Continue reading »]]> Just in today…Rest in peace, Robert Hegyes, who played Epstein on the old Welcome Back Kotter TV show.

Robert Hegyes, an actor whose Jewish-Puerto Rican character Juan Epstein was one of the Sweathogs on the 1970s TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, died Thursday of a heart attack in New Jersey. He was 60.

A resident of Metuchen, N.J., Hegyes arrived at JFK Medical Center in nearby Edison in full cardiac arrest and died there, hospital spokesman Steven Weiss confirmed.

Hegyes, who had a mop of dark curly hair, played Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter.

One of my favorite scenes:

Continue reading »]]> Bishop Joseph McFadden of Harrisburg, PA made this regrettable statement recently with regards to the public schools in his diocese.

“In totalitarian governments, they would love our system,” McFadden said to during the interview. “This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all those tried to establish a monolith so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things.”

And there wasn’t a person in the diocese who thought that this was a bad idea? Who reviewed this? And why wasn’t their response, “I get your point, Bishop, but that’s not the way to say that. You’re going to offend people if you write or say that.” It seems the communications department is asleep at the wheel.

This is beside the fact that the statement is not accurate. Public schools (of which I am a product–elementary and high school) are quite diverse in their thinking. They teach many ways of looking at a problem, not a monolithic way. Being at a public university where that kind of diversity is valued has furthered my thinking in this area. Openness is of the highest possible value it seems on public campuses be they High School, College or even grammar schools.

Now that being said, I’m not opposed to school vouchers or in disagreement that people can choose to send their kid to whatever school they choose. I would say that that choice includes public schools and in promoting education, Catholic Schools shouldn’t have to put public schools down, by comparing them to fascism in order to lift themselves up.

Some additional thoughts on public vs. Catholic or private schools.

From Kindergarten to 6th grade I attended Public School in Yonkers, P.S. #23 to be exact. I got a phenomenal education there. My two favorite teachers were Mrs. Balassi and Mrs. Richter–two old school style teachers who expected much and still kept a gentle hand.

When I got to “Middle” school, my parents decided that I should attend our parish school instead of Enrico Fermi Middle School, our local public school. Fermi had a bad reputation. It was a wild place, as any place with a large number of teens, a lot of experimenting was happening. I remember finding two of my childhood friends smoking at 13 on my walk home. I’d hear stories of people getting drunk. One of my classmates got pregnant that year and despite being in a public school (gasp! #sarcasm), she had the baby, raised it well and sacrificed much for her child as a single mother.

Meanwhile, I attended Mt. Carmel-St. Anthony School. The school day itself was probably more sedate than what you’d find at Fermi and we were loaded up with homework every night, but the teens were no less wild than anyone else. Girls flirted and hiked their skirts up often higher than the public school girls. We found one girl smoking just off school grounds. There were drinking parties and sexual hijinx all around us then and the nice quiet little school did little to protect us from those things. Moreover, I think I received more abuse there from kids than from other schools. Apparently, I was the nerd and that gave others carte blanche to take aim at my awkwardness. More bullies existed there than anywhere else. And there was certainly plenty of trouble just beyond the school gates.

What protected me from finding that trouble often? I really was a good kid and even when friends would smoke or experiment, I didn’t find myself even wanting to at that age or even through high school. (My first beer was at Clarke’s Bar at Fordham!) What protected me was the rational guidance of my parents. We lived in a neighborhood that wasn’t always great, drugs were around, alcohol use was fairly pervasive amongst the families of my friends. Domestic violence, arson, and even a murder–all occurred in the neighborhood of my youth. Some parents are indeed heroes. And mine were certainly heroes for me. They had expectations of how I would behave and while I don’t remember ever being seriously punished for anything, I thought there would be repercussions for my actions if I stepped out of bounds.

High school had me return to public school and while the ship was run bit looser there, by no means was it a zoo. Could it have been better? Certainly. But did I get a good education there? Absolutely. It was there I learned to write well (Thanks to Mrs. Gladys Stein). Coaches began to take in interest in my gift for broadcasting and for sports. I honed speaking and science skills. I became a student leader despite nerdy-ness. And my parents kept me out of trouble, by demanding curfews, an adherence to homework and an expected respect for others.

