Catholic Hotdish

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.

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.

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.

This Mother’s Day marks one year since my mother succumbed to cancer.  I miss her and think of her often. When I think of my mom, my mind usually turns to food or the family gatherings that were surrounded by food.  Once, while in high school,  some friends stopped over to my house. Before they could leave, my mother had emptied the entire refrigerator! She would not let them leave until they ate something! In the world of food pushers, my Mom was the Godfather or should I say the Godmother! I guess mothers and food are forever linked in most of our minds.  But the food we receive from our mothers is much more than food.  Our mothers are our first teachers and the nourishment that they give to us is counted in greater terms than calories.

When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It’s also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be.

Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, 2009

Yes we have a great gift from our mothers as they teach us who we are, who we have been and who we want to be.  May is also the month of Mary and on May 31st we will celebrate the great feast day of the Visitation.  In the same way our mothers taught us – OUR mother Mary teaches us through the food of life that she brought to the table – Jesus Christ. In times of prayer we turn to mother Mary to be taught the same lesson of who we are, who we have been and who we want to be and it is through Christ, the bread of life, that these things are revealed.

When looking through our church cook book I came across one of the most beautiful stories that illustrates this connection between our mothers, food and the bread of life.  The dedication in the cookbook includes a story from Father Kevin Finnegan.  It goes:

My mother, Evie, took delight in having a day off from work so she could dote on her children and bake bread! Several loaves would be gone within minutes of getting home from school. Several months after my mom died on May 22nd,1983, my family came to a deeper appreciation of mom, the bread baker.  My sister was looking in the freezer for something to cook for dinner when she came across a loaf of her bread. She brought it into the kitchen, and one by one she was joined by my father, my brother and me. We placed the bread on a cutting board and practically watched it defrost. Then we shared it among us, recalling with great affection the devotion which our mother loved and served her family.

“They recounted what had taken place on the way and how He was made known to them in the breaking of the Bread.”  Luke 24:35

My own mother was a kolacky maker, but I will include Evie’s batter bread recipe below.

What memories of food are forever connected to your mother?  Share them in the comments section below.

EVIE’S WHITE BATTER BREAD
1 c. milk                   2 pkgs. active dry yeast
3 T. sugar                1 c. warm water
1 T. salt                    4 1/2 c. unsifted flour
2 T. margarine

Scald milk. Stir in sugar, salt and margarine. Cool to lukewarm. Dissolve yeast in warm water.  Add milk to mixture. Stir in flour (batter will be fairly stiff). Beat about 2 minutes.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 45 min. It will more than double in size. Stir batter down, beat vigorously for a minute. Turn into a well greased 9x5x4 in. loaf pan.  Bake in preheated oven at 375* for 50 min.  (Reprinted with permission from Divine Mercy Family Cookbook)

Honor your mother this Mother’s Day with food and stories about family, whether your mother is with you in this world or with the heavenly bread of life.

And this time St. Paul the Hermit faces the right way — upward in prayer

Art lovers won’t want to miss the beautiful sculpture of St. Paul the Hermit that’s on display — the right way now — at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The larger-than-life-size work of 18th century Italian artist Andrea Bergondi was acquired by the MIA nearly 40 years ago, but until this year the piece wasn’t displayed the way it is now presumed was originally intended. Credit goes to the folks at MIA for rediscovering the proper positioning and not only fixing it but being very public about the misplacement.

Read about the details here, but the short version is that, the way the piece was displayed before, it looked as if the bearded old hermit was diving off a cliff, as a wonderful display explained for several weeks. That display — now down — showcased the Bergondi work in a separate room, with the story of the statue’s restoration and realignment explained in storyboards along the walls of the room.

What the correction did was turn the statue so that the saintly one was seen to be praying upward to God — which seems more appropriate than for him to be going for a dip in a lake.

Find out more about St. Paul the Hermit here, but the back story behind the piece that comes to us from early church tradition is that St. Anthony Abbot found the body of St. Paul the Hermit frozen in prayer. That’s exactly what you’ll see today in the marble image on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Photo credits go to The Catholic Spirit’s Dave Hrbacek.

“Small Mercies: Glimpses of God in Everyday Life” is an easy reading collection of anecdotes from which Nancy Jo Sullivan has reached back and harvested the God moments.

