Angelus News | August 2-9, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 27

ANGELUS
August 2-9, 2019 Vol. 4 No. 27

Contents
Archbishop Gomez 3
World, Nation and Local News 4-6
LA Catholic Events 7
Scott Hahn on Scripture 8
Father Rolheiser 9
Local summer camp reopens to thank its ‘guardian angels’ 16
Meet Catholic LA’s new head of religious education 20
A remote Catholic parish is shaken hard by July quakes 22
Kathryn Lopez: St. Ignatius’ invaluable set of prayer tools 24
Greg Erlandson: Lessons from a prophet of digital distraction 26
New documentary explores quantum physics’ God problem 28

ON THE COVER
A nationwide trend pushing to remove tributes to certain historical figures of U.S. history has
seized on a new, unlikely target: the bells lining California’s iconic El Camino Real. The reason?
The belief that Spanish missionaries — among them St. Junípero Serra — were oppressors,
captors, and even murderers of California’s first peoples. On Page 10, renowned historian Gregory
Orfalea examines the most common critiques of the Spanish evangelization of California
and makes the case for why the bells represent a legacy of love, not oppression.
JACOB POPCAK
IMAGE: Formerly known as the Crystal Cathedral, the newly
christened Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove was
dedicated as the Diocese of Orange’s new cathedral
July 17. On Page 32, Heather King got a look at the
unusual worship space and recounts her night at a
pre-dedication “lollapalooza” event.
DIOCESE OF ORANGE

POPE WATCH
ANGELUS
August 2-9, 2019 | Vol.4 • No.27
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Don’t forget Syria
Pope Francis urged Syrian President
Bashar Assad to put an end to his
country’s eight-year-long conflict and
seek reconciliation for the good of the
nation and its vulnerable people.
“The Holy Father asks the president
to do everything possible to put an
end to this humanitarian catastrophe,
in order to protect the defenseless
population, especially those who
are most vulnerable, in respect for
international humanitarian law,”
said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican
secretary of state.
The Vatican press office said July 22
that Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of
the Dicastery for Promoting Integral
Human Development, and Cardinal
Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio to
Syria, met that morning with Assad in
Damascus.
During the meeting, Turkson gave
the president the pope’s letter, which
expresses “Pope Francis’ deep concern
for the humanitarian situation
in Syria,” particularly for civilians in
the province of Idlib, read a written
statement from the new director of the
Vatican press office, Matteo Bruni.
The United Nations said conditions
in Syria were “alarming” for millions
of civilians.
Nearly 12 million people were in
need of humanitarian aid and 5
million more civilians were in serious
need.
The increased crisis was due to intensified
fighting between the Syrian
government and rebels in Idlib, where
the 3 million people who live there
have essentially become trapped in a
Papal Prayer Intention for August: That families, through their life of prayer
and love, become ever more clearly “schools of true human growth.”
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battle zone.
Needed infrastructure has been
destroyed, at least 350 civilians reportedly
have been killed, and more than
330,000 people have been displaced
by the conflict.
In an interview with Andrea Tornielli,
editorial director for the Dicastery
for Communication, Parolin said the
pope wrote the letter because of his
concern for the “emergency humanitarian
situation” there.
“The pope follows with apprehension
and great sorrow the tragic fate
of the civilian population, children
in particular, caught up in the bloody
fighting. ...”
Detailing some of the specific
requests the pope made in the letter,
the cardinal said the pope renewed his
appeal “for the protection of civilian
life and the preservation of the main
infrastructures, such as schools, hospitals,
and health facilities.”
The pope’s concern is not politically
motivated, he added, but reflects a desire
for a “climate of fraternity” in the
hopes that reconciliation “may prevail
over division and hatred.”
Parolin said the Vatican has long
called for “an appropriate political
solution to end the conflict, overcoming
partisan interests” that is done
“using the instruments of diplomacy,
dialogue, and negotiation, along with
the assistance of the international
community.”
Reporting courtesy of Catholic News
Service Rome correspondent Carol
Glatz.
@Angelus
News
www.la-archdiocese.org
@Angelus
News
2 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

NEW WORLD
OF FAITH
BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ
Our commitments as Catholics
As Catholics, we are a people who
believe that every human life is born
from the will of a Creator who knows
us and loves us.
He creates each of us with a mortal
body and an immortal soul, as a male
or a female, and all of us are made in
God’s image, each with the dignity of
a child of God.
These basic beliefs about the sanctity
of life and the dignity of every person
should shape how we live and work,
how we treat other people, and how
we care for the world around us.
These beliefs should also shape our
commitments as citizens — what we
prioritize, the laws and policies we
support, and the kind of society we
seek to create.
Maintaining a true Catholic identity,
understanding ourselves to be
followers of Jesus Christ before we are
anything else, is always a challenge.
And it is getting harder in America
today.
Every aspect of our lives, it seems, is
becoming “politicized.”
We are living in a culture that is
confused and divided over basic issues
regarding what it means to be human
and what is the way that truly leads to
human happiness.
We see this in the many arguments
going on in our society today about
race and gender, abortion and euthanasia,
marriage and the family, the
environment and the economy.
As Catholics, we need to be deeply
engaged in these political and cultural
debates, because at the heart of these
questions is a conflict over the truth
about the human person that God
created and that Jesus Christ died to
redeem.
But we need to understand our commitments,
not in political terms, but
in terms of the Gospel and teachings
of the Church and the witness of the
saints.
Our mission as Catholics is to be
missionary disciples. This is the only
reason for our lives — to know and
love Jesus and to serve his plan for the
world’s salvation.
If we are going to be the people God
calls us to be, if we are going to restore
and renew the Church and rebuild
society, then we need a new dedication
to living our Catholic identity
and communicating that identity in
everything we do, from our schools
and religious education programs to
the way we live our faith in society.
In practical terms, that means
bringing our family and neighbors to
know the love of God, and it means
working for a society of love and compassion
that truly serves the human
person.
This is why we must be deeply concerned
by the federal government’s
return to executing criminals, which
was announced last week.
Every person is precious and sacred,
even those convicted of the most evil
and violent crimes. There are other
ways to punish criminals without taking
away their chance to change their
heart and be rehabilitated through the
mercy of God.
We also need to keep God’s love for
the human person at the center of our
perspective on the immigration issue.
Our political leaders — on both sides
— are still exploiting the sufferings of
immigrants and refugees for their own
political advantage. This has been going
on for years. It is cruel and wrong
and it should stop.
We are talking about human beings,
the image of God, our brothers and
sisters. Beyond law, beyond politics,
beyond their “status,” we have a duty
to open our hearts and attend to their
human needs. That must be the start
of any humane and reasonable solution
to these complicated issues.
We have that same duty of love
toward the child in the womb and
women facing crisis pregnancies.
Right now in California, there is
legislation, Senate Bill 24, that would
require all state colleges and universities
to offer students free access to the
“abortion pill.” But a compassionate
society should have more to offer
women in need than the ability to end
the life of their children before they
are born.
As Catholics, we need to oppose still
another attempt to expand abortion
for our young people. I urge you to
visit the California Catholic Conference
website to tell your legislators to
vote against SB 24. We should defeat
this bill and work to find new ways
to truly help pregnant women and
working mothers trying to continue
their education.
Pray for me this week, and I will be
praying for you.
And let us ask our Blessed Mother
Mary to help us to stay faithful to the
calling of Jesus Christ and his vision
of a society worthy of the human
person.
To read more columns by Archbishop José H. Gomez or to subscribe, visit www.angelusnews.com.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 3

VATICAN MEDIA
WORLD
NEW VOICES — Pope Francis has named Vatican communications
staffer Matteo Bruni (left) and Brazilian
Vatican Radio journalist Christiane Murray (right) as his
new spokesman and deputy spokeswoman. The pair
take over for interim Holy See Press Office Director
Alessandro Gisotti, who has been filling in since American
Greg Burke and Spaniard Paloma Garcia Ovejero
both resigned from their roles at the end of 2018.
Benedict’s surprise daytrip
Summer breaks aren’t just for students.
On July 25, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI left Vatican City for
the first time in four years to pay a surprise visit to the papal
summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, where he walked the
garden paths where he used to pray.
According to Italian media, his next stop was to pray at a
15th-century Marian sanctuary in the town of Rocca di Papa.
He finished the day with dinner at the house of Bishop Raffaello
Martinelli of Frascati, a small diocese outside of Rome.
Benedict’s last venture outside of Vatican City was in July
2015, when he spent two weeks in Castel Gandolfo at Pope
Francis’ invitation.
The capital of
the crisis of faith?
Germany’s Christian churches — both
Protestant and Catholic — lost more than
400,000 members last year, according to
data published by the German Bishops
Conference and the Evangelical Church in
Germany.
Church membership in Germany is officially
recorded by the government, which
collects donations for religious groups
through a “church tax.” The tax requires
members of a church to pay up to 9 percent
of taxable income, which the state gives to
the church they are registered with. Church
membership can be renounced at any time,
and the state doesn’t require a reason to
leave.
The Catholic Church in Germany, which
counts 23 million members, lost 216,078 in
2018.
“Every departure hurts,” president of
Germany’s Evangelical Church Heinrich
Bedford-Strohm told Vatican News. “Since
people today, unlike in the past, decide out
of freedom whether they want to belong to
the church, it is important for us today to
make even clearer why the Christian message
is such a strong basis for life.”
If membership trends continue, Germany’s
Christian population could drop by half by
2060, according to a study by the University
of Freiburg.
Cardinal Louis Sako at a conference in Rome last month.
Join the army, but don’t start one
If you want to fight ISIS, join the army or get active in politics.
But just don’t get involved with so-called “Christian militias,”
Iraq’s senior prelate told the country’s Catholics.
“We respect individual decisions to join Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi or
to get involved in politics,” read a statement by Cardinal Louis
Raphaël I Sako, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, “but
not to form a Christian ‘brigade,’ since forming a Christian
armed militia contradicts the Christian spirituality that calls for
love, tolerance, forgiveness, and peace.”
Plans to create Christian militias to help fight against the Islamic
State in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, two areas with historically
large populations of Christians in Iraq, have emerged
in the past years as violence has threatened the area.
One such militia, known as the Babylon Brigades, has been
relatively successful, giving rise to a political movement, the
Babylon movement, which won two out of five seats reserved for
Christians in Iraq’s 2018 elections.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/PAUL HARING
4 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

