Angelus News | January 14, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 1

ANGELUS 

MERCY 

IS THE 

MEDICINE 

Rediscovering the healing 

power of confession 

January 14, 2022 Vol. 7 No. 1

ANGELUS 

January 14, 2022 

Vol. 7 • No. 1 

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ON THE COVER 

CNS/MIKE CRUPI, CATHOLIC COURIER 

It can be described as the sacrament of “penance,” 

“reconciliation,” or more simply, just “confession.” A 

necessary part of any serious Catholic’s spiritual life, 

certainly, but can it be something more? On Page 10, 

Mike Aquilina invokes the life and example of St. Pope 

John Paul II to make the case that confession is much 

more than a duty, but actually a right — and perhaps our 

best shot at the radical conversion God wants to give us. 

THIS PAGE 

CNS/ALYSON MCCLARAN, REUTERS 

A statue of St. Francis of Assisi in Louisville, 

Colorado, stands in the remains of homes 

destroyed by the Marshall Fire Dec. 31, 2021. 

Authorities said 991 structures, including 

businesses, were destroyed and another 127 

damaged by the fire, which swept through 

more than 6,000 acres before snow helped 

extinguish the blazes. 

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Pope Watch.................................................................................................................................... 2 

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

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

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

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

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

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

14 

18 

CONTENTS 

A parish school in the Valley’s unlikely success story 

Why LA’s Catholic school district is suing its public counterpart 

Angelus News 

@AngelusNews 

@AngelusNews 

20 

22 

John Allen: The stops and starts of a maverick’s reform papacy 

Is the digital age validating a former priest’s once radical ideas? 

angelusnews.com 

lacatholics.org 

26 

Greg Erlandson on the pope’s advice for COVID-weary families 

Sign up for our free, daily e-newsletter 

Always Forward - newsletter.angelusnews.com 

28 

30 

The unique achievement of Cardinal Pell’s ‘Prison Journal’ 

Heather King lands an exclusive interview with — herself 

January 14, 2022 • ANGELUS • 1

POPE WATCH 

Kids, pets, and the big fear 

Pope Francis made international headlines 

this month for comments made 

about parenthood, adoption, and pets 

in a catechesis on St. Joseph during his 

weekly General Audience on Wednesday, 

Jan. 5. What follows is an excerpt 

from his much-quoted remarks. 

It is not enough to bring a child 

into the world to also be the child’s 

father or mother. 

“Fathers are not born, but made. A 

man does not become a father simply 

by bringing a child into the world, but 

by taking up the responsibility to care 

for that child. Whenever a man accepts 

responsibility for the life of another, 

in some way he becomes a father to 

that person” (Apostolic Letter “Patris 

corde”). 

I think in a particular way of all those 

who are open to welcome life by way of 

adoption, which is such a generous and 

beautiful, good attitude. Joseph shows 

us that this type of bond is not secondary; 

it is not an afterthought, no. This 

kind of choice is among the highest 

forms of love, and of fatherhood and 

motherhood. 

How many children in the world are 

waiting for someone to take care of 

them! And how many married couples 

want to be fathers and mothers but are 

unable to do so for biological reasons; 

or, although they already have children, 

they want to share their family’s affection 

with those who do not have it. 

We should not be afraid to choose the 

path of adoption, to take the “risk” of 

welcoming children. And today, with 

orphanhood, there is a certain selfishness. 

The other day I spoke about the demographic 

winter there is nowadays, in 

which we see that people do not want 

to have children, or just one and no 

more. And many, many couples do not 

have children because they do not want 

to, or they have just one — but they 

have two dogs, two cats. … Yes, dogs 

and cats take the place of children. 

Yes, it’s funny, I understand, but it is 

the reality. And this denial of fatherhood 

or motherhood diminishes us, it 

takes away our humanity. And in this 

way civilization becomes aged and 

without humanity, because it loses the 

richness of fatherhood and motherhood. 

And our homeland suffers, as it does 

not have children, and, as it has been 

said somewhat humorously, “and now 

who will pay the taxes for my pension, 

if there are no children?” 

It is said with laughter, but it is the 

truth. Who will take care of me? I 

ask of St. Joseph the grace to awaken 

consciences and to think about having 

children. 

It is true, there is the spiritual fatherhood 

of those who consecrated 

themselves to God, and spiritual motherhood; 

but those who live in the world 

and get married, think about having 

children, of giving life, which they will 

take from you for the future. 

Also, if you cannot have children, 

think about adoption. It is a risk, yes: 

having a child is always a risk, either 

naturally or by adoption. But it is riskier 

not to have them. It is riskier to deny 

fatherhood, or to deny motherhood, be 

it real or spiritual. 

But a man or woman who does not 

develop the sense of fatherhood or 

motherhood are lacking something, 

something fundamental, something 

important. 

Papal Prayer Intention for January: We pray for all those 

suffering from religious discrimination and persecution; may 

their own rights and dignity be recognized, which originate 

from being brothers and sisters in the human family. 

2 • ANGELUS • January 14, 2022

NEW WORLD OF FAITH 

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

The Church’s best kept secret 

I 

have been reflecting on Pope 

Francis’ message for the annual 

World Day of Peace and the challenges 

we face as we emerge from the 

pandemic. 

As Catholics, how do we understand 

and address these challenges: 

the threats to peace, the economic 

hardships, all the troubling social conditions 

and injustices we find in the 

world? The pope counsels that we can 

find “sure guidelines in the Church’s 

social doctrine.” 

And he is right. 

Catholic social teaching may be 

the Church’s best kept secret. I am 

surprised how often I meet people, 

even many good Catholics, who do 

not know that the Church has her 

own teaching about what makes for a 

good society. 

The Church’s teaching includes a 

moral analysis of what governments 

and economies are for, a vision of 

who the human person is and what 

makes for human happiness, and 

includes the demand that all believers 

work, not just for the salvation of our 

neighbors’ souls, but for a world that 

protects their rights and dignity. 

The Catechism of the Catholic 

Church’s sections on the human 

community (nos. 1877–1948), and on 

social living (nos. 2419–2449) make 

for challenging and inspiring reading. 

A wide range of teachings is found 

there — on social justice and solidarity, 

the dignity of work, the morality of 

economic activity, love for the poor, 

and much more. 

These teachings are not treated 

as something “extra” added on to 

Catholic beliefs about the Trinity, the 

incarnation, the resurrection, and our 

redemption in Christ. 

What we profess in the Creed leads 

to a conception of life that embraces 

the well-being of the whole person — 

understood to be a creature of body 

and soul, made a man or a woman, 

born on earth but destined for heaven. 

Our social teaching flows from the 

basic truth that the Father so loved 

the world that he sent his only Son to 

dwell on earth in human form by the 

power of the Holy Spirit. 

From that great truth, we understand 

that the human person is loved by 

God and made in his image, and is 

called to a heavenly destiny, to communion 

in the blessed Trinity. 

The salvation we believe in is personal. 

But, as the Catechism says, “it 

also concerns the human community 

as a whole.” 

In revealing that God is our Father, 

Jesus disclosed the truth about our 

personal relationship with God, that 

we are children of God. He also 

revealed the truth of our social relationships. 

We are made to live as one 

human family, as equals, brothers and 

sisters of our heavenly Father. 

Catholic social teaching is part of 

the mission that Jesus entrusted to his 

Church. 

Jesus suffered and died to raise up 

every person to new life in God. In 

calling believers to follow him, Jesus 

calls us to love others as he loves 

them, and to express that love in 

practical works of mercy, healing, and 

delivering others from suffering and 

evil. 

Practically speaking, that means that 

no one who claims to love God can 

remain indifferent when one of God’s 

children is suffering. 

That was the message of Jesus’ famous 

parable of the Good Samaritan 

and also his parable about how God 

will judge us at the end of our lives. 

Our love for God, he told us, will be 

measured by the love that we have 

shown to our neighbors, especially the 

most vulnerable, the poor, the prisoner, 

the sick, the stranger. 

The Catholic Church does not 

claim to have an economic program 

or a domestic agenda or a foreign 

policy. What we have is a vision of 

the world as God intends it to be, and 

a duty that Jesus gives us to work for 

God’s will on earth. That means we 

can never tolerate social conditions 

that degrade or dehumanize people. 

We live in a cultural moment 

marked by urgent concern for social 

justice. There is much that Catholic 

social teaching can bring to these conversations 

and debates. 

As the saints and the popes remind 

us, the real contribution we make as 

Catholics is simply to be Catholics, to 

be faithful followers of Jesus Christ. 

“Others drink from other sources,” 

Pope Francis writes. “For us the wellspring 

of human dignity and fraternity 

is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” 

The popes warn us never to allow 

the truths of the Gospel be reduced to 

“a kind of moralism” or a “secularization 

of salvation.” 

We need to help our neighbors to 

see the higher vision of the Gospel, 

to recognize the glorious truth of 

the human person, and to work for a 

world where each of us can live as our 

Creator calls us to live. 

Pray for me and I will pray for you. 

And let us ask our Blessed Mother 

Mary to help us to bring the good 

news of her Son’s social gospel to the 

people of our time. 


WORLD 

■ Archbishop Tutu’s Catholic connection 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose death at the age of 90 

on Dec. 26, 2021, has been mourned around the world, 

was a renowned Anglican bishop known for his leadership 

against South Africa’s apartheid. 

But he also had a strong connection to the Catholic 

Church. 

While studying to become an Anglican priest in Johannesburg, 

seminary formators worried that he was “suffering from 

a touch of ‘Roman fever,’ ” or love for Catholic beliefs and 

practices, according to a Catholic News Service report. This 

included daily recitation of the Angelus and the Hail Mary, 

as well as a particular devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux. 

“As I am not part of the Catholic tradition, I think my 

interest in her indicates that she has an ecumenical appeal,” 

Tutu once said. “She encourages us to grasp the significance 

of retracting into oneself for inner peace, to seek solitude, 

silence, and waiting, 

to be with God.” 

Tutu was also 

married to a Catholic, 

Nomalizo 

Leah Shenxane, at a 

Catholic ceremony 

in 1955. As Anglican 

archbishop of Cape 

Town, Tutu partnered 

often with the 

city’s Catholic archbishop 

in the fight 

Archbishop Tutu in 2011. | CNS/ALLISON JOYCE, 

REUTERS 

against apartheid. 

■ India strikes a blow to 

Mother Teresa’s order 

The Indian government announced on Christmas Day 

that the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, 

are no longer eligible to receive foreign donations. 

Two days later, the government claimed to have found 

unspecified “adverse inputs” to the Missionaries and that 

they no longer met eligibility requirements under Indian 

law. 

Father Dominic Gomes of the Archdiocese of Calcutta, 

the order’s birthplace, called the ruling “a cruel Christmas 

gift to the poorest of the poor,” and said that 22,000 people 

directly depend on or benefit from the work of the sisters’ 

centers across India. The order said local support will keep 

the India centers in operation. 

