Angelus News | August 27, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 17

ANGELUS 

THE NEW 

AGE OF 

DANTE 

700 years later, 

Christianity's 

greatest poet is 

still speaking 

August 27, 2021 Vol. 6 No. 17

ANGELUS 

August 27, 2021 

Vol. 6 • No. 17 

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ON THE COVER 

CNS/NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 

Sept. 14 will mark the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri. 

Around the world, the milestone is sparking renewed attention to his 

legacy and even a “Year of Dante” in the poet’s native Italy. On Page 10, 

art historian Elizabeth Lev argues that today’s language-obsessed culture 

needs Dante’s faith in the beauty of words more than ever before. 

On Page 14, Dante scholar Enzo Arnone explains the spiritual lessons 

“The Divine Comedy” can offer Christians and wandering souls alike. 

THIS PAGE 

CNS/RALPH TEDY EROL, REUTERS 

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Cayes, Haiti, Aug. 15, following a magnitude 

7.2 earthquake the previous 

day. As of press time, the death toll 

from the quake had risen above 1,400. 

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CONTENTS 

Archbishop Gomez..................................................................................................................... 3 

World, Nation, and Local News.......................................................................................... 4-6 

In Other Words............................................................................................................................. 7 

Father Rolheiser............................................................................................................................ 8 

Scott Hahn................................................................................................................................... 32 

Events Calendar......................................................................................................................... 33 

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Why the popes love Dante more than he loved them 

Gift to help ‘landscape study’ of LA’s religious sisters 

Why El Salvador’s young leader is no friend of the Church 

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26 

A Midwestern bishop’s advice on adjusting to God’s time 

Robert Brennan on Skid Row’s high-rise neighbors 

28 

What ‘Respect’ gets right about the power of forgiveness 

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Always Forward - newsletter.angelusnews.com 

30 

Heather King on the brave book challenging the teenage trans myth 

August 27, 2021 • ANGELUS • 1

POPE WATCH 

Mary’s secrets to heaven 

The following is adapted from the 

Holy Father’s Angelus address on Sunday, 

Aug. 15, the feast of the Assumption, 

with the faithful and pilgrims 

gathered in St. Peter’s Square. 

Mary’s secret is humility. It 

is her humility that attracted 

God’s gaze to her. The 

human eye always looks for grandeur 

and allows itself to be dazzled by what 

is flashy. Instead, God does not look at 

the appearance, God looks at the heart 

(cf 1 Samuel 16:7) and is enchanted by 

humility. 

Today, looking at Mary assumed into 

heaven, we can say that humility is the 

way that leads to heaven. The word 

“humility,” as we know, comes from 

the Latin word “humus,” which means 

“earth.” 

It is paradoxical: To arrive on high, 

in heaven, what is needed is to stay 

low, like the earth! Jesus teaches this: 

“the one who humbles himself will be 

exalted” (Luke 14:11). God does not 

exalt us because of our gifts, because of 

our wealth or how well we do things, 

but because of humility. 

Today, then, let us ask ourselves: How 

am I doing with humility? Do I want 

to be recognised by others, to affirm 

myself and to be praised, or do I think 

rather about serving? Do I know how 

to listen, like Mary, or do I want only 

to speak and receive attention? Do I 

know how to keep silence, like Mary, 

or am I always chattering? Do I know 

how to take a step back, defuse quarrels 

and arguments, or do I always want to 

excel? 

In her littleness, Mary wins heaven 

first. The secret of her success 

is precisely that she recognizes her 

lowliness, that she recognizes her need. 

With God, only those who recognize 

themselves as nothing can receive 

everything. Only the one who empties 

him or herself can be filled by him. 

Those who are filled with themselves 

have no space for God. 

The poet, Dante Alighieri, calls the 

Virgin Mary “humbler and loftier than 

any creature” (“Paradiso,” XXXIII, 2). It 

is beautiful to think that the humblest 

and loftiest creature in history, the first 

to win heaven with her entire being, in 

soul and body, lived out her life for the 

most part within the domestic walls, in 

the ordinary, in humility. 

The days of the “full of grace” were 

not all that striking. They followed one 

after the other, often exactly the same, 

in silence: externally, nothing extraordinary. 

But God’s gaze was always 

upon her, admiring her humility, her 

availability, the beauty of her heart 

never stained by sin. 

It is a huge message of hope for us, for 

you, for each one of us, for you whose 

days are always the same, tiring and 

often difficult. Mary reminds you today 

that God calls you, too, to this glorious 

destiny. These are not beautiful words: 

It is the truth. It is not a well-crafted, 

beautiful ending, a pious illusion or a 

false consolation. No, it is the truth, it 

is pure reality, it is as real, as live, and 

true as the Madonna assumed into 

heaven. 

Papal Prayer Intention for August: Let us pray for the 

Church, that she may receive from the Holy Spirit the grace 

and strength to reform herself in the light of the Gospel. 

2 • ANGELUS • August 27, 2021

NEW WORLD OF FAITH 

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

People of the Assumption 

The return of a new coronavirus 

variant has left many of us feeling 

sad and disappointed. 

For more than a year, we have been 

living with the fear of illness and death. 

Now, we are again trying to find our 

way, to function with the reality of this 

deadly virus that remains all around us. 

The great solemnity that we celebrated 

last Sunday, August 15 gives us 

every reason for hope. 

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption 

into heaven, body and soul, calls 

us to set aside fear, and remember the 

glorious destiny that has been promised 

to each and every person. 

As Catholics, we are people of the 

Assumption. We follow the One who 

conquered death and raised Blessed 

Mary into heaven at the end of her 

earthly life. Where Mary has gone, we 

know we can go too. 

This is a powerful truth in every age. 

But especially now, in this fearful time, 

we need to renew our faith in the resurrection 

of the body and the promise 

of heaven. 

When Pope Pius XII declared the 

dogma of the Assumption in 1950, it 

was at the end of a half-century period 

that had seen two world wars; the genocide 

of millions of the Jewish people; 

a nuclear bomb attack; an influenza 

outbreak that infected and killed nearly 

100 million worldwide; and the rise 

of atheist-totalitarian regimes in Russia 

and China. 

In this time of widespread death, cruel 

disrespect for the human person and 

human body, and a spreading sense 

that the individual does not matter, the 

pope’s proclamation of the Assumption 

dogma came as both the answer 

and the antidote. It was a reminder 

to a troubled world that God was still 

in charge, that his love and mercies 

endure forever. 

From the earliest days, the Church 

has believed that Blessed Mary was 

the first of us to experience the joy of 

eternal life, but that she was not to be 

the last. Her Assumption has always 

been regarded as a pledge that the 

resurrection of the body is promised to 

all of us. 

Ancient accounts of the Assumption 

tell us that when it came time for 

Mary’s earthly life to end, the 12 apostles 

were summoned by angels from 

the ends of the earth, to be with Our 

Lady at her bedside in Jerusalem. 

This is a beautiful image of the 

Church and I think it speaks powerfully 

to our mission in this moment. 

Like the apostles, we need to stay 

united in prayer with the mother of 

Jesus, who is the mother of the Church 

and the mother of each one of us who 

believes in her Son. 

With Mary, we need to proclaim, 

“The Almighty has done great things 

for me and holy is his Name.” 

The truth of the Assumption is the 

answer and the antidote that our world 

needs in this time of coronavirus. 

In this time of the coronavirus, the 

Assumption tells us that disease and 

death do not have the last word in any 

person’s life. Death may come but our 

bodies are destined to rise, as Blessed 

Mary’s did. The Almighty will still do 

great things for us, just as he did for 

Mary. 

Like her Immaculate Conception, 

Mary’s Assumption is the sign of God’s 

love for the human person, his tender 

care and involvement in every human 

life. 

Our Blessed Mother Mary was specially 

chosen for her role in salvation 

history — conceived without original 

sin and given the grace to live with 

In this time of the coronavirus, the Assumption 

tells us that disease and death do not 

have the last word in any person’s life. 

perfect holiness throughout her life. 

But our neighbors need to be reminded 

that God also has a personal 

hand in the creation of each and every 

person. He knows our name, even 

before our parents do. Each of us is 

born because he wants us to be here, 

and because he has a plan of love for 

our lives. 

In our parishes, ministries, and 

schools, we need to proclaim these 

truths with joy and confidence — that 

every human person is precious in 

God’s eyes, that God creates us to 

know joy and love in this life and to 

live forever with him in the life to 

come. 

Pray for me and I will pray for you. 

And let us keep praying for our 

nation, for all those who are sick and 

dying and all those who are caring for 

them, at home and in hospitals. 

And let us ask our Blessed Mother 

Mary to intercede for us and bring 

deliverance from this pandemic. And 

may she strengthen all of us in the 

Church, “now, and at the hour of our 

death.” 


WORLD 

■ Vatican: Beware killer robots 

Speaking from its capacity as a permanent observer to the United Nations, a 

Vatican statement warned against the potential danger for peace and security of 

“killer robots” during the Aug. 3 meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts 

on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). 

The statement described LAWS as “swarms of ‘kamikaze’ mini drones,” and 

spoke of other weaponry-like drones, unmanned vehicles and missiles which use 

artificial intelligence to identify and target enemies. 

“If functioning without any direct human supervision, such systems could make 

mistakes in identifying the intended targets due to some unidentified ‘bias,’ ” the 

statement read. It also warned that the development of such systems could violate 

standing international laws and norms. 

“The end does not justify the means used to achieve it,” the Vatican said. 

Father Olivier Maire, who was killed on Aug. 6. | 

CNS/MONTFORT MISSIONARIES 

■ France: Suspect in 

priest killing confesses 

A 40-year-old Rwandan immigrant 

turned himself in for the murder of Father 

Olivier Maire, French provincial 

of the Montfort Missionaries. 

Emmanuel Abayisenga reportedly 

beat Father Maire to death on Aug. 

6. At the time, Abayisenga was living 

in housing provided by Father Maire 

in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre while he 

awaited trial for the 2020 arson attack 

on the cathedral of Nantes. 

In another bizarre development, 

French Catholic newspaper La Croix 

identified Abayisenga as the man in a 

2016 photo seen greeting Pope Francis 

during a papal audience in Rome. 

While some French politicians have 

cited Father Maire’s death as evidence 

of the country’s failed immigration 

policies, Catholics have focused on the 

murdered priest’s charity. 

“This man was under police control, 

and it was the priest himself who took 

the risk of welcoming him!” tweeted 

Father Cédric Burgun, a friend of Father 

Maire and vice dean of the canon 

law faculty at the Catholic University 

of Paris. “Because charity and mercy 

take risks that some politicians have 

forgotten.” 

■ Britain blocks treatment for Jewish baby 

A right-of-life battle drawing international scrutiny is unfolding in the U.K., 

where an appeals court has upheld a high court decision to cease life-threatening 

treatment for a 2-year-old Hasidic Jewish girl. 

Alta Fixsler is the daughter of Israeli parents, who was born in the U.K. eight 

weeks premature and with severe hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in 2018. 

Doctors treating the girl argue that continued treatment is not in her “best interests.” 

But Fixsler’s father — who is also a U.S. citizen — and mother are contesting 

the plan to remove life-sustaining treatment, citing their religious beliefs. 

Hospitals in both Israel and the U.S. have offered to continue treatment for the 

girl. The U.S. Embassy in London has issued a provisionary visa to allow her to 

enter the country, while U.S. senators from both parties have asked U.K. prime 

minister Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden to intervene. 

In an Aug. 9 Wall Street Journal column, writer William McGurn said the case 

came down to whether life-or-death decisions are “best left to the courts and the 

clinicians.” 

“Or might there be something to be said in cases like Alta’s,” McGurn continued, 

“for deferring to the two people who love her most, her mom and dad — 

Abraham and Chaya Fixsler? 

