US

No Picture
News Briefs

Archdiocese of New Orleans files for bankruptcy

May 1, 2020 CNA Daily News 3

CNA Staff, May 1, 2020 / 02:54 pm (CNA).- Under financial pressure from clerical abuse litigation compounded by the coronavirus crisis, The Archdiocese of New Orleans announced May 1 that its administrative offices are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy…. […]

No Picture
News Briefs

St. Joseph the Worker was once out of work, too

May 1, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Denver Newsroom, May 1, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Mass unemployment is a deeply unwelcome background for this year’s Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, but the Catholic celebration has lessons for everyone, regardless of job situation, according to two priests with expertise on St. Joseph and the dignity of work.

Citing the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt, devotional writer Father Donald Calloway said St. Joseph is “very empathetic” towards those suffering unemployment.

“He himself at some point would have been unemployed in the Flight to Egypt,” the priest told CNA. “They had to pack up everything and go to a foreign country with nothing. They didn’t plan on that.”

Calloway, author of the book “Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father,” is an Ohio-based priest of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception.

He suggested that St. Joseph “at some point was surely quite concerned: how is he going to find work in a foreign country, not knowing the language, not knowing the people?”

At least 30.3 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last six weeks, in what is perhaps the worst unemployment situation in the country’s history, CNBC reports. Many others are working from home under coronavirus travel restrictions, while countless workers face newly dangerous workplaces where they may be at risk of contracting the coronavirus and taking it home to their families.

Father Sinclair Oubre, a labor advocate, similarly thought of the Flight into Egypt as a period of joblessness for St. Joseph—and also a period that showed an example of virtues.

“He remains focused: stay open, continue to struggle, do not get broken down. He was able to build up a livelihood for him and his family,” said Oubre. “For those who are unemployed, St. Joseph gives us a model of not allowing the difficulties of life to crush one’s spirit, but rather trusting in God’s providence, and in adding to that providence our own attitude and strong work ethic.”

Oubre is pastoral moderator of the Catholic Labor Network and the Beaumont diocese’s director of the Apostleship of the Seas, which serves seafarers and others in sea-based work.

The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker was inaugurated by Pope Pius XII, who announced it on May 1, 1955 in an audience with Italian workers. To them he described St. Joseph as “the humble craftsman of Nazareth” who “not only personifies the dignity of the manual laborer with God and the Holy Church,” but is “also always the provident custodian of you and your families.”

Pius XII encouraged continued religious formation for adult workers and said it was an “atrocious slander” to charge that the Church is “an ally of capitalism against the workers.”

“She, mother and teacher of all, is always particularly solicitous for her children who find themselves in the most difficult conditions, and also in fact has validly contributed to the achievement of honest progress already achieved by various categories of workers,” the pope said.

While the Church has rejected various systems of Marxist socialism, Pius XII said, no priest or Christian can remain deaf to a cry for justice and a spirit of brotherhood. The Church cannot ignore that the worker who seeks to improve his condition but faces obstacles opposed to the “order of God” and God’s will for earthly goods.

May 1 is observed as Labor Day in many countries, though not the United States. Calloway said that at the time of the declaration, communism was a serious threat that sought to take over a longtime celebration of work.

The observance originated in the late nineteenth century in the American labor movement’s May 1 protests against excessively long workdays.

“Workers complained that these long hours were punishing on the body and left them no time to tend to family duties or to improve themselves through education,” Clayton Sinyai, executive director of the Catholic Labor Network, told CNA.

Calloway reflected that most people in life are workers, whether outside or at a desk.

“They can find a model in St. Joseph the Worker,” he said. “No matter what your work is, you can bring God into it and it can be beneficial to you, your family, and society as a whole.”

Oubre said there is much to learn from reflecting upon how St. Joseph’s work nurtured and protected the Virgin Mary and Jesus, and so was a form of sanctification of the world.

“If Joseph did not do what he did, there was no way the Virgin Mary, a pregnant single maiden, could have survived in that environment,” Oubre said.

“We come to realize that the work that we do is not just for this world, but rather we can work to help build the kingdom of God,” he continued. “The work that we do cares for our family members and our children and helps build up the future generations that are there.”

Calloway warned against “ideologies of what work should be.”

“It can become enslavement. People can turn into workaholics. There’s a misunderstanding of what work is meant to be,” he said.

For him, the feast day shows the importance of family and the importance of rest, given that God spoke to St. Joseph in his dreams.

St Joseph gave dignity to work “because, as the one chosen to be the earthly father of Jesus, he taught the Son of God to do manual labor,” said Calloway. “He was entrusted with teaching the son of God a trade, to be a carpenter.”

