08.10.12

Diocese of Fall River

The Anchor

F riday , August 10, 2012

New ‘Beginnings’ for the RCIA process of the Fall River Diocese

By Becky Aubut Anchor Staff

SOUTH EASTON — About 50 people representing parishes from all five deaneries of the Diocese of Fall River descended on Holy Cross Parish in South Easton for a three-day presentation of Beginnings, an intensive initiative that seeks to provide participants with the vision and dynamics of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.

Evangelization is important, said Bishop George W. Coleman in his homily during a prayer service on the second day. Those attending the program should spread

the message of faith so that others can “desire to become members of the Church and Jesus Christ,” he said. “Through your work, you will be able to bring others into His Church.”

Harkening back the “beginnings” of the Church, Father Michael Sheehan, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., and team member of the Beginnings institute, explained that the function of the parish community is to play a vital role in welcoming those who want to be Catholic.

“This is a recovery of an ancient Turn to page 17 Living Their Faith — Participants of this year’s Pro-Life Boot Camp made a dramatic statement when they donned bright red shirts and prayed outside of the abortion clinic in Attleboro. Accompanied by the Sisters of Life, many of the youth had never done something like this, said Marian Desrosiers, director of the Pro-Life Apostolate in Fall River; “They prayed the Rosary and were deeply moved the entire time they were there,” she said.

The Anchor joins local radio reading service

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

WORDS OF SUPPORT — Evangelization is important, said Bishop George W. Coleman in his homily during a prayer service at Holy Cross Parish in South Easton for participants in Beginnings, an initiative that seeks to provide parishes with the vision of a welcoming Catholic community for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. (Photo by Becky Aubut)

Choose Life license plates receive extension

By Christine M. Williams Anchor Correspondent

BOSTON — Now is a critical time for people to order the Choose Life license plates, according to Merry Nordeen, who spearheaded the effort to bring these specialty plates to the Commonwealth.

As of July 14, there were 2,882 Choose Life plates on the road, just 118 shy of the 3,000 mark that was supposed to be

reached by June 30. The Mass.

Registry of Motor Vehicles will update the organization again in mid-August.

While the June deadline has passed, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles has informed Nordeen that the $100,000 bond put up by a private donor will be returned in its entirety if the goal of 3,000 plates is met. Until then, the bond is on Turn to page 14

MASHPEE — Thanks to a radio reading service available from Fall River to Cape Cod, people with vision problems or reading impairments can now listen to the latest edition of The Anchor being read live along with other local daily and weekly publications.

The Audible Local Ledger — also known as simply “The Ledger” — is an affiliate of the Massachusetts Radio Reading Service, a special statewide radio information network that provides the reading of daily newspapers, current periodicals, shopping guides, best-selling books, calendars of community events, and other material previously available only in print. The Ledger “turns print into sound” and broadcasts this material over closedcircuit radio stations, cable television audio channels and on secondary audio program channels of television stations for the blind, visually-impaired

or print-disabled residents from Fall River to Provincetown.

According to Sherry Bergeron, executive director of the Audible Local Ledger based in Mashpee, the service is provided throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with central operations located in Marshfield and The Ledger is the Cape Cod affiliate providing local broadcasts to a large portion of the Fall River Diocese.

“The service is transmitted on a subsidiary communication authorization, or SCA band,” Bergeron said. “It’s available online, through select cable channel services, or with a radio receiver. You can only get the radios from the affiliate, because they are all specially tuned in.”

Bergeron said the SCA radios are available for a nominal donation to offset costs, but no one who wants a device will be turned away.

“I personally go to every home and set up every Turn to page 18

silent reminder — The Pro-Life Committee at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Wellfleet hopes to educate the public of the enormity of the massacre of abortion with this display on the grounds of the church. (Photos by Frank Szedlak Jr.)

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News From the Vatican

August 10, 2012

Everyone can pray, have relationship with God, pope says at audience CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) — Everyone is given the grace to pray, which is the only way to have a life-giving relationship with God, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Resuming his weekly general audiences after a monthlong break, Pope Benedict continued his series of talks on prayer August 1.

The audience, which lasted less than half an hour, was held in Castel Gandolfo’s main square, just outside the entrance to the papal summer villa. The Vatican said the estimated 2,000 pilgrims and visitors could not all fit inside the courtyard of the villa.

Marking the feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists and patron of moral theologians and confessors, the pope said the saint lived in “a period of great rigorism,” but encouraged priests to administer the Sacrament in a way that communicated “the joyful embrace of God the merciful Father, Who in His infinite mercy never tires of

welcoming back His repentant sons.”

Looking at St. Alphonsus’ tract “The Necessity and Power of Prayer,” the pope said human life often is marked by temptations and weakness, but even the simplest prayer to God can give a person the power to resist evil and do good.

“The grace to pray is given to all,” the pope said. “We should not be afraid to turn to God and, filled with trust, present our requests to Him with the certainty of receiving what we need.”

St. Alphonsus taught that all people need a relationship with God, Who created them, and the way to initiate and deepen that relationship is through daily personal prayer and receiving the Sacraments, he said.

The grace that comes through prayer and the Sacraments “increases in us the divine presence that directs our path, enlightens it and makes it safe and serene, even in the midst of difficulties and dangers,” Pope Benedict said.

Archdiocese offers prayers in wake of Sikh temple shooting

Milwaukee, Wis. (CNA/ EWTN News) — Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki expressed sorrow and promised his prayers after a gunman fatally shot six people at a local Sikh temple before being killed by police.

“Our prayers go out to the congregation at the temple and to the entire Sikh community,” Archbishop Listecki said in an August 5 statement responding to the Sunday morning murders, committed by Wade Michael Page at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin.

“It is in times like these that we turn to God Who is the consolation and hope for all of us,” the Milwaukee archbishop reflected.

The archdiocese expressed its closeness to victims as well as families, friends, and emergency responders involved in the shooting.

Several dozen adherents of the Indian religion were reportedly gathering for a service when Page began shooting with a 9mm handgun, killing six people and seriously wounding three including one police officer. A fourth victim has been treated and released from the hospital.

The Catholic Church also responded to this tragedy through the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Bishop

Denis Madden, auxiliary bishop of Baltimore and chairman of the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs said that “we Catholics mourn with our Sikh brothers and sisters. We share a warm and fruitful friendship, as well as a love of God and a belief in the community of all people, making yesterday’s tragedy all the more painful and difficult to comprehend.”

Page was shot dead by the police. He was later identified as a 40-year-old U.S. Army veteran who had served for six years before being discharged for misconduct in 1998. His motive for the shootings is unknown.

The FBI is investigating the murders as a case of domestic terrorism. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white supremacists and others it classifies as “hate groups,” said that Page was “a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that the Anti-Defamation League also had been tracking Page’s activities recently.

Sikhism, founded during the late 15th century, is one of India’s main religions and the majority religion in the Punjab region. It has around 27 million members, around 500,000 of whom live in the U.S.

busy vacation — Pope Benedict XVI leads his weekly audience at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, recently. (CNS photo/Giampiero Sposito, Reuters)

Vatican’s doctrine chief: Pius X Society must accept Vatican II teachings

Rome, Italy (CNA/EWTN News) — Although the new head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is optimistic about reconciliation with the Society of St. Pius X, he says that the teachings of the Church — including the dogmatic content of the Second Vatican Council — will never be up for re-negotiation.

“The purpose of dialogue is to overcome difficulties in the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller told CNA, “but we cannot negotiate on revealed faith, that is impossible. An Ecumenical Council, according to the Catholic faith, is always the supreme teaching authority of the Church.”

As prefect of the Congregation, Archbishop Muller is also the President of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei,” the Vatican body responsible for dialogue with the Society of St. Pius X. The commission is currently awaiting an official reply from the society to an offer of reconciliation that would give the traditionalist group Personal Prelature status within the Church. In return the society would have to accept a “Doctrinal Preamble” proposed to it by the Congregation, including full adherence to the dogmatic content of the Second Vatican Council.

In a recent statement, the society said it had “determined and approved the necessary conditions for an eventual canonical normalization” at its recent General Chapter, but added that it still rejected “all the novelties of the Second Vatican Council which remain tainted with errors” as well as “the reforms issued from it.”

“The assertion that the authentic teachings of Vatican II formally contradict the tradition of the Church is false,” Archbishop Muller stated.

He added, however, that be-

tween various texts of the council there are “gradations” of teaching authority. By way of an example, Archbishop Muller drew a comparison between the council’s document on social communications, “Inter Mirifica,” which carries “less weight” than “dogmatic declarations” like the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “Lumen Gentium.”

“Whatever is dogmatic can never be negotiated,” he said, while still expressing hope that the members of the Society of Pius X “can overcome their difficulties, their ideological restrictions so that we can work together to proclaim Christ as the Light of the World.”

Although the 64-year-old German is new to his current post at the Vatican, Archbishop Muller has had extensive dealings with the Society of St. Pius X in the past. As Archbishop of Regensburg in the Bavaria region of Germany for the past decade, his diocesan territory included a seminary operated by the traditionalists group.

A key problem for Rome in recent discussions seems to be the perception that the Society of St. Pius X often speaks about errors in the conciliar texts themselves.

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Instead, the Vatican believes a distinction should be made between what the Second Vatican Council actually said and the sometimes problematic interpretations and applications of its teaching.

“We can all come together and avoid ideological positions if we accept the Word of God present in the doctrine of the Catholic Church,” he said.

The Vatican’s willingness to continue dialogue was indicated last month with the deployment of a high-ranking American archbishop to the commission responsible for the discussions.

On June 26, Pope Benedict switched Rome-based Archbishop Augustine Di Noia from his post as secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship to vice president of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei.” Archbishop Muller, who took up office in Rome earlier this month, said he is fully committed to working for the reconciliation of all separated Christians.

“Our aim and our task is clear — to promote the unity of all the disciples of Christ in the one Church under the leadership of Jesus Christ and in communion with His vicar, the successor of St. Peter.”

OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER Vol. 56, No. 30

Member: Catholic Press Association, Catholic News Service

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August 10, 2012

The International Church

sorrowful journey — Syrian refugees walk after collecting water at the Al Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq recently. Catholic aid workers assisting Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan said there was a large influx of people entering both countries during the last week of July. (CNS photo/Muhammad Hamed, Reuters)

Catholic aid workers find Syrian refugees are in dark about the future

BEIRUT (CNS) — Refugees from Syria are in “complete darkness” about their future, said an official with Caritas Lebanon.

Father Simon Faddoul, president of Caritas Lebanon, which has been working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon for 14 months, said there was a large influx of people during the last week of July as more than 20,000 refugees fled violence in Damascus and Homs.

“The situation we are in at the moment is terrible. What tomorrow will bring? Unfortunately, we estimate a worse situation,” he told CNS. “The human plight and wound in this part of the world is getting deeper.”

A Catholic Relief Services staff member chronicling the stories of refugees in border communities in Jordan and Lebanon found people fraught with concern for relatives and friends left behind as they were forced to flee the escalating violence with little advance notice.

“People are feeling generally broken and that they might not ever become whole again,” Caroline Brennan, senior communications officer for CRS, said in a telephone interview from Beirut recently.

“The underlying feeling among Syrian refugees is this genuine deep despair for everything that is lost,” Brennan said.

“They really were blinded by this happening to them. They did not expect this.”

The United Nations said July 31 that there were 34,096 displaced Syrians receiving protection and assistance in Lebanon through the efforts of the government, the U.N. and nongovernmental partners. However,

Father Faddoul said the number of refugees in Lebanon is much higher.

“In my opinion, the unofficial numbers could be well over 100,000,” Father Faddoul said, pointing to the roughly 300,000 Syrian workers in Lebanon who have been bringing their families to the country as the situation in their homeland deteriorated.

Syrian refugees, Father Faddoul said, are “extremely fearful.”

“They fear to talk or to be pictured. They are afraid to give their names to the UNHCR,” leaving many people unregistered, he said.

Caritas distributed food kits, food vouchers, sheets and blankets and hygiene kits to refugees in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, and the Bekaa Valley region, distributing nearly 13,000 items. Brennan said CRS was working with Caritas Jordan in providing food and distributing bedding, stoves, fans and hygiene kits in the northern Jordanian communities of Ibid, Mafraq and Zarqa.

“What you see in those areas are people with war stories you don’t expect. Mothers showing bullet wounds under their dresses. Children drawing pictures in a clinic they should have no reason to draw,” Brennan said.

“It is so raw for people right now. It is not what they expected to happen in their lifetime,” she added.

Many refugees are facing psychological trauma, Father Faddoul said, citing the violence they experienced.

“Someone who watched a family member being killed before their eyes ... a woman who witnessed her husband be-

ing hanged ... bombardment for three to four consecutive days ... the stories are endless,” he said.

The refugees face an uncertain future.

“They live in complete darkness about what comes next,” Father Faddoul said. “They have hit a wall.”

Laura Sheahen, communications officer for Caritas Internationalis, visited Syrian refugees in sprawling tent camps near the Lebanese city of Zahle in the Bekaa Valley July 31.

“Where I went, there were dozens of Syrian refugee families living in each tent camp,” Sheahen told CNS. “Often they make the tents by sewing seed sacks together. Sometimes they cook inside, which is dangerous because the dry cloth sacks catch on fire. In one case, five of these makeshift shelters burned down.

A man saved his children, but both of his arms were burned.”

The Syrians want the war to end quickly so they can return home and begin to piece their lives back together, both Father Faddoul and Brennan told CNS. “They are very attached to their homeland, their families,” the priest said.

“The human suffering is terrible,” said Father Faddoul, stressing that the crisis “cannot wait for political analysis or calculation.”

“Suffering people only wait to be supported by people who can feel with them. We at Caritas are helping them to remain on their feet until the crisis ends and they can go back,” Faddoul said, adding that the organization has received aid only from Caritas partners and needs financial and moral support “from our friends in the world.”

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Oxford Oratory to host Chesterton library

London, England (CNA) — A new library at the Oxford Oratory in England will host the archive and museum of the famous Catholic convert and writer G.K. Chesterton.

The G.K. Chesterton Library said August 1 that many people think Chesterton was “one of the best — as well as one of the most amusing — writers and thinkers of the 20th century.”

Organizers are preparing the collection to be opened in 2013 based on materials collected by Chesterton scholar Aidan Mackey, who was a friend of Chesterton’s secretary, Dorothy Collins.

The library intends to support and encourage the study of Chesterton, his contemporaries and his ideas “in close collaboration” with other Chesterton-friendly societies and organizations across the world.

Chesterton lived from 1874 to 1936. Under the influence of his wife Frances, he became a devout Anglican Christian.

He converted to Catholicism in 1922.

He enjoys a reputation as a writer with a taste for wit and a love of finding truth in paradox.

The author wrote journalistic essays, novels, poetry, plays, philosophical works and Christian apologetics. He created the character of Father Brown, a Catholic priest who solves murder mysteries.

His books include “Ortho-

doxy,” a defense of Christian faith, and “The Everlasting Man,” a reflection on the role of Jesus Christ and Christianity in history.