Hope after a hard year — People attend a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Bechara Rai, Maronite patriarch, to 

mark the one-year anniversary of Beirut's port blast on Aug. 4. The explosion killed more than 200 people, 

injured more than 6,000, and displaced more than 300,000. The cardinal has come under pressure recently for 

speaking out on behalf of the people of Lebanon. | CNS/MOHAMED AZAKIR 


NATION 

■ New Mexico: Church properties 

to be sold in online auction 

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe plans to auction off hundreds of its properties this 

fall as part of a bankruptcy settlement. 

The online auction will be the first of its kind for a Catholic diocese. It comes 

after a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled last fall that the New Mexico archdiocese 

had fraudulently transferred money into property and other assets to avoid paying 

larger payouts to victims of sexual abuse. 

Nearly 140 parcels of property will be up for auction in September, and several 

hundred more in November. Most of them are vacant lots. 

Meanwhile, the archdiocese is collecting donations to pay for the settlement. If 

the archdiocese fails to meet the settlement, individual parishes could be liable to 

sexual abuse lawsuits, warned Father Glenn Jones, vicar general for the archdiocese. 

“In all of this, we should never forget that claimants have been living with the 

nightmare of past abuse for decades,” wrote Father Jones to Sante Fe Catholics 

June 30. “While the vast majority of perpetrators are now deceased, victims’ pain 

continues, and in charity we should all have empathy for their tragic plight.” 

■ ‘A window into heaven’ 

for remodeled Queens church 

Catholics at a 

parish in Queens, 

New York, are 

being welcomed 

back to church 

after the worst of 

the COVID-19 

pandemic by a 

glimpse of “heaven.” 

Over the last 

several months, 

St. Gabriel of the 

Sorrowful Mother 

Church has 

gotten a modern 

makeover: a new 

marble altar 

and ambo, blue 

carpet, and even 

The new painted altarpiece at St. Gabriel Church in Queens during a July 28 an immersion 

dedication service. | CNS/JOE POLLILIO 

baptismal font in 

its center. 

But the centerpiece is a 35-by-45 foot rounded altarpiece created by a team led by 

contemporary Spanish painter David López Ribes, featuring icons depicting several 

mysteries of salvation inspired by traditional Eastern iconography and painted by 

using techniques from modern artists. 

“When we see these beautiful images behind us, they are the window into heaven,” 

said Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio at a July 28 service to dedicate the 

mural. “They teach us what is to come: the glory of heaven, the mystery of heaven.” 

The altarpiece and church renovations were planned and started by longtime pastor 

Father Giacchino Basile, who died from COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic. 

An Afghan interpreter brought to the U.S. hugs his 

nephew at Sacramento Airport on Aug. 5. | CNS/ 

BRITTANY HOSEA-SMALL, REUTERS 

■ Catholic Charities 

helping welcome Afghan 

guides, interpreters 

As the Taliban takes over Afghanistan, 

Catholic Charities workers in Virginia 

are helping welcome Afghans who 

served as guides and interpreters for 

American forces into the U.S. 

Operation Allies Refuge, which began 

July 30, has been bringing planeloads of 

pre-vetted Afghan families to Dulles International 

Airport outside of Washington, 

D.C., and then to the U.S. Army’s 

Fort Lee in Virginia. There, six Catholic 

Charities workers from the Diocese of 

Arlington, Virginia, have been working 

with the new arrivals. 

“People come with nothing and are 

starting over,” Stephen Carattini, president 

and CEO of diocesan Catholic 

Charities, told the Arlington Catholic 

Herald. “These are folks who helped 

our government in good faith and now 

we have an opportunity to return that 

favor.” 

For up to five years after their arrival, 

Catholic Charities will help them enroll 

the families’ children in school, get 

health care, and find employment and a 

place to live. 

Other Catholic organizations helping 

resettle Afghan translators and interpreters 

include the U.S. Conference 

of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and 

Refugee Services. 


LOCAL 

Bishop Peter Esterka at a Mass in Minnesota in 2018. 

| CNS/DAVE HRBACEK 

■ Bishop of displaced 

Czech Catholics 

dies in OC 

Bishop Peter Esterka, a native of 

Czechoslovakia who fled to Minnesota 

to avoid communist persecution, 

died in Orange County Aug. 10. The 

retired bishop was 85. 

Bishop Esterka left Communist 

Czechoslovakia in 1957, and was ordained 

in Rome in 1963. He came to 

Minnesota in 1967, where he taught 

theology. 

Bishop Esterka devoted himself to 

working among Czech Catholics 

in the U.S. and Canada, eventually 

extending his ministry to Australia. In 

1999, he was named auxiliary bishop 

of Brno, Czechoslovakia, and entrusted 

with the spiritual care of all Czech 

Catholics living abroad. 

“He has touched so many people,” 

said Joan Timmerman, a former 

teaching colleague and close collaborator 

of Bishop Esterka, who took care 

of him at her home in Anaheim. 

Bishop Esterka’s funeral Mass will be 

held Aug. 20 at Christ Cathedral in 

Garden Grove. He will be buried in 

the Czech Republic. 

■ ADLA gets high praise for digital efforts 

A Vatican official praised the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for setting “a high 

model for the rest of the Church” in its use of digital technology at this year’s 

Catholic Communication Collaboration Conference (C3). 

Bishop Paul Tighe, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the 

remarks during his keynote address at the virtual event Aug. 3. 

“We learn locally and we can share that with different parts of the world,” said 

Bishop Tighe, a native of Ireland. “Los Angeles has always been a church community 

of hope for the global Church.” 

Archbishop José H. Gomez echoed praise for the archdiocese’s efforts in 

his own speech, telling attendees he was “encouraged by the many ways the 

Church here in Los Angeles is leading the way in using these new media to 

bring people to a new encounter with Jesus Christ.” 

The archdiocese launched C3 in 2012 with a goal of integrating new and current 

technologies into archdiocesan ministries. At this year’s conference, topics 

ranged from digital learning and remote work to the concept of digital discipleship 

and a look at where the world may be in 2030. 

■ ‘Bittersweet’ end to Long 

Beach Masses for migrant kids 

In April, the Long Beach Convention Center was transformed into a temporary 

emergency shelter for unaccompanied migrant kids. The Archdiocese of Los 

Angeles successfully petitioned to begin holding weekend Masses at the shelter in 

May, but now that the shelter is closing, those Masses are coming to an end. 

The last Mass, held on July 18, was a celebration of the next step for the children, 

many of whom are fleeing violence, gangs, and poverty, but for the volunteers 

who helped coordinate the Masses, it was a “bittersweet” end to a “meaningful 

and intense ministry.” 

“I will never forget the profound experience of being together with the migrant 

children to receive holy Communion,” said one volunteer, Cynthia Marie Powell, 

who served as an extraordinary minister of holy Communion each week. 

Powell and other volunteers helped to facilitate more than just Masses at the 

shelter. Volunteer priests came to hear confessions and pray with the children, 

and local charities put together care packets, small gifts, and even a “Día de Los 

Niños” (“Children’s Day”) celebration. 

Carrying on the Faith — Teens at this year’s City of Saints attended Mass with Archbishop José H. Gomez 

at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The Aug. 7 event was held in person this year, with an option to 

attend virtually. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

Y 


V 

IN OTHER WORDS... 

Letters to the Editor 

Mixed reaction to ‘Rebel Hearts’ review 

Thank you for the excellent review of the documentary, “Rebel Hearts,” 

in the Aug. 13 issue. Ann Carey did an excellent job researching and 

preparing this article. 

I can attest from personal experience that each one of the bullet points in the article 

is correct. One that jumped out at me was regarding Anita Caspary’s misinformation 

that Cardinal James McIntyre forced the sisters out of the schools. In fact, I 

recall one of the members of the renewal team, Joan Campion, telling my mother 

and me in 1967 that the IHM sisters were going to stop wearing habits, etc. 

When my mother asked, “What if his eminence objects?” the response was, 

“We’ll withdraw from the schools.” 

They did everything Campion told us they would do. I’ve never understood why 

the sisters were so vitriolic against Cardinal McIntyre. He hadn't harmed them in 

any way — unless following canon law in the exercise of his authority is harmful. 

Thank you so much for this charitable correction of much misinformation. 

— Deacon Tom Brandlin, Los Angeles 

The review critiquing the film “Rebel Hearts” was as off base as anything I have 

ever read. 

Ann Carey states “it comes off as a superficial one-sided account of the 1970 tragic 

breakup of the 600 member Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Los Angeles and 

offers no new insights on the 50-year-old story.” Carey must not have actually seen 

the film, because the entire theme is about insights. 

The article includes much incorrect information, such as claiming that the sisters 

reported that they received no college instruction or teacher preparation before being 

placed in a classroom. Carey contends that two years in a novitiate for religious 

formation constitutes teacher training, when that is precisely not true. The entire 

story of “Rebel Hearts” is one of the power of the patriarchy. 

The IHMs were strong women, and Cardinal McIntyre just wasn’t having it. My 

conclusion is that Carey did not do her homework or it was simply a “hit piece” 

with conveniently misrepresented information. 

— Cheryl Ortega, Los Angeles 

Y 

Continue the conversation! To submit a letter to the editor, visit AngelusNews.com/Letters-To-The-Editor 

and use our online form or send an email to editorial@angelusnews.com. Please limit to 300 words. Letters 

may be edited for style, brevity, and clarity. 

A priestly resting place 

Bishop David O’Connell prays before a statue of St. 

John Vianney in the new burial section for priests 

at Queen of Heaven Cemetery and Mortuary in 

Rowland Heights on Aug. 4. Bishop Robert Barron 

dedicated a similar section at Santa Clara Cemetery 

in Oxnard on Aug. 6. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

View more photos from this 

gallery at AngelusNews.com/photos-videos 

Do you have photos or a story from your parish that you’d like to share? Please send to editorial @angelusnews.com. 

“God has called us to 

become, as the church, the 

living sign of his presence in 

the world.” 

~ Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio 

to the U.S., at a July 25 vocational gathering for 

youth of the Neocatechumenal Way in Gettysburg, 

Pennsylvania. 

“He who has the gold 

makes the rules, and if 

the audience makes the 

rules, then the creators can 

provide the audience with 

what they are looking for.” 

~ Actor Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in the hit 

TV series “The Chosen,” on the show’s success in an 

Aug. 12 interview with Crux’s Inés San Martín. 

“The pope is not a politician 

or a pundit. He’s a pastor. 

And he has more and 

better information than I.” 

~ Father Matt Malone, president and editor-in-chief 

of America Media, in an Aug. 13 column on Pope 

Francis’ decision to limit the celebration of the Latin 

Mass. 

“These religious doctors 

and hospitals joyfully serve 

ALL patients and routinely 

provide top-notch care to 

transgender patients. There 

is ample evidence, however, 

that some gender-transition 

procedures can harm 

patients.” 

~ Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel 

at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, after a U.S. 

District Court judge blocked a mandate from the 

Biden administration that doctors and hospitals 

perform gender-transition procedures despite moral 

or medical objections. 


IN EXILE 

FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father 

Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual 

writer; ronaldrolheiser.com. 

Complexity and paradox 

Reading the Letters of Dorothy 

Day recently, I ran into this line, 

“doubtless we need a Savonarola 

as well as a St. Francis.” She was 

speaking about what spirituality needs 

in order to be healthy and balanced. 

That triggered something inside me, 

something I have never been able to 

sort out. I have always been comfortable, 

perhaps too much so, in both 

circles of piety and circles of iconoclasm. 

I’m drawn to the warmth of the 

Sacred Heart even as I am stimulated 

by Nietzsche, and I see Merton’s raw 

sense of humor as issuing forth from 

the same unique place within him as 

his faith, one leaning on the other. 

