The SFHS Valedictorian ~ Thomas Kashino receiving one of his many academic awards, presented by Br. Michael Duffy, OFM Conv. and Fr. Michael Sajda, OFM Conv.
“After two years of having little to no formal celebrations of the graduating classes due to the pandemic, we want to acknowledge this monumental return back to tradition and being together once more. Our current seniors were only freshmen the last time we were able to celebrate the Baccalaureate Liturgy. Thank you to our school leaders, Assistant Principal Dr. Mary Lou Stahl, Dean of Students Mr. Joseph Krug, School Principal Br. Michael Duffy, OFM Conv. and President Fr. Michael Sadja, OFM Conv., who helped organize the receiving of the academic awards.”
Fr. Robert Schlageter, OFM Conv. (pastor), Fr. Manny Vasconcelos, OFM Conv. (parochial vicar), and Fr. Paul Pantiru, OFM Conv. (parochial vicar) serve the students of St. Anne-Pacelli Catholic High School, in pastoral leadership at St. Anne Catholic Church. Friar Robert and Friar Manny concelebrated the Baccalaureate Mass and High School Graduation.
In Fr. Robert’s final address to the Class of 2022 he expressed, “It is never too late to come Home to Christ. You are more than your worst moments or your worst choices. You are precious in our eyes and you are precious in God’s eyes. We are proud of you! … We are filled with so much hope for you.”
The Baccalaureate Mass for the Class of 2022 took place on Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at the Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore, MD. As is the custom, the graduates filed past the tomb of Michael J. Curley, the 10th Archbishop of Baltimore (right). Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Donald Grzymski, OFM Conv. ’70, president of Curley, was the main celebrant and homilist (pictured below presenting one of the students with one of the many awards earned by the Class of 2022 members).
Fr. Chris Dudek, OFM Conv. takes a quick photo with some of his students outside of Baltimore’s Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, in celebration of their May 27th Graduation.
The 58th Commencement Exercises of Archbishop Curley High School took place on May 27, 2022, at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen for the class of 2022.
Mr. William J. McCarthy, Jr., Executive Director, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Baltimore, was the Commencement Speaker.
Graduation Mass for the Class of 2022 of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, in Olney, MD was presided over by Fr. Tom Lavin, OFM Conv. (at right), who serves the school as Chaplain, since August 2015. The 10:00 a.m. Graduation Ceremonies were livestreamed from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington DC. During his Homily, Friar Tom reminded the Graduates to, “always allow your Faith to be a foundation of your future.”
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Video adapted from the
Bishop McNamara High School Facebook Page 05-26-2022 post:
Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Br. Dan Lutolf, OFM Conv. serves as a Theology Instructor at Bishop McNamara High School.
Here is the video from the school’s Facebook page, of the “Bishop McNamara Baccalaureate 2022.”
Excerpts included from the Homily by Friar Nick Spano, OFM Conv. at the Funeral Mass for +Roberta Dury, celebrated at our Province’s Syracuse, NY pastoral ministry ~ Assumption Church.
During the May 25, 2022 Daily Mass at the Chancery of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, celebrated by Most Rev. Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv., a friar of our province who serves as Archbishop of Atlanta, his homily speaks on prayerfulness at this time of unrest and grief in our world, and so much more.
Pictured is an altered image of a Chapter at the Portiuncula (“Little Portion” as St. Francis called the St. Mary of the Angels chapel) from “The Little Flowers of St. Francis,” published in 1919 by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. London. The book is an English translation by Thomas Okey of “I Fioretti di S. Francesco,” by Antonio Cesari (1822) of collected tales of St Francis of Assisi. Original stories were in Latin from about 150 years after the 1226 death of St Francis
Please keep the friars of our province in your prayers as their delegates gather this week for the Ordinary Provincial Chapter 2022. A modern Franciscan Chapter is reminiscent of the 1221 version when St. Francis of Assisi called more than 3,000 friars to come together as family, to the Portiuncula chapel, in Assisi, for a general meeting or “Chapter of Mats.” At that time, the friars lived in huts made from reeds and brought their sleeping mats with them, to the area surrounding the chapel to have a place to sit. Modern day friars, instead meet in a conference center, get to sit on actual chairs, and sleep in “real” beds. It is however still thought of as a coming together as a family, offering witness of brotherhood and celebrating Franciscan life. Days are filled with meetings, presentations as well as the much-needed work of organizing the general needs of the friars and ministries of the Province. Chapter is also a time to enjoy Franciscan Brotherhood. Our province is grateful to those to whom we minister, and all of those who prayerfully support our work, who are praying for our friar delegates, as well as the outgoing and incoming leadership. We will share some photos after the Ordinary Provincial Chapter 2022 (May 23-27, 2022).
Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Nicholas Swiatek, OFM Conv. (above center) serves as a parish priest for the Catholic Seto Church (dedicated to St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe), in Seto-Shi, Aichi-Ken, Japan. After his 1968 Ordination, Friar Nicholas spent six years serving in ministry in the USA, before heading to Japan to learn the language and serve as a Missionary. After 33 years ministering there, he returned to the USA in 2001 for just a decade before requesting to return to serve his beloved people of Japan. He will turn 81 in August and still is a strong presence among “his” people.
