s going out and finding people on the margins of society,” says Friello. “This is about humanizing people, not being like, ‘Oh, you’re different than I am,’ but [realizing] that we all share the same feelings—feelings of loss, feelings of hopelessness, regardless of where you are socioeconomically.”

“It’s called the community meal because it is the community that makes it run,” says Brother Rob. “There’s a family sense here. They can interact with the guests as they’re coming down the line. They can talk with them a little bit, give ’em a hard time. It’s a sense of family, more so than any other place I’ve ever worked. It’s hands-on. The guests share a lot of their heartaches and headaches and pains and suffering.”

Sheets-Howard says the same goes for the House of Peace site. “I think of the House of Peace as the House of Hope.

Many of our guests, they’ll come in, and even if they don’t need anything they’ll come in and just sit down. They just

During Catholic Schools Week in 2017, two volunteers from Marquette University share a blessing bag with Larry, a guest at Capuchin Community Services. Their smiles show that it’s a blessing to give and to receive.

want to be surrounded by people who are accepting and loving and kind. Many of our guests just want to sit for a little bit and talk about what’s happening in their lives.”

And just like at the community meal, moments of encounter and understanding are crafted at the House of Peace among guests, volunteers, and staff members alike.

“Volunteering is one of the best ways to bridge gaps,” she says.

One particularly faithful group of volunteers hails from Cedarburg, a community in Ozaukee County, about 20 miles north of the House of Peace. It’s one of the wealthiest zip codes in the state. This group of white women, says SheetsHoward, particularly bonded with another volunteer, an African American man who was mandated by the court to do community service.

“They established a wonderful working relationship,” she says. “He loved to cook, and they liked baking, and after a while they started swapping recipes and bringing food to share. Once you work alongside somebody, there’s no hierarchy of position. All of us have concerns about our families.

We all want the best for our children. We all have things we get excited about. We all like the Green Bay Packers.”

“It doesn’t matter what our religion is—we all have the same belief, that it’s important to care for others,” says Brother Rob. “I talk to the Sikh community [regular volunteers] and they say, ‘Yeah, we’re supposed to tithe beyond what we need.’ Islamic Society says the same thing. We might not agree on traditions or creeds, but we all have the same belief that we have to care for others.”

CapuchinCommunityServices.org

Colleen Jurkiewicz is a freelance writer from Port Washington, Wisconsin. A work-at-home mother, she enjoys writing about the Church and also writes fiction in her free time.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 17

The

Church

as

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has encouraged Catholics to look to the Church as a source of warmth and spiritual nurturing.

M

“

Mater si, magistra no” (“Mother yes, teacher no”) may have begun life as an expression of conservative revolt against Pope John XXIII’s 1961 encyclical “Mater et Magistra” (“Mother and Teacher”), but the phrase has since become shorthand for any brand of Catholic who appreciates the emotional benefits of the Church but ignores its teaching.

That such a slogan ever needed to be coined is troubling enough. But the statement itself also presents a rather limited view of what it is that mothers do. If appointing the Church as mother makes it possible to put aside its role in our moral formation and political thought, then it seems we have misunderstood what the Church’s motherhood means to us.

It’s an area of sometimes-dim understanding that Pope Francis has seemed especially intent on illuminating. From the earliest days of his papacy, the Holy Father has placed special emphasis on the Church’s motherhood. The metaphor is one of the oldest in Christian history—a favorite of some of the earliest Church writers, including St. Cyprian, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Augustine. The way we think of motherhood now, in our era of widely dispersed parental duties and variegated family forms, is perhaps

distant from how early Christians likely thought of the role, and it supplies us with little in the way of imagination.

If the Church’s motherhood means that her role is mainly sentimental, as the ’61 usage implies, then we’ve vastly misunderstood. Paying close attention to Pope Francis’ use of the term helps unearth the rich meaning carried in this ancient allegory.

Pope Francis lauds, rightly, the maternal character of the Church and the sense of warmth and security our membership in the body of Christ grants us. “Our Mother Mary and our Mother Church know how to caress their children and show tenderness,” he said in his September 15, 2015, morning homily. “To think of the Church without that motherly feeling is to think of a rigid association, an association without human warmth, an orphan.”

But a sense of comforting belonging isn’t the only thing a mother supplies.

“In our catecheses, we have often noted that we do not become a Christian on our own, but by being born and nurtured in the faith in the midst of the people of God, that is the Church,” Pope Francis told pilgrims during a September 2014 general audience. “She is a true mother who gives us life in Christ and, in the communion of the

18 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Holy Spirit, brings us into a common life with our brothers and sisters.” He went on: “As a mother, the Church nurtures us throughout life by illuminating our path with the light of the Gospel and by sustaining us with the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.”

Pope Francis locates a continuity between the Blessed Virgin and the Church itself, with both acting as mothers to the body of Christ: the virgin in bearing, nursing, and raising Jesus; and the Church, likewise, bearing Christians through the Sacrament of Baptism, nourishing them through the Eucharist, and raising them with instruction in the Gospel. It seems impossible, in Pope Francis’ formulation, to fully participate in one aspect of the life of the Church without participating in the others: Each element is mutually reinforcing and steeped in the mystery of the sacraments. To limit one’s understanding of the role of a mother—it’s emotional, yes, but also physical and heavily educational—is, therefore, to misread Marian tradition, as well as the role of the Church in the world.

The reverse reading—deriving a properly Franciscan reading of the Church through Francis’ understanding of the Blessed Virgin—also helps to illuminate the wide-ranging nature of

KYRIEN/FOTOSEARCH

By Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig

Mother motherhood in the pope’s imagination.

For Pope Francis, Mary is a deeply pedagogical figure.

“She teaches us the virtue of waiting even when everything appears meaningless,” he told a general audience in May 2017, adding that Mary’s steadfastness also teaches us to hope.

Motherhood, for Pope Francis, also takes on a strongly defensive character: Mothers protect their children at all costs, and here, too, the image of Mary helps illuminate his view.

“The Church has the courage of a mother who knows she must defend her children against the dangers which arise from Satan’s presence in the world,” Pope Francis said in the September 2014 general audience.

There are glimmers, here, of Mary standing triumphant on the serpent’s head, which communicates both the Church’s central role in opposing evil as an institution and through the spiritual betterment of its members, and the ultimate destiny of the Church in the kingdom of God. Pope Francis summons for us an image of the Church-asmother that offers maternal comfort and vital instruction, an organic bond and an aspiration of greater worldly fraternity, an origin of our truest selves and a destination for who we will become as Christians. It is no surprise that, under his papacy, mothers in the Church have felt recognized and uplifted by his approach to motherhood, benefiting from the Holy Father’s emphasis on the dignity and richness of maternity. Through his teaching and example, Pope Francis directs us toward a Church that both leads and loves, is both vast and intimate.

KYRIEN/FOTOSEARCH

s

This article is excerpted from Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s contribution to the book A Pope Francis Lexicon (Liturgical Press), edited by Cindy Wooden and Joshua J. McElwee. Bruenig is an assistant editor at The Washington Post, an essayist on Christianity and politics, and a wife and mother.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 19

By Richard Rohr, OFM any people have lost heart today because we feel confused and powerless. The “powers and principalities” seem overwhelming: consumerism, racism, militarism, patriarchy, climate change, the corporate juggernaut. We feel helpless to choose our own lives, much less a common life, or to see any overarching meaning. The world is so complex, and we are so small. What can we do but let the waves of history carry us and try to keep afloat somehow?

Maybe we can at least look for some patterns, or for those who found the patterns. Let’s turn to a 13th-century Italian who has one of the longest bibliographies of anyone in history: St. Francis of Assisi. His simple wisdom has attracted many cultures and religions and continues to resonate 800 years later.

St. Francis stepped out into a world being recast by the emerging market economy and ongoing conflict. His father was greedily buying up the small farms of debtors, moving into a new entrepreneurial class. Europe was engulfed in multiple crusades, and the world was obsessed with war, fear, and security. The Church seemed to be largely out of touch with ordinary people. But Francis trusted a deeper voice and a bigger truth. He sought one clear center—the Incarnate Jesus—and moved out from there.

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Francis understood everything from this personalized reference point and followed Jesus in at least three clear ways.

First, Francis delved into the contemplative prayer depths of his own tradition, as opposed to mere repetition of tired formulas. Second, he sought direction in the mirror of creation rather than intellectual and fabricated ideas. Third, and most radically, he looked to the underside of his society, to the suffering, for an understanding of how God transforms us.

For Francis, the true “I” first had to be discovered and realigned (the prayer journey into the True Self). He then had to experience himself situated inside of a meaning-filled cosmos (a sacramental universe). Francis prayed: “Who are you, God? And who am I?” Finally, in imitation of Jesus, Francis chose poverty as his honest lens to see reality. He valued the authority of those who have “suffered and been rejected” and, with Jesus, come out resurrected.

A GOSPEL FOUNDATION

In the beginning of the Franciscan Rule, Francis wrote, “The Rule and the life of the Friars Minor is to simply live the Gospel.” In fact, the first Rule that he started writing around 1209 is basically a collection of quotes from the New Testament. When Francis took it to Rome, the pope looked

RONDAKIMBROW/FOTOSEARCH PHOTO CREDIT HERE

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PHOTO CREDIT HERE

For St. Francis, the heart of Franciscan spirituality is found deep within the Gospel.

at it and said, “This is no Rule. This is just the Gospel.” I can hear Francis replying, “Yes . . . that is the point. It is just the Gospel. We don’t need any other Rule except the Gospel!” To be a Franciscan is nothing other than always searching for “the marrow of the Gospel,” as he called it.

When Francis read the beatitudes, Jesus’ inaugural discourse, he saw that the call to be poor stood right at the beginning: “How blessed are the poor in spirit!” (Mt 5:3).

Henceforward, Francis’ reading of the Gospel considered poverty to be “the foundation of all other virtues and their guardian.” The other virtues receive the kingdom only in promise; poverty, however, is invested with heaven now, without delay. Notice how Jesus uses the present tense: “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

As a result, Franciscan spirituality has never been an abstraction. It is grounded in Jesus’ specific instructions to his disciples, not ideology or denominational certitudes.

Francis’ living of the Gospel was just that: simple lifestyle.

It was the Incarnation continuing in space and time. It was being Jesus more than just worshipping Jesus. At its best, Franciscan life is not words or even ethics. It is flesh—naked flesh—unable to deny its limitations, unable to cover its wounds. Francis called this inner nakedness “poverty.”

Francis did not want his friars to preach salvation (although they did that too) as much as he wanted them to be salvation. He wanted them to model and mirror the life of Jesus in the world, with all of the vulnerability that would entail. Today, many people use the phrase “preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words” to describe Francis’ focus on living authentically and creating real change.

