I don’t know if you had a chance to see it a few weeks ago, my blog on what I called “markers” of our faith?

Apparently quite a few of you did, to judge from the feedback!

In that posting, I just wondered aloud if we Catholics, over the last forty-five years, had tossed too many “external markers” of our Catholic identity out the window.  The one example I mentioned was abstinence from meat on Fridays, as I reflected a bit on the decision of the bishops of England to restore that Catholic custom.

Not that these “external markers” – such as, for example, holy days, feasts, fasts, saints’ names, genuflection, holy water, candles, bowing one’s head at the Holy Names of Jesus, Ember Days, First Fridays, First Saturdays, frequent confession, parish allegiance, novenas, devotions, only to name a few other such “signs” of Catholic identity — are of the essence of the faith; or, not even to deny that excessive attention to them could cause superficiality.  No, I just asked if we have lost some spice from Catholic life with their departure, and noted that scholars of religion report that such exterior marks of membership help make a religion cohesive and attractive.

I’m just wondering if we leaders in the Church are trying to attract people by making things easier.  As one of my friends tells me, we’re too much into “Catholic lite.”  And it’s backfiring, I’m afraid.  I hear our Catholics tell me, “We don’t want Catholic lite; we want to be “lights to the world!”

Yes, a lot of Catholics are leaving the Church.  This is a monumental pastoral challenge for all of us.  Why do they leave?

The studies tell us that some who leave us just give-up any faith at all;

Some others who leave Catholicism join a religion they might consider more “liberal” or “modern” than the Church;

But, get this: most who leave the Catholic Church to join another religion, end-up as members of a church considered stricter or more conservative!

I just got back from a “high” of World Youth Day in Madrid: 1.5 million young people from every continent, race, nation, and language, for five uplifting days, with Pope Benedict.  These young people want “the real thing,” not Catholic lite!

While there, I had the honor of presenting a teaching at a different church or site in Madrid to English-speaking youth on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning.  After each teaching, I celebrated the Eucharist with my new young friends, usually 500-or-so strong.  (On Friday, and then at a special Mass Saturday morning, it was even more, as we were in a sports arena, 15,000 strong.)

Now, to get back to my point . . .   On each of those four occasions, the same interesting thing happened spontaneously.  Each Mass was jammed; there were young people in every corner, up-and-down aisles, in balconies, even outside the space.  Backpacks and sleeping bags added to the tight squeeze.

The planners of each Mass — wisely and thoughtfully, when you think about it — printed in the Mass booklet, and even announced before Mass, “Look, it’s so jammed in here, and you are all so hot and tired, why don’t you just stay seated during the Eucharistic prayer.”

Very practical . . .  very wise . . . let’s make this simple and a bit more relaxed.  Let’s “lighten-up.”

What happened?  I’ll be darned, at all four occasions, all the hundreds, thousands of youth still knelt! They wanted to kneel in adoration!  They didn’t want it simple or practical!  They didn’t mind the challenge!  They wanted it!

I realize it’s a trivial example, a little thing.  Maybe I read too much into it.  But I wonder as well if once again our people — our young people — are telling us something:

“We don’t like ‘Catholic-lite.’  Don’t pander to us!  Call us to greatness!  Call us to heroic virtue!  Remind us that following Jesus calls for sacrifice, and that we long for ways to let ourselves, and the world, know that we are different.  Don’t make things simple!  Don’t cater to convenience!”

Jesus summoned us to be a “light to the world.”  Nothing “lite” about that.

Have we put this lantern under a basket?  Have we turned light into lite?

Recently I got such a communication. He told me he thought my columns in Catholic New York were overly pious, and way too simple.

I wrote him back to thank him for reading the column — I thought Mom was the only one who ever did! — and for the compliment!

He certainly did not intend his criticism as a compliment. But I sure took it as one! To claim my column to be too pious and simple is, for me, a feather in my biretta.

Well, he’s not going to be popping champagne corks over this week’s entry either, I’m afraid. Read on…

June, traditionally, is dedicated in our Catholic calendar to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Friday after the Feast of Corpus Christi — this year  June 11 –  [was] the Feast of the Sacred Heart, always in June. Since childhood, I’ve had a strong devotion to Jesus under this title.

The heart symbolizes love, mercy, tenderness, compassion. Our God has a heart! His Sacred Heart is literally on fire with those noble sentiments, and I find that very consoling.

Two very practical ways to bond with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

One is the morning offering. Easy but profound: early each day, right after getting out of bed, dedicate the day to Jesus, and unite all your prayers, works, words, thoughts and trials to His Sacred Heart.

Here’s what I have prayed every morning since I made my first Communion:

All for Thee, Most Sacred Heart of Jesus!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in Thee!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I believe in your love for me!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, Thy Kingdom come!

My Dad, the first to admit he was far from a saint, had that morning offering taped to the mirror on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I guess he prayed it while he shaved.

