September 23, 2005 - Issue #19
Local News | Opinion/Editorials | Letters to the Editor
Native students’ problems brought to fore
Editor’s Note: First in a series on the struggles of Alaska Natives in the Anchorage School District and the work of AFACT (Anchorage Faith & Action — Congregations Together) in finding solutions.
Patti Jacobus, a Yup’ik woman, met recently with the principal and staff of an Anchorage elementary school. Several other Alaska Native people and two Caucasian women joined her to talk to educators about why Native students are struggling in school, with lower graduation rates and lower proficiency scores than their peers.
During the meeting, Jacobus said, she noticed that the educators repeatedly addressed the Caucasians without glancing at the Native people at the table.
"I was invisible," Jacobus told the Anchor last week. "Imagine how they’re treating the students. They wouldn’t even look at us. It hurts."
This has happened more than once at school meetings, Jacobus said, before quickly adding that she’s "grateful" for the chance to build better relationships with the Anchorage School District and to help Alaska Native students succeed in school.
Why do Native students have the highest rate of middle- and high-school dropouts?
Why are 42 percent of Alaska Native students in grades 3-10 not proficient in language arts and 47 percent not proficient in math?
Why did only 41 percent of Native students who started high school in 2000 in the Cook Inlet region go on to graduate as seniors four years later?
Catholic and Lutheran Native ministry groups are searching for answers and solutions. They’re doing it by organizing their faith communities through AFACT (Anchorage Faith & Action — Congregations Together). The two-year-old organization has mobilized 11 church congregations and ministries to address quality-of-life issues affecting their communities.
A key element of AFACT’s methodology is having members pay "one-to-one" visits in their neighborhoods and churches to talk deliberately about the people’s concerns. More than 100 Alaska Native families and individuals have been interviewed by about 15 Lutheran and Catholic Native ministry members since January.
" ‘Our kids aren’t making it in school,’ " is what they have heard again and again, according to Susie Delgado, an Inupiaq Lutheran woman originally from Nome. Three of her four children did not graduate from the Anchorage schools they were once enrolled in.
Last week on Wednesday evening at Central Lutheran Church about 300 people, predominately Alaska Native, met with Carol Comeau, superintendent of the Anchorage School District, to address the status of education of Alaska Native students.
AFACT members presented their research and then the meeting was opened up for public testimony. One by one, parents, students, former students and teachers talked about their school experiences, with Comeau listening and taking notes at the front of the church. Some wore colorful kuspuks. Some of their voices trembled. One woman pointed her finger at Comeau.
The superintendent stayed at the church after the hour-long meeting to hear from people who did not have time to talk during the testimony phase. More than a dozen lined up behind the microphone.
Carl Topkok, a 20-year-old Inupiaq wearing a gray parka, stepped up to the microphone in his church and stood silently, pausing for a long while.
"Sorry, it’s hard for me to speak," Topkok said, wiping away tears. "I’m one of those dropouts."
He composed himself and continued: "It was very hard for me to go to school just about every day. I was discriminated (against) by my peers because I was Eskimo."
Topkok went on to tell Comeau that in the seventh grade, he moved to Anchorage from the village of Teller, where he had attended class all day with the same students and one teacher.
"I wasn’t very used to these types of classes where I had to hear the bell ring every day, every hour, go to class, go to another class. And I had one teacher and another teacher, another teacher and another teacher, another teacher. … I was used to being in one community group of students because that’s how I grew up — in one community of people."
During the meeting, AFACT leaders asked Comeau some specific questions regarding how to address the problems.
"Will you create a pilot project in one elementary and one middle school that includes intensive cross-cultural training for all school staff focused on the culture and communication techniques of Alaska Natives?" Delgado asked the superintendent in front of the hundreds gathered.
"Yes," Comeau answered into her microphone, and the church filled with applause.
The superintendent also agreed to create another pilot project in those same schools to provide active outreach to Native parents by teachers and staff, and also to meet with leaders of the Lutheran and Catholic Native ministry team in two months to discuss progress on the projects.
The day after testifying at the meeting, Topkok explained more about his move to the big city in a telephone interview with the Anchor.
It was the first time he had to ride a bus to school and he sat with other Alaska Native children.
" ‘Look at those dumb Eskimos chillin’ up there,’ " he recalled other kids saying.
"I was just crushed," Topkok recalled. He didn’t feel comfortable confronting the kids on the bus or talking about it with a teacher. "I wasn’t raised like that," he said. "I just missed the whole school (in Teller) and feeling accepted."
When he got into middle school he joined the wrestling team and had the support of a coach.
" ‘Topkok, you should be pretty damn proud of your last name,’ " he remembered his coach shouting out during practice. "It really built up my self-esteem," he said.
