Sunday, August 14, 2022: Our Lady of the Angels Province’s Syracuse, NY pastoral ministry ~ the Franciscan Church of the Assumption enjoyed a postponed celebration in honor of the 175th Anniversary of the parish’s founding.  The actual 175th Anniversary took place in 2020, but due to COVID restrictions, the celebratory Mass at the time, with Bishop Douglas J. Lucia (video), and other events were very limited.

The full celebratory events were two more years in the making and it was a joy for all present to combine this event with the “Goodbye Mass” for Friar Rick Riccioli, OFM Conv. (pastor) and Friar Nick Spano, OFM Conv. (parochial vicar), who are moving onto their new assignments. At right is a photo as they gave the Solemn Blessing at their last Liturgy at Assumption. Friar Rick will now serve as pastor of Most Holy Trinity – St. Mary Parish, in Brooklyn, NY. Friar Nick will now serve as pastor of St. Patrick Parish, in Trevorton, PA and pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish, in Coal Township, PA.

The parish enjoyed a great day of celebration including Mass with the Bishop, and a celebration following by a joy filled reception. The new FrancisCorps 24 volunteers and staff joined in the 175th Anniversary celebrations, taking advantage of the opportunity to grab the photo below with Friar Rick, Friar Michael Heine, OFM Conv. (Minister Provincial), Friar Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. (Vicar Provincial), and their new Chaplain & Parochial Vicar at Assumption Church ~ Friar Nader Ata, OFM Conv.
Friar Rick has served not only as the pastor of Assumption Church since 2015, but also as the Chaplain of FrancisCorps since 2017.

SIDCE NOTE: Although the parish was founded in 1845, the Franciscan Friars Conventual have been serving the people of Assumption Church since 1861; building a new church in 1865 (consecrated on May 3, 1867), and finishing the towers in 1872.

As their summer assignments came toward an end, four of our friars-in-formation renewed their Simple/Temporary Vows, including friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. (pictured above) who spent this past year serving his Fraternal/Apostolic Year of Formation living and serving in ministry with our friars of our Province Delegation of St. Francis of Assisi, in our St. Bonaventure Friary (Toronto, ON, Canada). On the Feast of Our Lady of the Angels, our province’s patronal feast day – August 2nd, during Evening Prayer with the friars, friar Fabian renewed his Simple Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, as the hands of his current Friary Guardian ~ Br. Tom Purcell, OFM Conv., as witnessed by Fr. Mark Steed, OFM Conv. and Fr. Joseph Connick, OFM Conv.

The other three, friar Raad Eshoo, OFM Conv. (returned to our Post Novitiate Friary in Silver Spring, MD, after his summer assignment with our friars in Jonesboro, GA), friar Joseph Krondon, OFM Conv. (Fraternal/Apostolic Year with our friars in Syracuse, NY), and friar Antonio Mouleau, OFM Conv. (Fraternal/Apostolic Year with our friars serving at St. Francis High School, Athol Springs, NY) first Professed Simple Vows together on July 22, 2019, during the Jubilarian Mass Celebration at The Shrine of St. Anthony (Ellicott City, MD). These three friars also renewed their Simple Vows at the end of this summer.

Excerpt from our Order’s Website:
“By their profession of the vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, the friars:
a) dedicate themselves directly and entirely to God in a special manner;
b) are conformed more exactly to the type of life Christ the Lord chose for Himself and are united in a special way to the Church and her saving mission;
c) stimulate the fervor of their charity through a fuller expression of their baptismal consecration, progress in the life of pilgrims and penitents, and voluntarily deny themselves goods otherwise highly esteemed.”

For more information on life as a
Franciscan Friar Conventual of
Our Lady of the Angels Province,
email vocations@olaprovince.org.

On Sunday August 8, 2022, the morning Mass at our Syracuse NY pastoral ministry – Assumption Church included the commissioning the FrancisCorps 24 volunteers! The Mass was celebrated by our Vicar Provincial ~ Friar Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. (top right), joined by the new Chaplain of FrancisCorps & Parochial Vicar of Assumption Church ~ Friar Nader Ata, OFM Conv. (top left), Friar Steven Frenier, OFM Conv., outgoing Parochial Vicar & Chaplain of Franciscan Place ~ Friar Nick Spano, OFM Conv.,  and the outgoing Rector/Pastor of Assumption Church ~ Friar Rick Riccioli, OFM Conv. Also pictured above with the FC24 Volunteers is the Director of FrancisCorps ~ Mr. AJ. LaPointe (2nd from left), and the Associate Director of FrancisCorps ~ Ms. Jenny Rose Anacan. AJ served as a FrancisCorps 10 (2008-2009) volunteer, and Jenny served as a FrancisCorps 20 (2018-2019) volunteer.