Try it — you won’t regret it.

Two, First Fridays.

When Jesus revealed His love and mercy by appearing to St. Margaret Mary and showing her His Sacred Heart, He invited her to encourage people to approach the sacrament of penance, and attend Mass on the first Friday of every month.

We haven’t promoted that devotion for decades. Some have even discouraged and mocked it.

Yet, wherever I’ve been — St. Louis, D.C., Baltimore, Rome, Kansas City, Milwaukee and now here in New York — folks still come. You see an uptick in Mass attendance and confession every First Friday. Bravo! (At St. Patrick’s Cathedral we also have all-day Eucharistic adoration.)

You looking for a booster shot to a listless, weary spiritual life?

Try the First Fridays. It’s worked for centuries.

Sorry for the piety and simplicity. But, it worked for my Grandma; it worked for my Dad; it’s worked for me.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, for I will refresh you, for I am gentle and humble of heart.”

The morning offering and first Fridays. Nothing fancy, folks. Just down-home holiness of life.

No more citizens died, so, true to their word, Oberammergau has kept the vow. An act of faith, of piety and of perseverance, to be sure, but, for 476 years, the renowned Oberammergau Passion Play has been celebrated as well for the poetry of its script, the inspiration of its music and song, the art of its costuming and set, and the amazing talent of its cast, all taken exclusively from this tiny town.

I went in 1984 (the Play occurs at the beginning of each decade, but also in ’34 and ’84 of each century to commemorate the 1634 vow), with my recently retired first pastor, and we caught each other tearing up more than once during the six-hour spectacle — and enjoyed the beer, Bavarian sausages and dumplings at the lunch break! I promised myself then I would return.

So, earlier this year, I readily accepted the kind invitation of the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre to serve as chaplain on their June pilgrimage to Bavaria, the highlight to be the Passion Play. We had to move quickly, as the 5,000 seats at each performance, five times a week from May through October, go right away.

Once again, I was very moved at the Play, and was hardly surprised that each one of our 65 other pilgrims were as well. The awesome natural beauty and warm Catholic culture of southern Germany helped make our journey very memorable.

This time around was even more meaningful than a quarter-century ago. I had come to learn that the Oberammergau Passion Play was noted not only for its devotion, art and spiritual inspiration — alleluia for all of that — but also, soberly, because of its past anti-Semitism.

While a seminarian at the North American College in Rome, I benefited immensely from a course on Judaism by the acclaimed scholar Rabbi Joseph Lichten. He had told us how Holy Week, and public reproductions of the Passion of Christ in Catholic cultures, had at times tragically prompted outbreaks of anti-Semitism in the past. He specifically mentioned the granddaddy of all Passion plays, my beloved Oberammergau, as an example. I can remember my shame when Rabbi Lichten related how Hitler had attended the play in 1930 and 1934.

The problem was that often these plays blamed the Jewish people collectively for the rejection, suffering and crucifixion of Jesus, and that this inaccurate and unfair indictment had engendered harassment and persecution of the Jews.

Thank God, Rabbi Lichten went on to tell us in his lectures in Rome in 1973, things were changing for the better. He credited the Second Vatican Council (which he attended as an official observer), which taught in its document Nostra Aetate that it was downright wrong to blame the Jews collectively for the crime of killing the Son of God. He happily pointed to the revision of the Good Friday liturgy, and — to the point — to the brave action of the Archbishop of Munich (whose pastoral jurisdiction includes Oberammergau), Cardinal Julius Doepfner, who had refused to approve the 1970 Play until it had reformed the script to bring it in line with the council’s teaching.

My subsequent study had shown me that 1970 was only the start of a slow process to bring the legendary Play in line with clear Church directives, rendering it more sensitive to the understandable worries of our elder brothers and sisters in faith. Thanks to the efforts of respected Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, Rabbi James Rudin and Rabbi Leon Klenicki, and supportive Catholic voices, the script has been revised considerably.

So, this summer, when two prominent officers of the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi Gary Greenebaum and Rabbi Noam Marans, asked if they might view the Play with me, I was thrilled. As you can imagine, my excitement was on high that day we met outside the theater in Oberammergau to attend the production together.

Even the mayor of the village was there to welcome the two rabbis, Father Dennis McManus and me, and he was accompanied by the director and associate director of the Play, Christian Stückl and Otto Huber, both courageous reformers of the script. They invited us to go backstage to meet the hundreds of townsfolk in the Play, and to lead them in prayer. And then this archbishop and the two rabbis settled in to watch.

At the dinner break later, we were joined by Stückl and Huber, as well as the 30-year-old man portraying Christ, Frederick Mayert, for a most fascinating visit. Mayert — it was uncomfortable addressing the Christus as “Fred” — told us that the major actors had traveled to Israel to better appreciate the drama, and the rabbis complimented him on the Hebrew he had learned to assure that moments of public prayer by Jesus and His apostles were more authentic. I mostly listened as the rabbis and directors reviewed progress in the Play, spending a lot of time on how the new emphasis on the “Jewishness” of Jesus and the apostles had enhanced the quality of the production.

