Angelus News | May 22-29, 2020 | Vol. 5 No. 16

ANGELUS
OPPORTUNITIES
TO LOVE
May 22-29, 2020 Vol. 5 No. 16

Contents
Pope Watch 2
Archbishop Gomez 3
World, Nation, and Local News 4-6
Scott Hahn on Scripture 8
Father Rolheiser 9
John Allen: Are Vatican’s pandemic woes bringing about a ‘poor Church?’ 22
Gary Jansen: Don’t forget the Stations of the Cross after Lent 24
Grazie Christie: The kind of men we need in times of trouble 26
Catholic blues legend takes a ‘train bound for heaven’ in new album 28
Art imitates stay-at-home life in films of solitude and isolation 30
Heather King: A pope’s timely guide to living well 32

ON THE COVER
A Carmelite Sister of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles smiles while welcoming
volunteers at Sacred Heart House in Alhambra May 12. As the coronavirus (COV-
ID-19) pandemic drags on, Catholics are finding special “opportunities to love.” On
Page 10, families come together to help local Carmelite nuns, who had to make a surprising
choice to protect the most vulnerable in their care. On Page 14, R.W. Dellinger
gets an up-close look at the “daily bread” being provided at dozens of LA Catholic
schools for families in need. And on Page 18, Sophia Martinson reports on how the
“domestic Church” is becoming a reality in family homes during the pandemic.
IMAGE:
Ambassadors, priests, religious, and the faithful
gather May 18 for Mass at the tomb of St. Pope
John Paul II in St. Peter’s Basilica on the 100th
anniversary of the late pope’s birth. The liturgy was
the last daily Mass with Pope Francis livestreamed
on the internet during the time of pandemic, as the
restrictions on the celebration of public Masses in
Italy were lifted the same day.
VICTOR ALEMÁN
VATICAN MEDIA
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 1

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May 22-29, 2020
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POPE WATCH
Forged by the Lord
In the foreword to a new book ahead
of the 100-year anniversary of St. Pope
John Paul II’s birth, Pope Francis said
that he has looked up to the Polish
pope throughout his priesthood.
“St. John Paul II was a great witness
of faith. … Many times, in the course
of my life as a priest and bishop I have
looked to him, asking in my prayers
for the gift of being faithful to the
Gospel as he witnessed to us,” Pope
Francis wrote in the forward of “St.
John Paul II: 100 Years. Words and
images.”
The book is being issued in Italian to
mark the centenary of Karol Wojtyła’s
birth on May 18, 1920. In his five-page
foreword, Pope Francis wrote that
St. John Paul was “a great man of
prayer who lived completely immersed
in his time and constantly in
contact with God, a sure guide for the
Church in times of great change.”
When Cardinal Wojtyła became
Pope John Paul II in 1978, a 41-yearold
Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio was
serving as the provincial superior of
the Jesuits in Argentina.
St. John Paul appointed Father
Bergoglio an auxiliary bishop in 1992,
elevating him to become archbishop
of Buenos Aires in 1998, and making
him a cardinal in 2001. Pope Francis
canonized St. John Paul in 2014.
Pope Francis pointed out that there
are young people today who have not
known or only have a vague memory
of St. John Paul.
“For this reason, on the centenary
of his birth, it was right to remember
this great, holy witness of the faith that
God has given to his Church and to
humanity,” he said.
Pope Francis wrote that many may
not realize how much St. John Paul
suffered in his life. He experienced
the death of his mother, brother, and
father by the age of 21, and then lived
through World War II.
“The suffering that he experienced
relying totally on the Lord forged him,
and made even stronger the Christian
faith in which he had been educated,”
Pope Francis said.
“He suffered a terrible attack in
1981, offered his life, shed his blood
for the Church. He testified that even
in the difficult trial of disease, shared
daily with God made man and crucified
for our salvation, we can remain
happy. We can remain ourselves.”
In a tribute published May 15, Pope
Emeritus Benedict XVI hailed St.
John Paul as a “liberating restorer of
the Church” in the turbulent years
after the Second Vatican Council.
He suggested that those who present
the Polish pope as a stern moralist
overlook his message that “in the
end God’s mercy is stronger than our
weakness.”
“The inner unity of the message of
John Paul II and the basic intentions
of Pope Francis can also be found:
John Paul II is not the moral rigorist
as some have partially portrayed him,”
he wrote in a 2,000 word message to
Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, St. John
Paul’s personal secretary.
“With the centrality of divine mercy,
he gives us the opportunity to accept
moral requirements for man, even if
we can never fully meet them. Besides,
our moral endeavors are made
in the light of divine mercy, which
proves to be a force that heals for our
weakness.”
Courtney Mares is a Rome correspondent
for Catholic News Agency.
Papal Prayer Intention for May: We pray that deacons, faithful in their service
to the word and the poor, may be an invigorating symbol for the entire Church.
2 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

NEW WORLD
OF FAITH
BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ
Love alone casts out fear
As I write these words, it is the 100th
birthday of the great pope, St. John
Paul II.
I feel a close connection to him
and have been thinking about him,
praying for his intercession, reflecting
on how his life has inspired me in my
ministry.
I was ordained a priest two months
before he was elected pope in 1978,
and he appointed me a bishop in
2001. In December 2004, he named
me an archbishop, just a few months
before he died.
St. John Paul reminded all of us that
the reason for our lives is to know
Jesus, to love him, and to share his life
with others.
In this Easter season, we always
return to the Acts of the Apostles and
the stories of the Church’s beginnings.
Those first disciples gave their whole
lives to follow Jesus and continue his
mission. Their love for him was so
strong it cast aside all fear.
Jesus had told his disciples on that
first Easter night, “Do not be afraid.”
St. John Paul repeated these words in
his first homily as pope.
“Do not be afraid. Open wide the
doors to Christ,” the pope told us.
These words speak more clearly to us
in this time of plague.
Following Jesus means sharing in his
life. It means carrying our cross with
him. And it means accepting that we
will suffer, as he suffered for us.
I am praying for all of you who are
worried about your businesses, your
jobs, about what the future will look
like for your children and loved ones,
for our economy, and our way of life.
I am praying for all of you who are
grieving and feeling abandoned and
lonely.
We are in this together, we are suffering
together. In his Providence, God is
allowing this pandemic to happen to
all of us.
And God is asking us to bear these
burdens without the consolation of
the sacraments, without being able to
come to church for many weeks now.
This is a profound sadness for me, as I
know it is for you.
We closed our churches out of love
for our vulnerable brothers and sisters
and concern not to spread the disease.
Now, we are working on it, trying hard
to open our churches back up. I am
confident that we are getting there,
that it will be a matter of weeks now,
not months.
The Church has always suffered,
from the beginning. Being Christian
does not mean we escape suffering.
Being Christian means we know that
our suffering will be redeemed, that
divine mercy overcomes every evil,
that divine love is stronger than death.
God is alive and he goes with us. He
has a plan for human history and a
plan for every human life. Jesus Christ
is still the light that shines in the darkness.
We need to look for that light
with the eyes of faith. We need to walk
by that light with the courage and love
that he gives us.
This is what Jesus meant when he
said, “Do not be afraid.” This is what
St. John Paul meant.
In this pandemic, God is asking each
of us what we value, what is important
to us. He is showing us that in the end,
it is only love that matters. The love
that Jesus Christ has for us. The love
that we have for him. The love that we
have for one another.
We are coming out of the darkness of
this coronavirus pandemic, and as we
open the doors to get back to work and
some kind of “normal,” we are going
to see the damage this virus has left in
its wake: economic, spiritual, emotional,
and psychological. Lives broken
and emptied of hope, people hurting
in ways we cannot yet imagine.
Our society needs the Church, perhaps
now more than ever. Love is the
only answer, the only credible way to
proclaim Christ. And love alone can
cast out fear.
In his book, “Crossing the Threshold
of Hope,” St. John Paul wrote, “Love
that became man, Love crucified
and risen, Love unceasingly present
among men. It is Eucharistic Love. …
He alone can give the ultimate assurance
when he says ‘Be not afraid!’ ”
Jesus is calling us in this hour to
love without holding anything back.
We need to help our neighbors get
back on their feet. We need to help
them mourn their dead and heal their
wounds, to begin their lives again.
We need to make sure the poor are
not forgotten. We are in this together.
And we are stronger together, better
together.
Pray for me this week and I will pray
for you.
Let us ask our Blessed Mother Mary
to intercede for us as we prepare for
the reopening of our society and our
churches.
And let us entrust our lives to her Immaculate
Heart, just as St. John Paul
did. Let us say as he said, “Totus tuus.”
All for Mary.
To read more columns by Archbishop José H. Gomez or to subscribe, visit www.angelusnews.com.
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 3

WORLD
Vatican Museums to
reopen amid money woes
After months of being closed due
to the coronavirus (COVID-19),
one of the Vatican’s biggest sources
of revenue has announced plans to
reopen, but with many changes and
challenges.
The Vatican Museums will resume
tours under several safety restrictions,
including requiring all visitors to wear
masks, taking visitors’ temperatures,
and limiting group sizes.
The extended closure, which began
March 9, has taken a heavy financial
burden on Vatican City.
According to Reuters, the Vatican
Museums generate about $100
million annually, and in 2015 the
Economist reported that about half
of those annual funds serve as surplus
revenue for the city.
Father Juan Antonio Guerrero, head
of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the
Economy, anticipates that because of
the coronavirus, the Holy See’s overall
income will drop between 25% and
45%.
“We definitely have difficult years
ahead of us,” he told Vatican News.
Phase two of Italy’s reopening process
allows museums to reopen May
18, but the Vatican Museums have yet
to set a date.
PANDEMIC PILGRIMAGE — A nun wearing a face mask attends a ceremony marking the
103rd anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima at the Fátima shrine in central
Portugal on May 13. Without the crowd of pilgrims it welcomes every year due to the
coronavirus (COVID-19) safety measures, the shrine of Fátima celebrated the anniversary
during a ceremony reduced to the bare minimum.
Benedict cites threat of ‘humanist ideologies’
The Catholic Church is under siege,
said Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, but
not necessarily by plague or persecution.
In a newly published biography, German
journalist Peter Seewald quotes
the 93-year-old once known as Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger as saying that a
“worldwide dictatorship of seemingly
humanist ideologies” is threatening
the Church.
These ideologies, the pope continued,
include same-sex marriage,
abortion, and in vitro fertilization.
“Modern society is in the process of
formulating an anti-Christian creed,
and resisting this creed is punished
by social excommunication,” Pope
Benedict said in the interview with
Seewald. “Events have shown by now
that the crisis of faith has above all led
to a crisis of Christian existence.”
In the same interview, the pope also
referred to a spiritual testament he
had written, which will not be published
until after his death.
Catholic charity group calls for post-pandemic aid
PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
PAUL HARING/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
Visitors tour the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican
Museums Feb. 21, two weeks before their
closure.
The end of the coronavirus (COV-
ID-19) will not mean the end of
challenges, according to the world’s
biggest network Catholic aid agencies.
“Caritas Internationalis is highly
concerned by the major humanitarian
crisis to which the post-pandemic
is heading,” read a May 6 statement
from the network, which is dedicated
to bringing emergency aid to the poor
and vulnerable.
Citing Catholic teaching, Caritas
noted the importance of addressing
a range of mounting human afflic-
tions, including famine and migrants’
increased vulnerability.
To alleviate these situations, the
network believes the international
community should suspend economic
sanctions on certain countries,
support faith-based organizations
responding to post-pandemic needs,
and allocate funds to support the
needy.
“We can stop another major humanitarian
crisis,” read the statement,
“if courageous and bold actions are
taken to anticipate and support the
most vulnerable communities.”
4 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

