Sunday: 5:30PM Vigil Mass $383; Sunday 8:30AM $387; 10:00AM $325; 11:00AM $365; 12:30PM$823; 8:00PM $333; Week Masses & donations $1278; Total $3,894 — Thank you!
–Ash Wednesday was a very tiring day. A lot of people came to Church for ashes. Many attended Mass. So I was pleased with the pastoral aspect of things. Mass participation was impressive.
–Notice that on Wed. 24th at 6PM there will be here in our church a special memorial Mass for our former Pastor Rev. Robert Lott celebrated by Msgr. Aquino. Refreshments will follow afterwards in the hall downstairs. Everything is organized by Anna Garrett.
–Next Sunday Feb. 28th at the 12:30pm Mass we shall have the official inauguration of the chair lift and Jamie, Alexander and Nina, the children of the great Maestro Leonard and Phylicia Bernstein will be present to honor Julia Vega, their Nanny, and in whose memory they have donated the chair lift to our parish. A plaque will be affixed to the wall to remember the event.
–I received last week the following letter from the present chairman of our Parish Council. Dear Father Victor, I wish to inform you that I shall be shortly departing for overseas and will have to relinquish my post as Chair of the St. Francis De Sales Parish Council. As it is the New Year and my resignation comes at this time it is, in my opinion, an ideal opportunity not just to find my replacement but perhaps re-organizing the council to meet the challenges that Catholic Churches will be facing for the coming new decade. It has been a great pleasure being a parishioner at St. Francis De Sales through good time as well as the difficult times. Please offer your prayers for me and for Liz and Annabel who hopefully will be following me not tto long after. Wishing your good self, Fathers John and Matthew, Sister Josephine, Willie, Mark, all the staff and parishioners at St. Francis, and the members of the Parish Council all the best. Patrick Yenson. (Food for thought). Patrick left over a week ago. We miss his presence at the 5:30pm Mass. He was the faithful lector. Of course his wife Elizabeth and daughter Annabel are still with us until things sort themselves out. The temporary separation will not be easy on them both. I must confess that I was always very impressed yes from the very beginning by this young, thin tall distinguished gentleman and his lovely family, always there, with his distinctive British accent reading loud and clear. Always supportive, always affirming, always encouraging and always faithful to his Catholic Identity and proud of it. Even as a chair he always had the interests of St. Francis at heart. The good of the parish and nothing would give him more pleasure than to see the parish thrive and grow stronger. I wish I could clone him. Many, many thanks Patrick. God be with you. You deserve a bit of luck for you and your family. He told me many times that Manhattan apart from being so expensive, was not the best environment in which to bring up a family. Once again thanks.
–Oh, the weather outside has been frightful, meaning that fewer Catholics have braved a trek to their churches during a series of weekend winter snowstorms. This means in turn that the Sunday offertory revenue is down, creating a hole in parish budgets while at the same time snowstorm-related expenses pile up. A series of storms have socked in large chunks of the mid-Atlantic region this winter. The first took place Dec. 19, the Saturday before Christmas. A second storm, not as large as the December blast, happened Jan. 30, another Saturday. But an epic snowfall, registering record totals in Baltimore and Philadelphia and dumping massive amounts of snow throughout the mid-Atlantic, started Feb. 5, a Friday, and didn’t end until nearly 24 hours had passed. The region was hit again Feb. 10. Bishops in many of the affected dioceses dispensed Catholics of the obligation to attend Mass those weekends, as safety considerations took precedence. But as Catholics were missing from the pews, so too were their offertory envelopes from the collection baskets.
–You probably read on the news about a new book on the “real” Pope John Paul II, published recently, which describes among many other things the penitential practices of the late Holy Father. Sleeping on bare floors, flagellating himself, etc. The book was surprisingly written by the postulator, the promoter of his cause of beatification. I remember thinking that this was weird. You don’t proclaim anyone a saint before the Church does so. You don’t propagandize your candidate; you wait patiently. This was clearly an effort to influence people’s opinion. Well, now I find out that the Vatican too thought it weird and improper and even the Cardinal in Poland that was the secretary of the Pope called up the postulator and thought the book was a bad idea. The Vatican completely snubbed the book. Now I find this coolness reassuring. JP II was a great pope and was a saint but protocol is protocol and rules are rules. Propriety is propriety. Remember this. The beatification/canonization of JP II will be a source of limitless revenue. Who is going to get all this money? Books, relics, prayer leaflets, DVDs, altars, churches dedicated to him, museums and shrines and places of pilgrimage, who has the copyright is bound to make a lot of money. Pope John Paul II could become another Padre Pio. This may be one of the reasons for the impatience in some quarters. Kudos to the Vatican.
