New Parish...new life

I have begun that life that most priests dream about. I live in an apartment about a block away from my parish. I have a separate phone number from the parish. I wake up and walk to my office. I'm still a priest all the time, I just don't live in the store.

I think this is why I'm not frustrated that the flooring in my kitchen isn't done. I've not had "my kitchen" since I was here as a seminarian. I'm taking my time getting settled in. My first goal is to get accustomed to sleeping past 6:00 in the morning and going to sleep later than 10:00 at night. Once I get used to that, then I'll be set.

Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest

Have you ever had a problem that only seemed to get worse the more you work on it? I’m not a good driver. I realize this but there’s not much I can do about it. In the words of the Red Green show, “I’m a man…But I can change…If I have to…I guess.” My biggest fault when driving is not speeding. As some of you may have experienced, I tend to travel at exactly the speed limit. And I’m pretty good about not talking on my cell phone or finding other ways to distract myself from paying attention to the road. The main reason that I am not a good driver is the most stereotypical female criticism of men; I get lost easily and refuse to ask directions. Let me give you an example. Last week, I went to Cedar Rapids to hear the Dubuque Colts drum and bugle corps perform. I got the address and directions off of the colt website and headed down with plenty of time to spare. I found the street it was supposed to be on and couldn’t find a football field. There were people around but, of course, I didn’t stop to ask any questions. I even found one of the corps practicing on a field. I could have asked them where they were performing but, instead, I decided to drive all over the city of Cedar Rapids with my windows open listening for drum sounds. After an hour of searching with ever increasing tension and impatience I found myself on the other side of town on the exact same street. Someone had written down southeast when it should have been southwest. The only bright spot was that the performance was about forty-five minutes behind schedule so I was right on time.

Driving is not the only thing that can cause us to work way too hard for something that should be a lot easier. Most of us would like to have more money so that we could afford more stuff and have an easier life. But, in order to earn the money necessary, we work long, exhausting hours and find that, when we come home at night, we have just enough money to survive and no energy to go do something exciting. And my favorite example of this happens when you get a new piece of technology. Have you ever got a new computer, cell phone, VCR, or something else and spent all day trying to figure out how it works only to have your teenage daughter or son come home and have it working in ten minutes? Now that’s frustration! Let’s face it, oftentimes life can seem like more of a burden than it’s worth.

In the face of this tension, our Lord calls us to himself saying, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” I find it fascinating that one of the introductory things that we say on the telephone is, “What did you do today?” We usually say this at some point earlier in the conversation unless if we are calling for a specific purpose. And the response the person gives, especially if it deals with relaxation or rest, can often lead to criticism. We are a very pragmatic country. In other words, we tend to expect people to be productive. If they aren’t productive, then they aren’t worth anything. That’s the mistake so many people made surrounding the Terry Schiavo case. The reason that Terry Schiavo deserved to be fed according to the Pope and most of the bishops wasn’t because she could have recovered. That was the politician’s response. The reason her feeding tube shouldn’t have been removed was because her life was worth something in and of itself. She didn’t need to produce anything, any emotion, any action, to have dignity. She had dignity because she had life. Life in and of itself has dignity.

We need to remind ourselves of this every day. That’s at the heart of what our Eucharist is about. We don’t come to mass to be entertained. If you do, you’d certainly be disappointed each week. We don’t come to mass because it makes us feel good. In fact, there are times when we leave mass without any comfort at all. We come to mass in order to come to know the Son so that the Son will reveal his Father to us through the Spirit. We come so that, for a few moments, we can hand our problems over to our heavenly Father and find some peace, even if the only peace that we receive is just knowing that we aren’t in this all alone. God is pulling for you and I am too.

Clustering Part Four

For the past week, I’ve been telling you about what a cluster of parishes is all about. With this posting, I begin a series to conclude these reflections by offering ways that you can help in this endeavor of clustering. The first and most important thing you can do is not panic. There will be some changes in the future that will need to take place. When they happen, there are natural reactions that people seem to have that hinder rather than help the situation. People tend to bristle at a change that is happening because of the relationship to the other parishes. For instance, if mass times change in order to ensure that we have a different time than the other two parishes. Or if we have a change in the way mass is celebrated in order to be “in line” with the other two parishes. You may feel tempted to complain but, in order to help the situation, it is better to adjust and trust that the change is necessary.

