DOR Catholic

Still at Cleansing Fire

2011-06-24T11:42:00.000-04:00

I got an email today wondering why I hadn't posted anything here during the last year, so this is a reminder that I am now a staff writer at Cleansing Fire and that I post regularly there.

Moving to Cleansing Fire

2010-06-13T15:14:00.000-04:00

I have been asked - and have gratefully accepted - an invitation to join the team at Cleansing Fire 2.0.

DOR Catholic will remain up and running, but I only expect to be posting here when I have something to say that does not fit comfortably into the CF mission.

Most of the time, however, you will be able to find me at www.CleansingFireDOR.com.

See you there.

YNN says goodbye to Our Lady of Mercy

2010-06-06T09:49:00.001-04:00

My former parish, Our Lady of Mercy in Greece, will be closing in three weeks.

Your News Now has posted a video farewell on its web site. See here.

146 years of priestly service

2010-06-05T21:37:00.000-04:00

The weekend the three priests serving at Holy Cross Parish in Charlotte are celebrating a combined 146 years in the priesthood.

Fr. Tom Wheeland is observing the 44th anniversary of his ordination, Fr. John Reif the 45th of his, and Fr. Fred Eisemann the 57th of his.

Congratulations, Reverend Fathers!

And thank you for saying yes to God.

New images of St. Thomas the Apostle

2010-06-01T14:19:00.001-04:00

Blogger/photographer Ryan McDonell has captured some excellent images of St. Thomas the Apostle Church.

See here and at the bottom of the page here.

Largest ordination class in decades

2010-05-27T22:21:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday the Diocese of Little Rock ordained four men to the priesthood. It was their largest ordination class in 44 years.

Story here.

The Church the women - and the bishop - want

2010-05-24T23:06:00.001-04:00

Six years ago Boston College's The Church in the 21st Century Initiative hosted a conference entitled Envisioning the Church Women Want.

One of the panels at the conference was called When Bishops Listened to Women: The Women's Pastoral 12 Years Later. This panel was comprised of Sr. Mary Ann Hinsdale, Dr. Susan Muto, Dr. Pheme Perkins and Bishop Matthew Clark. Video and audio of this session can be found here.

After some introductory remarks by Sr. Hinsdale, Dr. Muto spent several minutes reviewing the history of what she termed the "Women's Pastoral." This was to be a USCCB Pastoral Letter outlining the concerns of women in the Church. Although it went through several revisions, the USCCB ultimately declined to adopt it.

Dr. Muto was followed by Bishop Clark. After some initial comments the bishop launched into the heart of his talk. What follows in blue is my transcript of His Excellency's talk beginning at the 23:25 mark:

I thought I might use my time this morning in a more future oriented way and to that end, that is, envisioning the Church women want, I thought, well, if I'm going to be consistent with what I believe in and the spirit of this conference, I'd better ask some women what they want. So I took the question to our St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry, which is a wonderful, small, graduate level school that we have. It's a great resource for us. It's president is Sister Patricia Schoelles, a Sister of St. Joseph and there are two full time faculty members who are women and some men who are [full time] and a number of adjuncts who are women. "So," I said, "what do we want to say to the people at Boston College?"

Let me share with you their thinking, which I want to say up front is very much my own [although] I might use a different word here or there. I would like to do that with one concrete image of the Church women want offered by one of the people I polled and six basic desires they have.

This brief story is by one of the women who teaches at St. Bernard's and [it's] her experience at a Sunday liturgy at St. Gabriel's Parish in Hammondsport, which is a small community on the south end of Keuka Lake, one of our splendid Finger Lakes.

There must have been thirty people taking leadership roles at the liturgy. A male, a priest originally from Sri Lanka, and a female, a sister, [the] pastoral administrator of the parish, led the congregation with the sense that neither was simply imported or a token figure. They seemed to invite others to assume a role in the service as well. The impression was given that this is our Church and we care for it and actively participate in it.

From the cantors to the preacher - the preacher a layman in training for diaconal ordination - to those who collected the song books and cleared the pews afterward, people participated, they cared, greeted each other and assumed a variety of roles in tending to whatever physical tasks needed to be done for the celebration. The spiritual communion, then, was so obvious and easy to enter into.

This isn't a big city parish filled with sophisticated people well versed in theories about emerging roles of women, but it was hard to imagine anyone sitting back complaining that "she shouldn't be doing this or that" because of an imposed or inherited view of what people are or are not allowed or intended to do. Instead, the clear sense was that this is our Church, we have a role in it, we own it, we care, and we are community in Christ.

Leadership clearly comes from within the parish itself. I suppose for those who prefer liturgy that seems more like theater - the leaders providing a program for the congregation - this would not have been as satisfying. But for me the kiss of peace alone in that parish was close to the most important experience of church that I have had in years.

That's the kind of Church she wants and I think she expresses that want very beautifully out of her own experience.

I'd like to mention, as I said - I'll mention them very briefly - six qualities, six encouraging notes, that these women look for in the Church.

The first relates to how the Church formulates its proclamations and teachings and I would say under that category they have three strong desires: First, that their experience be heard and honored, not argued with, but absorbed and integrated into the thinking of those who hear. Secondly, that a broad spectrum of voices should be heard before coming to conclusions that relate to teaching and polity of significance. They include specifically poor women and men, abused women, abandoned mothers, divorced women, gay, lesbian, single people, now thought to be absent from this kind of discourse, leaving us deprived of their experience and their insights. Thirdly in that basic theme that they seek to develop, a Church that is diverse and affirming of all, welcoming those who have been excluded, including varying theological perspectives, people whose backgrounds offer richness that clerics alone cannot possibly hope to have, and all manner of gifts and talents and life experiences. So, how the Church formulates its proclamations and teachings.

Secondly, how the Church deals with diverse opinion among the faithful: They want a Church that deals with issues and people and divergent theological opinion in loving and just ways, rather than what may seem to be a condemnatory manner or a dictatorial kind of manner. Many long for a Church that affirms the gifts of all members as we struggle to form communities dedicated to loving one another and building the kingdom of God.

Thirdly, on theological work that needs to be done in service of the Church women want: In terms of the theological tasks they're most concerned about they ask for the development of a more adequate theological anthropology, one that will adequately account for gender distinction in integrating our understanding of "imago Dei" and "in persona Christi". With particular emphasis they stress the need for that kind of reflection and inclusion in matters of sex and sexuality which does not sufficiently include consideration of women's experience.

Next, the exercise of authority in the Church: The general call is for a decentralized authority better able to serve the Church and the Gospel we seek to follow and embody. This includes a climate of honest and open dialog, granting to local churches - dioceses - the right to exercise their own identities, to call their own leaders, and respond pastorally to concerns and realities that arise in a given place and time and which may not be common to all places. Disagreement on matters other than creedal statements should not be feared, but a community of discourse in which truth is sought and celebrated should be encouraged and nourished.

Fifth, on Church activity and action: The Church needs to consider its call to reach out to those in need and to grant increasing prominence to action on behalf of justice as a constitutive part of preaching the Gospel. We need to search for ways to work toward genuine healing and not just sustenance for those who suffer from sickness, abuse, poverty, addiction, etc., but really to find remedies and cures for that. A Church that simply "maintains" and leaders who focus on extraneous or superficial goals are in no way the Church that women want.

Next, on the Church as a source of spirituality and help in leading a Gospel-centered spiritual life: They make considerable reference - and, I think, understandably so - to the stresses of modern life: too little time, too many expectations, the need for grounding and a firm sense of self and purpose, the desire to serve others while fostering mutual love, justice and responsibilities in our relationships and in society. Women want help from the Church in formulating a sense of priorities, in focusing and developing habits that would help lead a balanced life amid competing demands and increasing insecurity from any number of sources. Women I have talked with expressed the need to approach the Church as a community whose rituals and celebrations are rich in the authentic tradition that nurtures life and genuine relationship with God. Under that rubric of spirituality in a Gospel-centered life, if we fail to image God in appropriate ways, if we cannot assume the role of pilgrim Church assisting the disciples of Christ in their call to be present to those bearing the fears and anxieties of our time, then we will have forsaken our call and our mission.

Those are the main themes that emerged in my conversations with the St. Bernard's people. They are deeply consonant with the themes I have heard for most of the 25 years that I have served as bishop.

I thought of giving this a good fisk but decided instead to leave that as an exercise for the reader. Suffice it for me to say that this is, in rather vivid detail, the Church that the women teaching at St. Bernard's would like to have - and would like the rest of us to have as well, whether we want it or not. And, it seems safe to assume, this is also the vision these women have been inculcating in their students, whether those students be in training for lay pastoral ministry or in diaconal formation.

Also, since Bishop Clark says that he shares this vision - with the exception of "a different word here or there" - this is his vision also. This is a well fleshed out picture of what he has been working toward for so many years now.

My thanks to the people at Boston College for recording this. While I am sure it wasn't their intent, this serves as the most detailed explanation for the ongoing collapse of the Diocese of Rochester that I have yet to see.

DOR's legacy

2010-05-20T15:05:00.001-04:00

Peter J. Smith at LifeSiteNews.com has posted an article dealing with the Rainbow Sash Movement and its plans to disrupt Mass in various dioceses this Sunday.

Near the end of his piece Mr. Smith provides his readers with something of an historical perspective:

In the past, the Rainbow Sash movement has received welcome in a handful of U.S. dioceses. Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, Archbishop Harry Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, and Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester have all at one time or another welcomed members of the RSM to receive communion.

I sure hope history remembers us for more that that.

One parish, eleven seminarians

2010-05-20T14:10:00.001-04:00

This morning I was listening to Catholic Connection over the Internet. One of the guests was Kurt Klement, Director of High School Ministry for St. Ann Parish in Coppell, Texas.

St. Ann is located in the rapidly growing Dallas-Fort Worth area and it is a huge parish. With some 8,400 families and 27,000 individual parishioners, it completely eclipses most of our local parishes. Still, there is a lot to be learned from St. Ann.

Outside of its size, St. Ann seems unremarkable in many ways. Average weekend Mass attendance is around 28%. 54% of the families contribute through envelopes or similar means, with the average family donation running around $9.00 a week.

Two things, though, make St. Ann Parish stand out. The first is Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. The parish has a separate adoration chapel where at least one person is present adoring Our Lord 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. The chapel was built in response to a call from Pope John Paul II and is dedicated to him "for an increase in vocations from the parish."

The second is the parish's focus on youth. St. Ann does not have a Catholic school. Instead, it relies on religious education programs and youth ministry to form the next generation of Catholics. And it makes that formation a priority: Last year the parish spent 9% of its operating budget on religious education programs and another 13.6% on tween and teen ministry.

A part of the latter is its high school ministry program which is overseen by 3 full-time parish staff members assisted by a large team of trained "core" volunteers. According to the parish's annual report,

St. Ann is a parish that values youth ministry, and this is bearing remarkable fruit as this year the High School Ministry had over 600 teens in grades 9-12 from over 30 different high schools involved. St. Ann High School Ministry continues to try to provide a variety of experiences for the youth of our parish highlighted by youth involvement in the 4:30 p.m. youth Mass followed by weekly youth nights. Also, through Bible studies, retreats, service projects, pro-life outreach, and an annual mission trip we hope to continue to expose the teens to the riches of the Catholic Church and the beauty of living a life of faith.

We continue to be grateful for all that God has done here and the ways He continues to work in the lives of the teens who have been involved with our ministry. Many former participants in the high school ministry are now leaders in their college Newman Centers. This past summer we had our first youth ministry intern—a young man who has grown up in the parish, was involved in the high school ministry, and is studying in college to be a youth minister after graduation. We also continue to see many beautiful vocations to the married life as well as two additional young men from St. Ann entering seminary this year for a total of 11 young men from our parish in formation for the priesthood or religious life. We feel blessed to have had some part in helping to prepare and form these young men and women for a continuing life of faith.

Many of the parish's teens have experienced life changing encounters with Jesus, either at adoration or during retreats, according to Mr. Klement. This is borne out by the fact that 15 young men from the parish have entered the seminary over the last few years and, while four have discerned that this was not their calling, 11 are still there.

To put this number in perspective, 11 seminarians from this parish of 27,000 Catholics would be comparable to 128 seminarians from our diocese of 314,000 Catholics.

DOR, however, currently has 6 seminarians.

All of which leads to two questions for Bishop Clark:

1. What are they doing that we aren't?

2. Why aren't we?

Who's really in charge, the Pope or the local bishop?

2010-05-18T11:09:00.001-04:00

A lawsuit currently underway in federal court in Kentucky provides us with two somewhat competing views of the relationship between the Pope and the other bishops in the Catholic Church.

It seems that three men who claim they were sexually abused by Louisville priests decades ago when they were minors are also asserting that the Vatican is ultimately responsible for that abuse. Their claim is that the Louisville bishops who failed to properly control their abusive priests were so firmly under Rome's control that the Vatican must answer for the actions of both the bishops and the priests.

To bolster their position the plaintiffs have brought in a canon lawyer who says,

... it is "absolute lunacy" to say bishops are not responsible to the pope.

He does not pay their checks, but they are totally controlled by the Vatican ... He alone can create them as bishops, he appoints them, assigns them to a diocese, fires them, accepts their resignation or transfers them.

The employee-employer analogy is incomplete when it comes to the pope and his bishops; control by the pope is much more complete. A bishop can't take a sabbatical to go study science for three months without the pope's permission.

Au contraire, says a research fellow in religion and law at Ave Maria University.

In peoples' minds, they imagine the pope is the general manager of every bishop in the world. The bishop is the head of a diocese; he is its chief priest and administrator. Theologically, each diocese is the local church and he's its head. The pope appoints bishops but after that, there's minimal contact.

And so the court is faced with two competing theories of the extent of papal control over local bishops. How is it to decide which one actually reflects the reality on the ground?

Might I suggest that the court take a close look at a diocese such as Rochester. Here it will find a local bishop who effectively thumbs his nose at anything coming out of Rome that is contrary to his vision of what a modern, progressive Catholic diocese should look like. Whether it be liturgical dancing, non-ordained homilists, prominent dissidents speaking in our parishes or to gatherings of our ministerium, other dissidents in control of parishes, heresies being taught to aspiring deacons at St. Bernard's or the criteria for the acceptance of candidates to the priesthood, Bishop Clark has made it abundantly clear that he is in charge, not Rome.

If the court would just spend a little time reviewing our bishop's record vis-a-vis the teachings and directives of Rome, I'm certain that the verdict would be a quick, "Case Dismissed!"

Source here.

Lay ministry webinar to feature Bishop Clark

2010-05-15T08:53:00.001-04:00

In another 10 days the National Association for Lay Ministry and Ave Maria Press will host a webinar featuring Bishop Matthew Clark.

A long-time advocate of lay ecclesial ministers, Bishop Matthew Clark will be giving a forty-five minute presentation on the ever-growing significance of this important group and the way it is changing the face of the Church. Following this will be fifteen minutes for Q&A. Register today for this free seminar!

Details here.

Bishop Clark: No attempt to shorten patient's life

2010-05-13T11:35:00.001-04:00

In 2006 Gary Harvey of Horseheads, NY suffered a severe brain injury. By May 2009 he was breathing on his own and just needed to receive nutrition through a feeding tube. By that time he was also a ward of Chemung County and a patient at St. Joseph's Hospital in Elmira.

That month the Catholic hospital's ethics committee recommended the removal of Mr. Harvey's feeding tube, an action which would have lead to his death by starvation and/or dehydration. The county, as his legal guardian, then petitioned a NY State Supreme Court judge for permission to remove the feeding tube. The judge, however, refused to rubber-stamp the request and asked for more information. Chemung County ultimately withdrew the request.

Several advocacy organizations, such as the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse (NASGA), ultimately became involved in the case.

According to a report (my emphasis),

In a January, 2010 letter to Bishop Matthew Clark in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, NASGA president, Elaine Renoire, cited: "The guardian attempted to terminate his life and would have been successful had Mrs. Harvey not taken it to the media. St. Joseph's Hospital's Ethics Committee chose to participate in what would have been Gary Harvey's execution rather than prevent it. NASGA is asking you to find out why."

Bishop Matthew Clark responded nearly one month later saying, "I am convinced that St. Joseph Hospital complies with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, that the Hospital is complying with the Order of the Court, and that there has been no attempt to shorten Mr. Harvey's life."

It would seem that our bishop does not equate the recommendation to remove a feeding tube with an attempt to shorten a patient's life.

Lord, have mercy!

Faux Catholic schools

2010-05-12T02:37:00.001-04:00

Patricia Weitzel-O'Neill is in her final weeks as superintendent of schools in the Archdiocese of Washington. When she first took over that job 8 years ago the archdiocese had 114 grade and high schools. Now the number is 89.

Last Friday, at an event entitled "A Washington Briefing for the Nation's Catholic Community," Weitzel-O'Neill offered her opinion on a variety of issues related to Catholic schools. One such issue is the appearance of schools in the "Catholic tradition." These are generally schools started by concerned parents without the approval - or support - of their dioceses. According to a CNS story,

... what Weitzel-O'Neill termed "faux Catholic schools" are springing up, led by those who have been in the Catholic home-schooling movement. She showed the home page to a website for a Pope John Paul II Academy in a suburban section of the Archdiocese of Washington, which has no connection with the archdiocese, despite entreaties by archdiocesan officials that the school seek some sort of connection. "They're teaching the Catholic faith, but they're not approved by any bishop," she added.

Let me see if I've got this straight. Ms. Weitzel-O'Neill has closed 22% of her schools in the 8 years she's been on the job, a record that would scream FAILURE! in just about any other area of endeavor. And now she is concerned that some Catholic parents have started a school that she and her successors will never be able to close. How, exactly, is that a problem?

