Calendar of Events.
August 7, 2011. Concert at our Lady of Sorrows, 4:00 p.m. Music by Amanda Shaheen. Amanda will be accepting free will offerings to help finance her trip to Madrid to attend World Youth Day 2011. See note below.
August 8, 2011. Luncheon Meeting and Speaker, 12:00 Noon at University Club. Speaker will be Father Stasker.
August 15, 2011. Serra Board Meeting, 12:00 Noon. Location TBA.
August 16-21, 2011. World Youth Day, Madrid, Spain. See note below.
August 22, 2011. Prayer Service and Luncheon, 12:00 Noon at Sacred Heart.
August 27 and 28, 2011. 31 Club Parish Visit at St. Patrick/St. Anthony Catholic Community, Grand Haven. We need speakers for all four weekend masses and people to preside at the information tables. Mass schedule is as follows: St. Patrick's, 5:00 p.m. on August 27; 8:00 a.m. at St. Anthony; 10:00 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. at St. Patrick's. St. Patrick's is at 920 Fulton St. and St. Anthony is at 13421 Green Street, Robinson Township, Grand Haven. The zip code for both locations is 49417.An Evening at the Ball Park with the Sisters. As our readers can see from the photos, the evening was a great success in every way. Although our team didn't win, the sisters greatly enjoyed the game, the picnic supper, and the fellowship with Serrans and their families and with our guests from St. John's Home. Thanks to fellow Serran Larry Mulligan for suggesting that our 25 extra tickets be donated to St. John's Home so that the young people who reside there could join us for game and the picnic. One of these young people was very excited to catch a foul ball that came his way! Thanks to Dan LaVille for coming up with the idea of this new way of showing our appreciation for the Sisters of our diocese. Our club received the following note from the White Caps: Dear Group Leader: Having your group out at the ball park was really a hit! It looks as though everyone in your group is having a great time. Attached you will find some photos from your group outing. We would like to thank you for the hard work you put into organizing your outing this season. We look forward to working with you again sometime. If you need anything else, please don't hesitate to get in touch with our Group Sales Department. A thank-you note from Sharon L. Loughridge, Executive Director of St. John's Home and thank-you notes from the Sisters will be sent under separate cover. The Sisters' notes indicate that the whole idea was a hit, except that Sr. Janet requested a win for the White Caps at next year's outing!
Guest Column. Speaking of St. John's Home, we note that former Serran Mark Thomson wrote a guest column for the Grand Rapids Press which appeared on Saturday, July 30 regarding the use of mood-altering drug use among young people and its connection to the terrible act of violence which occurred in our city this past month. As his bio indicates, Mark Thomson is director of special projects at D. A. Blodgett-St. John's and serves on the Kent County Prevention Coalition and Project Vox, and advocacy group for those in recovery.
Priests' Anniversaries: Rev. Donn Tufts: 8-20-1980, Rev. George Darling: 8-11-1984, Rev. Stephen Dudek: 8-11-1984, Rev. Dennis Morrow: 8-24-1985, Rev. Dennis O'Donnell: 8-20-1983, Rev. Eugene Okoli: 8-29-1993, and Rev. James Wyse: 8-29-1987.
In Memoriam. Father Joseph Pettit entered eternal life Friday evening, July 22, 2001. He was born August 3, 1924 in Grand Rapids, the son of Joseph and Ema (Schmidt) Pettit. Father Joe was ordained a priest for the Passionist Community on March 26, 1955 at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Louisville, KY. He ministered at various locations as a Passionist priest until coming to the diocese in the following positions: associate pastor of St. Mary's in Grand Rapids, St. Patrick in Portland and the Cathedral of St. Andrew, pastor at St. Philip Neri, Reed City with Mission of St. Ann at Paris, St. James at Montague with Mission at St. John Claybanks, St. Joseph at Pewamo, St. Margaret Mary at Edmore, and St. Bernadette at Stanton. Father ministered as a chaplain at Blodgett and Butterworth Hospitals and the Carmelite Monastery. He served as Diocesan Director of Communications and was appointed Advocate in the Diocesan Tribunal. After his retirement in 2003 Father Pettit served the diocese in an on-call capacity...May Father Pettit rest in eternal peace and enjoy the fullness of the glory of the Lord he so faithfully served. Let us continue to remember him in our Masses and prayers. May this good and faithful servant now enter into the joy of his Lord. Source: The Grand Rapids Press.
