Angelus News | October 2-9, 2020 | Vol. 5 No. 25

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October 2-9, 2020 Vol. 5 No. 25

Contents
Pope Watch 2
Archbishop Gomez 3
World, Nation, and Local News 4-7
Scott Hahn on Scripture 8
Father Rolheiser 9
The extraordinary ‘second life’ of Father Adrian San Juan 14
What’s next after the fall of a powerful Vatican cardinal? 18
Mike Aquilina on the importance of coming back to the Eucharist 20
A Catholic (and historical) defense of Christopher Columbus 24
Dr. Grazie Christie: A tale of Chinese adoption and God’s providence 26
How a journalist uncovered a dangerous piece of biblical fraud 30
Heather King on Catholicism and conformism 32
ON THE COVER
A statue of the Virgin Mary in the cemetery area of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo
stands as the Bobcat Fire burns in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains Sept. 16. Starting
on Page 10, local Catholics — including the monks at St. Andrew’s — share how the
same fires that threatened their homes have helped strengthen their faith.
ABBOT DAMIEN TOILOLO/ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY
IMAGE:
“Don Antonio” is usually one of several pilgrims who make a 60-mile walking
pilgrimage from Orange County to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels ahead
of the annual Mass in Recognition of All Immigrants. Due to the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic, he did it alone this year, and was welcomed into the
cathedral by Archbishop José H. Gomez before the start of this year’s livestreamed
Mass Sept. 20.
VICTOR ALEMÁN

POPE WATCH
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October 2-9, 2020
Vol. 5 • No. 25
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2 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020
Love and clarity
With the legalization of assisted suicide
and euthanasia in many countries,
and questions concerning what is
morally permissible regarding end-oflife
care, the Vatican’s doctrinal office
released a 25-page letter offering “a
moral and practical clarification” on
the care of vulnerable patients.
“The Church is convinced of the necessity
to reaffirm as definitive teaching
that euthanasia is a crime against
human life because, in this act, one
chooses directly to cause the death of
another innocent human being,” the
document said.
Titled, “ ‘Samaritanus bonus,’ on the
Care of Persons in the Critical and
Terminal Phases of Life,” the letter
by the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith was approved by Pope
Francis in June, and released to the
public Sept. 22.
A new “systematic pronouncement
by the Holy See” was deemed necessary
given a growing global trend
in legalizing euthanasia and assisted
suicide, and changing attitudes and
rules that harm the dignity of vulnerable
patients, Cardinal Luis Ladaria,
congregation prefect, said at a Vatican
news conference Sept. 22.
It was also necessary to reaffirm
Church teaching regarding the administration
of the sacraments to and
pastoral care of patients who expressly
request a medical end to their life, he
said.
“In order to receive absolution in
the sacrament of penance, as well as
with the anointing of the sick and the
viaticum,” he said, the patients must
demonstrate their intention to reverse
their decision to end their lives and
to cancel their registration with any
group appointed to grant their desire
for euthanasia or assisted suicide.
In the letter’s section on “Pastoral
discernment toward those who request
euthanasia or assisted suicide,” it said
a “priest could administer the sacraments
to an unconscious person ‘sub
condicione’ [‘conditionally’] if, on
the basis of some signal given by the
patient beforehand, he can presume
his or her repentance.”
The Church’s ministers can still
accompany patients who have made
these end-of-life directives, it added,
by showing “a willingness to listen and
to help, together with a deeper explanation
of the nature of the sacrament,
in order to provide the opportunity to
desire and choose the sacrament up to
the last moment.”
The letter reaffirmed that euthanasia
is “an act of homicide that no end can
justify and that does not tolerate any
form of complicity or active or passive
collaboration.”
For that reason, “those who approve
laws of euthanasia and assisted suicide,
therefore, become accomplices
of a grave sin that others will execute.
They are also guilty of scandal because
by such laws they contribute to the
distortion of conscience, even among
the faithful.”
The letter also underlined a patient’s
right to decline aggressive medical
treatment and “die with the greatest
possible serenity and with one’s proper
human and Christian dignity intact”
when approaching the natural end of
life.
Reporting courtesy of Catholic News
Service Rome correspondent Carol
Glatz.
Papal Prayer Intention for October: We pray that by the virtue of baptism, the laity,
especially women, may participate more in areas of responsibility in the Church.

NEW WORLD
OF FAITH
BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ
A rosary for America
At the cathedral where I live, often I
stop to pray at the outdoor chapel to
Our Lady of Guadalupe, which overlooks
the US 101 freeway.
As I pray to Our Lady and look out
on the cars moving by below, my mind
goes to St. Junípero Serra and the
missionaries. Three centuries ago they
walked this same path, devoted to Our
Lady, and bringing the faith to people
up and down the California coast.
These days, I’ve been praying and
thinking a lot about Our Lady of
Guadalupe.
She was sent by God to the people of
Mexico at a time of great uncertainty
and political unrest. Plague and earthquakes
were devastating the population,
and there was violence and racial
conflict, and widespread suffering and
injustice.
Into this historical and cultural
moment, Our Lady came as a mother
bearing a message of hope. “Let not
your heart be disturbed,” she told St.
Juan Diego.
This has been Mary’s role in history,
beginning in the first days of the
Church when the mother of Jesus was
at the center of the apostles’ community
in Jerusalem.
In a fine new book, “History’s
Queen” (Ave Maria Press, $17),
historian and Angelus contributing
editor Mike Aquilina writes: “In every
age, she is present, leaving her mark
on the great events of the time. She is
there because she is our mother — a
mother to all Christians, and a mother
to all humanity.”
We are living in a moment in our
culture when current events are delivered
to our little screens immediately
and without context. We are tempted
in this moment to think that history
is only a human project and to see it
only through the lens of present-day
values and priorities.
To be a believer in this climate, we
need to step back, see things in the
light of our faith. God made heaven
and earth and he is the ruler of
nations and the Lord of history. There
are not two “histories” that run side by
side — the one the history of nations
and the other the history of salvation.
History is one because God is one.
And history is a love story, the story
of God calling his children to him
through the cross and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. We are promised that
this world will be redeemed, that
history is leading to what St. Peter
called “new heavens and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells.”
As believers, we need to see beyond
the chaos of current events and seek
to find the will of God in the present
moment. For this, Mary holds the key
because it is through her that Jesus
Christ entered into human history.
And he is still at work, shaping the
world’s course and direction.
So, we need to keep getting closer to
Mary, we need to enter more deeply
into her way of seeing and her way of
living. This is the secret of the saints.
Everything that Mary does points us to
her Son — to his commandments, to
the mysteries of his life, to giving up
our own will to follow him and share
in his mission.
In every age, Mary’s maternal care
is an expression of God’s providence,
his plan of love for history and for
every soul. And in the troubles of this
present moment, we need to entrust
ourselves even more to her care.
Earlier this year, I led my brother
bishops in the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops in reconsecrating
our great country to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Next week, on Oct. 7, my brother
bishops and I will again join in asking
for Our Lady’s help, praying a virtual
Rosary for America.
There will be bishops participating
from every part of the country, from
north to south and east to west and
places in between. Our hope is to
unite Catholic people from across the
country in a moment of prayer for
our nation, at a time when there is so
much unrest and uncertainty. For details
on the event, please visit our website:
lacatholics.org/rosary-for-america.
As we seek our Blessed Mother’s
intercession for our nation, I hope
that we will also make this a moment
to deepen our own commitments to
Mary — to dedicate ourselves to her
and to let her teach us how to offer
our hearts to serve Christ and his
beautiful plan of salvation history. Let
us live all for Jesus through the heart
of Mary!
Pray for me this week, and I will
pray for you. And please tell everyone
you know to join us in this Rosary for
America!
May our Blessed Mother intercede
and guide us to see our lives and our
world always through her loving gaze
and the mysteries of her Son, Jesus
Christ.
To read more columns by Archbishop José H. Gomez or to subscribe, visit www.angelusnews.com.
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 3

WORLD
St. Pope John Paul II’s former secretary
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz gave the reliquary
to Archbishop Renato Boccardo in 2016.
Italy: Churches
burglarized and
desecrated
September was not a good month for
church security in Italy.
On Sept. 22, a reliquary containing
the blood of St. Pope John Paul II was
stolen from Spoleto Cathedral, just
weeks before it was set to be moved to
another church in time for the saint’s
Oct. 22 feast day.
“It’s a serious act,” Archbishop
Renato Boccardo of Spoleto stated
Sept. 24. “Serious, naturally, because
it wounds the sentiments and the
devotion of many people.”
Two days earlier, unidentified
suspects broke into a church in
Sicily, leaving statues damaged and
eucharistic hosts strewn on the floor.
Police have arrested two men and are
pursuing another male and a female
suspect.
In the wake of the crimes, Archbishop
Boccardo encouraged the faithful
to pray to the revered pope.
“I exhort the many devotees of St.
John Paul II to continue to entrust
themselves to him,” he said, “who is
a powerful intercessor before the
Lord.”
UMBRIAN CONFERENCE OF BISHOPS
The flags of the United States, Israel, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are projected on a section of the
walls surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City Sept. 15.
A patriarchal promise of peace for the Middle East?
The patriarch Abraham is known as the father of the three major monotheistic
faiths — Judaism, Islam, and Christianity — so it seemed fitting to make him the
namesake of the recent Middle Eastern peace accord.
Known as the “Abraham Accords,” the pact was signed Sept. 15 at the White
House, where the president, vice president, and first lady welcomed Israel Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah
bin Zayed, and Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani.
The accord formalizes relations between Israel and the UAE and confirms Bahrain’s
formal recognition of the Jewish state.
Bishop David Malloy, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International
Justice and Peace, welcomed the agreement.
“The [USCCB has] long held that both morally and as a basis for lasting peace,
the two parties must negotiate directly and arrive at a fair compromise that respects
the aspirations and needs of both peoples,” he stated Aug. 20. “As Catholic
bishops, we join in this aspiration and know much work remains in the pursuit of
peace in this region.”
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/YARA NARDI, REUTERS =
PUSHED TO THE BRINK — A displaced child from the Moria refugee camp looks over a
fence inside a new temporary camp on the Greek island of Lesbos Sept. 23. The Moria
camp, which was mostly destroyed in fires Sept. 9, was home to at least 12,000 people, six
times its maximum capacity of more than 2,000 asylum-seekers.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/RONEN ZVULUN, REUTERS
4 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