And they did it all without cable TV–because they didn’t want to pay the $21/month for it. No internet either. I did have a sleek Atari 2600 though.

So when a Bishop says essentially that public schools are akin to fascism, I cry foul! Parents are not merely responsible for the choice of school their child attends–they are even more responsible for the values that they instill in their child, so that the school might enhance those values and the student might appropriate both the school’s values with what they’ve learned from their parents.

So Bishop, no offense, I get your point, but maybe the time has come to take a look at what kinds of lives the students in your diocese are leading outside of the classroom. And talk about that–if you can.

Continue reading »]]> Cardinal-Designate Thomas Collins, the Archbishop of Toronto is simply a wonderfully humble guy. I got to interview him once for BustedHalo® and he’s always warm and inviting. You can sense the surprise in his voice here as he meets with the Canadian media on his recent appointment:

Congrats, to our neighbors to the North and to Archbishop Collins. May you wear the red hat well.

Continue reading »]]> The Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration will soon require all employers to include “contraception and sterilization coverage in their health-insurance plans, including those provided to employees of religious institutions.” The USCCB is complaining that this violates religious liberty and requires Catholics to purchase a health care plan that violates their moral principles.

The Department of HHS also has given companies that don’t presently comply with this edict until August of 2013 to figure out how they plan to comply. Some will simply give their employees a lump sum payment of cash and tell them to purchase their own insurance on the open market. Sounds like a plan? Perhaps, until one realizes that those plans will be more expensive than what a company would have access to, putting especially those with families in a dicey economic quandary.

Providing health care is something that the Church and the Obama administration agree should be a fundamental right for all people. Is it a greater evil to say, not provide a diocesan employee or a Catholic Health worker with benefits or to have a benefit plan in place that includes coverage for contraception and sterilization? Would the latter be formal cooperation with evil simply by purchasing a plan like this? If it is then giving money to someone to purchase that same plan would also be formal cooperation as well, wouldn’t it? Just as say paying Independent Health (my insurance company) money for plans that don’t cover contraception even though they have other plans that do also qualify as a no-no.

Grant Gallicho over at dotCommonweal provides us with better insight on this issue:

Paying for health-insurance that includes contraception coverage does not amount to formal material cooperation with evil because an employee may or may not take advantage of the benefit — and the act of using artificial contraception is something an employee could engage in with or without health insurance. Rather, when a Catholic institution pays for health insurance that includes birth control, it is remotely cooperating with evil. Remote material cooperation is permissible when there are proportionate reasons. Providing health care for someone who could not get comparable coverage as an individual on the open market (and at this point an individual could not) is sufficient reason to freely and remotely cooperate with evil. (emphases mine)

In short, my view is simple: If you don’t want to use contraception or have a sterilization procedure than don’t do that. Perhaps therein lies the issue. Why couldn’t the Bishops simply call on Catholics to not use such things and trust that they won’t? If statistics are to be believed, many Catholics use birth control (and I’m not saying that they should, I’m just stating a fact). Presumably, some are employees of a Catholic entity (a school, a hospital, a diocese). So they are already finding a way to use contraceptives with or without access to it in their health care plan. The issue at hand here is really trust. Do the Bishops trust that Catholics won’t use these options in their health care plan? The answer is apparently no.

Is this as big of a deal as we think it is? I think that’s doubtful. Is President Obama purposely trying to annoy Catholics in this regard? No, I don’t think so either, but there was an easier solution to be sure. Some Catholics are claiming that he’ll now lose the Catholic vote. I find that even more highly doubtful. Why? The last time I checked very few Cathoiics checked what the Bishops have to say about who they should vote for. After the sexual abuse scandal the Bishops moral leadership was put into a grave situation with regard to whether people consider them a trusted source with regards to morality. These days they don’t rate very high unfortunately. So the risk of losing the Catholic vote is minimal because statistics show that for most people, they generally don’t consider what the Bishops say when making the decision to vote or to not to vote for someone anyway.

Still, President Obama and the HHS department could’ve expanded the exemption for religious entities that are not churches. To not do so seems to disregard the moral conclusions that concerned people of faith have concluded after deep discernment. Their conclusions are not ones that should so carelessly be dispensed with and this law will give them more to chew on unnecessarily. That said, people of faith should also smartly realize that we need not fret as much as we might first think.