In the latter work, he stressed the power of Christianity to renew itself through Jesus.

“Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died,” he said. “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God Who knew the way out of the grave.”

Chesterton devised a political philosophy called Distributism, whose ideal is the widespread ownership of economically productive property.

He was also a staunch opponent of eugenics and birth control.

Those influenced by Chesterton’s writings include C.S. Lewis, Mahatma Gandhi and E.F. Schumacher.

The library’s collection includes a complete run of his newspaper “GK’s Weekly,” with some annotations by Chesterton. It includes many of Chesterton’s books, including some first editions. It has a background library of writers like Hilaire Belloc and Father Vincent McNabb, the U.K. journal Second Spring reports.

The G.K. Chesterton Library has launched an appeal to secure financial support.

More information is available at: http://chestertonlibrary. blogspot.co.uk.

4

The Church in the U.S.

August 10, 2012

Federal judge upholds Arizona’s new law banning late-term abortions

PHOENIX (CNS) — The executive director of the Arizona Catholic Conference praised U.S. District Court Judge James A. Teilborg for upholding Arizona’s recently enacted ban on abortions after 20 weeks except in cases of medical emergency.

Ron Johnson said he was “absolutely thrilled with the decision from the federal court.” Johnson, who worked with Arizona legislators to help get the measure passed, said that “it’s been frustrating at times” when courts overturn hardwon legislation.

“It’s extremely rewarding when we get the legislation passed and the court upholds (it),” Johnson said, calling the new law “sensible and very positive legislation.”

In his recent ruling, Teilborg wrote that the Arizona Legislature had written the law — known as H.B. 2036 — based on “the substantial and well-documented evidence that an unborn child has the capacity to feel pain during an abortion by at least 20 weeks gestational age.”

Supporters of the law said that it also protects women from increased risks incurred in late-term abortions.

Three doctors who provide abortions, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New-York based Center for Reproductive Freedom, had asked the court for a temporary restraining order or an injunction to prevent the law from going into effect August 2. Teilborg’s ruling denied both and declared Arizona’s law constitutional.

The decision sent shock waves through the abortion industry, and opponents of the law said they would immediately appeal the ruling, calling the restrictions “extreme.”

Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma have similar laws restricting late-term abortions based on the scientific

finding that fetuses experience pain.

Pro-Life organizations throughout the country praised the ruling.

Dorinda Bordlee and Nikolas Nikas, attorneys with the Bioethics Defense Fund, advised Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who was named as a lead defendant in the emergency injunction action filed by the abortion providers, the ACLU and the New York center.

“This ruling should be studied by everyone in the Pro-Life movement,” Bordlee said, “because it foreshadows the day that the Supreme Court will return the abortion issue back to the state legislatures to act on their legitimate interests in protecting women and unborn children from the unspeakable violence of abortion.”

Steve Aden, senior counsel for the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, agreed.

“Every innocent life deserves to be protected. That certainly includes the most vulnerable of all: children in the womb who experience horrific pain when being torn apart in the womb during a late-term abortion like those this law prohibits,” Aden said. “The ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights, who filed this lawsuit, apparently don’t care about any of that, preferring to pursue their own agenda.

The court was right to thwart their attempts to stop this law.”

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, similarly welcomed the court’s decision and called for an end to “dismemberment abortions” known as “dilation and extraction.”

“The abortion debate should not be so abstract that we forget we’re talking about pulling the arms and legs off of babies,” Father Pavone said. “To those asking for our vote in November, I ask, do you or do you not think dismemberment should be legal? Every voter should ask the same.”

fighting for their rights — James, Paul, William and Andrew Newland, who run Hercules Industries in Denver, a manufacturer of heating and air-conditioning equipment, are pictured in an undated photo. The Catholic family won a temporary injunction July 27 against enforcement of the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate. (CNS photo/courtesy Hercules Industries)

Enforcement of contraceptive mandate blocked for Catholic-run business

DENVER (CNS) — A Colorado firm owned by a Catholic family won a temporary injunction July 27 against enforcement of the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate.

Senior Judge John L. Kane Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado said the HHS requirement that employers provide contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilizations free of charge to their employees, even if they have objections based on their religious beliefs, has potential for violating the family’s religious freedom.

He said the government’s arguments in favor of the contraceptive mandate “are countered, and indeed outweighed, by the public interest in the free exercise of religion.”

But Kane emphasized that his ruling only applied to the case brought by five members of the Newland Family and the company they own, Hercules Industries, a manufacturer of heating and air-conditioning equipment that has 265 full-time employees in Colorado.

“The government’s arguments are largely premised upon a fear that granting an exemption to plaintiffs will necessarily require granting similar injunction to all other for-profit, secular corporations voicing religious objections to the preventive care coverage mandate,” the judge wrote. “This injunction is, however, premised upon the alleged substantial burden on plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion — not to any alleged burden on any other party’s free exercise of religion.

“It does not enjoin enforcement of the preventive care cov-

erage mandate against any other party,” he added.

The ruling marked the first positive outcome in the nearly two dozen lawsuits brought

by Catholic dioceses, religious organizations and employers against the HHS contraceptive mandate, which took effect August 1 for health insurance plans that are not grandfathered.

Federal judges in the District of Columbia and Lincoln, Neb., have dismissed similar suits filed by Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina and the attorneys general of seven states, respectively, saying that the plaintiffs had not proven that they would be harmed by the mandate.

The Obama Administration granted a one-year “temporary enforcement safe harbor” to religious organizations that do not qualify for a religious exemption under the administration’s fourpronged test. The test requires exempt organizations to serve and hire only members of their own faith, among other things.

“We never imagined the federal government would order our family business to provide insurance for drugs we object to covering,” said Andrew Newland, vice president of Hercules Industries, at a news conference shortly before the injunction was granted.

“The whole premise that family businesses are prevented from bringing morals and principles into business is such a dangerous slope to start going down,” he added. “The question becomes, what ethical and moral principles do you use to run your business?

We’ll end up with businesses operating with no ethical or moral principles at all.”

Kathleen Sebelius, HHS secretary, said she was “disappointed with the court’s decision to preliminarily enjoin application of part of the women’s preventive services policy to this particular for-profit company in Colorado.”

“We are confident that as this case moves through the courts, the policy that most health insurance plans cover contraception will be upheld,” she added in a recent statement. “Preventive services are critical to women’s health and the administration is committed to ensuring women have access to the health care they need regardless of where they work. Health decisions should be between women and their doctors, not their employers.”

The Newlands are being represented in the case by the Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund.

“Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith. For the time being, Hercules Industries will be able to do just that,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the alliance.

“The cost of freedom for this family could be millions of dollars per year in fines that will cripple their business if the Obama Administration ultimately has its way,” Bowman added.

“This lawsuit seeks to ensure that Washington bureaucrats cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living.

Americans don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding what faith is, who the faithful are, and where and how that faith may be lived out.”

5 The Church in the U.S. State Department report shows dangers to religious freedom on the rise August 10, 2012

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A bomb attack in July that targeted Israeli tourists in Bulgaria and killed six is part of a trend, according to the 2011 International Religious Freedom Report.

Ambassador Suzan Johnson Cook released the findings at a press briefing recently at the U.S. State Department in Washington.

The annual report covers the status of religious freedom in 199 countries and territories. It allows the Office of International Religious Freedom to monitor religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, and recommend policies that encourage religious freedom.

Johnson Cook, ambassador at

large for international religious freedom, pointed to eight countries that exhibited widespread religious persecution. They include a major U.S. Middle East ally, Saudi Arabia, and a major U.S. trading partner, China, as well as North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Eritrea, Myanmar and Uzbekistan. Authoritarian regimes in many countries were using religious persecution for political ends, said Johnson Cook, noting Russia and Uzbekistan have invoked national security as a pretext for restricting the rights of peaceful religious groups.

Johnson Cook noted that religious freedom, especially in Arab Spring countries, was in flux and needed to be closely

monitored. The report pointed to successes in Libya, where the interim constitution has for the first time included protections of free worship. However, in Egypt, there was a notable rise in anti-Jewish attacks and sectarian violence against Coptic Christians.

The report said the rise of technology has had an impact on religious relations around the globe. Social networks and mass communication have allowed protests of human rights violations to be more easily organized, but they also give governments the tools to more effectively persecute individuals.

“This February,” Johnson Cook noted, “a young blogger,

Chicago, Ill. (CNA) — Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago says the city’s mayor showed contempt for many residents’ beliefs by stating that Chick-fil-A’s stance on marriage was against “Chicago’s values.”

“Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the ‘values’ that must be held by citizens of Chicago,” the cardinal wrote in a recent online post, responding to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s assertion.

“I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval,” Cardinal George wrote.

He wondered: “Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a ‘Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities’ and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it?”

“I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, ‘un-Chicagoan.’”

The cardinal made his remarks on the Catholic Chicago blog after the mayor ventured into an ongoing controversy about the Chickfil-A restaurant chain.

Many homosexual “marriage” advocates took offense at company president Dan Cathy’s support for “the biblical definition of the family unit” in a recent interview.

During a recent press conference, Mayor Emanuel said he stood by his July 25 statement that was interpreted by some as supporting a plan to bar the restaurant from the city’s First Ward.

After Alderman Proco Moreno said he would block the restaurant’s plan to open a new location, Emanuel issued a statement saying that “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”

“They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents,” the mayor stated. “This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”

But a spokesman for the mayor told NBC 5 Chicago that Emanuel did not intend to stop Chick-fil-A from opening, despite his conviction that the Christian-run company’s values were not those of the city.

In Monday’s remarks, the mayor appeared to identify the city’s “values” with government policy on homosexual unions, saying: “When it comes to values, there’s a policy as it relates to gay marriage. The values of our city are ones that welcome and recognize that, and I will continue to fight for that.”

Emanuel’s statement also appeared to identify civil unions — which Illinois implemented in 2011 — with homosexual “marriage,” which has never been instituted in the state. The mayor personally supports a measure to redefine marriage, which was introduced in February but has stalled in the legislature.

In his response to the mayor on Sunday, Cardinal George spoke out on behalf of Catholics, and others, whose “values” do not include what he called “gender-free marriage.”

The cardinal stressed that authentic marriage exists prior to any decree of the state or Church, due to the complementarity of the two sexes and their procreative potential.

The natural definition of marriage is not “bigotry,” nor is it

unique to a particular religion, he said.

“People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life,” Cardinal George noted. “The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage.”

But the Chicago archbishop also pointed to Jesus Christ’s teaching on marriage in the Gospel of Matthew, in which the Lord affirms marriage as the unbreakable union of a man and woman as “one flesh.”

The citation prompted him to pose a question as to whether Jesus’ own “values” were still welcome in Chicago by Mayor Emanuel’s standards.

“Was Jesus a bigot?” he asked.

“Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan?

Cardinal George says mayor overstepped with Chick-fil-A remarks

Hamza Kashgari, was arrested for questioning his faith on Twitter, and he still remains in jail without charge.” This happened in Saudi Arabia, a country where disagreeing with the Wahabi interpretation of Islam could legally result in death.

Later, at a briefing for the press and others in a different building, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the importance of the report’s findings and safeguarding international religious freedom.

“Free exercise of religion is the first freedom enshrined in our First Amendment, along with the freedoms to speak and associate. Because where religious freedom exists, so do the others,” said Clinton.

“Like all human beings and all human rights, they are our birthright by the mere fact of us being who we are — thinking, acting human beings — men and women alike. They are not granted to us by any government. Rather, it is the responsibility of government to protect them.”

Clinton went on to identify two types of religious persecution she said is pervasive in intolerant countries. The first, secular government’s refusal to recognize non-state-run religions, is epitomized by China appointing its own Catholic bishops and refusing to recognize bishops appointed by the Vatican. The second is a government’s refusal to diffuse religious tensions within its own borders, embodied in the junta’s tolerance for religious violence between Buddhist Bamar and Muslim Rohingya ethnic groups in Myanmar. (The State Department report calls the

country “Burma.”)

There are two reasons governments that acknowledge religious intolerance in their countries allow it to continue, said Clinton. Such governments claim it is the will of the majority in their country, or religious freedom is a luxury their country cannot yet afford.

Clinton called that rationale the “tyranny of the majority” and explained the necessity of human rights protections in constitutions. Democracy, she explained, cannot exist without religious freedom. “Genuine democracies use principles to guide power and to protect the rights of citizens equally,” said Clinton.

One area struggling with the question of democracy is Egypt and its new Muslim Brotherhood-run government. Coptic Christians, which make up 10 percent of the nation’s population, fear implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law. Clinton, who had recently visited Egypt, said President Mohammed Morsi has promised to place women and Christians in high-ranking government positions.

Despite growing religious tensions worldwide illustrated in the report, Clinton remained optimistic about religious freedom.

“We saw that capacity vividly in Tahrir Square, when Christians formed a circle around Muslims in prayer, and Muslims clasped hands to protect Christians celebrating a Mass,” she said. “I think that spirit of unity and fellowship was a very moving part of how Egyptians and all the rest of us responded to what happened in those days in that square.”

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The Anchor Our response to the deaths of famous people

The deaths over these last 12 months of public figures such as Christopher Hitchens and Gore Vidal bring to mind issues of the Church’s dialogue with literary critics and how we respond to the deaths of famous people.

Although different in many ways, Hitchens and Vidal did share contempt for belief in God, for Christianity, and for the Catholic Church in particular. Part of this was due to their professed fear of totalitarianism. Hitchens, in an interview with fellow atheist Richard Dawkins shortly before dying, said, “I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian — on the left and on the right.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy — the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes. And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. The beginning of that is the idea that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquise the divine and tell us what to do.”

Vidal said something quite similar: “Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god’s purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one king, one pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.”

Though extreme sounding, the views of Hitchens and Vidal are reflected in the approaches that many people take to religion — that it is just a system meant to impose someone else’s will upon free people. Sometimes we believers unwittingly feed into this perception — when we treat God as if He were some overlord Who just wants us to “toe the line,” without understanding the loving relationship that God desires to have with us, a relationship which helps us to be truly free.

Although Vidal was supposedly against totalitarianism, he would have been fine with the state oppressing the Catholic Church. In 1974 he said, “Where the Catholic Church has dominated, there has never been a democratic society. I would not allow any religious group to have schools. And without schools, there would be no Catholic Church in two generations because their doctrines are so insane that nobody in his right mind would accept them. Then I would tax all churches heavily. That would reduce their influence by 90 percent.”

Although Hitchens was against all religions (authoring a book entitled “God is not great”), he was particularly annoyed by the scandal of sexual abuse and its cover-up in the Catholic Church. He wrote in 2010, “Almost every week, I go and debate with spokesmen of religious faith. Invariably and without exception, they inform me that without a belief in supernatural authority I would have no basis for my morality. Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked” (One can read in a response to the letters to the editor in today’s edition that this is not true).

Hitchens continued, “Yet let the subject be the rape and torture of defenseless children, and at once every kind of wiggle room and excuse-making is invoked.

What can one say of a Church that finds so much latitude for a crime so ghastly that no morally normal person can even think of it without shuddering?”