Three hours later, upon completion of the Play, the directors invited us backstage to join the cast for some banter and a beer. We sat up late discussing the masterpiece we had just experienced, rejoicing in the obvious progress, and attentively listening to Rabbi Greenebaum and Rabbi Marans thoughtfully point out some remaining unresolved issues.

Our Jewish colleagues first expressed deep appreciation for the power and inspiration of the Play. Rabbi Greenebaum, who had never seen it before, remarked that he found the production very moving, while offering the insight that a fuller discussion of the Christian attitude on suffering—a constant theme of the Play, and, of course, of the Gospel itself—should be a future agenda item for Jewish-Catholic dialogue.

Rabbi Marans brought up what is a regular topic in our dialogue, the Christian praxis of viewing the Old Testament only as a prefigurement of the New. His observation was timely, because a significant part of the Play is the “still tableaus,” where the cast silently portrays an Old Testament scene—let’s say, for instance, the sacrifice of Isaac—right before the “fulfillment” of that event by Jesus—in this case, the crucifixion. “Be our guest,” is how Rabbi Marans expressed his feelings about such a Christian interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures, but, he continued, “watch out!” For us as Jews, he went on, these sacred events have normative meaning on their own, not merely as antipasto for the main course, Jesus.

Both rabbis renewed their high praise for the Play’s accent on the fact that Jesus and His apostles were deeply faithful Jews, singling out the Seder meal of the Last Supper.

Rabbi Marans, who had viewed the spectacle before, and was well-informed on the history of past tensions, commented that negative stereotyping of Jewish leaders in costume and script was much less than in past decades, but pointed out some areas where improvement could go on.

Most of our post-production conversation centered on the neuralgic point of blame. Does the 2010 script, admittedly a vast improvement over older ones in cleansing any vestiges of anti-Semitism, still hint that the Jews are to blame for the death of Christ?

The two rabbis noted some positive advances here, commenting, for one, that the Romans, led by the tyrannical Pontius Pilate, were the clear villains in the Play; two, that all seemed to bear the blame, even the apostles, who hardly came off very well at all; and, three, that Jewish sentiment about Jesus is presented as dramatically divided in the Play, with “pro-Jesus” Jewish leaders such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimithea very prominent foils to the “anti-Jesus” crowd led by Annas and Caiphas.

However, our two rabbi-friends were still concerned, they candidly admitted, that the Play might give the impression that the Jews of the time collectively were the major culprits, especially, Rabbi Marans observed, because of the obsessive hatred of Jesus by Annas and Caiphas. Rabbi Greenebaum weighed in that, by the end, he saw Annas and Caiphas as just petty, evil men, not as representatives of the Jewish people.

Christian Stückl, Otto Huber, Father McManus and I were more at peace that the script was balanced and fair, not tilted to collective blame on the Jews. The real devil, Father McManus observed, was Pontius Pilate and the brutal Romans. I conferred that, as a bishop — thus, in our Catholic understanding, a successor of the apostles — I hung my head in shame at the depiction of the Twelve, whose misunderstanding of, rejection of, betrayal of, denial of and abandonment of their Rabbi, Lord, Savior and friend was so tearfully evident in the Play. The only heroes, I commented — apart, of course, from Jesus — were Jews: the faithful women, the teenage John, and the two leaders, Nicodemus and Joseph.

Well, needless to say, this tender issue needs more consideration, we all agreed.

“Gospel,” of course, means “good news,” and, bottom line, there’s “good news” in Oberammergau, as two rabbis and an archbishop were inspired by the 2010 Play; as major progress in the ongoing noble goal of removing any hint of inaccurate and unjust caricaturing of Jews has been made; and as the three of us agreed that continued dialogue about the renowned Play could indeed be a boost to Jewish-Catholic friendship.

God willing, what has been in the past a cause of acrimony between the children of Abraham can become now an occasion of deepening understanding and reverence.

I was 22, and it was August 1972. Along with 50 other homesick guys, there I was, brand new as a seminarian at the North American College, jammed into the courtyard at the papal villa in Castel Gandolfo with thousands of others awaiting the noon appearance of Pope Paul VI for the Sunday Angelus.

And there he was … the Successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth … and he spoke about …vacations!

Yes, vacations! We were there at the height of Italian vacation season, and the courtyard was filled with people on holiday. And the Pope himself was at his summer villa for a bit of relaxation.

So, the Holy Father spoke warmly about vacations, time off from work, school, routine. I can still recall him saying that a vacation was a wonderful gift from God, a time to savor family, friends, nature, beauty, art, song, food, good laughs and company — and, Pope Paul went on — a time to grow closer to Jesus through prayer, meditation, spiritual reading, discovery of God’s presence in nature, friends and quiet.

