New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan elevated to cardinal

Associated PressNewly-appointed cardinal, Archbishop of New York Timothy Michael Dolan, hugs two unidentified people after being elevated at St. Peter’s basilica at the Vatican on Saturday.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was elevated to cardinal early yesterday, and Staten Island Catholics — some of whom traveled to the Vatican for the event — lauded him as a staunch defender of traditional Roman Catholic values nationally while being a force for positive change right here on the Island.

“Not only is the cardinal a kind, warm, engaging man, but he also is a strong voice of the truth of our faith,” said Monsignor Edmund Whalen, principal of Monsignor Farrell High School, who was in Rome for the elevation.

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday brought 22 new Catholic churchmen, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, into the elite club of cardinals who will elect his successor in a greatly simplified ceremony that took into account evidence the 84-year-old pontiff is slowing down.

The ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica formally created the 22 cardinals, who include the archbishops of New York, Prague, Hong Kong and Toronto, as well as the heads of several Vatican offices. The consistory brought to 125 the number of cardinals under age 80 who are thus eligible to vote in a papal election — including Cardinal Dolan.

In remarks at the start of the service, Benedict recalled that the red color of the three-pointed hat, or biretta, and the scarlet cassock that cardinals wear symbolizes the blood that cardinals must be willing to shed to remain faithful to the church.

“The new cardinals are entrusted with the service of love: Love for God, love for his church, an absolute and unconditional love for his brothers and sisters even unto shedding their blood, if necessary,” Benedict said.

Dolan smiled broadly as he approached the pope to receive his skullcap, biretta and ring, a day after he received a heartfelt papal thumbs-up for his animated speech to cardinals about spreading the faith.

Benedict termed Dolan’s remarks Friday “enthusiastic, joyful and profound,” according to a Vatican summary of the closed-door meeting.

Monsignor Whalen and Monsignor James Dorney, co-vicar of Staten Island and pastor of St. Peter’s R.C. Church, praised the cardinal for speaking out against the Obama administration’s plan to require nearly all employers, even faith-based groups, to pay for free contraceptives for employees. Under pressure from Cardinal Dolan and religious leaders from other faiths, the administration has been seeking a compromise.

“This is a question of religious freedom and the denial of our First Amendment right to practice our faith,” Monsignor Whalen said.

“The cardinal is ready to stand firm on what the church teaches and I applaud him for that,” said Monsignor Dorney. “It takes you back to something that Pope John Paul II said: ‘Be not afraid.’ Cardinal Dolan will not be afraid.”

Monsignor Dorney noted Cardinal Dolan has a crucial position as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We have a forthright leader and I, for one, say, ‘Thanks be to God,’” he said.

Monsignor Peter Finn, co-vicar of Staten Island and pastor of Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church, also traveled to Rome, and said Cardinal Dolan is deeply involved in ecumenical and inter-faith activities.

“The cardinal has a very keen grasp of what is going on in the church nationally and internationally,” Monsignor Finn said.

Cardinal Dolan is the former rector of the Pontifical North American College of Rome and author of several acclaimed books, notably, “Priests for the Third Millennium.” While he has national and international prominence and insight, Cardinal Dolan also has endeared himself to Staten Islanders in his relatively short time as Archbishop of New York since April 2009.

“The cardinal has enjoyed tremendously his exposure to the people of Staten Island,” Monsignor Finn said. “He finds Staten Island to be a little bit like home.”

Monsignor Finn noted that while Staten Island has a population of over half a million, it “continues to have that community involvement and spirit and identification.” The cardinal fits right in here with his “affable, outgoing and warm personality” and “tremendous sense of humor,” Monsignor Finn said.

“When the cardinal speaks about Staten Island,” Monsignor Finn said, Dolan has asked with a hearty laugh: “Why should I go on vacation to the Caribbean when I can go to the Pearl of the Atlantic?’”

Monsignor Finn believes that as cardinal, Dolan will be instrumental on Staten Island with outreach of the Catholic faith in the shifting demographics of the Island, especially with the influx of immigrants from Mexico, Africa and Asia.