During the next week, these FrancisCorps (FC24) Volunteers and staff will embark on their Orientation Retreat; their first retreat together. Pray for these volunteers as they spend this time learning about one another, and the next year living as an intentional community, in Franciscan spirituality.
Prayerfully consider spending a year of service as a FrancisCorps volunteer.
Applications for 2023-24 will be made available soon.
For more information about becoming a  FrancisCorps volunteer,
or to learn more about this important ministry of our province,
visit: FrancisCorps Volunteer Program – Apply Today

August 10th is the anniversary of St. John Henry Newman’s death in 1890. Fr. Ed Ondrako presents information from the August 4, 2022 Newman Conference. The focus was Newman’s “interiority” which is the integrating force in his 89 years.
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Newman, Arguer and Sniper

 Outer circle for reflection on Newman’s interiority as, an inner circle

Part One

Text and Context; Prologue;  Procedural Remark

Abstract. It is difficult to understand the outer circle without an integrating knowledge of Newman’s “interiority.” Newman is an “arguer” because religion is worth arguing about. His target was John Locke who washed and rinsed Christianity, its practices, devotions and prayers, yet did not countenance atheists. Christology was reduced to Arianism at best. Mariology was thrown overboard. Worship made no sense.

1. Text and Context.

In 1850, Newman delivered “Twelve Lectures on Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church.” In 1833, J.Keble, E. B. Pusey, H. Froude, and W. Ward were prayerful friends in a common quest for the true and ancient Church.

1. Prologue.

Newman lived in modernity which is very different from living in pre-modernity. In mid life he came to realize that the Roman Church, with all of its saints and sinners, traumas and glorious moments, was the only Church that could validly claim to trace itself to the Church of the Apostles.

1. Procedural Remark.
2. At least two senses define the “gift” of modernity. Giften is cure and poison.
3. Your questions should include a look back with Newman’s critical eye.
4. Your questions should include a close look at what he says in the Apologia about late 1844 and 1845. He was writing himself into the Roman Church. He learned why modern Roman doctrines were legitimate developments.
5. What method would be better than Newman’s seven tests, notes or markers about the character of doctrinal development?
   1. Preservation of the type
   2. Continuity of principles

• The power of assimilation

1. Logical sequence
2. Early anticipations
3. Preservative additions

• Chronic continuance

Part Two

Loci of Questioning; Analysis; Prophetic Voice; Recapitulation;

Three loci of questioning about post-Christian culture

1. External forces
2. Temporization by Church authorities
3. Inviting in the secular without competence to regulate Christianly

Analysis

1. First, Newman had the instinct to identify post-Christian culture.
2. Second, Newman had the competence to invite the secular.
3. Third, Newman knew how to extricate himself from liberalism in religion.
4. Fourth, Newman used memory to remember forward.
5. Fifth, for Newman, secularity is not the same as secularism.

Newman’s Prophetic Voice is one of lamentation and jubilation. Newman exposes idolatry as idolatry. The Catholic Church missed opportunities to prepare Catholic thinkers who could engage Kant and Hegel. Newman’s Letter to Norfolk (1874-1875) offered a comprehensive treatise on authority and conscience. Newman’s voice aligns with Rahner, Balthasar, deLubac, Wojytla, and Ratzinger while not necessarily with all of their ideas.

Recapitulation

External forces are not the only cause of post-Christian culture. A seismic shift today is the erosion of belief in the doctrines, practices, and form of life in the Catholic Church. Newman gave us an explicit vocabulary leading towards simple assent that brought certitude and certainty about the true Church.

Conclusion

Newman’s “Twelve Lectures on Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church,” interpret the intentions of the Religious Party of 1833. He was engaging a  “post-Christian culture.”  He lived with a peaceful trust in slow-paced truth knowing a bunker mentality could never engage effectively. The contents warrant Vatican II  to be referred to as “Newman’s Council.” His canonization sealed him as theologian. His works reveal an arguer, a Christian sniper, and genius at guerilla warfare with his “inner life” as unifying.

eondrako@alumni.nd.edu

1889 Portrait of John Henry Newman by Emmeline Deane (1858-1944)

Newman and the Gift of Modernity

[18th wk] “I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts” from Jer 31: 31-34;
“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” from Mt 16: 13-23

In December 1844, Newman set out upon the task of resolving his difficulties, notably with the Anglican Bishops over Tract 90. He knew the history of Christian thought, what was assertive and counter-assertive, what needed incubation. He knew the heresies that exaggerated the truth, or exaggerated partial truth which is grounds for heresy. Newman was empirical without being an empiricist. He never gave into the empirical error that all knowledge is based on experience, i.e. derived from the senses. Newman was always a free radical.