Ms. Weitzel-O'Neill also expresses concern that the school is teaching the Catholic faith without having been approved by a Catholic bishop. A quick check of the school's website indicates that her concern might be misplaced.

Will the School be Served by the Archdioceses of Washington?

The school is not an Archdiocesan school. This means that we are challenged to find financial support from our community, and that we cannot, under canon law, lay claim to the title “Catholic.” Rather that title must be given to the school by the Archbishop. Since the Archdiocese has struggled for many years with failing schools, it continues to consider new schools with caution. Our view is that our students, teachers and parents must not hide their faith or treat it as a private matter, but we must let it permeate all that we do, as Pope Benedict XVI has called us to do.

Will There be Any Religious Formation in the School?

We are charged by Christ to go forth and teach all nations. Therefore, the religious formation of our children is integral to the existence of Pope John Paul II Academy. In a day of moral relativism, the teachings of the Catholic Church have given the world an example of sound judgment and spiritual clarity. Consequently, our students will be deeply immersed into the sacred scripture and the treasure of the Church’s magisterial teachings.

Will the School Have Religious Devotions?

Religious devotions have been embraced by our families and by our church as an important form of spiritual growth. The Stations of the Cross, the Holy Rosary, the Angelus, the Divine Mercy Chaplet and other practices of our Catholic families will be given places of prominence in the daily life of the school.

Given the above, I suspect that the Pope John Paul II Academy just might be more Catholic than many of the Catholic schools in the archdiocese.

Maybe that's the REAL problem.

That hospice mentality

2010-05-11T21:18:00.001-04:00

"I am afraid many of our bishops, priests and leaders in Catholic schools have bought into the mentality that Catholic schools are gradually dying and that the best thing we can do is prolong their life and make their demise as comfortable as possible.

"I refuse to buy into that hospice mentality.

"We must rediscover a sense of boldness. We've got to get dramatic. We've got to have some fresh thinking. "

- Archbishop Timothy Dolan (source here).

"The genius of Catholic schools"

2010-05-06T11:27:00.001-04:00

Recognizing that the time for "business as usual" is over for its Catholic schools, the Archdiocese of New York is about to launch Pathways to Excellence, a strategic plan "designed to assist elementary schools throughout the Archdiocese."

In an op-ed piece in the New York Post, Archbishop Timothy Dolan writes (my emphasis),

As the plan begins to take hold, it is likely that some schools may merge and some may close -- and, Please God, new schools will open, as well.

Know that the difficult and painful decisions of this sort will never be made lightly, as we are all very aware that school closings have a profound impact on the students and their families. Such decisions will only be made after long and careful consideration, with plenty of opportunity for input and discussion by all who have an interest in that school.

Part of the genius of Catholic schools is the involvement of the entire local community -- parents, parishioners, pastors, principals, teachers, benefactors and civic leaders -- in the life of a school. We recognize that all of these stakeholders must be involved in any decision to merge, close or open a school.

This is a far cry from what happened here in DOR in 2007-08. When Bishop Clark decided that the financial situation of Monroe County's Catholic schools required serious attention, he gave little, if any, thought to what Archbishop Dolan rightly calls "the genius of Catholic schools."

Instead, Bishop Clark assembled a group of 22 cronies, sent them off to secretly review data which remains undisclosed to this day, and told them to come up with a fix to the problem. As far as can be determined this committee never met with a single parent, parishioner, pastor, principal, teacher, benefactor or civic leader, thus showing their - and the bishop's - utter contempt for all those very genuine stakeholders in our Catholic schools.

And, just to rub a little salt into still-open wounds, Bishop Clark then let teams from five parishes build up false hope while investing hundreds of man-hours devising plans to operate their schools independently, knowing full well that he would axe any plans they presented - no matter how excellent - as potential threats to his cronies' plan.

The Archdiocese of New York will almost certainly have to close some of its Catholic schools. No one will be happy about it and some are sure to disagree with the decision to close particular schools. But at the end of the day there won't be anyone who can claim that they did not have input into those decisions. There won't be anyone who can claim that their role as a stakeholder wasn't recognized and respected.

Archbishop Dolan gets it. Bishop Clark couldn't care less.

Spiritual Alzheimer's, Ecclesial Parkinson's

2010-05-03T17:30:00.001-04:00

Much is spoken today of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. By analogy, their symptoms can, at times, be found even in our own Christian communities.

For example, when we live myopically in the fleeting present, oblivious of our past heritage and apostolic traditions, we could well be suffering from spiritual Alzheimer’s.

And when we behave in a disorderly manner, going whimsically our own way without any co-ordination with the head or the other members of our community, it could be ecclesial Parkinson’s.

- Ivan Cardinal Dias, speaking of DOR the Anglican Communion.

Source here.

H/T: Fr. Z.

Lunch with Bishop Clark

2010-04-30T17:12:00.001-04:00

One of the items in WXXI's annual auction is lunch with Bishop Clark.

The opening bid is $63.00 and bidding ends at 8:56 pm, May 7.

Thus far there are 0 bids.

More info here.

DOR Spin

2010-04-29T14:12:00.001-04:00

Fr. Bill Spilly at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Hamlin attended the most recent diocesan Priests' Council meeting. The subject of DOR's ongoing decline in Mass attendance was on the agenda and Fr. Spilly is now relaying the information he received to his parishioners ...

At the last meeting of the Priests' Council with Bishop Clark, a report was given about the decrease in Mass Attendance in the Diocese of Rochester over the last 10 years. Most of that decline began in 2002 and continues to the present day. Among the many reasons, including laziness and lessening priority of Sunday Mass as very important, are the following:

* Demographic shifts: people relocating out of the diocese due to jobs, retirement, and illness

* Church renovations: people disliking the renovation plan, process or fundraising

* Parish planning: people dropping out of church because of the elimination of a Mass, the changing of a Mass time, the clustering of parishes, the closing of parishes and schools, the appointment of a new pastor, the appointment of a parish leader not a priest, the appointment of an extern (a priest from another country) who is difficult to understand

* Church practices: people drop out of church because Mass is too long or not reverent enough; homilies are too bland, too long or too political; the Church's annulment requirements; the parish or the priest/administrator is not traditional enough or liberal enough; the Church is unwelcoming to the divorces and remarried or to homosexuals

* Alternative Catholic churches: Within Monroe County, people attend Mass at St. Ann's Home (700), Cherry Ridge (100), Jefferson Road Carmelites (203), SSJ Motherhouse (100), RSM Motherhouse (45) and various campuses. Elsewhere in the diocese, people attend Mass at the Canandaigua VA (250), Abbey of the Genesee (125), Mt. Saviour Monastery in Elmira (200), etc.

* Sex abuse: The fact that the precipitous decline begins in 2002 is indicative of the effect this has had on Mass attendance.

In the Diocese of Rochester in the year 2000, there was an average of 106,483 people going to church during a given month. By 2009, there was an average of 75,376 people going to church during a given month. That is a decline of 30% in just the past 10 years.

Dr. K. at Cleansing Fire has already ably commented on several of these points (see here) and I would now like to pick up where he left off.

First, to the best of my knowledge it's only been within the last two years that the diocese has made a concerted effort to count every last nose in our collective pews on each weekend in October. Along with parish churches, places like prisons, nursing homes, campus chapels, monasteries, senior living centers, migrant ministries and motherhouses are now being asked to report their October weekend Mass attendance. While the effort to be as accurate as possible is commendable, one has to wonder if this might also be an attempt to put as much lipstick as possible on that pig which is our corporate decline in Mass attendance.

Second, at the beginning of his remarks Fr. Spilly writes that most of our decline in Mass attendance "began in 2002" and later states, "The fact that the precipitous decline begins in 2002 is indicative of the effect [the clerical sex abuse scandal] has had on Mass attendance."

This is DOR spin, pure and simple.

It is nothing other than a lame attempt, apparently on the part of those who fed Fr. Spilly this data, to put the blame for our Mass attendance collapse in a place where it demonstrably does not belong.

Yes, DOR's 2000, 2001 and 2002 Mass attendance numbers were, respectively, roughly 108,000, 110,000 and 103,000 and so, at first glance, it would appear that our slide began in 2002.

But what DOR would like us to forget is that these are average OCTOBER numbers and that a certain event happened on September 11, 2001 that drove nationwide church attendance substantially higher for the next several weeks, including all the weeks in OCTOBER of that year.

In fact, the Barna Group, a highly respected religious research organization, reports that nationwide Catholic weekend Mass attendance was up by 10% during this period, while other sources mention numbers in the 5 to 7% range.

Were not for the attendance spike caused by September 11, DOR's 2001 Average October Attendance number would most likely have been somewhere in the 100,000 to 105,000 range, thus making it obvious that DOR's Mass attendance tailspin started well before the sex abuse scandal hit the newspapers and that our rate of decline has not increased one iota due to this scandal.

That said, I must note that when I first began reporting on our Mass attendance decline I mentioned that the DOR was putting the entire blame for it on factors totally outside of its control (see here).

Now they are at last admitting - grudgingly, I suspect - that at least some of the causes (church renovations, school and parish closures, Mass eliminations, etc.) are all actions they took themselves. The real question is whether DOR will now be more conscious of the potential effects of its contemplated actions on Mass attendance than it has been in the past.

I suspect that Bishop Clark's impending decision on St. Thomas the Apostle Church will be our first indication.

Fr. McBrien whines

2010-04-27T23:43:00.001-04:00

LarryD's piece on the lamentations of Fr. Richard McBrien is well worth a read.

See here - and don't forget to play the music.

The Secret of Christ

2010-04-27T09:40:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday the Holy Cross Church Choir presented The Secret of Christ. The concert featured Fauré's Requiem, along with works by Handel, Howells, Shephard and Hertel. The venue was Holy Cross Church in Charlotte.

The choir, under the direction of Katherine Evans, was accompanied by parish organist Sarah Allen and several students from the Eastman School of Music.

Very inept camera work was provided by yours truly (I need a better tripod!) using a Canon DM-100 stereo microphone attached to Canon Vixia HF 100 digital camcorder.

My favorite pieces follow, with the entire concert being available here.

Filth, pride and self-complacency

2010-04-25T09:05:00.001-04:00

Five years ago Pope John Paul II was too ill to lead the Good Friday Stations of the Cross and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was asked to take his place.

By that time Cardinal Ratzinger's office had been responsible for overseeing all cases of clerical sexual abuse against children for some four years and His Eminence must surely have had a good sense of the magnitude of the crisis, certainly in North America, if not in much of the wider world.

What follows is His Eminence's meditation on the Ninth Station. While there are some signs of improvement, much of what was true in 2005 remains sadly true today.

What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? [In the Third and Seventh Stations w]e have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church?

How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts!

How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there!

How often is his Word twisted and misused!

What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words!

How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!

How much pride, how much self-complacency!

What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall!

All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart.

We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison Lord, save us (cf. Mt 8: 25).

Joan Workmaster

2010-04-23T13:05:00.000-04:00

A week ago Dr. K over at Cleansing Fire reported on an upcoming 9-hour course at St. Bernard's that is being billed as an exploration of the "history and development of the Roman missal, as well [as] an examination of the projected changes." The instructor is identified as Joan Workmaster.

I was interested in learning a little more about the instructor but it turns out there is very little of substance on the Internet concerning Ms. Workmaster. The only significant information I could find comes from pages 136-7 of Chava Redonnet's 2002 account of the Corpus Christi/Spiritus Christi fiasco, "Standing in the Light: A Parishioner's Story." That information is, however, quite revealing.

Ms. Redonnet's text is in black; my comments are in red ...

"[In late 1998 a]bout three hundred people came to the first of the educational series of meetings sponsored by the Spring Committee. Peg Rubley had gathered a panel that could give a variety of perspectives on the issue of Women in the Church: Joan Workmaster, Director of the Office of Liturgy for the diocese, and possessor of a Masters in Liturgical Theology; Mary Ramerman, who held a Masters in Theology; Chris Schenk, csj (sic), a nun with Masters degrees in Midwifery and Theology; and Dan Daley, co-founder of Call to Action.

"Joan Workmaster spoke first. She reminded us that while progress has not been fast, it had been only twenty-six years since roles in the Church opened up to women at all. In August, 1972, Pope Paul VI issued 'Ministerium Quaedam,' which abolished some roles, such as lectoring, from being the province of the ordained, and gave them to lay people as ministers. 'The Church has been on an uneasy way of inclusion ever since.' There had been a tremendous rise in the number of lay people, men and women, in ministry. 'In the midst of revolutionary change, it can be easy not to see the forest for the trees.' [Revolutions are messy things that tend to tear up and discard as worthless everything that has gone on before them. It is unsettling that Ms. Workmaster, then DOR's Director of the Office of Liturgy, viewed the changes since Vatican II in this light.]

"Joan said that she was committed to men, women an children in some form of liturgical ministry. She said, 'The Church is not standing still,' and that this has been possible because we took seriously the call to understand baptism as the priesthood of all believers. The Church is coming to understand the role of the assembly in the Eucharistic prayer. [I wish that Ms. Workmaster had elaborated a bit more on this point.] The role of the priest is to be the presider, the leader of prayer. The words said, the gestures made, and the things worn become the essence of sacramental theology. Context puts meaning around these items. 'If you pour water on a child's head, what does it mean?' she asked. 'It could mean a number of things: abuse, play, cooling off - or baptism. It depends on the context.'

The wearing of an alb is not an issue, Joan told us. The alb is for all of the baptized, and everyone could wear one. That's why children wear white at first Communion, and why brides and grooms are encouraged to wear white. [No, Ms. Workmaster, the alb is not for 'all the baptized.' According to GIRM, the alb is one of the 'sacred vestments' whose use is reserved to the ordained as well as 'acolytes, altar servers, lectors, and other lay ministers.' Furthermore, in Article 6 of Ecclesiae de mysterio we are told that 'Every effort must be made to avoid even the appearance of confusion which can spring from anomalous liturgical practices. As the sacred ministers are obliged to wear all of the prescribed liturgical vestments so too the non-ordained faithful may not assume that which is not proper to them.']

"She agreed that the issue of ordination is a justice issue - but not only for women. The ranks of the ordained are narrowed to include only male celibates, and many people are affected. In addressing this justice issue [If this is a justice issue, then who is fit to serve as judge? I suspect Ms. Workmaster's answer would not be 'the Magisterium'] , we can't act autonomously, but need to act collectively. What would Jesus do? - he would collect people for discussion, teaching and understanding. [When did Jesus ever collect people - other than the apostles, his first bishops - for 'discussion, teaching and understanding?' And even with them the very idea of 'discussion' is almost comical. These guys were usually so clueless regarding what Jesus was trying to teach that they made fools of themselves just about every time they opened their mouths. Rather, Ms. Workmaster, I suspect what Jesus would have done would have been to fashion a whip from some cords and use it to drive the dissenters out of his Father's house.]

"Joan summed up by saying that in twenty-five years, tremendous strides had been made in making ministries inclusive, but that the role of the presider was still limited to the ordained. No one can assume the right to preside, and individual communities can't confer it. 'Work for solutions, but act together. We gain nothing by working alone.'" [Here Ms. Workmaster is either rejecting the papal teaching found in Mulieris Dignitatem and Inter Insigniores, or she is suggesting that the "role of the presider" might somehow, someday be opened up to the non-ordained.]

Q: Why doesn't the pope just replace Bishop Clark?

2010-04-22T23:07:00.001-04:00

A: Bishop Jacques Gaillot of the Diocese of Partenia

Bishop Jacques Gaillot seems to subscribe to the philosophy that, when the Church hands you lemons, it's time to learn to make lemonade.

One source relates the bishop's story as follows ...

Bishop Jacques Gaillot, a progressive and activist bishop in an increasingly conservative Catholic hierarchy, was stripped of his bishopric (at Evreux, in France) in 1995. Summoned to Rome, he was reassigned to a patch of central Algerian desert, once a thriving community in the first millennium but now a sandy wasteland. In response, Bishop Gaillot created the first virtual diocese and has pursued his clerical duties from this base ever since. The website/diocese has become the diocese without borders, the diocese which excludes no one, worldwide, in seven languages.

Other sources tell us the Bishop Gaillot, once he found himself unencumbered by the myriad duties typical of a local ordinary, found that he had a lot of free time on his hands. This led to his authoring of several books setting forth his heterodox views on various Church teachings and also made him available to be a guest speaker at just about any event anywhere in the world where an audience was interesting in hearing from a dissident Catholic prelate.

And so, given Bishop Gaillot's still ongoing response to being removed from the Diocese of Evreux, it is understandable that Rome might be a bit gun shy at trying similar discipline with other wayward prelates. It probably seems best, absent any overt apostasy, to just leave them where they are, thus confining the damage to a single diocese, rather than risk creating a whole pack of titular bishops with plenty of time on their hands to spread their poison all over the world.

I know that many of us have been writing letters begging Rome to do something about the situation in DOR. Given the above, I'd be somewhat surprised if we saw any serious response.

The class of 2010

2010-04-19T23:16:00.001-04:00

The USCCB's snapshot of the ordination class of 2010 is now out. The Catholic World News summary reads as follows ...

A survey of US seminarians who will be ordained this year has found that 31% were born outside the United States, with most coming from Mexico, Colombia, the Philippines, Poland and Vietnam.

Among the other findings of the survey:

the average (mean) age of ordinands is 37; the median age of diocesan ordinands is 33

10% are converts

37% have a relative who is a priest or religious

55% have more than two siblings

49% attended a Catholic elementary school, and 39% attended a Catholic college

60% completed college before entering the seminary; 92% held full-time jobs

16% had a parent with career military service

78% were encouraged by a priest to enter the seminary; few were influenced by vocational advertising

50% were discouraged by parents or other family members from considering the seminary; 15% were discouraged by priests, while 4% were discouraged by religious

19% attended a World Youth Day, and 8% attended a Franciscan University of Steubenville High School Youth Conference

67% regularly prayed the Rosary before entering seminary; 65% regularly took part in Eucharistic adoration

the seminarians typically began to consider a priestly vocation when they were 18

Two of these figures just jump out at me: Over half (55%) of these men come from families with 4 or more children and almost half (49%) attended a Catholic elementary school. Large Catholic families and Catholic schools continue to be seedbeds of vocations (see here and here for similar results from another survey). It's too bad we don't have very many of either in DOR.

