Fall semeseter 2012-2013 course summary

Hello again,

So, I am starting to settle in here at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.  In many ways it has been an easy adjustment since I was already at a major seminary when I was at Mundelein, but there are enough differences that there have been some things that take a bit of getting used to. 

Most major seminaries (maybe all of them) in the country have guys in theology wearing clerical clothing, the shirts with the funny collars.  This is something I expected, but it does take some getting used to.  At Mundelein, for the most part evenings were casual, out of dress code.  But here we have to be in dress code through supper.  This is a minor thing, but a takes a bit getting used to. 

The course work here is pretty good.  It seems to me that the workload is a little lighter due to being on the semester system instead of the quarter system that Mundelein had.  I have some pretty good classes and enjoy my instructors well enough.  At Mundelein I gave a rundown of which courses I had each quarter, so I’ll do that here by semester, I will start at the beginning of Monday and go until I get through all of the courses, so that is the only order I am using.

My first class on Mondays is Communication Skills for Ministry.  I didn’t really know what that was when it showed up on my schedule.  It is pretty much so far a music course, but it seems like the instructors are teaching, rather than just having us sing as I complained about in the choir class at Mundelein.  I think that this course will also have us practice reading for Mass.  This is important because later this year we will be installed as lectors, and surprisingly few of us have ever read at Mass. 

The second class I have on Monday’s is History of Christian Tradition I.  We have already covered a bit of the pre-Christian era and will be going through the ideas of where Christianity comes from and its development all the way to the Renaissance time frame. 

My last class on Monday is called Supervised Ministry: Mission of a Parish.  This class ties in with the teaching parish program which I will mention later but is kind of basically to give us an idea of what a parish is about from the intent of the Church through Canon Law and such, even if that isn’t what we always see.  It is a once a week course so kind of just an overview.

Tuesdays I pick up the other three classes that I have this semester, obviously most of these meet twice a week, but I don’t figure you need my whole schedule.  My first class on Tuesdays is Introduction to Sacraments and Worship.  I think that the title is pretty self-explanatory in that we will begin to learn what should be going on in the liturgy and why.  We will also be touching both on the theology behind the sacraments and the way that they happen, stuff that will obviously be expanded on in later years.

The second class I have on Tuesdays is called Old Testament: Pentateuch.  The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible, what Jewish people refer to as the Torah.  Since this is our first scripture class here at St. Paul Seminary we are starting out learning about different approaches to reading and interpreting scripture and then we will be applying them to the Pentateuch and then a bit more of the Old Testament.  The most common method of biblical interpretation for Catholics is called the Historical-Critical Method.  In this method quite a bit of time is spent looking at old copies of the texts to figure out which are closest to what the inspired authors intended, then looking at what was going on at the time and the literary genre the text is written in and then figuring out how it can be applied today.

The last of my classes this semester is Foundational Theology.  This is a course that in the past might have been called Fundamental Theology or even Systematic Theology.  It is a course about theology, what it is, what purpose does it have, how do we do theology and how do we use it.  This course is also going to  begin to get us doing theology.

In addition to these courses we have morning prayer, Mass, and evening prayer every day.  We also have a formation session as a class on Wednesday mornings.  We each meet with our spiritual directors and formation directors every two to three weeks.  So again, seminary is very busy.

One really cool thing that St. Paul Seminary does is that they have what is called the Teaching Parish Program.  Each seminarian is assigned a teaching parish that they are to go to for all four years.  If a guy’s teaching parish is less than 60 miles away they go one Sunday a month and every Wednesday, if, like mine it is over 60 miles we are required to go for one full weekend and one Wednesday a month, although I will probably do a little more since I like the opportunity to be at the parish.  Each semester has different goals for the teaching parish program, this semester for my class is simply to get to know the pastor and the parish. 

Well, That is probably a long enough update.  Again I ask for your prayers and assure you of mine.

Peace,

Adam

Orientation at St. Paul Seminary

Hello again,

My first class at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity is today.  I have been here about a week for orientation and am getting pretty settled in.  I have had a lot of people ask me to compare the differences between here and Mundelein Seminary where I was at.  There are a lot of small differences, but on the whole there is a lot that is the same.  It is a major seminary still where men participate in their final years of formation for the priesthood.  That is the essential and that is the same at both places.  I really want to hold off on comparisons until I’ve been here a bit longer.

Orientation was great.  It was a combination between getting to know what we needed to live here and growing fellowship amongst the new guys.  The orientation included guys starting in pre-theology and starting in theology.  Here they didn’t divide us apart as much as they had at Mundelein so it took quite a while to get a feel for who is in my class in first theology and who is in pre-theology. 

We did a lot of social activities, spiritual activities and generally getting us the information we needed.  For social activities we have had a pizza party, watched a movie, gone on a dinner cruise on the St. Croix River, among other things.  Spiritually we have of course had Mass every day and liturgy of hours.  We also did a one day pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, to spend time praying together away from the seminary.  It has been a fun week, but so much more than that.  The guys that I am with are great.

I know this is a lot of generalities, but I wanted to give just a quick update of what I’ve been up to here.

Peace,

Adam

Discernment update after two years in seminary

Hello again,

I know that I have not updated how my discernment of my vocation has been going in a long time.  Wow, with that starting line, let me tell you right away that I am staying in seminary, so you don’t think that I am saying that I am leaving seminary based on that line.  All of what I’m telling you in this has been discussed with my spiritual director at Mundelein, along with other priests and seminarians that I trust.

It has now been over two years since I first showed up at Mundelein Seminary.  Tomorrow I move to St. Paul seminary.  At Mundelein I completed the pre-theology program and in St. Paul I will be beginning the Theology program.  This is a big transition that I am excited for and that I think will help me to figure out in life if the life of a priest is what I’m called to, a change of perspective often seems to help me clarify things.

This past year has been a great struggle for me as discernment is concerned.  Towards the end of my first year of pre-theology I began to seriously wonder if I was doing the right thing being in seminary.  However, I knew at that time that I had to keep moving forward in seminary because I did have enough thought that I was called to be a priest so I wanted to keep giving that to God. 

