03.27.09

Diocese of Fall River

The Anchor

F riday , March 27, 2009

An eye-opening experience in Guaimaca, Honduras

By Dave Jolivet, Editor

GUAIMACA, Honduras — He had never been to the diocesan Mission, but he had heard much about it. It was time for his first visit, and Father Karl C. Bissinger, secretary to Bishop George W. Coleman, and diocesan director of Vocations, candidly admitted to The Anchor, “I was a bit apprehensive about going.”

Not as apprehensive as were Father Bissinger’s parents. “My parents were nervous about my going and a few days before hand they said good-bye to me,” he said.

“Then the next night my mom called to say good-bye, and then the next night,” he laughed.

Father Bissinger accompanied Bishop Coleman on his recent visit to the Mission. Since The Anchor featured the bishop’s insights from past years, we figured it would be interesting to see the Mission through the fresh eyes of his secretary.

“I had my ideas about what I would find there,” he said. “I thought that once we got off the plane and out of the airport, we’d Turn to page 11 Turn to page 11

DEDICATION BLESSING — Bishop George W. Coleman anoints the altar at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Wellfleet with sacred chrism during the Rite of Dedication Sunday. The altar was originally in the former Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Wellfleet Center and was restored and moved to the new location. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

Bishop Coleman dedicates new Our Lady of Lourdes Church

FAR-AWAY RENDEZVOUS — Bishop George W. Coleman, left, chats with a delegation from St. John the Baptist Parish in Westport, at the Fall River diocesan Mission in Guaimaca, Honduras. The Westport folks visited the bishop and Father Craig A. Pregana while they were in Honduras helping out their “adopted” parish in Olancho.

Westport faithful visit ‘adopted’ mission in Honduras — page 11

Diocese’s judicial vicar addresses Vatican on clergy sexual abuse

By Deacon James N. Dunbar

by the Pontifical Council for LegROME — As a pontifical islative Texts to prepare a paper and offer input,” said council on Church law Father Robinson, who draws up new procedural was ordained a Carmelprovisions for cases of ite priest in 1967, and sexual abuse by clergy, who holds a doctorate in Father Paul F. Robinson, canon law from the UniO. Carm., judicial vicar versity of St. Thomas for the tribunal of the Aquinas in Rome.

Fall River Diocese, was Because there has among six American Father Paul canonists invited to share Robinson, O. Carm been a sharp increase in the number of penal their insights at a March cases brought before ecclesiasti5-6 symposium here.

Turn to page 18 “I felt quite honored to be asked

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

WELLFLEET — Despite the expanded capacity of the new 500-seat Our Lady of Lourdes Church, it was standing room only last Sunday as Bishop George W. Coleman presided at the solemn Rite of Dedication for the Fall River Diocese’s newest church.

The church and attached parish center, located on a 10-acre site at 335 Main Street (Route 6), is the culmination of a major fund-raising campaign on the part of parishioners, who raised more than $2 million to construct the

new church on property previously purchased by the diocese in 1987.

“Today is a time for rejoicing, as we dedicate this new church to the glory of God under the patronage of Our Lady of Lourdes,” Bishop Coleman said during his homily. “Some years ago Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Wellfleet Center was closed and work began to construct the beautiful church we’re dedicating today. I am most grateful to Father John F. Andrews for his pastoral ministry to the members of the parish. On this occasion I thank him

for carrying out those additional responsibilities … that led to the realization of this project.”

Father Andrews, who has overseen the fund-raising campaign and all aspects of construction since he became pastor 12 years ago, was elated to at last see this project come to fruition — especially given some of the obstacles he had to overcome along the way.

“This new church is the second church in our diocese planned and constructed under the leadership of Father Andrews — the first beTurn to page 15

Pauline Year director glances back, looks ahead to final leg

By Deacon James N. Dunbar

HYANNIS — When Father Andrew Johnson, OCSO, says “It’s been a pretty good year” as March nears its end might seem a little too anticipatory for most.

But as the director of the Pauline Year observance in the Fall River Diocese that began June 28 in 2008 and ends this June 29, he has been at the helm of many outstanding events that aim at inspiring Catholics to learn about St. Paul and hopefully imitate him in making their own personal conversion.

“And there’s more exciting events to come,” reports Father Johnson, who spoke to The Anchor from the Cape where he is parochial vicar at St. Xavier

Parish in Hyannis.

After Pope Benedict XVI launched the Year of St. Paul, Father Johnson has been busy writing a column about St. Paul, tracing his lineage to Tarsus about the year 8 A.D., his persecution as an assertive Pharisee who persecuted the early Christians and the theology of his conversion on the way to Damascus.

He also made it clear that it was the risen Christ who appeared to Paul and that the resurrection is the confirming proof of the redemption Christ won for us on the cross.

“I write every other week, taking from the Holy Father’s ongoing catechesis on Paul and boiling it Turn to page 14

March 27, 2009 News From the Vatican Pope’s condom comments latest chapter in sensitive discussion

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YAOUNDE, Cameroon ly that of the Catholic Church, behavior regarding one’s own (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI’s with its programs and its diver- body and toward the other perdeclaration that distribution of sity. I think of the Sant’Egidio son, and the capacity to suffer condoms only increases the Community, which does so with the suffering. I think this problem of AIDS is the latest much visibly and invisibly in is the proper response and the and one of the strongest state- the fight against AIDS ... and Church is doing this, and so it ments about the issue. of all the Sisters at the service offers a great and important The pope was speaking to of the sick. contribution. I thank all those journalists aboard his flight “I would say that one can- who are doing this.” to Cameroon March 17, and not overcome this problem The pope’s words reflected he was asked whether the of AIDS only with money — a statement he made to South Church’s approach to AIDS which is important, but if there African bishops in 2005, when prevention — which focuses is no soul, no people who know he noted that the Church is in primarily on sexual responsi- how to use it, (money) doesn’t the forefront in the treatment bility and rejects condom cam- help. of AIDS and said the “only “One cannot overcome the fail-safe way” to prevent its paigns — was unrealistic and ineffective. spread is found in the The pope framed he pope’s words reflected a state- Church’s traditional his answer in terms ment he made to South African teaching on sexual reof the Church’s serbishops in 2005, when he noted that sponsibility. vice to those with In saying that conAIDS and its efforts the Church is in the forefront in the dom-promotion proto promote what he treatment of AIDS and said the “only grams only increase called a “humaniza- fail-safe way” to prevent its spread the problem, the pope tion of sexuality” that to agree with is found in the Church’s traditional appeared includes the elements those who have put of fidelity and self- teaching on sexual responsibility. forward several argusacrifice. ments: that condoms The pope did not have a failure rate and get into the specific question problem with the distribution so are never completely safe; of whether in certain circum- of condoms. On the contrary, that encouragement of condom stances condom use was mor- they increase the problem. use may promote promiscuity, “The solution can only be a a factor in the spread of HIV, ally licit or illicit in AIDS prevention, an issue that is still double one: first, a humaniza- the virus that causes AIDS; and under study by Vatican theolo- tion of sexuality, that is, a spiri- that reliance on condom camtual human renewal that brings paigns has overshadowed more gians.

Lest it be taken out of con- with it a new way of behaving effective means of prevention, text, here is the exchange that with one another; second, a true namely fidelity and chastity. took place on the pope’s plane. friendship even and especially There is another factor in The question’s premise was with those who suffer, and a the pope’s thinking, accord“The Catholic Church’s posi- willingness to make personal ing to an Italian theologian, tion on the way to fight against sacrifices and to be with the Franciscan Father Maurizio AIDS is often considered unre- suffering. And these are factors Faggioni, who has advised the alistic and ineffective,” and the that help and that result in real Vatican on sexual morality ispope responded: and visible progress. sues. The pope sees condom “I would say the opposite.

“Therefore I would say this campaigns as a question of I think that the reality that is is our double strength — to cultural violence, especially in most effective, the most pres- renew the human being from Africa, where there has never ent and the strongest in the the inside, to give him spiri- been a “contraceptive mentalfight against AIDS, is precise- tual human strength for proper ity,” Father Faggioni said.

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A TAMER LION — Pope Benedict XVI touches a preserved lion during a meeting at the Unity Presidential Palace in Yaounde, Cameroon. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Catholic Press Photo)

Papal social encyclical should be published in May, says cardinal

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI’s first social encyclical is already completed and should be ready for release in early May, said a top Vatican official.

The original aim had been to have the encyclical on social justice issues ready for publication in 2007 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on human development, “Populorum Progressio” (“The Progress of Peoples”), said Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

“Naturally, however, with the research and revisions necessary to create and have a text that would respond to today’s current situation, well, it got behind schedule a little bit,” he told re-

The Anchor

porters March 20.

“The encyclical is already ready and we hope it will be published in early May,” he said.

He said the new papal encyclical will offer “a beautiful response” to the new realities and the changes that have occurred since the last papal encyclical on Catholic social teaching, “Centesimus Annus” (“The Hundredth Year”), was published in 1991 by Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict’s social encyclical was tentatively titled “Caritas in Veritate” (“Love in Truth”) and will be his third encyclical in four years.

He said he hoped the encyclical could play a part in helping the world overcome its economic woes.

OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER Vol. 53, No. 12

Member: Catholic Press Association, Catholic News Service

Published weekly except for two weeks in the summer and the week after Christmas by the Catholic Press of the Diocese of Fall River, 887 Highland Avenue, Fall River, MA 02720, Telephone 508-675-7151 — FAX 508-675-7048, email: theanchor@anchornews.org.

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PUBLISHER - Most Reverend George W. Coleman EXECUTIVE EDITOR Father Roger J. Landry fatherrogerlandry@anchornews.org EDITOR David B. Jolivet davejolivet@anchornews.org NEWS EDITOR Deacon James N. Dunbar jimdunbar@anchornews.org OFFICE MANAGER Mary Chase marychase@anchornews.org ADVERTISING Wayne Powers waynepowers@anchornews.org REPORTER Kenneth J. Souza k ensouza@anchornews.org Send Letters to the Editor to: fatherrogerlandry@anchornews.org

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Better awareness of all vocations will lead to more priests, pontiff says

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — The key to increasing the number of candidates for the priesthood is helping all Catholics — including married couples and youths — understand that God is calling them to serve him and the Church in a special way, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Meeting 30 bishops from Argentina, the pope called for “a more incisive pastoral program for marriage and family life” that emphasizes that each Christian has a specific vocation and for “a bolder youth ministry that helps the young to respond with generosity to God’s call.”

The bishops were making their “ad limina” visits to report on the status of their dioceses.

“The fundamental role that priests play should lead you to undertake a great effort to promote priestly vocations,” the pope told them.

Pope Benedict said the fatherly attitude of love and encouragement that must characterize a

bishop’s relationship to his priests is even more important in situations where a priest is in difficulty.

“I exhort you to demonstrate charity and prudence when you must correct teachings, attitudes or behaviors that are not fitting for the priestly character of your closest collaborators and that also can damage and confuse the Christian faith and life of the faithful,” the pope told them.

The Church in Argentina will grow and thrive if all the faithful are helped to have a “living experience of Jesus Christ and the mystery of his love,” the pope said.

“Constant contact with the Lord through an intense life of prayer and an adequate spiritual and doctrinal formation will increase in Christians the pleasure of believing and celebrating their faith and their joy at belonging to the Church, leading them to participate actively in the mission of proclaiming the good news to all,” the pope said.

March 27, 2009

News From the Vatican

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Pope encourages Christian-Muslim efforts to defend African values

WORTH THE WET — Children stand in the rain hoping to catch a glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde March 18. (CNS photo/Finbarr O’Reilly, Reuters)

In Africa, pope says Gospel is answer to continent’s problems

B y John Thavis C atholic News Service

YAOUNDE, Cameroon — Arriving in Africa, Pope Benedict XVI said the Church’s message of hope and reconciliation was sorely needed by a continent suffering disproportionately from poverty, conflict and disease.

At a welcoming ceremony March 17 in Yaounde, the pope said he was making his first visit to Africa to respond to the many men and woman who “long to hear a word of hope and comfort.”

In Africans’ fight against injustice, he said, the Church is their natural ally.

“In the face of suffering or violence, poverty or hunger, corruption or abuse of power, a Christian can never remain silent,” the pope said.

The 81-year-old pontiff stood on a platform at Yaounde’s airport next to Cameroonian President Paul Biya, who welcomed the pope on a hot, humid afternoon. Groups of schoolchildren sang and cheered, waving paper flags with the Vatican’s colors.

The pope said he came to Africa as a pastor, not a politician, to a continent where the saving message of the Gospel needs to be “proclaimed loud and clear.”

The encounter with Christianity, he said, can transform situations of hardship or injustice.

He cited the regional conflicts in Africa that have left thousands homeless, destitute and orphaned, as well as human

trafficking that has become a new form of slavery, especially for women and children.

In place of bitter ethnic or interreligious rivalry, the Church offers the righteousness and peace of the “civilization of love,” he said.

The pope described Cameroon as a “land of hope,” noting that the country has accepted refugees from neighboring countries and tried to settle border disputes with patient diplomacy.

Cameroon is also a “land of life, with a government that speaks out in defense of the rights of the unborn,” the pope said.

In his remarks on the unborn, the pope may have been referring to a recent exchange between the Cameroonian government and a U.N. committee that monitors compliance with a convention on eliminating forms of discrimination against women. In response to a request to liberalize its abortion law, the government responded that abortion was murder and should not be elevated to a right.

It was Pope Benedict’s first papal visit to Africa. As a cardinal, he visited the continent only once, attending a theological conference in 1987 in what is now Congo.

Aboard the plane taking him to Africa, the pope told reporters that he considered corruption one of the continent’s biggest problems. According to the U.S. Department of State,

Cameroon’s corruption level is among the highest in the world.

Biya and his Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement have retained power for 27 years, giving the country political stability but at a price.

Critics say national elections have been unfair, and human rights organizations have faulted the government for restricting freedoms of speech, press, assembly and association.

The pope later rode in his glass-walled popemobile some 20 miles into the city of Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, past groups of well-wishers who sat in plastic chairs in front of their cinderblock homes and waved palm fronds in greeting. As the pope drew closer to the city center, the enthusiastic crowd was wall-to-wall.

