The AnchorDiocese of Fall RiveR fRiday, May 22, 2009

Controversialbills await action on Beacon Hill

Theologian Scott Hahn coming to Fall River Diocese

Military chaplains: A calm port in a turbulent sea

GENTLE WOMAN, PEACEFUL DOVE — Sarah Bowles, a seventh-grader at St. Pius X School in South Yarmouth, places a crown of flowers on Mary after a May procession. First-grader Aveen O’Brien was the crown bearer.

By Deacon James n. DunBar

NEW BEDFORD — Catholics the world over regard the conversion of St. Paul — and his subsequent ministry as Apostle to the Gentiles — as milestones in the Church Christ founded.

To emphasize that, Pope Benedict XVI called for a Pauline Year jubilee begin-ning June 28, 2008, to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of St. Paul about the year 8 A.D. at Tarsus in Asia Minor known today as Turkey.

So it was most appropriate when, as the Fall River Diocese planned celebra-tions for the Pauline Year, people of great faith who were converts to Catholicism would be instrumental in proclaiming it.

“I wanted someone outstanding to be the final speaker as the Year of St. Paul ends on the upcoming June 29 feast of SS. Peter and Paul, and Dr. Scott Hahn, himself a convert and professor of theol-ogy and Scripture at Franciscan Univer-sity of Steubenville in Ohio, and director of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theol-ogy is perfect,” said Father Andrew John-son, OCSO, director of the Pauline Year in the diocese.

Hahn, 52, an exceptionally popular speaker and teacher who has delivered thousands of talks nationally and inter-nationally on a wide variety of topics re-lated to Scripture and the Catholic faith, will “break open” what is often referred to as “The Gospel according to St. Paul” at three sessions on June 27 in St. An-thony of Padua Church, 1359 Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford, one of the sev-

By Dave Jolivet, eDitor

FALL RIVER — The funeral Mass at St. John Neumann Church in East Free-town last week served as a grim reminder of the ultimate sacrifice thousands of our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbors have made to make this country, and the world a safer place. Freetown resident, 22-year-old Tyler J. Trahan, a member of the U.S. Navy, was killed April 30 in Fallujah, Iraq.

It doesn’t matter if one agrees with this war, or any war, the hard fact is that thou-sands of Americans continue to place them-selves in harm’s way so that others may be free. Thousands of our fellow countrymen and women live each day always looking over their shoulder and sleeping with one eye open. Fear and uncertainty are a way of life for these heroes.

One thing remains constant; from World War I nearly 100 years ago, to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Catholic chaplains are there with and for our troops, bringing the love of God to places where that would seem impossible.

Just as enlisted men and women risk their lives serving our country, Catholic chaplains are right there by their sides — sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice themselves. In World War II, Army chaplain Father Arthur C. Lenaghan, a priest of the Fall River Diocese, gave his life on the battle fields of Italy carrying wounded U.S. soldiers to safety.

In the Korean War in the 1950s, Army chaplain Father Emil J. Kapaun of the Eighth Calvary Regiment, was captured with scores

of his battalion and spent years in a North Korean prisoner of war camp, often sacrific-ing his meager portions for wounded com-rades and risking death by spiritually min-

istering to his fellow POWs, regardless of race, color or creed. Father Kapaun died in the prison camp because of a lack of medical aid, and his cause for canonization has been initiated in recent years.

Bishop Francis Xavier Roque, retired auxiliary of the Archdiocese for Military Ser-vices, USA, recently spoke with The Anchor about what

Catholic chaplains mean to those preserv-ing our freedom in far away lands.

The retired bishop, now in residence at St. Timothy’s Parish in Warwick, R.I., be-

came an Army chaplain at the height of the Cold War in 1961. He has been awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Distinguished Service Medal for his tours of duty in Korea and Vietnam.

Serving with the Second Infantry Divi-sion in 1965-66, then Father Roque was sta-tioned at the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea. By then the Korean War was over, but at the time DMZ ten-sions ran high. “The North Koreans didn’t like us at all and we were just yards away from them,” recalled Bishop Roque. “The area was also strewn with land mines mak-ing it very dangerous. It was a poor area and it was a very lonely life for our soldiers. The chaplain brought the influence of God and the Church to our soldiers there.”

Bishop Roque served two tours of duty

By Gail BesseAnchor corresponDent

BOSTON — True or false: civil mar-riage between people of the same sex was legalized five years ago by Massachusetts lawmakers?

False.Although municipal clerks have issued

marriage licenses to same-sex couples since then, state statute to redefine civil marriage never changed. Same-sex mar-riage advocates have refiled a bill to ac-complish this.

That bill and others with far-reaching effects on the family, school children and freedoms of speech and religion await ac-tion in the 2009-10 session.

One bill would legalize sodomy. An-other would make compulsory a public school health curriculum for grades preK-12 with portions on sex education that push abortion, contraception and homo-sexuality.

Massachusetts Catholic bishops have opposed this bill for the past three years as a violation of parental rights to explain the intimate subject of sexuality to chil-dren. According to the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” parental rights in re-gard to moral education and spiritual for-mation are “primordial and inalienable” (No. 2221); homosexual acts are “gravely disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved” (No. 2357).

The bill to legalize marriage “regard-less of gender” is H 1708, sponsored by Rep. Byron Rushing of Boston and now in the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

Turn to page 18Turn to page 18

Turn to page 14

2 May 22, 2009

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Father Roger J. Landry fatherrogerlandry@anchornews.orgEDITOR David B. Jolivet davejolivet@anchornews.orgNEWS EDITOR Deacon James N. Dunbar jimdunbar@anchornews.orgOFFICE MANAGER Mary Chase marychase@anchornews.orgADVERTISING Wayne Powers waynepowers@anchornews.orgREPORTER Kenneth J. Souza kensouza@anchornews.org

OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER

Published weekly except for two weeks in the summer and the week after Christmas by the Catholic Press of the Diocese of Fall River, 887 Highland Avenue, Fall River, MA 02720, Telephone 508-675-7151 — FAX 508-675-7048, email: theanchor@anchornews.org. Subscription price by mail, postpaid $14.00 per year.

Send address changes to P.O. Box 7, Fall River, MA, call or use email address

POSTMASTERS send address changes to The Anchor, P.O. Box 7, Fall River, MA 02722.THE ANCHOR (USPS-545-020) Periodical Postage Paid at Fall River, Mass.

PUBLISHER - Most Reverend George W. Coleman

Send Letters to the Editor to: fatherrogerlandry@anchornews.org

The AnchorMember: Catholic Press Association, Catholic News Service

Vol. 53, No. 20

IN THE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM — Palestinians and pilgrims fill Manger Square for Mass celebrat-ed by Pope Benedict XVI in the West Bank town of Bethlehem May 13. (CNS photo/Debbie Hill)

By John thaviscatholic news service

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Visiting the Palestinian city of Bethlehem during his Holy Land pilgrimage, Pope Benedict XVI called for an independent Pales-tinian state and urged young peo-ple to reject acts of violence and terrorism.

The pope celebrated Mass May 13 in the city of Christ’s birth and encouraged Christians to help re-build their homeland’s “spiritual infrastructure.”

“Be a bridge of dialogue and constructive cooperation in the building of a culture of peace to replace the present stalemate of fear, aggression and frustration,” he said in his homily.

The pope was on the sixth day of an eight-day “pilgrimage of peace” that had already taken him to Jordan and Jerusalem. Throughout his visit, he urged the region’s peoples and its religious leaders to set aside historic an-tagonisms and make serious new dialogue efforts.

Nearly 100 Christians from the war-devastated Gaza Strip attend-ed the Mass in Manger Square. The pope said his heart went out

Pope takes Holy Land peace pilgrimage to city of Christ’s birth

to them, and he prayed that the Is-raeli embargo on the strip would soon be lifted.

The pope crossed the border from Israel into the West Bank through a gate that stood beneath the most striking feature on the landscape: Israel’s 26-foot-tall concrete security wall.

Speaking at the Aida Refugee Camp later in the day, he said the wall symbolized the stalemate be-tween Israelis and Palestinians.

“In a world where more and more borders are being opened up — to trade, to travel, to move-ment of peoples, to cultural ex-changes — it is tragic to see walls still being erected. How we long to see the fruits of the much more difficult task of building peace,” he said.

The pope met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the presidential palace in Bethlehem and paid a visit to the Church-run Caritas Children’s Hospital, where he visited an infants ward.

The 82-year-old pontiff came to Israel from Jordan May 11. At an airport welcoming ceremony in Tel Aviv, Israel, he said he wanted to honor the memory of the six million Jewish victims of

the Holocaust and “to pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude.”

“Sadly, anti-Semitism contin-ues to rear its ugly head in many parts of the world. This is totally unacceptable,” he said.

On May 12, the pope celebrat-ed an open-air Mass in Jerusalem, prayed at the Western Wall and visited one of Islam’s most sacred shrines. The events underscored his message that Jerusalem, a meeting ground for Christianity, Judaism and Islam, must again become a city of peace.

The pope then went to the Western Wall, a site sacred to Jews as the remains of the Sec-ond Temple, and placed a written prayer in a crevice between the massive stones. It asked God to “hear the cry of the afflicted” and “send your peace upon this Holy Land.”

In the evening, the pope cel-ebrated Mass for several thou-sand people in the Josafat Valley beneath the Mount of Olives, next to the walls of the Old City. In his homily, he called for Jerusalem to regain its vocation “as a prophecy and promise of that universal rec-onciliation and peace which God desires for the whole human fam-ily.”

Sadly, in today’s Jerusalem, he said, “hope continues to battle despair, frustration and cyni-cism, while the peace which is God’s gift and call continues to be threatened by selfishness, con-flict, division and the burden of past wrongs.”

Like many papal events, the Mass was tinged with politics. Welcoming the pope, Latin Patri-arch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem said Palestinians dream of a “free and independent” state of their own while the people of Israel dream of living in peace and security.

By cinDy wooDencatholic news service

JERUSALEM — Taking a piece of paper, firmly folding it in four and pushing it deep into a crevice of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, Pope Benedict XVI prayed for peace in the Holy Land and re-spect among believers from every faith.

The pope stood alone in silence for two minutes May 12, facing the massive stones of the Western Wall, a site sacred to Jews because it is what remains of the complex of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.

The text of the prayer he left in a crevice began: “God of all the ages, on my visit to Jerusalem, the ‘City of Peace,’ spiritual home to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, I bring before you the joys, the hopes and the aspirations, the trials, the suffering and the pain of all your people throughout the world.”

Pope Benedict’s prayer asked God to “hear the cry of the af-flicted, the fearful, the bereft; send your peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East, upon the entire human family; (and) stir the hearts of all who call upon your name, to walk humbly in the path of justice and compassion.”

The pope ended his prayer with a quote from the Book of Lamen-tations, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.”

Pope Benedict’s private prayer at the wall was preceded by a brief ceremony in which the rabbi re-sponsible for religious services there read in Hebrew from the First Book of Kings, and the pope read Psalm 122 in Latin.

The psalm includes the lines, “For the peace of Jerusalem pray: ‘May those who love you pros-per! May peace be within your ramparts, prosperity within your towers.’ For family and friends I say, ‘May peace be yours.’ For the house of the Lord, our God, I pray, ‘May blessings be yours.’”

At Western Wall, meeting with rabbis, pope prays for peace

After visiting the wall, Pope Benedict traveled less than a mile to the offices of the Chief Rabbin-ate of Israel, the body that governs Jewish religious affairs in the na-tion.

Meeting with Israel’s two chief rabbis as well as rabbis from around the country, the pope used the oc-casion to reaffirm the fact that “the Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to the path chosen at the Second Vatican Council for a genuine and lasting reconciliation between Christians and Jews.”

As “Nostra Aetate,” the coun-cil’s declaration on relations with other religions affirmed, “the Church continues to value the spir-itual patrimony common to Chris-tians and Jews and desires an ever deeper mutual understanding and respect through biblical and theo-logical studies as well as fraternal dialogues,” he said.

Welcoming the pope, chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger thanked Pope Benedict for mak-ing it clear that Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the So-ciety of St. Pius X, must publicly renounce his denial of the extent of the Holocaust before he can func-tion as a Catholic bishop.

“God is compassionate and ex-pects us to love and respect one an-other, even if we are from different religions,” the rabbi said.

Pope Benedict told the rab-bis his visit was an opportunity to thank God for the progress made in the dialogue and for the willing-ness of participants to discuss not only what they have in common, but also their differences.

“I pray that God, who searches our hearts and knows our thoughts, will continue to enlighten us with his wisdom so that we may fol-low his commandments to love him with all our heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves,” he said.

As a gift, the rabbis gave the pope a small sculpture depicting men praying before the Western Wall.

IN THE TOWN OF NAZARETH — Two men cover their heads with Spain’s national flag during an open-air Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI on Mount Precipice in Nazareth May 14. (CNS photo/Darren Whiteside, Reuters)

The PoPe’s VisiT To The holy land

3 May 22, 2009 The PoPe’s VisiT To The holy land

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN — Pope Benedict XVI prays at the grotto of the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem May 13. Tradition holds the grotto marks the spot where Jesus was born. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano)

By John thaviscatholic news service

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Sometimes a scarf is worth a thousand words.

Pope Benedict XVI spoke carefully during his Holy Land pilgrimage in May — so carefully that it occasionally seemed his talks were written by Vatican diplomats.

But the image and the mes-sage people will carry from his visit may have more to do with scarves than speeches.

In Bethlehem, during a long evening event at the Aida Refu-gee Camp, the pope expressed sympathy for the suffering of families who have been di-vided and uprooted since the 1948 war that established the country of Israel and dispos-sessed many Palestinians of their homes.

However, he carefully avoid-ed direct comments on the right of return, the principle that Pal-estinian refugees have a right to regain possession of their ancestral homes. The issue is an explosive and difficult one in peace talks, in part because of the practical difficulties in-volved.

The Vatican has generally steered clear of the issue in recent years, though Church officials have suggested on oc-casion that some form of com-pensation for those who lost homes might be a fair settle-ment.

But at the Aida camp, ringed by banners reading “No justice without return home,” the sen-timent was decidedly more un-compromising.

When the event drew to a close, Palestinian officials an-nounced they had a special

Scarves speak volumesin pope’s Holy Land visit

gift for the pontiff: a “scarf of return,” designed and embroi-dered by Palestinian artists.

Lest anyone miss the point, the scarf was full of symbols:

— the “key of return,” sym-bolizing the keys many Pales-tinians still keep to their old homes;

— the papal keys, implying the pope had the moral author-ity to make a difference on the issue in the international arena;

— images of the Star of Bethlehem, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Nativity, “to express the unity of the Palestinian people and Jerusalem as the capital of Pal-estine.”

While Vatican diplomats would have winced at a papal endorsement of all those con-cepts, the pope had no problem accepting the gift. As he stood up and smiled broadly, a Pales-tinian placed the scarf around his shoulders, and he wore it during the rest of the program.

The moment drew some of the loudest cheers of the eve-ning.

The pope had an earlier scarf experience in Jordan, where he was presented by Melkite Catholics with a kaffi-yeh, also known in Jordan as a “shmagh,” the red-and-white-checked head scarf that in some parts of the Mideast is associated with Hamas and other militant groups.

The photo of the pope in the “shmagh” landed on the front pages of Jordanian newspapers the next day. A few days later, children greeting the pope at the Latin patriarchate school in Bethlehem already had that picture on their T-shirts.

NAZARETH, Israel — Cel-ebrating Mass in Nazareth, the hometown of the Holy Family, Pope Benedict XVI urged the re-gion’s people to keep their family bonds strong and to extend that love and acceptance to others, whether Christian or Muslim.

“Let everyone reject the destruc-tive power of hatred and prejudice, which kills men’s souls before it kills their bodies,” the pope said during his homily at the May 14 Mass on Nazareth’s Mount Preci-pice.

The Mass at the new amphithe-ater, built into the hillside, drew the largest crowd of the pope’s eight-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land; organizers said 40,000 people at-tended.

Taking place in the town where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear the savior and where she and Joseph raised Jesus, the Mass was focused on the family.

