Welcome RBC faculty!

Tomorrow, November 1, we welcome the faculty and staff of Red Bank Catholic High School to Saint Anselm.  The faculty will be having their annual spirituality day with us.  After breakfast, there will be a presentation on humor in the spritual life, followed by a presentation by Msgr. Sam Sirianni and myself on the implementation of the new Roman Missal.  I'll reserve comment on the juxtaposition of these topics until after the presentation......

Basically, we'll be presenting to the faculty the same information we shared at our parish meeting on the new Roman Missal.  Just a reminder, you can view that powerpoint presentation by visiting the Saint Anselm website...www.stanselm.com...so check it out!

A great time at EPCOT

After the Stewardship Conference ended with the final concelebrated Mass, I joined some of my colleagues in an afternoon and evening at EPCOT.  I have never been there before, so I was very excited about the trip.  All I have to say about the trip was WOW!  I had no idea it would be so fun and so cool!  I think I had as good a time as did all of the little kids and families that were roaming the park.  I think that I will return to this magical place again.

Tomorrow I fly home to Jersey.  It will be good to be home.

International Catholic Stewardship Conference

I'm currently enjoying a great conference on Catholic Stewardship.  The conference is being held in Orlando, Florida, at the Lake Buena Vista Palace hotel....just across the street from Disney World!  It's a beautiful place for a conference, the weather is great (79 degrees F) and I'm learning and re-learning lots of great stuff.  The exhibitors are top-notch, and I've even re-connected with some long-time friends from around the country. 

Look out St. Anselm!  I'm coming home with lots of good ideas, and exciting thoughts about rejuvenating our parish practices regarding stewardship!  It's going to be moved to the front-burner!

A new Nuncio for USA!

Just heard that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has been named by the Pope to be the new Nuncio (ambassador) to the USA.  Let's pray for him, and for his ministry!

Rest In Peace, Fra Pietro

Late this evening came word of the death of Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican Nuncio (Ambassador) to the United States for the past 6 years. The Archbishop had been suffering from a lung condition and was being treated at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Earlier in the week, his family had been called to his bedside, and dioceses throughout the U.S. had asked the faithful for prayers for him.

Archbishop Sambi was a good priest, an eminent diplomat, and very interested in the vibrant pastoral life of parishes in the United States. I had the wonderful occasion to meet him at the "Enthronement" of Bishop Gerald Dino of the Eparchy of Van Nuys a few years ago. Bishop Dino is a longtime friend, and so I was thrilled to be invited to his Enthronement. Archbishop Sambi who "recommended" Bishop Gerald to Pope Benedict XVI to be made bishop, was very much present at the ceremonies, and the wonderful eparchial reception afterward. I was very impressed at how, as I said at the time, "He worked the room like a Jersey City politician!" He went to every table of lay people, priests, deacons, et. al. I'm not sure that he actually ate any food, he was so busy greeting everybody! Even after the reception, he came down to the lounge in the hotel where most of us were staying, and continued visiting with all of Bishop Gerry's friends and family members.

I will remember this very friendly priest, Archbishop, ambassador, and man at Mass tomorrow. Let us pray for each other!

A new Archbishop for Philadelphia

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia will announce tomorrow that Pope Benedict has appointed Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM as the new archbishop of Philadelphia. He succeeds Cardinal Justin Rigali, who reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 last year.

Archbishop Chaput is coming to the East Coast from Denver, Colorado. He has a very big job ahead of him, especially in the area of healing hurts from the massive mishandling of the clerical sex abuse crisis. Hopefully, the Lord will aid the new archbishop with Grace to heal the massive wounds that the people of Philly are suffering. Let us pray for the people of Philadelphia.

The New Missal????

I just saw this image on another blog, and couldn't resist posting this. I welcome all humorous comments!

Holy Thursday preparations

Just got word that Bishop John M. Smith, the retired Bishop of Trenton, will be coming to St. Anselm parish for Holy Thursday, for the celebration of the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper. He knows how we have the practice of washing everyone's feet. And he's looking forward to a parish celebration of the Lord's Supper that truly lives out the vision of "Full, conscious, and active participation of all of the faithful" in the Holy Thursday liturgy. Yes, we will wash lots of feet, yes, we will sing the Liturgy as much as possible, yes, we will process in song and movement, with the Blessed Sacrament, to the Altar of Repose. We will sing in modern and ancient languages, and we will proclaim by our celebration of this liturgy, that we are all partakers of the Priesthood of Christ because of His gift of the Eucharist. Let us continue to pray for one another! FYI: The Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper begins at 8:00 p.m. on Holy Thursday evening. After Mass, we will watch in prayer in our chapel until 10:00 p.m., with the singing of Night Prayer, and the closing of the church for the night. Please note, children are welcome to attend, and to participate in the Mass of the Lord's Supper! All are welcome.

