The Catholic Spirit - November 6, 2014

Burying Ebola victims 12 • Vocations 16-18 • Was Shakespeare Catholic? 21 November 6, 2014 Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

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Former Navy nurse dedicates birthday run to fallen Minnesota soldiers

44 miles

for 44 vets

By Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

On Sept. 8, the day of her 44th birthday, Pam Baker of St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park did something many might call crazy: She ran her age — 44 miles.

By the grace of God, she says, she finished the journey. It ended at about 10 p.m., right where it started — in the driveway of her Maple Grove home.

The amazing part for her was simply this — she did it with no training beforehand, and without a single sore muscle afterward.

She takes that as a sign that her prayer intention for the race was divinely inspired, that inspiration coming just three days before her 44-mile run.

Veterans Day “Literally, the Friday before my birthday — my birthday was on a Monday — I decided, ‘I’m going to do this and I’m going to dedicate it to those in Minnesota Nov. 11 Pam Baker ran her age on her birthday Sept. 8, completing a run of 44 miles to honor military personnel from Minnesota who who had fallen — Minnesota died in the line of duty. She herself is a veteran, having served as a nurse in the Navy. Dave Hrbacek/The Catholic Spirit veterans, Minnesota military members who had been killed in “This was my fourth year doing the She then chose to dedicate each more walking than running to make it combat,” said Baker, a veteran who mile to someone important in her life. easy on her back. run. I started when I was 40,” said served as a nurse in the Navy from Her parents got miles 1 and 2, and her Baker, who is married with four This year was special because she 1991 to 1998. “So, I found a [web]site husband John got mile 23, which was children, two of whom attend St. had extra inspiration from the where it identified the military her age when they met. veterans she was running for, plus the Vincent de Paul School. “Two weeks members [killed]. I believe that there many Facebook connections who before I turned 40, I decided that I were 99 Minnesota individuals who At age 41 and 43, she did the same posted inspiring messages before the have been killed since 2001, since the wanted to do something that thing, again coming up with a list of race — and agreed to run part of the 9/11 attacks. So, I dedicated [to] the epitomized who I am, which was not people to honor with one mile each. race with her. most recent 44. Each of them got a about going out and doing crazy At 42, she missed it because of back mile.”

Here’s how it worked. She kicked it things and staying up all night surgery to repair spinal damage from a off at about 7:30 a.m. with people drinking. That wasn’t me. So, I fall she suffered when she was 2. But, Fueling her hope that she could who had agreed to start the run with decided I wanted to run.

I thought, she got back at it on her 43rd finish were two things: 1. She has been ‘Why don’t I try running my age in birthday, successfully completing the a runner most of her life, and 2. She miles?’” journey for a third time, though doing Please turn to RUNNER on page 7 had run her age three times before.

ALSO inside

Arguing for life

Faith comes alive

A generous spirit

Attorney with cancerous brain tumor to speak out against euthanasia.

— Page 5

Nearly 2,000 teens gathered for the third annual Archdiocesan Youth Day. — Page 6

New book details life of local philanthropist I.A. O’Shaughnessy.

— Page 8

Page Two

2 in PICTURES

“Our prayer is that these people will find the courage to live every day to the fullest until God calls them home. Brittany’s death was not a victory for a political cause. It was a tragedy, hastened by despair and aided by the culture of death invading our country.”

Janet Morana, executive director of Priests for Life, in a Nov. 2 statement about Brittany Maynard’s physician-assisted suicide in Oregon Nov. 1

NEWS notes • The Catholic Spirit

Pope names Superior, Wis., Bishop Peter Christensen bishop of Boise City, Idaho, accepts resignation of Bishop Michael Driscoll A HALLOWEEN TREAT Jake (shown) and Shannon Voelker, parishioners of St. Joseph in West St. Paul, announced their pregnancy Oct. 31 on a pumpkin that Jake carved and shared on social media. “I’m really excited that it’s finally public news. It was a perfect reveal,” said Shannon, who is due April 1. (No joke!) Jake has carved a number of creative pumpkins, including Pope Francis. “I wanted this pumpkin to really convey to our family and friends how excited and happy we are that God has given us a little life to take care of, and I hope it might remind people in some small way that every life, young or old, is precious and a gift from God,” Jake said. Their announcement comes at the end of Respect Life Month. Congratulations and God bless, Jake and Shannon! Photo courtesy of Jake Voelker/jakevoelker.com

From the USCCB Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Peter Christensen, 61, of Superior, Wis., as bishop of Boise City, Idaho, and accepted the resignation of Bishop Michael Driscoll, 75, from pastoral governance of that diocese.

The appointment was publicized in Washington Nov. 4 by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

Peter Christensen was born Dec. 24, 1952, in Bishop Peter Pasadena, Calif. He studied at the College of the CHRISTENSEN Redwoods in Eureka, Calif., at the University of Montana in Missoula, at St. John Vianney College Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and at St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on May 25, 1985.

He served as associate pastor of St. Olaf, Minneapolis (1985-1989), spiritual director/counselor of St. John Vianney College Seminary (19891992), rector of St. John Vianney College Seminary (1992-1999) and pastor of Nativity of Our Lord, St. Paul (1999-2007). Pope Benedict XVI appointed him bishop of Superior, Wis., on June 28, 2007. He was ordained a bishop on Sept.14 of that year.

The Diocese of Boise City comprises the entire state of Idaho and has a total population of 1,595,728 people, of which 175,530, or 11 percent, are Catholic.

Cathedral of St. Paul seeks wedding photos for exhibit PAPAL POSTAGE A Filipino student paints an image of Pope Francis during the Nationwide On-the-Spot Stamp design contest in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 24. The Philippine post office organized the event as part of the preparation for Pope Francis’ Jan. 15-19 visit to the Philippines. CNS/Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA

WHAT’S NEW on social media Veterans Day is Tuesday, Nov. 11. This week, a post on The Catholic Spirit’s Facebook page asks, how can you make Veterans Day special for a veteran?

Read the latest news about the local and universal Church by following The Catholic Spirit on Twitter @CatholicSpirit.

National Vocation Awareness Week is Nov. 2-8. Watch a video from Father Robert Barron and the seminarians of Mundelein Seminary in Illinois about the “Heroic Priesthood”: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TaoqdKz4m5E.

The Catholic Spirit is published bi-weekly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Vol. 19 — No. 23 MOST REVEREND JOHN C. NIENSTEDT, Publisher ANNE STEFFENS, Associate Publisher JESSICA TRYGSTAD, Editor

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

The Cathedral of St. Paul plans to open an exhibit highlighting weddings held at the Cathedral over the past 100-years as part of its centennial events.

The exhibit, “100 Years of Marriage,” will open in June 2015.

To submit your photographs of a wedding at the Cathedral, complete the online submission form at www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/100-years-ofmarriage. The website gives detailed instructions on how to create a digital copy of your photo, what to include in your submission, as well as the opportunity to include any special family stories about the wedding. If you don’t have a digital copy, the staff at the Welcome Center on the lower level of the Cathedral will make a copy.

By constructing donated photographs into a 100-year timeline, visitors will be able to see the evolution of weddings over time, as well as how world events shaped the style and nature of weddings held at the Cathedral.

For more information about the Centennial Anniversary of the Cathedral of St. Paul, visit www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/centennial.

CORRECTION In the Oct. 23 edition, incorrect information was listed for Ambrose Filbin in the disclosures of clergy with substantiated claims of sexual abuse of a minor against them. Filbin served at St. Peter, not Assumption, in Eden Valley in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, not the Diocese of St. Cloud.

Materials credited to CNS copyrighted by Catholic News Service.

All other materials copyrighted by The Catholic Spirit Newspaper.

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3 My trip to our sister Diocese of Kitui in Kenya paradoxically gave me new insights into our mission here as a local Church.

When I asked the energetic Bishop Muheria what were his primary goals and areas of focus for his own diocese, he quickly answered: 1) Attention to those with Special Needs (the physically and mentally marginalized); 2) Reverent and devout celebration of the Sacred Liturgy; and 3) Building up teamwork (Solidarity) throughout his local Church. His clear vision of what should be done reminded me of the desires I heard seven years ago when I arrived as coadjutor: 1) a Strategic Plan for parishes and schools; 2) a program for the New Evangelization; and 3) greater attention to youth and young adults. I believe now, seven years later, that we have made progress on all three of these foci: 1) the 2010 five-year Strategic Plan for parishes and the Aim Higher program for Catholic schools meet the first important goal; 2) the Rediscover: initiative has successfully responded to the second; and 3) the Archdiocesan Youth Day, the annual Men’s Conference and the Rediscover: gathering for young adults have invited our youth and young adult Catholics to engage more fully their Catholic faith.

THAT THEY MAY Thus, as I returned from Kitui, I found ALL BE ONE myself wanting to renew those original goals, but also to continue this local Church’s Archbishop outreach to victims/survivors of clerical sexual John Nienstedt abuse.

Almost five years ago, when we launched the Strategic Plan for parishes, we were responding to demographic shifts, a decline in the number of priests able to lead parishes, and an aging infrastructure. We knew at that time, particularly because it was the first Archdiocese-wide strategic planning initiative since World War II, that we would need to revisit our plans again to make sure we were on the right course.

I believe that the time has come to do this now. In fact, I am convinced that we should revisit our strategic plans every five years to make necessary changes to keep us on course toward a strong

“We must all place our trust in Jesus, bringing to him in prayerful discernment our questions and concerns, our triumphs and tribulations.” future. For this reason, I asked Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché to identify leaders for this task force. He has tapped Father John Bauer and Doctor Marilou Eldred, who have now convened a task force of parish and other local Catholic leaders to review the excellent proposals submitted by each deanery for the 2010 plan, determine what work remains to be done, and find out what further steps should be taken in the near future (See related article on page 4 in this issue of The Catholic Spirit.)

Your input is vital to this strategic planning process, so I ask you please to talk with your pastor about your ideas regarding your parish community, its relationship to neighboring parishes as well as the big picture for your whole region of parish communities.

Just as your parish is asked to be operating on an updated strategic plan to ensure that it works within budget while sustaining essential ministries, so should our entire local Church look for ways we can work together with greater efficiency to live out our mission of making the name of Jesus Christ known and loved.

As I remarked at the outset of our last strategic planning initiative, while the times may change, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

We must all place our trust in Jesus, bringing to him in prayerful discernment our questions and concerns, our triumphs and tribulations. Working together, with Christ as our guide, we can ensure a bright future for our entire local Church for this generation and generations yet to come. I am grateful to all who will be involved in this process. I am confident that we will be able to build on the successful work that has already been achieved.

I know that these are challenging days for us as a local Church, but that cannot distract us from the critical mission of envisaging planning, and praying for the future, a future that we hope will be brighter and better than we can even imagine.

May God bless you!

From the Archbishop

Your input is vital in revisiting strategic plan

Su aportación es vital para revisitar el plan estratégico Mi viaje a nuestra hermana Diócesis de Kitui en Kenya, paradójicamente, me dio nuevos conocimientos sobre nuestra misión aquí como una Iglesia local.

Cuando le pregunté al enérgico Obispo Muheria cuáles eran sus objetivos principales y áreas de interés para su propia diócesis, rápidamente contestó: 1) La atención a las personas con necesidades especiales (los marginados física y mentalmente); 2) La celebración reverente y devota de la Sagrada Liturgia; y 3) La creación de trabajo en equipo (Solidaridad) a través de su Iglesia local. Su clara visión de lo que se debería de hacer me recordó de los deseos que escuché hace siete años, cuando llegué como coadjutor: 1) el Plan Estratégico para las parroquias y las escuelas; 2) un programa para la Nueva Evangelización; y 3) una mejor atención a los jóvenes y jóvenes adultos. Yo creo, siete años más tarde, que hemos avanzado en estos tres enfoques: 1) el Plan Estratégico 2010 de cinco años para las parroquias y el programa de Alcance Superior para las escuelas Católicas reúnen el primer objetivo importante; 2) Redescubre: Iniciativa que ha respondido con éxito a la segunda; y 3) la Jornada

Arquidiocesana de la Juventud, la Conferencia anual de Hombres y Redescubre: Reunión para jóvenes adultos a participar más plenamente su fe católica.

Por lo tanto, a mi regreso de Kitui, me encontré con deseos de renovar esas metas originales, pero también continuar el alcance de la Iglesia local a las víctimas/sobrevivientes de abuso sexual clerical.

Hace casi cinco años, cuando lanzamos el Plan Estratégico para las parroquias, estábamos respondiendo a los cambios demográficos, una disminución en el número de sacerdotes que podían dirigir las parroquias y una infraestructura de envejecimiento. Sabíamos en ese momento, sobre todo porque era la primera iniciativa de planificación estratégica en toda la Arquidiócesis desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que tendríamos que revisar nuestros planes de nuevo para asegurarnos de que estábamos en el camino correcto.

Creo que ha llegado el tiempo para hacer esto ahora. De hecho, estoy convencido de que debemos revisar nuestros planes estratégicos cada cinco años para hacer los cambios necesarios para mantenernos en el camino hacia un futuro sólido. Por

esta razón, le pedí al Obispo Auxiliar Lee Piché identificar a los líderes de este grupo de trabajo. Él ha nombrado al Padre Juan Bauer y la Doctora Marilou Eldred, quienes ahora han convocado un grupo de trabajo de parroquia y otros líderes Católicos locales para revisar las excelentes propuestas presentadas por cada decanato para el plan 2010 para determinar qué tipo de trabajo queda por hacer y descubrir qué otras medidas se deben tomar en un futuro próximo (véase la página 4 en esta edición del Espíritu Católico.)

Su aportación es vital para este proceso de planificación estratégico, así que pido por favor de hablar con su pastor acerca de sus ideas con respecto a su comunidad parroquial, su relación con las parroquias vecinas, así como el panorama general para toda la región de las comunidades parroquiales.

Al igual que se le pide a su parroquia que esté operando en un plan estratégico actualizado para garantizar que funcione dentro del presupuesto, mientras que se están manteniendo los ministerios esenciales, toda nuestra Iglesia local debe mirar las diferentes maneras en que se pueda trabajar juntos con

mayor eficiencia a vivir nuestra misión de hacer el nombre de Jesucristo conocido y amado.

