Photo Gallery (Day Seven)

Click on the image below to view photos from Day 7 of the archdiocesan pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia:

Mass with the pope and 1 million of his closest friends

Each day that the archdiocese's pilgrimage group to the World Meeting of Families has spent in Philadelphia has involved lots of things: worshiping at Mass, hearing keynote addresses, attending breakout sessions and visiting historic sites in Philadelphia. We sometimes caught ourselves coming and going as busy as the days often were.

Today was about one thing: the closing Mass of the World Meeting of Families with Pope Francis. Although the Mass started at 4 p.m., the Moster family of St. Louis Parish in Batesville and I got to our place along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway around 8:30. I'd say we were about a quarter of a mile from the altar but really couldn't see it (except on a Jumbotron screen) because of temporary bleachers in front of it. Other archdiocesan pilgrims arrived a couple of hours earlier and had a view of the altar.

The size of the crowd gathered for the Mass was much larger than that for the Festival of Families the night before and gathered much earlier.  Pope Francis arrived some time after 3 p.m. and rode in a popemobile up and down the parkway.  As he went by, you could hear the crowd roar.  And, unlike last night, he frequently stopped to kiss and bless babies.

One stop that he made that we saw on a Jumbotron (and that Deacon Pat Bower of St. Barnabas Parish in Indianapolis saw in person) was particularly moving. When he came to the Basilica Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, he got out of the popemobile to visit the makeshift shrine to Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, a favorite devotion of his. Many archdiocesan pilgrims had included their intentions there with thousands of others. So, it was touching to know that the pope offered those intentions to Jesus through Mary along with us.

Not long afterwards, he came by the place on the parkway where the Moster family and I were situated. The crush of people trying to make their way to the barrier was pretty intense. But it passed as soon as the popemobile did.

Mass began not long afterwards.  It was beautiful to see everyone focusing on the jumbotron and taking part in the worship, many kneeling when we kneel, standing when we stand, sitting when we sit.

Pope Francis offered a touching message during his homily, encouraging families to show their love for each other and other people in small, everyday ways.  It was thankfully a message that I had seen embodied for hours before the Mass as I saw families crowded around us caring for each other, getting to know their neighbors and helping other people in need.

I also saw it in a touching way during the Rite of Communion. Scores of priests with guides holding umbrellas of yellow and white (the colors of the flag of Vatican City) made their way down the parkway. As a priest came to where the Moster family and I were at, the crush of people was probably greater--and definitely more sustained--than when the pope had come by.

But it was beautiful to see how people who had received Communion were very deliberate about making way for people who had not yet received. And it was equally touching to see how so many priests made their way to where we were to help out after they had distributed Communion elsewhere. With the goodwill of the congregation and the help of the priests, it did not take long for Communion to be distributed to so many people, perhaps no more than 15 or 20 minutes.

It was then profound to see this large congregation become silent when invited to do so after the Rite of Communion. It may be hard to imagine how attending Mass in such a mass of people could be prayerful, but it really was.  Worshiping with the pope and so many other families from around the world was a fitting way to end the World Meeting of Families.

Now we have the mission of spreading the grace we've received this week in our homes and throughout central and southern Indiana. That will start with a long bus ride tomorrow.  Please pray for a safe ride for all of us.

Photo Gallery (Day Six)

Click on the image below to view photos from Day 6 of the archdiocesan pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia:

 

Festival of Families

Sept. 26 was, in some ways, a long day for archdiocesan pilgrims.  But it's length was sweetened by faith-filled fellowship with each other, Catholics from around the world, and Pope Francis.

It started with Mass in the lower church of St. John the Evangelist Church a few blocks from our hotel. As happened with our archdiocesan Mass yesterday, word got out to the crowds of Catholics in Philadelphia that Mass was being celebrated and so many other visitors worshiped with us.

Afterwards we walked about 40 minutes to Benjamin Franklin Parkway along many deserted streets, blocked from all vehicular traffic and after we got through a tight security checkpoint.  When we arrived around 10:30, there weren't a lot of other people around, but the flow of people into the area was steady so that, by the end of the afternoon, the crowds were three or four deep along the barriers by the street.

Security was tight. Pennsylvania state troopers stood about 50 feet apart all up and down the parkway. Secret Service agents made their way through at times. We saw policemen in cars and on motorcycles, bicycles and horses. There were also agents from Homeland Security. And the security agent who looked through my backpack at the checkpoint said he was from Seattle.

Although many people's legs got tired through the day and some of the little kids understandably got impatient at times, we had a good time sharing time with each other, seeing various entertainers on a jumbotron screen, hearing powerful witnesses about family life and, around 7:30, seeing Pope Francis come by our area in a popemobile.

