Good Night Irene

Several friends have very kindly been inquiring about my family and how they survived Hurrican Irene. I'm happy to report that everyone is safe and sound and that they largely avoided even the minor inconveniences of power outages, downed tree limbs, and basement flooding.

That is not to say that Staten Island was unscathed. These pictures from The Staten Island Advance show that there was quite a bit of localized flooding, especially on our South Shore of the Island.

There were also any number of downed trees and power lines. Still, it seems that the worst case scenarios were thankfully avoided. Here in DC that is certainly the case. In Bethesda there were spotty power outages, but little to no flooding.

Let's hope that we can go a week or two without another natural calamity! And may the next weather event involve snow!!

"It is as if they had gone to the edge of an abyss..."

Several weeks ago, the Pew Forum released a new study examining the state of religious knowledge in the United States. It's not good news. It shows that people of all faiths, especially Catholics (and among them, especially Hispanic Catholics whose numbers are swelling) are woefully uneducated about the basic tenants of their traditions. Even atheists and agnostics knew more about faith traditions than believers! And especially among the younger generations of Americans, more and more people describe themselves as belonging to no church or faith community. A significant number of these have left the nation's largest faith community: the Catholic Church.

Of course there have already been a bevy of responses and commentaries on the study. All of the articles I've read have seen the study's statistical data as a confirmation of what we have actually known anecdotally for  quite some time. When these articles differ, they tend to disagree about the reasons for these disastrous numbers.

As you might imagine, there are many who blame the Church's unwillingness to adopt the author's preferred liberalizing reform. The problem with this analysis is that it ignores the Pew Forum's other astonishing finding: the death of mainline Protestantism in the United States. The very Protestant traditions that dominated the commanding heights of American society nearly since its founding are all but completely gone, replaced by Evangelical Protestantism.

The reason these startling numbers pose a problem for those who advocate a liberalizing trend in the Catholic Church, is that the primary cause of the death of Mainline Protestantism is its embrace in the last century of Liberal theology!

So Fr. Steve Grunow has correctly suggested: "If we are looking for possible reasons for the decline of Catholicism in the United States and its possible remedies, it might be a good idea to begin with a serious appraisal of the kind of theological ethos that came to dominate the Church in America for several decades."

Sadly, any such intellectually serious examination leads to the undeniable conclusion that "the ethos of Catholic leadership has been for decades that of assimilation and accommodation to the American experience." So, we must further ask ourselves, is it really "all that shocking that so many Catholics would 'drift' or find the category of 'none' to best describe their religious and spiritual identity? Given that the Catholic Church in the United States has so emphasized the importance of assimilation and accommodation to the American cultural experience, is it any wonder that so many Catholics would find Protestantism appealing? They are simply coming to terms with the fact that Protestantism is a better fit for an American than that of the 'ancient regime' of the Catholic Church."

I've referenced and linked to Fr. Robert Barron on this blog before. He is by now a nationally famous preacher and commentator. I am proud to call him a friend and I'm grateful for the many ways he's inspired and supported me and countless other young religious and priests. He had this phenomenally accessible and accurate commentary on the study, and on what he sees as the root causes of its troubling findings:



I really couldn't agree with this more. And yet, I fear that there are many who fail to recognize this self-evident truth.

Fr. Barron says at the end of the video, "we need a new generation of priests, brothers, sisters, teachers, catechists etc. who know and love this tradition, who know it from the inside and are passionate to communicate it." Through my work in campus ministry, and especially since I entered formation for religious life, I have met so many young men and women who make up this new generation. They are deeply in love with the Church's rich and diverse tradition, they seek out mentors and teachers who will assist them in unlocking the Church's theological, liturgical, artistic and musical treasures, and they are zealous for bringing these riches to bear for their peers as answers to the longings of the modern age.