Hitchens’ critique is a worthwhile one. As Bishop Sean P. O’Malley said back in 2002, God used the newspapers to purify the Church, just as He used the pagan kings to purify Israel in Old Testament times. Neither the news media nor the pagan kings did these “services” out of pure motives — they had their own interests at heart. But Israel needed purification then and the Church constantly needs purification, if she is to be true to her mission to proclaim Christ. This proclamation is not accessible to people when all they can see is power-grabbing or hypocrisy in us. They don’t see a “truth that will set them free,” but an “authority” which will deny them “happiness.”

Hitchens and Vidal supposedly went to their deaths denying the existence of God (only they and God know what really was going on in their minds). One of Hitchens’ old friends, a commercial talk show hostess, said she was going to pray for his soul, to which her guest, a host from a Catholic station, responded that it would be futile, due to his adamant refusal of the Sacraments. He made reference to 1 John 5:16, where we are told, “There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray.”

What should we do? We should pray for the souls of all the dead, entrusting them to the mercy of God. Only God can know what led Vidal and Hitchens to their aversion to religion, what negative factors there were in their lives, especially anything having to do with bad example from religious people.

Popular culture nowadays normally assumes everyone is in Heaven when they die — normally an editorial cartoon in the newspaper will show the famous dead person of the moment receiving a halo from St. Peter. Just the other day Andy Warhol’s nephew, who was remembering his uncle’s birthday August 6, said that he thought Andy was looking down from Heaven with amusement at the soup cans people leave on his grave. How the nephew knew the current location of his uncle was not disclosed in that radio report.

Coverage of Hitchens’ and Vidal’s deaths did not mention how they had now passed the “pearly gates,” since the two of them were adamant in their disbelief in the existence of those gates. Nonetheless, we Catholics pray for them, either by name or amongst “the souls in Purgatory” (God willing). Now having encountered the truth, we pray that they embrace it in love. If they do so, they will also be grateful for our prayers (and a little more humble than they were in this life) and offer prayers for us when we die, too.

August 10, 2012

Faithfully launching out into the depths of beauty

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n his pastoral plan for the Third mission He has given us is not meant to be Christian Millennium, Blessed John a recreational sport or hobby! He’s calling Paul II denominated “Put into the Deep” us to the type of commitment we see in the as the motto for the Church for the next pescadores of New Bedford. thousand years.

That’s what this column is about. It’s an Like St. Peter at the seashore in Galilee, opportunity to feature those who put out even if we’re fatigued, even if we think we into the deep in living and spreading the won’t catch fish in deep water in daylight faith, like saints old and new, canonized when normally fish are caught in shallow or hidden. It’s about inspiring figures who water at nighttime, we’re called, with trust seek to live with heroic virtue. It’s about in Christ’s words, to launch anew into the the challenge given to all of us by those depths and lower our nets for a catch. who do.

This motto is a summons to a New I’m very grateful to Father Richard Evangelization, to a bold new attempt to Wilson, the new executive editor of The cooperate with the Lord in bringing Him Anchor, for his invitation to resume this and His saving Gospel to others. column, which I wrote from 2004-2005 It is a courageous act of faith that, even and from 2007-2010. It’s always been a when human wisdom and other factors joy for me to write these articles, because portend a failure, as did the Carpenter’s they allow me to describe the “good news” advice to the professional fisherman on the that is active, alive and incarnated in so Galilean Sea, we, like Peter, don’t hesitate many men and women, boys and girls, to put our trust in a higher wisdom and at near and far, present and past. the Lord’s command lower our nets.

The future Pope Benedict said back in That’s why, 1985, “The back in 2004, only rewhen I first ally effective Putting Into began writing apologia for the Deep for The AnChristianity chor, I chose comes down this imperative to two arguBy Father of the Master ments, namely Roger J. Landry as the title of a the saints the new column, Church has hoping that, produced and together with John Paul II, all of us in the the art which has grown in her womb.”

Diocese of Fall River, thinking with the I’ll have a chance next week to focus Church, would act audaciously with the on the importance of the art the Church whole mystical body in casting out the has generated, but mainly this column will nets. continue to be dedicated to the saints in the I’ve always been struck by the fact that broad sense, those inspiring personalities our diocese boasts by far the largest comwho give witness to the joy of the faith mercial fishing port in the United States lived to the full. and I think that New Bedford’s excellence “Every crisis the Church faces is a should be a particular inspiration for us crisis of saints,” St. Josemaria Escrivà as we ponder the command Christ has once said, and Church history has proven given St. Peter and us. If the faithful of the him correct. The greatest bait, the greatest Diocese of Fall River were to work as hard nets, we have in carrying out the Lord’s in fishing for friends and family, neighbors command to fish for others is the lumiand colleagues as New Bedford comnous example of God radiating through mercial fishermen work to catch flounder, those in true communion of love and life haddock, tuna and cod, we could easily with Him. become the top “Christian fishing port” as “Today, for the faith to grow,” Cardinal well.

Ratzinger said in Rimini in 2002, “we Anyone driving by New Bedford must lead ourselves and the persons we Harbor sees hundreds of boats regularly meet to encounter the saints and to enter launching out and — despite all types of into contact with the Beautiful.” Notice the obstacles from onerous government regucapital “B.” This insight is crucial with relations —returning with catches far bigger gard to the upcoming events of the Year of than Peter’s on the Sea of Galilee. In my Faith and the Synod on the New Evangetime as a pastor in the Whaling City, I met lization and the Transmission of the Faith, hundreds of gutsy, gritty fishermen who both of which will take place in October. gave new meaning to the expression “hard The future pope was saying that it’s workers.” They’d head out for long trips through our and others’ encounter with the to the deep waters of the Atlantic, laboring holiness of the saints that we come into not only through grueling shifts but also contact with the most beautiful reality of in difficult and often dangerous condiall, God Who is holy, holy, holy. Mother tions brought out by storms and seasons.

Teresa, with all her wrinkles, Damien de They would invariably return from their Veuster with his leprous sores, and John expeditions exhausted from many days of XXIII with his rotund physique attract back-breaking work. Anyone who has ever more by the perennial supernatural beauty watched “The Deadliest Catch” on the of their holy lives than supermodels with Discovery Channel would easily underall their natural beauty, make-up and airstand why. brushing. And it’s through contact with the When Jesus calls us to be fishers of beauty of God in this way that we grow in men, He’s calling us to a similar type of faith and become instruments of God to courage and tenacity. Jesus isn’t sumhelp the faith grow in others. moning us to the spiritual equivalent of So let’s get down to work and together taking a small motorboat out on a placid throw The Anchor into the deepest and pond on a crisp, sunny day, with a rod in most beautiful water of all. one hand and a beer in the other, mildly Father Landry is pastor of St. Bernahoping that some fish decide to bite. The dette’s Parish in Fall River.

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uch public discussion and debate has occurred recently over the mandate by the Department of Health and Human Services that employers, including religiously-affiliated institutions, provide services that are morally objectionable, such as abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization.

Among the many important issues raised by this mandate is the matter of religious freedom and the related principle of “separation of church and state.”

The separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of our American constitutional arrangement, but it must be properly understood. This foundational principle serves as a restriction on government actions — it prevents actions of the state to coerce the practice of a particular religion. It therefore guarantees

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The Anchor

August 10, 2012

An alarming policy

All of this means that separathe right of citizens to practice tion of church and state does not their freely-chosen religion. restrict the action of religious This principle of freedom groups or institutions; rather, it from governmental coercion in protects the right of such groups religion is one of our cherished American traditions, and it is enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the

By Father free exercise thereof ….”

It must be rememDavid Pignato bered that religious liberty applies to groups, as well as to individuals. Religious to act in society, as long as their liberty cannot be understood as actions are not coerced by the only the right of an individual state. The suggestion that religious entities violate the separacitizen to practice religious acts in private. Religious faith brings tion of church and state when they act in society according to people together and motivates their religious beliefs is therefore communal action, which is also protected by the principle of flawed and muddled thinking. In matters so serious, matters that religious liberty.

Guest Columnist

Making it in Rome

ome is a crazy city. The sion), but also a holy priest, as traffic is chaotic, the well as for Bishop Alvaro del politics quite impenetrable to out- Portillo, who was the successor siders, the beauty of its fountains to St. Josemaria Escriva as head and piazzas in sharp contrast with of Opus Dei, and whom I knew its grimy buildings, its impressive when I lived here lo these many array of artistic and architectural years. The supernatural spirit and masterpieces, its rich pagan and peace that he always exuded were Christian history, its saints and its palpable. Both are eminently the sinners, its nuns and its pickpock- stuff of saints, and not just their ets. I’ve been in Rome the last bella figura, in other words. If few weeks taking an intensive Latin-asif-it-were-a-livinglanguage course at my alma mater, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross,

By Dwight Duncan where I got a doctorate in canon law 25 years ago.

Some things never he is canonized, Bishop Sheen change. Rome is rightly called would be the first American-born the Eternal City, because getting things done here can take forever. male to be proclaimed a saint, joining native-born SS. Elizabeth As the Roman poet Catullus Ann Seton and Katharine Drexel, once wrote in another context, not to mention the soon-to-beOdi et amo, “I hate and love” canonized Kateri Tekakwitha. at the same time. Roma spelled Rumor has it that Pope Benebackwards is amor, the Latin dict will soon beatify both Pope word for love. But only backJohn Paul I, the pope who reigned wards. Romans put a lot of stock for a month before Blessed John in la bella figura, making a good Paul II, and Pope Paul VI, who impression. This makes for great fashion and style, of course, but it concluded the Second Vatican can often substitute for substance. Council. Since John Paul II and John XXIII, who opened Romans are big on conspiracy the council 50 years ago, have theories, that there is something behind everything, that things are already been beatified, that would mean that the previous four popes not as they seem. And of course would all become “Blessed,” and that is often true. well on their way to being proBut then there are the saints, claimed saints. Since the papacy sincerely practicing love of God and others. Just recently the pope is Rome’s greatest adornment, approved decrees of heroic virtue this is great news, a truly wonderful development. Would that the for American archbishop FulRenaissance popes had been such ton J. Sheen, who was a media paragons of virtue! celebrity when I was a kid in the When you explore Rome, 1950s (he at one point had the you are immediately struck by most-watched show on televi-

Judge For Yourself

the marvelous presence of its saints. St. Bridget of Sweden, for example, whose feast was celebrated this week, lived and died in a building just off the Piazza Farnese, a block from where I’m staying. St. Philip Neri, the Renaissance-era Apostle of Rome, is buried under a side-altar at the Church of St. Mary in Vallicella, the Chiesa Nuova (It was a “New Church” in the 16th century. In the U.S., of course, such a church would be our oldest).

St. Catherine of Siena, who in the 14th century convinced the pope to return to Rome from exile in Avignon, France, is under the main altar of the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (“St. Mary on top of Minerva,” called that since the Gothic church is built on the site of an ancient Roman temple to the goddess Minerva.)

At the Capitoline Museum, which sits atop the Capitoline Hill, I visited the spectacular exhibit Lux in Arcana (“Light in Hiding”), a collection of a hundred documents like the 16th-century excommunication of Martin Luther or the 13thcentury papal recognition of the Franciscans, which occurred during St. Francis’ life. Church history contains everything, good and bad, but it’s marvelous to see the leavening effect that the saints continue to exercise throughout history, in spite of everything. Wars and politicians come and go, but the saints, like the Eternal City, remain.

Dwight Duncan is a professor at UMass School of Law Dartmouth. He holds degrees in civil and canon law.

concern the basic principles of our common life, we need more clear and right thinking, especially when the protection of liberty is at stake.

The exemption to which some have pointed is an incredibly narrow one for “religious employers” stating that they must inculcate religious doctrine, hire and serve mainly people of their own faith, and qualify as a church or religious order in a very narrow part of the tax code. Some have said that since universities and hospitals receive federal funds, they should be forced to provide these services. But because the exemption is so narrow, even a parish could fail to qualify due to the social work of its St. Vincent de Paul Society which helps those in need regardless of their religious affiliation. Proponents have tried to reduce the mandate to the issue of contraception coverage.

While that itself is objectionable, it also requires abortion-inducing drugs and other procedures that violate our teachings.

The HHS mandate violates religious liberty and the separation of church and state because it coerces religious employers, such as Catholic institutions, to provide services that we believe are contrary to God’s plan of creation and are therefore sinful. The “accommodation”

announced by President Obama has been rightly called a “cheap accounting trick,” since it fails to recognize that the cost of such services will be passed on to the employers in the form of increased premiums. Premiums always reflect costs.

The refusal by Catholic institutions to provide coverage for contraception and other objectionable services is an exercise of our religious freedom. It is not an act of coercion by either the Church or the state, and it in no way forces individual employees to practice our religion. Individuals are always free to choose whether or not to work for a religiouslyaffiliated employer. The mandate is unfair because it forces us to be complicit in the provision of “services” that we believe are immoral. The state cannot tell our Catholic institutions to provide morally objectionable services anymore than it can tell us what religious beliefs we can teach in our Catholic schools.

By not exempting Catholic and other religious employers from the HHS mandate, the Obama Administration has decided that our religious convictions and our moral objections cannot be accommodated by society.

Such a policy should be alarming to all who hold religious convictions, as well as to all who value the exercise of liberty.

Father Pignato is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River.

Revised and updated ...

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e live in an era unlike any other when it comes to the old adage: “you are what you eat.” The media is constantly telling us what we should or should not eat and drink to keep healthy. Many people listen, and believe and try their best to adhere to the advice of the experts, so they will have healthy bodies and extend their life span.

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus gives us similar advice, but with an important difference. The advice of the health and nutrition experts is good, but only temporary in nature, for ultimately, our mortal life will come to an end. The food, the Bread that Jesus offers us, on the other hand, is everlasting.

In the Gospel, Jesus says: “I am the Bread of Life come down from Heaven,” meaning that He is the Word of God, Who has come from the Father to reveal to us what the Father is like. Jesus came to sustain and strengthen us with revealed truth. But this requires that we first listen to

August 10, 2012

The Anchor

You are what you eat

Him. The Jews listened, but He said He was the Bread they did not understand and that came down from Heaven. learn.

The Jews hear only the literal We seem to have little words of Jesus, but fail to difficulty listening to and realize that it takes faith to get believing the health and nutribelow the surface and grasp tion experts who offer something which is only temporary and Homily of the Week fleeting, but experience difficulty in Nineteenth Sunday listening to, believin Ordinary Time ing and living out the

By Deacon message of Jesus.

Lawrence A. St. Onge The audience listened to Jesus but rejected Him, because they judged by human values what Jesus is saying on a and external standards. God deeper level. can draw us to Him, but it is Jesus proclaims that only our own resistance that can those who have been drawn defeat even God’s pull.

by God can come to Jesus and In the Gospel Jesus faces believe in Him. It is this belief the situation where the people that will raise them up on the have eaten the loaves and last day. Jesus connects the fishes, and have come looking manna of the desert with His for more. So Jesus offers them feeding the 5,000. The manna more: “I am the Bread from was able to feed the people but Heaven,” He says. Jesus tries could not give them eternal to open their minds and their life. Jesus says to them and hearts to the Word of God, us, I am the Bread that feeds namely, Himself. you into eternal life, and will The crowd, however, murbe your source of life even in murs against Jesus, because the kingdom of God. Listen

to what I am saying; there is more to God’s plan for you than you already understand.

