family embraces life for daughter who was never expected ... · family embraces life for daughter...

Tennessee Register 1January 18, 2013

January 18, 2013 | A Voice of Tennessee Catholic Life since 1937 | www.dioceseofnashville.com

Dominican sister leads U.S. bishops’ education efforts … page 11 | Diocese sending 400 to March for Life … page 16

Family embraces life for daughter who was never expected to live

Parish involvement keeps Good Shepherd school vibrant

Theresa Laurence

Before Pearl Joy Brown was born on July 27, 2012, her parents, Ruth and Eric, had picked out her cemetery plot

and had made arrangements with a funeral home to collect her body from the hospital.

“We believed fully that she wasn’t going to make it,” Eric Brown said while sitting in the living room of his East Nashville home, hold-ing his very much alive 24-week-old daugh-ter. “We thought her delivery day would be her passing day, and that was heavy.”

The Browns learned of Pearl’s rare genetic condition, alobar holoprosencephaly, dur-ing a routine 20 week ultrasound. Doctors explained the grim statistics associated with HPE, and told them their unborn daughter’s

Andy Telli

The School of the Good Shep-herd in Decherd, with 62 students in pre-kindergarten

through eighth grade, is the smallest school in the Diocese of Nashville. But what it lacks in numbers, it makes up for in support and involve-ment from parishioners.

Whether serving as a volunteer physical education teacher, or help-ing the Knights of Columbus do maintenance on the school building, or working with the school’s Lego League team, or supporting the school with donations, parishioners are “always helping us out, sharing their time and their talent,” said Prin-cipal Kelly Doyle.

“They just embrace the school, which is a wonderful blessing for us,” she added. “They feel it’s their

school. That’s been my mission, to let them know this is your school and we want them to be involved.”

Good Shepherd will join the other Catholic schools in the Diocese of Nashville and across the country in celebrating Catholic Schools Week Jan. 27-Feb. 2. Schools have events planned for the week to celebrate the contributions the schools make and they receive from their communities, their teachers, their students, and their parents.

There has been a Catholic presence and a school in Franklin County for more than a century. In 1829, James Dardis, a Catholic and prominent citizen, moved from Knoxville to Win-chester. In the 1890s, the Paulist Fa-thers bought the unfinished Hundred Oaks mansion in Winchester, com-pleted its construction, and opened it as a retreat house and a center for

the faith. In 1900, they opened Win-chester Academy, which was staffed by the Dominican Sisters of St. Ceci-lia from Nashville.

The school has served the commu-nity in Franklin County, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, since.

Its peak enrollment in recent years was about 90 students, but the eco-nomic recession that started in 2008 has driven down enrollment in recent years, Doyle said. Today the school has a total of 62 students, with 27 of them in the popular pre-kindergarten program, she said.

Families “like our pre-school be-cause it’s all day, five days a week, and there’s a definite curriculum. It’s not just play all day,” Doyle said. “It has a good reputation.”

One obstacle to growing the enroll-ment is the age of the parishioners, Doyle said. “We don’t have a lot of

young families with children,” she explained. The Tims Ford Lake area attracts a lot of retirees, said Doyle. She and her husband, Fred, moved to Franklin County after retiring as public school teachers and adminis-trators in Ohio.

“Seventy-five percent of our parish-ioners are retired and older,” she said. That doesn’t help the school’s

Continued on page 13

Photo by Theresa LaurenceRuth Brown holds her 24-week-old baby,

Pearl, in the living room of her East Nashville home. Pearl was diagnosed in

utero with a rare genetic disorder that doctors deemed “incompatible with life,”

and advised termination of the pregnancy. However, Ruth and her husband

Eric leaned on their faith in God and chose life for Pearl. The Brown family is not Catholic, but their unwavering

commitment to life is a perfect crystallization of the church’s teachings

on the dignity of the human person.


Tennessee Register 15January 18, 2013

condition was “incompatible with life.” They were advised to terminate the pregnancy.

But the Browns never considered abortion. Their strong faith in God’s plan for every life guided their decision to give Pearl the best life they could, for as long as they could.

Careful readers of the Bible, the Browns believe that “God does everything lov-ingly and intentionally. It was not a mis-take she was made this way,” said Ruth.

Ruth and Eric must constantly remind themselves and their older children, Brennan 5, and Abbey, 3, that God has a plan for their lives and Pearl’s life. “We have fewer conversations than we used to about Pearl’s life expectancy, but I’ve had more conversations about life, death, heaven and God than I ever thought I would with a 3- and 5-year-old,” said Ruth.

“Our faith is what’s helped us through all of this,” she said. Members of the non-denominationalVillageChapel,theBrowns are not Catholic, but their un-wavering commitment to life is a perfect crystallization of the church’s teachings on the dignity of the human person.

When the Browns first said “yes” to life for Pearl, “we thought her entire life would be lived in the womb,” said Eric. That opened his eyes to how pre-cious life before birth could be. “I was passively pro-life before Pearl,” he said, “Now, I see why the pro-life movement is as passionate as it is.”

The Browns can see the value of ral-lies like The March for Life, which will draw tens of thousands of anti-abortion advocates to Washington, D.C., on Fri-day, Jan. 25, but it is a little too noisy for them; they prefer to stay on the sidelines of abortion politics.

As March for Life participants wave signs and chant slogans, supporting the right of all babies to be born, Eric and Ruth Brown will be home with Pearl, a baby many par-ents would have chosen to abort.

Whether Pearl would make it to term or live for a matter of hours, days or weeks was completely uncertain. “I just wanted as much time with my kid as I could have,” Ruth said. And they wanted to walk as far as they could down the path that God laid out for them. “If we’d terminated at 20 weeks, that cuts Him out of the picture,” Ruth said.

“God can do mighty things that science can’t explain,” she continued. “When you look at Pearl, it doesn’t look like a com-plete healing, but He’s done a miracle,” she said.

Few babies with Pearl’s severity of the HPE disorder make it to term, and of those who do, only 3 percent survive birth, according to the Carter Centers for Brain Research in Holoprosenceph-aly and Related Malformations.

Pearl’s brain development stalled dur-ing her first few weeks in the womb and her brain never divided into two hemi-spheres. She has an underdeveloped nose and cleft in her upper lip. She has regular seizures, is susceptible to illness and must feed through a tube.

“Pearl has a lot of challenges,” said Ruth. “There’s always something changing.”

“This is hard. It’s hard for her and for us,” Eric said.

The Browns maintain a blog about their journey with Pearl and have been very open and honest about the joys

and difficulties they’ve encountered along the way. Eric usually posts the family updates and his musings there, everything from Pearl’s latest hospital stay to frustrations with healthcare pro-viders to his struggle to embrace God’s plan for his family.

“I put all the cards on the table,” he said. “I can’t paint a false reality.”

People around the world have con-nected with the Browns on-line, in part because of this transparency, and regu-larly send e-mails and cards supporting them and baby Pearl.