The ruling comes amid a wave of increasing hostility 

toward Christians in India, including hundreds of violent 

incidents in 2021 alone. 

“They are thinking that opposing Christianity is patriotism. 

This is not a healthy atmosphere,” Bishop M. 

Jagjivan, moderator of the National Christian Council, told 

the Wall Street Journal. 

■ A QR code at the Vatican 

A woman scans the new QR code on “Angels Unawares” 

in St. Peter’s Square last month. | CNS 

Tourists in St. 

Peter’s Square 

may now have 

a legitimate 

excuse to be on 

their phones. 

Visitors who 

scan the QR 

code recently 

added to the 

square’s “Angels 

Unawares” 

statue with their 

phones will be 

taken to a dedicated 

website in 

several languages 

with history 

about the statue 

and Pope Francis’ teachings on immigration. 

The statue, installed in 2019 and created by Canadian 

sculptor Timothy Schmalz, depicts a group of migrants 

from different historical and cultural backgrounds huddled 

on a raft. Its replica has visited the Cathedral of Our 

Lady of the Angels and other sites around the U.S. 

“We have decided to incorporate cultural information 

and Church teachings from recent years to help all tourists 

and visitors at the Vatican to become pilgrims, too,” 

said Cardinal Michael Czerny, who leads the Vatican 

department on migration issues. 

A saintly status upgrade — Pope Francis will declare his predecessor, Pope John 

Paul I, “blessed” on Sept. 4, the Vatican announced. Pope John Paul was known as 

“the smiling pope.” The announcement came after the Holy See recognized the 

miraculous healing of a young Argentinian girl from inflammatory encephalopathy 

attributed to Pope John Paul’s intercession. | CNS/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO 


NATION 

■ No change at the border, bishop says 

A leading voice among the U.S. bishops on immigration 

said little has changed for migrants at the U.S. southern 

border despite promises from the Biden administration. 

El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz visited migrants along the 

border Dec. 20, 2021, two weeks after the administration 

reimplemented the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy. 

The Biden administration was ordered to reinstate the 

Trump-era policy by a Texas judge last August. Officials 

claimed they would conclude immigration cases within 

six months of the migrants’ return to Mexico and provide 

COVID-19 vaccinations to eligible migrants. 

But Bishop Seitz said that the migrants are telling a 

different story, one where “they’re still being treated like 

criminals” and where promises of humane conditions and 

vaccines have gone unfulfilled. 

“They’ve lost everything in their home place,” Seitz said. 

“They can’t go forward and if they stay, they’ll be staying in 

a place that has so many social problems right now and they 

will continue to be at risk.” 

■ No, NASA hasn’t hired theologians 

Migrants from Haiti 

cross the Rio Bravo 

near El Paso, Texas, 

to turn themselves 

in to U.S Border 

Patrol agents to 

request asylum on 

Jan. 3. | CNS/JOSE 

LUIS GONZALEZ, 

REUTERS 

“NASA just hired 24 theologians to assess how the world 

would react if we discovered alien life.” 

That was the claim that gained viral popularity on social 

media in the waning days of 2021. According to an Associated 

Press fact check, the claim is not completely true — or 

false. 

Though the space agency has not hired theologians, NASA 

did make a grant in 2015 to Princeton University’s Center of 

Theological Inquiry (CTI) to support a study to “assess societal 

implications for NASA’s astrobiological and search for life 

efforts.” The NASA-funded part of the research concluded 

in 2017. 

“Individuals who receive grant funding from NASA are 

not employees, advisers, or spokespersons for the agency,” 

a NASA spokesperson told AP. “Thus, the researchers and 

scholars involved with this study were not hired by NASA, 

but instead received funding through CTI to conduct this 

work.” 

■ New York Times uncovers problems 

with popular prenatal tests 

Pro-life advocates say a groundbreaking report from The 

New York Times on faulty prenatal genetic tests further 

illustrates the injustice of abortion. 

Basing their findings on interviews and combined studies, 

the Times found that five of the most common prenatal 

tests for genetic disorders provide false positives around 

85% of the time, and that some companies advertise these 

tests as “reliable” and “highly accurate” despite the false 

positive rates. 

Catholic activist Jeanne Mancini, president of the March 

for Life, decried the poor regulation of the tests, telling 

Catholic News Agency that children who test positive for 

a genetic disorder in utero are “disproportionately targeted 

for abortion.” 

“It is a travesty that women and families are making life-altering 

decisions based on misleading information and that 

children with disabilities are deemed unworthy of life,” 

said the American Association for Pro-Life Obstetricians 

and Gynecologists in a statement. 

Top billing for the Bible — A billboard spotlighting “The Bible in a Year” was 

seen from mid-December until Jan. 9 in New York’s Times Square to celebrate 

the surprise success of the daily podcast, which leads listeners through the Bible’s 

narrative. It became the No. 1 podcast in all categories in the U.S. within 48 hours 

of its Jan. 2021 launch, remained the No. 1 podcast in religion and spirituality 

for most of the year, and was expected to have 170 million downloads and 4 

billion total listening minutes by the end of 2021. The billboard featuring host 

Father Mike Schmitz also encouraged people to read the Bible in 2022. | CNS/ 

COURTESY ASCENSION 


LOCAL 

■ A Catholic school’s new firefighting mission 

Fire authorities 

in Ventura 

County have 

a new piece in 

their firefighting 

arsenal: a 

strategically 

located helipad 

on the campus of 

Thomas Aquinas 

College in Santa 

Paula. 

The Catholic 

university 

allowed the 

helipad’s installation 

as part of 

an agreement 

A Firehawk helicopter during a debut training exercise at the new helipad on the 

campus of Thomas Aquinas College. | THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE 

with the Ventura 

County Fire 

Department 

(VCFD), which recently purchased two Sikorsky Firehawk helicopters. 

For decades, firefighters were allowed to land water-carrying choppers on the 

school’s athletic fields, but that option was no longer viable for the larger and 

heavier Firehawks. 

Thanks to the new “helispot” — less than a mile from where the infamous 

2017 Thomas Fire started — “we no longer need to fly our helicopters to Fillmore 

to fill water tanks,” said VCFD Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen. “That means 

we can put more water on a fire while it’s small, giving it less time to spread.” 

A most important gift — Archbishop José H. Gomez enters the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels at the start 

of the 9 a.m. Christmas Day Mass Dec. 25. In his homily, the archbishop called on the faithful to “adore the Child, 

as the shepherds did on that first Christmas night, and let us offer this honor to the Child — let’s offer him the gift 

of our heart.” | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

■ Vocations basketball 

game set for a 

comeback 

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ 

annual Priests vs. Seminarians basketball 

game is back this year after taking 

a year off due to COVID-19. 

A squad made up of men studying 

for the priesthood at St. John Seminary 

in Camarillo will take on their 

ordained opponents on Friday, Feb. 11, 

at Chaminade College Preparatory’s 

middle-school campus gymnasium. 

The teams have a split record since 

the tradition started three years ago: 

Team Seminarians won the matchup 

in 2019, and Team Priests in 2020. 

Doors open at 6 p.m. and tip-off is at 

7:30 p.m. COVID-19 protocols will be 

followed. Tickets can be purchased at 

archla.org/basketball. 

■ UC Irvine fires 

Catholic professor over 

vaccine mandate 

A professor at University of California 

Irvine’s (UCI) medical school is 

out of a job after refusing to comply 

with a systemwide COVID-19 vaccine 

mandate. 

Aaron Kheriaty, Ph.D., who taught 

psychiatry and human behavior and 

was director of UCI’s medical ethics 

program, had argued in a lawsuit 

against the UC system last fall that he 

should be exempt from the vaccine 

mandate due to the natural immunity 

he acquired from previously contracting 

COVID-19. 

Kheriaty, who is Catholic, has said 

he is not against the COVID-19 

vaccine but opposes making it mandatory. 

“Requiring the naturally immune to 

be vaccinated doesn’t make anyone 

actually safer,” wrote Kheriaty in 

the Wall Street Journal last year. 

“It is wrong to risk harming healthy 

people so that college can peddle a 

psychological placebo to those who 

don’t care enough to consider basic 

scientific facts.” 

Y 


V 

IN OTHER WORDS... 

Letters to the Editor 

A second perspective regarding the ‘liturgy wars’ 

In response to John L. Allen’s article “Tradition and transition” in the 

Dec. 3 issue: My theological schooling is at the baccalaureate level, with 

courses in the novitiate and self-study, but “liturgy wars” would not be a term I’d 

choose about the worship of God. But it surely gets attention! 

The issue is about believers wanting to deepen their relationship with God by restoring 

the Tridentine Latin Mass. Pope Francis’ refusal to restore it has provoked 

clergy and laity alike. The pope saw its return in opposition to the Second Vatican 

Council’s intent to let nothing interfere with the Church’s community life, like 

the confusing use of another language here — Latin being one of them. 

I know of a good number of Roman Catholics in the Bay Area, where I live, who 

have deepened their relationship with God by celebrating the Byzantine liturgy. It 

teaches how well the early Church understood the mystery of the Incarnation — 

its liturgy expresses it in every detail. The vernacular, English, is used there. The 

Scriptures take on much more meaning with the knowledge that the apostles St. 

Andrew and St. Paul, among others, composed the structures of these liturgies we 

pray from. 

There is much to be said for the graces that come from making an effort to 

encounter an ancient liturgical experience — and the Tridentine Mass isn’t the 

only one. 

— Sister Joyce Turnbull, RSM, Burlingame, California 

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. 

An archbishop’s resolution 

On Jan. 1, Archbishop 

José H. Gomez addressed 

LA Catholics via video 

message. He encouraged 

them to add a few 

spiritual resolutions to 

their list that will bring 

them into a “deeper and 

closer friendship with 

Jesus.” | ARCHDIOCESE 

OF LOS ANGELES 

“I make it very clear that I’m 

here to serve them, not to 

ask for something.” 

~ Washington, D.C. priest Father William Gurnee, 

former congressional staffer, on his ministry to 

government workers on Capitol Hill one year after 

the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. 

“If we are to begin anew 

this year, we must take a 

proper stance in all that we 

are facing as individuals 

and as a community of 

God’s children. One foot 

in the world … and one in 

eternity.” 

~ Sister Josephine Garrett, CSFN, in a Dec. 30 New 

Year’s Eve column for Catholic News Service. 

“The office of godparent … 

has lost its original meaning, 

limiting itself to a purely 

formal liturgical presence 

that is not followed by the 

accompaniment of the 

baptized and the confirmed 

on the path of human and 

spiritual growth.” 

~ Sicilian Bishop Domenico Mogavero in his 

Jan. 1 decree temporarily banning the naming 

of godparents due to their use as a means to 

strengthen family bonds, particularly within local 

Mafia families. 

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. 

“Consciences aren’t helped 

by priests giving their 

blessing to evil.” 

~ Kathryn Jean Lopez, in a Jan. 5 National Review 

article criticizing former House chaplain Father 

Patrick J. Conroy for suggesting that a woman’s right 

to choose abortion is a “Catholic value.” 


