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Christian Witness, Perspective, ,

What is mission, what is presence?

From Kenny Be at Denver Westword: Vandalized St. Francis statute unable to lend a hand to animals:
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This week, the St. Francis of Assisi National Catholic Church in southeast Denver will be presented with a new statue to replace their five-foot-tall front door figurine of St. Francis that was stolen on July 30. Meanwhile, the St. Francis of Assisi statue residing with The Sisters of Penance and Christian Charity in Chaffee Park shall just have to try to come to grips with the rationale of being left limbless and ignored for years…
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Standing before a rock wall at the intersection of West 52nd Ave. and Federal Blvd., the St. Francis statue… is hidden from the view of the Marycrest caretaker’s house just barely seen through the trees. The overgrowth of vegetation and lack of repair suggest that the Marycrest mission may (once again) be in transition. A quick Internet search reveals that the Sisters have sold the property to developers for affordable housing.

A look at the Aria Denver website for the Marycrest development intimate that future plans for the limbless statue include removal of the remaining body parts and complete replacement with an asphalt parking lot and strip mall. Since the statue has not been converted into a curbside nail salon/income tax/doggy daycare sign holder insinuates that there may be little need for new retail development at the location at this time.

The build-out of the proposed eighty co-housing units and 120 apartments planned for the Aria Denver project was supposed to be completed by 2010, thereby hinting that the project is experiencing a slowdown, possibly due to a weak housing market.

The unwillingness to replace the hands on the statue indicate that the property’s current managers believe that the improved economic conditions needed to make this development a success can be achieved without St. Francis’s prayers.

Two sisters from the congregation that owned the property commented on the post. They indicate that the statue had been repeatedly vandalized, and then offered the “well we are the hands of Francis” justification for leaving things as they are. They then go on to indicate that the property’s new owners will be “the hands of Francis.”

I imagine something quite different, amounting to an abdication of responsibility for the statue, the property (note the overgrown/unkept part of the article), and for their mission in this distressed area of Denver.

Where are the sisters of days gone by who did real missionary work, real charity, and real acts of courage? Why aren’t they providing education and healthcare services to the poor in Denver. The hands of Francis appear to be off doing backpacking and camping retreats, massage therapy, community blessings (with a feather, of course), handing the Eucharist off to each other (no priest or deacon necessary), and tying “universal ribbons.” All that’s missing is a labyrinth and a Reiki session. The one good and courageous thing I found in their resume was a home for Lakota children – close to their original missions of education and healthcare. I believe that the order’s foundress would find something lacking.

My suggestions: get proper habits, focus on one or two core missions (once again), and stop trying to be every ministry needed in the world. Humility calls you to remember that the totality of the Church’s ministry is not present in, or channeled through, you.

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC,

Don’t avoid clergy burnout, embrace it

From the NY Times: Congregations Gone Wild

The American clergy is suffering from burnout, several new studies show. And part of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that pastors work too much. Many of them need vacations, it’s true. But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.

The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing than listening to the local people.

As a result, pastors are constantly forced to choose, as they work through congregants’ daily wish lists in their e-mail and voice mail, between paths of personal integrity and those that portend greater job security. As religion becomes a consumer experience, the clergy become more unhappy and unhealthy.

The trend toward consumer-driven religion has been gaining momentum for half a century. Consider that in 1955 only 15 percent of Americans said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood, according to a Gallup poll. By 2008, 44 percent had switched their religious affiliation at least once, or dropped it altogether, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found. Americans now sample, dabble and move on when a religious leader fails to satisfy for any reason.

In this transformation, clergy have seen their job descriptions rewritten. They’re no longer expected to offer moral counsel in pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay dearly. A few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Ariz., when their respective preachers refused to bless the congregations’ preferred political agendas and consumerist lifestyles.

I have faced similar pressures myself. In the early 2000s, the advisory committee of my small congregation in Massachusetts told me to keep my sermons to 10 minutes, tell funny stories and leave people feeling great about themselves. The unspoken message in such instructions is clear: give us the comforting, amusing fare we want or we’ll get our spiritual leadership from someone else.