Over the summer after first pre-theology I was at the Boy Scout camp as you know if you’ve read this.  I thought that the time at scout camp would be good for me to discern, I thought that either I would love the ministry side completely or I would feel the great desire to be a dad to a kid like what I was dealing with.  The problem was that I felt both, so it wasn’t very helpful for discernment.

Returning to Mundelein for second pre-theology I had some doubts still, but had enough thought that I was called to being a priest that I felt the need to continue on discerning.  This was really challenged when I soon found out that the job I had previously dreamed of had opened up.  I was really tempted to apply for that job, but I knew that I owed it to God to stay in seminary and continue to discern my vocation in life.

During second pre-theology I continued to discern through prayer, thinking, and talking to priests and seminarians I trust.  Often I felt like I was spinning my wheels in this discernment, I wasn’t getting much clarity one way or the other.  I then began to look at myself quite a bit.  I looked at my love for the Eucharist… as I examined it through prayer I knew for sure that I love the whole Eucharist, but I am especially drawn to the Precious Blood.  I am not sure if this truly means anything, but I spent a lot of time praying about that.  I was reminded of a permanent Deacon told me one time about his love for the Precious Blood and how the Deacon is the official minister of the cup. 

This thinking opened up a whole new line of thought, maybe I am called to the permanent Deaconate after marriage.  This took a lot of my discernment.  I know some people who say that the permanent Deaconate is a “best of both worlds” thing, but I see it as truly a separate vocation and calling.  I hadn’t thought of the permanent Deaconate in a long time in regards to myself.  So now I was trying to discern between the three vocations that hold attraction to me at all: Priesthood, Permanent Deaconate after marriage, and marriage without Deaconate.  I don’t see any sign that I feel called to the single life as a vocation, so I really don’t think of that much.

As the year went on with my discussions with others I tried to figure this out, I still felt that there was enough of a chance that I’m called to the priesthood that I want to continue in seminary, at least for now, maybe all the way to Ordination. 

Discernment is part of why I am very excited about the transfer to St. Paul Seminary.  I think that a change in setting and people will help me to clarify what God is calling me to.  I am so excited about that. 

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would always be honest with anyone who reads it about where I was at discernment wise so that is why I wrote this.  I ask you all to keep me, and all those discerning God’s call in their life in your prayers.

On another note, I wrote this post over a long period of time, so I hope that the choppiness of it doesn’t matter too much.

Peace,

Adam

Tuesday through Thursday of my experience with Catholic Relief Services in Burkina Faso

Hello again,

Summer is beginning to wind down so I thought that I would write a post to finish out the trip to Burkina Faso.  Part of the reason that I was trying to write all of this was of course to share this information with you, about the wonderful work that CRS does, but also to remember it for myself.  I have my journal that I wrote on the trip, and the notes from the visits, so I am able to use this and my memory from the trip I think that I can still do it justice… as much as I ever have.  I will try to finish out the trip in this post, but we’ll see how long it gets.

Tuesday started out a little bit of a tourist day, but any tourism in a situation like this is somewhat cultural.  We went to a site called Laongo.  Laongo is an outdoor art park.  It had many sculptures of both rock and metal.  The rock carvings tended to be in granite.  This is a place for both Burkinabe and foreign artists to display their work.  The main themes running through this park were the ideas of the difficult struggles of life, but also the hope for the future.  I can remember one sculpture in particular; I’ll see if I can figure out how to upload a picture to the blog.  This was a sculpture in granite that had a human face carved in it with a large rock on top of the head.  Once you looked closely, you noticed that one side of the face was a woman and the other was a man.  The heavy part of the rock on the head was over the woman, the rock symbolized that all Burkinabe seem to have the weight of the world on them, but it seems to be pushing down on the women even more.  A constant theme that I saw during the trip was the amazing power of the Burkinabe women, they seemed to support the families the most and have the most responsibility thrust onto them.

We left Laongo and went to visit a seminary in Ouagadougou.  This is their theology seminary, the last four years before priesthood.  It served both Burkina Faso and some other nearby countries.  The set-up there is a little different; the seminarians are responsible to cover their own expenses for the most part.  It costs about $1500.00 per seminarian per year, a huge burden remembering that the average income in Burkina Faso is $345.00 per person per year.  I don’t know how they manage; with the language barrier it was difficult to get an answer to that.  For the most part the seminarians seemed as I had expected, fun loving men who love what they are doing.  When we had a talk with them through translators I saw them coming in and as with anywhere else they looked for their friends to sit with, seminarians aren’t that different from everyone else.

Following the seminary we visited a warehouse where CRS keeps the food that it distributes.  It has a large warehouse which holds 6000 metric tons of food and two smaller ones that each holds 1000 metric tons.  The warehouse is restocked twice a year with about 80 trucks to a shipment.  There are many of the things that you would expect stored there, rice, soy products, lentils, corn, and oil for cooking.  It all has to be stored in the warehouse like this so that it doesn’t go bad in the weather, so it is taken out to the people from here as the programs allow.  One thing that was pretty cool about that warehouse was how tall the stacks of food were and that all the bags were carried in and stacked by hand, large bags are 50 Kg (110 lbs) and small ones 25 Kg (55 lbs) and the staff stacks them all very high and very neatly.  It is great that they have this facility in case there is ever a disruption to one of the shipments they could go on for a little while to continue serving.

That evening we had the opportunity to visit with the Archbishop of Ouagadougou for a bit.  He gave us a history of the Catholic Church in Burkina Faso and was generally a pleasant Man to visit with.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday; I couldn’t help thinking how appropriate it was to be in Burkina Faso at that time.  I somewhat associated it with them living in an ongoing Lent.  What I mean by this is that the Burkinabe live with challenges and struggles all the time, but they also have a joyful hope for what is to come, hopefully for them, assuredly for all during Lent.

On Wednesday we spent some time visiting an orphanage in Ouagadougou named Kizito Center.  Kizito Center was founded in 1931.  It started as simply an orphanage, but now also cares for children who are abandoned and some other social reasons that they can’t be cared for by their family.  Kizito does not receive any state support; it is run by the Archdiocese and tries to get some funding elsewhere as it can.  From time to time CRS helps out too, but that depends on their resources as to how much.  We gave them one of the sheep which we had been given during the trip.  Kizito has a high rate of the children being adopted, most locally but some international adoptions.