When The Tennessean newspaper ran a story on the Browns in October, it was quicklypickedupbyseveralmajornewsoutlets including the Huffington Post and the Daily Mail U.K.

Then things started to get ugly. Thou-sands of people who read the story on-line have left hostile comments about Eric and Ruth’s choice to give Pearl life. “When it’s about your family, you can’t help but read some of them,” said Ruth, “but some were so hurtful they made me sick to my stomach.”

People have suggested that the Browns are doing a disservice to Pearl by allowing her to be born and by keep-ing her alive; they’re allowing a child to needlessly suffer; they are wasting re-sources on a child who won’t contribute to society in a traditional sense. “They are not our basis for truth,” Ruth said of the commentators.

“How well you treat a person does not depend on their contribution to society. That’s not how you value somebody,” Ruth said. “Treating people with disabilities like they are not people is a slippery slope.”

Pearl “is loved by thousands of people around the world. She has a life that is well worth living,” said Ruth, as her eyes well up with tears, the tears of a

mother who is frustrated that she must defend the value of her daughter’s life to strangers.

Fortunately, Ruth said, “we haven’t had any harsh comments from people face to face.”Theymaygetstaresandquestionsout of concern or curiosity, but nothing like some people are emboldened to

write from behind the anonymity of a computer screen.

The Browns mostly avoid reading nega-tive feedback these days, but say that the positive response from so many people and support from the Nashville commu-nity has lifted them up. “Always the light is brighter than the dark,” Eric said.

Photo by Dan NewsomRuth and Eric Brown pose for a family photo with their three children, Abbey, 3, Pearl, 24 weeks, and Brennan, 5. Their youngest daughter, Pearl, was born last summer with a rare genetic disorder. She has already lived longer than expected, and the family embraces every small milestone with her.

Family embraces life for daughter who was never expected to liveContinued from front page

Photo by Eric Brown

Tennessee Register 1May 24, 2013

May 24, 2013 | A Voice of Tennessee Catholic Life since 1937 | www.dioceseofnashville.com

Loretto principal retires after 44 years of service … page 12 | Aquinas, Ryan, JPII celebrate graduates … pages 24 and 27

Full house provides winning hand for seminarian education

Jesuit volunteers live in solidarity with those they serveTheresa Laurence

Seven young women gather around a spartan dinner table, hands joined in prayer, ready to share a

meal together, as they do most nights at the Jesuit Volunteer Corps house in East Nashville. They each dish up a modest serving of couscous and veg-etables onto mismatched plates. On the wall behind them are posters, chore charts, and a handwritten document declaring this house “a place of radical living,” where residents are expected to garden and compost, limit phone usage, and respect the need for silence.

Tucking into their supper this night, the women listen eagerly as fellow Jesuit volunteer Veronica Dress shares details about a community meeting she just attended, concerning the city’s plans to revitalize a nearby public hous-ing project. Speaking with the passion of a seasoned social justice activist, Dress rattles off the daily hurdles faced by public housing residents, in-cluding limited access to public trans-portation and healthy food.

Dress and her fellow JVs – as they call themselves – may not live in public housing, but they deal with many of the same obstacles during their year of service, committed to voluntary pov-erty and simple, community living.

Every year, Jesuit Volunteer Corps houses around the country, including Nashville, welcome a new crop of recent


Photo by Theresa LaurenceJesuit Volunteer Corps member Katie Gonzalez, right, searches her purse for her bus pass while fellow JV Veronica Dress looks out for the bus at a stop on Gallatin Road. Both work with homeless teens at the Oasis Center in Nashville. Seven young women, all recent college graduates, live together in the JVC house in East Nashville and work at social service organizations around town. JVs live on strict budgets to gain a sense of solidarity with the clients they serve, who are often poor and marginalized.

Andy Telli

Bishop David Choby looked out over the large crowd at the fourth annual Seminarian Educa-

tion Dinner and expressed his gratitude for their support.

“We’re being blessed by God, in part because of your prayers,” Bishop Choby said.

The dinner, co-sponsored by the Serra Club of Williamson County, the Serra Club of Nashville, and the Knights of Columbus, is a fundraiser to help pay for the education of the Dio-cese of Nashville’s 33 seminarians.

Each year, the dinner has become more successful. The first year it raised $6,000, the second $12,000 and last year, moti-

vated to qualify for a matching grant of up to $50,000 from the Catholic Extension Society, $62,000.

“We want to go past $62,000,” said Bob Guerra of the Serra Club of Williamson County and chairperson of this year’s event. “We would be happy if we could get to $75,000 this year.”

The money comes from ticket sales, si-lent and live auction items, and individual donations. Those who were unable to attend the dinner, held Tuesday, May 21, at Holy Family Church in Brentwood, can still send a donation to the bishop’s office or by making a check payable to Serra Club of Williamson County and mailing it to Serra Club of Williamson County c/o St. Philip Church, 113 Second Ave. South, Franklin, Tenn. 37064.

“We’ll wait a little bit,” to allow people to send in more donations, Guerra said. “At some point, we’ll present the bishop with his check.”

During the dinner, Guerra praised Bishop Choby for his efforts to increase the number of seminarians for the diocese.

“The facts we have more than 30 semi-narians, that two will be ordained this year and up to eight will be ordained next year, speak for themselves,” Guerra said.

Although the diocese applauds the increase in vocations, it comes with a cost. The diocese pays about $35,000 per year to educate each seminarian. They are studying in seminaries in Columbus, Ohio, New Orleans, San Antonio, Texas, and Rome, Italy.

Bishop Choby said when he visits

parishes and talks about vocations, he en-courages people, if they meet one of the seminarians, to let them know they care about them. “The fact that so many are here tonight is proof that you do care,” Bishop Choby said. “Thank you for your support.”

About 530 people attended the dinner, Guerra said. “I’m absolutely overwhelmed and thrilled with the turnout. It’s beyond what we were hoping for,” he said.

“What we strived for this year is to get as much of the diocese involved in the event” as possible, Guerra said. “It’s be-come more of a diocesan event. It needs to be that.

These seminarians are going to serve the entire diocese. They’re their priests.”

Continued on page 5


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Things don’t always run 100 percent smoothly at the JVC house, but there are no shouting matches, and misun-derstandings get resolved peacefully.

When people ask about how seven women could live in a house without engaging in regular catfights, JV Ei-leen McFarland says that reveals an ugly misogynistic streak in today’s cul-ture, fueled by reality television.

“I think it’s sad that people think a group of women won’t all get along,” said McFarland, who works at South-ern Migrant Legal Services. “We’re not the Real Housewives of Nashville. We’re real people.”

JVs work together to foster a spirit of cooperation. Everyone in the household meets weekly to map out schedules, grocery lists and chore planning, but “we have our own lives independent of the community, and we support each other in our pur-suits,” said Voit. “I don’t feel that liv-ing in community is so different and radical,” she added.

Training for lifeAs the Nashville Jesuit volunteers

wind down their official commitment to the program, they are preparing to step out of their bubble, where they will no longer come home at the end of the day to the built-in support network of six other women who know exactly what they’re going through. It’s a little

scary for them right now, not knowing what’s next.