“We’re not called to be slaves to a trade, or to find our ultimate meaning of life in our work, but to allow our work to glorify God, to build up the human community, to be a source of joy to everyone,” he continued. “The fruit of your labor is meant to be enjoyed by yourself and others, but not at the expense of harming others or depriving them of a just wage or overworking them, or having working conditions that are beyond human dignity.”

Oubre found a similar lesson, saying “our work is always at the service of our family, our community, our society, of the world itself.”

While some business owners and workers hope to see a speedy end to restrictions and business closures intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Oubre warned that opening a non-essential business to make money might not be prudent. He used the example of a football stadium, excessively focused on opening in August, even if it packs people into a situation that potentially spreads a dangerous disease.

“I don’t know if that’s the most prudent decision coming out of the spirit of service, at this particular time,” he said. “That’s not something we have to do right now.”

“St. Joseph gives us that image of humble service work,” Oubre emphasized. “If we want to go back to work right now, we need to make sure that it grows out of a spirit of humility and service and promotion of the common good.”

Some of those who have jobs are protesting work conditions they believe to be dangerous. They have organized May 1 protests and walkouts at Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, FedEx and others, citing health and safety concerns during the epidemic, the news and commentary site The Intercept reports.

Oubre said these protesters too must recognize the importance of the work in a spirit of humility, service and promoting the common good.

Calloway too reflected on the dueling positions of workers objecting to coronavirus protections, while other workers are protesting to seek improved protections.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” he said. “That’s where we move into the spiritual aspect of asking St. Joseph to give us wisdom to help us know what to do in this tricky situation. Be cautious, of course, we don’t want to spread this thing. But at the same time, people have to get their jobs back. We can’t go on like this for long. We can’t sustain it.”

Calloway said no worker is meant to work in isolation and “just be selfish about his employment.”

“Work is meant to benefit himself and others,” he said. “It’s when we become stingy and selfish that we begin to hoard, and we take for ourselves gigantic salaries while your workers are getting pennies.”

St. Joseph is described as “the most just” in the New Testament, and would have been a just man in his labor as well, the priest said.

For Oubre, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker is a time to remember “invisible workers.”

“No matter how humble work may be, and how much it may be considered low-skilled, or semi-skilled, it is absolutely essential to the quality of life of the nation,” said Oubre. “No matter how society looks upon the job, it becomes a very, very important task. If that task were not done, the more respected, prestigious work can’t happen.”

The coronavirus epidemic has drawn support and recognition to the risky work of doctors and nurses. Oubre noted that housekeepers and cleaners at the hospital may go unnoticed but are critical in keeping infections down and maintaining the safety of doctors, nurses and patients, while other hospital support staff also deserve their due credit.

Grocery store checkers, too, are “literally putting their lives on the line interacting with the public” so that people can continue to feed themselves, the priest said.

“All of a sudden the checkout girl at Kroger’s is not just some high school kid we’re going to deal with, and go on. She becomes an essential person helping people fulfill their needs,” Oubre said. “She’s putting her physical health on the line, by being in a public realm, interacting with hundreds of people a day.”

Calloway noted that many people will consecrate themselves to St. Joseph on the saint’s May 1 feast day, a practice encouraged by his book.

 

 

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Potential postulants wait and see as COVID puts convent plans in question 

April 30, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Denver Newsroom, Apr 30, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- If everything were going according to plan, Jessica would be entering the convent on August 22.

But, thanks to coronavirus, everything is not going according to plan.

“I was accepted to pre-postulancy with an order, and as of right now everything is going according to their schedule still,” she said, as far as the entrance date.

“But because of COVID-19 I haven’t been able to work (I had two jobs on campus which closed) and I lost my summer job opportunities, so I might not be able to enter because of student loan debt,” Jessica told CNA.

Jessica asked that her identity and the order be somewhat concealed because she hasn’t told all of her family and friends of her plans to join the convent – especially now that she’s not sure if it will even happen in the expected timeframe.

“I haven’t told many people about my plans to enter because I’m worried I won’t be able to enter,” she told CNA.

Jessica is not alone. Postulants – new members of a religious community starting the first process of formation before taking vows – are among the myriad of people whose plans have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Many women discerning religious life with communities of religious sisters or nuns in the United States are having to settle for tentative plans as their summer or fall entrance dates to their communities are fast approaching. Many otherwise-standard pre-entrance visits or retreats have been canceled or moved online, while some entrance dates have been postponed, and others are – very tentatively – staying in place.