Cardinal Dolan will deal with the justice, peace and civil rights issues concerning the minority communities and will embrace interfaith efforts with Jews and Muslims, Monsignor Finn believes.

Politicians also praised his selection for cardinal. Rep. Michael Grimm congratulated him from the floor of the House of Representatives, and Borough President James Molinaro said he was creative and had many good ideas.

“To me, Cardinal Dolan represents a religion that has done more for people in need than any other religion around,” Molinaro said.

Cardinal Dolan established a new Staten Island Catholic Schools Board with clergy and lay members and appointed Monsignor Thomas Bergin, pastor of St. Charles R.C. Church, Oakwood, as chairman in January.

“Archbishop Dolan being named the cardinal is not only an honor for him, but for the Archdiocese of New York,” said Monsignor Richard Guastella, pastor of St. Clare’s R.C. Church in Great Kills, the largest Catholic parish on the Island.

“On a personal level, I think he’s a really nice guy, a breath of fresh air for New York. What you see is what you get,” Monsignor Gaustella added.

Parishioners also supported the elevation.

“I am delighted that he will be elevated to cardinal,” said Maggie Watson as she was about to attend mass last Wednesday morning at St. Clare’s with fellow Great Kills residents Zita Flegar and Josephine Cretella.

“He has a great personality, he relates well to people and he is down to earth,” Ms. Watson said. “He’s a people person,” added Ms. Cretella.

Ms. Flegar said she enjoyed watching the coverage of the cardinal-designate Dolan’s trip to Rome on TV.

“I think it’s God’s holy will and a blessing for all of us, he’s our shepherd,” said Rosaria Incantalupo of Annadale.

“I’m very proud of him,” said Angelo Caterina of Great Kills about Dolan. “He is very charismatic. He will do a lot to advance the causes of the Catholic Church. He has the courage to say what is correct and to do it fairly so no prejudice is shown to Catholics in the practice of their faith.”

MPs congratulate Cardinal

Skilled trades on display

Exhibitors from leading Ontario colleges and training centres, unions, and skilled trade employers will showcase their expertise at upcoming fair in Mississauga next month.

CNN Quickly Reported Liberal Backlash Against Komen, But Sat on Religious …

CNN’s blatant double-standard in covering religious and social issues was manifested in its lopsided coverage of two different stories over the past few weeks.

When prominent religious leaders condemned an Obama administration mandate as an attack on religious freedom, the network gave the controversy one brief mention in ten days. But when liberal outrage ensued over a cancer charity pulling its funding of leading abortion provider Planned Parenthood, CNN reported the story the next day and promptly followed it up with more coverage.

On January 20, the Obama administration required religious organizations to pay for birth control for employees, even if their religious beliefs objected to such a practice. Both liberals and conservatives were aghast at the decision, and the head of the U.S. Catholic Bishops condemned it as an assault on religious liberty. CNN gave the story one brief report in ten days before finally covering it in detail.

In contrast, when a leading cancer charity pulled its voluntary funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, CNN began covering the “controversial” decision the next afternoon.

Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center, slammed CNN on Monday for failing to promptly report the HHS mandate requiring religious groups to pay for contraception. As Bozell noted, the rule affects no small sliver of the population since over 65 million Catholics reside in the U.S.

More than 7,000 Catholic schools operate in the U.S., as well as hundreds of Catholic hospitals serving one out of every six patients in the county. Many, if not all, of these institutions would be forced to close their doors or act against their faith in compliance with the HHS.

Yet only after Catholic priests read letters against the decision in their Sunday homilies did CNN pick up on the story – on January 30, ten days after the mandate was announced. During that time period, the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops, as well as other bishops, released scathing rebukes of the decision, but CNN failed to report their outrage.

CNN’s White House correspondent Dan Lothian even admitted that many were up in arms, when he finally reported on January 30 that “clearly, there are a lot of people out there who don’t agree with it [the mandate].”

