Florida summer weather has finally come to far northern Michigan with a vengeance! This was the week-end when I attempted substituting for the pastor of the local parish by hearing confessions yesterday afternoon and celebrating and preaching the 5pm Vigil Mass and this morning’s 8 and 10am. The church is not air-conditioned so everyone felt the need to seek the visiting bishop out and apologize for the heat and humidity. They trusted I would understand. At least they did not blame me for bringing it along with me.

This week I thought a lot about how people in the Church can sometimes so disappoint God’s faithful people. I focused on how some highly trusted and “believed” personalities have fallen into ecclesial disgrace because of things which they have done in life which when revealed cost them their ministry. In my endless desire that this blog not be  place to vent my own anger or outrage, I will not use any names. But there have always been preachers of the Gospel whose actions when made publicly known brought sometimes shame, sometimes disbelief, sometimes great sadness to God’s people. In particular, possibly vunerable are those who are able through the use of the media to connect with the spiritual feelings of people, to often use their electronic pulpits to hammer others with whom they do not agree, to paint a path to holiness that gives great value to material poverty, doctrinal fidelity, clearly delineating the saved from those at risk losing their immortal souls only to be discovered to have themselves not lived by the code and sometimes even the creed which they preached. And when they are discovered, the community of believers are thrown into first the pain of disbelief and then the anger at the betrayal of trust. Everyone has their failings. God knows I do. But in my preaching and in my life I try not to make myself out to be perfect but rather a pilgrim, struggling to get it right more often than get it wrong. I try not to be judgmental in the administration of my office, but to give everyone the same chance at forgiveness which I often feel gifted with. I think the vast majority of priests in our Church try hard and struggle to live life in the gray and not in the black and white. We know the moral absolutes to be sure and we preach them and try to live them but we also know what it means to confess our sins, amend our lives and try hard to offend neither God or neighbor again.

In Christian history as in any history there have always been falls from grace. The presence of evil is a powerful force even in today’s society or maybe even better said it is a major force. It is the weed which attempts to strangle the shaft of wheat. However, God the sower, plants wheat everywhere and no force for evil can ever totally overcome the plan of God which is directed not just to the present but more importantly to the moment of “harvest.” Put your trust in God. Listen to our voices as long as we betray not the task which the Lord has given to us and preach the truth in love. The real soldiers of the Gospel are not those you see on TV or listen to on the radio or read in the printed word, but those who week in and week out stand before you in Church to unpack the Word of God and apply it to daily living – their own and as well as ours. Then your faith will be well placed and it will likely not be shaken in the presence of human failure. In God we trust!

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So I lied! I know I said no more blog entries until early August since I would be spending all of July “fishin” but I can’t resist (and also I find that I have more time on my hands to think and write than normal). There can really be no secret about my whereabouts (and there need not be) as yesterday when filling in for the local pastor who began his two week vacation with my arrival at the parish church, the lector for the 1000am Mass is a parishioner of St. Paul’s parish in St. Petersburg. Additionally, the sister of one of our priests, Father Mike O’Brien, was in the congregation with her husband, baseball immortal and Bishop Barry graduate, Bill Freehan. So it is time to fess up. I am spending the month on Crooked Lake (named for its shoreline and not its property owners) which is about six miles east of Petoskey and a similar distance south-west from Harbor Springs in the far northern area of the lower peninsula of Michigan. I am the sacramental ministry presence for St. Francis Xavier parish in Petoskey for the next two weeks while the fine pastor, Father Dennis Stilwell is away for a brief vacation. The Church is beautiful, indeed bordering on spectacular, except it is not air-conditioned and yesterday, Sunday, was really the first super hot and humid day of the summer (guess who got blamed for the humidity – that visiting bishop from Florida, of course).

