Bringing Christ’s Church Door to Door

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Homeowners are used to members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints coming to their doors, but many Catholic door-to-door missionaries are springing up across the country for the purposes of evangelization.

The efforts have no centralized headquarters. They’re simply the grassroots efforts of faithful Catholics who continue to bring the Good News to the ends of the earth.

For marketing representative John Rosenthal and retiree Roger Cruze, the door-knocking effort was the outgrowth of Rosenthal’s business.

“As I went door-to-door as an appointment setter for a home-improvement company, I kept encountering broken people,” said Rosenthal. “I would pray for them as I walked to the next house. That’s how it all started.”

After hearing a talk on college evangelization by a Fellowship of Catholic University Students’ missionary at his parish, Rosenthal felt convicted to do something more to spread the Catholic faith.

Rosenthal recalled that Cruze, a fellow parishioner at Holy Family Church in St. Louis Park, Minn., knew some apologetics and had taught confirmation class, so he approached him about the idea. With the blessing of their parish priest, they began knocking on doors in the neighborhoods covered by the parish in October 2010.

Cruze admits that going door-to-door was “way outside my comfort zone.”

“On our first day out, at the first house we knocked, we spoke with an 80-something-year-old Lutheran and his wife who was a former Catholic,” said Cruze.

“After introducing ourselves, he said, Catholics, huh?! We’ve had Jehovah’s, the Mormon boys and even Assemblies of God. We ain’t never had any Catholics here before. Where ya been?” recalled Rosenthal.

“We go door-to-door to plant seeds,” added Rosenthal. “To give others who may not otherwise have been given the invitation to come to Mass and to explore the richness and beauty that we enjoy in the Catholic faith. We hope that sooner or later they will choose the fullness of Christianity — in the Catholic Church.”

To date, Rosenthal and Cruze have visited nearly 1,000 homes. They typically make their visits on afternoons, evenings and weekends. They’re able to visit approximately 20 homes — or a city block — in about an hour.

Simple Method

Their method is simple. Rosenthal and Cruze introduce themselves and ask the homeowner if there is anything they can pray for. They hand each person a miraculous medal, a Divine Mercy holy card, and a card with useful Catholic websites on it. If the person seems open to it, they’ll invite them to Mass at Holy Family, and depending upon the situation, offer them a CD either on considering the Catholic faith or growing in one’s Catholic faith.

Both Cruze and Rosenthal would like to see other parishes adopt a door-to-door campaign. They’ve produced a manual to help others get started. The “Catholic Door to Door Evangelizing Guide” is available as a free download through their website.

Mark Middendorf, president of Lighthouse Catholic Media, took the door-to-door concept a step further at his parish, St. Thomas Catholic Church in Lake Crystal, Ill. With the leadership of the pastor, they piloted the program “Open Doors, Open Hearts,” which sought to reach the door of every parishioner.

“I expected we would have 50 volunteers,” said Middendorf. “We had 300, and we knocked on about 5,000 doors.”

As part of their door-to-door-evangelizing effort, they passed out a “welcome kit” featuring two different CDs — one for practicing Catholics; the other for fallen-away Catholics. Each CD featured a custom message from the pastor. On the back of each CD case was information about the parish, Mass times, and an invitation to a talk geared for skeptics, “When Science Tests Faith: Following the Trail of the Blood of Christ.”

“We had between 700 and 800 show up for the talk,” said Middendorf.

Through Lighthouse Catholic Media, Middendorf plans to make the program available to other interested parishes.

A similar effort took place in Colorado. Lyn Rooney helped create a pilot door-to-door effort at her parish, St. Francis of Assisi in Colorado Springs, Colo. The effort was the outgrowth of an apologetics group Rooney has been a part of for eight years.

“A Jehovah’s Witness had come to my door,” said Rooney. “We talked for about an hour, and I spoke about the Catholic faith. In the end the Jehovah’s Witness said, ‘If this is really the Church that Jesus founded, why aren’t you out doing what we’re doing?’ That was compelling.”

‘Any Baptized Catholics?’

In response, the group created the Welcome Home Evangelization Project, secured the support of the parish priest and parish council, and began going door-to-door in May 2011. The group adapted resources, guidelines and a script from the Diocese of Peoria, Ill., in coming up with a course of action. Approximately a dozen volunteers are involved in the work.

“This is a way to reach out to non-Catholics and inactive Catholics,” explained Rooney. “It’s an effort to help fulfill the bishop’s pastoral plan for evangelization.”

“We go out two-by-two on Sunday into neighborhoods within the parish boundaries,” explained Rooney. “We introduce ourselves and ask if there are any baptized Catholics in the household. If they say, ‘Yes,’ we delve a little deeper. We ask them if they would be willing to take a CD, and we share our experiences with them.”