NATION
Catholic doctors offer church reopening ‘road map’
A panel of Catholic doctors on the front lines of the
fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) have produced
a “road map” with suggestions on how to reopen
Catholic churches safely during the prolonged pandemic.
Sent out to the country’s bishops May 14, the document
recommends social distancing, masks, no singing, and
reception of Communion on the hand during celebration
of Mass.
The sacrament of confession, the doctors recommended,
“should follow safe social distancing practices and be
carried out in a well-ventilated area, outdoors, or in the
main church,” with the priest and penitent separated by
a barrier and both wearing masks.
One of the doctors on the panel interviewed by Angelus
said he believes churches actually have a number of
advantages in protecting people that businesses don’t.
“It’s a no-brainer, if you should have best practices for a
grocery store and for a Home Depot, why can’t you have
best practices for church services?” said Yale University
immunobiologist Dr. Andrew Wang.
A man applies an electrostatic disinfectant at Christ the King Church
in Nashville, Tennessee, May 15.
The document and interviews with the doctors can be
found on AngelusNews.com.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/RICK MUSACCHIO, TENNESSEE REGISTERN
A special coach-in-waiting
The not-so-great mask debate
St. Michael High School
in Fairhope, Alabama,
knows it will be getting
an NFL legend as its new
football coach, it just
doesn’t know when.
Longtime San Diego
and LA Chargers quarterback
Phillip Rivers was on
May 8 named “coach-inwaiting”
of the Fairhope,
Alabama, school’s football
team, which means the
job is his once he retires Philip Rivers on May 8.
from the NFL, which
could be after a few more seasons.
“I [had] two childhood dreams,” Rivers told Catholic
News Service. “One was playing in the NFL … the other
was to be a high school football coach as my dad was.”
Rivers recently announced he is leaving Los Angeles to
play for the Indianapolis Colts on a one-year deal. He has
not announced his plans beyond that.
“[Phillip] and Tiffany are devout Catholics,” Faustin Weber,
St. Michael’s principal, told Catholic News Service.
“I believe he’s going to be a tremendous influence on the
lives of our young men here and their faith life.”
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/ROB HERBST, THE CATHOLIC WEEK
The editor of the Christian journal First Things set off
a heated social media debate this month when he denounced
the “mask culture” brought on by the coronavirus
(COVID-19).
“Masks=enforced cowardice,” R.R. Reno wrote in one of
the tweets. The tweets were later deleted.
Public health experts, and many of Reno’s fellow Catholics,
were quick to object.
“The simple reason [to wear a mask] is primarily to protect
others, the secondary reason is to protect oneself,” Dr.
Barbara Golder, a physician, lawyer, and bioethicist with
a background in pathology, told Catholic News Agency
when asked about the controversy. “It isn’t fear to exercise
prudent care for ourselves and others.”
Acknowledging that there are legitimate concerns regarding
such limitations, Golder said that it is “absolutely true
that there has been some overreach of government officials
in imposing restrictions in various places.”
But at a time when a large portion of the population is
at risk due to age or medical conditions, charity should be
our first concern, Golder said. “Wearing a mask is a way of
exercising our care for the other, who could be harmed if
we do not.”
Reno issued an apology for his “foolish and ill-considered
remarks” on May 18. “It was wrong of me to impugn the
intentions and motives of others.”
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 5

LOCAL
Essential workers get Hollywood treatment
At a livestreamed Mass on May
17, Blessed Sacrament Church in
Hollywood honored those working
on the front lines of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic.
In the empty church, the names
of more than 400 medical professionals,
LAPD and LAFD
members, pharmacists, and other
essential workers with ties to the
parish community, were posted on
the backs of the pews. “It’s not a
jet flyover,” said Father John (J.T.)
Tanner, SJ, in his opening prayer,
“but we come together and we
recognize these specific people.”
The Mass was inspired by a team
of teenagers who have served at
the parish food pantry since the
beginning of the pandemic. The
teens identified contacts for local
hospitals and nursing homes, made
and displayed the name posters, and
participated in the celebration of the
appreciation Mass.
The names of first responders and essential
workers are displayed on empty pews at
Blessed Sacrament Church May 17.
COURTESY BLESSED SACRAMENT CHURCH
COURTESY ST. ELISABETH SCHOOL
Van Nuys school offers drive-thru Mother’s Day
In the chaos of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic, parents are
feeling the pressure: working from
home, supervising distance learning,
and keeping family faith alive.
“Homes have become the school and
the church,” said Sister Angelie Marie
Inoferio, principal of St. Elisabeth
School in Van Nuys.
On Mother’s Day weekend, teachers
and staff decided to give busy moms
a break with a socially distanced
celebration. The Daughters of Divine
Zeal Sisters decorated an altar for
the Blessed Mother in the school’s
parking lot, and mothers and students
were invited to participate in a drivethru
party.
The teachers made signs wishing
moms a “Happy Mother’s Day!”
and telling students how much they
missed them, and passed out roses and
treats.
And, as one final gift, the school
canceled all distance learning classes
that day.
A teacher and a Daughter of the Divine Zeal sister hand out treats to mothers and students in a
May 8 Mother’s Day celebration.
A glimmer of hope?
After more than two months of
churches being closed to the public in
California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said
May 18 he expects people to be able
to gather for worship again in a matter
of weeks, not months.
Newsom made the comment as he
announced revised reopening standards
for individual counties in the
state, many of which have pushed
back against some aspects of statewide
shutdown orders aimed at stemming
the spread of the coronavirus (COV-
ID-19).
“We recognize the conditions across
the state are unique and distinctive
depending where you are,” Newsom
said in the news conference.
Under the new rules, churches
in some parts of the state would be
allowed to offer “counseling services”
such as confession soon. He suggested
that the congregants would be able
to meet for worship again in a matter
of weeks, “if everything holds,” but
offered no specifics.
6 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

The global COVID-19 outbreak continues to evolve rapidly and impact all aspects of our lives. During times
of uncertainty and crisis, people come together to support one another. We are one family of faith. When
one part of our family suffers, we join together to help alleviate the pain of another.
At the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, our clergy and lay staffs’ primary concern is the health and safety of our
community. We continue to pray for those who are sick, and for a fast-moving resolution of the current crisis.
We look forward to the time when we can celebrate all the sacraments and Mass as a community.
During this unprecedented time, the COVID-19 Relief Fund ensures that the more than 10,000 people who
work in support of faith needs can keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Our faith and lay
ministers continue to serve those in need – those in our community most affected by the pandemic.
Please join us, and together let us rise up and support our local community. As we keep one another in
prayer, let us embrace this crisis as Jesus embraced his Passion – by loving one another and trusting that God
is with us – we are not alone!
Visit LACatholics.org/Emergency to donate
COVID-19 Relief Fund
May 22-29, 8-15, 2020 • ANGELUS • 7

SUNDAY
READINGS
BY SCOTT HAHN
Acts 1:12–14 / Ps. 27:1, 4, 7–8 / 1 Pt. 4:13–16 / Jn. 17:1–11
Jesus has been
taken up into
heaven as we
begin today’s
First Reading.
His disciples,
including the
apostles and
Mary, return
to the upper
room where he
celebrated the
Last Supper
(see Luke
22:12).
There, they
devote themselves
with
one accord
to prayer, awaiting the Spirit that he
promised would come upon them (see
Acts 1:8).
The unity of the early Church at
Jerusalem is a sign of the oneness that
Christ prays for in today’s Gospel. The
Church is to be a communion on
earth that mirrors the glorious union of
Father, Son, and Spirit in the Trinity.
Jesus has proclaimed God’s name to
his brethren (see Hebrews 2:12; Psalm
22:23). The prophets had foretold this
revelation: a new covenant by which
all flesh would have knowledge of the
Lord (see Jeremiah 31:33-34; Habakkuk
2:14).
By the new covenant made in his
blood and remembered in every
Eucharist, we know God as our Father.
This is the eternal life Jesus promises.
And this is the light and salvation we
sing of in today’s Psalm.
“The Ascension of Christ,” by Pieter Jozef Verhaghen, 1728–1811, Flemish.
As God made light to shine out of
darkness when the world began, he has
enlightened us in baptism, making us
new creations (see 2 Corinthians 5:17),
giving us knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Christ (see Hebrews
10:32; 2 Corinthians 4:6).
Our new life is a gift of “the Spirit of
glory,” we hear in today’s Epistle (see
John 7:38–39). Made one in his name,
we are given a new name — “Christians”
— a name used only here and in
two other places in the Bible (see Acts
11:16; 26:28). We are to glorify God,
though we will be insulted and suffer
because of this name.
But as we share in his sufferings, we
know we will overcome (see Revelation
3:12) and rejoice when his glory is
once more revealed. And we will dwell
in the house of the Lord all the days of
our lives.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Scott Hahn is founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.
Scott Hahn is founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.
8 • ANGELUS • May August 22-29, 16-23-30, 2020 2019

