Catholic Hotdish

Matt Weber is a single, twenty-something guy who isn’t shy about being Catholic.

Weber frankly doesn’t seem shy about much. He bares a lot about himself in a just-out, lower-case titled paperback,  ”fearing the stigmata,” which is billed by Loyola Press as “Humorously Holy Stories of a Young Catholic’s Search for a Culturally Relevant Faith.” There’s a lot of truth in that.

In a bit of a reversal of the usual routine in which a popular book is made into a movie or a TV series, “fearing the stigmata” can be accused of being a TV show that’s been made into a book.

The TV  piece — “A Word With Weber” — is a two-minute segment that runs every week on CatholicTV.com, and two minutes is just about how long it takes to read a chapter in the book.

The contents are somewhat similar, too. Every chapter starts with an off-beat story or memory, produces at least a giggle and usually several, and ends with a connection to Weber’s faith life or spiritual journey — and maybe, just maybe — to yours and mine.

Funny and faith go together fabulously

Weber writes about his mom asking at the post office for “Madonna” stamps at Christmas time and being told that there is yet to be a stamp issued that honors the pop singer.

He writes about playing balloon-volleyball with nuns, dressing up as Zak the Yak for a reading encouragement program, about liking Cheez Balls, about appreciating Mass, about his observations after years of watching the collection basket being passed, and about stopping after work to pray before a statue of Mary at a busy intersection.

He snitches on himself about the time he received Holy Communion and then had to play the harmonica — yes, the harmonica — as he accompanied the choir for the communion hymn. It’s only slightly irreverent. Weber, of course, being a good Catholic gentleman, had the sense of preface the story about being the harmonica player at church by noting: “If you have strict notions about church music — pre-Vatican Two-era — and you just fainted, I apologize.”

Since a regular workout seems important to his generation, Weber is right on the target audience with his wish that “people could look to religion or church the same way they look to a gym.” A priest is like a person trainer, he writes, and the pews and kneelers like Nautilus equipment: “At a gym, it’s health. At a church, it’s spiritual health.  A soul is nourished with community and Christ, and we don’t even have to break a sweat.”

He sneaks in advice for older Catholics that “young adult Catholics want just a little nod, a little recognition that they are on the Catholic team, too.”

And he has some advice for his own media-obsessed generation: While he’s all for You-Tube and Facebook, some of life’s events are better savored by “soaking in the moment without the worry of technologically capturing it.” I love his introspection: “Am I experiencing life in order to write about, and is something lost in the attempt to communicate the moment?”

Telling it like he is

What readers will most appreciate is Weber’s unabashed honesty. As do many of us today — not just twenty-somethings — he struggles with, in his words, “the overall challenge of trying to be a good Catholic. . . . The real problem lies in knowing what voices to listen to.”

And a Weber take-away? ” Be a good Catholic in whatever way you can.”

The book is funny, filled with the self-deprecating kind of humor that SiriusXM’s Lino Rulli, aka “The Catholic Guy.” brings to his afternoon radio show.

After you read “fearing the stigmata,” or maybe even before, you really need to check out “A Word With Weber” on http://www.CatholicTV.com. There’s a typical segment here. See one and you’ll want to watch several. Just Google Matt Weber CatholicTV.

Check out the book on the Loyola Press site. But before you click over to one of those sites, read just one more paragraph — after this one, I mean. It’s the most clever writing in the book, and it comes as Weber begins a chapter by repeating a nugget of wisdom an Irish seatmate shared on a flight from Dublin to Boston: “Matty, me boy, let me tell you something about love. It is the itch around the heart that you just can’t scratch.” Weber follows by writing:

“Perhaps this is a common phrase in Ireland, or maybe she made it up. In my younger years, I never really thought too much about love. I knew that love was patient and kind, a type of story, all we need, in the time of cholera, cannot be bought, and the name of a shack. I had heard that C.S. Lewis identified four kinds of love. The Greeks wrote about it. And Paul, the apostle, was pretty sure it bears all things, believes all, hopes all things, and endures all things.”

I wish I’d written that.

My mom on her prom day.