The members carry CDs on a variety of Catholic topics, including “The Mass Explained,” “Confession” and “What to Do With Suffering?” The course of conversation determines which CD they get. They also invite people to attend Mass and pass out information pamphlets on the Church and the sacraments.

Rooney said that the work is simple, but the main challenge is convincing Catholics that they are capable of doing it and that it needs to be done.

Since the Colorado Springs group started, they’ve been to more than 400 homes. Rooney said that they’ve been able to build a rapport with those they meet.

“The personal invitation of someone touches people,” said Rooney. “They learn that people are praying for them.”

“When we go out we have no idea who we’re going to meet or who we’re going to touch,” said Cruze. “We likely won’t know all of the good we’ve done until we meet Jesus.”

“The renewal of Catholicism has begun,” said Edward Gallagher, who goes door-to-door as a member of the Legion of Mary in the Diocese of Providence, R.I. “We invite people back to the Church knowing that it could be 30 years before the seed that was sown begins to grow. It’s time for Catholics to take back their streets.”

Register senior writer Tim Drake writes from St. Joseph, Minnesota.

Hope for the future of Saint Gabriel Parish School

The recent announcement that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will close almost 50 schools throughout the Archdiocese is indeed a stinging wound that hurts everyone that has had the benefit of Catholic education. I admit, the proposed closing of Saint Gabriel School distresses me because my very roots of my Catholic beliefs were instilled there by the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the generations of priests that FAITHFULLY served thousands of faithful Catholics from the parish’s inception. The closing of a school, or for that matter the closing of a parish marks a life cycle that has come full term, not happening overnight but rather taking generations of a declining spiral based on many, many points and issues. First, I emphatically support efforts to keep Saint Gabriel School and Parish fully operational, not for nostalgic and sentimental reasons;but because there is a genuine need for educational and spiritual nurturing in Gray’s Ferry. One of the least read writings of the late Father Karl Rahner, was Towards a Church in the 2st Century, which speculated that Catholicism would experience great difficulties in the United States in the 21st century if considerations were not made to compensate for, shifting demographics of ethnic populations, the grave immoral invention and use of the birth control pill and Catholic’s rejection of the official prohibition against artificial methods of birth control, and declining numbers of vocations to the priesthood and the religious life. Well, we can now say after looking into the rear view mirror, that Father Rahner was our own 20th century Nostradamus. What most of us also forget is the great industrial demise of the United States since the end of the Second World War, second and third generations of immigrant’s children, living the American dream and escaping the confines of the city to the sprawling suburbs post WWII and finaly and regretfully White Flight from the urban environment. While we all lament the closure parishes and schools, how many of us would honestly return to live in the brick row homes of our youth, give up a driveway with a 2 car garage, a (dreaded) lawn that always needs to be cut, and a large home with 4 or 5 bedrooms with lots of closet space to hold as George Carlin most famously caricatured in his conceptualization of a house as just a big place to store more,”things.”
Growing up in Gray’s Ferry during the 1960’s and 1970’s marked the last vestiges of the 19th century’s Industrial Revolution, and surge of Irish immigration to Philadelphia. When, we were growing up in the area, there were mills that made clothing, factories that made furniture, refineries that produced oil and gasoline to fuel the industries of the 19th and 20th centuries, DuPont Chemicals, Barrat’s Chemicals, and dozens of industrial installations ran 3 shifts 24/7 to built “American Made Things”, from ships at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, to clothing, military tanks and vehicles and even beer and whiskey (Ortliebs and Publickers). All of these jobs are gone, and frankly fueled the nation and the world from Gray’s Ferry. The nation’s first Federal Arsenal provided munitions and clothing on Gray’s Ferry Avenue until its demolition in the late 1950s, the river provided hundreds of jobs for Irish immigrants in the area loading and unloading coal barges in order to keep the flames of industry and in most cases home heating burning. The birthplace of the United States Naval Academy in a building designed by William Strickland, proudly served as initially an educational institution and then a rest home for retired U.S.Navy sailors. Now that same property, has been developed into luxury condominiums and the local industries have moved offshore to places like Thailand, India and the former Eastern Block of the Soviet Union.
Saint Gabriel’s Parish and School has seen all of these changes, including the painful race riots of the 1960’s, the traumatic changes of Vatican II, that initiated the end of local eating establishments that supplied fish for our now cast-off tradition of abstinence on Fridays all year around.I would give anything to enjoy a dinner of fried oysters, oyster stew or a piece of flounder or a crabcake from any of the local bars( or tap rooms,as we called them) in Gray’s Ferry. While my wife thinks I am ancient, there was indeed a time that there were icemen, milkmen, ragmen, itinerant window washers and street cleaners in Saint Gabriel Parish.  However, that era of Americana has been in rapid decline since the Second World War, and Catholic parishes unfortunately have felt the seismic effects more directly.
Another consideration regarding Catholic education that is often forgotten are the countless men and female religious that taught in the Catholic school system, well into their 80’s teaching children by the thousands for decades for a stipend of about $100.00 per month. Remember, Mother Maria Robert, who was not only principal of Saint Gabriel’s Schol, but prior of the convent of Sisters. She taught, administered, cleaned, mediated and oversaw a student population of over 2000 children and perhaps 30 I.H.M. Sisters for about $100.00 per month, with room, board and meals included. The decline of female and male religious as the primary educators in Catholic Schools directly affected the cost of Catholic education because laity now were required to fill the positions of religious, that were virtually free labor to provide Catholic education. These women, had 50-60 students per class, lived in community, wore a dozen layers of religious habits and they still scrubbed floors with mechanical floor polishers, controlled 1000 kids with a “clicker” and went back to a convent every night for a community meal (the choice of which was not theirs), evening prayer, night prayer and perhaps a short respite of television watching whatever Mother Superior wanted. Wow….what a charmed life. We forget the vocational sacrifices these men and women made to spread the Gospel to the parochial school system.They even had to staff, The Children’s Mass” on Sunday, making sure their classroom charges behaved through the changing liturgical results of Vatican II.
