By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

In February 1915, only six months after the beginning of World War I, Lancet, a British medical journal, used for the first time the expression “shell shock.” This newly coined expression was used to describe the feeling of helplessness that soldiers felt after exposure to constant bombardment. The term was new, but not the reality. After every war, soldiers return from combat, suffering “shell shock.” 

Watching their comrades mowed down by enemy fire or left maimed and strewn on the battlefield, combatants become immune to feelings of connectedness and concern. Today, this phenomenon is becoming an epidemic. We are constantly being bombarded by bad news. The catastrophic and inhumane events that interrupt our everyday life are causing many people to escape from the brutality by becoming shell shocked. 

Terrorist attacks in Belgium, Syria, Africa, and in England; daily violence on the streets of Chicago, New York, Paterson; the massacre of our children in their schools and of believers in their churches, synagogues and mosques; the interminable disputes and rancor over immigration; allegations of racism and sexism; the incessant reporting of scandals, present and past!  Moment by moment these evils confront us. So fast does news travel that one story stumbles over the other with images of the dead, the wounded, the homeless imprinted on our minds. These problems do not admit of simple solutions. And, since we are more aware of them today than in the past and yet less able to find solutions, many, left numb and disillusioned, drift into apathy.  

In addition, newspapers, blogs and TV commentaries flash before us cause after cause, such as global poverty and climate change. “Every cause seems urgent, but nobody has the time, the energy, or the information necessary to make an impact. Knowing all the ways in which the world is flawed in a very real, raw, up-close kind of way without the ability to make any sort of important change is perhaps the most unwelcome symptom of the digital age” (Jamie Varon, “Generation apathy: How internet outrage is making us all numb and hopeless,” August 20, 2015).

Some Christians have drunk the hemlock of apathy. They are becoming more and more indifferent to evil in the world and, sadly, more and more detached from religion. Unconnected. Not invested. Religion may be good; but, when it comes to God, they have hung up a “Do Not Disturb Sign.” For them, weddings, funerals, First Communions, Confirmations, if even celebrated, are mostly social occasions. 

Apathy within the Church is far more devastating than outside the Church. The Church is the sign and sacrament of salvation for the world. It is an instrument in God’s hands. But if the instrument is dull and listless, it hinders God’s activity. When people become apathetic, something more is needed than telling them to be kind and compassionate. Such preaching falls on deaf ears and hardened hearts. What is needed today is the bold proclamation of the kerygma, that is, the love of God given us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

God is not apathetic. He is intensely passionate about his relationship with us and his world. He is the lover who pursues his beloved. He never gives up on us, despite our sins. He woos us back to himself (cf. Hosea 2:11). He did not turn his back on the evil of our world, but sent his Son to be our Redeemer.

 “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s love is a fact. In Jesus, God has begun the work of forgiving sins and recreating the world. And, he gifts us with the Holy Spirit so that, together with him, we make all things new. We are not helpless. We are not alone. Apathy makes people murmur a half-silent “No” to the world in which we live. But, faith in Jesus Crucified and Risen makes us shout a resounding “Yes” to God’s work of the New Creation. Faith is the antidote to apathy.


 

By Cardinal Gerhard Müller

“Let not your heart be troubled!” (John 14:1)

In the face of growing confusion about the doctrine of the Faith, many bishops, priests, religious and lay people of the Catholic Church have requested that I make a public testimony about the truth of revelation. It is the shepherds' very own task to guide those entrusted to them on the path of salvation. This can only succeed if they know this way and follow it themselves. The words of the Apostle here apply: “For above all I have delivered unto you what I have received” (1 Cor. 15:3). Today, many Christians are no longer even aware of the basic teachings of the Faith, so there is a growing danger of missing the path to eternal life. However, it remains the very purpose of the Church to lead humanity to Jesus Christ, the light of the nations (see LG 1). In this situation, the question of orientation arises. According to John Paul II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a “safe standard for the doctrine of the faith” (Fidei Depositum IV). It was written with the aim of strengthening the Faith of the brothers and sisters whose belief has been massively questioned by the “dictatorship of relativism.”

1. The one and triune God revealed in Jesus Christ

The epitome of the Faith of all Christians is found in the confession of the Most Holy Trinity. We have become disciples of Jesus, children and friends of God by being baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The distinction of the three persons in the divine unity (CCC 254) marks a fundamental difference in the belief in God and the image of man from that of other religions. Religions disagree precisely over this belief in Jesus the Christ. He is true God and true Man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. The Word made flesh, the Son of God, is the only Savior of the world (CCC 679) and the only Mediator between God and men (CCC 846). Therefore, the first letter of John refers to one who denies His divinity as an antichrist (1 John 2:22), since Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is from eternity one in being with God, His Father (CCC 663). We are to resist the relapse into ancient heresies with clear resolve, which saw in Jesus Christ only a good person, brother and friend, prophet and moralist. He is first and foremost the Word that was with God and is God, the Son of the Father, Who assumed our human nature to redeem us and Who will come to judge the living and the dead. Him alone, we worship in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the Only and True God (CCC 691).

2. The Church

Jesus Christ founded the Church as a visible sign and instrument of salvation realized in the Catholic Church (816). He gave His Church, which “emerged from the side of the Christ who died on the Cross” (766), a sacramental constitution that will remain until the Kingdom is fully achieved (CCC 765). Christ, the Head, and the faithful as members of the body, are a mystical person (CCC 795), which is why the Church is sacred, for the one Mediator has designed and sustained its visible structure (CCC 771). Through it the redemptive work of Christ becomes present in time and space via the celebration of the Holy Sacraments, especially in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Holy Mass (CCC 1330). The Church conveys with the authority of Christ the divine revelation, which extends to all the elements of doctrine, “including the moral teaching, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, and observed” (CCC 2035).

3. Sacramental Order

The Church is the universal sacrament of salvation in Jesus Christ (CCC 776). She does not reflect herself, but the light of Christ, which shines on her face. But this happens only when the truth revealed in Jesus Christ becomes the point of reference, rather than the views of a majority or the spirit of the times; for Christ Himself has entrusted the fullness of grace and truth to the Catholic Church (CCC 819), and He Himself is present in the sacraments of the Church.

The Church is not a man-made association whose structure its members voted into being at their will. It is of divine origin. "Christ himself is the author of ministry in the Church. He set her up, gave her authority and mission, orientation and goal (CCC 874). The admonition of the Apostle is still valid today, that cursed is anyone who proclaims another gospel, “even if we ourselves were to give it or an angel from heaven” (Gal 1:8). The mediation of faith is inextricably bound up with the human credibility of its messengers, who in some cases have abandoned the people entrusted to them, unsettling them and severely damaging their faith. Here the Word of Scripture describes those who do not listen to the truth and who follow their own wishes, who flatter their ears because they cannot endure sound doctrine (cf. 2 Tim 4:3-4).

The task of the Magisterium of the Church is to “preserve God’s people from deviations and defections” in order to “guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (890). This is especially true with regard to all seven sacraments. The Holy Eucharist is “source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). The Eucharistic Sacrifice, in which Christ includes us in His Sacrifice of the Cross, is aimed at the most intimate union with Him (CCC 1382). Therefore, the Holy Scripture admonishes with regard to the reception of the Holy Communion: “Whoever eats unworthily of the bread and drinks from the Lord's cup makes himself guilty of profaning the body and of the blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27). “Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion” (CCC 1385). From the internal logic of the sacrament, it is understood that divorced and civilly remarried persons, whose sacramental marriage exists before God, as well as those Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Faith and the Church, just as all those who are not disposed to receive the Holy Eucharist fruitfully (CCC 1457), because it does not bring them to salvation. To point this out corresponds to the spiritual works of mercy.

The confession of sins in Holy Confession at least once a year is one of the Church’s commandments (CCC 2042). When the believers no longer confess their sins and no longer experience the absolution of their sins, salvation becomes impossible; after all, Jesus Christ became Man to redeem us from our sins. The power of forgiveness that the Risen Lord has given to the Apostles and their successors in the ministry of bishops and priests applies also for mortal and venial sins which we commit after Baptism. The current popular practice of confession makes it clear that the conscience of the faithful is not sufficiently formed. God's mercy is given to us, that we might fulfil His Commandments to become one with His Holy Will, and not so as to avoid the call to repentance (CCC 1458).

“The priest continues the work of redemption on earth” (CCC 1589). The ordination of the priest “gives him a sacred power” (CCC 1592), which is irreplaceable, because through it Jesus becomes sacramentally present in His saving action. Therefore, priests voluntarily opt for celibacy as "a sign of new life" (CCC 1579). It is about the self-giving in the service of Christ and His coming kingdom.

4. Moral Law

Faith and life are inseparable, for Faith apart from works is dead (CCC 1815). The moral law is the work of divine wisdom and leads man to the promised blessedness (CCC 1950). Consequently, the "knowledge of the divine and natural law is necessary" to do good and reach this goal (CCC 1955). Accepting this truth is essential for all people of good will. For he who dies in mortal sin without repentance will be forever separated from God (CCC 1033). This leads to practical consequences in the lives of Christians, which are often ignored today (cf 2270-2283; 2350-2381). The moral law is not a burden, but part of that liberating truth (cf Jn 8:32) through which the Christian walks on the path of salvation and which may not be relativized.

5. Eternal Life

Many wonder today what purpose the Church still has in its existence, when even bishops prefer to be politicians rather than to proclaim the Gospel as teachers of the Faith. The role of the Church must not be watered down by trivialities, but its proper place must be addressed. Every human being has an immortal soul, which in death is separated from the body, hoping for the resurrection of the dead (CCC 366). Death makes man's decision for or against God definite. Everyone has to face the particular judgement immediately after death (CCC 1021). Either a purification is necessary, or man goes directly into heavenly bliss and is allowed to see God face to face. There is also the dreadful possibility that a person will remain opposed to God to the very end, and by definitely refusing His Love, "condemns himself immediately and forever" (CCC 1022). “God created us without us, but He did not want to save us without us” (CCC 1847). The eternity of the punishment of hell is a terrible reality, which - according to the testimony of Holy Scripture - attracts all who “die in the state of mortal sin” (CCC 1035). The Christian goes through the narrow gate, for “the gate is wide, and the way that leads to ruin is wide, and many are upon it” (Mt 7:13).

To keep silent about these and the other truths of the Faith and to teach people accordingly is the greatest deception against which the Catechism vigorously warns. It represents the last trial of the Church and leads man to a religious delusion, “the price of their apostasy” (CCC 675); it is the fraud of Antichrist. “He will deceive those who are lost by all means of injustice; for they have closed themselves to the love of the truth by which they should be saved” (2 Thess 2:10).

Call

As workers in the vineyard of the Lord, we all have a responsibility to recall these fundamental truths by clinging to what we ourselves have received. We want to give courage to go the way of Jesus Christ with determination, in order to obtain eternal life by following His commandments (CCC 2075).

Let us ask the Lord to let us know how great the gift of the Catholic Faith is, through which opens the door to eternal life. “For he that shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation: The Son of Man also will be ashamed of him, when He shall come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38). Therefore, we are committed to strengthening the Faith by confessing the truth which is Jesus Christ Himself.

We too, and especially we bishops and priests, are addressed when Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, gives this admonition to his companion and successor, Timothy: “I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, Who shall judge the living and the dead, by His coming, and His kingdom: Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil thy ministry. Be sober.” (2 Tim 4:1-5).

May Mary, the Mother of God, implore for us the grace to remain faithful without wavering to the confession of the truth about Jesus Christ.

United in faith and prayer,

Gerhard Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 2012-2017

 

Editor's note: After this text was published, the cardinal's office submitted to CNA three amendments to the text originally submitted to CNA. Two were minor syntactical corrections. The third change replaced the word "to" with "cannot" in the following phrase: "just as all who are not properly disposed, to cannot receive the Holy Eucharist fruitfully (CCC 1457) because it does not bring them to salvation."

 

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

In The Innocents Abroad, published in1869, Mark Twain humorously narrates his travels thorough Europe and the Holy Land. He goes out of his way to praise the great hospitality that Catholic priests offered to any pilgrim traveling through 19th century Palestine. They readily welcomed all, whether they came “in rags or clad in purple.” Twain was pleasantly surprised by this, because, as he readily confesses, he had been “educated to enmity toward everything that is Catholic.” Enmity toward everything Catholic! Not a thing of the past.

Most recently, the hatred was aimed at one of the most charitable and benevolent group of individuals in this country, the Knights of Columbus. During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s review of Omaha-based lawyer Brian C. Buescher for the position of judge on the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, Senators Mazie Hirono, a democrat from Hawaii, and Kamala Harris, a democrat from California, grilled Buescher on his membership in the Knights of Columbus. In their questions, they boldly gave voice to an anti-Catholic prejudice in our society.

Hirono accused the Knights of having “taken a number of extreme positions.” And, what are those extreme positions to which she is so vehemently opposed? The Catholic teaching on marriage as a union established by God. The sanctity of human life. The rights of a child in the womb to take his or her place at the banquet of life. For many, when it comes to birthing a child, only a woman has rights. And, when it comes to marriage, only what an individual wants matters. In their eyes, God’s design for his creation cannot limit the freedom of anyone to choose as they wish. 

Holding to what the Catholic Church has always taught, according to their line of questioning, now disqualifies someone from public office. In effect, both senators were applying a religious test as a qualification for public office. Responding to this blatant attack on a man’s religion, on January 17, 2018, the United States Senate unanimously passed the resolution that disqualifying a member of the Knights of Columbus for a federal office actually violates the Constitution of the United States. Article VI of the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Sadly, this recent attack on Catholicism is not an isolated incident. Last September, Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed serious concern about the qualifications of Amy Barrett for a judgeship on the 7th Circuit. Feinstein is an unflinching supporter of abortion. It was no surprise that she zeroed in on Barrett’s position on Roe v. Wade. Because Barrett is a practicing Catholic who faithfully holds to Catholic teaching on this and other hot button issues, Feinstein remarked “in your case, professor…the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.” Clearly, the Senator sees no place for what the Catholic Church teaches on major moral and societal issues. 

It is becoming more and more obvious that the Catholic Church is being targeted as the public enemy of our society. Talk shows and news media attack the Catholic position on the right to life as misogyny and the Catholic teaching on marriage as intolerance and hatred. One can only wonder why those States that are investigating the Catholic Church on its record of protecting children are not looking into other public institutions. Why is there not a comparable investigation into their own school systems or other religious groups? Is the terrible crime of child abuse limited only to Catholics? Today’s media would even have people believe that abuse of minors is becoming more frequent within the Church. Patently false. But, too often facts do not matter when a villain is needed.

Those who advocate for the radical autonomy of the individual find in the Church an indomitable opponent. The Catholic Church stands firm in her teaching on contraception, abortion, stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, marriage and divorce. The Church teaches that every choice that touches on the gift of life and the beauty of marriage is judged by a law higher than the autonomy of the individual. And, for this reason, today’s secularists judge Catholics as public enemies to the good of the society they wish to construct. A society without God. A society without a future.

Almost every day, a politician or teacher or public speaker is lambasted for a statement that is judged to be homophobic, misogynistic, racist or anti-Semitic. In some cases, not even an apology can save their careers. Yet, a free pass is given by society to any anti-Catholic view or statement. Someone can make an insulting or slanderous remark about Catholics, Catholic teachings or the Church herself and emerge unscathed. In his essay on The Significance of Jacksonian Democracy, historian and Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., himself not a Catholic, made the often cited assertion that anti-Catholic prejudice is “the deepest bias in the history of the American people.” According to Baylor University professor Philip Jenkins, anti-Catholic prejudice is “the last acceptable prejudice.”
 

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

Beneath the soil of every continent lie buried the ruins of fallen civilizations. The Sumerians, Akkadians, Mayans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Minoans, Romans: all of them, faded memories of past grandeur and glory. History records the collapse of at least thirty-two major civilizations that once thrived and prospered before our time. 

No great civilization is built in a day. No great civilization disappears in a single instant. Historians try to explain how these civilizations once so great have slowly vanished into the dustbin of history. Weather, economics, population decline, wars, politics are some of the reasons that they offer. But, ultimately, a civilization disappears when it loses its identity, forfeits its unity and jettisons its commitment to the common good.

