Month: October 2022

WILKES-BARRE – As a new academic year begins for the Diocese of Scranton Catholic School System, educators and administrators are focusing on student growth.

“Every single day counts,” Kristen Donohue, Diocesan Secretary for Catholic Education/Superintendent of Catholic Schools, said during the Diocesan Teachers’ Institute on Sept. 26, 2022, at Holy Redeemer High School.

Each year, hundreds of Catholic school educators and administrators from all 19 Diocesan schools gather for the Diocesan Teachers’ Institute. The day-long Institute began with the celebration of Mass led by the Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, and continued with teachers learning from one another at breakout sessions.

Donohue provided the day’s keynote presentation where she outlined growth goals that include attention to Catholic Identity, STREAM (Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics), Differentiated Instruction and Social Emotional Learning.

“Every student who comes to us, every single one, can grow,” Donohue explained. “We have an incredible opportunity to promote growth for each of our students. We are their biggest cheerleaders.”

During her presentation, Donohue explained how students learn in different ways and at different paces. She also challenged each educator in the audience to have a “growth mindset” instead of a “fixed mindset.”

In a “growth mindset,” a student’s natural abilities are enhanced by a nurturing environment. Under a “fixed mindset,” it is believed that a student is born with only a certain amount of intelligence and/or talent that is unchangeable.

“It takes intentional planning and making sure that that you’re thinking about what is really going to challenge a student in order to give them that rigorous education that they need,” she explained.

Following the keynote presentation, the educators were able to choose between breakout sessions that focused on one of the identified growth goals.

Father Ryan Glenn, Assistant Pastor of Saint Matthew Parish in East Stroudsburg, presented one of the breakout sessions focused on Catholic Identity.

Father Ryan, who has served as Chaplain of Notre Dame Jr./Sr. High School for the last three years, emphasized the teachings of Popes Benedict and Francis who said we need to be people who pray, people who serve and people who proclaim Jesus.

“That happens in our classrooms, that happens when we gather for Mass, it happens on our sports teams but it is always going back to those three fundamentals,” he explained.

He also said it is vital for parishes and schools to see each other as partners in mission.

“We need our students to come to our parish and to join us for the Sunday Eucharist and to be a part of the community and likewise, we need our parishioners to support our schools, whether it is financially or whether it is in support of the values of Catholic education. I think there is just a great harmony between our parishes and our schools and hopefully that keeps going,” Father Ryan said.

Geralyn Durham, a first grade teacher at Notre Dame Elementary School focused on the Catholic School System’s STREAM initiative.

Her interactive presentation focused on how to use “3D Doodle” pens to enhance lessons.

“It’s almost like a glue gun that heats up, but doesn’t get too hot to touch and we have plastic filament sticks that go in the end and melt and they come out as a liquid and dry immediately,” Durham said.

Describing the pens as an early version of a 3D printer, she explained how she uses the pens in many different lessons, including explaining the life cycle of a butterfly.

“They love it. It takes learning to the next level. I can stand up there and talk about the life cycles of a butterfly but when they’re actually doing it, hands on, in front of them, tracing and welding the parts together, they love it,” the educator emphasized.

During her earlier remarks, Donohue emphasized the outstanding projects Catholic school educators have developed as they have embraced the STREAM initiative.

“The opportunities that you provide with STREAM are really allowing our students to think critically, use their talents differently and be creative,” Donohue said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Second Vatican Council was the universal Catholic Church’s response to God’s love and to Jesus’ command to feed his sheep, Pope Francis said, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the council’s opening.

The council reminded the church of what is “essential,” the pope said: “a church madly in love with its Lord and with all the men and women whom he loves,” one that “is rich in Jesus and poor in assets,” a church that “is free and freeing.”

Pope Francis presided over the Mass Oct. 11 in St. Peter’s Basilica, where the council sessions were held in four sessions from 1962 to 1964. The date is also the feast of St. John XXIII, who convoked and opened the council; the glass urn containing his body was moved to the center of the basilica for the liturgy.

The Gospel reading at the Mass recounted Jesus asking St. Peter, “Do you love me?” and telling him, “Feed my sheep.”