Also of interest is that the full report tells us that "about one in ten diocesan ordinands (10 percent) report that they lived in the diocese or eparchy for which they will be ordained less than a year before they entered the seminary." Last year, this number was 17% and in 2008 it was 16%. It is unclear whether this year's lower percentage actually means that fewer men are now feeling the need to seek ordination in dioceses other than their home dioceses, as fully 30% of the 2010 diocesan ordinands-to-be failed to answer this question.

Some readers might recall that the comments on my post concerning the class of 2009 indicated that several orthodox men raised in DOR have felt the need to seek ordination elsewhere (see here). I am looking forward to 2012 and beyond when, hopefully, that need will no longer exist.

"It's not that bad ..."

2010-04-15T11:50:00.001-04:00

I came across this while searching for something else and it just got me laughing. From a 2003 edition of FaithFacts ...

Heaven Can Wait

Fr. Charles Curran, Fr. Hans Kung and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger all die on the same day and go to meet St. Peter to learn their eternal fate.

St. Peter approaches the trio, explaining that each will be dealt with separately, in accordance with the Church’s teaching on the “particular judgment” (cf. Catechism, nos. 1021-22).

St. Peter begins with Fr. Curran, shouting, “Charles! In my office!”

Fr. Kung and Cardinal Ratzinger wait anxiously as one, two, three hours pass. Finally, Fr. Curran staggers out of St. Peter’s office, drained and exhausted.

“What happened?” the others ask.

“Well, it’s not that bad,” Fr. Curran responds, "considering I basically denied the Church’s moral law while serving on earth. Fifty years in purgatory, but I’m gonna make it, thank God.”

Then, Fr. Kung goes into St. Peter’s office. Fr. Curran and Cardinal Ratzinger anxiously wait as one, two, three, four, five hours six hours pass! Finally, Fr. Kung crawls out of St. Peter’s office, barely able to move.

“What happened? What happened?” the others ask.

“Well, it’s not that bad,” Kung responds, “considering I basically called into question the Church’s entire deposit of faith while serving on earth. A hundred years in Purgatory, but I’m gonna make it, thank God.”

Finally, Cardinal Ratzinger, the Church’s legendary “watchdog of orthodoxy” goes into St. Peter’s office. Frs. Curran and Kung wait anxiously as one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine hours pass. Finally, the door to St. Peter’s office opens and out steps, not Cardinal Ratzinger, but St. Peter.

“What happened?! What happened?!” the befuddled priests inquire.

“Well,” the humbled keeper of heaven’s gate begins, “it’s not that bad . . .”

Read the bill? Don't be silly!

2010-04-13T06:12:00.001-04:00

How do clowns like this keep getting re-elected? Are the American people really that stupid?

More $$$ available for Catholic schools

2010-04-09T13:42:00.001-04:00

Last Monday, the day before the start of the National Catholic Educational Association convention and expo in Minneapolis, a group of eight panelists shared their dioceses' or organizations' approaches to helping Catholic schools not only survive, but grow.

Frank Butler, president of Washington-based Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, attested to philanthropy's important but changing role in funding Catholic education.

Fundraising looks different today than it did 10 or 20 years ago, Butler said. "It's really an interactive sport. The fact is, you've got to get engagement," he said. Traditionally, Catholic education fundraising has been "insular," and not open to ideas from donors, he said.

"That is a formula for disaster in today's fundraising environment," he said. Instead, Catholic schools should take advantage of Catholic networks and actively engage their donors in their mission, Butler said.

Despite the difficult economy, the climate for raising funds "could not be better," Butler said.

"Catholic schools are the hottest issue in Catholic philanthropy right now. ... We've never seen the level of donor interest as high as it is today," he said. [my emphasis]

I wonder if the people over at the Monroe County Catholic School System know this.

Full story here.

A shout-out to the nuns

2010-03-28T15:20:00.001-04:00

From a March 24 Huffington Post article by Cecile Richards, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America ...

And in the final days before the [health care] bill was passed, it was the Roman Catholic nuns who most importantly broke with the bishops and the Vatican to announce their support for health care reform. This brave and important move, demonstrating that they cared as much about the health care of families in America as they did about church hierarchy, was a critical demonstration of support. Bart Stupak may not ask the nuns for advice, as he recently announced to the press, but maybe next time he should.

The leaders of the abortion industry certainly know who their real friends are.

Poll results

2010-03-26T13:03:00.001-04:00

The results from my first poll are in ...

Thanks to all who participated.

ND theology department "growing stronger"

2010-03-26T12:09:00.001-04:00

Most Reverend John D'Arcy, Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Fort Wayne - South Bend, recently gave an interview to Thomas Bounds, a student at the University of Notre Dame.

Reflecting on the University, Bishop D’Arcy comments, “The most significant improvement over the past 25 years has been in the Theology department.

“At the last ad limina visit I made with Pope John Paul II in 2004, I had the opportunity to meet with Cardinal Ratzinger [now Pope Benedict XVI]. He said, ‘You have done a wonderful thing for the Church,’ referring to the Theology department. I said, ‘It wasn’t me. It was the Blessed Mother.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re the instrument.’ I replied, ‘No, not really, it was John Cavadini.’

“He’s such an outstanding scholar, and he has recruited outstanding scholars who are also Catholic. You now have a department that is in close communion with the local bishop and is growing stronger theologically. No one’s freedom was threatened, and yet it has grown closer to the Church and the theology has improved.”

Yes, Fr. Richard McBrien is still the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at Notre Dame but, like so many other infamous dissidents, he is also getting pretty long in the tooth. Fr. McBrien will turn 74 this summer and, judging from Bishop D'Arcy's comments, it appears that his influence within ND's theology department has been on the decline for some time.

Full interview here.

Marginalized Catholics give more

2010-03-19T18:19:00.001-04:00

DOR's annual Stewardship Day is scheduled for Saturday, April 24 at Fairport's Church of the Assumption. According to a note on the Catholic Courier's web site, this year's keynote speaker "will be Charles Zech, Ph.D., director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova University and the author of more than 75 books."

One of Dr. Zech's many books is "Why Catholics Don't Give ... And What Can Be Done About It." A quick glance at this book on Google Books shows Dr. Zech to be a very interesting choice.

For instance, on pages 54-56 the author reviews the research on the relationship between belief and giving level (reformatted for clarity; my emphasis):

[N]ot many researchers have considered the effect of specific religious beliefs on giving, perhaps because they've concluded that churches are unwilling to modify their teachings merely to attract larger contributions. Those few studies that have looked at the effect of beliefs have always concluded that parishioners with more orthodox beliefs and more conservative attitudes on moral issues contribute more.

For example, John Hilke (1980) compared the effect of religious orthodoxy on contributions across a number of Protestant denominations. He found it to have a strong effect on religious giving.

Andrew Greely, in another study that he coauthored with William McCready and Kathleen McCourt (1976), found a moderate relationship between contributions and both people's agreement with Church teachings and their reluctance to criticize priests.

Dean Hoge and Fenggang Yang (1994) found that Catholics who do the following tended to he more generous givers: those who prayed more often, believed in life after death, considered the Bible to be an important guide in making life decisions, regard Church teaching as being an important guide in making life decisions, believe their faith to be free of doubts, and consider premarital sex to be always wrong.

Another study, by D'Antonio et al. (1989), reported that Catholics who agreed with the Church's position on artificial contraception, abortion, and punishment of dissenting theologians, contributed more. But those who approved of some of the Church's more liberal positions, such as the Bishops' letters on the nuclear arms race and the economy, and the notion of the preferential option for the poor, also gave more.

D'Antonio et al., also looked at the effect of attitudes about Church authority on contributions. They found that parishioners who agree that Church leaders should have the final say on what is morally right or wrong regarding both abortion and birth control contributed more than did others. Those who thought these should be joint decisions between the leadership and members gave the next most. The lowest givers were those who felt that abortion and birth control should be individual decisions.

We can conclude from all of this that it is the willingness to accept the Church's official position, and the acknowledgement of its teaching authority, as much as the Church's stance on any one specific issue, that motivates people to contribute more.

So it would appear that it is the conservative or orthodox Catholic, the very Catholic that many in DOR spend so much time and effort marginalizing, who tends to be the biggest donor to the Church.

Maybe that was part of the reasoning behind the near desecration of St. Stan's during the production of last fall's CMA promo video. Perhaps someone thought that a veneer of orthodoxy would lead the orthodox to give even more.

Be that as it may, one wonders if Dr. Zech has any ideas on how to get more more money out of DOR's many progressive Catholics.

"The illusion of moral cover"

2010-03-16T10:52:00.001-04:00

Archbishop Chaput's latest column on the health care debate deals with the "Catholic" enablers of this seriously flawed legislation.

A couple of quotes ...

Groups, trade associations and publications describing themselves as “Catholic” or “prolife” that endorse the Senate version ... provide the illusion of moral cover for an unethical piece of legislation.

The long, unpleasant and too often dishonest national health-care debate is now in its last days. Its most painful feature has been those “Catholic” groups that by their eagerness for some kind of deal undercut the witness of the Catholic community and help advance a bad bill into a bad law. Their flawed judgment could now have damaging consequences for all of us.

Read the entire column here.

St. Rita to become parish school in 2011?

2010-03-16T09:41:00.001-04:00

The principal believes it's a done deal, while the pastor says no final decision is close to being made.

The following appeared on the Channel 13 web site late yesterday morning:

Webster, N.Y.- The Saint Rita School in Webster will be run by the parish beginning in the fall of 2011.

Monday, school leaders announced they are planning to significantly expand fundraising efforts to prepare for the time when the school is no longer run by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

In a press release, Principal Sister Katherine Ann Rappl said, “Only 52 percent of our students come from families that belong to the Saint Rita Parish. So as we transition to parish responsibility, the support of the surrounding community will be more important than ever.”

The school is holding a new spring gala in May as a way to raise money.

It will be held Friday, May 7 at Glendoveers on Old Browncroft Road.

However, the D&C this morning reports:

Fate of St. Rita’s school up in air

Father Charles Latus of St. Rita’s Church in Webster said Monday that although the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester is exploring the possibility of having some schools become parish-run, no decisions have been made regarding St. Rita’s school.

“We have had talks with the diocese, but no final decision has been made or is close to being made,” said Latus.

There's hope for DOR schools - after 2012

2010-03-12T03:11:00.001-05:00

The Philanthropy Roundtable has just released Saving America's Urban Catholic Schools: A Guide for Donors. As the title indicates, the book is targeted at potential donors and it makes the case for supporting Catholic schools in general and urban Catholic schools in particular.

Part of making that case involves detailing the success stories already out there and one of these stories involves the Diocese of Memphis.

In one five-year period, from 1999 to 2004, "donors helped the Diocese of Memphis reopen a total of nine previously shuttered inner-city Catholic schools. Supporters of the effort regularly refer to it as the 'Memphis Miracle.'"

There is absolutely no financial reason why this success story could not be repeated here. There is no shortage of well-heeled philanthropists in this area and the recently reported 46% graduation rate from our city's public high schools only serves to underline the need for quality alternatives to the Rochester city school system.

There is, however, one critical stumbling block that needs to be overcome and it will be, God willing, come 2012 (see the last sentence, below).

A free PDF version of the book is available here. The section on the Diocese of Memphis follows ...

Resurrecting Closed Schools: Miracle in Memphis

When all these elements come together—re-setting high academic standards, improving business practices, and increasing transparency and accountability—the end-result of a turnaround effort can be impressive. Perhaps the largest and most consequential turnaround effort to date has taken place in Memphis, Tennessee. Between 1999 and 2004, donors—both Catholic and non-Catholic—helped the Diocese of Memphis reopen a total of nine previously shuttered inner-city Catholic schools. Supporters of the effort regularly refer to it as the “Memphis Miracle.”

The effort started in July 1999. Bishop J. Terry Steib asked Mary C. McDonald, superintendent of schools, to develop and implement an ambitious strategic plan. The goal: to reopen nine shuttered Catholic schools in inner-city Memphis, some of which had been closed for over 50 years. As McDonald worked on the plan, she devised a new governance and infrastructure model, one that called for the closed parish schools located in the inner city to be reopened as diocesan schools. Under the new arrangement, the superintendent would serve as the chief executive officer of each school, with the principal acting as the chief operating officer. Pastors would continue to provide spiritual leadership, overseeing the Catholic identity and ongoing spiritual formation of teachers.

Once the plan was sufficiently developed,McDonald approached members of the business and philanthropic communities to interest potential investors. The effort was kicked off with an initial $10 million anonymous donation. All that was known was that the benefactor was not Catholic. An additional $5 million was raised from other interested donors. After receiving the initial funding of $15 million for renovation and scholarships, the program started with one school in August 1999.

Over the next four years, with additional funding in place, the Jubilee Catholic Schools— named for the Year of Jubilee proclaimed by Pope John Paul II in 2000—grew from that one to nine schools. All of the schools serve a student population whose families are at or below poverty level.

In 2003, the Jubilee initiative launched the Catholic Memphis Urban Schools Trust (CMUST) to assume responsibility of the financial oversight and budgets, as well as assist in ongoing development efforts. CMUST, according to McDonald, provides tuition assistance to families on a sliding scale, and helps the nine schools cover any operational deficits. It has its own, separate 501(c)(3) status, which was necessary to assure all investors that their contributions to the Jubilee schools were completely segregated from diocesan funds. Building an intermediary organization allows an expert, independent board to oversee fiscal management, reducing overhead and protecting funds from lawsuits that may be filed against the church.

In Memphis, oversight for the ongoing operations component remains in the superintendent’s office. Oversight for the financial component, meanwhile, resides with CMUST. To further ensure accountability, the program sought and received district accreditation in 2006 through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. This holds the academic program to a higher standard of third-party accountability, and ensures the continuous improvement of a quality academic program. Memphis was only the second diocese in the country to receive this accreditation.

The results have been, as some donors put it, miraculous. Enrollment continues to climb (please see Figure 6), and test scores are steadily improving.

The Hyde Family Foundations have long been key contributors to the effort, and their commitment to the Jubilee Catholic Schools included a $5 million challenge grant in 2007. Barbara Hyde, president of the foundations, says she has seen “great commitment and talent among the leaders of the Jubilee schools.” Hyde and her husband, AutoZone founder J. R. (“Pitt”) Hyde, are not Catholic, but their charitable work takes a multi-sector and ecumenical approach to K–12 reform that focuses on school supply, demand, and governance. As part of its effort to increase supply—the number of opportunities for children to get a high-quality education—the Hyde Family Foundations have pushed for more accommodating charter school laws in Tennessee, supported public school reforms, and funded the Jubilee Schools effort.

Support for the Jubilee Schools also came from local business leaders, many of whom recognized that the city needs a highly educated workforce with solid moral character. Nathan Pera III, chairman and CEO of Memphis-based Environmental Testing and Consulting of the Americas, says the Jubilee schools are effective because “they combine the hunger of children to learn and the hunger of donors to help; because they attract significant support from non-Catholic business leaders and philanthropists; and because of God’s good will.” “If you want to re-open Catholic schools,” Pera continues, “you have to talk with practitioners in the trenches. You have to recruit a passionate, savvy, and mission-focused leader. You have to build a multicultural and religiously pluralistic coalition. You have to demand fiscal accountability. And, most of all, you have to make sure that the local bishop is completely—100 percent—supportive.”

Applause during Mass?

2010-03-11T23:10:00.001-05:00

I recently received a note from a DOR reader who is concerned about applause during the liturgy. He/she mentioned that a family member had counted seven rounds of applause during a recent Mass at their parish.

My correspondent is aware of the rubrics but, leaving that aside for the moment, he/she went on to note that applauding for everything and everybody is not much different than ending every sentence with an exclamation point. We end up giving the same acknowledgement to everything from, say, a birthday to a CYO basketball victory to an excellent performance by the choir to a couple celebrating 50 years of marriage. In treating everything the same we lose sight of inherent differences, of relative importance.

In my experience applause is most likely to occur near the end of Mass, during the time reserved for announcements. While still something of an interruption, applause here seems less disruptive than it would at any earlier point.

In doing some research for this post I learned that Rich Leonardi had dealt with a related topic a little over a year ago. Rich's concern was applause in response to homilies and the comments of Father Edward McNamara in that regard seem well thought out and balanced. (See here.)
Father McNamara reminded us that, while still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, our Holy Father once wrote,

Whenever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 198)

To put this in context, then-Cardinal Ratzinger was commenting on applause in response to so-called liturgical dancing during Mass, not in response to homilies or announcements near the end of Mass. Still, his point is well-taken: When applause is a response to some human achievement, it is problematic during Mass.

My correspondent was wondering how common applause during Mass is in DOR. To answer that question I have decided to conduct my first poll - see bottom of left column. Please feel free to participate.

Mother of Sorrows to lose 7th, 8th grades

2010-03-07T09:10:00.001-05:00

Cleansing Fire is reporting that DOR will close the 7th and 8th grades at Our Mother of Sorrows School at the end of the current school year.

An announcement to that effect was reportedly made at yesterday's 5:00 pm Mass at MOS.

We covered the fact that these grades were in danger last October (see here). It now appears that our fears have been realized.

DOR's weekend Mass attendance continues to nosedive. Every year fewer DOR Catholics celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony within the Church and every year fewer DOR Catholics bring their infants for Baptism.