I had a big meeting last Thursday night. About 100 Respect Life representatives from the parishes showed up.
Two women from my home town were present. One woman was a friend of my mothers. My mother passed away last year and this woman’s daughter was a friend of my sister who died of cancer at 18.
She came up to me after the meeting and told me how proud my mom and sister would be of me. She said that they were in heaven smiling.
Being that I was greeting everyone as they left after the meeting,  I hadn’t let it sink into my head what she had said to me.

I thought of it this morning at Mass, it made me cry.

The people we love who have died are especially close to us during the Eucharist.

St. Augustine (354 – 430) said:

Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church, which even now is the Kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.

It isn’t unusual to feel closer to our loved ones during the Mass.  They are in fact with us.   Right there with us!  We are so lucky as Catholics to believe this.  Even if it is a teaching that is hard to put our heads around.

I will leave the explanation of this teaching to the theologians, but I will faithfully believe that when I take part in the body of Christ, that all those that I love, who love me… are with me as part of the celebration of the Mass.

Listen to the words during the Mass.  We enter into this heavenly banquet with ALL of the saints and angels.

I have to remember this as I attend Mass and remember to say hi to Mom!

Who do you say hi to at Mass?

Before you jump into the deep end of home schooling your child or children — and even if you’re already in the water — make sure you pick up Pam Patnode’s new book on the subject.

Patnode’s been in the pool — and her “5 Steps toSuccessful Home Schooling” will help you keep afloat.

She shares what she’s learned in providing a home-based education to her own family, and even better applies to home schooling advice from other walks of life – business world best practices, for example — that seem to fit naturally to home schooling, too.

Best of all, Patnode’s work 150-page paperback is subtitled “How to Add Faith and focus to Your Home Education Program,” and although those of other faiths will find her advice useful, the parishioner at Holy Name of Jesus in Medina, MN, acknowledges that Catholics are the target audience.

Maybe that’s obvious from Patnode’s first step: Pray.

And she’s honest enough to point out that, if you decide to home school, you’ll need to pray. She writes, “Home schooling your children will likely bring you to your knees more often than few other things in life.”

She offers good suggestions and resources for each of the steps. While some of these are relatively recently developed, others are time-tested.

The encouragement to read good literature — classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Giving Tree” and “The Secret Garden” — has been good advice for centuries.

The suggestion to use the coming Sunday’s Scripture readings as prayer with children harkens back more than half a century to “Our Children’s Year of Grace,” a widely used pamphlet written in 1943 by St. Paulite Therese Mueller, one of the first women’s voices in the Liturgical Movement.

Here are Patnode’s five steps for faith-based home schooling:

Step 1: Pray!

• Pray alone, then pray with others. Both are important!
• Pray first. Start each day in prayer.
• Pray often. Consider times throughout the day when you can add prayer. Allow God to lead.

Step 2: Establish your mission

• Ask the right questions!
• Write a mission statement that defines your goals for home education.
• Create a home education plan. Determine strategies and tactics to achieve your goals.
• Review your plan regularly. Adjust according to specific needs of each child.

Step 3: Read quality literature

• Believe in the value of reading.
• Choose quality reading material.
• Establish good reading habits.

1. Model this behavior by reading yourself every day.
2. Read aloud to your children and/or schedule independent reading time.
3. Make reading as enjoyable as possible
4. Limit screen time.

• Seek out help and/or resources for the struggling reader.

Step 4: Get organized!

• Organize your priorities first!

1. God
2. Spouse
3. Children
4. Work

• Discern the number of regular activities and commitments in which you and your children are involved.
• Schedule your daily routine.
• Keep home school materials (in the area in which they are used) orderly.

Step 5: Find support

• The support of your spouse is very important.
• Consider joining a local home school support group or participating in or creating home school clubs, classes, or activities with your children.
• Know where to find legal support if needed.
• Attend home school conferences whenever possible.
• Ensure that your kids connect with other home schooled children.
• Take advantage of available resources for home schooling children with special needs.

Source: “5 Steps to Successful Home Schooling.” Philomena Press, Minneapolis.

I walked into the Ascension School building in north Minneapolis this afternoon as the heat index soared well above 100 degrees.

As I waited in the hallway, principal Dorwatha Woods poked her head out of her office and gave me a warm greeting.