But then at Bartlett High School he started skipping classes and earning "withdrawal fail" marks instead of credits toward graduation. Before he dropped out his senior year, he was only attending two of the six classes he had started.
"It was easy to skip high school. It was easy to skip class," Topkok said.
Now he’s studying for a GED (General Equivalency Diploma) and drumming and dancing with his father and a group at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.
After people left the Native ministry meeting Sept. 14, Comeau broke down in tears talking to a radio reporter.
"The biggest thing is the acceptance of everybody. It was very hard to listen to. This really hit me because it was so from the heart and there was so much pain," Comeau told the Anchor. "It was a very compelling, heart-rending, gut-wrenching meeting," she said.
The superintendent said she’s been to big celebratory gatherings of Alaska Native people but that this was the first time she’d been to a meeting with so many Native people sharing their hardships.
"This is the other side of the coin," she said.
Despite the intensity of the meeting the superintendent said she was "so pleased."
"The sheer number (in attendance) was very significant because it showed the people really, really cared," she said. "I’m looking at it as a real catalyst for change. I’ve got a lot to think about."
Deciphering discipleship: Faith celebrated at three-day conference
Catholics from across the state joined together to learn more about spirituality, faith and what it means to be Catholic during the archdiocese’s three-day Discipleship Days event.
More than 300 Catholics from around Alaska and as far away as Florida converged on Anchorage last week for Discipleship Days, a three-day conference that offered a dazzling array of workshops and presentations.
The famous Hotel Captain Cook became a mini Catholic mecca Sept. 15-17. Incense and church music drifted from the facility’s main ballroom when its giant doors were opened, and in between workshops the hotel teemed with "disciples," easily identifiable by the bright yellow nametags hanging round their necks. The ballroom itself was transformed into sacred space, complete with a 20-foot wooden cross, bright red liturgical draperies, the book of the Gospels and a large baptismal font.
Discipleship Days brought together bishops and young mothers with babies, professors with Ph.D.s and people inching back to the faith they’d drifted away from. They came from all over Alaska, from each of its three dioceses, from communities large and small.
"This is unprecedented for Alaska," Peter Zografos announced to applause the first morning. "We have over 300 disciples gathered together here!"
Zografos, director the Anchorage Archdiocese’s Office of Evangelization, led planning and organization for the event.
For two-and-a-half days, presenters offered workshop after workshop, more than 60 in all, covering a spiritual topography as broad as Alaska: end-of-life morals, parish nursing, lectionary-based catechesis, homiletics, children’s Liturgy of the Word, community organizing, global solidarity, post-abortion ministry, hospitality ministry, ministry discernment, Mary, the Gospel of Mark, Native spirituality, Korean spirituality, generic spirituality.
Zografos said event planners wanted to offer so much in order to appeal to as many people as possible and to make the trip worthwhile to people from outside Anchorage.
That logic made sense to Deacon George Bowder of Fairbanks, who marveled at the sheer variety of offerings.
On the first day he attended workshops led by a Native deacon, by the adult faith formation director from a Western Alaska village, and by an Indian woman theologian from Florida. "It just tells us how universal our church is," he said.
Bowder, chief fiscal officer for the Fairbanks Diocese, said he was relishing Discipleship Days because in his job he wears many hats and he wants to be informed and sensitive in all of them.
JoJeana Gage of Wasilla, who attended workshops and meals while entertaining her energetic six-month-old, Nyalie, also said the effort was worth it.
Gage said she was raised Catholic but hadn’t practiced for many years. When she was pregnant with Nyalie, she and her husband decided to come back to the church. At Discipleship Days, she went to several workshops relating to raising children in the faith.
"I feel like we have a lot of catching up to do," she said.
Kodiak parish secretary Sarah Bass has taught children’s religious education for many years but said it was still "wonderful" to have an expert on the topic affirm her methods.
In the workshop Bass attended, Daughter of Charity Sister Paule Freeburg, who has written books about teaching the faith to children, suggested that educators read age-appropriate versions of the Scripture readings and ask children what they heard.
Bass said that’s exactly what her parents did when she was a girl and what she does with her daughter now.
Not every workshop went so smoothly.
In a talk titled "Discipleship and the End of Life," Mary Jo Iozzio, Ph.D., didn’t shy away from discussing Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman whose life and death in March sparked a fierce debate about artificial nutrition for people in a vegetative state.
Iozzio, who teaches moral theology at Barry University, a Dominican institution in Miami Shores, Fla., spent nearly all of her 75-minute presentation discussing the Scriptural and ecclesial bases for the church’s positions on death and dying.
She talked about the virtues of faith, hope and love, the communion of saints, and belief in everlasting life with God. She told how being present when several loved ones "breathed their last" had given her a "glimpse of heaven."
