Catholic Herald

Dear Catholic Herald reader,

Thirty years ago, when I was moonlighting as a disc jockey, one of the songs that received a lot of airplay was Anne Murray’s “A Little Good News.” Each verse ended with: “We sure could use, a little good news today.” That line could resonate with listeners as much today as it did in 1983.

Those words came back to me a few weeks ago when Marcy Kasper, assistant to the editor and office manager for the Superior Catholic Herald, noted that while we carried a Scripture Search and the list of Scripture readings, we weren’t publishing a Scripture reflection in the Herald. Somewhere during the changes in editors over the last three years, that element of our work disappeared.

Beginning with this issue, we are providing you not with a little, but with a lot of Good News-related material. In addition to the Scripture Search and the Scripture readings, we have added a Scripture crossword puzzle and Word to Life, a reflection on this Sunday’s readings.
As Catholics, you and I know how fundamental Scripture is to our lives. Yet, taking it into our hearts, understanding it and practicing it can be challenging. We need all the help we can get in doing those things. Our hope is that the material we provide will serve as a supplement to what you hear proclaimed and explained during Sunday Mass. We want to help you grow in your faith, whether it’s through clues in a puzzle or by reading about Scripture.

We have also added Colorful Scripture, a brief explanation of what you’ll hear in the readings, accompanied by an illustration that can be colored. One way for children to learn about their faith is through interaction with their parents, grandparents or guardians who read the story to/with them, and then having the children color the picture. The message, as well as the interaction, will help children grow in faith, too.

Let us know what you think about the additional Good News material. Email olszewskib@archmil.org.

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Another feature that used to appear on these pages was “The Pope Speaks.” With the election of Pope Francis, we are taking a different approach. Because our Holy Father teaches the Good News in down-to-earth language – he may be the first pope to use the word “sourpuss” in a teaching – we want to provide as much of his spirituality, wisdom and insight as possible in each issue. Thus, look for more of the pope’s words on these pages.
Speaking of wisdom, we were pleased to publish in the last two issues some of what youth in our diocese had to say about the sanctity of life. From what we read, it is evident that parents, guardians, grandparents and/or catechists are doing an excellent job of forming them in the faith. Thanks be to God!

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When we read the obituary of someone we knew, we often recall time we spent with that person. So it was when I learned that Fr. Vic Zwaska, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee who had been living in the Diocese of Superior since 1989, passed away.

Fr. Vic was my religion teacher during junior year of high school. He was deliberate, soft-spoken and prayerful. Like most of my classmates, I didn’t appreciate it then, but years later I tried to capture for myself the calm that can only come to a person so deeply immersed in his faith. May he rest in peace.

Remember, everyone could use a little good news today. Let it be the Good News we share.

Pope Benedict XVI is stepping down. We all know that. But not everyone is calling it “resignation.” Some secular media outlets have taken to saying the Holy Father is “abdicating” or that this is an “abdication.”

Wait a minute. Abdicate? Doesn’t one have to be a royal, like a king or queen, to be able to abdicate? Is the pope to be considered royalty?

This prickliness surely comes because we’re treading in verbal terra incognita: A pope hasn’t voluntarily stepped down since the Middle Ages so lots of us don’t exactly know where we’re going or what to call this. Everyone, including the Swiss Guard, has been caught, well, off guard.

So what is the proper word? To find out, I turned to Catholic News Service, which has not been using “abdicate.” Julie Asher at CNS’s national desk turned my question over to Barb Fraze at the international desk in Washington, D.C. Fraze emailed me to say that the pope used “renuntiare,” not “abdication” in his Latin address.

“The Vatican used the word ‘renounce,’ which our bureau in Rome believes is the same as resigning. The folks in our Rome bureau noted that the Vatican seems to have pointedly avoided the word ‘abdicate.’”

Fraze went on to note that another regal term has entered the secular media about this event.

“Many secular papers talk about the reign of the pope, but the CNS Stylebook says to avoid that unless talking about historical references. Perhaps ‘abdicate’ goes along with ‘reign,’” she said.

After I emailed this information to editors of Catholic newspapers in Wisconsin and Minnesota, one wrote back. Joe Towalski, editor of The Catholic Spirit in the Twin Cities, stated: “I ran across this in the Code of Canon Law (English version) on the Vatican website: ‘Can. 332 §2. If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.’”

Those of us who work in the Catholic press sometimes sigh and roll our eyes when our counterparts in the secular press cover church news. This usually happens when someone goofs and says the pope “abdicated” or when a local TV news crew rushes to the nearest Catholic Church steps to get reactions from “average Catholics” as they leave Mass or when secular press journalists predictably bring up papal teachings about birth control. Again. Always. Ad infinitum.

Me? It doesn’t bother me much. In fact it helps me feel smug and self-satisfied that I know better, an admittedly questionable pleasure. I’ve worked at secular newspapers longer than I have at Catholics ones, so I know that unless secular journalists are Catholic, most simply don’t know much about the church. They only cover it when truly major news happens. That’s why they don’t know the right terms or how to dig deeper any more than I know how to use all the proper terms and dig deeply to cover the intricate machinations of Congress.