What an occasion of grace and holiness a vacation can be! concluded the Holy Father. And, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Be careful, because a vacation can be at times an occasion of sin, too.”

(I remember the next morning, in our Italian class, studying the headlines in the Roman newspapers. There it was: “Pope Condemns vacations as Occasion of Sin.” The media was getting it wrong even back then!)

Anyway, I recall those uplifting words as summer is upon us and we, if lucky, relish some vacation. Our wonderful schools are “letting out” for some welcome weeks of respite, our parish programs wind down a bit, and all of us, please God, can take a little time for vacation.

I’ve already got my stack of books to read as I savor a few weeks away in July and August, and look forward to good company with family and friends. Soon I’ll go on pilgrimage with Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre to Bavaria, where we will attend the renowned Oberammergau Passion Play, and then go to Ireland with my two sisters and nieces.

I can remember how my Dad loved his vacations. He only got two weeks, and we couldn’t afford to go anywhere. So, we all stayed home as a family. We’d have picnics, go to the zoo, a ballgame, swimming. Mom would cook our favorite meals or Dad would barbecue. We’d sit up late to catch a cool breeze. Mom and Dad would stay up later talking and laughing. And we all dreaded to see those simple, happy days end. It added to the sadness of my Dad’s sudden death that he died the day before he was to begin his vacation. I can still remember our pastor consoling us, “But now, we trust, with God’s mercy, he is enjoying his eternal vacation.”

Our best friend, of course, is Jesus — who is also our Lord and Savior, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

So, I recommend that He be part of our vacation, too. Thinking of Him, listening to Him, speaking to Him — all in prayer — would be a great vacation resolution.

Usually, I try to get away with a priest-friend from back in St. Louis. We’ll rent a simple place on the lake, sleep in, enjoy some good barbecue, read a lot, catch up on news, and share memories and dreams. But, there’s a third person with us — Jesus — and the heart of each day is our simple Mass on the kitchen table, and our morning and evening prayer together from our Divine Office.

When I was rector of the seminary, before the men would leave for summer break, they knew I was going to give them the same “pep talk”: “Fellas, there’s no vacation from our vocation.”

I think that’s what Pope Paul meant. Our vocation is to be a child of God, a follower of Jesus, a faithful member of His Church, united to Him by grace, prayer, the sacraments. Our vacation is a time to deepen, enjoy and strengthen that vocation.

When we do that, those “lazy, hazy days of summer” are the best of all.

A blessed vacation!

You may recall that, a week later, in my capacity as chair of the board of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), I traveled to Port-au-Prince to survey the devastation, encourage our brave CRS workers there and show fraternal support for the paralyzed Church as they buried their archbishop, one of hundreds of thousands crushed to death in the convulsions. (I’ll be back down in Haiti again next month.)

At the conclusion of a meeting with our exhausted yet still-committed CRS staff, I asked them, “Is there anything I can do for you?” Two hands went up. One young woman inquired, “Archbishop, tomorrow is Sunday. Will we have a priest to celebrate Mass for us?” — a plea from a woman of faith I will never forget. And then the second person spoke up, “Archbishop Dolan, thank the folks at home for all they’re doing for Haiti now, but…promise us you’ll remind them of our suffering again in July, six months from now, when Haiti will be forgotten.”

My column today keeps the promise I made to him six months ago.

Thank you, so many of you, for your overwhelmingly generous assistance to Haiti! Catholics here in the Archdiocese of New York gave $2 million in our special collection, with hundreds of thousands more given for more special projects through sister parishes, Knights of Malta, religious orders, foundations, City Hall and other relief agencies. I’ll never forget a call from the Yankees the day after the quake donating a quarter-million dollars to CRS. The generosity has been inspirational.

God can bring good out of evil, right? And the world community united in comforting our bloodied, near dead neighbor at the side of the road, Haiti.

I’ll never forget a scene I witnessed down there: much needed crates of medicine, donated by an Islamic country, being unloaded by Baptist volunteers from Kentucky, into CRS trucks, delivered to volunteer surgeons from Israel at the rubble of St. Francis Catholic Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

My briefings from CRS tell me that there is a lot of good news: progress is being made (although at an arthritically slow place), the hungry are being fed, the wounded and sick are being tended to, the rubble is being cleared, people have a roof — however, temporary — over their heads, clean water and rudimentary sanitation is available. The “rainy season” was relatively light this summer, too. Relief is working, thank God.