One of my favorite spiritual writers is 

the Italian monk and hermit, Brother 

Carlo Carretto. When you are reading 

a Carretto book, you are never sure 

what you will meet next in terms of 

either piety or its (seeming) opposite. 

On one page, he might be offering 

a handmade toy to the Blessed Virgin 

Mary to give the infant Jesus, and a 

page or two later he will be offering 

a blistering critique of clericalism or 

calling on the pope to shut present-day 

seminaries because he believes those 

training for the priesthood should be 

living with everyday families. Many 

of us are familiar with his “Ode to the 

Church,” within which both his piety 

and his iconoclasm are manifest. 

“How much I must criticize you, my 

church and yet how much I love you! 

“How you have made me suffer much 

and yet owe much to you. 

“I should like to see you destroyed and 

yet I need your presence. 

“You have given me much scandal and 

yet you alone have made me understand 

holiness. 

“Never in this world have I seen 

anything more obscurantist, more 

compromised, more false, and yet never 

in this world have I touched anything 

more pure, more generous, and more 

beautiful. 

“Many times I have felt like slamming 

the door of my soul in your face — and 

yet how often I have prayed that I might 

die in your sure arms!” 

Not many spiritual writers have this 

range on their keyboard. As Ernst 

Kasemann once said, the problem in 

the Church and in the world is that the 

pious are not liberal and the liberal are 

not pious. Brother Carretto was both. 

He could love the Church, fiercely, 

piously, with childlike devotion, even 

as inside of that very devotion he could 

critically acknowledge and speak out 

against her faults. That’s a rare capacity, 

seen in some saints. 

Dorothy Day, not unlike Brother Carretto, 

was a pious woman, a unanimity-minus-one 

defender of chastity in 

the circles she moved in, and a woman 

who believed that reverence was a 

non-negotiable moral virtue. Yet, like 

Brother Carretto, she could be blistering 

in her criticism of piety whenever it 

was blind to injustice, racism, violence, 

and war. Small wonder her favorite 

saint was St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a 

pious nun tucked away in an obscure 

convent in France, writing mystical 

treatises on how much Jesus loves us. 

Moreover, that patron saint Thérèse 

was herself a wonderful example of a 

piety that can look saccharine and yet 

have a disarming capacity for critical 

insight. St. Thérèse is the same person 

who, while posturing in her writings 

as a little girl, someone of no consequence, 

the Little Flower, can pivot 

radically and suddenly become the 

wise, aged Sophia, dishing out hard 

spiritual counsel: 

“Be careful not to seek yourself in love, 

you will end up with a broken heart that 

way. I felt it more valuable to speak to 

God rather than to speak about Him, for 

there is so much self-love intermingled 

with spiritual conversations. There are 

no miracles, no raptures, no ecstasies — 

only service.” 

St. Thérèse had a keyboard that could 

play very diverse melodies. 

The late Irish biblical scholar Father 

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor used to say 

(partially tongue in cheek) that consistency 

is the product of small minds. 

What he was highlighting, of course, 

was that great minds aren’t simple, that 

they know the importance of nuance, 

that they don’t work in terms of black 

and white, that they can hold things in 

tension without prematurely resolving 

that, and that they can shock you 

equally in their capacity for reverence 

and for iconoclasm. 

Jesus fits that description. He scandalized 

his contemporaries and continues 

to scandalize us with what seem like 

inconsistencies, but are really the capacity 

of a great mind and heart to hold 

truth in paradox, in tension. Small 

wonder there are so many Christian 

denominations today. 

We, his followers, cannot hold the 

whole truth together as he did and so 

we live out pieces of it rather than the 

whole Gospel. The same might be said 

for other great figures in history, like St. 

Augustine, who is cited as the root for 

both orthodoxy and heresy in theology. 

There are indeed real contradictions 

and genuine inconsistencies; but there 

is also the paradox seen in great minds, 

minds that know when to honor an 

icon and when to smash it. 


Dante’s 

DREAM 

The medieval Italian 

poet used words to 

unify a people and 

bring them closer to 

God. Seven hundred 

years after his death, 

it is our turn. 

BY ELIZABETH LEV 

D 

espite the suffering and strife 

in the Middle Ages, Dante 

Alighieri believed that beauty could 

save the world, and he used his pen to 

prove it. 

As the world marks 700 years since 

the death of Italy’s most celebrated 

poet, it is sobering to reflect that 

in our present language-obsessed 

culture, few share Dante’s belief in 

the beauty of words. Dante dreamed 

of forming a language to unify and 

inspire. What would he make of our 

weaponized words and their constantly 

changing meanings? 

“Dante,” as history has remembered 

him, was born in Florence, then a 

republic, around 1265. The son of a 

wealthy family, he lived as the increasing 

number of well-to-do young men 

did in the affluent mercantile cities: 

military service, guild enrollment, formal 

education, marriage, and politics. 

"Dante Alighieri, 'La Divina Commedia' ('The Divine Comedy') 

(100 works)," by Salvador Dalí, 1964. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 


His status allowed him to pursue his 

passion for philosophy and poetry, so 

he continued his studies at the University 

of Bologna. where he joined the 

poets of the “sweet new style,” a term 

coined by Dante to describe the courtly 

love poems written in new types of 

verse, spiced with lofty allegories and 

symbols. 

The idyllic existence of these young 

artists, absorbed in love and letters, 

was set against a backdrop of violence 

and uncertainty. Italy, a political 

patchwork of republics, dukedoms, 

and turf claimed by the emperor of 

the Holy Roman Empire, was in a 

constant state of armed conflict. 

Pope Celestine V, the spiritual glue 

of Europe, had shocked Christendom 

by resigning after only a few months, 

followed by his death under suspicious 

circumstances. His successor, 

Pope Boniface VIII, appeared more 

interested in 

influencing 

temporal affairs 

than shepherding 

souls. 

The lack of unity 

was exacerbated 

by the chaos 

of language, with 

differing dialects 

evolving according 

to each 

region’s geopolitical 

reality 

and with Latin 

increasingly 

reserved for the 

learned and the clergy. 

Artwork entitled "Dante 

Meditating on 'The 

Divine Comedy,' 1843," 

in an undated photo. 

"The Divine Comedy" 

is perhaps the most 

powerful depiction of the 

transcendent in Western 

literature. | CNS/GIFT 

OF THE CHRISTIAN 

HUMANN FOUNDATION 

VIA NATIONAL GALLERY 

OF ART 

All the while, Dante and his band 

of erudite troubadours sang of love in 

their catchy rhythms. Dante hit a sour 

note, however, when his diplomatic 

activities brought him into conflict 

with the opposing political faction in 

Florence. Once his enemies rose to 

power through a violent takeover of 

the city, they turned on the poet in 

absentia, sentencing him to exile for 

life. 

The banished bard responded to the 

injustice, humiliation, and penury by 

creating a masterpiece designed to 

transcend politics. Written during his 

exile, Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” 

was an epic tale to unite Italy under a 

common language, to bring together 

Christendom’s classical roots with its 

contemporary saints, and so to join 

souls, past and present, on their common 

journey to the Lord. 

Words were the bricks and mortar of 

his opus. The fragmented Latin-derived 

dialects reflected the factions 

and tribes that sprang up after the fall 

of the Roman Empire. Tainted with 

Arabic in Sicily and with Greek in 

Venice, dialects formed verbal fences 

limiting communication. Thanks to 

his wide-ranging experience of poetry 

throughout the Italian peninsula, 

Dante could select the perfect words 

to craft his verses. 

His poetry painted pictures and 

stimulated the senses. One can almost 

hear the sighing of the unbaptized in 

limbo or feel the cold of the frozen 

Lake Cocytus where traitors are 

imprisoned. Anticipating St. Ignatius’ 

composition of place in the spiritual 

exercises, Dante awakens the senses 

during his extraordinary voyage 

through hell, purgatory, and heaven. 

His literary images are knit together 

by Dante’s invention of “terza rima” 

(“third rhyme”), an interlocking 

rhyme system that propels the story 

stanza by stanza. Dante’s epic took 

words, and instead of using them to 

divide and wound, he employed them 

as a means to unify a divided people. 

The poem offered readers the chance 

to revel in the pleasure of speech, 

an anomaly for today’s world where 

communicating can seem more like 

stepping into a minefield. 

“The Divine Comedy” deftly melded 

pagan references with the most recent 

Christian theology, creating a blend 

of the finest Mediterranean vintages. 

Mythological creatures populate 

“Inferno,” while Emperor Trajan 

exemplifies humility in “Purgatorio.” 


Virgil, Augustan poet par excellence, 

serves as Dante’s guide, though the 

final steps in “Paradiso” are led by St. 

Bernard. 

Dante knew well the murderous 

persecutions inflicted on Christians 

by the Ancient Romans, yet instead 

of “canceling” the past, he transformed 

it. “The Divine Comedy” is 

an illustration of St. Paul’s exhortation 

to the Philippians, “whatever is lovely, 

whatever is admirable — if anything 

is excellent or praiseworthy — think 

about such things.” 

It took the best of antiquity, emptied 

it of error, and converted its beauty 

to promote the true and good. While 

readers enjoy “The Divine Comedy” 

and its vignettes of retribution, it is 

also a story of redemption, including a 

reconciliation between Christendom 

and its pagan ancestors. 

In the present age, so quick to sacrifice 

European philosophy, history, 

and literature on the altar of political 

correctness, it grows increasingly 

difficult for people to comprehend 

and appreciate Dante’s art, steeped in 

a Christian thought. 

“The Divine Comedy” is an intensely 

personal quest, where Dante 

reveals his own sins and weaknesses. 

It is simultaneously a metaphor for 

humanity’s universal journey toward 

its Creator, described in the last line 

of the comedy as “the Love that moves 

the sun and the other stars.” Love is 

the guiding force of the work, personified 

in the beautiful Beatrice whom 

Dante admired from afar. It is she 

who sends Virgil to rescue Dante lost 

in sin, she who guides him through 

paradise. 

A passage of Dante 

Alighieri's "The Divine 

Comedy" is depicted 

in stained glass at the 

apostolic nunciature in 

Washington, D.C., July 2. 

| CNS/TYLER ORSBURN 

Dante’s epic 

is laden with 

love. “Inferno” is 

populated by lovers 

— lovers of 

power, of money, 

of self — the author 

even feels a 

twinge of pity for 

the adulterous 

love that damned Paolo and Francesca 

to windswept torment in hell. 

Purgatory articulates the poet’s theology 

of love, divided into “bad love,” 

“too little love,” and “immoderate 

love,” all of which must be transformed 

into a pure love directed at the 

Lord. 

The greatest modern challenge to 

understanding “The Divine Comedy” 

may be in the loss of the understanding 

of the word “to love.” Contemporary 

culture invokes love at every 

turn, whether for the superficial, the 

disordered or as a weapon against 

“haters,” generally described as those 

with differing beliefs. The divergent 

paths of these many “meanings” of 

love foment division, leaving many 

in the same situation as Dante at the 

beginning of the epic, “lost in a dark 

wood.” 

Living in an age with awesome 

capabilities of communication brings 

responsibilities. The “Year of Dante” 

offers a remarkable opportunity to 

think about the privilege of literacy, 

the power or language for good or ill, 

and how to bring beauty back into our 

daily discourse. 

Elizabeth Lev is an American-born art 

historian who lives and works in Rome. 



Dante holds a copy of 

"The Divine Comedy" 

next to the entrance to 

hell, the seven terraces of 

Mount Purgatory, and the 

city of Florence, with the 

spheres of heaven above. 

This fresco painting is by 

Domenico di Michelino, 

1465. | SHUTTERSTOCK 

A divine 

recovery mission 

Dante hoped ‘The Divine Comedy’ 

could help readers take their desires 

more seriously — and bring them from 

misery to happiness along the way. 

BY STEFANO REBEGGIANI 

A 

man gets lost in the woods. He 

tries to climb a mountain, but 

three beasts block his path. 

