Lisa, Katharine, and Bruce Alexander. / Screenshot EWTN Pro-Life Weekly
Denver Newsroom, Nov 25, 2021 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Biological parents to two daughters and two sons, Bruce and Lisa Alexander first considered adoption after their youngest was born. However, it was not until the 2012 March for Life that the Catholic couple decided to proceed.
At the time, Lisa was thinking about adoption and decided to ask her husband about it. He was thinking the same thing.
“From then on, the Holy Spirit was with us,” she said in a 2018 interview with EWTN Pro-Life Weekly that CNA is highlighting for National Adoption Month.
Bruce recalled, “The fact that things lined up as quickly as they did, and what were typical … delays where the process normally drags on or gets held up — we didn’t experience that.”
Realizing that they were older in age than most adoptive parents, the Alexanders decided to adopt an older child by making a switch from the infancy program to the early child program. On Jan. 14, 2014, they made their decision but, that same day, they received a call from the adoption agency.
“She told me … ‘I know you’re interested in maybe switching but I’d like to tell you that we have a baby girl,’” Lisa explained. “Neither one of us needed to take any time. We knew that God had just placed this girl, even at that point, we thought that this was the child that was for our family.”
The little girl’s name was Katharine.
Holding back tears, Bruce added, “Even at the call, it was intuitively obvious we were being called.”
Throughout the adoption process, the Alexanders had been set on adopting a little boy. When they found out it was a little girl, they considered it to be a sign from above.
That sign came in the wake of tremendous heartache. In 2009, the Alexanders’ oldest daughter, Codi, was riding her bike home when she was hit by a car. Five days later, Codi died at the age of 16.
“Our older daughter, who is with Jesus in Heaven, is who I prayed to and the Blessed Mother,” Lisa explained. “And I had a feeling that Codi had something to do with bringing this little girl to our family.”
This little girl, though, was born facing an increasingly common problem. Her birth mother was addicted to oxycodone. The adoption agency assured the Alexanders that she was weaned off, but did suggest contacting their pediatrician.
“Their response was that there simply just isn’t enough research,” said Lisa. “We just thought that we would be provided for if Katharine needed something that later on in life that was tied with this addiction.”
Fast forward ahead and nothing is stopping little Katharine, or as she prefers being called, “Peanut.”
Big brothers Chase and Brandon Alexander have embraced their new roles from playing baseball to tackling the playground with Katharine and welcomed the new energy that has filled their home.
“A lot of the new creativity comes from her,” said Chase.
While Katharine, now 7, brings a new energy into their home, there is also a sense of familiarity.
“It was the wittiness, I thought, that both Katharine and my older sister Codi had that they share,” explained Chase. “Not so much cracking a joke but more of like the comment at the right time that you wouldn’t expect from a four year old but just kind of fits in.”
“It’s not coincidence,” expressed Bruce.
Lisa added, “I have always believed that Katharine was heavenly sent. … If you knew Codi, she definitely had her way with deciding who was going to come to our family.”
“There have been some tough times in our family, but God has always been there,” she concluded.
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After rioters pulled down a statue of St. Junipero Serra in Sacramento on July 4, a local Catholic told CNA that she felt compelled, after prayer and reflection, to clean the spot where the statue once stood, to pray there, and to defend the 18th-century missionary’s legacy.
“I know enough about him to know that he was not a bad man, and that he doesn’t deserve the inaccurate histories that were being portrayed in our local media. I’m not going to be silent about that when given an opportunity.” Audrey Ortega told CNA.
Ortega, a homemaker from Sacramento and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, set up a makeshift shrine to Serra on the statue’s empty plinth July 5, and led other Catholics in cleaning graffiti from the site.
On July 4, a rioter burned the face of the Serra statue with an ignited spray from an aerosol can, before a crowd pulled the statue from its base using tow straps. After the statue fell, members of the crowd struck it with a sledgehammer and other objects, dancing and jumping upon it.
Ortega said it hurt her especially that the rioters waited for the cover of darkness to destroy the statue, which according to an eyewitness took less than ten minutes to accomplish before the rioters scattered.
St. Serra’s detractors have accused him in recent years of perpetrating abuses against Native Americans. The statue, installed on the grounds of California’s state capitol in 1965, was the third figure of the missionary saint to be torn down by crowds in California in recent weeks.
Ortega was not present at the protest, but watched the coverage that evening on the local news. She resolved to go to the site to, in her words, put “something beautiful on this marred, awful place.”
Her 12-year-old son had made a simple wooden cross for their family’s door during Holy Week, she said. She decided it would be an appropriate item to use to honor Serra, along with holy water, an Our Lady of Guadalupe candle, and holy dirt from Chimayo, New Mexico.