Last night I had the honor of being the guest of the bishop of the diocese in which I am vacationing, Bishop Bernard Hebda, Bishop of Gaylord. We had a super dinner together but even better conversation. Bishop Bernard told me that he has about 41 active priests in ministry of whom 19 are either right at retirement or serving beyond retirement. Two of his pastors are in their nineties. The diocese has quite a few square miles to cover but except for Traverse City, Petoskey, and Cheboygan the towns, villages and parishes are very small and very rural. The area is spectacularly beautiful but the winters are very cold and there is a lot of snow. The local Church is the reverse of our experience in the Diocese of St. Petersburg in that during the summer, the Catholic population grows with those seeking relief from the heat of the midwest and Florida and in the winter, the population decreases substantially. The bishop gets around. In fact the priests and people worry for his health as he seems to be omni-present to the point that almost everyone with whom I talk, and they love him, worries about his schedule. He has taken to this local Church (originally a priest of Pittsburgh with some time spent working in Rome) like all these ducks from Canada take to the local lakes around here. This is truly a mission diocese, even in Michigan, and since it is indeed in Michigan, the state with the nation’s highest unemployment, the challenges of the economic downturn are felt even more in the parishes. But he finds a very healthy local church with impressive and dedicated priests and people. The time spent with him last night was pure gift to me.

This morning my hosts asked their cleaning lady to take a quick turn at my apartment. I had known that she was a devout member of the Jehovah’s Witness congregation and I do not know if she knows that in trying to convert me, which she attempted this morning, she was dealing with a Catholic bishop. That might have made me “the catch of the day” for her. Clearly, as a church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t particularly care for Catholics, in fact they are pretty certain where we will be spending the afterlife though this woman stopped well short of that assertion. She did tell me that we do not know the Bible (I countered that we were getting better all the time at that), that the end of time is just around the corner because quoting Matthew 24 “the world is rising up in war, nation against nation”. When I said that first happened with World War I she countered with “that’s when the end of time started.” I asked if we would live to see it and she assured me we would. Steadfast, firm, unfailingly polite, she gave not one inch to reason, logic, theology or scripture interpretation. She never in the fifteen minutes or so we spoke explicitly came after the Catholic Church (except that when they call on us, we don’t know the bible). She also said that the “Confraternity Bible” which we use never uses the name of God and that is shameful. I told her God’s name is everywhere in our bible and then she said just as strenuously, “no it’s not! God’s name is “Jehovah” and you won’t find that anywhere in your Bible.” I countered, the word “Yahweh” from which Jehovah comes is all over the  Old Testament and she said, “but that is not God’s name. It is Jehovah.” We parted friends and she said she would pray for me. I call that something of a pyrrhic victory but all in all I had met my match in debate points.

Two distinctly different conversations separated only by sleep, one so comfortable talking about our faith and what we might do to spread it and the other demanding total capitulation. I think I have two choices: either to mop my own floors or to be absent next week when she comes again. Although I don’t understand the nexus often in their faith belief based strictly on a fundamental interpretation of Scripture, I end this with some admiration for the strength of her faith which gave her the courage to open, guide, direct, manipulate the conversation. And I think of yesterday’s Gospel. This woman takes very seriously her responsibility to be both a hearer of the Word and a sower of the same. I think I know which category of earth she falls in as a hearer of the Word, but I wish more of us had the courage and strength of our convictions in sowing what she has heard.

That’s all the news for the week-end from Crooked Lake where the men are all absent, the women are all hard working and the children are all out on boats.

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It is that wonderful time of the year again when I can find some time to get away, rest and relax. This year, for the first time in my episcopal ministry, I will be taking the whole month of July. There is nothing to be done, places to visit, just pure rest and relaxation. The pastor of the parish where I am visiting is alone so I will be helping in his parish on Sundays starting a week from today and since he takes two weeks himself each year in the middle of July but has had the custom of returning for the three week-end Masses, thereby interrupting his time away, I will cover for him the week-end of July 16/17 giving him for the first time two weeks away. While I like to keep the location in the US where I am vacationing a secret, I can tell you that under cloudless blue skies yesterday the high reached a whopping 77 degrees and the low last night, my first here, was 57, necessitating a blanket (my hosts had to explain to me what a”blanket” is!). The diocese is never out of my thoughts and you are never out of my prayers.