For the Catholic Church, Cameroon represents an evangelization success story on a continent that has experienced an explosion of Church growth over the last century. Over the last 40 years, the number of Catholics in Africa has increased from 11 percent to 17 percent of the total population; in Cameroon, Catholics today constitute 27 percent of the population, up from 23 percent 40 years ago.

Africa also has the fastest growth in priestly vocations, and Cameroon, with 26 seminarians for every 100,000 Catholics, has one of the highest vocation rates on the continent.

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (CNS) — Meeting with Muslims from Cameroon, Pope Benedict XVI said Christians and Muslims need to cooperate in Africa to defend traditional values and reject all forms of violence.

The pope’s brief talk March 19 offered a capsule version of his take on interreligious dialogue, which he believes should join believers in a defense of religious faith as “reasonable” and as the foundation of any truly human civilization.

Muslims represent about 22 percent of Cameroon’s population while Christians make up about 44 percent, and Christian-Muslim relations are generally quite good.

In his talk, the pope noted that members of both faiths live, work and worship in the same neighborhoods.

“Both believe in one, merciful God who on the last day will judge mankind. Together they bear witness to the fundamental values of family, social responsibility, obedience to God’s law and loving concern for the sick and suffering,” he said.

The urgent task for believers today, he said, is to “unveil the vast potential of human reason, which is itself God’s gift and which is elevated by revelation and faith.”

“Belief in the one God, far from stunting our capacity to understand ourselves and the world, broadens it. Far from setting us against the world, it commits us to it,” he said.

It is important for believers, he said, to remind the world that

“what is ‘reasonable’ extends far beyond what mathematics can calculate, logic can deduce and scientific experimentation can demonstrate; it includes the goodness and innate attractiveness of upright and ethical living made known to us in the very language of creation.”

When believers step outside the sphere of self-interest and act for the good of others, he said, it shows the world that genuine religion widens human understanding and “stands at the base of any authentically human culture.”

“It rejects all forms of violence and totalitarianism: not only on principles of faith, but also of right reason,” he said.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said the climate of the encounter was very cordial and friendly, and that the 22 Muslims leaders — two more than scheduled — greeted the pope warmly and thanked him for his comments.

The pope told the group that he hoped Christian-Muslim cooperation in Cameroon would serve as a beacon to other African nations.

African Church officials emphasize that in most African countries dialogue between Christians and Muslims has advanced in recent years. But they are also worried about sporadic outbreaks of violence. In Nigeria, which borders Cameroon, attacks between groups of Christians and Muslims have left hundreds dead in recent months, although Church leaders have emphasized that the violence has been primarily political and not religious.

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News From the Vatican

March 27, 2009

Pope asks Angolan youths to shape the future according to the Gospel

LUANDA, Angola (CNS) — Meeting with nearly 30,000 Angolan young people, Pope Benedict XVI urged them to be wary of today’s dominant social culture and to shape the world according to the values of the Gospel.

The encounter in a Luanda soccer stadium March 21 was marred by a stampede that killed two young women and injured 89 others, hours before the pope arrived. The pope was informed of the tragedy later that evening and he expressed his condolences at a Mass the next day.

The rally had a little bit of everything: native dance and song, testimonials from young Catholics, conga ensembles and, above all, tons of enthusiasm among the participants.

The focus of the pope’s talk was a simple lesson on how to live the good life.

“My young friends, you hold within yourselves the power to shape the future,” he said. But it won’t happen without an encounter with God, he said.

“The dominant social culture is not helping you to live by Jesus’ word or to practice the self-giving to which he calls you in accordance with the Father’s plan,” he said.

Instead, he said, they need to build their lives around the renewal that begins with a personal encounter with Christ. That’s especially important when it comes time to make decisions that involve a lifelong commitment, like marriage, that can seem to represent a loss of freedom, he said.

“These are the doubts you feel, and today’s individualistic and hedonistic culture aggravates them,” he said. But he urged them to find inspiration in their faith.

“Life is worthwhile only if you take courage and are ready for adventure, if you trust in the Lord who will never abandon you,” he said.

The pope also greeted a group of young people who were left orphaned or disabled by Angola’s 27-year civil war, and said he could imagine the conflict’s devastating effects on all the country’s young people.

“I think of the countless tears that have been shed for the loss of your relatives and friends. It is not hard to imagine the dark clouds that still veil the horizon of your fondest hopes and dreams,” he said.

In the stands, youths held up pieces of colored cardboard in synchronized patterns, spelling out “God is love” and depicting the pope’s own smiling face.

Several young Angolans spoke about their own spiritual paths and experiences, including detours into drugs and alcohol use, discouragement and loneliness. One of them told how he was welcomed into the Church after a life of stealing and addiction, and later became a priest.

One young woman, Elsa Montenegro, said that even those active in the Church don’t have an easy time putting the faith into action.

The challenges, she said, are many and can seem overwhelming: unemployment, corruption, drug use, prostitution, AIDS, abortion and dishonesty.

“Holy Father, we are asking you to enlighten us, help us, advise us, orient us,” she said.

After delivering his talk, the pope greeted many of the performers individually. A final, haunting song was sung directly in front of the pope by a young man in a wheelchair. The pope embraced him warmly after the performance.

The young people presented the pope with several gifts, including a carved ebony statue of a gazelle and a wood-and-gourd balafon, the xylophonelike instrument popular throughout Africa.

A STORIED GATHERING — People await the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI for youth rally at Coqueiros Stadium in Luanda, Angola, March 21. Angola was the second and last stop on the pope’s week-long pastoral visit to Africa. (CNS photo/Alessandro Bianchi, Reuters)

In Africa, pope challenges attitudes, cultural trends

By John Thavis Catholic News Service

LUANDA, Angola — Pope Benedict XVI’s in-flight statement opposing condom distribution in AIDS prevention drew sharp criticism and was seen by many as a distraction from his main message in Africa.

But a closer look reveals that very little of what the pope had to say during his March 1723 African journey was easy or accommodating. On issues ranging from abortion to corruption, from women’s rights to economic development, he preached the Gospel in a way that took issue with common practices and prevailing attitudes.

His conviction, expressed on his first day in Cameroon, is that Christianity is the answer — the only real answer — to the chronic problems plaguing Africa. His fear is that Africa, caught up in economic and cultural globalization, will follow the secularized West and lose touch with its own best values.

Condom campaigns are, to Pope Benedict, a small but very real part of this threat. But his concern extends to virtually every area of social, economic and political life.

“At a time when so many people have no qualms about trying to impose the tyranny of materialism, with scant concern for the most deprived, you must be very careful,” he told Africans in Cameroon.

“Take care of your souls,” he said. “Do not let yourselves be captivated by selfish illusions and false ideals.”

News accounts usually leave

out the words than inevitably followed these papal warnings, but for the pope they were the most important part of his message in Africa: “Only Christ is the way of life.” “The Lord Jesus is the one mediator and redeemer.” “Christ is the measure of true humanism.”

The transformation the pontiff asked of Africans was, as he described it, one that must begin with a radical conversion to Christ that redirects every aspect of life.

The pope kept reminding listeners that, in his view, inside and outside Africa the Christian message lived to the full is profoundly countercultural.

That was eminently clear when he addressed young people in an Angolan soccer stadium, telling them that their power to shape the future was directly dependent on their “constant dialogue with the Lord.”

Abortion was very much on the pope’s mind in Africa.

His first speech on the continent reminded Africans of their traditional values and said the Church was the institution best able to preserve and purify them — unlike agencies that want to impose “cultural models that ignore the rights of the unborn.”

In a speech to foreign diplomats, he laid down a direct challenge to international organizations that, in his words, were undermining society’s foundations by promoting abortion as a form of reproductive health care.

The pope hit hard on African wars and ethnic conflicts and repeatedly held out Christianity

as the answer. If Africans grasp that the Church is “God’s family,” he said in Cameroon, there is no room for ethnocentrism or factionalism. In effect, he presented the Church as the only institution capable of bringing Africans together in a way that goes beyond political or economic expediency.

He did not engage in fingerpointing — even in Cameroon, which is usually at the top of the corruption charts of human rights organizations. Indeed, he called Cameroon a “land of hope” for Africa.

The reason is that he knows local African Church leaders are already on the front lines in denouncing political corruption.

His visit to the sick in Cameroon illustrated that the Church must invest its resources in love and care for the needy, but with a special focus: Human suffering can only make sense in light of Christ’s crucifixion and his “final victory” over death, he said.

Even the pope’s defense of women’s rights in Africa was very much a “Benedict” approach, based not on human rights declarations but on the biblical account of creation.

Here, too, his point that men and women have “complementary” roles will no doubt find critics.

The pope’s method in Africa was not to lay down the law but to lay down a challenge, asking people to examine their own lives and their relationships in the light of the Gospel. He believes that Christianity is a perfect fit for Africa but that, in view of cultural trends, it won’t necessarily be an easy fit.

March 27, 2009

The Church in the U.S.

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Church urged to use digital media, teach about ethical communication

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service

NOWHERE TO GO — Gennadiy Tomashov rolls a cigarette in his tent recently at a tent city for the homeless in Sacramento, Calif. Tomashov lost his trucking job and has been homeless for eight months. Sacramento’s tent city has seen an increase in population as unemployment numbers grow in the U.S. (CNS photo/Max Whittaker, Reuters)

Head of Covenant House praises FBI sweep to stop child trafficking

By Carol Zimmermann Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — A recent nationwide sweep of child traffickers by the FBI should highlight that child prostitution is closer to home than many realize, said Kevin Ryan, president of Covenant House.

Ryan called the undercover sting operation — which took place in 29 U.S. cities at the end of February — a “great stride forward” but he also said it was just a start.

“Enormous work still needs to be done,” he said.

The FBI sweep, called Operation Cross Country III, was part of the bureau’s Innocence Lost Initiative that was started in 2003 to crack down on the sexual exploitation of children.

The operation, which took place during three nights, led to the release of 48 youths between the ages of 13 and 17 forced to

work as prostitutes and the arrest of 571 trafficking suspects. Federal agents working with local law enforcement officers arrested the suspects on both federal and state prostitution-related charges. The teens were placed in the custody of local child protection agencies.

“We continue to pursue those who exploit our nation’s children,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in a statement. “We may not be able to return their innocence but we can remove them from this cycle of abuse and violence.”

Daniel Roberts, the FBI’s deputy assistant director, told The Associated Press the majority of the child prostitutes found in the sting operation “are what they term ‘throwaway kids,’ with no family support, no friends. They’re kids that nobody wants; they’re loners.

Many are runaways.”

Ryan, at the helm of the international Catholic organization

that serves homeless and runaway youths, is keenly aware that young people living on the streets are “muscled into the sex trade.”

He said what surprised him the most about the FBI sweep — to his knowledge the largest of this type of crackdown — was the lack of media coverage about it.

The broad scope of the operation should “remind child advocates in the United States that (child prostitution) is not just an international phenomenon” but something that happens in this country, he said.

And although he was pleased with the crackdown’s success, he said that “none of us should take comfort in the more than 500 arrests” of child traffickers because there are “thousands more out there.”

In an as-yet unpublished opinion piece, Ryan wrote about the FBI operation, saying the bureau should “receive the resources and direction” to put an end to child prostitution. He also said state and federal law enforcement agencies should not just target child traffickers but those who pay for sex with the child prostitutes.

“In almost nine years,” he said, “there has not been a single conviction for purchasing sex with a child under the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act.” “Our streets are filling up with homeless youths,” he told CNS. As he sees it, Covenant House and other similar organizations are part of the solution to help “keep our kids safe from the peril of the streets.” But they can’t do it alone, he said.

Now it is all the more urgent, he said, for civic, church and community groups to “band together and be intentional about reaching out to homeless kids on the street.”

VATICAN CITY — As the Catholic Church works to become more present in the new digital media, it also must help teach people to be ethical communicators, said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state.

Formation is crucial, he said, especially now that the world of communication is crossing new “frontiers that are in need of serious ethical grounding.”

The cardinal’s remarks came at the end of a five-day meeting in Rome to discuss how the Church should respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by modern media.

The seminar was sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and drew bishops from 82 countries.

One aim of the gathering was to set the groundwork for a possible document by the council that would update its 1992 pastoral instruction, “Aetatis Novae” (“At the Dawn of a New Era”).

In his talk, Cardinal Bertone said that the world has recently experienced enormous revolutions in communication technology that have “radically transformed, if not overturned,” the media and communications landscape.

Any kind of new document or instruction “would be of little service without the constant contribution of educating pastoral workers — priests, religious, laypeople — who are personally involved in the field of media,” he said.

Helen Osman, communications secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said many participants at the seminar saw a need to develop this sort of “theology of communications.”

Osman, who was attending the seminar as an observer, told Catholic News Service that the biggest challenge the Church faces with the new media is “realizing that we are only one part of the message-shaping.”

Traditional reporting entailed professionals distributing the news down to its audience, but

with today’s social networks, individuals can be the newsmakers and “the line between the consumer and the creator is no longer there,” she said.

The head of the pontifical council, Archbishop Claudio Celli, said in opening remarks that it would be impractical for the Vatican to make its Web presence interactive because of the flood of questions and comments that would come in. He said such interactivity would be more easily done on a local level.

However, some local churches might also be quite reticent to change the way they communicate with the outside world, Osman said.

“The Church has been accustomed to dealing with the mass media where we present something and the media filters it for you,” she said.

The fact that the Vatican has placing a greater emphasis on “the importance of the development of social networks means we should be paying more attention to them,” she said.

Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ communications committee and a participant at the Vatican seminar, told CNS that overhauling and revamping diocesan Websites is an important investment.

Making them easy to navigate, informative, up to date and rich in offering resources and links is “going to pay big dividends for dioceses and archdioceses across the country,” he said.

But while the Church learns to encounter, engage with and evangelize today’s “electronic public square,” he said it must never stop doing what it has been doing for millennia because no matter how sophisticated new technology gets, “you can’t receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ over the Internet.”

The liturgy and eucharistic celebration are the summit and fountain of Christian life, he said, which means everything the Church does must lead up to the liturgy and then everything must in turn flow from it.