Today’s relentless front-page news reports of scandal and sin (many times, stale news served up as current), the incessant discord of our politicians, the unending string of acrimonious tweets, and the rage of angry voices make one wonder whether or not we are facing the decline of our own civilization. Has our unity as a nation become so fragmented that it cannot be repaired?

The TV sitcoms, the talk shows, the din of warring cable news channels do little to promote serious discourse. Rather, they seem at times to make us despair of receiving unbiased reporting. They hardly inspire us to respond to the gospel’s clarion call for truth, justice, compassion and charity. Have we lost our commitment to the common good? Are we in the midst of an unstoppable decline of our nation? 

Some say this is the age of tolerance. As a result, good and evil, right and wrong, vice and virtue, truth and error are accepted as equally valid. But, this is not the age of tolerance. Those who are pro-life are marginalized. Those who cherish and protect the life of the child waiting-to-be-born, the elderly and the terminally ill are branded as bigots, unwilling to show compassion to those suffering. Those who accept the sanctity of marriage and human sexuality as designed by the Creator are vilified. We live at a time when some are not only intolerant to our basic Christian values, but are actively engaged to silence Christians, target the Church and reduce her to ruins. 

In an age of relativism, has it become almost impossible to dialogue rationally on the major issues that face us, such as poverty, migration, and the sanctity of life itself ? “Relativism is the order of the day. Good and evil, right and wrong, innocence and guilt – all these binaries are deliberately confused as antipodal extremes are brought into artificial congruence. Moral clarity is muddled and logical cogency diluted. All inherent preference is suspended out of a misguided attempt to achieve balance where there is none” (Brandon Marlon, “The Decline and Fall of Modern Civilization: 8 Simple Steps to Squandering It All,” The Algemeiner, January 22, 2015).

From the Church, we receive a rich heritage of truth, morality and charity. We have solid and clear moral principles given to us by Jesus. These are the solid building blocks with which to construct a just and peaceful society. Could it be that we ourselves are slowly abandoning these principles? How is it possible that those trained in the Catholic faith assume leadership roles in government and then jettison their Catholic morals? How is it that any one of us can remain complacent to the slow moral deterioration of our country? 

Our country will not collapse if we refuse to hand over our future to those who deny the existence of God and live as if this world is all that there is. Our society will not collapse if we are courageous enough to draw on our moral and spiritual heritage to solve the issues that divide us. Our nation will not collapse if we remain true to our identity given to us by our Founding Fathers as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Our courage as moral individuals to stand for justice, truth and compassion is the antidote to the collapse of our country.
 

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher who lived four centuries before Christ, proposed the scientific theory of horror vacui. Based on his observations, he concluded that nature fills every empty space with something, even if it is only air. In his works Gargantua and Pantagruel, the Renaissance priest, doctor and scientist Rabelais popularized this idea with the phrase Natura abhorret vacuum (“nature abhors a vacuum”). Where there is a void, either mass or energy rushes in to occupy the empty space. In truth, this theory applies not merely to physics, but to life.

For the last thirty years, the secularization of culture and the banishing of God from the public forum have created a great religious void. More and more Americans have been abandoning the practice of religion. Since 1990, the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has tripled from eight percent to twenty-two percent. 

Today there are about five million fewer mainline Protestants and three million fewer Catholics than there were ten years ago. For every new convert to Catholicism, six others leave the Church. Young people between the ages of 18 and 30 are much less interested in religion than their parents. As Alan Cooperman, the director of religion research for the Pew Research Center, has observed, “the country is becoming less religious as a whole, and it’s happening across the board.”

Nonetheless, the human person is innately religious. More than just being a material creature on the same level as irrational animals, the human person has reason and is always in search of meaning. “Nature abhors a vacuum.” And, so into the void created by abandoning religion as a source of meaning, other forms of discovering meaning have rushed in. 

In an attempt to respond to the spiritual dimension of human life, some people are turning to New Age beliefs. New Age adherents, now nearly one-fourth of the population, have replaced the personal God of revelation with a spiritual energy that animates the cosmos. They are making use of crystals, tarot cards, astrology, psychics, and even yoga as a spiritual exercise to tap into this impersonal energy in order to manage their lives and find self-fulfillment. 

For New Age adherents, there is no absolute truth. All beliefs are of equal value. And, since they deny the existence of sin, they do not accept the need for a Redeemer. At best, New Age adherents trade the transcendental for the immanent, the spiritual for the physical. At worse, they reject God and unwittingly fall into the hands of the Adversary. 

And, then there are others who reject God and consciously choose to turn to one form or another of the occult. It is astounding to realize that there are almost 1.5 million people who are involved in Wicca, a pagan form of witchcraft. Ever since the Garden of Eden and our first parents’ sin of attempting to be like God, people have been looking for ways to have the same knowledge and power as God himself. Today there are more witches than Presbyterians, more people involved in the occult than there are Muslims in the United States. 

The more individuals extol themselves as self-sufficient and exalt reason over faith, they turn from God and enthrone Satan. Attempting to control their lives through the use of the occult, they hand themselves over to Satan who uses them to destroy the peace and harmony God plans for us. Satan is the great deceiver. He makes people believe that they have absolute control of their lives. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “[Satan’s] logic is simple: if there is no heaven there is no hell; if there is no hell, then there is no sin; if there is no sin, then there is no judge, and if there is no judgment, then evil is good and good is evil.”

It would be foolish to close our eyes to the unmistakable increase of the devil’s activity in our society. Lack of civility. Hate speech. The tearing down of people’s good name. The blood shed on our streets. The breakdown of family life. The widespread extolling of vices contrary to the gospel. The delight in exposing the sins of others. Abuse in all its forms. Abortion. The persecution of the Church. All these are born of anger, hatred, envy, pride, greed and lust. They cause division and are the fingerprints of the Evil One.

On the day after his election to the papacy, Pope Francis shocked the cardinals who had placed him on the Chair of Peter. He said, “Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil. When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil.” The Pope courageously acknowledged the reality of Satan that day and many other times thereafter. And the Pope provided the only way to banish the devil from our midst: professing faith in Jesus. Professing our faith means quite simply staying close to Jesus within the Church, attending Mass at least each Sunday and Holy Day, receiving the sacraments and practicing charity. In other words, the only permanent antidote to evil in the world is the presence of God who leaves in us no room for evil.

By Bishop W. Shawn McKnight

The November General Assembly of Bishops in Baltimore was a difficult but perhaps unavoidable experience for us to move forward as a Church. I was very disappointed to learn that the Holy See found it necessary to insist that the USCCB not take action at this time on the proposals presented by our conference leadership. My frustration, shared with many other people, is this: We have known about the scandal of Archbishop McCarrick since the end of June, and our Church must take immediate, decisive and substantive action in light of the deep wound the scandal has caused.

I am not so concerned about the time it is taking to punish the perpetrator. Pope Francis immediately required the Archbishop to resign from the College of Cardinals when Cardinal Dolan announced the New York review board found a credible and substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against him. I’m okay with the fact that further penalties (which could include McCarrick’s return to the lay state) will take more time for a complete canonical process. McCarrick isn’t going anywhere and he is already living a life of imposed prayer and penance.

But much more is needed than simply meting out a just punishment. How could his rise to such an influential position in the Church have happened? I am concerned how the national conference of bishops and the Holy See answer that question. An internal investigation of the McCarrick scandal without the use of competent and qualified lay investigators will hardly be considered transparent and credible. We need and must utilize the best and brightest people to do a top-notch investigation and study of the problem. Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta is the most qualified Catholic clergy to lead such an investigation, but without knowing that his collaborators include competent laity, the public may not perceive his eventual report as independent and complete enough to be believed.

At the time of this writing, there has not been one bishop, archbishop or cardinal in either the Holy See or the United States who has come forward on his own to repent publicly of his sins of omission or commission with regard to Archbishop McCarrick’s series of promotions over decades. Please, be men, not cowards, and come clean on your own! There doesn’t have to be a formal and long, drawn out investigation for a bishop to exercise a little compunction and concern for the well-being of the whole Church. An independent and transparent investigation is all the more necessary when culpable hierarchs exhibit an incapacity to do the right thing on their own.

The laity are the only ones who can keep the hierarchy accountable and get us out of the mess we bishops got ourselves into. My singular focus throughout the Baltimore meeting was to advocate and push for greater public involvement of the laity at all levels of the Church. Why can’t we have well qualified, nationally known and trusted lay experts named to the special task force announced by the president of the USCCB? We are too insular and closed in as a hierarchy, and so are some of our processes at the USCCB. The Second Vatican Council gave us not only the freedom but the obligation to utilize and engage the gifts and talents of the laity in the life and mission of the Church.

Beyond the McCarrick scandal, we have more work cut out for us with regard to putting into place protocols and institutional structures to build credibility in the hierarchy’s handling of sexual abuse cases going forward. History proves that we bishops are not capable of policing ourselves adequately on the issue of clergy sexual abuse. Why not include the laity to assist us with this problem? The document the Missouri Province of Bishops presented to the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People on Oct. 6 was intended to offer a set of principles for the USCCB to consider as it was developing proposals for the full body of bishops, including the involvement of the laity. We Missouri bishops wanted something valuable to come from our November meeting.

And so, I was disappointed that even the mild proposals up for consideration at the Baltimore meeting had to be pulled from a vote. It was a rather harsh reminder to me of what many lay people have been saying throughout our Diocese: We bishops are ineffectual in our attempts to address the problem of abuse of power by the hierarchy. The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People has had a marked impact on lowering the number of incidents of abuse by clergy since 2003. But with the aggravation of the McCarrick scandal, the laity and clergy are now rightfully asking that we get it all out, once and for all, and respond with an urgency that this crisis deserves. We literally have people dying because of the harm caused by predator clergy, and survivors of abuse are further victimized when we fail to take swift action. Seeing certain retired bishops who were notoriously responsible for covering up clergy sexual abuse at this year’s General Assembly in Baltimore as welcome guests was a slap in the face to all who have been wounded by the clergy. This example of episcopal arrogance and clericalism evidences the fact that we still don’t get the problem.

The whole Church is needed to solve our problem which the whole world knows about. What more do we have to hide? If we are going to move forward, we need to have authentic communion and a genuine synodal process. And this requires transparency and better communication between the clergy and the laity, between the USCCB and its own members, and between the USCCB and the Holy See. We need to become the Church Christ founded us to be.

Some of the most poignant comments I heard during the listening sessions in our Diocese were in response to the question asking for people’s dreams for their children and grandchildren. People spoke of a Church where their children and grandchildren would find the love, mercy and hope of Jesus Christ, a community filled by God’s graces and led by holy priests. Despite our current lethargy, I believe we are witnessing the rebirth and renewal of our Church in our day. And I feel very blessed to be part of that renewal with each of you. We are better together.

 

 

Bishop McKnight's column was first published at Making Connections, his column on the website of the Diocese of Jefferson City.

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

On the Mediterranean coast, half way between modern Tel Aviv to the north and Haifa to the south, stand the ruins of Caesarea Maritima, the magnificent city that Herod the Great built between 22 and 10 B.C. Herod’s palace, built on a promontory jutting out into the sea, was an engineering marvel. The city’s 40-acre harbor could accommodate 300 ships. The city boasted a hippodrome as well as a theater with a seating capacity of 3,500.

Caesarea Maritima was one of the most important cities in the world. It was the Roman capital from which Pontius Pilate ruled the province of Judea at the time of Jesus. Paul was imprisoned here. Deacon Philip lived here. And, for the first 300 years of Christianity, Caesarea became a center of faith and study that rivaled Alexandria and Antioch. Among its most famous Christians is Origen.

Origen (184 – 253 A.D.) was a teacher, scholar, preacher, apologist, and theologian. He has rightly been called “the greatest genius of the early Church.” Like St. Paul himself whose writings influenced all subsequent theology, Origen has had an unmistakable effect on the Church’s great thinkers for centuries. Among others, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Meister Eckhart all studied his writing. Origen’s allegorical interpretation of Scripture became the preferred method of explaining the Scriptures during the Middle Ages.

As a first-class philosopher and student of Sacred Scripture, he has earned himself the distinction of being the Church’s first biblical scholar. But, he did not limit his study to Sacred Scripture. He wrote on many different topics, including textual criticism, hermeneutics, theology, asceticism and homiletics. Origen’s principal work, De Principiis, was the first systematic exposition of Christian theology ever written. With the help of seven full-time secretaries, he produced more than two thousand works. So extensive were his writings that St. Jerome remarked, “Has anyone read everything that Origen wrote?”

The catechetical school that Origen established at Caesarea Maritima boasted the largest theological library of the day. It attracted such renowned scholars as St. Gregory Nazianzus, St. Basil the Great and St. Jerome. One of Origen’s students, Eusebius of Caesarea, earned the distinction of being “The Father of Church History.” Eusebius himself provides us into a glimpse of Origen’s personal life.

According to Eusebius, Origen not only worked assiduously defending the faith, but also he lived the faith in great simplicity. He owned only one coat. He wore no shoes. He ate sparingly. He slept on the floor. He spent the night studying and praying the Scriptures. In the words of Eusebius, “he taught as he lived and he lived as he taught.”

In the days of Origen, the Church herself had to face persecution, hostility and attacks from pagan philosophers. Even within the Church, there were the interminable battles on such important doctrines as the Trinity, the Divinity of Jesus and Redemption. While, in some instances, Origen may have not understood or explained the faith correctly, he nevertheless said, “I want to be a man of the Church … to be called … of Christ.”

What a great inspiration Origen is for anyone who may find it difficult when the Church faces challenges, questions, hostility, persecution and human failure. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, he writes: 

“The Church is being built out of living stones; it is in process of becoming a spiritual dwelling for a holy priesthood, raised on the foundations of apostles and prophets, with Christ as its chief cornerstone. Hence, it bears the name ‘temple.’…It is written: You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it. Thus even if the harmonious alignment of the stones should seem to be destroyed and fragmented and, as described in the twenty-first psalm, all the bones which go to make up Christ’s body should seem to be scattered by insidious attacks in persecutions or times of trouble, or by those who in days of persecution undermine the unity of the temple, nevertheless the temple will be rebuilt and the body will rise again on the third day, after the day of evil which threatens it…” From a commentary on John by Origen, priest (Tomus 10, 20: PG 14, 370-371).

With these words, Origen offers hope to those who become discouraged when they see the Church suffering, besieged and wounded by sin. Origen presents the Church as a building being constructed, a work in progress. And, he enlarges our understanding of the Church so that we see ourselves as her members, imperfect in ourselves, yet being perfected by the grace of God. As we look forward to “the third day,” the day of the final resurrection, we pray for the Church and try to advance her holiness by striving after holiness in our own imperfect lives.
 

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

One of the most famous figures of all English literature is the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Three times he appears in Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. He demands that his son settle accounts with his uncle who murdered the dead king. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Richard III, ghosts also appear. From the 3rd century B.C. Epic of Gilgamesh through Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Shakespeare and Dickens, ghosts populated the pages of literature. They have appeared in films and even starred in their own TV show, Ghost Hunters.

Are ghosts merely fictional? Do they really exist?  First Lady Grace Coolidge said that she saw Abraham Lincoln’s ghost looking out the window of the Oval Office. Many others have, likewise, reported sightings of the ghost of our 16th President at the White House. Among those claiming to have seen a spectral Lincoln are Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and President Reagan’s daughter Maureen.

Within the Old Testament, there is the famous incident of the ghost of the prophet Samuel. In 1 Samuel 28, King Saul is facing a fierce battle with the Philistines. He wants to know the outcome; and, so he consults the witch of Endor. The spirit of the dead prophet Samuel appears and predicts Saul’s imminent defeat and death. Some commentators say that Samuel came because God allowed him to come and speak on God’s behalf (cf. Sir 46:20). Other commentators consider this incident a demonic apparition. In either case, they accept the apparition.

The New Testament gives evidence that the disciples of Jesus believed in the reality of ghosts. After the miracle of the loaves and fish, “when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea, they were terrified. ‘It is a ghost,’ they said, and they cried out in fear” (Mt 14:26). When the Risen Lord appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday, “they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have’ ” (Lk 24:37-39). 

The word “ghost” simply means “spirit.” It refers to the spirit of a deceased person who has made himself or herself present to the living. According to polls taken in the last ten years, almost forty-two percent of Americans believe in ghosts. According to a recent poll, almost thirty percent of Americans say they have been in touch with someone who has died.