“On the one hand, I can see where I’ve changed and how I’m different, be-cause I took this risk and chose to live this life,” said Granville. “On the other, I can see how easily I could slip back into what’s comfortable,” an alternate reality where a cup of coffeehouse latte is not a once a month treat, where Sat-urdays are spent watching movies and napping instead of volunteering.

But Granville and the others are

certain that the foundation they’ve con-structed during this year is solid, and one that has equipped them to engage in the world differently, through the lens of faith, eager to tackle injustice.

“I feel like I’m not going to be able to look at the world with the same eyes as I used to, and I think that’s a good thing,” said Norris.

During her year with the Jesuit Vol-unteer Corps, “I feel like I’m training for how to live for the rest of my life,” Pecher said.

Submitted photoJesuit Volunteer Corps members pose for a group shot on the front porch of their house in East Nashville. They are, clockwise from top left: Jane Granville, Eileen McFarland, Kristen Norris, Tracy Pecher, Veronica Dress, Alison Voit, and Katie Gonzalez.

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JVC at a glance

The Jesuit Volunteer Corps, in collaboration with the Society of Jesus, offers men and women an opportunity to work full-time

for justice and peace. The JVC program helps local organizations better serve their communi-ties by providing Jesuit volunteers to work di-rectly with the poor and marginalized in the U.S. and developing countries.

During their one or two year commitment, Je-suit volunteers live according to the four values of the JVC: spirituality, simple living, commu-nity, and social justice.

The Jesuit Volunteer Corps welcomes women and men of any age, although many are recent college graduates. Applicants should be 21 or older and have a college degree or applicable work experience. JVC houses are usually co-ed; this is the first time that the Nashville house has included only women.

Placement sites where JVs work cover costs for housing, utilities, a food stipend, transpor-tation to and from work (usually a bus pass), and transportation home at the end of the year. Health insurance coverage and a small personal stipend are also provided.

The JVC was originally founded in the 1950s to serve the native people of Alaska, and now more than 12,000 Jesuit volunteers have served tens of thousands of individuals and families at hundreds of sites around the world.

For more information, visit www.jesuitvolun-teers.org.

14 Tennessee Register May 24, 2013

Continued from front page

college graduates who make a commitment to serve the poor and marginalized, dedi-cated to service informed by faith. Through their jobs at various social service organiza-tions, the JVs walk alongside people wholly different from themselves – homeless addicts, elderly refugees and struggling ex-cons – and gain a new perspective that may very well ruin them for life.

“It’s a happy ruined,” JV Katie Gonzalez says with a laugh when explaining what the JVC motto “ruined for life” means to her. “We’re using a negative word, but in this sense it’s positive,” said Gonzalez, who works with homeless teens at the Oasis Center in Nashville. It makes you less complacent, she said, restless to be a force for positive change.

Being “ruined for life” means something a little different to each JV, and Dress ex-plains it as “an inconvenient awareness,” sort of the opposite of “ignorance is bliss.”

JV Kristen Norris, who works with formerly homeless recovering addicts at Room in the Inn, describes a recent expe-rience that made her keenly aware that she has been “ruined for life.” Standing in the sea of people gathered for the dedica-tion of the city’s massive new convention center, “In the back of my mind I was wondering, ‘What if some of the money for this had gone to housing for the home-less? What could’ve happened?’”

Simple, comfortableUsually in their early 20s, Jesuit vol-

unteers fall squarely in the “millennial” generation, often described as entitled and narcissistic, constantly plugged in, slaves to their screens. But these young women are embracing a lifestyle that offers a refreshing counterpoint to the millennial stereotype. They do not have a television or internet service at home. They ride the bus to work every day. They spend their weekends gardening and volunteering. They are committed to living like those they serve, stretching their resources, and gaining new insight into the realities of poverty and injustice.

Jane Granville, who works at Project Return, an organization that helps ex-of-fenders reintegrate into society, said most of her clients “think my parents pay for ev-erything. They don’t understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. They don’t get that.”

Jesuit volunteers live on a strict, no frills budget during their year of service. Their housing costs are covered by the pro-gram, but their food and personal stipend totals only $190 a month.

But the JVs insist they don’t feel de-prived. “I wouldn’t classify our situation as poverty, far from it. We live simply, but comfortably,” said Granville, who is on her second year of service with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. When she lived in the JVC house in Mobile, Ala., last year, “we didn’t have air conditioning during the summer or heat in the winter, and that was difficult,” she said.

“I think we are still living above our clients, but the solidarity is there,” said JV Alison Voit who works for the Catho-lic Charities Refugee Resettlement Program.

JVs embrace life of serviceto others

Photos by Theresa LaurenceJesuit Volunteer Corps member Veronica Dress, center, leads her fellow JVs in prayer before an evening meal at the JVC house in East Nashville. Joining hands with her are, clockwise from top right, Eileen McFarland, Kristen Norris, Alison Voit, Jane Granville, and Katie Gonzalez. The JVs pool their modest food stipends together every month and take turns planning meals and cooking for each other.

A weekly chore chart, above, helps the JVs keep household

jobs organized. Part of living in community means each member of

the seven person household must pitch in to keep things running

smoothly. The group has weekly planning meetings every Sunday to map out the week’s jobs. In photo

at right, Jesuit volunteers Katie Gonzalez and Tracy Pecher pick

some of the first spring greens to be prepared for dinner. Gardening and

composting are integral to the JV lifestyle that embraces simple living.


‘Deeper than service’All of the Nashville Jesuit volunteers

were raised Catholic and began con-necting with the church’s social justice teachings through high school or college courses. Domestic and international mis-sion trips began to awaken their sense of service. Heroic Catholic figures such as Archbishop Oscar Romero, champion of El Salvador’s poor, and Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement in the United States, spoke to their souls. When Dress was first introduced to Day, “I fell in love with her,” she said. Day was the role model she was looking for, a “very driven, determined female figure who went against the grain.” Dress, who works with teens in the transitional living pro-gram at the Oasis Center, continues the tradition of reaching out to the less fortu-nate, welcoming the stranger as Day did through her network of hospitality houses.

Those who grew up in a tight-knit par-ish or a family of volunteers felt especially

called to the four core values of the JVC: spirituality, simple living, community and social justice. “I see JVC as a backdrop for continued spiritual exploration,” said Voit.

When researching similar programs, she was most drawn to JVC because of its spiritual component, so “there’s some-thing deeper there than just service.”

Weekly spirituality nights are part of the well-oiled Jesuit Volunteer Corps pro-gram, as are occasional group and silent weekend retreats. This is all by design, to help JVs fuse their social justice work to the roots of their Catholic faith.

Overcoming individualismNot satisfied to simply meet the im-

mediate needs of their clients, these Jesuit volunteers want to play a part in something bigger. “You have to look at the structures that create poverty,” said JV Tracy Pecher, who works with the YMCA’s Bridge program, which serves high achieving students who come from

disadvantaged backgrounds. That’s why the anti-consumerist lifestyle

of the Jesuit volunteer program is so im-portant. The less they have, the more the JVs are free to examine their impact on the planet and how their decisions affect the global family and the common good.

Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit, has been reminding Catholics to walk with the poor and to turn away from the “cult of money,” which the JVs do every day. During a recent canonization ceremony, the pope asked the audience to consider “how much damage does the comfortable life, well-being, do,” and encouraged Catholics “to overcome indifference and individualism.”

These words resonate deeply with the Je-suit volunteers who see their simple, com-munal lifestyle as the way to live. “It frees you up for so much more,” said Gonzalez.

Being constantly attuned to the needs of others, at home and at the office, can be rewarding, but at times, draining.


Photos by Theresa LaurenceJesuit Volunteer Corps member Veronica Dress, center, leads her fellow JVs in prayer before an evening meal at the JVC house in East Nashville. Joining hands with her are, clockwise from top right, Eileen McFarland, Kristen Norris, Alison Voit, Jane Granville, and Katie Gonzalez. The JVs pool their modest food stipends together every month and take turns planning meals and cooking for each other.

Jesuit volunteer Alison Voit, above, talks with a member of the Catholic Charities Refugee Elders program. The program, she said, “helps create a space where these people are honored. Often they had power and prestige in their home country, and that’s not the case here.” Below, JV Kristen Norris hands out magazines for an art project she designed for members of Room in the Inn’s Odyssey program, which provides support for chronically homeless men in addiction recovery. Jesuit volunteers work with poor and vulnerable populations, which Norris says “is the best thing I could have done, serving other people.”

Tennessee Register 1August 30, 2013

Theresa Laurence

Tennessee residents, including refugees and their allies as well as Tea Party and Eagle Forum

supporters, packed a Legislative Plaza hearing room on Aug. 21 to listen to lawmakers and others try to determine what it costs the state of Tennessee to resettle refugees here.

During the hearing, the newly formed Joint Government Operations Legis-lative Advisory Committee directed questions to Holly Johnson, director of Catholic Charities’ Tennessee Office for Refugees, which administers the state’s refugee resettlement program. She spent a considerable portion of her time explaining what her office does and the logistics of resettling refugees.

She explained how the Tennessee

Office for Refugees offers technical assistance and administrative support to partners like the Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement office and World Relief that work directly with refugees. The Tennessee Office for Refugees disburses funding it receives from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement to the local direct service providers.

“We invite a fair and balanced fiscal review of the program,” Johnson said in an interview after the hearing. “But it seems like there may be something else going on here than just looking at the cost to the state.”

Johnson and other refugee support-ers are concerned that the refugee resettlement program is coming under legislative scrutiny due to pressure from outside groups that would like to see immigration and refugee resettle-

ment programs severely curtailed or even banned in the state.

“The driving force behind this is the Eagle Forum and the insinuation I be-lieve we’re getting is that refugees are draining financial resources from state and local government,” said Jennifer Murphy, executive director of the Ten-nessee Catholic Public Policy Commis-sion, which represents the state’s three bishops in public policy matters.

The Eagle Forum was also behind recent legislation that attempted to ban Sharia law, and another that would place a tight cap on the number of non-U.S. citizens allowed to teach at charter schools. Eagle Forum attorney Joanne Bregman and Center for Immigration Studies fellow Don Barnett also testi-fied before the advisory committee.

As much as Johnson and others

wanted to talk about the benefits of the refugees who resettle in Tennes-see, committee chairman Rep. Judd Matheny (R-Tullahoma) kept steering the conversation back to the state costs incurred by resettling approximately 1,300 refugees annually.

Johnson is concerned that if the com-mittee does not consider the long term benefit of refugees alongside the costs, the data may be skewed.

It is not uncommon for refugees to start their own businesses, which cre-ates jobs and contributes to the tax base. They pay federal taxes, Social Security taxes and sales tax. Many of the children grow up and go on to pay tuition at in-state community or four-year colleges.

“They are putting money into the

August 30, 2013 | A Voice of Tennessee Catholic Life since 1937 | www.dioceseofnashville.com

Nashvillians lead UT Catholic Student Association … page 12 | Clarksville woman turns illness into ministry … page 17

Continued on next page


Refugee resettlement program fends off attacks from legislators

Photo by Andy TelliThe grand opening of the expanded Safe Haven Family Shelter was held Tuesday, Aug. 27. The expansion will allow the shelter for homeless families to double the number of families it can accommodate as well as providing more space for dining, classes, administrative offices and children’s play. Mayor Karl Dean, right, and students from Whitsitt Elementary School, cut the ribbon for the expanded shelter. Watching is board member Henry Bedford.

Andy Telli

Winnie McKenzie’s first job at the Safe Haven Family Shelter, which houses homeless fami-

lies, was being a hostess, greeting the families when they arrived each night, said her son, Deacon Jim McKenzie of the Cathedral of the Incarnation.

“She absolutely loved the interaction with the homeless people,” Deacon McKenzie said of his late mother.

It wasn’t long before she took the reins of the organization as its execu-tive director.

Winnie McKenzie was on the mind of many people during ceremonies on Tuesday, Aug. 27, as Safe Haven dedi-cated its expanded facility, which now has room for 10 families instead of five, more office space for the administrative staff, a larger kitchen and dining space, a playroom for the children, and private bathrooms in each family unit.

“She would have been so happy … they will be able to help more families,” Deacon McKenzie said of his mother.

Winnie McKenzie, her colleague in the early days Sam Hollis, and the other board members, staffers and vol-unteers during the 30 years Safe Haven has operated “are our role models,” said Joyce Lavery, executive director.

Deacon Andy McKenzie of Christ

Safe Haven’s success ‘the real deal,’ says mayor

Tennessee Register 13August 30, 2013

economy,” Johnson said. Additionally, “refugees bring with them a rich culture from their country that doesn’t have a monetary value,” she said.

Johnson points to the success story of refugee Fadil Dervishi who arrived from Kosovo in 1999. “I used to work three jobs and sometimes have no sleep for 24 hours,” he said during a World Refugee Day event several years ago. Dervishi, a father of four, praised the U.S. for the opportunities here. “If you want to work, you can work,” he said.

Since settling in Nashville, Dervishi has bought a home and opened a restaurant. His children were successful in school, and at least one attended medical school at the University of Tennessee.

Since the Tennessee Office for Refu-gees took over administrating refugee resettlement from the state in 2008, it has helped thousands of displaced persons find new homes in Tennessee.

The number of refugees resettled in Tennessee is on par with neighboring states like Georgia and Kentucky. Larger states like California and Texas resettle three times as many, while some states like Wyoming do not resettle refugees.

Johnson was questioned about whether Catholic Charities stands to benefit fi-nancially from resettling more refugees in Tennessee. The Tennessee Office for Refugees received $8.9 million in federal grant money last year to assist refugees. A small portion of that money covers the

modest costs of administering the pro-gram, Johnson said. “Our administrative monies aren’t tied to the number of refu-gees resettled here,” she added.

