Many religious communities are embracing a "green" lifestyle (see the posts on the Sisters of Providence, a group of English Benedictine sisters, and an Austrian monastery and an article in the upcoming 2011 issue of VISION Magazine). We can add another to the list: the sisters of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton, Wisconsin, an ecumenical community in the Benedictine tradition, which received the highest Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum rating ever: 63 out of 69 points for sustainability, energy efficiency, and choice of materials. The building has bamboo flooring, solar panels, and windows oriented to maximize sunlight and prairie views.

The monastery and part of its prairie

"People wonder why such a small [three-member] community would do something like this," said Sister Mary David Walgenbach. "But we are charged to tread lightly upon the earth."

Pope Benedict XVI

This past April, Pope Benedict XVI became the seventh-oldest pope since reliable records began being collected in the year 1400. Benedict XVI, now 83, moved just behind John Paul II who died at 84 years of age. Anura Guruge, an IBM information systems expert, posted a table that ranked the oldest known popes on his website www.popes-and-papacy.com.

Guruge did not consider popes who were in office before 1400 as those records “are either unreliable or unavailable and as such are impractical for meaningful analysis.”

Should Benedict XVI remain pope until 2015, he will move into second place behind Clement XII who was 87 at the time of his death. The oldest modern pope, Leo XIII, lived to be 93.

Benedict XVI was elected pope April 15, 2005 three days after his 78th birthday. He was the fifth oldest pope ever to be elected and the oldest in the past 274 years.

During a 2008 homily, Benedict reflected on a passage from the Book of Wisdom on age: “The world reputes that he who lives a long life is fortunate, but God, more than at age, looks at the rectitude of the heart. God,” he said, “is the true wisdom that does not age, he is the genuine richness that does not spoil, he is the happiness to which the heart of every [person] aspires profoundly.”

Sister Carol Ann Nawracaj, O.S.F. and her sister Terri Macor at a Giants game

When Sister Carol Ann Nawracaj, O.S.F. is not leading the Villa Maria Education Center—a school for children with learning disabilities where she is director—teaching graduate education classes, writing books, serving on various boards, or utilizing her artistic abilities with her Bernardine Franciscan community in Connecticut, she has a few other things up her sleeve.

Building on a childhood interest in sleight of hand, Nawracaj is a professional magician and a member of the Society of American Magicians. Besides doing magic for her students, faculty, family, friends, and other sisters, she has performed for David Copperfield and Paul Newman and appeared on Entertainment Tonight. She also used her magic to entertain the audience of Nunsense at the Connecticut Broadway Theater.

But that’s not all. During the summer of 1974, when she was studying at Fairfield University where the New York Giants football team was training, she slowly became "first a friend, and then a fan" of the team. She baked cookies for the coaches and players and even made Christmas stockings for their kids, according to an article in the New York Times.

Her developing relationship with the team led to then-head coach Ray Perkins naming her an honorary assistant coach, and subsequent head coaches have renewed her contract. In this capacity she gives “spirit” talks at team meetings, sends congratulatory messages and birthday and holiday remembrances, and collects news clippings of the team that she artistically displays for the players at the end of each season. She accompanied the Giants to all of their Super Bowls and shared in their victory celebrations. Her role as coach has been featured in many newspaper articles, and she has appeared on CBS, FOX, WOR, NFL Today, Sports Channel, and Sports Update.

The Vatican Museums and London's Victoria and Albert Museum are bringing together two “long-lost twins,” two halves of an artistic masterpiece conceived by the Renaissance master Raphael, reports Carol Glatz of Catholic News Service.

Some of Raphael's enormous tapestries for the Sistine Chapel and his preparatory paintings, called cartoons in the art world, will be united for the first time in the Sistine Chapel exhibition. Since the Renaissance, "the cartoons and the tapestries have led separate lives" and the Sept 8-Oct. 17 exhibit will bring together "the two halves of the same story," said Mark Evans, senior curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Michelangelo completed the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1512. When Pope Leo X was elected the following year, he wanted to leave his mark on the chapel, but every surface had already been painted. He decided to commission a special set of tapestries for the chapel's lower walls. Tapestries were a popular art form at the time and the church liked to use them for special liturgical ceremonies.

Because the designs would be sent off to famed tapestry artisans in Belgium, Raphael had to color them exactly like a painting so weavers would know what precise hues to use. That unique kind of detail meant the cartoons eventually became prized works of art in and of themselves.

The tapestries depicted the lives of Sts. Peter and Paul and events from the Acts of the Apostles. They also were designed to specifically correspond to the frescoed images of the lives of Moses and Jesus.