NATION
President Donald Trump arrives at the White House Rose Garden with Judge Amy Coney Barrett and
her family Sept. 26.
Trump taps Catholic mom of 7 for Supreme Court seat
The daughter of a Catholic deacon and mother of seven children is President
Donald Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee following the death of Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsberg Sept. 18.
At the Sept. 26 White House event announcing the pick, Trump hailed federal
appeals judge and Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett as one of the
country’s “most brilliant and gifted legal minds” and “a woman of unparalleled
achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials, and unyielding loyalty to the
Constitution.”
The 48-year-old Catholic native of
Louisiana is a popular jurist in social
conservative circles, and Trump had
considered naming her to the Supreme
Court earlier in his term. She has
already faced scrutiny and criticism
in the media for her Catholic faith,
pro-life views on abortion, and her
membership in “People of Praise,” an
ecumenical prayer movement associated
with the Charismatic Renewal.
Barrett paid tribute to Ruth Bader
Ginsburg in her remarks at the event,
noting that the justice “began her
career at a time when women were
not welcome in the legal profession,”
and “shattered glass ceilings” to lead
a life of “enormous talent and consequence.”
She is expected to face a tough
confirmation battle in the Senate, with
opponents of Trump arguing that the
seat should not be filled until after
the Nov. 3 presidential election.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CARLOS BARRIA, REUTERS
Feds investigating
alleged hysterectomies
on migrant women
Recent reports indicate that at least
six Mexican women in U.S. immigration
custody were subjected to
hysterectomies without consent.
Several advocacy organizations
filed a complaint on behalf of Dawn
Wooten, a nurse at a U.S. Immigrations
and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) detention center in Georgia.
Wooten claimed that several women
were sent to a doctor she called “the
uterus collector.”
“I’ve had several inmates tell me
that they’ve been to see the doctor,
and they’ve had hysterectomies, and
they don’t know why they went or
why they’re going,” Wooten stated in
the complaint.
According to Dr. Ada Rivera, ICE
health services director, only two
women have been referred for hysterectomies
at the detention center
since 2018. Mark Koumans, acting
U.S. immigration services director,
has ordered an expedited investigation
into the complaint.
KISSING ALLOWED — Couples renew their marriage vows after 50 years of marriage at St.
Mary’s Cathedral in Peoria, Illinois, Sept. 13. At the ceremony, Bishop Daniel R. Jenky called
the couples “our heroes” for their daily witness to love and the Catholic faith.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE / TOM DERDODY, THE CATHOLIC POST
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 5

NATION
Illinois bishop: Shutdowns
are not the answer
Sister Norma Pimentel speaks with a young
resident of a tent camp in Matamoros, Mexico.
‘Sister Norma’ makes Time magazine’s Top 100 list
After years providing humanitarian aid to migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border,
Sister Norma Pimental has received national recognition.
In this year’s “100 Most Influential People” series, Time magazine included the
Catholic nun on its list.
“Sister Pimentel has been on the front lines of mercy for three decades,” stated the
Sept. 22 Time article. Sister Pimentel, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus, also
directs Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
“Thank you, Sister,” tweeted Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, the diocese
where “Sister Norma” is based, on Sept. 22. “You help us all come together in the
Valley to face our challenges, you help us learn how to help each other, how to protect
the vulnerable, to not lose hope … and to be a sign of Christ in the world.”
Born-Alive Act signed
into law by president
After several failed congressional
attempts to pass a bill requiring
medical care to infants born alive after
attempted abortions, President Donald
Trump has mandated the practice via
executive order.
“The Born-Alive Executive Order
[will] ensure that all precious babies
born alive, no matter their circumstances,
receive the medical care that
they deserve,” the president stated in
a prerecorded video shown during the
livestreamed National Catholic Prayer
Breakfast Sept. 23.
“This is our sacrosanct moral duty.”
The president added that his administration
will also raise federal funding
for neonatal research, “to ensure that
every child has the very best chance to
thrive and to grow.”
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/DAVID AGREN
The bishop of Springfield, Illinois, is
speaking out on the negative consequences
of “social shutdowns” aimed
at slowing the spread of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic.
“In the face of a pandemic, do we
have a moral obligation to shut down
our society, require people to stay at
home … impair the food supply chain,
and prevent worshippers from going to
church?” questioned Bishop Thomas
Paprocki in the September edition of
the journal Ethics & Media. “I would
say no.”
Bishop Paprocki distinguished
between “ordinary and extraordinary
means of preserving life.” With
extraordinary means, he asserted, “the
burdens outweigh the benefits,” and
public authorities should not impose
them.
Bishop Paprocki noted the importance
of caring for others’ physical
health but also the greater importance
of spiritual well-being.
“Life, health, all temporal activities
are in fact subordinated to spiritual
ends … [which] is eternal life.”
NOT ENOUGH — Demonstrators in Louisville, Kentucky, march for Breonna Taylor Sept.
25. A grand jury handed down an indictment Sept. 23 for one of three police officers
involved in the fatal shooting of Taylor earlier this year. The police officer was indicted
on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree. In a statement, Louisville
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz affirmed objectors’ right to protest, but urged nonviolence and
unity in working toward racial justice.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/LAWRENCE BRYANT, REUTERS
6 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

LOCAL
People in San Francisco march during a “Free the Mass” demonstration Sept. 20.
Feds call San Francisco Mass restrictions ‘draconian’
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has warned that San Francisco’s current restrictions
on public worship may be unconstitutional and called on the city to
treat churches as it has other venues, like gyms, tattoo parlors, and hair salons.
In a Sept. 25 letter to Mayor London Breed, the DOJ warned that the city’s
rule allowing only “one worshipper” in churches regardless of their size, while
allowing multiple patrons in other indoor buildings, is “draconian” and “contrary
to the Constitution and the nation’s best tradition of religious freedom.”
San Francisco’s restrictions are among the strictest in the country.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone praised the letter.
“Catholics in San Francisco have been patiently suffering injustice for
months. At last, a competent legal authority is challenging the city’s absurd
rules, which have no basis in science, but are grounded in hostility to religion
and especially the Catholic Church,” Archbishop Cordileone said.
The letter came days after Catholics in San Francisco marched in eucharistic
processions across the city Sept. 20 to protest the city’s continued restrictions
on public worship.
San Diego: Chaldean cathedral defaced
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/DENNIS CALLAHAN
COVID-19 numbers
stay down in LA County
The steady drop in the number of
new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases,
deaths, and hospitalizations in Los
Angeles County means that churches
could be allowed to reopen soon,
statistics suggest.
As of press time, LA County was
averaging around 1,000 new cases
a day, while hospitalizations and
deaths were at levels seen before this
summer’s surge of cases and deaths.
Ventura and Santa Barbara counties,
which also form part of the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles, reported similar
trends.
The decline in numbers means that
the county could be on the verge of
moving from the state’s “purple tier”
to the less-restrictive “red” tier, which
would allow more businesses to reopen,
as well as churches, albeit with a
100-person limit.
Because of Orange County’s move
into that tier, churches there were
allowed to reopen in early September,
although some parishes have
continued holding outdoor Masses
to accommodate the 100-plus crowds
coming to weekend Masses.
A Catholic cathedral in San Diego County was defaced overnight with swastikas,
an upside-down cross, and “BLM” and “white power” messages spray-painted on
doors and entryways.
“Pray for the criminals who did this,” St. Peter’s Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in
El Cajon posted on Facebook Sept. 26, the morning after the attack.
Some symbols were indecipherable, while others were seemingly opposing
slogans, raising questions about a possible motive.
The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic Church of more than
600,000 people. The cathedral is the seat of the Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle of
San Diego, an Eastern Catholic diocese of roughly 70,000 Catholics.
The vandalism came amid a wave of similar attacks on Catholic churches that
have been ongoing for months. Most recently, a man burned pews in a Florida
Catholic church, and a man with a baseball bat damaged a crucifix and doors at a
seminary in Texas.
EXTRA FINAL BLESSING — Archbishop
José H. Gomez blesses parishioners
in their cars with holy water on their
way out of an outdoor drive-in Sunday
Mass at St. Vincent de Paul Church
near downtown on Sept. 27. Archbishop
Gomez visited the parish on the occasion
of its patron saint’s feast day.
DAVID AMADOR RIVERA
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 7

SUNDAY
READINGS
BY SCOTT HAHN
Is. 5:1–7 / Ps. 80:9, 12–16, 19–20 / Phil. 4:6–9 / Mt. 21:33–43
In this week’s Gospel, Jesus returns
to the Old Testament symbol of the
vineyard to teach about Israel, the
Church, and the kingdom of God. And
the symbolism of the First Reading and
Psalm is also readily understood.
God is the owner and the house
of Israel is the
vineyard. A
cherished vine,
Israel was plucked
from Egypt and
transplanted in a
fertile land specially
spaded and
prepared by God,
hedged about by
the city walls of Jerusalem,
watched
over by the towering
Temple.
But the vineyard
produced no good
grapes for the
wine, a symbol for
the holy lives God
wanted for his
people. So God
allowed his vineyard to be overrun by
foreign invaders, as Isaiah foresees in
the First Reading.
Jesus picks up the story where Isaiah
leaves off, even using Isaiah’s words
to describe the vineyard’s wine press,
hedge, and watchtower. Israel’s
religious leaders, the tenants in his parable,
have learned nothing from Isaiah
or Israel’s past. Instead of producing
good fruits, they’ve killed the owner’s
servants, the prophets sent to gather the
harvest of faithful souls.
In a dark foreshadowing of his own
crucifixion outside Jerusalem, Jesus
says the tenants’ final outrage will be to
seize the owner’s son, and to kill him
outside the vineyard walls.
For this, the vineyard, which Jesus
calls the kingdom of God, will be
taken away and given to new tenants:
the leaders of the Church, who will
“The Parable of the Vineyard,” by Ambrosius Francken I, 1544-1618,
Flemish.
produce its fruit.
We are each a vine in the Lord’s
vineyard, grafted onto the true vine of
Christ (see John 15:1–8), called to bear
fruits of the righteousness in him (see
Philippians 1:11), and to be the “first
fruits” of a new creation (see James
1:18).
We need to take care that we don’t let
ourselves be overgrown with the thorns
and briers of worldly anxiety. As today’s
Epistle advises, we need to fill our
hearts and minds with noble intentions
and virtuous deeds, rejoicing always
that the Lord is near.
Scott Scott Hahn Hahn is is founder of of the the St. St. Paul Paul Center for for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
8 • ANGELUS • October August 16-23-30, 2-9, 20202019

