Beginning Winter quarter 2011-2012

Hello again everyone,

I hope that everybody had a very happy Thanksgiving and took some time to be thankful to God for all that he has given to us.  He is the ultimate cause for all the rest of the stuff that you are thankful for.

I have had a great (almost) two weeks since I wrote last.  In addition to spending time in Stevens Point and the wonderful talk given by Fr. Chris regarding the new translation of the Roman Missal I have done quite a bit. 

I spent the weekend before Thanksgiving staying at a friend’s farm so that I could just wake up and walk out the door for hunting.  These are the friends who got married last spring and I was the best man in their wedding.  I didn’t see any deer at all opening weekend, but it was still great to get into the woods for a bit.  The weather was decent too.  I went to Mass on Saturday evening at St. Elizabeth’s in Holmen; it is always nice to go back to the parish that I grew up going to.  The new priest that came in last summer is wonderful.  Sunday night I went up to my mom’s house to take Monday off for myself and Tuesday to spend with her since she had off of work.

Wednesday I went hunting at the farm again in the morning, still no deer to be seen, and then went hunting with a great friend in the afternoon on some public land that we hunted growing up, again no deer.  Wednesday evening I was able to go out for wings with some good friends before hunting again Thursday morning.  I wasn’t seeing any deer so I came in early to go to Mass for the Thanksgiving holiday, they asked me to be the reader, I haven’t read in that parish in more than 10 years, so that was very nice.  Then I went back to my mom’s and had all the Thanksgiving stuff with family.

On Friday I packed up all of my stuff and headed back to Stevens Point.  I went out hunting there on Saturday morning and saw the first deer I had seen all season and I got him, a five point buck.  After getting him all butchered up I got cleaned up for the Saturday evening Mass. 

This was the first weekend of Advent and the first weekend with the new translation of the Mass.  I was serving (altar boy) for it and was pretty impressed with how smoothly it went.  Of course there were a few hiccups since it was the first change in 40 years but the Newman University Parish was well prepared.  After going out to supper with a couple of parishioners and then serving at the Sunday morning Mass I picked up one of my friends to bring him back to where he goes to school in Milwaukee, which is along my route to get back to school. 

Classes started yesterday (Monday) for the new quarter and I am pretty excited for them.  This will be my easiest class schedule by far, since I only have 4 classes this quarter.  I still have all the other stuff like field education and formation and such, but it is nice to have fewer classes.  I have three classes that meet on Mondays and Thursdays and only one that meets on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The class that I have on Tuesdays and Fridays is Political and Social Philosophy, which I still don’t quite have a handle on what we will be going over in this, maybe I’ll say more on it later.  This is taught by Fr. Bob Barron, who produced the Catholicism TV series and runs to Word on Fire ministry.  He is a good speaker and presents information well, so I’m sure that I’ll get a lot out of it.

My first class on Mondays and Thursdays is on the Gospel of Mark.  This is normally one that people take in first year of Theology, but since I dropped Greek, this is what they had me pick up.  It should be fun and educational having this presented in class.  The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the first Gospel that is in the Bible to be written.  It is believed to have been written somewhere between 55 and 70 AD, so the author seems to have known St. Peter and taken many of his stories directly.

My second class is Humanities II.  This will be pretty fun I think.  It seems like we will read a couple of novels and talk about a wide spectrum of humanities topics such as music and architecture in addition to the novels.

My final class on Mondays and Thursdays is Modern Philosophy.  This will cover works by philosophers such as Descartes (although we have done some of his stuff already, he is who most of the others work off of), Spinoza, Locke, Kant, and Nietzsche to mention a few.  I really enjoy the instructor for this so I am looking forward to this class quite a bit too.

We are only here for three weeks at this point, before getting another two weeks off for the Christmas Holiday.  So we have a little sprint with a lot of material and then come back to finish out the quarter after the New Year’s Day holiday.  We will only have six weeks left at that point since this quarter is only nine weeks long for those of us in second pre-theology.  The final week of the quarter and one week of our two week break will be taken up by a mission trip.  We had the opportunity to apply for going to Mali in Africa with CRS (Catholic Relief Services) or to a Native American reservation in Arizona.  I have applied for the CRS experience, but we have not found out for sure if we are accepted yet.

Well, that is enough for now.  I hope everyone is doing well this Advent in preparing for the incarnation of our Savior.

Peace,

Adam

Fall finals and beginning of fall break 2011-2012

Hello again everyone,

                My finals last week went pretty well.  I am glad to be done with the quarter, this was probably the most stressful quarter that I’ve had in seminary, but on the whole it wasn’t too bad. 