In his homily, the pope said the council was the church’s response to that question and marked a renewed effort to feed God’s sheep, not just those who are Catholic, but all people.

The debates that followed the council and continue today are a distraction from the church’s mission, Pope Francis said.

“We are always tempted to start from ourselves rather than from God, to put our own agendas before the Gospel, to let ourselves be caught up in the winds of worldliness in order to chase after the fashions of the moment or to turn our back the time that providence has granted us,” he said.

Catholics must be careful, he said, because “both the ‘progressivism’ that lines up behind the world and the ‘traditionalism’ that longs for a bygone world are not evidence of love, but of infidelity,” forms of “selfishness that puts our own tastes and plans above the love that pleases God, the simple, humble and faithful love that Jesus asked of Peter.”

“A church in love with Jesus has no time for quarrels, gossip and disputes,” the pope said. “May God free us from being critical and intolerant, harsh and angry. This is not a matter of style but of love.”

Jesus, the good shepherd, “wants his flock to be united under the guidance of the pastors he has given them,” the pope said, but the devil loves to sow division; “let us not give in to his enticements or to the temptation of polarization.”

“How often, in the wake of the council, did Christians prefer to choose sides in the church, not realizing that they were breaking their mother’s heart,” the heart of their mother, the church, Pope Francis said.

How often, he asked, did they prefer “to be on the ‘right’ or ‘left,’ rather than with Jesus? To present themselves as ‘guardians of the truth’ or ‘pioneers of innovation’ rather than seeing themselves as humble and grateful children of Holy Mother Church?”

The council, he said, taught the church to see the world around it and to share God’s love with all, knowing that “if it is fitting to show a particular concern, it should be for those whom God loves most: the poor and the outcast.”

With Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant representatives present, as they were at the council, Pope Francis also prayed that “the yearning for unity” would grow within each Christ, “the desire to commit ourselves to full communion among all those who believe in Christ.”

Thanking God for the gift of the council, the pope asked the Lord to “save us from the forms of polarization that are the devil’s handiwork. And we, your church, with Peter and like Peter, now say to you: ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that we love you.'”

Pope Francis, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1969, is the first pope ordained after the Second Vatican Council. His immediate predecessor, now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, attended all four sessions of the council as a theological adviser — a “peritus” — to the archbishop of Cologne, Germany. St. John Paul II participated in all four sessions as a full member of the body, first as auxiliary bishop of Krakow, Poland, and then as archbishop of the city.

Among the more than 400 priests concelebrating the Mass, the Vatican liturgical office said there were five who were present at Vatican II.

According to the websites GCatholic.org and catholic-hierarchy.org, there are six bishops alive in the world today who participated in at least one session of the Second Vatican Council. Among them is Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, an 89-year-old former Vatican official who was ordained a bishop in 1965 and attended the council’s last session; he was one of the concelebrants at the anniversary Mass.

Before the Mass, passages were read from the speech St. John XXIII gave at the council’s opening. Known by its opening words in Latin, “Gaudet Mater Ecclesia,” the speech begins: “Mother Church rejoices.”

Selections from the council’s four constitutions also were read. Pope Francis has asked Catholics to prepare for the Holy Year 2025 by re-reading and studying the documents: Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (“Sacrosanctum Concilium”); Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (“Lumen Gentium”); Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (“Dei Verbum”); and Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (“Gaudium et Spes”).

MIAMI (CNS) – With the full picture of the widespread fallout and damages Hurricane Ian brought to southwest Florida still coming into focus, the Miami region looks on with a collective sigh of relief: What if that had hit here?

From Naples, just two hours west of Fort Lauderdale across Interstate 75, up throughout the greater Fort Myers, Port Charlotte and Sarasota region, many residents and parish communities are facing a challenging close to 2022 and with the holiday season just around the corner.

The post-Hurricane Ian landscape is expected to trigger housing, employment and other cost-of-living complications for the entire state and in particular on the Gulf Coast.

“We saw wind damage and heard stories of those who stayed for the hurricane and the trauma they went through but some areas we have been to saw significant flood damages, the waters had subsided but the needs are going to be there,” said Peter Routsis-Arroyo, CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami.