Wednesday evening we had a meeting with the Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference.  For those unfamiliar with the Catholic verbiage there this is the man who runs the day to day operations for the organization that unites the Bishops in the area, this conference includes Burkina Faso and also neighboring Niger.  He told us that the Church in Burkina Faso is growing and that they have just created two new dioceses in the area.  One thing that he stressed quite heavy was the desire that they have for a relationship with the Church in the rest of the world.  They realize that at this point they need aide from the rest of the world, but they hope someday to be even more partners in faith. 

The Secretary General talked quite a bit about the relationship that the Catholics have with others in the area.  Muslims are the dominate group in the country and they have a good working relationship with them.  One of the reasons for this is the Catholic aide organizations that serve people of all faiths.  He told us that this has been noticed and appreciated and that the Muslim groups are getting better about doing the same, and even working together.  We were told that there is actually a better working relationship with the Catholics and Muslims than with the Catholics and Evangelical Protestant Christians.  The Evangelicals tend to only serve those who come to their churches and that has caused some animosity among both Catholics and Muslims towards them.

Thursday was a day of reflection and saying goodbye before we left.  We had a recap meeting at the CRS headquarters and it was great to summarize what we had done and say goodbye to the wonderful staff of CRS Burkina Faso.

That is the end of the summary of my experience with Catholic Relief Services in Burkina Faso, thank you for reading.  If you feel so moved I encourage you to support CRS at www.CRS.org

PEACE,

Adam

Summer update 2012

Wow, I just looked and it has been about two months since I have posted.  I have thought about putting up a post many times but I want to write a good one and I just haven’t been able to find the time with the way that my summer has been going.  So I decided just now that I will sit down and pound out a quick post to have something new up here.  I am still hoping to find time to finish writing about my wonderful experience with CRS in Burkina Faso this past February, but that has not happened yet.  It will and I will make sure to make those posts good.  Please continue to pray for the people of Burkina Faso as they are indeed enduring a drought and food crisis as predicted.  If you hear about the food crisis in the Sahel that is a region of which Burkina Faso is just a part.

So, since my last post I had a couple of weeks that were supposedly down time, catching up on a lot of little things is more accurately what I did.  I then had my interview with St. Paul seminary.  It was a much simpler process there than when I went to interview at Mundelein.  At Mundelein there had been 3 separate interviews with 2 people each.  The interview in St. Paul was one interview with 3 people and took about an hour.  Sitting in was the vice rector, a member of the academic faculty, and a member of the spiritual faculty.  The interview went well, and before I left I was told that they were going to recommend me for acceptance.  I received my acceptance letter a few weeks later.

After my interview I went up to northern Minnesota to visit relatives and relax a bit.  It was a great trip which I was able to end by going over to Superior Wisconsin to see a friend ordained as a priest.  After returning from that trip I spent a bit more time getting little things that I had been delaying done and then we had to get going with staff week at the Boy Scout camp.  It was a great staff week, we had about half the staff as new staff members and the rest were returning from the past.  Because this is my second year here I had a better clue what is going on and was able to have more fun with it. 

Scouts started coming right after the staff week.  It has been an interesting year for the homesick aspect that I deal with.  The first week was my busiest week and then the second week was my least busy week for dealing with homesickness.  I think it was because the first week had bad weather at the beginning of the week that a lot of the guys started out not liking it here.

Since then my weeks have been about normal.  We had the week of the Independence Day off.  I started the week by going to the wedding for one of my best friends.  It was a very special occasion.  I was so happy for her.  It was on my birthday and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my birthday than to see a dear friend get married.   After that I drove to Stevens Point where I spent the week off.  I had a few people ask if turning thirty was hard on me, it wasn’t, just another year. 

The week in Stevens Point was terribly hot, so I didn’t do as much outdoors as I had wanted to, but I found plenty to keep me busy.  I ended the week by spending a bit of time with the priest that Baptized me.  He is assigned to our Diocesan mission parish in Bolivia, but was home for a while and subbed in at Newman.  I was able to talk to him some and go to dinner with him, so that was nice.

I am now back at camp and have a couple of weeks left.  We are done at the end of July and then in early August I will go to Indiana for a wedding of another of my best friends (I have a lot of really close friends that I just consider them all best friends)  I am the best man in this wedding, so that is pretty exciting.  I will then have a bit of down time in August before going up to St. Paul Seminary on August 30^th.

Well, that is a brief catch up, sorry it has been so long, and I will try to write again sooner.

Peace,

Adam

Monday of my experience in Burkina Faso with CRS Globalfellows

Hello again,

As the quarter (and the school year) winds down I have a bit of time to post more about the wonderful experience I had with Catholic Relief Services in Burkina Faso.  Since I have noticed a bit of new activity on here I will step back a moment for those who haven’t been reading about this trip since I started posting on it.  This experience that I had was with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program called Globalfellows.  Globalfellows is a program where CRS takes priests, deacons, and seminarians to witness their great works in action.  They do this so that these men can come back to the United States to tell about what they saw and the great work that CRS is doing, hopefully educating people to the need and the ability to help through supporting CRS.  They say that this is more of a “come and see” than a “come and do” so that we can have a better overall knowledge of the programs in a specific place to be able to share.  We had Mass every day but I don’t include a lot of details about that or our prayer time since it was often just our group participating, we had three priests along, plus myself and 5 other seminarians in addition to two staff members from CRS in the US.

My last post of the trip concluded Sunday and our experience at the local parish.  Sunday night we were back in the Pacific Hotel in Kaya. 

Our first project to visit was a food distribution site and nutrition program.  This is a program that CRS administers, but much of the food and I think much of the funding comes from  USAID (United States Agency for International Development) an international aid program of the US government.  USAID relies on other aid groups to do much of the on the ground work for the good work that it does, in Burkina Faso and many other places CRS is the main organization that they work with.  This allows CRS to do farm more than it would be able to on its own, but also includes some restrictions on what they do. 

