Category: Pastor’s Corner

Will you take your responsibility as a Catholic seriously and invite family and friends to Mass on Easter Sunday? This week our parish-wide invitation to Easter Masses will be going out to every postal patron in the Wareham, W. Wareham, and E. Wareham zip codes. Be on the lookout for the card in your own mail and give us some feedback. The mailing is made possible by the special generosity of parishioners who donated the $3,200 the mailing will cost. Thank you to those who donated. We were still getting a few donations this past week. Any money left over will be used for future evangelization efforts.

As I have mentioned several times, the postcards just scratch the surface. To really plant the seeds of faith we need to invite lapsed Catholics and un-churched people to come to Mass with us. Even if you have invited a person in the past, invite them again. It takes more than one invitation to get most fallen away Catholics or those without a religious affiliation to summons the courage to accept your invitation. So don’t give up just because you were rejected in the past.

Evangelization doesn’t have to been done in any dramatic fashion. So much evangelization goes on in our everyday life. It is done at work, in our social circles and anywhere you have contact with friends, neighbors and acquaintances. All we have to do is be aware and take the opportunity to show that we love our Catholic faith enough to share it with others. The past several weeks I’ve been passing on some suggestions of how we can evangelize in our every day environments. One of those ways is to be aware of what is happening in the Church. A week or so ago Pope Francis commented in an interview to a German magazine on the subject of priestly celibacy. Of course the wider press took that and ran off in every direction with it. So often the secular media covers Catholic topics in very sensational ways that aren’t always accurate. Often people will come to me very confused about a Catholic issue because of poor reporting in the secular media. As good evangelizers, we should be aware of what is going in the Church, locally, nationally and internationally. We can keep up on Catholic news by subscribing to our Diocesan newspaper “The Anchor”. For national and international news go to our parish website www.stpatrickswareham.org and follow the links to very good Catholic websites like Crux or Catholic News Service. Regularly consulting such sites with accurate news coverage helps us keep abreast of Catholic happenings. We can also be a good evangelizer by reading Catholic books. If you belong to a book club, have you ever suggested reading books by Catholic authors with Catholic themes? That is a good way to get lapsed Catholics and the un-churched to start thinking about their faith. Books by G. K. Chesterton, Walker Percy, J. R. Tolkien and Graham Greene are good candidates. Reading the lives of the saints can also give us inspiration as we consider how they were evangelizers.

Maybe you can also be an evangelizer by sharing what is going on here at St. Patrick’s with the local media. Good Letters to the Editor on Catholic topics are appreciated. One of our parishioners, Jim Grady, often makes a contribution to the local press with an insightful commentary. I’d love to get some help from someone with connections with cable TV to publicize happenings here in the parish. Recently, a parishioner has come forward to be our webmaster. If you’re adept with social media, or have webmaster capabilities you could be of great use to the parish as an evangelizer willing to help us spread the gospel message.

We did it! We raised the $3,200 we needed for our Easter Evangelization Campaign. We did even better. 123 parishioners contributed $4,001 to the campaign. We have $800 for seed money for the next time or for some other evangelization effort. This week the design of the postcard that will be sent to every postal patron in the Wareham, W. Wareham and E. Wareham zip codes will have been finalized. The mailing is planned for the week of April 3-7, in plenty of time for Easter Sunday, April 16. So be on the lookout for the card when it comes in the mail. Give me your feed back after you have seen them.

Over the last couple of weeks I have written in this column that the postcards will only scratch the surface of the seedbed of faith. All of us have to be responsible for planting the seeds of faith. Who are you planning to invite to Easter Mass this year? Who among your family, friends and neighbors are you going to invite on Easter Sunday? Don’t be put off by an initial rebuff to your invitation. Surveys tell us that the average person who returned to church did so after five invitations. Now that is the mean. Half the people came after fewer than five requests. So you might be surprised at how receptive to your initiation to church a person might be. It also means that it took half the people more than five invitations before they finally came to church. So don’t give up after only one or two requests.

