Year: 2013

By Celine Klosterman

DAVENPORT – Building relationships with young people is key for individuals, parishes and schools working to encourage religious vocations, said Father Thom Hennen, vocations director for the Diocese of Davenport.
During a Dec. 3 webinar, he gave about 20 Catholics tips for creating a culture of vocations. One suggestion: Invite people who know and trust you to consider the priesthood, diaconate or religious life. In surveys, a high percentage of people with religious vocations have reported they’d received a personal invitation, and that it played a very important role in their discernment.
Vocations to the priesthood have been slightly increasing in southeast Iowa, Fr. Hennen said. For years, an ordination to the priesthood in the diocese occurred about every two years. More recently, the rate has been one or two ordinations annually.
Still, myths about vocations can deter people. Fr. Hennen countered misconceptions including these:
• Only a select few have a vocation. Actually, everyone is called to holiness because of their baptism. If the Church can encourage more people to embrace their baptismal calling, more people will enter a religious vocation.
• God calls only really holy people. In truth, some saints lived unchristian lives before converting.
• Priests, deacons, Sisters and Brothers are unhappy. Everyone has bad days, but surveys have shown people in religious vocations are happier than people in secular professions.
• Celibacy is impossible and unnatural. It’s not necessarily more challenging than married life.
• “I can’t be called because I want to get married and have children.” “Hearing this is a good sign to me,” Fr. Hennen said. Someone un-attracted to family life might not make a good priest, who is called to spiritual fatherhood.
• You must be 100 percent sure before you start the path to a religious vocation. Actually, you just need to be open to the possibility and willing to take steps toward further discernment.
Fr. Hennen also addressed potential fears, including the idea that life is harsh at a seminary, convent or monastery. Visit one of those places, and you’ll find joyful people, he said.
So how do Catholics overcome common objections and encourage vocations? Present an integral vision of Christian life, he said – a life in which faith pervades every decision. Be deliberate and unashamed about Catholic identity. Provide ample opportunities for service; volunteering may inspire people to consider serving in other ways. Invite local priests, deacons or religious – whom young people may know personally – to speak about their vocations.
Parishes and schools could also consider:
• Starting a vocations committee and organizing two vocations events each year. Dates to consider are the World Day for Consecrated Life (Feb. 2, 2014), World Day of Prayer for Vocations (May 11, 2014), Priesthood Sunday (Oct. 26, 2014) or National Vocations Awareness Week (Nov. 2-9, 2014).
• Holding regular holy hours for vocations. Matthew 9:38 encourages prayer: “Ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” Holy hours also create awareness of the need for religious vocations.
• Hosting a Project Andrew Dinner in which people with religious vocations share a meal with people who may be discerning a calling.
• Offering a traveling chalice/crucifix program.
• Recognizing parish altar servers.
• Creating a local or regional discussion and discernment group for young people.
• Organizing a visit to a seminary, monastery or convent.
• “Adopting” a seminarian in prayer or creating a seminarian/religious pen pal program. Contact Fr. Hennen for seminarians’ addresses: Hennen@davenportdiocese.org or (563) 888-4255.
Easy actions include displaying the most recent seminarian poster, regularly including a prayer for vocations during the intercessions at Sunday Mass, and printing short articles promoting vocations in the bulletin. Gear bulletin blurbs to parents and grandparents, the main bulletin readers, Fr. Hennen suggested.
For more information, visit www.davenportvocations.com.

By Sr. Laura Goedken

As the end of the year approaches, you will want to evaluate your giving. Take time to think of how God has given you so much and how you share these gifts with others. You are probably thinking also of the many messages from Pope Francis on helping the poor. This might also be a time for you to look at your finances and taxes. The following are suggestions for you to consider.
Setting up a donor-advised fund might be a good idea for you. You are able to make a gift to the Catholic Foundation this year and receive a tax deduction. The Catholic Foundation can, in future years, make donations to diocesan Catholic organizations you select, such as your parish, the Annual Diocesan Appeal, Humility of Mary Housing Inc. and Humility of Mary Shelter Inc., your Catholic school, etc.
With the stock market having grown, a gift of stock may be a good idea. The donor avoids capital gains tax when donating appreciated securities. The charity benefits from your generosity.
If you are at least 70 ½ years old, you can donate to a charity from your IRA and avoid taxes on your IRA withdrawal.  On Dec. 4, the House Ways and Means Committee stated there would be no tax reform bill in 2013. This IRA rollover will expire the end of December. This committee will restart the tax reform process in 2014.
You could also consider setting up a charitable gift annuity.  An annuity does three things for you: gives you a tax deduction, makes a gift to a charity and gives the beneficiary income in future years.
For more information on any of the above options please contact diocesan Director of Development Sister Laura Goedken, OP, at (563) 888-4252 or Goedken@davenportdiocese.org.