6

The Anchor The first step toward despotism

Over the last few decades, our society has made great progress against discrimination and harassment in the work place. The rights that flow from workers’ human dignity have been increasingly secured in law so that now those who discriminate or harass, rather than their victims, are the ones at risk for losing their jobs, money and freedom.

This progress in protecting workers’ rights that our country has made puts into even greater relief how retrograde and dishonorable are the Obama administration’s recently announced plans to strip health care employees of conscience protections in the workplace.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, last week called attention to the troubling significance of the Obama administration’s intentions.

Never known as one to engage in hyperbole, Cardinal George declared in a video statement that the administration’s proposed action “would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism.” His stark and unexaggerated language shows the seriousness with which this matter should be taken by all who care about our country, our freedoms, and the consciences of our health care workers.

“On Friday afternoon, February 27,” Cardinal George described in his statement, “the Obama administration placed on a federal Website the news that it intends to remove a conscience protection rule for the Department of Health and Human Services. That rule is one part of the range of legal protections for health care workers — for doctors, nurses and others — who have objections in conscience to being involved in abortion and other killing procedures that are against how they live their faith in God. …

“We are deeply concerned that such an action on the government’s part would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism. Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God — that’s what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion — including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves.”

Cardinal George next expanded upon the un-American nature of the Obama administration’s proposal. “Conscientious objection against many actions is a part of our life. We have a conscientious objection against war for those who cannot fight, even though it’s good to defend your country. We have a conscientious objection for doctors against being involved in administering the death penalty. Why shouldn’t our government and our legal system permit conscientious objection to a morally bad action, the killing of babies in their mother’s womb? People understand what really happens in an abortion and in related procedures — a living member of the human family is killed, that’s what it’s all about — and no one should be forced by the government to act as though he or she were blind to this reality.”

He finally appealed to you — and all citizens and Catholics — to get involved by letting the Obama administration know that this is not the type of change that we support. “I ask you please to let the government know that you want conscience protections to remain strongly in place. In particular, let the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington know that you stand for the protection of conscience, especially now for those who provide the health care services so necessary for a good society.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has opened a 30-day window between March 10 and April 9 to accept comments on the administration’s intention to rescind the conscience protections. Comments may be submitted electronically on the Website www.Regulations.gov (by entering 0991-AB49 in the search box) or sent by email to proposedrescission@hhs.gov. Written comments — which, if mailed, need to be submitted in triplicate — may also be sent to the Office of Public Health and Science, Department of Health and Human Services, Attention: Rescission Proposal Comments, Hubert H. Humphrey Building, 200 Independence Ave. SW, Room 716G, Washington, D.C., 20201.

A fitting message would be: “Please retain the conscience regulation, and enforce the laws protecting the right of health care providers to serve patients without violating their moral and religious convictions. The government has a special responsibility to ensure that the conscience rights of health care providers are fully protected.”

In a recent article, Susan Wills, the assistant director for education and outreach for the Pro-Life Secretariat of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, provided some background for the outrageous nature of the intended move by the Obama administration. “The right of conscience is recognized in the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the World Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics, and in 47 states, laws protect the conscience rights of healthcare providers. … Given the universality and history of the right of conscience among free peoples, it is shocking that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others have sued to overturn regulations implementing long-standing federal laws enacted to protect the conscience rights of healthcare professionals and institutions.

By seeking to rescind the federal regulations, Wills continued, “the ACLU is taking aim at three federal laws. Congress enacted the ‘Church Amendment’ immediately after the Roe v. Wade decision to ensure that health care professionals and hospitals would not be coerced into involvement in abortions or sterilizations. The Coats Amendment was enacted over a decade ago to nullify the attempt by the medical accreditation council to coerce medical schools into training ob-gyn residents in abortion procedures. Since 2004 the Weldon Amendment has prevented governmental discrimination against healthcare entities on account of the entity’s refusal to ‘provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.’” The regulation the Obama administration intends to rescind puts teeth into all three of these congressionally-passed protections. By taking the regulation off the books, all of these defenses would remain unenforced.

Why would the Obama administration propose to do this? Wills answered, “Despite all their talk of ‘choice,’ the abortion industry and its supporters are determined to eliminate the choice of medical professionals and entities to not become accomplices in killing unborn boys and girls. Despite all their talk about ‘privacy,’ the abortion industry and its supporters are determined to trample on healthcare professionals’ innermost zone of privacy, that ‘secret core and sanctuary’ known as conscience. It is no longer enough, in their eyes, that women and girls can obtain potentially abortifacient drugs in virtually every pharmacy in the U.S. or that women and girls can have abortions on request in every city where there’s a profit to be had. They will not rest until every pharmacy, hospital, healthcare provider, and taxpayer collaborates in the culture of death.”

Wills said in summary, “A hallmark of free nations is the recognition of the individual’s freedom of conscience. Tyrant states do not protect conscience; they strangle it.” After decades treating those who are younger and weaker as if they were non-persons, now the abortion industry and its political enablers in Washington want to treat those who disagree with them as second-class citizens, giving them a choice between following their conscience or keeping their jobs.

The stakes for our country involve more than keeping those who respect life in the healing professions. As Cardinal George points out, once our government begins to force those who wish to keep their jobs to violate their consciences and do what they know is evil, we are no longer dealing with a limited government, but rather with a despotic one. And with a despotic government, none of our rights is safe.

Now is the time for Catholics and all people of good will to get involved.

L

March 27, 2009

Reconciliation

ast Friday and Saturday, the Diocese of they had come to the sacrament because a famFall River held its first ever Diocesan ily member or friend had encouraged them to Reconciliation Weekend. As priests stepped take advantage of the Reconciliation Weekend. into their confessionals and reconciliation A few from a neighboring parish said it was their rooms across the diocese, none of us really priest’s powerful homily the weekend before. A knew what to expect. couple of my own parishioners thanked me for I had high hopes because we had put in a lot showing the Reconciliation Weekend video the of effort in preparation for it. At St. Anthony’s previous Sunday, which they said showed them in New Bedford, we put up posters at all the that there was no reason to be afraid of the Sacentrances two months ago. We printed an ex- rament. Between us, Father Nick and I heard 53 amination of conscience and lots of other mate- confessions in that second session. rial in the bulletin. We showed a video at all the After running over to the rectory for a quick Masses. I mentioned it in several homilies. We sandwich while finishing my Sunday homily, I prayed for its success during the Sunday and returned for the last two-hour period. When I weekday Prayers of the Faithful. We encour- got to church, there were already a dozen people aged and tried to equip parishioners to go out to waiting. Father Nick and I went back to work. those who had been away from this sacrament Most of my confessions in the afternoon were in or all the sacraments and invite them back. The Portuguese, which means that they were briefer, diocesan organizing team ran ads on radio sta- since most older Portuguese Catholics are extions and set up a Website with various resourc- perts in making a clear, contrite and complete es. Convents and monasteries were recruited to confession in a very concise way. That meant pray for those in need of the sacrament as well that during the afternoon I actually had the time as for the priests God would want to use as in- to pray Evening Prayer during the few times I struments of his merciful love. could come up for air. Father Nick and I heard Since we had never tried such an outreach 48 in the final session. as a diocese, however, no one really knew what Before the 4 p.m. Mass began, a parishiothe response would be. ner approached me in the sacristy to ask how At St. Anthothe Reconciliny’s, the Reconation Weekend ciliation Weekend had gone. She began on Friday could tell I night after the was exhausted Way of the Cross. but wondered Once the Stations whether I was a were done, the little dispirited.

By Father Blessed SacraShe had seen big Roger J. Landry ment was exposed numbers and exand the Chaplet of pected me to be Divine Mercy was ebullient. prayed. This is the great prayer that explicitly unites I replied that, on the one hand, I couldn’t be the sacraments of the Eucharist and confession, happier because I had heard some of the most as we offer to God the Father the Body, Blood, beautiful confessions of my priesthood and was soul and divinity of his Son in atonement for thrilled for and because of the approximately our sins and those of the whole world. When 150 people who had come. On the other hand, I Father Herbert Nichols and I entered the con- continued, I said I couldn’t help but feel a little fessionals just before 7 p.m., there were already sadness that so many more had not come to reapproximately 20 people in line. ceive the incredible wealth of God’s forgiving We were busy almost the entire two hours, love. hearing confessions in English, Portuguese, The analogy that immediately sprung to mind Spanish and French. It’s no violation of the sa- was that I was like a doctor with a cure for macred seal of confession — which strictly pro- laria in the midst of a malaria-infected people. I hibits a priest from revealing, even indirectly, longed for everyone to come to be cured by the the sins a person has confessed in the sacrament costly-acquired but freely-dispensed medicine, — to say that a sizeable number of the people but only a fraction of the people who needed the we welcomed to the sacrament that first night remedy came. hadn’t been to confession in decades. I was I remained in a somewhat bittersweet mood privileged several times that first night to be the until the following morning when, still thinking quiet witness of the torrent of tears that rained about the weekend during the early morning down on the other side of the screen, tears ini- Mass when I should have been praying the retially of sorrow that were transformed into ir- sponsorial psalm, I calculated the total numbers resistibly contagious tears of joy. for the weekend at my parish. When I realized In order to help the diocese determine that the sum of 52, 53 and 48 was 153, the joy whether we should repeat such Reconciliation of Laetare Sunday and the Lord’s great sense of Weekends in the future, the organizing com- humor quickly enveloped me. mittee had asked priests to keep a count of how One hundred fifty-three is one of the most many had come to receive the sacrament in each symbolic numbers of the New Testament. of the three two-hour sessions. The first night, After the resurrection, when St. Peter and six Father Nick and I had been God’s instruments other Apostles went fishing all night long on to reconcile 52 of his sons and daughters. the Sea of Galilee but caught nothing, an inThe following morning I exposed the cognito Jesus from the shore told them to cast Blessed Sacrament about 10 a.m. and began to their nets on the right side of the boat. They pray back by the confessionals in case someone did and they caught such a haul of fish that came early not wishing to be seen. At 10:25, the they were not able to bring it on board. Afonly people with me in the church were those ter dragging the contents ashore, they counted who had committed to come to pray for priests 153 fish. and penitents during the two-hour session and The early saints of the Church saw great those who had volunteered to welcome people significance in this number, because there to the church, help them with any questions were at the time of Jesus 153 nations in the and guide them toward the confessionals. I had world and, according to the Greeks, 153 difbegun to think that Friday night was a fluke. ferent species of fish. To those who had been When Father Nick arrived a couple of minutes called to be fishers of men, this miraculous later, we both entered the confessionals. I had draught of fish, after much toil, was a symbol brought plenty of spiritual reading with me of an even greater catch that awaited them on and it seemed that I might have a chance to get a much larger sea. some of it done.

Despite the fact that as a pastor and spiritual I actually didn’t even have the chance to get father, I still long for the day when all of my pathrough the first page. rishioners will come to receive the lavish riches Right after we entered the confessionals, the of God’s merciful love, I saw in the 153 who doors to the church started opening — and they came a message of hope that this is just the becontinued to open until 12:27. It was a similar ginning, that bigger catches await, and that we experience to Friday night with regard to the per- should, at the Lord’s command, keep putting out centage of penitents who had been away from into the deep. the practice of the faith and the sacrament of Father Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of confession for many years. Several mentioned Padua Parish in New Bedford.

Putting Into the Deep

St. Paul on the Paschal Mystery, part one: The Cross

T

he Lenten Season is a the Son of God. Unlike the other time of preparation for evangelists, Paul the Apostle the celebration of the Paschal never relates the biography of our Mystery, the dying and the risLord. He does not compile the life ing of Christ. During the first story of Christ. He gives no acfour weeks of Lent, the Church asks us to focus on personal conversion Living the and on penance. For the Pauline Year last two weeks, however, we turn our gaze toward

By Father the passion and death of our Lord. We focus on the Karl C. Bissinger Way to Calvary. At this time in the Pauline Year, therefore, we ask St. Paul to teach count of his miracles nor a record us his understanding of the cross. of his preaching. He nevertheless At the center of St. Paul’s communicates a surprisingly proGospel stands the person of Jesus, found understanding of our Lord’s

O

7

The Anchor

March 27, 2009

death and resurrection.

St. Paul makes it clear that the Paschal Mystery is the culmination of the earthly life of Jesus, the root of all Christian theology developed down through the ages, and the source of God’s love and mercy in the world. In fact, according to the Apostle’s teachings, the Paschal Mystery is the key for interpreting the entire Christian message. We cannot separate the two moments of the Paschal Mystery: the first moment being the suffering and death of our Lord, the second being, of course, his rising again to life. We

Piling on the pope

n the plane taking him to a flexible shield of body armor Africa for the first time as that could easily be mistaken for pope, Benedict XVI fielded some a balloon. Problem is, life is more questions last week from reportcomplicated than that. Sex is deep ers, including one about the spread and mysterious and intrinsically of AIDS there and whether the related to life and death and love position of the Catholic Church and selfishness. It’s not all fun and was unrealistic and ineffective. The games and can’t be fixed with a pope said that he would say the rubber band-aid. So when the pope opposite, that “the scourge of AIDS suggests that condoms aren’t the cannot be resolved by distributing answer he must be shouted down, condoms; quite the contrary, we even or especially when what he risk worsening the problem. The says is true. solution can only come through Dr. Edward C. Green, author of a twofold commitment: first, the five books and more than 250 peerhumanization of sexuality, in reviewed articles, is the director other words a spiritual and human of the AIDS Prevention Research renewal bringing a new way of Project at the Harvard Center for behaving towards one another; and Population and Development Studsecondly, true friendship, above ies. He is not a Catholic, but an all with those who are suffering, a agnostic. He told National Review readiness — even through personal sacrifice — to be present with those who suffer. And these are the factors that help and bring visible progress.”