IN EXILE
BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI
Moving beyond weakness and betrayal
“The excusable doesn’t need to be
excused and the inexcusable cannot be
excused.”
Michael Buckley wrote those words
and they contain an important challenge.
We’re forever trying to make
excuses for things we need not make
excuses for and are forever trying to
excuse the inexcusable. Neither is
necessary. Or helpful.
We can learn a lesson from how Jesus
dealt with those who betrayed him.
A prime example is the apostle Peter,
specially chosen and named the very
rock of the apostolic community. Peter
was an honest man with a childlike
sincerity, a deep faith, and he, more
than most others, grasped the deeper
meaning of who Jesus was and what his
teaching meant.
Indeed, it was he who in response
to Jesus’ question (“Who do you say I
am?”) replied, “You are the Christ, the
son of the Living God.” Yet minutes after
that confession, Jesus had to correct
Peter’s false conception of what that
meant and then rebuke him for trying
to deflect him from his very mission.
More seriously, it was Peter who,
within hours of an arrogant boast
that though all others would betray
Jesus, he alone would remain faithful,
betrayed Jesus three times, and this in
Jesus’ most needy hour.
Later we are privy to the conversation
Jesus has with Peter vis-à-vis those
betrayals. What’s significant is that he
doesn’t ask Peter to explain himself,
doesn’t excuse Peter, and doesn’t
say things like, “You weren’t really
yourself! I can understand how anyone
might be very frightened in that situation!
I can empathize, I know what fear
can do to you!” None of that.
The excusable doesn’t need to be
excused and the inexcusable cannot be
excused. In Peter’s betrayal, as in our
own, there’s invariably some of both,
the excusable and the inexcusable.
So what does Jesus do with Peter? He
doesn’t ask for an explanation, doesn’t
ask for an apology, doesn’t tell Peter
that it is OK, doesn’t offer excuses for
Peter, and doesn’t tell Peter that he
loves him. Instead he asks Peter, “Do
you love me?” Peter answers yes — and
everything moves forward from there.
Everything moves forward from there.
Everything can move forward following
a confession of love, not least an
honest confession of love in the wake
of a betrayal. Apologies are necessary
(because that’s taking ownership of the
fault and the weakness so as to lift it off
the soul of the one who was betrayed)
but excuses are not helpful.
If the action was not a betrayal, no
excuse is necessary; if it was, no excuse
absolves it. An excuse or an attempt
at one serves two purposes, neither of
them good. First, it serves to rationalize
and justify, none of which is helpful to
the betrayed or the betrayer.
Second, it weakens the apology and
makes it less than clean and full, thus
not lifting the betrayal completely
off the soul of the one who has been
betrayed; and, because of that, is not
as helpful an expression of love as is a
clear, honest acknowledgement of our
betrayal and an apology that attempts
no excuse for its weakness and betrayal.
What love asks of us when we are
weak is an honest, nonrationalized
admission of our weakness along with a
statement from the heart: “I love you!”
Things can move forward from there.
The past and our betrayal are not expunged,
nor excused; but, in love, we
can live beyond them.
To expunge, excuse, or rationalize is
to not live in the truth; it is unfair to
the one betrayed since he or she bears
the consequences and scars.
Only love can move us beyond
weakness and betrayal, and this is an
important principle not just for those
instances in life when we betray and
hurt a loved one, but for our understanding
of life in general.
We’re human, not divine, and as such
are beset, congenitally, body and mind,
with weaknesses and inadequacies
of every sort. None of us, as St. Paul
graphically says in his Epistle to the
Romans, ever quite measure up. The
good we want to do, we end up not
doing, and the evil we want to avoid,
we habitually end up doing.
Some of this, of course, is understandable,
excusable, just as some of
it is inexcusable, save for the fact that
we’re humans and partially a mystery
to ourselves. Either way, at the end of
the day, no justification or excuses are
asked for (or helpful).
We don’t move forward in relationship
by telling either God or someone
we have hurt: “You have to understand!
In that situation, what else was I to do
too? I didn’t mean to hurt you, I was
just too weak to resist!” That’s neither
helpful, nor called for. Things move
forward when we, without excuses,
admit weakness, and apologize. Like
Peter when asked three times by Jesus,
“Do you love me?” from our hearts we
need to say, “You know everything, you
know that I love you.”
Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, award-winning author, and president of the Oblate School of Theology
in San Antonio, Texas. Find him online at www.ronrolheiser.com and www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser.
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 9

Abbot Damien Toiloro and
the Benedictine monks of St.
Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo
smelled smoke for a week before the
Bobcat Fire coiled over the San Gabriel
Mountains toward their monastery at
the edge of the desert floor.
“Some guys were getting sick because
of the smoke,” he said. The owner of a
hospice agency offered to take a dying
monk into her own home if evacuation
became necessary.
The fire, which ignited on Sept. 6,
had already threatened but spared
Immaculate Conception Church in
Monrovia.
On Sept. 11, “We could actually see
the flames,” said Maricruz Avila, the
parish business manager.
Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19),
all Masses are held in the Immaculate
Conception parking lot, which offers
no protection from smoke. Father Joachim
Lepta canceled public Mass from
Sept. 11 to Sept. 18.
“It was because the quality of the air
was very terrible. The smoke was heavy.
Holding
the line
Local Catholics are left with gratitude — and
a stronger sense of community — after close
calls with the Bobcat and El Dorado Fires
BY NATALIE ROMANO & ANN RODGERS / ANGELUS
A statue of the Virgin Mary in the cemetery area of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo stands as the Bobcat Fire burns in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains Sept. 16.
ABBOT DAMIEN TOILORO
10 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

Sept. 16.
ABBOT DAMIEN TOILORO
The Bobcat Fire burns near St. Andrew’s Abbey in mid-September.
The falling of the ashes was very heavy.
You couldn’t be standing out there for
10 minutes without feeling short of
breath,” Avila said.
During livestream Mass, “Father said
that material stuff is just material stuff
and life is more important.”
The Benedictine community has lived
that lesson for decades.
St. Andrew’s was founded in 1955 by
Benedictines who had been arrested,
imprisoned, and exiled from communist
China. The primary ministry of
its current 20 monks is hosting retreats
and spiritual direction, which has been
on hold since the pandemic began in
March. Then came the fire.
The monks prayed for neighboring
homes, for firefighters, and especially
for the Benedictine sisters in Glendora
and Carmelite sisters in Duarte. The
sisters were on standby to evacuate, but
the fire spared them.
“That’s why, when we received a warning
that we might have to evacuate, I
said, ‘OK, it will probably be here in a
week.’ The very next day, evacuation
was mandated,” Abbot Damien said.
Most of the monks became guests of
American Martyrs Church in Manhattan
Beach, which had hosted them
during a voluntary evacuation from the
Station Fire in 2009. Parishioners and
friends have brought food.
“American Martyrs Parish has been
very generous,” Abbot Damien said.
Father Francis Benedict, a spiritual
director, sees their experience as an
opening for greater trust in God.
“If you have a prayer life, you are
spiritually prepared for anything,” he
said. “I was praying to be abandoned to
the Father’s will. We didn’t know God’s
will. Would we have nothing when we
came back and have to build a new
monastery? The fire is aggressive. Bad
things have happened to good communities.
It’s not like we are exempt.
We are entitled to the whole paschal
mystery, not just to the Resurrection.”
On Sept. 18, the day after the evacuation,
the maintenance man called
to say that the fire had reached the
grounds.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
“My heart sank,” Abbot Damien said.
“In my mind there was the vision of the
founders, all of the work, the energy,
the blood, sweat, and tears. It is a beautiful
piece of property.”
He saw the flames on a security camera
app. Other monks began to call.
“There was a lot of sadness,” he said. “I
shed a few tears. And then I said, ‘God
knows all things. He knows the fire is at
the abbey. Therefore, if the abbey burns
down or doesn’t burn down — and we
all thought it was going to burn — we
are in his hands.’ ”
The next day at 5 a.m., a firefighter
called.
“The word he used was ‘unscathed,’ ”
Abbot Damien said.
“Spiritually, it reminded me of the
Resurrection. The abbey is gone, then
it’s alive. I didn’t believe it.”
He realized he was repeating the experience
of Doubting Thomas.
“I always said that I would never be
a ‘Doubting Thomas.’ Yet, when the
photos came, I was still saying, ‘I have
to see it for myself.’ ”
Days later, fire officials confirmed to
Angelus that during the firefight to protect
the property, a strike team was able
to “hold the line” using water hoses
right on the edge of the abbey grounds,
and just feet away from the first gravestones
of St. Andrew’s cemetery.
“It is 100 percent evident when you
get there that the firefighters saved that
monastery,” said Sky Cornell, public
information officer for the LA County
Fire Department. “You can see the line
right in the dirt where everything’s black
from being burnt, and then it’s not.”
The blackened dirt to the left shows where fire
crews stopped the Bobcat Fire’s advance, just feet
away from the cemetery at St. Andrew’s Abbey.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 11