Those are the small mercies of the title, mercies she suggests her readers take the time to share with others as part of their own lives.

You can speed through Sullivan’s newest work in less than an hour, the language is that familiar. Written at her kitchen table in St. Paul, it’s the kind of personal, real-life prose that makes you almost feel that Sullivan is sitting with you at your own kitchen table sharing the stories over a cup of coffee.

The points she makes in each of the 20 short chapters aren’t rocket science, just, well, small mercies — good things not to forget, good things to remember to do. They touch on topics like unconditional acceptance, remembering one’s dreams, dealing with the loss of a marriage and a child, fear of the future, taking risks, heartache and, of course, hope.

A divorced Catholic, the mother of three daughters, one a Down’s Syndrome girl who lived to only 23, Sullivan senses God touching her life almost at every turn. She puts it this way:

“The most precious revelations of God’s love are often hidden in the ordinary moments that shape our days….We can find God’s small mercies in the mundane conversations we share at the kitchen table or in the unexpected chats we have with strangers. When we encourage a coworkers, support a friend, or receive the care of a loved one, God’s mercies shine brightly, like votive candles.”

More than a memoir

Women ”of a certain age,” as they say, may best appreciate the voice that 50-something Sullivan writes from, that of an woman looking back at her motherhood years yet looking forward to being more than an empty nester, finding the courage to see herself as more than a wife and mother, grieving yet coping.

She has a great line there. After cleaning out photos of her grown children and filling 10 scrapbooks, she writes about finally being ready to move on. Her own future, as she put it, is “an empty scrapbook waiting to be filled.”

You’ll find gems of that kind of turn-of-phrase sprinkled throughout “Small Mercies.” It’s inspiring writing.

At times Sullivan seems to reach a bit to connect an anecdote with a spiritual lesson, but it’s a minor fault if a fault at that. If anything it’s a reminder to readers to look for God in all things. As Sullivan writes, “God is always closer than we think.”

At end of each chapter Sullivan uses the framework of prayer, fasting and almsgiving to invite reflection and offer thoughts and ideas for how readers, too, can share God’s small mercies and put them into practice for the next chapters in their own lives. For this Loyola Press 108-page paperback, it’s just the right, helpful touch.

WARNING – This may be a PG 13 Blog post.

It seems everybody is talking about contraception these days.   It used to be impolite to speak about sex in public and if you spoke to anyone about contraception, it would be only your most intimate friends. Now it has become the subject of coffee clutches, water coolers, the United States Congress and homilies!

If you haven’t heard about the HHS Mandate click HERE for a primer.

Hurray – it is about time we get this hush-hush topic out in the open and because I love to talk about my faith, I welcome the opportunity to talk about the church’s teachings on just about anything.

The question I get most often from friends, family and strangers is: ” The Bishops are just plain ignorant when it comes to contraception.  Don’t they know that 98% of women in their churches are using contraception? The church should change their thinking on this!”

I first ask them to look into that statistic a little further – how was the information taken?  Does it mean that one time a Catholic woman used contraception once? It certainly doesn’t mean that 98% of the women in the pews are currently contracepting.  – I would maybe need to confirm that with the 80 year old blue haired lady sitting in the front pew – but I am pretty sure she is not.

My reply to the the question is: “Of course the bishops know that a percentage of Catholics are contracepting.  Maybe even 98%.  But 100% of us have gossiped, Probably 99% of us have lied.  How many of us have stolen? Maybe we should change those sins too.  If we are going to change what is considered a sin based on how popular it is – I vote for changing gossip too.  I really like to gossip. It is my favorite sin – lets change it so I can always do it and not have to feel guilty or attempt to change my behavior.”

The thing is – the church knows that we are prone to sin and that is why we have the church’s teachings to rely on to help us hold to doing what is good for us instead of doing what ever feels good at the moment. Yup – The bishops know human nature or rightly Jesus knows it.

But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well. (John 2:24-25)

Even though it feels good – gossiping is not good for me or good for my community. (neither is gluttony but since I write about food sometimes we won’t go into that one just yet)  Likewise, sex without responsibility is not good for us, our community or society as a whole.  The years since the sexual revolution has seen the downfall of marriage, the family and parenting. Sex before marriage has not been a great thing for our society.  Contraception makes it easier to just do what we want without consequences. The church, like a good parent, only wants what is good for us.

