12.04.09

Diocese of Fall River

The Anchor

F riday , December 4, 2009

Pro-Lifers applaud abortion clinic closures

By Christine M. Williams Anchor Correspondent

FALL RIVER — Massachusetts Pro-Life leaders cheered the news that five of the state’s outpatient abortion facilities have closed in the past seven years.

While calling the closures an answer to prayer, they tempered their comments with the reality that the result has not been a sharp drop in the number of abortions in the Commonwealth.

In October, NARAL ProChoice Massachusetts published a report that found that two abortion facilities in the southeastern, one in the central and three in the eastern region shut their doors from 2002-2008.

“It is a triumph of the prayers and efforts that have gone on through the years,” said Patricia Stebbins, president of the Cape Cod Family Life Alliance, a consortium of Church Pro-Life ministries.

About 90 percent of abortions in Massachusetts take place at licensed clinics and private physician practices. There are currently 12 facilities in the state; only one of those — Four Women Health Services in Attleboro — is located in the Diocese of Fall River.

Second Sunday of Advent

That clinic is the closest to Cape Cod, where the only remaining abortion facility closed after abortionist Rapin Osathanondh was arrested for manslaughter for allegedly causing the death of Laura Hope Smith during an abortion in 2007.

Cheryl Sullenger, spokeswoman for Operation Rescue, said in a November 10 press release that pro-abortion advocates should not lament the closure of a “shoddy and negligent” abortionist’s practice.

“Those who claim to be so concerned for women should thank God that Operation Rescue was able to work with Laura’s mother, Eileen Smith, to bring this killer to justice,” Sullenger said. “The bottom line is that NARAL and their ilk would rather keep the dangerous abortion chop shops open, no matter how many people are hurt, than see clinics close for legitimate reasons that actually protect women.”

The Hyannis location of A Woman’s Concern, a group of crisis pregnancy centers, is located near Osathanondh’s closed office. Doris Toohill, a counselor at A Woman’s Concern, said that at Turn to page 14

December 6

‘A season for every activity under heaven’

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS — Students at St. Francis Xavier School in Acushnet pose with Father Leonard Kayondo from the Diocese of Kabgayi who has been working with them this Christmas to help sponsor students to attend high school in Rwanda through the Humura Project.

Students are being asked to raise and donate $10 each to sponsor one of 10 adopted high school students for a full year. (Photo courtesy of Karen Pimentel)

Catholic schools keep busy with charitable efforts for Christmas

By Kenneth J. Souza Anchor Staff

FALL RIVER — With the increasing commercialization of Christmas, many young people tend to get caught up in their own wants and needs instead of reaching out to those less fortunate this time of year.

Catholic school students throughout the Fall

River Diocese are doing their part to buck this trend by participating in several charitable efforts during Advent and Christmas that prove it is often better to give than to receive.

At St. Francis Xavier School in Acushnet, elementary students are working on a unique effort to give the lasting gift of education to 10 high Turn to page 15

Bringing Christmas to the needy is challenging parishes, agencies

By Deacon James N. Dunbar

PROVINCETOWN — Meeting charitable donation deadlines and coming up with a full Christmas menu for marginalized families across the Fall River Diocese finds many parishes and agencies feeling the effects of the poor economy.

But all of them are pledged to make the message of Christ’s birth brighter than ever for those who might otherwise feel it to be the darkest.

“Because it’s easier for those in need to pray and be thankful when they’re not hungry and so able to enjoy Christmas and Christ’s birth, makes it all worthwhile for all of us,” said Yvonne Cabral-Edwards, one of the “Kitchen Angels” at St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Provincetown.

For the past 11 years, CabralEdwards, along with Patricia Sullivan and Kathy Gonsalves,

have led a team of volunteers who traditionally provided apTurn to page 11

THAT’S A WRAP — Staff members at the Diocese of Fall River’s Catholic Social Services office began wrapping donated gifts for needy families. From left, Maria Pereira, director of counseling; Maria Aguiar, counselor; and Lisa Manning, school counselor. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

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News From the Vatican

December 4, 2009

Christ’s royal power is the power of love, pope says

VATICAN CITY — The royal power of Christ the King is the power of love, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The key sign of Christ’s kingship is the cross, a symbol of weakness that God turned into a sign of “the divine power to give eternal life, to liberate (people) from evil and to defeat the dominion of death,” the pope said November 22, the feast of Christ the King.

During his midday Angelus address, the pope told people gathered in St. Peter’s Square that Christ’s power “is the power of love, which is able to draw good out of evil, soften a hardened heart, bring peace to the most bitter conflict and spark hope in the densest darkness.”

Christ the King does not invade

and does not impose allegiance to him, Pope Benedict said.

Each person must make a choice, the pope said: “Who do you want to follow? God or the evil one? The truth or lies?”

Pope Benedict said that following Christ does not guarantee a person success in this world, but it does give “that peace and that joy that only he can give.”

Throughout Christian history, he said, the power of Christ’s love has been demonstrated in the lives of “the many men and women, who in the name of Christ, in the name of the truth and of justice, have stood in opposition to the illusions of earthly powers hidden behind different masks to the point of sealing their fidelity with martyrdom.”

OPEN DIALOGUE — Pope Benedict XVI speaks with Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, England, head of the Anglican Communion, during a private meeting at the Vatican. A Vatican statement said the two leaders reiterated “the shared will to continue and to consolidate the ecumenical relationship between Catholics and Anglicans.” (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

Pope, Anglican leader pledge to continue unity dialogue

VATICAN CITY — While some pundits have sounded the death knell for ecumenical relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, the Anglican spiritual leader, pledged to move forward.

The pope and archbishop met privately at the Vatican for about 20 minutes November 21.

A Vatican statement said the two leaders reiterated “the shared will to continue and to consolidate the ecumenical relationship between Catholics and Anglicans.”

And, it said, they discussed the work their representatives were to begin preparing for a third round of study by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, the body for official theological dialogue.

The statement said the two leaders discussed “recent events affecting relations between the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion,” a reference to Pope Benedict’s apostolic constitution establishing “personal ordinariates” — structures similar to dioceses — for Anglicans who want to enter full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining some of their Anglican heritage.

The announcement appeared to cause some tension, mainly because Archbishop Williams was not informed about the papal provision until shortly before it was announced publicly in late October.

Despite the Vatican’s clear statements that the move was a pastoral response to people who contacted the Vatican seeking to become Catholic, many headlines treated it as the Vatican taking unfair advantage of tensions within the Anglican Communion over the ordination of women as priests and bishops.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Archbishop Williams said he told the pope that the way the an-

nouncement was handled “put us in an awkward position,” but he also said media presentations of the announcement as a “dawn raid on the Anglican Communion” were simply wrong.

“People become Roman Catholics because they want to become Roman Catholics, because their consciences are formed in a certain way and they believe this is the will of God for them. And I wish them every blessing in that,” the archbishop said.

“But I don’t think it’s a question of the Roman Catholic Church as it were trying to attract by advertising or by special offers,” he said, adding that for that reason “I don’t particularly worry about it.”

Asked for the pope’s reaction, the archbishop said, “the main message was that the constitution did not represent any change in the Vatican’s attitude toward the Anglican Communion as such.”

As for the issue of ordaining openly gay men and blessing gay marriages, which a few Anglican provinces have done, Archbishop Williams told Vatican Radio the official policy of the Anglican Communion remains opposed to such practices.

“We have to keep considering this, praying about it (and) reflect-

The Anchor

ing without creating too many facts on the ground that pretend the debate is settled,” he told the radio.

At the same time, he said, it must be done in a way that shows how much “we value and appreciate the contribution made already by many faithful gay and lesbian people who serve as clergy and laity in the Church.”

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Archbishop Williams both said they thought the next topic to be treated by ARCIC would be the relationship between the local and universal Church.

Archbishop Williams told Vatican Radio that if ARCIC studied the topic, the question of the ordination of women probably would come up, at least in the context of the decision-making authority of local dioceses or provinces.

But, he said, ecumenically there still is a question regarding whether “there is a mechanism in the Church that has the clear right to determine for all where the limits of Christian identity might be found,” and whether “the integrity of the Church is ultimately dependent on a single identifiable ministry of unity the papacy to which all local ministries are accountable.”

OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER Vol. 53, No. 46

Member: Catholic Press Association, Catholic News Service

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

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

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December 4, 2009

The International Church

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INSPIRATION IN THE HOLY LAND — Christian Arabs pray under a large portrait of Mother MarieAlphonsine Ghattas during her beatification Mass in the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel, November 22. Mother Marie-Alphonsine, founder of the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Rosary of Jerusalem, was beatified by Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal during a Mass in the presence of more than 3,000 people. (CNS photo/Debbie Hill)

Report on clergy abuse in Dublin Church leads to calls for action

By Cian Molloy Catholic News Service

DUBLIN, Ireland — A report detailing failures of Church leaders’ handling of sex abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Dublin has resulted in calls for bishops’ resignations and further investigations and prosecution.

“The Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets,” said the report by the independent Commission of Investigation, headed

by Judge Yvonne Murphy. “All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state.”

The report said Church officials and police colluded in covering up instances of child sexual abuse by clergy.

The commission investigated the period from January 1975 to May 2004, during which time there were four Dublin archbishops: the late John Charles McQuaid, Dermot J. Ryan and Kevin McNamara and Cardinal Desmond Connell, who retired in 2004 and is now 83.

More than two-thirds of the 325 complaints evaluated by the commission were made during the 1990s and 2000s. Cardinal Connell served as archbishop from 19882004. As of November 30 he had made no comment on the report.

The report emphasized that the

commission was established not to determine where child sexual abuse took place “but rather to record the manner in which complaints were dealt with by Church and state authorities.”

“It is also important in the commission’s view not to equate the number of complaints with the actual instances of child sexual abuse,” the report said. “Of those investigated by the commission, one priest admitted to sexually abusing more than 100 children, while another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis during the currency of his ministry, which lasted for over 25 years. The total number of documented complaints recorded against those two priests is only just over 70.”

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin had warned that the report would shock Catholics.

“Efforts made to ‘protect the Church’ and to ‘avoid scandal’ have had the ironic result of bringing this horrendous scandal on the Church today,” he said in a statement released November 26, the day the report was made public.

“The damage done to children abused by priests can never be undone,” he said. “I offer to each and every survivor my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened to them. I am aware, however, that no words of apology will ever be sufficient.”

Archbishop Martin asked Catholics to support and encourage the “many good priests of the archdiocese ... at what is a difficult time,” and he acknowledged the sense of betrayal felt by many Catholics.

The report found that Auxiliary Bishops James Kavanagh, Der-

mot O’Mahony, Laurence Forristal, Donal Murray and Brendan Comiskey “were aware for many years of complaints and/or suspicions of clerical child sexual abuse in the archdiocese.” Bishop Comiskey resigned at the request of the Vatican in 2002 following publication of evidence that he covered up child abuse.

Bishop Murray is now serving as bishop of Limerick and is considered the hierarchy’s most senior moral theologian.

“Bishop Murray handled a number of complaints and suspicions badly,” the report said, calling at least one situation “inexcusable.”

It noted that in 2002 Bishop Murray acknowledged that “he had not dealt well with the situation.”

Since the report’s publication, there have been several calls for Bishop Murray to resign.

Denying that he had done anything wrong Bishop Murray told the weekly Limerick Leader that he would not resign, but later that afternoon he said in a local-radio interview, “The question whether I remain on, as far as I am concerned, is a question for the people and priests of Limerick.”

Victims also have called for the investigation to be extended to other dioceses.

The report found no direct evidence of a pedophile ring among priests in the Dublin Archdiocese, although it said there were worrying connections between some priests, notably Father William Carney and Father Francis McCarthy, who were seminarians together in the 1970s and who, in one case, both abused the same child.

The Church in the U.S.

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December 4, 2009

Archdiocese issues guidelines on choosing speakers, award recipients

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) — Only individuals in good standing with the Catholic Church can be invited to speak at churches or other Catholic venues or be considered for an award from the Church, according to a new policy issued by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“The speaker’s writings and previous public presentations must also be in harmony with the teaching and discipline of the Church,” it said. “A priest who left the ministerial priesthood without dispensation would not be eligible for consideration. Those in irregular marriages or those living a lifestyle at variance with Church teaching would also not be eligible,” it said.