As Catholics, we should not worry as much about what a health care package gives us the freedom to do. Rather, we should worry about what our freedom allows us to be called to do. We have the power, despite the law to tend to those who seek abortion or sterilization and to honor them with such a profound care that their worries about bringing a child into the world cease. Do we do that? Some do. Most of us are concerned. But more needs to be done.

Do we take time to really articulate a sexual ethic that says more than “No-no, don’t do that! That’s dirty” to young people? Do we honor women with our sexual ethic regarding the body by campaigning against pornography, sexism, domestic violence and genital mutilation? Do we dispense with outmoded examples of female submissiveness in favor of mutual partnerships in marriage that call EACH person to freely give all that they are to one another promising that they will stay with that partner, come what may? Do we honor that covenant marriage, or do we think of it more as a corporate merger that can be reworked or dispensed with at will frivolously? Do we spend enough time with our teens to notice to whom their attractions lie and work to teach them proper ways to interact with one another instead of regarding the other as a mere sexual desire to be quenched? All of these are ways to combat the choice that evil gives them.

It seems to me that more “preventative” measures can be taken to make sure that Catholics are discerning well when it comes to these matters of moral levity. In doing that, perhaps we’d have less of a reason to be concerned about what health care companies offer at all. Simply put, we’d have no need to even venture the question.

Continue reading »]]> So one year ago, I weighed in at around 238lbs. Today I’m around 218. So I dropped 20lbs just by exercising. My diet has fluctuated from being very rigid at times about that and then not paying much attention at all. Being on a college campus doesn’t help as food is always a nearby temptation. But at least I’m eating healthier than I used to.

So the other side of this is that muscle is much heavier than fat and I’ve gained a ton of muscle. One of the things that I’ve noticed is how much weight I can push these days. When I started it was all I could do to bench press the bar 5 times with no weights on it. Now I’m pushing 155-160lbs that many times for three reps.

I can squat 135 lbs now 3 times and a bit more for one time.

Some days I get disappointed that the scale isn’t down as much as I’d like it to be. But as diet improves this year I hope to lose another 20lbs and improve my personal bests. I’m running better than ever in terms of sprinting and my agility is really good during drills. I’m really looking forward to our faux “NFL combine” drill that our great trainer, Ben Woods wants to put us through at some point.

But here’s the tell tale sign. Here’s me in 2008 after climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge–which had me slightly winded walking up so many stairs.

I love the fact that I climbed that bridge and it was a great experience. But I look so fat in that horrid gray suit they make you wear. It helps you blend into the bridge so you don’t freak the traffic out.

Recently a student snapped this picture of me with my students at Glenmary:

OK—now I believe that seeing is believing. I look a lot thinner. Still a bit of a paunch, but for a man of 42 who has only gotten back into shape, not so shabby. 20lbs makes a difference and if I can do it again this year, then I’ll be below 200lbs by year’s end–a very realistic goal.

So today, let’s pray for better health and for those who push us to be healthier, trainers, doctors, therapists, spiritual directors. I am especially grateful to Ben Woods, who pushes me and our crew of young students who work out with “the old man” in the morning.

A final story from the gym:

I was doing rows the other day. Now when I started doing rows I think I started with a 20lbs dumbbell. I’ve graduated to 50lbs recently. Ben looked at me the other day and pushed me to do 15 reps with that weight and I successfully did it. But that means only one thing. The weight is too light. “Up you go to 55lbs!” Ben triumphed.

“Ugh!” was my first thought. I struggle to do 12 reps with the 55lbs. As I finish a young student comes over and asks, “Hey is that a 60?” And I say “Nope, 55.” He turns his nose up at my weight–mind you, a personal best, for me. And heads over to get a 60 pound dumbbell.

OK, now I’m not very competitive in general, but the student pissed me off. I looked at Ben and said, “That little (word I shouldn’t say), I just do the most I’ve ever done and he made it seem like I was lifting a pillow!”

Ben’s simple response: “Well, ya think you can do 60? Cmon, you’re strong today. Go show him that you can lift as much as him.”

I grabbed a 60 and began to row. I got to 10 with my left arm and I thought it would explode. The student got a glimpse of me rowing and smiled. I switched arms to my stronger right arm and started rowing away.