More than 500 firefighters battled the El Dorado Fire east of San Bernardino, which started Sept. 5, triggered by a firework at a gender-reveal party.
Meanwhile in San Bernardino
County, the El Dorado Fire
had one Catholic parish
racing against the clock. St. Frances
Xavier Cabrini Church in Yucaipa
had only 35 minutes to get ready to
take in dozens of evacuees trying to
escape the blaze. On Sept. 5, flames
erupted in El Dorado Ranch Park,
and by the next day the fire was threatening
a youth shelter. The facility
director reached out to her father’s
parish when no one else could take
them in.
“They had exhausted all their options,”
said Joseph Scarite, St. Frances
Xavier Cabrini Church emergency
preparedness coordinator. “They had
nowhere else to go … so we made it
happen.”
The emergency preparedness team,
along with members of the Knights of
Columbus and Columbiettes, sprung
into action, transforming the parish
center into an evacuation center. The
volunteers said after setting up basic
accommodations, 31 teens and eight
counselors arrived in a caravan, looking
taxed and tired.
“This was an emotional time for
them,” said Scarite. “The smoke levels
were very intense. They didn’t get any
sleep that first night of the fire.”
While the volunteers did their best
to make the evacuees feel welcome,
the Red Cross delivered cots, blankets,
and toiletries. Local restaurants
provided pizza and the school district
allowed use of their showers.
“Those were their immediate needs
and then they felt more comfortable,”
said Scarite. “Initially there was a lot
of apprehension.”
Bishop Alberto Rojas, coadjutor
of the Diocese of San Bernardino,
who came to Southern California
from Chicago early this year, said the
vast devastation of the wildfires was
shocking.
“It is very hard for me to believe the
number of fires that take place in
California. I am so sorry how many
people are affected,” said Bishop Rojas.
“I am glad that our parish was able
12 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

JOSH EDELSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
to open as a shelter for those people.”
The evacuees came from Trinity
Youth Services, a residential facility
for abandoned and abused teens.
Counselors help residents emotionally
recover then find them a safe place to
live. Scarite said these teens were the
last people to deserve such upheaval.
“They didn’t need this,” said Scarite.
“They didn’t need to be uprooted and
go to a separate facility.”
Due to COVID-19, this was the first
time the residents had left the shelter
in months. Scarite noted that the
teens had gone from being trapped by
a virus to being trapped by a fire.
“The smoke was so bad they couldn’t
even go outside. They did a lot of puzzles
and Monopoly games and things
like that,” said Scarite. “Plus, they had
their cellphones and laptops. One of
the first things they asked was, ‘What’s
the (Wi-Fi) password, Joe?’ ”
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church
has been a designated Red Cross
Neighborhood Shelter for 10 years.
While the parish served as a gathering
point during past fires, it’s never been
used as an overnight shelter. Scarite, a
retired firefighter, said he works with
experts to keep up on the latest safety
practices and that his parish may be
more prepared than most.
At left is St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Yucaipa Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Joseph
Scarite, together with volunteer couples Don and Carol Averill (standing) and Bill and Marcy Daily
(sitting).
SUBMITTED PHOTO
“There’s a lot of retired cops and
firefighters in Yucaipa, so if I need
something, I know they are available,”
said Scarite. “You gotta know your
parish, right?”
What makes those retired professionals
so helpful is also what makes it so
personal when they learn, as they did
here, that a firefighter had died. U.S.
Forest Service officials announced
that 39-year-old Charles Morton was
killed while battling the blaze. The
volunteers made a point of praying for
him, as did Bishop Rojas.
“I have been praying for all the
people affected, and also for the (deceased)
firefighter and rescue crews
who risk their lives by saving lives,”
said Bishop Rojas. “I am very grateful
to them, may God bless them.”
The flames got as close as 10 minutes
to the church’s doors but never forced
them to close. Surprising, Scarite said,
since the fire, which started after a
pyrotechnic device was lit at a genderreveal
party, burned “so hot and fast.”
After five days of living in the parish
center, it was safe for the evacuees to
return to Trinity Youth Services.
“They were grateful for everything,”
said Scarite. “We gave them some
nice prayers to take back with them.
Hopefully they’ll be able to reflect on
that.”
The volunteers have had time to
reflect as well.
“We got through the week. It was
pretty tough, pretty tiring for everybody,”
said Scarite. “Though once I
got there [parish center], I didn’t think
about anything. I just felt like we were
doing something good.”
Natalie Romano is a freelance writer
for Angelus and the Inland Catholic
Byte, the newspaper of the Diocese of
San Bernardino.
Ann Rodgers is a longtime religion
reporter and freelance writer whose
awards include the William A. Reed
Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Religion News Association.
Editor-in-chief Pablo Kay contributed
to this story.
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 13

A second life
well-lived
Father Adrian San Juan
fulfilled an important
mission before his sudden
death last month at 43,
his loved ones say
BY PABLO KAY / ANGELUS
Father Adrian San Juan
RAFAEL ALVAREZ
After being brought into this world
against the odds, losing his father
at 8 years old, and surviving a
battle with cancer, Father Adrian M.
San Juan knew one thing for certain:
that he would “rather be with the
Lord.”
That attitude — and memories of the
young priest’s zeal for Christ — are
what is left to console grieving parishioners,
relatives, and fellow priests
stunned by the news of the 43-yearold’s
sudden death Saturday, Sept. 19,
after collapsing at the start of a wedding
at St. Linus Church in Norwalk, where
he served as administrator.
“He passed away doing what he loved:
celebrating the Eucharist,” said Rafael
Alvarez, a St. Linus parishioner and
seminarian at the Queen of Angels
Center for Priestly Formation. “That
was one of his most joyful moments.”
Alvarez was there assisting Father
San Juan as he entered the parish’s
canopied “outdoor church,” kissed the
altar, and waited for the wedding party
to process toward the altar. But a few
moments later, something “didn’t feel
right”: to Alvarez’s surprise, Father San
Juan went to sit in the presider’s chair
before falling to the ground.
Paramedics were called and attempted
CPR on Father San Juan, who
had suffered an apparent heart attack,
before taking him to PIH Whittier
Hospital while another priest at St.
Linus, Father Marco Reyes, stepped in
to continue the wedding.
Father San Juan was pronounced
dead a short while later. A small group
of family members were briefly allowed
into the hospital, and a priest was able
to give him the last rites.
As of Thursday, Sept. 24, funeral
plans were still pending while the
priest’s family awaited word from the
county medical examiner on his official
cause of death.
Despite the shock over the apparently
healthy priest’s death, though, those
who knew “Father Adrian” told Angelus
they were comforted that his death
came before the altar, after a “second
life” in which he lived his vocation to
the fullest.
Father San Juan was born the last of
six children in 1976 in Valenzuela,
Philippines, outside the capital city of
Manila. His birth was welcomed as a
miraculous surprise, coming 11 years
after the family’s next oldest child.
“Because of my mom’s advanced
age, she had a very critical pregnancy
[with Father San Juan],” said Victoria
Siongco, the late priest’s sister. “She
almost lost him.”
His mother, Gloria, spent the final
months of the pregnancy confined to
bed rest, begging God for her son’s life.
“We would see her every day praying
with her arms outstretched, like a
manifestation of a sacrifice, praying not
to lose him,” recalled Siongco.
Both Father San Juan and his mother
survived what his family says was a
14 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

RAFAEL ALVAREZ
complicated childbirth. Eight years
later, hard times struck the family again
when his father, Carlos, succumbed to
lung cancer.
As Siongco remembers it, her little
brother showed signs of a vocation
even before starting elementary school.
He was fascinated by religious processions
and was already singing in
church by age 3.
“He loved the saints, he loved
praying, he loved singing, he loved
everything about the Church,” said
Siongco.
By the time he had finished high
school in 1994, he had broken up
with his girlfriend at the time with the
intention of entering the seminary.
Those closest to Father San Juan say
his life was marked above all else by a
life-and-death experience during that
time: a testicular cancer diagnosis in
2002 a few months before his ordination
to the diaconate.
Chemotherapy left him hairless,
pale, and thin, but he vowed to follow
through with his ordination to the
diaconate. Family, friends, fellow seminarians,
and even professors rallied
behind him in prayer, and the cancer
went into remission in 2003. He was
ordained to the priesthood the following
year.
“This is my second life, no doubt,”
Father San Juan told Manilla’s Phillipine
Sunday Inquirer Magazine in an
interview after his ordination in 2004.
“I see myself in the hands of a loving
Father. A second life is his revelation to
me that I have a mission to do in His
Name.”
In the same interview, the new priest
shared that the cancer battle had given
him more joy and a stronger faith.
“Life will not always be a journey of
certainty, of controlling it the way we
plan it,” he continued. “Doubts and socalled
trials will come. But if we seek
God in all things, then we learn that
God’s love is everywhere.”
The priest credited his “second life”
in particular to Divine Mercy, the
Virgin Mary, and the miraculous
intercession of St. Thérèse of Lisieux,
to whom he had a fervent devotion for
the rest of his life.
After spending six years ministering
in parishes and schools in Manilla,
Father San Juan transferred to the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2010
to be closer to his family. He served in
several parishes, including St. John the
Baptist Church in Baldwin Park, St.
Madeleine Church in Pomona, and
St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley
before coming to St. Linus in 2019. He
was officially incardinated as a priest of
the archdiocese in 2015.
Among his brother priests, Father
San Juan was known as a “holy priest
Father Adrian San Juan with parishioner “Aubrey” at her first Communion this summer.
FAITH CHERISSE PHOTOGRAPHY
Rafael Alvarez (second from right) with Father
San Juan and the St. Linus “livestream team”
during the COVID-19 shutdown earlier this year.
who had a wonderful sense of humor,
and always had a smile on his face,”
according to Vicar for Clergy for the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles Msgr. Jim
Halley.
Auxiliary Bishop Alex Aclan remembered
how shortly after arriving in the
archdiocese, then-Msgr. Aclan relied
on Father San Juan twice to write the
music for two fundraiser musical plays
benefitting the Filipino Priests Association
of Los Angeles.
And during the annual Christmastime
Simbang Gabi Mass at the Cathedral
of Our Lady of the Angels, it was
Father San Juan who was charged with
leading his brother Filipino priests in
singing in Tagalog after Communion.
“That’s how he endeared himself to
the Filipino priests here,” recounted
Bishop Aclan. “He was an excellent
composer, pianist, and vocalist.”
One of those priests, Father Rizalino
“Riz” Carranza, spent four years with
him at St. Peter Claver Church in Simi
Valley, where Father Carranza is pastor
and Father San Juan served as associate
pastor from 2015 to 2019. He said Father
San Juan was the ultimate “people
priest,” a gifted preacher whose enthusiasm
while celebrating the Eucharist
was infectious.
“He really appealed to a lot of people
of different ages, from the older to the
younger,” recalled Father Carranza.
In private, his former pastor says
Father San Juan was a man of deep
prayer. Walking past the door to his
FAITH CHERISSE PHOTOGRAPHY
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 15