Let me just summarize some of the progress:

• CRS has fed nearly 900,000 people and has distributed 10.6 million rations of food.
• CRS provided emergency shelter materials to more than 98,000 people.
• At the St. Francois de Sales Hospital that CRS helped to reopen and continues to support, surgeons brought in by CRS have performed more than 800 emergency operations.
• CRS’ health care team includes 20-plus doctors, nurses and aides working in 10 camps and settlements, treating an average of 350 patients a day. Medical personnel have conducted a total of 62,000 outpatient consultations
• CRS has installed hundreds of latrines and hand-washing stations, drainage, potable water tanks and inflatable water bladders in 10 sites around Port-au-Prince.
• CRS has established “child-friendly spaces” for unaccompanied children in the densely crowded camps of PŽtionville Club and Bureau de Mines. So far, 1,920 children have attended these child-friendly spaces.
• For years, CRS Haiti has provided monthly food rations to more than 100 orphanages and child-care centers in Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes, benefiting nearly 10,000 children. Since the earthquake, though, CRS has provided additional relief at affected orphanages, and reached out to all to assess their needs.
• Prior to the earthquake, CRS was already implementing a school feeding program; currently, CRS is providing food to more than 24,000 students in over 100 schools.
• CRS has provided more than 5,000 families with vouchers that allow them to choose the types of seeds and fertilizers they want — benefiting local seed suppliers and stimulating local markets as well.

But our CRS laborers — part of a staff that has been in Haiti for more than 60 years and will be there at least another 60 — report realistically that there’s still a lot of bad news. In a word, there is still a lot of chaos, and, although relief is working, rebuilding is not yet there.

One of the most pressing problems is a vacuum of leadership. Even in “normal times,” our people tell me, Haiti is hardly a showcase of efficiency. After the earthquake, forget it! So there is dramatic frustration among the people and the rebuilders because progress is so molasses-like.

CRS was asked by the Holy See (the Vatican) to serve in a coordinating role to help organize the Church universal’s massive relief presence. Hardly a task we asked for, or another duty we hardly needed, but a further service we’re trying our best to provide (which means more people, even some Catholics, will take more potshots at us).

January, six months ago, called for a sense of urgency, an immediate response of food, medicine, water, shelter, sanitation, clothing, and professionals to help and bring relief. Thank God, that call was generously answered by the world community.

July seems to ask for patience from a people tragically used to suffering and raw survival, from brave and exhausted volunteers who want renewal and rebuilding to get going, from sincere people who throw up their arms and plead, “Who’s in charge here?”

Our veteran CRS people recall the decimation of the tsunami back in 2004. They swap stories of how desperate things were, how slow the recovery was, how impatient they were with how long rebuilding was taking. But they smile now, aware as they are of the tremendous progress that was made in those drowned countries.

And that gives them immense hope, from which comes patience, a hope that perhaps is the virtue most needed in desperate Haiti, a hope flowing from faith, inspired by the world’s generosity, boosted by little signs that things are working, and nurtured by the eyes and smiles of a resilient people who refuse to give up.

Thanks for hearing me out. Thanks for letting me keep my promise to our courageous CRS worker who last January made me give my word that I’d remind you all of Haiti in July.

The last six weeks or so, as [may] you know, Catholic New York has been running enlightening articles on Sunday Mass, not afraid to admit the somber fact that only about one-third of Catholics in the United States faithfully attend Sunday Mass.

My recent columns have been devoted to this pastoral challenge as well. Actually, it began with my pastoral letter on the Lord’s Day issued on St. Patrick’s Day. (Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy,  http://blog.archny.org

Anyway, I was beginning to wonder if we were overdoing it and driving you all nuts about it.

But, last week the Lord gave me a sign to keep at it.

The occasion was an all-day meeting of the National Jewish-Catholic dialogue. The topic was the common lessons we Jewish and Catholic leaders could learn from recent scholarly research on practices of the faith in America conducted by the Pew Center and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).

I’ll be…both Catholic and Jewish leaders had to admit that, while there was good news in the research findings, there was also sober stuff. And the most somber news was about the Sabbath. Our Jewish colleagues let us know that they, too, face a challenge because their faithful are no longer as loyal to Sabbath prayer as they once were.

Well, if misery loves company, the day was a success! But the fruits of the dialogue were even more obvious as we digested the data from the studies that showed the dramatically high value of consistent worship at a synagogue or church on the Sabbath.

Let me dwell on the findings about Catholics — although they are similar to the data about our Jewish neighbors.

Simply put, a Catholic faithful to Sunday Mass has a happier, holier, healthier life! A Catholic consistent in worship at Sunday Mass, the research shows:

• prays more often and more fruitfully;
• has a happier marriage;
• has a family more unified;
• is more generous to the Church and to charity;
• is more likely to consider a vocation as a priest, sister, brother, deacon or lay ecclesial minister;
• is much more knowledgeable about the teachings of the faith, and more accepting of them;
• is more solicitous of the poor, sick, and elders;
• is more concerned about civic affairs, issues of pro-life, peace and justice, and votes more often;
• volunteers more often for community service;
• is much more successful in handing on the faith to the next generation, especially through support of Catholic schools;
• is dramatically less likely to leave the Church.