Another way that people panic when they hear about clustering is what some pastors and administrators call "shared suffering". The idea of shared suffering is that if one parish has to do something, all the parishes should do something. On the surface, this looks like it would actually be at the heart of the clustering process because you are trying to make sure one parish is not getting cheated out of something or being unduly rewarded. Yet, exceptions always seem to happen for one reason or another.

Having said that, the best thing a cluster can do to avoid panic is try to avoid making exceptions. Given the large number of events that already take place and the increasing number of meetings that will be taking place, it’s important that we all work to make the schedule as it already is set up be maintained. Next week, I’ll give you some ways that you can help facilitate the clustering process as it is proceeding and I will conclude the by looking at more long range suggestions.

Clustering Part three

In the past couple of days, I've been taking some time to describe what it means to cluster parishes together. I said that my parish, Holy Ghost, is in the process of clustering with a couple of other Dubuque parishes. Now, I hope to give you one example of what it means to cluster in an orgainic way.

Earlier this spring, the Director of Religious Education (DRE) for Holy Trinity Church, Sr Mary Kivlahan, retired. Shortly thereafter Holy Ghost's DRE, Peggy Swift, also retired. This seemed like a prime oppertunity to share in the area of Religious Education so the issue was brought to the cluster planning committee. In those meetings, we set up a sub committee of experts to bring together the needs of the parishes and propose scenarios for the larger committee as to how we should handle this monumental staff change. After the sub committee did our job, the larger committee determined that a good next step would be to hire one director for the three religious education programs and hire as many part-time Coordinators of Religious Education (CREs) as the DRE thought necessary. This will mean that one person, the DRE, will oversee helping the three programs to cooperate while CREs will be responsible for much of the "leg work" involved with the individual programs. In the interim, representatives from the three parishes have begun putting together many of the programs that are easily consolidated: baptism preparation, confirmation, adult faith formation, RCIA, etc. This is the beginning of the process that the DRE will continue in a short time when she or he is hired.

One of the other areas that the cluster planning committee has worked on is maintenance. All three parishes need someone to oversee our large structural maintenance needs. The maintenance sub committee presented the need for a full time maintenance/custodial person to work equally among the three parishes. We are in the process of hiring this person, the second "cluster" person to be employed. There will, undoubtedly, be many such oppertunities for sharing in the future including sharing priests, deacons, and (possibly) office staff. And, at some point, we will need your help to name our new entity. The goal is, as I said last time, to share resources when the opportunity presents itself. This, hopefully, propmts you to ask what you can do to help our newly forming cluster succeed. I will finish in the next three days talking about that very thing.

Clustering part two

Yesterday, I started explaining what clustering has meant to me these past three years of priesthood. I believe clustering is not all about "priesthood shortage" but is, in reality, a part of what it means to be catholic. Today, I hope to explain some things that I've learned about the process that goes with clustering. Members of Holy Trinity, Sacred Heart, and Holy Ghost parshes met with St. Mary Montgomery about two years ago and determined a parish leadership team. After a few introductory meetings, the process stalled for a few months because the leadership at Sacred Heart and Holy Trinity changed drastically. I became involved in meetings beginning in January of this year when St. Mary helped us begin coming up with a four-step plan to go from where we currently are to where we will be when we are clustered. We have finished step one which dealt with eight areas of where we are today in terms of staffing, proframs, and events as entirely separate entities. Now we are in the process of discussing step two which is based on what we can do without prompting a lot of changes for our parishes to combine a few things. In the future, we will be discussing the next step which will involve even more cooperation. Step four will envision the completed cluster. It became obvious, in the course of the meetings, that we didn't want to rush the process even though we all recognize that it is a necessary process for keepng our parishes alive. In general, we have a orgainic viewpoint toward clustering. In other words, we don't want to force a lot of changes on anyone but, instead, we wan to use opportunities as they present themselves to promote greater cooperation.

clustering part one

In the Archdiocese of Dubuque, there was once a situation in which we had a very large number of priests. I heard that we had, per capita, the largest number of priests in the world. This meant that we had too many priests for the population in Dubuque. One solution among many to this problem was to create more parishes, even ones that served very small communities that were very close to larger towns. In the last thirty years, our priest population has declined making it difficult to maintain all the parishes that we once maintained. This has caused a couple of difficult situations. The first is being forced to close down some smaller communities that can no longer be maintained. The second is something called clustering.