But when she shifted to three "case studies" — the deaths of John Paul II, Schiavo and Frank Anthony, her own father — hackles raised in the audience.
Iozzio asserted that in North America people have become too dependent on technology that can preserve earthly life, and not accepting enough of God’s promise of heaven.
"Instead of in God’s hands, we’ve put our hope in technology," she said.
Of Schiavo, she said bluntly: "She was not killed. She died."
When the professor offered the microphone to people with questions, Schiavo was the hot topic.
Arthur Roraff of Anchorage said that Catholics had been upset by the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube "because we were following Rome."
Therese Syren, a teacher at Lumen Christi High School in Anchorage, quoted from a speech John Paul II made last year in which he said water and food, even when delivered artificially, is ordinary treatment and therefore morally obligatory.
In response, Iozzio said that popes can speak at various levels of authority and that the statement Syren read was from a talk to a group of physicians, not a new doctrine. The church’s formal teachings on life have been developed over hundreds of years, she said.
Syren challenged that, too, and a little later interrupted Iozzio, but others in the audience shushed her. Iozzio told Syren she would speak with her afterward, which she did.
Keynote speaker Paulist Father John Hurley also took strong stands in his two presentations.
In the first, he issued a challenge to reach out to fallen-away Catholics and others who "want to come to the table and are turned away."
"One of the great challenges for us is to realize that Eucharist is a means to completing our journey to the Father," he said. "It is not a reward for a job well done."
He peppered the audience with questions: "How do we as a church respond to issues addressing the needs of those less fortunate than ourselves?" he asked, pausing as if waiting for an answer. "How do we address the issues of life in the womb — and in prison? How can we call ourselves Christian when we isolate ourselves from people who do not live their lives as we believe the Gospel calls us to? Are these not the precise situations in our society where the Gospel is calling us to be present?"
Father Hurley, who serves as the Paulist Fathers’ assistant to the president for strategic planning, was originally slated to deliver one of two keynotes, but he filled in when the other scheduled speaker missed the conference because of medical issues.
In his second address the priest returned to his themes of openness, warmth and action as integral to evangelization.
"Discipleship calls us to celebrate our identity," Father Hurley said. "(We can’t) presume that everybody knows who we are and what we are about in our mission and our life."
Father Hurley kept the crowd laughing, joking about the number of Catholics who go to Mass only on Christmas and Easter ("If we put poinsettias and lilies out at the same Mass they’d only have to come once") even as he stressed the importance of working to welcome people back in to the church.
He suggested that parishes should think of all the issues that affect the community — issues such as culture, generational differences and language — as icebergs. Some issues are readily apparent, but most of them lurk under the surface, unseen.
"It’s not what they saw that sunk the Titanic," Father Hurley said. "It’s what they didn’t see. If we talk about those issues, the iceberg won’t be a problem."
While Father Hurley’s talk covered a broad range of concerns, from multiculturalism to youth work to interpersonal issues, he continued to come back to two concepts: enthusiasm and evangelization.
"The task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the church," he said. "We are called, brothers and sisters, to be witnesses. It’s a mission entrusted to us as a church."
Archbishop Roger Schwietz missed the first part of the conference because of travel, but he addressed the group at the midday meal Sept. 17.
"It’s called the Archbishop’s Lunch," he told the crowd, adding dryly: "I suppose that’s because I’ll get the bill."
The luncheon may have been named for the archbishop, but the stars of the event were teenagers from five Anchorage parishes who came to share photos and stories from their August trip to Germany for World Youth Day 2005.
Sarah Cunningham of Eagle River said she was struggling with her faith before the pilgrimage and wasn’t really sure she even wanted to make the trip. It ended up being a life-changing experience, she said.
"I actually felt that I was part of a real, big family," Cunningham said.
Discipleship Days was itself a pilgrimage of sorts, especially for those folks who live in small, isolated communities.
"It’s very valuable, both for the content and for the between times, the communicating with everyone," said Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart Sister Diane Bardol. Even after 35 years at St. Mary School in Kodiak, she said, she has much to learn and experience.
"You come to a larger setting and you become recharged," she said. "It’s a bigger community. You can have your ideas rehoned and reshaped."
CSS programs offer more than just a shelter
Editor’s Note: Second in a three-part series exploring the mission of Catholic Social Services, the Anchorage Archdiocese’s social outreach agency. This installment looks at the mission to "strengthen individuals and families." Click here to read story 1.
Catholic Social Services carries out its mission to strengthen individuals and families in myriad ways. But there are misconceptions about just what Catholic Social Services is and what services it provides, according to St. Joseph of Peace Sister Charlotte Davenport, the organization’s acting executive director and chancellor of the Anchorage Archdiocese.