Without meaning to, we often have a tendency to make God out to be as small as we are, and into our own image and likeness.

And, as a result, we are often unaware of the mystery unfolding in our lives. We question, we complain, we murmur about what is happening to us. We are imprisoned in the present and cannot see God inviting us into a larger and richer life. We fall back into bitterness, passion and anger, harsh words and slander and malice from which, as St. Paul in the second reading says, the Spirit of Jesus has freed us. We neglect to be imitators of God, but instead insist that God imitate us.

What happens is that we become shut in on ourselves, incapable of experiencing the continuing love of God for us, and unable to follow the way of love that Jesus Himself walked.

Fortunately, Jesus is not satisfied to leave us there.

He works the miracle of the loaves for us today. He says this is the true Bread from Heaven. This Bread is I, Myself. This Bread is My flesh given for the life of the world.

And so we come to Mass, to receive the “Bread of Life” in His Word and in the Holy Eucharist. As Elijah in the first reading was strengthened in body and spirit, after eating and drinking of the food provided by God, and thus enabled to complete his journey to the mountain of God, so too will we be likewise strengthened, when we partake of the Holy Eucharist, the real and everlasting food that strengthens us on our pilgrim journey to the mountain of God. The more we partake of the Eucharist, the more “we become what we eat”; and the easier is our journey and the more assured we are of reaching our ultimate goal — eternal life with God. Deacon St. Onge is assigned to Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. James Church.

November 6 will be his 30th anniversary of ordination.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. Aug. 11, ­­Hb 1:12—2:4; Ps 9:8-13; Mt 17:14-20. Sun. Aug. 12, Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 1 Kgs 19:4-8; Ps 34:2-9; Eph 4:30—5:2; Jn 6:41-51. Mon. Aug. 13, Ez 1:2-5,24-28c; Ps 148:1-2,11-14; Mt 17:22-27. Tues. Aug. 14, Ez 2:8—3:4; Ps 119:14,24,72,103,111,131; Mt 18:1-5,10,12-14. Wed. Aug. 15, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Rv 11:19a;12:1-6a,10ab; Ps 45:10bc,11-12ab,16; 1 Cor 15:20-27; Lk 1:39-56.

Thurs. Aug. 16, Ez 12:1-12; Ps 78:56-59,61-62; Mt 18:21—19:1. Fri. Aug. 17, Ez 16:1-15,60,63 or 16:59-63; (Ps) Is 12:2-6; Mt 19:3-12.

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omplaints that Washington-is-broken, which seem to have new intensity in recent years, often go hand-inhand with laments about “partisanship” in politics. And, to be sure, there are reasons to be concerned about the functionality of our political system and its ability to address and solve some very serious problems. The present, sad condition of much of Europe, where a breakdown of (Christian) democratic culture seems to be leading inexorably to a breakdown of democratic politics and the substitution of government by technocratic elites (currently being previewed in Italy), is a cautionary tale for Americans.

“Partisanship” that concedes no possible rectitude or good will to the other party is obviously problematic; so is the self-righteousness and bullheadedness that help explain congressional gridlock. Yet there are at least two other reasons for what is often deplored as “partisanship,” and those reasons are worth pondering in the summer before a national

The reasons for ‘partisanship’

election. possible restriction on the One reason why governing abortion license, even those is hard at the federal level is regulations on the abortion that the Framers deliberately industry that protect women’s designed our constitutional health, because it fears that one structure to make serious hard tug on one loose thread national decisionmaking difficult: meaning that serious decisions had to be rooted in a broad consensus. That’s why we have the separation of powers, two houses

By George Weigel of Congress, and the requirement of supermajorities for constitutional amendments. The will unravel the entire legal tough calls are supposed to structure created since Roe be made on the basis of deep, vs. Wade. That is why there broad and carefully considered is so little common ground agreement. on the question of abortion: The other reason is even while Pro-Lifers are, in the more obvious, but it’s rarely main, willing to work in steps stated: 21st-century Amerito dismantle the Roe-defined can society is deeply divided abortion license — much as on certain basic issues. That the classic civil rights movedivide reflects a serious rift in ment worked incrementally to the moral-cultural fabric of our dismantle legal segregation — democracy. the pro-“choice” forces refuse The abortion issue comes to concede an inch of ground, readily to mind. Pro-“choice” fearing that any concession America is all-in for abortionwill lose them the entire battle. on-demand. It resists every And if that means that your lo-

The Catholic Difference

cal Planned Parenthood clinic is subject to less legal and medical regulation than your local McDonald’s, so be it.

There are other, deeper reasons for this form of pro“choice” hyper-partisanship, however.

Our public culture is deeply confused about the moral life and about the relationship between virtue and happiness. Happiness, for many Americans, is a matter of willfulness, not a matter of living in ways that we know are, objectively, worthy of human beings. Indeed, the very idea of “objective” moral truth is one that Americans seem uncomfortable defending today.

Something may be “true for me,” but not “true for you.”

And pushing beyond that kind of radical subjectivism is too often deplored as “judgmental.”

Yet there are serious confusions-within-confusions on this front in the American culture war, a struggle that’s at the root of our many contemporary political divisions.

As moral philosopher Janet Smith has long argued, if you think Americans don’t believe in moral absolutes, just light up a cigarette, cigar or pipe in the non-smoking section of a restaurant. Or try parking in the “Handicapped” spot at your local supermarket without the appropriate license plate.

Americans believe in moral absolutes, all right; some of us just don’t know how to justify them — which is to say, make sense of them.

In a mess like this, the Church’s primary task is not to endorse policies or candidates.

It’s to do its best, through preaching and catechesis, to rebuild a national moral consensus based on the moral truths inscribed in us by “Nature, and Nature’s God” (as Mr. Jefferson once put it). That consensus is the cultural prerequisite to a politics in which differences are engaged with respect, and serious problems get addressed and solved.

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

August 10, 2012

The DB’s

Friday 10 August 2012 — to learn, kid.

Falmouth Inner Harbor — St. “DB” seems to be current Lawrence Day jargon among seminarians and his week, for the first younger priests. Although I’ve time, I heard a certain long been aware of the world“initialism.” An “initialism,” wide brotherhood shared among dear readers, is a technical term some use for that type of acronym spelled out Reflections of a letter-by-letter, but not Parish Priest pronounced as a word.

Think “CEO” (chief

By Father Tim executive officer) as Goldrick opposed to “sonar” (sound navigation and ranging.) You spell “C-E-O” but you pronounce priests, it had never occurred “sonar” as a word. In a cato me to identify DB’s as a sual conversation, a visiting distinct subgroup. At any rate, a seminarian referred to a “DB.” Diocesan Brother, I learned, is I asked what the initials meant. someone studying for or serving “DB stands for Diocesan Broth- in the priesthood of the same er,” he informed me, somewhat diocese as you. The DB’s are taken aback that I was so out of the men beside whom you will the loop. You’re never too old be working shoulder-to-shoul-

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The Ship’s Log

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The Anchor der for the rest of your life, God willing.

I encountered my first seminarian a couple of months after my graduation from high school. He introduced himself and informed me that he was a Fall River diocesan seminarian studying at the same college to which I had been assigned. We would be preparing for ministry for the same diocese at the same time and in the same place. That made us DB’s, although back then in the Paleolithic Era the term had not yet been invented. A few weeks after our initial meeting, we were on the same flight to Toronto and then drove together to the same seminary campus.

We would have been DB’s even if we had not happened to be

Bringing the Church to others

rally — nourishing, healing, s families shift into praying, reconciling, feeding, summer mode, their teaching, and consoling those parish priests remind them around her. Each is called to gently that vacation from share what wisdom she has school doesn’t justify vacacome by in her life with those tion from God. Surely, the she meets in the course of her usual pews are a little less day — whether in the family, full these days and one would at work, in school, or where hope that somewhere else she lives — and summer of(near beaches and lakes) they ten provides unique opportuare more crowded, but we must admit that with the regular routines gone, Sunday Mass is often negatively impacted.

Along with summer’s more relaxed schedules come

By Genevieve Kineke visits with distant relations, weddings that provide a chance to see old friends nities through which to share and new vistas, and a chance these treasures. to engage in more leisurely The call is not to be obconversations by the pool. trusive or overbearing; just This is all as it should be, for as the Church is there — the the pace of life the rest of the parish on the corner, the soup year often forces us to forego kitchen downtown, the school such encounters through through which so many which a deeper communion pass, the sanctuary lamp that is built. welcomes all who visit — In consideration of this our vocation is to be there as opportunity, women would do well. While the institution well to remember the foundamay require bricks and mortion of their feminine vocatar, our vocation is rooted in tion: to live as icons of Holy the heart — a heart disposed Mother Church. The essence to love, guiding others to God of our call is to give flesh to the Father. the Bride for whom Christ Meditating on the Saclaid down His life, and Who raments will provide one in our midst provides the key, for there we find the surest refuge for the children essential work on which to of God. model our own lives. Our How do we do this? Each domestic churches should women does it in her own imitate the parish work, our way, using her God-given tables providing sustenance gifts to do naturally what and fellowship, our domestic the Church does supernatu-

The Feminine Genius

altars a source of forgiveness and healing. Family life can be difficult, but if our lives are grounded in prayer, we will find ways to deflect the discord so that peace is possible. It’s not always easy, but the grave trials of the Church over the centuries have shown us that as well.

Ultimately, though the piety of some may slacken over the summer months, ours cannot.

If we are true to our calling and immerse ourselves in imitating Holy Mother Church, we will have a heart for these dear souls that transcends the transgressions borne of human weakness.

If we can see our way to living the feminine vocation in such a way that Christ is paramount and that His wounds mark the path to wholeness, then we can absorb a great deal on His behalf.

With this focus — loving with the mind of the Church, forbearing with the grace of God, and drawing all into a communion built on the promise given to Peter — we trust that our encounters this summer can provide a deeper meaning than the trifles with which most are absorbed.

And if we do our work well, even those who neglect God will have found something of value, because we will have brought the Church to them.

Mrs. Kineke is the author of “The Authentic Catholic Woman” and can be found online at feminine-genius.com.

attending the same seminary, since we fulfilled the one basic qualification. We were affiliated with the same diocese.

When considering the bond between Diocesan Brothers, there’s a gesture in the Rite of Ordination to the Priesthood that bears special mention (although it may appear to some to be perfunctory.) The Sign of Peace is extended to the newlyordained by the ordaining prelate. It’s the same Sign of Peace we exchange at every celebration of the Eucharist. It’s the same Sign of Peace the bishop gives to those to whom he has just administered the Sacrament of Confirmation. It’s the same Sign of Peace extended to a dying person during their final moments among us. In all cases, the Sign of Peace signifies unity in Christ. In the Rite of Ordination to the Priesthood, however, there’s a unique unity being expressed.

The bishop is not just offering paternal congratulations but making a sign of deep spiritual union with the newly-minted priest. Bishop and priest now share together in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ. They have become both co-workers and brothers. I remember years ago concelebrating Holy Mass with Blessed John Paul II. What struck me, among many other things, was that the pope addressed the concelebrating priests as “My brothers....” The very thought of me being the pope’s brother hit me between the eyes. His Holiness, I’m sure, did not use the salutation lightly.

Once the bishop has extended the Sign of Peace to the newly-ordained, the other priests participating in the ordination ceremony proceed to do the same. They, too, are signifying unity with their new brother.

They are welcoming him into the fraternity of the priesthood.

DB’s share each other’s joys and challenges over a lifetime of service in the same vineyard. They pray together, learn together, rejoice together, and socialize together. They laugh together and sometimes cry together. It is a brother priest who best understands the ups and downs of the life of another priest because it is basically the same life. Simply put, a priest understands what another priest is experiencing. Priestly fraternity means we have a common bond, a shared mission, and insight others may not have into what it means to be a priest today.

I now find myself living among other priests. I haven’t lived in community for 20 years. There are three DB’s sharing this house and also a priest from Brazil (Father Messias Albuquerque) in residence. We range in years of service from Father Peter Fournier (ordained just three years) to Father Frank Wallace (ordained 65 years). At the age of 91, Father Wallace is the oldest priest in the Diocese of Fall River. Combined, the four of us living under one roof represent 118 years of priesthood.

There are several other DB’s who frequently visit the rectory and often join us for supper.

Some are newly-ordained and some are senior priests. There are still more DB’s assigned to the three other parishes in town.

We get together often. Turns out I’m surrounded by DB’s.

Now at least I know what to call them.

Father Goldrick is pastor of St. Patrick’s Parish in Falmouth.

10

The Anchor

August 10, 2012

A Rose by any other name

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

ONSET — Ninety-sevenyear-old Mary Vieira Rose just laughs when she hears that someone has referred to her as the “Mother Teresa of Onset.”

“Someone once called me Reverend Rose,” she said in turn. “I asked them, ‘Who called me that?’ I found out later it was my sister.”

Sitting with Rose in the living room of the house she has called home since her birth in 1914, it’s easy to understand how those nicknames came to be. There are countless religious pictures and images adorning the walls along with statues of various saints tucked away in corners and sitting on bookshelves.

Then there are the Rosaries.

More than a dozen prayer beads in a variety of colors are spread out on the coffee table in front of her.

Each set was hand-crafted by Rose herself as part of a hobby and ministry she founded called Our Lady’s Rosary Circle.

“When I was living and working in New Bedford, I’d come home after work and didn’t have anything to do,” Rose said. “I was looking for a hobby. So I saw in a Catholic magazine that they needed people to make Rosaries. That’s how I started.”

While she initially began making the standard chain-type Rosaries which required a special tool and a lot of patience, Rose said she later moved on to making mission-type Rosaries

which are made of cord and monthly now because most of tion to Portugal. plastic beads. the women are elderly and have “We didn’t have any Catho“In Dartmouth there was a other appointments and doc- lic churches around here until I Catholic store and they started tor’s visits.” was about 12 or 13. There was teaching people how to make Rose has always been de- an Irish priest who came to mission Rosaries,” Rose said. voutly religious and she can Wareham named Father Calla“At the time I didn’t want to remember when her beloved han who bought an old Baptist make them because I church that closed was so used to makand that became what ing the traditional is now St. Patrick’s Rosaries with the Church. After that chain. But I went was set up, he came there and looked at to Onset because he the samples they heard about our comgave us.” munity here. He went A simple request from house to house, from her pastor at St. telling everyone he Mary Star of the Sea was going to build a Church in Onset to church for Onset. So make Rosaries for the he built St. Mary’s, students who were which was originally about to graduate a mission of St. Patfrom St. Margaret’s rick’s.”