“Politicians and candidates for public office — regardless of their relationship

with the Catholic Church — should never be invited to speak during or after the holy Eucharist,” the policy said, adding that an invitation to any politician or government official to speak on Church property must be in keeping with guidelines from the U.S. bishops.

Published in the November 19 issue of The Catholic Spirit, the archdiocesan newspaper, the policy was recommended to Archbishop John C. Nienstedt by the archdiocesan priests’ council November 11. The archbishop approved it the same day. The policy is aimed at giving guidance to pastors and administrators of any Catholic institution or organization in the archdiocese “as they consider inviting speakers and/or granting awards,” it said.

DEPOSIT DEADLINE JANUARY 15, 2010! For further information, please call Eliesa at CARMEL TOURS 978-977-3062 ~ Email: carmeltour@aol.com

MEETING OF THE MINDS — Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, speaks during a public forum titled “Faith in a Secular Age” at The Catholic University of America in Washington recently. At right are Jose Casanova, center, of Georgetown University, and professor Charles Taylor, who teaches law and philosophy at Northwestern University. (CNS photo/Ed Pfueller, The Catholic University of America)

Panel on faith in a secular age opens major philosophy project

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A major research project studying faith in a secular age was launched at The Catholic University of America recently with a forum featuring Templeton Prize winner Charles Taylor and Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George discussing the challenges posed by the topic.

Cardinal George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, also holds a doctorate in philosophy and has taught the subject at the Oblate Seminary in Pass Christian, Miss., and at various universities.

Taylor, a Canadian Catholic philosopher whose most recent book is titled “A Secular Age,” was the recipient in 2007 of the Templeton Prize for exceptional contribution to life’s spiritual dimension. In 2008 he received the Kyoto Prize for arts and philosophy, often called the Japanese Nobel Prize.

In introducing the program, Oblate Father George F. McLean, president of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and director of Catholic University’s Center for the Study of Culture and Values, said there’s international and interfaith scholarly interest in the 15-month research project on the meaning of faith and the challenges and opportunities of evolving human awareness.

In his remarks, Taylor said contemporary secular society creates faith challenges unlike those of past generations. He traced a timeline beginning before the 17th century, with the context in which people understood mankind’s place in the cosmos.

The world was widely accepted to have been “designed by God,” and it was seen as full of signs pointing to a divine creator, he said. The secular world was “shot through” with evidence of signs of a creator beyond it.

As scientific inquiry developed and information accumulated it sometimes poked holes in what people previously believed to be evidence of God’s hand in the universe, Taylor explained.

“We can still connect with God ... he’s made this magnificent design of the universe where everything fits together,” Taylor said. “He’s made this set of rules for human society ... a very powerful notion of design.”

Today, Taylor sees a society where people fall into categories of “seekers” or “dwellers.”

As Father McLean described Taylor’s work, dwellers are those who want things decided for them, those who are inclined to commit to “things which are true and old.”

He noted that this puts the Church in a difficult position.

“The degree to which it clarifies and makes things decisive is a problem for seekers,” said Father McLean. “And the degree (to which) it leaves things open and undecided is a problem for the dwellers. In these circumstances, I wouldn’t want to be a bishop.”

Cardinal George said he thinks Taylor “does us all a great deal of good” by challenging people to consider “how can I be holy in a secular age?”

People are basically interested in being holy, the cardinal said, which he sees again and again in his interactions with the people of his archdiocese.

“The saving of Christianity as a whole is to go back to the resurrection and the cross of Christ,” Cardinal George said. “You cannot escape from the world if you believe that the Lord has risen because the resurrected Lord walks beyond the world. He has transcended the world but has not escaped it.”

“The hallmark of an open society is trust in the process,” Cardinal George said. As long as the governing process is open and transparent and trustworthy, “then you can have even dishonest people and the process will enable us all to live in peace and keep seeking.”

The “Faith in a Secular Age” research project will involve scholars from around the United States. So far, two teams have been established with particular topics on which to focus.

Jesuit Father John Haughey of Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center will lead a team studying the interior search for meaning.

William Barbieri, professor in Catholic University’s School of Theology and Religious Studies, will lead a team looking at the role of belief in the sociopolitical order of the global society.

December 4, 2009

The Church in the U.S.

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Immigration reform next up on bishops’ wish list for Congress

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Over the years, hundreds of thousands of postcards have come from U.S. Catholics in organized efforts to influence members of Congress on issues ranging from partialbirth abortion to human cloning to health care reform.

A new postcard campaign in 2010 will urge Congress to take up as its next priority comprehensive immigration reform that would reunite families, regularize the status of an estimated 12 million people in this country illegally and restore due process protections for immigrants.

“We want to increase Catholic grass-roots support for immigration reform, but we also want to show members of Congress a strong Catholic voice and strong Catholic numbers in support of immigration reform,” said Antonio Cube, national manager of the U.S. bishops’ Justice for Immigrants project, in a November 16 conference call with reporters.

The postcard campaign will coincide in most places with the bishops’ National Migration Week, January 3-9, although it might be held earlier or later in some dioceses, Cube said. It also is part of a multifaceted interfaith campaign called “Home for the Holidays,” designed to stress the family reunification aspect of immigration reform.

The Catholic Church is uniquely situated to comment on the immi-

gration issue, because of its “long history of welcoming and serving immigrants for generations” and because it is “present in both the sending countries as well as the receiving countries,” Cube said.

Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration, predicted in a November 17 interview with Catholic News Service that the prospects for Congress to pass immigration legislation will depend a great deal on how health care reform fares in the coming weeks.

If health care reform fails to pass, Bishop Wester told CNS at the U.S. bishops’ fall general assembly in Baltimore, it will mean the political parties are so divided that the chance of passing immigration reform will be greatly diminished.

However, success with health care legislation will bode well for an immigration bill, he said: “That will mean there’s a momentum in the country.”

President Barack Obama has promised repeatedly that immigration reform would be the next big issue on the administration’s domestic agenda.

At a November 13 press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose agencies handle most immigration-related law and policies, said the political climate, economy, border security issues and immigrant flows

have all changed since the last attempt to pass an immigration bill in 2007, making the goal more attainable now.

“I’ve been dealing hands-on with immigration issues since 1993,” said the former Arizona governor. “So trust me, I know a major shift when I see one, and what I have seen makes reform far more attainable this time around.”

She cited improved border security, with particular attention to stopping smuggled cash and weapons on which drug cartels thrive, as well as fewer illegal entries to the United States, partly because of improved enforcement and partly because of the poor economy.

Napolitano outlined an immigration reform package that echoes the comprehensive approach long advocated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, other religious and immigrant rights organizations. She also came out strongly in favor of offering a way for the millions of undocumented immigrants to legalize their status.

“We will never have a fully effective law enforcement or national security system as long as so many millions remain in the shadows,” she said.

Bishop Wester said he’s confident that his fellow bishops are ready and willing to work to help pass a comprehensive reform bill.

“The bishops know the stories, they see the people, the human faces,” he said. One of the biggest

problems with previous attempts to pass immigration reform, said Bishop Wester, was that the “loud, strident voices” opposed to reform caused many members of Congress to hesitate to support legislation.

“We were outperformed 10-toone in terms of media,” said the bishop.

He said the bishops’ coming postcard campaign, as well as plans to use community-based networks such as Facebook and Twitter to remind members of Congress of the level of support for reform, will help offset those opponents.

Other denominations will be organizing their congregations in similar ways, especially in seven states whose members of Congress are considered critical to the immigration reform debate — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina and North Carolina.

The Rev. David Vasquez is campus pastor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, about 20 minutes from the scene of one of the nation’s largest immigration raids — the May 12, 2008, raid at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville. Nearly 400 people were arrested that day — equal to about 15 percent of Postville’s

population.

“While we fail to reform our broken immigration system, 442,000 people will be detained this year by Immigration (and Customs Enforcement), wreaking havoc on communities and families across the country,” said Rev. Vasquez in the conference call.

“This is the equivalent of 1,000 Postville raids.”

The Rev. Dean Reed, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Stephenville, Texas, said healing broken communities is a religious imperative.

“The immigration system has created problems and opened the door to divisive rhetoric,” he said.

“We need to reform the system so these problems can be humanely and fairly solved, and our sense of community restored.”

Jews too have a religious obligation “to welcome the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt,” said Vic Rosenthal, executive director of Jewish Community Action in St. Paul, Minn.

“This commandment from the Torah combined with our history of immigration throughout the world leads us to stand in solidarity with immigrants of today struggling to secure legal status,” he said.

Rev. Msgr. John J. Oliveira, V.E. 106 Illinois St., New Bedford, MA 02745 ANCH. 12/04/09

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The Anchor The call of Christian conscience

Later in this edition, we print in full a remarkable declaration of American Christians — clergy and lay, Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical — that is a brilliant analysis of the ongoing series of attacks on the foundational principles of justice and the common good in our country as well as a courageous, inspiring public pledge to come together in conscience vigorously to oppose them.

Called the “Manhattan Declaration” because it was originally conceived in a meeting in New York City, it is a concise and compelling presentation of the authentically Christian positions on the dignity of human life, marriage and religious freedom and a direct response to recent political developments with respect to health care reform, referenda on marriage and multiple incursions against freedom of conscience.

It is a document that every conscientious Christian citizen ought to read, co-sign, and help implement.

We would like to underline seven important points made in the declaration.

First, while the history of Christian institutions clearly includes “imperfections and shortcomings,” Christians have a two-millennium track-record of being the salt, light and leaven in their societies. From rescuing abandoned babies in the Roman empire, to caring for the sick and suffering during plagues, to leading the fight to eliminate slavery and racism, and to battling against human trafficking and sexual slavery, Christians have not shirked from helping their societies to recognize human dignity and protect and promote it. Today’s Christians are called to do the same.

Second, Christians have a right — and, in fact, an obligation — to speak and act in defense of the dignity of human beings created in the divine image. Like Martin Luther King, William Wilberforce, so many martyrs, and countless Christian heroes before us, we can and must act.

The signers of the declaration state that “no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.” They pledge to proclaim the Gospel “in season and out of season,” and explicitly call on God’s help so that we do not fail in our duty.

Third, the same ignominious notions of “life unworthy of life” that inspired the eugenics movement in the early 20th century and flourished in Nazi Germany have “returned from the grave” in the modern instantiations of the culture of death. Even though the “doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of ‘liberty,’ ‘autonomy,’ and ‘choice,’” no euphemism can gloss over the damage caused by the cancer of abortion and its metastasized daughter cells: embryonic destructive research, “therapeutic” cloning, and “voluntary” euthanasia. This new form of culturally acceptable eugenics “cheapens life in all its stages and conditions” and promotes the belief that “lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable.” American Christians today should do what we wish German Christians would have done in the 1930s and 40s, and stand up in defense of those whom others want to treat as disposable.

Fourth, the “first responsibility of government” is to “protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination.” This is precisely the point that Pope Benedict made during his address to the United Nations in April last year. This means that it is a total dereliction of duty — not just Christian duty but civic — for Christians in public office not to do everything in their means to decrease and eliminate the destruction of innocent human life. It is likewise a total dereliction of religious and civic duty for Christian citizens of a republic like ours — who share in the responsibility of government — not to do everything possible to protect innocent human life.

Fifth, since marriage is the “first institution of human society” and the “institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation,” it follows that “marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits — the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves.” There are many influences that have led to the erosion of a marital culture — out-of-wedlock births, non-marital sexual cohabitation, unilateral divorce, glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity, and the scandalous failure of many Christians and Christian institutions to uphold marriage and “model for the world its true meaning” — but the most urgent threat today is the attempt to redefine marriage as something other than the union of one man and one woman. If political attempts to redefine marriage succeed, the declaration says, it would be nearly impossible to restore a sound understanding of marriage and rebuild a healthy marriage culture, because it “would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.”

Sixth, the greatest attacks on the rights of religious freedom and of conscience come from those who are always clamoring for us to affirm their rights. “It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices — and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law — are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.” This is an “ominous” development “not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded.” The signers of the declaration do not hold back from describing what such lack of respect for freedom of religion and conscience portends: “Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.”