By Craig DeVrieze
Courtesy of www.sau.edu

DAVENPORT — Members of St. Ambrose University’s Winter 2013 graduating cohort of the Doctor of Phys­i­cal Ther­apy program were not about to let classmate Alyssa Curtis stand alone.
When Curtis posted on Facebook that complications from surgery to remove a brain tumor earlier this year would force her to attend commencement ceremonies Dec. 14 in tennis shoes, her classmates laced up their tennies, too.
“She joked about it on Facebook, but it seemed like she would be uncomfortable if she were the only one wearing tennis shoes,” said graduating classmate Katie Carberry, who emailed the idea to the other 33 members of the DPT cohort. “I thought it would be a good idea so she wouldn’t feel like she stood out.”

Curtis, diagnosed with a Stage III malignant tumor after suffering seizures in the midst of her clinical assignment in August, said she felt embraced and supported by her classmates while she was undergoing treatment. The complicated surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., this past fall caused minor paralysis on her left side. That meant she would need to wear a brace on her left ankle when she crossed the stage during commencement ceremonies at Davenport’s RiverCenter, and only tennis shoes would fit.
To discover her classmates were wearing tennis shoes, too, was in keeping with the level of support the DPT cohort has shown her all year, she said.
“I have never gone a day without hearing from at least one of them,” she said. “We say all the time how much we have each other’s back. This is absolute proof.”
Although Curtis won’t receive her doctoral degree until she is able to complete the clinical assignment that was interrupted by discovery of the tumor, it was important to her to join her classmates at commencement, said Associate Professor Michael Put­hoff, director of the DPT program.
DPT graduate Justine Uhl said it was equally important to Curtis’ classmates. “It’s everything,” Uhl said. “We wouldn’t be complete without her. She is part of our class. She has been here through thick and thin. She should be here.”
Uhl also is leading a fundraising effort to help defray Curtis’ medical expenses. Along with Curtis’ family and friends, they hosted a trivia contest Dec. 15. Direct contributions can be made out to “Benefit for Alyssa Curtis” and mailed to Modern Woodmen Bank at 1701 First Ave., Rock Island, IL, 61201.
Curtis recently completed a first round of radiation and chemotherapy and will undergo a brain scan soon to determine if another round is necessary. She plans to complete her degree work when able and said her experience as a patient will make her a better and more empathetic physical therapist.
“Now it’s time to heal. I’ll give my rehabilitation all I’ve got … and see where God’s plan takes me,” she told The Catholic Messenger.
Meanwhile, her classmates have taken to answering to the title of Team Alyssa. Uhl said teamwork is just a natural outgrowth of the SAU DPT program.
“From the first day we started class, we were all in it together,” Uhl said. “The PT program at St. Ambrose is not easy — anyone who has been through it will tell you that. And we all knew that we were going to have to get through it together, because that is the only way we could. We all just kind of grew together.”
(Craig DeVrieze is director of publications and editorial projects for St. Ambrose University, Davenport.)