In mid-life Newman reflected deeply on “primal ideas.” Without an idea, there is no development. Idea is a Lockean term. The episteme of Locke are facts that one saw in the world. Americans remember Locke as a major philosophical influence behind the drafting of the American Constitution, a document that has lasted for almost two and a half centuries.

Newman pondered how ideas become explicated over time. Truth is found in history, not historicism. If a doctrine develops, is it true? Was it ever true? He saw the trap of the empiricist and used the language of empiricism to explode it. Some doctrines evidenced themselves even from the apostolic period. “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” To Evangelicals, the Council of Nicaea may not be required. To Luther, tradition was not required. His convenient answer was sola scriptura.

To Newman, all interpretive texts of Sacred Scripture from antiquity do not have the same rules of interpretation. Newman seems to favor comparing spiritual texts as St. Paul: “words not taught by human wisdom but the Spirit that is from God” (1 Cor 2, 12,13). However, doctrine is not a free radical to Newman. No doctrine can come into being, and none have, if they are not related to Sacred Scripture. Moreover, Newman understood what was congruent in Scripture in the 4th and 5th centuries, Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon with the 19th century. He did not think that doctrines were repetitious but congruous. By 1845, his personal quest for truth brought him to conclude that High Anglicanism was a “pastiche.”

Newman asked: if ideas in political and legal institutions grow, why not in religion? His question led him towards a work of historical genius on the development of doctrine. It functions at the level of abstraction. The primal fact is Christ. An idea has different elements in history. E.g. Vatican I refused to engage modernity, while Vatican II, left no one out of engagement. Each Christian has a sharable, rich idea. An idea refracts itself in a plurality. In time the idea has further refraction, is reflected and shareable. Doctrine holds the community together. If an idea at the beginning seems too big or disruptive for any group, remember that an acorn becomes an oak, he said. An implicit idea gradually becomes explicated. An idea is planted in human minds. Inquisitiveness asks: is it true? Locke could not accept the organic model that an idea as a seed grows, is processed, then is transcended. The organic model made common sense to Newman.

If the “gift of modernity” comprises cheerers, weepers, and those who are both cheerers and weepers, as Cyril O’Regan contends, how do they align with the theological embrace of modernity by Christianity? If there are philosophical cheerers, it is more than likely that many are cheerers. Is a person a cheerer because he or she is a Christian? There are many yea-sayers in modern philosophy and modern religious thought to turn to. Newman saw the Lockean-inspired move at Oxford and its considerable impact on members in the Anglican Church in the 18th and 19th centuries. Whately’s exceptional influence on Newman, his fine tuning of Locke almost cost Newman his faith. Newman was drawn towards Rome for one because the Roman Church would prevail over too many cheerers that he saw in the Anglican Church. The cheerers were quite literally the Anti-Christ for him. Their example of Christianity was not real Christianity, but a counterfeit.

What would Newman say today? How might he apply the words of Jesus to Peter: “Get behind me Satan, you are not thinking as God does, but as human beings do”? Certainly, no one gets a free pass: Bishops, priests, parents, Catholics in political life. Newman helps priests in their increasingly difficult task to preach to disillusioned Catholics and those in public life.

The early 20th century movement of Catholic modernism did not go well. As a new priest after Vatican II, I did not grasp the complexity of modernity. If Roman Catholicism has reversed her verdict on Modernism, Newman will help with critical engagement. The Greek, pharmakon, and German Giften, are both cure and poison. Our Popes Francis, Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and Paul VI were never unequivocal lovers of modernity. The focus of their dislike with modern thought might be different, but they were not unequivocal cheerers. E.g., in 1966, Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey of the Church of England were making great ecumenical progress. I rejoiced that Paul VI proposed John Duns Scotus, who was not yet beatified, as offering a plan for the reunification of the Anglican Church with the Roman. In 1973, the demand in England for ordination of women caused a rupture. Is Newman’s Anti-Christ fitting?