Como señalé al comienzo de la última iniciativa de planificación estratégica, mientras que los tiempos pueden cambiar, “Jesucristo es el mismo ayer, hoy y siempre” (Hebreos 13: 8).

Todos debemos poner nuestra confianza en Jesús, pidiéndole a Él discernimiento con fervor para nuestras preguntas y preocupaciones; y ofreciéndole nuestros triunfos y tribulaciones. Trabajando juntos, con Cristo como nuestra guía, podemos asegurar un futuro brillante para toda nuestra Iglesia local en esta generación y las generaciones por venir. Estoy muy agradecido a todos los que estarán involucrados en este proceso. Estoy seguro de que seremos capaces de construir sobre el exitoso trabajo que ya se ha logrado.

Sé que estos son días difíciles para nosotros como Iglesia local, pero eso no nos puede distraer de la misión crítica de prever la planificación y orar por el futuro, un futuro que esperamos sea más brillante y mejor de lo que siquiera podemos imaginar. ¡Que Dios los bendiga!

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

Local

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Parish Strategic Planning Task Force begins work The Catholic Spirit A group of local Catholic leaders has begun meeting about the next phase of parish strategic planning within the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The first Parish Strategic Planning Task Force meeting took place this month with more planned at least monthly into spring.

“This round of strategic planning builds on the work done during the last phase in 2009-2010,” said Father John Bauer, who co-chairs the current task force and co-chaired the last one. “This really will become part of business as usual. Strategic planning will take place every five years to respond to demographic, personnel, economic and other changes and to help ensure that the needs of the local Catholic

community are met.”

Pastors and other parish and Catholic community leaders last worked on a strategic planning process that resulted in the 2010 archdiocesan strategic plan. It is anticipated that the current process will be shorter in duration, will work largely with updated data from the previous session, and will focus on needs in particular geographic areas.

“Unlike the last round of planning, not every parish is being asked to provide data for the process,” said Marilou Eldred, who co-chairs the task force with Father Bauer. “We have that valuable baseline information from the last planning process, and we are going back to follow up on recommendations regarding specific

Task force members Brother Milton Barker – Totino-Grace High School, Fridley Father John Bauer – task force co-chair, Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis Judy Berger – St. Genevieve, Centerville Deacon Robert Durham – Our Lady of Grace, Edina Marilou Eldred – task force co-chair, Assumption, St. Paul Father Kevin Finnegan – Our Lady of Grace, Edina Tom Gainor – St. Joseph, West St. Paul George Gmach – Mary, Queen of Peace, Rogers Father Bill Kenney – retired clergy Jane Schmidt – Highland Catholic School, St. Paul Viviana Sotro – St. Stephen, Minneapolis Deacon George Nugent – All Saints, Lakeville

parishes or regions.”

Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché, who is overseeing the process, said leaders are hopeful that the strategic planning process will engage the faithful at the parish level, as it did in the previous round.

“The parishioners, parish leaders, parish staffs and pastors are the ones who are most informed about the situation and the needs in their respective deaneries,” Bishop Piché said. “We absolutely need their input and ideas, and we are relying on people to share this input with their pastors.

“There are no ‘givens’ in this next phase of planning, except for our common mission and the shared goal of increasing the vitality of parishes,” he added.

Bishop Piché appointed Father Bauer and Eldred to lead the volunteer task force, which includes veterans of the last process and new faces from a variety of parish communities.

For the planning process, pastors are asked to share input from their parishes at deanery meetings. Then, the dean and/or other representative from the deanery will present recommendations to the task force.

Every parish belongs to a deanery; each of the 15 geographic deaneries and the Latino Ministry deanery will provide input.

The task force also is considering input gathered through the parish visitation process and GROW pastoral planning process. Regional

vicars have visited 108 parishes in the archdiocese since the visitation process was launched in 2012, and nearly 80 parishes have participated or are currently engaged in GROW. Both the parish visitation process and GROW are initiatives from the 2010 strategic plan.

People wanting to provide input in the process may call (651) 2914435 or email PlanningProcess@ archspm.org.

The guiding principles of the task force are similar to those used in 2010. The 2014-2015 guiding principles are: 1. Full sacramental ministry 2. Competent pastoral leaders 3. Special concern for the needs of the poor, marginalized and immigrants 4. Wherever applicable and possible, there will be dialogue and collaboration with parish leaders and Catholic school leadership and the Comprehensive Assignment Board, a body that helps make clergy assignments to parishes and elsewhere 5. Respect, patience and honesty in all discussions to build on strengths.

The task force hopes to share its report and recommendations with Archbishop John Nienstedt in the spring of 2015. More information about the strategic planning process is available at archspm.org. Click “Archdiocesan Planning Update” in the right side bar.

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By Sharon Wilson For The Catholic Spirit Elizabeth Bakewicz, a graduate of the University of St. Thomas School of Law in St. Paul, has found herself in a position of arguing for something she wasn’t prepared to argue for — her right to live.

In 2008, Bakewicz was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor, which is much like that of Brittany Maynard’s, whose story spread over social media and the cover of People magazine.

Maynard ended her life by a physicianprescribed pill on Nov. 1 after publicly announcing her plans and support of euthanasia while Bakewicz has chosen to embrace life and suffering.

Bakewicz and her husband, Jonathan, also a St. Thomas law school graduate, live in Lakeville with their daughter, Lucia. Last year, they lost twins through miscarriage.

The loss of their children and Bakewicz’s road to her own mortality have given her a unique perspective on the beginning and end of life.

Her training as an attorney also gives her insight into how we can change the culture and medical community by looking at life issues through a different lens.

At an event Nov. 11 sponsored by the Pro-Life Center at the University of St. Thomas, Bakewicz will share her thoughts on how the culture of death has led people away from seeing the value in suffering and the value of her life.

“The medical community needs to start seeing people not as their disease or separate from their disease, but a person ‘with’ their disease,” Bakewicz said. “The same holds true for a woman and her pregnancy — it isn’t a

Local

Fighting the culture of death: For local attorney, it’s personal woman and her fetus. It is a woman who is with child. What we need is a ‘soulistic’ approach to medicine and care.”

Soulistic care, a term coined by her father, recognizes the soul of the person and doesn’t fail to see the meaning in a person’s life and suffering.

Suffering “I have encountered suffering during the past six years [that] I never expected to occur, much less before the age of 35,” Bakewicz states in her paper, “Arguing for Myself: Moving from Abstract to Personal.” She has endured chemotherapy, a miscarriage, surgeries, and now lives with constant fatigue, seizures and painful headaches. The law regarding euthanasia in the Netherlands, for instance, requires only that a person be suffering hopelessly and unbearably to be prescribed a lethal dose to end his or her life.

“That could describe me now,” Bakewicz said.

“These people [medical professionals for assisted suicide] fail to see the patient suffering through the diagnosis, and therefore find no alternative to death. Conversely, I see life in my suffering, and a soulistic approach to care would do the same.”

Faith Bakewicz looks to many faith models when it comes to her belief in how people with a terminal illness should be treated — medically and spiritually. She reads Scripture daily, and although not Catholic, she is greatly influenced

Elizabeth Bakewicz, who in 2008 was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor, will speak against euthanasia at an event Nov. 11. Dave Hrbacek/ The Catholic Spirit

‘Arguing for Myself in the Process of Dying’ 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 11, University of St. Thomas Owens Science Hall, 2115 Summit Ave., St. Paul For more information, contact Bethany Fletcher at (651) 962-4830 or moel1755@stthomas.edu.

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Archdiocesan Youth Day

6 Nearly 2,000 teens from across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis celebrated the life of the Church at the third annual Archdiocesan Youth Day Oct. 25 at the University of St. Thomas.

The day included Mass celebrated by Archbishop John Nienstedt, keynote speaker Sister Miriam James Heidland, activities, music from local band Sonar, and eucharistic adoration.

On the web • What is Archbishop John C. Nienstedt’s middle name? What dating advice does he have for teens? How can we get closer to God? The archbishop answers questions from youth.

• See more photos www.TheCatholicSpirit.com

ek ave Hrbac D y b s o t Pho ic Spirit l o h t a C e Th Left From left, Jack Saunders, Calvin Dahlheimer, Ryan Olson and Noah Lanka of St. Henry in Monticello dance and clap to the music of Sonar.

Below From left, Madelyn Backes, Danika Tweten and Claire Stevens of St. Francis Xavier in Buffalo pack toys and other items in Christmas boxes that will be sent to the poor in Appalachia as part of a Youth Day activity called Catholic Faith Fest.

Above left The band Sonar performs at the start of Archdiocesan Youth Day Oct. 25 at the University of St. Thomas. The third annual event drew the largest crowd thus far.

Left Gema Rangel of Ascension in north Minneapolis receives Communion during Mass. Behind her is Jackie Gomez, also of Ascension.

Using the Twitter hashtag #ayd14, participants share their thoughts about the day: agined m i r e Nev nuns d n a t pries s cool a e b would nny as u f d n a !! Lol e r a y the 4 #ayd1 November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

#ayd14 w as so great , I lo ved every pa rt of it!

Thank yo u so much for making it a great e xperienc e #YAYGO D

today really chang ed my life forev er. th anks to eve ryone who made it pos sible. #ayd1 4

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By Susan Klemond For The Catholic Spirit Laura Knippling experienced culture shock when she left her family’s South Dakota ranch to attend the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis more than two years ago. She found the best treatment for that culture shock near campus at St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center.

By getting involved in the parish and campus ministry, she saw that God was the common factor that could link her to home.

“This community is pretty much my family here,” Knippling said. “They are constantly supporting me, whether it’s physically, emotionally, spiritually.”

As St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center’s revitalized campus ministry program invites increasing numbers of students to grow in their faith, the parish’s diverse congregation of students and longtime parishioners is becoming a stronger faith community.

“We have talked about the whole thing together that we’re one spiritual family of resident parishioners and student parishioners who are all called to share the abundant love of Christ together,” said Pastor Jon Vander Ploeg.

“Really, St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center is about all of us pursuing holiness, serving together the way the Lord invites us.”

Founded in 1858, St. Lawrence merged with Newman Center in 1998.

Campus ministry director Brother Ken Apuzzo of the Brotherhood of Hope, and associate campus minister Justina Hausmann have trained student leaders to invite their peers to deepen their faith. Students have opportunities to encounter Christ, build Christian relationships and become part of the community through a weekly prayer meeting, Bible studies and retreats.

“What we’re building is a way of life, and it’s a spiritual family,” Brother Apuzzo said. “It’s the family of God.” The ministry reaches out to those who are — and aren’t —practicing their faith, he said.

“Everything is a stepping stone back to the Church.”

The parish invites students to go deeper, Father Vander Ploeg said. “We want always to be reaching out, not just settling with what we have,” he said. “The U of M has so many tens of thousands of students. We want to be reaching out to them constantly.”

Collaborating with the parish’s campus ministry in some of its outreach efforts is St. Paul’s Outreach, a West St. Paul-based Catholic college ministry.

The parish also seeks to better unite older parishioners and students. Non-student parishioners make up 30 percent the parish, Brother Apuzzo said.

“It really opened my eyes to how much the regular members of the parish wish to be involved in the student activities or just get to know us,” Knippling said.

According to Rod Sykora, who has long been

Local

Campus parish unites students and longtime parishioners

University of Minnesota students Maria Jamison (left) and Sarah Stuart attend St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center’s fall retreat Oct. 24-26. Photo courtesy of Justina Hausmann, associate campus minister at St. Lawrence involved with the parish, “The dynamic between the more elderly, traditional parishioners of St. Lawrence and the youthful students [with] their curiosity and their zeal, it’s a fun relationship to watch and be a part of,” he said.

Though Sykora is a parishioner at Good Shepherd, for the last 25 years he has joined St. Lawrence and Newman Center volunteers to serve a monthly meal at the nearby Ronald McDonald House, which offers lodging to families of seriously ill children. Recently, Ronald McDonald House Charities honored the parish for its long service.

As the parish’s student outreach grows, so does the need for resources. Father Vander Ploeg said it is developing a campaign to help with the mission.

Runner says grace of God kept her going Continued from page 1 her. She ran a few miles, then looped back to her house. The rest of the day featured similar loops ranging from 1 to 12 miles. She included a run with students on the St. Vincent’s cross country team she coaches.

“I stopped at every mile and whoever I was with, we prayed a Hail Mary out loud,” she said.

“Then, we prayed for the repose of the souls of the faithfully departed.

And, we moved on to the next mile. We lifted these [deceased soldiers] up, prayerfully thinking about their families and the loss that they encountered.”

The most memorable mile came during the second half of the run.

She had an encounter with one of her supporters that she will never forget. And, it came at the best possible time — with her close to

the brink of quitting at mile 27.

“I was totally and completely overwhelmed,” she said. “I was completely fatigued, tired, thinking, ‘I can’t continue. I don’t have the energy. I’m hungry, I’m tired, my head hurts, I’m by myself, this is a lonely stretch of road. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’”

All of that distress melted away in the parking lot of a senior highrise when an elderly friend came out to greet her.

“His name is Mike Cullen,” she said. “He came out with his walker — his ‘fast walker’ — so he could jog with me. We just went maybe 100 yards. He jogged about 15 feet.

I said, ‘You need to stop. You’re making me nervous.’ I was really, really tired at mile 27. And, he brought out two gentlemen who were veterans.”

The symbolism of that simple

gesture was not lost on Baker, who said she was rejuvenated by that encounter and cruised the rest of the way.

Not bad for someone whose only preparation for the run was a 5-mile jog several days before.

What’s more, there were none of the after affects from her 44-mile journey that runners often suffer.

“God gave me the strength to finish. He also gave me the will to start,” she said. “I didn’t have a sore joint, a sore muscle, a blister. I had nothing that was sore, nothing that ached — nothing. I didn’t train. I didn’t eat right the night before. And, I did it. There is no other way that I believe that that was possible without the grace of God, without the prayers that were supporting me, without the prayers that were part of that run, and by the grace of the angels of those young men who perished.”

As many folks prepare to observe Veterans Day Nov. 11, Baker can simply look back and smile at what she did to honor those in Minnesota who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Baker received feedback from someone who knows the family of the fallen soldier mile 27 was dedicated to — Benjamin Kopp, who was only 21 when he died.