Natalie Ross has been discerning religious life for several years, and decided in October last year to begin the application process with the Daughters of Mary Immaculate, often called the Marianist Sisters.

Ross turned in her application in April and should know if she is officially accepted by late May. If she is accepted, she would theoretically enter shortly thereafter, and move from her home in Austin, Texas to the sisters’ house in Dayton, Ohio.

“Right now there are no concrete plans to delay entrance if I’m accepted, but I think that’s the way a lot of people and institutions have been handling all this,” Ross told CNA. “You just keep your plans the way they were before until it gets closer to the time for them to happen, and then re-evaluate if they will really be possible now.”

Ross said while she doesn’t “terribly mind” having plans up in the air, and while she knows other people are facing bigger problems related to the virus, it has left her with a lot of questions.

“Our lease is up around when I would theoretically be moving, and someone else has already leased our apartment – should I look to sign a new lease somewhere? How do you safely move during a pandemic? Should I move back in with my parents (several hours away)? If I leave, what should my roommate do? Also, will I be able to say goodbye to my friends and family?” she said.

Because the Marianist sisters are not cloistered, Ross said she knows she will get a chance to see family and friends again, even if she doesn’t say goodbye before she initially leaves. But she had specific ideas of a “cheerful but slightly teary-eyed goodbye party,” of revisiting some of her favorite parks and restaurants one more time, of heart-to-heart conversations she’d have with friends and siblings in the days before she left.

“And now, I’m sure I’m being melodramatic, but I’m picturing me packing my stuff into my car and abandoning my roommate and driving to Ohio by myself and bawling my eyes out. And that breaks my heart. The idea of this temporary separation from loved ones becoming more permanent is really sad!” Ross said.

“But this situation is a reminder that I have to sacrifice things I really want, even things that are genuinely good, to pursue God’s call,” she said.

That doesn’t mean that she isn’t grieving the things she will miss, she added, “but it does give meaning to it in a way that strengthens me. I was reminded of Jesus’ words, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead’…that passage in Matthew made sense to me in a personal way that it hadn’t before.”

Brianna Farens would have been entering the convent of the Poor Clares in Roswell, New Mexico, a cloistered community, on May 26.

Because cloistered communities have even fewer opportunities for members to see friends and family in person after entrance, Farens had planned out her time before entrance. She had planned to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with her parish in Denver, and then to spend some time with her parents and extended family and friends in Connecticut before her entrance into the cloister, since she had been living in Denver for the past five years.

It started with the Holy Land pilgrimage. What was supposed to be a 10-day trip in mid-March turned into a whirlwind of about three days in Israel and hurrying to get home as countries quickly shut their borders. When Farens got home, she had to self-quarantine at her house in Denver since she had been traveling internationally.

She also learned that both of her parents had contracted coronavirus.

“I found out the day they got the results back, the day I landed back in the U.S. That was horrifying,” Farens said.

While they were both very sick for two weeks, they both have recovered and are doing well, Farens said. But it meant she had to wait until Good Friday to go home, to make sure that they were recovered and that her risk of infection was low. At home in Connecticut, Farens kept in touch with the Mother Superior of her convent. Just recently, they decided to push her entrance date from May 26 to June 30.

“So in that way, it’s giving me some extra time with my family here,” Farens said. “We’re also hoping that things might be a little bit better, it might be a little bit safer to travel a month later. Also we’re just really wanting to make sure I’m not at risk of bringing the virus or anything else there to the monastery, because obviously the sisters being cloistered, they’re very safe, very well-quarantined.”

Even June 30, Farens said, is likely just a tentative plan.

“I think as it gets closer, we’re going to have to see how everything is and reevaluate. We might also figure out if I should get tested before going,” she added. Some sisters in the community are older and immunocompromised, and are therefore at greater risk.

One of the hardest parts of this time has been being unable to see the extended family and friends that she wanted to see before entering, Farens said.

“These were going to be some of the last times I get to hug my family and friends here and all my friends’ babies. This process of surrendering all of that, realizing that that actually might not be – at least in a way that I was wanting and hoping – it’s been really, really hard to let go of,” she said.

But despite the challenges, the changes to her plans haven’t deterred Farens in her conviction of being called to the Poor Clares. “Living in such chaotic times and realizing the brokenness of our world, and hearing the sufferings of so many people and people I know, and especially people dying alone…if anything, I feel even more steadfast and convicted that is my call, this vocation to give my life praying for this world that is suffering so much,” she said.