Finally, Christians must be willing to pay the cost for doing what is right, “even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions.” When laws are passed that are “gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral,” when laws “undermine the common good rather than serve it,” Christians have a right and duty to civil disobedience, as we have seen in the example of the early Christians all the way to Dr. Martin Luther King. “Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience.”

This leads to the courageous and powerful concluding paragraph, which is a forewarning of widespread Christian disobedience if unjust laws are forced upon us. “Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.”

Anchor readers wishing to join prominent American cardinals, bishops, priests and lay leaders, Orthodox and Evangelical torchbearers and, as of press time 221,611 other Christian citizens in signing the declaration, may do so by visiting www.manhattandeclaration.org.

December 4, 2009

Spiritual medicine

Last week we discussed how demanding St. for serious felonies. He knew that out of justice, John Vianney was in requiring a firm purpose reparation needed to be made; he didn’t want to of amendment from those who came to him to put the full burden of that reparation, however, receive the sacrament of penance. For a confes- on his penitents. sion to be valid, he knew that there had to be When a priest who was a defender of rigorsincere conversion — shown in a firm intention ous penances came to visit him and asked, “How to amend one’s life and avoid the near occasions can we strike a happy medium in this matter?” of sin — flowing from genuine sorrow for one’s the Curé of Ars let him on a secret that revealed sins. Unless one is willing to do what Jesus how much he had become configured to Christ metaphorically describes in the Sermon on the through his work in the confessional. “My Mount — to “pluck out one’s eyes” and “cut off friend,” he replied, “here is my recipe: I give one’s hands” if they are leading one to sin (Mt them a small penance and the remainder I myself 5:29-30) — absolution would be invalid even if perform in their stead.” a priest were to give it. Out of ardent pastoral Through his rigorous fasts, bodily mortificalove for his penitents, the Curé of Ars was ex- tions, vigils of prayer and especially his heroic igeant in ensuring that each one had a firm reso- stamina in the confessional, St. John Vianney did lution to do precisely what penitents say they’re the vast majority of the penances corresponding ready to do in the Act of Contrition: “to do pen- to the gravity of his penitents’ sins. Just as Christ ance, to sin no more and to avoid whatever leads paid the price for our sins on the cross, so St. me to sin.”

John Vianney was paying most of the cost for his If the patron saint of priests was tough with penitents’ penances through his cruciform life. penitents in terms of the forming resolutions not We can say that St. John Vianney understood the to sin, he was exceedingly mild in terms of the inherent “logic” of the penances to be imposed penances he would impose. This was a huge far better than his colleagues, because, as the source of concern to his brother priests who Catechism passage above describes, the ultimate accused him of being too soft and of lowering penance was paid for by Christ. the standards of the type of penance that should That said, when the good of penitents decorrespond to the manded it, St. gravity of sins John Vianney committed. could be as creThe penance ative and chalthat a priest gives lenging with mean absolved dicinal penances penitent is not as St. Philip Neri supposed to be or any priest in arbitrary; rather, the history of the

By Father it’s meant to be Church.

Roger J. Landry a form of “spiriTo a future tual medicine” nun who was that the penitent battling pride does in order to repair some of the damage and begged his help to grow in humility, St. John caused by sin. As the Catechism of the Catho- Vianney assigned as a penance to kneel on the lic Church says, “Absolution takes away sin, steps of the church with her arms extended in the but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has form of a cross as people were leaving Sunday caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner must still Mass. It was a quick cure, as most looked at her recover his full spiritual health by doing some- as crazy. thing more to make amends for the sin: he must To an elderly gentleman who confessed ‘make satisfaction for’ or ‘expiate’ his sins. This that an excessive desire for worldly respect satisfaction is also called ‘penance’” (1459). was inhibiting his leading a publicly ChrisLike a doctor giving a prescription to a sick tian life, he told him to go pray the rosary out patient to bring about the restoration of health, loud in the front of the church. By the end he the confessor, in prescribing a penance, needs to had learned that he could survive without the adapt it to the state of the person and the seri- cheap esteem of those who value the wrong ousness of the spiritual infection. “The penance things. the confessor imposes,” the Catechism continTo a worldly young man whose principal ues, “must take into account the penitent’s per- fault was vanity — which terrified him from sonal situation and must seek his spiritual good. giving witness to the faith — he prescribed a It must correspond as far as possible with the penance that was like a burst of radiation for the gravity and nature of the sins committed. It can cancer that was killing his soul. After having him consist of prayer, an offering, works of mercy, pray acts of faith, hope and love before leaving service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sac- church, St. John Vianney assigned him to particirifices, and above all the patient acceptance of pate in the upcoming Corpus Christi procession the cross we must bear. Such penances help con- in his hometown. He was to secure a place as figure us to Christ, who alone expiated our sins close as possible to the Blessed Sacrament, right once for all” (1460). behind the canopy. Since he and his friends had The colleagues of the Curé of Ars thought been known to make fun of those who took part that the penances people were saying they re- in the procession, he dreaded their seeing him ceived in Ars were not corresponding to the now participating in it, and prayed during the “gravity and the nature of the sins committed.” two weeks between his confession and Corpus Many of them tried to talk to him about it direct- Christi that rain would cancel the procession. ly. Others reported him to the bishop. The light The rain didn’t come. penances of the pastor of Ars were a common “Were I to live a hundred years,” the young topic in clergy get-togethers. man said years later, “I should never forget those St. John Vianney was aware of the criticism. two hours spent walking behind the canopy.

“I am accused of being somewhat easy with cer- Cold perspiration bathed my forehead; my knees tain pilgrims,” he admitted to Brother Athana- shook under me.” But the experience not only sius, one of his chief helpers in his later years made him bolder in his own living of the faith, in Ars. But he had a ready defense: “Surely I but his example touched the heart of his friends must take into account the trouble it costs them and many others and brought them to examine to come from so far and the expense to which the immature state of their own spiritual life. they are put.” Making expensive journeys to Ars Within two years, he had founded a St. Vincent and waiting in line for up to eight days to go to de Paul Conference in his hometown comprised confession, St. John Vianney believed, was al- of 30 of his friends who had been won over by ready powerful medicine for most of the peni- his example on that Corpus Christi. tents. “They reproach me,” he continued, “but Most of the penances he gave, however, were can I really be hard on people who come from simple, straightforward and light: a few prayers so far, and who, in order to do so, have made so asking the help of God and the saints to continue many sacrifices?” to correspond to grace just as they had correHe thought that the more effective medicine sponded to the grace that had brought them back to spur penitents on to repair the damage due to to confession. sin was to prescribe honey rather than vinegar.

His medicinal penances, those he gave and “Were I to impose severer penances,” he said, “I those he did on behalf of those who had come should discourage them.” to him, remain a model for doctors of the soul This doesn’t mean, however, as some thought today. at the time, that his behavior was akin to bleedFather Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of ing heart judges who dole out slaps on the wrists Padua Parish in New Bedford.

Putting Into the Deep

December 4, 2009

I

am writing my personal thoughts on the priesthood from my desk that overlooks the home and property where I grew up, in the town of Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard.

The roots of my vocation to the priesthood will be found here, on Tashmoo Avenue, as a member of St. Augustine’s Parish.

I attended Tisbury High School and graduated in 1956.

It was during my Junior year that I informed my parents that I wanted to enter the seminary and study for the priesthood. This decision had been discussed with the priests who had served the parish here on the Island during the course of my years as an altar server. They were all very supportive, but more importantly, their example, availability and the spirit with which they ministered to the people here on the Island, impressed me.

It was the faith of my parents and their involvement in the parish — along with the various priests who came to serve among us — that nurtured the desire within me to think about being like them. It was during these years that my parents were members of a couples’ club that met in the homes, so we often had

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ongressman Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) has asserted: “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” This was by way of explaining why he would keep advocating for abortion rights. Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence, his diocesan bishop, wrote him in response, “Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does make you less of a Catholic.

Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church.”

The Bishop continued: “If you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, makes you ‘less of a Catholic.’” Now Kennedy reports, in an interview published on November 22 in the Providence Journal, “The bishop instructed me not to take Communion.” The Bishop is right.

If you’re seriously out of communion with the Church, you should not receive holy Communion. When our Lord said, “He who hears you, hears

7

The Anchor

Back to the seminary on Tashmoo Avenue priests at our home. Mom always demand not only the knowledge of theology but also the skills had some sweet bread on hand. for developing a spiritual life After graduation, I was that would enable us to serve the informed that I would attend St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, people entrusted to our care.

Another plus during my years Conn. Not having sufficient of study was the opportunity knowledge of Latin, I would be to have a spiritual director who there for three years, even though provided the support and encourthe program was normally two years. In 1959, I moved to St. John’s Seminary Year For Priests in Brighton. Here the focus was on philosophy Vocational Reflection for two years. When I began the four years of theology, conducted

By Father in Latin, Rome gave Thomas C. Lopes permission for the classes to be taught in English. agement to set up a plan once we So much for my extra year at St. completed our course of study.

Thomas.

Shortly after ordination, I had the My seminary days and years opportunity to make a directed are filled with many fond memoretreat at one of the area’s retreat ries of teachers and classmates. I believe that we were blessed with centers and I have been able to a number of great professors who stay with this program all my years of ministry. joined the faculty at a time when It was during my years of new and exciting developments service in Portuguese parishes were occurring as the Second that I was brought into contact Vatican Council was in session. with the devotions honoring the My fondest memories were the Holy Spirit, which is a particular developments in Scriptural and custom of the Azorean Islands, moral theology. the heritage of my father.

The other focus was on the After completing 25 years of spirituality of the diocesan priest. ministry, I went on sabbatical for Our ministry in the parish would

three months. While there, one of the spiritual directors suggested a plan for spiritual growth: an hour a day, a day each month and a week each year of time set aside for personal prayer and reflection.

I have found this schedule most rewarding.

I have been blessed with three brothers and three sisters.

They are all married and have given me 27 nieces and nephews. My sacramental ministry to my family over the years has been a wonderful gift.

It has now been extended to grand nephews and nieces. My extended family members continue to call upon me for their sacramental needs, providing me with much support, encouragement and joy.

I was ordained with two other classmates by Bishop Connolly on Feb. 13, 1965. Over the past 43 years, I have served in every deanery of the diocese. I served for eight years as a hospital chaplain, during which I was involved in two diocesan retreat programs: the Cursillo Movement for adult men and women, and the ECHO program for high school students. These provided a community of supportive

friends throughout the diocese.

Another area of involvement over the years has been through the National Federation of Priests Councils. It is a nation-wide organization, now celebrating its 40th anniversary, whose membership comes from diocesan priest councils and works to be of service to priests and presbyteral councils. It functions in conjunction with the American bishops to provide programs, resources and support to member councils. Attending these national meetings has provided me a broad view of the Church across the country, especially of the wonderful work being done by priests in every state.

All through these years of ministry, I have managed to take time for myself, and I have enjoyed photography, travel, sailing, kayaking, gardening and spending time with my siblings and their families.

I retired last year and now I live and minister on the Island where I grew up. It is a joy to assist the local pastor and to give back to the community that fostered my vocation and enabled me to hear his call.

Father Lopes is a retired priest of the diocese living on Martha’s Vineyard.

me” (Lk 10:16), he was talking claim to heaven in return for to his apostles, and their sucmeager temporal advantage. cessors the bishops. After all, “What does it profit a man to he told them, “Whatever you gain the whole world, and sufbind on earth will be bound in fer the loss of his soul?” (Mk heaven” (Mt. 18:18).

8:36).

When St. Paul wrote “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord

By Dwight Duncan (1 Cor 11:27),” he was warning of the grave consequences of unworthy reception of the Eucharist.

Of course, people claim that So Bishop Tobin is actually do- separation of Church and state ing Rep. Kennedy a favor in the means that prelates shouldn’t long run, by warding off further tell politicians how to vote on sacrilege and scandal, things matters of public policy. But it for which the Congressman, as certainly is within the province all of us, would have to answer of the bishop to tell Catholics in the life to come. what is necessary to remain a On the anniversary of his Catholic in good standing. Our uncle’s assassination in Dallas constitutional right to the free in 1963, in the month tradition- exercise of religion requires no ally dedicated to the holy souls less: The Church, and not govin purgatory, and not long after ernment officials, decide what the funeral of his own father it is to be a good Catholic.

