June 11, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar Richard Rome, OFM Conv. (top left) renewed his Simple Vows during Mass, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, at our pastoral ministry of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, in Shamokin, PA, in the presence of several friars and the local faith community of the three Franciscan parishes in the Shamokin, PA area. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed heart to heart conversation over coffee and baked goods from the famous Broadway Bakery in Mt. Carmel. Friar Rich has been serving with the friars of Mother Cabrini Friary during his Apostolic Year of Formation, with the focus of his ministry serving as Director of The Franciscan Center, in Coal Township. The vow renewal took place at the hands of his Friary Guardian & Pastor of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Martin Kobos, OFM Conv. (top right). His vow renewal was witnessed by Fr. Michael Lasky, OFM Conv. (2nd from left – JPIC Commission Chairman and Pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish – Coal Township & St. Patrick Parish – Trevorton) and Fr. Everest Valentine Nyaki Mkenda, OFM Conv. (bottom – a friar from Tanzania, who has been living and serving with our friars since 2019, while continuing his studies in America). Also pictured above if Fr. Angelo Geiger, OFM Conv., Parochial Vicar of all three Shamokin area parishes. Simple Profession is for a term of three years, so friars often have to renew their vows, during their Post Novitiate stage of formation. During this time they are continuing their studies, including a Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation, which friar Rich has just completed. In July, he and two of his confreres will Profess their Solemn Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.
Rebuild My Church[1] Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of the Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II
First in a Series by Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual University of Notre Dame
“It pleases me that you teach the friars sacred theology, so long as in these studies the spirit of prayer and devotion is not extinguished, as is contained in the rule.”[2] This is a quintessential direct answer from St. Francis of Assisi to St. Anthony of Padua, theologian, teacher, preacher, and miracle worker whose feast we celebrate on June 13. Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conventual (1931-2018), from Our Lady of Angels Province in the USA, followed the directive of St. Francis the founder of the Order to St. Anthony with an incredible fidelity to the history of the Franciscan Order especially in face of the massive challenges to faith from modernity, which has begun with the Enlightenment. In 2017 he had read closely my study, Rebuild My Church, about his life. “You have represented the development of my entire life’s thought correctly,” he said. I could not have wished for more and that serves as the prompt for this first in a series of short summaries to share the gift of getting to know and to understand this sometimes enigmatic friar thinker and teacher of countless Franciscan friars and faithful. Our Lady of Angels Province website has generously accepted my offer to make known a gifted and humble friar who is not known as well as he ought to be known.
Overview.
It sometimes happens that something present is not seen by persons who see other things that are in plain sight. St. Augustine calls this aorâsia (Greek) or caecitas (Latin) City of God: 22, 19). Hiddenness may architectonically hold together The Works of Peter Damian Fehlner and his lifelong scholarly engagement with the relation between premodernity and modernity. For his entire life, Fr. Peter Damian (1931-2018) taught what he believed to be the correct teachings of the Church throughout its history. That encompasses creation, the fall, the prophecies and miracles of the Old Testament that all lead to the Incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. Receiving the Word in her Immaculate Heart, Mary was found worthy to conceive the Creator and to nurture the beginnings of the Church. Fr. Fehlner critically engaged proof from prophecy to show evidence of a continuous intention found in Sacred Scripture. This intention is manifested in the unfolding of a continuous efficacious plan: the wisdom of God and the needed perspective for everyone to see. There is one Mediator who condescends to dwell with everyone. We are the Mediator’s temple and our heart is his altar. God desires the heart that is bruised, humble, and sorrowful. The only begotten Son of God is our priest. His sacrifice is real and truly free. The wisdom of the Cross is not the experience of suffering. Rather, cruciform wisdom is love willing to suffer, which requires becoming incarnate in the form of a servant. St. Francis of Assisi and his theologian disciples could not be further apart from Luther and Calvin on the theology of the cross and its implications for the hierarchy of truths in Catholic doctrine as articulated at Vatican II (UR, 11). The Council intended to open a kind of fraternal rivalry to prompt dialogue and lead towards a deeper realization of the unfathomable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). True sacrifice is designed to unite us to God which makes possible our true happiness. Truth is gifted to the Church through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The truth of the Church is renewed in the Eucharist. The prayer and good works of the Church, despite the stains of sin and scandal, is the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit which enables the Church to be the light of the world. One member is All-Holy, Mary, the Mother of the Church. She awaited the Spirit her Son had promised with the Apostles and became the pattern of the Church at prayer. She accompanies the pilgrim Church’s homeward steps with a Mother’s love until the Lord’s Day.