Western media pundits reacted like Dracula when

By Dwight Duncan confronted by a crucifix: The New York Times dogmatically pontificated: “Grieviously wrong! There is Online last week that “the pope is no evidence that condom use is correct; or put it a better way, the aggravating the epidemic and conbest evidence we have supports the siderable evidence that condoms, pope’s comments ... condoms have though no panacea, can be helpful been proven to not be effective at in many circumstances.” A Washthe ‘level of population.’” ington Post “Catholic” commenta“There is,” Green says, “a tor headed his column, “Impeach consistent association shown by the Pope,” and stated, “the cardinal our best studies, including the sin of the Catholic Church — a U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health literally deadly sin, if ever there Surveys,’ between greater availwas one — is its opposition to birth ability and use of condoms and control.” The National Catholic higher (not lower) HIV-infection Reporter ran a story headlined, rates. This may be due in part “Gay Catholic Groups Condemn to a phenomenon known as risk Pope’s Statements in Africa on compensation, meaning that when Condom Use,” and quoted the one uses a risk-reduction ‘technolcommunications director of Call to ogy’ such as condoms, one often Action as saying: “To this day, the loses the benefit (reduction in risk) Vatican bans the use of condoms by ‘compensating’ or taking greater

by Catholics. This is just morally chances than one would take withwrong.” out the risk-reduction technology.”

Condoms, it turns out, are a I can understand this: how often a sacred cow. Condom is king. The diet soda will give me an excuse to modern secular dogma is that sex indulge in potato chips or chocois all about having fun, and that lates or whatever. the possibility of having children Green continued: “The best and as a consequence, or contracting latest empirical evidence indeed a serious life-threatening disease, shows that reduction in multiple needs to be nipped in the bud by and concurrent sexual partners is

Judge For Yourself

the most important single behavior change associated with reduction in HIV-infection rates....” This is what the pope called “the humanization of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another.” As Green wrote in “First Things” last April, “Christian churches — indeed, most faith communities — have a comparative advantage in promoting the needed types of behavior change, since these behaviors conform to their moral, ethical, and scriptural teachings. What the churches are inclined to do anyway turns out to be what works best in AIDS prevention.”

On March 10, Pope Benedict published a letter to bishops concerning the remission of the excommunication of the Lefebvrite bishops, another recent instance of media piling on the pope.

In it, he commented on the reaction of some who “openly accused the pope of wanting to turn back the clock: an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than the present moment.”

He mentioned St. Paul’s advice in Galatians 5:13-15, “surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: ‘Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another.’ Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love?”

The same comment could be made about the current contratemps over condoms.

Dwight Duncan is a professor at Southern New England School of Law in North Dartmouth. He holds degrees in civil and canon law.

cannot separate the cross from the empty tomb, nor the resurrection from the crucifixion. Even when speaking of our Lord’s death, Jesus remains in Paul’s mind the risen one: “If the rulers of this age had known God’s wisdom, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (cf. 1Cor 2:7-8).

In his preaching, St. Paul vividly presents our Lord on the cross to his listeners: “Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified before your eyes!” (cf. Gal 3:1). We wonder if Paul held up a simple crucifix as he spoke or arranged an elaborate passion play at the beginning of his ministry in a particular place. On the other hand, with such statements he may simply be referring to his initial preaching of the Gospel to them.

The Apostle never discusses the historical, political, or legal motivations for Jesus’ condemnation. Instead, he speaks about the divine and personal reasons behind our Lord’s consent to die on the cross: “Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God” (cf. Eph 5:2). Paul saw that not everyone accepts this gift of love on the part of our savior. “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jew and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor 1:23-24).

To those of us who do accept this message, the cross becomes an explosive power in our lives: of liberation, salvation, and reconciliation. Christ’s cross also stands as a model to follow. To imitate the cross, however, means not to copy it slavishly, not to have ourselves literally nailed to the wood or immolated, but to live the

passion as part of our lives. We do this through communion with our Lord, as sacramental participation and real sharing in his life, death, and resurrection, and as the assimilation of his power and virtues. St. Paul puts it this way: “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:19). He further explains: “For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ … to know him and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death” (Phil 3:8,10). We are enabled to offer our sufferings to him, to endure our sufferings with him, and to gain strength through his sufferings. The cross and resurrection transform our lives and give meaning to our failures, wounds, and sufferings, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual.

For St. Paul, Jesus is not merely a moral teacher or a miracle worker, but the Son of God crucified for our sins. In the letters, Christ doesn’t stand in front of us as a preacher or walk beside us as a friend. Instead, as man-made-flesh, crucified and risen from the dead, he intersects our path; he invests himself in our story. Our Lord inserts himself into our relationships. He absorbs our lives into his, and, through faith and the sacraments, we absorb his death and resurrection into ours. This makes him not a figure of the past, a historical character, but a person who is part of our everyday lives (and the Church’s life as well) in the present, today, right now.

Father Bissinger is vocation director of the Diocese of Fall River and secretary to Bishop George W. Coleman.

Fill Your Easter Basket with Trappistine Quality Candy!

8

F

rom all eternity God has loved us in a special way.

In our first reading, Jeremiah announced that God was going to make a new covenant with his people. He was telling the Israelites that this new covenant would be written upon their hearts and that God would be with them always. Not only would God forgive all their sins, but he would empower them to know him and live according to his will. The Lord stated: “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

The prophet Jeremiah looked ahead to a time when the people would live their lives according to principles within their hearts, instead of striving to meet the written requirements of the law — a time when people would be motivated by an inner conviction that “God’s will” should pervade in everything

The Anchor

March 27, 2009

Listening to and living by our heart

that they do. personal prejudices and our Dealings with God, are in personal hang-ups and ask a sense, non-negotiable; for ourselves the question: What how can we negotiate with our would Jesus do in this situacreator? The terms of this new tion? In a sense, we must die covenant calls for serious comto our own will and seek out mitment, loyalty, and obedithe will of God. We must listen ence. This covenant should not be a burdensome commitment, but Homily of the Week simply a way of life, a Fifth Sunday natural response of a of Lent grateful recipient to a generous God.

By Deacon The questions we Paul M. Fournier need to ask ourselves are: Do we sometimes have a tendency to live by the letter of the law instead with our hearts and not always of the spirit of the law? Do with our heads. we become too self-righteous, In the Gospel, Jesus says: pointing out the faults of others “I solemnly assure you, unless based on the law? the grain of wheat falls to the Jeremiah is telling us that the earth and dies, it remains just a law is to be more a matter of grain of wheat. But if it dies, it the heart that of the head. produces much fruit.” Jesus was To live by the spirit of the speaking about his own death, law, we must overcome our but we must, like him, go the

way of the grain of wheat to bear fruit.

Jesus made a covenant with his followers and asked them to take God’s words into their hearts. We must die to our own will, and become alive in Christ. To die to our own will would be difficult without the example Jesus gave us in his death and resurrection.

With the gift of the Holy Spirit, God strengthens and guides us. With the power of the Holy Spirit, we too can go from death to life.

Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, there is eternal salvation for all who follow him.

Jesus was the grain of wheat that was to die and produce much fruit. Jesus explained to his disciples that only through his death, would he be glorified.

Only through his obedience to his Father would he be “lifted

up” so that we might enjoy eternal life.

Jesus gave us a new way of looking at life and death. He was telling us that we too are grains of wheat, and that we must also follow his example.

Through his obedience, and his being lifted up on the cross, the depth of God’s love for us is shown. We are called to follow the law that has been imprinted on our hearts. Through this obedience, we too may suffer, but through this obedience, we are doing what our Lord is calling us to do. By dying to our own will and following his will, we are accepting the new covenant which God has made with his people.

We are a grain of wheat.

What will you do with the grain of wheat you have been given?

Deacon Fournier is a permanent deacon at St. Joseph’s Parish in Attleboro at Sturdy Memorial Hospital.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. Mar. 28, Jer 11:18-20; Ps 7:2-3,9b-12; Jn 7:40-53. Sun. Mar. 29, Fifth Sunday of Lent, Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51:3-4,12-15; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33.

Mon. Mar. 30, Dn 13:1-9,15-17,19-30,33-62 or 13:41c-62; Ps 23:1-6; Jn 8:1-11. Tues. Mar. 31, Nm 21:4-9; Ps 102:2-3,16-21; Jn 8: 21-30. Wed. Apr. 1, Dn 3:14-20,91-92,95; (Ps) Dn 3:52-56; Jn 8:31-42. Thu. Apr. 2, Gn 17:3-9; Ps 105:4-9; Jn 8:51-59. Fri. Apr. 3, Jer 20:10-13; Ps 18:2-7; Jn 10:31-42.

G

eorge F. Will calls Mary Eberstadt “intimidatingly intelligent.” George must be easily intimidated these days, because Mary is one of the nicest (and funniest) people I know.

She’s also our premier analyst of American cultural foibles and follies, with a keen eye for oddities that illuminate just how strange the country’s moral culture has become.

In mid-2008, Mary penned the “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae,” the best defense of the encyclical written on

Food, sex and us

its 40th anniversary. (If you last encountered The Critique of missed it, you can retrieve it at Pure Reason via Cliff Notes. www.firstthings.com). Now, in Mary Eberstadt’s argument is Policy Review, she’s written “Is neatly conveyed by her fictiFood the New Sex?,” a brilliant tious, but telling, tale of two dissection of culinary puritanism and bedroom libertinism that includes the greatest subhead in recent magazine history: “Broccoli, Pornography, and Kant.” But don’t

By George Weigel let the invocation of the Sage of Koenigsberg put you off your feed, so to speak; the article women. is quite accessible to those who Betty is 30-year-old Jennifer’s grandmother. Imagine Betty when she was 30 — in, say, 1958. Betty didn’t think about food a lot. She cooked and served her family lots of red meat, baked cookies and pies using refined sugar, gave the kids whole milk, got many of her vegetables out of tin cans, snuck in the occasional Swanson’s TV Dinner, and imagined that the only critical judgment involved in eating centered on the question, “Does it taste good?”

By contrast, her granddaughter Jennifer has settled opinions about food — lots of settled opinions, which she thinks of as moral judgments engaging serious questions of good and evil. She wouldn’t ingest a bacon cheeseburger if she were starving. Swordfish steaks are forbidden, because swordfish are an endangered species.

The Catholic Difference

Frozen foods are for cannibals and Republicans; “organic” is in, refined sugar is out; tinned anything is yuck, because of both the food and the tin can.

On the other hand, if Betty imagined judgments about food to involve relatively trivial questions of taste, she knew that there was an area of domestic life in which grave questions of right and wrong really were involved — and they had to do with sex: sex outside marriage was bad, period. Jennifer, despite her moralizing about food and her censoriousness about lardbellies watching the Super Bowl while scarfing down potato chips and California dip, is unprepared to make moral judgments about sex the way Betty was. In fact, Jennifer believes that there are no serious moral judgments involved in sex (of whatever declination) “so long as no one else gets hurt.”

Sex once involved taboos, transmitted by culture and powerfully enforced by society. Food is now taboo-ridden among upscale young people, while life for many American 30-somethings is a sexual freefire zone. In that zone, moral judgments are not only eliminated but actively proscribed by strong taboos: “Why are you so judgmental?” “Why are you imposing your values on others?”

Violate those taboos, and you risk the kind of ostracism once visited upon Hester Prynne.

What’s going on here? Mary Eberstadt suggests that a weird inversion is underway, driven by unfocused but slightly guilty consciences: “The rules being drawn around food receive some force from the fact that people are uncomfortable with how far the sexual revolution has gone — and not knowing what to do about it, they turn for increasing consolation to mining morality out of what they eat.”

When I was a teen-ager, one of the reasons Americans went to Europe was to eat, it being assumed that American cuisine was inferior. Which it was, in the main. Today, there are very, very few wonderfully edible things that you can’t find in American stores and restaurants. Indeed, one of the signal improvements in American culture over the past two generations is its new respect for food. But better cooking and a deepened respect for the culinary arts are one thing; misplaced moral judgments are another. If whole foods is a culture’s answer to the demise of the Sixth Commandment, that culture is suffering from moral indigestion.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Early Christianities

pha (books that never made it Wednesday 25 March 2009 into the Bible.) Their esoteric — Three Mile River — Old questions tweaked my own New Year’s Day interest in the subject. I must he adults of the Emmaus retreat community gather monthly at Cathedral Camp to hear presentaReflections of a tions on Christian topParish Priest ics of general interest.

February must have

By Father Tim been a slow month.

Goldrick Not only was I called upon to be the presenthave heard most of this mateer, but there wasn’t even an assigned topic. My task was to rial covered in the seminary but, apparently, it went in one take questions from the floor ear and out the other. It really — any and all questions.

You just never know what’s does matter whether or not the learner is ready to learn. It on people’s minds. Emmaus only took me four decades to folks must spend a lot of time get ready. thinking deeply about the To overcome my ignofaith. They obviously want rance, I recently took a to learn more. They raised course on Christian Scripfor example, several queries tures and the battle over about New Testament apocry-

T

A

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March 27, 2009

The Ship’s Log

authentication. I’m a great fan of these pre-recorded university courses. I sat in my favorite recliner listening to taped lectures by a biblical historian. I had somehow gotten the impression that just about all early Christians believed the same thing. This proved untrue. Churches in the second and third centuries differed in the most basic tenets about God, about human beings, about the Scriptures and about the world — in fact, I guess we still do, don’t we? Communities also held widely varying opinions about the nature of Jesus and about his death and resurrection. What a chore it must have been for our early Church leaders to discern

Forty years of darkness

is two-fold. First, the sexual quick scan of any day’s revolution could not proceed headlines would show without our cooperation on that our popular culture is in many levels. Myriad choices a death spiral. In this season — including fashion, entertainof Lent, in which we recall ment, consumption and questhe Israelites’ 40-year sojourn tions of intimacy — are made in the desert, we find that every day and, at this point, we’re following in their very stopping the snowball effect footsteps — despite our slick appears virtually impossible. marketplace and hi-tech comSecond, women rely on forts. Forty years after Moses brought God’s Commandments relationships for their wellbeing, and making the difficult to the attention of the chosen but necessary choices would people, they were ready to enlead to breaking up friendter the Promised Land; and yet 40 years after the firm instructions and dire warnings in “Humanae Vitae,” we fiddle and dance while the next generation burns.