Francis found a way out of the world of comparison, competition, greed, and the violence that comes with it.

He felt that he had to live in close proximity to and even in solidarity with the excluded ones in his society. If we are not marginalized ourselves in some way, we normally need to associate with some marginalized group to have an enlightened Gospel perspective and to be converted to compassion.

Jesus himself both lived and taught this “preferential option for the poor.”

A CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE

Francis literally changed sides or teams. He was raised in upper Assisi, as one of those who considered themselves the majores, or upper class. In the lower part of town lived the minores, or lower class. Francis moved even further down, StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 21

into the plain below Assisi where there was a leper colony, the excluded ones.

Members of religious communities usually place initials after their names to indicate their particular order. We Franciscans use OFM, Ordo Fratum Minorum—Latin for “the little brothers,” or the “Order of the Minor Brothers.”

Francis told us to move down the social class ladder. We were not to identify with the climb toward success, power, and money. We were to be mendicants or beggars.

Francis resisted priesthood because, I believe, he was deeply aware of all that invariably comes with priestly ordination (education, titles, privilege, respect, income, special clothing, and the need to protect the establishment or institution). He wanted his followers to be “blue-collar” ministers who lived close to the people in every way rather than “white-collar” superiors. However, Francis was not long in his grave before the Church started ordaining as many Franciscan men as possible—who soon wore stiff white Roman collars. It gave us access, credibility, status, and stipends in academia, Church, and society. I know that it was probably inevitable, and not all bad, but it is indeed dangerous for the soul.

For St. Francis, “poverty” and “penance” were not some kind of dark asceticism but a proactive, free leap into the problem. It is the same freedom that we see in Jesus when he says, “You are not taking my life from me; I am lay-

ing it down freely” (Jn 10:18). In the opening words of his “Testament,” Francis writes: “The Lord gave me, Brother Francis, thus to begin doing penance in this way: for when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers. And the Lord himself led me among them and I showed mercy to them. And when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body. And afterwards I delayed a little and then left the world.”

Francis’ phrase “left the world” did not mean leaving creation, but leaving what we might call the “system.” Francis left business as usual and lived in a radically different way.

He decided to focus on alleviating the needs and suffering of others instead of self-advancement. Most of our decisions are usually based on personal, egoistic preference and choice.

This is the life we are called to leave, the self that Jesus says must die to fall into our larger life or True Self. This brings freedom from the self, which is precisely freedom for the world, a freedom that is counter to our Western notion.

A CALL FOR CHANGE

Imagine how different Western history and religion could have been if we had walked so tenderly and lovingly upon the earth, as Francis and Jesus did. Imagine what the world would be like if we treated others with inherent and equal dignity and respect, seeing the divine presence, the imago

22 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

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We can only offer to others what God has done in us.

Francis walked the journey himself and thus he could lead others along the path. The cosmos is mirrored in the microcosm of a healed and healing life.

Dei, in ourselves and everyone else, too—regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, appearance, or social class. Nothing less offers the world any lasting future.

As he lay dying, Francis said, “I have done what is mine; may Christ teach you what is yours!” We can only change the world insofar as we have changed ourselves. We can only give away who we are. We can only offer to others what God has done in us. Francis walked the journey himself and thus he could lead others along the path. The cosmos is mirrored in the microcosm of a healed and healing life.

If we let the mystery happen in one small and true place, it moves from there! It is contagious; it is shareable; it reshapes the world. Both Jesus and Francis had no pragmatic social agenda for reform. They just moved outside the system of illusion, more by ignoring it than fighting it and quite simply doing it better. They knew that the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Jesus and Francis moved to a much larger place that we call holiness/wholeness in God, and from there they could deal kindly with all smaller and confined places. Nothing threatened them; everything elated them, reflecting their own infinite abundance.

Don’t waste any time dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys. Hold them both together in your own soul—where they are anyway—and you will have held together the whole world. You will have overcome the great divide in one place of spacious compassion.

Francis of Assisi must have known, at least intuitively, that there is only one enduring spiritual insight and everything else follows from it: The visible world is an active doorway to the invisible world, and the invisible world is much larger

than the visible. This is the mystery of Incarnation, the essential union of the material and the spiritual worlds—or simply “Christ.”

Our outer world and its inner significance must come together for there to be any wholeness—and holiness. The result is both deep joy and a resounding sense of coherent beauty. What was personified in the body of Jesus was a manifestation of this one universal truth: Matter is, and has always been, the hiding place for Spirit, forever offering itself to be discovered anew. Perhaps this is exactly what Jesus means when he says, “I am the gate” (Jn 10:7).

Francis and Clare carried this mystery to its full and lovely conclusions. Or, more rightly, they were fully carried by it.

They somehow knew that the beyond was not really beyond, but in the depths of here. Francis’ biographer, Thomas of Celano, wrote, “Often, without moving his lips, [Francis] would meditate within himself and, drawing external things within himself, he would lift his spirit to higher things.”

All we need is right here and right now—in this world.

This is the way to that! Heaven includes earth. Time opens us up to the timeless; space opens us up to spacelessness, if we only take them for the clear doorways that they are. There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments.

There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments—and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it.

Father Richard Rohr, OFM, is a Franciscan priest of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

AN ARRAY OF INSIGHTS This article was compiled and adapted from Richard Rohr’s 2017 Daily Meditations. It includes excerpts from the following books and recordings:

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• Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (Franciscan Media) • Franciscan Mysticism: I AM that Which I Am Seeking (CAC) • Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media) • The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (Sounds True) Learn more about Father Richard Rohr and sign up to receive his free Daily Meditations at cac.org/sign-up.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 23

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POINTSOFVIEW | AT HOME ON EARTH

f o y

By Kyle Kramer

Time to Reconnect

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.

EarthandSpiritCenter.org

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WANT MORE? Visit our website: StAnthonyMessenger.org

M

argaret Schlegel, one of the main characters in E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End, is a cultured, romantic intellectual. She educates her new husband, a wealthy industrialist named Henry Wilcox, trying to open his mind to the world beyond business: “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. . . . Live in fragments no longer.”

HELPFUL I believe that God calls us to a nonOnly Connect! fragmented, integrated life: connected to all the various parts of our own selves, conOne way to get outside your nected to the people and communities around own bubble is to put yourself in us, connected to the Earth and its cycles, and a position where you’ll have to connect in all of this, connected to God, who creates, with others different from you. Try apps, such sustains, and connects everything that is. as The Third Party, that suggest random local Theologian Thomas Berry puts a fine events for you to attend. point on it: “We will go into the future as a single sacred community or we will all perish Making connections doesn’t have to in the desert.” To survive and thrive and be require heroic efforts. Try a few minutes of fully alive, in the image of our triune, relasilence, or walking barefoot on the earth, or tional God, is to belong as deeply and fully as making a quick call to a friend or relative with we can. whom you haven’t talked for a while.

These days, we are more connected than ever, through modern networks of commuSometimes the first step in making connication and economic relationships. And yet nections is to start noticing where you feel the strange paradox is that, at the same time, disconnected in your life and what you do to we feel more isolated than ever. According to distract yourself from those feelings. a new Cigna poll, nearly half of Americans— especially young people—feel lonely. We seem to be in that same awful predicament as the ancient mariner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

We’re dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean.

It’s time to trade superficial connections

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LEFT: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER; MIDDLE: EDHARCANSTOCK/FOTOSEARCH; LOWER RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHY33/FOTOSEARCH

Kyle Kramer

for true, conscious belonging. In fact, I think the primary spiritual and ethical question to ask of anything we do is simply: Does this action better serve loving connection—to my interior life, to others, to creation, to God— or does it get in the way? Thinking more broadly, we could ask: What kind of life—and what kind of society—fosters and preserves these vital connections? What people or groups might we marginalize, preventing them and us from living a life of full connection, and how might we change that dynamic?

Engaging these questions provides a vision that can guide each of us through our days and offer a road map for our whole culture.

We won’t come up with perfect answers to these questions, of course. But if we want to be at home on earth, we can at least start asking them.

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Many people— still living or long dead—guided me to the Franciscans. This is my vocation story.

By Richard Goodin, OFM

T

Becoming a

26 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PROVINCE AND RICHARD GOODIN, OFM, PERSONAL ARCHIVES

he story of how I became a friar hinges largely on dead men.

Admittedly, there were some men who were very much alive who pointed the way forward. But it seems that it was the dead men who really taught me how to live this way of life.

First, I want to thank God! It was God who called me to this consecrated religious life. At first, the call was both surprising and scary. The surprise of it fueled the scariness, and that led me to suppress the whole notion and carry it about my neck like some embarrassing albatross.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PROVINCE AND RICHARD GOODIN, OFM, PERSONAL ARCHIVES

Father Richard Goodin’s family supports him during his solemn profession.

Yet this albatross led me into the quiet spaces of the heart, mind, and soul. It led me to pull back from the Greek campus life I was immersed in. It caused me to retreat from my aerospace engineering ambitions, back into the only thing I’d ever been sure about: my Catholic faith. This albatross slowed me down enough to actually listen to God’s still, small voice. Slowly, I came to know it as true. This was because the call of consumerism, materialism, and careerism no longer made any sense to me in comparison.

During that retreat from the loud and competitive life of a state university in the early 2000s, I attended daily Mass on campus and prayed with my grandmother’s rosary in an empty Newman Center chapel. There, the call became compelling—so compelling that I just had to join religious life.

And with supernaturally inspired endurance, I completed my engineering degree in four years. Two months later, I began formation in the Order of Friars Minor (also known as the Franciscans). But it was before leaving the university fraternity house to join the fraternity of the friars that I encountered the two dead men who would greatly impact my future.

QUESTIONING MY CALL

The first came during a conversation about religion with my paternal grandmother. A Catholic, she told me to read

LEFT: Richard smiles during his first profession of vows in 2008. MIDDLE: His solemn profession took place on August 27, 2011. RIGHT: Richard was ordained as a friar on June 14, 2014, by Bishop Charles C. Thompson. Richard now assists other young men in their vocation journey.

Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. She had told me that anyone who had grown up near the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky (as she and I both had) must read that book.

I later found out, after my grandmother died, that she had told my grandfather that very evening that I would go on to religious life and the priesthood. But before getting too far ahead of the story, what I need to say is it was through that dead man’s autobiography that I encountered my first vocation story.

The second dead man I met before I graduated from the university was discovered in a lecture hall. With only one elective at my disposal amid a jam-packed, four-year engineering curriculum, I opted to take a philosophy course.

There I met an elder statesman who taught the young to think for themselves. Socrates and his dialogues woke me up to the nonscientific, nonmathematical side of university studies. And within that single undergraduate course, I began to catch fire for the Socratic method.