Refugees are defined as individuals who have had to leave their home country because of a well-founded fear of persecu-tion. They are targeted because of their religious or political beliefs, or member-ship in a particular social class. They often live, displaced for years, in camps, and come to the U.S. from some of the worst humanitarian crisis zones around the world. Once they are vetted and ap-proved for entry into United States, the U.S. State Department, in consultation with state refugee coordinators like John-son, will assign the refugee an arrival city.

When refugees land in Nashville, for example, a representative from a local re-settlement agency like Catholic Charities or World Relief will be assigned to their case, helping them navigate their new city and assisting them with their initial resettlement.

The Tennessee Office for Refugees, which Johnson directs, helps refugees state-wide access cash and medical assistance, initial medical screenings, employment, social adjustment services, and English language training, in an effort to quickly achieve self-sufficiency. All the assistance and programs initially accessed by refugees are covered by federal grant money.

What is unclear, and what legislators were trying to learn at the Aug. 21 hear-ing, is exactly how much refugees are costing the state of Tennessee after the

initial federal funds have been exhausted. How many taxpayer-funded social ser-vices are they accessing, like food stamps and TennCare? How many end up living in public housing? The short answer is, it’s difficult to tell.

Few statistics were readily available, but according to the Tennessee Office for Refugees’ 2012 Year in Review report, 535 adults secured full-time employment and an additional 159 found part-time employment within the first year of ar-rival. Approximately 550 adult refugees engaged in English language training and 383 refugee children and their parents received an orientation to the American school system. Refugees are encouraged to seek jobs that provide family medical benefits, but they are eligible for Refugee Medical Assistance coverage for up to eight months after arrival; 742 received this federally-funded benefit in 2012.

“Long-term tracking doesn’t exist for refugees,” said Johnson. Refugees are legal residents of the U.S., and just as American citizens should not expect to be tracked by the government, neither should refugees, she said.

Generally, refugees are self-sufficient within eight months of arriving in the U.S. “and if you think about what that means – that they come from the other side of the world with nothing, to paying their own bills in eight months – that’s re-ally remarkable,” Johnson said.

After that transition time, the resettle-ment agencies may not have records of them. For example, “If they decide to move to Kentucky they’re not required to report it to the agency,” Johnson said. “Our goal is not to track them but to be aware of how many are being served ini-

tially,” she said.Some of the federally funded services

available to refugees, like cash and medi-cal assistance, are time limited to eight months after their arrival. Others, like job placement training and English language tutoring, are available for up to five years.

The question was posed during the hearing whether the state legislature has the authority to end refugee resettlement programs in the state, but no one knew the answer. If refugee resettlement pro-grams were somehow defunded or voted out of existence, “it would not keep refu-gees out of Tennessee. People are still going to move here,” Johnson said, they just wouldn’t have specialized assistance available to them and then they would end up relying on taxpayer-funded state services “and be a big burden on those agencies,” Johnson said. “Refugees need the help that we can provide. It’s not the same as serving Americans.”

Catholic Charities of Tennessee has a 50 year history of resettling refugees and assisting immigrants, dating back to the first arrivals of Cuban children in 1962 following the Castro revolution. In recent years, larger numbers of refugees from Bhutan, Burma, Iraq and Somalia have been resettled in Tennessee, with the highest concentration in Nashville.

While refugees and their supporters have clear concerns about the nature of the hearing, they are seizing the opportu-nity as a teaching moment. “We welcome this as an opportunity to answer ques-tions. We’re not hiding behind a curtain,” said Murphy. “It’s important that people understand who a refugee is, and who we are, and that we do this as a Christian service.”

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Photo by Theresa LaurenceRefugees and their supporters watch a closed circuit television in the hallway of Legislative Plaza on Aug. 21 while Holly Johnson of Catholic Charities’ Tennessee Office for Refugees answers questions from the Joint Government Operations Legislative Advisory Committee.

Refugee resettlement program fends off attacks from legislators

The Adult Day Services of Catholic Charities of Tennessee will host an open house 3-5 p.m. Tuesday,

Sept. 17, at St. Mary Villa, 30 White Bridge Road in Nashville.

Approximately one in four house-holds in the United States provide care for a relative or friend age 50 or older. The open house will give families an

opportunity to share their story and to learn about the services offered through the Adult Day Services pro-gram.

For more information, contact Linda Edwards at (615) 352-3087 or [email protected] or visit the pro-gram’s website: http://cctenn.org/ser-vices/seniors/adult-daycare.

Open house set for Catholic Charities Adult Day Services

12 Tennessee Register October 11, 2013

Theresa Laurence

On Loaves and Fishes’ feeding days, men and women, talking and smoking, cluster near the

door of the Holy Name Parish Center, located in East Nashville on the edge of downtown.

A grizzled man pushes a shopping cart full of all his earthly belongings up to the door; a family pulls into the park-ing lot and piles out of a beat up mini-van. The occasional unruly guest shows up with a near-empty bottle in his back pocket, primed for a fight. Most people mind their own business, waiting qui-etly and patiently for their meal ticket.

Catholic Charities’ Loaves and Fishes program serves about 150 hot lunches every Monday, Wednesday and Satur-day. For nearly 30 years, the program has served “individuals down on their luck,” according to program director Wendy Overlock. “We serve whoever’s at the door.”

For those living in poverty and at risk of hunger, every day it can seem like they are caught standing in a doorway, halfway between hunger and having their fill, between having plenty and none.

Today, an alarming number of Ameri-cans are struggling to provide the most basic of necessities for their families. According to the USDA, more than 50 million Americans are at risk of hunger, and 16.7 million U.S. children under 18 are food insecure, which means they “do not know when or where they will find their next meal,” according to Tasha Kennard, spokeswoman for Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, which distributes millions of pounds of food annually to more than 400 partner agencies in the area, including Catholic Charities.

Hunger is a reality for one in six Ten-nesseans, and cuts across all demo-graphics. “There is not a typical profile of hunger, in fact people of all back-grounds, races, neighborhoods, both rural and urban, and people with and without jobs struggle with hunger here in Tennessee,” said Kennard.

Patching it all togetherMost Saturdays, April Willis and her

three children ride the city bus from their apartment in Madison to Loaves and Fishes so they can get a free, hot lunch, no questions asked. “We come here when we run low,” she said, explaining that when her food stamp benefits are maxed out for the month, and there’s little food in the house, she has no choice but to shuttle her family between community meal programs so they can eat.

She’s been doing this for so long, she doesn’t need a written schedule of when and where each church or outreach center serves food. “It’s in my brain,” she said.

April’s mother used to bring her and her siblings to Loaves and Fishes when they were little. Raised in a hardscrab-ble south Nashville neighborhood, Wil-lis got pregnant at 16 and didn’t finish high school. Without the advantages of a good education or family connections to fall back on, April, now 29, has been unable to follow the prescribed “pick yourself up by your own bootstraps” narrative of escaping poverty.