What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?

Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? (Luke 11:11-12)

Regardless what congress has to say on this subject – the Catholic church will not be handing us (or more likely paying for) a scorpion.

I have spoken to women who have used contraception before marriage or  are possibly in a difficult marriage situation who say to me that they just can’t use Natural Family Planning.  It takes two to tango you know. NFP requires self control – for both parties.  I ask them to read Blessed John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and then ask them to tell me that it is not a beautiful teaching. It is important to know the value of what you are throwing away.  You can’t say it is not beautiful, because it IS a beautiful teaching and in a perfect world we all would be living it ALL of the time.  Instead, people want the church to change it’s thinking from this beautiful teaching and recognize human nature and let us do what we want instead of holding us to a higher standard.

And – maybe like myself and my favorite sins – some people can’t follow this teaching successfully.  Or maybe they can’t YET.

That brings us to the real beauty of our church.  Because Jesus knows human nature – he gave us this beautiful gift.  The sacrament of confession.  As Mother Theresa said “We are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful.”

So once a month or so – I head into confession and confess many of the same sins over and over again. It occasionally seems futile, but the grace of that sacrament produces a miracle. Little by little – my behavior changes (I hope) to comply more and more to God’s will for me.  And maybe someday – in a perfect world – I will be living it all of the time.

I think they call that place Heaven…

COMMENTARY

What’s all the fuss about “The Hunger Games” trilogy?

There’s not much not to like about the books: love story, drama, humor, revolution, friendship, family, patriotism, murder, mystery, sci-fi, war, military strategy, mind games.

No religion, outwardly at least. But definitely moral choices. The idea of people being willing to sacrifice their lives to save others, that has a familiar ring to it.

Thousands of young people reading the Suzanne Collins series have adults following suit, and the movie is a box office blockbuster.

Personally I wonder, has this tour de force come out in time?

Is this our future?

Can a make-believe story that shows dramatically a society in which a very few are extremely well-off and the rest of a nation an underclass wake up its readers to what’s happening in the United States this very day?

Can reading this fiction penetrate enough American brains so that we see the reality of our own 2012 culture, one in which one life is more valued than another? One in which the middle-class is not just shrinking but being hammered into submission?

Yes, “The Hunger Games” is about the evil of war and the horror of taking the life of another. The very thought of children killing other children is abhorent — as is the killing of any child, any human being at any stage (even in its mother’s womb). And children killing children as a form of entertainment for a privileged upper class doubly so.

But readers (and moviegoers) have to be able to equate the context of this futuristic, post-apocalyptic trilogy to life right now, and then to life as it very well could be in the years ahead.

Medicine, food, rights for just a few?

In “The Hunger Games,” the privileged in the Capitol district have incredibly advanced health care, science-fiction type of treatments, while in backwater District 12 where heroine Katniss lives, her mother treats the sick and wounded on her kitchen table with homemade remedies.

Some Christians today want to destroy the small steps the United States has taken to provide health care for those who aren’t fortunate enough to work for companies that have insurance plans.  As one of the books’ characters applies moss to a wound to slow bleeding, I recalled a benefit a corporate CEO received upon retirement: His health care paid for the rest of his life. Like with the millions this man was making every year he hadn’t stashed away enough to pay for his own health care!

In “The Hunger Games” there are fences around each of the districts of the fictional country of Panem, and those who dare to illegally cross a border in search of food are punished or killed. It is impossible for a thinking person not to picture Mexican workers willing to risk their lives to sneak over, under and around U.S. borders in search of work so they can eat and feed their families.

Is it right and good and just for Katniss to cross the border to help her mother and sister survive but not right and good and just for Juan and Juanita to do the same?

When some Mexicans enter the United States they do so illegally.  Absolutely.

But tell me you can read “The Hunger Games” and not hope that Katniss doesn’t get caught on the wrong side of the fence.

You may or may not agree with the Catholic bishops of this country as they protest forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraceptives and sterilization in their employees’ health insurance policies because it is a violation of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. But you were on the side of Katniss, Peeta and Gale as they struggled to overcome the conscience-compromising policies of a powerful fictional government, weren’t you?