Oddly enough, the Socratic method served me well as a new postulant in the Franciscans. The word postulant is from StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 27

With the Cincinnati skyline behind him, Father Richard enjoys a moment of levity with his brothers.

Father Richard meets Pope Francis during the Jubilee of Mercy for Priests in 2016.

the Latin postulare—to postulate. My task as a postulant was to question my call, question my fitness for becoming a friar, and question the friars with whom I now lived. All those questions were to help facilitate my discernment about whether to leave or remain in the order.

him as a brother and model, as opposed to an untouchable saint.

Yet, while being saturated and overwhelmed by Francis, I met another dead man who was far more comprehensible and impactful. For me, it came at a time when the so-called American dream had lost its luster.

Following the call of God into consecrated life looked to be the remedy for what ailed me.

Meanwhile, much had terrified and sickened me about the post-9/11 America of my college years. The bombing of Baghdad occurred during my first year at the University of Kentucky. It was a warlike society that did not fit in with my rural Catholic upbringing.

And it was at that critical juncture that I met Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was recommended to me amid a conversation over lunch at the friary. I was advised to read Walden. In turn, that book channeled my unbridled youth. It led me back to a place that had proved helpful in the past: a quiet, reflective place. Near Walden Pond, Thoreau challenged himself to discover how one could live a peaceful and fulfilled existence with as little as possible.

In hindsight, I realize that Walden helped bridge the divide between the American

A NEW DREAM REALIZED

Father Richard spots a Star Wars lookalike during the Mardi Gras parade in Galveston, Texas.

As my discernment blossomed, I encountered more dead men. First, and most obviously, I ran into St. Francis of Assisi. Through inhouse courses and reading lists centered on Francis, I encountered the saint who started the group God had called me into. The stature of the man was beyond legendary. Most of what I was learning and reading from the mid-1200s was making Francis out to be a second Christ.

Having been a cradle Catholic and a daily Massgoer for years, I was alarmed at this. Was he really that holy? With dozens of pieces of good artwork around the friary where I was living and with all the reading I was doing, this Francis figure certainly was omnipresent during my year as a postulant. Needless to say, Francis of Assisi overwhelmed me. It was not until much later that I came to see

28 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

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The Shortage of Priests and Religious has Reached Crisis Proportions

The number of priests, sisters, and brothers has been declining for decades, resulting in priestless parishes, shuttered monasteries, and understaffed Catholic schools. But the reason might surprise you.

Thousands are Waiting to Serve, but Something Stands in Their Way

Skyrocketing education debt plagues an entire generation of graduates, but none so much as those attempting to answer God’s call. Most seminaries and religious institutions are unable to accept the burden of outstanding student loans, so nearly half of the nations’ estimated 10,000 aspiring priests and religious are turned away every year.* *NRVC Vision Study, Center for Applied research in the Apostolate

Labouré Delivers Desperately Needed Vocations to the Catholic Church

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You Have the Power to Change the World

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LEFT: Richard and his brothers pause for a moment with the Shenandoah Mountains in the background.

INSET: The friars walk on the Appalachian Trail. RIGHT: Father Richard celebrates Easter Mass with Cardinal Daniel DiNardo in 2015.

dream I had pursued for so long and the overwhelming, full-blown evangelical poverty of Francis of Assisi. The pages of Walden helped me loosen my grip enough to let American materialism fall away.

ON THE ROAD

Shortly thereafter I took a more confident leap into the second year of formation. That year is called novitiate. It is where novices, or beginners, live. There, another dead man showed up. His name was Father Arcadius Smolinski. Father Arcadius was a mixture of all the dead men I had “met” previously. He was an idealist who, like Thoreau, followed a unique call. Yet, like Socrates, he was old when he made his mark. And Father Arcadius lived the ideals of St. Francis of Assisi unlike anyone I had encountered.

And he was nearly a contemporary, having died only two years prior to our “meeting.” So, during my year as a novice in 2007, I was given a rough draft of Father Arcadius’ life— one that was intended to promote his canonization document. I found him deeply inspiring due to his “friar-on-theroad” style. He literally walked around Europe for decades.

Once, he even walked from Italy to Jerusalem and back!

Father Arcadius saw himself as radically open to talking with anyone about Jesus Christ and his Church. He wanted to be on the road so that people who needed a friar could find one. Reading his story felt like my first encounter with 30 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Socrates and my days sitting by Walden Pond—thrilling and inspiring. Meanwhile, Father Arcadius helped Francis of Assisi become more and more approachable.

I have told and retold Father Arcadius’ story to anyone who would listen. Other young friars were likewise inspired.

Several of us became determined to seek permission to take to the road like Father Arcadius. We wanted to follow the pattern of Luke 9:3: “Take nothing for the journey.” After we begged our superiors and conscripted two 50-year-old friars, permission was granted. Thus, in the summer of 2009, four very green friars and two seasoned ones took to the roads of rural Virginia.

Fifty days of pilgrimaging ensued. We trekked across landscapes and into the lives of hundreds of benefactors. All told, we traveled some 325 miles. Our negative experiences were few, while our experiences of the true, good, and beautiful—and of Christian charity—were countless. During that summer, I felt as if we were bringing the lessons of my dead mentors to life. Or perhaps they helped bring me to life.

INDEBTED TO ST. FRANCIS

Soon, I settled into the seminary. There I encountered more dead men. But it wasn’t the content at school that transformed me as much as the dead men within the Franciscan library at our friary. There, I encountered Peter John Olivi, Blessed John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Currently, I am responsible for the vocations of other men.

As the director of vocations, I am the friar who helps the called to answer the call—a role I inherited from my predecessor, the late Father Don Miller, OFM, who helped guide me, in his own way, to the Franciscans.

I assist at the beginning of the process that I call “becoming a friar.” And trust me when I say that I am not the recruiter type who aggressively persuades a man to join up.

Instead, trusting in the process that guided my own vocation, I attempt to stride alongside these men as they build upon and are influenced by those living and dead mentors who have carried them along.

Yes, I help men to fill out paperwork and get prepared to enter our formation program. But I’m also constantly asking them about what they read, who inspires them, what Gospel passages resonate in their hearts, what saints they pray to, and how they utilize the Blessed Mother’s intercession.

I am confident that the stories of Francis of Assisi, the characters of the Gospel, and the saints of old will assist and inspire these men far more than my own life, about which I imperfectly plod along.

Since becoming a friar, Richard Goodin, OFM, has been on the move around the country and beyond, even doing missionary work in Jamaica. He is currently the director of vocations for St. John the Baptist Province in Cincinnati, Ohio. You can learn more about his efforts at BecomeaFriar.org.

THE LABOURÉ SOCIETY A LIFELINE FOR VOCATIONS

“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pt 2:5).

CNS PHOTO/JENNIFER WILLEMS/THE CATHOLIC POST

These three medieval friars rocked my intellectual world.

They helped sharpen my thinking in a manner that would have pleased Socrates. From Olivi, I gained courage to live the friar life of poverty through sound theory and demonstrable practice. From Scotus, I learned the art of the subtle argument, the centrality of Christ, and the beautiful significance of our Blessed Mother. It was the prowess of William of Ockham that deepened my appreciation for the scientific studies of my university years.

As the years continued to pass and the dead mentors mounted, I began to circle back to the particulars of my weighty call to live in the manner of St. Francis of Assisi. But before I could profess permanent and solemn vows to such a life, I was asked to spend a week reencountering Francis of Assisi through his written words. During that time, much to my surprise, I was no longer overwhelmed by Francis’ example. Instead, I found myself wanting to keep pace with him. I wanted what he wanted. I had become ready to run the evangelical race with full force—and to do so in the style of St. Francis of Assisi.

And to finally speak in the present tense: The major twists and turns of the race—that of final vows, seminary formation, and ordination—are now behind me. Even the early challenges of my years in the priesthood are back there among the early mile markers. And all along the race, it has been dead men and their lessons that have kept me on course and on pace.

To demonstrate the vitality and importance of vocations, Priests Pedaling for Prayers took Father Michael Pica, Father Tom Otto, and Father Adam Cesarek on a journey of some 70 miles throughout central Illinois.

THE LABOURÉ SOCIETY RESCUES Catholic vocations from the impediment of student loan debt. In the United States, there are thousands of men and women who wish to serve the Church, but are prevented from entering seminaries, convents, and religious communities because they have outstanding student loan debts. The result is—or could be—the loss of priests and religious at a time when the Church’s need for vocations is critical.

Using an innovative Catholic philanthropic fund-raising model, Labouré teaches these future priests and sisters how to raise funds for vocations. They raise funds as a collective class of 20–22 future priests and religious. Using this model, they are able to pay back six-figure debt in 12–18 months rather than 12–18 years. The results are hundreds of vocations saved.

Operating since 2003, Labouré has delivered more than 285 men and women into formation. It has awarded more than $6.4 million to aspirants to free them from student loan debts. Ninety percent of donor gifts go to aspirants. Over 80 percent of those aspirants are currently in formation or have gone on to ordination or profession of final vows.

The Labouré Society, named after St. Catherine Labouré, who experienced difficulty in her own vocation journey, exists to help men and women achieve their religious dreams. The society’s vision is “a world where Catholic priests, sisters, and brothers exist in adequate numbers to fill the world’s needs, where young people everywhere who feel they are called to the priesthood or religious life have the opportunity to pursue that calling.”

To learn more, go to LaboureSociety.org.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 31

POINTSOFVIEW | EDITORIAL

‘It’s Time, Holy Father’ DEAR POPE FRANCIS,

I

write this in late August about how the Catholic Church responds to clerical sexual abuse and the bishops or superiors who have enabled it. The Church in the United States is reeling from the revelation in July that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually abused a minor and later seminarians and priests. This month a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a report documenting that 301 priests and religious in six dioceses abused over 1,000 minors.

You certainly deserve our gratitude for the swift and comprehensive way that you have denounced past abuse, are speaking with survivors regularly, and are working to prevent further abuse. This crisis weighs even more heavily on your heart than it does on mine. Thanks for your August 20 “Letter to the People of God.” I look forward to your next steps in implementing the contrition expressed there.

So who is writing this letter? A Franciscan priest ordained 43 years, an editor of this monthly magazine for 19 years, and a Catholic heartsick about a crisis that continues to hemorrhage the Church’s credibility in all areas.

Between late 1985 and early 1992, I worked at the general headquarters of the Order of Friars Minor and processed all the official correspondence between the Holy See and our order. I have some sense of how the Roman Curia operated then, usually very conscientiously.

‘WE ARE WEARY’

Many US Catholics date their awareness of clergy sexual abuse as a systemic problem to January 2002, when a tsunami of accusations swept away the “It’s only a few bad apples” explanation. A National Catholic Reporter series in 1985 addressed abuse in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, but accurately suggested such abuse may be a national crisis.