NATION
Abortion by cable and on demand
Whether on TV, streaming, or in movies, on-screen
depictions of abortion have increased this year, a California
scholar has found.
“You’re definitely seeing more of the matter-of-fact
‘I am pregnant, I don’t want to be, I’m going to have
an abortion,’ ” said Gretchen Sisson, a University of
California San Francisco sociologist, to The New York
Times July 18.
According to a study by Sisson, almost two dozen
characters have had an abortion on-screen halfway
through this year. The increase in abortion as plot
points comes as pro-choice activists call for its greater
portrayal onscreen.
Meanwhile, as abortion on-screen becomes more
normalized, pro-life filmmakers have turned away
from the Hollywood establishment.
“Nobody’s speaking for us, Hollywood doesn’t
speak for us,” filmmaker Nick Loeb, director of the
forthcoming film “Roe v. Wade,” told The New York
Times. “But when people make movies for us, they’re
loved and they’re adored.”
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/YURI GRIPAS, REUTERS
A Catholic callout on death penalty
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is a
practicing Catholic.
Catholics are
criticizing the
Justice Department
following
the decision to
reinstate the
federal death
penalty after
16 years of no
federal executions.
Attorney General
William
Barr, himself a Catholic, announced July 25 that the
Justice Department will once again begin implementing
the death penalty starting this December.
“The United States’ death penalty system is tragically
flawed. Resuming federal executions — especially by
an administration that identifies itself as ‘pro-life’ — is
wrongheaded and unconscionable,” Catholic Mobilizing
Network Executive Director Krisanne Vaillancourt
Murphy told Catholic News Service.
Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman
of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice
and Human Development, said he was “deeply
concerned” about the change of policy and urged the
Trump administration to reconsider.
A change in the language in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church last year by Pope Francis declared
that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an
attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/COURTESY BOYS TOWN
NEBRASKA’S HOLY FATHER — Father Edward Flanagan talks with
a group of boys in an undated photo. The Irish-born priest founded
Boys Town, a well-known Catholic orphanage in Nebraska that
today serves as a center for troubled youth. The effort to have
Father Flanagan canonized took a step forward on July 22 with the
presentation of the “Positio super Virtutibus” (“Position on the Virtues”)
to the Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes, along with a
letter of support from Archbishop George J. Lucas of Omaha.
Sun-powered Catholic charity
Washington, D.C., is about to get a pope-inspired
shock to its energy grid.
Catholic Energies, a nonprofit dedicated to switching
churches to solar energy, is teaming up with Catholic
Charities to install almost 5,000 solar panels in a fiveacre
plot in northeast Washington, D.C. The array will
be the capital’s largest, and is inspired in part by Pope
Francis’ encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si”
(“Praise Be to You”).
“We love being supportive of the pope’s position
and believe that it really has helped advance the
conversation within the Catholic community about
our responsibility to be good stewards of this earth,”
Catholic Charities CFO Mary Jane Morrow told The
Washington Post July 21.
The project is scheduled to be completed by early
2020 and should bring Catholic Charities enough
energy credits to power 12 of its properties throughout
the capital.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 5

BILLY HARDIMAN PHOTOGRAPHY
LOCAL
Graduates from Tepeyac Institute’s 2019 program in Phoenix.
Tepeyac aims for impact in LA
A civic leadership program is spreading west in hopes of helping lay
LA Catholics grow in both their professional development and their
faith.
Tepeyac Leadership, Inc. (TLI), will open enrollment for its inaugural
program in Los Angeles during October and November, with
the program set to begin in the spring of 2020. An open house will be
held Oct. 1 at Cathedral High School.
“Today, the development of lay Catholic professionals and equipping
them to become virtuous leaders to advance the mission of the
Church and serve the common good in secular society is vital,” said
Archbishop José H. Gomez, offering prayers and support to TLI and
those who participate.
Currently, TLI has a program in operation in the Diocese of Phoenix,
where Bishop Thomas Olmsted has reported “seeing a big
impact.”
“It is our prayer that the Holy Spirit will place in the hearts of participants
a mission of leadership that they will gladly embrace and fulfill
through God’s grace,” he said. “The true call of the laity, the authentic
vocation of lay Catholic men and women, is to be ambassadors of
Christ in the world, living among everyone else in secular society,
while striving for holiness, sanctifying the world.”
A reminder to our readers
During the summer months of July and August, the print edition
of Angelus is published biweekly. The next issue will be August
16, followed by September 6 (an extra week is skipped due to
Labor Day), after which we return to our weekly schedule.
Heartbreak on
the highway
A highway crash involving a Northern
California priest led to a disturbing find
inside his car: more than $18,000 in
cash stored in church collection bags.
Upon further investigation, Church
officials found more than $95,000 in
the office and home of Father Oscar
Diaz, pastor of Resurrection Church in
Santa Rosa, following the June 19 car
accident.
In a July 22 press release, Santa Rosa
Bishop Robert Vasa said that evidence
had been found showing that “money
was stolen in a variety of ways from
each of the parishes where [Diaz] had
served as pastor.”
Diaz, who fractured a hip in the crash,
admitted to the embezzlement and has
been suspended from ministry. Although
he is under investigation by the
police, he has not yet been arrested for
any crime.
California court wins
for pro-life activist
The state of California’s case against
underground pro-life activist David
Daleiden may be weakening.
The 30-year-old Catholic faces more
than a decade in prison after being
charged with more than 15 felonies
related to his undercover filming of
abortion-industry workers at conferences,
restaurants, and at work in their
facilities.
But on July 22, Daleiden was handed
a victory when a federal judge ruled
that Daleiden and fellow activist Sandra
Merritt can defend their actions as
journalism.
A week earlier, the same judge
reduced the amount of a Planned Parenthood
lawsuit against Daleiden from
$20 million to less than $100,000, the
National Catholic Register reported.
The Thomas More Society, which is
representing Daleiden pro bono, argues
that Daleiden used standard undercover
journalism techniques to expose
wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood.
6 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

LA Catholic Events
Items for LA Catholic Events are due two weeks prior to the date of the event. They may be mailed to Angelus News (Attn: LA Catholic Events), 3424 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010-2241; emailed to
calendar@angelusnews.com; or faxed to 213-637-6360. All items must include the name, date, time, and address of the event, plus a phone number for additional information.
Fri., Aug. 2
City of Saints Teen Conference. UCLA Campus, 405
Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles. Three-day conference
hosted by Archbishop José H. Gomez and the Youth
Ministry Division for high school teens runs Aug.
2-4. Speakers include Chris Padgett, Katie Prejean
McGrady, and Brian Greenfield. For more information
visit cityofsaints.org.
Sat., Aug. 3
Understanding Through Native Eyes: The Legacy
of California Missions. San Gabriel Mission, 428 S.
Mission Dr., San Gabriel, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Doors open
for registration at 10 a.m. Opening remarks: Bishop
David O’Connell. Free summit, snacks, and drinks
provided. Sponsored by Native American Concerns
ADLA. RSVP to Sylvia Mendivil Salazar, coordinator,
at 626-755-9175 or email sylvia2018@verizon.net.
Foster Care and Adoption Information Meeting.
Children’s Bureau, 1529 E. Palmdale Blvd., Ste. 210,
Palmdale, or Andrew’s Plaza, 11335 W. Magnolia
Blvd., Ste. 2C, N. Hollywood, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Discover
if you have the willingness, ability, and resources
to take on the challenge of helping a child in need.
RSVP or learn more by calling 213-342-0162, toll free
at 800-730-3933, or email RFrecruitment@all4kids.
org.
Sun., Aug. 4
Eight-Day Silent, Guided Directed Retreat: Jesus,
the Face of God’s Mercy. Mary & Joseph Retreat
Center, 5300 Crest Rd., Rancho Palos Verdes. Retreat
runs from Sun., Aug. 4 at 6:30 p.m. to Sun., Aug. 11
at 1:30 p.m. Retreat directors: Father John Galvan,
SJ; Sister Jeanne Fallon, CSJ; Sue Ballotti; Father
Charles Jackson, SJ; Carlos Obando; Sister Pascazia
Kinkuhaire, DMJ. Annual silent retreat based on the
spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius will offer spiritual
reflection and direction, solitude, and prayer. Cost:
$820/person, shared ($845 after July 19), $925/
person, single ($950 after July 19). Call Marlene
Velazquez at 310-377-4867, ext. 234 for reservations
or information.
Tues., Aug. 6
C3 2019 Conference. Bishop Alemany High School,
11111 N. Alemany Dr., Mission Hills. Conference runs
Aug. 6-7. For more information, visit c3.la-archdiocese.org.
Thur., Aug. 8
Retreat on the Angels. Prince of Peace Abbey, 650
Benet Hill Rd., Oceanside. Retreat will be led by Father
Matthew Hincks and Father John Brohl. Offered
three times: Aug. 8-11, 15-18, and 22-25, from 4
p.m., Thur. to 1 p.m., Sun. Cost: $330/single, $300/
double per person and includes room and three
meals per day. For more information, call Opus Angelorum
office at 330-969-9900. Register at opusangelorum.org.
An Evening at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat
Center with Áine Minogue. 700 N. Sunnyside Ave.,
Sierra Madre, 6:30 p.m. World-famous Irish harpist,
singer, and contemplative Áine Minogue will perform
in the outdoor amphitheater. Cost: $35/person and
includes a light supper. For more information or to
purchase tickets, visit https://materdolorosa.org/anevening-with-aine-minogue/,
call Marta Salgado-Nino
at 626-355-7188, ext. 134, or email msnino@
materdolorosa.org.
Sat., Aug. 10
Foster Care and Adoption Information Meeting.
Children’s Bureau Carson office, 460 E. Carson Plaza
Dr., Ste. 102, Carson, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Discover if you
have the willingness, ability, and resources to take on
the challenge of helping a child in need. RSVP or learn
more by calling 213-342-0162, toll free at 800-730-
3933, or email RFrecruitment@all4kids.org.
Sun., Aug. 11
AACCFE: Finding God in All Things: Ignatian Spirituality.
St. Jerome Church parish hall, 5550 Thornburn
St., Los Angeles, 3 p.m. Guest speaker: Lori Stanley,
executive director, Loyola Institute of Spirituality. All
are welcome. Refreshments provided. Call 323-777-
2151 or email aaccfe@sbcglobal.net for more information.
Tues., Aug. 13
An Evening of Exploration for Members of Alcoholic
& Addictive Families with Peter McGoey, MA, LMFT.
Mary & Joseph Retreat Center, 5300 Crest Rd., Rancho
Palos Verdes, 7-8:30 p.m. Evening of discussion
on how family dynamics are formed and harmed by
addiction, alcoholism, and codependency. The role of
contemplative prayer will be described and experienced
as a method of healing from troubled family
history. Cost: $10/person. Call Marlene Velazquez at
310-377-4867, ext. 234 for reservations or information.
Lector Training. Precious Blood Church, 435 S. Occidental
Blvd., Los Angeles, 7-9:30 p.m. Training runs
Aug. 13, 15, 20, 22, 27, and 29. Cost: $60/person.
Register at http://store.la-archdiocese.org/lectortraining-precious-blood-church-2019.
Wed., Aug. 14
Office of Life, Justice and Peace Bi-Annual Regional
Meeting: San Pedro. St. Philomena Church, 21900
Main St., Carson, parish hall B, 7-9 p.m. Special
guest: Bishop Marc Trudeau.
Thur., Aug. 15
An Evening at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat
Center with Marty Brounstein. 700 N. Sunnyside
Ave., Sierra Madre, 6:30 p.m. Interfaith evening with
speaker, storyteller, and author Marty Brounstein on
his book “Two Among the Righteous Few: A Story of
Courage in the Holocaust.” Cost: $35/person and
includes a light supper. For more information or to
purchase tickets, visit https://materdolorosa.org/anevening-with-marty-brounstein/,
call Jeanne Warlick
at 626-355-7188, ext. 103, or email jwarlick@materdolorosa.org.
Fri., Aug. 16
Office of Life, Justice and Peace Bi-Annual Regional
Meeting: San Fernando. St. Mel Church, 20870
Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, parish center, 7-9 p.m.
Special guest: Bishop Alex Aclan.
Carmelite Spirituality with Father Matthias Lambrecht,
OCD. 920 E. Alhambra Rd., Alhambra. Retreat
runs Fri., Aug. 16, 5 p.m.-Sun., Aug. 18, 1 p.m. Father
Matthias will guide the retreat, which includes spiritual
conferences, the sacrament of reconciliation,
eucharistic adoration, Mass, and time for personal
reflection. This retreat is open to men and women.
Call 626-289-1353, ext. 203. Register at sacredheartretreathouse.com
or email sjcprogcoodinator@
carmelitesistersocd.com.
Sat., Aug. 17
Magnificat — A Ministry to Catholic Women Prayer
Meal. Odyssey Restaurant, 15600 Odyssey Dr.,
Granada Hills, 10 a.m. Father Aristotle Quan talks
about the Holy Land conversion that led him to the
priesthood. Cost: $31/person before Aug. 10, $33/
person after. Check payable to Magnificat and mailed
to 29122 Florabunda Rd., Canyon Country, CA 91387.
RSVP online at magnificatsfv.org., or call Teri Thompson
at 805-527-3745.
Foster Care and Adoption Information Meeting. Children’s
Bureau’s Magnolia Place, 1910 Magnolia Ave.,
Los Angeles, or Children’s Bureau, 27200 Tourney Rd.,
Ste. 175, Valencia, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Discover if you
have the willingness, ability, and resources to take on
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August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 7