Although she recently moved out of

the James Cayce public housing proj-ect, she is currently unemployed and struggling to provide for her children, with help from her boyfriend, the father of her youngest child. Willis and her 13-year-old son both have health issues, but do not qualify for disability benefits.

Every month, Willis keeps her family’s livelihood stitched together through a patchwork of government benefits and charity. The logistics of daily life – caring for her 3-year-old daughter, ensuring that her oldest chil-dren have city bus fare to get to and from Bailey Middle School, and putting food on the table – can be draining.

Without a car of her own, just getting to and from the grocery store is a chal-lenge for Willis. When the cashier rings up her purchases, her silent prayer is, “please don’t let me go over, please don’t let me go over.”

Red tape and no foodAcross town from Loaves and Fishes,

a gritty one mile north of St. Vincent de Paul Church, the Catholic Charities North Nashville Outreach office sits in a low slung strip of brick buildings. Nearby neighbors include a liquor store, Ed’s Pizza and Fish, a used tire shop, and a storefront funeral home.

Robert Smith lives here, across from the Outreach office, and utilizes the services they provide, including food, clothing and emergency financial assis-tance. “I don’t know what I’d do without Catholic Charities,” said Smith, a strap-ping man who’s “in pretty good shape for an old dude.”

Smith, 62, works part time for an elec-trical contracting company; he helps support his daughter and two grand-children, and volunteers at the Out-reach office when they need assistance

unpacking truckloads of donations and stocking the shelves of the food pantry.

Because of his own health issues and a family history of diabetes, Smith says it’s a priority for him to eat healthy, but he can’t always afford to.

Smith currently receives about $200 a month in Supplemental Nutrition As-sistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, and “it don’t get everything, believe me,” he said.

Smith usually walks about a half mile

from his home to shop at the Save-a-Lot grocery store. Sometimes he cooks a huge pot of turnip greens to eat all week; some nights he only eats a bean salad for supper. He tries to stay away from fast food, and avoids too much starch and meat, but does enjoy his pasta. If his grandchildren, ages 1 and 4, are staying with him “I’ll do without a meal myself for the little runts,” he says affectionately.

If Smith stretches his food stamp al-

Risk of hunger crosses all social boundaries

Photos by Theresa LaurenceApril Willis and her daughter Akaeden, 3, help sweep up after a Loaves and Fishes Saturday meal. Willis struggles to provide for her three children and brings them to Loaves and Fishes most Saturdays so they can get a free, hot lunch.

Smithson Craighead Academy students who participate in the Project Reflect after school programs on campus receive a snack box full of food every day, which includes milk, cheese, meat, crackers, and applesauce. About 70 percent of Metro Nashville Public School children eat free and reduced price breakfast and lunch at school every day. The after school snack program is one more way to feed children from low income families.

Tennessee Register 13October 11, 2013

lotment, it can get him through about three weeks of the month, “then the refrigerator starts getting empty,” he said. When he’s running low on food, he will eat at a friend’s house or dip into his canned good stash for a quick meal.

Smith, like all North Nashville Out-reach clients, can only get one emer-gency food box every three months. The requirements for the food boxes are strict; clients must live within the designated service area zip codes, and must show photo ID, Social Security card and a current utility bill each time.

On a recent weekday afternoon three different men showed up at the Outreach office; one was recently released from jail, one just moved to town from Chicago, and the third lived nearby with his mother. Only the third was able to provide all the appropriate documentation to get a food box. “I un-derstand, I know it’s frustrating,” case-worker Davina Kraeger told the men she had to turn away.

“The bad ones take advantage and the good ones have to suffer,” Kraeger said after the men left. The documentation requirements do provide safeguards against fraud, but they can also prevent some needy people from accessing food in an emergency. Because of its structure and funding, the North Nash-ville Outreach office must require the documentation to provide services.

To help their clients better under-stand the need to budget and manage their limited resources, the North Nashville Outreach office has re-cently begun offering financial literacy classes, with the help of Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace” workbooks. They are hoping to educate up to 30 clients a week, and one thing that will be cov-ered is food budgeting.

One recurring issue for families is that “the kids get free lunch at school but during the summer, families don’t budget for that change,” and find food running out much faster than they ex-pected, Kraeger said.

Feed the childrenOne in four children in the state of

Tennessee is food insecure, and a big portion of these are school-aged. About 70 percent of Metro Nashville Public School children meet federal free and reduced lunch guidelines and eat low or no cost breakfast and lunch every day at school.

When school is in session, children from low income families rely on school feeding programs for “almost every-thing” for their daily meals, according to Sister Mary Acerbi, support staff mem-ber at Smithson Craighead Academy, Nashville’s first public charter school.

Sister Mary, a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis, has been a Jill-of-all-trades at Smithson Craighead since it opened 10 years ago. If a child has an ac-cident and needs a fresh uniform, they go see Sister Mary for clean clothes. If a child comes to school on a cold day with no hat or mittens, they go pick out something from Sister Mary’s locker full of clothes, much of it donated by families at St. Henry Church in Nash-ville. If a child is sick or upset during the day, they can go talk to Sister Mary.

“I love the challenge. It’s not the same every day,” she said in her thick Wis-consin accent, which is peppered with frequent laughter. “I feel like I’m really a servant to these kids. It’s not just a job, I’m on a mission.”

Inside Sister Mary’s office, a portable

outbuilding on the Smithson Craighead campus, the space is domi-nated by tall stacks of cardboard boxes, filled with after school snacks for the students. Sister Mary oversees the after school food program that provides a hardy late afternoon snack box to the hundreds of children who are enrolled in Project Reflect Educational Programs at the school.

The food comes to Project Reflect through a Second Harvest program known as “Kids Café,” and each box typically includes plain or chocolate milk, cheese sticks, crackers and a cup of applesauce. It may not be the fresh-est, healthiest food possible, but it’s better than chips and candy, and it can serve as dinner if need be.

Many Smithson Craighead parents are busy shuttling multiple children around, working part-time jobs, and simply don’t have time or don’t know how to cook nutritious food, said Sister Mary. In the

past Project Reflect has hosted a Second Harvest dietician to show children how to make healthy food choices, but “we need more adult education for the fami-lies,” Sister Mary said.

She would also like to revive the school’s raised garden beds, which sit near the entrance to the school and once contained tomatoes, squash, and greens, but are now overgrown with weeds.

How healthy can you be?To help combat obesity and other

health issues that result from un-healthy eating habits, Second Harvest and other hunger relief organizations in Nashville are working to increase the availability of fresh food to the poor. Second Harvest increased its fresh product distribution by 25 percent last year and plans to do so again this year, according to Kennard.

Overlock, of Loaves and Fishes, oversees a Second Harvest fresh food

giveaway twice a month, once at Holy Name Church, and once at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. “They drop off pallets of food and the great thing is, it’s all salvageable food,” she said. “You never know what it’s going to be,” but the delivery often includes a mix of fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, yogurt, bread and more.