This food distribution site was in a place called Taparko by the best that I could figure out.  It is one of the many villages over a great deal of area that makes up what is often referred to as Tougouri, the main village where the parish I had stayed at for the weekend was.  One of the restrictions that USAID has with the food distribution program in Taparko is that it has to focus on pregnant women and mothers who are still nursing their babies.  There simply isn’t enough food to distribute to all so they do the best that they can.  Each woman that qualifies gets a ration according to how they qualify.  If they are pregnant or nursing they are given 6 kg of a corn soy blend flour type mix, they are also given 0.65 liters of oil to use in cooking.  If they qualify for this and have small children they are given a little bit more of each of these and 2 kg of lentils.   All for the month. (The numbers I say are the best I could figure out, I was a bit confused as we were being told as to what exactly was being talked about)

This site also helps teach women skills to raise their children in a healthier manor.  One of the biggest issues is that they don’t normally breast feed children in the culture.  I don’t know the reasoning behind this, but it isn’t done.  They switch the babies to solid food or mixes far sooner than is good for them.  This program is a way to encourage breastfeeding to at least six months old to give the child a healthier start.  There is also access to a nurse and some medical attention that is provided at the nutrition site since most of the people in these areas don’t get medical care often.

We had some time to talk to people who were receiving food in addition to helping with the distribution (I say helping, but we were far slower than those who normally do the distribution).  I spoke with one woman named Sonde who had 3 children but one had died.  Sonde was pregnant again and was very thankful both for the food and the education which would help her to provide a better chance for her coming child.  As with most of the women, Sonde said that the ration given under the restrictions wouldn’t last the whole month, not just for her but she used it to help provide for her whole family.  She appreciated the food because even though it didn’t last the whole time (she said about 5-7 days was all she got out of it) it did help her family to stretch out what they could get on their own and had additional nutrition compared to that food.

After we went away from Taparko we went to see a BRIGHT school.  I don’t remember right now what that acronym stands for, and I don’t have my materials around to look it up.  BRIGHT schools are built in two phases and include both classrooms and places for teachers to live.  The first phase is for grades 1-3 and the second 4-6.  There is only one class per grade but that seems like enough for these villages.  We had some trouble getting to the site in the bus because the road was washed out, but eventually we made it. 

We pulled up in the bus and I looked out the window to see a couple of shrubs dancing.  As I have said, many of the sites we visited greeted us with dancing and song, but this was the first one with what I think of as traditional costumes.  They were costumes with long strands of fur or hair or something swinging around.  They were brown and black.  The dancers were wearing the traditional wooden masks that were brightly painted, the kind of thing you see in museums.  They also had long poles on the top of their heads with these strands on them that they swung around, sometimes at people, while they were dancing.  These were traditional costumes of the Gormanchi tribe.

The whole village was out to greet us again.  We walked around the school briefly and then had a sit down session with the village elders and those who worked at the school.  The chief of the village was too old to come out, but his representative was there to say thank you to us for what CRS has done for the village.  It was wonderful to hear about the appreciation for the school.  Classes were taught in French as best as I could tell, since that is the official language of Burkina Faso.  I think there was some teaching in Morae, the most common spoken language, but I wasn’t sure of that.  The classes were pretty evenly split between boys and girls but heavier on the side of girls attending school, not fitting with the stereotype that we have.

I was interested to hear about the change in the culture of emphasis on schooling for the children.  I don’t know how long the school had been there but it seems that the parents and other members of the village saw a great deal of importance in education, this is a big step in the culture.  We were told that even in places where schools are available most people don’t send their children to school.  They are in need of the child’s contribution to supporting the family through work in the fields and around the house.  To help with this CRS has figured out that you increase the education if they provide what is called “take-home rations”  What this is is that if a child has at least 90% attendance for the month they will receive a certain amount of food to take home for the family.  In this way the children are both getting an education and helping to support the family. 

The school also tries to provide the kids with lunch, but they don’t always have enough food for this.  Amazingly, the villagers had gathered together and donated food to the school so that the kids could get a meal while being educated.  Looking around I realized that the donated food probably meant that those who had donated it skipped a few meals to be able to provide, what a wonderful display of love for the children and the importance of education.  Villagers told us that they hoped to get a high school someday for the kids, or toys for the pre-school area but in general they were simply thankful for what they had.

After the visit to the BRIGHT school we went to have lunch with CRS field workers and others in the area.  There were some of the priests from the nearby villages that came out to this picnic lunch.  One of them was Father Samuel, the priest from Tougouri.  When I had packed for this trip I packed with the thought that I would leave some of my cloths behind as gifts for the people.  I figured that Father Samuel would be the one to get them after I had spoken to him when we were at his parish.  His face just lit up when the translator explained that they were for him.  Since I am much bigger than him I assume that he made some of the cloths work for him, but probably gave most of them to his parishioners whom they might fit better.  It was a great feeling seeing the joy on his face at receiving these cloths.

Well, that pretty much finishes Monday of this trip since we had a long bus ride back to Ouagadougou. 

Peace,

Adam  

Spring quarter 2011-2012

Hello again,

I realized that since I have been posting on my wonderful experience with Catholic Relief Services I have not posted my customary post about what classes I will be taking this quarter.  I think that since the quarter is more than halfway over I should do that.  I will get back to posting about the trip in my next post.

The spring quarter of second year pre-theology is a very heavy course load.  We joke that it is designed to weed guys out before they start theology, but I think that it just falls that way in the natural progression of classes.  I have six classes while still keeping up with all the other stuff around here, such as prayer time, Mass, formation sessions, formation advising meetings, spiritual direction meetings, field education, and whatever else comes up.  I am continuing to work at the library as well.  I am writing this without my schedule handy, so I may get a title wrong, but it will be close.

My first class is the “Study of Church and Religion.”  In this class we are going slowly through a theological book that talks about the development of understanding on the topic of “Is there Salvation outside the Church.”  This is really teaching us to look at the ways that doctrines have been developed as we go into our theological studies next year.  It is an interesting class to see how there has been advances in a doctrine and setbacks.  The question of the book is interesting as well, but you can ask me about that another time if you’d like.

