History of a celebration:
Looking at 'mission' roots

		Propagation  of the Faith  Msgr. Delbert  Schmelzer

Say "mission" today and most think of Africa and Asia, of faraway places where the poor hear the "good news" of Jesus and experience the Lord's great love through the work and witness of missionaries.

But a century ago, the "missions" were right here at home, and missionaries from Europe proclaimed the Gospel and served the poor on our shores, all motivated by the command of Jesus to "go, make disciples of all nations."

In 2008, the Church in the United States will mark the 100th anniversary of our no longer being considered "mission territory" dependent on financial help from the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. As World Mission Sunday approaches, it is the perfect time to celebrate our rich missionary history and to reflect with gratitude on the debt we owe to the missionaries who journeyed here and to the Catholics who supported their efforts through the Pontifical Mission Societies.

Lighting the way

In early 19th century in France, a young woman, Pauline Jaricot, had a vision. She saw two oil lamps - one, empty; the other, full. In her dream, the full lamp was filling up the empty one, making it fit once again for use.

Pauline saw the full lamp as the missions of her day - our own country included. She had been hearing a lot about those young churches from her brother, Phileas, as he prepared for the priesthood. She believed that the great faith of these growing churches would "fill up" the lack of faith she was finding in her own native France, and help renew her Church at home.

So Pauline decided to start something to support the missions of her day, so just that would happen. (Later, history would prove Pauline right. In fact, many missionary religious communities came out of France in the latter part of the 19th century, and three of the four Pontifical Mission Societies were founded there during those years.)

Pauline started gathering together small groups - mostly workers in her family's silk factory. She asked each member of the group to offer daily prayer and a weekly sacrifice of a sous (the equivalent of a penny at that time) for the Church's worldwide missionary work. She insisted that her efforts be directed to all the Church's missions, that it be universal.

From Pauline's vision came the founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Two thirds of its first collection in 1822 went to support the vast diocese of Louisiana, which then extended from the Florida keys to Canada, and the missions of Kentucky. The remaining third went to China.

The young Church in the United States started contributing to missionary outreach through the Propagation of the Faith as early as 1840. Today, as the Propagation of the Faith continues to seek prayer and sacrifice for the world's missions - now more than 1,150 dioceses in Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and remote regions of Latin America - Pauline's vision also continues, both in the emphasis on daily prayer and regular sacrifice, and in the universal approach to offering help to all the missions through one General Fund of Solidarity.

But Pauline's job for the missions didn't end there. She had more to say about the subject - and she said it to just the right person.

A missionary journey

Bishop Charles de Forbin-Janson was much in demand.

Many French bishops who were serving as missionaries in the United States - the "missions" of his day - wanted this bishop of Nancy in France to visit the young U.S. churches and then return home to encourage interest and support for their work.

In 1839, Bishop Forbin-Janson did just that, sailing across the ocean and landing in New York, where he was welcomed with open arms by Bishop John Dubois. "Poor New York," he wrote to Catholics back in France, "there is not yet a minor or major seminary . . . and this diocese is larger than all of England. There are already 200,000 Catholics, with the city of New York having about 24,000. Here everything is to be done for the sake of religion."

Continuing his travels, Bishop Forbin-Janson also visited New Orleans and Baltimore, as well as Canada, all on horseback. He preached retreats, celebrated Masses for congregations packed into small churches and chapels, and gathered children for religious instruction. Two years later, he returned to France.

Once home he met an old friend - Pauline Jaricot - who had founded the society that was helping to support the missionary efforts he had seen firsthand in the United States. Bishop Forbin-Janson had returned home determined to "arouse great interest for the useful work of the Propagation of the Faith."

During a conversation between these two friends in 1843, Bishop Forbin-Janson shared his own longtime dream - to help the children of the missions. Like Pauline, he saw the "riches" of the poor mission churches of his day. And he was convinced that though weak and needing care, children rich in faith and love were capable of playing their own part in the Church's mission - and of even stirring adults to the same generous missionary spirit.