These young people would, for example, take to heart this advice given to seminarians by the Holy Father, as a remedy to the "beige Catholicism" decried by Fr. Barron:

I urge you to retain an appreciation for popular piety, which is different in every culture yet always remains very similar, for the human heart is ultimately one and the same. Certainly, popular piety tends towards the irrational, and can at times be somewhat superficial. Yet it would be quite wrong to dismiss it. Through that piety, the faith has entered human hearts and become part of the common patrimony of sentiments and customs, shaping the life and emotions of the community. Popular piety is thus one of the Church’s great treasures. The faith has taken on flesh and blood. Certainly popular piety always needs to be purified and refocused, yet it is worthy of our love and it truly makes us into the "People of God."

And yet, in the same time since I entered formation for religious life, I have also seen how terribly misunderstood, dismissed, and even mocked and villainized such young people are in certain circles of the Church's life - especially in broad swaths of the Catholic academy and most sadly in religious life itself!

Archbishop Augustine DiNoia, OP currently serves in Rome in the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Not long ago, he gave an address to the provincial chapter of his Dominican community here in Washington DC. In it, he notes that his community has been blessed with a remarkable influx of new seminarians - but that these seminarians, because they are like the young people I described above, pose a challenge to older generations of religious who came of age in a different Church and world.

He describes what issues comprise the generational divide that leads to the misunderstanding, dismissal, and mocking I have described and which must be combated. I am so convinced that Archbishop DiNoia's observations are accurate and prescient to the discussion raised by the Pew Forum study, I'm going to quote him here at length:

"There is something new afoot among the young men being who are today being drawn to the priesthood and religious life . . .  I have noticed it over the past few years, but it seems more pronounced or at least more evident to me in the people born in the mid- to late 80s and early 90s. My sense is that these 20- and 30-somethings have been radicalized by their experience . . . in a way that we were not. 

A Home for a Hero

Several weeks ago in Portland I preached a homily about Brendan Marracco, an Army veteran from Staten Island who lost all four limbs in combat in Iraq. There is word today that ground has been broken on a new home for Brendan, specially equipped to ease his transition to independent living. All the best to the contractors and donors who are making this possible and especially to Brendan and his family.

A New Missal

Over the past several years, the Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome, and an international committee of bishops and scholars representing all English-speaking countries, have been working to make a new English translation of the latest edition of the Roman Missal. Their work is finally coming to a conclusion, which is to say that before too long the Mass prayers and responses we have known for the past forty years will be changing.

This new translation has many things to recommend it: it is definitely much more faithful to the Latin text it seeks to translate; it employs a more sacral language, helping ensure a dignified and theologically rich liturgy; and it unites all English-speaking churches in use of the same missal.

Still, all change (especially in the liturgy) runs the risk of confusing and alienating those who are comfortable and used to a previous way of doing things. And so our Holy Father's words to the Vox Clara committee are particularly important:

"A new task will then present itself . . . the task of preparing for the reception of the new translation by clergy and lay faithful. Many will find it hard to adjust to unfamiliar texts after nearly forty years of continuous use of the previous translation. The change will need to be introduced with due sensitivity, and the opportunity for catechesis that it presents will need to be firmly grasped. I pray that in this way any risk of confusion or bewilderment will be averted, and the change will serve instead as a springboard for a renewal and a deepening of Eucharistic devotion all over the English-speaking world."

All of us can prepare for the new missal, which is still many months away, by visiting a webpage created by the U.S. Bishop's conference and familiarizing ourselves with the new texts. It would also be appropriate to (politely) ask your pastor, diocesan liturgy office, or bishop about opportunities that will be made available in your area to learn more about the changes.

Let us pray with the Holy Father that this wonderful opportunity for renewal of our Eucharistic devotion will indeed be seized by clergy and laity throughout the country!

UPDATE: My confrere Fr. John Pearson, csc was good enough to direct me to a few more sources of information I can share with you: The Notre Dame Center for Liturgy has audio and video files of theologians explaining elements of the new Missal . . . and the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein Seminary in Chicago has also made catechetical resources available online. Enjoy!

