The DIOCESAN Chronicle The Official News of the Diocese of Baker
Published every two weeks for the sake of the unity of the Diocese and the “greater good of souls” August 25, 2013
www.dioceseofbaker.org
WORLD YOUTH DAY 2013 by Katie Beaubien, Sacred Heart Youth Minister, Klamath Falls Es-ta es/ la juventud del papa (This is the youth of the Father) and Papa Francis-co/ juntos en Cristo (Pope Francis/ Together in Christ) were the rallying cries of JMJ (Jornada Mundial da juventude—World Youth Day) Rio 2013. These words echoed through the subway, on the streets, on the sandy floor of Copacabana Beach. Everywhere you turned you were surrounded by pilgrims, who filled the air with electricity that sparked with excitement and joy. From the moment my 13 fellow pilgrims from University of Portland and I stepped off the plane in Sao Paulo, we were greeted with a warm Bem-vindos (welcome) from our Holy Cross coordinators. We spent four days in Campinas (outside of Sao Paulo) getting to know our Holy Cross brothers and sisters from Brazil, Peru, and Chile through games, visiting the elderly, eating (a LOT), and joining in prayer together before loading the buses and making the trek to Rio de Janeiro for the official week of World Youth Day. On the way to Rio, we stopped at the shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil’s national Marian shrine. My host family told me they always cry at the shrine, so it was wonderful to visit such an important piece of Brazilian culture. We arrived in Rio de Janeiro Sunday night, July 21, and met up with fellow pilgrim groups as they poured into the city in the next few days. As you can probably imagine, 3.5 million people from 120 countries is very crowded, and conversation is difficult. However, while we were separated by language, we were united by our Catholic faith and able to overcome the language barriers and communicate with each other. I made some very dear friends from all over the world. I was also blessed to see Papa Francisco FIVE times. The first time, I was talking with some girls from Argentina, and one of them gave up her spot so I could get a closer glimpse of the Pope (I was four people back)—this is the spirit of love that flowed through the pilgrims. While I can in no way adequately describe my experience or what it felt like to see Pope Francis in person, I do want to share a brief
Volume 4, Number 17
story that, for me, is at the heart of what World Youth Day is all about: It was the night of the vigil and we were at Copacabana beach. Every square foot of sand was occupied by pilgrims. Trying to walk anywhere across the beach was a nightmare because there were people EVERYWHERE and the crowds mob-like. It was the point of the evening where Papa Francisco was addressing the youth. Suddenly, I heard shouts all around me. At first, I thought they were cheering and I wanted them to be quiet so I could hear what Pope Francis was saying. But as I listened, I realized they were shouting “Ambulancia!” (ambulance) because someone had gotten hurt near the water. An ambulance, trying to navigate through thousands of pilgrims all the way across the beach to the water? Good luck. Then an incredible thing happened. Thousands of people, separated by language and who couldn’t even talk to each other formed two human chains facing each other stretching from the street to the water with an empty path the width of a street lane in between them. Within minutes, medics were able to run down the path and rescue the person. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of the cheers that erupted as the medics carried the stretcher with the person they had saved back to safety. 3.5 million people. 120 different countries. One Church.
The view of Rio from Sugarloaf mountain -- the curve is Copacabana beach.
Katie at Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) -- the statue that overlooks Rio de Janeiro.
PRIESTLY ORDINATION ANNIVERSARIES: Congratulations to the following as they celebrate their ordination anniversaries during September: Most Rev. Liam Cary, Bishop of Baker, ordained to Priesthood on Sept 05, 1992 Rev. Joseph Levine, The Dalles Sept 14, 2010
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We are most grateful for the years of service of all our Priests and Bishops. Please keep them in your prayers.
THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY from Bishop Cary In the summer of 1968 Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae and sparked a tumultuous debate about the morality of contraception. Forty-five years later this brief document is at the heart of the great threat to religious liberty in the United States as the Department of Health and Human Services proposes to force Catholic institutions and individuals to disobey the continuous Catholic teaching which Paul VI affirmed. The services the government wants to insure— contraception, sterilization, and abortion—all say “no” to human life. Humanae Vitae insists we must say “yes.” The difference between the two positions is as great as the issue is significant. For American Catholics, now is the time to think with the Church. That does not mean blindly accepting the party line. Rather, it means taking to heart both serious objections to Catholic teaching and the answers that can be given to them—answers that may in turn raise serious questions about the thinking of those who object to Catholic teaching. With this column I want to help you think with the Church about contraception. I invite you first to consider why contraception became culturally acceptable and then to evaluate critically the consequences of its acceptance. The public campaign for contraception began in the 1820s in England and continues to this day. For nearly two centuries now its advocates have promoted a distinctive contraceptive mentality that rests on three foundational pillars. The first is the cornerstone of the whole movement: a morality that separates sex from reproduction. No child is meant to come forth from a contraceptive sexual union; it is a union designed for pleasure, not for procreation. But it turns out that if sex can be separated from reproduction, so can reproduction be separated from sex. In-vitro fertilization separates procreation from pleasure and makes it possible to generate children without sexual union. “It was an ideal situation,” one sperm donor said. “Where else could I find a way where I could have a child and not have child support?” The second pillar of the contraceptive mentality holds that it is useless and undesirable to prescribe selfrestraint for the sake of spacing children. In other words, the virtue of chastity has no part to play at the heart of a relationship of sexual intimacy. Instead, men and women should simply give themselves over to sexual desire with no thought that it might make itself master. They need not learn how to control this powerful force and integrate it into their lives; they have only to release it from limitation and all will be well. To the proponents of contraception what counts is the expression, not the mastery, of desire. The third pillar of the contraceptive mentality assigns the primary responsibility for contraception to the woman. Since it is her body which will bear the
Continued… children, it is for her to determine when to separate sex from reproduction. With these three pillars in mind, we can see the contraceptive revolution at the root of the culture of promiscuity that engulfs us. From an early age the young are instructed in clinical detail how to avoid pregnancy—that is, how to separate sex from reproduction—and every movie they see will teach them to go from one sexual relationship to another with no thought of making their own the liberating self-mastery of chastity. No need to prepare for commitment to marriage when contraception protects pleasure from the risk of a new life to care for. Alternatively, those who opt to separate reproduction from sex have brought into being untold numbers of frozen embryos to be developed or discarded as their handlers may determine. In-vitro fertilization has also delivered “designer babies” who may one day view their father’s picture in a website catalog and read about his desirable genetic qualities but will never know his guiding presence in their lives. Deriding the struggle for self-mastery as repressive, the contraceptive revolution has dissolved societal expectations for chastity. Since values cannot be “imposed” and chastity cannot be expected, parents are left defenseless in the face of ubiquitous, aggressively invasive pornography that degrades women and enslaves men at ever younger ages. Finally, leaving the decision to have a child solely in the hands of the woman—the third pillar of the contraceptive revolution—has had particularly bitter consequences. Nowadays when an unmarried woman informs a man that he has made her pregnant, very often she is told that a child was not part of their equation: “That’s your problem. Take care of it yourself. Get an abortion.” Taken together these three pillars of the contraceptive revolution provide a perfect formula for widespread sexual irresponsibility: separation of sex from reproduction, no training of the young in selfmastery, and the onus of responsibility on the woman alone. Nowhere in this prescription do we find the slightest incentive for men to treat women right. To the contrary, the social acceptance of contraception effectively absolves men of responsibility for their sexual behavior and leaves the burden of its consequences on the women it was supposed to free from oppression. Notice that you do not have to be Catholic or even Christian to make these arguments against contraception. Any citizen concerned about the course of our country could make them, based as they are on history, sociology, and psychology. So the case against contraception need not depend on the Bible or Church teaching. But we can certainly turn to those sources for deeper insight. And in my next Chronicle column that is what we will do. Page 2
PENSAMIENTOS DEL CAMINO por el Obispo Cary En el verano de 1968 el Papa Pablo VI publicó la encíclica Humanae Vitae y provocó un tumultuoso debate sobre la moralidad de la anticoncepción. Cuarenta y cinco años después este breve documento se encuentra en el corazón de la gran amenaza a la libertad religiosa en los Estados Unidos, por la manera como el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos propone obligar a las instituciones y personas católicas a desobedecer la continua enseñanza católica que Pablo VI afirmó. Los servicios que el gobierno quiere que el seguro cubra: la anticoncepción, la esterilización y el aborto, todos dicen “no” a la vida humana. Humanae Vitae insiste en que hay que decir “sí ”. La diferencia entre las dos posiciones es tan grande como importante es el tema. Este es el momento que los católicos norteamericanos, piensen como la Iglesia. Eso no quiere decir aceptar ciegamente el pensamiento de la Iglesia. Más bien, significa tomar en serio las dos objeciones serias a la enseñanza católica y las respuestas que pueden darse a ellas, respuestas que tal vez puede plantear serias dudas sobre la forma de pensar de aquellos que se