Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Our choir pilgrimage is now more than half over, we are in Rome today. I thought I might share with you some of our experiences.

Our time in the Tuscan city of Florence was beautiful—not only perfect weather (although it has been below freezing at the beginning of every day so far, so it is a little chilly—the coldest winter in 30 years) but also all of the wonderful sights and tastes that we get to share together. We sang our first Mass at the Franciscan church of Saint Mark, the church that s connected to the convent where you can find the priceless treasure of the many nuns’ cells decorated with frescoes by Fra Angelico. It was a little dark, and very, very cold in the church, but the choir sounded amazing. These churches were designed with music in mind, along with many other things:
we discovered that we only need to work at making about half the sound in these churches because everything carries. We also learned how well our mistakes carry!

We toured the city, the Duomo, Our Lady of the Flowers (the name of Florence, Firenze, is a derivation of the word fiori, or flowers). The city is so old, and walkable, and we toured some of the world’s greatest art galleries and centers of power, both for the republic of Florence and the Church. So beautifully situated around the Arno River, the city combines the best of Italian culture, from the Renaissance to the modern day.

On our way to Rome on Saturday, we visited the clifftop Umbrian town of Orvieto, with its beautiful Duomo (Cathedral) of Our Lady of the Assumption. This is one you could google and study a little. It is the town of a Eucharistic miracle which gave birth
to the Tradition of the feast day of Corpus Christi. Like Florence, it is a town rich in the development of Renaissance culture, when a reawakening in art and music paved the way to modern day. We chose it because it is a town largely unimpacted by tourism and modern blight: it is a town like you might imagine still to be in the 1600s. After singing at Mass in the cathedral’s Chapel of the Corporal (the Host at Mass bled onto the bishop’s corporal, the cloth that is placed on the altar), a chapel from the 1200s, we went nearby to a 2 1/2 hour lunch! After a little shopping, we headed to Rome.

Since we have been in Rome, we have visited St. Peter Basilica several times. We were first there to sing for the 3:45pm community Mass on Sunday. St. Peter is a place that has something happening all day long, and we were the choir for a regular Sunday Mass at the altar of the Chair of Saint Peter. We were back there again on Monday morning to celebrate a private Mass for our group in a chapel beneath the main altar, at an altar facing the actual tomb of Saint Peter himself. After Mass we toured the Vatican Museum, culminating in a time when we experienced the Sistine Chapel. We were on our own this afternoon; I visited the Pantheon and the ruins at the Roman Forum. When I have been here before we always seem to rush through it on our way to something else... Today we leisurely walked through the centuries of history there.

Tuesday (tomorrow, as I write this) we will go to Assisi and while at the Basilica of Saint Francis we will have a private Mass for our group. These Masses serve also as great opportunities to rehearse for our Thursday night concert at the Church of Saint Ignatius in Rome. We also, at every place we stop, pause and pray for all the intentions we carry with us to Italy. I have been praying for all of you in a special way at all of these Masses, for your intentions.

We saw the Pope at his Sunday Angelus talk this past weekend. He stands at a very high window from the Papal Apartments of the Apostolic Palace every Sunday he is in town and gives a homily for the day. He gave a very moving homily on the Beatitudes, particularly in the context of our political divisions and the way in which immigrants and refugees are being treated right now.

We will, again see Pope Francis on Wednesday morning, as I think we have good tickets to see him at his Wednesday audience. Then, best of all, our choir will sing at the Papal Mass, the Solemnity of the Presentation of the Lord on Thursday afternoon. I went to the Congregation of Religious Orders this morning and picked up my ticket to concelebrate the Mass with the Holy Father! Cool. We will be home before you even read this—consider this my postcard greeting you from all the points along the way of our pilgrimage. We carry with us your prayers, and keep your hearts present to us all along the way. Hopefully we will do this again, and you will be able to join us. There is nothing like Rome anywhere in the world for Catholics, I have to say that when I am here, it feels like home.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

As you read this, we are already in Rome, having sung in Florence, Assisi and Orvieto.  I forgot to mention—if you are on Twitter, I’ll be tweeting photos, @frdonrooney.

Last week before we left for Italy I signed a little under 2,000 letters to all of you who have contributed to the parish in the past year.  I’ve done this every year now since being a pastor, and every year I become very much aware of how dependent the mission of the parish is upon your goodness and generosity.  I am deeply grateful to you for what you make possible, and hope you have a sense of accomplishment, of being a part of something wonderful that is larger than any of us.  Not everyone can give a lot—in fact, not that many people do: it is the collective contribution, something from everyone, that makes the difference.  The responsibility of the parish should not rest on the shoulders of a few, anyway. 

Each year we are asked by the diocese to conduct an “offertory enhancement” program of some kind, in which we encourage everyone to actually make a pledge to give more in the coming year.  There is good reason for this.  Just like any area of our lives, we respond to the requests before we ever get to the things we know we should get to.  That is why we have things like the Bishop’s Lenten Appeal each year, because we know that we will respond to the request.  We might not get around to giving—certainly not as much as is needed—if just left up to our memory.  I decided, as the new guy, to get to know the parish before I started asking formally for more.  What I have found here is good.  You are generous, you are supporting your church.  We have a good bank account, and I don’t believe the Church is in the ministry of saving:  we will identify the good works that we want to accomplish in building up our parish community and reaching out as Christ into the community surrounding us.  In the meantime, I ask that you continue to give.  If you would like to skip one Starbuck’s a month per family and give that, in turn, to the parish I wouldn’t argue.  That would add nearly $200,000 to the budget alone!

When my brothers and I were kids we watched our dad write the check every week.  We were far from rich, and lived without a lot of the things we saw that our friends had, but we knew that the Church got his first $20 every week (this was in the 60s and 70s), at times when we knew that there wasn’t a lot to spare.  Maybe this is a reason that my brother and I became priests.  We witnessed our parents’ commitment to the parish.

I wonder if successive generations would remain more faithful to the practice of our faith if parents were to make visible the sacrifices they make in support of the Church, a living example for children to know how to pick up where previous generations left off.  Where your treasure is, there will your heart will also be.  Children watch.

Maybe it was because my grandparents were first and second generation Americans of immigrant families.  They had a keen sense that the only success of the Church would be due to their support.  In this new country, they realized, there would be no benevolent ruler to build new versions of all the beautiful, old churches they knew in the “old country” and maintain them. 

Or, if you visit Central and South America, you’ll find the same remarkable churches from previous centuries.  But with the wave of dictators and 150 years of freemasonry which has sought to destroy the Church in these countries, confiscating properties and murdering, straining faith communities financially to the breaking point, the Church is largely now controlled by the government as a “service” to the people.  Salaries, buildings, maintenance and community development are all subsidized by the government.  At least, this was my experience studying several summers in Mexico and working two years in the Dominican Republic. There is not the direct correspondence between the Sunday Offertory and the survival of the parish in those countries as there is here.  

What can we do to restore the Church as the heart of the community and the center of peoples’ family life?—or is this even an ungrounded, idealized, sentimental vision of a past based on pictures of big, fancy churches and pious stories of pay, pray and obey.  Maybe we need to quit looking at the past: What we have now, Where are we now?

What do we have now?  What if we remove the word “restore” in our question and replace it with the word “build”?  What can we do to build the Church as the heart of the community and the center of our family life?

This is where your office as lay people becomes so important.  Show your children how to be faithful, and talk about these things where there is silence, contribute in the conversation.  Let’s build up.

God bless you.

Fr. Don