So what is DOR's solution to this decline?

Why, close more Catholic schools, of course.

These people are insane!

Practical Catholicism

2010-02-24T12:44:00.001-05:00

Thus the word of the LORD came to me:

You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel; when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me. If I tell the wicked man that he shall surely die, and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked man from his way, he (the wicked man) shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked man, trying to turn him from his way, and he refuses to turn from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but you shall save yourself (Ezekiel 33:1, 7-9)

With that by way of introduction, this is for anyone who may have missed it on Cleansing Fire ...

"Why Lutherans Can't Evangelize"

2010-02-24T11:54:00.001-05:00

I just came across a somewhat long but well written piece posted by a rather non-traditional Lutheran pastor. Entitled Why Lutherans Can't Evangelize, the essay presents an interesting theological slant on the problems facing his church.

For instance, Pastor David Housholder contends that Lutherans "more or less have no functioning eschatology (end times teaching)," which makes it "hard to invite people on a journey when we don’t have a compelling destination."

He goes on to add that Lutherans "have no theology of mission. Within the framework of our theology, we have no idea how to get someone saved."

This situation arose, according to the pastor, because

the formative-era Lutherans were concerned with two things:

1) Catechizing already-baptized nominal Christians within their jurisdiction ([Luther's] Small Catechism)

2) Defending the faith against non-Lutheran neighbors (the [Augsburg] Confessions)

Mission was just not on their radar screen. It didn’t get into our family DNA.

But what first caught my eye was Pastor Housholder's brief recapitulation of the history of the Lutheran Church in America. The parallels with Catholicism as it is practiced in some parts of our country (and we all know where) are striking ...

Lutherans in America have had three major eras:

1) The era of immigration.

2) The era of procreation.

3) The era of decline.

The era of immigration was a period which lasted up to 1920. Millions of nominal Lutherans were coming in sailing and steamships to North America. If we set up ethnic specific ministries which functioned as community centers, and catechized and confirmed the young, then primary relationships would be built around church activity and continuous exposure to Word and Sacrament would get the job done.

It worked. Until the steamships stopped coming.

Then we turned to plan B: Procreation. The average Lutheran woman had 4-5 kids. We built education wings onto our churches (a whole new thing). From VBS to Lutheran Colleges and Seminaries (via Luther and Walther League) we did a full court press on the kids, knowing that keeping over half of them would lead to a growing church. I am a product of that full court press.

It worked. Until the pill came and the average Lutheran woman now has 1.7 kids. Keep half of 1.7 and you get exactly what we now have.

The pill was introduced in 1963. The Lutheran Church has been in freefall since 1964 (despite the rapid growth of the US population during that same time).

Contraction, aging, and entropy have been the norm for our congregations since then. The exception has been Upper Midwest suburban areas where a fresh critical-mass population of young Lutherans moves into new tract housing and has kids (a curious mixture of “retro” immigration and procreation).

Pastor Housholder's entire essay is well worth reading.

The fruits of orthodoxy

2010-02-12T01:21:00.001-05:00

In anticipation of a January 19th speech by Bob Voboril, the Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Wichita, the Serra Club of Wichita published the following backgrounder in its monthly newsletter.

To this denizen of the wasteland known as the Diocese of Rochester these statistics are simply astounding.

Some Interesting Statistics

In the past 25 years the Catholic population in the US is up by 30%, partially due to the Mexican population. Priests are down by 20% in the same time period. Number of seminarians is about the same as 25 years ago but not keeping up with the population.

We now have 17 sisters teaching in our diocese vs 90 twenty-five years ago. We currently have 45 seminarians studying for our diocese. The Wichita Diocese has one seminarian for each 3,000 Catholics, compared to the national average of one seminarian per 20,000 Catholics. [DOR has 1 seminarian for each 56,000 Catholics. -ed.] Thirty of our 45 seminarians are graduates of our Catholic high schools. Bishop Carroll has had more than 50 religious vocations in 40 years. Kapaun Mount Carmel has produced more than 120 religious vocations in 120 years. We have two of the best Catholic high schools in the world.

From 1985 to 2010, national Catholic school enrollment in the U.S. is down by a third. In our diocese it is up by the same percentage. [Enrollment in Monroe County Catholic schools is down about 80% over the same period. -ed.]

Reasons for Our Diocesan Increase

There is a book entitled "Who Will Save American Urban Catholic Schools?" One chapter and parts of others are devoted to the Diocese of Wichita Catholic Schools. In the forward it states that Wichita is one of the best examples of how Catholic education should be carried out. Catholic education is the responsibility of all Catholics, not just the parents of those currently enrolled. Our diocesan philosophy of stewardship has enabled our diocesan Catholic schools to continue accomplish their mission.

The Wichita Diocese never forgets—in fact gives first priority to—the religious mission of our Catholic schools. It is their religious mission which motivates the support of parishioners. Their first priority is forming disciples of Jesus Christ. Strong parishes are the center of the entire community. Wichita is the home of one of the strongest Catholic schools systems in the nation. We teach kids that everything we have is a gift from God and we need to give back the best that we can. Seventy percent of our parishes incomes are spent on our schools.

All our teachers function as Catholic ministers and must go through Catholic courses. All our students must pass religious tests as well as their academic subjects. Of our 38 schools, there are 24 which are new or remodeled, which reflects the importance given to education in our parishes.

The challenge is to find ways to serve our poorest students and poorest parishes. The Bishop has established the Drexel Fund and endowment to aid in this effort. This fund now stands at $2 million and the goal is to raise it to $12 million.

We appreciate the leadership that Mr. Voboril has brought to our diocese and we pray that his and all teachers’ efforts, will continue to be blessed and supported through our stewardship way of life.

Other interesting statistics

According to the 2009 Official Catholic Directory the Diocese of Wichita has 115,967 Catholics spread over 91 parishes and, while there are 11 nuns and 38 lay people involved in ministry, each of those parishes administered by a priest. At least one parish (St. Francis of Assisi) reports 85% weekend Mass attendance.

"... we're not growing Catholics in Rochester anymore"

2010-02-04T12:47:00.001-05:00

HTparent is a frequent commenter on Catholic school-related issues, both here and on other local boards.

He/she posted the following in response to 13WHAM.com's story on the merging of Nazareth Academy with Aquinas.

As sad as this is, Nazareth Academy could not survive with such low enrollment ... Aquinas was having it's own problems with enrollment. This is a proactive decision on the part of the administrations of both schools.

More of these announcements will come in the future. Our own Bishop does not believe in Catholic Education, so why would people continue to pay money for it?

The high schools will not be able to survive without a solid feeder system, which the diocese has systematically dismantled over the past decade. None of the people with wallets big enough for Bishop Clark to be bothered listening to have ever stood up to him on this issue.

You reap what you sow, and we're not growing Catholics in Rochester anymore.

Thank Bishop Clark.

I couldn't have said it any better.

Starting your own Catholic schools

2010-02-03T23:48:00.001-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal ...

Down but Not Out in Catholic Suburbia

Inner-city parochial schools are not the only ones struggling.

By WILLIAM MCGURN - Wall St. Journal - February 1, 2010.

Tim Busch has an answer to the epidemic of closing Catholic schools. And it has nothing to do with vouchers.

It couldn't come at a more critical moment. Over the next few days, nearly 2.2 million students and their families will celebrate Catholic Schools Week. Though the Catholic school system remains America's largest alternative to public education, the number of both schools and students is roughly half what they were at their peak in the mid-1960s. According to the National Catholic Education Association, the trend continued last year, with 162 Catholic schools consolidating or closing against only 31 new openings.

Amid the gloom Mr. Busch offers a prescription for revival: End the financial dependence on parish or diocese. Build attractive facilities. And compete for students.

St. Monica's school joins about 1,267 Catholic schools that have closed since 2000 as enrollment nationwide has dropped by 382,125 students, or 14 percent, according to the National Catholic Education Association.

If that sounds like a business formula, it is. Mr. Busch is a good friend I came to know through Legatus, an association of Catholic CEOs. Spend any time around him, and you'll find he believes that America needs Catholic schools more than ever, and that they can compete with the best. To prove it, he's helped start up two privately run Catholic schools—St. Anne elementary school and JSerra high school, both in southern California.

Now, there are plenty of upscale Catholic schools with waiting lists—especially those run by religious orders. But here's a fact that gets little mention: a Catholic education is in danger of becoming a luxury for the middle class. It's hard to be optimistic about the future of Catholic schools in our inner cities if Catholics cannot make a go of these schools in the suburbs, where most Catholics live.

Do the math. In my area of New Jersey, for example, a Catholic high school whose tuition clocks in at $15,000 a year is deemed a bargain. For a family with three or four kids, the total tuition can top $3,000 a month. Young middle-class families struggling with a new mortgage and high property taxes can find themselves squeezed: not wealthy enough to pay, not poor enough for aid.

In Mr. Busch's case, he says he got the idea for starting up St. Anne after he and his wife went looking for a Catholic school for their first child—and were depressed by the dilapidated facilities they found at many schools. Ultimately he and his partners settled on a model where parents take responsibility for operating the school, with the diocese ensuring the teachings are authentically Catholic. It's a division of responsibility much in line with Vatican II, freeing up pastors to be pastors while tapping into the financial, legal, and business abilities of lay people.

In some ways, it's liberating for both. Schools replace lay boards that merely advised a pastor or bishop with lay boards that raise money, build facilities, and actually run the place. The appeal to a bishop is this: We'll help you provide an authentic Catholic education to more children—and it won't cost you a dime.

For those who complain that such schools serve only the rich, Mr. Busch says that financially stable schools have more wherewithal to offer those in need (even without endowments—the next step—St. Anne and JSerra have more than 10% of their students on financial assistance). He further points out that need is by no means limited to money. "Some children have wealth," he says. "But having wealth does not insulate you from problems like divorce, substance abuse, loneliness, a culture saturated in sex, and so on. These kids need the Catholic message as much as everyone."

Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., agrees. "Catholic education is such a value both for Catholics and for society that we want it to be accessible and affordable for all who see its intrinsic value . . . . We are fortunate that many lay people are committed to this cause—and are helping us 'think outside the box' so that Catholic schools will thrive in this new decade and beyond."

Mr. Busch's privately run Catholic schools, of course, are not the only new model showing promise. The 24 Jesuit-based Cristo Rey high schools across the country do a terrific job through an innovative work-study program. The bishop and his flock in Wichita, Kan., embraced a stewardship model that calls upon all parishioners to give 8% of their gross income, which allows the diocese to make all its Catholic schools tuition free. And Catholic universities such as Notre Dame and Boston College are reaching out to help run Catholic elementary and high schools.

"We can't wait for vouchers, and we can't look to the old model of relying on our pastors and bishops to come up with the money and answers," says Mr. Busch. "If we want Catholic schools for our children and our society, we have to adopt new models that let us compete."

Nazareth Academy and Aquinas to merge

2010-02-03T14:57:00.003-05:00

Talk about a bolt from the blue! I don't know of anyone who had a clue this was in the works.
From 13WHAM.com ...

Rochester, N.Y. - Nazareth Academy and Aquinas Institute have announced they will merge. They're calling it a partnership.

The new partners announced Wednesday that they will call their school system Aquinas Institute and Nazareth Schools.

Beginning in September, Pre K-6th Grade will be held at Nazareth, and grades 7-12 will be located at Aquinas. Some parents are unhappy that their children will have to move yet again.

Watch for more on this story and get reaction from local parents on 13WHAM News at 5 and 6 p.m. and at 13WHAM.com

From the Nazareth Scools website ...

Opening a new chapter for Catholic Education in Rochester:

The Nazareth Schools and Aquinas Institute are partnering to create a co-educational Catholic school system that seamlessly serves grades Pre-K through 12. The new school system will be called Aquinas Institute and Nazareth Schools. Beginning in September 2010, Pre-K through grade 6 will be located at the Nazareth Academy campus on Lake Avenue. Grades 7 through 12 will be welcomed at the Aquinas Institute campus on Dewey Avenue.
The Nazareth Schools will continue providing its well-respected elementary school program, including a highly recognized Pre-K and wrap-around school care. The Nazareth Academy program at Aquinas will continue a strong commitment to women’s leadership and development. This commitment will be overseen by a position created and staffed by the Sisters of Saint Joseph.
Both schools bring several shared values to the new school system including a religious grounding in the Roman Catholic faith tradition as taught and supported by the Congregation of Saint Basil and the Sisters of Saint Joseph. As private Catholic schools, The Aquinas Institute and The Nazareth Schools, this partnership is an historic juncture.

H/T: a loyal reader

UPDATE: Not too surprisingly, finances seemed to have played a major role.

From a Naz student's post on the Save NAZ ACADEMY from extinction! page on Facebook ...

"Apparently, Nazareth is in millions of dollars of debt and they have been trying to keep it going, but the diocese hasn't really backed anything. "The diocese is literally running out of the inner city" That's why my religion teacher told me. She is a SSJ nun and she was crying.

A memory from the '80s

2010-02-02T21:54:00.000-05:00

1985, to be precise - the year that Nunsense began its off-Broadway run of 3,672 performances.

Sister Robert Ann's childhood recollection, Growing Up Catholic, from early in Act II is still relevant today ...

At Saint Clare's School, religion class
Began with Mass each day.
It was said in Latin then.
That's how I learned to pray.
The nuns appeared in black and white.
And so did every rule.
Things were either wrong and right
At Saint Clare's Catholic School.
But then the rules began to change
And many lost their way.
What was always black and white
Was turning shades of gray.
Though Mass is said in English now,
To make us more aware,
Confusion seems to reign supreme.
Like God, it's everywhere.
The Church is quite progressive now
Though people ridicule,
The fact that so many things are optional,
It's hard to find a rule.
Through it all I've often said
Those ancient Latin prayers
That I first learned when growing up --
Catholic -- at Saint Claire's

Christine Anderson's 1998 rendition of Growing Up Catholic has also been posted to YouTube ...

Anger (and fear?) at St. Thomas

2010-02-01T11:50:00.001-05:00

Another article on the IPPG's recommendation to close both St. Salome and St. Thomas the Apostle parishes appears in today's D&C. There's no new factual information that I could spot, but there is an account of an interview with some St. Thomas parishioners by reporter Gary Craig.

The Diocese of Rochester is feeling the same strains as other dioceses across the country: shrinking enrollment and fewer men entering the priesthood. The strain is exacerbated by a schism within the church: Some think the church remains too adherent to tradition, such as the refusal to allow women as priests, while others see a church slipping from its traditional and historical moorings.

After Sunday's early afternoon Mass, a small group of parishioners remained at St. Thomas, upset with the decision.

"I'm angry," one parishioner said, refusing to give his name.

"I'm angry with the bishop."

He maintained that St. Thomas has long had a more traditionalist stance — an approach he said sometimes runs counter to the sentiments of the bishop. Several men and women surrounding him agreed, but none wanted their names used in public criticism of the closure recommendation.

Schism, at least in its formal sense, is much too strong a word here, although Craig is certainly correct in his assertion that there is a something of a rift between progressive and traditionalist (for want of better terms) Catholics in DOR.

That said, it is interesting to note the fear evidenced by the parishioners with whom Craig spoke. It would seem that Fr. Norm Tanck's efforts at belittling and demeaning the traditionalist Catholics at St. Thomas (see here) are having their desired effect.

Whither the altar rail?

2010-01-31T12:42:00.002-05:00

CatholicCourier.com posted a story today on the recommendation to close both St. Salome and St. Thomas the Apostle churches in Irondequoit.

I didn't spot any new factual information but the article did end with an intriguing sentence.

Unique traits of all five parishes would be incorporated into the new parish, planners pledged.

I wonder which of the surviving churches will now get an altar rail.

DOR's Available Priest Projections

2010-01-29T18:27:00.000-05:00

In September of 2003 Bill Pickett, then DOR's Director of Pastoral Planning, gave a presentation to a group consisting of the members of the Eastern Greece/Charlotte PPNM Steering Committee, along with the parish councils and pastoral staffs of the six parishes involved. The occasion was the kick-off of Phase 2 of the PPNM process for the EG/C Planning Group.

Part of Dr. Pickett's presentation was a 5-page handout containing what appeared to be screencaps from a 28 slide Power Point presentation. Some of these slides presented DOR's then-current projections out to as far as 2025 for such items as the number of priests and the number and type of parishes.

Packrat that I am, my copy of that handout is still in my files. As so, without further ado, here is the data Dr. Pickett presented 6+ years ago.

Priest Projections

Of particular interest is the following chart from Page 2:

Pay particular attention to the projected number of priests in 2015. I make it out to be about 90 and I have to wonder, despite DOR's protestations to the contrary, whether this is the real driving force behind at least some of the more recent parish closures, as well as some of those now in the works.

This "vast wasteland"

2010-01-21T15:06:00.001-05:00

Fr. Z. has noted that some people suspect that preference for the TLM over against the Novus Ordo might be largely a function of age. He therefore asked

would some of you younger folks take some time to write your thoughts about the new Mass/old Mass question?

I also invite seasoned Catholics to do the same.

Let’s see some responses.

Some of his responses were published yesterday. The second one came from a lady with experience with the liturgy as celebrated in DOR. It reads, in part,

I am 39 years old ... I went to Catholic school and the parish associated with my school was very orthodox and traditional (in the 1970s-80s everyone still received communion knelling at the Communion rail (mostly on the tongue but you had the choice)), parts of the Mass were retained in Latin, chant, etc. ...

I really had no idea how unusual the parish was or graced I was that I attended it until I left home for college in 1988 and saw the vast wasteland that’s left in upstate NY (Bishop Matthew Clark’s diocese).