Priests in the parish of course had life quite different. They called the shots, they had cars and they made all of the real decisions about the school, church convent and rectory, without having to be in a classroom all day will hundreds of sugar hyped children that really couldn’t care about the right angle of a triangle, or the proper Palmer Method of using a cartridge pen (This author is living proof of the failure of the Palmer Method, I recently reviewed my 6th grade report card and noticed my grade for handwriting was a meager 75)! However, the priests of the parish did not have permanent deacons, extraordinary ministers of communion, lay teachers, outreach assistants and CCD offices. They celebrated all of the Sacraments, said Mass daily, including funerals and grave services, visited and took communion to the sick and infirmed, heard confessions on Saturdays from 2-5 and during the week for the school children and even like Father now Msgr.Shoemaker gave out the report cards quarterly in either a cassock or a priest’s rabat and suitcoat. Report card day was often dreaded because Fr. Shoemaker looked over each report card and offered words of encouragement to each relieved student. In those days, Saint Gabriel had an actie parish life, a Sodality of the B.V.M., the Men’s League of Prayer, C.Y.O., Block Collections, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday afternoons, Catholic league grade school sporting events, basketball, football, bowling. The parish priest drew the winning tickets at the weekly 50/50 raffle that offset the parish’s high school tax paid to the diocese. Priests also, like Msgr. Joseph Waldron( while puffing a cigar) sat in the rectory basement and counted the collection with the men of the Holy Name Society and got it ready for afternoon pickup on Sunday by armored car for deposit to the bank. Priests at Saint Gabriel and all of the other parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia rotated weeks of “on call” which meant they fielded the phone calls, requests to write Mass cards, hear confessions and oversee the nightly running of the parish rectory on alternating weeks. Often called out to administer Extreme Unction, or what is now the Anointing of the Sick to those dying and sometimes those that were perpetually dying over 40 years, but just wanted to call out the priest for a chat.
Weekly Mass began at 5:30 am until the High Mass, with a full male choir at 12:15pm. Today, Catholic parishes are forced to endure a cadre of evangelical/Protestant music, usually with a strumming Sally and no real appreciation of the liturgical and theological importance of music in the Liturgy, and a disdain for anything that contains Latin or polyphonic chant as old fashioned or out of touch with the modern Church. And of course, every parish has the Evita like, arms waiving leader of song, that provides a Mitch Miller touch to the Sacred Liturgy and leads the community in songs that have been stripped of any references to gender, in concession to political correctness, despite the fact that the phrase, Sons of God is intended to be inclusive of all women as well.
I also need to respond to the allegations that Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary is and continues to be a breeding ground for pedophiles and sex offenders that eventually become Catholic priests. As a Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary graduate, I speak for myself, non-ordained and the ordained alike that lead morally upright lives as priests , married men and some even still celibate men of faith. I have known hundreds of Seminary companions since 1978 and am proud to have been associated with them as men , as priests and as fellow graduates. To condemn the entire population and educational purpose of the institution because of the actions of a small percentage of the thousands of men that have called Saint Charles , Borromeo Seminary their home and alma mater for over 175 years is an gross exaggeration of implied complicity that implies all of us( myself included) were pedophiles in training. Such ignorance and exaggeration is not only reflective of a Catholic population that is unable to comprehend the widespread effects of the clergy sex scandal, but also neglects to understand and appreciate the fact that without priests, there is no Eucharist, which is the source and summit of our Catholic faith. Because some priests were not faithful to their promises of celibacy and obedience does not indite all graduates of Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary both ordained, non-ordained, and those legitimately released from their priestly, or deacon  obligations as pedophiles and sex offenders. There are those that proclaim this on places like FaceBook and Twitter that hold this opinion, some even the siblings of Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary graduates that perpetuate this erroneous understanding of priestly formation. I have known hundreds of priests, deacons and seminarians since grade school and have a great respect for all of them and continue to pray for those that might have erred as part of my Catholic obligation to fulfill the priestly prayer of Jesus, “That they may be one.” The task of being a priest in today’s agnostic or often atheistic society is to put it mildly, stressful and lonely at best.
Returning to the potential closure of Saint Gabriel’s School…perhaps and regretfully the time has come to reinvent and reinvigorate the parochial system of education as we have known it over the past 100 years. If indeed one really wants to save Saint Gabriel School, move back into Gray’s Ferry, enroll your children in the parish, attend weekly Mass, relearn to parallel park and put currency other than coinage into the collection basket and resurrect a neighborhood that has been subjected to multiple injustices, some self inflicted that have caused the current situation to exist. Most importantly return to celebrating Catholicism, by not only endorsing Catholic education, but by attending Mass, contributing appropriately and becoming active participants in the parish family.
While many will read this article and disagree with me, you have that right. I personally would love to return to a nostalgic Saint Gabriel Parish of times gone bye, but the reality is quite different than the memories. Rising costs of operations, teacher’s salaries, the lack of active Catholics despite the inflated real estate prices in the neighborhood still does not indicate an area of sustainable economic or Catholic growth. If 200 former families of Saint Gabriel Parish would move back to Gray’s Ferry and once again call it home, and actively participate in the fiscal, spiritual and temporal life of the school, parish and neighborhood….count me in….and I will see you at Dean’s for a round. However, without people, revenue and youth population, coupled with the opportunities for viable employment Saint Gabriel and 48 other parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia need to envision a new model of Catholicism for the 2st century, that is rooted in a grass roots faith, anchored by a Catholic family, following Catholic traditions and contributing to the support of a parish complex before there will be a reversal of closures at Saint Gabriel and other parishes throughout the United States. If every Catholic would just attend Mass and contribute 25.00 per week in the collection basket…imagine the revitalization Catholicism would experience. It is time to let nostalgia go, place the scandals in their correct perspective, focus on stirring up the Holy Spirit to provide viable vocations and come out of the closed Upper Room, and like the Apostles leave fear behind and proclaim our Catholic faith and educational morals and values as exemplary models for faithful Catholics, evangelization and conversion to our faith and using the Catholic family as the cornerstone of our faith that will restore Christ’s prominence to a Catholic world full of fragile peace and broken promises.