Fleeing, he meets the ghost of a poet 

who died 12 centuries earlier, and 

together they set off on a journey that 

brings him through hell, purgatory, 

and paradise. 

Thus begins “The Divine Comedy,” 

the three-part epic poem that has 

enshrined Dante Alighieri as one of 

Western civilization’s greatest writers. 

For centuries, scholars like Vincenzo 

Arnone have dedicated much of their 

life’s work to further understanding the 

literary, historical, and spiritual genius 

behind each of the poem’s 15,000 


copy of 

omedy" 

trance to 

terraces of 

tory, and the 

e, with the 

aven above. 

inting is by 

Michelino, 

TERSTOCK 

lines. To mark the “Year of Dante” in 

2021, Arnone, a retired Catholic high 

school principal from Turin, Italy, is 

leading a YouTube lecture series titled 

“Walking with Dante” to accompany 

21st-century readers of “The Divine 

Comedy.” 

Ahead of the 700th anniversary of 

Dante’s death on September 14, 2021, 

Angelus spoke to Arnone, who credits 

Dante with helping him “re-understand” 

the meaning of his own life, 

about how the poet’s reflections on 

freedom, happiness, and true love can 

help guide readers through their own 

journey “out of the woods.” 

How should we read Dante’s “The 

Divine Comedy” in 2021? As a “real” 

mystical experience or just a piece of 

fiction? 

In a letter to his leading patron, 

Cangrande della Scala, Dante called 

his work “polysemous,” or “of many 

senses.” The first sense is that which 

comes from the letter, the “literal”; the 

second is that which is signified by the 

letter, the “allegorical.” 

He adds: “The subject of the whole 

work, taken only from a literal standpoint, 

is simply the status of the soul 

after death. … If the work is taken allegorically, 

however, the subject is man, 

either gaining or losing merit through 

his freedom of will.” 

He also explains the purpose of his 

poem: “To remove those living in this 

life from the state of misery and to lead 

them to the state of happiness.” 

A mystical experience? We cannot 

rule it out, but this does not explain the 

meaning and the goal of Dante’s poem. 

The subject of Dante’s work is man, 

every human being lost in the woods 

of life. And we should understand 

Dante’s fictional journey as the endless 

adventure that is our own journey 

through life, marked by an attempt 

to fulfill that desire for happiness that 

defines us as human beings. 

In order to write “The Divine Comedy,” 

Dante left several other literary 

projects unfinished. Why is that? 

Why did Dante feel such urgency to 

write “The Divine Comedy”? 

In order to write “The Divine Comedy,” 

Dante abandoned a major literary 

project that he had dedicated a lot of 

work to, the “Convivio” (the “Banquet”). 

Through the metaphor of the 

“banquet of knowledge” this work, 

a collection of poems with prose 

commentaries, was meant to supply 

people with a philosophical “food” of 

sorts, in an effort to guide its readers 

to true happiness and true fulfillment. 

Dante abandoned this project when he 

realized that philosophical knowledge 

is not sufficient. 

Vincenzo “Enzo” Arnone. | SUBMITTED PHOTO 

At the age of 9, Dante fell in love 

with Beatrice, a woman he loved until 

her premature death. After Beatrice’s 

death, he sought consolation in rational 

knowledge, in philosophy, but soon 

he realized that knowledge is not able 

to provide an answer commensurate 

with the depth and vastness of his 

own desire for beauty and happiness, 

a desire that had been sparked by his 

encounter with Beatrice. When Dante 

fell in love with Beatrice he experienced 

a glimpse, a foretaste of infinite 

happiness. 

The famous critic Charles Singleton 

described “The Divine Comedy” as 

a “return to Beatrice.” For Dante, the 

whole poem is an attempt to recover 

that moment, the encounter that 

sparked in him the intuition of the divine 

and gifted him with a completely 

new way of writing love poetry. 

Certainly there are other factors that 

contributed to his decision to write 

a poem to which, in Dante’s words, 

“both earth and heaven contributed”: 

Dante’s political setbacks, the failure of 

his earthly aspirations, as well as the jubilee 

of the year 1300, the first jubilee 

in the Church’s history. This event was 

supposed to bring Christianity back to 

authentic faith, bringing about a renewal 

that the Holy Spirit had already 

set in motion through the preaching of 

St. Dominic and St. Francis. 

Dante wrote in a time and place 

where society was Christian. That is 

not the case today, and many Christians 

feel that the answer to a world 

that has abandoned Christianity is 

for Christians to abandon the world. 

Would Dante agree? 

True, medieval society was Christian, 

yet the Christian world of Dante’s time 

was full of tensions and contradictions. 

The Church was torn within itself and 

constantly at war with political powers. 

Yet, the Middle Ages knew the “art of 

coming back,” or, we should say, “the 

art of conversion.” 

Perhaps the most intriguing figure 

in Dante’s “Comedy” in this respect 

is the character of Ulysses. Ulysses 

returns from the Trojan War after years 

of wandering. At the end of his life, he 

sets out on a journey in which he crosses 

the limits of the known world, the 

pillars of Hercules, in a vain attempt to 

achieve supreme knowledge, only to be 

overcome by a storm. 

In a sense, Dante is a Christian Ulysses 

who succeeds where the classical 

character failed. First, he manages 

to go back home, the location that 

humanity was destined for in the first 

place: heaven, our true home. Then, 

like a new Ulysses, he crosses the 

uttermost limits of human experience 

— the true “pillars of Hercules,” death. 

He does so in order to recover life’s 

meaning, in order to rescue us from 

our constant wandering without hope 

of fulfilment. 

But this is only possible if we are 

helped to take seriously our desire in 

its totality. Our desire is ultimately 

oriented toward the most desirable of 

all: the divine, the ultimate answer to 

human longing. 

Dante describes this with an example: 


Pope Francis looks at 

materials related to 

Dante during a June 

4 visit by a delegation 

from Florence led by 

Cardinal Giuseppe 

Betori marking the 

700th anniversary of 

the poet's death. 

| CNS/VATICAN MEDIA 

Why the popes are Dante fans 

The popes have been more consistently kind to Dante than Dante was to 

the popes. 

Some sovereign pontiffs he placed at the heights of heaven. Others he 

portrayed in purgatory, where they were gratefully working off their sins. 

More than a few, however, he consigned to the depths of hell, where he 

seemed to take delight in describing their torments. 

In fact, many of the popes of Dante’s lifetime fared badly in the afterlife 

that he imagined. The poet even ventured a prophecy that the reigning 

pope would soon join his most disreputable predecessors. 

Nevertheless, the later popes have proclaimed only praise in return. 

In the late 19th century, Pope Leo XIII honored him, as did his immediate 

successor, St. Pope Pius X. But in 1921, Pope Benedict XV actually 

dedicated an encyclical letter to Dante, addressed to “professors and 

students of literature and learning in the Catholic world.” 

Dante, Pope Benedict wrote, ranks highest “among the many celebrated 

geniuses of whom the Catholic faith can boast who have left undying fruits 

in literature and art.” He argued that “the whole world,” not just Italy, must 

“pay honor to that noble figure, pride and glory of humanity.” 

Later popes followed suit. In 1965, St. Pope Paul VI dedicated the lengthy 

apostolic letter, “Altissimi Cantus” (For the VII Centenary of the birth of 

Dante Alighieri), to Dante, whom he called “the lord of sublime song.” 

In the name of the Church, Pope Paul praised not only the poet’s art, but 

also his virtue. The Church, he said, “places Dante among the illustrious, 

those who are clothed with courage and prudence, who compose poems 

according to the laws of art, and, who love beauty.” 

It should be no surprise, then, that St. Pope John Paul II — himself a 

poet — cited Dante as a doctrinal source, quoting “Paradiso” in his 2005 

apostolic letter on the rosary. 

Pope Benedict XVI, for his part, gave an address in 2006 in which he 

used “The Divine Comedy” as a key to understanding his first encyclical, 

“Deus Caritas Est” (“God Is Love”). His text encompassed the central 

mysteries of faith — Trinity, Incarnation, charity — and illuminated them 

with Dante’s insights. 

It fell to Pope Francis to reign at the seventh centenary of the poet’s 

death, and he has responded with two substantial statements: a message to 

the Pontifical Council of Culture in 2015 and the apostolic letter “Candor 

Lucis Aeternae” (“Splendor of Light Eternal”) this year. 

In his most recent letter he urged Catholics to read the master, whom he 

called “prophet of hope and witness to the human desire for happiness.” 

Dante, he declared, “can help us to advance with serenity and courage on 

the pilgrimage of life and faith that each of us is called to make, until our 

hearts find true peace and true joy, until we arrive at the ultimate goal of 

all humanity: ‘The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.’ ” 

— Mike Aquilina 

“We see that a little child’s greatest 

desire is an apple, and later, going further, 

he wishes to have a little bird … 

then a pretty garment … then a horse 

… then a woman … then some wealth 

… then even greater wealth.” 

Our whole life is an incessant 

movement from desire to desire. What 

Dante wants us to realize is that our 

earthly desires, always increasing in 

size, are but a reflex of that longing 

for the infinite, a reflex we are marked 

with because we carry the imprint of 

God. And God attracts his creatures 

toward himself by letting himself be 

sought through the many desires that 

set us in motion in our everyday lives. 

The desire for earthly things is not a 

denial of the divine, but a concrete 

anticipation of that totalizing, inextinguishable 

desire. 

The true masters among us, like 

Dante, are not those who teach us to 

see reality only as a source of temptation, 

but those who invite us not 

to stop at the countless small things 

that we fall in love with, to live our 

ambitions and desires as a springboard 

that launches us into the pursuit of 

increasingly greater desires, all the way 

to the most desirable: God. 

Dante is commonly perceived as 

a merciless type, a moralistic writer 

who relished condemning his contemporaries 

and sentencing them to 

eternal punishment. Is that accurate? 

People tend to focus more on “Inferno,” 

the first part of Dante’s poem, and 

thus they forget that mercy defeats the 

law many times in Dante’s poem. In 

“Purgatorio,” one sees time and again 

souls snatched from eternal punishment, 

souls who would be damned according 

to a rigid, legalistic application 

of the norms of Christian doctrine. 

A good example is the story of 

Manfredi, who was excommunicated 

for his unbending political opposition 

to the papacy. He was killed in the 

battle of Benevento and buried in 

unconsecrated ground, as per the laws 

of the Church. Yet the mercy of God 

prevails. Manfredi recounts: “My sins 

and crimes were horrible to hear. God, 

though, unendingly is good. His arms 

enfold and grasp all those who turn to 

Him.” 

But mercy cannot conflict with hu- 


Detail of a miniature 

of Beatrice 

explaining to Dante 

that the universe is 

a hierarchy of being, 

with creatures 

devoid of reason 

in the early "sea of 

being," and heaven 

as nine spheres 

ruled by the figure 

of love. | CNS/ 

BRITISH LIBRARY 

VIA THE PUBLIC 

DOMAIN REVIEW 

man freedom, which is the only thing 

that God refuses to overcome. Mercy is 

an initiative of God in response to the 

faintest movement of human freedom, 

the slightest opening of our hearts to 

him. 

This is illustrated by another memorable 

character of “Purgatorio,” Buonconte 

of Montefeltro, a knight who 

fought alongside Dante in the battle of 

Campaldino. The spirit of Buonconte 

tells Dante how, pierced in his throat, 

he fled to die alone: 

“I lost my sight,” he says, “and all my 

words ended in uttering Mary’s name. 

I fell — my flesh alone remaining 

there.” 

A devil shows up immediately, ready 

to drag Buonconte to hell on account 

of his many sins. Yet an angel also 

arrives. God has heard the silent prayer 

uttered by the dying man, who crossed 

his hands and died with the name of 

Mary on his lips. The angel obviously 

succeeds in claiming Buonconte’s 

spirit. The devil’s words highlight the 

paradoxical logic of God’s mercy: 

“Why do you rob me, son of Heaven, 

of this [soul]? / You’d prize him from 

me for one little tear, / and carry off his 

everlasting part?” 