Senator Ted Kennedy, it is good We just celebrated the feast to remember that as Cathoof Christ the King. As Pope lics we believe in the four last Benedict said on that occasion, things: death, judgment, heaven Christ’s kingdom “is not that and hell. (Of course, believof the kings and great people ing in death doesn’t require of this world; it is God’s power much faith.) Perhaps politicians to give eternal life, to free from should especially remember evil, to confound the dominion these ultimate realities, as they of death.” Every conscience may be tempted to forfeit their must choose: “Who do I want

to follow? God or the evil one?

Truth or the lie?”

While the way of conversion and repentance is open to all, and much to be preferred, Congressman Kennedy is ultimately free to leave the Church if he can’t accept its essential (and, Catholics believe, infallible) teachings. Few things are worse than being a phoney, pretending to be a faithful Catholic while being an actual protestant (in the etymological sense of dissident from, protesting, the Church’s authority).

The bishops of the Church in this country, as I noted in last month’s column, have spoken with one voice about the need

for abortion funding to be removed from health care reform.

Pro-Lifers of whatever faith around the country have mobilized to stop a stimulus package for the abortion industry in the guise of health care reform.

As a result, the House version excluded all abortion funding.

The Senate version now being debated is trying to include abortion funding again. Fortunately, we have bishops who know how to bishop, and lay people, including many nonCatholics, who know how to be conscientious citizens.

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

Bishops who know how to bishop

Judge For Yourself

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The Anchor

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he filling in of gorges and the lowering of mountains are images used in today’s first reading and also, to great advantage, by John the Baptist as the prophet of Advent in Luke’s Gospel. The season of Advent encourages Christians to view the second coming of Christ through the lens of God’s first advent at Bethlehem.

There is but one way to prepare for both, and that is through repentance. Without the repentance John preached, the love of which Paul wrote to the Philippians in the second reading can hardly “increase ever more and more.”

This second Sunday of Advent encourages us to dig into and probe our souls. All the readings today propose fundamental change in our life. The reading from Baruch senses a radical shift in current events about to unfold, and exhorts the people of Israel to

Repentance: A change of the heart

“take off your robe of mourndeveloping a better prayer life, ing and misery,” and “put on or performing works of charity, the splendor of glory from but points to something more God forever.” St. Paul’s letter radical: a fundamental change to the Philippians encourages of heart. This means going them to be “pure and blameless” in order that they may fully Homily of the Week experience the “day of Second Sunday Christ.” An old way of of Advent life is to be put aside in order to enjoy the

By Deacon “fruit of righteousLarry St. Onge ness.” John the Baptist appears in the Gospel of Luke preaching “a baptism beyond correcting petty faults of repentance,” indicating that and bothersome idiosyncrasies, preparations for the coming of and looking deeply at what Christ would require us to have drives us — not only examina major change of heart. ing problems, but our prioriImprovements always mean ties; not only evaluating our change, and if we hope for a behavior, but our hearts. more productive and happy John the Baptist’s mission life, some changes in our life is seen in Luke’s Gospel as a patterns must take place; genfulfillment of God’s decree that erally, the deeper the change mountains should be laid low the better. According to today’s and valleys be filled in: “prereadings, growing in the way pare the way of the Lord, make of the Lord does not discount straight his paths.” Building

a straight road does not mean avoiding what lies in our path.

It means filling in the valleys and flattening mountains that stand in our way.

John aims to make the Lord’s paths straight by proclaiming “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Repentance and baptism force us to face up to two vital and contrasting truths. One we would compare to a valley, the other to a mountain. Repentance involves acknowledging our sinfulness, staring into the depths of ourselves and seeing our weakness, our failure. It involves acknowledging that this world can be a vale of tears, a place of shadows. To move on from repentance to baptism involves acknowledging that we are forgiven, that God’s love is greater than our sins. To realize this is to stand on the mountain heights and be filled

with confidence and strength.

John the Baptist invites us to face the reality of sin and God’s forgiveness, and to work through them. Dwelling exclusively on one, to the neglect of the other, will not enable us to create a straight path for the Lord. We prepare a straight path for the Lord by facing our sins head on — the valley — and the reality of God’s forgiving love — the mountain.

Advent is about remembering God’s promise to bring to completion the good work begun in us, if we will give God a chance and allow our perceptions to change so that we can believe the hope that has been offered to us.

Deacon St. Onge was ordained a deacon 27 years ago. He and his wife, Jackie, have four children. He serves at Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. James Church in New Bedford.

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. Dec. 5, Is 30:19-21,23-26; Ps 147:1-6; Mt 9:35-10:1,5a,6-8. Sun. Dec. 6, Second Sunday of Advent, 6 Bar 5:1-9; Ps 126:1-6; Phil 1:46,8,11; Lk 3:1-6. Mon. Dec. 7, Is 35:1-10; Ps 85:9ab,10-14; Lk 5:17-26. Tues. Dec. 8, feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Gn 3:9-15,20; Ps 98:1-4; Eph 1:3-6,11-12; Lk 1:26-38. Wed. Dec, 9, Is 40:25-31; Ps 103:1-4,8,10; Mt 11:28-30. Thur. Dec. 10, Is 41:13-20; Ps 145:1,9-13ab; Mt 11:11-15. Fri. Dec. 11, Is 48:17-19; Ps 1:1-4,6; Mt 11:16-19.

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Willful blindness and the Fort Hood massacre

an Henninger, whose Wall Street Journal column is aptly titled “Wonder Land,” put it best: “The only good news about the Fort Hood massacre is that U.S. electronic surveillance technology was able to pick up Major Hasan’s phone calls to an al Qaeda-loving imam in Yemen. The bad news is that the people and agencies listening to Hasan didn’t know what to do about it. Other than nothing.”

Here in Washington, D.C.— where strategists are already game-planning What-HappensAfter-the-Next-9/11 — one can only wonder whether any such

horror will be preceded by other they were, and are, in this clash missed warnings: missed, not of civilizations. The Obama because the intelligence hardadministration seems to believe ware is deficient, but because that appeasing the homicidal the programming of the software, meaning the analysts, filters out anything that smacks of distorted religious conviction.

In the eight years and

By George Weigel three months since 9/11, the U.S. government has willfully turned a blind eye to the Islamist roots culture of victimhood that has of the war against jihadism. warped the Arab Islamic world The Bush administration was for decades — and that has now reluctant to name things for what reared its head on a U.S. Army base — is more urgent than calling spades spades.

Perhaps the most obnoxious expression of this myopia is the instinct to warn the American people against over-reaction, rather than to name jihadism for what it is. That instinct was on display in the immediate aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre, when Secretary of Home and Security Janet Napolitano raised the alarm, not about jihadism, but about possible violence against Muslims by outraged Americans. Query to Secretary Napolitano: The overwhelming majority of victims of jihadist terrorism around the world are Muslims — like those little Afghani girls who want to learn how to read and have acid poured on their faces by Taliban thugs. Isn’t identifying the

The Catholic Difference

sources of crimes like this, and like Fort Hood, more important than politically-correct posturing about American yahoos going bonkers and conducting anti-Muslim crusades in these United States?

When my small book, “Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism,” was first published in early 2008, it was read as samizdat — underground literature — at the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency: or so I’m told by friends and colleagues. Evidently, even a primer on the war against jihadism that stressed the imperative of serious, sustained interreligious dialogue was too controversial for career civil servants to be seen reading, because the book also described the ways in which bad theology had led to lethal politics.

“Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism” has now been issued in paperback. In a new afterword, I stress two points: that our security remains threatened by our government’s institutional refusal to take the religious roots of jihadism seriously; and that Pope Benedict XVI has pointed the way to new and potentially more fruitful Christian-Islamic dialogue by insisting than any such conversation focus on the hard questions — religious freedom as a fundamental hu-

man right, and the separation of religious and political authority in a just state. We’ll see if the paperback shares the same samizdat fate as the hardback in the corridors of power.

Father Raymond de Souza, the Canadian columnist, identified another aspect of willful blindness in the aftermath of Fort Hood. Noting the disinclination among English-speaking opinion merchants to connect the dots between extremist Islam and Fort Hood, Father de Souza reminded his readers of the double standard at work here: for when late-term abortionist George Tiller was murdered in June, many of those same columnists immediately opined that the murderer was a “logical extension” of the Pro-Life movement.

That slander was quickly falsified when the mainstream Pro-Life movement immediately and publicly condemned Tiller’s murder. We’ll know that a corner has been turned when, after the next Fort Hood, the immediate public reaction of Muslims and non-Muslims alike is an unequivocal assertion that crying “Allahu akbar” (God is Great) while spraying bullets at innocents is a profanation of the name of God. George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

December 4, 2009

9

The Anchor

Never count your chickens before they crossed the road

Tuesday 1 December 2009 — Old Dighton Village. In December of 1929, the game called Bingo was invented here’s a forthcoming book by Paul Milo.

It will be titled “Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Builders, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century.” I hope to be able to read this one as soon as it’s published. The title alone is interesting. It surfaces memories.

As a gangly student at Normandin Junior High School, I remember an all-school assembly being announced over the public address system. We had a visiting lecturer, said the voice.

Our guest was a futurist. I really didn’t know what a futurist was but I was curious. Being at an impressionable age, I was mesmerized by his presentation.

Now that I’m older, I’m beginning to realize that the future he predicted never happened. I’ve been robbed.

Our cities were by now supposed to have all been encased in protective bubbles with sliding roofs. If we didn’t like the weather, we just pressed a

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hirty years ago I received a Christmas present that would change my life. The present came from my mother, a woman so artistically gifted and impulsively creative that each year the wrapping paper and bows on the presents beneath our tree would be as splendid as the gifts within. That Christmas morning 30 years ago, it was obvious that my mom had been keeping her artistic eye on my progress in a high school photography class for when I unwrapped one unusually flat present, I was astonished to find two of my own color photographs enlarged and mounted on museum quality photo boards. Seeing those two photographs, physical manifestations of my own emerging creativity, uncovered for me what would become one of the most important passions of my life: photography.

Truthfully my mother’s gift was not so much the beautifully wrapped and professionally mounted photographs, but her magnificent insight into the fact that photography would be an excellent vehicle for someone, like myself, who had a intrinsically visual mind-set.

She saw that I had an intuitive knack for pairing abstract concepts with physical forms in order to gain insights into

button and closed the roof. Our past. We could just kick back, cocooned cities were completely relax and text-message all our climate controlled. As I write friends. We do have text mesthis, it’s pouring rain outside saging, but texting while driving and having just returned from a car is illegal in many states. walking the dogs, I’m dripping None of this ever happened. wet. Would somebody please The cars themselves would be close the dome? wonders to behold. They would I remember, too, what the cityscapes were supposed to look like.

The buildings were all Reflections of a sky-scrapers, interconParish Priest nected by aerial walkways. It never happened,

By Father Tim although I once lived in Goldrick a rectory that was connected to the church by a breezeway. It was handy, but I be entered by gull-winged wouldn’t call it futuristic. doors. Remember the stainEach of us would have our less steel Delorian? The sleek private sports helicopters in vehicles would have stylish fins which to buzz around town. Or, protruding out back. Instead, if we preferred, we could strap we have the boxy cars we drive on our solar-powered backpacks today. Those auto designers in and jet away. If we were planDetroit seem to have gotten their ning a family trip, all we had to wires short circuited on the way do was punch a code into the to the future. computer in our dashboards and Our domed cities would not just the vehicles would speed off exist on land, but also under the to our destination on their own sea. We would be able to whiz to volition. Traffic flow would be the surface in our very own minicontrolled by laser beams from submarines. I guess that’s still on a central command, so auto acthe drawing boards as well. cidents would be a thing of the Then, of course, we would

have space colonies, completely self-contained. If we decided to live and work on the planet Mars or in some other galaxy light-years away or just up in a low-orbit space station, it would all be possible. But it isn’t.

Our households by now are supposed to be managed by robots that respond instantly to our voice commands and go about the assigned chore. Why do I still have to make my bed, take out the garbage, and walk the dogs?

It isn’t supposed to be like this at all.

The cutting-edge technology at this point should have been time travel. All we would have to do to travel backwards or forwards in time was to get in the unit and punch in the year and location. Instead, we need a passport just to drive across the border into Canada.