That person then promised to send word to Kopp’s family about Baker’s run.

Connections like this confirm her decision to run for the fallen vets, and help her remember what they died for.

“I have the freedom to run,” she said. “I have the freedom to choose when and where and how. I have the freedom to be able to pray when I’m running. And, I was praying for the individuals who sacrificed their freedom for mine.”

NOTICE Look for The Catholic Spirit advertising insert from

CATHOLIC CHARITIES in all copies of this issue.

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

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New book details I.A. O’Shaughnessy’s generous spirit Legacy of local philanthropist found in Catholic higher education

By Bob Zyskowski The Catholic Spirit In St. Paul, the name “O’Shaughnessy” graces a handful of buildings at the University of St. Thomas, including the library, education center and football stadium, and at St. Catherine University there is the O’Shaughnessy Auditorium.

Who this O’Shaughnessy was and how he came about the financial means to support Catholic higher education — plus an amazing variety and staggering volume of charities and individuals — is told in an enlightening new book, “That Great Heart: The Story of I.A. O’Shaughnessy.”

It’s a rags-to-riches tale: Ignatius Aloysius O’Shaughnessy, born in 1885, the youngest of 13 children of a Stillwater bootmaker, graduates from the then College of St. Thomas, becomes the largest independent oil refiner in the United States, makes millions and gives millions away.

Where he started, how he grew his businesses, how and to whom he donated — and especially what motivated him — gives readers an insight into the man behind the buildings.

It makes for good-paced reading, thanks to the journalistic writing style of author Doug Hennes.

Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at the University of St. Thomas and a former reporter and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, never met O’Shaughnessy. He was a freshman at St. Thomas in the fall of 1973; Doug HENNES O’Shaughnessy died at age 88 in November that year.

The oilman’s funeral was held at the Cathedral of St. Paul, and a memorial Mass was held on campus.

“I remember looking out a window from one of the buildings at St. Thomas at what seemed to be an endless procession of black limousines,” Hennes said. “I’ve always been fascinated by the guy.”

Decades later Hennes wrote about O’Shaughnessy for the St. Thomas magazine

As a donor of the project, I.A. O’Shaughnessy works with mortar for the laying of the cornerstone of the library at the then College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, where he was an alum. The library opened in 1959.

Photo courtesy of Doug Hennes and helped with a video about him. That sparked an interest in Hennes to learn more about I.A.

Boxloads of letters At the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, Hennes discovered 14 boxes of O’Shaughnessy’s correspondence and newspaper clippings, all in

I.A. O’Shaughnessy (left) meets with Pope Paul VI and Notre Dame President Father Theodore Hesburgh Aug. 29, 1964.

O’Shaughnessy financed one of the pope’s dreams, the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in the Holy Land.

Photo courtesy of Doug Hennes

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

files organized alphabetically.

That source material helped to paint a picture of the man who is likely known to few who enter the buildings that bear his name.

“Some material even surprised family members,” Hennes said.

Those surprises include facts such as: • O’Shaughnessy played on the first St. John’s University football team that beat rival St. Thomas, was dismissed for drinking beer (at age 16), went to St. Thomas and starred for the Tommies.

• As part of a marketing effort, his Globe Oil Company sponsored a basketball team, and players on the Globe Refiners made the bulk of the U.S. squad that won the gold medal in the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

• For a short time he was a part-owner of the Cleveland Indians.

• He was offered the post of U.S. ambassador to Australia but turned it down.

How O’Shaughnessy made his millions is interesting: He borrowed money to finance drilling and refining projects and either paid back investors or bought them out when the projects succeeded.

He played a major role in the development of the oil industry in the Oklahoma and Kansas area, risking building a refinery at the height of the Great Depression.

Please turn to PART on page 9

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By Bob Zyskowski The Catholic Spirit Dana Masek wasn’t planning to attend a session of the “Holiness Revolution” parish mission when she came to morning Mass Oct. 28 at St. John the Baptist in New Brighton.

After hearing evangelist Dan DeMatte, she was glad she did.

“I think he’s telling us what we need to hear,” Masek said. “So many of our Catholic churches seem so dead. We’re broken. We’ve compromised with the culture.”

DeMatte, a youth minister from Columbus, Ohio, and former member of National Evangelization Teams (NET Ministries), led St. John’s mission Oct. 27-29.

“The world is not yet what God intended it to be,” DeMatte told his morning session audience on day two of the mission.

“More and more today, Christ needs you and me to lay down our lives for the cause of Jesus Christ, for the cause of changing the culture.”

Catholics are called to bring Christ and his Church “into every strata of society,” DeMatte said.

“Jesus’ Plan A — his long-term vision — is for you and I to bring about the renewal in the world, permanent change,” he said.

Needed: More saints In his command to go and make disciples of all the world, Jesus issued the mission statement, “Help other people follow me,” DeMatte said.

“He doesn’t say go into your church and volunteer for everything, but go into the marketplace, into the neighborhood, wherever you are, and be saints.

Whatever we Dan DEMATTE are called to be, we need to be saints.”

DeMatte challenged Catholics to be ministers of life, love and faith, the three crises he said burden today’s world.

He decried the 46 million abortions that are carried out worldwide each year, calling Catholics to be disciples of life via a three-pronged approached. (See box, this page).

To counter the crumbling of marriage and family in today’s culture, Catholics must be disciples of love, preaching that “to love is to give 100 percent of ourselves to

the other,” combatting the urge to live for power, popularity, pleasures and possessions.

And, finally, Catholics have to reverse the trends that have seen 30 million people leave the Church in the past 30 years and 83 percent of young people leave the faith by the end of their college years.

“We need to be disciples of faith who live our faith publicly,” DeMatte said.

Audience touched The crowd at the Oct. 28 session of the mission was so large that the morning Mass had to be moved from its usual site in the parish Chapel of the Angels to the main church.

DeMatte, a fiery, impassioned speaker, touched St. John’s parishioners who attended the mission.

Don Kelly said that among the thoughts he took away was the idea to look at things through God’s eyes — the way God looks at things.

“He’s a dynamic speaker,” Kelly said. “His description of the Lord’s passion — you wondered if he helped Mel Gibson with his [film] script.”

Linda Bookey agreed.

“He put you right below the

3 ways you can be a disciple of life

Local

At parish mission, evangelist tries to start ‘holiness revolution’

Evangelist Dan DeMatte’s three-pronged approach to being a disciple of life: 1. Live life to the fullest joyfully.

“Allow people to see the beauty of human life,” DeMatte said. As Pope Francis teaches, there is no room in the Church for unhappy Catholics.

2. Recognize the dignity of every human person, from womb to tomb.

See every person as a child of God who deserves our love.

3. Use your time well. Don’t spend so much of your time on yourself, your comfort and your pleasure, but spend it on the needs of others.

cross with Jesus,” she said.

Mary Lee Kelly, Don’s wife, found DeMatte speaking to her.

“When he was talking about trust in God, I thought, ‘How much trust do I really have?’ ” she said.

“You pray for things and three days later you pray again. I learned you just have to let it go and let God steer you.”

Part of O’Shaughnessy’s giving was encouraging others to give, too Continued from page 8 He eventually used a vertical marketing strategy to not only drill for oil, but also to refine it for multiple uses — gasoline, kerosene, burning oils, turpentine and lubricating oils and greases — and to distribute it under the Globe trademark to 600 independent dealers in 12 states in the middle of the country and into Canada.

“He was pretty sharp,” Hennes said. “He had a shrewd business sense — an instinct about what would work and what wouldn’t.

And he hired really good people to run the operations.”

O’Shaughnessy was an early adopter of new technologies and methods, and also understood the need to keep employees happy.

After starting to give Christmas bonuses, he felt compelled to continue the practice even in years when the company lost money.

Generous beyond measure Still, it is O’Shaughnessy’s charitable contributions that are the real story behind the man.

“He gave to everything,” Hennes told The Catholic Spirit.

O’Shaughnessy’s files contain letter after letter of requests for loans and donations. If he decided he would give, he’d write yes and an amount

About the book “That Great Heart” by Doug Hennes, Beaver’s Pond Press, Edina, 2014; 257 pages. $25.

Book signing events • 11:45 a.m.–1:15 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6, Anderson Student Center, University of St. Thomas St. Paul campus, Summit and Cretin Avenues.

• After 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Masses Sunday, Nov. 9, St. Mark, 1976 Dayton Ave., St. Paul.

• 11 a.m.–12:45 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15, St. Patrick’s Guild, 1554 Randolph Ave., St. Paul.

I.A. O’Shaughnessy as a Tommies football player for the then College of St. Thomas, circa 1905. Photo courtesy of Doug Hennes right on the bottom of the letter and write the check right away — $100 here, $200 there.

“If he was saying no,” Hennes said, “there would be a letter, because he’d always say why.”

While O’Shaughnessy donated millions for buildings at the University of Notre Dame as well

as St. Kate’s and St. Thomas, he often donated only if organizations raised a matching sum.

“He really saw himself as trying to leverage other gifts,” Hennes said. “He was willing to give, but he wanted to get other people involved, too.”

His faith and his understanding of stewardship both came into play in giving.

Hennes quoted him, “The Lord has been good to me, so I figure I might as well spread some of my

money around where it will do some good.”

There’s much more, including O’Shaughnessy’s part in the effort during World War II, his commitment to his parish — St. Mark in St. Paul — and the meeting with Blessed Pope Paul VI and Notre Dame President Father Theodore Hesburgh that led to O’Shaughnessy financing one of the pope’s dreams, the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in the Holy Land.

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

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Former Catholic schools director remembered as advocate

By Bob Zyskowski The Catholic Spirit

It was a special time for Tom McCarver when the National Catholic Educational Association held its annual convention in Minneapolis in 1997.

The 13,000 educators from around the country set an attendance record, and, for McCarver, then director of Catholic Education and Formation Ministries in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the NCEA convention was an opportunity to showcase programs in Catholic schools in the Twin Cities area.

“He reached out to Catholic educators in our archdiocese to share with others what we were doing in Catholic education,” recalled Gary Wilmer, who is director of personnel and planning for the archdiocese’s Office of Catholic Schools.

“Tom was very proud of the national attention our schools and religious education programs received, and of the long-range vision for Catholic education in our archdiocese, in particular support for our urban schools, and his passion in finding ways to financially support them,” he said.

Tom MC CARVER McCarver, a lifelong teacher and education administrator, and a passionate advocate for Catholic schools, died Oct. 20 in St. Paul at the age of 80.

G. Thomas McCarver, a native of Memphis, was initially a member of the Christian Brothers. He was a teacher or administrator in schools in Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee and Iowa as well as Minnesota, where he taught religion, history and English, and coached football, basketball and hockey at Cretin High School in St Paul.

Before joining the faculty of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, he was assistant academic dean and academic advising director at St. Mary’s College in Winona and served as academic vice president and academic dean at Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa.

Innovative educator McCarver is remembered especially for proposing and establishing the Murray Institute at St. Thomas, which provides free graduate education to Catholic school teachers.

McCarver chaired the education

department at St. Thomas when, in analyzing enrollment data for graduate-level programs through a scholarship for Catholic school teachers, he noticed an alarming decline in participants.

From 1985 to 1989, Catholic school personnel taking advantage of the one, tuition-free course dropped from 139 students to 37.

He concluded that rising tuition rates and the low average salary of $16,000 were preventing Catholic school faculty from continuing their education beyond a bachelor’s degree.

McCarver proposed that money in the John Gregory Murray Fund be used to deliver a three-year, tuition-free graduate degree program for Catholic school teachers and administrators who pledged to continue to serve at Catholic schools for a minimum of three years.

The Murray Institute program has provided advanced degrees to hundreds of students since 1993.

McCarver was director of archdiocesan Catholic Education and Formation Ministries from 1994 to 2005, when he was named vicar for urban Catholic education in the archdiocese, a position that grew out of the need for funding of inner city Catholic schools.

Wilmer, who interacted with McCarver as a principal and as president of the Association of Catholic School Principals of the Archdiocese, recalled McCarver as “a very thoughtful and a soft spoken person,” a good listener who was always respectful of the people he professionally worked with.

“Tom always had a concern that our Catholic schools need to be available not only to all children, but in particular to serve and educate the poor and underprivileged, and he worked at finding ways to support them so they could receive a Catholic education,” Wilmer said.

“Tom also encouraged parish leadership to find ways to provide a living wage for teachers and principals as part of our obligation regarding the Church document on social justice,” Wilmer added.

Upon retiring, McCarver put his energy into fundraising, helping to create FOCUS, Friends of Catholic Urban Schools.

He is survived by his wife, Josanne, and children Chris, Thomas and Megan.

A funeral Mass was Oct. 27 at Guardian Angels in Oakdale.

Local mother shares expertise at first Catholic home-schooling conference in Mexico The Catholic Spirit A bi-lingual, home-schooling mom from Minnesota shared her knowledge and experience at the first International Catholic Home School Conference in Mexico City in mid-October.

Pamela Patnode, a mother of five who with her husband Dan are members of Holy Name of Jesus in Medina, delivered two presentations at the conference, held at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Speaking in Spanish to an audience of families from Mexico, Central America and Latin America, Patnode Pamela presented a summary of her PATNODE 2012 book, “5 Steps to Successful Home Schooling: How to Add Faith and Focus to Your Home Education Program.”

Patnode said homeschooling in Latin America today is similar to where it was 30 years ago in the United States, with few laws in place, few resources, but “growing for the same reasons it is growing in the U.S. — parents want to be able to pass along the faith to their children in the midst of a secular culture that is trying to usurp the faith of the family.”

Patnode, who has homeschooled all of her own children and still homeschools the three youngest, has a son studying at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and a daughter who attends Providence Academy in Plymouth.

“We see the benefits of various forms of education,” Patnode said.

In her second presentation in Mexico City, she tried to ease parents’ concerns that their children’s social development would suffer by not attending traditional schools.

Studies show that there is no foundation for those fears, Patnode said.

Her sessions were two of many held over the three-day conference.

“It was fun to meet the families who came,” she added. Her 15-year-old daughter Kristen attended the conference as well.