Once again, I was there to make a wild game donation. But, I was going to get something meaningful in return – smoked wild turkey. Yum!

Several weeks ago, she had accidentally dialed me and I happened to mention during our conversation that I have a bunch of wild turkey in the freezer. She replied that she has a smoker and she knows how to use it.

What a match! My friend, Steve Huettl, had some extra turkey he wanted to give away, so I took it off his hands and gave it to Dorwatha for smoking. When she described the process of smoking it in her charcoal smoker, I was getting hungry right then and there.

Of course, it’s nice to get something back, but that’s not why I bring wild game to her. She prepares it for poor and underprivileged folks, of which there are many in north Minneapolis. That’s something I believe in, and it takes very little prodding to put together a care package for her.

I added a few packages of venison to the donation, plus two turkey legs from the bird my son, Joe, took in Montana. So, it was a nice selection of wild game for her, and I’ll be counting the days until I get smoked wild turkey. I’ve never had smoked turkey before, so it will be fun to try.

After depositing the bag full of frozen game on her office table, we sat down and started talking about life, as we always do. I couldn’t help but think of her in the wake of the shooting death of 5-year-old Nizzel George not far away from her school on June 26, as he slept on his grandmother’s couch.

I know that this type of tragedy tears at Dorwatha’s heart, not just because of its proximity to her school, but because caring for children is her passion.

Sadly, this shooting is one of many to take place in her school’s neighborhood during the 25-plus years she has been at the helm at Ascension School. Thankfully, she – and her school – is a beacon of light in an area shrouded by the darkness of violence.

Amidst the crime, she marches – and prays – on. More than 200 children are safe within her school’s walls, even though she often invites the very thugs who perpetrate street violence into her building.

“I am determined to make a difference in this neighborhood,” Dorwatha proudly proclaims, adding that she is afraid of no one, even when police issue warnings that people should not be alone in a parking lot.

She scoffs at such alerts, saying “I’ve been going out alone for millions of years.”

It is not so much a statement of age, but of experience. What else would you expect from a woman who once walked across the street and told a group of young men to clean up the drug paraphernalia in the yard so the school children would not see it while looking out their classroom windows?

There is no fear in Dorwartha, but lots of fight left. And, make no mistake, she will not rest while kids are dying in her school’s neighborhood. Unlike many others who see such violence regularly, she has not grown cynical.

Far from it. She continues to open her arms wide and offer a warm smile to every visitor a warm, even those who have been in jail, or will be on their way there soon. She sees value in every person, saying over and over that all people are God’s children and have value.

I’m happy and proud to say I am on her good side, though the stories she tells indicate that visits to her office aren’t as scary as students might think.

In other words, she’s as tough as nails, but with a heart of gold.

And, I can’t wait to be called to this principal’s office for some smoked wild turkey!

As my wife Julie and I drove westward on Highway 44 toward the southeastern Minnesota town of Mabel, we saw a most unfamiliar sight on this back-c0untry road – a black, horse-drawn buggy.

We were in Amish country. After slowing down and circling widely around the buggy, we continued on our way to St. Olaf Catholic Church for 10 a.m. Mass.

The liturgy celebrated by the parish’s new pastor, Father Shawn Haremza, was a nice way to cap our 15th wedding anniversary celebration. It began with a nice drive down Highway 52 toward Lanesboro the day before. We stayed at a very nice bed and breakfast in Harmony, just about 10 miles from Lanesboro, called the Selvig House. It is owned by Carol and Ralph Beastrom, who not only are gracious hosts, but fabulous cooks!

Our appearance on their front doorstep was an answer to prayer. On Friday, Julie had been doing research on the Lanesboro area and was interested in spending the weekend there. But, most of the B&Bs in town were booked. By the time I left in the evening to pick up our daughter Claire from a friend’s house in Apple Valley, Julie was discouraged about her search for lodging.

So, I said a simple prayer as I drove southward on 35E: “Lord, you can make something out of nothing. Please help Julie and I find a nice place to stay.”

On the way down, I stopped at an outdoor archery range for some practice with my bow. Then, about 9 p.m., I headed to Apple Valley. I got to talking about our weekend plans with the parents of Claire’s friend, who perked up when I mentioned Lanesboro.