What Legacy will YOU
leave?
It’s easy to include a gift
for your favorite
Parish, School or Ministry
in your will or trust.
Father Adrian San Juan sings with St. Linus School teacher Issa Santos at the parish’s “Hope in
Harmony Concert” last year.
room, Father Carranza would sometimes
catch a glimpse of Father San
Juan on his knees with a lit candle
burning. “He always expressed that he
would rather be with God,” said Father
Carranza.
At St. Linus, where Father San Juan
spent the last year of his life, parish
business manager Ana Engquist said
the impact from his short time there
will be felt for a long time.
“He brought a strong spirituality to
the parish,” said Engquist, including
starting a Divine Mercy prayer group
as he did at St. Peter Claver. “When he
came on board he made it very clear
we’re going to be a family, and that was
kind of a strange concept to me. I was
used to just having a working relationship
with my pastors.”
Instead, Father San Juan told parish
staff that they would be eating, praying,
and even fighting together, as long as it
was followed, of course, by forgiveness.
“His goal was to get us to heaven
and to really live our faith, not just on
Sundays, but day-to-day, to do the little
things to get to heaven,” said Engquist.
Engquist and Alvarez agreed that the
new administrator was a unifying presence
for the parish over the last year.
“He was able to bring healing to the
parish staff, and restored the ministries
that were broken,” said Alvarez,
whom Father San Juan guided and
encouraged in his decision to enter the
seminary this year.
During the recent months of the
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic,
Father San Juan took a “hands-on”
16 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020
approach in bringing the sacraments
to his parishioners, whether through
organizing a team to livestream Masses
or building a dignified “outdoor
church” in the parish parking lot with
a stage and canopy when COVID-19
restrictions forced religious services to
be held outdoors this summer.
“He died doing what he loved to do,
and I think that he came to our parish
to heal us in a lot of ways. And he fulfilled
that mission,” said Engquist.
Part of that mission was accompanying
young people like Alvarez and
the couple that he had prepared for
marriage on that fateful day to embrace
their vocations. Among them also was
his own niece, whom Father San Juan
was also helping prepare for marriage
with her fiancé.
Siongco told Angelus that she and
her sister “Fely” (both of whom live in
nearby Walnut) will miss her brother’s
visits on his days off to eat together,
plan vacations, and take 6,000-step
walks to help them stay in shape.
Even in the face of losing their little
brother, family chaplain, and travel
companion, Siongco said her family is
consoled by the outpouring on social
media about the lives Father San Juan
touched, evidence of the good fruit
that his vocation bore.
“It’s an honor for Father Adrian to be
summoned by the Lord,” said Siongco.
“When our heavenly boss calls us, who
should say no?”
Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of
Angelus.
FAITH CHERISSE PHOTOGRAPHY
To leave a lasting legacy,
contact us today.
Kimberly Jetton
Director of Planned Giving
(213) 637-7504
KJetton@la-archdiocese.org
www.ADLALegacy.org
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October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 17

Cleaning
the stables
Why the story of
Italian Cardinal
Angelo Becciu’s
dramatic fall from
grace is far from over
BY CHARLES COLLINS /
ANGELUS
Cardinal Angelo Becciu speaks with journalists during a media conference in Rome Sept. 25.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/JUNNO AROCHO ESTEVES
It was an announcement as shocking
as it was short: On the evening of
Sept. 24, Italian Cardinal Angelo
Becciu, formerly the pope’s chief of
staff, resigned not only as the prefect
of the Vatican’s saint-making body,
but also from “the rights connected to
being a cardinal.”
This formulation — renunciation
of the “right connected to being a
cardinal” — had only been used once
before, when Scottish Cardinal Keith
O’Brien resigned following a sex
scandal involving adult seminarians.
O’Brien spent the rest of his life in quiet
“prayer and penance” just over the
Scottish border in Newcastle, England.
(American Cardinal Theodore
McCarrick resigned completely from
the College of Cardinals in 2018 after
credible accusations were made against
him involving the abuse of minors. He
was removed from the priesthood the
following year.)
The Becciu case is different from
O’Brien in two important ways: 1)
Becciu has not been accused of sexual
misconduct; and 2) he also has no
plans to slip quietly into obscurity.
Although when the announcement
was made on Thursday many assumed
the dismissal was connected to a
notorious $225 million property deal
in London, where Becciu was accused
of juggling the books while serving as
“sostituto” (“substitute”) at the Vatican’s
Secretary of State, things became
clearer on Friday when it was revealed
the cardinal was being punished for
allegedly funneling business to companies
owned by his brothers.
The cardinal defended himself on
Friday, telling Italian news publication
Domani that he committed no crimes,
and “hasn’t stolen a penny.”
Becciu admitted to favoring his brothers’
construction companies, but said,
“What’s wrong with that?”
As of press time, the Vatican hasn’t
commented on the affair, although
Australian Cardinal George Pell, the
former head of the Secretariat for the
Economy who often complained about
corruption at the Vatican, issued a
statement congratulating Pope Francis
for the “recent developments” and
offering his hopes that the “cleaning of
the stables” continues at the Vatican.
The question remains: Why now?
It is obvious the case against Becciu
had been growing for some time. This
summer, Pope Francis issued a new
procurement law for the Vatican meant
to increase transparency, and it specifically
bans officials assessing bids from
companies owned by close relatives.
The ongoing saga of the former
Harrods warehouse in the London
neighborhood of Chelsea was also
showing no signs of quieting down.
The 2014 deal involved transforming
the building into luxury apartments,
but questionable financing from
the Vatican’s Peter’s Pence fund and
extravagant fees paid to the person who
brokered the deal drew the attention of
the Vatican’s financial watchdog.
This led to a series of raids in the
Vatican, and the dismissal of several
employees.
However, it is still surprising to see
Becciu’s head on the block. In previous
Vatican financial scandals, lower-ranking
figures usually took the fall and
any cardinal implicated was left in the
clear.
A cynic might say this is a typical
Vatican power play. As far back as
1859, French writer Edmond About
noted that if “occasionally officials of a
18 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

Jubílese Hoy!
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/JUNNO AROCHO ESTEVES
certain rank are punished, if even the
law is put in force against them with
unusual vigor, rest assured the public
interest has no part in the business.
The real springs of action are to be
sought elsewhere.”
At first glance, the Becciu affair
seems to fit this narrative. Handing
out contracts to friends and family has
a long tradition in the Vatican and is
hardly frowned upon in Italian society.
For a cardinal to pay the consequences
for such actions is certainly raising
eyebrows, and not just Becciu’s.
In addition, at least by Becciu’s account,
the pope was punishing him for
the hundreds of thousands of dollars
that ended up in the bank accounts
of his relatives, not the hundreds of
millions of dollars currently swirling
down the drain of the toxic London
deal, a scandal that likely has more
than Becciu’s fingerprints on it.
However, Occam’s Razor may suggest
otherwise. There’s an old adage that
sometimes you have to shoot a general
to change an army, and Pope Francis
might have noticed that Becciu had
nicely lined himself up in the crosshairs.
Add the fact that some of the money
diverted by the cardinal was meant
for helping migrants — an issue close
to the pope’s heart — and it seems
that the pope might have just figured
he was the right person to serve as an
example.
But before hailing a new era in Vatican
justice, some questions are still up
in the air.
Becciu himself noted that he wasn’t
ever put on trial and claims that a
court would find him innocent. His
case shows that high-ranking Church
officials are still above official scrutiny,
even if they can be punished for their
alleged crimes. Amid calls for greater
transparency, one-sentence late-night
press statements leave a lot to be
desired.
The cardinal is also still a cardinal.
There is no real definition of what
“rights” he has lost, although presumably
he won’t be allowed to vote in the
next conclave.
However, he will still be allowed to
wear the cardinalate red and be called
“Your Eminence” in the finest restaurants
in Rome, which for many prelates
is what being a cardinal is all about.
And don’t count the 72-year-old cardinal
out of the Vatican game entirely.
Becciu still has friends in the highest
echelons of the Church, and knows
where many of the bodies — and bank
accounts — are buried. If after the next
conclave it emerges that all is forgiven,
don’t be surprised: It’s not like he’s
been found guilty of a crime.
Charles Collins is an American
journalist currently living in the United
Kingdom, and is Crux’s managing
editor.
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greeting Cardinal Angelo
Becciu. The Vatican
announced Sept. 24 that
Pope Francis accepted
Becciu’s resignation as
prefect of the Congregation
for Saints’ Causes
and his renunciation of
the rights associated
with being a cardinal.
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October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 19
07082020_24-Hr Insurance_Angelus_Rect.indd 15/28/20 3:27 PM

Going HOME again
Our move back to
Mass started before
the lockdown. It
started at creation
BY MIKE AQUILINA / ANGELUS
Archbishop José H. Gomez celebrates
his first Mass with faithful present at
the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
June 7. Public Masses throughout
the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had
been suspended since March 16 amid
the coronavirus pandemic.
VICTOR ALEMÁN
20 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