Later, as some of us were leaving for the hotel around 9:15, we got to hear a powerful speech by Pope Francis about family life.

We were all a bit tired in body but uplifted in spirit when we arrived back at the hotel a little after 10:00. A long day, but a day lengthened in blessings.

Tomorrow will see us out by the Benjamin Franklin Parkway again, this time for Mass with Pope Francis and probably more than 1 million other Catholics at 4 p.m.

Photo Gallery (Day Five)

Click on the image below to view photos from Day 5 of the archdiocesan pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia:

 

Catholic Philadelphia and Religious Liberty in America

I am staying in Philadelphia, the city in which the United States of America was born. In the colonial period of our country and in many ways up until the end of World War II, Catholics were looked upon with suspicion in this country as people who had loyalty to a foreign power. This remained true despite the fact that many Catholics played a significant role in establishing America’s independence and were advocates of the freedoms on which it was founded.

Today, I visited Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was voted upon by representatives of the 13 British colonies. Behind the hall is a statue of John Barry, a Catholic born in Ireland who later emigrated to America and who is considered the father of the American Navy. He served as a captain in the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War.

A couple of blocks from Independence Hall is Old St. Joseph’s Church, although a passerby could be excused from failing to recognize that it was there. From the outside it does not look like a church but like a townhouse alongside many other similar structures. The Catholics who founded the parish in 1733 were intentional in choosing this design. For while William Penn, who, when he founded Pennsylvania in 1701, guaranteed the religious liberty of all the colony’s residents, Catholics were still looked upon with suspicion and could not hold public office.

A year after the parish was founded, leaders in Philadelphia threatened to close it. A plaque at the parish gives part of the response to this threat by its pastor, Fr. Joseph Greaton. The Jesuit missionary priest noted in words reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence that the Catholics of Philadelphia “are and of right ought to be free and independent of all civil authority retarding, restricting or debarring religion. It is not toleration we claim. It is freedom we demand and will maintain.”

In 1908, the Knights of Columbus, at a time when Catholics were still held in suspicion in America, just years before members of the Ku Klux Klan persecuted members of the Church in Indiana, erected a plaque at Old St. Joseph’s “in memory of founders of the faith in Philadelphia and in gratitude for the triumph of religious liberty.”

In 1960, the election of the Catholic John F. Kennedy was seen by Catholics in America as the broader society here finally accepting them as true and faithful citizens. And today, Catholics hold positions of leadership in government, education, business and culture in numbers that often outstrip even the large number of the faithful who are Americans.

And yet the religious liberty of the Church as a whole, institutions connected to it such as hospitals and schools and of individual Catholics and their families are being threatened by governmental bodies, businesses and the broader culture for a number of reasons, including our beliefs regarding marriage and sexuality and our advocating for the dignity and rights of immigrants. The words of Fr. Greaton are sadly as relevant today as they were in 1734.

So there seems a mysterious paradox in the confluence of the pressure put at present on the religious liberty of Catholics and other people of faith in America and Pope Francis’ visit to the United States and the million or more Catholics from around the world who are expected to worship with him on Sunday on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.

At the opening ceremony of the World Meeting of Families a few days ago, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput noted that only 11 people attended the first Mass that Fr. Greaton celebrated in the city in 1732. (One wonders what city leaders found so threatening in such small numbers that they considered closing the parish.) Clearly the Mass on Sunday will be a vibrant expression of just how much has changed for the Catholic Church in the United States since Old St. Joseph’s was founded in 1733.

But we would make a mistake to presume that the strides the Catholic faithful have made over that time and the freedom they enjoy are a permanent reality. With the numbers that we have now in the United States—some 70 million, almost a quarter of the population of the country—we can do much to foster and preserve religious liberty, the first freedom of all humanity, for us and all people of faith around the world.

May the Holy Spirit nurture a greater unity and communion among the Catholic faithful of this country, the vitality of which is so clearly on display during Pope Francis’ visit, so that we may never be held in suspicion as we were in the past in America and may instead be leaders in promoting the common good of all.

Photo Gallery (Day 4)

Click on the image below to view photos from Day 4 of the archdiocesan pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia:

A day of conscience at the World Meeting of Families

“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”

This is the Second Vatican Council’s evocative description of the human conscience (“Gaudium et Spes” #16). It came to mind at several points today during the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

Late in the morning, I heard a presentation by Robert George, a professor of law at Princeton university and a frequent commentator on public matters, especially on marriage and the family, and Sherif Gergis, the principal co-author of What Is Marriage?, which makes a secular case for marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

George especially exhorted his audience to have no fear in living out and proclaiming the Church’s vision of marriage in light of the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges.  Given the pressure on individuals and institutions that hold to this vision of marriage from the government and broader culture, standing firm in it will challenge many people’s consciences in the years to come. Many forces will try to force them to compromise their consciences.  With God’s help, we can withstand that force.