SUNDAY
READINGS
BY SCOTT HAHN
Eccles. 1:2; 2:21–23 / Ps. 90:3–4, 5–6, 12–13, 14, 17 / Col. 3:1–5, 9–11 / Lk. 12:13–21
“God Inviting Christ to Sit on the Throne at His Right Side,” by Pieter de Grebber, circa 1600-
1652/1653.
WIKIMEDIA
Trust in God as the Rock of our
salvation, as the Lord who made us
his chosen people, as our shepherd
and guide. This should be the mark of
our following of Jesus. We must take
care to guard against the folly that
befell the Israelites, which led them
to quarrel and test God’s goodness at
Meribah and Massah.
We can harden our hearts in ways
more subtle but no less ruinous.
We can put our trust in possessions,
squabble over earthly inheritances,
kid ourselves that what we have we
deserve, store up treasures and think
they’ll afford us security, rest.
All this is “vanity of vanities,” a false
and deadly way of living, as today’s
First Reading tells us.
This is the greed that Jesus warns
against in today’s Gospel. The rich
man’s anxiety and toil expose his lack
of faith in God’s care and provision.
That’s why Paul calls greed “idolatry”
in today’s Epistle.
Mistaking having for being, possession
for existence, we forget that God
is the giver of all that we have, we
exalt the things we can make or buy
over our Maker (see Romans 1:25).
Jesus calls the rich man a “fool,” a
word used in the Old Testament for
someone who rebels against God or
has forgotten him (see Psalm 14:1).
Scott Hahn is founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.
8 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

IN EXILE
BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI
What does it mean to ‘be born again’?
What does it mean to “be born
again,” to “be born from above”?
If you’re an Evangelical or Baptist,
you’ve probably already answered
that for yourself. However, if you’re a
Roman Catholic or a mainline Protestant,
then the phrase probably isn’t a
normal part of your spiritual vocabulary
and, indeed, might connote for
you a biblical fundamentalism that
confuses you.
What does it mean to “be born
again”? The expression appears in
John’s Gospel in a conversation Jesus
has with a man named Nicodemus.
Jesus tells him that he “must be born
again from above.”
Nicodemus takes this literally and
protests that it’s impossible for a grown
man to re-enter his mother’s womb so
as to be born a second time. So Jesus
recasts the phrase metaphorically,
telling Nicodemus that one’s second
birth, unlike the first, is not from the
flesh, but “from water and the Spirit.”
Well … that doesn’t clarify things
much for Nicodemus, or for us. What
does it mean to “be born again from
above”? Perhaps there are as many answers
to that as there are people in the
world. Spiritual birth, unlike physical
birth, doesn’t mean the same thing for
everyone.
I have Evangelical friends who share
that for them this refers to a particularly
powerful affective moment within
their lives when, like Mary Magdala
in the Garden with Jesus on Easter
Sunday, they had a deep personal
encounter with Jesus that indelibly
affirmed his intimate love for them.
In that moment, in their words, “they
met Jesus Christ” and “were born
again,” even though from their childhood
they had always known about
Jesus Christ and been Christians.
Most Roman Catholics and mainline
Protestants do not identify “knowing
Jesus Christ” with one such personal
affective experience. But then they’re
left wondering what Jesus meant
exactly when he challenges us “to be
born again, from above.”
A priest that I know shares this story
regarding his understanding of this.
His mother, widowed before his ordination,
lived in the same parish where
he had been assigned to minister.
It was a mixed blessing, nice to see
her every day in church but she, widowed
and alone, began to lean pretty
heavily upon him in terms of wanting
his time and he, the dutiful son, now
had to spend all his free time with his
mother, taking her for meals, taking
her for drives, and being her one vital
contact with the world outside the
narrow confines of the seniors’ home
within which she lived.
During their time together she
reminisced a lot and not infrequently
complained about being alone and
lonely. But one day, on a drive with
her, after a period of silence, she said
something that surprised him and
caught his deeper attention.
“I’ve given up on fear! I’m no longer
afraid of anything. I’ve spent my
whole life living in fear. But now, I’ve
given up on it because I’ve nothing
to lose! I’ve already lost everything,
my husband, my youthful body, my
health, my place in the world, and
much of my pride and dignity. Now
I’m free! I’m no longer afraid!”
Her son, who had only been half-listening
to her, now began to listen. He
began to spend longer hours with her,
recognizing that she had something
important to teach him.
After a couple of more years, she
died. But, by then, she had been able
to impart to her son some things that
helped him understand his life more
deeply. “My mother gave me birth
twice; once from below, and once
from above,” he says. He now understands
something that Nicodemus
couldn’t quite grasp. We all, no doubt,
have our own stories.
And what do the biblical scholars
teach about this? The Synoptic Gospels,
scholars say, tell us that we can
only enter the kingdom of God if we
become like little children, meaning
that we must, in our very way of living,
acknowledge our dependence upon
God and others.
We are not self-sufficient, and that
means truly recognizing and living
out our human dependence upon the
gratuitous providence of God. To do
that, is to be born from above.
John’s Gospel adds something to this.
Father Raymond E. Brown, SS, commenting
on John’s Gospel, puts it this
way: “To be born again from above
means we must, at some point in our
lives, come to understand that our
life comes from beyond this world,
from a place and source beyond our
mother’s womb, and that deeper life
and deeper meaning lie there. And
so we must have two births, one that
gives us biological life (births us into
this world) and another that gives us
eschatological life (births us into the
world of faith, soul, love, and spirit).”
And sometimes, as was the case
with my friend, it can be your own
birthmother who does the major
midwifing in that second birth.
Nicodemus couldn’t quite get past his
instinctual empiricism. In the end, he
didn’t get it. Do we?
Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual writer, www.ronrolheiser.com.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 9

The
Beauty
of
theBells
Why the campaign to erase
the legacy of California’s first
evangelizers is based more
on fiction than facts
BY GREGORY ORFALEA / ANGELUS
10 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

Statues of Confederate generals
brought down or repositioned.
McSherry Hall at Georgetown
University renamed because Father
William McSherry sold slaves.
What’s in a name? What’s in a statue?
Are California’s 585 mission bells along
the road next in this flurry of reassessment
of representational history that
includes aggrieved people, questions
about the nature of art, and a selective
rendering of what took place long ago?
What, exactly, is a symbol and what
force — moral, spiritual, or otherwise
— does it have?
Californians take pride in the weathered
old bells on their staffs spaced
along U.S. Route 101 and offshoot
roads taken by original padres. When
I was a child, my heart quickened at
their sight, for it meant my parents and
us kids were on the road and would
soon be taking in a mission or two on
our way to the mountains, the beach,
the desert, or Lake Tahoe.
Spotting the road bells meant inner
joy, as it did later for my wife and our
kids. Even as we age, I hear those bells
inside when I pass and my heart is
glad.
But for some, that bell on the road is
an insult, and echoes with something
akin to Julius Caesar’s infamous summary
of laying waste to Gaul: “I came.
I saw. I conquered.”
To Valentin Lopez, chairman of
the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band near
Gilroy, those bells mean, as he put it,
“We conquered you, we controlled
you, we destroyed you.” And since the
missions and their bells were erected
by the Spanish Franciscans, there’s no
mistaking who Lopez accuses: the followers
of St. Francis of Assisi. So much
for talking to animals, right?
After many years of trying, in June
of this year Lopez was able to get one
bell removed from the University of
California Santa Cruz campus.
But what of Mission San Luis Rey,
where several hundred Luiseno Indians
ran into the water off Oceanside
to beg Father Antonio Peyri not to go
back to Spain as he boarded a ship, but
to stay with them where he had served
them for three prosperous and peaceful
decades?
What of St. Junípero Serra’s death at
Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel,
where 600 Esselen and Rumsen
Costanoan Indians fell weeping, many
cutting off talismans from his robe and
even his hair?
What of that all-Indian orchestra
at Mission San Antonio that played
original works? Were those performed
without pride or joy? Were the Indian
singers at Carmel whom the celebrated
author Robert Louis Stevenson said
sang in 1879 with such profundity
merely faking it? Was there no music
in those bells?
In a June ceremony, California Gov.
Gavin Newsom apologized to the
state’s 600,000 Native Americans at a
June ceremony, calling what happened
to their ancestors in the takeover by
Europeans “genocide.” Undoubtedly
it was. And shameful. But who was
responsible for it — the Spaniards or
the Americans?
To understand the legacy of the bells,
that and other questions need to be
answered. The role that microbes of
infection played in this tragedy, for
example, must be understood.
The treatment of Indians by the
Franciscans, a source of many accusations
against the Spaniards, must be
examined with context and a careful
attention to statistics. And the good
works, especially those of radical mercy,
of Serra and the Franciscans cannot
be ignored.
Who committed genocide?
On the question of genocide there is
no less an authority than James Sandos,
Ph.D., Farquhar Professor of the
American Southwest at the University
of Redlands. In 2010, he told a large
gathering of mostly Native Americans
at the California Indian Conference in
Irvine that the “comparison [of Franciscan
acts] to genocide is totally false.”
The true culprit? “The U.S. government
paying people to slaughter others,
that’s genocide,” Sandos said at the
event. On the same panel with Sandos
was reputable mission-era historian
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
One of California’s many historic El Camino Real bells.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 11

