Vatican City, Apr 26, 2017 / 12:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Former NFL quarterback Jim Harbaugh, now head coach for the University of Michigan football team, is also a Roman Catholic – and he said Wednesday that faith plays a major role in his life.
“The role that (faith) plays in my life is in the priorities that I have,” he said April 26, “faith, then family, then football.”
Coach Harbaugh spoke to CNA following a general audience with Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square April 26. He and his wife, Sarah, greeted Francis following the audience and presented him with a gift from the team – a University of Michigan helmet and pair of cleats.
The helmet included both the Italian and American flags and a little cross by the chinstrap. The Pope gave Harbaugh “some marching orders,” the coach said, “he told me to pray for him.”
Following the encounter, Harbaugh and his family and the University of Michigan football team were hosted for lunch on the terrace of the EWTN Rome bureau offices. After lunch they held a brief press conference.
Harbaugh, 53, has been head football coach for the University of Michigan since 2015. He played college football at Michigan from 1983-1986 and played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons from 1987-2000. He has seven children.
Speaking to CNA about his experience meeting Pope Francis, Harbaugh quoted his father-in-law, Merrill Feuerborn, who told him, “To live in a state of grace, put your trust in the Lord, and be not afraid.”
“When I met Pope Francis today, I was riding on a state of grace,” he said, “that feeling was beyond description. And I know that there’s something that I’m supposed to do with that opportunity, with that encounter, of meeting the Holy Father. I’m going to pray about it.”
Harbaugh is in Rome April 22-30. He brought along his family as well as almost his entire team and staff – some 150 people. He said he wanted to give his players an experience they might not otherwise have.
Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, he brought the team and staff to Rome for a week of team-building, cultural and historical experiences, and of course, spring practices.
The aim of this trip was to “have an educational experience like none other,” he told CNA.
“Not all learning is done in a classroom or on a football field, you know? It’s out connecting to people, and having a chance for our players and staff to see things they’ve never seen before, eat things they’ve never tasted, to hear a language they’ve never heard.”
One goal for the trip was to connect his team with people they otherwise might not have met, he said. Their first day in Rome, the group met and picnicked with a group of refugees, including several from Syria.
Later on Wednesday, Harbaugh and some members of the team and his family visited the SOS Children’s Village, a community made up of homes for children who are in positions of family or social hardship.
Harbaugh said that attending the general audience and meeting Pope Francis was an emotional experience, not just for him but for his team as well. Asked what he hopes his team will take away from the experience, he said just that “the relationship with God is a personal one.”
He said his suggestion for each of his players would be to spend time in silence and think and pray “about what it means, and what they should take away from it.”
“Because we don’t always know what to do with it,” he continued. “I don’t know what to do with the encounter I had meeting Pope Francis today. What exactly did it mean? What opportunity was given and what am I supposed to do with that?”
Immediately afterward, Harbaugh said he was able to speak with a priest from Detroit, Msgr. Robert McClory, about the experience: “And that was the advice that he gave me: to be silent, to pray, to be with God and listen, and you’ll get it, you’ll figure it out.”
Two players had the opportunity to get a little bit closer to the Pope during the audience, which Harbaugh chose through an essay competition. The winners, offensive lineman Grant Newsome and defensive tackle Salim Makki, both said they are inspired by Francis.
Attending the audience “was just an incredible experience,” Newsome said.
“Not only as a Christian, but as a person in general, just to listen to someone who is so internationally renowned as Pope Francis and to hear him and have him bless us was just an incredible experience for me and I know for a lot of the other guys on the team.”
Makki, a Muslim, said he looks up to Pope Francis as a hero. “He’s always shown that Muslims and Christians and Catholics can combine – we’re all brothers and sisters, we can co-exist together.”
Jack Wangler, a senior wide receiver told CNA, “I can speak for everybody, I think: this has been a once-in-a-lifetime trip.”
“It’s been great to come here with the team and use it as a bonding experience and a cultural experience, to expand what we’ve learned in the classroom,” said Catholic fullback Joe Beneducci.
He told CNA that he remembers reading about the Church and the Vatican at school and watching St. John Paul II’s funeral on TV. “Coming here to see it in person, it put it all in perspective and made me appreciate it just that much more.”
“I think it’s brought me closer to my faith as well, which is very nice.”
About the qualities of a good sportsman, Harbaugh said, “It talks about it in the Bible: strive hard to win the prize. To have that motivation, to have that quality of perseverance and discipline and drive is what really makes a good athlete.”
Sunday, before they leave to return to Michigan, Harbaugh’s infant son, John Paul, will be baptized at St. Peter’s Basilica. His daughter, Addison, will also make her first Holy Communion.
In the press conference, Harbaugh told journalists that if he accomplished nothing else in his life, to have met the Pope, and see his son be baptized and his daughter receive First Communion at the Vatican, would make him feel like “a blessed man.”
“This has been the experience of a lifetime.”
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Reference is made to the 2018 statement by the International Theological Commission (ITC), and then we read further: “Speaking of the Church as ‘synodal’ by its nature is something novel, the commission said, and required “careful theological clarification.”
As for “theological clarification,” this from the ITC:
“…It is essential that, taken as a whole, the participants give a meaningful and balanced image of the local Church, reflecting different vocations, ministries, charisms, competencies, social status and geographical origin. The bishop, the successor of the apostles [!] and shepherd of his flock who convokes and presides over the local Church synod, is called to exercise there the ministry of unity and leadership with the authority which belongs to him” (n. 79).