IN EXILE 

FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father 

Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual 

writer; ronaldrolheiser.com. 

At the origins of our universe 

Recently, NASA launched the 

James Webb Space Telescope 

into space, the biggest and most 

expensive telescope ever built. It will 

take six months for it to travel a million 

miles from the earth, find its permanent 

place in space, and then start 

transmitting pictures back to earth. 

Those pictures will be such as we have 

never seen before. 

The hope is that it will enable us to 

see much further into space than we’ve 

ever seen before, ideally to the very 

ends of our still-expanding universe, 

right to the first particles that issued 

forth from the original explosion, the 

Big Bang, that began time and our 

universe. 

Scientists estimate that our universe 

began 13.7 billion years ago. As far as 

we know, prior to that there was nothing 

in existence, as we understand that 

today (except for God). Then, out of 

this seeming nothingness, there was an 

explosion (the Big Bang), out of which 

everything in the universe, including 

our planet earth, formed. 

As with any explosion, the parts that 

were the most intimately intertwined 

with the expelling force are those 

driven furthest away. Thus, when 

investigators try to determine the cause 

of an explosion, they are particularly 

interested in finding and examining 

those pieces that were most closely tied 

to the original force of the explosion, 

and generally those pieces have been 

blown furthest away. 

The force of the Big Bang is still going 

on, and those parts of our universe that 

were most intimately intertwined with 

its beginnings are still being driven further 

and further into space. Scientists 

are investigators, probing that original 

explosion. 

What the James Webb Space Telescope 

hopes to see is some of the 

original parts from that unimaginable 

explosion that gave birth to our 

universe because these parts were there 

at the very beginning, at the origins of 

everything that exists. By seeing and examining 

them, science hopes to better 

understand the origins of our universe. 

Looking at the excitement scientists 

feel around this new telescope and 

their hopes that it will show us pictures 

of particles from the beginning of time, 

can help us understand why St. John 

the Evangelist has trouble restraining 

his enthusiasm when he talks about 

Jesus in his first epistle. 

He is excited about Jesus because, 

among other things, Jesus was there 

at the beginnings of the universe and 

indeed at the beginnings of everything. 

For St. John, Jesus is a mystical telescope 

through which we might view 

that primordial explosion that created 

the universe, since he was there when 

it happened. 

Let me risk paraphrasing the beginning 

of the First Epistle of John (1:1–4) 

as he might have written it for our 

generation vis-à-vis our curiosity about 

the origins of our universe: 

“You need to understand of whom 

and what I am speaking: Jesus wasn’t 

just some extraordinary person who 

performed a few miracles or even who 

rose from the dead. 

“We are speaking of someone who 

was there at the very origins of creation, 

who himself is the foundation 

for that creation, who was with God 

when the Big Bang occurred, and even 

before that. 

“Incredibly, we actually got to see him 

in the flesh, with human eyes, the God 

who created the Big Bang, walking 

among us! We actually touched him 

bodily. We actually spoke with him 

and listened to him speak, he who was 

there at the origins of our universe, 

there when the Big Bang took place! 

“Indeed, he is the One who pulled 

the switch to set it off, with a plan in 

mind as to where it should go, a plan 

that includes us. 

“Do you want to probe more deeply 

into what happened at our origins? 

Well, Jesus is a mystical telescope to 

look through. After all, he was there at 

the beginning and unbelievably we got 

to see, hear, and touch him bodily! 

“Excuse my exuberance, but we got 

to walk and talk with someone who 

was there at the beginning of time.” 

There are different kinds of knowledge 

and different kinds of wisdom, 

along with different avenues for accessing 

each of them. Science is one of 

those avenues, an important one. For 

far too long theology and religion did 

not consider it a friend. That was (and 

remains) a tragic mistake since science 

has the same founder and same intent 

as theology and religion. 

Theology and religion have been 

wrong whenever they have sought to 

undercut science’s importance or its 

claims to truth. Sadly, science has often 

returned the favor and viewed theology 

and religion as a foe rather than as a 

colleague. The two need each other, 

not least in understanding the origins 

and intent of our universe. 

How do we understand the origins 

and intent of our universe? Science 

and Jesus. Science is probing those 

origins in the interest of telling us how 

it happened and how it is unfolding, 

while Jesus (who was there when it 

happened) is more interested in telling 

us why it happened and what it means. 


Making mercy accessible 

St. Pope John Paul II and the apostolate of confession. 

BY MIKE AQUILINA 

A 

couple of years ago — when there were Catholic conferences 

attended by many people — I volunteered to 

man the book table at one in my city. It was a wonderful 

event, attended by hundreds. And the organizers made 

sure that priests were available for confession throughout the 

day. 

My table was the last, nearest to a conference room that 

had been repurposed as a confessional. 

Well, soon after the conference began, a woman came out 

Pope John Paul II gives confession at St Peter’s Basilica on April 9, 2004, in Vatican 

City. | ARTURO MARI/VATICAN POOL, GETTY 

of the room, and she stopped at my table. 

She leaned in as if she had a secret. She said, “There are no 

lines right now. You can go right into confession!” 

I thanked her. Then I saw her go to the next table and 

repeat the big secret: “There are no lines. …” 

And then she went to the next table. And the next. 


By the time she got to the end, there was a line. 

St. Pope John Paul would have approved. 

He loved the sacrament of confession. He loved it as a 

penitent. He loved it as a confessor. 

As a penitent he loved it by going frequently. He went at 

least once a week, his secretary, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz 

recounted. “He would also confess before major feast days 

and special liturgical seasons.” 

As a priest, he knew that the confessional was important to 

his life and ministry. He said, “It is in the confessional that 

[a priest’s] spiritual fatherhood is realized in the fullest way. 

It is in the confessional that every priest becomes aware of 

the great miracles which divine mercy works in souls which 

receive the grace of conversion.” 

We can trace Pope John Paul’s 

love for confession to a special 

grace he received when he was 

young. 

It happened in 1947, less than a 

year after his priestly ordination. 

His bishop, Cardinal Adam 

Sapieha, assigned him to pursue 

studies in Rome, and gave him 

extra money for travel in Europe. 

So, before classes started, Father 

Wojtyła (as he was then known) 

St. John Vianney, pictured in a 

stained-glass window, is widely 

known to Catholics as the Curé 

of Ars, who won over the hearts 

of his villagers in France by 

visiting with them, teaching 

them about God, and reconciling 

people to the Lord in the confessional. 

| CNS/CROSIERS 

made a pilgrimage to France and stopped in the town of Ars, 

where St. John Vianney had served as parish priest in the 

19th century. 

There he saw the small confessional where the Curé of Ars 

would sit sometimes for 18 hours a day. He heard the story 

of the tens of thousands who traveled to the rural parish to 

confess their sins — 80,000 came in the year 1858 alone. 

Trains had to accommodate the priest’s popularity by adding 

a stop in the middle of nowhere. The local government had 

to build a new station to accommodate the trains. 

The young priest was so deeply moved that he resolved to 

be like St. John Vianney. He would make himself a “prisoner 

of the confessional,” always available to penitents. And 

he would awaken in his congregations a strong desire for the 

graces available in the sacrament. 

In less than two years Father Wojtyła received his first parish 

assignment back in the Archdiocese of Kraków, and he 

made good on his resolution. 

His biographer George Weigel said that Father Wojtyła 

“was, by the testimony of his penitents, a ‘fantastic confessor.’ ” 

Confession with Father Wojtyła “could last as long as an 

hour, sometimes even longer.” 

Father Wojtyła came across not as a judge but rather a 

guide and friend. This ran contrary to his training. In seminary, 

he had been schooled in manuals that were juridical in 

their approach and deliberately positioned the priest-confessor 

as a judge. 

But he concentrated on the human person rather than the 

transgression. He was attentive and prayerfully involved in 

the sacrament. 

He was, Weigel said, “a demanding confessor but in a very 

different way.” 

“The goal was to deepen one’s Christian conviction and 

insight, not simply to internalize a checklist of moral prohibitions. 

The rules were there; they were real; they were to be 

obeyed. But the rules were not arbitrary. They defined the 

drama because they illuminated the dramatic tension in life, 

the tension between the person-I-am and the person-I-oughtto-be. 

The confessor was to be a counselor in the practice of 

the virtues.” 

Unfortunately for his congregation, Father Wojtyła did not 

remain a parish priest for long. Pope Pius XII appointed 

him an auxiliary bishop at a very young age — only 38. And 


four years later Pope John XXIII named him archbishop of 

Kraków. 

Even as archbishop, however, he continued his personal 

practice of frequent confession. Once (or more often) every 

week Archbishop Wojtyła would walk to the nearby Franciscan 

church and stand in line. He would hear confessions, 

too, when he had the chance — but the demands of his office 

permanently dashed his youthful plans to be a “prisoner 

of the confessional.” 

Nonetheless, he often reminded his people of the mercy 

available in the sacrament. And he reminded his priests of 

their obligation to accompany people as ministers of the 

sacrament. 

“The Eucharist and Penance thus become in a sense two 

closely connected dimensions of authentic life in accordance 

with the spirit of the Gospel, of truly Christian life. 

The Christ who calls to the Eucharistic banquet is always 

the same Christ who exhorts us to penance and repeats his 

‘Repent’.” 

It is a theme as old as St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. 

But he saw that the Church of his time was in need of a 

reminder. 

He noted that the 1960s had revived an awareness of the 

communal effects of sin — and the need for reconciliation 

with the community. Nevertheless, he emphasized that sin is 

first and foremost an offense against God. 

In his archdiocesan plan for the implementation of the 

Second Vatican Council, he quoted the council’s decree on 

the ministry and life of priests, saying that priests “are united 

with the intention and the charity of Christ when … they 

show themselves always available to administer the sacrament 

of penance whenever it is reasonably requested by the 

faithful.” 

It was during his years as pope, however, that his reflections 

on the sacrament came to full maturity. 

In his first encyclical letter, “Redemptor Hominis” (“The 

Redeemer of Man”), he linked confession inseparably with 

Communion. 

In this 2014 file photo, Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh hears a young woman’s 

confession during a pro-life youth rally and Mass at the Verizon Center in Washington, 

D.C. | CNS/LESLIE KOSSOFF 

“Conversion,” the new pope said, “is a particularly profound 

inward act in which the individual cannot be replaced 

by others and cannot make the community be a substitute 

for him.” 

So, again, he saw confession as integral to the drama of 

each Christian life. 


Four Cs for a good confession 

1. BE COMPLETE. Don’t leave any serious sins 

out. Start with the one that’s toughest to say. 

2. BE CLEAR. Try not to be subtle or euphemistic. 

Father should understand what sin you’re confessing. 

3. BE CONTRITE. Remember, it’s God you’ve 

offended, his forgiveness you seek. 

4. BE CONCISE. No need to go into detail. Often 

when we do, we’re just trying to make excuses for our 

behavior. There may be people in line behind you. 

Don’t make them wait! 