This magazine’s February 1994 issue contained our first article on this topic by John Feister. Our “Church in the News” column gives national and international news items about the Catholic Church. Since January 2002, our 202 issues have contained 169 “Church in the News” items (some a few lines and others a full page) about this abuse. Our June 2003 special issue was entitled “Crisis in the Church: Our Search for Healing.” During those same months, we have published another 15 articles and 13 editorials on this topic.

Many Catholics expect a prompt reporting to civil authorities of every accusation, cooperation with those authorities, and severe consequences from the Church in cases that cannot be prosecuted in civil courts because of the statute of limitations.

Holy Father, we and our readers are weary of this crisis—and so is probably every other Catholic in this country.

In Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs IV, we ask God, “Let your Church stand as a living witness to peace and justice.”

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It’s time for us to put more meat on those bones! Never has it been more obvious that genuine peace is a work of justice.

I’m sure you would agree that we cannot hope God will do what God rightly expects us to do.

IT’S YOUR TURN, HOLY FATHER

We all know that no one—not even you—can change a past event, but each person—again, including you—is responsible for how he or she responds to a past event once it becomes public knowledge.

I suggest the following: • Institute a tribunal independent of any existing Vatican office to conduct all canonical trials concerning bishops who commit such abuse or fail to act effectively after receiving complaints of clerical sexual abuse.

• Draw up a code of conduct to be accepted by a bishop before his ordination, specifying how any future complaints cited above will be handled by the Holy See. • Take what you have learned—especially from the incomplete information provided to you in the case of bishops in Chile—and make this part of the work of the nine cardinals advising you about the reform of the Roman Curia and the governance of the worldwide Church.

Responses at the national level are good, but they will always be inadequate. Some new worldwide juridical mechanism is needed to address these situations. Ad hoc responses thus far have not brought about the changes needed.

Also, appeals from the new tribunal that I have suggested need to have some time limit for resolution. Last March’s sentence against Archbishop Antonio Apuron of Agana, Guam, is still being appealed as I write this letter.

Regarding my second suggestion, the Holy See already specifies for its direct employees the procedures and penalties for handling such abuse or negligence. That code of conduct has not been applied to bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who do not work directly for the Holy See. My third suggestion will take the longest time to implement. In fact, it is the most important. These and other structural changes are urgently needed in order to restore the Catholic Church’s credibility. Your May 31 letter of apology to the Church in Chile suggests that the whole process of appointing bishops needs an overhaul.

Please know that millions of Catholics around the world are supporting you in prayer and will support whatever changes you judge, before God, to be needed at this time.

I pray especially that, by the time you receive this letter, you will have taken the first steps for a more effective response to clerical sexual abusers and the superiors who have protected them.

—Pat McCloskey, OFM

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For More Information Visit Our Website at FranciscanPilgrimages.com StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 33

CANONIZATION

OSCAR ROMERO Pastor, Peacemaker, Saint Two close friends of this new Latin American saint have a conversation about his life and love for the Salvadoran people.

Story and photography by Brother Octavio Duran, OFM

ABOVE, from left: Archbishop Romero visits a village in Chalatenango in the northern part of El Salvador. Romero shares a moment with seminarians in a beach house in Costa del Sol. A cross bearing Archbishop Romero’s name is held near the wall of remembrance in San Salvador, El Salvador. The names of thousands of victims, including Romero, killed during El Salvador’s long civil war, are inscribed on the wall. Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez delivers a homily during a Mass on Long Island honoring the legacy of Archbishop Romero.

O

n March 24, 2015, thousands of Salvadoran Catholics and people from other parts of the world gathered in the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, for the 35th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Two months later, on May 23, another transcendent—and perhaps the most important—event in the modern history of El Salvador occurred: Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyr of the Catholic Church, was beatified, thus becoming the first Blessed of El Salvador. His canonization is set to take place on October 14 in Rome.

I returned to my country for this significant anniversary and met the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, José Gregorio Rosa Chávez. We had both lived in community with Romero in the late 1970s. Rosa Chávez was the rector of the San José de la Montaña Central Seminary in San Salvador in 1977—the same year that Romero was appointed archbishop of the archdiocese.

Romero lived for a short time in the seminary where I was a seminarian. During that time, I accompanied him on his trips through the Salvadoran towns and had the opportunity to photograph him with his people. Rosa Chávez was the cohost of a radio program, Sentir con la Iglesia (To Feel with the Church). In a way, both of us were inspired by Romero to live our vocation to the Church through the media.

The following is my interview with Bishop José Gregorio Rosa Chávez, just prior to Romero’s May 2015 beatification.

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O

Despite it being a rainy day, Romero walked with his people in the streets of El Salvador prior to celebrating Mass for the feast of the TransďŹ guration, the national feast of El Salvador. This was the last time Romero celebrated this feast with his people.

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INSET: Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez is the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador and was a close friend and colleague of Romero’s. TOP: Every year, thousands of Salvadorans take to the streets of San Salvador to honor Archbishop Romero.

Q: People ask me what Romero was like. But it is difficult for me to answer accurately. For me, he was a human being who surrendered himself to God and his people. But back then, when I met him, I did not realize the true dimension of the man and what he now means for the world. Could you tell me about the human side of Romero?

A: He was reserved, a person of few words, discreet, timid, introspective, thoughtful, often worried, sometimes fearful, sometimes hesitant. That’s how you and I knew him. Romero was also a man of strong character but in a humane way. No one would dare stop him on the way to church for his personal prayers. He enjoyed being with simple people. He did not like being with the important people because he saw a lot of hypocrisy in them. He was very demanding of himself and of others. He was scrupulous about not offending the Lord. Some of his internal conflicts had to do with his character. That was one of the crosses he carried but, in the end, managed to overcome when he realized the love his people had for him.

When Father Octavio Ortiz Luna [a Salvadoran Catholic priest] was killed [on January 20, 1979], we all went to the funeral Mass. People surrounded the bishops, and Romero uttered a beautiful statement: “How well people respond when we know how to love them.” At that point, he felt very much embraced by the people.

On a theological level, I understood the meaning of being embraced by people; there is a kind of reciprocal affection and commitment. That is very much the tone given by Pope Francis when he says that one must be a shepherd with the “smell of the sheep.”

Q: At the international level, Romero advocated a dynamic change in a preference for the poor. Was he radical, or was it simply that he had always had that sentiment for the poor in his heart?

A: One Wednesday, I interviewed him and asked him, “They say that you have been converted; what do you think of that?” And he said, “I would say that it is not a conversion but an evolution.” When he was the bishop in another diocese, he saw reality in a different way. Then he arrived here, saw the reality of ingrained injustice, and realized that he had to accompany the people in denouncing the injustice. He was attentive to what God was asking of him.

In the Diocese of San Miguel, it was a quiet, nonthreatening atmosphere, and suddenly here he encounters all the injustice of military, economic, and political power that massacred people.

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CANONIZATION: ST. OSCAR ROMERO

So he had to respond to that reality.

There is another question that was posed: “Aren’t you afraid that they will kill you?” His answer: “I’m not afraid, but apprehensive.

God goes with me, and, if something happens to me, I am willing.”

That enduring sense of martyrdom linked to his ministry ran throughout his time in San Salvador.

Q: Romero is a martyr for faith. what is the significance of that?

A: The case of Romero marks a stage in Church [history] regarding martyrdom that highlights the position of the Vatican on the model of pastor. Romero was a product of the Second Vatican Council; he is a model of the pastoral thrust of the council. His ministry also reflects the world Synod of Bishops in “Pastores Gregis” [an apostolic exhortation

by St. John Paul II], where the profile of the bishop is described: to be pastor of the poor, fighter for justice, defender of the weak, a prophet who denounces. When one reads the document, one could easily say that profile describes Romero.

Romero’s death is martyrdom for the faith.

It wasn’t the typical martyrdom [brought on] by pagans. People who called themselves Christians killed him, people who went to Mass on Sundays and received Communion; that is unusual.

Q: How can that be explained?

A: Romero was killed because he followed Jesus Christ in his choice for the poor, for justice, for human dignity, for a more dignified life for all, which is what the Church demands today. So that is a recent rationale for the argument that makes theologians say that he is a martyr of the Church. In the doctrine of the Church, this marks a novelty and an advance. There are many cases like this, so they will now be understood as martyrdom.

Q: Thirty-five years ago, you wrote a symbolic letter to Romero after his death, in which you gave a general idea of how the people were doing. If you were to write it again, what would you say?

A: Yes, I remember that letter. I wrote it a month after his murder. In it, I told him that

During a visit to a village that had been taken by the military, Archbishop Romero holds a young girl on his lap. As he listens, a boy admires the archbishop’s pectoral cross.

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CANONIZATION: ST. OSCAR ROMERO

people were going to put flowers at his tomb, that we felt as if he were still among us, that the problems in the country continued, that the people needed hope, and that his words were very alive in their hearts. It was a letter that came out of my heart. Yesterday, at the anniversary memorial, we could see Romero still present on the lips of people—believers and nonbelievers. Romero is an interesting phenomenon. A journalist was asking me if we would forget his legacy over time. Note that it doesn’t work like that with him. Usually as time goes by, you forget people who have died. Here it is the opposite; more and more people know and love him.

And what will happen on May 23 is that we are going to see a saint, a saint who impacts the whole world.

Q: Those feelings are the same today. There are still people carrying flowers to his grave, and there are problems in the country. There is a lack of hope.

Why doesn’t the situation in El Salvador change?

A: I have also been asked why the process of canonization took so long. For 20 years, we had the same government guiding the country, one that rejected all that Romero had done, who never spoke well of him. One slogan that the people chanted during the Saturday Mass was: “If Romero is holy, why did it take so long?” One reason was that the government did not support this process and did not let it proceed. This same mind-set hindered a solution for the roots of the crisis that led to the civil war. It was a structural crisis of injustice, inequity, and exclusion.

That was the tone for 20 years. Then the gap widened, and the poor became poorer and the rich became richer.

Mauricio Funes arrived in 2009, changed direction, and emphasized social progress. So now Romero was resurrected in the public discourse. That’s how we arrived at the current government, which took a step closer to national dialogue and created an autonomous council, in which all are represented.

And there I am with three other representatives of the Catholic Church. An action plan has been developed with goals, budget, international assistance, and a period of five years for implementation. We are entering a new stage in the history of the country, and the world is aware of this. There is worldwide sympathy within the United Nations and the European Union for this initiative.

We did not have this before, but now we have broad international support, and there is optimism that we are going to take off.

Q: What has been the prophetic role of the Church after the death of Romero?