Stories about contact with the dead continue to fascinate us. They provoke the imagination. They manifest our awareness that there is more to reality than the physical world which we empirically experience. These reports of the spirits of those who have died clearly suggest personal survival after death. 

In her wisdom, the Church rightly condemns consulting mediums to be in touch with the dead. In fact, “all forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to ‘unveil’ the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2116).

As Catholics, we hold that, at death, we face an immediate judgment of our lives. If we are in the state of perfect charity, we go to heaven. If we die in the state of mortal sin (God forbid!), we suffer eternal estrangement from God in hell. And, those of us who die in the state of grace, but not in perfect charity, undergo a purification of love in purgatory before we come into the presence of God. In a word, death is not the end of our personal existence. Nor does the Grim Reaper sever our relationships with each other. All tales of ominous specters appearing from beyond the grave pale before the brilliant truth of the Risen Christ who leaves the tomb empty and joins the living and the dead in one holy Communion of Saints where we assist each other with our prayers!
 

The "jewel of La Masia", Ansu Fati scored his first Barcelona goal aged just 16 on Saturday.

Which players have the most appearances and goals? Which club have dominated? Find out here.

Watch the pick of the action from the sixth season of the UEFA Youth League.

Young players from the four teams taking part in the UEFA Youth League finals in Nyon have been given important insights into financial planning and the video assistant referee (VAR) system at an education session.

The UEFA Youth League's relevance is emphasised by the list of talented young players who have graduated from the junior competition to star at the very top of the game.

Tickets are on sale for April's finals in Nyon – your chance to see the stars of tomorrow.

See where to watch selected matches in the UEFA Youth League on TV around the world.

Holders Barcelona, fellow two-time winners Chelsea, Porto and debutants Hoffenheim won their quarter-finals to reach Nyon.

Holders Barcelona and fellow two-time winners Chelsea are among the teams through from the round of 16.

Tottenham, Chelsea, Hertha Berlin, Dinamo Zagreb, Midtjylland, Dynamo Kyiv,, Montpellier and Lyon are through.

Ajax, Atlético, Barcelona, Hoffenheim, Liverpool, Manchester United, Porto and Real Madrid topped their groups to reach the last 16.

Chelsea, Hertha, Montpellier, Midtjylland, PAOK, Sigma, Dinamo Zagreb and Dynamo Kyiv are into the play-offs.

The format, the dates, the key contenders: all you need to know about the competition's sixth edition.

The 64 entrants are confirmed, 32 in the UEFA Champions League path and 32 in the domestic champions path to be drawn on Tuesday.

UEFA Youth League matches were streamed live on UEFA.com this season; check out the best of the action.

Chelsea and Barcelona contested the 2018 UEFA Youth League final in Nyon on Monday.

The UEFA Youth League final between Chelsea and Barcelona will be screened around the world thanks to UEFA's broadcast partners and live-streamed in our MatchCentre in unsold markets.

The official programme of the 2018 UEFA Youth League finals weekend is filled with interviews, statistics, team profiles and much more. Get your free copy now.

Manchester City defeated Liverpool on penalties to set up a semi-final with Barcelona, victors at Atlético Madrid, while Porto beat Tottenham Hotspur and face Chelsea, who won at Real Madrid.

Real Madrid, Chelsea, Liverpool, Atlético Madrid, Tottenham and Porto won their round of 16 ties on Wednesday to join Barcelona and Manchester City in the quarter-finals.

"A natural-born striker" according to his coach at Krasnodar, ex-USSR star Igor Shalimov, Ivan Ignatyev is top scorer in this season's UEFA Youth League.

The eight group stage winners and eight play-off victors discovered their UEFA Youth League round of 16 opponents when the draw was made on Friday.

Real Madrid last night edged past Krasnodar in the UEFA Youth League with a 3-0 win on penalties, falling just short of the record for lowest scoring shoot-outs. We look at the spot-kick records.

A competition-record crowd of 32,510 watched Krasnodar take Real Madrid to penalties in their UEFA Youth League play-off, the Spanish side eventually winning 3-0 on spot-kicks.

"He is the future," Yaya Touré said of his 17-year-old Manchester City team-mate Phil Foden, whose midfield menace has earned him the nickname 'The Baby Shark'.

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

Some the most breathtaking scenery in the United States is found throughout Upper New York and northward to the St. Lawrence Seaway.      Two famous pilgrimage shrines are located in this area and deserve special attention for their historic and religious significance.  In this country, October 19th is the feast of the North American Martyrs. First, some history.

New France

In the seventeenth century, French authorities sent a number of expeditions to conduct fur trading in this territory and named it New France.  Soon, French Jesuit missionaries followed to minister to their own and to convert the Native Americans to the Catholic faith. Today this direct form of proselytism toward a native people would be considered out of step with ecumenical norms.

The Jesuit missions began their work early in the 1630s. Our story picks up twelve years later with eight French Jesuits who were martyred while working among these Native Americans.  Here is their story.

The Huron Indians

By the seventeenth century, the Huron Indians, who belonged to the Iroquois Federation, had developed a fairly high way of life. They spoke in the Wendat language, and their religious beliefs had been fixed for years.  Perhaps the Jesuits did not fully appreciate this fact. The Hurons encountered both the Dutch and the French. The Dutch were primarily merchants who established trading posts at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson; the French came south from present-day Quebec to establish fur trading posts.

Jesuit Relations: Instructions to the French Jesuit Missionaries

Much of what we know about the Jesuits’ work among the Hurons was recorded in annual reports, “Jesuit Relations,” written by Fathers Paul LeJeune, S.J. and Paul Ragueneau, S.J.  The “Relations” gave the Jesuits a long list of practical instructions to be followed when ministering to the Hurons.  Three of the many are:

“You must have sincere affection for the Savages, looking upon them as ransomed by the blood of the Son of God, and as our brethren, with whom we are to pass the rest of our lives.”

“You must so conduct yourself as not to be at all troublesome to even one of these Barbarians.”

“You must bear with their imperfections without saying a word, yes, even without seeming to notice them.  Even if it be necessary to criticize anything, it must be done modestly, and with words and signs which evince love and not aversion.  In short, you must try to be, and to appear, always cheerful.”    

By 1642, Father Isaac Jogues, S.J., leader of the missionary group, planned to work among the Hurons along the south side of the Mohawk River from east to west. It was only natural for the Native Americans to resent the overtures of the missionaries despite the respect given to them. Why would “black-robed” foreigners want to change their way of life and their religious beliefs? Suspicious, they eventually blamed the Jesuits for the outbreak of small pox and other diseases.
 
At various times, between1642-1649, the Jesuits were brutally tortured – accused as witch doctors.  Most of them were bludgeoned to death under the tomahawk.  

First Group of Jesuit Missionaries

The first group of French Jesuits answered the call to minister in this region.  These included Father Isaac Jogues, and two donnés, René Goupil and John Lalande.  Due to deafness, Goupil could not be ordained a Jesuit but was trained as a doctor and surgeon.  After years of ministering to the Indians along the St. Lawrence River, Jogues and Goupil were captured.  Goupil was the first of the eight to be martyred – he was bludgeoned to death.  

For thirteen months, Jogues lingered from brutal torture. Knowing that his index fingers and thumbs were essential to the celebration of Mass, his captives mangled them.

Curiously enough, his escape to France prompted a desire to return to his mission.  Accompanied by John de Lalande, the nineteen-year old donné, Jogues returned to the Mohawk Mission in New York. With papal approval, he celebrated Mass even with stubs as fingers.  On his return to the region, he resumed his work but was soon tortured again.  This time he succumbed.  The date was October 18th, 1646.  Lalande himself was killed the next day.  

Second Group of Jesuit Missionaries

The second group of Jesuits was martyred within the confines of Midland at Martyrs’ Shrine, Sainte Marie. In 1635, Father Anthony Daniel founded the first Huron Boys’ College in Quebec and worked among the Hurons for twelve years until, on July 4th, 1648, still wearing Mass vestments, he was attacked as he ended the celebration of Mass.  His martyred body was thrown into the flames of the burning church.  

The thirty-three year old, Father Jean de Brébeuf was a gifted linguist and mastered the Huron language. Gentle in manner, massive in body, it is said he had the heart of a giant.  Like Brébeuf, Father Gabriel Lalemant was a gifted scholar, professor and college administrator, but unlike Brébeuf, his body was frail.  Eventually both were captured, tied to stakes and underwent one of the worst martyrdoms ever recorded in history. The Jesuit Relations describes in detail how grisly were their tortures: “The Indians dismembered their hearts and limbs while they were still alive, and feasted on their flesh and blood” (L. Poulot, “North American Martyrs,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 507).

Brébeuf suffered for three hours before dying on March 16th, 1649. Lalemant died the next morning.   Father Charles Garnier was assigned to the Huron mission at Sainte Marie for thirteen years and then to the mission at Saint Jean.  He was beloved by his congregants, but in 1649, was tomahawked to death about thirty miles from Sainte Marie.

Father Noël Chabanel, S.J.

Perhaps the saddest and most poignant story of all is reserved for twenty-eight year old Father Noël Chabanel who was assigned to work with Father Charles Garnier.  Though he was a brilliant professor of rhetoric and humanism at home in southern France, he had no ear whatsoever for the Huron language. Plagued by a sense of uselessness, he was convinced that his ministry had failed. Feeling a strong repugnance to the life and habits of the Huron, and fearing it might result in his own withdrawal from the work, he bound himself by vow never to leave the mission. Today, in all likelihood, superiors would frown on this extreme position. Chabanel was martyred on December 8, 1649, by a “renegade” Huron.  Yet to the end, he persevered in his missionary activity.

In 1930, Pius XI canonized the North American Martyrs.  The Canadian Catholic Church celebrates their feast day on September 26th.    

The Shrines at Midland and Auriesville

Because the two shrines are not far from one another, they are popular places to visit at the same time during the summer months or during October when the fall foliage is at its peak period. Martyrs’ Shrine at Midland has a church and museum that feature seventeenth-century maps, songs written by Brébeuf, a history of the shrine, and the stories of the Canadian martyrs. It offers the pilgrim a walking tour to get a sense of how the Jesuits lived, worked, and prayed among the Huron Indians.  One can see the simulated rustic village that comprised a chapel, living quarters, and classroom where the Jesuits carried out their apostolates.

The shrine at Auriesville has a similar layout.  One of its most popular features is the expansive outdoor Stations of the Cross, a familiar feature of Jesuit retreat houses.  There is a large auditorium which seats 6,000 pilgrims.

“The Blood of the Martyrs … the Seed of the Church”

From the earliest days of Christianity, martyrdom for the faith has always been part of the Christian psyche. It was understood that those who openly professed their faith might have to suffer for this pearl of great price. But, it was better to stay alive.

When the missionaries were assigned to work in New France, martyrdom could not be ruled out, just as danger and death cannot be ruled out for policemen or firefighters.  Missionaries were expected to die for the sake of Christ, though they did not seek it out. It is a stark reality that remains a constant for missionaries today. But let us not forget that there are so many ways to be martyred, real and metaphorical.

The North American Martyrs were high-minded men, cultured, refined, and well educated.  For them, the savage, bloody road of martyrdom was transformed into a way of beauty, a road that remains sacred ground.  Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine at Auriesville and Martyrs’ Shrine at Midland are among the most frequently-visited pilgrimage sites in the world – both sacred ground.  Those who do visit them are disposed to receive special favors from the saints for whom the shrines are named.  It is said that during her lifetime, Dolores Hope, wife of comedian Bob Hope, made a pilgrimage to Auriesville almost every year.

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

He’s been dubbed: “The Poet-Philosopher of Baseball,” “A Voice for the Ages,” “The Velvet Voice.” He’s been compared to Walter Cronkite, Mark Twain, and Garrison Keilor.  

In 1982, the Hollywood Walk of Fame honored him with a star among the Greats of stardom in the same year the National Baseball Hall of Fame enshrined his name among the Greats of baseball.

Vin Scully may be the very model of sartorial perfection, but it’s not the wardrobe that has endeared him to baseball for sixty-seven years. It’s his deep baritone voice and the power of his words.

A Catholic Education

There’s much to be said for childhood dreams.  At eight, when he wrote an assignment about his future, Vin imagined himself as a sports commentator. That dream has come true.

Vin Scully was born in the Bronx, N.Y. and received his elementary school education from the Sisters of Charity.  At Fordham Prep and Fordham University, both conducted by the Jesuits, his eager mind opened itself wide to the liberal arts, to Latin and Greek, science, literary and refining arts. He acted in plays, engaged in debate, learned to read and write well, and above all, to speak well; this is eloquentia perfecta, the hallmark of Jesuit education. When his head was not in books, he took up menial jobs to make ends meet delivering beer, pushing garment racks, and cleaning silver in the basement of the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City. Vin Scully, the Renaissance man graduated from Fordham in 1949 with a major in communications.

With the Brooklyn Dodgers

In 1947, baseball executive Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to play infield on the Brooklyn Dodgers team.  Against a tide of opposition, Rickey was determined to integrate the ball club.  Against a tide of opposition, the all-round athlete broke the color barrier in major league baseball at a great personal cost to him and his wife Rachel.  If you wanted to see electricity personified, you went to Ebbets Field where you could fix your eyes on Jackie at home plate and on the base pads tantalizing the opposing team.  There was nothing like it.  Said Rickey, “There was never a man in the game who could put mind and muscle together quicker than Jackie Robinson.”

Three years later, a twenty-two year old Vin Scully joined veteran Dodgers announcers, Red Barber and Connie Desmond to complete the broadcasting team.  As the rookie, Scully was assigned to announce only two innings.  Before long, he was announcing World Series games. He was not yet thirty.

Scully called Jackie Robinson “perhaps the most exciting, most driven player I’ve ever seen.” He spoke fondly of two other players:  “Gil Hodges was probably my all-time favorite.  He was as straight an arrow as they come.”  Duke Snider was “a true star. Subject to teasing from teammates. Great talent.”

When, in 1955, the Brooklyn ‘Bums’ won their only World Series, Scully stood and proclaimed: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Brooklyn Dodgers are the champions of the world.”

Heartbreak in Brooklyn

In 1957, the Dodgers relocated from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.  For years, Walter O’Malley, the team’s major co-owner, had been searching for a more suitable land on which to build a new ballpark. When he and Robert Moses, the controversial construction coordinator of New York City, could not agree on a real estate price for a new Brooklyn location, O’Malley lost no time in accepting the offer of Los Angeles officials to purchase land suitable for building the ballpark he had wanted to build in Brooklyn.  Their departure triggered a virtual depression in Brooklyn.  The fans lost not only their team but also their beloved announcer.  Scully had pledged his loyalty to the team and followed them to Los Angeles.  

When, in 1959, the Los Angeles Dodgers honored Roy Campanella, one of the stars on the Brooklyn team, he was wheeled onto the field for a ceremony of lighting candles in his honor.  (He had been injured in a car accident leaving him paralyzed.) Vin Scully stood, and in tribute, spoke these memorable words:

“The lights are now starting to come out, like thousands and thousands of fireflies, starting deep in center field, glittering to left, and slowly, the entire ballpark. A sea of lights at the Coliseum. Let there be a prayer for every light, and wherever you are, maybe you, in silent tribute to Roy Campanella, can also say a prayer for his well-being. Campanella, for thousands of times, made the trip to the mound to help somebody out: a tired pitcher, a disgusted youngster, a boy perhaps who had his heart broken in the game of baseball. And tonight, on his last trip to the mound, the city of Los Angeles says hello.”

Honorary Doctorate from Alma Mater

In May, 2000, Vin Scully received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Fordham University. In his address to the graduates, he shared some memories of his years at Fordham.  . . . “I was once you.  I walked the halls you walked.  I sat in the same classrooms.  I took the same notes and sweated out the final exams.  I played sports on your grassy fields. I hit a home run here—in Jack Coffey Field against CCNY—the only one I ever hit.”

Fordham, he said, evoked three words for him: home, love and hope. Home, because he spent eight years at Fordham both in the preparatory school and as an undergraduate. Love, because he made lifelong friends, and hope because Fordham is where his dreams thrived.

He urged all present “to take some time away from the craziness around you to foster the things that are important. Don’t let the winds blow away your dreams or your faith in God. And remember, sometimes your wildest dreams come true.”