Ortega said she was scared at first to approach the former statue site— which is now little more than a “stump” with rebar sticking up, she said— but soon had her “prayer spot” set up on the stump with a lit candle, and she began to pray the rosary and the stations of the cross.
“I was just praying for peace, and praying for the safety of everybody involved,” she said. “I’m standing on firm ground as a Catholic…I don’t want to live with anger or bitterness in my heart. That’s what caused the statue to be torn down in the first place.”
She said praying the stations of the cross at the site was particularly powerful for her.
“I felt so connected to the sufferings of Christ, and to the sufferings of St. Serra, because I do know his story of how he suffered, of the deprivation he went through and the sacrifices he made,” referring to Serra’s practices of self-mortification and the health issues he endured as a missionary in New Spain.
Serra helped to convert thousands of native Californians to Christianity and taught them new agricultural technologies.
Critics have lambasted Serra as a symbol of European colonialism and said the missions engaged in the forced labor of Native Americans, sometimes claiming Serra himself was abusive.
But Serra’s defenders say the priest actually was an advocate for native people and a champion of human rights.
“Pope Francis canonized him in 2015. He’s not going to canonize a rapist. There were rapists, yes, but it was not St. Serra,” Ortega said in the Sacramento Bee video.
Serra specifically advocated for the rights of Native peoples, at one point drafting a 33 point “bill of rights” for the Native Americans living in the mission settlements and walking all the way from California to Mexico City to present it to the viceroy.
Serra often found himself at odds with Spanish authorities over treatment of native people, and point to the outpouring of grief from native communities at his death.
Ortega lamented the fact that the statue was removed with due process, or a rational discussion. She said the groundskeepers have told her that the statue has been recovered, but she does not know if there are plans to put it back up again.
“The city has to decide: are we going to pretend like this isn’t happening? Or are we going to do better than this?” she said, suggesting that the city could hold a community forum to talk about the issue.
“At least people are now learning [Serra’s] story, even if it’s a little late for this statue,” she laughed.
On July 6, Ortega said she decided to go and scrub graffiti from the plinth, which she and her children did for two hours straight. She said many passers-by, including some state employees, thanked them for what they were doing.
Today, she said, the plinth looks nearly back to normal thanks to the cleaning efforts. But she worries that, because of the apparent inaction of the city government, it may be vandalized again.
Ortega said she plans to pray at the statue site for a few minutes each day for as long as she can.
“Anybody can walk around the capitol grounds and pray the rosary and pray for peace. And anybody can go and pray at the Serra statue, or pray the stations of the cross like I did…you can do that without a permit and without drawing…counter protestors.”
In a July 5 statement, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento said that while “the group’s actions may have been meant to draw attention to the sorrowful, angry memories over California’s past,” their “act of vandalism does little to build the future.”
“All monuments are imperfect as are our efforts to live up to America’s founding ideals. The primary task is to build up our community, not tear it down,” the bishop added.
Maureen McKinley milks one of her family’s goats in their backyard with help from three of her children, Madeline (behind), Fiona and Augustine on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. McKinley and her family own two goats, chickens, a rabbit, and a dog. / Jake Kelly
Denver Newsroom, Aug 10, 2021 / 16:32 pm (CNA).
With five children ages 10 and under to care for, and a pair of goats, a rabbit, chickens and a dog to tend to, Maureen and Matt McKinley rely on a structured routine to keep their busy lives on track.
Chores, nap times, scheduled story hours – they’re all important staples of their day. But the center of the McKinleys’ routine, what focuses their family life and strengthens their Catholic faith, they say, is the Traditional Latin Mass.
Its beauty, reverence, and timelessness connect them to a rich liturgical legacy that dates back centuries.
“This is the Mass that made so many saints throughout time,” observes Maureen, 36, a parishioner at Mater Misericordiæ Catholic Church in Phoenix.
“You know what Mass St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Therese, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Augustine were attending? The Traditional Latin Mass,” Maureen says.
“We could have a conversation about it, and we would have all experienced the exact same thing,” she says. “That’s exciting.”
Recent developments in the Catholic Church, however, have curbed some of that excitement. On July 16, Pope Francis released a motu proprio titled Traditiones custodis, or “Guardians of the Tradition”, that has cast doubt on the future of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) – and deeply upset and confused many of its devotees.
Pope Francis’ directive rescinds the freedom Pope Benedict XVI granted to priests 14 years ago to say Masses using the Roman Missal of 1962, the form of liturgy prior to Vatican II, without first seeking their bishop’s approval. Under the new rules, bishops now have the “exclusive competence” to decide where, when, and whether the TLM can be said in their dioceses.