The weekend was “rooted in prayer,” Patnode said, and included Mass and adoration at the basilica that was built on the site of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a native man.

“It was a very beautiful event at a beautiful spot,” Patnode said.

Book lays out challenges, opportunities amid loss

By Bob Zyskowski The Catholic Spirit For people grieving, every hurdle to overcoming their loss affords an opportunity that can help them through their grief.

That’s the message Dominican Sister Mauryeen O’Brien preaches in “Catholic & Mourning a Loss,” a brief, 63-page paperback that delves into five of those challenges and opportunities they present to those grieving for any number of reasons — the death of a loved one, of course, or the loss of a job, health, ability, pet, etc.

It’s part of human nature to mourn what we have loved, she writes, but

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

“unless we mourn that loss sufficiently and successfully, we will not be able to move on with our life and live it to its fullest.”

Sister Mauryeen, who is director of separated, divorced and bereaved ministry in the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn., points throughout to Catholic prayer and ritual to bring the grieving a sense of balance and peace.

Faith, she noted, can help us realize that, even though loss produces suffering, we can recover and move to new life.

Among the challenges discussed is that loss is tiring, discouraging, confusing and leaves one feeling alone and questioning one’s value. A person who loses a job

may feel no longer useful.

The opportunities those tests provide, however, include the chance to find “new meaning in and appreciation of life,” Sister Mauryeen says, time to say goodbye, occasions to treasure memories, and reasons to encounter the love of God in a new and real way.

“When those of us who mourn feel we have lost ‘everything,’ ” she writes, “when we feel completely empty and alone, we often seem to be ‘pushed’ or even ‘forced’ to turn to God, and there we discover a power that loves us. . . . It’s almost as if our emptiness becomes a gift, for we finally realize that only God can fill the void and only our faith can sustain us.”

About the book “Catholic & Mourning A Loss: 5 Challenges and 5 Opportunities”

by Mauryeen O’Brien, OP; Acta Publications, 2014; paperback, 63 pages; $6.95.

11

By Mark Pattison Catholic News Service Liturgical matters will take center stage on the agenda of action items at the fall general meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to be held Nov. 10-13 in Baltimore.

There will be five liturgical items up for consideration. All are subject to amendments from bishops. All but one require approval of two-thirds of the bishops, followed by final approval from the Vatican.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., who is president of the USCCB, will deliver his first presidential address. He was elected to a three-year term last November. As is customary, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States, also will address the assembly.

During the meeting, the bishops will choose a new secretary-elect for the USCCB, and vote for the chairmen-elect of five committees.

A number of presentations will be made, including one on underserved communities and Catholic schools, and another on a recent pilgrimage of prayer for peace in the Holy Land.

The bishops also will conduct the canonical consultation on the sainthood cause of Father Paul Wattson. Father Wattson was an Episcopal priest who co-founded the Society of the Atonement, also known as the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement, to further Christian unity. He was received into the Catholic Church as were all men and women in the society at the time, and devised the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, still observed each January.

On the first day of the meeting, the bishops will concelebrate Mass at the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore in honor of the 225th anniversary of the establishment of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Bishops’ fall general assembly to be live streamed, live Tweeted, carried via satellite The 2014 Fall General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore will be live streamed on the Internet Nov. 1011, and also will be available via satellite feed for broadcasters wishing to air it.

The feed will run Monday, Nov. 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Central Standard Time, and Tuesday, Nov. 11, from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (CST), covering both the open sessions of the meeting and media conferences.

The live stream will be available at www.usccb.org/about/leadership/usccbgeneral-assembly/index.cfm. News updates, vote totals, addresses and other materials will be posted to this page.

Those wishing to follow the meeting on social media can do so at twitter.com/ USCCBLive with the hashtag #usccb14.

Updates will also be posted to www.facebook. com/usccb.

Baltimore was the first diocese founded in the United States. The bishops had similarly marked the bicentennial of the U.S. hierarchy in 1989 with a Mass at the basilica.

The liturgical items up for consideration: • A revised translation of the ritual book “Dedication of a Church and Altar,” used whenever a new church is built or when a new altar is made.

The revised English translation incorporates the modifications from the Code of Canon Law as well as bringing the translation into conformity with the Roman Missal, Third Edition.

• A first-ever official English translation of the ritual book “Exorcisms and Related Supplications,” revised after

Theology Day. Find out.

The Future of American Catholicism

Thursday, Nov. 20 – Basilica of Saint Mary, 88 N 17th St, Minneapolis 6 p.m.: check-in, 6:30-9 p.m.: presentation Young people have been portrayed negatively through the centuries, but young people have amazing gifts and talents and have much to teach us. Over the last twenty years the Lilly Endowment has invested a hundred million dollars fostering the next generation of young leaders for church and society. This presentation will discuss and reflect on the amazingly positive lessons learned from Lilly’s youth theology initiative and explore its implications for the future of American Catholicism.

Jeffrey Kaster, Ed.D, is the Director of the Youth in Theology and Ministry Program for Saint John’s University School of Theology·Seminary and an adjunct professor of theology at Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict. He also serves as the Coordinator of Lilly Youth Theology Network. Jeff completed a MA in scripture from Saint John’s School of Theology·Seminary in 1984 and a Doctorate of Education from the University of Minnesota in 2008.

the Second Vatican Council, and promulgated in Latin in 1999 with an amended version in 2004. The main part of this book is the rite of major exorcism and includes an introduction outlining criteria for its use, which is always the decision of the bishop alone.

While this text affirms the reality of evil in the world, it even more so affirms the sovereignty of Jesus to overcome any and all evil.

• A supplement to the Liturgy of the Hours of an English translation of the prayers used for the feast days of saints who have been added to the general calendar since 1984.

• Modifications to the Revised Grail Psalms, originally approved in 2010 by the

U.S. & World

Liturgical items top agenda at USCCB general meeting

Vatican. The USCCB Committee on Divine Worship recommended improving the translation and its “sprung rhythm” to make proclamation and singing easier.

The fifth liturgy-related item would authorize rewriting for later approval guidelines from its 1995 document “Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons with Disabilities” in light of medical developments and increased awareness of challenges faced by Catholics today, such as gluten intolerance, also known as celiac disease.

Other action items to be addressed by the bishops include the 2015 USCCB budget, the 2016 diocesan assessment, and a proposal to proceed on a revision to the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.”

If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, your first call should be to law enforcement.

The archdiocese’s Office of Victim Advocacy and Assistance is also here to offer you help and healing if you have been abused by a Catholic priest or another person in Church ministry.

You may make a confidential call to 651.291.4497.

FREE but registration is required: www.csbsju.edu/sot or 320-363-3570

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

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U.S. & World

CRS manages ‘safe and dignified’ burials of Ebola victims

By Bronwen Dachs Catholic News Service Burials that are dignified and safe are urgently needed for Ebola victims in West Africa, where corpses are frequently left unattended for days and then thrown into graves without ceremony, a U.S. Church aid official said.

“So many people are dying that there has not been the capacity to respond” to burial needs in an appropriate way and “we are now making this a priority,” said Michael Stulman, regional information officer for the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief Services.

Nearly 5,000 people have died in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia during the worst Ebola outbreak on record with many people contracting the disease from touching the highly infectious dead bodies of victims.

“The ritual of the family washing the body of the deceased has been

“We need to create ways for people to visit the graves of their loved ones and still be safe.”

Michael Stulman, regional information officer for the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief Services.

taken away, and this can’t be changed because of the health risks, but we can bring dignity back to the burial process,” Stulman said.

CRS has taken responsibility for managing “safe and dignified burials” in the Port Loko district in northern Sierra Leone, he said.

The agency will ensure that graves are marked so that families

Health workers in protective gear take a body bag containing the highly contagious body of an Ebola victim out of a vehicle in preparation for burial at a cemetery in the Port Loko district in northern Sierra Leone. CNS/Michael Stulman, courtesy Catholic Relief Services know where their loved ones are buried and that there is “one body in one grave,” he said, noting that in the current crisis “this is not always the case.”

Stulman, who is based in Dakar, Senegal, visited a cemetery in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, where laborers “are digging 40 graves a day,” he said.

“We need to create ways for people to visit the graves of their loved ones and still be safe,” he explained, noting that currently no funeral services are held in Sierra Leone and visits to cemeteries are not allowed.

Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person and is not an airborne disease.

“We will work closely with local religious leaders in putting in place burial procedures,” Stulman said.

“There needs to be some ceremony for the loved one who has died,” he added.

Father Paul Morana Sandi,

general secretary of the Interterritorial Catholic Bishops’ Conference of The Gambia and Sierra Leone, told Catholic News Agency for Africa that a meeting with Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma had led to a decision that religious leaders can be at burial sites “to pray, but from a distance, with some of the relatives present.”

The removal of all rituals associated with death “has had negative influences on our own cultural practices and way of behaving,” Father Sandi said.

“A sacred ritual has been taken away” in the wake of Ebola, Stulman said, noting that health teams in protective gear now remove corpses from homes; in the past, religious leaders and family members had carefully prepared the body for burial.

While most people “understand the severity of the disease, there is a reluctance to change behavior, particularly regarding burials,” he

said.

When someone dies of Ebola in Sierra Leone, households “wait between one and seven days for a burial team to collect the body,” he said, noting that this is often caused by “difficult roads or a car breaking down.”

CRS aims to enable burial teams to respond to calls “quickly and safely, with the resources to protect themselves from danger of infection,” Stulman said.

Two vehicles are needed for collecting bodies from homes or clinics for burial; “one for the team and the other to transport the body,” he said.

“The team should spray the body with disinfectant and put it in a bag and also spray the house,” he said.

Noting that deaths from Ebola can be “sudden and unexpected” and there is little help at hand for grieving families, Stulman said CRS will start providing counseling services.

Pope calls for abolishing death penalty, life imprisonment

By Francis X. Rocca Catholic News Service Pope Francis called for abolition of the death penalty as well as life imprisonment, and denounced what he called a “penal populism” that promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.

“It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples’ lives from an unjust aggressor,” the pope said Oct. 23 in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law.

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

“All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this I connect with life imprisonment,” he said. “Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty.”

The pope noted that the Vatican recently eliminated life imprisonment from its own penal code.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, cited by Pope Francis in his talk, “the traditional

teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,” but modern advances in protecting society from dangerous criminals mean that “cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

The pope said criminal penalties should not apply to children, and should be waived or limited for the elderly, who “on the basis of their very errors can offer lessons to the rest of society. We don’t learn only from the virtues of saints but also from the failings and errors of sinners.”

13

By Lindsay Steele Catholic News Service For couples struggling to conceive a child, in vitro fertilization has been a medical standard for the past 30 years.

The Catholic Church has long opposed the process because it separates contraception from the marital act, and it destroys embryos.

With the procedure’s prevalence in the medical world, some Catholic couples are led to believe they are out of medical options after a doctor recommends it.

However, officials from the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha, Neb., say in vitro fertilization, or IVF, is not a miracle procedure and they report that more effective options exist.

Dr. Kristina Pakiz, associate medical consultant, said couples “do not have to feel trapped in a corner where they are told they will never have a child without in vitro fertilization. The truth is that there is superior gynecologic health care available to them.”

She said IVF has a success rate of about 30 percent and increases the risk of high-risk pregnancy and birth defects. About five in six embryos created in the process will die. IVF does not address root causes of infertility; only a detailed workup that helps doctors diagnose and treat infertility as the product of an underlying condition can do that. When infertility is seen as an underlying medical condition and treated accordingly, success rates for

conceiving increase.

Dr. Karla Polaschek, medical director for Women’s Choice Center in Bettendorf and pro-life OB/GYN practitioner at Medical Arts Associates in Moline, Ill., said many doctors are aware of alternative treatments and procedures, but may be skeptical or less comfortable with them.

Additionally, she said IVF is part of a profitable industry; treatments cost $10,000 or more, and medical research companies depend on donated embryos — with the parents’ permission — for research.

Jamie Rathjen, director of Fiat FertilityCare Center in Cedar Falls, Iowa, said she suspects there is more money to be made in treatments such as IVF than solutions that treat the underlying condition. She also conducted a survey of 15 Cedar Falls-area doctors and most said that such treatments were not emphasized during medical school training.

Rathjen, an advocate for procedures that diagnose and treat the underlying issue, said doctors tend to be receptive to Churchapproved methods and technologies once they understand them as viable options. Three Cedar Falls-area medical professionals are now seeking additional training.

These alternative treatments often utilize natural family planning methods to chart fertility cycles and detect problems. Beth Budelier, NFP teacher and member of St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Davenport, explained that it is common for couples with low or marginal

LEVITTOWN, Pa.

Companies criticized for offering to pay to freeze female workers’ eggs The recent announcements by Facebook and Apple that they would include among employee health benefits the option for young women to freeze their eggs for future use at a cost of up to $20,000 has been greeted with numerous objections by bioethicists and pro-life leaders. Unlike normal medical procedures intended to restore health to a person with an illness, this proposal offers “risky technology” to otherwise healthy young women, noted Jennifer Lahl, president of the California-based Center for Bioethics and Culture. “This is still an enterprise that has a very high failure rate,” she said, and no one yet knows the long-term health effects of the medications and other chemical agents that are used in the processes of retrieving and freezing eggs. It’s amazing to her, Lahl said, how little attention “these very smart people” at the tech companies are paying to “human biology 101,” which knows that advancing maternal age always carries risks, and she said she wonders what benefits will be offered to women and children who suffer adverse effects.

CINCINNATI

Three Cincinnati priests on leave for misconduct have been laicized Three priests of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati who have been on administrative leave because of allegations of improper behavior involving minors

Local resources For local resources and to see a video of the “Understanding Infertility” conference, visit www.archspm.org/ resources_video/ understandinginfertility/ fertility to conceive within six months of learning this method.

For women who do not ovulate or have other issues that cannot be detected or confirmed through charting fertility signs alone, ultrasounds and hormonal testing can be useful. Treatments can range from a healthy diet to fertility-enhancing medications such as clomiphene and letrozole to reparative surgery.