Local farmers markets are also mak-ing a concerted effort to reach out to those in poverty by accepting SNAP benefit cards as payment, and posters hung in the North Nashville Outreach office and Holy Name Parish Center try to entice customers. “I think people are starting to slowly make their way there,” Overlock said.

The main problem, again, is transpor-tation. Neighborhood farmers markets have limited hours and if you have to ride the bus, with children, to get there it may be too daunting.


Sister Mary Acerbi, above, a member of the School Sisters of

St. Francis, serves an after school snack to

a student at Smithson Craighead Academy.

“I feel like I’m really a servant to these kids,” she said of her job as a support staff member at the school. Robert

Smith, right, laughs with volunteer Betty Gift as they stock the shelves

at the Catholic Charities North Nashville

Outreach office. Smith is an Outreach client

who has received emergency food box and financial assistance from

them. He lives across the street from the office and volunteers there as

needed.

22 Tennessee Register October 11, 2013

Community feeding programs and emergency food boxes are only “semi-healthy,” Kraeger said, trying to sound optimistic. “There’s no fresh fruits or vegetables here,” at the Outreach office, she said. They do have frozen meat to give away, but a lot of it is high fat, high sodium pork products; the canned vegetables often have a high sodium content too.

Many Catholic Charities clients seeking food assistance suffer from a variety of health problems, including obesity and diabetes. “Self care when you’re just trying to survive is not a priority,” said Overlock, and her clients come in with both physical and mental health issues.

There is often a health care represen-tative available at Loaves and Fishes, as well as other advocates who can help people organize their personal docu-mentation so they can connect with SNAP benefits and more.

“To get assistance you have to get these papers together and it can be a process that’s quite frustrating for ev-erybody,” Overlock said.

Because of its funding, through pri-vate donations and grants, Loaves and Fishes remains one of the most open

and easily accessible feeding programs in the city. “We were founded to be a place where people can come in and get in out of the elements and get a hot meal,” Overlock said.

Over the years, the program has become a safe haven where birth-days, employment, and housing are celebrated and deaths are mourned.

“It really is like an extended family,” she said.

Loaves and Fishes is just one of sev-eral well established soup kitchens in Nashville. “There are some wonderful feeding programs in this town,” Over-lock said. “If it’s near you, if you can figure out how to get there, it’s good stuff.”

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Ann Sappenfield of the 40 Days for Life prayer vigil to end abortion prays the rosary at Aquinas

College. The Center for Faith and Culture at Aquinas sponsored a Mass and Living Rosary on Monday, Oct. 7, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The rosary was prayed in support of the 40 Days for

Life prayer vigil. The circle of people praying were illimunated by candles in bags decorated with

prayers by members of the art class sponsored by Aquinas College at Room In the Inn homeless

shelter. The people who decorated the bags all knew someone who had an abortion or had one

themselves.

Photo by Andy Telli

Deacon Fye was seeing his classmates and friends walking back from the altar after Cardinal Harvey had prayed over them. “When they had approached him, they were the same men I always knew; afterward, they had become ordained Deacons of the Roman Catholic Church. I felt, and still feel that we are a true band of brothers, with Jesus Christ as our model, leader, and friend.”

During the ordination, the new deacons promised to live a life of prayer, celibacy and obedience to their diocesan bishop. As deacons, they will be able to preside at baptisms, marriages and funerals, preach, and assist the priest at the altar during the

liturgy.The new deacons will have an additional

year of theological studies and spiritual formation before being ordained to the priesthood in their home dioceses.

As part of the ordination rite, the Car-dinal Harvey placed the Book of the Gos-pels in the hands of each candidate being ordained and said, “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you be-lieve, and practice what you teach.”

In his homily, Cardinal Harvey empha-sized the beginning of the rite of ordina-tion, in which the ordaining prelate asks of the one presenting the candidates, “Do you judge them to be worthy?”

Cardinal Harvey told the seminarians

that the worthiness to be ordained does not come from their own talents or prepa-rations, but is a gift given by God for the service of the Church.

Highlighting the words spoken to Jer-emiah the prophet and Jesus’ words re-corded in the Gospel of John, Cardinal Har-vey reminded the new deacons that it was God who had initiated this plan for their service and has called them to this new life.

He concluded by reminding them that the prayers of the bishops and hundreds of priests, and thousands in attendance, most especially their families and friends who have prayed for and supported them, are for them to be joyful servants of the truth of the Gospel, whose messengers and preachers they now are.

Seminarians ordained deacons at St. Peter’sContinued from page 2

Continued from page 13

Risk of hunger crosses all social boundaries

Praying rosaryfor the unborn

Tennessee Register 1November 22, 2013

November 22, 2013 | A Voice of Tennessee Catholic Life since 1937 | www.dioceseofnashville.com

Father Ryan retires number of pioneering athlete … page 2 | Food rescue program attacks waste, hunger … page 23


Filipinos ramp up to help after Typhoon Haiyan

Theresa Laurence

Like all Americans old enough to remem-ber the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which occurred 50 years

ago this week, John Siegenthaler remembers the moment he heard that the president had been fatally shot.

He was working at his desk at The Tennes-sean when an AP reporter ran in with a wire report of the news.

“Instinctively, I became angry,” said Siegent-haler, a lifelong Catholic, prominent Nashville journalist, and close friend of the Kennedy family.

At first, he thought it might have been a “sick joke,” but it quickly became clear that it was no joke. The president, America’s first Catholic commander-in-chief, and a man whom he knew personally, was dead.

Siegenthaler scrambled with his fellow edi-tors and reporters to get the next day’s edi-tion of The Tennessean out, then made plans to go to Washington for the funeral. “It was tragic and sad, there were a lot of tears,” he said of the funeral Mass, held at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 25, 1963.

Fifty years later, Siegenthaler recalls the scene of somber mourners along Kennedy’s funeral procession route. “It was something to see people lined up along the streets, openly weeping,” he said. Even though they had never met the president, those people “were touched by his death, they were hurt by it. I think their tears reflected the emotions of the country.”

Local Catholics reflect on legacy of JFK’s life and death

CNS photo/courtesy Catholic Standard The caisson bearing U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s flag-draped casket is drawn by horses in a procession to the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington for the president's funeral Mass on Nove. 25, 1963.

Andy Telli

A fter the devastating Typhoon Hai-yan struck the central Philippine is lands, killing thousands and

displacing about 600,000 from their homes, Anna Lyn Tiller had to wait for four days to hear whether her mother, brother, sister and other family members had survived.

“Four days of agony,” said Tiller, a parishioner at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church in Nashville. “It was very, very devastating for that four days.”

Finally, she heard from her family. They had survived the 15-foot storm surge and the 200 mph winds, and were living in an evacuation center, Tiller said, waiting to get back to their homes

in the town of Balasan in the province of Western Visayas.

Tiller’s story has been repeated for scores of Filipino families living in Middle Tennessee. “We still have a lot of families here who have their families either in the evacuation centers or miss-ing,” said Irene Cepnio, a parishioner at St. Joseph Church in Madison.

Soon after they started hearing about the extent of the destruction, members of the Filipino community began working to orga-nize fundraisers to help the relief efforts.