After finishing finals I hit the road right away to get to Stevens Point.  I had decided to spend the night at the house of a couple that are close friends of mine before going to Fr. Tom’s on Saturday.  I was getting into town early and since it was Veteran’s Day I decided to stop for my free meal at the Appleby’s restaurant which I was passing on my way in.  The line was out the door, this is a very popular thing that they do, however, I was alone so I was told that I could sit right away if I didn’t mind eating at the bar.  So I did that and had a beer and the shrimp basket meal that they had on the veterans menu.  It is very nice of them to give the free meal, although the beer was kind of expensive.  I then headed down to my friends and had a great evening playing with their kids and visiting with them.  It is always nice to catch up with friends.

Saturday was pretty much a down day until Mass and going out to supper with a couple of parishioners.  I also attended both Masses on Sunday, I get so much strength from this community and although I get here regularly it is always special.  Following the evening Mass on Sunday Fr. Tom and I were planning on picking up a priest friend of his at the airport nearby, but his first flight was delayed so he missed his connection and we had to drive to Appleton to pick him up.  This friend is leading a talk tonight (Thursday) at the parish about the new translation of the Roman Missal which will be changing many of the words used at Mass starting on the First Sunday of Advent.

After we finally got out of the airport at about 10:30 we stopped for Supper and then Fr. Tom asked me to drive back to Stevens Point.  I have driven his car quite a bit, so this is fairly normal.  Driving back from Appleton is a 65 mile per hour road and we were rolling along until at about quarter after midnight I see a deer in the median running out in front of me, I hit the brakes but ended up hitting the deer.  After calling the sheriff, Fr. Tom calls AAA to get a tow, since the car was not able to be driven.  This took quite a while but we eventually got back to the house at a little before three on Monday morning.  Fr. Tom and his friend Fr. Chris were planning to head up to a parishioners cabin up north on Monday and after dealing a little bit with the insurance company that morning he was able to borrow a car and still have their relaxation time. 

I of course felt really bad, but there is nothing that can be done when a deer runs out in front of you.  I spent a lot of Monday doing some little things around town before going to have dinner with another couple of my college friends.  A little after leaving there I got a call from Fr. Tom that the insurance company said that the car is totaled, so he is beginning to look for a new car.  I was then able to sit in on a Bible study at the parish with college students before catching the second half of the Packers Monday Night Football game. 

Tuesday I served for a funeral that the parish was having.  A retired priest celebrated the funeral.  The lady that died wasn’t really a parishioner.  She had just moved to town when her health turned so she hadn’t joined any parish yet.  She had met Fr. Tom through one of our parishioners who works in spiritual services at the hospice and she had asked Fr. Tom if our parish would have the funeral.  I was kind of saddened that there were only about 50 people who attended the funeral, and although it sounds like this woman was a devout Catholic it didn’t seem like her children could even remember the responses at Mass.  This makes me a bit sad.

Other than that I did quite a bit of work around the parish on Tuesday and Wednesday and was able to go to the Pointers men’s basketball season opener game, which I went to a lot of games while I was in college, so I always enjoy that.  On Wednesday the two priests returned and we went to a talk at the university by a history professor who has looked in to the various types of propaganda that countries use when going to or in war.  This was a very interesting talk, and it was kind of set up to time with the art display Visions of War that the university had by art students and veterans timed to coincide with Veteran’s Day.

On Wednesday night Fr. Chris had the late night Mass and it is always so very wonderful to pray with a group of about 50 college students at a weekday Mass.  I will do a few more things for the parish today before the talk tonight.  Tomorrow morning I will head home to get ready for the gun deer season which opens this Saturday.

That is the update for the first part of this break.  I hope you all are doing well and incase I don’t get another post in before it, have a Blessed Thanksgiving and don’t forget to give thanks to God.

Peace,

Adam

Catholic Q&A November 2011

Hello everyone,

It is Finals week, so I am of course very busy.  So I thought I’d share with you a recent e-mail conversation.  I received a comment on the blog from someone asking me to e-mail her to answer some questions about the Catholic faith.  I am going to put two e-mail exchanges with her here.  I have removed her name for privacy.  Enjoy.

Peace,
Adam

Her to me #1

 Lately, God has been placing it upon my heart to become more aware of other denominations, which is when I came across your blog. After reading it, I was in awe of how different this denomination is from what I am used to. I grew up Lutheran but now I do not affliate myself with anything other than a follower of Christ.  So there were a few questions I had about catholicism that I would like to ask you-I feel it would be more insightful to learn from a devout catholic themself, rather than an online wikipedia entry.  With that said, I was wondering if you could tell me what catholics believe about Mary and what the significance of the Rosary is in relaion to her? What do catholics believe about Jesus Christ and His divinity?  Why do catholoics go to a priest to confess their sins?  No need to elaborate too much on these questions, just a general response would be great.  Thank you so much for your time!