He spoke of the sacrament not so much as a duty of the 

faithful, but a right: “In faithfully observing the centuries-old 

practice of the Sacrament of Penance … the Church is … 

defending the human soul’s individual right: man’s right 

to a more personal encounter with the crucified forgiving 

Christ.” 

This was certainly a fresh approach — confession as a right 

that is not to be denied to God’s people. 

But that’s not his most startling point. He also defended 

the sacrament as a right that belongs to Jesus. He said, “This 

is also a right on Christ’s part with regard to every human 

being redeemed by him: his right to meet each one of us in 

that key moment in the soul’s life constituted by the moment 

of conversion and forgiveness.” 

So, in preaching about confession — and in making 

confession accessible — the Church is doing more than 

dispensing justice. It is enabling love. 

In his next encyclical, “Dives in Misericordia” (“Rich in 

Mercy”), these themes came even more to the forefront. 

Once again, he emphasized the connection between Eucharist 

and confession, which are the only sacraments a Catholic 

can receive frequently. Pope John Paul urged Catholics 

to take up a “conscious and mature participation” in both. In 

the Eucharist, he said, Christ comes “to meet every human 

heart.” But it is confession “that prepares the way for each 

individual, even those weighed down with great faults.” 

The pope arranged for the 1983 Synod of Bishops to 

address questions of “Penance and Reconciliation in the 

Mission of the Church.” The following year he devoted his 

apostolic exhortation, “Reconciliatio et Paenitentia” (“Reconciliation 

and Penance”), to the findings of the synod. 

Then, in 1986 on Holy Thursday, he published a letter to 

all the priests of the world; and in it he recounted what he 

had learned in his 1947 pilgrimage to France. 

He told the story of St. John Vianney, and he urged all 

priests to imitate the holy Curé in making themselves available 

for confession. 

But he also spoke with sadness about the decline in the 

practice of confession. He declared that there was an “urgent 

need to develop a whole pastoral strategy of the sacrament of 

reconciliation.” 

“This will be done,” he said, “by constantly reminding 

Christians of the need to have a real relationship with God, 

the need to have a sense of sin when one is closed to God 

and to others, the need to be converted and through the 

Church to receive forgiveness as a free gift of God.” 

The matter would remain urgent for him to the end of 

his days. To the U.S. hierarchy he spoke of the problem as 

a “crisis,” which had become “a challenge to the Church’s 

fidelity.” 

At stake, he said, “is the whole question of the personal 

relationship that Christ wills to have with each penitent and 

which the Church must unceasingly defend.” 

Many years have passed since he made those pleas; and 

the crisis remains. A 2008 study conducted by Georgetown 

University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate 

concluded, “Three-quarters of Catholics report that they 

never participate in the sacrament … or that they do so less 

than once a year.” Only 12% go once a year. Only 2% go 

once a month or more. 

What the situation requires of us — especially the laity — is 

a commitment to an active apostolate. We need to be like 

that lady at the conference. We need to go to confession — 

and then go to our family members, co-workers, and neighbors, 

saying, “There are no lines. You can go right in!” 

So many people are out there hurting and wounded — and 

we’re standing around with a pocketful of medicine that can 

heal them. 

It doesn’t work for us to say, “Hey, you look like a sinner. 

Maybe you ought to try confession.” But we can surely speak 

from our own experience. We can tell them why we go. We 

can tell them about our own healing. 

Pope John Paul wasn’t afraid to let the world know he went 

to confession every week. He wasn’t afraid to invite others to 

join him in the practice of frequent confession. 

We can do this, too. 

Mike Aquilina is a contributing editor to Angelus and author 

of many books, most recently “Friendship and the Fathers: 

How the Early Church Evangelized” (Emmaus Road Publishing, 

$22.95). 

If it’s been a while . . . 

If you haven’t darkened the doorway of the confessional 

in years, don’t worry. Our Faith is big on 

welcoming prodigal children home. But don’t delay 

any longer. Just go. You might even want to make 

an appointment with your parish priest, so you can 

spend a little more time, without worrying about 

holding up the line. 

And let Father know at the start that it’s been 

a while, and that maybe you’re not sure how to 

proceed. Also, if you’re nervous, say so. The point 

of the sacrament is mercy; and the more the priest 

can dispense in the name of God, the merrier the 

occasion should be. 


A tripod of success 

Enrollment at a North Hollywood parish school has surged 

during COVID-19. Here’s how they did it. 

BY STEVE LOWERY/PHOTOGRAPHY BY 

VICTOR ALEMÁN 

St. Jane Frances de Chantal principal Ashley Giron was excited to 

welcome back students to improved classrooms with help from the Shea 

and Smet foundations. The classrooms feature new equipment, paint, and 

floors, something she said allows students to focus more on academics. 

Four years ago, when Ashley Giron 

arrived as principal at St. Jane 

Frances de Chantal Catholic 

School in North Hollywood, she asked 

teachers and staff to come up with a 

list of improvements they would like 

to see made at the school over the next 

five years. 

Anything was up for discussion, and 

the list soon grew into a wide-ranging 

“Dream List” with everything from 

new roofing, to better pipes, to more 

dynamic elective classes. 

At the time it may have seemed like 

a nice exercise, but probably a tad 

optimistic. The San Fernando Valley 

school had seen its enrollment drop as 

low as 150 in recent years (it was 180 

when Giron arrived). Its finances were 

less than ideal, and its campus, opened 

in 1951, was beginning to show its age, 

to put it kindly. 

“Every time I turned around, the 

plumbing was overflowing somewhere,” 

Giron recalled of her first year. 

But since then, that Dream List has 

more of the feel of a To-Do List. Many 

of those items have since been checked 

off as “done,” and as a result, St. Jane 

Frances is writing its own comeback 

story: The turnaround at the school — 

now in its 70th school year — has seen 

its finances toned up and much of its 

campus fixed or improved. But perhaps 

most impressively, its enrollment has 

surged to 250 students during the 

COVID-19 pandemic. 

Giving a tour of the school, Giron 

pointed out shiny new flooring, smart 

14 • ANGELUS • January 14, 2022

projectors in classrooms, fresh paint 

and, yes, new plumbing. The physical 

transformation left such an impact that 

teachers like Brittnie Nerkins said they 

were a little nervous when students 

came back to a relatively new campus 

last summer. 

“It was a little scary,” she said with a 

broad smile. “We were getting back 

kids who hadn’t been in a classroom 

for a year and a half and you felt like, 

‘Hey, be careful, don’t scratch the 

floors! Don’t touch the paint! Hey, 

don’t you bring that Gatorade into this 

classroom, you know better!’ ” 

Nerkins’ tongue-in-cheek confessional 

is met with laughter by her colleagues 

during a teacher meeting. One of them 

is Kathleen Richardson, who started 

the school’s preschool program in 

1986. Richardson, like other teachers, 

is proud to show off her classroom, to 

point out the new floor and closets, the 

doors that have been replaced. Perhaps 

even prouder than the rest, given that 

she actually attended the school in the 

1950s. 

“When you think about where we 

were and where we are now, it’s really 

amazing,” said Richardson. 

At a time of unprecedented challenges 

for Catholic education, St. Jane 

Frances stands out as a success story. 

What did it take to make it happen? 

Here are three components that 

helped. 

The pastor-principal principle 

Since Giron’s arrival, she and St. Jane 

Frances de Chantal Church pastor 

Father Antonio Carlucci said they’ve 

forged a partnership based on mutual 

respect and a shared vision for the 

school. 

Together, they pursue outside resources 

to fix and maintain the school’s 

infrastructure. Together, they’ve helped 

streamline the school’s finances, 

including making the often touchy 

business of tuition collection easier for 

parents. Together, they hire teachers 

and decide on the school’s academic 

and spiritual direction. 

“I need to work with a pastor who’s 

willing to work with me. Father [Carlucci] 

has been great, probably because 

he’s been an educator for much of his 

career,” said Giron, referring to the fact 

that Father Carlucci has worked with 

seminarians. “He’s not a micromanager. 

He’s amazing, he trusts me.” 

Father Carlucci will be the first to 

tell you he does. He’ll also say that the 

school runs on Giron’s energy and 

talent, and that his part to play is one of 

active support. 

“I recognize I’m a priest and I don’t 

know as much about the school as she 

does,” he said. “I trust her, I listen to 

her.” 

Of course, there are times when some 

people in the school community may 

not agree. Though a pastor can be 

valuable in chatting up foundation 

presidents or negotiating down contractors, 

the most critical interaction they 

have is with school parents who, at 

times, see things differently. 

“There are times when parents come 

to me because they don’t like what 

she’s doing and I’m very clear with 

New floors, paint, and educational equipment have been installed at St. Jane 

Frances classrooms thanks to grants from the Shea and Smet foundations. 


Giron and St. Jane Frances pastor Father Antonio Carlucci credit a close working partnership to the improvements 

in the school’s finances and infrastructure while growing its enrollment from 180 to 250 students. 

them. I say, ‘Don’t come to me, talk 

to Mrs. Giron. Because what she tells 

you, I believe.’ And sometimes they’ll 

say, ‘But you’re the last word,’ and I’ll 

say, ‘Yes, and the last word is ‘Talk to 

her.’ ” 

Giron credits their partnership with 

St. Jane Frances’ relatively quick 

turnaround. “It amounts to a make-orbreak 

kind of thing for the success of 

a school,” she said. “It’s so liberating 

to know he has my back and I have 

the autonomy to get what needs to be 

done, accomplished.” 

Teachers with a mission 

It’s no secret that teachers at Catholic 

schools often must perform above and 

beyond those at public schools. 

Apart from teaching the same 

subjects, Catholic school teachers are 

also expected to support their students’ 

spiritual life, offering a strong example 

and transmitting lessons that go beyond 

academics. 

“Public schools don’t teach religion 

and that’s the difference,” said Reynald 

Ventura, who went to St. Jane Frances 

as a child and is now in his first year of 

teaching first-graders there. “It becomes 

the basis of how we teach.” 

Because Catholic schools ask teachers 

to do more — and often with fewer resources 

— schools like St. Jane Frances 

look for candidates who are innovative, 

teachers who are “not just going to 

teach from the textbook, and that’s it,” 

Giron said. 

In other words, someone who “considers 

their job a mission,” added the 

principal. 

That standard was tested during 

the initial COVID-19 shutdown 

that forced teachers to quickly pivot 

to remote learning. Teachers made 

themselves available after school hours. 

Some dropped learning packets at 

students’ homes when their parents 

couldn’t pick them up. 

“It was ‘Anything you need, we’re 

available at all hours,’ ” said Nerkins, 

who also serves as vice principal at the 

school. “I had students emailing me 

at eight at night, asking me questions 

about homework. I’d answer their questions 

and then tell them it was late, 

stop working.” 

Perhaps that show of commitment is 

connected to the school’s COVID-19 

enrollment spike, Nerkins wonders. 

“Quite a few parents approached me 

and said how happy they were with 

how we handled things,” she said. 