At my parish in Dubuque, Holy Ghost, we have begun the process of planning for future clustering with two other parishes here in the city, Holy Trinity and Sacred Heart. We are still some time away from it actually taking place because of the size of the parishes involved but, in the past several weeks, I've been giving some information about clustering in order to dispel any false rumors that go around and, in the next couple of weeks, I hope to duplicate that information here.

As I said before, part of this has to do with the decline in the number of priests. But, I believe that, even more fundamental than that, clusetering is an exercise in what it means to be Catholic (a word which means universal). In other words, clustering is God's gift to us in recognition that our churches really are connected all over the world. We were not baptized into Holy Ghost church or any particular parish. We were baptized into Christ Jesus who gave us the church as his earthly body.

Many people become afraid when they hear about clustering because they think about other more frustrating situations that have involved consolidation, especially with catholic schools and hospitals. While no one can guarantee that everything will be easy in clustering parishes, there is a HUGE difference between consolidating schools and clustering parishes. You probably already have a sense of the principle behind clustering. Have you ever gone to a different catholic church on a Sunday? If so, you heard the same readings, same prayers, and received the same body and blood of Christ that you would have if you had been at your own parish. There may have been some small differences but, for the most part, Mass is the same in all the churches throughout the world. Yet, your child would not go to a different school expecting that everything be the same there. We who are catholic trust that what happens in our church is what happens, for the most part, in all of them. With God's help, in the coming years, we will model this universality for the rest of the city of Dubuque.

love God and love your neighbor

I begin my homily today on a very hopeful note. This morning, our church ordained a new priest, Fr. Brian Dellaert. In one of the most beautiful and moving ceremonies, Fr. Dellaert was blessed by the church through the imposition of the Archbishop’s hands and giving of the Holy Spirit. Fr. Dellaert beamed with love as he received three standing ovations throughout the ancient ritual. It was a profoundly beautiful end to what was, otherwise, a very difficult week.

At the beginning of this week, I was worried that our national media would, yet again, be reporting one of those frustrating stories; one that doesn’t really have an ending. When I heard about eleven-year-old Brennan Hawkins being lost, I feared that he would end up in the same category as Johnny Gosh and Eugene Walsh, two kids that were abducted here in Iowa in the eighties and never found. I was especially suspicious when they said that he was rappelling with someone else who left early to get to dinner. I kept asking myself how a boy could get lost in a Boy Scout camp and kept thinking that it probably would be a prime target for a sexual abuser. And I imagine we were all relieved when we heard that the little boy had been found two days later. I’m still a little confused as to how he got lost but it makes a great deal of sense how he stayed lost. After all, even I’ve talked in a homily to grade school children about how important it is to avoid strangers. I could imagine this scared little boy reverting to the core values his parents and teachers taught him: stay on the trail and don’t talk to strangers. Yet, these core values were the very things that almost got this boy killed. He may avoid being sexually abused or abducted but what good is that rule if it ends up killing the kid?

I think a similar tension is also present in our gospel today. On the one hand, Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” And, a couple of sentences later, Jesus says, “Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward.” So, which one is it? Are we supposed to cut off our relationships to other people in order to inherit the kingdom of heaven or are we supposed to be hospitable and open our doors and hearts to other people in order to enter the kingdom of heaven? Are only secluded cloistered monks going to enter the kingdom of heaven or might the rest of us have a chance too?

I think one way of solving this is to talk about, in general, the way that a high school kid wants to date and the way that a college student dates. Now, I’m going to make a sweeping generalization with this comparison so please don’t apply this literally to your own children or grandchildren. Nonetheless, when I worked in High School, I noticed a lot of kids starting to date exclusively for the first time. In the process of starting to date, I noticed a lot of kids that defined their whole high school world around their boyfriend or girlfriend. Their other friends and family take a back seat to the beloved. After a couple of these exclusive relationships, I think kids realize that something is wrong. By the time they head off to college or a job, they realize that our world gets too small if we focus all our attention on one other person. We need to allow others into our relationships in order for them to succeed.