Time to ask ourselves hard questions

Here’s a good question to ask after reading or viewing “The Hunger Games”: What’s happening in my world that troubles my conscience but that I feel I can’t do anything about?

And how about a few more questions. We learn through authoritative studies about the growing gap between the rich and the poor. When we read “The Hunger Games” or see the film, it isn’t a reach to see how that kind of society of haves and have-nots is happening in our day. What might it take for America’s middle class to dissolve to the point that those with decent salaries and benefits could become like the underclass in Ms. Collins’ fictional world?

Would it take a so-called “right-to-work” act?

Maybe legislating collective bargaining rights out of existence?

Dissolving the nation’s health care act?

Sending good-paying jobs overseas where people are willing to work for half the salary so that a corporate CEO can retire with health care paid for life?

We see and hear the stories everyday about people who lost their jobs, lost their homes. They used to donate food to the food shelf; now they feed their families thanks to those same food shelves.

Talk about hunger games.

Bob Zyskowski is The Catholic Spirit’s associate publisher / general manager.

We walk into church and the first thing we do is reach our fingers into the Holy Water fount.

Why?

Even better questions are, what benefit are we supposed to be getting, and, what are we supposed to be thinking about when we do it?

Johan van Parys, a Minneapolis liturgist, has the answers to those questions and more.

The director of liturgy and the sacred arts at the Basilica of St. Mary, he’s packaged them nicely in 150 reader-friendly pages in “Symbols That Surround Us: Faithful Reflections.” (Liguori Publications, $16.99)

Folks who haven’t had any exposure to things Catholic will find explanations for everything from church architecture to garb, from gestures to sacraments. But if it’s been some good while since Sister Mary Whats-her-name taught us that blessing ourselves with Holy Water upon entering church is a reminder of our baptismal vows, that we are members of Christ’s church, that we’re entering a holy place, a different atmosphere than the rest of the world, then you’ll get something out of reading this, too.

Van Parys reminds us that those ordinary elements of water, fire, bread and wine are symbols that “enable us to communicate on a deeper level . . . to express our faith in ways that would not be possible if we were to rely exclusively on words.”

He’s right on the money when he adds, “Although we may not always be aware of them, symbols surround us, connect us to sacred images found in our churches, remind us of our faith, and support us in our private and public prayer.”

Much to learn — or re-learn

Like a good teacher, van Parys sets the stage for comprehension by helping readers grasp the concept that nonverbal communication and symbols touch us everyday. Body language, for example, flowers on Mother’s Day, a hug to a grieving friend.

He quickly moves from the secular to the sacred, explaining, “When it comes to our faith, we use symbls even more readily to approach that which by definition cannot be explained or captured by words: the mysteries of creation and salvation. . . . The liturgy and the sacraments of the Catholic Church use symbols to share meaning and reveal deeper meaning.”

After that, the author is off and running, effectively quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the General Instructions of the Roman Missal, the documents of Vatican II and other authoritative works.

There’s much to grab onto here, the what and why of vestments worn at Mass, the meaning behind the use of the various oils during sacramental rites, how sacred art can connect us to God and the saints, and of course, the superb symbolism of bread and wine.

Bread, he simply writes, that becomes the Body of Christ, is for Catholics “weekly nourishment on our journey of faith.” And he’s honest enough to note this about the use of wine at Mass:

“Wine has been ascribed medicinal qualities: It was used to settle an upset stomach and to clean out wounds. Still, the principal quality of wine is to add festivity to a gathering and emphasize unity among those who share the cup.”

Perfect for discussion by groups

He’s unafraid to explain how some Catholic ritual evolved from pre-Christian peoples.

And there’s a marvelous chapter on sacred architecture as symbol that tackles why our churches look the way they do and how they’ve changed through 2,000 years. The book is richer for the personal anecdotes van Parys relates: I loved the one about the choir members who tossed their coats casually on the altar only to have the pastor come by and sweep the coats off in one fell swoop!

Each of the 10 chapters ends with a brief reflection and three questions to ponder and/or discuss.

After reading “Symbols That Surround Us” I could easily see it serving as the text for a small group for a number of sessions and as the focus of an adult faith formation series. Those who facilitate gatherings for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) might find it a nice supplementary resource.

