Author: Walter

In January I wrote in this column about a fundraiser I want to hold to raise the money for a pre-Easter evangelization drive. Unfortunately, it was the weekend of the snowstorm and Mass attendance was low. People suggested to me that I write about it again. So here is an update.

In my article I wrote about the rise of the “go fund me” phenomena. GoFundMe is a website founded in 2008 by Brad Damphousse and Andrew Ballester. The website allows people to solicit funds on the internet for events ranging from celebrations to helping people facing challenging circumstances like recovery from accidents, illnesses or difficult financial circumstances. It’s a very interesting business model and has seen success in encouraging people in their generosity.

I would like to do a similar thing to help raise funds for a special evangelization project I have in mind for Easter. We won’t be setting up a website for this but want to raise the funds from our parishioners. The task I have in mind is to send a card with an invitation to celebrate Easter Mass here at St. Patrick’s to every postal patron covered by the Wareham, W. Wareham and E. Wareham Post Offices. Did you know that 70% of the household in Wareham have at least a Catholic cultural background or have a member of a household with a Catholic heritage? You wouldn’t know that from our Sunday Mass attendance. The U.S. Post Office supplies a service to help accomplish our project. The cost of sending such an invitation to about 15,000 households would be about $3,000.

The problem is that we don’t have funds in our budget to pay for such an initiative. I suppose the easy solution would be to have a Second Collection. We could pass the basket once a month from now until Easter and raise the money we need. If we did that, most of you would grudgingly contribute a few dollars.

That isn’t what I want to do. I want to get people to donate to this project with enthusiasm. I’m looking for people to donate to this effort who really feel invested in evangelization. People who are willing to make a really generous contribution are who we want to enlist. I want people who aren’t only willing to make a financial contribution but also make contributions of prayer and fasting to our evangelization effort. Maybe if we raise enough money we could do this mailing not only at Easter but after Labor Day (the start of a new year in many respects) and at Christmas. To send three mailings we would have to raise $10,000. Well let’s raise enough to do it this once.

In the pews this weekend you’ll find green envelopes that ask for you to make a commitment to this campaign. Please make a generous monetary donation if you can. Even if you can’t make a donation of treasure to the campaign, I ask you to join us by committing to fast and pray for the collection’s success. Our dedication to praying and fasting along with our financial support will be the key to the success of the campaign. Let’s make this evangelization effort a project supported by all St. Patrick’s parishioners.

Fake News about the Conflict between Faith and Science—I probably was in the Fifth Grade when in science class we studied a unit on genetics. In it we were taught about Gregor Mendel an Augustinian monk who is considered the Father of Genetics. Mendel is famous for experiments that led to his formulation of the Laws of Mendelian Inheritance that explain how genes are passed on from parents to child. I thought it was interesting that a Catholic priest was famous for such discoveries.

It is laughable now but I remember talking to my father and asking him if he knew about Mendel and that he was a priest. My father had a science background and of course he was very much aware of Mendel and his work. He also told me about Fr. Georges Lemaitre and Cardinal Desire-Joseph Mercier who were physicists at the beginning of the 20th Century. Fr. Lemaitre is credited with formulating the Big Bang Theory. He told me that many scientific discoveries throughout the centuries have been made by faithful Catholic clergy and laity throughout the centuries. One of my father’s favorites was the 17th Century mathematician and physicist Blasé Pascal. He was also a Christian philosopher and searched for a proof of God. He formulated Pascal’s Wager as that proof.

Last week I wrote about an article in Our Sunday Visitor. The article cited two studies conducted by CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate). They found that much of the decline of faith among Millennials is because they feel there is a conflict between science and faith. The study attributed this conflict to Millennials’ lack of education in the Catholic faith. The studies contend that while Catholic school students can be taught religion in one class and science in the next one, many Millennials have never had that opportunity to study both subjects side by side. In fact 38% of Millennials lack any Catholic education either in a Catholic School or a parish Religious Education Program, the CARA studies found.

The truth is the Catholic Church has few disagreements with modern science. It has never banned the study of evolution or other important scientific topic. Actually, there is much about Catholicism that is consistent with scientific evidence. Much of the belief that there is a conflict between Catholicism and science comes from centuries of “fake news” dating all the way back to the Enlightenment.

The problem is that the Catholic Church is misunderstood by many in the media and thrown into the religion vs. science war alongside fundamentalist evangelical denominations. These groups believe in Biblical inerrancy and hold to a word for word literal interpretation of the Bible. Catholics do not interpret the Bible that way. While Catholics believe in Biblical literalism, we do not believe in a strict word for word interpretation. For example, while we believe that God created the world, we do not hold to the idea that it was created in seven 24-hour days corresponding to our week. For Catholics a “day” of creation could very likely be a million or even a billion of our calendar years.