“That’s where we went for our honeymoon!” the mom replied. She said she and her husband stayed at the Selvig and really enjoyed it. The town of Harmony is quieter than Lanesboro, they said, but close enough to take advantage of everything this small tourist town has to offer.

On the drive back home, I decided to call the Selvig. I figured I would get an answering machine and planned on leaving a message, hoping for a call back on Saturday morning. Instead, Carol picked up and said they had vacancies.

In fact, all four of the rooms were open. She said we could come down and look at them, then pick the one we liked.

Praise God! What an answer to prayer. And, this fit in perfectly with Sunday’s Gospel passage from Mark, in which Jesus raised the daughter of a synagogue official, Jairus, from the dead. His words to Jairus were, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”

Sometimes, it is so simple. Just bring our requests to the Lord and believe. Father Haremza, who originally is from the Twin Cities, echoed that sentiment in his homily, exhorting those inside the small church to act on Jesus’ words.

For us, the weekend seemed to be about simplicity – the landscape, the small towns, and, especially, the Amish lifestyle.

We found that both appealing and refreshing. There are a number of Amish tours in the area, and we took one out of Harmony. The guide got into our van and we made a loop just east of town. We visited a number of farms and got to talk to some Amish folks. Unfortunately, they do not allow photos of themselves to be taken, so I had to leave my camera in the van for most of the tour, which was painful.

But, we got to visit two different farms where furniture is made and sold. The craftsmanship was remarkable – and each piece was made of 100 percent, natural wood. The Amish find trees locally, have them cut down and brought to an Amish sawmill, where planks are cut and kiln dried.

After seeing so much beautiful furniture, I couldn’t help but dream of buying some. For about $1,500, you can have a gorgeous red oak dining room table.

For sure, the way to get the best price is to buy directly from the Amish. There are stores that sell their stuff, but there is some hefty markup involved.

I think it would be fun to go down again and do some serious furntiture shopping. Perhaps, in the fall, we can drive there to see the colors change, then take home a table or dresser.

I wonder: Do the Amish sell scratch-and-dent furniture?

As I took my 3-mile walk last night, the sirens I heard as I neared Snelling Avenue brought my thoughts to Colorado Springs and the raging wildfires that have claimed one life and more than 300 homes.

My youngest brother Pat lives there with his wife Kara and four daughters, the youngest of whom is recovering from open heart surgery. As I turned around on Snelling to walk back home, I said a prayer for them. This morning, I followed up with a phone call to Pat, who assured me everything was OK for him, Kara and the girls.

That was nice to hear. I was able to respond with some good news of my own: I won two first-place awards at the annual Catholic Press Association convention, which took place last week in Indianapolis. The highlight is the awards banquet on Friday night. This is only the third time in 16 years I have made it to the convention, so it was nice to be able to make it this year.

Believe it or not, both of my firsts were in writing categories – best feature story and best sports story. The feature was about the Gross family and the loss of Michael and Anne’s teenage daughter, Teresa, to suicide. The other was a sports story about former NFL (and Vikings) quarterback Brooks Bollinger, who took over as head football coach at Hill-Murray High School in Maplewood.

I know it may come as a surprise to some folks that I won two writing awards, but I actually have been a writer longer than I have been a photographer. I will continue doing both in my new role as senior content specialist in the archdiocese communications department, which officially begins next week. I enjoy my role of telling stories with words and pictures, and I’m very thankful that it will continue. May God continue to bless my work – and keep my brother and his family safe in Colorado Springs!

Unforgettable Monsignor Greg Schaffer

After presiding at the early-evening Mass, the big, white-haired American priest walked toward the big doorway at the side of the 400-year-old Church of San Lucas Church, greeting his people along the way.

It was a lot like watching John Paul II in action.

He’d shake hands.

When he’d stop to talk with someone he’d put a hand on their shoulder.

He’d wave with an open-handed gesture to make a point.

That was the Monsignor Gregory T. Schaffer I saw pastoring some 15 years ago in San Lucas Toliman in the Central Highlands of Guatemala.

