As I previously noted in my pastoral messages, each Sunday and every day, as myself and Father Hillier offer Mass for you and your intentions, our hearts continue to ache, not only because we are unable to be in the presence of many of you, but due to the horrible things that continue to invade us — from outside the Church and from within.
     In recent days the whole McCarrick matter is being rehashed in the media.  I am not able to cover everything that has been reported from recent articles but I do join my voice to those who seek the final report on McCarrick that was promised many months ago by the Vatican.  Remember, with you I am Catholic; for you I am a priest.  As a Catholic, I am saddened and horrified by the revelations that have surfaced regarding the now disgraced ex-Cardinal-Archbishop McCarrick.  If all they say about him is true I would be tempted, if the church was only a manmade institution, to leave and never return.  But the Church is not manmade.  The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, divinely instituted by Christ. No matter how rotten some members may be, (even members of the hierarchy), it does not change the truth about our divinely instituted sacraments or the fact that Christ is our Redeemer and Savior who died for our sins and has given us a new birth through water and the Holy Spirit!  
    Then there is the other troubling news that our fellow Catholics who live in places like Africa and South America are being persecuted because of their Catholic faith.  Bishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa of Mozambique’s Pemba Diocese is an advocate for the needs of the more than 200,000 people who have been displaced by the violent insurgency.  In June alone insurgents had beheaded 15 people in a week.  Yet the bishop said “the world has no idea what is happening because of indifference.”
     In the mostly Catholic country of Venezuela “the dire economic situation, combined with the effects of the pandemic lockdown, has led to a crisis more severe than the biblical plagues in Egypt”, said one local bishop. Under the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro, the once rich country of  Venezuela has been marred by violence and social upheaval.  Some 96% of households in Venezuela are living in poverty.   A family earns about three or four dollars a month.  A carton of eggs costs two dollars and a kilo of cheese costs three dollars.
     Meanwhile, in our own country many of our cities continue to  experience mayhem.  Statues of Jesus, our Blessed Mother, Saint Junipera Serra, and others have been destroyed.  Churches have been graffitied and now statues of Christopher Columbus have become the latest target.  Within the last few days the mayor of Chicago removed a beloved statue of Columbus from Grant Park in the middle of the night.  In other cities statues of Columbus and others have been destroyed or beheaded.  Surprisingly, in the City of Worcester, MA the city council voted to allow the statue of Columbus to remain due to the fact that it was donated in honor of Italian Americans.  They noted that Columbus has long been an  American Catholic and Italian-American folk hero.  They have seen his pioneering voyage from Europe as a way of validating their presence in a sometimes hostile majority-Protestant country and as the means by which Christianity reached the New World.
        As we continue to struggle with the on-going pandemic, allow God’s peace to comfort you during these unpredictable summer months.  Know too that God is listening; that God hears us when we raise our voices in prayer, especially at Mass.

 
God bless you!
Msgr. Edward C. Puleo
 

Confessions:

Saturday  3:30 PM - 4:15 PM 

          St. Brigid Parish Library (located in the Parish Center) or on the St. Brigid Church plaza (weather permitting) and by mutual arrangement.

Saturday Vigil Mass:  4:30 PM - St Brigid Church 

with live streaming via website and simulcasted to the Church Hall

Sunday Mass:   9:00 AM - St. Brigid Church 

              and simulcasted to the Church Hall

Sunday 10:30 AM Distribution of Holy Communion:

St. Brigid Church by St. Anthony of Padua near the brook.    (Remember to wear face masks and put your car in PARK when receiving Holy Communion).  Weather Permitting.

Weeks of August 17-21 and August 24-28
Daily Mass Schedule: 

Monday - Friday

9 AM St. Elizabeth Church Far Hills

PLEASE NOTE

If you feel sick or are aware that you are positive for the COVID 19 virus, please stay home and do not come to church. For those who are elderly or those with other health conditions, you may also choose to remain at home and watch the Mass on our website www.sainteb.org or on television (EWTN).