In presenting the award, Michael T. Gillan, dean of Fordham College of Liberal Studies, noted that “when Jesuit schoolmasters developed their plan of studies in the 16th and 17th centuries, they defined “the goal of Jesuit education as eloquentia perfecta … which connotes a mastery of expression that is informed by good judgment and consistent principles. Those Jesuit schoolmasters of another age, if they had known anything about baseball, would certainly have approved the rhetorical gifts of the man who has been the voice of the Dodgers for the past fifty-one years, Vincent E. Scully.”

The Scully Anaphora

For years, every Scully broadcast has repeated the same avuncular opening:  “It’s time for Dodger baseball! Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant afternoon/evening to you, wherever you may be. Pull up a chair and relax;” The poet-philosopher announced the games painting vivid word pictures with his musical voice, tinged with Irish inflection.

Scully held himself to three rules:  Avoid criticizing managers and umpires; keep your personal opinions to yourself; avoid using clichés to describe a play. The Scully trademark, he insists, is silence—silence to allow the roar of the crowd to touch the listening audience.

Scully in His Own Words     

There are numerous quotes attributed to Mr. Scully. In describing Tom Glavine as a strike-out pitcher, he mused: “He’s like a tailor, a little off here, a little off there, and you’re done, take a seat.” The talent of Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals amazed Scully:  “How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away.”

Vin was known to spin some philosophy out of the play at the moment.  In 1991, he remarked: “Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day (Pause).  Aren’t we all?”  

Then there were his philosophical quips: “Good is not good enough when better is expected.” “Statistics are used much like a drunk who uses a lamp post—for support, not illumination.” “Losing feels worse than winning feels good.”     

One day, when Vin joked that Joe Torre might be apprehensive about returning from third base to catcher after getting hit by a foul tip.  “If he were apprehensive, Torre would forever be known as “Chicken Catcher Torre.”  At this, the crowd groaned.

Awards

Listed among Vin Scully’s many awards are:
1976 Most Memorable Personality in L.A. Dodger history by Dodger fans
1982 Induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame as the Ford C. Frick Award recipient.
Four times, voted as the country’s Outstanding Sportscaster.  
Twenty-two times voted, as California Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.
2009  NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame
2009  Ambassador Award of Excellence by the LA Sports & Entertainment Commission
2014 The Gabriel Personal Achievement Award from the Catholic Academy of Communication Professionals.

Personal Life

Vin Scully has not been one to wear his feelings in the open.  Yet, he has experienced two family tragedies.  In 1972, after fifteen years of married life, his wife died from an accidental medical overdose.  The next year, his thirty-three old son Michael was killed in a helicopter crash while working for the ARCO Transportation Company.  A chemist, he was inspecting oil pipelines for leaks near Fort Tejon.

Vin credits his strong Roman  Catholic  faith for helping him cope with family grief and then to resume his work as an announcer. “As long as you live,” he reflects, “keep smiling because it brightens everybody’s day.”

The Final Inning

The longevity of Vin Scully’s baseball life has drawn to a conclusion.  As part of a conference call before the Dodgers played the Giants on Sept 19th, Scully he spoke about all the attention he had received in the closing days of his long career: “First of all, I attribute it to one thing and one thing only,” Scully reflected, “God’s Grace to allow me to do what I’ve been doing for 67 years. To me, that’s really the story. Not really me, I’m just a vessel that was passed hand-to-hand, down through all those years. So I don’t take it to heart as some great compliment. I just realize that because I’ve been doing this for 67 years, that’s why everybody wants to talk about it. So I think I’ve kept it in proper perspective” (Courtesy of MLB Network).

Finally, a favorite Irish prayer and blessing from Mr. Scully:

May God give you for every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life send,]
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song
And an answer for each prayer.

Dear Mr. Scully, ad multos annos.

 

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

It’s a wonderful phenomenon—yeast.  It permeates lifeless flour and causes it to rise and expand.  The power of yeast effects the brewing of beer and the making of wine.   The yeast plant is a fungus that grows without limits to its borders.  Only if yeast is alive and active will it interact with the dough.

On her TV program, “Martha Bakes,” the talented Ms. Stewart cannot contain her delight when she makes yeast dough: “Look at the sheen—so soft and shiny! The aroma is “bee-you-tee-ful,” and the fragrance gratifies all the senses!” Follow these instructions: proof active yeast, blend it into the flour mixture, and let it rise to double the size.  From yeast dough come baked goods such as breads, sticky buns and sugar buns, and monkey bread.  “Soo pretty, soo delicious,” Ms. Stewart swoons over her culinary works of art.

Yeast as a Metaphor

In the Matthean parable (13:33), the reign of God is like yeast that a woman took and kneaded into three measures of flour.  Eventually the entire mass of dough began to rise.  The image of yeast was a favorite in the Early Church.  Everyone understood the inner power of yeast with its limitless ability to make things grow, even in small beginnings with “three measures of flour.”  They grasped the comparison.  The yeast referred to the Church as an unlimited and growing reality, “destined ultimately to be present everywhere and to affect everything, though by no means to convert everything into itself” (Walter J. Ong, “Yeast: A Parable for Catholic Higher Education,” America Magazine, April 7, 1990).  The Church is catholic because it has always been expanding into new and shiny ‘dough’ without limit. Katholicos, from kata or kath and holos, means “through-the-whole or “throughout-the-whole.”

The Laity: Worldly and Yet Unworldly    

The laity are catholic, yeast in business and finance, entertainment, nursing and medicine, arts and science, law and law enforcement, politics, and sports.  They are the inner power with its limitless ability to make things grow, even in small ways. The laity find their holiness in the world with its financial concerns and family responsibilities.  Those who marry and have children become not just a family but also the Domestic Church.

In 1987, the Catholic Church held a World Synod on the Laity, one of many, beginning with Vatican II in the 1960s.  According to the synod’s final document, the laity are equal with clergy and consecrated religious in the life and mission of the Church.  

The call to holiness of the laity differs from the vocation of consecrated religious.  The laity are to be in the world in an unworldly way.  They approach life with wisdom that teaches the limited and relative value of material things. This would seem to be a contradiction in terms.  How to be worldly and unworldly at the same time?   It cannot be easy, for at times, the challenges seem insurmountable.  Yet, it remains for the lay vocation to find a theology of being present in the world. It is a practical spirituality of the family and the workplace.  For the laity, this is where holiness resides.*  

Holiness of the Laity

The holiness of the laity began with Jesus himself.  He was a rabbi and teacher, as were his disciples. Peter was a married man, and for all we know, so were the other apostles, the exception being John, the Beloved Disciple.  

St. Paul addresses and refers to those he evangelized as ‘saints,’ meaning that they were on their way to becoming saints.  In the Early Church, there were no consecrated institutes of men and women.  All Christians grasped the importance of living as disciples and ambassadors of the Lord.

As increasing numbers of Christians came to view the world as wicked, they flocked to the desert to live alone. When the desert grew so overcrowded with these solitaries, they came together and formed religious communities.  Thus, the start of monastic orders of men and women.

Prayer

Consecrated men and women, and especially those who live in cloisters, spend several hours a day in prayer.

This is not the way of the laity. Their days focus almost entirely on family and the means of supporting it.  Their prayer is measured not in hours but in minutes—two here, five there, perhaps a Holy Hour or Retreat Day on rare occasions.

The conciliar document on the sacred liturgy encourages Catholic families to pray portions of the Liturgy of the Hours (#102-111).  The Hours are not private or devotional prayer but the prayer of the entire Church, the Church at prayer.  Praying the psalms nourishes Catholic family life whose welfare is daily beset with conflicting external forces. If prayer is the underlying power of strong family life, then parents can find ways to incorporate parts of the Hours into their daily schedule. In prayer, married couples derive the strength of God’s grace to live their married vocation.  

As children mature, they too must learn to travel the road to discipleship in the Lord.  Small children can be taught to pray a psalm or two at bed time. If this is not feasible during the week, then prayer on weekend is an alternate possibility.  

A minimal and external Christianity will not fortify today’s Domestic Church but only a vibrant Christianity in which Christ is a living reality.  It takes a few minutes to pray short sections of the Hours, even on public transit.  It is a consoling thought to recall that “in him, we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  

At Pre-Cana instructions, couples can learn the practice of making the Hours an integral part of their married life.

Can Yeast Corrupt?

The image of yeast is not always positive.  In First Corinthians 5:6-8, St. Paul mentions what all Jews understood.  At the Paschal festival time, they were to destroy all yeasted products because leaven was a metaphor for the corruptive influence of evil, for puffing up the self, leaving no room for God.   

Proofing the yeast in warm water will yield bubbles around the surface, and the yeast will become puffed up if it does not interact with the flour dough.  The puffed up yeast will die.  In this sense, neither the laity, nor any minister in the Church, can afford to be puffed up with pride.

Élisabeth Leseur (1866-1914) and Félix Leseur (1861-1950)

The story of Élisabeth Arrighi Leseur exemplifies the limitless power of marital love.  Élisabeth was born into a wealthy French Catholic family of Corsican descent.  As a child, she had contracted hepatitis, a disease from which she suffered all her life.  At twenty-one, she met Félix Leseur, a medical doctor, who also came from an affluent Catholic family.  Shortly before they were to be married, Élisabeth discovered that Félix was no longer a practicing Catholic.  Soon he became well known as the editor of an anti-clerical, atheistic newspaper.  

Despite the circumstances, the couple married, for Élisabeth was deeply in love with Félix.  They were unable to have children, a fact that made their marriage all the more difficult.  His attack on her religious devotion prompted an even more serious fidelity to the faith. She bore the brunt of his hatred of the Church with patient love.  At thirty-two years of age, Élisabeth experienced the grace to a deeper form of prayer.  She was convinced that her task now was to love her husband and pray for his conversion while remaining steadfast during his taunts against religion, and the Church in particular.

Homebound and Bed-Ridden

Élisabeth’s deteriorating health forced her to lead a sedentary life.  She received visitors and was able to conduct a vibrant apostolate from the confines of her home.  She became a devotee of St. Francis de Sales who wrote for the layperson in the seventeenth century. His Introduction to the Devout Life, perhaps the most famous spiritual guide of all time, is an offshoot of the Ignatian Exercises. During this period, Élisabeth kept a secret spiritual diary.  

When, at the age of forty-five, Élisabeth underwent surgery and radiation for the removal of a malignant tumor, she recovered and continued to receive visitors to her home. Three years later, she succumbed to cancer.  Her life has been recommended for sainthood. Why?  We turn the page to continue the narrative of her husband.

Dr. Félix Leseur

After Élisabeth’s death, Félix found a note addressed to him.  Not only did it predict his conversion, but he would also become a Dominican priest.  His hatred of the Church prompted him to expose her note as a fake, and he decided to do so at Lourdes, the famous Marian shrine in France.  There, something prevented him from carrying out his intended project—call it God’s intervening grace. As Élisabeth had predicted, he experienced a conversion and published her spiritual journal.  In 1919, Félix entered the Dominican Order, was ordained a priest four years later, and spent his remaining years speaking about his wife’s difficult yet remarkable life with him.  

In 1924, the future Archibishop Fulton J. Sheen made a retreat under Fr. Leseur’s direction.  It was at this time that he learned of Élisabeth’s life and her husband’s conversion.  In 1934, Fr. Leseur, O.P. worked to begin the cause for her canonization, and the Archbishop shared the story of this remarkable married couple in many presentations.  Élisabeth is currently a Servant of God, the first step in the cause for sainthood.

Élisabeth Leseur’s suffering was not wasted. On the contrary, her lifelong devotion to Félix was central to his conversion.  She became the yeast that permeated the lifeless soul of her husband.  It forever transformed his life so that he could affect change in the lives of others. Love begets love.

*The Ignatian “Prayer for Finding God in All Things” by Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. can help the busy person find God throughout the day.  Copies are available from the Institute of Jesuit Sources, Boston, MA.

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

Everyone has a theory about leadership, but all of us want strong, effective, and moral leaders. They’re in great demand but hard to find. Families and schools, sports teams, businesses, and faith traditions rise or fall on leadership. Governments, armies, and nations rise or fall on leadership. According to James MacGregor Burns, historian and political scientist, leadership is “the process by which groups, organizations, and societies attempt to achieve common goals.”

Political leadership is a matter of personality, and it concerns the relation of authority and power with the people. Yet, within this definition lies a mysterious and mercurial quality known as temperament—the most difficult characteristic to gauge in a leader, the most challenging to pin down.  Different leadership styles and different temperaments produce varying degrees of success or failure, a topic requiring lengthy discussions.

In this essay, we will consider three aspects of leadership: personal and professional qualities of leaders, vision, and decision-making.

Personal and Professional Qualities of Leaders

To paraphrase the Hallmark motto: The nation should care enough to elect the very best men and women with proven effective leadership, strength of character, and moral probity.

Character

Leaders should reflect on a key question: Who must I be, and what must I do to bring about and advance the vision I have for the common good?  Having learned the art of self-discipline, strong leaders are master listeners, master communicators, and masters of their emotions.  Honesty lives at the core of their moral compass; it undergirds and supports the public trust. Strong, effective, and moral leaders speak the truth to themselves and to others without shaving it.  

On the eve of Britain’s entrance into World War II, Winston Churchill delivered the stark and sobering truth to a nation in distress:  “I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”  

George Washington was acclaimed for his integrity, wisdom, and astounding courage on the battlefield, and Nelson Mandela, as a “colossus of unimpeachable character.”

Rose Kennedy was not a public figure but the matriarch of a family of political leaders.  She inspired thousands of men and women through her courage in the face of so many family tragedies.

The Burmese-Myanmar politician, statesperson, and author Aung San Suu Kyi has inspired women throughout the world for her courage to withstand fifteen years of house arrest by the authorities who considered her an enemy of the state.  She writes in Freedom from Fear: “It is not power that corrupts but fear.  Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”  

Communication Skills

Effective leaders have the ability to communicate clearly and persuasively. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a charismatic patrician. With his clear sense of noblesse oblige, he led the country through the Great Depression.  From his struggle with polio, he learned to empathize with others.  Roosevelt’s fireside chats gave him a direct, personal, and immediate contact with the country.  He simplified his grand-scale programs capped by the motto, “The New Deal” which gave jobs to the millions of unemployed roaming the streets in despair.

As a sickly child and young adult, President John F. Kennedy spent many solitary hours with books.  The breadth of his reading history and politics, literature, science, travel, and biography served as one source of his eloquence, whether in prepared speeches or presented spontaneously.  His press conferences became the stuff of conversation pieces in Washington. The press corps was riveted as much on Kennedy’s oratory as on his responses to questions. Here was a master communicator thoroughly enjoying his own press conferences.

Winston Churchill’s strongest quality as a leader was his ability to inspire others, despite the ominous circumstances Britain was facing during his tenure as Prime Minister.  The source of this ability lay in his own character—and of course his ability to find the right words to fit the country’s mood.  On the eve of World War II in 1940, Churchill declared before the House of Commons: “We shall go on to the end.  We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.  We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”  Labor MP Josiah Wedgwood promptly responded:  “That was worth 1,000 guns, and the speeches of 1,000 years.”  

In April 1963, when President Kennedy made Churchill an Honorary Citizen of the United States—Churchill’s mother was an American—the President offered this word of praise: “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”  

Sense of Humor

Strong leaders have a developed sense of humor that may enhance their Office.  “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it,” declared the President in the spring of 1961 on their visit to France.  

Acerbic wit was never far from President Lincoln’s lips or from Winston Churchill’s.  In a letter to his good friend, Joshua F. Speed, Lincoln wrote, “When the Know-Nothings get control, it [the Declaration of Independence] will read: 'All men are created equal except negroes, foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”  Regarding his pro-slavery opponents Lincoln declared, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

One evening as a tired and wobbly Churchill was leaving the House of Commons, the Labor MP Bessie Braddock accused him of being disgustingly drunk.” He replied: “Bessie, my dear, . . . you are disgustingly ugly.  But tomorrow I shall be sober, and you will still be disgustingly ugly.”

Vision

Leaders have vision, a quality that conceives of an idea or sees a picture into the future before others can visualize it.  St. Ignatius of Loyola chose and trained leaders who would be affable, attractive, and persuasive messengers of his vision and not those who were rich or powerful.  