My second class is Epistemology.  Epistemology is the branch of philosophy the tries to understand learning.  We are reading mostly modern and contemporary philosophers on the subject, since it hasn’t been addressed in a long time.  We did look briefly at ancient philosophers to see what they thought.  The topic doesn’t interest me a whole lot, but I really like the professor, who I’ve had before, and it is kind of fun debating some of the philosophers that we read, some of their ideas seem to be way out there on the logic spectrum.

The third class that I have is contemporary philosophy.  This could also be called “post-modern” in philosophical talk.  This is the era that we live in, and we are looking at the way that people are thinking now.  It is pretty fun to see how the lines that these thinkers expand on play out in every day thought.  Much of this is answering the questions that were raised during modern philosophy, so it gives us great insight into those around us.

Class number four is Introduction to the Devout Life.  The course is titled based on the book of the same title from St. Francis de Sales.  This course seems to be a way of helping us to learn how to better participate in spiritual reading.  How to take a work and see how it can guide our faith.  The first book we read was C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.  This work, written from the perspective of a lead tempter for the Devil gives great insight into the ways that all people, us included, slip in doing what is write.  We are now into the title book and going through that slowly to glean the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales in spiritual growth.

My fifth class is Introduction to Mariology.  This is obviously a beginner’s course on the study of Mary.  Mariology is an important part of the Catholic tradition, not for itself, but in how it links to Christology and Ecclesiology (study of the Church).  Mariology helps with understanding and guiding us towards her Son.

The last class that I have this quarter is Philosophy Seminary II.  This is kind of a capstone class for the two years of pre-theology.  We spend the first couple of weeks looking at philosophical topics that hadn’t fit into any of our other classes.  Now we are each doing a 40 minute presentation on a topic of our choice that we wish to expand on from the past two years.  It is a lot of fun seeing the different topics that guys have chosen to present on.

So, that is what I’ve been doing for classes.  It is enjoyable, but as always very busy. 

I have been asked by a few people if I have heard anything on the potential transfer to St. Paul Seminary.  I have not.  They told me that they don’t start interviews until May, so I’m not surprised by that.  I am operating under the assumption that I will be transferring.

Peace,

Adam

Saturday afternoon and Sunday of the experience in Burkina Faso with Catholic Relief Services

Hello again,

Happy Easter to everyone.  I was away doing stuff at the parish for Holy Week and had a great time.  Now back to the trip to Burkina Faso with Catholic Relief Services.

After leaving the SILC project we went to see a community garden.  Not just a community garden, as the whole place is a farm during the rainy season.  We went to see an area where CRS had helped put in irrigation for a small patch.  This area was about 8.5 Hectare and included 170 plots given to different families.  Burkina Faso has only about a 3 month rainy period with the rest of the year being dry and inhabitable to crops.  This project allows the Burkinabe to grow a small amount of crops year round.  With this they are able to help themselves, rather than needing handouts during the year. 

One thing that people told us that this irrigation project really helps with is to keep the families together.  Often time when the dry season hits some members of the family have to travel to other parts of the country or other countries to find work to help them get through.  With this project they are able to stay together and be a family.  After seeing the community garden we split into small groups and went to various house areas where people live.  Many times the houses in Burkina Faso are little compound like structures, but they are where everything happens.  Livestock wanders in and out and food is stored in the same area where they have a small spot for sleeping or cooking.  I went with a couple others to the house of Kouka Oumenga.  Kouka is a widow with 8 children.  She works hard and 6 of her children are able to be in school studying, she is unable to afford school for the youngest two at this time.  The area where Kouka lives doesn’t have its own school yet, she has to send her kids away and this is very expensive for them.

We left the community garden and our group split into three to stay at various parishes for the night.  I stayed in the village of Tougouri.  Tougouri is actually 42 small villages with the one main village where the church is.  28 of the villages have Catholics in them, but there are only two priests to serve them all.  They have a great program of Catechists to serve these outlying communities and the priests go around as they can to offer Mass.

Father Samuel, the pastor of the parish was there, the other priest had to go into Kaya for a meeting so we didn’t get to meet him.  Fr. Samuel is a man with a strong, calming presence.  He seems truly concerned for the people around him and gives whatever he can to help them.  He told us a story of spending his own money to drive people to the hospital when he can, a huge sacrifice since he doesn’t get much of a salary and the hospital is a long ways away.

Father Samuel told us that he feels that the social and human development projects that his parish has are a strong part of evangelization.  People have to be fed physically before they can be fed spiritually.  While at his site we were able to see some of these projects.  He runs a center for children that have been rescued from working the gold mines.  The gold mines are dangerous jobs and children work them almost as slave labor.  The center that Fr. Samuel runs helps these children get an education and skills training.  They are trained in sewing, or mechanics, or masonry, or woodworking.  We may balk a little bit at the age that these children are working these jobs, but these are skills that will support them for a lifetime and they would be working in the dangers of the gold mines without this.  The parish also has a warehouse where it distributes food when it can get food in.  They even have their own irrigation project of a sort.

Father Samuel also runs a center to train the catechists to work in the rural villages, this is a long training process and those going through it support themselves by growing crops and doing other jobs as they can. 

I really enjoyed my time in Tougouri.  The people were so welcoming and it was great to be able to walk around and observe some of the normal daily life, rather than the big, planned receptions we had been shown at other places.  On Saturday night we were even able to look in on a wedding reception that was going on.  The wedding receptions aren’t that different than here, they are playing music and dancing and simply celebrating.

On Sunday morning we attended Mass at the church in Tougouri.  The place was packed, and people were sitting outside looking in.  I wouldn’t even attempt to guess how many people there were, but it was well over 500 and maybe over 1000.  There were many great things about Mass.  The first thing that really hit me was the collection taken up.  Rather than passing a basket as is normally done in the States they place baskets at the front for people to come up and put in an offering.  EVERYONE came up and gave something.  I am sure that what they gave caused them to miss a meal or two, but they saw the importance of giving to the community.  I went up near the end and glanced in the basket, it was all small coins except for one bill of 500 xfa (about a dollar).  I put in a 10,000 xfa (20 dollars) and felt like I had given far less since I wouldn’t go hungry because of it.  I felt some sadness when I thought about that and one of the stories that Jesus tells in the Gospel of rich people putting in out the excess and a poor old lady putting in out of her need.