Please note that admittance to Mass will be based on a “first-come, first serve” basis and ALL are expected to wear personal face masks upon entering the church. 

Please bring sanitizers to use for your personal space in the church.

Once you have arrived at your seat, please use personal discretion to distance yourself from others safely about 6 feet in every direction.  Take note of designated sitting areas.  Of course, this “distancing” does not apply to family members or those who accompanied you to church. 

Missalettes and Hymnals have been removed as per Diocesan regulations to avoid multiple people touching the same book.  There will be disposable worship aids with the readings available in the back of Church.  Please discard after use. 

It is also suggested that the congregation not sing so as to minimize the amount of breath/saliva expelled while in church. 

Holy Communion will be distributed immediately following Mass.  As you approach the sanctuary for Holy Communion, please allow 6 feet between yourself and the person in front of you. As you come up the aisle and arrive at the Communion station, please remove your mask when you are next to receive.  When the host is placed on the palm of your hand and you receive Our Lord in Holy Communion, please place your mask back on.  You may then leave the church in silence.

Until further notice, Altar Servers will not serve Mass. Hopefully their role will be restored soon.

If you wish to chat with friends and fellow parishioners, kindly make your way out of the church and speak outdoors.  

Other miscellaneous directives will be added as necessary. Please pay attention to bulletin announcements as well as information sent via e-mails and on our parish website at www.sainteb.org.

Thank you,

Monsignor Puleo

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 31, 2020 / 01:28 pm MT (CNA).-  

A Hawaiian Catholic catechist said that St. Damien of Molokai is a “hero” to the Hawaiian people, after a prominent congresswoman claimed the statue honoring him in the U.S. Capitol is part of colonialism and “patriarchy and white supremacist culture.”

 St. Damien “gave his life” serving the isolated leper colony at Kalaupapa peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, said Dallas Carter, a native Hawaiian and a catechist for the diocese of Honolulu, in an interview with CNA.

“Any Hawaiian here who is aware of their history--which most Hawaiians are--would absolutely, Catholic or not, defend the legacy of Damien as a man who was embraced by the people, and who is a hero to us because of his love for the Hawaiian people,” Carter said.
 

“We did not judge him by the color of his skin. We judged him by the love that he had for our people,” Carter told CNA.
 
In an Instagram story on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) asked why there were not more statues honoring women historical figures, at the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection. The collection includes statues honoring historical figures from all 50 states, which are chosen by the states and sent by them to Congress for display.

“Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told – and virtually no one else,” Ocasio-Cortez posted, with a picture of Fr. Damien’s U.S. Capitol statue in the background.

In 1969, Hawaii chose to honor St. Damien alongside Kamehameha I in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.

Ocasio-Cortez noted on Thursday that Hawaii’s statue was of Fr. Damien and not of “Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii,” implying that it was an example of “colonizers” being honored instead of historical figures who are native to states.

“This isn’t to litigate each and every individual statue,” she said, arguing that “patterns” among the “totality” of the statues in the Capitol reveal they honor “virtually all men, all white, and mostly both.”

“This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like!” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture & how it impacts the present day.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s office told CNA that "it’s the patterns that have emerged among all of the statues in the Capitol: virtually all white men. Each individual could be worthy, moral people. But the deliberate erasure of women and people of color from our history is a result of the influence of patriarchy and white supremacy."

Her office later added that "Fr. Damien conducted acts of great good, and his is a story worth telling. It is still worthy for us to examine from a US history perspective why a non-Hawaiian, non-American was chosen as the statue to represent Hawaii in the Capitol over other Hawaiian natives who conducted great acts of good, and why so few women and people of color are represented in Capitol statues at all."

St. Damien of Molokai was a religious priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who spent the last 16 years of his life caring for lepers in the Hawaiian Kingdom.

He was born Jozef De Veuster in Belgium in 1840, and he entered the Picpus Fathers in 1859, taking the name Damien. He was sent to the mission in Hawaii in 1864, and was ordained a priest that May.