oponen a la enseñanza católica. En esta columna quiero ayudarle a pensar con la Iglesia sobre la anticoncepción. Los invito primero a considerar por qué la anticoncepción se hizo culturalmente aceptable y luego evaluar críticamente las consecuencias de su aceptación. La campaña pública para la anticoncepción se inició en los 1820s en Inglaterra y continúa hasta la fecha. Durante casi dos siglos sus promotores han promovido una clara mentalidad anticonceptiva que se apoya en tres pilares fundamentales. El primero es la piedra angular de todo el movimiento: una moral que separa el sexo de la reproducción. Ningún niño se espera de una unión sexual anticonceptiva, es una unión diseñada solo para el placer, no para la procreación. Y resulta que si el sexo puede ser separado de la reproducción, también puede separarse la reproducción del sexo. Fertilización in vitro separa la procreación del placer y hace posible generar niños sin la unión sexual. “Fue una situación ideal,” dijo un donante de esperma. “¿De qué otra manera podría tener un hijo sin tener que mantenerlo?” El segundo pilar de la mentalidad anticonceptiva sostiene que es inútil e indeseable la abstención sexual para espaciar los embarazos. En otras palabras, la virtud de la castidad no tiene ningún papel en la relación de intimidad sexual. Por eso, los hombres y las mujeres deben dejarse llevar solamente por el deseo sexual, sin pensar que ellos pueden ser dueños de sus instintos. Ellos no tienen que aprender a controlar esta fuerza poderosa e integrarla a sus vidas, sino que sólo tiene que dejarse llevar por sus instintos y todo estará bien. Para los partidarios de la anticoncepción lo que cuenta es la expresión, no el dominio, del deseo. El tercer pilar de la mentalidad anticonceptiva dice que la responsabilidad de la anticoncepción es de la mujer. Ya que su cuerpo que llevará el bebe, que es ella la que
determinara cuándo debe separar el sexo de la reproducción. Con estos tres pilares en mente, podemos ver que la revolución de los anticonceptivos es la raíz de la cultura promiscua que nos envuelve. Desde muy temprana edad los jóvenes son instruidos en detalle clínico cómo evitar el embarazo, o sea separar el sexo de la reproducción, y todas las películas que ven les enseñan a ir de una relación sexual a otra sin pensar en que ellos tienen el poder de gobernar la castidad. No hay necesidad de prepararse para el compromiso del matrimonio cuando la anticoncepción protege el placer, del riesgo de cuidar una nueva vida. Alternativamente, aquellos que optan por separar la reproducción de las relaciones sexuales han causado la existencia de un número incalculable de embriones congelados para ser desarrollados o destruidos al antojo de los científicos encargados. La fecundación en vitro también ha producido “bebés de diseño” que algún día podrán ver en un catálogo de una página de internet la foto de su padre, leer acerca de sus cualidades genéticas deseables pero nunca verán su presencia que los guie en la vida. Ridiculizar la lucha por el dominio de sí mismo como represiva, la revolución anticonceptiva ha destruido las expectativas sociales de la castidad. Dado que los valores no pueden ser “impuestos” y la castidad no puede conservarse, los padres se quedan indefensos ante la omnipresente pornografía, agresiva invasora que degrada a las mujeres y esclaviza a los hombres a edades cada vez más jóvenes. Por último, dejando la decisión de tener un hijo solo en manos de la mujer, el tercer pilar de la revolución ha tenido consecuencias anticonceptivas muy amargas. Hoy en día cuando una mujer soltera informa a un hombre que la ha embarazado, a menudo se le dice que el niño no era parte del trato: “Ese es tu problema. Resuélvelo tú misma. Ve y aborta”. Tomados en cuenta estos tres pilares de la revolución anticonceptiva nos da una fórmula perfecta para la irresponsabilidad sexual generalizada: la separación del sexo de la reproducción, sin formación de los jóvenes en el dominio de sí mismo, y el peso de la responsabilidad solo sobre la mujer. En ninguna parte de esta prescripción encontramos el menor incentivo para que el hombre trate correctamente a la mujer. Por el contrario, la aceptación social de la anticoncepción eficazmente absuelve al hombres de la responsabilidad de su comportamiento sexual y deja la carga de sus consecuencias sobre la mujer que se suponía debía liberarse de la opresión. Fíjese que usted no tiene que ser católico o cristiano para plantearse estos argumentos en contra de la anticoncepción. Cualquier ciudadano preocupado por el curso de nuestro país podría hacérselas, basándose en la historia, la sociología y la psicología. Así que el caso en contra de la anticoncepción no tiene que depender de la Biblia o enseñanzas de la Iglesia. Pero sin duda podemos recurrir a las fuentes mencionadas para una comprensión profunda. Y en mi próxima columna de la Crónica será lo que haremos. Page 3
Pope Francis’s first encyclical, Lumen Fidei; a wonderful and terrifying reality (part 2 of 4). In part one of this series, we learned that the reality of our modern times presents significant obstacles and temptations resulting in a widespread misunderstanding of Christian faith. Lumen Fidei reminds us, there is an urgent need to rediscover and restore the primacy of God in Christ to the center of our lives. We also learned the wonderful reality that, in our baptism, we receive “infused supernatural virtues” from which “we realize that a great love has been offered us.” Faith interwoven with hope and charity are infused into our inner most being. Indeed, the supernatural reality of God himself (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) resides within our spirit. In our baptism we become a “new creation.” This incredible reality is possible only through the incarnation of God—in the Son—who has intimately bound himself to our human nature. In His love, in His faithfulness, and in His Sacrifice—death on the cross— God freely chooses to redeem and reconcile all of humanity. Why? So that we might “have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Lumen Fidei clarifies that baptism “opens the door” to life in abundance; however, to fully obtain this life “is a lengthy journey.” Faith “lights up our way to the future and enables us joyfully to advance. . .towards full communion with God.” Drawing upon both St. Paul and St. James, Lumen Fidei sheds light on many misconceptions concerning faith, works, and salvation: “faith alone” does not bring us to full communion with God; faith alone does not save us; “good works” and even obeying the commandments, when failing to realize that all goodness comes from God, results in futile and barren lives isolated from the Lord. “Faith in Christ brings salvation because in him our lives become radically open to a love that precedes us, a love that transforms us from within, acting in us and through us.”