World Youth Day, 2011. From all over the world, thousands of Catholic young adults will converge on Madrid from August 16-21. The occasion: World Youth Day, 2011, an intensive week of daily worship, catechesis, renewal and fellowship. Accompanied by their bishops and convened by the Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI, they will witness to the vitality of the Catholic faith. The Pope announced the theme for the 2011 Youth Day some three years ago: Rooted and Built up in Jesus Christ, Firm in Faith (Colossians 2:7). He also asked prayerful preparation for 2011 through local and national World Youth gatherings in 2009 and 2010, each year centered on related themes: We have set our hope on the Living God, from St. Paul's First Letter to Timothy, and Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life, from Mark 10:17. At the heart of the World Youth Day themes: A Catholic's faith is based on the experience of building and nurturing a lifelong relationship with Jesus Christ, a true friendship that is rooted in prayer and encounters the Lord in the Gospels and Sacraments, most especially in Holy Eucharist. For it is in the Holy Eucharist, Pope Benedict emphasises, that young people find the Lord is present and close to us, the Savior and friend who even becomes food for our journey.
World Youth Day participants, together with their bishops, will welcome the Pope on August 18. Thereafter, they will endeavor to keep pace as Pope Benedict teaches, hears their concerns, blesses, and finally commissions these young people as modern day apostles. He will urge these young adults to preach the Gospel in the only way evangelization has ever been effective--by living the Gospel as members of Christ's Mystical Body on earth. Pray daily for the success of this joyful World Youth Day 2011. As we think about the young people in Madrid,...
Let us pray for these brave souls. On July 17, Catholic churches in Spain marked with sadness and prayer the 75th anniversary of a brutal, convulsive, three-year conflict...When Pope Benedict XVI meets with thousands of young people gathered in Madrid, he will encounter a Spain that was deeply influenced by the war, three quarters of a century earlier.
"I was six years old in July 1936 when the war started," remembers Ismael Virto, a U. S. representative of Spain's University of Navarra. "There was a knock on the door, and it was the militia--self appointed men and women, Spanish people, with guns."
"They said, 'Give arms to the people!' Our house was a modest, middle-class house in the city of Valencia, which was controlled by the socialists. Why did this gang come to us? My father had a car, which was a problem--for us," continued Virto. "So the militia searched our house. They took whatever weapons we had, a hunting gun and some ceremonial swords. But then they saw it and knew we were dangerous: My grandfather had a life-sized crucifix in his bedroom. And to these guys, the Church was their enemy," Virto explained. Virto's father fled to London and the family eventually joined him...
Many Americans, if they think about it at all, probably picture the Spanish Civil War as a pre-World War II face-off between a fascist dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco, supported by wealthy friends, the so-called Nationalists, vs. a ragtag army of international idealists, misleadingly (for Americans) known as the Republicans. Some people might know that these "idealists" were actually a fiercely anti-religious alliance of socialists, communists, and anarchists.
Catholic author Robert Royal dedicated an entire chapter to the persecution of Spanish Catholics in Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century. While researching the book at the Vatican in 1999, he found that records documenting new martyrs indicated that some 13,000 causes from around the world had been forwarded, and about half were from Spain.
"The Republicans were just utterly unrestrained. Whole convents were killed. Whole orders. It was very nasty," said Royal. The Vatican tried to defend people as well as they could, but there was little they could do against increasingly radical forces controlling the government." But he points out the exemplary behavior of the bishops in the darkest days. "We hear about how Spanish bishops were corrupt; they enjoyed being honored," he explained. "Yet, when the persecutions started, every single one of theme refused to flee the country. There were only two bishops who were not captured and killed--because they were out of the country on business."