In Back to Methuselah, George Bernard Shaw wrote: “You dream dreams and say “Why?”  But I dream dreams that never were and say “Why not?”  His words were paraphrased by Robert F. Kennedy in his 1968 campaign for the presidential nomination.    Transformative leaders can rouse a nation to action when their goals are persuasive. They articulate a shared raison d’être in words such as the Rev. Martin L. King, Jr. orated in his “I have a dream” speech.”  He asked men and women to dream today and tomorrow of a better America.

In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy put his vision this way: “And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” He simplified this vision in the motto: “The New Frontier.”  This phrase encompassed pursuits in science and the arts, foreign affairs, race and inequality.  He invited the country to become pioneers on this noble quest.  Soon the Peace Corps appealed to the generosity and self-sacrifice of American youth to serve all over the world.    

It is no small thing for leaders to touch our hearts and minds by appealing to “the better angels of our nature,” a phrase of Charles Dickens which Lincoln quoted in his First Inaugural Address.

Decision-Making

Leaders make decisions throughout the course of a day or over a longer period of time.  Some decisions are so consequential they can change the public image of an organization.  Such was the case with a decision taken at Vatican II regarding the fate of Gregorian chant.  At the close of the Council, it was hastily whisked away from parish Masses in North America, though it was kept alive in a few monasteries. Popular songs, accompanied by thumping guitars and percussive bongo drums, hastily replaced it.  Latin gave way to the vernacular.

The pros and cons cannot be debated here, but music scholars were shocked at the sudden change. Gustav Reese, a noted expert on Gregorian chant, could barely contain himself at the hierarchy’s decision.  In a passionate cry, he exclaimed:  ‘What have you done to the chant!’

To avoid open criticism of the Church, other scholars described the drastic changes in neutral and measured language as the most dramatic and consequential of all the changes made at Vatican II. Internal struggle was marked by “defiance versus intractability.”  This struggle “has sapped the church of its vitality not to mention the effect it continues to have on matters that are “aesthetic, political, sociological, or even purely technical.”    

In times of crisis how do leaders make decisions?  Some leaders make decisions without consultation, while others call for collegiality. Collegial leaders point the way forward to advance the purpose of the organization.  Still, the personality of the leader plays an important role in this model. Whereas strong leaders get the best and brightest to execute their vision by delegating responsibility, weak leaders fear initiative and creativity from their workers.  They lack trust in the abilities of others.

To sum up this complex topic, St. Paul exhorts leaders of the community “to lead their lives worthy their calling” (Eph. 4:1).

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

In this political season—some call it the theater of the absurd—discussions about women presidents evoke strong views.

In the1960s, there was one woman whose contributions to society were so far reaching that, if the times had been more propitious to women, she could have been elected President of the United States.  But it was not to be.

Eunice Kennedy (1921-2009)

Eunice was the fifth child and the third daughter born to Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy. As the granddaughter of John F., “Honey Fitz,” Fitzgerald, the famous mayor of Boston, she inherited her mother’s natural political instincts; from her father, the energy, initiative and drive of a human dynamo.    

Rosemary was the third child and first daughter born into the Kennedy family.  Unlike the bright brood of eight other brothers and sisters, she was found to be retarded. Eventually, this fact changed the lives of millions of retarded children and adults because Eunice looked after her older sister for the rest of her life.   

“I had enormous respect for Rosie,” Eunice said of her sister. “If I had never met Rosemary, never known anything about handicapped children, how would I have ever found out?  Nobody accepted them any place.” Through Rosemary’s limitations, Eunice discovered her ministry—really her genius—to spend herself and achieve marvelous things for retarded children throughout the world.  

Academic and Professional Preparation

Educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London and at the Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, Eunice graduated from Stanford University in 1943 with a Bachelor’s degree in sociology.  She worked for the Special War Problems Division of the U.S. State Department and eventually moved to the U.S. Justice Department as executive secretary for a project dealing with juvenile delinquency.  

In 1951, she served as a social worker at the Federal Industrial Institution for Women before moving to Chicago to work with the House of the Good Shepherd women’s shelter and the Chicago Juvenile Court.  

In 1953, she married Sargent Shriver, an attorney who later worked in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.  He was the driving force behind the creation of the Peace Corps; the founder of the Job Corps, and the architect of Johnson’s “war on poverty.”  During his service as the U.S. ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970, Eunice studied intellectual disabilities there.  
    
Advocate for the Mentally Retarded

Among advocates of every kind, Eunice excelled as this country’s advocate for the mentally retarded.   In 1962, an exhausted and distressed mother of a retarded child phoned Eunice at her home.  No summer camp would accept her child, she said. Eunice responded with largesse by opening her own home as a summer camp—free of charge—at Timberlawn, the family estate in Maryland,. She would get in the pool and teach the youngsters to swim, loving them as her own children.

Eunice and Her Brothers

Eunice’s advocacy for the mentally retarded was overshadowed by the political pursuits of her three brothers, but she far surpassed them as the natural politician.  More than once it has been said that Eunice would have made a fine President of the Unites States.

Eunice made it a habit of calling the offices of her more famous brothers urging them to another project for the retarded. Teasingly, they dubbed her repeated requests nagging. Yet, they dared not ignore them.

President Kennedy set up research centers on mental retardation.  Robert Kennedy inspected squalid state mental institutions, and Sen. Edward Kennedy helped write the Americans with Disabilities Act.  “It was extraordinary of her to conceive that she too, could play a role comparable to that of her brothers,” Edward Shorter says, author of The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation.  “Her leadership role would be in the area of mental retardation rather than on the big political stage.”

In 1968, Eunice founded the Special Olympics.  Today, they include more than 2.25 million people in 160 countries. “She had the genius to see that she, in fact, was capable of major achievements helping these kids, and that is what she did.  She dedicated her life to it,” writes Shorter.  

Awards

Among the many awards Eunice Kennedy Shriver received, the most notable are:
1984  Presidential Medal of Honor by Ronald Reagan highest civilian award in U.S.
1990  Eagle award from the U.S. Sports Academy
1992  Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged
1995  Second American to appear on a U.S. coin while still living
2006  Papal Knighthood and made Dame of the Order of St. Gregory
2009 Smithsonian Institute’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled an historic portrait of her, the first portrait of the NPG has ever commissioned of an individual who had not served as a US President or First Lady.
2010 The State University of New York at Brockport, home of the 1979 Special Olympics, renamed its football stadium after Eunice Shriver.  (Awarded posthumously)

Later Years    

At 85, Eunice was not about to retire or relax.  She continued her tireless work on the issues concerning those with special needs “because in so many countries, the retarded are not accepted in the schools, not accepted in play programs, just not accepted. We have so much to do.”     Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her husband were devout Roman Catholics and lifelong Democrats. Both staunchly pro-life, Eunice was a member of Feminists for Life. She died in 2009, her husband, in 2011.  

The epilogue of the Book of Proverbs is a fitting tribute to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a woman of noble character.  She lived for others.

Proverbs 31:10-31 Epilogue: The Wife of Noble Character    
10 [a]A wife of noble character who can find?
    She is worth far more than rubies.
11 Her husband has full confidence in her
    and lacks nothing of value.
12 She brings him good, not harm,
    all the days of her life.
13 She selects wool and flax
    and works with eager hands.
14 She is like the merchant ships,
    bringing her food from afar.
15 She gets up while it is still night;
    she provides food for her family
    and portions for her female servants.
16 She considers a field and buys it;
    out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17 She sets about her work vigorously;
    her arms are strong for her tasks.
18 She sees that her trading is profitable,
    and her lamp does not go out at night.
19 In her hand she holds the distaff
    and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
20 She opens her arms to the poor
    and extends her hands to the needy.
21 When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
    for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
22 She makes coverings for her bed;
    she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
23 Her husband is respected at the city gate,
    where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
24 She makes linen garments and sells them,
    and supplies the merchants with sashes.
25 She is clothed with strength and dignity;
    she can laugh at the days to come.
26 She speaks with wisdom,
    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
27 She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women do noble things,
    but you surpass them all.”
30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
31 Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

 

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

Search the Internet, and you’ll find literature in abundance regarding the hackneyed phrase, dark night of the soul. Last week, the phrase surfaced again with the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity.

The Dark Night of the Soul and The Dark Night: Some Distinctions

In the lexicon of popular phrases, the dark night of the soul should be distinguished from the dark night as developed by St. John of the Cross in his treatise, The Dark Night.  

Worries and annoyances that weigh us down each day are part of the human condition. No more, no less. Rarely are they considered the dark night of the soul. To accept and face hardship as part of the human condition is a sign of maturity.

It may surprise even spiritual directors to read that John does not use the phrase, the dark night of the soul, nor does it appear in his poem or treatise.

The Dark Night has a precise and rich context. Its focus lies on God’s innovating activity upon the soul destined for transformation.  The soul remains in spiritual darkness, passive yet docile and responsive to the divine touch.  

By contrast, the dark night of the soul focuses on the individual self and one’s particular trial—any trial—that causes sadness, agitation, turmoil, or distress in one’s life. It has a one-dimensional perspective—the self.

Moses and the Divine Darkness     

In the Book of Exodus 20, Moses approaches the dark cloud where God dwells. This is a metaphor for his journey into the dark of night where it is impossible to see. Darkness is a symbol for the encounter with God who is incomprehensible. Here Moses encounters God in the darkness only to be enlightened by that very same darkness.

Put another way: Moses’ eternal progress is the movement from human light to divine darkness.  The vision of Moses begins in the light.  But as he becomes more perfect, he is led by God into the darkness where he is enlightened.  

Thus the life of prayer and contemplation is represented paradoxically as a journey from light to darkness.  It is only through this maze of darkness that the soul can reach God who is beyond all intellectual comprehension.   To remain in one’s own light is to die.  To walk through the darkness where God dwells is to live in the light.

St. Gregory of Nyssa (d 394), one of the Eastern Church Fathers, used Moses to exemplify and develop a symbolism of darkness. His 1Life of Moses is considered the crowning work of his mysticism.  Gregory was followed by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagate (d 5th-6th c) who became the major resource for the study of the divine darkness.
    
The Dark Night Proper
 
The Dark Night, the title of a poem and treatise on prayer, was written between 1578-85 by St. John of the Cross, the great Spanish Carmelite saint, mystic and poet (d 1591).  It complements his treatise, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, in which the soul learns to love God by pulling up and rooting out his or her vices.  Whereas vices puff up the ego, the love of God scours the ego clean.

The Dark Night is a metaphor describing the mystical union between the soul and God in prayer.  In this dark night, the soul is detached from all that is not God, undergoes privation of light but remains on the road to darkness because it will lead to the light.  Thus John builds his systematic exposition of the spiritual life upon this metaphor.  

The dark night comes not at the beginning of one’s journey to God.  It usually happens when souls have entered the unitive way, that is, when their wills and hearts are united in perfect harmony with God’s.

History has proved that God consistently sends trial to the souls who seek perfection, but lay persons and consecrated men and women experience different dark nights suited to their different vocations. The biographies of saints as well as the masters of the spiritual life are in agreement.  

In The Graces of Interior Prayer, Fr. A. Poulain, S.J. tells us who he likely ones are to receive these trials.  “And as persons who are leading a purely contemplative life are not obliged to undergo the arduous labors the active life entails, God sends them interior crosses by way of compensation.  And then they feel these crosses more keenly, being more thrown back upon themselves” (400).  

It appears that Mother Teresa is an exception to this rule.  Her life serving the poorest of the poor was not just active.  It was arduous.  The work day of the sisters is usually between ten and twelve hours of manual labor.  Yet the Rule of the Missionaries of Charity requires them to spend at least two hours in prayer and contemplation every day in addition to other exercises—the Office, Examen, and spiritual reading.  Formed and guided by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, these sisters are true active contemplatives.

The Dark Night and Passive Purification

The Dark Night is essentially an experience of infused contemplation.  One cannot ask for it; one ought not ask for it.  In The Dark Night, the purification is accomplished by God and not by the will of the individual who could never accomplish this task.  John describes this metaphor: A mother weans her child away from the sweetness and consolation of being nourished at the breast, and of having her child experience its own independence away from the mother.  This purification is accomplished by the mother and not by the child.  Passive purification.

The dark night first affects and purifies the individual’s spiritual senses.  These are:  spiritual pride and avarice, spiritual lust and anger, spiritual gluttony, envy, and sloth.  Persons succumb to spiritual gluttony, for example, when they seek sweetness, delight, and satisfaction in prayer, striving more to savor the sweet experiences rather than the desire to please God. Spiritual sloth delights in spiritual gratification, but when the soul is told to do something unpleasant, it remains lax.  

The first and chief benefit of this dark night of contemplation is the knowledge of self and of one’s misery and lowliness but also of God’s grandeur and majesty. The second is the purification of the spiritual faculties:  the intellect, the will, and the memory. John compares this experience to a fire consuming a log.  In both books, the soul does little more than dispose itself for the divine action.  

Here are the first two stanzas of the poem anticipating the explanation of Books One and Two:

One dark night,
Fired with love’s urgent longings
--ah, the sheer grace!—
I  went out unseen,
My house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
--ah, the sheer grace!—
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now all stilled.

Mother Teresa’s Dark Night

We can never know what activity takes place inside another person.  Yet, we know that dryness, aridity, and restlessness in prayer afflicted Mother Teresa as well as doubt in the existence of God.  She remained a woman of joy, faithful to her religious vocation as a missionary. Read some of her reflections, marked by darkness:

“In my soul, I feel just that terrible pain of loss of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of God not existing.”  

“I find no words to express the depths of the darkness.  If you only knew what  darkness I am plunged into.”

 “In the darkness . . . . Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me?  The child of your love—and now become as the most hated one.  The one—you have thrown away as unwanted—unloved.  I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer . . . Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.  Love—the word—it brings nothing.  I am told God lives in me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”  The self-offering of St. Ignatius sums up Book Two and the total offering of Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta:  

“Take, Lord,
into your possession
my complete freedom of action:
my memory, my understanding, my entire will;
all that I have, all that I own.  
It is your gift to me.  
I now return it to you to be used simply as you wish.  
Give me your love and your grace.  
It is all I need.” 

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

We have just celebrated the last civic holiday of the summer. On Labor Day, we reflect on our role as co-workers in God’s vineyard and, with our talents, continue the activity of God our Creator.   Work deepens the truth that we are all made in God’s image and likeness.  Mr. Shakespeare has a word to send us off:  “Proud of employment, willingly I go.”  

The Church’s special care and concern of the worker began in earnest with Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891) when it treated the theme of work. Included in the encyclical was the defense of workers and, in particular, their exploitation.  Since then, every pontiff has integrated Catholic social thought concerning workers as part of the Church’s teaching.  Politicians of all religious stripes have quoted from their writings as part of their own social platforms. According to Ronald Reagan, “the best social program is a job.”

Bearing Fruit

Work is one way men and women discover their dignity because the building up of the culture is the fruit of labor.

The Psalmist uses the image of a garden to describe the just ones who labor in it.  They are fruitful in all they do because they remain rooted in the Lord.  These men and women “will flourish like a palm-tree and grow like a Lebanon cedar. Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God, still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green, to proclaim that the Lord is just (Ps 92:12-15). . . . The just are like trees planted near streams; they bear fruit in season and their leaves never wither.  All they do prospers” (Ps 1:3-4).
 
How many cultures have handed down to us the fruits of their labor and the fruits of their creativity!  The Jews through their worship, for example, have given us the weekend as well as the 150 psalms permeated with beauty. Among other benefits, the Greeks gave us Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who laid the foundations for medieval and modern philosophy. The Romans were master builders, especially of roads, waterworks, and bridges. Had it not been for the medieval European monks, who would have preserved ancient and Christian culture for future generations?  

Unemployment

In virtually every instance, John Paul II considered unemployment an evil and a social calamity.  He placed this responsibility at the feet of the vast enterprise of employers.

For our current pontiff, Pope Francis, “work is not a gift kindly conceded to a recommended few.  It is a right of all . . . and in particular, the young must be able to cultivate the promise of their efforts and their enthusiasm, so that the investment of their energies and their resources will not be useless” (Dec. 2015).

Men and women are our primary natural resource, and the Church has grave concerns about the unemployed and those who are under employed, the working poor.  From these two groups can come other evils; the first among them is hunger.  Social unrest, like disease, crime, and violence are bound to follow.