"I think some people don’t look at CSS as a total agency," she said. "Some people think Brother Francis Shelter or Clare House are separate entities."
In fact, those two well-known shelters are among eleven Catholic Social Services programs, each of which strives to fulfill the agency’s mission.
Also, some people don’t understand that Catholic Social Services is part of the Anchorage Archdiocese; it is the archdiocese’s social outreach arm, and its mission is grounded in Christ’s mandate to serve "the least of my brothers."
Another common misconception is that Catholic Social Services merely provides basic services like a shelter for the night or a meal.
While those services are important, Catholic Social Services is committed to standing by people as they strive to improve their lives, Sister Davenport said.
"And that means we accompany them on their journey," she said. "None of us can do this journey alone."
Clare House program manager Lora O’Connor and her staff walk the journey with many women and children.
On a typical night, close to 40 moms and kids pack the modest little shelter on a side street off Anchorage’s Arctic Boulevard. But Clare House provides more than a roof overhead.
"Each woman has a case manager who helps them take time to stop and look at what’s going on in their lives that may need to be changed," O’Connor said.
There may be mental health issues or substance abuse, or a woman may simply need time to save money for rent.
"We just had a phone call earlier this week from a woman who told us she’s gotten on her feet and has even opened her own business," O’Connor said. "She said she never could have done it without Clare House."
An educational program that Catholic Social Services utilizes called "Home Sweet Home" teaches clients about lease agreements and the rights and responsibilities of both tenants and landlords.
Clare House also partners with the Anchorage School District’s "Child in Transition Homeless Project" to keep kids in their neighborhood schools for at least a year, even if the mother has moved into a shelter on the other side of town.
"Kids who are homeless are in an unstable situation," O’Connor said. "They need the stability of being in the same school."
Jackie Snyder helps strengthen families each day through Catholic Social Services’ Healthy Families Program.
The purpose of the program, which is currently funded by a federal grant, is "the prevention of child abuse and neglect or early intervention."
The program serves families with pregnant mothers and those with infants; families may remain with the program until the child is 5.
Through once-a-week home meetings, parents get assistance developing parenting skills, learning about child development and good nutrition, or addressing deeper issues that may be pulling the family apart.
"We had a situation where there was a history of domestic violence and incarceration," Snyder said last week. The end result of the family’s ongoing association with Healthy Families was that "those issues were no longer in their lives and the parents stayed together," she said.
At Catholic Social Services’ Adoption and Pregnancy Services program, Kristina Church works with birth families to help them make the critical decision about parenting or adoption.
"There are other places women can go," Church said, "but the non-coercive support we give is vital. They need to have the time and safety to talk to someone who’s non-judgmental."
Although Church worked on a long-term basis with 10 women placing babies for adoption last year, she receives countless walk-ins, and phone calls, like the one recently from someone who knew a pregnant homeless woman and wanted to help her.
"Many women come in only once and I don’t hear from them again," Church said. "And I just hope that I helped."
Hope is what Catholic Social Services is all about, Sister Davenport said — "hope and creating an environment where hope can thrive."
She added that part of strengthening families and individuals is helping them see themselves not just in light of their problems, but in light of "who they can be."
Holy Spirit Center celebrates 35 years of tranquility in archdiocese
It had its genesis when what is now the Hillside area of South Anchorage was mostly trees and uninhabited parcels of land.
Today, Holy Spirit Center, nestled on the corner of busy O’Malley Road and Hillside Drive, retains an aura of rural tranquility as it celebrates its 35th year as the spirituality center for the Archdiocese of Anchorage.
Just as changes have taken place on the lands surrounding the center, there have been changes within the organization itself, especially recently. The center has experienced numerous staffing changes in the past two years and, like retreat facilities around the country, is struggling with persistent financial challenges.
That means there’s all the more reason to celebrate the past, said interim executive director Rosemary Insley.
"In the midst of all that’s changing, it’s important to honor the people who have gone before us," she said. "It’s a grounding thing to do; it’s a good thing to do."
At a Sept. 25 celebration, Archbishop Joseph Ryan, Anchorage’s first archbishop and the founder of Holy Spirit Center (then called Holy Spirit Retreat House), and Jesuit Father Vincent Kelliher, the center’s first executive director, will be honored. Two rooms in Holy Spirit Center will be blessed and dedicated to the memory of the men, both of whom are deceased.
It was in the mid-1960s, before the Archdiocese of Anchorage was formally established, that Harvey and May Dault donated 22 acres of prime Hillside property to the local church.
Archbishop Ryan moved a former Lutheran church to the site in 1967 to serve as a chapel, then added an administration building with offices, bedrooms and a dining area.
By 1970, Archbishop Ryan established a bona fide retreat center on the property, staffed by the Sister Adorers of the Precious Blood who had been maintaining a monastery in Eagle River, according to Mae Ferrari, an early retreat house staffer.