Summary. “Rebuild My Church” is the first critical analysis of the development of the thought of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, for whom the work of Christ always moves forward, never backward. At Vatican II, engagement with modernity began in earnest for the first time with the Catholic Church’s irrevocable goal to build a “bridge” to modernity. As the Council intended, Fr. Fehlner critically engaged thinkers with Kantian, Hegelian-Marxist, and Heideggerian inspired thought that seeks to repackage Christianity. The Council taught that reform and renewal of the entire Catholic church meant that these daunting figures in modernity have to be engaged critically which Fr. Fehlner did both explicitly and implicitly as a gifted metaphysician-theologian. Whoever had the privilege of listening to him lecture and preach, never left with a doubt why he was repeating the Scotistic[3] concept of the perfect will as radically ordered and unitive, and why the ordered will was not willfulness in modern philosophy or ideology, cloaked in freedom. I will identify ideas that are hostile to Christianity in a readable manner because their influence is ubiquitous and seductive. Vatican II taught us to invite many religious thinkers for dinner with whom we will wrestle but we are on the journey together through the storms of modernity. Some guests may have a cruciform pattern, but may become unruly guests.
Fr. Fehlner elegantly crafted his reply to the complex truth and phenomena thrown up by history. Vatican II taught to bring on board from modern life when the context of the believer and history have changed. Fr. Fehlner read the Catholic thinkers from St. John Henry Newman to Erich Przywara, S.J., Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, O.P., Henri de Lubac, S.J. in the twentieth century and their full measure of direct or indirect reading of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger. Catholic thinkers recognized helpful insights, but overall, read them negatively. Fr. Fehlner was no exception. Famously, he feared the Kantian deformation espoused by Kant for its insistence on the absolute autonomy of the transcendental “ego.” Fr. Fehlner identified why the radically autonomous will of the creature in the thought of Kant was the exact opposite to the radically humble will of the Immaculate Virgin and the unique Marian tradition from the origins of the Franciscan Order. In sum, there is no consensus Catholic view.
Hegel had no time for philosophical modesty and made the claim that his thought summed up all of philosophy. The interpreter may think this is tragic or comic, but Hegel risks everything to insist that all philosophies are oriented towards his. If we think Hegel’s claim is “out there,” for starters, ponder why and how people reinvent themselves today. Focus on the dramatic change about religious liberty during the course of recent political campaigns! Fr. Fehlner knew that incorporation of Hegelian thought foreshadowed the roll back of religious liberty and primacy of conscience. Pope St. John Paul II did not miss the potential and real rollback In Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio, nor Benedict XVI in his panoply of writings. Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti is one of his writings that subtly exposes the historicist sleight of hand in current Hegelian interpretation. What does all of this mean? Hegel’s affirmation of Christian beliefs in the creation, incarnation, redemption, Church and afterlife are merely apparent. History is not to be interpreted as a spousal vision, but only as pedagogy. Modernity unveils the secret of the divine who was always ourselves. “I too am God.”[4] Kierkegaard, the Danish Lutheran father of existentialism, refused to recognize Hegel’s presentation as Christian and thoughtHegel was an imbecile.[5] What this means to a Christian believer today is that Hegel continued and developed Kant’s substitution of the invisible church of rational believers for the historical church of faith, which Nietzsche and Heidegger seemed to be only too happy to follow. Kant’s secularity replaced Hegel’s sublation. The historical Church is not dismissed but refigured as a shadow of the secular.