Congregations that make such demands seem not to realize that most clergy don’t sign up to be soothsayers or entertainers. Pastors believe they’re called to shape lives for the better, and that involves helping people learn to do what’s right in life, even when what’s right is also difficult. When they’re being true to their calling, pastors urge Christians to do the hard work of reconciliation with one another before receiving communion. They lead people to share in the suffering of others, including people they would rather ignore, by experiencing tough circumstances —” say, in a shelter, a prison or a nursing home —” and seeking relief together with those in need. At their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed.

Ministry is a profession in which the greatest rewards include meaningfulness and integrity. When those fade under pressure from churchgoers who don’t want to be challenged or edified, pastors become candidates for stress and depression.

Clergy need parishioners who understand that the church exists, as it always has, to save souls by elevating people’s values and desires. They need churchgoers to ask for personal challenges, in areas like daily devotions and outreach ministries.

When such an ethic takes root, as it has in generations past, then pastors will cease to feel like the spiritual equivalents of concierges. They’ll again know joy in ministering among people who share their sense of purpose. They might even be on fire again for their calling, rather than on a path to premature burnout.

I do not believe it is solely a problem in Churches with a democratic nature, nor solely among Protestant congregations. The cause is, as is typical, in sins of pride, selfishness, and blindness — both the congregations and ours.

I have seen this sort of thing in many different settings, and have heard many a tale of woe. These experiences, and the stories I’ve heard, have spanned the spectrum of Churches, from Protestant, to Oriental, to Roman Catholic. In fact, my earliest recollection was of division in the Roman Catholic parish in which I was raised. A certain faction was fighting over the removal/reassignment of an assistant priest. Of course it caused some to leave the parish, and perhaps the Church. I’ve seen it among pastors who have given it, who have watered down their message, tickling the ears of the congregation with the messages they want to hear. Of course the PNCC gets its share of the problem too. Being a “democratic Church,” on occasion leads one group of parishioners or another to shop for clergy, especially if they do not like what they hear or experience from the current pastor.

While identifying the issue is a start, we as clergy need to find a way to get past the problem to the root causes. We cannot play whack-the-mole with sinfulness. Rather, we need to gently, yet firmly stay on the message that transforms. At the same time, we must avoid the urge to run away from the problem when it rears its ugly head over and over. Vocation is in part about self-sacrifice, as well as leadership by example. Take the time needed to refocus, spend time in prayer, recollect Christ’s commitment (sure, He got burned out and was saddened by people’s failure to respond — but He kept on message), and lean on the support of family, fellow clergy, your Bishop, and those who “get it.” In time, burn out will lead to renewal.

The Young Fogey covers his take on the issue in More on Clergy Burnout. Valid points.

PNCC, , , ,

From Sta. Sunniva Mission Parish, Bergen, Norway

Their summer picnic. Their priest (in cassock – hope its summer weight) is the Rev. Erik Andreas. Prior to coming to the Nordic Catholic Church in 2001, Father served as a Norwegian Naval Chaplain. He was ordained a deacon in Holy Mother of the Rosary PNC Cathedral in Buffalo on November 29, 2001 and as priest on November 30th. Between 2001 and 2004 he served as an assistant priest and later vicar at the Parish of St. John the Baptist and St. Michael in eastern Norway. From autumn 2004, he has served as chaplain and administrator in the Sta. Sunniva Mission Parish in Bergen. He and his wife Solveig have three children.

Christian Witness, Perspective, , ,

From Communist to Priest

A Greek Catholic priest, Fr. Yurko Kolasa, reflects on his journey from communism to a vocation as a married man and a priest. He speaks of the martyrs of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, his personal journey, his marriage, vocation, pastoral work, and a program he developed to support married life.

From ZENIT: From Communism To Catholicism To Priest: An Interview With Father Yurko Kolasa of the Ukraine

Raised in the communist Soviet Union, Yurko Kolasa knew nothing of the Catholic faith until he was well into his teens. Once the Greek-Catholic Church went from an underground following to being an openly practiced and respected religion in Ukraine, this future priest’s whole world opened up.