I went to the “Catholic” Mass offered by the Catholic campus ministry. I truly did not recognize it as a Catholic Mass. I called my husband (who was then my boyfriend) and told him that I must have gone to a protestant service by mistake. Besides the hideous music, the liturgical dance, the clown vestments and everything about the “worship space”, they had written their own Eucharistic Prayers that had phrases like “save us from the bondage of capitalism.” My time in upstate NY was like being lost in the wilderness (I did not own a car so was forced to endure what I had access to). I stuck it out and went to Mass every week with gritted teeth.

It's still a wasteland, only just not quite as vast as it was 20-some years ago, as more and more Catholics simply quit attending Mass.

St. Joseph School to revert to being parish run

2010-01-20T21:50:00.003-05:00

CatholicCourier.com is reporting that St. Joseph School in Penfield will revert to parish school status at the end of the current school year. Discussions are also underway, according to the diocese, that may lead to a similar change at St. Louis in Pittsford and St. Rita in Webster. Similar talks are also going on with St. Lawrence in Greece, according to a report last week by Channel 10 News.

Tuition to rise at St. Joseph School

St. Joseph Parish will raise tuition by about 10% to $3,300 for the 2010-11 school year. Tuition has been set by the diocese at $2,950 for the last two years. The diocese has yet to say anything about its tuition plans for next year.

MCCS 2009-10 enrollment down

DOR spokesman Doug Mandelaro is quoted as saying that there had been "an 8-percent enrollment drop at the remaining schools this past year." The 2008-09 MCCS enrollment has been reported at 3,700 students. With St. Joseph's enrolment at just over 400, an 8% drop at the remaining schools translates into a loss of of about 265 students, or a 2009-10 enrollment level of about 3,435 students.
Two years ago the diocese indicated that it needed over 4,000 students to break even, given its tuition rate of $2,950. It would therefore appear that the MCCS budget is now under considerable strain.

The demographic shift - again

Mandelaro attributed the drop in enrollment to both the economic downturn and "changes in demographics." It must be noted that for the last two years the diocese has been citing a demographic shift as a cause of various ills ranging from declining Mass attendance to declining MCCS enrollment, but that it has yet to publish the data upon which it bases that claim.

No closed school will be allowed to reopen

Mandelaro confirmed an earlier report that the diocese will not allow any of the 13 schools closed by Bishop Clark in 2008 to reopen as parish schools.

"None of the closed schools are being reopened," he said, noting that one reason Bishop Clark approved the task force's recommendation on school closings was concern that if some or all of the schools slated for closure had been allowed to remain open, they might have drawn students away from the county's other 11 schools, thereby destabilizing the entire school system.
That concern persists.

A parish school: A "wonderful opportunity ... for the growth of our parish"

The story quotes St. Joseph pastor Fr. Jim Schwartz on the relationship between a parish and its school ...

"From a parish perspective, faith formation is a major parish priority as it is expressed in Catholic school," Father Schwartz said. "We see this as a rich and wonderful opportunity to provide faith formation for the growth of our parish."
Father Schwartz said he is optimistic that local control over the school will encourage parishioners to feel more connected to it, allowing the school to continue providing a high-quality education ...

"The viability and the future of the school has just taken a giant step forward," Father Schwartz remarked.

All of which leads one to wonder just what Fr. Schwartz' assessment of "the viability and the future of the school" would have been, had it remained under MCCS control.

Why does it always seem to be about the money?

While DOR does not release the weekend collection figures of its parishes, it does publish their CMA assessments. And, since a parish's CMA assessment is based largely on the size of its average weekly collection, these assessments can give us a good picture of our parishes' relative incomes.
With this in mind it is interesting to note that the four parishes that have or may regain control over their schools are among the nine in all of DOR with the highest CMA assessments. Indeed, only one other parish (Peace of Christ) in this top nine has a Catholic school on its property.
So it looks like just about the only parishes to be considered for, in Fr. Schwartz' words, "wonderful opportunit[ies] ... for the growth of our parish" are those who are already doing pretty well for themselves.
I guess the rest of us will just have to fend for ourselves.

UPDATE: 13WHAM.com is reporting that the reversion of St. Lawrence School in Greece to parish control is now a done deal. The change-over will take effect at the end of the current school year.

UPDATE: WHEC.com also has a report on this story. At least one St. Joseph parent is quite happy with the new arrangement ...

Since Bishop Mathew Clark closed 13 Catholic schools in 2008, there has been some lingering resentment and skepticism. Parents worried which schools might be next? But parents who spoke today say they like this move.

"It is a good thing. It's actually a very positive thing. It's a relief," said parent Christine Sebastian. Instead of sending her son's tuition money to the Diocese, it will now go directly to the St. Joseph's parish school. "I mean, for years we've worried every timed the tuition list comes out, which schools are going to close. And honestly, the anxiety, the fear is now gone. We can raise money for areas that we wanted to spend money in. And now we can do that."

A blast from the past

2010-01-18T13:10:00.001-05:00

The Big Bopper, Poodle skirts, a Hula Hoop contest, the Stroll and lots of food - all part of last Friday night's Sock Hop at Holy Cross ...

The full slideshow ...

DOR clarifies its plan

2010-01-16T16:39:00.001-05:00

While the diocese is discussing (some say compelling) the reversion of 4 of its 11 Monroe County Catholic schools to parish school status, it has made it clear that it will not allow any of the 13 schools closed by Bishop Clark in June 2008 to reopen.

YNN Rochester is reporting that

The diocese clarified its plan with a follow-up statement:

"Monroe County Catholic School officials have no plans to reopen any of the 13 schools that were closed as part of the restructuring in 2008. The current study exploring reversion of our existing schools to a parish-run model currently involves several, but not all, existing sites."

Father John Riccardo

2010-01-15T01:21:00.005-05:00

About a week ago I "discovered" Father John Riccardo of the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Resembling in some ways Father John Corapi and in others Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Father Riccardo is a highly orthodox, thoroughly lucid and remarkably humble expositor of the faith.

See for yourself ...

Dozens of Father Riccardo's homilies and longer talks can be found here.

I found myself particularly impressed with his series of talks entitled Catholicism for Cradle Catholics, especially number 7 on the Eucharist.

Also, his Faith Under Attack is a must listen for anyone with children - or grandchildren - about to head off to college.

UPDATE: Most of the talks on Father Riccardo's site are in audio format but there are a few videos. One of these, Confession: A Fireside Chat with the Lord, is well worth the 30 minutes it takes to watch it.

Rosary and Benediction for vocations

2010-01-14T15:55:00.001-05:00

The Knights of Columbus Council 11411 are sponsoring a Rosary and Benediction for vocations. The service will be held at 7:00 PM, Tuesday, February 2 at St. Margaret Mary Church in Irondequoit.

H/T: Gen at Cleansing Fire

4 MCCS schools to be semi-independent

2010-01-13T22:53:00.001-05:00

Nikki Rudd at News 10NBC is reporting that St. Lawrence School in Greece and three east side schools may soon become parish schools once again.

Well, sort of.

While it will retain control over curriculum and staff hiring and firing matters, the diocese will turn over the financial end of the operation to the schools and their parishes.

The most obvious effect of this arrangement will be a substantial savings to the MCCS' strained budget, as it will no longer be paying these parishes hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent their buildings. How the parishes would deal with this loss of income is unclear at present.

The effects on other financial issues, such as the financial aid currently provided by the diocese, are also unclear.

While the identities of the three east side schools were not mentioned by Rudd, Dr. K. over at Cleansing Fire reports they are St. Rita (Webster), St. Louis (Pittsford) and St. Joseph (Penfield).

The change-over apparently will not be immediate. At the end of her on-air piece Rudd says, "The superintendent tells me it will be a seamless transition and she says it might not happen for another year or two."

Part of the original Task Force recommendation

Since DOR's education task force made its report to the bishop two years ago the details of its recommendations have been a closely guarded secret. Now one of those secrets has been made public.

Rudd reports,

It was also a recommendation by the task force to have parishes run their own schools instead of the Diocese. This is how Catholic schools were run for more than 100 years.

This confirms something many of us have suspected for some time. While the bishop would have us believe that he had no choice but to close 13 Catholic schools two years ago, we now know that his own task force thought there were other viable options - options which included allowing parishes to run their own schools.

MCCS: A record of failure

It appears that the bishop thought his own MCCS people were still the best choice for running our Catholic schools, in spite of their abysmal track record.

For instance, DOR assumed control of all Monroe County Catholic schools at the beginning of the 1988-89 school year. At that time it had a system of 39 schools and was serving some 16,000 students. Today, a mere 21 years later, the MCCS System has shrunk to 11 schools educating maybe 3,500 children (2009-10 registration data has yet to be released).

Furthermore, in the 10 years ending with the 2007-08 academic year DOR lost 39.4% of its Catholic school students, the second worst showing among the 37 dioceses with comparable (+/- 25%) 1997-98 enrollments. (Data here.)

If this isn't a record of failure I don't know what one looks like.

DOR "has failed the people"

2009-12-25T23:56:00.004-05:00

A friend from Our Lady of Mercy Parish has an LTE running in today's D&C ...

Leadership caused Catholic downturn
We keep reading story after story about possible Catholic Church closings, declining attendance and the priest shortage. Earlier this year, a committee was formed in the eastern Greece-Charlotte area to decide what parish was no longer "viable." The committee concluded that Our Lady of Mercy, with the lowest attendance and lack of money, should be the first to close. The other churches in the area face the same problems and will be reviewed on a yearly basis.
When will we read a story about how the diocese has failed the people? They approved over a million dollars to build a brand-new Our Lady of Mercy in 2001, now the church is closing? How is that being responsible? The diocese has known for years about the low number of priests being ordained. How many have we lost to sex abuse? If the priesthood had been willing to give up some power, perhaps we would be in better shape today.
The schools thrived when the nuns ran them.
—TIM TARTAGLIA
ROCHESTER

I'm afraid I have to disagree with my friend Tim. While I do believe that DOR has failed its people, that failure involves something far more fundamental than a possibly ill-advised approval of a Church renovation project.

When those renovations of which Tim writes were approved in the late 1990s, weekend Mass attendance at OLM was averaging almost 800. Within 10 years it had fallen to 275. The loss of over 500 parishioners - and the money those people used to put in the collection basket - is the primary cause of OLM's problems.

The real question here is why did roughly 2/3 of its parishioners abandon OLM in just 10 years? Where did they go and why? Have they, for example, transferred to one of the surrounding Catholic parishes? Or did they perhaps join one of the nearby Protestant churches? Or maybe they just gave up on "organized religion" and decided to sleep in on Sunday morning?

It is difficult to give a precise answer to these questions, but it is possible to glimpse the outline of a solution. For example, an analysis of the Eastern Greece/Charlotte Planning Group's Mass attendance numbers indicate that very few of OLM's former members have gone to nearby parishes. This data, coupled with the growth of nearby Protestant congregations and some purely anecdotal evidence suggest that many of these people are now former Catholics.

What this all ultimately points to is a massive failure of catechesis on the part of Bishop Clark and many of his pastors. People who truly believe in the Real Presence, people who truly believe that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life, simply do not leave the Church for a Protestant denomination. And they simply do not decide to sleep in on Sunday.

That is how DOR "has failed the people."

Update: Some further examples of DOR's catechetical failures can be seen in the following statistics gleaned from various editions of the Official Catholic Directory:

From 1977 through 1994 DOR was baptizing about 19 infants per year per 1,000 Catholics. That number has now fallen to a shade over 10.
20 years ago 14.8 Catholics out of every 1,000 were getting married in various DOR parishes every year. That number is now 6.6.
20 years ago 207 out of every 1,000 DOR Catholics were either in Catholic schools or religious ed programs. Today that number is 104.

Taken together, these data portend a bleak future for Catholicism in DOR.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T09:17:00.000-05:00

Here's wishing everyone a very Merry - and Holy - Christmas!

St. Bernard's posts operating loss

2009-12-21T00:41:00.001-05:00

A summary version of SBSTM's annual financial report is now online. Covering the fiscal year beginning June 1, 2008 and ending May 31, 2009, the report shows what appears to be an operating loss of nearly $839,000.

Clouding the issue somewhat is the inclusion of a $694,427 loss attributed to "Investment income" and charged against Revenues. Gains and/or losses from the sale of investments (stocks, bonds, etc.) are normally charged against a "Capital Account." They are not normally considered operating revenue/expense items.

Even with this item removed from the report, however, SBSTM still seems to have had an operating loss of just over $144,000 for its last fiscal year.

The Preaching Institute

2009-12-16T01:05:00.002-05:00

While visiting the St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry site I happened across the following (my emphasis).

The Preaching Institute was formed to meet the ongoing needs of the authorized preachers, both lay and ordained, within the Diocese of Rochester. Providing focused opportunities for personal enrichment, theological education, and liturgical engagement, the Preaching Institute sponsors workshops at St. Bernard’s throughout the year designed to help lay and ordained ministers of the Gospel enhance their preaching skills. Grant support from the Sisters of St. Joseph allowed the Institute to develop an ongoing assessment tool utilized by preachers for on-site feedback from specific homilies. Working with the Director of the Assessment Project preachers have one-on-one opportunities for personal growth and enrichment.

The Preaching Institute, spearheaded by an advisory committee, works in collaboration with the Diocese as well as St. Bernard’s Office of Continuing Education. Members on the Advisory Board represent a cross section of the Roman Catholic community, including pastors, educators and pastoral administrators. As a resource for the local Church, the Preaching Institute is an integral component of St. Bernard’s focus on the continuing formation for those in ministry in today’s Church.

The SBSTM Preaching Institute seems to have been founded about 2 years ago (see here).

Fr. Frank Fusare to concelebrate with Bishop Clark?

2009-12-13T11:20:00.001-05:00

At last night's 7:00 pm Mass Holy Cross Parish formally sent 31 candidates to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation at Sacred Heart Cathedral Monday evening.

Among these young men and women was one whose sponsor was listed as Fr. Frank Fusare. According to a Holy Cross staffer, at last report it was still uncertain as to whether Fr. Fusare's schedule would allow him to be in Rochester Monday.

It was also unknown whether Fr. Fusare would be concelebrating, should he be able to attend.

"I want real theology"

2009-12-11T10:57:00.001-05:00

Amy, who describes herself as "a 20-something, married, mother-of-two grad student," has weighed in on the subject of women's ordination.

As this continues to be an unrealized dream for many here in DOR - as exemplified not least by the fact that we have members of the Women's Ordination Conference leading two of our parishes - I expect that Amy's comments might be of interest locally.

From Modern Commentaries ...

I oppose women’s ordination. Yeah, I know that makes me a horrible oppressor or some drooling brainwashed ignoramus, but I really don’t care. If you want women priests and bishops, become an Episcopalian. Just don’t pretend to be martyrs kept down by the Catholic patriarchy because you can’t be ordained. Here’s my two-part question:

Theologically, what is the basis for women’s ordination within the teachings of the Catholic Church? And what are the fruits and graces of women’s ordination that will order Catholics toward salvation through Christ?

I don’t want to hear about equality or fairness or feelings or giving women power and a voice within the Church. Those are not theological arguments. They are politics, personal and public, masquerading as something slightly resembling theology. I want real theology, based in a contextual reading of Scripture and in Tradition. Pick up the Bible, the Catechism, and prove your argument.

Amy's analysis of the agenda underlying the women's ordination movement aligns quite closely with that of Boston College's Professor Peter Kreeft ...

I find that the push for women’s ordination is only a Trojan horse through which theologically liberal types hope to dismantle Catholic teaching on abortion, contraception, marriage and homosexuality. In other words, it takes Catholicism and removes the last shred of Catholicity – turning us into every other unremarkable denomination out there. Ordaining women takes away the correct belief that our teachings come from God and cannot be altered for the sake of the politically correct cause du jour, and bolsters the notion that the priests, bishops, and Pope make up this theology as they go along.

Read the complete post here.

With tongue firmly planted in cheek ...

2009-12-02T09:22:00.001-05:00

From Damian Thompson at Telegraph.co.uk ...

Happy 40th birthday, Novus Ordo!

It is 40 years ago today since the New Mass of Paul VI was introduced into our parishes, writes Margery Popinstar, editor of The Capsule. We knew at the time that this liturgy was as close to perfection as humanly possible, but little did we guess what an efflorescence of art, architecture, music and worship lay ahead!

There were fears at first that the vernacular service would damage the solemnity of the Mass. How silly! Far from leading to liturgical abuses, the New Mass nurtured a koinonia that revived Catholic culture and packed our reordered churches to the rafters.

So dramatic was the growth in family Mass observance, indeed, that a new school of Catholic architecture arose to provide places of worship for these new congregations. Throughout the Western world, churches sprang up that combined Christian heritage with the thrilling simplicity of the modern school, creating a sense of the numinous that has proved as irresistible to secular visitors as to the faithful.

Read the rest here.

Advent concert coming to Auburn, Webster

2009-11-30T13:59:00.003-05:00

This holiday season, Musica Transatlantica - one of Rochester's premier Early Music vocal ensembles - will present Ave Maria: A Concert of Advent Motets Sunday afternoon, December 13 in Auburn NY, and again on Friday evening, December 18 in Webster, NY.

Unlike typical holiday concerts that present Christmas throughout December (or even into November), Ave Maria focuses on the season of Advent, the liturgical season that anticipates this holiday. The texts chosen for this concert speak of Mary, the angel Gabriel, and the upcoming virgin birth; and have been set to beautiful music by renaissance masters.

These concerts present a unique opportunity for residents of Auburn and the Greater Rochester area to prepare for the upcoming holiday.

Buffalo diocese joins schools fundraising effort

2009-11-29T13:14:00.001-05:00

Kelly at Catholic Ponderings has an item up detailing the Diocese of Buffalo's participation in the Catholic Alumni Partnership (CAP),

a new, privately funded effort in support of Catholic elementary schools. A pioneering undertaking, CAP aims to implement strong, sustainable annual fundraising programs for each of the Catholic elementary schools participating in CAP, with alumni support as its foundation.