A great night at the Waldorf-Asotria in NYC

Coach Brian Kelly, and his wife, Paqui Kelly,

Coach Ara Paraseghian

Heisman Trophy winner, and Presenter, Tim Brown, ND 1988

Coach Lou Holtz

Regis Philbin, ND class of '51

Last night, I was privileged to attend a great dinner in New York City, at the Grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. It was the inaugural celebration for "Irish Eyes Dinner to Remember" to benefit the Kelly Cares Foundation. A great night, hosted by ND's class of '51, Regis Philbin.

The entire Waldorf environment was spectacular, and very welcoming.

It was a wonderful night for old friends, classmates, and new members of the Notre Dame Family to gather and rekindle old relationships.

The dinner itself was superb, and featured not only great speeches, but wonderful music from Hayley Griffiths, lead singer from "riverdance" and "lord of the dance."

Overall, a great way to raise awareness for Breast Cancer awareness, and to start a proper celebration of St. Patrick's Day!

Go Irish!

A Great Liturgy Committee Meeting tonight

Tonight we had a great Liturgy Committee meeting. We decided how to handle several issues, and I informed the Committee of our plan to implement our Diocesan plan for the implementation of the Roman Missal. I shared the many resources for the implemenation of the new Roman Missal, especially some very good webistes and bulletin inserts to use in our catechizing for this implementation. I'm very happy to be working with this very talented group of Liturgy Committee members, who are so very talented and resourceful, and loyal to the teachings of the Church. We all seek to put into place a loyal, faithful, and a pastoral celebration of the Church's liturgy.

Our Parish Liturgy Committee has already received some very awful, and almost violent comments from some of our parishioners.....saying things like: "I'm not going to accept any of these changes..." Well, I encouraged the Liturgy Committee to pass on any negative comments to me, and I'll be glad to handle them.

I truly believe that this time is a chance to educate our Catholic Faithful about the real, deep, and true meanings of our Liturgy, and its meanings. We didn't do this after Vatican II, and now, with this new translation, we have a golden opportunity.

Yet, we will have to face our members who will stupidly ask: "Why do we have to change?"


It's up to us to lead the rest to more deeply understant the beauty of the Liturgy and how it shapes, forms, informs, and leads us into the Christ-Life.

Blessed Sacrament Choir tonight!

Tonight we hosted the choir from Blessed Sacrament/St. Charles Borromeo parish in Newark, NJ at our 5:30 PM Liturgy. They all sang beautifully, and we really rocked the church.

Afterward, our Parish Life Committee hosted a covered-dish supper for the choir. More than 200 people showed up, to fill our Learning Center. It was very, very tight.

I'm overall very pleased with our Parish Life Committee, and how they hosted our guests. However, in assisting the committee members who were doing all of the work, I heard of several stories of parishioners who were downright rude, too demanding, who were disrespectful of our guests, and now I'm writing this with knots in my stomach considering whether we should ever do this event again, if it's going to cause such divisions and dissension.

Our Parish Life committee hosted a great event, and donated hundreds of hours trying to provide a great event. Yet the complaints that I heard from parishioners who give absolutely nothing to our parish who were demanding service at this event.....It was really disheartening. I have to tell you....I'm thinking of cancelling this event for next year.

While I really love having the choir from Blessed Sacrament parish here to sing our Liturgy in Gospel style, I am very, VERY, disappointed with the nasty parishioners that abused our Parish Life Committee this evening. Once again, I'm very dissapointed....let the word go forth!

The view from my window these days

Thanks to Mike McElroy for this great image of life at the Jersey Shore these days. I, for one, have had enough of the white stuff.

Let's pray that this is the last of the winter storms. January is NOT supposed to look like this in New Jersey.

An evening at Carnegie Hall

Last evening, I went to a great concert in New York, at the world-famous Carnegie Hall. For me, it was my first time there. And what a night it was!

The featured artist was John Angotti, who was backed up by a Catholic Choir of 330 people! Singing in the choir were our own parishioners Cindy Buck and Mike Zorner. They were joined by many other choir members from all over the Diocese of Trenton. We had a Party Bus for 30 from Saint Anselm, and we had a great time. I'm sure that this won't be the last bus trip to NYC for an event like this.

