Obama Against Pope Benedict: A Case of Diplomacy and Betrayal

If Rome sees Obama’s policies as being as dangerous as communism was in Poland, then it may do something

Obama Against Pope Benedict: A Case of Diplomacy and Betrayal

- Robert Klein Engler  Monday, February 20, 2012
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Now that the recent controversy over contraception and health insurance between US Catholics and Obama has left the front pages, many in the media think things will go on as usual between the Vatican and the Obama administration. They couldn’t be more mistaken

The problem the Obama administration now has is not just one of a simple misunderstanding between some religious believers and an administration policy. The problem pits the head of one state against another. The Obama administration has seriously underestimated the rift that now exists between Washington, DC and the Vatican.

Because the Vatican is itself a state, it is cautious about its involvement in the affairs of another state. Realizing what Stalin once asked, “How many divisions has the Pope?” is a political fact of life, the Vatican can not make its point by the exercise of military power. It must resort to diplomacy and other not so obvious means.

But diplomacy between the Vatican and the Obama administration has failed. The key to successful diplomacy is trust and keeping one’s word. The Obama administration went back on its word in regard to the birth control issue, and that is the most grievous sin that a state can commit.

The disagreement between Pope Benedict XVI and Obama may soon look like a rematch between David and Goliath, the tiny Vatican against the mighty Washington, DC bureaucracy. Breitbart TV links to a report where, “Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan shot back at President Obama’s birth control mandate…”

“While in the South Bronx to bless a library, the Archbishop of New York City had sharp words for President Obama. “The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of a church.”

More than just backing off, Townhall.com reports, “Archbishop Dolan feels betrayed after his meeting with the president on the issue late last year.” Betrayal is not a good thing between states and their diplomats.

When the Chicago Sun-Times reports the normally easygoing Cardinal George as saying, “We cannot—and will not—comply with this unjust law,” You know trouble between the Vatican and the Obama administration lies ahead.

The Sun-Times reporter adds, “The cardinal…is vehemently opposed to the new Obama administration rule requiring religious organizations to include contraceptive health insurance coverage.”

The Vatican may suspect that whatever so-called compromise offered by the Obama administration and US Catholics over insurance and contraception will change for the worse if Obama is reelected. The Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI have every reason to get involved in US politics to see to it this does not happen.

The Catholic Church, next to the United Nations, is the only really viable international institution in the world. It is much better organized that either the Democrat or Republican Party in the United States. If the Vatican decides it wants to throw its moral weight around and get involved in the US presidential election, the Obama administration has cause to worry.

Pope Benedict XVI is well aware that US Catholics voted 54 per cent for Obama in the last election. He also knows that many US Catholics do not follow the Church’s teaching on contraception and abortion, or that the Church’s stance on illegal immigration is not popular with US conservatives, but these are not going to be the issues.

Susan Hogan, a writer for the Star/Tribune claims Catholic bishops are crying foul, but the Catholic faithful support the president’s decision. Hogan writes, “A majority of U.S. Catholics support President Obama’s decision to require religious institutions to include birth control in health insurance plans…A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute in Washington, D.C., found that support among Catholics (58 percent) is higher than that of the American public overall (55 percent).”

In spite of this survey, Cardinal George reminds us, “What isn’t always understood is that the Bishops of the Church make no attempt to speak for all Catholics…The Bishops speak for the Catholic and apostolic faith, and those who hold that faith gather around them.  Others disperse.”

The Bishops see that underlying issue here is not a survey or even free contraception. It is Obama’s audacity in telling Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic faithful what to do. For most Roman Catholics, with the exception of the Holy Spirit, no one should tell the Pope what to do.

Furthermore, Obama’s audacity extends beyond the issue of the separation of church and state. We can imagine how his policy towards Israel may worry the Vatican as well. The Vatican is a lot closer to the Iranian nuclear threat than Washington, DC. Certainly, there are those in the Curia who preferred the status quo under George Bush than the Arab Spring furthered by Obama’s policies.

Some say the Vatican won’t get involved in the internal affairs of another state. They argue that the Catholic Church in the United States has long ago made a pact with the Democrat Party that is difficult to break. This pact is especially the case in Obama’s so-called hometown, Chicago.

In spite of this, the history of the Catholic Church argues otherwise. The Church’s struggle against communism and socialism offers us the contemporary example of Poland. In Poland, the Catholic Church played a central role in the fall of communism.

Brian Porter of the University of Michigan writes,” There is no doubt that the Roman Catholic Church played an enormous social, political, and cultural role in the Polish Peoples Republic, and the fall of Communism would certainly have played out differently were it not for the Church’s involvement.”

Porter continues, “When Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow became Pope John Paul II in 1978, it was immediately obvious that life would never be the same for the Communist authorities in Poland. Indeed, some have credited him with playing the key role in toppling Communism.”

If Rome sees Obama’s policies as being as dangerous as communism was in Poland, then it may do something. The time has come when the universal Church may have to get involved in a particular state, if the promise of religious freedom is to be defended in the United States.