In 1623, before becoming king, Charles I of England bought seven of Raphael cartoons. They became, as they are to this day, the property of the British royal family. Coinciding with Pope Benedict's visit to England in September, the exhibit is meant to be a visible sign of the coming together of the two countries' common cultural heritage, said Arnold Nesselrath, director of the Vatican Museums' Byzantine, medieval, and modern collections.

Seeing the cartoons alongside the final product is considered to be a once-in-a-lifetime event, he said; "it was something not even Raphael ever got to see."

(photo credit: one of Raphael's tapestries hanging from a wall of the Sistine Chapel--CNS)

Mother Alfred Moes

U.S. News & World Report just released its annual ranking of best U.S. hospitals. Only 152 medical facilities out of almost 9,000 considered made the list, and of those 14 got onto the “honor roll” for their ability to take on and meet the most medical difficult challenges. At number two (behind Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, which has held the top spot for 20 consecutive years) is the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Last July I blogged about the Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America exhibit, which is making its way through various venues in the United States (see schedule below). If you attend the exhibit you will find out (among many other things) that the foundress of the Rochester, Minnesota community of the Sisters of Saint Francis, Maria Catherine Moes, later known as Mother Alfred Moes, also had a role in the founding of the Mayo Clinic.

The “Mayo” in the clinic’s name comes from Dr. William Worrall Mayo. After witnessing the destruction of Rochester by a tornado in 1883, Mother Moes proposed to Dr. Mayo that she would build and staff a hospital if he and his sons would agree to provide the medical care. This hospital was the beginning of what would become the Mayo Clinic.

Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America Touring Schedule
May 9, 2010-August 28, 2010: Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Cleveland, Ohio
September 24, 2010-January 22, 2011: Statue of Liberty National Monument/Ellis Island Immigration Museum, Liberty Island, New York
February 2011-April 2011: The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium, Dubuque, Iowa
June 17, 2011-August 14, 2011: Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, California
September 2, 2011-December 31, 2011: Center for History in association with the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, South Bend, Indiana

Father Pius Pietrzk, O.P.

On Friday, June 25, President Barack Obama announced the appointment of Father Pius Pietrzyk, O.P. as a member of the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, reports Father Brian Mulcahy, O.P., prior provincial of the Dominican Province of St. Joseph.

The Legal Services Corporation was established in 1974 and operates as an independent nonprofit corporation to promote equal access to justice and provide grants for high-quality civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. It is the single largest provider of civil legal aid for the poor in the nation. The corporation is headed by a bipartisan board of directors whose 11 members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Before becoming a Dominicans, Pietrzyk attended the University of Chicago law school and after graduation worked in corporate and securities law for the Chicago-based law firm of Sidley & Austin. In that time he discerned a vocation to the priesthood and left the practice of law to enter religious life. He entered the Province of St. Joseph as a novice in 2002 and was ordained to the priesthood in 2008. He currently serves as parochial vicar in St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Zanesville, Ohio.

In April of 2008 I posted a blog item about the Monastery of the Holy Cross, an urban Benedictine monastic community on Chicago’s South Side. Specifically I talked about the award-winning bed-and-breakfast they operate out of one of the monastery buildings.

The community has an interesting history, tracing its roots to three founding brothers who had done mission work and felt called to form a community of prayer. In 1991 they were invited to Chicago in order to establish a contemplative presence in the city and were given a parish church that had been closed. They began renovations of the church and over the next few years were able to purchase several adjacent properties, allowing them to welcome more guests and accommodate more monks. In the mid-1990s the community sought to affiliate itself with the Subiaco Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict, and in May of 2000 the founding members made their solemn professions as Benedictine monks. On the same day the first new member made his first vows.

The story of the current prior of the community, Father Peter Funk, O.S.B., is as interesting as that of the community itself. Coming from a musical family, Funk studied music theory at the University of Chicago and was getting hired as a cantor at Chicago parishes and leader of music at the university’s Catholic campus ministry. With his childhood friend Jon Elfner, Funk formed a jazz-rock fusion band called Om in 1994, which also included bassist Aaron Kohen and a rotating group of other local musicians. They played their last gig at the Taste of Chicago in 1997. “I wasn’t surprised at all,” Elfner said of his friend’s decision to enter monastic life. “Knowing him as long as I did, he always vested a lot into his religious life.” Funk was prepared to give up music to focus on his monastic formation but got lessons with a voice coach instead.

These days, besides the community’s liturgical music (they devote three and a half to four hours a day to communal sung prayer), Funk also plays in a trio with fellow Benedictines Brother Brendan Creeden, Funk’s former novice master, and novice Ezekiel Brennan. The group performs at social functions the monastery hosts. While he doesn’t listen to much modern music anymore, Funk is still a fan of Steve Reich and Steve Coleman.