Still, she said, some couples may not be able to conceive even with the most statistically effective treatments, depending on their condition and age. Statistically, women are seeking motherhood past the age of declining fertility, but IVF does not offer a viable solution. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology reports a success rate of less than 5 percent for a 42-year-old woman.

Anything that helps to increase a couple’s natural fertility — as opposed to replacing it or creating life outside of the body — is acceptable in the Church. Father

have been dismissed from the clerical state by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“I hope that this resolution will bring some measure of closure and healing to anyone harmed by these priests,” Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of Cincinnati said in a statement issued Oct. 28. He said that with this decision, all the cases presented to the doctrinal congregation “have been dealt with and we have no more priests of the archdiocese on administrative leave.” The three former priests are Thomas Kuhn, Thomas Feldhaus and Ronald Cooper. Following a canonical process, the archdiocese said, they have been permanently removed from both the rights and the obligations of the priesthood. It said the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation affirmed a decision made by a panel of three judges in another diocese that the men be laicized.

OMAHA, Neb.

Creighton criticized for giving benefits to same-sex spouses of workers Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha said he was disappointed that Creighton University’s president said the Jesuit-run institution will extend health care benefits to the same-sex spouses of employees in 2015. Same-sex marriage is not legal in Nebraska, and the beneficiaries are in same-sex marriages performed in states where such unions are legal. An amendment to the Nebraska Constitution that was approved by voters in November 2000 defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and prohibits recognition of same-sex relationships under any other

U.S. & World

Experts outline alternatives for infertile couples

Thom Hennen, religion teacher at Assumption High School in Davenport and a theologian and diocesan vocations director, said that couples are welcome to try what is permissible, all the while being open to whatever life may or may not come.

“At all times there has to be an abandonment to God’s will,” he added.

Polaschek recommends that Catholics seeking infertility treatment familiarize themselves with treatments acceptable to the Church and resist being persuaded into using illicit treatments.

Even if a doctor is not explicitly pro-life, he or she may know of alternative methods or be able to make a referral. If a doctor does not respect the couples’ wishes, they can look for a new doctor.

They can also call the Pope Paul IV center for referrals, she said.

For more information about the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, visit www.popepaulvi.com. name. Jesuit Father Tim Lannon, Creighton’s president, announced the benefits would be extended in an Oct. 27 letter to university trustees. In his statement issued the same day, the archbishop said he strongly disagreed with the priest’s decision. Father Lannon in his letter said he had informed Archbishop Lucas before he announced the decision and acknowledged “his disagreement and disapproval.”

VATICAN CITY

Bright lights, cool air protect Sistine Chapel from visiting hordes The Vatican is not promising visitors to the Sistine Chapel more elbow room, but it is guaranteeing a cooler experience. Marking the year of the 450th anniversary of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s death, the Vatican Museums hope the brand new air conditioning system and the 7,000 new LED lights will preserve the Renaissance artist’s masterpiece for generations to come. Television cameras, news photographers and journalists were invited to the chapel Oct. 29 for a “before and after” experience.

Initially, they viewed the chapel with the lighting installed 20 years ago after the cleaning and restoration of Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes and his massive wall mural, “The Last Judgment.” Then the brighter, cooler LED lights were turned on. Even with a crowd in the chapel, the room is designed to stay cooler than ever — never going above 77 degrees Fahrenheit — thanks to a new system installed by the U.S.-based Carrier company.

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

This Catholic Life • Commentary

14 FAITH IN THE PUBLIC ARENA Shawn Peterson

Educational options don’t always equal choices; it’s time for both Of all the important and interesting policy areas I work on, none is more personal than education.

Education issues have always held a particular interest for me.

This interest has been greatly influenced by my own experience growing up, and now by experiences my wife and I have had with our three children’s education.

Growing up, we moved a lot. My dad was in the restaurant business, and every few years it was on to a new and, most often, better opportunity for our family. With each move, my parents had to select where to live and which school I would attend. They had options from which to make choices. Sometimes it was a Catholic school, and sometimes it was a public school. Where I went to school always played a part in which area of the new city they chose to live. No matter where we eventually settled, they would find an area that had a good school.

When it came time for my wife and me to send our first child to

school, we did some research. We attended open houses, talked to friends and neighbors, and looked into all our options in the area, including the public, charter and private schools. We live in an area that has great options for all three, an embarrassment of riches as education goes. After much discussion, prayer and discernment, we made our choice — a choice based on what we wanted for our children and what best fit our family’s all-around education needs. It wasn’t the newest school, the biggest school or even the most well-funded school, but it was the best school for our kids.

My parents had choices, my wife and I had choices. Yet for tens of thousands of families in Minnesota, there are no choices.

At a Latino education summit I attended, the Minnesota commissioner of education, Brenda Cassellius, stated that Minnesota was No. 1 in the nation for providing school choice. She said we have great public, private, charter and homeschool options.

REDISCOVER: God’s time Alyssa Bormes

Having faith when our prayers seemingly go unanswered When our prayers are seemingly unanswered, our hearts can break.

The wound can shake our faith.

However, age has given us wisdom.

We know that these moments require an act of the will. “In spite of this seeming setback, I believe.”

It might be challenging, but this is all a part of spiritual maturity.

The question becomes far more difficult when it is being posed by a young child. How do we help our children remain faithful when their prayers are seemingly unanswered? Our experience, wisdom and words often fail us.

The child’s eyes might already be welling with tears, and lips quivering. The child’s heart is pure, and prayers are full, and yet the

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

good Lord has not answered in the desired way.

It is precisely at this time that our acts of the will must be firm.

This can be a pivotal moment for the child — let’s call her Rose. Just as at her baptism, we spoke for Rose, now our faith must sustain her. We have to be “all in” for the faith; any disbelief on our behalf will be magnified in her.

Let me speak firmly to parents.

In order to help our children, we must seek to be in a state of grace.

If needed, go to confession today.

Sin clouds, or even covers, our vision, and we are about to ask for guidance from the Holy Spirit. It is important for the soul to be in order for reception of the Spirit.

Yes, commissioner, we do have “options” in our state, but options don’t equal choices. An option is something that exists; a choice is something you have the ability to make.

For too many in our state — especially those who live in minority communities, disadvantaged neighborhoods or many rural communities, and for families who are struggling economically — there is only one option. Therefore, there is no choice. Many parents are forced to send their children to the local school that might be failing to educate their child or meet their needs as parents. Those parents feel trapped and are unable to

“Parental choice in education is important because no one knows a child better than his or her parent.”

fulfill their responsibility as the first educators of their children.

Catholic social teaching is clear on this: Parents are the first educators of their children and therefore, must have choices to appropriately address their educational needs.

In Blessed Pope Paul VI’s “Declaration on Christian Education,” he states: “Parents who have the primary and inalienable right and duty to

educate their children must enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools.

Consequently, the public power, which has the obligation to protect and defend the rights of citizens, must see to it, in its concern for distributive justice, that public subsidies are paid out in such a way that parents are truly free to choose according to their conscience the schools they want for their children.”

Parental choice in education is important because no one knows a child better than his or her parent.

No one else should be able to judge better on a daily basis if their child is learning. No one should know better what their child is going through at school or if their education needs — no matter what they are — are being met.

A parent has to have the ability to say, “This school isn’t the best fit for my child and I need to make a different choice.” But if no opportunity for choice exists, it doesn’t matter what the parent knows or thinks; they are rendered powerless. And no parent should have to feel that way when it comes to their child’s future.

Through legislation, such as an Opportunity Tax Credit Scholarship bill, parents would have the ability to take advantage of actual options and make a real choice. In the next “Faith in the Public Arena” column, I will address in more detail what some of these legislative solutions might look like.

Peterson is the associate policy director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

“In order to help our children, we must seek to be in a state of grace.”

Now, back to young Rose. She is wounded; comfort her. While you hold her, quietly whisper prayers, just so she can hear. Call on the Holy Spirit, on the mother of mercy, on the angels and saints, especially her guardian angel and patron saint. Even if your whisper is just “Jesus,” it is enough.

When spoken words return, the question might come from deep in her soul, “Why?” The answer, with a sense of mystery, may well need to be, “I don’t know.” Rose has asked an age-old question; perhaps it is necessary to give her age-old answers, which are really questions.

Job questioned God, but was answered with questions. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” This was a discourse of wonder. Job realizes his smallness and God’s greatness. G.K. Chesterton

explains, “The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”

Give Rose the wonder of God. “Rose, where were we when God created the earth? Where were we when he made the sky, and the sea, the earth, the animals and plants?” Let her probe the questions with you.

Finally, it must come back to his plan for all time, which has always included Rose. There is something wonderful in being small enough to fit in his great plan.

Remind her that God is love.

“Rose, even right now, when your prayer remains unanswered, you are right in the middle of God, right in the middle of love.”

Bormes, a member of Holy Family in St. Louis Park, is the author of the book “The Catechism of Hockey.”

15

Colleen Carroll Campbell

Our heavenly family after Vatican II It’s a month known for food, family and frenzied holiday shopping. But for Catholics, November is also about heaven: specifically, the saints who have arrived there and the holy souls who long to join them.

Our Church’s focus on heaven and its citizens takes on special significance this November. Fifty years ago this month, Pope Paul VI promulgated one of the landmark documents of the Second Vatican Council, the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.”

Known as “Lumen Gentium” (“Light of the Nations”), it famously proclaimed the “universal call to holiness” — the idea that sainthood is God’s will for each of us, not just for priests and nuns or some elite caste of professional Catholics.

Most Catholics believe in that universal call, at least in theory. Yet too many of us consider the saints, and the holiness they achieved, as impossibly distant. We celebrate

All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1, then spend the rest of the year struggling in solitude with our sins and trials, unaware of the powerful help the saints long to give us.

What’s more, some Catholics believe that turning to the saints for support or inspiration is passé, a relic of pre-Vatican II Catholicism that went the way of mantillas and altar rails.

It’s true that the Council Fathers moved or eliminated many saints’ feast days in an effort to streamline the Church’s liturgical calendar and keep our focus on Christ’s life. And they warned in “Lumen Gentium” against “any abuses, excesses or defects” in our devotion to saints that privilege “the multiplying of external acts” over learning from the saints’ virtues.

“Lumen Gentium” didn’t call for a sidelining of the saints, though — far from it. The same Vatican II document that summoned each of us to holiness also urged us to befriend the saints as a means of

TWENTY SOMETHING Christina Capecchi

Art among us, art within us: honoring the ‘divine spark’ Looking back, the son that was born to Leoold and Anna Maria Mozart on a Tuesday evening in late January seemed to arrive with fully formed symphonies bound up in his tiny body, waiting for ink and instrument. At age 3, the toddler nicknamed Wolfgangerl was identifying thirds on the clavier, and by 5, he was composing music.

How tempting it must have been for Leopold, himself a musician, to look at his fair-skinned son with those wide, searching eyes and claim the credit.

But the devout Catholic cast it upward, not inward. He believed his son’s musical genius had a divine origin, describing it to a friend as “a miracle, which God has allowed to see the light in Salzburg” and insisting on his paternal duty to share it and “let

God have the honor.”

When Mozart was 14 he visited the Sistine Chapel and heard “Miserere Mei, Deus,” a haunting Tenebrae melody commissioned by the Vatican more than a century before. It was performed once a year and forbidden to be transcribed or played elsewhere in order to preserve its mystery.

Young Mozart, so the story goes, was so riveted by the music that he went home and wrote out the 12-minute song entirely by ear.

That score eventually made its way into the hands of a British historian and into publication.

When Pope Clement XIV heard what had happened, he met with Mozart. Rather than excommunicate the teen, the pontiff praised his talent — and lifted the longtime ban, allowing the song to be enjoyed widely.

Over the years Leopald often urged his boy to hold onto his Catholic faith. He once wrote to Anna Maria, on a trip with their 21-year-old son: “Is it necessary for me to ask whether Wolfgang is not perhaps getting a little lax about confession? God must come first! . . . Young people do not like to hear about these things, I know, for I was once young myself.”

A year later, Mozart offered reassuring words in a letter to his father. “I have always had God before my eyes,” he wrote. “I know myself, and I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do anything which I would not do before the whole world.”

During this month of giving thanks, I’ve been thinking about Mozart’s desire to compose — which feels so distant and grand — and our own desire to create, to seek and celebrate beauty in the world. If we are truly grateful for an artistic gift — or any talent, for that matter — we honor it. To give thanks for creative ability is to guard and nurture it.

In St. John Paul II’s 1999 letter to artists — 6,361 words I have not fully mined, uncovering new insight each time I turn to them — the late pope made a connection between art and gratitude. “That is why artists,” he wrote, “the more conscious they are of their ‘gift,’ are

Over the course of the next 15 years, as I grappled with everything from my father’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease to my own struggle with infertility, I found the saints to be a continual source of strength and consolation. I felt the power of their prayers. I was challenged — and changed — by their example.

And I learned that the family of God in heaven is truly also a family to us on earth.

This November, as our Church celebrates the saints and the Vatican II document that called us to join their ranks, it’s a perfect time to reconnect with family — in heaven, as well as on earth.

This Catholic Life • Commentary

GUEST COMMENTARY

achieving that lofty goal. We should request the saints’ prayers and consider them family, “Lumen Gentium” says, “For just as Christian communion among wayfarers brings us closer to Christ, so our companionship with the saints joins us to Christ.”

I believe it because I’ve experienced it.

There was a time, during my college days, when I thought I was too old and worldlywise to bother with saints. I still practiced the Catholic faith I was raised in, but I thought those dewy-eyed, cherubic stars of my childhood books had nothing much to say to a modern woman like me.

Then one December afternoon, I cracked open a biography of St. Teresa of Avila. I found myself captivated by the liberated, laughout-loud funny woman I encountered within its pages — a woman whose meandering quest for God cast my own sputtering search in a new light. Teresa became a true friend to me that day, a wise and loving elder sister whom Jesus used to draw me back to him.

Campbell is an award-winning author, print and broadcast journalist and former presidential speech writer.

Her newest book, “My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir” (Image, 2012), has just been published in paperback. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.

“To give thanks for creative ability is to guard and nurture it.” led all the more to see themselves and the whole of creation with eyes able to contemplate and give thanks, and to raise to God a hymn of praise. This is the only way for them to come to a full understanding of themselves, their vocation and their mission.”