A: There is a growing self-awareness in the Latin American Church. After the 1979 General Conference of the Latin American Episcopacy and Caribbean (CELAM) in Puebla, 38 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Mexico, the Latin American Church missed the opportunity to emerge as a force for justice, as if disinterested in the world it had to serve. Hence, its prophetic role was diminishing. But then the more recent 2007 CELAM in Aparecida, Brazil, brought back that fervor. And there was also Jorge Bergoglio, the current pope, who as a cardinal coordinated the team that drafted the final document. That connection gave his pontificate the link to the Church’s role in history as a prophetic Church, and that is why Pope Francis has so much affection for Romero.

There is so much similarity in both [men]. The magazine New Life of Spain published an article where I compared the two of them in seven points. For Pope Francis, Romero incorporates what he wants for the Church and for the world.

Q: What would these seven points be?

A: Marian devotion, so deep in both; shepherds with the smell of sheep; a Church for the poor and with the poor; a vision for a missionary Church that proclaims the paschal mystery; seeing in the poor the flesh of Christ; a Church that is present in the world as yeast, as light and salt. Finally, both evangelize as they are, what they do, and with what they say.

Q: The similarity between both shepherds is amazing. Since you knew Romero so personally as the rector of the seminary, what was your personal experience with him?

A: You know, when he was named archbishop, I was just beginning in the seminary. That same month and year, we were reopening it after it had been closed during a period of crisis. We removed cobwebs, cleaned, swept, mopped; it was like a building ruined. Romero arrived, and he asks, “Do you have a little space for me to stay?”

So we prepared an apartment for him. He lived with us for several months in his quarters, where he set up his office.

It was there that he started something interesting, the radio program Sentir con la Iglesia, broadcast on Wednesdays. He was the host. There were two microphones, and we talked with each other about issues regarding the Church and the country.

I was already familiar with his method of communication from the time when I was an adolescent seminarian. When he had been in San Miguel before that, he had a radio show that was called Oración de la Mañana (Morning Prayer). One day, we ate dinner together as we were listening to Vatican Radio, and Romero said to me, “Let’s go to the sacristy after dinner.”

There [in the sacristy] was his recording equipment, and he was getting ready to record his radio program. I was standing by, listening to what he was saying, when he suddenly said, “I have next to me a seminarian by the name of

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A French journalist interviews Archbishop Romero at Sacred Heart Basilica following Sunday Mass. The interview took place at the basilica because the cathedral was occupied at the time by the rebels.

Gregorio Rosa, who will say a few words.” He gave me the microphone without any prior warning, so I improvised a few words.

He continued recording, and at the end he said, “That turned out very nicely.” I remember that phrase very well; it was the beginning of my vocation as a communicator.

He was passionate about the radio. This shy man who we met with those human limitations became a prophet of the people in front of the microphone. There the spirit of God moved him.

If you read his diary, this topic [of the radio program] appears almost every day: What if the radio program was ruined? What if it was sabotaged? What if the program did not go well or didn’t air? The radio would always be on his mind. One time, they [the Salvadoran government] almost blew up the radio [station], and he uttered this famous phrase, “Even if we lost our radio station, each one of us must become the microphone of God.” Brother Octavio Duran, OFM, a native of El Salvador, Central America, is a Franciscan friar from Holy Name Province who serves as director of media for the province’s office of development. He is also the editor of The Anthonian magazine. Brother Octavio is known to the Catholic media through his many years as a photojournalist. During his years as a seminarian, he captured many of the iconic images of Archbishop Romero during the final two years of the Salvadoran archbishop’s life.

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 39

CANONIZATION

ST. PAUL VI Bridge Builder

A quiet leader, Pope Paul VI guided the Church through the sweeping and controversial reforms of the Second Vatican Council during turbulent times.

O

n October 14, 2018, Pope Francis will canonize Pope Paul VI, along with martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. Pope Paul VI, despite his enormous impact on the Church—the most obvious being the reform of the liturgy brought about by the Second Vatican Council—is curiously obscure to many Americans. He is perhaps best known for his 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (“Of Human Life”), which upheld the Church’s controversial ban on the use of artificial birth control.

Paul VI has the disadvantage of being sandwiched between two far more charismatic personalities: Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II (elected after Pope John Paul I’s monthlong reign). His was often the unglamorous work of a bureaucrat, not of a beloved papa figure like John or a superstar evangelist like John Paul II. But as the man charged with implementing an enormously controversial council and shepherding the Church in its transition to facing the modern world as a renewed evangelistic force, he faced titanic challenges with intelligence, resolve, and deep holiness.

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini was born on September 26, 1897, the last pope born in the 19th century. He was ordained in 1920, became a bishop in 1954, and was named a cardinal in 1958. He was a cleric groomed for the papacy by his work in the Vatican, serving in the Secretariat of State (1922–54) and witnessing the torments of what was arguably the most violent century in history.

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PHOTO CREDIT

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Before being elected, Pope Paul VI served for years as the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Pope Paul is pictured with Archbishop Albino Luciano, the future Pope John Paul I, in Venice in September 1972. In this April 1972 photo, Pope Paul greets a child as he visits a parish in Rome. Paul VI, who guided the Church toward greater ecumenism, stands beside Eugene C. Blake, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1969.

CNS PHOTOS: LEFT TO RIGHT: VATICAN MEDIA; WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES; GIANCARLO GIULIANI, CATHOLIC PRESS; OPPOSITE PAGE: GIANCARLO GIULIANI, CATHOLIC PRESS

By Mark P. Shea

PHOTO CREDIT

CNS PHOTOS: LEFT TO RIGHT: VATICAN MEDIA; WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES; GIANCARLO GIULIANI, CATHOLIC PRESS; OPPOSITE PAGE: GIANCARLO GIULIANI, CATHOLIC PRESS

Pope Paul VI is carried in procession on the sedia gestatoria, a ceremonial throne, in this undated photo. Pope Paul served as pope from 1963 to 1978.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 41

SHEPHERD OF VATICAN II

Pope Paul’s most obvious achievement was, of course, to shepherd the Church through the Second Vatican Council 42 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

(1962–65), the largest rethink of its tradition since the Council of Trent, 400 years earlier. He understood, better than most, that the paradigms that had governed the Church’s engagement with the world since the 16th century were no longer sufficient. This did not mean that the Gospel was inadequate, of course. But it did mean that the Church needed to return to the sources of its tradition—particularly the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church—and approach the world with a view not of defending a fortress under assault, but of proclaiming good news as the early Church had done.

Paul VI understood that the Church needed to proclaim the faith with a unified voice, an irony given the hostility the council would meet. The priorities he laid out for the council were a better understanding of the Church, Church reforms, advancing the unity of Christianity, and dialogue with the world. He requested the council fathers to avoid new dogmatic definitions and to restate the faith in simple language.

For Catholics born before 1960, perhaps the most notable change was in the liturgy. Priests faced the congregation instead of the altar and spoke in the vernacular instead of Latin, and laypeople were encouraged to take a more active role in worship.

Pope Paul VI was also notably solicitous of the goodwill of the representatives of other Christian traditions at the council, sought their forgiveness for the sins of Catholics that had contributed to the disunity of Christendom, and took particular care to remind the council that many bishops could not attend because they lived under Communist rule.

He understood that Christians now stood together in a world that both desperately needed the Gospel and presented the Church with a host of threats that it could not afford to meet with internecine squabbles.

CNS PHOTO: GIANCARLO GIULIANI/CATHOLIC PRESS

At the pope’s request, from 1939 to 1947, Montini created an office that worked to find over 11 million displaced persons and provide refugees with shelter, food, and other material assistance. In addition, he helped escaped Allied POWs, Jews, anti-Fascists, Socialists, Communists, and others. It gave him a unique perspective and skill set for the work to which God would call him when Pope John XXIII died in the summer of 1963, having convened the Second Vatican Council in October 1962.

John XXIII initially hoped the council would be able to finish its work by December 1962, after a single two-month session. Montini, with a more realistic grasp of the immense challenges facing the Church, remarked of his friend wryly, “This old boy does not know what a hornets’ nest he is stirring up.”

As pope, Paul VI accomplished so much that it is difficult to summarize in a mere 2,500 words. His biographer, Peter Hebblethwaite, gives a reasonable assessment of his crowded papal career (stretching from June 1963 to August 1978) with these words: “He managed to complete the council without dividing the Church. He reformed the Roman Curia without alienating it. He introduced collegiality without ever letting it undermine his papal office. He practiced ecumenism without impairing Catholic identity. He had an Ostpolitik [way of negotiating with Communists] that involved neither surrender nor bouncing aggressivity. He was ‘open to the world’ without ever being its dupe. He pulled off the most difficult trick of all: combining openness with fidelity.”

CNS PHOTO: PAUL HARING

Pope Francis celebrated the beatification Mass of Blessed Paul VI in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican October 19, 2017, at the conclusion of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family. Blessed Paul authored the encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which affirmed the Church’s teaching against artificial contraception.

CANONIZATION: ST. PAUL VI CATHOLIC ECUMENIST

Pope Paul VI sought to affirm whatever could be affirmed in common with those from other faith traditions. “Unitatis Redintegratio” (“Decree on Ecumenism”) and “Nostra Aetate” (“Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”) are the two great models for this approach. Compare them with the documents of the Council of Trent, and the immense shift in tone is plain.

Trent reveals the mind of an embattled Church, struggling to condemn one false proposition after another in the heat of combat with the Reformation.

At Vatican II, under Paul VI’s guidance, the Church emphatically shifts to a glass-half-full approach to other Christian traditions and to religious traditions beyond the Christian sphere. Again and again, the Church, while not papering over the real differences between the Catholic communion and other traditions, focuses on what can be affirmed in common.

As a result, Pope Paul made unprecedented strides in healing some of the Church’s ancient and open wounds. For instance, his meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in Jerusalem led to rescinding the excommunications of the Great Schism of 1054. Similarly, after nearly 2,000 years of what had amounted to monologue (and countless shameful persecutions by Christians culminating in the horrors of the Shoah) he inaugurated respectful interreligious dialogue with various representatives of the Jewish people, as well as conversations with other religious traditions, both Christian and non-Christian.

sought that, and the goal was in large measure achieved. The implementation of the Extraordinary Form in 2007, while a clear conciliatory gesture to those who prefer Latin over the vernacular, was not a rebuke of Paul’s reform of the Mass.

The most obvious evidence of that fact is that the Ordinary Form remains the Ordinary Form.

DEFENDER OF THE POOR

Pope Paul VI was, in many ways, “to the manor born.” His mother was from a noble family. His father had been a member of Parliament, his brothers a doctor and lawyer. This was reflected in his own career: He never pastored a parish and was funneled straight into curial work. He served three popes before he became pope himself and was accustomed to moving at the very highest levels of the Church.