". . . Not as external agent, but as participant . . ."

Yesterday and today, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend has been making a a sort of apostolic visit to the University of Notre Dame. He presided at a Mass of Welcome in the Basilica yesterday and greeted the faculty, staff and students of the University at a reception under the Golden Dome. This evening, he presided at the Holy Cross community's Mass in Corby Hall and joined us for dinner. I am grateful to have been able to concelebrate both liturgies.

Today's Observer does a good job of summarizing the visit, and the bishop's homily from the Mass of Welcome.

Photo Credit: The Observer

The salient point of these celebrations must certainly be what the Bishop said in his homily: “I believe, as Pope John Paul II said, that bishops should be seen not as external agents but as participants in the life of the Catholic university.”

Father John Jenkins, C.S.C. himself noted in his words of welcome, that Bishop Rhoades comes to Notre Dame not merely as our "friend" or our "guest," but as our bishop. He also noted that in the University's gift of a crozier (or pastoral staff) we can see that it is sometimes the role of the bishop to "prod" and direct.

It strikes me that both Bishop Rhoades and Father Jenkins rejected, each in their own way, the terrible inadequacies of the infamous Land O' Lakes Statement, which said:

"To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself."

We must hope and pray that we are witnessing the dawning of a new day in the relationship between the University and the Church - a day that rolls back the ill effects of the Land O' Lakes Statement and asserts once and for all that "one cannot have communion with the Church unless it is with the local bishop" (as Bishop Rhoades succinctly put it in an interview with The Irish Rover).

Mundelein Seminary Shootout 2010

Notre Dame's daily, The Observer, also covered the seminarian basketball tournament held this weekend at Mundelein Seminary in Chicago. I traveled with all of our Old Collegians, and the majority of our seminarians at Moreau, to attend the 10th annual Seminary Shootout.

Back in the day, yours truly cheered our men on as we won two of the first three championships at this tournament - and then I played on Moreau's third championship team!:

Unfortunately, Holy Cross hasn't had as much luck since Fr. Bill Miscamble handed the reigns over to Fr. Pat Neary. We haven't won the tournament since! - and we tease him about this pretty mercilessly. But, of course, the tournament is about much more than competition. It really is a wonderful chance for seminarians throughout the Midwest to get together for fellowship and fun.

And we had one heck of a cheering section . . .

Mundelein Seminary is also a beautiful location to spend a weekend. The seminary campus was constructed in 1921 by Cardinal Mundelein - and its neo-classical architecture is meant to indicate the compatibility of Catholicism and the American experiment.

I was also very glad to have the opportunity to spend time with Fr. Bob Barron, who teaches on the faculty of Mundelein Seminary. Fr. Bob spent a sabbatical year living with us at Moreau Seminary when I was a newly professed religious. A number of us seminarians developed a fast friendship with Bob and remain grateful for the influence he had on us as we prepared for ordination. We've stayed in touch through the years, but this was the first time we've been able to see one another in awhile.

Fr. Barron not only teaches and writes, he also has a thriving and effective ministry of evangelization through digital media. His radio show, podcasts, webpage, YouTube videos, and now his Catholicism Project are phenomenal gifts to the Church in this country. I encourage you to use these resources, as I do, and to assist Fr. Barron with your prayers and financial support.

Prof. Ralph McInerny - R.I.P.

Yesterday morning I concelebrated the Mass of Christian Burial for Prof. Ralph McInerny, the legendary professor of philosophy and author of innumerable scholarly works - who is perhaps best known as the author of the wildly successful Father Dowling murder mystery series.

Prof. McInerny was quite possibly the greatest Thomistic philosopher of his generation. As Fr. Marvin O'Connell noted in his eloquent homily, the milieu that nurtured Prof. McInerny's intellectual life and faith is largely gone - and so it's doubly hard to imagine someone being capable of filling his shoes.