Our Common Journey The greatest studies on the central mystery of our faith, the Trinity, are arguably by St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure.[6] Learning about the mind and heart of Fr. Fehlner and “Rebuilding the Church” is to trust verses Hegel who is an extraordinarily learned philosopher who would leave us with nothing. Hegelian braggadocio and its adherents as Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, have oceanic gaps from this quintessential Franciscan’s “deep knowing.” Hegel seems to know little about philosophy and theology between the third and sixteenth centuries. Hegel’s analysis of history strikes no prophetic complaint or echoes of lament of the Psalms. The post Vatican II dialogical world remembers the claim that in Protestant thought Hegel essentially rediscovered the central importance of the doctrine of the Trinity but with no mention of the traditional authorities of the doctrine of the Trinity: Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, nor Luther, Calvin and other Protestant theologians. Hegel keeps strange company with Jacob Boehme (theosophist), Philo of Alexandria, and Valentinus. Creation is necessary and God has a lot to gain from creation of the world. Without the world, God is nothing. Fr. Fehlner reminds us that knowledge of the Blessed Trinity is the most practical of all knowledge for it reminds us of our goal and joy of life, sharing in the love of the Father and Son in the Holy Spirit.
Study Questions.
If we forget the essential elements in a world of lowered expectations, will we remember what Christianity was and is?
As Christian thinkers, will we unapologetically know where we are and where we stand vs. flight to a bunker mentality that witnesses only to those in the bunker?
If we allow ourselves to be “reinvented by a hostile secularism,” what will our worldview be? Change in the Holy Spirit is knowing how to productively forget and what to remember.
While engaging modernity critically, will we intercept subtle efforts to “repackage” Christianity?
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[1] E.J. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2021). [ISBN 978-1-943901-18-0] [2] Placet mihi quod sacram teologiam legas fratribus, dummodo inter huius studium orationis et devotionis spiritum non extinguas, sicut in regula continetur (EpAnt). [3] Bl. John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) was the “subtle doctor” and “Marian doctor” who systematically supported the absolute primacy of Christ, a theme that was the driving force for Fr. Fehlner. [4] “I too am God” is Ludwig Feuerbach’s skillful affirmation of Hegel’s thought that concludes that Christian beliefs are all myths and that the secret of modernity is that the divine was always ourselves. See Cyril O’Regan below. [5] See Cyril O’Regan, “97 Theses on Hegel and His Catholic Thinkers” in Church Life Journal, McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame (31 Auugst 2020). This is O’Regan’s hypothetical about Kierkegaard. [6] See P.D. Fehlner, in J. Isaac Goff, Caritas in Primo (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2015), Afterword, 311-321.
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
June 11, 2021
In this (eventually 12 part) series, Friar Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. delves into the Constitutions for the Order of Friars Minor Conventual; a document presenting the original charism of the Order, given to us from our founder St. Francis of Assisi 800 years ago, and describing how that charism translates into modern terms.
Eucharistic Procession led by friar Antonio and Friar Calixto
The June 2021 Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) celebrations at our pastoral ministry of Holy Cross Catholic Church (Atlanta, GA) included the Eucharistic Procession through the neighborhood, led by Our Lady of the Angels Province student friar Antonio Moualeu, OFM Conv., with Benediction and Adoration presided over by the parish’s parochial vicar, Fr. Calixto Salvatierra Moreno, OFM Conv.
{Note: Photos taken from the Holy Cross Atlanta Español Facebook page where you will find several more beautiful moments from the celebration}
Why is friar Antonio in Atlanta?
During the Post-Novitiate stage of formation, our student friars not only engage in furthering their education, but also take the time to participate in active ministry. This past year we had four student friars in study in Washington, DC and two in study in San Antonio, TX.
Friar Antonio and friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. lived in a large community of student friars from several provinces, in the Post-Novitiate San Damiano Friary (San Antonio, TX), under the direction of Our Lady of the Angels Province Friar Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. and Our Lady of Consolation Province Friar Andy Martinez, OFM Conv. While friar Antonio will return to San Antonio to continue his Doctoral studies after his summer break with our friars of Holy Cross Friary (Atlanta, GA), this summer friar Fabian will begin his Apostolic Year of Formation with our friars of St. Bonaventure Friary (Toronto, ON).
The other student friars of our province have also been assigned to spend the summer in varied friaries throughout our province. Please keep them all in your prayers as they proceed in their vocation formation.