A month ago I wrote a letter which was distributed in the parishes about the diocese’s history since 1991 in dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct against minors, our process and its procedures. The letter has been very well received and the feedback overwhelmingly positive. However, two people very respectfully asked for a clarification of the statement that we have not used Annual Pastoral Appeal monies to pay the costs of dealing with these sad issues. I reaffirm that the statement is correct but it does raise the question as to whence do the monies come if not from the people. At no time did I ever mean to imply that monies used for this purpose comes from anywhere other than the parishes and, therefore, the people. Every parish and institution in the diocese is “taxed” or “assessed” for certain things which are not directly related to pastoral programs which the APA funds. For example, parishes and schools pay a significant amount each year for the health and welfare costs of their employees, likewise for unemployment compensation insurance and pension fund contributions. All of that is deducted mainly from offertory contributions. A fourth and final category of parish and parishioner support is for “Property and Liability Insurance.” We maintain a reserve here to cover some deductibles and catastrophic losses due to hurricanes and storm damage, legal claims and settlements for things like “slip and falls”, fires, etc. We have dipped occasionally and as needed into this reserve to pay what we identified as the costs associated with the diocese’s history of settling with victims in the hope of giving them some sense of pastoral care and solicitude for the immense harm done to them. Anticipating the next question which likely is, “well, has the diocese raised its tax against the parishes to build up this reserve” and the answer is in the negative. From time to time our Property and Liability Insurer, Catholic Mutual, has raised premiums against the parishes and institutions because either the property is seen to have increased in value or risk but this has nothing to do with sexual misconduct claims and payments. So, yes, parishes and parishioners as well as high schools and other diocesan institutions have been the ultimate source of these funds but that fact has not impacted the assessment parishes have been paying because we have had the funds in reserve. I hope this is helpful.

So, the fish are calling and I will sign off, not to be heard from again until sometime in early August. May the Lord spare us storms this hurricane season and may each reader also have an opportunity at some rest and relaxation from the normal. God Bless.

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Hearkening back to my blog entry on the way to Seattle I find myself once again on United, flying over one of those big square states that all look alike between Colorado and the Mississippi River. Our bishops meeting in Seattle ended one hour later than scheduled last night in Bellevue, Washington with a very long Executive Session. The public agenda was very light as I have previously indicated and pretty much devoid of disagreement as I have noted already.

There is a short, succinct statement of the bishops on the matter of Physician Assisted Suicide which can be read on the USCCB website by clicking here. I found it interesting that the site of the acceptance of the document happened in a state (and along with its neighbor Oregon) which allows for it legally and that it follows closely the death of Dr. Jack Kevorkian a few days ago – probably the most famous and fatal administrator of assisted suicide in the history of this nation.

Attention was given to fixing some things in the Dallas Charter for another two years before it will once again be revisited and reexamined. I know that some people, particularly victims and groups representing them believe that there are large lacuna in the charter and things which the bishops do not wish to change. Personally, as I have written earlier this week in the ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, I recognize that the Charter is not a perfect roadmap to complete and total child safety but its efficacy can be seen in the radical drop in new reports of sexual misconduct against minors by priests and other Church employees. In our area of the country, our diocese, you have not had a reported instance after 1995 and contrast that with the instances in the five county public school districts and other organizations dealing with kids.

Our Diocese will be audited under some new rules as well as under some previous rules in October of this year. There is a new auditing firm. They do what are called compliance audits to make sure you are doing precisely what you promised to do. My staff and I welcome this visit and are prepared to tell them that there have been no complaints against priests, religious, volunteers, staff, faculty or volunteers during the period of the audit.

The bishops did agree to start implementing the music attached to the new Mass translations which will be used throughout the Liturgy on the First Sunday of Advent this year, so we will begin to sing the Gloria and the Agnus Dei in English using the new translation in our parishes beginning in September. I need to consult with the staff of my Worship Office to find out how best to accomplish this, so stay tuned here for more information as it becomes available.

Bishops’ meetings are opportunities to spend time with old friends, from the staff of the Conference as well as with brother bishops. This meeting marked the 51st General Meeting I have attended, either as staff (22) or as a bishop (29). My good friend Bishop Paul Etienne of Cheyenne, Wyoming, boarded the flight with me in Denver last Sunday and we spent Monday on Puget Sound and celebrated his birthday on the 15^th.

What is always hard for me is that the membership of the episcopal conference is about eighty per cent new since I left the Conference’s employ and became a bishop myself. Faces that I could recognize in a nano-second are no longer present and the new faces one does not see often enough to etch them in memory. The outgoing General Secretary paid a nice but unnecessary compliment to me in his farewell speech and now I shall miss him unless and until he returns as a member.