A baptism conducted by California mission friars in a sketch displayed at the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala in San Diego. This drawing is part of a
collection of sketches depicting mission life by California artists A.B. Dodge and Alexander Harmer.
NANCY WIECHEC/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
George Harwood Phillips, Ph.D., who
agreed: “I don’t think you can see
Franciscan missionaries committing
genocide [in California].”
Neither of these distinguished scholars
are mission apologists; in fact, they
are critical of several practices in the
missions. I was in the audience, heard
them both, and can attest that no one
in the crowd of mostly Native Americans
opposed them.
Regarding genocide, there are two
crucial elements to look at: intentionality
and magnitude.
Did the Spaniards intend to wipe out
California’s Indians? The answer to this
question is a simple no.
What about the magnitude of losses?
There were an estimated 225,000 Indians
in California in 1769. In 1830, just
prior to secularization of the missions,
there were about 150,000, a drop of
one-third.
The vast majority of this admittedly
tragic decline was due to infectious
diseases that the Spaniards had no
control of — they hardly understood
how pathogens spread.
Nor were there any real massacres by
the Spaniards along the West Coast.
And there’s a major spiritual reason for
that: The Spaniards, and the Franciscans
in particular, saw the Indians
as having an inviolate soul, of being
essentially the equal of any Spaniard.
Unlike the Puritans of New England,
for instance, the Spanish intermarried
with Native Americans almost from the
start; in fact, Serra actively encouraged
it.
Perhaps some of the understandable
anger toward the Spanish stem from
two very real records of atrocity: that
of Spain 200 years earlier during the
conquest of Peru and Mexico, as well
as modern-day Arizona and Florida, in
which scores of Native Americans were
killed. The other “black record” is that
of the United States when it took over
California in 1850.
I am convinced that the Spanish (particularly
the Franciscans) learned an
important lesson over those 200 years
of the colonial conquests, and that they
put into practice in their last crucible,
California: You do not convert someone
by force.
As Viceroy Antonio Bucareli in Mexico
City instructed the new governor
of California, Felipe de Neve, in 1776,
“The good treatment of the Indians
and the kindness, love and gifts showered
upon them are the only means,
taken together, to win them over; and
may Your Grace prefer those means
to others that stem from rigor. By the
latter we have never been able to win
good will from anyone.”
That’s a far cry from the blunt words
of the first American governor of California,
Peter Hardeman Burnett, nearly
a century later: “It is inevitable that the
Indian must go.”
That suggests genocide, which climaxed
in the last stand of California’s
Native Americans in the Modoc War
of 1872.
By then, the number of California
Indians had declined to just 30,000,
an 80 percent drop after the Spanish
withdrawal and nearly three times the
rate of loss under the Spaniards. And
40 percent of those losses under the
Americans was not due to disease, but
to outright murder.
One important point to keep in mind
is that the large majority of California
Indians did not come into the missions.
The largest mission population was
22,000; that is about 10 percent of
12 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

NANCY WIECHEC/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
DINA MOORE BOWDEN VIA GREGORY ORFALEA
the population estimate on contact of
225,000.
On several occasions, Serra referred to
the California Indians being “in their
own country.” He almost never referred
to Indians as “barbaros” (“barbarians”),
as others did, but rather “indios,” “gentiles,”
or “pobres.”
In fact, Serra directly suggested that
Spain remove itself from California
if soldier depredations continued. If
the better side of Christianity was not
shown the Indians on a daily basis,
he said, “what business have we … in
such a place?”
Were the missions slavery?
The question arises: Were the missions
slavery? It’s a serious claim, but
it is false. No one was forced into the
missions.
This is made clear by the testimony
of Father Pedro Font, diarist of the
second settler expedition into Upper
California, who observed, “The
method of which the fathers observe in
the conversion [of the Indians] is not
to oblige anyone to become Christian,
admitting only those who voluntarily
offer themselves for baptism.” Most
historians ratify this.
There was, however, a catch. Once
one entered the mission he or she
could not leave without permission.
The missions were a community on
a frontier and Indian labor, as well as
Spanish labor, were necessities for a
community’s survival.
We might ponder how many who
came into the mission system understood
this quid pro quo, but there’s
little doubt most fell to the task of
contributing their labor for the food,
clothes, living quarters, and other items
they were given.
Douglas Monroy, a Hispanic-American
historian and author of “The Borders
Within,” calls this “the communitarian
spirit,” and he notes that working
for the common good was not all that
different from the ethic of the Indian
village. Sandos calls the mission Indian
status “spiritual debt peonage,” though
the Indians were given concrete things,
not just spiritual practices.
Most took “leave” to their home
villages for weeks or months. Some,
like the Luiseno of Mission San Luis
Rey, were already in their villages and
commuting to mission work.
There is one undeniable, hard, and
premeditated thing to admit about the
missions: the use of the flog for corporal
punishment for theft, assault, concubinage,
and desertion. That Spanish
civilians and soldiers got the same
treatment is no comfort for those of us
who see such a thing as abhorrent.
The bell tower of St. Peter’s, Serra’s childhood parish church, in Petra, Mallorca (left) and bells at
Mission San Juan Capistrano (right).
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
However, a few things need to be said
about this practice. First, whippings for
discipline were common in the 18th
century. Even schoolboys at Eton in
England were caned for infractions,
and their parents paid a fee for it to the
school.
Second, many tribes made prisoners
of war run a gauntlet of beatings, so
such a thing was not entirely strange.
Third, as Father Francis Guest has
written, the Indians were considered
children by the padres, and as such
the flogging was cut in half (12 strokes
at most). Guest also notes that the
punishment was not to be given in
anger and if it were, those who did so
had committed a grave sin and were
subject to punishment themselves.
Serra himself was clearly conflicted
about the practice: “I am willing to admit
that in the infliction of punishment
we are now discussing, there may have
been inequities and excesses on the
part of some Fathers and that we are all
exposed to err in that record,” he wrote.
About this matter, I wrote in my biography
of Serra, “Journey to the Sun:
Junípero Serra’s Dream and the Founding
of California” (Scribner, 2014),
in no uncertain terms: “It was cruel,
a violation of the Fifth Commandment;
Christ accepted the Roman
soldier’s whipping his body, but he
certainly didn’t recommend it. Serra’s
and Lasuen’s arguments for flogging
ultimately ring hollow. They should
have had the wisdom and foresight to
stop it.”
Ultimately, before the mission period
was over, the flogging was outlawed in
1833. Father Francisco Diego at Mission
Santa Clara applauded that “such
punishment as revolts my soul is being
abolished.”
If this were the main story of Serra
and the missions, I would say tear
down the bells. But it isn’t, not by a
long shot.
In his landmark apology to the native
peoples of the Americas in Bolivia in
2015, Pope Francis said, “Where there
was sin — and there was plenty of
sin — there was also abundant grace
increased by the men and women who
defended indigenous peoples.”
As I have indicated, Serra tirelessly defended
the indigenous people against
those who talked as if they were sub-
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 13

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIBRARIES/CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
A ‘Camino’
in California
The Camino de Santiago in
northern Spain today that follows
the medieval pilgrimage
along the Pyrenees west to a miraculous
site in Santiago de Compostela is
trod by millions, many of faith, many
of no apparent faith.
I say “apparent” because faith is a
curious thing. It can start with awe over
the beauty of nature, and end with awe
at the Creator of it all. In any case, it’s
an opportunity for a spiritual upgrade.
The magic of the Spanish Camino de
Santiago in the Old World could become
part of the California Camino. I
propose a spiritual and history-marking
walkway from Loreto (Baja California)
to Sonoma, or even more appropriately,
from Mexico City to Tepic to La Paz
to Loreto to Sonoma.
This journey on foot would have several
purposes. For those of a spiritual
bent, it would be the cause for meditation,
prayerful hiking, worship of the
Creator, and a Franciscan-like wayfarer’s
trust in strangers on the road.
For those who also respect history, the
Camino in California (or the Californias)
could have mini-exhibits along
the way of treatment in the missions —
pro and con — and of Native American
testimony in every shade.
For environmentalists, they would
have a walk in some of the most
beautiful land and sea and mountain
in the world, and an opportunity to
raise awareness of the threat of global
warming and the erosion and warming
of the seas. Many might be drawn by
all three perspectives.
As my friend and celebrated author
Richard Rodriguez wrote in his book
“Days of Obligation”: “Have I, like the
California Indians, sought some refuge
from a world that can no longer make
sense to me?”
From the nuclear shadows of our
world, from the terrible addiction to
energy that is killing us, from the fear
of the Other, let the Camino give
refuge. And let the mission bells bend
gently over that road.
— Gregory Orfalea
human, with no dignity, who abused
them sexually, and grabbed their land.
But the supreme act of “radical
mercy” occurred after the Kumeyaay
raid on Mission San Diego in 1775
that burned the mission to the ground
and killed three Spaniards, including
a priest friend of Serra’s who was one
of the Kumeyaay’s greatest champions,
Father Luis Jayme.
Despite Jayme’s deeply tragic, nonsensical
murder (he was beaten to death
and skewered by a dozen arrows),
Serra insisted to the viceroy that those
jailed and awaiting execution in San
Diego for the attack be pardoned and
released.
“As to the killer,” Serra appealed to
the highest authority in the Americas,
“let him live so that he can be saved,
for that is the purpose of our coming
here and its sole justification.”
Though there was severe loss of
life due to disease, and disciplinary
measures we do not counsel today, in
contradistinction to intentional murder
and land seizure of the American
government in the 19th century, those
Hispanic mission bells represent the
Gospel of Love. That, to me, is one
California symbol worth saving in the
midst of so many social ills that inflict
so much misery.
The Franciscans were founded, after
all, by one of the great peace-lovers of
all time; if they had forgotten him in
Peru and Mexico and Arizona, they did
not — for the most part — forget St.
Francis in California.
An early San Diego interlude in the
life of Serra always brings to me the essential
benevolence of the Franciscans
in 18th-century California. On the first
exploration, just over the present-day
U.S.-Mexico border in what is today
the Tijuana Estuary Nature Preserve,
the Portola expedition came across
“good sweet water” and the leader proposed
to water the horses, let the men
bathe, wash their clothes, and drink.
Serra would have none of it.
“We do not want to spoil the watering
site for the poor gentiles,” he said,
meaning this was the Indians’ water
and hands off. Does that sound like
genocide?
On the side of the heart
“If we weren’t here, who would have
put the bricks on top of each other?”
Mel Vernon, captain of the Luiseno
tribe, hardly sees mission life uncritically.
But at a book signing for my
Left to right: St. Junípero Serra scholars Steven Hackel, Robert Senkewicz, Rose Marie Beebe, Ruben
Mendoza, and Gregory Orfalea at Serra’s canonization in Washington, D.C., in 2015.
biography of Serra in San Diego, he
took the time to shake my hand and
tell how proud he was to be a part of
the book.
Vernon is one of the many Native
Americans in California who understand
this complex history and come
down on the side of the heart.
Ernestine de Soto, whose mother was
the last Native American speaker of
Chumash, herself a Chumash shaman
and registered nurse, is no shrinking
violet on difficulties in the missions, as
I can personally attest. Yet today she is
not only a devout Catholic, but leads
winter solstice services at Mission Santa
Barbara with a recitation of the “Our
Father” in Chumash.
She also wrote to the Vatican present-
GREGORY ORFALEA
14 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