Whatever Rome does may be limited and kept from public view. The United States is not predominantly a Catholic country the way Poland is. Depending on what course Vatican officials want to follow, an overt or covert one, by disrespecting the Pope and Cardinal-designate Dolan, Obama risks Rome will work against in his reelection.

Mexican Catholics: Religiosity with disconnect between faith, practice

MEXICO-DISCONNECT Feb-20-2012 (980 words) Backgrounder. With photos posted Feb. 16. xxxi

Mexican Catholics: Religiosity with disconnect between faith, practice

By David Agren
Catholic News Service

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (CNS) — President Felipe Calderon came to this border city to boast of improvements in public safety and witness the destruction of a cache of illegal guns, grenades and ammunition, which he blamed for contributing to more than 10,000 deaths in Ciudad Juarez since 2008.

He also received an inadvertent reminder of some of the extreme expressions of faith in Mexico when an army colonel showed him a sample of the assembled arsenal: pistols plated in gold and silver and engraved with images of saints and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Professions of piety are common and diverse in Mexico, where a quasi-religious drug cartel teaches from its own text, the downtrodden venerate pseudo-saints such as Santa Muerte (St. Death), and Our Lady of Guadalupe and her role in Mexican life and history form part of the national identity — even in a country with an official secular ethos and government.

In a country where 84 percent of 2010 census respondents identified themselves as Catholic, questions arise over the commitment of Mexicans to a faith that has played a defining role throughout their nation’s history — from the Spanish conquest and evangelization to the independence movement promoted by Father Miguel Hidalgo to the 1920s Cristero Rebellion against anti-clerical laws.

Auxiliary Bishop Victor Rodriguez Gomez of Texcoco, secretary-general of the Mexican bishops’ conference, told Catholic News Service dioceses across the country have worked to promote catechism classes and ministries with a missionary focus. He estimates between 10 percent and 20 percent of Catholic are committed church-goers and involved in parish life.

“There’s a large group of people that participate sporadically in church life,” he said, even though they bring “a great religiosity.”

This common form of professing the Catholic faith in a sporadic, yet seemingly pious way, perplexes church leaders and religious observers, who point to a disconnect in the way so many Mexicans identify themselves as Catholic, but fail to bring church teaching into their daily lives.

The disconnect is especially visible in the ways corruption, income inequalities and violence have been common in a heavily Catholic country.

“The religious expression … is not very connected to a commitment to social transformation,” said Victor Ramos Cortes, a professor at the University of Guadalajara. “A person can go Mass, but be a thief, or be unfair with the people around them.”

Or be a drug dealer.

Cartel kingpins have made donations known as “narcolimosnas,” or drug alms, which have built and repaired churches, including a chapel in the state of Hidalgo, bearing a plaque thanking the generosity of Los Zetas founder Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano.

The mixture of the criminals and church seems improbable, but it makes sense in the Mexican context, said Ramos.

“There’s very little relationship between symbolic religious practices and daily living,” he said.

Over the past five years, conflicts among drug cartels, criminal gangs and the Mexican military have left more than 45,000 people dead, yet many of those involved in the conflicts are baptized Catholics.

Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo considers such figures proof that the church has fallen short in its pastoral work. He expressed frustration with the church’s inability to draw the faithful into the parishes for more than just special occasions and provide ongoing training that would produce laypeople ready to play productive roles in Mexican public life.

“The administration of sacraments is when (priests) give a little formation to lay members,” Bishop Vera said.

The church role in Mexican public life has been polemic for decades as church and state were officially estranged and anti-clerical laws limited priests to nothing more than preaching spiritual matters inside authorized houses of worship.

Bishop Rodriguez said these restraints prevented priests from fulfilling a more communitarian and social vision for the church like that encouraged by the Second Vatican Council.

The less-cordial period of the Cristero Rebellion led to the closing of churches and seminaries, altering the way the Catholic faith was practiced in Mexico.

This led people to follow the faith in their own way and develop a sort of “homemade religion,” said Father Robert Coogan, an American priest in Saltillo and a diocesan prison chaplain.

“The way Catholicism has stayed alive in Mexico is through the rosary, not Mass,” he said, explaining that most of the people he serves consider themselves Catholic, but only attend church for things like baptisms and weddings. “They don’t see Mass as part of their Catholic identity.”

Father Coogan sees devotion in the inmates he works with and the neighbors in the subdivision surrounding the prison in Saltillo, an industrial city 190 miles from the border with Laredo, Texas. Much of the devotion is informal, however.

Behind bars, Father Coogan estimates fewer than 25 percent of the inmates attend Mass, but more than half of them come to pray — daily.

“Do they have a relationships with God? I say they do,” he said of the inmates. But Father Coogan added, “I haven’t found a way to make the sacramental life of the church important to them.”

Informal expressions of faith date back decades and even centuries as evangelization in Mexico often involved some adapting of Catholicism to existing pre-Hispanic customs.

These informal expressions are often known as “religion popular” (people’s religion).

One popular expression is the skeletal-looking Santa Muerte, which Father Coogan says is venerated by 40 percent of the prisoners in Saltillo and is looked to for miracles.