Hugh J.McNichol is a Catholic author and journalist that reflects on Catholic topics and issues. Hugh studied both philosophy and theology at Philadelphia’s Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. He is currently in an advanced theology history degrees program at Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia. He writes daily at http://verbumcarofactumest.blogspot.com , http://catholicsacredarts.blogspot.com . Hugh writes on his Irish Catholic parochial experiences at  http://graysferrygrapevine.blogspot.com.
He also contributes writings to The Irish Catholic, Dublin, British Broadcasting Company, and provides Catholic book reviews for multiple Catholic periodicals and publishers, including Vatican Publishing House.
Hugh lives in Delaware’s Brandywine Valley with his wife and daughter.
Hugh welcomes your comments via hjmn4@trinetconsultantsinc.com.

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Book recalls crucial role of intellectuals in Catholic life

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December 13th, 2011
By Mitch Finley

“A CATHOLIC BRAIN TRUST: THE HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC COMMISSION ON INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS, 1945-1965” by Patrick J. Hayes. University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, Ind., 2011). 440 pp., $75.

(CNS) Catholicism, as a tradition and as an institution, has a history of intellectualism that goes back to its very beginnings. St. Paul was an intellectual of the first order. A thousand years before St. Anselm, Paul acted on Anselm’s motto, “faith seeking understanding.” Names such as Ignatius of Antioch, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas lead directly to Catholic intellectuals in our own era.

But respect for the role of the intellect in the life of faith has gotten precious little respect in the history of American Catholicism specifically, at least not outside the realm of academia – and sometimes not even there. At the same time, whatever its weaknesses from a post-Vatican II catechetical point of view, one not insignificant virtue of the Baltimore Catechism was that it addressed faith on the level of cognition, thus teaching ordinary Catholics that, at the very least, faith is reasonable and intellectually defensible.