Pope Benedict also had strong words of encouragement for the Christian and Muslim communities of northern Israel, especially for those in Nazareth, where a decade of tensions over building a mosque near the Basilica of the Annuncia-tion has continued to sour relations between the two communities.

The Israeli government eventu-ally withdrew permission for the mosque to be built, and the site now is a small park.

A month before the Mass, a Muslim group opposed to the papal visit hung a banner between two

Keep families strong, extend love to others, pope says in Nazareth

trees in the park; the banner — in English and Arabic — warned that anyone who speaks against the prophet Mohammed would be cursed by God in this world and in the hereafter.

The group that hung the sign said it was addressed to the pope, who had offended many Muslims in 2006 when he quoted a medieval emperor’s criticism of Moham-med.

In his homily, Pope Benedict said, “Let us reaffirm here our com-mitment to be a leaven of respect and love in the world around us.”

The pope asked Christians and Muslims in Nazareth “to repair the damage that has been done, and in fidelity to our common belief in one God, the father of the human family, to work to build bridges and find the way to a peaceful coexis-tence.”

Maisoun Khoury, 35, a Catholic from Nazareth who attended the Mass, told Catholic News Service there is too much racism in people’s hearts: “Muslims against Chris-tians, Christians against Christians, Christians against Muslims.”

Khoury, a mother of two, said children learn prejudice in their own families and in school, “and I don’t allow my children to speak that way in my home.”

The papal Mass drew not only Catholics of various rites and Christians from many denomina-tions, but also Muslims, including Mohammed Safadi, 35, and his wife, Samiha, who came with their infant son from Raine, a village

near Nazareth.“For us every religion comes

from God,” he said. “I did not de-cide to be Muslim and the Chris-tians did not choose to be born Christians.”

He said he thought there were not as many tensions between Muslims and Christians in northern Israel as there were in other parts of the Middle East, but he hoped things would be even better.

Nabila Shinara, 35, came to the Mass with her husband and two children from Muquebly, a largely Orthodox village surrounded by five Muslim villages. She said the Christians and Muslims get along well and could be an example for others in the Holy Land.

Nevertheless, she said, as a member of the Catholic minority she felt an important sense of be-longing at the papal Mass.

In his homily Pope Benedict urged married couples to show oth-ers how fidelity to one another and a commitment to educating chil-dren in solid moral values can make societies stronger.

“In the family each person, whether the smallest child or the oldest relative, is valued for himself or herself, and not seen simply as a means to some other end,” he said.

The example of Mary and Jo-seph also demonstrates the “need to acknowledge and respect the God-given dignity and proper role of women,” and the possibility of a “manly piety” in which authority is placed at the service of love, he said.

4 May 22, 2009The PoPe’s VisiT To The holy land

HOLY GROUND — Pope Benedict XVI prays in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem’s Old City May 15. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

JERUSALEM (CNS) — Amid billowing Israeli and Vati-can flags, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed his friendship with the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, acknowledging the Palestinians’ right to an independent state as well as Israel’s right to exist in “peace and security.”

“Let there be lasting peace based on justice, let there be genuine reconciliation and heal-ing,” the pope said May 15 before boarding his chartered jet at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. “Let the two-state solu-tion become a reality, not remain a dream.

“Let peace spread outward from these lands; let them serve as a ‘light to the nations,’ bringing hope to the many other regions that are affected by conflict,” he said.

Following an eight-day pil-grimage that received a lukewarm reaction in the Israeli media and praise in the Palestinian press, Pope Benedict attempted to as-sure the Israelis of his friendship.

Pope urges peace, two-state solution as he leaves Holy Land

“No friend of the Israelis and the Palestinians can fail to be saddened by the continuing ten-sion between your two peoples. No friend can fail to weep at the suffering and loss of life that both peoples have endured over the last six decades,” he said.

Israeli President Shimon Peres told the pope his visit was a “pro-found demonstration of the en-during dialogue” between Jews and Christians around the world. He said the pope’s statements during his visit “carried a sub-stantive weight.”

The visit, Peres added, con-tributed significantly to new re-lations between the Vatican and Israel.

“I believe that your great spiri-tual leadership can influence a spirit of godliness in man. (It) can help people recognize that God is not in the hearts of terrorists. This is a historic mission which resides in your great ability to in-spire others,” he said.

“We believe that aside from your pilgrimage, your prayers and

the silent sacred moments which were the focal points of your vis-it, you personally enhanced your visit with an additional spiritual dimension by inspiring peace and elevating hope and understanding — in particular your declaration that the Holocaust, the Shoah, must not be forgotten (or) de-nied,” the Israeli president said.

The pope, who had been criti-cized in the Israeli press and by some Jewish leaders following his visit to the Yad Vashem Ho-locaust memorial May 11 for the language he used to describe Nazi atrocities, recalled his visit to the site as “one of the most solemn” moments in Israel. He called his time with Holocaust survivors “deeply moving encounters” that reminded him of his visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland three years ago.

“So many Jews — mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, broth-ers, sisters, friends — were bru-tally exterminated under a god-less regime that propagated an ideology of anti-Semitism and hatred,” Pope Benedict said.

The German-born pope told his Israeli hosts that the saddest sight during his visit was the Is-raeli-built separation wall at the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethle-hem, West Bank.

“As I passed alongside it I prayed for a future in which the peoples of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for such instru-ments of security and separation, but rather in respecting and trust-ing one another and renouncing all forms of violence and aggres-sion,” he said.

Peace will not be an easy goal to achieve, the pope told Peres, but he offered his prayers and the prayers of Catholics around the world for all efforts to “build a just and lasting peace in this re-gion.”

NAZARETH, Israel (CNS) — Peace in the Middle East, Catholic-Jewish relations and the difficulties of Church workers in Israel were just a few of the topics discussed when Pope Benedict XVI met pri-vately May 14 with newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Advancing the Middle East peace process was the main topic during the 15-minute private meet-ing between the pope and prime minister at the Franciscan con-vent in Nazareth, said Jesuit Fa-ther Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman.

Father Lombardi also said the two leaders briefed each other about their recent meetings with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Pope Benedict had met the Jordanian leader May 8, while Netanyahu made a surprise visit to Jordan just hours before meeting the pope.

After their private meeting, the pope and prime minister were joined by top aides for a 20-min-ute discussion about the work of a Vatican-Israeli bilateral commis-sion, Father Lombardi said.

The commission, established in 1993, has been working on and off for years trying to find a way to settle agreements related to the tax situation of Catholic institutions in Israel and other primarily fiscal issues. Despite hopes that the ne-gotiations would have been com-pleted prior to the pope’s visit, the fiscal issues remain unresolved.

After the meeting, Netanyahu told reporters: “I met the pope first of all because it is important for Israel’s relations on a global level; there are a billion Catholics.

Pope, Israeli prime minister discusspeace, a new dialogue, priests’ visas

The pope stands at the head of the world Catholic community, and we want good relations with such a large part of humanity.”

The prime minister said they spoke about “the historic process of reconciliation between Christi-anity and Judaism, and the pope is very interested.”

The Israeli leader also asked the pope to speak out against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadine-jad’s threats against Israel.

“I told him it cannot be that at the beginning of the 21st century there is a state which says it is go-ing to destroy the Jewish state,” the prime minister said.

He said the pope told him that “he condemns all such things — anti-Semitism, hate. I think we found in him an attentive ear.”

He said Pope Benedict asked him for assistance in getting multi-ple-entry visas for Catholic clergy from surrounding Arab countries and with other “administrative matters.”

“I said we would examine them in a positive atmosphere,” Netan-yahu said.

According to media reports, Is-rael recently turned down a Church request for multiple-entry visas for 500 priests from Arab countries who work in Israel and the Pales-tinian territories.

In recent years the issue of vi-sas has become a major point of contention, and the Latin Patri-archate of Jerusalem has warned that not having the visas hinders the priests’ ability to carry out their pastoral work and prevents them from being able to visit their fami-lies.

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT TO ROME (CNS) — Flying back to Rome after a pil-grimage to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI offered an instant analysis of his eight-day trip.

He told reporters aboard his El Al chartered jet May 15 that the visit to Jordan, Israel and the Pal-estinian territories took him to the roots of Christianity and left him with three major impressions.

The first, he said, was that he found among Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders a strong desire for cooperation and dialogue — not as something motivated by political circumstances but seen as a demand of the common faith in God.

“To believe in the one God who created all of us and to believe that God is love and wants love to be the dominant force in the world implies this necessity of dialogue and collaboration,” he said.

On return to Rome, pope says he found desire for peace in Holy Land

The pope said he also found a very encouraging ecumenical climate on his stops in the Holy Land, where a multitude of Chris-tian communities live.

The third impression, he said, was a yearning for peace.

“There are great problems, and we have seen them and heard about them. But I also saw a pro-found desire for peace on the part of everyone,” the pope said.

“The problems are more vis-ible, and we shouldn’t hide them. They need to be cleared up. But the common desire for peace and fraternity is not as visible, and I think we need to talk about this and encourage the effort to find solutions,” he said.

The pope said he hoped his pilgrimage would inspire many others to follow in his footsteps to the Holy Land, and thus become “messengers of peace” them-selves.

5 May 22, 2009 The ChurCh in The u.s.

SCHOOL SPIRIT — Students from Sacred Heart School in Washington participate in a May 6 rally at the city’s Freedom Plaza to support the D.C. Opportunity Schol-arship Program, a voucher program that provides grants for private school tuition. (CNS photo/Rafael Crisostomo, Catholic Standard)

By laura Jamisoncatholic news service

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s recent budget proposal to al-low 1,700 poor children in the District of Columbia to keep their federally funded scholarships but bar any more students from entering the program means a slow death for an initiative that works, said a Washington archdiocesan official.

“This proposal might help children who are now in the program,” said Pa-tricia Weitzel-O’Neill, superintendent for schools. “But what about the many other children in the city who will never have this opportunity?”

She was referring to the D.C. Oppor-tunity Scholarship Program, a federally funded voucher program launched as a pilot program five years ago that has to be reauthorized by Congress.

It allocates $14 million annually in individual scholarships of up to $7,500 to 1,700 children from low-income fam-ilies, which allows them to attend pri-vate schools in the District of Columbia. About half of the scholarship recipients attend Catholic schools.

The announcement of the president’s proposal came the same day that nearly 2,000 students, parents and other com-munity members converged on Freedom Plaza in Washington for a rally to urge elected officials to keep the program in-tact.

A statement from the Washington Archdiocese noted that with the presi-dent’s proposal Congress would have to appropriate funds annually and at a level that adjusts for inflation so the scholar-ships retain value for low-income fami-lies. The archdiocese called for perma-nent, full funding of the program.

Of the 1,700 children in the program, 879 attend a Catholic elementary or high school. At the archdiocese’s six inner-city elementary schools, these students constitute from one-quarter to two-thirds of the total enrollment.

Weitzel-O’Neill said Obama’s pro-posal would create a “two-tier education system” for families, barring younger siblings from going to the schools their older brothers and sisters attend with

Obama proposal seen as beginningof end for school voucher program

the help of the scholarships.Four applications are received for ev-

ery scholarship made available, accord-ing to the archdiocese.

“The president, in his February ad-dress to a joint session of Congress said, it ‘will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education,’” Weitzel-O’Neill noted.

“He can fulfill this goal by fully fund-ing the popular and proven Opportunity Scholarship Program into the future,” she said. “The program is a proven aca-demic success, a lifeline for the children and a matter of justice.”

At the May 6 rally, Catholic school students — many of whom had never been to such an event before — came by bus and subway, carrying homemade signs and chanting slogans to help save the scholarships of their classmates and friends.

Over their school uniforms most stu-dents wore bright yellow T-shirts that had “Put Kids First” in black letters across the front.

DC Children First and D.C. Parents for School Choice, two groups dedicat-ed to educational reform in the city, or-ganized the rally across from the Wilson Building, which houses some district government offices and is blocks away from the U.S. Capitol.

Among the speakers was Washing-ton’s former mayor, Anthony Williams, who said if his parents hadn’t adopted him and made sure he had the very best schooling he wouldn’t have become mayor.

“This is a great example of a pro-gram that’s working for kids. It’s hard to think of a federal program that de-serves funding more than this,” John Schilling, interim director of the Alli-ance for School Choice, told the Cath-olic Standard, Washington’s archdioc-esan newspaper, in an interview before the rally.

He praised those who had gathered for the event, saying, “It’s important to take this stand. Low-income children in the city deserve the same opportunities as their higher-income peers.”

WASHINGTON (CNS) — U.S. Sec-retary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent remarks expanding the definition of reproductive rights to include abortion have sparked criticism and warnings from a U.S. Church official and a Catholic congress-man.

Clinton’s comments are a “real threat” to U.S.-based international aid agencies, such as Catholic Relief Services, which do not promote or provide abortions, said Deirdre McQuade, assistant director for policy and communications at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities.

“The news is that she’s not being euphe-mistic anymore,” McQuade told Catholic News Service in early May.

On Capitol Hill in late April, Clinton re-sponded to a series of questions from Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a leading Pro-Life member of Congress and a Catholic.

“Reproductive health includes access to abortion,” Clinton said. “We are now an administration that will protect the rights of women, including their rights to reproduc-tive health care.”

Smith’s questions were prompted by Clin-ton’s praise of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger at an award ceremony in Houston March 27. During the ceremony, Clinton said Sanger’s work had yet to be completed. Sanger, who wrote “The Pivot of Civilization,” advocated for population con-trol via access to birth control and abortion.

During the Capitol Hill hearing, Smith asked Clinton: “As part of Sanger’s work that remains undone ... is the Obama ad-ministration seeking to weaken or overturn Pro-Life laws and policies in African and Latin American countries either directly or through multilateral organizations including ... the U.N., African Union or the (Organiza-tion of American States), or by way of fund-

Clinton’s remarks on reproductive rights spark Catholic concern

ing (nongovernmental organizations) like Planned Parenthood?

“And so we have total transparency, does the United States definition of the term ... ‘reproductive health’ or ‘reproductive ser-vices’ or ‘reproductive rights’ include abor-tion?” Smith asked.

Clinton responded that she respected his views but noted their “profound” and “fun-damental disagreement.”

“It is my strongly held view that you are entitled to advocate, and everyone who agrees with you should be free to do so anywhere in the world, and so are we,” she said.

She added, “We happen to think that fam-ily planning is an important part of women’s health, and reproductive health includes ac-cess to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.”

In an interview with CNS, Smith ex-pressed concern that Clinton’s redefinition of reproductive health severely could threaten the Pro-Life policies of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as the Pro-Life policies of CRS and other Pro-Life agencies.

If U.S. dollars from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the U.S. Agency for International Develop-ment sponsor reproductive health care that must include abortion, then countries and organizations with Pro-Life policies could be forced to change their policies to include abortion in order to receive U.S. funding, Smith explained.

“Money is coming with abortion strings attached,” he said, urging the U.S. govern-ment not to taint the money with the killing of unborn children.

With these strings attached, he said, “an entire generation of Latinos and Africans dies.”

“Money subsidizing abortion pays for more abortion,” Smith said.

When I was in Louisiana in March, I made my second pilgrimage to the parish church dedi-cated to St. Landry in Opelousas. The last time I had been there was 10 years ago, 10 days after my priestly ordination, when I celebrated Mass in the church dedicated to my namesake, the saintly seventh-century bishop of Paris.

Returning two months ago, I was blinded pulling into the parking lot by a huge, sparkling Carrara marble statue in the square in front of the church. “What’s that?,” I asked my friend, Father Bryce Sibley. At first glance, I couldn’t make out what the statue was, because it was full of spiraling-vertical movement without clear figures. “That,” Father Sibley drawled, “is a new statue dedicated in 2007 to Father J. Ver-bis Lafleur.”

“Who’s he?,” I retorted. That day I would find out — and never forget.

Father J. Verbis Lafleur was born in 1912 in Ville Platte, La. He became an altar boy at seven and began to express an interest in the priesthood. When he was 14, his family moved to Opelousas. Once his pastor found out of his desire to become a priest, he arranged for him to enter high school seminary. Eleven years later, in 1938, he was ordained and celebrated his first High Mass at St. Landry’s Church.

