Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Earlier this summer I met with several dedicated individuals to talk about how we might enhance our Pro-Life ministry at Saint Mary and have more of an impact on our city.

It is important to pray; we pray a lot. It is important to speak the truth; we speak. It is also vitally important to do something to help provide alternatives to  abortion—we have supported and volunteered with very generous donations of time, talent and treasure to local organizations such as Birthright, Mary’s Shelter, and others.

Still, the fact is, even though there are no corporate providers of abortion in the Fredericksburg area, statistics show that we are third in the state only to Fairfax and Richmond: 37.2% of the pregnancies in the Fredericksburg area are terminated early by abortion. From a national standpoint, I also wonder if the number seems to be down across the country due to the fact that there are so many easily obtained contraceptives that cause a spontaneous loss of a child’s life before he or she can register as a statistic.

The simple fact that recent videos—which are widely known by all—are widely ignored by our leaders is a damning judgment of our culture.  But pointing fingers and shouting has rarely proven to be useful. We must educate, we must embrace people in difficulty, we must be people of mercy. And we must do this visibly and powerfully in order to cut through the confusion of this age. Life is good, life is a gift, and every person is made in the image and likeness of God. His beauty and goodness are not to be destroyed. Pope Francis uses this as a central theme in his recent work on the Care of Creation. It is a crime to be cruel to pets…what is wrong with this picture?

A conversation I had recently with a mom still chills me. I was wondering out loud why so many young people leave the Church so soon after receiving the Holy Spirit in Confirmation. She said that from her experience, many youth today confront a profound contradiction: follow the Church—but take this pill “just in case.” It’s the slippery slope of departure. They learn to follow one teaching, but ignore others. And in doing so, drift away from Truth.

Education. We need to teach children about their beauty, their dignity as children of God. The world is a mess. They don’t need to have crushes on popstar- bad-example-teens and idolize the person who wears the least clothes. They are a gift and they need to save that gift for a person who they really love and to whom they want to give their life, as Jesus does for them.

Support and Welcome. We need to go out and find ways to show we care. God said it is mercy he desires, not sacrifice. If we weren’t sinners—all of us—we would have no need of a Church. Jesus wouldn’t have had to go to all this Trouble to love us. It was the sinners that he went out on the road to seek out, to love and to reassure that he came for them despite the onlookers who judged him for what he was doing. We need to be people who are known first for our loving welcome, not our self-righteousness.

As a sign of that welcome we have made a decision. As grateful as we are for the tombstone commemorating the unborn that was placed on our property by the Knights many years ago, I think it is time for a strong, symbolic change in communication. Over the years there have been many women who have told me that they felt punched in the gut every time they drove in our parking lot to come to Mass or make a visit in church. They had made a mistake, they were very sorry, always will be. But did they have to be reminded of it every time they came to church? “The church,” one older lady told me, “should be a place of refuge for us who grieve our mistakes.”

If today’s statistics are right, and one out of four women have experienced the horror of abortion, and are getting to church, then we are opening a lot of wounds without even intending to do so.

There was a time when these tombstones were placed everywhere, but not any longer. People have realized that a positive message goes farther.

I have ordered a life-sized bronze sculpture of the Holy Family to be placed in the island in front of the Parish Life Center. We have already paid half, it is not cheap, but I believe this is the right thing. Jesus is standing in Mary’s lap, Joseph stands alongside them. It will be placed on a brick pedestal so that it will be clearly visible, even when the parking lot is full of cars.

Maybe you can help us pay for it, will you? It is an extraordinary expense and we didn’t budget for it, but I feel this strongly about it. It will be a testimony to the love and mercy of God during the upcoming Holy Year of Mercy.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Beginning this week we will start again with registrations for the Called and Gifted Program at Saint Mary.

If someone told you that there was a way to make sense of the questions you may have about how God is calling you to serve him and the Church as a lay person—if there was a program where you could logically reflect on  our life and discover a particular direction based on the gifts that you have received, perhaps even gifts you’ve been ignoring all these years—wouldn’t you be interested?