By Kathy Berken

When Pope Francis recently embraced that man with the facial deformity after one of his Wednesday audiences, my first thought was, “I wonder how he felt doing that in such a public arena.” I quickly dismissed the thought because I have come to know our new pontiff by such spontaneous acts of kindness. However, as time went on, that photo really bothered me, but probably not for the reasons you might think.
When I lived and worked for those 10 years at The Arch, the L’Arche community in Clinton, I grew to accept, love and befriend people with disabilities. There were times when I honestly forgot that the men and women there had any kind of impairment. After awhile, their personalities emerged and limitations often became secondary. It was the growing relationships that developed that helped me to see them as everyday people. Sharing the same address also helped to break barriers. In L’Arche we would often say, “We’re all in the same boat, let’s keep it afloat.”
So then, why did that photo of the pope irritate me? For one, I’ve been reading a host of comments on social media calling the pope a saint. This is not good. Echoing the words of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, L’Arche founder Jean Vanier also responded to someone who tried to canonize him. “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
The love Pope Francis shows for others is surely admirable, but it’s misguided to put him on a heavenly pedestal. That makes him and the others up there responsible for being compassionate instead of us. As Christians, we are all in this boat together.
That said, there is an even deeper reason the photo upsets me. It seems to me that it is much easier to find a compassionate heart for someone with an outward disability than it is for someone whose suffering is hidden. I find that my maternal/protective instincts arise when I see a person unsteady on his or her feet, or I listen to someone struggle to speak, or I observe people being rejected for their looks. But for the rest of us whose invisible disabilities may cause us untoward suffering, I regretfully admit that I sometimes feel less compassion for them because somewhere inside of me I think that they ought to know better.
The photo of the pope caressing that man’s face is too small because it tells only part of the story. Yes, the pope shows us how to be compassionate towards those society considers outcasts, to acknowledge them as worthy of respect. But I miss the whole message if I stop there. You know the line, we all have disabilities; some are just more noticeable than others. If we know that we hide behind our façade so others don’t see our pain, then what’s to say that others don’t do the same thing? Aren’t we all in the same boat here?
I think that I can be more of what Jesus asked when I can love those who might seem to have it together, but whose internal lives are miserably broken, who live in terror, whose hearts ache for meaning, who may be ready to jump ship. Those disabilities are just as real, just as valid.
When I can see through the masquerade into the truth of all of our inner lives and embrace every piece of that, despite the pain and suffering, only then does the photo make sense. I’m pretty sure that Pope Francis already knows this, that every single human being is God’s Beloved. No exceptions.
(Kathy Berken has a master’s degree in theology from St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minn. She lived and worked at The Arche, L’Arche in Clinton (1999-2009) and is author of “Walking on a Rolling Deck: Life on the Ark (stories from The Arch).”)

By Barb Arland-Fye
FORT MADISON — Inmates dressed in fresh T-shirts and blue jeans enter the snug chapel at Iowa State Penitentiary for a rare opportunity: Mass with a bishop. Warden Nick Ludwick has just introduced himself to Bishop Martin Amos, thanked him for his presence and recited from memory a Latin phrase he recalled from his days as an altar boy in Michigan. Grinning, the bishop responded in Latin.
A videographer and sound man arrive to videotape the bishop’s visit. As the 21 inmates walk into the chapel, Ludwick asks, “Do you guys mind being filmed?” Depending on their responses, he points to chairs in the back, middle or front of the room. Bishop Amos, wearing purple vestments and holding his shepherd’s staff, greets the inmates. One asks how the bishop is doing. “I’m doing fine; how are you?”
Bishop Amos may be the first bishop to celebrate Mass inside the prison which opened in 1839, seven years before Iowa became a state. As shepherd of Catholics in southeast Iowa, the bishop notes that “this is certainly my parish, and these are my parishioners, too.” He’ll likely be the last bishop to preside at Mass in the prison that predates invention of the electric light bulb. The old prison is poised to close, and the 620 maximum security inmates will move into the new prison in March. The videographer and sound man are recording the transition, and received permission to videotape Bishop Amos’ Dec. 4 visit as part of the project.
Some of the inmates have lived in the old prison for 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years; many are serving life sentences. “Most of the men serving life are serving it for murder,” says Deacon David Sallen, a member of Holy Family Parish in Fort Madison who leads a monthly Communion service at the prison. He organized the bishop’s visit with support from the warden and Associate Warden of Treatment Mike Schier­brock, and other staff.
“I’ve been explaining to (the inmates) that they’re part of the universal Church and that our bishop is a successor of the apostles, and that’s one of the marks of our Church,” Deacon Sallen explains. They said, ‘Well, we want to have him come.’ I said I would work on it. The next time I saw Bishop Amos I asked him if he’d be interested in coming and he said sure.” Planning began six months ago.

Pointing out the significance of the bishop’s visit to the inmates, Schierbrock said: “I tried to explain it’s not very often 20 or 30 people will get a Mass with a bishop. And it’s the last time here.”
Inmates invited to this Mass had a prerequisite: attendance at Mass in November. Priests of the region take turns presiding at the monthly Mass here. One of them, Holy Family Pastor Father David Wilkening, is concelebrating today’s Mass; Deacons Sallen and David Mont­gomery are assisting.
The Catholic prisoners won’t have their own chapel in the new facility; they’ll share an all-faith chapel with other denominations — Protestants, Jews, Muslims and even Satanists. The large crucifix displayed here in Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel, along with pictures, statues and other symbols of Cath­olicism will have to be put up and taken down for each Mass in the new facility.