Indignities of Unemployment

As an evil of the social fabric and against individuals, unemployment robs persons in good health, ready and willing to work, from supporting themselves and their families. What happens to the family when parents lose their jobs through no fault of their own?  The individual members in the family suffer in psychological as well as financial ways. Loss of the weekly paycheck weighs on the family unlike any other burden.

Losing One’s Job

Unemployment comes in different ugly shapes and sizes. It affects Blue Collar workers, Wall Street traders, educators, and other professionals. Even CEOs can be ousted from their high places.

How many are those who have gone from standing tall in satisfying and lucrative jobs to the humiliation of sleeping in nooks and crannies of store fronts, huddled up and penniless? How many men and women have experienced the indignity, the embarrassment, and the emotional heartburn of losing one’s job?  The worker is summoned to the supervisor’s office only to be told his or her services are no longer needed.  A cold speech is delivered in staccato fashion:  ‘I’m sorry, we have to let you go, but it has to be this way. Thank you for your service.’  Often, severance pay does not accompany the loss of employment.  How many have been dismissed without even being told?  The names of college adjunct teachers are routinely deleted from the roster without any explanation, personal or otherwise.      

And what of those new college graduates? John Paul II has written of the particularly painful problem “when the young, after preparing themselves with an appropriate cultural, technical, and professional formation, can’t find a job and see their sincere will to work frustrated, as well as their willingness to take up their responsibility for the economy and social development of the community” (Laborem Exercens:18). The indignities of unemployment!

Statistics on Employment     

The August unemployment figures have been estimated at a low 4.8%, though this impressive figure feels like a lie to so many” (Sarah Kendzior: Quartz, April 20, 2016).

62.6% is the figure given for those who are not participating in the work place. This means that approximately 37% is the unemployment rate.  According to the Wall Street Journal, 4.8% hides the devastating lie for millions of Americans. The jobless rate is low because more and more people are no longer participating in the work place.  This low percent fails to include discouraged workers and those in part-time jobs who seek full-time employment.
Another consideration has to do with sporadic work.  A person who works one hour a week earning $20.00 for that hour is considered employed.

How can breadwinners support a family on the minimum wage? They can’t, these working poor.

While Labor Day focuses on the value of work, loss of employment and financial crisis can provoke despair. Surely there is a limit to how many rejections unemployed persons can sustain before they throw up their hands and succumb to hopelessness, including temptations to end it all through suicide. During times of unemployment the individual can make matters worse by rubbing it in: ‘I’m a loser; I’m a failure.  Everyone knows it’  ‘Why has God permitted put me in this situation when I’ve done my best?  

The Open Wound

What can the unemployed do during the trial of unemployment?  To begin with, it is important to live in the present moment and structure one’s time. While coping with this extreme hardship, energies can be given over to constructive activities that otherwise might not have been possible.  Unemployed men and women have discovered their true vocation quite by accident during the so-called lost time of unemployment.

During this time, it is also important to sharpen one’s professional capabilities, for example, public speaking, retooling one’s writing skills, reading well and memorizing fine poetry.  Numerous agencies need volunteers, especially in tutoring school children.  Finally, there is no better advocate to plead one’s cause than St. Joseph the Worker.

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

Matteo Ricci College (MRC) is one of eight schools and colleges that form part of Seattle University, a Catholic institution conducted by the Society of Jesus. 

With the Humanities as its core, MRC offers three degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (BAH), a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for Leadership (BAHL), and a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for Teaching (BAHT). 

Mission of MRC

MRC educates teachers and leaders for a just and humane world. The study of Western culture is the surest place to begin. Pseudo-educators claim it’s a waste of time.   Yet, the facts don’t lie.  We are the beneficiaries of Greco-Roman culture preserved, reinterpreted, and handed down through the Catholic Church’s medieval monastic tradition and continued through the Italian Renaissance. To be human is to be in a story, and to forget one's story leaves a person without a present identity, without a past and without a future.  At MRC, cultural history is taught so that students can draw moral lessons from it.  Those who don’t learn from these lessons are condemned to repeat and relive them.    

With the small class size at MRC, professors can take a personal interest in each student.  In this environment conducive to learning, a close collaboration between student and professor is pursued.   This encourages greater participation in class. Shouldn’t MRC be the envy of most serious students?  You would think so. 

What’s in a Name? 

MRC is named after the 16th - century Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) who spent his adult life as an educator and missionary in China.  At that time, the doors of the Chinese empire were closed to foreigners from the West.   It was Ricci who brought Western civilization to China, and Chinese literati reciprocated by sharing with him their ancient and venerable culture.  For him, inculturation was a reality centuries before the term was invented. He founded the modern Chinese Catholic Church.  

Ricci astonished the Chinese because he loved them. An authority on so many subjects and disciplines—mathematics, astronomy, apologetics, literature, popular catechesis, poetry, art and music—he brought this treasury of gifts to his mission. His intellectual gifts were prodigious: a photographic memory, linguistic ability to speak flawless Chinese, ingenuity to write maps, assemble clocks, read the stars.  As if this weren’t enough, Ricci had a keen ear for music and reportedly sang with great sweetness.   This “wise man from the west” is recognized as “the most cultivated man of his time and one of the most remarkable and brilliant men of history.”  

Known throughout the realm as Li-Ma-T’ou, this missionary scholar remains the most respected and beloved foreign figure in Chinese culture. Some in the Chinese government view him as the “Second Founder of Modern China.”  

This is the man after whom MRC is named.  He is its model of a complete liberal arts education cast in the Jesuit mold.

Student Protest against the Curriculum of MRC

In May, some two hundred enrolled students at (MRC) staged a week-long sit-in objecting to the core curriculum: The focus on Western culture and values was declared irrelevant. Studies in Western Civilization had failed to serve the academic interests of these students. 

The students demanded of the administration that the classic core curriculum in the Humanities be discarded in favor of a new program of studies to reflect special interest groups of race, class, gender, and disability.  Additionally, they demanded that only qualified faculty be hired to teach courses that reflected their interest in identity group studies of race, class, gender, and disability. The Dean of the MRC was to be fired.

Student demands focused on “dissatisfaction, traumatization, and boredom,” that is, “the Humanities program as it exists today” which “ignores and erases the humanity of its students and of peoples around the globe.”  . . . “We are diverse, with many different life experiences, also shaped by colonization, U.S., and Western imperialist, neo-politics, and oppression under racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative and homophobic, transphobic, queerphobic, ableist, nationalistic, xenophobic systems which perpetuate conquest, genocide of indigenous peoples, and pervasive systemic inequities.”

Students spoke of oppression perpetrated by the Administration:  “The first manifest demand is a complete change in the curriculum from a Whiteness-dominated curriculum to a non-Eurocentric interdisciplinary curriculum.  If the (MRC) is unable to tackle these requirements, we demand that it be converted into a department so as to be accountable to another college.”   

What Students at MRC Seek

If MRC students are seeking social justice and equality for all, if they are to make sense of this complex world, they ought to study the Humanities. If they are curious about how other cultures have learned to develop feelings of compassion, tolerance, respect, empathy, they ought to study the Humanities. If they are curious about how creative other people can be, if students are determined to live in a democracy of free citizens, the Humanities should be studied. Without the Humanities, democracy would not exist.  

The Crisis of Higher Education

In this country, we are experiencing an intellectual crisis that has already affected our work force, our politics, and our culture.  Western civilization, the human culmination of centuries of learning is under attack by an identity-driven student population exemplified by the protesters at MRC.  Whereas many academic leaders fail to uphold the purpose of teaching Western civilization, the faculty at MRC values it.  Whereas academic leaders don’t believe that the Humanities have any fundamental influence on their students, the faculty at MRC is invested in it.  Shared values—this is what brings the world together.  

MRC is not alone in promoting a Humanities core curriculum. Many non-sectarian and private colleges proudly offer a core curriculum around which other subjects are framed. At least twenty-five colleges and universities in the United States offer the Great Books tradition to their undergraduates. These books are part of the great conversation about the universal ideas of cultures and civilizations, always related to ethical and religious values. 

Many educators believe that nearly half of college graduates show no measurable improvement in knowledge or critical thinking. They speak and write incorrectly; they do not read.  Their constant companions? Electronic devices with accompanying head sets. Weaker academic requirements, greater specialization in the departments, a rigid orthodoxy and doctrinaire views on liberalism are now part of the university’s politics and cultural life.  

Clash of Goals

If the demands of these special interest groups—race, class, gender, and disability, were met, MRC would cease to exist. A program of identity studies clashes with the raison d’être of a college named after Matteo Ricci, a name synonymous with the richest of classic studies.   

The student protesters are demanding to be extricated from the program that distinguishes itself in the pantheon of Catholic higher education.  

Who would be so foolish as to look down on, much less protest, such a rich curriculum that prompts the most influential employers to hire MRC’s crême de la crème? 

Let the disgruntled students go elsewhere with their partisan interests and narrow viewpoint.  They lose.

Ricci Speaks to College Students

Matteo Ricci has left us several proverbs that can inspire college students.  But not just college students:  

 “Man is a stranger in this world.”

 “The virtuous person speaks little.”

“Time past must be thought of as gone forever.  Don’t waste time.”

“True longevity is reckoned not by number of years but according to progress in virtue.  If the Lord of Heaven grants me one day more of life, He does so that I may correct yesterday’s faults; failures to do this would be a sign of great ingratitude.”

The canonization of Father Matteo Ricci, S.J. ranks high on the ‘to-do list’ of Pope Francis whose high regard and love for him are well known.  This is the Servant of God, Matteo Ricci, S.J.

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

In a week or two, freshmen from around the country will begin their college education. The first year, the most important of the four, is meant to build a strong academic foundation for the remaining three years and even beyond.  

Freshmen year often awakens in the student a love for learning. In college, self-identity is chiseled out, attitudes and values mature, friendships and new loves, discovered. The halls of university academe can be an exciting place to hope and dream about one’s future.

Attending college is both a privilege and responsibility.  Here the phrase, noblesse oblige applies (literally, nobility obliges): Those who have received much are expected to share their gifts with others to make society a better place in which to live. 

Seeking a Liberal Arts Education

Colleges typically organize their curriculum around their mission statement. An institution of higher learning worthy of its name offers a core curriculum, also known as the humanities or liberal arts.  Some have general requirements.

The humanities offer a splendid array of disciplines, and one of them will be chosen as the focus of students’ special attention in junior and senior year.  Courses include: foreign language(s), linguistics and literature, philosophy, theology/religious studies, social sciences, the refining arts—music and art. 

The liberal arts develop the student as an intellectually rounded person exposing students to disciplines that broaden their horizons and add meaning to life.  It has been said that a specialist without a liberal arts background is only half a person.

Importance of the Humanities

Did you know that two-thirds of humanities majors find satisfying positions in the private sector?  If the college one attends does not require the humanities, here are eight benefits for choosing them on one’s own:

They help us understand others through their languages, histories, and cultures. They foster social justice and equality. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of the world. The humanities teach empathy. They teach us to deal critically and logically with subjective, complex, and imperfect information. They teach us to weigh evidence skeptically and consider more than one side of every question. Humanities students build skills in writing and critical reading. They encourage us to think creatively.   They develop informed and critical citizens.  Without the humanities, democracy could not flourish. (Curt Rice, “Here are 9 reasons why humanities matter. What’s your number 10?”) Listening to the Parents

 Before the 1990s, most parents were satisfied with the college education of their sons and daughters who had graduated with more than a passing knowledge about great ideas and universal questions. 

In recent years however, an increasing number of parents have expressed dissatisfaction: “I spent $100,000.00 for my daughter’s (my son’s) education at a four-year private college.  She graduated with a degree in Peace Studies.  She has no job.” 

Content of subject matter and intolerance of diverse opinions are two major concerns.

Content of Subject Matter

Too many colleges have abandoned required courses—no foreign language, no language arts. 

What great literature and poetry are students studying?  A prevailing attitude sees the Great Books Tradition as little more than the political opinions of dominant groups. 

What of philosophy and religious studies? Why aren’t students exposed to the ancient philosophers who wrestled with perennial questions:  Who am I? What am I doing, and why am I doing it? What is the purpose of my life? Few colleges offer a course in world religions.

As for history and American government, they’re bunk. War after war—it’s all an inventory of political grievances; our American government is composed of corrupt politicians. 

And what of art and music history?  Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bernini?  Are they the preserve of dead white males, a phrase used by collegiates?  Is the answer offering the “gutter phenomenon” of Rock, Rap, or Hip-Hop which use orgiastic and foul language and offering shock art like the photograph, “Piss Christ,” by Andres Serrano?  A few years ago, why did Syracuse University offer a course called “Hip-Hop Eshu: Queen B*tch 101?” To exalt Lil’ Kim? 

Parents are willing to spend generously on education that expands the mind with a classic education but not for studies whose content is without purpose.  Why should they squander hard-earned dollars on a core curriculum that is a sham or on courses that entertain pubescent students with a degraded popular culture? Such institutions are caricatures of what used to be referred to as higher education.

Liberal Intolerance

Until the 1990s, the phrase: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" was operative on college campuses.  Today, those who speak what is opposed to the majority must refrain from giving their opinions that are open to critical and healthy discussion.

In former days, institutions required students to challenge each other to think clearly and logically about a topic.  In class, the Socratic methodology was employed to insure that students’ views could be articulated without reprisal.  In Jesuit education for example, students are required to argue both sides of an issue, including those topics that are abhorrent to defend or condemn.  

To give one example, if a person holds to what he or she considers a good action, does intention alone make for a moral act?  As students work their pros and cons, eventually someone will cite Hitler whose good intention was to exalt the German people beyond all others.  However, he ostracized German Jews whom he derided as polluting the German race.  This view led to the barbaric means he took to achieve his end—their annihilation.  The conclusion to the discussion? The immoral end does not justify a moral means or intention. The intention and the end must together be moral acts.

Since the 1990s, intellectual diversity has gradually muffled honest debate.

A Confession of Liberal Intolerance

Recently, the liberal columnist, Nicholas Kristoff, published two essays in the New York Times on the present status of liberal thinking in this country: Nicholas Kristoff’s “Confession of Liberal Intolerance” and “The Liberal Blind Spot.” Some of his observations apply to what unsuspecting freshmen might find on certain campuses with varying degrees of intensity. Increasing numbers of liberal professors and students pride themselves on their diversity and their tolerance of diversity—diversity of various minority groups but not of conservatives—Evangelical Christians, and practicing Catholics.  Kristoff calls this “liberal arrogance”—“the implication that these groups don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion.”

The unwritten motto may be: “We welcome people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.” Or, “I disapprove of what you say, so shut up.” Or I close my mind to what you may want to say because it’s not worthwhile saying, in my view. Thus we hear: “We’re tolerant. You are entitled to your truth, but keep it to yourself.  And don’t force it on me.”

What Is Truth?  

Alan Bloom, the author of The Closing of the American Mind, made the argument in the 1980s that American youth are increasingly raised to believe that every belief is merely the expression of an opinion or preference.  They are raised to be “cultural relativists” with the default attitude of “non-judgmentalism” (Patrick Deneen, “Who Closed the American Mind?”).

Parents object: “My son, my daughter entered college with a moral compass with a belief that there is such a thing as objective truth.  But in my son’s college, only the relativity of truth and the absolutism of relativity are taught across the board.  Thus, there is no longer any possibility of objective truth.”

The Crisis of Higher Education

We are experiencing an intellectual crisis that has already affected our work force, our politics, and our culture.  College costs are escalating, while too many colleges and universities without a core curriculum or without any substantive requirements are failing this generation. Western civilization, the human culmination of centuries of learning is pummeled by a pop culture.  Too many academic leaders fail to uphold the purpose of teaching Western civilization.  Academic leaders don’t believe that the humanities have any fundamental influence on their students.  There are no shared values. The result?  The advent of identity courses: Feminist studies, African-American, Latino, LGBT studies.  As long as everyone is tolerant of everyone’s classes, no one can get hurt. 

Yet not all institutions of higher learning fit this description. Many non-sectarian and private colleges offer a structured curriculum or a core curriculum around which other subjects are framed. At least twenty-five colleges and universities in the United States offer the Great Books tradition to their undergraduates. These books are part of the great conversation about the universal ideas of cultures and civilizations.