Some time during the course of their talk, the Holy Childhood Association (HCA) was born. Bishop Forbin-Janson started appealing to the children of France to reach out - in faith and love - to help the children of the missions of our country and China.

Today, HCA continues to follow the vision of Bishop Forbin-Janson - "children helping children." After learning about the great needs of the world's poorest children, young people are invited to pray and to offer financial help so that children in the missions today may know Christ and experience His love and care.

One call for the world

This year on World Mission Sunday, October 21, we celebrate our own missionary call, through Baptism - the same call given to the first apostles, heard by the missionaries who traveled from France to the United States in the 19th century, and heeded by Pauline Jaricot and Bishop Forbin-Janson in founding two of the four Pontifical Mission Societies.

It is too the same call heard by priests, religious, and lay persons from Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Latin America who come to our country today to proclaim the Gospel in word and service. In these missionaries from today's missions who enrich and sustain our Church here at home, we see reflected Pope Benedict's theme for this year's World Mission Sunday celebration: "All the churches for all the world."

Msgr. Delbert Schmelzer is director of the Propagation of the Faith for the Diocese of Madison. Contributions to the Propagation of the Faith may be made at the parish or may be sent to: P.O. Box 44983, Madison, WI 53744-4983.

Sexuality: 'Handle with care'
isn't synonymous with 'this is bad'

		A Culture  of Life  Christopher West

The objective person will admit that a deep ambivalence about the body and its functions, particularly its sexual, genital functions, is not a limited Christian phenomenon but a universal human phenomenon.

As such, Christian authors, like many others, have not been exempt from the failure to appreciate fully the goodness and beauty of sex. Still, it's important, within the context of this admission, that we not confuse the mind of the Church with the minds of people in the Church.

In the face of many attacks, the Church's official teachings have always upheld the inherent goodness of the body and of sexuality. The Church has deemed all contrary systems of thought nothing short of heretical.

Unfortunately, until the 20th century, official pronouncements on the matter have been relatively brief and juridical in nature. As such, they haven't made as lasting an impression on our culture's "historical consciousness" as some of the more extensive writings of Catholic thinkers who were heavily influenced by currents of thought alien to the mind of the Church.

Thus, despite significant developments of Magisterial teaching on sex and marriage in the last century, the notion that the Church is "down on sex" still lingers.

'Gift to God'

The esteem accorded the celibate vocation has been misunderstood to mean that those who do marry and have sex are somehow less holy, or even "unholy."

Yet nothing could be further from the mind of the Church in promoting the celibate vocation. The Church holds this vocation in such high regard precisely because she holds that which is sacrificed for the sake of God - genital sexual expression - in such high regard. If sex were something unclean and unholy, offering it as a gift to God would be an act of sacrilege.

'Handle with care'

The misinterpretation of the Church's strict moral code is similar. The sentiment goes like this: if the Church says you can't do this and you can't do that - everything that it seems people want to do - then the Church must think sex is bad, even if she grants the one reluctant exception of "doing it" for the purpose of procreation.

The simple fact is that saying, "Handle with care" - or even "Handle with extreme care" - is in no way synonymous with saying, "This is bad." In fact, what are those things in life that we handle with the most care? The things that have the most inherent value. It's because sex is so valuable, because it's so precious in the eyes of Christ and his Church, that it must be handled with extreme care.

Parallel with Eucharist

There's a parallel here with another holy mystery of the Church: the Eucharist. The Church has many "strict" teachings about who can and cannot receive the Eucharist, how it's to be received, and with what spiritual dispositions. It would be absurd to conclude that the Church is therefore "down on the Eucharist." It's no less absurd to conclude that the Church is down on sex because of her strict moral teaching about it.

Historically speaking, God tends to grant the Church what she needs when she needs it. Not until the 20th century, with its widespread dismissal of long-held sexual mores, did the Church have "need" to deepen her understanding of conjugal love, sex, and marriage beyond her previous brief pronouncements. Hence, over two-thirds of what the Catholic Church has ever officially said about sex and marriage has come from Pope John Paul II.