That search for miracles is common in Mexico, along with short-term thinking, Ramos said. That thinking, he said, is shared by criminals and their targets, who seek protection and intervention from the same source — sometimes Santa Muerte.

“The Catholic religion, mixed with the indigenous perspective … results in a sort of magic thinking,” Ramos said. “At the end of the day, I’m not responsible, rather, if I invoke something magical, some rite, I’ll be saved in some way.”

END

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International students find comfort in worship

LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WTW) — A little more than three years ago, Suman Maity moved to West Lafayette from his home in Kolkata, India, to study ecological sciences and engineering at Purdue University. But trying circumstances — stress, loneliness and two car accidents — prompted Maity to seek answers outside the lab.

At a house of worship.

He walked away from his first accident in 2009 on Interstate 70, but another one, this time on Interstate 65 in August 2010, shook him up.

“I had a little bit of concussion and laceration … but this experience actually changed me,” said the 27-year-old, who graduated in December and now is working as a research scientist at Purdue. “I came out alive. I was unsure what to do with my life at that point in time. After the two accidents, I could’ve been dead, but I was not.”

A friend referred Maity to Paul Briggs, the campus pastor at Kossuth Street Baptist Church in Lafayette, where Maity has been attending services since November 2010.

“You cannot live in isolation,” he said. “You need some type of friends or family. The (Briggs) family is very helpful in treating you as a friend.”

Aside from terrifying accidents, just relocating to a foreign world rife with differences can be difficult for international students. Some, like Maity, find comfort in local worship centers. These spiritual houses help foreign students find community by welcoming them or creating an environment that feels just like home.

The story of a spiritual community embracing foreign students plays itself out often in Greater Lafayette, thanks to Purdue boasting one of the largest international student populations in the country.

The university’s total international enrollment ranks second among U.S. public institutions, second in the Big Ten and fourth in the nation, according to the university’s Fall 2011 International Student and Scholar Enrollment and Statistical Report. This school year, 7,934 students — 20 percent of the total 39,637 undergraduate, graduate and professional students at Purdue University — are international.

Some places of worship are seeing their international student populations grow, too. Purdue’s international student population has grown 68.9 percent in the past 10 years, increasing from 4,695 to 7,934 last year.

Pastor Tom He of Greater Lafayette Chinese Alliance Church said he has seen the international student population increase since he became pastor in 2004.

About 80 people, including students and residents, attended the church in 2004, but now about 140 people attend on a given Sunday. More than 50 percent of his congregants are international students. Most are from mainland China; some are from Taiwan, Hong Kong or Malaysia.

“There is an emptiness in students’ hearts,” He said. “That is what we have witnessed in the last eight years. I think Chinese students are more interested in the Gospel.”

Father Patrick Baikauskas, director of campus ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas in West Lafayette said the international student population has grown significantly during the last five years.

“Purdue is doing so much with respect to attracting Asians to the campus, and we are responding to their spiritual needs,” he said.

Houses of worship use a variety of ways to try to meet the needs of international students. Kossuth Street Baptist aims to integrate prospective followers into Sunday services and other activities.

“We want to see people from every spectrum, poor to rich, black and white, national and international,” Briggs said. “We’re growing at that. It’s never a finished product. It’s something you work at.”

He said between 30 and 50 international students from Purdue attend Sunday services. Most are from China, India and Malaysia. About 15 years ago, only a few international students attended, he said.

In addition to offering Bible study sessions, the church offers parenting and English language classes.

Even though he is new to the community, Maity said he never felt like an outsider at his church.

“I didn’t sense an invisible glass wall,” he said. “As an outsider, some societies will be mean to you. But others won’t be mean — they will just avoid you. It’s not like discrimination. It’s like avoidance. You get this feeling that you are not welcome here. I don’t see that in this church.”

Baikauskas said the church tries to integrate and accommodate international students at the same time, depending on their needs.

For instance, the church has about 100 Korean Catholics who attend, including students, faculty and family members, and about 60 Indonesian students.

Both groups have their own Bible studies and social groups. The Korean Catholics have a separate Mass, in Korean, at the church.

“What they want is not so much to set themselves apart but to be integrated into our parish,” Baikauskas said. “These are all students who are receiving their course instruction in English. They want to be part of the English-speaking congregation. We do everything we can in accommodating them.”

Once comfortable in the church, the students integrate into the larger parish on their own. That technique worked for Bella Handojo, a junior at Purdue.

But before Handojo arrived in the United States, she was drenched in tears at the airport in her home city of Jakarta, Indonesia. Handojo didn’t want to trade the tropical weather, the familiar food and city life for the foreign world awaiting her.

In the three years since her arrival, Handojo has become acclimated to her new surroundings, especially due to her church. Handojo sings in the choir at St. Thomas Aquinas, attends daily Mass and has met other students from Indonesia at the church.

“I think the church has a lot to do with me not being homesick anymore,” the 19-year-old said. “This is probably the only place I would call home here. I feel so strange on the outside. Here, I feel like I’m just normal.”

Sylvia Swandono, an Indonesian professional student at Purdue, agreed. Swandono moved to West Lafayette in 2006. Soon after her arrival, she started attending Masses at St. Thomas Aquinas and quickly became involved in other activities, such as choir.