In a letter accompanying the motu proprio, Pope Francis maintains that the faculties granted to priests by his predecessor have been “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”
Using the word “unity” a total of 15 times in the accompanying letter, the pope suggests that attending the TLM is anything but unifying, going so far as to correlate a strong personal preference for such masses with a rejection of Vatican II.
Weeks later, many admirers of the “extraordinary” form of the Roman rite – the McKinleys among them – are still struggling to wrap their minds and hearts around the pope’s order, and the pointed tone he used to deliver it.
Maureen McKinley says she had never considered herself a “traditionalist Catholic” before. Instead, she says she and her husband have just “always moved toward the most reverent way to worship and the best way to teach our children.”
“It didn’t feel like I became a particular type of Catholic by going to Mater Misericordiæ. But since the motu proprio came out, I feel like I have been categorized, like I was something different, something other than the rest of the Church,” she says.
“It feels like our Holy Father doesn’t understand this whole group of people who love our Lord so much.”
McKinley isn’t alone in feeling this way. Sadness, anger, frustration, and disbelief are some common themes in conversations among those who regularly attend the TLM.
They want to understand and support the Holy Father, but they also see the restriction as unnecessary, especially when plenty of other more pressing issues in the Church abound.
Eric Matthews, another Mater Misericordiæ parishioner, views the new restrictions as an “attack on devout Catholic culture,” citing the beauty that exists across the rites recognized within the Church. There are seven rites recognized in the Catholic Church: Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian or Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, and Chaldean.
“It’s the same Mass,” says Matthews, 39, who first discovered the TLM about eight years ago. “It’s just different languages, different cultures, but the people that you have there are there for the right reasons.”
Eric and Geneva Matthews with their four children. / Narissa Lowicki
Different paths to the TLM
The pope’s motu proprio directly affects a tiny fraction of U.S. Catholics – perhaps as few as 150,000, or less than 1 percent of some 21 million regular Mass-goers, according to some estimates. According to one crowd-sourced database, only about 700 venues – compared to over 16,700 parishes nationwide – offer the TLM.
Also, since the motu proprio’s release July 16, only a handful of bishops have stopped the TLM in their dioceses. Of those bishops who have made public responses, most are allowing the Masses to continue as before – in some cases because they see no evidence of disunity, and in others because they need more time to study the issue.
But for those who feel drawn to the TLM – for differing reasons that have nothing to do with a rejection of Vatican II – it feels as if the ground has shifted under their feet.
Maureen McKinley wants her children to understand the importance of hard work, of which they have no shortage when it comes to their urban farm. After morning prayer, Maureen milks the family’s goats with the help of the children. Madeline (age 10) feeds the bunny; Augustine (7) exercises the dog; John (6) checks for eggs from the chickens; and Michael (4) helps anyone he chooses.
With a noisy clatter in the kitchen, the McKinleys eat breakfast, tidy up their rooms, and begin their daily activities. They break at 11 a.m. to head to daily Mass at Mater Misericordiæ, an apostolate of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), where they first attended two years ago.
Matt, 34, wanted to know how the early Christians worshipped.
“The funny thing about converts is they’re always wanting more,” says Maureen, who was, at first, a little resistant to the idea of attending the TLM because she didn’t know Latin. “Worship was a big part of his conversion.”
Maureen agreed to follow her husband’s lead, and they continued to attend the TLM. What kept them coming back week after week was the reverence for the Eucharist.
“Matt had a really hard time watching so many people receive communion in the hand at the other parish,” says Maureen. “He says he didn’t want our kids to think that that was the standard. That’s the exception to the rule, not the rule.”
Reverence in worship also drew Elizabeth Sisk to the TLM. A 28-year-old post-anesthesia care unit nurse, she attends both the Novus Ordo, the Mass promulgated by St. Paul VI in 1969, and the extraordinary form in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her parish, the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, offers the TLM on the first Sunday of the month.
Sisk has noticed recently that more people in her area — especially young people who are converts to Catholicism — are attending both forms of the Mass. While the Novus Ordo is what brought many of them, herself included, to the faith, she feels that the extraordinary form invites them to go deeper.
“We want to do something radical with our lives,” Sisk says. “To be Catholic right now as a young person is a really radical decision. I think the people who choose to be Catholic right now, we’re all in. We don’t want ‘watered-down’ Catholicism.”
Elizabeth Sisk stands in front of Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina.
With the lack of Christian values in the world today, Sisk desires “something greater,” which she says she can tell is happening in the TLM.