“I really love the liturgies here,” he told me as we spoke outside the ancient church in the town 5,000 feet above sea level. “It’s informal, but simple and beautiful.”

Back in 1997, the man his parishioners called “Padre Gregorio” had been their pastor for 34 years already. He’d go on to minister to the people of San Lucas for another 14 years before coming back to Minnesota. A terrible skin cancer finally took him May 24 at the age of 78.

If he’s not a candidate for sainthood, none of us are.

 One busy missionary

Although he’d been born in St. Paul and trained at the St. Paul Seminary, in 1960 young Gregory Schaffer was ordained a priest of the new Diocese of New Ulm, the nation’s most rural diocese, one that was carved out of the southwestern portion of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

He had only been a priest for three years when he took the assignment to go to Guatemala as a missionary.

A number of dioceses in the United States had taken to heart Pope Paul VI’s suggestion that relatively vocation-rich countries share their priests with countries where vocations were few. (It’s why our own archdiocese continues to have a presence in Ciudad Guyana in Venezuela, where the pastor is also named Gregory Schaffer. It’s not a coincidence.)

The year was 1963 when Father Schaffer began to minister in Guatemala.

By the time I got there in 1997 the Church of San Lucas had accomplished much and had more projects underway than the busiest suburban parish you can name.

• Next to the church was a library/dining hall.
• Attached was the parish center, where coffee beans raised by 170 families were bagged before being sent for sale in the United States.
• Across the courtyard was the parish medical clinic.
• A few blocks away was the dental clinic and eye clinic, which was being expanded to be a full-service clinic with 60 beds.
• Up one hillside a parish crew was putting in a water tank, the first step in building a new “colonia” or neighborhood for 56 families. The construction crew built 16 new homes a year and always had three under construction.
• There were parish apprentice programs for the needed trades, for carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians and mechanics.
• At the south end of town the parish had an experimental farm.
• Drawing international attention was a parish tree reforestation project.
• Of course there was a parish pre-school and grade-school.
• And all the sacramental prep programs.

Weekday mornings I watched Monsignor Schaffer lean against a wall in the dining hall and simply observe as the male Guatemalan leaders of the parish – the project managers for all those programs – planned the day’s work, updated one another to learn when the skills of their crews would be needed, and told Padre Gregorio where they could use some help from the volunteers he was always hosting.

Each afternoon he’d listen in again as the women of the parish met to discuss the programs they were working on.

After 34 years of organizing and building up indigenous leaders from among the Mayans, the pastor didn’t need to say much at these meetings.

When he did the talking was when he was in front of groups – lots from Minnesota – who came down to volunteer at San Lucas. Marker in hand he’d explain the socio-political situation of the place they’d come to, writing on a white board to explain what he taught as “the process of poverty” that his parishioners were living.

 A teacher at heart

Two volcanoes dominate the geography of this town of 25,000 on the shore of Lake Atitlan, and a volcano was the priest’s favorite image to use to explain Guatemala to outsiders.

He’d draw the familiar triangular form, then add a line across it fairly near the top.

“The top of the volcano is small, held up by a great big body,” he’d start out.

“The country is run by 18 to 22 extended families, people who live the good life, and 94 percent of the land in Guatemala is in the hands of 7 percent of the population.”

Monsignor Schaffer would draw another line somewhere around the center of his volcano, explaining that was the military and the middle class.

“The bottom of the volcano, the base holding it up, is the 84 percent of the population that are people living in the process of poverty.”

The lectures to his guests explained that industrialized economies needed raw material, cheap labor and markets to sell their goods and services, and that was how the poorest Guatemalans were being used.

At the base of the volcano, he explained:

• 54% are unemployed.
• 84% who do work make less than the daily requirement to provide for their families.
• 70% are illiterate.
• 46% lack access to health care.
• 51% of all children die before the age of five.

“A volcano is an explosive situation,” Monsignor Schaffer explained. “It may not be erupting now, but it certainly has the potential to erupt.”

 Literacy and land

The priest tapped fund-raising sources in New Ulm, in the Twin Cities and elsewhere to address the issues parishioners brought to him. When he’d have groups of Norte Americanos come down, it wasn’t just to be lectured to but to work side-by-side on projects with Guatemalans. His idea was to put volunteers into situations where they can appreciate the gifts of the people of this developing country.