Father Moises Agudo leads a eucharistic procession through San Francisco during a “Free the Mass” demonstration Sept. 20, organized by Archbishop
Salvatore Cordileone against the city’s harsh restrictions on public worship during the coronavirus pandemic.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/DENNIS CALLAHAN, ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO
VICTOR ALEMÁN
“We cannot live without the
Mass!”
That was the response
of the Christians of Abitinae, in 304,
when their interrogators asked why
they exposed themselves to danger by
meeting together on a Sunday.
Christianity was illegal in the Roman
Empire: a capital crime, punishable
by horrific torture and death. It had
been proscribed by law since the time
of the Emperor Nero, 2 1/2 centuries
before.
The risks were great. Yet Christians
were willing to take those risks. They
were, in fact, impatient to take them,
because life without the Mass was not
life for them.
More than 17 centuries later, the story
of the Martyrs of Abitinae has been
told again, this time as the centerpiece
of a letter from the Vatican’s Congregation
for Divine Worship. Titled “Let
Us Return to the Eucharist with Joy!”
and written by the congregation’s prefect,
Cardinal Robert Sarah, the letter
received the approval of Pope Francis
and was released to the bishops of the
world on Sept. 11.
In its pages, Cardinal Sarah considers
current events in light of the ancient
story. He acknowledges the risks
of attending Mass during a pandemic.
But he ends by urging “a rapid and
safe return to the celebration of the
Eucharist.”
Soon after his letter appeared,
bishops from throughout the United
States and Europe echoed his plea.
Pope Francis had been among the
first to raise the matter. When the
churches in Rome reopened for Mass
on May 22, he immediately stopped
televising his daily liturgy. Through
his spokesman he said he hoped
people would “be able to return to
communal familiarity with the Lord
in the sacraments, participating in the
Sunday liturgy and resuming, also in
churches, the daily attendance of the
Lord and his word.”
While all these members of the hierarchy
pressed for a return to congregational
gathering, they acknowledged
that continued isolation might be
necessary for people with a high level
of vulnerability to the virus. Even in
ordinary circumstances, people who
have a contagious illness — and people
who have severely compromised
immune systems — are permitted and
even encouraged to stay home.
The goal for all, however, should be
the full return to the sacraments.
These events made the news. They’re
recent, and they’re relevant. They
mark an outward movement that’s
observable in far-flung churches and
people.
But they’re driven by an interior
movement that was evident in the
martyrs of Abitinae. It’s what drove
them to say they could not live without
the Mass. And it’s a longing as old
as the world.
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 21

“The Last Supper,” by Juan de Juanes, 1562.
• • •
Adam and Eve were created for
intimacy with God, but they lost the
possibility when they disobeyed him
and committed the original sin. They
were banished from God’s presence.
By means of the ancient Law, God
sought to give humanity a new means
of approach. He gave Israel the gift of
his special presence, first in the tabernacle
in the wilderness and then in
the Jerusalem Temple. He also taught
his Chosen People how to worship,
sacrificially, as a community.
Sacrifice is a practice common to all
ancient religions, but modern Christians
find it remote from their experience
and difficult to understand.
The modern Jewish scholar Baruch
Levine put it in simple terms. He described
the Bible’s Book of Leviticus —
which contains the laws for sacrificial
worship — as etiquette for meals eaten
in the presence of God.
Through the Law God guided his
people back to intimacy, inviting them
to eat meals with him. This is what
families do.
When Moses presented the Law to
Israel, he sprinkled the people with
the blood of sacrificed animals, saying,
“Behold the blood of the covenant
which the LORD has made with you
in accordance with all these words”
(Exodus 24:8).
That blood sealed the covenant, the
divine decree by which God created
a family bond between himself and
Israel.
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And then, the Book of Exodus tells
us, the leaders of Israel “beheld God,
and ate and drank” (Exodus 24:11).
Because, again, this is what families do
together: they eat and drink; they share
meals.
These meals were very important.
They were acts of worship that gathered
and defined the community. To
share at the table was to be within the
covenant. To sin was to forfeit one’s
place at the table, one’s place in the
community and the covenant with
God.
Great as these meals were, the people
knew, however, that they were signs
of something far greater. In Psalm 23,
King David spoke of the Lord preparing
a table for him, a place where his
“cup overflows.”
In the Book of Proverbs, King
Solomon wrote mysteriously about
Wisdom’s banquet: “She has mixed
her wine, she has also set her table.
She has sent out her maids to call …
‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of
the wine I have mixed’ ” (Proverbs
9:2–3,5).
The prophet Isaiah foretold a great
banquet that would take place when
the Messiah, the Christ, came to
restore the fortunes of Israel: “On this
mountain the LORD of hosts will make
for all peoples a feast … a feast of wine
on the lees … of wine on the lees well
refined” (Isaiah 25:6).
And when the Messiah came, that
anticipated banquet was his deepest desire.
On the night of the Last Supper,
Jesus told his disciples: “I have earnestly
desired to eat this passover with you
before I suffer” (Luke 22:15).
He said this immediately before he
blessed bread and declared it to be his
body, before he blessed a chalice of
wine and declared it to be his blood.
He broke the bread and gave it to the
men who shared his table; and then he
shared the chalice with them.
Echoing Moses, he called his chalice
the “blood of the covenant” (Matthew
26:28). In a way Moses could not have
imagined, Jesus’ disciples “beheld
God, and they ate and drank.” And
he commanded them to “Do this in
remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).
Three days later, again he showed
his earnestness to share that meal. Just
hours after he had risen from the dead,
Father Matt Elshoff, OFM Cap., celebrates Mass
for the feast day of St. Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre
Pio) at St. Lawrence Brindisi Church in Watts on
Sept. 23.
DAVID AMADOR RIVERA
22 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

A CATHOLIC
DAY AND BOARDING SCHOOL
SINCE 1924
Father Alexis Ibarra distributes Communion
during Mass Sept. 20 at St. Anthony of Padua
Church in Los Angeles.
DAVID AMADOR RIVERA
High School Placement Test (HSPT)
Prep Course
he found himself “at table” with two
disciples. There “he took the bread
and blessed, and broke it, and gave
it to them,” and “was known to them
in the breaking of the bread” (Luke
24:30,35).
His disciples were faithful to his
command to “do this,” to re-present
his sacrificial, covenantal meal. Their
fidelity is evident in the Acts of the
Apostles (Acts 2:42,46; 20:7). It is evident
in the Letter to the Hebrews, with
its description of community worship
that involves an altar and the blood of
the covenant (Hebrews 12:24; 13:10).
And it is everywhere in the documents
of the early Church Fathers.
Christians, like their master, earnestly
desired to eat that meal that God had
foretold, and to eat it with God and the
family of the Church.
There has always been risk involved.
For the first 250 years of its existence,
the Church was an outlaw organization.
Underground Masses have been
celebrated in every age somewhere on
earth.
There are risks involved in every activity.
But Christians have always seen
the Mass as an essential activity, worth
great risks. Americans are venturing
out now, after many months, for the
most important things. The first among
those things should be the worship that
God established from the foundation
of the world.
Mike Aquilina is a contributing editor
to Angelus and the author of many
books, including “How Christianity
Saved Civilization … And Must Do So
Again” (Sophia Institute Press, $18.95).
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 23
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9/25/20 4:04 PM

The redemption of
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
landing in the
New World, 1492.
History’s most famous explorer
was a man of sincere Christian faith. How did he
become a symbol of everything that is wrong with Western Civilization?
EVERETT COLLECTION/SHUTTERSTOCK
BY MSGR. RICHARD ANTALL / ANGELUS
I
have hardly seen many family
members due to COVID-19, so I
was pleased when my sister and her
family recently came to join me for
dinner at my parish.
I asked my niece Maeve how school
was going, and she offered a review of
her classes. Maeve is not someone you
have to draw out for conversation, but
she made my jaw drop while talking
about her history class. She was learning
a lot, she told me with the insouciance
of a teacher’s pet. That included
— and she admitted that it was news to
her — that Christopher Columbus was
a bad man.
“A bad man!” I exclaimed. “What do
you mean?”
“Well, because of slavery and all that.”
As a Fourth Degree Knight of
Columbus, I felt it incumbent on me
to disagree. I told her that Columbus
was a valiant man who had proceeded
against all odds in his voyage and mission.
I said while he was a man of his
time, he was also a man of deep faith.
Her response was not to pursue the line
of argument. She didn’t say it, but I
saw “Whatever!” in the thought cloud
above her head.
I was left frustrated, realizing that
some of the most incomplete and
erroneous ideas have become common
cultural assumptions. If a student in a
Catholic school can condemn Columbus
as a “bad man,” then some influential
cultural warriors have gained a
victory.
Columbus is now thought and taught
to be a “bad man” because his voyage
of discovery led to a dramatic expansion
of European civilization on the world.
Columbus has become a symbol of all
that is wrong with Western Civilization,
and it has become the consensus that
24 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