Sadly, as Prof. McInerny himself witnessed, even his beloved Notre Dame has suffered the grave effects of this death of Catholic culture. In his later years, Prof. McInerny often spoke out against the diminishment of Catholic identity on our campus and the loss of a distinctly Catholic contribution to the life of the academy.

As we pray for the eternal repose of his soul, we also pray that the Lord will raise up more philosophers, theologians, scholars and teachers who are zealous for the intellectual patrimony of the Church.

Siegfried Hall . . . Leading the Way, Yet Again

The new bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend celebrated Mass on Sunday evening in Siegfried Hall. This was the bishop's first public Mass on the campus since being installed, and he couldn't have picked a better place to begin his ministry among the students of Notre Dame. I'm sure, too, that Fr. John and the Ramblers showed him tremendous hospitality. Read all about it in the Observer article at the link above.

Home Sweet Home

I'm amazed that Scott Cullen didn't forward this article to me . . . he must be very busy at work. But I'm glad my cousin Brendan mentioned it when we were together last week and then sent it along in an email. It comes from the on-line journal, Slate, and addresses a cultural phenomenon I've been asked to comment on more than once in the past few months: MTV's reality show, Jersey Shore.

Here's the article in it's entirety:

Planet of the Guidos
Why Staten Island is New York City's most mocked borough.
By Jonah Weiner
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010

This week, MTV will air the season finale of Jersey Shore. Over nine episodes, the reality show has evolved from its initial, one-joke premise—an intimate look at the boardwalk blunders of a vulgar tribe of self-identifying Guidos, distinguished by their gelled coiffure and tangerine skin—into a portrait of the sort of dysfunctional but lovable TV family we've been welcoming into our homes for years. Snooki, that exhibitionist Oompa Loompa, tumbled into our hearts and passed out on the beanbag. Mike, aka "The Situation"—who, despite his prized cobblestone abdominals, failed for the first six episodes to seal the deal with any of the ladies of Seaside Heights, N.J.—has an endearingly delusional optimism about him. Ronnie is at once fearsome for his temper and sympathetic for his romantic streak—he's Stanley Kowalski with a heart of GNC Ultra Mega Gold. And Pauly D.'s "blowback" hairdo, a character in its own right, has benefited from prolonged exposure—its sculptural audacity deserves our awe, not our disgust.


Italian-American organizations, a New Jersey state senator, irritated Jersey locals, and Alyssa Milano were among those who tuned in (or refused to) and hammered MTV for trafficking in negative stereotypes. I'm among those who watched Jersey Shore on behalf of another interested, albeit less vocal, party, one that has resigned itself to a regular regimen of slights and abuse: Staten Islanders. Three members of the Jersey Shore cast (Vinny, Angelina, and The Situation himself) are natives of New York City's fifth borough, which sits obstinately across the harbor from Manhattan. "Did you see the show?" asked a story on the Web site of Staten Island's local paper, the Advance, after Jersey Shore debuted. "Are you proud or ashamed that three of the cast members have ties to Staten Island?"

Staten Island is to the Jersey Shore what, say, the Upper West Side is to the Berkshires: a prime summer-rental feeder community. The relationship between shore and island is occasionally fraught—the mayor of Belmar, N.J., recently took flak (and won some fans, no doubt) for a statement denigrating the island-headquartered "Guidos" who flock annually to his beaches—but it holds firm. "Go back to Staten Island, bro!" an antagonist yells at Ronnie in one episode. "I'm not from Staten Island, bro," he responds. Honest mistake.