He took pride in the fact that the people of the parish did all the decision-making, did the hiring and firing, set the salaries, planned and managed the projects.

He was justifiably proud, too, that the literacy rate in his parish was 85%.

“I can tell we’re making progress,” he said, “because the newspapers sell out every day.”

He humbly acknowledged, “We’ve met a lot of felt needs,” but claimed that the parish had made its greatest contribution in helping the people get the one thing they want most: land.

“The greatest request is one I hear on a daily basis: Help us get land,” Monsignor Schaffer said. “The people want to be farmers. They want to work the land with a hoe and a machete, and they are very good at it.

“We’ve been able to help 3,000 families get about three acres of land apiece. They plant corn and beans on two acres and then coffee on the other as a cash crop.”

 Reaping what he sowed

Monsignor Schaffer, however, planted a few things himself.

One was a missionary spirit in his namesake nephew, Father Gregory J. Schaffer, a priest of the archdiocese who is pastor of Jesucristo Resuscitado parish, the mission of the archdiocese in San Felix, Venezuela. Visits to his uncle’s mission in Guatemala played no small part in the younger priests’ own vocation. Between college and the seminary younger Greg spent two years volunteering at San Lucas and visited the mission about a dozen times.

He’s been a missionary himself in Venezuela now for 15 years.

Monsignor Schaffer also planted concern for the people of another culture and country in the hearts not just of Catholics in the New Ulm Diocese but with the thousands – many college students – who visited and worked at San Lucas Toliman at his invitation.

Finally, what Monsignor Schaffer planted were some invaluable gifts in the people he served for those 48 years: Confidence. A sense of self-worth, so every person in town knew they were created in the image and likeness of God. And hope. Hope that there is a way out of living in the process of poverty.

Sainthood credentials?

*     *     *

After a funeral Mass in New Ulm’s Cathedral and another here in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Monsignor Schaffer’s body was flown to Guatemala for a final funeral Mass and burial in the cemetery at San Lucas Toliman.

 Learn more about the Diocese of New Ulm’s mission in Guatemala at http://www.dnu.org/service/sanlucas.html.

Corpus Christi parish in Roseville used elements of the Archdiocesan Stewardship Toolkit last year when it was first introduced.

“The toolkit was helpful in setting up our ministry fair,” said Tom Dohm, who is a member of the Corpus Christi parish pastoral council as well as its stewardship committee. “But more than that it helped us with the broader stewardship effort in our parish.”

Dohm was one of more than 300 parish leaders – clergy and mostly lay – who attended one of five workshops intended to present the new tools that have been added to the toolkit in this its second year. The workshops were spread geographically across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis the first full week of June.

Along with presenting the new elements of the toolkit, the workshops offered parish leaders time to share challenges and ideas with others engaged in parish stewardship initiatives and to suggest other needs that might be addressed in the toolkit in the future.

At each workshop Michael Halloran, archdiocesan director of development and stewardship, briefly ran through the elements new to the toolkit:

• A chapter on Shared Ministry;
• More scriptural references to stewardship;
• A chapter on Planned Giving;
• More samples of commitment forms, pastor talks about stewardship, and,
• A section to facilitate the segmenting of parish lists through the Logos software system for more effective annual stewardship renewal efforts.

The toolkit is available both in three-ring binder form and on http://www.archspm.org, and Halloran invited parish leaders to browse through the updated version to see what’s available now to see what they may want to adapt for their own parish stewardship initiatives.

 Added time and talent pieces

At the workshops Mary Kennedy and Sally Carlson-Bancroft described the additions to the toolkit aimed at supporting approaches to parish volunteerism.

Kennedy, coordinator of stewardship at Pax Christi in Eden Prairie and chair of the archdiocesan Stewardship Committee, pointed out that in its first year the toolkit’s emphasis was on the more financial aspects of the parish annual stewardship renewal effort.

“This year we collaborated with the Shared Ministry Association in the archdiocese to work on the time and talent part,” Kennedy said.