Many TLM parishes saw an increase in attendance during the pandemic, as they were often the only churches open while many others shut their doors or held Masses outside. This struck some as controversial, if not disobedient to the local government. For others, it was a saving grace to have access to the sacraments.
The priests at Erin Hanson’s parish obtained permission from the local bishop to celebrate Mass all day, every day, with 10 parishioners at a time during the height of the COVID pandemic.
“We were being told by the world that church is not necessary,” says Hanson, a 39-year-old mother of three. “Our priest says, ‘No, that’s a lie. Our church is essential. Our salvation is essential. The sacraments are essential.’”
Andy Stevens, 52, came into the Church through the TLM, much to the surprise of his wife, Emma, who had been a practicing Catholic for many years. Andy was “very adamantly not going to become Catholic,” but was happy to help Emma with their children at Mass. It wasn’t until they attended a TLM that Andy began to think differently about the Church.
“He believed that you die and then there is nothing, and he never really spoke to me about becoming a Catholic,” says Emma, 48, who was pregnant with their seventh child at the time.
Andy noticed an intense focus among the worshippers, which he recognized as a “real presence of God” that he didn’t see anywhere else. After the birth of their 7th child, he joined the Church.
All 12 of the Stevens’ children prefer the TLM to the Novus Ordo.
Emma and Andy Stevens with their 12 children in Oxford, England.
“It’s a Mass of the ages,” says their eldest son, Ryan, 27. “I can feel the veil between heaven and earth palpably thinner.”
A native of Chicago, Adriel Gonzalez, 33, remembers attending the TLM as a child, which he did not particularly like. It was “very long, very boring,” and the people who went to the TLM were “very stiff and they could come off as judgmental” towards his family, he says.
Gonzalez, who also attended Mass in Spanish with his family, didn’t understand the differences among rites, since Chicago was a sort of “salad bowl, ethnically,” he says, and Mass was celebrated in many languages and forms.
He took a step back from faith for some time, he says, noting that he had a “respectability issue” with the Christianity he grew up with. He watched as some of his friends were either thoughtless in the way they practiced their faith, or were “on fire,” but lacked intentionality. When he did come back to the faith, it was through learning about the Church’s intellectual tradition.
He spent time in monasteries and Eastern Catholic parishes with the Divine Liturgy because there was “something so obviously ancient about it.” He decided to stay within the Roman rite with a preference for a reverent Novus Ordo.
When he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gonzalez committed to his neighborhood parish, which had a strong contingent of people who loved tradition in general. The parish instituted a TLM in the fall of 2020, when they started having Mass indoors again after the pandemic.
Hallie and Adriel Gonzalez.
“If I’m at a Latin Mass, I’m more likely to get a sense that this is a time-honored practice, something that has been honed over the millennia,” he says. “There is clearly a love affair going on here with the Lord that requires this much more elaborate song and dance.”
For Eric Matthews, the TLM feels a little like time travel.
“It could be medieval times, it could be the enlightenment period, it could be the early 1900s, and the experience is going to be so similar,” he says.
“I just feel like that’s that universal timeframe – not just the universal Church in 2021 – but the universal Church in almost any time period. We’re the only church that can claim that.”
What happens now?
The motu proprio caught Adriel Gonzalez’ attention. He sought clarity about whether his participation in the extraordinary form was, in fact, part of a divisive movement, or simply an expression of his faith.
If it was a movement, he wanted no part of it, he says.
“As far as I can tell, the Church considers the extraordinary form and the ordinary form equal and valid,” says Gonzalez. “Ideally, there should be no true difference between going to one or the other, outside of just preference. It shouldn’t constitute a completely different reality within Catholicism.”
With this understanding, Gonzalez says he resonated with some of the reasoning set forth in the motu proprio because it articulated that the celebration of the TLM was never intended to be a movement away from the Novus Ordo or Vatican II. Gonzalez also emphasized that the extraordinary form was never supposed to be a “superior” way of celebrating the Mass.
Gonzalez believes the Lord allowed the growth in the TLM “to help us to recover a love for liturgy, and to ask questions about what worship and liturgy looks like.” He would have preferred if what was good was kept and encouraged, and what was potentially dangerous “coaxed out and called out.”
Mater Misericordæ Catholic Church in Phoenix, Arizona. / Viet Truong
Erin Hanson, of Mater Misericordiæ, agrees.
“If [Pope Francis] does believe there is division between Novus Ordo and traditional Catholics, I don’t think he did anything to try to fix that division,” she says.
Hanson would like to know who the bishops are that Pope Francis consulted in making this decision, sharing that she doesn’t feel that there is any of the transparency needed for such a major document. If there are divisions, she says, she would like the opportunity to work on them in a different way.