Here’s how it works. You attend the Workshop on Friday evening and Saturday until 3pm, October 9 and 10. After a preliminary inventory and consideration of the different gifts with which God blesses his people, you decide  which gifts you would like to “experiment” with, to see if this is really the way God is leading you. You schedule a meeting with one of our trained peer-to-peer consultants (people like me who are trained in the  program to help you in the discernment process) and decide which gifts you would like to focus on for now. Then, we schedule a six-week series of small group study and discussion, based on seeking the fullest expression of these gifts in your life.

We have had over 500 people in the parish complete the Workshop, half of those have followed through with the consultation and small group meetings. Not a one of them that I have spoken with has ever said that they felt it was a waste of time or something they would have ever discovered on their own. It opens doorways which maybe you thought were closed, it gives a fresh outlook on life and the way that God interacts in a living, intimate way with you.

It is important that you register soon. Last year the large Workshop we hosted included a few people from each of 14 different parishes, some local, some from far away. As the word gets out, this gets more and more popular. I don’t want precious spaces to be gone when Saint Mary people start to inquire about registration. We have 350 spaces—space is limited—because that is about all we can accommodate in the gym out at Holy Cross around tables for the Workshop and for lunch. Please don’t wait and discover that seats are filled.

I hope you’ve had a chance to look at the lineup of adult education that we are offering this year, too. It is extensive, thanks to the education committee of our parish council who continues to add more classes for adults. This year I am glad that we include such a diversity of topics. In addition to these, we intend to add also an introductory class on forming healthy attachments in dating and marriage which will be good for singles and married couples, and a class on Lectio divina prayer which I will teach. And we are developing the calendar more each week.

Finally, it is that time of year when I get excited about our fall kick-off social for the parish. Make plans now to bake an award-winning cake and come for our old-fashioned Cakewalk, dancing to a live band, and as much ice cream as you can eat. The DJ stops the music outside on the school patio and everyone stops; a number is called. If you are standing on it, you choose from all the cakes that people have donated. Really, it is like musical chairs, except that everyone eventually wins.

Anyway, it starts at 4pm on Sunday, September 13. Cake judging will happen at 4:15pm. Every year we have late arrivals after the judging has already started—cakes that probably would have won if they had arrived on time!

 You will be very pleased with the spirit of good will and fellowship as we spend a beautiful afternoon together and relax as a parish. Please plan to come.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Why Catholic? A couple of years back Pope Benedict XVI sparked a great controversy with something he said, and it put a magnifying glass on an important topic, even if just for a moment. He was speaking about the Jewish people, but it applies for all people, really. It is a topic that is not considered politically correct if Catholics talk about it, but it seems to be acceptable for most other religions. It has to do with the difference between proselytizing and proclaiming.

Pope Benedict’s discussion considered the tension between the Church’s teaching that Jews will ultimately be saved because they were asked by God, through the law and prophets, to join him in the initial covenant, and what God does he does not revoke, nor does he make mistakes. What he formed with the Israelites was truly a good and holy relationship and those who stay faithful to God can be saved. But, Pope Benedict said, this cannot rob us of our obligation to proclaim Jesus Christ and his gift of saving love for all peoples, and to spread the Gospel to all who have not heard it.

The problem is, that for so many centuries this was done with coercion. Terrible scenes unfolded over the centuries with regard to the Jewish people, how they were forced to convert or die. We see these terrible images alive in our modern world and wonder how poeple could do such terrible things to other people, particularly where the cause of their suffering is faithfulness?

What Pope Benedict said didn’t make anyone happy. I had a teacher in seminary who told me once that you aren’t doing your job if someone isn’t upset with you, because what we do is supposed to reveal the truth; sometimes it reveals the falseness of some. The Jewish people were angry because Benedict said we should still proclaim the Gospel to all people, the Catholics were angry because they wanted to hear that only Catholics were saved.

We look around the world today into cultures that we might refer to as “third world” and see that many Catholics are being “stolen” by other Christian churches who claim that the Catholic Church isn’t true Christianity and that to be saved you must convert to their religion. We become upset when we see so many people go elsewhere after being told a lie.