School in Buzzards Rose said the Bay led to a weekly fledgling St. Mary’s meeting of Our LaChurch, now a misdy’s Rosary Circle sion of St. Margaret’s that at one time had in Buzzards Bay, as many as 20 memprospered because bers who made and at the time there shipped Rosaries all were many wealthy over the world. people living in On“It’s been about 30 set. Things changed, years now and we’re though, when the still making Rosa- Anchor Person of the week — Mary Great Depression ries,” said Rose’s Vieira Rose. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza) hit and people were daughter, Mary Ann, finding it difficult to who is also a member of the St. Mary’s was first built as a make ends meet. group. “Most of the older wom- mission church of St. Patrick’s “Most of the children have en have passed on … but we’ve Parish in Wareham. grown up and have moved got about six dedicated women “My mother and father were out of the area,” Rose said. who still make them. We find born in Cape Verde and we “I’m lucky because I have my people through a Rosary-mak- came to this village (in On- daughter living here with me. ing newsletter who need Rosa- set),” she said. “We had a large She does a lot of things that I ries and we ship them out. I can Cape Verdean community here used to do for the parish.” fit 65 to 70 Rosaries in a flat- and most Cape Verdeans are Rose always considered herself rate envelope. We only meet Catholic because of its connec- blessed to have had a good job working at Aerovox in New Bedford during those difficult times.

“We spent weekends over here in Onset with my mother, then during the winter I had an apartment in New Bedford,” Rose said. “My son was in Vietnam and he remembers seeing a box that said ‘Aerovox, New Bedford’ and he told everyone: ‘My mother works there.’”

Among her many activities

at St. Mary’s, Rose was known to drive people to doctor’s appointments or to pick up groceries or run errands as needed.

“When I used to drive some women to work, I told them if you’re riding with me, we’re going to go to St. Mary’s first to receive Communion and then go to work,” she said. “Nobody said anything.”

Rose always takes her faith seriously and said it is important to attend Mass on a regular basis.

“We all went to church, winter or summer,” she said. “We made sure to make every Mass.

When I made my Confirmation, I remember the bishop told me I was a soldier of Jesus Christ and that I should defend my faith. I took that literally. To this day, whenever I hear anyone say anything against the Catholic Church, I argue with them.”

Looking back, Rose said she may have missed her life’s calling to become a teacher, but she still manages to teach others about her faith.

“I went to the library and read a lot of books about the Catholic Church,” she said. “I taught all my brothers and sisters to speak English, but I also taught them religion. I always wanted to be a teacher, but I really was a teacher to them.”

Although she no longer drives and has since passed on many of her parish activities to her daughter, Rose still faithfully attends Mass and prays the Rosary everyday.

And she’s still heeding the bishop’s challenge to be a “soldier of Jesus Christ.”

“Find out if there’s someone in your community that needs help and reach out to them,” she said. “You get blessings for that. We’ve got to look out for each other and God will take care of us.”

To submit a Person of the Week nominee, send an email with information to fatherwilson@anchornews.org.

devout daughters — The Easton Circle Daughters of Isabella recently visited La Salette Shrine in Attleboro attending Mass, praying the Rosary and viewing the sights. Back row, from left: Judy Thomas, Maureen Papineau, Josie Bastable, June Mann, Marie Roscoe, and Irene Roberge. Front: Bette Brosnahan, Rose Friedborn, Kim Pressey, Gigi Riviera, Gertrude Dagosta, Pat Griffiths, and Helena Luxton.

August 10, 2012

The Anchor

11

12

August 10, 2012

The Anchor

Be sure to visit the Diocese of Fall River website at fallriverdiocese.org The site includes links to parishes, diocesan offices and national sites.

Shrine of The Little Flower of Jesus

JUBILEE CHURCH & SHRINE

19th Annual Feast Day Celebration

First Shrine To St. Theresa In America

easy to assemble — Zachary Gordon and Steve Zahn star in a scene from the movie “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.” For a brief review of this film, see CNS Movie Capsules below. (CNS photo/Fox)

Sunday, August 19, 2012 Rain or Shine

10:30 AM ~ Prayers at Holy Stairs 11:15 AM ~ Stations of the Cross 12:00 PM ~ Lunch & Concert 1:30 PM ~ Outdoor Living Rosary 2:45 PM ~ Procession with St. Theresa 3:00 PM ~ Chaplet of Divine Mercy Solemn Feast Day Mass - Main Celebrant and Homilist: Father Dean Perri (Administrator of St. Casimir Church, Providence, R.I.) Blessing with St. Theresa’s Relic ~ Continuous video showing of St. Theresa’s life ~

• Gift Shop • Food & Refreshments • Canopy - Covered benches at Outdoor Altar • Bus Groups welcome • Priests are invited to concelebrate the Feast Mass • Bring Chairs &s Umbrellas for the sun

For information please call (401) 568-0575 • (401) 568-8280 E-mail: shiirl@cox.net www.SaintTheresaShrine.com

Shrine is located at intersection of Rt. 102 and Rt. 7 in Nasonville (Burrillville), R.I. (near Wright’s Farm Restaurant)

CNS Movie Capsules NEW YORK (CNS) — The following are capsule reviews of movies recently reviewed by CNS. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days” (Fox 2000) This second sequel to 2010’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” — based, like its predecessors, on author Jeff Kinney’s series of “novels in cartoons” — provides a warm, kid-friendly comic outing that emphasizes the virtue of honesty and the importance of familial ties. Zachary Gordon once again plays the awkward preteen protagonist who, in this installment, is out to thwart his dad’s (Steve Zahn) plans to transform his housebound, video-game-playing summer vacation into a father-son bonding experience via a long sequence of outdoor activities. His initially honest schemes to evade this dread prospect gain the aid of his loyal best friend (Robert Capron). But when the two pals have a falling-out, and he turns to subterfuge, his deceit leads to all manner of trouble, thanks in part to his knuckleheaded older brother (Devon Bostick). Director David Bowers delivers a moving message amid the laughs, so that touches of vaguely crass humor are easily overlooked in favor of the generally amiable proceedings.

Some mild scatological humor.

The Catholic News Service classification is A-I — general patronage. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not

be suitable for children.

“To Rome With Love” (Sony Classics) Woody Allen writes, directs and stars in this picturesque but morally misguided romp through the Eternal City, featuring a confusing quartet of stories about the search for romance, happiness and — all too frequently — sin. A retired opera director (Allen) discovers a potential star in the person of an undertaker (Fabio Armiliato) who only sings in the shower. A honeymoon couple (Alessandra Mastronardi and Alessandro Tiberi) face twin temptations: He at the hands of a sexy prostitute (Penelope Cruz), she at those of a sleazy movie star (Antonio Albanese). A famous architect

(Alec Baldwin) takes on a protege (Jesse Eisenberg) who reminds him of himself in youth, and coaches the lad in the art of seduction. An ordinary man (Roberto Benigni) becomes a media sensation for no apparent reason, only to find his life turned upside down. A benign view of adultery and nonmarital sex, much sexual innuendo, some uses of profanity and of rough language. The Catholic News Service classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Diocese of Fall River TV Mass on WLNE Channel 6 Sunday, August 12, 11:00 a.m.

Celebrant is Father William Sylvia, Technical Assistant at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Hyannis and Chaplain at Cape Cod Hospital

August 10, 2012

13

The Anchor

Princeton professor urges hotels to remove pornography

troubled waters — A resident wades through waist-deep floodwaters caused by Tropical Storm Saola as he passes by a Catholic church near Manila, Philippines, recently. (CNS photo/ Romeo Ranoco, Reuters)

Chinese woman rescued more than 30 abandoned babies

Washington D.C. (CNA) — Reports of a woman in China who saved dozens of abandoned babies in recent decades has drawn praise for her heroic actions and criticism for the one-child policy that leads to the practice of child desertion.

“These children need love and care,” said Lou Xiaoying. “They are all precious human lives. I do not understand how people can leave such a vulnerable baby on the streets.”

A recent article in the Daily Mail told the story of the 88-year-old woman who has dedicated the last 40 years of her life to saving abandoned Chinese babies from death.

Lou has made her living by recycling garbage. One day in 1972, she found an abandoned baby girl lying among the trash in the street.

The child “would have died had we not rescued her and taken her in,” she said. As she and her husband watched the baby grow, she realized that she had “a real love of caring for children.”

Lou, who has one biological daughter of her own, has rescued more than 30 babies. She and her husband — who died 17 years ago — raised four of the abandoned children and helped the rest find homes with family members and friends.

“I realized if we had strength enough to collect garbage how could we not recycle something as important as human lives,” she said.

Her youngest adopted child — a boy named Zhang Qilin — was in a dustbin when she found him.

Although she was 82 years old, she decided to take him in, giving him a Chinese name that means precious and rare.

“Even though I was already getting old I could not simply ignore the baby and leave him to die in the trash,” she said. “He looked so sweet and so needy. I had to take him home with me.”

She explained that she took him back to her house, “a very small modest house in the countryside,” and nursed him back to health. Today her other children help look

after the seven-year-old child, “a thriving little boy, who is happy and healthy.”

According to the Daily Mail, Lou is well respected as “a local hero” in the community, saving children despite her lack of money and power.

Mark Shan, spokesman for China Aid Association, a group that promotes religious freedom and aids victims of human rights violations in China, said that he has heard similar stories of people “picking up children from the streets.”

Abandoned children — particularly girls — are a significant problem in the country, caused by both a “very strict law” and a “son preference culture,” he told CNA. The nation’s one child policy is strictly enforced, and violating the law can result in heavy fines and even the loss of a job or home, he explained.

“The punishment is really severe,” he said. “And the children will suffer a lot.”

China’s one child policy has drawn considerable international attention in recent months, after blind Pro-Life activist Chen Guangcheng escaped from house arrest and was eventually able to come with his family to the United States.

Chen had been imprisoned after exposing the forced abortions and sterilizations that are routinely used to enforce the policy.

The strict regulation, which prohibits most couples from having more than a single child, is attributed with creating a troubling gender imbalance in the country and leading to high levels of female infanticide, abortion and abandonment, as well as the trafficking of young girls into child prostitution.

In addition to the law, Shan noted, traditional Chinese culture stresses the importance of producing an heir and therefore values male children over female children.

When couples are only permitted to have one child, they may choose to abandon an unwanted baby girl, he said, because “every family wants a son.”

Washington D.C. (CNA) — Catholic law professor Robert P. George of Princeton University is discouraging pornography use in hotel rooms by calling on hotel CEOs to consider the harm that it causes.

“Pornography is part of a larger phenomenon that’s rooted in the fundamental misunderstanding of sexuality,” he told CNA recently.

George recently teamed up with prominent Muslim intellectual Shaykh Hamza Yusuf in writing letters to the CEOs of the five largest hotel chains that offer pornography in their hotel rooms.

He explained that the move was an attempt “to re-stigmatize pornography,” which has been presented to the public as “at worst, a kind of harmless naughtiness” with no lasting personal or social effects.

However, studies show that pornography “does damage to everybody concerned,” including those involved in producing and viewing it, and the marriages and families into which it enters.

George said that rather than threatening a boycott or protest, the letter simply presents a moral appeal to the consciences of the businessmen, respectfully asking them to regard the women involved in pornography as their beloved daughters and wives.

It reminds “respectable business people” that there are some things — such as pornography — that are degrading and dehumanizing and therefore wrong even if they are legal and profitable, he explained.

“We are old-fashioned

enough to believe that an appeal to conscience will sometimes do the job, that everything’s not money,” he said.

“We think people are still reachable.”

As an example, he pointed to the 1998 decision by Omni Hotels to remove pornography from all of its hotel rooms because the CEO believed that it was wrong to sell it.

“People have a basic sense of human dignity,” he said, and even if it is deeply buried, it can be reached and begin to change society.

George explained that the widespread acceptance of pornography is rooted in “a very serious problem” present in contemporary culture.

Young people are falsely taught to think of sexuality as “mere recreation” rather than something “profound” that is “founded upon the reproductive unity of male and female,” he observed.

“To totally detach sexuality from its procreative dimension is at the same time to detach it from its marital significance,” he said, adding that this ultimately renders “unintelligible the basic norms of fidelity, sexual exclusivity and the pledge of permanence” that make marriage the profound human institution that it is.

In this way, he noted, pornography has the same fundamental cause as high levels of divorce, promiscuity, widespread contraception and a push for “gay marriage.”

All of these problems are rooted in a general misunderstanding of “the marital, conjugal significance of our sexuality,” he said.

This, in turn, is tied to a false conception of what it means to be human, George continued. He explained that pornography users come to view other people as objects to be used for satisfaction and themselves as mere bundles of appetites.

They objectify themselves and others, losing “the sense of true humanity,” he said.

The truth, however, is that we are “bearers of a much more profound dignity,” capable of self-control and not “slaves of our desires or lusts,” he explained.

“We undermine our own dignity as persons when we permit ourselves to become enslaved to our own passions,” he added.

The connection between basic human sexuality and dignity is not only a religious tenant but a “fundamental principle of reason,” he observed. Found as far back as Plato, this is “an insight that anyone of any faith and even people of no particular faith can grasp.”

George hopes that his collaboration with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf will show that “we can and we should be collaborating and working together in defending and promoting those values.”

While the two religions are sometimes depicted as being suspicious and hostile towards each other, there are “many, many values which are shared”

by Muslims and Christians, he explained.

“Catholics should never hesitate to reach out across the theological divide and partner with people who share our basic values,” he said.

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14

The Anchor

Government pressure on religious groups growing in U.S., says archbishop

NAPA, Calif. (CNS) — Government pressure on religious entities “goes well beyond” the current federal contraceptive mandate and has become “a pattern in recent years,” said Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

“It involves interfering with the conscience rights of medical providers, private employers and individual citizens,” he said in a recent keynote address at the Napa Institute Conference. “It includes attacks on the policies, hiring practices and tax statuses of religious charities, hospitals and other ministries.

“These attacks are real. They’re happening now. And they’ll get worse as America’s religious character weakens,” the archbishop said in a speech titled “Building a Culture of Religious Freedom.”

“Contempt for religious faith has been growing in America’s leadership classes for many decades,” he added.

Americans have always been “a religious people,” with millions of them taking their faith seriously, he continued, but while “religious practice remains high,” America “is steadily growing more secular.”

“Mainline churches are losing ground. Many of our young people spurn Christianity. Many of our young adults lack any coherent moral formation,” he said, and respect for the role of religion in the public square has clearly eroded.

The nation’s Founding Fathers knew the importance of religion, and recognized it was “not just a matter of private conviction” and “has social implications,” the archbishop said.

“The Founders welcomed those implications,” he continued.

“Christian faith demands preaching, teaching, public witness and service to others — by each of us alone, and by acting in cooperation

with fellow believers.”

“Religious freedom is never just freedom from repression but also — and more importantly — freedom for active discipleship,” Archbishop Chaput said. “It includes the right of religious believers, leaders and communities to engage society and to work actively in the public square.

He said Catholics have to fight for what they believe about abortion, sexuality, marriage and the family, and religious liberty.

“We have a duty to treat all persons with charity and justice.

We have a duty to seek common ground where possible. But that’s never an excuse for compromising with grave evil. And it’s never an excuse for standing idly by while our liberty to preach and serve God in the public square is whittled away,” he said.