Source: ChicagoCatholicNews.com and the Chicago Sun-Times

A former Protestant pastor who is a married father of eight was ordained a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania this past June 15. The newly ordained Fr. Paul Shenck was raised Jewish and baptized a Christian when he was 16 years old, Catholic News Agency reports.

In 1994 Shenck left the New Covenant Tabernacle, an evangelical church he founded, and became a pastor in western New York for the Reformed Episcopal Church. He entered the Catholic Church in 2004. He and his wife Rebecca have been married for 33 years.

While Latin-rite Catholic priests are ordinarily required to be celibates, a special provision instituted in 1980 by Pope John Paul II allows the ordination of married men in certain cases.

Saint Angela Merici with Ursuline sisters

How could a woman in her 60s, together with a small supporting group of older women, gather two dozen young women to live a new life and end up becoming a force for reform and renewal in the whole Western Church? This is what happened in 1535 in Brescia, Italy and the woman was Angela Merici, says Ursuline Sister Elisa Ryan, OSU in an update sent to VISION about her community.

Within 100 years, following the reforming Council of Trent, her small Company of St. Ursula inspired Ursuline foundations throughout Europe and soon after in North and South America. Today Ursulines are found in every corner of the world. The Holy Spirit was Angela's life-long guide. Her parting counsel to the members of her company was to remain united and obedient to the Holy Spirit who speaks without ceasing in their hearts.

Ursulines are women called to grow in holiness, women committed to respond to the counsels and urgings of the Holy Spirit to lead a new life in our Church and in our world. Ursuline life mentors this growth in ways that have reflected the very diverse times and needs of the Church. Today a new Church awaits a new generation of Ursulines. Click here to read more about the Ursulines in VISION's digital edition.

While Catholicism plays only a supporting role in John Landis’ 1980 film The Blues Brothers, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as Jake and Elwood Blues, it still qualifies as a “Catholic classic”, at least according to the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the movie's release, the paper put it on a list of recommended films which also includes Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, Jesus of Nazareth from Franco Zeffirelli, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, Victor Flemming's Joan of Arc, and It's a Wonderful Life from Frank Capra.

But, besides providing the reason for the wild road trip the brothers make—to raise money for the church-run orphanage where they grew up—there isn’t that much church in the movie. In fact, the scene where Sister Mary Stigmata—also known as “The Penguin”—sends them on their “mission from God” is dotted with obscenities, and beatings from Sister.

Nonetheless, the editor of L’Osservatore, Gian Maria Van, said the film’s “Catholic and spiritual heft were not lacking” and was “rich with ideas.” Heck, one scene even had a photo of the young Pope John Paul II hanging on a wall. Of the brothers’ effort to save the orphanage, Van wrote: “For them, this Catholic institution is their only family—and they decide to save it at any cost.” The movie is a “memorable film and, judging by the facts, a Catholic one” (emphasis added).

Official church opinion of the film, however, was not always so positive. When The Blues Brothers first appeared, the Office for Film and Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops offered this review: “The plot is interspersed with scenes of wholesale destruction and frenzied chases which are spectacularly unfunny and uninvolving . . . . Some good musical portions from Cab Calloway and Ray Charles, but not enough depth from director John Landis to save this zany comedy from milking cheap laughs from rough language and crude situations.” The bishops’ gave office the movie an A-III rating: “For Adults Only.”

Sister Cristina Marie Trudeau, S.N.D.

The American Montessori Association recently gave a lifetime achievement award to Sister Christina Marie Trudeau, S.N.D., a member of the California Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Trudeau, the Association said, “has worked tirelessly on behalf of Montessori education, providing inspiration to Montessori teachers, teacher educators, and adult learners around the world.”

In a 60-plus-year career she has been instrumental in starting Montessori teacher education programs and Montessori schools for young children in California, Washington State, Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines.

Her interest in children and serving the poor led Trudeau to emphasize the Montessori Cosmic Plan of Education in the teacher education programs with which she has been associated. This approach uses the cullture of the place where the program is located as well as its natural environment as the basis for integrating curriculum and creating materials, rather than relying on European materials and organizing curriculum according to disciplines.

New York City's Empire State Building said "yes" to Mariah Carey, dog shows, cancer charities, even the 60th anniversary of communist China. But the landmark skyscraper's owners have declined to illuminate the iconic skyscraper in honor of the late Mother Teresa.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League said his advocacy group requested that the building be lit on August 26 for the centennial of the late Nobel Peace Prize winner's birth. The request was denied in an unsigned, faxed letter, Donohue said, "and they never gave an explanation."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn told the Associated Press that she spoke with Empire State Building owner Anthony Malkin. Although the real estate mogul was "very professional" and said he "would reflect on the points I made," she said, he didn't give her a satisfactory answer.