“Even though everything else is different … Mass is the same,” the 23-year-old said. “It reminds me of home. A Catholic Mass is the same all over the world. It’s another community. I can hang on to something like that.”

Equipped with food, language and faces that strike a familiar chord, some worship centers simply provide a place that feels like home in a foreign world.

Hillel at Purdue is one of those places. About five of the 50 students who regularly attend religious services at Hillel come from all over the world — Israel, Colombia, Panama, Great Britain and Turkey, director Philip Schlossberg said.

At Hillel, the students find common ground.

“It really doesn’t matter what stream of Judaism you practice, there are certain things that are the same all around the world,” Schlossberg said.

“Hebrew is generally part of the religious services. If you go to services in your home country there will be a little bit of Hebrew that sounds familiar. (Also) Jewish food doesn’t change from country to country. There are different additions (but) the basic food is always the same.”

Common language makes the Greater Lafayette Chinese Alliance Church feel familiar. The church holds a bilingual service in Mandarin and English every Sunday.

For Purdue senior William Tao, the cultural transition from Wuxi, China, to West Lafayette was almost seamless because both communities are small and quiet, he said. The most difficult aspect was leaving his family.

“They didn’t want me to leave,” the 23-year-old said. “They still want me to come home every year. For me, it’s difficult too.”

But the church in West Lafayette has become his adopted family.

“I treat everybody as a family member here. I know they love me, and I love them too. I get guidance from the mentors in Bible study group and from the pastor.

“I feel like going to a church where the spoken language is my mother language makes more sense. The culture suits me better.”

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Querins celebrate 50 years

Rudy and Julie Querin celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary
on Feb. 10, 2012.  The couple was honored with a party hosted by
their children, and attended by close family and friends at their
Napa home.

They were married on Feb. 10, 1962 at Holy Angels Church in
Colma and spent the early years of their marriage in San Francisco
and Daly City before moving to Napa in 1976. 

Rudy, the son of Italian immigrants, was born in Crockett,
Calif. and then moved with his family as an infant to Zopola, Italy
where he grew up playing soccer and learning the Catholic Mass in
Latin.  He returned to the United States at the age of 17 to
preserve his American citizenship.  After service in the U.S. Army
in Korea, he settled in Crockett and became a carpenter working in
the trade until his retirement several years ago.  

Julie, who is also the child of Italian immigrants, was born in
San Francisco and attended Jefferson Union High School.  She worked
for the Wall Street Journal until starting a family.  She works at
Vassar Chevrolet.

Rudy and Julie have been active members of the Sons of Italy for
more than 30 years and enjoy playing bocce ball with a local
league.  It was at a Sons of Italy dance in San Francisco where the
couple first met.  They are also members of St.Thomas Aquanis
Catholic Church.

Rudy and Julie are proud parents of Michael of Napa, Sandra of
Durham and Dayna of Reno.  They have three grandchildren, Michele,
Kathryn and Nicholas. 

Bishop: Ad-libbing priest drew many complaints from parishioners

About 10 days ago, Rowe resigned his position of 17 years following a meeting in October at Braxton’s Belleville home, where the bishop informed Rowe that he must adhere to the liturgy of the church, especially as it is set out in a new version of the Roman Catholic Missal recently adopted that adheres more closely with previous Latin texts. Rowe has been a priest for 47 years. While his resignation will mean he will not have a ministry, Rowe will remain a priest.

Braxton said in his letter that he usually does not speak publicly on matters concerning his conversations with a priest, but felt compelled to do so in this matter. He described Rowe as a “good and sincere person” and stated that he did not “fire” him, but instead required that he stick to the rules of the church.

Braxton, who does not comment to local media, could not be reached for comment Thursday about his letter. Braxton is in Rome, where he is on a required visit to the Vatican. The Rev. John Myler, diocese spokesman, also could not be reached for comment.

In another development, Rowe said his parish council and school board are preparing a letter that will be presented to Braxton when he returns from Rome, possibly Monday.

“The idea is to approach the bishop when he comes home to ask him to maybe reconsider, not so much his holding on what’s right or wrong, but to see it as a pastoral thing, that maybe even though he doesn’t approve of what I do, perhaps, it’s causing more harm in the church to remove me than to allow me to do what he feels is wrong,” Rowe said Thursday.

Rowe’s resignation takes effect in June and was delayed to allow time for a replacement priest to be assigned to the parish, which has about 1,000 members. Rowe said he has served at St. Mary Parish for 17 years but has never taken a salary, preferring to rely only on a pension from the Air Force and Social Security. He said if Braxton will not allow him to remain in his parish, even though he has resigned and will not agree to adhere strictly to the liturgy, he may run a soup kitchen, perhaps in Belleville.

He said that in his meeting with Braxton in October at Braxton’s home in Belleville, the talk included a discussion on the meaning of the church.

“I think his idea of what the church is about, means what the bishops declare,” Rowe said, “And I told him, I think my idea of the church is a little more broad; what do all the people say?”