I think this is what Jesus is warning us about in the gospel. If we are so closely connected to our family that we leave out God or God’s people than we have missed the point of what it means to be a follower of Christ. We need to keep nurturing our primary relationship to God and his church even as we are good members of our individual families. And it is important that we teach our children this lesson as well. We should involve our children in conversations with other adults and be interested in our children’s friendships by getting to know their friends. Let them know that an unhealthy relationship is one that excludes other people. Yet, I believe this applies to our parish families as well. We cannot become so comfortable with this building or these people that we lose track of the larger church. Rather than being afraid of strangers, we need to reach out to them in love because, on the cross, Christ reached out to us in love and promised to take us with him into everlasting life. Part of taking up our crosses means extending our relationships outside of what is comfortable in order to show love to a stranger.

Being inspired by our Archbishop

I don't really like what my life is like right now. I'm not going to spell out the specifics because I'll keep that for the confessional but I don't really like some of the things I do. Basically, I'm not sure that this is what I'd have expected my life would have been like a few years ago. And the frustrating thing is that I've had this feeling before and felt like I could just change this and do that and it would be much better. Then a couple of weeks or a month later I'll realize that I haven't really changed anything and that I'm still the same SOB I was a few weeks earlier.

But, what I have going for me that most people don't have going for them is that I get to sit down with my brother priests and talk about and learn about what priesthood is all about. These past three days, the priests of northeast Iowa, the archdiocese of Dubuqe, have been in dialogue regarding certain issues. In the middle of it, there were times when the person said just exactly what I expected and other times when I felt frustrated by what my brother priest was saying. But, all along, I felt uplifted to hear from them. It was good to have the archbishop do what the very thing that I believe is one of his gifts, both empower us and challenge us. I felt like he wanted to hear from us and wanted our comments AND hoped that we would listen to his. I feel so blessed to have a shepherd who cares for his sheep, even the ones that act a lot like goats sometimes.

Three years

Tomorrow, Wednesday, I will celebrate my three years anniversary as a priest. This might seem like a strange thing to celebrate but, in the Catholic church, we have a three year cycle for our Sunday readings and it just happened that the same readings that I used for my mass of thanksgiving (first mass after ordination) came up this past weekend. It was a strange feeling to celebrate this anniversary in many ways because I had switched with another priest for the sunday so I wasn't even with "my people" in "my parishes", but that was okay. I talked about hearing the readings remind me again that we cannot fear. Pope John Paul the second was so good to remind us that we aren't supposed to fear. I had so many reasons to be afraid when I approached the altar that ordination day. There were so many people who told me that I wasn't going to be a good priest and so many doubts that went through my head. Yet I kept reminding myself that if God is for us, who can be against us. I still take consolation in the fact that, even if I'm not a perfect priest, I am at least doing what God wants me to do.

World Youth Day

I was reading my favorite Web site today and found out that there are already 345,000 young people signed up for World Youth Day in a couple of months. I've never been to World Youth Day ever, not because I have anything against it but because I've just never been organized enough to make it there. I'm just excited that a huge number of young people, especially a record number from France, will get to be so close to the Holy Father. It should be a truly transforming experience.

It's Hot!

Because of the heat and lack of air conditioning in my parishes, I gave this very brief homily about this Sunday's Gospel which you can find at this link....

http://www.usccb.org/nab/061205.htm

Most scholars see in this passage a model for a diocese. The Bishop, standing in the place of Christ, selects priests to serve the crowds of laity as shepherds. Yet, I believe that this speaks just as strongly to us at the parish level as it does on the diocesan. We are all called to be shepherds of evangelization, even if not all of us have the gifts to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, or drive out demons. Regardless, each of us have been given talents to be used to spread the faith. You may know of someone who no longer comes to church. Have you ever invited that person to come to church with you? They may just not want to come alone. Do you know someone who can't come to church because they are in a nursing home or are homebound? Have you ever found out if they have communion brought to them by a member of our pastorate? Do you know someone who has never been associated with a church? Have you ever invited them to come to church with you? When we do these things, we are all helping to reach out to those people that seem troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.