When we discuss problems in the Church, we often conclude, “There are no easy answers.”

Well, there is one rather easy answer: all the problems in the Church can be improved if we encourage and invite people to faithful Sunday Mass attendance. Have we found the “silver bullet”?

Marketers tell us that nothing is more successful than success. Maybe it’s time to broadcast the “success of Sunday Mass”: you want to be happier, holier, healthier? See you at Mass!

So, we are faithful to Sunday Mass, yes, because it is a religious duty; yes, because we were raised to take it very seriously; yes, because I need the prayer, grace, mercy; yes, because I savor community.

But I also am faithful to Sunday Mass because it is good for me. That’s why God instructs us to “Keep Holy the Sabbath!”: because He wants what is best for His family and children.

As I got ready to leave them that Saturday afternoon, I asked if there were anything else I could do for them. A young woman raised her hand. I expected her to ask for more medicine, tents, drinking water, food and workers. Perhaps, I thought, she would beg me to “get the message out” here at home about the agony of Haiti.

Instead, all she asked was, “Can a priest say Mass for us tomorrow, on Sunday?”

Can you imagine? What a tremendous inspiration she was! In the midst of all the horror, from out of her exhaustion and helplessness, she simply wanted Sunday Mass!

Think about it: she realistically knew that, without the grace of the Eucharist, without God’s help, she would be useless. All over Port-au-Prince she was seeing the dying of Jesus on the cross. She knew she needed the Mass — the renewal of the dying and rising of Jesus — more than ever!

By now you know I’m “hung up” on Sunday Mass. To be sure, we’ve got problems galore in the Church. You don’t need me to enumerate them — just turn on TV or buy a newspaper.

We won’t be able to do anything about them if we do not put first things first. “Seek first the Kingdom of God…” as Jesus exhorted us.

That means, on the first day of the week, the day of His Resurrection, we long for the same grace that tearful CRS worker in Haiti desired: Sunday Mass.

Those many of you who are faithful to Sunday, and even weekday Mass know that during this glorious Easter season we often have our readings from episodes in the Gospel when Jesus, just risen from the dead, visits with His disciples, and also from the Acts of the Apostles recounting the earliest days of the Church.

Notice (like Sunday, April 18’s Gospel) that Jesus very often appears to His friends at a meal. He eats with them! He breaks bread with them!

Guess what? That’s the Eucharist! Jesus was doing again what He had done on the night before He died, Holy Thursday, at His Last Supper.

Recall that, in the early Church, what distinguished the first followers of Jesus was that they faithfully came together every Sunday to pray, hear His word and “break bread.”

There it is again! Sunday Mass!

People ask me all the time, “What’s the major problem in the Church today?”

They’re hoping for a juicy answer. They’re disappointed when I reply, “Two-thirds of our Catholic people no longer attend Mass every Sunday.”

Not long ago, the board of trustees of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., of which I am a member, heard a young priest from China share his appreciation for the chance to have studied at the university. He had finished his doctorate and was eager to get back home to China.

Mind you, things for the Church in China are far from rosy. “Where will you live?” we asked the young priest.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“Does your bishop have an assignment for you?” we inquired.

“My bishop is in jail,” he somberly responded.

“So what will you do?” we wondered aloud.

“I will offer Mass,” the young Chinese priest smilingly replied. “I will visit villages and celebrate Mass in barns, around kitchen tables, in garages, in fields and the people will come. They will risk harassment and arrest, but they will come. They will come to Mass because they realize it makes them Catholic, it sustains and strengthens them. They will come to Mass…”

And we don’t…

See you at Mass!

“With very few exceptions,” he went on, “Catholics in the United States did little or nothing to condemn the dramatically moral evil of slavery, and demand its end. And that is to our shame to this day.”

Those words came from my mentor, friend and teacher, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, the legendary professor of the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, during his sobering lecture on the Church and slavery, when I was a graduate student at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps we have learned our lesson, for Catholic leaders—committed laity, religious sisters and brothers, clergy, bishops—have been on the front lines of the premier civil rights issue today, the right to life. And that is to our credit. And that’s good to ponder during October, Respect Life Month.

The comparison of abortion to slavery is an apt one. The right of a citizen to “own” another human being as property—to control him/her, use him/her, sell him or decide her fate—was, prior to 1865, constitutional, sad to say.

That “right” to own a slave was even upheld by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court (whose Chief Justice at the time, Roger Brooke Taney, was a Catholic, “personally opposed” to slavery!) in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Decision, declaring that a slave who had escaped and claimed freedom had to be returned to his “master,” because he had no rights at all.

Tragically, in 1973, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court also strangely found in the constitution the right to abortion, thus declaring an entire class of human beings— now not African-Americans, but pre-born infants—to be slaves, whose futures, whose destinies, whose very right to life —can be decided by another “master.” These fragile, frail babies have no civil rights at all.