IN EXILE
BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI
Leaving peace behind as our farewell gift
There is such a thing as a good
death, a clean one, a death that,
however sad, leaves behind a sense of
peace. I have been witness to it many
times. Sometimes this is recognized
explicitly when someone dies, sometimes
unconsciously. It is known by
its fruit.
I remember sitting with a man dying
of cancer in his mid-50s, leaving behind
a young family, who said to me,
“I don’t believe I have an enemy in
the world, at least I don’t know if I do.
I’ve no unfinished business.”
I heard something similar from a
young woman also dying of cancer
and also leaving behind a young family.
Her words: “I thought that I’d cried
all the tears I had, but then yesterday
when I saw my youngest daughter I
found out that I had a lot more tears
still to cry. But I’m at peace. It’s hard,
but I’ve nothing left that I haven’t
given.”
And I’ve been at deathbeds other
times when none of this was articulated
in words, but all of it was clearly
spoken in that loving awkwardness
and silence you often witness around
deathbeds. There is a way of dying
that leaves peace behind.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus gives a
long farewell speech at the Last Supper
on the night before he dies. His
disciples, understandably, are shaken,
afraid, and not prepared to accept the
brute reality of his impending death.
He tries to calm them, reassure
them, give them things to cling to,
and he ends with these words: “I am
going away, but I will leave you a final
gift, the gift of my peace.”
I suspect that almost everyone read-
ing this will have had an experience
of grieving the death of a loved one,
a parent, spouse, child, or friend, and
finding, at least after a time, beneath
the grief a warm sense of peace whenever
the memory of the loved one
surfaces or is evoked.
I lost both of my parents when I was
in my early 20s and, sad as were their
farewells, every memory of them now
evokes a warmth. Their farewell gift
was the gift of peace.
In trying to understanding this, it is
important to distinguish between being
wanted and being needed. When
I lost my parents at a young age, I
still desperately wanted them (and
believed that I still needed them), but
I came to realize in the peace that
eventually settled upon our family
after their deaths that our pain was
in still wanting them and not in any
longer needing them.
In their living and their dying they
had already given us what we needed.
There was nothing else we needed
from them. Now we just missed them
and, irrespective of the sadness of
their departure, our relationship was
complete. We were at peace.
The challenge for all of us now, of
course, is on the other side of this
equation, namely, the challenge to
live in such a way that peace will be
our final farewell gift to our families,
our loved ones, our faith community,
and our world. How do we do that?
How do we leave the gift of peace to
those we leave behind?
Peace, as we know, is a whole lot
more than the simple absence of war
and strife. Peace is constituted by two
things: harmony and completeness.
To be at peace something has to have
an inner consistency so that all of its
movements are in harmony with one
another and it must also have a completeness
so that it is not still aching
for something it is missing.
Peace is the opposite of internal
discord or of longing for something
we lack. When we are not at peace it
is because we are experiencing chaos
or sensing some unfinished business
inside us.
Positively then, what constitutes
peace? When Jesus promises peace
as his farewell gift, he identifies it
with the Holy Spirit; and, as we know,
that is the spirit of charity, joy, peace,
patience, goodness, longsuffering,
fidelity, mildness, and chastity.
How do we leave these behind when
we leave? Well, death is no different
than life. When some people leave anything,
a job, a marriage, a family, or a
community, they leave chaos behind,
a legacy of disharmony, unfinished
business, anger, bitterness, jealousy,
and division.
Their memory is felt always as a cold
pain. They are not missed, even as
their memory haunts. Some people on
the other hand leave behind a legacy
of harmony and completeness, a spirit
of understanding, compassion, affirmation,
and unity. These people are
missed, but the ache is a warm one, a
nurturing one, one of happy memory.
Going away in death has exactly the
same dynamic. By the way we live and
die we will leave behind either a spirit
that perennially haunts the peace
of our loved ones, or we will leave
behind a spirit that brings a warmth
every time our memory is evoked.
Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, award-winning author, and president of the Oblate School of Theology
in San Antonio, Texas. Find him online at www.ronrolheiser.com and www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser.
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 9

Sacrificing for
The sisters at Sacred Heart House in Alhambra received care packages and honored the Order of Malta with a rendition of "Rejoice in the Lord."
10 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

‘Operation Gratitude’ is delivering care
for caregivers at a critical time during the
COVID-19 pandemic
BY HAYLEY SMITH / ANGELUS
In the early weeks of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic, the Carmelite
Sisters of the Most Sacred
Heart of Los Angeles learned that senior
citizens were at a heightened risk
of contracting the deadly virus. The
sisters thought instantly of the residents
at their Santa Teresita nursing home
and assisted living facility in Duarte,
and realized what they were being
called to do: move in with them.
“It was the ultimate sacrifice,” said
Mike Psomas, president of the Los
Angeles chapter of the Order of Malta,
a 900-year-old lay religious order of the
Catholic Church.
recipients of the program?” Psomas
asked. “It probably took us a month to
figure it out.”
As part of the Order of Malta’s mission
of caring for the sick and the poor,
the organization was already running
a hygiene kit delivery program for
homeless shelters in LA. Each month,
a truck delivered a pallet of supplies to
the members of the order, who broke
them down and reassembled them into
personal packages for delivery. They realized
they could use the same system
for the Carmelite sisters.
“We were already doing this hygiene
kit program, so the idea arose that we
Rich Grimes, a knight of the Order of Malta, assembled care packages for the Carmelite sisters
with his family over Mother's Day weekend.
COURTESY ORDER OF MALTA/ADLA
VICTOR ALEMÁN
When Psomas and other members
of the Order of Malta heard about the
sisters’ commitment, they knew they
wanted to help. But with strict citywide
stay-at-home orders and social distancing
measures in place, they had to get
creative.
“How do you structure a program
to protect the people providing the
program and the people that are the
could model it like that,” Psomas said.
“It’s already approved by our medical
director, and we can make kits, we can
give people something to do.”
Over Mother’s Day weekend, that’s
precisely what happened. Thirteen
families received supplies like gummy
bears, granola bars, and hand creams
and worked in an assembly-line fashion
to put together care packages for the
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 11

After learning that senior citizens were at a heightened risk of contracting the coronavirus (COV-
ID-19), several sisters decided to quarantine with their patients in their nursing and assisted living
facilities in Duarte.
COURTESY ORDER OF MALTA/ADLA
care package contained a hand-written
note and a copy of “Prayer for the
Health Workers in the Time of the
Coronavirus Pandemic,” written by
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Edward
Clark.
“Bless the hands of those who care for
the victims of this disease,” the prayer
reads. “Reward the generosity of their
commitment to those who suffer.”
Because the senior population at
Santa Teresita is at such a high risk
of contracting the coronavirus, it was
decided that the gift kits would themselves
be quarantined for a minimum
of five days. The sisters at Sacred Heart
House in Alhambra — the “motherhouse”
of the Carmelites — agreed to
accept the gifts and keep them until
they are cleared for human contact, at
which point they will distribute them
to the sisters who moved in with their
patients.
But these additional steps aren’t just a
necessary precaution in the time of the
pandemic; they’re something the sisters
view as yet another act of love for the
people they care for. The delivery on
May 12 was a joyful occasion for everyone
involved.
“I can feel my heart enlivening,”
said Sister Mary Scholastica as the
Malta Mobile Unit pulled into the
leafy driveway. Before accepting the
packages, she and several other sisters
honored the order with a rendition
VICTOR ALEMÁN
sisters, more than 300 in total.
“The Carmelites are so wonderful,”
said Rich Grimes, a knight of the Order
of Malta whose family assembled
several of the kits. “Our hope is to put
a smile on their faces and a recognition
in their minds that they’re not alone,
and that we’re beaming our prayers
and support for what they do and how
they put themselves at risk for others.”
The idea, which the order named
“Operation Gratitude,” could not have
come at a more critical time. As the
city inches toward reopening, many experts
are expressing increasing concern
about the responders on the front lines
of the virus. Doctors, nurses, chaplains,
and nuns are witnessing illness and
death at unprecedented levels, and for
many of these caregivers, even small
acts of kindness and encouragement
can make a big difference.
“This situation is almost reminding
people that life is passing, and there’s
another life we’re heading for.”
“We just went through Nurses Week,
which is normally a time to celebrate
nurses in a lot of different ways,” said
Arthur “Tri” Fritz, a knight of the
order who also assembled kits with his
family. “To be able to recognize nurses,
caregivers, and first responders of all
sorts is really crucial, because they’re
under the most pressure right now.”
In addition to snacks and lotions, each
of “Rejoice in the Lord,” their smiles
peeking out from beneath their masks
as they stood in formation across the
lawn.
“The great evil in this virus is that it
isolates us from each other,” said Sister
Isabel, one of the nuns who lives at Sacred
Heart House, “but if we keep love
in our hearts, then evil can never win.”
While the gifts await distribution, the
12 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

VICTOR ALEMÁN
In order to protect the recipients of their gifts, the Order of Malta used a creative, multistep system to assemble and distribute care packages while
maintaining strict social distancing protocols.
Carmelite sisters are focused on yet another
method of offering hope: They’ve
used their time in quarantine to set up
a livestream of their prayer services.
The response has been overwhelmingly
positive, and people from all over the
world have reached out to express their
gratitude and appreciation.
“It speaks a lot to the hunger people
have,” said Sister Scholastica. “This
situation is almost reminding people
that life is passing, and there’s another
life we’re heading for.”
That the pandemic has left many
people frightened, confused, and in
search of meaning is a challenge the
Carmelite sisters feel uniquely prepared
to handle.
As spiritual (and often medical) caregivers,
they see it as their job to help
not only those suffering from the virus,
but also their families as they move
through with what Sister Scholastica
called “the walk from this life to the
next.”
“It’s hard, but not all hard things are
bad,” she said.
The decision of some sisters to
quarantine with their patients is both
an illustration of their exceptional
commitment and an embodiment of
their faith. In addition to small sacrifices,
like the opportunity to go for walks
around the neighborhood, the sisters
who chose to move into Santa Teresita
have taken on even more duties: they
sent the regular staff home in order to
In addition to snacks and lotions, each care
package contained a prayer and a hand-written
note.
VICTOR ALEMÁN
avoid the risk of any contamination
from people coming and going.
The opportunity to provide these
sisters with care packages, and involve
dozens of families in the process, is
something Psomas and the other members
of the Order of Malta feel acutely
grateful for.
“I just hope they know that people
do care for them, and that the outside
world cares for them and recognizes
them,” Fritz said. “They’re not alone.
People love them, God loves them.”
As the pandemic enters its fourth
month, all parties involved with Operation
Gratitude are looking ahead to
other ways they can be of service. And
while assisting the sick and the poor
has never been so challenging, or required
so much creativity, it makes the
work that much more meaningful.
“It’s happening all over the world,”
said Sister Isabel. “You see different
people reaching out in different ways,
and then you know: there’s God. You
can see how his love can never be
beaten by sickness or by death.”
Hayley Smith is a Los Angeles-based
reporter with a master’s degree in journalism
from USC Annenberg.
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 13