Love is a crucial theme of “The 

Divine Comedy.” “Love that moves 

the sun and other stars” is the poem’s 

last line. How does Dante define 

love? And how does he understand 

the relationship between divine and 

human love? 

Love for Dante is closely connected 

to desire. “No creation or creature was 

ever without love,” he writes; and when 

desire turns to that which someone 

likes “that turning is love.” But desire 

and love do not end when we seize the 

object of our desire, but they push us to 

go further, to discover who we are and 

who we are made for. 

This appears clearly in one of “Inferno’s” 

most famous episodes, in which 

Dante hears the story of Paolo and 

Francesca, a pair of adulterous lovers 

(Francesca was married to Paolo’s 

brother, who murdered both upon 

discovering their affair) overwhelmed 

by a passion akin to what Dante, who 

was married to another woman, felt 

for Beatrice. Francesca and Paolo are 

condemned to hell not because they 

yielded to their desire for illicit love, 

but because they limited their own 

desire to the immediate object of their 

longing. 

In other words, they blocked the 

trajectory of their desire, constraining 

their freedom to an object that cannot 

satisfy their thirst for happiness. They 

refused to look further toward the greater 

good and refused to follow in the 

direction into which their love, even if 

sinful, was pointing them: the infinite 

and the divine. 

For Dante, what is essential is not the 

distinction between sacred and profane 

love, but whether people are prepared 

to travel, through love and desire, the 

full distance that separates them from 

the infinite. 

What can Dante say to our profoundly 

divided world today? And to 

a Church that seems equally torn? 

What Dante keeps saying, to the men 

and women of today as well as those of 

We should understand Dante’s fictional 

journey as the endless adventure that is 

our own journey through life, marked by 

an attempt to fulfill that desire for happiness 

that defines us as human beings. 

700 years ago — and St. Francis’ canto 

in “Paradiso” proves it — is that the 

only way for us to be happy is to take 

our own “I” into our hands again. 

This means taking our desire of happiness 

seriously, recognizing that we, 

like Dante, are lost in the woods of life. 

We need to beg for help and to follow 

those who are ahead of us along the 

path that, like Dante’s journey, reaches 

for the stars. This is the source of every 

change, of every rediscovery of our 

identity, and of the rediscovery of our 

particular vocations. 

Stefano Rebeggiani is an associate 

professor of classics at the University of 

Southern California. 

August 27, 2021 • ANGELUS • 17

A word from our sisters 

The work of LA’s vast ‘community of 

communities’ of religious sisters is getting 

a much-needed helping hand. 

Sisters at the annual Religious Jubilarians Mass in 2016 

with then-Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Brennan. 

BY TOM HOFFARTH / PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR ALEMÁN 

Spread across 120 active congregations, orders, and religious 

institutions and living in several hundred different 

locations in three counties, keeping track of the more 

than 1,200 religious sisters living and ministering in the 

Archdiocese of Los Angeles is no easy task. 

That job belongs to Sister Maria Carlos Valdez, EIN, vicar 

for women religious for the archdiocese, who likes to think 

of the sisters under her purview not as a group but rather a 

“community of communities.” 

Herself a product of a bicultural and bilingual upbringing, 

Sister Maria has a better appreciation than anyone of the 

sisters’ diversity, whether in terms of their different charisms 

or their cultural backgrounds. 

For example, she cites the Lovers of the Holy Cross in 

Gardena, marveling at how sisters whose first language is Vietnamese 

can work in education, health, and homelessness 

outreach under the congregation’s superior general, Sister 

Grace Duc Le. 

“They’re individuals who belong to one community, and 

what one does will impact the whole group,” Sister Maria 

said. “They have a feeling that they’re not alone.” 

The Missionaries of Charity (founded by St. Teresa of 

Calcutta), based in Lynwood, shows a selflessness to simply 

be present and listen to those in need, especially in solidarity 

with women on Skid Row. 

Archbishop José H. Gomez with sisters of the Missionaries of Charity during a 

2018 visit to St. Emydius Church in Lynwood. 


“And they have no access to technology,” a detail that Sister 

Maria likes to recall. “That shows me their impact as people 

living in 2021.” 

Sisters from 11 different missionary communities provide 

their services at several Korean-based facilities around the 

archdiocese. An immigrant population that could feel separated 

by language barriers has instead become important 

witnesses and transmitters of faith. 

“If they weren’t there, there might be no faith formation in 

their Korean community parishes,” Sister Maria emphasized. 

“They show it’s better for us to be inclusive regardless of the 

language.” 

And yet, after four years on the job for the sister, there still 

remain some important practical questions to be answered. 

How do such religious communities in LA pull together on 

issues of social justice, health care, education, human rights, 

or even just gathering in prayer? What communication or 

cultural challenges do they face in their alliances? In what 

ways can these consecrated women share their joys and 

sorrows with the Catholic community? 

Some answers are now on their way, with the help of a 

$190,000 grant provided last summer by the Conrad N. 

Hilton Foundation’s Catholic Sisters Initiative. 

Sister Jane Wakahiu, LSOSF, Ph.D., associate vice president 

of program operations and head of the Catholic Sisters 

Initiative, saw an opportunity to help sisters in the archdiocese 

by funding this project, the goal of which is to develop a 

working plan or road map for the Office of Vicar for Women 

Religious over the next three to five years. 

Embracing the Mission Anew (EMA) became the project 

title of a yearlong needs assessment for sisters throughout the 

archdiocese. Sister Maria and administrative assistant Maria 

Guadalupe Reyes became the overseers. 

“The Hilton Foundation has given a beautiful gift to all the 

people of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” said Archbishop 

José H. Gomez. “This grant will help us to plan for our 

future and encourage the vital work of our religious sisters in 

proclaiming the love of Christ and his mercy in our community.” 

Sister Maria has seen the need for this kind of project for a 

while. 

“I remember six months after coming into this office, my 

first question was: Where is the database for all the sisters in 

the archdiocese?” said Sister Maria. 

She found that database. She also found that it was outdated 

and often inaccurate. 

“We had no budget, no resources,” she added. “We just 

kept asking ourselves: Where do we begin?” 

Conversations with Sister Jane, a member of the institute 

of the Little Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, Kenya, but who is 

now based in LA, led to the project funding from the Catholic 

Sisters Initiative. 

“After connecting with Sister Maria, we understood the 

need for a landscape study that articulates the needs and 

voices of sisters across the archdiocese,” Sister Jane told 

Angelus. 

In her experience with other communities, this kind of 

study is particularly useful in “creating and strengthening 

sisters’ collaborative networks,” she explained. 

International hotelier and well-known Catholic philanthropist 

Conrad N. Hilton established the grantmaking foundation 

that bears his name in 1944 to help people living in 

Sisters of the Lovers of the Holy Cross at the annual Vietnamese Martyrs Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in 2015. 


Carmelite sisters at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in 2016. 

poverty and experiencing disadvantage worldwide. 

Today, it is one of the world’s largest, with $7.5 billion in 

assets. It has awarded grants to date totaling more than $2 

billion, $207 million worldwide in 2020, benefitting an 

array of charitable causes, ranging from early childhood development 

and homelessness prevention to safe water access 

and refugee integration. 

Last year, the foundation awarded its $2.5 million Conrad 

N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize — the world’s largest annual 

humanitarian award presented to nonprofit organizations — 

to LA’s own Homeboy Industries, run by Jesuit Father Greg 

Boyle. 

And then there are the sisters. 

According to its mission statement, the Catholic Sisters Initiative 

aims to “increase the capacity of sisters to meaningfully 

address poverty, and elevate their voice and influence 

as moral leaders of change in the global effort to relieve 

human suffering and restore human dignity” with a target 

date of 2030. 

Through surveys, focus groups, and listening sessions 

coordinated by The Center for Applied Research in the 

Apostolate at Georgetown University, some of the initiative’s 

key findings in Los Angeles include: 

• Sisters say they are extremely satisfied and blessed with 

their vows and highly motivated in ministry work. 

• There are 31 countries on six continents represented, 

reflecting the city’s own diversity. Sisters are a more diverse 

population compared to the national averages, especially 

with Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander demographics. 

While there are 29 different languages spoken, nearly all 

converse in English fluently. 

• Seventy-seven percent of the sisters have at least a bachelor’s 

degree, and 41% have a master’s degree or better. 

• When asked about the biggest challenges to women 

religious in LA, respondents who cited aging membership 

(60%), decreasing number of sisters (59%), and lack of new 

vocations (58%), clearly made them the top three concerns. 

• It also confirmed that only half of the sisters working in 

active ministries are receiving pay or a stipend. 

As the research was conducted, the 

Hilton Foundation also stepped in last 

fall to approve a $75,000 emergency 

COVID-19 grant to “help mitigate 

negative effects of the pandemic and 

associated economic downturn” for 

eight congregations in the archdiocese. 

One congregation lost as many as 

five sisters to the virus within just a few 

months. As the year progressed, other 

congregations lost fewer, but others 

lost more. Also accounting for the 

passing of older sisters, there are 200 

fewer in the archdiocese between the 

numbers reported in 2019 versus those 

reported in January 2021. 

Some of that emergency funding 

helped the Daughters of St. Paul, 

who needed help with repairs to their 

Culver City bookstore damaged by looting during last 

summer’s civil unrest. Several other congregations used 

their own food supplies to nourish unhoused people in their 

neighborhood. 

Sister Maria, a member of the Esclavas de la Inmaculada 

Niña community serving in Boyle Heights, said the survey 

results revealed things many of her fellow sisters would not 

otherwise publicly voice. 

“The sisters will always work toward the benefit of society 

— it’s in their nature and vocation not to grow in their ego,” 

said Sister Maria. “But we know that because of women religious, 

we have hospitals and schools and so many educated 

people in society.” 

As the collaborators in the Embracing the Mission Anew 

project began to share data with Sister Maria, she said it 

reminded her of when and why she began her vocation as a 

teenager. 

“One of the things I said when I first started was, ‘With a 

trembling heart, I am here,’ ” Sister Maria repeated. “This 

really makes me tremble to see the huge work that has been 

done and is still to be done.” 

The realities of a decline in the sister population — there 

were some 4,500 in 1965 — aren’t lost on Sister Maria. For 

now, the bigger goal is making sure the sisters are a visible 

sign to a world that needs their presence. 

“If we know what the sisters’ needs are, then we can impact 

so many others through the sisters’ works,” said Sister Maria, 

who said she hopes the project can help shed light on “all 

those good and selfless things sisters do in the archdiocese. 

“Even then, it is impossible to see all they do because 

there is no stop for a sister. Whenever there is a need, there 

is a sister, regardless if it’s recognized or not, or compensated 

or not. The sisters are going to be there.” 

For more information on the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, 

visit www.hiltonfoundation.org. 

Tom Hoffarth is an award-winning journalist based in Los 

Angeles. 


Confronting 

a culture of 

confrontation 

El Salvador's President Nayib 

Bukele speaks at a news conference 

in San Salvador on Feb. 28. | JOSE 

CABEZAS/REUTERS VIA CNS 

El Salvador’s lone cardinal is in a unique position to sound the 

alarm over its president’s increasingly authoritarian moves. 

BY INÉS SAN MARTÍN 

ROME — Common sense would 

indicate that when a citizen of 

a struggling country compares 

theirs to another, they would point to 

one that is in better economic shape, 

or enjoys more social and political 

stability. 

But in Latin America, more often 

than not, those comparisons are more 

fatalistic: people tend to name other 

countries not as an example to aspire 

to, but as a warning. 