The CAP website indicates that there are seven arch/dioceses currently participating in this effort, along with 303 of their Catholic schools.

The NY State participants include the Archdiocese of New York and the dioceses on Buffalo, Brooklyn and Rockville Centre.

Conspicuous by its absence is DOR.

Parish tax to fund inner city ministries?

2009-11-29T12:35:00.001-05:00

"Urban ministry in the City of Rochester must be a priority for the entire diocese." Thus begins an article posted last Tuesday on CatholicCourier.com.

It seems that Bishop Clark has appointed another of his committees, this one charged with determining "how best to use the diocese’s limited resources to meet the needs of Rochester's parishes and neighborhoods," and that group has now come back with its recommendations.

One of those recommendations was the hiring of additional staff. That has been implemented with the appointment of Sister of Mercy Janet Korn as urban-ministry coordinator and Thomas Kubus, chairman of Peace of Christ Parish’s finance committee, as diocesan finance coordinator focused on working with urban parishes.

According to the article, the group’s other recommendations are:

Establish a parish advisory council, to be appointed by the bishop, to offer financial support and oversight to some urban campuses, do strategic planning and seek out real-estate expertise.
Development of a multistage urban summit to focus on the ministerial needs of city residents and include participation of community agencies and other churches. Meeting the needs of urban parishioners "is not just a problem for the Catholic Church," Grizard said.
Explore other models of ministry, such as the House of Mercy that serves the homeless, and provide education and support to parishioners who want to be engaged in ministry.
Enhance the relationships between urban and suburban parishes. "What’s occurring in the city is not an issue to be addressed only by people working within the city," Grizard explained. "These are our issues, our challenges. We can’t continue to be church in the suburbs if we ignore the urban churches."
Study potential areas of further parish or ministry consolidation.
Generate funding through new assessments on parishes throughout the diocese's 12 counties, based on their level of income. The assessments would be levied on parishes with assets greater than $200,000 or collections totaling more than $200,000.

With respect to that last point I suspect that "assets greater than $200,000" means liquid assets; otherwise, every parish in the diocese would qualify for this new tax.

My take on this: It's too bad that the bishop doesn't consider the proper formation of the next generation of Catholics (i.e., Catholic schools) to be important enough for a similar diocesan-wide assessment.

"10 Reasons" from Fr. Dwight

2009-11-27T15:26:00.001-05:00

Fr. Dwight Longenecker over at Standing on my Head has taken a close look at modernist Christianity and concluded that its long term prospects are poor.

He offers 10 reasons for his opinion (see here), but I would like to focus on just two of them.

Reason #1:

Modernists deny supernaturalism and therefore they are not really religious. Now by 'religion' I mean a transaction with the supernatural. Religion (whether it is primitive people jumping around a campfire or a Solemn High Mass in a Catholic Cathedral) is about an interchange with the other world. It is about salvation of souls, redemption of sin, heaven, hell damnation, the afterlife, angels and demons and all that stuff.

Modernists don't deal in all that. For them religion is a matter of fighting for equal rights, making the world a better place, being kind to everyone and 'spirituality'. It doesn't take very long for people to realize that you don't have to go to church for all that. So people stop going, and that eventually means the death of modernist Christianity. The first generation of modernist Christians will attend church regularly. The second will attend church sometimes. The third almost never. The fourth and fifth will not see any need for worship. They will conclude that if religion is no more than good works, then the religious ritual is redundant.

Reason #6:

Modernism makes no great demands for its devotees to be religious. Ask any modernist, "Why should I come to Church?" What would he answer? "You don't have to come to church. It's there if you want it. If it does you good, and makes you feel better, we're here to serve you." Modernist Catholic priests wring their hands and wonder why no one comes to Mass anymore. It's because for forty years they've been saying, "It's not really a mortal sin to miss Mass. You should come because you love God, not because you fear him." While this sentiment may be laudable, they shouldn't therefore be surprised if no one comes to Mass.

While the remainder of Fr. Dwight's reasons are all sound, these two seem particularly relevant to the situation here in DOR. In fact, they go a long way toward explaining how we have arrived at our present state.

About 4 years ago I made a presentation to my local PPNM Steering Committee. At that time I had 6 years' worth of diocesan Mass attendance numbers along with 8 years' worth of our planning group's Mass attendance numbers at my disposal and I was very concerned with the sharp downward trend shown by both data sets.

I turned that data into graphs and projected them onto the wall for the 20 or so people present to see. The ensuing discussion quickly focused on reasons why people no longer attend Mass. Toward the end of the discussion I offered my opinion that most folks don't believe it's a sin to miss Mass without a good reason and that they feel that way because no one has told them any different. Furthermore, I added, we seem to have stopped preaching about sin all together.

You would think I had 2 heads, the way those people just stared at me.

They were polite

2009-11-24T16:21:00.003-05:00

CatholicCourier.com has just published a story relating to DOR's participation in the November 19-21 National Catholic Youth Conference. This year's event was held in Kansas City, MO and drew in excess of 20,000 participants. According to the story DOR "sent 632 conventioneers -- two-thirds young people, and the rest adult chaperones and officials including Bishop Matthew H. Clark."

Four of those young people were Holy Cross parishioners and, on their way to the conference, they and their chaperones were waiting for their connecting flight at one of the Chicago airports.

The group was somewhat surprised when they were joined by Bishop Clark, who had been attending the Baltimore USCCB meeting and was also en route to the conference.

At least one of the Holy Cross kids was wearing her school shirt.

I am told that our kids were polite.

"Any parish can do what we're doing here"

2009-11-21T22:02:00.005-05:00

21 years ago Father Frank Phillips, C.R. took over as pastor of St. John Cantius Parish in urban Chicago. The parish, while debt-free, was down to about 200 parishioners and the 95-year old church building was showing the effects of decades of deferred maintenance. "A pandora's box full of extensive building maintenance issues," according to one observer.

Today, St. John Cantius is a vibrant community of over 3,000 parishioners, some of whom drive as much as two hours each week to attend Sunday Mass. 350 to 400 confessions are heard every Sunday and Mass is offered in both the Novus Ordo and Extraordinary forms. The parish has also been the seedbed for many vocations and has become the home of a new religious community.

What is Father Phillips secret? Quite simply, it lies in restoring the sacred, whether that be the liturgy, the music, the vesture or the art.

A 30 minute video chronicling the restoration of St. John Cantius Parish is embedded below. Also, one may order his own copy of the video in exchange for a $15.00 Paypal donation by going here. (When I made my donation I was actually sent two copies and asked to give the second one away.)

On Assignment Episode 1 - Saint John Cantius: Restoring the Sacred from StoryTel Foundation on Vimeo.

Conspicuous by our absence

2009-11-18T18:11:00.001-05:00

I just received the following email from CatholicsComeHome.org.

One would think that DOR, with the loss of over 25% of our weekend Mass attendees in just the last 8 years, would surly be among the dioceses availing themselves of this proven outreach.

We must have other priorities.

Dear Michael,

We Need Your Prayers!

In a few short weeks, Catholics Come Home TV commercials will begin airing in the following partner dioceses and archdioceses in English, Spanish, hearing-impaired, and even Polish:

Archdiocese of Chicago
Diocese of Rockford
Diocese of Joliet
Archdiocese of Omaha
Diocese of Lincoln
Diocese of Colorado Springs
Diocese of Sacramento
Diocese of Providence

Our CCH team will be praying a novena of the Divine Mercy Chaplet for these diocesan partner campaigns from Wednesday, 11/18 - Thanksgiving day, Thursday, 11/26.

We cannot think of a better way to show our thankfulness for this mission to reach souls in need than to pray for God's Mercy upon all who will be touched through these CatholicsComeHome.org diocesan outreach campaigns.

The bishop and the cafeteria Catholic

2009-11-10T22:16:00.001-05:00

Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island recently claimed that his dissent from the Magisterium on certain issues "does not make me any less of a Catholic."

His bishop disagrees.

From the Rhode Island Catholic ...

WITHOUT A DOUBT

Dear Congressman Kennedy

BY BISHOP THOMAS J. TOBIN

11/12/09

Dear Congressman Kennedy:

Since our recent correspondence has been rather public, I hope you don’t mind if I share a few reflections about your practice of the faith in this public forum. I usually wouldn’t do that – that is speak about someone’s faith in a public setting – but in our well-documented exchange of letters about health care and abortion, it has emerged as an issue. I also share these words publicly with the thought that they might be instructive to other Catholics, including those in prominent positions of leadership.

For the moment I’d like to set aside the discussion of health care reform, as important and relevant as it is, and focus on one statement contained in your letter of October 29, 2009, in which you write, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” That sentence certainly caught my attention and deserves a public response, lest it go unchallenged and lead others to believe it’s true. And it raises an important question: What does it mean to be a Catholic?

“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church. This principle is based on the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of the Church and is made more explicit in recent documents.

For example, the “Code of Canon Law” says, “Lay persons are bound by an obligation and possess the right to acquire a knowledge of Christian doctrine adapted to their capacity and condition so that they can live in accord with that doctrine.” (Canon 229, #1)

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” says this: “Mindful of Christ’s words to his apostles, ‘He who hears you, hears me,’ the faithful receive with docility the teaching and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.” (#87)

Or consider this statement of the Church: “It would be a mistake to confuse the proper autonomy exercised by Catholics in political life with the claim of a principle that prescinds from the moral and social teaching of the Church.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2002)

There’s lots of canonical and theological verbiage there, Congressman, but what it means is that if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, makes you “less of a Catholic.”

But let’s get down to a more practical question; let’s approach it this way: What does it mean, really, to be a Catholic? After all, being a Catholic has to mean something, right?

Well, in simple terms – and here I refer only to those more visible, structural elements of Church membership – being a Catholic means that you’re part of a faith community that possesses a clearly defined authority and doctrine, obligations and expectations. It means that you believe and accept the teachings of the Church, especially on essential matters of faith and morals; that you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish; that you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly; that you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially.

Congressman, I’m not sure whether or not you fulfill the basic requirements of being a Catholic, so let me ask: Do you accept the teachings of the Church on essential matters of faith and morals, including our stance on abortion? Do you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish? Do you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly? Do you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially?

In your letter you say that you “embrace your faith.” Terrific. But if you don’t fulfill the basic requirements of membership, what is it exactly that makes you a Catholic? Your baptism as an infant? Your family ties? Your cultural heritage?

Your letter also says that your faith “acknowledges the existence of an imperfect humanity.” Absolutely true. But in confronting your rejection of the Church’s teaching, we’re not dealing just with “an imperfect humanity” – as we do when we wrestle with sins such as anger, pride, greed, impurity or dishonesty. We all struggle with those things, and often fail.

Your rejection of the Church’s teaching on abortion falls into a different category – it’s a deliberate and obstinate act of the will; a conscious decision that you’ve re-affirmed on many occasions. Sorry, you can’t chalk it up to an “imperfect humanity.” Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the Church.

Congressman Kennedy, I write these words not to embarrass you or to judge the state of your conscience or soul. That’s ultimately between you and God. But your description of your relationship with the Church is now a matter of public record, and it needs to be challenged. I invite you, as your bishop and brother in Christ, to enter into a sincere process of discernment, conversion and repentance. It’s not too late for you to repair your relationship with the Church, redeem your public image, and emerge as an authentic “profile in courage,” especially by defending the sanctity of human life for all people, including unborn children. And if I can ever be of assistance as you travel the road of faith, I would be honored and happy to do so.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas J. Tobin

Bishop of Providence

Three "musts" for a bishop

2009-11-07T11:31:00.003-05:00

Britain's Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor was recently interviewed by Andrew M. Brown of the Telegraph.

The following exchange caught my eye.

[What is important in a bishop?]

There are clear things that he must have. He must be thoroughly orthodox and therefore well able to express the teaching of the church. He has to have a pastoral mind and heart, so that he gets on with people, his priests and people. He’s a shepherd. And then I think he should have good communication skills. That’s quite important these days.

I think they key things are his orthodoxy, his fidelity to the teachings of the church, his prayer life, spirituality is crucial – you can’t preach what you don’t believe.

So, according to His Eminence, a bishop must

Be thoroughly orthodox,
Have a pastoral mind and heart, and
Have good communication skills.

Let us pray that DOR gets such a shepherd in 2012.

The Five M's

2009-11-05T13:12:00.001-05:00

John J. DiIulio, Jr. is a Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society, and Professor of Political Science, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor DiIulio has just published an article in the online version of America Magazine in which he presents his take on what it will take to stabilize and even grow Catholic elementary and secondary education, especially in urban areas. Although focused largely on Philadelphia, DiLiulio's ideas also have wider application.

The decades-old “crisis” is neither demographic destiny nor divine will. Catholic schools in Philadelphia and other cities can be saved, made solvent and strengthened managerially, and some long-closed schools might even be reopened. The five M’s for reviving Catholic schools are: mission, market, money, millennial and miracle.

Mission. In his address at Catholic University on April 17, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI called Catholic schools “an apostolate of hope” that must be “accessible to people of all social and economic strata.” The pope called for a renewed “commitment to schools, especially those in poorer areas.” For the mission to be sacred, the local children whose minds are fed by Catholic schools need not be Catholic any more than the overseas children whose bodies are fed by Catholic missionaries need be Catholic.

Market. Based on estimates I derive from data on a private scholarship program for low-income children, the latent demand for Catholic schooling in Philadelphia is huge. If partial tuition relief were available, some 50,000 more local parents would send their children to Catholic schools. Estimates of untapped markets in other cities are similar, and that is without even adding the large latent demand for Catholic schooling among Latino immigrant families.

Money. Government vouchers are politically improbable, but there is private money aplenty for Catholic schools. Since 1965, many Catholic colleges and universities have soared (bigger endowments, better buildings) just blocks from where many Catholic grade schools have sunk. The Catholic higher education sector needs to “adopt” and raise funds for Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Wealthy and well-positioned Catholics need to make the schools a philanthropic priority, and the bishops need to start looking to wealthy non-Catholics like those who support independent Catholic schools.

Millennial. Look to the Catholic quarter of the college-age cohort born in 1982 or later. Through programs like the amazing Alliance for Catholic Education, which is anchored at the University of Notre Dame, they are ready by the thousands to become the greatest-ever generation of Catholic school teachers and principals. The aforementioned Time story referred to the ACE as “a sort of Catholic version of Teach for America.” Actually, ACE is much better than T.F.A. I estimate that ACE yields five to 10 times as much urban teaching for every dollar invested.

Miracle. On Jan. 5, 2010, the 150th anniversary of St. John Neumann’s death, pray for him to intercede in expanding ACE and resurrecting Catholic schools in Philadelphia and nationally: “Obtain for us that complete dedication in the service of the needy, the weak, the afflicted and the abandoned which so characterized your life.”

All the news that's fit to print. Not!

2009-10-30T20:29:00.001-04:00

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York posted the following on his archdiocesan web site yesterday ...

October 29, 2009

The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it.

FOUL BALL!
By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York
October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!

Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.

It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:

On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.
On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.
Five days later, October 21, the Times gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.
Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops, as mentioned in this blog on Monday. Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will not receive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands – in some cases tens of thousands – of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALL school-children and their parents to be treated equally?

The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.

I guess my own background in American history should caution me not to hold my breath.

Then again, yesterday was the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.

Conflicting data

2009-10-27T22:03:00.003-04:00

Today's D&C features a page 1, above-the-fold article claiming that NY State led the nation in the number of people leaving the state between 2000 and 2008.

Entitled, "N.Y. tops in people loss," the story is based on a report just released by the Empire Center for New York State Policy. This report, which can be found here, says that it is "[b]ased on the latest data from the Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service."

Table 2 of this report claims to show the 2000-to-2008 population changes in each county in the state. However, when I saw that Monroe County had supposedly lost 20,783 people over those 8 years I began to suspect something was amiss.

You see, the U.S. Census Bureau has its population data on line and the loss it reports for Monroe County over the same 8 year period is a substantially smaller 6,252.

Curious as to the difference in combined population loss for the 12 counties which comprise DOR as reported by these sources, I created the following table from the on line Census data and Table 2 of the ECFNYSP report.

And so, if the ECFNYSP report is to be believed, DOR has lost 2.3% of its overall population over the last 8 years, while the census data on which it is supposedly based indicates that loss to be 0.7%.

While neither figure is significant in comparison with our 25.3% drop in Mass attendance over the same period, does anyone have any doubt which set of numbers DOR will cite the next time it blames declining Mass attendance on "demographic shifts?"

Satan's M.O.

2009-10-24T15:02:00.001-04:00

From Fr. Dwight Longenecker ...

The Slippery Slope

Here is how Satan spreads his lies:

1. Natural Law is ignored, undermined or made to look stupid by particular instances where it seems not apply.

2. Subsequently religious and civil authorities have their laws questioned because they are 'too strict' too 'black and white', 'unworkable' or 'lacking in compassion'.

3. Relativism is therefore introduced. An understanding gradually grows that 'there are no objective rules' that apply to all people at all times.

4. Individualism is the next step. 'I guess I have to decide what is right for me in my situation.'

5. Sentimentalism: People who live in a sinful situation demand that they not be judged. They deserve compassion and understanding. They are nice people really...but they have a problem. They're sick. They're wounded. Who are you to judge?

6. Dialogue is demanded. "You need to listen to us and to our stories. Then you will understand we are just like you."

7. Once sympathy is won, the goalposts are moved. Now they are not 'sick' or 'wounded' they're just 'different'. They expect to be accepted despite their 'differences'.

8. Equal rights are expected by those who are acting against God's law. "We are not asking you to approve us. We are simply asking you to tolerate a difference of opinion. Simply allow us to be who we are!"