“Those parents told all their friends 

about it and the friends were saying, 

‘That’s not how it is at my kid’s school.’ 

I think that’s how word spread about 

what we’re doing here, and I think it’s 

why a lot of people wanted to send 

their kids here.” 

Fix the plumbing 

Like so many before her, Giron first 

handled the plumbing problems with 

patches, doing whatever necessary to 

get through that day. But when the 

middle-schoolers began to complain 

about the restrooms, Giron knew she 

had to look for long-term solutions. 

Her first problem was, she didn’t have 

the money to make them. 

So Giron began looking outside the 

school for help. She found two nonprofit 

organizations dedicated to helping 

Catholic schools, the Shea and Smet 

foundations. 

“They came in and they handled 

everything,” Giron said, before correcting 

herself: “Well, not everything. I 

remember I showed them all the items 

on the dream list and they said, ‘Umm, 

no.’ ” 

But, together, working in concert with 

Giron, the grant money brought new 

classroom equipment and, instead of 

patches, problems got more permanent 

fixes. Those middle-school restrooms 

are now something to be shown off. A 

part of the school once used for storage 

was remodeled into an auditorium that 

now hosts performances of all stripes. 

The facelift was certainly welcomed 

by teachers. But getting students 

excited to return last fall to a virtually 

new(ish) campus was a feat of its own. 

“You could see in their faces how 

happy they were to be here, how much 

they loved the changes,” recalled 

Giron. “It was so joyous!” 

Giron said that getting the school 

finances in order, and being open to 

asking for assistance from outside partners, 

has allowed the school to thrive 

while helping it focus more on what is 

important. Mindful that she is charged 

with forming the hearts and minds of 

the school’s students, she knows that 

doing so is much better if things are in 

order with the bricks and mortar. 

“To focus on academics, we had to 

put our financials in order, had to get 

our facilities in order, so now it’s not 

some everyday thing we have to deal 

with because something has broken. 

Now, we are able to focus on our kids 

and our school community.” 

Steve Lowery is a veteran journalist 

who has written for the Los Angeles 

Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, 

the Press-Telegram, New Times LA, the 

District, Long Beach Post, and the OC 

Weekly. 



Students at Holy Name 

of Mary School in San 

Dimas after the return 

to in-person classes in 

February 2021. 

| VICTOR ALEMÁN 

An injustice with consequences 

LA’s Catholic schools are still waiting for millions in federal funds for 

students in need. A new lawsuit calls the delay ‘egregious.’ 

BY ANN RODGERS 

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles 

is suing the Los Angeles Unified 

School District (LAUSD) over 

millions of dollars in federal funds 

that the public school district is legally 

required to share with Catholic and 

other private schools for assisting 

low-income, academically struggling 

students with reading, math, and 

counseling. 

Attorneys for the archdiocese filed 

the lawsuit in the Superior Court 

of California on Dec. 16, nearly six 

months after the California Department 

of Education issued a 58-page 

“investigation report” that said LAUSD 

had committed “egregious” actions in 

withholding Title I federal funds from 

scores of Catholic schools. The state 

gave LAUSD 60 days to begin “timely 

and meaningful consultation” with the 

archdiocese and to rectify any errors in 

calculating student need. The lawsuit 

states that LAUSD has taken no such 

action. 

A statement from the archdiocese says 

that inaction by LAUSD “continues 

to leave thousands of students in need 

without the Title I services they are 

legally entitled to under the federal 

program, which mandates assistance to 

low-income and academically struggling 

children regardless of whether 

they attend public, private, or religious 

schools, particularly during a pandemic.” 


Holy Name 

ool in San 

the return 

classes in 

21. 

LEMÁN 

The archdiocese is seeking financial 

damages, but does not specify the 

amount. It asks the court to compel 

LAUSD representatives to engage in 

“timely and meaningful consultation” 

with archdiocesan representatives and 

to “properly calculate” the number of 

low-income students eligible for Title I 

assistance. It also asks for a declaration 

that the LAUSD’s “policies, procedures 

and conduct” violate the equal 

protection and due process rights of the 

archdiocese and the rights of children 

attending ADLA schools. 

By long-standing federal law, Title 

I funds are to be distributed equitably 

among all low-income students, 

regardless of whether they attend 

public, private, or religious schools. 

Public schools usually act as the agent 

for distributing a proportional share to 

nonpublic schools, and federal law stipulates 

the consultation required in this 

process. According to the archdiocese, 

beginning in 2019 LAUSD arbitrarily, 

and without meaningful consultation, 

reduced the number of Catholic 

schools eligible for Title I funding from 

more than 100 to 17. 

The lawsuit states that LAUSD 

“has openly and consistently acted to 

prevent federally funded services from 

reaching eligible, lower-income ADLA 

students, and has been indeed quite 

frank about its understanding of federal 

education programs as a zero sum 

game and about its intent to increase 

its own share of federal education 

monies by artificially reducing ADLA 

schools’ share of services funded by 

such monies.” 

Catholic schools cut from Title I 

include those in some of the nation’s 

most poverty-plagued urban areas, 

such as Watts and East Los Angeles. 

The funds had traditionally paid 

special teachers who provided struggling, 

low-income students with extra 

assistance in subjects such as math 

and English, and with counseling for 

academic difficulties. 

The loss of those teachers and counselors 

“has prevented those students 

from having the supplemental learning 

that they need in order to maintain 

grade-level performance, and also to 

deal with the remedies necessary to 

close the gap on any learning losses 

they experienced due to the pandemic,” 

said Paul Escala, senior director 

and superintendent of schools for the 

archdiocese. 

“Regardless of who serves poor kids, 

they have rights under the law.” 

A spokesperson for LAUSD reiterated 

a response issued when the California 

Department of Education ruled against 

the district in July: 

“Los Angeles Unified strives to 

comply with all applicable rules and 

regulations regarding the provision of 

Title I equitable services.” 

The suit says that, after seeking a 

resolution through administrative 

channels for four years, the archdiocese 

filed suit because “ADLA and the 

students that attend its schools ... will 

suffer irreparable harm if required to 

wait up to a year or more on top of the 

several years they had to wait for the 

CDE’s decision. Low-income students 

who grow up, year after year, without 

the Title I services to which they are 

entitled under law, cannot be made 

whole four or more years later by extra 

Title I services; by that point the damage 

done by this unlawful withholding 

of necessary services will have become 

permanent[.]” 

In a letter to school administrators, 

Escala said the suit was filed after long 

deliberation. 

“We are clear eyed about the realities 

of litigation and realize that a speedy 

resolution is not assured, in fact, this 

may necessitate more time. However, 

the action we are taking is important 

— advocacy for our students must be 

represented in a firm and public manner,” 

he wrote. 

He continued that the litigation will 

benefit archdiocesan schools outside 

the territory of the LAUSD: “The ability 

of Catholic schools in our Archdiocese 

and other dioceses across the state 

to access Federal resources to support 

high-need students is at stake here and 

the LAUSD is not the only district 

in ADLA that has sought to undermine 

our efforts to serve the poor and 

struggling students through Federally 

funded programs.” 

Ann Rodgers is a longtime religion reporter 

and freelance writer whose awards 

include the William A. Reed Lifetime 

Achievement Award from the Religion 

News Association. 


Switching 

up the pace 

Under a hurry-up pope, are we 

seeing a slow-down papacy? 

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. 

ROME — When it comes to the 

relationship between a pope 

and the papacy he leads, the 

correspondence is never exact. Yes, a 

papacy directly reflects the personality 

and vision of the pope, but it’s also 

shaped by the instincts and outlooks, 

and also the foibles and limitations, of 

all the people who serve it. 

It was sometimes said of the papacy 

of Pope Benedict XVI, for instance, 

that it possessed most of the vices of 

its pope — an incapacity for management, 

stubborn loyalty to the wrong 

people, and a strong devotion to tradition 

— without many of his virtues, 

above all the towering intellect and 

deeply spiritual nature that’s always 

defined Joseph Ratzinger. 

In the case of Pope Francis, the 

relationship between pope and papacy 

is further complicated by the fact that 

Pope Francis has a love/hate relationship 

with the system that sustains his 

reign, sometimes entrusting it to handle 

business and other times taking 

things directly into his own hands. 

As a result, the papacy at times can 

seem to suffer from multiple personality 

disorder, depending on who’s 

actually driving the train on a given issue. 

One area where this gap between 

pope and papacy is the clearest is the 

pace at which things move. 

From the beginning, Pope Francis 

has taken obvious pride in his profile 

as a maverick, an innovator willing to 

slash and burn his way through centuries 

of custom and institutional inertia 

in order to shake things up. 

At 85, and despite the impact of 

a serious colon surgery over the 

summer and his ongoing bouts with 

sciatica, he is still capable of being 

exceptionally nimble. Recently, for 

instance, he accepted the resignation 

of Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris 

just seven days after it was offered, and 

on the first day of the pontiff’s voyage 

to Greece and Malta. 

Given the Vatican’s general reluctance 

to put off any major business 

while the pope is on the road, the 

sequence suggests Pope Francis knew 

what he wanted, and wasn’t interested 

in a five-day delay just because he was 

going to be out of town. 

Indeed, at times his apparent determination 

not to slow down can be 

an Achilles’ heel. Over the course of 

just a few months in 2019 and 2020, 

Pope Francis leaves at the conclusion of 

an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s 

Basilica at the Vatican on Dec. 31, 2021. 

| CNS/REMO CASILLI, REUTERS 


Pope Francis speaks at a meeting with high-level finance 

ministers and economic experts at the Vatican on Feb. 5, 

2020. Seated next to the pope is Argentine Bishop Marcelo 

Sánchez Sorondo. | CNS/VATICAN MEDIA 

Cardinal Peter Turkson and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. | CNS/PAUL HARING 

he signed four separate “rescripts” 

that gave prosecutors broad powers 

not recognized under existing law — 

such as a virtually unlimited ability 

to utilize wiretaps and other means 

of intercepting electronic communications 

— in order to expedite a 

trial over the Vatican’s $400 million 

London land deal that went spectacularly 

bad. 

The pope got his trial, though early 

hearings suggest disorganization, 

confusion on strategy, and deep reluctance 

to share all the results of their 

investigations on the part of prosecutors. 

In retrospect, one wonders if the 

enterprise might have benefitted from 

a more deliberate pace at the beginning, 

so that the “trial of the century” 

doesn’t end up collapsing under its 

own weight. 

On other fronts, however, where the 

prime mover appears to be less the 

pope and more the papacy, the Vatican 

is capable of being just as glacial 

as it’s ever been. 

Consider, for example, release of a 

new apostolic constitution governing 

the Roman Curia, supposedly the 

linchpin of this papacy’s internal reform 

campaign. It’s been in the works 

since, almost literally, five minutes 

after Pope Francis was elected in 

March 2013, and still has not seen 

the light of day. 