“We need to work vigorously in law and politics to form our culture in a Christian understanding of human dignity and the purpose of human freedom,” he said. “Otherwise, we should stop trying to fool ourselves that we really believe what we claim to believe.”

He urged Catholics to work “for good laws” and get “involved politically,” which he called urgent.

“Every one of our votes matters. We need to elect the best public leaders, who then create the best policies and appoint the best judges,” he said. “This has a huge impact on the kind of nation we become.

“Democracies depend for their survival on people of conviction fighting for what they believe in the public square — legally and peacefully, but zealously and without apologies. That includes you and me.”

He called for a re-examination of “the spirit that has ruled the Catholic approach to American life for the past 60 years.”

Our Lady’s Monthly Message From Medjugorje July 25, 2012

Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina “Dear children! Today I call you to the ‘good.’ Be carriers of peace and goodness in this world. Pray that God may give you the strength so that hope and pride may always reign in your heart and life because you are God’s children and carriers of His hope to this world that is without joy in the heart, and is without a future, because it does not have its heart open to God Who is your salvation.

“Thank you for having responded to my call.”

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“In forming our priests, deacons, teachers and catechists — and especially the young people in our schools and Religious Education programs — we need to be much more penetrating and critical in our attitudes toward the culture around us. We need to recover our distinctive Catholic identity and history.

Then we need to act on them.”

Archbishop Chaput said America is now “mission territory.”

“Our own failures helped to make it that way. We need to admit that. Then we need to re-engage the work of discipleship to change it,” he said.

He said the attitude of his own generation, the baby boomers, has contributed to America’s growing secularization — with “our spirit of entitlement and moral superiority, our appetite for material comfort unmoored from humility; our refusal to acknowledge personal sin and accept our obligations to the past.”

Archbishop Chaput also noted that over the past half century, Catholics have become part of the mainstream, climbing “the ladder of social and economic success,” which “has done very little to Christianize American culture.”

“It’s done a great deal to weaken the power of our Catholic witness,” he said.

“If we want a culture of religious freedom, we need to begin it here, today, now,” he said. “We live it by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ — by loving God with passion and joy, confidence and courage; and by holding nothing back. God will take care of the rest.”

“The firmer our faith, the deeper our love, the purer our zeal for God’s will — then the stronger the house of freedom will be that rises in our own lives, and in the life of our nation,” he said.

August 10, 2012

Pro-Life license plate deadline extended continued from page one

hold and so is the money raised by the plates.

The foundation for the Choose Life license plates has distributed some of the more than $100,000 the plates have raised. Now, the board is waiting to see that the $100,000 bond is released before spending the nearly $100,000 they have accumulated in case that money is required to replace the bond.

“We’re doing it one plate at a time. Every plate counts. If anyone is considering getting the plate, now would be the time to help us reach our goal,” Nordeen said. “It’s very exciting to be this close, and we’re just looking forward to being able to start giving our grants out again once we know that we’ve reached the goal.”

The nearly $100,000 on hold

by Choose Life could go to crisis pregnancy centers and other ProLife causes. In the past, the organization has granted money to pregnancy resource centers and provided funds to their counselors and directors to attend training sessions.

“The centers can’t believe that there’s money to be had. They struggle a lot. It’s been really great to do this for them,” she said.

Choose Life has also funded Massachusetts Citizens for Life’s Summer Academy for high school students and provided a matching grant for Boston’s Walk to Aid Mothers and Children, held every October.

Anne Fox, president of MCFL, said that MCFL is grateful for the assistance they have received from Choose Life.

Fox said she is “delighted” to see the RMV extend the deadline for the plates.

In a June email to supporters, Fox urged, “If you don’t have a plate, please, please get one. If you do have a plate, thank you.

Now, please inspire someone else to get a plate.”

“There has never been an easier way to do real good!” she added.

The Choose Life plate, one of 18 Massachusetts plates that benefit charities, features a mother cradling her infant and the words “Choose Life.”

The cost of the plates is $90 every two years. The first $50 is the normal registry charge.

The remaining $40 will cover a $12 manufacturing fee the first year and the rest funds Pro-Life causes. In subsequent years, the entire $40 goes directly to Choose Life.

A simple trip to the Registry or Registry’s website is all it takes, and there is no need to wait until your plates are due for registration.

The first Choose Life license plates were introduced in Florida 11 years ago. When Merry Nordeen heard about them, she thought, “That’s a great idea. I want that for my car.” But no one in Massachusetts was working to bring the plates to the Commonwealth. So Nordeen decided to give it a try. She started a corporation, secured non-profit status and began collecting registrations. Seven years later, the plates made it on the road, which was just two years ago this July.

There are 27 states that offer the plates, which have raised more than $14 million nationally.

In two more states, they have been approved but are not yet available. Efforts continue in 14 states, and in just seven there is no effort underway.

Because of the money raised by the plates, supporters say they are significantly different than a Pro-Life bumper sticker.

On their website, the Massachusetts Family Institute says, “The Choose Life License Plate is a wonderful way to raise public awareness and much-needed funding to support the positive choices of life, adoption and safe havens for unwanted pregnancies and newborns.

Anne Fox praised the solidarity the plates bring to people who are Pro-Life. So far, she has not heard any reports of plate owners receiving negative feedback.

“It’s just been a very positive experience for people,” she said, adding about the plates, “Seeing them on the road, I just feel great.”

Nordeen agreed, “Whenever I do see one on the road in the state of Massachusetts, I’m so happy because you feel like it’s extended family, like-minded people who have put forth the effort to get the plate.”

For more information about the Choose Life plates, visit www.machoose-life.org

Visit The Anchor online at http://www.anchornews.org

August 10, 2012

Well deserved We loved the write up on Damien Cabral, the college student. He deserved being the Anchor Person of the Week. I wish I knew him; I’m so proud of him.

He knows that he has God by his side with every step taken. Wow, he was my inspiration. I don’t know Damien, but deep down in my heart I feel proud of him and I’m sure God is rejoicing in Heaven.

Leo and Olive Viega South Dartmouth Executive Editor responds: Thank you for your positive comments, which are true not just for Damien, but for all of us — that God is always by our side.

A golden opportunity Three decades ago, the brave people of Poland banded together in a solidarity movement and, in a bloodless coup, defeated atheistic communism in their land. Three months from now, the brave people of America can band together in a similar solidarity movement and at the ballot box defeat secular humanism in our land.

Some of you were taken in four years ago by promises of hope and change. The only hope for us now is to make a change at the top. Those of you who were duped by the dictator four years ago can say, “Shame on you.”

However, if you should fall for the despot’s diatribe again, then you will have to say, “Shame on me.”

We have a golden opportunity this November to help restore to our nation, two of the more fundamental rights and freedoms described and defined by our Founding Fathers in our Declaration of Independence and our U.S. Constitution — the inalienable right to practice their faith without interference from the government.

We can accomplish this by supporting candidates, starting at the top, who subscribe to these core principles that most Americans hold near and dear.

Richard A. Carey Needham, Mass.

Executive Editor responds: While I agree that we need to “fight” secular humanism and defend our freedoms, I would say that “despot” and “dictator” are exaggerated terms to use for the president, terms which might not help in convincing people “on the fence” to side with you.

Speak the truth In perusing “Forming Conscience for Faith Citizenship” issued by the USCCB, I am again, as in the 2008 election version, dismayed and disheartened by

15

The Anchor

Our readers respond

the lack of courage displayed by our own bishops. In particular, the first insert states, “Issues that directly affect human lives such as abortion and euthanasia are fundamental and demand serious consideration.” Why not “abortion and euthanasia are intrinsic evils and Catholics must not vote for candidates who support in intrinsic evils?” Where is the courage and conviction exhibited by Cardinal Wuerl and Archbishop Lori as they defend our right to religious freedom?

Let us pray for our bishops, as the shepherds of the flock, that they have the courage and commitment to speak the truth in love no matter the consequences.

Doris Toohill Orleans

the Spirit is still moving and very much still alive in our midst and in the universal Church. However, as we look around, we find many Catholics who have never left the Church or disagreed with the spirit of Vatican Council II, but feel ostracized and very much unwelcome at our Communion table. May we, as the Body of Christ, pray that the day will soon come when all will feel welcome at our Communion tables with the same love and welcome that Jesus gave when He invited everyone to the banquet of the supper of the Lord before His death and Resurrection and left us with one command: “Do this in memory of Me.” Msgr. John J. Smith Fall River

Executive Editor responds: As you note in your last sentence about “speak[ing] the truth in love,” we cannot judge exactly what individual bishops (or anyone else, for that matter) are thinking. I do believe that they are working to convince the Catholic population to do all it can to respect human life and to work, including through the voting box, to end abortion and euthanasia.

Executive Editor responds: When we ran that article, I assumed that Archbishop DiNoia’s quote would open wounds in people like the ones Msgr. Smith mentions. I think that the article which we are running today on page two, where Archbishop Muller (who is Archbishop DiNoia’s direct superior) says that the “traditionalists” would have to accept all of the doctrine from Vatican II so as to reunite with the Catholic Church (and receive Communion with us, by definition) might be in response to the earlier quote, trying to correct a possible misunderstanding of it. As I said in an above comment, we can’t mind-read the bishops. In terms of the issue of people feeling unwelcome at the Communion table, we need to remember what St. Paul wrote in the first account of the Last Supper (which was written before the four Gospels). In 1 Corinthians 11:27, right after finishing his narration of the First Consecration on Holy Thursday, Paul wrote, “Therefore whoever eats the Bread or drinks the Cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the Body and Blood of the Lord.” The Church has a responsibility to hand on what she has received from the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 11:23), which is that if we receive Communion unworthily we are committing a mortal sin. Having ministered with both Anglo and Hispanic populations, I see that often Anglos think only sexual sins can keep them (or other people, whom they might be watching go or not go to Communion [which we shouldn’t be doing — we should be praying, not kneeling in judgment]) from Communion, while many Hispanics will keep themselves from Communion at a given Mass due to serious sins against any of the Ten Commandments. Of course, as priests we need to work lov-

A breath of fresh air I want to comment on The Anchor edition of July 6, 2012. On page two there appeared a lengthy article entitled: “Pope names U. S. archbishop to the new post to aid talks with traditionalists.” May I quote from the article?

“In an effort to aid reconciliation attempts with traditionalist Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI has named U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia to fill a newly-created post of vice president of the Pontifical Commission ‘Ecclesia Dei.’ The appointment of a high-ranking prelate to this position is a sign of the Holy Father’s pastoral solicitude for traditionalist Catholics in communion with the Holy See and his strong desire for the reconciliation of those traditionalist communities not in union with the See of Peter, the Vatican said in a written statement.”

The article continued with Archbishop Di Noia telling Catholic News Service that the Vatican needed to help people, who have strong objections to the council (Vatican Council II), see “that these disagreements don’t have to be divided or keep us from the same Communion table.

It is possible to have theological disagreements while remaining in communion with the See of Peter,” he said.

I find this appointment to be a breath of fresh air, showing that

ingly with people, teaching the truth (to paraphrase a previous letter) and helping them (and ourselves) to prepare for Communion by amending our lives and approaching the Sacrament of Reconciliation for healing. In terms of the supposed contrast between how the Church is treating people who rejected Vatican II and are now being courted, while seeming to reject people who “never left the Church or disagreed with the spirit of Vatican Council II,” this is a complicated question. As Archbishop Muller stated on page two, the “traditionalists” will have to accept all of the doctrine which came from Vatican II if they wish to be Catholic again. This requirement was also required of Anglicans who wish to become Catholic, and is true for anyone.

Sometimes people separate the “spirit of Vatican II” from the doctrines which were approved at it. Ultimately, the goal that “all feel welcome at our Communion tables” is Jesus’ goal, but we must remember that He also told sinners whom He forgave to go and not repeat their sins. If the Church were not to proclaim its teachings, it would be offering a disservice to everyone in the world.

A real contradiction After reading the article in the July 20, 2012 edition of The An-

chor about casinos, it seems to me quite the contradiction for the four bishops of Massachusetts to be opposed to all expanded gambling in the Commonwealth and yet condoning parishes to be running bus trips to casinos in other states. If it’s bad, it’s bad everywhere.

I am completely opposed to having these trips to casinos run by our Catholic churches. There are many other less controversial places to go for a fun day out in which these parishes can participate.

Barbara MacLean East Sandwich Executive Editor responds: This is a complex issue. The Church does not claim that all gambling is a sin (see “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” 2413), but it also notes the harm that can come from gambling, calling it “enslavement.” The bishops of Massachusetts are justifiably worried that the social ills which can be seen in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Connecticut will come to Massachusetts.

However, since the casinos are already open in Connecticut, it is not a sin, in and of itself to go to them (not that I ever have).

That said, parishes would be wise to make sure that the passengers on these trips are not caught in the vise of a gambling addiction.

16

Youth Pages

August 10, 2012

With construction, Bishop Stang High School enters new era

home sweet home — First-grade students at St. John the Evangelist School in Attleboro learned all about what it takes to build a house by reading “A House Is A House For Me” and then making their own journal with 10 different ideas of what constitutes a house. They had to build a house and write out the steps that took them to do the project. Proudly showing that “a fish tank is a house for fish” is Ellie Dafulas. The students got to show off their projects to parents on the last day of school.

NORTH DARTMOUTH — Bishop Stang High School, long proud of its legacy of service and academic achievement, is now looking ahead to all that technology is bringing to education in the 21st century.

The day after the 50th graduation at Bishop Stang was held, the school began construction on the conversion of the former convent for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur into a media, technology, administration and classroom building. With work beginning at the end of the academic year, the plans are to minimize disruption to classes.

The campaign “Building on our Foundation” has raised $4.2 million, $630,000 of which is for the endowment, to bring the endowment to more than $2 million. The capital campaign cabinet under the leadership of Honorary Chairman Patrick Carney ’66 and Campaign Co-Chairs Maureen Sylvia Armstrong ’82 and Michael Harrington ’79 is going forward to raise the remaining $2.5 million needed to complete Phase IA. The $6.5 million total project is the largest major renovation to the campus since its con-

struction in 1959, according to retired Stang President Theresa Dougall. “This project ushers in a new era in the 53-year history of our great school,” Dougall said. Incoming President Peter Shaughnessy added, “Our new Academic Resource Center will provide our students with a rigorous, dynamic and technology-integrated education which cultivates the skills required for college and the 21st-century marketplace.”

Saltonstall Architects of Marion are working with Ryan Construction of Walpole to complete the project.

arts and krafts — Somerset native Brian Fox, a nationally-renowned artist specializing in painting athletes and celebrities, visited St. Michael School in Fall River prior to summer break to share his success story with the students. He recently painted a memorial to Myra Kraft, the late wife of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. He signed autographs, toured the school and gave art tips to aspiring artists.

people of action — William Bennett, director of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. recently sent a letter of congratulations to Bishop Feehan High School in regard to their swift and earnest response to suggested areas for improvement. Feehan’s Two-Year Interim Evaluation Report, submitted as a requirement for continued accreditation, outlined improvements currently in operation in the areas of technology, facilities, and long-range planning. Feehan administrators from left: Principal George Milot; Vice Principal Student Life, Al Svendsen; President Chris Servant ’66; and Vice Principal Academics, Ann Perry ’83.