9. Equal rights are demanded. Legislation and lobbying and protests are now in order. The pressure group for sin starts to get aggressive. They do so out of 'hurt' and 'woundedness.' Once they get their 'rights' (they claim) they will be happy and won't be so aggressive.

10. Tolerance being won, they will not stop. They now demand not only that you tolerate, but that you approve. They've moved from being 'sick' or 'wounded' or 'disabled' by their condition to tolerance, and now they proclaim their condition to be 'good'. As Thomas More was not allowed to remain silent on the King's 'great matter' but had to approve, so the pressure group insists on approval.

11. What was once tolerated now becomes mandatory. Society must integrate the new morality into every level--right down to schools and churches and scout groups. Everyone must adopt the new morality or suffer.

12. Persecution of those who resist.

13. Devil's real happy.

This process happens on an individual level, a family level, a community level and a societal level. The bigger the level the longer it takes, and for it to take effect at the societal, community and family level it must first work on the individual level.

This means you and I must watch for the signs in our own moral life and be alert. Any of us can go down this path, and any of us may be victims of those who are already well down the path of evil and darkness.

John Beaulieu coming to Bishop Kearney

2009-10-24T13:40:00.003-04:00

This Wednesday at Bishop Kearney ...

Mother of Sorrows to lose 7th, 8th grades?

2009-10-21T18:32:00.001-04:00

5th, 6th and 7th grade students at Our Mother of Sorrows school brought the following letter home today ...

10/20/2009

Dear Parents and Guardians of 5th, 6th and 7th graders,

The Department of Catholic Schools has NOT made any determination concerning the continuation of 7th and 8th grade at Our Mother of Sorrows.

Enrollment in 7th and 8th grade is the determining factor. The Superintendent of Catholic Schools, Mrs Anne Wilkins-Leach and the Associate Superintendent for Curriculum, Sr Margaret Mancuso SSJ are most anxious to meet with us to discuss the situation. This meeting will be scheduled in the very near future. I am waiting for confirmation from our superintendent. It is imperative that at least one parent or guardian of each student in grades 5, 6, 7 must attend this meeting.

In addition to Our Mother of Sorrows, Siena Catholic Academy offers a 7th and 8th grade program within the Monroe County Catholic School System. In order for you to make an informed decision, principals have agreed to distribute information for the independent Catholic High Schools that also have a 7th and 8th grade program.

Your commitment ot Our Mother of Sorrows School is testimony of your support to Catholic Education. We look forward to meeting with you.

Sincerely,

Mr. Samuel Zalacca

Principal

The parent who sent me this letter also wrote,

I thought that closing 13 of our schools would be enough for a few years but obviously it won't be. I doubt no matter the enrollment that they will keep those 2 grades open after this year. As many of us have thought, the goal is to not have the diocese fund ANYTHING regarding the schools, as seen by the paltry 5% they have designated from the annual appeal. Its again so disheartening, as parents are continually asked to give and make sacrifices, which we do, but in the end it makes no difference.

Report from the Diocese of Buffalo

2009-10-20T18:05:00.001-04:00

Kelly over at Catholic Ponderings was asked how things were going in her diocese. Her reply follows ...

Things are great! Many parishes merged last year which shook a lot of people up, of course. It was done with the input of anyone who was willing to attend meetings and I think many have found it to be a blessing (though many refuse to admit it).

Our Bishop fights hard for our schools and frequently states that they are our most important ministry. We have seminarians at our very own seminary. Only one PA and he is an ordained permanent Deacon at a very small, rural parish that is linked to another. Our Cathedral looks like one. Lay homilies are forbidden. You will find that it is a minority of parishioners who assume the orans posture during the Our Father. In our parish, the priest who was teaching at our school instructed the children to NOT hold hands.

In the DOB, people kneel during Communion and do not sit until the priest finishes purifying the vessels and takes a seat himself. Many of our religious sisters wear habits - and the sisters who teach at our school in a full habit. Our Bishop addressed the laity in regard to Spiritus Christi and the virus they were spreading to Buffalo.

Candles, sanctus bells and incense are all seen as good things. We also do not have general confession - though I have known people who travel to the DOR so that they can be forgiven without confessing to a priest - or so they thought until I corrected them.

Is the DOB perfect? No, plenty of humanity to go around. But, many people from the DOR send their children to our school in LeRoy, and some even travel forty minutes to attend Mass with us. You can find out Diocesan newspaper here.

:) Dominus vobiscum!

"Too much fluffy-ruffle stuff"

2009-10-14T23:05:00.002-04:00

I got a kick out of this one ...

When parochial teachers of Rochester, N. Y. gathered for an annual conference, 800 priests and nuns heard a speech by Rev. Francis Peter LeBuffe, S. J., business manager of the able Jesuit weekly America. An expert at making points of dogma crystal clear, Father LeBuffe had a blackboard handy, covered it with white, red, green, yellow chalk marks demonstrating the meaning of the Trinity, Original Sin, Transubstantiation, Incarnation. And then Father LeBuffe went on to say:

"Whether we like it or not, we Catholic teachers must realize that our courses in Religion are not being taught as they should be. They are frequently voted by the students to be 'the worst-taught courses in the curriculum.' We must teach fundamental dogmas rather than the frills and accidentals of Religion. . . . There is too much fluffy-ruffle stuff in pious books—entirely too much. I would like to take 90% of the spiritual books written and make a glorious bonfire of them, and their authors too, because they do not tell fundamental truths."

While the language points to a bygone era (this was written 72 years ago), the problem described sounds remarkably contemporary.

Source here.

"This awful seminary"

2009-10-13T10:43:00.003-04:00

A few weeks back Cleansing Fire posted this photo of 25 members of the Fathers of Mercy and asked if anyone could identify the third priest from the left in the top row.

It turned out the cleric is Fr. Frank Fusare, C.P.M.

What made this exercise interesting is that Fr. Frank was at one time a diocesan priest here in DOR. He was ordained by Bishop Clark in 1996 and the combox conversation around the post (especially here) indicated that he had been driven out of the diocese because he insisted on preaching what the Church teaches on homosexuality.

I was interested in learning more about Fr. Frank and quickly found out that he was one of three presenters on Saint Joseph Communications' Confronting the Gay Agenda - The Catholic Truth About Homosexuality. Intrigued both by the title and Fr. Frank's experience in DOR I ordered a copy.

Fr. Frank's presentation is entitled The Effects Of The Homosexual Agenda and is a detailed account of what homosexual activists hope to achieve and the effects their success would have on society.

But what is really of interest is the following excerpt from the early part of his talk where he is, in a sense, establishing his credentials (my transcription and emphasis):

I can make these claims with 100% certainty - 100% - because I've not only read about this issue but for years I've heard with my own ears what militant, active homosexuals have to say by viewing their rallies and listening to their speeches and because I was forced to attend a seminary that protected militant homosexuals.

Now let me stop for a second and tell you that before I was a member of the Fathers of Mercy I was a priest in a diocese in this country, so the Fathers of Mercy did not send me to this awful seminary, it was the diocese that I was from originally.

That diocese, of course, is DOR and the seminary is St. Mary's in Baltimore, the "Pink Palace" of Michael S. Rose's Goodbye, Good Men.

In Chapter 4 of his book Rose writes,

According to former seminarians and recently ordained priests, the "gay subculture" is so prominent and accepted at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore that students have long nicknamed it "The Pink Palace."

Father Andrew Walter, ordained for the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut in 2000, spent several semesters at the Baltimore school as a seminarian for the Diocese of Patterson, New Jersey. The problem was so bad when he was there, he explained, that "some of the students and faculty used to get dressed up in leather to go to ‘the block,’ Baltimore’s equivalent to 42nd Street in Manhattan."

Seminarians, sometimes accompanied by faculty members, would do this regularly, Walter explained. "They would meet in the foyer, and then head for the gay bars."

That's the seminary that Bishop Clark forced Frank Fusare to attend.

Elsewhere in his book Rose quotes Fr. Charles Fiore of Wisconsin,

If the bishops and rectors don't know that this kind of rot is eating away-at the innards of the church, at its future vitality, that's misfeasance. If they know but do nothing to stop it that's malfeasance! And the faithful should demand a top-to-bottom housecleaning where such situations exist. Certainly they are not morally obliged financially to support this ecclesiastical incompetence.

I couldn't agree more.

Coming Out Day at Nazareth College

2009-10-13T08:49:00.001-04:00

Lee Strong has a well written post up on Nazareth College's participation in yesterday's National Coming Out Day.

I know a local young man who attended MCC and then transferred to Nazareth to complete a B.A. in social work. He graduated this past June.

He reports that the school - or, at least, that department - was so radically feminist that he felt like he was walking on egg shells his entire two years there.

He credits his eight years in the army with giving him the ability to get along with just about any one, but still his time at Nazareth was a real test for a heterosexual male.

Stories in stained glass

2009-10-09T09:49:00.002-04:00

From MPNnow.com ...

Beautiful windows

As part of the Rochester River Romance Celebration, Holy Cross Church — 4492 Lake Ave. in the Charlotte area of Rochester and just over the O’Rorke Bridge from Irondequoit — is hosting a free tour of the 50 historic, pictorial stained glass windows there from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. this Saturday.

Each of the windows illustrates a biblical passage, and the tour was created by Maureen Staves, a longtime parishioner and member of the choir. Tour volunteers will share historical and biblical information as it relates to each window and answer any questions.

The windows are also featured in the book “Our Faith Illustrated in Stained Glass,” which will be sold at the event. See www.holycrossrochester.org for more information.

Full article here.

Sixty-four vs. six

2009-10-09T09:39:00.001-04:00

Dave Hartline has a must-read post on The American Catholic.

The statistics don’t lie. To say that surging numbers and priestly vocations are tied to Church orthodoxy would be an understatement. An example from my 2006 book, The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism best illustrates this point. The Diocese of Rochester, which is considered to be one of the most liberal in America, has a Catholic population of 342,000. They have a total of six seminarians studying for the priesthood. The Archdiocese of Omaha has a Catholic population of 230,000 with 30 seminarians. In Nebraska, the Diocese of Lincoln (run by perhaps the most conservative ordinary in America, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz) has a population of 89,236 Catholics with 24 in their local seminary and 10 in other seminaries. Put another way, while Lincoln and Omaha do not have as many Catholics as Rochester, these two dioceses had sixty-four men studying for the priesthood while Rochester had only six men.

Full post here.

Do Catholics Have to Believe All that the Church Teaches?

2009-10-08T16:23:00.001-04:00

Jason Hull, aka haojiesheng, has taken many of John Martignoni's Two-Minute Apologetics audio clips and converted them into videos.

One of my favorites is Martignoni's demonstration of the absurdity of "cafeteria" Catholicism.

The rest of haojiesheng's video work is here.

Bible Christian Society, Martignoni's website that is loaded with free audio downloads, is here.

DOR publicly acknowledges decline

2009-10-08T07:13:00.001-04:00

Three months ago in his Along the Way column, Bishop Matthew Clark observed,

While it is no secret that Mass attendance has generally declined since the mid-1960s nationwide — not unlike attendance for other mainline Christian denominations — we saw last year in our own diocese a leveling off of that trend. [my emphasis]

I wrote at the time that His Excellency seemed misinformed, as his own Pastoral Planning people were reporting a 2008 Average October Attendance number that was almost 4% lower than the 2007 AOA, and that 2008 number meant that DOR had lost 25% of its weekend Mass-attending Catholics in a mere 8 years. (Also see here.)

The Catholic Courier has now confirmed my reporting. In an online article appearing Monday, the Courier's Mike Latona wrote,

Yet declines also are evident in more concrete statistics: In addition to a 25-percent decrease in Sunday-Mass attendance across the Rochester Diocese from 2000-08, the number of recorded baptisms and marriages each fell off by approximately 50 percent between 1994 and 2007.

Latona makes an attempt at softening the impact of this decline by citing somewhat similar statistics from neighboring dioceses.

But he proves too much - far too much! - when he cites Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) research showing that "the Catholic population of New York state decreased by 7 percent between 1990 and 2008."

A 7% drop in the Catholic population over 18 years works out to an average loss of 0.40% per year. DOR's Mass attendance, however, has been falling at an average rate of 3.58% per year. In other words, we have been losing Mass attendees 9 times faster than Catholics have been leaving the state.

And so it would seem that the "demographic shift," so long a favorite rationalization for decline among DOR officials, simply cannot carry anywhere near the level of blame that these apologists would like to heap upon it.

Something else is obviously going on. The question now is: What?

"Does the bishop matter?"

Two years ago InsideCatholic.com released its 32-page Diocesan Report 2007. The opening paragraph reads,

This analysis began with the question, “Does the bishop matter?” It arrives at an interesting pair of conclusions. The first is that there is no problem ailing the Catholic Church in America that is not being addressed successfully in some place, and typically in multiple places. Second, there is a cadre of bishops, invisible to the national media, largely unknown outside their dioceses, absent from Washington political circles, who are truly unsung heroes of the Church, presiding over vibrant communities, building the Church, and effectively proclaiming the Faith—men such as Bishop Joseph Kurtz of Knoxville, Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe, and Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steubenville, to name just a few.

The report goes on to assign a ranking to each of the 176 Latin Rite dioceses in the United States, excluding Puerto Rico and territories. This ranking is based on 3 criteria: the morale of the presbyterate, the number of vocations, and effective evangelization. (See the report for an explanation of how these areas were rated.)

In overall ranking DOR finished 174 out of 176. Among the 28 dioceses of similar size (i.e., +/- 25% of DOR's Catholic population), we finished dead last.

The report concludes,

The final question, however, is how much influence a bishop has on diocesan ranking. The clear answer: a great deal. After having systematically examined a number of external factors that might account for the vitality of a diocese, the bottom line remains that variations in the ranking of the dioceses cannot be definitively accounted for by region, size, or population change. Neighboring dioceses can and do have substantially different ratings. And most compelling, the ranking of the dioceses do change—sometimes dramatically—from one decade to the next. Absent other explanations, the number-one factor that accounts for this variation is the quality of the diocesan leadership.

A bit of advice to DOR

It is time to quit blaming our decline ("collapse" might be a better word) on "demographic shifts," "generational shifts" and any other factors outside of our control. As Inside Catholic reports, there is no problem ailing us "that is not being addressed successfully in some place, and typically in multiple places."

It's time to do a little of what business people call benchmarking: Identifying best practices and emulating them.

And if that means abandoning "progressive Catholicism" and returning to orthodoxy, then so be it.

Holy Cross, Holy Trinity slapped hard by CMA

2009-10-04T23:30:00.003-04:00

Last year Holy Cross Church in Charlotte missed raising its Catholic Ministries Appeal assessment by just over $8,200. As a reward, this year the diocese has raised that assessment by more than $5,000.

Holy Trinity in Webster has fared even worse. Last year they fell almost $18,000 short and so this year's CMA assessment has been raised by over $9,300.

Both parishes had their schools closed by Bishop Clark in 2008.

Updated Table of Year over Year CMA Assessments:

A little help, please!

The above table is far from complete. If you know the 2009-10 CMA assessment for any of these parishes please leave a note in the comment box.

DOR hides its CMA allocation data

2009-10-03T10:22:00.001-04:00

Ever vigilant, the folks over at Cleansing Fire have caught DOR in another instance of disinformation or - in this case - destruction of information.

When the section dealing with the 2009-10 CMA first went up on dor.org there was a page letting the potential donor know exactly what percentage of his or her contribution would go to various ministries and services.

That page has now disappeared and has been replaced by one that looks to have been pasted together in a real hurry, as one paragraph and a collection of 10 bullet points are simply repeated verbatim within a short span of text (see here).

Cleansing Fire, however, captured a screen shot of the original page before it was cast into the digital dustbin and that image is available on their site.

Google also captured the original page, cached it, and has made it available here.

Finally, to provide one more source of this data, the original 2009-10 CMA allocation data - complete with dor.org links - is repeated below:

2009-2010 CMA Allocations

Faith Formation 10%
Sacramental preparation, Adult Education, Campus, CYO Young Adult and Youth Ministry Programs

Catholic Schools 5%
Support for programs, aid to students and schools

Catholic Charities 13%
Support for the 10 regional offices / agencies serving people throughout our 12 counties.

Parish Support Ministries 18%
Liturgical, Urban, Rural, Multicultural & Jail Services, Subsidies & Programs

Human Resources 4%
Staff recruitment & training, support to St. Bernard School of Theology & Ministry

Bishop's Ministry / Pastoral Planning 10%
Bishop's Office, consultative councils and planning services

Diocesan-wide Administrative & Support Services 19%
Hospital Chaplaincy, Stewardship, Finance, Information Technology, etc.

Pastoral Center Operation & Services 15%
Operational and system costs of the diocesan offices

CMA Campaign Costs 6%
Campaign staff, materials, data processing and postage

Total Goal: $5,490,000

Now the question is, why doesn't DOR want its CMA contributors to know how much of their money is going to which ministries and services?

Gaillardetz to address Canadian bishops

2009-09-29T17:18:00.001-04:00

From LifeSiteNews.com ...

Dr. Richard Gaillardetz, professor of Catholic studies at the University of Toledo in Ohio, is scheduled to present a set of talks at the annual plenary assembly of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) in Cornwall from October 19-23.

Marking the Year for Priests, Dr. Gaillardetz will speak to the bishops about the priesthood and the relationship of bishops to priests.

The article goes on to say that "Gaillardetz may strike some as a surprising choice for the job, however, since he is an open dissenter from Church teaching," including her teaching on women's ordination. As a reference the article cites SoCon or Bust blogger John Pacheco's thorough post on the subject.

Pacheco cites so many of of Gaillardetz' "nuances" of - or outright departures from - authentic Catholic teaching that it is amazing that the man considers himself a Catholic, considering his myriad problems with Church teaching.