So in the coming days of the conclave in Rome, and all its attendant secular news coverage, if I hear or read such gaffes, Jesus will comfort me and can comfort you too. Simply remember his words: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Dear Friends in Christ,

Rarely does one describe Lent as “memorable,” but our family had one. Just one.

Having been raised in homes where giving something up was an attempted Lenten exercise, when my wife, Ruth, and I had children we wanted to share that practice with them. In March 1985, we were living in Rapid City, S.D. Ruth, a stay-at-home mom, and I agreed that our family should give up TV. Not just give it up, but to ensure that we didn’t succumb to temptation, remove it from the house.

Our five children ranged in age from eight years to five months. Ruth also did child care so three to five children of similar ages were also at our house several days each week.

A few days before Ash Wednesday we explained to our kids what we were planning to do. When I told them it was for 40 days, our 6-year-old son asked, “And nights, too?” Twenty-six years later he became a lawyer.

When the child care kids showed up on Ash Wednesday, Ruth explained to their parents what we were doing. We soon found out how dependent their children were on TV when, at noon, the time “Sesame Street” aired, several of them sat silently looking at the wall where the TV had been.

Ideally, the act of giving something up should lead one to a greater spiritual depth, to a closer relationship with Jesus. I can’t recall if it did, but I do recall certain things from that Lent. One is that we never rushed through meals so “we can watch ‘our’ show.” We talked. We listened.

We had more family time. When the seven of us went to the library — and we went often — it was an adventure. We loaded a couple of crates with the books, records and audio tapes we were borrowing. We’d go any place with free admission. The RV and camper show? We were there. The mall? That was a field trip.

Our heaviest dose of penance came when a snowstorm blew into western South Dakota. This was not a postcard storm; this was the kind for which you heeded the warnings to stock up on food and other essentials. It started on Friday and continued to fall and blow throughout Saturday, Sunday, and into Monday. Even for a community used to snow, this was a major storm. Few people went anywhere.

That weekend, our togetherness got more “togethery.” We played music and sang along to Buddy Holly, show tunes, the Muppets, country, Bing Crosby and whatever else was in the record cabinet. Writing and drawing occupied our time. So did baking. And board games. Do you know how many times you can play “Chutes and Ladders” and “Candy Land” during a blizzard? I don’t know either; I do know that once the storm ended, those games were buried in our closet for five months.

While not necessarily a desert Lenten experience, that Lent 28 years ago serves as an annual reminder that this season requires our attention, our focus. We need to make an effort if it is to make a difference in our lives. As I write this, I haven’t decided what I am doing for Lent. Giving up TV wouldn’t be a sacrifice; having to watch TV might be. No computer? Sacrificial, but I need it for work.

Self-denial need not be something so obvious. What about giving up cynicism and sarcasm? How difficult would it be to forego gossip and back biting? Criticism and condescension? So that this season makes an impact on your life, try abstaining from one or all of those vices for 40 days — and nights.

Make it a great — and memorable — Lent.

Brian T. Olszewski

A long time ago in a diocese far away, Marianist priests and brothers, along with lay teachers, educated me in high school.
At an Ash Wednesday Mass one year, the celebrant asked us to write on small slips of paper what personal flaws we wanted to work on for Lent. Afterward we folded up our papers tight and in grand procession put them in a crystal punch bowl in the center of the room. Then, one of the religious brothers lit the papers afire. This symbolized our offerings’ rise to heaven. As this happened, someone strummed a guitar and hummed. Flames arose from the bowl.

Then … BAM! POP! POW! POW-POW-POW-POW! Sparks and smoke flew. It was so loud some held hands over their ears.

My heart raced.

Br. Tom fetched a fire extinguisher. He dispatched the blaze and din with a quick WHOOSH, then carried the ashy mess from the room.

Mass continued. It skipped nary a beat.

Afterward, we learned someone put firecrackers in the bowl as a prank.

It was a portent of more serious things to come.

A year or so later, pyromania’s tendrils crept into school again. It was the last day of school for us seniors, end of the day. Some classmates lit smoke bombs in the senior hall to celebrate. Kids whooped and hollered and tossed papers.

I just wanted to go home. I sped to clear out my locker and fled. There was much to prepare for at home: Relatives were on their way from three states away for my graduation.

Soon after I arrived home a friend called to see if I’d heard the news.

“What news?” I said.

More had happened besides smoke bombs, crumpled papers and hollering. Some seniors were alleged to have mouthed off at a few teachers while smoke obscured everybody’s vision.

Result? The principal, Br. Victor, cancelled our graduation ceremony, just two days away. His decision stood, even though the culprits came forward, apologized to him and the teachers, and offered to miss the ceremony if their good classmates could have graduation.

