Meeting the bishop for the first time...

Another highlight of the seminarian retreat was meeting my bishop for the first time (here is a picture of him ordaining soon-to-be-Fr. Jason Blahnik to the holy priesthood). I had a short time to talk with him one on one, and look forward to his promised visit to the North American College.

I do not know him well, but I am confident that in two years I will be able to make the three priestly promises to him at my ordination: obedience, celibacy, and to pray the liturgy of the hours. How can I be so confident when I do not even know him? Well simply, it is not about his personality, but about his office as bishop. If I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, that means he is lord of history including the history of the diocese of Green Bay. I make the promises to a bishop, who ever that bishop may happen to be.

That being said, after just a short conversion and knowing what others, who I trust, have told me about him, I can say with confidence that the diocese will greatly benefit from having him here. Where we are weak as a diocese, he brings strengths.

If you get a chance to meet him ask him about the founding of Wyoming Catholic College. If similar things happen here under his pastoral care, we will be a power-house of Catholicism.

Brief comment on health care reform...

A number have asked me what my thoughts are, so a figure a few brief comments...

1. The United States is the most prosperous nation in the world, so it is a scandal that there are so many without access to basic health care.
2. The cost of health care has sky-rocketed in recent decades... coincidentally this is when medical care has also first been treated as a "commodity." This is the first time that we see hospitals ran as for-profit institutions, whereas before they were most often not-for-profit institutions (very often sponsored by religious organizations -- just look at the number of Catholic hospitals). So it makes sense that part of the reform of health-care is whether or not medical care should be treated as a for-profit commodity.
3. After living in a country with government sponsored health care for two years, I can just say from experience we do not want to go there (i.e. health care rationing [do you want a government agency deciding when you get your chemo?] and oddly there is greatly inequality in access to health care [the government hospitals are vastly sub-standard, and the private hospitals are beyond the means of the vast majority of citizens]).
4. Last point -- no reform of health care can violate the rights of conscience of medical professionals and sponsoring institutions (very often religious). The right to conscience is not made up by the "right" but has long standing in our political tradition (remember conscious objection from the Vietnam war era? -- it is pretty much the same thing here). That being said any law that would require employers or insurance to cover procedures (abortions/sterilizations) or treatments (contraceptives/embryonic stem cell research) that violate the conscience of said employer or insurer is inherently unjust. It is even more unjust than the situation from point 1 -- since freedom of conscience is more basic a right than the duty of society (society is greater than the state - are there any non-government solutions being proposed? - honest question, let me know) to provide health care.

These points being stated -- health care reform is complicated business, but these guidelines seem pretty reasonable to just about anybody. While the need to provide health-care for all is real and pressing, it ought not be done at the sacrifice of a free conscience -- after all our nation was founded to protect freedom of conscience.

Seminarians retreat...

Last week I was on the seminarian/Serran retreat with my diocesan brother seminarians. It was a great experience. Some of you readers might also have been on it. It was one of the largest seminarian retreats in some time since there are so many new seminarians. There were fourteen seminarians last year, with two ordained to the priesthood that leaves twelve. To these twelve are added ten new seminarians, please keep them in prayer.

Note on the picture: this cross was put up opposite the island's marina by a Catholic Youth Expeditions retreat that I was on, so now every visitor to Chambers Island is greeted by the cross.

Two summers later...

Two summers later...

Today I will be leaving for the annual seminarian retreat. It has been two summers since I have attended since I was out of the country for my studies in Rome the previous two summers. I am looking forward to it greatly. There are many new seminarians that I have not met, and this year with great joy we welcome ten more seminarians, which almost doubles the number of seminarians for the diocese of Green Bay. Please keep us in prayer the next four days!

Mission Accomplished.

1900 miles later; 80 youth exhausted from painting, gardening, and other service jobs in northern New Jersey; and all of Manhattan toured in about eight hours; I think I can truly say mission accomplished.

For the last week I was on a service-mission trip with the youth of Holy Cross parish in Kaukauna, where I am stationed this summer, and the youth of the neighboring parish, Holy Spirit parish in Darboy-Kimberly. With a day to recover, I can say I am still exhausted. Those coach-buses just do not provide the kind of sleep that a seminarian needs.

All told though it was a good experience, and I hope that in the few short years when I will be starting in parish ministry as a priest that I am able to bring youth on these service-mission trips.

After all -- true Christian service is one of the strongest vehicles of evangelization. We see this from the Gospel ("What ever you have done to the least of my brethren...") in the early Church (many of the governors of the provinces of the Roman empire were resistant to following the edicts commanding presecution of Christians, because of the great services they rendered to society at large), and we are even reminded of this in the first encyclical of the great pontiff, Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est.