Shortly after that, the Hawaiian government and King Kamehameha V passed a law mandating that lepers quarantine themselves in an isolated colony on the island of Molokai. The local bishop asked for volunteers to minister to the leper colony, and Fr. Damien presented himself, beginning his work there in 1873.

Carter noted that the Hawaiian government of the time “did not know how to deal with leprosy,” and that “no one wanted to deal with Kalaupapa [colony].”

Damien himself was afraid to go and minister to the lepers, Carter said, but “over a period of time—his journal is very clear, and the writings of the Hawaiian people in that town are very clear—that he fell in love with the people.”

Eventually, Damien was given an ultimatum by his religious superior to either leave the colony or remain there permanently. He chose to stay.

The priest served the colony for the rest of his life, attending to both spiritual and temporal needs of the lepers. By 1884 he had contracted leprosy, and he continued to minister until his death in 1889.

St. Damien is beloved by native Hawaiians, Carter said, and then-princess Lili’uokalani—who Cortez implied should be given a statue instead of Damien—made Fr. Damien a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalākaua in 1881, for his “efforts in alleviating the distresses and mitigating the sorrows of the unfortunate.”

Damien is also the only priest-saint in the Hawaiian martyrology “that spoke the native Hawaiian language,” Carter said. “He loved the Hawaiian people, he embraced our culture,” he said, and in turn “he was part of our kingdom. He was one of us.”

The priest was canonized Oct. 11, 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI, who said that “his missionary activity, which gave him such joy, reached its peak in charity.”

On the occasion of the canonization, U.S. president Barack Obama expressed his “deep admiration for the life of Blessed Damien De Veuster.”

“Fr. Damien has also earned a special place in the hearts of Hawaiians. I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out,” Obama, who was born on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, said.

“Following in the steps of Jesus' ministry to the lepers, Fr. Damien challenged the stigmatizing effects of disease, giving voice to the voiceless and, ultimately, sacrificing his own life to bring dignity to so many.”

St. Junipero Serra protested colonial oppression and abuses, Archbishop Gomez says

CNA Staff, Jun 30, 2020 / 02:24 pm MT (CNA).- Those who “slander” the legacy of St. Junipero Serra ignore his history of opposing colonial oppression and abuses of indigenous Americans, said Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, praising the saint, whom he called the “spiritual founder” of Los Angeles.

“The real St. Junipero fought a colonial system where natives were regarded as ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages,’ whose only value was to serve the appetites of the white man. For St. Junipero, this colonial ideology was a blasphemy against the God who has ‘created (all men and women) and redeemed them with the most precious blood of his Son’,” Archbishop Gomez wrote in his June 29 column for Angelus News.

“He lived and worked alongside native peoples and spent his whole career defending their humanity and protesting crimes and indignities committed against them,” he said. “Among the injustices he struggled against, we find heartbreaking passages in his letters where he decries the daily sexual abuse of indigenous women by colonial soldiers.”

The archbishop called for the observance of St. Junipero Serra’s July 1 feast day as “a day of prayer, fasting and charity.”

Numerous statues of historic figures have been pulled down in recent weeks amid ongoing protests and riots throughout the country. While some protests have torn down the statues of Confederate figures as part of a call to end systemic racism, other statues have also been torn down from prominent locations, including one of George Washington.

In San Francisco’s Golden Gate State Park on June 20, a mob tore down statues of Junipero Serra, as well as Union general and U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, and National Anthem author Francis Scott Key. In Los Angeles the same day, rioters pulled down a statue of Serra in the city’s downtown area.

Statues at Catholic churches and missions, including Southern California’s famous Mission San Juan Capistrano, have been relocated for fear of vandals.

Archbishop Gomez voiced understanding for “the deep pain being expressed by some native peoples in California.”

“The exploitation of America’s first peoples, the destruction of their ancient civilizations, is a historic tragedy. Crimes committed against their ancestors continue to shape the lives and futures of native peoples today. Generations have passed and our country still has not done enough to make things right,” he said.