I refer to “Scotus and Newman in Dialogue”^[1] a prescient, original, and forward looking study by my Franciscan mentor, Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv. Newman is in step with yea-saying, nay-saying, and yea-and-nay-saying about modernity. Catholic thinkers engage the doubleness of the gift of modernity, cure and poison. Questions abound. Do they cheer for the same thing, weep for the same thing, and hope for the same thing? Can a bridge be built? Do they employ Vatican II against cleavage and in favor of negotiation? What intrinsic prospects for dialogue are there between Christian thought and traditions which might be attractive but illusory? Is Heidegger’s apocalyptic discourse a prospect? Newman answers: the safe handing on (traditio) allows a measure of hard-earned continuity in all of the discontinuity. In conclusion, Newman, a free radical, was a volcanic eruption. He did not identify as conservative nor liberal. Nor do I. Instead he courageously aligned with Francis of Assisi: Be Catholic!

Fr. Ed Ondrako, OFM Conv, eondrako@alumni.nd.edu, University of Notre Dame

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^[1] E. Ondrako, ed., The Newman-Scotus Reader (New Bedford: 2015, rpt canonization issue, 2019), ch. 7.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
Newman Conference, Holy Cross College, Aug 4, 2022

Our Franciscan Friars Conventual Novitiate for the Provinces of North America is located in Arroyo Grande, CA, at the St. Francis of Assisi Friary, of the St. Joseph of Cupertino Province. Three of the new novices are from the Province of Our Lady of Consolation, two are from St. Bonaventure Province, and two are from our province (Our Lady of the Angels Province). This new class of novices arrived in July 2022 and began their “year and a day” with a retreat led by their Assistant Novice Director, Fr. Marek Stybor, OFM Conv. (Our Lady of the Angels Province). Since 2017, the Director of the Novitiate ~ Br. Joe Wood, OFM Conv. (St. Bonaventure Province) has led the formation of the novices, and this year Friar Marek has been assigned to join him. Next month, another one of our province friars will arrive in Arroyo Grande to serve as the “wisdom friar” for the novices. Friar Raphael Zwolenkiewicz, OFM Conv. we be a friar in residence, sharing almost 50 years of experience as a Solemnly Professed friar. On August 2, 2022, the Feast of Our Lady of the Angels (our province’s patronal feast day), Friar Marek will celebrate the 25th Anniversary of his Solemn Vow Profession. He kindly shared these photos of the 1st month with the Novices.

NOTE: The Novitiate’s website and Facebook page are in the midst of updates.
Check back later for more information on this stage of formation for our friars
and to follow along with the progress of the Novitiate Class of 2022-2023.
For more information on life as a Franciscan Friar Conventual visit: FranciscanVoice.org.
Contact the Vocation Directors of our Province at vocations@olaprovince.org.

Friar Marek leads the Novices in Adoration

Blessing of the new garden

Working together to plant the new gardens

Novitiate’s Chapel

Br. Joseph Wood, OFM Conv. (Novice Director – left front) and Fr. Marek Stybor, OFM Conv. (Assistant Novice Director – right front). Our Province’s two Novices – friar Connor Ouly, OFM Conv. (next to Br. Joe) and friar Marvin Paul Fernandez, OFM Conv. (next to Fr. Marek)

On this Feast of Our Lady of the Angels, as we begin our third* Province Quadrennium,
we reflect on these words from our Minister Provincial, Friar Michael Heine, OFM Conv.:
“May the simplicity of life
that our friars lived at the Portiuncula
inspire all of us to focus on what truly is important,
her Son, Jesus.”

Our province logo incorporates the Portiuncula graphic. This small chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, nicknamed Portiuncula – “Little Portion” by our Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi, is located within the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli – The Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels, in Assisi, Italy, and is considered the cradle of the Order. Franciscans around the world celebrate August 2nd as the Feast of Our Lady of the Angels, but as friars of a province named in her honor, we hold the day in special regard, as it is also our Patronal Feast Day. There will be many opportunities to join our friars for celebrations (live and virtual) throughout the province. We encourage all to find a ministry location nearest to you, and to join with our friars in celebrating Our Lady of the Angels. Visit our ministry locations page for links to our various ministries’ websites. 

*NOTE: In 2014, friars of the Immaculate Conception Province (est. 1872) and the St. Anthony of Padua Province (est. 1906) joined together in union to become, our friars of the Franciscan Friars Conventual – Our Lady of the Angels Province. (Read more about our history in the USA) This is why it is only our province’s “third” Quadrennium (four year period). Our province includes over 220 friars, under the leadership of Fr. Michael Heine, OFM Conv. [Minister Provincial], Fr. Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. [Vicar Provincial], and Br. Nicholas Romeo, OFM Conv. [Province Secretary]. Most of the friars of our province serve in ministries along the United States’ East Coast. We also have a handful of friars serving in Italy (Assisi, Rome, Vatican City), Japan & Australia. In addition, our province includes friars of our Provincial Delegation – St. Francis of Assisi in Canada, and friars of our two Provincial Custodies – Immaculate Conception of the B.V.M. in Brazil & Blessed Agnellus of Pisa in Great Britain-Ireland.