You will never know who pops in...

Kaukauna is a small town, about 16,000 people. So there is an expected sense of normality in day to day life, something that is greatly appreciated. But than again when you live at a Catholic parish you never quite know who will drop in. As I was making my way through the parished offices to the Church to pray this afternoon I was met by a slightly-older-than-middle-aged man wearing a guayabera shirt.

This is not something I would usually catch my attention. It did not actually catch my attention. What caught my attention was the Pastor, Fr. Tom Pomeroy, yelling from his office, "Hey did you meet Fr. John?"

To be honest I walked right past him. Something I do too often, walking past people. But before me stood a priest of the diocese of Green Bay, extending his hand to introduce himself as Fr. John Reuter. I am glad my attention was caught, and take it as a lesson to be more attentive to persons, for I had almost walked past one of the most interesting priest of our diocese.

Parish church in Tlaxiaco, Mexico

Fr. John has been serving outside the diocese for past forty years, almost his entire priestly life, in the area around Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico. He is a missionary. He is a priest like I will be some day, but what great variety of service he has been called to.

It is no secret one day I will be serving two, three, or even four parishes. I cannot imagine how busy that will be. Well this little anxiety of mine is put to shame by Fr. John -- he may only have one parish (which is think is pictured above) -- but it has twenty-three mission sites through out fields and jungles surronding Tlaxiaco. This is not a typo -- that is 1 parish, spread over 23 sights.

His life catches my attention. The missionary spirit must ring in the heart of a seminarian and a priest (after all what is the point of this sacrifice if it is not to spread the Gospel of Christ?), and I have found an attraction and a solidarity to his mission.

Native plowing in near Tlaxiaco, Mexico

He was more than half serious when he asked if I wanted to visit (hey got an extra $700.00 hanging around, that is about what a plane-ticket runs to get there -- cheaper than Europe?). Well, I do not think that the opporunity will come about any time soon (no really got an extra $700.00?), but I do not hope to make it there some day. Who knows, with ten new seminarians next year, perhaps one of them will be the missionary to Tlaxiaco.

Today's Saint Lawrence of Brindisi tells you "Read This!"

Well a few days ago I offered encouragment to reading the Bible, well here you go with the St. of the Day...
Saint Lawrence of Brindisi was the greatest linguist of his day. He could read, write, and speak Italian, Latin, Hebrew, Greek, German, Bohemian, Spanish and French.

Here's my favorite story about him. He was preaching somewhere and was being heckled by a Protestant minister about a Catholic doctrine not being found in the Bible. Saint Lawrence took his Greek New Testament and threw it at the man and said, "Read this!"

His knowledge of Hebrew was so thorough that the rabbis were convinced that he had once been a Jew who had converted to Christianity.

(courtesy of: Canterbury Tales)

Holy Martyrs of Gorcum, Pray for Us!

Its a few days late...

I admire the Norbertine spirituality so I share these two Norbertine martyrs with you.

As a future diocesan priest I find the Norbertine spirituality very attract for as a pastor of souls. He was entrusted with the pastoral care of an archdiocese. He started out as a "secular canon," which in someways is similar to a diocesean priest.

The spirituality he proposes centers around five "pillars":

1. devotion to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (St. Norbert is the "Apostle of the Eucharist" after all)
2. devotion to the Mother of God, Mary Most Holy
3. singing the divine office
4. habitual penance
5. and most importantly "zeal for the salvation of souls"

So you can find out some more about these two Norbertine Martyrs: Martyrs of Gorcum

Please keep Itan in prayers...

Usually I am restrained in re-posting news, but since this has seemed to receive minimal and inconsistent coverage on number of major Internet news sources (CNN, MSNBC, but Fox News does have a nice story: Iranian Police Tear-Gas Protesters at Prayer Sermon), I re-post an article from the UK Times Online: Rafsanjani calls for release of jailed protesters in Iran amid clashes in Tehran.

The struggle continues in Iran. These are men and women who have yearned to be free, to prosper and to leave to their children a better world. Please in your prayers be in solidarity with them.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The
wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! -- from the poem inscribed on the statue of Liberty

h/t to Gateway Pundit: Hundreds of Thousands Protest Killer Regime in Iran

It comes at no suprise...

It is no secret that I am pro-life. I have been admonished before that clerics cannot take public political positions. Being pro-life is not a political position, because the beginning of human life is a fact that comes before politics; it comes before government policy. It is that simple. Governments do not determine who is and is not human; the human person and the family comes before government. It is that simple.

The truth of the dignity of the human person is not something that can be compromised. Once it is, everything else is on shaky ground. It stands on one of the first lines we learn,

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26, NAB).