Detroit Tigers pitchers and catchers report to Tigertown, on-field workouts … – The Ann Arbor News

LAKELAND, Fla. — Under cloudy skies and the threat of rain looming over Tigertown, a handful of players trickled into camp Sunday morning — the official reporting date for Detroit Tigers pitchers and catchers.

No formal workouts were scheduled, but some players participated in light workouts and a few spent the morning in the weight room.

Pitchers Doug Fister and Duane Below threw long toss to each other — as did non-roster invites Rob Brantly and Patrick Leyland.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland arrived to camp Sunday morning following a Catholic mass at a nearby church. He then briefly met with general manager Dave Dombrowski and the rest of the coaching and baseball operations staff to discuss camp operations.

Tigers top position prospect Nick Castellanos and catcher James McCann, the club’s first draft pick in 2011, were among the non-roster invitees spotted in Joker Marchant Stadium’s clubhouse early Sunday.

Catchers Alex Avila and Gerald Laird arrived at the Tigers complex earlier in the week, but were no-shows Sunday.

That’s because the real work is expected to begin tomorrow.

Monday, the regular on-field workouts will begin for pitchers and catchers and position players who reported to camp early will take part in voluntary activities on the field.

Position players aren’t to report until Thursday, but most players are expected to beat that deadline. More than a dozen Tigers have already reported early, including a notably slimmer Miguel Cabrera, who participated in an informal workout Saturday.
The first full-squad workout is Friday.

Longtime clubhouse manager Jim Schmakel was still busy unloading nearly a dozen boxes that traveled from Comerica Park. The first truck, packed with clubhouse items, arrived to Joker Marchant Stadium Wednesday morning and the second arrived Thursday.

Asked whether any clubhouse items were accidently left behind in Detroit, Schmakel said he wouldn’t admit to forgetting something it even if he had.

“It went flawless,” he said. “Everything was on time and arrived without any problems.”

Suzette Martinez Standring: Are you ‘flunking sainthood’?

Ash Wednesday reminds me of the Lenten sacrifices of my childhood. I was pint-sized and pious. At the age of 6 I gave up watching TV for forty days. Hearing Huckleberry Hound cartoons play in a distant room brought exquisite pain. The next year, I was a 7-year-old at the 7 a.m. daily Mass for Lent. Where did all my spiritual discipline go? Now I battle with Fat Tuesday every day of the year.

Yet I’m drawn to sacred practices though I doubt my ability to follow through. For example, I have friends who draw spiritual strength from fasting. I listen awestruck, cheeseburger in hand. If I don’t eat something by noon, I doubt I’d live to tell the tale.  Yet fasting is on my spiritual bucket list.

So I loved the new book, “Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking The Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor” by Jana Riess (Paraclete Press, Nov. 2011, $16.99, 171 pages), a comical memoir of attempting religious rigor.

For one year Riess engages in monthlong practices to embrace the divine. Riess begins January by mapping out her project. February is for fasting. March is for mindfulness in small daily chores. April is spent in Lectio Divina, which is discernment through reading and prayer. In May she shuns materialism. June is about contemplative prayer. She tackles the Jewish observation of the Sabbath in July. Gratitude is on the menu for August, while September is spent in Benedictine-style hospitality. October features vegetarianism inspired by St. Francis and his compassionate mindset toward animals. In November, Riess is “praying the hours” at set times throughout the day. December is about “radical generosity.”

Riess grew up attending Saturday evening Catholic Mass and Sunday morning Protestant worship. She has been a Christian for 25 years but feels little romance for religion, and in her new book, she wrote, “These days Jesus and I are like old marrieds – sometimes I’m a nag, and sometimes he is emotionally distant. Maybe the extremes I’m contemplating with a year of bizarre faith practices are the spiritual equivalent of greeting Jesus at the door wrapped only in cellophane. I’m trying to pop a little zing in our relationship.”

When she begins, she is convinced the 12 months will be an angel cake of a walk. Then she is disappointed to find she is rarely holier than thou. I laughed often at her valiant and self-deprecatory efforts, yet each month did lead her to unexpected inner spaces. To “be still and hear God’s voice” is very difficult in modern life, with its demands, deadlines, and our Pavlovian conditioning to email. Yet turning off the world, even for a little while, offers a spiritual payoff – time with Jesus and surprises in self-awareness. One might even find a way to forgive the unforgivable.      

Here’s her deal. Connecting with God is in the trying, but for many, the trying can be fraught with frustration. Am I doing this right? Do I have what it takes? Is God talking to me yet? Stillness and simplicity amplify the divine voice, and Riess experiments with different ways to achieve this. Sometimes she succeeds, other times not. What I found refreshing is that “Flunking Sainthood” celebrates vulnerability and surrender, from which all sacred growth springs.

Contact Suzette Standring at suzmar@comcast.netor visit www.readsuzette.com. She teaches writing workshops nationally based on her award-winning book, “The Art of Column Writing.” She is syndicated with GateHouse News Service.

New San Jose parish built on faith, persistence

When Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church celebrates its first Mass on Sunday, opening its wide double doors and stained-glass sanctuary to one of East San Jose’s poorest neighborhoods, seats will be reserved up front for three elderly nuns and a gray-haired monk.