“10, 11, (grunt) and 12!” Then I glanced at the student and fired the weight into the floor with a thud and said “There! And I’m twice your age!”

He laughed and said, “Way to go! Now you’re motivating me.”

Someone told me he went and got a 65 pounder soon after that.

I knew my limits and went upstairs to do some running.

But that’s the kind of community that we have. We push each other. Men and women, faculty and students, ministers and athletes all supporting each other. It’s beginning to break down a lot of doors, mostly because I’m mouthy. If I’m running behind someone, you’ll hear me saying “Don’t let me catch you, Doc!” to one of my colleagues who is a former athlete and in great shape. He’ll realize that I shouldn’t be close to him and push that much harder, making it harder for me to catch him, but ultimately giving me a better workout.

I’ve never felt better, in a number of ways. I can’t imagine not being at the gym three days a week and even feel a bit lethargic when I’m not there.

So pray for my community of friends and our trainer, Ben as a new school year starts. May we be able to stay healthy and move more swiftly and strongly as time goes by.

Continue reading »]]> In my now many years of ministry one of the joys I have had is being able to meet a lot of really wonderful people. Some of these people are prayerful and contemplative, like my buddy Fr. Tom Ryan, CSP. Others are silly and fun, like Fr. Brett Hoover, CSP. Some are energizing like Becky Eldredge.

And then there’s Kerry Robinson who is simply one of the classiest people I have ever met.

Kerry is the head of the Leadership Roundtable on Church Management and is an expert fundraiser. She’s in the Raskob family, longtime Catholic philanthropists who had a vision of the laity handling more of the temporal affairs of the church. Kerry’s family was way ahead of their time. That future is now and Kerry is left holding up the family mantle with the rest of her family, pushing the rest of us to realize our own gifts and talents and how they can be used for the benefit of the church. She does it creatively and with a ton of class, meeting with tons of high powered executives and humble ministry types like myself and my colleagues.

Today, Kerry posted a wonderful reflection on her “yes” to Fr. Bob Beloin, Yale’s Catholic Chaplain. when he asked her to work with him on raising money to build Yale’s Catholic Center some years ago. Here’s just a snip:

I hated the thought of the proposition but civility and manners prevented me from cutting him off in mid-sentence. He entreated me to pray about it for five days and said that whatever I concluded in prayer, he would accept and honor. I readily agreed, convinced that after prayerful reflection my “No” would be uncommonly articulate.

Imagine, then, my astonishment the following Tuesday evening when I called him and told him I would accept the invitation.

At which point the goal doubled to $10 million.

Three months into our work together, fueled by a passionate commitment to bring a Catholic intellectual and spiritual center of consequence to fruition, overwhelmed by the magnitude of work our aspirations would entail, sleep-deprived with a newborn at my constant ready, the chaplain-my prime collaborator-gave me a present. It was an elegant plaque that said, simply, IT CAN BE DONE.

I was moved by this because when I first met Kerry, I was at a conference where she was speaking to a group of people about fundraising. She said something astounding:

“Fundraising is ministry.”

Have you ever been sort of half paying attention and then hear something that nearly knocked you off your chair? Well, color me that. I nearly yelled, “Say what, now?”

“Fundraising,” Kerry continued, “is ministry simply because we’re excited about what it is that we do for the church, where we’re called by God to be. And we want others to be just as excited about what that is. And we want people to be partners with us in that ministry. For some, the best way that they can enter that partnership in ministry is to give us money.”

I stopped being afraid to ask people for money at that moment. It can be done. And then, I had to meet this woman. And she was so classy. Surprisingly, she told me gracefully that she was a fan of Busted Halo and we hit it off right away. We invited her to be on our board and I always loved the challenges put before us by her.

Mostly though, I’m proud to call her a friend. Kerry’s been a good person to lean on and has always had time for people. She’s a great mom and someone who hopes for the best for the future—not merely for the Catholic Church but for all the people of God.

Check out her blog Love in Ordinary Time, which I enjoy and is always insightful and occasionally very touching. This post On Dying I also found particularly moving.

Thanks Kerry, for always being a class act.

Continue reading »]]> Megan Blackmer, or Meggie as I call her (she calls me Mikey and is one of the few people I ever let call me that), reflects on her time serving the needs of adults with mild to moderate psychological disorders at Comprehend, a hang out spot for people with those needs in Vanceberg, KY. She also muses on our experience of ecumenism as we went to a worship service at a Pentecostal church with our farm managers Walter and Abby.