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More on the Portiuncula,
and the Il Perdono (the Portiuncula Indulgence):

Six years ago (2016) marked the 800th Anniversary of the August 2nd Portiuncula Indulgence.
The small chapel (at left) of St. Mary of the Angels (Our Lady of the Angels) was very dear to St. Francis of Assisi. He referred to it as the Portiuncula (aka “Little Portion”). Originally settling into the sacred hut of Rivo Torto for about two years with his companions, serving the lepers in the valley below Assisi, an area known as “Arce,” St. Francis obtained from the Benedictines the use of the Chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, for which he paid a basket of fish. The chapel and the surrounding small parcel of land were in disrepair. He relocated there, and just as he had done at San Damiano, St. Francis rebuilt the chapel, adding small huts (cells) and enclosing it all in a protective hedge. It was there that St. Francis gained a more vivid understanding of his own vocation. It was there that he held the annual meetings of the growing Order of friars (Chapters), and it is there, where he desired to spend his final earthly moments; dying in his nearby cell in 1226.
St. Francis felt that the Portiuncula was a place filled with God’s grace. In 1216, at the request of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Honorius granted special privilege (plenary indulgence – a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins) to all those who would visit the little chapel.
Although limited to include from noon on August 1st to midnight on August 2nd, the privilege continues to be granted to this day; not only to those who visit the Portiuncula, but to anyone who visits any church where Franciscan Friars live and minister.

Conditions to receive this privilege for yourself or for someone else – living or deceased:

• Sacramental confession to be in God’s grace (during the eight days before or after)
• Participation in the Holy Mass and Eucharistic Communion
• Visit to the Portiuncula or another Franciscan Church, followed by Profession of Faith, in order to reaffirm one’s own Christian identity
• Say the Our Father, in order to reaffirm the dignity as a child of God that one received in Baptism
• Pray for the Pope’s intentions, in order to reaffirm one’s membership in the Church, of which the Roman Pontiff is the foundation and sign of visible unity

Inside the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli

The beautiful Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli (below) that now surrounds the Portiuncula chapel was begun in 1569 (completed in 1684) by decree of Pius V. It was meant to accommodate the huge crowds of pilgrims who came on August 2nd for Il Perdono (Portiuncula Indulgence). This is an important feast day for all Franciscans and is celebrated in Franciscan churches throughout the world.

What are Catholic Indulgences? Video One  –  Video Two

On July 13, 2022, a new year began for the community at the St. Francis of Assisi Novitiate in Arroyo Grande, California, USA. This inter-Provincial novitiate is under the jurisdiction of the Conventual Franciscan Federation (CFF).

Adapted from the 07/27/2022 St. Francis High School Facebook post:

Our Lady of the Angels Province student friar Antonio Moualeu, OFM Conv. will be joining our friars of the St. Frances of Assisi Friary (Hamburg, NY) for his Apostolic Year of Formation. We have nine friars living in that friary, seven of whom serve at our St. Francis High School (SFHS), where friar Antonio is assigned as the new Campus Minister for the 2022-2023 school year. On June 25, 2022, the former Campus Minister, Fr. Matt Foley, OFM Conv., was appointed President of the school. This past May, friar Antonio Moualeu, OFM Conv. received a Doctoral Degree in Mechanical Engineering, from Georgia Institute of Technology. (Read More)

On July 20, 2022, in the beautiful SFHS Chapel, at the hands of Fr. Maximilian Avila, OFM Conv. (seated at left), friar Antonio renewed his Simple Vows; recommitting his desire to live the Gospel as a Franciscan Friar Conventual. Friar Max has been assigned as the new Friary Guardian, and has served as an Instructor at SFHS since 2018.  Alongside two of his confreres, friar Antonio first professed his Simple Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, on July 22, 2019. These Simple Vows are also referred to as Temporary Vows, since they are for only three years. It usually takes a bit longer for the final preparation for Solemn (also known as Perpetual) Vows, so it is most often necessary for a friar to renew his Simple Vows, at least once during his formation journey. Such a Vow Renewal has not taken place in the school’s chapel for a long time, and it was a very joyous occasion. When asked about this next step, friar Antonio said, “I’m very excited to serve the SFHS community as the next Campus Minster. I look forward to a great school year ahead!”