Plenty of 2022 look-aheads have predicted 

we’ll finally get the constitution 

sometime in the next 12 months, 

but, for the record, prediction pieces 

in 2021, 2020, etc., contained much 

the same thing. The waters were 

further muddied recently when Pope 

Francis asked the Pontifical Council 

for the New Evangelization to take 

charge of planning for the jubilee 

year in 2025 — an office which, supposedly, 

was going to be folded into 

the Congregation for the Evangelization 

of Peoples, and thus disappear, 

when the reform is complete. 

(That plan may now be under review, 

since the recent exit of Cardinal 

Peter Turkson from the Dicastery for 

Promoting Integral Human Development 

would suggest that simply 

shoving different offices under the 

same administrative roof, without a 

blueprint for how the new entity is 

supposed to work, isn’t necessarily 

“reform”.) 

Or, consider the replacement of 

the heads of Vatican departments, 

a robust seven of whom are already 

over 75, the usual retirement age for 

bishops, and two of whom – Cardinal 

Gianfranco Ravasi at the Pontifical 

Council for Culture, and Archbishop 

Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, president 

of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 

— actually will turn 80 this year. 

Of course, nobody else can appoint 

new leadership for Pope Francis. 

One has the impression, though, that 

nobody’s really lighting a fire under 

him to get it done either. 

All this may simply be standard bureaucratic 

psychology, i.e., “it’s much 

harder to get into trouble for the 

decisions you don’t make than those 

you do.” On the other hand, there 

may be two additional reasons why 

the junior architects of Pope Francis’ 

papacy tend to put their foot on the 

brake when the boss isn’t stomping 

on the gas. 

First, in most papacies there’s a 

tendency for the pope to defer many 

matters of routine governance to 

subordinates, so there’s an incentive 

for those figures to act. Pope Francis, 

however, insists on making the big 

decisions himself, and since it’s often 

hard to know in advance what he’ll 

consider “big,” often the safest course 

is restraint. 

In addition, sometimes the key 

figures around the pope, consciously 

or unconsciously, take it upon themselves 

to protect the boss from his 

perceived vulnerabilities by leaning 

in the opposite direction. For a pope 

known to be impatient, and sometimes 

capable of being arguably a bit 

rash, that instinct would tend toward 

caution. 

However one explains it, a distinct 

feature of the Pope Francis papacy, 

especially as it draws ever closer to 

the decade mark, seems to be the old 

mantra of the U.S. military: “Hurry 

up and wait.” 

John L. Allen is the editor of Crux. 


Not your standard intellectual 

Dismissed as a radical in his day, onetime priest 

and Catholic thinker Ivan Illich predicted 

the confusion of the digital age. 

BY ROBERT INCHAUSTI 

David Cayley is a Canadian 

writer and broadcast journalist 

who has made a career 

interviewing and explaining notable 

Christian intellectuals, including 

Marshall McLuhan, Northrop Frye, 

George Grant, and René Girard. 

In his new book “Ivan Illich: An 

Intellectual Journey” (Penn State University 

Press, $42.75), Cayley offers us 

the fruits of his 32-year relationship 

with Ivan Illich as his friend and 

student. 

Illich (not to be confused with 

Tolstoy’s famous character of a very 

similar name) was a onetime Catholic 

priest and controversial social theorist 

in the ’60s and ’70s, whose radical ideas 

are only now beginning to receive 

their due. 

A historian of the Middle Ages, Illich 

saw the institutions of the modern 

world largely growing out of the 

early and medieval Roman Catholic 

Church. But over time this process 

distorted and corrupted the original 

teachings and inverted the virtues and 

values of Christ, transforming hospitality 

into hospitals, know-how into 

schooling, health care into a commodity, 

and death into a disease. 

As a consequence, modern men 

and women have made impressive 

demographic advances in terms of life 

spans and mortality rates, but lost their 

self-sufficiency, personal integrity, and 

religious faith. 

These, Illich theorized, have been 

replaced by economic dependence, 

collective thinking, and a distorted 

sense of personal entitlement, making 

good on Chesterton’s witticism: “We 

live in a time when it is harder for a 

free man to make a home than it was 

for a medieval ascetic to do without 

one.” 

It may sound like a pretty outrageous 

assessment — until we listen 

with care to what Illich actually 

meant by these charges. Dismissed 

as an anarchist by the liberal left and 

falsely appropriated by the extreme 

right, Illich saw himself as bringing 

the good news of the gospel to bear 

on the many crises afflicting our 

institutions, from church to school to 

government. 

For him, the way forward was backward, 

back to the original virtues that 

predated modernity and shaped and 

defined both classical civilization and 

the Medieval Synthesis. 

Cayley’s serious dive into Illich’s life 

as a cultural critic and social activist is 

a deep one — 560 pages deep, to be 

precise. For Cayley, who posthumously 

published a series of interviews 

conducted late in Illich’s life in 2005, 

it is the latest valuable contribution 

to a figure whose radical ideas were 

not fairly understood the first time 

around. 

We now can see the Christian sources 

of Illich’s views. Not to mention 

that much of what Illich warned us 

about has come true — including our 

increasing inability to fathom what 

has happened to us! 

Take Illich’s most infamous book 

“De-Schooling Society” (1971). As 

absurd as that title may (still) sound to 

those of us who depend upon schools 

to help raise our children and prepare 

them for jobs in an increasingly 

technological and professionalized 

workplace, public education must 

take at least 

some responsibility 

for our 

increased dependence 

on secondhand 

thinking 

(aka “the nonthought 

of received 

ideas”) that make us 

so vulnerable to demagogues 

— including the 

hustles of robo-calls and the 

extortions of conspiracy theorists. 

Increasingly our authorities are 


SHUTTERSTOCK 

being replaced 

by social media 

“influencers,” 

artists by entertainers, 

ideas by 

fads, reflection 

by distraction, 

and faith by false 

optimism. 

But Illich wasn’t 

just saying that 

standards have 

dropped or that 

values have 

changed. His critique 

of modernity 

goes much 

Ivan Illich. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

deeper than 

that. The way 

we think and the words we think with 

have themselves been so corrupted by 

new disciplines and systems that their 

common meaning no longer gives us 

a way out from the ideologies within 

which they have become embedded. 

Try to talk to a school superintendent 

about curriculum or a politician about 

legislation without using jargon; it’s 

impossible. 

Illich’s motto “the corruption of 

the best is the worst” applies to the 

Church as much as it does to any 

other modern institution. We already 

see our culture being increasingly 

“de-churched” — or rather, we see 

churches being replaced by secular 

rituals and forms of worship from 

sporting events to foodie events to 

celebrity idolatry. 

The new form of Christian prophecy 

Illich declared has migrated to friendship 

— honesty communicated one to 

one, heart to heart, friend to friend. 

I must admit here that I am not 

doing justice to Illich as a stylist or to 

the “sparkle” of his prose, nor to the 

careful eloquence of Cayley’s analysis. 

As a friend of Illich, Cayley’s book 

carries forward and, in many ways, 

completes the vision Illich had not 

the time in his relatively short life to 

fully elaborate and explain. 

Born in an Art Deco mansion in 

Vienna with four different languages 

as his mother tongue, Illich was exiled 

from Europe during World War II and 

wound up in the slums of New York 

and, later, in collectives in Mexico 

and Puerto Rico. 

Watching him being interviewed 

by a French journalist on YouTube, 

Illich comes across as a charming, 

humble, and self-effacing man. To 

hear him propose surprisingly radical 

and liberating ideas made it sometimes 

hard to believe my own ears. 

This is why Cayley’s book is so necessary: 

It is important for us to know 

who Illich was and what he truly stood 

for before his genius is misappropriated 

again by those with a superficial 

understanding of what he stood for 

and who did not know him personally. 

Former California Gov. (and onetime 

Jesuit seminarian) Jerry Brown 

described Illich, his friend and adviser, 

as “not your standard intellectual.” 

“His home,” Brown tells us, “was not 

in the academy and his work forms no 

part of an approved curriculum. He 

issued no manifestos and his utterly 

original writings both confound and 

clarify as they examine one modern 

assumption after another. He is radical 

in the most fundamental sense of the 

word and therefore not welcome on 

any reading list.” 

Surely David Cayley’s masterful new 

appreciation will help correct this 

inhospitality. 

Robert Inchausti is professor emeritus 

of English at Cal Poly, San Luis 

Obispo, and the author of several 

books, including “Thomas Merton’s 

American Prophecy,” and “Subversive 

Orthodoxy.” 

AMAZON 


INTERSECTIONS 

GREG ERLANDSON 

A papal pep talk for families 

One of my favorite phrases I 

picked up during my foreign 

travels years ago: An Englishman 

in our rail car was looking out 

at the locals on their porches by the 

railroad tracks and described them as 

“lying about in hoggish slumber.” 

More than a bit of colonial racism 

in that comment, but the phrase 

stuck with me. It aptly described the 

post-Christmas letdown after an excess 

of sugar and carbs that in turn followed 

the helter-skelter of pre-Christmas 

shopping. We were indeed lying 

about in hoggish slumber, rousing 

ourselves only to reach for another 

Pope Francis greets a family during a meeting with the poor at the Basilica of St. Mary 

of the Angels in Assisi, Italy, on Nov. 12, 2021. During his Dec. 26 Angelus, the pope 

said as a “Christmas gift” he had written a letter to families. | CNS/PAUL HARING 

piece of peppermint bark or to change 

the channel. 

Thus Christmas ended not with a 

bang but with a whimper as my wife 

tried to rouse us for a brisk walk, reminding 

us that our limbs were meant 

for more than reaching for desserts. 

This is the perfect time to think 

about New Year’s resolutions, since it 

is likely that the 12 days of Christmas 

has meant breaking a number of last 

year’s resolutions. 

This is also the perfect time to be 

thinking about family. Many of us 

spend at least a portion of the holidays 

with at least a portion of our families. 

It is a time of joy and reunion, but 

also a time when we recognize that 

our families are, well, very real. As in 

loving but also fractious, warm but at 

times sarcastic, united by blood and 

yet sometimes out of sync. Especially 

this Christmas. 

After nearly two years of COVID-19 

alarms and the oppressive anxiety that 

has accompanied those alarms, we 

are all a little frayed right now. My 

children spent part of their Christmas 

with us seeking out COVID tests, for 

example, trying to assess whether they 

had a garden variety cold or something 

worse that could potentially do 

in the parents they were visiting. 

It is at times like these that Pope 

Francis becomes our pastor-in-chief. 

His letter to families issued on the 

feast of the Holy Family, Dec. 26, 

is a remarkable example both of his 

pastor’s heart and his way of speaking 

in nonchurchy language about what 

many in his flock are experiencing. 

And what we have been experiencing 

is two years of anxiety and frustration 

and, come the new year, exhaustion. 

Noting how the pandemic has 

changed so many of our family experiences, 

he wrote that the isolation 

we have all experienced has meant 

that “the time for being together has 

increased, and this has been a unique 

opportunity to cultivate dialogue in 

the family.” We’ve had a lot more time 

to “dialogue” for sure. 

This togetherness, he recognizes, 

also “requires a special exercise of 

patience; it is not easy to be together 

all day when you have to work, study, 

relax, and rest in the same house. 