Finally, they almost all want to come back to St. Petersburg for a meeting and soon. They loved the Vinoy, the waterfront, the gelateria on Beach Drive, the walks to Albert Whitted Airport and the Rays baseball games. I told them, you had better hurry, and the clock is ticking quickly on my time. I was happy they loved our area so much. Also the Bethany Center gets brought up often as a destination of choice for retreats and meetings. So we may not have Mt. Rainer (saw it for the first time this morning in all its glory) or Puget Sound or a seafood store where the employees toss salmon at you but we do have things which give birth to good memories. I will be glad when in one hour I step forth at TIA once again and am back with those I love.

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My brother bishops trying to stay awake at times. Photo furtively taken by me.

Today (Wednesday) is the first full day of the Spring meeting of the United States Conference of Bishops and we are in Seattle this year (Atlanta next year in June, then San Diego, then New Orleans). I had a ten hour meeting yesterday involving Catholic Relief Services and find that I am falling asleep around 830pm every night and waking up around 430am. I am not unhappy with that since I hope to somehow “trick” my b0dy into thinking it is still operating on Eastern Daylight Time for my return trip early on Friday morning (a 545am departure).

There are about 200 bishops present for the Spring meeting and the weather has been, well rainy, what else? We are not exactly meeting in Seattle but in a suburb called Bellevue which is the home of Microsoft. Lots of tall buildings, high end shopping stores, and not a McDonalds in sight. There is no view of Puget Sound to be had from Bellevue and no view of Mt. Ranier which has not been available since I arrived from any vantage point due to the very cloudy and overcast weather. So what else is there to do but sit in a meeting room, listen intently and look at one’s watch for the next break.

We passed a few items this morning which did not allow for amendments and listened to some oral reports. One of the more interesting was led by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, who has been appointed to work with communities of Episcopalians in the United States who wish as a congregation, including their priests, to come over to the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Benedict has reached out to these communities and their priests and will allow them to come into full communion, their priests to be ordained as deacons and priests and they can bring with them the treasured aspects of what is called the “Anglican Rite.” I listened with interest even though I know of no such movement of any parishes or communities in the Diocese of St. Petersburg wishing to come over.

There is one more hour of public session tomorrow and then we dive into the rest of the day in Executive Session which means I will not reveal any of the discussions which take place under that rubric. Overall it is a light agenda and to have come such a long way. Tonight I am invited to a farewell dinner for the departing General Secretary of the Conference, Monsignor David Malloy who will be returning to his home Archdiocese of Milwaukee after completing five years as the chief operating officer of the episcopal conference. Monsignor Malloy is the fourth occupant of that position since my own departure in 1995 (the term is for five years and it can be renewed as it was in my case but annually after five). It is customary that there is a dinner for the departing GS and all living former General Secretaries are invited. By my count there are exactly six of us remaining on this mortal coil. Monsignor Malloy has a priest brother who is residing and working in our diocese as a Chaplain at Bay Pines Veteran’s Hospital, Father Frank Malloy. His successor was elected last November and will assume office on Friday with the closing gavel of this meeting.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, our new President, is chairing quite efficiently and we are considerably ahead of our meeting agenda’s schedule going into the Executive Session.

So from the shadow of the Cascade Mountain range, greetings to all back home, leave the light on as I will return on Friday.

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Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy, then the second Archbishop of Miami, ordained me a priest. He was an incredibly fine man, almost a kindly uncle to me and to most of the other priests in the Archdiocese. His primary way of communicating with the people of the Archdiocese was through an occasional column in THE VOICE  (the weekly Archdiocesan newspaper)and later the FLORIDA CATHOLIC which he entitled “Devotedly Yours”. Every time it would show up, we knew the Archbishop was writing at “altitude” or above 30,000 feet on an airplane going to someplace or coming home. Laptops were not available in those days so the Archbishop would take out a brown pen and write on the back of the air-sickness bag, a piece of hotel stationary – anything he could get his hands on and his wonderful secretary would transcribe it on a typewriter prior to submission for publication. Priests can sometimes be quite “catty” and occasionally when someone would read one of his “Devotedly Yours” columns, some crack would be made about a lack of oxygen at altitude. But those columns were very personal and one never had to struggle to discern what the great man meant.