Sr. Emily Marsh is the national vocations director for the Daughters of St. Paul, an order of religious sisters with convents throughout the United States and Canada.

Typically, new postulants would enter the community in the order’s St. Louis convent in August or September, but there hasn’t been a final decision made yet as to whether the women will enter at the normal time, or at a slightly later time, she told CNA.

“We have not had any conversations with my superior or council for formation regarding that, we don’t have enough information regarding August or September,” she said.

The sisters’ infirmary is housed in a separate convent in Boston, Marsh added, but there is a 92 year-old sister living in the postulancy house who would particularly be at risk for coronavirus. Marsh said she has been keeping in touch with the women who are planning to enter this year, and she said that even if their entrance date were to get bumped back by a few months, it wouldn’t cause major logistical problems for most of the women.

However, “if things get pushed back more than six months we would have some concerns,” she said.

Other than the entrance for postulants being up in the air at the moment, the community has “basically been taking our vocation apostolate online,” Marsh said.

Many of the order’s convents have monthly in-person discernment gatherings, Marsh said, and those have all been moved online in the form of video chats, recorded talks, or live question-and-answer sessions with the sisters.

The sisters also usually host an in-person Holy Week retreat at their convent in Boston. This year, as the retreat approached, the sisters decided to move the event online, particularly out of concern for the sisters in the infirmary at the Boston convent.

Normally, Marsh said, there would be about 6-15 women on any given year at the Holy Week retreat.

This year, she said, “we had 7 or 8 confirmed, when we realized we couldn’t have people travel. We decided to at least do something online for those who had signed up, and we started planning an online alternative.”

Word spread, and soon there were five times as many young women registered for the retreat.

“I woke up to 40 emails inquiring about it,” Marsh said. In total, the retreat had 43 registered participants from the U.S. and Canada, as well as Trinidad and Tobago, and one from Australia who had to completely “flip her schedule” in order to participate in the real-time events.

There were also about 150 additional people viewing the discernment videos and downloads that the sisters posted online who were not registered participants, Marsh said.

“I don’t know why it took a pandemic for us to come up with a discernment retreat online,” Marsh said, adding that the sisters are looking into planning another one for this summer.

“I think just from what I’ve been seeing, it’s weird, but it’s been a very fruitful time,” as people have been forced to stay at home because of the virus, Marsh said. “People have a lot of time, and it’s just making people think about life. I think God is giving special graces for vocations and vocational discernment, and we’re basically trying to do what we can in providing women with resources.”

Marsh said while she doesn’t see virtual retreats ever replacing in-person discernment opportunities, she thinks the community will plan on offering a few online discernment events in the coming years, as they can provide a good first step for young women looking into the community who may not be able to afford an expensive plane ticket to a faraway convent.

“It will provide a nice first step, and then from that interaction we can make a mutual discernment of what’s a good next step,” she said.

Sr. Anne Catherine, OP, is a sister with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, Tennessee. She told CNA that the order typically welcomes the new postulant class in August, and so far those plans have not changed.

“From indications we’re seeing at this time, we do think we can go forward with an August entrance date,” she said, and the current postulant class is still proceeding in their application process.

But if the public health situation regarding coronavirus were to change for the worse, the entrance date could be changed, she noted.

Already, some of the young women in this year’s entrance class have experienced other natural forces throwing off some of their plans, when a tornado blew through Nashville on March 2, just days before a discernment retreat at the convent, knocking out power for most of the weekend.

“It was all very funny, normally they eat in this one dining area, but it was so dark we couldn’t take them down there,” Sr. Anne Catherine said, “so we made a makeshift refectory with candles.” The rest of the weekend went well and the women had a good attitude about everything, even without power, she added.

The week of March 16 is when many non-essential businesses started to shut down and people started to shelter at home in the state of Tennessee due to coronavirus. Since then, Sr. Anne Catherine said, the sisters haven’t been able to have retreats or visitors.

Looking ahead to August, Sr. Anne Catherine said that because the sisters’ convent is so big, it is possible that they would have the young women entering do a kind of quarantine-retreat hybrid in their first two weeks, to ensure that they are not bringing the virus into the community as they’re entering. They would normally have the new members do a retreat upon their entrance anyway, but this one would be a little longer and in a separate part of the house.

“We’d want to protect the young women who are coming to us, to make sure that they feel safe and their families feel safe, and also protect our community,” Sr. Anne Catherine said.

“A vocation is an invitation to put out into the deep and trust the Lord,” Sr. Anne Catherine added. “In the pandemic, the emphasis on God’s plan and trusting his will…it’s even more palpable in this time.”

[…]