The Mass was incredible with the music and singing too.  They even used liturgical dancers to emphasize the importance at certain parts.  Then we got to the celebration of the Eucharist.  I wondered how that would go and was amazed beyond what I expected.  During the prayer of consecration the people were yelling with joy and then as the priest genuflected they were stone silent in reverence, they truly get the meaning of the Eucharist.

We spent Sunday looking around the village and spending time with Father Samuel.  We then went back to our hotel but I was forever changed for this experience. 

I will write about more experiences on the trip later.

Peace,

Adam

Friday afternoon and Saturday morning of my trip to Burkina Faso with Catholic Relieve Services

Hello again,

I’ll get right into continuing on with the description of my trip with Catholic Relief Services to Burkina Faso.  In my last post I covered the orientation, the arrival in Burkina Faso, and meeting with the staff at CRS Burkina Faso headquarters.  This only got me to the middle of the first day.

After the meeting at the CRS Burkina Faso headquarters and having lunch we went to our first site visit.  The site that we visited is one that sadly doesn’t get as much support as CRS would like to give.  The sad fact is that CRS doesn’t have enough money to help everyone that they would like to and they have to prioritize as best as they can.  We had a couple of the CRS Burkina Faso staff with us when we went to this site and I could see that they wished they could do more, but they just couldn’t.

The site was the Delwende center.  This is the center that I mentioned in a previous post that I would be going to.  This center is a refuge for women who have been accused of witchcraft. 

A little bit on the culture of Burkina Faso is in order.  The best statistics I can find put the religions in the country as being about 50-60% Muslim, about 15-20% Catholic, about 5% Protestant and the rest being part of the traditional animist belief systems.  However, there is a saying that in Burkina Faso 50% are Muslim, 50% are Christian and 100% are animists.  Despite their being part of more formalized faiths most Burkinabe still hold some of their traditional beliefs.  This is in part because for them these beliefs explain certain things in a way that is easier to understand, and the formalized religions use a bit more modern understanding of the world within their system.

One of the areas that the animist religions show through is in the understanding of early deaths.  Despite its sad commonality there is a struggle for the Burkinabe to understand when a child dies.  They look to their traditional beliefs which say that the soul of the child must have been stolen by a witch.  This is obviously more common in the rural areas and less so in the more developed cities.  When a child dies they look for the witch that must have stolen their soul.  Once an accusation is made it is assumed to be a true accusation.  Most of the time the accusation of being a witch falls on an older woman, typically either unmarried or widowed.  Most of the time this woman is childless, but occasionally she does have children of her own.

Once the woman is accused she is run out of the village with only what she has on her at the time.  Her house is burned down and she is not allowed back into the village.  Many of these women will die out in the bush; it is a very harsh climate.  A lucky few are able to find their way to a center that some charity runs for these women.  But even then their life is hard.  They have to deal with the fact that they have been exiled from what they knew.  They are not able to ever contact any family that they may have.  And they are looked at with suspicion even by those who are more educated in the society.

The centers scrape by on donations and limited income opportunities.  At the Delwende center they make thread out of cotton that they buy and they grow a garden, both to feed themselves and to sell the excess.  The Delwende center does have a nurse come in for healthcare, but with the age of these women it could never be enough.  As I said, CRS used to support the Delwende center to a great extent, however, as budgets are tightened and restrictions are placed on some donations they have had to cut back.  They still give what they can, but it would be so much better if they could do more.

At the Delwende center we met a German nun named Sr. Maria.  She has given 40 years of her life to the people of Burkina Faso and has been at the Delwende center for much of this time.  Sr. Maria was an example of love and self-giving, an amazing woman.  When she spoke to us she spoke of course of the need to provide essentials for these women, but was even more emphatic on the need to help educate the people of Burkina Faso so that this culture will not continue to harm these women in this way.  That was also the wish of those who were living at the Delwende center as best as I could tell.  The women living there don’t expect their lives to get much better, but they hope that something is changed so that others don’t have to go through this in the future.

After the Delwende center visit we had a couple of hours to go to get to the hotel that we were staying at for the night.  The next day was a great day of seeing what CRS does.  One thing to note is that while CRS of course does emergency relief and helps provide for immediate needs such as food and shelter, there are a lot of places where it focuses on development assistance, projects that will help the people to help themselves.  In Burkina Faso it does all of these.  I didn’t see any immediate emergency situation needs, but they are gearing up for that because towards the end of the last rainy season the rains didn’t come so the crops were significantly less, if not complete failures.  All the weather models show that a drought period is starting in that area so CRS is gearing up for that, above and beyond what they do all the time.  During my trip I witnessed more of the everyday things that they do.

One development project that I was very, very, very impressed with was what we went to visit the morning of our second full day in the country.  We were greeted as we arrived in the village by singing and dancing of what had to be most of the village.  They were excited to greet us, both simply for being strangers, of whom they are a welcoming people, and the fact that we were representing CRS.  In this village, named Retkuilga, they knew how much they had been helped by CRS and were very thankful.

In the village of Regkuilga we were visiting a SILC.  SILC stands for Savings and Internal Lending Community.  This is a project that CRS runs that has had great success and is very popular.  Word spreads about it and CRS gets requests to help set up SILCs in other places. 

A SILC is a microfinance operation, but not the microloans that you may be familiar with, where money comes from elsewhere and is paid back to elsewhere.  In a SILC there are between 10 and 30 members, most often women, but not always, and they meet every week.  They set an amount that each person will save each week, and then give loans out of that to members of the group that will help them to prosper, or at least have opportunities that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

There is so much more to the SILC.  Each group is run by its members.  CRS doesn’t provide any start-up funds, but what they do provide is a strong box, some locks, and the ledgers to keep track.  CRS also provides the format, and in the village a person trained to help guide the groups, there can be many groups in one village.  Each SILC runs for about 10 months, from the end of the rainy season to right before the next rainy season.  Any savings and interest is dispersed at the start of the next rainy season so that people can buy essentials, such as seeds, to help them make survive, and maybe make some money.