They’ve been praying for this day since the mid-1990s, when they first held Mass on a dirt lot in the midst of the crime-ridden Santee neighborhood near Story and McLaughlin roads. They set up an altar in front of the communal laundry room, opening umbrellas to block the sun and rain.

Moving into rundown apartments on Tami Lee Drive, they opened their tiny living rooms for choir practice and their spare bedrooms for Bible study. Sister Miriam ran off drug dealers in the alley and took on landlords whose rentals were infested with cockroaches and mold. Brother Paco broke up gang fights and sheltered frightened children from drive-by shootings. Sister Catherine Irene, well into her 70s at the time, slept on a futon in a converted storage room with no heat.

This was an immigrant neighborhood, the newcomers found, filled with Catholics whose marriages weren’t blessed by the church, whose babies weren’t baptized, whose teenagers never received their First Holy Communion. The nuns remember when then-Bishop Pierre DuMaine, wearing full white regalia in a tall peaked hat and wooden staff, came to the vacant lot, which Santee residents dubbed “the dust bowl,” to serve Mass in 1995. He asked

the humble congregation, “What do you need?”

Esperanza Fernandez, who was raising five children in Santee, stepped forward and said: “We need a church!”

Nearly two decades and one bishop later, those prayers have been answered. The 3 p.m. dedication ceremony at Our Lady of Refuge, where Bishop Patrick McGrath will preside and a procession of 50 priests in white robes will follow, is the first new parish to open in the San Jose Diocese in 20 years.

It’s the diocese’s response to the tremendous influx of Catholics — mostly Mexican, Vietnamese and Filipino immigrants — in South and East San Jose who have been crowding into St. Maria Goretti and other parishes in the area. Our Lady of Refuge, which will now occupy a large church on Lucretia Avenue vacated by another Christian congregation, seats 1,000 — 250 more than St. Joseph Cathedral downtown. It will serve not only as a place of worship on Sundays, but also as an extension of what the nuns have been doing at the Santee Mission for years: providing a safe gathering place for young people, social services for families and lessons in English.

Along the way, the nuns and Santee families have forged deep bonds. For many who left behind their own relatives when

they crossed the border, the sisters became like grandmothers. They shared advice for family and legal problems, wrote letters of recommendation and translated traffic tickets. The families cooked them meals and invited them to quinceañeras. When Sister Miriam Daniel Fahey lost her brother, the neighbors sent flowers and attended the funeral. When Sister Catherine Irene Thoeni had a series of surgeries, they visited the hospital.

“The people here love, love all the sisters very much,” said Fernandez, 59, who first spoke up to the bishop all those years ago. “They’re my second family.”

For the nuns, being so close to family life has been a rare gift.

“We are families intertwined, this whole community,” said Sister Catherine Irene, 89, her voice breaking. “This was the most meaningful experience in my 70 years as a sister.”

Although both she and Sister Miriam, 84, recently moved to the Sisters of the Holy Names retirement center in Los Gatos, and Sister Catherine Irene now walks with a cane, they wouldn’t miss the Mass of Dedication. Brother Paco Gomes, a Marianist monk who moved back to his home state of Hawaii a decade ago, is flying in for the ceremony.

Of the original four nuns, only Sister Guadalupe Johnston, 77, still lives in the Tami Lee apartment. She runs the choir and plays the piano (she’s so petite she sits on a phone book to reach the keys). And a year-and-a-half ago, Sister Mary Becker moved to the neighborhood to help.

Sister Martha Bendorf, who started a lending library in a storage room, didn’t live long enough to see the new church.

Over the years, many city, police and nonprofit programs have worked to help the people of Santee, with varying degrees of success. Carports were torn down and apartments fixed up, but the neighborhood is still considered a “hot spot” for crime. But through it all, the humble presence of the nuns living in the residents’ midst has had a profound and lasting effect.

“I’d like to think that we still would have done good things” even without the nuns, said Kip Harkness, who ran the city’s Strong Neighborhoods Initiative program for years before joining the city manager’s office. “But I was personally moved by the sisters’ commitment. They were fierce and determined to make sure the voice of the poor and the immigrants were heard loudly. They were a living symbol that this community is not abandoned.”

In the 1990s, many Santee residents certainly felt that way. Their neighborhood was a haven for crack dealers and gangs. Sagging carports lining the back alleys provided street thugs with perfect hiding places from the circling police helicopters with searchlights.

Upon the request of pastors Tim Kidney and Kevin Joyce at St. Maria Goretti, Brother Paco began knocking on doors, inviting the residents to join the parish. He soon realized how few had received the holy sacraments. Many didn’t have transportation to the church four miles away. Some were illegal immigrants afraid to venture too far.

“We thought if they won’t come to us, we’ll go to them,” Brother Paco said. “So we decided to pack up and move over to them.”

Within a year, the four Sisters of the Holy Names, all retiring teachers from the area in their 60s and 70s, began moving in. Instead of habits, they wore simple street clothes, with crosses or religious medals around their necks. Three of them brought what Sister Guadalupe called “quiet things” — Spanish language skills, music talents, and relationships with Catholic parishes that sent food, clothes and toys.