Meanwhile, CNN’s treatment of Komen vs. Planned Parenthood was quite different. On January 31, the Susan G. Komen foundation – a leading cancer charity – announced that it would stop funding Planned Parenthood. CNN’s Soledad O’Brien gave the story a brief mention the next morning, and later in the afternoon correspondent Mary Snow aired a pretty one-sided story on the backlash against the decision, manifested in the spike in donations to Planned Parenthood.

On the morning after that, February 2, CNN aired two news briefs on the story, followed by Snow’s lengthier report on Newsroom later in the morning. Host Ashleigh Banfield declared that “this is a huge story.” Thus began CNN’s coverage of the outrage over Komen’s de-funding Planned Parenthood – only 24 hours after the story broke, and not ten days.

- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center

Vatican schedules canonization of Pedro Calungsod

By Jason A. Baguia
Inquirer Visayas

Blessed Pedro Calungsod FILE PHOTO

CEBU CITY—The Vatican announced over the weekend the canonization of 17th century Visayan martyr Pedro Calungsod on October 21, making him the country’s second Catholic saint.

The announcement followed the approval by Pope Benedict XVI of the canonization of Calungsod, according to the Vatican’s official news website.

The Pope made the announcement through Angelo Cardinal Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, at St. Peter’s Basilica following a ceremony in which 22 bishops from around the world were elevated to the rank of cardinal.

Those to be canonized on October 21 along with Calungsod are Jacques Berthieu, a French martyr and priest of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits); Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian priest and founder of the Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth and of the Congregation of the Humble Sister Servants of the Lord; Maria del Carmen, a Spanish founder of the Conceptionist Missionary Sisters of Teaching; Maria Anna Cope, a German religious of the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in Syracuse; Kateri Tekakwitha, an American laywoman, and Anna Schaffer, a German laywoman.

Calungsod will be the second Filipino to be canonized in the history of the Catholic Church after Pope John Paul II canonized Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila in 1987. Both Calungsod, who hailed from Cebu, and Ruiz were lay persons.

Ruiz, a parish scribe and former altar boy who was born in Binondo, Manila, was martyred in Japan in 1637.

Calungsod was born in 1655 in what was then the Diocese of Cebu which covered the islands of Panay and Mindanao, as well as the Pacific island of Guam.

A lay catechist, he died at 17 in Guam while trying to defend his fellow mission worker, Jesuit priest and now Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores, when natives attacked them on April 2, 1672.

Calungsod was struck by a spear and his skull was split by a machete blow. Their bodies were then tied together and thrown into the sea.

The latest announcement is expected to push preparations for Calungsod’s canonization to full swing in the Archdiocese of Cebu, where the archbishop emeritus, Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, was the lead promoter of the campaign for Calungsod’s canonization.

Since his beatification in 2000 by Pope John Paul II, Cebuanos have been offering prayers through Calungsod.

The Vatican earlier recognized the recovery from a deep coma of a Cebu businesswoman as a miracle obtained through Calungsod’s intercession.

On March 5, 2000, Pope John Paul II beatified Calungsod along with 43 other martyrs in ceremonies held at St. Peter’s Square in Rome. The Vatican officially set April 2 as Calungsod’s feast day.

In his homily during the beatification, John Paul called on the youth to emulate Calungsod.

“From his childhood, Pedro Calungsod declared himself unwaveringly for Christ and responded generously to His call. Young people today can draw encouragement and strength from the example of Pedro, whose love of Jesus inspired him to devote his teenage years to teaching the faith as a lay catechist,” John Paul said.

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In response to Julia Duggan’s letter (Certain teachings central to Catholic faith

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• Time to pull the plug on funding of Catholic schools – LETTER

Updated 1 hour ago

In response to Julia Duggan’s letter (Certain teachings central to Catholic faith) Nugget. Feb. 13, 2012).

Public dollars should no longer be directed into a separate school system that has no tolerance for those who are born being different.

Under the guise of piety, Ms Duggan would have us believe “that bullying should not be tolerated in our schools”.