Christopher West is a research fellow and faculty member of the Theology of the Body Institute in West Chester, Pa. His column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and reprinted from his book Good News About Sex and Marriage: Honest Questions and Answers About Catholic Teaching (St. Anthony Messenger Press).

Part of 'Greatest Generation':
Couple are still going strong

		Grand Mom  Audrey  Mettel Fixmer

The "Greatest Generation" that Tom Brokaw wrote about in his best selling book was largely the generation that reached adulthood in World War II.

For the most part they are pictured now as very old men and women in their 80s or 90s who occasionally gather with their grandchildren or their old buddies to reminisce. I can identify with that, but I have a couple of friends who simply refuse to "act their age."

Dr. Bob and Lois Liners are well known in the Madison Diocese as the inexhaustible missionaries from St. Henry Parish in Watertown. They have just returned from their latest trip to their dental clinic in Kilimambogo, Africa, much to the relief of their children, grandchildren, and friends. Reading Lois's daily e-mails from Africa have kept all of us praying and breathlessly awaiting their safe return.

The Liners' work, sponsored by the Watertown Rotary Club, has taken them to all parts of the world: India, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, refugee camps in Hong Kong and the Philippines, Jamaica, Mexico, Honduras, and Haiti.

They began doing this work 33 years ago as their four children were leaving home and they were working full-time: Dr. Liners at his dental practice and Lois as a social worker at Bethesda.

Twenty years ago they retired but continued their dental missionary work two or three times a year. Altogether they have made 63 missions in 33 years.

In 1989 the Liners established a full-time clinic in Guatemala, staffing it 12 months a year with volunteer dentists from all over the world. More than 8,000 patients are seen annually in that clinic. In 1994 they established another full-time clinic in Kenya, East Africa.

When they were forced to miss their scheduled time in Africa last February due to a very painful spinal surgery for Lois, many of their friends hoped they would join the ranks of retirees. But, no, they simply swapped with another dentist and took the September stint with Lois wielding a cane to help her over the bumpy terrain.

Daily life at the outpost

Lois' letters are delicious adventure stories we gobble up eagerly each day. When she writes about the harrowing drives of four or more hours to "outpost clinics" over rough roads that we can only imagine, I shudder and feel her pain (or imagine I do).

When she writes about the joyous Eucharistic celebrations with dancing and singing and bodies crammed onto hard benches, I smile and wonder how anyone in our parish could ever miss Mass when we have it all.

When she describes the long days her husband puts in often pulling more than 100 teeth in a day and how hard she finds it to turn away a long line of people who have walked miles to get there, I am sad for these people and admiring of Bob's stamina at his age.

All of us have come to love Michael and Bernard, the two faithful men who work year 'round for the clinic in Kilimambogo. They assist the dentists with sterilizing equipment, driving the truck, and setting up the noisy generator when there is no electricity, and play many more roles.

The young men have so endeared themselves to the dentists that Liners always treat them and their wives and children with special gifts or a visit to the "safari" hotel where they see for the first time the wild animals we associate with Africa.

Taking leave, for now

The Liners' last two days in Africa were "A Day to Forget and A Day to Remember." The day to forget was the one on which they were at a rough outpost where they had to dismantle the clinic and climb a steep hill to the truck.

Bob was carrying a heavy load when he slipped, fell, and hit his head on a boulder. He was unconscious when Lois wiped the blood with a clinic towel and bottled water, then helped him to a truck.

The day to remember was the day they were given a celebrity sendoff. The president of a teacher's college (where the Liners and friends sponsor a line of students), a reporter from the Nairobi Nation (Kenya's biggest newspaper), and many other notables were present to speak about the great contribution the Liners have made. The photos will show Bob with a black eye and a large bump on his head.

One would think that this would be the end of the story, the end of their mission work. When anyone asks, however, they won't get the "sensible answer" they expect. Instead, as Lois says, "Only God knows. We will have to wait and see what happens in our lives."

God bless them!

"Grandmom" likes hearing from other senior citizens who enjoy aging at P.O. Box 216, Fort Atkinson, WI 53538.