Carlson-Bancroft, coordinator of both volunteer support and new member welcome at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, noted the importance of encouraging all aspects of a giving community, not simply financial stewardship.

“So much of our life is about how we steward our time and talent as well as our treasure,” she noted.

The new toolkit chapter on Shared Ministry includes a baker’s dozen ways to link parishioners’ gifts with ministry opportunities and samples of ways to invite people into parish ministry.

 More for Logos users,  new Planned Giving section

Mike Laughery introduced the new segment of the toolkit that shows the step-by-step process to segment donor lists using Logos, a process he used as business administrator at St. Michael in Prior Lake, and Pam Burke, the Logos consultant to the archdiocese, walked attendees through a sample of the possibilities the software affords for better stewardship results.

Finally, Bill Marsella of the Catholic Community Foundation offered a glimpse at the new chapter on Planned Giving and the reasoning behind adding it to the toolkit.

The chapter includes sample letters, suggested resources and steps for building an endowment.

During a roundtable discussion with parish leaders from St. Patrick in Oak Grove, Corpus Christi’s Dohm said he liked the new things that have been added to the toolkit.

“I like the strength-finder idea, and maybe working on the endowment, too,” he said.

Mark Flynn from St. Patrick said his parish began using the new stewardship logo from the toolkit last year, and is looking forward to the new portions on Shared Ministry.

“We need help with volunteer development,” Flynn said, “re-generation of volunteers. We need to work on how to ask for volunteers.”

Ideas for future additions to the toolkit that surfaced at that one table included stewardship education for children, family activities with a stewardship focus and education pieces on the benefits of electronic giving.

Roger Williams is my newest hero.

Yes, that Roger Williams, the one you remember from elementary school history class, the Puritan preacher banished from Massachusetts who went on to found a colony of his own, Rhode Island.

A book published this year – “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty” – goes way past those few paragraphs that your American history course spared.

As politics of our day have breathed life into the topic of religious freedom and the role of the church in civic life, learning more about Williams’ struggles against the all-powerful leaders of his day is timely.

Knowing more about the religious oppression that the Puritans sought to escape, knowing more about how the Puritans themselves oppressed people in the name of religion, knowing more about the deep-seated religiosity of the United States, and knowing more about the hatred of Catholics that lingers still in the United States, all that is even more valuable.

 Prejudice came across the sea

Author John M. Barry takes readers back to 16^th century Europe to add perspective to Roger Williams’ life and works. In England and France back then, Catholics were slaughtering Protestants, and Protestants were slaughtering Catholics. They would do so for centuries, even up to the 20^th.

The Reformation brought rule of the church together with the rule of kings and queens, linking the two in what was widely accepted as “the divine right of kings,” another flashback to grade school history.

Barry does a thorough job – maybe more than necessary – documenting the historical background so readers know who the Puritans are and why they fled England for the colonies. The history of the colonists once on North American soil seems more pertinent, and Barry covers the waterfront on that era.

There is an incredible amount of I-never-knew-thats in these 395 pages. For instance, did you know:

• Virtually every government in England and New England fined people who didn’t attend worship – and that it was a revenue stream for those governments?
• The colonists who arrived with the Massachusetts Bay Company worried that Catholic powers might attack them?
• The English saw the need to colonize in North America as a bulwark against the further spread of Catholicism because of the Spanish and French incursions in the hemisphere?
• If the Puritan church in Massachusetts excommunicated a person, no member of the colony – Puritan or not – could eat with them or even greet them on the street?
• To avoid “heathenish and idols’ names,” Massachusetts stopped using names for the days of the weeks and months of the year?

 Seeking liberty from church and state

Roger Williams sees so much of these actions and prohibitions as misuse of both power and religion. Barry describes Williams’ thinking along these lines in plain language:

“. . . he had seen enough of power. He clearly had no desire to direct other men’s lives. He had even less desire to be directed by others. To him all that mattered was that he and every other person in his plantation (Rhode Island) could worship or not worship God in whatever manner he or she desired. . . .”

“He was saying that mixing church and state corrupted the church. He was saying that when one mixes religion and politics one gets politics.”