During what would be his only parish as-signment, three years as paro-chial vicar at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Abbev-ille, he quickly became beloved, especially among the families that were dirt poor even before the depression. With his amiable personality and good-natured wit, Father Laf-leur worked to try to give them hope and keep their kids out of trouble. A good athlete himself, he provided the boys with bats, balls and gloves and began to organize baseball games. The boys would find out later that Father Lafleur paid for the equipment by pawning his watch.

In 1941, with his bishop’s permission, he joined the Army Air Corps to care spiritually for those who were being drafted. After training in Albuquerque, his unit, the 19th Bombardment Group, was assigned to Clark Field in the Phil-ippines. The crusty senior officers upon seeing him felt sorry for him, because he looked so young and they thought he would have a hard time earning the respect of the men. It would take less than a month, however, for him to prove his fiber and gain the admiration of the entire base.

On December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Japanese carpet-bombed Clark Field. The wounded were everywhere, exposed and totally vulnerable to continued machine gun fire and bombs. “With absolute disregard to his personal safety,” one colonel wrote after the catastrophe, Father Lafleur “went among the wounded soldiers, giving spiritual comfort to those who desired it, assisting the doctors in giving care to the wounded, and helping in their evacuation. Never once did he take cover. Never once did he think of his own safety as he con-ducted himself in accordance with the highest traditions of his Church and our army.”

This turned out to be just a beginning to his heroic deeds.

After the attack, the brass thought it best to move the 19th Bombardment group to a safer island. While in transit, their ship was attacked by Japanese planes. A wounded officer was ly-ing on deck. Father Lafleur crawled, through a storm of bullets, to bring the man to safety. Upon continued attacks, the transport vessel began to sink. Father Lafleur remained on the ship until all other men were in lifeboats and then dove into the water to swim behind one of them.

When he was offered the opportunity to fly to safety in Australia, he asked whether the men of his unit would also be evacuated. Since only a few would be given spots, he replied, “My place is with the men,” and chose to stay. The next day all were captured and for the next two-and-a-half

Putting Intothe Deep

By Father Roger J. Landry

6 May 22, 2009The Anchor

years he and they would be prisoners of war. While in the prison camp, Father Lafleur

tried to keep the soldiers’ spirits up and hopes alive, bringing Christ into a living hell of dis-ease, brutality and starvation where one-third of detainees would die. He cared for the wounded, blinded and crippled soldiers who had scant medical attention and food. He would feed them, clean them and sit by the bed and read to them. With Cajun friendliness and ingenuity, he bartered with the natives outside the camp, trad-ing his watch, his eyeglasses and anything else of value to try to obtain what the sick needed. He ate only a small amount and gave the rest of his meager rations to needier prisoners. When he discovered that a healthy prisoner was stealing food from the wounded, he confronted the man and ordered him to stop. When the man refused, Father Lafleur, without other options, flattened him with two punches and gained compliance the old-fashioned way. He was permitted to build a chapel and did so with his own hands, calling it “St. Peter in Chains.” He celebrated Mass each day for Catholic and non-Catholic POWs, using a medicine dropper for the wine to ensure that it would last.

Eventually the Japanese decided to move 750 soldiers to the jungle to clear cut an airfield. At first they said they would per-mit one chaplain to accompany the men and Fa-ther Lafleur, be-cause he was the youngest of 21 POW chaplains,

volunteered. He said he had sensed in prayer that something terrible would happen during the jungle detail and he thought a chaplain should be present. When the Japanese changed their minds and said that no chaplain would be allowed, Fa-ther Lafleur took the place of one of the soldiers selected for work detail and went as a laborer.

In terrible conditions, Father Lafleur and the soldiers cleared the jungle for the airfield. He worked hard to console his companions with his sense of humor and faith. As the war was coming to a close in 1944, the Japanese decided to move the American POWs to Japan to serve as slave labor. They were packed into the hold of a small retired freighter for three weeks at sea. Tragi-cally, the Shiniyo Maru did not fly a white flag as vessels transporting prisoners were supposed to do. On September 7, it was torpedoed by the USS Paddlefish, caught fire and began to sink.

The soldiers in the hull needed to escape from the onrushing water on one side, the flames on the other, and the ubiquitous smoke. The hatch to the deck was opened and the men said, “You first, Padre,” but Father Lafleur insisted that the other men precede him. He gave general abso-lution and then held the ladder as soldiers tried to climb to safety, blessing the soldiers as they ascended. The Japanese were throwing grenades into the hold and shooting at the POWs who had jumped into the water. Only 83 of the 750 POWs survived. Father Lafleur went down with the ship.

“No one has greater love,” Jesus said, “than to lay down his life for his friends.” For Father Verbis Lafleur, these were not just words but a way of life.

Various faithful, priests, Knights of Columbus and others in the Diocese of Lafayette are hoping to begin soon a process of canonization for Fa-ther Lafleur and are encouraging people to pray through his intercession. The eight-ton, 16-foot white marble statue by Italian sculptor Franco Allessandrini I alluded to at the beginning is one means by which to try to promote knowledge of him. The statue shows Father Lafleur in his dra-matic final act of love, standing at the foot of the ladder pushing other soldiers to safety. That pose is a fitting summation of his whole priestly life, in which he put others first and labored to help them ascend to salvation.

May Father Lafleur’s priestly work continue, God-willing, from the top of the heavenly ladder.

Father Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in New Bedford.

Man of God among the greatest generationIn his commencement address at Notre Dame, President Obama, rather than vindicating the

university’s decision against its countless critics, reinforced the validity of the critics’ argument and the wisdom of the U.S. bishops’ policy not to give honors and platforms to those who act in defiance of fundamental Catholic moral principles. For beneath his ever-genial tone, uplift-ing images and eloquent delivery, President Obama made several major points contrary to the Catholic faith. Packaged as they were, however, in mellifluous pseudo-Christian phrases enun-ciated in front of applauding Catholic priests by a man adorned with newly-bestowed doctoral garments, few seemed to realize what he was doing — which is why he should have never been given such a hallowed pulpit in the first place.

The most audacious part of the address was when the president tried to change the meaning of the Christian faith and draw erroneous conclusions from the false notion. “The ultimate irony of faith,” the president declared, “is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen.” He seemed to be quoting from Hebrews 11:1, one of the most famous definitions of faith found in sacred Scripture, but, whether intentional or not, he got its meaning completely wrong. The passage reads, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is not a “belief” in things not seen — which would be tautological and nonsensical — but the “substance” or “evidence” of things not seen. Faith leads not to doubt, or even merely to subjective conviction, but to objective truth discoverable through revelation and grace.

In his challenging part of his 2007 encyclical on Christian hope, Pope Benedict described the real meaning of the passage the president was trying to cite. Faith, the pope said, is the “‘hypostasis, the ‘substance’ of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.’ … The concept of ‘substance’ is therefore modified [by the words ‘proof of things not seen’] in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say ‘in embryo’… there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty [and] constitutes for us a ‘proof’ of the things that are still unseen.”

So, according to Hebrews, Pope Benedict and the teaching of Christianity, faith does not “necessarily admit doubt,” as the president claims. In fact, true faith and doubt cannot coexist. At the same time, we cannot both believe in the resurrection and doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. We cannot simultaneously believe that God is a Trinitarian communion of love and doubt his existence. This does not mean that a generally faithful person does not have occasional doubts, but these doubts are temptations against faith rather than necessary consequences or companions of faith.

Once one grasps how the president is mistaken about connection between faith and doubt, it’s easier to see how he errs in the conclusions he draws from the false premise. He spoke to the graduates at length about the “great uncertainty” of our era with its “competing claims about what is right and what is true.” He warned them, “You will hear talking heads scream on cable, read blogs that claim definitive knowledge, and watch politicians pretend to know what they’re talking about.” He told them that no one can really know any of the most important things for sure, since “it is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us. … This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But … it should temper our passions and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate. …”

Whether by design or accident, this is nothing but relativism dressed up as religious reason-ing. While because of human finitude it is impossible for us to know everything God has planned for us or asks of us, through faith and reason we can and do know much with certainty. Our faith and our rational nature should lead us, fundamentally, not just to continue a debate — which for the president would be a never-ending one about things we can never truly know — but to seek the truth, to understand the truth, and to live the truth. Rather than basing our lives on the rock of Jesus’ words (Mt 7:24), Obama actually proposes the quicksand of the latest intellectual fad: instead of calibrating our culture’s values to the truths discoverable by faith and reason, he says, astonishingly, we need to “align our deepest values and commitments to the demands of a new age.”

This relativistic discussion about faith, doubt, and “moral and spiritual debate” contextualizes what the president said about “dialogue” in the principal part of his address. After mentioning the opposing sides of debates on the war, gay rights and embryonic stem-cell research, he asked, “How do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? … How do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convic-tions on the other side?” He answered the questions with what sounded like a campaign slogan: “Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.” He elaborated, “When we do that, when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do, that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.”

Once the president’s premise is admitted that we cannot know with certainty either by faith or reason the truth about what is right and wrong, then all that seems to be left is dialogue to try to find some common ground on which we can agree. No one — especially faithful Catholics — would ever be opposed in principle to dialogue and a spirit of collaboration, but everyone should agree that in cases of some offenses dialogue is not only not enough but counterproduc-tive. There’s a reason why Martin Luther King never sought to engage in dialogue with the Ku Klux Klan, Holocaust survivors don’t try to seek common ground with neo-Nazis and American law enforcement officers are not trying to engage Al-Qaeda in “moral and spiritual debate.” Such dialogue would seem but moral absolutes up for negotiation or compromise. There’s a reason why the president doesn’t call for dialogue on the merits of racism, anti-Semitism and terrorism, because he knows all are evil. He cites Martin Luther King, and not Rodney King, as a hero, because he knows that in the face of racism there’s something more important than all of us just getting along.

The fundamental reason why the president called for dialogue and common ground on abor-tion in South Bend — and set up an elaborate pseudo-religious argument to pretend that it’s all that can be achieved between the “irreconcilable” views on both side of the abortion issue — is because he seeks to draw Pro-Lifers, and Catholics in particular, from a position of moral absolutism about the evil of abortion to one aligned with the “demands of a new age,” which wants unfettered abortion access. His call for an end to “demonizing” opponents — while itself certainly consistent with Jesus’ summons to love the sinner and hate the sin — seems to be an attempt to get others from ceasing to think that abortion itself is diabolical.

None of this means that we cannot work with the president to reduce the number of abor-tions and provide more assistance to women in crisis pregnancies. It does mean, however, that we cannot stop there. Unlike the president, we know by reason that abortion kills an innocent human and by certain faith that whatever we do or fail to do to that child made in God’s image and likeness, we do, or fail to do, to God.

Doubt, dialogue and demonization

7 May 22, 2009 The Anchor

Our Mission

By Father Craig A. Pregana

Living thePauline Year

By Father Karl C. Bissinger

Young women in Latin cultures celebrate their

coming of age when they com-plete 15 years, or “quince años.” The young woman, or “quincea-ñera,” usually celebrates it with a Mass and a party for her family and friends to mark the special moment in her life. At the Diocesan Mis-sion in Guaimaca, we have welcomed many young women who have wanted to have their Quince Años celebra-tions at Mass.

The ceremony at Mass includes an entrance proces-sion for the young woman and her “chamberlan,” or compan-ion for the evening, and other attendants. During the Mass,

Quince Años: ‘Sweet 15’the “Quinceañera” renews her baptismal promises, makes a special commitment to con-tinue her faith formation, and receives a special blessing. Usually, the young woman’s

parents give her a ring to mark the day, along with a Bible, a rosary, and a cross. It is a spe-cial day, and depending on the financial situation of the family, it can become like a small wed-ding.

Since many families in Guaimaca are poor, these cel-ebrations are more modest than the traditional quince años, with the family inviting their friends to the parish hall for cake. A

number of young women have asked simply for a blessing at Mass — no attendants, procession or party — because of the poverty of their families. We make the celebration as special for them, as for those who come with new dresses, etc.

Recently, we learned that the daughter of one of our cat-echists, Timotea, was preparing to celebrate her quince años. The family lives in one of the re-motest aldeas, or villages, called “Piñuelas.” (A few of years ago,

Bishop Coleman made the trip to celebrate a Mass and bap-tisms in that village.) The young woman, Jacqueline, always accompanies her mother at Mass and on trips to Guaimaca. Jacqueline is a young woman with special needs and special qualities. She always comes to greet us at the truck when we arrive at the village, and leads us by the hand to her house where her mother prepares a simple lunch.

During our last visit, Timo-tea told us how her daughter was going to be celebrating her quince años at the Celebra-tion of the Word in a couple of weeks time. Those who had traveled with me talked about it on our way back to town. We decided to help Jacqueline by providing a new dress, cross,

rosary, etc., for the celebration. A few of the students at the Marie Poussepin Center made a new dress for Jacqueline and we sent it with the rosary, etc., to her in time for her birthday. She was thrilled to have a new dress and to mark her day in such a special way.

Although our brothers and sisters live in poverty, and some-times misery, they still share the same desire for a good life. Mothers and fathers still wish for the best for the children, and strive to provide them with good things. Young people, at times without recourses for a second-ary or college education, still de-sire to better their lives. Part of our commitment as a diocesan family is to reach out and share from our blessings.

www.FallRiverMissions.com

TIME TO CELEBRATE — Father Craig A. Pregana, top photo, left, helps two young Guaimacan girls celebrate their “coming of age,” or quince años. With Father Pregana are Jacqueline and her mother Timotea. Below, Suany with her “chamberlan” Denis. (Photos courtesy of Father Pregana)

As we have seen in previ-ous articles, St. Paul

did not tell stories the way the Gospel writers do. In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke tells the story about the first Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descends upon the Twelve gathered in the upper room on the 50th day after Jesus’ Resurrection. Of course, Paul was not present on that occasion, for his conversion happened later. Even though St. Paul’s letters contain no such account of Pentecost, this does not imply or mean that he did not know about it or that he did not believe it had occurred. Instead, he tells about the Holy Spirit and his effects in the lives of believers in other ways. In fact, the Holy Spirit plays a very important role in Paul’s theology. By the Holy Spirit, God gives himself to us, and we live in him.

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke relates the incident when St. Paul on one of his journeys finds some disciples in Ephesus who had been bap-tized only with the baptism of repentance in the tradition of St. John the Baptist. These disciples had never learned about the Holy Spirit nor received him, although they believed in Christ. So Paul baptizes them “in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (Acts 19:5b-6).

This brief scene teaches us several things. First, it dem-onstrates that the Holy Spirit’s coming is linked with baptism and with faith in the mystery of the dying and rising of Jesus. It’s not simply an external or

St. Paul on the Holy Spiritsymbolic work. Moreover, it shows that the bestowal of the Holy Spirit happens through the instrumentality of the Church — in this case through Paul the Apostle. Finally, it shows how God confers his power on those in whom his Spirit dwells, giv-ing rise to the outward signs of charismatic gifts.

The Holy Spirit, who, as we pray in our Creed, proceeds

from the Father and the Son, is nevertheless closely associated with the risen Christ. Although God already communicated to Israel’s prophets by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, we now see something new. Since his Ascension, the Son of God now relates to the world — and is present in the world, especially to the Church and to the faithful — through the Holy Spirit in a more powerful and explicit way than before. In St. Paul’s writ-ings, it becomes clear that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ — crucified and risen — as well as the Spirit of the Father. To have the Holy Spirit dwelling in-side one’s heart and to be united with him means to be in commu-nion with the Son and, therefore, also with the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead (cf. 1Cor 2:12;15:45. Gal 4:6).

St. Paul also teaches us that as God gives himself to us in the Holy Spirit, he enters and transforms our lives. Through the Holy Spirit, Christ conforms

us to his image. He gives Chris-tians the grace to walk accord-ing to the Spirit. Just as the Holy Spirit fills the first communities of the early Church with gifts and charisms, so does he fill and inspire the lives of believers today.