I have noticed that the future is not what it used to be. I think it’s because we look to the future as simply a continuation of today. Whatever trends we are experiencing at the moment we presume will continue to develop and so we project present

trends into the future. The problem is that “tomorrow” is not a super-sized “today.” We cannot factor unforeseeable changes.

We were expecting another Ice Age, for example, but instead we got global warming.

It would have made our lives a whole lot easier if the Pilgrims had the foresight to build their towns closer to the airports. And who knew in the 1950s, when all us kids were trained to crawl under our desks in case of a nuclear attack, that communism would implode by itself. Who knew that the world economy would collapse or that so many shopping malls would stand vacant or that we would be merging and closing churches?

Not even the futurists could see these things coming. The fact is you can only predict the future after it has happened. Today’s trends can get run over on their way to the future.

Not that I’m jaded, dear readers, but when it comes to the future, I’ve learned to never count my chickens before they’ve crossed the road.

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

husband who was enrolled in the abstract, and understood rightly that photography could a doctoral program, it seemed that my options were fairly help me satisfactorily express limited. But then I looked and share my insights. I would later come to appreciate around at what was available that words, spoken and written, held the same satisfactory power.

College, marriage, and beginning a family represented a 10-year detour from professional photography,

By Heidi Bratton but during that time three other passions of mine came to light: to parents trying to pass the my personal love for Jesus, a strong desire to teach my chil- Christian faith on to their children right at home, and I saw dren and other families about a literary Sahara Desert where his love, and the admiration it seemed there should be a for the power of words that flowering Garden of Eden of I already mentioned. Little catechetical materials. It was did I realize that these passions would be as important as in that moment that I saw my passion for photography not photography when I first felt only as a gift from my mother, the call to join in John Paul the Great’s “new springtime of but also as a talent from God evangelization” about 15 years which I could put to use by writing and photo-illustrating ago.

Christian children’s books for Now, at that time I was the domestic Church. the usual sort of Catholic I saw that by tucking a who thought that evangelizsimple lesson of faith into ing could only be done by beautifully photo-illustrated priests and nuns who trekked children’s books I could nourto the farthest reaches of ish the faith of the two audiAfrica, built concrete-block ences, the child and the parent churches, and fed orphans. reading together, and thereby When I, therefore, began to help to transform the domesconsider how to join in the tic church into the flourishnew springtime while already ing garden of faith that God having three children and a

designed it to be. The true test of my inspiration, and my willingness to persevere for it, would come in the two years it took develop the books and to get my first publisher.

Into this time period stepped my husband and children with some unwrappable gifts to further change my life. From my husband I received relentless encouragement, technical support, and enough time away from parenting and home schooling to write and take photographs.

From my children and many of their friends I received the boundless willingness to say “cheese” just about a million

times.

It is my fervent hope that as my children grow I can help them uncover their own passions and God-given talents as my mom helped me. This Christmas, however, I will be giving them, my husband, my mom, and so many others the gift of joyful gratitude for their help in the launching of four new children’s books to add to the 11 already in print, and the most beautiful way I can think to wrap the gift of gratitude is in a great big hug.

Heidi, her husband, and their six children belong to Christ the King Parish in Mashpee. Her newest children’s books are available at www.circlepress.org.

The Ship’s Log

Life-changing gifts

Home Grown Faith

10

The Anchor

For love of God and country, she answers the call

By Michael Pare Anchor Correspondent

NEW BEDFORD — Whether it has been from her God or her country, Rita M. Leger has always answered the call.

Like so many Americans, the bombing of the U.S. navy base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, shook Leger to her core. She was 18 at the time.

And she so desperately wanted to help.

“When we were bombed, like a lot of people, I didn’t like it too much … I wanted to go in,” she said.

As a woman, she couldn’t. Not right away, anyway. But when the U.S. Marine Corps’ Women’s Reserve was formed early in 1943, Leger saw an opportunity. She was determined to serve her country. In July of that year, she gathered all of the necessary papers and walked into the recruiting office.

Fittingly, it was the holiday weekend. Leger remembers it vividly.

“I was born on the Fourth of July and so I had to wait until the Monday after the long weekend,” she said.

Leger did her basic training at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and served as a drill instructor. She served from 1943 to 1945 and then re-enlisted during the Korean War. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she said.

“I didn’t see active duty in Korea, but I was on standby.”

Loyalty to her country was something that Leger learned at a young age. One of four children of Adelard and Eugenie Leger, Leger’s love for her country has deep roots.

Leger’s parents taught her that there were rules in life to follow. They taught her dis-

— always. After all, her commitment to her cipline.

“My father was a World War I veteran,” faith, like that to her country, also had deep she said. “He would walk in the parades. We roots.

Leger remembers that as a young womwere so proud of him.”

It was also at a young age that the impres- an, she always had that urge to help out at sionable Leger fostered a deep love for God church. She would typically arrive early for Mass and if the and what would priest needed help prove to be a lifewith something, long commitment Leger stepped forto her faith. ward. As women “My mother were given more would tell us stoopportunities ries at night,” said to get involved, Leger. “We would Leger embraced kneel at her feet them. and she would tell Leger’s love us the story of a for God is demonsaint. I was drawn strated in the tireto those stories.” less commitment Before enlistshe now has to ing in the U.S. St. Francis Xavier Marine Corps., Parish in AcushLeger had another net. form of service “Whateverthey in mind. At about need me to do, I the age of 15, she do,” she said. had decided that She cleans she wanted to be the church and a nun. She went to helps to count the her parish priest at weekly collection. the time to talk to him.

ANCHOR PERSON OF THE WEEK — Rita M. She also restocks the candles in the “I think he Leger. prayer room or could see in me heads to the parish something that I couldn’t see …he told me that I should go office where she helps to stuff bulletins and mailers on a regular basis. out and see the world first,” she said.

“I get a real sense of satisfaction,” said So she did. And she never regretted the decision. But her religion stayed close to her Leger.

Msgr. Gerard P. O’Connor, pastor at St. Francis Xavier, sees Leger as a faithful Catholic who “is not afraid to show” her love for her parish.

“Rita is a tremendous parishioner who always has the best interests of St. Francis Xavier in mind,” he said. “She is involved in so many aspects of parish life, but her behind-the-scenes support is legendary. Rita is concerned not only with the physical upkeep of the church, but the well being of its parishioners, staff, and pastor. She’s always upbeat and is a pleasure to be around.”

In a sense, Leger sees helping out at St. Francis Xavier as her duty. After all, God has given her so much and it is only right that she does what she can in return.

“He is my strength,” said Leger. “With him, I have no fear. I have had illnesses in my life. I’ve had heart surgeries. But I figured whatever he wanted to be done, would be done. And he has taken on whatever fear I have had. I have given it to him and he has taken it.”

At 86, Leger shows no signs of slowing — though, she can’t imagine doing the walking she did back in basic training these days.

Leger has two guideposts in her life — God and country. She always will. She gets around just fine and proudly flies an American flag from the front door of her home.

The flag is a tangible sign of her love for country.

And as for her love of God? That she demonstrates through her daily acts of selflessness and kindness. Perhaps it is through a simple act of cleaning the church sacristy or restocking the candles. Or maybe it is through a visit to someone at a nursing home, another of her simple pleasures.

But it is there, as it always has been. Just like those nights when her mother was telling her the stories of the saints.

“I love my Church,” she said.

To nominate a person, send an email to FatherRogerLandry@AnchorNews.org.

Bringing Christmas to the needy continued from page one

proximately 30 needy families and as many as 60 children with food baskets, clothing, toys and even Christmas trees to brighten their holy-day holidays.

At first, the Kitchen Angels used a mix of charitable donations and their own credit cards to get underway. In the “up” years since with a significant number of benefactors, the program reached its zenith.

“But it’s going to be a different kind of a Christmas we’re offering this year,” reports CabralEdwards.

“We’ve witnessed a big drop in residents in our area — because it’s costly to live down here on the Cape and fewer children enrolled in our schools.

And while it might seem easier to target smaller numbers, we’re especially affected by the poor economy and we can’t hit on fewer firms and businesses too hard for their usual contributions,” she added.

“The year-round population in our area has dropped from 5,000 to 2,500 and the school enrollment has also dropped, but what is good news is that there is an increase in children in our parish’s Religious Education program,” she noted.

“This year, we’ll be helping approximately 20 families with 32 children,” Cabral-Edwards stated.

“But instead of us buying the food and toys, we’ll be offering a $75 food gift card to Stop and Shop, a $50 gift card that’s good at K-Mart or Sears for toys, and we’ll provide a tree for those who ask,” she explained.

Although the Kitchen Angels in the past has done a collection of outerwear for the needy, the local Girl Scouts have taken up that effort this year, “and we have been asked to help them out and we will,” Cabral-Edwards reported.

“We’re praying and hoping things will get better between now and next year, and if things don’t improve economically and we find more generous benefactors, we might be facing the reality that this could be our final year,” she told The Anchor.

The importance of Christmas presents as well as needed food and clothes can be to raising the hearts and minds of families and their children to the story and meaning of Christ’s incarnation is inspiration for Mary Lou Frias, who for 12 years has been the volunteer coordinator for the gigantic Gift of Giving Program of the diocese’s Office of Catholic Social Services.

“This year we will be handing out from 8,000 to 10,000 gifts to an estimated 4,000 families and

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The Anchor

December 4, 2009

approximately 5,000 children, the most we’ve ever done,” she said.

“Each year our aim is to offer every needy child a wonderful clothes outfit and a great toy. It might well be also for an adult who is handicapped. And for families of five or more we toss in other things, like blankets and shampoo that come in on a regular basis to CSS.” The Christmas effort begins in the fall, when the program — working out of the CSS headquarters at 1600 Bay Street in Fall River — takes in donations

from parishes, schools and individuals as well as from business and industrial donors.

Since Halloween, Frias and hundreds of volunteers — “including high school and college students who provide the mus-

cle, many of whom come yearly and remain anonymous” — have been spending their spare time weeknights and weekends collecting, purchasing, wrapping and delivering warm clothing, toys and other necessary items

families have asked for to help brighten someone’s Christmas.

“In the coming weeks it means we will be in Sundays in large numbers too,” Frias added.

Turn to page 12

12

The Anchor

Bringing Christmas to the needy continued from page one

Frias, whose full-time “hat” is being the director of Health Services in the Counseling Center at Bridgewater State College, recalled that when the Giving Tree Program began 12 years ago, only nine parishes took part.

“Right now there are 24 parishes participating and we wish there were more,” she said.

Besides parishes, some schools and private organizations have also set up the Giving Trees beginning the first Sunday of Advent. At the parish level, pre-prepared tags representing what marginalized families in those parishes request are hung on the trees in churches or their church halls.

Parishioners then take the tags, purchase the suggested

gift or gifts and return them unwrapped to the parish. The gifts are transported by volunteers using their own vehicles, to the CSS headquarters on Bay Street where they are wrapped and returned to the parishes for distribution.

“For years we worked in dingy basements and tight quarters in various buildings in several cities, but now we are in roomy facilities,” Frias recalled.

“I think the poverty of our past surroundings helped put us in the mood to help those who live daily in poverty.”

She said families of any religious denominations with needs not met by other organizations, federal, state or local, can come into any of the five CSS offices in Fall River, New

Bedford, Taunton, Attleboro and Hyannis and file requests,” said Frias.

And a CSS food basket is another gift,” she explained “Our problem is that supermarkets limit how many turkeys an individual can purchase,” reported Frias. “While we still purchase some turkeys and prepare the food baskets, for some families we instead offer a gift card so they can buy turkeys.

We are always seeking funds for the gift cards.”

What impact the economy will have on the programs “won’t be known until we are fully underway,” said Frias.

“Hopefully, the generosity we have seen in the past will carry us through.”

Each year, Frias has the same

December 4, 2009 “dream.”

“Wouldn’t it be grand if we get all the items needed and have them ready — so that when those who asked for our help — could come in and look at what we have and then select the size, the color, the right toy, just as they would in a department store?” she mused.

Even as each of the 79 parishes that have St. Vincent de Paul Conferences combine to furnish approximately 4,000 Thanksgiving food baskets — targeting nearly 40 to 50 needy families in each parish, Irene Frechette can’t sit back and wait.