It comes as no surprise that it was Roger Williams who is likely the first to write of the need for a “wall of separation” between church and state. Nor that Williams’ religious beliefs influenced Rhode Island to be perhaps the first government anywhere in the world to outlaw slavery.

While not all of Williams’ thinking is worthy of admiration or acceptance, his story carries a level of historic importance to us today. For me, that’s a story that is the root of a conclusion I’ve come to believe more and more holds this kernel of truth: You can’t tell Americans that HAVE TO do anything. We see it playing out in so many things today in civic life and the church – from the provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act to the new translation of the Roman Missal.

Roger Williams brought the cornerstone with him from England in the 16th century. Now in the 21^st century – 350 or so years later – U.S. citizens enjoy the freedom of worship that Williams modeled, yet how much influence religion has on civic affairs and how far government can go to impose on one’s religious beliefs, these are topics of the day just as they were in colonial times.

Photo/makelessnoise Licensed under Creative Commons

I did a search on “marriage” recently and was blessed with more than 700 million results. It didn’t surprise me that Wikipedia was on top with this definition: “a social union or legal contract between people called spouses that creates kinship.”

I thought that was vague enough to please just about everybody. The Catechism’s definition is a little more specific:

The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament. (CCC 1601)

A covenant, a sacrament—the Church not only has her own definition of marriage, she has her own language. The mainstream media doesn’t understand that language so we don’t see it in the paper, on TV or on news websites.

With this and the next few posts, I’m going to get into that language to try and discover what the Church actually teaches about marriage. I’m looking for answers in scripture and Church documents. Anywhere along the way, I’d like to know what you think–if these posts are helpful, if you have insights to share or if you have constructive criticism.

In the Beginning

After laying out the Church’s definition of marriage, my next question is, where does she say that it came from? Marriage is believed to predate recorded history in cultures around the world. Among other places, tribes in the Western Hemisphere practiced it before Europeans arrived.

In Judeo-Christian traditions, the book of Genesis records that God established marriage when He created Adam and Eve. (Gen. 1:27-28; 2:18-24 RSV) While some skeptics claim the Genesis creation story is taken from a pre-scientific Babylonian myth,  I am basing these posts on my belief that it is the Word of God and therefore truth.

Evidence of God’s work in instituting marriage appears in Genesis 1: “God created man is his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…” (Gen. 1:27-28)

Genesis 2 provides more detail:

Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him … and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man … Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:18, 22, 24)

Jesus affirms the creation story when Pharisees ask Him about the lawfulness of divorce:

Have you not read that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. (Matt.19:4-6)

The story of “the beginning” that Jesus describes differs from how many tribes in pre-Columbian America would tell it. Still, they understood God’s plan for marriage because it was part of the natural law, the foundation of many of our laws, which is known to all people.  The natural law by which those outside the Church reach this conclusion is the basis of the Church’s teaching on the institution and laws of marriage, as Pope Pius XI presents in his encyclical on Christian marriage, Casti Connubii:

… let it be repeated as an immutable and inviolable  fundamental doctrine that matrimony was not instituted or restored by man but by God; not by man were the laws made to strengthen and confirm and elevate it but by God, the Author of nature, and by Christ Our Lord by Whom nature was redeemed, and hence these laws cannot be subject to any human decrees or to any contrary pact even of the spouses themselves.

This language of the Church is strong, affirming that her teaching on marriage, as established by God, is truth which doesn’t evolve. God’s law might seem  inflexible but in reading the Genesis story again, I see His care for the newly created humanity. The last verse, Genesis 2:24, shows that human beings, created as man and woman, were created for unity and through this unity they became one flesh, which from the beginning has a character of union, according to Catholic Encyclopedia.

In looking at the origin of marriage, St. Augustine sees this bond as kinship, which might be the strongest part of Wikipedia’s definition.

Forasmuch as each man is a part of the human race, and human nature is something social, and has for a great and natural good, the power also of friendship; on this account God willed to create all men out of one, in order that they might be held in their society not only by likeness of kind, but also by bond of kindred. Therefore the first natural bond of human society is man and wife. Nor did God create these each by himself, and join them together as alien by birth: but He created the one out of the other, setting a sign also of the power of the union in the side, whence she was drawn, was formed.