Two places in St. Paul’s writ-ings describe the effects of the Holy Spirit in the new life of the Christian faithful. In the eighth

chapter of the Letter to the Romans, the Apostle concentrates on life in the Spirit, as opposed to life in the flesh, or even life under the law. He speaks about walking in the Spirit or “living according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:4. Cf. also Gal

5:16,25). Paul is also able to affirm, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (Rom 8:14).

Finally, in chapters 12-14 of the First Letter to the Corinthi-ans, St. Paul speaks at length about the varieties of spiritual gifts and charisms. He describes how the many members of the Church and the different func-tions each one may play are made one by the Spirit, forming one Body of Christ (cf. 1Cor 12:12ff). This binding force, Paul concludes, is the supreme sign and the principal fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is the “more excellent way” of love (cf. 1Cor 12:31-13:13). “So, faith, hope, love remain, these three; but, the greatest of these is love” (1Cor 13:13). In this way, the Apostle reminds us of the deep connec-tion between the Holy Spirit and the teachings of the Son of God.

Father Bissinger is vocation director of the Diocese of Fall River and secretary to Bishop George W. Coleman.

8 May 22, 2009The Anchor

Upcoming Daily Readings: Sat. May 23, Acts 18:23-28; Ps 47:2-3,8-10; Jn 16:23b-28. Sun. May 24, Seventh Sunday of Easter, Acts 1:15-17,20a, 20c-26; Ps 103:1-2,11-12,19-20; 1 Jn 4:11-16; Jn 17:11b-19. Mon. May 25, Acts 19:1-8; Ps 68:2-5acd, 6-7ab; Jn 16:29-33. Tues. May 26, Acts 20:17-27; Ps 68:10-11,20-21; Jn 17:1-11a. Wed. May 27, Acts 20:28-38; Ps 68:29-30,33-36c; Jn 17:11b-19. Thu. May 28, Acts 22:30;23:6-11; Ps 16:1-2a,5,7-11; Jn 17:20-26. Fri. May 29, Acts 25:13b-21; Ps 103:1-2,11-12, 19-20ab; Jn 21:15-19.

We are nearing the end of our Lenten-Easter

journey. The clear message from today’s readings is that God cares for his people. Last Thurs-day, we celebrated the feast of Jesus’ returning to the Father on the Ascension. Next Sunday, we will be in Jerusalem when the promised Holy Spirit descends on the Apostles on Pentecost, the birthday of the Church.

The Acts of the Apostles written by St. Luke has been our companion for the week-days and Sundays of this Easter season. We return to the begin-ning of the Acts of the Apostles for our first reading for each of the final three “feasts” of this season. On Ascension Thurs-day, St. Luke opens Acts with a description of Christ’s Ascen-sion into heaven (1:1-11). Next Sunday, the feast of Pentecost, Luke describes the first Pente-cost in the beginning of chapter 2. In today’s first reading,

Luke describes the selection of Mathias, the Apostle chosen to replace Judas Iscariot. This narrative is placed by Luke be-tween the Ascension and Pen-tecost. It is interesting to note how the selection takes place. Peter addresses a large group of disciples, about 120. He lists the qualities of an Apostle. He should be someone “who has been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us … from the baptism by John until the day he was taken up from our midst” (1:21). Two candidates were put forth by the whole assembly, and Mathias was chosen by lot. God’s role in this selection of Mathias is evident by the prayer of the disciples, “Lord, you know the hearts of all. Show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic

ministry.”Today’s second reading

from John talks to us about God’s love for us. He tells us that when we love one another, we mirror God’s love for us. The early Church focused a great deal on community. The

Acts of the Apostles chronicles for us how the infant Church grew and expanded. The young Church spread because its members loved one another as God loved them. The early Church knew that God loved and cared for them. We are to love and care for one another

in the same way.The Gospel for the Seventh

Sunday is taken from the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel. We are in the upper room during the Last Supper. Right before Jesus goes out to the garden where he will be arrested and

eventually be crucified, Jesus prays at length to his Father for the Apos-tles, for the disciples and for us. He asks his father to make us all one. He asks God to protect the Apostles as he protected them while he was with them. He petitions that they not be taken out

of the world, but that they be kept from the evil one. He begs the Father to strengthen them because the world will not ac-cept his teachings readily and because the world will hate his followers because of what and whom they stand for.

God’s message for us this

Sunday between the Ascension and Pentecost is that God loves and protects his people no matter what happens to us. Will some of us suffer trials, exclusion, or even “hatred” because we are followers of Jesus? I am sure that we do not have to look too far to see the price that is paid by some for being a disciple. The infant Church needed to replace the Apostle Judas who betrayed the Lord. Jesus, on the night he was betrayed by the same Judas, prayed to his Father to love and protect those who proclaim his message and make them one. The message becomes personal when we are told to love one another as a reflection of God’s love for us.

How wonderful it is to reflect on the love and care God has for all his people.

Deacon Hill is retired from active ministry and resides with his wife Terri in Matta-poisett.

He was an amazingly prolific writer, but the

late Father Richard John Neu-haus was also finicky about writing. He would personally review the galleys of each issue of “First Things,” the journal he founded, which was one reason the magazine was a pleasure to read: it was edited, and re-edited, and then edited again. But Richard was partic-ularly finicky about his books. Last August, in what turned out to have been the last of our 22 summer vacations together, he sat in his cottage on the Ottawa River and, pounding away on his beloved MacBook

Pro, edited, and reworked, and then re-edited the book that is now his posthumous liter-ary valedictory — “American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile” (Basic Books).

“American Babylon” is vintage Neuhaus, in several senses of the term. It deepens themes Richard had been exploring since “Time Toward Home” (1975) and “The Naked Public Square” (1984), especially the continually vexed question of Church-and-state. It includes perhaps his most developed reflection on

the importance of living Juda-ism for Christianity. It takes up the cudgels in defense of life and sharply critiques the “im-mortality project” with which

some scientists are obsessed. There is a notable chapter

on Richard Rorty, one of the most influential of contempo-rary American philosophers, whose pragmatic case for democracy Neuhaus found perilously thin. And there is the final version of a famous lecture to which Richard gave the deliberately provocative title, “Can an Atheist Be a Good Citizen?” (Answer: Yes, but only accidentally.)

Above all, and tying it all together, is Richard Neuhaus’s profound conviction that this gloriously messy, often mad-dening, sometimes exhilarat-ing business we call “living here and now” is time spent on the way to Somewhere Else — “time toward home,” as he called it in that earlier book, time toward the New Jerusa-lem, time toward life within the light and love of the Holy

Trinity. Richard Neuhaus loved this life, as he loved New York City and as he loved America. Yet, above those loves and giving those loves meaning

was his love of Christ and Christ’s Church. For RJN was a radically converted Christian disciple who believed with the author of the Letter to the Hebrews that “here we have no lasting city,” be-cause everything about

this city, about life here and now, is directed toward “the city which is to come” (Heb 13:14).

Now, as Richard often pointed out, it was precisely that loyalty to “the city which is to come” that makes serious Christians good citizens of a democracy — or at least good citizens of a democracy that does not divinize itself. By reminding democratic citizens that democratic citizenship is penultimate — for our ultimate citizenship is in the City of the Living God — Christians can give politics its due while helping keep politics in its place. Which is an important place, but not the ultimate place. Indeed, the name for the kind of politics that takes poli-tics with ultimate seriousness is “totalitarianism.” It killed several hundred million people in the 20th century.

In some respects, “Ameri-can Babylon” is a darker book than “The Naked Public Square” — which is under-standable because the times are darker, or at the very least quite different. Jihadism is a murkier external threat than communism. Post-modernism, in which there’s your truth and my truth but nothing properly describable as “the” truth, makes for a slippery public square in which it’s hard to get intellectual traction. Whatever else the democratization of discussion and opinion has done (via the Internet, talk ra-dio, 24/7 cable news, etc.), it’s also dumbed things down, to the point where the ability to craft the telling sound-bite is mistaken for political wisdom. In his last year, RJN knew that the project to which he had given over 40 years of his life — the creation of a “religious-ly informed public philosophy for the American experiment in ordered liberty” — was in serious trouble.

But he was a warrior, and a happy one at that. And he kept fighting until the end. “American Babylon” is the last intellectual testament of a Christian soldier, always moving onward toward his true home, the New Jerusalem.

George Weigel is Distin-guished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Cen-ter in Washington, D.C.

TheCatholic

DifferenceBy George Weigel

A Sunday sandwich

Exiles on the way home

By DeaconRobert J. Hill

Homily of the WeekSeventh Sunday

of Easter

Wednesday 20 May 2009 — Nicea — Bishop Nicholas of Myra arrived in the city for the opening day of the Church’s first Ecumenical Council on this date in 325 A.D.

The film “Alice in Wonderland”

(1951) has a devout cult following and is considered to be one of Disney’s classic animat-ed movies. The White Rabbit is forever running behind schedule. The White Rabbit has a bigger following than I ever imagined.

Parents of ninth-grade con-firmation students were recently afforded the opportunity of spending half an hour with one of the parish staff members. The majority took the opportunity.

I was assigned to meet with the parents of two dozen high school freshmen. I wanted to take time to listen to what they had to say. The Pastoral Life

Center has a comfortable parlor in which to hold these sorts of meetings. Nevertheless, many of the parents entered sheepishly,

as though they were sixth-grade students summoned to the prin-cipal’s office for some infraction of school rules. My first task was to put the parents at ease.

I thoroughly enjoyed these chats. They were a real revela-tion to me. Parent after parent told me that, in effect, their role model is the White Rabbit. Par-ents say they’re over-scheduled, and so are their kids.

Religion is on their paren-tal list of priorities, but not at

the top. Seems to me that if morality, ethics, and values are high on the parenting list, so should be faith formation.

Life-skills are based on values and values are based on faith. From what I heard, first place in “extra-curricular” activities goes to school sports. One mother told me she insists her child participates in at least three high school sports

simultaneously because it looks good when applying for college. This is in addition to keeping a consistently high academic rat-ing. One parent told me that so much time is consumed taxiing kids from one event to another that parents neglect their own personal and spiritual develop-ment. This cannot be good. I wonder what kind of strain this puts on a marriage. If you have no down time for yourself, you probably have no time for your

spouse — and no time for a real relationship with your kids.

One father was very articu-late in this regard. He said kids need to feel wanted and appreci-ated. He stressed self-esteem, parent/child bonding, ethical and moral values, role models, and selflessness on the part of parents. According to him, many youngsters are not receiving adequate guidance and direction in either home or school. Kids feel emotionally abandoned and consequently chronically anxious.

I heard a lot from parents about the need for morals and values. “It’s all about forma-tion and foundation,” opined one mother. It really is. They spoke of peer pressure, too-early dating, dress codes, Internet use and abuse, inculcating family traditions; manners, etiquette and life-skills, need for discipline and the virtue of obedience, dealing with anger, depression and anxiety, parental separation and divorce, stressing the dignity of the human body, and providing opportunities of service to those in need.

There was also a certain note of nostalgia expressed by the parents. They compared their task of raising children to the experience of their own child-hood. They said it was never like this for their parents. Perhaps it was and, as children, they just didn’t realize it. “Help me un-derstand what’s going on in the life of my teen-ager,” pleaded one mother.

Frankly, I was surprised by the parents’ overwhelmingly positive feedback to our nine-month-old parish. They were enthusiastic, firstly, about the intensive 14-hour retreat held for our parish confirmation students. They explained how they had expected their teen-ager to return home filled with complaints, but instead found the kids filled with holy joy. One father said that, although he didn’t know how or why, the retreat was a life-changing expe-rience for his daughter. Parents asked repeatedly if their child might next year become in-volved in peer ministry of some type. They said the kids them-

selves wanted to do this. Parents gave our Youth Ministry and Religious Education programs rave reviews. They appreciated the deeper spirituality, the op-portunity for teen socialization in a safe environment, and the apostolic outreach.

The parish in general also got high marks. Parents identi-fied professionalism, hospitality, participation, and enthusiasm. They also had suggestions for improvement. “Keep in touch with young adult parishioners — those away at college and those in the military.” “Please put a restroom in the church.” “We need a bigger parking lot to handle increased attendance and activity.” “Is there any way to provide a ‘cry room’ or nurs-ery?” “What’s the chance of a children’s Liturgy of the Word?”

Being Catholic in the next generation will not mean the same thing it did to our grand-parents. The times, they are a-changing and so, necessarily, must the Church. In this new parish of St. Nicholas, we have only just begun. Our parish motto is “A faithful past, a hope-ful future.”

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

On a recent pilgrimage, my daughter and I took

a detour to see if we could find the hospital in which I was born. The map was confusing, the traffic was pressing and we waived off for lunch. There, over our meal, we looked up to see the building we sought across the street, with its sign hidden by the surrounding trees. We just smiled at the irony, finished eating and headed home.

The decades be-tween that first drawn breath and now have been complicated in ways, and yet remark-ably straight-forward in others. The first maternal embrace and swaddled welcome gave way to an unforeseen abyss as death intervened, and the essential motherly tasks were under-taken by others. God provides, and yet the yearning for a reliable sanctuary has ever been with me, for those who are deprived feel keenly what others may take for granted.

God is good, and in his almighty plan the perfect sanctuary endures even when the smaller icons of it slip from our horizons. Thus if a person needs a mother, father, food, shelter and a lamp to light his path, then such things can be found — in both concrete expressions and the supernatu-ral echoes that point their true meaning.

When it comes to the es-sential tasks of motherhood, the Church — the bride of

Christ — stands ready to scoop up the wayward souls in search of peace and order, and to swaddle them in truth and love. The door is open, her arms reach down and she gives freely from her storehouse of nourishment to all who ask. The fact that this bride first “drew breath” in Jerusalem lends context to the pilgrimage that the Holy Father made to

the Holy Land last week — for supernatural echoes abound in that holy place.

Benedict saw many things during his visit, and three faith communities parsed his every word and gesture. Interest-ingly, while all three look to Jerusalem as a city integral to their worship of God, only Catholicism puts weight on the maternal dimension of that place.

Layers of the mystery unfold when we recognize that the temple built by Solomon was precursor to both the bride of Christ and the heavenly Jerusalem to which all our churches here on earth point. There are also deep implica-tions tied to Mary, the mother of God, who is herself related to that city. “Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made

his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells” (CCC, 2676).

While Benedict XVI was privileged to walk in the footsteps of Our Lord, we must remember that every Mass is itself a pilgrimage. “In the earthly liturgy we share in a foretaste of that heavenly

liturgy which is cel-ebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God” (CCC 1090). In each Mass we’re privileged to glimpse the wedding

feast of the Lamb, which will take place at the consumma-tion of the world.

Benedict described his jour-ney as a pilgrimage of peace — “the lasting peace born of justice, integrity and compas-sion, the peace that arises from humility, forgiveness and the profound desire to live in har-mony as one” — and we pray that it continues to bear fruit. Only through the blood of Jesus is lasting peace possible, and to that end Holy Mother Church offers her sanctuary of ordered love and humble service. She is the true witness — a signpost to the tranquility of heaven.

Mrs. Kineke is the author of “The Authentic Catholic Woman” (Servant Books). She can be found online at www.feminine-genius.com.

9 May 22, 2009 The Anchor

The Ship’s LogReflections of a

Parish PriestBy Father Tim

Goldrick

I’m late! I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!

Jerusalem, our mother

TheFeminineGenius

By Genevieve Kineke

CAPE CODNATIONAL MORTGAGE

Low, low rates starting at

47/8%*

NO POINTS, NO CLOSING COSTSPURCHASE OR REFINANCE

IMPROVEMENT, REPAIR CREDIT CARD PAY OFFS,

COMMERCIAL, 2ND HOMES, TUITION, SELF EMPLOYEDNO INCOME VERIFICATIONPOOR CREDIT - NO CREDIT

PAY OFF LIENS & ATTACHMENTSFORECLOSURE

APPLICATION TAKEN ON PHONENO APPLICATION FEE.

FAST SERVICE. WE CAN HELP!

CALL NOWCape Cod 508-362-7777

New Bedford 508-992-1400FREE APPLICATION ON INTERNET

WWW.CCNM.COMMB # 1161

*APR 5.49%, 30 yr $12k min.