Gomez said he believes protests over California history are important. He praised the city of Ventura’s model of respectful debate over the Serra monument with both indigenous leaders and Catholic representatives.

In other cases, he said, “it is clear that those attacking St. Junipero’s good name and vandalizing his memorials do not know his true character or the actual historical record.”

“He learned their languages and their ancient customs and ways,” Gomez said. “St. Junipero came not to conquer, he came to be a brother. ‘We have all come here and remained here for the sole purpose of their well-being and salvation,’ he once wrote. ‘And I believe everyone realizes we love them’.”

“Serious scholars conclude that St. Junipero himself was a gentle man and there were no physical abuses or forced conversions while he was president of the mission system,” said Gomez. “St. Junipero did not impose Christianity, he proposed it. For him, the greatest gift he could offer was to bring people to the encounter with Jesus Christ.”

During the eighteenth century, the saint founded nine Catholic missions in the area that would later become California. Many of those missions would go on to become the centers of major California cities. Serra helped to convert thousands of native Californians to Christianity and taught them new agricultural technologies.

Pope Francis canonized the Franciscan missionary in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 23, 2015.

Some critics have lambasted Serra as a symbol of European colonialism and said the missions engaged in the forced labor of Native Americans, sometimes claiming Bl. Serra himself was abusive.

“The sad truth is that, beginning decades ago, activists started ‘revising’ history to make St. Junipero the focus of all the abuses committed against California’s indigenous peoples,” said Gomez. “But the crimes and abuses that our saint is blamed for — slanders that are spread widely today over the internet and sometimes repeated by public figures — actually happened long after his death.”

At the time of Serra’s arrival in California, it was voluntary to live in the missions and only 10-20% of California’s native community joined Serra in these missions. St. Junipero died in 1784, but it wasn’t until 1851 when California’s first governor called for “a war of extermination” against the Native Americans and called in the U.S. Cavalry, according to Gomez.

“It is sadly true that corporal punishment was sometimes used in the missions, as it was practiced throughout late 18th-century society. It is also true that some natives died of diseases in the missions,” he said.

Gomez said the saint understood that “the souls of indigenous Americans had been darkened with bitterness and rage at their historic mistreatment and the atrocities committed against them.” He cited Serra’s defense of Kumeyaay attackers who in 1775 burned down the San Diego mission and tortured and murdered a priest who was a friend of Serra.

“St. Junipero was not outraged. He was concerned for the killers’ souls. He pleaded with authorities to have mercy,” said Gomez. Serra urged forgiveness of the killers after “some slight punishment.”

This would help teach the Christian rule “to return good for evil and to pardon our enemies,” Serra wrote.

“This may be the first moral argument against the use of the death penalty in American history,” said Gomez. “And St. Junipero was arguing against its imposition on an oppressed minority.”

Gomez rejected online petitions which compare the saint to Adolf Hitler and the missions to concentration camps.

“No serious historian would accept this, and we should not allow these libels to be made in public arguments about our great saint,” he said. While the missions had “many flaws,” he compared them to other communes and communitarian efforts of early American history.

“The missions were multicultural communities of worship and work, with their own governments and a self-sustaining economy based on agriculture and handicrafts,” said Gomez. “Living and working together, Natives and Spaniards created a new, mestizo (‘mixed’) culture reflected in the distinctive art, architecture, music, poetry, and prayers that came out of the missions.”

While society could eventually agree not to honor St. Junipero Serra or other figures in the past, said Gomez, “elected officials cannot abdicate their responsibilities by turning these decisions over to small groups of protesters, allowing them to vandalize public monuments.”

“This is not how a great democracy should function,” he said.

 © Reverend John G. Hillier,  March 10, 2020

Jesus reminds us that there is no greater live than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends; if we do so our joy will be complete. Have you ever considered giving yourself to the service of your sisters and brothers as a priest or religious? If so, call the Vocations Office @ (732) 562-2453 or e-mail us at vocations@diometuchen.org. Or you can visit our website at www.diometuchen.org/vocations. Turn your life over to the Lord today.