ing evidence of a second miracle for
Serra sainthood considerations — her
own daughter’s miraculous deathbed
recovery from cryptogenic pneumonia.
There’s archaeologist Ruben Mendoza,
Ph.D., of both Yaqui Indian and
Hispanic descent, whose father hated
the Church and the missions and grew
up with the same hatred, refusing to
make a fourth-grade mission model as
a child. (Instead, the young Mendoza
made a model of Aztec pyramids.)
Mendoza, chair of the School of Social,
Behavioral and Global Studies at
California State University at Monterey
Bay, had three transformative experiences
while excavating missions, the
last at Mission San Luis Bautista that
led to other discoveries convincing him
that at least 13 missions “were precisely
oriented … to capture illuminations,
some of days that would have been
sacred to Native Americans.”
In 2015, Mendoza flew from California
to attend the Serra canonization
ceremony with Francis in Washington,
D.C., the first time ever a pope has
done such a thing on American soil.
Andy Galvan, the Ohlone-Patwin-Bay
Miwok director of Mission San Francisco
Dolores, was at the canonization
ceremony, too. Galvan is no blind
observer of mission life, nor of Serra’s
flaws, but an enthusiastic supporter
of his inspired life and those of other
Franciscans who served selflessly.
In my research of more than 12 years,
I discovered records of 200 interview
contacts with descendants of mission
days in the 1940s that culminated in 50
taped testimonies in 1949 in Monterey,
San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Many
of these had relatives who lived in the
missions and even knew Serra, and
dozens of them were Native American
or mestizo.
Several mentioned a practice dating
back to the days just after Serra died
when Esselen and Rumsen fishermen
would lay tobacco and other offerings
at a point in the Carmel River, praying
to Serra for a good catch.
Gregory Orfalea is a historian, poet,
and novelist, and has taught at the
Claremont Colleges, Georgetown University,
and Westmont College in Santa
Barbara. Currently, he is at work on a
novel on Syria and baseball.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 15

From left: Ray Lopez, camp director; Father Lawrence Seyer; Father Peter Banks, OFM Cap.; Nadine Melancon, camp committee co-chair; Viktor
Rzeteljski, SVdPLA board member; Jackie Yanez, camp committee co-chair; David Garcia, SVdPLA executive director; Tony Yanez, camp committee
co-chair; James Bibb Jr., SVdPLA board member; Marilyn Coyle, SVdPLA board member, and Paul Melancon, camp benefactor.
CHRIS SARIEGO
‘Thank you Guardian Angels’
Campers return to Catholic Charities’ Circle V Ranch Camp
two years after their dramatic escape from the Whittier Fire
BY R.W. DELLINGER / ANGELUS
While the beginnings
of the Whittier Fire
began racing up the dry
hillsides above Santa
Barbara County’s Lake Cachuma
toward the Circle V Ranch Camp
and Retreat Center on July 8, 2017,
summer camp was in full swing.
Sitting a few miles from the lake in a
live oak forest, the camp with mostly
boys and girls from disadvantaged
urban families has been run and
operated by the Society of St. Vincent
de Paul, Los Angeles Council, since
1945 at different sites.
By the time the fire was fully contained
three months later, 18,430
acres were burned, mostly on national
forest lands suffering from a yearslong
drought. Sixteen homes were destroyed.
Nine people suffered nonfatal
injuries.
But those injuries could have led
to many fatalities, with only 20-some
children and staff from the camp making
it all the way down a narrow, rutted
road to state Route 154. The rest,
58 children and 24 staff members,
“sheltered in place” in the camp’s dining
lodge until forest service workers
16 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

and firemen broke through the smoke
and flames to rescue them.
Looking back, the counselors and
campers there that day consider themselves
very lucky that the camp was
not completely burned to the ground.
In fact, the fire went around it for the
most part. But in the upper part of the
camp, both the arts and crafts building
and the health center were destroyed.
A water treatment plant about a
quarter-mile away was also severely
damaged.
Still, the post-fire plan was to get
the camp up and running for last
summer. But in
January, a mudslide
and debris flow
came through part
of the camp, setting
everything back. So
the first campers in
two years arrived
earlier this month
on Friday, July 12.
The camp formally
reopened three days
later with a special
Mass in the camp’s
outdoor chapel
celebrated by Father
Peter Banks, vocation
director for the
Western American
Province of Franciscan
Capuchins, and
Father Lawrence
Seyer, pastor of Our Lady of Mount
Carmel Church in Montecito.
Afterward, Seyer gave a special blessing
with holy water for the reopened
camp.
“You guys are the first group here
after the fire,” he pointed out. “So we
ask for Jesus to be here and help us
with this renewing of our camp. May
counselors teach their students how to
join the discovery of human wisdom
with the truth of the Gospel, so they
may be able to keep the true faith and
the love in their lives.
“We also ask the Lord that the
campus will find in its teachers and
counselors the image of Christ. So
that with both human and divine
learning, they may be true and be
able to redeem one another in Christ.
Amen.”
Later, a metal plaque fixed to the
side of a boulder titled “THANK YOU
GUARDIAN ANGELS” was dedicated
to the first responders who rescued
the campers and staff. In gold letters,
it thanked the U.S. Forest Service,
Santa Barbara County Fire Department,
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s
Office, Santa Barbara County Search
and Rescue, as well as volunteers and
staff.
Below it reads: “In Gratitude for Your
Extraordinary Service and Efforts During
the July 8, 2017 Whittier Wildfire
at St. Vincent de Paul Circle V Ranch
Camp.”
Alexis Paniagua, who has worked at Circle V since the summer of 2012, prays with campers
and staff during Mass in the camp’s outdoor chapel.
Alexis Paniagua, 25, started
working at Circle V in the
summer of 2012 as a counselor
who trained older campers
affectionately known as CILTs
(Counselors in Leadership Training)
to become counselors themselves.
He believes the plaque is a fitting
tribute to the first responders who
helped keep counselors like him
calm, which is what he tried to do
driving a car full of young girl campers
down a windy access road to Route
154 and safety.
He recalls it was just a regular day
when he and some other staffers
suddenly smelled smoke. When they
could see flames, it was time to get out
of there. He and a counselor loaded
Paniagua’s Kia with seven- and eightyear-old
girls, and slowly started down
the access road in a caravan of other
camp residents and staff members.
“There was fire all around, and I was
really afraid and terrified,” Paniagua
recalled.
“We tried everything to distract them,
singing lively camp songs, playing
music and playing games, including
one where we had the campers close
their eyes.”
The counselors’ efforts were successful,
until the flames came so close
that the children could see branches
falling.
The caravan finally made it out to
Route 154 and then headed to nearby
Old Mission Santa
Inez in Solvang, the
camps designated
evacuation spot for
emergencies, before
making making
phone calls to
parents.
Paniagua, who just
started a “diversion”
job with Los Angeles
County to keep juveniles
out of detention,
calls Circle V
his “second home.”
He admitted he was
R.W. DELLINGER
disappointed when
the camp didn’t
open last summer.
“But I’m super
excited to be able
to come back now
and be able to play with the kids and
interact with them,” he said, grinning.
“I always look forward to coming back
every year.”
So does Ray Lopez. The camp’s
director said that mudflow damage
to Circle V’s boys’ side of the camp
hampered his hopes of reopening the
camp last summer. He also wanted to
make it even better than ever when
it did open, especially making the
dining lodge even more fireproof.
In addition to new fire retardant dark
brown paint, the long, single-story
building now has rolled-up aluminum-like
foil on every window, which
can withstand up to 3,000 degrees
Fahrenheit, the same material used by
firefighters to protect themselves.
“We feel good about this building
being our shelter-in-place zone,” he
added, turning to glance at the dining
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 17

The plaque dedicated to the first responders who rescued campers and staff in 2017 outside the
dining hall, now with new fire retardant dark brown paint.
lodge behind him. “But we’re looking
at ways to even make it safer. So a
good number of kids are coming
back who were here the day of the
fire.”
This is Isaiah Simental’s
fourth year at Circle V, and
his first time back since the
Whittier Fire broke out.
He was in his cabin hanging out with
other members of his outfit when
they heard the fire siren. At first, they
laughed, thinking that somebody must
have set it off.
But when a burning tree that had
fallen on the access road they were using
to evacuate forced them to return
to camp, it became all too real.
“I felt scared and I felt sad,” remembered
the 12-year-old. “And I wanted
to get out. But then the fire was like
halfway around the camp. You could
see the fire now in the back. And
some of the windows were melting.
So we were just praying. We were just
hoping that we could get out.”
That was when a man driving a bulldozer
showed up. He started relaying
where loads of fire retardants should
be dropped. And he made a path
behind the dining lodge if the wildfire
got out of control.
“The counselors were giving us ice,
water, and helping kids to sing. They
were doing everything just to help us
calm down. But I thought I was going
to be stuck there, because I had seen
forest fires on TV.”
But led by the bulldozer, campers
and staff members started driving
down the access road to Route
154 again. This time they made it
through. He was glad to be getting
out, but sad, too, thinking the camp
would burn down. “Because I’d been
going here, and I had a lot of good
times,” he explained.
This summer, 95 percent of Circle
V’s campers are either on partial or
even full scholarships, Lopez said.
Few pay the full cost of $600 for a
week of six days and five nights in the
Santa Inez Mountains. And it can be
a life-changing experience.
“You can watch the wonder through
their eyes when they see a family of
turkeys or a deer in a meadow or a
starry night,” said Lopez, “and just see
their awe of witnessing God’s beauty,
where that can be hard in urban places.
Kids today don’t have that opportunity
in city parks, where programs
are filled up or the neighborhood park
isn’t safe.
“So we’re blessed to be part of an
amazing ministry that really gives kids
a chance to be their true selves. The
counselors and the CILTs sacrifice
their summers to make a difference in
the lives of young people.”
R.W. Dellinger is the features editor
of Angelus.
R.W. DELLINGER
18 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 19

Restless for religious ed
Sister Rosalia Meza takes over as director of the
archdiocese’s new head of religious education
Archbishop José H. Gomez and Sister Rosalia Meza.
VICTOR ALEMÁN
BY PABLO KAY / ANGELUS
A few days after starting her new
job, Sister Rosalia Meza’s office at
the Archdiocesan Catholic Center
overlooking Wilshire Boulevard in
Koreatown got a fresh green paint job.
A few paintings depicting scenes from
the Gospels were placed on a wall
opposite a framed photo of a statue of
the Virgin Mary from the Spanish island
of Mallorca, where her religious
order was founded.
Yet besides an empty bookcase, there
isn’t much else in her fourth floor
office. After all, she doesn’t plan to
spend much time there.
“Me, Rosalia, I don’t perceive myself
just being in an office, I will kill myself!”
she chuckled from behind her
desk. “That’s not me, and that’s not
my vocation.”
But it is precisely her vocation that
has led the 47-year-old Verbum Dei
sister to LA’s ultimate Catholic office
job: director of the Office of Religious
Education (ORE) for the nation’s
largest diocese, a post filled since 2015
by Father Chris Bazyouros, who was
appointed administrator of St. John
Chrysostom Church in Inglewood
this year.
The department counts on 34 office
employees but oversees religious
education programs for the entire
archdiocese, which this year saw more
than 23,000 young people receive the
sacrament of confirmation and nearly
40,000 children receive first Communion.
Rosalia Meza Moreno was
born in Guadalajara, Mexico,
to a Catholic family. She
grew up living what she calls
a “very normal life,” earning a degree
in pedagogy at a Jesuit university and
working as the supervisor of a software
company’s education department,
overseeing training personnel and
procedures.
“I had everything,” she recalled.
“Everything was given to me.”
The year was 1997. Meza’s boyfriend
at the time wanted to get married. But
something didn’t feel right.
“I was searching for something more,
and I didn’t know what.”
Meza had plans to study for a Master’s
degree in Canada. But a stay in
20 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