Br. Vic, as everyone called him, basically said, “No deal.”

The incident made front page of the local paper, as well as TV and radio newscasts. At home I sobbed on the shag carpet in my bedroom. I couldn’t believe the public magnitude and shaming — Br. Vic’s unjust punishment for a class of 160 students for the sins of so few.

God waited until the good guys escaped before crushing Sodom and Gomorrah. Couldn’t Br. Vic take a cue from God? How could Br. Vic overlook the four years of Catholic thought we’d learned that urged us to forgive and love others, especially when sinners came forth to seek redemption and offer penance?

We hoped the principal would change his mind before Sunday, when graduation had been planned. Rumors flew that negotiations were under way among school board members, the Catholic schools’ superintendent and even the bishop.
Discipline had to be considered, enforced, yes. But face had to be saved, too. It was an enormous, very public teachable moment fraught with consequences and repercussions, no matter what decision was reached.

Enter a diocesan priest — “Fr. Fitz” as everyone called him — pastor of a local parish, St. Joseph’s, from whose school I’d graduated four years earlier. At the time of the Great Graduation Debacle, Fr. Fitz, was superintendent of schools for our diocese.

On Saturday, he made a decision that would earn him the “super” in his title: He decided to celebrate a Mass.

But it would be no ordinary Mass: It would be for the graduates on Sunday afternoon at the time when the commencement ceremony would have happened. Families and friends were welcome. Venue? St. Joe’s. We could wear our caps and gowns. The valedictorian and salutatorian could make their speeches. A few classmates hurried to cobble together liturgical music they’d provide.

What wouldn’t happen was distribution of diplomas. We’d have to unceremoniously visit the school office during the coming week to fetch them. Individually.

I clearly recall that at Mass my mind wandered to feeling kinship with the early, persecuted Christians who celebrated Mass in catacombs. Under and outside proper norms, I fancied us as scapegoats while we engaged in something laudable, like St. Joan of Arc.

Then I recalled that lions also dined on early Christians. Maybe I was over dramatizing.

My class went on to call itself the “Ungraduating Class” — the only one to ever emerge from that school

Of course, we still get the alumni newsletter, and the school still remembers us when it seeks funds for its annual appeal.But I couldn’t bring myself to donate any money until a good friend I met at that school killed himself six years later, and his parents established a creative writing contest there in his memory.

Pat wanted to be a writer. He was a fantastic raconteur, both on paper and at the lunch table. I wrote an essay about him for a high school English class assignment in which we had to describe a person we knew. I got an A on it, and Pat was so pleased. But his inner demons – and alcohol and drugs — later got the better of him.

After Ungraduation, many parents yanked their other kids out of the school and put them in public school over the incident, never to return. Within a year, Br. Vic left. Years later, all the Marianists left, though the school is still alive and Catholic.

Who was right? Br. Vic? Fr. Fitz? The obvious answer to me then was Fr. Fitz. But decades of life have since shown me that shades of gray often replace black and white, no matter how much we want binary choices, answers, solutions. The biggest moral decisions in life often don’t present two clear paths of obvious right and wrong. Instead, they present a swamp to navigate.

I still don’t know who the Ungraduation culprits were nor do I care. I hope Br. Vic’s decision helped them see something I now understand but couldn’t then — that sin doesn’t offend God alone. Nor is it something that hurts just the sinner and the person sinned against. Instead, sin often ripples beyond us and our control. It caroms in unpredictable directions. It is like a first domino pushed to cause thousands of others to fall, even if they’re innocent.

Did the culprits learn and remember that? Did it cause them to live more mindful, sensitive, holy lives because of it? If that happened, Br. Victor was right, too.

Keleman is the reporter for the Superior Catholic Herald

Much of our nation is enduring one of the worst droughts in U.S. recorded history. Last week my editor asked me to write about the drought’s effects on the Diocese of Superior. There’s only one problem with that: There is no drought in the Diocese of Superior. We have, so far, escaped the catastrophe. If that continues, farmers in this region could actually benefit because they’ll fetch high prices for crops that will be in high demand and short supply, thanks to crop failures elsewhere.

As I write this, it drizzles outside my window in Rice Lake. Earlier today I dropped off some donated items for a mission trip at church and had to hop over water that gushed down the street near the curb so my sandaled feet wouldn’t get soaked.

Have we done something up here to deserve sufficient rain this year? Probably not. So when we are awash in plenty while others, despite their hard work, experience failure, what would Christ have us do? What should our attitudes and actions be when we thrive and others don’t? And not just during a drought but anytime we do well while others suffer. What about the people who face the “droughts” of unemployment, home foreclosure, divorce, addiction, homelessness, mental illness or a host of other tragedies?

It’s easy to feel compassion and send a check and pitch in and be glad our taxes help take care of farmers when “acts of God” cause crops to fail. But what about times when tragedy is a result of people’s own shortcomings, lack of education, poor decisions, personal pain or just plain bad luck? “They really need to get their act together,” can be the too-common response, especially if we’re doing just fine.