Meanwhile, it is quite clear throughout her letter the Catholic school system will not tolerate those who are homosexual. This is an impossible situation for those children who find themselves in this hostile territory.

Even though GSA’s have been mandated in all schools – including those within the Catholic system – there has been a lot of resistance shown by the ACBO (Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario) right through the entire Catholic school hierarchy. This itself is a form of bullying.

Those who believe themselves to be followers of God forget his teachings. According to the Bible, God created man in his own image. Therefore, this must include those of other sexual orientation as well.

Religious zealots pick and choose which passages of their holy books they wish to adhere to and how to interpret them, depending on their own agenda.

Why haven’t they held their own priests to the same high standards that they have for their young charges?

While they continue to leech money out of the public coffers in order to further their own religion, I’d say they must abide by the mandate of the Ontario government.

Considering the looming deficit our province is faced with, there is every reason for us to pull the plug on the funding of separate school education.

Dalton McGuinty – himself a Catholic – is now being ostracized by those within his own religion because of his decision on GSA’s.

I guess he’s just not Catholic enough.

I have personally read their school system’s policy on the topic of homosexuality. Although it is covered in platitudes, the clear message it sends is that only a relationship between a man and woman is acceptable and that those who feel or behave differently must ‘remain celibate’ or risk the wrath of God.

Does this sound like acceptance and tolerance?

Rita Ramsay

Callander

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While one may agree with the apparent unfairness of a government which allows one religion to pay it’s school tax dollars toward it’s own separate school system while others are not allowed to do the same, rubs many the wrong way. However this is a constitutional matter and is not simply in the power of the ruling party of a province to change. It is mainly a matter for the supreme court, the Federal Gov’t. and Provinces to bring about any changes, and would most likely have to be decided with a country wide referendum. It will not be an easy task. So there is no currency in blaming one party or another for this situation. That is why it is never a part of any party platform. It is a red herring….a can of fish which nobody wants to open. It would be really interesting to see what would happen if some political party, made working toward the abolition of the Separate school system part of their platform. Amending the constitution of Canada is no easy task as can be evidenced by reading the following URL. Which explains all the hoops that have to be jumped through.

http://www.pco-bcp.gc.c​?a/aia/index.asp?l​a?ng=engpage=​fe?deraldoc=m​odif/modif-eng.htm

Below is some of the legal history involved.

Wikipedia……”In Canada, the term separate school refers to a particular type of school that has constitutional status in three provinces (Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan) and statutory status in three territories (Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut). …….

The Constitution of Canada does not establish separate school education as a natural or unconditional right available to all. Only Protestants or Roman Catholics, whichever is the minority faith population compared to the other in a community, can consider the establishment of separate school education. The separate school establishment right is not available to citizens of any other faith (such as Jews, or Mormons, or Hindus, or Muslims). …….

There is one Protestant separate school jurisdiction in Ontario, the Burkevale Protestant Separate School, operated by the Penetanguishene Protestant Separate School Board. In Ontario, this determination was largely made throughout the province by the time of Confederation.

The public school system in the province was historically Protestant but was gradually transformed into a secular public system. Prayer in public schools was discontinued in the early 1980s.

The right to have a publicly-funded separate denominational school system continues to be guaranteed by Section 93 of the 1982 Constitution Act to Roman Catholics in Ontario.[7]
A province-wide newspaper survey conducted between 1997 and 1999 in 45 dailies indicated that 79% of 7551 respondents in Ontario favoured a single public school system, but no widely supported movement to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 has developed.”

Post #1
By leeds,
1 hour ago |

0 Votes | Vote:

Catholics make up about 35% of the Ontario population, and even most catholics who don’t attend church send their kids to separate schools. As well some Muslims, and those of other faiths, and none, and even a few atheists send their kids to separate schools. This happens mostly in Catholic high schools, if they change their school tax status to separate school supporter. They send their kids there largely because the schools are perceived to have a more conservative family value set than public schools, and this is what many people want. Non Catholic kids are exempted from attending any religious classes or functions at the schools. Considering the demographics regards the number of catholics in the province and the fact that some Muslims and others send their kids to the separate schools, it would be political suicide for any party to attempt to get rid of the system using “the notwithstanding clause” or any other method.