My colleague Ed Koch (pronounced KO) had served at Glenmary as a farm manager for short time and was known to the Mosby Pentecostal Community. He was hoping that they’d sing his favorite song that he remembered from his time here. He even got up to sing along.

Some takeaways for me: I was quite impressed with our new friends at the Pentecostal church. Pastor Rick came to each person before the service and greeted them and each person in the congregation did the same for the most part. As we left, every single person came over and gave all of the students and Ed and I a hug good bye. They warmly invited us back and we extended the invitation to them as well to come visit us if they are ever in Buffalo. Do we ever give our own visitors and even our regular parishioners that kind of welcome? How do we treat other Christians? Have we gone to see how they worship? Invited them to share an experience with us? I found their personal prayers to be very sincere, giving God their struggles and concerns–many of which were quite serious.

The following day, Pastor Rick joined some of our group at the construction site, working alongside our number. One student, Vineet, was quite touched by the experience of seeing him working with the guys. “He was working harder than everyone else and he made everyone feel valued and welcomed.” His hospitality really moved us and we all felt so comfortable with him and his church.

While one group was at construction, another was at Licking Valley Senior Center where we bagged groceries for pick up and distributed them the following day. Here’s some of us in action:

And then at the end of the day Maggie, a UB first year undergrad, offered her reflection on the day:

A bunch more to go. A great reflective week. For me personally, I really enjoyed working bagging groceries. It’s kind of mindless work, but at the same time it was very satisfying. I made friends with a client who came over to make small talk. He talked of fishing and the weather and began to help us load groceries into bags and move them into the next room. It was a source of pride for him to help when he was also receiving so much from the center. He was graceful in his humble way and made us all put a human face on the experience. Today I offer some prayers for him and his family that there are better times ahead in 2012.

Continue reading »]]> It is with a mix of sadness and joy that I bid farewell to my short-time Campus Ministry colleague, Julianne Wallace (pictured in the center flanked by Niagara Campus Minister, Kristina Schliesman and yours truly) today from our UB Campus Ministry staff. Julianne will become the Campus Minister for Liturgy, Worship and Faith Formation at St. Bonaventure University–where her Franciscan heart will be fed with the charism that has formed her for so many years.

As a friend often says about job opportunities, “When they call, you’ve got to go.” Yesterday’s readings reflected that very theme. God calls us to do great things but, many times we shove away the call that God sends to us, making excuses because we’re afraid to make a move or simply don’t want to upset the apple cart and start over risking our comfort.

The truth is that I know St. Bonaventure will be a wonderful place for my friend and colleague to be a minister and she’ll be a great addition to the place where her gifts will be used wisely and with great joy. Besides Jules looks better in Franciscan brown than in UB blue anyway.

So in bidding her adieu, I spent the morning in prayer for Julianne and for all those who discern their role in life, especially those students who are seniors and graduate students who are starting their last semester tomorrow. As a new semester starts, I’ve been feeling that I’m being called to do more spiritual direction with people. I’m excited about getting more training from my Jesuit friends at Canisius High School where I’ll be taking a class on spiritual direction and the spiritual exercises with some of their faculty. For Julianne, who has discerned her gifts for helping people worship well reflecting that Franciscan spirituality she loves to students, my prayer for you is that you are able to do that and be joyful as you serve others.

So this post is dedicated to Julianne along with this song which many parishes I’m sure sang at mass yesterday. A hat tip to Deacon Greg for this you tube version.

See ya at the diocesan vicariate meeting. And Fordham takes on the Bonnies this Saturday in basketball. Get ready to feel the wrath of Ignatius. I’ll be the one in Maroon.

Continue reading »]]> So we worked in Vanceburg with People’s Self-Help Housing. They were a group of guys–and I do mean guys, real men—workboots and flannel. These are the kind of guys that you’d find talking smack in the barber shop and it was no different on the construction site. One guy came in and was smothered by three others who knuggied him into submission and came up laughing. They were great guys who made us all feel real welcome and found us some fun tasks to do.

Here was mine:

Meanwhile, Matt, one of my favorite students, also had some words of wisdom about the experience.