Hmmm

I don't have anything to say but I also don't want my blog to detiorate into the "Father Dennis Homily" blog. So, here's an intersting web site if you want to know the mind of Pope Benedict.

www.zenit.org/english

I came to call sinners

One of the songs that easily gets stuck in my craw and doesn’t seem to get unstuck is the Mississippi Squirrel Revival by the comedic songwriter Ray Stevens. It’s a little bit old but it’s just one of those songs that, as soon as I hear it, I chuckle and sing along and then I can’t get it out of my head after. I’ll find myself for days after singing it in the shower and whistling it as I walk. The context of the song, in case you’ve never heard it, is that a boy brings a squirrel to church one Sunday, an act that I discourage from happening in this church! But, the squirrel in the song gets out of the boy’s shoebox and runs all around church making the preacher think that this congregations has been touched by the Holy Spirit. The best verse, in my opinion, talked about when the squirrel when all the way down to the amen pew where sat Sister Bertha better-than-you who'd been watchin' all the commotion with sadistic glee. But you should've seen the look in her eyes when that squirrel jumped her garters and crossed her thighs. She jumped to her feet and said "Lord have mercy on me".

Have you ever met a Bertha better-than-you, someone lets you know that she or he is better than you in some way, whether it be richer or better looking or nicer or holier? I imagine we all have Berthas in our life. And, if truth be told, I have a feeling most of us have been Bertha better-than-yous at one point in our lives as well. Jesus, in our gospel today, cautions us against just such arrogant attitudes. He repeats one statement three times using different ways, all of which seem to say, “Don’t make religious performance too formulaic.” In other words, we shouldn’t believe that we have our relationship to God figured out. This is a challenge to all of us, perhaps especially to us who come to church and pray more so than those who don’t. We can get into the groove and start thinking that religious observance is about repeating formulaic morning and evening prayers, coming to mass on Sundays and praying before meals. We must be open to the possibility that God wants something else from us. And we must recognize our own faults and failures. If we turn our religion into a checklist of daily items to accomplish, we may not be allowing God to penetrate into the deepest recesses of our hearts to point out the times when pride, selfishness, or some other sin disturbed our relationship to God and our neighbor. We might just think that we do enough to please God and not care about the times that we don’t.

This is what frightens me about some new organizations connected to the church. There are some that have a leader who seems to claim to have all the answers. The leader may claim that she or he is just reading and utilizing texts that are part of the church’s tradition like the Bible and the writings of certain saints, but it is clear that it is the leader’s interpretation of these documents that prevail and that, oftentimes, her or his interpretation seems to make our faith into a list of dos and don’ts.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are still things that God expects from us like praying our morning and evening prayer, coming to mass weekly, and going to confession at least once a year. But we much also remember that God doesn’t want us to be his pets that complete the obstacle course of life in order to get the treat of heaven. God loves us and wants us to love him back. God wants to be in a relationship of love with us and wants us to live our lives like we are in a dynamic relationship to him. God doesn’t want us to be Bertha better-than-yous who have everything figured out but, instead, he wants us to turn to him ever day and be willing to follow wherever he leads us.

Corpus Christ Processions

This Sunday is Corpus Christi Sunday, or as it is more commonly known today, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord. In four areas throughout the archdiocese of of Dubuque, the Archbishop and his vicars will process through town with the Blessed Sacrament and people will follow in procession. The procession will stop in areas just long enough to pray at the place and then move on. It is my hope to go to the one in Dyersville because I have never seen this before and it is the closest. In this procession, we remember something that we learned first from our Jewish brothers and sister, "our elder brothers and sisters in the faith" as Pope John Paul II used to say. Just as the Israelites were tested but never abandoned by God (he gave them manna, a food unknown to their ancestors) so we are never abandoned by God regardless of what we do. God never gives up on us. He always loves us and even gives us ways to get to know him better.