Ironically, when attending the graduation of my grandson from a public high school, the opening ceremonies began with a Christian prayer. I thought that was a bit unusual. I didn’t think that was allowed. I did not partake, but wondered how other agnostics and atheists felt. Probably much like myself, surprised, but not outraged. I guess tolerance ruled the day.

The Not Withstanding Clause

“Such a declaration lapses after five years or a lesser time specified in the clause, although the legislature may re-enact the clause indefinitely. The rationale behind having a five-year expiry date is that it is also the maximum amount of time that the Parliament or legislature may sit before an election must be called. Therefore, if the people wish for the law to be repealed they have the right to elect representatives that will carry out the wish of the electorate.”

The political turmoil caused by any attempt to use this political tool to remove the Separate School System at this point in our history would have disruptive devastating effects that would rip the province to shreds. Is there any Ontario politician of note, that would dare even mention the possibility? This at the moment is only a topic for hypothetical discussion, at least for now.

Post #2
By leeds,
1 hour ago |

0 Votes | Vote:

It,s hard to take anyone seriously who,s main contribution to society is the amount of money they spend at the LCBO i am surprised that a letter could be comprised together at all through rose colored glasses i thought there would be more stains on it due to spillage and slurs or are those teachings not central to the faith Julia?

Post #3
By TommyTricker,
12 minutes ago |

0 Votes | Vote:

Leeds, non-Catholic students are not exempted from attending religious classes or events in Catholic high schools. They are held to the same standard as the Catholic students (I know, I went to one). The philosophy is, if a non-Catholic family is sending their child to a Catholic environment, they must want them learning in and of the Catholic faith…rightly or wrongly.
An Act of Parliament is all that is required to abolish publicly funded seperate schools. It’s been done before (NFLD., and Que.) and could just as easily happen in Ontario. All that is needed is the will of the people and a political leader with the desire (and majority in Parliament) to do so.

Post #4
By read carefully,
4 minutes ago |

0 Votes | Vote:

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Tallaght murder victim buried

irishtimes.com – Last Updated: Friday, February 17, 2012, 14:24Undated family photograph Melanie McCarthy McNamara (16)

MARK HENNESSY London Editor

Murdered teenager, Melanie McCarthy McNamara’s death is inexplicable to those who loved her, a priest said today at her funeral mass in London in the church where she had received her First Communion, which was attended by several hundred people.

In a sermon, Fr Peter Harries OP of St Dominic’s Priory, Southampton Row in North London said the death of a loved one at any time was hard to bear, but the circumstances of Melanie’s death – shot dead in the back of a car in Tallaght in Dublin – made it especially difficult for her loved ones to cope with.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Kentish Town church shortly after 9am for the funeral mass of the teenager, who had been ready to announce that she was going to marry her boyfriend Christopher Moran, one of those all dressed in identical pink shirts who later carried her coffin down the aisle, while a friend sang In the Arms of an Angel. 

Two men have been arrested in relation to her murder and are still being held at Tallaght Garda station under anti-gangland crime legislation.

The death of the teenager’s is being blamed on a feud amongst drugs criminals, though some members of the McCarthy family displayed their anger with some photographers present, saying that newspapers ‘had told lies’.

Ms McCarthy had lived near the church in Queen’s Crescent for most of her life. Some former school-friends were amongst those who attended today’s funeral mass.

A small contingent of police helped with traffic issues around the church, particularly when the flower-laden hearse, followed by a line of Daimlers, left for the graveyard.

A small open-backed truck travelled immediately behind the hearse holding giant bouquets, including one that declared ‘Our Barbie Doll’.

She had been in the back-seat of a car in Tallaght on February 7th with her boyfriend, Christopher and two others, one of whom was believed to have been the intended target when the shooting happened.