Joseph Nieto, a producer for Spanish TV based in New York, has spent his adult lifetime amassing a 6,000 volume collection on the Spanish Civil War and researching documents as they have been declassified from national archives. Nieto said that the most recently available historical documentation demonstrates the central role played by the Soviet Union in manipulating political alliances in order to position the left to gain power as the "Popular Front" in 1936, with the Communist Party playing a critical but low-profile role in providing material support, including tanks and arms at the outset of the conflict, recruiting 40,000 mercenaries from around the world,...and promoting stragegies such as the murderous attitude toward Catholicism...Nieto described how thousands of people--mostly military personnel and Catholic priests, but also doctors, lawyers, professors and writers--were taken from Madrid by bus to fields near Paracuellos del Jarama, where they were systematically executed for three straight days, and their bodies were dumped in mass graves in November 1936...
The atrocities committed against Christians during the Spanish Civil War became a signature style of communist regimes from Lithuania to Romania, from China to Cuba. In order to build "a new society," churches were destroyed, clerics were murdered and imprisoned, religious property was confiscated, and public worship was banned. Asked whether the Church in Spain has recovered, Royal pointed to negative and positive trends..."I don't think the Church has recovered entirely, if you look at what the socialist government has done," he said. The Spanish government legalized abortion on demand in 2009,...it was one of the first to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, and the divorce rate has increased 200% over the last 20 years. And Nieto pointed to a law approved by the socialists in 2007 which awarded Spanish citizenship to some 188,000 descendants of people who fought with the Republicans against the Nationalists. However, Royal said, "The Church is very much alive, contrary to the stereotype. Very vigorous, forward-looking people are engaged in lay movements such as Opus Dei, a new movement which has really brought vitality to the Church."
With regard to the Spanish Civil War, under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Vatican has concentrated on highlighting the remarkable sanctity--and number--of martyrs and saints, including Blessed Ceferino Gimenez, known as El Pele, the first Gypsy to be beatified. During the war, El Pele defended a priest being dragged by a Republican soldier, who then found that El Pele was carrying a Rosary, which he would not relinquish. El Pele was executed holding the Rosary, shouting, "Long live Christ the King!"
Last April, Pope Benedict beatified another 22 Spanish martyrs, bringing to approximately 1,000 the number who have been beatified or canonized. For another 2,000, the beatification process is ongoing. Summarized from an article by Victor Gaetan, writing from Washington, D. C. for the National Catholic Register," July 31-August 13, 2011.
A Message from our President. We had a beautiful evening at 5/3rd Ball Park with the Sisters of the Diocese. Thanks to all those who attended. We are grateful that the young people from St. John's could benefit from the tickets the Serrans could not use.
The diocese of Grand Rapids lost a great man when Fr. Pettit passed away. He was very visible at Catholic Central in the early to mid-80s and his presence was always welcome there for mass and for the religion classes while I was there.
We are planning an evening at the University Club in September. We are inviting the Catholic Doctors and West Michigan Attorneys for some fellowship and discussion. This will be a great opportunity to invite friends and others that you feel would make good Serrans. Please forward to Aggie or to me detailed contact information for anyone you would like to receive an invitation.
As we look ahead to the fall season which is fast approaching we need to move forward toward forming the committee for the 2013 Regional Conference. This is another opportunity to grow as members working together. Let us unite and show the rest of the Region our enthusiasm and dedication to our club. Many hands make light work! I also see these Regional Conferences in the next few years as an opportunity for all Serrans to heal the issues that have torn apart some clubs with Serra International and USAC. We come together for the common cause of vocations and worship despite all of the legal issues between the two bodies. We are the lay vocational arm of the Church. Let us look forward to seeing everyone on August 8 at the University Club and on August 22 at Sacred Heart. Mary, Mother of Vocations, Pray for us! Tim Hile, President.
P. S. Try this link for information about the International Convention:
If you have trouble with it, let Tim know.
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