One bright exception to the general American Catholic disinterest in the intellectual life is the subject of “A Catholic Brain Trust,” a book which, unfortunately, will appeal almost exclusively to academics. Still, the intellectually hardy soul among the educated nonprofessorial also will find in this volume considerable inspiration for the ongoing cultivation of the intellect in the life of faith. For, as author Patrick J. Hayes – assistant archivist for the Baltimore province of the Redemptorists, in Brooklyn, N.Y. – illustrates admirably and in well-documented detail, there was, until 2007 when it was disbanded, a group of American Catholic intellectuals from various disciplines who got some respect.

As Hayes writes: “(T)he Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (CCICA) [was] founded in 1946 at The Catholic University of America. Specifically, the CCICA sought to draw in the best and brightest Catholics in the country, in and out of academia, to aid in rebuilding the church and the world after the catastrophic losses of the world war. The CCICA grew to become much more.”

Hayes recounts the history of the commission during the first two decades of its existence, highlighting the fact that just as its members were drawn from various disciplines so they addressed a variety of concerns, from war relief to U.N. policies, from theology to American Catholic higher education. Of particular interest is the book’s discussion of a famous lecture on American Catholic intellectual life given in 1955 before the membership of the commission by historian Msgr. John Tracy Ellis.

“More than any other single moment in the organization’s history,” Hayes declares, “the Ellis speech served to rally CCICA members, the larger academic community, and the church as a whole to the question of Catholic intellectual identity. … As later commentators often suggested, it was Ellis’ address that changed the tone and substance of the whole educational enterprise – a decisive move out of the confines of a Catholic ghetto to a more open and courageous quest for scholarly ideals.”

One of the primary underlying convictions that motivated the CCICA was that Catholic intellectuals should bring their insights and scholarship to bear on topics related to religious faith and the church, yes, but to virtually all aspects of human interest and endeavor. Still, Hayes concludes, the Catholic intellectual’s most basic inspiration for the work he or she does is rooted in faith. “Thus, for the Catholic intellectual, toiling for the public good is a measure of one’s love for God.”

“A Catholic Brain Trust” is a first-rate, informative account of adventures in 20th-century American Catholic intellectual life of which too few are aware. We live in an era when many Catholics tend to be satisfied with merely this or that ideology. Thus, to read this book, and become better informed about Catholics who believed in the pursuit of truth for its own sake, can only have positive consequences.

Finley is the author of more than 30 books on Catholic topics, including “Key Moments in Church History” (Sheed Ward).

From December 16, 2011 issue of Catholic San Francisco.

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Immaculate Mary…Processing around Saint Gabriel Church!

October is always a memorable month, as is May when I recall the parochial school days at Saint Gabriel Parish School. It was Mary’s Month, and the school was festooned to reflect Marian Blue in all of the classrooms and hallways. The most favorite recollection is the magnificent decorations that decorated the Mary Altar within the Church itself. Draperies of blue velvet and gold silk, covered the great painting of the Annunciation of Saint Gabriel and focused all of the attention on the pristine white marble, larger than life representation of the Blessed Virgin. Of course, the penultimate factor was the sparkling diadem, with diamonds. The Marian Altar was transformed from the usual ancillary altar that balanced out the church with Saint Joseph on the other side, and became a monumental shrine devoted to Mary…just as important as Lourdes, Knock or Fatima for the multicultural parish of Saint Gabriel.

Throughout the years of grade school, we processed to the song, Immaculate Mary, accompanied by the booming organ and Sister Maureen Rose I.H.M. leading the singing. While we were not climbing the foreign pilgrimage sites of Saint Patrick’s Rock in distant Ireland, nor following the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem, we were indeed on a circular processional of pilgrimage honoring the Theotokos, the God Bearer and asking for Her Divine intercession with Her Son to the Eternal Father. Today, my thoughts of Mary as Theotokos are usually infused with a theological reflection or historical understanding of the Council of Ephesus; despite this my seminal faith is transported always back to my memories of processions and the Marian Altar at Saint Gabriel Church. Pragmatic and simple devotions are the touchstones that link us to our historical and theological past, present and future. What I now understand as kairotic time, was rooted in signs and symbols of Catholic devotions that transcended generations of faithful Catholics.

October, as Mary’s month had all of us gradeschool students carrying rosary beads, the boys, looping them through their belt loops and pacing the crucifix in their pockets, the girls, draping them in a similar manner in the waistbands of their uniform jumpers. Rarely do I see a Rosary when I watch the students at my daughter’s school of Saint John the Beloved in Pike Creek Delaware, seemingly the Rosary is viewed as an antiquated sacramental displaced by outlandish and incorrectly instructed notions what Saint Francis might say in a contemporary world.