Youth Pages

August 10, 2012

I

17

Do you know the way?

love road trips. In the pre-GPS days they were even more exciting, especially when I got lost. And, of course, I never asked for directions. I’m sure some of you have been there as well. Do you remember a time when you traveled with your family on a road trip and your dad exited the main highway, you and your siblings/friends were laughing and talking, the radio blaring, and your dad was pretty sure he knew where he was going because he’d driven that road before?

But, after some time, your dad realized things didn’t look the same.

Now, instead of laughing, you and your siblings are fighting. Your mom is thinking that your dad should stop and ask for directions. Finally, your dad admits he’s taken the wrong road.

What does he do? Put the car in reverse and back up for a couple of hours? No! There’s no going back, but he has to find out which is the right road. What would you do if you were in your dad’s shoes?

This is the same with your life.

There’s no going back to the starting line. When you’ve made mistakes and taken wrong turns in the road, you have to assess the situation to determine how

you get to where you want to go with then forsake it. We need to be specific your life. It’s like when you borrow your in calling things what they are — a lie is father’s car without permission, and you not “misinformation” but a lie; an act of get into an accident. You stood there infidelity is not “a poor choice” but adulthinking of the consequences that were tery. “Those who conceal their sins do sure to follow, and prayed, “Dear God, I not prosper, but those who confess and pray this thing forsake them didn’t happen!” obtain mercy” But it did hap(Prov 28:13). pen!

Ask for help.

Whether it is When you’re getting back on lost, are you the right road quick to ask or coming back someone for

By Ozzie Pacheco to do the will of guidance and God when you direction? “Oh, have wandered but people will the wrong path, you have to do the same make fun of me!” Nonsense! “If any of things. Here are three ways to get back you lacks wisdom, he should ask God on track.

Who gives to all generously and unAdmit your mistake. Was it your dad’s grudgingly, and He will be given it” (Jas fault that he missed the right road? Or 1:5). That Scripture means God won’t was it because your mom was listenmake fun of you or scold you for your ing to the radio and you were making failure — this is good news for troubled noise? Saying what the prodigal son people today. said, “I have sinned!” or “I’m wrong!”

Start over. You can’t really start over is never easy. Seldom do we want to by going back to the starting line. What’s admit our own failure. With God we’ve done is done. But you can start again, got to confess our failure and our sin and which is good news. This means to prac-

Be Not Afraid

New ‘Beginnings’ for diocesan RCIA process

tice a measure of humility and perhaps with a “I’m not going to make the same mistake again” attitude. You can learn from your failure! In a very real way, the will of God begins anew every day, as you confess your need of direction and guidance and look to your Father in Heaven for grace and strength.

OK, you blew it, you failed radically, you sinned. But God is an awesome God, Who is also the God of the second chance, and the third and the fourth, and so on. God’s grace is unlimited because His love for us is unlimited. Make good from your wrong turns and make straight tracks for your life. With God’s help, you can head towards home. If you can come to know that then you will know the way!

If you’re ever in doubt about God’s grace, read Psalm 130:3-5, “If you, Lord, keep account of sins, Lord, who can stand? But with You is forgiveness and so You are revered. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and I hope for His Word.”

God bless!

Ozzie Pacheco is Faith Formation director at Santo Christo Parish, Fall River.

continued from page one

ritual of the Church,” he said.

Older parishioners may remember that in the past a person would come to a church, talk to the pastor, get some instruction and during Easter Vigil would be welcomed into the Church as a Catholic, said Claire McManus, director of the Faith Formation Office for the Fall River Diocese.

“Now they are replicating the early Christians, so there’s this period of inquiry — where you figure out what it means to be a Catholic.

Why are these people so happy; why do they come together every week?” said McManus. “If you’re moved to become a member of the Church in January, then you should be welcomed in January. You should be part of the process then; it’s not a program, it’s a process.”

McManus continued, “When a person comes into the Church, you’re not just trying to give knowledge, this whole process should take a whole liturgical year, not just September to April. We don’t want anyone to wait until September for the program to begin — as if it’s a school year — and then Easter Vigil they become Catholics and are sent on their way.

“There’s no real formation, no real welcoming into the parish life.

People who want to come into the Church should be invited to take part in parish activities, like a food pantry or whatever service work a parish does, so that they can be apprentices to the Christian life,” said McManus.

And that process truly begins with the parish community, a mantra emphasized over and over again

at the conference. The Beginnings initiative gives the overview of the origin of the rites of Christian initiation and then shows what the Beginnings initiative can look like in a

about that and it was very moving.

This is what they try to model for us so that we can go back to our parishes and do this. If you involve the whole community, then people

Sheehan.

“It’s important to get our heads around all of this stuff,” he said. “It’s revolutionary. It’s a role for everyone. Think of yourselves as minis-

FOLLOW THE LEADER — Linda Licata, team member of Beginnings, an initiative that seeks to provide parishes with the vision of a welcoming Catholic community for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, offered one of many presentations to provide an RCIA model that participants would be able to bring to his or her parish. “It’s not just giving knowledge,” said Licata. “It helps people walk in the footsteps of Christ.” (Photo by Becky Aubut)

parish and how it engages the entire parish community. During the three days, team leaders walked participants through different rites, including the Rite of Acceptance that “was done in a way that involved everybody,” said McManus. “We were told this is not play-acting, that this is how the rites were done.”

It’s about the Church community supporting the candidates in prayer, said McManus. “We talked

get a better idea of why we come to Mass. It’s not just to go through the motions, it’s so that the prayers of one another are lifted up with everyone in the community.”

The goal of the program is to offer enough information to make candidates into disciples, not just another person sitting through Mass, and even weddings and funerals are opportunities to let the Catholic faith shine, said Father

ters of a Sacrament, not leaders of a program. As ministers, we need to ask, ‘How is God at work here?’”

Participating in an immersiontype of curriculum made McManus and coordinator Rose Mary Saraiva appreciate the rich traditions that rites have within the Catholic faith.

“People want ritual,” said Saraiva. “People want the old Church and what we have in these rites is everything people are looking for,

and if we embrace these rituals and rites, we’ll be all set. This is what the young people are looking for; we don’t have to reinvent anything, we just have to give them this.”

For Saraiva, the Welcoming Ritual made the biggest impact on her during the three days.

“The welcoming acceptance and the reaching out, and having the whole community come and get [the candidates]; not waiting for them to knock but going to get them and bringing them in,” said Saraiva. “That spoke so loudly to me. We always talk about being a welcoming community, but do we really welcome them? Do we go out or wait for them to come to the door and let them in? We can’t sit and wait for them, we have to open the doors to look and see who’s searching.”

By having representatives from all the deaneries attend, McManus hopes the next step for the diocese is to have those participants continue to build on the model taught to them and have it spread to all RCIA programs in every parish; the idea is to have the formation of people done together, but the rites done individually in each parish, she said.

“This is evangelization at its best,” said McManus. “Just imagine if you’re sitting in the assembly and you’re lukewarm about your faith or you have a family member you’d like to invite back, and you watch this go on and pray together for this person to grow in faith — it moves you, and you realize it’s not anything that we’re doing, it’s God’s action that is drawing them to Christ.”

18

The Anchor

Godspeed to the ‘duck’

B

ased on past experiences, I’ll begin this column with a disclaimer. The following statement is made with total respect and not a mean-spirited slight. Every time Emilie and I watch South African runner Oscar Pistorius compete in the Olympics, we can’t help but think of a duck. Let me follow that up by adding that Oscar Pistorius is one of my most inspirational heroes. Period.

For those who don’t know, Oscar is the first double-amputee to compete in the Olympic games. Not the Para-Olympics, but the games played by thousands of able-bodied athletes from around the world. He runs on prosthetic running feet — blades of carbon fiber. Emilie and I see a duck when he’s motoring across the track. Per-

My View From the Stands

By Dave Jolivet haps the yellow and green team uniform adds to the aura.

Oscar was born without the fibula bone in both legs, and one month shy of his first birthday, had both legs amputated between the knees and ankles.

His family raised him as they did their other children — as a normal lad. In a recent NBC interview during a break in the competition, he told the reporter that his mother used to tell his brother to put his shoes on and then tell Oscar, “Put your legs on.” A normal childhood.

Oscar didn’t let his disability get in the way. He couldn’t. He didn’t see it as a disability.

He grew up playing sports, including water polo, tennis and his beloved rugby ... not a sport for the feeble-hearted. A knee injury led him down the path of track and field.

He excelled at Para-Olympic events, but there was more he could do. He wasn’t disabled.

Mankind, (an oxymoron in this case) deemed Oscar had an unfair advantage with his blades. I’ll guarantee that’s the first time Oscar ever heard his name and unfair advantage in the same sentence.

A former prolific U.S. Olympic sprinter sounded off on Oscar’s “unfair advantage.”

Perhaps a year living with Oscar’s advantage would set this “athlete” straight.

After much debate and scientific input, he was deemed “fit” to race in “regular” events.

Oscar made it past the first round in the men’s 400-meter event. He came in last in the semi-finals. He will be competing for the South African relay team later this week.

Oscar probably won’t collect a medal. It doesn’t matter. Oscar is already a winner.

The athlete with the perpetual smile on his face is a role model for every girl, boy, woman, or man with what society deems a “disability.” He’s an ambassador for Sole of Africa, part of the Mine Seeker Foundation dedicated to the detection and removal of land mines.

Oscar Pistorius is my hero.

He’s a hurricane of fresh air in the world of sports, an environment often filled with arrogance, cheating, and selfishness. I Tweeted Oscar this week and told him he does have an advantage over many athletes — he’s a decent human being and fine role model.

Oscar has captured the heart and soul of the crowds in London, and the millions watching on the tele. He’s also an inspiration to some of his fellow competitors. The eventual winner of the men’s 400-meter gold medal, Kirani James of Grenada, exchanged racing bibs with Oscar after the semifinal heat had finished. A beautiful display of respect and sportsmanship.

People like Oscar can’t help but bring out the best in some people.

He’s known as the “Blade Runner,” and the “Fastest Man on No Legs.” In fact, Oscar has a leg up on most of us.

And what message does those who feel Oscar has an unfair advantage send to young amputees? That they too have an advantage over most. That they take nothing for granted and work harder to get to where they want to be.

The summer games in London have been a thrill to watch so far. Some of my favorite moments include Queen Elizabeth’s “sky dive” and Mr. Bean’s “Chariots of Fire” scene at the opening ceremonies; gold for Gabby Douglas; Michael Phelps going out a winner; Brit Mo Farah and training mate, American Galen Rupp coming in gold and silver respectively in the 10,000-meters; and Usain Bolt’s blistering 100-meter streak.

But my favorite by far is the presence of Oscar Pistorius.

Godspeed “duck” from South Africa!

August 10, 2012

Updated diocesan directory shipping soon

FALL RIVER — Copies of the revised and fully-updated 2012-2013 Catholic Directory for the Diocese of Fall River will begin shipping later this month.

This annual information resource, published by The Anchor, has become the go-to reference guide for all parishes, offices and apostolates within the Fall River Diocese and has continued to offer more information with each subsequent edition.

“This year it was a particular challenge to ensure that the more than 20 pastor transfers and assignments were accurate and up-to-date,” said Kenneth J. Souza, reporter for The Anchor and coordinator of the directory for the past five years. “This edition contains the most changes I’ve seen since working on the directory project.”

This year’s 244-page volume is the largest directory ever published for the diocese and it continues to offer unique features such as the 12-month desk calendar that includes pertinent information such as saints’ feast days, significant events in the history of the Fall River Diocese, holy days of obligation, and a daily necrology of deceased priests and deacons.

“We introduced the calendar section in last year’s directory and received very positive feedback on it,” Souza said.

The “Parishes and Missions” section remains the heart of the directory and reflects the greatest number of changes this year.

With the large number of pastoral reassignments, Souza expects the directory will be an invaluable tool and, as a result, he anticipates demand for the publication will be higher than usual.

“We’re doing a limited press run, so I would suggest people order copies early before they sell out,” he said.

The directory also continues to offer features introduced last year like the special “In Memoriam” page recalling those who died within the last year; a “Partial List of Religious Abbreviations” for various religious

orders; and convenient forms to order additional copies of the directory or provide updates and corrections to future editions.

“Everyone seemed to like these sections, so we will continue to offer them,” Souza said.

As in past years, the directory provides updated telephone and address listings of all diocesan offices, personnel, archives, priests’ residences, councils and apostolates ranging from The Anchor to Catholic Social Services and its many offices, Campus Ministry, summer camps, the Catholic Charities Appeal, Chancery, Faith Formation, Insurance, Legal, Communications, Scouting, Shelters, Vocations, and Youth and Adult Ministry.

Most of these listings can be found using one of nine handy pull-out “tabs” for quick reference.

The colorful cover of the 2012-2013 directory features a stained-glass image of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, taken from St. Lawrence Martyr Church in New Bedford.

As always, the continued support of dedicated advertisers is crucial to the directory’s annual success.

“Despite the economy, the number of advertisers in this year’s directory remained consistent,” said Wayne R. Powers, advertising director for The Anchor and the directory. “I think people know it’s still one of the best vehicles and values to make their products and services known throughout the diocese.”

With another directory now completed, work will soon begin on making updates and changes to next year’s edition.

“Change is inevitable and we try to make sure the directory is as up-to-date as possible,” Souza said.

To order a copy of the 2012-2013 Catholic Directory, send a check for $18 made payable to “Anchor Publishing,” to Anchor Publishing Company, P.O. Box 7, Fall River, Mass. 02722. You can also place an order online at www.anchornews.org or call 508675-7151.

The Anchor joins radio reading service continued from page one

radio,” she said, adding that they have set up transmitters in Truro, Hyannis and Dennis to cover the large territory for her affiliate station.

While the radio reading service has been around for about 15 years, Bergeron said it’s really grown in popularity over the last five years.

“When I started as executive director it was just about Mashpee and Falmouth,” she said.

“Modern technology has really helped out. The radios now are better and the radio stations are bigger. We’ve taken advantage of that technology.”

Dennis Polselli, an avid supporter and listener of The Ledger, previously directed a similar radio reading affiliate called MetroWest that was based out of Framingham State University.

“The network is headquartered in Marshfield and it provides the reading of daily, local and national newspapers from the Boston newspapers, to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor, to name a few,” Polselli said. “In the South Coast, we are served by the Audible Local Ledger out of Mashpee. The

secondary channel of WUMD at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth provides one of the feeds for the service.”

A devout Catholic who wanted to get local Catholic news, Polselli said one of the newspapers he offered while directing MetroWest was The Pilot, the weekly Catholic newspaper for the Archdiocese of Boston.

“One of the first things I did when my wife and I returned to Fall River was to ask that The Ledger broadcast the Fall River Herald News, which they now do weeknights at 7 p.m., and The Anchor.”