Mother Teresa helped open a pioneering hospice for AIDS patients in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "Her impact on the world was so much greater than one religious group," Quinn said.

Illuminating the 102-story high-rise on Fifth Avenue in different colors to mark an important date, cause, or personality is a New York tradition. The building is color-decorated for religious holidays such as Christmas and Hanukkah and other special occasions.

For Mother Teresa, the building would glow in blue and white in the New York night--the colors of her Missionaries of Charity order. Mother Teresa died in 1997, at 87, and was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church-- a step toward possible sainthood.

Requesting a lighting display involves filling out an application evaluated by the Empire State Building Co., which is privately owned and considers selection "a privilege, not an entitlement," according to the website with the application form. A decision is made "at the sole discretion of the (company's) ownership and management."

There are around 24,000 priests in France today, down from 42,000 in 1975. But vocation ministers are responding by launching a campaign to reach out to the public with newspaper inserts and brochures that showcase real priests and their passion for people and humanity, says a National Public Radio story. The campaign is also distributing 50,000 postcards aimed at 16- to 22-year-olds—depicting a Catholic priest's garb with a button reading "Jesus is my Boss" pinned to the lapel and the slogan "Why not?"—in cafes, bars, and cinemas and on college campuses.

“Priests suffer from a low social status, so we're trying to change that by showing what being a priest really means,” says Frederic Fonfroide de Lafon, the head of the firm the church has hired to run the campaign. “A priest has extensive training in philosophy and the humanities. He is not someone who lives apart from society in his own world, but someone who participates. A priest accompanies people in the most important moments of their lives." Church officials say they are pleased with the campaign's reception; its Facebook page has had 40,000 visitors already, and vocation ministers say they are receiving more than 100 emails a day since the campaign began in April.

Listen to the full National Public Radio story.

When Sister Lynn Rettinger, S.C., a Sister of Charity of Seton Hill in Pittsburgh, saw a man reach into an open car window and take a wallet a couple of weeks ago, she spoke to him as she would have any erring student in her 50 years of teaching, telling him, “You need to give me what you have.”

The man, whom police were still looking for, handed over the wallet, apologized, and walked away.

Sister Rettinger, by the way, just celebrated her jubilee anniversary as a Sister of Charity and has this to say about her vocation: “Striving to live always in the presence of God and practicing that charism in my daily routine has had a centering effect on my ministry. Through the years the virtues of humility, simplicity, and charity have become part of the fabric of living to the point where we ourselves don’t recognize how integral they are to us. It is always an awakening when a lay person comments on how those virtues are lived. It is often someone from outside oneself who points out what we take for granted.”

As millions of gallons of oil from the offshore rig explosion foul hundreds of square miles in the Gulf of Mexico, at least there is some news to cheer. Catholic News Service reports that well owner BP donated $1 million in emergency relief funds to the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The grant will allow local church relief agencies to provide emergency food, financial and counseling assistance to needy fishing families.

BP earmarked $750,000 to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans for direct assistance such as gift cards to local grocery stores, case management and counseling, and $250,000 to Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana for emergency food boxes.

In response to the catastrophe, Catholic Charities has opened five emergency centers at local churches to distribute the financial aid and offer counseling to fishing families. The $1 million grant will help fund outreach services for three months, and the program is likely to be extended if the impact of the oil spill grows.

The National Catholic Reporter Online has a “Women religious: Lives of mercy and justice” section that draws “attention to the remarkable work of women religious around the globe.” It currently includes a number of reports from the five-day meeting of the International Union of General Superiors held in Rome in early May, which gathered 800 leaders of women's religious communities from around the world.

Bobby Brasher tells a story of coincidence on an American Public Media radio program called The Story. It involves two of the lowest moments of her life - and a nun who appeared at just the right time, in two different hospitals, years apart. Even though Bobby hasn't seen Sr. Jane Neussendorfer in almost 20 years, to her, their interaction was unforgettable.

Bobby thinks of this odd coincidence often as she does her own work as a nurse.

Tune in to listen to the fascinating story of how a Catholic nun made a real difference--twice--in the life of a woman at the most critical moment.

St. Scholastica Chapel at Mount St. Scholastica

“Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?”