Our province will be holding a Summer Discernment Retreat, from July 29 – August 2, 2021 (The Feast Day of Our Lady of the Angels). To sign up or for more information about vocations, contact our Province Vocation Director ~ Br. Nick Romeo, OFM Conv. at vocations@olaprovince.org.
Throughout our province Education Ministries, the students, teachers, staff, volunteers and friars are celebrating the end of the 2020/2021 School Year. It was not an easy year for our world. Our students, from PreK – Graduate School, had to learn to adapt and still thrive in a pandemic world. Although the struggles were very real, these young people grew personally, academically, and spiritually. We are grateful to have hopefully been able to be a source of strength for the school communities we serve.
Friar Pedro, friar Joseph and Friar Marek were joined by the St. Peter School Principal and the PreK teachers in a candid shot with the students.
June 2, 2021: To end the year with a joy filled and very Franciscan celebration, our friars of the St. Peter Friary (Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ) were visited by the PreK students, teachers & principal of St. Peter School, to help with “Planting Day” in the friary garden. The students stayed and celebrated with yard games and treats for a well deserved job well done. The Point Pleasant Beach Police Department, which is very active in the local community and are often present on campus, helping with student activities and special projects, participated too. Fr. Pedro de Oliveira, OFM Conv., Fr. Marek Stybor, OFM Conv., Fr. Richard Rossell, OFM Conv., Fr. Brennan-Joseph Farleo, OFM Conv., and student friar Joseph Krondon, OFM Conv. enjoyed their participation in the planting and the fun.
Friar Richard, Friar Brennan-Joseph, and the local visiting police officers joined friar Joseph and Friar Marek for another shot with the students before the planting begins
Friar Marek works with the school principal and one of the officers to help a group of students plant in a side box, while the Friary Guardian, Friar Brennan-Joseph, oversees the whole project.
Friar Pedro joins in the fun with a game of cornhole against the officers, while the kids cheered for him!
Kicking on his summer break from classes at The Catholic University of America, friar Joseph started his summer assignment with his confreres of the St. Peter Friary with some planting instruction.
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The month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In thanksgiving for the perseverance and successes acquired during this past academic year, we pray:
Prayer of Thanksgiving and Praise to the Sacred Heart
Lord, you deserve all honor and praise,
because your love is perfect and your heart sublime.
My heart is filled to overflowing with gratitude
for the many blessings and graces you have bestowed upon me and those
whom I love.
Forever undeserving, may I always be attentive
and never take for granted the gifts of mercy and love
that flow so freely and generously from your Sacred Heart.
Heart of Jesus, I adore you.
Heart of Jesus, I praise you.
Heart of Jesus, I thank you.
Heart of Jesus, I love you forever and always.
Amen.
June 1, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. renewed his Simple Vows in the Chapel of the San Damiano Friary – House of Formation (San Antonio, TX), where he has been in residence as a student friar, since 2018. The vow renewal took place at the hands of his Friary Guardian, Post Novitiate Director and Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. His Simple Vows are now renewed for 14 months. The friary is one of several Houses of Formation in the USA, and is of the Province of Our Lady of Consolation. As such, two friars of that province, Friar Richard Kaley, OFM Conv. & Friar Tim Unser, OFM Conv., served as friar Fabian’s witnesses. Friar Fabian first professed his Simple (Temporary) Vows on July 16, 2018. Simple Profession is for a term of three years, so friars often have to renew their vows, during their Post Novitiate stage of formation. During this time they are continuing their studies and moving into their Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation prior to their Solemn Profession of the Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. This stage usually, but not always, takes more than initial three years. Soon, friar Fabian will being his own Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation, with our friars in Toronto, Ontario.
Please keep him, and his formation journey, in your continued prayers.
Presented by Franciscan Voice, “Behind the Quill” is a series of living history stylized conversations with the authors of the Synoptic Gospels.
The 1st in the series was a 30 minute interview with ST. MARK, the 1st Evangelist, as he stoped by to talk about his Gospel, with our own Friar Tim.
This 2nd presentation, “Lunch with Luke” delves into what we know about St. Luke and how he came to know so much about Jesus and the early Church?