"Archbishop Ryan always had a dream about a retreat center for the people," said Ferrari. "He said the priests, brothers and sisters all had places to make retreats. He wanted a place for the people."
In 1972, the sisters left Alaska, and a year later the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) took over operation of the center, an arrangement that continues today although it is no longer required that the executive director be a member of the order.
No Jesuit has served Holy Spirit Center longer than Father Vincent Beuzer, who was executive director from 1986, when Father Kelliher left, until 1998.
After a sabbatical year, Father Beuzer returned as a spiritual director, a post he still holds.
In 1990 Father Beuzer received an offer he couldn’t refuse.
"Ben Tisdale sat down with me after Mass and said, ‘I’d like to give you $500,000 to build a new chapel.’ "
Tisdale laughs when asked about his offer.
"We always went to Mass there, and the place could only hold about 30 people," he said. "I was sick and tired of standing up during Mass.
"But seriously, the place was growing and so was the Hillside. It seemed like a good thing to do."
Tisdale and his wife, Dawn, took an active role in the design of the chapel, which was begun in September 1990 and finished in time for Christmas Eve Mass. Featuring a panoramic view of the mountains and the city of Anchorage below, the chapel is now the facility’s centerpiece.
Under Father Beuzer’s leadership, several programs based on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola were introduced at Holy Spirit Center and later expanded to other sites in the archdiocese.
Father Beuzer also established a two-year program for spiritual directors. Insley said she sees these kinds of programs as key to the church’s future.
"This is a wonderful opportunity for those who have been through the intensive programs to become more active in ministry," both at the center and in parishes, she said.
From the beginning, Holy Spirit Center has been a source of spiritual empowerment for the laity.
Mae Ferrari is an example of that. She often helped Archbishop Ryan with housekeeping tasks and cooking for guests. When she met Father Kelliher, he saw something more in her, and sent her to Toronto to a Jesuit center for spiritual directors.
"There were 50 priests, brothers, nuns — and me," laughs Ferrari, who became a retreat director at the center in the 1970s and the first female Eucharistic minister in the archdiocese.
Today, there are at least a dozen Holy Spirit associates, lay people who volunteer their time offering spiritual direction, facilitating Ignatian programs and maintaining the library.
In addition, a large community gathers at Mass on Sunday at Resurrection Chapel and continues to provide support, both financial and physical, to the work of the center.
In addition to Fathers Kelliher and Beuzer, Jesuit Father Paul Macke served as executive director from 1998 to 2004.
The center’s first lay executive director, Dacia Van Antwerp, served from 2004 until this fall. Insley, acting executive director, also serves as the coordinator of ministry.
The anniversary celebration on Sept. 25 begins at 3 p.m. with Mass in Resurrection Chapel. All are invited.
Jesuit who has led spiritual retreats around the world returns to Alaska
Jesuit Father Armand Nigro led his first spiritual retreat in the Anchorage area more than 40 years ago, before the archdiocese was even formed. He went on to teach and offer retreats all over the world, but now he’s back, assigned to provide spiritual direction at Anchorage’s Holy Spirit Center.
His return to Alaska is also a reunion with an old friend and fellow Jesuit, Father Vincent Beuzer, with whom Father Nigro will be working side-by-side at the center.
For the last seven months before the Anchorage assignment, Father Nigro served as pastor of two parishes in Oregon. Before that he lived out of two small suitcases for six years, trotting the globe to offer spiritual guidance to clergy, religious and lay people.
"There isn’t a place on earth you could send me that I wouldn’t be happy," the 77-year-old priest said.
Though Father Nigro prefers warmer climes, people are "the warmth of your life, and there are beautiful people everywhere," he said.
The priest knows what he’s getting into with this latest assignment. In the early 1950s, before snowmobiles replaced dog teams as the main mode of transportation in Bush Alaska, Father Nigro, as a seminarian, served for two years in the Western Alaska community of Holy Cross. The Jesuits operated a boarding school and orphanage there until 1956.
Father Nigro remembers the large vegetable gardens in the self-sustaining community and the bountiful Yukon River, which he described as "a mother to us."
"If we didn’t grow it or make it," he said, "you didn’t get it," unless it was something that could be ordered and delivered by the sternwheelers that came upriver two or three times a year.
Father Nigro said he will "never be able to thank God enough" for those years in Holy Cross.
For about the next 40 years, the priest taught philosophy, spirituality courses and Christian ethics classes at Jesuit universities and various seminaries in the United States, Canada and Africa. Over the course of his priesthood, he’s filled vacation weeks and time between assignments leading retreats and parish renewal programs in multiple African countries, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and almost every nation in the Western hemisphere and in Europe.