Two weeks ago I told you that to be an evangelizer we needed to really love and be bold about sharing our faith. Last week I told you that by simply smiling and being a happy Christian you were evangelizing. Today I want to encourage you to speak about your faith in simple ways. These ways can be as simple as saying “thank God, “I believe” or “Amen” in public. When something good that can be attributed to God’s goodness and mercy happens, don’t be shy about giving God praise. It is a little way to evangelize.

Help people who are around you know that you pray. Last week I was walking into a nursing home. It was the change of shift and workers were leaving in their cars. One woman rolled down her window and shouted a prayer request to a male co-worker. She told him that her mother was going into surgery the next day and would he pray for her. The man said he would and asked for the mother’s name. There was an example of a man who was known as a man of prayer at his workplace. I don’t know if the woman was a prayerful person too but obviously she believed in its power. If she isn’t a churchgoer, I bet she would be receptive to an invitation to church on Easter Sunday.

Don’t be afraid to mention your faith in public. Make people aware of your journey of faith. If you have had a moment when you really felt the presence of God, share it with those around you. Tomorrow when people ask you how your weekend was, maybe share an insight you got from a homily or something else that touched your heart during Mass or another experience of prayer. There are so many rich opportunities everyday to be a great evangelizer.

The Lenten Season got underway last Wednesday as we celebrated Ash Wednesday. Hopefully, all of us are beginning our efforts to put into practice the Lenten disciplines of fasting, almsgiving and prayer. During the Lenten Season, St. Patrick’s offers parishioners opportunities to help guide your living the Lenten disciplines with various parish programs.

Fasting—While it is good to “give up” certain things such as candy, meat, alcohol or some other enjoyable distraction for Lent, the real spirit of fasting comes when we recognize the need to abstain from things in our life that are hurtful to our relationship to God, others or our better selves. That would of course be sin. On Sunday, March 19, at 6:00 pm we will hold our Lenten Reconciliation Service. There will be several priests assisting Fr. Sullivan that evening so take advantage of the opportunity to celebrate reconciliation in preparation for Easter.

Almsgiving—All registered parishioners received a Lenten Letter in anticipation of the season last week. Also in the mailing was one of our Lenten folders. The folder is designed for you to put aside 50c every day of Lent for a total of $20. The proceeds of our Lenten Folders will be donated to Food for the Poor to build a house in Haiti or another poor country in Latin America. Each house costs $3,200. Over the last three years we have built a house each year. Join in this almsgiving opportunity this year. Take a look at the pictures of the families we have helped over the years. They are displayed on the poster at the front of the church.

Prayer—Put into practice the discipline of prayer by attending Daily Mass during the Lenten Season. In addition to our regular 8 am Daily Mass, we will add an evening Mass at 7 pm. On Wednesdays Deacon David Murphy will conduct a Communion Service. Also plan to attend Stations of the Cross each Friday evening of Lent at 7:30 pm.

Wednesday is Ash Wednesday the beginning of Lent. Masses for Ash Wednesday will be at 8 am, 12:05pm and 7pm. Ashes will only be distributed at the Masses. Please recall that Ash Wednesday is a day of fast and abstinence for all Catholics. To review all the rules of fast and abstinence please go to our parish website www.stpatrickswareham.org.

All registered parishioners should have received a Lenten mailing this week. The letter included a brochure entitled Lent: the Promise of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. Read the brochure and gain in your knowledge of the purposes of Lent. Also in the mailing was one of our Lenten folders. We ask you to make a donation of 50c every day of Lent for a total of $20. The proceeds of our Lenten Folders will be donated to Food for the Poor to build a house in Haiti or another poor country in Latin America. Each house cost $3,200. Over the last three years we have built a house each year. Join in this fund raiser this year. During the Lenten Season we will add an evening Mass at 7 pm. On Wednesdays Deacon David Murphy will conduct a Communion Service. Plan to attend Stations of the Cross each Friday evening of Lent at 7:30 pm.

Don’t Give Up Chocolate for Lent—Well don’t make that all you do for Lent. To make this your best Lent ever, do something that will really help you grow spiritually by joining in the spiritual offering from www.dynamiccatholic.com. Every day you will be emailed a short message to help your prayer life this Lent. Sign up today and you’ll have your best Lent ever.