Today, Father Kolasa is the prefect of the training program for priests, seminarians and religious, at the International Theological Institute in Vienna. He is also a married priest of the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and a father of four.

He also tells of the marriage preparation program he developed, how it has positively impacted the marriage success rate in Ukraine and is quickly becoming the proto-type for marriage preparation programs throughout various dioceses in Eastern Europe.

ZENIT: You have said that you accepted the ideas of Communism until you were 15. What happened that made you turn away from that ideology and turn toward the truths of the Catholic faith?

Father Kolasa: Most of my relatives were very active in communist party. As a boy I did not know anything about the persecution of the Greek-Catholic Church in the Soviet Union. It was only in 1989, when the Greek Church was legalized that I began to learn about thousands and thousands of martyrs of this Church — Greek Catholic bishops, clergy, monastics, and laity.

It was the authenticity of their faith that radically changed my life. I was crushed by the fact that there were so many people who have resisted compromise with the oppressive regime of that time and overcame the greatest moral challenges of the 20th century: the suppression of God-given freedom and human dignity by ideological totalitarianism. They gave the strongest testimony of their faith — their blood.

ZENIT: Despite the government’s effort to stamp out Christianity, the people’s faith prevailed. Can you describe how people continued to practice, or at least hold on to, their faith in such conditions?

Father Kolasa: By the end of 1947, male and female religious, lay faithful and hundreds of priests who refused to “convert” to orthodoxy, often with their wives and children, were arrested and sent to labor camps, where they endured horrific hardships. Parishes where the pastor had been arrested were to become the backbone of the underground. The faithful sang outside closed churches or worshiped at churches not registered with the regime. Priests who had avoided arrest tried to make pastoral visits to these underground communities. Nuns maintained contact between the priests and the laity, arranging secret religious services and catechizing children.

With Stalin’s death in March 1953, many priests who survived the camps were allowed to return home where they often resumed their pastoral activities. Priests celebrated the sacraments in forests or in private apartments, late at night or early in the morning, in addition to their legal jobs. Sometimes they were caught and again sentenced.

Until it emerged from the underground in 1989, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was the world’s largest illegal church. It was also the most extensive network of civil opposition in the Soviet Union. Despite relentless persecution, church life continued through an elaborate system of clandestine seminaries, monasteries, ministries, parishes and youth groups until the church was legalized on Dec. 1, 1989.

ZENIT: You are a Greek-Catholic priest, you are married, and you have four children. For those not familiar with the tradition of married clergy in the Eastern Catholic rites, could you explain how this difference in tradition came about?

Father Kolasa: The tradition of married clergy comes from the apostolic times. In the early years of the Church some married men were even consecrated bishops. The Eastern Church has always allowed the possibility of married men being ordained to the priesthood.

Please note that not a single practicing priest in the Church has ever married; there have only been instances of married men who later became ordained. The Western Church has cherished the discipline of only unmarried men being ordained, except for some Protestants who have entered the Church in recent years.

I always have a great respect and high esteem for unmarried priests and always try to encourage them to treasure and to protect the gift they have received. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:7 said; “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.”

ZENIT: You were ordained in 2001. As you approach your 10th anniversary as a priest, could you share with us some reflections on your vocation, and how your life has changed since your ordination?

Father Kolasa: One of the most powerful experiences of being a priest is to be an eyewitness of the tremendous power of the holy sacraments, and to know that as unworthy as I am, God is using me to be a channel of his infinite divine love.

I will never forget this one moment in my life when, after a long, exhausting day of fulfilling different tasks at the parish, I was called to give the anointing of the sick to a very sick man. When I came, the poor man was in terrible pain. His whole body was caught in convulsion. I tried to communicate with him, but he would not respond. I do not know if he even heard or saw me. I began to pray the prayers of the rite of anointing of the sick. All this time the convulsions would only increase. The moment I finished with the word Amen, his body suddenly rested. His eyes were closed. He was still breathing.