Well, I am tonight at altitude, on board a small United Airline plane bound first for Denver and then I must switch to their fiancée in the airline business, Continental for the remainder of the trip to Seattle. Having left Tampa on Pentecost night at 710pm EDT, I will arrive Seattle at 235am EDT (1135pm PDT) and probably climb into my Hyatt hotel bed about 4 am by my body time. The Catholic bishops of the United States are holding their spring meeting this month in Seattle. You may recall that last June they held a longer assembly in St. Petersburg which they loved enough to talk about coming back again. How I wish I could once again drive down the street for twenty minutes to attend the meeting.

The actual meeting begins on Wednesday morning and ends on Friday evening but I must leave Seattle at 545am on Friday to return for the celebration of a “Blue Mass” for policemen and firemen on Saturday morning and the second and last wedding of my summer later Saturday. On Tuesday, however, the Search Committee on which I serve for a new CEO/President for Catholic Relief Services will present two candidates to the CRS Board of Directors for their ultimate decision. I am no longer able to fly coast to coast and start a meeting the next morning without some kind of rest day in between. How I hate being 70 (except that on Saturday I was called for Jury Duty in Pinellas County and discovered that if you are over seventy you do not have to serve – the first “bene” from being ancient!)

On these two very long westbound flights I have been able to read the documentation, which precedes each meeting. The most important thing I find on the public agenda is a discussion of the Dallas Charter, which was passed in 2002, and deals with how the Church will handle accusations of sexual misconduct with a minor or vulnerable adult. I have written an “Op-Ed” piece at the invitation of the editorial board of the St. Petersburg Times for today’s paper in which I outline the experience in our diocese in the last ten years. It is possible that this agenda item will receive more than its share of media attention this week, but reading the changes, which are being recommended to the bishops to me indicates that there will not be a wholesale re-working of the Charter but some tightening up and tweaking. There will be a first discussion of a new document of the Conference on physician-assisted suicide entitled “To Live Each Day With Dignity, another seeking permission to develop a document on preaching, and some liturgical matters all dealing with the liturgy in Spanish. Once again it is not a particularly heavy or burdensome agenda.

So as I chase the sun west tonight on a never ending evening, I recall celebrating Pentecost this morning at St. Jude’s Cathedral and a lovely confirmation of about seventy-five young people. What a great day to confirm! Pentecost, the birthday of the Church which is the body of Christ. Have a great week and stay tuned – I intend to interrupt any boredom which may occur with blog posts.

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Robert Angel, First Theology, St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary and currently a summer intern with Catholic Relief Services, Sierra Leone

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, there are two seminarians and a junior attending Notre Dame University who have been sponsored by the diocese to spend eight weeks this summer as an intern with Catholic Relief Services in Africa. Bob Angel is already on post in Makene, Sierra Leone, about 100 miles northeast of the capital of Freetown. His brother Dan who is a senior at St. John Vianney College Seminary in Miami leaves next Tuesday for eight weeks in Liberia and Christophers Mertens, the junior pre-med student from Notre Dame has just arrived in his eight week posting in Tamale, Ghana. Bob and Dan have established a blog site and it can be reached by clicking here http://african-angels.blogspot.com. Bob’s early postings reveal the challenges of an American spending any time, much less two months in a strange culture, challenging climate, and without the support systems which often sustain us in manners and ways unknown to us when we take them for granted. It is a superb blog and I strongly recommend that you add it to your regular reading for the next few weeks.

Christopher sends me a long e-mail which I convert to a Word file and which I will edit and present here from time to time. I am sure that Walter, my cyberspace guardian angel will find a way to make it accessible so that I do not have to add the full text to this blog spot each time but will share with you his experiences as well. He will be assisting in a clinic and working with a physician who treats a lot of HIV-AIDS cases and other diseases which affect people in that part of the African continent. Needless to say, none of these men are enjoying anything near the “lap of luxury” but rather are experiencing the desperate poverty and living standard of most of the world in which we live.

I hope you enjoy their reports back as much as I am enjoying hearing of their experiences coming from “Out of Africa.” I am very grateful to the staff of Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore and in the host countries and regions of those countries who are welcoming these men and guaranteeing their experiences.

What follows now is Christopher’s first two impressions of Ghana.