10 May 22, 2009The Anchor

By michael pareAnchor corresponDent

SOUTH YARMOUTH — On the spacious grounds of St. Pius X Parish on Barbara Street, there is a beautiful statue of the Blessed Mother. Four separate paths, lined with rhododendrons and laurels, lead to the statue. There are wooden benches in place. It is a truly peaceful place.

Helen Mullaney often goes there to pray.“I talk to her and I feel comfortable,” said

Mullaney, a member of the Cape Cod parish for the past 40 years. “She answers my prayers.”

Mullaney has always felt close to the Blessed Mother. And she has al-ways found comfort in prayer. She remembers the time years ago when her father was sick. She prayed and she prayed. She promised to go to church every day. She said the rosary.

“A month later, he got better,” she said.

It has always been that way. Prayer has been such an integral component of Mul-laney’s Catholic faith. She has always believed in its power.

Mullaney is a native of Norwood. She and her husband Donald set-tled in South Yarmouth where they raised four children. Donald died 10 years ago.

That was not an easy time. But Mullaney had the Church. She had her family. And she had the Blessed Mother.

She is a product of public schools, but always there was the Church, and of course, holy Mass each week. That’s how she and Donald raised the kids. They went to Mass. Their twin sons served as altar boys.

“We went to Mass every Sunday and we made sure our children knew their prayers,” she said.

To Mullaney, the Church has always pro-vided something in return. Her commitment to her faith, if you will, has always been a sound investment.

“After they were altar boys, they became lec-tors,” she said. “That was about the best thing because then they could speak anywhere.”

That is something you see in Mullaney when you spend just a few minutes talking to her. She doesn’t overdramatize her faith. It is quite sim-ply an important part of her life. She would not have it any other way.

For her, everything comes back to prayer. Talk to her about it and the confidence in her voice is palpable. Prayer allows her, she said, to enjoy such a personal relationship with the Blessed Mother.

But Mullaney, who will turn 80 next month, also covers her bases.

“After I visit the Blessed Mother I go inside … I don’t want God to think that I play favor-ites,” she said.

Mullaney laughs as she says this. It is that

wonderful sense of humor that endears her to so many people who have been a part of St. Pius X through the years. Friends like Nancy Jones, of Cumberland, R.I., who met Mullaney while she and her husband were living on the Cape from 1997 through last year.

“By the time you’ve spent 10 minutes with Helen, you’re laughing,” said Jones.

Jones admires Mullaney. They met in 1998. Jones was active at St. Pius, and for a while, spearheaded the parish’s bereavement commit-tee.

“Helen always volunteered when I needed her,” said Jones. “She’s just a kind person.”

Jones said that Mul-laney “is the one who is always there.” She might not be the leader of a particular group, said Jones, but there she is behind the scenes ... always working to help others.

St. Pius X is a vibrant parish made up of some 3,000 families. Its min-istries are many. Mul-laney serves as an ex-traordinary minister of holy Communion, and in addition to the be-reavement committee, has been a member of the Women’s Club.

Mullaney is also firmly entrenched as one of the “Kitchen An-gels,” a group of about half a dozen women who help Tom Madden in preparing and serving the numerous meals put

on by the parish, whether they be to welcome new parishioners, honor older ones, or anything in between.

Her efforts at the monthly breakfasts have earned Mullaney the nickname “Pancake Prin-cess.”

“I can always count on her,” said Madden. “She puts her all into our monthly breakfasts. She’s been helping since their inception 10 years ago. I don’t think she’s missed one.”

Father George Bellenoit has been the pastor at St. Pius X since 2006. He marvels at the time and talents that parishioners always seem will-ing to contribute. In Helen Mullaney, he sees a fitting example of that generosity, and that dem-onstration of living one’s faith.

“Helen is a dedicated, faith-filled person who graciously gives of her time,” said Father Bel-lenoit. “She is certainly dedicated to this parish and her faith.”

Mullaney’s immediate plans are to continue helping out in the St. Pius X kitchen and to spend time with her family, which now includes six grandchildren. And she will continue to speak to the Blessed Mother.

“I just truly believe that if there is something I need, I ask for it,” she said. “And if the answer is no, then maybe that is the right answer.”

To nominate a Person of the Week, send an email message to FatherRogerLandry@An-chorNews.org.

Prayer and the Pancake Princess

ANCHOR PERSON OF THE WEEK — Helen Mullaney.

HONORARY DEGREE — Bishop George W. Coleman is con-ferred with a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Stonehill Col-lege President Father Mark T. Cregan during the college’s 58th commencement May 17. (Photo by Nicki Pardo)

NORTH EASTON — Bish-op George W. Coleman re-ceived a Doctor of Humane Letters degree for his commit-ment to helping the poor and disadvantaged communities from Stonehill College during its 58th commencement May 17.

Referring to Bishop Cole-man as a “man of faith, pastor of pastors and minister to other ministers,” Stonehill President Father Mark T. Cregan singled out the bishop’s role as teacher under Canon Law as a signifi-cant reason for receiving the honor from the diocese’s only Catholic college.

“Your interest in teaching and learning found its most direct expression in your ap-pointment as Director of the Fall River Diocesan Depart-ment of Education, where you oversaw Catholic schools, par-ish Religious Education, and campus ministry programs,” Father Cregan said. “Stonehill College is proud to maintain a special relationship with Cath-olic schools in the Fall River Diocese, offering collaborative engagements with teachers, principals, and other school leaders.”

Father Cregan also cited Bishop Coleman’s commitment to charitable efforts throughout the diocese and beyond as an-other reason for this distinc-tion.

“Because you take special care of the poor and of disad-vantaged communities, be-

Bishop Coleman receives honorary degree at Stonehill commencement

cause you embody the justice and compassion of Stonehill’s mission statement, and because you understand the complexi-ties of nurturing scholarship and faith, Stonehill College is pleased to confer upon you, Bishop George W. Coleman, honoris causa, the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters,” Father Cregan said.

Bishop Coleman was hon-ored alongside three other in-dividuals inside Stonehill Col-lege’s Sally Blair Ames Sports Complex before 568 graduates received their own degrees.

Other honorary degree recip-ients included business innova-tor and community leader John Shaughnessy Sr., who received a Doctor of Business Adminis-tration degree for his role in the development of Boston and his dedication to service; Robert E. Wilkinson, a member of the first graduating class at Stonehill and its oldest living alumnus, who received a Doctor of Lit-erature degree for his devotion to education; and renowned eye expert and Stonehill alumna M. Elizabeth Fini, who was award-ed a Doctor of Science degree for her dedicated research on eye tissue and its injury, repair, and regeneration.

Bishop Coleman, who was appointed the seventh Bishop of the Diocese of Fall River by Pope John Paul II in 2003, has previously participated in many commencements and cel-ebrated Baccalaureate Masses at Stonehill College.

11 May 22, 2009 The Anchor

STANDING TOGETHER TO SERVE — The Fall River Diocesan Council of Cath-olic Women recently held its 56th annual convention. Themed “Let Us Stand To-gether To Serve Him,” the event was held at St. Bernard’s Parish in Assonet. Top photo, from left, are: Lynette Ouellette, Boston Province director; Jeanne Alves, diocesan president; Bishop George W. Coleman; Claudette Armstrong, immedi-ate past DCCW president; Sister Euge-nia Brady, S.J.C., DCCW moderator; and Father Michael Racine, pastor of St. Ber-nard’s. At left, Father Richard D. Wilson, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. James Parish in New Bedford, who was the guest speaker. Mary Mello from St. Anthony’s Parish in Taunton, and Eliza-beth Howard from Our Lady of the As-sumption Parish in Osterville, received the Our Lady of Good Counsel award for dedication and service.

By anthony Barich catholic news service

PERTH, Australia — Australia’s first po-tential saint appears closer to canonization after a Vatican medical board concluded that there was “no scientific explanation” for a cure attributed to the intercession of Blessed Mary MacKillop.

Sister Anne Derwin, head of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, said in a recent statement that the medical board’s conclusion is a “very encouraging step” in the process of Blessed MacKillop being recognized as Australia’s first saint by the Catholic Church.

Blessed MacKillop co-founded the Sis-ters of St. Joseph with Father Julian Tenison

Cure attributed to intercession of Australia’s Blessed Mary MacKillop Woods in 1866 to educate poor children in Outback settlements. She was beatified by the late Pope John Paul II in 1995.

The order expects Blessed MacKillop to be canonized in Rome within the next 18 months, St. Joseph Sister Judith Sippel, project manager for the Sisters’ canonization committee, told the Australian bishops’ Nation-

al Catholic Media Congress May 5 in Sydney.The current miracle attributed to Blessed

MacKillop’s intercession was the 1995 cure of a woman suffering from an invasive and inoperable can-cer. The first miracle that led to her beatifi-cation was the 1961 cure of a woman from leukemia.

Sister Anne warned Catho-lics not to take

any decision for granted. “There is still a way to go before we can

get too excited about a final outcome, and we cannot pre-empt any decision of the Church,” Sister Anne said in her statement.

The next step in the process involves the presentation of evidence of what is called “intercession through prayer” to Church theologians. Before canonization, the theo-logians’ must acknowledge that the cure was indeed a miracle performed through the intercession of Blessed MacKillop.

The Sisters said that following the theo-logians’ acceptance the cause must then be taken to the Congregation for Saints’ Causes before ultimately being presented to the pope for approval. BlesseD mary macKillop

Can’t remember how a recent film was classified by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops? Want to know whether to let the kids go see it? You can look up film reviews on the Catholic News Ser-vice Website.

Visit catholicnews.com and click on “Movies,” un-der the “News Item” menu.

Movies Online

12 May 22, 2009The Anchor

Diocese of Fall River TV Masson WLNE Channel 6

Sunday, May 24 at 11:00 a.m.

Celebrant is Father Marek Chmurski,

a parochial vicar atHoly Trinity Parish in

West Harwich

NEW YORK (CNS) — The following are capsule reviews of movies recently reviewed by the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Con-ference of Catholic Bishops.

“Angels & Demons” (Sony/Columbia)

Highly improbable but mindlessly entertaining se-quel to “The Da Vinci Code” — adapted from Dan Brown’s prequel written in 2000 — in which religious symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and a scientist (Ayelet Zurer) join forces with a church of-ficial (Ewan McGregor) to try to prevent the destruction of the Vatican and the mur-der of a quartet of kidnapped cardinals by following a trail of clues left across Rome by the secretive Illuminati cult of anti-Catholic intellectuals. Though director Ron Howard has toned down some of the book’s most egregious ele-ments, the historical church is still falsely portrayed as a relentless and at times violent foe of science. Much action violence, some grisly mur-ders, factually false church history and ritual, some crass language and a profanity, and a suicide. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting clas-

CNS Movie Capsules

My View From

the StandsBy Dave Jolivet sification is L — limited adult

audience, films whose prob-lematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inap-propriate for children under 13.

“Easy Virtue” (Sony Classics)

Glossy but ho-hum retread of an early Noel Coward play (1924), adapted by director and co-writer Stephen Elliott, wherein a landed young Eng-lishman (Ben Barnes) brings home his vivacious new bride, a glamorous American widow (likable Jessica Biel) with a “past,” who clashes with her husband’s stodgy mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and sisters, though winning the admiration of his more bo-hemian father (Colin Firth). The colorful period and back-ground tunes are enjoyable, but performances are gener-ally flat and the dated and unconvincing story is further sabotaged by a couple of mor-ally problematic plot addi-tions. Unconventional view of marriage, divorce, assisted suicide, nongraphic sexual marital encounters, brief rear and partial nudity, some crass language and heavy smoking. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inap-propriate for children under 13.

“Next Day Air” (Summit) Brisk, low-budget brew

of violence, street language and stoner comedy mixing dimwitted criminals with a Mexican drug lord as a pot-smoking overnight-delivery driver (Donald Faison from TV’s “Scrubs”) accidentally takes a package containing 10 kilos of cocaine to the wrong apartment, which just happens to contain misfit criminals (Mike Epps and Wood Harris) who plan to sell the drugs and start new lives. Director Ben-ny Boom keeps these one-di-mensional characters and the stale, predictable plot clatter-ing along for just 84 minutes, but the only surprising twist is who survives the close-range brutality at the finish. Non-stop crude and profane lan-guage, drug use, brief upper female nudity, knife violence, the occasional fistfight, a slow-motion gun battle, racial stereotypes and an utter lack of redemptive behavior by any character. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting clas-sification is O — morally ob-jectionable. The Motion Pic-ture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Un-der 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

DEAD AIR SPACE — Donald Faison stars in a scene from the movie “Next Day Air.” For a brief review of this film, see CNS Movie Capsules below. (CNS photo/Summit Entertainment)

Things were getting just a little too weird around this

neck of the woods for the past few years.

My wife seems to think it all started in January 2001 when a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck western India. She and others claim this may have affected the tilt of the earth on its axis ever so slightly.

I was taking a different route. I was thinking more biblically — the advent of Armageddon to be precise.

In February 2002, the New England Patriots shocked the sports world, defeating the “Greatest Show on Turf,” the St. Louis Rams, in Super Bowl XXXVI, for the first-ever world

championship in their then 42-year history.

In February 2004 they won No. 2 in Super Bowl XXXVIII, defeating the Carolina Panthers. Later that year things really got strange. The Boston Red Sox, after rallying from a three-games-to-none deficit against the N.Y. Yankees in the A.L. championship series, went on to win their first world title in 87 years. People were happy ... but scared.

Four months later, the Patriots nabbed their second title win in a row, nipping the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIV.

I wasn’t quite sure whether to revel in this success, or keep an eye to the sky to see when it would fall.

Two short years later, in 2007, the Sox grabbed their second World Series win in three years. Again, I kept one eye scanning the heavens. The end is near I thought.

If that weren’t enough, a mere eight months later, the Boston Celtics returned to basketball prominence after a 22-year hiatus, defeating the

L.A. Lakers in the finals.Giddy with glee, I prepared

for the end of the world. Denise insisted it was the “tilt” theory.

Well, I either misinterpreted biblical signs, or something must have nudged the earth back on its previous angle, because things are getting back to normal.

It all started last February when the heavily-favored, unde-feated Patriots, blew a chance at history and lost in Super Bowl XLII to the Giants. In their very next game that mattered, Tom Brady went down with a season-ending injury.

The team rebounded nicely, finishing with an 11-5 record — while failing to make the playoffs despite having a better record

than four of the playoff teams.

Several months later, the Red Sox, with a chance for their third World Series appearance in five years, lost the A.L. title

in seven games to the Cinderella Tampa Bay Rays.

Just last week, the Boston Bruins, with a decent chance of winning their first Stanley Cup in 37 years, failed to make it out of the second round, losing a game seven contest in overtime at home. And a few days later, the defend-ing champion Celtics also lost a game seven home game, getting bounced from the playoffs in the second round as well.

Things seem to be returning to normal around here. All this disappointment brings me back to my childhood. It’s almost com-forting in a sick way.

We New Englanders have been spoiled lately, and the new generation of Home Towne Team fans only knows success.

This will be good for them. It will help mold character and teach them that life isn’t always a bowl of cherries. Sometimes it has its pits.

Cheer up young fans. Stay true to your teams — even if it feels like the end of the world. The earth can be jarred from its axis at any time. And then, who knows?

The end is not near after all

13 May 22, 2009 The Anchor

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (CNS) — President Barack Obama took on the controversy swirling around his commencement address May 17 at the University of Notre Dame, urging those bitterly divided over abortion and other issues to adopt an approach of mutual respect and dialogue.

Obama invoked then-Notre Dame president Holy Cross Father Theodore Hesburgh’s winning an agreement in the 1960s from deeply divided U.S. Civil Rights Commis-sion members during a fishing trip in Wisconsin as a model of perse-vering dialogue.

“Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It’s a way of life that has always been the Notre Dame tradition,” Obama said, positioning dialogue as the hope for solutions to enormous modern problems.

“Your class has come of age at a moment of great consequence for our nation and the world — a rare inflection point in history where the size and scope of the challenges be-fore us require that we remake our world to renew its promise; that we align our deepest values and com-mitments to the demands of a new age,” he said.

“We must find a way to live to-gether as one human family. More-over, no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone. Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history.”