Every day, the bells at Saint Gabriel Church tolled precisely at noon for the Angelus. We stopped, stood and prayed the prayer that commemorated the great moment of Christ’s Incarnation and prayed afterwards for the souls of the faithful (and not so faithful departed). Our parish doesn’t even ring the bells out of deference for the fear of ecumenical offense to neighboring denominations, let also recall the magnificence of the Incarnation. Our desire to experience God and to feel and in some manner see God depends strongly on all of our traditions of signs and symbols.

I personally always carry a Penal Rosary to remind me of the great persecutions my Irish forefathers endured both in Ireland and in the early days of the British colonies to pray and celebrate their faith. Additionally, I carry it to remind me of the unconditional faith and trust Mary must have felt as a frightened young girl that precipitated the Archangel Gabriel to first say to Her, “Non Phobia”, “Do not fear.” In recalling Gabriel’s exclamation at the Annunciation it allows me to also reaffirm a personal lack of fear, through Mary’s, “Fiat!” and the transformational magnificence of Christ Among Us, the Incarnation, that always brings me back to the refrain, “Immaculate Mary, Our Hearts are on fire.”, the same feeling Mary surely experienced at the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion and with the tongues of fire at Pentecost.

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary…and she conceived by the Holy Spirit….

constantly reminds of of the circular processions around a neo-Gothic Church in the inner city that I remember on a daily basis as the formational and foundational touchstone for my entire love and desire for Mary, Mother of God, the Church and each and every one of us,

Finally, find those rosaries and start putting them to good use, pray for the Church, past, present and future, It is really more enriching and fulfilling than transactional psychological analysis!

Hugh J.McNichol is a Catholic author and journalist that reflects on Catholic topics and issues. Hugh studied both philosophy and theology at Philadelphia’s Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. He is currently in an advanced theology history degrees program at Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia. He writes daily at http://verbumcarofactumest.blogspot.com , http://catholicsacredarts.blogspot.com . Hugh writes on his Irish Catholic parochial experiences at  http://graysferrygrapevine.blogspot.com.
He also contributes writings to The Irish Catholic, Dublin, British Broadcasting Company, and provides Catholic book reviews for multiple Catholic periodicals and publishers, including Vatican Publishing House.
Hugh lives in Delaware’s Brandywine Valley with his wife and daughter.
Hugh welcomes your comments via hjmn4@trinetconsultantsinc.com.

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What Would it Take for Christianity to Dominate the Arts?