When I was a child, someone gave me a book called “The Rich Fool.” I liked it. Read it over and over again. I can still see the colorful illustrations in my mind’s eye. The story intrigued me, even though it was a rather scary, cautionary tale. It told of a wealthy man who built bigger and bigger granaries to contain his bumper crops every year. He thought he was a cool, self-made man and congratulated himself on how well-prepared for the future he was. But then one night he died unexpectedly, still a young man.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized the story came from Luke’s Gospel and is a parable Jesus told.

“The Rich Fool” taught me an early, valuable lesson that no matter how much you prepare for your earthly future and think you’ve got things covered, you never really are “safe.” So first, make sure you’re good with what God wants you to do. Never grow complacent with your own good fortune. Do not succumb to the tempting belief that you somehow “deserve” your prosperity or happiness because of your efforts alone. For as the drought reminds us: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Last month’s flash floods that deluged Superior also affected my office. For one week the chancery’s basement offices, including those of the Herald, were unusable. First, an inch of rainwater had to disappear, then came mop-up, days of drying out with industrial strength dehumidifiers and fans roaring so loudly as to make work impossible. Then the rugs needed to be shampooed.

Even with all of that, the consensus was that it smelled like soiled cat litter.

So back came the rug cleaners and flood abatement workers who worked their wonders with odor abatement. About  a week after the flood, things returned to normal.

Nearly 19 years ago I was living in St. Louis when the Mississippi River overran its banks in a 300-year flood none of us are likely to ever see again. Right before the ‘93 flood, my June mornings were filled with freelance writing projects followed by lunch in front of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” reruns. The news gradually replaced Rob Petrie’s stumbles over the ottoman, because of a growing threat — area rivers’ dangerous rise.

My spouse and I, both college instructors off for the summer, watched the news and worried. We lived about a mile from River des Peres — a storm and river water drainage canal built by WPA workers during the Great Depression. When dry, River des Peres’ concrete bottom is wide enough that a fleet of a dozen cars could drive down it side-by-side.

We kept a close eye on the basement drain — where water would bubble up were it to do so. As in the Superior chancery, at Christ the King Cathedral and at St. Anthony Church, the water et al arrived via basement drains.

Unlike Superior’s flash flood, in St. Louis, day by day, minute by minute, in a slow-motion style like no other disaster I’d endured (including blizzards and a tornado), the deluge slowly changed life for the worse.

The news featured sandbaggers. My husband and I, at that time childless, had time and energy to help, and the media told where volunteers were needed. We soon discovered “sandbagging” didn’t mean “pile sandbags as floodwater laps closer.” It meant the slow, hot, tedious, back-and-bicep straining work of shoveling heavy, damp sand into bags and tying them shut.

There must be a higher-tech way to do this, I thought. There wasn’t. But sandbagging gave thousands of us something to do other than wring our hands in front of the TV.

We worked at night when it was coolest and crowds were smaller. July daytime temperatures in St. Louis regularly reach the mid-90s with an added bonus of high humidity. At night, it sometimes drops below 80.

We went to a site where about 20 people, all under 40, filled sandbags. It was 2 a.m. Nobody talked much other than the obligatory, “Hold this one over here, please,” and “That’s good. Thanks.”

A nearby chemical plant, a KFC restaurant sign and streetlights dimly lit our work.
Periodically a city truck pulled up, and the stronger men hoisted the filled sacks aboard. Crickets chirped and cicadas buzzed in the night.

We worked a few hours and went home. I checked the basement drain. We slept until 11 a.m.
The steamy days dragged on. Every day forecasters told us when the rivers would crest; every day they extended those dates.

On another night we filled sandbags not far from where river water lapped at bridges. Portable generators roared as they powered glaring lights to illuminate the work of hundreds.

The Salvation Army had erected tarps nearby under which shadowy women tended aluminum pans of ravioli that steamed in the night. Boxed stacks of chips, snack cakes, sunblock, bug repellent, canned water, plastic utensils, lip balm and fruit awaited. All had poured in as donations.

I wandered over to one of these hospitality stations and lurked. The ravioli smelled good.

That’s for the workers, I thought, and began to wander back to the sand piles.
“C’mon! Take some! There’s plenty,” one woman said.

I looked around to see whom she’d addressed. It was me. I was one of the people that tent was for. For the first time in my life I was an “emergency relief work volunteer.”

The ravioli tasted great.

The city trucks’ reverse beepers sounded, and the strongest among us formed a sandbag brigade to load ‘em up and move ‘em out.

Spouse and I again went home to sleep until late morning. President Clinton came to town, and our congressman, Richard Gephardt, greeted him. Both wore obligatory disaster casual – khakis and Polo shirts.
Our basement drain looked fine, but we got word that a co-worker of my husband’s in the town of Ste. Genevieve, 63 miles downriver, was missing. The flood had hit the small town hard. His wife and family were frantic.