He was, however, also a committed disciple of Jesus Christ who understood that the Church was called to model Jesus’ teaching to “let the greatest among you be as the young-

CNS PHOTO: GIANCARLO GIULIANI/CATHOLIC PRESS

CNS PHOTO: PAUL HARING

GLOBE-TROTTING EVANGELIST

Paul VI took his name in honor of St. Paul and, like his namesake, was driven by an evangelistic imperative that governed everything he did. Indeed, he declared in “Evangelii Nuntiandi” (“On Evangelization in the Modern World”): “Evangelizing is, in fact, the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of his death and glorious resurrection.”

Accordingly, he became, like his namesake, something new in the history of the papacy: a globe-trotting evangelist. He visited six continents. He was a kind of prototype for the great popes who have followed him, leaving the Vatican to bear witness to the flock around the world and to call into the fold those not yet baptized.

This drove his reform of the liturgy as well. Vatican II’s “Sacrosanctum Concilium” (“Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”) had declared that “all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active, participation in liturgical celebrations, which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy” (14). The Ordinary Form promulgated by Paul VI

Pope Paul VI greets a girl during a visit to the Church of St. Leo the Great in Rome in 1968. Even though he never served as a parish priest, Paul VI guided the Church as a pastor, serving with “intelligence, resolve, and deep holiness,” according to the author.

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CANONIZATION: ST. PAUL VI

est, and the leader as the servant” (Lk 22:26). In a dramatic gesture of renunciation, during the Second Vatican Council, he descended the steps of the papal throne, ascended to the altar, and laid the papal tiara on it. Later, the tiara was sold and the money was given to charity. No pope since has worn one.

Pope Paul understood the threats and opportunities confronting the least of these in a world where economic extremes were growing, but economic opportunity was growing as well. His great encyclical “Populorum Progressio” (“The Progress of Peoples”) addressed this, proposing a holistic view of the human person who, to be sure, does not live by bread alone, yet whose physical needs could not be ignored either. He called for complete solidarity with the least of these and a view of material goods as entrusted to the rich for the sake of the poor. This would enable the poor to sufficient means not only to live, but also to participate in the kingdom of God. His goal in this was spiritual, not political, social, or materialistic. As he said: “Founded to build the kingdom of heaven on earth rather than to acquire temporal power, the Church openly avows that the two powers—Church and State—are distinct from one another; that each is supreme in its own sphere of competency. But since the Church does dwell among men, she has the duty ‘of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.’ Sharing the noblest aspirations of men and suffering when she sees these aspirations not satisfied, she wishes to help them attain their full realization.”

DEFENDER OF LIBERTY

Pope Paul VI understood one of the great developments of doctrine that the Church slowly came to grasp: Though “error has no rights,” nonetheless, persons in error do have rights. It was this development that led to the formulation of the principles enshrined in “Dignitatis Humanae” (“Declaration on Religious Liberty”).

Faced with a world where a third of the population were bound under the yoke of Communism, the Church profoundly stated the Christian doctrines of freedom of conscience and the necessity for Catholics to uphold liberty for all—not merely for Catholics. Paul VI put legs on this by undertaking dialogue with a host of people and insisting that such dialogue be predicated on the equal dignity of all participants. This did not mean that he sacrificed the reality that the fullness of truth subsists in the Church, which is the body of Christ. Nor did he see dialogue as an end in itself.

Rather, he had the confidence of St. Thomas Aquinas that any movement by anybody toward the truth was movement toward Jesus Christ.

For this reason, he did not fear religious liberty since, with St. Paul, he knew that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).

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DEFENDER OF LIFE

At the same time, Paul VI understood the distinction between liberty and license. The misuse of freedom leads, as he saw, not to greater freedom, but to slavery, the consequence of sin. The most famous and countercultural expression of this Christian conviction was his restatement of traditional Catholic sexual ethics in “Humanae Vitae,” which insisted that the sexual act was intended only for marriage between one man and one woman, that our sexual nature was made by God to bring forth children, that thwarting that nature by artificial contraception was destructive and warping to our understanding of human sexuality, and that the embrace of a contraceptive culture would inevitably lead to the devaluation of human life and human relationships, as well as the rise of an abortion culture.

SUFFERING SAINT

Pope Paul’s life in the center of the maelstrom of change in the ’60s and ’70s made him a lightning rod for hostility, which he bore with heroic courage. In his piety, he was every inch an ordinary Catholic. He had a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, naming her Mother of the Church and asking for her intercession for the council.

Paul VI suffered much in his lifetime. He witnessed the agonies of two world wars. He loved and admired Pope Pius XII, and it hurt him to see that pope accused of failing in his duty during the Holocaust. He suffered as well from accusations of heterodoxy after the council and from the fury heaped on his head for “Humanae Vitae.” Unlike many of his predecessors, he did not excommunicate opponents and bore much opprobrium from enemies—as well as from those who thought him weak for not punishing those enemies.

In addition to the controversy, near the end of his life, his friend Aldo Moro, the former prime minister of Italy, was kidnapped by terrorists and held hostage for 55 days. Pope Paul begged for his life and even offered to exchange places with him, to no avail. Moro was shot to death and his body left in the trunk of a car. Pope Paul, heartbroken, celebrated his state funeral Mass.

As the summer of 1978 wore on, his health failed. He died on August 6, 1978. His burial was characteristically humble in obedience to his will that stipulated he be placed in the “true earth” with no ornate sarcophagus.

One of his last writings sums up well his life of patient Christian suffering: “What is my state of mind? Am I Hamlet? Or Don Quixote? On the left? On the right? I do not think I have been properly understood. I am filled with ‘great joy.’ With all our affliction, I am overjoyed (2 Cor 2:4).”

Mark P. Shea is a popular writer and speaker. He is coauthor of the best seller A Guide to the Passion: 100 Questions about the Passion of Christ. He also writes for the blog Catholic and Enjoying It! at Patheos.com.

MY SON, SAINT FRANCIS

BY MARCY HEIDISH

“… a story…in the hands of a poet like Marcy Heidish will not disappoint.”

— Murray Bodo, OFM

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Peace and joy

IN THEIR T WI LI GHT YEARS

Your generosity allows our senior and infirm friars to live their twilight years with the peace and joy they so richly deserve.

During October, your gift will be matched by the Jasper Challenge dollar for dollar up to $10,000.

For more information visit stanthony.org/retired or call 513-721-4700.

The Franciscan Friars, Province of St. John the Baptist 1615 Vine St., Cincinnati, OH 45202 StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 45

Nature’s Cathedrals Faced with the demands of the world around us, St. Francis led the way to our finding peace in nature.

O

ver the years, I’ve had a continuing love affair with trees.

While growing up in the heartland of America, I discovered early in life that there was something about trees that evoked a deep sense of reverence. Their ability to praise God simply by following the purpose for which they were created awakened in me seeds of contemplation, which I believe are planted in every heart before we are born. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you” (Jer 1:5a).

I recall spending countless hours lying in the grass, captivated by the sight of mighty oak trees, their leaves rustling in the wind, bowing in solemn adoration. The scene was enough to send my imagination soaring, often reaching a crescendo of praise audible only to God. Fir trees were transformed into cathedral spires, piercing the heavens even as they shaded earth from the heat of the day. Standing in the shadow of nature’s houses of worship, my whole being 46 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

seemed to be clothed in a velvety silence that made me feel warm all over. The taller the trees, the greater the security I found in my smallness, as I delighted in knowing that I was part of a world so large that only God could wrap his arms around it.

Decades later, trees continue to speak to me, serving as gateways to mystery, daring me to describe the indescribable bounty of God’s love. As I became increasingly aware of humanity’s deepest longing—which only God can satisfy— the hunger that at an earlier age was satisfied by gazing upward was directed inward. Gradually the words of Jesus took hold. “But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you” (Mt 6:6).

In retrospect, those early years of tree-gazing have accompanied me into adulthood as an apt metaphor for the seasons of prayer. Much in the same way trees change with

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the seasons of the year, so our prayer life changes as we pass through the deepening stages of prayer.

Perhaps no one understood this better than St. Francis of Assisi. He roamed the hills of Assisi praising God and singing love songs to Lady Poverty. He fell in love with the beauty of nature, but that was only the beginning. His search for God eventually led him to enter the caves of Umbria, where, in darkness, he confronted his inner demons, surrendered his life to God, and discovered truth.

When he emerged, Francis was changed, not because of any one encounter, not even because he bore the wounds of the Savior later in life. The once youthful and flamboyant troubadour was changed because he emerged from humanity’s self-imposed prison, looked around, and saw God everywhere and in everything.

He related to all of creation as his equal, addressing the earth and sky as brother and sister. When he looked around, he saw that every blade of grass, fish and fowl, mountain and valley, sun and moon, all proclaimed the glory of God, and Francis became God’s troubadour. Unable to contain his joy, he invited all the world to join the chorus.

Barbara Hughes has a master’s degree in formative spirituality from Duquesne University. She is an experienced retreat facilitator and spiritual guide. A columnist for the Catholic Virginian, she is the author of Ministry and the Mystical Path. Her works on prayer and spirituality have been widely published.

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 47

media MATTERS

reel time | channel surfing | audio file | bookshelf

By Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP

Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society The Seagull Eighth Grade Pope Francis: A Man of His Word

W

hen Nick Young (Henry Golding) invites his girlfriend, New York University economics professor Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), home to Singapore as his date to his best friend’s wedding, she knows she’ll be meeting his family for the first time.

Rachel soon realizes how wealthy Nick and his family are when their seats are upgraded to first class. Once in Singapore, Rachel learns that the Young family owns the biggest real estate firm in the region. As one friend puts it, they are “crazy rich.”

Before Rachel meets anyone, someone takes her photo with Nick and shares it on social media. By the time they arrive at the Young home, everyone is calling her a gold digger. Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), Nick’s mom, is formal and stiff, and eventually tells Rachel that she will never be good enough for her son. Eleanor insists that Nick put family first.

Nick’s grandmother, Shang Su Yi (Lisa Lu), appears welcoming at first and invites Rachel to help make dumplings because cooking is a way to keep the family together and pass down the culture to the next generation.

The opulent bachelor and bachelorette parties don’t go well for either Nick or Rachel.

48 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Nick proposes to Rachel, and neither his mother nor grandmother is pleased. Eleanor, in fact, goes to extreme lengths to expose Rachel’s background to her son.

Crazy Rich Asians is based on the 2013 best-selling novel by Kevin Kwan. The film adaptation is directed by Jon M. Chu and cowritten by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim. The film is the first Hollywood production since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago to feature an all-Asian cast, which is a good thing. The story, however, is a satirical commentary about rich Asians and a traditional romantic comedy set against a mostly garish background (especially the wedding venue that was once a Catholic chapel).