From about 1998 to 2004, he worked solely as a world-traveling retreat master.
Father Nigro said that experiencing so many different countries and cultures has taught him that human beings around the world are "all our brothers and sisters."
"They all have those deep lovable human qualities and the same desires for goodness and happiness," he said. "They all primarily want to have children and raise good families."
Being able to spiritually guide and teach people from Zimbabwe to New Zealand and Ireland to Israel has been a "huge grace," the priest said.
As for his new Alaska assignment, Father Nigro said he hopes to live out the rest of his days here, sharing the "good news of Jesus" and basically listening to those who come to him in search of spiritual direction or prayer renewal.
"It’s important to listen to their story first," he said, "and then to be supportive to what God is trying to do in their lives."
His job, as he sees it, is to help people "respond to God’s loving presence," he added.
Father Nigro and Father Beuzer originally met in 1945 while they were both studying at the
Jesuit novitiate in Sheridan, Ore. They have teamed up many times all over the world to lead retreats and train clergy, religious and lay people for ministry.
"We work well together," Father Nigro said. "I think we can finish each other’s sentences."
Father Nigro fills a need at the retreat center created by the departure this spring of two Jesuit spiritual directors. Father Paul Macke left for Washington, D.C., to become secretary of pastoral ministries for the U.S. Jesuits, and Father Joseph Schad is now at a parish in New Hampshire.
Father Nigro has been celebrating some daily noon Masses and Sunday 9 a.m. Masses at Holy Spirit Center, the retreat and conference facility perched in the scenic Chugach Mountain foothills of South Anchorage. The Anchorage Archdiocese owns the center but it has been administered for many years by the Jesuit’s Oregon Province.
News & Notes
Lumen Christi wins soccer tournament
Lumen Christi High School freshman Joe Skaja scored in the waning minutes of the championship game to lift his soccer team over Tri-Valley School in the Sept. 9-10 Tri-Valley Tournament. On Sept. 9, after the five-hour drive to Healy, the Lumen Christi varsity squad defeated Nenana 3-0. Later that day, they lost to defending champions Tri-Valley 6-1. On Saturday, Lumen Christi defeated Heritage Christian 10-1. In that game, sophomore Greg Bombeck scored five goals, Phil Dixon and young Skaja put in two each, and Matt Hudlow added one. Then it was on to the championship game, a rematch against Tri-Valley. Lumen won 5-4. Skaja scored four goals in the game, including the tie-breaker with about two minutes to go. The Archangels fended off three offensive rushes from Tri-Valley after Skaja’s final goal.
— Reported by Lumen Christi Junior Roman Bakic
Parishioners tend garden to feed poor
On the sprawling grounds of Our Lady of the Lake Mission Parish in Big Lake this summer, parishioners tilled and sowed and weeded and nurtured a garden to feed the poor. The parish St. Vincent de Paul Society oversaw the operation, which produced lettuce, bok choy, green beans, sweet peas, celery, zucchini, cabbage, strawberries, turnips, radishes, onions, broccoli, tomatoes and cauliflower. "We gave fresh vegetables to the Palmer food bank, several families in the Big Lake area who needed food, parishioners, and I have all the green tomatoes to make green tomatoes relish — which I will can and St. Vincent de Paul will give to the parishioners as a thank-you for all their support," said Kathy Bishop, pastoral director at Our Lady of the Lake.
Archbishop's Column
Inspiration and joy could be found at every turn on pilgrimage
This year’s World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, as can be seen in the witnesses shared in the Sept. 9 Anchor, was a powerful and rich experience for most of us pilgrims. I would like to add a few more reflections regarding this extraordinary event.
The theme of this 20th World Youth Day, "We have come to worship him," colored all that we did and experienced.
The week before the actual event was a true pilgrimage for our Anchorage Archdiocese group (which included some folks from the Fairbanks Diocese and some from the Seattle Archdiocese). Our journey, like that of the Magi on their way to Bethlehem, was sometimes arduous, sometimes inspiring, always guided by faith.
Pilgrims arrived at the World Youth Day sites ready to worship their Lord and King, just like the Magi. Numerous churches in the three cities where pilgrims stayed — Cologne, Bonn and Dusseldorf — remained constantly open for Eucharistic adoration and were filled with countless youths and young adults. Our Holy Father, on his first World Youth Day pilgrimage as pope, took the theme of his talks from the Gospel account of the Magi, whose relics are housed in the Cologne cathedral. Each pilgrimage group was assigned to make a journey to the Cologne cathedral on one of the three days following the opening Masses of Tuesday evening, Aug. 16.
Our Anchorage group was assigned lodging in Dusseldorf. Upon arriving, Brother Craig Bonham and I separated from our group to lodge across town at a residence called "Das Mutter Haus," along with bishops from around the world. There we joined Cardinal Francis George, a fellow Oblate and the archbishop of Chicago.