People who know little about Staten Island tend to know this much: It is a historical haven for mobsters (Paul Castellano's former mansion is a short drive from Vito Corleone's Godfather compound); it is home to a 2,200-acre landfill, the city dump from 1948 to 2001; it is home to the city's strongest conservative voting bloc (it's the only borough McCain carried in 2008); and it's home to the largest per-capita Italian-American population in New York state. This last factoid extends back to the 1950s, when "white flight" began to scatter Brooklyn's Italian-American communities out to suburban Staten Island. This migration was further enabled and encouraged by the 1964 opening of the Verrazano bridge, which connects Brooklyn to Staten Island and which gave the rest of the city a means of entry besides public ferry. (There are three bridges that connect Staten Island to New Jersey.)

MTV deserves ample credit, however, if Staten Island is best known today as Planet Guido. Jersey Shore isn't the first time the network has tapped the island for deliciously unflattering programming. The past few years have also seen the broadcast of True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl, in which three teens share their preferences for buff, "orange" guys and fantasize about high-paying waitress jobs; and My Super Sweet Sixteen: Cindy, in which a luxuriously pampered adolescent arrives at a garish New Dorp catering hall via Cinderella-style carriage, her beau in full-on princely regalia and wearing a blowback to make Pauly D.'s wilt with envy. One commenter responding to the Advance article wrote that "thanks to MTV, no one believes me when I tell them I'm from SI, NY ... they say I'm not orange enough."

Saturday Night Live has done its part, too, and with none of MTV's documentary pretext. A 1999 sketch featuring host Gwyneth Paltrow sent up a pair of "Staten Island Nurses": gum-smacking, big-haired, empty-headed, attitudinal. In late 2009, a sketch called "Gossip Girl: Staten Island" told the same joke, more or less: Bobby Moynihan put on a shiny shirt and mook accent, Bill Hader gesticulated wildly in a pizza parlor, and host Blake Lively tottered on high heels under the tremendous weight of her hair-sprayed wig. (Maybe it's written on some SNL idea board that patrician blondes impersonating outer-borough trash = big funny.)

I was born in Brooklyn, but when I was six, my parents moved to St. George, the northernmost neighborhood on Staten Island. St. George is occasionally referred to as "downtown," typically by residents hoping that some of the designation's urban cool might rub off: It's the part of the borough that most wishes it were somewhere else. Periodically, reports citing the neighborhood's prewar architecture, skyline views, small artists' community, and some newly opened café will announce St. George as a burgeoning hipster enclave, but that's more or less the same thing my parents heard in the '80s. The poor public-transit access and dearth of nightlife and cultural life keep that dream deferred. In high school, a classmate of mine wrote an essay bemoaning the absence of a Barnes & Noble on Staten Island: A middling prize, you might say, but the island's culture-hungry couldn't be choosy. (One did open in 2000.) My own relationship to Staten Island is ambivalent. And yet I get a little defensive whenever it shows up in the popular culture as a cheap punch line.

A recent film offers a somewhat fresher and more complicated vision of Staten Island than we're used to: Big Fan, which came out on DVD last Tuesday after a limited theatrical run. Written and directed by Robert Siegel (who wrote The Wrestler), and starring the comedian Patton Oswalt as a Giants-obsessed parking-lot attendant, Big Fan is part of a tradition of films—lean, but a tradition nonetheless—in which Staten Island plays a crucial supporting role. The landmark of this genre is Mike Nichols' Working Girl, from 1988, which concerns a Staten Island-based Wall Street secretary (Melanie Griffith) who sets her sights on big-city glory. Staten Island allowed Nichols a fresh twist on the age-old tale of the diamond-in-the-rough hero who yearns to escape her nowhere hometown: In Working Girl, the nowhere hometown is part of the greatest city on earth. Griffith's ambitions are captured in an early scene on the Staten Island waterfront when she gazes hopefully at the Manhattan skyline: The harbor becomes a moat, the twinkling kingdom so close but so far.