There are interesting themes, such as the traditional role of women in a family challenged by culture clashes. Despite Wu’s sympathetic performance as an independent woman willing to sacrifice her own happiness, in the end it’s still all about getting the guy.

The box-office success of this film shows that audiences are open to story lines that feature a diverse cast.

A-3 • PG-13 • Some sexual humor.

THE APPARITION: MUSIC BOX FILMS; THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME: LIONSGATE ENTERTAINMENT

DVD or NETFLIX On

CRAZY RICH ASIANS

LEFT: SISTER NANCY USSELMANN; CRAZY RICH ASIANS: WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. AND RATPAC-DUNE ENTERTAINMENT LLC

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 SPY WHO DUMPED ME

W

THE APPARITION

THE APPARITION: MUSIC BOX FILMS; THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME: LIONSGATE ENTERTAINMENT

LEFT: SISTER NANCY USSELMANN; CRAZY RICH ASIANS: WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. AND RATPAC-DUNE ENTERTAINMENT LLC

J

acques (Vincent Lindon) is an injured war journalist who has recently returned to France after seeing his colleague die in an explosion in a Middle East conflict. He struggles with his hearing and wants to be alone.

When he is mysteriously beckoned to the Vatican and asked to be on a team investigating Anna (Galatéa Bellugi), a young woman who says she has seen the Blessed Virgin, he reluctantly accepts.

The town in southern France where the apparitions occur is inundated with pilgrims. The parish priest, eager to believe in the apparitions, preaches about Mary’s message to Anna, now a novice in the local convent. He emphasizes that Mary wants us to care for the poor in addition to prayer.

Anton (Anatole Taubman) sells religious items and organizes pilgrimages to his own advantage. But Jacques starts to investigate Anna’s personal background and discovers she lived her life in foster homes alongside children with whom she is still in touch.

A mystery emerges that challenges Jacques’ own weak faith and unwittingly exposes not only the feeble faith of others, but also genuine charity.

While The Apparition is long and the drama uneven, the reverence for Our Lady and the genuine search for faith will inspire audiences. Mary is always present in the film.

Director and cowriter Xavier Giannoli’s intent is to explore the mystery of belief in the modern world.

The director has done his research on the process for approving Marian apparitions. The film is in French with English subtitles.

Not yet rated • Some moments of 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

Source: USCCB.org/movies

hen Audrey (Mila Kunis) is dumped by her boyfriend, Drew (Justin Theroux), via text on her birthday, her best friend, Morgan (Kate McKinnon), tells her to text him back that she is burning his stuff. He texts her again, begging her not to.

Audrey meets a man, Sebastian (Sam Heughan), at the bar where she works. He flirts with her and reveals that Drew is really a spy for the CIA and has disappeared. But when Drew comes back to get his things, especially his fantasy football statue, men arrive to shoot Drew and anyone in sight.

Drew tells Audrey to take the statue to a meeting at a café in Vienna. Then Sebastian shoots Drew, and Morgan, to her great surprise, shoots Sebastian.

Audrey and Morgan flee, spending their meager funds to buy plane tickets and make the meeting in Vienna. Once again, chaos breaks out. But Audrey is smart, and Morgan is crafty. As they are pursued through numerous cities, the two women follow Drew’s initial advice to them: Trust no one. This film, directed by Susanna Fogel, is a crass and vulgar spy caper with few admirable qualities, aside from the competent pairing of Kunis and McKinnon and one terrific laugh about the overwrought menu of a certain American restaurant chain.

L • PG-13 • War and domestic violence.

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 49

media MATTERS

reel time | channel surfing | audio file | bookshelf

By Christopher Heffron

stream UP CLOSE

All or Nothing: Manchester City Amazon Prime

K

ids today have no shortage of distractions: Social media, video games, and streaming seem to be the preferred time sucks for young people. They’ve never been so connected and yet so detached. And many would struggle to imagine a time when kids didn’t have Google or Snapchat to experience or engage with the world. Once upon a time, children went outside. Families of the 19th and early 20th centuries didn’t have flat screens or Wi-Fi to keep them entertained. They went to the circus.

PBS’ four-hour plunge into the history and influence of this treasured pastime is as engrossing as it is overwhelming. On the surface, this documentary is about the roots of the circus in the American soil; how showman (and shyster) P.T. Barnum had the vision and dexterity to grow its popularity; how circus folk banded together in a brutal, itinerant lifestyle to create a ragtag family; and how generations of Americans found a sense of wonder under the big top.

Like all poorly regulated forms of entertainment, life for early circus performers wasn’t pretty—and as they traveled across the United States, their arrivals were often met with disdain. In the early 19th century, on the heels of a religious revival in this country, performers endured the wrath of church leaders who viewed entertainment of any kind as sinful. But Barnum’s concept could not be cast out.

The lure of the acrobats, clowns, contortionists, oddities, and an ever-changing menagerie of animals proved too enticing for American audiences. We were hooked.

The Circus, meticulously researched and rendered, is a celebration of ingenuity, ability, and agility. It is an homage to the faceless entertainers who devoted their lives to the circus and its code. One early critic called performers “nomadic ruffians.” But history has a kinder retrospect. They were pioneers of entertainment— ambassadors of escapism.

One historian in the film says it best: “There is a need for the human being to try things for no reason whatsoever.”

50 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

NICK DRAKE: PHIL EK/BELLA UNION/SUB POP; JACK WHITE: THIRD MAN RECORDS; PETE & REPEAT: TOM GREENE

PBS, October 8 and 9, check local listings

he lackluster ratings for the 2018 FIFA World Cup prove a time-tested theory: Soccer doesn’t yet have a foothold in this country. Professional leagues are popping up, but culturally we haven’t embraced the sport quite like the trifecta of football, basketball, and baseball. For those who didn’t play, Amazon Prime offers a fascinating look into the lives of those who do in All or Nothing: Manchester City.

In Europe, soccer isn’t just popular; it’s a religion. The 2016-2017 season netted over $17 billion in revenue. This docuseries focuses on one club in particular: Manchester City. Much of the focus, at least with the first episode, is on head coach Pep Guardiola, a former midfielder. The series covers the team’s mission to clinch the number one ranking and to add some hardware to their trophy case. It’s a lofty goal—and watching the team work to accomplish it is riveting.

Channel surfers might recoil from the locker-room vulgarities (these are professional athletes, after all), but stick with the series and you’ll discover themes of teamwork, family, and sacrifice that truly inspire.

THE CIRCUS: COLLECTION OF THE JOHN AND MABLE RINGLING MUSEUM OF ART, THE STATE ART MUSEUM OF FLORIDA, AND FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY; ALL OR NOTHING: MANCHESTER CITY: FOOTBALL.UA/CREATIVE COMMONS

The Circus

T

reel time | channel surfing | auDiO file | bookshelf

Editor’s Pick

By Daniel Imwalle

JACK WHITE | BOARDING HOUSE REACH

Retro-spective NICK DRAKE | WAY TO BLUE

NICK DRAKE: PHIL EK/BELLA UNION/SUB POP; JACK WHITE: THIRD MAN RECORDS; PETE & REPEAT: TOM GREENE

n the song “Time of No Reply,” the late English musician Nick Drake wistfully sings: “Summer was gone and the heat died down/And Autumn reached for her golden crown/I looked behind as I heard a sigh/But this was the time of no reply.” Lyrics such as these make October the perfect time to listen to Drake, who often employed odd guitar tunings and unusual time signatures in his unique brand of folk music.

Sadly, Drake died in 1974 at the age of 26. Though he was largely unknown at the time of his death, a small but devoted audience kept his musical legacy alive. Way to Blue, released in 1994, compiles 16 songs from Drake’s short but fruitful time as a songwriter.

Despite the darkness lurking at the periphery, there’s a flickering light at the heart of the music. Songs such as “Poor Boy” and “One of These Things First” even have a welcome bit of humor in them, providing some buoyancy to the heavier material. A solid introduction to the music of Nick Drake, Way to Blue does justice to an artist lost far too soon.

PETE&REPEAT

usical enigma Jack White has spent the past two decades delighting and confounding critics and fans with his often unconventional songwriting. Whether in the groundbreaking music of the White Stripes or other musical projects he’s been involved in, White consistently takes risks and refuses to repeat himself.

For those looking for a garage rock album in the spirit of the White Stripes, Boarding House Reach—White’s third solo album—will most likely be a disappointment. But listeners interested in hearing one of the great musical innovators of our time try something completely different will find this album to be exhilarating, challenging, and rewarding. White decided to record his new songs on a reel-to-reel tape recorder he purchased when he was 14. The grittiness of the production value helps make the album believable and raw. For a musician whose career has nearly been defined by his lead guitar-playing, Boarding House Reach instead focuses on grooves and features a wide variety of instruments.

A case in point of the album’s far-reaching experimentation is the sixth track, “Ice Station Zebra.” Funk-inspired drum and bass parts combine with squelching synthesizers, short clips of bluesy upright piano, and various percussion instruments. Many of White’s lyrics on Boarding House Reach are cryptic, to say the least.

But on “Ice Station Zebra,” there’s a hint of the Catholic imagination at work in the lyrical content: “Everyone creating is a member of the family/Passing down genes and ideas in harmony/The players and the cynics will be thinking it’s hard/ But if you rewind the tape, we’re all copying God. . . . Add your own pace, but the puzzle is God’s.”

It could be that his upbringing in a Detroit Catholic family has had some bearing on his artistic expression over the years. Some might be surprised to learn that White was an altar server and even nearly joined a seminary before he decided to pursue music. How much this religious background plays a part in his music will likely remain unknown. After all, the fiercely private Jack White wouldn’t be the mysterious mad genius that he is without at least a few unanswered questions.

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 BOOK

Great fun for puzzlers of all ages!

Go online to order: Shop.FranciscanMedia.org For ONLY $3.99 Use Code: SAMPETE ANSWERS to PETE & REPEAT: 1) A cloud is behind the tree. 2) Sis has buttons on her collar. 3) One leaf is still on the tree. 4) Pete’s shirt has lost a stripe. 5) An extra leaf is on the page. 6) The tree has lost a branch. 7) The knot in the tree is now empty. 8) The vein has disappeared from a leaf on the page.

THE CIRCUS: COLLECTION OF THE JOHN AND MABLE RINGLING MUSEUM OF ART, THE STATE ART MUSEUM OF FLORIDA, AND FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY; ALL OR NOTHING: MANCHESTER CITY: FOOTBALL.UA/CREATIVE COMMONS

I

M

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 51

media MATTERS

reel time | channel surfing | audio file | bookshelf

By Julie Traubert

Baseball, Brotherhood, and Faith “God loves impossible situations,” Dad told us. “It gives him a chance to show off.”