Thanks to Dr. Jerry Galipeau and other friends at World LIbrary Publications in Chicago, I think artists like John Angotti will continue to come to great venues like Carnegie Hall, and gather with many other Catholic musicians to bring the message of God's love to the world.

Celebrating Theophany

Last night, I joined my good friend, Fr. Michael Mondik of St. Thomas Byzantine Catholic Church in Rahway for the vigil celebration of Vespers and the Divine Liturgy for the Feast of Theophany. This was my first time concelebrating as the sole concelebrant for a Byzantine Liturgy. Fr. Michael was very gracious, and very patient with me, as I tried to sing the parts of the Liturgy that he gave to me. I was especially honored when he asked me to take the Blessing of Water at the end of the Liturgy. (It takes almost 20 minutes to bless the water in this Liturgy.) It was a great, and very moving evening for me. I think that I may ask my bishop for permission to begin studying the Byzantine Liturgy with the hope of gaining bi-ritual faculties.

A campus mourns

By now, you may have heard of the terrible accident that claimed the life of Notre Dame student Declan Sullivan on Wednesday of this week. A friend came across a beautiful description of the Mass celebrated last night (Thursday) in memory of Declan from a student's vantage point. She, like most of us, didn't know Declan personally, but she was drawn to participate in this beautiful display of the Notre Dame family. I want to share the student's blog entry with all of you.

The student's name is Amy.

Here's the text of her blog entry:



I did not know Declan Sullivan.

On Wednesday, Declan was killed on campus in an accident involving a hydraulic lift. He was filming football practice for his job as a student manager, and high winds caused the scissor lift he was filming from to topple over.

He was 20 years old. He was a junior majoring in FTT (film, television and theater) and marketing. He lived in Fisher Hall.

Tonight, Father John Jenkins, University President, presided over a Mass in Declan's memory in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Mass began at 10 p.m. I was in a lecture and movie screening for class until 9:45 pm, and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to the Basilica in time to get a seat. I also wasn't sure if I even wanted to go to the Mass. I didn't know Declan, so a part of me thought, "Why should I take a seat from somebody who knew him, loved him, cared about him? Who am I to do that?" But another part of me desperately wanted to go to the Mass to show my support for Declans family during this horrible, difficult time. That part of me wanted to show the Sullivans that Notre Dame is a place where everybody matters, a place where the spirit of the community links everybody together. I was already running late and I knew that my baseball-cap-and-Ugg-bots attire wouldn't fly at the Basilica, so I decided to go over to LaFortune Student Center, where I had heard there would be auxiliary seating and a live feed from the Mass.

As I walked across the God Quad in the dark, I watched people walking towards the Basilica, two by two. The doors were wide open, emanating a warm golden glow. I was able to hear the prelude for Declan's Mass all the way at the flagpole on South Quad, and the sound of the organ became clearer as I crossed through the pine trees and made my way to LaFortune.

Up the winding staircase, I burst into LaFortune and brushed past the representatives from the Student Activities Office who tried to usher me upstairs to the ballroom. "We have some seats left up there," a girl with a nametag whispered. By the time I heard her, I had already set down my backpack near my usual spot in the main lounge. LaFortune was different. Normally, the building serves as a study/food/coffee/socializing/meeting space, and it's one of the busiest places on campus. But tonight, it was quiet. Dimmer, somehow.

All of the comfy armchairs were occupied, so after lingering against a wall, cornered by a trashcan, for a few minutes, I plopped down on the floor like a kindergartner. Mass was beginning. The broadcast was coming through the two large telivisions in the main lounge. (It was available online as well.) during the opening song, the SAO folks brought out a number of chairs from another room, and I snapped up a seat just as Fr. Jenkins was greeting the Sullivan family.

Then, the oddest thing began to happen. Everyone in the room began to respond to the TV, just like Mass.

The Lord be with you.
"And also with you."


I don't know if it was reflex, a genuine desire to participate in the Mass, or some combination of both. All of a sudden, I found myself in the midst of the celebration of the Eucharist in the same room where I drink coffee, read the paper, watch ESPN, and play Sporcie.

Notre Dame is very good at a lot of things, and onne of those things is church. Notre Dame knows how to put on a great Mass, and the higher-ups pulled out all the stops for Declan. The Liturgical Choir provided beautiful music for the service. I was particularly impressed with the selection of the readings. The first reading was Romans 8:31-39 ("If God is for us, who can be against us?") The gospel reading was John 14:1-14 ("I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.").