Big Fan captures a different side of Staten Island: the one that wants nothing to do with its neighbor to the north. Oswalt's Paul Aufiero has one friend, lives with his mother, and likes it that way. He's barricaded himself comfortably among his obsessions, and his happiest contact with the outside world comes in the form of nightly calls to an AM sports-radio talk show. Big Fan nods not just to Staten Island's McMansion-studded topography—Paul's brother is an ambulance chaser who lives on a gaudy, stucco-drunk street—but also its unique brand of semi-urban decay: the crumbling warehouses, empty storefronts, gas-station mini marts, and run-down houses that line formerly industrial waterfront neighborhoods like Stapleton and Port Richmond. Early on, Paul takes a disastrous trip to Manhattan that threatens to draw him out of his world, and he spends the rest of the film hiding out in his bedroom, pretending it never happened. The harbor is a moat in Big Fan, too, only the kingdom has switched shores.

The longing, Manhattan-ward gaze and the stiff-armed big-city rebuff: this duality is key to Staten Island. But the latter is the borough's dominant attitude, especially as you get farther and farther south. In True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl, one South Shore teen puts it nicely: "Nobody in my family has really left. I have everything I've ever wanted here. I drive a Lexus truck." Several parents of friends of mine lived lives in which the city at large pointedly played no part. I remember one mother describing Manhattan, with a theatrical, revolted shudder, as crowded and gross: She liked to leave Staten Island on weekends, but preferred to head for the air-conditioned confines of New Jersey's Short Hills Mall. Provincialism can be sniffed out in suburbs everywhere, naturally, but it's jarring to find a chunk of the stuff bobbing, intact, within the so-called melting pot. There's something of the chicken-and-the-egg to the issue, as a systematic inferiority complex shades into fierce, hermetic pride. The borough's geographic remoteness at once mandates isolation (the ferry is a hassle to build a life around, except perhaps as a 9-to-5 commuter) and caters to isolationism (the present-day population remains nearly 80 percent white).

The stiff arm was ratified in 1993, when a majority of Staten Island residents voted to secede from New York City, tired of paying taxes to a city that rewarded them with megatons of waste and megatons of scorn. The State Assembly swatted down the resulting bill in 1994; secession talk resurfaced in 2008, though its chances of success are as slight as they were 17 years ago. The isolationist spirit is there, too, in a different way, in the music of the Island's greatest cultural export, the Wu-Tang Clan, which challenged both the supremacy and strictures of Bronx- and Brooklyn-based hip-hop—from which perspective Staten Island was taken about as seriously as Peoria, Ill.— and refigured Staten Island as "Shaolin," a proud, kung fu fantasyland.

Other New York boroughs claim strong self-reliance, too, of course, but Staten Island does so in a way that is more oppositional, and less appealingly "exotic." Urbanites take foodie trips to Flushing, Queens, for authentic ethnic cuisine and can relate, at least implicitly, to the striving-immigrant narrative that animates a community like Jackson Heights or Sunset Park. Staten Island is much harder to assimilate into the fabric of New York. Politically, culturally, and sociologically, it is the strangest bedfellow in the city's ménage à cinq, regarded as a little red state full of orange people who seem to have crash-landed on our blue planet.

In this light, the Staten Island Guido is the most vivid, visible (and, some might say, grotesque) reflection of the borough's psychology. He turns "Guido" from a slur to a badge of honor and wears his déclassé otherness as proudly and aggressively as a punk rocker. (In its snob-scandalizing powers, the blowback is a far more radical hairstyle today than the Mohawk.) "The Situation" is exemplary: part insufferable rooster, part underdog. Kind of like his hometown.

I watched only one episode of the show to see what all the fuss was about. It's certainly not anything I was interested in watching more of . . . but the Old Collegians got a kick out of my watching even that one episode. I had to explain that in a weird sort of way, I know the people on that show and they remind me of home!

I think this article does an excellent job placing the show in its larger, and proper, cultural context. Weiner's analysis of "the guido" and the Island's somewhat schizophrenic relationship with New York City is rather convincing.