The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

One of the most powerful things that I get to do as a priest is exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. That’s what we do when we set that large metal stand, called the monstrance, on the altar so that people can adore and pray in front of the Host or Blessed Sacrament for a period of time. I am especially proud that we resurrected this practice in our pastorate on the feast days of our parishes and on the feast of our patron, John Baptist de la Salle. It is my hope that this will not only continue into the future but that many of you will notice when these celebrations take place in other sites of the pastorate and make a point of attending. Yet, regardless of how profound my experience of Adoration is, there is this little uneasy dance that happens in my heart towards the end of almost every session. I begin to wonder if people are bored. I begin to worry that people are remembering days when their mother or father forced them to come and do this. I begin to worry that people are resolving never to do this again. I begin to think that I should cut it short so that people don’t get more frustrated than what they, undoubtedly, already are. But, I stick it out for the full amount of time and stand, with all these doubts running through my head, to return the Blessed Sacrament to it’s place in the tabernacle. I kneel with my back to the people and invite them to open to the back of the hymnal and sing that classic chant, “Tantum egro sacramentum” and I hear these voices that wouldn’t be caught dead singing “Rain Down”, “Alle, Alle, Alleluia” or “Lead me, Lord” singing out this song that was first song before it’s singers knew there was a North America. Then, I approach the monstrance to bless the people and, on their faces, I see looks that bespeak respect and love. Not only do the people not feel the way my heart was trying to say they do, most of the time people wish they could have adoration more often. I even had one woman openly admit that she wished it could be much longer. I’ve never had anyone tell me that they thought mass was too short but, for this woman, she didn’t have enough time to adore the presence of the Lord. I think people see in this form a prayer a memory. And, I don’t mean that people sit around and think about the good old days, I think we are reminded of the respect that we have in our hearts for what we eat and drink each week.

That is what is at the heart of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord. We are invited to focus on the Eucharist and its importance in our lives, an event that is even more important during this year of the Eucharist. Our readings focus on the respect that we should have for the Eucharist. The first reading from Deuteronomy reminded our Jewish brothers and sister and, through them, reminds us that the Eucharist is a gift from God. Jesus, in the gospel, takes this message a step further and reminds us that the bread that we eat is his flesh and the wine that we drink is his blood. This God given gift we receive is what connects us to Christ and to eternal life. This is a warning to us about how we receive the body and blood of Christ. We must remember that there is no church law that says we have to receive each week. We have to come to mass every week that we are physically able, but we are not obliged to receive the Blessed Sacrament every week. If you are ill, you should not receive from the cup out of respect to your fellow communicants. And, if you are concerned that you may vomit, you should not receive at all lest the Blessed Sacrament end up in a latrine. But, there are other reasons that a person would not receive. All Catholics who are able are called to fast for one hour before receiving communion in order to prepare our stomachs and hearts for the Blessed Sacrament. If you broke your fast and were able to fast for one hour, you should not receive communion. Futher, those Catholics who are aware of committing a serious sin should not receive unless they have first gone to confession. A serious sin takes us out of communion with the church. I recently overheard a conversation between a young man and a young woman in which the woman asked the man how church was. The young man sighed and said, “Alright, I guess. I tried not going to communion but my mom made me go with her.” I’m sure that that mother thought she was doing something good for her son by forcing him to go to communion, but that man had the right attitude. It was clear that he didn’t feel like he was in communion with the church and that, out of respect for the Church, he shouldn’t receive communion.

If we do decide to receive communion, we should also remember to be respectful when we come up. Remember that it is not only still acceptable but preferred that Catholics receive the host on the tongue. If you choose to receive on the tongue, tip your head back and stick your tongue out. It is the only time when it is acceptable to stick your tongue out at someone, after all. Then, when the host is placed on your tongue, gently take the host back into your mouth. If you choose to receive on the hand, please wash your hands before you come. St. Augustine says that we are to make a throne for God and, in all the pictures that I’ve ever seen, I have never seen a King’s throne covered in dirt. And don’t set your hands side by side because the host could fall through the middle when you try to put it in your mouth. Take your dominant hand, the one you write with, and set that under your other hand. That way, you can use your dominant hand to take the host from your non-dominant, receiving hand to your mouth.

These might seem like nit-picky concerns but they all point to the kind of respect that we need to have for the Eucharist, the pinnacle of the church’s prayer life. We celebrate today a renewal in this respect and evaluate what it means to be part of this body of Christ, the Church.