My mom called from Michigan. A TV reporter in her town had asked viewers to call if they knew anyone from Kalamazoo living in the flood area who’d like to be interviewed. Mom gave them my name.

“Mom, they won’t want to talk to me. Our house isn’t flooded,” I said.

A few days later a reporter from WWMT-TV, Kalamazoo, called. He was in town. Could he and the cameraman come over?

He showed up and looked like he wasn’t old enough to shave. We sat on the front porch swing and chatted about my sandbagging as the cameraman hopped, hovered and taped. I wore a purple, tie-dyed shirt. Mom said she taped me on the 6 o’clock news. When I saw the tape, I thought the shirt made me look fat and hoped none of my high school friends had seen me. I got Christmas cards later that year and found out some had.

The basement drain still looked fine, and Mr. Ste. Genevieve was still gone. I fell asleep praying a rosary for him and his family.

The last place we sandbagged was at an apartment complex. The creek beside the buildings had overflowed. Sandbags had already been piled two stories high, but sandbaggers continued to shore them up. The sandbag levee leaked, and water flowed in rivulets across the parking lot where we toiled into the night.

When the rivers finally crested in August and things oh-so-slowly returned to normal, my folks drove in from Michigan. We toured the low-lying, historic old neighborhoods, including one where my mom had been born.
From a distance we gaped at high water marks five feet high on temporarily abandoned homes now protected by the National Guard. We stared at the soggy, destroyed Guidry’s Cajun Restaurant, an old favorite.

I wandered away and walked along the tracks. Where is Mr. Ste. Genevieve? Again, I prayed.

The rain subsided, and our summer days ended in lecture preparation and drafting a syllabus.

The basement drain never overflowed.

And Mr. Ste. Genevieve? He turned up all right. Turns out he’d been deluged, too — with passion. He’d run off with another woman.

Julie D. Kelemen
Reporter

Dear Catholic Herald readers,

Nearly 36 years ago, when I began my work in Catholic communications, I made a commitment to live my life — personally and professionally — as a steward of the time, talent and resources with which God has entrusted me. Every Scripture reading about stewardship reminds me to take inventory of how I use those gifts to best serve God and his people.

That practice of stewardship provides background for the changes that have taken place at the Superior Catholic Herald this week, because those changes are about best use of time, talent and resources.

As editor of the Herald for nearly a year, Julie Kelemen has also shot photos, written stories, done page layouts and helped keep the paper running issue after issue. While the publication is located in Superior, she lives in Rice Lake.

Julie is an excellent writer, and does a good job with photographs. These are talents with which God has entrusted her. For more than a year, we have been looking for a reporter — someone to write stories and shoot photos. We even advertised nationwide. Yet, as is often the case, our ideal candidate was already here.

As of July 1, Julie is the Superior Catholic Herald’s reporter. She will devote her time to writing more stories that feature people in the Diocese of Superior living their faith, and photographing a variety of events. Beginning in August, she will work from the Bishop Hammes Center in Haugen.

Marcy Kasper, who has been with the Herald for more than nine years, will continue to use her talents as the Herald’s office manager and assistant to the editor. Those are important roles that require someone who is gifted as a planner, organizer and communicator. That ability to communicate explains why Marcy has a good rapport with so many parish personnel and others who contact the Herald office.

Erik Peterson is the creative director for the Milwaukee Catholic Press Apostolate, of which the Superior Catholic Herald is a part. His talent is taking the stories, photos and ads with which we provide him and designing pages that make the Superior Catholic Herald attractive and easy-to-read. He works out of the Milwaukee office.

For more than seven years, I have been general manager of the Milwaukee Catholic Press Apostolate and executive editor of the Milwaukee Catholic Herald. As of last Sunday, I am also the editor of the Superior Catholic Herald.

Thanks to technology, we are able to have a reporter in Haugen, an assistant to the editor in Superior and an editor and page designer in Milwaukee, where the paper is put together. (It is printed in Madison.)

When Bishop Peter Christensen, our publisher, and I discussed this possibility in April, I told him that there was no blueprint, no model, for this kind of arrangement when it came to operating a Catholic publication, but that it involved a leap of faith. Then I noted, “Where better than in the Catholic press to make that leap of faith?”

A few weeks ago, we heard St. Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians: “ … walk by faith” (2 Cor 5:7). Along with the aforementioned commitment to stewardship, that passage guides my life. As we embark upon this uncharted territory in the Catholic press, we do so equipped with time, talent and treasure, and we do it by faith. It’s a great way to travel!

I ask that you keep Marcy, Julie, Erik and me in your prayers as we continue to serve you and all members of the Catholic community in the Diocese of Superior.

Thank you.

Brian T. Olszewski, Editor

P.S. I look forward to hearing from you. The best way to communicate with me is at olszewskib@archmil.org. Include your name in your email and I will respond as quickly as possible.