Sister Miriam brought fearlessness. At public meetings, she berated landlords for the deplorable living conditions. In dark alleys, she chastised suspicious characters: “Do I smell marijuana? It’s not allowed here!”

She remembers hearing rocks hit the window upstairs to get the attention of the drug dealer who lived there: “He would come for Mass on Sunday, I might add.”

Chimed in Sister Guadalupe: “He asked about ashes on Wednesday!”

Faith was the focus of the Santee Mission, a religious outreach center intended to be transitional, not permanent. It was built around dedicated families yearning to practice their faith. Many in the congregation volunteered to help with liturgies, religion classes and luncheons after Sunday Mass.

Over the next 18 years, the growing outdoor Mass moved to a portable trailer at Santee Elementary School down the block, then to the school cafeteria, then on to a larger cafeteria at Kennedy Elementary nearly a mile away.

Almost 400 people spilled out the doors every Sunday for the 10 a.m. Mass. Until the final Mass there last weekend, a core group arrived two hours early to set up chairs and decorate the altar, and they stayed late to put it all back in a shed across the parking lot. Sister Guadalupe brought the statue of the Baby Jesus home during the holidays because it “suffered greatly,” she said, having broken an arm in a tightly packed storage unit.

It will have a safe home at Our Lady of Refuge.

Still, a tinge of sadness comes with the move. Children will no longer gather at the nuns’ door for First Communion classes. Choir voices will no longer waft out the windows and down the alleys of Santee. Sister Guadalupe, who has lived in the same apartment since 1995, doesn’t know how long she will stay.

“We are going to miss this,” said Laura Morales, 67, who has been part of the Santee Mission since the earliest years. “But we are going to be better over there.”

During Sunday’s ceremony, Brother Paco and Sisters Miriam and Catherine Irene will hand Bishop McGrath the key to unlock the sanctuary doors. Inside, Sister Guadalupe will be playing the piano. And the choir will be singing.

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409.

if you go

What: Dedication of the first new Catholic Church in the San Jose Diocese in 20 years. Bishop Patrick McGrath will preside.
When: 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church, 2165 Lucretia Ave., San Jose

Led by Monsignor Francisco Rios and co-pastor Brendan McGuire, Masses at Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church will be held in three languages: English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

FUNDRAISING FALLING SHORT

A $6 million fundraising campaign to pay for the church and renovations, including large pledges from several wealthier San Jose parishes, is still $1 million short.
Because most members of the congregation have little money to contribute, many have spent recent weekends pulling weeds from the church property, offering to sew altar cloths and cooking for Sunday’s celebration. Those who would like to donate to the new church should visit www.dsj.org/ways-to-give/our-lady-of-refuge-appeal. Contact Melanie Lara at lara@dsj.org or 408-983-0246 with questions.

A lifetime of learning to trust God

Springfield, Va., Feb 19, 2012 / 11:02 am (CNA).- When you see Bob Ward, it’s safe to assume his wife, Beverly, isn’t far behind.

The nickname of “Boberly,” given to the couple by accident during a wedding toast 47 years ago, has proven throughout the years to be a fitting appellation for the two local Catholics who rarely spend time apart.

The Wards, parishioners of St. Raymond of Peñafort Parish in Springfield, Va. taught religious education together, attend daily Mass together, fostered 18 newborns together and pray daily together. They are regular speakers at Conferences for the Engaged, hosted by the Diocese of Arlington, Va. Office for Family Life, where they draw on life experiences to help counsel those preparing for marriage.

“Nobody sees us without us being together,” Bob said. If they do get separated in a crowd, Beverly added, they have to be careful not to repeat the same stories to the same people.

As strong a unit as Bob and Beverly are, it’s important to acknowledge they started off as two individuals from very different backgrounds.

Beverly grew up in Junction City, Kan., as a cradle Catholic. A small-town girl, she loved the saints and dreamed of being a cloistered nun. Bob, born in Spartanburg, S.C., lived around the world with his Army father and grew up as a staunch Protestant. Bob attended Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., before he, too, joined the Army.

What the two had in common, though, was their devotion to their particular faith traditions. This, Bob said, was what attracted him most to Beverly. (Not to mention, Bob added, that “she was gorgeous.”)

When Bob was transferred from Fort Riley, Kan., where he and Beverly had met, the two kept in touch via letters. They learned that, though they had different faith backgrounds, they had similar values.

“There was just something so special, and I think through correspondence we really got to know each other because we wrote a lot,” Bob said. As they got more serious, they began praying their one common prayer — the Our Father — after speaking every night.

After eight months apart — while Bob was in Germany — he and Beverly were reunited.

“I was so smitten that … they sent me on the advanced party (back to the United States),” Bob said. “They knew that I had to be (with Beverly).”

The couple married Aug. 8, 1964.

As a compromise, the couple agreed never to argue about their separate faiths, and they supported one another by attending both Mass and a Methodist service every Sunday for 12 years. Bob and Beverly both remained involved in their separate faiths, teaching religious education and Sunday school.