“We have to prepare another 4,000 food baskets for those families who can’t afford to celebrate the holy-day holiday for Christmas,” she said.

Frechette replaced Ron Correia in September as Central Council President of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which changes its top leadership post every six years.

“Every year we apply to the government’s Emergency Food and Shelter program for assistance, and beyond the usual grant we received this year was an additional sum from the federal stimulus package. So, unexpectedly, we are doing better than we had anticipated. We were very worried because of the slow economy,” Frechette told The Anchor.

The Thanksgiving baskets — in reality, boxes — include a turkey or a second turkey depending on the size of the family, as well as all the fixings: potatoes, cranberry sauce, vegetables and rolls. They are delivered or in some cases made available to the listed families at the parish itself,” Correia added.

“Frequently we change the food menu to include ham or chicken at Christmas, but we also include toys for the children and even needed clothing like winter jackets or coats,” he said.

He reported that three parishes in Somerset, St. Patrick’s, St. Thomas More and St. John of God, are conducting a collection of winter hats, mittens and scarves “which they will donate to us to use in our gifting,” Correia added.

At the same time he said he has received cash and food donations from the Prince Henry the Navigator Association in Fall River.

“That organization offered to provide any additional assistance we might need,” Correia reported.

He said he wanted to make clear that “we would not be able to do what we do without the fund-raisers and those who donate through their parish’s Giv-

ing Tree … as well as the stores, markets and so many generous people, including retired priests, who do so much.”

At Our Brother’s Keeper, a volunteer Christian Ministry based in Easton, and which serves all denominations, operations manager Erich Miller reports they will deliver food, clothing and toys to 3,000 families in 60 communities for Christmas.

The ministry, having this year reached a 20-year milestone, includes not just providing food, but furniture and household items free of charge including transportation.

“Because we have so many churches and organizations supporting us so generously, we will deliver a food box containing milk, juice, eggs, bread, meat, fruit, vegetables and personal hygiene items, which amount to a $110 gift, but which costs us only $11.50,” Miller said.

“Because every food box and every furniture item such as tables, chairs, beds, dressers are accompanied by a flyer saying that Jesus is the person who sent you this gift, that we are only the delivery people, the gift must be quality. The furniture we deliver cannot have stains or not be quality.

So too, the food must be quality as well,” Miller asserted.

“Our mission is to bring the love and hope of Jesus — and thank you for helping us,” he added.

At Sacred Heart Parish’s soup kitchen in Fall River, coordinator Donald Duarte said the December 21 supper beginning at 5 p.m. “will in effect be our Christmas dinner.”

He said the weekly supper is held every Monday, even if it falls on a holiday. “If Christmas has fallen on this day, we still would have served a meal as we traditionally always do.”

While no specific menu has yet been set, Duarte said, “We always provide a full dinner from soup to nuts, such as soup, salad, pork loin and roasted potatoes, for the hundred or more who come. Perhaps this dinner will feature steak, depending on which organization or firm is the benefactor providing the meal.

Whatever, we feed them well every week.”

As for the twice-monthly food pantry, “we cater to from 150 to 200 people each visit, and they literally clean us out.

We will add some nice Christmas touches to the provisions this month,” he added.

Duarte said “the most generous donations you can imagine are what keeps us going from week to week. Among those is Holy Name Parish, which assists us weekly.”

December 4, 2009

“I

am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). With those words, Mary committed and commended her life to God. Every day we are faced with the choice of saying yes or no to God: we choose to be for God or choose to be against God. It’s not easy.

In fact, at times, it’s rather frightening. Sacred Scripture tells us that Mary was in her early to mid teens when she was faced with such a choice. We are thankful for the choice she made — Mary said “Yes” and became the Mother of God’s Son. At first, Mary was afraid, but her fears were quickly conquered because of her faith and trust in God. Imagine now, young women, putting yourselves in Mary’s shoes.

Would you? Try explaining this pregnancy to your parents or your boyfriend. Sounds like a tough story to sell. But the fact is, aside from the issue of pregnancy, we’ve all been in Mary’s shoes. We’ve all come face-to-face with God and had to respond to God’s call in some way.

Today, I would like to focus on the issue of teen-age pregnancy, praying all the while that the hearts and minds of young men and women everywhere will be open to God’s will for them. But, first, here are some facts to ponder, statistics on U.S. teen-age pregnancies (data is taken from the U.S. Department of

Youth Page

13

Commit and commend yourselves to God

hopeful, replied, “I want an Health and Human Services): abortion.” After a moment of Each year, almost 750,000 silent thought, the doctor said, teen-age women aged 15–19 “I think I have a better solubecome pregnant. The teention to your problem, and it’s age pregnancy rate in this much less dangerous to you.” country is at its lowest level in 30 years, down 36 percent since its peak in 1990. Research suggests that much of this decrease in teen pregnancies, in part, is due to a greater focus on

By Ozzie Pacheco abstinence. By 2002, the teen-age abortion rate had dropped by The young mother smiled, 50 percent from its peak in believing the doctor had com1988. From 1986 to 2002, the plied with her request. The proportion of teen-age pregnancies ending in abortion de- doctor continued, “Since you don’t want two young children clined more than one-quarter so close in age, let’s kill the from 46 percent to 34 percent child you hold in your arms. of pregnancies among 15- to This way, the child in you can 19-year-olds. be born. If the intention is to You see, your prayers are kill, there’s no difference to already working. This is good me which one dies. Sacrificnews, for these facts present a ing the child you hold in your decreasing trend in teen pregarms is much simpler, and nancies and abortions. But we must continue to pray for better poses no danger to you.”

The young mother, panicnumbers — say, zero abortions. stricken, cried out, “No docWe must continue to pray for tor. That’s horrible. Killing a all life, born and unborn. Read child is a crime.” The docand reflect on the following tor smiled and saw that the short story: lesson was effective. He had A young mother, visibly convinced the young mother nervous, visited her doctor with her 10-month-old daugh- that there is no difference in the killing of her born child ter and asked him, “I need and the killing of her unborn your help with a very serichild. The crime is exactly the ous problem. My baby isn’t a year old and I am pregnant again. I do not want children so close in age.” The doctor responded, “Very well. How can I be of service?” The young mother, now seemingly

Be Not Afraid

same. Either way, she would have become the mother of her dead child.

Our Blessed Mother put her words into action — she bore for us a Savior and gave him life so we can have life forever. If you are pregnant, and considering an abortion, there are other choices. Have courage. Trust in God. Let Mary’s “Yes” be your “Yes,” your commitment to God — serve the God of life. Let Mary’s commendation be your action for life — entrust your life to God and let God’s will be done through you, in you and

for you.

There is a Christmas song entitled, “Love Came Down At Christmas,” by Roger Copeland, and its last lines read, “Love came down at Christmas. Love, all love divine; Love came down at Christmas, and I know, I know that love is mine.”

There is love in the womb of an expectant mother, and that love is God’s love, given to her to nurture so that love can grow and share and live with others.

A blessed Advent and holy Christmas to you. God bless.

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

The Anchor is always pleased to run news and photos about our diocesan youth. If schools or parish Religious Education programs have newsworthy stories and photos they would like to share with our readers, send them to: schools@anchornews.org

14

The Anchor

Pro-Lifers applaud abortion clinic closures continued from page one

a doctor’s office abortions can be performed without oversight. A license is not required, unlike at clinics.

She said Osathanondh did not have the proper equipment to resuscitate Smith when complications arose during the abortion.

When the clinic closed down nearly a month later and Osathanondh surrendered his license, Pro-Lifers were overjoyed, she said.

“We were thrilled. We celebrated,” she said. “No more women were going to be harmed in this place.”

Toohill is a member of Cape Cod Family Life Alliance and co-chair of the Respect Life Ministry at St. Joan of Arc Parish in Orleans.

The NARAL report also found a decline in the number of Massachusetts hospitals performing abortions, with seven of the 55 hospitals with obstetrics and gynecology services offering the procedure. Thirteen other hospitals “may provide” abortions in limited circumstances, the study found.

NARAL noted in the report that the closure of abortion facilities and fewer hospitals offering abortions is a nationwide trend.

The Massachusetts report concluded by calling for expanded access to abortion in the western, central and southeastern regions of the state.

In an article published in The Barnstable Patriot, Andrea Miller, executive director of NARAL ProChoice Massachusetts, claimed that clinics have closed because

EasternTelevision

there has been “a decline in the number of physicians entering the obstetrics/gynecology field” and there is “the possibility of violent and non-violent actions taken against practitioners by abortion opponents.”

Steve Marcotte, co-director of 40 Days for Life in Attleboro, said the campaign is a peaceful vigil outside the abortion clinic there.

“Violence does not justify violence,” he said.

Their presence is meant to change hearts and awaken public concern so that the clinic closes.

Threats and intimidation contradict their Pro-Life message and have no place in the Pro-Life movement, he said.

In The Barnstable Patriot article, Miller also accused Pro-Lifers of holding health care reform hostage.

Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said she believes NARAL is trumpeting the closures in the hope of capitalizing on health care reform financially and by mandating training in abortion procedures for doctors.

Fox noted that the NARAL report called for expanded training of doctors in how to perform abortions. The report lamented that despite Massachusetts’ “exceptional” medical schools and residency programs, not all of those programs offer training in abortion.

Fox said that for most doctors, performing abortions is antithetical to their profession. They go into medicine to save lives, not take them, she said.

Fox said the premise of the NARAL report — that fewer abor-

tion facilities equal fewer abortions — is untrue.

“Unfortunately closing facilities did not in and of itself reduce the number of abortions,” she said, adding that in Massachusetts it is not difficult for a woman who wants an abortion to find a nearby facility.

The total number of abortions performed in the state has stayed about the same over the past seven years. In fact, when the Hyannis facility closed, abortions performed at the next closest facility, the clinic in Attleboro, increased, she said.

In some cases, smaller clinics have been put out of business by the expansion of Planned Parenthood, she added.

In Massachusetts, Planned Parenthood performs more than 60 percent of abortions, according to James Sedlak, vice president of the American Life League and executive director of STOPP International, a group dedicated to working against Planned Parenthood.

From the podium at the rally before this October’s Respect Life Walk, he told the crowd, “In Massachusetts abortion is Planned Parenthood. They do two out of three abortions in this state.”

Bea Martins, associate field director of Catholic Citizenship in the Diocese of Fall River, said that through abortion, “We are throwing away our children.”

Catholic Citizenship is a nonpartisan grassroots organization that promotes public policy education and participation of Catholic laity in politics.

Martins added that Pro-Lifers need to help change people’s hearts but that sometimes the answer to prayer comes in an unexpected way. She said two abortion facilities were shuttered because the abortionist was charged with tax evasion.

“That answered my prayers,” she said. “We continually need to pray. God works in strange ways.”

December 4, 2009

Annual Retirement Fund for Religious appeal is this weekend

NORTH DARTMOUTH — Catholic parishes in the Diocese of Fall River will conduct the 22nd annual appeal for the Retirement Fund for Religious this weekend. The collection theme is “Share in the Care.”

In a letter sent recently to all pastors in the diocese, Mercy Sister Catherine Donovan, diocesan Episcopal Representative for Religious, said, “The total amount received from our diocesan parishes in 2008 was $148,285.14. We are most grateful for this abundant gift. I ask for your continued support of this appeal to defray the escalating costs of eldercare for religious.”

The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts and Dominican Sisters of Charity received financial assistance made possible by the Retirement Fund.

In addition, religious who serve or have served in the diocese but whose institutes are headquartered elsewhere may also benefit from this fund.

The collection is coordinated by the National Religious Retirement Office in Washington, D.C., and benefits thousands of elderly women and men religious whose communities lack adequate funding for retirement.

“The collection has been the most successful campaign in the history of the Church in the United States, which is testimony to the gratitude many feel for the services they have received from religious orders,” said Sister Janice Bader, a Sister of the Most Precious Blood of O’Fallon, Mo., and NRRO executive director.

“I am continually heartened by the overwhelming generosity of Catholics to this fund each year,” she said. “Even in these difficult financial times, Catholics across the nation find a way to give back to the women and men religious who sacrificed so much for our Church and our world.”

The 2008 collection drew more than $28.2 million. Since 1988, Catholics have donated

nearly $589 million to the annual appeal. Approximately 95 percent of these donations are distributed almost immediately to support the care of senior religious.