But let me go back to my very first thought: I wasn’t halfway through “Symbols That Surround Us” when the lightbulb was turned on: I’d forgotten so many of these symbolic connections that enrich Catholic life. Reading van Parys’ little book will remind those of us in the over-50 crowd of some what we used to know — or at least had studied for the religion class test!

19th century newspaperman considered Catholicism key to racial justice and saw an advocate in the Archbishop of St. Paul

Daniel Rudd’s is a name you’ve likely never heard, but the one-time slave was a bold Catholic ahead of his time, and one who found a champion in none other than St. Paul’s Archbishop John Ireland.

Back in 1887, Rudd founded a black Catholic newspaper, the American Catholic Tribune, and from its pages he preached the unique message that the Catholic Church would play an essential role in the breaking down of the color line in the United States and in gaining racial equality for black people.

Historian Gary B. Agee’s recently released biography, “A Cry for Justice: Daniel Rudd and His Life in Black Catholicism, Journalism and Activism, 1854-1933″ (University of Arkansas Press, 2012) captures that distinctive philosophy.

As a child Rudd was owned by a Catholic master and formed in faith along side white children in his parish in Bardstown, Ky. He became a free man after the Emancipation Proclamation, founded his newspaper in Cincinnati, and was one of the most well-known black Catholics of the late 19^th century as he labored for justice and equality for people of color.

Born a century later, he might have been a prophet, too. He wrote this in 1888:

“We think we will live long enough to see a black man president of this Republic.”

 Journalist and evangelizer

Rudd believed in – and took pride in – the Catholic theology that taught “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of all people.” That belief convinced Rudd that the Catholic Church was the best hope for blacks to have the same rights as whites.

Agee noted, “In July 1890, Rudd told a reporter of the Cincinnati Times-Star, ‘I have always been a Catholic and, feeling that I knew the teachings of the Catholic Church, I thought there could be no greater factor in solving the race problem than that matchless institution….’”

Rudd’s newspaper had a circulation of 10,000 at its high point, and he used its pages not just to cry out for racial justice but to evangelize his fellow blacks. He wrote that he had started the newspaper to “give the great Catholic Church a hearing and show that it is worthy of at least a fair consideration at the hands of our race, being as it is the only place on this continent where rich and poor, white and black, must drop prejudices at the threshold and go hand in hand to the altar.”

White readers both bought subscriptions and donated money to support the American Catholic Tribune. Agee states that Rudd used his newspaper “both to instruct and encourage African American Catholics as well as to proclaim Catholicism’s merits to prospective black converts. In this manner he served his black readers even as he attempted to shape his white readership’s perception of blacks.”

 Hero in an archbishop

Rudd was a gutsy editor who addressed the issue of women’s rights, demanded the blacks be hired when they can do a job just as well as whites, called for granting home rule for Ireland, and took to task a Catholic newspaper editor who claimed that whites were destined to rule America’s inferior black race.

Rudd sued a delicatessen for refusing to serve him (and won a $100 judgment). He founded the Colored Catholic Congress movement to prod black Catholics to take up collective action to demand racial equality, and he chided the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. to open its Catholic schools to blacks.

Not all Catholics of Rudd’s time bought the idea of the equality of the races. Not all Catholic bishops agreed with him either.

One who did, however, was Archbishop Ireland, who wasn’t shy about his feelings on the matter. The archbishop caused an uproar when in 1890 he preached on the subject to a packed house at St. Augustine Church in Washington, D.C., with members of Congress and other highly place politicians present.

St. Paul’s archbishop said that racial prejudice is a crime that Catholics must lift themselves above. He said whites need “lessons in charity, benevolence, justice and religion” in order to address “the race problem.”

Agee’s work goes into great detail about ArchbishopIreland’s views on racial prejudice, and notes that Rudd made sure the archbishop’s words were spread far and wide, quoting him in the columns he wrote for his own newspaper, urging other black publications to reprint the archbishop’s talk and lecturing on the topic around the United States.

Businessman, journalist, evangelist, and advocate for justice, his biography tells of the trials, the accomplishments, and the disappointments of a black Catholic who more American Catholics – black and white – should learn about.