If there was ever a man who deserved to go down in U.S. history as a major player parallel to George Washington and Paul Revere, Capt. Meriwether Lewis was certainly one. Along with William Clark he led that famed expedition into Louisiana Purchase territory at the start of the 1800s. There he and his crew labored to explore their country much as the astronauts did space 150 years later. It was that unpredictable and dangerous.

The Lewis & Clark Expedition shot raging bears, slapped swarming mosquitoes, ached with disease, fought raging rapids and trudged through thunderstorms. Lewis himself adroitly averted many altercations with Native Americans by understanding and practicing a gentle, practical diplomacy that assumed neither friendliness nor hostility among the unknown Natives. His decision to bring along Sacagawea, her spouse and their infant child greatly helped with that.

Still, the crew endured hunger and a many lesser annoyances until they reached the Pacific Ocean, rested a while and then turned back to experience many of the same things on the return trip.

Lewis himself survived a nasty flesh wound across his posterior portions, a result of an accidental gunshot by one of his own men as they hunted. The captain had to be carried back partway in an undecidedly un-captainlike, painful state of laying on his belly in a canoe.
Yet Meriwether Lewis thought much of what he did amounted to little. Here’s what he wrote, misspellings and all, in his expedition journal on his 31st birthday:

This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little, indeed, to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. But since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least endeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestowed on me: or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.” – Capt. Meriwether Lewis, August 18, 1805

Just four years later, most historians agree Lewis shot himself to death at an inn along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. His family members, however, continued to claim it was a murder. Were I a betting woman, and considering his birthday “greeting” to himself, I vote for the suicide theory.

Lewis’s story makes me ache for him and all tortured souls who objectively, lead exemplary Christian lives of service yet who, in their hearts worry and labor under fears that they’re just not good enough. There’s a name for it: Scrupulosity. It’s a bona fide psychiatric problem classified under the obsessive-compulsive group of anxiety disorders.

Sure, many of us need calls to accounting for sinful ways. But all of us?  Scrupulous persons have the opposite problem — terror that they live in constant sin, even though the worst thing they might have done is had an “impure thought” and even though they confessed and were absolved, they cannot forgive themselves.

St. Alphonus Liguori knew such torture. I once worked as an editor for Liguori Publications in Missouri. Best known among Catholics for its “Liguorian” magazine, Liguori is run by the Redemptorist order of priests and brothers. The publishing house takes its name from Redemptorist founder, St. Alphonsus Liguori.

A prolific writer, St. Alphonsus was also a tortured soul. He suffered from scrupulosity. He knew what it was to often fear that he wasn’t doing Catholicism, “right.”

Scrupulous persons often obsessively use the sacrament of reconciliation, confessing the same sins over and over, even though a priest has absolved them. Scrupulous persons many times live in a mentally tortured state whereby no matter how much reassurance they receive that their sins are forgiven, they cannot forgive themselves and let it rest.

Often, scrupulous persons don’t avail themselves of receiving the Eucharist, believing they are not worthy of it, even though objectively they are worthy indeed.

The late Fr. Patrick Kaler, a Redemptorist whose office was beside mine at Liguori, often spent days counseling scrupulous persons on the phone and also acting as editor of the Redemptorists’ newsletter, “Scrupulous Anonymous.” I can still hear his muffled voice offering loving but firm counsel to callers that they were good and not in a state of sin. I never knew what the conversations were specifically about, but I guarantee you Fr. Kaler did everything in his power to assure callers of God’s fidelity and love.

Find “Scrupulous Anonymous” at http://mission.liguori.org/newsletters/scrupanon.htm.

So the next time you’re tempted to find only the sinful in a person, stop for a minute and think about whether that might be someone who’s already plenty hard on themselves. Is it really necessary to drive home a point they already know? If you’re a homilist, is there room for an occasional homily about God’s healing love and what people do right instead of their shortcomings and sin?

Don’t subscribe to “Scrupulous Anonymous” for someone whom you think has the problem. Fr. Kaler and the Redemptorists emphasized that the scrupulous person themselves needs to admit and seize responsibility for the problem, not others.

And if you might have this problem, ask around for a spiritual director familiar with the problem and ask for guidance. All you have to lose is a self-loathing guilt that goes way beyond what Jesus ever intended. He can, and does bring light to such a dark world.

And I pray he did so for Capt. Lewis as well.

Julie Kelemen
Managing editor

Easter is about hope and life’s triumph over despair and death. It helps us recall death-unto-life experiences that, while not literal, can be just as  powerful. Many of us can recall a time when we did eventually emerge from a figurative tomb, aided by an angel or two, whether human or spiritual. Here is my true story of a death-to-resurrection experience. See how many angels you can find. They are there!

Fourteen-year olds are cheeky. I knew this when I joined busloads of Rice Lake eighth-graders on a big school trip in June 2010.  My son was one of them. We agreed to avoid each other on the trip because, well … you know … moms aren’t cool to hang around with when you’re 14.