The authors of Academically Adrift, the most devastating book on higher education since Alan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind, found that nearly half of undergraduates show no measurable improvement in knowledge or “critical thinking” after two years of college. Weaker academic requirements, greater specialization in the departments, a rigid orthodoxy and doctrinaire views on liberalism are now part of the university’s politics and cultural life.

Freshmen entering college today should be aware of the crisis of liberal education which is in conflict and incompatible with the traditional aspirations of the liberal arts.

Advice to Freshmen

Choose your friends wisely. Confide in a very few. Find a small group of friends who are serious about studies and who know how to balance work with play.  Form or join a reading group. Establish healthy eating and sleeping habits. Don’t pull all-nighters. Don’t go out on the week nights.  Study for about 50 minutes.  Take a ten-minute break.  Then return to study. Repeat.  Make a habit of this process—study, break, study. If you put your energies into academics, you will be handsomely rewarded later on. Don’t get behind in your assignments.  Make certain that you are up-to-date on all of them.  In the case of writing papers, get started on your research as soon as the assignment is given.  Work a little on the research every day. Keep a dictionary and thesaurus at hand at all times. Make it a habit of looking up the meaning of words.  Words are power and the right word is a sign of right thinking. Be your own leader.  Do not follow the crowd if you sense they engage in actions contrary to your beliefs.  For example:  doing drugs or binge drinking. Be reflective.  Reflection means going below the surface of an experience, an idea, a purpose, or a spontaneous reaction to discover its meaning to you.   Find an older mentor, not necessarily a professor, but someone whom you have observed has wisdom and common sense.  Place your confidence in this person as your unofficial adviser. Remember:  Your college life is an open book.  Whatever you do or avoid doing becomes common knowledge—quickly.     Every College Has its Own Soul

Every college builds its own identity, its own reputation. Some colleges are known for the seriousness with which they pursue academics.  Some are known as “party” schools.  Still others are best known for their sports prowess.

According to John Henry Newman, the ideal university is comprised of a community of scholars and thinkers, engaging in intellectual pursuits as an end in itself.  Only secondarily, does it have a practical purpose, for example, finding a job.  Today, most people would scoff at this assertion.  For them, today’s goal of education is to find a job.   The facts however don’t lie.  Those with intellectual pursuits as an end are the most likely to secure the best positions. 

A university is a place where one looks out toward everyone and everything … without boundaries.  A university is a place where one discovers and studies truth. A person of faith holds sacred this belief.

According to Newman, knowledge alone cannot improve the student; only God is the source of all truth; only God can impart truth. Today, this notion alienates students at secular colleges and universities.  

By Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

“It’s back to school,” the many ads remind us.  The noble work of education will soon begin anew.  

The word, educate, from the Latin educere, means to lead out of. Educators worthy of the name lead their students out of the darkness of ignorance to the light of truth, knowledge and wisdom. 

The Catholic Philosophy of Education

To realize its Divine mission, the Church has developed a view of education that claims the right over all other agencies to make final decisions about the education of its youth. 

There are several principles of the Catholic philosophy of education that mark it with distinction.  With the obvious age-appropriate adaptations, they affect all ages and academic levels. 

Belief in a Personal God

First, that belief in a personal God is essential to all Catholic thinking in any and every phase of human activity. This includes formal education which proclaims Jesus as its primary Exemplar.  It follows that the Church rejects any philosophy of education or position that sacrifices the eternal and supernatural to the temporal and natural (V.P. Lannie, “Catholic Education IV,” The New Encyclopedia 5: 168).

Academic Excellence

Second, Catholic education imparts far more than amassing facts and information.  Scholarship and faith belong together, the whole person, seeking ultimate Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.  Students should be taught to wonder at the goodness and truth surrounding them. Catholic education builds character. It develops in its students a Catholic moral compass and a Catholic sensibility to understand how society and democracies function. The curriculum’s first order of business is academic formation and excellence. Students must learn correct grammar and use language skillfully, even artfully. This means reading well, writing with imagination, precision and power, and speaking the country’s predominant language correctly. It is typically true that whoever uses the right word thinks precisely and persuasively as in the famous Hopkins’ poetic line, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” 

English is a difficult language to master, but it must be said that immigrants to this country often learn to speak better English than those who are born here. In the musical, “My Fair Lady,” the character of Henry Higgins sings, “Why Can’t the English Teach Their Children How to Speak.”  He lampoons Americans’ mutiliation of English with the line, “Well, in America, they haven’t used it in years.” A playful jab, but jab it is.

Catholic and Christian Humanism

Third, in Catholic humanism, God is found not just in the sacred but also in the secular where Christian values and virtue can be uncovered.  The religious and the profane are mutually inclusive, “charged with the grandeur of God.” Whatever is human is inherently Christian.  No enterprise, no matter how secular, is merely secular for we live in a universe of grace and promise. 

The humanities are associated with depth, richness, feelings, character and moral development. This is why the literary and refining arts are so important.  Their purpose is to impart wonder and enjoyment, sensitize the feelings of students and eventually influence their behavior.  The humanities are intended for all students and not just for the elite.

The Student and the Educator

Fourth, St. Thomas Aquinas puts it concisely: Education is a lifelong process of self-activity, self-direction, and self-realization. The child is the center of attention, the “principal agent,” in the educational process. 

The instructor is the “essential mover” who teaches by the witness of his or her example and consistently brings to their lessons a high degree of preparedness. The teacher’s role is critical to Catholic education (Ibid).  The students’ real life situations initiate the process of learning.   Educators lead their students out beyond their life setting—their Sitz-im-Leben.  Experience teaches students to discover for themselves by engaging the five senses. This includes, for example, making or doing beautiful art forms or listening to beautiful music. Affectivity must be channeled in socially-accepted ways. For the most part, “Rap” culture exalts anti-social affectivity.

In his apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii nuntiandi,” Pope Paul VI reflected: “Today students do not listen seriously to teachers but to witnesses, and if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”  

Catholic educators teaching in public schools can adapt Catholic principles to the public school curriculum especially when these are also embraced by other faith-traditions.    

The Benedict Effect

At his papal election in 2003, why did Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger take the papal name Benedict?  It was the Benedictine monks, who, systematically and comprehensively, rebuilt Europe after the barbaric invasions of Rome in the 5th century. Some European leaders refuse to acknowledge Europe’s Christian roots and, specifically, the Church’s role in building on Greco-Roman culture, Christianizing it, and handing it on to future generations. At a time when Europe was cast in darkness, the Church led it out of the darkness; the Church was Europe’s light. Not opinion, but fact.

St. Benedict, the Benedictine Order, and the Monastic Centuries

In the middle of the sixth century, a small movement changed the landscape of the European world.  Benedict of Nursia (480-547) introduced a new way of life and thinking that has brought vitality to contemporary men and women. He laid the foundation of Benedictine monastic life with his monks first at Subiaco and Rome, and then at Monte Cassino.  

Benedict composed his Rule of disciplined balance that fostered order and peace.  If “pray and work” (ora et labora) was the Benedictine motto, the way to live it was through beauty, piety, and learning.  Every monastery was built on an expansive tract of land, and  eventually, it became a miniature civic center for the townspeople.  One could say that the monks sacralized the landscape.  

Monastic Schools

Of the many contributions the Benedictine monks made to European culture, education remained a prominent value. In the Middle Ages, education was conducted within the confines of the monastery by monks, and later, by nuns.  They offered religious and general education to youth who intended to enter the monastic or clerical life and to youth who were preparing for public life.  They lived at home.  Young children of six or seven years of age were taught the basics. The majority, especially potential monks and nuns, were taught to read Latin, writing, chant, arithmetic, and learning how to read time on the sundial. The main text was the Psalter.  From the eighth century onward, students were taught the seven liberal arts, the trivium, grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music.  The ideal monastery of the Benedictine Order was that of Saint Gall in present-day Switzerland where the town flourished around the monastery.

In our century, Catholic education continues to flourish across the world in developed and in developing countries.

Conclusion: Catholic Education in the United States

The Encyclopedia of Catholicism asserts that “throughout history, there is likely no more compelling instance of Catholic commitment to education than the school system created by the U.S. Catholic community.  The story of American Catholicism goes back to the very first Catholic settlers in the New World.” 

Despite the various declarations of freedom in early American history, anti-Catholicism prevailed through groups such as the Know-Nothing Society of the 1850s.  They existed to eradicate Popery, Jesuitism, and Catholicism.  

Between 1840 and 1900, at least sixty European religious orders of women and men were teaching in this country’s parochial schools. 

Conclusion

Finally, the philosophy of Catholic education integrates several aspects of the faith into the curriculum but always in age-appropriate ways: Biblical tradition, Early Christian Church plus heresies and the results,  Spirituality and prayer, Liturgy,  Doctrine, Ecumenism:  a study of the world religions and the Third World.

Today, apologetics is needed more than ever to defend the Church against old and new approaches to anti-Catholicism.  Our students should be taught the art and skill of civil debate—to learn the principles, internalize them, anticipate opposing views, and then defend the principles. 

(This précis of the philosophy of Catholic education has been presented in its ideal conception and not necessarily as it exists with the integrity described.)

Nairobi, Kenya, May 3, 2020 / 06:01 am (CNA).- At a one-room house outside Nairobi, a 23-year-old girl with disabilities claps her hands and throws herself at Sr. Rose Catherine Wakibiru, who has been visiting girls with disability at their homes since the Kenyan government closed schools last month over coronavirus.

The girl, referred to as Faith, “is deaf and dumb,” Sr. Rose Catherine of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi, told ACI Africa April 27. “She is autistic and has cerebral palsy and so she doesn’t know anything about social distancing. She has pure love in her heart and she can’t stop embracing people to show how happy she is.”

Faith lived at Limuru Cheshire Home along with 60 other girls who have physical or intellectual disabilities, before the pandemic.

Sr. Rose Catherine, administrator of the home, called the girls’ parents and guardians to retrieve their children when schools were closed. 

“Most parents we called were not ready to pick their girls,” Sr. Rose Catherine said, adding that many girls at Cheshire home are drawn from poor backgrounds and that most come from informal settlements around Nairobi.

The nun explained that Faith initially lived with her mother and three siblings in a Nairobi slum, but they moved to another settlement “three weeks ago when their house was washed away in floods.”

When their house was washed away, Faith’s mother gave out her children to different well-wishers and looked for a place to stay herself. Later, friends helped her to get a single-roomed house where she stays with her three children and goes out to look for menial jobs to sustain her family.

Such jobs are hard to come by amid the restrictions due to coronavirus, and the family may be thrown out of their home as the mother is unable to pay for it.

Sr. Rose Catherine said five residents of the Cheshire home were taken in by other families, as they had nowhere to go.

“I know all [the] families that have their daughters here and I have an idea of those that can accommodate a girl [who] isn’t their own. So when I made those calls, I would ask a parent if they were willing to take care of an extra girl. That’s how I got all the five girls a place to stay,” said Sr. Rose Catherine.

To ease the burden of the foster parents, Limuru Cheshire Home supplies the girls with basic necessities such as food, soap, and sanitary materials in their new homes.

Some families were reluctant to have their daughters back home, and Sr. Rose Catherine said the biggest challenge for girls with disabilities and their families during coronavirus is poverty.

Most of the families “live on daily wages, and with their girls around they can’t go out and work as they used to. All the girls at the facility are special needs cases and they need someone to look after them” at all times, the nun said.

The girls also come last in families that grapple with lack of basic needs, such as food. When there is little food to share, children with disabilities do not get any of it, Sr. Rose Catherine reported.

“I have been to a home where I found my girl watching her siblings eat. When I asked her brother why her sister wasn’t eating anything, he said there was very little food in the house,” Sr. Rose Catherine recounted. “Children with disabilities are treated as second-rate individuals. People only think about them when everybody else has had their fill.”

Many of the girls’ families have asked the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi for help since having the girls returned to their care, and Sr. Rose Catherine has made at least eight home visits in recent weeks.

On each home visit, families are supplied with food, masks, and sanitizer.

“What we have at the moment is only enough to keep the families going for one more week, yet we have outreach plans for next week. We can only plan and hope that well-wishers will come on board to touch the lives of these vulnerable girls and their families,” Sr. Rose Catherine said.

 

A version of this story was first published by ACI Africa, CNA's African news partner. It has been adapted by CNA.

CNA Staff, May 2, 2020 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- A man claiming to have killed the murdered Nigerian seminarian Michael Nnadi has given an interview in which he says he executed the aspiring priest because he would not stop announcing the Christian faith in captivity.

Mustapha Mohammed, who is currently in jail, gave a telephone interview to the Nigerian newspaper Daily Sun on Friday. He took responsibility for the murder, according to the Daily Sun, because Nnadi, 18 years old, “continued preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ” to his captors.

According to the newspaper, Mustapha praised Nnadi’s “outstanding bravery,” and that the seminarian “told him to his face to change his evil ways or perish.”

Nnadi was kidnapped by gunmen from Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna on January 8, along with three other students. The seminary, home to some 270 seminarians, is located just off the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria Express Way. According to AFP, the area is “notorious for criminal gangs kidnapping travelers for ransom.”

Mustapha, 26, identified himself as the leader of a 45-member gang that preyed along the highway. He gave the interview from a jail in Abuja, Nigeria, where he is in police custody.

On the evening of the abduction, gunmen, disguised in military camouflage, broke through the fence surrounding the seminarians' living quarters and opened fire. They stole laptops and phones before kidnapping the four young men.

Ten days after the abduction, one of the four seminarians was found on the side of a road, alive but seriously injured. On Jan. 31, an official at Good Shepherd Seminary announced that another two seminarians had been released, but that Nnadi remained missing and was presumed still in captivity.

On Feb. 1, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Diocese of Sokoto, Nigeria, announced that Nnadi had been killed.

“With a very heavy heart, I wish to inform you that our dear son, Michael was murdered by the bandits on a date we cannot confirm,” the bishop said, confirming that the rector of the seminary had identified Nnadi’s body.

The newspaper reported that from “the first day Nnadi was kidnapped alongside three of his other colleagues, he did not allow [Mustapha] to have peace,” because he insisted on announcing the gospel to him.

According to the newspaper, Mustapha “did not like the confidence displayed by the young man and decided to send him to an early grave.”

According to the Daily Sun, Mustapha targeted the seminary knowing it was a center for training priests, and that a gang member who lived nearby had helped conduct surveillance ahead of the attack. Mohammed believed that it would be a profitable target for theft and ransom.

Mohammed also said that the gang used Nnadi’s mobile telephone to issue their ransom demands, asking for more than $250,000, later reduced to $25,000, to secure the release of the three surviving students, Pius Kanwai, 19; Peter Umenukor, 23; and Stephen Amos, 23.

Nnadi’s murder is one of an series of attacks and killings on Christians in the country in recent months.

Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Abuja called on Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to address the violence and kidnappings in a homily March 1 at a Mass with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria.

“We need to have access to our leaders; president, vice president. We need to work together to eradicate poverty, killings, bad governance and all sorts of challenges facing us as a nation,” Kaigama said.

In an Ash Wednesday letter to Nigerian Catholics, Archbishop Augustine Obiora Akubeze of Benin City called for Catholics to wear black in solidarity with victims and pray, in response to “repeated” executions of Christians by Boko Haram and “incessant” kidnappings “linked to the same groups.”

Other Christian villages have been attacked, farms set ablaze, vehicles carrying Christians attacked, men and women have been killed and kidnapped, and women have been taken as sex slaves and tortured—a “pattern,” he said, of targeting Christians.

On Feb. 27, U.S Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback told CNA that the situation in Nigeria was deteriorating.

“There's a lot of people getting killed in Nigeria, and we're afraid it is going to spread a great deal in that region,” he told CNA. “It is one that's really popped up on my radar screens -- in the last couple of years, but particularly this past year.”

“I think we’ve got to prod the [Nigerian President Muhammadu] Buhari government more. They can do more,” he said. “They’re not bringing these people to justice that are killing religious adherents. They don’t seem to have the sense of urgency to act.”

CNA Staff, May 1, 2020 / 12:09 pm (CNA).- The Turkish foreign ministry on Wednesday rejected Turkey's inclusion in a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, charging that the report comes from a “biased mindset”.

“The report contains baseless, unaccredited and vague allegations as in the past years while trying to portray isolated incidents as violations of religious freedoms through far-fetched accusations,” Hami Aksoy, a spokesperson for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said April 29.