As time went on, the couple had two children, Rob and Sheri, while Bob was going back and forth to Vietnam. When Bob was assigned to Korea, the family went with him, living on economy so they could be together.

While in Korea, Bob found himself more drawn to the Catholic faith. He read books and got into passionate debates with an Italian priest chaplain on base.

“He would give books to Beverly that he knew I would read,” Bob said. “And I did.”

Bob realized that he had acquired “a set of false understandings” of the Catholic faith. Through logical analysis, “slowly but surely everything Catholicism taught made sense,” he said.

Beverly never put any pressure on him, he added; rather, “it was truly the Holy Spirit calling me to seek this out on my own initiative.”

Bob compared his experience with that of theologians Scott and Kimberly Hahn.

“Rome Sweet Home (the book chronicling the Hahns’ conversion) is exactly what I went through,” he said.

Bob was received into the Church March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, at the private residence of the papal nuncio to Korea.

“I was on fire from that day forward and it’s just been a continuous journey,” he said.

Bob’s conversion only increased the already happy bond between him and Beverly. In addition, his excitement for the Faith and for praying together “made such an impact on our children,” Beverly said. They would pray the rosary together, mapping out Mary’s progress from one place to the next.

After Korea, the family moved to Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C. Beverly suffered three miscarriages in a row (in addition to one before Sheri was born) before becoming pregnant with James, the couple’s youngest son. After a difficult and dangerous birth, the doctors told the Wards they were still able to get pregnant, but if they had another baby neither Beverly nor the new life would survive.

After using contraception for a while, Bob and Beverly realized they didn’t feel as connected to one another. When a priest pointed them toward natural family planning (NFP), it changed their lives.

“Ours was really a life/death situation and yet we really trusted,” Beverly said. “And NFP really works. Very conservative we were, but it works.”

Unable to have any more biological children, Bob and Beverly turned to Catholic Charities soon after moving to Springfield in 1980. They fostered 18 newborn babies over seven years, caring for the children anywhere from four months to two years.

Extremely active in the Faith, both Bob and Beverly taught different religious education classes. After attending a Marriage Encounter retreat, they decided to start doing everything as a couple.

Together, they taught religious education for 11th- and 12th-graders. For 12 years, they prayed regularly at the abortion clinic on Duke Street in Alexandria, Va. They did, and still do, attend the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. For the past 17 years, the couple has helped couples prepare for marriage.

Still, though, they were not done learning — and learning together.

In the mid-1990s, “I came home and announced to Beverly that we were going to go to graduate school,” Bob said.

Beverly, though at first nervous about taking classes for credit, agreed. They both earned a master’s in theology from Christendom College’s Notre Dame Graduate School in Alexandria — Bob in 1999 with a discipline in scripture and Beverly in 2001with an emphasis in spirituality.

For eight years, while the new St. Raymond Church was being built, they became co-directors of religious education. Though no longer working in a formal capacity for the church, Bob (using his notes from graduate school) teaches two Bible studies every Tuesday — one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Beverly, of course, goes to every class. She’s the one who’s good with names.

Bob now “lives to teach,” he said — both the Bible studies and Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults for anyone interesting in learning more about the Catholic faith.

“My joy is to have been given this knowledge,” he said, and passing it along is essential to him.

Ultimately, the Wards built on their foundation of faith and friendship to continue to grow in their love of Catholicism and their love of one another.

“Love is a decision of the will,” Bob said. “You choose to love (the other).”

“The thing that keeps the spark in our marriage is that we’re always dating,” Beverly said. “We have a date every two weeks to go to confession. We do everything together.”

They’ve gone from praying the Our Father — the only prayer they had in common — to attending daily Mass, praying the Liturgy of the Hours and maintaining an entire prayer regimen at home.

The time together as a couple helps keep them focused on the sacrament of marriage, Bob said.

“You get the sacramental graces,” he said. “We’ve really grown closer together by being together.”

Posted with permission from the Arlington Catholic Herald, official newspaper of the Diocese of Arlington, Va.

"Borgia Faith And Fear" Season One on DVD!

Before The Mafia, there were The Borgia. Packed with drama, intrigue and lawlessness, Lionsgate debuts Borgia Faith and Fear Season One on DVD and Digital Download this February. The international series, created and executive produced by three-time Emmy® winning drama veteran Tom Fontana*, stars John Doman (HBO’s “The Wire”) as Rodrigo Borgia, a Renaissance-era pope who is on the quest for ultimate power. The complete first season features all 12 gripping one-hour episodes as a three-disc set. Borgia Faith and Fear: Season One, including a “making of” featurette and the “Borgia Diaries” – cast and crew interviews, will be available on February 21st, for the suggested retail price of $39.98.

In the era of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, enlightened creativity and unparalleled intellectual achievement, rampant lawlessness and incessant war also reigned. A crime family emerged and would open the most infamous chapter in the history of the Catholic Church. In the center of the story is Rodrigo Borgia – pope and ruthless dictator, on a quest for power and the ultimate prize, the Chair of Saint Peter.

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