By Genevieve Kineke Our contemporary utilitarian view of the human person, who exists for his own fleeting plea- ships, impacting family bonds and inviting ostracism and hard sure and the gratification of feelings everywhere. Such is others, is a cancer eating at the the nature of choice. Consider vitals of the modern world. It Our Lord and his reception is the most pressing concern of and he promised, “If the world this generation, and the crisis hates you, be sure that it hated which separates the children me before it learned to hate of light from the children of you” (John 15:18). darkness.

We didn’t get here overAh, the reader will yawn night. What may have seemed — such drama. It is dramatic, inconsequential choices 30 or but then all of salvation history 40 years ago have now become is dramatic. We can read the monumental choices that have Old Testament accounts and will have the potential to shock wonder why we don’t have the others and bear tremendous same opportunities to prove effects — for the good or ourselves as David, Esther, otherwise. Perhaps long ago Ruth, Daniel, Judith and we thought that we could avoid Joseph each did. And yet, their confrontation, but this shrinkshining moments facing down ing from moral clarity has only the zeitgeist were no different made everything worse. than the one we face in our Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote own cultural landscape. of this battle of good and evil The trickier part for women

The Feminine Genius

and how it plays out in every generation. “To share Christ’s life was to share his fate. The world would hate his followers, not because of evil in their lives, but precisely because of the absence of evil or rather their goodness.... The holier and purer a life, the more it would attract malignity and hate. Mediocrity alone survives.”

As attractive as mediocrity can be at times, it is not an option. All women who love others must consider whether their love is authentic and lifegiving, or whether it is based on their own comfort, self-preservation or fear. We can pray without ceasing for a way to stand for the truth without alienating others, but we also might be asking for a way to avoid God’s own suffering.

We need to be brutally honest in assessing our real intentions.

Over the centuries, the lives of the chosen people depended on their fidelity to God’s law — and the children often paid for their parents’ transgressions. If fear is keeping you from standing for the truth, perhaps fear for your children will compel you to do otherwise. Let perfect love cast out this fear, and we’ll make the next 40 years a pilgrimage back to God. Mrs. Kineke is the author of “The Authentic Catholic Woman” (Servant Books). She can be found online at www. feminine-genius.com.

what was true and what was false. Some of the false teachings seem obviously “off-the-wall,” but there were once people who believed them with all their hearts.

Without official clarification, Christianity would have imploded early on. The need for Catholic orthodoxy is the reason the Nicene and Apostles creeds were formulated.

Safeguarding adherence to the articles of the creed is the function of what we call the magisterium. Oddly, some of the same bizarre theological opinions held nearly 2,000 years ago are still with us in some form or another.

You would think that all early Christians could at least agree that there was one God, but no. Some thought the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament could not be the same God. These people solved this by believing in two gods. You hear that echoed today when Christians say, “The God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath but the God of the New Testament is a God of love.” Some early Christians went so far as to completely reject Judaism and the Old Testament. Others maintained you had first to keep all Jewish customs and beliefs if you wanted to be Christian.

For still others, there was one main God surrounded by a pantheon of mini-gods.

Somehow, sparks of the divine essence of some wayward god became entrapped in the bodies of special earthlings. One day these human enlightened ones would shed their earthly shells and return to heaven.

The human body was nothing but the evil place of their imprisonment. This reminds me of those crazies in California who convinced themselves

there was a spaceship lurking behind Comet Hale-Bopp waiting to whisk them to heaven. The group expedited their swift departure by committing suicide.

Some believed Jesus was human, but not divine. He never really died on the cross, just passed out, they said. At the other extreme were those who believed that Jesus was God pretending to be man.

His humanity was an illusion, said they. Others maintained that salvation was to be found in knowledge of the divine spark within, not in the Lord’s death and resurrection. Somewhere in between were those who taught that Jesus was just a man whose body was taken over by God at baptism only to be abandoned by God at the crucifixion. Some said his spirit rose at Easter, but not his body and we will rise in spirit, not in body. There’s a lot of that still going around.

Each heretical group had its own Scriptures to back them up. These apocrypha include Gospels, acts of various Apostles, epistles, and even apocalypses. Thank heavens the orthodox list of New Testament books was formulated by the end of the fourth century (by St. Athanasius.)

The diversity between various Christian churches today is mild compared to that of the earliest centuries.

The Emmaus retreat community seemed fascinated by this abstruse subject, but, sad to say, not I. I never did finish the professor’s taped lecture series. I dozed off in my recliner. Oh, wait. Now I remember why I can’t recall my seminary classes in this stuff.

Father Goldrick is pastor of St. Nicholas of Myra Parish in North Dighton.

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10

The Anchor

No one’s busted flat yet

S

ince I initiated my March Madness coverage with a rock ’n roll theme, I’ll continue the trend.

It was Kris Kristofferson who wrote the Janis Joplin hit “Me and Bobby McGee,” in which she sings “Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train.”

Well I’m pleased to say no one in the Jolivet Madness pool is “waiting for a train.” Denise, Emilie and I did not fall victim to the deadly “Broken Bracket,” that spells doom for any hoops prognosticators — especially before the Sweet 16 is established.

My View From the Stands

By Dave Jolivet There were some close calls, but the Orange, the Sooner, and the Panther are still alive entering this weekend’s battles.

Last year at this time I was comfortably in the lead on my way to hoop supremacy in my happy home. This year, not so much.

Last weekend was great fun, and great family time, as we all rooted for most of the same teams — selfish as our reasons may have been. Yet we were united in our selfishness.

We even rooted for each other’s final pick, lest our bracket be busted. Perhaps one reason for was that was my vow that “If my bracket gets busted,

I’m not watching any games at all next week.” The women took heed and rooted my pick on to a hard-fought victory. They’re too good to me.

Everything changes this weekend. Family loyalties will be as welcomed as a technical foul call. Rooting for the other’s picks will occur with far less frequency.

First of all, my Pitt Panthers played last night, and for all I know, I could already be out of the running. This hot dog could be movin’ out. (See last week’s column.)

Secondly, Denise’s top pick and Emilie’s top pick play against each other tonight.

For whom will I root? For whomever most benefits my chances. Sorry ladies, this is March Madness.

And if things work out right (for me), I could be Pitted against either my spouse or my offspring in the national semifinals on April 4.

Some may wonder where is Igor during this season of Madness? She’s usually behind the couch because someone in this family gets quite boisterous come game time. It’s best that person remain unidentified.

I just hope I’m not fighting with her for space behind the furniture tomorrow — busted flat in Baton Rouge — lamenting, “I’d trade all of my tomorrows, for one single (win) yesterday.”

March 27, 2009

Former math teacher finds helping others is a formula for strong faith

By Michael Pare Anchor Staff

rides. Ward and Eleanor drive a couple of young people to church every Sunday.

EAST SANDWICH — J. Ward Harrigan loved “It is part of what we have to do,” said Ward. to teach math, which he did, for so many years to “And it’s nice to help people when you can. You so many high school students in New York City. know, ‘help your neighbor.’ I’m able to drive even Always, he enjoyed the challenge. though I am 90, so if someone needs help….”

“I always wanted to make math interesting,” he Father Marcel Bouchard, pastor at Corpus says.

Christi, sees the Harrigans as shining examples of It’s funny, but maybe now, with the time to re- people putting faith to practice. flect, Ward sees a connection between his love for “The whole stewardship message … they unmath and his faith. He sees it in his life journey, derstand it,” said Father Bouchard. “They are all which included Catholic grammar school, Catho- about helping others. It is a wonderful example to lic high school, and St. John’s University in the everybody. It shows the older people to just keep Bronx. going. And it shows the “I just followed the younger people that life rules,” he said, when goes on.” asked about his faith Father Bouchard and the roots of his conlaughed as he shared nection to Catholicism. an anecdote, further il“Like math.” lustrating Ward’s comWard’s educational mitment to stewardship. pursuits always seemed Every year, it seems, the to bring him closer to parish has a fair that calls God. At St. John’s, he attention to the dozens of majored in math and phiministries it fosters. The losophy. idea is not only to recruit “I found proof for the volunteers, but to make existence of God,” he sure parishioners know said. “There was never a the services and proquestion.” grams available to them.

After retiring as a Ward always saw the high school teacher, fair as an opportunity to Ward moved on to teach strengthen and promote college students at the the transportation minisNew York Institute of try.

Technology. And then, in “He makes the big1988, he and his beloved ANCHOR PERSON OF THE WEEK — J. Ward gest effort to get noticed wife Eleanor would leave Harrigan, with his wife of 67 years, Eleanor. at the fair,” said Father Westbury, N.Y., retiring Bouchard. “One year he again, this time to Cape dressed up with a sandCod. wich board and walked around. His faith … it’s in The move brought them close to one of their his actions.” four daughters. It also brought them close to CorThe Harrigan’s faith is also evident in their depus Christi Parish. votion to one another. That too, is a witness for “The minute we got up here, we got involved others. Three of their children are still living. They with the food pantry in Sandwich and with Meals are grandparents to eight and great-grandparents to on Wheels,” he said. “And we were always doing three. something at church.”

Eleanor keeps as busy as her husband. On That the Harrigans sought out volunteer op- Thursday mornings she volunteers at Mary’s portunities when they arrived on the Cape should Closet, a “thrift boutique” run by parishioners at come as no surprise. They had been doing that Corpus Christi. A product of public schools, Eleakind of thing back in their days in Westbury. nor believes that she was born with a strong faith.

So it made sense that once in Sandwich, Elea- In recent years, she has taken the time afforded nor found her way to the Council on Aging office. her in retirement to attend Bible study classes. It’s She would get calls from people who needed some strengthened an already strong faith. assistance. Often, if transportation was what they As for all of the volunteer work, Eleanor views needed, Eleanor would enlist Ward. That kind of it much like her husband does. It’s the right thing approach, that desire to do for others carried over to do and it’s fulfilling. It adds up nicely, if you nicely to various ministries at Corpus Christi. In will. fact, until about a year ago, Ward headed the parAnd Eleanor knows that they get something out ish’s busy transportation ministry. of it all, too.

“We would give people a ride to the doctor’s or “The older you get, the more you need to be to church,” said Ward. “I had so many volunteer involved with people,” she said. “God has given us drivers. I acted as the dispatcher.” the health and the strength. It keeps us occupied.”

And often, it was about more than a ride. It was And occupied is good. As long as God affords about connecting to people. him his health, Ward figures he’ll keep offer“We would go into houses and talk to people,” ing those rides. It’s a good deal for everybody. It he said. strengthens his faith. It adds up nicely.

At 90, Ward continues to volunteer at church.

Like math.

He is a lector, an usher and every Sunday morning To nominate a Person of the Week, send at 10:45 Mass, he serves as an extraordinary min- an email message to FatherRogerLandry@Anister of holy Communion. And, he is still giving chorNews.org.

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The Anchor

March 27, 2009

Eye-opening experience in Guaimaca, Honduras continued from page one

CARE AND CONCERN — Todd Baptista, a pharmacist and a member of St. John the Baptist Parish in Westport, was one of several individuals who visited a mission in Olancho, Honduras.

Here he speaks with the mother of a sick child.

Westport group visits ‘adopted’ Honduran people for the first time

By Dave Jolivet, Editor with reports from St. John the Baptist Parish, Westport

WESTPORT — Nearly 20 years ago, then Father Edmund Fitzgerald, pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish, invited an old seminary friend to speak to the congregation at the Westport parish.

Father Richard T. Donohue, was a priest in the Boston Archdiocese, and had been assigned to a mission in Olancho, Honduras.

Father Donohue’s stories about the poverty and despair in one of the poorest countries on earth touched the Westporters deeply.

Shortly after, the St. John the Baptist community “adopted” Father Donohue and his charges.

For nearly 15 years, the folks at Westport Point have been helping the Honduran people with donations of supplies and money.

Nearly one-half million dollars has gone to help the people of Olancho.

In early March a contingent of 13 parishioners and friends of St. John’s visited their adopted parish for the very first time since the relationship began.

Over the years Father Donohue, through the support of St. John’s, has built a school for mentally challenged individuals; a bilingual elementary school; a high school; and a branch of Catholic University of Honduras in Juticalpa.

While there, the visitors from up north made electrical repairs, built and painted shelves, conducted medical and eye clinics and worshiped and bonded with their Honduran brothers and sisters.

“It was a wonderful learning experience,” said St. John’s pastor Father Leonard Hindsley, who accompanied the pilgrims. “The team plans on returning next year since the interest among the parishioners is so great.”

Parishioner Todd Baptista, a pharmacist, witnessed some very extreme medical conditions the likes he and some accompanying

nurses never seen, many of whom affected children. He wrote of a 10-year-old boy with severe exophtalmos, hyperthyroidism, and a long-neglected brain tumor.

“Money was raised for his mother five years ago when they knew he had a tumor,” Baptista wrote to parishioners back home. “She took him to city and then took the money and left him there and never returned.” The young man is now dying.

He and other nurses also treated a 17-year-old girl with a large cancerous eye tumor; and a young girl with an infected boil in her ear, to name but a few.

The St. John’s parishioners witnessed illness and poverty, yet they were blessed to share simple meals, and their faith in Christ with the Honduran people.

They interacted with school children, teachers and residents of remote villages, all of whom were kind and shared what little they could offer.

The group also traveled to Guaimaca for a visit with Bishop Coleman and Father Karl Bissinger who were ministering at the Fall River diocesan mission there.

“I can’t find the appropriate words to summarize my experience,” said parishioner Don Dufault. “I need more time to sort through the myriad of emotions, scenes, and people experiences.

It is something one has to experience to get the full appreciation of how lives can be so different.”

Father Hindsley told The Anchor that the parish has already funded the building of one home in Olancho, and they’re in the process of raising funds for another.

Father Donohue told the Westport parish community that he “could not do his work without your help.”

Father Hindsley said his parish’s support is “Our way of trying to make a difference in our global community.”

immediately enter a jungle. The bishop got a kick out of that,” he added. What Father Bissinger did find wasn’t jungle territory, but “beautiful mountainous country, much like you’d see in California.”

While his topographical expectations may have been a bit off, the poverty and simplicity of the Guaimacan people was as expected, or even greater.

“If anything, the people have just the basics in life,” said Father Bissinger. “The amazing thing is that the people are not depressed about what they don’t have; instead, they appreciate what they do have, and for them the most important things in life are God and family.