–Young children who are regularly looked after by their grandparents have an increased risk of being overweight, an extensive British study has suggested. Analysis of 12,000 three-year olds suggested the risk was 34% higher if grandparents cared for them full time. Children who went to nursery or had a child minder had no increased risk of weight problems, the International Journal of Obesity reported. Nearly a quarter of preschool children in the UK are overweight or obese. (Well here is the same).
–I have not been able to get myself involved in the winter Olympics in Vancouver, although I like mountains and alpine sports. NBC is broadcasting nothing else. Ratings have been good. There is a lot of frustration with many mishaps. First of all the terrible tragedy of the death of the luger. The authorities insensitively blamed the athlete. How can a mistake cause death? Now is the weird weather. One day too warm, another too stormy. –I am watching with apprehension the Eurozone, to which I am attached by birth. Greece seems to have destabilized the entire European monetary system. Some people are predicting the dissolution of the euro because of excessive disparity between the strong economies of Germany and France, disciplined and prudent and profligates like Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland that are on the verge of bankruptcy. Will the euro hold?
–I followed with interest because of my love for Ireland the Pope and the Irish Bishops meeting in Rome to discuss the sexual abuse of minors by priests and cover-ups. Every Bishop (24 of them) was supposed to speak for 7 minutes in front of the Pope. There is talk of forcing Bishops to resign. Some have already resigned. There is talk of a Pastoral letter by the Pope to the Church of Ireland. Some people are screaming for blood. They want heads to roll. Others are sticking up for the Bishops who are no guiltier than anybody else in the country. If they have to resign so should everybody else: Ministers, politicians, state officials, police, etc.
– Catholic Charities Junior Board (a young adult division of Catholic Charities) presents a Two-Part Lenten Recollection on February 25th and March 4th at the Cathedral of St. Patrick Parish House, 14 East 51st Street, from 6:30pm-8:30pm. On February 25th, Fr. John Bartunek, author of the book, The Guide to the Passion will show scenes from the film, “The Passion of the Christ,” and offer meditations on these scenes. On March 4th, Fr Ron Perez, from Blessed Kateri Parish in Dutchess County, will provide a reflection on Our Lady and the Passion of Our Lord through her eyes. RSVP to Mario Bruschi at mario@cspya.org.
– Juries are getting tough on whiners. As more people seek dismissal for financial hardship, their claims face much tighter scrutiny. In one case the jury pool was so rebellious and ‘scary’ that both sides agreed to let the judge decide. A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was suing his former sergeant, alleging severe emotional distress inflicted by lewd and false innuendo that he was gay. Jury candidate Robert Avanesian said of it: “I think severe emotional distress is what is happening in Haiti. I don’t think you could have such severe emotional distress here.”
–Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhodes Island, who has had his ups and downs and bouts with addiction, has announced that he will retire from politics. Apparently after the death of his uncle, he no longer had the heart for a political fight! Kennedys used to die in office, tragically or otherwise; or they died tragically before they could run for office. But Patrick’s renunciation is a sea change. It will mark the end of a dynasty. Patrick Kennedy clashed with Bishop Tobin, who reproached him in public for his stance on abortion and denied him Holy Communion. On hearing of the retirement the Bishop said that he was praying for him.
–As the last news item I’ve just read that Tiger Woods has scheduled a Press Conference for this Friday. Wow, I can just imagine the pandemonium that will take place with all the cameras, satellite dishes from all over the world. Golf cannot do without Tiger. It is obvious. Only March separates him from the Masters. Is he going? What is happening with his marriage? Is it on, is it off? Is he been divorced or what? That’ll be interesting. I hear now that it is going to be a farce. No questions allowed! Another of these plastic dopey events organized by P. R. gurus.