The 2008 appeal, for example, enabled the National Religious Retirement Office to distribute more than $23 million to 483 religious institutes. These funds supplemented the day-to-day care of elder religious and helped religious institutes implement long-range retirement strategies.

The NRRO also distributed nearly $3 million in targeted financial assistance to support self-help projects, such as collaborative health care facilities, initiated by religious institutes.

The retirement crisis developed as demographics of religious institutes changed so that now there are more elderly than younger members. The problem has been compounded by skyrocketing health care costs. Today, there are more than 35,000 women and men religious over age 70, and more than 5,500 religious require skilled care.

Historically, older religious worked for years for small stipends, with surplus income reinvested in their ministries, such as schools and social service agencies. Retirement was not a priority in the past when there were enough younger members to care for older ones. Over the next 10 to 15 years, the number of religious age 25 to 74 is expected to decrease sharply. With this decline, the income of religious institutes will drop precipitously.

Sister Donovan extended to all diocesan faithful “Pope Benedict’s invitation ‘to thank the Lord for the precious gift of our religious Brothers and Sisters.’” She encourages everyone to “share in the care of those upon whose shoulders we stand at Church. Women and men religious throughout the country send their abundant thanks for your donation.”

For more information visit www.retiredreligious.org.

December 4, 2009

Catholic schools keep busy with charitable efforts continued from page one

school students from Rwanda as part of the Humura Project.

Hoping to raise a total of $2,000 to cover the costs of sending 10 “adopted” Rwandan students to school for one year, the local students are being asked to donate $10 each to meet their goal.

The idea to adopt and sponsor Rwandan students was suggested by Karen Pimentel, a member of the office staff at St. Francis Xavier School, after seeing a program on PBS about how important education was to children in Kenya.

Pimentel mentioned the idea to her pastor, Msgr. Gerard O’Connor, who suggested they talk with Father Leonard Kayondo from the Diocese of Kabgayi, who was coming to give a talk at the parish on his missionary work in Rwanda.

“I mentioned to Msgr.

O’Connor I think I have a calling,” Pimentel said. “I just knew this was where St. Francis Xavier School should be putting its energy. We met with Father Leonard and decided to adopt 10 students … at a cost of $200 per student.”

Pimentel said they’ve encouraged students to do something to raise the money themselves or to sacrifice a portion of their allowance or give up something as simple as a trip to McDonald’s.

“We just didn’t want them to go home and ask for $10,” she said. “We wanted them to understand they can make a true impact on someone in another part of the world.”

While elementary schools in Rwanda are supported by the government and cost only about $30 per student, Pimentel said the high schools don’t have the same financial backing and cost $200 per student, which is why they opted to help them.

“The need is so great at that age,” Pimentel said. “It’s so important to them — they ask to go to school.”

Students at St. John the Evangelist School in Attleboro have been busy for the past month collecting canned goods for their food drive and also by participating for the first time this year in a Penny Drive for the Poor, where students have been bringing in their spare change on a daily basis to benefit the needy.

“We’ve been collecting pennies for the homeless all through November and will continue in December,” said eighth-grade student Hailey Erwin. “We’ve collected hundreds of dollars already. It feels good to know that people who aren’t as fortunate

15

The Anchor as us will be able to buy things they need for Christmas.”

“Even though pennies may be small, it still means something,” added Hailey’s cousin Rachel, a third-grader at the school. “I’ve been bringing in pennies and even quarters. It feels good to give because I’m used to getting gifts at Christmas.”

“It feels really good to help other people during Christmas,” agreed seventh-grader Jared Salois. “I just felt like I needed to give something, even if it wasn’t that big.”

A similar drive to collect spare change is also underway at Pope John Paul II High School in Hyannis.

“We’ve been doing something called coin wars,” said junior Naibmba Habawai. “It’s a competitive and ongoing effort during the Advent season where students and faculty members bring in spare change to put into jars. Last year we raised $700 that was donated to the diocesan AIDS ministry office.”

Fellow Pope John Paul II student Matthew Laird noted how one program — a food collection drive held every Friday under the auspices of Crosswalk, a social justice group — is an example of a year-round charitable effort.

“Every Friday students bring in canned food items to put into collection boxes,” Laird said.

“Those food items are then brought over to the local St. Vincent de Paul Society food pantry.”

“For us, like many other schools, charitable efforts are not seasonal,” agreed principal Christopher W. Keavy. “So there’s a steady drumbeat of activity and also the pick-up programs for Advent.”

Continuing their annual tra-

dition of giving, the members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society at Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro are once again sponsoring their Santa Shop drive to collect toys and gifts for needy families.

Last year the student body and faculty donated 3,000 toys for this event that were later disbursed to 200 families during a Christmas party at the high school.

“This service experience is greatly appreciated by the community, but was invaluable for the 1,100 students who donated and organized the items and the 600 students who attend the event,” said Carla Tirrell, director of campus ministry. “Not only did they become part of an experience that was much greater than they alone could have created, but they also experienced the joy that comes from giving from one’s heart.”

Tirrell said that such charitable efforts not only benefit those most in need, but also teach a valuable lesson to students about how generosity and giving with joy comes through the grace of God. “The first year we did the Santa Shop we had 100 toys the night before the event,” she said.

“We needed 2,000 toys to make it happen. The football team joined hands with me in a circle around the toys and prayed. The next day we had so many toys that the tables never seemed to diminish in stock. That was grace — a miracle of response similar to the loaves and the fishes. The students brought in the toys, but grace made it happen.”

“The Santa Shop has been a truly humbling experience for me,” said student Kathy Hig-

gins, class of 2010. “I have seen Christ in each person that I have served. As I have shown love to these people that I serve, I can feel Christ’s peace pour into the moment. Each person I help is a gift from God.” “The people I have served over the past three years have been drawn closer to God, as I have been drawn closer to God,” agreed James Marcotte, class of 2010. “Serving has shown me

how God shows himself in other people.”

Principal Bill Runey said it is programs like the Santa Shop and other ongoing St. Vincent de Paul efforts that help Bishop Feehan achieve its mission as a Catholic high school.

“Our service events teach our students the personal and communal impact of ‘making a difference,’” he said.

NORTH EASTON — To help area faithful concentrate on the true meaning of Advent and Christmas, Holy Cross Family Ministries, 518 Washington Street, is offering several Advent events.

“Come Walk with Me,” an Advent reflection, is an hourlong recording of music, meditation and prayer leading us to reflect on a personal relationship with Christ. Prayer begins in the Chapel of the Father Peyton Center with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, December 9 from 10:30 to 11:30

a.m., and December 10 from 7 to 8 p.m.

“Journey to Forgiveness: The Way of the Cross,” is an hour-long guided Advent meditation with recorded music

by Lynn Geyer as the Way of the Cross is done. Meditations will lead participants to an examination of conscience and communal reconciliation December 16 from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m., and December 17 from 7 to 8 p.m.

For more information call 1-800-299-7729 or visit hcfm. org.

Holy Cross Family Ministries offers Advent activities

Our Lady’s Monthly Message From Medjugorje November 25, 2009

Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina “Dear children! In this time of grace I call you all to renew prayer in your families. Prepare yourselves with joy for the coming of Jesus. Little children, may your hearts be pure and pleasing, so that love and warmth may flow through you into every heart that is far from His love. Little children, be my extended hands, hands of love for all those who have become lost, who have no more faith and hope.

“Thank you for having responded to my call.”

Spiritual Life Center of Marian Community One Marian Way Medway, MA 02053 • Tel. 508-533-5377 Paid advertisement

16

The Anchor

December 4, 2009

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

The Manhattan Declaration is a declaration of American Christians — clergy and lay, Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical — that is an analysis of the ongoing series of attacks on the foundational principles of justice and the common good in our country as well as a courageous, inspiring public pledge to come together in conscience vigorously to oppose them.

Preamble Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes — from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on Sept. 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in holy

Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained

by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right — and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.

It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Life So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10 ).

Although public sentiment has moved in a Pro-Life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The president says that he wants to reduce the “need” for abortion — a commendable goal.

But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective Pro-Life

laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v.

Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as “the culture of death.” We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us. A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryoresearch to include the taxpayer funding of so-called “therapeutic cloning.” This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and “voluntary” euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of “liberty,” “autonomy,” and “choice.”

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children.

Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak.

And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and

young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

Marriage The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.”

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh (Genesis 2:23-24).

This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the Church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband (Ephesians 5:32-33).

In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society — indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as “holy matrimony” to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed

by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society.

Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits — the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling — and alarming — indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than 50 years ago, it was under five percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society — and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average — is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited Continued on page 17

December 4, 2009 Continued from page 16 idea of unilateral divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law.

Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to “a more excellent way.” As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital.

They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being — the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual — on a commitment that is sealed,

The Anchor completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being “married.” It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and redefine to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality — a covenantal union of husband and wife — that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow.

First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized.

Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as “marriages” sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral. Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good (not “prejudice”), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture.

How could we, as Christians, do otherwise?

The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God’s creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his Church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the Church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.

Religious Liberty The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners (Isaiah 61:1).

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s (Matthew 22:21).

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development.

The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness ..., for compulsion is no attribute of God” (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4).

Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God — a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law — such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel Pro-Life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and Pro-Life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restric-

17 tions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of. Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust — and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust — undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the Gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

Drafted by Robert P. George, Chuck Colson and Timothy George and signed by Cardinals Justin Rigali (Philadelphia) and Adam Maida (Detroit), Archbishops Donald Wuerl (Washington, DC), Charles Chaput (Denver), Timothy Dolan (New York), John Nienstedt (St. Paul-Minneapolis), Joseph Naumann (Kansas City), Joseph Kurtz (Louisville), Bishops Thomas Olmsted (Phoenix), Michael Sheridan (Colorado Springs), Richard Malone (Portland), David Zubik (Pittsburgh) and, as of December 1st, 221,611 other Americans. Those wishing to sign and support the declaration may do so at www.manhattandeclaration.org

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The Anchor Eucharistic Adoration in the Diocese

ACUSHNET — Eucharistic adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Parish on Mondays and Wednesdays 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Fridays 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Saturdays 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays end with Evening Prayer and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.; Saturdays end with Benediction at 2:45 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 following the 11 a.m. Mass until 7:45 a.m. on the First Saturday of the month, concluding with Benediction and Mass.

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

FAIRHAVEN — St. Mary’s Church, Main St., has a First Friday Mass each month at 7 p.m., followed by a Holy Hour with eucharistic adoration. Refreshments follow.

FALL RIVER — St. Anthony of the Desert Church, 300 North Eastern Avenue, has eucharistic adoration Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on the first Sunday of the month from noon to 4 p.m.

Holy Day Tuesday, December 8, is the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a holy day on which Catholics are obliged to attend Mass.

Around the Diocese 12/5

A Day with Mary will take place tomorrow from 7:50 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. at Holy Rosary Church, 120 Beattie Street, Fall River. The day will include a video, instruction, procession and crowning of Mary, along with Mass, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and an opportunity for the sacrament of reconciliation. For more information call 508-984-1823.

12/6

The float sponsored by St. Mary’s Primary School, Taunton, will be collecting new, unwrapped toys along the route of the Taunton Christmas Parade, to be held Sunday. All collected toys will be distributed by The Gift Shop at Coyle and Cassidy High School, which will distribute them to families in need on December 12 from 9 to 11 a.m.

12/6

The Providence Adult String Ensemble, directed by John Gomes, and the Fall River Diocesan Choir and Cathedral Youth Choir, led by Madeleine Grace, will present an Advent Concert at St. Mary’s Cathedral, corner of Spring and Second streets, Fall River, Sunday at 3 p.m. A free will offering will be accepted for the Cathedral Pipe Organ Fund.

12/6

HYANNIS — A Holy Hour with eucharistic adoration will take place each First Friday at St. Francis Xavier Church beginning at 4 p.m.

An information meeting about becoming part of the Diocesan Marriage Preparation team will be held Sunday at the Family Life Center, 500 Slocum Road, North Dartmouth from 1 to 2 p.m. No commitment need be made if attending.

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.