But today inmates, staff and volunteer prison ministers focus on this celebration of the Eucharist and the annual (early) Christmas dinner for chapel members to be shared afterwards. Before Mass begins, Deacon Sallen introduces Bishop Amos. “… He has come to break bread with his church in captivity,” the deacon says.
Ludwick sits in the middle row next to Schierbrock, surrounded by inmates. “I’m also part of this (prison) community,” the warden explains after Mass. “I’ve never been a desk jockey. Wardens can’t run prisons from their desks. We’re a community within walls … and I just happen to be the mayor.”
When people ask Ludwick why he has spent his career in corrections, he says: “Someone has to look out for all of God’s children.” That includes the men housed in this prison, who are some of the most “problematic individuals” in the state’s corrections system. The warden never forgets that these men have victims. Nonetheless, “you have to care about people. It’s our job to run a safe, secure and humane facility. We don’t try to distance ourselves (from the inmates).”
Schierbrock tells offenders when they enter the Fort Madison prison that they’ve already been punished by being sent here. “Our job is not to punish; our job is to manage you and to help you … our job is to turn out better citizens.”
An inmate named Lha approaches the lectern to proclaim the first reading, from Isaiah, which he reads with confidence and feeling. After Mass, he notes, “It’s always an honor when you have people coming from the outside.” He appreciates being able to attend Mass here because “I feel connected; (we’re) coming together for something meaningful.”
After Lha returns to his seat, everyone waits expectantly for someone to lead the responsorial psalm. A minute or two passes. Inmate Enrique gets up from his seat and bashfully approaches the ambo, just inches away from where Bishop Amos is sitting. “I’m from Mexico, and my second language is English,” Enrique says after Mass, apologizing for what he deems to be a less-than-perfect reading of the responsorial psalm. Bishop Amos assures the 35-year-old inmate that he did just fine.
In his homily, Bishop Amos focuses on Advent themes of waiting, hope and mercy, and how the faithful ought to live their lives in this in-between time of Christ’s incarnation and his second coming at the end of time. It is a time of grace, but also a time marked by a struggle, the bishop says: “between darkness and light, flesh and spirit; the part of us that is redeemed and the part not yet redeemed; violence and peace; between this age and the age that is to come.”
The videographer later asks the bishop whether he had intentionally focused on time because the prisoners are serving time. “No,” the bishop says. “The Scriptures opened that up for me.”
Bishop Amos had envisioned his audience and what he might say to them as he prepared his homily, he told The Catholic Messenger in a separate interview. “I didn’t want to say anything wrong, and at the same time, I wanted to challenge them. I knew that my example had to fit people who couldn’t just go out into the world, people who were not going to be leaving this institution. It really had to relate to them.”
After exchanging the sign of peace with one another, inmates walk up to the bishop to extend the sign of peace to him. “Every time we have Mass everybody shares the sign of peace with everybody else, including the visitors and the celebrant,” Deacon Sallen says. Extending peace to the bishop “shows the spirit of welcome they have for him.”
It is a moving experience for Bishop Amos, he reflects afterwards. “It’s like Communion; it’s one of those times when you can look at someone’s face and see a genuine smile.” In another prison where he celebrated Mass, prisoners were not allowed to exchange the sign of peace.
Immediately following Mass, an inmate named Fred says a prayer of thanksgiving for celebration of the Eucharist with Bishop Amos, for the volunteer prison ministers who visit monthly and for the feast that all are about to eat.
Jean Gunn and Karen Ruble have been volunteering in prison ministry for several years; Karen worked in the prison’s health care unit as a registered nurse before retiring in 2009. Russell Savage is a newcomer to their prison ministry group. All are members of Holy Family Parish in Fort Madison.
“When I go home, I feel so fulfilled,” Gunn says. “I feel good coming up here to support these fellows. They’re so glad you come.” Ruble appreciates being able to speak freely about her faith and to share it with the inmates. “To have the bishop here today,” Ruble says, “is wonderful,” interjects Gunn.
Inmates, staff, clergy and volunteer prison ministers exit the chapel and walk down the hall into a larger room that serves as the Protestant chapel. Today it functions as a banquet hall.
“This is quite a feast you have,” Bishop Amos says, sitting down at a table laden with pizza, chicken, fresh shrimp, bags of chips and large grapes, containers of beans and cold salads. At another table, inmates work enthusiastically preparing fresh ingredients for tacos. Money for the meal comes from their savings and a contribution from the volunteer prison ministers’ small fund.
At Bishop Amos’ table, Enrique shares stories about his family in California and talks about his work taking care of prisoners who can no longer care for themselves. He bathes them, changes their diapers and attends to other needs.
“Just think, you’re being a Mother Teresa,” volunteer prison minister Ruth Coffey exclaims.
“The Lord gives us grace, even here in prison,” Deacon Sallen observes.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Enrique says, explaining why he is in prison. “I’m in a place where I can help somebody.”
Like the other inmates, Enrique expresses appreciation that Bishop Amos has taken time out of his busy schedule to share Eucharist with them and to participate in their Christmas feast. “We feel blessed that he is here. We were happy because we were going to have a banquet, but having a bishop here was a plus. It was better than Christmas.”