Retraction

I sent the following letter to Archbishop Jerome Hanus today.

Dear Archbishop Hanus

Grace and Peace in our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you. Thank you for the beautiful confirmation ceremonies at Holy Ghost and the La Salle Pastorate. Let us pray that the newly confirmed continue to nourish the faith that was first given to them in baptism and is now confirmed in them by your chrismation. I’m writing today to ask for your forgiveness.

Earlier this spring, I posted an unfair and rather juvenile statement on my blog (fatherdennis.blogspot.com). I was critical of you for not mentioning Fr. Dustin Vu at the chrism mass. I’m very sorry for this because, if I truly thought it was worth criticizing, I should have done so to you personally instead of just whining about it via the internet. Then, to compound the situation, I thought I had erased the post the next day but, in searching today, I found that it was still there. I did erase it today and I’m sure it is no longer posted but it remained there for far too long and, I fear, may have caused you pain or embarrassment. If so, I am very sorry. I hope that you know that I have always found you to be very supportive of me and my ministry and that, when I talk to the newly ordained priests, we all feel very honored to have you as our Archbishop.

Rest assured that this will not happen again. I am making every effort to emphasize the positive things happening in my life and in the life of the church on my blog. I truly believe it to be a useful resource for evangelization and another way in which the Spirit can work. I hope you will also allow me to offer my apology to you personally when we meet this Wednesday.

Your obedient son
Fr. Dennis Miller

The Cube and The Cathedral

I recently read a book by imminent theologian Georgy Weigel, one of the most thorough biographers of Pope John Paul II. I've, since then, become fascinated with one of the concepts that Weigel is proposing in that book. Using Europe as a foil, he shows how, in the absence of a God that has a role publicly, people use the concept of power as a guiding principal of morality. One must be in control of one's own circumstances. I was thinking about this considering the press coverage that shows like "The Apprentice" get on TV. Donald Trump is an icon of American society, not someone who values money over relationships and financial success over loving other people. This hunger for power is exemplified in the power to control all aspects of our lives, especially the power to decide human life. European populations are not producing a significant enough second generation to replace themselves. I don't want to get into Weigel's pessimistic presumption that Europe will be an Islamic state in a number of years because I don't have the expertise to know this. Instead, I'd like to focus on the notion that children need to be a chosen activity, an attitude that is dominant at this point in history. If children are seen as either a choice or a mistake it makes human life into something that is, somehow, less valuable. It could seem as though a child born into a family that didn't plan for him or her is a curse or not as good as a child born into a family that makes a twenty year plan for raising the child. Somehow, the child becomes the same as an automobile. Our culture needs to recognize that God does have an effect in our daily lives and that we aren't always in charge. Being faithful should be more important that being powerful.

Rainbow Sashes

A little over a week ago, a scene played out that was less violent but, in some ways, more painful than last year. Last year, at the Cathedral of St. Paul, a group of people wearing rainbow sashes accross their chests came to worship and recieve the body and blood of the Lord. When the time for communion began, another group of people kneeled and sat in their way making it impossible for them to come forward. The two groups, obviously, had differing agenda; one advocating greater rights for homosexual people and the other holding tightly to the teaching of the Catholic church. This year, the archbishop of St. Paul, a very good pastor named Harry Flynn, wrote the pastors of his diocese and the leaders within the rainbow sash movement a note that said the rainbow sash people should not wear the sashes to communion. It had become increasingly obvious that they didn't seek to support homosexual people but sought to change church teaching. Unfortunately, many members of that group, nonetheless, came to communion wearing their sashes and were denied communion. Now, I can't imagine having to do this, although I have heard of an instance in which someone received the host, held it up in the air, crushed it, and threw it on the ground, an action that is grounds for automatic excommunication in the Catholic church. I can't find the story on the net but, if I remember correctly, it was one of the rainbow sash people who were using the reception of communion to show their distaste for Catholic teaching on homosexuality. The reason that I appreciate Archbishop Flynn's response is because he tries to remove the use of symbols when receiving the reality of Christ. In other words, he tries to get both those who would stand in the way and those who wear the sashes to blend in with the rest of the body of Christ who didn't come to see them. He just wants people to pray and not turn mass into an oppertunity to sell their agenda. We don't come to mass to have an agenda thrust down our throat. That's what people constantly remind priests who only preach on the church's teaching on abortion. When we come to mass, we should come to pray, to love God and love our neighbor.