“The people there are so welcoming and so friendly — peaceful actually.”

The first-time visitor admitted he didn’t sleep well the first night, “but each day there, I felt more and more at ease, more comfortable.”

It was a very pleasurable experience for Father Bissinger to hook up with his mentor, Father Craig A. Pregana, pastor of the two Mission parishes in Guaimaca. “Father Craig was the vocations director when I became a priest and he taught me a great deal,” said Father Bissinger.

“And he was still teaching me when I was in Honduras.”

One of Father Bissinger’s most memorable experiences during his initial visit was going on a day-long session of pastoral visits to some remote sections of the Mission. “Bring your stole and your prayer book,” Father Pregana told the young priest.

“When we entered the first

house, I administered holy Communion to the woman there,” he recalled. “Father Craig handled the prayer service. At the next house he asked me to hear the woman’s confession. I had one year of Spanish many years before, but I did OK. Again, Father Craig handled the prayer service. At the next house he told me to perform the prayer service and administer holy Eucharist.

That went well.”

At the next house, “Father Craig said ‘OK, you’re on your own, and left me in the capable hands of a team of women to take me to the various other stops,” he said. “I was a bit wide-eyed, but realized I could do it, and ended up visiting maybe 10 or so more homes. Everything was good.”

Father Bissinger was amazed at how the people held the priests in such high regard. “The children appreciate and respect the priests so very much,” he said. “That’s not something you find as much up here in our diocese. The children don’t take priests for granted. When you pay even a little attention to them their faces light up. It makes their day. It affirms them.”

It was clear in his interview with The Anchor that Father Bissinger found the experience rewarding and eye-opening.

“At first, I had reservations about going, but now I would recommend this experience to our own seminarians,” he said. “I see, after a visit to Guaimaca, their view of Church as being stretched — seeing things they wouldn’t see in an environment like our diocese in Fall River.

What better way to experience ser-

vice to the poor than to interact with some of the poorest of the poor in the world.”

Father Bissinger views his own faith horizons as “being stretched.”

“It was nice to break the ice about my reluctance to go, and to live the Jesus’ Gospel message of ‘whatever you do to the least of your brothers, you do to me.’”

He stressed how important the work Father Pregana does there on a daily basis. “Father Craig serves as pastor; administrator; hospitality specialist to those visiting from the diocese; missionary to faithful in remote, mountainous areas; and as an everyday priest.

“He works hard, but you can see that he loves what he does, and after visiting, I can understand why.”

Father Bissinger made mention that Father Paul Canuel’s time spent in Guaimaca is not forgotten by the people there. “The people still talk with great affection about Father Paul’s many years in Guaimaca. He laid a great foundation for the Fall River Diocese there.”

Father Bissinger also told The Anchor that he would have no reservations about recommending a trip to the Mission to laypeople.

“As long as you get a clean bill of health from your doctor to go, you should,” he said.

It’s a land where children with little, play soccer and laugh; where daily poverty doesn’t affect the spiritual lives of its inhabitants; and where faithful in the Fall River Diocese can lend a much-needed hand.

Father Bissinger learned all that first-hand. And he’s glad he did.

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The Anchor

March 27, 2009

Transgender bill passage would mark ‘institutional disintegration of the family’

By Gail Besse Anchor Correspondent

BOSTON — People with gender identity disorder would have specially protected legal status if a bill pending on Beacon Hill becomes law. “Transgender” and gay activist groups are making this a priority, according to both supporters and opponents of the bill.

Transgender is an umbrella term coined by those advocating that society try to deconstruct the biological realities of male and female, say researchers who have studied gender confusion.

An Act Relative to Genderbased Discrimination and Hate Crimes was re-filed this year after it died in committee following a public outcry against it last year.

But its supporters have lobbied fiercely since then; it now has about four times more co-sponsors.

Numbered H1728 in the House and S1687 in the Senate, the bill is currently in the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

The Woburn-based Coalition for Marriage and Family (Coalitionformarriage.org), which advocates for traditional values, is making defeat of the bill a priority. In a March 19 statement, Chairman Tom Shields urged people to “put the pressure on now.”

If the bill leaves the committee for a full legislative vote, he predicted, it will pass.

“This dangerous legislation will make it legal for biological men to enter women’s rest rooms and locker rooms, further eroding our rights in an attempt to erase the differences between the sexes,” he said.

Bay Windows, a free publication that dubs itself “New England’s largest GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) newspaper,” devoted its March 18 lead article to explaining the bills’ chances.

“GLBT advocates have already persuaded a majority of the legislature to back the transgender rights bill, but that doesn’t mean that passage of the bill is a done deal.

“In fact, the bill’s fate will ultimately be determined by a handful of legislative ‘gate-keepers’ who must decide both to support it and to make it a legislative priority.

Without their support and commitment to expend political capital on the measure, the bill is dead in the water this session,” the paper reported.

Spokesmen for the Massachusetts Catholic Conference (MCC), which represents the state’s four bishops, testified at a 2008 public hearing against this bill.

The lay political action group Catholic Citizenship (Catholiccitizenship.org) noted in a March 23 email: “Proponents of the measure have called for a “lobby day” on Beacon Hill on April 7, signal-

ing the bill’s public hearing may not be far behind. Some parishes have already begun a letter drive in opposition to the legislation. To find out what you can do, contact MCC.” Massachusetts already outlaws discrimination based on racial, religious, ethnic, handicap, and “gender or sexual orientation” prejudice.

Under this proposal, a new category would be added to the existing hate crime statute, as well as to non-discrimination laws on employment, housing, credit, labor union membership, public accommodations and public education.

The additional category — “gender identity or expression” — is defined in the 15-page bill as “a gender-related identity, appearance, expression, or behavior of an individual, regardless of the individual’s assigned sex at birth.”

Thus, heterosexual cross-dressers, homosexual transvestites and “transsexuals” — people undergoing so-called “sex change” operations — among others, would be given specially protected status.

The Bay Windows article spelled out “four key figures in particular who will be crucial to the bill’s success: House Speaker Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop; Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth; and Judiciary Committee co-chairs Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, D-Newton, and Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty, D-Chelsea, whose committee has jurisdiction over the bill. Of those four DeLeo and Creem support the bill and are signed on as co-sponsors, while Murray and O’Flaherty have yet to take a public position.”

It continues, “The success of the bill also depends on the support of the other members of the Judiciary Committee, who must give the bill a majority vote to send it to the full House and Senate.”

Contact information for 17 committee members and the text of the bill can be accessed through the Massachusetts General Court’s home Web page, Mass.gov/legis/ legis.htm.

The Waltham-based parents’ rights group Mass Resistance (Massresistance.org) is also asking people to call for a public hearing

to probe how “transgenderism” is quietly getting state sponsorship through a questionable change in the policy of issuing drivers’ licenses.

In January, Registrar of Motor Vehicles Rachel Kaprielian announced that people could now change their gender designation on drivers’ licenses with simply a note from a “medical provider.”

Lobbyists for homosexual and transgender causes want the American Psychiatric Association to declassify transexualism and transvestism as mental disorders, according to the California-based Traditional Values Coalition.

Its brochure “A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream,” explains: “In reality, no person can actually change into a different sex.

Maleness and femaleness are in the DNA and are unchangeable. A man who has his sex organ removed and takes hormones to grow breasts is still genetically male — a mutilated man, not a woman.

“These are deeply troubled individuals who need professional help, not societal approval or affirmation.”

Dale O’Leary, Catholic speaker and author of “The Gender Agenda,” agrees. In an article published by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, she wrote: “Patients who suffer from the belief that they are men trapped in the bodies of women (or women trapped in the bodies of men) need real help.

“The promotion of ‘sex changes’ and the normalizing of severe gender identity disorders by radical feminists, pro-same-sex attraction disorder activists and sexual revolutionaries is part of their larger agenda — namely the destabilization of the categories of sex and gender,” O’Leary said.

“Of course, we should be kind to people with severe psychological problems. But there is nothing kind about denying them real help, or using them as pawns in the culture wars.”

The General Court’s main number is 617-722-2000 and the Judiciary Committee’s is 617-7222396. The Coalition for Marriage and Family is at 781-569-0509 and the Mass. Catholic Conference is at 617-367-6060.

Diocese of Fall River TV Mass on WLNE Channel 6 Sunday, March 29 at 11:00 a.m.

Scheduled celebrant is Father Michael Fitzpatrick, chaplain at UMass-Dartmouth and St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford

March 27, 2009

M

oralistic Therapeutic Deism. This isn’t a disease, it’s a religion. According to the National Study of Youth and Religion, this is the religion practiced by a majority of the teenagers in the United States, including the Catholic youth of your parish.

They wouldn’t be able to name it exactly, but this religious worldview persists. In fact, the authors of the 2004 study, Christian Smith and Melissa Lundquist, report that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism has a creed: 1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

If you are not familiar with the diagnosis, you certainly have

13

The Anchor

Inviting youth, parents into the life of Christ

recognized the symptoms. Everyolescents’ misconception about the thing is OK as long as it makes Christian faith, let’s take a look at us happy. At first glance one may another key finding of the NSYR. wonder what’s so wrong with American youth between the this religious worldview. It has ages of 13 and 21 (the millennial produced a generation of nice, fair, generation) are very conventional. happy people, hasn’t it? UnfortuWhatever their parents believe, nately, there is much wrong with they believe. The youth are not the this perspective. For one, the God same as those rebellious “Boomin whom they trust is not a Trinitarian God. There is no need for Christ. The God-from-a-distance never enters humanity to make that salvific sacrifice on the cross. There is

By Claire McManus no resurrection from the dead, and no need to send his life-giving Spirit.

There is no need to repent for ers” or the individualistic “Gensins, nor to keep holy the Sabbath. Xers.” The youth of the millennial There are no demands for disciple- generation have no intention of ship, and no self-sacrifice for the seeking their own way. Their faith cause of social justice. There is is part of their life, but in the backonly the “do-good because it feels ground and taken for granted. The good” acts of kindness by nice authors of the NSYR described people. I have heard this creed this as “Benign Whateverism.” If described as “beige.” Why do we the youth have misconceptions paint the room beige, because about their faith, then you better it goes with everything, right? believe that their parents also do.

Their beige creed accommodates Our youth are both mirrors of the everyone. faith life of the adults in their lives, Before we rush in to fix our ad- and indicators of the faith lives

The Great Commission

that they will bring to the next generation. This is very disturbing news, indeed.

Faith formation programs in our parishes are targeting the wrong generation. We have some excellent catechetical programs for young people in our diocese that are doctrinally sound and employ excellent pedagogy. All of this nourishing doctrine gets mixed in with the junk food of popular beliefs. The nutrition plan of the youth and their parents may be comprised of belief in infant baptism, the daily horoscope, a touch of re-incarnation, sprinkled with some good oldfashion secular humanism. What comes out at the end is a syncretism of many faiths operating in the environment of our pluralistic society.

The implications of the findings of the NSYR are far reaching.

We need to re-examine our tightly held assumptions about evangelization, catechesis, vocations, and pastoral planning. Catechesis will not be made more effective by imposing stricter guidelines for doctrinally sound materials if there is no support for the learning at home. Vocations will not be fostered by bringing back male-only altar servers if such concepts as the “demands of discipleship” sound like a foreign language. Evangelization is not about knocking on doors of strangers, but about inviting the youth of the millennial generation and their parents into the life of Jesus Christ. Pastoral planning is not a process of closing doors, but a mandate to do what needs to be done to rescue our Catholic faith from the clutches of benign whateverism.

Claire McManus is the director of the Diocesan Office of Faith Formation.

14

The Anchor

March 27, 2009

Pauline Year director glances back, looks ahead continued from page one

down and perhaps making it easier for Anchor readers to understand,” he said.

“The other week finds Father Karl Bissinger taking up the baton with his column on St. Paul, and between us we hopefully have kept the Pauline Year in the front of people’s minds,” Father Johnson added.

Looking back, he recalled the Pauline Year kickoff Mass at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville; another marking the conversion of St. Paul celebrated by Bishop George W. Coleman at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Fall River at which Father Johnson gave the homily.

He also recalled how Dr. Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy and an eminent theologian at Boston College delivered an inspiring talk November 7 to approximately 300 of the faithful gathered in St. Julie Billiart Church in North Dartmouth.

Kreeft, born a Calvinist, talked of how he regarded the Catholic Church with the “utmost suspicion.” Challenged by a Calvinist professor to investigate the claims of the Catholic Church prompted prayer and his conversion, he told the assembly.

“The recent Reconciliation Weekend held in parishes throughout the diocese, and the associated adoration of the

Blessed Sacrament in some churches was another vital step in honoring the 2,000th birthday of Paul as the year is intended to do,” said Father Johnson.

The upcoming celebrations to complete the dedicated year include a lecture by popular speaker and theologian Scott Hahn on June 27 at St. Anthony’s Church in New Bedford.

“Scott Hahn is also a convert, who entered the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 1986,” Father Johnson pointed out.

Hahn, currently a professor of theology and Scripture at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, holds a doctorate in biblical theology as well as various degrees in theological studies and is the author of several religious books.

His talks have been effective in helping thousands of Protestants and fallen away Catholics to re-embrace the Catholic faith.

There is also be a talk on St. Paul being planned at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville by Father Timothy Joyce, OSB, from Glastonbury Abby in Hingham, The final Mass ending the Pauline Year will be held in St. Anthony’s Church in New Bedford at 6 p.m. on June 28, the vigil of the feast of SS. Peter and Paul. Father Johnson will be the celebrant and homilist. Prior to

the Mass St. Anthony’s pastor, Father Roger J. Landry will give a lecture connecting the Pauline Year to the newly declared Year of the Priesthood announced recently by Pope Benedict.

“I’ll continue to write my column, taking an historic look at Paul’s journey to the Colossians, the Ephesians and the Corinthians, and Paul’s themes addressed to them. We can’t miss talking of the message to the Corinthians when Paul wrote about conversion and from which we took the theme of the Pauline Year, ‘Be reconciled to God.’” Father Karl C. Bissinger, secretary to Bishop Coleman, will also continue with his column.