Don’t let yourself be overcome by 

tiredness; may the power of love make 

you capable of looking more at others 

— at your spouse, at your children — 

than at your own fatigue.” 

Pope Francis does not gloss over the 

challenges of life — growing old, dealing 

with in-laws, struggling to provide, 


Greg Erlandson is the president and 

editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service. 

wrestling with doubts. His description 

of marriage is hardly Hallmark: “Marriage, 

as a vocation, calls you to steer 

a tiny boat — wave-tossed yet sturdy, 

thanks to the reality of the sacrament 

— across a sometimes stormy sea,” he 

wrote. 

Sometimes the boat doesn’t make 

it. He seeks to comfort those whose 

marriages break under the stresses 

of the pandemic era. “The problems 

that already existed have aggravated, 

generating conflicts that in many cases 

have become almost unbearable,” he 

observed. Yet he wanted those couples 

who have suffered and perhaps parted 

“to sense my closeness and my affection.” 

He reminds couples in these situations 

to think of the children and “do 

not stop seeking help so that the conflicts 

can somehow be overcome and 

do not cause further suffering between 

you and your children.” 

“Do not forget that forgiveness heals 

every wound,” he wrote, reminding 

all couples that “it is important that 

together you keep your gaze fixed on 

Jesus. Only in this way will you have 

peace, overcome conflicts, and find 

solutions to many of your problems. 

Not because these will disappear, but 

because you will be able to see them 

in another perspective.” 

That last sentence is classic Pope 

Francis. Faith does not guarantee us 

no troubles, no problems, no worries. 

It means that we understand the hurdles 

we face in a different context if we 

“keep our gaze fixed on Jesus.” 

So this January, while we are making 

various resolutions, let’s not forget our 

families. The stresses we are experiencing 

now will not disappear suddenly, 

but neither do the opportunities to 

support and nourish our spouse, our 

children, our parents. Let’s swear off 

the peppermint bark for sure, but let’s 

also resolve to be supportive of those 

we most want to love well. 


Keeping company with a cardinal 

Cardinal George Pell’s three-volume prison diary is both a 

pleasant read and a spiritual classic. 

BY MSGR. RICHARD ANTALL 

Australian Cardinal George Pell holds a copy of the first 

volume of “Prison Journal,” during an interview at his residence 

in Rome in Dec. 2020. | CNS/ROBERT DUNCAN 

It’s a prison story of a priest subjected 

to all kinds of troubles and 

humiliations: strip searches, solitary 

confinement, screaming and banging 

from fellow prisoners on his cellblock; 

vicious letters from a neighboring inmate; 

an Islamic terrorist who chanted 

prayers; days and weeks without the 

Eucharist, breviary, or his Bible; and 

the callousness of the judicial process 

influenced by a biased media and 

public opinion. 

These were a few of the sufferings 

endured by a cardinal of the Catholic 

Church, not in some distant past but 

in modern times. 

The story of Cardinal George Pell, 

who was eventually cleared of all 

charges against him and freed from 

prison in Australia, is told in his 

“Prison Journal,” published by Ignatius 

Press. Though its three volumes total 

more than 1,000 pages, I enjoyed 

keeping the cardinal company in the 

“clink.” (This phrase refers to a letter 

Cardinal Pell thinks was from a religious 

sister who said that if Jesus could 

be born where they fed animals, she 

guessed that it was appropriate a cardinal 

spend some time “in the clink.”) 

Cardinal Pell’s volumes are marked 

with subtlety, insight, and reflections 

on living the Christian life behind 

bars. Mixed in with bleak details of the 

quotidian challenges of detention are 

beautiful reflections on the Scriptures, 

as well as ominous references to the 

appeals of his conviction and the reactions 

of others to them. Among those 

reactions was a letter from Ireland 

that tells him that a visionary said the 

Blessed Mother attributed his trials in 

Australia to his attempts at financial 

reform in the Vatican (though Cardinal 

Pell admits being skeptical about 

private revelations, he had wondered 

the same thing.) 

The cardinal offers many remarks 

about the state of the Church, including 

some painful insights. He is 

an astute observer of human details. 


For instance, seeing the word “home” 

scrawled on the windowpane of his 

cell prompts him to wonder about the 

man who wrote it “and whether he 

was bitter.” 

“I suspect not,” the cardinal writes, 

“as this is my home for the moment 

and it is not a terrible place.” I am not 

sure I agree with his hypothesis, but I 

admire that he could consider it such. 

Cardinal Pell is as adept at humor as 

he is with sincerity: He watches and 

comments on television preachers 

like Joel Osteen and the Singaporean 

Joseph Prince, keeping count of how 

many times they mention Jesus, the 

size of their studio audiences, and 

their couture (Reverend Prince has a 

great variety of rings and bracelets and 

Cardinal Pell is careful to observe the 

accessories). Nevertheless, he takes 

the messages of preachers and letter 

writers very seriously, and confesses his 

difficulty in forgiving some of his enemies. 

It is refreshing that the cardinal 

acknowledges that it is hard for him to 

grasp that God loves even those who 

attack the Church as much as he loves 

those who serve it, “but of course, that 

is true,” he writes. 

I could not help comparing the three 

volumes to some other famous works 

about prison. The cardinal’s writings 

sent me to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters 

and Papers from Prison,” for instance. 

Ironically, the “Prison Journal” 

also reminded me of “De Profundis,” 

written by Oscar Wilde during his 

imprisonment for a sexual scandal: 

Although Wilde was guilty and Pell 

innocent, both convey the experience 

of a sophisticated intelligence shining 

a light on an environment and persons 

far from one’s ordinary life. 

The first volume ends with the expectation 

of the results of the first appeal. 

The second deals with the Appeals 

Court confirmation of his six-year 

sentence. The third volume, entitled 

“The High Court Frees an Innocent 

Man,” kept me in a sort of tension of 

vicarious suffering, especially when 

the cardinal writes, “Today I complete 

one year in prison for crimes I did not 

commit.” 

The entire experience gave him a 

great deal of compassion for his fellow 

prisoners. One of them wrote the cardinal 

a letter of support that reminded 

him of the Good Thief’s defense of 

Jesus. When the news broke of the 

overturning of his convictions, the 

prisoners in neighboring cells congratulated 

him and shared his happiness. 

The scene gives “Journal” a poignant 

touch of grace, especially because the 

cardinal believes one of those men was 

falsely framed for a life sentence. 

Cardinal Pell was released from 

prison in April 2020 only to enter the 

restrictions of the initial COVID-19 

lockdown. In a recent interview, the 

cardinal said his pre-Vatican II seminary 

prepared him for life in solitary 

confinement, while his time in prison 

prepared him for COVID. 

I mentioned to a friend of mine that 

I was reading the “Journal.” “So, he 

was innocent?” he asked me and then 

said, “That’s good.” As Jonathan Swift 

said, “Falsehood flies and Truth comes 

limping after.” That is why these books 

are so important. Cardinal Pell, who 

wrote several books and countless 

columns in the course of his ministry, 

said the writing of this “Journal” was 

the easiest for him in terms of composition. 

Thankfully, the “Journal” is an easy 

read, almost like having a tête-à-tête 

with a great shepherd of the Church. 

Ignatius Press should be congratulated 

on the project of publishing the 

writings, which will be an enduring 

witness to the present moment of 

Church history. 

Msgr. Richard Antall is pastor of Holy 

Name Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and 

the author of several books. His latest 

novel is “The X-mas Files” (Atmosphere 

Press, $17.99). 


DESIRE LINES 

HEATHER KING 

An interview with — me! 

I 

started this column in May of 

2014. 

Which means that for more than 

7 1/2 years, I have written, every week, 

on a book, a ballet, a play, a garden, a 

painter, a contemporary issue. 

During that time, I’ve interviewed 

scores of people: visual artists, musicians, 

film-makers, actors, pilgrims, a 

Holocaust survivor. 

I keep thinking some enterprising 

Catholic influencer is going to notice 

the incredible uniqueness — genius, 

really — of what I’ve been up to here. 

That’s never happened. 

So since we’re embarking on a 

new year, a 52-column blank slate, I 

thought this week to interview myself! 

Your range is dizzying. How do you 

come up with ideas? 

Why, thank you! Basically, I read. 

Memoir, travel, spirituality, novels, 

poetry, art. I read The New York 

Times just to see what happened 

that day. I skim longform.org, Arts & 

Letters Daily (aldaily.com), the Times 

Literary Supplement, the New York 

Review of Books. I’m drawn to liberalism 

in the old-school sense of free 

speech, the open exchange of ideas, a 

wide-ranging curiosity, which means 

that culturally the pickings are pretty 

slim nowadays. My Twitter go-to is @ 

Titania McGrath. 

I’m way too impatient to listen to 

podcasts — just give me the transcript 

— and in lieu of news, I listen to 

classical music, take long walks, and 

borderline obsessively watch films. 

I put everything that interests me to 

use, one way or the other: martyrs, 

cults, women’s tennis, Scottish otter 

keepers, heroin-addicted jazz singers, 

cloistered nuns, serial murderers. 

Are you formally trained in art, music, 

or literary criticism? 

Not at all. I have a law degree. 

I have an intellect that’s been pruned 

by suffering and loneliness to discriminate 

the true from the false. I have a 

heart that yearns. I have a deep desire 

to celebrate the other. And I have a 

sense of humor. 

I once wrote a piece on Bay Area-based 

photographer John Chiara. 

One of my finest moments was 

receiving word from his gallery that 

he’d read the piece and thought it the 

best commentary on his work he’d yet 

seen. 

Some of the people around whom 

I feel most awkward are musicians, 

of whom I’m simply in awe. And to 

a person, I have found them to be 

gracious, forbearing, informative, and 

kind: Grant Gershon of the LA Master 

Chorale; Lisa Sutton of the Pittance 

Chamber Orchestra; Peter Sellars, internationally 

known theater and opera 

director; Joshua Ranz, first clarinet for 

the LA Chamber Orchestra. 

That’s taught me a lot about the 

kind of person and artist I want to be 

myself. 

How long does it take you to write a 

column? 

It’s not the kind of thing I can just 

dial in. Every week, I “descend,” as 

I call it, insofar as possible, into the 

person, subject, or event at hand. An 

interview means a phone call, transcribing 

— which can take hours — 

and then wrestling the transcription 

down to 800 (supposedly) maximum 

words. 

I really consider it a sacred honor, a 

call to obedience, to do the very best 

job I can. I do keep some rough kind 

of cost-benefit ratio in mind so I don’t 

spend an inordinate amount of time 

on any given week. But my life is definitely 

ordered by it. Monday, the day 

the column is due, I hit “Send” and 

breathe a huge sigh of relief. A couple 

of hours later the angst begins anew. 

What kind of feedback do you get, if 

any? 

I hear from any number of people 

who love the column. I will say it’s 

also been recognized by the Catholic 

Media Association, all kudos to Angelus 

News for publishing a voice each 

week — and I’m far from the only one 

— that doesn’t readily fit into any pat 

category. 