So, what happens is that each group sets the minimum amount to save each week, every member of the SILC has to be at the meeting each week.  There are three different locks on the strong box, the box is kept by one person and a key by each of three different people.  They gather and after the box is opened each person comes forward and puts in their savings.  The amount at the group I was at in their first year was 100 XFA, about twenty cents.  Each person can save up to five times that in any given week.  The amount saved is tracked in a ledger, since most people in Burkina Faso are illiterate they track it with stamps in boxes.  Once the money is set aside they hear loan requests and decide what may be a good project to loan money to.  This could be something like buying a sheep or a goat to raise to sell.  If the group decides to loan the money it will later be paid back at a set interest rate.  If they decide that the loan isn’t a good idea they work together to advise the person on how to make it better.

Now a really amazing thing with the SILCs, each group is required to have a social fund that everyone contributes to.  This is money set aside to simply help the other members of their group.  For example, one woman mentioned that she had been helped by the social fund allowing her to go to the city for medical care, she returned from that to be a productive member of the community.

While saving seems obvious to us, we heard constantly how much the members of the SILC appreciated being taught about saving.  With the poverty rate they hadn’t saved before, so they didn’t have money to buy seed when they needed it and the cycle went on.  With this savings and the ability to get loans the members mentioned that they truly are living better.  So much so that in this, the third year that the group is running they have tripled the amount of savings that they do each week, they now save 300XFA, about 60 cents as the unit, again someone can save up to five times that.  I glanced at some of the ledgers, most are saving between 2 and 4 times that amount weekly, so $1.20-$2.40 on average, impressive savings rates when the national income averages just $345 per person per year.  This is truly a program that helps people to help themselves.  CRS has minimal investment, but provides the things that are necessary, especially guidance, to help people.

The village was so very thankful for our visit, the people danced and sang as we were leaving too.  Then they stopped us and gave us a gift to show their thanks.  The gift was a goat, an amazing gesture on their part, to the level that we really don’t comprehend.  We took it, as telling them to keep it would be in insult.  We later gave that goat to the Delwende center to help them out a little bit.

I will write about the rest of that day in a later post.  I hope you are enjoying my experience.

Peace,

Adam

Beginning of the trip to Burkina Faso with CRS

Hello,

So, it has been quite a while since I’ve written.  Before my trip to Burkina Faso; which began over a month ago.  I am sorry about that, but I was really trying to figure out how to write about the experience.  It may take more than one post, so we’ll see how much I write tonight.

First of all, let me ask you all for prayers for the repose of the soul of my Aunt Gerrie who passed away yesterday.  I didn’t know her well, but I loved what I knew of her and I know that she was well liked by many people.  So please say a prayer for her.

Well, onto the trip.  It was an amazing experience.  I have done some international travel in the past, including to poor countries but every experience is unique.  As I said before I left, I have supported Catholic Relief Services for a long time, but was very happy to be going to see what they did first hand.

The trip started out with us going to Baltimore.  Baltimore is where the headquarters for CRS is at, so we were to have an orientation and meet the others who were going to be traveling with us.  In the group were 6 seminarians (counting me) from here at Mundelein Seminary and one of the priests from here, a priest from the Tucson, Arizona Diocese, and a priest from a religious order who is currently assigned out East.  There were also two staff members from CRS.  One of these is the director of the GlobalFellows program and the other works on Capital Hill in advocacy, a lobbyist. 

Our group hit it off right away and we enjoyed each other’s company even during the orientation sessions.  The sessions included topics such as CRS structure, general CRS programs, a briefing by the Western Africa coordinator at the headquarters and how to spread the CRS message.  We also heard about CRS’ US operations, how they spread the word to Catholics here in the US to get support.  This was pretty interesting, but mainly stuff that I was at least somewhat familiar with. 

One of the most common programs that people know about CRS is their Operation Rice Bowl.  This is a program that they run each Lent in which they give out this little cardboard “rice bowl” with some information on their programs.  The bowl is a little piggy bank type thing that people are encouraged to put money in as part of their Lenten almsgiving, but in addition to being a fundraiser it is hoped that it will get people to educate themselves about people in need and how CRS serves them.  Hopefully people will say a prayer for those in need whenever they can and be reminded to do this by the presence of the rice bowl.  One thing that I found amazing was that while 8.4 million rice bowls are given out each year the collection from them only amounts to $8million.  Less than one dollar per rice bowl, I was amazed, and disappointed by that.

After the orientation time we headed out for Burkina Faso, with a connection in Paris, the flights were 7-8 hours each, so it was quite a bit of plane time, but that was alright.  We landed there on Thursday the 16^th of February at about 5:30 PM local time if I remember right.

One thing that I go through each time that I go to a poverty area happened again as we were flying into Ouagadougou, the capital.  This is the earliest it has happened, but it does get earlier each time.  I was looking out the window of the airplane and saw what looked like a dusty sports field with people running around on it, they were kids playing soccer.  A little bit later I saw another field with kids playing soccer and then a third.  It hit me, as it does each time, that of course kids are going to be running around playing games, they should be.  Despite the poverty they still find ways to enjoy life, the kids play games and play with toys (maybe something as simple as a water bottle that becomes a toy) and adults sit around talking and joking.  I don’t know why this always has to strike home to me again, especially since I’ve seen it so many times, but it does, it isn’t what we think of when we think of places of poverty.

We didn’t do much that first evening, we went to a retreat center where we were going to be spending the night and settled in after dinner.  The next day the first thing we were going to do was to go to the CRS Burkina Faso headquarters.  We met the senior staff.  One thing that did surprise me was how much of the staff were native Burkinabe.  I guess that I thought that most aide organizations had a lot of staff from the country they are based out of.  The staff of CRS in Burkina Faso consists of about 100 people, only 4 of whom are American, the rest, including the country director, are from Burkina Faso.  The staff gave us a briefing on the programs and operation they have.  It was incredible listening to them, not so much in what they said, which was describing wonderful programs, but the pride they have in helping people, their people.  They see the good that CRS does, some of them have been served by CRS in the past and are happy to be passing on the good works.  The love that they have the ability to help, they are also helping to direct what happens in their country.