I said to his sister that stood next to me, let us pray together and thank God for his mercy. As we began to recite the Our Father, the man gently opened his eyes; he looked at his sister then at me and then he smiled at me with the most blissful and peaceful smile, then he closed his eyes and breathed his last. At this moment I could not stop thanking God for saving his soul and for the gift of the priesthood…

He gets it and lives it.

Christian Witness, PNCC,

June Is Sacred Vocations Month

Each year during the month of June, the PNCC observes Sacred Vocations month. During this month, the Church reminds all of her faithful of the urgent need to pray for the gift of vocations to the Holy Orders. The Church asks all of us to offer special prayers to bless our Church with new vocations.

The purpose of this month of Sacred Vocations is to petition God, the Author of every vocation, to bless our Church with new priests and deacons who are blessed with strong faith, broad vision and solid academic background. PLEASE, PRAY FOR AN INCREASE VOCATIONS TO THE HOLY PRIESTHOOD of the Polish National Catholic Church.

Those interested may contact me and I will provide you with the appropriate information.

Christian Witness, , ,

Religion and the Labor movement – not living up to the standard

Two cases, highlighted below, where individuals, institutions, and a whole diocese have fallen short of the Church’s teaching on Labor.

From IWJ: Healthcare workers in Michigan–and across the country–need our support!

In his recent Encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI repeatedly speaks of the “grave dangers for the rights of workers” that today imperil so many of our friends and neighbors who struggle daily to provide security for their families. It is imperative that people of faith stand with those workers hoping to secure wages and benefits consistent with their dignity as children of God.

Ascension Health is the nation’s largest Catholic and non-profit health system, comprised of 37 health systems or centers in 20 states, totaling over 570 hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation centers, labs, and other facilities. The employees of Genesys Health System, a member of Ascension Health, provide health care services in the Flint, Michigan area.

The management of Genesys is proposing severe wage, benefit, and pension cuts for several hundred of its employees. These healthcare workers are men and women committed to serving the health and welfare of the members of their communities.

On Friday, March 12, Genesys workers and their supporters traveled to the Ascension headquarters in St. Louis, Mo. to protest these wage and benefit cuts. Workers also gathered at Ascension centers in seven cities across the country – Washington, D.C., Buffalo, N.Y., Tucson, Ariz, Detroit, Flint, Mich. and Kansas City, Mo. – and held vigils before the management of Ascension and its subsidiary, Genesys Health System.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reminds us that “among the elements of a just and fair workplace [in medical and health care centers] are: fair wages, adequate benefits, safe and decent working conditions…” (See A Fair and Just Workplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health Care.) These things are indispensible if we hope to assure quality care for patients and dignity for working people.

As has been seen in several Labor issues over the past few years, the message often does not translate into action. While the R.C. Church is not unique in pushing out Unions, or resisting employee efforts to unionize, it should hold itself to a higher standard, especially in light of Encyclicals exhorting fair treatment of workers going back to Leo XIII.

From the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit via BNA: Ninth Circuit Nixes Seminarian’s Wage Claim, Says Exception Applies to Priest-in-Training

The First Amendment’s “ministerial exception” barred a Catholic seminarian from bringing his claim for unpaid overtime compensation against the Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle under the Washington Minimum Wage Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled March 16 (Rosas v. Corp. of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle, 9th Cir., No. 09-35003, 3/16/10 [pdf]).

Judge Robert R. Beezer wrote for the unanimous panel that the “ministerial exception helps to preserve the wall between church and state from even the mundane government intrusion presented here.” “The district court correctly determined that the ministerial exception bars [Cesar] Rosas’s claim and dismissed the case on the pleadings,” Beezer wrote.

In affirming the lower court, Beezer found that the interplay between the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses carves out an exception to otherwise applicable statutes if enforcing them would interfere with religious organizations’ employment decisions about their ministers.

Seminarian in Ministry Training Program

Rosas was a Mexican seminarian who was required to participate in a ministry training program at St. Mary Catholic Church in Marysville, Wash., located in Snohomish County, as part of the ordination process for the Catholic priesthood.

Rosas and another Mexican seminarian, Jesus Alcazar, worked under the supervision of St. Mary’s parish priest, Horatio Yanez, performing some pastoral duties and doing maintenance work for the church in 2002.