We hit Washington, D.C. and New York City. I especially wanted to see Ellis Island, but mixed feelings dogged me.

Fourteen was an unkind age. I have mostly noxious memories of that time about my appearance, emotional tempests and others’ rude remarks. What lunacy drove me to risk such a cold sweat again by going on this  trip?

In D.C. we zoomed through monuments, memorials, the National Archives, the Capitol, a photo op outside the White House … and a trip to the Holocaust Museum.

I didn’t want to go there. Adolf Hitler’s platoons included my Austro-Hungarian great-uncle Louis. I’d seen a swastika on his sleeve in an old photo he’d shown me 20 years earlier when I visited his Austrian village near the Hungarian border. I learned German in college so I could converse with relatives there.
Five years after that, I visited an Anne Frank traveling exhibit in St. Louis. Afterward, I wept, alone, in a restroom stall. Shudders rippled through me at the thought of what atrocities Onkel Louis might, or might not, have committed. I knew nothing more about that part of his life. And I hadn’t asked, other than to question that it indeed was him in the photo and, Ja, it was a Nazi infantryman’s uniform.

“I was drafted!” Onkel Louis protested loudly in German, when he saw my widened eyes. I knew Hitler was born  in Austria, but it had never really hit home for me before that the quaint, lovely little farm town my relatives inhabited had once been torn and stained by the evil of the Third Reich.

Back in the restroom of the synagogue where the Anne Frank exhibit sat, I cried to myself. Fluorescent light gleamed off the yellow tiles. It wasn’t seeing horrors that wrenched me like this: It was the sight of Frank’s family photos at the exhibit’s end — all smiles and neat, combed hair.

Back in D.C., 2010, I gulped and revealed this to four Rice Lake 14-year old boys and their chaperone while we ate lunch in a noisy food court. In about an hour we’d visit the museum. All but one of the boys were strangers to me.

The one boy I knew was Ethan (not his real name). We’d known each other two years through a bowling league he and my son played in.

In those days, Ethan was an ebullient, brainy kid who preferred conversation with adults. (He’s since become a more taciturn 16-year-old.)

He’d chatted me up over the years and seemed to seek me out at games. One time he mentioned he had some Jewish relatives.

At lunch he sat quietly and munched on a sandwich. His new purple D.C. baseball cap nearly obscured his eyes.

“Anyone in your family affected by the Holocaust?” I asked him.
He shrugged: “I don’t know.”

“Ask your mom sometime,” I said.

He pulled out a cell phone and keyed a text message. Within minutes he interrupted my conversation with the others and flatly stated, “She said yes. Some cousins were killed.”

I stopped and looked at him. I remembered the restroom at the Anne Frank exhibit. Would the Holocaust Museum do that to him? Why did he wear sunglasses outdoors that day when he usually didn’t? Why was he not his usual chatty self today?

“Have you been to this museum before?” I asked.

“No.”

I noticed my heart beat faster than usual. Finally, I mustered the nerve to say, “Ethan, I’m scared of that place. Will you go with me?”

He brightened and said, “Sure!”

Inside the museum’s dim chambers he and I split off from our group, divergent family baggage in tow.

Docents handed us cards containing a bio of a person whom the Holocaust affected. Mine was Juliana Nemeth, a Hungarian shopkeeper deported to a labor camp in east Austria. SS soldiers shot her days before U.S. forces arrived.

Ethan ’s relatives were Poles named Levy. We sought that very common Jewish name anywhere we could find it. Like a deft sponge with legs Ethan darted from exhibit to exhibit, yet read far more explanations than I could.

I translated and explained the great lie of “Arbeit macht frei” at Poland’s Auschwitz for him as I did with other German posters.

Like a combo platter of absolution and blessing, Ethan’s thirst for knowledge nourished me through the excursion. So did his smile. I doubt he knew that.

Our awareness of time vanished. One of the teacher/chaperones found Ethan and me, gazing upward, inside an exhibit of victims’ family photos — hundreds of them inside a chimney-like structure that rose above the building. Again, we did not speak. Diffused sunlight from a window at the top bathed our faces.
Charged with rushing a boy who was a cousin of those victims and a great-niece of a Nazi soldier, the woman shepherded us out to the buses with utmost tact. We were the last ones.

Three days later the bus left our group at Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue for a few hours of shopping. Outside the doors of toy purveyor FAO Schwarz, we huddled like football players and strategized: Meet at Rockefeller Center in an hour. Three boys and chaperone left to find video games. Ethan and I beamed at each other and both said, “Puppets!” He’d wanted a marionette since day one of the trip. From Señor Wences’ puppet Johnny, a childlike face drawn on Wences’ hand, to ventriloquist Paul Winchell and sidekick Jerry Mahoney, puppets and dummies endeared themselves to me long ago. They are the ultimate free pass to say whatever the hell you want … via puppet, of course.

We searched three floors and found the selection ho-hum. Same things you could get in Rice Lake.
“Can I help you?” a saleswoman asked.