Columin
the
1492.
EVERETT COLLECTION/SHUTTERSTOCK
everything would be better if Europeans
had not arrived in the New World.
This idea is even embraced by some
ecclesiastics, who propose that the
evangelization that took place was not
justified since the means by which
it was conducted were not always
upright.
I remember standing on a Mayan
pyramid in Tikal with some Spaniards
who sighed with guilt because their
ancestors had “destroyed” the civilization
whose ruins lay before us. Tikal
was destroyed before the conquistadors
arrived, of course, but that did not matter
to the romantic hankerings of these
modern, post-Franco Spaniards (who
enjoy all the perks and luxuries of the
culture they profess to hate).
“You don’t think that the Spanish
were not at least better than the people
who built this place for human sacrifice?”
I asked. “Didn’t you hear the
guide say they rolled the victims’ heads
down these steep steps?” They rolled
their eyes at my reply.
How do such ideas gain currency and
why are they being passed down to the
next generation?
Several books about Columbus have
been very instructive in teaching me
how people choose to think of him.
One is the 1996 science-fiction novel
“Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher
Columbus” (Tor Books, $8.99),
by Orson Scott Card.
The author imagines an alternative
history in which Columbus is stranded
in America with people from the
future. The planet has been catastrophically
depopulated and ecologically
damaged.
Columbus is given credit in the novel
for his sincere Christianity. But an
African woman named Diko comes
from the future to marry him and
change the course of human history,
supposedly to save the human race
from extinction. In my opinion, Diko’s
purpose is to power-wash Columbus
with political correctness.
Alternative-history fiction involves
reimagining the past to reshape it.
“Pastwatch” is an attempt in fiction to
do what cultural commentators are
trying to achieve by history writing:
change our understanding of the past
by adapting it to the prejudices of the
present. Ambiguity, thy name is alternative
history.
Card may have written a historical
novel that veered off into fantasy, but
he did teach me something important.
I knew that Christopher Columbus
wanted to find a trade route to the
Orient of Cathay and Cipango, as he
called China and Japan.
I assumed that he was motivated by
what a German book about him captured
in a title, “Um Gott und Gold,”
or “About God and Gold.” I learned
that the gold the discoverer wanted was
supposed to pay for the liberation of
Constantinople and the reconquest of
Jerusalem.
I also read a book about Columbus’
laborious study of the Fathers and the
Bible to defend his route to the East by
way of the West, as well as his prediction
of the end of the world if his plan
was achieved. It is called “Christopher
Columbus’s Book of Prophecies,” and
shows how much Columbus worked
out of a medieval theological mindset.
In other words, Columbus was a
brilliant sailor, a kind of entrepreneur
of discovery, and a Christian mystic.
He was concerned about conquest
but as a means of evangelization. This
seems on the face of it to be a contradiction,
but he lived in the shadow of
the Islam’s conquest of almost half of
the world the Europeans knew and its
ambition to conquer the other half.
He saw himself marching toward the
apocalypse, premised on the preaching
of Christ to all the nations as predicted
by Scripture.
Much of the rejection of Columbus
has to do with the imposition of
European values and the exploitation
of indigenous peoples that happened
long after the explorer died. Still others
argue that it would have been better
for the Incas and the Aztecs to keep
their violent empires and gold (until
the French or the Portuguese or the
English got to them) than to discover
Jesus. That is a philosophical position
that really is a decision about faith.
The intellectuals who reject Columbus
must rely on a hypothetical,
alternative history in which Columbus
did not discover America. But the real
choice is between seeing the value of
the past, with its light and shadows, or
deciding to completely erase it.
Pulling down the statues of Columbus
doesn’t help people see reality in
its complicated ambiguity — it makes
people ignore the past, and thus fail to
learn from it. Calling Columbus a “bad
man” because of ideas that are antithetical
or politically incorrect to some
now, doesn’t make you more aware of
history, but less so.
History should give us a more complicated
and nuanced view of human
affairs, not a narrower one.
Protesters topple a statue of Christopher Columbus in front of the Minnesota State Capitol in St.
Paul, Minnesota, on June 10.
SHUTTERSTOCK
Msgr. Richard Antall is pastor of Holy
Name Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and
author of “The Wedding” (Lambing
Press, $16.95). He spent 20 years as a
missionary in El Salvador.
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 25

WITH GRACE
BY DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE
Surprise on Shamian Island
The process of adopting a baby girl in China was full of worry,
fear, and anxiety. Then God stepped in
The author with her newly adopted daughter at the Chongqing Zoo in China.
COURTESY GRAZIE CHRISTIE
26 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

Chinese toddlers awaiting adoption at the social welfare institute in Chongqing.
COURTESY GRAZIE CHRISTIE
It is an incontrovertible fact to
me that if we are but clear-eyed
enough to see it, we can watch
the hand of God at work everywhere
along the course of our lives. Tenderly
caressing, ceaselessly guiding, carefully
shielding, gently pulling — he has
not left us unattended for a moment.
He does much more than watch and
accompany. To think of his role in our
lives as that of a loving spectator is to
say that a good mother only yearns
over her infant crying in his crib, and
doesn’t fly to clasp him in her arms.
When I was a girl with a child’s shining
faith, I saw God’s hand in mine
as plainly as I did my pretty mother’s.
Later, as the scales of life grew over
my eyes, this clarity of vision mostly
left me. But (and how thankful I am
for this!) there have been three occasions
when a light broke upon me and
I was granted a brief reprieve from my
tragic blindness of spirit. The most
beautiful one happened a few days
after I met my youngest daughter.
I went to China to adopt a little
toddler girl after almost two years of
anxious waiting. Two years is a long
time, especially when they are filled
with great uncertainty. Are we doing
the right thing? Are we going to find
challenges that we can’t easily overcome?
Are there better parents out
there for this child than us?
These questions rolled around and
around in my head for all the long
months I spent waiting to hear from
the agency. Finally the call came and
off I went to China, without my husband,
as he had to stay home to work
and to care for our other children.
I met our daughter on my third day
in China when I, along with 12 couples
in our adoption group, went to a
social welfare institute in Chongqing.
We joined a milling confusion of
perhaps 50 foreign couples waiting to
collect their long-hoped-for children.
There was a room with a glass wall
along the back and we all pressed our
faces against it. That room had plastic
gym mats on the floor and on the mats
were dozens of babies and toddlers, all
in either pink or green rompers. Our
daughters and sons, on the other side
of the glass. Imagine our exultation!
One by one they called our names
and a child was handed out to a weeping
mother and a proud father, or in
my case, just a joyful woman.
At first my new daughter was calm
and quiet. She seemed puzzled by me
and looked at me thoughtfully when I
tried to make her smile. She endured
a warm bath, perhaps her first, with
patience. She put up with my bumbling
attempts to warm her bottle to
just under boiling but not scalding, as
I’d been told she was used to.
She calmly let me hold her and hug
her and caress her and hand her toys,
which she promptly dropped, not
knowing what a toy was. She suffered
me to dangle her in front of my laptop
computer so her father could exult
over her chubby cheeks and rosebud
mouth.
Finally, it was all too much for a
little girl who had spent all her short
life lying virtually unattended in a
hard wooden crib. On our second day
together, she started to cry.
She cried endlessly, disconsolately.
She woefully but decidedly rejected
all my timid advances and sobbed
through her bottle. She wept and
shook and rocked, and cried even in
her sleep. All that night I heard her
little hiccups of leaden despair and
watched tiny teardrops gather at the
corner of her tightly shut eyes.
This went on the next day, all day.
By nightfall I was as grief-stricken as
she was. Me, a mother many times
over, who had delighted in all my
babies with a cheerfulness that had
never faltered, and whose babies had
delighted in her. Me, a woman who
could change an infant with one hand
while shoveling food into a squirming
toddler with another, and all three of
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 27

The author and her daughter at the Catholic church on Shamian Island in Guangzhou where she
attended a Mass that would change her life — and her daughter’s name.
us laughing uproariously.
I could not console her. What if she
couldn’t love me? What if I couldn’t
love her? That night I tasted perfect
misery.
Sometime during that long night I
began to pray. Mentally I threw myself
at the feet of Our Lady and begged
her to help me. She, the best of
mothers, the acme of tenderness, had
to help me be a proper mother to my
new little one, to teach me to love her
patiently, calmly, at a distance, for as
long as it took.
I begged her to take away my fears
that my daughter would not learn to
love me. With every hour I felt more
hopeless, and it was just past dawn
when I gave up. I rose and dressed,
and put my sad daughter in the stroller
for a long walk.
We were then in Shamian Island, in
Guangzhou, near the American consulate.
Shamian is a former foreign
concession, an oasis of elaborate Western
style buildings and wide streets;
safe and quiet, even at dawn.
Just a couple of blocks from the hotel
COURTESY GRAZIE CHRISTIE
I turned the corner and to my shocked
surprise found myself facing a lovely
little church. The sign proclaimed:
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic
Church. And the 6 a.m. Mass was just
beginning.
I had not been able to find a church
the whole time I had been in China. I
ached for the Mass. And there it was,
impossibly, magically, after my long
dark night.
The little church was almost full of
elderly Chinese men and women. I
entered a pew with my little girl and
every face turned to us. Shining faces,
beaming, loving. The priest bowed
to me, welcomed me. He began the
familiar-in-any-language Mass, which
I could follow perfectly and my heart,
which only a few minutes before was
heavy with gloom, started to dance
within me.
When the priest lifted the host it was
as though he was pulling every black
thought and hopeless feeling out of
me and flinging it to the skies, to be
swallowed by Love himself.
After Mass the elderly men and
women gathered around me, saying
sweet things I couldn’t understand,
patting me and the baby with soft
hands, bowing and bobbing. The
priest blessed my daughter elaborately,
with wide movements and incomprehensible
words. He blessed me, too. I
cried again, this time with gladness.
I remembered then what my priest
at home told me when I went to him
with my fears and doubts during the
long wait for my daughter. He said,
“You will bring her home and you will
baptize her. You will give her to him.
He will take care of everything. His
hand will be upon you and you will
not be afraid.”
He was right. If God had whispered
in my heart, and in my husband’s
heart, the fervent desire to adopt this
pretty baby, then God would provide
the grace we needed to be her good
and patient parents. And when I was
overcome with worry and doubt, his
saving hand would lead me out of
myself and to him, as he had led me
from the dark and despairing night to
the bright dawn of the Mass.
28 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