In February 2006 both Rosas and Alcazar filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese alleging Yanez had sexually harassed Alcazar and that the Archdiocese fired them in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for complaining and reporting the conduct. The two men also claimed the Archdiocese had failed to pay them overtime compensation in violation of the Washington Minimum Wage Act.

Trial Court Dismisses Wage Claims

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed Rosas’s harassment claim because he had not indicated that he had been sexually harassed but allowed Alcazar’s sexual harassment claim to proceed (4 DLR A-10, 1/8/07).

Alcazar subsequently settled his sexual harassment claim against the Archdiocese and was dismissed from the lawsuit.

The district court dismissed all other claims on the pleadings as barred by the First Amendment’s ministerial exception. “This exception prohibits a court from inquiring into the decisions of a religious organization concerning the hiring, firing, promotion, rate of pay, placement or any other employment related decision concerning ministers and other non-secular employees,” the trial court said.

Ministerial Exception Applies to State Law Claims

Rosas argued on appeal that the district court had erred in dismissing his state law claim without first determining if requiring the church to pay overtime wages actually burdened the church’s religious beliefs. Second, Rosas argued that requiring the church to pay overtime wages did not implicate a protected employment decision. Finally, he claimed that the district court erred in determining on the pleadings that he was a “minister” to whom the exception applied.

The appellate panel disagreed. Beezer first clarified that although the district court had relied on precedent involving only Title VII cases, the exception also applied to state law claims.

Beezer wrote that the ministerial exception encompassed “all tangible employment actions” and barred lawsuits seeking damages for lost or reduced pay.

“Our previous cases focus on Title VII, but our analysis in those cases compels the conclusion that the ministerial exception analysis applies to Washington’s Minimum Wage Act as well,” Beezer wrote. “Because the ministerial exception is constitutionally compelled, it applies as a matter of law across statutes, both state and federal, that would interfere with the church-minister relationship.”

Next, Beezer disposed of Rosas’s assertion that the trial court should have considered if the law “actually” burdened the church. “The [ministerial] exception was created because government interference with the church-minister relationship inherently burdens religion.”

Overtime Claim Triggers Exception

In addition, Beezer said that Rosas had misinterpreted Ninth Circuit precedent in arguing that the payment of overtime wages was not a protected employment decision that would trigger the exception.

Beezer said that Rosas admitted that his case involved the training and selection of the Catholic Church’s priests-issues the Ninth Circuit had expressly addressed in Bollard v. Cal. Province of the Soc’y of Jesus, 196 F. 3d 940, 81 FEP Cases 660 (9th Cir. 1999); (232 DLR AA-1, 12/3/99).

“This case thus quintessentially follows Bollard’s explanation,” Beezer wrote. “Rosas interprets our case law too narrowly. Bollard refers not only to the selection of ministers but more broadly to ’employment decisions regarding … ministers,’ ”

Beezer wrote that the ministerial exception therefore encompassed “all tangible employment actions” and barred lawsuits seeking damages for lost or reduced pay.

Finally, Beezer rejected Rosas’s argument that the district court erred in ruling on the pleadings that the exception applied because Rosas claimed that his primary duties at the church primarily involved maintenance rather than ministerial duties…

Here is some text from Judge Beezer’s decision (emphasis mine and discussed below):

“The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.” Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 18 (1947). The interplay between the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses creates an exception to an otherwise fully applicable statute if the statute would interfere with a religious organization’s employment decisions regarding its ministers. Bollard v. Cal. Province of the Soc’y of Jesus, 196 F.3d 940, 944, 946-47 (9th Cir. 1999). This “ministerial exception” helps to preserve the wall between church and state from even the mundane government intrusion presented here. In this case, plaintiff Cesar Rosas seeks pay for the overtime hours he worked as a seminarian in a Catholic church in Washington. The district court correctly determined that the ministerial exception bars Rosas’s claim and dismissed the case on the pleadings. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, 1 and we affirm.