By Fr. Andrew Kelly
FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT – DEC. 22
Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 1:18-24) begins: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah (Christ) took place in this way.” Matthew wants the believing community to ask itself: “How is Jesus the Messiah born into the life of this particular 2013 community?”
Matthew offers Joseph as the model.  Through the grace of God, Joseph’s eyes, heart, mind and soul were opened. Joseph became an obedient servant of faith to the Word of God.  In faith, when Joseph obeyed the Word of God, the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place.
The Sunday Scriptures are the “dream” in which God reveals to the community just who and how Jesus is the Messiah. Through prayerful listening to the words, deeds, life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, the community begins to both understand and believe the meaning of Jesus’ name:
“…[Y]ou are to name him Jesus, for Jesus will save God’s people from their sins … they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’”
When the community, like Joseph, acts upon and lives the “dream,” an awesome miraculous event takes place both within the life of the community and the world: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.”
 (Father Andrew Kelly is a retired priest of the Diocese of Davenport.)

Scripture Readings for Dec. 22-29
Sunday
Is 7:10-14
Rom 1:1-7
Mt 1:18-24

Monday
Mal 3:1-4, 23-24
Lk 1:57-66

Tuesday
2 Sm 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
Lk 1:67-79

Wednesday
Is 52:7-10
Heb 1:1-6
Jn 1:1-18 or Jn 1:1-5, 9-14

Thursday
Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59
Mt 10:17-22

Friday
1 Jn 1:1-4
Jn 20:1a and 2-8

Saturday
1 Jn 1:5—2:2
Mt 2:13-18

Sunday
Sir 3:2-6, 12-14
Col 3:12-21 or Col 3:12-17
Mt 2:13-15, 19-23

Here we are again, for roughly the 1,800th time, celebrating the birth of Jesus, the Christ, or the Anointed One of God. Christmas we’ve called it since sometime in the fourth century when Christians began putting new purpose into festivals around the winter solstice.
Christmas in our religious calendar is known as the feast of the Incarnation, the fleshing of God. Divine life took on human life in Jesus. Why? We have several ways of working on that question, but they all point in one direction: To show us the way home.
Or, to model the way of unity, peace and joy in life.
So what we are remembering and celebrating next week is the way of embodying God in human affairs. It happened first in the person Jesus. His followers carry on by bringing God to flesh in our days and nights.
God becomes incarnate in the teacher drawing students to see new truth.
God becomes flesh in the clown who causes pure delight in his audience, in the farmer calculating the best use of his land, in the nursing home aide carefully bathing an old man.
The incarnation of God goes on in the work of the Sisters of Humility as they mother new life for floundering parents and their children, in the careful cutting of animal parts by meat-packing workers who stand at a bloody link in the food chain, in the listening by a legislator as a constituent explains her point of view.
God becomes flesh in moms and dads who spend themselves for their children, in the injured person forgiving his attacker, in the counselor who shows a petty crook new options for life, in the child who befriends a shy classmate.
The examples are endless, and intended to be that way. Christmas, the enfleshing of God, was not to be a single, unrepeatable flash of light. It was unique in Jesus and his mother Mary, but as the origin and model for our awakening through history. God did not stop becoming flesh at the birth in Bethlehem — unless we stop putting into flesh the justice, the mercy, the love of God in our lives.
Christmas is our blessing to pass on. Be glad in it.
Frank Wessling