t eanco VOL. 35, NO. 43
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Friday, November 1, 1991
F ALL RIVER, MASS.
FALL RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSETTS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS Southeas.tern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
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511 Per Year
Imperfect saints give rest of us hope WHEELING ,W.Va. (CNS)St. Jerome struggled with a terrible temper all his life. St. Therese of Lisieux often fell asleep when she prayed. St. Alphonsus of Ligouri had frequent bouts of scruples, misgivings about what was right or wrong. The Catholic Church, which honors all its saints Nov. I, has way of putting them on pedestals. According to this thinking, saints are holy people who lived centuries ago and never did anything wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Gertrud Mueller Nelson, author ofthe book, "To .Dance With God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration." "To be a saint is not to be perfect - not to be made of plastic, with our hands folded, eyes rolled up, sort of living under glass so that no dust gets on us - but to be whole, which is a word related to heal, healthy and holy," she said in an
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interview with The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Wheeling-I Charleston Diocese. Ms. Mueller Nelson said Catholics often believe that holiness means perfection and flawlessness. "There are parts of ourselves that are imperfect, tha~ are flawed, that are wounded, that are out of balance, that are dark and seamy, that are not yet conscious," she said. "That's what makes a person holy - to go and turn around and embrace that part of ourselves that's imperfect." To be a saint is the most difficult and yet simple thing in the world, said Ms. Mueller Nelson, because it means "being fully human, awake, alive, conscious, humble, close to the ground." "We always think our saints are· way out there and we feel we can't quite reach it. It can't be for me," she said. God is not asking us to be that complicated, "but to be human.... Even God became human Turn to Page 14
DIOCESAN ELEMENTARY school principals confer at the Catholic Education convention in Fall River. (Hickey photo)
Catholic educators convene By Marcie Hickey Faculty, staff and administrators from the 29 Catholic schools of the Fall River diocese gathered Monday for the annual Catholic Education convention, held this
year at Bishop Connolly High School, Fall River. Bishop Daniel A. Cronin was principal celebrant for the convention's opening Mass and 13 concelebrants included Diocesan De-
partment of Education director Father Richard W. Beaulieu. Kathie Barboza, principal of St. Jean Baptiste School, Fall River, offered the day's opening remarks, and Jeff Megna of St. John EvanTurn to Page 14
A good and faithful servant begins a new life All Souls' Day 1991: a common life ma:de uncommon by our' Christian faith By Jo McGowan My Aunt Catherine died on my birthday this year. I was visiting my parents at the time, and I sailed into the kitchen early in the morning, full of good cheer and expectation: the birthday girl. When my father told me of her death, the day suddenly seemed as scrambled as a jigsaw puzzle pushed care.lessly off the card table. Aunt Catherine was dead. Not that she hadn't been ill, and weary of living. We had seen her onlya few days earlier and she had said, "I'm just tired of myself." She had struggled with cancer for years and she was exhausted. But still. It was Aunt Catherine. During the rest of that day I spoke with my sisters and brothers on the phone, and we shared stories about her. She had been part of OUF lives forever, and it wasn't easy to let go. The next day her obituary appeared in the local newspaper. Wife of Olement J. Dowling. Mother of seven. Employed for 15 years in a knitting factory. Lifelong resident of Fall River. Is that all? I kept wondering as I read. OK, she had never had a
flashy career, never amassed a fortune, never been stylish or literary. But surely the newspaper could have come up with more than this bare-bones outline of her life. When I· thought about it some more, however, I had toadmit that there wasn't much she had done that would impress a secular newspaper. A devoted wife and mother. That about sums her up, but who's impressed by that these days? She had given her entire life to creating and sustaining a family - a life so common it disappeared when confronted by the Herald News. But not in church, not in the eyes of the Lord. At her funeral Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, I finally felt satisfied. The language of the service was right: the standards were the ones by which she could be judged. "Oh, God, we pray Yo.u in behalf of the soul of Your servant, Catherine." The servant of God. Fifteen years in a factory? And did they know she was a servant of God! "Command that this soul" (this lifelong resident of Fall River) "be taken up by the holy angels and brought home to paradise." It was where she had been headed all her
life and now it was the only'place that mattered. "Absolve the soul of Your servant, Catherine, from every bond of sin so that she may rise again to life in the glory of the resurrection with Your saints." As far as the newspaper knew, her life was over. By the next day, she was old news and pushed from
the obit page into the oblivion of who once was poor, ~ay you have microfilm in the public library.. everlasting rest." But in fact, her life was just beginAs we processed out of the ning and her funeral was both a church, most of us were weeping chance for us to say good-bye and for the loss of this good and faithto bless her on her way: "May the ful woman. She had been a strong angels take you into paradise; may and loving force in our lives and the martyrs come to welcome you nothing could ever replace her. and lead you into the holy city, But the magnificence of the funJerusalem. May the choir of angels eral service assured us that our welcome you, and with Lazarus, grief was not misplaced. The easy, almost casual use of words and concepts entirely foreign to the secular mind delighted me. The angels taking her into paradise? It's just what ( .e wants to believe ~ are we still allowed to? And a choir waiting to sing her into the' holy city! And probably her mother, Grandma Pat, just . inside the gate .. , who knows? Her common life, a life of service and kindness, slipped quietly into the life of Christ and disappeared, and the funeral service gave us the language we needed to make sense of it all. The newspaper deals in today, but we have the words of eternanife.
CATHERINE DOWLING with Father Jon-Paul Gallant, a parochial vicar at 51. Mary's Cathedral at the time this picture was taken.
Reprinted by permission jrom the Oct. 27, J99J, issue oj Our Sunday Visitor, Huntington, Ind.
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