Father Tom Doyle, Vice President for Student Affairs, gave the homily. He spoke eloquently and simply about storytelling--about Declan's love of telling stories through film and about the feeling that we have been "written out of the book of life" that accompanies loss and grief. Doyle said, "Most days, we live in this place that is like Eden before the fall." Normally, bad things don't happen here. Students joke about the "Notre Dame bubble" for a reason. When terrible things hit Notre Dame, it seems that much worse.

As I watched the Mass on TV from my chair in LaFortune, I noticed the camera kept panning out to the people sitting in the pews at the Basilica. The Sullivan family sat in the front row. Gwynn, Declan's sister, wore a Notre Dame football jersey and Mac, Declan's 15-year-old brother, wore a Notre Dame sweatshirt. Across the aisle, the men of Fisher Hall sat in the other front section, all with their trademark neon green sunglasses pushed back into messy brown waves and perched on blonde crewcuts. Fisherman wear these distinguishing sunglasses around campus all the time, so it seemed appropriate that they wore their shades to Mass in memory of their hallmate. The Notre Dame football team sate behind the contingent from Fisher Hall.

During the Eucharistic Prayer, LaFortune was filled with the mutterings of hundreds of students:

Lift up your hearts.
"We lift them up to the Lord."

When it came time for the Our Father, the Liturgical Choir sang the beautiful Notre Dame Our Father. LaFortune joined hands and joined in Then, everyone got out of their seats for the sign of peace. Hugs and handshakes all around.

The SAO employees notified us that the Eucharist was being distributed outside the Basilica and that we could leave and come back. After a moment of hesitation, about 75% of the room stood up, grabbed coats, and quietly filed out of the room. I was near the door, so I made it out quickly. Down the stairs, across the quad, towards the music and light. There were hundreds of people already standing outside the Basilica--overflow. Outside, there were musicians performing acoustic versions of the songs playing inside. As I huddled around the front of the Basilica, I turned around. A massive block of students stretched all the way from the foot of the Basilica to the stairs of LaFortune, and people continued to stream out of the building from the ballroom on the second floor.

We stood patiently, quietly in the cold. Occasionally, a priest would emerge from the Basilica doors. People gathered around eagerly as the priest distributed Communion. Nobody jostled, nobody complained. We just waited. Slowly, more priests came out. After I received Communion, I walked back to LaFortune. I counted six priests standing outside, each man completely surrounded by students waiting for the Eucharist.

I made it back to LaFortune just in time for the final blessing.

The Mass is ended, go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
"Thanks be to God."

And then, as always, we sang the alma mater, arms around each other, swaying:

Notre Dame, Our Mother
Tender, strong and true
Proudly in the heavens
Gleams thy gold and blue
Glory's mantly cloaks thee
Golden is thy fame
And our hearts forever
Praise thee Notre Dame
And our hearts forever
Love thee, Notre Dame.

The fervent prayers of the Notre Dame community are with Declan Sullivan and his family.

A night like this should never have to happen again.

The Miracle Man of Montreal

The Service of a New Saint
In his homily for the beatification of John Henry Newman, a month before the scheduled canonization of Blessed Brother André Bessette, C.S.C., Pope Benedict XVI praised the scholarly Victorian Englishman for exemplifying how “our divine Master has assigned a specific task to each one of us, a ‘definite service,’ committed uniquely to every single person.” The sanctity of Blessed Cardinal Newman, remembered not solely, but primarily, for the veritable library of elegant books, essays, poems, letters, and sermons he has left behind, provides an ironic counterpart to that of Blessed Brother André, an uneducated Quebecois who would have been incapable of reading almost anything Cardinal Newman wrote.

The “definite service” which Blessed Brother André was assigned, and which the Church, by canonizing him, insists is every bit as indispensable as Cardinal Newman’s scholarship, could not have been simpler: His service was to open the door.

Blessed Brother André is the first member of Notre Dame’s founding religious order, the Congregation of Holy Cross, to be proclaimed a saint, and his brother in Holy Cross, Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., will lead a delegation from the University to Rome for canonization ceremonies to be held on Sunday, October 17. Other members of the delegation will include Notre Dame provost Thomas G. Burish, Rev. James E. McDonald, C.S.C., associate vice president and counselor to the president, and Matthew Ashley, chair of Notre Dame’s theology department.