Primera encíclica, Papa Francisco Lumen Fidei; maravillosa y terrible realidad (parte 2 de 4). En la primera parte de esta serie, nos enteramos de que la realidad de nuestros tiempos presenta obstáculos y tentaciones y el resultado es un malentendido generalizado de la fe cristiana. Lumen fidei nos recuerda, hay una urgente necesidad de redescubrir y recuperar la primacía de Dios en Cristo en el centro de nuestras vidas. También nos enteramos de la maravillosa realidad que, en nuestro bautismo, recibimos “virtudes sobrenaturales infundidas” por lo que “nos damos cuenta de que nos ha dado un gran amor.” La fe unida a la esperanza y a la caridad entran en lo más profundo de nuestro ser. De hecho, la realidad sobrenatural de Dios mismo (Padre, Hijo y Espíritu Santo) están dentro de nuestro espíritu. En nuestro bautismo nos convertimos en una “nueva creación.” Esta increíble realidad es posible sólo a través de la encarnación de Dios en el Hijo, quien se ha unido íntimamente a nuestra naturaleza humana. En su amor, en su fidelidad, en su sacrificio y muerte en la cruz, Dios decide libremente redimir y reconciliar a toda la humanidad. ¿Para qué? Para que. “Tengan vida y la tengan en abundancia” (Juan 10:10) Lumen Fidei aclara que el bautismo “abre la puerta” a la vida en abundancia; sin embargo, para obtener plenamente esta vida que “Es un largo viaje”, la Fe “ilumina nuestro camino hacia el futuro y nos permite con alegría avanzar... hacia la plena comunión con Dios.” Lumen Fidei ilumina muchos conceptos erróneos acerca de la fe, Pablo y Santiago nos dicen, de las obras y la salvación: “la fe sola” no da plena comunión con Dios, la fe sola no salva; “buenas obras” e incluso obedecer los mandamientos, sin creer que todo lo bueno viene de Dios, se convierte en una vida inútil y estéril aislada del Señor. “Fe en Cristo trae salvación porque en Él nuestra vida se abre a un amor que nos precede, un amor que nos transforma desde dentro, actuando en nosotros y por nosotros.”
Lumen Fidei posses a bold challenge “If we want to understand what faith is, we need to follow the route it has taken.” This route begins by understanding the path trodden by believers who have gone before us. It means understanding faith, truth, and love are inseparable. Faith becomes awakened when we freely welcome Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, into all aspects of our life.
Lumen fidei posee un audaz desafío “Si queremos entender qué es la fe, tenemos que seguir la ruta que ha tomado.” Esta ruta empieza por comprender el camino recorrido por los creyentes que han partido antes que nosotros. Es entender que la fe, la verdad y el amor son inseparables. La fe se despierta cuando libremente aceptamos a Jesucristo, la Palabra hecha carne, en todos los aspectos de nuestra vida.
Lumen Fidei states plainly: “We need knowledge, we need truth, because without this we cannot stand firm, we cannot move forward. Faith without truth does not save…” Part three of this series will examine what the Church means by this bold statement and the implications for us!
Lumen fidei dice claramente: “Necesitamos el conocimiento, necesitamos la verdad, porque sin esto no podemos estar firmes, no podemos avanzar. La fe sin la verdad no salva …” La tercera parte de esta serie examinará lo que la Iglesia quiere decir de lo que esta en negritas y lo que implica en nosotros!
Barry Metzentine, Director of Evangelization & Catechesis
Barry Metzentine, Director de Evangelización y Catequesis
BISHOP CARY’S UPCOMING SCHEDULE: Aug 24-25 Evangelization & Catechesis Symposium, Powell Butte Aug 30-Sept 2 Campamento Familiar, Powell Butte
Sept 4 Sept 6-8 Sept 8 Page 4
Year of Faith Teaching Series, Vale Retrouvaille, Redmond Prineville Mass & Picnic