Of course, his analysis also misses a great deal by taking as emblematic and typical a group of people that MTV clearly selected because they were so outrageous - a group of people which, in fact, most Staten Islanders don't look or talk like. First, as Italian as the borough is, "the guido" is a small sub-species of that dominant group.

Second, while I'm sure the statistics Weiner cites are accurate, Staten Island has definitely changed over the last twenty years: when I visit home I am amazed at how many more African Americans, Hispanic-Americans from various Latin American countries, Russian immigrants, and Asian-Americans there are living on the Island.

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, the largest group of Staten Islanders is still the families of hardworking firemen, policemen, sanitation workers, teachers, secretaries, and businessmen. They don't get much attention, because their lives aren't exotic or stereotypical enough for MTV. But they still represent the Staten Island that's most important to me.

Picture Updates from Haiti

These pictures were recently sent from our Holy Cross community in Haiti. The photos show the damage to our provincial house . . .

and high school . . .

and the people that have gathered on our properties, living in tents cities because of the fear of aftershocks.

Earthquake in Haiti

The terrible news of the earthquake in Haiti has hit the Congregation of Holy Cross, and our University of Notre Dame and University of Portland communities particularly hard.

The Congregation has been in Haiti since the late 1940s and has grown to a considerable size in that impoverished country. Our American universities have also sent any number of volunteers to work in Haiti serving the needs of the people there in schools, orphanages, shelters, dispensaries and clinics.

Sadly, one of our Holy Cross seminarians, Emmanuel Jacques Guillaume, CSC was killed in the falling debris at the University Quisqueya where he was taking an exam in preparation for teaching mathematics at one of our Haitian high schools. Please pray for the repose of his soul.

(It is also reported that the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, and "hundreds" of other priests and seminarians have been killed in the total collapse of the cathedral, diocesan chancery, and seminary.)

Thanks be to God, the other members of the Holy Cross community have been spared, despite significant damage to our provincial house, high school, and other properties. There are now a large number of refugees taking shelter on our properties and our religious are doing their best to serve and feed them.

Fr. Thomas Streit, CSC of the University of Notre Dame spends much time in Haiti working with a Gates Foundation grant to eliminate elephantitis. He and several other Notre Dame researchers were in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck, and they are thankfully unharmed.

The University of Portland is, however, mourning the loss of one of its alumni. Molly Hightower was an 2009 alumna of the University of Portland volunteering in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince. She was killed in the earthquake when the building she was in collapsed.

If you are interested in contributing to relief efforts, one can never go wrong with Catholic Relief Services. CRS was on the ground in Haiti, already involved in long term relief work long before the earthquake hit. One could also send donations to the Holy Cross Mission Center with the specific intention of helping our Haitian confreres.

And of course, please join us in praying for our brothers and sisters in Haiti through the intercession of Our Lady of Sorrows, and Venerable Pierre Toussaint.

Welcome Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades!

The Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend has officially welcomed its new bishop, Kevin C. Rhoades, previously the bishop of Harrisburg, PA. On Tuesday evening, Bishop John D'Arcy presided at a Vespers service at St. Matthew's Cathedral in South Bend to welcome Bishop Rhoades:

I attended the Vespers with all of the Collegians, the seminarians from Moreau and a number of CSCs from campus and our local parishes. Then on Wednesday, I accompanied Deacon Kevin Grove, CSC on the drive to Fort Wayne for the Mass of installation at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. Deacon Kevin is seen here greeting Bishop Rhoades:

As part of the Mass the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi read the Holy Father's letter of appointment, and it was then shown to the diocese's college of consulters and to the faithful:

Bishop Rhoades is a former rector of Mount Saint Mary's Seminary in Maryland, and a number of priests who studied under him attended the installation. They had nothing but good things to say about him! Their supportive presence is a testimony to the esteem they hold him in, and a wonderful sign of the ministry Bishop Rhoades is likely to give his new diocese.