Bagged free lunches are
distributed to needy families
at the entrance of Our Lady of
Guadalupe School in East LA.
Carryout cafeteria
Local Catholic schools like Our Lady of Guadalupe in East LA are
serving hundreds of free to-go meals a day to families in need
BY R.W. DELLINGER / PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR ALEMÁN / ANGELUS
Principal Na
of Los Ange
14 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

By 9 a.m. on a recent Friday, the
line of mostly young mothers already
stretched for a block down
the sidewalk along the chain-link fence
that separates Our Lady of Guadalupe
School from Hazard Avenue. Nancy
Figueroa, principal of the parish school
in East LA, was talking to them in
Spanish.
Today, not even the blue mask on her
face could contain the administrator’s
enthusiasm as she made sure to catch
up on how their families were doing.
Slowly but surely, the women made
their way to the partly open front metal
gate to the table blocking the entrance
to the schoolyard. A woman in a floppy
brim hat and green T-shirt with the
elementary school’s logo greeted them,
asking how many meals they needed
for their children.
Most answered “dos” or “tres.” Three
women inside the gate, stationed at
two longer tables stacked with cardboard
boxes of plastic grocery bags with
breakfast and lunch cartons, passed
along orders to the server in front.
She handed the bags to the waiting
mothers, who responded with “gracias”
before hauling away the bags with both
arms.
The day’s lunch was popcorn chicken,
mixed vegetables, applesauce, and
milk.
Principal Nancy Figueroa (left) and Lilia Chavez, di rector of Externally Funded Programs for the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles.
Handing out some 750 breakfasts and
lunches each Monday through Friday
during the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic, Our Lady of Guadalupe
is the busiest of 38 Catholic schools
in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
involved in the national “Seamless
Summer Option.”
The food distribution program from
the U.S. Department of Agriculture
is a pandemic-time adaptation of the
National School Breakfast and Lunch
program that 73 local Catholic schools
participated in. Before the pandemic,
the federal program offered free and
reduced-priced meals to low-income
students at public and private schools
across the country.
Now there is no reduced price —
only free.
sometimes think
that it’s only public schools
“People
providing breakfasts and
lunches, because that’s all you hear
about on the news,” Lilia Chavez, director
of Externally Funded Programs
for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,
told Angelus.
Those 38 school sites around the
archdiocese provide the federally
funded meals through “Better 4 You
Meals,” a vendor based in Commerce.
The numbers tell the story: Many of
the schools serve hundreds of meals
each day; then there are ones like St.
Lawrence of Brindisi School in Watts
(1,460 meals a day) and St. Patrick’s
School in North Hollywood (1,200),
for a total of 15,000 meals a day
throughout the archdiocese.
The meals are intended for students
under 18, but they don’t have to be
enrolled in a Catholic school. No one
is turned away.
What makes these food programs especially
vital to struggling low-income
urban families, according to Chavez,
is the fact that paying the rent and
utilities are usually a family’s top two
priorities. So putting food on the table
can come in a distant third.
“We have run out of food at some
sites, but then we adjust,” Chavez
explained. “Then we just increase the
order. And that’s what we did with Our
Lady of Guadalupe, which started
giving out just 60 meals, until it’s up to
1,500 today.”
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 15

Food insecurity, or going hungry, isn’t
new, even in the U.S., the wealthiest
nation in the world. Before the coronavirus
first appeared in the U.S. in January,
more than 40 million Americans
were categorized as “food insecure.”
And now, with more than 30 million
workers filing for unemployment benefits
in the last two months, that number
has been rising rapidly.
The principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe
has seen that firsthand. Decreasing
attention spans and cognitive skills
are often the first observable symptoms
with students who don’t have enough
to eat at home.
Still, Figueroa, who graduated from
the East LA school herself in 1989 and
still lives nearby, thought people in
the community might be too proud to
show up in a food line. And she was
really afraid of wasting any food.
“Lilia said, ‘It’s OK. We’ll try it out
small. We can fluctuate. If we have to
go down in the number of meals, we’ll
go down,’ ” the principal recalled. “But
instead of going down, we’ve only gone
up.”
Figueroa said new patrons come from
both near and far, waiting as long as
they need to but sometimes fearful.
“I was talking to a family who
wouldn’t get out of their car. And
they asked me if they could have four
meals. And I said, ‘Of course. I’m the
principal.’ They’re just so grateful. So
there shouldn’t be any stigma in asking
for food right now during this crisis.”
“If we didn’t have this summer food
program, it would be hard for these
people.”
Before transitioning to the out-ofschool
food program, when all
265 elementary and high schools
in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
closed in response to the pandemic,
the principal and her staff had an even
bigger transition to make. In a matter
So with tens of thousands out-of-work
families now skimping on food, experts
say that developing school-age children
— one of the groups most affected by
chronic hunger — are in grave danger
of not maintaining their physical and
mental health.
The principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe
has seen that firsthand. Decreasing
attention spans and cognitive skills
are often the first observable symptoms
with students who don’t have enough
of days, the parochial school had to
navigate the transition from in-class
instruction to distance learning.
“We transitioned so quick,” said
Figueroa with a chuckle. “It was announced
on March 13, a Wednesday,
that we were closing. So we sent home
letters to our parents. We had a faculty
meeting on Friday and a plan for
distance learning on Monday. Tuesday
and Wednesday we rolled it out.”
iPads and Chromebooks were handed
out to parents, and by Thursday,
March 19, the school’s 131 students
had embarked on a homeschool adventure
none of them had prepared for.
The principal said the transition had
worked well. Teachers are planning
“around the clock,” coming up with
new weekly lesson plans, posting
instructional videos in math, reading,
religion, English, social studies, and
science. They hold live online sessions
with students four to five days a week,
and answer feedback from parents.
“There’s no limit now on using
Zoom video conferencing with kids,
parents, and teachers,” the principal
pointed out. “For second-graders, it is
45 minutes, Monday through Friday.
Third, fourth and fifth grades have an
hour every day. And for middle school,
sixth, seventh and eighth, it’s six hours
a week total.
The trade-off? “It’s actually a lot more
work for teachers.”
Back at the line on Hazard Avenue,
a woman toward the front
was asked what she thought of
the summer food program that began
in March.
“I’ve been coming from the first week
it started when I heard about it,” she
said, but didn’t want to give her name.
“This really helps my family. My kids,
who come here, all get to eat. My
daughter is going to graduate this year
and my son is in sixth grade. And one
graduated last year and goes to Sacred
Heart High School.
“But it’s good for the whole community,
because food is so expensive
these days. With this extra food, I can
also give some of our own food to my
grandmother, who can’t go outside
now. So the program is good for my
whole family.”
R.W. Dellinger is the features editor of
Angelus.
Th
the
wo
as
tha
Jo
FR
“Ma
Da
an
ev
16 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

“No one does more to keep Mary
in our minds than Fr. Rocky.”
– Dr. Scott Hahn, Ph.D.
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Family-driven faith
For Catholic families during the coronavirus pandemic,
the ‘domestic church’ has gone from idea to reality
BY SOPHIA MARTINSON / ANGELUS
Fuad Shunnara and his wife, Sohad, kneel and read the Bible and pray with their sons in their
living room in 2013.
DEBBIE HILL/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
Deborah DiPaulo sat down on
her living room couch one
Friday and turned on her laptop.
She had cleared out her schedule
for the whole evening and the next
morning so that she could tune into
the virtual event about to take place.
That event was the Catholic Family
Conference, hosted completely online
May 1-2. Through a series of lectures
and panels, the conference brought
together a host of prominent Catholic
Deborah DiPaulo
COURTESY DEBORAH DIPAULO
18 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

DEBBIE HILL/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
speakers and thousands of families
from across the globe to reflect on the
topics of faith, family, and finding hope
in hardship.
“They touched me more than they
realized,” said DiPaulo, 49, about the
conference speakers, which included
Angelus contributors Kathryn Jean
Lopez and Scott Hahn, Ph.D. As a
Catholic wife and mother of five living
in Flowery Branch, Georgia, she found
the virtual conference to be nourishment
for her faith and family life.
“This, to be honest, brought me more
into my Catholic faith,” she told Angelus
in a phone interview. “I needed
it to be a Catholic forum … so that I
could direct [my family] the right way.”
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
continues to confine thousands
of people to their homes, the question
of how to strengthen family faith while
separated from the sacraments and
parish life has become increasingly
prevalent. And as parish leaders have
stretched to minister to their congregations
from afar, a recurring theme has
been the meaning of the family unit
within the Church.
“The Church is the family of God
— we are a family of families,” said
Archbishop José H. Gomez at a May
6 virtual town hall organized by the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, echoing
Pope Francis’ “Amoris Laetitia” (“The
Joy of Love”).
While not a new teaching, the challenges
brought on by the coronavirus
pandemic have compelled the Church
to proclaim and support the centrality
of the family, or the “domestic
church,” more than ever before.
ANCIENT YET OVERLOOKED
What exactly is the domestic church?
The term first appeared in the Second
Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution,
“Lumen Gentium” (“The Light
of the Nations”). “The family is, so
to speak, the domestic church,” the
document states. “In it parents should,
by their word and example, be the first
preachers of the faith to their children;
they should encourage them in the vocation
which is proper to each of them,
fostering with special care vocation to a
sacred state.”
The council’s subsequent document
on the laity, “Apostolicam Actuosi-
Gregory K. Popcak, Ph.D.
tatem” (“Apostolic Activity”), later
revisited the topic, and St. Pope John
Paul II expounded upon it in his 1981
encyclical “Familiaris Consortio”
(“The Fellowship of the Family”).
According to Gregory K. Popcak,
Ph.D., the concept stems from Vatican
II’s promulgation of the “universal call
to holiness,” or the fact that God calls
all people, regardless of life circumstances,
to be saints.
“It is the notion that every home is
meant to be a sacred space and an
outpost of grace in the world,” he told
Angelus via email.
Popcak, founder and executive director
of the Pastoral Solutions Institute,
an organization of Catholic counselors,
has researched and written about the
domestic church for years. He noted
that while Vatican II brought it to new
light, the idea is as old as the Church
itself.
As the Acts of the Apostles reveals,
the first Christians fostered their faith
within their homes and neighborhoods
long before the establishment of monasteries,
convents, and parishes.
Despite these ancient foundations,
Popcak has often found the domestic
church to be an overlooked teaching.
“Unfortunately, very little has been
done to help families live out this
vision in our homes,” he explained.
“Until fairly recently, the phrase ‘domestic
church’ has been employed as,
at best, an aspirational term with little
practical relevance.”
Part of the problem, Popcak continued,
stems from a misunderstanding of
the role of the Catholic parish.
COURTESY GREGORY POPCAK
“Catholics have a tendency to think
that the parish is meant to be the
center of our faith life. But that’s not
what the Catholic theology of the
Church actually teaches,” he said.
“In reality, the parish church exists to
support the Christian life and ministerial
efforts of the domestic church: the
family.”
Now that parishes across the world
have closed their doors, families have
had to reevaluate exactly what that
means.
NEW LIGHT ON OLD TEACHING
Even with the ability to livestream
services, the cancellation of public
Masses and other gatherings has been a
blow to pastors and parishioners alike.
“Seeing the church totally empty is
very sad,” said Archbishop Gomez at
the archdiocese’s town hall.
Recently, Pope Francis also emphasized
that while Catholics can
stay united from afar through prayer,
coming together in person is a crucial
part of the Faith. “This is the Church
in a difficult situation that the Lord is
allowing, but the ideal of the Church
is always with the people and with the
sacraments — always,” the Holy Father
said in an April 17 homily.
At the same time, being cut off from
the sacraments has inspired many
Catholic families to appreciate them
more than ever before. Hahn, a biblical
theology professor at the University
of Steubenville and renowned author,
reflected upon this sensation in his
address at the Catholic Family Conference.
“I was talking to [my daughter] Hannah
just a couple of weeks ago,” said
Hahn, “and she was describing to me
how it was throughout this period that
she came to realize how much she’s
been taking the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass for granted, and how much more
she has a kind of holy hunger, a longing
for holy Communion like she has
never known. … I realized that she was
giving voice to what thousands — tens
of thousands of us are feeling.”
For Popcak, the repercussions of the
pandemic have brought his research
on the domestic church to the fore.
When asked about this shift in focus
within Catholic discussions and events,
he commented, “As truly painful as it
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 19