Accra, Ghana, greeted me as the sun rose on our plane and we prepared to land after a ten hour flight across the Atlantic. I didn’t get much sleep on the overnight flight, a result of what I believe was a combination of restless anxiousness to arrive and the bright flickering movie screens on the bulkhead of the plane playing various romantic comedies in succession. The thing that struck me the most as I peered at the landscape while stretching my neck to see around those sitting in the window seats was that most of the roads were not paved for the city where we landed. I know this shouldn’t be a shock to me, but it did drive home the reality that I was truly someplace far removed from Tampa and South Bend, my two homes.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) had a driver awaiting me as I cleared customs at the airport, a process that was also surprisingly painless and quick, at least in my case. The heat and humidity that greeted me outside is a close family member of the climate of Tampa, and the sweat that immediately appeared on my face and arms confirmed this observation. The 7-8 mile drive to the CRS offices took nearly 45 minutes thanks to the narrow roads of Accra and the explosion of car ownership in the city that far outpaced the road capability. As we crept along the streets, various venders would hold their wares up to the window. I have been told that it is possible to leave your house here in Accra with just the clothes that you are wearing, and you would be able to purchase almost anything you could possibly need to take on vacation somewhere.

At the CRS office, I was warmly welcomed and introduced, and then briefed on not only my stay, but also on the major programs that were being run within Ghana. CRS is involved in many programs, most of which are focused on the 3 northern regions of Ghana (Upper East, Upper West, and the Northern regions), and dealt with issues ranging from pre-natal care and early childhood care, HIV and AIDS treatment, prevention, and education, and agricultural programs aimed at assisting small villages and farmers that struggle to live even on a subsistence basis from the farms they live and work upon. Although I will be primarily stationed at the Shekhinah Clinic in Tamale, it is planned that hopefully I will be able to travel out to some of these program sites while in Tamale so that I may more fully see the scope of the work and good that CRS is doing.

After waiting out the 2-hour downpour that is beginning to signal the start of the rainy season in the southern part of Ghana, I left the office and arrived at my lodgings in a guesthouse for the night. After a much welcomed 3 hour nap, I arose and headed to the small 4 table restaurant downstairs to catch some dinner. After hearing the options, I decided that I would forego the familiar food from home (such as spaghetti) and try a local dish that came with tilapia. Now, being from Florida, and a fan of seafood, I thought it would be great to see what they used as spices for it. When the plate came, it seemed I did “catch” some dinner, as the fish was present in whole on my plate, eyes gleaming, and mouth and teeth open in an eternal grin. The waitress, smiling, told me that usually it is customary to eat this meal without utensils, and I took that as a challenge to be accepted. Unfortunately, I didn’t foresee dinner being such an entertaining event, and left my camera locked in my room, so I will let you imagine the rest of the dinner, as I tried to delicately remove the skin of the fish and scrape out the tasty meat and seasoning while trying to avoid any guts, bones, or brains on the fish.

Today I fly up to Tamale where I will be greeted by the CRS office there, and then after a little time to orient myself there, I hope to be off to the Shekhinah clinic with Dr. Abdulai in a day or two. I was fortunate to have a great internet connection this past night, but I believe it will be a bit more sporadic for the weeks ahead, yet I will still try to jot down notes, observations, and experiences on paper so that I may commit them to type to send out. The graciousness and generosity of those that I have met so far has truly been a blessing, and I hope that God will help me to remain open to meeting and getting to know people here on my stay.

Christopher Mertens and myself outside of Corby Hall on the Notre Dame campus in October 2010

There are two major reasons why I think our local Church will benefit from young women and men having opportunities such as this. First and foremost, we are a universal Church and although we share the same doctrines and disciplines throughout the world, every local Church is different. The Diocese of St. Petersburg is different from the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, for example. To have priests and lay people who have first-hand experience of the Church Universal will broaden our own horizons and make the universal nature of our faith better known. The second reasons is the profound love which I hold for Catholic Relief Services. They do incredibly good work in incredibly difficult working circumstances. They make we Catholics in the United States look good by their presence in over 110 countries throughout the world. I want these two men studying for the priesthood and the one studying for a possible lifetime as a doctor to share their experience with CRS and their sense of its presence and effectiveness throughout this diocese. I also hope that more young women and men will choose CRS for a life’s profession. All of this is possible with “apostles” of CRS spreading out throughout the diocese and country and telling its amazing story.

I am leaving in a few moments for Chicago and the final meeting of the Search Committee seeking a new President and CEO for Catholic Relief Services. It is the least I can so and sharing with the organization some of our women and men and allowing them to tell their amazing stories of their experience is a part of my DNA.