Why does Santorum despise the separation of church and state?

Secular-baiting has become something of an art form in high GOP circles ever since Newt Gingrich began his pioneering explorations of the genre back in the 1990s.

A milestone in the evolution of this rhetoric occurred in 2007 when Mitt Romney likened secularism to radical Jihadism in a memorable speech.

Those were impressive accomplishments, for sure. But let me say that no one, but no one, can demonize, Talibanize, or Stalinize secularism like Rick Santorum. On occasion he has done so, I would admit, with a fair degree of intellectual seriousness, as in this 2010 speech. Though for the most part his pronouncements on the subject amount to rank and preposterous name-calling.

View Photo Gallery: Scenes of religious faith meeting politics in the 2012 campaign.

Back in 2003 he lamented: “I want to remind people of the societies that have been secular in nature. Starting with the French Revolution, moving onto the fascists, and the Nazis and the communists and the Baathists, all of those purely secularists hated religion, tried to crush religion.”

Recently he claimed the Obama administration believes that “secular values should be imposed on people of faith.” “Don’t you see,” Santorum sighed, “how they see you? How they look down their noses at the average Americans. These elitist snobs!”

Needless to say, Santorum’s aversion to separation of church and state has led him to repeatedly anathematize John F. Kennedy. For it was the nation’s first Catholic president who famously called in 1961 for separation. Looking back, Santorum was “frankly appalled” by Kennedy’s “radical” stance.

Fresh off his three victories last week, Santorum upped the ante: “the intolerance of the secular ideology. It is a religion unto itself. It is just not a biblical based religion. And it is the most intolerant just like we saw in the days of the atheists in the Soviet Union. . .and they fear dissent why? Because the dissent comes from folks who use reason, common sense, and divine revelation and they want no part of any of those things.”

So let’s review, shall we? Secularism is defined by Santorum variously as a religion, intolerant of religion, atheist, leftist, liberal, intolerant of dissent, Gallic, Nazi, Communist, elitist and, of course, the official ideology of the Obama administration. Oddly, in a recent debate we found candidate Santorum praising “secular” Pakistan over a theocratic Iran, but by now the reader may realize that when it comes to public discussions of secularism logical coherence is expressly discouraged.

The truth is that for decades terms like “secular,” “secular humanist,” “atheist,” and “liberal,” have been used by the right as if all were synonyms of one another and synonyms of every form of depravity known to the species. Santorum is not the first conservative Christian public figure to draw these loose associations, though he is presently the most visible.

This raises the question of why the practice of disparaging secularism has continued for so long. This is a complex prompt, but I want to suggest one quick answer here. The highfalutin’ rhetorical assaults on secularism permit culture warriors to avoid the real problem of how to let religion function in a public square teeming with diverse and often antagonistic religious actors.

It is easy, lucrative, and even pleasurable, to pulverize sinister secularism. It rallies the base, secures contributions, and helps conservative voters focus on demonic (i.e., liberal, Democratic) forces possessing our political system. It is much harder, however, to explain how citizens who base their civic thinking on Santorum’s “divine revelation” could possibly live in peace when those revelations might lead them to completely different policy prescriptions. Anti-secular rhetoric, at its core, is a demagogic evasion.

Yet Santorum and others will keep baiting secularism, and evading difficult issues, until someone stops them. As I think through the future of an admittedly troubled secular movement, I note that Santorum’s co-religionists often have a far better appreciation of the value of the secular than he does.

Writing in the magazine America, the Jesuit Raymond Schroth reflects on the vast discrepancy between Santorum’s views on Kennedy and his own: “I don’t know where Santorum was in 1960, but he was two years old. I was surrounded by Jesuit scholastics in philosophy studies. We knew the speech had been written with the advice of Catholic theologians and that Kennedy knew the proper role of conscience, as well as religion, in making public decisions.”
Father Michael Ssenfuma conducts the Catholic Mass Sunday at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Montgomery, Ala. (AP)

It may be lost upon candidate Santorum, but religious minorities in America such as Catholics often have pragmatic reasons for being wary of permitting religion to play too large a role in public life. This truism is often lost upon anti-theist movement secularists as well. Which is unfortunate because it is precisely by reaching out to religious individuals that the secular movement can re-energize itself.