Our faces blush with shame as we Catholics admit we did so little to end slavery; but we can smile and thank God that the Church has indeed been prophetic, courageous and counter cultural in the right to life movement. As an evangelical pastor recently commented to me, “We may criticize you Catholics for some things, but we have sure been inspired by your early and courageous leadership in the pro-life movement.”

A few years ago, I met with a prominent philanthropist, who described himself—and I always know I’m in for trouble when I hear this—as a “former Catholic.” Now, he went on to say, he was a “progressive,” and would consider a large gift to the Catholic Church “if you changed your position on abortion.”

I must admit I’m afraid I made no headway at all when I patiently tried to explain to him that this was hardly a “position” of the Church that could change, but a conviction grounded in natural law, shared by most other world religions, and, for that matter, dramatically obvious in our American normative principles, which hold that certain rights are “inalienable”—part of the inherent human makeup—the first being the right to life itself.

Many issues and concerns in addition to protecting the baby in the womb fall under the rubric of the right to life—child care, poverty, racism, war and peace, capital punishment, health care, the environment, euthanasia—in what has come to be called the consistent ethic of life. All those issues, and even more, demand our careful attention and promotion.

But the most pressing life issue today is abortion. If we’re wrong on that one, we’re just plain wrong.

When our critics—and their name is legion—criticize us for being passionate, stubborn, almost obsessed with protecting the human rights of the baby in the womb, they intend it as an insult. I take it as a compliment.

I’d give anything if I could claim that Catholics in America prior to the Civil War were “passionate, stubborn, almost obsessed” with protecting the human rights of the slave. To claim such would be a fib. But, decades from now, at least our children and grandchildren can look back with pride and gratitude for the conviction of those who courageously defend the life of the pre-born baby.

I well remember being in Baltimore two years ago for the installation of their new archbishop, Edwin F. O’Brien, a native son of this archdiocese in whom we are very proud. He gave a stirring homily, recounting how his predecessors had often been on the forefront of promoting issues of justice in our country: Cardinal James Gibbons came up, of course, for his defense of the rights of labor back in the 1880s; Cardinal Lawrence Sheehan, who was jeered at a City Council meeting in 1965 for speaking on behalf of open housing for African-Americans; Cardinal William Keeler, criticized for advocating the rights of immigrants. And now, the new archbishop concluded, the tradition has to continue, as the Church must be on the front lines of the premier justice issue of the day: the protection of the right to life of the baby in the womb.

It’s October, Respect Life Month.

Today I realize how dad felt: the world, the Church, I have lost a Holy Father, a friend, a good shepherd.

I just fulfilled a solemn duty as your archbishop as I knelt before the Eucharist in our Cathedral and thanked God for the life, the gift of Pope John Paul the Great, and prayed Psalm 130.

"Praise be Jesus Christ" were the first words he uttered twenty-six-and-a-half years ago when he was elected successor of St. Peter.

And those are my words now – - "Praise be Jesus Christ" as I thank God for a pastor who taught us how to live and how to die.

Three special words come to mind at this somber moment: the first is serenity. They tell us he was serene till the very end. Sure he was: he was a man of unshakeable faith and hope, who had as his motto, totus tuus, "all yours," as he surrendered his whole life to the Lord.

Two, solidarity, which he made a household word. It seems as if the whole world, certainly the entire Church, has been in solidarity these last days around the deathbed of our father. We Catholics have been deeply touched by the solidarity we have experienced from all our friends and neighbors, and we now feel an intense solidarity in our loss and in our faith in life eternal.

The third word is Savior: Yes, Karol Wojtyla was a poet, a Polish patriot, a philosopher, a diplomat, linguist, priest, statesman, pontiff, but first and foremost he was a believer, a disciple of Jesus Christ our Savior. And now we pray that he has met His Savior face-to-face and heard those words we all long to hear from Jesus! "Well done, good and faithful servant! Now enter into the kingdom I have prepared for you!"

Viva il Papa!

And that is fitting. Because, as I hope is clear, Catholic education is of the highest priority for me as archbishop: to keep our Catholic grade schools, high schools, colleges, and universities strong, academically first-rate, genuinely Catholic, available, and affordable, true to our heritage of forming soul, mind, body, character.

And this is not just my high priority. As you know, last spring we completed a process of strategic planning for our Archdiocese of Milwaukee. After extensive, professional consultation with our priests, religious, deacons, lay ministers, teachers, Church professionals, and, at my special insistence, the people in the pews, it is clear a major priority of our people is also exactly that: to keep Catholic education strong, academically first-rate, genuinely Catholic, available and affordable, true to our heritage of forming soul, mind, body, and character.

What I want to encourage you about this morning, as we contemplate a new academic year, is the development of a strong sense of confidence. We need to be confident about our mission, about the supreme value of our product, and about our future.