On Tuesday evening the opening Mass for those in Dusseldorf was held in a large soccer stadium. I was able to concelebrate with more than 100 bishops, archbishops and cardinals and was able to find our Anchorage group to greet them before Mass started.
On the next three days the groups were scheduled to have two days of catechesis and one for the Cologne pilgrimage. Our Anchorage group was assigned Wednesday for the Cologne trip.
Brother Craig and I took a train into Cologne to meet our group for the cathedral visit and Mass but never found them among the thousands of pilgrims there. We were able to accompany Cardinal George to Cologne on the next day, however, where we celebrated Mass with a large, international group of pilgrims and were given special access to the relics of the Magi and a private tour of the cathedral.
Pope Benedict XVI, in the tradition of Pope John Paul II, connected with the youths on several occasions, teaching and challenging them. On Saturday at the vigil service and Sunday morning at the closing Mass at Marionfield, the pope reflected on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the same Jesus whom the Magi adored in Bethlehem.
At the closing Mass the pope challenged youths to put their faith into action. First, by attending weekly Mass: "Do not be deterred from taking part in Sunday Mass, and help others discover it, too," he said. "This is because the Eucharist releases the joy that we need so much … ."
He also challenged youths to study their faith: "Pope John Paul II gave us a wonderful work in which the faith of the centuries is explained systematically: The Catechism of the Catholic Church. I myself recently presented the Compendia of the Catechism, prepared at the request of the late Holy Father. These are two fundamental texts which I recommend to all of you."
He also invited youths to be sensitive to the needs of others: "Today there are many forms of voluntary assistance, models of mutual service, of which our society has urgent need."
Finally, the pope invited youths to be a sign of hope: "I know that you as young people have great aspirations, that you want to pledge yourselves to build a better world.
"Let others see this, let the world see it, since this is exactly the witness that the world expects from the disciples of Jesus Christ; in this way, and through your love above all, the world will be able to discover the star that we follow as believers."
Editorials
Government is failing poor people
Hurricane Katrina exposed severe shortcomings in the government’s ability to respond swiftly and effectively to major disasters — even ones as frequently foretold as a levee-breaching hurricane in New Orleans.
But the storm also blew the lid off the city’s widespread but heretofore mostly-hidden poverty. Before the storm hit, nearly one-third of New Orleans residents had incomes below the federal poverty line (which, for a family of three, is an annual income of $14,680).
New Orleans is in very bad shape, but nationwide, one in eight people are living in poverty. This in the richest country in the world?
From a Catholic perspective, government has failed miserably in its responsibilities to its poorest citizens.
The church teaches that all members of society are responsible for building up the common good, and that government is responsible for maintaining the fundamental means for basic rights to be exercised.
Consider the prophetic voice of Pope John XXIII:
"For experience has taught us that, unless these (civil) authorities take suitable action with regard to economic, political and cultural matters, inequalities between the citizens tend to become more and more widespread … and as a result human rights are rendered totally ineffective and the fulfillment of duties is compromised.
"It is therefore necessary that the administration give wholehearted and careful attention to the social as well as to the economic progress of the citizens, and to the development, in keeping with the development of the productive system, of such essential services as the building of roads, transportation, communications, water supply, housing, public health, education, facilitation of the practice of religion, and recreational facilities" ("Pacem in Terris" no. 63-64).
When projects like Alaska’s $2.2 million Gravina Island "bridge to nowhere" survive even as the nation digs deep to rebuild New Orleans, it would seem government is meeting its obligations in the "transportation" area.
But 45 million Americans lack health coverage (80 percent of them belong to working families). Eight million of the uninsured are children.
Education, another fundamental tool against poverty, remains dismal in many communities, including New Orleans, where the dropout rate is reportedly at least 35 percent.
Church workers have long been aware of the social and economic gulfs in America. But Katrina ripped off the roof for all to see. The tragedy will only be mitigated if it leads to a national discussion about poverty and ultimately to better government.
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (www.usccb.org/cchd/) is an excellent source of information about poverty in America and ways to combat it.
Alaska Native organizers are disciples
Alaska Native members of AFACT (Anchorage Faith in Action — Congregations Together) walked out of their places of worship and into the homes of their neighbors, and brought their faith with them.
This faith-in-action process led to a meeting last week between several hundred Natives and Anchorage School District superintendent Carol Comeau.
At the end of the meeting the superintendent agreed to work to improve relations and communications between school staff and Native parents.
This community organizing process dovetailed perfectly with Discipleship Days, the Sept. 15-17 conference for the enlightenment and encouragement of Alaska’s Catholic community.