I recently interviewed a series of Catholic artists, all but one of whom quoted John Paul II, multiple pointing to his statement that “those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation . . . feel at the same time the obligation not to waste it but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbor and of humanity as a whole.”

Gift and obligation, duty and desire. The work of our hands, the stamp of our hearts.

Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights and editor of SisterStory.org, the official website of National Catholic Sisters Week.

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

Vocations

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Priests, religious are key in helping bring souls ‘home to God’ National Vocation Awareness Week is Nov. 2-8

By Father Troy Przybilla For The Catholic Spirit This week, the Catholic Church in the United States encourages us to turn our gaze toward religious vocations as we commemorate National Vocation Awareness Week.

For many years this week took place in January. But, as we know, there are other important themes during that month, such as Catholic Schools Week and diocesan appeals that tended to overshadow the important topic of vocations. So at the recommendation of the National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors (NCDVD), the United States bishops decided to move it to the first week in November.

I was grateful for this move until I looked at the calendar and noticed the unfortunate coincidence. The Sunday that kicked off National Vocations Week was All Souls Day. However, the more I reflected on it, the more it seemed like divine providence rather than a coincidence.

In a promotional DVD titled “Fishers of Men,” a priest made a powerful statement. He said, “The priest brings the soul home to Father Troy God.” The priest does this by preaching and offering the PRZYBILLA sacraments, but especially in the sacrament of the anointing of the sick and the use of the apostolic pardon. But the priest doesn’t stop here. All priests regularly offer Masses for souls in purgatory. Go to any parish in the world, and the Mass intention will more than likely be for the eternal repose of a dearly departed soul. I was at Mass in a parish in Alabama and the Mass intention was for Elvis Presley. The priest may never have met the person, but he still gladly offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for them.

I once heard of a pastor who would go out to the parish cemetery on Saturdays to pray for the people of his parish who have died. He did this in light of the fact that Jesus spent Saturday in the tomb and with the hope that Jesus would raise them up with him. The priest also said he would ask the souls to return the favor and pray for him and his parishioners. In light of this, we can see how the priest brings the soul home to God. But it’s not only the priest whose life is concerned with bringing souls — especially those in purgatory — home to God. Many religious dedicate their lives and offer numerous sacrifices for the souls in purgatory. St. Gertrude had a deep empathy for them. At every holy Communion it is said that she asked Jesus to show them mercy, and he never failed to answer her prayer by delivering more souls than what she asked.

Our Lord told St. Gertrude the Great that the following prayer would release 1,000 souls from purgatory each time it is said. The prayer was later extended to include living sinners as well.

“Eternal Father, I offer you the Most Precious Blood of Your Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal Church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.”

I encourage you to join me in praying this prayer every day for the holy souls in purgatory and ask them to join us in praying for more holy vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

Father Przybilla is director of vocations for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Discernment events in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Vianney Visit – Nov. 13-15 High school and college-aged men are invited to visit St. John Vianney College Seminary for a couple days in order to experience what seminary life is like. Guys who have entered the seminary have said this event was the most beneficial in helping them make their decision. For more information, visit www.vianney.net.

Year for Consecrated Life Opening Celebration – Nov. 21 Pope Francis has called for a year to honor those who have consecrated themselves to Christ. Religious women and those who are discerning are invited to attend a talk given by Deborah Savage, St. Paul Seminary professor of philosophy and theology.

Come and See Retreat – Nov. 23 Men who have graduated from college or are close to graduating and are younger than 50 are invited to come to the St. Paul Seminary to see what seminary life is like. There will be Mass, talks, meals, fraternity and prayer.

Archbishop’s Retreat – Dec. 19-21 This is the main discernment event of the year. Archbishop John Nienstedt leads a retreat at Christ the King Retreat Center in Buffalo for men who are interested in the priesthood. It’s the perfect place and time to step away from the anxieties of the world and rest in the peace of Christ.

Unless otherwise noted, times and more detailed information can be found on the archdiocesan vocation’s website, www.10000vocations.org.

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To qualify, individuals must:

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November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

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17

By Patricia Zapor Catholic News Service A longtime trend of declining numbers of women in religious orders is unpacked a bit in a new study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

In the report released Oct. 13, the social science researchers of CARA observed that the demographical story of women religious in the United States takes some disentangling.

Although past studies have talked about the rapid decline in the number of nuns in the country starting after the Second Vatican Council, “such studies did not provide the more nuanced narrative of what decline meant for the individual religious institute,” the report said. “How, for example, did religious institutes respond to declining membership?”

From a peak in 1965 of 181,000,

Vocations

Report takes deeper look at statistics about women’s religious orders the number of women religious in the U.S. has steadily declined to the current 50,000. That’s about how many sisters there were in the United States 100 years ago, said the report: “Population Trends Among Religious Institutes of Women,” by CARA staffers Mary Gautier and Mark Gray, and Erick Berrelleza, a Jesuit scholastic at Boston College.

CARA found that as their numbers declined, some religious orders reorganized their internal structures, while others merged with other religious institutes.

Some have been bolstered by sisters from other countries or women who joined a religious order later in life. Others simply stopped serving in the United States.

“In the face of diminishment,” it said, “women religious have innovated by responding with new Please turn to SOME on page 18

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TheCatholicSpirit.com November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

Vocations

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Some institutes show consistent growth even without mergers Continued from page 17 models when old models proved ineffective.”

That’s partly why the report refers to disentangling, Gautier told Catholic News Service. Some whole institutes disappeared from the Official Catholic Directory, a reference book published annually, whether by being folded into another organization, by leaving the United States or adapting in another way.

The report pointed to a flaw in assumptions about the growth in women’s religious vocations coming primarily in orders that are “traditionalist” — meaning, for example, those whose members wear a full religious habit — while institutes whose members do not wear a traditional habit are declining.

“One of the most striking findings regarding new entrants is that almost equal numbers of women have been attracted” to both kinds of religious orders, the CARA report quoted. Gautier’s book categorized the two types of religious orders according to whether the organizations belong to one or the other of two leadership organizations, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Council of Major Superiors of Women.

The LCWR’s member organizations, which account for about 80 percent of the country’s women religious, had among them 73 postulants, 117 novices and 317 women who had taken temporary vows in 2009.

Although its member organizations account for a much smaller percentage of the nuns in

CNS/Rick Musacchio, Tennessee Register the U.S., CMSWR organizations had about the same number of women in formation as did LCWR institutes, said Gautier — 73 postulants, 158 novices and 304 who had taken temporary vows.

Among other items in the report, CARA pointed to several institutes that stood out in the data for having a “slowing rate of decline” in number of members.

When the authors dug a bit, they found that such slowing sometimes was the result of one community absorbing another.

It cited the merger of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield, Mass., in the mid-1970s with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Fall River, Mass.

“It is not that the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield exhibited a sudden increase in new vocations,

but rather these two mergers account for the upswing,” the CARA report said. “In such cases, the apparent slowing rate of decline is not related to an increase of new vocations; instead, it is these mergers that account for the increases in membership.”

There are some institutes that show consistent growth even without such mergers, the report said.

“These communities do not exhibit the growth-followed-bydecline pattern and seem to point to even further expansion into the foreseeable future,” it said. For instance, the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich., was established in 1973 with nine members. The community has continued to grow gradually, and

its membership will approach 100 by the end of the decade, the report predicted.

In some cases, statistically significant growth actually represents very few people, Gautier noted.

Six institutes that have been cited in anecdotes and news reports as evidence of a reversal of the trend toward decline have increased their membership by a combined total of 267 people since 1970. That number, the report said, is “too few to have an effect on the overall picture.”

“Whatever these institutes have done or are doing is unlikely to offset losses in the tens of thousands elsewhere. It is simply not enough.”

2014-2015 To order, please send check for $49.95 (includes shipping & handling) to: Subscription Department • c/o The Catholic Spirit • 244 Dayton Ave. • St. Paul, MN 55102

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

19 The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Readings

• Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12 • 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17 • John 2:13-22

Reflection

What do you need in order to allow the Lord in the Eucharist to speak to the depths of your soul?

In this 2012 file photo, bishops from Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Alaska concelebrate Mass at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. CNS/Paul Haring

SUNDAY SCRIPTURES Deacon Christopher Gernetzke

Adoring, worshiping and loving Jesus in the Eucharist A few years back, during summer break from college seminary, I had the privilege of accompanying my bishop, His Excellency Robert C. Morlino, to Rome for a couple of weeks. While we were there, Pope Benedict XVI was celebrating the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (the Body and Blood of Christ) at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, followed by a eucharistic procession to St. Mary Major, which is located nearby. The Basilica of St. John Lateran is grand and extremely beautiful — the body of the church lined with life-size statues of the

apostles, the floor and pillars made of marble and flourishing details leafed in gold.

Since I was with a bishop, I had the honor of vesting in cassock and surplice and being seated in the sanctuary with the priest assistants and bishops. When the Holy Father processed in, I realized that I would be about 15 feet from him as he celebrated Mass. When the time came for the eucharistic procession, the Holy Father exposed the blessed sacrament and knelt in prayer for what seemed like eternity but was probably about 20 minutes.

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, Nov. 9 The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17 John 2:13-22 Monday, Nov. 10 St. Leo the Great, pope, doctor of the Church Titus 1:1-9 Luke 17:1-6 Tuesday, Nov. 11 St. Martin of Tours, bishop Titus 2:1-8, 11-14 Luke 17:7-10

While we were all kneeling there with the Holy Father, adoring our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, it occurred to me that the pope, a man who is famous throughout the world and whom countless Catholics dream of the opportunity to see in their lifetime, was not focused primarily on all those gathered there but on allowing our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament to speak to the depths of his soul.

This is what our Lord is doing in this Sunday’s Gospel. He cleanses the temple, casting out the moneychangers that facilitated the temple tax and the vendors selling animals for the temple sacrifices.

Jesus Christ institutes a new order of worship. No longer will we worship by simply offering animals in place of man for man’s sins, nor will we pay the temple tax to make everything right for the sake of observing the law. Christ casts this out. We are now to join Jesus Christ in offering the one sacrifice that he offers. This is the Eucharist — the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, eternally offered to the

Wednesday, Nov. 12 St. Josaphat, bishop, martyr Titus 3:1-7 Luke 17:11-19 Thursday, Nov. 13 St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin Philemon 7-20 Luke 17:20-25 Friday, Nov. 14 2 John 4-9 Luke 17:26-37 Saturday, Nov. 15 St. Albert the Great, bishop, doctor of the Church 3 John 5-8 Luke 18:1-8

father through the Holy Spirit for our sins. Our Lord comes so that each of us might be saved, that we might truly encounter the God who desires to save us, to love us, to be united to us.

The reality of adoring, worshiping and loving Jesus Christ in the Eucharist was profoundly deepened in that beautiful basilica with our beloved Holy Father. While it is most fitting that we worship in beautiful churches and give respect and have a deep filial affection for our Holy Father, these must never let anything impede each of us from falling down in utter awe and heartfelt adoration of our Lord, Jesus Christ — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity — offered for us in the Mass and desiring to love us at all times.

Deacon Gernetzke is in formation for the priesthood at the St. Paul Seminary for the Diocese of Madison, Wis. His teaching parish is St. Maximilian Kolbe in Delano. His home parish is St. Paul in Evansville, Wis.

Sunday, Nov. 16 Thirty-third Sunday in ordinary time Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6 Matthew 25:14-30 Monday, Nov. 17 St. Elizabeth of Hungary, religious Revelation 1:1-4; 2:1-5 Luke 18:35-43 Tuesday, Nov. 18 The Dedication of the Basilicas of Sts. Peter and Paul, apostles; St. Rose Revelation 3:1-6, 14-22 Luke 19:1-10 Wednesday, Nov. 19 Revelation 4:1-11 Luke 19:11-28

Focus on Faith • Sunday Scriptures

Sunday, Nov. 9

Thursday, Nov. 20 Revelation 5:1-10 Luke 19:41-44 Friday, Nov. 21 The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Revelation 10:8-11 Luke 19:45-48 Saturday, Nov. 22 St. Cecilia, virgin, martyr Revelation 11: 4-12 Luke 20:27-40 Sunday, Nov. 23 Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe Ezekiel 34:11-12 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28 Matthew 25: 31-46

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

Focus on Faith • Seeking Answers

20 SEEKING ANSWERS Father Michael Schmitz

Despair errs because of one thought: Life is worth living Q. Is assisted suicide OK? Why

should people needlessly suffer?

A. The only thing that makes a story worth telling is the underlying and fundamental certainty that life is worth living.

Think of any great story. Every one of them is built upon this premise. If they weren’t, there is no real conflict; instead of fighting courageously when one encounters overwhelming odds or faces an impossible situation, the characters would simply die. The reasonable thing would actually be to take matters into one’s own hands and end one’s life. If they’re going to die eventually, why not simply face death on one’s own terms?

Because life is worth living.

As I wrote this, a 29-year-old woman named Brittany Maynard was preparing to die on Nov. 1. She planned to end her own life by self-administering a lethal dose of medication. Brittany has terminal cancer and experiences pain and suffering on a moment-to-moment basis. Because of this, she has moved from her home state of California to Oregon so that she will be legally allowed to kill herself.

The public response is initially one of sympathy.

We see this beautiful young woman and hear about her wedding and learn of her pain, and we feel compassion. We feel so sorry for this woman whose life has been entirely disrupted. In

doing this, we are being human. It is human for us to feel such compassion for Brittany (and anyone else in pain). And it is natural that we don’t want her to suffer any more. If there is a way that her pain can be taken away, wouldn’t that be better than for her to needlessly endure?

But to agree that ending her life is the solution is decidedly unhuman.

There is something in us that recognizes that human suffering, while evil, is worth it. We intrinsically know that life is worth living. When we see someone endure suffering heroically, even if it costs them everything, we see human dignity in action. It is the reason why we cheer for those who are willing to face overwhelming odds. It is the reason we love heroes: They remind us that life is worth fighting for. They remind us that there is more to this life.

As Christians, we know that suffering is not the worst thing.

Yes, if all there is in this universe is the material world (no soul, no spirit, no God), then the worst possible evil is suffering. But we know that there is more to this life than what we can immediately see.