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The Florida bishops met with Governor Rick Scott this morning, obviously for the first time and I must say that I was impressed with him. Obviously somewhat nervous to be in front of seven men in black suits with crosses and chains, the Governor quickly warmed up to the audience and gave us about thirty-five minutes of time in his busy schedule. While I consider discussions such as this to be somewhat privileged, I would say that our first meeting went very well. Our talking points were these: sanctity of life concerns (nothing to worry about here with this Governor), the McKay and Florida Tax Credit scholarships for children in non-public schools (he is strongly in favor of choice in education), criminal justice reform (his administration has proposed some interesting concepts which just might lead to greater restorative justice in our jails and prisons), immigration concerns (here he tends to think somewhat in Arizona terms but acknowledges that until the border is sealed and the economy improves, there will be no shift in public perception and feelings about immigration reform), health reform and Medicaid changes (in this regard, he thinks health care can be improved and delivery of services more accessible than presently or even under the proposed federal health care reform act).

Governor Rick Scott meets with the Florida Bishops

What impressed me most is that our session was a no-nonsense and straightforward discussion. This Governor does not equivocate if he holds a position on an issue. If it is something he can espouse but needs more information, he promises to see to it and I leave thinking that he will. There is a passion in the man that is not political but practical. I left our meeting today thinking that Governor Scott at this moment in his tenure doesn’t give a proverbial “hoot” about re-election but is dedicated to achieving the goals he laid down in his campaign to reform, streamline, and attempt to make every aspect of state government more effective while at the same time less costly. In other words, he seems intent on doing exactly those things he said he would do during the two campaigns.

On the matter of the death penalty, the Governor clearly does not like being the person who will sign the final warrants for death by lethal injection. He noted that out of the 392 persons on death row, 40 have exhausted all their appeals and decisions will have to be made case by case. We spoke to him with our own passion about the fact that Florida is now the only state in the union which allows juries to offer an advisory sentence with only seven of the twelve recommending death. It takes a unanimous jury to convict but fifty percent plus one to execute. I remain equally uncomfortable with the fact that Florida elects its judges, many of whom make capital punishment decisions while running for election or reelection.

We will surely disagree on issues of public policy in the years to come but he seemed to me to be respectful and a good listener. After the meeting I learned that he has removed all state aid to the homeless from his budget and that is troubling and I wonder if his approach to Medicaid reform will really improve or remove the access of the poor to medical care and service.

The Governor who is not a Catholic will be attending the Red Mass this evening, something his predecessor never did and promised that his Administration would be open to further dialogue with our Conference staff and the bishops. All in all, a good morning in Church-State relations and a good start to what I hope will be a useful and fruitful l relation with our new Governor.

Later in the morning we met up with the representatives from our respective dioceses who were here for the annual “Catholic Days at the Capitol.” These generous and dedicated volunteers come early in each legislative session to meet with the members of the Legislator and share our and their position on certain issues of public policy.

The afternoon was taken up with a meeting of the heads of the Catholic hospitals in the state to talk about the implementation of the Patient Protection Act (“Obama-care”) in Florida, its consequences for conscience protection and use of federal or state funds for abortion, etc. It was a ninety-minute walk through an alien land for most of us bishops as health care is almost a world unto its own. The CEO’s present from hospitals in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Jacksonville and Pensacola were a very impressive group of women and men.

Now I am ready to fly back to Tampa after a long day and a packed twenty-four hours. On the way up last night, our flight was twenty minutes into the sixty minutes trip when our right propeller engine began to fail and we had to turn and limp back to Tampa, allow them to swap planes and arrive here an hour and thirty minutes late. I am hoping for better luck tonight.