Obama listed war, gay rights and embryonic stem-cell research among difficult issues that demand dialogue, but he spent the bulk of his talk on the abortion issue.

Critics of Notre Dame’s decision to invite Obama, including more than 50 bishops, said the presi-dent’s support of legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research made him an inappropriate choice to be a commencement speaker at a Catho-lic university and to receive an hon-orary degree from Notre Dame.

The local bishop, Bishop John M. D’Arcy of Forth Wayne-South Bend, announced weeks before he would not attend the ceremony, and a student group, Notre Dame Response, and other protesters held daily demonstrations. On com-mencement day, the student group also received permission to hold a vigil for life at the grotto on cam-pus as an alternative graduation ceremony.

During the main commence-ment ceremony in the Joyce Center, a handful of hecklers were escorted out during Obama’s talk — once with a student-led “We are ND” chant drowning out the protesters’ shouts.

Obama said he had learned to choose careful language on the issue during his race for the Senate in Il-linois, when a Pro-Life doctor com-plained that his Website referred to abortion opponents as “right-wing ideologues who want to take away

Obama address at Notre Dameprovokes applause and criticism

a woman’s right to choose.” Obama had the words removed.

“And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same pre-sumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me,” Obama told the graduates and their families.

“Because when we do that — when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do — that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground,” he said.

Acknowledging that positions on abortion are in some ways ir-reconcilable, he urged respect for conscience and recognition of the “heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both spiritual and moral dimensions.”

“So let’s work together to re-duce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do car-ry their child to term,” he said.

“Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women,” he said.

“Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature,” he said.

Noting he was not raised in a particularly religious household, he said he was “brought to Christ” by the witness of co-workers in service on the south side of Chicago and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. Obama acknowledged Catholic parishes helping fund an organization called the Developing Communities Proj-ect.

He contrasted faith and certain-ty, describing a doubt that fosters humility.

“It should compel us to remain open and curious and eager to con-tinue the moral and spiritual de-bate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame,” he said.

“And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to per-suade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to univer-sal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds,” fulfilling the golden rule of shared by religions and nonreligious people.

Obama invoked Father Hes-burgh’s twin images of Notre Dame as a lighthouse of Catholic wisdom and a crossroads where different cultures can converge. The priest, now 91, attended the commence-ment.

Obama also recounted how Father Hesburgh, the sole surviv-

ing member of the first U.S. Civil Rights Commission, brokered the deal that became the basis of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by flying the members to Notre Dame’s Land O’ Lakes property: “They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history.”

“I will not pretend that the chal-lenges we face will be easy, or that the answers will come quickly, or that all our differences and divisions will fade happily away,” he said. “Life is not that simple. It never has been. quote continues

“But as you leave here today, remember the lessons of Cardinal Bernardin, of Father Hesburgh, of movements for change both large and small,” he continued. “Re-member that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family and the same fulfillment of a life well-lived. Re-member that in the end, we are all fishermen.”

Holy Cross Father John I. Jen-kins, president of Notre Dame, and Judge John T. Noonan, who won the university’s prestigious Laetare Medal in 1984 and delivered a brief speech “in the spirit of the Laetare Medal,” also addressed the protests that erupted after Obama accepted Father Jenkins’ invitation to speak.

In the weeks that followed, anti-abortion activists including Ran-dall Terry and Alan Keyes came to South Bend for demonstrations. An airplane-drawn banner depict-ing an aborted 10-week fetus flew frequently over the campus, and protesters, some pushing baby car-riages with dolls stained with fake blood, were arrested.

On May 16 a group of lead-ing Catholic theologians and other leaders published a full-page ad-vertisement in the South Bend Tri-bune daily newspaper in support of Father Jenkins’ invitation, and the graduating class selected them as their senior fellow. The crowd gave him two standing ovations at the close of the ceremonies.

“More than any problem in the arts or sciences, engineering or medicine, easing the hateful divi-sions between human beings is the supreme challenge to this age,” Father Jenkins said in his introduc-tion of Obama. “If we can solve this problem, we have a chance to come together and solve all the others.”

Noonan referred to Harvard pro-fessor and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon, who declined the medal in late April, as making a “lonely, coura-geous and conscientious choice.”

“I respect her decision,” he said to applause. “At the same time, I am here to confirm that all consciences are not the same; that we can recog-nize great goodness in our nation’s president without defending all of his multitudinous decisions; and that we can rejoice on this wholly happy occasion.”

JudgeFor

YourselfBy Dwight Duncan

I just finished reading Obama’s speech at the

Notre Dame commencement May 17. I was struck by two passages in particular. In one, the president comments on the obstacles to finding common ground: “We too often seek ad-vantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privi-lege in the face of poverty and injustice.”

In another, towards the end, he draws some lessons: “Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity pos-sessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize our-

selves in one another; to under-stand that we all seek the same love of family and the same fulfillment of a life well-lived.” Of course, these are true and admirable sentiments, and make nice sound bites.

One would think, of course, given these high moral senti-ments, that Obama would be Pro-Life, as we just learned that 51 percent of Americans are, according to the latest Gallup poll. That is, unborn babies are possessed of the same human dignity as the rest of us, and so most Americans “recognize ourselves in” them, as indeed all of us once were what they are.

But “the strong too often dominate the weak … and find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of … injustice.” As one of the powerful, Obama tellingly includes himself in the com-ment that “we cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar.” And so millions of abortions will continue to occur in America under the legal authority of Roe v. Wade.

Obama thinks that recogniz-ing the humanity of the unborn is “above his pay grade,” though he is both well paid and intel-ligent. While he says at Notre Dame, “Let’s honor the con-

A Machiavellian moment at Notre Dame

science of those who disagree with abortion,” he removes in Washington the federal regu-lation that provides just such protection. Meanwhile, he is pledged to remove every restriction on abortion through the Freedom of Choice Act and appoint to the Supreme Court a “Justice” who is pledged to perpetuate Roe v. Wade.

I am reminded of a passage in Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” the landmark work of political phi-losophy famous for first divorc-ing politics from ethics. Machia-velli says that “A prince ought to take great care that nothing goes out of his mouth which is not full of [pity, faith, integrity, humanity and religion], and that he appears to be, when one sees and hears him, all pity, all faith, all integrity, all humanity, and all religion. Nothing is more necessary than to have this last quality. For men, universally judge more by the eyes than

by the hands, because it is given to every-one that they see, but to few that they can touch.” (Alva-rez translation.) Thus, it seems advisable to

pay more attention to what a politician does than to what he says.

By being honored by Notre Dame, the nation’s premier Catholic university, and say-ing such high-sounding things, Obama seems very moral and religious. The fact is, however, that he is not practicing what he is preaching, that he is in effect faking it.

Styling himself, and sound-ing, like another Abraham Lin-coln, he is actually acting like Lincoln’s immediate predeces-sor President James Buchanan, who welcomed the Dred Scot decision on slavery, which like Roe denied legal personhood to a whole class of human beings. Or like Stephen A. Douglas, another senator from Illinois, who thought that people should be able to choose whether to recognize slavery in their terri-tory, as if a basic human right were not implicated, and who was Lincoln’s opponent on the issue of slavery.

Shame on Notre Dame (the school) for staging this charade! Shame on us Catholics if we fall for it!

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

14 May 22, 2009

in Vietnam, one with a broken ankle. “Regardless of what people back home thought about the Viet-nam War, the U.S. soldiers there felt they were there for a good rea-son — to protect these people,” the bishop said.

“The fighting varied in different areas, but often it was the youngest and lowest ranking soldiers who were at the most dangerous places,” he said. “Having a Catholic chap-lain there to celebrate Mass and to hear confessions was a great help to the soldiers. The closer they were to the front lines, the more they appre-ciated the chaplain.”

Bishop Roque said soldiers in some areas literally had to dig trenches in which to sleep, just for protection’s sake. He recalled making trips deep into the jungle to celebrate Mass for the soldiers. “Most of the Catholic soldiers wore a rosary around their necks at all times. I had one Jewish soldier in my battalion and he wore one also. I asked ‘Why are you wearing that?’ He said ‘Father, who’s taking chances?’”

Bishop Roque recalled, “My mom gave me a holy medal when I left for duty and I wasn’t comfort-able unless I had that medal with me.”

Father Paul Halladay is current-ly an Army chaplain at Fort Leon-ard Wood in Missouri. In 2006, Father Halladay was stationed with the First Battalion, 506th In-fantry Regiment in Ramadi, Iraq. During that tour of duty, a young Navy SEAL, Michael Monsoor, sacrificed his own life to save two SEAL teammates, throwing him-self on a hand grenade tossed their way by an Iraqi insurgent. Father Halladay was with Petty Officer Second Class Monsoor when he died several hours later. Monsoor had a few days earlier asked Father Halladay to hear his confession. “I do know his faith was important to him,” Father Halladay would say at a ceremony at the White House at which President George W. Bush presented a posthumous Medal of Honor to Monsoor’s parents.

Father Halladay told The Anchor Catholic soldiers need a Catholic chaplain to bring them the Mass, the opportunity for reconciliation

and “just to talk.” He added, “The Catholic soldiers are ecstatic when a chaplain is there to celebrate Mass and offer the chance for con-fession. But it’s not just the Catho-lics. The presence of a Catholic chaplain provides non-Catholics a window to the Catholic world, and its riches,” he said. “They see what their Catholic peers are receiving and they want that aspect of faith. They learn who and what we are.

“There are non-Catholics who come to talk to me and in a sense they’re making a confession with-out even knowing it.”

Father Halladay said the soldiers cope with a great deal of pressure and fear and “they come to a chap-lain to voice those fears.”

Like the soldiers Bishop Roque served with, Father Halladay sees many Catholics and non-Catholic enlisted men and women wearing rosaries.

“I stress to them that the rosa-ries are not just to wear, but they are powerful spiritual weapons, to be used. I teach them how to pray the rosary to fight against the true enemy — evil.

Father Halladay acknowledged the chaplains are as much in harm’s way as the soldiers they serve. “There’s always the danger of blood being spilled,” Father Halla-day said. “We think about it before and after, but when you’re in the middle of things, you don’t think about it at all. You just go to work as a priest and take care of business. You give the soldiers all you can.”

Father Halladay said on Memo-rial Day we should all remember those who paid the ultimate price for our American way of life. “Our way of life is so unique in this world,” he said. “It’s still an experi-ment among people of this nation and others. We make our mistakes, but we have men and women will-ing to protect this way of life.

“It’s amazing in the Litany of Saints, soldiers make up the sec-ond largest group, after those who served as religious. The sacrifice a soldier makes is very similar to the sacrifice our Lord made for us, and for us to follow him. Looking at our men and women in the military, we should see the connection of fos-tering the faith life by service and

The Anchor

sacrifice.”Robert Leroux is a member of

the U.S. Naval Reserve who re-cently returned from a tour of duty in northwest Iraq. E-3 Leroux is a member of Good Shepherd Parish in Fall River.

“I’ve been in the Naval Reserve for nearly two years, and I’ve been away from my family 16 out of the last 24 months,” he told The An-chor. “It’s a lot to get used to, being away from family and being in a country that is so different that I’ve experienced. The terrain is different, so much sand, and the temperature extremes can be drastic.”

Leroux mentioned where he was stationed there was only one Catho-lic chaplain in the area. “I saw him three or four times in the time I was there,” Leroux said. “His name was Father Shaughnessy, and he did his best to be there for the Catholic sol-diers, and there were quite a few of us.

“I was fortunate enough to be able to attend three or four Masses that Father celebrated, and there were always as many Catholics there as could be possible. I and they enjoyed having him there.”

Leroux’s take on Memorial Day is very similar to Father Halla-day’s. “The soldiers are all brought to war for a reason, whether it’s accepted or not,” he said. “Our job is to protect our country. I hope people remember that on Memo-rial Day.”

Christopher Plonka, a member of St. Bernard’s Parish in Assonet, is stationed at Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield. He served a tour of duty in Iraq in 2003.

“I was there just prior to when the war started and when it began, we were working 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “We were so busy that we didn’t have time to think.”

Plonka told The Anchor that the Catholic chaplain’s presence there was greatly valued. “I can count the times I was able to attend Mass there on one hand, but it was very much appreciated. It provided a continu-ity and helped make a connection with the people back home.”

He mentioned that the military leadership appreciated the chap-lains as much as anyone, knowing that they provide a sense of conti-nuity for their soldiers.

“I hope people in the U.S. keep everybody who sacrificed their lives and who sacrifice their time serving their country in their thoughts and prayers this Memorial Day,” added Plonka.

Prior to entering the seminary and becoming a priest for the Dio-cese of Fall River, Father Karl C. Bissinger served five years in the U.S. Navy from 1989 to 1994.

While this was a time of relative peace in the world, a deployment at sea could be a long period of time without touching land.

“I recall one time when I was on the USS John Hancock in the Red

Military chaplains: A calm port in a turbulent sea continued from page one

Sea, when a Navy chaplain was flown to our ship by helicopter,” Fa-ther Bissinger said. “He came to say Mass for us in the galley. I was very moved that this man would come out to us on the high seas, land on our deck and celebrate Mass with us. In fact, many of my shipmates took advantage of this. Up to as many as 175 of us gathered for the Mass. It meant a great deal to us.”

War has never been popular, with the soldiers who fight them, or with the people back in the home-land. The sad fact is that wars do flare up. They have since biblical times, and will most likely do so for years to come.

When conflicts do arise, Ameri-cans can be assured that brave men and women will take up the chal-lenge and sacrifice time, energy

and possibly their lives to protect this country and others around the world from evil.

What also can be assured is that Catholic chaplains will follow these soldiers to the battle field to provide comfort, spiritual strength, support, and most importantly the presence of God in what can be a hell on earth for some.

Regardless of political affilia-tions, or opinions on the conflicts that arise, this Memorial Day all Americans should think of and pray for all those who paid the ulti-mate price throughout history. Also in our thoughts and prayers, and de-serving our thanks, should be those who stand in harm’s way today and tomorrow for what many Ameri-cans thoughtlessly take for granted — freedom.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Less than four months into President Ba-rack Obama’s term, opinion polls are finding that Americans are tak-ing a dramatic turn toward greater opposition to abortion.

A poll conducted May 7-10 as part of the annual Gallup Values and Beliefs survey found that a majority of Americans (51 percent) described themselves as “Pro-Life” with respect to the abortion issue, while only 42 percent said they were “pro-choice.” The results were made public May 15.

It marked the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 1995 that more respondents said they were Pro-Life than pro-choice, and was a shift of seven-eight per-centage points from a year earlier, when 50 percent said they were pro-choice and 44 percent said they were Pro-Life.

A separate Gallup Poll Daily survey conducted May 12-13 found that 50 percent of Americans de-scribed themselves as Pro-Life and 43 percent as pro-choice.

The results were similar to an-other national survey made public April 30 by the Pew Research Cen-ter for the People & the Press, which found that the number of Americans who said abortion should be legal in all or most cases had declined to 46 percent in April 2009 from 54 percent in August 2008.

Forty-four percent of respon-dents in the Pew poll said abortion should be illegal in most (28 per-cent) or all cases (16 percent), up from 41 percent in August 2008.

The margin of error for each of the three polls was plus or minus three percentage points.

The Gallup Values and Beliefs survey found the strongest Pro-Life views among those who said they were Republican or independents leaning toward the Republican Par-ty, those who described themselves as conservative and those who said they were Christians.

Fifty-two percent of the Catho-lic respondents and 59 percent of Protestants or members of other Christian religions described them-selves as Pro-Life in the 2009 poll, compared to 45 percent of Catho-

Polls find more ‘Pro-Life’ Americanslics and 51 percent of Protestants in May 2008.

Seventy percent of Republicans or those leaning Republican said they were Pro-Life, compared to 60 percent in 2008; the percentage who said they were pro-choice in that group dropped from 36 percent in 2008 to 26 percent this year.

Among Democrats and indepen-dents who leaned toward the Dem-ocratic Party, the position on abor-tion remained virtually unchanged, with 61 percent saying they were pro-choice and 33 percent Pro-Life in 2009, compared to 60 percent pro-choice and 33 percent Pro-Life last year.