MIRACLE IN SHREVEPORT

BY DAVID AND JASON BENHAM Thomas Nelson

N

ot since John Sexton’s Baseball as a Road to God has the national pastime been merged so sublimely with the eternal. Miracle in Shreveport is the kind of book that is easy to read and makes its point about growing up in a faith-filled family that has dreams— without being overly sentimental.

David and Jason Benham are twin

brothers who love baseball, but love God even more. Raised in an evangelical family in Texas, the twins aspire to play professional baseball together, specifically in a minor-league stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The narrative chronicles their rise through the ranks as they secure scholarships to play baseball for Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The story is told in the voices of both authors as they interchange their conversation with each other. It’s an interesting approach and the conceit works. We learn about their struggles to reach the big leagues, always keeping their eyes fixed on God and relying on their faith to get them through the various bumps that occur on the road to the major leagues. They never lose faith that God will answer their prayers

to play on the same team in Shreveport.

This is a book about faith and trust in God’s promise to give us a life of great abundance. It’s the story of a family that is filled with faith 24/7, cast against the picture of baseball, a world where competition and money are often the Holy Grail. It’s a book that proves God has a plan for us and that plan is better than anything we expected or deserved.

If you love baseball and want to see how God uses sports to make the spirit in each of us alive and dynamic, then this is a read you do not want to miss.

Reviewed by James A. Percoco, history chair at Loudon School for the Gifted in Ashburn, Virginia.

Spiritual Wills: Define Your True Self “You will have created, with God’s help, the life that you want to be remembered for . . . the answers are the treasures of your journey.”

T

he Journey Never Ends asks questions we continue to ask ourselves: Who am I and where did I come from?

Mary Petrosky, FMM, a social worker and spiritual director, has combined years of guidance and compassion journeying with people of all faiths and backgrounds to share this reflective guide that encourages us to not only ask these questions but also go one step further by creating a spiritual will.

For people who define themselves as “spiritual” as well as those who are part of a religious tradition, a spiritual will helps you focus on defining your true self. You express what’s important to

you and where you want to concentrate your life’s energy: toward love, family, faith, career, and/or ministry. It can also describe what you have learned in life from various experiences and relationships. The purpose is not only to have this for yourself as a guide through life, but also to share this legacy of values with your loved ones so they can remember your spirituality and journey.

Petrosky provides 10 principles to help guide you in writing a spiritual will. In addition to a “Group Use Guide,” she includes 14 questions at the end, which she says “are a good outline

52 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

THE JOURNEY NEVER ENDS

BY MARY PETROSKY, FMM Ava Maria Press

for anyone doing counseling or spiritual direction, as well as anyone who reads them and is prepared to get to the real core of his or her true self.”

Reviewed by Paula J. Scraba, OSF, PhD, an associate professor at St. Bonaventure University, New York.

THE ROSARY HANDBOOK

ST. CLARE OF ASSISI

THE CANTICLE OF THE CREATURES

BY MITCH FINLEY

BY BRET THOMAN, OFS

BY LUIGI SANTUCCI

The Word Among Us Press

ILLUSTRATED BY MARTIN ERSPAMER, OSB

TAN Books

Paraclete Press

“The rosary has something to offer just about everyone. . . . [It] is at once simple and deep.”

T

he subtitle of this book says it all: “A Guide for Newcomers, OldTimers, and Those in Between.” First published in 2007, author Mitch Finley has updated and revised this edition with the same approachable style, while focusing the Catholic lens on Mary through 21st-century eyes.

Finley presents the basics—how to pray the rosary and put it into practice—but also offers insight into why we should recite this tactile prayer to grow toward a “state of prayerfulness.” The reader almost feels as if a friend is explaining the 20 mysteries of the rosary as Finley comments on key points for meditation.

“I have (perhaps boldly) set out to explore what was at the heart of this still little-known medieval saint.” ne thing you should know is that this is not your typical biography of a saint. Secular Franciscan Bret Thoman takes you into the thoughts and 13th-century world of St. Clare of Assisi using what he calls “a blend of biography and historical fiction.”

Combining his creativity and historical research with St. Clare’s surviving writings and letters, Thoman brings to life Clare’s spiritual journey following the path to poverty paved by St. Francis.

Living in Italy and working with Poor Clare sisters, Thoman bases some of the characters on his personal relationships with nuns, Franciscan friars, and laity.

O

What Our Readers Recommend The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene The Everlasting Man, by G.K. Chesterton Silence, by Shusaku Endo

“He carefully exhorted birds and beasts and even insentient creatures to praise and love the Creator.” riginally published in Italian in 1981, this diminutive, beautifully illustrated English translation is a gift for the eyes and the soul. Influential Italian writer and poet Luigi Santucci died in 1999, but his fanciful take on St. Francis’ “Canticle of the Creatures” holds its charm and wisdom. Each of the short chapters is from the point of view of one of St. Francis’ beloved animals, including birds, the cicada, and of course the wolf. The animals tell stories of their interactions with St. Francis, underlying Francis’ belief that all brothers and sisters, human and animal alike, should be treated with respect and love.

O

KIDS’ HOW TO BE A HERO

SPOT T

BY JULIA HARRELL

ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHAD THOMPSON

he saints had superpowers?

Absolutely! Children ages 9–12 will learn about a wide range of heroes from early Christianity to modern day. Each short chapter features a saint and his or her superpower—the outstanding virtue each showed when interacting with God and others.

Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith,

by Robert E. Barron

Books featured in this section can be ordered from:

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life, by James Martin, SJ

1909 West End Avenue • Nashville, TN 37203 • 800-233-3604

St. Mary’s Bookstore & Church Supply web: www.stmarysbookstore.com e-mail: stmarysbookstore@gmail.com

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 53

POINTSOFVIEW | FAITH & FAMILY

#HeToo

By Susan Hines-Brigger

I

Susan welcomes your comments and suggestions!

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

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THE FLIP SIDE

But that is only one part of how this story affects our family. That’s because we also have a son. And it occurred to Mark and me that by not explicitly spending time on these issues with Alex, we are missing a big piece of the puzzle. Because even though the #MeToo movement seems to be predominantly female-centered, it really shouldn’t be. This isn’t only a female issue. This is also a male issue—and a human issue. Because of that, we

54 • October 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

absolutely should be including Alex and all men in these conversations.

I don’t want you to think that we haven’t talked about the subject of respect for women with Alex before this situation reared its ugly head. Growing up with three sisters, he has been made aware of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior when it comes to women. And on the flip side, our daughters have similarly been taught to be respectful of their brother and other men.

START TALKING

One thing that this whole situation has made clear to me, though, was that I couldn’t just preach to my kids about it. I also needed to figure out my own feelings about what is taking place. As I said, I have been on the wrong side of the issue. However, I’ve also been blessed to be surrounded by very respectful and honorable men in my life. In fact, when I asked one of my male friends how he felt about the whole situation, he said, “sad and angry.”

So how can I respect and acknowledge those hurt on both sides of the situation? The best answer I can come up with is to keep doing what I’ve already been doing: and that is talking about it—or in my case writing­­— and listening. That is how we will move forward.

Perhaps social activist Maggie Kuhn said it best: “Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind—even if your voice shakes.

When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.”

This isn’t just a female/male issue. It’s an us issue. Let’s talk, shall we?

FOTOSEARCH IMAGES: NATAVKUSIDEY; TOP RIGHT: YURAN78

Susan has worked at St. Anthony Messenger for 24 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.

LEFT: MC KOZUSKO/SAM; RIGHT: MASZAS/FOTOSEARCH

Susan Hines-Brigger

am the mother of three girls. I am the youngest of three girls. For the past year, I have watched in horror as story after story of sexual harassment and abuse has grabbed the headlines. At the same time, I have watched the development and growth of the #MeToo movement. This month, that movement marks the one-year anniversary of its start.

The movement has been both praised and criticized, but, regardless of anyone’s take on it, it has succeeded in getting a long-overdue conversation started.

With each story of harassment or abuse that comes to light, I continue to ponder how to best address the situation with my girls, who range in age from 8 to 20. As a woman and mom, I want to remind them of their invaluable worth and basic right to respect and safety. I want them to know about the issue because, like many other women, I also have my own experiences of gender inequality. To me, the issue is more than just something that happened to people in Hollywood.

I have even seen it in the Church. In fact, it wasn’t until 1994 that the Vatican came out and officially approved of female altar servers.

As our daughters have grown up, my husband, Mark, and I have tried to do our best to prepare them to face situations where their gender may affect their goals and opportunities. We have raised them to be confident, strong, and sensible. But we have also had to make them aware of the potential challenges they may face by demonstrating those characteristics. A strong-willed woman is seen in a different light than a strong-willed man. She is often seen as being difficult, while her male counterpart is praised for being determined.

Christmas in Rome Sweepstakes

Read two articles this October and get a chance to win.

Enter at Aleteia.org/ChristmasInRome

in the kitchen

with Erika Glover

Pumpkin Spice Latte

Yield: 2 drinks Prep time: 5 minutes • cook time: 5 minutes

Ingredients: 2 cups

milk (dairy or nondairy)

2–3 tbls. pumpkin puree (start with two; add a third if needed) 1–3 tbls. sugar (to taste) 1 tbls.

vanilla extract

½ tsp.

pumpkin pie spice

½ cup

strong hot coffee whipped cream (optional)

Instructions: Add milk, pumpkin puree, and sugar to a saucepan over medium heat. Heat until hot, but do not boil.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and whisk in the vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, and coffee.

Divide the mixture between two mugs.

Top with whipped cream and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice.

WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I dreamed of becoming a fashion designer in Paris and living above my boutique. This dream has since changed to writing books in a farmhouse and owning a coffee shop that serves the best spiced coffee to those who share the ways Jesus has touched their lives.

There is something so familiar about coffee shops—as if time is paused outside the doors and all the worries in the world are put on hold. Maybe that’s why I like them so much. Maybe it’s the smell of coffee that reminds me of my childhood. Or maybe it’s the clicking of keys or the scraping of a pencil on paper—words being tied together creating sentences to inspire, teach, comfort.

FOTOSEARCH IMAGES: NATAVKUSIDEY; TOP RIGHT: YURAN78

Autumn is the best time of year to be in a coffee shop: The door hangs open and the crisp autumn breeze floats in as people walk in to warm up.

Conversations that linger in the air are filled with stories of where Christ’s love has shown through. On the faces around the room, you can see where he has filled hearts with laughter. Coffee rings stain tables as strangers become forever friends over warm mugs filled with pumpkin pie spice and espresso.

FIND THIS AND OTHER RECIPES AT: FranciscanMedia.org/source/recipes

StAnthonyMessenger.org | October 2018 • 55

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Side by Side

LORI AND AVA UBOWSKI 192 pages, $15.95

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8/7/18 2:59 PM