I’m sure there are also many who 

don’t think the column is nearly 

“Catholic” enough. The whole underlying 

thrust is that to be a follower 

of Christ means to stay awake. To observe, 

as he did. To filter all of reality 


Heather King is an award-winning 

author, speaker, and workshop leader. 

through the lens of the gospels. 

All my work is very much underlain 

by daily Mass, the Divine Office, the 

rosary, confession. I’m in many ways 

very conservative — conservative in 

my devotion to the sacraments, the 

discipline of daily prayer, the belief 

that love displays itself in courtesy, 

conscientiousness, and gratitude. 

That grounding orders my interests. 

I would never write about something 

just because it was “quirky,” for example. 

I’m looking beyond, within. 

What is the lens through which a follower 

of Christ, or any given subject, 

sees the world? What is the quality of 

heart? Is the work excellent? What is 

any given person willing to suffer for, 

for love? 

Who oversees your work? 

I’m consistently shepherded and 

supported by Pablo Kay, Angelus 

editor-in-chief, and David Scott, vice 

chancellor for communications. Hannah 

Swenson, Tamara Long-Garcia, 

Dianne Rohkohl and Rick Beemer 

provide the editing, fact-checking, and 

first-rate graphics. 

I’ve been given an incredible amount 

of respect and trust since day one. I 

don’t have to pitch my column; I’ve 

never had a column refused. To be given 

that kind of freedom is an extraordinary 

gift and an extraordinary honor. 

And to write for the Archdiocese of 

Los Angeles? I may well have the best 

gig in Catholic journalism. 

IMAGE COURTESY HEATHER KING 


LETTER AND SPIRIT 

SCOTT HAHN 

Scott Hahn is founder of the 

St. Paul Center for Biblical 

Theology; stpaulcenter.com. 

Turn, turn, turn 

St. Paul isn’t any ordinary saint. He’s unique. And the 

Church calendar reflects the extraordinary role he played 

in God’s revelation. It was he who brought the gospel to 

the world beyond Israel. He’s credited as author of more 

than half the books of the New Testament, and it was 

under Paul’s tutelage that Luke composed his Gospel and 

Acts. 

The Apostle to the Gentiles gets not one but two feasts. In 

June he shares a day with St. Peter, with whom he died as 

a martyr. 

On Jan. 25, however, we mark the feast of the Conversion 

of St. Paul. It’s quite unlike other feasts. For St. Paul’s 

conversion marks a milestone not only in his own life, but 

in the life of God’s people. Once a persecutor of Christ, 

he became the Lord’s preacher. Once a guardian of Israel 

as an ethnic preserve of holiness, St. Paul came to serve as 

a father in the worldwide (literally, Catholic) Church that 

included both Jews and Gentiles. 

The story of his conversion is told repeatedly in the New 

Testament, three times in the Acts of the Apostles and then, 

briefly, in Paul’s own correspondence with the Galatians 

and Corinthians. In all of history, no other conversion gets 

that kind of special coverage, with God himself as primary 

author of the narrative! 

I am an adult convert to the Catholic faith, so St. Paul, 

the “adult convert,” was a special guide for me. 

But he’s not just a patron to those who change religious 

affiliation. In fact, it’s debatable whether he would have 

considered his affiliation to be different after he met the 

Lord. 

No. St. Paul is everyone’s patron because we’re all called 

to conversion — and we’re always called to conversion, 

even if we’ve been Catholics since the cradle. 

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and 

become like children, you will never enter the kingdom 

of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). The word he used for “turn” 

is at the root of all our Christian terms and notions about 

conversion. 

“Conversion of St. Paul,” by 

Nicolas Bernard Lépicié, 

1735-1784, French. | 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

Conversion is a turning toward 

God. It’s a turning away from sin. 

This is the work of a lifetime. It’s not 

just “once and done.” 

Unless we turn — unless we 

become “converts” — we’re not 

Christian. Unless we make a habit of 

repentance, we’re not disciples of Jesus. We celebrate our 

conversions whenever we go to confession. We celebrate 

our conversions whenever we resist distraction and turn to 

our Father God in prayer. 

If Christians work on this, all else will fall into place, in 

society and in the Church. 

St. Paul should be our model. His conversion was ongoing, 

lifelong, never easy, but always joyful. “Rejoice in the 

Lord always,” he said in his Letter to the Philippians (4:4). 

“Again I will say, rejoice.” St. Paul is joyful not because of 

how good things are getting, but how good God is. That’s 

the fruit of true conversion. 

And that’s a great reason to celebrate on Jan. 25. 


■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 8 

Living a Hope-Filled Life. St. Finbar Parish hall, 2010 W. 

Olive Ave., Burbank, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. A day of teaching, 

prayer, and Mass with Father Bill Delaney, SJ, and Kay 

Murdy. Topics include “Rejoice in the Lord Always” and 

“The God of Peace Will Be With You.” Cost: $35/person. 

For more information, visit events.scrc.org. 

Centering Prayer Introductory Workshop. Holy Spirit 

Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 

With Bobbi Rudin, Marilyn Nobori and the Contemplative 

Outreach Team. For more information, visit hsrcenter.com 

or call 818-784-4515. 

■ TUESDAY, JANUARY 11 

Memorial Mass. San Fernando Mission, 15151 San 

Fernando Mission Blvd., Mission Hills, 11 a.m. Mass is 

virtual and not open to the public. Livestream available at 

CatholicCM.org or Facebook.com/lacatholics. 

■ FRIDAY, JANUARY 14 

Hildegard of Bingen’s “Book of Divine Works” Weekend 

Retreat. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino. 

Friday, 5:30 p.m.-Sunday, 1 p.m. With Father Stephen Coffey, 

OSB, Cam. For more information, visit hsrcenter.com or 

call 818-784-4515. 


Cultural Mysticism: A Theology of Pop Culture. Zoom 

webinar, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Presenter: Sister Nancy Usselmann, 

director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies. What 

does it mean to be a mystic today? How can our media 

experience provide the opportunity for us to recognize 

God’s grace at work in the world and in our lives? Cost: 

$10/person. To register, visit https://lacatholics.org/departments-ministries/religious-education/. 

Compelled by Love: A Jubilee Retreat. St. Joseph the 

Worker Church, 19808 Cantlay St., Winnetka, 9 a.m.- 

12 p.m. Come renew your discipleship of Jesus and hear 

his summons to join him on mission. Presenters: Ana De 

Anda, Eddie Perez, Father Parker Sandoval, Katie Tassinari, 

Bobby Vidal. Free event. For more information, email Alicia 

Hernandez at ahernandez@la-archdiocese.org or call 213- 

637-7542. 

New Year Silent Saturday, Centering Prayer, and Silence. 

Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9 

a.m.-12 p.m. With Marilyn Nobori and the Contemplative 

Outreach Team. For more information, visit hsrcenter.com 

or call 818-784-4515. 

28th Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast. St. 

Monica Church, 725 California Ave., Santa Monica, 8 a.m. 

Theme: Advancing the dream: Time to reflect, imagine, and 

build the future. Speaker: Kim Harris, Ph.D., assistant professor 

of theological studies at LMU. Drum major awardee: 

Bishop Edward Clark, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles. 

Cost: $50/person, $300/table of 7. Visit aaccfe.org. 

■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 16 

Diaconate Virtual Information Day. Zoom, 2 p.m. The 

Diaconate Formation Office invites all interested in joining 

the diaconate program to learn more. Send your name, 

parish, and pastor’s name to Deacon Melecio Zamora at 

dmz2011@la-archdiocese.org. Presentations will be in 

English and Spanish. 

“Gifted to Give” Santo Niño Celebration. Cathedral of 

Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 

3:30 p.m. Archbishop José H. Gomez will celebrate a 

Mass in honor of 500 years of Philippine Christianity and 

the 35th anniversary of the feast of Santo Niño. Dinner 

banquet will follow at Casa Italiano, 1051 N. Broadway, Los 

Angeles, 6:30 p.m. Archbishop Gomez will give an address. 

For more information, call Romy Esturas at 213-393-9405 

or email romyesturas@hotmail.com, or call Lem Amit at 

323-793-5144 or email lemamit@aol.com. 

■ MONDAY, JANUARY 17 

Limitless. Four-week small-group experience that explores 

the cost and abundance of the life Jesus offers by his 

invitation to follow him. For more details and free registration, 

visit https://lacatholics.org/departments-ministries/ 

new-evangelization-and-parish-life/. 

■ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19 

Virtual Record Clearing Clinic for Veterans. Legal team 

will help with traffic tickets, quality of life citations, and 

expungement of criminal convictions, 5-8 p.m. Free clinic is 

open to all Southern California veterans who have eligible 

cases in a California State Superior Court. Participants can 

call in or join online via Zoom. Registration required. Call 

213-896-6537 or email inquiries-veterans@lacba.org. For 

more information, visit lacba.org/veterans. 

■ THURSDAY, JANUARY 20 

Children’s Bureau: Foster Care Zoom Orientation. Children’s 

Bureau is now offering two virtual ways for individuals 

and couples to learn how to help children in foster care 

while reunifying with birth families or how to provide legal 

permanency by adoption, 4-5 p.m. A live Zoom orientation 

will be hosted by a Children’s Bureau team member and 

a foster parent. For those who want to learn at their own 

pace about becoming a foster and/or fost-adopt parent, an 

online orientation presentation is available. To RSVP for the 

live orientation or to request the online orientation, email 

rfrecruitment@all4kids.org. 


OneLife LA. The event begins at La Placita with a pre-program 

including a welcome from Archbishop José H. Gomez, 

who will lead the walk through downtown streets to Los 

Angeles State Historic Park for inspiring speaker presentations 

and a musical program. For more information, visit 

onelifela.org/. 

Conscious Aging, Death Makes Life Possible, Surrender 

& Letting Go. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., 

Encino, 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. With Deborah Lorentz, SSS. For 

more information, visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-784- 

4515. 

■ MONDAY, JANUARY 24 

“Hail, Holy Queen” Weekly Bible Study. St. Paschal Baylon 

Church, 155 E. Janss Rd., Thousands Oaks, 10 a.m.-12 

p.m. Bible study will explore Mary in Scott Hahn’s book 

“Hail, Holy Queen.” In-person classes start Monday, Jan. 24. 

Virtual classes start Wed., Jan. 26. For more information, 

email ritadacorsi@yahoo.com. 


Angels: The Good and the Bad. St. John the Baptist Church 

parish hall, 3883 Baldwin Park Blvd., Baldwin Park, 10 a.m.- 

4:30 p.m. A day of teaching with Dominic Berardino and 

Father Ismael Robles. Topics include “How to Solicit the 

Ministrations of God’s Holy Angels” and “Discernment and 

Testing Spirits: What You Need to Know.” Cost: $25/person 

if registered by Jan. 24, $35 afterward. For more information, 

email spirit@scrc.org. 

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 | January 14, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 1

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