God bless,

Me to her #1 Reply

May God Bless you in your inquiry.  Since you asked for the short answers I will try to keep this short.  

Your first question was in regards to Mary.  We honor Mary because she is the first Christian and the one who said, "Yes" to bringing Christ into this world.  We also see her as an able to, willing to, and wanting to plead for us to her son.  If you look at the story of the Wedding at Cana you will see this in action with her pleading with her son to help out those hosting the wedding.  Also, on the cross Christ pointed to John and said, "Behold your mother."  We see that as a message to all of us, not just John.  When praying "to" Mary we are truly praying through Mary.  God the father and God the son both honored Mary so we feel that we should to.  If you look at prayers like the Hail Mary (the most frequent in the rosary) they do not ask for Mary to do anything more than to pray for us.  Also, in regards to the rosary, it is more than simply reciting the words.  There are four sets of five "mysteries" which are announced before each decade (Our Father, 10 Hail Marys, and a Glory Be) to be meditated on during the decade.

As for Jesus Christ and His divinity it is most likely the same as you learned growing up as a Lutheran (by the way, which synod were you part of, I may be able to explain stuff better knowing this, I have a great deal of family and many friends in different synods of Lutheran)  We believe that Christ is both fully God and fully man, understandable only as a mystery of the faith, in the two thousand year history of the Church we have battled the teachings of some who have taught that either was only an illusion, one thing that helps our Church is the extensive history of clarifying the understanding from the scriptures.

The reason that Catholics participate in the sacrament of Reconciliation (confession) is because Christ told us to.  Upon the sending of the Apostles he gave St. Peter the keys to Heaven and told the Apostles "who's sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you hold bound are held bound" so we see this as Christ forgiving sins through the priests.  We are not confessing our sins to the priest, at that time they are acting as a mediator between us and Christ by the power that Christ gave to His Church.  I understand the difficulty that some would have with this when you can go directly to God and I am struggling to explain it in short.

I think that this answers what you were asking at least to some extent... let me know if there is more that I can help you with.  One website that may help you with questions is www.catholicscomehome.org this site is focused on bring those who left the Church or those from other Christian faiths to a better understanding of the teachings.  It has the goal of bringing people into the Church, I don't know if that is a possibility with you or not, but it has a pretty good frequently asked questions section.

Peace,
Adam

Her to me #2

Hello,
Your answers have definitely given me a better understanding of the Catholic faith so I appreciate you taking the time to answer them!  The website was very helpful as well. Thank you for the scriptural basis-I now have a clear picture of where the catholic beliefs come from, especially the role of Mary. There are only 2-3 more questions that I have.  What are catholics' beliefs on believers performing miracles/healings today?  What do they believe the role of the Holy Spirit is in our daily lives?  On a more personal note, what does your relationship with God look like (quiet time, prayer life, etc. )  I promise, those will be the last of my questions!  No need to feel rushed in answering the questions-I understand that you're busy with your class obligations.

Thanks!

Me to her #2 Reply

Feel free to ask more questions, I enjoy answering peoples questions, it helps me get things ever more clearer in my mind every time I do so.  I am glad that the website was helpful.  I wouldn't imagine giving information like that without the scriptural references (although I don't often cite book chapter and verse unless you want me to).  Now onto the questions here.

No believer can perform miracles themselves.  All miracles are acts of God.  God may and does work through His believers in this regard.  As Catholics we put a great deal of emphasis on science as a gift from God to help us understand and better serve the world, but there are many areas that He gets involved and will go against science to help us out.  If our prayers line up with His will it is very easy to see miracles happening often.  Many of these are small miracles while others are bigger.  We wouldn't give the credit for a miracle to a believer, but to God working through them.  This applies both to believers still alive on earth and those living in Heaven.  The definition of a canonized Saint is someone that we are sure is in Heaven with God, but they are still simply a believer.  When someone says that they were healed through their prayers "to" St. so-and-so it is simply a way of saying that we asked that St. to pray for us and God worked a miracle.

The Holy Spirit is very, very important in the Catholic Church.  In fact, the feast of Pentecost is considered the birthday of the Church (Pentecost is the celebration of the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles to guide them in their ministry)  We believe that the Holy Spirit is involved in our understanding and growth.  Most Catholics ask for the Spirit to be with them when reading scriptures since it was the Spirit who gave the authors their inspiration.  As a future priest I will be asking the Spirit to guide my ministry to the people at all times.  We see the Sacrament of Confirmation as a Holy Spirit sacrament in the growth of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in promoting and defending the faith.