His homily was simply excellent. Focusing on his episcopal motto, the bishop spoke of the Church's mission to preach "the truth in love" even amidst what Pope Benedict has called a "dictatorship of relativism." Bishop Rhoades invited the faithful of the diocese to " always be proud to profess our Catholic faith, doing so with courage and without equivocation."

In his words of welcome at Vespers, Bishop Rhoades also pledged his ongoing support for the mission of Catholic education, and for the Church's commitment to the defense of all human life. We can only hope and pray that all the priests, faithful and institutions of the diocese will be renewed by this call to fidelity and mission.

Photos from the South Bend Tribune and the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette

At their ordination, all priests "promise respect and obedience" to the ordaining bishop and his successors. In attending the installation yesterday I certainly wished to convey my commitment to fulfill that promise and to work zealously under our new Successor of the Apostles.

I offer Bishop Rhoades a heartfelt welcome and my prayers of support. Ad multos annos!!

Portland as Economic Bellwether

                                Photo Credit: Leah Nash for the NY Times

Today the New York Times takes a look at the state of the nation's economy through the prism of Portland, Oregon. The article includes a look at Powell's Bookstore, seen in the picture above, and how their plans for expansion have been affected.

Lots of people have asked me if I have seen any fall-out from the economy in the parish: either in the form of decreased giving, or increased attendance at Mass.

I haven't noticed a specific increase in attendance other than to say Holy Redeemer has been experiencing a general growth in young couples and families as the neighborhood has been gentrifying over the past few years. I'm not sure what, if any, downturn there has been in the collection, but I do know that long term giving such as campaign pledges have been slower in coming in. We'll soon see about enrollment in the school for next year.

Like everywhere else, some people in the parish have been downsized from work or fear that they may yet be. There is definitely a hesitancy about how and when we will emerge from this particularly deep recession.

While we rightly feel concerned about our financial security, and our ability to provide for ourselves and our families, it is also important that we reflect on these words of the Holy Father, and seize the ever-present opportunity to ground our lives in God, relying entirely on that which truly endures:    

"He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand. We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God's words are a solid reality."

Great Day in New York

Rocco (and the Associated Press) is reporting that tomorrow morning the Holy Father will name Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee as the tenth Archbishop of New York, replacing the retiring Cardinal Edward Egan. 

This will (and should) be a source of great rejoicing for the people, and especially the priests of New York. Though I've not yet had the pleasure of meeting Archbishop Dolan, his reputation is simply sterling. I was also very much impressed with a collection of lectures he gave on the priesthood while serving as Rector of the North American College in Rome. 

Stick with Rocco for the best reporting of this unfolding story . . . and if it all comes to pass, say a prayer for New York's new Archbishop!

PDX Rally for Life

This past Sunday I led a group of parishioners downtown to participate in the Rally for Life at Pioneer Courthouse Square. We traveled by chartered bus and joined nearly seven thousand others in peacefully protesting on behalf of the unborn.

This event has been held in Salem, the state capital, in past years but moving it to Portland led to a significantly larger crowd.

As always, I was most grateful for our Archbishop, John Vlazny. He opened the formal program with a prayer and then gave a brief speech later in the event. His remarks were perfectly pitched for the most unchurched state in the Union. 

He forcefully made the point, that science, not merely opinion or a particular faith tradition, tells us that human life begins at conception. Therefore, our opposition to abortion is in fact a human rights crusade. Like the abolitionists and Civil Rights activists before us, our Biblical faith, and our American ideals, further assure us that life and liberty are God-given rights and that the God of Life will prevail.

Timely Message

In this week of an historic Presidential Inauguration, the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, and the annual March for Life in Washington DC, CatholicVote.com has released this powerful video:



Let's pray for our new President and all legislators - that they may have a change of heart and mind and seek to defend the human rights of all, including innocent life in the womb. Let's pray for women in crisis pregnancies and work together to help them as they strive to choose life. Let's pray for women who have had abortions and work to help them recover from the violence they too have suffered.