Joyfully, on Saturday, May 21, 2022, in Tokyo’s Akabane Church, (dedicated to Our Lady of Assumption), the Most Reverend Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi, S.V.D., the Archbishop of Tokyo ordained two friars to the Diaconate. Pictured above are Friar Timothy Maria Nakanori Kosuke, OFM Conv., Friar Nicholas and Friar Michael Toyama Akira, OFM Conv. after the historic moment shared by Friar Nicholas. It has been many years since the last Ordinations there. Friar Timothy and Friar Michael are both friars of the Japanese Province of the Immaculate Conception of the B.V.M.
A reflection by our Assistant General, Fr. Jude Winkler, OFM Conv., on his recent visit with the Minister General, to our Syracuse, NY pastoral ministry of Assumption Church.
After several years without it due to the pandemic, the friars, staff, volunteers and pilgrims of our province’s Shrine of St. Anthony ministry, in Ellicott City, MD, are excited to again host the St. Anthony Festival, on Saturday, June 11, 2022! Guest presenter, Patrick Madrid is a noted author, apologist, and radio host for Relevant Radio. Patrick will be talking about the Eucharist and the biblical sources of Catholicism! The day will begin at 11:00 a.m. with Patrick’s first talk. All present will have the opportunity to gather for Noon Mass and Adoration until 3:00 p.m. Patrick will also give a second talk at 2:00 p.m. The Festival will end with a 4:00 p.m. Vigil Mass in the Chapel.
Mark your calendars and join us on this day as we celebrate the Feast of St. Anthony (June 13th).
May 20, 2022: Our Baltimore, MD high school ministry ~ Archbishop Curley High School gathered to celebrate the Golden Friars Liturgy to honor the 50th Reunion of the Curley Class of 1972. The main celebrant of the Mass was the President of Curley & a member of the Class of ’70 ~ Fr. Donald Grzymski OFM Conv. (pictured below). Fr. Bart Karwacki, OFM Conv., the Guardian of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Friary, concelebrated with Friar Donald.
Congratulations to Friar Lawrence and the rest of the Curley Class of 1972!
Included among the Curley’s class of ’72 honorees was Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Br. Lawrence LaFlame, OFM Conv. (seated in the insert with some of his classmates in attendance). Friar Lawrence is a Theology and Philosophy Instructor at Curley. After graduating from Curley, and before he became a friar of our province, he served in the US Navy as a Sonarman. Fr. Lawrence holds a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy as well as a M.A. in Theology. He spent 19 years teaching at our Athol Springs, NY high school ministry ~ St. Francis High School, where he taught Latin, Theology, and World History. Friar Lawrence, Friar Donald, and Friar Bart live in community with two more friars in the IHM Friary.
From Newman as a Critic of Modernity To Vatican II as Newman’s Council
I have nothing of that high perfection, which belongs to the writings of saints,
…I trust that I may claim …[in] what I have written, … an honest intention, absence of private ends, temper of obedience, willingness to be corrected, dread of error,
desire to serve Holy Church, and, through Divine Mercy, a fair measure of success.[1]
Since 1969,[2] I’ve been privileged to study John Henry Newman.[3] Imagine my joy on Sunday morning, 19 October 2019, at St. Peter’s, Rome, when Pope Francis canonized Newman. I cannot emphasize enough why Newman was prophetic in his denunciation of modern rationalist forms of Christianity which, in his view, has capitulated to secular reason fully established in the 19th century as both the default intellectual position as well as the[4] new social imaginary. Using Newman’s Idea of a University as a standard, I intend to hand on why Newman as prophet of lamentation and as prophet of jubilation helps to “Rebuild the Church.”
To plumb deeper into lamentation and jubilation as Newman’s critique of secular forms of Christianity he regarded as counterfeit, is to shout out Newman’s prophetic voice in defense of the picture of God as totally Other. To appropriate human response rests on religious fear and awe. It is an honest view of human beings as sinners that are capable through grace of becoming saints (jubilation) or scoundrels (lamentation). It means conviction that faith has prerogatives over instrumental or moral reason, that what matters is making judgments about behavior that pertain to one’s salvation. It means recognizing Newman’s prudent resistance to and refutation of highly processed forms of Christianity in modernity. It means recognizing how secular Christianity disguises itself as genuine and immunizes itself. A more recent and pernicious phenomenon is “weaponized incomprehensibility”[5] that is besieging our values.
As a standard, was Newman’s Idea of a University a success or failure? A dismal failure for it never became a reality. TheIdea of a University was based on the Oxford model with its roots in Aristotle’s system of broad cultural education, paideia, and linked to the origin of the modern university as founded by the Catholic Church in the 13th century at Paris, Padua, Bologna, and Oxford. A university is not a seminary, and that misunderstanding with the Irish Bishops was not bridged. Yet Newman wrote a classic, a coherent and powerful vision of the concept of university that has a signified, adequate, expressed, enormous influence as synthesis with all its details to this day. Shortly before he died, Fr. Hesburgh, C.S.C said to me: Newman’s Idea of a University was just that, a powerful synthesis whose principles helped him to lead the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years as its president.