Father Roger J. Landry, former executive editor of The Anchor, made arrangements to provide the latest issue to The Ledger and it is now read on-air every Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m. A volunteer named Shirley Zebergs is currently the on-air voice of The Anchor.

“She’s an adorable elderly woman who does a great job,” Bergeron said.

Zebergs is one of about 85 volunteers who read local publications from within the confines of the Mashpee studio. In addition to the weekly reading of The Anchor, there’s a Monday-

through-Friday reading of The Cape Cod Times at 10 a.m., the New Bedford Standard-Times at 4 p.m., and the Fall River Herald News at 7 p.m.

“I’d say we do about one-third live readings and two-thirds prerecorded,” Bergeron said. “We’re always looking for volunteers to read. I might have a few openings coming up when some of the snowbirds move to Florida.”

Those outside the radio reception area for The Ledger can always listen live online via the affiliate’s website at www. audiblelocalledger.org.

With a local range that reaches residents from Fall River to Provincetown and an online link that offers the service to people within the diocese and beyond, Bergeron said it’s a wonderful service for those who can’t read print publications themselves.

“In this age, you don’t get a lot of compliments,” she said.

“But it’s worth it when I go to set up a radio for someone and see the appreciation on their face.”

To obtain a radio, volunteer to read, or for more information about the Audible Local Ledger, call toll-free 877-245-2260 or visit www.audiblelocalledger.org.

August 10, 2012

Eucharistic Adoration in the Diocese

Acushnet — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Parish on Monday and Tuesday from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Thursday from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Evening prayer and Benediction is held Monday through Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

ATTLEBORO — The National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette holds eucharistic adoration in the Shrine Church every Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. through November 17.

ATTLEBORO — St. Joseph Church holds eucharistic adoration in the Adoration Chapel located at the (south) side entrance at 208 South Main Street, Sunday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Brewster — Eucharistic adoration takes place in the La Salette Chapel in the lower level of Our Lady of the Cape Church, 468 Stony Brook Road, on First Fridays beginning at noon until 7:45 a.m. First Saturday, concluding with Benediction and concluding with Mass at 8 a.m. buzzards Bay — Eucharistic 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 Freetown — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. John Neumann Church every Monday (excluding legal holidays) 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the Our Lady, Mother of All Nations Chapel. (The base of the bell tower).

East Sandwich — The Corpus Christi Parish Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 324 Quaker Meeting House Road, East Sandwich. Use the Chapel entrance on the side of the church.

EAST TAUNTON — Eucharistic adoration takes place in the chapel at Holy Family Parish Center, 438 Middleboro Avenue, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. On First Fridays, eucharistic adoration takes place at Holy Family Church, 370 Middleboro Avenue, from 8:30 a.m. until 7:45 p.m.

FAIRHAVEN — St. Mary’s Church, Main St., has eucharistic adoration every Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to noon in the Chapel of Reconciliation, with Benediction at noon. Also, there is a First Friday Mass each month at 7 p.m., followed by a Holy Hour with eucharistic adoration. Refreshments follow.

Fall River — Espirito Santo Parish, 311 Alden Street, Fall River. Eucharistic adoration on Mondays following the 8 a.m. Mass until Rosary and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.

FALL RIVER — Notre Dame Church, 529 Eastern Ave., has eucharistic adoration on Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the chapel.

FALL RIVER — St. Anthony of the Desert Church, 300 North Eastern Avenue, has eucharistic adoration Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

FALL RIVER — Holy Name Church, 709 Hanover Street, has eucharistic adoration Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the Our Lady of Grace Chapel.

FALL RIVER — Good Shepherd Parish has eucharistic adoration every Friday following the 8 a.m. Mass until 6 p.m. in the Daily Mass Chapel. There is a bilingual Holy Hour in English and Portuguese from 5-6 p.m. Park behind the church and enter the back door of the connector between the church and the rectory.

Falmouth — St. Patrick’s Church has eucharistic adoration each First Friday, following the 9 a.m. Mass until Benediction at 4:30 p.m. The Rosary is recited Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

HYANNIS — A Holy Hour with eucharistic adoration will take place each First Friday at St. Francis Xavier Church, 347 South Street, beginning immediately after the 12:10 p.m. Mass and ending with adoration at 4 p.m.

MASHPEE — Christ the King Parish, Route 151 and Job’s Fishing Road has 8:30 a.m.

Mass every First Friday with special intentions for Respect Life, followed by 24 hours of eucharistic adoration in the Chapel, concluding with Benediction Saturday morning followed immediately by an 8:30 Mass.

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. Please use the side entrance.

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.

NEW BEDFORD — St. Lawrence Martyr Parish, 565 County Street, holds eucharistic adoration in the side chapel every Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

NORTH DARTMOUTH — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Julie Billiart Church, 494 Slocum Road, every Tuesday from 7 to 8 p.m., ending with Benediction.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is available at this time.

NORTH DIGHTON — Eucharistic adoration takes place every First Friday at St. Nicholas of Myra Church, 499 Spring Street following the 8 a.m. Mass, ending with Benediction at 6 p.m. The Rosary is recited Monday through Friday from 7:30 to 8 a.m.

OSTERVILLE — Eucharistic adoration takes place at Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 76 Wianno Avenue on First Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and every Friday from noon to 5 p.m., with Benediction at 5 p.m.

SEEKONK ­— Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish has eucharistic adoration seven days a week, 24 hours a day in the chapel at 984 Taunton Avenue. For information call 508336-5549.

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.

WAREHAM — Every First Friday, eucharistic adoration takes place from 8:30 a.m. through Benediction at 5:30 p.m. Morning prayer is prayed at 9; the Angelus at noon; the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3 p.m.; and Evening Prayer at 5 p.m.

WEST HARWICH — Our Lady of Life Perpetual Adoration Chapel at Holy Trinity Parish, 246 Main Street (Rte. 28), holds perpetual eucharistic adoration. We are a regional chapel serving all of the surrounding parishes. All from other parishes are invited to sign up to cover open hours. For open hours, or to sign up call 508-430-4716.

WOODS HOLE — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Joseph’s Church, 33 Millfield Street, year-round on weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. No adoration on Sundays, Wednesdays, and holidays. For information call 508-274-5435.

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The Anchor Sister Maria Teixeira, DSHS

TAUNTON — Sister Maria Teixeira, 94, died at Marian Manor on July 3, 2012.

Born in Portugal, she was the daughter of the late Jose and Matilda (Gomes) Teixeira.

Sister Maria entered the Sisters of St. Dorothy on Nov. 30, 1938, living 74 years as a dedicated religious.

She loved little children and spent many years teaching at Our Lary of Mount Carmel School in New Bedford. Her other teaching ministries were carried out in Newport, Bristol and East Providence, R.I. as well as Taunton.

Sister Maria was a caregiver to disabled Sisters from 1967 to 1992, as well as a sacristan. For many years she also took care of the altar at St. Anthony’s Church in Taunton.

Upon becoming medically unable to live at Villa Fatima, Sister Maria took residence at Marian Manor. While residing there, she participated in all the activities programs, and especially enjoyed playing bingo with her new-found friends.

A funeral Mass was celebrated at St. Anthony Church on July 7. Burial followed at St. Joseph Cemetery.

Memorials may be made to the Marian Manor, Activities Fund, 33 Summer St. Taunton, Mass., 02780.

Arrangements were by the Silva Funeral Home, 80 Broadway, Taunton.

In Your Prayers Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks Aug. 12 Rev. Victor O. Masse, M.S., Retired Pastor, St. Anthony, New Bedford, 1974 Aug. 13 Rev. Edward J. Sheridan, Pastor, St. Mary, Taunton, 1896 Rt. Rev. Leonard J. Daley, Pastor, St. Francis Xavier, Hyannis, 1964 Rev. Gabriel Swol, OFM Conv., Former Associate Pastor, Holy Rosary, Taunton, 1991 Aug. 14 Rev. Raphael Marciniak, OFM Conv., Pastor, Holy Cross, Fall River, 1947 Rev. Conrad Lamb, O.S.B., Missionary in Guatemala, 1969 Aug. 15 Rev. Charles W. Cullen, Founder, Holy Family, East Taunton, 1926 Aug. 17 Rev. Cornelius O’Connor, Former Pastor, Holy Trinity, Harwich Center, 1882 Rev. Msgr. Maurice Souza, Retired Pastor, St. Anthony, East Falmouth, 1996

Around the Diocese 8/10

Good Shepherd Parish, 1598 South Main Street in Fall River, will be holding its annual feast today and tomorrow from 5 to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 12 to 8 p.m. There will be live entertainment all three days, along with Portuguese, Polish and American food, games for all ages, a flea market, Chinese auction and a Portuguese bazaar. Homemade malassadas will be available all three days. Visit www.gsfallriver.com for a complete list of music and activities.

8/12

Mark Shriver, author of “A Good Man: Rediscovering My Father,” will be signing copies of his book on Sunday at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville following the 11:30 a.m. Mass.

The book is about his father, Sargent Shriver, and was written to bring awareness about him and his remarkable career. Sargent Shriver had a deep commitment and love for his wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Jesus Christ and family; all of the values that are desperately needed in today’s material world. The book will be available for sale. For more information call Cathy Carpenter, Administrative Assistant, at 508-775-5744.

8/14

The next meeting of the Catholic Cancer Support Group will be at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville on August 14. The meeting will begin with Mass and Anointing of the Sick at 6 p.m. in the church, followed by an ice cream social in the parish center. A summer visitor to the parish, Gaetana Aliotta, LICSW, a two-time cancer survivor, will speak briefly about House of Hope in Westfield which she helped to establish as a meeting place for cancer support. The support group is faith-based, but all are welcome: cancer patients, survivors, family and friends. Reservations are not needed. For more information call Mary Lees at 508-771-1106 or email maryplees@comcast.net.

8/14

Good Shepherd Parish is offering a program on “Women of the Bible: Role Models for Men and Women Today.” The presentations will be held on August 14, and 21 from 7 to 8 p.m. at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. All are invited to participate in these sessions of reading and discussing the stories of women of the Bible and discover kinship with them in their struggles, pain and joys. For more information call 508-693-1897.

8/17

A fund-raiser to benefit June and Don Chouinard will be held August 17 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Elks Lodge in Fall River. Don Chouinard has been coaching baseball at Bishop Connolly High School for more than 30 years and his home was recently destroyed in a fire.

All proceeds will benefit the Chouinard Family. The event will include dinner, a live band, and a large auction for prizes. Tickets will be available at the door.

For more information call Michael Vieira at 508-472-4763 or Derek Viveiros at 774-644-9178.

8/21

The third and final Summer Catholic Reflections Speaker Series will be “The Life and Spirit of Dorothy Day Today” on August 21 at 7 p.m. at Christ the King Parish in Mashpee. Martha Hennessy will speak about her grandmother, Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement which began in 1933. The Catholic Worker movement is committed to non-violence, voluntary poverty, prayer, hospitality for the homeless, the exiled, the hungry and forsaken. Martha will share her experience with “Mary House,” the Catholic Worker House in New York City. The event is free and open to all. For directions or more information visit www.christthekingparish.com.

8/23

A Citizenship Workshop will be held August 23 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Waquoit Congregational Church, 15 Parsons Lane, East Falmouth. Catholic Social Services’ legal staff assists clients with N400 Application for Naturalization and answers questions about the process of becoming a US Citizen. For more information, contact Ashlee Reed at 508-674-4681 or email areed@cssdioc.org. Please bring your Green Card to the workshop.

9/6

The Lazarus Ministry of Our Lady of the Cape Parish in Brewster is offering a six-week bereavement support program called “Come Walk With Me” that begins September 6 and runs through October 11 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays. The program meets for six weeks at the parish center and is designed for people who have experienced the loss of a loved one within the past year. Pre-registration is required. Contact Happy Whitman at 508-385-3252 or Eileen Birch at 508-394-0616 for more information.

9/7

The Cape and Islands Prayer Group Deanery invites you to attend a retreat to be held September 7-9 at the Sacred Hearts Retreat Center in Wareham. Father Edward A. Murphy, pastor of St. Anthony Parish in New Bedford, will be the presenter. The theme for the weekend retreat is “Spiritual Warfare.” The retreat begins at 7 p.m. Friday and ends at 3 p.m. Sunday. For more information or to register, call Pat at 508-349-1641 or Pam at 508-759-2737.

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The Anchor

August 10, 2012

Holy Cross student sees world in new way after program in South Africa

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) — College of the Holy Cross student Mark Legare didn’t expect it, but a two-week leadership program he recently completed in South Africa got him thinking differently about the world.

Legare, a graduate of Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, now holds a wider view, he said, one that recognizes that people around the world have a lot to share with people in developed countries such as the United States.

“We gained a different perspective on how we live, not just on how others live,” Legare said in a recent telephone interview from

Worcester, the home of Holy Cross.

He admitted that he shared the common American perception that “people in the U.S. have better lives than those living elsewhere.” After the July 8-20 program at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, which focused on leadership, diversity and racial reconciliation in higher education, Legare said, “I know that we have global struggles and I think I see these more clearly.” Legare was among nine students and staff members from the school who took part in “Transcending Boundaries in Global Change Leadership.” The program drew 220 students and academic leaders from univer-

sities in the U.S., Belgium, Netherlands and Japan.

The students were between the ages of 19 and 22, “and because we were all the same age we had certain similarities, despite interesting differences, in our reactions to and understanding of global events, such as the popular uprisings in Egypt last year, 9/11 and the war in Iraq,” Legare said.

“We talked a lot about these perspectives, as well as about the importance of being bold and courageous,” he added, noting that all participants had “a passionate engagement with and investment in research and learning.”

In an address to participants, Jonathan

Jansen, vice chancellor at University of the Free State, challenged students to examine what it means to be a “transformational leader in a wounded country and troubled world.”

Jansen took his position in 2009, a year after white students produced a video of a mock initiation of five black staff members at a university residence that shocked the world and led to student protests in South Africa.

He is the first black vice chancellor at the university, which was founded during apartheid and taught only white students in the Afrikaans language, until it was desegregated in the 1990s. Jansen has launched initiatives to foster racial reconciliation including curriculum reform, student leadership programs and a drive to promote black academics.

Legare said one of the highlights of his time in Bloemfontein was a conversation he and his friend Mendoza, from the Bronx, N.Y., had with Jansen about their interests and concerns.

“We didn’t realize what a big name he has become in South Africa and so we were able to have a long, relaxed chat,” he said.

Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke to the students during the program. Legare said the archbishop “inspired us with his wisdom and humor.” The stories the archbishop shared about life as a black person during apartheid, he said, “could have led to him speaking with great anger or sadness.”

Other Holy Cross participants were students Roobvia Bernadin, Patricia Feraud, Yulissa Nunez and Manny Mendoza, Jacqueline Peterson, dean of students; Mary Conley, associate professor of history; Mable Millner, director of multicultural education; and Virginia Coakley, assistant chaplain.

Holy Cross was one of nine U.S. colleges where University of the Free State students were placed in 2010 as part of the Study Abroad Leaders for Change initiative. Another group of South African students visited Holy Cross in 2011.

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