An Advent Mass of Consolation will take place Sunday at St. Julie Billiart Church, 494 Slocum Road, at 3:30 p.m. for those who have lost a loved one. The Mass will assist those looking for peace and joy in this Advent season.

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.

Good Shepherd Parish, Martha’s Vineyard, will offer an Advent program on December 7 at 7 p.m. in the parish center. Marjorie Milanese, spiritual director and retreat facilitator, will present a reflection on the topic “Advent: Waiting in Expectation.” A discussion and social with refreshments will follow and all are welcome.

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.

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 at the church from 7:30 to 8 a.m.

12/6

12/7 12/8

The Catholic Cancer Support Group at Our Lady of Victory Parish will hold its next monthly meeting December 8 at 7 p.m. in the parish center, 230 South Main Street, Centerville. The meeting will start with Mass and anointing of the sick in the church, then move to the parish center for discussion and support. The group is faith-based but all are welcome: cancer patients, survivors, family and friends. For more information, call 508-771-1106 or 508-775-5744.

12/8

The Traditional Latin Mass will be offered December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at St. Francis Xavier Church, Hyannis, at 10 a.m. The Traditional Latin Mass, also known as the Tridentine Mass, is offered every Sunday at St. Francis at 1 p.m.

OSTERVILLE — Eucharistic adoration takes place at Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 76 Wianno Avenue on First Fridays following the 8 a.m. Mass until Benediction at 5 p.m. The Divine Mercy Chaplet is prayed at 4:45 p.m.; on the third Friday of the month from 1 p.m. to Benediction at 5 p.m.; and for the Year For Priests, the second Thursday of the month from 1 p.m. to Benediction at 5 p.m.

12/9

TAUNTON — Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament takes place every First Friday at Annunciation of the Lord Church, 31 First Street, immediately following the 8 a.m.

Mass and continues throughout the day. Confessions are heard from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m., concluding with recitation of the rosary and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.

12/12

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

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

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.

Theology on Tap, a discussion series for Catholic young adults in their 20s and 30s, and their friends, will host Father David Frederici December 9 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at The Vineyard Family Restaurant, 809 Washington St., South Attleboro. Father Frederici’s topic will be “Hi, this is God. I’d like to make an appointment.” For information call Crystal-Lynn Medeiros at 508-678-2828.

An Our Lady of Guadalupe celebration will be held December 12 starting at 6 p.m. at St. Mary’s Cathedral, 327 South Street, Fall River. Bishop George W. Coleman will celebrate the holy Mass.

The event is sponsored by the Hispanic Apostolate of the Diocese of Fall River. All are welcome.

12/17 12/27

A Healing Mass will be celebrated at St. Anne’s Church, 818 Middle Street, Fall River, December 17 at 6:30 p.m. The rosary is recited at 6 p.m., and Benediction and healing prayers follow the Mass.

On December 27 at 3 p.m., the Cathedral Adult and Youth Choirs will present the 14th Annual Christmas Carol Sing at Holy Rosary Church, 120 Beattie Street in Fall River. The choirs will offer a few selections but most of the one hour program is intended as a sing-along for all present. There is no admission charge and all are welcome to bring family and friends.

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

Celebrant is Father Rodney E. Thibault, chaplain at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford

December 4, 2009

Mass times and locations for December 16-17

Fall River Deanery — St. Anne’s Church at South Main and Middle streets in Fall River, 11:30 a.m.

New Bedford Deanery — Our Lady’s Chapel, 600 Pleasant Street in New Bedford, 6:45 a.m., and 12:10 p.m.; and Sacred Hearts Retreat Center, 226 Great Neck Road in Wareham, 8 a.m.

Taunton Deanery — Holy Rosary Church, 80 Bay Street in Taunton, 7:30 a.m.; and Stonehill College Chapel, 320 Washington Street in North Easton, 8 a.m., and 12 noon.

Attleboro Deanery — National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, 947 Park Street in Attleboro, 12:10 and 5:30 p.m.

Cape Cod Deanery — St. Francis Xavier Church, 21 Cross Street in Hyannis, 12:10 p.m.

(Wed. and Thur.); St. Anthony’s Church, 167 East Falmouth Highway in East Falmouth, 8 a.m. (Wed.); St. Patrick’s Church, 511 Main Street in Falmouth, 9 a.m. (Thur.); Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 76 Wianno Avenue in Osterville, 5:30 p.m.

(Thur.); Our Lady of the Cape Church, 468 Stony Brook Road, 8 and 11 a.m. (Wed. and Thur.)

Note: There will be no funeral Masses all day Wednesday and Thursday morning.

Funerals can be celebrated Thursday afternoon.

In Your Prayers Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks Dec. 7 Rev. Thomas F. Daley, Retired Pastor, St. James, New Bedford, 1976 Rev. Ambrose Bowen, Retired Pastor, St. Joseph, Taunton, 1977 Rev. James W. Clark, Retired Pastor, St. Joan of Arc, Orleans, 2000 Dec. 8 Rev. John F. Broderick, Pastor, St. Mary, South Dartmouth, 1940 Dec. 9 Rev. Rene Patenaude, O.P., Retired Associate Pastor, St. Anne, Fall River, 1983 Dec. 10 Rev. Thomas C. Briscoe, Former Pastor, St. Anne, Fall River, 1918 Rev. Andrew S.P. Baj, Former Pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, New Bedford, 1971 Dec. 11 Rev. Edward L. Killigrew, Pastor, St. Kilian, New Bedford, 1959 Dec. 12 Rev. Paul F. McCarrick, Pastor, St. Joseph, Fall River, 1996 Dec. 13 Rev. Reginald Theriault, O.P., St. Anne, Dominican Priory, Fall River, 1972 Rev. Adrien L. Francoeur, M.S., La Salette Shrine, North Attleboro, 1991

The Anchor

December 4, 2009

From ShamWow to SpongeBob

H

ow the mighty have fallen ... what’s left of them any way. Last Monday night, before a national audience, the New England Patriots were dismantled, piece by piece by a group of Saints, of all people.

The Patriots are just a shell of what was once “the team of the decade,” with very few personnel remaining from the glory days.

The implosion began back in Super Bowl XLII when the undefeated Pats were upset by the New York Football Giants, thanks to a fortunate no-call on a sack, and a one-in-a-million catch on the same play.

My View From the Stands

By Dave Jolivet We Pats fans knew things were beginning to head south when Tom Brady was lost for the season in the first quarter of the first game of 2008. Granted Matt Castle led us to an 11-4 season — only to miss the playoffs. At 11-4. Go figure. The pendulum was gaining momentum in the opposite direction from the early 2000s.

Next came an early-season loss to the arch rival New York Jets this season. Next up was the dreadful 17-point collapse, again on national TV, to the Indianapolis Colts — a game that left me with the same empty feeling as Super Bowl XLII. I watched the Pats-Saints game, knowing this was make or break for the Patriots this season.

A good showing, even if it were a loss would go a long way in proving New England was truly one of the NFL’s elite teams.

The Saints absolutely destroyed the Patriots. After a quick touchdown in the first quarter, Tom Terrific would have more luck driving the team bus than driving the team down the Super-

dome turf.

The once daunting New England defense has more holes in it than SpongeBob SquarePants.

What used to be a ShamWow, sucking up everything in site, has now become as leaky as a pasta strainer.

I did watch most of the game because it was a treat to watch Drew Brees and the Saints execute like, well the Patriots of the early 2000s. Brees’ passes were lasers, on target, and soul crushing for Pats fans.

The Patriots’ time has come ... and now gone. It happens in sports. The beauty of football is that the big market teams don’t necessarily have the advantage — with the salary cap.

In baseball, it’s always the same old teams — the ones with large cash flows, including the Red Sox — that are in the running.

In football you can have teams like New Orleans, the Minnesota Vikings, the Indianapolis Colts, and the San Diego Chargers become the cream of the crop.

As a football fan, Monday’s game was a beautiful thing to watch — as far as the Saints’ performance.

Brady and Bill Belichick now seem to have those deer-in-theheadlights looks on their faces, reminiscent of when Pete Carroll was the captain of the good ship Patriot.

Patriots Place in Foxboro is a mecca of shopping and entertainment venues. Thank goodness, because what used to be the main draw to the little town on Route 1 is growing rustier by the day.

The circle may eventually make its way back to New England, meanwhile get used to watching SpongeBob take the field in a Patriots uniform.

The Pats will make the playoffs, but expect a Bruins-like first-round exit. The mighty have fallen.

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The Anchor

December 4, 2009

Jesus’ communication platform is ‘the human person,’ bishop says

PROUD PAPA — Manuel Soares, 94, second from right, stands with his daughter Claire M. Sullivan after she recently received the Marian Medal from Bishop George W. Coleman, right. Soares’ wife, the late Marcelle D. Soares, received the same award in 1981, when she was a member of Sacred Heart Parish in Fall River. Sullivan, who is Care Manager at Elders First, a member of the Diocesan Health Facilities, is a member of St. John the Baptist Parish, Westport. With them is Father Karl C. Bissinger, secretary to the bishop, who celebrates Mass at the Landmark in Fall River, where Soares is a resident.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (CNS) — As parents already know, if you want to talk to a teen-ager, send a text message.

Before he began his homily during the National Catholic Youth Conference’s closing Mass November 21, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, Calif., pulled out his cell phone.

“Let’s see. You put the message in. Then the number. Then you hit ‘Send,’” he said.

Up on the gigantic high-definition screen appeared his message to the 21,000 Catholic teen-agers assembled in Kansas City’s Sprint Center: “U R GR8.”

“We are a bilingual group. So there is another message I want to send,” he said, pressing more keys on his phone. “SALU2 a TO2” (“Saludos a todos, salute to all”) appeared on the screen.

Then he said he would send the original Christian text message: “IHS.” “You should recognize this one,” Bishop Soto said. “It is the oldest text message anywhere. It is the text for the holy name of Jesus.”

New forms of electronic communication are everywhere and being reinvented again rapidly, but God doesn’t care, Bishop Soto said.

“God does not buy a new iPhone or get a new mobile application. His communication platform is the human person,” he said.

The explosion of electronic communication, he continued, is merely a reflection of the yearning in the human heart to have what Jesus offers — a connection to love.

“The Lord Jesus Christ is tapping on the homepage of your heart,” he said. “He wants to text the truth of God’s mercy on your soul. Jesus is the word, the ultimate Facebook of God, and invites you to be his friend.”

“Jesus does not Twitter,” the bishop said. “Rather he humbled himself so that he could meet you, connect with you and serve you in charity and in truth. He is the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the way, the truth and the life.”

Bishop Soto challenged the teens, who sat in rapt, silent attention, not to allow the connectivity of new technology to take them away from God. His homily at the Sprint Center

Mass was linked by closed-circuit television across downtown to a second Mass at the H. Roe Bartle Convention Center, to an overflow audience also numbering in the thousands.

Bishop Soto said the connection that people truly long for is a connection to Christ.

“Any truth worth knowing is fundamentally part of a relationship with Jesus,” he said. “Truth is most persuasive and most attractively revealed to us through the new covenant of charity found in knowing and connecting with the Lord Jesus.”

But too often, new technology can sever the connection between truth and God as new media become new messages, the bishop said.

“Both truth and relationship are corrupted when the culture disconnects them to serve a distorted sense of freedom,” Bishop Soto said. “’I’ve got to be me.’ ‘Let me do my own thing.’ ‘It’s all about me,’ have become the national anthems of the times,” he said.

The freedom the culture claims is true couldn’t be more false, Bishop Soto said.

“Life has become a multiplechoice question for which there are no wrong answers and the only criteria for choosing are one’s own impressions, preferences, desires and fears,” he said.

“Who would say they are against pro-choice because having choices and being able to choose seems to be the essence of freedom,” Bishop Soto said.

Many want to be free from having to make any choices, but to be connected to God and his truth, he said, everyone must make a choice.

“Jesus put his personal liberty at the service of charity and truth,” the bishop said. “He humbled himself to dialogue with us, a dialogue rich in truth, a conversation charged with charity.”

At the center of that dialogue is the cross, Bishop Soto said.

“The cross is both the medium and the message that Christ sends us,” he said.

“When we respond to that call, when we hear his voice, we begin a dialogue that will connect you to the truth that will set you free. You will enter into a covenant of love that frees you to love others,” the bishop said.