San Francisco to study English led her
to meet the Verbum Dei Missionary
Fraternity (VDMF), a religious community
founded in 1963 in Spain that
her parents had come to know back in
Mexico.
“I always say that it was God interrupting
my life,” said Meza of the call
to her vocation as a religious sister.
“It was God approaching me, getting
closer to me, and showing me who
God was, and as well as the need of
the people.”
Attending youth group meetings led
by the community made her see that
“God wasn’t something boring, or up
there,” but someone “really close to
us.”
She recalled the ensuing process of
discernment as something “beautiful,”
in which God helped her leave
behind a good life in exchange for a
better one.
“We didn’t have cellphone, internet,
or any of that — so I really did a clear
cut in my life, from family, friends,
boyfriend, everything!”
Meza’s studies and job experience
prepared her well for her new calling.
She has taught theology at her
community’s institute, the Archdiocese
of San Francisco, and Loyola
Marymount University, while training
the order’s novices, and forming lay
catechists.
In 2017, she earned a doctorate
in sacred theology from the Jesuit
School of Theology at Berkeley. And
since being elected two years ago, she
has served as Verbum Dei’s regional
provincial, a post she’ll serve in until
at least next year, when her term is
complete.
Most recently, she has served as the
director of religious education at St.
Anthony’s in Long Beach, where she
will continue to live in community
with her fellow Verbum Dei sisters.
Since arriving there in 2008, she’s
seen the job not only as an opportunity
to evangelize, but also to put
her background in pedagogy to use
in restructuring the parish’s religious
education programs for children,
teenagers, and adults.
“For me, and for us as a community,
it was very important that besides the
catechetical formation, the people
could leave with a certainty of
experience of God, because many of
them don’t come back to church,”
explained Meza, who oversaw the
preparation of more than 700 children
for first Communion and more than
350 teenagers for confirmation during
her time at St. Anthony’s.
“But if they could leave the program
having the certainty that God loves
them, that’s fine — the objective is
reached.”
As if she hadn’t been busy
enough lately, she was
approached this spring to see
if she’d consider leading the
religious education department of the
nation’s largest Catholic archdiocese.
“No way,” she remembered she
answered. “I have a lot of work. I don’t
have time for that.”
But they soon called again, asking
if as provincial, she could offer any
Verbum Dei sisters to help the archdiocese.
The answer was, again, “no.”
“Well, then, what about you?” she
was asked.
Meza finally relented, figuring she’d
give the interview process a try. She
met with archdiocesan leadership,
including Archbishop José H. Gomez,
who liked what he was hearing in
their conversations about her ideas for
the future of religious education in
Los Angeles.
“He was transmitting to me the
desire of helping the people have
an encounter with Christ, and then
making disciples of Christ. And that’s
the core of my charism.”
The two agreed that keeping the
doctrinal element of religious education
was important, but not without
“recovering the spiritual element of
the doctrinal part.”
Meza admitted that her first weeks
on the job have been a little “overwhelming”
with so many things to
learn, people to meet, and events
to plan. But she’s felt supported by
the warm welcome from staff, and
perceives an openness to working
differently in the office.
Although the ORE oversees the
religious education programs of the
nearly 300 parishes of the archdiocese,
it also coordinates events like the upcoming
City of Saints teen conference
held each summer.
On the global stage, the department
is best known for organizing the annual
Religious Education Congress in
Anaheim. When asked how the event
can stay “fresh” while bringing back
attendees every year, Meza responded
that she feels a certain “restlessness”
to reach out to those hungry for both
theological training and spiritual
nourishment.
“I have the desire of reaching out to
the younger generations, including
millennials, so that they can find that
the Church is home for them,” said
Meza.
“How? I have no idea. I don’t think
that I’m ready for the how. I just have
the restlessness of reaching out to the
younger generation according to their
needs.”
Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of
Angelus.
Sister Rosalia Meza (top row, fourth from left) with most of the sisters of the Verbum Dei Missionary
Fraternity’s U.S. province.
SISTER ROSALIA MEZA
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 21

Authorities inspect St. Madeleine Sophie Barat Church in Trona, California.
DIOCESE OF SAN BERNARDINO
A ‘moment of fear
and uncertainty’
The recent series of earthquakes near Ridgecrest may have
damaged a tiny town’s only Catholic church beyond repair
BY NATALIE ROMANO / ANGELUS
Patricia Scyrkels was one of the
first parishioners to set foot in
Trona’s Catholic church after
the earthquake that struck the
California desert July 4-5.
She could be one of the last.
Scyrkels was part of a small group to
inspect St. Madeleine Sophie Barat
Church following the first temblor,
centered between Trona and Ridgecrest
in San Bernardino County.
When she looked around her
church, she was devastated by what
she saw. Split walls, buckled floors,
and broken statues all stemming from
the 6.4 shaker. San Bernardino County
officials determined that, pending
further inspection, St. Madeleine is
no longer safe for services.
The small 300-seat church, built
in 1958, is a mission of St. Joseph
Church in Barstow. Priests from the
parish make the 100-mile trip to
Trona twice a month to offer Mass. If
22 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

there is a constant Catholic presence
in Trona, it’s Scyrkels. She even has a
key to the place.
“I work a lot with the church, and it
seems like everything I have volunteered
for is ruined,” said Scyrkels. “I
don’t know how to describe it. I just
feel like the church is such a big part
of my life.”
The initial quake took its toll, but it
was only a taste of what was to come.
The 7.1 that followed was so long and
violent Scyrkels thought she might die.
“It was absolutely the scariest thing.
My son and I got under
the table and held
on for dear life,” she
recalled. “I prayed to
God that if this was it,
just forgive everybody
in Trona their sins.”
Scyrkels’ voice broke
and she softly cried.
It wasn’t the end for
Trona’s 2,000 residents,
but they were left with
the crumbled remains
of a town. Homes
and driveways were
riddled with cracks.
Once tall chimneys
were reduced to piles
of bricks. Inside, dishes
and lamps littered
floors. Initially, residents
had no power or
running water. Even
when the water came back, it had to
be boiled.
The San Bernardino County Fire
Department said that so far 31 area
homes are red tagged as not habitable
and 51 more are yellow tagged
as having limited habitability. Eight
commercial buildings are also red
tagged, including St. Madeleine. The
former rectory, now an office building,
is unscathed, but the church and
parish hall are another story.
“It’s more than just a crack,” said
David Meier, director of the Diocesan
Office of Construction and Real Estate.
“They’ve had displacement and
uplift of the floor. Obviously, the floor
holds the walls and the walls hold the
roof. I’m really concerned about that
damage.”
At press time, Meier was scheduled
to return to Trona to conduct a more
detailed inspection of the church in
order to determine the next course of
action.
“There is that potential that the structure
of the church building may not
be fixable,” said Meier. “I don’t know
at this point. My hope is yes we can.”
Scyrkels moved to Trona in the
mid-1980s and has been a dedicated
parishioner at St. Madeleine’s ever
since. Knowing the building may
not survive makes her so sad she can
barely speak.
“The thought of not being able to go
One of the cracks in the church ceiling caused by the July earthquakes.
in our church again is just heartbreaking,”
Scyrkels said.
With the church currently uninhabitable,
Mass will be held in the old
rectory building.
“Whenever we go up there, we
know they [parishioners] will come
out,” said Father Michael C. Okafor,
SMMM, parochial vicar at St. Joseph.
“They appreciate the church. They
appreciate the sacraments.”
A week after the earthquake, a group
of nuns and deacons made the trek
from San Bernardino to Trona, bringing
drinks and food such as cereal,
soup and canned fruit. They also
brought boxes filled with toiletries and
baby supplies.
First Baptist Church in Trona, which
suffered less damage than St. Madeleine,
has taken a leading role in
distributing donated items.
“For the Christian, this is our opportunity
to show off our faith,” said
Senior Pastor Larry Cox of First Baptist
Church. “As people are coming to
our church and getting goods, we’re
taking some time to talk to them and
see where they’re at.”
With some 70 significant aftershocks
and counting, some of those people
are just plain scared.
“They are still in shock right now.
They need our prayers,” said Okafor.
Other residents are expressing anger
or questioning why God is letting
them suffer such a natural
disaster. San Bernardino
Bishop Gerald
Barnes urged leaning
on God instead of
pulling away.
“Natural disasters
frighten us and force
us to consider what
is the will of God
in such a scenario,”
Barnes said in a July
8 statement. “Let us
take this moment of
fear and uncertainty to
DIOCESE OF SAN BERNARDINO
draw ourselves closer
to him so that we are
sustained by his love
and protection.”
That’s what Scyrkels
does, and she wants
more of her fellow
Catholics to follow
suit.
“Really, I’d like a priest or nun to
come up and talk to the parishioners
that haven’t been coming to Mass and
let them know how important God is
in their lives,” said Scyrkels. “We just
need to come together as far as I’m
concerned. We really do.”
Barnes called for a special collection
in parishes at July 13-14 Masses to
help raise money for the earthquake
relief effort.
Editor’s Note: This article originally
appeared in the Inland Catholic Byte,
the news website of the Diocese of San
Bernardino.
Natalie Romano is a freelance writer
for the Inland Catholic Byte and a
parishioner of The Holy Name of Jesus
Church in Redlands.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 23