A virtual town hall organized by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles May 6 featured Archbishop José
H. Gomez, Helen Alvaré, Aaron Kheriaty, and Christina Lamas.
is to be separated from the sacraments,
the pandemic is forcing us to rethink
how we ‘do church.’ ”
He added, “God is giving us an opportunity
to rediscover an idea that has
been hidden in plain sight since the
early Church. “Namely, it’s the Catholic
home — not the parish, the parish
school, or diocesan chancery — that is
meant to be the crucible of intentional
discipleship and primary outpost of
evangelization.”
FROM IDEA TO ACTION
Within the context of the coronavirus,
these discussions on the domestic
church have also addressed how families
can live it while observing shelterin-place
orders.
In his lecture, Hahn offered several
practical recommendations. First and
foremost was family prayer. “We all
know that prayer is to the soul what
breath is to the body,” he observed.
“When you stop praying, you start
suffocating.”
Hahn continued by emphasizing
the importance of the “nucleus” of
the family: marriage. “That, too, is a
blessed sacrament,” he said. “So pray
together as spouses.”
The LA town hall also included practical
tips for families. In his remarks,
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist at the
University of California at Irvine and a
father of five boys, first acknowledged
the very real and acute difficulties individuals
and families face while being
confined: “What we’re going through
is not normal for human beings,” he
stated. “This has caused disruptions in
our life, on a biological level … [and]
on a social level.”
In response to these challenges,
Kheriaty offered recommendations for
quarantined families to sustain their
physical, psychological, and spiritual
health. “This can be a golden opportunity
for family mealtimes,” he said,
noting the benefits of maintaining
a regular meal schedule, including
stronger family bonds.
Kheriaty also said that many important
activities, such as physical exercise
and acts of service, can build family
relationships and virtue when done
together. “I think there are all kinds
of little, simple, everyday ways that we
can be in service to others, starting
with the people close to us,” he said.
When it comes to putting the notion
of the domestic church into action,
Popcak refers to various components
of family life that make up a kind of
“liturgy.”
Just as the ministerial priesthood of
the clergy cannot exist without the
liturgy of the Eucharist, he explained,
the common priesthood of the laity
cannot exist without the “liturgy of
domestic church life.”
This kind of liturgy, he said, “presents
an authentic, domestic-church-based
spirituality that allows families to ‘bring
Jesus home’ and make the faith the
source of the warmth in their homes.”
SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE
To live this liturgy, Popcak continued,
families must focus on three things:
relationships, traditions, and service.
Specifically, fostering an environment
of affection; making time for prayer,
conversation, and fun together; and
serving others inside and outside of the
home are key.
By doing so, families can make faith
the source and center of their life and
therefore fulfill their mission as the
domestic church.
MAKING IT STICK
If the coronavirus pandemic has
stimulated an increased appreciation
for the domestic church, sustaining
that appreciation after the pandemic
passes will be just as vital a task. After
all, in his April 17 homily, the pope
urged Catholics to see this time as
providential but temporary, and the
Church must at some point resume
the full activity of the sacraments and
evangelization outside the home.
Nevertheless, hope is not lost that
the good habits built during quarantine
will disappear when busy, outand-about
schedules resume. Going
forward, Hahn sees the opportunity for
families to build on the lessons from
this period and grow in their mission.
“When you get together and you listen
to the truth of the Gospel with new
ears, you get changed,” he told Angelus
in a phone interview. “And when this
quarantine is lifted, individual faithful
members of the Church, but also faithful
families are going to get going … to
be fruitful apostles.”
For DiPaulo, the Catholic Family
Conference is still impacting her life.
She connected with several speakers
on Facebook, where she continues to
draw insights from them.
“I really knew God was going to bring
fruit out of it,” she told Angelus. “He’s
still working … and [he’s] not done
yet!”
Now that his area of expertise has gotten
increased attention, Popcak aspires
to make the message of the domestic
family more prominent than ever.
“I would like to challenge families to
realize that their homes are meant to
be spiritual.”
Sophia Martinson is a writer living in
New York City.
20 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

Memorial Day
MONDAY, MAY 25, 2020 – 10 AM
Online Event Only
Holy Cross Cemetery
& Mausoleum
Culver City
ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ GOMEZ
PRINCIPAL CELEBRANT
Join us Online at:
CatholicCM.org or
Facebook.com/lacatholics
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 21

A complicated
crunch
The Vatican’s financial mess
illustrates ambivalence over
being the ‘poor Church’
Pope Francis dreams of
BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. / ANGELUS
Pope Francis gave his blessing from the apostolic palace above an empty St. Peter's Square after the Sunday Regina Coeli April 26.
VATICAN MEDIA/CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY
ROME — Before “Who am
I to judge?” and before the
“throwaway culture,” as well as
before his celebrated catalog of the
15 “spiritual diseases” of the Roman
Curia, Pope Francis just three days after
his election gave us the soundbite
which, in many ways, would define
his papacy.
“How I would like,” the new pope
said, “a poor Church for the poor.”
Under the heading of “be careful
what you wish for,” Pope Francis may
now be perilously close to getting
what he wanted, at least as far as the
Vatican is concerned, not as a result of
internal reform, but rather long-standing
financial weaknesses combined
with the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic and its economic repercussions.
A recent internal analysis prepared
for Pope Francis and the heads of Vatican
departments suggests the Vatican’s
deficit could balloon by as much as
175 percent in 2020, reaching $158
million, which is basically as much
as the Vatican is projected to bring in
this year, meaning it will be spending
about twice as much as it collects.
Annual income for the Vatican
(technically, the “Holy See”) derives
from three principal sources: investment
returns, the real estate market,
and contributions from dioceses, all of
which have been negatively affected
by the coronavirus shutdowns.
Likewise, the Vatican City State,
which fiscally is a separate operation,
has been hard hit by closure of the
Vatican Museums and the consequent
loss of revenue from ticket sales (the
Holy See has announced plans to reopen
the museums in the near future).
Longer term, the Vatican faces a ticking
financial time bomb in the form
of unfunded pension obligations that’s
not been ameliorated by the coronavirus,
because even idled workers are
still on the books.
Right now, the Vatican will have to
scramble just to cover payroll; how it
will make ends meet when more and
more of its present workforce begins
to retire and collect pension checks is,
frankly, unknown.
The internal report recommended
that Pope Francis impose a freeze on
hiring and promotions, plus a ban on
travel, even when it becomes possible
again, as well as a moratorium on
conferences and events.
Beyond that, it also counsels the creation
of a unified investment fund for
all Vatican entities to maximize return
on investment, and at least hints at
trimming payroll by recommending
building a human resources capacity
so a smaller staff can work more productively
and nimbly.
In past eras of crisis, popes have been
able to count on the generosity of
Catholics around the world to provide
the resources necessary to weather
whatever storm broke.
Yet this time around things may be
different, given that an important
vehicle the Vatican uses to tap that
generosity, the annual Peter’s Pence
collection, has been tainted by association
with a $225 million scandal
involving the Vatican’s role in purchasing
a former Harrod’s warehouse
in London’s tony Chelsea neighborhood
slated for conversion into luxury
apartments.
Most Catholics believed Peter’s
22 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