You see, although we believe that baptism administered validly is valid for all people in all Christian churches, we still hold that the fullness of the faith is found in the Catholic Church. At one  time—including the eastern churches, up until the 12th century, ultimatey in the Reformation of 1517—all churches were “Catholic.” Generally, there wasn’t question about divisions that would exclude someone from one or another church. But as churches broke away, in the splintering process, important things also were left behind. Take marriage, which is such an issue today, for example. As Protestant churches split away, marriage was no longer held as a sacrament, and civil marriage was accepted as valid. What results is confusion. We see these issues with regard to sacraments, governance, authority, holy orders (ordination) and other significant articles of belief. Once something was rejected, opinion began to replace truth. I am a priest in the Catholic Church today because I value truth over opinion. And things like doctrine and rules are not only important to me, the are the only way to preserve an order that will defend doctrine.

So, as it is possible that people of good will who are faithful to what they believe have, in the mercy of God, a chance for salvation, it does matter what you believe. One of the saddest things I can hear someone say is, “It doesn’t matter which church, they’re all the same.” If only that were true, but it isn’t. A minimalist might say that it doesn’t matter what you believe: “as long as I get  my foot in the door…” But is that why God put us here? Or did he give us life so that we might truly know him, and through the sacraments seek the deepest life and love with him that is available to us here on earth? For this to happen there must be a moral compass that all of us follow, as a rule, or else the needle goes in all directions, and we forget there is an east and a west. There really is a need for some one person to speak on behalf of all the Church, someone that speaks with an inspired voice that brings us all back together. There are as many churches today as there are preachers. And last I checked, it was Jesus that established the Church.

That is why we have RCIA, because it does matter. We are not out to steal anyone, but to offer the same welcome Jesus first gave to his disciples when he said, “Come and see.”

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Today I’m writing from Dublin, it is Tuesday afternoon and we are on our parish trip to Ireland. We went this morning to the Neolithic archeological site of Newgrange / Knowth, where people lived 6,000 years ago and built massive burial mounds according to the path of the sun. The photo below shows our group assembled on the top of the largest mound in the Boyne valley north of Dublin, in the distance behind us is the hill of Slane, where Saint Patrick lit the Paschal Fire and shortly after converted and baptized the high king and people of Leinster. So far we have only spent time around Dublin, but  tomorrow we will head for the center and south of the Republic of Ireland. More next week!

I do have to say one thing, though. There is something about this country that really affects me. I’ve mentioned the idea of so-called “thin places” before, those places where the spiritual, unseen reality of God and his presence is almost tangible, you just know something powerful is present to you. I always forget, until I’m back, that Ireland is this to me. Especially certain places. It has always been my experience, for example, when we visit Clonmacnoise, the 7th century monastery ruins of St. Cieran (where we go tomorrow and we will be able to celebrate Mass in the ruins of one of the chapels), and the ocean coast of Kerry. It has only been recently that I discovered in my genealogy work that my ancestors are from these places. I have the same kind of unexplainable emotional reaction when I hear Uilleann pipes—not the sound of bagpipes, that is too loud and brash in comparison to the haunting, beautiful subtlety of Irish pipes.

I always say this, but I truly mean it. I wish we could take everyone on these trips. There is a beauty to traveling with the spirit of pilgrims, a deep reverence and appreciation of how we come to grow and know people, and learn.

On the parish front, it is time to begin seriously making plans for the fall and I want to insist on the duty of all our parents to follow through with the good practice of ensuring the religious formation for your children. It is something to which parents and godparents make a solemn commitment at baptism, and I firmly believe that children have no strong chance today in following through with their faith if they don’t have a good foundation in religion. It is difficult enough to think that most adults are living lives and trying to make sense of God and faith with an education that ended with Confirmation in eighth grade. How can adults survive life with an eighth grader’s understanding of God? No wonder the spark goes out so quickly in high school and college.

Please renew your commitment and register your children with us. We put a lot of energy and time into always making our program better, as good as it can be, and we take our parish responsibility to support our parents in this primary duty seriously. To the 2,700+ children and youth in our parish who aren’t receiving formation: Please join us.

God bless you.