John and Cecile Dy, parishioners at St. Jo-seph, donated the receipts from their down-town restaurant Pacifica on Nov. 15, which totaled more than $6,000, Cepnio said.

St. Joseph also hosted a memorial

Mass for the victims of the typhoon on Wednesday, Nov. 20, and money from the collection was donated to relief ef-forts, she added.

The Filipino Family Prayer Group of St. Joseph is sponsoring a benefit con-cert featuring several country music songwriters and Filipino entertainers at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 30, at St. Joseph School, Cepnio said. Tickets are $30 a person and $75 for a family and are available by calling Cepnio at (615) 500-5428.

Proceeds from the concert will benefit the Red Cross. “They are already on the ground (in the Philippines) and they have a long term program to help com-munities rebuild,” Cepnio said.

On Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Filipino children will be performing at Rivergate Mall and collecting donations for the relief efforts, Cepnio said.

Those are only some of the fundraising efforts underway in Middle Tennessee. The Diocese of Nashville also is asking


See pages 8-9 for the Diocese of Nashville’s annual report, and a letter from diocesan CFO Bill Whalen.

12 Tennessee Register November 22, 2013

‘Shock and grief ’Msgr. Owen Campion, a Nashville na-

tive, former editor of the Tennessee Reg-ister and associate editor of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper, recalls that when news of the assassination, on Nov. 22, 1963, spread around the St. Bernard College seminary campus in Cullman, Ala., he and his fellow students were glued to the television. When they gath-ered for dinner “not a word was spoken. It was all shock and grief,” he said.

In the hours and days that followed as Lee Harvey Oswald was chased down and arrested for the murder of Kennedy, then killed by Jack Ruby, Msgr. Cam-pion remembers the “confusion, sense of panic almost in the whole country.”

‘Symbol for American Catholics’While the shocking death of President

Kennedy looms so large in the collective American memory, the impact of his life should not be forgotten. “He was such a symbol for American Catholics,” Msgr. Campion said. “Here was this highly edu-cated, very elegant, powerful man … who went to Mass every Sunday,” he said.

Until Kennedy came to the forefront of American politics, Catholics “were very much on the outside looking in,” still con-tending with prejudice and the suspicion that they were less than fully American.

Siegenthaler, who worked on Ken-nedy’s 1960 presi-dential campaign from its Washington headquarters, recalls “the seminal mo-ment in the campaign” when Kennedy addressed the Houston Ministerial Al-liance about his Catholic faith. Siegent-haler, who attended the speech, watch-ing as “a fly on the wall,” said its impact

should not be underestimated. Before that speech on Sept. 12, 1960,

Kennedy faced some “really mean spir-ited attacks” about his Catholic faith and how it would impede his ability to govern the nation, Siegenthaler said.

Many people openly questioned his patriotic loyalty to the United States, implying that he would be guided by the pope in Rome rather than the will of the American people. It was not uncom-mon to come out of Mass on Sunday and see anti-Catholic tracts plastered on car windows, Siegenthaler said. If some-one handed Siegenthaler one of these pamphlets, “I would take it and throw it in the gutter in front of them to let them know what I thought about that.”

The Houston speech, however, “helped immeasurably ease the minds of non-Catholics,” Siegenthaler said. Kennedy assured the American people that, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters – and the church does not speak for me.”

The Houston speech set the prec-edent for how future politicians would be judged, or more importantly, not judged based on their faith background, Siegenthaler said.

In today’s polarized political climate, it’s difficult to imagine a Catholic politician not butting heads with the U.S. bishops on policy issues, but Kennedy “never had an issue of conflict with the church,” Msgr. Campion said. Today’s hot button social issues of abortion and same-sex marriage were simply not an issue in Ken-nedy’s day, Msgr. Campion reminded.

Catholics’ affection for Kennedy has been leveled some by the revelations about his private life in the years since his death, Msgr. Campion said, but the very public pride in his Catholic faith that he exhibited during the 1960 cam-paign and while he served as president

helped create a bond with Catholics across the country. Kennedy regularly attended Mass, traveled with his per-sonal Missal, and always stopped to greet priests and religious sisters.

Father John Henrick, pastor of St. Ig-natius of Antioch Parish, was, for a brief moment, one of those priests greeted by the country’s first Catholic president.

When Kennedy was visiting Nashville for a speech at Vanderbilt University in May 1963, Father Henrick was a young priest teaching at Father Ryan High School. He parked his car at the old Fa-ther Ryan campus on Elliston Place and was walking toward Vanderbilt’s Dudley Field when the presidential motorcade passed by. Riding through the streets of Nashville with the top down in his car, Kennedy noticed Father Henrick wear-ing his Roman collar and looked at him and said, “Hello, Father.”

“It was a total chance encounter, and as brief as it was, it was very touching,”

Father Henrick said. Father Henrick, who was still a semi-

narian in Baltimore during the Kennedy campaign, remembers casting his first-ever vote for him. “It was a heady time,” Father Henrick remembers of all the changes swirling around the nation and the church at that time, with the start of the Second Vatican Council.

Father Henrick also remembers the day of the assassination when he was teaching in his Father Ryan classroom. “The news came over the loudspeaker and I was ter-ribly depressed,” Father Henrick said.

‘Expectations and hopes’While the grief of those early mo-

ments after the president’s death has long since passed, what has not passed is the allure of imagining what might have been if Kennedy had lived. To examine his legacy, “you have to put it in terms of expectations and hopes,” Msgr. Campion said.

Kennedy had just begun to step into the fray of the Civil Rights Movement but was not yet a champion of it, accord-ing to Msgr. Campion. A typical Bos-ton Irish Catholic, Kennedy had little knowledge of the African American struggle in the South. If he had lived, could he have done more to advance the cause of Civil Rights in the South? Would he have acted to de-escalate the war in Vietnam? These and many other questions will, of course, continue to exist only in the hypothetical sense.

Intensely interested in foreign policy, Kennedy established the Peace Corps, an international volunteer service pro-gram, and one of his most enduring legacies. The Peace Corps was “a major contribution” and “excited an awful lot of young people,” Msgr. Campion said.

While thousands of young adults have had the life-changing experience of serv-ing in the Peace Corps, Siegenthaler had the personally life-changing experience of working within the Kennedy adminis-tration.

“I had some really meaningful experi-ences working in government,” he said. “Living on the cusp of public policy deci-sions sharpens the mind, and I think I came back from working in government better prepared to do my job as a journalist.”

Kennedy gave Siegenthaler a unique opportunity, made possible because “he was, in my view, a unique politician.”


Local Catholics reflect on legacy of JFK’s life and death

CNS photo/courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum U.S. President John F. Kennedy and first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, arrive at Love Field in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963, the day he was assasinated.

Siegenthaler

CNS photo/Cecil Stoughton, courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum U.S. President John F. Kennedy reaches out to the crowd gathered at the Hotel Texas parking lot for a rally in Fort Worth Nov. 22, 1963.

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