The folks who took part in the AFACT organizing are exemplary disciples; they carried their faith in Christ into the streets, into their communities, and effected change.
The most important immediate lesson from this phenomenal example of discipleship is that hurting people, when they reach out to one another and act in solidarity, can instigate and promote solutions to their problems.
Before, these individuals faced their despair alone, feeling powerless. Now they are working with the school district. Now they have each other, and they have hope.
Letters to the Editor
Youths proved their mettle
Traveling to Germany for World Youth Day afforded our group many once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We walked in the steps of saints. We heard cardinals provide solid catechesis to us in a relatively small group setting. We celebrated Holy Mass with Pope Benedict XIV. However, as an adult I was consistently impressed and inspired by the youths whom I had the honor of befriending. For everyone who did not go to World Youth Day I am pleased to announce that our youths are strong people who are fully capable of carrying our faith into the future. Support them always in their spiritual journey in both prayer and action.
Anchorage
Mercy is parable’s point
With great respect for Father Clementich, I must comment on his Scripture column in the Sept. 9 Anchor. He asserts that the central point of the parable of the workers hired at varying times of the day is just compensation. Although just payment for labor is certainly one of the principles that Christian business owners should practice, this parable has nothing to do with that subject. Rather, our Lord is making the point that the mercy of God extends to all his workers, no matter the time of our calling or the hours available to work in his vineyard. The parable helps us to more clearly understand the grace of God to the thief on the cross; it provides no help for us in considering just earthly wages. Indeed, in the eyes of the world, the owner of the vineyard is rightly accused of paying unjust wages! The parable is about mercy, not wages.
Anchorage
Quit trashing pro-life group
I am disturbed by the vehement trashing of Alaska Right to Life in the Anchor’s Sept. 9 "Catholic Comment" column. While Archbishop Schwietz considers Providence’s guidelines on early induction to be in compliance with Catholic moral guidelines, he will not publish those guidelines so that all of us can likewise be convinced that abortions are not being done at the local "Catholic" hospital. When I heard Archbishop Schwietz describe early induction two years ago, it sounded like abortion to me. As an ecumenical group, Alaska Right to Life has kept abortion from becoming simply a "Catholic" issue, instead of the humanitarian issue it truly is. They have done far more to combat this evil than any other group, including the Knights of Columbus. As a Catholic, I am proud to support Alaska Right to Life; I wish I had a fraction of the courage displayed by their volunteers.
Anchorage
Help bishops design logo
The Alaska Catholic Conference is seeking a crisp-looking logo containing the words "Alaska Catholic Conference" to use on letterhead, printed materials and other media. The conference, composed of the Catholic bishops of the state, serves as the official public policy voice of the Catholic Church in Alaska. The conference also assists the bishops in coordinating the efforts of the Archdiocese of Anchorage, the Diocese of Fairbanks and the Diocese of Juneau in areas of mutual interest. For example, it serves to strengthen each diocese’s bargaining power in the insurance market through collaborative action. The conference extends an open invitation to submit design(s) for consideration. There is a $100 cash prize for the winning entry. Designs should be e-mailed no later than Oct. 14 to citw@alaska.net or mailed to me at 415 Sixth St., Suite 300, Juneau, AK 99801 in time to be received by Oct. 14.
Juneau
Hymn no stand-in for psalm
As a last response to the Church at Prayer series I’d like to add my voice to Robert Baeten’s (Readers Respond, Sept. 9) in a plea for the use of original sources. Why? For example, in the last installment of the series, Father Clementich notes quite correctly that "the psalm changes at each Mass to accommodate the accompanying Scripture passage. To simplify things, many communities choose to sing a seasonal hymn that accentuates the particular season of the liturgical year being celebrated." Constrast that final, unqualified statement about the responsorial to that of the General Instruction for the Roman Missal: "Songs or hymns may not be used in place of the responsorial psalm" (61). The General Instruction clearly states that seasonal psalms are fine, seasonal songs are not. What is done no longer indicates what ought to be done. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass originates in the heart of Christ crucified, not a parish committee.
Anchorage
Jesus here physically as well
I recently wrote to an Assemblies of God magazine, Pentecostal Evangel, that invites comments. I never heard back but thought I’d share my thoughts in the Anchor. Jesus said he would be with us always. As Christians we know with a spiritual knowing that he is near in our thoughts, our prayers, our aspirations, ever since he went back to the Father. We also know that he is not only true God but also truly and fully man, with a physical body like us. He was not content just to do, and suffer, all he did and then just leave us his spiritual presence. He desired to leave us his physical presence as well. In fact, he insisted on it, in no uncertain terms, in the sixth chapter of John. This physical giving of himself, the Real Presence of the Eucharist, is so holy an act that we in the Catholic Church rightly call it Holy Communion.
Anchorage