“…called to exercise…the authority which belongs to him?”
Hmm, forgot about that. The synodal Vademecum casts bishops “primarily as facilitators” and yet warns not to fall for “passing opinions”–a feeble allusion, perhaps, to the eclipsed Deposit of Faith versus the Zeitgeist?
So now, the self-credentialed sociologist-scientist (!), and relator-general of the 2023 Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Hollerich, can clarify (!), all by himself his superior wisdom: “I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching [on sexual morality] is no longer true [….] I think it’s time we make a fundamental revision of the doctrine” https://www.aol.com/news/liberal-cardinal-calls-revised-catholic-135429645-181222377.html
The “synodal process […] within the Council’s wake.” Or is it the secular world’s “woke?” So, yes, to a smoother and synodal Church fabric of consultation, and yes to the concluding remark: Jesus Christ as “the way, and the truth, and the life.”
Butt, first, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8). Yes? Hopefully the lights go on before Hollerich’s synodal synthesis! in 2023: You just can’t put lipstick on that pig.
I wouldn’t be quite so skeptical if I heard less from Cdl. Grech and more from Cdl. Ratzinger/BXVI.
A “synod of the whole Church” is not in any of her sources. If they mean to call another Council they haven’t said it nor have they identified what it is.
VATICAN II mentions synods in the context of the ordinary practice of the Church over many centuries -nothing more. Anything else would be over-reaching.
If you set up something as “synod” that’s not really what the Church has lived, everything in it is going to be skewed, misshapen and out of proportion.
Quoting Benedict XVI or anyone else will be out of context. If it is something entirely new you should just say that and find a name for it without trying to automatically legitimize it using the word “synod”.
Neither the first Mass -the Last Supper- nor the ordinary Mass is a synod. Just because the word “synod” has a relation with “Church” it it doesn’t mean you can use it.
Perhaps what the Pope has in mind is a gathering alike to the Lord giving the Sermon on the Mount; with the Pope teaching how the Beatitudes are to be lived today?
And the justification would be that “VATICAN II wanted to avoid ‘denunciations’ while maintaining a ‘pastoral’ bearing”? Even that stretches VATICAN II though.
In some ways they are being very candid yes -while unctioning a collective passivity, which yet doesn’t make up for what is lacking. But it is so “developmental” piecemeal and adapting that it’s not possible to know what to put where.
Apparently the Holy Spirit is already sanctioning it (and the use of “synod”), since, as they are saying, He is showing His intent what He wants for the whole Church, apart from VATICAN II but envisaged in VATICAN II.
Well, well, well, what do they have there.
“The [2018] CDF document said the more modern view of a synod [is] that its development was accompanied by the neologism of synodality”. A perfect tautology, open to invention.
Pope Benedict XVI is quoted in the Oct 10 message, that the “synodal dimension is constitutive of the Church: it consists of a coming together of every people and culture in order that they become one in Christ and walk together, following him, who said: I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Benedict in Angelus 5 Oct 2008). Although Benedict, in this documented 2008 Angelus clearly articulates the continuity of doctrine between pontiff and bishops. “The purposes of the Synod of Bishops, [is] to promote a closer union and greater collaboration between the Supreme Pontiff and the Bishops worldwide, to provide accurate and direct information concerning the Church’s circumstances and problems, to facilitate agreement on matters of doctrine and pastoral action” (Benedict in Angelus 5 Oct 2008).
There isn’t any semblance in what Benedict said then, and what is proposed now by Cardinals Grech, Hollerich within the Synod on Synodality.
Grech ought to be prosecuted for micro-aggression–this homophobic talk about “fruits” of the Council. You just can’t get good help these days.
Elias Galy – Yes, throwing in a quote from BXVI is just for cover. Interesting that they see the need.
Gilberta thank you. If I was instead structuring a study of it to make it in book form, I’d try to be more factual as you see Fr. Morello doing on this page. So much of that kind of background information escapes me though; and it is hard-going to bring it together at any given point in time, when the work for it, on my part, is still not done! You see.
Some areas are non-factual, eg., the Holy Father warns against Pelagianism /neo-Pelagianism; but, What is Fr. James Martin preaching in the name of the faith?
Some things have become so circulated we can’t even remember who first announced it or if Pope Francis ever conditioned it. As we are urged to “move forward” we can’t tell if Pope Francis will back it.
And then they have floated strange ideas, like: being pro-life (as always understood) means you are insensitive to “other life issues”, as if there is some a priori implacable evil connection or division between such “two sections” in a pro-life person, or proven terrible neglectful attitudes in care the elderly, by pro-lifers.
I’m going with Cdl. Muller and Francis Maier on this Synod of Synodality business.
I pray for Fr. Benedict and I hope you will not leave him out of your own prayers.
Cardinal Muller has been lucid and very good on instruction; and he lends his stability.
The resolution of the “progressives/conservatism” dichotomy is not the purpose of VATICAN II and I believe that the “stand-off” is all too consuming for some. The Holy Father seems to have tried to “move forward” from it, or, tried to get other past it, by introducing a tertium quid; but, yet, by hitting many wrong notes together.
The charity that is aimed for in the Council is for witness that expresses unity of doctrine and discipline. Thus, separating doctrine and discipline is contrary to faith and reason and the Council and elicits lack of depth. I’m trying to be non-abrasive.