Issue of February 5, 2006

UPDATE

Prayers for sick

The archdiocesan Commission on Mental Health and the Office for Persons with Disabilities will hold a prayer service Feb. 11 in commemoration of the World Day of the Sick.

Pope Benedict XVI has asked Catholics to recognize those whose lives are affected by mental illness. The 2 p.m. service will be held at commission offices, 25 W. Washington Blvd., Oak Park, (the former St. Catherine-St. Lucy convent).

Portions of the pope’s message will be read in English, Spanish and Polish, and discussion and hospitality will follow. For information, call (708) 383-2976.

Teachers named ‘Apple’ finalists

Two Chicago Catholic schoolteachers have been named as finalists for the 2006 Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching. They are among 30 finalists from Cook, Lake and DuPage counties in the pre-kindergarten-third grade category.

The teachers are Jennifer L. Sime, a third-grade teacher at Our Lady of the Gardens, 13300 S. Langley, Chicago, and Susan P. Stachler, a first-grade teacher at St. Cajetan School, 2447 W. 112th St., Chicago.







NEWS

An appeal to the heart

Annual Catholic Appeal changes tactics in quest to raise $8 million

Fourteen parishes learned a valuable lesson last year, one archdiocesan stewardship officials are hoping to pass on to every parish in the Archdiocese of Chicago: If you want Catholics to support the mission of the church, you have to ask them.

And with $8 million of needs to be met—everything from grants to needy parishes and schools, ministry to disabled Catholics, help to people around the world through Catholic Relief Services, and services provided by the archdiocese such as the publication of The Catholic New World—this year, each pastor is being asked to make the appeal personally.



Festival of Faith offers opportunities to learn, worship, grow

When thousands of Catholics gather to learn, celebrate and deepen their faith for three days in February, it won’t be at a church or even a Catholic school or university.

Instead, they will take their faith into the world, as it were, convening the “Catholic Festival of Faith” at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont.

The event will evangelize both believers—who are called to ongoing personal conversion—and those they meet, said Father Thomas Franzman, director of the archdiocese’s Office for Evangelization.



FOCUS on college students

Organization sees campuses as mission turf

They consider themselves modern-day missionaries, out to win souls for Jesus. But they are not aiming their messages at people who live in distant lands, formed by unfamiliar cultures.

Their mission field? The American college campus.

Nine hundred young people from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students gathered in Chicago Jan. 20-22 for a leadership conference. The group included missionaries-typically sent to campuses in groups of two men and two women, most often recent college grads who are willing to dedicate two years to the work-and students who have shown a serious commitment to deepening their faith.

“Students on American college campuses are potentially some of the most important people to be evangelized,” explained Justin Bell, a missionary at Hastings College in Hastings, Neb. “They are going to be doctors, lawyers, business leaders. It’s an amazingly important mission field.”



Marching for life

Thousands mark Roe anniversary

They were just an aisle apart but almost-6-month-old Abigail Matava and 102-year-old Hattie Proctor symbolized the full spectrum of life that thousands of pro-lifers jammed the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington Jan. 22 to celebrate.

Four busloads of people from the Archdiocese of Chicago were among the more than 6,000 people—many of them high school and college students—who filled every square inch of the basilica’s upper church for the National Prayer Vigil for Life on the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand.



Pilgrimage travel growing

Rome, Holy Land still top sites

When Catholic pilgrims poured into Rome to celebrate the jubilee year in 2000, the world watched on television. The event proved to be a turning point in religious travel.

“With the jubilee, Catholic religious group travel began to accelerate,” said Scott Scherer of the Catholic Travel Centre in Burbank, Calif. “In 2000, pilgrimage got a much higher profile. Before then, there weren’t many large religious group operators. Now the travel industry has woken up to the potential.”



Vatican exhibit worth the two-hour drive north

Can’t make that pilgrimage to the Vatican this year? Fortunately, the next closest thing to the Holy See will be in Chicago’s backyard this spring.

Midwest travelers can view a 300-piece collection of Vatican historic objects, documents and art spanning 2000 years of reigning popes at the Milwaukee Public Museum through May 7.



The core of evangelization: we depend on each other

This is the fourth in a series of columns encouraging evangelization in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been talking about the essentials of evangelization. I’ve argued that preaching the Good News involves the proclamation of 1) Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead, 2) the divinity of the Lord, and 3) radical humanism. Now, a passionate and committed evangelical Protestant might agree quite readily with these three principles; so what is it that makes Catholic evangelization distinctively Catholic? I believe it is a fourth element, namely, the indispensability of the church.