Dignity is not found in taking one’s own life, but in facing the challenge well. Compassion is not helping another person to end their own life but in caring for them in their weakness and pain.

Years ago, I came upon the story of an Italian teenager named

Chiara Badano; she was declared “Blessed” in 2010. Like Brittany, she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

In 1988, when she was only 17, the advancement of her bone cancer left her paralyzed and in bed. She had been an athlete and loved to dance, but for two years, she could hardly move. Her cancer left her in almost constant agony, but she refused to take any painkillers. She said that they made it more difficult for her to focus, and “there’s only one thing I can do now: to offer my suffering to Jesus because I want to share as much as possible in his sufferings on the cross.”

Blessed Chiara faced the last years and months and moments of her life with the confidence that her suffering was not meaningless.

She was confident that her life was not meaningless. Chiara had encountered the person of Jesus Christ, and in discovering the love of God, her life was transformed.

Her life was not pointless, and her illness was not merely evil. It had the ability to draw her even more deeply into life and into the mission of God himself. She had met the God who entered deeply into human suffering and had redeemed it. Jesus has given human suffering a power and a purpose. Jesus reveals that all life, even the most painful and broken life, has the ability to make a difference in this world.

When Blessed Chiara had given away everything that she had and was unable to hardly speak, much less move, she stated, “I have nothing left, but I still have my heart, and with that I can always love.”

The only difference between Brittany and Chiara is the knowledge that life is worth living.

In the end, Jesus died. And in the end, Chiara died. But the truth is, that wasn’t the end. There is more to this life than many of us realize.

Our culture has exchanged a

“Dignity is not found in taking one’s own life, but in facing the challenge well.

Compassion is not helping another person to end their own life but in caring for them in their weakness and pain.”

Sanctity of Life ethic for a Quality of Life ethic. In doing so, we have positioned ourselves to rate a person’s worth based on our perceived quality of life. We think, “I wouldn’t want to have to live like that,” and in our fear, we forget the truth: Life is worth living.

Brittany is not a villain. She is our sister who is in incredible pain.

I do not condemn her even though I believe her actions are wrong. I can relate to her struggle more than anything. I think that we hear about Brittany and we are afraid. “What if it was me? What would I do? Would I be strong enough to die well?”

But this is where a heroic life could be made. “Death with dignity” does not mean dying like an animal; it means dying like a human being, with untold worth and courage.

Father Schmitz is director of youth and young adult ministry for the Diocese of Duluth and chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Reach him at fathermikeschmitz@gmail.com.

Don’t be bad Christians, people may think atheism is better, pope says

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service The way Christians behave can either help and inspire others or turn them away from ever following Jesus, Pope Francis said.

“How many times we’ve heard in our neighborhoods, ‘Oh that person over there always goes to church, but he badmouths everyone, skins them alive.’ What a bad example to badmouth other people. This is not Christian,” the pope said at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 29.

Causing scandal and being a bad example turn people off, making them think, “‘Hey, if that is being Christian, I’ll be an atheist.’ That’s because our witness is what makes people see what it is to be a Christian,” he said.

“The Church is called every day to be close to every person, beginning with the one who is poor, the one who suffers and who is marginalized, so as to continue to let everyone experience the compassionate and merciful gaze of Jesus,”

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

he said.

“Christ is the model, the model of the Church because the Church is his body, and he is the model for all Christians, every one of us,” Pope Francis said. “By looking to Christ, you cannot go wrong.”

However, he said, people are “fragile” and limited. “We are all sinners, all of us,” he said, asking his audience to give a show of hands of those who believe themselves free of sin.

“Let’s see, how many hands? You can’t, because we are all” sinners, he said.

While sin and human weakness can create “scandal” and plenty of bad examples in the Church, God also lets people grow in holiness, he said.

“Let us ask then for the gift of faith, so we can understand how — despite our insufficiencies and our deficiencies — the Lord truly has made us instruments of grace and a visible sign of his love for all of humanity.”

21

By Jonathan Luxmoore Catholic News Service Inside this town’s recently refurbished Royal Shakespeare Theater, a massed audience, banked on three floors, gazes attentively out over a wide, brightly lit stage.

“Necessity will make us all forsworn. Three thousand times within this three years’ space; for every man with his affects is born, not by might master’d, but by special grace,” recited the actor playing Berowne in “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

When the latest production of William Shakespeare’s beloved play opened recently, set in an English mansion before World War I, it attempted to draw new meaning from the Bard’s eternal lines.

A similar task is being pursued by historians and researchers amid claims that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic at a time when the faith faced savage persecution.

“The probability that Shakespeare was a hidden Catholic helps explain the generally recognized enigma behind his work,” said Jesuit Father Peter Milward, an authority on the playwright.

“The Catholic elements visible everywhere in his 37 plays suggest he can be viewed as a champion of medieval Christendom, looking back with nostalgia to England’s past Catholic traditions,” Father Milward told Catholic News Service.

Views of Shakespeare until recently have been dominated by an “old guard” of literary scholars, who have portrayed him as conforming with England’s Protestant establishment, Father Milward said.

Although his vast output explored human emotions and dilemmas, it was held to be essentially artistic, as befitted England’s golden age under Queen Elizabeth I. However, new historical evidence has produced a “turning of the tide,” the Jesuit said.

Shakespeare was most prolific from 1589 to 1613 as the Reformation still was being imposed, causing creative people to avoid drawing attention to their religious beliefs. Some experts now think Shakespeare was deeply religious and that far from going along with England’s official Protestant ideology, the playwright was deeply attached to the Catholic devotions suppressed a generation before.

“Shakespeare rose above the disputes of his day and never descended to sectarian squabbles.

But by hiding theological messages in his secular language, he invited his listeners to ponder the heritage they’d lost,” said Claire Asquith, author of “Shadowplay: the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare.”

“Catholic idioms and images are

The Vatican Post Office will celebrate the 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare with a stamp featuring art work by Czech artist Marina Richterova.

The stamp will go on sale at the Vatican Nov. 21. New historical research suggests that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic at a time when the faith faced persecution in England.

CNS/courtesy Vatican Philatelic and Numismatic Office present throughout his work, in a forgotten world of saints and holy places. It seems we’ve been deaf to this and missed much of Shakespeare’s subtlety as a result,” Asquith said.

Generations of English-speaking children, Asquith argued, were taught an orthodox view of the 16th century, in which a corrupt Catholic Church was rightly taken over and reformed by King Henry VIII, allowing an enlightened Protestant-led compromise to be established by Queen Elizabeth.

The interpretation has been challenged in recent years by Catholic historians, who have cited evidence that the destruction of the “old religion,” far from reflecting popular demands, was motivated by top-down political expediency.

Such scholars have depicted Queen Elizabeth as a harsher figure. Some 35,000 people died in prison or on the scaffold during her 45-year reign, and Catholics, loyal to the old faith, were prime targets for repression.

The official hostility was understandable. The queen was declared excommunicated and deposed by Pope Pius V in 1571, and an invasion force, the Spanish Armada, launched with Rome’s blessing 17 years later.

But for ordinary Catholics, conditions became intolerable as all non-conforming religious life was driven underground. For a writer such as Shakespeare, it would have been dangerous to overtly display Catholic sympathies. Working them into his plays necessitated subtlety and skill.

Clues to Shakespeare’s apparent Catholic loyalty nevertheless have been pieced together.

It is known that his father, John Shakespeare, a Stratford town councilor, ran into trouble because of his Catholic preferences. The surrounding county, Warwickshire, was linked to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up King James I and his parliament in

Faith & Culture

Experts, historians explore Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies

“The Catholic elements visible everywhere in his 37 plays suggest he can be viewed as a champion of medieval Christendom, looking back with nostalgia to England’s past Catholic traditions.”

Jesuit Father Peter Milward

London.

The playwright’s eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, is believed to have boycotted Protestant services, while his mother’s family, the Ardens, were related to St. Robert Southwell, a Jesuit priest who was executed in 1595. Historians believe his poetry influenced the writing of “Macbeth” and “Titus Andronicus.”

London’s South Bank, where Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was situated, was a focus for underground Catholic life. In 1613, three years before his death, the playwright bought a large house in Blackfriars that was used for covert Catholic gatherings.

Although Shakespeare lies buried with his estranged wife, Anne Hathaway, in Stratford’s Anglican church, several witnesses claimed he received Catholic last rites on his deathbed.

Father Milward said coded religious references are widespread in Shakespeare’s work. Citing the fact that Shakespeare’s comedies are set in Catholic Italy, while his ideal heroines show a fullness of grace reminiscent of Catholic notions of the Virgin Mary; the lovers’ go-between in several plays, including “Romeo and Juliet,” is a Franciscan friar who is revered as holy.

Asquith agreed, saying characters such as Malvolio, the mordant puritan in “Twelfth Night,” and the king’s long-lost daughter, Perdita, in “The Winter’s Tale,” personify the religious mentalities of Shakespeare’s time. The plays also are saturated with allusions to

Catholic suffering, and can be seen as collective plea for tolerance and reconciliation, she said.

When Asquith’s book was published in 2005, it was dismissed

by David Womersley, professor of English literature at Oxford University, as “a tide of wild hypothesis, strained reading and reductive historicism.”

Diarmaid Macculoch, a lecturer on Church history at Oxford, has doubts, too. When Shakespeare quoted the Bible, he used official Protestant translations, he said.

“Of course, there was some nostalgia for the old religion, and it’s natural Catholics should claim this great cultural icon for themselves,” Macculoch said.

“But Shakespeare’s Catholic family associations prove nothing about his own outlook. It’s wrong to assume his work reflects some popular groundswell in favor of Catholicism.”

While the debate continues, the contrasting views serve as a reminder of Shakespeare’s richness as a writer with a profound grasp of life’s tragic and comic complexities.

“Until precise documentary proof emerges, it’s unlikely there’ll be any consensus among scholars,” said Father Milward, whose books include “The Catholicism of Shakespeare’s Plays” and “Shakespeare the Papist.”

“But Shakespeare has influenced generations of English speakers. If he really was a hidden Catholic, we’ll clearly need to revise our understanding of this crucial period.”

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

Calendar

22 Parish events St. Joseph the Worker Taste of Thanksgiving — Nov. 7: 6:30 p.m. at CretinDerham Hall High School, St. Paul. For more information, visit http://stjosephworkers.org/ thanksgiving.aspx.

Saint Therese Auxiliary Annual Christmas Boutique — Nov. 7, 8: Nov. 7 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Nov. 8 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 8000 – 8008 Bass Lake Road, New Hope.

Healing with Love with Immaculée Ilibagiza and Father Richard McAlear — Nov. 7, 8: Nov. 7 at 5 p.m.; Nov. 8 at 8 a.m. at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, 2035 15th St. W, Hastings.

Cost: $30. Visit www.seasparish.org for information and tickets.

St. Joseph’s Fall Festival — Nov. 8: Beginning with 4:30 p.m. Mass at 8701 36th Ave. N., New Hope. For more information, contact Peter Somers at (612) 396-1699 or the Parish Office at (763) 544-3352.

Annual Mary Queen of Peace Holiday Bazaar — Nov. 8: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 21304 Church Ave., Rogers. For more information, please contact Nicole Baker at (612) 750-2809.

8th Annual Fair Trade Sale — Nov 8: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at St. John Neumann, 4030 Pilot Knob Rd. For more information, contact Jeanne Creegan at (651) 681-9575.

Our Lady of the Lake Holiday Boutique — Nov. 8, 9: at Our Lady of the Lake Church and School, 2385 Commerce Blvd., Mound. For more information, call (952) 472-1284 or visit ourladyofthelake.com.

St. Joseph of the Lakes Annual Christmas Bazaar — Nov. 8, 9: Nov. 8 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Nov. 9 from 9 a.m. to noon at 171 Elm St., Lino Lakes in the church social hall. For more information, call (651) 784-4774 or hohnhaven@aol.com.

St. Richard’s NovemberFest — Nov. 8, 9: beginning at 9 a.m. both days at St. Richard’s, 7540 Penn Ave. S. For more information, visit http://strichards.com/novemberfest or call (612) 869-2426.

St. Boniface Christian Mother’s Guild Christmas Bazaar — Nov. 8: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 629 Second St. NE. For more information, call (612 )788-4389.

St. John the Baptist Craft & Bake Sale — Nov. 8: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the St. John’s School gym, 12508 Lynn Ave., Savage. For more information, visit www.stjohns-savage.org, or call (952) 890-9465.

St. Patrick Open House: Do all your Christmas shopping in one place — Nov. 8, 9: Nov. 8 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Nov. 9 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 7525 Dodd Road, Fairbault. For more information, call (507) 334-6002.

St. Maron’s Annual Lebanese Bake Sale — Nov. 8, 9: Nov. 8 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Nov. 9 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Maron, 602

More events online TheCatholicSpirit.com/ calendar University Ave. NE, Minneapolis. Pre-order by calling (612) 379-2758.

St. John’s Annual Pancake Breakfast — Nov. 9: 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 2201 Third St. NE. Donations for children in need, bake sale, crafts.

Everyday Miracles: A Morning of Renewal — Nov. 15: 8 to 11 a.m. at St. Michael’s Church, 11300 Frankfort Pkwy. NE, St. Michael.

Mass, prayer, confession, refreshments and a talk by Bonnie Engstrom. Questions please call (763) 497-2745 or visit stmcatholicchurch.org.

KC Turkey Bingo — Nov. 15: 5 to 9 p.m. at Transfiguration, 6133 15th St. N, Oakdale. For more information, contact Joe Peisert at (651) 738-2219 or Chris Marsh at (612) 578-6090.

Knights of Columbus Turkey Bingo — Nov. 15: 6:30 p.m. at St. Vincent De Paul Parish School Gym, 9100 93rd Ave N, Brooklyn Park.

For more information, call Julie Wilhelm at (763) 425-7754.

Holy Name of Jesus “Fun”raiser for Home Free Shelter – Nov. 15: 6 to 9 p.m. at 155 County Rd 24, Wayzata. Includes a spaghetti dinner, performance, live and silent auctions.

For more information, contact Jan at (763) 473-3470.