Our own dignity, which is protected by how well we guard the dignity of the most weak (which is certainly the unborn), rest on this line – not on science.

Often though science serves to support this truth, and for this reason I share with you the following link:

Study: Unborn babies can form memories by 30 weeks.

This is something that every pregnant woman knows, but now has scientific “proof” to back it up. I have included a picture of a fetus at thirty weeks for you reflection.

Ignorance of Scripture IS ignorance of Christ

" What are you doing this summer?"

That is a question that a lot of us have heard quite a bit the past couple weeks. Some of us have taken and will take vacations. Then there is the annual rotation of soccer and baseball games, cook-out, and days at the beach.

Okay - but I am asking: What are you doing this summer to grow closer to Christ?

Reading theBible? I am. Not the whole thing of course, but part of it -- parts from the Old Testament since that is what I am least familar with.

This grows out of a big disappointment from the previous two years of theology studies. I have taken classed on the Gospels, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) and the Letters of Paul, and they seem to have shared a set of common characteristics:

(1) There is a divorce between Scripture scholorship and pastoral applications. (Do you really want to hear me start an homily with: this word in Greek as many meanings, or since this story about Moses comes the the D-source)? I think you understand my point.

(2) Modern scripture scholarship seems to face the average Christian (like myself) with an insurmontalbe obstacle to reading the Bible. It all really does seem very confusing (at times) and always daunting. If the Church really expects all Catholics to be Bible Christians - does that mean all Catholics need to be experts in the geography of the near East from 600 BC, and find reading Akkadian stories to be their idea of a "good time on the Friday night?"

(3) Worse perhaps - all of the scripture courses so far have seem to not even required the reading of any scripture. Hmmm... to me that would be like studying biology without ever looking through a microscope or majoring in English without ever touching Shakespere.

All these things considered I found the following article to be very helpful and encouraging (you can click on the picture and it will link to the article):
Please consideri making the daily habit of reading scripture part of your summer -- just ten to fifteen minutes. It will change the way you pray (and is a good first step to starting to pray). You will enjoy Mass more. You will not regret it.

Fourth of July Celebrations

One of my favorite places growing up was "up-nort" -- in particular the cottage home of my Uncle Peter and Aunt Mary in near Crivitz. As a child it was a place of wonders: a hand pump and "sun shower" since there was no running water, an amazing "no-flush" toilet (an outhouse), and in winter time a big Franklin stove. Summer weekends were spent at a lake-side beach swimming and fishing, and on the road sides picking the little strawberries that tasted much better than what is now sold in the supermarkets. In winter there were fewer trips, but usually something for New Years, and this was a great joy in hoping that there might be just enough snow that we would be stuck -- and of course that would mean having to miss school (darn).

Well time moves on and things change: in comes the running water and the central heat. Eventually Peter and Mary move there year round in their retirement -- meaning out with the cottage and in with the bigger house. But there is still a desire to return there -- it was a home for me in childhood.

I left for Rome on June 26, 2007. This of course meant that I missed the fireworks and festivities of two Fourth of July celebrations. Well this year -- I arrived home in time and did not start my parish assignment until after the festive weekend -- it was time to return to the "cottage" in the North woods. So I did. It was a sublime joy, and in someways a was a kid again (at age 25 none-the-less).

Answer to yesterday's quizz:

Sad to say the person who sees some populations as undesirable was Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Gingsburg. She was discussing using abortion to control "populations we do not want to many of," by providing Medicaid funding for abortions. Sad day.

It can also be noted that almost the exact same quote can be found in the writings of the third possible answer.

http://themcj.com/?p=5512

Pop-quiz:

Who said the following?

Frankly, I thought at the time... there was a concern about population growth,
and particularly growth in populations we do not want to many of...

(a) a Supreme court justice?
(b) a early 20-th century feminists?
(c) a German leader from the 1930'2 and '40's

Well however said it, I wonder if I am part of the "we" or the "population we do not want to many of."

Summer time and...

Sorry for the long delay in posting -- I guess with exams and than coming home I have lost track of the blog for a few weeks. I look forward to having the extra time this summer to catch-up with you, readers, and share some of my recollections from the last two years in Europe. Since I am not sure how much I will actually get done, I will go in reverse order (most current to furthest away time-wise).

I hope everyone is doing well. My home-coming went very well, and I have had a chance to talk with many of you. This past week I arrived at my summer parish assignment at Holy Cross Parish in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. My pastor already has given me a running start, with a funeral vigil the evening of my first full day in the parish. I will be kept busy primarily shadowing the pastor, giving a class after Wednesday daily Mass, visiting parishioners, and cathcing up with friends.

Take care,
Brunner.