He served as CEO of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Venice before moving to Miami.

Routsis-Arroyo’s remarks followed a second tour he took of the area following Hurricane Ian. He connected with his Catholic Charities counterparts in the Venice Diocese and offered moral support during stops at churches and drive-up emergency distribution sites Fort Myers, Arcadia, Bonita Springs and more.

“When you have a house with 4 to 6 feet of water coming in, I don’t know if this means your house is not going to be habitable or if you get some mediation done, but you will go through some pain and suffering while all of that goes on,” he said Oct 5.

“And then there is the dealing with insurance companies, if you have insurance, and those who don’t may be dealing with loss of employment or work, inflation, higher costs. It’s all going to lead to making this a humanitarian crisis,” he added.

Lee County, which also includes Fort Myers Beach, Pine Island and Sanibel, suffered most of the 119 fatalities related to Hurricane Ian, which made landfall on the state’s west coast as a powerful Category 4 storm Sept. 28.

Eddie Gloria, Venice Catholic Charities CEO, has said the easiest way to understand where the damage is greatest is in terms of the central corridor of Fort Myers and Lee County along with dispersed pockets of rural communities throughout the greater 10-county diocese. These areas suffered flooding as river waters spilled over into neighboring housing.

Hurricane Ian brought heavy rains and gusts of 140 mph, but “it took a few hours to cross the town,” said Father Luis Pacheco, the Venezuela-born administrator of St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Arcadia in DeSoto County.

The parish of 600 families is in a farming and largely Spanish-speaking community inland from Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte.

“One week after the hurricane we still had people who haven’t been able to leave their homes because they were totally flooded” and because roads in and out of town were impassable, he said.

Also, as the flood waters receded, the community was still waiting for civil engineers to verify that all the local bridges were safe.

The National Guard troops working in the area helped deliver food and water to trapped parishioners. They were “heaven sent,” Father Pacheco said. “They have done an amazing job and are the true heroes.” He also praised first responders.

Local Catholic Charities staff have helped facilitate a morning drive-through operation for food and water at the church.

The church campus lost its offices and facilities for religious education classes, and the church roof has developed several leaks. To check on parishioners and their welfare, the church used its ministries’ phone trees to contact them.

“We more or less know about everyone through that,” Father Pacheco said, adding that the locals are grateful — and sympathetic to the areas with greater suffering, such as Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Boca Grande.

“I learned that we are not to take life for granted, to be centered and to know that the most important thing in life is our relationship with God and each other and everything else is just temporal and not as important as perhaps it once was,” the priest added.

Arcadia residents living in trailers may be facing uncertain fate as some of the trailer housing was toppled, flooded or severely damaged in other ways.

“What I am planning to do is give distribution of food packages during the weekdays and then on the weekends hot food; the people bring it in coolers already cooked and from other parishes, he said, adding: “Life has to go back to normal ultimately, God willing.”

Clara Alvarez, program manager for education programs for Catholic Charities in Arcadia, said Hurricane Ian temporarily cut her off from accessing her brother who lives on the other side of the nearby Peace River.

Franz Sylvestre, who also is with Catholic Charities, said the local Haitian American community is suffering the loss of work since the hurricane and looking to the church for short-term food assistance.

South of Fort Myers in the suburban area of Bonita Springs and Naples, local newspapers reported that badly damaged trailer home communities were being closed indefinitely and residents were forced to vacate on short notice — and this in a region where rents can run an average of $3,000 a month.

In Bonita Springs, the Catholic Charities staff had a full-time disaster recovery and drive-up distribution operation in full swing at their afterschool program, food pantry and human trafficking/victim assistance office.

Among those being served are residents of three migrant camps in the Imperial River area, said Paulina Matias, director of the Catholic Charities offices in Bonita Springs.

One migrant camp remained evacuated because of fears the nearby river would rise and flood the housing.

Routsis-Arroyo, Miami’s Catholic Charities CEO, said it will be a long path back for southwest Florida. but “there is a sense of resilience in the people here.”

“They need help and yet they are not giving up their life or homes for Florida: This is home for them and they will just need help to pull it back together,” he said.