Pence was designed to support
papal charities, and they may be less
inclined to give if they think their
money will instead end up in speculative
land deals. The Vatican analysis
presumes just a modest drop-off in
income from the collection to support
papal activities, and only time will tell
if that’s right.
The crunch may well induce a new
spirit of financial modesty, and to that
extent, Pope Francis may be inclined
to see it as a blessing in disguise. To
date, his efforts at a financial cleanup
have met with mixed results, but in
the wake of the pandemic, it seems
obvious some sort of reform is now
inevitable.
On the other hand, there’s also the
wisdom embedded in the famous
comment attributed to the late American
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus,
onetime president of the so-called
“Vatican Bank,” which goes like this:
“You can’t run the Church on Hail
Marys alone.”
For the record, Archbishop Marcinkus
always claimed he was misquoted.
What he actually said, he insisted, was
that when Vatican employees came
to his office wanting their paychecks,
he couldn’t respond, “I’ll pay you 400
Hail Marys instead.”
In whichever version, the point is
the same: However much it may strive
to be poor in spirit, the Vatican still
needs money to keep things running.
It’s worth recalling, in that context,
where Pope Francis was when he
delivered the “poor Church for the
poor” soundbite: the Vatican’s Paul
VI Audience Hall, known to Italians
as the “Aula Nervi” after the architect
who designed it, Pier Luigi Nervi,
whose other projects included the
UNESCO building in Paris, Rome’s
Fiumicino airport, and the Port Authority
Bus Station in New York.
The hall was built between 1966
and 1971, providing seating for almost
7,000 people (capacity rises to 14,000
if people are standing) and features
strong acoustics and lines of sight.
The total price tag at the time was
about $6 billion in the old Italian lire,
which worked out to $3.8 million in
1971. Adjusted for inflation over the
intervening 50 years, in today’s money
the same hall would cost about $25
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 23
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus
million. Given its size and capacity,
that’s hardly extravagant, but it’s not
chump change either.
Yet if a pope is to be the Church’s
chief evangelizer and a voice of
conscience for the world, he needs a
platform from which to speak. One of
the reasons the “poor Church for the
poor” line was so effective, in fact, was
because Pope Francis delivered it in
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
front of the entire world’s media, in a
setting perfectly designed for it to get
across, with great sound and broadcast
facilities.
Pope Francis knows all this; when
the London scandal broke, he
acknowledged something seemed
“dirty” about the affair, but defended
on principle the idea of investing the
Vatican’s income in order to grow its
resources.
“Good administration isn’t about
collecting the sum of the offerings and
putting it in a desk drawer,” he said.
“That’s bad administration. Instead,
you have to try to make investments so
that when you need money, it’s there.”
Thus the dilemma: How to embrace
a new climate of limited means, along
with much of the rest of the world,
seeing it as an invitation to be that
“poor Church” of the pope’s dreams,
while, at the same time, cultivating
practices of “good administration”
to ensure that when the pope really
needs it, he’s got more than Hail
Marys in the account.
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.
¿Qué Legado dejará Usted?
Es fácil incluír a su Parroquia,
Escuela o Ministerio en su Testamento.
Para dejar un legado perdurable,
llámenos hoy.
La oficina de Planned Giving
(213) 637-7364
PlannedGiving@la-archdiocese.org
www.ADLALegacy.org
14032020_ADLA_Angelus__1-3pgH_4-10.indd 1
3/29/20 11:38 AM

Carrying
our
CROSSES
Suffering is always around us, especially during this pandemic.
Let the Stations of the Cross be a spiritual balm
BY GARY JANSEN / ANGELUS
Life-size Stations of the Cross at St. Anthony’s Chapel on Troy Hill in Pittsburgh in 2011.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/NANCY WIECHEC
Even though I consider myself pretty Catholic, I have
avoided the Stations of the Cross for most of my life.
I had what you might call a tumultuous childhood
that left me with an odd form of self-diagnosed post-traumatic
stress disorder. Even today, there are times when
I’ll be walking down the street only to flinch or dodge an
imaginary blow that just isn’t there; call it bad memories or
phantom pain, but it’s real and unsettling.
Though I knew there were people out there who suffered
worse than I did, I still wanted nothing to do with meditations
or prayers that had to do with suffering and misery.
Give me the Joyful and Glorious mysteries of the rosary
— those were more my speed. Keep the sorrowful stuff to
yourself, Lord.
As we learn of more and more people around the world
losing loved ones to the coronavirus (COVID-19), I’m
reminded of an experience that happened to me some years
ago. I was alone with my grandmother in her hospital room.
I was watching her die.
Though I kept a strong face, I was sad, disoriented, frightened,
and confused. For much of my life, my Nana (sometimes
“Nana Banana,” a nickname I gave her when I was a
small child) was a second mother for me, a lighthouse in the
tempest.
She was always there with a smile, some words of encouragement,
or a small bag of my favorite pretzels (my snack of
24 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/NANCY WIECHEC
choice after school for many years).
Though she lived simply, she struggled her whole life, always
on the verge of poverty, always dealing with uncertainty.
When her husband, Harry, my grandfather, a gravedigger
for more than 30 years, died of a heart attack when I was 22,
it became my turn to take care of her.
I was just starting in my career in publishing, busy with
work, and making new friends at my new job. Still, I would
see Nana every day, take her to the grocery store on Saturdays,
primarily to get cat food (I swear her cats ate more
food than she ever did) and to Calverton National Cemetery
once a month to visit Harry.
At the time, I was driving an old Jeep CJ-7, and in the summer
we’d take off the hard-shell roof and cruise down the
Long Island Expressway en route to the old flower shop she
loved so much; there we would buy the perfect bouquet of
cash-and-carry carnations to put on my grandfather’s grave.
Nana. We were pals. We were, in many ways, best friends.
The last five years of her life, though, had become even
more of a struggle than the first 78. She suffered a series of
strokes and became bedridden. Her daughter, my aunt, who
had struggled her whole life with addiction, became her
primary caregiver.
During those final years, because of various complicated
circumstances, I didn’t see my grandmother very much. We
would talk on the phone from time to time, but visits were
almost impossible.
I missed those old days when we were BFFs, blasting
Bruce Springsteen on the radio while she wore big bug-eyed
sunglasses, giving people the peace sign as we cruised to the
grocery store to buy kitty litter.
But here she was now, so close to death. She couldn’t
speak. Her hospital room was quiet except for the beep of
the heart monitor and her own labored breathing. I knew
I was going to lose her, and I knew I was going to lose her
soon. I took her frail, soft hand into mine and just held it as I
looked into her pale water-blue eyes.
For a fleeting moment, I felt her whole life flash in front of
me. Wait, I thought afterward, isn’t that supposed to happen
when I die?
But at the moment I felt as if all her stories — growing up
in Brooklyn, her walks on the boardwalk at Coney Island,
all the five-cent Pepsis she bought as a teenager, the death of
her father when she was 21, the loss of her first love, working
at Woolworth’s during World War II, the disappointments
she suffered, the joys she experienced — had all been downloaded
through the palm of my hand and into my heart.
No words were spoken, but just being in her presence
while she was suffering made me feel closer to her than I
had ever felt before.
Nana would die a few days later. I wasn’t in her hospital
room when it happened, but to this day, I carry her life
around inside me, and I am a better person for it. Having
been there with her during those painful and precious moments
created a bond and an understanding that continues
to affect my life. I know that today in this time of pandemic,
many people do not get that opportunity.
Sometime later, after her funeral, I was drawn to the
Stations of the Cross. I don’t know why. I just remember
Pictures and names of people who died from the coronavirus (COV-
ID-19) hang on crosses in a remembrance garden near a church in
Burton, England, April 24.
being in church and looking at the stained-glass depictions
of Jesus’ last moments. I thought of my grandmother and
her struggles, and I looked at the colorful images as the sun
streamed in, casting an aquarium of colors on the floor.
I realized that just as I had felt close to my grandmother
as she made her way to God, I felt closer to Jesus as I spent
time with him as he inched his way to God. I’d never felt
that before. It was late summer, and I remember asking
myself why the Stations were relegated to Lent, when suffering
is around us all the time. Soon after that, I made the
Stations a regular spiritual exercise.
I love the visual representations of Jesus’ life. As a movie
geek and someone who attended film school for a couple
of years, I sometimes look at the Stations of the Cross as if I
were watching a movie while listening to the director’s commentary.
Only this director isn’t Martin Scorsese or Steven
Spielberg; it’s God talking to me through prayer.
As Christians, we celebrate Jesus’ passion every year, so
we may fall into the trap of thinking that we know the story,
like, “Hey, I’ve seen this movie before; I know what happens.”
But there’s so much more going on that we might not
know. When we meditate on the Stations, no matter what
time of year, no matter what we are going through, we allow
God to speak to our suffering, to provide us with insight on
what unfolded 2,000 years ago and what’s unfolding in our
very lives today.
The Stations of the Cross isn’t just a Lenten practice, it is a
perennial exercise in spiritual awakening and a vital way of
helping us carry our cross — and the crosses of those around
us — in this time of uncertainty and upheaval.
Gary Jansen is executive editor at Loyola Press, a Chicago-based
publisher. He is the author of “Station to Station:
An Ignatian Journey Through the Stations of the Cross” (Loyola
Press, $9.96). For a limited time, the ebook of “Station to
Station” is available for free to help people during this time of
pandemic. Copies are available at Amazon.com, BN.com, or
Apple.com.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CARL RECINE, REUTERS
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 25

WITH GRACE
BY DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE
Honors Latin American history teacher Juan Vazquez teaches his
students about the Wall of Martyrs located inside the Belen Jesuit
Preparatory School administration building.
Be a man — and maybe a martyr
IMAGE VIA FACEBOOK @BELENJESUITMIAMI
My sons’ Catholic high school
in Miami has all the usual
things that high schools have,
like a gymnasium, science labs, and
a cafeteria that serves the mountains
of food necessary to keep 1,200 male
appetites satisfied every day.
But it has something that may be
unique among schools: a wall of
martyrs.
The right-hand wall of the school lobby
is decorated with dozens of pictures
and portraits, faces of handsome boys
and men, all of them students or alumni
of the school who died for truth, liberty,
and the good of others. First-time
visitors often stand there, gazing up at
the wall, awestruck by the sight.
Some of the faces are painted or
drawn portraits and date back to the
19th century. The school was founded
in 1854 in Havana by Queen Isabel II
of Spain and named after Our Lady of
Belen (Bethlehem in Spanish).
It keeps its name today, but it is now
in Miami, and some of the elderly
priests who give the boys spiritual
direction and wait for them in the
confessionals during the homeroom
hour were young teachers when the
whole school was expelled from Cuba
by Fidel Castro, the school’s most
(in)famous alumnus.
From its founding to the present day,
it has been a school infused by a heady,
virile faith. The idea was and is to form
young men who lean confidently on
God, not simply to patiently endure
the slings and arrows of life, but to
wade enthusiastically and confidently
into the fray.
One of the school’s mottos, and my
favorite, is “Esto Vir” (“Be a Man”).
That is, live the classically masculine
virtues of honor, daring, selflessness,
and valor. Be, in short, a “man for
others” — another school motto. The
results, much of the time, are young
men imbued with a Christianity that
makes them capable of heroism; ergo
the wall of martyrs.
Some of the earliest portraits on the
wall are of young men who gave their
lives in the long and deadly struggle
against one of their own century’s
viral scourges: yellow fever. It was the
school’s doctor, Carlos Finlay, who,
seized by inspiration while saying his
daily rosary, hypothesized that the
disease that killed upward of half of
those infected was being spread by
mosquitoes.
Fifty-seven young men from the
school volunteered to be bitten by
mosquitos that had recently fed on a
yellow fever patient. Three of them
died a hard yellow fever death and their
portraits grace the wall. Dr. Finlay was
correct, incidentally.
Within a few decades, mosquito control
measures had virtually eradicated
a disease that had killed millions and
26 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