Welcome to the newly redesigned St. Patrick’s Church website. I hope you like our new updated design. I think it looks bright and welcoming. Social media has become such an important means of communication in our digital age. My prayer is that the website will be a useful tool to share the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ not only with our parishioners but the World Wide Web.

In designing our website our desire was to make the St. Patrick’s website your one stop for news about the parish, the Church on a national and international scene and our local community. With that purpose in mind we have created links to two very credible Catholic news services. One is Catholic News Service, which is the official news service of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The other is Crux News Service an independent service edited by noted Catholic news writer John Allen. These two news services are excellent sources for you to keep aware of the news of the Catholic Church. The website also includes many links to other Catholic websites with a wealth of information on the Church.

To prove that we want to be your first stop for news every day we are also including a link to the Wareham Wicked Local news feed. So, you can keep informed about news from our Wareham community too.

Give us your feedback on what you like or dislike about our new site. Please be gentle with your criticism though. Share this site with others who might like to visit us on a regular basis. I’m looking forward to communicating with you on a regular basis here in the Pastor’s Corner but most of all sharing in the Eucharist every weekend. God Bless!

Centennial Year of the Fatima Apparitions—2017 will mark the 100th Anniversary of the appearance of the Blessed Mother to three shepherd children at Fatima in central Portugal. Our Lady made six appearances to Lucia dos Santos and her two cousins Blessed Francisco Marto and Blessed Jacinta Marto at Fatima near their home at Aljustrel in May through October of 1917. The children were first prepared for the visits from Our Lady by three apparitions of the Angel of Peace in 1916. In the three visits the angel taught the children prayers and gave the children the Eucharist.

In her appearances the Blessed Mother encouraged the children to pray the Rosary daily and, as the First World War was still raging, she encouraged prayers for peace. She promoted devotion to her Immaculate Heart and promised them that on her appearance on October 13, 1917, St. Joseph as well as Jesus would appear to them.

At that climatic October appearance 55,000 people gathered in the rain at Cova da Iria in Fatima and witnessed the “miracle of the sun.” Despite the clouds, the sun broke through and began to spin while growing larger. Many people knelt in fear that it would consume the earth. Miraculously the rain soaked cloths of the observers were dried. This miracle was seen by another 20,000 witness within a 25 mile radius of Fatima.

At this apparition the three visionaries were also privileged to see a series of visions of St. Joseph and the Christ Child who blessed the world. Mary also appeared several times and identified herself as Our Lady of the Rosary. She instructed the children to encourage that a chapel be built on the spot at Cova da Iria.

The appearances were not without trials and difficulties for the three children. Lucia dos Santos was harshly treated by her family and was reluctant to be present at the July 13 appearance. All there were kept from being at Fatima for the August 13 appearance because they were arrested by anti-clerical civil authorities even though they were each 10 years old or younger. They were released from jail on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, after the authorities thought they had thwarted Our Lady’s appearance. But she appeared to them on the 19th of that month near their homes at Valinhos rather than Fatima.

Two of the seers, the siblings Francisco and Jacinta, were to die very young victims of the influenza epidemic of the late 1910s. Their early deaths had been one of the messages of the Blessed Mother. Our Lady also instructed Lucia to learn to read and write. She later became a Religious and lived to just short of her 98th birthday.

In addition to instructing the children to encourage the daily praying of the Rosary, Our Lady gave the children three secrets. The first was a vision of hell after which she taught them the “Fatima Prayer for Sinners”. The second secret revealed the end of World War I but also warned of another more tragic World War and the spread of the errors of Communism if people did not cease offending God. The third secret was kept hidden by Sr. Lucia and not shared with the public. It was recorded in a letter preserved in the Vatican. Its contents were read to both Popes John XXIII and Paul VI but not revealed to the public until May 13, 2000, at the beatification ceremony for Blessed Francisco and Jacinto Marto. The secret felt by many to reveal the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.

Years later in 1929, Lucia, now a Religious Sister in a Dorothean convent in Spain received a vision of the Most Holy Trinity and Our Lady. In the vision the Blessed Mother instructed the Holy Father to make a consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. For a number of reasons this was not able to be accomplished until March 25, 1984, three years after an assassination attempt on the life of Pope St. John Paul II. That attempt occurred on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima and John Paul attributed his survival to the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima. The Soviet Union dissolved on December 25, 1991.

Sr. Lucia also received a vision of the Holy Virgin and the Christ Child on December 10, 1925. In that vision the Blessed Mother promised to, “assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess their sins, receive holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”

To celebrate the Centenary of the apparitions at Fatima, I’d like to plan to celebrate the First Saturday Devotions on each of the first Saturdays of the months of May-October. Plan to commemorate the Fatima Centennial by renewing or beginning your own devotion to praying a daily Rosary. It protected Pope John Paul II from the assassin’s attack. It brought down Communist Russia. It can still have a great impact on our lives and the world. Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for us.