Busy busy busy

I went to the Twin Cities yesterday and saw the play that inspired the movie "You've Got Mail". It was a very well acted play with a lot of character development, much more than movie audiences would have permitted. The Play was called "She likes me" and is running at the Guthrie Theater. My favorite part happened when the two (until this time) anonymous lovers were going to meet at a romantic restaurant. The scene started with a waiter dropping a tray and moved from there until the entire restaurant was fighting and, eventually, in a conga line. The development of it was just precious and so well acted. I think it's worth travelling five hours to see quality acting.

Pentecost

Mary in an oil stain on the wall of an underpass in Chicago. Is it authentic? Mary on the sun spot in a window in Florida. Is it her? Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich sold on ebay. Should we believe it? In the past few weeks, these are just a few of the times that the Virgin Mary is supposed to have appeared in this country alone. Is there a difference between those appearances of Mary and the apparitions in Fatima and Lourdes. I imagine most of us would say “yes” but why?
This past week, Pope Benedict the sixteenth, opened the cause for sainthood for his predecessor, John Paul the second, or John Paul the great as one of the television network is calling him. Why not wait the normal five-year waiting period until beginning the process to let the blindness of popular opinion recede. I mean, accompanying those people in St. Peter’s square chanting “santo subito”, in other words asking that he be made a saint right now, there are people in this country that believe John Paul the second didn’t deal well with the sexual abuse crisis and the global shortage of clergy and the continued implementation of the reforms of Vatican II. Not to mention the question of what prompts the church to hurry up and make some people saints while others who were just as holy remain “blessed” for many years? The church is often given a difficult task of determining if something is of the Holy Spirit or not. Our present Pope knows a lot about this, after all. As prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was the one that had to call in theologians that had controversial opinions to ensure that what they were teaching didn’t fall outside the bounds of correct Catholic teaching. That’s why there are some people who are angry at him because of the resignation of Father Thomas Reese, former editor of America Magazine. Fr. Reese was often called to appear before then Joseph Cardinal Raztinger’s Congregation to answer questions about issues his magazineand, apparently, those questions led to his leaving the magazine. This has caused some people in this country to see the Vatican as continuing on its conservative trek instead of seeking conciliation.
The difficulty is that the Vatican was given the responsibility that Paul is talking about in the second reading today, namely keeping together all the parts of the body of Christ underneath Christ who is our leader or, to use Paul’s terminology, our head. Paul wisely uses the imagery of a body when talking about Christianity. We are the arms, legs, torso, back, etc of Christ but Christ is still the one that’s in charge. Just like a body is pretty useless without it’s head so our church is pretty useless if we start thinking that we’re the ones that are in charge. God is still God and we still aren’t.
So, part of what the church does is make determinations as to what’s wrong under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That’s what Pentecost is all about, after all. The Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel is an example of the culmination of the fragmentation of the human family once united in Eden. It’s almost as though the first eleven chapter of Genesis show our undoing that plagues us whenever we eat from the tree of knowledge. The undoing of this fragmentation culminates when we receive the Holy Spirit. We are really celebrating today the idea that we are united as a people and that, united, we enter into a new and unique relationship to Christ. Whatever threatens this unity is, therefore, something that needs to be avoided and stopped. That’s why the church is very careful about new organizations that seek official approval. The last thing we want is someone setting up a parallel church to the one founded on Christ. We already have enough of that fragmentation of the unity that Christ wants us to have. We need to do whatever we can to draw closer to the body of Christ and avoid whatever leads us away from it. To put it bluntly, if any organization asks you to make your diocese or bishop less important than its leadership, than it is not acting like it is part of the church and you should avoid being a part of that organization, especially if it is a religious organization.
As we come together around the altar of this church we recognize the unity that God has given to us and we commit ourselves to working for greater unity among those who are separated from us by working toward the truth. It is in the truth that we will find the Spirit.