In Argentina, for example, a common 

lament these days is that if things don’t 

change, the country will end up like 

Venezuela: Instead of the current 50% 

of the population living under the 

poverty line, they might end up having 

90%, as is the case in the nation ruled 

by Nicolás Maduro. 

Similarly, many in El Salvador today 

warn about the possibility of resembling 

Nicaragua. 

Daniel Ortega first rose to power 

promising a revolution, yet almost 40 

years later, many accuse him of resembling 

the dictator he helped bring 

down. Ahead of the Nov. 7 national 

elections, he’s made sure he’s the only 

contender, having imprisoned more 

than 30 opposition leaders in the past 

45 days. 

Years of popularity have allowed him 

to eliminate many of the legislative 

checks on his power, and his iron grip 

on the country’s security forces allowed 

him to quash a popular civil uprising 

that began in April 2018. 

Similarly, Nayib Bukele, the young 

and charismatic leader of El Salvador, 

is facing criticism for his efforts to 

weaken the country’s judicial system, 

the prosecutors’ offices, and Congress. 

He has done so through a series of 

executive actions, most of which he 

has communicated directly through 

Twitter, claiming he doesn’t trust the 

country’s media outlets. 

As a footnote, he defined himself 

as the “most handsome and coolest 

president in the world” in a tweet back 

in 2019. 

Though on the opposite side of the 

political spectrum from the democratic 

Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez of San Salvador, 

El Salvador, who was a personal friend of St. Oscar 

Romero (right), poses for a photo in 2018. | JOSE 

CABEZAS/REUTERS VIA CNS 

socialist Ortega — Bukele is a rightwing 

admirer of Donald Trump who 

describes himself as pro-family and 

anti-abortion — he’s been relentless in 

his persecution of the opposition. 

Thus far, this man who arrived to 

power thanks to the support of the 


vador, 

t. Oscar 

. | JOSE 

national liberation party (FMLN for 

its name in Spanish), the party of El 

Salvador’s former guerrilla, has earned 

praise for being a good administrator 

and successful in the fight against 

violence. But he has done so, his 

opponents charge, using authoritarian 

measures, challenging critical press 

coverage and the justice system. 

Much like the Cuban or Venezuelan 

“revolutions,” Bukele claimed that 

the online paper El Faro, arguably 

the country’s online newspaper, was 

laundering money because it received 

foreign aid. 

Last year, he briefly occupied 

Congress with a group of soldiers 

to pressure lawmakers to back a 

crime-fighting plan. Earlier this year, 

he forced the body to fire judges from 

the national Supreme Court that 

opposed him. 

The people continue to support 

Bukele because he came to power as 

a relatively new face in his 30s. After 

three decades of the “old politics” that 

dominated the country in the wake of 

a bloody civil war — during which corruption 

and nepotism were rampant— 

his efforts to get rid of the old system 

have been relentless. 

Yet having learned from the painful 

experiences of his peers in neighboring 

countries where members of the 

Catholic hierarchy have been threatened, 

shot at, and forced into exile by 

strongmen like Ortega and Maduro, 

the country’s senior Catholic prelate is 

sounding the alarm against his dictatorial 

ways, even in the face of the popular 

support Bukele continues to enjoy. 

In a series of interviews and statements 

made to the press in recent 

weeks, Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez 

has emerged as the most vocal critic 

of Bukele’s El Salvador, claiming that 

the country is experiencing a “political 

earthquake” with no functioning 

constitutional state nor a trustworthy 

politician leading the country. 

“Right now, democratic institutions 

do not work, there is no separation of 

powers nor democratic culture,” Cardinal 

Rosa Chávez said on Aug. 8 amid 

celebrations leading up to the birthday 

of martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero, 

the country’s first canonized saint. 

“This must change ... we do not have 

a functioning rule of law, we do not 

have independence of powers, we 

do not have a political figure to trust, 

we do not have a law that we have to 

respect, there is a very great fear that 

there is no law and order, therefore, 

there is no real justice. 

“Prevailing among us is the culture 

of confrontation and the culture of 

indifference. It is urgent to combat it 

with the culture of peace,” he emphasized, 

before expressing his support for 

a meeting between the president and 

several NGOs (Non-Governmental 

Organizations) that advocate freedom 

of expression that took place on Aug. 6. 

Bukele refrained from engaging the 

prelate directly, yet several members 

of his party didn’t, condemning the 

cardinal and describing him as a 

“red (Communist) priest with black 

cassocks.” 

The more the cardinal speaks, the 

more criticism he will receive, and 

more desperate will the government 

become in quieting him: In a country 

where half of the population is Catholic, 

and where the memory of the 1980 

martyrdom of Archbishop Romero is 

still fresh in the collective memory, the 

criticism of a prelate seen by many as 

the successor of the murdered archbishop 

and known for being close to 

Pope Francis, is a threat few authoritarian 

leaders want to face. 

Inés San Martín is an Argentinian journalist 

and Rome bureau chief for Crux. 

She is a frequent contributor to Angelus. 


INSIDE THE PAGES 

KRIS MCGREGOR 

Stepping into God’s time 

Bishop Donald Hying makes the case for slowing 

down in a world that avoids thinking about eternity. 

maintain his charitable heart, even 

toward those trying to kill him, is a 

testimony not only to his wisdom, but 

to his virtue. 

“To turn off the television 

and the phone — these are 

probably two of the most 

sacred acts that we can perform for 

our own salvation and sanity,” Bishop 

Donald Hying, of Madison, Wisconsin, 

writes in his new book, “Love 

Never Fails: Living the Catholic Faith 

in Our Daily Lives” (Ignatius Press, 

$16.95). 

In a world full of distractions, disappointments, 

and otherwise depressing 

circumstances, falling back on the 

basics — faith, hope, and love — can 

help root us in our purpose and bring 

us back to God. 

Kris McGregor: This book reminds 

me of another bishop: St. Francis de 

Sales. 

Bishop Donald J. Hying 

during his 2015 installation 

Mass at Holy Angels 

Cathedral as the fourth 

bishop of the Diocese of 

Gary, Indiana. | ANTHONY 

D. ALONZO/CNS, NORTH- 

WEST INDIANA CATHOLIC 

Bishop Donald Hying: I am a great 

aficionado of St. Francis de Sales. He 

would be the sun; I would be a little 

piece of sand on the shore compared 

to him. 

But he realized the necessity of making 

the faith simple, and articulating 

it with great love and charity. I always 

say that love without truth becomes 

empty, vacuous, sentimental. Truth 

without love can become harsh and 

judgmental. When you fuse truth and 

love together, you’ve got Jesus, the 

Gospel, the power of our Faith. 

We need reminders of that, especially 

in the very divided environments 

within the Church and in the world. 

St. Francis couldn’t even enter his 

own diocese without fear of being 

killed by the Calvinists. So for him to 

McGregor: St. Francis’ time in 

France had literal “religious wars.” 

With the use of new media, we have, 

in some sense, “religious wars.” There 

are victims’ souls all over because of 

the conflicts caused by those who are 

not speaking in charity. 

Bishop Hying: With social media, 

anyone has a platform where they can 

say anything. And a lot of it is calumny, 

and divisive, really from the spirit 

of the evil one. 

That’s the moment we find ourselves 

in. So, how important is it to stay centered 

in Jesus and to stay centered in 

the truth, truth rooted in love itself? 

McGregor: You talk about taking a 

“kairos” moment. What is that? 

Bishop Hying: The ancient Greeks 

had two words for time: “chronos” and 

“kairos.” “Chronos” is chronology: 

calendars, appointments, schedules. 

“Chronos” time is when you’ve been 

at the office seemingly for hours, and 

you look at the clock and it’s 9:17 a.m. 

“Kairos” time is when we’ve been 

engaged in something for five hours, 

and it feels like five minutes, because 

we’ve been taken out of ourselves. In 

some sense, it’s a moment of transcendence, 

of grace, really a moment 

of experiencing God, whether it’s the 

sacraments or prayer, or being out in 

the beauty of nature, or a moment of 

forgiveness, or just deep communion 

with another person. But it’s those 

moments when we step outside of 


Kris McGregor is the founder of 

Discerninghearts.com, an online resource for 

the best in contemporary Catholic spirituality. 

time and realize that the Lord wants 

to plunge us into the timelessness of 

his love for us. 

That’s why the Eucharist is so powerful. 

When we go to Mass, we step 

from the “chronos” of this world into 

the “kairos” of God’s time. We step 

into the vast, beautiful world of the 

Resurrection. 

The archbishop of Milwaukee, who 

ordained me a bishop, always takes 

his watch off at the beginning of Mass 

as a reminder to himself that he’s 

stepping out of “chronos” time, that 

he’s stepping into God’s time. The 

Mass then becomes our participation 

in the timelessness of eternity. God 

drops those precious gifts of eternity 

into our hearts, if we have the grace to 

receive them. 

Life is so busy, and we’re worried 

about so many things. I think that’s 

why prayer is so difficult for us, 

including me, because to embrace 

prayer is to live in the present moment. 

And “kairos” moments are 

moments where we are fully engaged 

in the present. 

McGregor: How difficult I think it 

was, particularly early in the pandemic, 

where you had to communicate 

that to your faithful. For a while, there 

was no opportunity to gather. I don't 

know how you do it without grace. 

Bishop Hying: It’s a challenge, but 

yet so many people have powerfully 

spoken with me about the graces 

they’ve found in these past months, to 

slow down, to be compelled to spend 

significant time with their families, 

with their spouses, to not be running 

around. There were terrible crosses, 

the deprivation of the sacraments, the 

isolation and despair, the sickness and 

death, but there were graces for people 

as well. Just being home and being 

forced to slow down was a tremendous 

blessing for many. 

McGregor: I was struck by your 

emphasis on having joy and faith, and 

to share it with others. 

Bishop Hying: I think despair is 

the greatest failing, because if we’ve 

given up hope, in essence we’ve given 

up on God and ourselves. Hope is 

the conviction of things not seen, as 

Hebrews says. 

When I feel dispirited, or just tired, I 

try to place myself, if by God’s mercy I 

AMAZON 

get to heaven, standing in the glory of 

God forever. This current moment of 

affliction, as St. Paul says in Romans, 

is simply a means by which God’s 

glory is going to be made manifest. 

We can be so easily defeated today by 

criticism, suffering, loss of a job, the 

death of a loved one. We can become 

so disheartened that we want to give 

up. But in those moments, I think we 

need to place ourselves in heaven, 

and realize the most difficult crosses 

in our lives will end up being the 

source of greatest graces and blessings, 

if we could just see the whole panorama 

of our lives from the back end. 

The other thing to understand is the 

mystery of God’s passive will. Theologically, 

we would say God does not 

will evil or bad things, but he allows 

them to be. So, if he allows them to 

be, then somehow they must be for a 

greater good. We just need to learn to 

trust that and believe it. 

We do need hope today, but a hope 

rooted in faith. Optimism is this naive 

thought that somehow, things will 

automatically get better. And when 

they don’t, optimism is crushed. Hope 

can look the darkest night in the face 

and know that the Son of God is going 

to win. 

When I think of hope, I think of 

Mary at the foot of the cross, rooted to 

that spot of suffering, standing as a solitary 

sentinel of the hope of the dawn, 

that God was going to bring about 

resurrection and life from the horrible 

death of her Son. Mary is the sign of 

hope for us, that even in the darkest of 

nights, we can face the most terrible 

things with serenity because we know 

that God has won the victory. 


AD REM 

ROBERT BRENNAN 

Down the rabbit hole into LA’s Skid Row 

Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. | THE ERICA CHANG/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

When Alice tumbled down 

the rabbit hole, she emerged 

into a world of fantastic contradiction. 

It was an upside-down society 

peopled, or “animaled” in some 

cases, with surreal takes on reality. 