May 31, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province Vicar Provincial, Fr. Michael Heine, OFM Conv.(2nd row, 3rd from right – photo from The Catholic Review) concelebrated at the Mass on the Feast of the Visitation, in celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the dedication of Baltimore’s National Shrine of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Mass concluded with the dedication and opening of the Pope Saint John Paul II Eucharistic Adoration Chapel for perpetual adoration, in the undercroft of the Basilica.
May 27-19, 2021: The Very Revered Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv. (center), Minister Provincial of our province, traveled to the InterProvince Novitiate (Arroyo Grande, CA) to visit with the Novices and Formators, and to present classes on the Blessed Virgin Mary and on Franciscan & Celtic Spirituality. It was a great time of fraternity, telling stories and sharing many laughs, for which the Novitiate community of friars is grateful. Friar James’ visit also coincided with the 56th anniversary of priesthood ordination, for our own Fr. Julian Zambanini, OFM Conv. (center left), who serves on the Formation Team as a friar in residence. Ad multos annos, frater Iulianus!
Memorial Day in the USA, a Federal Holiday celebrated the last Monday of May each year, honors American Military Personnel lost while fighting in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, The Vietnam War, The Korean War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For our Canadian friars, the day – known as Canada Day – is held on July 1st. They celebrate Remembrance Day on November 1th.
June 2014: Our Lady of the Angels Province Minister Provincial, the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv. visited the Normandy American Cemetery at Omaha Beach (Cimetiere Americain de Normandy), where the graves of 9,387 soldiers, a chapel, memorials and garden can be visited to honor the courage, skill and ultimate sacrifice made by those who are laid to rest there.
While our friars hold in prayer all those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for freedom, of laying down their lives in times of war, we remember especially our own Paratroopers’ Chaplain, +Capt. Father Ignatius Maternowski, OFM Conv. +Friar Ignatius was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1912. He joined the Franciscan Friars Conventual and was ordained a priest, in 1938. He and several of his confreres enlisted as chaplains in the US Army, in 1942, and +Fr. Ignatius volunteered for the Parachute regiment. Deployed to Ireland and England, he celebrated one last Mass for his troops on June 5, 1944; the Eve of D-Day, giving them General Absolution, in anticipation of the peril awaiting them all the next day. He died on June 6, 1944 attempting to negotiate with the Nazi occupiers of Gueutteville-les-Grès (a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in northern France) to establish a “safe-zone” where a common hospital could be used for all of the American, German, and French casualties. +Friar Ignatius was the only United States military chaplain to die on D-Day.
Memorial in Gueutteville commemorating the charity and heroism of +Friar Ignatius
Although Memorial Day is traditionally observed in honor of those who have died in times of war, faith communities often hold special Memorial Services and Masses around this same time, to honor all men and women who are serving or who have served in the US Military. Our province would like to take this opportunity to remember our friars who have served in the Military, and have been welcomed by Sister Death in the past couple of years:
June 11, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar Richard Rome, OFM Conv. (top left) renewed his Simple Vows during Mass, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, at our pastoral ministry of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, in Shamokin, PA, in the presence of several friars and the local faith community of the three Franciscan parishes in the Shamokin, PA area. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed heart to heart conversation over coffee and baked goods from the famous Broadway Bakery in Mt. Carmel. Friar Rich has been serving with the friars of Mother Cabrini Friary during his Apostolic Year of Formation, with the focus of his ministry serving as Director of The Franciscan Center, in Coal Township. The vow renewal took place at the hands of his Friary Guardian & Pastor of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Martin Kobos, OFM Conv. (top right). His vow renewal was witnessed by Fr. Michael Lasky, OFM Conv. (2nd from left – JPIC Commission Chairman and Pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish – Coal Township & St. Patrick Parish – Trevorton) and Fr. Everest Valentine Nyaki Mkenda, OFM Conv. (bottom – a friar from Tanzania, who has been living and serving with our friars since 2019, while continuing his studies in America). Also pictured above if Fr. Angelo Geiger, OFM Conv., Parochial Vicar of all three Shamokin area parishes.
The friary is one of several Houses of Formation in the USA, and is of the 