From that moment on I was filled
with calm certainty and optimism. I
was the daughter of God, and no mere
spectator God but a Father who runs
to the rescue of his stumbling child.
My heart was buoyant with hope
and I knew I could wait calmly for
as long as it took for my little girl to
learn to love me. When I brought her
home we christened her Lourdes, in
thanksgiving for that miracle of a little
church, and of a Mass at dawn, just
when it was most needed.
It was only a few months later that
God granted my husband and I a perfect
moment with her. She was lying
between us in bed, almost asleep. She
reached out to me and patted my arm.
“Mama” she said softly and confidently.
Then she patted her father’s arm.
“Papa.” She smiled contentedly and
drifted off to sleep, secure, loved, loving.
She was ours, and we were hers,
and all three of us were his.
I wonder sometimes how many
instances of God’s loving providence
pass unnoticed in the course of our
lives? How many times have I chalked
up some splendid gift from my Father
as coincidence, or the work of my own
cleverness, or sheer dumb luck?
I suppose that is one of the things
that will amaze us when and if we go
to heaven. We will see how he saved
us here by sending us a friend to give
us good advice, or there by making
incontrovertibly clear to us that our
enemy was just a bumbling human
being like ourselves.
And we will know, finally, how the
graces that flowed and gushed from
the altar at each and every Mass that
he called us to attend bore us up, and
carried us along in a glad torrent, right
to his very throne.
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October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 29
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WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
“The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” papyrus fragment.
Following the money
A journalist uncovers the true-crime tale of a phony piece of
parchment with an anti-Christian agenda
BY JOHN J. MILLER / ANGELUS
When a Harvard professor
needed fast cash to test
the date of a controversial
document that made a startling claim
about Jesus, she knew where to go:
“Funding for the carbon-14 testing
was generously provided by a gift from
Tricia Nichols,” noted Karen King
of Harvard Divinity School in her
2014 article for Harvard Theological
Review.
But who was Tricia Nichols? The
journalist Ariel Sabar wanted to find
out. He’d been covering King even
before she had announced in 2012
the discovery of a piece of papyrus that
quoted Jesus as referring to “my wife.”
Written in Coptic, an ancient Egyptian
language that uses Greek letters,
the fragment is smaller than a business
card and contains eight lines of broken
text. It was supposedly part of a much
larger manuscript, now lost. King gave
the scrap a provocative title: “The
Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” If nothing
else, the name was a brilliant bit of
branding: She made front-page news
around the world.
Yet it was also a fragment of her imagination.
The once-celebrated document
is a forgery, as many scholars
suspected from the start and as Sabar
shows conclusively in his outstanding
book of investigative journalism,
“Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con
Man, and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”
(Penguin Random House, $29.95).
Sabar has written a true-crime tale
that reads like a reverse “Da Vinci
Code”: Whereas Dan Brown’s notorious
novel described the fictional
exploits of a Harvard professor who
battles Catholic reactionaries and
learns that Jesus and Mary Magdalene
were husband and wife, Sabar’s work
of nonfiction tells how a Harvard
scholar was duped into believing the
false claims of a phony document because
they appealed to her professional
ambitions and ideological fantasies.
(I podcasted with Sabar here.)
Tricia Nichols played a minor but
revealing role in the drama. She
donated $5,000 to Harvard Divinity
School to pay for the radiocarbon test
of King’s so-called gospel. Although
King cited Nichols in her academic
article, the Harvard scholar refused
to answer any of Sabar’s questions
about her patron. A determined Sabar
searched for Nichols on his own: “It
was a common enough name, but
after some false starts I found her.”
So who is the person who underwrote
a key study of a bogus text that makes
explosive claims about Jesus? “The
Sen
Nam
Add
City
30 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

widow of a medical testing magnate,
Nichols is a Southern California philanthropist
and abortion-rights activist
with no record of having ever before
donated to Harvard Divinity School.”
Moreover, notes Sabar, the gift to
Harvard via Nichols’ Cirila Fund “coincided
with Nichols’ public criticism
of a hospital that banned elective abortions
after affiliating with a Catholic
health system.” Sabar found a letter to
the editor written by Nichols and published
in the Daily Pilot, an Orange
County newspaper: “The Catholic
Church’s historical position, based on
the likes of St. Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas, is that women were created
to live under the subjugation of men,”
wrote Nichols in 2013.
“This assumption is surpassed only
by the sanctimony of the Covenant
Health Network. Central to its doctrine
is that women are to be denied
self-determination in their healthcare
decisions, and male administrators are
granted the audacious right to select
which legal reproductive procedures
they’ll make available.”
After quoting these passages, Sabar
observes dryly: “That the generous
funder of a key test had a contemporaneous
political stake in a specific
test result — one that challenged ‘the
Catholic Church’s historical position’
— was never publicly disclosed.”
The dating test, by the way, showed
that the papyrus that enamored King
is indeed old. The forged text it bears,
however, is the product of modern
chicanery. Although King and other
scholars fell for it, several experts in
Coptic regarded the script as sloppy
and spotted grammatical problems.
Some of them were distinguished
professors, but in an interesting and
even inspiring detail, a couple of
influential skeptics were self-trained
scholars who worked from their homes
and lacked institutional support.
By following the money, Sabar
uncovers a small episode in what is a
much bigger story about a fraud that
involves everything from the priestabuse
scandal and online pornography
to academic self-dealing and the perils
of postmodern relativism.
At its heart, though, Sabar’s excellent
book is about
the quest for
truth. That’s
why he
called it “Veritas,”
which
also happens
to be the
Latin word
that appears
on the seal
of Harvard
University.
John J. Miller is director of the Dow
Journalism Program at Hillsdale
College, a national correspondent for
National Review, and the author of
“Reading Around: Journalism on Authors,
Artists, and Ideas” (Woodbridge
Press, $12.99).
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October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 31

THE CRUX
BY HEATHER KING
SHUTTERSTOCK ILLUSTRATION
What makes a
truly independent
Catholic thinker?
Software developer Paul Graham
recently posted a piece called
“The Four Quadrants of Conformism.”
An individual’s conformist tendencies
reveal themselves in childhood, says
Graham, and he asks us to imagine a
Cartesian grid.
“The kids in the upper left quadrant,
the aggressively conventional-minded
ones, are the tattletales. They believe
not only that rules must be obeyed,
but that those who disobey them must
be punished.
32 • ANGELUS • October 2-9, 2020

SHUTTERSTOCK ILLUSTRATION
“The kids in the lower left quadrant,
the passively conventional-minded, are
the sheep. They’re careful to obey the
rules, but when other kids break them,
their impulse is to worry that those kids
will be punished, not to ensure that
they will.
“The kids in the lower right quadrant,
the passively independent-minded,
are the dreamy ones. They don’t care
much about rules and probably aren’t
100 percent sure what the rules even
are.
“And the kids in the upper right
quadrant, the aggressively independent-minded,
are the naughty ones.
When they see a rule, their first
impulse is to question it. Merely being
told what to do makes them inclined to
do the opposite.”
In adulthood, he continues, the
aggressively conventional-minded cry,
“Crush !” The passively
conventional-minded fear, “What will
the neighbors think?” The passively
independent-minded shrug, “To each
his own.” And the call of the aggressively
independent-minded is, “Eppur
si muove” — “And yet, it moves” —
Galileo’s dogged insistence, apropos of
the earth, in the face of the Inquisition.
Graham’s thesis is that passively
conventionally minded are the largest
group and the aggressively independent-minded
(among whom he clearly
counts himself) are the smallest.
We would probably all like to count
ourselves among the independent-minded.
But how deeply have the
purportedly independent-minded in
our culture truly thought?
I’m with Graham completely in
bemoaning the decline in the spirit of
free inquiry within universities. On the
other hand, he believes the independent-minded
need to be protected
because they have “all the new ideas,”
and gives as an example the successful
startup CEO.
It’s accepted without further exploration,
in other words, that the goal
for all four groups is the acquisition
of power, property, and prestige.
Thus, the aggressively independent
in Graham’s scheme are really simply
the smartest, most driven, most secure,
with the most to gain — and the least
to lose — from the attempt to bend the
world to their will.
Where does the saint fit into such a
scheme? In which of the four quadrants
do you place, say, a virgin martyr,
or Archbishop Oscar Romero?
The truly independently thinking
individual has in fact recognized his
profound limitations, weaknesses, and
propensity for sin, and is therefore
entirely dependent on Christ.
The independent thinker ponders the
mystery of suffering, for example, and
at some point realizes that every minute
by rights, we should be lamenting
before the doors of every prison, every
refugee and forced labor camp, every
abortion clinic, every execution chamber,
every tree where a human being
was lynched, the site of every Nazi gas
chamber, every home where a woman
was beaten, every sacristy where a child
was abused, every convalescent home
where the aged languish, forgotten and
alone.
At some point, the independent
thinker thus orders his life, inner and
outer, in a way that acknowledges and
addresses all of those evils. You order
your prayer, actions, and habits to the
promotion of peace, to some rough
form of poverty, to some rudimentary
willingness to forego security, power,
property, and prestige. You’re chaste
in the full Catholic sense of the word,
in or out of marriage, because you
support the human family literally
with your own body. You constantly
examine your conscience, constantly
fall short, constantly pick yourself up
and start over again.
Such an individual doesn’t ignore
the world, or set himself against the
world. Like Christ, such a person slips
through the crowd unnoticed.
The truly independent thinker was
thus aware of racial injustice, to cite
a current cultural example, decades
before the death of George Floyd.
The response to such a death is not
therefore to set fire to a courthouse and
call for the abolition of the police. The
response is to ask oneself: What was I
doing in solidarity with George Floyd
before he was killed? What have I been
doing all along to promote a responsible,
competent, and compassionate
police force?
Perhaps you’ve been helping those in
recovery from addiction, praying that
George Floyd, and perhaps the police
officer, showed up before putting
themselves and others in danger.
Perhaps you’ve been raising a family,
remaining faithful to your spouse while
silently suffering raging lust for your
neighbor. Perhaps you’ve been in prison
for protesting at a nuclear weapons
site, silently praying for world peace.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, St.
Maximilian Kolbe, and Father Alfred
Delp, martyrs under the Nazi regime,
were aggressively nonconformist only
to the extent that a follower of Christ
is aggressively nonconformist simply
by virtue of the fact that he believes
and acts from that belief by obeying
the laws of supernatural love. They
couldn’t have cared less about, in any
worldly sense, succeeding.
While the number of such people
is far smaller than that of successful
startup CEOs, their influence is of
infinitely further reach — and eternal.
“I urge you therefore, brothers, by the
mercies of God, to offer your bodies
as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing
to God, your spiritual worship. Do not
conform yourselves to this age but be
transformed by the renewal of your
mind, that you may discern what is the
will of God, what is good and pleasing
and perfect” (Romans 12:1–2).
Or as Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin
Suhard, archbishop of Paris from 1940
to 1949, observed: “To be a witness
does not consist in engaging in propaganda
or even in stirring people up,
but in being a living mystery; it means
to live in such a way that one’s life
would not make sense if God did not
exist.”
Heather King is an award-winning author, speaker, and workshop leader. For more, visit heather-king.com.
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 33

Join us at
THE 34 TH ANNUAL SOAR!
AWARDS GALA
A Virtual Event!
Celebrating religious life and honoring
Father Greg Boyle, S.J.
Founder/Director
Homeboy Industries
Los Angeles, CA
-
Friday, November 6, 2020 (5:00 PM EST)
To support the gala or register to attend, please visit
www.soar-usa.org/2020dc
(There is no cost to attend the gala.)
Genevieve L. Murphy
Former SOAR!
Board Member
Boca Raton, FL – Washington, D.C.
For more information, please contact Kevin Callahan
at (202) 529-7627 or events@soar-usa.org
All proceeds from this event will support
the care of aging Catholic Sisters, Brothers and Priests.
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