To honor Blessed Brother André Bessette and his service to the sick and needy, Notre Dame students will take up a special collection during the Oct. 16 Notre Dame-Western Michigan football game. The collection will support ongoing efforts of the University and the Congregation to help rebuild Haiti following the devastating earthquake there in January.

Not only among the priests, sisters and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross, but also throughout the Notre Dame community, the new saint is affectionately regarded, conspicuously honored and continually invoked. He is routinely mentioned in campus liturgies, and his statue, carved by Rev. Anthony J. Lauck, C.S.C., is in the northeast apsidal chapel of Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Another statue of Brother André, this one carved by Notre Dame art professor Rev. James F. Flanigan, C.S.C., is above the south entrance of the University’s Eck Visitors Center.

“Blessed Brother André was famous first as a ferociously hard worker at the high school where he worked his whole life,” said Rev. David Tyson, C.S.C., Provincial Superior of the Indiana Province of Holy Cross. “He simply did everything and anything that was needed, from answering the door to cleaning the floors; from fixing shoes and doing students’ laundry to cutting hair. It seems wonderfully apt and instructive that the first Holy Cross saint was a man who insisted, sometimes testily, that ‘to serve is sweeter than to be served.’”

Born Alfred Bessette on Aug. 9, 1845, in Saint-Grégoire d’Iberville, Québec, Brother André was one of 12 children. By the time he was 12 years old, his father, a lumberman, had been killed in a work accident and his mother had died of tuberculosis. Physically diminutive, chronically ill, uneducated and clumsy with his hands, the young Bessette nevertheless worked as a farmhand, shoemaker, baker, and blacksmith in Québec for six years before leaving for New England, where he spent four years working in textile factories and farms in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

From his earliest childhood, he was quietly but conspicuously prayerful, an inclination which seemed only to intensify during his hardscrabble years as an itinerant laborer, and when he returned to Canada in 1867, he confessed an interest in formal religious life to his local parish priest, who sent him to a nearby community of Holy Cross brothers with a letter assuring its superior that “I am sending you a saint.”

The largely illiterate 25-year old novice was put to work as a porter, or doorman, at Montréal’s Collège of Notre Dame, an assignment in which he continued for the next 40 years.

In addition to welcoming visitors, he served as janitor, launderer, and sacristan, ran errands and provided the students with cheap haircuts. Throughout these years his reputation for humility and kindness grew, as did the numbers of visitors he received. Most of these were poor and sick people, to whom he offered not only his compassion and what material assistance he could provide, but also moral and spiritual advice. Many of his visitors attributed miraculous cures to him, but he would insist, sometimes with annoyance, that any such cures were attributable to the prayers of Saint Joseph.

Brother André’s particular affection for St. Joseph, in addition to the need to accommodate the throngs of people seeking his help, advice and prayers, led to the foundation of Saint Joseph’s Oratory, at first a small structure constructed on Mount Royal with funds from small donations and Brother André’s barbershop income and now a massive basilica which attracts some 2 million pilgrims each year.

A great short clip about the Church in the Modern World

You gotta love this!

I came upon this as I was preparing my talk for our Pre-Cana session today...Providential????

Anyway, since Monmouth Park is just 5 minutes away, I thought y'all would enjoy this.

Come to the Parish Campout and the Bonfire Mass tonight! A great night to gather for some end of summer fun!

WASHINGTON—Cardinal Francis George, OMI, Archbishop of Chicago and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has announced that the full text of the English-language translation of the Roman Missal, Third Edition, has been issued for the dioceses of the United States of America.

The text was approved by the Vatican, and the approval was accompanied by a June 23 letter from Cardinal Llovera Antonio Cañizares, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The Congregation also provided guidelines for publication.

In addition, on July 24, the Vatican gave approval for several adaptations, including additional prayers for the Penitential Act at Mass and the Renewal of Baptismal Promises on Easter Sunday. Also approved are texts of prayers for feasts specific to the United States such as Thanksgiving, Independence Day and the observances of feasts for saints such as Damien of Molokai, Katharine Drexel, and Elizabeth Ann Seton. The Vatican also approved the Mass for Giving Thanks to God for the Gift of Human Life, which can be celebrated on January 22.

Cardinal George announced receipt of the documents in an August 20 letter to the U.S. Bishops and issued a decree of proclamation that states that “The use of the third edition of the Roman Missal enters into use in the dioceses of the United States of America as of the First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2011. From that date forward, no other edition of the Roman Missal may be used in the dioceses of the United States of America.”