I left the presentation a little early to see a big-screen viewing of my favorite movie of all time—A Man for All Seasons, which won six Academy Awards in 1966.  It tells the story of St. Thomas More, who clung tenaciously to his conscience when King Henry VIII claimed authority over the Church in England in the 16th century. More was eventually beheaded for refusing to acknowledge Henry’s supremacy.

The showing of the movie was part of a film festival connected to the World Meeting of Families and was shown at a beautiful theater at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

When I returned to the World Meeting of Families, I heard a keynote address by Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manilla.  He exhorted his listeners to be families that spread the healing of Jesus, especially the healing of wounds in the human heart.  Many consciences have been wounded in recent years by the deception of the kingdom of this world, which Cardinal Tagle contrasted with the kingdom of God.

He went on to say that, although all followers of Jesus have their own wounded hearts, those are, when touched by Jesus, “the wounded one,” “beautiful scars, scars of love.”  A conscience formed well, and formed continually over time, will be instruments of God’s healing to others who so desparately need it. People with such consciences will, as Cardinal Tagle said the Church should always do, never give up on anyone.

That healing can extend to couples struggling with “the heartbreak of infertility,” as Cardinal Willem Eijk of Utrecht described it in a breakout session on infertility at the end of the afternoon. Also participating in the panel discussion was Dr. Kyle Beiters of the Gianna Center in New York, who is an expert in treating infertility in ways that are in harmony with the Church’s moral teachings.

The panel was rounded out by Dr. Gianna Emmanuela Molla, the daughter of St. Gianna Beretta Molla.  I had venerated second-degree relics of her (e.g., her wedding dress, her stethoscope) the past two days at Philadelphia’s cathedral. Now, in listening to and meeting Dr. Gianna, I was, in a sense, in the presence of a living second-degree relic. Her witness to the life of her mother and how her intercession has helped so many infertile couples in so many ways was incredible.

Like St. Thomas More, St. Gianna clung to her conscience to her death. She gave herself up in love to death so that her daughter could live. As I noted in a previous blog post, when St. Gianna was pregnant with Dr. Gianna, she was diagnosed with a tumor on her uterus. Doctors recommended she have a hysterectomy. She refused and demanded that they put a priority on her baby’s life and not hers. She died four days after giving birth to Dr. Gianna.

Families are the workshop where consciences young and old are carefully honed and molded.  With the help of God’s grace, all families can transform the world by sending out into the world people with consciences that lead them to stand up for the truth and serve others in love—no matter the cost.

Tomorrow will give the archdiocesan pilgrims a blessed later start.  Since we’ll have Mass with Archbishop Tobin at a nearby parish church at 2 p.m., we won’t have to make it to the convention center for Mass at 8:30.  We’ll go later, though, to hear a keynote address by Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and to finish up the meeting later in the morning.

Photo Gallery (Day 3)

Click on the image below to view photos from Day 3 of the archdiocesan pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia:

A busy day at the World Meeting of Families

Today was the first full day at the World Meeting of Families. As such, it was a bit tiring for myself and some of the pilgrims.  It included a Mass, keynote address and a breakout session in the morning followed by another keynote address and breakout session in the afternoon.

The day also highlighted the universal nature of the Church and the international nature of this event.  Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria was the principal celebrant and homilist of the Mass.

In broadly commenting on the day’s first reading from the Book of Ezra, Cardinal Onaiyekan  made a clear statement about a teaching of the Church related to marriage that has been much discussed since last year’s extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops on the family and in the lead up to next month’s meeting of the synod, also on the family: “It is not possible to claim to repent of an irregular marriage, calling on God’s mercy, while, at the same time, remaining in a sinful union.”

The keynote address that followed the Mass was given by Cardinal Robert Sarah, a native of Guinea in western Africa who is prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The title of his address was “The Light of the Family in a Dark World.”

He put much of his remarks on the family in the broad context of the Church’s teaching about creation, the fall of Adam and Eve and the redemption won for us in Christ.  Cardinal Sarah also exhorted the families among his listeners to be active evangelizers in the world.

Some of his comments were somewhat pointed like Cardinal Onaiyekan’s had been.  Cardinal Sarah said that separating the Church’s magisterium from its pastoral practice is a “dangerous schizophrenic pathology.” Nonetheless, he also strongly noted that people in “self-serving unions” must find “regeneration” in the Church without fear of being pointed out.

After Cardinal Sarah’s keynote address, various archdiocesan pilgrims and I attended a breakout session given by Greg and Lisa Popcak. The married couple co-host a show on the Ave Maria Radio network on family life. And Greg Popcak is a counselor and author that focuses on family life and marriage.