…

Cesar Rosas and Jesus Alcazar were Catholic seminarians in Mexico. The Catholic Church required them to participate in a ministry training program at St. Mary Catholic Church in Marysville, Washington as their next step in becoming ordained priests. At St. Mary, Rosas and Alcazar allegedly suffered retaliation for claiming that Father YanezCurrently Pastor of Holy Family Parish in Seattle, WA. sexually harassed Alcazar, and they eventually sued Father Yanez and the Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle (“defendants”) under Title VII. 2 In addition, Rosas and Alcazar sued under supplemental jurisdiction for violations of Washington’s Minimum Wage Act for failure to pay overtime wages. See Wash. Rev. Code § 49.46.130. The district court dismissed the overtime wage claims on the pleadings, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c), and Rosas’s overtime wage claim is the only issue on appeal.

…

Because the judgment was on the pleadings, the pleadings alone must be sufficient to support the district court’s judgment. We thus base our decision on the very few allegations in Rosas’s complaint. Rosas alleges as follows:

1.3 … The Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle hosted [Rosas] as [a] participant[ ] in a training/pastoral ministry program for the priesthood.
. . . .
2.2 Cesar Rosas entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest in 1995 in Mexico.
2.3 As part of [his] preparation for ordination into the priesthood, the Catholic Church required [Rosas] to engage in a ministerial placement outside [his] diocese, under the supervision of a pastor of the parish into which [he was] placed. The Archdiocese of Seattle sends seminarians to Mexico and has Mexican seminarians come to its parishes. [Rosas was] placed in St. Mary Parish in Marysville, Washington under the supervision of defendant Fr. Horatio Yanez.
. . . .
2.10 … [Rosas] was hired to do maintenance of the church and also assisted with Mass. He … worked many overtime hours he was not compensated for.

First, I think the Court erred in defining exactly what a minister is. Is a seminarian a minister of the R.C. Church? It could be argued that in the Roman Church, prior to Vatican II, most seminarians were ministers of the Church since they were likely tonsured and deemed clerics entitled to beneficences (the civil benefits then enjoyed by clerics)This is still the case in the PNCC, where seminarians enter the clerical state via tonsure..

In this day and age a R.C. seminarian is no more a minister than your average lay person. They receive no beneficence from the Roman Church (health care, salary, stipend, room and board), nor are they entitled to carry out any ministry different than your average lay person (men and women both who may serve at the altar, distribute the Holy Eucharist – yuk, read the lessons, etc.). The average seminarian is just a student and a “civilian” with a vocational choice.

Next, seminaries are open to any lay person who may engage in a variety of ‘ministries’ or jobs in the Church. It is definitely no exclusive club and there is no real differentiation any longer. Any person may be in a training program related to their studies (an internship/externship) which makes the work these seminarians were doing no different from your average pew dweller. The Court, and likely the defendant’s lawyers, missed that point

Additionally, look at the work they were “hired” to do. The Archdiocese of Seattle took these university educated Mexicans, and in typically American fashion, made them maintenance men who also happened to serve as altar boys from time-to-time. It would only have been worse if the Archdiocese would have had them go out and pick crops. There is definitely something wrong here. If the ministerial teaching was to be about menial labor and humility, why not send them to a monastery?

Judge Beezer quoted the Fifth Circuit’s holding that if a person (1) is employed by a religious institution, (2) was chosen for the position based ‘largely on religious criteria,’ and (3) performs some religious duties … that person is a ‘minister’ for purposes of the ministerial exception,” What was missed was that the choice of these individuals for this service had very little to do with religious criteria and more to do with whether they had strong backs. Further, the religious duties portion of the test likely fails because the ministerial or religious portion of the training was so de minimis as to be almost non-existant.

So did the Court err in finding that these men were engaged in ministerial training? Absolutely! There was no ministerial training going on. These two young men were merely janitors, and the whole escapade a scam aimed at obtaining cheap labor. What happened here was wage theft, all disguised as “ministerial training;” another example of actions inconsistent with teaching.