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Today also belongs to the Mother of the Redeemer as the Church pauses between Christmas and the Epiphany of the Lord to remind us of the significance of Mary in the story of our salvation. We celebrate her solemnity which is interesting because the only thing one can reasonably glean from the scriptural references these past few weeks is her “humility.” The joy of successful childbirth preceded by weeks of uncertainty, physical dislocation and discomfort, and giving birth without the known assistance of a mid-wife or what she might have had available to her in Nazareth quickly gives way to more uncertainty, physical dislocation, discomfort, and outright fear as she, Jesus and Joseph flee Herod’s jealousy. This is not a story that would play well on ET or make the cover and front pages of PEOPLE magazine. The solemnity is to be found in her incredible faith and trust in the Lord, in her religious belief and practice, and in her trust. How I long to comfortably possess in my own life those foundational elements of a person of true faith. Remember at Christmas I spoke of the “risks” one must take to come to Jesus? Tomorrow three more “risk-takers” show up on the scene, the Magi or “Wise Men.” They come to see Jesus bearing gifts, a message, and an uncertainty that quickly turns to an investment in faith when in the presence of the Lord, his mother and his foster-father. What happened in the week or days between Christmas and their arrival on the scene is silent and somewhat lost in Scripture, like the last seven days were for most of us, unless like Mary we took time to contemplate the place of Christ in our lives.

Christmas 2010 is mostly a blur to me already. I was planning to make a quick trip to see a friend who is an Archbishop and papal diplomat serving in another country but the great blizzard of Christmas in the Northeast left me sitting on the tarmac of my house wondering what to do, so I changed directions, literally and figuratively and went west to spend some days with a family in St. Louis with whom I have been very blessed with friendship for almost forty years now. Among the opportunities afforded me this past week was one to go and see what I consider one of the most extraordinary and compelling movies I have seen in some time. Titled The King’s Speech and now showing in this area at only three theaters (including the Tampa Theatre), this movie is definitely worth the look and if it does not win the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Actor for Colin Firth and best supporting actor for Derek Jacoby, then it will be a travesty. Rated as an “R” film, there is absolutely no sex in the flick at all. There is, however, the repeated use in several momentary segments of a four-letter word which is always inappropriate in daily speech. The story is about King George VI of England, Queen Elizabeth’s father, who was second in line of succession to the throne but succeeded when his older brother who most of us remember not as King Edward but the Duke of Windsor abdicated to marry an American woman and divorcee, Wallace Simpson. George VI was born with a stutter and stammer and wanted no part of being King until thrust into it by the decision of his brother David (aka, King Edward). His wife seeks out a speech therapist and therein lies the story. Want to feel good in the early moments of 2011, go see this one.

My Christmas Day was full as expected and also as expected the day’s climactic moment of Mass at the Hillsborough Correctional Institution for Women was the highlight. My how they sang and prayed. I confirmed two of the inmates during the ceremony who had been prepared for the sacrament by the wonderful women and men who work there as volunteers, mostly from Prince of Peace parish in Sun City Center and Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Waimauma. My deep sleep Christmas night was interrupted by a phone call at 4 a.m. informing me of the flight cancellations. I went back to sleep dreaming not of sugar plum fairies but of the faces of those who had come in the previous twenty-four hours to see Jesus.

Yesterday, I joined about  dozen of our priests and offered the Funeral Mass for Clarice Larkin, the sister of our beloved former bishop, W. Thomas Larkin. With her passing, a chapter in the emerging history of the Diocese of St. Petersburg comes to a close. May she rest in the peace which she found difficult to find in this life and take her place alongside her beloved brother and parents in everlasting life.

Happy New Year, all

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A second of our beloved priests entered Eternal Life on Monday of this week. Father William J. Kearney went home to the Lord at the wonderful age of eighty-six. Father Kearney never married but rather presented himself for ordination on May 21, 1983 at the age of fifty-nine. Prior to his death, Father Kearney was an associate pastor at Christ the King in Tampa, St. Patrick parish in Largo, and Prince of Peace parish in Sun City Center. Incredibly well educated (AB from Case Western Reserve, MA in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh), he also did graduate work at one time or another at Notre Dame, Catholic University, Niagara and John Carroll.Prior to ordination he was a counselor and social worker. He retired shortly after I arrived (I hope there was no cause and effect) and in the end was cared for by a loving nephew in Evansville, Indiana. I will celebrate his funeral Mass in his home town of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, joined only by his good friend, Father Raymond Lettre and his pastor at Christ the King, Father  Michael Muhr.

When we opened Father Kearney;’s instructions for his funeral we found that he asked that Monsignor John Scully preach. Father Kearney wrote this: I ask Monsignor Scully preach my funeral Mass as he was the source and inspiration of my becoming a priest.” This twosome entered eternal life within days of one another, keeping each other company I am sure. Rest in peace, dear Father Bill.

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