St. Peter’s Turkey Bingo — Nov. 15: 5:30 to 9 p.m. at 6730 Nicollet Ave. S, Richfield. $7 bingo includes meal. Prizes available. For more information, call (612) 866-5089.

Holy Family Holiday Bake Sale — Nov. 15, 16: Nov. 15 from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Nov. 16 from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at 1960 Lexington Ave. S. For more information, visit www. holyfamilymaronitechurch.org.

Bingo and Turkey Raffle — Nov. 16: 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Immaculate Conception, 4030 Jackson St. NE, Columbia Heights. For information, visit www.ICCSonline.org or call (763) 788-9062.

St. Francis de Sales Holiday Funfest and Silent Auction — Nov. 16: 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 426 So. Osceola Ave., St. Paul. For more information, contact Karen Thomas at (651) 442-5357.

Prayer/Liturgy First Friday Devotions — Nov. 7: 6 to 9 p.m. at St. Michael’s, 337 East Hurley St., West St. Paul. For more information and a schedule of the evening, call (651) 457-2334 or visit www. stmichaelwsp.org.

Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil & Icon Festival Concerts — Nov. 15, 16: Nov. 15 at

CALENDAR submissions DEADLINE: Noon Thursday, seven days before the anticipated Thursday date of publication. Recurring or ongoing events must be submitted each time they occur.

LISTINGS: Accepted are brief notices of upcoming events hosted by Catholic parishes and institutions. If the Catholic connection is not clear, please emphasize it in your press release.

ITEMS MUST INCLUDE the following to be considered for publication in the calendar: • Time and date of event.

• Full street address of event.

• Description of event.

• Contact information in case of questions. EMAIL: spiritcalendar@archspm.org.

(No attachments, please.)

MAIL: “Calendar,” The Catholic Spirit • 244 Dayton Ave., • St. Paul, MN 55102.

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

8 p.m. at the Basilica of Saint Mary, 88 N 17th St. Minneapolis; Nov. 16 at 3 p.m. at St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral. For more information, contact Terri Ashmore at (612) 333-1381 or thashmore@mary.org.

Faith & Reason Lecture with Deborah Savage — Nov. 18: 7 p.m. at the Cathedral of St. Paul (Lower Level), 239 Selby Ave., St Paul.

For more information, visit http://www. cathedralsaintpaul.org/faith-reason or call (651) 228-1766.

Retreats Healing with Love Retreat — Nov. 7, 8: At St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish, 2035 15th St. W, Hastings, 55033. For more information, contact Julie Strommen at jrstrommen@gmail. com Order tickets by mail & retreat location information: http://www.seasparish.org. Online ticket purchases: http://www. brownpapertickets.com Women’s Silent Mid-week Retreat: The Joy of the Gospel — Nov. 11 to 13: at Christ the King Retreat Center, 621 First Ave. S, Buffalo. Suggested offering: $150 per person.

For more information, call (763) 682-1394 or visit www.kingshouse.com.

The Discipleship of St. Francis of Assisi — Nov. 15: 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Immaculate Conception, 4030 Jackson St. NE, Columbia Heights. Free. For more information, call (763) 788-9062 or visit www.ICCSonline.org.

Music Rachmanioff Pre-Concert Talk — Nov. 15: 7 p.m. with all-night vigil concert to follow at 8 p.m. at the Basilica of St. Mary, 1600 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis. For more information, call (612) 247-0008.

Circle of Friends CCW Fundraiser featuring the Whitesidewalls Rock and Roll Revue — Nov. 15. 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. at St. Patrick, 3535 72nd St. E., Inver Grove Heights. Cost $15.

For information or to purchase tickets, call (651) 457-3683 or (651) 453-0770.

A Cecilian Choral Celebration — Nov. 16: 3 p.m. in the O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul. Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for students.

Cretin-Derham Hall Fall Band Concert — Nov. 17: 7 p.m. in the Lillian Theater at CretinDerham Hall High School, 550 S Albert St., St. Paul. For more information, call the Band Office at (651) 696-3314.

Speakers An Ecumenical Winter? The State of Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue in the Third Millennium Speaker Series with Dr. Christian Washburn — Nov. 10: 7 p.m. at Good Shepherd, 145 Jersey Ave. S., Golden Valley. For more information, call (763) 5440416.

2014 Magnify! Special Event with Chris Lowney on Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads — Nov. 11: 6:30 p.m. presentation followed by a Q & A, brief reception and book signing in the Schulze Hall Auditorium on the University of St. Thomas’ Minneapolis campus. For more information, contact Kathleen Groh at (651) 777-0991 or email kgroh@ivcusa.org.

Icon Festival Talk — Nov. 15: 1 p.m. at the Basilica of St. Mary, 1600 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis. For more information, call (612) 247-0008.

Father Michael Joncas to Speak About Connecting Liturgy and Justice — Nov. 16,17: Nov. 16: 12 p.m. Mass and 1:15 p.m. presentation followed by hospitality at St. John Neumann, 4030 Pilot Knob Road, Eagan. Nov. 17: 6:30 p.m. evening prayer and 7:15 p.m. presentation followed by hospitality at Mary, Mother of the Church, 3333 Cliff Road, Burnsville.

Workshops Walking in the Spirit of Pope Francis: A Reflective Conference on Sister Parish Relationships — Nov. 8: 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. Vincent de Paul, 9100 93rd Ave. N, Brooklyn Park. For more information, contact John Twohy at johntwohy@centurylink.net.

Fall Marriage Enrichment Event with John Buri & Bob Spinharney — Nov. 15: 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. Joseph, 13900 Biscayne Ave., Rosemount. Cost: $15 per couple. Register online at http://www.stjosephcommunity.org/ marriage_life.aspx. Any questions contact Renae Gusaas (952) 367-7967 0r renaegusaas@gmail.com.

Other events Cretin-Derham Hall’s Macbeth — Nov. 7 through 9: Nov. 7, 8 at 7 p.m.; Nov. 9, at 2 p.m.

Tickets $6 for students/seniors and $8 for adults. For more information or to purchase tickets, contact Mary King at (651) 696-3304 or mking@c-dh.org.

Annual Mission Benefit Luncheon Fashion Show — Nov. 8: 11:15 a.m. social followed by lunch at Kolbe Hall, 1630 Fourth St. NE, Minneapolis, 55413. Features “Dress Barn Fashions.” Donation of $22 is requested.

Sponsored by Holy Cross CCW Rosary Guild.

Call (612) 789-7238 or (763) 574-9342 for tickets.

Benilde-St. Margaret’s Knightsbridge Boutique Event — Nov. 8: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Haben Center, 2501 Hwy. 100 S., St. Louis Park. Featuring many merchants and food.

For more information, visit www.BSMschool. org/knightsbridge or call Liz at (612) 719-0906.

St. John the Baptist Veteran’s Day Program — Nov. 11: 9 to 10 a.m. at 680 Mill St., Excelsior. K-8 grade school performances and talk by veteran Frank Orr. For more information, contact (952) 474-5812.

Highland and University LifeCare Center Benefit Banquet with Keynote Bishop Andrew Cozzens —Nov. 14: 6 p.m. social, silent auction, dinner and program at the Anderson Student Center at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul. $50 per ticket. Call (651) 695-0111 or email changingheartssavinglives@ gmail.com for tickets and information.

Stefano Fontanini Presentation and Signing — Nov. 15: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Leaflet Missal, 976 W. Minnehaha Ave., St. Paul. For more information, contact (800) 3289582, (651) 487-2818 or sjfurlong@ leafletonline.com.

Mary Mother Collecting Donations for Thanksgiving Baskets — Nov. 15, 16: at 3333 Cliff Rd., Burnsville. Register to make a Thanksgiving dinner basket for families in need after all Masses, or call (952) 890-0045 for more information.

Coats for Kids: KC’s Accepting Cash Donations — Nov. 16: Donations accepted throughout the weekend at St. Joseph the Worker, 7180 Hemlock Lane N, Maple Grove.

Contact Patrick Farrelly at (763) 218-3816.

23

People concerned issue will reach state legislature in 2015 Continued from page 5 by the faith. A meaningful phrase for her comes from the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” which articulates, “The human person must always be understood in his unrepeatable and inviolable uniqueness.”

Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Ore., recently issued a statement regarding the Oregon law allowing euthanasia. “[Assisted suicide] suggests that there is freedom in being able to choose death, but it fails to recognize the contradiction,” the archbishop said. “Killing oneself eliminates the freedom enjoyed in earthly life. True autonomy and true freedom come only when we accept death as a force beyond our control.”

Bakewicz agrees.

“As I look toward that day when death will be hard for me to deny, I do not wish to hear the words

from my doctors that euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is best for ‘all involved’,” she said. “Who am I to choose the time of my death when the Lord Almighty is the author? I prefer to let God be God and wear his sovereign robes like doctor’s scrubs.”

“The best way to counter the strong cultural and political push to advance the culture of death under the false guise of patient autonomy is to tell stories witnessing to the beauty of life at all stages, even in difficult circumstances where sometimes great suffering is present.”

Public policy Bakewicz is concerned about Maynard’s decision and subsequent media attention.

“I wonder after her being so public about her decision if she then felt pressured to follow through,” said Bakewicz, who cried when she read the story about Maynard. “I would have told her to try a new study and other treatment. I think I would want to shake my finger at her and tell her that there are other ways to approach this. That is sort of my personality. But then the other side of me would have wanted to just hold her. We have to be about

Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference

love.”

Maynard’s death has been used to gain backing for changes in laws that support assisted suicide through lobbying efforts from Compassion and Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society.

Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, said there is “extreme concern” that assisted suicide will

become a state legislative issue in 2015.

“The best way to counter the strong cultural and political push to advance the culture of death under the false guise of patient autonomy is to tell stories witnessing to the beauty of life at all stages, even in difficult circumstances where sometimes great suffering is present,” he said.

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November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

The Last Word

24

Pope: Evolution, Big Bang do not push aside God

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service The Big Bang theory and evolution do not eliminate the existence of God, who remains the one who set all of creation into motion, Pope Francis told his own science academy.

And God’s existence does not contradict the discoveries of science, he told members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Oct. 27.

“When we read the account of creation in Genesis, we risk thinking that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand, able to do everything. But it is not like that,” he said. “He created living beings and he let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave each one, so that they would develop and reach their full potential.”

God gave creation full autonomy while also guaranteeing his constant presence in nature and people’s lives, he said.

The beginning of the world is not a result of “chaos,” he said, but comes directly from “a supreme principle that creates out of love.”

“The Big Bang, which today is held as the beginning of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator, but requires it,” he said. “Evolution in nature is not at odds with the notion of creation because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.”

Members of the academy, many of them renowned scientists and philosophers, were meeting at the Vatican Oct. 24-28 to discuss “Evolving Concepts of Nature.”

Science, philosophy and religion have all contributed to how people see the world, how it began and what it all means, said the

“[God] created living beings and he let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave each one, so that they would develop and reach their full potential.”

Pope Francis

introduction to the academy’s program.

Despite many scientific advances, many mysteries remain, said Rafael Vicuna, professor of molecular genetics and molecular biology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. While Charles Darwin shed light on the origin of species, one of the most perplexing questions is the actual origin of life, Vicuna said.

November 6, 2014 • The Catholic Spirit

Bigstock How is it that inert, inanimate matter turned into something living, and how is it that the first living single-celled organisms were still so amazingly complex, Vicuna asked in his talk Oct. 27.

Chemistry, biology and genetics have been able to identify the tiniest components and basic building blocks of living organisms, but there is something more than just what they are made out of that makes them “living,” he said in an interview with the Catholic newspaper, Avvenire.

“I can know perfectly what a cell is made up of, but how it works deep down, what really is the dynamism that makes it move — that is, life — I don’t know,” Vicuna said. “A refrigerator and a car are complex structures that move, but only with an immense amount of energy from the outside. Life, in its deepest essence, remains something that escapes us.”

In his talk to academy members, Vicuna said the laws of chemistry and physics “do not suffice to grasp the whole of life . . . that life is more than molecules.”

Another mystery is how everything in the universe, from the smallest atomic particles to every galaxy, is spinning and orbiting, another academy member said.

Rudolf Muradyan, a quantum and mathematical physicist who also works in cosmology, said in his talk that spin “is the most important problem in our universe. It is the only thing that

prevents the universe from totally collapsing.”

Without bodies rotating on an axis or orbiting each other, everything would fall: All the stars would become one giant black hole, the earth would crash into the sun and the moon would collide into the earth, he said.

He said the problem with the Big Bang theory is it explains linear motion, with everything moving outward and expanding from one common point as a result of the “bang,” but it does not account for the rotation of celestial objects, and theories that the universe was “born spinning.”

Philosophy and religion have to be careful to not make the mistake of trying to solve the mysteries in nature by making God “responsible for a natural process that escapes scientific explanation,” Vicuna said.

An example of this, he said, can be found in the intelligent design movement, which accepts that life has evolved over eons but asserts that it is so complex that its development must have been guided by a supreme being or intelligent agent.

Not only are intelligent-design proponents “denying nature’s autonomy, but they are also revealing some degree of ingenuousness, because science has already provided explanations for the development” of structures they had considered to be too complex to occur naturally, he said.

However, there is an argument

for the “apparent design, order and purpose observed in nature,” he said, which is not to be confused with intelligent design and the “God of the gaps.”

Pierre Lena, a French Catholic astrophysicist, told the assembly there are laws at work in the entire universe that are “eternal, creative, uniform in space and time and stable” enough to be fairly predictable.

“But these laws have a mystery.

Why are they there? We can’t touch them, but they act. They are not God,” he said, but they are a sign of the “supranatural existence of something.”

He told Catholic News Service that scientists can observe laws working exactly the same way over time and space. This “strange property” means scientists can figure out what most likely happened one billion years ago, as well as “in a remote galaxy and here in this room with the same accuracy.”

“If the laws were changing, science would not be possible,” Lena said.

Early philosophers like Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine all felt nature’s wonder and beauty reflected the beauty and perfection of their maker, Vicuna said.

However, “the existence of a divine creator of life and the universe” comes from personal belief and conviction, not scientific proof; science cannot empirically prove or disprove a God that transcends the natural sciences, he said.