Carlos Juan Finlay was a Cuban epidemiologist
recognized as a pioneer in the research of
yellow fever, determining that it was transmitted
through mosquitoes.
caused untold misery for centuries.
For the last three decades of the 19th
century, Cuba was gripped by war,
which is a dark and cruel thing but
one whose blackness never fails to be
pierced by the light of human courage.
For centuries Cuba had chafed as a
colony under the grip of Spanish rule.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
They longed for freedom: to vote, to
free the slaves, to speak frankly without
fear of punishment.
José Marti, the philosopher-poet-martyr
of the revolution wrote about that
longing: “It is terrible to speak of you,
Liberty, for one who lives without you.”
His own generosity of spirit and love of
“patria” (“homeland”) stirred the souls
of countless Belen students and alumni
to abandon all self-interest to reshape
their country around the claims of
justice and human dignity.
The portraits of those who died fill the
wall, and hang side by side with many
more who died on the beaches of Playa
Giron in 1961 or were summarily
executed along with hundreds of other
men and boys in the infamous La
Cabaña prison for recognizing in the
face of Fidel Castro yet another brutal
enemy of freedom.
The lamentable way that most
schools concentrate exclusively on the
technical and academic education of
their young men betrays a tragic blindness
of spirit. We have long since left
Eden, and in our exile from that glad
place where Adam strolled with God in
the cool of the evening, we can be sure
that sin, injustice, and disease will have
to be confronted by each generation.
And each age will need heroes alight
with enthusiasm to go and right what
is wrong, courageous enough to risk
— even disdain — their own safety
and future when the common good
demands it.
Our current crisis is no different.
We need heroes to lead the way out
of quarantine and into life with the
coronavirus, heroes to fight for the vulnerable
as economic ruin envelops the
world, and heroes of patient cheerfulness
and hope in every home. Heroes
so heroic, they may even earn a place
on a wall of martyrs of their own.
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie grew up in
Guadalajara, Mexico, coming to the
U.S. at the age of 11. She has written
for USA TODAY, National Review, The
Washington Post, and The New York
Times, and has appeared on CNN,
Telemundo, Fox News, and EWTN. She
practices radiology in the Miami area,
where she lives with her husband and
five children.

Salvation out
of the blues
After passing through fame, addiction,
and Protestantism, a Catholic rock ’n’
roll legend’s new album may be his
finest testament of faith yet
© DION DIMUCCI
BY ARSENIO ORTEZA / ANGELUS
How long has Dion DiMucci been making music?
Here’s how long: When he sang “I’d make love to
you” in the song “Can’t We Be Sweethearts,” he
wasn’t referring to anything R-rated any more than Laurence
Olivier was when he told Joan Fontaine in the film
“Rebecca” that he “should be making violent love to [her]
behind a palm tree.”
Dion, in other words, was simply promising his sweetheart
lots of romance — with “lovin’ kisses too!”
The year was 1963, the album “Donna the Prima Donna.”
And Dion was all of 24 years old. Yet he was already
a rock ’n’ roll veteran, with 16 top-40 singles to his name
(or his and the name of his doo-wop backing group, the
Belmonts) dating back to 1958.
The biggest — “A Teenager in Love,” “Lovers Who Wander,”
“The Wanderer,” “Runaround Sue,” “Ruby Baby” —
would eventually propel him into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame (and, what’s arguably cooler, find him rubbing
shoulders with Tony Curtis and Oscar Wilde on the cover
of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
album).
He’s in the news these days because of his new album,
“Blues with Friends,” his 33rd solo recording (not counting
live discs and compilations) and his first for Keeping the
Blues Alive, a label launched by the blues guitarist Joe
Bonamassa.
You could call the album a comeback, except that Dion
has never really gone away. Leaving aside the hiatuses
between 1963’s “Ruby Baby,” 1968’s “Dion,” 1993’s “Rock
n’ Roll Christmas,” and 2000’s “Déjà Nu,” he hasn’t gone
more than three years without releasing new music.
And, incredible as it may seem given his many accomplishments
and the fact that he’ll turn 81 in July, “Blues
Dion DiMucci
with Friends” might be the best long player of his career.
His switchblade-tenor voice evinces minimal wear and
tear, and 12 of the 14 compositions are new. They haven’t
come out of nowhere: His last three albums, “Bronx in
Blue,” “Son of Skip James,” and “Tank Full of Blues,” were
blues efforts, too. But the new songs are tougher, sharper,
and sometimes even sweeter than their recent antecedents.
And although the majority are blues through and
© DION DIMUCCI
28 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

through, they’re spelled by haunted roots exercises ranging
from yearning folk to nightclub jazz that open windows
through which refreshing cross breezes flow.
Even without the tasty contributions of the guest guitarists
(Bonamassa, Jeff Beck, Joe Louis Walker, John Hammond,
Sonny Landreth, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Stray Cats’
Brian Setzer) and singers (Paul Simon, Van Morrison,
Rory Block, Patti Scialfa), “Blues with Friends” would have
listeners wearing out the “repeat” buttons on their playback
devices of choice.
As for the two vintage copyrights, “Kickin’ Child” (which
Dion originally recorded in 1965) and “Hymn to Him”
(1986), they’ve never sounded better.
“Songs are never finished,” Dion says of the latter in the
album’s press kit. “I kept hearing this with Patti’s voice, so
I asked her to help me remake the song.” Scialfa’s singing
plus an impromptu guitar solo from her husband, Bruce
Springsteen, made the
song, in Dion’s words,
“something sublime.”
As its title suggests,
“Hymn to Him” is a gospel
song. “Come to Him
through the darkness,”
Dion sings, “come to Him
through the rain, / walk
with him from misfortune,
/ walk with Him from the
pain.”
It’s the album’s last song
and, as such, a culmination,
the inevitable last
stop on a journey foreshadowed
by the “train bound
for heaven” that Dion
boards 11 songs earlier on
the loping “Uptown Number
7” and promises never
to disembark.
It’s a metaphor with particular
meaning in Dion’s
case. The main reason for his dry spell circa 1963-1968 is
that the heroin habit that he’d begun nursing as a teenager
in the Bronx had finally overtaken him, all but undoing his
music, his marriage, and anything else of value that he’d
worked to amass.
Eventually, to make short a long and moving story that
Dion himself has told many times, he got clean (with the
help of his wife and a 12-step program) and did, in fact,
board the Gospel Train.
The best-known song of what’s sometimes called his
“mature period” — his hit rendition of Dick Holler’s paean
to assassinated emancipators (real or perceived), “Abraham,
Martin and John” — followed shortly thereafter and reflected
his newfound gravitas. But it was his two self-penned
confessions-of-an-ex-junkie numbers “Daddy Rollin’ (In
Your Arms)” and “Your Own Backyard” that laid bare his
soul.
By 1980, after a decade of earnest but commercially
unsuccessful albums, he’d begun taking his Christian faith
especially seriously, immersing himself in the evangelical
subculture and reinventing himself as a born-again
singer-songwriter. In 1984, the third of his five contemporary-Christian
albums, “I Put Away My Idols,” earned him
a Grammy nomination.
Then, like so many other restless Protestants before and
since, he began noticing the unintended consequences of
the doctrine that, more than any other, animates the evangelical
soul, “sola scriptura” (“by scripture alone”): namely,
that in making every believer a one-man magisterium, it
inevitably leads to an exponentially multiplying number
of denominations and the absence of a unifying spiritual
authority.
By the time that Dion, a cradle Catholic, happened upon
an episode of Marcus Grodi’s EWTN program “The Journey
Home,” he was, so to speak, ripe for the picking.
He returned to the
Church in 1997, and
he hasn’t looked back.
Indeed, he has burrowed
deeply into his Faith’s
theological roots.
One fruit of these investigations
has been his
ability to give articulate
reasons for the hope that
is within him. Google
any video of him giving
his testimony, and were
it not for his trademark
beret and Bronx-inflected
speech, you’d almost think
© DION DIMUCCI
that you were listening
to a seminary-trained
apologist instead of one of
the last living survivors of
the ill-fated Winter Dance
Party tour.
Another fruit is “The
Thunderer,” a “Son of
Skip James” album cut that, as of this writing, is the only
blues song to have been inspired by St. Jerome.
“[M]y definition of the blues,” Dion once told NPR’s
Linda Wertheimer, “is the naked cry of the human heart
longing to be in union with God.” The blues, he went on
to say, are “a bit of salvation” because they let out emotions
that if pent up would “spiral inward” and eat us alive.
Or, as Dion’s old friend Bob Dylan puts the matter in
“Blues with Friend’s” liner notes, “You have to be careful
with the blues. They’re strong with lust and you can overpay
for them, but they quote the law.
“It’s a shame,” Dylan concludes, “more people don’t
follow that law.”
As “Blues with Friends” makes unmistakably clear, Dion
agrees with every word.
Arsenio Orteza is a freelance music critic and regular contributor
to WORLD magazine.
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 29

Uneasy discoveries
Movies that navigated the
nature of solitude, loneliness,
and suffering before stay-athome
orders and a pandemic
made them all too real
BY ALISON NASTASI / ANGELUS
Thanks to a virus that has brought the world to a
standstill, achieving focus and productivity feel like
a Sisyphean task. Even as some sectors of the economy
slowly reopen, there’s a palpable uneasiness caused by
the sudden unpredictably of what’s going to happen next.
It’s an uneasiness that pop culture has tried to capture
for years, often using dystopian themes that resonate more
deeply today than we could have ever imagined.
Take “The Twilight Zone,” for example, which brought
the post-World War II anxieties of the Atomic Age to the
small screen. The episode “Time Enough at Last” is an
eerily prescient story for a time when people are trying to
navigate the blurry line between solitude and loneliness
while holed up in their homes.
Burgess Meredith stars as bespectacled bank teller Henry
Bemis who has a penchant for books. Despite protests from
his boss and wife, he values nothing more than time alone
to read. After a nuclear explosion, Henry finds himself the
last man in existence.
It’s a troubled fate made better for the bookworm by the
discovery of a library filled with undamaged books. In a
typically bleak “Twilight Zone” plot twist, Henry’s glasses
break, rendering him nearly blind and unable to read.
“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all,” bemoans Henry.
“There was time now. There was all the time I needed.”
Before “Twilight Zone,” the great American director Alfred
Hitchcock made us feel the loneliness of confinement
Burgess Meredith in “The Twilight Zone.”
with 1954’s “Rear Window.” The story about an injured,
homebound photographer who believes he has witnessed a
murder unfolds through the perspective of James Stewart’s
character, Jeff.
He gazes out his apartment window at the neighbors he
only knows by made-up nicknames. Our view of the narrative
is limited to his. The compositional frames of windows
and doorways entrap us with each character, making us
complicit in Jeff’s voyeuristic compulsions.
James Stewart in “Rear Window.”
IMDBNS IMDBNS
30 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