That’s the question that spoke to journalist and poet Judith Valente from the Rule of St. Benedict, which has guided Benedictine monastic life for about 1,500 years. The 17th-century bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet called the Rule “an epitome of Christianity, a learned and mysterious abridgement of all the doctrines of the gospel, all the institutions of the Fathers, and all the counsels of perfection"—or, as Valente reported in an October 30, 2009 Religion & Ethics Newsweekly story, “It’s been said everything one needs to know about living the spiritual life is contained in this little book.”

Starting in June of 2008 the Rule had become Valente’s constant companion. She had been invited to share as a layperson in the life of Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery for women in Atchison, Kansas (and a VISION Vocation Network advertising-community), for a book she’d been asked to write. “I admit I questioned at first what practical wisdom a monastery might hold for a modern, married, professional woman like me,” Valente said. “It turns out I’ve learned plenty.

“I used to think of monasteries as outmoded remnants of a past era,” Valente said. “But now, when I enter Mount St. Scholastica, I feel as if I’m peering into the future, a future our world so desperately needs—one that stresses community over competitiveness, service over self-aggrandizement, quietude over gratuitous talk, and simplicity over constant consumption. The Mount is a place where those who listen are valued as much as those who speak up; a place where people forgo personal wealth but want for nothing; where prayers are said for the victims of violent crime and bells are tolled when a Death Row prisoner is executed.”

Valente found another countercultural example in the monastic idea of stability. “At Mount St. Scholastica there are sisters who have lived together for as many as 75 years. Having moved from state to state here in the U.S. and lived in three European cities over the course of my career, the notion of spending one’s entire life in the same place seems quite foreign to me. In fact, the whole concept is alien to our highly mobile American society. Stability reminds us to grow where we’re planted.

“I suppose,” she said, “I am just one of the many Benedict has spoken to through the ages who yearns for life and desires to see good days. ‘Run, then,’ Benedict reminds me and all of us, ‘while you have the light of life, that the darkness of death may not overtake you.’ ”

Lisa Smith Batchen and Sister Mary Elizabth Lloyd

We’ve talked about athlete-nuns before (see the item on triathlete Sister Madonna Bruder, 6/3/09 below), and here’s another one: ultramarathoner Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd, M.P.F., 62, of the Religious Teachers Filippini, who with her friend Lisa Smith Batchen has pledged to walk and run 50 miles in each of the 50 states within 62 days to raise $1 million for orphans around the world.

Lloyd first met Smith Batchen, now a leading endurance runner, when Lloyd was a teacher and track coach at Villa Walsh Academy Catholic high school in Morristown, New Jersey and Smith Batchen was a cross-country running coach there.

When Smith Batchen was trying to come up with a way to celebrate her 50th birthday, Lloyd suggested the run/walk event. The 50 miles-50 states idea stands for the Filippini community’s 100th anniversary in the U.S. this year, while the 62 days comes from the 62 miles in ultramarathons which equal 100 kilometers, a race standard.

Lloyd has elected to walk and jog the her part of the trek, called “Running Hope Through America,” because she is still recovering from losing her toenails at a Labor Day marathon. “My goal is to stay out six hours each day,” she said. The two began their effort on April 20 in a Morris Township, New Jersey park where Smith Batchen ran a loop all day until completing 50 miles.

Lloyd, who has a doctorate in nutrition and public health from Columbia University, received the 2008 Servitor Pacis (Path to Peace) Award from the Vatican’s Mission to the United Nations for her work with AIDS orphans.

 

Originial post: April 23, 2010 by Joel Schorn

A U.S. federal court has ruled that a Phoenix, Arizona, ordinance that limits the sound of church bells is an unconstitutional infringement of religious expression, reports Ecumenical News International. Three Phoenix churches, including a Roman Catholic parish, had sued over the ordinance, which prohibits "any unusual or disturbing" sound. In one instance neighbors had complained after one of the congregations moved to a new location and began ringing their church's electronic bells every hour from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The bells rang at 67 decibels; the law had made an exception for ice cream trucks, which were allowed to ring up to 70 decibels.

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ARIZONA UPDATE: Arizona is taking heat from the church again--this time for its newly enacted immigration law. Arizona's bishops have expressed their opposition to the legislation. They stated earlier this month that the legislation may have many unintended consequences, including keeping dangerous criminals on the street because illegal immigrants will be afraid to report crimes. Now New Mexico's three Catholic bishops have issued a statement saying they are concerned the law could lead to racial profiling, community distrust, and a pervasive fear among immigrants. According to an Associated Press report, Arizona's law would make it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. Set to take effect in late July or early August, the law directs state and local police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal. The New Mexico Catholic bishops say immigration reform is needed at the national level to deal with disparities in current immigration law and that Arizona's measure "is not in keeping with the best traditions of our nation."