A season’s supply of
spiritual weapons
Got a case of the summer blues? St. Ignatius
of Loyola may have the prescription you need
BY KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ / ANGELUS
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
“St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Vision of Christ and God the Father at La Storta,”
by Domenichino Zampieri, circa 1622.
If you are a Christian who goes to Mass most Sundays
but see that you’re not quite living up to everything that
your faith professes, how about asking yourself a couple
of useful questions before the summer is over? “Do I
have a thirst to imitate Christ?” “Does my heart ache to
live without anything contrary to Christ in my life?”
If your answers are “yes” — even just a little — St. Ignatius
of Loyola might just be the saint for you. In fact, he may
just be the saint for our times.
“Prayer is simply getting in touch with God’s thirst for us
and our longing for him,” writes Father Gregory Cleveland,
OMV, in his new book, “Awakening Love: An Ignatian
Retreat with the Song of Songs” (Pauline Books & Media,
$20). In other words, prayer makes what can sometimes
seem impossible in our busy, noisy world, feel a lot more
doable. It’s not reliant on us — it’s God’s work.
Bruno Lanteri, the late 18th- and early 19th-century
founder of Cleveland’s religious community, the Oblates of
the Virgin Mary, once wrote: “In order to facilitate prayer,
to know what it is to pray, what is really necessary is neither
strength, nor study, but only a word, a sigh, a desire ever so
light, a desire in its birth, a desire that we feel has not yet
developed in the heart; this same disposition of the heart to
pray has already passed into the heart of God.”
The existence of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary has a
lot to do with Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, who we
celebrate on the last day of every July. At the heart of the
Oblates’ charism is spiritual direction and the spiritual exercises
Ignatius composed from his own prayer experience.
In his book, Cleveland credits Ignatius’ “Spiritual Exercises”
as a school of prayer through which we prepare ourselves
to receive the divine gift of prayer, the kiss of God.
“Saint Ignatius offers many forms of prayer exercises as
ways to dispose ourselves to receive God’s grace. As we ponder
these exercises, a combination of prayer and Scriptures,
we use the powers of our soul — the memory, intellect,
will, and imagination. God works through our faculties to
reveal himself to us in prayer.”
The temptation that threatens this work, Cleveland writes,
24 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

is believing that “prayer flows from our own efforts.”
This is how close God is to us and how strong his longing
is for us to rely on him, trust him, and be strengthened and
healed by him.
That “kiss” Cleveland talks about is in the context of his
book, which draws from both the rigorous spiritual exercises
and the beautiful Song of Songs.
If the latter is too much of a love story for you, remember
that this is what salvation history is: the story of God’s
love for us. While loneliness and even suicide are societal
plagues, the spiritual exercises stand out as a way of leading
people to understand God’s love for all of humanity in the
most intimate of ways.
We’re so confused. These days can be crushing to the
human will. Memories can be clouded or crowded with
pain. Our imaginations can be utterly exhausted. Just like
reading the lives of the saints while convalescing started to
bring Ignatius to new life in Christ, Ignatian spirituality is
meant to kindle the fire
in our souls that God
already put there.
His exercises are
about being who we
are meant to be and
believing in a divine
plan for each one of us.
They’re about uniting
our lives to the will
of the Father for us.
That’s the kiss Cleveland
talks about: God
the Father’s gentle,
eternally rock-solid
love for us. That’s a
game changer for most
of us, living in a world
of such uncertainty.
Speaking of confusion,
there’s that and
ARCHDIOCESE OF DENVER
Father Gregory Cleveland
anger and sadness, even despair. It’s ubiquitous, it seems,
when it comes to politics and culture. Triumphalism, dismissal,
derision — the near universal cynicism people used
to have about politics seems so quaint in comparison.
It’s in the Church, too. People wonder and worry what the
Church will look like in years to come. Will it be there for
their children? Will their children care?
A big part of the answer lies in prayer, in taking it seriously
and being clear and decisive about identifying what
comes from God and what doesn’t, and resting in and
running with the first and always rejecting the latter.
Ignatius talks about consolation and desolation in the soul
and in our lives. One major consolation is the gift of the
first Jesuit pope. I was reminded of this when earlier this
month Pope Francis popped up in my Twitter feed.
A young Jesuit had a selfie video where he showed us with
some astonishment the unexpected visitor he encountered
in his Jesuit residence in Rome. The Holy Father was making
the stop in honor of it being Ignatian memorial month.
In many ways, in his homilies and witness of his pontificate,
Francis is a Jesuit spiritual director to the world
guiding people through spiritual warfare.
In his more than 20 years of experience writing about and
practicing spiritual direction, Father Timothy Gallagher,
OMV (another Oblate of the Virgin Mary), has come to
the conclusion that Ignatius “provides an unparalleled
resource for overcoming what is generally the major
obstacles faithful persons encounter in their efforts to grow
spiritually: discouragement, fear, loss of hope, and other
troubling movements of the heart.”
“I was struck to see how often, at the end of a retreat or
seminar, such persons would say that Ignatius had supplied
them with an invaluable set of spiritual tools for overcoming
discouragement and fear,” writes Gallagher in his book
“Discernment of the Spirits.”
“They sensed that Ignatius had assisted them in the struggles
of the moment and equipped them with the spiritual
means to conquer similar trials in the future. With this
learning came new
hope.”
In his translation and
commentary of the exercises,
Father Joseph
A. Tetlow, SJ, makes
the case that we live in
a time not so different
from that of Ignatius.
“We are anxious.
… We live in an age
when limits have been
broken and boundaries
have been leveled in
every dimension. …
We feel a keen need
for order and for a way
to find some meaning
in human life beyond
the mere consumption
of goods.”
And so, with Ignatius we take up the same gift he gave to
his 16th-century contemporaries who “felt keen concern
for their personal redemption in a world that appeared
dyed deeply with sin.”
With the help of Ignatian spirituality, Tetlow writes, “We
can always know what we are to do for love of God; we can
always know best by imitating Jesus Christ.”
In the midst of headlines and frenzy and fury, God may
just be offering us new hope and tools for renewal, the kind
of renewal work any and each one of us can take up.
Whether Ignatius winds up your go-to saint or not, the
spiritual tools he left us are at minimum a reminder that
God does not leave us alone. They may just be our school
for a new faithfulness — to be contemplatives in the world,
seeing and knowing and showing and loving in union with
the heart of God.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is a contributing editor to Angelus,
and editor-at-large of National Review Online.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 25

“It is not necessary to conceal
anything from a public
insensible to contradiction
and narcotized by technological
diversions.”
Neil Postman has nailed us.
The author of “Amusing Ourselves to
Death,” written 35 years ago, Postman
has written the epitaph for our age.
We need only look at our politics to
see that we have become insensible to
contradiction. Be ye left or right, progressive
or populist, the contradictions
of our leaders should be impossible to
ignore.
Yet politics, as Postman predicted,
has become entertainment: “If politics
is like show business, then the idea is
not to pursue excellence, clarity, or
honesty but to appear as if you are,
which is another matter altogether.”
Reporting on politics now resembles
sports reporting. There is very little
serious coverage given to policies and
proposals, to honest assessments and
substantive debate. Instead, journalism,
particularly television journalism,
is increasingly about keeping score:
Whose numbers are up. Whose donations
are down. Or shallow sideline
reporting: Joe looks old. Pete has a
husband. Would you want to have a
beer with Elizabeth?
Journalists chase after every tweet,
presidential and otherwise, while
bemoaning that they are chasing after
every tweet. The news is too negative,
says practically everyone, yet a study
by researchers at the University of
Muenster shows that bad news spreads
much more quickly than good news.
Other journalistic organizations are
more likely to pick up and pass along
bad news because the data shows it is
what we the audience want.
We say the news is negative but we
INTERSECTIONS
BY GREG ERLANDSON
Seeking screen time over salvation
are drawn to the negativity, and this
negativity has become one more form
of entertainment. What is President
Trump’s latest outrage? Who is The
Squad badmouthing now?
“When a population becomes
distracted by trivia, when cultural life
is redefined as a perpetual round of
entertainments, when serious public
conversation becomes a form of
baby-talk, when, in short, a people
become an audience and their public
business a vaudeville act, then a nation
finds itself at risk; a culture-death
is a clear possibility.”
Oh snap! Postman nails us again.
What is so striking about his observations
is that he wrote all of this before
the internet was a thing; before Snapchat
and Tinder and Facebook and
Twitter; before the endless ways we
are distracting ourselves. Yet in the television
age he saw it coming: “People
will come to adore the technologies
that undo their capacities to think.”
I have more friends who are telling
me about their children — teens,
millennials, and older — who spend
hours gaming. It’s not so bad, my
friends say to comfort themselves.
They make friends online and have
a social life. This despite the fact that
their grades are tanking, their flesh
and blood relationships are suffering,
and their plans for the future become
increasingly vague or unreal.
As Postman once again diagnosed:
“There is nothing wrong with enter-
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26 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

tainment. As some psychiatrist once
put it, we all build castles in the air.
The problems come when we try to
live in them.”
It gets worse, however. For while the
kids are playing, their siblings and
their parents are streaming. And the
streaming companies compete for our
every waking hour, literally.
In an article on “The Great Race to
Rule Streaming TV,” The New York
Times quotes the head of Netflix:
“We actually compete with sleep. And
we’re winning.”
Grabbing eyeballs, consuming our
waking hours, keeping us binging so
we will either pay the monthly subscription
fee or — in terms of social
media — justify their ad rates: This
is modern capitalism, entertainment
style. As Aldous Huxley foretold in
“Brave New World,” we are all mainlining
our Soma and loving it.
So how does the Church respond to
all this? For if it is not salvation we are
seeking, but entertainment 24/7, the
Church is at a grievous disadvantage.
The Church becomes, to borrow
Howard Eppis’ line in “The Big Fix,”
the spoilsport at the orgy.
There are small signs of hope.
Among the elites, there is a growing
distrust of the Silicon Valley puppet
masters. Among the young, some are
intentionally downgrading their tech.
Loneliness is epidemic, but there is a
hunger not just for relationship, but
for contemplative solitude.
The Church is not called to fix it all.
Right now, it is having trouble fixing
itself. What the Church can do is
create oases of spiritual nourishment
staffed by authentic witnesses whose
lives testify to something more than the
consumerist distractions of our age.
We don’t need celebrity heroes and
internet influencers. We need everyday
saints, the quiet laborers in the
vineyard who show us another way.
This is the message of Pope Francis
for our age: Encounter. Accompaniment.
Flesh and blood reality versus
the narcotic distractions being offered.
The allure is authenticity. The ultimate
antidote is Christ.
Greg Erlandson is the president
and editor-in-chief of Catholic News
Service.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 27

Waking up from the
quantum pipe dream
A renowned physicist makes his case for why
modern science needs to make room for God
BY SOPHIA BUONO / ANGELUS
When Wolfgang Smith
applied to Cornell University
at the age of 14,
he wrote that he wanted
to study physics because he believed
it was “the key to understanding the
universe.”
But he soon changed his mind.
A voracious reader and deep thinker,
the young Smith (who went on to
earn a master’s degree in physics from
Purdue University and a Ph.D. in
mathematics from Columbia University)
found himself drawn to philosophy.
But he found the cold, academic
environment of graduate school a
“profanation” of what he viewed as
a sacred enterprise, one that calls for
wisdom and love, in accord with the
etymology of “philosophia” (“love of
knowledge”).
Fortunately, these setbacks did not
stop Smith’s pursuit of truth, which
finally led him to a realization that
upends modern materialistic science
as we know it.
This realization is the subject of In
Ohm Entertainment’s newly released
documentary, “The End of Quantum
Reality.” As the title suggests, the film
posits that quantum physics, which
has dominated modern science’s interpretation
of the world for decades, has
now been proven untenable, thanks to
Smith’s work.
Spearheaded by Katheryne Thomas
(director and producer) and Rick
DeLano (producer and narrator), the
documentary proceeds to explain the
history, ideas, and paradoxes surrounding
quantum physics.
Physicist Wolfgang Smith.
Katheryne Thomas, director and producer.
It soon becomes clear that while the
theory, which has developed since
the 19th century by various physicists,
most notably Max Planck and Albert
Einstein, provides a mathematical
description of physical reality with
pinpoint accuracy, it also raises some
IMDB
Rick DeLano, producer and narrator.
serious metaphysical problems.
Essentially, quantum physics rests
upon the notion that particles only
come into existence upon observation
and that they are otherwise in a state
of “potentiality.” This, in turn, leads
to the conclusion that our world holds
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IMDB
28 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