Excellent blog article Jennifer. Terrific topic!
@Meredith:  Did you EVER hit it out of the ballpark, way deep into center field! Wonderful summation! If there was one sad-sack “hymn,” (and I’m being extremely charitable by using the quotation hooks) it’s that funereal “composition” titled “God hears the cry of the poor.” Unfortunately,  I’ll bet the guy or gal who wrote that thing didn’t stay poor for very long if a lot of baby –boomer contemporaries and comrades of your “croaking … Mrs. Pillar-of-the-Parish” pushed it as often nationally as my former parish had during the late 80s. Oh, was that awful.
  I couldn’t stand it after a while and though my reasons for straying into the Protestant (first Episcopalian/then Evangelical) pastures were more seriously based than any excruciating mental agony endured from listening to those impoverished notes … it didn’t take long to see that the Evangelicals hadn’t come up with anything to ease the pain (besides sneaking down to “Fellowship Hall” for more coffee and donut holes.) When a close Vermont-native Yankee friend told me the Evangelicals were getting their “contemporary tunes” from the Catholics, I reminded him he got “my Irish up.”
  “What … No way, ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘God hears the cry of the poor’ were bad enough, but no way can we be blamed for the rest of the garbage,” I protested.
  When I returned to the Real Old Time Religion, (by 1,500 years) … was I in for a devastating disappointment. We had indeed allowed our Kumbaya-ites to wreck havoc on good Christian music and culture wherever Christians bowed their heads n’ darkened the doors of their respective “worship facilities.”
  If it was just superb music, a decorous liturgy and great preaching I needed to “get me by…spiritually-speaking,” I should’ve stuck with the Episcys. Salvation, the late Fr. Neuhaus, a convert from Lutheranism, or is it Woebegonism(?), comes from the Jews. True, but since a Divine Jew directly founded our Church, not another mere mortal wayward Christian, I knew where to return for more than just good music, decorum and great preaching. (One doesn’t need to hear a 30-45 minute “message” every week to be reminded how much God loves us, especially when there’s no crucifix hanging above or behind the messenger.
  There’s not a single power point “message” in the world that packs the power contained in the visual imagery of a man … not just any man, but that Divine Jewish man I referred to above … nailed to a crude pair of oak planks, both of which had a million sharp splinters sticking out to cause further pain to what Jesus was already enduring.  I knew my time at that Evangelical church were shortening when I heard a fellow congregant on the bus say she “had to leave the Catholic Church” because she could no longer stand to look up at the crucifix. “It was too traumatic.”
  Hmmm. Interesting enough. But not nearly as interesting as hearing the same church’s pastor during a Christmas Eve “message” say that our churches with their stained glass windows were making it harder for God to reach us. As a crafter of wooden Christian-themed artwork, hearing this was worth a half-gallon of coffee in a single swallow! Wow! There’s power in the wood and stained glass if it can keep the Almighty from reaching our hearts. I HAD to get my hands on whatever brands of building material he was referring to!
  All kidding aside, most of my life, I’ve been exposed to the highest levels of Christian artistic expression, (and yes, some of its more plebian variety.) As a military dependent who was blessed to be raised by two parents who grew up in the same parish (that IS rare in the Service, folks, very RARE!) and made sure their three sons would be readers and learn how to appreciate the arts, historical sites, and music they exposed us to – of course, regardless whether we cared to then or NOT, restless boys being restless boys—when I look back on all those years, experiences and lessons, I can’t help feeling somewhat brokenhearted for future generations.
  Okay, they couldn’t get me to break a bad habit of writing way too long run on sentences. On the other hand, they presented me with a lasting ever-youthful appreciation for the necessity of creating a life-long run-on sentence, so-to-speak, of never losing interest in the classical arts, especially classical ecclesiastical arts.
  I build Bavarian style (among other) nativity crèche display stalls for Christmas and historically-themed (i.e., Colonial, Federalist eras) decorative birdhouses. Why those topics? I was exposed to the German crèche making artists in Oberammergau in Germany whenever we visited that area, not to mention pay a visit to Him at nearby Ettal while lodging at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Being a New Englander,  and a history buff, I’ve long been fascinated by all the old historical buildings up here.
  It sickens me to watch the constant erosion of appreciation for our deep spiritual, cultural and historical heritage. Perhaps the biggest reason for this erosion is the idiot box. Yet it doesn’t have to be because of the many wonderful shows that have been created to highlight the wonders of both our spiritual and historical blessings.
  The scariest thing for us “aging baby boomers” (Geeesh, I hate that term, along with buzz-cliches like “accountable,” “transparency” and “at the end of the day”) is to hear such sad laments about what our children and grandchildren are exposed to enough or not encouraged enough to get involved in; but also what they ARE exposed to participate more often in while playing computer games. (Computer games can be wonderfully instructive without being “nerdy.” Today, it saddened me greatly to hear Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thom Hartmann radio show recall how last week he went shopping for some games for his grandkids to play, and all he could find were imported games promoting nothing but violence (for its own sake.) Sen. Sanders didn’t have to give any titles: Yet, instantly “Halo” came to mind. (Love that irony!) No games promoting history could a U.S. Senator find presumably in our nation’s capital of all places. The last time I checked, the U.S. had a terrific treasure chest of historical events to produce many interesting games from.
  What next? Italian kids being told to ignore the greats from the Renaissance for the blandishments of modern “art” produced by Picasso,  and Jackson Pollack, et al.? Remember the old “Kid Pix” teaching game for kids released 20 years ago? You could reproduce exactly the level of Pollack’s “artistry” in a matter of minutes. What does that say? 
  It’s not that I want to shamelessly plug my crafts or interests here. There are beaucoup areas would-be or experienced Christian crafters or performing artists and writers can serve Him and improve their lives and the lives they love and enjoy being with. 
  The key to making sure our kids and all future generations receive the same blessings of such a rich spiritual/cultural and historical heritage is constant parental exposure to what St. Paul described in Phillippians. It means having “news of the day” and “what did you learn in school that was interesting today” every time at the dinner table. Get your kids to read more and describe what they read. What did they make in school or Scouts, etc. and how and why did they make it.  And parents… MAKE IT CHALLENGING AND ENJOYABLE!
  Don’t rely on public schools to make sure your kids get the exposure they need and DESERVE. In this day and age when school budgets are cut back by stingy-minded politicians at all government levels, you can count on the liberal arts being the first among other “luxuries” to wind up on the budgetary chopping block. “We must be competitive with the (next town over) and the Chinese!” Translated from contemporary educational politico-speak… “Dump art, music, and foreign languages, except Mandarin, and of course—make sure they get their math and basic writing skills up to snuff to pass the state tests!”
  With apologies to Mark Twain, the Good Lord made an idiot for practice. Then he got down to business and created both school committees and professional educational standard testing experts.  Which of course begs an obvious follow up question: Where does appreciation for the finer things in life, especially those relating to the “Godly skills” in fine arts, music, architecture, literary skills? Why, today some diocesan-level education officials and parish school committees have trouble meeting this simple challenge.
  Tip O’Neill used to preach, “All politics is local.” This also holds true for making sure our young ones are truly enlightened from their respective HOME precincts.  Parents CAN and MUST make sure their kids get the most well-rounded liberal arts education and exposure to the finer things in life besides rote skills in reading, writing, counting and test taking:; and this “rounding off” BEGINS AT HOME. If my wife, (a stay-home-wife n’ mother for our first 12 years, and school cafeteria worker, “Lunch Lady” thereafter) and I could raise four adult children through public schools, and for a while in a very liberal secularist college-town public school system, anybody can do it. We’re a mixed religion family and two of our children went to excellent colleges and graduated within 7 years. And, fellow parents, you don’t need to have doctorates or a fat trust fund to pull this off, either.
I’ve heard and read conservative Catholics and Protestants say in so many words, “Real loving Christian parents”  would “never”  put their kids in public schools and leave them “exposed to the secular humanist agenda of the public schools and teachers’ unions.” They’d (OF COURSE!) make sure their kids are home schooled, put in Christian academies or Parochial schools, no matter what it cost. Really.
  Ah, but when parents can by spending more time with their kids to teach them how to make something in the basement shop or upstairs crafts room, share how to play an instrument or read music … how much more is that costing them as compared to working two or three jobs to put these kids in private school or afford for one parent to home school the kids, on top of paying their college loans and mortgage n’ auto payments, etc.?  (At least while your kids are learning craft skills at home, and times are tight with the family budget, they’ll already have one leg up “competitively-speaking” over their classmates when it comes time to deal with the lack of crayons, scissors, glue, etc. At home you learn how to make do real fast and inexpensively till pay-day. The “pros” tell their teachers to pay out of their pockets or ask their students to ask their parents to cough up more.  Parents, tell the “pros” to go figure.
  It’s time for some parental pushback on behalf of preserving and promoting what St. Paul exhorted us to pursue. When this happens on a regular basis in every state, city, town, village, ward, diocese, parish, school, and most importantly…HOME,  that’s when the Mrs. Pillars and their guitars will vamoose for Kumbayaville in a heartbeat! They’ll finally know their gig’s over!