Darling of the DOR ministerium

Professor Gaillardetz is no stranger to DOR, having given talks here at least 3 times within the last 5 years, including presentations to the DOR ministerium (i.e., priests, deacons and lay people involved in ministry in some way).

This isn't very surprising, given John Allen's comments in a 2007 NCR piece.

Gaillardetz argued that in the United States, liberal Catholicism is less an ideology than a “pastoral phenomenon … alive in parishes that have a flourishing catechumenate, vibrant liturgies, thoughtful and relevant preaching, and multiple lay ministerial opportunities,” as well as “in a growing number of intentional Christian communities that are determined to keep alive a vision of the church that they associate with Vatican II.”

Looking around, observers such as Gaillardetz say that the moderate-to-liberal camp probably represents a disproportionate share of the church’s ministerial workforce, meaning priests, deacons, religious, and laity, as well as the theological guild.

What Gaillardetz (and Allen) fail to note is that, at least in DOR, liberal Catholicism is driving the faithful right out of the pews: Fully 25% of DOR's Mass-attending Catholics have called it quits in just the last 8 years, "vibrant liturgies" and "thoughtful and relevant preaching" notwithstanding.

"What does a bishop do?"

2009-09-28T22:41:00.002-04:00

2nd grader: "What does a bishop do?"

Bishop: "What do you think he does?"

2nd grader: 'Well, he writes letters asking for money."

Thus went an exchange between Bishop Eugene Gerber and one of the younger members of his flock about 30 years ago when His Excellency was leading the Diocese of Dodge City.

"That was when it first struck me that things have to change," Bishop Gerber told a reporter in 2004.

In 1982, when Gerber was transferred to head the Wichita diocese, he began thinking of ways to change how the diocese was governed. Gerber, who had served as a priest in the Wichita diocese before becoming bishop of Dodge City in 1976, knew of one parish where changes had already occurred.

Msgr. Tom McGread told NCR he first began considering a new model in 1959, after he read an article by two Mobile, Ala., priests who were trying to "come up with a Catholic idea of the Protestant practice of tithing."

He explained that when he introduced the model to his Wichita parish, St. Francis of Assisi, in 1969 his "emphasis was getting the people involved in the Parish, with their time and their talents. Once they became involved, they got a sense of belonging. Once they got a sense of belonging, then they got a sense of ownership."

McGread asked his parishioners to work out a percentage of giving, "according to what the Bible told us," he said. "I advised them to start with a lower percentage and work up and see if they missed it. One of the promises I made to them was if they were worse off financially at the end of the year after tithing, they could come back and we'd give them all their money back. In 40 years I never had anyone do that."

Gerber was encouraged by St. Francis' success. He began to hold meetings around the diocese asking three questions: "What are the qualities of a good parish? What are the obstacles? what would you do if you had unlimited resources?" He also began studying ways to meet the increasing challenges of providing Catholic education.

He said the findings "converged into one," and out of that emerged United Catholic Stewardship.

Following the new model, parishes began tithing 10 percent of their donations to the diocese each month, replacing the annual bishop's appeal and special collections.

All parishes agreed to pay for Catholic' education for the children of active parishioners. According to Daniel Loughman, diocesan director of stewardship and finance, between 60 and 70 percent of parish budgets are devoted to paying for Catholic education. The great majority of that money goes to schools, but religious education classes and other education ministries also figure in.

Gerber said that the parables in the Gospels are full of references to stewardship. He said that in order to succeed, the model must be "centered on the Eucharist." That focus on Eucharist is why "probably about 70 percent of our people, somewhere in there, are attending Mass on the Lord's Day. We have perpetual adoration here that I suspect, relatively speaking is unequaled." Currently" perpetual adoration continues in 18 parishes in the diocese. In some parishes it has been ongoing for nearly 20 years.

While free tuition to the schools is one of the fruits of Wichita's stewardship process, it is not the only one. The diocese built The Lord's Diner, a free diner for poor and homeless people, and supports the Guadalupe Clinic, which provides free health care for working poor people.

The conversion to the stewardship model has not always been easy. According to McGread, one of the biggest difficulties has been converting priests, rather than parishioners. Priests, he said, are often afraid that the stewardship process won't be "successful for them."

Gerber said some older priests may have "been schooled more in fundraising than in stewardship. As a consequence, they trust their longtime experience. That doesn't mean their ministry is less for it, but it is not something that I say meets the challenges of our time."

He said that stewardship "very much meets with [the approval of] the younger set of priests because it is a part of their theology, they know the scriptures, and they haven't been a part of any other models."

Gerber said he's been asked by bishops how to get started, and he tells them, "Well, just go start. Just go begin preaching it, go begin learning about it. If nothing else, get a cluster of parishes and start. If it takes one parish, start with one parish."

He said, "Some dioceses have decided they want to do it incrementally. We did it as one fell swoop. It takes a leap of faith to do that."

(Full source here. This story is the "RELATED ARTICLE" beginning here.)

That is how the Diocese of Wichita transformed itself into what is today a model of Catholic stewardship that any other diocese in this nation is free to emulate. What is amazing is that their story has been out there for years and yet so few dioceses have been willing to follow their lead.

Perhaps the reason is that Bishop Gerber neglected to mention the other necessary component (besides faith): Total loyalty to the Church as exemplified by full acceptance of all that she teaches.

That last part is a deal-breaker in far too many dioceses these days.

Opening conversation, updated 30 years and translated to DOR

So how would our opening conversation play out today here in DOR, were Bishop Clark ever to visit a Catholic school?

I suspect it would go something like this:

2nd grader: "What does a bishop do?"

Bishop: "What do you think he does?"

2nd grader: 'Well, he writes letters asking for money."

Bishop: "That's only part of my job, honey. I also close parishes and schools, appoint dissenters to head up parishes, allow non-ordained people to preach at Mass, appoint agenda-driven gatekeepers to make sure few if any orthodox vocations get sent to seminary and turn a blind eye to just about any liturgical abuse anyone can dream up.

"I also try to get out parishes to push stewardship, but that doesn't seem to be going very well."

Wichita Catholic schools enrollment up 20% in 16 years

2009-09-28T11:36:00.001-04:00

Buried in a recent blurb announcing a future guest speaker is this little tidbit (my emphasis):

Mark your calendars! September 2 - Mr. Bob Voboril, Superintendent of Schools for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita since 1993. In the 16 years he has been here our schools collectively have grown over 20% and have been recognized nationally for putting the Catholic faith as every school’s priority.

The announcement comes from this month's online bulletin of the Downtown Wichita Chapter, Serra International.

2009-10 Enrollment is up, parishioners continue their support

Other news coming out of Wichita indicates that, contrary to the trend in the rest of the country, Catholic school enrollment is actually up a modest amount.

The 20 Catholic schools in Sedgwick County had an increase in enrollment from 8,005 to 8,052 students, according to the Wichita Catholic Diocese.

Kapaun Mount Carmel High School reached an all-time high of more than 900 students, an increase of about 30 from last year.

Growth in the east-side K-8 Catholic schools that feed students into Kapaun, such as All Saints and Magdalen, has been faster than expected, said Bob Voboril, superintendent of the diocese schools.

"The feeder schools are doing a better job," he said.

The growth has led to larger class sizes and waiting lists to get into those schools, Voboril said.

"For the most part, schools are trying to add students without adding staff," he said.

Wichita Catholic schools don't charge their mostly Catholic students tuition individually. Instead, all church members pay for their parish's school.

Funding has kept up with growing student populations, Voboril said.

"It's amazing that in the middle of a recession, our parishes are willing to support more students," he said.

"They could've just as well said, 'Cut off enrollment.' "

Story here.

Former MCCS Superintendent involved in fatal accident

2009-09-28T09:50:00.001-04:00

Sr. Elizabeth Meegan, Monroe County Catholic School Superintendent from 2001 through 2006, was involved in a 2 car accident Sunday afternoon in North Fort Meyers, Florida.

Two other nuns in her car died. Sr. Elizabeth was reported to be in good condition in a local hospital

Story here.

Confusion to the north

2009-09-27T14:22:00.001-04:00

International Studies in Catholic Education is a scholarly journal that began publishing this year. It's second issue contains the following article (emphasis within the abstract is mine).

Can there be ‘faithful dissent’ within Catholic religious education in schools?
Graham P. McDonough
Pages 187 - 199

Abstract

Catholic education struggles with an apparent tension between student-centred methods and remaining true to the official Church teaching. The traditional view holds that students are to learn ecclesial facts, but contemporary pedagogy promotes a wider range of experiences. Consequentially, teachers struggle with the question of how to deal with reasonable student dissent on non-infallible teachings like contraception, female ordination and homosexuality. This essay comments on interview findings that religion teachers attempt to accommodate dissent, but since there is no firm theoretical grounding for student-centred methods the possibility of nurturing a reasonable intra-Church intellectual plurality becomes lost in the Catholic school.

Keywords: dissent; pedagogy-religious education; Catholic school-aims; critical thinking

Editor’s Note: This is Canadian research based on Catholic schools in Saskatchewan.

Dr. McDonough is listed as an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Victoria. His 2007 doctrinal dissertation is entitled "The moral and pedagogical importance of dissent to Catholic education."

A few of the terms in the good doctor's abstract are just begging for translation into plain English.

"Contemporary pedagogy promotes a wider range of experiences" actually means that, sadly, many of today's Catholic teachers and their schools are heavily into experiential theology.
"Non-infallible teachings like contraception, female ordination and homosexuality" is pure gobbledygook. If the solemn teachings contained in Humanae Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis are not binding on one's conscience, then hardly anything taught by the Church is. Ditto for any teaching proclaimed by the pope and bishops always and everywhere.
"Reasonable intra-Church intellectual plurality" is double-speak for dissent which is, itself, the politically correct term for heresy.

Lay ecclesial leaders get CMA assessment reductions

2009-09-27T10:40:00.003-04:00

While DOR may have removed the Parish-by-Parish listing from its website, it is still possible to glean CMA information from other sources.

I've been looking through online bulletins and have thus far managed to learn the 2009-10 CMA assessments for 6 parishes. While that is not enough to draw any real conclusions, it is interesting that the 3 parishes which have seen reductions in their assessments are those being run by Sr. Joan Sobala and Nancy DeRycke.

If anyone out there knows of 2009-10 CMA assessments for these (or other) parishes, please leave a note in the comment box.

One priest, one roof

2009-09-24T16:34:00.001-04:00

If you think we have seen too many church closings here in DOR, be thankful we don't live in the Diocese of Syracuse.

In the last decade that diocese has closed 37 churches, with 15 of those closures coming in the last 30 months.

The diocese has a "one priest, one roof" policy which forbids a priest to pastor more than one parish even if he wanted to. This effectively eliminates clustering, which is the only thing keeping several DOR parishes open.

Story here.

Dor.org traffic analysis

2009-09-24T13:03:00.005-04:00

Quantcast is a 2006 start-up that tracks internet traffic to millions of websites and uses inference technology to estimate demographic data for the visitors to each site.

I recently stumbled across their site and thought it might be interesting to see what they knew about the users of dor.org.

It turns out that Quantcast claims to know quite a bit. Their summary says,

This site reaches approximately 18,35 [they mean 18,350; see the graph] U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a rather female, primarily older, more educated group.

Dor.org's recent traffic seems to show a sharp increase since mid-July.

However, the demographics underlying that traffic don't bode well for the future.

It's difficult to see how an older, mostly female demographic with no kids left at home can do very much to help DOR recover from its ongoing malaise, no matter how well educated it might be.

Bishop Clark to celebrate Mass at Mason's farm?

2009-09-24T10:12:00.002-04:00

According to the Wayne County Star, Bishop Clark will be celebrating Mass in Savannah this weekend:

Bishop Matthew Clark will lead a noon Mass at Bruce and Barbara Waterman’s farm on Route 89 during the St. John - St. Michael - St. Patrick cluster picnic Sept. 27.

The Mass, which will be held in the Watermans’ barn about four miles north of the hamlet of Savannah, is open to the public. Those wishing to stay for the picnic afterward need to purchase a ticket from the parish office ...

I wonder if His Excellency is aware that an online Masonic newsletter lists a Bruce G. Waterman as Past Master of Savannah Masonic Lodge No. 764 and a Bruce M. Waterman as current Master of the same lodge.

Awash in narcissism

2009-09-23T22:13:00.001-04:00

One of my Google Alerts took me to Anecdotal Evidence, a blog which bills itself as being "about the intersection of books and life."

In a recent post blogger Patrick Krup shares this letter from a friend:

I'd been pondering the general topic [of tradition] since I sat near a group of women in a Starbucks one day a couple of weeks ago and was forced to listen to them discuss why the Catholic church was moronic for not ordaining women.

Not being Catholic myself, I didn't have much stake in the argument but I was astonished by their blithe assumption that the tradition of the Church was utterly without value and further, that their own opinions deserved equal weight with those of, say, Augustine of Hippo or Aquinas.

I wish I could have recorded it, so I could play it back for anyone who doubts that we're awash in narcissism. It was jaw-dropping. Maybe this is what comes of too much democracy.

Patrick's unnamed (and non-Catholic!) friend had managed to put his or her finger on the reason I feel so irritated by priestess wannabes and their supporters: they totally deny the importance and value of Tradition in the Catholic Church. The only things that matter to them are their desires and their feelings. What the Church has done for 2,000 years - and why she has done it - they dismiss as utterly irrelevant.

"Awash in narcissism" is a perfect description of these people.

DOR drops CMA Parish-by-Parish feature from its website

2009-09-22T21:54:00.004-04:00

For the last few years DOR has posted Parish-by-Parish results for its Catholic Ministries Appeal on its website. These results were updated periodically and allowed people to track their parish's progress throughout the 8+ months of the campaign.

That feature now appears to be a thing of the past. Dor.org currently has many links related to the 2009-10 CMA but none of them lead to a parish-by-parish accounting.

Could it be that someone at Buffalo Rd. got tired of seeing images like these?

This post writes itself

2009-09-22T17:06:00.001-04:00

I was reading through some of the comments on Channel 10's story on the launching of this year's Catholic Ministries Appeal and was struck by how many people connected years of Catholic school closings with the fact that we now see so few young people in church.

Read them for yourself:

Gus R wrote,

This year's campaign targets young people. The bishop says that's a missing group in the church. I wonder why? The Bishop has closed half the schools. That means many have left with the kids and do not donate anymore and will not be back ...

The Bishop is now loosing a whole new generation for good. Go see the Fathers house in Chili. Many are from the Catholic church and are fed up. All young with young kids. The young are not being fed Bishop. You are in another world. They are leaving and will never be back. Why? Because you did not feed them ...

The only ones left are the old folks and they are dying off. The Catholic church in Rochester will die with the old folks as well. The Bishop has just about destroyed the church in Rochester. They young have suffered the most because many have lost half their money and have lost jobs. They need support from the church not a leach.

amerks55 added,

Our school was among the first wave of closings in 1992, We fought the bishop with every resource we had, and still lost. The deck was stacked and no matter what solution we offered, he had his mind made up. So what happens? 17 years later, our church is closing.

Why? We lost two generations of kids- the lifeblood of the parish! Without the kids to bring us all together, we floundered. Without the kids, there was no continuity- no new young adults to become members of the parish. Instead, folks scattered, looked for new schools, and supported that parish.

Clark doesn't GET IT. He is killing the diocese. Soon it won't be a matter of closing another school or church. Instead he will have to shut down the diocese. Nice going! Nice legacy, Matty!

And Simon chimed in with,

The bishop said our youth are not involved in the faith today. DUH, he closed the lifeline to almost all catholic parishes.

Yes, catholic schools were that lifeline. There were self-supporting parishes that He would not save.

I think the bishop and his advisors should donate their salaries for a year.

I guess I'm not the only one who believes that a diocese that refuses to find a way to keep its Catholic schools open is a diocese that has decided to commit suicide.

DOR "loses" 36,000 Catholics in just one year.

2009-09-22T01:28:00.001-04:00

The 2009-2010 Catholic Ministries Appeal has been officially launched, according to a story on the Catholic Courier website.

Bishop Matthew H. Clark launched the Diocese of Rochester's 2009-10 Catholic Ministries Appeal Sept. 21, asking parishioners to pull together to help meet the campaign's $5.49 million goal, thus keeping the spirit of faith and service alive in the diocese.

"Keeping the Spirit Alive" is the theme of this year's annual campaign, which funds ministries touching the lives of more than 314,000 Catholics in the 12-county diocese. (emphasis mine)

However, last year's CMA kickoff letter cited a significantly higher number of Catholics.

Calling on Catholics to help bolster the Church’s ministries and ensure a strong Diocese for future generations, Bishop Matthew Clark today officially launched the 2008-09 Catholic Ministries Appeal (CMA).

The CMA funds ministries for more than 350,000 Catholics in 12 counties. The campaign goal is $5.39 million. (again, my emphasis)

Hmmm, let's see here ... "More than 350,000" minus "more than 314,000" equals just about 36,000 Catholics who have simply disappeared in just one year.

One would think that over 10% of our Catholics vanishing in 12 months would rate some kind of acknowledgement from DOR.

Apparently not.

Radical feminists killing health reform?

2009-09-13T11:55:00.001-04:00

Saturday's D&C contained a Guest Essay by Carol Crossed, President of the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum.

Headlined Feminists could kill health reform, the essay recounts how radical feminists' insistence that the Equal Rights Amendment not contain language specifically excluding abortion as a "right" helped torpedo that legislation.

Ms. Crossed then goes on to predict that a similar stance by today's radical feminists might also kill health reform.

Read the essay here.

Asperges me ...

2009-09-11T19:13:00.002-04:00

Another video found on The Deacon's Bench ...