no objective reality or truth, and only
exists to humans as we perceive and
measure it.
Twentieth-century Nobel Prize-winning
physicist Neils Bohr summed it
up with this disturbing phrase: “There
is no quantum reality … only a quantum
description.”
This conundrum plagued scientists
for decades and led to various
attempts to square metaphysical explanations
with this effective yet troubling
system —“from the more or less
weird to the patently absurd,” DeLano
asserts in the film.
(One explanation,
for example, claims
that a countless
number of universes
exist that contain
every possible event
that could have happened,
but has not,
in our own observed
world.)
Smith faced the
same paradoxes until
the 1990s, when he
came to a simple yet
pivotal realization
about the theories
of quantum physics:
All of them assumed
what he called “the
Cartesian split,” referring
to the work of René Descartes.
The 17th-century French Enlightenment
philosopher, famous for
asserting, “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think,
therefore I am”), built his philosophy
on the premise that man’s access to
truth is limited to intellectual understanding.
When taken to its full extent, argues
Smith, it reduces what is accepted as
true to what can be proven with mathematical
certainty. Everything else,
including the perception of qualities
in the world, belongs to the subjective
world, or the realm of the mind, and
cannot be relied upon in scientific
analysis.
Descartes’ work has long been
acknowledged as one of the most influential
on modern philosophy, and
as the film highlights, that influence
has given rise to a moral dilemma in
both science and society at large.
“Qualities pertain to essence, and to
Philosopher René Descartes.
being no less,” DeLano asserts in the
film. In other words, if we disregard
qualities, we refer to a world of just
potentiality, not the world we know,
experience, and live in.
All of this tells us that while quantum
physics can give a mathematical description
of something like our world,
it cannot capture the actual nature of
the real world.
What the quantum theorists missed,
in other words, is that you need something
else, something substantial and
not merely potential, to give form and
make that transition
from not being to
being. And that
something, Smith
realized, must come
from above.
“Qualities have
primacy,” he states.
“[They are] the light
of higher spheres
shining into this
world.”
FRANS HALS/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
This discovery is
what led Smith to
turn to philosophy
in the first place.
First, he turned
to Indian writers,
whom he admired
for acknowledging
a higher realm and
revering it in their lives. Still, something
was missing.
After traveling to India and making
many inquiries, Smith found himself
unsatisfied with the Indian philosophers’
assertions that the supreme,
spiritual state of being necessarily
abandons the particulars of human
nature.
Was there no view of the world that
reconciled the material with the
spiritual? Finally, Smith concluded
that the answer was yes, and he found
it in the Catholic Church.
“God became man so that man
can become God,” says Smith in the
documentary. Through the mystery
of the Incarnation, he found, “Our
humanity is not disintegrated but can
be deified.”
With this new inspiration, Smith
hurriedly returned to the Faith he had
abandoned long before. As Smith’s
story continues to unfold, the film
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 29

makes clear that when it comes to
resolving the quantum paradox, faith
and science are not only compatible
but need each other.
DeLano was inspired to create “The
End of Quantum Reality” after he
encountered Smith’s writings. “What
inspired me to share this story,” he
told Angelus News, “was the recognition
that I had encountered in Dr.
Wolfgang Smith a profound genius, a
man whose work is of centuries-spanning
significance.”
Impressive as an individual scholar
might be, a film about quantum
physics and its refutation runs the
risk of being much too dense for a
lay audience. Luckily, “The End of
Quantum Reality” does an impressive
job presenting complex principles in
a straightforward and interesting way,
using an array of visuals, interviews,
and anecdotes to turn a scientific
debate into an intriguing story.
Smith explains how his intellectual
journey was also a personal one, and
interviewees share how his work has
changed their careers and lives.
One of them, Brazilian professor
Olavo de Carvalho, teaches an online
philosophy class that incorporates
Smith’s works to about 5,000 students.
Still, the reach of Smith’s work remains
limited. His theory has not broken
through to mainstream science,
academia, and society, which still
seem to cling to the Cartesian mindset
and quantum physics.
Why has this proposed resolution to
one of the most troubling scientific
enigmas in history gone overlooked
since it was first presented two decades
ago?
According to Smith, the problem
is an ideological one. “It is difficult,
almost impossible, in fact, for the
scientific community to recognize
the fact that Cartesian bifurcation is a
philosophic postulate, for which there
is absolutely no scientific basis,” he
said.
“It is not that they can conceive
or imagine a scientific proof of that
hypothesis; it is rather that they are
unable to conceive that it might not
be true.”
Smith continued that accepting his
theory necessarily entails recognizing
a divine reality, which in modern
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science is thoroughly rejected. In
order for a change to take place, he
said, “physical science will have to be
knocked off its high horse by recognizing
its stringent limitations.”
And this process is already underway,
he added, as developments in space
exploration (particularly the data from
the Planck satellite launched in 2009)
have presented challenges and refutations
to theories such as “big bang
cosmology.”
“The dream that physics can in principle
become a ‘theory of everything’
needs thus to be officially disavowed
as the pipe dream it is,” Smith said.
Even though the theory has not yet
penetrated modern thinking, Smith
believes that the film still delivers
a vital, influential message. “I dare
hope that, sooner or later, the impact
of what the movie has to say will
contribute its share to bring to an end
the 400-year arc of history some have
called ‘the reign of quantity,’ ” he said.
This impact, he added, is necessary
for both society at large and for
the mission of the Catholic faith in
the world. “I fully believe with St.
Thomas Aquinas that ‘a small error
regarding the creation’ invariably gives
rise to ‘a false conception concerning
God,’ from which I conclude that
what we are doing is vital for the
renewal of the Church.”
“The End of Quantum Reality” is
scheduled for a limited release in
theaters across the country this September.
Sophia Buono is a writer living in
Arlington, Virginia.
30 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

THE CRUX
BY HEATHER KING
Crystal clear
transcendence
Notes from a pre-dedication sneak peek at
Orange County’s new Catholic cathedral
Let me say upfront that my idea
of the ideal Catholic church
is a teeny, slightly down-atthe-heels
chapel, say one
of the “capillas” (“chapels”) in and
around Taos, New Mexico: whitewashed
walls streaked with candle
smoke, bloody statues of Jesus, tin
retablos. On Sundays, if you’re lucky,
maybe an accordion player.
On July 13, as usual, God had other
COURTESY DIOCESE OF ORANGE
The 20-foot-long bronze entry doors.
plans. That was the night I journeyed
to Garden Grove for a lollapalooza
event at Christ Cathedral.
Formerly known as Crystal Cathedral
and owned and operated by Protestant
televangelist Robert “Hour of
Power” Schuller, the church has been
scooped up by the Diocese of Orange,
subjected to a $77 million renovation,
and as of July 17 is now open for
weekend worship.
To celebrate, the diocese (which
ministers to 1.2 million faithful) threw
a black-tie bash, including a cocktail
reception, a program and concert,
and an elegant dinner by Patina in the
Cathedral Plaza.
Naturally, my first consideration
was what to wear. I own one dress, by
a German designer partial to colors
like “algae” and “grout”: the kind of
sack-like garment in which prisoners
were sent to the guillotine during the
French Revolution.
The second was who to bring. I was
lucky enough to nab Dr. Michael
James Sullivan (Jamie to his friends),
chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology
at City of Hope National
Medical Center.
His equally accomplished wife,
Maura, was out of town and graciously
agreed to lend him out. So I, too,
stepped up to the plate and as Jesus
would have me do, bought a fancy
dress and had my nails done.
Traffic was hideous so we missed
cocktail hour and barely arrived in
time for the concert.
Partly because with its thousands
of glass panes, the exterior of the
120-foot church resembles an upscale
medical building; partly because
the approach consists of a huge but
minimalist plaza; and partly because
32 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019

The monochrome sanctuary and Hazel White organ during the dedication Mass July 17.
COURTESY DIOCESE OF ORANGE
the interior has the look and feel of an
airline terminal, it took me a minute
to realize we were in the actual
cathedral.
All pale marble and limestone, the
monochrome sanctuary’s dominant
feature consists of 11,000 silver-white
quatrefoils — triangular metal “sails,”
that cost $6 million and completely
line the geometrically precise walls
and ceiling. Even the renowned Hazel
White organ, with its 16,000 pipes,
has been painted white.
Donning a cherry-red ball gown,
“America’s Got Talent” star Jackie
Evancho kicked off the concert, the
first ever in this sacred space, with
“Some Enchanted Evening.”
Needless to say, it took a while to get
my bearings. Finally I realized, oh
THERE are the vaunted baldacchino,
the bishop’s chair, and the “crux gemmata”
(“jewelled cross”) inlaid with
precious jewels.
Originally designed by Philip Johnson
of the “Chippendale Dresser”
AT&T Building fame, the cathedral
received its makeover from Scott
Johnson of the LA firm Johnson Fain.
There are some lovely touches: the
20-foot bronze entry doors; the bas-relief
Stations of the Cross, also bronze,
by Bolivian artist Pablo Eduardo (with
more work by him to come). The 34-
acre campus houses six other buildings,
including one each by Richard
Neutra and Richard Meier.
The cathedral alone, along with the
adjacent 236-foot mirrored spire, really
deserves a separate trip and several
hours.
And to be fair, as airline terminals
go, this one is transcendent. Since the
cost of tearing down the building and
new construction would have been
prohibitive, the diocese had to work
with what it had. Our own Auxiliary
Bishop Robert Barron imagines the
new cathedral as “a vibrant center of
evangelization.”
But the attempt to turn a Protestant
televangelist megachurch designed
by a maverick postmodernist into a
Catholic cathedral was bound to generate
a certain amount of blowback.
Los Angeles Times architecture critic
Christopher Hawthorne, for example,
describes the renovation as having
“far more in common with the nearby
Mattherhorn at Disneyland, the
Biosphere in Arizona or the domes
of Buckminster Fuller than with any
cathedral in Europe.”
I guess it all depends on perspective.
In my mind, a church should be
hushed, with a gloomy corner or two,
and the merciful twilight of a convalescent
home. A church needs imagery,
however high or low, that speaks
of consecrated time and space; of a
world beyond this one; of sin, redemption,
eternity, and sacrificial love.
With all that, the Catholic novelist
Flannery O’Connor observed that the
Mass involves the same act if it’s said
out of a suitcase in a boiler room or at
St. Peter’s in Rome. That’s what will
bring the cathedral alive: Mass, and us
rank-and-file members of the faithful.
As St. Ambrose observed, “The
Church is beautiful in her saints.”
A saint would remember, as I should
more often, that people who live in
glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. A
saint would kneel before the altar, any
altar, and ask, along with Elizabeth,
“Who am I, that the mother of our
Lord should come to me?”
Dinner was splendid. The staff,
our host, and our table companions
couldn’t have been warmer or more
fun. Jamie and I were both honored
to have been invited and thoroughly
enjoyed the evening.
Plus now that I have a fancy dress,
I’m all set for the next bash.
Heather King is a blogger, speaker and the author of several books.
August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 33