All Souls…remember all of the faithful departed.

Aladar Korosfoi-Kriesch

All Souls’ Day –1910 Oil on canvas, 51,5 x 72,5 cm

Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

(It is a Hungarian tradition to go to cemeteries to honor the dead)

 
     Today we remember the faithful souls that have not attained their final eschatological state with God. Countless, nameless souls that need our prayers and spiritual remembrances. This commemoration of All Souls reminds us of our temporality and our own mortality. At the same time it also causes us as faithful Catholic Christians to contemplate the disposition of our souls in the afterlife after human death.
     We are strengthened and reaffirmed in our hope in God’s love and mercy through the Paschal Mystery.
Souls in the state of purgatory are also engaged in the eschatological progression to life with God. Outside of out comprehension of chronological temporality, we do not understand or might not even be able to comprehend the notion of kairotic time, namely God’s notion of time. Because of this incomprehensible notion on the part of human beings, we need to pray for all members of the People of God, those living, those departed and those still to come. One thing for certain is that we through prayer can assist all of these souls in transition on their journey towards oneness with God’s Divine Being.
Please use this day to pray for all of the faithful departed especially those in the purgatorial state as they are refined like a fine metal towards the Presence of God. Please also, pray for those countless souls that have no one living to pray on their behalf. The forgotten souls are souls indeed most in need of our prayer and supplications for God’s mercy and forgiveness.
     The Rosary, of course is a most powerful tool that invokes the intercession of Mary, the Mother of God.
If you get time, pray the rosary today, or even a few decades for the intentions of all of the faithul departed, especially those forgotten, unknown and without living faithful to intercede on their behalf.
 
May all of the souls of the faithfully departed rest in peace. Amen.

Hugh J.McNichol is a Catholic author and journalist that reflects on Catholic topics and issues. Hugh studied both philosophy and theology at Philadelphia’s Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. He is currently in an advanced theology history degrees program at Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia. He writes daily at http://verbumcarofactumest.blogspot.com , http://catholicsacredarts.blogspot.com . Hugh writes on his Irish Catholic parochial experiences at  http://graysferrygrapevine.blogspot.com.
He also contributes writings to The Irish Catholic, Dublin, British Broadcasting Company, and provides Catholic book reviews for multiple Catholic periodicals and publishers, including Vatican Publishing House.
Hugh lives in Delaware’s Brandywine Valley with his wife and daughter.
Hugh welcomes your comments via hjmn4@trinetconsultantsinc.com.

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Cross-Examining Catholicism (9 of 11)