“We want puppets, but there’s nothing we like,” I groused.

“Have you tried the Whatnot Shop?”

She led us to an overlooked corner. There, Oz loomed — the Muppet Whatnot Shop. Dozens of zany extras used in Muppet productions gazed kindly upon us. Two real Muppeteers stood ready, happy to build us custom-designed Muppets. Cost? About 135 bucks each.

Ethan  called his mom. He beseeched her to wire him the extra $20 he needed.

“She said no,” he told me afterward, barely audible.

“I’ll loan you that,” I said. “She can pay me when we return. Call her. Ask if it’s OK.”

Like a nervous stockbroker Ethan  called and paced. His face strained under the stress of this delicate negotiation. He returned with a smile and thumbs up.

Twenty minutes later we emerged to scurry along Fifth Avenue, late again.

“Where’s Rockefeller Plaza?” I asked a pedestrian.

Her loveliness stunned me, but she wore a Manhattan poker face. At the sight of us and our cargo, she halted, smiled and gave us directions in eastern European accented English.

We trotted away. Sunbeams illuminated our clear backpacks that contained one orange and one green Muppet — mine female, Ethan ’s male. Both wore glasses. Ethan  hadn’t worn sunglasses since D.C.

My return to 14 left no cold sweat. It left a power surge tingle like all the bright neon in Times Square.

Julie Kelemen
Managing editor
Editor’s note: Frank Oz (born Oznowicz in Hereford, England) created and has performed as many of the original Muppets, including Miss Piggy, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover and Yoda. Oz’s father was a Polish Jew, his mother a Flemish  Catholic. Both  puppeteers, they fled to England after fighting the Nazis with the Dutch Brigades.

My name is Julie, and I’m a Facebook addict.

There. I’ve said it. This is not news to many people who know me, especially those who have seen my myriad postings on the ubiquitous social media site.

About a year ago, someone I know who seldom uses Facebook posted a funny yet telling picture about the nature of the many-tentacled social media giant. His post featured an anthropomorphized book with a scowling, demonic face on its cover. The caption read: “Facebook: It wants your soul.” Surprisingly, a teenager posted it. He is wise beyond his years … in some ways.

Indeed, Facebook has infiltrated every corner of life; in my case, far too much of it. It started when I had to move to Delaware in the summer of 2010 from northwest Wisconsin. For a whole year I was mostly unemployed, didn’t know a soul, and felt adrift in a county whose population density is about 2,500 people per square mile. It was like being stuck on a desert island except with a million strangers around me … and I was all but invisible to most of them.

So, like many lonely people, I turned to Facebook and other social media sites for solace. Like many addictions, this one found its germinating seeds in loneliness, boredom and psychic pain. Before then, I’d never had any problem with a behavior I felt I couldn’t control, but after a while, I couldn’t go one hour without checking to see if someone had messaged me or to check the status posts of people I missed most. I programmed my smart phone to notify me when I got Facebook messages.

It got worse. When Facebook could no longer give me the information hit I needed, I turned to Googling the names of people I missed most. Sometimes I stayed up until the wee hours simply reading about others’ lives – people whom I believed had lives while I did not.

Thankfully, I eventually moved back to Wisconsin and  figured all that “stalking lite” would naturally stop once I got back to people I knew. It didn’t. A bad habit had taken root, and   intervention was needed.

So, for Lent, I deactivated my Facebook account. That means I basically put it into suspended animation and into storage. For all intents and purposes, I’ve disappeared from Facebook. Doing this, however, can have unintended, bothersome social consequences: Now, if a friend seeks me on Facebook, I’m not there … anywhere. The same thing happens when one “blocks” someone on Facebook; therefore sometimes when one deactivates, friends think you’ve abandoned them or are upset with them when that’s not the case.  I did post an announcement on my page before I “went dark” but not everyone saw that, and I got a handful of emails from people saying, “Julie, where did you go? Is something wrong?”

No, nothing is wrong, I assured them. In fact, something is right: I’m trying to experience my friends and family in 3D instead of 2D online.

To be sure, I’ve gamed the system. For example, technically, Sundays in Lent aren’t considered Lent, so I’ve reactivated and peeked at my Facebook account then.

That’s when God’s grace intervened.

I’ve discovered a sneaky thing Facebook does to “punish” you if you deactivate too often, which is what I did for a few Sundays. Facebook doesn’t advertise it, but if one deactivates too often, Facebook makes that user wait 24 hours before being allowed to log in again. At first I thought, “Ouch. That’s not fair.” But then I realized that by the time 24 hours had passed, it would no longer be Sunday; I’d have to go back to my Lenten sacrifice and wait yet another week to log on. Interesting. No, it’s more than interesting; it’s awesome. What Facebook’s handlers conceived as punishment has worked out to be helpful for kicking the Facebook habit.

Wow. God is even greater than Facebook. Thanks be to God!

Julie Kelemen
Managing editor