“It’s been hectic at times. I don’t think I could write every week. But it has been a wonderful experience because I needed to learn so much about Paul in order to write about him for others. I hope it helps people to learn about this Apostle and be inspired by him to become better Christians and followers of Christ,” Father Bissinger said.

“I plan to use the coming Church calendar as a guide and reflect on the mysteries of the cross, the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist and how Paul reflected on them in my upcoming articles in The Anchor.”

Any time is a good time to subscribe to

The Anchor P.O. Box 7, Fall River, MA 02722 theanchor@anchornews.org 508.675.7151 This Message Sponsored by the Following Business Concern in the Diocese of Fall River Gilbert C. Oliveira Insurance Agency

Congratulations to Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Wellfleet on this historic occasion!

St. Peter the Apostle Parish 11 Prince Street Provincetown, MA

March 27, 2009

The Anchor

Bishop dedicates new Wellfleet church continued from page one

ing St. Joan of Arc in Orleans,” Bishop Coleman said. “Father Andrews can now add his name to that brief list of priests who have supervised the building of two churches and endured such things as construction delays and, in the case of this church … the environmental concern of the box turtle.”

Shortly after the diocesanowned land was cleared to begin construction of the new church, state officials raised concerns over the impact it might have on the eastern box turtle — a “species of special concern” in the area. Bishop Coleman agreed to set aside land on the site for the turtles, although Father Andrews has said he’s never seen one on the grounds.

“You have probably noticed that the box turtle has been memorialized by the weather vane on top of the parish center,” Bishop Coleman said.

The first Catholic church in Wellfleet opened in 1900 and was an abandoned, one-room school house that had been moved from South Wellfleet. It served the town’s Catholic community of fewer than 100 people until a new house of worship, dedicated to

Our Lady of Lourdes, was constructed in central Wellfleet.

Founded in 1911 by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes Parish initially included the towns of Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, Chatham and Brewster.

As the Catholic population on Cape Cod grew over the years, new parishes were formed and new churches constructed. Our Lady of Perpetual Help was dedicated in 1915 in North Truro and Holy Redeemer Church in Chatham in 1916. A new Holy Trinity Church was completed in 1930 in Harwich. Orleans became a parish in 1947 and in 1952 St. Joan of Arc Church was built there with Our Lady of the Visitation as its mission church in Eastham. Our Lady of the Cape Church for the new Brewster parish was dedicated in 1963.

In 1999 it was decided that the needs of Catholics on lower Cape Cod would best be served by three churches — St. Peter’s in Provincetown; St. Joan of Arc in Orleans; and, halfway between the two in Wellfleet, a new church replacing the old Wellfleet parish Continued on page 20

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16

Youth Pages

HAVING A HEART — On Valentines’ Day more than 50 Bishop Feehan High School students decorated and prepared breakfast at St. John the Evangelist’s Parish Center for 36 local families referred from the greater Attleboro St. Vincent de Paul Societies who registered for donated food, personal care items and clothing. As the invited children made Valentines, received balloons and ate pastries, students from the Attleboro school got to know the parents and learn about their struggles to buy basic items for their daily lives. During Lent, the entire Feehan community will be putting together gift baskets of food and clothing for these neighbors. As a side note, Bernard and Rolande Poirier were on their way to 9 a.m. Mass at St. Joseph’s Parish on Valentine’s Day and noticed a family huddled in the cold on the steps outside the church. After Mass, they noticed that the family was still there and shivering with cold. The Poiriers approached the family and asked them if they needed a ride. The family explained that they were trying to get to the St. Valentine’s Day breakfast hosted by Bishop Feehan. The Poiriers not only gave them a ride there but waited for them as they enjoyed the event and drove them home as well. Ironically, this couple are the parents of 15 Feehan alumni. Pictured are Feehan students as they inflated balloons for the children of the families. From left, Lynnette McLaughlin, Ellen Valley, William Firth, Larsan Korvili, Kyle and Nick Cataldo, and Brendan Burke.

A GOOD START — Coyle and Cassidy High School officials recently awarded four scholarships to next fall’s incoming freshmen. The recipients were selected from a pool of applicants who applied for admission for next year’s freshman class. Selection was based on placement test results, middle school grades, as well as recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors. This year’s recipients were: Matthew Houghton, (Thomas Whalen Scholarship); Bridget Nolan, (Sister St. Paul Collard Memorial Scholarship); Jacob Santos-Marques, (Brothers of Holy Cross Scholarship); and Matthew Orsi, (Coyle & Cassidy Alumni Scholarship). From left: Vice Principal Chris Myron, Principal Paul Cartier, Santos-Marques, President Mary Pat Tranter, Orsi, Nolan, Houghton, and Vice Principal Marie Angelely.

SMILING IRISH EYES — Students from St. Mary’s, Mansfield, celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by dressing in green shirts, headbands and socks. Many students welcomed the day by sharing Irish traditions and family stories.

March 27, 2009

A WAY WITH WORDS — Shashawna Santiago, a seventh-grader at Holy Family-Holy Name School in New Bedford recently received an award from Maryknoll Missionary Father Bob Jalbert after placing second in the Congregation’s annual essay contest.

New Bedford seventh-grader places second in national essay contest

NEW BEDFORD — Recently, Father Bob Jalbert, a Maryknoll Missionary and representative of Maryknoll Magazine, visited Holy Family-Holy Name School.

His visit was two-fold. One, to award a prize to Shashawna Santiago, a seventhgrader. The second, to give a talk about his missionary work in the countries of Kenya and Tanzania, which are located in East Africa.

During a religion class, Santiago and her classmates were asked to write an essay entitled “Witness for Christ.” Her teacher, Alexa Vacaro, graded the essays and entered them in the essay contest sponsored

by Maryknoll Magazine. The contest, open to all students in the United States, had two divisions (Division 1 for high school students; Division 2 for elementary students), and received more than 6,000 entries. Editorial and educational staff of the magazine as well as outside consultants judged the essays and chose the winners. Winners were notified and received their award with a personal visit from a Maryknoll representative. Father Jalbert said that the focus questions are designed to be thoughtprovoking as well as experience-provoking so that students can use their own life to answer the question.

When Santiago heard the title of this year’s essay question, she immediately

thought of her mom. Her narration detailed the many ways her mom has shown the love of the Lord to her daughter and others in the community, through her job and volunteer work.

Father Jalbert celebrated Mass in the school chapel, and during the liturgy, Santiago read her prize-winning essay aloud.

When asked afterwards how she felt, Robin Santiago said how proud she was of her daughter. “Shashawna is an avid writer. So I knew she would do well. It’s wonderful to see that all my nagging had made a difference.” Edward Nelson, her dad, said he was thrilled that her work was being published.

“I’m so proud of her,” he said.

After Mass, Father Jalbert awarded Santiago a certificate of merit, a congratulatory letter from Superior General Father Edward M. Dougherty, and a $300 check.

Santiago said hearing her name announced over the intercom was a total surprise, and she felt extremely proud of her effort. “I’m so lucky to be able to talk about my mom in such a positive way.” Having others across the United States read her essay? “Wow! So overwhelming!” The best part of winning was “being able to put the money towards a college education.”

Cecilia Felix, principal, said, “What an awesome tribute to a mother that her daughter has seen her witness Christ to others.”

SURROUNDED BY FRIENDS — Shashawna Santiago is surrounded by, from left, Maryknoll Missionary Father Bob Jalbert; her dad, Edward Nelson; seated her mom, Robin Santiago; and Father John M. Sullivan, pastor of St. Lawrence Martyr Parish following a recent ceremony at the New Bedford Church.

March 27, 2009

S

pring has sprung. The official start of spring was March 21, and this year it couldn’t come soon enough. It has been a long, difficult winter, both in terms of the weather, and in terms of the issues that are facing us. We are still a country at war.

The economy is in tatters. A parent may have lost his job and most teens will find it hard to find work this summer. Many are depressed and fearful for their future. It’s not pretty.

Spring is a time of renewal. It is a time when nature moves from a state of dormancy to new life and growth. It is a cycle of life that is most comforting to us. We can rely on it happening year after year. The season of spring reminds us that there is hope.

As I was preparing the materials for the upcoming Christian Leadership Conference to be held this summer, I came across a story that is in the candidate journal. It seemed to offer some instruction on what we are called to do during these difficult times.

The story, I believe, is by Megan McKenna from a book entitled “Parables.”

There was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart and all sorts of good things, but she was very frustrated. The world seemed to be falling apart. She would

Youth Pages A time for planting

read the papers and get depressed.

One day she decided to go shopping, and went into a mall and picked a store at random. She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter. She knew it was Jesus, because he looked just like the pictures she’d seen on holy cards and in church.

“Excuse me, are you Jesus?” “I am,” he said.

“Do you work here?” “No,” Jesus said, “I own the store.”

“Oh, what do you sell here?” “Oh,

By Frank Lucca just about anything.”

“Anything?” she asked.

“Yeah, anything you want. What do you want?” She said, “I don’t know.”

“Well, “ Jesus said, “feel free. Walk up and down the aisles. Make a list.

See what it is you want, and then come back and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

She did just that — walked up and down the aisles. There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drug abuse, harmony, clean air, careful use of resources. She wrote furiously. By

Be Not Afraid

the time she got back to the counter, she had a long list. Jesus took the list, skimmed it, looked up at her and smiled.

“No problem.” And then he bent down behind the column and picked up all sorts of things, stood up, and laid out the packets.”

She asked, “What are these?” “Seed packets,” Jesus replied, “this is a catalog store.”

“You mean I don’t get the finished product?” she asked. “No, this is a place of dreams.

You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds. You plant the seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to grow and someone else reaps the benefits.” “Oh,” she said. And she left the store without buying anything.

So often we pray and pray and wait for God to do something for us. How often have you perhaps prayed that you pass a test, but didn’t take the time to study? How did that work out for you? There are those that speak out about drugs but aren’t there to support the addict in their need. Hun-

17

ger is not a good thing. What have we done lately to help alleviate it? There is so much to be done, but it won’t get done unless each and everyone of us does our part.

I once heard a saying that I think applies here. “Pray as though everything depends on God, but act as though everything depends on you.” We are all given various talents (seeds) that can make a difference in the world. We simply need to plant them and nurture them. If each of us takes the time to do our part, we can change things for the better.

We can want the good things. We can dream. But we need to do. The wheat does not grow unless the seed is planted and nurtured. We can’t get the final products of peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drug abuse, harmony, clean air, careful use of resources as the woman in the story wanted unless we first plant the seeds and nurture them.

It’s time to go shopping. Will you walk out of the store empty handed?

Frank Lucca is a youth minister at St. Dominic’s Parish in Swansea.

He is chair and director of the YES! Retreat and director of the Christian Leadership Institute (CLI). He is a husband and a father of two daughters.

18

The Anchor

Diocese’s judicial vicar addresses Vatican on clergy sexual abuse continued from page one

cal tribunals in the United States in the past decade, has given its canonists an unparalleled experience in applying certain provisions of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, he said.

Father Robinson recalled that in October 2008, Archbishop Francesco Cocopalmerio, who has led the PCLT since 2007, visited the U.S. and expressed his desire to hear the experience of American canonists in applying the procedural and penal law of the Code to cases involving the sexual misconduct of priests/deacons under the 2002 Dallas Charter and Norms.

“The invitation that came last December for six of us to appear at the symposium followed on that,” said Father Robinson, an Easthampton native who came to the Fall River Diocese in December 1992 and served in the Tribunal, where he has been judicial vicar since July 1, 2002.

“What is hoped for is that the PCLT will, in the next few years, produce an instruction for the penal law of the Code similar to the 2005 Instruction — “Dignitas Connubii” — which the Council produced for the canons concerning marriage processes,” he reported.

“It was a candid, no-holdsbarred exchange among the presenters and the member of the various Roman dicasteries — about 50 in number — who attended,” the Carmelite described the meeting.

“Each of us spoke for about an hour. It was followed by another hour of questions and answers, during the two-day period with morning and afternoon sessions.”

After the symposium the speakers appeared before the

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Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the dicastery responsible for the clerical sexual misconduct trials, for an off-the-record meeting during the late afternoon and evening hours.

Although that meeting gave everyone a greater sense of each other’s concerns and problems, “and this is not meant as a criticism, but it offered few, if any, practical solutions to concrete issues,” he stated.

“But I believe that Rome listened, heard what we had to say, took notes, and will incorporate our remarks, where appropriate, into forthcoming legislation.”

What was most surprising, he said, “was to see the depth and breadth of the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the problem and of its consequences in the American Church,” said Father Robinson.

“Rome seems ready to hear how the universal legislation plays out in local churches and to allow for local variations on a given theme. At the same time, I detected a great concern for what Rome perceives as a widening rift between American priests and deacons and their bishops due to the perception that the bishops have abandoned their priests and have sacrificed them to the media gods and to popular hysteria.

Happily, this generally has not been the experience in religious institutes.”

The other distinguished canonists who spoke included Patricia M. Dugan of Philadelphia, Passionist Father John J. Foley of New York, Mercy Sister Victoria Vondenberger of Cincinnati, Father David L. Deibel of Napa, Calif., and Father Patrick R. Lagges of Chicago.

Their topics addressed confidentiality and the media, preliminary investigations, balancing

rights, pastoral principles, and resolution of cases.

“My paper presented the experience of the collection and evaluation of proofs,” he said.

The principal problem in penal trials is we are dealing with two divergent legal systems: an inquisitorial European one and an adversarial Anglo-American one, he explained.

In the Anglo-American system, law enforcement personnel gather evidence. In the European system, the judge(s) gather evidence. In the Anglo-American system there are separate processes in court trials — criminal and civil. The European system combines them.

“While civil law focuses on the apprehension and punishment of perpetrators of crimes, canon law focuses on the reform of the offender and the restoration of order in the community,” Father Robinson pointed out.

The thorniest issue, he said, is conflicting rights in sexual abuse cases, because once the canonical action begins, the accuser becomes a witness for the diocese or province against the accused.