As for my personal relationship with God.  All of us are to be constantly growing in our relationship with God.  As Catholics we see this as a life long process.  Our faith and relationship with God should be (and for me is) centered around the Eucharist.  The Eucharist is the true presence of Christ in communion.  When we receive communion we are receiving the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ into us as He instructed at the last supper.  Christ is everywhere but in a special way is present in the Eucharist both during Mass and when it is reserved in the tabernacle.  (The tabernacle is the place where we place consecrated hosts for times when the sacrament is needed for those who are unable to attend Mass such as the homebound or the sick.)  So I spend time every day just saying prayers in front of the tabernacle since Jesus is there in such a special way.  I of course go to Mass every day to receive the Eucharist and be fulfilled by the Word that is part of the Mass.  I pray at all times, sometimes these are formalized traditional prayers and other times it is just something that the Spirit moves me to make up as I go.  In my previous career I was a forester so I see God's work in all of His creation so I spend a lot of time praying outdoors too.  I also have a book called the liturgy of hours which is a set of prescribed prayers to be prayed at five times during the day, this is required of priests and religious (nuns and brothers) and a good practice for me as a seminarian to get into.  This is something that is growing among the laity, but probably most Catholics that you would ask wouldn't be familiar with it... it just isn't out there as much.  I also am a very visual person so I use icons and statues to point me to God.  Many of these are of different biblical stories which is obvious how they point to God.  For a protestant you may not as easily understand the statues to the Saints, but these are all tools to guide us to God.  When I see a statue of St. Francis I can think of the mission that God gave him to rebuild His Church and so on.  I also try to spend time in the scriptures every day.  There are prescribed readings every day for Mass and I like to take these to my personal prayer as well as listening to them at Mass and listening to the Homily (sermon) during Mass.  I can find these every day either in a book that I have or at http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings  

I hope that this answers today's questions.  Feel free to ask more.  I don't check this e-mail account a lot unless I am expecting something so please be patient if you send and future questions.

Peace,

Adam

Chicago's transitional Deacon Ordination and more 2011

Hello everyone,


It has been a joyful week here at the seminary since I last posted. On Saturday 11 men were Ordained to the Deaconate. Ten of them are going to be Chicago priests and one is going to be a Springfield priest.



When we talk about Deacon Ordinations we often use either the word permanent or transitional. In reality the office of Deacon is the same, the Ontological changes (changes in being, mark on the soul, etc…) are the same. A permanent Deacon is a man who feels that this is where they are called to in life while a transitional Deacon is a man who is preparing for the priesthood. Canon Law requires that a man be a Deacon at least 6 months before being ordained a Priest is why there is this step. I am not entirely sure on all of the theological reasons for this. So now you know what we are talking about when we use the terms transitional or permanent Deacon. It is a blessing for these two Diocese to take this next step towards having them as priests.



The man from the Springfield Diocese is a wonderful story. In short he was a minister in a protestant denomination (I’m not sure which one) who over time and study realized the truth of the Catholic faith and converted to Catholicism. One interesting thing in his situation is that while most priests are not allowed to marry, if someone was ordained in certain protestant churches they can get a dispensation from the Vatican to later be ordained as Catholic priests despite being married. This is only possible if they were not raised Catholic, so it isn’t an end around that a man could go and be ordained in one of these Churches, get married, and then come back to Catholic…



Other than the Ordination we are all busy finishing up projects, papers, and studying for finals which are next week. All five of my finals are Thursday and Friday, the 10th and 11th of November. After that I get another two weeks off. I am sure I will write about that in a later post.



Today I found out some wonderful news (wonderful for me). I will be able to be done with Greek after this quarter. I am enjoying the class, but my brain just doesn’t seem to work in the detail needed for language studies, at least a language that can’t be used in modern conversation. I seem to understand the concepts that are being taught, however, I am still struggling to memorize the things that we were supposed to memorize the first week. This isn’t due to me not working on it. I am studying for Greek between 12 and 16 hours a week at least, plus class time. I just can’t seem to memorize the details. I think that the professor can tell that I am indeed working and will allow me a passing grade in the course, even if my scores don’t justify it. The reason that I am dropping for next quart isn’t the work load, I wouldn’t mind that amount of work if I was getting the material and at least partially able to keep up, but now it seems pointless to continue when I am not able to apply what I am learning. It looks like I will be taking a course on the Gospel of Mark instead, something that will be very useful in the future.



Well, I should probably get back to homework, so this is a long enough post. I will try to write another short post next week.



Peace,

Adam