 

Current events have left us all in a whirlwind lately. Many of Donald Trump’s Executive Actions since coming into office have been controversial to say the least! They have spurred much debate and protest in our world. A question often arises among clergy how to speak about controversial events and issues from the pulpit. This week I read a couple of articles about the issue. One was in America Magazine, the Jesuit Review of Faith and Culture, and the other sent to me by a parishioner, came from the Wall Street Journal.

The America Magazine article reported on an informal poll the magazine had done with readers online after the January 28-29 weekend. In light of Trump’s Executive Order barring travelers from seven predominately Moslem countries, they asked readers, “Did your parish do enough to address current events? (Remember I was on vacation that weekend.) Their informal survey found that 80% of respondents felt that their parish did not do enough to address the issue and less than 1% felt they heard too much.

Often in Catholic circles I hear people complain that they don’t hear enough about current events in homilies. They claim they wished they heard homilies address current issues more often. I’ll have to admit to being gun shy when it comes to addressing in my homilies some controversial issues from the news. My reluctance comes from the fact that our faith leaves quite a bit of room for a disparity of opinions on how best to address controversial topics. That diversity of opinion surely exists in our parish too.

Another contributing factor is what the nature of the priest’s or deacon’s homily should be. Since the Second Vatican Council, priests have been encouraged to preach homilies rather than sermons. Homilies are talks focusing on breaking open the scriptures and applying them to daily life. A sermon is more a talk on a moral topic using scripture to support it. With a homily it is often more difficult to apply the Mass readings to a current event than in a sermon that picks and chooses scripture text to illustrate the importance of a current event.

The scripture reading for the Feast of the Holy Family, a feast we didn’t get to celebrate this year, speak very clearly about the issue of refugees and the displaced. So using that scripture to address immigration issues is probably a no brainer. On other Sundays trying to make the scripture theme for the day fit a current event would be too forced. However, a reminder that the Gospel on the weekend of January 28-29 was the Beatitudes and it doesn’t take that much creativity to use it to address any current issue.

The other article I read that addressed this topic was from the Wall Street Journal. It was entitled “How to Fix the Johnson Amendment”. The Johnson Amendment was authored by former President Lyndon Johnson in 1954 when he was a Senator from Texas. Donald Trump has promised to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment. The Johnson Amendment prohibits nonprofit organizations who receive tax deductable contributions from endorsing partisan candidates for public office. Johnson wrote the amendment in 1954 not to silence religious organizations from exercising free speech but political opponents who used nonprofit political organizations to accused him of being soft on communism.

Over the years the IRS included religious organizations as being prevented from endorsing specific candidates. Since the1990s IRS enforcement has extended that prohibition to even the use of code words such as pro-life or pro-choice. Early every election year I receive a form letter from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State warning me about the provisions of the Johnson Amendment. I always find it a bit intimidating. I’m sure that is their intention.

According to Erik Stanley the author of the Wall Street Journal article which appeared in his regular House of Worship column, Mr. Trump should not be so brash in saying he will “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment. The truth is that the original purpose of the amendment, the prohibition of political expenditures or contributions by tax-exempt organizations is still a good one. He suggests that Congress instead pass The Free Speech Fairness Act that was introduced into Congress about the same time Mr. Trump made his remark. The legislation would, “get the IRS out of the speech-police business while prohibiting political expenditures or contributions by tax-exempt organizations.” He says, “It would provide a relief valve for speech by allowing all charities to speak on political issues, as long as the speech is done in the course of carrying out the groups regular activities. That would allow religious leaders to express their opinions on specific candidates and give them back their rights to free speech.” This seems to be a better solution than “totally destroying” the Johnson Amendment. It would save the good provisions and do away with the bad.

As a preacher I want to be helpful to parishioners deal with the challenge to live lives that confront the issues of our day in a Christian way. I struggle to try to be prophetic and not partisan in my homilies. I want to challenge my listeners but not completely alienate them. So, let me know what you think. Would you like to hear homilies where I address current issues more directly? Let me know I’m interested in your opinion.

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.