“The process for determining guilt and punishment must be beyond reproach,” the vicar asserted. “From the point of view of the accused cleric, he is on trial for his life and finding him guilty of a crime for which he stands accused is equivalent to a death sentence in a criminal trial. Resurrecting a cleric’s good name/ministry is largely an elusive, philosophical goal, whose practical achievement largely still escapes us in the concrete.”

With the current Dallas Norms in place, “Each of us is only the point of a finger away from personal and ministerial disaster,” he commented.

Receiving considerable discus-

March 27, 2009 sion at the symposium were the Norms’ “one-size fits all” crime and punishment and the “onestrike-and-you’re-out” response to sexual misconduct allegations.

“Rome and the American canonists voiced the conviction that all crimes are not equally nefarious and that there needs to be some gradation in the seriousness of the crimes and the fittingness of the penalties,” he reported.

All are concerned about the impact on the traditional Catholic teaching of repentance and conversion made by the Dallas Norms. “Not surprisingly, no one had a solution,” Father Robinson said candidly.

“But all did recognize the potential for conflict: the possibility of true conversio morum [total change of behavior]; the probability of recidivism or falling back into sin; the need to protect the patrimony and ministry of the diocese or province; and the need to assist victims with their own personal healing.”

While all are clearly seeking to resolve those issues, no one yet found a complete satisfactory way to do so, he added.

Another area of concern for Rome and American canonists was the lack of distinction in the Dallas Norms between historical and current accusations. The lack of clarity comes when there is a removal of a cleric accused of a crime many years ago and not since, as opposed to a cleric who is currently, actively abusing minors.

“They do not pose the same risk to society and the Church and should not be treated in the same way,” said Father Robinson.

For the currently abusing cleric, there is an urgency to remove him from ministry, which does not exist in the case of one who had not been accused of any sexual misconduct for many years, he opined.

In his paper, Father Robinson addressed circumstantial evidence such as the polygraph, voice stress analysis and recovered memories.

“None of these is universally accepted and trusted by law enforcement communities. My

own belief is that it would be a disservice to the jurisprudence of the Church to accept any of them lock, stock and barrel at this time.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “it is time to conclude they don’t work, may never work, and seek more reliable ways of separating truth from prevarication such as the low tech, non-scientific solution of improving our own interviewing and assessment skills.”

As a backdrop for the whole discussion are additional realities, Father Robinson pointed out.

“One is that there seems to be powerful, deep pocketed attackers who are determined to see the destruction of the Church. Another is that there is a whole class of individuals who have become professional finger pointers and who live off the results of their accusations,” he noted.

“We need to find an effective way to defend ourselves against these realities while protecting the Church, wrongly accused clerics, and true victims of sexual abuse,” he asserted.

While there are few, if any current practical results of the symposium, “I believe everyone left Rome feeling we had made a successful presentation of the issues and difficulties we have encountered in dealing with the clerical sexual misconduct penal trials,” Father Robinson said.

“I believe everyone on both sides of the table was pleased and satisfied with the symposium.”

Msgr. Thomas J. Harrington, who although retired, is a defender of the bond in the diocesan Tribunal, said Father Robinson’s selection to address the PCLT “is a clear indication of recognition for his extraordinary competence and knowledge of canon law, as well as his practical experience as a canonist in inter-diocesan matters.”

He added, “The work that emanates from his office under his direction is exemplary and could easily be used as a textbook for canon law students. His peers in the presbyterate are encouraged at the recognition which also reflects well for the entire Fall River Diocese.”

Around the Diocese Eucharistic Adoration: Eucharistic Adoration ACUSHNET — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Church, 125 Main Street, Mondays from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., ending with evening prayer and Benediction.

BUZZARDS BAY — Eucharist adoration takes place at St. Margaret Church, 141 Main Street, every first Friday after the 8 a.m. Mass and ending the following day before the 8 a.m. Mass.

EAST TAUNTON — Eucharistic adoration takes place First Fridays at Holy Family Church, 370 Middleboro Avenue, following the 8:30 a.m. Mass until Benediction at 8 p.m.

NEW BEDFORD — Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament takes place at St. Joseph-St. Therese Church, 51 Duncan Street, Mondays following the 8:30 a.m. Mass until 1:30 p.m. For more information call 508-995-2354.

NEW BEDFORD — Eucharistic adoration takes place 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 233 County Street, with night prayer and Benediction at 8:45 p.m., and confessions offered during the evening.

NEW BEDFORD — There is a daily holy hour from 5:15-6:15 p.m. Monday through Thursday at St. Anthony of Padua Church, 1359 Acushnet Avenue. It includes adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Liturgy of the Hours, recitation of the rosary, and the opportunity for confession.

TAUNTON — Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament takes place every First Friday at Annunciation of the Lord Church, 31 First Street, immediately following the 8 a.m. Mass and continues throughout the day. Confessions are heard from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m., concluding with recitation of the rosary and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.

TAUNTON — Eucharistic adoration takes place every Tuesday at St. Anthony Church, 126 School Street, following the 8 a.m. Mass with prayers including the Chaplet of Divine Mercy for vocations, concluding at 6 p.m. with Chaplet of St. Anthony and Benediction. Recitation of the rosary for peace is prayed Monday through Saturday at 7:30 a.m. prior to the 8 a.m. Mass.

WEST HARWICH — Our Lady of Life Perpetual Adoration Chapel at Holy Trinity Parish, 246 Main Street, holds perpetual eucharistic adoration. For open hours, or to sign up call 508-430-4716.

Miscellaneous: Miscellaneous ATTLEBORO — The 40 Days for Life Pro-Life campaign invites people throughout the diocese to join in 40 days of prayer and fasting for an end to abortion. A peaceful vigil will take place outside a local abortion clinic, 150 Emory Street through April 5. Those interested in participating or for further information can contact Steve Marcotte at 508-406-1211 or visit www.40daysforlife.com/attleboro.

FAIRHAVEN — The sixth annual Scallop Supper to benefit Shepherd’s Pantry and St. Mary’s Church will be held April 3 from 4 to 7 p.m. at St. Mary’s Church, 440 Main St. Tickets can be purchased at the rectory during regular business hours or by calling 508-997-9019. Tickets will not be available at the door.

FALL RIVER — A Lenten program titled “Happy Birthday St. Paul — 2,000 Years” will be presented tomorrow at Saint Anne’s Hospital from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Mass and lunch will follow the presentation. The program presenter is Dr. Joyce Kelly, teacher at the Institute for Religious Education and Pastoral Studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. For more information, call 508-678-2373.

FALL RIVER — The Men’s First Friday Club will meet April 3 at the Parish of the Good Shepherd, 1598 South Main Street. Following the 6 p.m. Mass celebrated by Father George Almeida, there will be a hot meal in the church hall. The guest speaker is Father Almeida, who will share some of his experiences as a Catholic priest. The evening will end about 8 p.m. For more information, call 508-672-8174.

FALL RIVER — A Holy Hour will be held at Notre Dame de Lourdes Church, 529 Eastern Avenue, March 30 at 7 p.m. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is held every Friday from 8:30 a.m to 6:30 p.m. in the Lourdes Chapel.

HYANNIS — Matthew Kelly, a Catholic speaker, will present “Becoming the Best Version of Yourself” at Pope John Paul II High School, 120 High School Road, March 31 at 7 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. For more information or to reserve seats, call 508-8626336.

LAKEVILLE — Dr. Joseph Coyle will teach on understanding Christian psychology — especially depression, anxiety and addictions — tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at His Land Bethany House, 17 Loon Pond. All are welcome. For information and reservations call 508-947-4704.

NORTH EASTON — The Joseph W. Martin Institute for Law and Society will host the annual Red Mass in honor of Stonehill students and alumni entering law school in the Chapel of Mary at Stonehill College, 320 Washington Street, at 6:30 p.m., April 2. For more information, go to http://www.stonehill.edu/x10444.xml.

TAUNTON — The faith community of St. Andrew the Apostle Parish, 261 Tremont Street, prays the Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent at 6:30 p.m.

MCC voices concern over shelter eligibility changes

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Catholic Conference has joined with other advocacy groups in urging that proposed legislation that would tighten eligibility requirements for those seeking stays in homeless shelters across the Commonwealth not be implemented.

Since July the number of families statewide needing emergency housing has increased by 32 percent.

Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration proposes to restrict eligibility requirements for shelter to help close a funding gap, which would go into effect on April 1.

The MCC and the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless and other advocacy groups have

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The Anchor

March 27, 2009

sent letters to the governor and Legislature leadership requesting that shelter access remain available to children and families.

The coalition asked that financial concerns be addressed by shifting money the state is receiving from the Federal Economic package into the family shelter budget account.

Citizens are urged to call their State Representative or Senator at 617-222-2000 and ask them to support supplemental funding for the Emergency Assistance family shelter and services; and to call Gov. Patrick at 617-725-4005 or 1-888-870-7770 and urge him to withdraw the proposed shelter changes.

Pope declares year of the priest to inspire spiritual perfection

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI declared a year of the priest in an effort to encourage “spiritual perfection” in priests.

The pope will open the special year with a vespers service at the Vatican June 19 — the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the day for the sanctification of priests. He will close the celebrations during a World Meeting of Priests in St. Peter’s Square June 19, 2010.

The pope made the announcement during an audience March 16 with members of the Vatican Congregation for Clergy.

He met with 70 participants of the congregation’s March 16-18 plenary assembly, which focused on the missionary identity of the priest and his mission to sanctify,

In Your Prayers Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks

March 30 Rev. Aime Barre, On Sick Leave, Fall River, 1963 Rev. Benoit R. Galland, USN Retired Chaplain, 1985 Rev. Lucio B. Phillipino, Retried Pastor, Immaculate Conception, North Easton, 2003 March 31 Rt. Rev. Msgr. George C. Maxwell, Pastor, SS. Peter & Paul, Fall River, 1953 April 1 Rev. George A. Lewin, Pastor, St. Mary, Hebronville, 1958 Rev. Edwin J. Loew, Pastor, St. Joseph, Woods Hole, 1974 April 2 Rev. Adolph Banach, OFM Conv., Pastor, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, New Bedford, 1961 Rev. Donald Belanger, Pastor, St. Stephen, Attleboro, 1976 Rev. James B. Coyle, Retired Pastor, St. Dorothea, Eatontown, N.J., 1993 April 3 Rev. Henry F. Kinnerny, Former Pastor, St. Peter, Sandwich, 1905 Rev. Roger G. Blain, O.P., 2000 April 4 Rev. Lionel Gamache, S.M.M., 1972 Rev. James F. McCarthy, Retired Pastor, Sacred Heart, Fall River, 1985 Rev. Gaspar L. Parente, Retired Pastor, St. Theresa, Patagonia, Ariz., 1991

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teach and govern.

During this jubilee year, the pope will also proclaim St. John Vianney to be patron saint of all the world’s priests. Currently he is considered the patron saint of parish priests.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of this 19thcentury saint who represents a “true example of a priest at the service of the flock of Christ,” the pope said.

St. John Vianney is widely known to Catholics as the Cure (parish priest) of Ars who won over the hearts of his villagers in France by visiting with them, teaching them about God and reconciling people to the Lord in the confessional.

In his address, Pope Benedict said the priestly ministry consists of total adherence to the ecclesial tradition of participating “in a spiritually intense new life and a new lifestyle which was inaugurated by the Lord Jesus and which the apostles made their own.”

Priestly ordination creates new men who are bestowed with the gift and office of sanctifying, teaching and governing, he said.

The pope underlined the necessary and “indispensable struggle for moral perfection which must dwell in every authentically priestly heart.”

The pope said he was calling for the special year for priests in an effort to foster the priest’s yearning “for spiritual perfection, upon which the effectiveness of their ministry principally depends.”

“The awareness of the radical

social changes over the past decades must stir the best ecclesial energies to look after the formation of priestly candidates,” the pope said.

This means great care must be taken to ensure permanent and consistent doctrinal and spiritual formation for seminarians and priests, he said, specifying the importance of passing down, especially to younger generations, “a correct reading of the texts of the Second Vatican Council, interpreted in the light of all the Church’s doctrinal heritage.”

Priests must also be “present, identifiable and recognizable — for their judgment of faith, their personal virtues and their attire — in the fields of culture and charity which have always been at the heart of the Church’s mission,” he said.

“The centrality of Christ leads to a correct valuation of ordained ministry,” he said, adding that, without priestly ministry, there would be no Eucharist, no mission and even no Church.

Therefore, he said, it is crucial to make sure that new bodies or pastoral organizations are not set up “for a time in which one might have to ‘dispense with’ ordained ministry based on an erroneous interpretation of the rightful promotion of the laity.”

“This would lay the foundations for further diluting the priestly ministry, and any supposed ‘solutions’ would dramatically coincide with the real causes of the problems currently connected with the ministry,” he said.

20

The Anchor

March 27, 2009 Continued from page 15 church and the mission churches in Truro and Eastham: the new Our Lady of Lourdes Church.

The church is expected to serve about 400 registered families in a parish that now encompasses all of Wellfleet, half of Truro and half of Eastham. The mission Visitation Church in Eastham, where parishioners had been attending Mass while construction was underway, has now officially been closed and the future of that building has yet to be determined.

After expressing his appreciation to architect Jim Edwards, general contractors Carr Enterprises, and the Rambusch Company, which created and installed the beautiful stained glass windows in the church, Father Andrews offered his heartfelt thanks to the parishioners of Our Lady of

MAKING ALL THINGS NEW — Bishop Coleman, above, presents the parish Lectionary to lectors Nina M. Anderson and John E. Talbot during the Rite of Dedication for the new Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Wellfleet. At left, the bishop blesses the entrance and baptismal font of the church during ceremonies held last Sunday while pastor Father John F. Andrews looks on to his immediate left. (Photos by Kenneth J. Souza)

Lourdes for their generosity and patience during the 12-year process.

“I’m grateful to the bishop for coming here and all the priests who have already celebrated so many Masses today,” Father Andrews said. “But most of all, I want to thank the people of the parish for making all of this possible.”

“I am most grateful to the faithful parishioners of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish for their patience and unswerving support in building this new house of God,” Bishop Coleman added.

“Their generous sacrifices have made this project possible. I have no doubt that the Son of God is at work here in the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes. Under the guidance and the protection of Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes, let us go forward in hope.”