“With the first pro-choice presi-dent in eight years already making changes to the nation’s policies on funding abortion overseas, express-ing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans — and, in particular, Republicans — seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice posi-tion,” said a Gallup commentary on the results.

“It is possible that, through his abortion policies, Obama has pushed the public’s under-standing of what it means to be ‘pro-choice’ slightly to the left, politically,” it added. “While Democrats may support that, as they generally support every-thing Obama is doing as presi-dent, it may be driving others in the opposite direction.”

When Gallup first began con-ducting the Values and Beliefs survey in 1995, 56 percent of Americans described themselves as pro-choice and only 33 percent said they were Pro-Life. Since then, the highest percentage to identify themselves as Pro-Life was 46 per-cent, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

In surveys conducted by Pew Research, support for keeping abortion legal in all or most cases ranged in 2008 from 57 percent in mid-October to 53 percent in late October but dropped to 46 percent in April 2009.

15 May 22, 2009

By Kenneth J. souzaAnchor staff

FALL RIVER — Some of the faith-ful readers of The Anchor, the official newspaper of the Fall River Diocese, have been frustrated in recent weeks over delayed deliveries of the publica-tion. While no changes or adjustments have been made in deadlines or print-ing schedules, those who consistently received the periodical with their Fri-day mail have reported getting the newspaper nearly a week later.

It’s an escalating problem that Mary Chase, office manager at The Anchor, hopes will soon be resolved.

“We never had a problem with peo-ple getting The Anchor before,” Chase said. “People who were getting it on Friday are now getting it on Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week. This started within the last month, so something has changed with the post office.”

Chase received 30 to 40 calls a day during a recent week from subscribers who hadn’t yet received their newspa-per. While she understands their ob-vious frustration, she also wanted to make them aware that once the printed newspaper is turned over to the U.S. Postal Service for delivery, it’s beyond her control.

“Our subscribers are very, very up-

Mailing issues leave diocesan newspaper anchored at post officesset,” she said. “They don’t understand why this is happening and they need some sort of explanation. I just want to tell them we are working on the prob-lem and I’m trying to correct the prob-lem with the post offices. But if enough people address it with their individual post offices, hopefully it will be re-solved.”

The staff at the diocesan

newspaper completes

each weekly edition by Tuesday af-ternoon and submits it to Telco Com-

munica-tions, Inc. in Seekonk for printing. TCI prints the 28,000 copies on Wednesday and de-livers the finished product to the Fall River post office by Thursday at noon for anticipated delivery to homes and parishes throughout the Fall River Dio-cese the following day.

Although he praised the efforts of the post office in promptly getting The Anchor to subscribers “in most areas of the diocese on most weeks,” Executive Editor Father Roger J. Lan-dry expressed concern that some paid

subscribers have not been getting the newspaper on time of late. Readers in the New Bedford area, for example, did not receive their May 8 edition un-til May 13.

“We care very much that Anchor readers receive the newspaper on Fri-day, the publication date,” Father Lan-

dry said. “We work very hard with our printer to make sure it’s delivered in a timely manner so that the post-al service is able to get it into reader’s boxes on Fri-

day afternoon. But once we drop it off at the post office, it now is the total re-sponsibility of the post office to get it to Anchor readers on time.”

While there have been isolated occa-sions in particular zip codes throughout the diocese where delivery has been de-layed in the past, Father Landry noted this recent problem seems to be more widespread.

“With some of the struggles that the post office is having in terms of raising their prices and needing to lay off staff

and taking mailboxes off the streets, it seems like that has affected Anchor de-livery time in large sections of the dio-cese,” he said.

Chase says it seems the problem stems from the Providence post office, through which the bulk of all area mail is routed.

Father Landry said he appreciates readers letting him know they have not received their papers and also urged them to contact the U.S. Postal Service to make them aware of the problem.

“If they haven’t gotten their newspa-per in a timely manner, they should call customer service at the Providence Post Office as well as the customer service representative at their local post office to just simply say that they haven’t got-ten their Anchor and they’d like to have their help so they’d be able to get their paper delivered in a timely way,” Fa-ther Landry said.

“I’ve always told our subscribers, if enough people call their individual post offices, they will get a better response than if I’m just calling the post office myself.”

Subscribers who do not receive The Anchor in a timely manner are encouraged to contact their local post office, the Providence Post Of-fice at 401-276-3917, or toll free at 1-800-ASK-USPS.

“We care very much that An-chor readers receive the

newspaper on Friday, the publication date,” Father Landry said. “We work very hard with our printer to make sure it’s delivered in a timely manner so that the postal service is able to get it into reader’s boxes on Friday afternoon.”

The Anchor

16 May 22, 2009youTh Pages

FALL RIVER — Reid Latham of South Easton is not your typi-cal eight-year-old when it comes to having a birthday party. In March, Reid’s mother, Nancy, contacted St. Vincent’s Home to say Reid had decided not to receive birthday gifts but wanted donations in honor of

his eighth birthday to go to a char-ity. Reid and his parents, Steve and Nancy, discussed different charities, and the Lathams had been touched by the work done at St. Vincent’s. Mrs. Latham’s aunt, Mary Balleste who died several years ago was in-strumental in naming the Memorial Garden at St. Vincent’s in honor of her son, Peter. So, as Mrs. Latham commented, St. Vincent’s “seemed

UP, UP, AND AWAY — St. Mary’s School in Taunton, has been selected as one of 40 schools in the Boston area par-ticipating in the 2009 USA Hot Air Balloon School Tour spon-sored by Beemster Cheese. The school presentation began with an inflation of the Beemster balloon to demonstrate how hot air balloons work. The balloon was tethered at Hopewell Park and 10 teachers from St. Mary’s were able to experience an un-forgettable journey. The chil-dren waved as the teachers bid them farewell. An educational and inspiring power point pre-sentation followed the display. Beemster’s Betty Bovine, the Beemster Cheese balloon, is a top of the line aerostat manu-factured by Cameron Balloons U.S.

AMONG FRIENDS — Mercy Sister Patricia Harrington, front, second from right, moderator of Bishop Feehan High School’s ECHO retreat program since its inception 40 years ago, is surrounded by the 110 Feehan seniors who participated in the celebratory 40th anniversary retreat at the Attleboro school.

very fitting all around.”Birthday invitations were mailed

out to Reid’s family and friends saying, “In lieu of gifts Reid is re-questing that you make a small donation (cash, decks of cards, CD headphones, or kid’s cards games for ages five-18) to St. Vincent’s. St. Vincent’s is located in Fall River and provides residence for children whose parents are currently unable to care for them or for children/teens with special behavioral needs.”

In mid-April a package arrived at St. Vincent’s with CD head-phones, numerous decks of cards, card games, and nearly $300 in do-nations — all from Reid’s party.

The home was humbled by Reid’s gesture. John T. Weldon, executive director of St. Vincent’s thanked Reid, saying, “Forego-ing birthday gifts so that children less fortunate could benefit from your special day is truly a self-less act of kindness and one that greatly benefits other children your age.”

Weldon further noted, “Through Reid’s thoughtfulness, he is making a positive difference in the lives of the children who call St. Vincent’s ‘home’ — many of whom do not have families like Reid Latham’s to care for them.”

Eight-year-old philanthropist helps St. Vincent’s kids

reiD latham

CHEERS! — The Holy Trinity “Saints” Cheerleaders, from Holy Trinity Regional School in West Har-wich, practice their routines.

HONORING MARY — Kindergarten and third-grade students recite the rosary at a crowning of Mary ceremony at St. Pius X School in South Yarmouth.

17 May 22, 2009 youTh Pages

Several days ago I had eye surgery. It was nothing

too serious. It was for the re-moval of a cataract in my right eye. For those of you too young to think much about cataracts, they are a sort of ‘film’ that builds up in your eye cutting down on the amount of light that ultimately gets in. They generally are associated with “older folks” but as a nurse reassured me when I said, “I’m too young for cataracts,” even babies can develop them. It was fairly shocking to find out that I had a cataract. Your eyesight gets poorer as time goes on, but it is almost an impercep-tible change. It gets harder and harder to see and you barely notice it until it gets to the point where your driving and read-ing suddenly become impaired. After the surgery I spent about 24 hours in a hotel room with a patch over the operated eye and

the other eye being so lazy that nothing much was discernable to me. For about 24 hours I was blind and wholly dependent on my wife. When I returned to the hospital to have the patch removed, I was struck at the difference in brightness and clarity I experienced when my patch was first removed. Contrasting that to my sight just 24 hours earlier was a dra-matic change, so much so that I never really noticed how impaired I was becoming during the few previous years. I guess sometimes when you are so close to something you don’t see the tiny changes taking place and suddenly you are in a darker place.

There is a metaphor that I have quoted to students in the past to demonstrate the inability of people to react to important

changes that occur gradually. The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough. If a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will

never jump out. In many ways, I was getting more and more blind and really didn’t notice it much until it got to the point where I was getting impaired. That can happen to all of us in many different ways, and if we don’t notice it may be too late once we do.

In today’s society, we are becoming desensitized to major changes just like the frog placed in cold water. Slowly and surely, there are changes, important changes, gradually taking place in our country and we may not notice. Many are

becoming more ac-cepting of euthanasia and abortion. Many are opting to live together rather than getting mar-ried. Many are bail-ing out of salvageable marriages without first trying to work things out. And now, in many

states, marriage is no longer exclusively between a man and a woman. Drugs? Maybe, they say, marijuana should be okay. Musical lyrics, TV shows and movies are getting more and more daring — always trying to push the envelope on decency. I remember that about 40 years ago, my father, who owned a movie theater, had a advertise-ment pulled by the local paper because it showed a young girl simply sitting on a bed. My how things have changed!

I’m reminded of a Bible story that I can’t resist closing with — especially an article dealing with sight (and I think it makes the point I’m trying to make here.) In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus says, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not

perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

Many humans have a tenden-cy to look for fault in others, as a way of escaping looking at our own flaws. We need to focus on our own spiritual growth, and take responsibil-ity for our own thoughts and actions before trying to point out the flaws in others. We need to evaluate where we are in our own lives. We need to remove what is keeping us from the light and what is blocking our view of Christ. I believe that if we become more personally willing to accept the non-ac-ceptable, we allow the “cata-ract” to build up and slowly blind us — ultimately blocking out the “light of Christ” in our lives. When we notice, it may be too late for us. Think about it.

Frank Lucca is a youth minister at St Dominic’s Par-ish in Swansea. He is chair and director of the YES! Retreat and director of the Christian Leadership Institute (CLI). He is a husband and a father of two daughters.

I can see more clearly now

LOG CABIN LEGEND — Students in David Raymundo’s fifth-grade class at Espirito Santo School in Fall River received a surprise visit from an old friend, Abraham Lincoln, while finishing a unit on historical figures.

Be NotAfraid

By Frank Lucca

HEALTHCARE HELPERS — The Coyle and Cassidy High School, Taunton, school nurses and science faculty hosted a reception for graduating seniors who will be pursuing a degree in nurs-ing. Front, from left: Patti Lucini, school nurse; Juliet Levangie, Marissa Hebert, and Brittany Schultz; Back row: Anne Marie Pavao, RN and science teacher; Kayla Leonardo, Haley Milot, Paula Jencyowski, Karen Williams, school nurse; and Kathy St. Laurent, chairperson of science department and RN.

This Message Sponsored by the FollowingBusiness Concern in the Diocese of Fall River

Gilbert C. Oliveira Insurance Agency

P.O. Box 7, Fall River, MA 02722theanchor@anchornews.org

508.675.7151

The Anchor

Any time is a good time to subscribe to

18 May 22, 2009The Anchor

ARE YOU MOVING?The Post Office charges The Anchor 70 cents for notifica-tion of a subscriber’s change of address. Please help us reduce these expenses by notifying us immediately when you plan to move.

Please Print Your New Address BelowNAME:

STREET ADDRESS:

CITY, STATE, ZIP:

NEW PARISH:

MOVING DATE:

Please attach your Anchor address label below so we can update your record immediately.

Please cut and adhere addresslabel in this space

CLIP THIS ENTIRE FORM AND MAIL TO:

P.O. BOX 7 — FALL RIVER, MA 02722THANK YOU

The Anchor

en parishes in the diocese that Bishop Coleman has designated as a Pauline Year indulgenced pilgrimage site.

“The first and introductory talk will begin at 10 a.m., and last for approximately 75 min-utes,” Father Johnson reported. “It will be on Paul’s Gospel — which is actually his various epistles or letters.”

The second talk, from 11:30 a.m., to 12:30 p.m., will be on reconciliation, the sacrament of penance.

The final talk, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., will again take up Paul’s writings, “so that they sandwich the talk on confession,” Father Johnson explained.

“The total cost to attend all three lectures is just $5,” he add-ed. Because of high expected demand, those who would like to attend are required to reserve a seat either by calling 508-993-1691 or emailing hahntalks@gmail.com.

In “The Conversion of Scott Hahn,” his gripping first-hand account of his 1980s conversion to Catholicism, Hahn, a former brilliant young Presbyterian minister, recalls how he acci-

dentally received a Catholic, California-published magazine, “This Rock.”

It arrived at his home because the address on the gift subscrip-tion to a Pennsylvania town had the right town and street, but the wrong street number.

When Hahn acknowledged to the publishers how the magazine had helped during his conver-sion, the story impacted many, and continues to do so.

Married and the father of six children, Hahn holds many academic degrees; is an adjunct professor at several Catholic colleges and universities; is the author of dozens of books as well as numerous articles in lay and academic publications on the Mass, Eucharist, marriage and family; and is the general editor of Ignatius Bible Studies in California.

In his “The Pocket Guide to St. Paul,” Hahn writes: “St. Paul was a thinker, a pastor, a mis-sionary, a revolutionary, and a martyr. By the end of his life and largely thanks to his effort, Christianity enjoyed a world-wide presence. Since then, he has emerged repeatedly down

the millennia as a fresh voice, compelling us to envision God, and life, in a new way. We can-not understand Christianity un-less we understand his message. We cannot understand ourselves as Christians unless we see our-selves in the light of his word.”

Hahn’s talks will sound the final note in the year that found Father Johnson and other priests and deacons, as well as The An-chor, busy promulgating the his-tory and dedicated apostleship of the man formerly named Saul, who the risen Christ knocked off his horse and blinded en route to Damascus and his assiduous persecuting of Christians.

The jubilee’s goal is to help Catholics strive to imitate Paul’s conversion in their own encoun-ter with Christ.

Father Johnson said he hopes Scott Hahn’s presentations will assist the faithful of the diocese in achieving this goal, and urged them to reserve their spots for the day.

The last event of the Year of St. Paul will take place the day after Hahn’s talks with a clos-ing Mass of the year at St. An-thony’s. Father Johnson will be the celebrant and homilist of the Mass. Everyone is invited.

Rushing has said he refiled this pro-posal because “we want the word-ing of law to be in conformance with the Goodrich decision.”

In that controversial 4-3 deci-sion, the state Supreme Judicial Court in 2003 interpreted the state constitution as “not limit-ing marriage to one man and one woman” for the plaintiffs in that case, who were represented by the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.

Although the ruling opened the door to Massachusetts be-coming ground zero in the na-tional battle to redefine marriage, the legislature never changed the law. In essence, former Gov. Mitt Romney extended that court decision to the whole state by instructing municipal clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

In a nationally publicized let-ter to Romney in 2006, 44 na-tional pro-family leaders urged him to declare “gay marriage” il-legal. Among those signing from Massachusetts were Dr. John Diggs, an expert on the medical risks of homosexual behavior; Ray Neary of ProLife Massachu-setts; and Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News.

They said the Constitution au-thorizes only the legislature, not the courts, to decide marriage policy, and that Romney had no obligation to enforce an uncon-stitutional ruling. Romney did not respond, but had in the past disagreed with this theory.

However, the wording still used publicly by homosexual activists shows they understand the law. For example, Bay Windows, a gay ad-vocacy newspaper, observed May 14 that five years have elapsed “since same-sex couples first be-gan obtaining marriage licenses in the United States.”