We face temptations against confidence: We confront a defeatist attitude among some that our Catholic schools are a relic of the past, part of a fading Catholic culture; we are afraid to trumpet the proven value of our schools for fear of offending those in public schools or in our programs of religious education; we are sensitive to jabs that our schools cost too much and drain money from other necessary ministries. So, we are tempted to be shy about our schools, hesitant to promote them, meek about defending them.

Enough of that: we need confidence. The jury is back, the verdict is in: our Catholic schools are one of the best things going, cherished by both Catholics and the wider community, one of the most effective tools of evangelization ever devised, and one of the most admired ways we serve the wider society. They are worth every penny. Our children need them, our parents love them, our alumni are eternally grateful to them, and the wider community admires them. We who have positions of leadership in Catholic education " we bishops, priests, deacons, religious, lay leaders, principals, and teachers " need to exude a sense of confidence in our schools.

Now, being confident does not mean being unrealistic. You bet we have towering challenges to the sacred enterprise of Catholic education. These challenges must indeed be met with creativity, care, concern " and with confidence.

"¢ We do have monumental financial problems. In our strategic plan, we found out our Catholic people want their schools on a solid fiscal foundation, so that paying our teachers justly and keeping the lights on are not contingent upon tomorrow's bake sale. Some schools " particularly some small rural ones and those in the city " especially struggle. As one principal observed, "The poor in the city are helped with choice money, the more affluent in the suburbs can afford tuition " I worry about our vast middle-class, parents who are 'just making it' who can no longer afford our schools." Well said.

"¢ We struggle with demographics, as populations shift and the school-age pool shrinks. Our public school colleagues wrestle with this, too. I am so grateful to promising new endeavors like St. Thomas Aquinas Academy in our neighborhood here in St. Francis, Cudahy, and South Milwaukee, and Mary Queen of Saints Academy in West Allis, where committed pastors, principals, parents, and parishioners came together in neighborhoods that no longer had the numbers to support multiple schools and, with gritty confidence, have given us a new model of Catholic schools.

"¢ We face the challenge of never allowing our unwavering dedication to our schools to make us callous to the needs of our young people who are not in our schools, compelling us to promote sound religious education programs for them, nor to ignore the need for lifelong faith formation, nor to forget that our schools exist to further the broader aims of Church, diocese, and parishes, not vice versa. Our schools are only one " albeit a singularly important one " of many ministries our parishes sponsor in today's exciting Church.

Strengthening the faith dimension of our schools is essential. Unless " like Ezekiel prophesies in our reading " unless we work on the heart, on the spirit, we work in vain. Our schools put faith first, and not some generic, feel-good, Hallmark-greeting-card type of faith, but our Catholic faith. If our school day does not begin and end with prayer; if our classrooms do not have a crucifix, image of our blessed Mother, and a Bible enshrined; if the liturgy and the sacraments are not frequently, reverently, and fittingly celebrated; if our students are not daily fed with God's word, with a class in religion professionally taught with fidelity to the teachings of our Church, well, "we're just whistling Dixie," and then we ought to save a bundle and close up shop. We are not "private schools;" we are Catholic schools.

Before I left Mexico, I had the honor of celebrating Mass for 4,000 girls at a Catholic high school. It is a residential school in session 11 months a year, which takes the poorest of Mexican girls from the most primitive villages. I came to know of it from Dan and Eileen Meehan, from our archdiocese, who are generous benefactors. Each year the Sisters of Mary who administer the school must turn away three girls for every one they accept, that's how popular it is. After my visit with the students, I met with a group of poor parents. "Monseñor," they explained, "we are so grateful our girls are here. They get the best education they can, and then they get a good job and can even go to the university. But, more important, they learn here about Jesus, His Mother, His Church; they learn that He loves them and wants them to love others; they learn to know, love and serve Him. That's why we want our children here." That's what I mean by a Catholic school. There's our strength. There's our difference. There's our past. There's our future.

Last year a mom and dad came to visit me. They had moved here from another city and wanted to enroll their children in one of our Catholic schools. They visited the one nearest them. As they walked in, no one greeted them. They finally caught the attention of an unshaven man wearing a baseball hat whom they thought was a delivery man but who then introduced himself as one of the teachers. He was unable to answer any of their questions, but pointed them to the office. They told me that on their walk to the office, they looked in vain for crucifixes or statues. The classrooms were loud and unruly. No one offered to help them or welcome them. When they finally reached the office, a receptionist tried to answer questions, but seemed particularly tongue-tied about the religion curriculum and questions about discipline. The only thing she knew for sure was the cost of tuition, which was high.

"Archbishop," they told me, "as we drove away, we passed the brand new public school. We both looked at each other and wondered why we should sacrifice to send our two boys to a school that seemed so indifferent versus the school that would cost us nothing." I'm afraid they had a point.

I don't want any parents ever to say that again.

The French say, "Vive la différence!" So do we. We are different " and that's why we're confident.

God bless this new year.