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.

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.

ON RELIGION: Transforming the Crystal Cathedral – Times

It doesn’t take a doctorate in church architecture to know why every pew in every Catholic cathedral allows worshippers to gaze toward the altar.

What happens on the altar during Mass is the heart of Catholic faith.

Meanwhile, architects that design Protestant churches make sure preachers have everyone’s attention when they rise to preach. What happens in those pulpits is what matters for most Protestants.

The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, on the other hand, asked the legendary architect Philip Johnson to design the world’s first great church specifically built for use as a studio for televised worship.

Leaders of the Diocese of Orange will have to meditate on that fact as they work to turn the Crystal Cathedral into a spiritual home for Orange County’s nearly 1.3 million Catholics, according to an architect who has published a sketch of possible changes in that structure. The diocese recently completed its $57.5 million purchase of the property.

”It would be hard to imagine a more symbolic project than this one,” said Matthew Alderman, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s classical design program and an architect at Cram and Ferguson Architects in Concord, Mass. The firm specializes in traditional church designs.

”What we are going to see at the Crystal Cathedral is sort of like a collision between the therapeutic American Protestantism of the television age with all of the symbolism, art and ancient traditions of the

Catholic Church and its worship.”

At this point, the Diocese of Orange has not taken formal steps to hire an architect and the Crystal Cathedral congregation has three years to find a new home. Acting on his own, Alderman sketched some possible changes to illustrate a piece for an Anglican periodical called “The Living Church.”

It would be impossible, he noted, to retroactively convert this modernist classic — a structure so open that it seems to have no true walls or interior space — into what most people would consider a normal, conventional cathedral.

”While traditional styles can often be mixed within historic interiors,” wrote Alderman, “the modernist movement was such a destructive act of self-exile that great care must be used when adding traditional elements to a dated modernist interior. Plopping down a Gothic altarpiece into a 1968 ecclesiastical wigwam usually just makes the wigwam look worse.”

The crucial decision, according to Alderman, is whether to turn the direction of the seating so the faithful will face down the 415-foot length of the sanctuary toward a newly created altar platform built inside the existing glass building. This would create a traditional nave with a center aisle for processions toward the altar and the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament. Currently, the church resembles a long amphitheater in which worshippers face a stage and giant video screen in the middle of the cruciform building, which is 207 feet wide.

”Strong processional movements from the back of the church to the altar are practical, but also theological,” said Alderman, reached by phone. “We are the people of God and we are traveling somewhere — together. We are moving toward Christ and the altar. That’s the focus.”

The local Catholic leadership has already concluded that the Crystal Cathedral is “not a highly liturgical space in the traditional sense. Yet, the Diocese of Orange considers it a ‘clean (palate),’” wrote Msgr. Arthur Holquin, in a paper entitled “Domus Ecclesiae (House of the Church).”

”While renovations are called for, not much deconstruction would be required and the iconic personality of the original architecture and design would, for the most part, be retained.” In particular, he added, the “quality of light and its allegory is consistent with the enlightenment of Christ.”

Bishop Tod Brown recently challenged Catholics nationwide to help name the new cathedral — proposing “Christological” names linked to the person and work of Jesus. As of Tuesday morning, more than 3,500 entries had been submitted. The deadline is Monday.

Alderman has already turned in his vote, proposing what he believes is a logical name for a cathedral containing 10,000 windows of silver-tinted glass — The Cathedral of the Transfiguration.

”The Crystal Cathedral is all about light and the blue sky being everywhere you look,” he said. “It’s the perfect place for dramatic images of Christ being transfigured and illuminated in divine light. … You could also say this sanctuary is about to be transfigured, becoming a real cathedral.”

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Terry Mattingly is the director of the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and leads the GetReligion.org project to study religion and the news.