.”
Stanley Kubrick looked at the extremes of isolation in his
adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Shining,” about the
breakdown of a family that moves to a remote hotel in the
Colorado Rockies to become off-season caretakers.
Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.”
Kubrick confronts us with our own murky subconscious
and the strange, dark places it sometimes leads us. Like the
book, the film veers into supernatural territory, and “The
Shining’s” labyrinthine centerpiece, the imposing Overlook
Hotel, becomes the stage for a battle between ultimate
good and evil.
The mystery of human motivation and suffering is also at
the heart of a 2019 film by director Robert Eggers, “The
Lighthouse,” recently available to stream on Amazon
Prime. On a remote New England island chiseled by
the fury of the sea, a grizzled lighthouse keeper (Willem
Dafoe) and his tight-lipped apprentice (Robert Pattinson)
descend into madness as violent storms keep them stranded
in isolation atop the rocks.
By night, the sailors become entranced by the lighthouse’s
hypnotic beam. Eggers’ claustrophobic tale of seafaring
horror revels in its graphic, intrusive masculinity and scatalogical
humor, but it’s one of several intentional choices
that become agents for exploring identity.
The black-and-white format and boxy 1.19:1 aspect ratio
limits what the viewer can see, confining us to the characters’
miserable existence fraught with memories and
fantasies they can’t escape, perhaps the greatest torment
of isolation. Both men are named Thomas, which comes
from Aramaic origin, meaning “twin.”
“How long have we been on this rock? ... Where are
we? Help me to recollect. Who are you again, Tommy?”
asks Dafoe’s character. They are at once trapped by their
grotesque humanity and closer than ever to touching the
gods through the lighthouse, their Mount Olympus, the
“heavenly threshold” of Homer’s “Iliad.”
IMDBNS
While Julio Quintana’s 2016 Terrence Malick-produced
film “The Vessel” doesn’t portray phantoms in a traditional
sense, grief still haunts the hearts and minds of its protagonists.
Set years after a deadly tsunami took the lives of a
Puerto Rican village’s schoolchildren, the townspeople
have yet to be consoled despite the efforts of a tenacious
priest, Father Douglas (Martin Sheen).
One young man, Leo, struggles with loss, tending to his
distraught mother, who seems to favor his deceased brother,
and a love interest who clings to the memory of her late
husband. The villagers are transformed when Leo has an
accident but appears to return from the dead, like Lazarus.
He decides to build a boat from scraps of the old schoolhouse,
reigniting hope and faith within the community.
Unlike many movies that explore similar themes, “The
Vessel” proposes although there are seasons of life that
bring us pain, suffering, and loss, these are burdens we
don’t carry alone.
In his 1984 apostolic letter “Salvifici Doloris” (“Redemptive
Suffering”), St. Pope John Paul II asserted that suffering
is “a universal theme that accompanies man at every
point on earth: in a certain sense it co-exists with him in
the world, and thus demands to be constantly reconsidered.”
Suffering is not fully reconciled by the end of “The Vessel.”
Leo still questions if he will ever fully reach a place of
interconnectedness through his pain, but his healing has
begun. Suffering, in this way, is a sacred mystery.
Perhaps he could have used the words of the late saint
in “Salvifici Doloris”: “This is the meaning of suffering,
which is truly supernatural and at the same time human.
It is supernatural because it is rooted in the divine mystery
of the Redemption of the world, and it is likewise deeply
human, because in it the person discovers himself, his own
humanity, his own dignity, his own mission.”
Alison Nastasi is an arts and culture journalist, author, and
artist living in Los Angeles.
“
Ghost stories appeal to our craving for immortality,”
Kubrick once said. “If you can be afraid of
a ghost, then you have to believe that a ghost
may exist. And if a ghost exists, then oblivion might not be
the end.”
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in “The Lighthouse.”
IMDBNS
May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 31

THE CRUX
BY HEATHER KING
Ten ways
to live for
today
John XXIII served as pope from
1958 to 1963 and was canonized
April 27, 2014.
He is most noted for convoking the
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,
which was inaugurated on Oct. 11,
1962, at St Peter’s Basilica.
But I best remember him for his
promulgation of the Daily Decalogue.
1. Only for today, I will seek to live
the livelong day positively without
wishing to solve the problems of
my life all at once.
2. Only for today, I will take the greatest
care of my appearance: I will
dress modestly; I will not raise my
voice; I will be courteous in my behavior;
I will not criticize anyone;
I will not claim to improve or to
discipline anyone except myself.
3. Only for today, I will be happy in
the certainty that I was created to
be happy, not only in the other
world but also in this one.
4. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances,
without requiring all
circumstances to be adapted to my
own wishes.
5. Only for today, I will devote 10
minutes of my time to some good
reading, remembering that just as
food is necessary to the life of the
body, so good reading is necessary
to the life of the soul.
6. Only for today, I will do one good
deed and not tell anyone about it.
Pope John XXIII in the Vatican Gardens with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background in
this undated photo.
7. Only for today, I will do at least one
thing I do not like doing; and if my
feelings are hurt, I will make sure
that no one notices.
8. Only for today, I will make a plan
for myself: I may not follow it to
the letter, but I will make it. And I
will be on guard against two evils:
hastiness and indecision.
9. Only for today, I will firmly believe,
despite appearances, that the good
Providence of God cares for me as
no one else who exists in this world.
10. Only for today, I will have no fears.
In particular, I will not be afraid
to enjoy what is beautiful and to
believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12
hours I can certainly do what might
cause me consternation were I to
believe I had to do it all my life.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CATHOLIC PRESS
32 • ANGELUS • May 22-29, 2020

The Daily Decalogue serves well at
any time and never more so, it turns
out, than during a pandemic.
“Only for today, if my feelings are
hurt, I will make sure that no one
notices.”
Now that’s a tough one. Are you really
going to praise her writing — to my
face! — and not mine? Do you not
realize I asked about a hundred questions
about you during our conversation
and you asked none about me?
“Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes
of my time to some good reading.”
Thus, I’ve dusted off “Seven Short
Novels by Chekhov,” returned to the
“Letters of Caryll Houselander,” and
just ordered three books on spiritual
direction so I can be better prepared
to help those who turn up on my
doorstep.
That 10-minute rule works well for
any number of things: balancing a
checkbook, cleaning the bathroom,
updating a website.
“Only for today, I will not criticize anyone;
I will not claim to improve or to
discipline anyone except myself.” Not
even mentally. Just try it! Impossible!
To that end Father Augustine Wetta, a
monk at St. Louis Abbey, recently posted
a YouTube video on “obedience.”
Turns out that the one infraction St.
Benedict could not abide — “ante
omnia” (“above all others”) — was
grumbling.
The word in Latin is “murmuratio,”
which Father Wetta describes as “that
cowardly, backstabbing, passive-aggressive,
underhanded whining” — the
kind of whining the Israelites did on
their way out of Egypt when, after all
the miracles God had performed on
their behalf, they still carped about the
food.
“Murmuratio” can also be defined
as criticizing something you have no
power to change, like oh, just say,
the course of the coronavirus (COV-
ID-19).
Grumbling poisons community life,
undermines confidence, and is thus
“incompatible with the monastic
ideals.”
Father Wetta went on to describe
what psychologists call “the fundamental
attribution error”: I attribute
my own actions to circumstance. I
attribute other people’s actions to flaws
in their character.
When I dash around the grocery store
like a bull in a china shop, it’s because
I don’t want to be late for Mass. When
someone else does it, he or she is a
selfish jerk. When I go on and on
about myself, it’s because I’ve decided
to allow myself to become vulnerable;
to share. When someone else does it,
he or she is a mindless narcissist.
For 12 hours I can do what would
plunge me into despair if I thought
I had to do it my whole life: Homeschool
my kids. Wear a mask. Watch
and hear 24/7 predictions of catastrophe.
But wait. When someone else offers
catastrophic predictions, they’re being
a conspiracy theorist doomsdayer.
When I share my reflections, I’m just
trying to help.
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A woman in Los Angeles hikes above the early morning fog May 9, the first day of the
reopening of trails during the coronavirus pandemic.
Heather King is a blogger, speaker, and the author of several books.
(CNS PHOTO/LUCY NICHOLSON, REUTERS)
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May 22-29, 2020 • ANGELUS • 33

What Will You Do?
A ministry of the Church serving the faithful.
If you’ve ever wondered what will happen when a loved one
dies or how to plan for your own passing, then don’t miss this
informative, FREE online seminar:
My Father’s House
What to expect When a Loved One Dies,
How to Prepare for Your Own Final Needs . . .
From a Catholic Perspective
We’ll walk you through the steps you’ll take when a family
member passes and explain why preplanning for yourself is
so important.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020 * 7:00 – 7:45 PM * Q & A to follow
Or Saturday, May 30, 2020 * 11:00 – 11:45 AM * Q & A to follow
Pre-registration required at: catholiccm.org/webinars
Questions?
Please contact Outreach@CatholicCM.org
or call 213-637-7810.
¿Y Tu Que Harías?
¿Haz pensado alguna ves que pasaría si alguno de tus seres
queridos muere y ademas cómo planearias tu propío funeral?,
si es así, no te pierdas este próximo taller informativo, llamado:
La Casa de mi Padre,
Qué esperar cuando un ser querido fallece y como preparamos
nuestras necesidades del funeral desde una perspectiva Católica.
Te mostraremos paso a paso que hacer cuando tu familia
se enfrenta una situación asi. También explicaremos
la importancia de Planear con anticipación.
¿Cúando? Miércoles 27 de Mayo 2020 * Hora: 7:00 – 7:45 PM
O Sabado 30 de Mayo 2020 * Hora: 11:00 – 11:45 AM
Continuaremos con una sesión de preguntas y respuestas.
El curso es gratuito pero require regístrarse a:
catholiccm.org/webinars
¿Preguntas? Email Outreach@CatholicCM.org o
llamado al 213-637-7810.