They noted in their talk that the family is called to be an image of the Blessed Trinity by lives of marked by intimacy, communion among the family members, radical self-donating love and an incarnational love.

They also listed five characteristics of a Catholic family. They worship together, pray together, are called to intimacy, put family first and are a witness and sign of God’s love to others.

In the afternoon, Helen Alavare, a law professor at George Mason University and an expert on the intersection of religion and law, gave a keynote address titled “Creating the Future: The Fertility of Christian Love.”

She noted the importance of sacrificial love within the life of the family and how this must be made into a habit by all its members.  Alvare also gave a touching testimony on how she was converted “from the Gospel of me” to the “joy of loving other people,” including a disabled sister.

She also gave a strong critique of many trends in society today, saying that lower marriage and birth rates in nations around the world suggest that “people fear interdependency” and that public policies focus more on efficiency than on what is good for families. Alvare also noted that in a culture where sex is treated as “just another thing to do, the casualties are legion” and brings depression to women.

The afternoon ended for me by attending a breakout session given by four religious sisters on how to encourage vocations in the home. They encouraged parents not to fear their children’s vocations and to meditate on the mysteries of the rosary in light of vocations.

One sister, noting that since love is the “fundamental vocation of every human being,” families are to teach love to children and are to become the seedbed of vocations.

Another sister encouraged parents to be more conscious of the fact that they and their children are all children of God and that they need to care for their own souls daily in order to help form the souls and vocations of their children.

The final sister to give remarks gave some advice to parents on encouraging vocations in their children. They should love their own sacrament of matrimony and see how it is tied to their children’s vocations. To illustrate this, she told the story of St. Pius X when he was ordained a bishop and how his mother, after she kissed his episcopal ring, pointed to her wedding ring and said, ‘You couldn’t wear this ring if I didn’t wear mine.’

The sister also exhorted the parents among her listeners to respect the unique relationship between God and their children and that, by doing so, they would respect their children’s vocations and not try to force them into one or another.

At the end of the session, attendees got to view a new video about women religious produced by Grassroots Films for the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, an organization of the leadership of many women’s religious communities in America. It is titled “For Love Alone,” is 18 minutes long and very well produced.

Tomorrow will be another busy day. First thing, I’ll get my pass to the area where I will be standing with other archdiocesan pilgrims during Mass with the pope on Sunday. I’ll also attend various keynote addresses and breakout sessions.  I also hope to attend a big screen showing of the classic film on St. Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons, which is part of a film festival tied to the World Meeting of Families.

Photo Gallery (Day 2)

Click on the image below to view photos from Day 2 of the archdiocesan pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia:

 

Bishop Barron at the World Meeting of Families

Bishop Robert Barron, recently ordained to the episcopate and now serving as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, does not waste his words.  I once had the privilege of interviewing him for about 20 minutes.  That relatively short conversation resulted in two long question and answer interview articles published a few years ago in The Criterion.

Well, Bishop Barron didn’t waste his words in the first keynote address given today at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia before some 20,000 attendees who have come here from more than 100 nations. His address was titled “Living as the Image of God: Created for Joy and Love.”

Given that his address was some 50 minutes long, this could become a very long blog post.  Here are some excerpts, however:

Bishop Barron exhorted his listeners “not to drive a wedge” between the Church’s moral demands and its call to show mercy to all.  To illustrate this seeming paradox, he cited G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy in which the early 20th century English Catholic convert author said that the Church’s proclamation of both the full humanity and full divinity of Christ had “set the tone for the logic of Catholicism up and down the centuries.”

“He said, ‘We like red. And we like white. And we have a healthy hatred of pink.’ … Red and white. Both flags flying. Moral demand—all the way. Mercy—all the way. That’s the prophetic speech of the Church.”

Bishop Barron also reiterated that the Second Vatican Council’s universal call of holiness is to send forth lay Catholics in all walks of life out into the world to sanctify it, but that this is in part being short-circuited because so few people now go to Mass.

“Did you ever wonder why our society is becoming increasingly secularized,” he asked his listeners. “A lot of reasons. But I’ll give you one of them. Because so many Catholics have stopped going to Mass.”

He then concluded by presenting to his listeners the power of a family fully immersed in its faith.

“A family where basic moral truths are taught and, above all, lived is a family that is learning how to engage in prophetic speech, that learns how to go out to the wider society and speak this important truth.  Families where the virtues of courage and prudence, of forgiveness, of non-violence are cultivated, that’s a family that can now go out to teach the world those same virtues.”

The first full day of the World Meeting of Families will take place tomorrow in which there will be two keynote addresses and two breakout sessions. I’ll try to give a summary of some of them tomorrow.