It continued: “Massachusetts became the first state to begin is-suing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on May 17, 2004” and details ensuing challenges to marriage in other states. Now “Boston’s GLAD has been em-boldened to take on a challenge of the 13-year-old Defense of Marriage Act in federal court,” it concluded.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute noted, “Over one-third of those polled (recently by the National Organization for Marriage) said they were afraid to speak out against ‘same-sex marriage,’ a sentiment crystallized by the re-cent Miss Universe controversy. Until individuals can vote on the issue for themselves in this state, as they have in 30 other states across the country, the issue will not be settled in the hearts and minds of citizens.”

The bill to mandate health education is being pushed by CARE For Youth, a coalition managed by the Planned Parent-hood League of Massachusetts. Among its members are the ACLU, Massachusetts Teachers Association, National Organiza-tion for Women, Boston College Women’s Health Initiative, and Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

Under the curriculum, young-sters in PreK to grade five would be able to “define sexual orien-tation using the correct termi-nology (such as heterosexual, and gay and lesbian).” Grade six-eight students would learn to “define the types of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), in-cluding HIV/AIDS,” and how to “identify sexual discrimination and harassment.”

Among other topics, high schoolers would study “possible determinants of sexual orienta-tion” and know where to obtain contraception and abortion.

The state Website at doe.mass.edu/frameworks/health/1999/physical.html#repro shows the text of the curriculum’s sex ed-ucation component.

The bill would mandate that all public schools adopt the now-optional Department of Educa-tion’s Comprehensive Health Curriculum Frameworks. Filed as S 218 by Senate Harriet Chan-dler and H 3434 by Rep. Alice Wolf, the bill is in the Joint Edu-cation Committee

On May 14, Planned Parent-hood urged members to conduct a “virtual lobby day” for this and other legislation.

Marie Sturgis, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, warned that there could be either a direct push for the bill or alterna-tively, “The governor’s Readiness Project may become a major ve-hicle to push for it, in which case it could be slipped in under regula-tions and not legislation.”

MCFL director Linda Thayer said the proposal “violates our freedom of religion and con-science; it will force us to sur-render our rights as parents to people who have an economic and political agenda.”

Among numerous other bills of interest are: H 1711, which would repeal the law that calls sodomy a “crime against nature” (now in the Judiciary Committee) and H 483, an anti-bullying bill, filed Rep. John Rogers of Norwood in partnership with the Anti-Defa-mation League and the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (in the Joint Education Committee.)

The text of all bills and contact information is available through the home Webpage Mass.gov/legis of the Massachusetts General Court.

Controversial bills await action on Hill continued from page one

Scott Hahn to help close Pauline Year celebrations continued from page one

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Visiting even the most remote parishes, carefully planning homilies and devoting serious time to prayer are all neces-sary parts of a bishop’s minis-try, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Meeting May 18 with bish-ops from Peru making their “ad limina” visits to report on the status of their dioceses, the pope urged them “to live courageously as disciples and missionaries of the Lord.”

“Regular pastoral visits to Church communities — including the most remote and humble — prolonged prayer, careful preparation for preaching and paternal care of priests, families, youths, catechists and other pastoral workers” are all part of being messengers of the good news of salvation, the pope told the bishops.

He also told them they must open their own hearts and the hearts of those around them to the needs of the sick, the poor and the suffering, especially those who are unemployed, those who lack adequate health and education and the victims of drug abuse and vio-lence.

Pope: Parish visits, prolonged prayer are bishop’s duty

Eucharistic Adoration:

ACUSHNET — Eucharistic Adoration takes place at St. Francis Xavier Parish on Mon-days 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Fridays 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Mondays end with Evening Prayer and Benediction at 6:30 p.m.; Saturdays end with Benediction at 2:45 p.m.

FALL RIVER — Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is held Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Lourdes Chapel at Notre Dame Church, 529 Eastern Avenue.

NEW BEDFORD — Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament takes place at St. Joseph-St. Therese Church, 51 Duncan Street, Mondays following the 8:30 a.m. Mass until 1:30 p.m. For more information call 508-995-2354.

NEW BEDFORD — Eucharistic adoration takes place 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 233 County Street, with night prayer and Benediction at 8:45 p.m., and confessions offered during the evening.

NEW BEDFORD — There is a daily holy hour from 5:15-6:15 p.m. Monday through Thursday at St. Anthony of Padua Church, 1359 Acushnet Avenue. It includes adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Liturgy of the Hours, recitation of the rosary, and the opportunity for confession.

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

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

Miscellaneous:

ATTLEBORO — The annual procession and Mass in honor of the Holy Spirit will take place June 7 at Holy Ghost Church, 71 Linden Street. The procession will begin at 10 a.m. from 54 Cypress Road and the Mass will be celebrated at the church at 11 a.m. Traditional free “sopas” will be served in the church hall following Mass.

CENTERVILLE — A Career Decisions Workshop meets bi-weekly at the Our Lady of Victory Parish Faith Formation Center. The next session is May 28 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Sessions will continue every other Thursday through June 30. All are welcome to attend at no cost. For information contact Kelley Spodris at 508-775-5744 extension 113 or at kjs@olvparish.org

EAST FREETOWN — Cathedral Camp, owned and operated by the Diocese of Fall River, is a day camp for children ages four to 13. This year the camp, located on Route 18, will be offering four two-week and four one-week sessions from June 29 to August 21. Open house will be held June 14 with opening remarks at 1 p.m. and tours through 3 p.m. For more information visit www.cathedralcamp.net, email rena@cathedralcamp.net or call 508-763-8874.

EAST FREETOWN — St. John Neumann Parish’s Lakeside Family Festival, Route 18, 157 Middleboro Road, runs tonight from 6 to 11 p.m.; tomorrow and Sunday from noon to 11 p.m.; and May 25 from noon to 5 p.m. Events include a barn sale, car show on Sunday, games, food, fun, live entertainment, rides, and a “blind” auction with themed baskets with cash prizes. Admission is free.

FALL RIVER — The annual Espirito Santo Parish feast, to be held on the church grounds on Alden Street, will begin tonight at 6:30 p.m. with the procession of transfer of the image of Santo Christo from the parish center to the church. Following the procession, the feast will continue on the church grounds, with food, games and entertainment, until midnight. Tomorrow the feast opens at 6 p.m. and will close at midnight. On Sunday a feast Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. with Bishop George W. Coleman. That afternoon the feast procession will form at 3 p.m. beginning at the church on Alden Street and travel east on Warren Street to Pittman Street, Webster Street, Pleasant Street, Quequechan Street, and Alden Street back to the church. Following the procession there will be Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and the feast will continue on the church grounds until midnight.

FALL RIVER — To conclude the Year of St. Paul, a four-week Bible study series on the Acts of the Apostles will be held Wednesdays at Holy Trinity Parish, 951 Stafford Road. The sessions will be held May 27, June 3, June 17 and June 24 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the school library.

FALMOUTH — The annual Italian Mass will be celebrated at St. Joseph’s Chapel, Fal-mouth Heights Road by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk Sunday at 2 p.m. All are invited.

MANSFIELD — On May 25 at 8 a.m. a Mass will be celebrated at St. Mary’s Parish cemetery on Franklin Street. The celebration will remember those who gave their lives in service for our country as well as for deceased loved ones, especially those buried at St. Mary’s. In the event of inclement weather, the Mass will be celebrated at St. Mary’s Church, 330 Pratt Street, at 8 a.m. Luminaries in memory of loved ones will be available and all members of the community are welcome. Lawn chairs are recommended.

MARTHA’S VINEYARD — Good Shepherd Parish, 55 School Street, Oak Bluffs, will host a “Social and Speaker” evening June 5 at 7 p.m. in the parish center. Marjorie Milanese, spiritual director and retreat leader, will present a reflection on the topic “Where Are You, God?” A discussion and social will follow and all are welcome.

NEW BEDFORD — A Holy Hour is held every Thursday from 6 to 7 p.m. at St. Kilian’s Church, 306 Ashley Boulevard.

WAREHAM — “My One Wild and Precious Life,” a women’s retreat will be held May 29-31 at Sacred Hearts Retreat Center, 226 Great Neck Road. The retreat is led by Peggy Patenaude of Taking Time Out. For more information, call 508-548-9149 or visit www.timeoutretreats.com.

WAREHAM — St. Patrick’s Church, 82 High Street, will host the yearly Mass of Anointing on May 31 at 2 p.m., for all those who wish to receive the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. All family and friends are invited to participate. Following the Mass refreshments will be served in the parish hall.

WEST HARWICH — The Cape and the Islands Prayer Group Deanery will hold a Cel-ebration of Pentecost at Holy Trinity Church, Route 28, Sunday with praise and worship beginning at 12:30 p.m. Father Michael McNamara, director of Servants of Christ Min-istries, Scituate, will be celebrant and homilist. Following Mass, fellowship and refresh-ments will be available in the parish center. For more information call 508-255-4679 or 508-759-2737.

ATTLEBORO — Concerned faithful are needed to pray the rosary outside Four Women, Inc., an abortion clinic at 150 Emory Street, Thursdays from 3-4 p.m., or 4-5 p.m. and Saturdays from 7:30-8:30 a.m. For information call 508-238-5743.

Around the Diocese Eucharistic Adoration

Miscellaneous

19 May 22, 2009 The Anchor

Please pray for these priests during the coming weeks

In Your Prayers

May 25Rev. Michael P. Kirby, Former

Assistant, St. Mary, North Attleboro, 1925

Rev. James V. Mendes, Pastor, Our Lady of Angels, Fall River, 1961

May 28Rev. Lionel A. Bourque, For-

mer Chaplain, Cardinal Cushing Hospital, Brock-ton, 1982

May 30

Rev. Jordan Harpin, O.P., Do-minican Priory, Fall River, 1929

Rev. Edmond J. Potvin, Pas-tor, St. Jean Baptiste, Fall River, 1937

Rev. James M. Quinn, Pastor, St. John the Evangelist, Attleboro, 1950

Rev. Robert T. Canuel, Assis-tant, St. Anne, Fall River, 1993

May 31Rev. Vincent A. Wolski, OFM

Conv., Pastor, Holy Cross, Fall River, 1964

Pro-Life

TAUNTON — Franciscan Missionary of Mary Sister Ro-salina Cabral, a member of the Queen of Peace Community in North Providence, R.I., died May 9 at Miriam Hospital.

Born in Fall River, the daughter of the late Ernest T. and Rosalina (Barbosa) Cabral, following high school she worked in the billing de-partment of a clothing store.

She entered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in North Providence, R.I., in December 1951, and took the name Mary of St. Agathangelus.

After taking her first vows in 1954, she was sent to Fall River, where she served as a commissioner — one of many Sisters of her institute — who traveled the U.S., selling the handwork made in needle-work facilities. The proceeds supported missionary endeav-ors across America as well as

Sister Rosalini Cabral FMM;was missionary and teacher

young girls employed in nee-dlework industry in overseas missions.

She also taught at Espirito Santo School in Fall River.

Fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and French, as well as in Eng-lish, Sis-ter Cabral taught Eng-lish in Lima, Peru; was missioned

to Cartavio to assist in a hospital, and served as superior.

In 1985, she was returned to the Peru region to work with girls in a shelter for children from broken families. She re-turned to the U.S. in 1998 for health reasons and served as a receptionist to the Franciscan

Community in Rosalyn. N.Y. She celebrated her golden ju-bilee in religious life in 2002.

In 2005, Sister Cabral was missioned to the Queen of Peace Community in North Providence, where her minis-try was one of prayer for the Church and the world.

She leaves a brother, Al-bert Cabral of Spring Hill, Fla.; nieces and nephews, and grandnieces and grandneph-ews.

She was also the sister of the late Agnes, Alice, Ernst, David and Anthony Cabral, and Mary Moniz.

Her funeral Mass was cel-ebrated May 13 in the Holy Family Chapel of the Fran-ciscan Sisters in North Provi-dence.

The Russell J. Boyle & Son Funeral Home in Providence was in charge of arrange-ments.

sister rosalini caBral fmm

By michael Kelly catholic news service

DUBLIN, Ireland — The identity of the killers of Arch-bishop Michael Courtney, the Vatican diplomat shot dead in Burundi in 2003, probably never will be known, the prel-ate’s brother said.

Louis Courtney, the arch-bishop’s brother and a coro-

Papal nuncio’s 2003 death in Burundi attributed to random violence

ner, conducted an inquest May 13 into the death of the papal nuncio to the East African na-tion. He announced the finding after the inquest in Nenagh, in County Tipperary.

Courtney said he believed his 58-year-old brother was shot Dec. 29, 2003, in a ran-dom act and was not targeted because he was a senior Catho-lic Church figure.

The inquest heard that as-sailants had ambushed the car in which Archbishop Court-ney was traveling because they were looking for food, cloth-ing or other supplies.

Courtney said other cars

had been ambushed on the same route on the day of the fatal shooting, but his brother was the only one killed in the attacks.

Archbishop Courtney was involved in furthering Burun-di’s peace process in the midst of the country’s civil war. Both the government and the rebel National Liberation Forces ac-cused each other of the mur-der.

In 2006 a Burundian inves-tigative journalist reported that the archbishop’s death had been planned from the top levels of the Burundian government, a charge officials denied.

20 The Anchor May 22, 2009

A CELEBRATION!Father Pat will formally release his

new DVD and CD entitled“Tears of Love”

On Sunday, May 24th at 6:30 PM atLa Salette Shrine Church,

Attleboro, MA

You are invited to join him on thismomentous occasion as he radiates

through his words and music the love our Blessed Mother has for all of us!

Admission is Free

NEW BEDFORD — A sol-emn procession celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi will be held June 14. The procession will begin at 2:30 p.m. from Our Lady’s Chapel.

The Blessed Sacrament will be carried in procession to three different church stations where Benediction will be held.

The first station will be Our Lady of Purgatory Church on Franklin Street, then St. Law-rence Church on County Street, then to St. John the Baptist Church on County Street, and return to Our Lady’s Chapel for final prayers, hymns and Benediction.

While processing, children, dressed as angels, will strew flower pedals in front of the

Blessed Sacrament. Children wanting to participate are most welcome; angel outfits will be provided.

The rosary will be recited during the procession in both English and Portuguese. Ap-propriate hymns will also be sung. Priests are welcome as well as all parish organizations and sodalities with their ban-ners.

For handicap use, vans are being provided in the proces-sion. A potluck buffet will fol-low. All are welcome to wit-ness their faith in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist during procession.

For further information, please contact the Friars at 508-996-8274.

New Bedford Corpus Christiprocession slated for June 14

special to The Anchor

FALL RIVER — Yvonne (Karama) Nasser, a long-time parishioner of St. Anthony of the Desert Maronite Parish turned 100 years old May 8.

Her family and her pastor Chorbishop Joseph F. Kaddo,

gathered at Venus de Milo in Swansea to celebrate her life.

She is the mother of Ga-briel and Richard Nasser of

New York; Gisele Nasser of this city; and the late Dr. Rene Nasser.

She was born in Cairo, Egypt and moved to the United States in 1969 with her late husband Attorney Philippe Nasser. She has been a resident at the Somer-set Ridge Center for the past eight years.

Friends and family say that what has kept her going is her Catholic faith. She has always lent a hand to anyone in need. She has always been gener-ous with her time, effort, and never hesitates to give what she has, and is a firm believer in forgiveness and letting go of anger. They add she is a true optimist and encourages everyone to be happy and not to worry.

Nasser is famous for en-tertaining family and friends with elaborate Middle-East-ern meals. Whether rolling grape leaves or making Bak-lava, she has meticulously prepared these delicious dishes with a lot of love. These complicated recipes were passed on to the next generation who are still pre-paring them. They are known as Meme’s recipes.

Believing in being ac-tive, Nasser was a volunteer at Saint Anne’s Hospital for many years. She is a com-municant of St. Anthony of the Desert Church where she often has volunteered to bake for its annual Christmas ba-zaar.

Woman of great faith marks 100th birthday with family, friends

MAJOR MILESTONE — Yvonne Nasser turned 100 years old May 8. Family and friends, including her pastor, Chorbishop Joseph F. Kaddo, of St. Anthony of the Desert Parish in Fall River, gathered to celebrate her life.