If Alice was driving a 2021 Tesla 

instead of chasing a time-obsessed 

rabbit, and if she were driving along 

the streets of downtown Los Angeles, 

she would have had the same experience 

— finding herself in a world that 

did not make any sense. 

I drive the streets of Skid Row as part 

of my new day job, and I see homelessness 

up close and personal. Skid 

Row is a land of troubled souls. There 

are those down on their luck, having 

experienced unfathomable shocks to 

their lives. Many others have been 

ravaged by their drug and alcohol 

addictions or mental illness. 

It is so easy to look the other way, so 

easy to even look down at these peo- 

ple, so easy to not see them as people 

at all, but statistics. 

If a modern-day Alice were driving 

her car down San Pedro Street 

between 4th and 6th Streets, she 

would come upon as strange a land 

as one inhabited by talking dodos and 

disappearing cats. She would also find 

a large edifice of contradiction: a highrise 

luxury loft apartment building. 

More than once, its presence has 

made me question whether I took the 

wrong exit on the Hollywood Freeway 

and ended up in a not-so-wonderful 

Wonderland. 

Only a couple of blocks before Skid 

Row begins in earnest, this refurbished 

multistoried building looms, 

advertised by a sign nearby reading: 

“Luxury Los Angeles living and loft 

apartments with a view.” 

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I thought 

to myself, so I looked up the building’s 

webpage. I found out that to live half 

a football field away from a sea of 

human misery and be the master of 

730 square feet of loft space would set 

you back more than $400,000. 

The website is glossy and well-produced. 

The loft apartments shown 

on its virtual tour look exceedingly 

inviting. The images of the indoor 

and outdoor areas are cast with young 

happy people enjoying the good life, 

as the website promised 24-hour 

security, private parking, a community 

pool, on-site gym, and easy access to 

the best that Los Angeles has to offer. 

What the website failed to mention 

was that, to get this slice of comfort 

and prestige, one must navigate a surreal 

world inhabited by people staggering 

in the street in ragged clothes, 

some of them ranting as intensely as 

the Queen of Hearts or mumbling as 

incoherently as the Mad Hatter. 

As chaotic and desperate as the 

streets outside appear, the inside of 


Robert Brennan writes from Los Angeles, where 

he has worked in the entertainment industry, 

Catholic journalism, and the nonprofit sector. 

this luxury compound is presented 

just as calm and orderly. Which is the 

real world and which is make-believe 

would be something a modern-day 

Alice would have difficulty discerning. 

The reality of this region, the 

reality of our city, is that just a few 

short blocks from seats of city, state, 

and federal power, and blocks of 

well-maintained buildings where 

the levers and pulleys of a first-world 

economy are manipulated, there exists 

a valley of tears. 

I had a hard time imagining why 

anyone would plunk down nearly half 

a million dollars on a living space 

smaller than some walk-in closets in 

a mega-mansion. They are certainly 

people sophisticated enough to realize 

the location of these loft apartments is 

so close to the unsophisticated living 

in tents and cardboard boxes. 

Maybe they don’t see that. Maybe 

they are like the rich man in the 

Gospel of Luke, who goes about his 

life completely unaware of the beggar 

Lazarus suffering just outside his door. 

I wonder if there isn’t a bit of that 

rich man in all of us. 

The very term “rich man” has 

become much more subjective since 

Luke wrote down his Gospel. For instance, 

the immigrant family that lives 

in a converted garage, with access 

to electricity, clean water, and even 

a menial job, is stupendously richer 

than their counterparts who stay 

behind in their home country. And 

many of us who consider ourselves 

middle class, and even lower middle 

class, would be people of immense 

wealth in other parts of the world. 

The challenge Jesus makes so 

uncomfortably clear is that we are 

either Lazarus or we are the rich 

man. I hope the rich people buying 

these apartments will see the disparity 

outside their doors and do something. 

I hope and pray the rest of us, rich 

beyond what we deserve, take the 

Gospel of Luke to heart and do something 

as well. 

If there is an answer to fixing homelessness, 

I do not know it. But in the 

immortal words of Alice in Wonderland, 

“I do not see how he can even 

finish, if he doesn’t begin.” 

August 27, 2021 • ANGELUS • 27

NOW PLAYING RESPECT 

THE GOSPEL 

ACCORDING 

TO ARETHA 

‘Respect’ gives due credit to its subject’s lifelong 

search for meaning and reconciliation. 

Jennifer Hudson in "Respect." 

| © MGM VIA IMDB 

BY SOPHIA MARTINSON 

One of the first scenes of “Respect,” 

the new film now in theaters on the 

life of Aretha Franklin, takes audiences 

to church. A young Aretha, about 

8 years old, steps up to the podium 

and belts out a gospel melody that 

brings the congregation to their feet. 

As the camera pans around the room, 

the young singer transforms into the 

adult Aretha, played by powerhouse 

singer Jennifer Hudson, who finishes 

the song amid the continued sound of 

applause and “Amens.” 

The scene makes clear a central 

fact about Aretha Franklin’s life: that 

Gospel spirituality lies at the heart of 

her upbringing and her music. And 

without being an explicitly Christian 

film, “Respect” is driven by the Gospel 

message of reconciliation. 

Like any biographical drama, “Respect,” 

directed by Liesl Tommy and 

coming to theaters this Friday, has the 

challenge of capturing an entire life 

story in just under 2 1/2 hours without 

oversimplifying and without overwhelming 

viewers with information. 

Like any film, it needs a central plot 

to tie everything together. “Respect” 

could have been a movie about a 


number of things — the evolution 

of a black female musical legend 

in the 1960s, the intersection of the 

civil rights movement with the music 

industry, or the impact of abuse and 

family dysfunction on children. 

The film touches on all of these 

things, but at its core, “Respect” is 

a story about finding God. Not only 

does this common thread pull the film 

together into a compelling story, but 

it also casts a light of hope on a life 

fraught with tragedy. 

From the outset, the film makes clear 

that although she was the daughter 

of a minister, Aretha’s life was not 

all prayer and innocence. As young 

Aretha, Skye Dakota Turner expresses 

the trauma of a girl who has lost her 

mother when she bursts into tears 

at her birthday party and falls silent 

during music lessons. 

Later, the angry outbursts from her 

father (Forest Whitaker) illustrate a 

family life that sometimes suppressed 

Aretha’s ability to speak for herself. 

And woven throughout the film, flashbacks 

of her mother and her preteen 

pregnancy hint at an upbringing 

marked by tragedy and mistreatment. 

These details work as a backdrop 

not only to Aretha’s musical career, 

which shifted from church to recording 

studios, but also her personal life 

decisions. Although the explicit (and 

often excessive) portrayal of Aretha’s 

intimacy with the neighborhood bad 

boy Ted White (Marlon Wayans) is 

off-putting, it does get the point across 

that in running to him, she is running 

from her father, his mission, and his 

morality. 

The moral and spiritual thread 

continues as Aretha’s music career 

unfolds. Thankfully, Jennifer Hudson 

does not disappoint when it comes to 

showcasing her music, from sitting at 

the piano building “I Never Loved a 

Man” to wowing crowds at Madison 

Square Garden with the song that 

gives the film its title. 

Hudson’s seemingly effortless control 

over her voice, which swells from soft 

to booming from one song to the next, 

makes her the rare kind of singer who 

can do the Queen of Soul justice. 

But beyond her vocal performances, 

Hudson’s portrayal of Aretha shows a 

woman who is searching not just for 

the right sound for a hit or the right 

message for the civil rights movement 

(which she is), but also for the meaning 

of her own life. 

At one point in the film, she confesses 

that through her singing, she is 

still trying to discover who she is. The 

answer, it turns out, is hard to find. As 

we see her rise to fame, we also see 

her lash out at loved ones who tell her 

to rest, pour herself one drink after 

another, and break ties with her father 

when he accuses her of “not walking 

in the Spirit.” 

All the lights and shadows converge 

in a climactic scene of conversion that 

unites all the major elements of Aretha’s 

life: family, music, and faith. It is 

a moment in which Aretha finds that 

she has no one to turn to but God, 

and that the only voice she can speak 

is one of prayer. 

Because the film 

Jennifer Hudson and 

Forest Whitaker in 

"Respect." | © MGM 

VIA IMDB 

hinges on this 

scene, it drives 

home the truth 

that for all the injustice 

that Aretha 

suffered and inflicted 

throughout 

her life, her search 

for meaning had only one destination: 

the arms of a merciful heavenly 

Father. That message brings the story 

of the Queen of Soul directly into the 

reality of its viewers and gives them 

reason to find reconciliation in their 

own lives. 

Because it dares to explore the dark 

corners of Aretha’s life, “Respect” is 

not easy to watch. But with Hudson’s 

voice, it is easy to listen to, and with its 

hope-filled message, it is easy to love. 

“Respect” was released in theaters 

nationwide Aug. 13. 

Sophia Martinson is a writer living in 

New York City. 


DESIRE LINES 

HEATHER KING 

Demolishing the 

teenage trans myth 

Wall Street Journal columnist 

Abigail Shrier has written 

a brave book: “Irreversible 

Damage: The Transgender Craze 

Seducing Our Daughters.” 

A graduate of Columbia College, the 

University of Oxford, and Yale Law 

School, Shrier lives in LA and is a 

mother. 

Supportive of those with transgenderism 

who transition as adults, she 

naturally decries anti-transgender 

discrimination of any kind. She writes 

here exclusively of the trans phenomenon 

of “rapid onset gender dysphoria” 

as it affects teenage girls. 

The statistics are staggering. A decade 

ago, the Diagnostic and Statistical 

Manual (DSM-5) reported an expected 

incidence of gender dysphoria for 

natal females, based on those who 

sought medical intervention, at .002% 

to .003% of the population. 

In the last decade, the incidence 

has increased by 1,000%. In Britain, 

the increase is 4,000%. Puberty 

blockers, testosterone, and surgery, 

all with irreversible effects, are now 

routinely administered, based largely 

on the subjective feeling of the teen 

in question that she was born into the 

wrong body. 

“The children lead the way” is the 

ethos. Some teens threaten to commit 

suicide if their demands aren’t met, 

and thus withholding of consent has 

come culturally to be considered an 

act of violence. 

Asking questions about such a 

sudden and startling phenomenon 

is responsible, reasonable, and sane. 

A sense of bewilderment — how? 

Pete, 9, a transgender minor, holds a banner as he takes 

part in a protest to mark LGBT Pride Day in Madrid on 

June 28. | J. CNS/SERGIO PEREZ, REUTERS 

Why? — is the cry of the heart of any 

marginally sensitive human being. 

But cries of the heart, in case you 

haven’t noticed, have been banned 

in this culture. Language, belief, and 

thought are regulated by the woke. 

Shrier writes of girls who never 

exhibited the slightest sign of gender 

dysphoria as children or pre-teens. 

Many of these young girls have never 

even kissed. Many are sexually and 

emotionally naive. Many describe the 

online world of Tumblr and YouTube 

trans “influencers,” aided and abetted 

by teachers, standard school curricula, 

pharma, tech, psychiatrists, therapists, 

and the health care and porn indus- 


Heather King is an award-winning 

author, speaker, and workshop leader. 

tries, as a cult. 

To express the slightest concern with 

this state of affairs is to court the terror 

of the online lynch mob and career 

annihilation. After simply mentioning 

the book in one of its promotional 

mailings, the American Booksellers 

Association, under pressure from 

“gender supremacists” as they’ve been 

dubbed, issued a groveling apology 

and promptly switched their Twitter 

account to private. 

“This is a serious, violent incident 

that goes against ABA’s ends policies, 

values, and everything we believe and 

support. It is inexcusable,” the trade 

group tweeted. “Apologies are not 

enough.” 

But sales for the book have exploded. 

Scrolling through some of the 4,000- 

plus Amazon comments is instructive. 