As the Seattle Herald reported:

The two seminarians became disillusioned by the experience and have given up their quest to become priests…

“Both these young men had a lifelong dream of being priests,”… “It’s emotionally damaging when your lifelong dream and your spiritual vocation is shattered by the very people you entrusted that dream to.”

So much possibility wasted in a world plagued by a shortage of men willing to offer their lives for worship of God and service to His people. A sad case, and a case teetering on the edge of going the other way if all the facts had been established.

PNCC,

Welcome home Fr. Walczak

From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: [Rev] Melvin Walczak rejoins St. Casimir

IRONDEQUOIT —” A priest who made headlines as the first married priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester has returned to the church of his first ministry, St. Casimir Polish National Catholic Church on Simpson Road.

Along the way, the Rev. Melvin Walczak, 62, has had quite a journey.

St. Casimir is part of the Polish National Catholic Church, which formed in 1897 by Polish nationalists who broke away from Roman Catholicism. The church, which according to its Web site has more than 25,000 members nationally, allows married priests.

The Roman Catholic Church typically does not, but policy does permit married priests ordained in another church to become Roman Catholics and continue to serve as priests.

Walczak served as pastor of St. Casimir from 1973 until 1985, when he switched denominations. He served at four Roman Catholic diocesan churches as well as at Rochester General Hospital, where he was director of pastoral care.

But after experiencing a —crisis of ministry,— Walczak left the diocese in 1996 and worked for the administrations of Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks and, before that, former county executive Jack Doyle.

Walczak retired last year and thought about moving to the South to be near his brother. But when he learned of financial problems at St. Casimir, Walczak contacted the church’s bishop, who reappointed him.

And last Sunday, for the first time in a quarter-century, Walczak celebrated Mass at St. Casimir.

A homecoming

—I was frightened by how comfortable it felt, but frightened by how nervous I felt,— Walczak said. —As it unfolded, God provided the grace to make it easier for me. The anxiousness comes from not surrendering to God, and the peace comes from saying, ‘It’s in your hands now.’— Parishioners at St. Casimir said they were thrilled with Walczak’s return.

—We consider Father Mel a friend as well as pastor,— said Gary Richardson of Penfield, who got married at St. Casimir in 1963, when the church was still on Ernst Street in Rochester. —He’s a take-charge guy, and that’s a good thing. We’re all delighted with Father Mel coming back. If anyone can save the church, it’s Father Mel.—

Maria Weldy of Irondequoit, who joined St. Casimir after Walczak left, has been fighting to keep the church open. Membership now is about 20 families, compared with about 200 families when Walczak first served there.

—When someone comes over and offers his experience, it’s incredible,— Weldy said. —We’re very grateful, and it’s very surprising.—

…

Walczak … retired in 2009 and planned to spend a year in retirement before making any —dramatic changes.—

Then he read about St. Casimir’s problems.

—I have a friend who said, ‘Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous,’ and I have leaned on that,— Walczak said. —I hope to appeal to folks who have not been going to church, and to people who are going but are disillusioned.

—I’m still not sure why I’m here. I’m not sure that I understand God’s plan. But there are a lot of God’s plans that I don’t understand.—

Welcome home Fr. Walczak. May God grant you great joy and perseverance in your ministry in the Polish National Catholic Church.

Christian Witness, , ,

St. Nersess Armenian Seminary Second Annual 3K walk

From friend, Fr. Stepanos Doudoukjian, Director of Youth and Vocations for the Armenian Apostolic Church in the United States: The St. Nersess Armenian Seminary Second Annual 3K walk is just a few weeks away. The walk will take place on Sunday, April 11th following Badarak at 10am, a light lunch at noon, and the 3k walk beginning at 1pm.

The 3K walk has turned into a fun, healthy and spiritual way to raise money for St. Nersess Seminary which really needs your support right about now. There are 4 seminarians who will be graduating in May and who will be serving in parishes within the year. The seminary expects possibly four more new seminarians in the fall of 2010. It is an exciting time for St. Nersess and they could use your support.

If you wish to support the efforts of our friends at St. Nersess, please send your checks payable to St. Nersess and mail them to St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, 150 Stratton Road, New Rochelle, NY.

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