Newman’s quote upon acceptance of the cardinalate encapsulates his debt to the ancient classical system proximate to his Oxford classical studies. He embraces his limits as a creature and sinner with freedom and self-transcendence. His understanding and commitment to Church AND World reflect an inheritor of that line from the great saints as Francis of Assisi, and a precursor of Vatican II’s emphasis on reform, renewal, and updating. Understanding Aristotle’s paideia, the Medieval universities, the Oxford model as a youth, contributed to the university curriculum he created for Dublin. Negotiation between Church AND World is constitutive of the Roman Catholic Church.[6] Fr. Hesburgh saw his work at Notre Dame as a progression of Newman, with philosophy as a synthetic state of mind providing integration.
Pope St. John XXIII’s call for Aggiornamento did not equate with thinking that updating for the whole Church meant only when the Church was fully egalitarian. Second, there was never a break with the past at Vatican II, for it would not be the Catholic way. The Church negotiates because it is “in” AND “for” the World, but the Church is not the World. The Church has a supernatural end. TheDocuments of Vatican II give expression to the balance of two lines of interpretation which are ongoing. Lumen Gentium, on the mystery of the Church, and Gaudium et Spes, on the Church AND World, are a balance between the two lines of interpretation. The dominant interpretation after Vatican II, which is the wrong interpretive strategy to Pope Benedict XVI, is the lens of social justice as the only interpretation of the purpose of the Catholic Church.[7]
In The Idea of a University, Newman avoids being clever or appearing to win. To be clever gets old and, ironically, never grows. To be clever is to be permanently frozen. The beauty of argument is towards development of a bridge between views. Second level order of reflection on the data of Christian faith in history and interpreting the development of the Church’s institutions assists theology as a form of knowledge that is public, one that is able to draw conclusions that verify its intuitions, and enable a person to intervene in public space.
Newman’s gentleman[8] in TheIdea of a University describes a “gentleman” not of Christianity, but of civilization, a good citizen. St. Paul’s Christian character in its most graceful form and with its most beautiful hues depends on lifelong formation and cultivation of virtue that is more than ornamental. The Idea of a University lists the Church’s duties: to cure and keep its members from sin by teaching justice and chastity, the judgment to come, faith, hope, devotion and honesty, with elements of charity that puts souls on the way of salvation, aspiring to be heroic, attaining to various degrees of what is beautiful.[9] In the 21st century information explosion we gasp for air trying to answer what constitutes a university education. I read Newman’s Idea of a University as a serene text that is more and more relevant today.
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conv., Univ. of Notre Dame, Easter Reflection 4 eondrako@alumni.nd.edu
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[1] J. H. Newman, Biglietto Speech, 12 May 1879. Given upon acceptance of the cardinalate. [2] P. D. Fehlner, OFM Conv. was the first to teach Newman a Franciscan systematic approach. [3] A. J. Boekraad, MHM in 1973-1974; John Ford, C.S.C at CUA in 2006; Oxford Conf. with I. Ker et. al, @ Nat Inst of Newman Studies; SJHNA Conferences; C. O’Regan at Notre Dame since 2010; Dissert. at Syracuse University on Newman and Gladstone,1994; Ed., Newman Scotus Reader, 2015, rpt canoniz. issue, 2019; Dissert. at Notre Dame, Rebuild My Church, 2021. [4]The Documents of Vatican II with Notes and Index (Vatican Trans: 2009, rpt. 2020). [5] Weaponized incomprehensibility implies: “if I do not understand something, you are the fool.” [6] The difficulty was compounded by the refusal of the Catholic Church to negotiate with modernity. [7] Responsible complaints from the faithful most often are in this register, i.e., too social justice oriented. [8]Idea, 208-210. [9]Idea, 203.
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
May 20, 2022
“After two years of having little to no formal celebrations of the graduating classes due to the pandemic, we want to acknowledge this monumental return back to tradition and being together once more. Our current seniors were only freshmen the last time we were able to celebrate the Baccalaureate Liturgy.
The Baccalaureate Mass for the Class of 2022 took place on Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at the Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore, MD. As is the custom, the graduates filed past the tomb of Michael J. Curley, the 10th Archbishop of Baltimore (right). Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Donald Grzymski, OFM Conv. ’70, president of Curley, was the main celebrant and homilist (pictured below presenting one of the students with one of the many awards earned by the Class of 2022 members).
Graduation Mass for the Class of 2022 of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, in Olney, MD was presided over by Fr. Tom Lavin, OFM Conv. (at right), who serves the school as Chaplain, since August 2015. The 10:00 a.m. Graduation Ceremonies were livestreamed from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington DC. During his Homily, Friar Tom reminded the Graduates to, “always allow your Faith to be a foundation of your future.”
Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Nicholas Swiatek, OFM Conv. (above center) serves as a parish priest for the
From Newman as a Critic of Modernity