“This isn’t going to be any less divisive if he causes a possible schism,” Hanson says.
According to the motu proprio and the accompanying letter, the TLM is not to be celebrated in diocesan churches or in new churches constructed for the purpose of the TLM, nor should new groups be established by the bishops. Left out of their parish churches, some are worried their only option to attend Mass will be in a recreation center or hotel ballroom.
Eric Matthews hopes that everyone is able to experience the extraordinary form at least once in their life so they can know that this is not about division.
“I can’t imagine someone going to the Latin Mass and saying, ‘This is creating disunity,’” he says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with the Latin Mass. You’re just going to be surrounding yourself with people that really take it to heart.”
Maureen McKinley was home sick when her husband Matt found out about the motu proprio. He had taken the kids to a neighborhood park, where he ran into some friends who also attend Mater Misericordiæ. They asked if he had heard the news.
“I felt disgust at a document that pretends to say so much while actually saying so little and disregards the Church’s very long and rich tradition of careful legal documents,” Matt McKinley says.
Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix stated that the TLM may continue at Mater Misericordiæ, as well as in chapels, oratories, mission churches, non-parochial churches, and at seven other parishes in the diocese. Participation in the TLM and all of the activities of the parish are so important to the McKinleys that they are willing to move to another state or city should further restrictions be implemented.
For now, their family’s routine continues the same as before.
At the end of their day, the McKinleys pray a family rosary in front of their home altar, which has a Bible at the center, and an icon of Christ and a statue of the Virgin Mary. They eat dinner together, milk the goat again, and take care of their evening animal chores. After night prayer, the kids head off to bed, blessing themselves with holy water from the fonts mounted on the wall before they enter their bedroom.
“The life of the Church springs from this Mass,” Maureen says. “That’s why we’re here—not because the Latin Mass is archaic, but that it’s actually just so alive.”
Arlington, Va., Oct 1, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics with special needs are a central part of “who we are and what we do” as a community, Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington told attendees of the diocesean Mass for Persons with Disabilities on Sunday, Sept. 29.
Burbidge told the assembly that he hopes and intends to work so that every school and parish in the Arlington diocese is able to offer special education and inclusion programs.
The Mass was sponsored by the diocese’s Office of Faith Formation, Porto Charities, and Holy Spirit Church in Annandale, where the Mass was celebrated. The Virginia-based branch of Porto Charities works to help and support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Burbidge drew from Sunday’s Gospel reading, the parable of the poor man, Lazarus, going to heaven while the rich man went to hell.
“I do not think the rich man intentionally and deliberately did anything evil. He did not order Lazarus from the gate. He did not treat him intentionally cruelly,” said Burbidge.
“The failure of the rich man was that he simply did not notice Lazarus right there in his midst. Instead, the rich man accepted him as part of the landscape.”
In today’s world, it is important to not become like the rich man and ignore the suffering of those around us, even if this is not an intentional act, Burbidge said. He challenged those at the Mass to search for ways to assist those who may need help, including in the diocese’s schools. Burbidge explained that many Catholic schools in the diocese have programs to include students of varying abilities.
“I want to highlight today the expanded services and inclusion and options programs that our Catholic high schools and some of our elementary schools [have], where those with learning challenges and gifts are part of who we are and what we do,” said Burbidge.
He said that students with special needs who attend these schools “show others the face of Christ and bring out the best in all of us.”
Fifteen diocesan schools currently enroll students with special educational needs. The bishop said it is his aim that every part of the diocesan community be able to accommodate students with special needs.
“It is my expressed desire and hope and intention to make these expansion programs part of every parish and every school,” said Burbidge. Presently, three of the diocese’s five Catholic high schools have programs that serve students with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Dr. Joseph Vorbach, who serves as the superintendent of the Diocese of Arlington’s Catholic schools, told CNA that expanding inclusivity at schools is a “growing priority” in the diocese.
“With Bishop Burbidge’s vision and support, schools are initiating new programs and expanding existing ones that benefit not only the students with intellectual disabilities, but also entire school communities as everyone becomes more acutely aware of individual differences and challenges,” said Vorbach.
“Moving in this direction has been possible because of bold leadership at the school level empowering wonderfully creative and mission-focused educators.”
Sacred Heart Academy, a diocesan elementary and middle school in Winchester, VA, was chosen by the Virginia Division of Rehabilitative Services to receive the Winchester Division of Rehabilitative Services “Champion Employer Award.” This award recognizes employers who “go above and beyond” to employ and support people with disabilities.
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