“The importance attached by Turkey to protect religious freedoms, including those of religious minorities, is expressed at the highest level by our Government officials. Our authorities make it clear that any harm to the religious freedoms of our citizens will not be tolerated,” Aksoy added.

In its 2020 report, USCIRF recommended that the State Department add Turkey, as well as 10 other countries, to a “Special Watch List” of countries where abuses of religious minorities are taking place, but not at a level as severe as in those designated as “countries of particular concern.”

The commission wrote that “religious freedom conditions in Turkey remained worrisome” in 2019, “with the perpetuation of restrictive and intrusive governmental policies on religious practice and a marked increase in incidents of vandalism and societal violence against religious minorities.”

It cited the Turkish government's prevention of the election of board members for non-Muslim religious groups and its limitations on the election of the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople.

The report added that Alevis, a group related to Shia Islam and the country's largest religious minority, “remained unable to gain official recognition for their gathering houses (cemevleri) as places of worship or to exempt their children from compulsory religious classes, despite European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings finding that these policies violated Alevis’ rights.”

According to the US commission, Turkish religious minorities “expressed concerns that governmental rhetoric and policies contributed to an increasingly hostile environment and implicitly encouraged acts of societal aggression and violence.”

The report also drew attention to the permission given for a museum, that was originally a Greek Orthodox church and later a mosque, to be reconverted into a mosque. It noted also that president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for the same thing to happen to the Hagia Sophia, which has the same history.

USCIRF also said the Turkish government has “continued to dismiss, detain, and arrest individuals affiliated with, or accused of affiliation with, the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, for alleged complicity in a July 2016 coup attempt or involvement in terrorist activity.”

Gülen has lived in the US since 1999, and is considered a terrorist by the Turkish government.

The Turkish foreign ministry charged that Gülen's mention in the report “amounts to deliberately turning a blind eye” to the coup attempt, and added: “We invite the US authorities to earnestly examine the evidence we have provided” about the Gülen movement “and to engage in effective cooperation in line with the spirit of alliance in order to reveal the true nature of this terrorist organization.”

Aksoy added that the recommendation of adding Turkey to a “special watch list” for religious freedom “is a clear indication of the biased mindset behind it and the circles under whose influence it was drawn up.”

“In the report that is supposed to include global trends that threaten religious freedoms, the Commission does not mention a single word about xenophobia, Islamophobia and discrimination on religious grounds that is on the rise in the West and the US,” Aksoy stated.

“This clearly reveals that the purpose of the report is not to protect religious rights and freedoms. It is clear that the Commission, which has been accused of being anti-Muslim in the past, has drawn up this report based on its unwarranted agenda and priorities under the influence of circles that are hostile to Turkey, rather than objective criteria. We recommend the authors of this report to look in the mirror and engage in self-criticism.”

Earlier this year, Turkish authorities arrested a Syriac Orthodox priest on terrorism charges after he provided bread and water to members of a Kurdish separatist group that has been deemed illegal.

Washington D.C., Apr 30, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- The Syrian civil war has led to one of the largest refugee crises of modern times, and presented unique problems for Syria’s ancient Christian communities. Marginalized for centuries, persecuted by ISIS, afraid to attract any attention from the West, Syrian Christians remain, by most accounts, the war’s most invisible victims.

In partnership with the Philos Project, CNA sat down with Mary Sayegh, a Syrian who lives now in the United States:

Tell me a bit about yourself.

My name is Mary Sayegh. I am 22 years old and live in the United States. I was born and raised in my beloved hometown of Aleppo, Syria. I moved to New Jersey about six years ago, running away from war to build a better future for myself. It was hard to leave my parents, family and friends behind and start all over. To be honest, it wasn’t easy to fit in a new country, even though I’m an extrovert. In America, I had to try and rebuild my social life in a strange land. As for Syria, I was involved in the scouts in church, Sunday school, computer program classes, art, and basketball.

When I came here, I started high school as a junior. I was held back for a year because I had to do ESL and take two courses in US history. During that time, I started planning for college and eventually got accepted to Montclair State University as a biology major and a public health minor. During my studies I also worked several part-time jobs in retail, as an executive office assistant and a front desk receptionist for a doctor. I tried to find balance by going to the gym, hanging out with friends and volunteering at the hospital.

When and how did you flee to the US?

Before my dad was married, he lived in the US, and therefore had American citizenship. Naturally, he passed it on to the rest of the family when he got married and settled in Aleppo again. The American citizenship made it possible for me to have a safe flight to the US when I left Aleppo. I flew from Lebanon to Spain to spend 6 weeks with my uncle and his family. Then my aunt (from New Jersey) came and took me to the States because I was too afraid to fly alone. On September 27, 2014 I landed in America. My mom and brother came three months later, and I didn’t see my dad until a couple of years later. 

When did you start recognizing that there was a war going on in Syria?

I have lost track of the years. I have no idea what happened when. In general, everything started changing when they hit my hometown and we became more in danger. We couldn’t stay out late anymore or go to certain areas. It got to the point where I would walk in the streets and couldn’t find a familiar face. I didn’t recognize anyone on the streets mainly because many Christians in my neighborhood had fled Aleppo. Bombs, shootings and noises became a daily experience for us. On the contrary, it felt weird when nothing was happening.

Tell me about Aleppo.

Aleppo was one of the most beautiful cities. It is famous for its architecture, the churches, mosques, schools, tombs and baths. As an important center for culture and as one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Aleppo was loved by all Syrians.

The Citadel of Aleppo was one of the things that made the city special. The Citadel is considered to be one of the oldest and largest ones in the world. It is the best place to watch the sunset and learn about our ancestors’ history. During the siege, the Citadel of Aleppo was partly destroyed, unlike its surrounding buildings that were left in ruins. Today, the area is filled with locals and even tourists that enjoy nice meals in the newly built restaurants around it.

Did you ever feel like you were less valued because you were a Christian in Aleppo/Syria?

I never felt that way. Maybe back in the day. But in my days, we never felt a difference. We felt we were all equal and we treated each other as human beings, brothers and sisters, regardless of our religious differences.

What are your best and worst memories from Syria?

My best memories were every second I spent in Syria growing up until I moved to the States. I would say my worst memory was having to attend friends’ funerals at a time when I thought I would be attending their graduations and weddings.

Tell me about Aleppo when it was under siege.

I consider myself one of the lucky ones. There were obviously people who lived under better conditions during this horrible time because they were rich, and my dad owned his own business, so we were considered upper middle class. However, days passed when we would not have water or electricity. Still, we were fortunate to at least have had a roof over our heads. Close to my home, al-Assad School opened up for the people whose homes had been destroyed in the clashes. So, one really gets a perspective.

A lot of young girls and boys helped their parents to buy or bring gallons of water or fuel to their homes. I would help my dad fill up huge bottles with water so we would always have some when needed. We also filled up our bathtub as soon as water was available. We had three buckets: one for clean water, one with the soap for when we would wash our hands, and one for when we rinse our hands. The latter one was later reused as water to flush in the toilet.

We never really knew which groups were fighting, or where, unless we saw it on the news. We just heard the bombs and the shootings. There would also be snipers on buildings that would shoot as soon as someone would pass by. Once, a sniper shot at our car, but it wasn’t critical, so we just continued driving.

I was also lucky because I didn’t lose any loved ones in the war. I had a fellow peer in the church scouts who was killed by a bomb. That was really emotional because it was the first time my scout played at a funeral and not a wedding of a person belonging to the scouts. Another scout lost his mother.

If there were to be peace in Syria tomorrow would you move back?

As much as it hurts me to say this, I wouldn’t go back. I will go to visit but not live there anymore. It’s just impossible for our young generation to go and build everything all over. And to be honest, what’s left for us to even go back to? Even if I want to what would I do with my degree?

 

 

CNA Staff, Apr 24, 2020 / 11:31 am (CNA).- The bishops of Togo called for peace and respect for the rights of citizens after the violent arrest of an opposition leader from his home on Tuesday.

“[E]very citizen has the right and duty to express his/her disapproval in the face of manifest injustice and oppression,” the Catholic bishops of Togo said in a statement, according to English Africa Service.

“The physical violence and other inhuman and degrading treatment inflicted on citizens on this occasion is, therefore, a negation of their rights and freedoms…the Conference of Bishops denounces and condemns them, and calls on authorities to exercise restraint.”

In their statement, the bishops said they were dismayed to learn that opposition leader Agbeyome Kodjo had been arrested at his home this week, “in circumstances of brutality and violence perpetrated by the Defence and Security Forces.”

News reports indicated that police had broken into Kodjo’s home to arrest him for failing to appear before the nation’s intelligence police force. The opposition leader previously served as prime minister of the country, but his diplomatic immunity was removed last month by Parliament.

Kodjo, who heads the Patriotic Movement for Democracy and Development, came in a distant second to incumbent President Faure Gnassingbé Eyadéma in the nation’s February presidential elections.

Kodjo called the results a farce and declared himself the rightful president of the country. He said his calculations showed that he had received some 60% of the nation’s votes, while official tallies put him at about 18%.

Gnassingbé has been president of Togo since 2005 and is entering his fourth term. His father previously ruled the country after a 1967 coup.

Togo has seen political instability and widespread poverty in recent years. Protests in 2017 called for the resignation of Gnassingbé and resulted in harsh crackdowns.

Last month, 90-year-old Archbishop emeritus Philippe Fanoko Kpodzro of Lome was placed under house arrest briefly, after he encouraged protests following the presidential election.

Rome Newsroom, Apr 22, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- For Iraqi Christian and Yazidi communities still recovering from the destruction wreaked by the Islamic State, the coronavirus poses significant risks, NGOs have said in a joint statement. 

“The public health system in Sinjar and the wider Nineveh Governorate was decimated by ISIS during its brutal occupation and genocidal campaign in Iraq, beginning in 2014,” the letter stated.

“An impending humanitarian and security disaster looms large in Iraq. … There is a significant attendant threat to global security if ISIS uses this opportunity to regroup and return, but it does not have to be this way. Iraqi authorities and the United Nations must act now,” it continued.

Twenty-five NGOs working in northern Iraq issued a joint statement April 16 calling on the World Health Organization to undertake an assessment mission in the area, where testing has been limited, and urging Iraqi authorities to prevent the Islamic State from regrouping.

Signed by the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, Free Yezidi Foundation, Genocide Alert, and the Religious Freedom Institute, the statement described how the pandemic is exacerbating existing security, humanitarian, and health risks among displaced and rebuilding Iraqi minority communities. It highlighted, in particular, the global risk of a potential resurgence of the Islamic State.

Security threat

“COVID-19 and the precipitous drop in oil prices have caused the Iraqi economy to collapse, leaving a dangerous security vacuum for ISIS to exploit. Indeed, the resultant political turmoil and social strife recall the very conditions that earlier incarnations of ISIS and its supporters capitalized on during its initial surge almost a decade ago,” it stated.

“According to International Crisis Group, ISIS in its weekly newsletter Al-Naba called on its fighters to attack and weaken its enemies while they are distracted by the pandemic,” it added.

U.S. military officials have expressed concern that the Islamic State could use adverse conditions to its advantage in it recruitment efforts.

“COVID-19 has also hastened the departure of some coalition forces from Iraq, weakening counter-terrorism operations, while some ISIS detainees have recently escaped prison in Syria,” the letter stated.

On March 30, Islamic State fighters imprisoned in northwestern Syria revolted. The rioting prisoners took over one wing of the prison before Kurdish forces intervened.

“There is an urgent need for reform in the civilian security sector, in order to integrate regional militias into a unified Federal Police that upholds the rule of law and protects all citizens, regardless of religion or clan affiliation,” the letter said.

Health infrastructure needs

The economic strain has also hindered Iraqi minorities’ efforts to rebuild their communities, including medical infrastructure needs.

“Many Yazidis (Ezidis/Yezidis) want to return to Sinjar, but security, reconstruction and basic services are still lacking to allow a dignified return. There are currently only two hospitals and just one ventilator to assist the current population of around 160,000 people in the region,” the NGOs’ statement explained.

Iraq’s healthcare system, which has suffered for decades from the effects of sanctions and war, currently faces a critical shortage of doctors and medicine, according to a Reuters investigation. Hospitals in Iraq are already overcrowded and doctors overworked, while the healthcare situation is slightly better in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which has its own health ministry.

There have been at least 1,600 cases of COVID-19 documented in Iraq, which is under pressure to reopen its border with Iran, which has had more than 85,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

Humanitarian workers have also had trouble reaching those in need due to movement restrictions, and have raised concerns about the risk of an outbreak in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.

Social distancing is very difficult in these high-density IDP camps in Iraq, where 1.8 million people remain displaced due to insecurity and reconstruction needs, according to the UN.

The 25 NGOs called for the government of Iraq and the United Nations to provide testing capacity in the IDP camps in Sinjar, Tel Afar and the Nineveh Plains.

“At present, it is impossible to apprehend the extent of the spread of the virus because no testing for the disease is taking place in the camps, while restrictions of movement impede the work of humanitarian actors who provide basic essentials such as food, water and medicine,” they stated.

Psychological risk for trauma survivors

Genocide survivors with trauma also face increased personal risk of psychological harm amid isolation imposed by coronavirus measures.

As in much of the world, authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan have ordered people to stay home, imposed a curfew, and have closed places of worship, schools, restaurants, and most businesses. 

“Another alarming corollary of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iraq is the psychological impact on at-risk communities, including Yazidis, Turkmen and Christians, such as Assyrians,” it said.

This is a particular concern for the Yazidi communities in which thousands of women were victims of sexual violence by the Islamic State.

“Prior to the outbreak, Médecins Sans Frontières reported on a debilitating mental health crisis among Yazidis in Iraq, including a rising number of suicides,” it stated.

Suicides in this community have already been reported since social distancing measures were put into place, the NGOs reported. They called on the World Health Organization to address this “acute mental health crisis.”

In their appeal to the WHO and Iraqi government, the NGOs insisted that the stakes were high: 

“COVID-19 is a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen before. Survivors of genocide and other mass atrocity crimes are now waiting for this silent death to pass through the camps and their homes, unable to fight back.”

CNA Staff, Apr 20, 2020 / 10:40 am (CNA).- The cathedral of the Archdiocese of Cape Town, South Africa, was vandalized on Saturday and the tabernacle desecrated. In a statement on the incident, issued on Sunday, an auxiliary bishop of the diocese requested prayers from the faithful and donations to help feed the poor of Cape Town. 

“It is with great sadness and alarm that we confirm the news that has been doing the rounds on Social Media that the Cathedral has been vandalized,” said a message from Bishop Sylvester David, OMI, published Sunday, April 19. David is an auxiliary bishop of the Cape Town archdiocese. 

Bishop David said that various sacred objects had been stolen in the course of the break-in including “a ciborium, a pyx, four silver candelabra, a gold plated chalice, and two gold plated patens.” Money was also taken from the votive offering box, he said.

In addition to the robbery and damage, and more concerning to the Church, the vandalism included Eucharistic desecration.

“The consecrated hosts from the ciborium have been left inside the tabernacle but the host from the pyx has been removed,” said David. “There has been desecration.” 

The vandalism of St. Mary’s Cathedral occurred sometime of the early hours of Saturday, April 18. The damage was reported to the Cape Town Central Police when it was discovered the following day by the cathedral caretaker. 

South African media reported that in addition to the thefts, vandals ripped the tabernacle door off the hinges, and tore up carpets. Media reports estimated that the damage to the cathedral was more than R100,000, approximately $5,400 USD. 

This was the second time the cathedral has been targeted for a break-in.

Bishop David acknowledged that while the archdiocese was itself the victim of a crime, the acts of vandalism and desecration meant that “reparation has to be done,” and that each parish church of the archdiocese would be sent special prayers to offer.

“We request that all the faithful in the Archdiocese to join with the Cathedral parishioners and to engaged in the prayer which will be sent out to the Parish priests for distribution. It is important that the entire local Church engage in this as the Cathedral is the Mother church,” he said. “This prayer does not replace other daily prayers but supplements them.”

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the Archdiocese of Cape Town suspended the public celebration of Mass on March 17.

Additionally, David requested that those who are able make a donation to the Archdiocese of Cape Town’s account in order to provide food for the poor. 

“We wish to thank you for the many expressions of the faith especially during this difficult time of the shutdown and wish you a meaningful Easter season,” he said.