Many 5-star reviews are from gay or 

trans adults who are themselves appalled 

by the notion that human biological 

sex is a social construct, and by 

the relentless promotion of hormones 

and surgery upon young girls. 

The more extreme the treatment, the 

greater the approval and support from 

the transgender community. Through 

their schools, teens in California and 

other states can begin medically “transitioning” 

with neither the consent 

nor knowledge of their parents. 

John Hopkins University distinguished 

professor of psychiatry and 

behavioral sciences Paul McHugh believes 

the eventual, inevitable lawsuits 

will ring the death knell of teenage 

girl transgenderism. Some of these 

girls, he predicts, “will wake up at age 

23, 24, and say, ‘Here I am. I’ve got a 

five-o’clock shadow, I’m mutilated and 

I’m sterile, and I’m not what I ought 

to be. How did this happen?’ ” 

But in the meantime, how did we 

get here in the first place? How did 

we get to the point that young girls 

are so repulsed by their changing 

bodies, so horrified by the prospect of 

womanhood, so divorced from their 

deepest identity that they are willing 

to take testosterone, bind their breasts, 

reject their families, undergo double 

mastectomies, and in many cases 

effectively render themselves sterile, 

before they’ve even had a romantic 

relationship? 

To that end, the most interesting 

passage in the book may be where 

Shrier observes that we women have 

ourselves repudiated what is best in 

us. While professing to despise men, 

we have measured ourselves against 

them. 

My own gloss: Women, so the woke 

ideology runs, are now no longer 

needed to bear, raise, foster, and guide 

new life. We are thus ever more superfluous 

and bothersome, with our hysterical 

desire for privacy, our annoying 

delicacy, our pathetic piping cry that 

a level playing field for, say, girls high 

school sports, would naturally exclude 

biological males. 

Is it any wonder that self-harm and 

suicide rates among teenage girls are 

skyrocketing? We have lost sight, we 

humans, of what we are, who we are, 

who we were made for. 

In “No Man is an Island,” Thomas 

Merton wrote: 

“Suffering and the consecration it 

demands, cannot be understood perfectly 

outside the context of baptism. 

For baptism, in giving us our identity 

[emphasis mine], gives us a divine 

vocation to find ourselves in Christ. 

It gives us our identity in Christ. But 

both the grace and the character of 

baptism give our souls a spiritual conformity 

to Christ in his suffering. For 

baptism is the application to our souls 

of the Passion of Christ.” 


LETTER AND SPIRIT 

SCOTT HAHN 

Scott Hahn is founder of the 

St. Paul Center for Biblical 

Theology; stpaulcenter.com. 

A priest without Levi’s genes 

Another in a series about St. Paul. 

Saul the Pharisee was 

zealous for the Torah. He 

may have been a member 

of the Sanhedrin, Judaism’s 

supreme court in the first 

century. 

But he did all this as a 

layman. He could never lay 

claim to priesthood as he was 

born into the tribe of Benjamin, 

and Israel’s priesthood 

was restricted to the tribe of 

Levi. 

Yet St. Paul clearly understood 

his role in priestly terms. 

In his Letter to the Romans, 

he spoke of his calling as “the 

grace given me by God to be a 

minister of Christ Jesus to the 

Gentiles in the priestly service 

of the gospel of God, so that 

the offering of the Gentiles 

may be acceptable, sanctified 

by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 

15:15–16). 

By grace, St. Paul had become 

a “minister.” In Greek 

COMMONS 

the word is “leitourgon,” 

from which we get the English word “liturgy.” In St. Paul’s 

culture, this referred to a ritual and priestly role, not simply 

a job title for a religious administrator. 

Thus, his work is a “priestly service,” and he further specifies 

that it is sacrificial. He speaks of the “offering of the 

Gentiles,” and prays that it may be “sanctified.” 

St. Paul was speaking of himself in terms that were off-limits 

because of his genes. 

Nevertheless, he employed such terms on many occasions. 

He spoke of his apostolate as a “ministry of reconciliation” 

(2 Corinthians 5:18). Again, in the Old Covenant, that 

role had been fulfilled by the priests, who brought about 

the forgiveness of sins through the expiating sacrifices of 

the Temple (see Hebrews 8:3). Now, St. Paul can describe 

himself as a “steward of God’s mysteries” (1 Corinthians 

“St. Paul the Apostle,” Russian icon, author unknown. | WIKIMEDIA 

4:1), employing a common 

Greek term for religious rituals, 

“mysterion.” 

St. Paul also identified himself 

as an “ambassador of Christ” (2 

Corinthians 5:20; Philemon 9). 

The ancient rabbis said that an 

ambassador was to be received 

as the dignitary whom he represented. 

And indeed that is how 

the churches received St. Paul 

— they “received me,” he said, 

“as an angel of God, as Christ 

Jesus” (Galatians 4:14). 

With the coming of Jesus, 

there had been a “change 

in the priesthood” (Hebrews 

7:12). Jesus was the high priest 

of the New Covenant. In fact, 

St. Paul spoke of Jesus as both 

sacrificial priest and sacrificial 

victim (Ephesians 5:2). 

But Jesus also shared his 

priesthood with men he 

designated as apostles; and he 

commanded them to offer the 

sacrifice of the New Covenant 

(1 Corinthians 11:25). 

When St. Paul forgave sins, he said that he did so “en 

prosopo Christou” (“in the person of Christ”) (2 Corinthians 

2:10). That Greek word “prosopo” is rich. It means 

“face.” It can also mean “person” or “presence.” St. Jerome 

translated the phrase into Latin as “in persona Christi.” 

Thus tradition has always read it: in the person of Christ. 

That is how St. Paul understood his priesthood. His is the 

face God showed to the Gentiles. Like Christ, St. Paul saw 

himself as priest and sacrificial victim, “poured as a libation 

upon the sacrificial offering of your faith” (Philippians 2:17). 

The priesthood is a call to self-giving. By the rite of ordination, 

the apostle conferred the gift of priesthood on a new 

generation (2 Timothy 1:6). 

And so it has passed through the millennia, to the priests 

who serve our parishes today. 


■ SATURDAY, AUGUST 21 

Catholic Bible Institute: New Testament Year Bible 

Study. Zoom Bible study from CBI meets Aug. 21 and 28, 

Sept. 11, Oct. 9, Nov. 13, Dec. 4, Jan. 15, Feb. 12, March 

12, April 9, May 14, and June 18, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Cost: $380/ 

year, course covers three years. Register before Aug. 21 for 

only $300. Participants can earn LMU Extension Semester 

Hours in the Certification Track. New participants can join 

in August of any year, starting with either the Old Testament 

or New Testament. For more information, contact 

cbi@la-archdiocese.org or Alex Moreno at JAMoreno@ 

la-archdiocese.org. 

■ SATURDAY, AUGUST 28 

Many Peoples, One Mother Mass and Rosary Procession. 

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. 

Temple St., 3 p.m. Entrance procession begins at 2:30 p.m. 

Archbishop José H. Gomez will celebrate Mass in honor of 

Our Lady of the Angels, patroness of the city and Archdiocese 

of Los Angeles, followed by a rosary procession on 

the Cathedral Plaza. Mass will be livestreamed at facebook. 

com/lacatholics or at lacatholics.org/many-peoples-onemother/. 

■ SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 

Catholic Cemeteries and Mortuaries Memorial Mass. 

San Fernando Mission Rey de España, 11 a.m. Mass will be 

livestreamed on LA Catholics social media channels and 

will not be open to the public. 

■ FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 

Centennial Celebration: Holy Name of Jesus Church. 

Holy Name of Jesus Church will celebrate 100 years as a 

bedrock of the Jefferson Park community with a special 

weekend of events Sept. 10-12, ending with a Mass featuring 

Bishop Clarke, celebrated by Reverend John H. Ricard, 

pastor Rev. Kenneth Ugwu, SSJ, former pastor Rev. Gregory 

Chisholm, SJ, and other local clergy. For more information, 

visit holynameofjesus-la.org. 

■ SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 

Fall Silent Saturday. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai 

Rd., Encino, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Arrive at 8:50 a.m. Join us for a 

quiet morning of Centering Prayer and silence. This day is 

open to beginners as well as those experienced in contemplative 

prayer or silent meditation. The day provides time 

for communal prayer, a contemplative walk, private journaling 

and reflection, and ends with a period of Lectio Divina. 

All are welcome. Register online at hsrcenter.com by Sept. 

9. For more information, contact Amanda Berg at spiritualdirection@hsrcenter.com. 

Donations are appreciated. 

■ MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 

Rosary Rally for a Better World. St. Louis of France 

Church, 6 p.m. Mass, 7 p.m. rosary. Event held on the 13th 

of every month through October 2021. Email Margarita 

Acevedo at margie_therese@yahoo.com for more information. 

■ WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 

What Will You Do? Free Online End-of-Life Seminar. 

Hosted by Catholic Cemeteries and Mortuaries, the seminar 

provides a Catholic perspective on how to prepare for final 

needs and what to expect when a loved one dies. English: 

Sept. 15, 7 p.m., Sept. 18, 10 a.m. Spanish: Sept. 16, 7 p.m., 

Sept. 18, 1 p.m. Visit catholiccm.org for more information. 

■ SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 

Day in Recognition of All Immigrants Procession and 

Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple 

St., Los Angeles, 3 p.m. Archbishop José H. Gomez will 

celebrate a special Mass at 3:30 p.m., which will be in 

person and livestreamed via Facebook.com/lacatholics and 

lacatholics.org/immigration. 

“Pueblo Amante de Maria” Virtual Procession, Rosary, 

and Tagalog Mass. Incarnation Church of Glendale will 

host a virtual procession and rosary at 1:15 p.m. to celebrate 

500 years of Christianity in the Philippines. Tagalog 

Mass to follow. To join on livestream, visit the Incarnation 

Church Facebook page. For details, call 818-242-2579. 

■ FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1 

Tepeyac Leadership Initiative Virtual Open House. 4 p.m. 

PST. Meet future instructors, recent alumni, and other professionals 

who share Catholic values. Facebook Live event. 

For more information, visit https://tliprogram.org/event/ 

virtual-open-house/. 

■ TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12 



livestreamed on LA Catholics social media channels and 


■ SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24 

Health Care Professionals Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady 

of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3:30-5 p.m. 

Visit lifejusticeandpeace.lacatholics.org/healthcare-professionals-mass 

for more information. 

■ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5 

Retrouvaille: A Lifeline for Married Couples. Weekend 

program runs Nov. 5-7 in Santa Clarita. Retrouvaille is an 

effective Catholic Christian ministry that helps married 

couples. The program offers the chance to rediscover yourself, 

your spouse, and the love in your marriage. Married 

couples of any faith are welcome. For more information, 

visit https://www.losangelesretrouvaille.com or call 909- 

900-5465. 

■ TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9 



live-streamed on LA Catholics social media channels and 


■ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1 

“The Inner Journey: Finding the Treasure Within” Workshop 

with Rev. James Clarke. Four-part online workshop 

(Dec. 1, Jan. 12, Feb. 9, March 2) will help participants 

uncover traditional ways of entering the interior sanctum 

of the soul. Learn more at https://cal.lmu.edu/event/the-inner-journey-workshop. 

■ FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10 

Retrouvaille: A Lifeline for Married Couples. Weekend 

program runs Dec. 10-12 in Los Angeles. Retrouvaille is an 

effective Catholic Christian ministry that helps married couples. 

The program offers the chance to rediscover yourself, 

your spouse, and the love in your marriage. Married couples 

of any faith are welcome. For more information, visit https:// 

www.losangelesretrouvaille.com or call 909-900-5465. 

Items for the calendar of events are due four weeks prior to the date of the event. They may be emailed to calendar@angelusnews.com. 

All calendar items must include the name, date, time, address of the event, and a phone number for additional information.

Angelus News | August 27, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 17

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