This is almost two pages long already, so I will end here and hopefully pick up soon with more of the trip experience.

Peace,

Adam

Finals week Winter 2011-2012

Hello everyone,

The busy time at the seminary continues.  I really think that there isn’t much of the other type of time.  Classes are going well and wrapping up this week.  I have written a lot in the last two weeks for class, but I still have a decent amount to get done before I get to leave.  What I have left is the take-home exam for Political and Social Philosophy (Probably about 6 or 7 pages of writing), to finish my long paper for Gospel of Mark (about 10 more pages), and to memorize a part of a poem for my Humanities class (I don’t memorize specifics well, so this may be the biggest challenge of the three).

Everyone in my class is gearing up for the mission trips.  The trip to Arizona leaves on Saturday.  My trip to Burkina Faso with CRS will leave the seminary on Monday and go to Baltimore for some orientation to CRS.  We will leave Baltimore on Wednesday and head to Burkina Faso.

We had our final conference call about the trip today; it is nice that plans are falling into place.  I am getting excited.  I don’t know all of what we will do there, but I heard during the conference call today that on the first day in Burkina Faso we will visit a shelter that CRS runs.  It is a unique place.  This shelter is for women who have been accused of witchcraft.  Burkina Faso is about 50% Muslim with about 10% Christian (most of them Roman Catholic).  The rest are still part of the indigenous belief systems.  Actually, from what I have read, even the Christians and the Muslims still have a lot of the old beliefs.  With this there is still a great deal of talk on witchcraft.  When a woman is accused of witchcraft she is banished from her family, and normally the village.  With such limited resources the country over, not much is allowed to go to these women.  CRS has a shelter where they provide for these women.  I am excited to see this.

We will also get to visit a seminary there.  I don’t know much about it, if it is a college level seminary or a major seminary, or how many men they have studying for the priesthood.  It will be interesting to see how much we are able to experience with these seminarian brothers across the world.

For each of the three conference calls we have had dealing with the CRS Global Fellows trip we have had assigned readings to go through and then some reflection questions to answer talk about when we are on the call.  Today’s readings were dealing with the teaching on Solidarity.  This is a deep theological principle within the Church.  It is meant to bring out a lot of Jesus’ message of loving one another.  In short it makes us remember the connection with all the members of the Church, all the members of the human species, and even all of God’s creation.  It is a teaching that people can spend a lifetime on and not totally grasp.  This is a big part of how I live my faith so I am excited to see how it plays out through CRS’ mission.

I want to take a brief moment to talk politics.  I don’t do that much on here so I hope you will grant me a moment.  Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a mandate that all insurance plans have to provide for free birth-control within the plan.  This is up-to and including abortion causing drugs.  When this was talked about last year HHS said that it would include a conscience clause to allow organizations to opt out of it.  In the regulation that was published the conscience clause extends only to Churches and a couple of other very limited settings.  It is good that HHS put in this small exemption, but it does not exempt some very important entities of the Catholic Church. 

For example, Catholic hospitals, I have seen various stats from 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 of the hospitals in this country are run by the Catholic Church.  This regulation would not exempt these institutions.  It would possibly be allowed to exempt these institutions if they went to only having Catholic employees and only serving Catholic patients.  This would go against our teaching of helping all people.  One way or the other Catholics are being asked to violate their conscience.

The first amendment to the US Constitution starts out, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  This mandate from HHS will severely limit our free exercise.  If someone wants to say, “Well it doesn’t stop you from going to Mass” That is true, but that is not the extent of how we exercise our faith.  This is a major infringement on religious liberty in this country. 

The mandate does not require Catholics to use these drugs; however, it does require us to pay for things that go directly contrary to the Church’s teachings.  With all honesty, many Catholics do use these drugs, but that doesn’t mean that they are in line with the Church’s teachings on that and these institutions are supposed to be run in accordance with our teachings, which this mandate will not allow in one way or the other.

Okay, the political rant is over.  I’m going to get back to working on my papers.  I’m not sure if I’ll have time to write again before I return from the mission trip at the end of the month.

Peace,

Adam

January 2012

Hello again everyone,

Obviously I’ve been very busy with stuff here that has caused long break in posts.  This one will probably be short for the same reason, but I guess I never really know about that until I get working on it.

Since I wrote last there has been a lot that has gone on.  My Bishop came down to the seminary.  He took the La Crosse guys out to eat on the Tuesday but was really here to celebrate the Mass to install the Second year theology guys as Acolytes.  I wrote a bit about the Acolyte Mass last year, but to remind you it is one of what used to be called “minor orders” on the way to the priesthood.  The idea of minor orders has gone away but these are now offices to be installed in that allow for different functions in the Mass.  Most people would see an Acolyte as simply an altar server (altar boy) but there is a bit more that they can do and some theological ideas with it that I don’t fully understand so I won’t try to go into them.

Following late the night of the Acolyte Mass (actually about 1:00 the next morning) I had to coordinate picking up the group from my parish that had been on a mission trip to Guatemala.   Fr. Tom rode back to the seminary with us and then spent a day here before catching the train to take a quick vacation.

The following weekend my mom and her husband came down.  We spent a good deal of Saturday at the Shedd aquarium and then went out to dinner with my cousin that lives near here and an old neighbor who has moved to this area.  On Sunday we went to Mass and then they left.

Since then I have been trying to get a lot of homework done and working on my application the St. Paul Seminary.  This is an interesting process even though I went through it applying for here.  All of the forms are different and even the autobiography that I have to write is formatted differently so I can’t just use my old one while adding to it.

Those of us going on the CRS GlobalFellows trip to Burkina Faso have had one of the three conference calls that we are going to have with CRS before leaving, to help us prepare.  I will try to write in my next post a bit about what I am hoping to gain out of this experience.

I have to get back to working on other stuff.  I hope you enjoyed this brief post.

Peace,

Adam